Tell the Good News

“For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:20)

When you have good news you want others to know about it. When the doctor told my wife and I that we were going to be parents, we were excited and told everyone we knew. You would have thought that no one else had ever given birth to a child. My wife could barely wait to get into maternity clothes.

In our first church I invited a black pastor and his choir to come and sing. They sang several songs but the one I remember more than fifty years later had these words: “I said I wasn’t gonna tell nobody what the Lord has done for me,” repeated about three times followed by, “but I couldn’t keep it to myself,” repeated about three times. It is the truth.  When someone is genuinely saved, all their sins have been washed away in the blood of the Lamb and Jesus is now dwelling within, you just cannot keep it to yourself.

That’s where Peter and John were. They had seen the crucifixion and the empty tomb. They had seen the proofs of the resurrection during the forty days before Jesus ascended back to heaven. They had to tell it. They couldn’t keep it to themselves. This is good news. Don’t keep it to yourself.