Persecution Begins

Assurance of salvation is much like illustrations, and we have natural illustrations in the born-again process of birth, but there's also a natural illustration for assurance, and that is, spiritually healthy people are like physically healthy people, you know, you're healthy, you feel good, and if you get sick, it helps, physically you start feeling ugh, ugh, and sickness in the spiritual realm tends to darken your eyesight, your conscience, and leaves you with a lack of assurance, and it's like a spiritual sickness, and what you need to do is get healthy in the spirit, walk with God, walk in the light, and that'll give you some assurance and help. All right, well, we want to go back to the book of Acts, and I'll be honest with you, I mean, I'm challenged, and I know that you're all going to be challenged. We had a dear brother many years ago, Dennis Stevens, who got up one day and said, we need to forget being challenged, you've probably seen this, challenged, he got up one day and he said, let's forget this challenge stuff, and let's start doing some of this, be changed, and so let's work on changing.

The Bible is given to us as a mirror for us to look into it and then see, as James says, things in our life that are not aligned up with the mirror, and therefore do things that are necessary to change it, and that's something that's a real challenge, to change, change your life. We're oftentimes so set in what we're doing, day by day it's a habit, and we get deeply rooted in it, and our lifestyle is a habit, we get deeply rooted into it, and it's something that we just have a hard time changing. So the book of Acts is a real challenge for change, and I'm, as I go through this, thinking about, wow, and I'm trying to just preach to you the Word, you know, I know there's many people that will try to fit it to the congregation, many people will try to please the people because they're getting some salary and maybe a nice allowance for housing and things like that, and so they don't want to offend anybody, but I'm really up here, I've told you this before, I'm up here, I get a week of study and just looking into it and meditating and what God shows me, that's what I give to you.

As a matter of fact, it gives me a lot more than what I share with you here today, but I narrow it down on Sunday morning and try to present it to you. I, you know, I'm not, I don't have any other motive than just to teach you what the truth is. Well, I've been following here in the book of Acts, and I've noticed here by way of review that there have been two great miracles.

The miracle of the speaking in tongues, and then we saw in Acts chapter 3, the miracle of this lame man at the gate being healed, and after each miracle there was a sermon. Peter took an opportunity, when the multitudes came together at Pentecost, what does this mean? Peter took his opportunity to share the Word of God. Then when the lame man is healed, a multitude come rushing together again into the temple.

They're in the porch, and Peter takes another opportunity to share the Word of God, and we hear that 3,000 are converted after the first sermon, and now 5,000, we're going to see here in Acts 4, are being converted. And so God is doing this preaching miracle thing, preaching miracle thing. These men, just about ten days earlier, stood on a hillside and watched the Lord ascend up into heaven.

You imagine being there. You see our Lord ascending up into heaven, and you hear Him again. He says to you, now go into all the world, starting in Jerusalem, preach the gospel to every creature, and here's what's going to happen.

These signs are going to follow you. You're going to cast out devils. You're going to speak with new tongues.

Ah, there's the day of Pentecost. You're going to, if you drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt you. You will see that later on in the book of Acts, and you're going to lay hands on the sick, and they're going to recover, while we just saw that at the gate there in the temple.

This is nothing unusual. They were told. This is what's going to happen.

These signs shall follow them that believe. And then it says in Mark 16, and so after they heard that, they went forth and preached everywhere. The Lord working with them and confirming the word with signs following.

I wish we could all see and believe that. I'd like to see us as a congregation do the words there, just let's go everywhere preaching. Wouldn't that be something? That's what they did.

They went everywhere, preached the word. You say, where are these signs we're supposed to see? Well, maybe we start off with, let's go everywhere preaching the word. And, I mean, that's what it says.

Amen. So be it. Well, we come here, and we're going to see a group of people going everywhere preaching the word.

We're going to see signs. And it's going to go through the entire book of Acts. And again, I don't believe God gives us this book just for us to read to our children exciting stories and trying to build up their faith in Jesus.

Look what Jesus can do. Yeah, but mommy and daddy, well, why doesn't he do it in our church? Well, that's a good question. And so maybe we should raise our standard way up here a little bit.

And that's what's going to happen, I think, here in Got Me a New Shirt and Failed to Take My Tag Off. There we go. Let's start reading here in chapter four.

Peter has just finished the sermon after the lame man is healed. And I believe this is the word of God. How many of you believe this is the word of God? It's going to speak to us this morning.

It's going to call upon you to change. And so let's let the word of God change us. Here in chapter number four, I'm going to start reading.

I'm going to read down through a few verses, and we'll come back and talk about them. And as they spake unto the people, 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. Again, this great company of people had gathered at the temple after the healing of the lame man.

And they laid hands on them and put them in hold unto the next day, for it was now even tide. Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed, and the number of the men was about five thousand. So here we are, this great gathering of people, and certain things are starting to happen.

Now this is the first persecution the early church is going to face. It's going to start here, and it's going to intensify all the way through the book. We're going to find some of God's people being thrown in prison.

Some of them are going to end up under a pile of rocks. Some of them are going to be chased from city to city. Others are going to be martyred.

You're going to see this throughout the entire book. But it all starts right here, in Acts chapter 4, and this is the first mention of persecution. So let's pray, and I'd like to begin here in Acts 4. Our heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for your word.

Thank you for the exhortation to take up a cross and follow me. Lord, may we truly understand what that means, to follow you, your example in life, and the example of those who did follow you, the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even as Paul said to those church members, follow me as I follow Christ.

Lord, open our eyes and our hearts to a changed life. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right, so we come here to Acts chapter 4, and I want to bring out here the reasons what is happening, why the early church is facing some persecution. There's actually two reasons, and it goes back to the two things that they're doing. Preaching and miracles.

Preaching and miracles. And I'll show you here later on in the sermon how this all lines up with what they've been taught for the last three years as they followed the Lord Jesus. So here, two reasons for persecution.

I'm going to start out with the first one, and that is they are actually preaching the word of God. Verse number one says, and as they spake unto the people. As they were speaking unto the people, this multitude, the priests and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, the authorities, came upon them being grieved.

Here's what they were grieved about. They were upset that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. Now, first of all, these people are being persecuted because they are teaching and preaching the word of God as they speak to the people.

And Brother David and I are experiencing this. We've been experiencing it for 15 years. You can go to a public place where there's many people.

You can go to a college campus. You can go to a festival. You can go downtown Mount Vernon, downtown Columbus, and you can walk around and be silent, and you'll face no persecution.

But as you begin to speak and lift up your voice and teach the people, you're going to find there will be immediately opposition to what you're sharing. And it starts right here. As they spake unto the people, it's triggered the priest, the captain of the temple, the Sadducees to come upon them, grieved that they taught and that they preached through Jesus the resurrection of the dead.

It's interesting. Think about this for a minute. It's interesting that in chapter 2, the fact that they were fellowshipping from house to house did not bring persecution.

The fact that they were breaking bread, the fact that they were getting together to pray, the fact that they were selling their goods and giving them to one another brought no persecution. And, you know, we can live our Christian life and break bread together like we did this morning. We can help each other financially.

We can do all these things which are very good things inside the body of Christ. All of these things were being done, but nobody really cared about them until they got out in the public arena and started preaching Jesus and teaching the lost, the people who were lost, the darkness, here's the truth. And so the early church could have been fine.

Just like most churches today, let's stay and have fellowship. Let's break bread one with another. Let's go from house to house and have prayer meetings.

Let's sell our goods and give to one another and support each other. Let's have Bible community life, and they did. But the early church went further than that.

They actually listened to the Lord's command to go into all the world and preach the gospel. So that's just what's happening here in Acts chapter 4, and they're beginning to face persecution. And in my personal life, it's such a clear testimony.

I can get along with people just fine in the streets at Walmart until I start speaking about the Lord. And, may I say it this way, until I start preaching the commandments and doctrines of Christ and still until I start saying homosexuality is a sin, oh, all of a sudden you've got a mess on your hands then, transgenderism is a sin, lying is a sin. You know, Brother David has experienced this.

I'll get out there and sing in a campus and sing a few songs and nobody bothers you. I'll even preach on the love of God and nobody bothers you until you start talking about sin. You know, one of the commandments in the Bible is Ephesians 5. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

You know, nobody really cares about that commandment. You mean I've got to go out and reprove the wickedness in this world? That's what the Lord commands. Don't fellowship with them, reprove them.

And you know, I don't mean to be sarcastic here this morning, but I think we need to be woken up a little bit. Certain commandments in the Bible, oh, we will never let these commandments pass. You know, we have to do these things.

I mean, it's just as simple as what the Bible says. Can't everybody see it? And then we turn to other commandments and we just overlook it. I'm not going to look there.

This is not comfortable for me and so I'm going to pass by it. Here I'm a pastor of a church. I guarantee you this, in these settings, if my wife doesn't wear a head covering, I wouldn't be here.

I guarantee you. However, if I don't reprove sinners, like the commandment is in Ephesians chapter 5, nobody will care and I'll be an elder. Certain things we care about, certain things we don't.

And these people in the early church, when they heard Jesus say, I'm commanding you to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, that was a commandment from the Lord. And it was as serious a commandment as a head covering, as a modest dress. It was a commandment.

And you know, I don't think we believe it's a commandment. And I don't see how we can read the book of Acts and not see that. They felt like, whoo, we're going to see her this morning.

They said, whoa, you know, you're telling us not to do it. We just heard from the Lord to do it. We're going to listen to him.

We fear him. And so they had that in their heart. And I really feel like most churches today, you know, you ask the question, maybe our children ask the question, where is the early church? And well, let me ask you this.

Do you go down to Mount Vernon? Do you go into Newark? Do you go in public places and see people out preaching like they were? I mean, if you'd have been in Jerusalem, you'd have seen men out preaching the gospel. Right? Am I wrong here? You'd have seen it. You'd have heard them.

And today we've forgotten those things. But anyway, it says, as they spake unto the people, they were speaking the truth. And that brought about animosity.

That brought about hatred. Verse two, being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. Verse three, and they laid hands on them.

Now, that's not an anointing service here. They laid hands on them and put them in hold unto the next day. It was probably close to seven or eight o'clock, and they held them in a room somewhere and put them in hold until the next day, for it was now even tide.

And so this is the first time that the apostles, after the day of Pentecost, face persecution. They are being put in hold. I don't know, there's a room.

You can imagine these men there. We're keeping you here. You're in hold because we don't like what you're teaching.

The people. Now, this persecution is going to increase. And if you follow the Bible, and we'll see it here in the next couple of chapters, it's going to go from being held to being threatened.

We're going to see that in this chapter. Then it's going to go, in a chapter or two, to getting beaten. And then it's going to move to being imprisoned.

And then we're going to see James and Stephen being martyred. So there's an intensity here that is picking up. We'll just hold you for now.

Then we're going to threaten you. Then we're going to beat you. Then we're going to imprison you.

And then finally, if you're not going to listen to us, we're going to put you to death. And many people were martyred. And so they're in hold right now.

But just if you'll turn over to verse number 18 of chapter 4, or excuse me, yes. Verse number 18 of chapter 4, it says, And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of the Lord Jesus. 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 you.

For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. So when they had further threatened them. Now we're getting some threats.

Hey listen, we got you in hold here. But listen, if you don't listen to us and stop speaking, we're going to beat you. They threatened them with beating and imprisonment.

Finding nothing how they might punish them because of the people. For all men glorified God for that which was done. For the man was above 40 years old on whom this miracle of healing was showed.

And so they're being threatened. Jump down to verse 29. They run back to their congregation.

Can you imagine people coming back here? And the congregation. Verse 24. And being let go they went to their own company.

And reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them. They lift up their voice in prayer. And verse 29.

And now Lord behold they're threatening. And grant unto their servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word. By stretching forth thine hand to heal.

Notice again the miracle of healing with preaching. God you told us that if we preach the word you'll send signs to follow. We went out and preached the word and we just saw a man healed.

Now Lord they're threatening us telling us you better stop this right now. They're going to put us in prison and kill us maybe. And they get back and say God give us the boldness to preach.

You keep stretching forth your hands with signs and wonders and we'll preach. And you know what happens? The house is shaken. People say Lord why don't God shake the house for our prayer meeting? Well maybe if we're threatened after preaching the gospel.

And threatened with beatings and threatened with imprisonment. And we get together and say God give us the boldness and courage to go out there and face it again. And even take a scourging to do it.

God we want to do your will. He might shake the place. But I just don't hear that prayer request offered up very often.

Not much on our hearts. For this kind of a ministry. Well that's the early church.

I'm just giving you the example of the early church here. And so they're threatened. Those threats were to suppress the public speaking.

I don't know that these Sadducees and these captains and these priests cared whether they sold their possessions. Whether Barnabas sold his property at Crete and gave it away. I don't know that they cared about that.

Let him do what he wants with his money. I don't know if they cared about having some private prayer meeting in some corner of the temple where they're just praying unto God. I don't think they cared about that.

And most of the world doesn't care about what we do religiously here in our churches. Sharing one with another. Just don't go out to them and preach the truth.

You're going to find you're going to get blasted. And it's just common. I mean I know we're in the midst of a bunch of rebellious people.

Young college kids. We were up at Bowling Green this week. This is an example.

You know people say it. I don't say this to lift myself up any. But people say where is the book of Acts? Well you ought to come with us sometime and you'll experience it.

I mean you'll literally experience it. You go preach openly to the people and you'll get threatened. You'll get the authorities there.

They normally come on a regular basis. This last week we were in Bowling Green. Two of our signs were stolen.

A banner was stolen. We went with all this stuff. And I came back simply with one little metal thing that held our sign together.

And cursed and blasphemed. You talk about feeling threatened. All because you're just out preaching the Word of God.

I mean we're not calling anybody names. We're just saying here's the truth. And we have a concern for your soul.

Thousands and thousands of young people. Just as lost as can be. Just like Stephan.

As blind as can be. Don't know the difference between their left hand and their right. And much cattle.

Happens all the time. But I'd like to just emphasize here. We're going to get to it probably next time.

But verse 19. This is one of our issues I think we all face. Verse 19.

But Peter and John answered and said unto them after they were threatened, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than to God judge you. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. What keeps you? What keeps you from speaking boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus? You say well weren't these guys seminary trained? Didn't they go to Bible school for ten years? And didn't they have a lot of experience? Well they were fishermen.

Most of them. They were tax collectors. But one thing.

One thing they did have. And I think it's something that we lack today. Is they did have the fear of God.

Fear of God. You know can you imagine Peter and John there. And the people are threatening them.

These are the leaders that had the power to do these things. And Peter and John said you're telling me that I can't preach anymore in Jesus name. I got a problem with that.

Because I just heard ten days ago the master. The one at the right hand of God. I saw him ascend up.

He said go and preach it everywhere to every creature. We got a problem here. I either fear you and stop.

Or I either fear him and keep going. You know what they did the right thing. They feared him and kept going.

You know I think most people. I'll just be blunt. Most people are fearful of men.

They are petrified of men. They are so afraid of what men think of them. They're not remembering that God is watching.

What do you think of me? I am cowering before men. Lord what do you think of me? You know we ought to get more concerned about those things. Wouldn't you agree with that? These guys were more concerned about God's crown than this.

And I'd like you to turn back here. Because I've shared these things before. But look back to Matthew 10.

This is not the first time that this has happened. And this is actually three years prior. These men are in training.

And in Matthew 10. I know this is a challenge for many of us. But I think we should rise to the challenge.

This is the Bible. I'm not teaching you something out of my opinion. This is the Bible.

Here in Matthew 10. The Lord is sending his 12 out. These are the same 12.

Peter and John. And some of the same men that are here in Acts chapter 4. In verse 5 of chapter 10 it says, These 12 Jesus sent forth and commanded them saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles and into any city of the Samaritans. Enter ye not.

But go ye rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as you go preach. Here's the word again.

Preach. Saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Now notice this also.

There are signs. Heal the sick. Cleanse the lepers.

Raise the dead. Cast out devils. Freely ye have received.

Freely give. The same two things. Preach and miracles.

We're going to see that throughout the book of Acts. Preach and miracles. Now, this is what they're told to do.

Now notice it jumps down here in verse 16. Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

Now jump down to verse 22. And you shall be hated of all men for my name's sake. But he that endureth to the end shall be saved.

Boy, that's an interesting passage there. You look at that one in the context. They're sitting down listening to the Lord.

And the Lord's saying, now go out and preach. They're going to persecute you. But you better endure through all that persecution and hold your faith to the end.

Am I right on that or not? Oh, it's so easy to say, well, I don't want this lifestyle. I want to go back to the easy stuff. I'm going to depart.

Like what Mark did, departed. But now look at this. Verse 23, when they persecute you in this city, flee you into another.

Wow, that's serious stuff. You're fleeing from city to city. And I know this is the Bible, and that's 2,000 years ago.

But we need to bring it up to our day. Brother David, he's experiencing some of this. You know, these people, they actually just curse you on the way out.

And sometimes the police, like this week, they follow you out of the campus because these people are angry. They tell you, they sing songs to you to get out. Get out of here.

And you go from place to place. Human beings angry that God wants them to live holy. But notice what it says here.

Verse 24, the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his Lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master. Verse 26, fear them not therefore.

Now this is spoken to these 12 who are going to go out and preach and do miracles. Same context, same thing. Don't be afraid of those people out there in the city.

Anywhere along the line, if I'm preaching something that's not true, raise your hand and I'll stop. Okay, fear them not. Okay, should we be fearing these people out here? No, no, no, no, no.

Listen, those people out there only have the power, he's going to say, to put a gun to your head and end your body. I have the power not only to kill you, but to send you to hell. Oh, that's serious there.

So he's talking to his disciples here, and in verse number 28 he says, and fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Now we need more of that in this congregation and many other congregations. He says, Lord, I tremble at the reality that you're sending me into this world to preach the gospel and warn them against sin, and if I don't do that, I'm in trouble with you.

Am I preaching the truth there or not? And yeah, these people, I know the first time I stood out in a street corner and preached the gospel, I was petrified. I had to get over it. Everybody is.

Would you agree with that? You're all petrified, and we were all fearful, but we have to get over that. We have to get past that. But you ought to fear God.

Oh, I'll just do what I want to do, you know, and live my life the way I want to live it. It's like, Brother David, I'll go to heaven, and I know you don't have a lot of assurance along the way, and I'll get there somehow. I'll tell you what you do.

Go out and preach the gospel, get a beating for it, sit in a prison cell, and I guarantee you'll be happy and joyful and have assurance of salvation. You know why? Because the Spirit of God is going to testify to you. You're real.

And so, fear God. You know, that's what Peter said. I fear God.

I'm not going to obey you people here. Even though you threaten me, if you want to put me in prison, that's fine too. If you want to kill me, that's fine too.

But I know this. I'm afraid of the One who can not only kill my body and end my life, but He'll send my soul straight to hell. So you're not going to do anything to me.

And there needs to be more of that fear. I think it's a dreadful thing. You know, yeah, it's a dreadful thing that we're immodest in our dress and we maybe don't have the head coverings we ought to have, but I think it's a dreadful thing for a man to be fearful of this world and be silent because of it.

I think it's a fearful thing. Someday you'll stand before God. We'll find out how things fall out.

But I would encourage you to get past that. And I know the arguments. You know, well, I'm just a regular old Christian and these are apostles.

You know, I'm not a part of that group. We're going to see just a little bit that the whole church was going for. Even some of those deacons, Philip and Stephen.

So I want to be a faithful minister. I don't want you to stand before God and you look at me and say, Brother Jerry, what's the deal here? You never even taught us this stuff. You never even told us what to fear God more than the world out there and told us to go out and preach the gospel.

Well, consider yourself warned. Amen? Now, the apostles here in this passage and in the other passages did not have this understanding that we're waiting for persecution. All they were doing was obeying the commandment and they found themselves in obedience to his commandment.

They found themselves in the persecution. They feared God. They obeyed him.

I think a lot of people are concerned. We need a church that obeys the Lord and their mind immediately goes to certain things. I understand.

I've heard that for years. Certain things. Why doesn't our mind go to this? Obey God.

Great commission. By the way, what's the two greatest commandments the Lord gave? First, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and the second is thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Do we love our neighbor as ourselves? Who's my neighbor? You know, someone asked Jesus that question.

Who is my neighbor, Lord? I mean, you said love your neighbor. Who is the neighbor? Well, the Lord said the neighbor is that nice brother in the church. You know, that one that sits beside you in the pew.

You need to love him. Is that what he said? What? No, he didn't. What do you say his neighbor was? I'll tell you who your neighbor is.

It's this fellow you don't even know that goes down to Jericho from Jerusalem and gets beaten up by a bunch of thieves and he's laying in a ditch somewhere where the religious crowd goes by and wants nothing to do with it. It's dirty. And you go down to the ditch and you sacrifice much of your belongings to help this man out.

That's your neighbor. That neighbor there is a picture of a lost soul that's been beaten up by the devil in the ditch going down to Jericho. He's fallen.

So the Lord says you really love your neighbor. That's the second greatest commandment there is. Why don't you get out there and help these people who are down in the ditch and preach to them and minister the grace of God to them? Well, that's what the second commandment is.

It's a great commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. And so these apostles are simply doing what they're told. This is not something they're asking for.

Nobody asks for persecution. Nobody asks for suffering. Nobody asks, can you beat me with a rod? Can you cut my head off? Can you do that for me? Nobody asks for that.

They're just doing what they're told. And they're finding out that when we obey Jesus, we get persecuted. There is a Bible verse that says, they that live godly in Christ Jesus shall do what? Suffer persecution.

I think it's the greatest testimony against the Christianity of today. I don't care. Even our Christianity has very little persecution.

There's something wrong with it. I realize that we obey many commandments in the Bible, but there are some major ones we've left aside. So Brother David mentioned, if you love me, you keep my commandments, and you walk the way I walked.

So the persecution does not come. It didn't come in the early church in their community atmosphere, in their church atmosphere. It only comes when they're now out saying, we're going to preach Jesus.

And God's doing miracles. And it's out in the midst of the lost people. And Jesus said to start with your preaching in the temple.

And that's where they're going. Or not in the temple, but in Jerusalem. So that's where they're going.

Now, I'm going off here a little bit, but I'm not being critical when I say this, but I hear a lot about the underground church. I don't see the underground church in the Bible. You don't see the underground church in the Bible.

Underground, think about this. You're underground. What does the Bible say? The church, we are the light of the world.

Do you put a candle under a bed? Is that what you do with a candle? Do you put a bushel basket over a candle? Didn't Jesus say don't do that? You don't put it under something. You set it where? On a candlestick, right? That everyone can see it. And you go through the book of Acts, and you just don't see this mindset of hiding, or underground, secret.

These people are out in the open, publicly declaring the truth. And they're facing a lot of persecution for it. And I know that there's many people when they read this that kind of check out in their minds, and this is a part of our fallen nature.

It's just like Peter. You know, Peter, when he heard Jesus say I'm going to go and suffer at the hands of the elders, and then they're going to kill me, and I'm going to be raised the third day, Peter says, not so! Not so, Lord! Because I don't want you to do that. You're our king.

This suffering is not so. And of course, the Lord rebukes him, basically said, you're of the devil. Get thee behind me, Satan.

That's demonic. And I don't know. This idea of not suffering.

We're not going to suffer. No, no, no, no, that's not for us. We ought to try to trace the roots of that one.

See where it's coming from. It's not coming from the one who said if you want to follow me, take up a cross and deny yourself. Not coming from him.

So maybe we ought to raise our standard a little bit and get out. You know, I had to as a young man. They said, listen, it's time for you to go out and preach.

I don't want to. I hate it. Do it anyway.

Do you think these young men, in Matthew chapter 10, when they're sent out of the cities, saying, oh boy, this is going to be fun. You're telling me they're going to beat us and scourge us in their synagogues and we're going to be chased from city to city. Oh boy, this is going to be fun.

I like this Christian thing. No, they didn't. They really believed Jesus when he said, you're going to take up a cross.

Deny yourself. And so early church, this is what's happening. People are starting to get persecuted for doing what they were commanded to do.

By the way, these are commands, not gifts. This whole idea of gifts. It's not my gift.

These are commandments. I'm not talking about gifts. I'm talking about commandments.

Now, some people have gifts. Some people have an extra measure of, you know, a giver, a helper, a server. But as I've said many times, see, we've got an offering box back there.

Only you who have the gift of giving should give to the offering box. You don't agree with that, do you? No, because God commands all of us to give. But some of you, I believe Valerie is one, some of you just have an extra measure that God has poured into your heart for giving.

And your antennas go up when someone needs help and you're the first responder. But the commandments of Christ are for all of us. How many of you can give me one commandment that Jesus gave his apostles that are not for us? When Jesus said to the apostles, go into all the world and preach the gospel, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you.

You see, you 12, I've commanded you this. You teach them all things. I've commanded you.

Very simple. Follow me, fellas, you 12, and then you teach your converts to follow you as you follow me. That's what Paul said.

Follow me as I follow Christ. So one of the commandments that the apostles heard was go and preach the gospel to every creature. That means the apostles turn around to us and say, go and preach the gospel to every creature.

And it's not for someone who has a special gift. It's someone, it's for all of us. And I think if we don't get past that, then we'll read the book of Acts, study it, and we'll just continue to let it go over our minds, and not actually accept the truth.

Well, look at verse number 3 here in chapter 4. Let's keep going. How be it many of them which heard the word believed, and the number of men was about 5,000. So now there's been 8,000 conversions.

Again, many of them which heard the word. Stephen here needed to hear, hear. Faith cometh by hearing.

And there's not enough word of God going up into the air today. We need people who are preaching it into the air, that people can hear the word of God. So they heard.

I did a little study, and as far as Jerusalem, there were 40,000 to 50,000 people living in Jerusalem in this day. With the feast, maybe 250 more thousand people had gathered. And so you've got 8,000 out of this great multitude converted.

You know, I'm thinking when the people go home, maybe one-tenth of the Jerusalem's population is now a believer in Jesus. Boy, that's going to shake the authorities up pretty good, isn't it? And things are starting to spread. They heard the word.

Faith comes by hearing. I think we need to get back. This is just me.

I believe it's the Bible. I think we need to get back to preaching, preaching. I like tracts.

I think tracts are good. How many times have you been persecuted for handing out a tract? Probably not very many. I like handing out books.

Books are fine. How many of you have been persecuted for handing out a book or handing out a tape or, you know, doing things on the Internet? It's amazing to me that we have all these technologies which people thought might bring a great revival because the Word of God could go out, but yet it still seems like God still wants us to preach. That's His method.

He calls it the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe. Here's another thing that these people didn't agree with or believe in that people can just see my life. They don't need to hear anything, just see my life.

Well, obviously, they didn't believe that. And by the way, what a blasphemous thing to think or to say. All they need to do is see my life, and that's enough light for them.

Hey, if anybody could have been that way, it was Jesus. Jesus, who is God in the human body, He came here and just see me. Look at how I do my business.

Look at how I handle my affairs. I don't need to say anything. I'm just the Son of God.

And yet, in Matthew chapter 4, it says, He went everywhere preaching the Word of God and teaching. Now, if Jesus needs to open His mouth, probably we do too, especially if we hear Him say, Follow me. Follow me.

Now, Brother Chris, let's pretend you're doing gutters one day, and Jesus walks by you. You're 2,000 years ago, and Jesus says to Chris, Follow me. You know what that meant, Peter, when he heard that? He left his nets, and he forsook all.

Follow them. You know what the Lord said to him when he left? He said, Follow me, and I'll make you a fisher of men. I'll make you a fisher of men.

You know what? They're fishing for men here, and they're catching a lot of them too. 8,000. We're only in chapter 4. Follow me.

So here is the Lord Jesus, and He is the perfect individual. His life is perfect, yet He has to speak. And so we do too.

And so persecution is beginning. Now, the second reason here for persecution, and by the way, my Bible here is torn, so I'm missing a number of words, so you'll have to fill in here. I might have them in my memory, but they're torn out of my Bible.

It says it came to, and I'm assuming past, that on the morrow that there, I don't know what the next word is, elders and scribes and Annas and the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest were gathered together at Jerusalem. And when they had sent them in the midst, they asked, By what power or by what name have you done this? Who is giving you this authority? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, You 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 you crucified, by the way, that's convicting there, he's accusing them of murder, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him that this man stand here before you whole. Now jump over to verse 14.

And beholding the man which is healed standing with them, by the way, that guy must have walked around with them, they could say nothing against it, but when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves, saying, What shall we do to these men? For that indeed a notable miracle has been done by them, it's manifest to all them that dwell at Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. Listen, you can't deny this thing. But that it spread no further among the people, let's squelch it, let us straightly threaten them that they speak henceforth to no man in this name.

Now, not only is the preaching causing problems, but this healing causes big problems. Man, everybody's already finding out this guy's healed. How do you get away from, everybody knows him, they walk in, and I think that's why God did the miracle with that man, because everybody knew him.

They passed him every day into the temple. So God says, I'm going to heal this guy, so that everybody knows him. And there's no way to deny it.

That's what they said. We can't deny this one. So if you look at the example here of the early church, God said, Go preach, I'll work signs and wonders.

What'd they do? They went and preached, God worked signs and wonders. When God's people preached and worked signs and wonders, the world says, We've got to stop it. We're going to squelch it.

It can't go on. And so that is why they are persecuted. They're persecuted.

They are troubled by the spread of the gospel. They are troubled by the miracles that these men are doing. And they are going to stop it.

Turn with me, because I want to, as we go through here, I'm going to try to knock down certain philosophies that are in our hearts. Turn over to Acts chapter 8. In verse 1, it's another example of great persecution here. It says, And Saul was consenting unto his death, and at that time there was great persecution against the church, which is at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles.

Again, I think God puts that in there for the lies that many people are trying to promote, that only this is for the apostles, because look what happened. And the devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him. Here's a martyr.

As for Saul, he made havoc at the church, entering into every house and hailing men and women, committing them to prison. Now people are going to jail. Now here's an amazing verse.

Verse 4, They that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word. Now, again, the apostles are back in Jerusalem. Saul is scattering the people.

That's us, the church. We're running, fleeing our houses. We're going to end up in jail if we don't get out of here.

So people are scattering. And are they going underground? No. But they go everywhere what? Preaching the word.

Wow. That's just so different than our world today. These people seem to have a real faith in God, and they want to communicate.

I think they really believe that people who died without their faith are going to spend an eternity in hell. They really believe that. Not only do they believe that, and here's one of the advantages they had.

They saw Jesus ascend up, and He said, You go and preach unto every creature before I come back, and then shall the end come. This gospel must be preached, and then shall the end come. They thought, we want our Lord to come back.

And the end to come, we want to enter into eternity in heaven, and this new heaven and new earth. And so let's get busy at the work. Right? And we've lost some of that.

Oh, it's been 2,000 years. Why don't we just take it easy and kind of enjoy life? We've got a good job, and making good money, and we can have a lot of things. You know, all those kind of things.

But getting people into the boat before the rain comes is not on the top priority. At least giving them a warning. So what I want to share this morning in closing here, I want to read just another verse or two, but in the book of Acts here as we start down this road, we have preaching and miracles.

Preaching and miracles. And those two things are what are bringing great persecution to the church. I'm not going to go back and read Matthew 10 again, but Jesus said, go out and preach, and stand up on the housetop, and declare the truth, and I'm going to send signs and wonders to follow you.

Oh, this is great. They did. They came back rejoicing, didn't they? We're here casting out devils.

I can't believe it. And the Lord says, well, that's great, but remember, that assurance of salvation is a better thing, that knowing your name is written in heaven. It's really the thing you ought to treasure.

But I want to read just one more verse. I'd like you to turn to John 15. We went over this probably a year ago now, and Jesus is preparing them for this day here in the book of Acts, and let's read what he says to them.

Same thing, just in a different way. In John 15, verse 20. Remember the word that I said unto you, the servant is not greater than his Lord.

If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake.

By the way, you have to remember that. The Lord tells you this. When I'm out there and these kids are blaspheming me and just calling me everything in the book, I realize that they don't hate me.

They don't even know me. If they knew me, they wouldn't hate me. But you know who they hate? I tell them, you hate this one right up here.

You're taking your hatred out on me. That's always been the case, hasn't it? The messenger is the one that gets the hatred. Let's keep reading.

Verse 22, If I had not come and spoken unto them. Here is this idea of speaking. They had not had sin, but now they have no cloak for their sin.

He that hated me hated my Father also. And now here is the miracles. If I had not done among them the works, which none other man did.

These miracles, they had not had sin, but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father. Not only my words, but the miracles that I showed them. But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, they hated me without a cause.

Jesus came and he says, I've preached to them, I've taught them, they hate me. I've shown them all these wonderful miracles, they hate me. And guess what? They're going to hate you too.

You're going to go forth and preach and God is going to work miracles and they're going to hate you for it. My personal feeling. And again, I'm just trying to immerse myself into the Word of God and New Testament Christianity.

And as many of you would say, you read the book of Acts, you say, where is this? Today. And some of us sit in church and say, our church is dead. Where is a church that's alive? Well, I'll tell you what, you start doing this stuff, you'll get alive.

You'll get alive. Lay down some of the things that you're prioritizing in life and start putting His Kingdom and the preaching of God's Word higher and higher in your life, you'll start feeling some life. Would you agree with that, Brother David? Some life.

We need some life. You're commanded. It's not a calling, it's not a gift.

Oh, some people are better at it than others. Some of you are better at serving than me. Some of you are better at giving.

Some of you are better at helping. Some of you are better at many of the gifts. But you know what? I'm trying to help too.

I'm trying to give. I try to serve. And so yes, maybe some of us are better at preaching, but that doesn't mean you don't do it at all.

You're commanded to go and to preach the Gospel. So we're going to look at persecution and some of the things that they faced. From what I understand in church history, that those 12 men, 11 of them were martyred, lost their life.

The other one, John, ended up in a pot of hot oil. You ever heard that story? He was burned alive, but he lived through it. You know why they put him in a pot of hot oil? Revelation chapter 1 says, I'm out here on the Isle of Patmos.

Does anybody know what he says, why he's there? For the testimony of our Lord, the Word of God. They put me out here because they want to shut me up. I'm out here on this barren island.

They put me in a boiling tub of oil and God preserved me. Finally, they said, we can't get rid of this guy. Let's put him out here on this barren island and maybe we can't hear his voice anymore.

So let's be apostolic churches. Let's be New Testament churches. Can I hear an amen for that? And let's not fear men.

Let's fear God. I think Brother Chris said a few weeks ago, if you fear God, you'll fear nobody else. And that's the truth.

Fear God. You won't fear anybody else because you know that you've got the Lord standing right with you. Nobody to fear.

That's why David could go out and face the giant and have confidence. He said, giant, you're coming down. And you and I ought to be like David.

We ought to have courage to face the giants. Alright, so we're going to continue here in Acts chapter 4 and there's going to be a lot of people getting beaten and imprisoned and martyred and they're all going to be out preaching and persecution is all over the place. So prepare yourself.

You say, I don't like this kind of Christianity. Well, maybe there's another church down the road you can hear better messages. But I'm just going to try to teach you the truth.

Is that the truth today or am I missing something? Now we can say this and some people say this, that was for then. We're different today. And then when you say that, always remember, they'll come around and say, well, homosexuality, that was back then.

They were against it. We hear this all the time. That was back then.

Not for today. That modesty thing, those head coverings, that was for back then. It's not for today.

So then you open up a big can of worms. But Jesus said, you go and teach them everything I command, everything. And I'll be with you to the end of the world.

So there's our commission. So let's love our neighbor. And remember that many of these people out here in the world are going straight to hell.

And don't let them go to hell without a warning. We're trying to give opportunities and anyone who would like to go on a college campus with us, if you want to warn young people, there's precious young people, 18, 19, 20 year old people who are as blind as Stephan up here. It is blind.

You can warn them. Speak to them. Hopefully we're going to begin ministering to homeless and lost people in Columbus.

Wonderful opportunities to learn to fear God and not men. And talk to people about heaven and hell. I don't think you're going to stand before the Lord and the Lord's going to say, oh, why did you preach my gospel so much? You shouldn't have done that.

Can you imagine? That's silly. The only thing I can hear Him saying is, why didn't you preach it more than you did? Why didn't you warn sinners? So let's organize priorities in life and move in that direction. I'm going to do that.

And I've tried to do that over the years, so let's do that. Alright, let's close while I have a word of prayer. And we'll continue with this book next time.

Heavenly Father, Lord, we pray for the mercies of God again to abound upon us, but more importantly, for the grace of God, Lord, to move us in the right direction. And Lord, may we in our hearts acknowledge our need.