Dan: 0:00

Hi, everyone. And welcome again to trainingforliferedeemed. Today's episode 22, we are looking at Acts chapter two, verse 42 all the way through to chapter five, verse 11. And this covers two studies on Acts for us, which are studies three, four, and five. Actually that's three studies not two, I need to work on my maths a little bit Well Dad we just had, you know , Pentecost where we've had 3000 people get converted, they get baptized, but we now have a church that was 120 people. And we're now up to 3,120 plus probably plus all the children. What do you do with that kind of growth in the church?

David: 1:03

It's a bit mind-blowing isn't it, especially when you've got a staff of so few people that make it all work, but these people were mainly tourists. You've got Jerusalem during a feast, like Pentecost would have 50,000 , extra men, some with families coming into town for the festival. And if out of that lot, 3000 get converted and f ollow Jesus, they're going to be going. Most of them are going to be going home in a few weeks. So therefore they're going to make the most of their time. They want to find out t hey've discovered who J esus i s. They discovered t hey've got the whole of everything wrong. They've discovered they crucified the Messiah. There's, you know, we've got a lot of things to sort out. So t his d ecide the, particularly the apostles, the e ye w itnesses, the people in that 120 in the upper room, they're setting up a teaching ministry

Dan: 1:55

And he's teaching ministry. I feel like there's kind of a cultural gap, I think, between our culture currently and the culture back then. So back in those days, if you attended the synagogue and you were going to the temple you were kind of going there anyway to get taught and to learn stuff, right? Yeah .

David: 2:14

If you wandered around the temple, you would find sitting around the porch, like there's a porch that goes all the way around the temple. [Dan Solomon's Colonnade, right?] That Solomon's Colonnade is one side. The, but this goes like three sides. And then the fourth side is the Sanhedrin office. So in all of those, that , that look as porch areas, you've got rabbis sitting down, teaching the Bible. People didn't have a Bible, they could take home. So they had to come and find somebody who had a copy of the Bible and have them read it and explain it to them. So for the Jewish community, it was really necessary that you would devote time to read the scriptures, to have a rabbi, explain them to you and be set up for life. The synagogues, therefore, more schools than we would imagine a church being, yeah , people really were expected to spend perhaps their childhood or their early years making sure they had read the whole old Testament that the rabbi had explained it, it would be done on on Friday night and Saturday at synagogue meetings. But particularly during festivals, it was like going to Bible college for a week. t hey not just the sacrifices and the prayers, but now I've got access to the best Bible scholars in the world. I'm going to go sit down and listen.

Dan: 3:33

Yeah. So essentially a one week really intensive kind of Bible school thing where they're going to be sitting down and learning all about how the old Testament then points towards Jesus and really learning to make those changes. And I guess that then also is going to require lots of changes to the church. But before we even get to changes in the church, we have Peter and John go and pray, and there's this big miracle thing, but it's also the first time that they're going to get arrested and have to deal with that process as well.

David: 4:04

It gets really scary because the Sanhedrin sitting at one end of the temple, they've got offices upstairs. They can look down, they can see the courtyard and they can see thousands of people that they can see that the apostles they've killed Jesus. They thought they got rid of the problem. And now, instead of getting rid of the problem, 3000 people get saved. And now they're all messing around all these followers of Jesus, reading the old Testament and discovering that it's all about Jesus and it's happening right under the Sanhedrin's his nose. And to set it right off the apostles and now performing the miracles that Jesus used to do, except that there was one Jesus. And now there's plenty of apostles. So we have this spectacular miracle happening right at the gate where people go in from the court of the Gentiles, into the quarter of the women. And then through there to the quarter of the men and sitting at that, that's a key spot. If you want to beg for money, you sit at the gate where everybody goes in and you do it in the middle of a festival. Everybody knew this guy. So if he's born crippled and Peter comes along and the next thing you know, this, guy's leaping all over the place and yelling and carrying on, you're doing this in the middle of thousands and thousands of people. It's, it's sort of like the Royal Easter show for crowds. And the Sanhedrin is now coming out of their office, looking over the balcony, going what's going on down there. And they find out well, it's , they're teaching people about Jesus and all the crowds are down there. And the apostles are telling everybody about Jesus. And they're telling them that you killed the Messiah.

Dan: 5:43

Yeah. And they also have the guy jumping around with his legs at work, all of a sudden, and yeah , they can't deny that can't say, well, the miracle didn't happen. So they end up threatening Peter and John essentially. And then releasing them, telling them you don't don't start teaching in Jesus would kind of forbid you to do that again. It doesn't really last long when Peter , Peter and John, they know who they should be listening to that men a re God. And they choose God. So this then leads on to further growth. I guess, of the church. They've just had 3000 in one day, and now it's going to continue to grow. If we have miracles like this and people and Peter and John teaching about Jesus. So that then leads us into w hat, what are we doing next with our church? We have these couple of passages throughout here where it talks about the congregation kind of being o f one in mind and sharing things. Why is that important? Why is that mentioned multiple times at the beginning of Acts,

David: 6:41

Start off with the fact that the Sanhedrin has tried to intimidate. And if it was just like 12 or 13 guys, they were hiding in an upper room. They were scared. The police were going to find them. If they can kill Jesus, they can kill anybody. So with that fear in mind, you would expect these guys at the first shot being fired to go hide somewhere again. But they've been filled with the Holy Spirit. God is resident in them. So Peter and John stand up in front of the sand hood and say, hang on, mate, we're not on trial . You are, you murdered the Messiah. Yeah . We're the ones out there teaching the gospel. You've had the whole old Testament. You're the Bible experts. You got it wrong. And you murdered the Messiah. So don't tell us to shut up. You know, we're going to go down there and tell the whole world. And basically it boils down to what are you going to do about it? There's thousands and thousands of people down there. And , see you later. Folks were busy. We were a lot of people to teach. And those people are desperate to understand and to hear and to know, and to reread their old Testament and rethink their whole life. But Hey, hang on. If we hang around here in Jerusalem, this was a one day festival. We want to be here a little bit longer than the weekend. There's so much more here We want to learn. We're staying with relatives and friends and we've rented a room in somebody's house. Everybody's crowded in, how do we finance this? how long can I stay in? Am I a burden on the household? Who's going to feed all of these people. So it's time for the church to settle down and think, how can we do the urgent thing of getting the word of God out? And at the same time, put food on the table and take care of business. And look, after all these people and their families, the result is people like Barnabas, people start bringing contributing finances. They start sharing. They start looking after one another and Barnabas goes to the extended , oh , you know , I've got a few blocks of land I can sell. Let's get rid of that. And I'll bring the cash and that'll help feed all these people. And we'll get this ministry going. It's enormously generous.

Dan: 8:56

I Think it's great to see even just the fact that they're so keen like this , this keenness , I'm going to hang around. They're going to be going to finance people to stay. They're going to feed them. And people are willing to do this. They're willing to actually go about the process of making sure it happens. But then of course, Ananias and Sapphira say they've done the same thing. They can't , they , they lie about it to try and I guess, make themselves look good. And the outcome is, God just kind of kills them for it.

David: 9:24

We've just had a miracle where a guy gets healed. Now we're going to have a miracle where two people get dead. If we just had the miracle where the people got healed, you could understand why 50,000 people come rushing in and everybody wants a piece of the pie. And it's, you know, everybody's contributing money. We've got an opportunity here to earn merit. We've got an opportunity here to be praised by all of my local Jewish friends who think I'm so wonderful, [Dan become famous] and become famous. I can there's lots of motivations here to do it wrong. If you're coming out of a salvation by works culture, obviously you want to stand on the street corner, put on your academic gown, blow the trumpets and have everybody see how much money you're donating and erect a little monument a nd a brass plaque. And put your name on the building. That's the culture. And how do you stop that culture? How do you turn it around to realize this isn't about me, big noting me and earning merit. This is about sinful, rotten stinking me deserves to die. Having the Messiah die in my place. And that brings me to my face. That has me loving selflessly, not seeking adoration. well, let's teach you the lesson. You don't lie to God. Coming to Christ is not something you fake. You're dealing with God. You're dealing with the one who loved you and gave his life for you. You don't mess with him. And so you want to come in here and tell us, yo u've d onated everything you own. When in fact you've donated 20% of it. It's not us that are the ones that are really important here. You treated God, like he's not here. When Israel in the wilderness grumbled, they didn't grumble against God. They blamed Moses. They acted as if God had nothing to do with it w as al l M oses's fault and Anna ni ce. An d S apphira treating the apostles that way. They're trying to impress what's visible. An d t h ey're t otally forgetting about the whole point of it.

Dan: 11:42

Yeah . And the results seem, you know, there's this sense of yeah . Verse 11, the great fear that comes over the whole church, in the sense of, you know, you can't do the wrong thing and act in this way. And I like how it goes on further. It talks about how people dared not join or associate with the says of them. But that's not the church in general. That's just that the leaders, the disciples, right? Because more believers are added to the church, but people aren't associating their height day. Instead they hold them in high esteem. It's this sense of you're actually doing what you're called to do. You're , they're all getting the holy spirit, but they're the ones who have actually been with Jesus the whole time. Also , now that we're not going to hold you in high esteem and listen kind of like in essence, it'd be like what they did with Moses. This is not

David: 12:27

This change , but with the death of Anna, nice. And Safara the celebrity culture just went out the window. We're not coming along to a big rally here to be some fan club of a new movement. If you get this movement wrong, you get dead. So there's a fear of God element that comes in and it grounds the preaching of the gospel. In reality, we really did see a man born, unable to walk leaping and running around and celebrating the fact that God had healed him. Then we saw people who mess with this killed. So we need to realize this is not some lighthearted entertainment. This, this is life and death. This is eternity and hell. We've got to take this seriously. So the fan club, they walk away the people who are serious and who understand the depth and the gravity of what's happening. They're coming in their hundreds

Dan: 13:29

In droves. Well, that brings us to the end of episode, 22, if you would like the study notes to go with these three studies that we've kind of walked through, you can head over to trainingforliferedeem.com/ 22. You can sign up there and grab your, your study notes so that you're ready to dive into those a bit more deeply with those around you. And we hope that you will come and join us next week or possibly in a couple of weeks. If you're going through all the studies before you come back to episode 23, episode 23 is next looking at chapters five verse 12 to eight three, make sure you come back and join us for those. Make sure that if you enjoyed this podcast, that you hit that subscribe button, we would love for you to leave us a review or head over to the show notes and leave us a comment. And we'll make sure we get back to you. See you next week.