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The scripture reading for this afternoon is Acts chapter 17. I begin at the verse numbered 1. Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia they came to Thessalonica where there was a synagogue of the Jews and Paul went in as was his custom and for three weeks he argued with them from the scriptures

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explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead and saying this Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ and some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women but the Jews were

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jealous and taking some wicked fellows of the rabble they gathered a crowd set the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason seeking to bring them out to the people and when they could not find them they dragged Jason and some of the brethren before the city authorities crying these men who have turned the

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whole world upside down have come here also and Jason has received them and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar saying that there is another King Jesus and the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard this and when they had taken security from Jason and the rest they

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let them go and may God bless to us this reading from his word. I've been interested in some comments that have been made about the church in the last few years for example in 1977 when we were having that energy crisis the governor of Virginia decreed that his service should be cut in all non-essential

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buildings and the buildings at the top of his list of non-essential were churches. Then there was the Canadian minister up north who recently said that he thought it would be a good thing if at least half the churches in Canada burned down. He said if my church were to catch fire I would stand across the

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street and sing praise God from whom all blessings flow holding out my hand for the insurance money. Now we might have a tendency to say that a comment of that kind is extreme but the fact of the matter is there is a lot of tepid Christianity about which really is not very essential and certainly is not very

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incendiary. It's typified by John Brown who died and the bulletin in his church read "the funeral of John Brown will be held here tomorrow at 3 p.m. Mr. Brown will be here in person for the first time in six years." Well there are a lot of people whose commitment to the church is no deeper or more profound than that.

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The session of this congregation met last night for its monthly meeting and one of the sad responsibilities that it had as part of that meeting was to eliminate from the roles of the church 86 persons. 86 persons with whom we have tried to get in touch for two years. People who have never been here, who have

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never indicated any interest, have not responded to any mail. People who probably fill out some form somewhere "I am Presbyterian" but it's absolutely meaningless to them. There's a lot of that kind of Christianity about. Soren Kierkegaard tells of a barnyard in which there was a place for geese and there

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was one old gander who was the preacher for the group and he got up on the top of a post every Sunday and delivered an oration about the great days of the geese and how in those adventurous times the geese had moved out across all the world and with their wingtips had touched all of the planet's horizons and

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all of the geese nodded about what a wonderful thing this was. And then without ever attempting to fly they went back to their feed troughs to become more fat and delicious. Well that's typical of much of the church today. The gander talks but nobody really does anything. And if there's any honesty in

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us I think we have to acknowledge that that's true. In the first century the church was a movement. Much of the church today is a monument. In the first century the church was a community of belief. Too often today the church is so much a part of the community that is society that there's no evidence of what

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it believes at all. The church in its early days was a catalyst for change but anyone will tell you who is a study of the sociology of our time that in this day and age the church is one of the most conservative agencies about. The fact of the matter is the church ain't what it used to be. Look at the scripture

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passage which I shared with you just a few minutes ago. Paul and Silas and Timothy are on a missionary journey. Now that journey is outlined in just a sentence or two. It makes it sound like they were out for a weekend stroll but the fact of the matter is they walked over a hundred miles on that journey. And

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that's quite a walk by anyone's standards. And as a result of the preaching of these men individuals were converted. Some Jews were converted, some Greeks were converted. It's particularly notes that there were some women of great influence and prestige who were converted. But there were others who were

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deeply offended by the power and the truth of the message. So much so that they went out and got some street hooligans and asked them to organize an uprising against these Christians and they did. They went out and created a public scene, a public riot. And their charge, that which they threw at the

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Christians as a form of accusation was this. It's the sixth verse of the 17th chapter. "Those who have turned the world upside down have now come here also." These people you see were troublemakers for God. They were upsetting the world as it existed at that time and people resented them because of that. The early

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church was as successful and dynamic and powerful as it was because it gave power to those who'd never had it before, because it reoriented the values of society, because it was full of a contagious and infectious joy, and because it had a wonderful hope and vitality. And these things threaten

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moribund power structures. People who are in charge don't like to encounter this kind of thinking, this kind of talking, and this kind of doing. Now we find pretty much the opposite situation today. Put it in geographic terms. The church started in the Middle East and then it was when it started there, it was a

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fellowship of people who were deeply committed to the Lordship of Christ. The church gradually spread to Greece and under the influence of Greek thought, Christianity became more of a philosophy than a fellowship. It then was carried to Rome and the Romans did to it what Rome is most known for, organization and

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institution. Rome changed the church into an institution. Then the church moved up into Europe and became a basic part of the culture, so that now rather than being an institution, the church became the culture of the time. And then the church came to America and we have done to it what America does to so many

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things. We have made it into an enterprise, from a fellowship, to a philosophy, to an institution, to a culture, to an enterprise. And you see enterprises, businesses, and the church is involved in just about every area of business today. Business does not want to upset society because business lives

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off of society. Therefore the church has lost its voice of excitement and its impact. I mentioned last Friday that I heard a youngster once talking about the books of the Bible and she said that the last book in the Bible was the book of revolutions. Well it isn't, but there was something about the church in its early

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days which was altogether revolutionary and that essentially has been lost in our time. The church believed then that Jesus Christ makes all things new, that the lost are found, that the weak are made strong, that the despairing are given hope, that the people who dwell in darkness are shown the light, that those

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who have fallen are lifted up, that those who are broken are restored. Now that's a very revolutionary plate of beliefs and it's that kind of revolution against the world in its wickedness stands. But today the church has retreated from these values and these commencements and as a result it gets along fine with the world.

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But it is no longer turning that world upside down. See the world says look out for number one, but the church in its purest days said if you save your life you will lose it. It's only if you lose your life that you save it. The world says be sure to set something aside, get an IRA going, get a various savings

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programs. But the Bible says and the church preached do not be anxious about tomorrow, consider the lilies in the field, they neither toil nor spin, but Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. The world says get everything you can and get it as quickly as you possibly can. But the church has

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always said what shall it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lose his own soul. The world says let the poor take care of themselves, I mean everybody's responsible for himself. But the church in the days of its power said in as much as you have done it unto one of the least of the brethren you have

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done it to Christ. The world says scramble to the top, get there in the best way that you can. And Jesus said and the church believed once that those who would be the greatest among you must be the servants of all. The world says might makes right. But the church has believed blessed are the peacemakers for they

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shall be called the children of God. The world says be in the right place with the right people at the right time and make sure you're wearing the right thing. And the church has always said to those who think that way and when the church said this it said what its Lord had said, "Tax collectors and whores will go into

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the kingdom of heaven before you." The church has become very complacent, very casual, and it has degenerated into a kind of sermon-tasting society where people come and go and life is not affected. I suppose there are some who would say I'm crazy to suggest that the values and virtues of the first century

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church should be lived and seriously considered in the 20th century. If that is crazy then you may call me crazy. My response is that the world is what is crazy and that the truth when it hits the insanity of the way in which most people live is upsetting and when it's proclaimed truly today the truth will be

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just as upsetting, just as revolutionary, just as life-changing as it was 20 centuries ago. Why was it that the early church was dynamic and powerful as it was? Well in the first reason because the early church believed that Jesus was really alive. The early church knew that the worst that you can do to a person is

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to kill that person. But if being killed is no final defeat, if being killed is not the beginning of the end but only the end of the beginning, if being killed is all the world can do and we rise to new life, well then the worst the world can do is not very impressive anymore. There's a wonderful play by a Eugene

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O'Neill, he wrote it very early in his life, called Lazarus Laughed. You remember the story of Lazarus and how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead? Well in this play he appears before the Roman Emperor Caligula. This is many years later and Caligula tries to get him to deny his faith and Lazarus won't do it.

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And finally Caligula says, "If you don't, I will have you killed." And Lazarus starts to laugh and he laughs and he laughs and he laughs and that's when the curtain comes down. Wally's laughing. He'd already gone that route. He'd already been raised from the dead. So what could the world do? The church had that conviction that

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Jesus was alive and therefore it didn't fear for its own life. The church also spoke to everyone about what it believed. It was very, very aggressive. The scriptures say it proclaimed the truth about Jesus Christ and the word that's used is "kairos" it means literally "to blow a trumpet." It heralded, it really

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made a big noise for the sake of the gospel. I don't know whether you're aware of this or not but there's a new style of radio broadcasting coming into the country now called abrasive broadcasting. The intent of the station is to say something so outlandish that it gets your attention. One of our Pittsburgh

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radio stations right now is moving very aggressively in the abrasive direction. They're even bringing people onto the radio that are deliberately designed to get other people excited to say things that'll get everybody all stirred up. That's a kind of style that's coming into our time. The gospel is not an

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abrasive thing in terms of what is said but it is an abrasive thing in the sense that when it's said earnestly it's going to be upsetting to some people. You know we're the greatest fellowship in the world. There's no institution in the world that is as large as the church. Remember, I don't know if, I haven't seen

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this for a while, but you remember those Sherwin-Williams paint signs? There was the earth and then the can of paint was spilling out on the top and it said "we cover the earth." I haven't seen one of those for a while. I thought that was a good ad. It's very true of the church. We're in everything. Every business you

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can name has some Christians in it. Every school that you can name has some Christians in it. Every art has some Christians in it. You know, we infiltrate. We're everywhere and if we began to say with earnestness what we believe in all of those places, well, the church could recapture the excitement of the first

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century. You know it is said that Mao Tse-tung was successful in taking over China because he had a little book of sayings and he got everybody gossiping about those sayings and that word spread across China and was the secret to his so-called agrarian revolution. Well, we have a book too and if we would gossip

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the gospel, the effects could be as exciting as they were 20 centuries ago. The early church also had tremendous courage. They took life, you know, Beethoven said, "I take life by the throat." The church took life by the throat. It was aggressive in the statement of what it believed and it had the courage to stand

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by its convictions. Two weeks ago I was introduced to a man here in Pittsburgh who has recently been fired from his company, not let go, fired. And the reason he was fired was because he took a stand against what he knew to be false advertising. He said he would have nothing to do with it and they threw him

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out. And he had been with that company for 26 years and he is right now unemployed. Now whether he will have success in finding another position, I don't know. There are some of us that are doing everything we can to assist in that. But here was a man who would not yield his soul for what he knew to be a

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lie. Now you may say, "Well what good did it do? He's out of the company, he's gone, all is lost." I don't think any of us can say that. We don't know what the effects of his act will have. There are other people in that company who know what he did, who know the stand that he took. What influence is this going to have on them?

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We never know how our influence works out. I had a young man say to me five weeks ago that the first time he ever became interested in the gospel was not when he heard me preach. He heard me preach in the morning. Didn't impress him. But in the afternoon he was playing softball and I came over and sat there

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and he hit a home run and I came out on the field afterwards and congratulated him and that was the first time he ever knew that a Christian would get excited about a home run. And he went to his church youth group that night and from there he was led to the gospel. Now you know I don't even remember the

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experience. I have no knowledge of this ever happening. I don't ever remember seeing him before or going to that game or saying anything to this young man who hit one out of the thing. I don't remember any of that. We don't know where our influence falls. So I'm not ready to say that what that man did in taking a

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stand and being fired was of no account. The fact of the matter is he stood up and it's that kind of courage that makes for decisive action. The other characteristic of the early church was it was a very caring fellowship. They loved one another. They took care of one another. They supported one another so

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that when the hard times came they weren't alone. Now I think it's very interesting. I was reading an article just about a week ago about Sand Hill cranes. Sand Hill cranes migrate almost as far as any bird in the world. They fly thousands and thousands of miles and it's interesting to observe their flight

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patterns. They fly in the V of course but they rotate leadership. The same bird isn't up in the front all the time. And what is more the ones that I put up in the front most often are the ones who are able to handle turbulence when they get into some tough wind currents. And thirdly all the other geese honk all the

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time. You know the reason they do that? To encourage the one up front. That is really what it is for. To encourage the one in the front. Well that's what the church ought to be. We get our bravest people out in front. They're able to handle the turbulence. We rotate them. We don't let anybody take the brunt all the

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time. And then we do a lot of honking to encourage one another. We need more encouragement in the church. Darrell Royal who was the head football coach at the University of Texas for so many years. He's a Presbyterian elder by the way. He's retired now. And shortly after he came to the University of Texas he had a call

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one day from one of the big boosters of the team. Guy gave a lot of money. He said now coach when can we sit down together so that I can give you some constructive criticism about last Saturday's game? And Darrell Royal said never. I have discovered I do not respond well to criticism. I do respond well to

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friendship and affirmation and support and appreciation. I know my mistakes. What I need is someone to congratulate me when I do right. I said to the session of our church last night at that same meeting to which I earlier referred I've completed one year here. And the thing that has meant the most to me is that

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that group of men and women have not jumped on me when I've made mistakes and I've made some beauties. But instead of that they have slapped me on the back and encouraged me and lifted me up every time by God's grace I did something right. And that is the spirit which ought to be more typical of the church. So on

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this week after Easter we're coming up to a Sunday which is called incidentally in the liturgy of the church is called Low Sunday. It really doesn't have to be. I think we're on the edge of a revival. I think we are perhaps moving into the most exciting days that the church has ever known. Nesbitt in his book

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Megatrend says and it's said in subsequent publications and articles that he believes that the church is moving into a time of great influence. It will only happen however if the church believes what it says, says it with courage, depends on a living and reigning Christ, and has fellowship,

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caring community within itself. Last Sunday morning this place in the room behind everything was filled and we had about 60 or 70 young air cadets here. They were at a convention in Pittsburgh down at the Hilton Hotel and they came here to worship. Boy they were beautiful. Young fellas, young girls, all in uniform,

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fine-looking, sitting different places around. It amazed me that when the service was over every one of them, instead of going outside doors, they all came through the center door back there and I had a chance to greet them. And one young man said to me, "I'm enthusiastic about the gospel." And one young girl said

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to me, "I like to hear the truth." And one young guy looked at me, had very red hair and all he said was, "I believe it, sir. I believe it." And that was Easter for me. Not the lilies or the singing really, it was that. It was young people going out into the world, young people who are wearing their country's colors, young

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people who are taking on tough tasks and not backing off, who say, "I believe it. I am inspired and I will stand for the truth." The fact of the matter is, this is a very poor world in which to play it safe, but it's a glorious world in which to be brave. And it's a very poor world in which to be sure about things, but

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it's a great world in which to be curious about things. It's a devil of a place to try to harvest a soul, but it's God's own kind of place in which to grow a soul. And that's what we're called to do. So, what are you doing for God's sake? Let us pray. Oh God, bless this simple witness in your name, for we

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pray it in Jesus' name, amen. >> Thanks.