On Mission Despite Opposition
To the ends of the earth - acts 4:23-31 (NET) - Pastor CURTIS ISAACSON
MATTHEW 5:11:
‘Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things about you falsely on account of me.”
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Honey is an incredible substance, but it comes at a cost. And for good reason. It’s labor intensive, not only for the beekeeper, but for the bees. A single bee will only produce about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. A single pound of finished honey from a hive requires the bees to make about 2 million flower visits. Talk about labor intensive! But finished honey has anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, preservative and probiotic properties. Plus, if stored correctly, it never spoils. Archaeologists have discovered jars of honey in Egyptian tombs that are over 3,000 years old yet still edible!
A few years ago I had a neighbor who kept bees. I loved watching his bees at work in our flower beds, knowing the result of their intense labor would be a jar of fresh honey in the fall. He invited me over one summer day to watch how he opened a bee box to extract the honey comb with as little disruption to the bees as possible. He only had one beekeeper’s suit (which he wore, of course) so he told me to stand a few yards off. “You’ll be just fine,” he said through his head net.
I was so intent on watching him go to work with his smoker and hive tool that I failed to notice a bee on a literal bee-line for my face until it was too late. It stung me square in the cheek. I yelled some things less than flattering, to which my friend yelled, “Ya gotta go!”
I learned after the fact - and after the swelling had gone down - that when a bee stings, it releases an alarm pheromone called isoamyl acetate (which apparently smells like bananas). This gives the other bees in the hive a pheromone highway to follow so they can join in attacking whatever threat is headed their way. My neighbor knew this full well…thus his warning.
Nonetheless, a few months later he knocked on the door with a jar of freshly extracted honey, made in part from nectar from my wife’s flowers, and I assume with the help of the bee that stung me. As I polished off that jar of honey, the pain of its sting was long forgotten. As the saying goes, “the honey was worth the sting.”
In today’s episode, we’ll see the young church respond to the firsts stings of gospel persecution. Peter and John had just appeared before the Sanhedrin, proclaimed Jesus boldly, but received a stinging warning to keep their mouths shut about Jesus…or else. How they and their fellow believers responded was a clear demonstration that they very much believed “the honey was worth the sting.”
