Love of the word of God. This is the book of Acts chapter four, beginning in verse 13 and continuing through verse 22. Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated common men, they were astonished and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another saying, what should we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But in order that it may spread no further amongst the people, maybe we'll warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name. So they called them and they charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge. For we cannot speak of what we have seen or heard. And when they had further threatened them, they let them go finding no way to punish them because the people, for all of them were praising God for what had happened. For the man on whom the sign and healing was performed was more than 40 years old. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you and we pray that you would be gracious to us and merciful in our weaknesses. We pray that you would use this word to transform us into the men and women that we ought to be and that you would order our steps and that we might glorify you. Father, we pray that we would indeed be bold in our witness and our testimony as were Peter and John and the church for that matter that followed them. And Father, I pray that in all of this, that you would use our faith to build your church. So build us up in our faith and call those who do not have faith to faith and repentance and be glorified in everything that we say and do this day. This we pray in Jesus' name, amen. And so what is it about Bible study that you find interesting? I mean, be honest on how you answered that question, because some of you may answer the question, I don't like Bible study. And that would be a legitimate answer, though not a good one. And we may need to have a different conversation in terms of encouraging you to get into the word. But for those of you who do do Bible studies, I mean, what are some of the things that interest you? Could it be lessons about practical living? I mean, we refer to the Bible sometimes as basic instructions before leaving earth. I've used the illustration, there's a gentleman that I knew back in my carpet installation days back in Maryland who had a padding warehouse and his entire employee's manual, he wasn't a Christian, his entire employee's manual though was drawn from the book of Proverbs. He, not as a Christian, but he recognized that there was some wisdom there that could be applied to business. And so he went based on that. It might be the character of God. It might be new things that you discover about God, whether relationally or in terms of who he is personally. Maybe some of the things that God has done, maybe some things that you learn about yourself. or the world that is around us. The thing that I really enjoy about studying the Bible are seeing connections that are made. You know, I read a passage of scripture here, and then I read another passage of scripture there, and I say, oh, wait a minute, this is how they tie together and make a united whole. That's neat to me. And as I was reading through and working through the text for this morning, it struck me about how neatly the sermon that I was asked to preach last week in Kenya fit into the text that we have this week. And I take a step back from that, you know, in terms of, you can count this as a little bit of a covenant connection, but mostly, you know, the last week I spent in Kenya and I had been asked by Bishop Gershon Yerogi to come, this was several years back, to come and preach. the keynote sermon at their 20th anniversary, which happened to be this year. Many of you have met him. We had our Kenyan tea party and things like that as a church. And so he places a lot on the relationship that we have together. And when he asked me to preach the keynote address, basically the sermon for that morning, he said to preach from Luke 19.13, which is the phrase that we know from the King James language, occupy until I come. In context, the passage is about Jesus telling the parable of the ten minas, you know, and the owner is leaving. He's going to assume another kingdom and then he's going to return. Notice the idea and the parable that Jesus is pointing to, him ascending to heaven and returning again. Everything about this parable has to do with what we are doing, you and me, with the gifts that God has given us. And that's how we occupy, or more literally, the Greek actually says, do business. And so Jesus comes again. And so if we kind of think of a timeline from the ascension You know, the beginning of Acts to Jesus' second coming, you know, kind of set one on one side of the church and the other on the other side of the church. Everything about the church age is kind of in the middle of it. You know, somewhere in between those two marker posts. That's the wings of life. That's you and me here at Burry's. That's the Christian church through the ages. And of course, if we're in Africa, we're gonna do a little bit of more interactive response to that. But I'm gonna ask you at least to think through this question, what's your job? You may go, well, I've got, you know what my job is. We talk about, no, no, no, no, no. Not your vocation, but broadly speaking, what is your job as a church together, your body? The answer is to occupy. to occupy until I come. What does occupy mean? Do business. What does it mean to do business? To do business as Jesus would have us do business. How are we doing that? You know, first of all, we could just go, well, okay, am I living my life as Jesus would have me live my life? What does it look like? Well, there's a lot of places you can go, but let's just go where we went the other week. Look at the fruit of the spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. It's do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as yourself. It's do justice, love grace or mercy and walk humbly with your God. Here's an exercise for all of you this afternoon. Go to people that you interact with, your students, your classmates, if you're an employer, your fellow employees, customers with whom you do business, people from which you might purchase from, you go to the store, your spouse, your children, and sit down with them and ask them, do these words describe me? You might be a little bit surprised. You might be surprised at what some of these people say. And if you don't remember all of the fruit of the spirit, it's Galatians 5, verses 22 and 23. And so ask them, what do you think? Do these words describe me? And perhaps where they don't, start working on developing those things out in your life. That starting point in how we're to do business, until Christ comes. We're to do what? Occupy until he comes. And where did that begin? Well, the ascension in terms of the parable that Jesus told. Ascension into heaven, to sit at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. That's Hebrews 1.3. What book do we learn about the ascension? No, the book of Acts. Remember, I play my sermons about a year out. I was asked to preach on Occupy Until I Come two or three years ago. Kind of funny, in God's providence, how all of that kind of works together. And so as we've been looking at the book of Acts, we've been talking about the book of Acts as a book of preaching. Preaching is how Christ builds his church. Remember, faith comes through hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. occupy until I come. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. You'll notice, and I've said this to you before, but you'll notice that it's not by seeing. Our society will tell us that seeing is believing, but that's not what our Bible tells us. Society will say, well, you know, if I could just witness a miracle myself with my own eyes. Folks, your eyes will deceive you. And I'm not just quoting from Star Wars there. Just turn on the TV and watch a magician. Magicians make their living deceiving your eyes. Your eyes are easily deceived. Faith doesn't come by what you see. We're to walk by faith and not by sight. Faith comes by hearing and hearing, not just anything, but hearing through the word of Christ. Occupy until I come. So let's turn to the text, verse 13. They saw boldness in Peter and John. Okay. What did they see? They saw boldness that was there. And I just cringe at the next statement. And I cringe because I was a tradesman for 11 years of my life. And people in our society broadly, and I'm stereotyping a little bit, but broadly people look at people who are tradesmen and say, well, those are uneducated. Baloney, I was a carpet installer with a bachelor's degree in English. It wasn't, had any to do with uneducated, had to do with what God called me to do and equipped me and gifted me with skills to do for that season. But they said they were bold, but they were uneducated and common men and they were surprised at their boldness. Oh, that bugs me to no end. A tradesman. So they concluded The only reason that they could be bold is because they'd been with Jesus. That part of it doesn't bug me. It's actually remarkable. So what is the mark of somebody who has been with Jesus, at least through his word, who has a relationship spiritually with him? Well, boldness. So are you bold in your faith? Would people describe you as being bold in your faith? Would your family describe you as being bold in your faith? Edith to verses 14 through 17. These guys observed the healed man. There's not much you can do with hard evidence. other than choosing to turn a blind eye to it. And they were kind of faced with that's reality. But they try and do what oftentimes corrupt people do. And they tried to silence. They tried to silence it. Verse 16, what are we gonna do with these men? We know that there's a sign in here, duh. Maybe this is something that God is doing. That's called the miracle. Everybody's aware of it. We're afraid of what's going to happen as a result of it. We can't deny it, but we don't want this knowledge to spread. So our solution, we're going to threaten them some, and we're going to tell them not to preach in the name of Jesus any longer. So in verse 18, they do that and they tell Peter and then John, don't preach in Jesus' name. Don't tell them about him. And they had a decision to make. The decision is, you know, what do you say? What do you do when the authorities around you say, don't talk about Christ? There was a point in American history that only those who worked in the public sector, political officials, maybe teachers and things like that, had rules over them about not proselytizing, not sharing your faith. But that's changing. That's changing. And if you work for large companies, you will find more often than not, the boundaries of what you can say and can't say are being pushed. And for those of you who work in context like that, and I commend you for doing so, be salt and light in every corner of our world here. But you've got to make a decision on who you're going to listen to. Are you going to listen to your boss? or you're gonna listen to God. Now, recognize that listening to God may have consequences with your boss. Most cases, we're required to submit to the authorities around us. This is Romans 13, but we have one, I don't wanna even call it a loophole, one place where there's a variant. And that is, if it would cause you to deny God, the sin against God, you are commanded not to listen to those authorities that are over you. Later on, Peter will address the same thing, Acts 5.29, and simply say, we must obey God rather than men. There's your exception to the rule. We're gonna find ourselves at some point in time, as individuals and as a society, as Christians in this society, that all of us are gonna have to make that decision. They're gonna say to ministers of God, you're gonna have to marry people who are gay or transgender or whatever, not believers, born again believers in Jesus Christ. And when they say that, ministers like me will become criminals. Because we have to obey God over men. Because the other option is to ignore God and obey men. And Peter basically says, look, if that sounds good to you, you're gonna be answerable for that. but it oughtn't sound good to the Christian. God's law trumps man's law. Recognizing that when you pursue God's law over man's law, there will be civil consequences for doing so. So be wise and careful in how you go about it, but obey God rather than men. That is exactly what Peter and John would do. Don't take these words lightly. The wicked had been creeping into society and into churches for years with the aim and the goal of silencing the church. Will you be silenced? Or will you stand bold? There are laws already in place in some states in America that would make it illegal for a counselor, a Christian counselor, to give conversion therapy. Basically a therapy that would help somebody turn back away from their homosexual lifestyles to a heterosexual one. There are places in America where a young teenage girl can get an abortion without parental consent. And where hormones can be prescribed to a child to a child who supposedly self-identifies as a different gender, opposite what the parents wish. We're fighting a battle of ideas here, folks. and remaining silent about your Christian faith is not an acceptable option, never was. We treat it as an acceptable option for a generation and it's gotten us in the mess that we're in today. These debates will divide families, they will separate friends, they will divide even churches and communities. That's reality. The question you will have to answer is to whose voice will you listen? To the absolute word of God or to the changing standards of men? Men who glorify and rebelling against all things that honor God. So to whom will you listen today? If it's God, are you really sure that when push comes to shove, when, if you will, the chips are down, we genuinely listen to God's word? You may say that, you may be thinking that, but are you doing that in the little things that you do? Even look at the 10 commandments, how you behave towards one another. Do you forgive one another? Do you practice the Sabbath day? Do you hold on to anger and hate in your heart? Do you gossip and lie about people? Do you really, do you really follow God's commands? Jesus says, don't be surprised when the world hates you because it hated him first. This kind of stuff doesn't happen overnight. It's not little by little, but we've been moving in this generation, in this direction for probably a hundred years, probably more than that. And it's a time that we need to react. We need to pray about it, but we need to act upon those prayers. If we don't, when we stand before God and are accountable for the works that we have done, what will that be said of us? You know, James says, a faith without works is dead. You know, this is kind of the thing that he's talking about, folks. You might say, well, I'll pray for you, and that's great, pray. But don't stop there. Do something about it in faith. If your faith is genuine, you should be putting that faith to work and do so to further the purpose and mission of Christ's church. What's that? Occupy until I come. Tear down the strongholds of hell that are in our midst. Make disciples, not just converts, but disciples. You know, disciples are those who are taught and obey everything that Jesus teaches. You know, you gotta be a disciple to make disciples. So make disciples of yourself and then make disciples of others. Occupy until I come. Pursue Christ and Him alone. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you and we come before you and ask that your mercies would be upon us because we don't often occupy like we're supposed to. Father, we come and ask that you would help us to do that, that you would equip and comfort us, that you would encourage us, but challenge us to that end as well. We lift our prayers to you and we pray them in Jesus' name. Amen.