So Acts chapter 4, verse one, 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, 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 so. The number he believed grew to
about 5000. The next day the rulers, the
elders, and the teachers of the law met in Jerusalem.
Anas, the high priest was there, and so were Caiaphas, John,
Alexander, and others of the high priest family.
They had Peter and John brought before them and began to
question them. By what power or name did you do
this? Then Peter filled with the Holy
Spirit said to them, rulers and elders are the people.
If we have been called to account today for an act of
kindness shown to a man who was lame are being 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 in God raised from the dead that this man
stands before you healed. Jesus is the stone you builders
rejected, which has become the cornerstone.
Salvation is found, and no one else, for there is no other name
under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.
And 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.
But since they could see the man who had been healed standing
there with them, there was nothing they could say.
So they ordered them to withdraw from Sanhedrin and then
conferred together. What are we going to do with
these men? They asked.
Everyone in living in Jerusalem knows they've performed A
notable sign, and we cannot deny it.
But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the
people, we must warn them to speak no longer to anyone in
this name. And then they called them in
again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the
name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied,
Which is right in God's eyes to listen to you or to him?
You be the judges. As for us, we cannot help
speaking about what we have seen and heard.
And after further threats, they let them go.
They could not decide how to punish them because all the
people were praising God for what had happened, for the man
who was miraculously healed was over 40 years old.
Well, I hope if you've been here at all the last little while,
you might even just see this morning the book of Acts.
It is a precious gift from God to any local church.
It's the unique record of the early years of the Christian
Church in the city of Jerusalem. And without Acts, we'd have a
much poorer picture of what it means to follow Jesus and live
as his witnesses. Just imagine if we didn't have
the book of Acts. We'd have so much more guesswork
to do about what it means to be a local church.
And actually, the book of Acts was much shorter if it was just
a couple of chapters. Say it finished at the end of
chapter 2, then the picture we get of life in the local church
is one of largest of joy and peace and steady growth.
At the end of chapter 2, you might expect healthy church life
to always look like the steadily ascending curve, basically,
where new people become believers every day, where
believers grow in love and worship and witness together,
where everything just keeps getting better all the time.
And this is how Luke sums up the life of the early church at the
end of chapter 2. We look at this a few weeks ago.
Every day they continue to meet together in the temple courts.
They broke bread in their homes and act together with glad and
sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the
people. And the Lord added to their
number daily those who were being saved.
It's an amazing picture of a healthy local church here, and
even if ACT stopped where we were last week at the end of
chapter 3, it's still an amazing picture.
Peter and John have just healed a lame man in the name of Jesus.
They've transformed his life. He's now physically healed,
we're told. He's walking and jumping and
praising God and he's spiritually transformed.
He's now a joy filled worshipper of God.
Overall, Acts chapters one to three paint a pretty idyllic
picture of the early church. A church that was 3000 strong
and growing. A church that was loving Jesus
and loving each other, enjoying the favour of all the people,
seeing people come to faith in Jesus daily.
It's very much the honeymoon period of the early church.
And as a result, actually people reading these chapters,
Christians over the centuries, they've, they've both been
hugely encouraged by the opening chapters of Acts, but also sort
of on a bad day, they felt really intimidated, maybe even
crushed by the picture of the early church here.
If you read Acts one to three and go, why isn't my church like
that? Why isn't our life together like
this? We feel so small and weak by
comparison. It doesn't feel like we enjoy
the favour of all the people. It feels like people think we're
pretty irrelevant or they oppose us.
We don't see anything like the growth in numbers and success
and evangelism that the early church had.
Why can't our church, my church, be more like the early church in
Jerusalem? How should we respond to those
feelings of of disappointment and inadequacy in these early
chapters? I think in one hand it is really
good to feel challenged by the picture of the early church we
get in the opening chapter of Acts.
It's a glorious vision of what a local church should be.
And, and I believe that we're meant to learn from it and ask
God to grow these things on us. So we're told that the early
church was devoted to the apostles teaching.
We want to be devoted to the apostles teaching in the word.
They're devoted to sharing life together.
We want to do that together as a church family, do it to prayer.
We want to grow in prayer. They're devoted to proclaiming
Jesus to the people around them. We want to grow in those ways.
So in one sense it's meant to encourage us to make us
dissatisfied, to want more from the life of our church.
But actually alongside that, it is important not to see the
early church in Jerusalem with rose tinted glasses, to think of
it as basically a perfect church because heavy shock horror, but
the early church in Jerusalem was not a perfect church.
Some examples of it's imperfections that Luke tells us
about in Acts we're going to see in a couple of weeks time. 2
church members lied about how generous they were and they are
struck dead by God as a result. We've got told that one group of
widows in the church was consistently overlooked in the
daily distribution of food. They were suffering as a result.
The church had to do something about it.
That's in Acts chapter 6, and arguably the early church was
just too slow and reluctant to leave Jerusalem and take the
good news of Jesus to Judea and Samaria and the ends of the
earth. That actually took the death of
Stephen and a great persecution against the early believers to
drive them out of Jerusalem and into the rest of the nations.
Arguably, they were too settled in Jerusalem to actually be
obeying Jesus call on their lives.
The church in Jerusalem was not a perfect church.
We need to be careful not to idealize it or view it as such.
An addition to these weaknesses that sort of come from within
the church. Acts 4 records the first
appearance of opposition and persecution from outside the
church. I hope you saw that when John
was reading. For the first time in Acts, we
see the early church experience opposition.
We see people rejecting the good news of Jesus.
There's an outbreak of persecution that begins in
chapter 4 and actually carries on in different ways throughout
the book of Acts. Luke's going to keep returning
to these themes of opposition, rejection, suffering.
So we read Acts and go, what a perfect time to have been a
Christian. If only I was alive.
Then we're actually missing part of the picture Luke has for us.
It's a major theme in the book of Acts and throughout the whole
Bible. Old and New Testament is the
place of suffering in the Christian life, as the Apostle
Paul puts it later in this book, speaking to churches he had just
planted across the Roman world. Acts 1422.
We must go through many hardships to enter the Kingdom
of God. Look of Acts is open and honest
with us as followers of Jesus. We follow a crucified Saviour, a
saviour who suffered and we follow him on the way of the
cross, taking up our cross daily and following Jesus.
So the Christian life isn't meant to be easy all the time.
We praise God for periods of growth as the early church did.
But the colonist says, will we be faithful to Jesus even in the
harder seasons? And the encouragement Luke gives
in Acts chapter 4 and the subsequent chapters is this,
that when we are facing hardship, suffering, rejection,
persecution, God the Holy Spirit gives us courage to live as
witnesses for Jesus. That's the aspect of the
Spirit's work that Luke emphasizes in this passage.
God the Holy Spirit gives the apostles the words to say when
they stand trial. He teaches them how to pray.
We're going to see next time. In response to opposition, he
gives them courage and boldness to help one another keep living
as Jesus witnesses in this world.
And it's an amazing reversal, actually, of what you'd expect,
because in our passage this morning, it's the same religious
leaders who arrested, tried and condemned Jesus to death just a
few months earlier. Now arrest and try Peter and
John. And this should have been a
terrifying moment for the early apostles.
Except. Except we see the gift of the
Holy Spirit powerfully at work in Peter and John.
Here verse 8. Peter is filled with the Holy
Spirit as he stands trial and the religious leaders are
shocked and silenced by Peter's courage.
Instead of Peter and John being frightened of the religious
leaders, actually he looked to us as the religious leaders end
up frightened by Peter and John. They don't know what to do with
these men. It's an amazing turn around and
it's a picture for us of the difference the Holy Spirit makes
when we rely on him and ask him for the courage to live and
speak for Jesus. So let's look at this passage
together now, Acts 41 to 22. And first of all, the thing we
want to see in this first bit is that the enemies of Jesus try to
stop the apostles. That's verses one to seven.
The enemies of Jesus try to stop the apostles.
So why are the religious leaders happy with what Peter and John
are doing? Again, Peter and John say, well,
hang on, we just did this great act of kindness.
We heal the lame man. Why are you unhappy with us?
But Luke gives the reason in verse 2.
He says the apostles were teaching the people and the
religious leaders in the temple. They were threatened by that
teaching the people. That's our job.
They say they feel threatened by what the apostles are doing,
just as they were threatened by Jesus teaching people when he
was in Jerusalem. And we all see the religious
leaders. They look down on the apostles.
Look at verse 13, they look at them and they say, well, they
are unschooled ordinary men. The people shouldn't be
listening to them. They should be listening to us.
Look at our theological credentials.
Look at all the great things we know.
Why on earth are they listening to these fishermen instead of
us? There's a lot of threatening
thing here. They, they, they want to protect
their position of par. And the other main reason why
the religious leaders weren't happy in verse 2 is we're told
by Luke the apostles were proclaiming in Jesus the
resurrection of the dead and the religious leaders were not happy
about this. There were busy 2 main groups in
the Sanhedrin of that time, the Sadducees and the Pharisees.
The Sadducees were told elsewhere in the New Testament
they rejected the idea of the resurrection of the dead at all.
They thought this doesn't happen.
So hearing people teach about the resurrection of the dead, we
reject that the Pharisees believe in the resurrection of
the dead. They believe the testimony of
the prophets. But one day that would happen
when God would judge creation, but they rejected Jesus.
So their problem isn't the apostles are teaching the
resurrection of the dead. They're saying it's in Jesus the
resurrection of the dead takes place.
The Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection.
The Pharisees didn't believe in Jesus.
And verse three, they seize Peter and John and put them in
jail. The enemies of Jesus are trying
to stop the apostles. And who are these enemies of
Jesus? Well, the Jewish ruling council,
the Sanhedrin's made-up of 71 religious leaders at this time,
and Luke named some of them. In verse 6 he names Anas, and he
was the high priest from 86 to 8015.
He was deposed by the Romans, but he was widely regarded still
as high priest by the Jews of that time.
Luke even refers to him as the high priest, even though
officially that was not his title.
He introduces to Caiaphas, who is the son-in-law to Anna.
So keep it in the family. He's high priest 8018 to 8036.
He's the high priest who condemned Jesus to death just a
few months earlier. And we got other names, John
Alexander. They're not mentioned elsewhere,
but these are aristocratic names.
This group of men are the great and the good of Jerusalem.
That would be massively intimidating for Peter and John
to stand in front of them. Verse 7 that even the language
look used as they had Peter and John brought before them into a
large Amphitheatre where the Sanhedrin met.
This is all about shock and awe. This is to terrify 2 northern
fishermen into silence. And humanly speaking it would
have worked. But you see, the enemies of
Jesus reckoned without something.
They reckoned without Jesus gift of the Holy Spirit working in
his disciples. So the enemy of Jesus tried to
stop the apostles, but Peter courageously proclaims Jesus in
the power of the Spirit. That's verses 8 to 10 here.
Let me read that for us again. Verse 8 Luke tells us then Peter
filled with the Holy Spirit said to them, rulers and elders of
the people. If we're being called to account
today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and
are being 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.
Peter's not backing down here. He's not going to.
Oh, we're really sorry we did that.
Just let us go. He's going no, you know that
Jesus who you crucified Again, this is not the first time
Peter's really named the people in Jerusalem.
At that time. This is the guy you crucified.
But God raised him from the dead.
He's the one who healed this man, and he's the one I want all
of Israel to know about, says Peter.
How can Peter have so much courage before this terrifying
audience? Well, basically it's because
Jesus was keeping his promise to Peter and the other disciples.
Jesus keeping his promise made before the crucifixion that when
they would be standing trial for him, Jesus would give them the
words to say. This is from Luke's Gospel,
chapter 21. Jesus speaking.
They will seize you and persecute you.
They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in
prison. You'll be brought before kings
and governors, and all on account of my name.
And so you will bear testimony to me.
But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will
defend yourselves, for I will give you words and wisdom that
none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.
In this moment before the Sanhedrin, Jesus is keeping his
promise to his people. And it's so helpful us to see
this because a question we're keeping coming back to in this
book of Acts is really, what does it look like to receive the
power of the Spirit in our lives as individuals, in our life
together, as a church family? And in this passage, the answer
is the Holy Spirit gives us courage to live as Jesus
witnesses, even in the face of opposition.
And The thing is, we need courage to live for Jesus.
Again, maybe chapters one to three look like it's all going
to be plain sealing. Just you say the word Jesus and
people start trusting in him. But from this point onwards, we
get that more nuanced picture. There are people who will reject
that message, people who will reject Jesus witnesses.
It is hard to live for Jesus when the world around us rejects
him. It's hard when the people around
us think we're crazy for following Jesus.
It's hard when people in power try to silence us, whether
that's people in our families who don't want to know, people
in our workplaces, people in wider society.
It is hard to live as a witness for Jesus.
But that's why Luke says the Spirit gives us courage, gives
courage to any follower of Jesus when we ask him, so that we can
live as witnesses for Jesus in this world.
And that's what the Spirit does for Peter here.
If you look at what Peter says in the next bit, Peter cannot
stop talking about Jesus here. His message is all about Jesus
Christ of Nazareth, a real man who really lived among us with a
real hometown. Jesus, that name means the Lord
saves, he's a saviour Christ. That means God's special king
come to put things right in God's world.
And and Peter says, well, this Jesus, he was crucified by you,
nailed to a Roman cross by the people Peter is speaking to
Jesus died, but then God raised him from the dead.
And what is the proof Peter points to that Jesus alive?
Verse 10, this man stands before you healed.
He says that the man we healed in the temple courts, He is a
picture. He's a signpost of the salvation
Jesus has won for us if we put our faith in Jesus and then he
lands on a verse so powerful and magnificent that it's our
memory. Verse for the term verse 12 in
the in Peter's response, salvation is found in no one
else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by
which we must be saved. The word Peter uses for saved
there in verse 12 is the same word translated back in verse 9
as healed. There's so much overlap here.
So just as as the lame man was healed in the name of Jesus, so
we can be saved by the name of Jesus.
That healing is a picture of the healing and and restoration
sorry that Jesus brings about in the lives of everyone who trusts
him. It's a trailer for the new
creation when when sickness and sin and death will be no more.
Salvation has come, says Peter. It has come in the name of
Jesus, the Jesus you crucified, who God raised from the dead.
You need to be right with this Jesus, Peter is saying, and make
no doubt about it, these are exclusive and bold claims Peter
is making. No one else can heal or save
like Jesus, says Peter. No other name under heaven can
make us right with God and transform us into joyful
worshippers of God. These two negative statements in
this verse point to 1 astonishing positive message.
Jesus saves everyone who puts their faith in Him.
The name of Jesus, the power to save and transform and restore
anyone who puts their faith in Him.
We need to hear what Peter's telling us in verse 12.
Jesus isn't just one savior among many.
He's the only savior. He's not just one path to God
among many. He's the only path to God.
Again, the religious leaders are very happy to believe that the
God of Israel was their only hope.
But Peter confronts him, saying, actually, in the God of Israel,
he's revealed himself through Jesus.
So now you need to trust in Jesus.
That's what's getting them into trouble here.
And that's a hard claim to hear. It's hard for religious leaders.
It's hard for people in our culture.
It's hard for us to grasp the exclusive nature of Jesus here.
I think often Christians, we can struggle with this.
We want there to be other ways. We want there to be more wriggle
room than Peter says there is. And one fear we have, I think,
is we think that if we really share this message with the
people around us, we will just come across as arrogant and
intolerant and unloving. That is a fear we have.
We need to remember something. The Holy Spirit's work is to
make us more like Jesus. And Jesus wasn't arrogant or
intolerant of others. He was compassionate and loving.
He treated people with dignity and care and respect.
And so we proclaimed this exclusive message.
Message with the character that Jesus grows in us by his Spirit.
Again, the same apostle Peter, many years after this moment
before the Sanhedrin, writing to a group of Christians in Asia,
says this. He says to them, In your hearts
Revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an
answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope
that you have. But do this with gentleness and
respect, keeping a clear conscience so those who speak
maliciously against your good behaviour in Christ may be
ashamed of their slander. See what Peter is saying here?
He says we've got an exclusive gospel to proclaim.
People need to know about Jesus, but we need to proclaim it with
gentleness and respect. Why?
Because Jesus is our Lord, and by His Spirit we strive to be
like Jesus in this world. So what does the rest of the
passage have to say this before we finish.
We've seen the enemies of Jesus try to stop the apostles.
We see that Peter courageously proclaims Jesus in the power of
the Spirit. And then the great encouragement
Luke gives us is that the word of God spreads in spite of
opposition. Again, up to this point, things
have looked pretty easy for the early church in Jerusalem.
Maybe we think, well, that's why people are joining it, because
the Christian life looks amazing.
It's joy, it's peace. There's no opposition.
But the minute opposition comes, surely that's when the growth
stops. But it doesn't look at verse 4.
Earlier on in this passage, Luke tells us.
But many who heard the message believed, so the number of men
who believed grew to about 5000. So he said the early church grew
from 3000 believers to at least 5000 believers when this man was
healed. It's unclear whether by saying
man he just means literally males or whether that's just a
more generic term, men and women.
But at the very least, 5000 people are now in the early
church. Even with Peter and John in
prison, the word of God is not in prison.
And then you look at the way the religious leaders try to silence
Peter and John, but they can't do it.
They can't deny what's happened. They can't deny this healing of
this man. So they they release them and
say stop speaking about Jesus. Verse 20, Peter and John can't
agree to that. He said we cannot help speaking
about what we have seen and heard.
The word of God spreads in spite of opposition because the Spirit
of God, the presence of God himself, is with his people,
empowering them for witness. And we'll learn more about the
early church's response to opposition and suffering next
week when we look at them at prayer in the next bit of Acts
4. But just as we serve wrap up
here, what are what are the things this passage has to teach
a church family like ours today here at Ave.
The first thing very obviously is to say there will always be
people who reject the message of Jesus, and that's just a fact.
Luke is honest with us about that.
Even the early church in Jerusalem, with its astonishing,
attractive life together, still had people reject Jesus and live
as enemies of Jesus. Amazingly, even miracles, even
signs and wonders do not guarantee faith in Jesus.
Again, the religious leaders here, they knew this lame man.
They knew him well from the temple.
They couldn't deny what had happened to him in the name of
Jesus, and yet they still rejected Jesus and the apostles.
It's a sobering picture of the stubbornness and spiritual
blindness of so many people. That is why we need God the Holy
Spirit to work and to open our eyes to Jesus, to warm our dead
hearts to Jesus. That's what has to happen for
anyone to follow Jesus. The Spirit has to work in US.
The second thing I think we still learn here, we need
courage to live as Jesus witnesses.
But the Holy Spirit gives courage to anyone who asks.
It was CS Lewis who once wrote that courage, it's not simply
one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue.
At the testing point. Basically, you can.
You can say you're loving, but actually, when it's hard to be
loving, do you carry on? You can say you're patient, but
when it's hard to be patient, do you carry on?
Do you the courage to carry on? We need courage to live as
witnesses for Jesus, but this passage encourages us.
God can give us the courage we need if we ask him for that.
Some of us maybe naturally feel braver than others.
Some of us may have more opportunity to speak of Jesus
than others. But we all need the Spirit's
help to live as witnesses for Jesus in this world.
I think Luke wants to encourage us with the transforming power
of the Spirit. Remember who's speaking in this
trial? It's Peter.
The same Peter who denied knowing Jesus three times to
save his skin. And he was standing up to the
very man who condemned Jesus to death.
The Spirit can give us courage when we ask him, and Luke just
wants us to know as well. The Word of God will spread in
spite of opposition. It's pretty fruitless actually
going. If only we lived in those early
days of the church after Pentecost.
Because we don't live there. But as she looks shows us, even
when things are hard, even when people oppose us, the Word of
God spreads. And the gospel of God has power
because we follow a suffering Savior who walks with us when we
suffer, we follow a savour. He was rejected by humanity.
And so when his when his people are rejected, he is with us,
helping us, comforting us, bringing his truth to bear on
our struggles, suffering, opposition, rejection.
All these things positively just get us away from self-reliance,
from the belief that we can do it all on our own.
The I can be witness to Jesus on my own.
No opposition forces us into a life of faith.
It forces us to confess our need to go.
Jesus, I need you to be at work here.
Holy Spirit, I need the courage. Only you can give.
And so we need to learn that humility and wisdom to ask Jesus
to give us the courage to live for him.
Acts 4 is this new chapter in the life of the Church, a time
of persecution, of opposition. But the same Jesus, the same
Spirit, the same gospel, is ours to share with this world around
us. Jesus is with us.
He will give us the courage we need to live for him as we come
to Him and ask him to work in US and through US.
We finish with verse 12 again, Peter summing up his message to
the Sanhedrin. For salvation is found in no one
else. For there is no other name under
heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.
Let me pray for us. Let's, let's pray.
Lord Jesus, we come before You today as the only one who can
save us. Lord, there may be some of us
very aware of that right now, and we just pray that You would
draw near and comfort us with Your steadfast love, Your
faithfulness, Your power to save.
Lord, there may be some of us here today who doubt whether You
really are able to save us or please would you open our eyes
to Your grace and Your presence and Your power.
There may be those of us here today who wish there were other
ways of being saved, other ways of life we can live, but I pray
you'd open our eyes to the salvation you offer us, the
salvation you went to a cross to suffer and die and rise again to
win for us. Lord Jesus, help us to see your
uniqueness, your beauty, your goodness, and would we be those
who put our faith in you as a result?
For we ask that in your name and in the power of the Spirit,
Amen. I'm conscious of time.
We were going to have a song now, but I think maybe we'll go
straight into Q&A because we've already got some questions
rolling in. I think if we put the QR code up
again, you can kind of add your own questions to this.
You can also like questions that have been asked that pushes them
sort of up the up the priority list.
But I'll maybe kind of start with one of the one or two of
those we've already got here, and then others can kind of add
additional questions. So here's one about the practice
of the early church Richards. Should we celebrate the breaking
of bread more often? I say weekly than we do.
And what about in our homes? So in Acts 246 talks about
people breaking bread in homes. That's a.
Really good question. Again, we saw in Acts 2 the
breaking of bread is some of the early churches devoted to, and
there's a bit of debate whether the breaking of bread is
primarily talking about sharing meals in people's homes, which
Luke says a bit later is exactly what they did.
But I think I'm largely persuaded that also does bring
with it the idea of the of the breaking of bread, bread and
wine to remember the death of Jesus.
So the question is, should we celebrate the Lord's Supper more
regularly? I would definitely see a case
for that. And we, you might remember if
anyone was here during lockdown, just because of the restrictions
on us meeting together, we actually went through a period
of life as a church where I'm going to say for 18 months, we
didn't celebrate the Lord's Supper.
We, we didn't do it online. We just waited until we could do
that in person together. And again, still today, that's
your few years ago now. But that has made me value those
gifts of bread and wine even more than I did before.
So our rhythm is we celebrate that once a month on a Sunday
morning. And again, that is a sense of we
want to keep remembering Christ's death and resurrection.
For us, different traditions. Some will celebrate it weekly
because it's so important. I grew up in a church tradition,
a Presbyterian tradition in Northern Ireland where we
celebrated the Lord's Supper twice a year because it was so
important. So it's a funny thing.
People have different reasons for why how you honor the Lord's
Supper, but I think it's something we want to honor
regularly. It's a gift from Jesus and about
celebrating people's homes. And I know some of our home
groups have celebrated the Lord's Supper together in homes.
Again, we need to remember in the early church there weren't
church buildings as such. It wasn't you gathered at a
church building to celebrate that.
So it was a slightly different setting than some churches
today. And I think again, if there's a
real sense of remembering what it is we're doing, that is the
key part. In One Corinthians.
Paul's writing to a church in Corinth that had begun to forget
what that bread and wine was all about.
They were treating it as a banquet.
Some were getting drunk, some were going hungry again, Paul
says remember what it is you're doing.
You're the body of Christ remembering the body of Christ
given for you. So and once we've got a lot of
freedom actually, and Christians have interpreted differently how
regular you take the Lord's Supper where we don't have
freedom is you take it thankfully, you take it with
real awe and worship of Jesus for what he's done for us.
So if people would love us to celebrate Lord's Supper more,
please talk to the elders. We can make that happen.
And again, people want questions about how they might celebrate
that in home groups. Again, please come and talk in
ways we can make that happen. But it's a precious, precious
gift. And it probably for me
personally, it took that 18 months where we didn't do it to
really see just how precious gift is.
Yeah. So there's a clutch of questions
around this, the miraculous happenings in the book of Acts,
signs and wonders, speaking in tongues and so on.
And the question is how much we should kind of expect of that in
the present. One questioner puts it, and this
is the most popular question, Tongues, what what's going on
there? I mean, all these real languages
or is it something different? Which should we expect them now?
You know, are these signs and wonders just something of the
Apostolic age or could they carry on now is Ave.
continuationist or cessationist or some Christians think these
absolutely signs have ceased. They were part of the Apostolic
age. Others emphasized continuation
that you know these things could still be expected in the
present. Great questions.
I think as elders we were chatting about it recently and I
think we landed on cautious continuationists.
How how sexy is that? But but yes, in a sense, I think
we're we don't see clear thessalian Scripture that the
the signs of the Spirit and Acts have have ceased.
Some traditions do argue that very strongly, but we don't we
don't we're not convinced of that here at Ave.
But there was a caution to that because again, the great thing
we've got scripture speaks with this one Corinthians,
particularly chapter review 12 to 14.
There's a lot of content there with the apostle Paul helping
the Corinthian Christian see how they were abusing the gift of
tongues and how they could use it in a way that honors God
more. So the apostle Paul said he had
the gift of tongues, but he primarily used it on his own
with the Lord. He says when he's when he's
speaking in tongues, his spirit is speaking to God, but he'd
much rather prophecy in the gathering so other people can
understand what's being said and prophesying.
There just seems to be intelligible words about God
applying God's word to our lives, which in one sense people
could, you could say a sermon is an act of prophecy.
You could say discussion in Home group and just opening up God's
word together is prophecy. But tongues it seems from 1
Corinthians and worse of I would land on this, is that that is a
gift given to particular believers and good friends of
mine have that gift of tongues. But most of the time they use
that on their own in prayer to God.
And Paul says if that is to be used in the gathered assembly,
you then need to stop and ask does anyone have an
interpretation? And if there's no
interpretation, you leave that to one side.
If there is an interpretation, then you need to weigh up that
interpretation. So again, I would say it's been
20 years of Ave. We've been here about, I've been
here about 15 years and we've not had instances where someone
has shared a word in tongues in a gathering.
If they did that, they would have to feel very confident from
Scripture that someone else could interpret that.
We do have people messaging elders sometimes going, I'm just
thinking about this for our church.
I'm concerned about this. I've had a a picture or just a
thought about this and that's really helpful for us as elders.
We then can go away and weigh that up and pray about that and
say is something of what the Lord's saying to us in that
picture or that message. I think in Acts, interestingly,
when we did Pentecost, the gift of tongues at Pentecost does
seem to be intelligible human languages that help the cry
gathered in Jerusalem to hear what the apostles are saying in
their own language. That does seem to be a
particular moment where miraculously God enables these
Galileans to speak lots of different languages.
And that does seem to be a different example of tongues or
languages than what Paul is dealing with in Corinth in One
Corinthians 12 to 14. So I would say, I think I've
known people Ave. have the gift of tongues.
They pray privately with that gift and if that's something you
want to talk about, I'd really happily chat to you about that.
We don't see the gift of tongues on display on Sunday gatherings,
largely because following the apostle Paul and Corinth, that
doesn't seem to be the particular right context for
that. But equally, Paul in
Thessalonians says don't quench the Spirit, test everything.
And that's we want to be. That's why we're cautious
continuation as I guess is that pretty rubbish phrase.
But then but yeah, we say actually, yeah, there there
isn't a a big definitive that is all stopped.
Now we're not convinced of that, but there's caution and we don't
want that to be abused. And Paul, certainly in Corinth,
sees that being abused and challenges it, and we want to
follow the lead of Scripture on that.
I think one more question and that's sort of by the
expectations of, of sharing life together in the early church,
you know, so the people are in each other's homes, are sharing
their lives together, even sharing their possessions, some
people giving everything away. You know, somebody asks, should
I sell my house to give to the poor?
It's quite radical, isn't it? The kind of the, the vision of
fellowship. So what?
What does that say to us today? I suppose.
No, it is really radical, challenging, deeply convicting
when you read about the early church.
And some comedies have said actually in some ways those
early chapters when it's the church just in Jerusalem, Luke
is trying to show that this church is finally a restored
Israel. They are doing what Israel in
the Old Testament should have been doing in terms of
generosity and sharing with one another.
So there is that call to be generous, to share a life
together, to give to those in need.
Those are, those are really strong and challenging cause
again, different church traditions have dealt with this
differently. So there have been some
traditions who've said there really should be when someone
trusts in Jesus, they should then sell everything they have
and all the possessions should be held centrally by that church
to distribute as they see fit. So if my son was here, he'd say
that's communism. But you know, that's, that's
kind of what, what some people would argue.
It does seem in the early church and Acts that actually believers
still had the freedom to either keep or give away their
belongings. So some people read bits and
say, well clearly that was church policy, no one owned
anything. But spoiler for a few weeks time
when I mentioned the two church members who lied about being
generous, Ananias and Safari, they said they sell some some
property and they claim that they've given all the money to
the church to look really generous.
And Peter challenges them about it when he knows that they've
lied, he says. And then I ask, how is it that
Satan so filled your heart that you've lied to the Holy Spirit
and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for
the land? Didn't it belong to you before
it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't
the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing
such a thing? You've not just lied to people,
but to God. So basically Peter's really
clear and I survived, didn't have to give all the money to
the church. The problem was they claimed
they had done that. They were trying to look more
generous than they actually were and that is why God judges them.
And again, historically, very recent times, people might have
seen a recent documentary about a group called the Jesus Army.
They took from Acts that sense of you need to sell everything
and and put all your property at the disposal of the church
leaders to distribute as they see fit.
And of course the big challenge always with that as the leaders
are fallen human beings are sinners themselves and there was
abuse and with people exploiting that privilege of being given
money by other believers. So I think I'm not convinced
that the the book of Acts says we should we are commanded sorry
to sell all our property and that should be sell held
centrally, but equally. The problem is we kind of go
off. I don't have to do that then
actually the call is to be generous with what the Lord has
given us again that that that's that sentence in in chapter 2
about they they sold property, possessions to give to anyone
who had need. That generosity of the early
Christians transformed the Roman world and all too often
Christians today we play it so safe and we just want to live
very like our neighbors that we don't actually want to be
generous of what we have. So even though I do not think
it's a command for all churches everywhere to sell everything,
actually we need to go as at least the the the commander to
be generous with what we have. And how generous am I really?
And that is very convicting. We should, some of we should be
praying about and talking about with each other.
What, what are levels of giving right?
What, what are the needs we see around us, whether globally or
more locally? How could we together meet those
needs?