Book Of Acts - What Does Obedience To Christ Look Like?

God Centered Theology

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Today we want to ask the question, what does obedience to Christ look like? You've heard me talk a lot about obedience to Christ in the book of Colossians because we covered, and this is why these two books will go together really well as we, at some points we'll go back to Colossians as we move along with this, because it brings out the supremacy of Christ, the fact that He is the head over all rule and authority.

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He is the one who rescued us. He is the one who reconciled us. But it is also He in chapter 2, if you spend some time this week reading the book of Acts and some of the places we did the first 11 verses of chapter 1 last week, today we're going to kind of be in 2 and 3 and 4 in different spots.

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But I encourage you to go back and read chapters 1 through 4 straight through, and you'll see in chapter 2 in the day of Pentecost came, and the

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Holy Spirit came to dwell believers, and all those good things that happened, but it is Christ's church. He is the one who has all authority over it, and our obedience to Him is the hallmark of a believer in Christ.

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Obedience is also the expectation for His people and for His church.

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So it stands to reason that God's people need to know what obedience to their Savior Jesus Christ looks like and then go out and do it.

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It is one of the things that I'm starting to work into the conversation in the many different places that I am, whether it's

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Sunday school, Wednesday night, etc., is we need to stop talking about ministry and just simply do ministry.

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And ministry is a function of our obedience to Christ. Number 1, what we're going to see this morning is that obedience to Christ, it involves obedience to Christ in word, in word.

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Acts chapter 2, if you have your Bibles, we're going to be skipping over today so I won't have the verses on screen, but if you have your

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Bibles you can follow along with me. Acts chapter 2, verse 37, it says, Now when they heard this, and this comes on the heels of Peter's first sermon, the first sermon ever given in the church.

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Many of us pastors through the years have given sermon after sermon after sermon, but it all goes back to the first sermon

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Peter gave in the newly established church. And it says, Now when they had heard this, meaning his sermon, they were pierced or convicted in their hearts, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles,

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Brethren, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the

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Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the

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Lord our God will call to himself. And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying,

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Be saved from this perverse generation. So then those who had received his word were baptized, and that day were added about three thousand souls.

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Peter doesn't preach philosophy. He doesn't preach some college textbook on math or anything of the kind, although all those things are important.

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But as it pertains to our spiritual life and our eternal destiny, there was only one name that matters,

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Jesus Christ. Peter preaches Jesus. Acts chapter 8, the

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Ethiopian eunuch, when we get that far, we'll see that what that eunuch needed is the same thing these people needed, is the same thing we need, the same thing

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Emporia needs, the same thing the whole world needs, and that's Jesus Christ.

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And as we saw last week, our sermons, the sermons of Calvary Baptist Church that you all have a hand in, in your prayers and support, not only for me but for the other ones that preach from this pulpit, are reaching forty -one different countries in this world.

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Jesus is being preached. He preached repentance and faith in Christ.

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Now I'm not going to get into the whole theological nuts and bolts here, but this verse 38 is largely used by those that preach a baptismal regeneration and think baptism is part of salvation.

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I'm not going to get into a whole long discussion about that, but suffice it to say that one of the things we do when we interpret

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Scripture is that if your interpretation of a particular verse or a passage would bring you in contradiction with another clear portion of Scripture, then you know that your interpretation of said verse or passage is incorrect.

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So any interpretation of Acts 2, 37 -42, which would bring you to any decision that thinks baptism is necessary for salvation, you would be in error, because as we're going to see in other places, specifically in chapter 3, verse 16, and other places,

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Romans chapter 10, confess with your mouth, believe with the heart, it's clear in Scripture that salvation is by faith alone.

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Baptism here is something they did because they had been saved. And Peter specifically brings this out because these particular people, to be baptized and publicly identified with Jesus Christ would be a huge departure from what they had done in Judaism.

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To step out and say, I am publicly identifying by immersion into water with baptism with Jesus Christ was a huge mark of obedience for them.

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Now today in our circles it may be sort of, you know, we call believers baptism. It's just something that goes along with stuff.

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We may not think too much of it, but we need to stop and think, and it's something I will probably put more stress on the next time

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I do a baptism, is the fact that this is a huge mark of obedience to Christ, just simply by being baptized.

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The very act of repentance, which he calls them to come and do, the very act of repentance is an act of saving faith.

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Because why? As Romans 8, 7 tells us, the mind set on the flesh is hostile towards God.

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It does not subject itself to the law of God, because it is not even able to do so.

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Paul spends a lot of time differentiating and contrasting the mind set on the flesh, the unsaved mind, with the mind set on the

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Spirit, the saved mind. He says the mind set on the flesh is not neutral. It doesn't just need a nice gentle nudge, and it will somehow just be this wonderful Christian.

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It's hostile toward God. We covered this at the tail end of Colossians 1.

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It said you were formerly engaged in evil deeds, but now have been reconciled to Christ, and now because of this reconciliation you can be presented holy and blameless and beyond reproach to God the

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Father. Repentance is a change of mind, a change of purpose, something that the unsaved mind and heart is incapable of doing.

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It takes the power of God working in a heart, taking out the heart of stone, replacing it with the heart of flesh.

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So the very act of repentance, being convicted of your sin, understanding that you're a sinner, being sorrowful over your sin, and wanting to turn from that sin to God, is in itself an act of faith.

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And as we know, our faith is the only instrument by which we are saved. Not according to works, not according to anything that we have done, but based on the accomplished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

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The heart that sees its need for repentance is a heart that has been changed by the power of God, and it is a heart that has true faith in Jesus Christ.

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Any gospel message, and our goal is always to make it as simple as we can because it is a simple grace -filled message, but any gospel that leaves out repentance from sin is not the biblical gospel.

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Now this does not mean you have to repent of literally every sin you've ever done. The idea is that you're sorrowful over the fact that you're a sinner, that your sin makes you hostile towards God.

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Your sin is an affront to God. It is an act of rebellion against God. It is an act of hatred towards God.

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It is on that mark that we are sorrowful, and we repent and turn from it. It is a turning from sin to God.

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This can only be accomplished by conviction of sin, which is, in and of itself, part of our faith in Christ, and this faith we put in Christ is all that is required.

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God does not require us to clean ourselves up. He does not require us to be perfect.

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He does not require us to go a certain amount of years and show that we can obey Him first. We are saved unto obedience.

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Obedience does not save us. That's why when I preach I say obedience is the hallmark of the believer.

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Obedience is not the mechanism by which a person is brought into the kingdom. Now we will also say that any person that names the name of Christ and shows no transformation in their life, while we can't judge the heart and we would never want to make judgments on whether someone is saved or not, we would need to call that person to accountability and say, hey, look.

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In Matthew 18 style, I go to my brother in private and say, look man, or sir or madam, you name the name of Christ, you say you've been transformed from the inside out.

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Your life habitually shows a walking according to sin and according to the world. The Savior that we trust in calls us into obedience, and no

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Christian will have perfect obedience in this life, but a Christian will have obedience, and a

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Christian will be sanctified continually to the degree that we pursue sanctification.

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We will see it occur in our life, and our Christ likeness will grow, and we will image His Son better, and we will be able to do ministry better.

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John MacArthur, one of my favorite preachers in his commentary on the book of Acts, says the following about repentance. Great paragraph.

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I want to read it to you word for word. He says, although Peter's hearers feared God's judgment, and let me pause there for a second to give you context.

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He basically preaches a sermon that says, look, not only was your Messiah crucified, but you crucified

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Him. You were the ones that turned Him over. They wanted to give Him up, and you said, no, give us

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Barabbas, crucify Christ. How bad would it be to know that not only was your

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Messiah crucified, but that you were directly responsible for it. And these people feared the wrath of God.

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They no doubt feared the judgment of God for this act. I mean, all sin is bad. Sin is sin.

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But I would think that causing the Savior to be crucified was a pretty bad one. I'd be fearing the wrath of God as well.

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But MacArthur points out that although Peter's hearers feared His judgment, true repentance, obedience to Christ in word and what we preach and teach and say not only to each other, but to the people in the world, this true repentance that we're to call people to, and this trust and faith in Jesus Christ involves more than just fear of consequences.

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Too many people in my life that I've encountered, including myself at one point in my early 20s, was more concerned about consequences for my sin than the fact that I had sinned against the

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Holy and Righteous and Almighty God. Any person that tells you they're sorry over their sin, they want to repent of their sin, they want to confess their sin, but they're only doing it to avoid consequences is not truly repentant.

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They may have repentance to a degree, but they're only repentant insofar as they're trying to avoid consequences.

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Fear of judgment, fear of wrath, fear of consequences may get us to a place where we will walk and turn in true obedience and repentance, but the fear of consequences itself is not true repentance.

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True repentance hates sin for what it is as an affront to God. Knowing that sin is evil and that God hates it motivates the truly repentant person to forsake it.

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Genuine repentance thus forsakes sin and turns in total commitment to Jesus Christ.

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Repentance is a change of mind. Watch this now. Repentance is a change of mind that issues a change in behavior.

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Repentance is a change of mind that issues a change in behavior.

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We are a new creature in Christ. We have been transformed. We will continually be transformed by the renewing of our mind,

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Romans 12, 1 -2. We're not to be conformed to this world. Why? We're in the world, we're not out there.

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True repentance, true saving faith is a turning from sin and a turning to God.

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And this is what we're to preach in our words. It is involved in our obedience to Christ in word.

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And then secondly, it involves what does obedience to Christ look like? It involves obedience to Christ in deed.

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Same chapter, verse 42, they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.

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It's not enough to just say or preach what we believe.

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But our obedience must be active and visible and in accordance with the truth of God's word.

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We do not submit to religion. We do not submit to tradition. We do not submit to man or the world or as we covered in Colossians 2 -8, the empty traditions, the empty deceit of the traditions of men and the elementary principles of this world.

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This is why these two books go well together. What we're learning in Colossians feeds what we're seeing in Acts. We do not submit to those things.

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Why? We always submit to God's word and to Jesus Christ. And that submission, as we just saw with true repentance in the first point, will issue forth a change in behavior in the life of the believer.

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These people, as it says in verse 42, were devoted and continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching.

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These apostles, which would include Paul, John, Peter, the ones that wrote the

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New Testament, they were on the ground teaching these things then. Also, they would go on to write the

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New Testament. And every pastor since has preached this book, the

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New Testament, which is in accordance with the apostles teaching, which is in accordance with Christ and His word, because after all it is

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His word, and it is the Anustos, and His spirit breathed. Men carried along as the

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Holy Spirit moved them to pen the words of this book. That is what we are to devote ourselves to, the teaching of the word of God.

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And that is the only thing we are to be submitting ourselves to. Walking according to the truth,

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Colossians 2 .6, remember that? Walk. If you believe in Christ, so walk in Him.

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See the balance? This is one of the most beautiful things to me about Scripture. This is why I get so excited to preach, because there is balance, there is harmony, there is no contradiction, there is no mixture of error, it supports, it is complimentary of each other.

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We see how these two books come together. But walking according to truth will have many results in the life of the believer, and in the church, including, verse 43 it says,

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Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe, and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.

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And all those who had believed were together, had all things in common, agape love on display right there.

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And they began selling their property and possessions, and were sharing them with all as anyone might have need.

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Now look, we are not commanded in our day to sell everything we have and just give it to the church. I think on the individual level sometimes

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God puts it on our heart, that if we have some things He may want us to do something with our money.

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There is an element of tithing, but there is also an element of sacrificial giving. So those things are always at play.

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And as the Holy Spirit directs you, I know that sometimes in my life we felt like we did not give enough, whether it was money, or time, or devotion to prayer, whatever it is.

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Sometimes we feel led to give more. But the thing is, the reason you do not have a law that governs everything about the church is because Romans chapter 12 tells us that everything we are, everything we have belongs to Christ.

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If you see anything as being yours, you are in error. Now God does not come and command that we literally on every single day of our life may sell or give up everything.

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But we are told to take up our cross and follow Him, which means anything that I have that I hold on to tightly,

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I see it as mine. If God requires it of me, I am to give it to Him.

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And it just so happened in the early church they needed to have that ultra, super sense of community.

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I would argue that while we may not all go out and sell everything we have tomorrow and bring it all to the church and lay it at the church's feet like they did in the early church,

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I would argue that the principle applies. We should see each other's needs as so vitally important, even to the point of being more important than ourselves, that any need our brother or sister has, we would do anything we could to meet it.

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It may involve money, it may involve time, it may involve you just giving them a shoulder to cry on. Day by day, continuing with one mind in the temple.

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Sound familiar? Philippians 2 from about three weeks ago. Part of the unity in Christ? One mind, one spirit.

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Breaking bread from house to house, so on and so forth. This walking according to the truth has many results in lives and also in the church.

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Number three, it involves obedience to Christ, even if it goes against established or traditional religion or false authority.

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In chapter three in the book of Acts, I'm not going to read the verses this morning, you can go back and read them for time purposes,

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I'll just give you the summary. But Peter and John, I will read for you verse one, it says, now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the ninth hour, which would have been 3

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PM, which was the hour of prayer. They were going to the temple to pray.

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It was what they did. It was the tradition, it was the religion. It's what they did. And they stop and see the lame beggar, and they stop and heal him.

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The whole story, you know, silver and gold have I none, but that which I have I give unto thee, in the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk.

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The American church in particular has way too many traditions, too much legalism. It stifles true obedience to Christ because man ultimately ends up determining that what he wants is more important.

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Thankfully we have an example in the book of Acts of Peter and John giving us an example of what true obedience looks like when we put

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Christ above everything else. Does that mean that this prayer they were going to wasn't important?

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No, sure it's important. Does it mean that if this lame beggar hadn't been there that day they probably wouldn't have went on into the temple and prayed?

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Yeah, sure, none of those things. But we're going to see in a minute that it made a lot of people really mad.

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They broke from routine. They broke from tradition. They broke from the established religion of the day.

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And because of it true obedience to Christ was demonstrated and the power of God was seen in the healing of this man.

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This true obedience produced genuine praise for God.

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Verse 8 says, With a leap he stood upright and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising

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God. Religion, traditions, man -made rules stifles obedience.

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It stifles joy. It stifles enthusiasm. True obedience where Christ is put first,

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His Word is put first, agape love, others needs are put first. We obey

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God. We serve the needs of others. We serve our community. We have a connection to our community. It produces joy in the life of the believer.

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It produces enthusiasm in the life of the believer. God gets praise. God gets the glory.

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And people around us will see Christ. Skipping ahead to chapter 4, verse 7.

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This is up to the point where they have already been put in jail and now they've been drug in front of the leaders. It says,

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When they had placed them in the center, they began to inquire, By what power or in what name have you done this?

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They're before these rulers, these chiefs, these people that were in the authority.

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They're basically saying, How dare you think that you can go and do this? We find out later in the chapter they primarily said this because well, they're untrained men.

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They don't know what we know. They haven't done what we've done. They don't, you know, they don't have no right to be doing that, healing some guy.

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What did you think was going to happen? These people are going to see this healing? And now they're going to be wanting to follow you and not us.

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That's what it all came down to. They saw it as a potential for them to lose their authority. They saw it as a potential for them to lose their reach and their stranglehold in Judaism over these people.

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And they're preaching Jesus to people in Judaism because they want to free them from Judaism and set them free in Christ.

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But these rulers saw Peter and John as not being worthy or having any authority to do what they did.

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So they were basically saying this. And then John will find out. They go on to say it's on the authority of Jesus Christ that we do what we do.

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Lastly, this morning, number four, it will involve obedience to Christ even when there is satanic opposition.

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Chapter four, verse one, if you're looking with me in your Bibles, it says, as they were speaking to the people.

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So let's fill in our context. Chapter two, Day of Pentecost, Peter gives his first sermon. Beginning of chapter three, they're heading to the temple to pray.

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They heal the lame beggar. On the heels of that, Peter gives his second sermon. And then they're dragged before the rulers.

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It was already evening, so they throw them in jail for the night. They bring them out the next day and start to question them.

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Who do you think you are? What are you doing? By what name are you doing this? But notice, before they get thrown in jail, it says in chapter four, verse one, as they were speaking to the people, they were being obedient.

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They were being obedient to Christ. They were out there doing, not talking about ministry, doing ministry.

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They were doing what Christ had commanded them to do. Last week, you should be my witnesses.

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Preach the gospel. Make disciples. They were out there doing it. And in the midst of obeying Christ, guess who showed up?

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Satan. That's why our fall revival this year in October is going to be on spiritual warfare.

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We need to be equipped. We need to understand the enemy's tactics. We need to understand what to expect.

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We need to understand how to stand firm. We need to understand how to fight back, because it says, on this rock

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I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That means the church is on offense, not defense.

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And we're throwing a Hail Mary every time. Not because we're throwing for our dear life, but because we know we're going to score a touchdown every time.

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Obedience always brings blessing. And He brought it in their lives, even though right after this speaking to the people, they get thrown in jail.

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How do I know that? Well, because verse four says, but many of those who had heard the message, what message?

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The message they were speaking to the people in obedience to Christ, right before they get thrown into jail.

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It says, but many of those who had heard the message believed. They believed.

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They had faith in Christ. And the number of the men came to be about five thousand.

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If I'm not mistaken, I didn't do thorough homework on this, but I believe this is the last time the book of Acts where a specific number is mentioned.

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And you know why? Because God was adding so many people so quickly to the church that I honestly don't think they had time to even count.

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God blesses churches that are in obedience to Him, and one of those blessings is numeric growth.

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God wants His people to be in healthy churches, so it stands to reason that a healthy, functioning, unified, obeying church to the

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Word of God will see numeric growth. How much, how soon is up to God, not us.

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But it is a blessing that He will send to His healthy churches. Any opposition to Christ, which then being thrown into jail, then being drugged before rulers, all this, all opposition to Christ is sin.

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All opposition to God's Word is sin. Peter and John experienced satanic opposition for obeying

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Christ rather than man. Sometimes the attacks and persecution and opposition in the spiritual war can feel overwhelming at times, but we must press on and press forward.

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Why? Because Satan wants you to feel defeated. Whether you're running a business, whether you're working for some other employer at an office or at a food line or a subway, wherever it is, he wants to get you pressured, and he wants to get you overwhelmed.

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I'm going to borrow a line from my pastor from his sermon last week. He was talking about sharing faith effectively, and he says, he was pointing to his people and saying, all of you have an advantage over me.

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He says, all of you will get up tomorrow and you'll go to work with a bunch of unsaved people. He says,

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I go to church every day. For me, I'm at church with Glenda every day, and we're both saved and going to heaven.

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We're not around a bunch of unsaved people all day at a food line or a subway or an office building or a lawyer's office.

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That's why it's my job to equip you to do the work of ministry so that you can image Christ out there in the world.

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And obedience brings belief in Christ as God works in people's hearts, uses your example.

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He'll bring them into the community, bring them into the kingdom, bring them into the church. We can make them disciples of Christ, go and do ministry, and the church and the believers involved in that local church are blessed because of their obedience.

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That's my vision for this church. That's what I want to see happen. It's what can happen.

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Watch this. Why? Because the Bible says it can happen. And I believe the Bible. They're thrown in jail, they're persecuted, they're commanded.

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And our last spot for today before we wrap this up, the same chapter 4, verse 17, they've inquired, they've talked to them, they've kicked them out to decide what they're going to do.

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They bring them back in, it says, but so that it will, but so that it, meaning the message of Christ, will not spread any further among the people, let us warn them to speak no longer to any man in this name, or in the name of Christ.

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And when they had summoned them, brought them back in, they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

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They said, don't you go around doing that. Don't even think about it. And if you do, there's going to be consequences.

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Verse 19, but Peter and John answered and said to them, whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge.

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But we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard. My friends,

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Satan wants you to be defeated. He wants you to give up. And in those moments when you feel overwhelmed, you feel pressured, you feel persecuted, and you're tempted with giving up, you stand firm.

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You press on. You move forward. Why? Because you cannot help but speak and do and be an example of what you have seen and heard.

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And my friends, Jesus is real. Heaven is real. The Bible is true.

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And every single man and woman and child will give an answer to God Almighty one day.

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We need to love them enough to let them know that there's a Savior. Sin is real.

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It needs to be confronted. It needs to be repented of. It needs to be forsaken. And we need to turn to Christ.

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And our obedience in that manner, my friends, will set this church on fire. You won't even be able to contain it.

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We'll be having meeting after meeting every single week, begging and trying to figure out, what are we going to do?

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People's pouring in here. We've got lives and needs to meet, and we're not ready for it because God's blessing our obedience.

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It'll never come if we say, it has to be this way because I said so.

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The obedience and the blessing that comes from obedience comes when we do what God says because He said so.

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And that is what obedience looks like in the life of a believer and in the church.