Sermons

Authentic Christianity
Acts 4:1-20

Acts chapter four, when you find it keep it open.

I was reading about Harry Houdini who was an escape artist. He died in 1936 but reading about this man he could get out of anything. They said that he had the flexibility of an eel. He had the eyes of a cat. They tried all kinds of ways to keep Harry Houdini locked up. Sometimes they would put him in a coffin and bury the coffin. He would get out.

Sometimes they would rivet him in boilers. He would escape. Sometimes they would sew him up in canvas bags and throw him in the river. He would come out. They would seal him in metal milk cans and weld the top and yet, somehow, he would escape.

One time they put him in a federal prison, maximum security. He was in there less than half an hour and he walked out and in the mean while he had moved most of the prisoners from one cell to another.

An incredible individual, his biographer said he could escape from anything except your memory. And yet, there came a day when Harry Houdini died and he did not escape. No trickery there. No skill there. No flexibility there. Harry Houdini died, but let me say there was another who died, His name was Jesus and He made the great escape. Jesus came out of that grave and He arose.

This morning, I want us to think about some things that are true because Jesus arose. Look beginning in verse one, Acts 4:1, And as they spake unto the people and the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead.    

The first fact is that His persecution continues. Because Jesus Christ is alive, He is still being persecuted. In Acts chapter four these people are grieved that Jesus is being preached that He is alive from the dead.

It was the apostles who were persecuted but in the truest sense, it was the Lord Jesus who was being persecuted. The reason the apostles were being persecuted is that they had done a miracle, healed the crippled man.

Look back in 3:12. Peter refuses to take credit for the miracle. And, when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? Or, why ye look so earnestly on us? As though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk.

Then look in 4:10, Be it known unto you all and to all the people of Israel by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom ye crucified whom God raised from the dead, even by Him doth this man stand here before you whole.

A miracle had been done. The high muckety mucks didn't like it. The people were beginning to follow the Lord Jesus. They thought they had been done with Jesus, but now here is a man who is healed. Peter said, hey, we didn't do it. Jesus did it.

When they were persecuting these apostles, who were they persecuting, Jesus. The apostles were just the hands and the feet of the Lord Jesus. He has a new body now. His new body is called the church, He's still alive.

When you persecute the church, you're persecuting Jesus. Jesus is not dead. He is alive. You can't persecute a dead man. And, because He lives, His persecution continues.

That's an interesting thing.

Why did they persecute Jesus?

Why did they persecute these apostles?  

Why will they persecute you?                           

Why don't they like us Christians?                     

Why doesn't the world love the Lord Jesus?        

You would think the world would be glad to hear a message like that. You would think that people would love the Lord Jesus, but they don't. Why?

Let me just say, the world loves the baby Jesus. They don't persecute Jesus because He was born of a virgin. They don't persecute Jesus because He healed the sick and fed the multitudes. As a matter of fact, the world likes that message.

Christmas time, the merchants who don't even believe in Jesus, love to put the Christmas Carols in their store so they can sell more merchandise.

What is Jesus that the world doesn't like? It's the Jesus that came to destroy the works of the devil. That's the Jesus they persecute; the Jesus who is against rape and murder and greed and pride and abortion and sodomy and lust and racial hatred and homosexuality and cheating and lying and deceiving and all of these things.

That's the Jesus the world cannot stand. It is the Jesus who said, I am the way, the truth and the life and no man comes unto the Father but by me.

When you stand for this Jesus, the world is going to come down on you like a hammer and all of the artillery of hell is going to be aimed at you just like it was aimed at Jesus.

If you're not getting any persecution, don't boast about it, the Bible says ye and all who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

Don't get the idea that the world has gotten more churchy if there's no persecution. It's only because the church has gotten worldlier.

When we begin to let the living Christ live in us, we're going to find out His persecution continues.

A lot of people in our culture today are confused as to what the Christian faith is really all about. Many people regard following Jesus as a religion. The problem with thinking about it in those terms is that religion is something you do that makes you right with God.

But allowing Jesus to be the ruler of your life is all about what He has done and is doing in and through you. I believe that my purpose now in life is to lead people into a real, authentic relationship with Jesus.

What that means to me is that if you’re here and you’re not a believer, my role as your friend is to help you come to the place in your life where you repent of your sin and turn to Jesus.

If you are a religious person, my role as your friend is to help you come to the place in your life where you repent of your religion and turn to Jesus.

If you’re a very moral, good person who thinks because of what someone told you that you are a Christian. Many people in our culture think that. If that’s you, I hope that you’ll hear me out for the next few minutes.

First, let’s define what “religion” is. Dictionary.com “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.”

Notice a key phrase here, “Ritual observances,” rituals that one goes through to get closer to God. Ritual is probably the prime characteristic of all world religions.

Ritual places all the emphasis on me. “If I do this…then God will notice.” “If I do this…then I’ll be at peace with God and my fellow man.” The problem with religion is that it is rigid and self-centered with no room for God. Religion is all about self-help and self-improvement.

A follower of Christ knows that in our own power, we can make no fundamental changes to ourselves because it’s not an outward change that can really transform us. It’s an inward change. And only God’s Holy Spirit can do that.

Religion cannot save you. Religion cannot change you. And religion hates being confronted with this fact. When religion is exposed for what it is – a sham that can’t fundamentally change anyone – religions gets angry. (4:5-7)

When religion is threatened, it exercises intimidation, it emphasizes tradition and it employs interrogation.

This is the reaction religious people have every time something tries to buck their little religious system they’ve set up. Intimidate, fall back on tradition, and interrogate those who disagree.

Let’s bring this down to our level. I’ve seen this pattern happen in churches before and you probably have too. New things start happening, a church starts moving in a new direction, a fresh breath of God starts blowing, and the religious crowd can’t stand it. Instead of celebrating the new things God is doing, they want to cling to the old things they did 40 years ago.

The religious people will start throwing their weight around. They’ll sit there with their arms folded and a scowl on their face for the whole service. They’ll grumble and start talking about things they don’t like behind people’s backs.

When that no longer satisfies them, they fall back on tradition, making sacred cows out of minor issues. Saying things like, “We’ve never done it that way before, and I don’t like it! I don’t know if (fill in the blank) is really even Christian!”

Some of these issues that arise are just a matter of preference. Mature believers can get over preference for the sake of Christ. But there comes a point when it’s really just religion in disguise. That point comes as the religious people start treating personal preferences as sacred.

Then they start interrogating. They ask important sounding questions and force people to take sides. They spread division in the church. People get hurt. People leave. Leadership comes under undue scrutiny. And I can’t help but believe that’s God’s heart is broken.

Religion lacks the Spirit’s filling (4:8a) “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit…”

In the Greek language which the New Testament was written in, the phrase “filled with the Holy Spirit” can be explained by the understanding that God was doing the thinking of what to say, and Peter was saying it. God was actually doing the work; Peter was simply opening himself to be used.

The problem with religion is that it leaves no room for God to use us. Religion seeks to put parameters around our experience with God.

John 4:23-24 “But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

Jesus said that God is looking for people who will worship Him in Spirit and truth. This is the major difference between true Christianity and religion: religion can never worship God the way He desires or deserves to be worshipped because religion lacks the Spirit’s filling.

Religion asks, “What can God do for me?” A true relationship with God through Jesus asks, “What can I do for Him?”

Religion is blind to the work of Jesus (4:8b-11) Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and elders of Israel, If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole; Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner.

The religious leaders in the Sanhedrin could not deny that the man standing before them had been healed. But their religious biases blinded them from seeing this truth.

Peter even quoted their own prophecies to them when he talked about the “stone that the builders rejected.” David made that prophecy 1,000 years before Jesus was born and Peter interprets it and applies it to the whole council.

Remember, Peter was uneducated. He was a simple fisherman. These men he spoke to spent every day of their lives in the Scriptures from the time they were children.

Yet, because they chose to worship their religion instead of their God, they were blind to what God wanted for them. A man they all knew stood before them miraculously healed. An uneducated fisherman preached with boldness. Their Scriptures were shown to be fulfilled. And still, nothing.

We are not preaching today about a dead Christ of history. We present a living Christ to you.

It’s not my job trying to talk you into believing in Jesus Christ. If eleven apostles who had seen Jesus with their own eyes could not convince Thomas, I'll not be able to convince you.

Do you know what convinced Thomas? He had an encounter with the living Lord. And, when he had an encounter with the living Christ, he was convinced.

Do you know what we need today? An encounter with Jesus Christ. We need to meet the living Christ. These people were brought in contact by the Holy Spirit, the living Christ and they were totally, absolutely convinced.

That's the reason why I don't have to depend upon my ability to cause you to believe. My ability, my joy, my responsibility is just to bring you to an encounter with Jesus Christ.

 “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”

13 “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. 14 But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say”

The 19th-century Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard identified two kinds of religion -- Religion A and Religion B.

The first is "faith" in name only (2 Tim. 3:5). It’s the practice of attending church without genuine faith in the living Lord.

Religion B, on the other hand, is a life-transforming, destiny-changing experience. It’s a definite commitment to the crucified and risen Savior, which establishes an ongoing personal relationship between a forgiven sinner and a gracious God.

For many years C.S. Lewis had great difficulty in becoming a Christian. According to his brother Warren, his conversion was a slow, steady recovery from a deep-seated spiritual illness in the dry husks of religion offered by the dull emptiness of compulsory church during our school days."

Have you had past experiences with Christianity, and it was just dull and lifeless for you? Why was that? Could it have been that what you experienced wasn’t a faith that was based on a relationship but on a religion?

Here’s where religion is at its weakest: it has nothing to say when people’s lives are really turned around by Jesus. Religion has no answer for such transformation. For a sinner to become a saint requires something supernatural to happen. And religion doesn’t deal in the supernatural.

The first greatest need of our lives is an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ. The last thing we need is a substitute.

Another thing, by what power, and by what name, have you done this? 8-9 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and elders of Israel, If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, and by what means he is made whole; Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole.

There was the power of the living Christ, and they were confronted with it. The rulers thought they were done with Him. They put Him in that grave. They set a seal upon it. They said, if you're the Son of God, come down from the cross. That was the wrong question. They should have gone to the tomb and said, if you're the Son of God, come out.

He's shown to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. Now, He's still alive and He's on the loose. Peter said, you crucified him, but it's the same one that you crucified who's just healed this man and now they are confronted with the power of the living Christ. And so are you and I in the world today.

Peter talked about the cornerstone. You thought He was in the tomb, but He is the one who is the cornerstone. He lives, and because He lives, His persecution continues, His preaching convinces, and His power confronts. He is a living Christ and He is still doing miracles.

Look if you will in verse 13. "And when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus." They'd been in His presence.

You see, when you're in the presence of Jesus Christ, something happens to you. When you're in the presence of the risen Lord, and you spend time with the Lord Jesus you're going to be as bold as these people are and His presence will compel you.

"Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John..." What was it that set them on their ear? What was it that caused them to marvel? It was the boldness of these men for the Lord Jesus Christ. What we need in our church today is an epidemic of Holy Boldness. Do you know how we're going to get it? By spending time in the presence of Jesus. When they saw that these were ignorant and unlearned men, they absolutely marveled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. And the thing that caused them to marvel was their boldness, the boldness of these men.

So, what is boldness? It's not arrogance. Holy boldness is humble boldness. These men were not arrogant, but they were bold. Neither is it self-confidence. You can have self-confidence and that will turn people off. That's not boldness.

Places not too far from here, some church folks in order to show how bold they are pick up rattlesnakes and kiss rattlesnakes and caress rattlesnakes. You can call that boldness if you want to. I call it tempting the Lord.

There’s a story about a man who was in one of these services. He was part of a quartet. Said he'd gotten into one of these country churches, didn't know what they were going to do, but they began to handle snakes. He asked his friend, is there a back door in this church? He said, no there isn't. He said, well where would you like one to be? What some people call boldness is not boldness.

Holy boldness is knowing that Jesus is alive. I mean if you are truly, truly convinced that Jesus Christ walked out of that grave, could you ever be intimidated? Think about it. When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, they marveled. They took knowledge of them. They're ignorant and unlearned men, but they said, hey they have been with Jesus. We need an epidemic of holy boldness.

Look in verse 14. "And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it. But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they..." that is the religious leaders "... conferred among themselves saying, What shall we do to these men? For that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem; and we cannot deny it. But that it spread no further among the people, let us straitly threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no man in this name. And they called them, and commanded them not so speak at all or teach in the name of Jesus."

But now watch this, "But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." Now verse 20, here's the key, " For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard."

They said, you can't preach a risen Lord. We don't want you to tell this message. We don't want this message out. Why, because of the power of that message.

You might as well have told the sun not to shine as to tell these men that they could not preach a risen Christ. Why, because they'd seen Him. They had seen Him. You could not shut them up. Because He lives, His people confess. Anybody who has known that Christ is alive cannot keep quiet.

I’m going to tell you why some don’t witness. It's right here in verse 20. They said, "For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." Do you know what a witness is? A witness tells what he's seen and heard. Do you know why some don't witness? They haven't seen or heard anything. That's it.

A person who has seen and heard that Jesus Christ is alive cannot be made to shut up. His people confess. If you're not sharing Jesus Christ, if you're not telling people about Jesus Christ, very frankly, I don't think you understand that He's alive.

Look in 5:42. Here's the way the early church worked, "And daily... and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ." They've been told you can't do it. They said, we're going to do it. They said, we forbid you. They said, we're still going to do it.

Evangelism in the New Testament was not an eight-day meeting where they brought in some evangelist. I'm not opposed to that. But in the New Testament, these Christians were all at it and they were always at it. Why? They'd seen Him. They knew He was alive. You could not shut them up. His people confessed Him.

Let’s you and I confess it! He is risen... He is risen indeed. He is risen... He is risen indeed. He is risen... He is risen indeed. Oh, let's get that in our hearts. Let's get that in our mind. He is alive and because He's alive, His persecution will continue. People will still persecute Him. And the way they're going to persecute Him is by persecuting you. Wear that persecution like a badge of honor. Because He's alive, He's alive.

His preaching convinces. Don't feel like when you teach or preach or witness that it's up to you. All you do is bring them into an encounter with the living Christ. It is Jesus that convinces. His power confronts. His power is real in the world today.

Jesus Christ is still alive and well and the Christ that walked the shores of Galilee is alive through His new body, the church today and His power confronts. His presence compels.

Stay in the presence of Jesus and there will be a holy boldness about you. You'll not be ashamed of the Lord Jesus Christ; His people confess Him. They'll say, we cannot but speak, tell and preach the things that we've seen and heard.

Let me share what New Testament Christianity is, it is supernatural. It cannot be explained, and it cannot be denied. It will not be intimidated, and it must not be ignored. Jesus Christ lives.

Now here's the big question. Are you ready for the big one? Christ lives, do you? You say, well Pastor yes, sure, I'm alive. I'm hearing you. I'm listening to you. No, no, no. I didn't say, do you exist? I asked, Do you live? Jesus said to people whose hearts were already pumping, I've come that you might have life and have it abundantly.

How do you get this life? Well, the risen Lord imparts it when you intimately trust Him completely with your life.

In Jesus’ Name amen!

 When Voices Of Hope Evangelistic Team is ministering in Word and Song, their Fire Choir will sing several songs and then lead the Congregation in singing. Since that isn't possible on-line, please click here and may you be blessed by the song, "Pentecostal Power."