Following Jesus Is Hard
Acts 2021 • Sermon • Submitted
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Last week, I made a quick joke at the beginning of the service about how we all know that following Jesus is easy.
I corrected that quickly, though, because following Jesus will likely be the most difficult thing you will ever do.
Life isn’t easy, and it isn’t always fun. People get sick, we lose jobs, we fail classes, relationships don’t work out, and we can get really discouraged and disappointed.
This is where some preachers have made their millions: they come out and say, “I know life is hard for you now, but if you will just come to Jesus and get saved, all your problems will be solved.”
Usually, that’s followed up with the promise that if you give to their ministry, God will give you all the health, wealth, and prosperity you could dream of.
This morning, as we continue our look at Acts and the story of Saul’s first months as a Christian, we are going to see that the message of the prosperity Gospel just isn’t true.
I want to be gut-level honest with you this morning. In many ways, the Christian life is, to borrow from the little orphan Annie, the hard-knock life.
In America, we often have this expectation that coming to Jesus will make our lives smooth sailing. Many have turned their back on Jesus because they tried living like a Christian, and it just made things difficult, so they quit.
Other times, we may walk with Jesus but find ourselves frustrated that, for whatever reason, things aren’t working out. We have this unexpressed expectation that things shouldn’t be like this, and so we waste our time being angry at God.
We all struggle with this reality at times, but it is something we need to settle: As a Christian, this life is going to be hard.
The rest of Acts 9 shows this to us clearly. The believers in this chapter were put in all kinds of uncomfortable, difficult, and scary situations.
That’s the first part of what we will look at this morning—the reality that following Jesus is hard.
However, in this passage, there is a second reality I want us to see.
Saul had a terribly difficult time immediately after coming to Christ, yet in the middle of all of it, we see another truth: our difficult times are easier to make it through when we have other Christians walking with us.
In fact, I would sum up this morning’s sermon in two phrases: following Jesus is hard, so don’t go it alone.
Our goal, then, is to get a handle on the kinds of difficulties we could face when we follow Jesus, and then to see how we can come alongside each other to help carry each other through the tough times.
Let’s break this down by looking through portions of Acts 9 together.
First, let’s look at the idea that...
1) Following Jesus is hard.
1) Following Jesus is hard.
We see that Paul gets to figure that out early on in his walk with Jesus.
We will look more at what is going on here, but first, look at verse 16.
How’s that for an introduction to Jesus?
“He is my chosen instrument…I will show him how much he will suffer.”
Jesus didn’t say, “I will show him how to have his best life now.” He didn’t say, “I will show Saul how to overcome every challenge and claim victory over disease, finances, relationships, etc.”
Jesus said, “I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.”
Go back to verse 3 for the context, and then we will start looking at some of the difficulties Saul faced.
Right off the bat, we see that he experienced...
A) Physical difficulties
A) Physical difficulties
From the very beginning of his Christian life, Paul experienced physical challenges.
What happened to him when he saw Jesus? Look back at verse 8…
It’s a beautiful paradox, actually. Saul, a Pharisee who was so confident that he could see all truth and all error, suddenly saw everything in a different light.
Physically, he was blinded, but spiritually, God opened his eyes to the truth of who He was, and Paul could finally see his error.
He only had to endure his blindness for three days, as we’ll see in a minute, but this shows us that sometimes following God brings physical difficulties!
In case you are thinking that this is just something Paul went through, let me remind you of Job.
Way back in the days of the patriarchs, Job was a good, God-fearing man. Satan is looking to stir up trouble, and God asks,
Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil.”
Satan answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing?
Haven’t you placed a hedge around him, his household, and everything he owns? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.
But stretch out your hand and strike everything he owns, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
“Very well,” the Lord told Satan, “everything he owns is in your power. However, do not lay a hand on Job himself.” So Satan left the Lord’s presence.
So Satan does his worst. In a matter of moments, Job finds out that all flocks and herds have been stolen. Right after that, he finds out that his children have been killed in a freak accident where a strong wind knocked the house down where they were all gathered.
Still, Job won’t curse God. Satan isn’t ready to give up, though:
“Skin for skin!” Satan answered the Lord. “A man will give up everything he owns in exchange for his life.
But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
“Very well,” the Lord told Satan, “he is in your power; only spare his life.”
God gives Satan permission to afflict him with painful sores from the bottoms of his feet to the top of his head.
We know that Job remained faithful to the Lord through all this, but the point still stands: sometimes God allows physical difficulties in our lives.
For both Paul and Job, the difficulties came as a direct result of their obedience!
God may be allowing a physical difficulty in your life to push you towards Him. He may use it to show Himself strong in working in and through you. He may use it to open doors for you to share Christ with those around you.
Or, He may be sending physical difficulties your way, and you will never know the reason why.
However, we need to seal and settle this fact: God may very well allow and possibly even direct physical pain and suffering towards you.
It isn’t that God is against you, or that He likes to torment you. Instead, He is trying to show Himself to and through you in a way that you wouldn’t otherwise see Him.
Paul would later talk about this. Remember the passage we looked at last week where he said that he counted all his good works as worthless? He said that the reason he did that was this:
My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death,
You see, when you suffer physically, you share with Jesus in His suffering!
Remember that Jesus suffered physically for you! He was beaten, He was spat upon, He was hung naked and bleeding for the world to see.
When you find yourself suffering physically as a Christian, it is an opportunity for you to cry out to the one who knows what you’re going through.
God doesn’t promise an easy road. Sometimes, the path God leads us on is a path that involves physical difficulties.
That isn’t the only type of trouble we face, however. Look back at Acts 9 to see that we also face…
B) Relational challenges
B) Relational challenges
Look with me at verses 10-18…
Part of the pain we endure in honoring Christ involves strained relationships.
Saul had been a murderous man who was partly responsible for Stephen’s death and the arrests of a number of other believers. It’s understandable that Ananias wouldn’t have wanted to be around him very much.
Now that Saul is a Christian, he still is rejected by others, and not just in the first few days after his conversion.
Look at verses 26-28…
Listen to me: there will always be people who don’t like you when you do what God wants. Sometimes, they will be outsiders (like the Jews we will see a little later on), and sometimes they will be other Christians who don’t understand what God is doing in your heart and through your life.
The Christian life doesn’t mean that everyone will always be happy with you!
I have friends who, at various times, have felt the Lord direct them to take some huge steps of obedience. It may be a job change or an adoption or going to the mission field, and even their believing family and friends don’t understand why they are doing it.
This is especially true with those outside the church.
Jesus promised that much:
Don’t assume that I came to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I came to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.
As a Christian, you can expect even your own family to turn against you.
Some of you have experienced this. You turned to Christ, and your family doesn’t get it, so they make fun of you, they hurt you, they distance themselves from you.
Listen: that’s what happened to Jesus too! His own family thought He was crazy until He came back from the dead!
Why would we expect any different?
“If the world hates you, understand that it hated me before it hated you.
If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you.
Remember the word I spoke to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
Don’t lose sight of this: Jesus came to the group of people who were supposedly looking for Him for hundreds of years before His birth. If anyone would have wanted to receive the Messiah, it should have been the Jews.
Instead, they rejected Him and had Him killed.
Why do you think that people who are totally and completely against who God is would be happy for you to follow Him?
As a Christian, you can expect to share in the sufferings of Christ by having relationships strained.
This can lead to the other area where the Christian life can be challenging:
C) Dangerous situations
C) Dangerous situations
I couldn’t come up with a trendy way to say this, but here’s the reality: being a Christian can be flat out dangerous.
In verses 19-22, things seem to be going along fairly well.
He is preaching, people are getting saved, it’s an awesome time.
Pick back up in verse 23, though…
Eventually, the Jews that sent him there got tired of it and sought to kill him.
He was in so much danger that he had to get lowered down out a window in the city wall in a basket in the dead of night.
No two ways around this one: He was in incredible danger.
We read that quickly and might miss it. These guys wanted him dead.
Paul wrote about it in 2 Corinthians 11:
2 Corinthians 11:32–33 (CSB)
In Damascus, a ruler under King Aretas guarded the city of Damascus in order to arrest me.
So I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped from his hands.
They were watching the gates so he couldn’t escape!
That’s not the only time in this chapter that his life was in danger. Look at verses 28-30…
Again, the Jews he was talking to got mad and tried to kill him, so he eventually had to grab a boat and flee the country!
As you look through the rest of the book of Acts, you see that Paul found himself in danger time and time again.
This is what is interesting: you and I may face physical difficulties in our walk with God. We are certain to face relational challenges. However, few of us expect to find ourselves in dangerous situations where our life is at risk because we are Christians.
If you haven’t noticed, that may be something that changes. There are hotspots around the world right now where Christianity is under persecution, and it is incredibly dangerous to be a Christian.
How would you respond in the face of that?
Some might say, “Well, it’s understandable that someone with such a drastic turnaround like Saul’s would have a tough transition. Surely, though, as he grew in faith, he started claiming his victory over things like that.”
Not hardly. Paul’s life was characterized by pain, suffering, hardship, and the like.
These verses lead up to what we just read about his escape from Damascus:
Are they servants of Christ? I’m talking like a madman—I’m a better one: with far more labors, many more imprisonments, far worse beatings, many times near death.
Five times I received the forty lashes minus one from the Jews.
Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked. I have spent a night and a day in the open sea.
On frequent journeys, I faced dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own people, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, and dangers among false brothers;
toil and hardship, many sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, often without food, cold, and without clothing.
Not to mention other things, there is the daily pressure on me: my concern for all the churches.
Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn with indignation?
In fact, the book of Acts ends with Paul in jail. History records that he was released, only to be rearrested later and eventually beheaded by the crazy emperor Nero.
Why did Paul do this? Because his life was transformed by a God who would suffer like that for him.
Not only that, he trusted that the God who saw him suffer would eventually welcome him into a place of eternal rest.
Following Jesus is really, really hard. That’s why I want you to see one more key truth from this part of Saul’s life:
2) Don’t go it alone.
2) Don’t go it alone.
What else have you noticed happening in each of these moments in Paul’s life?
God always used other believers to help him through them.
When his entire life got turned upside down and he found himself physically blind, who came alongside him? Ananias, who was willing to put his own fears aside to invest in Saul the way God told him to.
When the Jews in Damascus tried to kill him, what did God do? Those who were following Christ because of Paul’s teaching put him in a basket and lowered him out of a window.
When he got to Jerusalem, he was rejected by the disciples. Who did God send? Generous Barnabas, who we met in chapter 4. His name means “Son of Encouragement”, and he showed that here.
When the Jews in Jerusalem again tried to kill him, God took another group of believers who protected Paul and sent him away.
Every step, Paul was surrounded by men and women of God who supported him.
What would have happened if Ananias hadn’t come? What about if his disciples hadn’t cared enough to risk their own lives by helping him escape Damascus?
What if Barnabas hadn’t advocated for Paul with the leaders of the church in Jerusalem? What if they hadn’t help Paul escape to Caesarea and Tarsus?
You see, in each of these situations, it was Paul’s brothers and sisters in Christ who stepped up and ministered to him. Yes, he had a unique amount of suffering that God was calling him to endure, but they came along and helped shoulder that load.
There were times when Paul faced hardships alone, but in each of these instances ,God used his relationships with other believers to help get him through.
Let me ask you: are you developing relationships with other believers that are close enough that you can call on them when you need help, or that you can see when they need help and can come alongside?
Scripture commands us to do this:
And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works,
not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.
We need to get together with each other regularly to encourage and challenge each other to walk more closely for Christ.
Don’t neglect that this summer. Now would be a great time to get in a Sunday School class where you can get to know people and God’s Word better.
Join prayer meeting on Wednesday evenings at 6:30, either in person or online. There is a link on our website to join the Zoom call.
Is God calling you to be an Ananias or a Barnabas who helps a new believer in Christ get connected when no one else will? Is he calling you to be like one of the others who comes alongside a believer in a difficult situation?
Why? Because following Jesus is hard.
Don’t go it alone! Start developing deeper friendships so you can be there to help and so others can be there to help you.
In fact, some of those we plan on spending time with this summer are dear brothers and sisters in Christ who have walked with us through some of the most difficult times we have ever been through.
Summer schedules often have more down time in them than during the rest of the year—how could you use that to draw closer to the Lord and his people?
As we think of this, remember that Jesus faced all this hardship on his own.
He had a group of 12 men in whom he had invested years of his life, and one betrayed him, one denied him, and the rest ran and hid. As far as we know, there was only one of the twelve present with him as he died.
In that moment, as Jesus was bearing the sins of the world on himself, all his friends had left him.
This is the God who calls us to follow Him—a God who knows pain, difficulty, and challenges that you and I could never begin to fathom.
He did that for you. Are you willing to live for Him?
It is going to be hard, so don’t go it alone.