Believe Boldly

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. My name is Tim Hartner. I'm a retired pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Weston, Florida. Weston is a suburb of Estero, on the other side of the state. Actually, it's wonderful to be here. First of all, John Roth is one of my dear clergy buddies, and I've known John for almost 30 years. You all are so fortunate to have one of the finest teacher, preacher, proclaimers of God's good news, in my humble opinion, in the Florida, Georgia district of the Lutheran Church of Missouri Senate. He's a great theologian, and so what a blessing. Over this last year of virtual things on Sunday morning, my wife, Lori, and I have joined you all on a pretty regular basis. We do a little bit of channel surfing, you know. We got a church over here, and church over ... If you don't like what this guy's saying, you can hit the mute button. John is like my wife's favorite preacher, so I don't even know if she's watching today with me here, but she makes sure that we tune in on John, and what a blessing that is. I'll say that I'm kind of an old school guy, so when John had informed me that he and Lisa hadn't had a weekend away an umpteen amount of time, I said, get something on the calendar, and I'm going to drive over there and cover for you, and you have a weekend away with your wife. He said, okay. I said, how do you want me to show up? He says, well, why don't you just kind of do what I do? I tend to be like a clerical collar guy, you know, with the robes and all that. I don't know that I've ever preached in my Valpo shirt before, polo shirt, so that's kind of fun for me. To show you, I am really old school, contrary to John Roth, with his gizmo pad that he always uses ... I don't know if at some point John's going to watch this, but John, this is a piece of paper, you know, and a pen, and you write out thoughts on the paper and pen, so that might be kind of a novel thing for him. Grace and peace from God, our Father, and from our Lord and our Savior, Jesus, amen. Well when I offered to cover for John, maybe I should have checked out what series he was going to be doing, and he informed me that after Easter Sunday, during the season of Easter, he was going to be reflecting on the book of Acts, and the date that I would be here would be Acts chapter 4. So looking around that chapter, there's a word that jumped out at me, and the word is boldness, boldness. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated common men, they were astonished, and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another saying, what shall we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name. So they called them and charged them not to speak, not to teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge. For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. Now Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness while you stretch out your hand to heal. And signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus. When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. As I tuned in to Pastor John last Sunday, he's done a good job of putting the book of Acts in context. Everyone likes that expression of how the book of Acts records the gospel exploding into that first century world. Just a reminder to you, when we're reading the book of Acts, remember Luke the Evangelist was the author of what we now call the Gospel of Luke and Acts, two works of his that made it into the New Testament under the inspiration of the Spirit. Luke Acts probably written, scholars tell us around 80 A.D. So the events they're describing happened some 30, 40 years earlier. This day, I kind of like paying attention to some of these kind of things, what month are we in? April. April 25th on the Christian calendar is Saint Mark Day. And Mark's gospel, again the seminary folk tell us was probably written about 10 years before Luke was. But both of those gospels describe and are addressed to people who were facing persecution. Those early Christians for whom a great deal of boldness was necessary, was called for living out their faith. So that's where we're going to be going these next minutes as we reflect on that word b...