Listen to God or Listen to Rulers?

I confess it is somewhat of a self -confession. That hymn is certainly one that I know very well from my youth.

I'm not sure that everyone else has that experience, but I did see a few folks that were singing without having to use the book very much, and it certainly is a very effective way of memorizing 2

Timothy 112, since that's what the chorus is. So you've got that one down, you might want to add it to your memory list if you haven't already done that.

But it's also testimony to the fact that in most Baptist churches you do not sing all the verses, because I certainly remember 1, 3, and 5, but I don't remember much discussion of all that stuff about saving faith, being imparted, and how

God creating faith in him. I don't know if you noticed that, but I don't remember that from my

Baptist churches. I think those got skipped. I think that does happen once in a while, when you don't sing all the verses.

You might miss what was actually being discussed. So, wonderful hymn, and it's great to memorize scripture in that way.

If you'll turn with me please to the fourth chapter of the book of Acts. We will continue in our study.

It has been a while since, well, I was here for one Sunday. I did not speak, but I was here, sort of, briefly between trips, and head out again fairly soon.

But it is interesting that since I last spoke from this pulpit,

I have spoken from a pulpit, for example, in a

Anglican Church in Belfast, Ireland, where I also debated a

Roman Catholic on the subject of indulgences, which turned out very well. I never had even a thought of violence, but if you are old enough, like me, to remember the 1970s especially, then you remember what they call the troubles over there, and the fact that there is no way that we could have had a debate like that in Belfast in the 1970s between a

Protestant and a Roman Catholic on a subject such as that. But also have spoken in churches in the

Midlands of the United Kingdom. I had not been in that area before, two and a half, three hours north of London, in Scotland, as well as down in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Lusaka, Zambia.

So it is amazing to think of all those different places, and to think about the people of God that were gathered there, and it is,

I hope, a encouraging thing for all of us here. We don't want to limit our experience to just the small fellowship that is ours, but to recognize that we are a part of a much larger gathering of the body of believers this day, and it is encouraging to know whether that was in a, well, you might be saying, yeah, but, you know,

I imagine that Anglican Church was pretty big. Yes, it was, and it's one of those, what's called the

GAFCON Anglican Church. Those are the J .C. Ryle, conservative, inerrancy -believing

Anglicans. They're still out there, believe it or not, and they're still active, and we're thankful for them.

They're mainly known down in Sydney, Australia. They have more college and things like that, but that was a fairly large, fairly large building, but you'll be happy to know that in Zambia, the church that I spoke at,

Lusaka Reformed Baptist Church, has about 1 ,600 members. Reformed Baptists are big in Africa, and especially

Zambia, and so that's a very encouraging thing to walk into a

Reformed Baptist church and go, wow, the megachurch has arrived, but it's not really a megachurch in that sense.

There weren't any drum kits around or anything like that, and it was, as I've mentioned to a few folks, speaking to Zambian Reformed Baptists is the quietest event you will ever speak at.

That response right there would have been absolutely charismatic amongst them, okay, and this would be the end.

If you are a speaker and you depend at all on hearing your audience, seeing your audience responding, maybe a nodding of the head, maybe an occasional amen, don't bother there.

It's not gonna happen. It is a Zambian cultural thing. You can try as hard as you can, you can preach as loud as you want, and they'll just sit there and look at you and appreciate everything you're saying, but there will be no response.

It doesn't matter what you do. So that was definitely, we did have one guy at the school that kept laughing when

I would say something funny and things like that, but then it reminded me he's from South Africa, so there you go.

So that's just how that works. So it is good to be back.

I will be speaking in two weeks, I believe it is, up in Utah at the

Christ Presbyterian Church. Always enjoy getting a chance to go up there, and then in Colorado as well.

So not quite as far from home, but still good to see the Saints in those places.

I hope that we are encouraged by the fact that God is building His church all around the world.

Now in Acts chapter 4, we had just entered in, we've only done two sermons in the book of Acts.

If you've been with us, you know that we are, when I'm speaking generally, we are doing a series based upon one of the primary

New Testament manuscripts that I am using in a doctoral program in South Africa called

P45. I'm sorry I do not have an image for you to put into the bulletin this week, but we haven't quite gotten to the point where P45 picks up in Acts chapter 4, so hopefully

I'll have more time next time and we'll have a nice pretty thing to insert in the bulletin for you as we get a little bit farther into Acts chapter 4.

If you are new to us or visiting, this series is based upon my decision that if that ancient manuscript, which is written between 200 and 220

AD, contains any portion of a chapter of a book, then we are covering that chapter in our sermon series.

And so we already looked at what it contains from the Gospel of John, now we're looking at what contains from Acts, which is all of, well not all of, but portions of Acts 4 through 17.

So we have 13 chapters in Acts to be able to work through, but it also contains the portions of Matthew, Mark, and Luke as well, so we'll get back to them as time allows.

And so we've entered into Acts chapter 4 and it certainly seems like a timely text to be looking at.

You may have seen in the news, and it is interesting to have access to the news in other parts of the world, and how they look at us and see us and see how their news reports things.

Sadly, in the vast majority of the world, the news is basically to the left of MSNBC as to how it covers things in the

United States, but I have found it fascinating. I often encounter people in foreign lands who know more about what is going on politically in the

United States of America than many of our fellow citizens do, than many even of us who sort of burn out on these things.

Truly, there are many in many of the nations that I go to. I haven't been to Russia yet,

I'm scheduled to teach in Samara, Russia in January of next year, which is going to be lots of fun because the last guy who did that reported it was minus 40 while he was teaching there.

I don't have any clothing ready for that yet, but we'll see what happens between now and then. But anyway,

I've been primarily in Western cultures,

Ukraine, not super, you know, and the

Czech Republic and things like that. I have a little bit of a different, you know, the former communist nations and things like that, but it is it is fascinating that people recognize that as this country goes, so are they going to go as far as their security and things like that.

They're very, very concerned about what is taking place in the United States of America. And certainly you may have heard in the news our northern neighbors over the past couple of weeks, their

Supreme Court decided a case that I had been watching for a number of years, and it was about Trinity Law School up in Canada, which basically the

Bar Association in Canada had decided that they would not grant accreditation or allow into the bar to practice in Canada graduates of this

Christian school for one simple reason, and that is that they have a behavioral covenant that calls for, that defines marriage as between a man and a woman, and prohibits premarital sexual encounters.

Now what that has to do with how you would practice law, you and I can simply guess, but the

Supreme Court rendered its decision and let stand that action, and basically recognized that in Canada you cannot stand by a

Christian moral foundation, and you can be prejudicially, and in a bigoted fashion, prejudiced against by official organizations within the nation of Canada.

You might say it's just, it's how has this happened so quickly? Well the reality is that there is a conflict between those who say that Caesar is

Lord, and those that say that Jesus is Lord. There has always been that conflict, we see that conflict very clearly laid out for us in the book of Acts, we will see that come up in our studies of the book of Acts more than one time, but this conflict begins early in Acts, and we see it first with the

Jewish leaders. Now the Jewish leaders are not sold out to Caesar in the sense that they have an overriding love of the

Roman Empire or anything like that. Primarily what you have here is traditional religion.

Primarily what you have here is the establishment of a religion that has the foundations of truth, but it does not any longer have the heart of truth found in it, and there are many examples of that kind of a situation down through church history.

But what we have initially here is the first encounter between the

Christian proclamation of Jesus, and in this situation the religious authorities of the day, who have of course had to compromise with the

Roman system. I mean the Jews had dug out for themselves certain exceptions.

Rome did not like the idea of exclusivity in religion.

You could believe what you wanted to believe, you could have your ancestral gods, you could say that there's salvation in your ancestral gods, but the problem was when you became exclusivistic in that claim.

Once you said there is only salvation in my God, that is where you have crossed the line in the

Roman mind. And they would eventually enforce this through the use of the sacrifice, where if you wanted to engage in commerce and things like that, you needed to obtain what was called a libelus.

You got the libelus by sacrificing a pinch of incense upon the altar to the genius of Caesar.

Now from their perspective they were not causing you any problem, they were not saying that you had to deny your gods, they were simply saying that you had to recognize the validity of other paths and other claims of truth.

And that of course would weed out the exclusive people and leave you only with inclusive people who would allow for multiple claims of ultimate truth, which as we recognize is rather incoherent fundamentally.

But that is how Rome dealt with the fact that it had to keep an empire together across a vast swath of land that contained all sorts of differing not only languages and peoples but religious beliefs as well.

And so the Jewish nation had already struggled with this.

Jews were very powerful in the Roman Empire and so they had utilized their influence and their political connections to basically be given a special status that would allow them to avoid having to make these statements and to avoid having to acknowledge the validity of other gods.

And you'll see what happens when Christianity comes along and at first Rome hears them talking from the same scriptures because they didn't have the

New Testament as yet and they're using Jewish terminology like the Messiah and things like that.

You all go decide this stuff. This isn't something for us. That's what happens early on.

Then over time they come to understand the distinction that actually exists between the claims of the

Christians and the claims of the Jews and they begin to treat these individuals differently.

But the Jews also suffered because of the Christians initially. By the midpoint of the first century the

Jews are expelled from Rome and most people recognize it was probably due to the fact of the

Christian -Jewish conflict that was taking place and the fact that the Jews that the

Romans didn't want to have to deal with what seemed to them to be rather arcane and odd arguments that were going on amongst these people.

Eventually they would come to differentiate and recognize the differences. But here in the early chapters of Acts what has happened as you know we've already looked at the end of chapter 3 into chapter 4 through verse 12 and you have the healing of the man, the very well -known man.

We mentioned last time we were together it is something to keep in mind that central to this story is the fact that this man was well known to the people in Jerusalem.

They all know who he was so when he's standing with the disciples as the text is going to say verse 14, and seeing the man who had been healed staying with them they had nothing to say in reply.

And so as we pointed out then it is very important to notice how many years this man had suffered want and become known to the people there in Jerusalem and for what purpose?

Well during that time he couldn't have known, he couldn't have known, but God had a purpose and that purpose was going to be fulfilled in this particular incident and many of us would struggle with the goodness of God had we been in his situation.

We would have struggled with why isn't the Lord showing his favor to me for week after week and month after month and year after year in the cold, in the heat, all the things that that man endured as he sat there begging and what was the purpose?

We can think of this in John chapter 9 the man who was healed there. There are numerous examples of this for us in the pages of Scripture and yet how many times has each one of us as soon as we have a pain, as soon as we have some type of a sickness, some type of a difficulty in our life, oh

God's abandoned me. There can't really be a purpose in all of this and yet here is a man who is, his story is provided to us in Scripture and it's so easy for us to forget all the backstory, all the time that had put him in the position of being that man who in his healing, by his standing there, forces the

Sanhedrin to have nothing to say, to have nothing to say and so we have heard the testimony of Peter that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazarene whom you crucified, whom

God raised from the dead, by this name this man stands here before you with good health. We saw that in verse 11 immediately in the first proclamation of the gospel in a public context, not talking about the

Sermon on the Day of Pentecost, but now in a position of conflict dealing specifically with the

Jews, what do we see? The church basing its proclamation upon the citation of what we call the

Old Testament text, which was the only text available at this time, of course.

The citation in verse 11, he is the stone which was rejected from Psalm 118, he is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which became the chief cornerstone and notice the paraphrasing, the stone which was rejected by the builders, you the builders, and so it's applied specifically to them in a prophetic manner and so we have the utilization of Scripture and then that signal passage, verse 12, when there is salvation and no one else, there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved, the centrality of the name of Jesus.

If you watch that word name in the early chapters of Acts, they suffer for the name, they proclaim the name, they are forbidden to speak in the name, over and over and over again, that centrality of who

Jesus was is seen in the text. And so beginning in verse 13, now as they observe the confidence of Peter and John, and as they came to understand the form of the language basically means it slowly dawned on them over time who these people were, they recognized that they're uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed and they began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.

It wasn't like when the Sanhedrin walks in that they go, oh these are

Jesus's disciples, we remember them. No, there is a slow process of recognition on their part of who these men are 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 leave the council, that's the Sanhedrin, they began to confer with one another saying, what shall we do with reference to these men?

For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place, a sign has taken place through them is obvious or apparent to all who live in Jerusalem, we can't deny it, but so that it will not spread any further among the people, let us warn them, warn them to speak no longer, it's threatened them, let us threaten them to speak no longer to any man, what?

In this name, in this name. They don't say it, but they make reference to it.

And when they had summoned them, they commanded them not to speak a teacher all, then they get specific when they speak to them, 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 about what we have seen and heard.

When they had threatened them further, they let them go, finding no basis on which to punish them, on account of the people, why?

Because they were all glorifying God for what had happened, for the man was more than 40 years old on whom this miracle of healing had been performed.

And so here is the situation after Peter has the opportunity of making an address.

The first thing that we are told is this is sort of the first encounter, and so there is a learning curve on the part of the

Sanhedrin. And so they observe that Peter and John, and evidently there's probably more that has been said, because you know the confidence of Peter and John, there must have been some other words that were uttered, they observe their confidence even though they understand that they were uneducated and untrained men.

Now we need to be careful when we look at those particular terms.

They were agrammatoi, they were without letters. Does that mean that they were illiterate?

Well some people might say that that's the case. I think it'd be better that they were not trained in linguistic arts, in any type of writing and things like that.

They were involved in business, they may have had to known enough to be able to write out a bill or pay a bill or things like that.

So there were different levels of literacy at that particular point in time. But the the term for untrained is idiot, idioti.

So obviously we use that in a little more harsh way that they did at that point in time.

But the point is they were not coming from one of the rabbinical schools, they were not recognized as having some kind of special academic credibility.

These are just, the term that they used back in that day was

Amha Adetz, the people of the land, the people of the land. We have in the writings of the rabbis this phrase, the

Amha Adetz, and it's sort of like the rabble, you know, the people that are out there but they don't observe the 613 laws that we do and and they don't get to spend their day in contemplating the law and memorizing the law and doing all this type of stuff.

And so they were looked at as a lower group of people.

They were not looked at as, oh these are our dear beloved fellow heirs of the

Covenant and so on and so forth and we just we just love them and we are their leaders. No, they were they were looked down upon and this is what they're seeing about them.

And so knowing that they don't have training they are amazed, especially in light of their utilization of the

Scriptures which we know from reading the end of Luke and and so on and so forth that that that had come from Jesus.

That had come from Jesus's ministry amongst them and his teaching of them and opening their minds that they might understand the

Scriptures. And they began to recognize them. They started to to to realize these are

Jesus's disciples. Now you would you would think, you know, we read through John and and even the the narrative of the last week, you know, the disciples are there with Jesus even in the disputes that take place there in Jerusalem with the

Pharisees and the Sadducees. You look at Matthew chapter 22 and when Jesus says all the things in Matthew chapter 23 that are such strong denunciations, the disciples were there too.

Why wouldn't they have been recognized? Well, there were, it's probably doubtful that the individual members of the

Sanhedrin themselves would have been going out and observing Jesus. They would have sent others to do that and they're hearing back from them and we see many instances where they sent people to go do things, even sent people to go arrest

Jesus and they come back and no one's ever spoken like him. And so there was a lot of secondhand information going on as well, but you would also think that they would expect that these men would have left, they would have been driven away by the death of their master, and here they are with confidence utilizing the scriptures and calling them to faith in this one whom they've just directly said, you crucified the

Messiah who was sent to you. That is exactly what has been sent to them, has been said to them, and now they begin to recognize that these are

Jesus's disciples, recognize them as having been with Jesus.

Now obviously there is a really great sermon there and if I wanted to repeat what other people have done over and over I'd stop right there and we would have a good old time making application of what

I think is an appropriate and and proper reality, and that is a person who has been with Jesus is a person who is going to show signs of having been with Jesus.

It's true that when we we look at cultural Christianity, Christianity that is compromised with the culture and is just a religious add -on to whatever the culture offers, whatever that culture might be,

I mean I was reminded it's real easy for us to talk about cultural Christianity and because we only experience predominantly one culture, then we get one thing in mind, and so we think of mega churches where there's never any discipleship preached and it's just come and and get a little serving of Jesus and don't worry about the idea of denying yourself and taking up your cross and mortifying sin and there's no discussion of repentance or holiness or anything like that.

That's what we start thinking about, we start thinking about cultural Christianity allows you to be the the cool guy but still go along with everything that the culture says to do and how to do it and the attitudes to have, but that's just what we have here.

I was reminded that one of the challenges in Zambia is that Zambia is a constitutionally

Christian nation. It's by Constitution, a Christian nation, and so you have these little buses that run around and all the little buses have

Christian sayings on them. To God be the glory bus. These are little, we'd call them vans, but I can't believe how many people they can get into those things.

It's sort of like the, you know, how many people can get into the old phone booth type thing and that's sort of how it is.

It'll stop in front of you and they just keep getting out and getting, how did they get everybody in there? And in South Africa they're just really dangerous, they're just, they don't care about anybody else's rules.

But anyways, there was even one called the Ten Commandments bus and this guy was so serious about it that he even had mud flaps that said the ten.

You couldn't get commandments on a mud flap, but the ten. Really, really interesting stuff. And so in Zambia though, the challenge for a acculturated church is not what we have in the

West. It is compromise with the concept of African religion in the society.

It is compromise with the idea of ancestors and spirits and stuff we wouldn't even think about when it comes to a cultural church.

Very, very different. And where you go in the world, it's all gonna look different and it's, for me anyways, it's been helpful to be able to see all the different ways in which we have to apply these things which you don't see if you're just staying in one place, there's only one application.

Well, there's actually a much wider application. And so there's a whole sermon that would be appropriate here.

Obviously, by the way I'm presenting this, I'm not gonna be expanding upon it too much. The idea that if you are with Jesus, if you are spending time with him, then there is going to be a result in your life.

You're not going to be able to look like whatever acculturated Christianity looks like wherever you are, whether it's in Zambia or Russia or the

United States or whatever it might be. There's going to be something about you. There is going to be a boldness, there is going to be a scriptural orientation.

We want people to recognize that we have been with Jesus. Now they have been with Jesus in his earthly ministry, but Jesus promised in that earthly ministry that he and the

Father would make his abode with his disciples through the Holy Spirit of God.

And that's definitely something that we want to be asking, Lord, may others see that I have been with Jesus.

May I not be just like the society around me. We so often try to fit in.

We shouldn't be trying to fit in. We should be trying to be like Jesus. And so they recognize these are

Jesus's disciples and seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they had nothing to say in reply.

They could not respond to the argumentation, they could not, the disciples have stood there and said it is by the power of the name of Jesus who is the

Messiah whom you crucified, it is by the power that is in his name, this man stands before you whole.

What are they supposed to say? They had walked by this guy for decades. They may have very, very piously dropped some money to allow him to be able to continue to exist, but they hadn't healed him, they had not shown any spiritual power, and so what are they supposed to say?

It's not like he's engaging in the argument, he is the argument. He's irrefutable proof standing right there in front of them.

And so they had nothing to say in reply. And so I can imagine the furtive glances that went back and forth between the various leaders, and so they have them dismissed from the council, they put them out from the council, from the

Sanhedrin, and they began to confer with one another, and they were saying, what are we gonna do these guys?

What are we gonna do with these guys? For, you know, the fact has become well known that a very noteworthy thing, a sign, the same term that is used by John of Jesus's miracles is used here, a sign has been done through them.

So what are we supposed to do? It's apparent to everyone who lives in Jerusalem, there's nothing we can do to deny it, we all know the guy, we can all tell it's him, he affirms it, and this is the reality.

But in order that it may not spread, it may not go out amongst the people.

Now, did they really think this was gonna work? I mean, we have the advantage of looking back and seeing that, you know, this is really how you make sure to get the word out, is to do exactly what they're about to do.

But we have the history of the church for this. What else are they supposed to do?

They do not want this to spread any further among the people. What, they don't want any more people to get healed by the name of Jesus?

What really is their motivation here? Their motivation is obviously to maintain authority and power amongst the people, that's what they want, they want the status quo to be continued.

And so, so that it will not spread any further among the people, and then it's interesting, in verse 17 it says, warn them, but then you'll notice later on, it says they threatened them, in verse 21, well it's the same term, and so it's a strong term, they say, what we'll do, we will threaten them, we will warn them to speak no longer to any man in this name.

Now they've already picked up, these people are really focused upon this name of Jesus. So we will tell them, don't do that anymore.

So they summon them back in, and I have to wonder if the healed man is listening very carefully at this point.

We aren't told anything about it. They commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

So what basis would they give for that? I doubt there was any basis given, there certainly wasn't any scriptural basis given.

Pure authority, pure authority. We are the leaders of the

Jewish people, you're Jews, you do as we say. But Peter and John answered and said to them, whether it is right before God to give heed to you rather than to God, you judge.

Notice the contrast that is placed there. It's literally whether it's right or righteous before God to hear you or God.

Can't hear both at the same time because you're not speaking in accordance with God's truth. I mean, these are the leaders, this is a

Sanhedrin. These are strong words. They're accustomed for their words to be accepted as if that was

God speaking. But no, the disciples make it very clear.

Either we have to give heed to you, or we have to give heed to God. But we can't give heed to both of you because you are contradicting what

God has told us to do. You judge. You be the judge of that. For we are not able.

It says we cannot, but it's the same term that is used, for example, in John, which is no man is able.

We are not able. We cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.

We don't have the capacity to stop speaking about the things we've seen and heard.

Literally, it's we are not able, the things we have seen and heard, not to speak.

So double negatives are fine in Greek, they're not so great in nice smooth

English, and so we turn things around a little bit. But what they're saying is we've seen these things.

We've heard these things. We cannot stop speaking about these things. This is what we must do.

This is our duty before God. No argumentation takes place, at least that is recorded for us.

So instead, verse 21, and when they had threatened them further, I wonder what that looked like.

We aren't told. What was the form of this threatening? What was being threatened? Not told.

When they had threatened them further, they let them go because they found no basis, no reason upon which they could punish them because of the people.

Now that's not the first time that phrase has occurred in the New Testament. Because the people. That is, these are individuals who are very well aware of the fact that they have the power that they have.

They have the position that they have at the will of this people. They may not respect them, but they recognize that there are limits to how far they can go.

And even though they would like to have punished these men, the people were glorifying

God for what had happened. And so their hands were tied.

There wasn't anything they could do because the man was more than 40 years old on whom this miracle of healing had been performed.

So in other words, he was a known individual, and in their experience, an older person like this.

You know, young people, man, the human body is an amazing thing. And so you could see situations where people could improve, but when a person is already into their 40s, into their fifth decade, as most of us know that they're already past that, the body does not heal nearly as well as it used to.

And so it was a clear sign, a clear evidence of the exercise of miraculous power that it brought about this healing.

Now as you know, this evening, when we have the opportunity of coming together again, very, very important text because of how the church responds to this persecution, to this initial resistance here on the part of the

Jewish leadership. And as we know, ask Stephen, the resistance is going to become significantly stronger in a relatively short period of time.

But this is the first experience they have. They've been thrown in jail. They've been detained. They've been arrested.

They've been warned and threatened not to continue preaching in this name. What are we going to do?

People of God face that question pretty much every day around the world we live in.

We don't face it, but the chances are we will be facing it in less and less subtle ways.

I suppose I should say we do face that. You face that in the workplace. You face that in the society around you.

You face that in the neighborhood, where it is becoming very, very clear that if you're going to speak up on the basis of biblical revelation as to what is true and what is good and honest, what will cause human flourishing and what will cause human suffering, if you speak up there will be a cost.

And we are being told, stop saying those things. That's what's happened to them.

And while the context will differ, this has happened to every generation down through the history of the church, somewhere in the world.

How did the church respond to that? We will be able to see in the next couple of verses, and it is a very, very important section, and so I would highly recommend that you be with us so that we can look at that together.

But in conclusion for this morning, here you have

God having done something that shuts the mouths of his enemies, but not having something to say in response doesn't mean that the enemy will stop being the enemy.

When everybody says, well you know, if you just present a strong enough argument, you know, anybody will believe if you can just prove it to them.

I wonder if any of those in the Sanhedrin that day had seen

Lazarus come out of his tomb. It wasn't very far from Jerusalem, wasn't very far at all.

How many miracles had some of these people seen? And yet, unless there is that work of the

Holy Spirit that opens the heart and the mind, removes that heart of stone, gives that heart of flesh, you can see miracle after miracle.

That guy that you walked past for decades is standing right there smiling at you.

He's excited because he's been healed. And what do you say?

No, no, no. The power of tradition, the power of religious tradition is incredibly strong.

Anybody says, well if we can just present strong enough arguments. God has provided plenty of strong arguments.

There is a need for that strong spirit to come and to make change in the heart and the mind, to grant light and repentance.

We see this and we will see it over and over again throughout the history of the church provided for us here in the book of Acts.

Let's pray together. Our great heavenly Father, we do thank you for this record you have provided to us and how it speaks to us today.

Lord, may we not make artificial connections, but may we see the true reality of the challenges that we face in our day.

And may we learn from your Word, may we have a foundation upon which we can act.

And Lord, may we in our day be as faithful as the disciples were then, and may the world indeed see that we have been with Jesus.