Psalm 37 declares, the steps of a righteous man or woman are ordered by the Lord, and he delights in his way. What if you were to just think that as you get out of bed, the steps that I take, ordinary steps, are ordered by the Lord.
Thus, God could do something amazing in my life today. On Connect with Skip Heitzel, Pastor Skip looks at Peter and John's boldness to preach in the temple. But first, here's a resource all about those who gave it all for the sake of the gospel. Today's modern martyr's actions mirror the courage of a long line of brave Christians. And as believers, it's important that we know the heroic sacrifice of those who gave it all for the Christian faith, so that we too can boldly stand for Christ.
But most of these modern stories are unknown. We want to help encourage and strengthen you with the stories of those who paid the ultimate price to share their faith, so you can hold fast to the truth by sending you a copy of the new book of Christian martyrs. In this update to Fox's Book of Martyrs, Johnny Moore and Jerry Patengale highlight key martyrs of past centuries and feature stories of contemporary martyrs around the world. You'll be encouraged and inspired as you discover that men and women are still standing firm for the truth. The New Book of Christian Martyrs is our thanks for your gift of $50 or more to keep messages like this one today on the air for you and others, equipping you to know God's word and follow His will.
Call 800-922-1888 or give securely online at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Let's get started with today's lesson. We'll be in Acts four as we join Skip. Well, let me refresh your memory. On the day of Pentecost, we remember that there was a physical miraculous phenomena that occurred. The cloven tongues as of fire was over the heads of the 120 followers of Christ that had gathered in an upper room. It was quite amazing. They had never seen it before.
They would never see it again. It was the very beginning of the church. Jesus said he would build his church.
He starts doing it on that day, the day of Pentecost. That's the birth of the church. And so they looked around the room and they could see what looked like fire on top of the heads or above the heads of all those in that room.
I'm sure it was shocking. Well, that fire has long gone. However, though the fire that was once on their head has gone, the fire that is in their heart still remains.
They have a burning heart. And we pick up the story of after Peter's sermon, Peter and John going into the temple with burning hearts. I'm using that phrase because you'll recall at the end of the Gospel of Luke, there were two disciples unaware of the resurrection, taking a journey from Jerusalem to a nearby village called Emmaus. Jesus shows up.
They don't recognize him. He starts talking to them, explaining the scriptures and then vanishes. And once they realized it was Jesus, one said to the other, did not our heart burn within us as he talked to us on the road and opened the scriptures to us? So with burning hearts, still Peter and John go at the hour of prayer into the temple complex. They had been in Solomon's porch.
A crowd gathered. Peter preached the gospel. Now they're going up at the hour of prayer to ordinary men. On an ordinary day. But God has an extraordinary plan. Peter and John had no idea what was about to happen.
They just did what they ordinarily did. But God will extraordinarily show up. I wondered what might happen if you decided to live your life that way. That you would approach each day.
Okay, it's a day. It's an ordinary day. I plan to get up, have breakfast, do my ordinary things, go to my ordinary occupation.
My ordinary duties with other ordinary people. However, because I serve an extraordinary God, what might happen? You know, when you frame life that way, you set yourself up for an adventure. And I've always loved the idea of following God as an adventure.
I love adventures. And I love the concept that, you know, following God could mean anything. Anything's possible. With God, Jesus said, nothing shall be impossible. So what might that extraordinary God want to do with an extraordinary plan in an ordinary fellow's life? I love that. Psalm 37 declares the steps of a righteous man or woman are ordered by the Lord.
And he delights in his way. What if you were to just think that as you get out of bed, the steps that I take, ordinary steps, are ordered by the Lord. Thus, God could do something amazing in my life today. Well, that sort of sets up what we're about to read in chapter four. As exciting as that seems, here's the unexciting part.
Ready? They're about to go in, an extraordinary thing is going to happen, a miracle has already happened. And they've seen it. And a man who was paralyzed from birth is now able to walk. He was lame, but now he's walking and leaping and praising God.
And they're flying high as a kite. However, now begins another period of church history. After the birth of the church is the persecution of the church. This is the first recorded persecution of the followers of Jesus Christ post-Christ on the earth.
He is now ascended. The disciples are gathered in Jerusalem. This great miracle invites the eyes of the world.
They're looking very carefully at what happened and the establishment won't like it. So the great commission preaching the gospel has and always will invite great persecution. This is the beginning of the persecution for the church for the next 300 years. The Church of Jesus Christ would experience some of the worst, most notable persecutions in its history. Most historians point to 10 waves of persecution, starting with Caesar Nero in about 67 AD. This is what happens at Jerusalem, but the Roman Empire will come against Christianity. Until Diocletian around 303.
Wave after wave after wave. When I say persecution, I don't mean they're going to laugh at their fish bumper sticker. That they're going to mock them and say, oh, you Christians are so narrow-minded, ha ha ha. That's the kind of persecution we might get. I mean, they get physical persecution.
They will be beaten. They will be scourged. They will be beheaded. They will be taken by one of the Caesars, given wax shirts and lit as living torches, living candles in the gardens of Rome at night until they die in the flames.
Caesar Nero will take the skins of freshly killed animals and sew them around live. Men or women of faith, believers, and have wild dogs consume them alive. For the next 300 years, they're going to face that. Now, we still have persecution on earth for Christians today. A lot of us thought that was passé until we discovered, no, it's been going on.
There's a steady and increasing stream of it. We've all heard of news reports over the last several years with ISIS and extreme Islam, beheading, crucifying, doing some of the same things that the Romans did to the Christians in the first 300 years. Now, in our culture right now, we don't see that kind of persecution. We see a persecution more of the ego. Our ego gets persecuted. We get scorned. We get maligned.
We get sidelined. And so we think, oh, no, people won't like me if I stand up for Christ. Oh, I may lose my job or my status or my friends. It's still persecution.
It's still legitimate. But our persecution in the West pales, I think you would agree, with the kind of persecution that our brothers and sisters are seeing in the Middle East, parts of North Africa, and what was seen in the early church. So, verse 1, chapter 4, now, as they spoke to the people, remember Peter has preached a message in Solomon's portico, as they spoke to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came upon them. Being greatly disturbed.
Stop right there. The gospel always does that. It greatly disturbs people. All those who live godly in Christ Jesus will, tell me, finish the rest, suffer persecution. All who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. Now, that's a very interesting verse of Scripture that Paul wrote to Timothy. All who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. If you're not suffering any persecution for your faith, it must mean you're not living godly in Christ Jesus because the Bible promises everyone who does will. The gospel always disturbs people because it always disturbs the status quo. When you open your mouth and proclaim the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ only, you are being very definitive and you are being very separatist.
You are taking the broad spectrum of all people are good and all people find their own way and so many people are sincere and there's so many ways to God, and you're saying, I'm gonna not only disagree with that, I'm gonna show you that all of those ways in God's book are closed down to one single narrow avenue, Christ alone, faith in Christ alone. That's gonna disturb people. Now, the word greatly disturbed here in our verse means pained. They were pained, they were perturbed, they were greatly ticked off. But notice by whom and why. We are told, the sad you seize, verse one, came upon them being greatly disturbed that they taught the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. The sad you seize. We've read about them so far in the four gospels.
But here's what's different. In the life of Christ outlined in the four gospels, the primary enemy of Christ was the Pharisees. Now that Jesus has risen from the dead and ascended into heaven and the early church is born, the Pharisees are no longer the primary enemy, the sad you seize are. You need to know why. The sad you seize are greatly ticked off.
Why? Because they preached the resurrection from the dead. Now, a word about sad you seize. The sad you seize were the ruling class of very aristocratic Jews who controlled all that went on in the temple, including the high priesthood.
The best way to think of the sad you seize is, first of all, politically. Politically, they sided with the Roman government. Because Rome gave them favor, because Rome appointed some of them and deposed other high priests, they wanted to get on the best side of the political engine that was Rome and not disturb the peace.
They loved the status quo. So, they curried the favor of the Roman government. So, the idea of a messiah coming and people following him and that whole disturbance that Jesus created, that wasn't too exciting to them.
Politically, they sided with Rome. Escatologically, they believed they were in the messianic era. The sad you seize believed that the messianic era started at the time of the Maccabean revolt about 167 B.C. When Judas Maccabeus revolted against the Syrians who had overtaken Judea, that they thought, they believed, was the messianic era because it was a physical deliverance from their enemies. Then another way to think of the Pharisees is theologically. Theologically, they were the liberals of their day. The Pharisees believed in angels. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection. The Pharisees believed in the spirit world. They believed in all of the scriptures. They were very, very legalistic.
The sad you seize, on the other hand, were very liberal-minded. They did not believe in angels. They did not believe in miracles. They did not believe in the spirit world. And they did not believe, get this, in a resurrection. So notice that it's the Pharisees that are greatly disturbed because the disciples are preaching the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. So they become, the sad you seize, become the foremost enemy of the early church in the book of Acts. Pharisees still don't like it, but the sad you seize, you know, sort of take the lead in being greatly ticked off. So the sad you seize saw no hope in life after death.
Just imagine living that way. They're religious, but they don't see any hope in life after death. They don't believe in the spirit world.
They don't believe in the resurrection. And that's why they were sad, you see? You know, sometimes things just get set up for me, and I can't resist.
I sort of apologize for that, but you're kind of used to it by now. But they were sad you seize. And they, the sad you seize, they laid hands on them and put them in custody.
They arrested them until the next day, for it was already evening. However, many of those who heard the word believed, oh, how I love that verse. And you're gonna hear me say that a lot in this chapter, because there's so many verses in this chapter I love.
This is one of them. Okay, they had their enemies, but many who heard the word of God believed. And that's what we live for. I understand whenever I share truth, even to a congregation, that not everybody in attendance agrees with the scripture, agrees with my teaching or the teaching of holy writ. I understand that. I understand that when I share to an unbelieving world that a lot will be turned off by it, and a lot will say, I don't believe that stuff, I hate that stuff.
And they'll be greatly disturbed, but I also know that not everybody will. That some will hear and some will believe. And that's what gets me going and keeps me going.
It's those some. Jesus talked about the seed that was sown, and the enemy immediately comes and robs the seed that was sown by the wayside. Other seed only lasts temporarily, but dries up whenever there's a hard time or persecution. Other seed, other people grow for a while, but the cares of this world choke them out. But then Jesus said, there's a soil that is good.
There's a heart that is good. And the seed of the word of God is sown in some people's hearts and it takes root. And they bear fruit. A good root always brings good fruit.
And the fruit is some 30, some 60, some 100 fold. And that's what I as a pastor always focus on. Not the empty seats, the filled ones. Not the ones who fall by the wayside as much as those who grab a hold of the truth. So some believed.
And watch this. The number of the men came to be about 5,000. Now, we read that on the day of Pentecost, Peter preached a sermon and we're given the number of those who believe, 3,000. Now we're given a number 5,000. You know what this is telling me?
Somebody in the early church is counting. So, you know, it's sort of holy to say, oh, we don't care about numbers. Well, they did. They recorded it. It was important.
They thought that we know what God was doing so that we could also rejoice 2,000 years later. So 3,000 souls were saved. Now the number, the total number, the aggregate number up to this point, that's what I think this verse is telling, is about 5,000 men. They're counting just the men here. You can talk to me all day about male chauvinism. I understand.
I get it. But that's just how they counted in those days. They counted the men who had made decisions and so it's not an exact number, about 5,000 plus wives or friends or children, but a large growing number of disciples are believing. And it came to pass on the next day that their rulers, elders, and scribes, as well as Annas, the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the family of the high priest were gathered together at Jerusalem. And when they set them in the midst, they asked, by what power or by what name have you done this? Now this is a loaded question. Because in their scripture, in the Old Testament, they were commanded when anybody comes in and does something notable like a miracle, a sign, or a wonder, ask that person what name they do it in.
If that person is leading you away from the name of God and from worshiping God, that person is a false prophet and is to be extricated. Nice, fancy way of saying stoned, killed, eliminated. So, they're waiting for the answer, by what name are you doing? They're waiting, by the name of Jesus. They are, I would say, rocked and loaded. They've got stone in hand.
They're like ready to stone these guys. By what power, by what name are you doing this? Okay, so I want you to notice who is mentioned here. First on the list, besides the elders, Annas, he was a high priest. Caiaphas, he was the residing high priest.
Now, here's what's ironic. Peter and John, disciples of Jesus, are standing before the very same group that Jesus stood before when he was tried before the Jewish Sanhedrin. Ironic, Peter was outside warming himself in the courtyard at a fire. Now, he's face to face. Jesus faced this crowd, Annas, Caiaphas, and the rest, members of the Sanhedrin, and now the disciples.
Now, can I refresh your memory? Annas was not the current high priest. He was the one-time high priest. However, though he wasn't the current high priest, Caiaphas' son-in-law was, he had the power. He had the influence. It's interesting, I said that politically, the Sadducees lined up with the Romans, right?
So here's what happened. In 6 AD, Carinius of Syria appointed Annas as the high priest of the Jewish nation. But Annas was deposed in 15 AD, so he was only serving for eight or nine years, and he was deposed by Valerius Gratus. The Romans, who controlled the land, had the power to put in and take out high priests of Judaism. Now, what makes that unusual is, as you know, in your Old Testament, if you're a high priest, you're a high priest for what?
For life, because you're a son of Aaron, and you live out your life in that position, and when you die, you get replaced. But this is Roman-occupied Israel, so the Romans are pulling the strings. And although the Romans deposed Annas as the high priest, he's the older guy, Caiaphas is the younger guy, he's the son-in-law of Annas, all the Jews still revered Annas, almost like a king of the Jews. He had the power.
And one of the reasons he had the power is he had the purse strings. It was Annas that was in control of the business of the temple. This is why Annas really got greatly ticked off when Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple.
It hit him in his pocketbook. Now, the same Annas and Caiaphas and group are meeting with the disciples. That's Skip Heitzig, with a message from his series, Expound Acts, taking a look at the boldness of those who are on fire for the Lord. Find the full message, as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now, here's Skip to tell you how you can connect others with the truth of God's word with a gift to keep these messages you love going around the world through Connect with Skip Heitzig. As Christians, we have a calling, and that is to win souls for Jesus, even as we await our glorious future with Him in heaven. And so our goal is to come alongside friends like you to encourage you to keep sharing Christ with others as long as you have the chance to do so. That's why we share these faith-building messages, and today you can take action to ensure these teachings keep reaching you and so many others worldwide.
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