filled - again Acts 4-5

Title: “After Pentecost” {The Spirit outpoured again}

Text: Acts 3-4

Subject: how does the Holy Spirit speak and act after the events of Pentecost?

Complement: he keeps on filling his people for witness

When the sixty-six-year-old Methodist leader Thomas Coke (1747–1814) announced that he had been called by God to take the gospel to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), people accused him of being senile and of trying to build his personal kingdom. But he persisted and left for Ceylon with a band of young missionaries. He died before he reached our shores. But the young missionaries, inspired by his vision, came and preached the gospel, and people like me are in the kingdom as a fruit of their labors.[1]

1. Acts 2 – 120 are filled with the Holy Spirit.

2. Acts 3- Now a Healing of beggar – parallels Jesus healings

3. Peter’s second sermon – he again points to Jesus.

a. By faith is Jesus name

b. Repent then and turn to God

c. That times of refreshing may come (3:19)

d. Jesus is the appointed and long-awaited messiah.

e. Verse 21: “heaven must receive him until the times come for God to restore all things as he promised long ago.” (________?)

i. Moses spoke of Jesus

ii. Samuel

iii. Abraham

f. God sent him first to you (3:26)

4. Priests, temple guard, Sadducees are “greatly disturbed” (annoyed): 4:1-3

a. Usurping their role & authority

b. Consider their message blasphemy – proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus – “and the dead” (believers)!

c. Another 2000 converts! (4:4)

d. Peter and John are thrown in jail for preaching a risen Jesus: 4:2-3

e. The believers now grow to 5000 (4:4)

5. Interrogation – (Sanhedrin)

a. The Sanhedrin (“council”) was the senate and supreme court of the nation,

i. had jurisdiction in all noncapital cases

ii. also advised the Roman governors in capital cases

iii. the high priest was president, and seventy others, made up of members of the high priestly families, a few influential persons of various formal ideological allegiances or backgrounds within Judaism, and professional experts in the law drawn from both Sadducean and Pharisaic ranks. [2]

iv. rulers, elders, teachers, high priest (Annas), Caiaphas, John(?), Alexander, - and others of the high priests family.

v. Annas –

Annas, father-in-law of Caiaphas (John 18:13), had been high-priest from AD 6 to 15, and continued to exercise a significant influence over Jewish affairs.

“The family business”

Annas and Caiaphas may have sympathized with the Sadducees, a religious movement in Judaea that found most of its members among the wealthy Jewish elite.

The long, 18-year tenure of Caiaphas suggests he had a good relationship with Rome

vi. Caiaphas –

Jesus was interrogated by this same Sanhedrin!

Matthew 26:57

Jesus Before the Sanhedrin

Those who had arrested Jesus took him to Caiaphas the high priest, where the teachers of the law and the elders had assembled.

Luke 3:2

during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

John 11:49

Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all!

John 18:13

and brought him first to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas,the high priest that year.

b. A Crisis for established Judaism.

c. They are upset…threatened…confused… blind. “greatly disturbed”

d. Q: how did you do this? (4:7)

6. Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit 4:8ff

a. Stott - “freshly filled”

b. The use of the aorist passive (plēstheis, “filled”) in the expression “filled with the Holy Spirit” denotes a special moment of inspiration that complements and brings to a functional focus the presence in every believer’s life of the person and ministry of God’s Spirit.[3]

c. Peter was filled in Acts 2 – he’s now filled again.

d. Remember Jesus words: the Holy Spirit will give you words: But before all this, they will lay hands on you and persecute you. They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict (Luke 21:12–15).[4]

e. 7:55 “then Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit…”

f. 13:9 “then Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit…said, you are a child of the devil…

i. Paul was filled with the Spirit in Acts 9:17

g. 13:52 “the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.”

h. Eph 8:18 “do not be drunk with wine – but be filled with the Spirit.”

i. Peter – we are being questioned by an act of kindness

j. “know this  it is by the name of Jesus …raised from the dead… Jesus is *”the (rejected) cornerstone” (4:11)

k. Salvation is found in no one else!!! (4:12)

7. Reaction  astonishment! (4:13)

a. And speechless – since the man was standing there healed!

b. Conference – what should we do?... we must stop this thing from spreading~!

c. Verdictstop!

d. Reaction stop preaching this!

8. Peter & John  “we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard”

9. Report and prayer: 4:23 ff

a. Most significant is the fact that these early Christians were not praying for relief from oppression or judgment on their oppressors but for enablement “to speak your word with great boldness” amid oppressions and for God to act in mighty power “through the name of your holy servant Jesus” (v. 30). Their concern was for God’s word to go forth and for Christ’s name to be glorified, leaving to God himself their own circumstances. With such prayer surely God is well pleased. Luke has evidently taken pains to give us this prayer so that it might serve as something of a pattern to be followed in our own praying.[5]

b. Sovereign Lord…

c. Psalm 2 – messianic psalm

d. Enable your servants to speak with boldness

e. Stretch out your hand and heal… signs/wonders though you r holy servant Jesus.

10.After they prayed (v. 31) the place was shaken…all filled with the Holy Spirit… and spoke the word of God boldly!

a. As a sign of God’s approval, Luke tells us that “the place where they were meeting was shaken” (cf. Exod 19:18; Isa 6:4) and “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (cf. comments on v.8). And with such motivation and divine enablement, their prayer was answered; and they “spoke the word of God boldly” (parrēsias, “with confidence,” “forthrightly”).[6]

11. Summary

a. Filled – acts 2

b. Filled – acts 4:7

c. Filled – acts 4:31

[1]Ajith Fernando, Acts, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), 159–160. [2]Richard N. Longenecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: John and Acts, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), 302–303. [3]Richard N. Longenecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: John and Acts, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), 304. [4]Richard N. Longenecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: John and Acts, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), 303. [5]Richard N. Longenecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: John and Acts, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), 309. [6]Richard N. Longenecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: John and Acts, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), 309.