Christian confidence is tied to one’s constant and consistent association with Jesus. Peter and John were standing trial before 71 learned [...]]]> “Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John, and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were marveling, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).

Christian confidence is tied to one’s constant and consistent association with Jesus. Peter and John were standing trial before 71 learned and respected men.  This council, known as the Sanhedrin, was Judaism’s Supreme Court.  They represented the ruling families, the religious leaders and the Jewish teachers.  They had complete authority in all matters except those involving the death penalty.  If there existed any group that would have made the normal Jew cower, this was it.  Yet Luke reports that even the council of the Sanhedrin “observed the confidence of Peter and John.”

Christians maintaining close fellowship with Christ are enabled to refuse man’s tendency to compromise the word of the cross.  The allure of the world is strong.  The enticement to dilute and compromise God’s message to remove the offense of the cross remains a constant temptation.  One must sustain closeness to the Christ in order to deny the desire to be pleasing to man rather than remaining faithful to God.

Peter and John’s boldness was observable even to natural men – they were not merely defenders, but aggressors.  Does your boldness possess their measure of transparency?  

Luke makes mention of the fact that Peter and John “were uneducated and untrained men.”  These two apostles were fishermen, not theologians!  In spite of their educational inadequacies, they were powerful, world-changing witnesses for your Lord.  

Would a seminary education assist in Jesus’ ministry of reconciling His people to Himself?  Surely it would.  Nevertheless, God has not called everyone to go to seminary.  He has called every child of His to witness to Him and to His only begotten Son (Mt. 5:14, 16; 28:18ff.).  God provisions all He commissions.

Luke reports that even the Sanhedrin “were marveling.”  They could not believe what they were hearing from the lips of these two crusty fishermen (who were trained by Jesus!).  They could not conceive of the boldness and confidence two unsophisticated disciples were exhibiting before the most august body in all of Judaism.  Who did they think they were?  Perhaps the more poignant question was: who did they think Jesus was!

At the end of this verse even the rulers of the Jews began to wrestle with the source of the strength of character they witnessed in Peter and John.  They recognized “them as having been with Jesus.”  Their power was the outpouring of a special relationship.  This same relationship is made available to all the children of God.  It is one of the sweetest fruits of the new birth.  

If you have been born of the Spirit, you too can embrace the apostles’ confidence.  With all your heart inhabit the special relationship you possess with your Lord Jesus.

Christianity is not a philosophy; it is an eternal revelation and an everlasting relationship.  Biblical Christianity demands that you consider God’s love, patience and tenderness, and at the same time, His justice, sovereignty, wrath and His eternity.  The Holy Spirit is the pursuer chasing [...]]]> “The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch” (Acts 11:26).  

Christianity is not a philosophy; it is an eternal revelation and an everlasting relationship.  Biblical Christianity demands that you consider God’s love, patience and tenderness, and at the same time, His justice, sovereignty, wrath and His eternity.  The Holy Spirit is the pursuer chasing the converted and unconverted into every closet of his carnal confidence.  

Be in no hurry to congratulate the new convert until his conversion is proven.  He is to submit to your Lord Christ in all His offices: Prophet, Priest and King.  Divine revelation changes the nature of the unconverted soul and continually transforms the inclinations of the converted soul.

The Christian consistently refuses to make decisions that are best just for this moment.  You can be enlightened without being converted (Heb. 6:1ff.).  Corruptions will in the end prevail over convictions, for disguised corruptions are the fruit of common grace rather than saving grace.  The non-saving enlightenment, when thoroughly tested, will result in God’s truth being neglected, the Holy Spirit’s conviction being scorned and finally the Lordship of Christ being forsaken.  Be ever mindful that God’s gospel is not only beyond mere human reason; it is contrary to man’s depraved, finite, intellectual pride.

The commonness of sin miscarries your awareness of the corruptness of sin. Churches teem with formal professors of faith, baptized heathens.  They profess conversion, yet their souls linger in Sodom with the heart of Lot’s wife. One must close with Christ to be a Christian.  Petition God to break hearts, convict of sin and cause nausea for one’s own self-righteousness.

You are by eternal election God’s (II Thess. 2:13; Acts 13:48).  You should be living your life as the dying saint, John Preston, who upon his deathbed said, “I shall change my place, but I shall not change my company.”  He knew he always stood in God’s company.

A biblically tutored conscience is the voice of God in the heart of man.  Your conscience is a most sensitive organ.  The most excellent William Perkins likened the conscience to the eye of the soul.  He perceived that your conscience becomes blinded if it is often wounded. Mr. Perkins declared the Bible to be a charter of one’s Christian liberty, not of one’s bondage.  

The more you advance in Christ’s Christianity, the greater freedom you will experience. Nevertheless, immaturity brings a famine of godliness and freedom.  You are different from the heathen because you have His regenerating grace whereas the heathen only has His restraining grace (Isa. 5:20).  

If you were in Antioch in the 1st Century AD, would you have been called “Christian?”

“Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; and you shall find rest for your souls” (Jer. 6:16).

Your society has become increasingly transient.  Even within a given locale, there is movement concerning people’s professions, places of employment and even their church.  Years ago, children just joined their parents’ church and stayed there the remainder of their lives.  In present days, [...]]]> “And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching…” (Acts 2:42).

Your society has become increasingly transient.  Even within a given locale, there is movement concerning people’s professions, places of employment and even their church.  Years ago, children just joined their parents’ church and stayed there the remainder of their lives.  In present days, the Holy Spirit is moving in the hearts of His beloved to encourage them to become involved in those churches that will best facilitate their Christian maturity.  

One of the questions frequently asked by Christians desiring to grow in the Lord is: “How/When do I know the time has come for me to leave the church I am attending?”
Though the panoply of answers to this matter is varied, one of the telltale signs of needing to exodus the church you are attending is when you are placed in the position of “outsourcing” the biblical education you, your spouse or your children need.  When your church fails to provide the biblical diet appropriate to your advance in the Lord, you should have already left.

Leaving the church of your parents, your youth, your baptism, your marriage or of your friends is not an indictment of that church.  The Lord leads His people to go wherever He directs in order for them and their families to capture the fullness of His Spirit.  No existing visible church can minister to all people with the same efficacy.

When someone recognizes they are not receiving from their church the nourishment they need, why do they hesitate to leave?  The reasons are legion:

• I’m teaching Sunday school or youth at my church and must stay for them
• I sing in the choir
• I have talked with my children and they want to stay at the church
• I love my spouse and he/she is not where I am spiritually, so we need to stay
• I’m in a good Sunday school class where I know everyone
• I like the way it ministers to my felt needs
• I’m in a position of leadership; I’ve invested so much and the church needs me
• I’ve always gone to this church and my family and friends are here
• I love the architecture, church yard and grave yard (my family is buried here)
• I like the preacher and many others in leadership
• I appreciate the number of business associates and social friends at my church
• I like the missions emphasis, the music and the fellowship
• I get to evangelize lost people attending my church
• I can turn the church around so that it will offer more solid teaching
• I like the programs at my church

Do you notice the prominence of the perpendicular pronoun “I” in each response?  How would Christ respond to each of your feeble protests?  Are you going to church for you, your spouse and your children, or for Jesus?  Could your selfishness be imprisoning your entire family?

Perhaps you need to give up living in yesterday. Perhaps you need to surrender your opinions to the mind of Christ. Perhaps your worship of your church has supplanted your worship of Jesus to the extent that your church has become a stone of stumbling between you and Christ.  

You are charged with the responsibility to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (II Pe. 3:18).  Is your church aiding in that growth or is another church providing the more significant assist?  God says, “Lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1).  Could your church be an encumbrance not because anything is wrong with your church, but because you need to be in another place at this season for you to capture all the Lord has for you?

Distinguish the riches of true Christianity from the container of your comfortable church.  If you are outsourcing your growth in Christ through His Word such that a marketplace Bible study, retreats, special services elsewhere, another preacher’s audios or another church through its teaching is providing your biblical meat, you need to change churches.  Now you must pray for the courage to do what you know you should have already done, “for whatever is not of faith is sin” (Ro. 14:23).

A story is told of a lady touring Westminster Abbey whose tour guide repeatedly advised her of the significance of the people buried in the hallowed ground of that church.  As the unimpressed lady walked past [...]]]> “And great fear came upon the whole church; and upon all who heard of these things” (Acts 5:11).

A story is told of a lady touring Westminster Abbey whose tour guide repeatedly advised her of the significance of the people buried in the hallowed ground of that church.  As the unimpressed lady walked past the graves of Britain’s most courageous prime ministers, learned playwrights and literary geniuses, she asked, “Has anyone been saved in this church lately?”  Perhaps you should ask that question of the principals at your church.

God commands Christians to live their lives under the authority of an eternal standard.  Christians practice a lifestyle reflecting an ethical and moral pattern exceeding the world’s standard (II Ti. 2:19).  The social and economic commerce of the Christian is never ordinary, for it is never separated from his spiritual commitments to the lordship of Christ.  

God desires a pure church unmixed with the world’s hypocritical models (I Cor. 5:5; 11:32).  Nevertheless, many within the church are but temporaries enjoying the outward privileges of being churched though failing to possess title to an eternal pew.  God shakes the church tree thereby identifying the temporaries.  

God is going to test every person within the church.  Why?  “For God has come in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin” (Ex. 20:20).  When you are tested, does the outcome of your testing reveal:
•    That you are a member of the eternal church as well as the temporal church?  
•    That your church membership is as well documented in heaven as it is on earth?  

The account of Ananias and Sapphira was written as an example to instruct you in the ways of your Lord (I Cor. 10:6, 11).  God intended on that occasion to bring the whole church to fear Him – He accomplished His purpose.  The church fearing the Lord is a nursery for revival, a vehicle for lifestyle transformation and a mini-culture that schools its members on how heavenlings are to conduct themselves during their tenure on earth.  

The church has experienced a Reformation (1500s), Great Awakenings (1720s – 1740s as well as in the early 1800s) and a Prayer Revival (1858-59).  Nonetheless, these extraordinary outpourings of the Holy Spirit upon the people of God shall not occur again unless great fear comes upon the whole church.

Christians should be praying daily for their earthly interests to abate, for businessmen to be more willing to nurture their souls rather than their businesses and for the church to be awakened to the holiness of God, the reality of sin and the truth that at every moment every churchman stands coram Deo – before the face of God (II Cor. 7:1).

Perhaps the problem is that the church does not teach the fear of the Lord (Ps. 34:11).  God says, “Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?  What God is there who can deliver you out of My hands?” (Jer. 23:24; Dan. 3:15).

Sinful man condemned Jesus to death.  God reversed the lower court’s declaration by handing down a verdict unseating man’s condemnatory decree.  God’s ruling was that there would “be [...]]]> “God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:24).

Sinful man condemned Jesus to death.  God reversed the lower court’s declaration by handing down a verdict unseating man’s condemnatory decree.  God’s ruling was that there would “be no end to the increase of His government or of peace” (Isa. 9:7).  God effectuated His pronouncement by raising Jesus from the dead thereby confirming Jesus’ position in the annals of human history, in the archives of Christian heroes and in the chronicles of transformed lives (Heb. 11).  

Jesus experienced a death that no Christian shall ever suffer because He encountered death without God (Mk. 15:34).  In addition, He died because of the sins of all Christians rather than for His own sins (because He was without sin!).  Man intends to make sin his servant – for sin to minister to his gratification – but sin only serves to kill.  Sin seeks man and expects him to succumb because the pattern of his life has been to acquiesce to sin’s dreadful offerings.    

Death is an agony because it is not natural to man in his innocency.  Man was not designed to die, but man chose to die when he chose to sin (Gen. 2:17).  God put an end to the agony of death for His precious ones by resurrecting Jesus from the dead.  If Jesus was only a man He could not have died for you.  Moreover, if He was only God, He could not have died for you – He had to be thoroughly both.  Because Jesus was the quintessential God-man (theanthropos), it was impossible for death to hold Him.  The reason the devil never wants you to discover the truth underlying Jesus’ death and resurrection is because through death, Jesus did “render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14).  

Jesus could not be held in the power of death because He had never yielded Himself to the slightest sin.  When His eternal labor of paying for the sins of God’s people had been fulfilled, He could declare, “It is finished!” (Jn. 19:30).  He paid the sin-debt of God’s beloved in full thereby satisfying God holy Law.  Since He was your high priest “forever according to the order of Melchizedek,” death had no authority over Him (Heb. 5:6).

Death was to Christ as the seven fresh cords were to Samson (Judg. 16:9).  The advantage for those “in Christ Jesus” is that you too shall enjoy an eternal resurrection from the dead (Eph. 1:1-14).  Jesus is the first fruit of those in Christ Jesus, “for He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet.  The last enemy that will be abolished is death” (I Cor. 15:25f.).  

When you receive the Victim of your sin, you have received the victory over death.  Thomas Watson said, “We are more sure to arise out of our graves than out of our beds.”  You need not be a casualty of sin.  You can be more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus.  It is an eternal truth that Christ rose from the dead to save those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.  Is your name carved in His book?

“God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:24).

Sinful man condemned Jesus to death.  God reversed the lower court’s declaration by handing down a verdict unseating man’s condemnatory [...]]]> Print this devotional

“God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:24).

Sinful man condemned Jesus to death.  God reversed the lower court’s declaration by handing down a verdict unseating man’s condemnatory decree.  God’s ruling was that there would “be no end to the increase of His government or of peace” (Isa. 9:7).  God effectuated His pronouncement by raising Jesus from the dead thereby confirming Jesus’ position in the annals of human history, in the archives of Christian heroes and in the chronicles of transformed lives (Heb. 11).

Jesus experienced a death that no Christian shall ever suffer because He encountered death without God (Mk. 15:34).  In addition, He died because of the sins of all Christians rather than for His own sins (because He was without sin!).  Man intends to make sin his servant – for sin to minister to his gratification – but sin only serves to kill.  Sin seeks man and expects him to succumb because the pattern of his life has been to acquiesce to sin’s dreadful offerings.

Death is an agony because it is not natural to man in his innocency.  Man was not designed to die, but man chose to die when he chose to sin (Gen. 2:17).  God put an end to the agony of death for His precious ones by resurrecting Jesus from the dead.  If Jesus was only a man He could not have died for you.  And, if He was only God, He could not have died for you – He had to be thoroughly both.  Because Jesus was the quintessential God-man (Theanthropos), it was impossible for death to hold Him.  The reason the devil never wants you to discover truth underlying Jesus’ death and resurrection is because through death He did “render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14).

Jesus could not be held in the power of death because He had never yielded Himself to the slightest sin.  When His eternal labor of paying for the sins of God’s people had been fulfilled, He could declare, “It is finished!” (Jn. 19:30).  He paid the sin-debt of God’s beloved in full thereby satisfying God holy Law.  Since He was your high priest “forever according to the order of Melchizedek,” death had no authority over Him (Heb. 5:6).

Death was to Christ as the seven fresh cords were to Samson (Judg. 16:9).  The advantage for those “in Christ Jesus” is that you too shall enjoy an eternal resurrection from the dead (Eph. 1:1-14).  Jesus is the first fruit of those in Christ Jesus, “for He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet.  The last enemy that will be abolished is death” (I Cor. 15:25f.).

When you receive the Victim of your sin, you have received the victory over death.  Thomas Watson said, “We are more sure to arise out of our graves than out of our beds.”  You need not be a casualty of sin.  You can be more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus.  It is an eternal truth that Christ rose from the dead to save those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.  Is your name carved in His book?