Passion For Truth Ministries

Jim Staley Passion For Truth Ministries and welcome to today's broadcast wherever you may be found from sea to shining sea or over the seas I'm glad that you taken a few minutes out of your day to spend with us we're going to dive into and continually dive through the book of Acts that's what we're doing we're looking at the foundation of the early church and what was it consisted of are we sure we got it right my friends because I believe for the last Almost 18800 years we've been reading into the book of what we as a 21st century Western GRE Roman society believe and not pulling from the scriptures exactly what these Hebrew Jewish authors really meant so that's what we're going to do we're going to put the hebraic context the backdrop of Judaism of the first century back into the book of Acts and Incredibly what's going to come out is not necessarily what we already believe so we're going to let the scriptures be our guide the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth that's what or after we'll be back to do it right after this passion for Tabernacles is about to happen again my friends 2024 this October 16th through 25th is going to be eight full days of absolute incredible connection with the Creator your family and new friends so go to passionfor tabernacles. right now and reserve your 2024 suot memories all right we're back Jim Staley Passion For Truth Ministries thank you again for joining us would you do us a favor right now and hit subscribe if you're not subscribed to this channel if you want to learn more about the word of God from the original hebraic Christian Roots perspective that the Bible was written in then this is your channel we're going to uncover and unpack the depth of the book of Acts like never before I believe we here at Passion For Truth we're after the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth that's exactly what we're looking for in order to do that we got to go past uh today's 21st century Greco Roman perspective we got to go past protestantism past Catholicism and even past the early church fathers who virtually were all uh uh Gentiles and Pagan and origin from their backgrounds and go back to the early hebraic roots of our faith that is found in first century Judaism from which Christianity sprung if we don't know the foundation and the backdrop we're simply going to read into it whatever our denominational bias is so that's what we're after we want to know the truth and by the time that we work our way through the book of Acts which by the way is the foundational book of all of Christianity it's found right here in the book of Acts this is where the early church was uh not born because that was all the way back in ancient Israel but this is when the congregation of Israel the eklesia was illuminated and given Power by the Holy Spirit and that's what we saw in Chapter 2 and we're moving through and now we are in chapter 5 we just left off last week with ananas and saf the whole church coming together selling everything that they owned everyone was taken care of and ananas and saf sold a piece of property and they lied to not just the early church but to the Holy Spirit and God killed them right on the spot and we left off with the concept uh that it wasn't God just killing ananas and in great judgment uh but it was exposing the enemy in the process God was not just interested in exercising his power and in in in flexing his muscles of over life and death that's not what it was all about he was trying to bring a purity and a fear of him and more than importantly the fear of the truth into the early church so that the early church would stay pure as long as possible if they were allowed to get away with lying to God lying to the disciples lying to the holy spirit that early that leaven would leaven the entire lump now eventually unfortunately the leaven would creep in anyway but God saw it necessary to keep it as pure as possible for as long as possible so before we go any further the very last verse that we read was right here verse 11 where it said so great fear Came Upon all the church and and upon all who heard these things the fear of God is so incredibly important ladies and gentlemen we've been taught that it's to Revere God but I'm telling you the word there is fear it's absolutely terrible terrifying fear that we would fall into hands of an Angry God like Jonathan Edwards said uh it is fearful we need to have the fear of God in our life uh that that that he has the capability of dropping us dead now we don't serve him uh to out of fear but we have the re the awe and reverence that this is a king you don't just Walt into a king's chamber uh unprepared or out of disre and have disrespect or it might be off with your head so that kind of fear needs to uh Prevail in our life today if we knew that we had that kind of fear we would have a very difficult time choosing to sin recognizing that the consequences are absolutely potentially deadly and dire and that's where we want to be now you might disagree with that that's okay I happen to believe that the fear of God is what's so important and so missing in the church today I believe that's why God Yahweh introduced himself on Mount Si with all the trembling of the mountain and the and the uh the Thunder and the lightning and the incredible voice why go through all that theatrics he's trying to show he is the creator of the universe he is not to be trifled with and that he wanted to instill in his people understand I am a powerful God for two reasons not so that we would necessarily just fear him for ourselves but that we would understand that when we come in the face of danger or face our enemies we've got a great and awesome and terribly fearful God behind us and that is part of the main reason why God wants us to fear Him is to recognize that the enemy is what uh will ultimately be fearing God the most and we've got a god that is this incredible behind us amen all right well let's continue and work through the scriptures here going back to the scriptures in verse 12 it says and th and through the hands of the Apostles many signs and wonders were done among the people they were all with one Accord in Solomon's porch yet none of the rest dared to join them but they all esteemed them highly now why is this so important the reason why this is so important that it says that nobody else dared to join them because Solomon's porch was right there at the opening of the temple it's the covered Portico of herod's Temple in in the time of Yeshua that he built that was an extension of the original Solomon's porch and this is where the rabbis taught so this is right in the face of the Sadducees and the Pharisees this is right where Yeshua got in trouble U for teaching what he was teaching because they're they're just l literally putting it all right out there in public nobody else wanted to join him that's what it means they were scared out of their mind to be there and to be seen doing these things but they esteemed them highly of course they did uh the disciples are are out on the the the steps of the Portico doing exactly what their Rabbi taught them teach the the people of Israel the children of Israel and teach them right in front of the Pharisees and so they did that and and the power of God moved because of that Faith all right let's go back here and keep working through all right there was so many people it says that brought their sick men women and children to them they just wanted the shadow of Peter to touch them to be healed that's the kind of power that was flowing through the early church even the shadow of Peter was was healing them now let me give you a little bit of Hebrew that to show you why that's so important okay the word Shadow and the word image in Hebrew come from the same root word sellum that word literally means image so when it says that they were made in the image of God they were made in the shadow of God Adam and Eve in the same way the reason why the shadow of Peter has power it's not the the you know the the lack of light that's coming from the actual science of a shadow no of course not it is the power of Peter's image because Peter he His Image was so replicating the image of Christ which was in the direct representation of Yahweh himself that the power flows through the image it's flowing through his shadow what's coming out of Peter is the image of God it's the mind will and emotions of God the Creator it's the fruit of the spirit love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control a faith like no one has ever seen Peter went through an enormous amount in his lifetime and in the three years when he was with Yeshua he had learned what it meant to deny the Messiah three times he knew knew what it meant to feel the guilt and the shame and the horrible feelings that go along with denying the very Messiah that you said that he said he was going to to build uh his church off of the rock of Messiah on the shoulders of Peter that Peter was going to be that leader to take the torch over and Peter was never going to make that mistake again my friends the image of God is what he's trying to produce inside of each and every one of us that is why we study the word of God it's not to learn when the Messiah is coming back necessarily it's not to learn all the nuances all of that's great but in all your study if the image of God is not growing inside of you more and more in likeness of him then you are a man that is like the former Paul that is persuasive in words but no power but Paul says look I didn't come with persuasiveness I came with the power the demonstration of power the demonstration of power is found in the shadow of God when you are under the shadow of his wings you will you strip yourself of your own uh mind will and emotions your own shadow your own image and you take on the cellum of God you take on the image the shadow of the almighty and that is what the enemy is afraid of that's why sin exists ladies and gentlemen sin introduces another grafting of another it's a grafting of another kind of tree the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil into the tree of life when you do that you dim the light of God you dim the shadow of God you dim the image of God and thus dim the power of God in the earth realm that's the only reason why why Satan does what he does he knows he if you're a Believer he can't get you back right it's very very difficult but he can dim the power and that's what happened uh if if I could just speak directly right now into traditional Christianity's interpretation of the book of Acts is that we've divorced the book from its origin that's very very Jewish and so we read into uh these scriptures a Western Christian mindset and we pull out a Theology and that theology doesn't match the apostle Peter it doesn't match uh what the Apostle Paul believed and therefore we create a different belief system and belief system creates a different do system because we do what we believe and therefore the pipes get disconnected again the power of God only flows through the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth and that's what we're seeing here in the book of Acts is we want to find out what did they believe what did they do because the power was there in the first century and I'm telling you it all has to do with the image of God and the image of God is shown through those who obey him 1 John chap 5 1-3 says here are those who love God those who keep his Commandments and his Commandments are not burdensome so there is a direct correlation between loving God keeping his Commandments and the power of God and we're going to see that even more as we walk through it so okay no more o bloviating for now no more commentary let's walk through the scriptures themselves all right so then it says here and 17 then the high priest rose up and all those who were with him which is in the sect of the Sadducees and we learned last week that the Sadducees were the ones that were the aristocrats they were the ones that were the wealthy uh rulers of the calendar they were in charge of the entire Temple and and they did not believe in a resurrection so this notion or this new message about Jesus raising from the dead was threatening to their uh very existence because their theology said that can't happen and the people were believing in it so therefore the Sadducees were losing people left and right uh that maybe used to believe like the Sadducees that there was no resurrection and the Sadducees have no way to say face so the only thing that happens to their face is it gets red and they're very very angry as a matter of fact it says they're filled with indignation and and they laid hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison okay so they're so upset they throw them in the prison but watch this but at night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and said go stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life now I love this my friends because it's at this point in the the uh the timeline where they are doing exactly what Yeshua did they're standing on the on on the steps of Solomon's uh porch they're preaching the Good News and they the Sadducees he about this Resurrection throw them in jail and then all of a sudden God just immediately shows up with an angel that lets them out of prison now here's the incredible part the guards don't even know it let's scoot down here because this is incredible L we we talk about the angel most people have heard about the angel that opens up uh the gate for Peter and them to walk out but watch this so they go back in verse 21 uh let's go back to the scriptures here in verse 21 they go back in the morning and they start teaching again in the very place where they were arrested okay now watch this but when the officers came and did not find him in prison they returned and reported saying indeed we found the prison shut securely the guards standing outside before the doors but when we open them up we found no one inside No One ladies and gentlemen think of this it is one thing for an angel to show up like he did opening up uh the prison door for Yeshua Jesus on that incredible uh morning on the third day to make him to let him go free and resurrect but it's a whole another thing to open up the gates and the guards have no idea that the gates are open and and and to their knowledge Peter uh is and the disciples that were arrested are already still in the prison cell think of the supernatural level here they walk out of prison right past the guards and no one even sees it no one knows it's even happening listen in the same way this is a principle God has the ability in your situation whatever it might be no matter how dire how difficult no matter what you think the enemy has that's that's constricting you do you feel constricted right now if you feel constricted in anything I want you to write it in the comments and I want you to declare okay that God has capability of opening up the prison door and breaking the shackles and unrestricting you right now whether it's in your marriage you be specific because this is before God these are not just comments I don't believe that I believe that it's like scripture you have to speak it you got to write it down and declare it publicly by faith I will not be restricted God has the capability of showing up miraculously in your situation at the worst part of what you've been scared of the most now remember the disciples watched Yeshua get killed over the similar sermon now they're arrested and have no idea what's about to happen and within hours God rescues them can I just encourage you my friend that no matter what you're going through reach out to the most high God and don't allow doubt to creep in at any time doubt prevents the angel of the Lord from ever showing up in your life and so what happens is you begin to go oh well yeah I guess God didn't come through no it was your doubt that prevented the angel of the Lord from coming and giving you the keys that you need for your own Redemption and your own breaking out of prison okay and so they did hear these things let's go back to the scriptures the high priest found out and the temple guard found out about these and they wondered what the outcome was going to be in other words like they're like what in the world is going on right now we just arrested these guys but nothing stops the enemy these high priests these priests don't even care that there are Supernatural things going on right now that they can't explain they are so upset they are going to find these these guys and bring them down and then they finally bring before them counsel and here's what they say did we not strictly command you to not teach in this name and look you have filled Jerusalem with your Doctrine and intend to bring this man's blood on us now why is this so important because this is what they did to begin with they were attempting to send Yeshua to Rome to have him killed so that their hands were free from the blood of Christ they didn't want the people the people loved Jesus they didn't want the people to be mad at the at the at the Sadducees or the religious leaders of the day so they creatively got out of it by handing them over to Rome and then these guys show up the disciples and say look you're the one that killed uh the Messiah you're the ones that killed the Holy One of Israel and the people were starting to believe it so they were that's why they said you're trying to put this blood on us and Peter and the other Apostles uh said that's exactly what's going on and uh and and so they finally answer the priests and say Peter and the other Apostles answered and said we ought to obey God rather than men my friends I cannot tell you how many Believers in Christ seek to please man instead of God there's so many teenagers uh that are out there and I have teenagers and they they will come home from school and they'll tell me dad or their friends that they are so influenced by their friends they don't want to be a leader they just want to be a follower they don't and you know why it's the insecurity and the Gap and the void in the heart that's there of being left out of something no one wants to be left out I'm here to tell you that that when Yeshua said I will never never leave you or forsake you it's for a reason everything that happens in life is for a test God doesn't want you to obey man when you obey man you are disobeying God so God says look don't care what men think they're not the ones that are going to help you on Judgment day care what I think amen and that's why he says the god of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a him God has exalted to his right hand to be Prince and savior guys this is an amazing thing let me show you this Greek word here this Greek word is the word is is the word that literally is the same word for the captain of the Guard or the high priest this is such an incredible insult that's happening is that the disciples are saying look God exalted him to the right hand of God to be be the high priest and savior the chief guard and savior he's standing Peter is standing right in front of the high priest and the chief guard when he says this this is a radical Onslaught in the face of the high priest that God the the one that you killed this Yeshua the Messiah he is sitting at the right hand of God as the high priest because do you know what the high priest was called in Judaism the right hand of God isn't that incredible that that that Peter is is doing a play on words and he's saying exactly what he needs to say to insult them in the most creative way Jesus is the high priest your illegitimate and especially since uh the high priests were chosen by Rome anyway all right and so he says and we are his Witnesses you know what this word is this is the same word for Martyrs it literally is the Greek word martyr we are his Martyrs to these things and so also is the holy spirit whom God has given to those who obey him and they were they were literally blown out of their minds ready to kill them over this statement because he just insulted them saying that that Yeshua is is the high priest and Chief and we are the martyrs okay which by the way way that word there means unto death we are the witness and we will go to our death with what we saw and of course they did they prophesied their own death right here and he goes on to say that that the holy spirit is also a witness and is given by God to those who obey him and that was the final straw what Peter was saying was you guys don't obey God you don't deserve the Holy Spirit and look what happens next when they heard this they were Furious and plotted to kill them then one in the council stood up a Pharisee named gel a teacher of the law held in great respect by all the people and commanded them to put the apostles outside for a while and he said to them men of Israel take heed to yourselves what you intend to do regarding these men for some time ago thus rose up claiming to be somebody a number of men about 400 joined him but he was slain and everybody dispersed and then there was somebody else Judas of Galilee rose up same way he died all of his disciples scattered and he says in verse 38 and this is very very important now I say to you keep away from these men and let them alone for if this plan or this work is from men it will come to nothing but if it's from God you cannot overthrow it and you might even be found in contempt and fighting against God himself my friends that is is so important because this is so wise uh what that what Gamel is saying here because Gamel is is giving a wisdom that all of us need to know because whenever we strongly disagree and you know religious people are the worst right I mean they are literally the worst outs maybe outside of politicians right maybe it's a close neck and neck all right politicians and religious people can be the worst type of people because we get so past about what we believe that we will be off with their head for disagreeing with us and many of us believe so strongly maybe something that's totally changed your life and your neighbor or your family member or your friend doesn't agree with you and you can so strongly disagree with them that you can destroy the relationship in the process and gel gives us great wisdom here top Pharisee and he says guys don't do that don't fight these people just because they they they believe something that we don't if it's of God it'll stand if it's not it'll go by the wayside who are we to judge because if we're wrong we could be fighting against God so let me just throw this out there my friends we're pretty passionate about what we believe you're pretty passionate I'm sure about what you believe but what if there is a 1% chance that you could be wrong about something leave yourself a way out l you be fighting against God on Judgment Day and that goes for even arguments with your spouse relationship conflicts leave yourself a way out the hum The Humble position is let God deal with that person just pray for them and let the Holy Spirit do what he does best that's for somebody out there that you've really been trying to control the issue you've been trying to control your your your spouse or your child or even your boss or employees I'm telling you the frustration that comes from not being able to be in control is not worth it take gel's position and just hand it over to Yahweh hand it over to God just say right now in the comments Lord I hand over to you my situation because you you you can't handle it anyway he's waiting to do a miracle in your life if you'll just hand it over all right now I want to share with you a few things here who is G this guy that is so wise he is the grandson of H now why is this so important a Gamel was literally one of the most important if not the most revered Rabbi in all of the first century the reason why this is important is because Paul himself later is going to say that he sat at the feet of Gamel he was the best student of Gamel Gamel is the most brilliant Rabbi and we see it even right here they were split into two School schools of thought it came from the school of shamai or you came from the school of Hillel Hillel was the grandfather of gel which is why he was so famous and so wise so these two School schools of thought would be kind of like Democrats and Republicans today on a very loose level one was more liberal one was more conservative so uh the the school of shamai uh they these were Pharisees that taught in the Years prior to Jesus's birth and they believed uh in the literal interpretation of scripture they believed in all of the oral law and the traditions and the very strict keeping of the law of God that came from the school of shemai in stark contrast to the school of shemai you have the school of Hillel which was a bit more liberal uh in their understanding of Torah they were more accepting of Gentiles all right so let me give you an example of how the school of Shmi and the school of Hillel disagreed with one another one of the five tenants that they disagreed with was online and it's kind of humorous but it kind of gives you an idea the school of shamai believed in their literal interpretation I mean very legal that you should never lie and so there there was a a a question of what would you do if you had a bride on her wedding day and she was ugly and shemai would say well you tell her the truth that she's ugly hell their his perspective their school of thought was it's okay to lie in that situation because a bride is always beautiful on her wedding day and so that's kind of how they got around it and uh on divorce uh Shmi said you should only divorce your wife for very very very serious situations uh hell on the other hand was far more liberal and their their school of thought was you could divorce your wife uh if she burned your meal uh and so there was a lot of issues that were going on between the school of H and the school of shami now why is this so important well Paul for one is under uh the the teaching of Gamel which comes from Hillel but he also was very influenced by the school of shamai and so if you were not a Pharisee in the Sanhedrin people would kind of adopt different things knowing the differences is critical as you walk through the New Testament especially the book of Acts because these schools of thought show up and it understanding what they believed radically helps us understand the New Testament and what the debate was over and what the big hoop lot was over on certain issues like circumcision that we'll get to a little bit later as we uncover what these schools believed about it because if we don't know what they believed we don't know what the people were taught if we don't know what the people taught then we don't know what they believed and they're the ones that are in the mix when we're dealing with Peter and Paul and their uh and their Doctrine okay all right let's get back to the scriptures here all right so they agreed with gel that this was the right thing to do uh was to leave them alone at least for now so they beat them and sent them out and it says in verse 41 they departed from the presence of the councel rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name and daily in the temple and in every house they did not SE teaching and preaching Jesus as the Messiah so they went right back to the stairs of the temple teaching and preaching everywhere and holy spirit sent Gamel the head Rabbi in the Sanhedrin to tell them leave them alone ladies and gentlemen if that doesn't happen if God doesn't infiltrate and speak through Gamel at that moment the disciples are likely in jail and most of the New Testament might not have ever been written it is incredible how God uses unbelievers to protect Believers all right so then in chapter six we've got the seven God uh in in impresses upon the disciples that they need to be about what the father's business of prayer and Ministry not waiting on tables so they come up with seven deacons and those deacons then are there to help serve the widows the orphans make sure everybody has the daily distribution of food so that the disciples can focus on the most important thing which is prayer and Ministry can I ask you a question my friends if we're to be like the disciples and we want the power of God how much time do we devote to prayer and Ministry now most of us you're out there you're not in full-time Ministry like I am and you are in full-time Ministry if you're supporting this ministry uh if you're supporting this ministry financially and through your prayers you're in full-time Ministry with us that's the incredible part you're paying it forward for other people to be in full-time Ministry for you on your behalf that's part of your calling right but if you're out there you're working in the civilian world how in the world can you make a difference in Ministry if you're not devoting yourself to prayer you know I remember when I was in a prison cell and I was reading uh God had sent me this little book by a rabbi from the 1940s and he had this incredible saying in there that I wrote down he said the power of God can only come through two different things prayer or pain it's up to us which one we choose and I'll never forget that my friends that power only comes through prayer or through pain and most of us unfortunately choose pain because we don't choose enough prayer so I encourage you right now if you don't get anything else out of this broadcast today I encourage you to take the time to pray and increase it daily so put in the comments right now make a commitment to pray say I'm going to make a commitment to pray every day prayer is what empowers you say that with me will you prayer is your power put that in the comments prayer is my power it is there's nothing else outside of the prayer that that the apostles did that gave them the power to minister the power of God flows through the pipe of prayer amen all right so watch this one of the deacons his name was step and it says this in verse 8 Steven full of faith and power did great wonders and signs among the people then there arose from what was called the synagogue of the Fred men disputing with stepen and they were not able to resist the wisdom and the Spirit by what he spoke ladies and gentlemen the power of God flows through your tongue in the spirit when you're in obedience and no one will be able to dispute what you say when the spirit of God comes over you they secretly induce men to lie to make up all kinds of stuff to slander him and they end up uh killing him they end up stoning him so he's the first person to be killed right uh of the disciples is Stephen and he's not even an apostle he's a deacon my friends this is amazing they they literally said hey we need seven deacons uh to take over the administer the ministering of the of the of the widows and the orphans and the daily distribution of the food and Stephen ends up being as powerful as the apostles he's doing signs and wonders and miraculous things so much so the Sadducees wanted to kill him and they did it through slander have you ever been gossiped about have you ever been slandered have you ever slandered someone else have you ever said something negative about someone else's reputation behind their backs when you didn't even know all the facts or maybe that you did slander destroys and kills when you slander when you make things up or when you pass on information that you don't know to be true or you pass on negative information that makes someone else look bad do you know what you're doing you're taking on the sin of ham exposing someone for their sin maybe they are guilty but you're exposing them and that carries a major penalty uh in the scriptures go back and read what happened in Genesis to H and his children the curse That Came Upon them and you're also taking on the position of the Sadducees and the Pharisees these brood of vipers that were just literally slandering people destroying end up killing Stephen and you know what it was out of jealousy do you know that where most gossip and most slander comes from is jealousy people are so insecure in their walk with God they can't handle it when someone else is Anointed they can't handle it when someone else is successful they can't handle when someone else you know got a better job or got a pay raise and so instead of congratulating them and truly sincerely being excited for them they get jealous oh he didn't deserve that and they begin the process of the Venom moving into other people biting people with their own Venom of jealousy there's nothing that will kill power of God faster in your life than jealousy and there there's nothing that God will he will remove there's nothing that will stop him from removing the anointing from your life faster than not supporting someone else in the ministry of the word even if you disagree you don't have to agree but you don't slander you don't gossip you don't poke fun at we simply allow God to be God Amen you do what God has put in your heart to do let each and every one of us have the instrument of ministry where we do our part there's leaders of tens there's leaders of 50s and there's leaders of tens of thousands the one that is has been anointed for 50 should do his job and not be jealous of the one that God has given 10,000 because judgment comes down harder on the one that is leading 10,000 than the one is over 50 we're all the same at the cross amen we're all serving the same King play for an audience of one and God will promote you all right moving into chapter 7 and then we will finish up if we can get if we can get that far all right is that he begins to go through Stephen addresses the call of Abraham is what this uh chapter is titled and and let's move into it he starts going through the entire message from the beginning of time all the way through Egypt starts talking about how God delivered them from E from Egypt through Moses and that Moses uh in verse 25 it says for he supposed that his Brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand but they did not understand in other words Moses is going back to the Israelites and he's saying hey uh why uh you know are you guys fighting among one another and they said who are you are are are you going to kill us like you did the Egyptian yesterday and Moses is freaking out because he is totally believing that that they are going uh that that they're going to listen listen to him and that's why he says he supposed that his Brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand but they did not understand in the same way okay uh that's what's going on both in this first century and what's going on today Brethren is fighting Brethren and we don't understand that God is the deliverer of all we don't need to be fighting one another you know one of the greatest uh arrows that the enemy has in Atheism in in paganism and the Gentile non-believing world today is they see so many religious people so many Christians fighting one another it didn't say you know you will know they are Christians by how much they fight no they'll know their Christians by their love is how it's supposed to go it's our love for one another that's what attracts them because the world is good at hate the world is good at fighting we are supposed to be known by our love amen all right and so he goes through all of this and then in verse 35 he says this this Moses whom they rejected saying who made you ruler and a judge is the one God sent to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the Angel who appeared to him in the bush he brought them out after he had shown wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for 40 years steeve is making this incredible connection that just like Moses was rejected by the brothers that were fighting the two brothers that were fighting there are two houses in the first century there is the house of shemai there's the house of alel they hated each other and all they did was fight and in the same way Moses came uh to these two brothers that were fighting that that uh United under to get rid of Moses in the same way he says Yeshua is your Moses and he came to you as you guys are fighting and you both rejected him and you killed him even though you hate each other you had no idea that you were standing before your deliverer when you killed him and they ran Yeshua off just like they ran Moses off and he went on to say y'all killed the prophets too everybody that came to you from God you spit in their face and you killed them and you rebelled against God in the process and that's why he says in verse 44 and we're close to closing with this our fathers had the Tabernacle of witness in the wilderness as he appointed instructing Moses to make it according to the pattern that he had seen which our fathers have received it in turn also brought with Joshua into the land possessed by the Gentiles whom God drove out before the face of our fathers until the days of David who found favor before God and asked to find a dwelling for the god of Jacob but Solomon was the one that built him a house however the most high does not dwell in temples made with hands as the prophet says Heaven is my Throne Earth is my foot stol what house will you build for me says the Lord or what is the place of my rest has my hand not made all of these things my friends Stephen just like Peter is really upsetting these Sadducees and Pharisees because what's going on is he's simply saying that all the way I'm showing you guys from the very beginning you've been rebellious from the very beginning we've rejected prophets from God and God himself said that he does not dwell in temples now guys this is a very big statement that he's making why they're looking at the temple the Sadducees are the ones that are in charge of the temple remember these are the aristocrats that are so proud of their Temple and here Stephen is saying um yeah God doesn't dwell in there anymore he never wanted to dwell in a temple we are the temple imagine what these Sadducees are thinking and the Pharisees right behind them who also love the temple they're just not in control of it and and these disciples are saying um by the way everything y'all are doing there is invalid God is not concerned about living in there he never was he wants to live here can I ask you a question is your house worthy of living in you know in my house my wife loves to have the house clean and if there's one thing that'll aggravate her to high heaven is when I invite someone over to the house and don't tell her and it's not totally clean right if any of you have a spouse out there that's like that I don't blame you I don't blame her but guys from we don't really care I don't really care if my house is clean necessarily or or not I I go to someone else's house I don't ever pay attention whether it's clean or not I'm not there to see the house I'm there to see the person but my wife's got a great Point she wants the house to be clean if someone's going to be invited in if Yeshua is knocking at the door of your heart is your house clean for him to live in because he cannot live in an unclean house an unclean environment this is why the enemy introduced sin it's to defile the house because in the defiling of the house look he's not he doesn't really care about you he just doesn't want the power and the Holy Spirit to reside in you and he knows how God's science Works he knows that God will not dwell in a defiled environment that's why it matters where you go it matters who you go with it matters what comes out of your mouth whether it's salt water or fresh water it matters what you think it matters what you watch it matters what you listen to every sense that God gave you it is is is like a pipe like a like a like a hose that is is sucking up its environment and whatever is it it is touching it is bringing into your temple and either it is cleansing it with the word of God and you're around righteousness look you'll be the average of the five people that you hang around the most is that a holy environment for the spirit of God to live in we need to make sure our house is clean ladies and gentlemen and that's what Stephen is saying we're the temple so it doesn't matter what you say it matters what you do and it matters how you live your life and how you keep the Torah the instruction manual of God like like Jesus said he said I didn't come to to destroy the law I came to to bring it more meaning which is what the word PLU means to to fill it up to to fulfill it and anyone that teaches at the the law of God has done away with be least in my kingdom because you love me you keep my Commandments 1 John 5:3 and my Commandments are not burdensome it's their Commandments that they added to it that's so burdensome it's their traditions and doctrines that are choking out my word not my word I am the word made flesh take my yoke upon you and you will have life and at the end he literally says this you stiff necked look at this no wonder they killed him he says you stiff necked and uncircumcised and heart and ears you always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did so do you which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute and they killed those who foretold the coming of the just one and of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it oh my goodness and when they heard this they were cut to the heart they na ashed at him they did not want to hear that ladies and gentlemen there is nothing more upset than a Pharisee that just got dogged on by a fisherman or an uneducated man uh such as Stephen and they were angry and they went to kill him they cast him out of the city and stoned him and the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of the young man named Saul this is critical and we're going to end with this the end of chapter 7 introduces the next Apostle the Apostle Paul and so we'll say this I'm going to save this for next week but I am going to dispel in the first five minutes one of the biggest wives tales that has ever pervaded the Christian church and that's that God's that God changed Saul's name to Paul we're going to talk about that next week but in the meantime the clothes of those that were stoning even they put them at the feet of Saul Saul was one of the guards that were part of the uh the temple guards he was part of the temple uh Army the police the Temple Police they knew they didn't want to get their hands all dirty their robes tore bloody so they took them off and they put them at the feet of a police officer that they knew would would protect them so Saul is introduced for the first time in the Bible and he is watching stepen get stoned does nothing protecting the robes now why are the robes so important because robes create status the robe all right that's why Bible talks about the you were taking off your robes your filthy robes and giving Robes of righteousness so robes were a status symbol based on what they were wearing at the time what they were made of showed your status so everyone is taking their status and putting them at the feet of Paul and what's he going to do with this is he watches them rip step's status away and God is going to call this young man from looking and destroying the status and authority of one of God's kids and he's going to force Saul to now be the opposite is to take everyone's status that is in the status of the enemy and drobe them and put them at the feet of the Messiah Saul his job right here is called the law first precedent in biblical hermeneutics or biblical laws of interpretation is we see that Saul's real goal and and Authority is taking the robes the authority and the status of people and putting them on the ground in front of real author Authority that's what he's going to do for the rest of his mission is because he took the authority and the status of Step he is now going to be in charge of taking everyone else's fleshly Authority fleshly uh uh status he's going to derobe them through his articulation and demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit and he's going to bring them to a place of the Cross and he's going to help them lay their robes down so they can be given new Robes of righteousness my friends this we've come to the end of this broadcast but I want you to catch that the shift is beginning to happen and it happens Ironically in chapter 7 because number seven is perfection we're perfecting and coming to a completion of the storyline of Peter and we're going to pick up in chapter 8 where this storyline of Saul is introduced or Paul is introduced and what happens from here is this dynamic duo begin as the first half of Acts is all about Peter and the second half is going to be all about Paul this transition is going to be happening right now moving into chapter eight next week as eight is the Hebrew number of new beginnings so if you need a new beginning then here's your answer take your robe off your comfortable status your comfortable Authority and throw it down like King David did and dance naked before your God don't be ashamed of dering before men and that same Rabbi that I read in prison that said you can only receive the power of God two ways through prayer or through pain and you get to choose he also said this that the Holy Spirit only clothes the naked those that he sees have dered themselves of their own flesh and carnal desires if he looks and the Holy Spirit sees because he's he's masculine he's the bridegroom and he's going to clothe his bride so when you hold the masculine perspective of robing yourself with your own mind will and emotions and doing what you want to do and I'll be darn I'm going to win this argument I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that then the Holy Spirit wants none of that then you are uh you're not his bride that's a masculine attribute the feminine attribute is the is the character istic of servanthood of laying down what you want and and choosing to be naked before God it's at that moment where God chooses to clothe you in his glory those who are least will become greatest and those who are greatest wearing the robe will become the least and my friends I'll leave you with the story of ancient Israel all the way back to the time of Joseph Joseph was given a status through his robe of many colors he wore it proudly his father gave it to him but his brothers despised him out of what jealousy like we talked about earlier jealously led to slander which led to Joseph's being thr Joseph being thrown into a well and then eventually into prison and what was the first step to his glorification deing destroying the robe of Pride the robe of AR own mind will and emotions our soul and giving our soul over to God that's the moment that Joseph began when he B nobody is when he began to be somebody I know that feeling deeply of becoming having to be somebody when our ministry was at the height in 2015 then becoming nobody thrown into a prison cell losing my robe losing my reputation losing my dignity crying my eyes out every single night and having to trust that God knew what he was doing as he dered me of my own pride and then robed me in the righteousness and the glory of Christ my friends never despise your low position it's the very place where God places his robe of Glory on you don't look for status and fame and wealth rather look to be glorified in Christ and that means the death of yourself my friends thank you for spending time with us here at passion for truth in this broadcast please share this subscribe to this channel if you're not already and consider partnering with us being part of the solution of paying it forward so we can bring this message to every tribe and tongue we need your help and we're so grateful if you are are our prayer partner our financial partner if you partner with us thank you so much for doing that less than 1% of those that that are ministered to through this ministry actually say thank you by joining with us in a very very small way financially so thank you for that and thank you for being a partner with God and in spreading this message sharing it means more to us than anything I can promise you that in the meantime I want you to love God with all your heart mind soul and strength drobe yourself and let the holy Spirit do what he does miraculously raise you from the dead and give you the power over life and death itself my friends I'm Jim Staley with passion for Truth Ministries and I'll see you in the next video sh

Jim Staley Passion For Truth Ministries and welcome to today&#39;s broadcast wherever you may be found from sea to shining sea or over the seas I&#39;m glad that you taken a few minutes out of your day to spend with us we&#39;re going to dive into and continually dive through the book of Acts that&#39;s what we&#39;re doing we&#39;re looking at the foundation of the early church and what was it consisted of are we sure we got it right my friends because I believe for the last Almost 18800 years we&#39;ve been reading into the book of what we as a 21st century Western GRE Roman society believe and not pulling from the scriptures exactly what these Hebrew Jewish authors really meant so that&#39;s what we&#39;re going to do we&#39;re going to put the hebraic context the backdrop of Judaism of the first century back into the book of Acts and Incredibly what&#39;s going to come out is not necessarily what we already believe so we&#39;re going to let the scriptures be our guide the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth that&#39;s what or after we&#39;ll be back to do it right after this passion for Tabernacles is about to happen again my friends 2024 this October 16th through 25th is going to be eight full days of absolute incredible connection with the Creator your family and new friends so go to passionfor tabernacles. right now and reserve your 2024 suot memories all right we&#39;re back Jim Staley Passion For Truth Ministries thank you again for joining us would you do us a favor right now and hit subscribe if you&#39;re not subscribed to this channel if you want to learn more about the word of God from the original hebraic Christian Roots perspective that the Bible was written in then this is your channel we&#39;re going to uncover and unpack the depth of the book of Acts like never before I believe we here at Passion For Truth we&#39;re after the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth that&#39;s exactly what we&#39;re looking for in order to do that we got to go past uh today&#39;s 21st century Greco Roman perspective we got to go past protestantism past Catholicism and even past the early church fathers who virtually were all uh uh Gentiles and Pagan and origin from their backgrounds and go back to the early hebraic roots of our faith that is found in first century Judaism from which Christianity sprung if we don&#39;t know the foundation and the backdrop we&#39;re simply going to read into it whatever our denominational bias is so that&#39;s what we&#39;re after we want to know the truth and by the time that we work our way through the book of Acts which by the way is the foundational book of all of Christianity it&#39;s found right here in the book of Acts this is where the early church was uh not born because that was all the way back in ancient Israel but this is when the congregation of Israel the eklesia was illuminated and given Power by the Holy Spirit and that&#39;s what we saw in Chapter 2 and we&#39;re moving through and now we are in chapter 5 we just left off last week with ananas and saf the whole church coming together selling everything that they owned everyone was taken care of and ananas and saf sold a piece of property and they lied to not just the early church but to the Holy Spirit and God killed them right on the spot and we left off with the concept uh that it wasn&#39;t God just killing ananas and in great judgment uh but it was exposing the enemy in the process God was not just interested in exercising his power and in in in flexing his muscles of over life and death that&#39;s not what it was all about he was trying to bring a purity and a fear of him and more than importantly the fear of the truth into the early church so that the early church would stay pure as long as possible if they were allowed to get away with lying to God lying to the disciples lying to the holy spirit that early that leaven would leaven the entire lump now eventually unfortunately the leaven would creep in anyway but God saw it necessary to keep it as pure as possible for as long as possible so before we go any further the very last verse that we read was right here verse 11 where it said so great fear Came Upon all the church and and upon all who heard these things the fear of God is so incredibly important ladies and gentlemen we&#39;ve been taught that it&#39;s to Revere God but I&#39;m telling you the word there is fear it&#39;s absolutely terrible terrifying fear that we would fall into hands of an Angry God like Jonathan Edwards said uh it is fearful we need to have the fear of God in our life uh that that that he has the capability of dropping us dead now we don&#39;t serve him uh to out of fear but we have the re the awe and reverence that this is a king you don&#39;t just Walt into a king&#39;s chamber uh unprepared or out of disre and have disrespect or it might be off with your head so that kind of fear needs to uh Prevail in our life today if we knew that we had that kind of fear we would have a very difficult time choosing to sin recognizing that the consequences are absolutely potentially deadly and dire and that&#39;s where we want to be now you might disagree with that that&#39;s okay I happen to believe that the fear of God is what&#39;s so important and so missing in the church today I believe that&#39;s why God Yahweh introduced himself on Mount Si with all the trembling of the mountain and the and the uh the Thunder and the lightning and the incredible voice why go through all that theatrics he&#39;s trying to show he is the creator of the universe he is not to be trifled with and that he wanted to instill in his people understand I am a powerful God for two reasons not so that we would necessarily just fear him for ourselves but that we would understand that when we come in the face of danger or face our enemies we&#39;ve got a great and awesome and terribly fearful God behind us and that is part of the main reason why God wants us to fear Him is to recognize that the enemy is what uh will ultimately be fearing God the most and we&#39;ve got a god that is this incredible behind us amen all right well let&#39;s continue and work through the scriptures here going back to the scriptures in verse 12 it says and th and through the hands of the Apostles many signs and wonders were done among the people they were all with one Accord in Solomon&#39;s porch yet none of the rest dared to join them but they all esteemed them highly now why is this so important the reason why this is so important that it says that nobody else dared to join them because Solomon&#39;s porch was right there at the opening of the temple it&#39;s the covered Portico of herod&#39;s Temple in in the time of Yeshua that he built that was an extension of the original Solomon&#39;s porch and this is where the rabbis taught so this is right in the face of the Sadducees and the Pharisees this is right where Yeshua got in trouble U for teaching what he was teaching because they&#39;re they&#39;re just l literally putting it all right out there in public nobody else wanted to join him that&#39;s what it means they were scared out of their mind to be there and to be seen doing these things but they esteemed them highly of course they did uh the disciples are are out on the the the steps of the Portico doing exactly what their Rabbi taught them teach the the people of Israel the children of Israel and teach them right in front of the Pharisees and so they did that and and the power of God moved because of that Faith all right let&#39;s go back here and keep working through all right there was so many people it says that brought their sick men women and children to them they just wanted the shadow of Peter to touch them to be healed that&#39;s the kind of power that was flowing through the early church even the shadow of Peter was was healing them now let me give you a little bit of Hebrew that to show you why that&#39;s so important okay the word Shadow and the word image in Hebrew come from the same root word sellum that word literally means image so when it says that they were made in the image of God they were made in the shadow of God Adam and Eve in the same way the reason why the shadow of Peter has power it&#39;s not the the you know the the lack of light that&#39;s coming from the actual science of a shadow no of course not it is the power of Peter&#39;s image because Peter he His Image was so replicating the image of Christ which was in the direct representation of Yahweh himself that the power flows through the image it&#39;s flowing through his shadow what&#39;s coming out of Peter is the image of God it&#39;s the mind will and emotions of God the Creator it&#39;s the fruit of the spirit love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control a faith like no one has ever seen Peter went through an enormous amount in his lifetime and in the three years when he was with Yeshua he had learned what it meant to deny the Messiah three times he knew knew what it meant to feel the guilt and the shame and the horrible feelings that go along with denying the very Messiah that you said that he said he was going to to build uh his church off of the rock of Messiah on the shoulders of Peter that Peter was going to be that leader to take the torch over and Peter was never going to make that mistake again my friends the image of God is what he&#39;s trying to produce inside of each and every one of us that is why we study the word of God it&#39;s not to learn when the Messiah is coming back necessarily it&#39;s not to learn all the nuances all of that&#39;s great but in all your study if the image of God is not growing inside of you more and more in likeness of him then you are a man that is like the former Paul that is persuasive in words but no power but Paul says look I didn&#39;t come with persuasiveness I came with the power the demonstration of power the demonstration of power is found in the shadow of God when you are under the shadow of his wings you will you strip yourself of your own uh mind will and emotions your own shadow your own image and you take on the cellum of God you take on the image the shadow of the almighty and that is what the enemy is afraid of that&#39;s why sin exists ladies and gentlemen sin introduces another grafting of another it&#39;s a grafting of another kind of tree the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil into the tree of life when you do that you dim the light of God you dim the shadow of God you dim the image of God and thus dim the power of God in the earth realm that&#39;s the only reason why why Satan does what he does he knows he if you&#39;re a Believer he can&#39;t get you back right it&#39;s very very difficult but he can dim the power and that&#39;s what happened uh if if I could just speak directly right now into traditional Christianity&#39;s interpretation of the book of Acts is that we&#39;ve divorced the book from its origin that&#39;s very very Jewish and so we read into uh these scriptures a Western Christian mindset and we pull out a Theology and that theology doesn&#39;t match the apostle Peter it doesn&#39;t match uh what the Apostle Paul believed and therefore we create a different belief system and belief system creates a different do system because we do what we believe and therefore the pipes get disconnected again the power of God only flows through the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth and that&#39;s what we&#39;re seeing here in the book of Acts is we want to find out what did they believe what did they do because the power was there in the first century and I&#39;m telling you it all has to do with the image of God and the image of God is shown through those who obey him 1 John chap 5 1-3 says here are those who love God those who keep his Commandments and his Commandments are not burdensome so there is a direct correlation between loving God keeping his Commandments and the power of God and we&#39;re going to see that even more as we walk through it so okay no more o bloviating for now no more commentary let&#39;s walk through the scriptures themselves all right so then it says here and 17 then the high priest rose up and all those who were with him which is in the sect of the Sadducees and we learned last week that the Sadducees were the ones that were the aristocrats they were the ones that were the wealthy uh rulers of the calendar they were in charge of the entire Temple and and they did not believe in a resurrection so this notion or this new message about Jesus raising from the dead was threatening to their uh very existence because their theology said that can&#39;t happen and the people were believing in it so therefore the Sadducees were losing people left and right uh that maybe used to believe like the Sadducees that there was no resurrection and the Sadducees have no way to say face so the only thing that happens to their face is it gets red and they&#39;re very very angry as a matter of fact it says they&#39;re filled with indignation and and they laid hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison okay so they&#39;re so upset they throw them in the prison but watch this but at night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and said go stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life now I love this my friends because it&#39;s at this point in the the uh the timeline where they are doing exactly what Yeshua did they&#39;re standing on the on on the steps of Solomon&#39;s uh porch they&#39;re preaching the Good News and they the Sadducees he about this Resurrection throw them in jail and then all of a sudden God just immediately shows up with an angel that lets them out of prison now here&#39;s the incredible part the guards don&#39;t even know it let&#39;s scoot down here because this is incredible L we we talk about the angel most people have heard about the angel that opens up uh the gate for Peter and them to walk out but watch this so they go back in verse 21 uh let&#39;s go back to the scriptures here in verse 21 they go back in the morning and they start teaching again in the very place where they were arrested okay now watch this but when the officers came and did not find him in prison they returned and reported saying indeed we found the prison shut securely the guards standing outside before the doors but when we open them up we found no one inside No One ladies and gentlemen think of this it is one thing for an angel to show up like he did opening up uh the prison door for Yeshua Jesus on that incredible uh morning on the third day to make him to let him go free and resurrect but it&#39;s a whole another thing to open up the gates and the guards have no idea that the gates are open and and and to their knowledge Peter uh is and the disciples that were arrested are already still in the prison cell think of the supernatural level here they walk out of prison right past the guards and no one even sees it no one knows it&#39;s even happening listen in the same way this is a principle God has the ability in your situation whatever it might be no matter how dire how difficult no matter what you think the enemy has that&#39;s that&#39;s constricting you do you feel constricted right now if you feel constricted in anything I want you to write it in the comments and I want you to declare okay that God has capability of opening up the prison door and breaking the shackles and unrestricting you right now whether it&#39;s in your marriage you be specific because this is before God these are not just comments I don&#39;t believe that I believe that it&#39;s like scripture you have to speak it you got to write it down and declare it publicly by faith I will not be restricted God has the capability of showing up miraculously in your situation at the worst part of what you&#39;ve been scared of the most now remember the disciples watched Yeshua get killed over the similar sermon now they&#39;re arrested and have no idea what&#39;s about to happen and within hours God rescues them can I just encourage you my friend that no matter what you&#39;re going through reach out to the most high God and don&#39;t allow doubt to creep in at any time doubt prevents the angel of the Lord from ever showing up in your life and so what happens is you begin to go oh well yeah I guess God didn&#39;t come through no it was your doubt that prevented the angel of the Lord from coming and giving you the keys that you need for your own Redemption and your own breaking out of prison okay and so they did hear these things let&#39;s go back to the scriptures the high priest found out and the temple guard found out about these and they wondered what the outcome was going to be in other words like they&#39;re like what in the world is going on right now we just arrested these guys but nothing stops the enemy these high priests these priests don&#39;t even care that there are Supernatural things going on right now that they can&#39;t explain they are so upset they are going to find these these guys and bring them down and then they finally bring before them counsel and here&#39;s what they say did we not strictly command you to not teach in this name and look you have filled Jerusalem with your Doctrine and intend to bring this man&#39;s blood on us now why is this so important because this is what they did to begin with they were attempting to send Yeshua to Rome to have him killed so that their hands were free from the blood of Christ they didn&#39;t want the people the people loved Jesus they didn&#39;t want the people to be mad at the at the at the Sadducees or the religious leaders of the day so they creatively got out of it by handing them over to Rome and then these guys show up the disciples and say look you&#39;re the one that killed uh the Messiah you&#39;re the ones that killed the Holy One of Israel and the people were starting to believe it so they were that&#39;s why they said you&#39;re trying to put this blood on us and Peter and the other Apostles uh said that&#39;s exactly what&#39;s going on and uh and and so they finally answer the priests and say Peter and the other Apostles answered and said we ought to obey God rather than men my friends I cannot tell you how many Believers in Christ seek to please man instead of God there&#39;s so many teenagers uh that are out there and I have teenagers and they they will come home from school and they&#39;ll tell me dad or their friends that they are so influenced by their friends they don&#39;t want to be a leader they just want to be a follower they don&#39;t and you know why it&#39;s the insecurity and the Gap and the void in the heart that&#39;s there of being left out of something no one wants to be left out I&#39;m here to tell you that that when Yeshua said I will never never leave you or forsake you it&#39;s for a reason everything that happens in life is for a test God doesn&#39;t want you to obey man when you obey man you are disobeying God so God says look don&#39;t care what men think they&#39;re not the ones that are going to help you on Judgment day care what I think amen and that&#39;s why he says the god of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a him God has exalted to his right hand to be Prince and savior guys this is an amazing thing let me show you this Greek word here this Greek word is the word is is the word that literally is the same word for the captain of the Guard or the high priest this is such an incredible insult that&#39;s happening is that the disciples are saying look God exalted him to the right hand of God to be be the high priest and savior the chief guard and savior he&#39;s standing Peter is standing right in front of the high priest and the chief guard when he says this this is a radical Onslaught in the face of the high priest that God the the one that you killed this Yeshua the Messiah he is sitting at the right hand of God as the high priest because do you know what the high priest was called in Judaism the right hand of God isn&#39;t that incredible that that that Peter is is doing a play on words and he&#39;s saying exactly what he needs to say to insult them in the most creative way Jesus is the high priest your illegitimate and especially since uh the high priests were chosen by Rome anyway all right and so he says and we are his Witnesses you know what this word is this is the same word for Martyrs it literally is the Greek word martyr we are his Martyrs to these things and so also is the holy spirit whom God has given to those who obey him and they were they were literally blown out of their minds ready to kill them over this statement because he just insulted them saying that that Yeshua is is the high priest and Chief and we are the martyrs okay which by the way way that word there means unto death we are the witness and we will go to our death with what we saw and of course they did they prophesied their own death right here and he goes on to say that that the holy spirit is also a witness and is given by God to those who obey him and that was the final straw what Peter was saying was you guys don&#39;t obey God you don&#39;t deserve the Holy Spirit and look what happens next when they heard this they were Furious and plotted to kill them then one in the council stood up a Pharisee named gel a teacher of the law held in great respect by all the people and commanded them to put the apostles outside for a while and he said to them men of Israel take heed to yourselves what you intend to do regarding these men for some time ago thus rose up claiming to be somebody a number of men about 400 joined him but he was slain and everybody dispersed and then there was somebody else Judas of Galilee rose up same way he died all of his disciples scattered and he says in verse 38 and this is very very important now I say to you keep away from these men and let them alone for if this plan or this work is from men it will come to nothing but if it&#39;s from God you cannot overthrow it and you might even be found in contempt and fighting against God himself my friends that is is so important because this is so wise uh what that what Gamel is saying here because Gamel is is giving a wisdom that all of us need to know because whenever we strongly disagree and you know religious people are the worst right I mean they are literally the worst outs maybe outside of politicians right maybe it&#39;s a close neck and neck all right politicians and religious people can be the worst type of people because we get so past about what we believe that we will be off with their head for disagreeing with us and many of us believe so strongly maybe something that&#39;s totally changed your life and your neighbor or your family member or your friend doesn&#39;t agree with you and you can so strongly disagree with them that you can destroy the relationship in the process and gel gives us great wisdom here top Pharisee and he says guys don&#39;t do that don&#39;t fight these people just because they they they believe something that we don&#39;t if it&#39;s of God it&#39;ll stand if it&#39;s not it&#39;ll go by the wayside who are we to judge because if we&#39;re wrong we could be fighting against God so let me just throw this out there my friends we&#39;re pretty passionate about what we believe you&#39;re pretty passionate I&#39;m sure about what you believe but what if there is a 1% chance that you could be wrong about something leave yourself a way out l you be fighting against God on Judgment Day and that goes for even arguments with your spouse relationship conflicts leave yourself a way out the hum The Humble position is let God deal with that person just pray for them and let the Holy Spirit do what he does best that&#39;s for somebody out there that you&#39;ve really been trying to control the issue you&#39;ve been trying to control your your your spouse or your child or even your boss or employees I&#39;m telling you the frustration that comes from not being able to be in control is not worth it take gel&#39;s position and just hand it over to Yahweh hand it over to God just say right now in the comments Lord I hand over to you my situation because you you you can&#39;t handle it anyway he&#39;s waiting to do a miracle in your life if you&#39;ll just hand it over all right now I want to share with you a few things here who is G this guy that is so wise he is the grandson of H now why is this so important a Gamel was literally one of the most important if not the most revered Rabbi in all of the first century the reason why this is important is because Paul himself later is going to say that he sat at the feet of Gamel he was the best student of Gamel Gamel is the most brilliant Rabbi and we see it even right here they were split into two School schools of thought it came from the school of shamai or you came from the school of Hillel Hillel was the grandfather of gel which is why he was so famous and so wise so these two School schools of thought would be kind of like Democrats and Republicans today on a very loose level one was more liberal one was more conservative so uh the the school of shamai uh they these were Pharisees that taught in the Years prior to Jesus&#39;s birth and they believed uh in the literal interpretation of scripture they believed in all of the oral law and the traditions and the very strict keeping of the law of God that came from the school of shemai in stark contrast to the school of shemai you have the school of Hillel which was a bit more liberal uh in their understanding of Torah they were more accepting of Gentiles all right so let me give you an example of how the school of Shmi and the school of Hillel disagreed with one another one of the five tenants that they disagreed with was online and it&#39;s kind of humorous but it kind of gives you an idea the school of shamai believed in their literal interpretation I mean very legal that you should never lie and so there there was a a a question of what would you do if you had a bride on her wedding day and she was ugly and shemai would say well you tell her the truth that she&#39;s ugly hell their his perspective their school of thought was it&#39;s okay to lie in that situation because a bride is always beautiful on her wedding day and so that&#39;s kind of how they got around it and uh on divorce uh Shmi said you should only divorce your wife for very very very serious situations uh hell on the other hand was far more liberal and their their school of thought was you could divorce your wife uh if she burned your meal uh and so there was a lot of issues that were going on between the school of H and the school of shami now why is this so important well Paul for one is under uh the the teaching of Gamel which comes from Hillel but he also was very influenced by the school of shamai and so if you were not a Pharisee in the Sanhedrin people would kind of adopt different things knowing the differences is critical as you walk through the New Testament especially the book of Acts because these schools of thought show up and it understanding what they believed radically helps us understand the New Testament and what the debate was over and what the big hoop lot was over on certain issues like circumcision that we&#39;ll get to a little bit later as we uncover what these schools believed about it because if we don&#39;t know what they believed we don&#39;t know what the people were taught if we don&#39;t know what the people taught then we don&#39;t know what they believed and they&#39;re the ones that are in the mix when we&#39;re dealing with Peter and Paul and their uh and their Doctrine okay all right let&#39;s get back to the scriptures here all right so they agreed with gel that this was the right thing to do uh was to leave them alone at least for now so they beat them and sent them out and it says in verse 41 they departed from the presence of the councel rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name and daily in the temple and in every house they did not SE teaching and preaching Jesus as the Messiah so they went right back to the stairs of the temple teaching and preaching everywhere and holy spirit sent Gamel the head Rabbi in the Sanhedrin to tell them leave them alone ladies and gentlemen if that doesn&#39;t happen if God doesn&#39;t infiltrate and speak through Gamel at that moment the disciples are likely in jail and most of the New Testament might not have ever been written it is incredible how God uses unbelievers to protect Believers all right so then in chapter six we&#39;ve got the seven God uh in in impresses upon the disciples that they need to be about what the father&#39;s business of prayer and Ministry not waiting on tables so they come up with seven deacons and those deacons then are there to help serve the widows the orphans make sure everybody has the daily distribution of food so that the disciples can focus on the most important thing which is prayer and Ministry can I ask you a question my friends if we&#39;re to be like the disciples and we want the power of God how much time do we devote to prayer and Ministry now most of us you&#39;re out there you&#39;re not in full-time Ministry like I am and you are in full-time Ministry if you&#39;re supporting this ministry uh if you&#39;re supporting this ministry financially and through your prayers you&#39;re in full-time Ministry with us that&#39;s the incredible part you&#39;re paying it forward for other people to be in full-time Ministry for you on your behalf that&#39;s part of your calling right but if you&#39;re out there you&#39;re working in the civilian world how in the world can you make a difference in Ministry if you&#39;re not devoting yourself to prayer you know I remember when I was in a prison cell and I was reading uh God had sent me this little book by a rabbi from the 1940s and he had this incredible saying in there that I wrote down he said the power of God can only come through two different things prayer or pain it&#39;s up to us which one we choose and I&#39;ll never forget that my friends that power only comes through prayer or through pain and most of us unfortunately choose pain because we don&#39;t choose enough prayer so I encourage you right now if you don&#39;t get anything else out of this broadcast today I encourage you to take the time to pray and increase it daily so put in the comments right now make a commitment to pray say I&#39;m going to make a commitment to pray every day prayer is what empowers you say that with me will you prayer is your power put that in the comments prayer is my power it is there&#39;s nothing else outside of the prayer that that the apostles did that gave them the power to minister the power of God flows through the pipe of prayer amen all right so watch this one of the deacons his name was step and it says this in verse 8 Steven full of faith and power did great wonders and signs among the people then there arose from what was called the synagogue of the Fred men disputing with stepen and they were not able to resist the wisdom and the Spirit by what he spoke ladies and gentlemen the power of God flows through your tongue in the spirit when you&#39;re in obedience and no one will be able to dispute what you say when the spirit of God comes over you they secretly induce men to lie to make up all kinds of stuff to slander him and they end up uh killing him they end up stoning him so he&#39;s the first person to be killed right uh of the disciples is Stephen and he&#39;s not even an apostle he&#39;s a deacon my friends this is amazing they they literally said hey we need seven deacons uh to take over the administer the ministering of the of the of the widows and the orphans and the daily distribution of the food and Stephen ends up being as powerful as the apostles he&#39;s doing signs and wonders and miraculous things so much so the Sadducees wanted to kill him and they did it through slander have you ever been gossiped about have you ever been slandered have you ever slandered someone else have you ever said something negative about someone else&#39;s reputation behind their backs when you didn&#39;t even know all the facts or maybe that you did slander destroys and kills when you slander when you make things up or when you pass on information that you don&#39;t know to be true or you pass on negative information that makes someone else look bad do you know what you&#39;re doing you&#39;re taking on the sin of ham exposing someone for their sin maybe they are guilty but you&#39;re exposing them and that carries a major penalty uh in the scriptures go back and read what happened in Genesis to H and his children the curse That Came Upon them and you&#39;re also taking on the position of the Sadducees and the Pharisees these brood of vipers that were just literally slandering people destroying end up killing Stephen and you know what it was out of jealousy do you know that where most gossip and most slander comes from is jealousy people are so insecure in their walk with God they can&#39;t handle it when someone else is Anointed they can&#39;t handle it when someone else is successful they can&#39;t handle when someone else you know got a better job or got a pay raise and so instead of congratulating them and truly sincerely being excited for them they get jealous oh he didn&#39;t deserve that and they begin the process of the Venom moving into other people biting people with their own Venom of jealousy there&#39;s nothing that will kill power of God faster in your life than jealousy and there there&#39;s nothing that God will he will remove there&#39;s nothing that will stop him from removing the anointing from your life faster than not supporting someone else in the ministry of the word even if you disagree you don&#39;t have to agree but you don&#39;t slander you don&#39;t gossip you don&#39;t poke fun at we simply allow God to be God Amen you do what God has put in your heart to do let each and every one of us have the instrument of ministry where we do our part there&#39;s leaders of tens there&#39;s leaders of 50s and there&#39;s leaders of tens of thousands the one that is has been anointed for 50 should do his job and not be jealous of the one that God has given 10,000 because judgment comes down harder on the one that is leading 10,000 than the one is over 50 we&#39;re all the same at the cross amen we&#39;re all serving the same King play for an audience of one and God will promote you all right moving into chapter 7 and then we will finish up if we can get if we can get that far all right is that he begins to go through Stephen addresses the call of Abraham is what this uh chapter is titled and and let&#39;s move into it he starts going through the entire message from the beginning of time all the way through Egypt starts talking about how God delivered them from E from Egypt through Moses and that Moses uh in verse 25 it says for he supposed that his Brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand but they did not understand in other words Moses is going back to the Israelites and he&#39;s saying hey uh why uh you know are you guys fighting among one another and they said who are you are are are you going to kill us like you did the Egyptian yesterday and Moses is freaking out because he is totally believing that that they are going uh that that they&#39;re going to listen listen to him and that&#39;s why he says he supposed that his Brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand but they did not understand in the same way okay uh that&#39;s what&#39;s going on both in this first century and what&#39;s going on today Brethren is fighting Brethren and we don&#39;t understand that God is the deliverer of all we don&#39;t need to be fighting one another you know one of the greatest uh arrows that the enemy has in Atheism in in paganism and the Gentile non-believing world today is they see so many religious people so many Christians fighting one another it didn&#39;t say you know you will know they are Christians by how much they fight no they&#39;ll know their Christians by their love is how it&#39;s supposed to go it&#39;s our love for one another that&#39;s what attracts them because the world is good at hate the world is good at fighting we are supposed to be known by our love amen all right and so he goes through all of this and then in verse 35 he says this this Moses whom they rejected saying who made you ruler and a judge is the one God sent to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the Angel who appeared to him in the bush he brought them out after he had shown wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for 40 years steeve is making this incredible connection that just like Moses was rejected by the brothers that were fighting the two brothers that were fighting there are two houses in the first century there is the house of shemai there&#39;s the house of alel they hated each other and all they did was fight and in the same way Moses came uh to these two brothers that were fighting that that uh United under to get rid of Moses in the same way he says Yeshua is your Moses and he came to you as you guys are fighting and you both rejected him and you killed him even though you hate each other you had no idea that you were standing before your deliverer when you killed him and they ran Yeshua off just like they ran Moses off and he went on to say y&#39;all killed the prophets too everybody that came to you from God you spit in their face and you killed them and you rebelled against God in the process and that&#39;s why he says in verse 44 and we&#39;re close to closing with this our fathers had the Tabernacle of witness in the wilderness as he appointed instructing Moses to make it according to the pattern that he had seen which our fathers have received it in turn also brought with Joshua into the land possessed by the Gentiles whom God drove out before the face of our fathers until the days of David who found favor before God and asked to find a dwelling for the god of Jacob but Solomon was the one that built him a house however the most high does not dwell in temples made with hands as the prophet says Heaven is my Throne Earth is my foot stol what house will you build for me says the Lord or what is the place of my rest has my hand not made all of these things my friends Stephen just like Peter is really upsetting these Sadducees and Pharisees because what&#39;s going on is he&#39;s simply saying that all the way I&#39;m showing you guys from the very beginning you&#39;ve been rebellious from the very beginning we&#39;ve rejected prophets from God and God himself said that he does not dwell in temples now guys this is a very big statement that he&#39;s making why they&#39;re looking at the temple the Sadducees are the ones that are in charge of the temple remember these are the aristocrats that are so proud of their Temple and here Stephen is saying um yeah God doesn&#39;t dwell in there anymore he never wanted to dwell in a temple we are the temple imagine what these Sadducees are thinking and the Pharisees right behind them who also love the temple they&#39;re just not in control of it and and these disciples are saying um by the way everything y&#39;all are doing there is invalid God is not concerned about living in there he never was he wants to live here can I ask you a question is your house worthy of living in you know in my house my wife loves to have the house clean and if there&#39;s one thing that&#39;ll aggravate her to high heaven is when I invite someone over to the house and don&#39;t tell her and it&#39;s not totally clean right if any of you have a spouse out there that&#39;s like that I don&#39;t blame you I don&#39;t blame her but guys from we don&#39;t really care I don&#39;t really care if my house is clean necessarily or or not I I go to someone else&#39;s house I don&#39;t ever pay attention whether it&#39;s clean or not I&#39;m not there to see the house I&#39;m there to see the person but my wife&#39;s got a great Point she wants the house to be clean if someone&#39;s going to be invited in if Yeshua is knocking at the door of your heart is your house clean for him to live in because he cannot live in an unclean house an unclean environment this is why the enemy introduced sin it&#39;s to defile the house because in the defiling of the house look he&#39;s not he doesn&#39;t really care about you he just doesn&#39;t want the power and the Holy Spirit to reside in you and he knows how God&#39;s science Works he knows that God will not dwell in a defiled environment that&#39;s why it matters where you go it matters who you go with it matters what comes out of your mouth whether it&#39;s salt water or fresh water it matters what you think it matters what you watch it matters what you listen to every sense that God gave you it is is is like a pipe like a like a like a hose that is is sucking up its environment and whatever is it it is touching it is bringing into your temple and either it is cleansing it with the word of God and you&#39;re around righteousness look you&#39;ll be the average of the five people that you hang around the most is that a holy environment for the spirit of God to live in we need to make sure our house is clean ladies and gentlemen and that&#39;s what Stephen is saying we&#39;re the temple so it doesn&#39;t matter what you say it matters what you do and it matters how you live your life and how you keep the Torah the instruction manual of God like like Jesus said he said I didn&#39;t come to to destroy the law I came to to bring it more meaning which is what the word PLU means to to fill it up to to fulfill it and anyone that teaches at the the law of God has done away with be least in my kingdom because you love me you keep my Commandments 1 John 5:3 and my Commandments are not burdensome it&#39;s their Commandments that they added to it that&#39;s so burdensome it&#39;s their traditions and doctrines that are choking out my word not my word I am the word made flesh take my yoke upon you and you will have life and at the end he literally says this you stiff necked look at this no wonder they killed him he says you stiff necked and uncircumcised and heart and ears you always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did so do you which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute and they killed those who foretold the coming of the just one and of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it oh my goodness and when they heard this they were cut to the heart they na ashed at him they did not want to hear that ladies and gentlemen there is nothing more upset than a Pharisee that just got dogged on by a fisherman or an uneducated man uh such as Stephen and they were angry and they went to kill him they cast him out of the city and stoned him and the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of the young man named Saul this is critical and we&#39;re going to end with this the end of chapter 7 introduces the next Apostle the Apostle Paul and so we&#39;ll say this I&#39;m going to save this for next week but I am going to dispel in the first five minutes one of the biggest wives tales that has ever pervaded the Christian church and that&#39;s that God&#39;s that God changed Saul&#39;s name to Paul we&#39;re going to talk about that next week but in the meantime the clothes of those that were stoning even they put them at the feet of Saul Saul was one of the guards that were part of the uh the temple guards he was part of the temple uh Army the police the Temple Police they knew they didn&#39;t want to get their hands all dirty their robes tore bloody so they took them off and they put them at the feet of a police officer that they knew would would protect them so Saul is introduced for the first time in the Bible and he is watching stepen get stoned does nothing protecting the robes now why are the robes so important because robes create status the robe all right that&#39;s why Bible talks about the you were taking off your robes your filthy robes and giving Robes of righteousness so robes were a status symbol based on what they were wearing at the time what they were made of showed your status so everyone is taking their status and putting them at the feet of Paul and what&#39;s he going to do with this is he watches them rip step&#39;s status away and God is going to call this young man from looking and destroying the status and authority of one of God&#39;s kids and he&#39;s going to force Saul to now be the opposite is to take everyone&#39;s status that is in the status of the enemy and drobe them and put them at the feet of the Messiah Saul his job right here is called the law first precedent in biblical hermeneutics or biblical laws of interpretation is we see that Saul&#39;s real goal and and Authority is taking the robes the authority and the status of people and putting them on the ground in front of real author Authority that&#39;s what he&#39;s going to do for the rest of his mission is because he took the authority and the status of Step he is now going to be in charge of taking everyone else&#39;s fleshly Authority fleshly uh uh status he&#39;s going to derobe them through his articulation and demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit and he&#39;s going to bring them to a place of the Cross and he&#39;s going to help them lay their robes down so they can be given new Robes of righteousness my friends this we&#39;ve come to the end of this broadcast but I want you to catch that the shift is beginning to happen and it happens Ironically in chapter 7 because number seven is perfection we&#39;re perfecting and coming to a completion of the storyline of Peter and we&#39;re going to pick up in chapter 8 where this storyline of Saul is introduced or Paul is introduced and what happens from here is this dynamic duo begin as the first half of Acts is all about Peter and the second half is going to be all about Paul this transition is going to be happening right now moving into chapter eight next week as eight is the Hebrew number of new beginnings so if you need a new beginning then here&#39;s your answer take your robe off your comfortable status your comfortable Authority and throw it down like King David did and dance naked before your God don&#39;t be ashamed of dering before men and that same Rabbi that I read in prison that said you can only receive the power of God two ways through prayer or through pain and you get to choose he also said this that the Holy Spirit only clothes the naked those that he sees have dered themselves of their own flesh and carnal desires if he looks and the Holy Spirit sees because he&#39;s he&#39;s masculine he&#39;s the bridegroom and he&#39;s going to clothe his bride so when you hold the masculine perspective of robing yourself with your own mind will and emotions and doing what you want to do and I&#39;ll be darn I&#39;m going to win this argument I&#39;m going to do this and I&#39;m going to do that then the Holy Spirit wants none of that then you are uh you&#39;re not his bride that&#39;s a masculine attribute the feminine attribute is the is the character istic of servanthood of laying down what you want and and choosing to be naked before God it&#39;s at that moment where God chooses to clothe you in his glory those who are least will become greatest and those who are greatest wearing the robe will become the least and my friends I&#39;ll leave you with the story of ancient Israel all the way back to the time of Joseph Joseph was given a status through his robe of many colors he wore it proudly his father gave it to him but his brothers despised him out of what jealousy like we talked about earlier jealously led to slander which led to Joseph&#39;s being thr Joseph being thrown into a well and then eventually into prison and what was the first step to his glorification deing destroying the robe of Pride the robe of AR own mind will and emotions our soul and giving our soul over to God that&#39;s the moment that Joseph began when he B nobody is when he began to be somebody I know that feeling deeply of becoming having to be somebody when our ministry was at the height in 2015 then becoming nobody thrown into a prison cell losing my robe losing my reputation losing my dignity crying my eyes out every single night and having to trust that God knew what he was doing as he dered me of my own pride and then robed me in the righteousness and the glory of Christ my friends never despise your low position it&#39;s the very place where God places his robe of Glory on you don&#39;t look for status and fame and wealth rather look to be glorified in Christ and that means the death of yourself my friends thank you for spending time with us here at passion for truth in this broadcast please share this subscribe to this channel if you&#39;re not already and consider partnering with us being part of the solution of paying it forward so we can bring this message to every tribe and tongue we need your help and we&#39;re so grateful if you are are our prayer partner our financial partner if you partner with us thank you so much for doing that less than 1% of those that that are ministered to through this ministry actually say thank you by joining with us in a very very small way financially so thank you for that and thank you for being a partner with God and in spreading this message sharing it means more to us than anything I can promise you that in the meantime I want you to love God with all your heart mind soul and strength drobe yourself and let the holy Spirit do what he does miraculously raise you from the dead and give you the power over life and death itself my friends I&#39;m Jim Staley with passion for Truth Ministries and I&#39;ll see you in the next video sh

Transcript for:Passion For Truth Ministries

Transcript for:
Passion For Truth Ministries