All right, if you'd now open
your Bible to the fourth chapter of the book of Acts. Acts chapter 4. We'll read the first 22 verses
of Acts chapter 4. The priests and the captain of
the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while
they were speaking to the people. Remember now, they were explaining
to the people what had just happened concerning the healing of this
lame man. And so the captain of the temple guard, and you
know, when you think of that, what in the world does a temple
need with guards? That thought just occurred to
me. What does a temple need with guards? But they had them. And the Sadducees,
they came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the
people. They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching
the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the
dead. They seized Peter and John, and because it was evening, they
put them in jail until the next day. But many who heard the message
believed, and the number of men grew to about 5,000. The next
day, the rulers, Elders and teachers of the law
met in Jerusalem. Annas the high priest was there,
and so were Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and the other men of the high
priest's family. They had Peter and John brought before them
and began to question them, by what power or what name did you
do this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy
Spirit, said to them, rulers and elders of the people, If
we are being called to account today for an act of kindness
shown to a cripple, and are asked how he was healed, then know
this, you and all the people of Israel, it is by the name
of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom
God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. Let's stop here and just make
a contrast. Do you remember what this man
Peter was doing six or seven weeks before this? He was there
around the campfire, and a young girl asked him if he knew Christ. And out of fear, he denied he
even knew Him. And that was the third time he'd
done that that evening, out of fear. And now, six or seven weeks
later, he stands before the same authorities that were responsible
for the crucifixion of Christ, the very same ones. standing
there in presence. And he says to them, know this,
you and all the people of Israel, it's by Jesus of Nazareth whom
you crucified. Now what's the difference? Did
something, is something different about Peter here? Nice, same
old man, same guy. It said in Peter being filled
with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God takes weaklings
and makes them strong. He takes the ignorant and makes
them wise. He takes the bashful and makes
them bold. That's why I pray. I suppose
every week I make mention of it in my prayers, that God would
strengthen me by His Spirit. In one form or another, I pray
that. Because without that, I'll be like Peter there, trembling
before men and denying the Lord. With the Holy Spirit, a man may
be bold and truthful. Then Peter goes on to say in
verse 11, he is the stone, that is, Jesus of Nazareth is the
stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name
under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. 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. I'm even sometimes
surprised. It just shows, I guess, that
we all still have flesh in us. But when I hear some of our brethren
preach and realize these men that have come through this pulpit,
most of them are what the world would call unschooled. I read
the things they've written. I get a lot of bulletins via
email. And men who've never been off to Bible school, never been
to seminary, write things with such wisdom and insight as embarrass
or should embarrass those whose books line the shelves of Christian
bookstores. Oh, the power of God's grace.
These men were astonished that men could speak with such courage,
such clarity, such authoritative truthfulness. And it says, And
they took note that these men had been with Jesus. And what
had been said about Jesus? No man spoke like He did. He speaks with authority. And
not the authority of a yell, or a pound on the pulpit, or
the authority of an ecclesiastical organization that they're a part
of. Our Lord Jesus Christ spoke and
it had the authority of truth behind it. When men heard it,
they knew it was true. And that same Spirit which indwelt
our Lord Jesus Christ to preach the gospel, that same spirit
was in these men, Peter and John, to declare. And they recognized
him. Verse 14 said, But since they
could see the man who had been healed standing there with them,
there was nothing they could say. So they ordered them to
withdraw from the Sanhedrin, and then they conferred together.
They had to go into secret session, figure out what they were going
to do. Verse 16, what are we going to do with these men? They
ask. Everybody living in Jerusalem knows they have done an outstanding
miracle, and we cannot deny it. But to stop this thing from spreading
any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak
no longer to anyone in this name. Does that not demonstrate the
stubbornness and rebellion of natural man? These men, these
Sanhedrin, They are just what all men become if God leaves
them to themselves. They saw a miracle. They know
it happened. These men didn't try to deny
the reality of what happened. They didn't say, well, no, this
is a different man than the beggar we saw before. We don't know
what happened to the beggar, but this is a different man. Or, no, this
man's just been pretending to be a beggar. This is all a scam. They didn't even try to say it.
They said, we can't deny it. It happened, and even though they
could not deny it, they were intent on denying the truth of
what that miracle said. And you know, we would be equally
stubborn in our refusal to believe the gospel of God's grace were
it not for the grace of God. When you see an unbeliever, when
you see someone steeped in self-righteous unbelief, at that time, if at
no other time, say this to yourself, there but for the grace of God,
go I. It's one thing to look at the
drunk and to look at the immoral and to look at the poor or whatever
and look upon their lot in life and how they've hurt themselves
and say, well, there but for the grace of God, go I. But you
can look equally into the fine, tailored, religious world, steeped
in their unbelief, and say, there, but for the grace of God, go
on. Verse 18, Then they called them
in again, and commanded them not to speak or teach at all
in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, Judge
for yourselves. whether it is right in God's
sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking
about what we have seen and heard. After further threats, they let
them go. They could not decide how to
punish them because all the people were praising God for what had
happened. For the man who was miraculously
healed was over 40 years old. Throughout our lives, there's
always someone we're supposed to obey. The scriptures say,
and you kids listen to this carefully, the scriptures say, children,
obey your parents. I heard a story of a young scholar
at a church in Ashland, you know, that he had to learn that. And of course, it says, the full
thing is, children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this
is right. And so they were to learn that
verse. And the next week, a Sunday school teacher asked one of the
little fellows, said, What was the verse? He says, Children, obey
your parents in the Lord. And she said, Is that all? He
said, No, it's not all. She said, Well, what's the rest
of it? I don't like the rest of it. It is right. It's the right thing to do. And
you young people, you obey your parents. Your parents,
God's put them there to teach you. God's put them there, and
they know better than you do. There's no such thing as perfect
parents, but our parents were given to us by God to teach us. I find this, and you young kids,
I'm 51 years old now. My dad's 82. He's still smarter
than me. And I look over my life, and
I see this. This is the truth. When I did
what my parents told me to do, things went well. And the only
time I ever got myself in a fix is when I went contrary to what
they told me. Now that's the truth. And you
obey your parents. And you know, even when we grow
up, we're no longer under the umbrella of their jurisdiction.
The law puts it this way, honor your mother and father. And even
though we don't, so to speak, have to do what our parents tell
us, they're always older than us. They've always been around
the block a few more times. And the wise man will always
at least listen to the counsel of his parents. And take into
consideration what they've said. Children, I know that I remember
thinking, you know, boy, once I grow up, I can do whatever
I want. Well, the Bible also says everyone must submit himself
to the governing authorities. There's always somebody to obey.
And as irritating as those governing authorities may be, we are to
submit to them as those who have been put in place by the Lord. I hear people say, well, I didn't
vote for him. God did. For whatever reason, those people
that are in authority in our government were put there by
God. And as much as conscience will
allow, we are to submit to them. There is a hierarchy in authority,
that is, one authority over another, and at the top of that authority
is God himself. Now, the disciples, found themselves
in a conflict of authority. Here's the high priest who is
called in other places the ruler of the people. Here's the high
priest who had a certain amount of authority given to him. Here
are the elders of the people, and they are saying, don't you
ever preach in the name of Jesus again. They wouldn't even say
Jesus. They just said, don't preach
in that name. You know, in a world that's confronted with the true
gospel, they don't even like to name it. Don't you speak in that name
again. And they commanded these disciples,
they gathered together all the authority and all the intimidating,
threatening they could and said, don't preach in that name anymore. And the disciples said to those
men, those men who seemed to have so much power, had so much
authority behind them, had the power to take away their lives,
said to those men, you judge for yourself whether it be better for us to
obey you or God, whether God would think that at this point
we should submit to you as opposed to submitting to him. We must
obey God rather than men. Now, in that statement, and that
kind of synthesizes the principle we're looking at, we must obey
God rather than men. Now, the first part of that is
we must obey God. The Lord Jesus Christ gave His
church a command when He left. Look back here at chapter one.
You see, the church has not been left to figure out what it's
supposed to do. The church has not been left
You know, to gather its councils together and decide what would
be the best direction for the Church to take. The Lord Jesus
Christ, the King of the Church, the only head of the Church,
when He departed this world to be seated at the right hand of
the Father, He gave specific instructions to His disciples.
And we find them right here in verse 7. The Lord says it's not for you
to know the times or the dates the Father has set by His own
authority. And if it's not for us to know
it, friends, it's not for us to waste our time trying to figure
it out. Why should we give a moment's thought to when the Lord shall
establish His kingdom, or how He shall do it, or when the Lord
shall return? The times and the seasons have
been set by God. His calendar is already filled
out, and it's not our job to try to look ahead and see what's
going to happen. If he's not going to tell us,
then there's no use looking. And our Lord dismissed the disciples
question about times and dates and all that. And then in verse
eight, he says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit
comes on you. And power was given to these
apostles and power has been given to the Lord's church all through
the ages. Power was given to them to do
a particular thing. And you will be my witnesses
in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of
the earth. If we were to write ourselves
a constitution for this church, And as a legal body, we do have
one of those. It's required by law. You've
got to tell them what it is you're doing. Well, if we were to write one
down, though, and present it to the world, we could do no
better under that subject of, what is the church doing? What
have you organized to do? Here it is. To be witnesses of
the Lord Jesus Christ. where we are, and wherever God
is pleased to send us. That's why we're here. If it were not for that, were
it not that you and I are to be witnesses of the Lord Jesus
Christ in this world, then there would be no reason for God to
leave us here, would there? But here is the job he's given
to his church, and unfortunately, that seems to be the one thing
that much of the visible church in this world doesn't do. They're
involved in almost everything else, many of them good and helpful
things. But they lay aside this one thing,
go into all the world and preach the gospel. I'm glad that hospitals
get built. I'm glad that, you know, that
people have gone into third world countries, you know, where they're
poor and they've set up sanitation systems for them and given them
running water and made their lives better and educated and
this kind of thing. All of that has its place. And,
you know, if you are a believer, you cannot help but want to make
things better for people. I mean, love just demands that
of you. But understand this, that that's not what our Lord
sent us to do in His name. He sent us to preach the gospel. And everything else we do should
somehow or another be connected with that. It should be to realize
that purpose. How simple a command. Go and
preach the gospel everywhere. The message of the disciples.
was assigned. It's the message of Christ. They
were to testify of the things that they've seen and heard.
That's what they said over here. We cannot help speaking about
what we've seen and heard. You know, the disciples did not
get together and say, are we going to come up with some doctrine
here? We've got to we've got to write us a book. We've got
to get us a confession of faith now so we'll know what to go
out and preach. As if we're just telling you
what we've seen and heard. John put it this way in his,
in 1 John, in that first letter he wrote, he said, that which
we have seen and heard, that which was from the beginning,
that which we have seen, that which we have heard, that which
our hands have handled of the word of life, this is what we
declare to you. We don't come to you with mystic
revelations which buzz through our minds in the deep of the
night. We come to you with plain, obvious
truth that we have seen and heard. And we can't stop telling that. Their area of ministry was assigned.
They would start where they were, then move out. Said, you'll be
witnesses unto me in Jerusalem. And that's where they started
on the day of Pentecost. And the Holy Spirit came on them.
And when the Holy Spirit came on them, they didn't say, you
know, brethren, we've got to set up a board of four missions. They went right out in the street
where they were and started telling the truth. And you know something?
Right here in Rock Valley, there's a need of the truth of the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We got lots of churches, don't
we? In the town I came from, Huntington, West Virginia, they're
in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most churches
per mile on Fifth Avenue. Well, if you stuck all our churches
in this town, you could get most of them in about two blocks.
I think we could beat them. I'll tell you this. What is it? Eleven
churches in this little town of 2,500 people, 3,000 people. That's a lot of churches. I'm not going to try to make
judgments about the individual churches. I just know this. This
town, just like Jerusalem of old, needs The gospel. And you and I have it. You and
I have it. Now, that should not make us
proud. That should not make us say, oh, just look at those idiots
over there. No, that's not the attitude it's
supposed to promote. Since we have it and they need
it, we ought to tell them. We ought to make it known the
best we can with whatever gifts that got right out in our street. In Jerusalem and in Judea, that
was the further surrounding areas, they began to spread out and
go to the other towns. Then to Samaria, then they started
kind of getting into foreign territory, areas that people,
well they didn't, you know, Samaritans and Jews didn't get along. But
they went there. You see, the gospel is not just
for the people you like. It's not just for the ones that
do things your way and see things your way. The gospel is even
for your enemy. The gospel is for the strange
person, the one whose culture doesn't fit with yours. So often
missionaries have gone out, people claiming to be missionaries,
and really they didn't go out with a gospel. They went out with a way of life.
They went out with a culture. They tried to make everybody
in the world like white Western Europeans. The disciples didn't go up into
Samaria and try to make Jews out of everybody. They just went
up and told the Samaritans, as Samaritans, what the gospel is,
and into the uttermost part of the world. They went into Rome
and into Galatia. They went as far as, I believe,
Paul, it's reported, he went as far as Spain. It wasn't long,
the gospel was in England. It spread throughout Western
Europe. And Philip, he saw that Ethiopian eunuch and it went
down there to Ethiopia. It was in China. It's been all
over the place. Because you see, the Lord Jesus Christ is Lord
everywhere. And the people need to know that. He's Lord where His name has
never been spoken. The people there don't know He's
Lord, but He is. God is God everywhere. Christ is Lord everywhere. Christ
is Savior everywhere. There are people that think it's
awful to go and try to get people to change their religion. In
some respects, that's true. If you're just changing them
from one false religion to another, what's the use? What's the waste?
But they think that it's awful to go in there and somehow or
another molest their culture of which part of it is religion.
Friends, there is only one true religion, because there's only
one God, and there's only one Lord, there's only one Spirit,
there's only one Gospel. And out of love for the God who
sent us, and love for the people who need to hear it, we take
this Gospel everywhere. Do you realize that the same
Gospel that you and I Rejoice here in the United States of
America, where we have as much freedom and prosperity as any
man has ever had. It's that very same gospel that
Sergei Makalov is preaching over there in that dark place in Russia.
It's the same gospel they need, and it works for them as good
as it works for you and me. And we think of places like right
now, Western Europe just seems so dead to any kind of truth
at all. You look on that place and you try, You try to find
a gospel preaching church over there. There are so very few
of them, and the people are so jaded and so cynical. And yet,
we don't need to adjust the gospel when we go there. We go there
and tell that same gospel. Because even though it's a land
of darkness right now, God is still God there. Christ is still
the only Savior. He's the only name whereby we
must be saved. That's the one job of the church. I get a lot of stuff in the mail.
The church gets a lot of stuff in the mail with people asking
for money. And you know, I would love to
give it to them. Really, I would. Like I said,
there's a lot of worthy things going on, things that are helpful.
But the church must set herself apart to the work that her king
has given her to do. There are precious few in this
world preaching the gospel, precious few supporting the preaching
of the gospel. And those who do, must confine
themselves to doing that. God calls his church to plant
the flag of Christ in every place. Not a flag of political or social
power, but a flag of that spiritual kingdom of Christ. My kingdom
is not of this world, says the Lord Jesus Christ. And the powers
of this world have no say in this kingdom. And so this is exactly what the
apostles did with boldness and without apology. They went everywhere
preaching the gospel. They went to the temple where
people went for worship. Their message was about worship,
about who is God, about how we must approach him. So they went
where people were worshiping and trying to approach God. I
find it interesting. that, you know, when the disciples
went out, started to go out, they were going to towns. And
you know how they get started? They'd go to the synagogue, wherever
people were meeting to worship, and they'd go there and begin
teaching. They went there into Philippi. And Paul heard that
there was a place where prayer was wont to be made. There were
some folks that were gathering on a regular basis. And so he
went there and preached the gospel. You see, their message concerned
spiritual things, so they went where there were people pursuing
spiritual things. They used a God-given opportunity
to preach the gospel. God enabled them to heal this
man. And with that, they preached
the gospel. These men did not set out to
disobey men, but to obey God. They weren't trying to stir people
up or cause trouble. They were simply obeying God.
You know, some people use the gospel as a platform for the
rebellion. I've seen it happen. What it is, is they don't like
being under anybody's thumb. They don't like authority, and
they find some freedom in the gospel. And it's not that the
gospel gives them the freedom to obey God. That's not what
they like. They just like it that they can take the gospel
and snub their nose at human authority. But that's not what
these fellows were doing. They weren't trying to overthrow
the authorities in Jerusalem. That was not their goal. Their
goal was to obey God, to do what he sent them to do. Well, in
doing what God said, they came in conflict with men. Verse 1,
the priests and captains of the temple guard and the Sadducees
came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people.
They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the
people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.
Even though we who know and love the gospel and want to make it
known, we don't want to create a disturbance, but if you preach
the gospel, it will create a disturbance. Sometimes I fear that we, I mean
you and me, here in this little congregation in Rock Valley,
that we get a little too timid. that we try to get along too
much. And the reason I worry about
it is, at least as I see it, we ain't creating a disturbance. At first we were quite a disturbance.
We weren't trying to be disturbing, but it was. People got upset
at what we said. I remember one time I preached
a message. This was when we were on KIWA
in Sheldon. I preached a message. Evidently,
they got some flack for it, because the next week before my sermon
came on the radio, it says the following sermon does not represent
the views of the staff and management of KIWA. And that became a prologue
to every one of our radio broadcasts. It's not that I don't want people
to believe it, but I know something about this world. For the most
part, they do not believe what we preach. And it should be that
we're plain enough in what we preach that people want to disassociate
themselves from it. But we don't believe that. Oh,
we believe what our church says, but we're not going to believe
that that means all the other churches are wrong or all that don't believe
this are wrong. We can't believe that. I believe
that my way is right, but your way can be right, too. See, we're not looking for a
fight, but when we don't run into one, we ought to wonder,
we ought to ask ourselves, are we being plain? Are we being
clear? Or are we trying to avoid persecution
and trouble for the sake of Christ? You know, we can gather like
this on a Sunday, and you and I can preach what we believe,
and we can rejoice in it and be happy. And then we can go
out there and kind of act like nothing happened. That's not
good. People should know what we believe,
Peter says, be always ready to give an answer for the hope that
lies in you. But how will you ever give an answer if the folks
don't even know there's a hope in you? And what that hope is. The preaching of the gospel disturbed
people. Everything about the gospel is offensive to man, and
the more a man is enamored of himself, the more the gospel
is going to offend him. The gospel offends a man about
his self-worth, his sense of self-worth. He may have a sense
of self-worth about any of many things. Men glory in their righteousness. They glory in their charitable
works. They glory in their intellect. They glory in their power. They
glory in their position. And the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ, when it's preached clearly, comes and robs a man of every
one of those things. Makes it all to be nothing. That's
why Paul hated the gospel. That's why Paul, in the days
of Saul of Tarsus, that's why he was so angry at the gospel
and angry at Christ and angry at Christians, because what they
said made nothing of everything he had done. He had a pedigree. A Jew of Jews of the tribe of
Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day, always did the things
that the law told him to do, so much so that he could say,
as touching that righteousness which is in the law, I am blameless.
And the gospel came and said, that doesn't mean anything. You've
done all that, but you've not elevated yourself one whit beyond
the chief of sinners. And that made him angry until
God changed him. Do we think then that we can
go out and preach the same gospel and that the religious people
of this world aren't going to get a little upset about it? It's going to happen. The leaders
here were likely disturbed because the message of the disciples
threatened their grip on the people. Men want what God has, sovereign
control over other men. It's interesting to note that
there's really no argument among men over the sovereignty of God.
Everybody believes that God is absolutely sovereign. The big
argument is who is God? And it really comes down to it.
That's what it is. Oh, they'll call him God, but then they'll
say, but he can only do what I let him do. And while they may give to Jehovah
the title God, They really hold the true badge of divinity to
themselves. They say, I'm going to be in
charge. These men were in charge and
they wanted it to stay that way. This was the high priest. This
was the leaders of the temple. This was the Sadducees who were
kind of the liberal theologians of the day. And they had some
power and influence over men and they thought they ought to
have it and they didn't like it that these disciples were
about to take it away from them. The apostles teaching threatened
the leaders several ways. They bypassed the authorities
and went straight to the people. It says they came up to them
when they were speaking to the people. You can't do that. You
must come to us first and get our approval before you can address
the people. You must first subject your thoughts
to peer review and you must publish them in some magazine so that
other men may critique them. And even then, you must be careful
to speak in such a way that the people really don't know what
it is you're saying. How else will we maintain the
image of superiority if we teach in such a way that the people
can actually understand us? Peter and John just stood there
and talked to the people. And there's nothing that upsets
an authoritarian structure more than bypassing the structure
and going right to the people. These men set forth Christ, excuse
me, These men denied the very theological point by which these
leaders identified themselves. We won't turn there, but later
on in the book of Acts, it says that the Sadducees didn't believe
in the resurrection. That was their claim to fame,
so to speak. The Pharisees did, the Sadducees didn't. And the
Sadducees, they were the intellects of their day. They glorified
themselves that they were a whole lot like the Greek people. They
didn't believe the resurrection. And here the disciples came in
and preached the resurrection. Kind of made the Sadducees look
foolish. If the people believed what the
apostles preached, the Sadducees would lose their grip on the
temple and the people. And their teaching set forth
Christ as the source and authority of all blessing. The apostles
bypassed the authorities and went straight to the people.
And they called on the people to bypass the authorities and
go straight to Christ. The resurrection is in Christ.
All salvation is in Christ. Men constantly set up religious
organizations and say, to get to God, you must come through
us. Some are more obvious about it than others, but it comes
down to that. And the apostles said, the only
name you need to know In order to obtain God's salvation is
this, the Lord Jesus Christ, verse 12, salvation is found
in no one else. For there is no other name unto
heaven given to men by which we must be saved. No name, no
reverend, no doctor, no father, no pope, No Baptist, no Methodist,
no Catholic, no other name. All men love their names. And
they love to see them put out there where everybody can see
them. And the gospel says there's only
one name that carries any weight in heaven. Only one name that
will gain the ear of the God of the universe, and that's the
name of Jesus Christ. And if you've got that name,
It doesn't matter if the whole world stands against you. God
is with you. Do you know that all through
history, the church has been confronted with authorities who will demand that they obey,
even if that means obeying God. And the church, you and me, must
always answer, we must obey God rather than men. We must obey
God rather than men, no matter how smart the men seem to be.
No matter how much schooling they've got. It was the unschooled
disciples that had the truth. The schooled Sadducees were heretics. We must obey God rather than
men, no matter how close Those men are to us, if it is our parents. Now we teach, children obey your
parents, but it does have that other line, in the Lord. The
authority of parents goes only so far as the Lord himself. When people grow up, it amazes
me that those who claim to know the gospel, some who claim to
know the gospel, would ever pull out parental authority. to keep
their children in a particular church as though parents were
ever given authority over the souls of their children. There's
only one who has the authority of souls, and that's God. I certainly hope that all my
children continue to worship according to the gospel that
they were brought up under. I hope they do. I pray that they
do, and they give every indication that's the direction they're
going. But they must not follow it because I said to. They must
follow it because God said to. Not your parents, not your children. I've seen people follow their
children into a false church. Not your spouse. Not the one
closest to you. You must obey God rather than
them. You must obey God rather than
men, no matter how threatening they become. Verse 21, after
further threats, they let them go. Now, we're not likely in
our lifetimes, though it could happen, but we're not likely
to have our property confiscated. We're not likely to be threatened
with beatings in jail time. Though, believe it or not, I
was, Bonnie and I were watching a show last night about the pilgrims.
And you know, that was about 400 years ago. And you know why
they came? I never really looked into the
details of them. They were getting thrown in jail. And for this
reason, here's why. King James, the one of the King
James Version fame? That King James would put our
brothers in jail because they wouldn't worship in the Church
of England. Because they bypassed the king
and his authority and worshiped on their own in their homes.
It wasn't because their doctrine was wrong. It wasn't because
at that time the Church of England believed essentially those things.
It was because they bypassed the structure and they'd get
thrown in prison. Threw them in jail, the men in
jail one time for a month and left their wives and children
out in the streets because their homes were already
gone. That's what men do, but they obey God rather than men,
regardless of the threats. We may never have such threats
set before us, but we know that there are subtle threats out
there that we may lose friends, that we may lose, we might anger
the boss at work. And even though he couldn't come
out and say he's going to fire us for that reason, but maybe somewhere
down the road we'll get fired and we'll realize we didn't get
that promotion because of it. We dare not bow to such Persecution
and such authority of men always obey God. And tell the truth
of Christ. Obey them no matter their threats.
Obey them. Or excuse me, obey Him. Obey
God. Because He is our God. And it
is He that has saved us. And it is He who has promised
that no matter what The authorities of this world do. He will see
to our needs. And He has promised that our
labor in the Lord cannot be in vain. Never. We must obey God
rather than men. God give us the boldness that
He gave to Peter and John and to others. That in our day, facing
whatever temptations and troubles we may face that in our day we'll
obey God and not men. Lord Jesus, impress our hearts
with this, lest we simply be puffed up with knowledge. Impress us with this, that you
deserve our full and complete submission. and make us glad to give it.
Deliver us from the fear of man, for it is a snare. In Christ's
name we pray, Amen. Forty two. Now hail the power of Jesus'
name, Let angels their screams roar. Bring forth the royal diadem,
And crown Him Lord of all. Bring forth the royal diadem, Let's sing the fourth. And with yonder's sacred throng
We at His feet we'll go We'll join the everlasting song Of
God, of God, of God Who will join the everlasting
Son and Holy Spirit.