Last week I pointed out the fact that after Jesus had raised from the dead
• The first thing that He did when He saw His disciples
• Was to command them to go and make more disciples.
• Part of our faith
• Part of being a Christian is that we obey Christ’s commands.
• And the most important command that we’ve been given is that we go make disciples. (This is our works)
• Faith and Works working together.
• And Today we are going to at look how the Apostles did this.
The Ministry of the Apostles (Acts 5:12–16)
• What we see in today’s verses is that a Church is being Born
• A Spirit-filled church is not only unified,
• But it’s also magnified, and multiplied.
• There is no doubt in my mind that Satan wants to divide the church,
• He wants to disgrace the church, and decrease the church;
• And he gonna do it, if we let him.
• But the church described in today’s text triumphed over the attacks of Satan!
This is what has been happing in Acts so far
• Spirit comes to the Apostles at Pentacost
• They Ran out in the streets
• And they start speaking to a variety of people in their own language. –
• And since the people couldn’t understand why this has happening
• The Apostles are Accused of being drunk.
• Hearing this Peter starts preaching
• And we see Peter doing through his preaching is
• Witnessing- He was a witness to the risen Christ – It was his Testimony
• And we see him Teaching- In Solomon’s Colonnade
• This was an open area on the east side of the Temple.
• Witnessing + Teaching = The addition of New Believers
In spite of the reluctance of the unsaved to join this group of believers,
• More and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.
• Rapid numerical growth was a phenomenon of the early church
Read
Ac 5:12 Meanwhile, the apostles were performing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people. And the believers were meeting regularly at the Temple in the area known as Solomon’s Colonnade.
Ac 5:13 No one else dared to join them, though everyone had high regard for them.
Ac 5:14 And more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord—crowds of both men and women.
Ac 5:15 As a result of the apostles’ work, sick people were brought out into the streets on beds and mats so that Peter’s shadow might fall across some of them as he went by.
Ac 5:16 Crowds came in from the villages around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those possessed by evil spirits, and they were all healed.
We see a lot of things happening in these verses
• We see that the believers are meeting together
• This Sounds like going to church.
• They were Being taught, They were Growing in their faith.
• In these early days the apostles perform many miracles,
• And huge crowds would fill the city to hear them preach
• They would come to see the healings
But The verse that I want us to look at today is
Ac 5:14 more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.
• Multitudes of believers were added to the Lord,
• And for the first time, Luke Does something different,
• He mentions the salvation of women.
• Both in his Gospel and in Acts, Luke has a great deal to say about women
• And their relationship to Christ and the church.
• There are at least a dozen references in Acts to women,
• As Luke shows the key role women played in the apostolic church.
This is saying alot when you consider how women were viewed
In those days you had a choice as a woman
1) Be a wife, stay home run the house, and raise the kids
2) Be a prostitute
3) Or be a concubine = MISTRESS
• But here Luke says that you to can be saved.
• Gal 3:28 There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. For you are all Christians—you are one in Christ Jesus.
God gave the Apostles power to perform great miracles.
• While it’s true that some of the ordinary members exercised miraculous powers (Acts 6:8),
• It was primarily the Apostles who did the miracles.
• These “signs and wonders” were God’s way of endorsing their ministry (Rom. 15:18–19; 2 Cor. 12:12; Heb. 2:4).
And looking back we can see that God always operated like this
• Whenever a new age started -- it has followed by miracles
• At the beginning of the age of Law,
• Moses performed great signs and wonders.
• Elijah and Elisha were miracle workers at the beginning of the great era of the Prophets
• Jesus and the Apostles performed signs and wonders when the Gospel Age was inaugurated.
• Each time God opens a new door,
• He called man’s attention to it.
• It was His way of saying, “Follow these leaders, because I have sent them.”
The mighty wonders performed by the Apostles
• Were the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise that they would do
• “greater works” in answer to believing prayer (John 14:13–14).
Miracles
A newly converted hippie was very interestedly reading the Bible while waiting for a bus and every now and then would exclaim, "Alleluia, Praise the Lord, Amen" and on and on as he read. A skeptic heard him and came and asked what he was reading.
He answered, "I am reading how God parted the red sea and let the Israelites go through--that is a miracle!"
The skeptic explained, "Do not believe everything the Bible tells you. The truth is that that body of water was only really 6 inches deep-- so it was not miracle." The hippie nodded in disappointment but kept on reading as the skeptic was walking away feeling proud that he had set the hippie straight.
All of a sudden the skeptic heard the hippie let out a big "ALLELUIA, PTL". At this the skeptic came back to him and asked, "What is it this time?" The hippie said excitedly in one breath, "This one is a real miracle, God drowned the whole Egyptian army in 6 inches of water!!!
When Jesus performed miracles during His ministry on earth, He had three purposes in mind:
(1) To show compassion and meet human need;
Love and caring – just like we need to show
(2) To present His credentials as the Son of God;
They proved to the people who He was.
(3) To convey spiritual truth.
• For example, when He fed the 5,000,
1) The miracle met their physical need,
2) It revealed Him as the Son of God,
3) And gave Him opportunity to preach a sermon about the Bread of Life (John 6).
The apostolic miracles followed a similar pattern.
• Peter and John healed a crippled beggar and met his need,
• And Peter used that miracle to preach a sermon on salvation
• They also did it to prove to the people and the council
• That he and John were really the servants of the living Christ.
One of the qualifications for an apostle is that they had seen the risen Christ
• Since nobody can claim that experience today, there are no apostles in the church.
• The Apostles and prophets laid the foundation for the church (Eph. 2:20),
• And today pastors, teachers, and evangelists are building on that foundation
It doesn’t mean that God doesn’t perform miracles today!
• It simply means that He doesn’t have to prove anything.
• Because we now have the completed Word of God
• And we use His Word “The Bible” to test teachers (1 John 2:18–29; 4:1–6).
• We have to remember that Satan is a Liar and is able to deceive the non-believer.
In the Old Testament, any prophet who performed miracles
• but, at the same time, led the people away from God’s Word,
• Was considered a false prophet and was killed (Deut. 13).
• The important thing wasn’t the miracles,
• It was whether his message was true to the Word of God.
• Most of the miracles recorded in the Bible were done out in the open for everybody to see,
• So it wasn’t difficult to prove them in a court of law.
Peter and the other Apostles found themselves ministering Just like Jesus had
• People were coming from all over,
• They were bringing their sick and afflicted (Matt. 4:23–25; Mark 1:45; 2:8–12).
• The Twelve must have found it very difficult to walk down the street,
• Because of all the people crowding around them and laying the sick in front of them
• Some of the people even had the superstitious belief that there was healing in Peter’s shadow.
But what’s important is that all of these people were healed.
• There were no failures
• Nobody was sent away because they didn’t have faith to be healed.”
• These were days when God was speaking to Israel
• And telling them that Jesus really was their Messiah and Savior.
• “The Jews require a sign”, and God delivered. (1 Cor. 1:22)
The important thing wasn’t the healing of the sick,
• It was the winning of lost souls,
• as multitudes were added to the fellowship.
• The Spirit gave them power to perform wonders
• And The Sprit also gave them the power for witness (Acts 1:8),
And The People brought people
• And We know that these men and women had to be believers
• Because if they didn’t believe
• Why would they bother?
• They believed in the healing power.
We see this in verse
• Ac 5:16 Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed.
People came from great distances just to be healed
• And they were brought their by their friends.
• Why? Because their friends cared.
• Their friends knew they were sick.
Friends care about the welfare of their friends.
• We hold onto them and let them hold on to us.
• Think about some of your friends right now.
• You worry about them when they have relationship problems.
• You worry about them when they have health problems.
• You worry about them when they suffer financially.
If these friends don’t have a relationship with Christ,
• Their health is suffering
• And they are going to suffer a fate worse than any financial problem we can imagine.
• We don’t want them to suffer for eternity.
• So Why wouldn’t you take a step to help them?
In today’s text Their friends knew they were tormented by evil spirits
• And their friends who were believers knew the only thing that could save them was the power of Christ.
This is the foundation for our work today
• We are the believers that have the power of the Spirit inside of us.
There is a whole world out there that is sick
• Sick of their problems
• Sick of failures
• Sick of life
There is a world out there that is being tormented by evil spirits
• Alcoholism
• Drug addiction
• Marital problems
The greatest miracle of all is the transformation of a lost sinner into a child of God
Ro 1:15 So I am eager to come to you in Rome, too, to preach God’s Good News.
Ro 1:16 For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—Jews first and also Gentiles.
Ro 1:17 This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”
We know the only chance we have to help people
• Is to get them into a relationship with Christ
• The early believers cared about these sick people
• And today we have to care about these sick people.
Maybe today’s people’s illnesses and demons are harder to see
• Today we may have to look harder to see those who are hurting.
• But they’re still there
• They’re still suffering
• We can help them put an end to their suffering through the grace of God.
• This is the miracle that meets the greatest need,
• This is the miracle that lasts the longest, and also costs the greatest price—
• It costed The blood of God’s Only Son.
This is the one miracle we can all participate in
• As we share the message of the Gospel,
