Peter and John, the rock and the one Jesus loved most, the two men who were without a doubt closest to Jesus when he walked the earth. Just walking down the street outside the MTS centre in Winnipeg, they see a crippled beggar outside the arena asking them for a few bucks. They don’t turn their heads and walk by ignoring him, they stop, look intently at him and tell him they have no money, but they have something even better. He’s saying to himself, “O great more advice” but then gets miraculously healed and saved by Jesus. So here’s the question; was the something better the fact that they healed the man physically, or that he became a believer in Jesus?
Both are pretty good aren’t they, but one lasts forever, the other doesn’t. The point is that by the power of Christ we can get both, a better life here on earth, and eternity with Him in the afterlife. I think this is also a picture of missions - money and meeting basic needs is good, but salvation is so much better.
But as we move from chapter 3 to 4 in the book of Acts we see that there was a bigger purpose for the miracle of healing. Remember a couple of weeks ago we talked about the primary purpose of the Holy Spirit sent to us, was to witness about Jesus Christ and what he has done. Well this one healing gets them two audiences, one consisting of mostly ordinary people, and another consisting of the highest religious leaders at the time. This miracle gets their feet in the door.
We begin chapter 4 by seeing that the real enemies of Christ show up to put a stop to what Peter and John are saying. They’re kind of OK with the healing, but they are not OK with whom they are giving credit to for the healing, especially the part about Jesus being raised from the dead.
What I want you to see is that the enemies here are the religious or spiritual people of the time, and the truth is that these are the primary enemies of Christ today as well. And the primary stumbling block then as it is today, is the resurrection of the dead. People are fine with Christians if they are nice, generous, helpful people. The church is good as long as it is creating hospitals and universities. Did you know that 100 of the first 110 universities in North America, including most of the Ivy League schools began as Christian institutions? And it’s only been in the last century or so that any hospitals were not started by the church.
But when we go and bring Jesus into the picture, hackles get up and people get upset. Especially when we make the crazy remark that Jesus was raised from the dead and that he is the only way a person can be saved. Both of those things are what Peter claims in his messages.
So, many of the people believed Peter’s message from the last chapter and now we see in verse 4 of ch 4 that in a few days the church has grown to about 5000 families. So the high religious mucky mucks are getting very nervous and they all meet in Jerusalem and get Peter and John brought before them.
Notice who was there. It says that all the rulers and elders and teachers of the religious law were there with most the of the high priest’s family. This must have been big for them all to get together. These guys believed in God, they even believed in the same God. But this Jesus thing was a thorn in their side. Believe what you want to believe, but don’t go talking about it publicly all over the place.
Now they don’t deny that this was a legitimate healing of this beggar, but they demand, “By whose name, and by what power have you done this?” Remember they were instrumental in getting Jesus killed a couple months ago. They thought this would have finally brought an end to this trouble making movement. But now all these weeks after, they are seeing that maybe this Jesus has been resurrected in his followers, and this is an even bigger threat now.
So in verse 8 Peter launches into his third sermon, in an incredibly intimidating situation, and filled with the Holy Spirit he begins with a question. He basically says are we being arrested because we have done a good deed for a crippled man? And then he clearly and unabashedly tells them by what power he was healed, and sticks a little jab in there as well. He says, “To all the people in Israel, he was healed by the powerful name of Jesus Christ from Nazareth whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead.”
He goes on to use an OT scripture that they all would have memorized as kids from Psalm 118, claiming that Jesus is the cornerstone that the builders rejected. They would have said, “who would be so blind to reject the Messiah”, but Peter says, hey you guys are famous, you are the ones David was talking about in that Psalm.
And then in verse 12 the famous and controversial statement, “There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved”. Notice it’s not a set of rules that we are saved by, it’s a name. No one has ever offered forgiveness of sins before. Salvation is available now and God has given it once and for all through the name of Jesus.
Now this is where I want to settle for a few minutes. First of all, did all these religious elite know they were sinners? Of course they did. They might not admit it because on the surface they kept all the religious man made laws in public, but they were the biggest hypocrites out there. There was no way they would admit to being sinners. They thought living according to the rules and making animal sacrifices, was the way to be saved, but their hearts were dark and they had no love in them.
They didn’t know they needed forgiveness, they thought they were doing what they were supposed to do to be on God’s good side. But there is nothing we can do, only Jesus could make us right with God. He paid the penalty, and we need to accept the bail he has paid to get us out of jail.
So while thousands of others were acknowledging their sin and repenting, and accepting Jesus forgiveness on the cross, these so called spiritual elite were fighting it. So the first thing Peter does is tell them the facts, that Jesus was crucified by them, because of their sin, and that he was raised from the dead. But even so, they can still be forgiven.
Now for anyone who is not sure if these are facts or not. Many secular lawyers have been converted to Christianity by simply looking at the evidence. Remember these Scriptures are by thousands of times the most reliable historical documents ever found, no one would argue that point if they have done the research.
There is no rational argument against the fact that when Jesus was placed in the tomb, he was dead, the spear through the heart and lungs after he had already died, would have sealed the deal. Many people saw this and the Roman Centurions knew how to kill and make sure that they didn’t fail. They were so sure he was dead on the cross that they didn’t bother breaking his legs as they normally would if a person was taking too long to die from suffocation on the cross.
Jesus was dead beyond resuscitation. Now during forty days after they found his tomb empty, (remember the penalty for the soldiers guarding this tomb would have been death if they were to blame for someone coming and stealing Jesus body), for forty days at least 500 people saw Jesus and ate with him and touched him, at different times and in different places. Eye witness testimony of one or two reliable witnesses will get you convicted in a court of law. Here there are over 500 eye witnesses. Even some of his own disciples doubted it was him at first.
Then at least about 20 if not 120 people saw him be taken into the sky by a cloud as he ascended to heaven. That same group of people then saw the proof of his ascension when Jesus sent the promised Holy Spirit to them fifty days after he ascended. We read all that in the first 2 chapters.
Now all of this was good news and was described in the Old Testament, which these religious people believed in, and that’s why Christ’s disciples use these Scriptures a lot in their explanation. So why did so many refuse to believe all this? Why do so many refuse to believe it today? Its good news, it means there is a possibility for forgiveness of sins, even for those who murdered Jesus. And it proves that Jesus was God in the flesh so that He could personally relate to what we go through here on earth, and it proved that if he in a human body could be raised from the dead to have eternal life, then we could too? Why would anyone not want to believe this?
Well, it can only be human pride and the desire to be in charge of our own destiny. The original sin in the Garden of Eden reflects this. We don’t want God to be in charge, we want to be in charge, we want to believe that we can save ourselves through our own means, by being good people. The Bible clearly says otherwise. “But that’s such an arrogant statement” we say, “How narrow minded to say Jesus is the only way”.
Well if God is God don’t you think he has the right to say that? If he created everything, which of course many don’t believe, (but again if you do the research you can come to no other conclusion), but if that is true, and if he truly did send his son to die for the forgiveness of sin, and if he did in fact raise him from the dead, does he not have the right to say that he is the only way?
And if all that is true, he’s not being narrow, he’s being loving and specific by clearly giving us the one way to inherit eternal life and abundant life here on earth. Is it narrow minded to say that gravity only causes things to go down? Am I being mean and intolerant if I tell you that you can’t get to Ontario if you keep driving west? You can sincerely choose to believe anything you want, but that doesn’t make it true. And facts are facts no matter what you believe.
So as we continue in verse 13, these members of this council are amazed by the words that these guys are saying, knowing that they are uneducated fisherman and such, but also realizing that they had been with Jesus and that is giving them the power to say these things and perform these miracles.
So there was nothing they could say, they were afraid to arrest them and had no grounds anyway, so they just warn them to stop talking about this Jesus. Now the disciples should have been very intimidated by this, and at the very least, I think I would have said “OK, I’ll stop” so they would let me go, and maybe just be a little less obvious if I continued to talk about Jesus. But what do they do? They just say, you decide, should we listen to you or God? We can’t help talking about things we believe (no that’s not what it says) they can’t stop talking about things they have seen (and they could have said if you guys opened your eyes, you would realize that you saw it too).
That is huge people. Peter and John were not talking about a belief system. They didn’t say we’re tired of these Old Testament stories let’s make up some new ones. They weren’t smart enough to do that. They wouldn’t risk death for a hoax. The religious leaders wanted them to change their belief, but this wasn’t a belief. They saw it. And remember religious leaders, you were there calling for Jesus to be crucified, you broke your own laws and murdered the Messiah, and watched him be crucified… I bet it got very quiet as Peter probably pointed his finger at them as he said this.
Peter and John and the rest of the disciples couldn’t stop talking about this because it wasn’t a belief they pulled out of a book or out of the air. They walked with Jesus for 3 years, they saw all his miracles, they knew his heart, they could prove that he never sinned. They watched him get arrested and crucified, Peter and John stuck their head in the tomb and saw that Jesus was gone after he was raised. They along 500 other people saw him and ate with him on several occasions after he was raised from the dead, with the holes in his hands and side to prove it was him. And they watched as he disappeared in a cloud up to heaven.
That was all fine and dandy, but then they saw the tongues of fire come down as Jesus kept his promise and sent the Holy Spirit to them. They saw everyone talk in different languages, and they knew now without a doubt that Jesus was indeed with them through the Holy Spirit until the end of the age as he promised.
They had no doubts anymore, they saw it, they didn’t just believe it, and they knew why the Holy Spirit was sent, so they trusted it and witnessed about Jesus as the Lord had commanded them. No fancy theology, they probably couldn’t have answered all the theological questions that the unbelievers would throw at them either, but they knew what they saw and had to keep talking about it.
And what’s weird is that the guys criticizing Peter and John just saw something as well in the healing they did on the beggar, but they refused to believe it was the power of Jesus that made it happen, even though they saw him do it countless times as well before he died.
So the officials threatened them again and let them go so that they didn’t start a riot.
Now they get back to the other believers and there is a bit of a celebration when they hear what happened to Peter and John. I think this is because they know that they are having an impact for Christ. This is confirming for them what Jesus said about being hated for the name of Jesus, and they again use scripture that helps them understand what’s going on, celebrating the fact that more prophecy is being fulfilled through them.
And I think it’s very interesting that they don’t pray for protection in verse 29, but they ask for even more boldness and more miracles. And then the building they were in shook as they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. What a confirmation. The result - they all continued to preach the word of God with boldness. This time not just eleven of them, but all the disciples.
Now as we compare their experience with ours today in the church what do we see?
I ask myself why don’t we see the power that they did back then. Why don’t buildings shake when we pray, why don’t we see the kinds of things that they do in Acts? Well I think the answer probably lies in the fact that we didn’t originally see what they saw when Jesus was on earth. For us I guess it is belief, belief in a book that comes from documents that are 2000 years old. And belief is less powerful than experience.
Now this might be a bad example, but we have all heard of stories of people being abducted by aliens, or of people who have had near death experiences seeing heaven and such. We may or not believe those stories, but if it happened to us, we would be a lot more bold about talking about it wouldn’t we? It would go beyond belief to what we have experienced.
My question to you is this? What would it take for you to risk your life to talk publicly and constantly about Jesus Christ? To devote your life fully to that? To forsake everything else to spread the word about Jesus?
You say, “Well I am not gifted or called to that ministry”. What ministry are you called to then? What is this whole church thing for anyway? You might be able to make an argument that the two commissions to be witnesses and make disciples were given only to the eleven remaining apostles, but we also see that there were many others who did this work.
Whether or not you are called to be a witness for Jesus Christ, you’re desire to share about Him will certainly reflect your experience with Him. Has Jesus done anything tangibly miraculous in your life that only could have been done by Him and you have no doubt about that, and have to tell someone about it? Well he saved you from death for one, but that’s not really very tangible, you believe it but do you know it?
I have been fortunate to have couple of those tangible experiences, and I believe that is why I am a pastor today, I could not do anything else. But it’s still hard to publicly proclaim Christ with boldness outside of church. I can only imagine how hard it must be when all you have as your experience of Christ is the Bible and church services.
What would it take to bring your Christianity to more than just belief based on a book of stories? How can you get your faith from belief to experience? Well for those who did not see Jesus in the flesh, it appears that it was the presence of the Holy Spirit and the preaching of the message from those empowered by the Spirit, that caused people to believe back then. And seeing others repenting and being baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit, would reinforce even the apostle’s belief. People hearing God’s word under the power of the Holy Spirit is what converts people.
When I was a counsellor, a big part of my job was to help people change their beliefs, especially about themselves and the circumstances in their lives. What I learned is that you can recite a new belief as often as you want, but if you don’t see some confirmation that that belief is true, it won’t stick, it won’t be very powerful, and it won’t create change.
To have or change a belief you must have evidence. So rather than having people do affirmations, where they stand in front of the mirror and say what they want to believe over and over again, I would have them actually do something that would confirm that their current belief was wrong and the new belief was better or more accurate.
I think we need to do that with our faith as well. I don’t mean that we need to test God, but that we need to test our faith. You say you believe such and such? Prove it by showing yourself that it’s true.
And the main mechanism God gives us for proving this, is to witness about Him. He says as long as you do this I will be with you, the Holy Spirit will give you power, and words to speak. I know this is true because each week I see evidence of it in my life. Why? Because initially I had the faith to put that to the test. Do you think it wasn’t the scariest thing I ever did when I gave my first sermon in my old church, where they were used to hearing one of the most respected Bible teachers in the area?
You wouldn’t have wanted to hear what my mind was saying about myself before I did that, but somehow I got up and did it, I didn’t have a choice. And the times I have shared Jesus with someone else in another setting, it felt as natural as anything after I opened my mouth.
There’s still very few Sundays when I am not feeling sick and wanting to run away before the service starts, but every time, the Spirit of God takes over, gives me the strength and the words to speak. I don’t know how it comes across to you, you may not think the Holy Spirit is empowering me, but I know he is simply by the fact that I’m standing up here and saying anything. Every Sunday is a miracle to me. Public speaking was without a doubt my greatest fear for the first thirty years of my life.
Now I’m not going to embarrass you by asking you to raise your hand, but how many of you have ever told another person outside of your immediate family the true gospel message, that they are sinners in need of salvation and that Jesus Christ died for the forgiveness of sins and rose from the dead, and that he is the only way to get eternal life and get to heaven.
Statistically less than ten of you in this room have. How many of you have ever invited someone to church? How many tried to invite someone this week? Statistically again, at most about 25 of you in this room did. Now those of you who did may say, “Well it didn’t work, I didn’t see God do any miracle, nobody got saved and the person I invited turned it down”. Well, you know most of the time it failed for those in the Bible too. They had successes but most people didn’t believe them, didn’t accept the invitation.
What if the miracle isn’t the result, but the fact that you were empowered to do it, to tell them, to invite them? For those 80-90 percent of you who have never done it, wouldn’t it be kind of a miracle if you did? Maybe the first miracle is you strengthening your faith by stepping out and telling somebody about Jesus. Maybe results will come after that.
Do you know that ideally we should all have church. If you have been a Christian for any amount of time, you should have a church. Maybe it’s just a few people in your house once in a while, but there should be lots of little churches that sprout from this one, with new people coming in because of you sharing the gospel with them. We have all been given this ministry of reconciliation with God and are all the priesthood of believers. If we go by the model in Acts these little groups would be getting together in houses and studying the Bible, worshipping together and sharing meals. Just think about that.
Now for those of you here today who know they are not believers in Jesus Christ, and for those who may have doubts if they are or not, or if you believe but have not been baptised, I wonder if you would give yourself the opportunity to see if Jesus is real. Peter says repent, or change your belief about Jesus and turn from your ways to His ways, and be baptised, for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
