Safely Through the Fire (Acts 3:22-4:22, Jeff Kliewer)

Let's pray. Father, as we took communion this morning, we recognize that our greatest enemy is within ourselves. It's that old man, that sin nature, that is opposed to you and will rise up at times and cause us to fall back into the life we left behind.

Lord, we thank you for the body and blood of Jesus that conquers that old nature. We thank you that as we look to the cross, we are cleansed from all unrighteousness. This morning, we also recognize, Lord, that there are enemies outside of us.

Those that would come and bring opposition to you and to your word. These enemies also are conquered in the name of Jesus. And we pray for the people of God this morning that we will rise up in the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome these enemies.

That we will not be silent anymore. That we will speak boldly the name of Jesus. Because the name of Jesus has all power. We ask now in the name of Jesus that you would empower the preaching of your word, that it would be glorifying to your name.

In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. Morning Star News reports that a woman named Hadiyah, living near Nairobi, Kenya, left for the day and her children were in the house that she left behind. As she went into the marketplace, someone ran to get her, telling her that someone had smashed through the window of their house and entered and began to attack her teenage children.

These were a group of Somali Muslim men who were who were bent on killing these young people because they had left Islam and embraced the Christian faith. If it weren't for the townspeople who saw the ruckus, these children would have been killed.

And yet the townspeople came and they broke up the commotion and fortunately by God's grace that family survived the attack. But I want us to hear the words of Hadiyah. My family has experienced difficult times since the time we embraced the Christian faith.

How long will this persecution continue? We will not recant the Christian faith. We will continue putting our faith in God. Despite the opposition, she will continue to trust in Christ and she will continue to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to her neighbors and to her friends.

She would not allow that opposition to silence her, to make her quiet. You know, the greater spiritual progress that we make, the more opposition we will face. The more boldly we proclaim that Jesus is Lord, King of Kings, the more we will face opposition to that very thing and attempts will be made to silence us.

In our culture it looks a little different than it did in Kenya. But I want us to share another story. This one came from Ecuador. A man named Jim Elliott, along with another group of missionaries, went to Ecuador to preach the gospel to the Alca Indians.

They went to make contact with a tribal people that had never heard the name of Jesus. They went preaching and before long that tribe did come to know Christ, but not before those missionaries were killed.

Many of you know the story of how the Alca Indians speared these five missionaries to death by the banks of the Curare River. But long before Jim Elliott went to Ecuador to preach the gospel, he was going to Wheaton College in Illinois and he would journal and write things and one day he wrote a birthday greeting to his own brother.

I want to read what he wrote because it's not the typical birthday greeting. Here's the card that he wrote. For you brother, I pray that the Lord might crown this year with his goodness and in the coming one give you a hallowed daredevil spirit in lifting the biting sword of truth, consuming you with a passion that is called by the cultured citizen of Christendom fanaticism.

But known to God as that saintly madness that led his son through bloody sweat and hot tears to agony on a rude cross and glory. Imagine you open that birthday card and read that greeting from a brother.

It's a little different than the Facebook balloon explosions you see on your birthday, isn't it? This is a passionate appeal from brother to brother to be a fellow soldier in the gospel. To have that hallowed daredevil spirit that rejects the cultural conditioning that would make us silent.

That says I will not be silent anymore even if I'm known as a fanatic, as a radical. Yet, I will speak the name of Jesus. Because Jesus himself endured hot sweat and agonizing pain going to that rude cross and glory.

Jesus was no cultured Christian. Jesus was zealous and passionate and his trip to the cross and his resurrected glory speak to that passion and zeal. The more we begin to step out with that boldness, with that zeal, with that passion, with that saintly madness, as Jim Elliot calls it, the more opposition we're going to face.

The more we'll be like Hodea even in this culture. And so the main idea this morning, we will face opposition. But the God who controls all things has our lives in his hands. He will not allow us to be killed unless it's his will and even that will be to his glory.

He will protect his people through the ages and for all eternity. We are able to trust him. He will see us safely through the fire. That's what we're talking about. We're going to read it in Acts chapter 3 because things are going great so far for the early church.

But it's about to turn ugly at the beginning of chapter 4. So turn with me. If you have a device, a smartphone, you can just quickly look up Acts chapter 3. You'll find it quickly. We're using the English Standard Version.

We're picking up where we left off last week in verse 22 and we'll read to chapter 4 verse 22. Now, I'm going to read this large passage of Scripture. But I'll tell you what, God is able to speak to you directly through his word.

Maybe before I ever preach these words, you'll already have a word from the Lord that you needed to hear. So open your ears, listen to God's word. He's able to speak through his word. Acts 3 22 and following.

The Gospel According to the Scriptures

Moses said, the Lord will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.

And all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and those who came after him also proclaim these days. You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, and in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness. And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.

And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about 5 ,000. On the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander and all who were of the high priestly family.

And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, by what power or by what name did you do this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is standing before you well.

This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you. The builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition.

But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another, saying, what shall we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.

But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name. So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

But Peter and John answered them, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge. For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. And when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way to punish them because of the people.

For all were praising God for what had happened. For the man on whom this sign of healing was performed was more than 40 years old. Greater spiritual progress was taking place. Now we're told 5 ,000 believers in the city of Jerusalem.

But it's now met with greater spiritual and even physical opposition to the gospel, an attempt to silence them. So picking up in chapter 3, where we left off last week, we didn't really get time to go through this adequately.

I only want to point out from verse 21 to 25, notice that the gospel we preach, the person of Christ, the work of Christ, we call people to repentance and faith, the promise of forgiveness of sin and eternal life, all of this is according to the scriptures.

The gospel we preach is according to the scripture. So from 21 to 25, you see Peter is quoting from Moses, the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. He's speaking of Jesus as a fulfillment of Deuteronomy chapter 18 verses 15 and 18.

The greater prophet is Jesus, and whatever Jesus says, you must listen to. If you don't, you'll be broken against his word. You can't break his word, it will break you. In verse 24, all the prophets who have spoken.

So after Moses, there were other prophets to come. Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Zechariah, all of these spoke of these days. The days when Christ would come incarnate in the flesh.

He would walk our streets among us. He would die on that rude cross and rise from the dead. All 39 books of the Old Testament point to Christ. We, on a different day, could take time to look at those.

This morning in Sunday school, the teenagers looked at Zechariah chapter 9 verse 9. Remember that? 9 9. The king comes riding humbly, righteous and having salvation on a donkey, even the foal of a donkey.

Zechariah foretold that the coming king would enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey, and Jesus did that. We could talk about how he was born in Bethlehem according to Micah 5 2. Isaiah 53, the great poem about the suffering servant, how he would die and bear the iniquities not his own, but of a people.

We could talk about Psalm 22, which tell the details of how the Messiah would be crucified, pierced through his hands and feet, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth, none of his bones broken, but out of socket.

All of these prophecies were telling of the coming Messiah, and he fulfilled them all. But we don't have time to go into all of that now, as the writer of Hebrew says. Acts chapter 3 verse 25. I want to spend a few minutes on how it is that the gospel was offered first to Israel and then to the Gentiles.

Notice in verse 25, the sons of the prophets and the covenant that God made with your fathers. Who is Peter talking to? He's talking to the nation of Israel, and Israel is still Israel to this day. These are physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The 12 tribes that descended from Abraham are the people of Israel. Verse 26, God having raised up his servant, sent him to you first to bless you by turning every one of you Israelites from your wickedness.

Now up until this point, how many of the Israelites are believing? We're told it was 3 ,000, and now after this sermon we learn it's 5 ,000. So the vast majority of the Israelites are rejecting their Messiah.

A majority will reject, but a remnant will believe. Israel is still Israel. Today, in our day, there is a theological tradition, which is rather prominent, that when the church was born, Israel was replaced.

And the church is Israel, and Israel is the church. According to Jeremiah 31, verse 35 and 36, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day, and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar.

The Lord of hosts is his name. Now hear this. If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever. The sun is still standing in its course, the stars are still shining at night, the sea is still fixed, and so Israel is still Israel.

And from the beginning of time, from the beginning of Israel, you have seen persecution and opposition to the people of Israel. The church did not replace Israel, contrary to what some of the teachers say.

Israel is still a nation in God's sight, even though they've been hardened for a time, until the full remnant of the Gentiles come in. And then there'll be a great softening at the end of time. But notice this.

The people of God, the nation of Israel, has been persecuted from the beginning. Pharaoh tried to throw the newborn boys into the Nile River. They were brought out of that bondage and brought into the promised land, but before long, conquered by a people bent to destroy the Assyrians, and before that, the Babylonians.

No, the Assyrians, then the Babylonians. Taken into captivity. What happened? Held in captivity now by the Persians. A wicked man named Haman worked a plot to utterly destroy the Israelites. But in the providence of God, Esther was there for such a time as this, to deliver God's people.

At the time of Christ, Herod tried to kill the Christ, and in so doing, attacked all the boys of Bethlehem. In 70 AD, Rome came through Israel and utterly ruined the place, killing women and children, men, destroying the Israelites, and sending them, scattering them to the end of the earth.

In 1492, those who ended up in Spain while Columbus sailed the ocean blue, that same year, the Spanish drove the Israelites out of their country, and sadly, we all know what happened here in the 1900s.

The late 1930s, early 1940s, Adolf Hitler tried to exterminate the Jews. I learned from my brother that actually Stalin almost accomplished the same thing in the early 1950s. In 1952, and then into early 1953, he hatched a plot to exterminate the Jews who were living in the Soviet Union.

It was called the Doctor's Plot. He falsely accused a number of Jewish doctors and tried to rally the people against them. Then he was going to step in as the great deliverer, and instead of killing all the Jews, send them off to concentration camps in Siberia.

He died of a stroke before he pulled it off, and the person who followed him did not believe in the plot, and all that came to nothing. But don't you know, to this day, Israel is still Israel, and there are nations surrounding them, bent on wiping them off the face of the earth.

Psalm 83, three and four, they lay crafty plans against your people. They consult together against your treasured ones. They say, come, let us wipe them out as a nation. Let the name of Israel be remembered no more.

We needed to take a moment to realize that there is great persecution against the nation of Israel, because Israel is still Israel. Jesus was offered to them first, and now in chapter four, verse one, while Peter is preaching the gospel, speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed.

D .L. Moody said, do not think you will have no battles if you follow the Nazarene, because many battles are before you. Yet, if I had ten thousand lives, Jesus Christ should have every one of them. Men do not object to a battle if they are confident that they will have victory.

And thank God, every one of us may have the victory. Greater spiritual progress means more spiritual opposition. This was a time of great gospel explosion, of preaching of Christ. Brother, sister, as you begin to step out in faith and open your mouth to proclaim Jesus, expect more, not less, opposition.

As you embrace Christ as Lord and Savior and begin to walk fully devoted as a follower of Christ, don't expect an easy road. Read the Pilgrim's Progress. You'll have to fight Apollyon. You'll have to battle Vanity Fair.

Your goings forth will be difficult, not easy. And yet, the victory is yours. It is worth the battle. And if I had one life to live, excuse me, if I had ten thousand lives to live, as D .L. Moody said, Jesus Christ would have every one of them.

This difficult journey, it's worth the pain. It's worth the suffering. So in chapter four, verse three, they arrest them. And can you imagine the sons and daughters watching their daddies being dragged off into prison?

Can you imagine the crying of the wives holding on to their arms, then having to let them go? Put yourself in that situation. These are the usual suspects. Caiaphas and Annas and Alexander. We learn these are the ones that crucified the Lord.

Being arrested, the expectation here is they're not coming home. Crucifixion could await them too. This is danger, great danger. Acts chapter four, verse five, on the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem.

These wicked men, Annas, Caiaphas, John Alexander, the high priestly family. And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, by what power or by what name did you do this? Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed?

Pause there, notice what Peter is doing. He's bringing some perspective to the situation. Almost like, let's review. You're telling me to account for a poor crippled man who is now healed. This is the problem that we're addressing, right?

He's putting this in perspective before he proclaims the name of Jesus. Verse 10, let it be known to you and all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, he's preaching the gospel.

By him, this man is standing before you well. And here is the issue. The dividing line in this world, the stumbling block or the building stone, the thing that separates sheep and goat, is the name of Jesus Christ.

When you're working building a tree fort for your kid and you accidentally hit your thumb with that hammer, you don't yell, Buddha! But if a curse word comes to your mouth, very often it's the name of Jesus.

It's the name that stirs up that rage in unbelievers. And hopefully none of us take the Lord's name in vain, but notice that tradition to use the name of Jesus as a byword. And yet, it's the name of Jesus that saves.

Now, our culture in America is founded on religious freedom. The Puritans who escaped the persecution of the state-run churches came to a new land and established the land of the free, where you can practice any religion that you desire.

And Satan and his minions know this, and so there will be no penalty from the state, at least at this point in history, for preaching the name of Christ. Did you think that Lucifer has given up on this country?

Do you think that his demons have given up on you? Or could it be that he's taking a different track with us? You see, in our culture, there's a different way to keep us silent. And it's not government opposition, it's not wicked rulers to drag us into court, it's the court of public opinion, it's the court of cultural conditioning, it's the mindset of this country called tolerance, which is a misnomer because we do tolerate anyone by not oppressing them and not persecuting them.

But under the banner of tolerance, our culture will say that you are not allowed to hold your truth as absolute and certain. We call it post-modernism, right? We've talked about it a lot here. Relativism, that all truth is personal, whatever you believe to be true is right and true, just because you believe it.

And in this culture that we live in, that mindset punishes anyone who dares to preach the name of Christ. It shames you into silence. I can't walk to the cubicle next to mine to tell someone about Jesus because they'll think I'm shoving religion down their throat.

Keep your religion to yourself, it's your private truth, but don't push your truth on me, I have my own. That's the court of public opinion about which you have to stand up and make a stand. And so listen to the words of Peter, because they apply just as much to me and you in the gym, at the workplace, out on the street, hanging out at the park.

Will you have the boldness to preach the name of Christ when our culture says you are not to speak that name? Peter says, this Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.

And hear this verse, there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. What boldness, preaching the name in opposition to Christ, verses 13 to 18, attempts will be made to silence Christians.

Now we've read this, seeing the man who was healed, they can't say anything. Nevertheless, they confer together, verse 16, what shall we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

We cannot deny it. So what is their plan? In order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name. They call them in and they command them to be silent.

John Bunyan was a preacher in England a few hundred years ago. They commanded him to stop preaching and they locked him up in jail. But on this condition, if he would merely sign his name stating that he will be silent and he will stop preaching, he could go free.

At any point he could have walked out of that prison, but he refused to be silent. Meanwhile, his wife was raising four children at home. His little daughter was blind. Think of our brother John Bunyan, a father sitting in jail rather than to sign that paper while his blind daughter is at home.

What is that spirit? Do we share in it? I will not be silent. I will preach the name of Christ. After 12 years, he was set free and he was returned to his family. But during those 12 years, he wrote the second most influential Christian book of all time.

The first is the Bible. The second is the Pilgrim's Progress. He wrote that book while sitting in jail, unable to speak, bound by the government, and yet with his pen has reached multiplied millions, probably billions of people who have read that book and been stirred to greater Christian devotion.

What are we willing to suffer for the name? The danger in America is that we don't have to suffer. We're so comfortable. There is no persecution. Has it lulled us to sleep? Verses 19 and following, but Peter and John answered them, whether it is right to listen to you or to God, you decide, but we must preach.

I love the passion of that answer. I love the passion of John Bunyan. I love the passion of that woman who's in Kenya right now. Last month, her children were attacked for the name of Jesus, and yet she will still preach.

She will not be silent. As I was thinking of this, I wanted some way to communicate the emotion of this passage. So sometimes I write poetry, and I've written this one. It came to me a couple days ago.

It's a back and forth between the Sadducees, scribes, and Pharisees, and the Christians who will not be silent. Tell us how you have done this. Reveal what power in name. Power that raises a lame man.

Name to stake the claim. Admit you're in league with the devil, summoning magical power. Name the demon you contact, bent to destroy and devour. A crippled man and a beggar. Must be a great sinner, you said.

Now walking and leaping and praising. A crown of joy on his head. Here you drag us before you. There is your sinner now clean. We'll tell you the name with such power. Jesus the Nazarene. Curse that name with its power.

You dare to speak it here. Courage is yours for a moment. Time will replace it with fear. Curse be that prophet you follow. See he was hung on a tree. We have the power to chain you, or power to set us, to set you free.

This is the thing you are facing. You'll find that you sized it wrong. Less like a puddle you're crossing, more like an ocean long. The name will always be spoken, gaining ever-increasing fame. The power can never be silenced.

The power of Jesus name. Speak no more in this name, under penalty of your demise. We've tested your so-called Christ and deemed his words to be lies. You're deceived and deceiving others. Uneducated men of the sea.

So go now. Say nothing more. Go silent to Galilee. Judge for yourselves what is better, to listen to you or to God? Yes, we will go to Galilee. The mere start of the path we will trod. Over mountains and seas we will travel.

On housetops we will proclaim. Jesus is Lord over all the earth. His name is above every name. You can understand why they killed James. Not long after this they tried to kill others. These were bold Christians who were taking the name to Jerusalem and wherever they went.

They would be scattered and wherever they would go they'd preach the name. And so the name has come to us brothers and sisters in closing. We bear that name. We're called Christian. We bear the name of Christ.

And yet this culture would make us silent for the sake of John Bunyan who sat in jail for 12 years while his blind daughter was home without him. For the sake of our brothers and sisters in Kenya today, Saudi Arabia, all the Muslim countries that are bent to destroy Israel.

For the sake of suffering brothers and sisters persecuted around the world, do not be silent. Make up your mind that this culture will no longer shame you into silence. Wherever you go, carry that name.

Take the name of Jesus to your family as hard as it is to do. Many will not want to hear it. And the more you go and the stronger you preach, the more the opposition you'll face. Life will be easier if you ignore me this morning.

Easier for me if I ignore what I'm saying to myself. I'm preaching to me. Take this name with boldness. Let no one shame you into silence. Our theology must include an expectation of suffering. This is the application.

We ought to expect it in times of great gospel advancement. Opposition will intensify. I am seeing an intensification of our gospel outreach. More people coming to Christ. The church growing. We should expect Satan will begin to attack.

Fight that spirit. We are in a season of gospel advance, so let's pray for protection from opposition. Let's overcome any opposition that may arise. Let's be full of the spirit and sharpen the word. And let's not be silent.

I close with Habakkuk 3, 7 and 19. Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like the deer's. He makes me tread on my high places. Let's close in prayer. Worship team, if you'll come. We're going to finish with a final song.

As we all bow our heads to pray, maybe you've never called on that name above every name. Maybe you've never been born again. Maybe today is the day that your eyes are being open that Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead, and there is salvation in no one else, no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved.

Maybe now is your time to be saved. If you want to trust him to take away your sin, just in the quietness of your heart, call on his name. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Say, Jesus, save me.

In the quietness of your heart, say, take my sin away. I am a sinner. I repent from my sin, and I turn to Jesus to save me. If you've done that, if you've just prayed that prayer, come talk to myself or one of the other elders afterwards.

Let us know so we can give you a Bible. We can encourage you as a new Christian. Get baptized on Easter Sunday, but now I'm talking to all of us, every Christian in this room. Take that name, the name that is above every name, and speak it boldly.

Don't let this culture shame us with their guilt messages, but know that we have the name that saves. Pray right now. Say something like this. Say, Lord, give me courage. Ask him for boldness. Say, Lord, give me boldness.

Let me welcome opposition as just greater opportunity for the preaching of the name. Let me not be afraid, not be ashamed. I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

Thank you, Father, for giving us the name that is above every name, the name of Jesus. Amen. Let's stand and worship.