Transcription
We're gonna get started now with chapter 3, and what we want to do is talk about the high cost of the free gospel. We want to talk about how the beginning of Mission Jerusalem gets started, and this starts with the center feature of Peter and John, two of the disciples. And what you see is a series of simple steps that help to get ministry going.
And let's start off with, let's start off with verse 1 of chapter 3. Now, Peter and John we're going up to the temple at the ninth hour, the hour of prayer. So stop right there. They're Jews. They know Jesus. They know the resurrected Jesus. They have the Spirit. They're still Jews. So they're going to a temple. And when they walk in, they are heading into the door. And I think there's an availability principle here. Walking with God in developing your heart of worship enables you to be used by God with with without any notice, without any additional effort. They are about to be used by God in the temple. Why? Because they're there. Why are they there? Because they should be. So a lot of times, making the choice to do what you should be doing makes you available for God to use you. That's what I'm trying to say.
Then you go into verses 2 through 5, and it says, "And a man who had been lame from his mother's womb was being carried along, whom they had used to set down every day at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful in order to beg alms of those who were entering the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he began asking them to receive alms. But Peter, along with John, fixed his gaze on him and said, 'Look at us.' And he began to give them his attention, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, 'I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.'" And seizing him by the right hand, he raised him up, and immediately his feet and his ankles were strengthened.
Now, it's a doctor telling the story, so that's why he gets down to feet and ankle strengthen. He's all about what's wrong with him. But beyond that, I want you to notice something. There's a simple attention principle here. You can't be used by God to do anything if you won't take the time to see people. So what makes Peter eligible to be used by God to heal the guy? As he saw the guy, he listened to the guy. It's one thing to be available by going into the temple. It's another thing to be paying attention to what's going on around you.
So what's interesting is that in verses 6 through 10, Peter told him that he could offer the man the power of Jesus, and he grabbed his hand, and the man's legs were healed, his feet were healed, and people in the temple began to take notice. This is an extension principle. Think about it. There are people that need help finding the healing Jesus offers for them, but you might have to extend your hand and actually touch them. If you don't touch them, they're not going to be able to experience Jesus at all. It may not be comfortable for Peter and John to walk over and grab this guy and touch him. You're not going to have an impact for Jesus without touching people. It's going to be required.
And and not only that, but if you go all the way down through the story, it says, verse 8, "With a leap he stood upright and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God." Can you imagine this guy? Well, this is the first time I've ever been able to get up and move around. I am free! And it says, "And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and they were taking note of him as being the one who used to sit at the Beautiful Gate of the temple." The Beautiful Gate is just outside the women's court. Inside the women's court is the offering bin. It's a smart place to stay because everybody's walking with their money, they're going into the room of offering, and he's lying by the gate. And what's interesting is it says, "And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him." While he was clinging to Peter and John, look at what happens. While he was clinging to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them to the to the so-called Portico of Solomon, full of amazement. I'll take you to the porch of Solomon. It's the eastern porch of the temple. But here's what's interesting. When somebody new to understand the power of Jesus, they're gonna cling to the people of God. He doesn't yet know the message of Jesus. He knows the power of Jesus. The very first thing that attracted him was the power of Jesus, but he doesn't have Jesus to hang on to. So he hangs on to the Christian. Expect when God is moving through you, expect when God is working through you, the people will will draw up to you because their experience with Jesus is through you. They don't know the difference. They need more than your care. That's only the first part of what they need.
Now, seeing the crowd, Peter quickly pointed the attention to himself. "Hey, I was the one who healed." Now, look at verse 12. It says in verses 12, 13, and 13, "When Peter saw this, that is, the people coming toward him, he replied to the people, 'Men of Israel, why are you amazed at this? Why do you gaze at us as if by our own power or piety we had made this man walk? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our Fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered and disowned in the presence of Pilate when he had decided to release him. But you disowned the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, but put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses.'"
It's interesting. Very quickly, look, look at the brilliance of Peter's ministry. God does something neat through him. He deflects it immediately to Jesus. It's not about the spotlight. It's not about how important he is. It's about that Jesus had the power. And then he says, "On the basis of faith in his name, it is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man whom you see and know, and the faith which comes through him has given him this perfect health in the presence of you all." What's interesting is people are gonna affirm you when what they're actually seeing is God's work in your life. They're gonna be gone, "Oh, you're so good, you did such a great job." Now, God has been at work in my life. So what do you do? Tell them the truth. Yeah, I'm really not as good as you think I am. Here's the truth: Jesus is at work. And he right away turns it over there. And what I love is the clarity he gives to the whole thing. People have to understand their lostness and their sin before they can understand salvation and freedom. It's true. You got to get a person lost before you get them saved. If they don't think they're lost, you're not going to bring salvation. It's not going to make any sense to them. So we have to be clear and direct in our presentation of the facts concerning the gospel.
And that's why he goes on and he turns to him in 17 and 18 and says, "Now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers also did. But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would have to suffer, he has thus fulfilled. Therefore, repent and return so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord." And you can see right away he's turning this thing around to saying, "I know you didn't know that's what you were doing, but that's what you did. You were guilty. Nevertheless, I need you now to address that sin. Go and repent. I need you to come back and understand that God is about to do a work." One of the things I like about this is there's a compassion principle here. Don't beat people with the truth. It doesn't help to make them feel badly about what they did wrong. Loading up how bad sin is isn't usually necessary. And the bottom line is that he wants repentance, and repentance has changed, not self-flagellation. He's not looking for people to beat themselves. He's looking for them to change their behavior and repent.
Now, the end of the story in chapter 3 is very important. Look at 19 to 26. "Therefore, repent and return so that your sins may be wiped away, verse 20, and that he may send Jesus Christ, appointed for you, whom heaven must must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from ancient time. Moses said, 'The Lord God will raise up a prophet like me from your brethren; to him you shall give heed to everything he says to you.'" Moses told us there would be a great prophet. Moses told us to listen to him. Verse 23, "And it and it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people." I think if you look very closely at at the passage, I think he's dealing with Deuteronomy 18 there. Say Deuteronomy 18:15 and Deuteronomy 18:18. I'd probably put that alongside of the verses. Deuteronomy 18:15 and Deuteronomy 18:18, the reference to the coming prophet. Verse 24, "Likewise all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and its successors onward also announced these days. It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, 'And in your seed all the families of the earth will be blessed.' For you first, God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you by every and by turning every one of you from your wicked ways." He turns in me and says, "I want you to understand something. The gospel isn't just about mental assent. It's about change. It's about transformation. It's not, I don't just want you to know Jesus came. I don't just want you to know he died. I don't want you to know that he was raised again. I want you to know all of those things on your way to repenting before God and being transformed by him. If there's no repentance, there's no transformation. If there's no transformation, there's no evidence of the work of the Spirit."
Okay, so we get to chapter four and we're rolling in. We're still in Jerusalem and Judea, and we're still under the ministry of Peter and John. And in chapter four, you start to see the sources of real power here. What's interesting is there are two kinds of people in the passage. Consider for a moment the beginning of the passage. There are priests, temple guards, and Sadducees in the beginning. And it says, "As they were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple guard, and the Sadducees came to them." Now, stop right there. What do we know about these guys? Are they reputable in town? You got priests, you got temple guards, you got Sadducees. These are reputable people. They're known to be men of stature, maturity, importance. What else do we know? We also know that they're protectionists. That their job is to shut down anything that's going to rock the temple. What's interesting is the second part. It says, "Being greatly disturbed, they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead." The second verse is not about these temple guards, priests, and Sadducees. It's about Peter and John and the disciples who are followers of Jesus. And what I see is that they are effective. What I see is that they're convincing many. In fact, verse four says, "Many of those who heard the message believed." So they are being effective. They're convincing many. But they are unrepeatable people. In fact, if you look down at verse 13, you'll see further down in the chapter, "Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus." It's interesting. They weren't untrained. They were trained by Jesus, which in their eyes was untrained. They weren't uneducated. They were educated by Jesus, which in the eyes of the Sadducees, temple guard, and the priest was uneducated. So you have two different kinds of people in this passage. And what I find interesting is look at the contrast. Look at the way the Apostles acted.
Go to chapter 4, verse 8, for a minute. Now, Peter and John are getting in trouble for preaching in the temple, right? That's essentially what's going on. And if you look in chapter 4, verse 3, they got arrested. They laid hands on them. They put them in jail. If you look in verse 4, many people heard the message and they were believing, and the number was about 5,000. You look in verse 5, the next day the rulers, elders, scribes gathered together, and drew some anise, the high priest Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and all who were of priestly descent. Every, but all the big names are there. And they, they begin to say, "By what power or in what name have you done this?" And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said, "Rulers and elders of the people..." and he begins to preach. Here's the thing I notice about him. Did you notice that Peter is up against people of power? Peter is up against people of education and stature, and Peter is none of those things. But he has the Spirit of God. And because he has the Spirit of God, the same Peter that denied Jesus three times, now after having the Spirit of God, is saying, "In the temple, you crucified the Prince of life." And now he's standing right in front of the very guys who he was scared to death in their house and ran away and wept bitterly because he couldn't, he couldn't admit that he was even with Jesus before. Now he's publicly going to name Jesus as his champion. Spirit of God brings confidence. The Spirit of God brings peace. The Spirit of God brings clarity to a mind that otherwise was clouded. And interesting, Peter becomes productive, not by education, but by effectiveness. Standing in front of opposition. When you've been effective in producing, it's much easier. Being right is not going to matter if there's no achievement. I want you to be right, but I want you to be effective. So you got to be effective in your outreach.
I think it's kind of interesting to go all the way down to verse 24. I'm not going to do his whole sermon, but he stands there and he preaches to them. And you read it in verse 24, it says, "And when they heard this, they lifted up their voices to God with one accord and said, 'Oh Lord, it is you who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.'" Now, what's here's what's interesting. They're glorifying God. Peter and John are glorifying God. And what does it tell you about them? They're not only peaceful, they're also prayerful people. They're going to turn and right in the middle of the thing, they're gonna stop and have a prayer meeting. What I love is that they're also very patterned. If you look in verses 25 and 26, these guys are incredible because they pull out the reliance of the word. They go back and say, "Look, here's what the word has said. Here's what the word is." They keep doing this. What you find is their effectiveness is bolstered by the fact that they're there using the word. They are shot through with Bible verses. "Every time they do something, this is because of this Bible verse. This is because of this Bible verse." I think it's interesting because if you keep reading, he goes on and he preaches. And verse 31 says, "And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the Word of God with boldness." You have again a movement of the Spirit of God. And one of the things I think is interesting is that their dependence upon God, their prayer, their obedience, their Bible, Bibley, and now you have the Spirit of God coming again on a meeting, and you start to see the house shaking, and the people are beginning to be empowered. In the end, they become powerful people. And then God provides for them, first materially in verse 32, and spiritually in verse 33. It says, "And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and one 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 testimony to the resurrection of Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all."
Now, let me ask you a question. And this is, this is actually an open-ended question. Would you take it from these verses that proper Christianity shouldn't have personal property? This is the second time, and you're in chapter four, and this is the second time they made a big point out of none of them owned anything. They all gave all their stuff. Do you think there would be a temptation on the part of Christians throughout the ages to see this as a statement against personal property? So do you think it's a compromise? Like the Bible says we shouldn't be trading with interest, but we do it because that's our society, and so we've become used to it. So now when we preach, we say, "Not unfair interest," as if it doesn't say interest altogether. Here's, here's what I think you might want to underline in your own mind because somebody's gonna bring this up to you. It's going to happen. So here's what I want you to think about. This is a narrative portion. It's not instructive. It's just telling you what they did. Did it work? You want to say yes. You want to say no. What do you want to say? Be bold. Step out. What's that? Well, if you happen to remember, some of you remember from your read-through the New Testament, the rest of the New Testament, they're flat broke, and everybody's sending them offerings. It not only didn't work, they could only survive if they took it as welfare from other churches outside of the Holy Land. Because when they did this, they all ran out of money. Second, when Paul, direst, addressed deliberately, First Thessalonians, he said, "Go to work." Now, here's the problem. He said, "I understand people are sitting there waiting for Jesus to come. Get a job." So yes, it's true. It's in the narrative. It's also in the narrative that it didn't work. It's also in the narrative that later instruction tells you to get a job. So here's the question: What trumps? What narrative trumps instruction, or instruction trumps narrative? Instruction trumps narrative. And that's what I want you to do. When you apply properly the principles of Scripture, you can go, "Yes, yes, it's in the text, but that doesn't mean that's what we should do. It didn't work. They all ended up flat broke. The commune strategy in the end didn't work. So it was fine that they all became sort of Christian communists and gave away all their stuff and had it all in common, and then they were flat broke for the rest of the New Testament, begging money off of Greeks." Okay, so what you want to do is you want to keep in mind in a narrative portion, if you go three chapters later and it says, "And it was a disaster," maybe you don't want to do that. If it tells you to do it, then you do it. If it tells you that they did it, you don't do it unless it works. Okay, so this is going to be important in the book of Acts because later on, Paul is gonna skip the Bible and quote from relevant poets of his day, and you're gonna go, "Oh, well, that must mean that's how we do it to be relevant." Later on, Paul writes to Timothy and says, "Don't do that." It was terrible. The problem is, we got guys who are only looking one portion of the scripture. So when somebody pulls this out and says to you, "Well, they had all things in common, why do we have personal property?" Because they were broke after that, and everybody had to take offerings for them. That's the answer. Yes, ma'am.
Well, a little bit later, here's the deal. They are, everybody so far in the whole story's Jewish. Everybody, the believers, non-believers. But eventually, people were pouring into the temple system. They're still operating under the temple system. So they're giving their offerings. And then what happens is that one of the ways they start to persecute them is by saying, "Okay, if you're not going to come under temple leadership, then you're not going to get your retirement, Social Security, from the temple." So they cut off the Social Security from the temple, which is how you got it if you were an elderly person. The place for you to get relief and assistance was through the temple system. Well, all these people would put all their money into Social Security, but they couldn't get it back out. Why? Because the temple leadership said, "Either you will follow us and shut this Jesus stuff down, or we will shut off your retirements." Which is interesting because I think if it happened right now in the church, I think you'd find that there'd be a lot of people that were not quite as stalwart in Jesus if they shut down your Social Security, depending upon whether or not you would deny Jesus. I think you'd find a considerable number of people open to kind of not getting so tough on standing for Jesus if it meant their Social Security. Their response? They created the deacons and said, "We'll take up our own offerings and we'll set up our own system." And really, the early offerings of the church had nothing to do with buildings and parking lots and anything else. It had to do with replacing the temple system for retirement because people put their money in and couldn't get it back out. Now, in a way, Peter and John were leveraging something. The disciples, apostles, were leveraging something. They were saying, "Fine, you don't want our money. We will stop putting it in. And when we stop putting it in the temple, we'll take a dive on what it's taking in, and we will have our own separate system." And by the way, go ahead and feel free to stop us. The persecution of Rome against the church began for that reason. They were an unauthorized collector of funds. That was one of the major things in the first century that brought about persecution. So that where, and where did the accusation come from? The temple that registered the accusation with the Roman authorities. It was unpopular among Jews to side with the Romans, but they thought, "Well, if we're losing them anyway, we might as well side with the Romans and see if we can't turn up the heat on persecution." And that's part of what happened in the first century. Now, we have little glimpses of it in the book of Acts, but it's an interesting story. When Christians were originally arrested, they were arrested for collecting funds in a non-state-licensed or understood institution, for meeting after dark. You're not allowed to meet in darkness, and for the breaking of the orders for having people of every station in Rome all sitting together having an agape meal, which could not, you never sat at an equestrian or a patrician never sat with a slave. That didn't happen. The church started something. So it's true to say what broke down the walls of the status of the society was the church. What's interesting is when the church was thoroughly Romanized, the walls went back up. Then there were priests, and they didn't sit with the people, and and all of a sudden you had this division between clergy and laity, which was a, which is really a throwback to pagan Rome, but from before the Christian message came. At any rate, but here we are, all sitting together now. So we're doing fine.
When I'm looking through this, I want you to drop your eyes down to verse 32 for a minute. We're just gonna take a break in just a few minutes, but in verse 32 to 36, I want you to look at what, what was the foundation of what they were building on. In verse 32, "And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and one soul." Let me just put the word unity there. There was harmony in thought and action. That's actually what kardia kyosuke mia is. There was harmony in thought in action. Some of us have been Christians for so long that we forget that at one time we were part of the world. And because of that, we also forget that God's active didn't stop when we left the world and became part of God's family. The fact is, God is still aiming beyond you. Race Steadman wrote it this way, and I think it was actually very interesting. He said, "We seem to feel that God's program stops with us. That his entire purpose in coming into the world and leaving by the cross and resurrection is to get us to heaven." A lot of times we preach it that way. If that were the case, it would be much simpler. If we would erect a chopping block in every church, and as soon as someone became a Christian, we could chop their head off. We could be sure then that they would get to heaven without any difficulty because they would be just saved and then dead. But it's clear from the scriptures that the Lord does not intend it that way. He leaves us here in order that we may learn how to share through the painful process of drawing a struggling, rebellious creation to himself. We must become part of the process of reaching the world." I think what's interesting is that the unity that's in verse 32 isn't unity without a purpose. It's unity in order that other people would be drawn to the message.
So let me go on to a second one: generosity. And that's at the end of verse 32. "They didn't claim things were their own. They had they had common property." Now, in a church, I'm not suggesting that we all, you know, give away all of our stuff and put it all in the offering. I am suggesting, however, that we need to have a common offering at some point. That there needs to be a way to help people. Okay? And if everybody just comes and everybody keeps their their money in their own wallet, it becomes impossible for us to fund missions and fund cooperative efforts. So generosity. It's interesting. There's an emphatic statement in the Greek. I want you to see if you can catch it. It says, "Not one of them claimed." It's actually the emphatic "not even one of them claimed." In other words, commonality was something that people knew about them. When you became a Christian, you locked yourself to the other people in such a way that no one thought that they were a Christian by themselves. This is an interesting word for our times because I run into Christians that are absolutely autonomous from everybody else. "I'm a Christian, but I don't really have a church. I just study the Bible on my own at my house." Fine, but that's not the example of the early church. They locked themselves to one another. "Not even one of them did not have things in common." You know what else I see? I see in verse 33, a bold clarity. Look at what it says. It says, "And with great power the Apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all." Here's what I see. With great power, they were giving testimony. Clearly, the message of the church was not how you can have a happy and meaningful life, or how you could improve your marriage. Those were outgrowths. Here's the clarity of the testimony of Jesus Christ. In my opinion, the more things the church has tried to say, the less we have been effective in what we're saying. Let me say it this way: When you walk into this room, I want you to hear the Word of God from one of the 1189 chapters of Scripture. Why? Because that's what you're not going to hear in the world. I think it's interesting because when I look through what they did, do you notice at the end of verse 34? They had a shared future. It's very simple. There was not a needy person because people would take care of them. And what's interesting to me is that they also had trustworthy leaders. Look at verse 35. "They'll and they would lay the proceeds at the Apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need." They brought the money and they brought it to the feet of the Apostles, and the Apostles counted it and distributed it. Now, what's interesting is that sets up a problem. Everything's fine until there's money, and now you got people starting to look at what, but what is going on? So the leadership has a great example. Look, I am, I'm really delighted to say to you in verse 36, "Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas." That's how, by the way, we know Joseph Barnabas's name is Joseph. And it says that Barnabas means son of encouragement. "Who owned attractive land, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the Apostles' feet." Interesting. Barnabas is is one of the first two missionaries along with Paul, right? But the first time you see him, he trusts the other leaders. If you want to be trusted by leaders, show trust in them. If you engender a lack of trust, people won't trust you either. So in truth, there were trusted, there was trusted leadership.
Now, right about this time, expect problems to begin to roll in. Why? Incredible impact plus rising budgets equals satanic attack. Okay? Serious. Incredible impact plus rising budgets equals satanic attack. And that attack will come in two forms. The first form will be internal strife. There will be people lying inside the ministry, and so they'll have body bags by chapter five. But right after that, then there'll be, if Satan can't tear apart the ministry from the inside, he'll go after it from the outside. I don't have to bring to you.