John Stott

Our own hearts will require it.

John Stott, the great British evangelist, said this, "'I could never myself believe in God.'" Were it not for the cross, the only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche ridiculed as a God who would be on a cross.

If he did not get on the cross, I don't know what to believe about him.

I look at my world, my circumstances, my suffering, but when I say, but he loved me enough to enter that world, it becomes the proof to me that the God that I would revere cares about me.

They said that his body was missing, and they had seen angels who told them Jesus is alive.

Some of our men ran to see." And I think John got there before Peter.

That's a different story.

Uh, he brags about running faster.

It informs for sure, but it also confronts.

And sometimes the most loving thing the Word of God can do is expose a pattern, challenge an assumption, confront a bias, or disrupt a way of living that we have become comfortable with.

It's why John Stott, one of the most influential evangelical pastors and Bible teachers of the 20th century, said it this way: "We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency, and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior." And that is another hard word, isn't it, everybody? Yeah.

But it's an important one, because if we only read the Bible looking for comfort, we'll miss out on what God wants to do in us.

He brings a strength to them.

And he did this, one, one commentator, John Stott, says, because he believed the Gospel to be true, and he wasn't a- afraid to engage the minds of people.

And he did not simply proclaim his message in a take it or leave it fashion.

Instead, he marshaled arguments to support and demonstrate his case.

But yet Paul still looks the good ways in, even although he knows the end destination.

As the commentator John Stott says in his commentary on Acts, wherever we begin, we shall end up with Jesus Christ.

who is himself the good news and who alone fulfills all human aspirations.

No matter where we start, you see, we will want to lead people to Christ, the one who loves us and gave himself for us on the cross.

The one who has been forgiven this debt is going to forgive other debts.

This is why John Stott, he says, I think helpfully here.

It certainly does not mean that our forgiveness of others earns us the right to be forgiven.

It is rather that God forgives only the penitent and that one of the chief evidences of true penitence is a forgiving spirit.

calls him to his service, and he says, you are to go, and that Paul is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name, to carry the name of Jesus before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.

Do you think Paul at that moment in time was thinking he would one day stand before emperors and give an account of him coming to saving faith? John Stott says that this title, Apostle, This title which Jesus used for his special representatives or delegates.

From the wiser company of disciples he chose twelve.

Named the apostles and sent them out to preach.

And the first thing we need to understand there is that the early church was a learning church, that this was a community that was devoted to this idea of learning.

I love what one scholar says, John Stott.

He says, one might perhaps say that the Holy Spirit opened a new school in Jerusalem that day.

Its teachers were the apostles whom Jesus had appointed, and there were 3,000 students in kindergarten.