The Whole Message: When Faithfulness Costs Everything | Howell Bible Church

 

The Whole Message: When Faithfulness Costs Everything

A reflection on Acts 5:12-42

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The Cost of Following Jesus

Following Jesus costs something. Sometimes it costs everything.

This isn’t a popular message in our comfort-driven culture, but it’s the reality that every believer must eventually face. The question isn’t if faithfulness will cost us something, but rather: Is Jesus worth that cost?

In Acts 5, the early church confronts this question head-on. Fresh off miraculous signs and explosive growth, the apostles find themselves arrested, imprisoned, and eventually flogged for preaching about Jesus. Their response? They rejoiced.

Arrested for Preaching the Gospel

The scene in Acts 5:12-16 shows a thriving church. Signs and wonders are happening. Multitudes are being added daily. People are streaming in from surrounding cities to be healed. Everything looks like success by any metric we’d use today.

But then opposition strikes.

The religious authorities, filled with jealous zeal for their own traditions, arrest the apostles and throw them in jail. This isn’t their first arrest—it’s becoming a pattern. The message of Jesus threatens the status quo, and those in power want it silenced.

Then something remarkable happens: an angel opens the prison doors and delivers a stunning command.

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Heart and Soul: Why the Early Church Changed the World (And We Don’t)

A look at Acts 4:32-5:11 and the price of authentic Christianity

What’s the difference between a church that changes the world and a church that’s just playing church? Between spiritual power that turns communities upside down and religious activity that merely keeps people busy?

These aren’t comfortable questions, but they’re essential ones—especially when we compare the early church’s impact to our modern reality.

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This past Sunday, Greg Churchley delivered a challenging message from Acts 4:5-31 that confronted us with a fundamental question every believer must answer: When human authority conflicts with God’s authority, where will we stand?

The Confrontation

The scene Greg painted was intimidating. Peter and John had healed a lame beggar and preached the resurrection of Jesus in the temple. Now they stood in the center of a room surrounded by every person of power in Jerusalem—the entire Sanhedrin, the high priest, the scribes, the elders. This wasn’t a casual conversation. This was the equivalent of being called to testify before Congress, except these men held both civil and religious power over Israel.

Their question cut to the heart of the matter: “By what power or in what name have you done this?”

It’s the same question that echoes through all of human history when sinful humanity encounters God’s truth. As Greg pointed out, this is the question behind the serpent’s hiss in Genesis 3: “Has God really said?” It’s the question the Pharisees asked when Jesus cleared the temple. It’s always been about authority.

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This blog post is based on a sermon delivered on September 14, 2025. Listen to the full audio here.

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When Peter stood up on the Day of Pentecost to address the crowd gathered in Jerusalem, he delivered one of history’s most powerful and effective sermons. In a single message, about 3,000 people came to faith in Christ. What made his proclamation so compelling? More importantly, what can we learn from it for our own gospel witness today?
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When Having Three Priorities Means Having None: Lessons from the Early Church on Spiritual Focus

What if the secret to spiritual fruitfulness isn’t doing more, but doing less with greater focus?

In Acts 1:12-26, we find the early church in a moment of waiting. Jesus has ascended to heaven, leaving His followers with a clear command: wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit, then be My witnesses to the ends of the earth. What they do next offers a masterclass in spiritual prioritization that challenges our modern tendency to pile our plates high with endless activities.

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Witnesses: Why the Church’s Mission from Acts Still Matters Today

The book of Acts isn’t just ancient history—it’s the blueprint for a movement that reached across 2,000 years to bring the Gospel to us today.

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Have you ever wondered why Christianity survived when so many other movements from the first century disappeared into the dust of history? The answer lies in a remarkable 40-day period between Jesus’s resurrection and His ascension to heaven—and the instructions He gave that would change the world forever.

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A year-long journey through the Gospel of John concludes with a deeply personal question that changes everything.

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The modern message often stops at “believe.”

After a year of studying the Gospel of John at our church, this truth became crystal clear: Christianity isn’t just about intellectual agreement with certain facts about Jesus. It’s about following Him—really following Him—wherever that path leads.

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