Today's Word Radio

Brett Meador: One day, everyone will need to give an account for what they did with the knowledge of Jesus Christ and the truth of Jesus Christ. You might say, "Yeah, but they had miracles back then to prove." But we've learned that miracles never really produce real faith. It's the word that produces faith.

Announcer: On Today's Word, Pastor Brett Meador in the irrefutable divine truth provided for all with ears to hear.

Brett Meador: Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. In fact, what makes someone not believe? Professing themselves to be wise. That's just pride. That's just pridefulness.

Announcer: In Acts chapter four, the early church faced opposition after God healed a lame man. Yet, having been brought before the grieving religious leaders, Peter and John stood boldly, refusing to stay silent about Jesus Christ. And despite the Sadducees' unwillingness to believe what they saw and heard was true, Pastor Brett Meador assures us God was glorified in today's word.

Brett Meador: Acts chapter four, verse one is where we will begin. And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, the Sadducees came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them and put them in hold until the next day, for it was now eventide. Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed, and the number of the men was about 5,000.

And it came to pass on the morrow that their rulers and elders and scribes, and Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together at Jerusalem. And when they had set them in the midst, they asked, "By what power or by what name have you done this?" Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, "You rulers of the people and elders of Israel, if we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole, be it known unto you all and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole."

"This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled. And they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it.

What a story. And really, this chapter breaks into four sections. The first section is verses one through 14, and it's the apostles defending the name of Jesus Christ. Defending the name of Jesus is something you might say, "Do we as Christians need to defend?" But if it is true, what Peter is saying—and it is—there's no other name under heaven whereby men can be saved, then that's a name that we should be proclaiming. We should be proclaiming the name, and there are those who would disparage the name of Jesus, and it's right for them to defend the name of Jesus. They're saying, "By what name do you do this? By what authority?"

We have quite a clash of emotions here. We've got a clash of the grieved religious leaders. They're grieved right here in verse two, being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. When you see people grieving, in this case, they're grieving for something that they're unwilling to believe, unwilling to know when it comes to truth. They're grieved on one side, but the thing that's interesting about these guys is they know the truth, but they're not willing to acknowledge it.

What about people in their ideologies and worldviews? Are they grieved because they're unwilling to just acknowledge the truth? I think we're going to see a similarity in some ways. I think the truth causes us to rejoice. In fact, first Corinthians 13 says love rejoices in the truth. But the opposite is true. People that don't love the truth are not going to be rejoicing, and they tend to be grouchy people. Mark my words, that's what's going on right here. These people are not willing to grab onto the truth.

The key is to find the truth. And what does the Bible say? Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me." So this is really what we're going to see is these disciples, they're going to be pointing back to Jesus. There's no other name under heaven by which men can be saved, defending the name of Jesus. Then the rest of the chapter, the second section is the council, the Sanhedrin, opposing the name of Jesus. That's verses 15 through 22.

Then we're going to see the church calling on the name of Jesus, verses 23 through 30. And then the fourth part of the chapter is just a report of what happens after those first three things happened. Then there's a final report in verses 31 through 37. So point number one is the apostles defending the name of Jesus Christ. I love how we're already seeing in this the boldness of the apostles. And that's what's required of you and me—to be bold. Remember we saw in Proverbs 28, it says that the wicked flee when no one's pursuing, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.

I challenge us as a church, and me personally, I feel challenged to be more bold in the things of Jesus. That's the key. I think of some people in history. One such guy was Hugh Latimer. He lived in the 1500s during the Reformation era. Hugh Latimer once preached before King Henry the eighth. Henry was greatly displeased by the boldness of Latimer's sermon that he gave, and he said he needed to preach the following Sunday and apologize for the offense of being too bold. The next Sunday, after reading his text from the scripture, he began his sermon like this.

He said, and I quote, "Hugh Latimer, speaking of himself, does thou know before whom thou today speak to the high and mighty monarch, the king's most excellent majesty, who can take away thy life if you offend? Therefore, take heed that thou speakest not a word that may displease. But then consider well, Hugh, dost thou not know from whence thou comest, whose message thou art sent? Even by the great and mighty God who is all-present and who beholdeth all thy ways, and who's able to cast thy soul into hell. Therefore, take care that thou delivers thy message faithfully."

Then he preached the same exact sermon he preached the preceding Sunday with considerable more energy. You say, "Man, I wish I had that kind of boldness." Yeah. From that time, he and Nicholas Ridley from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs—this is from 1863—they're both tied to a stake and they burned them both to death. That's not very encouraging. You're encouraging us to be bold, and you're saying he got burned to death? Good news, folks. Nobody's burning us at the stake anymore right now.

That's good news. Remember the wicked flee when no one's chasing them. I feel like we as Christians—these guys were bold back in the 1500s and they knew their lives were literally on the line. We're worried that someone might think we're a little too fanatical or a little too religious or we're not politically correct or whatever we're worried about. Really, the Bible says we're supposed to be bold in our faith. We see Peter, who's very much facing the same kind of martyrdom with the same Sanhedrin that would crucify Jesus.

Even though you and I may feel ill-equipped to share Jesus and proclaim the name of Jesus, really all you need is what Peter had. What did Peter have? He was filled with the Spirit. Verse eight: "Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost." That's the main thing here. Remember before the Holy Ghost, Peter was shaking in his sandals up in the upper room, afraid. Now we see a very bold Peter. You've got to be filled with the Spirit.

And then also we notice that he spent time with Jesus, even as his enemies noted they were unlearned and ignorant men, verse 13, but marveled and took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. If you're spending time with Jesus and you're filled with the Spirit, then you can be bold and the Lord will go before you even as he does right here. We see where there are two reasons they have nothing to say, the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders. Two reasons: one, because they saw that they were unlearned and ignorant men and yet they'd somehow been with Jesus. That was something notable to them. But then the second component was the guy that was healed, standing there as a testimony, and they could say nothing against it.

They could say nothing against it. So what did they try to say against it? Well, that's where we pick it up to the second section of this chapter there in verses 15 through 22. And that's the council opposing the name of Jesus. Let's pick it up in verse 15. And there it says, "But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves, saying, 'What shall we do with these men?' for that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it."

We can't deny this miracle that everybody knows—the crippled guy from the gate Beautiful. Their hearts were so hard against Jesus that they wouldn't take or receive the obvious truth and believe. There's a logic here that if you're careful and say, "Well, there's a guy that was crippled from the mother's womb and now he's walking and leaping and praising God. Maybe we should believe in this." But that's not even part of their thinking at all. It's all just they're so set in their ways.

Sadly, this is oftentimes the person that's hardened against Jesus—the hard-hearted person. Even though the truth is staring them in the face, they will not give in, they will not give up their hard-heartedness. This will be true for everyone at some point. One day, everyone will need to give an account for what they did with the knowledge of Jesus Christ and the truth of Jesus Christ. You might say, "Yeah, but they had miracles back then to prove." But we've learned that miracles never really produce real faith. It's the word that produces faith. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

In fact, we see great things today too, by the way. Let me show you in Romans chapter one, verse 17. It says, "For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith.' For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has showed it unto them." Did you notice what Paul is saying there to the Romans? He's saying there are people that hold the truth, but in unrighteousness. That's exactly what we're seeing here.

They know the truth. They know that Jesus is the one who is the name that Peter heals this guy. The guy's standing there, they can't deny it. They can't say anything against it, but so unwilling in unrighteousness are they unwilling to believe what is true? That is that hard-heartedness. Keep that phrase "who hold the truth in unrighteousness" in the back of your mind. If we keep reading here, because that's just verse 19, it goes on in verse 20. It says, "For the invisible things of him from creation, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse."

"Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their foolish imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became as fools." Sadly, this is a heartbreaker, but this section of scripture so much personifies today. People of the world today that are hardened against God and they're unwilling to put their foolish imaginations and their own professing to be wise, they've really become fools in setting that aside.

Here's the saddest part. It says, "For there's no excuse for them." You won't have an excuse. "What if they didn't hear the gospel? What if a person never heard a sermon?" Do you know even they are without excuse? Because of what it says here: "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." That's us. "Even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse." What makes someone not believe? Professing themselves to be wise. That's just pride.

That's just pridefulness. Their want to sin. They were vain in their imaginations. That's just a desire to sin and their stubbornness there—pride, their desire for sin, stubbornness when their foolish heart was darkened, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God. Even creation speaks of his glory. That's why, by the way, the creation issue versus evolution, say, or any other theory about origins, is such a big deal. "Why do you Christians have to die on that battlefield of creationism?" People ask me that.

There's a lot of Christians that will come up and say, "Well, Brett, I'm a theistic evolutionist." That's someone who believes that God created the universe and the laws of nature and the living things, but he did it with billions and billions of years of evolution. And that's what it is. You're a Christian who says God created the heavens, but you just don't take the Bible literally when it says he created it in six days and on the seventh day he rested. You don't like that part, so you strip it out of the Bible. Even though the Bible says that. "Oh, Brett, I can't take those literal creation days. I believe science."

Can I just say be careful if you use the scientific method and you're careful with that, you'll be shocked at how evolution is full of holes? If you use the scientific method, sadly, that's gone out the window for so many things, especially so-called science. The Bible even says science would be falsely so-called in the last days. That's interesting. It's almost like the Bible condones science. Some of the greatest scientists and even the scientific method was invented by Christians who were scientists.

But when it comes to Christians who were scientists, like Isaac Newton and others who believed the Bible and used the Bible to come to their conclusions, the world will never give the believers in God the credit that's due there. But what's interesting is the ones that came up with the scientific method, the very same scientists that have used that for hundreds of years now, are bailing off. They're saying things as if they're a matter of fact, like global warming and climate change, so-called science. It's something we're seeing today. People are making stuff up.

One of the things that they painfully try to make up is this idea of evolution, billions of years and an accidental set of circumstances. It went from just nothing to all this complexity that we see. Even that is sort of hard for some people even now to believe. If you're a logical person, a great explosion turning into this great complexity that we're seeing with our own eyes right now? I would say not in a billion years. That's too lucky. It's a fortuitous set of circumstances. That's what they call it.

So some people are moving more toward the idea of intelligent design. Be careful, Christians, because there are Christians arguing for intelligent design, and that's—I get it. I understand. But sometimes if you leave out the designer part, then the world's minds are still running wild. There are those who are saying, "Yeah, we've got to get off the evolution bandwagon," and so they say aliens. Aliens planted the seed of life because obviously evolutionary logic is out the window, so somebody had to design us. It must have been aliens.

There's another one that's gaining steam right now. Have you heard about the self-creating universe hypothesis or cosmic self-simulation hypothesis? It's basically that humans created humans. So what it is, simple explanation is we humans grow so advanced that we can create life, and through a time warp loop quantum cosmology or casual loop theory, we're the ones who invented ourselves, creating life once we got smart enough. We went through the cosmic quantum loop. Big bag of baloneys right there.

In other words, the belief that we are gods that created ourselves. I'm not sure you can get more vain in your imagination than that. Vain in their imaginations, becoming fools, when really the Bible says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He spoke the worlds into existence. That's starting to look better and better if you just logically look at it. The reason we spend so much time as Christians talking about that issue is because that's the issue that's going to be your indictment against you if you're a person that says, "I don't believe in God," or "I don't believe in what the Bible says."

The Bible says of itself that even creation speaks of God's clearly seen glory—the invisible things of him from creation so that they are without excuse. Notice it's this idea in our text here: they couldn't deny the miracle of healing of the crippled man, but they hold the truth in unrighteousness. That's that Romans 1:18 scripture. Now, by the way, there's a couple of other freebies here that are kind of interesting. Did you notice that Peter talked about Jesus and how he rose? Not only did they crucify him, but he rose from the dead.

Did you notice they never denied that Jesus rose from the grave? This is interesting to me. You'd think they'd say, "Well, you've got to stop talking about this Jesus mumbo jumbo. And by the way, he never really rose from the grave." You'd think they'd say that, but they didn't. Nowhere did these guys admit or try to persuade that Jesus did not rise from the dead. You'd think they would have come up with something to deny that. That would be the end of Christianity if they could prove it—a body or some evidence of tampering or the Romans or something. But none of them produced that. So they never said, "Don't say Jesus rose from the grave because he didn't, and then here's proof." They didn't say that.

They just say, "Don't say Jesus rose from the grave." We see that when it says in verse 16, saying, "What shall we do with these men? For a notable miracle is done in them." This is what they couldn't deny. That's the bottom line. But verse 17, now this is things getting heated up here. Verse 17: "But that it spread no further among the people, let us straightly threaten them that they speak henceforth to no man in this name." And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.

Now, question: Is there ever a time to break the law? This is an interesting question, isn't it? These guys are the rulers of the land. Now, when you read Peter's epistles, Peter's going to talk about how we're to obey the laws of the land. It's funny how this idea of not doing—Peter's not going to abide by these mandates. I use those terms sort of laughingly. There's a point where you will break the law, and this is one of those times where Peter's going to say, "I'm not doing what you're going to say." Wait till chapter five. He's going to let them have it even harder than what we see here.

So the debate kind of turns hostile. They start threatening, and they threaten them that they speak not in this name, the name of Jesus. And they called them and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But verse 19, this is where it gets interesting. Verse 19: "But Peter and John answered and said unto them, 'Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge you.'" Like you can judge whether it's right for us to listen to God or listen to you.

"For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." Don't you love this? If you're afraid to speak the name of Jesus where you are—at your office or school—if you're one of those afraid, would you mark this verse in your Bible? Verse 20, mark it well: "For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." What did they see and hear? They saw Jesus, who was resurrected from the grave, and they knew that he was the Messiah. And if you know that Jesus is the Messiah, we cannot but tell people what we've seen and heard. I love what Peter says here. It's very logical.

But verse 21: "So when they had further threatened them," so they continued to threaten them more, "they let them go, finding nothing how they might punish them, because of the people, for all men glorified God for that which was done. For the man was above 40 years old on whom this miracle of healing was shown." So this is interesting. They could have done anything that they wanted to, but they said, "The evidence is too great. We're not going to not talk about Jesus." And don't you love it? It's kind of like they had nothing they could do.

What are they going to say? The multitudes believe that the guy was crippled for 40 years. So this is where we learn that this guy had been crippled from the womb for 40 years. You say, "Brett, that's a long time." That's a long time. But there was this timing and a plan that God had for this man, and 40 years was the mark. Have you ever wondered? So often we wonder, "Lord, why aren't you working in my life? I've been praying. I've been believing. Where are you, Lord?" Have you ever felt that way where you're wishing the Lord would intervene or step in or help your problem? And maybe you've been waiting for 40 minutes. 40 minutes. Maybe 40 days. But what I would say is the Lord has a timing, and he makes all things beautiful in his time. This guy probably found it strange: "Why am I crippled for 40 years?" And then all of a sudden the Lord heals him. It was for a time just like this this guy was going to be healed and used.

Announcer: Pastor Brett Meador reflecting on the divine timing of the Lord on display in Acts chapter four, here on Today's Word. And there's much more to come in this verse-by-verse study that continues next time. And stay right there as Pastor Brett will join me to help with a question that many Christians struggle with. But first, our teacher, Brett Meador, is the senior pastor of Athey Creek Church in the Portland suburb of West Linn, Oregon. If you missed any portion of our time today, you can find this message online at todayswordradio.com. That's todayswordradio.com.

All right, I have Pastor Brett with me. Reading God's word, the Bible, is obviously very important for Christians to grow in their faith. But what about a person who struggles finding the time? Brett, what advice can you share with that person? Where to start and how to remain consistent in reading God's word?

Brett Meador: I think I'd like to encourage people to start with low pressure. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I think the Bible is so huge and people feel like, "Well, I've got to read a lot," and I've noticed there's a lot of people, even with dyslexia or comprehension issues, and they just throw it out and say, "I can't read the whole Bible." But I would encourage you start small. Start with just saying, "I'm going to read three verses every day," or if you're a good reader, one chapter a day.

And I wouldn't start in Leviticus. I would maybe start in the Gospel of John—what a beautiful expression of Christ and the gospel of Jesus Christ. So start in John. Some people start in Genesis, but that's a heavy lift. But it is interesting, but take your time. And I think day by day, daily in the word. Remember the people of Israel would get up in the morning there in the wilderness wanderings and they'd see manna in the morning. And they got manna daily. And what happened if they tried to store up the manna? It would grow worms and get stale and ugly and moldy. What they needed to do is daily get fresh food. I think that's what we need from the word of God—just to daily take small bites and see how the Lord might just use that. But the word will always reward you.

Announcer: That's such a practical and really encouraging way to think about getting into a daily reading program of the Bible. Thank you, Pastor Brett, for that. Well, I want to mention that if you'd like more information about Pastor Brett Meador or Today's Word, just go to todayswordradio.com. Well, next time, Pastor Brett will describe from the Book of Acts how, despite mounting persecution, the church gathered to pray for boldness and courage to continue declaring the truth and power of the gospel, including those who opposed them. Today's Word with Pastor Brett Meador is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in West Linn, Oregon.