And we're so excited today as we continue through our Acts series. Today is in Acts chapter 4. It's about witness tampering. How do you handle it when someone tries to discourage you from sharing your witness? I want to share from the subject of witness tampering. Witness tampering.
Witness tampering is when a defendant is so worried about the eyewitness account. That defendant will use intimidation or fear to try to influence that person to change their testimony or to not testify at all. Although it is illegal and criminal, that defendant will try to use whatever they can, money, threats to their family, all because they don't want that witness to get on the stand. Because they know if that witness gets on the stand and begins to testify about their experience, they know that that testimony could lead to them being convicted. Witness tampering doesn't just happen in our favorite movies.
It also happens in real life. Acts chapter 1 reveals that each of us has been called to be a witness. You have been signed in to be a witness.
God has called you to be a witness. calls you to be a witness. You are a witness to who God is. You are a witness to the power of God. You are a witness to what God can do.
You are a witness that his promises of true. You are a witness that nothing's too hard for God. And in this world, at some point in your life, you will find yourself going through witness tampering, where someone will try to discourage you about your testimony.
Someone will try to tell you. You don't need to go to church anymore. I stopped going to church.
Someone will try to tell you, are you still believing in Jesus? I gave up on him a long time ago. Someone will try to tell you, why are you still praying?
Why are you still believing? Why are you still holding on to your faith? Instead, they will try to discourage you about the witness that you have in your life about who God is and about what God can do. And I want you to know when you go through a witness tampering experience, Acts chapter four teaches us how we ought to respond when someone tries to discourage or doubt for us what God has done, what God is doing, and what God can do. Here's the sermon in a sentence.
Even when they tamper, you keep witnessing because Jesus can't. be contained. The first thing we see in the text is this.
First of all, friends, we must expect conflict. Somebody say expect conflict. It's right here in the text.
I want to give you the background of what's happening in the text. In the prior chapter three, as you recall, there's a man that's lame at the gate called beautiful of the temple. This man has been begging his entire life, but all of a sudden Peter and John show up and they ask him for arms and for money.
And Peter replies, silver and gold have I none, but in the name of Jesus, rise up and walk. They grabbed that man by the hand and he starts walking for the first time in his life. He doesn't just start walking. He starts praising God for the healing that he experienced. It is this miracle that then leads Peter to preach a sermon.
right there in Acts chapter 3, because everybody's in shock that this man is walking, and Peter says, let me tell you why he's walking. Peter goes to the prophets. He looks at Moses. He talks about Abraham and gives them a sermon on how Jesus was the one that everybody had been talking about.
He invites them to accept Jesus Christ as Lord, and guess what? While he's still still talking. Here they come.
Right there in Acts chapter 4 verse 1, there's always a they somebody. Here you are in the midst of trying to live for God, trying to do what you're trying to do, and here they come. Everybody got a they in your life. You can look at your phone and see they in the caller ID. You can go to work and here they come.
You can be minding your own business. Here they come. They come.
What's interesting. attacks is that this happens right after they've had a victory. I mean a man that was lame is now walking. Shouldn't everybody be celebrating the victory that just happened?
Oh but for sometimes in life. It's right after you get paid. It's right after the child did good at school.
It's right after you've had a good relationship and things seem to be going well. It's right after Your health was going well. Isn't it interesting that sometimes right after a victory, the devil loves to show up and try to bring havoc in your life.
Anybody in the room can testify that it was right after a victory that things began to unravel a bit. Here it is, friends. These people show up, the Sadducees and the temple guard and the high priest, and they got something to say because the text says, says they are disturbed by their teaching about the resurrection and about Jesus.
These Sadducees was the highest order. They were the supreme court of the religious world. 71 members and Caiaphas is the high priest, but he has others with him.
He has Anna. He's there too. And they're all there together and they are there because they are disturbed.
by the preaching. They are disturbed by what they're teaching. Friends, here's the real matter. The reality is this. They were the religious leaders and they loved to keep the status quo.
They didn't want to mess up anything because they were in good with the Roman government and they were in a high place politically. They had lots of status and so they wanted to make sure if somebody came in they had to have their approval. first.
They didn't want anybody doing new things and they didn't want anybody trying new ways to reach people. They like to keep everything like it always had been. And so they come in and they begin to, they begin to interrupt them and because it's the evening and they can't bring them to trial they put them in prison and they leave them there till the next day oh but look at what happens in verse four because it's interesting because the text says that while they're in prison some 5,000 people come to faith and trust Jesus as their Lord and Savior they done locked up the ones that were preaching but while the ones that were preaching had been locked up. The word of God that had been sent out was working while they had been locked up. I want to encourage somebody today that listen, even when it feels like someone's trying to tamper with your witness, when you share God's word, they may bind you, but they can't bind his word.
Oh, his word was working. His word was moving. moving his word was powerful and right there in that moment people come to faith in jesus christ friends it is a reminder to us that you and i must do everything we can to keep sharing the witness of the gospel of jesus christ you have no idea how many people around you in your family on your job in this city that need Jesus Christ. Don't worry about what happens to you because if you witness and you plant the seeds of the gospel, those seeds can grow whether you are there or not.
Somebody's a witness in the room because you know good and well how you grew up. Your mom and dad were planting seeds in your life and you ran away from the gospel because you wanted to do your own thing. But how many know that...
that when they plant seeds in your life, it may not grow in your 20s, but it can sure grow in your 30s, in your 40s, in your 50s, in your 60s, because the seeds of the gospel were planted in your life. This is what he said. They tried to lock him up, but they cannot lock up the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It was still working even while they were locked up. Somebody ought to know. It's still working.
You got a baby that's gone off waywardly. Listen, it's still working. You got a baby that ain't gave up on God.
Listen, it's still working. You got a loved one, a brother or a sister that gave up on God. Wave up on church.
You keep praying. You keep speaking the word. You keep trusting God.
God is still working. You got a loved one that's incarcerated. You may not have seen him for a while, but you keep believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ because the word is still working.
They say, we need to talk to you, Peter and John, because we're tired of y'all disrupting our program. We're tired of y'all talking all this new talk about this Jesus and about this resurrection, and we don't want to hear any of that. So they call them in, and they want to ask them one question. They want to know where... Did you get this power from?
They want to know whose name are you doing this in? They want to know who gave you the authority to heal this man. They want to know how did you do it? They want to know.
where, who gave you the authority? We are in charge. Who told you to do what you've done? Oh, and there are friends, people still there asking that question. Where do you get the power to overcome your past?
Where do you... you get the power to overcome your grief and the loss of a loved one? Where do you get the power to overcome a broken heart? Where do you get the power to love your enemies? Where do you get the power to recover from a setback?
Where do you get the power to be able to love your enemies? Where do you get the power to hold your head up tall and walk in there no matter what they said about you? Where do you get the power? to do what you do. Oh, people are trying to figure out where you get the power to stay together as a couple through thick and thin.
Where do you get the power to raise your kids and your grandkids? Where do you get the power when inflation goes up and you're trying to make ends meet? Where do you get the power? They say, where do you get it?
What they don't understand is that they hadn't read Acts chapter 1 verse 8. Because in Acts chapter 1 verse 8, Jesus tells them, if you just wait on me, the Spirit, when the Holy Spirit comes, you're going to have power to be my witnesses. What we're witnessing in Acts chapter 3 and 4 is the Holy Spirit at work. This is everything that Jesus said.
promise. He had promised it in Acts 1. Now we're seeing in Acts 3 and Acts 4. And we move from not only expecting conflict, but secondly and finally, we must express confidence. You got to expect that this gonna happen. Expect that you're gonna be tampered with. Expect they're gonna try to discourage your testimony.
But you got to also express confidence. Look at Peter's response. Peter.
filled with the Holy Spirit. Oh friends, I want you to see it. Look there.
It is a reminder that since the Holy Spirit arrived in that upper room in Acts 2, everything has changed in human history. When the Holy Spirit comes, power comes, boldness comes, courage comes, and anointing comes. Peter is full. of the Holy Spirit. And Peter says, if you called us here today because of what we did for that man, I want you to know, and you want to know, how did we do it?
And you want to know who authorized it. And you want to know where the power came from. The power came from Jesus Christ, whom you crucified, and whom God raised from the dead. I mean, you got to think that perhaps Peter in that moment remembers Jesus'words to them in Luke 12, 11 and 12. When you are brought before the synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.
Peter says, I got to give credit. to whom credit is due and Jesus is the one that's responsible. Peter is clear that the source of the healing is Jesus. Peter is clear that they crucified him but Jesus was raised from the dead.
What about you? Do you know? where the credit really belongs.
I know you're smart. I know you got talents. I know you got gifts. I know you went to school. I know you know some people.
I know you got a nice resume and your resume looks good on LinkedIn. But do you know where the credit really belongs? I hope you just didn't think that you just lucked up and happened to be where you are. That you just lucked up and retired when you did.
You just lucked up and have what you have. I hope you understand that the person responsible for where you are are today is Jesus Christ our risen Lord oh he gets all the credit because he did it he says to them that Jesus whom you crucified and whom God raised. It's the third time he uses this same phrase.
You killed him, but God raised him. He's trying to help them to understand. You thought you had some power, but you don't have any kind of power like the power that Jesus has. And then he says these words, the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
He quotes from Psalm 118 where David said these same words, a messianic psalm. David was talking about Israel being rejected and God choosing them. But here he says that applies to Jesus. He says the Jesus that you rejected, the Jesus that you talked about, the Jesus that you criticized, the Jesus that you crucified, the one you rejected has now become the chief cornerstone, the foundation of our faith. You threw him away, but you didn't know what you were doing.
You kicked him to the curb, but you didn't understand. Jesus is the chief cornerstone. Listen to Peter preach this thing in the testimony of the court. Listen to verse 12. Salvation is found in no one else. There is no other name.
Heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. Verse 12, he then makes this bold statement that Jesus is not just the one that healed that man, but Jesus also is the one that can give all of us salvation. He says salvation is found in no one else. There is no other name under heaven given the mankind by which we must be saved.
That's a verse you need to hold on to. In this pluralistic world that we live in, where we respect all other religions, and we give them the dignity that they deserve. But as followers of Jesus Christ, let us not get it mixed up.
Let us not get it mixed up. try to mix in something to make Jesus more than who he needs to be. This text says there is no other name.
I bless you for whatever you may choose, but as followers of Jesus Christ. We get in trouble when we try to add in stuff to what Jesus is already saying. There is no other name but the name of Jesus.
We cannot add other stuff into it because Jesus is enough. This is not Starbucks where you can add a shot of espresso and a shot of Jesus and a shot of Confucianism and a shot of Buddha. No! All it is, is Jesus and Jesus Christ alone. Jesus Christ yesterday, today, and forevermore.
Jesus is enough. Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No man will see the Father except by me. He does not say, I am a way. He says, I am the way, which means there's no other way to access God but through him.
Everybody can have their own belief, but when you follow Jesus, you walk with humility, but you recognize if Jesus said it, I believe it. I ain't got to have you cosign or you cosign or you cosign. I read my Bible and my Bible says before Abraham was, I already was. Jesus is the center.
We, We practice an exclusivity of Christ. It simply means that Jesus Christ and Christ alone. And you and I must make sure that we stay foundational to this truth in our lives. Because there are going to be people and family members and other people that are trying to try to pull you away from what Jesus has written in his scripture, that he is the only mediator between God and man.
That he's the only one that came to die for your sins. If you... If you try to add something to Jesus, you empty the cross. And he didn't come for nothing. He died so that you and I could have life, could have a future, could have purpose, could have redemption.
And we look to him and him alone. This is what he said. He says, listen, I want y'all to know he lived in a world where they were adding all these things.
They were saying tradition, and they were trying to claim others. He says, no, Jesus. It's not a way, but he is the way.
And we walk with humility, and we value and respect other people. But we understand and believe what Scripture has told us about Jesus Christ. You see Peter's response. But then you see religious leaders'response.
They're religious leaders. leaders, they got more than they were bargained for. And they started fooling around with Peter and John. They didn't think they had much to do, these two fishermen.
What can they do? But then they noticed something as they listened to them speak. The text says that when they saw their courage, when they realized they were unschooled, ordinary.
They couldn't handle these two men sharing God's word so clearly, so profoundly, pulling from the Old Testament, quoting the scriptures better than they could understand. And they took pride in their... rabbinical training.
They took pride in their pedigree and what they had learned. But here were two men that did not have their training and did not come from their schools and did not dress the way they dressed. And they said to themselves, wait a minute, what's up with these men? They are unbelievers.
But then they made a note that they had been with Jesus. School is a good thing. You ought to get as much understanding and degrees as you possibly can.
You ought to study the word at all costs. Oh, but if you ain't been with Jesus, it won't make much difference at all. That's what we want to do. We want to live our lives in such a way that even unbelievers will know, I don't understand all he or she's talking about. Oh, but they've been with Jesus.
The way they act and the way they carry themselves and the way they treat people, I don't understand it all. I don't necessarily agree with it, but they have been with Jesus. Those Pharisees want to say something, but when they want to say it, they want to say it but something is blocking their path.
Verse 14, verse 14, come and set your, no, come and set your, verse 14 keeps messing them up because in verse 14 what happens is, the text says this way, it says, but since they could see the man standing there. That's a problem for them because they want to discredit Jesus, but there's a man that's standing there. See in Acts chapter 3, that same man was begging at the temple gate. And when he was at the temple gate, they didn't have nothing to say. Because as long as he was on the ground, as long as he was begging, as long as where he was, they didn't have nothing to say.
But in this situation now... He's standing up. And because he's standing up, that's a problem. Because now him standing up is a witness to the healing power of Jesus Christ. They want to discredit Jesus so bad, but the text says because the man was standing there and as long as he's standing, they can't say nothing.
They want to discredit him. They want to tear him down, but the man keeps looking at them and they keep looking at the man and he just keeps standing. And as long as he's standing, his standing is a witness to what God can do. Somebody understands nobody had a problem when you were on the ground in your life Nobody had a problem when you were on the ground in that relationship Nobody had a problem when you were stuck in your past Nobody had a problem when you stayed in a bad situation Nobody had a problem when you were Stuck in insecurity. Stuck in your sinful ways.
Stuck in your sexual sin. Stuck in your brokenness. But every now and then, when you met Jesus and he got you up, you're no longer the same person.
And I want to tell somebody today, if you'll just stand right where you are. If you'll just stand right where you are. You are a witness to what God can do. Is there anybody in the room that can testify? I'm standing today because of what God can do.
I'm standing today because he healed my body. I'm standing today because he set me free. I'm standing today because he gave me a new life. You ought to praise God.
If you know what it's like to stand. Here's somebody. I came by to tell somebody just keep on standing. I know it ain't easy right now, but keep on standing I know you don't have answers right now, but keep on standing.
I know it don't make sense right now but keep on standing i know the timing ain't worked out but keep on standing when you go to work keep on standing with your friend keep on standing with your family keep on standing when it makes sense keep on standing because every time you stand you are a witness of what god can do Tell your neighbor, keep standing. Tell somebody else, keep standing. Tell one more person, keep standing. Tell them, I know it don't make sense, but keep standing.
I know you don't have answers, but keep standing. You got sickness in your body, but keep standing. I know you can't pay the bill yet, but keep standing. I know you're fueled by yourself, but keep standing. I know this ain't where you thought you'd be, but keep standing.
Your standing is a witness for what God can do. I know what God can do. Hallelujah.
Bless His name today. Bless His name today. I said bless His name today.
They said bless His name today. They said, Peter, John, go sit down somewhere. Stop talking about Jesus.
And they get down to that text and they say, listen, we want to stop talking about it. But we've seen too much. And we've heard too much.
We've seen him break bread and feed 5,000. We've seen him make the lame walk. We've seen him bring Lazarus from the dead.
We've seen him heal the man with a withered hand. We've seen him turn water into wine. We've seen him bring the dead back to life.
We've seen him break bread and feed 5,000. But it's not just what we've seen. It's what we've heard. We've heard him say, it's impossible with man, but all things are possible with God. We've heard him say, seek ye first the kingdom of God.
And all these things. things shall be added unto you. We've heard him say, I am the door.
I am the good shepherd. I am the life. I am the resurrection.
We've heard him say, I'm coming back again. If you've heard enough and you've seen enough, why don't you give him praise for what you've seen and for what you've heard. I've seen it with my I've seen it