In Christ Alone, Finding The Blessings in Persecution | August 10, 2025

The Setup: Arrested for the Resurrection

Sermon number six opened right where the healing of the lame man left off, with Peter and John still teaching the people in the temple courts when the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees arrive, greatly annoyed that they are proclaiming the resurrection in the name of Jesus. They arrest Peter and John and put them in custody overnight, even though many who heard the word that day believed, bringing the number of men in the church to about five thousand.

That set up the first point of the message: proclaiming the gospel of Christ will always come with pushback and blessing. Pastor Justin was honest that here in America, the pushback most of us face for our faith tends to be more annoying than dangerous, but he did not let that stay comfortable for long. He told the story of Pastor Tilahun Mekonnen, an Ethiopian church leader ambushed and killed in 2019 by extremists for refusing to deny Christ, whose sacrifice, rather than silencing the local church, only strengthened the resolve of the believers he left behind.

He paired that story with the very different but equally real suffering of the Christian recording artist TobyMac, who lost his twenty one year old son to an accidental overdose in 2019 and described the early days of grief as numb and rocked, yet leaned on his family and on God to endure. Pastor Justin used both stories to make the same point from two directions: real faith does not exempt anyone from real pain, whether the pain comes from persecution or from tragedy, but it does provide a peace that the world cannot manufacture on its own.

From there the sermon moved into Acts 4:8-12, where Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, stands before the council and declares that there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Pastor Justin tied that directly to Jesus' own words in John 14:6, that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him, making the exclusivity of the gospel the second major point of the message.

He addressed head on how uncomfortable that exclusive claim feels in a culture built around the idea that all paths are equally valid, using Matthew 23 to show that Jesus Himself was never shy about confronting religious leaders whose outward performance masked inward emptiness. The blessing of persecution, Pastor Justin argued, is that it forces a church to figure out quickly whether it actually believes Jesus is the only way or is simply hoping to avoid conflict by staying vague.

Galatians 2:20 and 2 Timothy 2:21 gave the sermon its call to personal application: we have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us, which means a life fully surrendered to Jesus should look noticeably different from a life still trying to manage its own image and comfort. Pastor Justin challenged us to examine whether our own lives show any evidence of that kind of surrender, or whether we have quietly kept ourselves in charge.

The message closed in 1 Peter 4:12-19, which tells believers not to be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes, as though something strange were happening to them, but instead to rejoice insofar as they share Christ's sufferings, so that they may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed. Persecution and suffering, in other words, are not signs that God has abandoned His church, they are often signs that the church is doing exactly what it was called to do.

This Week's Application

So this week, is there a place in your life where you have gone quiet about Jesus to avoid pushback, and what would it look like to trust that the blessing is often hidden inside the very persecution you are trying to avoid? We would love for you to join us this Sunday as we continue walking through Acts together.