Here is a man that it is dying, the most painful kind of death, perhaps he could have imagined, and he was full of the Holy Spirit.

Okay? Does that help you're dying? It does not mean that when pain is on you, God's forgotten you and that you're not blessed by the Holy Spirit.

Full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand.

And so I want to say to you, when the power to deliver is with hell, the power to die is given.

Why does God sometimes rescue and sometimes not?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper opens Acts 5, verses 17 to 42 to show that the same God who delivers also

ordains suffering strengthening his people to die in faith.

This sermon was originally delivered at Bethlehem Baptist Church on February 24th, 1991.

The price of spiritual power I see in verse 17.

The high priest rose up and all who were with him, that is the party of the Sadducees,

and filled with jealousy they arrested the apostles and put them in the common prison.

So the price that the apostles are now paying for the experience of crowd-gathering,

life-changing, healing, hope-giving power is three things. One, people are jealous.

Two, people accuse them of false teaching. I'm going to get that out of the word saddisees.

Three, there's a carnal counterpower. They're thrown in jail. So let's look at each of those three.

First, jealousy, verse 17, second half, filled with jealousy, they arrested them. Let's think about this for a minute, this jealousy business.

Spiritual power is very dangerous.

It's dangerous for the person who has it. It's dangerous for the person who doesn't have it and wants it. The reason it's dangerous for the person who has it is because it can create pride.

Even God's power can create pride. We saw that in 1st

Corinthians. And if you don't have it and you want it, it can create jealousy. And both pride and

jealousy are based on a big mistake.

The mistake of pride, if you have God's power, is that you forget it's gods.

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