So once again, it's Acts chapter
4 and verse 1. Peter and John are speaking. 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. And they laid
hands on them, and put them in hold unto the next day, for it
was now eventide. Howbeit many of them which heard
the word believed, and the number of the men was about five thousand. And it came to pass on the morrow
that their rulers, and elders, and scribes, and Annas 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 set them in
the midst, they asked, by what power or by what name have ye
done this? 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 is he 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 all. This is the stone which was set
at naught of you builders, which has become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in
any other, for there is none other name under heaven given
amongst men whereby we must be saved. Now 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. 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 conferred amongst 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 straightly threaten them that they speak
henceforth to no man in this name. And they called them and
commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of
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 ye. For we cannot
but speak the things which we have seen and heard. So when
they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding nothing
how they might punish them because of the people. And 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. Amen. May God bless this reading
to us. After the man at the beautiful
gate had been healed, Peter used that opportunity to preach the
gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of Jesus Christ to the people
that gathered around the miracle. Such an amazing thing had been
done that everyone was excited, everyone wanted to see the spectacle. A man that had been lame for
40 years, who had been laid at the gate of the temple for many
decades. now was walking about, was leaping
about, was praising God for the tremendous miracle that had been
performed upon him. And he was amazed, and the people
were amazed, and they began to listen to what Peter and John
had to say. And we spoke about that last
week, how that this miracle gave authority, gave boldness, and
it gave power to the message of the Lord Jesus Christ that
these disciples, these apostles, were preaching. Peter preached about serious
matters, not just silly talk, not just frivolous things, but
things to do with eternal life, things to do with Jesus Christ,
things about death and about life and about resurrection from
the grave. important things, meaningful
things, things that mattered to the hearts, to the souls of
those who were there and hearing what he had to say. And he gave
a challenge. He called upon these people to
repent and to be converted, to be changed, to be altered, not
to be the same people that they were when they came up to the
temple, but to go away from the temple different because They
had met the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, of course, had been crucified. He had been buried. He had risen
again, and he had ascended into heaven. Jesus himself used to
walk the streets of Jerusalem, but now he was seated at the
right hand of God in heaven. They weren't seeing Jesus anymore. They were listening to the apostles
of Jesus. the messengers of Jesus, the
people of Jesus carrying the message about Jesus to those
who had ears to hear. And the temple authorities were
very upset about all of the terrible things, the disruption and the
problems that were being caused by this great spectacle that
had arisen there at the gate of the temple. It's very interesting
how these authorities came and they arrested Peter and John
and they examined them and they threatened them and they put
them in jail overnight and they thought, this is a problem and
we're going to have to deal with it. And you know, that tells
us something about religion that we need to remember. The temple
authorities are a picture of religion and there's lots of
religion in this world. Many, many kinds. You youngsters
here, you younger people, boys and girls, you have been very
blessed by being brought by your parents at an early age under
the sound of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But there's lots of religion
out there, and there's lots of false religion. How do you know
what's true? How do you know whether you listen
to these apostles speaking about Jesus, or you listen to the temple
authorities, the religion of the world, and do what they say
that you should do? because religion wants to tell
people what they have to do to be saved and to be happy in this
world. But the gospel tells men and
women and boys and girls what Jesus has already done to save
us from our sins and to bring us life and happiness, not only
in this world, but in the world to come. The resurrection of
the Lord Jesus Christ was the central message that these apostles
preached and this is God's way of saying that salvation is a
completed work which Jesus Christ has accomplished. And lots of
people heard this message when Peter and John preached. Can
anyone tell me how many people were converted on the day of
Pentecost when Peter preached his first sermon on that day
when the Holy Spirit came? Somebody's got their hand up.
Do you know? Not a million. Not a million. How many? Yes, yes, 3,000. Now, most people would think
that that was absolutely amazing, but there were 5,000 people converted
this day. I don't know whether it was the
next day, maybe it was a couple of days later, but already in
Jerusalem, there's thousands upon thousands of people. Larry,
can you tell me how many people we're allowed to have in this
auditorium at one time? 150. Okay, that's 8,000 people. 150
at a time. How many times could we fill
this church? Okay, forget that. Forget that. It was a lot of people. A lot
of people. And those people were trusting
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And suddenly this was a big problem
for the authorities. The Jewish leaders said that
so many people are being converted to Jesus. We need to do something
about this. But what can we do? These men
haven't actually committed a crime. They've not done anything wrong.
We don't have a law that we can charge them with. And look, here's
this man. He's still dancing. He's obviously
healed. We can't deny that this happened. They didn't know what to do.
So they threatened the disciples and they told them that they
were to stop preaching. Stop preaching about Jesus. And Peter said, how can we stop
preaching about Jesus? when there is no salvation anywhere
else but in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the work of
the Lord Jesus Christ, in the accomplishments of the Lord Jesus
Christ. How can we stop telling men and
women, boys and girls about the Lord Jesus when he is the only
way of salvation? There is none other name under
heaven given amongst men whereby we must must be saved. And he went on to say, we cannot
but speak of the things that we have seen and heard. And you
know, this is the same today. That's the reason why we're here
today. That's the reason why we come to church. And I know
that sometimes when it comes around to Sunday morning, that
little ones groan and say, oh, have I got to go to church today? I was listening to some little
ones talking. I'm not going to tell you who
they were this morning. and one of them was groaning
a little bit about coming to church and the other one said,
oh, it's okay, it's only an hour and a half. So that's what we have to sit
through, an hour and a half, but it's okay, it's okay, it's
good for us to hear the things about the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's good for us to hear this message that was so important
to the apostles and it is so important to us today. This is the same gospel that
we preach and we must preach the Lord Jesus Christ. We must
preach the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus Christ as the way
of salvation. It was Peter's message. It was
John's message. It was Paul's message. And praise
God, He has maintained that message in its purity all down through
the ages. And men and women and boys and
girls can hear that today. If we are going to be saved,
we must be saved by trusting and believing in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And we must preach as Peter preached,
and we must look to the Holy Spirit to add to the church daily
such as should be saved, as did the apostles and the early church. Three thousand one day, five
thousand another day, but every single believer is a work of
grace, is a miracle of God, and every single believer is precious
in his sight. Thank you for listening and for
your attention this morning. May the Lord bless these