Sunday, February 5, 2023 AM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Your mercy and your grace, the goodness that you have poured out through your

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Son Jesus Christ by the power of your Holy Spirit. We thank you that you gather us together for praise, for worship, for glory.

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We ask that you would help us today as we read your word, that there would be a true amen in our hearts of your word that you have given from heaven.

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We pray that you would bless us this day in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, with whom you are well -pleased.

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Amen. Well, I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Acts, Acts chapter 5, and we're going to be reading verses 12 through 16.

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Acts chapter 5, and we'll be reading verses 12 through 16.

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I'm always surprised by the Bible, always surprised by the richness of the themes.

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One of the surprises I've had when reading and studying in the book of Acts is the very strong contrast that is given time and again between the

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Old Covenant and the New Covenant. I've also been very surprised at how many quotes and allusions and paraphrases of Old Testament scripture in the

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Gospels we find in the book of Acts. There's a lot of scripture in this scripture, if you know what

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I mean. And moving through this has been very enriching for me and encouraging for me in seeing the glory of Jesus Christ, the supremacy of Jesus Christ.

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It is exactly as he said, someone greater than Solomon has come. Something greater than the temple is here.

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And this is all very good news. And it comes with that contrast, a difference being explained and explored here in the book of Acts, where in Acts chapter 1,

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Jesus is telling his apostles that they are to preach the good news of his kingdom throughout all of the world.

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But beginning in Jerusalem, because all of their Jewish brethren still operating in the

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Old Covenant have need to repent, have need to believe, need to believe and to turn to Jesus Christ.

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And in Acts chapter 2, the Holy Spirit arrives on the day of Pentecost with signs and wonders.

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Everybody seems to be under great consternation as to what it all means, but Peter simply preaches from the prophet

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Joel and shows that this is the promised Holy Spirit of the New Covenant.

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Welcome to the last days of the Old Covenant that will be sealed with judgment. But whoever calls upon the name of the

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Lord shall be saved. And who is that Lord? He preaches from the Psalms and other Old Testament texts and proves that this

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Lord is none other than Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Christ, the Son of the living God. This is the same message that he and John bring to the temple and preach this message where a man is healed who was born lame and healed by the power of Jesus Christ.

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And they preach this good news to all who are there, which causes no shortage of consternation amongst the

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Sanhedrin, the Sadducees, the rulers of the temple who arrest Peter and John and then threaten them and tell them, you are not allowed to preach or teach in this name ever again.

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And they go back to their fellow believers and report on the threats of the

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Sanhedrin. And this drives them to prayer. And they pray to the Lord that he would empower them for the work of preaching the gospel, for the work of that great commission which their

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Lord had entrusted to them, for the work of that building of the new covenant temple, being bringing in the living stones from every tribe, tongue, people, the nation to be placed upon the cornerstone of Christ, the foundation laid by the apostles and the prophets.

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And to this prayer, God answers with great power and shakes the room in which they were praying, signifying that indeed, just like he said in Haggai, his new covenant temple would be greater than the old, and he would shake things up and bring the nations in.

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And then we begin to consider there at the end of Acts 4 and here at the beginning of Acts 5, what goes on in the house of the

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Lord? What goes on in this new covenant temple made of living stones filled by the

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Holy Spirit? How is it built? How is it operated? We began with a theme of love, love in the house of the

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Lord. We saw the believers gather together in one heart and one soul of one accord in unity in Christ.

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And then we saw lies, lies in the house of the Lord and the threat that that carried against the second

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Adam's garden, against his bride and how he keeps his garden, he keeps his bride and he casts out the deceivers and judgment fell.

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That brings us to Acts 5, verses 12 through 16.

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We've seen love in the house of the Lord. We've seen lies in the house of the Lord, but now glory, glory in the house of the

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Lord. I invite you to stand with me as I read the word of the Lord into the words of our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, by his Holy Spirit, through his servant Luke and through the hands of the apostles, many signs and wonders were done among the people.

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And they were all with one accord in Solomon's porch yet none of the rest dared join them.

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But the people esteem them highly and believers were increasingly added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women so that they brought the sick out into the streets and laid them on beds and couches that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them.

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Also, a multitude gathered from the surrounding cities to Jerusalem, bringing sick people and those who were tormented by unclean spirits and they were all healed.

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This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. In October of 2017, an article was published that extolled the virtues of a rather grotesque form of self -gratification, self -affirmation.

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The title of the article was this, Why Women Are Choosing to Marry Themselves.

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Why Women Are Choosing to Marry Themselves, commenting on a new and growing trend of sologamy, they called it, interviewing the women who choose to marry themselves, what was it like when you got engaged?

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What was that wedding ceremony like? How was the honeymoon? What's it like being married to yourself?

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Do your boyfriends understand why you're married to yourself? Are they really understanding and supportive of you marrying yourself?

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Situations like that, you know, things don't always work out. Sometimes these women, you know, they get divorced.

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You know, it just didn't work out. They divorce themselves and move on to new relationships.

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It's okay to laugh at absurdity. It's actually godly to laugh at absurdity. God laughs at absurdity.

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We should do the same. It's not all we should do in the face of absurdity. We should be plucking sinners out of the fire.

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But it causes us to pause and think about the meaning of marriage.

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Totally butchering and torturing and perverting this word marriage. One cannot marry themself.

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Marriage is defined by the Lord, defined by our Creator, between one man and one woman for life.

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For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

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These that God has made in His image according to His likeness, male and female, He created them. When we think about marriage, when we think about the mystery of marriage, the good of marriage, the blessing of marriage, we are directed in our attention by the scriptures to Christ and His church.

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Christ and His church. We are to reflect upon that relationship if we are going to get at what it means to be married.

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And if it is ludicrous and if it is absurd for a woman to marry herself, so also it is ludicrous and it is absurd for the church to think that she exists for herself.

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The church does not exist for herself. Her glory is not in and of herself.

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The glory of the church is not in her numbers or in her structures but in her Lord. The glory of the church is not in her numbers or in her structures but in her

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Lord. Not in her numbers. Not in counting the nickels in the plate and the noses in the pews.

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Not in establishing programs and polishing polity.

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Not in numbers, not in structures, but in her Lord. We have an opportunity, a particular opportunity to consider that as we have in verse 11 of Acts 5, in the verse just prior to our passage, the very first use of the word church in the book of Acts.

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So the church is to be thought about here, to be considered and look what goes on in the life of the church.

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Look what goes on as God answers their prayers and begins to work in their midst.

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Look at the church. But the glory of the church is in her

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Lord. For the house that Christ builds and sanctifies and indeed is glorified in is the church.

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We have a need to think a little bit about glory this morning so that we can recognize it here in our text.

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Next, what is glory? A word that we encounter time and again in the

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Bible. What is glory? One of the first instances of the word glory was used of Abraham.

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He was a glorious man. The Hebrew word kibbutz simply means weight, weightiness like that of precious metal.

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Precious metal that glows and has a luster in the light. The Greek word doxos has the same idea of the brilliance and the heaviness of whatever is being described, glory, weight, and light.

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There was a glory to the old covenant we're told, a glory, consider the temple that Solomon built and consider the temple that was constructed up the hill and fashioned after the

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Herod the great architect in his imagination and the Jews as they beautified the temple up the hill.

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You know, we're in the middle of a contrast between the old covenant temple up the hill and the new covenant temple in Christ filled with the

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Holy Spirit. There was a glory indeed to the old covenant, consider the heaviest building in all the land, definitely the temple.

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The stones that they have excavated are still too heavy for any of our modern engineers to know how to move.

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And these stones are not heavy enough because then they covered them over with gold. How's that for glory and heaviness and what of light and what of brilliance when the sun hit the golden temple and the brilliance and the shine of it.

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But more than that, there the Lord promised to set his name and called all the nations to turn their attention to where he has said his name and to pray and all this weight and this glory, the true importance of it and the significance of it is manifest in the motion that surrounds this glorious place.

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The people of Israel gathering to the temple and dispersing from the temple in regular rhythms.

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The swirl of activity going on inside of the temple, all of the sacrificial activity and then of course the additional activity that Jesus found and cleansed and interrupted when he found it in the temple.

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Indeed there was a glory, but someone greater than the temple is here. Someone far more glorious is here, more glorious than Solomon who had built that magnificent temple we read about in 1

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Kings. There is a glory to Christ.

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What is more weighty than Jesus Christ, the son of the living

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God to whom God has accorded all things that he would have the preeminence in all things so that nothing may exist and nothing may happen and no one may live without reference to Jesus Christ.

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He has the preeminence in all things. Everything is in orbit around him and understood only in the light of him.

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He is the light of the world and coming into the world he gives light to all men. He's the one who displays and manifests and gives light to all that exists.

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You want to know what something is? See it in the light of Christ. You want to know who someone is? See that person in the light of Jesus Christ who is more glorious to us and in our vision than Jesus Christ, God the son given to us.

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And what about motion? What about the motion manifesting this glory in that in due time

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God sent forth his son to be born of a woman born under the law and he walked among us and tabernacled among us and lived and he died upon the cross and was buried in the tomb and was raised the third day and he ascended to the right hand of the father where he was seated at his right hand to reign and he will surely return and sift everything.

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Indeed he reigns today and is active today. Consider glory. To understand what glory is consider

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Christ. As we look at the glory that goes on in the house of the

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Lord we see that as impressive as these instances are, we read this report from Luke about the amazing things happening in the church.

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What is this but the light of Christ? And what is this but the weight, the weightiness of Christ?

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And what is this except the directing of Christ, the direction of Christ and the motions of Christ?

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That's what we're seeing here. That's what we're observing here. I want us to consider the significance this morning, the significance of these signs and wonders that were being done in the midst of this church.

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Now when you read Acts 5, 12 through 16 aloud, it's easy to get a little lost.

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We read about the apostles and the people and then we've got, you know, pronouns and then there's the people, then there's the rest of them and then there's the multitude and I get a little lost.

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It's important to notice what Luke does. At the first half of verse 12 he's trucking along and then at the second half of verse 12 through verse 14 he inserts a parenthesis.

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He's got a, he has a clarifying thought he wants to get in and then he gets back to what he was saying earlier.

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So I want you to hear it for yourself. See if you follow along with Luke's train of thought.

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Acts 5 verse 12, halfway through we're going to jump right to verse 15 and see if it flows for you.

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And through the hands of the apostles, many signs and wonders were done among the people so that they brought the sick out into the streets and laid them on beds and couches that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them.

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It flows pretty nice, doesn't it? There's a parenthesis though at the end of verse 12 through verse 14 as Luke is inspired to make a clarifying statement about the people that are involved in these situations.

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This is essential because we just heard in verse 11, verse 11, so great fear came upon all the church and upon all who heard these things.

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And Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit and God struck him dead. Sapphira backed her husband up and lied and tested the

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Holy Spirit and God struck her dead. And in the wake of this judgment, fear came upon, notice, all the church, that's one group and upon all who heard these things, that's another group.

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Now, this is significant. These people in the church, these brothers and sisters in the church had grown up in Jewish homes, had grown up going to synagogue, had grown up making those pilgrimages to the temple and going up the hill, making sacrifices, singing psalms together, being taught by the same rabbis.

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And in fact, some of them are blood brothers and sisters, same family, cousins, but now all of a sudden there's a difference between them.

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Some are called the church and then there's the rest of them. Interesting, isn't it?

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What makes the difference? How are they being signified? The fear comes upon them both, but the fear hits differently.

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The fear hits differently and Luke clarifies that in his parenthesis, the last part of verse 12 through verse 14.

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The fear that falls upon the church, what effect does it have? It unifies them. The fear of the

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Lord, when they think of God first and they think of God most, that fear of the Lord unifies them.

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But then how does the fear hit those who are outside? Verse 13 says, yet none of the rest dare join them, but the people esteem them highly.

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Meaning, yeah, well, we're not going to be a part of your group.

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We're a little concerned about that. The judgment that just happened seems a little dangerous to be a part of your group, but you guys keep doing what you're doing.

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I think you're doing great, but we're not going to be a part of you. You see, you see how the fear hits differently for those inside the church and those outside the church.

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Do you see also that judgment always sifts? Every time

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God does a work of judgment, there's always a sifting, a clarifying of who's who in the goodness of God.

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You'll bring that about. Yet nonetheless, this is not a static situation where you have the church and you have those outside the church and then nothing ever changes because we read that believers were increasingly added to the

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Lord, multitudes of both men and women. Why is this significant?

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This is significant because Luke is identifying, there's a new fear in town. What happened in chapter four,

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Peter and John preaching Jesus, they get arrested, they get dragged before the

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Sanhedrin and the Sanhedrin threateningly threatens them with threats. You're going to stop doing this.

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You better stop or we're going to make your life miserable. What are they saying? Fear us, fear us.

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We are the authority in town. You fear us. And then Peter and John say, you know,

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I think we're going to obey God rather than you. And then they go and they pray and they ask God to do a work in their midst.

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They ask God to empower them for the preaching of the gospel, despite what the Sanhedrin is saying. And by the time we get to the answer to that prayer in verse 12, where indeed

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God is doing mighty signs and wonders with the hands of the apostles. By the time we get there, there's a new fear in town.

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No one's talking about the Sanhedrin anymore. No one cares what the Sanhedrin threatened to do anymore.

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It doesn't matter now because judgment came to town and we know who's really in charge.

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God had a judgment in his church, Ananias and Sapphira died. So you know what? We're going to fear God rather than men.

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He's the one who's really in charge. So the church, we're going to gather in Solomon's porch. We're going to go have church inside the old covenant temple.

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That's how little we fear the Sanhedrin now. That's why that's significant. That's why

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Luke inserts this parenthesis to clarify how this is all coming to a head.

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Now, I want us to focus on verse 12 and verse 15 and I want us to see here the answer to the saint's prayer and the acts of the savior's power.

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Verse 12 says, and through the hands of the apostles, many signs and wonders were done among the people.

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Through the hands of the apostles, many signs and wonders were done among the people.

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Matthew, Henry observed many acts of mercy for one act of judgment. Isn't God good?

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Many acts of mercy for one act of judgment. Isn't God good? Here are many signs and wonders, and these were authentic.

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They were genuine. These were not illusions. These were not sleight of hand. Everybody knew that these were genuine acts of deliverance and healing and power.

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They were done among the people, many, many of them. This became an issue for the

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Sanhedrin as we read further in Acts 5. We'll see just how angry all of this made them that these signs and wonders were being done among the people.

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Just like the man who got healed who was born lame, this is causing them so many problems as the power of the new covenant is laid aside, the deadness of the old, the obsoleteness of the old.

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But we see that this is an answer to prayer.

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Many signs and wonders done among the people. Well we go back to chapter 4 and let's look at exactly what they prayed in verse 29.

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The church prays, now Lord, look on their threats and grant to your servants that with all boldness they may speak your word by stretching out your hand to heal and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of your holy servant

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Jesus. You see how they prayed? They're praying that God would do a mighty work in the name of his son

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Jesus Christ in such a way that it would be clear that it was the risen Lord Christ doing the powerful acts of deliverance.

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They see this as essential. They see this as necessary as they preach the gospel, as they preach the good news of the kingdom in obedience to their savior.

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So many genuine, authenticated works of mercy were done in answer to the saint's prayer but these were nothing less than the acts of the savior's power.

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Verse 15, example, so that they brought the sick out into the streets and laid them on beds and couches that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them.

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My goodness. You ought to be as impressed with Peter at this moment as you are with his shadow.

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This is not about Peter. This is not about his shadow. This is the answer to prayer.

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Behold the acts of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Behold his power to save. Behold his power to heal.

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Look what he does through his servant, Peter, not just Peter, but his shadow.

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Look what Jesus can do with the shadow. After all, this is exactly how they pray.

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They say, hey, we're your servants in their prayer. They say, please, please, please help us preach your word.

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Please do acts by your hand. Please do it for your name.

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That's how they prayed. It was all about the glory of Jesus Christ. It was all about shining the light of Jesus Christ in this situation.

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Yes, Jesus told his disciples, you are the light of the world, but without him, there is no light.

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They were the light of the world because of Christ in them, because they were believers in Christ.

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Not apart from him, not without him, not alongside of him, but because of him. And so when they do their work, they're trying to draw attention.

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As Christ does his work through them, the attention is to be directed to the risen

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Lord Jesus Christ. They are preaching the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. How do we know he rose from the dead?

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How do we know he's at the right hand of the father? How do we know he's king of kings? Look at him work.

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Look at him work. It reminds of the, it reminds of the moment in Jesus' ministry captured by Mark in Mark chapter six, verse 56, it says wherever he entered into villages or cities or the country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might just touch the hem of his garment.

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And as many as touched him were made well. It sounds like a similar situation, doesn't it?

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But there's, there's some changes, isn't there? One of the changes is that Jesus is going out to the cities and to the villages and to the countryside, whereas here the people are being brought up into Jerusalem.

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We'll comment on that change sometime later, but notice the other difference in the story about Jesus, uh, the sick are reaching out to touch the hem of his garment.

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Whereas in this situation, it's just the shadow of Peter falling on them. They're not having to reach out or anything interesting, huh?

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You know, Jesus said to his apostles in John 14, verse 12, he said, most assuredly,

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I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also in greater works than these.

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He will do because I go to my father and he says, here's why things are going to get bigger and grander than my earthly ministry.

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Because he goes to his father and he sends forth another comforter. He says,

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I'm not going to leave you orphans. He sends forth the Holy Spirit and when the Holy Spirit, when the spirit of Christ and dwells his new covenant temple and dwells as apostles, they go forward and they do well, they do according to the power of Christ, what he wants to be done.

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And this brings greater glory to him after his resurrection and ascension and sending forth of the

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Holy Spirit than before. So here we see the supremacy of the covenant that Christ has forged by his own blood.

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He sends forth his Holy Spirit and this empowers the preaching and spread of the good news of the kingdom.

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Now this was definitely not what was going on with the old covenant. If you were really sick under the old covenant and you never ran into Jesus during his time, what could you do?

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You're chronically sick, perhaps terminally sick, unclean, cut off, distant, separate.

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What hope for the lepers? What hope for the demonically possessed? What hope for the lame?

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What hope for that woman who was sick for 12 years, a flow of blood that no one could stop?

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Mark had an interesting perspective on that. He says, Mark 5, verse 26, that she had suffered many things from many physicians.

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She had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. Isn't that a sad story? Oh, yes, ma 'am.

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We can try to help you with that. Yeah. We can help you with that. Yeah. There's probably a cure. Let's try this. Let's try this.

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Let's try this. I'm all out of money. I think you're incurable now. Wow. She had no hope at all.

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Jesus healed her. She touched the hem of his garment. By faith, Christ healed her.

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But there was no hope for her under the Old Covenant. What about spiritual deliverance?

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How did the practitioners in that Old Covenant try to deliver people who were possessed by demons?

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You ever heard of the seven sons of Sceva? Not only did they fail, they failed in a way that failed to keep their dignity intact.

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But look at how superior Christ is. Look at what He does. Look how

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He saves. All these wonders. Notice these are called signs and wonders.

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Now the wonders, the word wonders always shows up here in the plural, and it's a great synonym for a miracle.

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But the word signs means something more. Now, you've seen lots of signs today, I wager, on your drive here.

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And do you know that each one of those signs doesn't exist for itself? If you're driving along the highway and it says

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Oklahoma City, 85 miles, you don't stop at the sign and say, I have arrived. The signs signify something else.

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It exists to point to something else. And these were signs, they were not in and of themselves the glory of the apostles or the glory of the church or something to be ooed and awed at and go home.

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The signs were pointing to the reality of the risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That's why they were being done.

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That's why the Lord was acting in this way. These are the acts of the risen Lord Jesus through His Holy Spirit in the lives of His people to bring attention to the gospel of the kingdom.

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He was proving the reality of His kingdom, the reality of His reign by delivering these people from their illnesses and from their spiritual oppression.

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How are we to respond to these wonderful stories? In history, in history, stories like this got people to thinking, we've got to find some of these artifacts.

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Everyone kept on touching the hymn of Jesus's robe. Wouldn't it be great if we had a scrap of Jesus's robe? We could heal a lot of people.

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Wouldn't it be great if we could find Paul's handkerchief that was passed around and people got healed? We need

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Paul's handkerchief. Actually, a few dozen would be great because then we could spread them around.

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What we really need is a splinter from the cross. If only we had a splinter from the blood -soaked cross.

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And in history, in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, these artifacts, these relics were gathered together in places called reliquies, reliquies.

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And the commoners, and the not -so -common, would take their pilgrimages to these places that had these relics and pay money to be allowed in, to be guided by the approved of experts about these relics, and go and venerate all of these relics to receive for themselves healing grace, saving grace, forgiving grace.

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A great shame indeed, a great sham. You know what they never got a piece of and put into a reliquy?

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They never got a piece of Peter's shadow and put that in a reliquy, you know? I bet someone thought about how to do it, but they just couldn't pull that one off.

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Let us give glory to where it is due. What I am cautioning you against, of course, is superstition.

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Many today still practice superstition, and they'll sell you a holy artifact, they'll sell you a bottle of holy tears that some so -called apostle has cried over you, and maybe you can get grace by anointing your prayer cloth they sold you last month.

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But not just artifacts and relics, but they'll sell you a system, a method. Pray this prayer in this fashion.

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Anybody remember the prayer of Jabez, by the way? Oh, we still struggle with superstition, don't we?

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Here is this special little method, special little twist. If you really want to have the grace of God, then you have to do this or that.

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Where's the attention, right? Where's the attention? The attention is not upon the

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Lord, the attention is not upon our Savior Christ, but upon some method or some means, some man.

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Let us give glory to where it is due. Let me give you an example. We stand in a position here in the 21st century, here we are in 2023, all very sophisticated.

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And we're reading this story about how they brought the sick out into the streets, how unsanitary, and laid them on beds and couches.

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That Peter passing by, he's a fisherman, he's not a medical expert. What business does he have to do with any kind of illness that anybody is suffering?

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How dare he? And a shadow, come on, a shadow.

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Wow, how backward is this? We are challenged at the very front, do we believe this occurred?

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Do we really genuinely believe that the sick and the demonically possessed were brought out into the streets and that the

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Lord Jesus Christ healed them by the meager means of Peter the fisherman and his shadow?

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As surely as Jesus rose from the dead, they were healed. And as surely as he reigns from the right hand, they were delivered.

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Absolutely true. But then again, having believed it, we still look upon the situation and we say, how backward and distant from us, how ancient and a shadow, dearly beloved, we are not so sophisticated as we believe.

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Even today, we are guilty of superstition on a massive scale. Today, there are reliquaries throughout our land that are controlled by experts, which we must spend vast sums of money to show up to receive what we think are totems of healing.

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We think that the pharmaceuticals will heal. We think the doctors will heal.

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We think the surgeries and the procedures will heal, don't we? If I can just get into the right practitioner,

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I'll be fine. If I can just find the right mix of pharmaceuticals, I'll be fine.

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Dearly beloved, I'm not against modern medicine. My family has been very blessed by it, but unless God intervenes directly and powerfully between the doctor and the patient and between the medicine and the body, only harm is achieved.

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Do not be superstitious. Do not be superstitious. I would say that a shadow is far more elegant than the barbarism practiced today.

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I would rather have a shadow blessed by Christ's spirit than a surgery without God, which is why, dearly beloved, we should pray and pray and pray.

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The surgery doesn't heal, God heals. The pills don't heal, God heals. The doctor isn't the

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Savior, Christ is the Savior. Find a good doctor. Be wise.

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Do the best you absolutely can do. In this particular story, Peter and his shadow was the best that they had and God used it to heal.

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What does God have for us today but it's only God who heals? Let us be clear on that.

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Let us not be superstitious. And from that specific application, of course, we have the larger one.

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What is going on here in the church? What is going on here in the church? There is a distinguishing that is happening.

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Here are those who are in the church and here are those who are on the outside, not daring to join but respecting them nonetheless.

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And the Lord is adding multitudes to the church and look at all the people who are being healed and delivered.

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What goes on here? The temptation is to look upon this text and say we have to find the method that they were using here in verses 12 through 16.

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And if we can isolate the method and recreate it in our own context, then we will have the same results.

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Really? Is that what is going on here? Or is glory being given to Christ? In the church, as Christ does his miraculous, saving, delivering work, we are to praise no method.

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We are to praise no means. We are to praise no man. We are to praise

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Christ. The stories we read about of preachers and churches past, missionaries and their experiences.

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How are we to understand those things? Praise Jesus. Praise the

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Lord. Don't look upon those things and say, well, we don't have those particular expressions in our church so something must be wrong.

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Rejoice with those who rejoice. Rejoice in the work of the Lord that he did. I have been in church services where it felt like the

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Spirit of God himself came in a very special way and everybody sang in unison and we're all filled with the joy of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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I've been in services where people who were bitter at each other for decades, one got up and went to the other and they reconciled right there in the middle of the service.

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We've been in services where people have become believers, new hearts, born again, right in the middle of the mighty miracle.

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Praise Jesus. Praise the Lord for the way that he builds his church and washes his bride with the water of his word.

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Praise the Lord. We shouldn't go back and say, well, we have to have this certain man preaching again and we have to have these certain hymns played in a certain way again.

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No let's give the Lord the glory that is due to his name.

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Let us not be superstitious. Let us not reduce the church to some, to some means or to some method or to some man.

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And the Lord deserves all of the glory. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us in your word.

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I pray that you would help us to give an amen to this, to this, to this text.

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Lord, we see how you answered their prayers in a mighty way, far above what they certainly anticipated.

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Lord, we know that it is you who builds your church.

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We know that it is you who gathers your sheep. We know that it is you that sanctifies and glorifies your bride.

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And we thank you for that. And we pray that you would help us to walk by faith and not by sight and to rejoice in you.