The first prime minister of the new state of Israel was David Ben-Gurion. And he had just taken office and was a prime minister at a very, very crucial time in their history. And the reporter went to him and asked, you know, reporters asked some strange questions. He said, David Ben-Gurion, what will it take for your nation to survive all the danger, threat, and difficulty it faces? And he said, well, that's easy to answer. It's four things begin with A. A lot of money, a lot of troops, a lot of guns, and a lot of tanks. And I often think of that, and I was thinking about it as David has been ministering the word to us. He's in a very precious and special part of the Word of God in the Book of Colossians. It tells us about our resources in Jesus Christ. And we often, a lot of us limp along as individual believers and as a company of God's people, and we're just keeping our head above water and we're looking for a lot more than we've got. The truth is that we don't need more than we've got. We just need to know what we've got in Jesus Christ. And these are precious truths David's telling us, and I urge you to keep or take home a copy of his notes. These themes he cannot develop in detail. He'd love to. But you need to mind them for yourself and know that in Christ Jesus we are complete in him and we need nothing more. We just need to know the riches of God in Christ Jesus and what he wants us to learn in these little sessions we're having together. Please open your Bibles to... Acts chapter four. Acts chapter four. The basis of boldness in the Christian life. I'd intended to move into Acts chapter two, but I think that chapter is a little better known to you and they continued steadfastly in the Apostles. teaching and then the fellowship and the breaking of breath and prayer. There's a real sense that anything we add to that is an addition and this ought to be the heart and soul of what we're doing as we meet together in the name of the Lord Jesus. Acts chapter four verse twenty three and being let go they went to their own company now you want to read that correctly leave out the word company and being let go they went to their own and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them. And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord and said, Lord, thou art God, which has made heaven and earth and the sea and all that in them is. Who but a mouth of thy servant David has said, Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel. Now notice the crowd that were against the Lord Jesus. It says, Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together. For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done. And now, Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word. By stretching forth thy hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness. And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul. Neither said any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great peace and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold. And they laid them down at the apostles' feet and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. And we'll end our little reading there, and there'll be maybe a little more later. What I want to talk to you today is the basis of boldness in the Christian life. Think of these men, eleven, with the addition of Messiahs, with the salvation of a considerable number of people in the interval, but in all told, they were mostly infant believers in the Lord Jesus. The army that Satan had arrayed against them was immense. And the Christians there at that time knew what it was to be engaged in a spiritual battle. And here they're being told to be bold. Now the word study I did on this word boldness tells me that it's not just the brash affrontary that so often we seem to put up. And it's not just walking with our eyes closed and hoping the enemy isn't there. Here's what the word boldness here means. It means confidence, open confidence, plainly observed to be confident in God. It's a freedom in speaking without reservation in our speech, without concealment of the real issues, being open and frank, without ambiguity or circumlocution is that we go around the subject but never get to the heart of it. Without the use of figures and comparisons, free and fearless confidence, cheerful courage, the deportment by which one becomes conspicuous as a follower of Jesus Christ. That's boldness. Are you like that? When you talk about our precious Lord, are you obvious? and clear and concise and conspicuous, I so often am a part of God's secret service. I know who I belong to, but maybe some of my friends know. And this is a challenge for boldness in the Christian life, and it teaches us the basis of this boldness. How do I respond? when persecution comes and when trouble comes and opposition comes. The problem is that in North America and a few other parts of the world, we're in a little island of peace and acceptance and quiet and we have governments which we ought to pray for. I don't think there's any basis at all for Christians to be criticizing the government. They are not perfect men, but they're there because of God's will. And we're enjoined in the scriptures to pray for the powers that be. that we may live quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty and use that time to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. So let's pray for our governments. But we are in an island of peace where at any other place in the world there is horrors of war. Let me read a few things to you. The top ten countries where Christians are the most persecuted are Sudan, China, Vietnam, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, and North Korea and Cuba. Cuba, just a little ways off your Florida coast. A hundred and sixty thousand people died last year just because they were Christians. A hundred and sixty nine thousand just because they were Christians. That's one about every three and a half minutes. after day after day. Do you know anyone who has died for Jesus Christ personally? Have you taken the time when you have been told about such to pray for their families? We have four young men captive, a new tribe's mission, Canadian headquarters, just north of our assembly, and the director of the Canadian operation is a member of our assembly. Four of those young men have been in, disappeared from the face of the earth for four and a half years. We're not sure they're alive, but we pray for them every day. And they're the only ones I really know personally so that we can pray for them. But there's three and a half minutes between someone dying for the sake of Christ every day that we live. Christians now are the most persecuted religious group in the world. and the Bible is very clear what our responsibility is. So here they are, and these are persecuted believers exhorted in the Scripture to have boldness in our Christian life. And it says being let go. Well, that tells us that just before we ought to look into this to see where they were. And of course, it's the story of Peter and John going up to the temple to pray, and they heal a man and the story you know well, and that got them into deep, deep trouble. And it says a notable miracle had been done, but they were preaching in the name of Jesus and preaching the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and they were arrested. They were put into prison overnight. They were threatened, and they were told one thing. Do not preach anymore in the name of Jesus Christ. Don't do it. What would you do? Now, what were they doing besides preaching in the name of Jesus? They were doing notable miracles. and they were preaching in the name of Jesus. When they were told to leave, they were never told not to do miracles. You see, the world out there loves miracles. The world doesn't care if you go around doing signs and wonders and miracles, but it does care when you go to preach the gospel clearly in the name because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. There's a lot of signs and wonders and miracles happening out in Christendom today. We need to know that everything that is supernatural and miraculous is not necessarily from God. We need to know that Satan is able to do the miraculous. And he did it in the Old Testament. He's going to do it again in the future. There's going to be an idol, an inanimate idol set up in the temple in the future. When Satan is active in this world in the Great Tribulation, and that inanimate object is able to come alive and speak. So great is His power. Not everything that is miraculous is from God. It doesn't mean it's divine. But here, these men were doing these miracles in the power of the Holy Spirit. And the world didn't seem to care about that, but they didn't want them to speak in the name of the Lord Jesus. And it says, and we pick up a story in verse twenty three, and being let go, they went to their own people, their own company. What a joy it is to belong to a group of God's people so that when we're under attack or when we're under stress as Christians and we sense that we're in a spiritual battle and we know that there's times of struggle and depression and frustration that we can return to where God's people are. I was mentioning to a couple of you today, what a joy to come and be with you, and only know the names of a few. But when you start to talk to God's people, you're reminded again, it warms your heart to know they're the greatest people on earth. And we need to be sensitive to some of our brothers and sisters in our assemblies who are under struggle. They're in the front lines of the attack. They're tracking for Jesus Christ, and they need to know you're praying for them and encouraging them and blessing them. But the whole assembly of God's people needs to be a place where we return when we've been engaged in the battle. They had been arrested. Now if I think of this, I think of a time when I was a young guy. I was saved at fourteen and by age seventeen our assembly was very big on open air meetings. And so we'd go to one of the main corners in the city of Toronto and stand there and we'd step out and preach the gospel. not done a whole lot anymore, not possible in Toronto anymore, but it was a great training ground for me and a great challenge to my willingness to stand out for Jesus Christ. And that wasn't too tough because I was surrounded by a whole lot of God's people. And as young guys we would step out and try and share the message of the gospel. But then there was a Tuesday night one and we had a deaconess. Now I'm not going to go into the the whole issue of whether there are deaconesses in Scripture. But Old Miss Gracie was in her eighties. She was a volunteer for God's people in our assembly into some of the most deprived and depraved parts of the community in which the church existed. Tenement houses. And when our Sunday school teachers used to visit their pupils in these places, we had to send a male teacher along with them. because what the scene inside some of those places was bizarre to say the least. But there we stood. There was Miss Gracie, myself, and a tall lanky drink of water by the name of Bruce Somakal, just the three of us. Miss Gracie had already visited all those buildings and given money and clothing and food to some of those single mothers and all of that sort of stuff. And then there we stood on a Tuesday night, and she assured us that with those open windows and the old ratty curtains blowing out, that behind those windows there were hundreds of people eagerly listening to the gospel. I never saw the face of one, but we took her word. No one would ever cross Miss Gracie. And so there we were, knowing that it was God's will that we share the gospel. And there she was, eighty-something, on the front lines, and here we were shaken in our boots. I'll never forget one night. when we're three of us there, just Bruce and I taking turns preaching the gospel, went along came a police cruiser. You know what happens? It's just like when one follows you and starts getting on your case with your lights flashing in the highway. Your whole life comes before you in a moment of time. And he got out this big burly cop and he said, you two are under arrest. And I thought, what could this be? He said, The charge is obstructing traffic and endangering or disturbing the peace. He took the two of us, clapped us in the back of the cruiser and off to the police station. I said, my mother never told me that it was going to be like this. And so there we were. I remember going into the police station up to the death sergeant. And the death sergeant asked the constable, what is the charge? He said, disturbing the peace and obstructing traffic. And we found out later that he was a rabid Catholic, and this was a Catholic area. And so he said, oh, did you say preaching the gospel? No, I didn't say preaching the gospel, but that's what they were doing. It turned out that this death sergeant was a devout Salvation Army man. And I'll never forget God speaking the words through this man's Take these two boys back to the corner and stand there and guard them until they're through, even if it's midnight. And when I think of that, I still don't have the boldness that I'm talking about here. But I thank God that he is the God who is faithful to his frightened people. And so this is what we're talking about, the basis of boldness in our Christian life. The Lord Jesus had already told his disciples, when I send you forth, I send you forth as sheep amongst wolves. Do you think that's what sheep want to hear? I send you forth as sheep amongst wolves. And he says, if they hated me, they're going to hate you. In fact, when they kill you, they're going to think they're doing God's service. How do you think these men felt? Every day with Jesus is sweeter than the day before. Do you think that's what they felt? Well, he said something to them that he might not have caught. When I send forth my sheep, I go before them. The principle is this, when God sends you forth in boldness to do his work, he's already there when you get there. And so he wanted them to be bold. I like what Chuck Swindahl says. Christ did not send his disciples to live on shady Brook Lane. Isn't that a nice address? I wish I lived on shady Brook Lane. to sit on the front porch and swing until dark, snapping peas and watching lightning bugs. Their mission was to a world where life was to get ugly and people would be hostile and where depravity was relentless and physical survival was not guaranteed. And that accurately described where he sent them into this world that hated the Lord Jesus. Is that world foreign to you? Is it something we are familiar with as some of the folk in our assembly are bold for Christ? Do they meet opposition? Do they meet danger? Do they suffer reproof for the name of Christ? I think that we need to expect that this is going to happen as time goes on. If we step up to the plate and get out there where the world hates the Lord Jesus, and we're clearly representing the Lord Jesus, the world is going to hate us too. And we are ashamed of the name of Christ so often. and we are not bold in proclaiming His love and grace. What do you do first when you meet opposition? Well, you come back to your own people. There are no people on earth like the body of Christ. But there was a principle at work here when we're trying to understand the boldness of the Christian life. And although it isn't in the text, it's certainly in the scripture. The principle at work was the sovereignty of God, the presence of God, and the power of God. We don't teach like they did a hundred years ago much about the sovereignty of God. We don't really emphasize that the Lord we serve is a sovereign Lord. There's a favorite verse of mine. It's in Deuteronomy, twenty-nine, twenty-nine. So that's easy to remember, isn't it? You just have to remember Deuteronomy and then twenty-nine and twenty-nine. So you might want to etch it in your mind or don't be afraid to mark your Bible. It says this. Kind of a loose translation. The secret things belong to the Lord our God. Now that's the first thing we need to know about the sovereignty of God, that he has a plan. His plan will prevail, but he doesn't give all the details to us. the secret things belong to the Lord our God. That explains why when hurricanes come ashore in some particular place that God's people sometimes are killed and where God's assembly buildings are knocked down and why good people who are crucial to the ministry of Christ get cancer and sick and die. I remember when I moved from Bethany Chapel to Varia Chapel, just a little wee assembly in eastern, northeastern Calgary. We met in this dank little place in an industrial alley between an automobile repair shop and a furniture refinishing shop. And it was totally unsuitable for what we wished to do in that community. So it took about a year to get the brethren sort of committed to move. But move we did. And we bought six acres of land. The Lord provided it at a very small price, a building that seated about three-hundred-and-forty people, a nice three-bedroom bungalow on the six acres of land, and we set about to put the place in order. And these Christians worked with great gusto and commitment, and we got the place looking fine. All the furniture came with it, and it was all refinished, and we had a dedication service, and two weeks later, it was torched and burned to the ground. Now, if I'd known that when we rebuild, it looked so much better, I'd have burned it earlier. But nevertheless, there it was. And as David was saying, when they were working so hard to put their first building together, it brought the body of Christ together. And I will never forget that that was on a Tuesday. I had had one knee operated on. I was on crutches and in a cast. And my wife phoned me at work and said, Paul, I just listened to the radio. It's got to be Berea Bible Chapel by the directions that were given on the news. So I just jumped from my desk, ran down into the parking garage, jumped in the car and was halfway there before I forgot that I didn't have my crutches. Wasn't supposed to be on this knee. And I ran across the field and I stood there and watched the flames eat their way right through the roof. That was Tuesday night. Wednesday night, the assembly met together. And before we left that night, we had a committee for every task. And in four and a half months, we had rebuilt the building. And God's people were knit together in love and a commitment to Jesus Christ. They recognized there's an enemy. And that enemy wasn't us anymore. It was a world that hates the Lord Jesus. And it turned the body of Christ around in commitment to a wonderful Savior. But so they came back to their own company, it says, and they had to learn about the sovereignty of God, that the secret things belong to the Lord our God. He didn't ask us for permission to allow that place to be burned. He doesn't need to tell us why bad things happen to good people. He doesn't have to tell us where strategic people in the ministry of the local church can be ushered from time into eternity in a moment of time, because he knows why. Someday we'll understand. Sometimes he'll teach us now. But sometimes he does not tell us because he is the sovereign God. Now the second part of that verse, roughly speaking, says this. But the things that he does reveal, he expects us to understand and obey and to teach our children. Notice that? To understand and obey and teach our children. God is sovereign in the world. Here's a good definition, a simple definition of the sovereignty of God, that God is supreme and rule and authority over all things. His sovereign will cannot and will not be broken and his power cannot be resisted. Psalm, a hundred and three nineteen says, The Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his sovereignty rules over all. They had to face the fact that in this time of fear and of struggle and of danger, that God was sovereign. But not only is God sovereign, but He's the God who is always present. Philippians four, five to seven says, The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God. We're talking about the peace of God, which passeth all understanding shall garrison your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. The Lord is at hand. I don't know. whether that means the Lord is coming real soon. I don't know whether it means he sticks closer than a brother. He's with me. But I like both of them, and I want both of them. I won't settle for one of them. The Lord is coming soon, and we need to know when there's a need for boldness and the opposition amount that Jesus Christ is coming soon. We're going to hear the shout, the voice of the archangel, the trump of God, The dead in Christ are going to rise to meet the Lord Jesus. And then those of us who are alive and remain should be caught up in the cloud to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever meet with the Lord. I don't know what we're going to sing on the way up, but it might be something like this. It will be worth it all when we see Jesus. Life's toils will seem so small when we see Christ. One glimpse of his dear face will all life tear the race. So let us. gladly run the race till we see Christ. On the other hand, it might be that he's just going to be with us, just going to be with us in the trouble. When I was living in Calgary, I spent quite a bit of time in Vancouver, Canada, and there's a lot of Southeast Asians and Chinese there. I was speaking on an issue, something like this, in times of persecution of God's saints over there. And this dear Chinese man came to me and he said, you know, my brother-in-law was teaching the word of God in China and he was arrested and beaten three times. And finally, when he wouldn't stop preaching in the name of Jesus, he was arrested and he was put into prison. He said, then he would sing hymns in prison or he'd pray aloud and for that he was hauled out and beaten and put back in prison. And when he wouldn't stop, he said, they took him out of the prison altogether. And they put him away over a hill. And there he stood waist deep in human excrement. And his job was just to keep shoveling the human excrement on and on and on. And he said, when asked about it, he said, oh, it was wonderful. It was wonderful. In prison, I can't mention the name of Jesus aloud. I can't sing a hymn of praise and worship. I can't express my adoration. He said, but here nobody comes and nobody bothers me. Would you like to know what I sing, what my favorite hymn is? I come to the garden alone. When the dew is still on the roses and the voice I hear falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses, for he walks with me. And he talks with me. He tells me I'm his own. And the joy we share as we carry there, none other has ever known. When God puts his sheep forth amongst wolves, he's always there before us. And he's the God who promises the peace of God, which passes all understanding. If you ask the United Nations what their definition of peace is, they will say something like this. They will say there's about fifty-four wars going on in the world now, and peace will be the absence of war. But our text says that peace for the Christian is not the absence of war. It's the presence of the Lord Jesus in spite of it. And his peace will garrison. He'll build a wall around us so that the first person we see and talk to will not be the enemy, but will look on the face of Jesus. These men were understanding this. Not only was it the fact there was the sovereignty of God and the presence of God, but there was the power of God. greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. I was down in Groton, Connecticut, and one of the things I realized was that was a significant submarine base for the American forces. And you may remember the U.S. submarine Thresher. That name ring a bell. The Thresher was one of their number one top high-tech nuclear subs. And And when it went out to sea for the first time, it was just like the Titanic. Nothing can happen to the thresher. The fact is nobody ever returned. It just disappeared from sight. Well, it raised some significant issues amongst the U.S. military, so they sent down all these sophisticated things to the bottom of the ocean, and they pulled up the wreckage and reassembled it and found that under certain depths of pressure, the seams had opened. because the pressure outside in the water was greater than the pressure they could maintain within the vessel. That cannot happen to a Christian because greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. And so we need to know the power of God is unassailable and the secret things belong to the Lord our God. We need to trust, we need to go into our spiritual life every day knowing these as facts. Well, our second point is the prayerful request of a Christ-centered people. I think that we would expect these men to be like I am. I can remember when that constable was driving us to the police station. I was praying things in my mind like, take me to heaven now and please make it all a dream that, well, I'll wake up and I'll just have a little sweat, you know. But these men did not do this. What did they do? They believed in God's power. Verse twenty four. And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord and said, Lord, thou art God. They believed in God's power. And you have made heaven and earth and the sea and all that in them is. It's of interest that when you read in the Old Testament and you're looking for description after description of the power of God in the Old Testament, It says, it's the power that created the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that in them is. And that was the magnificent description of how powerful the God of the Old Testament was. When you come to the New Testament, the description of the ultimate power of a sovereign God is this. The power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Isn't that wonderful? The power that snatched him from the ground and exalted him to the glory. That's the power that that lives in your life if we're only willing to trust Him. It's interesting in Revelation four and five, it says they worship God on the throne. They worship the Lord Jesus on the throne because He was the Creator. In chapter five, it says He worships Him because He was their Redeemer. And today, this side of the cross, we worship the Lord Jesus because He's our Redeemer. He's washed us in His own blood, and we come to Him acknowledging his power. Lord, thou art God. It says, because they acknowledged that, they believed in prayer. I want to say something to you. Sometimes when we go to prayer meeting, if people go, and we pray, we know deep in our heart that our prayer is there, but it is not with conviction. Isn't that true? The fact is that we cannot pray if we do not believe that God is the all-powerful God. We're coming to somebody who's less than what God is in all of his deities, and we need to first learn to acknowledge God as the God of all power and strength and might and sovereignty and presence and blessing. And when we see God who He is, we come to Him to pray, we come to Him to worship in an authentic way. The first thing Christians need to do is to know their God. to know His power and His character and His deity. So they believed in God's power. I'm not so sure that we would all pray like that. But then the second thing in verses twenty-five to twenty-six, they relied on God's word. Do you know in verse twenty-five and twenty-six you've read something you've read elsewhere? Where do you read verses twenty-five and twenty-six elsewhere? And let's who by the mouth of thy servant David has said, and then they quote, Why did the heathen rage and the people imagined vain things? Etc. Where have you read that before? Psalm chapter two. Psalm chapter two is the first messianic Psalm in the book of Psalms. And so when they needed to be reassured and confirmed, that God was in charge, they went back to the book. They went to the Word of God. And they said, they quoted Psalm two, and it tells us, why do the heathen rage? Why is this crowd that I read twice to you, the Jews and the Romans and the Sadducees and the Pharisees, why are we afraid of them? Why are we afraid of them? Why are the heathen arranged against God? And why are we intimidated by them? And they went back to Scripture, the Old Testament. Lord, you are God. Why do the heathen rage? And it says there in Psalm chapter two that God laughs at them. Do you ever think of God laughing? Well, three times it says in our Old Testament that God laughed, and all of them in the book of Psalms. It's not that God enjoyed their plight, but he laughs at the futility of men who arranged their strength. agreents the strength of omnipotent God. So they relied on Scripture. They saw their circumstances through the lens of the Bible and God's sovereignty. Now one of the problems we have as believers is that we don't know our Bible well enough. So that we're in a difficult situation, the Spirit of God just yearns to turn our eyes back to Scripture. In fact, the Lord promised that His going, that when He's gone, He's going to send the Spirit of God, and He will bring all things to your memory in your time of need. But even the Spirit of God cannot bring to your memory things you never learned from the Word of God. You need to commit to read God's Word from cover to cover to cover to cover to cover. And you need to do it repeatedly so that the moment of your spirit shall need, God, the Holy Spirit, can direct you to the Old or New Testament and say, is the character of God. This is the promise of God. This is the will of God. Less than one of ten of born-again evangelical Christians will ever read the Bible through once in their lifetime. And that includes all the professional Christians, the pastors and teachers and seminary preachers and all of those people. Less than one in ten will ever read their Bible through once in all of their lifetime. We're going to stand before God. Timothy was told, study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth, approved by God. We're going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And one of the issues that's going to be raised is the neglect of the reading and remembering and obeying the word of God. These people went back to the word of God and the requirements were that they knew their Bible, and therefore they knew their God. The third thing is in verses twenty seven to twenty eight, they recognized God's will. They believed in the predetermined will of God. They didn't try to reconcile the actions of man with the actions of God and the purposes of God. Whatever God's purposes involve, man who opposes God's people will individually be held accountable. That means that if you witness to a son or daughter of yours and they fail to trust Christ, You will not be held accountable, but they will be. They will be. God holds individuals accountable. And we need to know that they didn't try to rationalize that. If God allowed this ministry of theirs to be wiped out, they wouldn't be held accountable, but the people who rejected Jesus Christ would be accountable. And it's an awful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. The third thing is the fourth thing. They pursued God's glory, verses twenty-nine to thirty. See what it says there. And now, Lord, behold, their threatenings and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word, by stretching forth your hand to heal and to help, and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of the holy child Jesus. What they were interested in is that God would be glorified. They ended their prayer with three requests. Boldness, not from themselves, but God. that Jesus Christ would be central to their experiences and not themselves and that glory be given to God. How unlike much of our prayer where we are the center of our prayer in time of need. But the Lord Jesus Christ was the center of their prayer. The third thing is the divine response to Christ-centered people. There were three visible things and three less visible things happened. It said the place shook. The place shook. Can you remember a place in the Old Testament where it says the place shook? What about Isaiah chapter six? Isaiah is in a deep, deep problem. King Uzziah had died. Under King Uzziah, he wasn't a perfect king, but the Lord's people as a nation had been raised to their very pinnacle, economically, militarily, socially, whatever way you look at it. They had reached their pinnacle and he died. And Uzziah is worried about that. He goes into the temple. And John twelve says, God gave him a pre-incarnate vision of Jesus Christ upon the throne. And he looked at the Lord Jesus and he saw the seraphim, the bright and shining one singing, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. This was an antiphonal choir. I don't know of any assemblies who have antiphonal choirs, but I'd vote for it. And that would be we'd have some choir lofts on the front and some over here. And this group would sing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And this group would respond, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his power and his presence. And that's exactly what was going on here. The place shook, it says. The gates of the temple shook because God's power and glory as the enthroned king of kings and lord of lords was evident to his humble servant. And we need to know that when God shakes the place, he's in charge. So the place shook and the people were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, had not these people been... been filled with the Spirit earlier. What happened to this group? Well, there are evidences of isolated cases in the book of Acts where people belonged to Jesus Christ and didn't even know there was a Holy Spirit. They were not filled with the Spirit, but it happened. But generally, First Corinthians twelve, thirteen is the norm. Acts is not always the norm. by one spirit where we all baptized into one body. Every one of us. There isn't a person in this building who knows Jesus Christ as their Savior who have not been baptized into the body of Christ. That means that as Ephesians tell us that we have to wish to be filled with the Spirit. And I've seen all sorts of preaching going on with glasses of water, half empty, half full. You can't fill a half full glass. You empty it and then you fill it. and all of that sort of stuff. What you need to do is mark in your Bible where it says, fill with the Spirit, and that causes the cobwebs to shake in your mind. What does that mean? Just write in control, control by the Spirit of God. Three times in our New Testament, at the birth of John the Baptist, his father said, he shall not drink wine or strong drink, but be filled with the Spirit. in the book of Acts. These men are not drunk, as you say. It's only the ninth hour, but they are filled with the Spirit. In the book of Ephesians, be not drunk with wine or is in excess, but be filled with the Spirit. And it's very clear that when you're controlled by wine, the way you think, the way you walk, the way you talk, and everything about you is controlled by that. But when you're filled with the Spirit of God, he controls your heart, your thoughts, and your worship, and your walk, and your I don't think this was that, Ephesians five episodes. We also read in the Scripture about the fullness of the Spirit. And every time I see the fullness of the Spirit occur in the New Testament, it's God moving in addition to everything He's done to motivate and equip His servants for supernatural and significant ministry in time of great need. And these men were filled with the Spirit of God. Do you think God is anxious to meet your need where you are? Do you think God cares when you need boldness and people are against Him? It says they spoke the Word of God with boldness. Fourthly, the invisible results among Christ-centered people. They had a deeper experience of unity. When God, the Holy Spirit, gets a hold of you and comes to your aid in time of danger and you go to your own people, than some of the picky things that we were thinking about earlier today and yesterday disappear. And there is a deeper experience of unity. It's sometimes called the inverse ratio of the law of thermodynamics. Do any remember your physics from a way back when? But the inverse relationship of spiritual thermodynamics says the greater the pressure, the greater the expansion. And that's going on all over the world today. People are being swept into the kingdom of God by the bucket full in third world countries. And it's not happening in our land. If churches are growing, it's by transfer, it's not by conversion. When did you see God come in mighty power and sweep ten or twenty or thirty or forty or fifty into the kingdom of God in one night? But it's happening elsewhere. Because when they're under pressure, the expansion of the church is guaranteed. And so these are the things that were happened. There was unity. They didn't have to dress alike. They didn't have to eat everything the same. They didn't have to have the same theological specs in their Bible. They didn't have to all agree on how many angels can dance on the head of the pin. And these are the things that divide God's people and through whom we shoot ourselves in the foot. Their traditions could be different. They came from a whole lot of different places, but there was unity in the body of Christ. because of their circumstances. And it always shows in love to God's people.