Joe Rigney

And they didn't go around moping and sulking and whining about, oh, woe is me.

How could this happen?

I really wish that Charlie Kirk wouldn't have said that or whatever.

Stephen should have kept his mouth shut.

Instead, it says, they went about preaching the gospel.

what they did in other words they imitated the boldness of their leaders who had been persecuted and they went about and as a result uh there was a revival the gospel goes to the samaritans and lots of lots of people are turning from their sins and being saved and immediately after that it results most remarkable in the story it changed the history of the world

is the Apostle Paul, who'd been approving all of that, who'd been sanctioning it and hauling people to jail.

But as a Pharisee, as an opponent of the church, God knocks him off his horse.

He finds out Jesus is in fact real, and the entire history of the world is different

because now the greatest evangelist in history has come to christ and so i'm i see this i see the tensions and yet um god's behind it all he's he's sovereign he rules he reigns he jesus is real and he is working in this for the good of his people and for the good of the world and the good of this nation and so my encouragement to christians would be to imitate

the early church to gather together in worship on sundays whether they're going to harass you or not and to pray and to say lord look upon their threats look what they're saying look at their lies and fill us with your holy spirit and grant us to preach the word of god all of it whole counsel of god courage clarity about jesus about sin give us that ability with joy in the midst of this chaos give us that

That's what we want, Lord.

And I believe just as God answered that prayer in the first century, he'll answer that prayer in the 21st.

Correct, yeah, and joyful.

And joyful, thank you.

And joyful.

I think that it's important because I think Christians do have a tendency sometimes when things go like this to get overly serious or serious in the wrong way, I guess.

It can become intense and instead to go like, well, is God?

So I was watching it, and one reaction I did have was from Psalm 2, he who sits in heaven laughs.

Like what does God look at when the nations rage and they rage against his people and they rage against Christ?