[00:00:00] Speaker A: I now can sing since I've been redeemed I'm on the everlasting, everlasting rock I faith in Christ my redeemer king I'm on the everlasting, everlasting rock Then roll Roll, billows roll I'm on the everlasting rock of ages Roll, Roll, billows roll I'm on the everlasting rock the storms may rage and the billows roll I'm on the everlasting, everlasting rock no earthly storm air can move my soul I'm on the everlasting, everlasting rock Then roll, roll, billows roll I'm on the everlasting rock of ages Roll, roll, billows roll I'm on the everlasting rock I am secure for my faith will hold I'm on the everlasting, everlasting rock My life he doth with his love in fold I'm on the everlasting, everlasting rock and roll Roll Pillows, roll I'm on the everlasting rock of ages Roll welcome
[00:01:36] Speaker B: to the Voice of Hope. I'm your host, Anthony High.
Today we continue our series in the book of Acts. I'm joined by Serge Penner, our Bible teaching manager. And in this episode, we're studying Acts chapters three and four, where we see what happens after the coming of the Holy Spirit.
The church has been formed, the gospel has been preached, and now we begin to see the Holy Spirit's power radiating through ordinary faithfulness.
Throughout today's lesson, we'll look at the healing of the lame man at the temple gate, Peter's bold proclamation of Jesus, and the early church's response when opposition arises.
Let's join Serge as we turn to Acts chapters 3 and 4 and consider how the Spirit's power radiates through the church.
[00:02:29] Speaker C: Most of us know Acts chapter two. We know the Holy Spirit comes and he fills the apostles and the believers there. And then they preach the gospel to everyone who's listening and they hear it in their own language.
It's this amazing beginning to the church and what Jesus does after he leaves.
But then what happens after that? Where do we go from there?
[00:02:56] Speaker D: Yeah, that's a great question.
So what we're going to be doing today is we're looking at Acts chapter three and four, and we're going to see how the Holy Spirit's power radiates through the church.
And think about the picture of. So you have a vehicle and you have the ignition. You have the engine running, but then eventually it's going to have to come out of the driveway. And it's going to have to start going down the road and let me get traction. And whenever you have traction, you know there's going to be. There's going to be some potential for there to be opposition. And we see that right away. And so we're going to see the Spirit at work. It's going to radiate through the church. And it leaves a couple expectations. In this episode, I want to talk a little bit about what those expectations for the church are. When we're filled with the Spirit, what does that actually look like?
[00:03:46] Speaker C: Well, I want to take you back to something.
When you say radiant and radiating a witness, what exactly did you mean by that?
[00:03:55] Speaker D: As we think about Jesus and Matthew, chapter five, Jesus said that we are to be salt, like to savor the food, to add flavor. We're also to be the light of the world.
When the Spirit comes and descends on the church, we are radiating Jesus presence. We are called to be the light. And so when we think about that, the context that I want us to think about is for salt and light to have any impact.
It needs to have contact.
And that's the whole thing going back to traction.
The church is only useful when it's in dark places, when. When it's proclaiming Jesus at the center of everything. Jesus needs to be proclaimed. And so that radiating a light is our invitation to be a witness.
Yeah. So we'll be looking at Acts, chapter 240 to 47. This comes right after Pentecost and Peter has shared his message and we see a lot of people being saved. And then we kind of see this. This slowdown puts everything into focus here. And this framework we're going to build off of that and see how does this help us understand chapter three and four. Why don't you read it and then we'll like break that down a little bit.
[00:05:14] Speaker C: Sure, yeah, I have it here.
Acts 2, 40, 47.
And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, be saved from this perverse generation.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Then those who gladly received his word
[00:05:29] Speaker C: were baptized in that day. About 3,000 souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.
Now all who believed were together, and they had all things in common and sold their possessions and goods and. And divided them among all as anyone had need.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: So continuing daily with one accord in
[00:06:01] Speaker C: the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.
[00:06:17] Speaker D: There's three different people, three different characters that I want to highlight. So the first that we see here is the apostles. They're mentioned twice in this account. So first it says that the believers are actively following the apostles teaching. This is something that we see that Jesus invites them to do, to teach. Very clear here. The next part, right, we see is that there's signs and wonders done by the apostle. So there's those two pieces, they're mentioned twice.
The next piece we have the believers, and they're kind of at the center of this. This is the church. And so we see three ways that they're in this summary being described as they're having fellowship, they're breaking bread, and they're praying.
This is very simplified. We're going to see this all throughout Scripture here on forward, that the church will always function together in these ways. We're going to see just deep fellowship, the koinonia, that deep commitment. This is well beyond coffee and donuts. It's like deep commitment, breaking bread and prayer.
[00:07:26] Speaker C: You said koinonia. Is that a Greek word?
[00:07:29] Speaker D: Yes, that's a Greek word for fellowship.
I guess I wanted to point that out simply because fellowship can kind of have this by His Word in our churches today.
So it's a group of believers that. That is deeply committed.
And then lastly, at the beginning of what you read in verse 40 as well as 47, it mentions that God is adding numbers to the church.
It is ultimately about God doing the work. This isn't formulaic. Like, this isn't apostles, you know, teaching plus, plus signs and then plus the church doing their thing. And it's going to be growth. No, this is ultimately. This is the Spirit's work. This is God at work. Chapter 3 and 4 begins strongly. We see signs and wonders. Chapter 31 to 10, we see a sign of wonder done by Peter. And then it'll just flow right into Peter takes that moment. And it was never about. It was never about the sign of wonder alone. It was about pointing it to Jesus. He began speaking.
Chapter 311 to 26, Peter shares this message of salvation.
And then beginning of chapter four, we see like this incredible movement. 5,000 people believe there's this acceptance. But then there's also opposition from the scribes and Pharisees. And so then Peter once again addresses them in verses 4 to 22.
And this is then where we're Starting to see that, like all of Jerusalem is starting to hear about this. This is what they were called to do.
And then later on we see that after this opposition, then they come back to the church and then we're back to this thing of prayer and fellowship and just an even deeper oneness. And so this is almost like a cycle. That little summary read before we should be expecting this. This is something, while it's not formulaic, God's church will work together.
There's power in it. And so we want to dive into that a little bit more to understand this passage.
[00:09:37] Speaker C: Yeah, it's interesting that you point that out and you see that in the world where the gospel comes in, there's people that come into it and there's just a joy. But then the opposition comes behind it. And it's interesting to see that that started at the very beginning. There's nothing new and just to expect that.
[00:09:59] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:01] Speaker C: So what's significant about how Acts chapter three opens?
[00:10:06] Speaker D: Yeah. So this is where I like to begin with my first idea of the church's expectation.
The expectation to see.
So we begin chapter three. Peter and John are. They're going to the temple and it's almost like unexpected. They're just continuing with prayer. They go to the temple to pray. It's the ninth hour and they're on their way. It's just. It seems almost ordinary.
[00:10:37] Speaker C: They're doing their normal process.
[00:10:38] Speaker D: Yeah, they weren't about. They weren't looking for someone to heal.
But as they're walking, there's a man who has been lame since birth and he's sitting there asking for alms, which seems incredibly strategic. He's there asking for alms. I know from my experience, having lived cross culturally, like that was the spot for him to be. And Peter, he's walking to the temple and there's something interesting. It says in verse four that he fixes his eyes on him, so he looks right at him.
And I don't know most people when, like, that's not something you do unless you're planning to give something to somebody who's begging you, don't fix eyes. Like, I don't know if you've ever felt that. But as soon as you lock eyes, there's a sense of, I probably should give them.
[00:11:32] Speaker C: It's like fishing.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: They're really right in.
[00:11:35] Speaker D: And it says that Peter actually fixes eyes on him. So he's the one initiating this.
He sees an opportunity and it's powerful. He says, silver and gold have I not but what I give I give to you in the name of Jesus. And then he like, instantaneously he gives him his right hand and he heals him right there on the spot. He recognizes this man has a need and just observation. I think there's so much we can learn on that if we want to have impact on the world.
Our world is dark, and all we need to do to begin with is look at the needs. And so that's the immediate expectation that I want to set. Before we even say, like signs and wonders, we work with what is God revealing to us?
And Peter was being faithful with that.
That's, I think, something for us to consider as we're. As we're looking at this, that this is ultimately about spiritual attentiveness.
This is about us being faithful.
Going from here, I think this pivots very quickly to the next point, the expectation to speak.
So we see something really interesting happening here. We spend about 10 verses with this opening of the lame man with Peter and John. And then very quickly it pivots verse. Let's see, verse 11, it says that the lame man ran inside the temple. And then Pretty soon, verse 12, we start seeing Peter pivots this, and it's like, why are you ascending a maze? And he pivots from the lame man and says, this is ultimately an opportunity to. To speak. And he speaks to everybody that's in the temple and proclaims the gospel, that same gospel that he proclaimed in the chapter before, he does it again. And it just becomes an opportunity. Like the sign was never. It was a means to speak about Jesus. It was about the message of the gospel.
[00:13:45] Speaker C: Yeah, he used that. And he had their attention and used it to share. Yeah, I like that.
[00:13:52] Speaker D: When, what do we see? God.
So God. God at work creates responsibility for us. And so we see that Peter, he redirects his attention. And then I wanted to point out a couple of things about what happens in the passage here. So we're just. We're going to look, we're not going to jump too much into the message, but I want to highlight a couple of things.
Peter is quick.
First, he redirects to teaching about Jesus.
His entire message is built around the understanding of the people. They're familiar with scripture.
What an easy way to begin. They have the context of scripture. That's where he begins. And so he points back to the lawn of prophets, and he talks about the prophet to come.
Like he points to Moses saying there was someone coming.
And he said that that was Jesus. And he said, the work that you're seeing right now, this is Jesus. This is the ultimate sign. And so it's a Christocentric message, and it cuts him right to the heart.
There's so much that we can learn from this going forward. We will see a number of messages throughout Acts.
They will always have Jesus at the center. It's never about who. Who they're healing about the apostle themselves. It's just like we talked about in previous episodes about the Spirit pointing to Jesus.
That becomes part of every message.
[00:15:21] Speaker C: Yeah. And you find that in John, that passage in John from 14, about 16, where Jesus explains the coming of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, he's always gonna refer to Jesus.
[00:15:34] Speaker D: So, yeah. Acts chapter three and four calls us to opportunities, and then those opportunities invite us to speak. It's not just an invitation. It's an expectation. We are called to be witnesses. And so I think if we look at this, what does it mean to be a witness?
I've heard a lot this idea that, oh, you know, it's not so much what you speak, but how you live.
I want to push back on that a little bit and say, like, while it's not just what you say, you are still called to say and represent with your words. We are Jesus witnesses. We're called to teach.
And if we're not teaching, we're not fulfilling that great commission.
[00:16:16] Speaker C: And there's no doubt they need to line up.
[00:16:18] Speaker D: Yeah, they need to come together. Our lives will match with that. And we'll look at that on the third point where we see the church at work together.
But we need to have the words. And so when we think about that, there's a couple things I'd like to think about that requires personal heart change. It requires us to be in tune with Scripture. The Spirit will put words in our mouth as we spend time with him.
And so we look at that. And Peter spoke out of that. We'll see very quickly as we get into chapter four, I wanted to pivot to this piece here a little bit where we see two responses.
The first response is people believing to hear the message. They believe. 5,000 people respond.
There's also the opposite response, and that is of the Scribes and Pharisees. And they make an interesting point which I wanted to bring back to us as well. So chapter three, chapter four.
And they have this conversation with Peter and John, and they're asking, by what power?
What power are you doing this?
And Peter, like, just on a trigger point, he's like, we're doing this through juicy power. And then, boom, right back to the message of Jesus and the response that we see it says now in verse 13, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled and they realized that they had been with Jesus. That verse right there, that's what it means to speak. It's not about what knowledge we have. Like, while I think it's important to learn and to have wisdom, it's that spiritual wisdom that comes from Jesus. And once we've been with Jesus, that's going to have incredible impact.
[00:18:27] Speaker C: You're speaking from experience then, not from something you just read and know about. You actually know about it because you've been there and there done that. You mentioned the belief in opposition and how those two go together. Some people believe and some people push back.
Why do you think those always go together?
[00:18:46] Speaker D: Yeah, that's a, It's a good question. I think it will always happen.
All throughout Scripture we see this whole thing of hard hearts, soft hearts, people who are willing to. Willing to receive, willing who don't receive. And so something that I wanted to point out here.
When the gospel is proclaimed, it's going to reveal our hearts.
So they have the 5,000 who believe they heard the message. Peter proclaimed. He's like, he proclaimed the gospel. He pointed to Moses and he's like, jesus was the greater prophet that you all killed and he's now with us. The Spirit has come. There's redemption in him.
And there's.
It says that some believed and then the scribes and Pharisees, essentially it pierced into their hearts and they were like.
It irritated them because it challenged their authority. And so when you, when you have the, the power of the Spirit and the power of the gospel, it. You can't hold true powers. And so essentially it's a letting down of self. And so it's like for me to accept the gospel, there has to be me letting go of my power. And when we receive Jesus power, then it will radiate like it is life transforming.
[00:20:15] Speaker C: One of our partners says that when the light comes in, the darkness has to flee, but it never goes willingly.
I think we see that right here.
What I always find interesting about Peter and John and this happens more than once, I think through the story of Acts, through the account there where they're released from this. So they, they get a trial, they get, we say they get their hands slapped in this case. Other times they won't coming up. But this case, they get away pretty easy. But the first thing they do Is they go back to the church. Why is that significant?
[00:20:54] Speaker D: So this is significant for a number of reasons.
It becomes a community reflex. Like this is the power of the Spirit is revealed by their oneness. We go back to that model that I talked about, that at the end of chapter 2, 40, 47. We see that that's how the church is.
There's fellowship, there's oneness. They pray together. They do everything together.
And so take the picture of a family debrief or like a huddle after something dramatic happens. I don't know how your family is, but. But essentially, that is how church works. Like, something exciting happens, you do it together.
The church is meant to be one. The church interprets life together. So faith is sustained corporately. And this is something that I believe that we, especially in the west, don't do really well.
We prioritize individual worship. We prioritize, you know, personal devotions. But it's the gathering of the saints. It's the togetherness that we see just tremendous power. It's a community that. That, like, lifts. Lifts the broken lifts.
All avenues are life together, and that's where the church shines.
[00:22:15] Speaker C: Well, you see that in everything.
[00:22:16] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:22:16] Speaker C: I mean, even football games have a sense of community that develops around.
Around it. We call it tailgating.
[00:22:22] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:22:23] Speaker C: But it's the same idea, like, here we are to come together, is what you're saying.
[00:22:29] Speaker D: Yeah. And if we dive into this a little more, I'm suggesting that it's a particular type of community. It's not just a fan base. This is much deeper than that. So showing up requires more than that. So a couple of things that I want to point out is the way they pray, it's powerful. Notice what they're not praying for.
They're not praying for, like, God, you know, give us. Give us safety. Give us. You know, they're like, no, the opposite. They're praying for boldness.
This is a church that is, like, deeply committed to each other. And, like, we want to do more.
More of what this is, like, pushed into that opposition, that darkness.
[00:23:13] Speaker C: Or one of our partners that works with people in Afghanistan pointed that out.
He spent some time with a church there, and what he noted, they spent a couple of days praying together. And he noted that he never heard any prayer about an easy life or things going well. They prayed for boldness. They were. It sounded very much like acts. And to me, that stood out because, you know, you think of someplace like Afghanistan, it's difficult, and it's difficult especially to be a believer, but that's not what they were after. They wanted the gospel to go out and they wanted to be bold and courageous for that which probably will cost them their life if they live that out.
[00:23:54] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:55] Speaker C: Ended up happening with Peter and John eventually.
[00:23:59] Speaker D: As we, as we come to the close of this, there's a couple things that we see. It's routine faithfulness and showing up.
Prayer is fuel. We see the Spirit. It says that once again. It's almost like they had a second Pentecost. It's like the Spirit descended. We see that it was just like a very visible, powerful way that the church just radiates together and shared communal life then becomes this witness.
And next time going forward, we'll see that not only are we fighting darkness on the outside, but we are still broken and there's brokenness inside of us that will be fighting. We're not going to go there. We're headed that way.
But for right now, I think the big idea that I want to leave with us is when the Spirit descends, we're going to see the Spirit's power radiated all around. And it began here in Jerusalem, but then it goes out to the ends of the earth. And we're still seeing that today.
And that's just, that's exciting.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: This concludes today's episode of the Voice of Hope.
We're reminded that a spirit filled life is attentive to the needs around us, ready to speak the truth about Jesus and committed to gathering with God's people.
Some will respond in faith, but others may resist.
But the call remains the same to be a faithful witness as we go. May we ask the Lord to open our eyes to the opportunities before us, Give us courage to speak his name boldly and draw us together in unity as his church.
Thanks for joining us for today's teaching. In addition to the Voice of Hope, Heralds of Hope has an international program called called Hope for Today.
Our Hope for Today program is available in 44 languages around the world.
We recently received this testimony from a listener in South Asia.
Since I came to faith, I have grown from having a simple faith to a mature faith, knowing God more and growing in fellowship.
Everything I have learned and the growth I've experienced have come through the program.
The radio has become a very handy tool that I can take anywhere while listening.
Here at Heralds of Hope, we believe that people need to hear the gospel in their heart language. If you've been encouraged by this study in Acts, we'd love to hear from you. Your stories and responses mean a lot to us. You can email us at
[email protected] or call 866-960-0292 or you can write to us at Heraldsofhope, 6183 Lincoln Highway, Harrisonville, PA 17228.
To explore more Bible teaching and encouragement, visit Heraldsofhope programs. You can also listen and share the Voice of Hope wherever you get podcasts.
Join us the next time as we continue our journey through acts. Until then, may God's Word strengthen your faith and remind you that his work in the world is far from finished. Thank you for listening to the Voice of Hope.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: Filled with the Spirit, filled with Go God's grace, Filled with the friendship we find in this place called as Disciples.
Go now in vain.
Jesus will show the way.
Go out and serve Him.
Serve Him.
Carry his word into all of the world. Go and serve Him.
Serve Him.
Go out and serve our Lord.
Go serve my lo.
