Day 321 (Acts 4-6) - Year 6
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Hey, bible readers, i'm trolly couple and i'm your host for the bible recap.

Yesterday, the early chair chat, its launch party god, the spirit came to dwel in believers, continuing the process of addiction. God planned and said in motion before he even created the world. Wild jesus can only be in one place at a time.

And he's currently seated at the right end of the father in heaven. God, the spirit isn't bound by a body. He is dispersed to all beevers. But even in this dispersion is for the sake of unity. He demonstrated that by unifying a divided language, by bringing clarity and understanding that wasn't there without him.

Then Peter and john held the man who was forty plus years old, who had been crippled for his entire life, then took bad opportunity to preach the gospel again. In today, we see Peter encountering some push back from the local religious authorities as he preaches his second sermon. Instead of making things so much Better, the death, resurrection and ascension of jesus has heightened the local tensions in the oppression of his followers on earth.

IT has made things worse for them. Peter and a few others are preaching and get thrown in jail for IT, but they don't even seem to care about that. As far as we can tell, they don't silence the message of hope and redemption.

They turn IT up to eleven. And as a result, about five thousand more people wept and follow jesus. The local leaders have a meeting about this because they are concerned about what these followers of jesus are doing and how when they ask Peter and john where they got their power and authority, Peter says, jesus, the guy who killed.

There's no other place to get that power. There's no other name by which people are saved. The leaders are thrown off by this whole thing.

They got two uneducated men who somehow speak with wisdom, authority, and they've got a lame guy who can now walk. And all three of them say that jesus, who has mysteriously disappeared, is the one responsible for at all. What do you do in this kind of trial? The witnesses all have the same story, but the defendant is nowhere to be found.

So they let them go, but tell them to knock IT off with all the jesus talk. And Peter says, yeah, that's not gonna happen. When they go back to meet with the other disciples, they actually pray to be more bold.

This is an incredible response to oppression in pain. They only want to relief from persecution, not for the sake of confident ease, but in order to preach the gossip. L more an inverse.

Thirty one god says yes to that prayer. IT says they continued to speak the word of god with boldness through the work of the spirit trials have a way of highlighting what really matters. And this one narrows their focus to two things, spreading the gospel and taking care of each other.

The early church exists under such an impressive roman regime that some of the Christ followers can't provide for themselves, so the others pick up the slack. A again named barnabas, sell some of island so the apostles can use the money to provide verney church members. Then a couple named in a ias, since fira decide they want to look as generous as Barnes.

This sounds like the therapies doesn't IT doing things for the purpose of being seen. IT smells a lot like a White wash tomb. They sell a piece of lands too, but only give part of money to the church and act like they gave all of IT.

The spirit gives Peter discreet and seems to tip him off to what's happening. He says, if they hadn't solved the field at all, or even if the'd kept all of the money, they're be no problem. They're free to do whatever they want with their stuff, but they're not free to lie to god in selling the field and faking their generosity.

Their hearts are revealed when Peter pathetically questions ananias about this. He balls over dead when his wife comes home and repeats the lie. Peter prophesies that he will die too, and he does immediately.

It's important to point out a few things here. First, Peter isn't commanding their death. He's communicating their death.

This whole section is backed by the activity of the spirit. God seems to be relying bad news to Peter, and he's just the messenger. Second, I always like to point out that as sinners, death and judgement is what we all deserve.

So what happens to them is not unfair. They're getting what they deserve. They're even getting what we deserve.

But in god's great mercy we've been spared, and that is the only unfair thing. Third, the text doesn't tell us if these are true believers or not. So we don't know anything about their eternal destinations, but that's not the point of this text.

Anyway, while outsiders are really intrigued by everything they see happening with these Christ's followers, they also seem to have a little bit of fear about at all. They want in on the healing and probably the whole community feel of IT. But they probably fear the same kind of judgment that happened to analyze and survival people keep dipping their toes s in the testing things out.

There's apparently even a local rumour that even Peter shadow can heal people. But the text never confirms or denies that as the preaching in healing continues, the local authorities grow jealous of them, probably jealous of their power and fearlessness, and even their community, and they arrest them again. But god vetos that moved by sending an Angel to unlock the doors. I love this.

And Angel set them bread to do what? Got them in prison in the first place. So they go back to the temple and start talking about jesus again.

Meanwhile, the authorities are like, hey, go get these guys out of their cell and bring into us. But you see there nowhere to be found. Then somebody tips the authorities off, and they bring the disables in again.

Peer in. The apostles don't back off from their message, and the religious leaders realized that their message makes them look really bad to the locals if the message jesus is true and they killed him. That's a bit of a score, but a fair acy name, gamelle says, listen, we've seen this before with two other guys.

Remember, we don't need to worry about IT. It'll blow over. And if IT doesn't blow over, well then we might want to to start paying attention because it's obviously true.

I'm assuming two thousand years as plenty of time for IT to blow over. And here we still are. The leaders beat the apostles, then send them home.

And luke says they rejoiced. They were considered worthy to suffer for the gospel. wow. And they keep teaching people about jesus. As the church grows and continues to cross cultural divides, these new Young leaders have to learn some harder lessons about how to work for a unity in the midst of diversity. The HEllenists are apparently a minority group in the church.

Their jews who moved away from jersey m and move back speaking greek, not he, brute or air, may go like the locals. They say their widows aren't being taken care of like everyone else. The abuzz les take their claims seriously in work to find a solution that allows them to still focus on their priority, preaching the gospel they call the whole church in and said, this is important, so we need to delegate IT to some of you because we don't have time to personally meet all the needs of the church.

We want the church to meet the needs of the church. So choose seven. Why is godly men to be in charge of making sure these windows are fit? One of the men they appoint is a gun, Stephen.

He's the first persons scripture records besides jesus and apostles who can do signs and wonders. So he's serving the church, preaching the gospel and doing some miracles. IT all seems to be going in great until he encounter some jews from a sinaitic that does not appear to believe jesus is the master.

Stephen apparently fills them in on Christ propac's, about the temple being destroyed and about jesus being the fulfillment of the law. And they twist his words and a boss testimony against him in a trial before the council. But as the council looks at him, he apparently got the same kind of radiance that Angels have when they appear on earth.

And like moster did when he came down from the mountain, it's the radiance that comes from being in the presence of god. My god chat was in Peter's conversation with the religious authorities in four twelve when he says, there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. First of all, we've talked about this before in regards to prayer, but the name of jesus isn't actually what Peter is placing emphasis on here in jewish culture.

Your name is a short hand way of summarizing you as a person, your character, your will. Saving power isn't in the word jesus. It's in the person of jesus.

After all, lots of people learnt, ed jesus, the power isn't in the name, is in the person. So Peter statement is more like there is no other person who can save you except for jesus. He showing them how specific the gas bol is.

One of the common accusations people make toward Christianity is that it's exclusive, but the gospel of Christ isn't exclusive. It's just specific. He's our only hope for salvation. He's where the rescue is, and he is where the joy is.

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You don't have to sit down and read with your eyes to really learn god work. In fact, for thousands of years, people have learn scripture by hearing IT. That's how most people without history have engaged with the bible.

So whether i'm in the car, a walk, getting ready for the day or cleaning house, I can listen two guys word with the dual bible lap, plus the apple lets you choose different voices and background music. So if you want to make IT easier to engage with the bible, especially when you're on the go, I highly recommend the dull bible. APP is t dull bible dot com forward flash T B R, or click the link in the shower notes during Christmas, in the holidays, we hear a lot of focus on the importance of family.

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Then there's alison king are sound engineer Laura of you, shelf analyzer amzi who help with T B R Operations. Linsey hearing created all our youtube videos and creates other social media videos. Sera billing managers, our T V R email account.

Ml pickle is our recapture ins manager let blackwell managers lost an upset liba eb dae helps with riding and communications. Syria can lease our social media crew Brooks Stuart runs the T B R store and bunny heart' wig our T B R director leads the whole T B R team. And I have truly never been more thankful for these people than I am today, and i'm going to be more thankful for them tomorrow. The fact that we get to work .

together to help you read, understand and love god's word, that is the greatest joy of my life.