Bold Witnesses

Continuing on from where Jerry left us off the story in Acts

Acts 4 · chapter mention

chapter 4. Now when the Sanhedrin saw the

boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were

uneducated common men, they were astonished, and they recognized

that they had been with Jesus. But seeing the man who was

healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in

opposition. But when they had commanded them

to leave the council, they conferred with one another,

saying, What shall we do with these men?

For that a notable sign has been performed through them, as

evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny

it. But in order that it may spread

no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to

anyone in the name of in this name.

So they called them, and charged them not to speak or teach at

all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered

them, Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you

rather than to God, you must judge.

For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.

And when they had further threatened them, they let them

go, finding no way to punish them because of the people.

For all we're praising God for what had happened.

For the man on whom the sign of healing was performed was more

than 40 years old. And this is the word of the

Lord, Thanks be to God. This is the word that God speaks

to us for the grass Withers and the flowers fade, but the word

of our Lord stands forever. Amen.

Please be seated. If you would grab your Bibles,

you can turn to Acts chapter 4. We're working our way through

Acts 4 · chapter mention

this chapter here today in different ways, different

readings. There's a a thin line between

boldness and foolishness, between being confident of

something and being foolhardy, between courage and immaturity.

I remember when I was about 12 years old or so, I wondered what

it was like to be kissed by a girl.

And I thought to myself, you know what, Henry, be bold.

So I went to a girl who was in my grade, and I said, hey, I

want to know what it's like to be kissed.

Would you kiss me and close my eyes, leaned in like whack,

slapping me across face. I will let you know that it took

about 12 years, but that technique actually did paying

off eventually for me and stuff. But that was boldness, not

really. That was an immaturity.

That was a foolishness. But the boldness comes through

very clearly in this passage. This is a passage that speaks of

the apostles boldness in proclaiming the word of God.

Perhaps, like me, there are times where you walk away from a

conversation and you sit and you think to yourself, boy, it's

hard to imagine that the Lord didn't want me to be more bold,

more faithful in that conversation than what I have

been. Perhaps there are times where

you fear that it would be foolish, that it'd be like

leaning in to get a slap. But we see the boldness.

We have outlined for us what boldness looks like in this text

before us. Now, we want to catch you up a

little bit just in case you weren't here last week or

haven't read the book of Acts for a while.

In Acts chapter 3, the apostles are on their way into Jerusalem,

Acts 3 · chapter mention

sorry, into into the temple at the time in order to pray.

Peter and John are going in to pray in the temple and they pass

a lame man, a man who's been crippled since birth.

And they say silver, gold, we don't have anything but what we

have we will give you in the name of Jesus walk.

And so through the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, the man is

healed. And the man begins to praise

Lord, and the crowd gathers around him.

And Peter, doing what any good preacher does, takes advantage

of a crowd and begins to proclaim what Jesus Christ has

done, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And in the midst of that, what Jerry picked up the story at

when he read earlier, is that the crowd is attracted the

attention of the temple authorities and particularly the

Sanhedrin. This is a ruling body of Jewish

authorities, both overseeing political issues and also

religious issues. And they see that you've got a

gathering of people. And anytime you have a big

gathering of people at this time, the Roman authorities get

a little nervous. So the Jewish authorities are

nervous and they say we better figure out what's happening here

so that no, riot doesn't start and we have problems with the

Roman authorities. So they bring Peter and John and

the crippled man who is now healed into their meeting

council place, and they want to figure out what's going on.

They say what's going on? And Peter once again with the

opportunity to proclaim the name of Jesus, proclaims the name of

Jesus. And as he speaks and proclaims

it, then we hear at the beginning of the text that I

read now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, they

are taken by the boldness of Peter and John.

Everything that follows of this is they're trying to figure out

how it is that these men are so bold in their proclamation of

Jesus Christ. Realizing, or I should say

suspecting that even for the evangelists in this room, and I

know there are a number of them, I'm impressed by the way in

which the Lord speaks in and through you to other people.

But even for the evangelists in this room, my guess is that

every one of us needs to capture more faithfully what it means to

be bold in the proclamation of the gospel.

So I want to take a look here at what it is that produced that

boldness in Peter and John. Verse 13.

We see now when they saw the boldness, when the Pharisees and

the Sadducees, the Sanhedrin, the ruling Jewish elders saw the

boldness of Peter and John and perceive that they were

uneducated common men, they were astounded, uneducated common

man. Now why is somebody bold?

Well, they're bold because they know all the answers.

They they know what's going on. They have all the solutions

ready in place. And so they can be bold in the

proclamation of the gospel because they can answer every

question. There was a man who came to the

campus where I worked. His name was Cliff Connectly.

He was in a traveling evangelist.

And what he would do, his shtick was he would answer any question

from the crowd. So the crowd would shout out

questions to him, challenges of the faith, and he would respond

very well. And the guy was very quick on

his feet. And he also, he had a script

that he knew how to turn every question into the gospel

message. It was, he was marvelous.

He was amazing. And you sit there and thought,

no wonder he's so bold. He's so bold because he knows

everything. He has an answer to every

question that enables him to be really bold out of the gate.

And now my guess is that for many of you, you don't feel like

you have every answer. You don't know what to say when

somebody says, does God really act like this?

Or how do we understand God when he does something like this?

Or is this really true? What evidence do you have for

this? My guess is in a number of you

feel uneducated, perhaps not academically, but perhaps in the

ways of responding well to the gospel.

And it'd be tempting then to temper your boldness, to say,

hey, I can't be bold anymore longer than the knowledge in

which I have. And then you read this passage

and you recognize that Peter and John are uneducated.

Their uneducated nature was evident, so much so that the

Sanhedrin is able to identify that just by being in the

presence for a few minutes. And yet he's realized that they

are bold. Nevertheless, they were also

common men. They weren't men of status.

They weren't men who had earned the right to be heard.

They were not men that had some kind of a high position, you

know, Well, I'm a pastor. Therefore my boldness comes from

my position and my authority. There were nothing like this.

They were uncommon men. Well, sorry, they were common

men. They were uneducated men.

In other words, they were in so many ways just like us.

And yet they were bold. But it was easy for them because

it was back then easy for them. Now one of the problems is that

we forget the time period that has taken place here.

We we take the Scripture in chunks often where we only hear

it on a Sunday morning or we read in our devotions a little

chunk at a time. We forget that the narrative,

the time period narrative that's going on two months ago, 8

weeks, just two months ago, the same Sanhedrin, the same

authority group dragged Jesus before them and within hours he

was crucified and Peter saw it happening, saw it happening.

The same people that are now accusing Peter now will pointing

their finger at Peter were the same ones that pointed their

finger at Jesus and LED Christ right to the cross.

There is no way that Peter was not well aware, not of the shame

that might come from answering a bad question or the

embarrassment of being a Christian these days or anything

like this, but the very self-evident persecution that he

was facing. That's what Peter think of the

evolution of Peter in two months.

Again, please grab a hold of this.

This is 2 months. A servant girl just asking him,

Hey, didn't you know Jesus? And what was Peter's response?

No, no, not me. And then the servant girl

prodding him a little bit. Sure, I think it is you.

No, no, not me. And denying Jesus just two

months ago in front of a servant girl, Peter doesn't have the

courage to own up to his faith in Jesus Christ.

And yet now, just two months later, Peter is seen with a

boldness that shocks even the Sanhedrin.

How does that boldness happen? How can we reflect that kind of

a boldness in what we do? They were common, uneducated

men. But look at the next line.

What makes a boldness in faith? They recognized the Sanhedrin,

recognized that the disciples had been with Jesus.

That's the source of their boldness.

The disciples are radiating the fact that they're uneducated.

They're radiating the fact that they're common people, folks.

They're radiating that their boldness is out of character

with everything that they appear.

Why are these guys not cowering in fear before the authorities,

before those who really can do them damage?

Why do we cower in fear behind people that largely can't hurt

us? Why are we not bold with our

neighbors? Why are we not bold with our

coworkers? OK, there's some situations

where you can't be because of the political situation or your

home situation. I understand all that, I'm not

downplaying that. I'm just saying that by and

large, in general, why are we not nearly as bold as we can be

and should be? We common uneducated folk.

Could it possibly be that our bold lack of boldness comes from

a lack of being with Jesus? That's the source of their

boldness. And it was evident to the

Sanhedrin, to the opponents of Jesus Christ.

As they're watching these two guys, Peter and John, as they're

watching them, they're able to look at them and say, wow,

there's something about them. They must be.

They have been with. Have you ever seen an interview

with somebody, a favorite athlete or a, or a track star?

I don't know where that one came from.

A, a movie star. There you go, one of those guys

or, or something along those lines and you find out you

there's there's somebody you really enjoy and then you find

out somewhere down the line that they're a Christian.

OK, there's a political commentator that I like and you

find out that they're a Christian down the line and you

go, Oh yeah, that makes sense. It it connects, it's evident

that they have been with Jesus. The boldness that Peter and John

demonstrate is so evident of their being with Jesus.

If God calls you to be more bold than what you are right now, and

you're wondering how, I beg you spend time with Jesus.

The more time you spend with Jesus, the more bold you will

find yourself being. It happened automatically here

within two months when they're threatened with death.

And nevertheless there is this great boldness.

But that's not the only thing. If you can go back to verse 2

for a second, verse 2, you can see that they are proclaiming in

Jesus the resurrection of the dead.

Their boldness arises not just from their message that they're

proclaiming the resurrection from the dead, but a recognition

of what that resurrection is, that resurrection has.

Now, again, you have to, you have to do justice to the text.

And the text says that two months ago Peter was a coward,

the greatest of cowards, to deny his Lord in a way that would

shame every single one of us. None of us would want to do

that. We all convince ourselves that

we wouldn't be like Peter in that situation just two months

ago. And yet now he's got a boldness

that is out of character, out of kilter.

Where did that come from? It came from the resurrection of

the dead. He's proclaiming the

resurrection of the dead. What?

What do I mean by that? Peter is acknowledging that

everything is different now. In the past two months,

everything has changed. What has changed?

Death has been conquered. Sin has been paid for.

Life has come upon the scene, burst upon the scene.

We are no longer living in a World of Darkness.

We now live in a world that is shining the brightness on the in

the light of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

What has changed between Peter shaking like a coward and him

being bull before the authority? The times have changed.

The whole world is different. A new era has turned into this

world. Yes, the old era is still

present. Yes, we today still live in a

world where sin dominates, where death is a terror, where hatred

is present. It's why in a situation like

today, we find ourselves as Christians, by necessity,

praying for this world, praying for the war that is happening,

praying for the innocents, praying for the leaders of the

countries, praying for safety and security for the military,

praying for the blessings of justice and righteousness to

rain down, praying in the midst of a dark and dreary world.

We live in a dark and dreary world, and yet as Christians we

also live in the resurrection. The new light has come.

The light of Christ is shine upon our life.

And as Peter now is standing before the Sanhedrin, what is he

to fear? The resurrection is here.

What is what is before me if the Sanhedrin comes down upon me and

leads me just like they led my Lord two months ago.

Two months ago I didn't know what happened after death.

Now I know. Now I know because the

resurrection of the dead has taken place.

And that produces within Peter a boldness.

If you don't share that, why not?

Are you really convinced of the resurrection?

If you are, how is it reflective in your boldness?

If you're not, how is that reflected in your shyness, your

shame, your hesitancy when it comes to the gospel

proclamation? But that's not the only source

of the boldness by which they have look.

In verse 14, the Sanhedrin sees the man who was healed standing

beside them. OK, so they want to say, look,

we we don't like what you're doing, but standing right next

to you is a guy who's been lame for 40 years and now he's

standing there. It's kind of hard.

You can read it in the text. That does a wonderful job here.

The author does of like noting the confusion of the opposition

to Jesus Christ. What do you do when the guy

who's healed is standing right there?

The evidence is so self-evident that you know, to say, Gee, you

need to stop doing that. Hello, the guy's just been

healed and he's standing right there.

The evidence is right now, wouldn't it be great if you had

the power to heal people? You could heal somebody and then

say to everybody around, look, this is or you didn't heal them,

God heals them through you. OK, look, look, this is what

Jesus does. Jesus heals people.

Look right here. I just, we just did this here,

Watch, we'll do it again. And you grab another guy and you

do it again. And then you say, hey, look,

everybody, you know, who wouldn't be bold if we could do

something like that? The healing is a sign.

That's specifically the way the Texas articulates it at the end

and verse. What is that last verse 22 and

verse 22. It is a sign of what it is a

sign of the spiritual. The physical healing is it's

marvelous and it's wonderful and it's distracting to our eyes

because what is really present is a transformation of our lives

is the change that happens in here.

It's the transformation where we go from being embedded in our

sin to rather to be embracing the resurrection of our Lord

Jesus Christ. That's the transformation.

That's what needs to be said. We should be bold in the same

reason that Peter was bold. Peter was bold saying, well, you

can't deny this. And every one of us can say,

well, you can't deny this, you can't deny this.

And yet we don't believe in the transformation.

One of the things that the Puritans used to do is hold on

to a pastor for a long period at a time.

Now we have a history here at Hebburn holding on to pastors

for a long period of time. Sorry about that, but but we

have but nothing like the Puritans.

Puritans would have the same pastor for their entire he'd

become a pastor in the age of 20s or in his 20s and he would

be in that church until he died. And that was just the way they

did things. They did that why?

For a particular reason. So the congregation would see

the lifelong transformation that takes place in the pastor's

life. This is a guy that we watch

every Sunday and we see that he's no longer.

You guys have met me much later in life.

You don't realize the transformation that has taken

place in my life. I don't realize and see the

transformation that has taken place in your life.

But by golly, if the Bible is true at all, it really has

happened. The greatest evidence that

should make me bold in proclamation and proclaiming the

gospel is look at this transformed life.

And if I'm too shy to say that too, because by the by the way,

there's plenty yet to be transformed.

There's plenty yet to be transformed.

I'm not trying to say look at how wonderful I am.

What I'm trying to say is look at what the Lord has done so far

in my life And if he if I'm too shy to say that about me, I

should be able to bring somebody here and say look out over here.

Every Christian in this room is evidence of Christ's

transforming work and you can't deny it, just like the Sanhedrin

couldn't deny it. And it forces a boldness for me

to be able to say man if. Who got to know some of these

people? If you really got to know some

of these people, you'd see the transformation that God has done

in their life. The evidence is there.

The evidence is there. It's screaming at us all the

time. If we take the time and energy

to acknowledge it and bring it to light so that we can have

that kind of boldness that Peter and John had in this situation.

But that's just not all. Look in verse 19, verse 19,

Peter and John answer there, there's the Sanhedrin says no,

OK, we can't deny what you're doing, but kind of take it easy,

would you don't don't talk anymore about Jesus when you do

this kind of things. And Peter and John then say, you

know, Peter says, well, you decide if we should listen to

you or listen to God. In other words, you know, should

we listen to God or should we listen to man and everybody?

That's a hypothetical question. Everybody knows that we what do

you mean we listen to God? I worked with the land surveyor

for a while, my father, and he would send me on, you know, I'd

have a range pull in the middle of the woods that I'd be

standing there holding the range pull.

And every once in a while, people would come up to me,

people who thought the land was theirs or something like that.

And I, you know, I was a teenage kid sitting in the middle of the

woods holding a range pole. And they'd come up to me and

they'd say, you know, hey, what are you doing?

Why are you here? What are you doing?

You know, why are you all that kind of stuff?

I quickly learned just to say the, the guy over there told me

to do it. You know, the guy over there

told me to do it. I never had anybody get mad at

me after that. They were always mad at the guy

over there, but they weren't mad at me.

Why? Because I was just doing what I

was supposed to do. Guess what we're supposed to do?

We're supposed to be bold with the gospel.

We are to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The boldness comes. I guarantee you that if you get

get with a Co worker or a family member or a neighbor or a loved

one and you sit there and say, you know what my pastor told me

today that I'm supposed to be bold about the gospel.

Therefore, I'm going to share the gospel with you.

You can hide behind that. You can get cover behind that.

Why? Because we are commanded to do

so. We act.

Our boldness comes from an obedience to Jesus Christ.

And finally, in the verse that follows that verse 24, we cannot

but speak of what we have seen and heard.

What does your boldness come from?

Your boldness comes from your experience, from what you have

seen, from what you have heard. That's what we're asking you to

share. You don't need to know all the

answers about the dating of creation or about, you know, how

we best think through thorny political issues or the

questions about social struggles or the answer to every Bible.

You get to share what you have seen and what you have heard.

In other words, you get to say, look, this is what's happened to

me. That produces A boldness.

That evokes A boldness because you're not being told that you

have to do all the work. Guess who does all the work?

God does all the work. You get to simply share that

which you heard or what you believe.

You get to simply obey the Lord. You get to simply say there's a

transformed life out there in here or out here that you cannot

deny the evidence of because we are in a new world now, a world

of life, a world built around the resurrection of Jesus

Christ. And I know it because I've spent

time with Jesus. Lord God, we do ask for your

great blessing once again upon us as we seek to be bold as

Peter and John were bold, faithful to the message that

they have been communicated to Lord.

We want to do this in a reflection of our love and our

grace, which was, which is ours in Jesus Christ, who taught his

disciples to pray together, saying, Our Father, who art in

heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, Thy will be

done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day Our Daily Bread, and forgive us our debts,

as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not in temptation, but

deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom and the power and

the glory forever. Amen.

Acts 423 through 31. When they were released, they

went to their friends and reported what the chief priests

and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they

lifted their voices together to God and said, Sovereign Lord,

who made the heaven and the sea and the earth and the sea and

everything in them, Who through the mouth of our Father David,

Your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, why did the Gentiles

rage and the people's plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were

gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.

For truly in this city they were gathered together against your

holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius

Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do

whatever Your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to Your

servant to continue to speak Your word with all boldness,

while you stretch out your hand to heal.

And signs and wonders are performed through the name of

your holy servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, and

when they had prayed, and when they had prayed, the place in

which they were gathered together was shaken, and they

were all filled with the Holy Spirit.

And continue to speak the Word of God with boldness.

And continue to speak the word of God with boldness.