Good morning, man, and we are glad that you are spending your Sunday with us, if you're here at Lincoln Road or one of our campuses or online. And we're honored that you take time out of your Sunday morning to be here. My name's Gray, and I get to serve over at The Hunt Club. And let me just say that Reclaimed night is one of my favorite things that we get to do here. And there were so many stories, as we've talked from each campus about-- Every baptism is special, but I know at The Hunt Club, there's a particular group of boys that were baptized that really just stuck out to me, and they were three football players, high school football players.

And what was so cool is that they were baptized not by a pastor or even a house church pastor necessarily, but they were baptized by their head coach. And man, I just think that's such a great picture of the Gospel getting beyond these walls, wherever those walls are for you, and you guys living out your faith on a daily basis. We always say that you guys preach far more sermons than anybody that ever stands on this stage because of the people you get to work around and do life with. And so, that was just a great testimony today. I want to do one thing, and you've already done it, but we're going to do it again because we can't celebrate it too much, is I want to go ahead and celebrate.

On all of our campuses, those of you, let's celebrate those that got baptized this past week. And know that if that's you, know that your testimony is going to inspire someone to place their faith in Christ and to follow through in baptism. And so God's goodness is already using that story, your story. We're continuing our series called "As We Go," and I'm actually going to pick up, if you guys were here last week, I'm going to pick up with the story, or in the story, where Craig left off last week. And to do that, I'm going to, I guess, maybe set some tension with maybe an odd statement, and it's this statement right here.

We shouldn't be here today. Now, if you've got kids and you wrangled them and you got to church and then I get up here and I lead off with this, that may be a little frustrating for you. You're like, "I went through Hades to get here." Right? And then when you're coming in the door, you better put a smile on your face. Moms, you know that talking that you do where your teeth stay closed and your lips just move.

Yeah, and you're like, "Well, we'll go back out to the car." And so you're like, "Man, what do you mean we shouldn't be here today? You guys always talk about how important church is and coming to church." And so let me unpack this a little bit. When I say we, what I mean is the church itself. In fact, most historians, not most, all historians believe that the church really, when you look at the facts and all that the church was facing, it should have never made it out of the first century. And that's what we've been looking at in this series is the Book of Acts and the first-century church.

And that historians believe that they can't figure it out. Now, we know that it's because God was in it and is in it. But when you just look at the facts, this is a group of nobodies that were defying the greatest power on Earth, and somehow it made it out of not only the first century, but 2,000 years later. And not only that, when we think about the persecution that the first-century church faced. Not long after-- Well, let me go back.

Acts 1, the Church begins. By Acts 8, there's persecution starting to happen. By the end of Acts, the Apostle Paul is teaching in Rome, and that's around at 60 AD. And then around 64 AD, a guy named Nero comes on the scene in Rome. He's the emperor, and he begins to actively really, really persecute Christians, so much so that one historian who wasn't necessarily a fan, or wasn't a fan at all of Christians, his name was Cornelius Tacitus.

And Tacitus recorded that Nero would take the Christians after they had been killed, and he would put them on stakes and set them on fire, and he would use them to light his gardens at night. All right. So the persecution they were facing was far more than us going through Starbucks and they saying, "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." Right? This was significant persecution. And then for the first 300 years, that was the life that they lived.

And then around 300 AD, Constantine became the new emperor in Rome, and he legalized Christianity. And we think, man, that's a really good thing. And it was. But over time, over the next 700 years, Christians with that power of it being legal, and then they started gaining power in the social system, then they shifted from being bullied to being the bullies. And around 1000 AD, the Crusades begin.

And I want to read you this from one crusade. On July 15th, 1099, Christian crusaders burst into Jerusalem, stormed the Temple Mount, which is the size of about 30 football fields, and slaughtered men, women, and children. Muslim men, women, and children slaughtered. And this is what one general recorded of that day. "Piles of body parts were to be seen in the streets of the city.

It was just and splendid judgment of God that this place be filled with the blood of the unbelievers." You go, "Golly, how do we get to that place?"And so, in the early church, to this point, we saw this incredible persecution, and then we saw it shift to incredible corruption. And somehow in the midst of that, there was always this remnant of people that held on, that faced the persecution without fear, and they resisted the corruption, and they held on to what God had intended the church to be. And because of those people in every generation, we're here today. And there's still persecution, and there's still corruption in the church, but there's always a group of people who hold on to what God intended it to be. And that means that you and I, that we get to play a role in God's plan in our generation.

We get to be that remnant in our generation, so that 100 years from now, when people look back and they read the history of our time, they don't go, "Golly, they were so corrupted." They go, "No, man, this was a group of people that lived out what God intended for his local church and in the community, and made an impact." And we get to play a role. Now, here's the good news. The Church is going to continue with or without you, and with or without me. Jesus promised in Matthew chapter 16 that the gates of hell wouldn't overcome it. So it's going to do its thing.

God is going to have his church on this planet making an impact. It's just an issue of whether or not we get to be or we want to be a part of it, because we have an opportunity to play a role in God's plan in our generation. And here's where I want us to land this morning. When you look back through history of that remnant of people that always held on to what God intended, there is a characteristic, an attribute, that every one of them had in every generation. And we want to look at that this morning.

Now, to do that, we're going to go to Acts chapter four, and we're going to continue the story or the encounter that Craig introduced last week. And just a quick recap, Peter and John, they're headed to the temple to teach. On their way, they're encountered by a lame man. He wants money. Instead, they give him healing, and he's able to stand up and walk and run around.

And of course, it made the religious people, and you can mark this down, at any point when there is a movement of God, it will always be the religious people, the hyper-religious people, that get their feelings hurt first. And so they're frustrated because they see this thing growing, and there's this evidence literally standing before them. And so they call Peter and John in, and in that process, they bring in the heavy lifters. They're trying to really intimidate Peter and John and the disciples. They're trying to stamp out this movement of Jesus, and that's where we're going to pick up.

Verse seven says this, "They had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them." Here's their question, "By what power or what name did you do this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them..." Now, before we continue, I want to help you get there. Have you ever had a conversation with someone, a disagreement type of conversation, and after you got back in the car or you left, you thought of all the things you wish you'd said? Like, all the best answers and the counterpoints to their points. Or have you ever been going into a conversation and you're like, "Oh, man.

If they say this, I'm going to say that"? And in your brain, you're playing out this scenario, and you say all the right things, and they say all the stupid things, and they look like an idiot, and you've got your people behind you like, "Yeah, you got it. You told them." Well, Peter actually gets to do this. And what's really cool is the last time Peter had an opportunity to talk about Jesus, it was to a teenage girl, and he ran, and he denied that he even knew Jesus. And so here's what happens.

This is what Peter says. He says, "Rulers and elders of the people, if we are being called to account today for an act of kindness." Now, every time I have read this, and this is just how I read the Bible, things pop into my brain. This word kindness, I think about Allen Iverson. He was a basketball player for the 76ers, and he has this interview, and they're getting on to him for skipping practice, and he keeps saying practice over and over and over. He's like, "Practice?

We're talking about practice?" And I feel like Peter's like, "We're talking about kindness? You're trying to bust our chops for being kind? We're talking about kindness shown to a man who was lame, and are being asked how he was healed? Then know this, you and all the people of Israel..." Timeout. Allen Iverson was an NBA basketball player, if y'all are lost there.

All right, back here. "It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed." He keeps going. Jesus is, and now here's another thing. The Pharisees and the Sadducees and the elders, this wrecked them because Peter was a fisherman, and if he was a fisherman, that meant that he had literally dropped out of Bible school. Right?

Everybody wanted to be a rabbi, a teacher, and when you progressed as far as you could, you did the family trade. And so if you were a fisherman, that meant that at some point, you got to a point where you couldn't progress anymore. You weren't smart enough, you couldn't remember, whatever it was, and so you went and did the family trade. And so Peter is dropping the Book of Psalms on them. And so he says, "The stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved." And here's the dealLike if I read that, and again, this is just how I read the Bible, there's things that come to mind, and I would imagine this was what all of Peter and John's friends and disciples were doing after he delivered this. Like, "No, you told them." That's Peter right there. He's like, "Mm-hmm, now what?" And I think that's how I read the Bible. And so this is their response to that. Verse 13, "When they saw the courage" and all the guys going nuts behind them.

"When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled and ordinary," there's nothing special, "they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say." And then verse 15, "So they ordered them to withdraw from the Sanhedrin, from the courts, and they conferred together." And let me tell you what continued to happen in this encounter. They get together, and they can't figure out what to do. They sense this wildfire happening around them with the believers of Jesus, and there's people being healed, and there's evidence. And they call them back in, and basically what they end up doing is just they warn them.

They're like, "Hey, you need to stop talking about Jesus." And Peter, at this point, he just has so much courage, and he's like, "Hey, look, I don't care what you say. I can't help but talk about what I've seen and heard, what I've experienced. Do whatever you got to do, but I'm going to tell you what I've seen and heard." And so Peter and John go back to their disciples and their buddies, and they're unpacking this thing that had gone on for a couple of days, and at one point, they were thrown into jail. And as they're doing it, they begin to praise God, and they're like, "Man. God, you've been so faithful to us." And they begin to pray, and then they do what we always talk about when we pray is we talk about not because God needs to hear it, but because it centers our heart about his faithfulness, and his power, and what he's done, and what he's going to do.

And then they get to a point, and they pray this right here. "Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness." I'll just be honest. If I'm those guys, this might've read like this, "Now, Lord, consider their threats and give us protection." Even if you grew up in the small Baptist church like I did, anytime the youth went anywhere and someone would pray for us, they always prayed for a hedge of protection. And I always think, I need more than a shrub. I'm pretty stupid.

I need Wall of China-type protection. Not a shrub, not a hedge. But they didn't pray for protection. They prayed for boldness, and they prayed in a way that, "Enable your servants to speak." They anticipated more to come. They're praying, and they've already been bold in this moment.

They're praying for boldness for what is to come, for the persecution that is to come. And this is the thing, this word, boldness. When you look back through the history of Christianity, there's always a group of people that have boldness, and that is the attribute. That is the characteristic. If we are going to play a role in the church in this generation, if we're going to make an impact, it's going to be because we are bold.

Now, let me just say this. If you're not a Christ follower, or you're like, "Man, I'm trying to get back in church, but part of the reason I don't go to church is I love Jesus, I just don't like Jesus people, and when you talk about boldness, that really wigs me out because those are the people that bother me the most," I hear you. I hear you on that. And so what I want to do, if that's you, is point number one of this whole thing of unpacking boldness is an attempt to give you some peace of mind. And this is what I mean.

When we talk about boldness, you need to know that boldness is not brashness. Now, let me give you some words to help you unpack brashness. Impudent. Now, I don't know why I put... Oh, I do know why.

I was trying to sound smart. Nobody uses this word. All right? Arrogance. Tactless.

They're just careless with their words, and they're not curious about anybody's story. They've got the truth and they weaponize it. Harsh. Just cruel. And you're like, "Yeah, I know that guy.

I know that lady. She's on Facebook, and she's always posting all this stuff, and if you don't share this with three people and tell them you're going to hell, then you're going with them." I know that person. When we talk about boldness, this is not what we're talking about. In fact, this is what we're talking about, and what we see over and over is we see boldness as confidence, not in themselves, but in who God is. We see conviction in who Jesus is and what Jesus has done.

If you read all the way through the Book of Acts, even all the way through the New Testament, when people are sharing the Gospel, they don't lead out with rules. They just lead out with the resurrection. They go, "Hey, listen, I knew this guy. He did crazy things. He was incredible.

He was so kind. Everybody wanted to hang out with him. Then they crucified him. Then he resurrected from the dead, and so that's the guy I'm going to follow." They were convinced of itAnd then care. Who can tell how many times the religious people have walked past this lame man that was healed?

Enough that they knew who he was. So when we talk about boldness from here on out, this is what I want you to think about. Now, I do want to give you this caveat. When you read, when Jesus talks to the Pharisees and the religious people, and you see the Apostle Paul, and you see Peter and John, even in this context, you could say, "Well, Peter was a little brash with them." And I would agree with you that he was. In fact, the meanest things that Jesus ever said, he said to the religious people, to the people that thought they were better than everybody else.

But then when you see Jesus interact with the woman at the well, who'd been married six times or seven times, was living with a man at the time, and Jesus is bold in his truth of what he's convinced of, of what his convictions, but he's tender. When the Pharisees bring the woman who's caught in adultery before him and says, "Hey, the law says to stone her," Jesus is bold. He doesn't shy away from the truth. He confronts her sin, but he's gentle. When the Apostle Paul, later on in the Book of Acts, he goes to Greece and he's in Athens, and there's all these statues of these different gods.

And the Apostle Paul walks in, and he could have walked in and gone, "You guys are a bunch of idiots. You're worshiping created things instead of the creator." That would be brash. But Paul walks in, and he surveys the scene, and he sees that they have a God that's to the unknown God, just to make sure. The just in case God. And he takes that and he says, "Let me tell you who that is." And he reasons with them what the scriptures say.

He's bold, but he's caring. He's not brash. In another letter, the Apostle Paul writes this, and I love this, "Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders. Make the most of every opportunity." Well, how can we make the most of every opportunity? "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." Seasoned with salt, full of grace.

We should make people better. Boldness is not brashness. But we got to keep going. Boldness begins with Jesus. Go back to verse 13, "When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus." Now, here is a principle for you.

Doesn't matter if you're a Christian, a non-Christian, or somewhere in between. It's true for all of us, and it's this: We are a reflection of the greatest influences in our lives. Always. And then what we are bold about reveals those influences. So for you, it could be your greatest influence is Fox News.

Your greatest influence is CNN. Or your greatest influence is the music that you listen to, or your greatest influence is the team that you follow. Maybe it's Alabama. Roll Tide. But we are a reflection of that, and these guys reflected Jesus.

This is what it looks like. As we spend time with Jesus, and this is why we do and provide the resources that we provide for you guys, is because we want to create opportunities for you to spend time with Jesus because it increases your boldness. And as it increases your boldness, your kingdom impact increases, the difference that you're making. And this is just for kicks and giggles, and I don't want to move past it. So as we live a life that is impacting the Kingdom of God, man, we begin to live a fulfilled life.

Now, here's the reality, the world is after this, but it starts here. As we live a life that impacts the Kingdom, or as we spend time with Jesus and our boldness increases and we live a life that impacts the Kingdom, and then we begin to have a fulfilled life. The next thing about boldness that I want you to know is that it may require different actions for different people. When you hear the word boldness, you probably do think about someone who is willing to say the hard things, even if they're doing it in love. They're willing to step into the hard conversation and you go, "I just don't know if that's me." And you know what?

Maybe it's not you. Because boldness looks like different things for different people. If it is you, you know what boldness might be for you? It may be to sit with someone and listen and just be curious instead of speaking. Boldness may be walking across the office space and having a conversation with someone that you know is struggling or praying with them.

Listen, studentsBoldness is walking into a cafeteria, maybe with hundreds of kids, and there is someone that sits by themselves day in and day out. And boldness is going up there, not sitting with your people, and sitting with them. Let me tell you a story about someone I met or someone that I knew that was bold. Her name is Ms. Riva, and I was a part of her funeral celebration of life service yesterday.

And earlier in the week, it was Thursday, I was with the family, and we were talking about the service and her life and how she lived. And as we were talking, I had just done the pre-recording of this message, so it was fresh on my brain, and I couldn't help but see so many parallels. And so I finally just asked, I said, "Would you guys describe Ms. Riva as bold?" And then I went to unpack what I meant by bold, and her husband, Rod, said, "Oh, yeah." Actually, they all affirmed that, and Rod said, "I've got a story for you." He said, "One Sunday morning," Riva, she had died of cancer and at this point had just... She'd been diagnosed and just had surgery, had a tumor removed from her spine, was in a wheelchair.

And he said up in the front row at the Hunt Club, there was a lady that just cried the whole experience. He said, "We got done and ready to leave, and Riva told me, she said, 'Rod, I need you to wheel me up to that lady.'" And Rod's like, "That's not really my jam, talking to people I don't know that are crying." And she insisted, and so Rod wheels her up there, and Riva just prays with her and sits with her and is present with her, cries with her. It's bold. Her daughters go on to say, they said, "Mama was so good at doing that." She called them God taps, that when God was tapping you on your shoulder to go and step into a moment, and she never missed those. And that's what boldness is, is as we spend time with Jesus, and we begin to see and think like He does, we see things differently.

And we feel the Holy Spirit nudging us into a moment to have a conversation, or maybe it is to say something hard or difficult, but to do it in love. That we step into it, no matter how fearful it might be. That's what boldness is. The last thing I want you to know about boldness is it is contagious. As one person becomes bold, it sets fire to another and another.

And too often, I think our Christian circles look like a middle school dance. Now, I was born in the '80s, so my middle school years were the early '90s. I don't know if you guys remember that if you're in that timeframe. But in your middle school dance, you have all the guys that are on one side and all the girls on the other side, and the dance floor is vacant, and nobody's wanting to make the first move. And you're like, "Ah, you go." "No, you go." "I'll go ask." "No, no, I don't know, man." "Yeah, what if she says..." And the girls doing the same thing.

"Oh, I hope he comes over here." And they're like... And they're back and forth and back and forth. And then there's a moment, and let me just put you there because on the way in this morning, I pulled up a '90s slow jams. So just to put you there, if you are my age, like K-Ci &JoJo, "All My Life," just imagine that song coming on. You know it.

I was about to sing it, but I'm not. But Boyz II Men, "End of the Road." Oh, yeah. Yes, come on. This is Bryan Adams. This was from the movie "Robin Hood." I had this on a cassette single.

"Everything I do, I do it for you." Imagine that song coming on, and you're like, "Oh, that's my song. There's my girl." I got chills right now thinking about it. And the one guy or the one lady who makes that trek across the dance floor and grabs the other, and then after that, people just start filing in, don't they? Just one act of boldness empowers other people. It's contagious.

And I guarantee if you were ever that person that was like, "I'm going to be the guy. Got it," you probably remember it to this day. And that's what, when we step into those moments, man, they're so significant. But then people come alongside us. Let me tell you who needs to hear that more than anybody.

Our college students, our middle school students, our high school students. There are locker rooms full of boys and full of girls, and there are classrooms full of boys and full of girls, and y'all just looking around waiting for somebody to step up.Let it be you. You be the one that sets everything else on fire. So I got two questions for you as we wrap up. The first question is this: Where do you need to be bold?

And my guess is if you're a Christ follower, as I've been talking, it was just like you're just banging in your head. Second question is, what are you going to do about it? That God tap. You going to step into that moment? You going to walk up into that dance floor?

Are you going to miss those opportunities to be the church for our generation, to play a role in God's plan in this generation? Boldness throughout Christian history is a thread woven in every remnant that has followed Jesus and done it the right way. Let me pray for you. Father God, God, I pray right now that for each individual that calls you their Heavenly Father, that calls your Son Jesus their Savior, God, that you would place in their heart and in their mind the act of boldness that needs to happen. And God, I pray for the unbeliever in the room.

No doubt their boldness is to place their faith in you. And Father, I pray that you give both the strength to do that, to respond to your nudge, to your tap, to be bold. And we pray all these things in your perfect Son's name. Amen.