The Power of Jesus

Intro

Missionary E. P. Scott was ministering in India in the mid 1800’s when he felt called to go out into a less-known region of India after meeting a strange man from the area. An area that had been unreached by the gospel.

Against the advice of his peers, E.P. Scott answered the call, and headed off to this man’s village. After two days of travel, he suddenly found himself surrounded by an armed war party

With spears pointed at him, at a loss of what to do, he calmly knelt down, took out his violin, and began to play and sing, “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” Understandably afraid, he continued to sing, with his eyes closed, through the third verse.

Finally, he opened his eyes and was astonished to see the spears had been dropped and the men were crying. On that day in India, it was again rediscovered that there is power in the name of Jesus.

As a result he was allowed to go to their village where he ministered for two years and saw many others come to Christ.

We are in our second week of our post-pentecost series Proclaim. And in this series we are looking at the proclamations of the early church. Proclamations that were made by people who were not only followers of Jesus, but by followers who were filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and beyond.

These proclamations are important...

first and foremost because they are found in God’s Word, so they are inspired and useful for living out our daily faith.

But secondly, they provide us with a historical window through which we can glimpse how the first church shared the good news, and what that good news was.

Today’s message comes shortly after the sermon that Peter proclaimed on Pentecost; the sermon we walked through last week. And this is the point of the proclamation that Peter makes in this second sermon of the first church, and it is that the early believers proclaimed the power of Jesus and pointed people to his name and his name alone

It sounds simple doesn’t it? Yeah of course I believe there is power in the name of Jesus, I’m a Christian. But here is the thing, if we truly believed in the power of Jesus name then why is it that we run to every other thing we can think of when we need power to overcome the obstacles we face in this life.

Yeah we might say a prayer and look up a quick encouraging Bible verse but then run to all these other places when the power we need is available to us 24/7, 365.

Yet so often Jesus is the last person we go to when we have exhausted all of the options we thought would give us what we were looking for.

The early Church, they didn’t have anywhere else to turn. They gave it all away to follow after Jesus. And it was in his name and his name alone that they found the power they needed to keep pushing forward.

Power in the Text

After Pentecost things kind of go a little crazy. You had all these Jews from all around in town and they witness these 120 believer get baptized in the Holy Spirit and start speaking in unlearned languages, and if that wasn’t enough. Peter gets up and preaches this message that basically went like this.

Jesus was real, you saw what he could do and the miracles he performed.

You crucified him. Not because he was a great teacher or even a miracle worker but because of who he claimed to be. And that is okay because this had to happen.

God raised him from the dead, we are witnesses of it, therefore he has proven once and for all that he is who he claimed to be and the scriptures back it up.

So repent and turn from your sins and be baptized in his name.

And just like that 3,000 people get saved and word spreads like a wild fire. The city is a buzz with what just happened. Every day people are getting saved and the Church is growing and these spirit-filled believers are demonstrating the power of God through signs and wonders.

In fact in Acts Chapter 3 we see Peter and John heal a man unable to walk and this draws a lot of attention and he begins to preach to the crowd and in Chapter 4 we read...

Acts 4:1-3 NLT While Peter and John were speaking to the people, they were confronted by the priests, the captain of the Temple guard, and some of the Sadducees. 2 These leaders were very disturbed that Peter and John were teaching the people that through Jesus there is a resurrection of the dead. 3 They arrested them and, since it was already evening, put them in jail until morning.

But you know that didn’t hinder what God was doing...

Acts 4:4 NLT 4 But many of the people who heard their message believed it, so the number of men who believed now totaled about 5,000.

And so they go to jail for the night and then we read...

Acts 4:5-7 NLT 5 The next day the council of all the rulers and elders and teachers of religious law met in Jerusalem. 6 Annas the high priest was there, along with Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and other relatives of the high priest. 7 They brought in the two disciples and demanded, “By what power, or in whose name, have you done this?”

So at this point their preaching had been to mostly people in the streets. Average everyday Jews. And I am sure that among those crowds may have been some of the religious leaders, but now Peter and John are standing before an entirely different crowd. This was the Jewish high council. Also known as the Sanhedrin.

This was a 71 member body that ruled the temple in Jerusalem. It was led by the Jewish High Priest. And so now the crowd that Peter and John are standing before have a serious problem with what they are preaching and by extension the miracle they just performed. So they ask, “by whose name or power were you able to heal this man?”

That question is the setup to the proclamation which follows. But Peter doesn’t answer the question immediately; instead he first turns their position upside down by painting them as being opposed to a good deed done for a crippled person.

Acts 4:8-9 NLT 8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers and elders of our people, 9 are we being questioned today because we’ve done a good deed for a crippled man? Do you want to know how he was healed?

He then informs them they did this miracle by the power of the name of Jesus

Acts 4:10 NLT 10 Let me clearly state to all of you and to all the people of Israel that he was healed by the powerful name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, the man you crucified but whom God raised from the dead.

But Peter doesn’t stop there. He declares,

Acts 4:12 NLT 12 There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”

This is a remarkable claim to make to a group of religious experts. Everyone there that day would have known that the Scriptures were clear: only God can save (Isaiah 43:11 NLT 11 I, yes I, am the Lord, and there is no other Savior.) And yet Peter is saying that salvation is found only in the name of Jesus.

This proclamation of Peter focuses on the power of God in Christ. And the Sanhedrin didn’t know what to do with them.

Acts 4:13-15 NLT 13 The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus. 14 But since they could see the man who had been healed standing right there among them, there was nothing the council could say. 15 So they ordered Peter and John out of the council chamber and conferred among themselves.

Peter and John’s presence among them was in itself a demonstration of God’s power for they were just ordinary men with no special training or education. Yet they were proclaiming bold truths.

And they couldn’t really refute what they had witnessed, the man was healed after all. So they tried to convince them to stop preaching in Jesus name and realized fairly quickly that they were never going to go for that so they let them go and began to figure out a way to get rid of them.

Why it Matters

And this really is the power of the Gospel at work. The transformation and calling of ordinary every day sinners to do mighty works for God in the name of Jesus.

But, notice something here. Not once did Peter or John try to convince the Sanhedrin of Jesus’ power. Not once did they try to persuade them to believing in what they were saying.

Instead you see two men who proclaimed the power of the name of Jesus and they let him do the rest.

I think sometimes we forget that there is power in the name of Jesus. We treat the gospel as if it is some sort of thesis that we have to defend or prove to people.

It is as if the Church has turned the gospel into something we are trying to sell. We come up with all these gimmicks and strategies for, if we are honest, trying to sell our faith. To make it attractive enough for people to want to buy in.

That isn’t the gospel. That isn’t what the early Church was proclaiming. They pointed people to Jesus and let him do the rest. They relied on his power to transform hearts and open blind eyes not on whether or not we look the best, sound the best, and provide the most appealing message.

Don’t get me wrong, we want to draw people. But we draw them with the results of the unexplainable peace and transformed lives we now live. Not because our message is super appealing.

Does this sound appealing?

Matthew 24:9 NLT 9 “Then you will be arrested, persecuted, and killed. You will be hated all over the world because you are my followers

1 John 16:33 NLT 33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

1 Peter 4:12-13 NLT 12 Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. 13 Instead, be very glad—for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world.

Matthew 16:24-25 NLT 24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. 25 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.

Need I go on?The gospel is not an appealing call. It is a sacred one. It is one where in you lay down whatever rights you thought you had to yourself in order to be used for something greater than yourself.

And you do this not because it is appealing and comfortable. you do this because you realize that what you may have to lose in this life, pales in comparison to what you stand to gain in the next.

There is power my friends in the name of Jesus. Not you or me or any other person, place, or thing. It is in Jesus and I believe it is high time that the Church remembers that and gets back to proclaiming that truth.