Apostles Arrested for Proclaiming Christ

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If you'll turn in your Bibles with me, please, to the fourth chapter of the book of Acts.
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Acts chapter 4. And while you are turning or tapping there, you might want to reach down, find that personal digital assistant, and make sure it's on silent.
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You won't like what I do when someone's phone goes off. I just stop and stare. And everybody else stops and stares too.
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So why don't we all check our personal digital devices and make sure that we have them on silent this morning.
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Acts chapter 4 might surprise some of you. We have been in a sermon series.
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In fact, I had the opportunity this week, I should mention this, that I spent some time this week with a scholar here in the
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Phoenix area. It just so happens, thankfully, that a part of the project that I'm working on for another doctorate is called
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CBGM. Yes, CBGM. It's a fascinating thing. I'm sure all of you would like me to actually set aside the text and just explain
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CBGM to you this morning, because it's called coherence -based genealogical method. And it is exciting stuff for about a dozen to two dozen people around the world.
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And so thankfully, well, it is necessary that I really struggle with this particular new technology and textual criticism in the project that I'm doing on P45.
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And there is only one guy that has written a book meant for the rest of us on the subject, and guess where he happens to teach?
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Phoenix Seminary. So we got together this week, and we were actually at Pastor Fry's favorite
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Mexican restaurant. We were at Carlos O 'Brien's. And we were sitting over in the corner, and I thought about it later on that the people around us must have really thought, man, we've got some weirdos in this restaurant.
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Because here we are passionately going back and forth about pre -genealogical coherence and coherence and parsimony and all these various textual critical things.
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And we're just oblivious to everybody else who must have been staring at us like, wow, there are some really weird people over there.
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But in the process, I explained to him our current sermon series here at PRBC.
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And he found it, he was one of the few people that, along with you, would have found it absolutely enchanting.
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He did his PhD at Cambridge, so I'm sure he's quite cultured. He's only a year and a half older than my son, so that also makes it rather interesting as well.
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I was reminded how aged I'm becoming. But anyway, he found it fascinating that we're actually doing a sermon series based upon P45.
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And if you are visiting with us, you may be wondering why we would be using a World War II fighter plane as something to do with our sermons.
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But we're talking about a papyrus. And within a few weeks, the next time, probably even the next time
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I preach, it depends on how far we get today, you will find in your bulletin, once again, one of our pictures and handouts.
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Not yet, not today, sorry if you're looking. But a handout showing a page from Papyrus 45, which contains portions of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the major portion of Acts.
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And P45 contains Acts, beginning at Acts 4 .27, as I recall, into Chapter 17.
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So, even though we were only able to cover a couple of chapters in John, and even then we had to stretch the rules a little bit to do
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Chapters 4 and 5, we're going to be able to cover a majority of the book of Acts as we look at P45 before we go back to Matthew and Mark and Luke and finish up with those
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Gospels. And so, the problem, of course, is that means we jump right into the middle of a text.
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And nobody really, really likes to do that. It's not the normal way we do things.
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If we were going to do an entire sermon series on Acts, we'd start in Chapter 1, we'd go all the way through to the bitter end, to the very last words.
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I assure you, that's how we do things. But following the papyrus, we begin in Chapter 4, we're covering any chapter that any portion of it is contained in the papyrus.
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But you can't just dive in, because when you look at Chapter 4, everything that happens at the beginning is due to what happened right beforehand.
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And, as we all know, but I'll repeat it for our own benefit and edification, chapter and diverse divisions were not a part of the original text.
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The chapter divisions came first, but still, well over 12 centuries after the writing of the originals.
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And then the verses came in 1551, if you want to know when that took place.
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And so, they're relatively new, as far as the history of the text is concerned. So it's a little bit arbitrary to just say, well, this is the beginning of Chapter 4, or anything along those lines.
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So to be able to get a running start and to handle Chapter 4 properly, we have to at least glance back into what we would call
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Chapter 3. And in fact, I would say, I think it's important for all of us to remind ourselves of the fact that we've moved from John, we've moved from one of the
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Gospels, probably the last gospel to be written, into the first history of the church.
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And though I believe very clearly that the book of Acts had a theological and polemical purpose to it, it is really the greatest source that we have in the
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New Testament to the history of those first few decades in the
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Christian movement. We have a lot more history, a lot more history in the
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Old Testament because we're talking about a much longer period of time. I mean, when you think about it, the
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Old Testament is written over the course of about 1400 years, but it covers more history than that.
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And so, it makes sense that we have entire books of history. When you look at the
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New Testament, it is written in a very, very, relatively to the Old Testament, short period of time.
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And so, it makes sense anyways that we only have one book of history, and we wish it went farther.
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As you know, it stops in the middle of nowhere, which
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I think is appropriate in the sense that, as you know, there is a group of churches in our day called
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Acts 29. And if that's ever confused you, when you tried to look up Acts 29, the point is, we are in Acts 29.
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Acts 28 ends, but it doesn't end. We're the next chapter.
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We are the continuation of that story. So it's an appropriate moniker, at least as far as that is concerned, in saying we are continuing.
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Now, you might say, really, we're probably about Acts 87 or something along those lines. I mean, there's been some history.
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And if we were to sort of calculate it out, it's probably more like Acts 292 or something like that, if you were really to write the whole history.
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But the point is that the book of Acts doesn't stop at a place where we'd expect it to.
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And we might ask ourselves the question, why? Now, let me just share with you briefly, we don't have time to do all sorts of introductory stuff, which we would normally do when looking at a book like Acts, but let me just share with you the theory that I have heard that, as far as I can see, the utility of a theory is related to how many questions it can answer in comparison to how many questions it raises or leaves unanswered, especially when we're talking about issues like, well, why did somebody write such and such a book?
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When was such and such a book written? Things like that. And so we know that Luke writes
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Luke -Acts. So when did Luke write this, and why did
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Luke write this? Well, when you consider the content of these books, to whom they're written,
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Luke is clearly writing to a primarily non -Jewish audience. He's very different than Matthew, along those lines.
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The language he uses, very classical -sounding Greek, very different than the
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Greek of other books. We're doing a Greek class with some folks right now, and I can assure you, you do not want to even look at Luke -Acts or Hebrews right now.
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It will discourage you, and you will quit. You'll say, nope, never, not even, can't get there, not even going to try.
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So it's some of the most difficult language, but it's clearly written on a more classical level.
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But why would Luke have written when he did, in the way that he did? And a theory that I heard a number of years ago, and it just seems to answer so many questions, is that Luke is writing to Theophilus, and in so doing, he is putting together information that is to be presented in Paul's trial in Rome.
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Because that's, we're just left hanging at the end of the book of Acts, with Paul just hanging out.
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And we don't know what happens, and there's all sorts of theories that he was released, and he went there, and he went there, did this thing, and so on and so forth, but we don't know.
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So why would it be written when it was? Well, if you've ever heard of what's called an amicus brief, a filing of a friend writing to the court to elucidate certain points in regards to a lawsuit, or about someone who's being accused of a crime, or something like that, the theory that I really tend toward is the idea that Luke is putting this material together as a demonstration of the nature of Christian proclamation, and what it's really about.
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It's not about fomenting rebellion, it's not about getting some other political party elected in the
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Roman Senate, or anything along those lines. These Christian people are proclaiming a message concerning Jesus, the crucified
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Messiah, who is coming again, and there is salvation for all people in His name. And so there's obviously an evangelistic intention in all the
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Gospels, and the book of Acts, and everything else. But it would make sense that it would end at that particular point, because that's when it would have been submitted in Paul's case.
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And so if that is the case, then that means this is being written in the sixth decade of the first century, in the late fifties, maybe early sixties.
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The chronology of Paul is difficult to put together, and there's different theories as to when certain things happened, and things like that.
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But you're talking within thirty years of the earliest events, and then very contemporaneously with the final events that are narrated in the book of Acts.
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And so many of the eyewitnesses would still be alive at this period in time.
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Luke himself says in writing the book that he interviewed people, that he used sources, he used written sources, he used interview sources, that he did his due diligence to verify the facts that he is presenting to us in these pages.
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Which causes some people problems, who have the idea that scripture just floats down from heaven and its authors don't actually concern themselves with doing research.
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That just sounds so unspiritual. But the reality is, when you're writing history, it's good to do some research and know what you're talking about, rather than just relying upon your own personal memory or anything else along those lines.
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And the Holy Spirit of God can actually, and does actually, utilize those types of things.
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So this is somewhat of the background then of the how and the why.
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And so what have we seen up to this point? Well, when you think about the book of Acts, you of course think at the beginning about the state of the church immediately after the ascension of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. A concern about the apostles and the election of an apostle, though there's some real questions
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I'd like to raise about that particular portion, we don't have time to go into that. And then of course, when we think about chapter two, we think about Pentecost.
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And one thing that we will be able to really, I think, benefit from as we work through the book of Acts is the fact that in the book of Acts, we get to hear the early church preaching.
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And in that process, we get to hear from the earliest point in time, how they testified of Jesus without having a
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New Testament. Without having a New Testament. I ask you, what if you didn't have a
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New Testament and you were asked to give testimony to why you believe that Jesus is the
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Messiah and that his death was necessary for the forgiveness of sins, be pretty tough for most of us to do without a
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New Testament. But we need to realize that these books are just now being written.
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And so the sermons that they present to us are sermons from a church whose scriptures were the
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Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament. And what we discover is especially since many of these sermons are taking place outside the context, the early sermons are there in Jerusalem and places like that.
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So they're there with people who have access to the scriptures. But then we see as the church goes out, the apostles, especially ones that the focus is turned upon,
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Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Silas, as they go out doing their missions, work are going into synagogues.
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And now the primary scriptures that they're going to be dealing with are not the
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Hebrew Old Testament, but the Greek Old Testament. The Septuagint translation of the
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Old Testament. And that's going to raise a number of questions for us as we see those sermons and how they use the
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Old Testament. What's especially exciting to me is that just a few weeks ago, we talked about the resurrection and at the time of Resurrection Sunday, and we thought about the disciples as they're walking along the road to Emmaus and they meet with Jesus and Jesus opens the scriptures to them and then later on, they've gone back to Jerusalem and Jesus appears to them and he opens their minds to understand the scriptures.
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And we commented then, wouldn't it be wonderful to have an extensive, full record of Jesus' ministry amongst the disciples during that time after his resurrection?
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I mean, to have Jesus' own exposition of the Old Testament text.
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What an incredible thing that would be. And especially when he says that from Moses onward, they testify of me.
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What a wonderful thing it would be to be able to listen in. Well, in essence, we can in the rest of the
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New Testament and especially in the sermons and acts. Now we can in Peter's epistles and Paul's epistles, we can hear the echoes of those things as well.
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But especially in the sermons, the early sermons in the book of Acts, will we be able to sort of get a bit of a picture of what it was that the apostles had been hearing from the
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Lord because obviously that's what they're going to be proclaiming to those to whom they are preaching.
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And so to refresh our memories, in chapter 3, which is the immediate context that brings us to where we are supposed to be this morning.
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In chapter 3, you have the healing of the man, the lame man who was laid by the gate beautiful and had been there for a very long time.
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Everybody knew who he was because he was just sort of a fixed asset. I mean, he was just, you know, someone you'd walk by when you're, if that's the way you went into the temple, that is someone that you would see there.
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He had been there for a long, long time. And what happens is he's healed.
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Peter, we have no money to give you, but in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and be healed.
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And he received strength in his limbs and he is healed. And so let's remind ourselves of the context in chapter 3, beginning of verse 11.
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While he was clinging to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them at the so -called portico of Solomon, full of amazement.
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But when Peter saw this, Peter saw an opportunity to preach. He replied to the people, men of Israel, why are you amazed at this?
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Or why do you gaze at us as if by our own power or piety, we had made him walk?
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The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers has glorified his servant
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Jesus. By the way, that is language taken directly out of Exodus chapter 3, by the way. So it would resonate in the, that's the section where God reveals himself as the
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I am to Moses. And so this is the language that is being used. The God of our fathers has glorified his servant,
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Jesus, the one whom you delivered and disowned, denied in the presence of Pilate, right before the face of Pilate, when he had decided to release him.
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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.
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Please note the contrast between murderer and prince of life. The one whom
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God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses.
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And that term witnesses is martyreo, from which we get, that's where we get the term martyr.
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We think martyr just simply means someone who dies, but that is not its original meaning.
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To be a martyr is to be a witness, one that testifies. And 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, he has given him this perfect health in the presence of you all.
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And now brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance just as your rulers did also, but the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets should sound familiar when we think back to the book of Luke and what
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Jesus said, how slow you are to believe the things testified by whom? All the prophets.
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So the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that his
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Messiah, his anointed one, his Christ would suffer, he has thus fulfilled.
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Therefore, repent and return so that your sins may be wiped away in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the
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Lord and that he may send Jesus the Messiah, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which
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God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from ancient times.
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Now, seeing the emphasis here, this is right, this is within days literally of the ministry of Jesus, Jesus saying, how can you be so slow to understand?
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By the mouth of his holy prophets from ancient times, Moses said, the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren, to him you shall give heed to everything he says to you, back to Deuteronomy chapter 18, a well -known text that is utilized there, being applied to Jesus, and it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people, and likewise all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and his successors onward also announced these days.
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Someone was listening very, very carefully to the Lord Jesus. It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which
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God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
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For you first God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.
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So, you cannot accuse Peter of beating around the bush.
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There was no holding back. He got straight to the issue.
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There were no nice, warm sermon illustrations. There was no warm -up. I guess from Peter's perspective, the
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Holy Spirit had provided the best warm -up you could possibly have, and that is, everyone's looking at this man.
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Everybody knows who he is. And can I stop for just a second and just point something out to you? How long had he been there?
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I mean, even to get into chapter 4, the Sanhedrin's going to say, no one can deny that this guy has been healed and everybody knows him.
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Everybody can see that a healing's taking place. So, that means this guy, in cold and wet and heat and dust, had been placed at that place until he was just like a part of the landscape.
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That's a long time. And when you think about it, there was a reason why he was there, wasn't there?
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That whole time, when you've got to understand, there were times when he truly wondered why
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God had abandoned him. And all these people walking by, don't you think there were times he looked at some of them and he'd hear stuff?
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He'd probably hear stuff that other people wouldn't hear. And so he could see the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees, but they have perfect health.
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They get to walk wherever they want to go. They wear fine clothing. They live in nice houses.
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And I'm a lame beggar. What did I do? Is there fairness? Is there not something fundamentally unfair here?
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And yet he kept coming. And he kept coming to God's house. Seeking alms from God's people.
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Knowing that many of them maybe weren't the best representatives of being God's people.
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God had a purpose in this man's life. We don't know anything more about him. We'll find out someday, maybe.
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I don't know. But he had a purpose. And that long period of time had a purpose.
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And here right at the very beginning of the church, in its earliest stages, at the very beginning of the interaction of the apostles with the
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Jewish leaders that is going to have impact for centuries. Centuries.
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There's going to be an impact. From what's going on right here. This man is part and parcel of that.
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It's so easy for us to become so focused upon what's happening in this world.
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And yeah, hey, but we're reformed. We talk about the sovereignty of God. Yeah, but you know what?
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It's so hard for us as finite, limited little creatures to keep in mind the complexity and the beauty and the expansiveness of God's decree.
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We cannot, don't ever pretend like you can wrap your brain around that. Because you can't.
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And so here is just one example given to us. One that's frequently rushed by because of all the other important stuff going on.
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But it's rushed by because here's this guy and he plays a role.
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He doesn't get involved like the blind man in John chapter 9 in unwittingly refuting the
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Jewish leaders. Well, I don't know about everything you're saying. All I know is once I was blind, now
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I can see. Wow, there was a testimony. Doesn't get involved in all that.
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But here you have Peter making application and preaching to the people and saying you want to know why this man has been made whole?
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You want to know the means by which this has happened? You all know he's been made whole. There's no fooling anybody here.
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It's not like you dressed somebody up they'd never seen before and he pretended to be made whole.
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The very fact that the man had sat there for so long season in and season out meant that everybody in Jerusalem looks at him and goes yep,
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I know who he is and nope, I've never seen him walk before and so yep, there's a miracle here. And so many of these miracles that are going to be in the earlier chapters of Acts not so much in the later chapters of Acts but in the earlier chapters of Acts mark them down.
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What are they about? They are about establishing the authority of the message of the gospel in the mouths of the apostles themselves.
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Here's Peter. Here's John. As we're going to see in chapter 4 unlearned men and all that means is they weren't a part of the training system of rabbis in the schools that existed at that time.
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Doesn't mean that they couldn't write their name or anything else it just simply means that they were not a part of the
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Jewish leadership and the hierarchy that hadn't been trained and all the traditions of the elders and all the rest of that stuff and so they are just, well they're a fisherman.
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They're just part of the what's called the Am Ha 'aretz the people of the land and that phrase
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Am Ha 'aretz the people of the land it was sort of an insult to the elite.
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They were sort of there but since they didn't observe the Mosaic law with the scrupulousness of the elite they're just sort of there maybe they'll make it, maybe they won't but you know that's all they were so how do you establish with authority the message that they're bringing as witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus Christ well how about we raise up a man that everybody knows has been sitting there for years unable to walk and when he's walking around he says these guys did it and they said in the name of Jesus whom you crucified but God raised him from the dead watch the miracles and see how they function in that way
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I think it's a vitally important aspect of what we will be seeing but you'll also see the centrality of the text of scripture to the argument that the apostles are already presenting right here in some of the earliest preaching that we will see if we went back to chapter 2, day of Pentecost same thing but now in a sort of a in the context of the early church that's going to follow all the way through the book of Acts to the 28th chapter is the conflict between the
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Jewish leadership and especially the apostle Paul as it goes all the way to Rome all the way to Rome that conflict was vital in forcing the church to think things through we'll get to cover
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Acts chapter 15 one of the most pivotal chapters in all the
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New Testament Acts chapter 15 do people have to enter into the old covenant before they can enter into the new covenant so do the
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Gentiles need to become Jews before they can become Christians that's dealt with in Acts chapter 15 and the very nature of our faith as a missionary faith as a worldwide faith was determined in that chapter and what caused that to happen but this constant controversy between Christians and Jews now we have to recognize what's eventually going to happen we're seeing it in the book of Acts itself in the earlier portions of Acts Christian proclamations taking place in a
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Jewish context in Jerusalem, in synagogues even as they go out from that area where's the first place the apostles go well the place where there are people who already have the scriptures they go to the synagogues or they go down by the river assuming that if there's not enough people for a synagogue that some of the
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Jews will be down there by the river maybe reading the scriptures together so on and so forth and so they're always looking for that place of commonality first but eventually you have the very strong separation of church and synagogue and even though Paul warns us in Romans chapter 11 don't boast against the branches that were broken off so you might be grafted in that's exactly what happened within a couple of hundred years you have you have statements being made by early church fathers that are just sadly reprehensible in their in what they would eventually end up resulting in and then you've got the long history of the significantly less than positive relationship between Judaism and Christianity that is an unfortunate reality of the history of the church and so we see the beginnings of it here but we see how it should have been handled and was handled by the apostles but then many of those lessons end up getting ignored as we go down through life, down through history and so what we see immediately and I hope depending on what translation you utilize or how big the fonts are on your phone that you're able to see when the text is quoting from the
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Old Testament that's one of the things I like about the New American Standard Bible it makes it a little bit harder to use electronically but at least in the
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NESB and they're coming up with a new one I thought it was supposed to be out last year but it's taking longer to come out, they're coming out with a new one and I hope they don't change this,
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I have a feeling they're going to but in the current NESB, NESB 95 specific
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Old Testament citations are in block quotes, I'm sorry they're in block font, all caps so it sort of hits you in the face and I like that there's other ways to do it but that's a rather effective way it will help you as we do our studies and of course
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I will remind you of it as best I can when you are seeing citations from the
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Old Testament and where they're being derived from, how they're being applied very very important in working through the sermons in Acts as well as the apologetics in Acts because this is the church under attack, now it's under attack primarily from Jewish perspectives but toward the end of the book of Acts you do start seeing
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Paul for example interacting with Roman leaders and especially
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Acts chapter 17 the sermon at Mars Hill a tremendous example of interaction with non -Jewish
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Greek culture at that time so there is much for us to learn much for us to learn from the book of Acts and how it interacts in this way and how it uses the
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Old Testament Scripture and things along those lines but just one other point of application there in the sermon it is you verse 25 who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which
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God made with your fathers saying to Abraham and in your seed all the families there shall be blessed, if you want to know the primary fulfillment of that promise really given twice both in Genesis 12 and Genesis 15 in slightly different forms but if you want to know where that promise is being fulfilled then you find it in the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, of the
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Messiah here is the fulfillment you want to see how all the families there shall be blessed?
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The Jewish people thought well that would be in the exaltation of Israel to the position of world dominance that would bring great peace to the entire world as our particular ethnic group predominates over everybody else but that wasn't
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God's intention that blessing of all the families of the earth is in providing to all of them equal access to God and peace with Him through the work of the
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Messiah Jesus whose message is to go to all the world and it's also very important that at this point you see that the apostles they've been taught by Jesus but it's going to take someone like Peter like special visions from heaven get smacked upside the head three or four times before he really understands that yeah you know when
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Jesus said go into all the world he really meant all the world and yeah he even meant those people that you're uncomfortable around because they eat stuff that you don't eat and they dress in ways that you don't dress in and yeah it's for all the world but it's seen right here in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed but for you first so the message is first going to the
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Jews here we are at the temple and you are the children of the covenant you're the children of the prophets you're the children of the covenant which
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God made with your fathers and so to you first it is being proclaimed for you first God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways and so here is a direct application being made to the people of Israel and that therefore is the context that will at least get us started in chapter 4 and we only have time just to begin but we will continue in chapter 4 this evening and so we can just imagine that all the people coming together gets the attention of the people that were in charge if someone came in here and started a little confab in the back room there we would all probably take note of that happening and so that's what takes place here as well as they were speaking to the people chapter 4 the priests and the captain of the temple so it would have been the temple guard there was a the
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Jews were allowed to have a armed police force in essence to keep control
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I mean the temple area was not a small area and it was extremely crowded and it would attract a lot of people and so there was a need to keep order and things like that and so the captain of the guard so you have the priest the captain of the temple and the
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Sadducees and as we know the Sadducees had managed in this time period to gain a tremendous amount of political power and hence that translated into power amongst the people or here in the very precincts of the temple itself and so it is decided hey this whoever these people are they've got way too big an audience and we're not the ones teaching them and they have come up and they have heard what has been said now had they said more things than this well probably in almost every situation we have a summary statement being made that gives us enough of the content to be able to understand what
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Luke then wants to present to us afterwards and we are told that they are now it can be greatly disturbed or the term is also used in the more prosaic really annoyed really annoyed almost in the sense of looking down upon someone but it's probably greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people okay that's one thing that's sort of their role they did that in the temple but they were not just teaching the people they were also proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead now the
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Pharisees wouldn't have a problem with part of that they would not have a problem with the proclamation of the resurrection of the dead but the
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Sadducees would because they did not believe in the resurrection of the final day in the way that the
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Pharisees did and so the Sadducees were well I know we've used it before and we've all heard it before but this is how you remember things the
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Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection that's why they're Sadducee and the Pharisees believed in the resurrection that's why they were
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Pharisees so I know it's corny but it sticks and it helps you to remember and so it's sort of like learning
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Greek vocabulary some of the ways you learn it very very strange but as long as it sticks that's the important thing and so but even the
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Pharisees would have a serious problem with proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead there's already a very specific unique element to this proclamation that is different from anything they've ever heard before and it is very disturbing to them so they had stood around long enough to have gotten the message that these men are teaching the people and they are proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead and so they come along there is no record of the discussion there were no cell phones in those days you can just imagine if there had been the attestment would be very long and they laid hands on them and put them in jail until the next day for it was already evening so it's getting toward the end of the day the shadows are lengthening they come along we're not told what the discussion is just we're in charge you're not supposed to be doing what you're doing let's go and they even have a place of imprisonment where they can place them and they are there overnight and they're not going to be getting together and doing some kind of inquest or something with the evening already coming on but we are told in verse 4 many of those who had heard the message believed and the number of the men came to be about 5 ,000 that I think we need to as I understand that it wasn't 5 ,000 men that day that went ooh we're going to believe in that you had had
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Pentecost and you had had the thousands then but now you have more and I think the number 5 ,000 here is in total there in Jerusalem who have heard the message and are following Jesus not 5 ,000 new individuals that particular day would be pretty big crowd in the temple if that was what was actually
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Solomon's portico can't hold that many people it may be big but it's not that big so you have even in the proclamation and I can't imagine that the man the healed man's presence wasn't a pretty powerful element of giving a foundation for people to listen to what the apostles had to say and so there are many of those who had heard the message believed so picture this in your mind though um they see the proclamation they see the healed man and they see the ones making the proclamation being dragged off to jail so it seems that from the very beginning in the early church there was right from the start a recognition that this believing in Jesus as the
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Messiah could be costly it's never going to be easy I mean even the message that was delivered there to bless you by doing what?
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by giving you straight teeth and lengthening out your legs and giving you the perfect tan and the perfect car you've always wanted and the perfect wife you've always wanted and is that the message?
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No. By turning every one of you from your wicked ways repentance repentance unto life that's the message and so that's not almost ever a super popular message and then when you add to it the fact that huh the guys proclaiming this message are now going to jail they're not going to have a nice warm meal this evening, they're not sleeping in their own beds and if it happens to them you can't help but think might happen to me as well that is a reality in the early church in the book of Acts that we sometimes because we've never experienced it miss now
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I don't know if any of you have been following the news but what's going on in California is frightening and California ain't that far away if you don't know what
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I'm talking about they've passed a bill it's now gone to the Senate, it's going to fly through the Senate and we all know about their governor when your nickname's
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Moonbeam it ain't it ain't Ronald Reagan this thing's going to get signed and you might say yeah yeah yeah but it'll get bogged down the courts immediately yeah it will but you need to understand this this bill makes it illegal and and the solid people who've looked at it not the people making excuses for it but the solid people looked at it and said as far as we can tell you will not be able to preach a sermon on 1st
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Corinthians chapter 6 it says such were some of you in regards to sexual sin and orientation you will not be able to sell a book that says you can change your orientation and I think the
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Bible's a book that says that so is the Bible about to be banned in California?
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No no no no that could never happen really you better believe it could especially when polls show that a frighteningly large percentage of the millennial generation are significantly more concerned about microaggressions than they are about freedom of speech and so there might be some real good current application to what we see in the early church because what we're seeing in our culture is a repaganization of our culture that's what's happening and when you proclaim an objective truth into a culture that has subjectivized truth and has all sorts of you can have your
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God, you can have your truth we see that the culture does not handle that very well and that's what we're seeing in California too at the same time that the secretary of state nominee is being grilled by a senator over his views on holding to what the
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Bible says about human sexuality and if you hold that you're not fit to serve you're not fit to serve that's where we are now it's going to be a few chapters until we run into the
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Romans doing these things but the concept of the clash between the proclamation of the lordship of Jesus Christ and what that means and cultures that say we will not have any of that it's going to be all through the book of Acts it's going to be there and there's a cost to discipleship there is a cost to discipleship and we're going to see it over and over and over again many of the people if you've noticed there's this one there's this one word that is almost in every chapter jail jail yeah,
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Paul spends a fair amount of time there jail might have some real practical applications that we will continue to look at as we work through so we will pick up with what happens on the next day when the apostles speak to the
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Jewish leaders and their first testimony in that context after the resurrection in that, what's going to be a growing conflict and how they handle that we will be looking at that this evening, let's pray together the grace heavenly father once again we thank you that you have revealed for us and preserved for us the history of our faith and what those brave apostles did under the direction of the
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Holy Spirit of God in proclaiming your truth for as we have just noted lord we are living in a day when there are many who hate this same gospel and lord we know the apostles were not consumed with hatred towards others even though they were constantly under pressure and under attack they existed for your honor and glory and they did not give in to the temptation to detest those who were fulfilling