They returned to their fellowship (perhaps they had already been praying for them and their release – How do we know that? Acts 12:5 What do men of courage do after facing difficult moments – run and hide? No way – they go back to their Church Family and do what they had always done. This is why they were men of courage.
The context from last week, Peter’s response to the question, really finishes his sermon the next day to the Sanhedrin council. This was in response to what Peter had been sharing with them in a sense of presenting the message to the council. Luke 21:15 We see this coming true right before our very eyes.
We start a new section today of Acts and we have focused on the early days of the Church and the launch of the Church, and the mission control and their leaving earth and now this morning we turn our attention to how the Lord works through specific individuals in the life of the Church and how they displayed incredible courage as they relied on the Holy Spirit to embolden them.
Our challenge is to understand that the “rediscovery” of the gospel should be a lifelong process that never ends. We began our Christian life by drinking from Christ’s everlasting water. We don’t grow in Christ by enlarging the circumference of our well; we grow in Christ by digging deeper into it.
As You have been to me, so I will be to others. We turned that corner last week and began to work our way to letting this Gospel spill out of our lives into the lives of others. We love others in response to the love we’ve experienced in the Gospel – we’ve experienced the extravagant generosity of God and so therefore we understand we extend that same generosity others. God’s Great Abundance & Our Allocation of those Resources The Gospel motivates us to generosity not by Guilt (we never give enough) or Greed (We give so we can get) but by Grace (we give because we have received). The bottom line is that it is impossible to believe the gospel and not become like the gospel!
The truth and meaning of John’s writing refers to the believers’ not sinning. All of the verbs he uses referring to sin are in the present tense, indicating continuous, habitual action. In other words, John is not referring to occasional acts of sin, but to established and continual patterns of sinful behavior. Believers will sometime sins – even willfully – but they will not and cannot sin habitually, persistently as a way of life.
We want to talk this morning about having an audacious faith and doing something and seeing something happen that we didn’t think we could do or could possibly happen. Will we really take God at His Word and believe that He will do what He said He would do and be who He said he would be – We are reading about it every day as I hope you are reading in the Gospels five days each week! Well, let me share with about this guy and doing something He would never dream he could do!!
We start to turn the corner here – again if you missed the last several weeks, then you’ve missed the foundation – the core of what we are talking about and living out this gospel revolution must start at the beginning – the Abiding, Amazement, Acceptance, Approval, and Affection inform how we then are to live out the Gospel in our lives – Here is the 2nd part of the revolution. The 1st part was the 1st 4 weeks – allowing the Lord to revolutionize our hearts in understanding How He sees us and deals with us and loves us and cares for us and provides for us and on it goes and then our desires changes to abide more and stand in greater amazement that He accepts us and we have his approval and His affection. Then we begin to the 2nd part which is then how we live that out – where the rubber meets the road so to speak. We flesh out the Gospel in our lives!
The words we have used so far are ABIDE, AMAZED & ACCEPTED. Today we add the words "Our Affection & God’s Affection Approval". The goal of this message is to teach the second part of the Gospel Prayer, which affirms that Christ is life’s greatest treasure, and in Him, we have all we need: “Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy.” No longer do we need to crave the approval of others, because in Him we have the absolute approval of the only One whose opinion really matters. No longer do we need earthly riches, for we have a treasure of unspeakable worth. In Christ, we can give away all we have because in Christ we have all that we need.
The verse in I Corinthians 13:13, but now these three remain, faith, hope, and love and the greatest of these is love.” We here a lot about faith and love, but not as much about hope. Gets overlooked a little bit, so let’s take a deeper look tonight at hope, what it is and what it means for believers. Biblical hope is not a wish but an absolute future reality guaranteed by the Lord. This hope cannot be experience by unbelievers. This hope is a like a light blazing in a dark room. It immediately will illuminate one’s outlook, uplifts the soul, and produces joy in our hearts even in the worst of circumstances and in the midst of our dark, sin stained and death-filled world.
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Things Jesus Never Said
