Acts 04 Round Two: Idiots for Jesus and an Earthquake

A healing no one can deny. A courtroom that can’t control the story. A prayer that shakes the room. We dive into Acts 4 and walk through the clash between ordinary believers and the highest religious council, where Peter and John—dismissed as untrained—answer with Spirit-given clarity and courage. Their message centers on Jesus Christ of Nazareth, crucified and raised, the cornerstone the builders rejected. The authorities demand silence, but the apostles refuse to trade obedience for safety, declaring they cannot stop speaking about what they have seen and heard.

From there, the scene shifts to one of the most stirring prayers in Scripture. The church gathers, anchors its voice in the Psalms, and asks not for rescue but for boldness to preach, along with God’s healing power and signs in Jesus’ name. The answer comes with force: the place shakes, everyone is freshly filled with the Holy Spirit, and the mission moves forward with renewed confidence. This isn’t bravado; it’s dependence, the kind that comes from being with Jesus and trusting the Spirit in the face of pressure.

Courage then turns into care. As revival draws people to stay in Jerusalem, the community opens its hands—no needy person among them. We highlight Barnabas as a living picture of encouragement through generosity, showing how a Spirit-filled church speaks truth, prays big, and meets needs. If you’ve ever felt underqualified, sidelined, or told to keep quiet about your faith, this chapter invites you to reimagine courage: rooted in Scripture, sustained by prayer, and proven in love.

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The More We Dig. The More We Find.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Community Updates
• 0:22 Theme: Idiots For Jesus And Earthquakes
• 1:58 Context: Acts 1–3 Recap
• 3:59 Arrest And Trial Before The Sanhedrin
• 7:35 Bold Response And “Ordinary Men” Insight
• 10:33 Command To Be Silent And Release
• 12:15 Unified Prayer For Boldness

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. Every day, we take one chapter of the Bible, dig deeper, and discover that the more we dig, the more we find. You can find out more at the BibleBreakdown.com. Now let's grow in God's Word together. Well hello everyone. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Acts chapter four. And if I were to give this one a title, I just got to tell you, it would be Idiots for Jesus and Earthquakes. Idiots for Jesus and Earthquakes. It's going to make sense in a little while, but I love this so much. Peter and John are literally going to get called idiots, and they're excited about it. We're going to get into that in just a moment. But as always, if you like what we're doing here, make sure you like, share, and subscribe. The YouTube videos, you're doing that a great job at that. Man, I see so many of you doing that and you're sharing it. Man, we're growing this community together. Thank you so very much for doing that. And also, make sure that you're leaving us a five-star review on the podcast, Bible breakdown discussion. I want to hear all about it. And I want you to do me a favor, especially on the YouTube videos and on the Bible breakdown discussion, I am trying to on the 15th and the 30th of every month, on our catch up days, do what we're calling Bible breakdown extras, where I dive a little bit deeper into different things that help us to just take what we're learning and reading and applying it to our life. And I have some of you who've asked me some wonderful questions about doing some on prayer and what we call a rule of life and different things. I would love to know from you what is the number one question you have when it comes to this Christian life. How can I help you to just feel more confident about your faith? What kind of resources are you looking for? Anything practical like that at all. That's that's what I want to do on these days is get extremely kind of roll up our sleeves practical so that we can have the most enriching Christian life and knowing God as much as we possibly can. Okay? All right, we're gonna get into that soon, but make sure you're leaving us that information. But today, Idiots for Jesus and an earthquake. And so what's happening is if you remember, the overall theme of the Gospel of Acts is this is the birth of the church. The investigative journalist, doctor turned journalist Luke, is writing about the first 30 to 35 years of the early church. And man, it is awesome. I mean, it it is amazing. Acts 2, the Holy Spirit comes down and dwells all of them. They begin speaking to other languages, spreading the gospel immediately. Then Peter, full of the Holy Spirit, with full of boldness, he gets up and he shares and he says, You fools are the ones that crucified Jesus. But guess what? He's back and he ain't mad at you. Best news of the day, right? And then yesterday in Acts chapter 3, how Peter and John are going to the temple and they look, man, you need to stop being this, you need to stop being like that. We want to give you what we have, and by the way, that's healing. And so they, by the name of Jesus, are able to see this guy healed and then immediately use that to spread the gospel. Remember, the overall theme is that if you are voted most likely to succeed and you're car and you're you're graduating class, the good news is God can still use you. But usually what he does is he uses the least likely to succeed, the ordinary folk to do the most amazing things. And if God can use ordinary fishermen, or they're gonna get called today idiots for Jesus. Man, what can you do through me and you if we embrace the power of the Holy Spirit and are not ashamed of God? Now, what's gonna happen today is if you remember yesterday, Peter gets up, and him and John start preaching to the to the crowd and telling them about Jesus. Well, they're gonna get a little trouble for that today, and they're gonna go before the Jewish leaders who are trying to figure out what to do with them. And then afterward, you're gonna see what's gonna happen next, and this is gonna be beautiful and wonderful. So let's jump into this and we're gonna see what happens. I'm gonna share with you, I'll stop when I get there, about Peter and John getting called idiots for Jesus. Here we go, you ready? NLT Bibles, chapter four, verse one. While Peter and John were speaking to the people, they were confronted by the priest, the captain of the temple guard, and some of the Sadducees. These leaders were very disturbed that Peter and John were teaching the people that through Jesus there is a resurrection of the dead. They arrested them, and since they were it was already evening, they put them in jail until morning. Gee, thanks. But many of the people who heard the message believed. And so the number of the men who believed now totaled about five thousand. So if you remember, back in the life of Jesus, that at one point he fed five thousand men, the women and children. And so now it's back up to that number again because they believe in Jesus. Verse 5. The next day, the council of all the rulers and the elders and teachers of religious law met in Jerusalem. That would have been called the Sanhedrin, who was the top leaders of all of Israel. Verse 6 Annas, the high priest, was there along with Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and other relatives of the high priest. They brought in two disciples and demanded, By what power or in whose name have you done this? Then Peter, remember, filled with the Holy Spirit, which means he's got boldness, he said to them, Hey, rulers and elders of our people, are you are we being questioned today because what we did a good deed for a crippled man? Do you want to know how he was healed? Let me clearly state to all of you and to all the people of Israel that he was healed by the powerful name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, the man you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead. For Jesus is the one referred to in the scriptures where it says, The stone that you builders rejected has now become the cornerstone. By the way, that was a messianic prophecy. And so he's saying, He's the king, by the way. There is a savior, there is salvation and no one else. God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. Then the members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and here it is, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in scripture. That word ordinary men is a the Greek word for that is idiotase, where we get the word idiot. And by the way, if you know what idiot means, it means uneducated fool. And so what they were saying is Peter and John are pretty bold, but they could see that they were idiots and they had never received special training. They were like, hey guys, you know. So when they recognized them and these men, they recognized that they had been with Jesus. Wouldn't that not be amazing? The people took one look at you and said, They've been with Jesus. Boy, wouldn't that be that would be my testimony? Is that when you looked at me, you knew I'd been with Jesus. Verse 14, but since they could see the man who had been healed standing right there among them, there was nothing the council could say. So they ordered that Peter and John out of the council chamber and conferred amongst themselves. What should we do with these men? They asked one another. We can't deny that they have performed a miraculous sign, and everybody in Jerusalem knows about it. People can't shut up about it. But to keep them from spreading their propaganda any further, we must warn them not to speak to anyone in the name of Jesus again. So they called the apostles back in and commanded them to never speak or teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him? We cannot stop telling about everything that he we have seen and heard. So then the council threatened them further, but then finally let them go because they didn't know how to punish them without starting a riot. For everyone was praising God for this miraculous sign, the healing of a man who had been lame for over forty years. So, as soon as they were freed, Peter and John returned to the other believers and told what the leading priests and elders had said. And when they heard this report, all the believers lifted their voices and prayed together to God, O sovereign Lord, creator of heaven, of earth, the sea, and everything in it, you spoke long ago by the Holy Spirit through our ancestor David, your servant, by saying, Why were the nations so angry? Why did they waste their time in futile plans? The kings of the earth prepared for battle, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Messiah. In fact, this has happened here in this very city. For Herod Antipos, Pontius Pilate, the governor, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel were all united against Jesus, your holy servant, whom you anointed. But everything they did was determined beforehand according to your will. And now, O Lord, hear the threats and give us your servants great boldness to preach your word. Stretch out your hand with healing power. May miraculous signs and wonders be done in the name of your holy servant Jesus. And listen to this after this prayer, the meeting place shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they preached the word of God with boldness. When's the last time that you or I prayed and the meeting place shook? An earthquake. Man, that's powerful and amazing. And notice they weren't praying for deliverance, they weren't praying to get out of hard times, they were praying for power to do the work of God in spite of hard times. I love that so much. Let's finish this up. Verse 32. All the believers were united in heart and mind. They felt that what they owned was not their own, so they shared everything they had. The apostles testified powerfully to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great and God's great blessing was upon them all. There was no needy people among them because those who owned land or houses would sell them and bring the money to the apostles to give to those in need. For instance, there was Joseph, one of the apostles, nicknamed Barnabas, also named which also means the son of encouragement. He was from the tribe of Levi, and he came from the land of Cyprus. So he sold a field he owned and brought the money to the apostles. And so what was happening here is what a lot of historians think is that people had gathered from all over the known world to Jerusalem for the time of Pentecost. It was one of the celebrations where they all had to go to Jerusalem. Well, now that the Holy Spirit has come and what we would call in our modern terms revival is now happening, people are not wanting to go back home. But as they are now running out of money, people are starting to be in need. And so what started happening is those who could afford it would sell other pieces of property and other things to then now supply for those who are wanting to stay and see what God is doing. And it is so they can continue to do the work of ministry. So what I love about this chapter is that when the people of God start to experience hardship, experience persecution, they don't look at that as though God had left them, but they rather they see it as an opportunity for God to move through them. I think that's a wonderful lesson for all of us. We don't see here at all that when Peter and John left that situation, they went back and said, Pray for us, you know, God must have left us. But rather they were honored that God would choose them to carry the gospel, even in difficult circumstances. And when they turned and they gave it back to the Lord and said, God, you're gonna have to do this, the meeting place literally physically shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And they began to use the gifts of the Spirit to preach with boldness for the kingdom of God. I think that's a wonderful thing for us. That whatever God brings you to, he will absolutely bring you through for his glory. Let's pray together today. God, thank you so much that you are with us more than we can ever understand. You are for us, and that when we turn our lives to you, Lord, you don't send us away, but you fill us with boldness, and you help us, Lord, and you lead us into all righteousness. Lord, maybe there's somebody who's listening to this today, and they're going through a difficult season where maybe in their own way they're being persecuted for their following you. Maybe their family doesn't agree, maybe there's people at work that don't agree. Whatever that is, I pray, Lord, that you won't turn them, you won't you won't let them turn away, but lean in with power and with boldness to share your word with someone today, and to realize that you are their plan. You are the plan. They are the plan that you have for them. And the God with you, all things are possible. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Don't forget, Jesus said in Acts 1, verse 8, you receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth. My prayer for you today is that you will receive power from the Holy Spirit, and you will use that to be a witness to your world. I love you, and I'll see you tomorrow for Acts chapter 5.