Power in the Name of Jesus

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If you got your Bibles, go to acts chapter four. I’m going to reference acts chapter three, just so that you know the context of what acts chapter four is. And not let me forget to say this as you, have watched the news at all, pray for our nation. I stood here this past, January.

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I stood here last October 7th at that last October 8th, ticked off some people happily, had some people get up and walk out on me, and I just wanted to wave my hat at them. When Israel got attacked by Hamas, I told you, things are about to get real, real crazy. I said, if you think they’re crazy now, wait about nine months.

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They’re going to be real, real crazy. I began the year by saying, if you think things in this country are crazy now, wait till we get to summer. And if you’ve watched what happened yesterday, and that’s nothing compared to probably what’s coming between now and November. What I’m trying to tell you, you say, man, you’re trying to be, a fear monger.

00:01:16:21 – 00:01:42:23
No, I’m telling you real stuff. I heard two prophets in the last week. Two prophets in the last week say that there would be an assassination attempt on President Trump, too. All right. And I’m telling you what I’m hearing from some real prophets of God and what I’m watching unfold in our world today and what we see in our political climate today.

00:01:42:25 – 00:02:03:25
I’m telling you, as Christians, the line has been drawn in the sand. You better know what side you stand on, because I want to tell you when I say pray for America, let me explain why I say pray for America. When you see attacks like we’ve seen, by the way. And I won’t apologize for this. So please don’t.

00:02:03:28 – 00:02:33:01
Don’t wait no more on when you see what we’ve seen in the political climate over the last couple of years, how in this country we’ve trying to put a person in jail, a former president, by the way, but the leading political candidate of one party and the other political party trying to imprison them and stop them from running for office, you’re seeing a banana republic unfold before you.

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And I don’t make an apology for that. And what you’re watching now, and this is what I hope you’ll understand. You’re watching Bible prophecy jump off the pages of Scripture. You’re watching things unfold, setting a stage for an Antichrist man to come on the scene soon to lead this world. I hope you understand that today what we witnessed, especially yesterday with the assassination attempt on President Trump.

00:03:09:01 – 00:03:33:13
Let me tell you why that’s so bad. And by the way, it would be bad if it was an assassination attempt on President Biden or any candidate running for office. And this is why we should pray for America, you and I. I’m one of those people. I like politics. I’m the kind of guy that bored my kids to tears watching the news.

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And you can ask my life just in case you don’t know, I don’t watch just Fox News. I want to know what the enemy’s doing. To say I watched the other ones. And so I want to hear both perspectives. I am that guy that would rather watch the History Channel and learn something than I had watch a movie.

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But, and so I realize a lot of people don’t like politics, but let me tell you why this is so important. If we don’t have politics in America, we will have what other banana republic nations do. And that’s called civil war. If we don’t work it out in our politics, it does lead to civil war. So it’s okay to see our politicians back and forth and arguing out and debating the issues of today.

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And by the way, it’s okay for you to do that and it’s okay for you to express your opinion, whatever that opinion is. And you have to realize that’s what makes America great. And that’s what keeps us free, is the fact that we can disagree and still be united as a nation, and still be united as a free people.

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And when that begins to fail, what happens next is civil war. And we don’t want that. And so I encourage you. You pray for the climate of our nation, the political climate, that it be dialed down some. And you pray for peace in our nation because what’s coming next is not going to look good. It’s not going to be good.

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We should pray for the peace of our nation, and we should pray for those running for president, regardless if they’re your party or not. Regardless if you like them or not. The last thing we want to see is someone assassinated. That’s political violence only leads to civil war, and we don’t need that. So that’s Mansfield now, acts chapter four.

00:05:31:28 – 00:05:52:14
You say, what’s the sermon got to do with that? Or what did that have to do with the sermon? We’re taking a deep seat. Hang on. As a cowboy would say, take a deep seat in a faraway look and hang on, because it’s fixing to get Western acts. Chapter four. Before I read the first verse, I gotta give you what acts chapter three was about real quick.

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In acts chapter three, you have Peter and John, two of the disciples to the apostles, and these guys are fired up. And let me tell you why they’re fired up. You got to know whether fired. They’re fired up because of what happened in acts chapter two. In acts chapter two, they have gathered in Jerusalem and Jews from all over the world came.

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And Peter gets up, by the way, the same Peter who 50 days before, 50 days before and said, Blankety blank, I don’t know that man, Jesus. And in 50 days the Lord used him to preach what we call the day of Pentecost. The greatest revival in human history, where 3000 people got saved and were baptized, and the church was filled and empowered with the Holy Spirit of God.

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And so by acts chapter three, they are on fire. I mean, man, there is revival in Jerusalem, and Peter and John are going up to the temple, and they get almost to the gym to get on the steps to Solomon SportAccord. They get up there by the beautiful gate, and there lies one beggar asking alms. In other words, he was asking for someone to give him money so he could buy food because he was crippled.

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He was lame. Apparently he had never walked, or if he had walked, it had been a long time. So he set there day in and day out, and everybody going into church would pass him. And hopefully he was hoping that somebody would be generous enough to give to him so that he could have money to buy food so that he could survive, too.

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And so when Peter and John came walking by, the Bible says that they fixed their eyes on him and he’s begging. And they said, silver and gold. We don’t have it. We’re broke preachers. We ain’t got no money. But what we do have, we’re going to give you, in the name of Jesus, rise up and walk in.

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The Bible says immediately his legs were strengthened. He stood up and by golly, he didn’t just stand up. He stood up, leaping, dancing. He was jumping. He was it was evident to him, to them and to everybody else that something miraculous had just happened. This man was healed and heal only in the name of Jesus. So, by the way, I want you to understand why that last song we just sang, we need some things to change in this country.

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We need them to change in the name of Jesus. And the power is in the name of Jesus. You got something in your life that you need God to change. Let me tell you what. Put the name of Jesus on it. It in the name of Jesus. There’s power in the name of Jesus. And so they they said, in the name of Jesus, rise up and walk.

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Well, what happened next was sort of predictable because it had already happened. It was the very reason they crucified Jesus. And it was not that they performed the miracle. It was because they said the name of Jesus and the religious leaders, the ones who crucified Jesus, the ones who went to the Roman government, they wanted him crucified. They did not like what this man was doing because he was turning upside down their religious system that was corrupt.

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And to the it was the religious leaders who had Jesus crucified. They went to the Romans. The Romans really didn’t want to do with it. And so they don’t like him. They they don’t like this stir. They sure didn’t like what happened at Pentecost. And they really don’t like now, these guys standing there preaching the gospel because it’s it’s just turning the city upside down.

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It’s messed everybody up. So acts chapter four, verse one, it says, now as they spoke to the people, the priest and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, came upon Peter and John being greatly disturbed that they taught the people. And if you enter on your Bible, underline this and that they preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.

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Why were they upset? They weren’t upset, really, that a man got healed? Because you’re going to find out. They couldn’t dispute that. They had nothing to say about it. What? What can you say? A man was lame and now he’s walking. That’s bad. Why were they upset? Why were the religious leaders disturbed? They were disturbed because these guys preached in the name of Jesus, the resurrection of the dead.

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Listen to me carefully. There’s going to be a lot of people in this world, and there certainly are every day that you will meet that will tell you, I believe in God. I have faith in God, God, God, God. But my question is, which God I want you to understand so you can go to work tomorrow and you can carry a Koran, and you’re probably not going to get in trouble.

00:10:39:27 – 00:10:59:27
You could go to work tomorrow and probably carry a Book of Mormon, and you’re not going to get in trouble. You go carry a Bible to work and let people see you reading that and believing that that’s going to cause a stir. You can pray tomorrow in the name of Muhammad or Buddha or anybody else, and you’re probably not going to invoke any response.

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But the moment you invoke the name of Jesus Christ, it stirs up demons. Okay? It makes the devil mad. Why? Because he knows there’s power in that name. These religious leaders get disturbed. They’re still what? God disturbed them. I’m going to tell you, I got to start in there. Demons got disturbed. It rustled there. You’re preaching in Jesus name for the resurrection of the dead.

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They didn’t like that. It infuriated them. It caused a problem. So verse three says, and they laid hands on them, and they wasn’t praying for them. By the way, different kind of laying hands. We lay hands on people and pray for them. Now these people laying hands will be they they rustle them up, they’re going to arrest them and they put them in custody until the next day.

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For it was already evening. However, many of those who heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to be about 5000. Now, if you think the day of Pentecost was was big 3000, that say, these dudes are out here preaching and they just seen the man get healed. And the Bible says about 5000 people believed the gospel.

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And by the way, that the gospel is this. And you hear people today and I listen to a lot of podcasts and I listen to a lot of different preachers. Most, most guys are not like me. And so I purposely listen to some guys who are not cowboy preachers, but the preachers and, and, and I listen to, religious debates.

00:12:30:28 – 00:12:55:01
A lot of times I hear a lot of stuff said about that, and you hear some people arguing what the gospel of Jesus Christ is. Can I just simplify that for you? The gospel of Jesus Christ is this the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus? Okay, I’ve always said, if a man believes that he is not my enemy, he may have a different denominational tag.

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He may worship a little different than I do. But if he believes in the death, the burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, he’s not my enemy. That’s my brother, that’s my sister. But see, it’s that message that is an affront to the culture that we live in. This would have been what you call a pre-Christian culture. Christianity is just getting started.

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It’s been said of America and the culture you and I live in today. It is now a post-Christian culture. In other words, we don’t see the things that in America and in an inheritance that are inherent to Christianity or the belief in the Bible that we once did. some of you that are as old as I am, you remember this, and those are older.

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You remember even things that I never got to see. But I can remember being a kid. Listen to me. I remember being a kid and grew up in Boyd, and we would occasionally come to Decatur because we didn’t have anything. Okay. And you didn’t find stores open on Sunday in Decatur? Matter of fact, there weren’t, but maybe 1 or 2 restaurants total in the whole town of Decatur, and they weren’t open on Sundays.

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And it was just a common thing of the culture, at least in the South, in the Bible Belt, that Sunday was the Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath, and that you just didn’t open stores and do business on the Sabbath. Now you say, well, I don’t agree with that. It like that, you know, it’s a matter of preference that I get that.

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But there was an inherent in, in, in something in our nation that we still recognized a reverence for God. We don’t do that anymore. I mean that that went by the wayside a long time ago. It it was it was not uncommon to to recognize that most people, including your neighbors, were probably Christians. Now, it’s hard to find a neighbor that’s a Christian now.

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It’s hard to find anybody that adheres to anything that is biblical or godly. We’ve really become that that post-Christian America. And while there are still Christians, you and I are gathered here today. There are churches. Don’t misunderstand me, but I’m saying the culture of America is no longer a Christian culture. And so these guys are facing a time very similar to you and I and what we’re facing.

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And there’s a lot we can learn from them. So look at verse number five. So it came to pass on the next day these guys are arrested. They’re put in jail. Peter and John are put in jail because they’ve been preaching the gospel for for no other reason. Are you getting they didn’t get arrested for healing a lame man.

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They didn’t get arrested for the good things that happened. They got arrested for preaching in the name of Jesus. And it came to pass on the next day that their rulers, elders and scribes, as well as Ananias, the high Priest, Caiaphas, John, and now Zander, and as many as were of the family of the high priest were gathered together at Jerusalem.

00:16:04:18 – 00:16:27:13
Verse seven. And when they had sent them in the midst, they brought Peter and John in the midst. And they asked by what power or by what name have you done this? But what name did you heal? This man? And Peter get this, this is important. Sealed with the Holy Ghost man, which you’re going to see that Peter has some boldness to him.

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Peter is the guy that you’re going to see. He’s going to poke him in the eye on purpose. But the reason he can do that is he’s got a holy boldness. He’s got a holy boldness that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit. He’s got a Holy Spirit power. And he says, so Peter, being filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers of the people and the elders of Israel, if we this day are judged for a good deed done to help a helpless man, by what means has he been made?

00:17:01:24 – 00:17:28:01
Well, let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. By this, by him this man stands here before you whole. Let’s stop right there for a minute. They’ve got him arrested. They spent the night in jail. They bring him before him.

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This is their arraignment. They. If they just answer the questions right, the heat goes away, right? but what name? And by what power have you done this act on this? By what? How did you do this? And Peter responds, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. That would have been a good place to start, right? Just stop right there.

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Bring down the temperature just a little bit. Not Peter lot, because he filled with the Holy Spirit. He’s got Holy Ghost power running through his veins. He he’s he he’s got courage. He you’re not going to back him in the corner. And the reason you’re not is because he’s got the Holy Spirit of God bubbling over in him, overflowing in boldness and he says, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and here comes the potent.

00:18:19:00 – 00:18:48:09
Yeah. In whom you crucified, you crucified him. And that doesn’t bring down the temperature, does that not? But what was he doing? He was confronting the wicked culture of the religious leaders that were oppressing the people with boldness, Holy ghost boldness. Listen to me. The world that you and I live in, what you and I as a Christian, to be marginalized.

00:18:48:13 – 00:19:21:08
They want us to be quiet. They want to say you. You should keep your religion over here. And this over here is secular. In other words, you keep your religion in church, and when you go out into the secular world, you should be just like everybody else. Don’t believe that lie. The reason you and I are saved, redeemed, born again, filled with the Holy Spirit is to be a witness for Jesus Christ, to be powerful, to be salt and light in this world you and I live in.

00:19:21:14 – 00:19:44:15
Jesus looked at his disciples and he said, hey guys, you are salt and you are light. Let me tell you two things. Number one, when light is turned on, what does it do? It expels darkness. Darkness goes away. And salt. What was salt? Salt in the Bible was always used as a preservative. In other words, they didn’t have refrigerator like you and I have.

00:19:44:18 – 00:20:08:24
They put salt on meats and things like that as a preservative. So when Jesus says were salt and light, I said, Christian, our witness in this world, if you think it’s bad now, wait till there are no Christians and see what happens. It’s called the tribulation. It’s seven years of of of hell on earth. It’s unlike the world has ever known.

00:20:08:24 – 00:20:34:01
So much so Jesus said, if those seven years, which are the tribulation in which the Antichrist, if those seven years weren’t shortened, no flesh would survive. In other words, if you think our world has ever seen anything bad yet, wait till there’s no Christian influence. Wait till the Antichrist rules. Wait till the godly influence is gone. So as Christians, our job is to be so.

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That’s why when Peter looks at them, he says, hey, we did it in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And by the way, and whom you crucified? Well, like the next part, because he’s noticed something about Peter. What we’re reading, he’s giving that Peter is a what they call a preaching machine. Peter, everywhere he goes, preaches Christ. When I when I was a young preacher starting out in my pastor.

00:21:04:12 – 00:21:29:27
And I’ll say this for any of you young men, young ladies in here, that you feel God’s call on your life to preach. And by the way, that’s all of us as Christians. You, God, may not call you to be a pastor, but if you’re a believer, the word preach means to proclaim. So when you proclaim something I need to tell you, when you proclaim the gospel, it’s the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus.

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Yes, there’s a lot of more in the Bible, but if you don’t get that, you’ve missed it all. And Paul said, I’m determined to know nothing among you except Christ crucified. In other words, you’ve got to understand that whenever, as a believer, don’t ever be afraid or ashamed to share the name of Jesus. And don’t ever be afraid to declare the dead.

00:21:54:12 – 00:22:15:10
It is in Jesus that one comes to salvation. And I remember my pastor telling me when I was a young man preaching. He said, man, you can start in Genesis or you can start in revelation, but wherever you start in the Bible, always make a beeline to the cross, because without the cross, you haven’t preached the gospel. I can preach to you about marriage today.

00:22:15:14 – 00:22:37:24
I can preach to you about your job. I preached to you about all kinds of things. But if I leave out the cross, I haven’t preached the gospel, and it’s the gospel that’s the power of God unto salvation to the Gentile or to the Jew first, and to the Gentile also. You’ve got to realize the power of the Christian faith is in the gospel message.

00:22:37:27 – 00:23:05:25
That’s what sets people free. That’s what redeems people. That’s what delivers people. It is what saves people. And so he says, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead by him, this man stands here before you, whole. I, like Peter, didn’t take credit for it. Peter, God’s one, Peter and John’s one that God used the Peter says, it ain’t by my name.

00:23:05:27 – 00:23:38:20
I’m not the one that did it. I just been obedient. The power of the Holy Spirit to do what I was told to do, and that’s to declare it in the name of Jesus, that this man be healed. And so verse 11, this is the stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become a chief cornerstone in words, you religious leaders, you Jewish religious leaders, you rejected Jesus the stone, and he is the cornerstone of your faith in ours.

00:23:38:23 – 00:24:09:22
And then it says, verse 12, get this. This is what infuriates the world. This is what makes hell tremble right here. This is what the world doesn’t want to hear, he says. Nor is there salvation in any other. Say that with me, in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

00:24:09:24 – 00:24:42:06
In other words, people say, well, you know the Christian faith, you Christians, your narrow minded. Yep, we all heard Jesus said narrow was the way that leads to life. The broad is the way to destruction. You Christians, you’re just narrow minded in bigoted you. You’re so exclusive you don’t include everybody. Let me just tell you something. Unless you come to Jesus and through him you will miss heaven and bust hell wide open.

00:24:42:09 – 00:25:02:25
You’re not going to get saved because you’re a good person. You’re not going to get saved because you’re not going to make it to heaven, because you belong to a church. You won’t get to heaven because you got baptized in water. You won’t get that. You won’t make it to heaven because you were religious and and you tried to do good or in the end, your good outweighed your bad.

00:25:02:25 – 00:25:29:21
By the way, that’ll never happen either. The only way you come to the father, Jesus says, no man comes unto the father except through me. He says, I am the way, I am truth, I am love. That’s pretty exclusive. In other words, Peter’s being very bold, very confrontational right here to this culture. And he’s saying there’s no other name like the name of Jesus.

00:25:29:24 – 00:25:58:14
There’s no other name in which you can be saved except the name of Jesus. And so verse 13, now when they saw the boldness of Peter and of John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled, and they realized that they had been with Jesus. So let me stop right there for a second. I’ve heard a lot of people say, mention that verse and talk about that verse.

00:25:58:14 – 00:26:33:24
And and we often. We often think, well, Peter and John, they were both fishermen right before they were saved. But if you’ve ever watched The Chosen, which I’m not telling you, everything on The Chosen is biblical. They take some artistic liberties and do some stuff, but it’s most of it is. And it’s a very, very accurate depiction many times of, kind of gives you, a view of maybe what was really going on then in the times that Jesus was on earth.

00:26:33:24 – 00:27:00:10
And when he chose his disciples. And if you’ve ever watched The Chosen, you see that that Peter and James and John were all three buddies and fishermen. James and John were brothers, by the way. They were the sons of Zebedee. If you’re Zebedee means the sons of thunder. In other words, people were given names that were characteristic of their personality.

00:27:00:12 – 00:27:28:05
So these were some redneck fishermen. Now, I’m speaking to a lot of rednecks in here. I’ve met some folks from Harvard, and they they may be educated, but most of the time they’re dumb as a box of rocks. And I don’t apologize for saying it. Anybody, anybody who thinks that someone born a woman can become a man and that gender don’t matter.

00:27:28:08 – 00:27:53:09
I don’t care how many degrees they got from behind or front or behind their name. They stupid. Let me just say they stupid. This going. I’m online, so just go ahead and put it out there. Gender don’t matter. Let me give you some redneck ideology here. Let me show you how smart a redneck is. Go buy you 12 roosters and get you some nest boxes.

00:27:53:12 – 00:28:10:15
And they used to sell a feed called later bust my dad. You remember that layer bus? And you Purina made it. When you give a chicken that he going to lay. Are you going to bust? You give those 12 roosters some layer bus and give them a nice pen and go out the next morning and tell me if gender don’t matter, because you will not have eggs.

00:28:10:15 – 00:28:28:18
You may have a bunch of busted roosters, but you won’t have any eggs. He’ll buy you 12 bulls and a milking machine. Decide you’re going to start your own dairy, go ahead and market the butter and the cream and whatever else you want do, and go out there. The next morning, you hooked your milk machines to the bulls and see how much milk you get.

00:28:28:18 – 00:29:00:01
I promise you, you’re about to get an education, a redneck one, and you won’t never forget it. Amen. Gender matters. I don’t have to have a Harvard education to understand that. So these guys are, it says, were unlearned and untrained this time out. Just a minute. The book of John, first John, second John, third John and revelation. Five of the 27 books in the New Testament were written by John.

00:29:00:03 – 00:29:22:17
The dude could read or write and make pretty coherent sentences. Matter of fact, people are still writing books about his books today. Like you want to study the most complicated book in the Bible? Go read revelation. And he wrote that Peter wrote first Peter and second Peter. And those are very in debt. Very, very, you’re talking about a man who could read or write.

00:29:22:20 – 00:29:49:07
So it wasn’t that they were unlearned and educated, as you and I might think they were unlearned and uneducated, the Bible says, because they didn’t have the right education. See, the world today, it doesn’t matter how much education you have. Someone like me, I make no apology for this. And by the way, I do have an education. I just don’t have the right education.

00:29:49:09 – 00:30:18:23
I believe that same sex marriage is an affront to God. I believe it’s an abomination because I believe a worldview called a biblical worldview. I do not believe the earth is billions of years old. I believe if you read in Genesis and you calculate you’re about a 6000 year old planet. That’s my belief. I have a biblical worldview.

00:30:18:25 – 00:30:48:04
I, I think when I, when I look that I, I think that there are I do not believe that you can reclassify sin and call it a syndrome. It is sin and same sex marriage, adultery, drunkenness, fornication. We could go on down the list our sins before God. I do not believe that a pervert should be called a math minor attracted person.

00:30:48:11 – 00:31:13:19
They are a stinking pervert. I don’t care if that offends the whole world. Nowhere. I have a biblical worldview and. But you know what that means. I don’t have the right education, I don’t think. And so here’s what our world and culture does today. It marginalizes people like me, people like you. And we’ll say, well, you’re unlearned and uneducated.

00:31:13:19 – 00:31:37:27
You you need you need a reeducation. No, I have a right biblical education which gave me education as well as wisdom, wisdom and and because of it, here’s but here’s how they will marginalize us as Christians in our culture today. That’s what I want you to get. They’re trying to marginalize Peter and John, and let me show you how.

00:31:37:27 – 00:32:02:03
Read on with me in the next two verses, I’m going to I’m going to explain how this happened. It says here that if you pick up and read with me about verse number, let’s see verse 14, and seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it. how could you even dispute that?

00:32:02:04 – 00:32:30:01
I mean, the guy that got healed standing there with them. So they really can’t say anything about the guy who just got healed because they passed him every too. He was lame. But when they had commanded him to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves, saying, what shall we do to these men? For indeed, that a notable miracle and a notable miracle has been done through them.

00:32:30:03 – 00:33:03:11
That’s evident to all who dwell in Jerusalem, and what we cannot deny. It, but so that it spreads no further. Here’s your answer, so that it spreads no further among the people. Let us severely threaten them. You get that, by the way. That’s always the enemy’s attack. That’s how you operate that threat. I think about I think about Elijah.

00:33:03:13 – 00:33:27:15
They didn’t like Elijah. They wanted to show up in the Old Testament, man. The Syrian army comes together round and lashes. Little servant boy gets up one morning. He goes outside to do what boys do on the back porch in the morning. And he looks across the mountains. And the Syrian army, just thousands of them. And he runs back in and he says, I like here we go.

00:33:27:20 – 00:33:59:15
We’re surrounded. That God is surrounded. Come on, we’re in big, big trouble. The Syrian army, the Syrian king is so mad, he said, all these armies that God has man, the goddess, and he got plucked out in a flash. It looks and he sees all these Syrian armies. It’s a silly boy, I tell you. You’re. And Elijah says, Lord, would you open his eyes, spiritual eyes, so that he can see what’s really going on over there?

00:33:59:17 – 00:34:29:04
And by that time they’re against the Holy Spirit? Open that boy’s eyes and he look in behind all them Syrian armies were twice the number of angelic hosts gathered, ready to wipe them out. And Elisha says, see, I told you we got more with us than they got with him. I make that point to tell you, one prophet in Israel named Elisha, and the Assyrian king sent a massive army to take out one guy, intimidation and threats.

00:34:29:04 – 00:34:53:05
And that’s what they were doing here. So how does how does the culture marginalize you? And I, as Bible believer? Here’s what I happen. You have the abortion issue, for example, and then they’ll bring some Fruit Loops on and call him a pastor. And he or she claims that they are a pastor, a Bible believer, but they support abortion.

00:34:53:07 – 00:35:22:21
Or you’ll bring out some gay clergy. Well, let me tell you, I’m a Christian and I’m gay. And so that means that it must be okay. And so they marginalize and see. Not all Christians think that way. Well, let me tell you something. Let me tell you the problem with that. There’s a lot of people who call themselves Christians who believe, doesn’t believe much of the Bible and practice a whole lot less of it just because somebody tells you they’re a believer and they’re a Christian.

00:35:22:24 – 00:35:42:27
I gotta tell you something. Read Second Corinthians chapter six. If you think that a person can live a habitual lifestyle as a gay person and be a Christian, you need to read Second Corinthians chapter six, because it tells us right there that if you do that.

00:35:43:00 – 00:36:10:26
You are changed. Well, I’m a Christian, but I support abortion. How can you support the death of an innocent human being and claim to follow the God who gives life? I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I want you to think about what I’m saying. I’m saying that they will marginalize the culture, will marginalize you and I, because we believe something different.

00:36:11:02 – 00:36:36:27
We believe a biblical worldview. Listen, I’m not trying to be mean, but I’m not going to back up, back down, or bow to this culture that is against God. I’m telling you, as believers, it is time. It is high time that we stand up with Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost, boldness and declare the name of Jesus Christ to this buckwild, corrupt culture that we live in.

00:36:37:04 – 00:36:58:28
It’s time that we be salt and light. It’s time that the world see there’s something different about us. I’m not like the rest of the world, I love them. I want to reach them with the gospel, but I can’t reach them being like them. I have been reached by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That changed me.

00:36:59:03 – 00:37:21:10
And because of that, I have a message of hope and change for a world today that has lost its mind. You. Well, I gotta hurry. We got to close because it’s getting hot here. You pray we got one air conditioner down, two over two working overtime, and, we’ll out here. Just bear with me, because this is fix and get.

00:37:21:10 – 00:37:26:08
Good, I promise. Verse number.

00:37:26:10 – 00:38:13:00
18 so they they’re going to threaten them and say don’t speak in that name again the issue. But we listen to me, the issue was not the lame man being healed that they can’t dispute that right. Okay. Let me let me say something right here. Do you know that as a church, if we start an addiction ministry, if we feed the homeless and into the hungry and, and we do a lot of social outreaches, which is nothing wrong with that, the world will have absolutely nothing bad to say about any of that.

00:38:13:02 – 00:38:41:29
The part that sets us apart, the part that sets you and I apart, is that we would dare speak the name of Jesus. I promise you, if the message I am preaching and had just preach God around the world, you couldn’t imagine the hate mail that I would get this week from people because of the words and things I would be called a hate monger, a bigot, everything in the world because what was once right is now left.

00:38:41:29 – 00:39:08:10
What was once up is now down. What was once black is now why our world has lost its way and lost its mind. Because they lost the principles of God’s Word in the scriptures and the wisdom that comes with it. So verse 18, so they called them and commanded them not to speak at all, or teach in the name of Jesus.

00:39:08:13 – 00:39:29:28
But Peter and John answered and said to them, this is what I want you to get, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, to judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen, and things we have heard.

00:39:30:00 – 00:40:16:04
Peter and John were not looking to be enemies of the government. They weren’t. They were put into a position that they had to choose between something the government, the Senate, the religious leaders and the culture said is acceptable and something they knew God said was unacceptable. And they said, we have to choose what God says. In other words, we have to obey what God has said to do, even if it makes us an enemy of the government, even if it makes us an enemy of the culture, even if it makes us an enemy of the religious system, we have to obey God.

00:40:16:11 – 00:40:45:14
Why? Because we cannot but speak. You know, we’ve got to tell the truth. And what the truth is. We have seen and we have experienced some things that we can’t get over. We’re talking about the men. Think about what I’m about to say. We’re talking about men who walked and talked and ate and traveled with Jesus. We’re talking about men who were standing there when he stood at a grave and said, Lazarus, come forth.

00:40:45:14 – 00:41:08:11
And a dead man came walking out of the grave. We’re talking about men who watched as he is. Jesus was beaten beyond human recognition. They were there. They saw when they wrapped his body in a robe and and they’re taken him off the cross. They they heard him cry out those words as he died. There on the cross.

00:41:08:18 – 00:41:33:18
Into thy hands I commend my spirit. They watched as they took the lifeless, dead, beaten body of Jesus of the cross, put it in a grave. And these two men were the first two men at the tomb to see that it was empty. Now I’ve done a lot of funerals, and I’ve done a lot of weddings. I’ve always said not every marriage and I ever, not ever wedding.

00:41:33:19 – 00:41:57:07
I even marriage that performed. Not everybody ever married. They married. But so far, everybody I’ve ever buried has stayed buried. Think about what I just said. But that ain’t going to be true. All in other words, one day in the resurrection, they’re going to be raised. But these guys saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead. They watched him heal blind man.

00:41:57:12 – 00:42:24:24
They watched him cast out demons. They then they watched him die. And on three days later, he came back to life. And they didn’t just watch it. They sat and ate with him afterwards. And so they their lives have been transformed. You could never convinced him of anything less than the truth of Jesus Christ and power in his name and so they said, look, we can’t do anything but speak what we have heard and what we have seen.

00:42:24:24 – 00:42:42:09
By the way, you want to know why I said, all of you preachers, all of you are preachers. You may not realize that you may. You’re not. Maybe not a pastor, but you’re preacher preachers. One who proclaims, well, when I when I talk to people, when they ask me about me, I just don’t know what to say.

00:42:42:15 – 00:43:06:10
All you’ve got to say. Because if you have a real relationship with Jesus, all you’ve gotta be able to tell him is what you’ve seen. And what you’ve experienced. this is how Jesus changed my life. This is what he did. That’s what being a witness for him is. And so look what the next verse says. And I’m almost done.

00:43:06:13 – 00:43:31:08
So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way of punishing them because of the people, since they all glorified God for what had been done. The was everybody was so excited about the man to got him, for. The man was over 40 years old, on whom this miracle of healing had been performed. They could not deny it.

00:43:31:10 – 00:43:57:20
Here it is. They couldn’t shut him up by their threats. And this is where, if you study the rest of the book of acts, you’ll find later that the Bible says, these were the men who turned the world upside down. You know, the Romans, the Roman Empire was considered another way. The Roman Empire ruled even Israel during this time.

00:43:57:20 – 00:44:35:06
That’s why the Romans were the ones to crucify Christ. It was thought that they would never be any power militarily, or any nation that could ever overthrow the Roman Empire. But within just a few decades, Roman centurions would stand at city walls, and they would watch these same men who were called apostles, disciples who were broken and beaten and wearing tattered garments because they were so.

00:44:35:06 – 00:45:04:08
That’s all they had left. And they would creep into those cities. They be coming, walking. And when those Roman centurion saw them, because they had been beaten, this is what they would say. The men who limp are coming to overthrow our city. Those men weren’t even carrying weapons. They were the apostles who had been beaten because they wouldn’t shut up.

00:45:04:10 – 00:45:48:21
They wouldn’t quit preaching in the name of Jesus, and they would come with the gospel. And you know what brought down the Roman Empire? The gospel of Jesus Christ? Can you imagine how that conversation went? Here’s Peter and John. You can get your, Well, I may not get a chair. I got. This Peter on there sitting in the middle of this council, and they’re telling him like, okay, guys, you cannot preach in the name of Jesus anymore.

00:45:48:24 – 00:45:58:10
But don’t worry. Really. Got a problem with God getting healed? Certainly something miraculous happen. But no more preaching the name of Jesus or else.

00:45:58:12 – 00:46:25:00
Peter. John will take all your earthly possessions. Peter and John probably looked at each other like we gave that up when we started following Jesus. no more preaching in the name of Jesus. We’ll rough you up. You got a better stuff. I mean, we no more preaching in the name of Jesus, or we’ll kill you there. Like, we already died ourself.

00:46:25:00 – 00:46:50:13
We live in Christ. No way y’all crucified him. How did that work out for you? In other words, all their threats didn’t even matter. Do you know what the most dangerous person in the world is? A Christian who is totally sold out to Jesus because the world and the culture can’t threaten them with anything, nor can they offer them anything.

00:46:50:20 – 00:47:14:18
I’ve already lost everything I needed to lose, and I’ve already gained everything I need to gain, so the world has nothing to offer me. All I have is the message of Jesus Christ crucified, buried, risen, and he’s coming again. That’s a message that this world needs. You look at our country today. You look at the circumstances of our political environment.

00:47:14:24 – 00:47:43:28
You look at everything wrong with it. Hear me? Well, the Democrats don’t have the answer and the Republicans don’t even know the question. And believe me when I tell you neither one can fix it. The only hope for America and the only hope for our world is in the name of Jesus. That’s it. That’s our hope. And where is that going to come from?

00:47:44:00 – 00:48:04:28
It’s going to come from his people, who have to speak of the things that they’ve seen and experienced through him. Would you bow your heads with me?

00:48:05:00 – 00:48:10:00
If the story ended there, that would be really cool.

00:48:10:02 – 00:48:44:07
Peter and John went on to preach for many more years. History tells us that Peter was eventually arrested. They crucified Peter’s wife. Peter was one of the few disciples we know that was married, and they crucified Peter’s wife in front of him. And then when it came his time to be crucified, it was said that Peter requested that he be crucified upside down, for he did not feel worthy to be crucified in the same manner that his Lord was John.

00:48:44:09 – 00:49:01:10
John wrote the book of Revelation. I told you that. Do you know where he wrote it from? He wrote it from the olive patent. That’s like a modern day Alcatraz, that he had been exiled. They couldn’t shut him up, and they even had tried to kill him. They put him in a in a big fat of of oil like chicken and egg, fried him like a piece of fried chicken.

00:49:01:10 – 00:49:36:12
And it didn’t kill him. And so they exiled him to this, this place called Patton. This, this, this island, this island prison where they just dump prisoners off to let them die. The Bible says it. John was in the spirit on the Lord’s day. And Jesus appeared to him and said, pen these words. And when you go to that last book of the Bible called revelation, John wrote that.

00:49:36:14 – 00:49:44:07
For everybody sitting in here today and those listening online.

00:49:44:09 – 00:50:07:13
You may have a great need in your life today. And the answer is found in the name of Jesus. Our country certainly has a great need. We need revival. We need, we need, we need people to turn back to God. We need a nation that are turned back to God.

00:50:07:15 – 00:50:16:03
And the only answer and hope that we will find is in the name of Jesus.

00:50:16:05 – 00:50:48:02
My question to you before we go this morning is this, number one, have you trusted in Jesus for your salvation? Has there ever been a time in your life that you humbled your heart before God and said, God, I know I’m a sinner. Yes, I get what I deserve. It’s going to be hell. But I believe that your son Jesus died for me and I believe he paid my sin dead at the cross.

00:50:48:04 – 00:51:03:21
And you’d say something like this today, Lord Jesus, I ask you to forgive me of my sin. Change me. I believe that you died for me.

00:51:03:23 – 00:51:31:09
Maybe you’re here and you have family. Who need Jesus. If there’s ever been a time to begin praying for family and friends that need Jesus, it’s now. It’s now. Maybe you’re like me. I’m. I’m. I’m greatly concerned about our country. I’m greatly concerned about the direction in what’s going to happen. And I know the only answer is Jesus.

00:51:31:11 – 00:51:56:06
As a Christian, would you make of a new commitment right here this morning? I’m going to be bolder. I’m not going to be ashamed. I’m not going to let the enemy intimidate me or threaten me. I’m going to boldly proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and the gospel of Jesus. I’m not going to be ashamed of him.

00:51:56:08 – 00:52:06:12
I’m not going to be embarrassed by him, but rather I’m going to live for him.

00:52:06:14 – 00:52:29:22
Father, we love you today and we thank you for your goodness to us. Thank you for your word. Lord. I pray you meet every need in this building today. I pray if there’s someone who doesn’t know you, Jesus, as their Savior, that they will call upon your name today. For your word says, there’s no other name given among men whereby we must be saved except the name of Jesus.

00:52:29:25 – 00:52:50:10
So, Lord, I pray that every person in the sound of my voice, whether in this building or listening online, that they would trust you as Savior before they leave here today. Lord, for those who have great needs in their lives, some need healing, some need financial relief, some need a marriage fixed, some Lord just need direction in their life.

00:52:50:13 – 00:53:08:24
They’ll find that in the name of Jesus. And I pray today that they would come. I pray today that they before they would leave here, they would come and ask and nor to the others in this building and are part of our prayer team. We lay hands on them and pray for them, and we’re believing that the captive can be set free.

00:53:08:24 – 00:53:34:17
The sick can be healed, that the lost can be saved. And the broken hearted can be mended. So, Lord, we love you. We thank you. We praise you for your good news to us. We lift up our nation to you. Today we lift up our leaders. We pray for President Trump. Pray for him to recover. And Lord, I pray that you bring peace to our nation.

00:53:34:19 – 00:53:48:24
And yet, Lord, we know that peace will only come through the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. So help us, Lord, as your people, to boldly proclaim and lift up his name to all who are here. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Well,