Embracing the Authority and Trustworthiness of God's Word

"If you want to open up your worship folder to follow along there in the outline as we continue this series of ascent. And we're in the book of Acts and we're seeing the disciples, the apostles, who are sent by Jesus to carry on this message to the ends of the world. And they're sending and they are making a movement. We talked about that last week, about this is a movement of God. God working through his people, how broken, how messed up. But he does that and creates these movements. And movements move. We are either part of that movement or we're not. And God is inviting us to be part of this movement. But this is a particular movement. It's a God movement. It's not a man movement. And therefore, it's not a movement of a man's ideas. This is a movement of God. And so a part of God's movement that we know it's his, that is by his word." [00:14:12] (53 seconds)


"And so Peter is saying, look, the Old Testament was prophecy concerning Jesus, and it had to be fulfilled. The events had to happen. Judas had to do what Judas did, so Jesus would die on the cross. This was prophesied, and then it had to be fulfilled amongst us. This was God's will. The Holy Spirit predicted, it was written down for us. We have known it. We have seen it in our own eyes, our own experiences with Jesus. We have in our own lives. So therefore, this is authoritative." [00:22:43] (34 seconds)


"God was fulfilling. And the apostles saw this, and therefore, the Scriptures have authority, and that's what Peter's doing. They had authority, and so Peter's looking at them and responding and saying, this is what we got to do, because here's what the Scriptures say. And what's part of that authority that Peter says? B, that they believe, again, the Old Testament Scriptures had authority, because B, the words were from the Holy Spirit." [00:27:34] (28 seconds)


"Peter says it this way. It's our memory verse. 2 Peter 1, 2, 3 together. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man. But men spoke from God as they were carried along. By the Holy Spirit. So the key word, you want to circle two words. Carried along. Carried along. In the Greek, carried along is to Pharaoh. Pharaoh. It means that it is the wind that blows a sailboat. The sailboat can't go anywhere on its own. It has no power. But the wind directs it. The wind takes it to the right destination. It fares it. It carries it along. And so what Peter is saying is, the Holy Spirit carried us along and spoke through us the words it wanted to say and wanted to be remembered and given." [00:31:50] (53 seconds)


"See, they knew Jesus was Lord. They surrendered their life to Jesus. Jesus fully surrendered it. They sold everything. They followed him for years. They gave it all up to carry on this mission that they were given. They are not out writing out their preferences and say, you know what? I've been wanting to get this in, or I want to change this because I don't like this. I'm not comfortable with that. I don't want to suffer through that. They all died for it. They were used to suffering. So for them to, they didn't come with an agenda. They were agendalists." [00:34:23] (35 seconds)


"Lastly well the skeptics and you may be considered the apostles claim to authority and you say you know what there are many people who came and collected uh who have claimed authority uh for god's word that they speak for them maybe it's um david koresh joseph smith muhammad and you're saying look uh it's just like them and just because they claim to have the word of god i'm just not going to believe it you know let's go back again and and look what peter claims again verse 21 22 he says what uh what men who have accompanied in other words eyewitness who experience these things during the time of jesus is in and going beginning the baptism of john all the way to he's taken up from us one of these men must become a witness to his resurrection in other words like the qualification of witnessing experience this all personally and some of these guys remember gentiles they don't have the old testament but yet they witness all these events and they're going to be a witness to his resurrection and they're going to be a witness to his resurrection events that showed over and over again he's christ and so they're eyewitnesses to the resurrection ministry of jesus and what is acts i mean acts again is a two -volume set and it started with luke and what does luke say again in so much as i've undertaken a compelling narrative of things that have been accomplished among us just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us so just an accurate account it seemed good to me also having a witness to his resurrection and so they're eyewitnesses to the resurrection so what does he mean he's he's taken all these eyewitness accounts and he's put them together all the different details and he made an orderly account so you could research them you could fact check them taken multiple eyewitness accounts and and compiled them into one and say look you know so maybe you have trouble and you run into somebody has trouble saying hey the bible's the word of god that's it's so okay you know what i'm going to do is i'm going to do a little bit of a if you can't dine at hill yet fine why don't you look at scripture as all eyewitness accounts and say like this is too important too significant this is a big decision of your life and you ought to look at and say look there what is what does the eyewitnesses say that person that was there because you weren't there what do they say it is and then you can evaluate and say is this reliable eyewitness testimony you can fact check it through history by the way there's more notes for jesus in in history historical public records than julius caesar you can look at the geography there's more geography that keeps proving scripture you know jesus said the rocks are going to cry out and the rocks do cry out they give testimony to jesus to doa's ark all these things that just keep getting pushed and submerged denied and kept from you because nobody wants to acknowledge that there's authority and there's power in the word of god because if there is that means there might be something different in my life that there truly is a lord and he has a message that's worth reading" [00:50:55] (0 seconds)


"so give me an example i mean if you go through every page of the gospels right what do we see over and over again the apostles who are disciples they're they're like three stooges they don't get it they mess up they make big mistakes over and over again i mean peter is the leader of the church right and what's he known for oh you're leader of the church for jesus and what did jesus call you peter he's the leader of the church for jesus and what did jesus call you peter he's the leader of the church for jesus and what did jesus call you he called you satan there's a nice compliment for you peter put that on your resume oh jesus called me satan that's nice no so you if you're building a legend you would not you would edit that out you can't be the leader and also be the satan anti -leader of it or if you're writing a legend and a fairytale myth why why when jesus resurrected did you have women be the ones who proclaim jesus resurrection at first because in those times women's testimony was not even allowed in court if you're making a legend up you would have had men do it to prove the fact that this was true but it wasn't about the messenger it was about the message that made it true because jesus truly rose from the dead the other reason c is detailed the accounts are way too detailed people think that maybe these are written up fictitious parables that have a true moral meaning but they were never intended to be taken literally they were never taken to be real i mean about but the problem is the bible has so many random details in their stories that have nothing to do with the point of the story or if you were to say the overarching moral lesson and a great example of this is mark 14 in mark 14 you have a very serious story moment jesus in the garden can send me i mean he's praying he's wrestling he's sweating blood he's really struggling with what's going to happen next and and here comes the guards to arrest him and what is mark right in mark 14 uh somebody fled naked from the scene that has nothing to do with it but i can tell you if you were there and saw a naked guy it's going to work its way into the story right come on i mean if my wife says hey go to the outlet mall and buy jeans and i go to the outlet mall and there's a guy who runs out of the store naked i'm going to come home i'm not going to talk about the jeans she's gonna say how did this shop go it was great i saw this guy run naked" [00:55:34] (157 seconds)


"why you not believe in the word of god i mean do you read it i mean if you really believe it you devote you read it you devour it you say god this is the authority this is how you reveal yourself there's power in this and so this is going to shape me instead of me shaping you instead of me saying oh you're not really serious about that are you i mean i think life would go better if i take you where and adapt to the world and i'm not going to be a Christian i'm not going to be a Christian i'm not going to be a little bit you know oh my goodness giving nah nah we can just kind of give it into tipping it doesn't have to be giving it doesn't have to be serving doesn't have to be sacrificial i mean god i just like those verses of comfort i mean i don't want to have sacrifice and after all it's a bunch of contradictions in fact frank mead said this it's pretty interesting he said men do not reject the bible because it contradicts itself it they reject it because it contradicts them ini so many people are against the bible because it contradicts them and had never even read it." [01:03:38] (58 seconds)