Nothing Can Stop What God Has Started
Reaching Our Potential as Ambassadors for Jesus
The audio of this teaching is available on Spotify.
What Is Acts 28 About?
Sermon Overview
The book of Acts ends with the most effective missionary in church history chained to a Roman guard inside a rented house. Paul cannot travel, cannot plant, and cannot preach in a synagogue. And yet Luke closes the entire book with a single word that changes everything: unhindered. In this final message of the Unstoppable Church series through the book of Acts, Pastor Bart works verse by verse through Acts 28:21-31 and asks a direct question. If Paul was chained and unhindered, why are we unchained and hindered? The answer is not our circumstances. It is our attitude.
This message covers what it means to be an ambassador for Christ, the three self-imposed hindrances that keep believers on the sidelines, why opposition has always accelerated the growth of the church rather than stopping it, and what the 2025 Barna research reveals about spiritual openness in America right now.
What Is the Main Point of Acts 28 in the Bible?
Acts 28 is the closing chapter of Luke's account of the first three decades of the church. Paul has appealed to Caesar, survived a shipwreck near Malta, and finally arrived in Rome, where he is placed under house arrest and chained to a rotating Roman guard around the clock. He has no trial date, no release date, and no guarantee he will survive the process.
Luke does not end the book with Paul's verdict, his release, or his death. He ends it with a description of how Paul spent two years: welcoming everyone who came through the door, proclaiming the kingdom of God, and teaching about Jesus with boldness and without hindrance. The final word of the book of Acts in the original language is the word for unhindered. Boldness in his mouth, the chain on his wrist.
Acts 28:30-31 (CSB)
Paul stayed two whole years in his own rented house. And he welcomed all who visited him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.
What Does It Mean to Feel Hindered in Your Christian Life?
The sermon opens with the experience of being grounded as a kid in the 1970s, which was closer to house arrest than the modern version of losing a phone or a video game console. Grounding is a childhood word for a very adult experience. As adults we do not say we are grounded. We say we are hindered.
"A kid gets grounded. An adult is hindered. Same feeling, different vocabulary."
Most people can name the area where they feel hindered right now: a career that has stalled out for lack of a degree, a certification, or a relational network. A financial number that always stays just out of reach. A social life that never became the community you imagined. A parenting relationship where you see more potential in your kids than they see in themselves and you no longer have the influence to help them get there. A marriage that is not what you pictured when you said "I do," often hindered less by the other person than by the hurts, habits, and hang ups you brought into it and have never been able to shed.
Those hindrances matter and they are worth naming. But this message shifts the lens from the practical to the spiritual with one question: what is hindering you from reaching your full potential as a disciple of Jesus?
What Does It Mean to Be an Ambassador for Christ in 2 Corinthians 5:20?
2 Corinthians 5:20 (CSB)
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.
An ambassador is not a volunteer. An ambassador is not a personality type. An ambassador is an assignment given to every person who says yes to Jesus. An ambassador represents their home and native land in a foreign country. When we say yes to Jesus we are adopted into God's family and become citizens of his kingdom, which means this earth is not home. We are here temporarily, representing a kingdom we belong to but do not currently live in.
Most people think of the gospel as purely transactional. God did something for us, we receive it, and we get to spend eternity with him. That is true, but incomplete. The gospel saved you and the gospel also assigned you. The refined question of the message is this: what is hindering you from reaching your full potential as an ambassador for Jesus?
What Are the Three Things That Hinder Christians From Sharing Their Faith?
Pastor Bart identifies three buckets where hindrances tend to hide. All three are self-imposed.
1. We Delay
We tell ourselves we need to know more of the Bible first. We need to clean up a few more areas of our lives first. We are in a demanding season with young kids, travel sports, and a job and a half to pay off student debt. Someday the calendar will clear and then we will step into the assignment. Paul never delayed. He was stuck, his conditions were unlikely to improve, and he did not wait.
2. We Defer
We look around and find people who seem more qualified. They know more Scripture, they have more of their life together, they have more margin. So we hand off the job God assigned to us. Paul could have said that since he was chained up and Peter was free, God would just use Peter. He never did.
3. We Downplay
This is the one that carries the most weight in the message. We downplay our role as ambassadors because we downplay the urgency of the gospel, and we downplay the urgency of the gospel because we downplay the real lostness of lost people. We forget how lost we were when God reached out with a saving hand. The word "lost" feels politically incorrect, which is why many of us avoid it. But Jesus himself refers to lost people as lost, which makes it safe language for us too.
None of these three hindrances were imposed by anyone else. It is like walking into a jail cell, pulling the door shut, and refusing to let yourself out. There is no guard outside. The door is unlocked.
Why Does Opposition Cause the Church to Grow Instead of Shrink?
Everywhere Paul traveled he faced opposition, most of it from religious leaders who followed him into cities where they had no synagogue and no reason to be, looking for a charge that would put him in prison or get him executed. Luke records threat after threat, scattering after scattering, persecution after persecution. And after every one of them, the gospel spread further and the church grew larger.
"Resistance is the growth engine for the gospel."
The illustration is resistance training. Walking is good for you, but if you want to keep your strength as you age you have to add resistance. Muscle is built by pushing against something. In the same way, every time the movement of Jesus faces resistance, God flexes his already perfect muscles and the church grows right through it. From the first century until 2026, the church has always faced opposition and has always expanded through it.
Why Did the Jewish Leaders in Rome Want to Hear Paul If the Message Was Being Denounced Everywhere?
Acts 28:22 (CSB)
But we want to hear what your views are, since we know that people everywhere are speaking against this sect.
Read the logic carefully. The Jewish leaders of Rome did not say they wanted to hear Paul in spite of the controversy. They said they wanted to hear Paul because of the controversy. People were saying terrible things about this movement, and that is exactly what made them want to hear it firsthand.
"Controversy is not a closed door."
The local church in North America is facing significant controversy, pushback, and cultural resistance right now. That is not a closed door to reaching your neighbors. It may in fact be the reason some of them are willing to listen.
What Do the 2025 Barna Statistics Say About Americans and Jesus?
If you read the headlines you would assume the church in America is dying and nobody is interested in God or the Bible. The research says something different.
• Barna reported in 2025 that 66 percent of U.S. adults say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus that still matters in their life today.
• That figure is up 12 points from 2021.
• Most of the growth is driven by Gen Z and millennial young men. Interest among young adult men in particular has grown 15 percent from 2019 to 2025.
• Barna's CEO called this the clearest sign of spiritual renewal in more than a decade.
• Almost three in ten people who do not call themselves Christians say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus. They are open to Jesus and cautious about the church.
"The same controversy that tends to push people away is pulling other people in."
There are people in your neighborhood, your workplace, and your kids' school and sports circles who are actively trying to assemble the puzzle pieces of their spiritual life and are hesitant to walk into a church building to do it. What they need is one trustworthy person they can ask the hard questions of.
There is a phrase in the marketing world that applies directly here: "If you're not offending someone, you're probably not reaching anyone." The goal is never to offend. The goal is to be light in a community and push back darkness. But avoiding every hard conversation out of fear of offending costs us the opportunity to tell people the truth about a God who loves them.
Why Did Paul Quote Isaiah 6 at the End of the Book of Acts?
Acts 28:23-24 (CSB)
After arranging a day with him, many came to him at his lodging. From dawn to dusk he expounded and testified about the kingdom of God. He tried to persuade them about Jesus from both the Law of Moses and the Prophets. Some were persuaded by what he said, but others did not believe.
Paul teaches all day from the Hebrew Scriptures, and the room splits. Some believe. Some do not. Some are reached and some are offended. Then Paul reaches for a prophecy from Isaiah 6 that seems to come out of nowhere, about eyes that look but never perceive and ears that listen but never understand.
It answers the elephant in the room. Paul has been telling the known world that Jesus is the Messiah God promised throughout all of history. So if Jesus really was the Messiah, why did most of the Jewish people miss him? Paul pulls back a prophecy given roughly 750 years earlier that said in advance this is exactly what would happen, and that the message would then go to the Gentiles, who would receive it.
There is a second effect of that quotation. It relieves Paul of the pressure of believing that the results of his preaching were up to him. Teaching the gospel all day and then watching people walk away rejecting it could have been a pressure cooker. Instead, Paul could not measure his ministry effectiveness by how many people said yes.
How Should a Church Measure Success When Most People Say No?
"We are not responsible for the harvest, but we are responsible for sowing the seed."
We can invite our neighbors, invite our friends, and have honest conversations about what we believe to be true. Many of them, probably most of them, will say no. That is not a measurement of failure. We control the invitation, the relationship, and the love. We do not control the response.
This matters for a church plant in particular. If success is measured by how many people walk through the doors on launch Sunday, or how many are still around two weeks later, a new church can be dead in the water by December. The real measurement is faithfulness. Are we obedient to what God has called us to do, and do we have the fortitude to keep going through the storms and the rejection?
Why Does the Book of Acts End Without a Real Ending?
Philippians 1:6 (CSB)
I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Paul wrote that sentence while chained to a guard in that rented house, with no trial date and no guarantee he would ever get out. He still wrote that God finishes what he starts.
"Paul was chained and hindered. We are unchained. Yet so often we are hindered."
Nobody reading this is under house arrest. Nobody has a gag order. Nobody is legally prevented from loving their neighbors or talking about their faith. The chain in our circumstances is not what stops us. Our attitude is.
Luke ends Acts on a cliffhanger. He never finishes the story, and that appears to be intentional. The next chapter was not his to write.
"The next chapter is our chapter."
1 Thessalonians 5:24 (CSB)
He who calls you is faithful; he will do it.
The Big Idea
Isaiah 14:27 (CSB)
The LORD of Armies himself has planned it; therefore, who can stand in its way? It is his hand that is outstretched, so who can turn it back?
"Nothing can stop what God has started."
That is Isaiah's question boiled down to a statement, and it is the thesis of the entire Unstoppable Church series. Jesus left 120 people in an upper room with a promise, a directive, and a map: the Holy Spirit is coming, you will be my witnesses, and you will go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. The math was comical. Their leader had denied Jesus three times a few weeks earlier. If you were betting, you would have bet on this movement lasting a couple of months. Two thousand years later, we are still telling the story.
Acts 1:8 (CSB)
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
What Is the Gospel? A Plain Explanation
Gospel simply means good news, but it starts with bad news. Every human being born on this planet is made in God's image and is also permeated with a sin nature. That is the thing inside you that makes you do what you should not do, say what you should not say, and think what you should not think. Sin is anything that deviates from God's best plan for your life, and sin separates us from a holy God. It severs the relationship.
God wanted that relationship restored, so he solved the problem himself. No human being was ever going to meet his standard, so he sent his Son Jesus to live the life we could not live. Jesus lived pure and holy and never sinned, and then went to the cross and died the death we deserved. The Bible says the wages of our sin is death. Instead of snuffing all of us out, God sent Jesus to pay that price, so that when we put our faith and trust in him, God forgives our sin, past, present, and future, and gives us the right to be adopted into his family as citizens of his kingdom.
The spread of the church in the first century was never about a religion spreading across the Roman Empire. From the outside it looked like a new religious sect within Judaism. It was actually God keeping a promise he had made millennia earlier to solve the sin problem once and for all.
Discussion Questions for Small Groups and Missional Communities
1. Where in your life do you currently feel hindered? Name the specific area rather than the general feeling.
2. Of the three hindrances, delay, defer, and downplay, which one is most familiar to you? What does it sound like in your own internal dialogue?
3. Read 2 Corinthians 5:20. If ambassador is an assignment rather than a personality type, what does that change about how you see your everyday relationships?
4. Paul had every legitimate excuse available to him. Why do you think he did not use any of them?
5. Do you agree that resistance is the growth engine for the gospel? Where have you seen that play out personally or in the life of a church?
6. The Jewish leaders in Rome wanted to hear Paul because of the controversy, not in spite of it. Who in your life might be more open than you assume?
7. If success is measured by faithfulness rather than by response, how does that change what you are willing to try this month?
8. Luke left the story unfinished. What does it look like for you to write the next chapter over the next 90 days?
Next Steps and How to Respond
If You Are Still Figuring Out What You Believe
If words like lost, hindered, gospel, and salvation feel like a confusing mess, that is okay and you are welcome here. Bear Creek Community Church is committed to being a safe community where you can bring your questions, your curiosity, your doubts, and your fears without being judged for not having the answers. If we do not have an answer, we will go find someone smarter than us who does. There is no rush and there is no pressure. There is only a desire for you to experience the hope and the life that come through a personal relationship with Jesus.
If You Would Call Yourself a Christian, Would You Also Call Yourself an Ambassador?
First-century fishing was not one person in a boat with a rod, hoping for a catfish. It was a team sport. One person could not cast that net or haul it in. It took people to mend the nets, people to clean them, people to cast them, and a whole crew to pull them in when the catch was good.
The BC3 missional community cast a net this week by addressing 500 personal letters to households in the 75166 zip code who have lived in Lavon less than six to nine months, inviting them to launch Sunday. Some of those letters will come back. Some will never get opened. That is not our responsibility. The invitation is.
Grab a corner of the net. There are 2,000 door hangers on the table in the back, in stacks of 50. Take a stack. Hang them in your own neighborhood, or in a neighborhood where nobody knows you. Five a day for ten days and your whole stack is out before launch Sunday without breaking a sweat.
Launch Sunday and the Black Sheep Series
BC3 launches publicly on Sunday, September 13, and Pastor David begins a three-part series called Black Sheep. Over three weeks the series takes a deep dive into what lostness actually is, who is lost, who is found, and makes the case that no lost person has to stay lost. God has made a way for every lost person to be found. Bring a friend who needs to work through that question.
About Bear Creek Community Church in Lavon, Texas
Bear Creek Community Church is a contemporary church plant in Lavon, Texas, serving families across Lavon, Wylie, Josephine, Royse City, and Rockwall in southeast Collin County. We gather on Sundays at 10:30 AM for expository, verse-by-verse Bible teaching that is practical enough to use on Monday.
BC3 was never designed to attract church people. There are already good churches in our community. Our goal is to connect with people who are not connected to a church and not yet connected to Jesus. If you are looking for a church near Lavon or a church near Wylie, Texas where you can ask hard questions without being judged, you have a seat here.
Service times, directions, and everything else: bc3.church
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Watch the full sermon on YouTube, listen on Spotify, and follow along with the Unstoppable Church series through the book of Acts. New messages every week.
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Bear Creek Community Church exists to help people find life with Jesus. We gather Sundays at 10:30 AM in Lavon, Texas, serving families across Lavon, Wylie, Josephine, Royse City, and Rockwall. Plan your visit at bc3.church.
Watch or listen to the full Unstoppable Church series, our verse by verse journey through the Book of Acts, at bc3.church.