OCT 25 2015 | The Name of Jesus Forbidden

Sea Change Church · "The Name of Jesus Forbidden" · Adam Stadtmiller · October 25, 2015
Acts 4:13-17
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

God's so good. If you're going through something right now, don't go back. Get up. Never lay down in the valley of the shadow of death. Get up. Walk on. Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. That was a verse the Lord gave me the first year I was here. Get up. Don't lay down in the valley of the shadow. Go to the green pastures. That's where he's taking you. Psalm 23, it says, little sheep, where do they go? It says, they will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

That's where God's taking you. All right, well, we're going to read about Peter and John. Verse 13, you'll see it there in your notes. Now, we know that these guys had just healed a man, and it was undeniable what it had done. They had Peter and John had gone to the temple, and they had healed a man of a crippling disease, and it was undeniable. Can everyone say undeniable? Right. Let me ask you this. What are you doing in your life that's undeniable?

It's undeniable. You know, it's funny. Yesterday, somebody put on Facebook, it was so funny, God is the God of the impossible. He's called you to do the impossible. And I wrote in the message, man, I'm just happy when I get the possible done. You know what I mean? Like, I just need God to help me get the possible done. You know what I mean?

I'm glad for the impossible, but, you know, there's a difference between impossible, and I love big vision. I love doing the impossible. I love vision. But we need to make sure that we're sober in our vision, that we're not drunk in our vision. And as a leader, that is really hard because it's easy to whip yourself up and to whip people up into an intoxicated vision.

You get that. You can whip people up. You can play on people's emotions. We're emotional creatures. And we can whip people up to follow something. We can all do something amazing. I just, I want to do, I want to do 1% more than possible, I guess. Just 1%. If we can do half a percent. If we can do 0.1% more than possible, God is in the mix. Because we have to live beyond ourselves.

But I'm not sure I always want to call people to the impossible, but I wouldn't mind calling them to the undeniable. To the undeniable. What in your life is undeniable? Yesterday, we're playing this team, okay? Back to the soccer team. We're playing this team. The kids were huge, like, compared to, I mean, Sable was there. I mean, literally, they're probably 50 pounds. I have a girl on my team who's 49 pounds, okay?

And she stood next to this girl. I mean, grown women. Grown women. Like, from the U.S. soccer team. I don't know how they got on the team. Okay? They had three girls. Okay, they have three girls on the team. Let me just show you. Three girls on the team that were bigger than my daughter, Lily, who's 13. This is 10 and unders, okay? They were bigger than my daughter, Lily.

Now, she's not a giant, but she's solid. I was getting mad. My kids were getting knocked down. They have so much heart. They get up and they fight. Fight, fight, fight. And at the end of the game, we dominated the third quarter, though, by the way. The ball never got on our side. I was so happy. They didn't score in the third quarter. They beat a 7-0 last time.

It was only 5 this time. One of the moms came up afterwards. She goes, you know, we didn't have two of our best players. I'm like, oh, thanks a lot. Yeah. You're amazing. I'll call you Barnabas. Daughter of encouragement. Little Ivana is probably 52 pounds as well. 53 pounds. She's a rock star. I got three Mexican Jewish people on my team. They came from Mexico.

What a mix. Have you ever met anybody Jewish who's Mexican? There's a community around here of Jews. I got three of them on my team. Very cool. They're speaking Spanish, but they go to Temple. It's just such a cool mix. And we were at their house yesterday up in the Muralins hanging out. We had a big pool party. I scheduled a pool party for them afterwards.

We had so much fun. And little Ivana, it was the end of the game. About halfway through the game, I was so frustrated. And I thought, I've got to change my attitude. I was angry. I was so mad. And about at halftime, I said, what are we going to do? And I decided I was going to start encouraging again and dance. So I had the kids dance. And I said, during the halftime, who's going to rock the goal?

And they said, no, we're going to rock the goal. We're doing that. My goalie's crying. Sable was there. It was awesome. I don't know if this is a vote of no confidence, because she runs the D and I run the O. We've scored two goals all season. She gets me yesterday. She's all, can I try running the offense for a while? She's a great soccer coach, by the way.

And where am I going with this? That the last play of the game, after being knocked down and coming out of the game three times with injuries, Ivana steals the ball, beats some kid, dribbles all the way down, dribbles up the field. We're on a breakaway. Now, by the way, if you're a ref, if you're on a breakaway in soccer, you don't call the game over until the breakaway's over.

Okay? You don't end the game. She's going to the goal. I'm thinking she might score after all this adversity. The guy calls, stops the game. I'm like, are you kidding me, ref? No, I didn't do that. I ran out. We put Ivana on. We lost 5-0. Okay? We put her on my shoulders and on Lily's shoulders. And everyone gathered around, because everyone knew what an effort she did.

And we were jumping up and down and celebrating. I bet the other team's like, really? Like, no. You know, you're not supposed to enjoy yourself when you lose. The joy of the team, of my team, is undeniable. We lose almost, we've won one game. I'm going to put Lily in next week. You trust me. They gave me a coach's outfit. I'm putting her in. 13-year-old.

We'll see what happens. I might not do the impossible, but I'm going to do something undeniable. Let me challenge you. Let me challenge you. Let me challenge you to do something undeniable. Be happy when you're not supposed to be happy. Be joyful when you're not supposed to be joyful. Undeniable. Why is that person so happy? That person has cancer.

Why are they happy? It's undeniable. The impossible might not happen. They might not get healed. I don't know. But let's do the undeniable. Live in the undeniable. And it says that there was undeniable. It says they perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men. And they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus. Oh, I love that.

We'll get to it. And seeing the man who had been healed standing with him, they could say nothing against it. These are powerful sentences. This is powerful. But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves. I always laugh at the Jewish leaders. It's so funny. What shall we do with these men? As opposed to like, hey, that was pretty awesome.

Maybe these guys are right. They just healed a guy. That was pretty cool. What shall we do with them? For indeed, a notable miracle has been done through them. It's evident to all those who dwell in Jerusalem. And we cannot deny it. But so that it spreads no further among the people, let us severely threaten them that they may now speak no more in this man's name.

What a ridiculous, what a transition. Like, all this has happened. It's undeniable. A notable miracle has happened. Let's stop it. Why? Because they want power. People want to be in charge. People want to be God. They want to be in charge. And so they were willing to not, they couldn't deny it, but let's just crush it. I mean, you see that in the world all the time.

This is an amazing thing that's happening. But rather than bless it, it's not happening to me. And since it's not happening to me, let's crush it. You know, it's hard to be happy for other people. I have Facebook. I struggle with the same thing. Oh, great. You're here doing that. The great thing. I have to go to work today. You're awesome. Okay. I'll press like just because I want you to think I like it, but I don't like it.

To what I like, if I was there and you were at work, we can both be there. How's that? We'll call it even. If you want a pastor that keeps it real, this is the place to go. Let's go to verse 13. It's true, right? I don't want to see your feet in a picture. I don't want to see any more feet in pictures on Facebook. Oh, yeah. At the beach. My feet at the beach.

That's so awesome. I've been wanting to go to a garbage dump and take my shoes off and get a picture of like the dump with my feet. Look where I am today. Beautiful day. I'm going to preach here in a moment. Verse 13. Now, when they saw the boldness, saw the boldness. What did they do? They what? The boldness? Saw the boldness. And they marveled. They had to see it.

You have to do something to have it be seen. What are you doing that is being seen? That is causing people to marvel? I want to say it's not that hard in this society to cause people to marvel. Smile. Try that one. Somebody smiled at me, you know, walking down on Girard Street. They freak out, you know. It's not that hard to make people marvel. It really, we live in a society that is easily overwhelmed by kindness because they don't see it that often.

So it says that they saw the boldness. What are they seeing? When people look at your life, what do they see? I was so tempted to be a jerk yesterday. You know what I mean? Actually, I was. Can I tell you? I feel bad telling you something. I don't want to tell you the bad things I do. Their big giant girl was throwing the ball in. And their team, they have giants on their team.

And at the end of the game, you're supposed to go, two, four, six, eight. Who do you appreciate? Jaguars. Yeah. Yeah, Jaguars. I said, girls, because no one knows the name. I said, the name of the team is the Giants. They said, really? I said, yeah, get down in here. Two, four, six, eight. Who do you appreciate? Giants. The other team didn't hear us, but it was funny.

Giants is not the name of their team. Yeah. So there you go. I was angry. But in the end, what did they see? They saw, my parents keep saying to me, I don't know why our daughters come home happy, so happy every week after we lose. And four or five said, are you going to coach in the spring? We want to be on your team again. I don't know, man. I can't take it.

That's why I like individual sports, you know. Just about me. I don't got to count anybody else. Too bad church is a team. Right? Look at this. No, they had a visible faith. They live, the way they live produced a visible and tangible example of Christ in the world. What Billy Graham is doing, and I can't do 10 million people, but I can do one box.

What they're doing is producing a tangible and visible example of Jesus' love in the world. It's really not that hard. Unless we want to completely be self-consumed with all of our own problems, which I am tempted to do all the time. This isn't happening. Where the mirror is constantly reflecting on me, where I think about myself. My anxiety comes because I'm affected by how are people going to think about me if this happens?

What am I going to do? What are they going to expect of me, people's expectations? Winston Churchill said that expectations steal the joy of actually living in the moment when you get there. That they steal away. He said he tried never to have expectations about things. I took up a new hobby. It's pretty awesome. It's brand new. It's called Reading.

I started it again. It's very awesome. I went to the library and got a book. And I'm reading that book on Churchill. And he said, I didn't have expectations because it steals that joy in the moment. I just thought it was good. They produced a visible and tangible example of Christ in the world. You can do that. We can each do that. I love the next thing that it said in that verse that these were uneducated and untrained men.

Look at the next thing I wrote. God's not on a talent search, team. God's not on a talent search. He's not standing back and looking at you, ah, ooh, not quite gifted enough for me. He gave you the gifts. He knows what he wanted to give you. He equips the team with the right skills. You weren't a mistake. You weren't under gifted. You weren't over gifted.

You are who God created you to be. And he's not on a talent search. Jesus, if he wanted to, could have gone and gotten the highest educated, best well-known, most popular people of the day. Done miracles. Taken over Jerusalem. He could have done it all. Chose not to. He went and found some simple people that just wanted to simply follow him. Simple.

Uneducated. Untrained. When I was working with Down Syndrome students, I was running a club, a Young Life club for Down Syndrome students. I love Down Syndrome kids. They're so awesome. I watched them worship. They just love the Lord so much. Guy said to me, I was working with him. He'd worked with him longer. He said if the gospel, there was this one kid worshiping.

He had his hands up. He would bring his Walkman in. A Walkman. What year was that? And he'd be listening. He'd have his hands up. He'd be singing during the club. And my friend said to me, he goes, you know, if it was all about how much you could understand God, and the more you could understand God, and the more talent and gifted you have, then God, then it says the Down Syndrome student would have no ability to get close to God.

He said, see, it's not based on that. It's based on hearts. And the hearts of these Down Syndrome students that were just, if you've ever known any Down Syndrome, they live with passion. You ever seen the passion of Down Syndrome students? The gift that they have. Down Syndrome. God has taken something that I think because after the fall was created, but God has taken it and created a gift out of it.

You know, God is able to extract goodness and hope and mercy out of anything. And they are such a gift. People with disabilities, disabilities are a gift. Our challenges are a gift. The scripture says our sufferings are a gift. Paul's in prison, and he's worshiping and saying it is a gift. It had nothing to do with their ability. It had to do with their hearts.

God's on a search for hearts. Look at the scripture that it has there. It's one of my favorite scriptures, Jeremiah 17, 10. I, the Lord, search the heart, and I test the mind. Now look at the order there. I believe that the mind is run by the heart. And I believe that the scripture says that the heart can think. It says the thoughts of the heart.

Our minds need to be controlled. And when we have broken hearts, I've said this over and again, I believe that we have, one of the reasons we have so much mental illness in our society today is because we have broken hearts. And broken hearts become separated from the mind, and the mind tries to do all the thinking and all the living, and it has separated itself from its heart because the heart no longer feels safe.

And I believe that that is why we are seeing the raises in anxiety, we're seeing the raises in depression and all these things, because we have such a wounded society that we have broken hearts. I met with a friend. He would call himself progressive. We had coffee. And I tend to think if you're progressing towards a cliff, it's progress, but you're going the wrong direction.

And I said, you know, I believe that, you know, I thought this would be pretty much mutually accepted. I said, you know, the breakdown of the family is what's, you know, really at the heart of what's going on in our society. He says, oh, I would completely disagree with that statement. I said, you ever heard somebody that has such a different thought than you that it just about snapped my neck.

I said, really? He said, he goes, yeah, it's the breakdown of society. He goes, actually, the newer family models we have of these mixed and broken families, it's actually strengthening because there's more options now. And that's actually strengthening it. So if you have a broken family, and what happens is this, is when you have so much brokenness in the world, and you have so much guilt and shame that comes with it, you have to end up validating it in order to give it some worth.

I just couldn't believe that he told me the more breakdowns that happen, the more, you know, if you get three dads and two moms, or whatever family model comes together strengthens the model of the family. I've been chewing on that for a month now, and I'm not even sure I know how to answer it. I just stood back in awe at the thought and looked at it.

God searches the hearts, it says. And so that's a little tangent there on the brokenness of the heart that I believe comes from the brokenness of the family, which I'll speak about in November when I'm going to be doing a series on the human sexuality from a biblical perspective. David Levy is going to be speaking about the differences between the genders.

So excited to have him. That's going to be in November. But I love this. I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the minds, even to give each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds. And thankfully, at any time, we can step into the deeds of Christ and receive the blessing that comes from that. You see, God's not on a talent search.

He's not on a talent search. And at any time, our talents, and I just know this. You know, spiritual gifts are important. We're going to be doing a spiritual gift thing in January. I know what my spiritual gifts are, and I know what God has blessed me with. But I know at any time, if he decides, he can just go, and they're gone. You ever seen a pastor that all of a sudden, they're just not effective anymore?

You ever seen a person, they have ministry, and then all of a sudden, they're not effective, but they just hold on and hold on and hold on, and the ministry keeps going on because we have to go on? I don't know why God does that, but I've been very clear that at any time, I know that it's a heart deal. It is my heart. I want a heart like David. David had all kinds of mistakes, but he had a heart that loved God.

God's not on a talent search. You don't have to measure up for God. You can do undeniably miraculous, powerful things. I want to tell you as a congregation, we can do that if we bond together. You are a jewel to God. You are a jewel. You are blessed. The Father loves you. He has an untamed, furious love for you. Let me say that again. An untamed, furious love.

The love of God is untamed towards you, and he loves you. So we look at that, and he's looking for these hearts. Verse 14 says, they realized that they had been with Jesus. I love that. I love that. Because the things that were undeniable were undeniable for a reason, and the reason was this, is because they had been with Jesus. If you want to change the world, spend time with Jesus.

That's the plan. Spend time with him in prayer. Spend time with him in worship. Worship. Yesterday, I had some music on. I was looking for some jazz. I was listening to some 80s alternative. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to put some worship on. And I thought, I don't want to listen to worship. But then I remembered that I preached to you recently.

We need to change the culture of our house. We need to have scripture up in our house. My mom brought me a plaque that said, you know, Joshua 1, 9, wherever you go, the Lord, you know, you will claim the land, basically, as a paraphrase. And it's up in the house. And so I put the worship on yesterday, and it began to sing about a good, good father.

That's who you are. And I'm loved by you. And that's who I am. After that, it said, it is well with my soul. And the verse came on, it is well with my soul. And then some stresses came in the afternoon that would have normally knocked me off my feet for a good 12, 15 hours. And there was a transcendent peace that went all the way through the night.

I woke up six times last night, at least six times. And each time I woke up, in my head was going through the song that I had put on. You are perfect in all of your ways. You are perfect in all of your ways. You are perfect in all of your ways. You are good, I think. The Holy Spirit must have got it wrong. But nonetheless, I was singing it over all night long.

And I came to church with such a peace today. And it's because I switched. I just know that all you have to do, you give God an inch, and what is he going to take? An eternity. Just in the afternoon. I didn't even know that I needed to listen to worship. But I spent time with Jesus. I was cleaning the house as I listened to the worship. I was potting plants.

But just spend time with him. The works were undeniable, and they recognized that these men had been with who? Who do you spend time with? Yeah. But who do you spend, think about your life. Who do you spend time with? Radio pundits? TV? Whatever message you pump into your head on a regular basis is going to be the message that comes out of your mouth.

See, the things that we meditate come out, the Scripture says, come out of our mouth. And out of the heart. And they go from our mind, and oftentimes they will become embedded fears into our heart. One thing I rarely do, I probably do about 30 seconds to a minute and a half of news a day. That's all I do. Check in, what's happening. I read the headlines.

I don't always read the entire story. I don't have the margin for it. Maybe you have the margin for it. I don't. But it breaks my mind, and it breaks my heart. And I can know the issue and move forward with that. And so we see Jesus there. They had been with. What are you doing with your time? Who are you spending time with? The undeniable proof that came from their actions was when they saw the action, the next thing they thought is, where have these guys been?

They've been with Jesus. That's all. Let me just give you the simple plan. Spend time with Jesus. Spend time with Jesus. It'll change your life. Read the word. Put worship on in your house. Get printed Bibles and open them in your house with scriptures that are there. Listen to the word of God on the radio. Just over and over. Spend time with Jesus. Simple plan.

After they realized that they had been with Jesus, they did what? They marveled. They stood back. Look what marvel means. I looked it up. To pause with wonder and astonishment. I just keep thinking of that picture of little Ivana on Lily's shoulders. And we're not trying to do it to impress anybody. We just, she deserved to be on the shoulders. She was crying.

She was dribbling the ball down the field crying. And we put her on Lily's shoulder, and we treated her like a queen coming into a city. It was beautiful. That's the life I want to live. It's beautiful. And it was undeniable. And you've got to think, if I was on the other side, and we weren't doing it for the other side, but I've thought about it since, if I was on the other side, and I looked at a team that just lost 5-0 with a little 51-year-old pound girl that had been knocked down and out of the game three times, dribbling down, crying with the ball, trying still to score, to put a shot on goal, and then we put her on our shoulders, and we celebrate her.

But if I'm looking from the other side, I would think, what in heaven is happening over there? It is an undeniable joy. And we had a pool party that was awesome. And I loved being a part. It was hard. I hate seeing my kids get knocked down. I hate losing. I hate it. I'm very competitive. I don't know if you've noticed that. I go to the other team's games and watch the games.

What 8-year-old coach does that? I go to the other teams, and I scout their teams for when we're going to play them. I'll be at practice. They have a number 10, okay? You're going to be on number 10. How do you know there's a number 10 on their team? Trust me. I know. I was at the game. They marveled. The product, John and Pete. I love this. This is awesome.

The product John and Peter were producing was greater than their factory's capacity. They were producing a product. You get that. A product of love, of grace, of mercy, of miracles, of things being astonished, things that you can do. These guys are average dudes, okay? They're not Paul. I look at Paul. I'm like, I can't be Paul. I can't be Paul. I can't be Jesus.

But I can be Peter. I'm sure I can be Peter. I think I can do better than Peter, to tell you the truth. Actually, he was crucified upside down. I better watch out. But the product John and Peter were producing was greater than their factory's capacity. Think about that. Little tiny factory. Awesome product. Our little church on the corner is a little tiny factory of God's love.

And we are going to produce a product here of God's love and mercy into this place. And I don't want to go back. I want to keep going. I want you to go forward into the little product that is your heart and build it and spend time with Jesus and let it, like he said, it's going to explode. You hear what he said in the video? It's an explosion of God's love.

An explosion of happiness. An explosion to let your life ignite. The people marveled. Verse 14. And seeing the man who had been healed standing there with him. Now remember, that man had to go to prison for the night too, just for getting healed. That's what you get. Because obviously he was still with them and they had spent the night in prison. They couldn't say anything against it.

The acts of these apostles gave indisputable proof that left them speechless. It was undeniable. We cannot deny it, they said. Here's the problem. When it comes to the things of God, seeing is not always believing. You've heard it said, seeing is believing. Unfortunately, God has created us with the capacity to choose. And a lot of times we'll choose us.

We'll choose me. We live in a selfie stick world. And seeing is not always believing. They saw Jesus. They saw him. They saw his life. It was undeniable. They saw the miracles. It was undeniable. They couldn't deny them, but they still could choose to go against them. And so we are going to have persecution in our day. It says that the name of Jesus here was forbidden.

It says that seeing is not always believing. This is not to stop the leaders from persecuting them. Why? Submitting to God removes your ability to play his part. This is why they persecuted them. Because to acknowledge what God had done, this is a lesson for us. To acknowledge what God had done would have taken them out of the place to be God themselves.

Because when all the power, when they have all the power and they make all the decisions and they have the spiritual rules and they can tell people when you can go to temple, they were in charge if you can go to church at night. Now imagine me. Now back then, this is a theocracy. And meaning all the culture was based around the centrality of temple. And so everybody, if you couldn't come into temple because you were unclean or whatever, you were on the outs.

This is, you're either in with society or you're an outcast. That's how it worked in the Jewish community back then. And I would stand there out the front with all the elder board and as you walked in, we could decide if you belong there or not. We could say, no, no, no, you've got this wrong with you or that or you haven't done this right or you, and so they had complete control, complete control over the people.

They didn't want to give that control up because once again, we all want to be God. This was the first temptation. First temptation, it's the same temptation that, that, that, um, that, well, I think it was in, it was in Jeremiah, right? It's, they call him the queen of heaven or Satan that it says that wanted to do was to become above God. And then he tempted Adam and Eve to be like God.

And every day we are being tempted over and over again to be like God. And this is what the Pharisees wanted. And so even though it was deniable, they weren't willing to submit to it because it had to remove them from the position of being God. We all want to be little demagogues, whether it's in our marriage, trying to control our partner or in our kids' lives or in whatever it is, I completely always have to ask myself, am I allowing God to be God?

One of the best ways to let God be God is to pray. To pray. One of the verses that I've learned that's helped me in marriage and I was talking to a friend of mine this week about marriage. He says, what are you going to do about it? I was telling him, you know, I got this. He goes, what are you going to do about it? I said, I'm going to pray about it. Well, what are you going to do?

I said, well, I'm going to pray about it because Proverbs says the husband of the godly wife has full confidence in her. And so, if I believe my wife's godly, then I have full confidence and she can sort it out and I don't have to do anything to change it other than pray and she'll fix it. See, or I can be God and I can go and start, you know, using whatever manipulative tools that I have.

And so, we have the same thing here with the Pharisees that they said, we are going to make sure that this name doesn't go any further because they saw their power crumbling. Seeing is not always believing. Why? Because submitting to God removes your ability to play his part. And let me ask you this, where do you need to stop being God? Where is it time to submit to prayer?

I said last week that the name of Jesus asks for submission to his glory and to his authority. And that's a problem. That's a problem for most people. Finally, the final verse here, verse 17b, let us severely threaten him. Let's not just threaten him. Let's severely threaten him, you know, I've really worked on, this is a little parenting, this is a little side note, parenting tool.

One of the things I had to work on the first five years of my time being a parent is if my, I would have to add emotion to make sure my kids were getting the point. Like, you know what I mean? So I'd be like, instead of stop doing that, I'd be like, stop doing that or I'm gonna, and I'd be like, get all big. My wife called it getting big. It terrifies your children.

My wife said one day, you're 6'4", 235, 231 is my fighting weight. My pre-head pastor weight was 220, so I'm up like 13 pounds since I've been here. Right. And my wife said, you don't, like, if your yes is yes and your no is no, just, just say what you need to say. You don't need to, you ever have people, like, they have to have a bunch of drama around what they say because what that does is, that invalidates what you're saying.

Do you get that? If you have to scream and yell and cuss, what you're saying is, I don't believe that my word is valid, so I've gotta go do this grandstanding thing in order to make you get the point because I'm not valid enough that if I just say, hey, that's not appropriate and I won't accept it, accept that. You can't just say it like that. You gotta do this big thing, okay?

The Pharisee said, we're gonna do a big thing. Let's not just threaten them, let's severely threaten them. Well, these are men that were willing to die for Jesus. How much can you threaten them? You see, when you've given everything up, when you're not holding onto anything tightly, you can finally be free. You can finally be free. The day I realized I didn't have to be in ministry anymore and God still loves me was the day I started enjoying being in ministry.

I don't have to be in ministry. I can do anything. I can do anything I want but this is where I wanna be and God's made me happy here and he's blessed it. So let us severely threaten them from now on that they speak to no man in this name. That they not speak in this name. The name of Jesus has been mentioned close to a dozen times so far in the book of Acts in the first four chapters.

The name of God. Let me give you a little homework assignment. Go Google verses, biblical verses on the name of God. The name of God has authority. It has power. You know in the Old Testament God's presence didn't dwell in the temple as his whole presence because the temple could not contain God. What did it say dwelt in the temple? His name. You see there's power in the name.

There's power. There's energy in the name that when you speak the name of Jesus if you could see what was actually happening according to the scriptures it has an authority and even when people are on the basketball court and they say Jesus Christ and they say that there's a power that goes out of that. The gospel is being preached whether they are for us or against us and even Jesus says that.

The name of Jesus when you look back this man it said we heal you how do we heal you in what? The name of Jesus and it says earlier in Acts as we preached it it said that no other person shall be saved except by what? The name of Jesus. Do you understand that when we get to before the throne of God that they will say how are you known or when God judges us you can say through the name of Jesus it'll be the name of Jesus because names have authority.

Names speak about identity. Names speak of a power and names have an authority and so as you look at this Jesus becomes central. The power of the name. The power of the name of Jesus. Who are you living for? A friend I met in a park in London and he's part of a different religion that claims to be Christian and I just said to him I said you can't call it Christian because Christianity has Jesus as the apex.

Obviously Jesus is leading us to the father but it's the apex and if you say that Jesus is not God and he's just the son of God and he didn't die on the cross and on and on I said it's not Christian you can call it religious but it's not Christian because we are a church that believes in the name of Jesus and so as a church we want to depend on the name of Jesus. The final thing I want to give you is a little tool in your time with God this week and spend time with Jesus because when you do this week people will stand back and marvel that this week meditate on the name of Jesus go and just meditate on the name of Jesus just sit you're not doing a mantra you're not doing some crazy chanting it's a verse we're supposed to meditate on scripture meditate and say Jesus just fill me with the power of your name the name of Jesus and see what happens because that name has been forbidden over and over but these men ended up dying for it you see nothing can hold back the furious power of the name of Jesus that's how our worship team come forward Lord Jesus we want to thank you God for no other name in heaven by which we will be saved no other name in heaven has power like the name of Jesus no other name will be recognized and it says in the end times that when you come every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father thank you thank you thank you