This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom, I want to welcome you to week two of our look together
through the book of Acts. We're going to chapter a day from now on, we went a
little bit slower through the first couple of chapters, that's where the
explosion happens, and now we're going to get to see how that works itself out
in the life of the church. And it works itself out in ways that you might not
expect.

Up until now, it's all been success, it's all been joy, it's all been victory.
Listen to what happens in Acts chapter four verses one to four. The priests and
the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John
while they were speaking to the people.

They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and
proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They seized Peter and John,
and because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. But many
who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about 5,000.

One of the questions we want to ask ourselves as we walk through this book of
Acts is, what should a church really look like? And many don't understand the
basic truth of what a church should look like, and so they end up with
disappointment. You hear people say things like, "I want to be in a first
century church.

" And I know what's in their minds, they're thinking, "I want to be in a perfect
church. " Well, if you ever find a perfect church, don't join it because then it
would become imperfect because you're sure not perfect, I'm sure not perfect, I
couldn't join it either. And the truth of the matter is, neither was the first
century church perfect.

Acts chapter four to seven, which we're going to focus on much of this week,
shows the real truth about what life was like in the Jerusalem church, the
troubles and the struggles that they went through. It shows the real tension
that was in the church. When you get a hold of the truths we're going to talk
about today, you can become a healthy part of the body of Christ for the rest of
your life.

Not living in some disappointment, hoping for something that's never going to
happen, but instead living out the life of the Spirit in the reality of what
goes on in this world. When we get to heaven, it's going to be perfect. On
earth, we hit earth.

And so how do you live out the life of the Spirit on earth? Well, you realize
there's always a tension in what happens in the church. There's the good and
then there's the bad.

There's the victory, but there's also the battle. We're going to walk through
some of those battle points these next few days together. The first tension
we're going to look at in Acts chapter four is the tension that with boldness
there is always opposition.

There is boldness in proclaiming there's always opposition to what we're
proclaiming. Listen to what happens in verses five to ten. The next day the
rulers, the elders, and teachers of the law met in Jerusalem.

Annas, the high priest, was there, and so were Caiaphas, and John, and
Alexander, and the other men of the high priest's family. They had Peter and
John brought before them and began to question them, "By what power or name did
you do this? " And then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them,
"Rulers and elders of the people, if we are being called to account today for an
act of kindness shown to a cripple, and are asked how he was healed, then know
this, you and all the people of Israel, it is by the name of Jesus Christ of
Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead, that this man
stands before you healed.

" In Acts chapter four, you see two groups going in two opposite directions, the
church and the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin, they were going in the direction of
blandness. The church was going in the direction of boldness.

The Sanhedrin, this was a group of 71 men presided over by the current high
priests. Three groups were in this group of Sanhedrin. They had elders and
scribes and priests, and they were divided into two parties, Sadducees and
Pharisees.

And they were evasive and elusive, and even in this confrontation, they refer to
the miracle as this, "Did you do this? " They couldn't even say what had
happened, the miracle of what God had done in healing the man who was lame. This
group that's all about one thing, holding on to what they have.

That's why they killed Jesus. That's why they brought Peter and John before them
now. Holding on to what they have.

You have the Sanhedrin, they're about blandness, then you have the disciples,
they're about boldness. 12 men at the beginning of this early church, and they
are one group with one goal, not holding on to what they have. Their goal is
giving away what they've been given by Jesus Christ.

Giving away what they have. That's the difference. The difference isn't their
background.

Some people act as if one's Jewish and one's Christian. They're all Jewish
background, both the Sanhedrin and these early apostles. They all have the same
cultural heritage.

That's not the difference. The difference is their motivation. One is trying to
hold on to what they have.

The other is giving away what they've been given. And because of the difference,
it can be seen even by these bland men. In verse 13, the Bible says, "When they
saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled
ordinary men, they were astonished, and they took note that these men had been
with Jesus.

" They took note of what God and only God can do in their lives and through
their lives. One part of this group was protective, was defensive. The other was
powerful and dynamic.

One was maintained, the bland Sanhedrin, by preservation. The other was
maintained by prayer. One was filled with the Spirit.

The other were filled with themselves. We live in a fairly bland world at times.
It's all about tolerance.

We live in a world that will fall for anything. What do you do when you're
slammed down because you stand for something? The answer is in the lives of
these early apostles, this early church.

The answer is you praise God. The answer is you pray with others. You cannot be
bold alone.

It is a team sport. So you do what they did. You recognize the place of God.

He is the sovereign Lord, they say. You recognize the plan of God. He's got a
plan for your life, and you ask for boldness.

Listen to what happened, verses 29 to 31. "Now, Lord, consider their threats,
and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out
your hand to heal and perform miracles, signs, and wonders, through the name of
your holy servant Jesus.

After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken, and they were
all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God boldly. " Prayer
is not an escape from responsibility. Prayer is, in essence, our response to
God's ability.

Philip Brooks once said, "Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men
and women. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers.

Pray for powers that are equal to your tasks. " And so they didn't ask for
protection. They asked for power.

They didn't ask God to remove the opposition. They asked for boldness to be able
to face the opposition, to face what only God could do. Notice that their prayer
resulted in action, and so they spoke boldly.

When God's people get out of balance, we overemphasize either God's sovereignty
or our responsibility. The church always loses its power. They held on to both
God's sovereignty and then their responsibility to live out what God's
sovereignty meant.

They didn't just pray and sit in an upper room. No, they went out from that
upper room, but they also didn't just go out from the upper room. They prayed,
and they depended on God.

Augustine once said, "Pray as though everything depends on God, and work as
though everything depends upon you. " That's what I want to do. That's what I
want you to do.

That's the way that I want us to live in the power of God. Let's take a moment
right now to pray together. Jesus, the secret is prayer.

But you know, there's many times when my prayers, they're all about what I need
in that moment. They're all about the hurts that I have. And I know, Lord, you
want me to talk to you about my needs for daily bread.

You want me to talk to you about the hurts in my life. But I also know you want
me to pray for boldness. So we pray together for it now.

Lord, consider those things that keep us from speaking out in your name, whether
it's our own hesitancy, whether it's our own embarrassment, whether it's the
threat of what might happen in a job or in our home, what others might think of
us. Consider those things that to us are threats. And enable your servants to
speak your word, we pray, with great boldness.

Lord, change our hearts. Give us opportunities. Open the doors so we can let
people around us know the good news of what you have done in our lives.

We need you. We need what only you can do in our lives. And so right now we
trust you.

We trust you. Lord, in trusting you, we know that our lives might be shaken,
even as the room was shaken when these early apostles prayed. Yet we trust you
more than we want comfort in our lives, more than what we've always wanted and
had in our lives that we thought would make us feel better and more comfortable.

We want you. And we want other people to know the good news of who you are. And
so God, we pray right now, speak your word with great boldness through our
lives.

In your name we pray. Amen. Join us tomorrow.

We're going to continue to look at what this early church was really like.