They Had Been with Jesus | When Mistreated Because of Your Faith

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Learn more and sign up at harvest.org. We can't cancel out the message of the gospel, but the gospel will never be canceled. Ever.

Ever. Jesus warned us that we may face persecution for our faith. It doesn't mean we're doing something wrong. In fact, it may be an indication that we're right with the Lord. Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie points to that characteristic and several others that show us how we're doing. If we're walking closely with the Lord, these traits will be obvious.

It's good insight and a good opportunity to take some notes. Pastor Greg is in the book of Acts today reading from the New Living Translation. Let's grab our Bibles and turn to Acts chapter 3 and the title of my message is, They Had Been with Jesus. And now we come to the first miracle of the early church. We don't read that the Lord said, go to the temple, by the gate, beautiful, the beautiful gate. It was a special gate there in Jerusalem. And there's going to be a guy there who begs for money.

I want you to raise that guy to his feet. We don't read that happen. There was no pillar of fire.

There was no angelic message. Peter and John were just doing what they did. They went to the temple and prayed. As they're walking in, here's a guy who was a fixture at the temple. Everybody knew him.

Most ignored him. Peter looks down on him and the Lord speaks to Peter. Loose paraphrase. He says, look buddy, I don't have any money for you.

But I have something much better. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk. He grabs the guy by the hand and pulls him up. Boy, you talk about putting it on the line.

You talk about bedding the farm. That could have gone south very easily. He could have pulled him up and then he came crashing to the ground. But Peter had an act of faith. But then he took the next step and pulled the man up. And of course the man was walking and leaping and praising God.

And now here comes an opportunity. The focus of this story is not the miracle. It was the door that the miracle opened. It was the opportunity that was now before Peter to preach the gospel. We read in Acts 3, 12, Peter's song, his opportunity and addressed the people of Israel. Five thousand people believed on this day as a result. And now Peter and John are brought before the Sanhedrin. That's sort of like the Supreme Court of the day.

Right? They had the final ruling. We read in Acts 4, verse 7, They brought on the two disciples and demanded, By what power? And in whose name have you done this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said, Leaders and elders of our nation, are we being questioned because we did a good deed for a crippled man? Do you want to know how he was healed? Let me clearly state to you and all the people of Israel, He was healed in the name and power of Jesus Christ from Nazareth, the man you crucified but whom God raised from the dead. For this is the one reference to in the scriptures where it says, The stone the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone in their salvation and no one else.

For there is no other name in all of heaven for people to call on to save them. Then the members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John. They could see that they were ordinary men who had no special training and they recognized them as men who had been with Jesus. And since the man who had been healed was standing right there among them, the council had nothing to say.

Alright, we'll stop there. So let's identify what it means to be with Jesus. What it means to walk with Jesus.

If you're taking notes, here's note number one or point number one I should say. If you have been with Jesus or if you're walking with Jesus you will boldly share your faith. You'll boldly share your faith.

Don't forget this. Saint Peter only days earlier effectively had openly denied Christ even taking an oath saying he never knew the man. Now he's preached on the day of Pentecost and 3,000 people have believed. And he's preached here and 5,000 people have believed. Where did Peter get this confidence and this courage?

He got it from the Holy Spirit. Remember we read in Acts 1-8, You shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you to be witnesses unto me. That same power that was given to the believers in the first century is available for believers in the 21st century.

That means us. Because the promise on the day of Pentecost was this promise is unto you, to your children, to your children's children, to all that are afar of even as many as the Lord our God shall call. So Peter had this boldness and we should have this boldness as well. You know for many to share their faith is a duty, it's a drudgery, it shouldn't be. Be like Peter and see the opportunities.

Number two. If you've been with Jesus you'll be a person that knows scripture. People will know you have been with Jesus when you love to read and study the Bible. Because Jesus said lo in the volume of the book I have come. He'll come to you in the volume of the book. Here's another point about being with Jesus or walking with Jesus.

You may not like but it's true. A person who has been with Jesus will be persecuted. You'll be persecuted. The authorities told the apostles to stop what they were doing.

No reason was given. They said just stop. Don't do it anymore Acts 4 17. But to keep them from spreading their message any further we must warn them not to speak to anyone in Jesus' name again. So they called the apostles back in and commanded them never again to speak or teach in the name of Jesus. You know what this was? This was first century cancel culture.

Right? They were trying to cancel out the message of the gospel. But the gospel will never be canceled. Ever.

Ever. That's the hill I will die on. There's other hills you can stand on and they're important causes. But the hill I will die on is the hill of the gospel. No one will stop me from preaching it.

They'll try but they'll always fail. Notice that the issue was the name of Jesus. Stop speaking in the name of Jesus. I've been asked to pray at different events.

I get asked to do these sort of civic events. And a couple of times I've been told please don't pray in the name of Jesus. I'm going to pray in the name of Jesus. I'm not going to be told I can't do that. And if they don't want me to do that they shouldn't ask me to come and pray.

Because that's how I roll. But that's how we pray. We go to the Father in the name of Jesus.

I don't think it's a small thing. We need to pray in the name of Jesus. We need to preach in the name of Jesus. We need to live in the name of Jesus because there's power in that name.

That's why. Right? That's why it's so weird to me when non-believers invoke the name of Jesus when they say they're atheists. If you're an atheist it seems the last name you would want to speak is the name of Jesus Christ.

Remember? He didn't even exist. God isn't even real. And yet you say Jesus Christ. Why do you say that? Because in your own way you're acknowledging He exists and there's power in that name.

Right? We know that. Even non-believers know that. And so persecution will come. That's one of the hardest things about being a Christian.

Let's be honest. I mean if you want to be loved by everyone this is a problem. Because Jesus said beware when all men speak well of you. I mean if everyone thinks you're great and nobody has any issues with you and no one's ever upset with anything you say I have to wonder are you living in the name of Jesus? Now I'm not saying be unnecessarily offensive.

As much as possible we should be the most loving person, the most caring person, the most compassionate person, the best neighbor, the best co-worker, the best at whatever we do. But we're looking for the opportunities to get the gospel in at the same time. And if you do that you will be persecuted. So what should I do when I'm persecuted? Go into the corner and sulk? No.

The opposite. Here's what Jesus says in Matthew 5. God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers. So Jesus says be happy about it.

Be very glad about it for a great reward awaits you in heaven. So how can people tell that we've been with Jesus? Number one, you'll be bold in your witness. Number two, you'll be a student of scripture. Number three, you'll be persecuted. Here's my last point. A person who has been with Jesus will be a person of prayer.

You'll be a person of prayer. So after being persecuted Peter and John were dismissed. What did they do? They went and got together with the Christians. Look at Acts 4 29. They're praying now together. And now, O Lord, they pray. Hear their threats and give your servants great boldness in their preaching.

Send your healing power. May miraculous signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus. Apparently God affirmed this prayer.

After this prayer the building where they were meeting shook and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they preached God's message with boldness. Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment. We really enjoy hearing when Pastor Greg's teaching and preaching touch lives. Pastor Greg, I'm a junior in high school, was raised in church and saved at a very young age. But when I started high school, I fell away from the Lord. One day I heard you on the radio and your message helps me see that I need to get my life right with God, which I did.

Thank you for all you do in allowing God to work through you. It's a blessing to know that listeners young and old are hearing these messages and God is using his word to touch hearts. How have Pastor Greg's studies impacted your life?

Would you let them know? Drop an email to gregatharvest.org. We're learning some of the characteristics that confirm we're walking closely with the Lord. Pastor Greg's message is called, They Had Been with Jesus. Here's some important little truths about prayer found in these verses. Number one, they prayed together. So they're threatened by the Sanhedrin. They're told to no longer preach in the name of Jesus. What's the first thing they do? They said, let's get together with our fellow Christians and let's pray about it.

Why? Because there's power in united prayer. Galatians 6, 2 says, share each other's burdens and in this way you will obey the law of Christ.

Jesus said, I tell you if any two of you will agree together on earth concerning anything you ask of your Father in heaven, he will do it. Pray together. Maybe you've come to church today with a burden.

Maybe there's a concern to you. You have a loved one that is very sick or you yourself are very sick. Or you're facing a catastrophe, a crisis, a challenge, or you're just feeling down. It's such a great thing to say to a couple Christian friends, can we just pray together? Haven't you noticed how things can just change when you just lift it up to the Lord? Instead of burying that all by yourself, you share it with others and they help you sort of lift it up. It's like when you try to lift the couch all by yourself and how hard it is and then you get three other people to help.

Everyone takes a corner and you pick it up and it makes all the difference in the world. They prayed together. And then as they prayed together, verse 23 says, as soon as they were freed, Peter and John returned to the other believers and told them what the elders had said and they all lifted their voices together. And now number two, verse 24, I love this part of their prayer. It says they prayed, O sovereign Lord.

Verse 24, O sovereign Lord, creator of heaven and earth and the sea and everything in them. So the Sanhedrin said you can't preach anymore. So they went to a higher authority. Later they said we must obey God and not men. We live under civil government. The Bible tells us that civil government is put in that position of power by God. But sometimes government leaders, presidents, governors, congressmen, senators, mayors, and others may tell you to do something that is against scripture. If that happens, that's a we must obey God and not men moment, right? This is one of those moments. And the moment was specifically you can no longer preach the gospel.

Yeah, no way. We're gonna keep preaching the gospel. But they call out to God and call him the sovereign God. And we call God sovereign. It simply means that I'm acknowledging his greatness. So it's really a good thing to remember your God is all powerful.

He's all powerful. That's why Jesus in what we call the Lord's Prayer taught us to pray as follows. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Then it says give us this day our daily bread. And so Jesus is giving us a template for prayer and he is in effect saying if you have the luxury of time when you pray take time to contemplate the awesomeness and greatness and power of God and it will put your problem in its proper perspective. Oh sovereign God. Oh sovereign God. There's a Spurgeon who pointed out that God's power is great and it is then that we can trust it and we should call upon him. Chuck Swindoll said God is able to do what he pleases with whomever he chooses whenever he wishes. And they prayed for God's will.

Look at verse 29. Oh Lord consider their threats and give us your servant's great boldness in preaching your word. So they were told not to preach so they said okay we're going to keep preaching. But now we pray that we'll be even bolder.

Even bolder than they were before. They did not pray they would have a break from persecution but that they might have boldness in persecution. It's sort of like praying Lord I don't pray for a lighter load. I pray for a stronger back.

I want to be stronger and bolder. I think we all should pray that prayer. And once again they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Let me remind you what it means to be filled with the Spirit. It means to be controlled by the Spirit. And as I've told you before we should pray for the filling of the Spirit every single day. Because Ephesians 5 says be being filled with the Holy Spirit. Speaking to yourself in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. And so the idea is ask for the filling of the Spirit again and again and again. And God filled them and this prayer was pleasing to God because verse 31 says the place shook and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And I want to pray for that as we close our service. But before we do that I want to just offer this final thought. Have you been with Jesus?

Let me put it another way. Do you know Jesus? Do you have a relationship with Jesus Christ?

I love how these folks were described initially as people of the way. People that are walking with the Lord, talking with the Lord, hearing from the Lord. Do you have that kind of relationship with God or does He seem distant and disinterested? You just perceive Him as some kind of a force out there in the universe.

Oh no. God is personal. It's a relationship with Him that we all can have. Because Christ died on the cross and rose again from the dead.

And now wants to come and live in us. Remember I told you being a Christian is not about imitation. It's about impartation. Meaning Christ living in you. Does Jesus live inside of you right now?

You say well I don't really know. Then He probably doesn't. If someone moved into your house in the middle of the night do you think you'd know? They're cooking fish at four in the morning. I'm not comparing Jesus to someone cooking fish in your house. I'm just simply saying that you would know if someone moved in your house. And don't you think of the creator of the universe. The sovereign almighty God took residence in your heart. You would know.

And if you don't know that would say to me He doesn't live there. Well that can change right now. Because the Bible says for as many as received Him. He gave them the power to become sons and daughters of God. Have you asked Christ to come into your life? Has He forgiven you of your sins? Have your sins been blotted out? Wiped away? Washed?

Have you been refreshed? Or have you come here today with a burden and load of guilt? Weighing you down? Guilt isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes God uses guilt to just show us how much we need His help. The objective is not to get rid of guilt. The objective is to get rid of what causes the guilt. And what causes the guilt is your sin you see. But if your sin is forgiven and if your sin is removed then the guilt goes with it. So let's not just deal with the symptom.

Let's deal with the cause. Go to the Lord and say I know I've sinned. I'm sorry. I need Jesus in my life. Forgive me Lord.

And if you do that you'll leave here a different person than when you came in. So we're going to close with a prayer. And if you want Christ to come into your life, if you want Him to forgive you of your sin, you can pray this prayer with me.

Let's all pray. If you want Jesus to come into your life, if you want to be forgiven of your sin, if you want to go to heaven when you die, pray this prayer with me. Lord Jesus, I know I'm a sinner but I know you're the Savior who died on the cross for me and rose again from the dead. Now come into my life and be my Savior and Lord. I repent of my sin. In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen. This is an important prayer with Pastor Greg Laurie today here on A New Beginning, and if you've just prayed that prayer and asked Jesus to forgive your sin, we want to first say congratulations and welcome to the family of God, and we also want to help you as you begin walking with the Lord. We'd like to send you our New Believers Growth Packet. It's free of charge and will help you get started on the road of faith. Ask for the New Believers Growth Packet when you call 1-800-821-3300. Call any time around the clock.

Again, that's 1-800-821-3300. Or go online to harvest.org and click Know God. And stay with us. Pastor Greg comes back in a moment to pray with us all. And then we have a wonderful resource to make available to you.

It's the revealing book called Steve McQueen, The Salvation of an American Icon. And Pastor Greg, I have a letter I want to read to you. It says, I had the most amazing testimony of my husband of 36 years. He was not a believer and was diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer. He told me that he was not going to turn to my God.

Being the Christian that I am, I said to myself, God is bigger than you. We did a lot of talking while he was in hospice. I was talking to him about Jesus and the stories in the Bible. Then I gave him the book on Steve McQueen that you wrote. I believe it was because of that book and the conversations I had with him that he came to Christ. I have the most immeasurable amount of peace because of that. It is not goodbye, it's see you later. As you've said before, Pastor Greg, God is so good for blessing you to be able to bless me to bless my husband.

Wow. Well, that is why I wrote this book. To reach an unexpected person in an unexpected place with an unexpected message. Because people have asked me, why would a pastor write a book about Steve McQueen or about Johnny Cash or about a bunch of rock stars? Well, I've always been interested in culture, but I'm an evangelist. And I want to build bridges to people. And I can take these stories as testimonies to reach other people with the gospel.

One of the most powerful tools we have in our evangelistic toolbox is our personal story of how we came to faith. But very few people know the story of Steve McQueen. I mean, McQueen was the man's man. He did it all. He did his own stunts, rode the motorcycles, drove the race cars. And when he was off, not making a film, he was out doing motocross. So this guy was living the dream.

The women threw themselves at him. He had tons of money, incredible collection of cars and motorcycles and planes. But there was a big old hole in Steve's heart. And it sent him on a search. And when he was at the very peak of his fame, he walked away from Hollywood.

He didn't know what he was walking away to, but he walked away. But God was setting everything into place so Steve would meet the right guy that he could relate to. A man named Sammy Mason, who was a pilot, who would teach Steve how to fly his antique Stearman biplane.

And it was through those conversations in the cockpit as Steve and Sammy spent hours together that Steve realized he wanted what Sammy had. A relationship with God. So McQueen made a commitment to follow Christ. And then he went on to serve the Lord, but tragically his life did not go as long as he had hoped. And he did get cancer and ultimately he died of it. But before that, his faith was strong and his faith was real.

But a lot of people haven't heard his story. So I wanted to tell a story in this book that I wrote, Steve McQueen, The Salvation of an American Icon. And I would like to send you a copy of this book. I won't charge you for it, but I'll ask for something in exchange. I would like you to send a gift of any size, whatever you can do. Now, some can only send a little, that's okay. Some can send more, that's great.

Some can send quite a bit more, that's fantastic. Send what you can and I'll send you in return a copy of this book, Steve McQueen, The Salvation of an American Icon. Yeah, we have a copy waiting for you and we'll send it just as soon as we hear from you. And thank you for partnering with us in our efforts to teach believers and reach unbelievers. Our mission statement is knowing him and making him known. You can call us at 1-800-821-3300. We are here around the clock to speak with you. That's 1-800-821-3300.

Or go online to harvest.org. Well, next time, Pastor Greg takes us to the sin of Ananias and Sapphira and shows us the peril of living anything less than an honest life before God. But before we go, Pastor Greg closes this way. We're going to pray now for the Lord to fill us with the Holy Spirit again because we need that power, don't we? Don't you need it? Man, I need it.

I need it. I need that boldness. I need that courage. I need that strength.

And we all need it each and every day. So if you want him to fill you right now, just pray these words. Lord Jesus, I am weak, but you are strong. I need courage. I need boldness. So fill me with your Holy Spirit right here, right now. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.