The Lord Working with Us

From Acts chapter 4, the passage we were thinking about last week. But now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness while thou stretchest out thy hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed in the name of thy holy servant Jesus. If what we were saying last week is true, that the time has come for us to shape this city with the gospel of Jesus, to manifest the kingdom of God with an impact we have not had up to now, then there are two things we need.

First, we have to have a clear word, bold, clear, living, burning, a word as clear as the word that was on the lips of Jesus himself. And secondly, we need signs to confirm that word, so that people who listen to us not only hear, but see, so that those who listen with any integrity receive evidence from God himself that what we say about Jesus is true. Reading from Mark chapter 16, verse 14 and following in the New International Version, later Jesus appeared to the eleven as they were eating.

He rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen. He said to them, go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

These signs will accompany those who believe. In my name they will drive out demons. They will speak in new tongues.

They will pick up snakes with their hands, and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all. They will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well. After the Lord had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God.

Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it. They went out and preached, and preaching for them was not exactly the way we so often conceive of preaching. There were no pulpits, no churches, no stained glass windows, no microphones, no soap boxes.

They simply went out and spoke what they knew, wherever they had an opportunity, on their jobs, in their families, in their neighborhoods. They spoke to ones and twos, to handfuls and to multitudes, and as they spoke, the word that they spoke about Jesus was confirmed with signs. The Lord, in the power of the Holy Spirit, worked with them and backed up what they said with evidence to the people who listened that the kingdom of God was really near.

Signs. What kind of signs? First of all, there were signs of mercy, signs of mercy that proved to those who listened with honesty that Jesus' death and resurrection made a difference, that he overcame the power of the enemy, that God was present on this earth now in a new way. And so they went out and spoke that word about Jesus, and people began to be healed.

Sick bodies and sick minds and sick spirits began to feel the impact of heaven as they spoke. Reading from Acts chapter 3, verse 1, Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour, and a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple, which is called beautiful, to ask alms of those who entered the temple. Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms, and Peter directed his gaze at him with John and said, look at us.

He fixed his attention upon them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, I have no silver and gold, but I give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.

And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. And leaping up, he stood and walked and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and recognized him as the one who sat for alms at the beautiful gate of the temple, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

This was a sign, something people could see, which confirmed the truth of what Peter and John were saying everywhere they went. Then there were signs of judgment, signs that demonstrated that by the death of Jesus on that cross, the enemy, Satan, and his kingdom were judged. Evil is judged.

Injustice is judged. And by his resurrection, the kingdom of the enemy is now superseded by the kingdom of God, and that anything in this world that opposes itself to the kingdom of God stands under that judgment. And so, the first sign that accompanied Paul as he preached the word, recorded at least, after he and Barnabas were sent out from Edeon, was a sign of judgment, reading from Acts chapter 13, starting at verse 6. When they had gone through the whole island of Cyprus, as far as Paphos, they came upon a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet named Bar-Jesus.

He was with a proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence, who summoned Barnabas and sought to hear the word of God. But Elamus, the magician, for that is the meaning of his name, withstood them, seeking to turn away the proconsul from the faith. But Saul, who is also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you shall be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.

Immediately, mist and darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand. Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had occurred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord. There were signs of mercy, there were signs of judgment, and there were signs of hope.

Paul and Silas were in prison in Philippi, and their feet were in the stocks so that they couldn't move. They couldn't get up and walk around, and it was very uncomfortable. Instead of sitting around complaining or, you know, hollering for some kind of relief from the jailer or whatever, they begin to pray out loud and sing hymns to God, on and on and on.

And so we read in Acts chapter 16, verse 25, about midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's fetters were unfastened. When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. Paul cried with a loud voice, do not harm yourself, for we are all here.

And he called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas and brought them out and said, men, what must I do to be saved? This earthquake was a sign of hope, great hope, for the prisoners and for the jailer. A sign is like not only an earthquake in the rocks beneath them, but an earthquake in the order of the kingdom, so that now there was a chink through which the light of glory could be seen, giving them hope. But notice, these signs were never planned.

They were never engineered. Couldn't have been. The apostles and the believers never said, well, today let's go out and heal a few sick and cast out a couple demons, and plan on having an earthquake tomorrow night.

These signs were not their doing, nor were they their responsibility. Their work was to speak the word which they had been given, with integrity. That's all they had to do.

And if they would speak that word with integrity, meaning that they were honestly trying to live what they were saying, and they were trusting that they were not alone, that this would be confirmed with signs. They believed when they were out there speaking that word, that they weren't doing it alone, that Jesus was with them. They had his presence not as a feeling, not even as an atmosphere, but as a burning spirit that was working with them.

Now applying this to ourselves, we can go out, and by the way, when I say go out, so many people think he's talking about street work again. I'm not talking about street work, I'm talking about everything. Whether we work the streets, or, I mean, we can go out into our homes, families, neighborhoods, places of work, wherever we happen to be, pass out our tracts, quote scriptures, or impart very sound Christian doctrine, and nothing happens, so long as the word that we convey is dead.

If it's not a living word, if it's not burning and alive, if we're not really giving Jesus a chance to work with us, then there's nothing to confirm, there are no signs, and very little happens. But, if we go out, and again, talking about far more than street work, go out into wherever we happen to be, our places of work, our families, neighborhoods, whatever, among our friends, and we take a word hot from the mouth of God, and we convey that word with any integrity, absolutely, that word will be confirmed. In some way, the Lord will work with us, and he will confirm that word with signs.

So where do you get this hot word from the mouth? Consider, we will have a word of mercy that will be confirmed by the hand of God with signs of mercy, when we seriously live mercy. From Matthew chapter 9 verse 9, and Jesus passed on from there, and he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, follow me, and he rose up and followed him, and as he sat at table, no doubt in Matthew's house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples, and when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners, deadbeats? But when he heard it, he said, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, go and learn what this means from Hosea 6, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, go and learn what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, he's been saying that to us for years, and he still says it. So where do we learn it? We learn it at the cross, we look and see what he has done, what it cost him, for us, what are we doing here today? We're gathered at the fountainhead of mercy, we eat his body, we drink his blood, we behold his grace, now if we take this with any kind of gratitude at all, surely we begin to thank him for it, and praise him for it, and worship him, and as we thank him for his mercy to us, truly thank him, this gratitude that we begin to express will now begin to take the form of mercy toward each other, great mercy, you know, instead of standing back and looking at each other nervously, and sometimes quickly judging each other, we'll have great forbearance, much mercy, so great will this mercy be that it will overflow beyond the limits of the fellowship of the kingdom out into the world, and we will begin to have a mercy that is the mercy of God for the world beyond us.

Wise as serpents, but innocent as doves, we will go out there with a word that will be mercy, and we will proclaim forgiveness, and healing, and peace in the name of Jesus, and that word that we speak will be confirmed by signs. Things will happen in people's lives that will convince them, there will be answered prayers, at God's pleasure there will be healings, there will be floods of forgiveness coming into people's lives. We will have, secondly, a word of judgment upon evil, and injustice, and arrogance, and hardness, a word of judgment that will be confirmed with signs of judgment out there in the world when we are willing to submit our own souls to the consuming fire of God.

Reading from Hebrews 12.25, see that you do not refuse him who is speaking, for if they did not escape when they refused him who warned on earth, much less shall we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. His voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven. This phrase, yet once more, indicates the removal of what is shaken as of what has been made in order that what cannot be shaken may remain.

Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. One of the richest blessings that has ever come to this fellowship is the consuming fire whose flames have been licking most of our lives within the last two, three months especially. It's a fire that has been refining us, uncovering things that are hidden, and destroying false hopes.

And instead of running away from this fire, we need to keep running toward it and welcome it. If we will do that, if we will open our hearts to the fire of the Lord, the cleansing of the judgment of the Lord, divide the evil from the good, Lord God, in my heart, and if we will welcome that fire, then we will have a word that will have the power to call people to repentance, that will convince people who live with that, who listen with any integrity, that God is holy. Finally, we will have a word of hope for that world out there that will be confirmed with signs of hope in people's lives when we ourselves truly live live in hope.

Reading from Romans 8, 18, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us, hope. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God, hope. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of him who subjected it in hope.

Because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God, hope. We know that the whole creation has been groaning and travail together until now, not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.

Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Three times a day, Daniel would go to his home and throw open the window facing southwest, where hundreds and hundreds of miles away was the city, and he'd get down on his knees and he would pray toward Jerusalem. Now Daniel knew that the Jerusalem that was there, hundreds of miles to the southwest, was in ruins.

The temple was in ashes, everything was a mess, but he prayed, and he prayed with hope. What he saw down through the future was a new Jerusalem, and he saw that glory and he drank it into his life so that then everybody he touched was touched with hope. We are living in a world that's full of despair and bitterness and cynicism and hardness and arrogance, a world that's sick because it has no genuine hope.

We've been given hope. We've been given a vision of a new day, of a time of glory, of a better country, of a new Jerusalem. So we go to our house, wherever it is, and we open the window that faces the new Jerusalem, and we drink in that glory daily and draw strength from that hope.

Then we go out with a gospel of the kingdom, which is a gospel of hope, a kingdom which is far better than anything people can see now, and a kingdom that's already here. Not like it's going to be, but it's already here. We proclaim that, and as we do, the Lord through the Spirit confirms our words with signs of hope, signs that lift people out of their despair.

Later, Jesus appeared to the eleven as they were eating. He rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen. He said to them, go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe. In my name, they will drive out demons.

They will speak in new tongues. They will pick up snakes with their hands, and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all. They will place their hands on the sick people, and they will get well.

After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven, and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word with signs, signs that accompany. Today, as we draw near to the table of the Lord to eat his body and drink his blood, let us ask for one thing.

Let us ask for a clear word, a living word, a burning word, a bold word, first spoken to us. Not just something to ram down somebody else's throat, but something which God is speaking to us. Then, having digested that word and received it with repentance, let us take that word out into the world, proclaiming it, speaking it, and knowing that Jesus himself works with us, and that he will confirm that word that we speak with signs of mercy, signs of judgment, and signs of hope.

Let us take some time now in absolute silence, and let the Lord speak to our hearts.