Acts chapter 4, 13-37 I'll be reading this morning. Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were marveling and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they had nothing to say in reply. But when they had ordered them to go aside out of the council, they begun to confer with one another, saying, What shall we do with these men? For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place through them is apparent to all who live in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.

But in order that it may not spread any further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to any man in this name. And when they had summoned them, they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said to them, Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge. For we cannot stop speaking what we have seen and heard. And when they had threatened them further, they let them go, finding no basis on which they might punish them on account of the people, because they were all glorifying God for what had happened.

For the man was more than forty years old on whom this miracle of healing had been performed. And when they had been released, they went to their own companions and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord, and said, O Lord, It is thou who didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. Who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our Father David, thy servant, didst say, Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples devise futile things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.

For truly in this city they were gathered together against the holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever thy hand and thy purpose predestined to occur. And now, Lord, take note of their threats and grant that thy bond-servants may speak thy word with all confidence, while thou dost extend thy hand to heal and signs and wonders take place through the name of the holy servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak the word of God with boldness. And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own. But all things were common property to them.

And with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of Lord Jesus, and the abundant grace was upon them all. For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses, would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need. And Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas by the apostles, which translated means son of encouragement, and who owned attractive land, sowed it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles feet." Let's pray. Lord Father, we thank you so much for your word this morning. Lord, we pray that we also, like Peter and John, would ask, how can we keep silent?

How can we not speak the name of Jesus Christ to our brothers and sisters and to the lost? Lord, help us to be bold as we go out from this day to herald the good news of Jesus our Savior. Lord, I pray now for the anointing of the Holy Spirit to be upon Scott just as you anoint it Peter and John this day that that he would be bold and have confidence in his Savior, Jesus Christ. Lord, I pray that your words would be spoken through Scott. I pray this in your son's name.

Amen. I read a very interesting article this week. It was entitled What's Up with Evangelicalism? And it spoke about the various expressions of quote unquote Christianity in the world and the proposition of the article is what is up with these people was written by an unbeliever absolutely but where are these people getting their life this it was the question and fortunately scripture is so helpful to us because it helps us to go get our life from a good source. We can pull our life out of a hat like an act of magic.

We can copy our neighbors. We can try to create a certain kind of life by developing a particular vision that we've created, but God is so kind to us in that He gives us an authoritative word from which to build upon. And in the book of Acts, and what we just read here, is just another one of those wonderful expressions of the life of Jesus being expressed through real people. And in Acts we see this amazing intersection of the work of the Holy Spirit and imperfect people and then the creating of a life, the creating of the church and different ways of its functioning. The gospel comes and it crashes in on political systems and on business efforts and all kinds of things like that.

And we see in this text here of scripture, we see in the beginning of this text the boldness of Peter and John as they were displaying the character of the Lord Jesus Christ out there in the public square. And then we see the chief priests and the elders being affected by the message, and our brothers are imprisoned. And then we see the continued outworking of the work of the Holy Spirit in the fellowship of the believers as they continue to just be this amazing, wonderful expression of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the chapter ends with a last illustration of this one man, amazing man, we'll meet him over and over again in the book of Acts. His name is Barnabas, His name means Son of Encouragement.

And before us here in this passage is another beautiful expression of the way that the life of the Lord Jesus Christ intersects with people's lives. And for us as we read this, I trust that God would help us to acquire wisdom for our own lives, not to pull our own lives out of a hat, not to create it by some fantastic vision that we've developed over the years or some form of wisdom that we think might be worthwhile to work out here in our pilgrimage on earth, but no, but that we would look at the Word and to allow our personal, our business, our church lives to emerge out of what we learn from the work of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. We'll see some of the most amazing individuals and groups of people in the Book of Acts. We'll see Agabus, we'll see Ananias and Sapphira next week, we'll see Ananias of Damascus and Apollos and Caiaphas and Stephen and Bernice and we'll see Caesar and Cornelius, Crispus, Demetrius the Silversmith, Drusilla, Gamaliel, Lydia, Mark, Philip's daughters, Pontius Pilate. We'll see women of prominence and the leading men in Acts chapter 13.

We're going to crash into various philosophies and world views of the day. The Asiarchs, the Epicureans, the Gentiles, the Godfears, the Greeks, the Hellenists, the idol worshipers, the Judaizers, the Pharisees, the proselytes, the Sanhedrin, the stoic philosophers, the zealots, and then our friends, the people of the way. In Acts we just see The intersection of the work of the Holy Spirit in so many places, in an upper room, in the public square, in a prison, in Athens, in Asia, in Corinth, in Derbe, in Macedonia, in Spain, in Syria, in Tarsus. We see The work of the Spirit operating in a multiplicity of locations. No one can bind the work of the Holy Spirit.

The Word of God is unchained, it's completely unchained. Nothing can stop it. No imprisonment, no threat. Nothing stops the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It never did and it never will.

And this is the great encouragement that we all have is that God will, He will do His work by His own spirit across all geographical boundaries, across all political impediments, across any disobedience in anyone's heart, God is almighty, and we see him that way working here in the book of Acts. And what we see here in this chapter, and we'll see it over and over again is we see really in every chapter of the book of Acts we see the entire gospel message pictured in different kinds of scenarios and it helps us to think about our lives in the different situations that we're in. You run into almost every kind of businessman that was in the ancient world in the book of Acts and how the gospel affected him. You run into all the different philosophies of the world and the message of the gospel for those philosophies. And so here we see a painting of this beautiful picture of the spread of the gospel in all of its different contexts, in all of its different business environments, in all its different kinds of personalities.

And Michael Green has written a book called The Three Crucial Decades in World History. And his proposition in this book is that these years here, these 30-some years, were the most critical years in all of world history. Let me quote him here. Three crucial decades in world history, this is all it took. In the years between AD 33 and 64, a new movement was born.

In those 30 years it got sufficient growth and credibility to become the largest religion the world has ever seen and to change the lives of hundreds of millions of people. It has spread into every corner of the globe and has more than 2 billion putative adherents. It has had an indelible impact on civilization, on culture, on education, on medicine, on freedom, and of course, on the lives of countless people worldwide. And the seedbed for all this, the time when it took decisive root was in these three decades. It all began with a dozen men and a handful of women, and the Spirit then came.

Michael Green. I think that's a beautiful expression of what we read in the book of Acts. And this is a wonderful opportunity that we have as a fledgling church to allow God to mentor us in a very unusual way as we go through this book. That the Lord would minister to us to change patterns, to change attitudes regarding the church, regarding business, regarding philosophy, regarding our own patterns of life. You know, whenever we open up Holy Scripture, there's always a golden opportunity to be mentored from on high, to have something from outside of yourself that is perfect, that is unchangeable, to come and intersect with life and to make adjustments and changes that are so necessary.

And here in the book of Acts are hundreds of examples of this. We've already gone through so many of them that are very, very helpful. But What's wonderful about Scripture and this book of Acts here is even if we find ourselves out of the way geographically, if we're off the beaten path, God can bring the wisdom of the ages to people living out in the middle of nowhere, to help them to know how to live in the middle of Podunkville. We live in a culture that has certain qualities that have let us astray. All of the cultures of the earth lead the sons of men and women astray.

It's always been that way, it'll always be that way. And it doesn't matter what culture you have been born into, God can help you build Christian culture in your community no matter where you live. The same thing happens if you've had a terrible church background. There's so many walking wounded in the church today for different things that have happened. But there are all kinds of wrong roadmaps in the churches.

There are all kinds of cobwebs that clutter up our thinking about the church. But even so, it doesn't matter where we've come from, God has brought to us an eternal word to come help us to see how to develop Christian culture in the church to abandon bankrupt ways of the world, but no to to take on the patterns, the commands, and the practices that we see in Scripture. We're not left alone at all. Even here today, we have tremendous examples that we've just read about in Acts chapter 4. If you've had a bad family background, and you've had terrible role models in your fathers and your mothers, and perhaps you've been abused and horrible things have happened, Still the Lord Jesus Christ reaches out with his word to come and mentor all of us and he gives us he gives us Adam and Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and he gives us the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul and all of the Apostles and the godly households that changed the world as well, for us to look at, to peer in to a different kind of life that was completely different than that we had.

God is so gracious to come and rescue us with his word. And this passage of scripture that we have today is no different. And what we have before us here today are many observations of the life of the early church and particularly the way that the Holy Spirit of God came upon people to help them. The Holy Spirit comes alongside to help, and He comes through His Word, and He comes through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, through the various comforts that he provides, and through his actually depositing his wisdom in his people so that they could minister to one another and care for one another. And that's what we see here in this text.

Let's go into the text now. The first example that I want us to ponder upon for a moment is found in verses 13 and 14, and that is that they displayed the boldness of Jesus. Now if you read these sentences, these two sentences, three sentences very carefully, you'll see how the logic flows. It says, now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, now these are the chief priests and the elders, and they saw something. They saw boldness, and they're thinking, what's up with that?

What's up with evangelicalism? And what did they see? They said, well, they marveled. That's the second thing. They saw it, and they marveled, and they realized something about it in their marveling.

They realized that they had been with Jesus. And there were some reasons for their marveling. And we'll give them to you here. First of all, they marvel because they had no earthly institutional qualifications. They were uneducated and trained.

Let's unpack these words for just a moment. They were unlearned or uneducated, agromatoi. In other words, not ah, not gromatoi. Grammar, it's a very easy term to understand. Not learned, unlettered.

This is a special reference to rabbinical culture. They had an absence of learning in the rabbinical culture. And not that they didn't know how to read or write. This is not what this means at all. But they did not have a scholastic rabbinical background.

And it doesn't mean that they were illiterate in the modern sense of the term, in the sense that they didn't know their alphabet, because they were obviously brilliant. They were communicators. They were writers. They had amazing powers of conversation. And they had much passion.

So they were unlearned in the sense that they did not have a reference point in a rabbinical education. And they were also called ignorant. We get our word idiot from the word that is used here, idioti. Originally, it meant one who is existing in kind of a private station as opposed to one who has an office in public affairs, one without professional knowledge, a layman, might even be thought of as someone who is ill-informed, perhaps a commoner even, but it's the absence of being connected in the wider educational breadth of culture. And this word has been rendered different ways to capture the meaning.

Wycliffe, in his translation of the Bible, reads, unlettered and lewd men. Now, lewd, the way that he used it is not the way that we think of the word lewd. The immoral connotations of the word lewd came later. In Wycliffe's time, that it meant just common, common or base. Here's what Matthew Henry says about this.

They perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men. They were of mean extraction, born in Galilee, that they were bred fishermen and had no learned education, had never been at any university, were not brought up at the feet of any of the Rabin, had never been conversant in courts, camps, or colleges. Nay, perhaps talk to them at this time upon any point in natural philosophy, mathematics or politics, and you will find that they know nothing of the matter. And yet speak to them of the Messiah and His kingdom, and they speak with so much clearness, evidence, and assurance so pertinently and so fluently and are so ready in the scriptures of the Old Testament relating to it that the most learned judge upon the bench is not able to answer them nor to enter the lists with them. They were ignorant men, idioti, private men, men that had not any public character or employment, and therefore they wondered they should have such high pretensions.

They were idiots, so the word signifies. They looked upon them with as much contempt as if they had been mere naturals and expected no more from them, which made them wonder to see what freedom they took. So they were not learned. And the second thing we learned about them is that they had been with Jesus. Those are the two big qualities of these men.

They were unlettered. They did not have the natural university qualifications. And that was stunning to the onlookers. And the second thing is that they had been with Jesus. This was their chief quality.

They were like their teacher And they were like their teacher in a particular way. Do you know what that was? They were bold. They were bold just like their teacher. People think that, people have this funny image of Jesus.

I think it comes from some of the Jesus movies. That Jesus is some kind of passive, sweet sort of a guy. Well, he was bold and his disciples were also bold. They had something to say. They were gracious.

Their burden was light. They were gentle in heart, but they were bold as lions. And we have to think rightly about Jesus, but their disciples were like them. The Bible says that a student, when he's well taught, is like his teacher, and they were like their teacher. And this was their great asset in life.

Now, what does all this mean? It means a number of things. But one thing that it means is that God can use anyone regardless of their educational background. You do not need a college degree. You do not need a rabbinical education to be useful to God.

I went to seminary and I'm extremely glad that I did, but it's absolutely not necessary to be a servant of God in the world. Of God in the world. I can on the one hand promote it and on the other hand say as what this implies is that it's not necessary, absolutely. But here we have a similar kind of situation among us where we've chosen for our children not to take the common track of education. In this same sense, all of our children will be unlettered just like this.

They will be the idioti of the culture. They will not be idiots. They hopefully will be like Peter and John, bold, brilliant, full of grace, full of a wonderful effect in the culture, coming in and bringing the love of the Lord Jesus Christ into everywhere that they go. So we've chosen, most of us, all of us probably, to abstain from the government school system and to engage in what we see pictured all over scripture. And that is a home-based, father-directed form of education.

If all you had was the Bible and you wanted to make conclusions about how education could be engaged, that's how it's engaged. There's no evidence of any other kind of engagement for education. Look as much as you want. You will not find universities. You will not find anything like this.

You will not find the age segregation that we see in our common culture. You see something completely different. And here the apostles were educated in a similar way. We pick up John, what did we see him doing before he started following Jesus? He was mending nets with who?

With his father. His father was his mentor and then he began to travel with the Lord Jesus Christ. They were in the same geographical area. There's all indication they were all around their families. All those things remained intact because they were in such a small geographical area, but we see here that they had been with Jesus.

Now here's a question. When the world looks at us, what do they say? Like Jim Santles, does your employer say, I can tell that Jim Santles has been with Jesus? I saw him today. I talked to him on the phone he has been with Jesus or what about your wife when you when you when you walk in you know from a hard day of being gone for a few hours does your wife say I can tell my husband has been with with Jesus or your children do they say I can tell that my father has been with Jesus?

Well that's exactly what we see here with the scribes and with the elders. When they saw the disciples, they saw one thing, and it's the most important thing in all of life, and that is that they had been with Jesus. Oh, that it would be that way with us, that we would be so impressionable by the Lord Jesus Christ, that we would be so aware of his presence all day long, that when we look into the eye of our brother, when we are doing business, when we're engaging conversation with our children, when we're speaking to our wives, hopefully to encourage them and to build them up, that they would say one thing, oh, this man, this woman, this child has been with the Lord Jesus Christ. I just want to challenge all of you heads of households and myself, Are you with the Lord Jesus enough so that you're demonstrating His character in all that you're doing? It's one thing to be the head of the house and to have authority in a house, but it can be a completely different thing to have the Lord Jesus Christ upon you.

This is the greatest challenge in life, that we would get our life from the Lord Jesus Christ. That's exactly what we see with these men here. Or What about your neighbor? He sees you tooling around, running errands, doing things, talking him over the fence. What does he say?

I can see that Tommy Vestal is. He has been with the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the only eternal thing that we have to give, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we so ought to be regulating our lives that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one we are with in a mighty way. So the second thing that we see is that they were commanded to cease speaking about Jesus.

And then they responded in the right way. You see this in verses 15 to 20. The council commanded the apostles to leave the room, or they were going to be separate for a moment, so that the council could talk and figure out what they were going to do. They were in a jam. They were in a big, big jam.

There were maybe 10, maybe 30, 000 people who had just been saved that were in the mix here. And God was giving them favor among the people. And they were on the wrong side of the movement right now. And so they asked the Apostles to go away and then they're going to collaborate and after discussing it here's what they decided. They decided to threaten them and let them go.

And it looks like the authorities are thinking about expediency to me. There was a huge throng of believers and they realized that it would probably be unhelpful at this time to do anything more drastic than that. So they did what real men do, they threaten them and then let them go. That's what they did. And you know, this council, think of the jam they were in.

I think they were embarrassed by all this because this healing had attested to the message. It's wonderful nature, the joyful quality of it. The people in the street, they're breaking bread with gladness and sincerity of heart. Honestly, they're having a great time. It's wonderful.

And here's this guy, everybody knows him in town, and he's walking and leaping, and he's praising God. He's the happiest guy on the platform. And what are these men going to do? Well, they say, they threaten them and they say, stop speaking this name and then they let them go. And the apostles give clear and polite answers to the things that they're saying.

Peter and John answered and said to them, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." It's almost like you're hearing Joshua, but as, choose this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we'll serve the Lord. That's exactly what these men are saying to the authorities. You know, I know there are many, perhaps in our movement, who are trying to think through all the issues surrounding allegiance to government. Because there are a number of things that our governments are beginning to do that really are absolutely the wrong direction.

And many of us are wondering, what are we gonna do when legislation, binding legislation, comes down upon the church and business and other kinds of organizations like that. What about with homeschooling? There in different places in the world people are being imprisoned for schooling their children at home. What if that happens in here? There's some really interesting things happening right here in North Carolina through the Department of Nonpublic Education Who knows what these people are going to do?

But they're they're rumblings. They're there. There's renewed desire to exercise control you know what if they decide to do that they're going to be some very big problems honestly but what do we do what do we do in this in this situation I got a great email from one of the brothers who used to go to church or who moved up to the northeast pen lender and he sent me this quote from Martin Luther on government here it is. Although they did not deserve it of the Lord yet he teaches them the right way and with these words he also confirms the worldly sword or government. Now Luther is commenting on Luke 22, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.

That's what Luther's talking about, okay? That's the context of Luther's comments. They had hoped he would condemn it and speak against it. He does not do it, however, but praises earthly government and commands to render unto it what is due it. You are not allowed to upbraid the government.

When at times you are oppressed by princes and tyrants who abuse the power they have from God, someday they will surely have to answer for it. Let them impose taxes as intolerable as they may. One must obey them and suffer everything patiently, for God's sake. Whether they do right or not, that will be taken care of in due time. Therefore, if your possessions, I, your life, and whatsoever you have be taken from you by those in power, then you are to say, I give it to you willingly.

I acknowledge you as my masters. Gladly I will be obedient to you. Whether you use the power given you by God, well or ill, that is your affair. But what if they would take the gospel from us and forbid us to preach it? Then you are to say, the gospel and the word of God I will not give up to you.

This is not within your power, for your rule is a temporal rule over earthly matters. But the gospel is a spiritual, heavenly treasure, and therefore your authority does not extend over the gospel and the word of God. We recognize the emperor as our master of temporal affairs, not of God's word. This we shall not suffer to be torn from us, for it is the power of God against which not even the gates of hell shall prevail." And he ends with this, these beautiful words here. Therefore, The Lord beautifully summarizes these two things and in one saying distinguishes them from each other.

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. And this will be and ought to be every day our meditation. What are the things of God's and what are the things of Caesar's? And that we would be diligent to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to render unto God that which is God's." So then we see that they were threatened and let go, and they were let go because of the favor of the people. That's why, That's why they weren't thrown back into prison or flogged again, because the people saw the beauty of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

They feared the people. This is how the great institutions of the world are driven. They're driven by fear of people and the fickle imaginations of the populace. The approval of man is what drives the great institutions of the world, and yet it is so fragile. But these authorities here dared not punish the apostles because the people were glorifying God for what had been done.

Now let's just take a moment and just say something that should be so obvious. This Christianity that was on the street was not an illusion. There were real people, tens of thousands of them, being substantially transformed. And everybody understood it. Everybody understood that the gospel had meaning in life.

And this, of course, should be our prayer. That God would so fill us up with the Word of the Lord Jesus Christ. That it would make us into different men and women, that the gospel would be so seen as it was here. The apostles had this experience. Now, it did cause them many problems.

We see that the apostles were martyred in not many years from now and in some not many days from this day here. But Christianity is not an illusion. It is a substantial work of God who is spirit, who is building his own kingdom. And he does it in his own timing and in his own way. Well the fourth thing that we see is that they were reunited in prayer, in a prayer of thanksgiving with their companions.

Verse 23 says, They went to their own companions. That's a beautiful phrase. It would be nice to stop there for a while, but they went to their own companions. Meaning they went back to a small group, probably a group of a size maybe something like this. But they went back to their own companions and they reported everything that had happened.

And they began, after the report, they prayed. And here was the prayer. I want to give three characteristics of this prayer. First of all, it was united prayer. It says in verse 24, they raised their voice to God with one accord.

This was a passionate, heartfelt, unified prayer. Oh God, would you give us prayers like this together? That our prayers would not be dispassionate. Don't you so feel that you need help in prayer? Don't you so need the assistance of Almighty God in your prayers?

I know my prayers, they are so insipid and weak. Only God can help our prayers. I would, that God would give us this kind of unity in prayer only God alone can do this We also see it's a prayer that glorifies the sovereignty of God It he in verse 24 Lord you are God Who made heaven and earth in the sea and all that is in them? Who by the mouth of your servant David have said, why did the nations rage and the people plot vain things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.

For truly against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do what? To do their nasty deeds, to rise up and be wicked? No. To do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done. Don't you see the absence of guile in the prayers and in the conversations of the Apostles?

They see everything under the mighty hand of God. God is superintending everything. They're free and they're fearless men and women because of this right here. Yes, they see Herod. They see Pontius Pilate.

They see the multitudes of the wicked rising up, the Gentiles against the people of Israel. They see it all. And they say, You're doing whatever the hand of the Lord would call you to do. That's how they see the world. That's their worldview.

Their worldview comes out in the prayer. You know, we had our men's Bible study on Tuesday, and at the end of it we said, Okay, what are we going to take home with this? And one guy said, you know, I am going to read this prayer to my wife and I'm going to encourage her. I'm going to tell her that God has his hand on everything, that she's safe, and that whatever the Gentiles or whatever Herod and Pontius Pilate or whatever rules of the kings of the earth might be, whoever they are, whatever they're doing, it doesn't matter because they're going to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done. I like that.

There's a man going out to go encourage his wife with the Word of God because perhaps she was fretting as of course most wives don't ever fret. Do not need this message at all, but here a man was going to take this message right into his home. Well this was a prayer of God's sovereignty. It was also an appeal for specific divine gifts. And they're listed here.

They prayed for boldness to speak the word. They prayed for a stretching out of God's hand to heal, and they prayed for signs and wonders through the Lord Jesus Christ. Those are the three things. Isn't that an interesting set of things to pray for? Listen to our own prayers.

Oh, Lord, keep me safe. This is just in a completely different stratosphere of sensibility than typically our prayers are. No, these are prayers for kingdom purposes, that God would do a mighty work, first through their boldness, second through the stretching out of the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then signs and wonders through the Lord Jesus Christ. And then fifthly, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and their prayer was answered and they spoke with boldness. And There were a number of things that happened here in verse 31.

First, the place was shaken. Wouldn't that have been wild? That's never happened anywhere I've ever been. But it happened here, and it certainly got their attention. They were filled with the Spirit.

That's the second thing that happened. Now there's much in the book of Acts about the filling of the Spirit. We're going to bump into a number of people who are filled with the Spirit. Also, you remember John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb. Elizabeth was filled with the Spirit.

And then we're going to see a whole bunch of people in the book of Acts who are filled with the Holy Spirit. We'll see what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Well here it meant that they were bold about their faith and Then they do something here under the power of the Holy Spirit that is an evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit in a person's life. And that is the work of the Holy Spirit gives the people of God a voice. It gives them something to say.

And here it comes out with a bold message. God does not leave His people without a voice. We should always have something to say. And it should always be the gospel. It should always be the Word.

Even this morning in the early morning hours, I was in the kitchen with my wife and I was asking her to pray for me that I would break any pattern of just replying with my own opinion about something, but to reply with the Gospel, but to reply with the Word of God. Wonderful moment last night, sitting on the couch here with Jeff Bach, and we were talking about some subject. I was expressing my opinions about things. He opened up Holy Scripture and read me a verse. I was so grateful for that.

The counsel of God. God gives His people a voice, but it should be the perfect voice. And This is why it's so important that we fill our minds with Scripture, we memorize it, we're ready to deliver the words of truth into the world so that the world would have something good, not just Scott Brown's meditation at this moment off the top of his head about something, but no, but that we would be filled with holy scripture. We're told that the Word does not return void. We should just trust that and believe it.

We think that somehow we can create arguments to win our friends for Christ, but it's the Word of God that will get them. It won't be our own creative presentation of the Gospel. It will be the Gospel itself. And so I trust that somehow over the next years as we're together as a church, that we will hide the word in our hearts, so that when the opportunity comes and we're poked, what comes out is the word of truth. Much benefit will come from that.

So they were filled with the Holy Spirit, And they spoke the word with boldness. And then sixthly, they were full of love and self-sacrifice, verses 32 to 37. Here we see a very close parallel for what we're memorizing in Acts 2, 36 through 47. But it was their experience together. It was a wonderful life.

You know, does anyone not want this kind of life? Well, honestly, I think there are millions of people in America who do not want this life in the church. I think they want an entertainment center that they go to and they go and they listen to a sermon and they hit the road and they have they have no relationship with one another there's no there are no tensions there's no opportunity for loving one another you know all the commands of love in the New Testament assume something. They assume lack of love. And it's so much easier to go to church with 10, 000 people and never know anyone and go and plug into the message and then leave.

Most of the churches in America have that kind of church life and it is a contradiction to Holy Scripture. But here they are of one heart and one soul. Neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all." Let me just give you some of the things that we see here. First of all there is unity.

Secondly there is generosity. Thirdly they had a message and the message was the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They were living in a state of grace. It was a wonderful state. It says that grace was upon them.

What's grace? What is grace? Well, grace is not something that comes from within. Grace is something that comes from without. It's outside of you.

It comes to you from God. They were imbibing on the grace of God and taking it deep within their hearts. They had material sufficiency. It says that they all had enough. And then it closes with this beautiful example of Barnabas, the son of encouragement, who takes of his resources and makes it available to the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Wow! What a church! What a neat place! This is the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is to us to Look at the patterns of scripture and to say, oh, Lord, help me to be obedient to these things.

You know, there are people who we pray that God would pour out a spirit upon all mankind in our geographical area or maybe the whole world. But a renewal of God's people happens through obedience. God pours out His Spirit in His own will whenever He desires and the great outpourings ebb and flow. That's just one thing we've learned from history and we see it in the book of Acts. God is sovereign over all these things.

But there is one thing that must be in the church at all times, whether God is doing an amazing outpouring or not, and that is obedience to the patterns and the principles and the commands of Scripture. And this is what makes the church a wonderful place. I pray that God would help us to learn to break our own patterns of church life and to be conformed unto the image of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. Would you pray with me? Oh Father, how we see the compelling, lovely expression of your name.

You are lovely. You are wonderful, Lord. We see your beauty working its way out here in the conversation with the elders and the scribes and with the people on the street in Jerusalem. Now we pray for these same expressions here among us. In Jesus name.

Amen.