Feb 20, 2019
By Pastor Rick Crouch
Daytona Beach is promoted as “The World’s Most Famous Beach,” but I don’t know of anyone who believes that statement is true. I can’t find any polls or research to support this claim. The slogan is just a marketing tool to draw tourists that has been in use since the 1920s. However, that doesn’t mean that Daytona Beach isn’t well-known. One of the things that Daytona Beach is famous for is automobile racing, which began on the beach and now draws hundreds of thousands of people to the Daytona International Speedway every year. The Daytona 500 is known as the Super Bowl of Racing.
Although I grew up in Daytona Beach, I have never been a fan of the sport of car racing. I grew up two miles from the speedway and have never been to a race. However, despite my lack of interest in the sport, seeing headlines and hearing news stories about the sport is unavoidable when you live here. For example, I was aware of when they began putting restrictor plates on engines in 1987 to limit how fast the cars could go. They did this mostly for safety reasons because cars were going airborne when they crashed, but it also had the effect of leveling the playing field and causing all of the cars to be clumped together in packs racing side by side. Starting next year they will be transitioning from restrictor plates to spacers and larger spoilers that will have a similar effect.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because race cars are designed to race. They are designed to be powerful and fast and yet, at the same time, they are intentionally being handicapped to be slower and less powerful. They are created to race and are functioning as race cars and yet they are in bondage to restrictor plates, spacers, and other things that are designed to slow them down.
All Christians are intended to walk in the fullness and power of the Holy Spirit, and yet many Christians are in bondage. They are shackled by fear, pride, addictions and a host of other things that limit their power and effectiveness. They are Christians functioning as Christians, but they are functioning in a severely weakened state.
In Acts 5:12-32 we get a glimpse of what it looks like to walk in the unbridled power of the Holy Spirit. We see that many signs and wonders are being done among the people and believers are increasingly being added. Multitudes of men and women are coming to faith in Jesus.
And then we read in verses 15-16, “that they brought the sick out into the streets and laid them on beds and couches, that at least the shadow of Peter
passing by might fall on some of them. Also a multitude gathered from the surrounding cities to Jerusalem, bringing sick people and those who were tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all healed.” (NKJV)
That is the unbridled power of the Holy Spirit, but it is also unbridled faith. Think about the kind of faith that it would take to believe that you could be healed by someone’s shadow passing over you. What would our lives look like today if we walked in that kind of power and faith? We don’t know because we haven’t tried it.
Very few of us truly believe in healing through anything other than medicine. We know that the Bible says that God is our healer, but we almost always turn to doctors and medicine before God. It is usually as a last resort that we anoint people with oil, lay hands on them, and pray for healing.
When we get a headache we go straight for the Tylenol or whatever our drug of choice is. When we get sick we go straight to the doctor and put our faith in whatever they
prescribe. There is a place for doctors and medicine, but we should not put them in a position above God. If we seek God first and put our trust in Him, then He can prescribe our method of healing. He may very well lead you to a doctor, but it will be the right doctor, at the right time, who will prescribe the right medication.
Another mistake that we make is that we don’t acknowledge the effect that our spiritual life has on our physical health. We experience physical symptoms that feel like physical illness and so we naturally assume that the source of our illness is physical. Yet we all know from experience that emotional stress affects us physically. Some people eat more when they’re stressed; others eat less. Some people throw up or get diarrhea when they’re stressed or nervous about something. Being nervous also causes our heart rates to increase and we might tremble and shake.
No one disputes these things, but many people are blind to the damaging effects of things like unforgiveness, secret addictions, and sins that have never been addressed. Many people plead for physical healing when what they really need is spiritual healing.
Verse 16 says that those tormented by unclean spirits were among those who were healed. Medicine today does not recognize unclean spirits as a disease to be healed and is completely unequipped to treat it even if it did. Medicine may subdue a person’s outbursts or suppress other symptoms, but that just plays into Satan’s hand because now the unclean spirits can occupy that person without any threat of being removed.
I am not saying that every physical illness has a spiritual root—I am saying that we need to have a balanced approach that takes spiritual factors into account. As we train ourselves to seek God first in all areas of our lives, we can include a prayer for discernment so that we will know whether the physical symptoms we are experiencing are purely physical, or if there is a spiritual element that needs to be addressed.
The believers in our passage today brought both the physically sick and the spiritually sick to the apostles to be healed and they were all healed—not through the power of the apostles, but through the unbridled power of the Holy Spirit. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to guide us and empower us when dealing with all areas of our lives – including sickness.
A couple of weeks ago we talked about how the apostles prayed for boldness in the face of persecution. We talked about how they prayed for more healing and signs and wonders to be done even though they knew that those were the very things that would bring more persecution. So it is no surprise that they are once again arrested and put in prison.
The surprise is that an angel of the Lord opens the prison doors and lets them out and tells them to go right back to doing the thing that will get them in trouble again. He says in verse 20, “Go, stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life.” (NKJV) The apostles obey immediately. Immediate obedience under those circumstances is only possible through the unlimited power of the Holy Spirit.
One of the things that Grace and I are working on with our kids is immediate obedience. Unless we specify that what we’re telling them to do can be done at their convenience, we expect them to stop whatever they are doing and obey. It is a sign of respect. It shows recognition of the fact that they are under our covering and are commanded by God to honor us. Of course we want their obedience to be out of love for God and love for us, but sometimes they need a little extra incentive in the form of punishment to obey.
As adults we are offended whenever someone expects us to stop whatever it is we’re doing to meet a need. It puts that person in a position of authority over us if we allow them to boss us around. Even when the person is our boss, we don’t like it.
As Christians, God is our boss, yet how many times are we reluctant to do His will? As a parent I get upset if I have to tell my kids more than once to do something. How do you think it makes God feel to have to repeat Himself over and over?
God expects immediate obedience. When Jesus called the disciples, they dropped their nets and followed Him. Even what seems like a legitimate excuse for delaying was not accepted by Jesus.
At one point in Matthew 8, Jesus saw great multitudes about Him and gave a command to depart to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Verses 21-22 say, “Then another of His disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.’” (NKJV) There is nothing more important than following Jesus.
The most important things we do each day are the assignments that God has given us. But how often do we actually complete every assignment, or how often do we even hear what the assignment is? We are so distracted by the world around us that we often miss or ignore the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
The one voice that we immediately obey is the voice of our phone. Many people will interrupt a conversation with you to answer their phone, or at least see who it is, and we don’t mind because we would do the same thing to them. We have been conditioned to stop anything or everything to check our phones—even the ringing of a landline.
It didn’t used to be that way. When I was growing up, my family never answered the phone while we were eating. We didn’t have an answering machine or voicemail. We just let it ring. My parents’ attitude was, “If it’s important, they’ll call back.” Our family time around the table was more important than whoever might be calling.
Now we routinely allow everything we do to be interrupted by our phones. But if an actual person tries to speak to you while you’re doing something, you get offended. When our family reads the Bible together, we’ll tell Abel and Katie not to interrupt us, but sometimes we allow the phone to interrupt. Imagine what we could accomplish for God if we were as sensitive and obedient to the promptings of the Holy Spirit as we are to the promptings of our phones.
The apostles were blessed to not have phones to distract them. However, they did have the threat of persecution hanging over them that they could have used as an excuse for not obeying. Despite this fact, they immediately obeyed the angel’s instructions without complaint. They went early in the morning and began to teach.
Later that morning when the officers discovered that the apostles were not in the prison, all of the leaders were perplexed and wondered what was going on. Then someone came and told them that the apostles were in the temple teaching.
So the apostles were taken back into custody and brought before the council, and the high priest was understandably upset by their actions. He says in verse 28, “Did we not strictly command you not to teach in this name? And look, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this Man’s blood on us!” (NKJV) They seem concerned for their safety and position.
Peter and the other apostles again refuse to back down. They say in verses 29-32, “We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a tree. Him God has exalted to His right hand to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are His witnesses to these things, and so also is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him.” (NKJV)
Peter and the apostles preach Jesus right in the face of their persecutors and in open defiance of the high priest’s authority because they were operating under the command and power of the highest authority.
There are not many Christians today who operate anywhere near the level of the early believers in terms of faith and power. The majority of Christians today are wearing restrictor plates that have been placed there by the enemy to make us less powerful and less effective. We have accepted this spiritual bondage as a part of life—and it is this bondage that keeps us from walking in the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
We are lazy, apathetic, and uncommitted when we should be on fire and fully committed. The good news is that we don’t have to stay in bondage. We can experience freedom in Christ by renouncing what is false and choosing to believe what is true.
Every one of us has believed a lie of the enemy at some point in our life. And if you don’t think you have, and if you don’t think you are holding something back from God right now, then you’re believing another lie.
God designed each of us for a special purpose. We aren’t all going to be apostles and do the things that Peter and the other apostles did. We aren’t all going to be race cars. Some of us might be moving trucks, but even moving trucks often have
governors on their engines to limit their power. If God designed you to be a moving truck, then you need to take that governor off and be the most powerful moving truck you can be.
God gave us gifts and abilities to be used for His glory. We should never allow the enemy to limit what the Holy Spirit is capable of doing through us.
