I felt like often when we come together, our time is just spent in debate and focusing on controversy, if you will. But I appreciated very much my brother, Skip Newsomberry, getting up right after me. After I said, why don't we just spend time fellowshiping and praying? Skip said, well, because we're Presbyterians and because our form of church government has modeled on the principles of Acts 15 and when the elders and the leaders of the church came together, they were doing the business and the work of the church. And I appreciated that and it caused me to go back and examine again a fresh Acts 15 and look at what it had to say. And he was right. In Acts 15, the apostles and the elders, they came together and they were trying to deal with problems within the church, disputes that had arisen among the brethren. But I was struck by something that I read in that passage as well. If you look in Acts 15, verse 12, we read, the whole assembly became silent as they listened to part of us in Paul, telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. They were doing the business of the church. They were doing the work that was necessary at the time. But they were also giving testimony and sharing and giving praise to God of the mighty miraculous and wondrous things that he had been doing through their ministry. And it made me think, you know, I could enjoy a little bit more the business of the church if while we were doing it, we were standing up and telling stories about the miracles and the wonders that God was doing through our ministry, about the people who were coming to Christ daily through the preaching of the Word. And I know it's not because it's not happening, but I've never heard a single person in our Presbyteries stand up and give a testimony about somebody coming to Christ. When we examine candidates for ministry, we focus exclusively almost. We throw in a question about, tell us about your devotional life and your marriage. But then we get down to the nitty gritty, the important stuff, the doctrine. What do you believe? One of my best friends from seminary is a PCA church planter, an evangelist out in Seattle, Washington. And he shares some of the same frustrations that I'm expressing to you right now. And so, after a very thorough theological exam in his Presbyterie one day, he stood up and addressed the candidate on the floor of Presbyteria and said, let me ask you a question from the book of church order. Our book of church order in chapter 8 and paragraph 3 describes the duty of an elder. Let me read it to you and then if you will respond to how this statement reflects your own life. And he read from chapter 8, paragraph 3 where it says, the elder should set a worthy example to the flock and trusted to their care by their zeal to evangelize the unconverted. Candidate tugged on his collar and looked around and he said, does it really say zeal? There was nervous laughter like we're doing now. But for all of us, how true is that of our lives, that when our congregations and the people in our community look at us, they see a passion and a zeal for the unconverted. I'm ashamed to tell you that they don't always see it in me. And so I'm struck when I go to the scriptures and I look at the passage that Craig read for us this morning from Luke 22 and we see a man named Peter who, throughout his life was bold. I mean, there's no denying that Peter was a bold and impetuous individual. We see him in many cases in the New Testament showing courage and boldness that many of us wouldn't have under any circumstances, jumping out of the boat and heading towards Jesus on the water. He didn't pull out the sword to chop off the ear and yet that same Peter with cursing and swearing denies that he even knows Jesus and then we go to the book of Acts. We go to Acts chapter 4 and we read to you the first 13 verses of Acts chapter 4. The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They seized Peter and John and because it was evening they put them in jail until the next day. But many who heard the message believed and the number of men grew to about 5,000. The next day the rulers, elders and teachers of the law met in Jerusalem. Anas, the high priest was there and so were Caiaphas, John, Alexander and the other men of the high priest's family. They had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them by what power or what name did you do this? Then Peter filled with the Holy Spirit said to them, rulers and elders of the people, if we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, then know this. You and all the people of Israel, it is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised in the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He is the stone you builders rejected which has become the capstone. Salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven, given to men by which we must be saved. They saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled ordinary men. They were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. What an amazing transformation has taken place in the lives of the apostles. One moment they are scattering, fleeing, hiding in fear that the same fate that has been fallen their master might somehow fall on them. And now we find them, Peter back in the same place he was earlier denying Christ with curses, standing and boldly testifying of the resurrection of the dead in Jesus Christ, calling them to repentance and proclaiming that salvation can be found nowhere else, not through the law, not through the fact that there are sons of Abraham but only through Jesus Christ, the son. There is a radical difference between Luke chapter 22 and Acts chapter 4, and as I think about my own ministry, I want to know what it is. I want to know what's happened. I think there are three things that we can see from the scriptures before us, the stories that we read in the gospels. And one is the undeniable facts that the apostles have encountered in their own personal experience. The second is their loyalty to Christ, and I think the final thing and the most important thing is the unbelievable transformation that has taken place in their lives. You see, I think the first motive for the boldness and the courage and the power of the disciples ministry was the undeniable fact of the resurrection. The apostles had seen a dead man walking. They had been there. They had seen Christ put on the cross, and now they had seen him risen. They had seen him walking. They had eaten with him. They had fellowshiped with him. They had heard his teaching. They knew the undeniable fact that Jesus had risen from the dead. Lloyd Ogilby, who is the chaplain of the United States Senate and his commentary on Acts, calls the resurrection of Christ the source of triumphant disillusionment. What does he mean by that? Well, disillusionment is to be set free from illusions that you may have. And the resurrection of Christ set them free from all sorts of illusions they had about God, about themselves, about life and death and life eternal. I'm sure they could think back to that time just before when Jesus had been in Bethany with Mary and Martha and had said, I am the resurrection in the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies. Do you believe this? Well, they may have said so at that time, but now they have seen the resurrection Christ. And that fact, undeniable fact, radically changed their approach to ministry. What about in our lives? Do we have that same boldness and power? Have we experienced the resurrected Christ in the same way that the apostles have? Or has it become a fact of history for us? There's also another undeniable fact that I would imagine gave them some boldness. We read back in Acts, we know that there's this layman who sits at the gates of the temple. Every day begging for change. Now who would have been most likely to encounter this layman? Those who work in the temple, the high priest, the Sanhedrin, they probably have been walking by this guy every day for 40 years on their way to work in the morning. And one morning they come to work, they know they've got a big docket, they've got a lot of cases coming form in those pesky apostles are back there again. What are we going to do with those guys? They call the court to order and the first witness is old lame Larry who they'd walked by every morning for 40 years. And the fact that he's standing there on his own two legs giving testimony to what had happened in his life was an undeniable fact that radically changed the way the apostles approached their own testimony before the court that day. What about in our ministries? How many lame Larry's are there? How many people whose lives have radically been changed by the power of the gospel? Can we point to it and give testimony out and encourage our own congregation and believers? The next thing I think that we see though is we look at the lives of Peter and John and the Apostle as their loyalty to Christ. Their loyalty to Christ is so powerful. It's interesting as we go on in the text, if you jump down to verse 19, Peter and John replied, judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. And Sanhedrin wanted to come crashing down on these guys. They wanted to put a stop to everything that was going on. They didn't want them to talk about Jesus anymore. What a ridiculous thing if you imagine it. Here's the Sanhedrin. They're going, what are we going to do with these guys? They are stirring up trouble like nobody's business. How are we going to put stop to this? Let's just tell them not to talk about Jesus anymore. Let's just tell them, don't say anything else. They're loyalty though. Who are they going to be loyal to? The Sanhedrin or the Christ who they've seen resurrected? Who's ministry and whose power has impacted them in such a way? They were loyal to the one who had done everything necessary for them. The one who had given them salvation and the one who had empowered them by the spirit to go out and do ministry. There's a story that's told of Abraham Lincoln. I believe it's apocryphal. I went and read a biography about this big of Lincoln and I didn't find the story in it. But it's a great story. I think that illustrates the kind of loyalty that the apostles had. The story is told of Lincoln going to a slave auction one day and standing off the side. And one point of young slave is put up for auction and Lincoln enters the bidding. And as the dollar amount climbs, Lincoln continues to bid and eventually wins the day and purchases the slave. At the end of the auction, he goes and collects his purchase and as they're walking away, he turns to the slave and says, I have purchased you in order to set you free. You may go. You may do whatever you want. You may be whoever you want to be. You are free. And Lincoln turns to go and he's walking away. Here's footsteps behind him. He turns around and there's the slave continuing to follow after him. He stops and he says, didn't you hear what I said? I've bought you in order to set you free. You may go. Be who you want to be. The slave said, no, I don't think you understand. You've given me something that I could never purchase for myself. You've given me a gift beyond giving and I want to be your slave. I want to serve you. I want to give my life in service to you. The loyalty that the slave then had for Lincoln. Again, I think it's an apocryphal story but it illustrates powerfully the loyalty that one who has been purchased, bought and set free, should have to the one who has bought them. Is that the kind of loyalty we have to Christ today? Is that the radical transformation that has taken place in our lives? I have a dear friend from college who is now in the ministry but he's a young man who was saved out of a totally pagan home when he was in high school. He was 16 years old and never heard the song Jesus loves me. I couldn't get over that. He actually came to know Christ through the ministry of anapolis EP church. There were a lot of things about my friend Gus that were funny. He used to think that that picture that has the old man sitting in the table praying with a loaf of bread, when he became a Christian started going to folks' house in anapolis EP, everybody had that picture. Gus thought, if you were Christian, you had to have that picture in your house. When we were in college, we'd go visit folks and we'd go, yeah, they're a Christian. They got the picture. It's there. But I remember one night, not long after Gus had become a Christian, we went to the movies. And I'm pretty mindless when I go to the movies. I sit there and let the thing go by and enjoy it for what it is. But we went this particular night to one of the opening nights of the movie Cocoon. This was back in the early 80s. I don't know how many of you remember the movie Cocoon. It's about sort of a geriatric community. And there's a secret swimming pool beside the community. And these old folks are going off and swimming in this pool where all these alien pods are. And they start swimming in this pool with these alien pods and they start feeling invigorated and their lives begin to change and they're excited and they're full of vigor and youth. And all of a sudden, the aliens come to them and say, you know what, guys, we're going to take you off in spaceships and you're going to go with us and live forever. You know, it's a hilarious movie. It's just great seeing these 80-year-old guys in the diving board doing the spring, into the pool and everything. And I'm not thinking anything about it. And the movie ends and the credits are rolling and all of a sudden I notice Gus isn't there. And I hear someone standing down in front of the theater. Hey, wait! Don't anybody leave yet. I got to talk to you guys. We just saw a movie where aliens come and take people off on a spaceship so they'll have eternal life. Let me tell you, it ain't going to happen. But if you want to know how to have eternal life, I can tell you. Come down here and talk to me. All of a sudden the theater manager is running down and ushering him out and Gus is like, he's throwing me up! Beat me in the parking lot! But Gus had experienced a transformation in his life. He'd been saved out of a life of sin and he wasn't going to allow anybody to paint a different picture of what eternal life was all about. His loyalty to Christ demanded that he stand and speak the truth in love and change me. How many of us are like that? When we encounter lies of the culture, when we encounter people distorting the truths of the gospel that we stand up in boldly confront them with the truth. I'm ashamed to say that I don't very often do it. Why not? Why is that? We can look at the undeniable facts and we can all agree on them and we can talk about our loyalty to Christ and see that that is something all of us would profess. But those things were true of Peter before. The resurrection. Peter had seen all sorts of undeniable things. He'd seen Jesus raise Lazarus from a dead, he'd seen a dead man walking before then, he'd seen Jesus feed the thousands, he'd seen Jesus give sight to the blind and legs to the lamb, he'd seen all those things, he'd had an encounter with undeniable facts. We know he was loyal, the text that Craig Ready pulls out his sword, he's ready to fight. Something else has to have happened. We see it when we go back to the text in Acts 4 in verse 8. Then Peter filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit. I think the secret of Peter and John, the apostles' boldness, had to do with the Holy Spirit. You know what I have to confess to you, that I talk about God all the time when I preach, I preach the cross, I preach Jesus, but I'm afraid of the Holy Spirit, partly it's because of you guys. When I came to this Presbyterian, I spent days trying to think about my answer to questions that you'd ask me on what I believed about the Holy Spirit, that I was afraid of what you'd do to me. And I'm often afraid of what would happen to my ministry, to my livelihood, to my family, to my church. If I really invited the Holy Spirit to come in a powerful way, we'll begin to work in our midst. I'm ashamed of that. William Law, the Puritan who is probably best known for writing a serious call to a devout and holy life, wrote this back in 1761, where the Holy Spirit is not honored as the one through whom the whole life and power of gospel salvation is to be affected. It is no wonder that Christians have no more of the reality of the gospel than the Jews had of the purity of the law. For the New Testament, without the coming of the Holy Spirit in power, over self sin and the devil is no better a help to heaven than the Old Testament without the coming of the Messiah. Thousands stand ready to split doctrinal hairs and instruct others in the fine meaning of scripture words, but there are so few through whom the Holy Spirit can work to bring men to new birth and the kingdom of God. Jesus told his disciples, he said, guys, it is better for you than I go away. Why? So that the counselor will come, the Holy Spirit will come, and he will give you power. I want to challenge you this morning, brothers. I want to challenge myself to repent of whatever fear we have allowed to shape our ministry. This may not be true to you. I may not be preaching to you this morning. I know I'm preaching to myself. I need to repent. And I need to ask the Holy Spirit to come in a powerful and fresh way to this church, to this ministry, to my life, and enable me to be the kind of pastor that, when I'm examined by Presbyterry, can give great testimony from my zeal to the unconverted. I want us to take just a few minutes and write where you are, if you will, that with me. Pray silently, pray with someone beside you. And if it's true of you this morning, repent of your fear, your fear of man, which quite often shapes our ministry, I told you I didn't like Presbyterry, and part of the reason is because I'm afraid of you guys. I need to repent of that. I need to repent of my fear of what God might do if he really came down in power and did a work here in our midst of habit. I looked at the statistical records for our Presbyterry, the 2000 edition of our Denomination of Yearbook. In our Presbyterry had more people die, transfer, or remove from the roles than we did see come to Christ. We need the Spirit of God to come in power on all of our ministries, that the unconverted might come to know Christ and that the gospel would change our own hearts and lives and ministries. Pray with me, if you will. Heavenly Father, I repent today before my brothers and brothers and sisters of my sin of the fear of man and my unhealthy fear of you, or God, forgive me when I have allowed my ministry to be shaped by the opinions of others, by cultural trends, by the latest church growth strategy, and I've neglected to spend as much time and prayer over your word as I haven't studied over your word. What I confess that I still have great fear, even in asking you to send your Holy Spirit in power on me and my ministry. And for my brothers here, Lord God, I pray that you would, in a powerful and radical way, change our ministries so that when we come together to do the business of your church as we need to do, that our time would be seasoned with stories of the gospel, of people coming to know Christ, of radical transformation in our own lives and ministries, empower us even as you empowered the apostles of old, cause us to be even as we read in Proverbs, to be as bold as lions, working our hearts today, I pray, in Jesus' name, Amen.