“Kingdoms in Conflict”
Acts 4:1-22
6.17.07
The book of Acts chronicles the story of the early church in the days following the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave. Until we get to chapter 4, it’s just one tremendous event after another. Jesus ascends to Heaven before the eyes of His disciples, after giving them marching orders for life. He promises the unleashing of the Holy Spirit in power, and that is recorded in chapter 2. Unprecedented growth occurs in the early church as a result of God’s power and Peter’s message of the resurrected Christ, and that early church is on a roll. People are caring for one another and helping each other out selflessly; they are joyfully worshipping God; they have a great reputation even with those outside the church. In chapter 3, a miraculous healing takes place, and again people are drawn to listen to Peter’s message, and many listeners become followers of Jesus.
Then comes chapter 4. Everything had been flying high for the fledgling church, and then comes conflict. Conflict is an inevitable part of life, inevitable because by nature all of us are fallen people, fallen from God’s holy standard, selfishly seeking our own way. When your desires get in the way of mine, there is often conflict as we each try to get our share, or get our way, or get ahead. And so we find in verses 1-22 a story of conflict, in fact several conflicts; let’s read together!
In Why Men Hate Going to Church, author David Murrow makes the observation that Christian faith has been perceived of late as being a “women’s religion”, something that real men have little interest in because their sense of “macho” is somehow offended. I think he makes some great points, but as he points out, it wasn’t always this way; look at this text of conflict! Two men, Peter and John, followers of Jesus, stand toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball with a religious council of seventy other men, men with the authority to throw them in jail. Instead of backing down, Peter boldly says some things that are the verbal equivalent of a left hook across the chops of these men, politely but firmly insisting that Jesus Christ is the One Who is ultimately responsible for a man’s healing, and that if they don’t like it, that’s too bad, but they’ll keep on talking about what they’ve seen and know to be true. This doesn’t sound like a couple of namby-pamby momma’s boys to me!
I want us to work our way through the story, and then come back and take a look at it from the standpoint of four conflicts that we find played out here.
• Peter & John had followed up the healing of this man with a message by way of explanation
• This ticked off the authorities
o Sadducees and priests were concerned because of
Fact of their teaching – what authority?
Content of their teaching – contradicted their beliefs about God
Potential effects of their teaching – temple guards there for concern of rebellion
o Had them arrested for the night
• Note that this arrest didn’t have the desired effect; “the Sadducees could arrest the apostles, but not the gospel” (Stott). Now, 1000’s of people were part of the church!
• Next day, the equivalent of a Supreme Court was convened, seated likely in a semi-circle to interrogate the disciples
• Question involves the authority by which these guys are talking about Jesus
• Response of the disciples is
o Calm
o Respectful
o Direct
o Clear
o Uncompromising
o Focused on Jesus Christ
• The council’s response was to be
o Astonished
o Dumbfounded
o They convened a meeting behind closed doors to try to figure out what in the world to do
o Final response was a weak one; “stop talking about this Jesus”
• Response of the disciples, these real men of faith, was courageous and resolute: we can’t stop talking about Him!
• In the end, about all the council could do was to make some idle threats, and let the disciples go
• Ultimately, the name of God received praise because of this episode, and rightfully so!
Now, let’s look at this encounter from the standpoint of the different conflicts that we find here. First,
I. The precipitating conflict: Between disability and the power of God
• The kingdom of pain and death, presided over by Satan, versus the kingdom of God
• Chapter 3 records the miraculous healing of a man disabled from birth
• Peter and John, followers of Jesus, had met the 40-year-old man at one of the gates of Jerusalem
• There to beg alms of passers-by
• One seemingly ordinary day, this man was well into his routine
• This day, he received complete healing
• He went skipping and leaping about with joy
• This happened as a result of Peter’s trust in God, as the power of the Holy Spirit intersected with Peter’s compassionate faith and the man’s deep need to produce a total miracle of healing
This miracle started the whole thing in process, that God had worked through these ordinary men to do something extraordinary—and He still is in the business of doing that today, by the way! Never discount the possibility that God will use you, even today, in some eternal way. When Peter and John approached the gates of Jerusalem that day, they had no idea what lay in store for them, how God would not only use them to heal this lame man, but how they’d give the message of Jesus, see thousands respond, spend a night in prison, and then stand before the Supreme Court and defend their actions. How will God use you—and are you ready for that to happen?
II. The religious conflict: Between the religious council and two disciples
• The kingdom of religion, represented in the traditions of men, versus the kingdom of God
• Sadducees were the religious group behind this
• Curried favor with Rome
• Didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead, and disbelieved that Jesus was the Messiah
• Thus, the disciples were viewed by the Sadducees as engaging in “unauthorized preaching by unprofessional preachers” (William Neil)
• The common people weren’t seen by the religious leaders as having the necessary training or understanding to carry on religious discussions of real depth
• Peter was a fisherman, of course, a rough-hewn dude without formal training, yet here he was demonstrating remarkable spiritual insight; how did this happen?
• They had been with Jesus! Jesus had had no formal religious training either, but He spoke as one who had authority, the Scriptures say, and this was the only possible explanation.
• “Maybe some of Jesus’ teaching ability rubbed off on these guys.”
Peter and John represented all sorts of threats to the religion boys, and they came down with all fours to stamp out such unauthorized, dangerous talk and actions.
III. The internal conflict: Between the religious council and themselves
Ah, the proverbial horns of a dilemma!
• Disciples had broken no law, and they had the favor of the people
• It was utterly undeniable that these untrained men had performed a miracle; the evidence stood before them in the person of a formerly-lame beggar who now was standing and able to move better than most of the men on the council!
• On the other hand, to allow them to continue preaching would have upset the apple carts of the authorities
• Interesting that the council didn’t attempt this time, or even in any later conflicts, to disprove the resurrection of Christ
Disproving the resurrection would have killed this fledgling movement; producing the body would have been the end of that. So why didn’t they try? Because there was no body in the tomb where they’d laid it, and no human explanation fit with the facts as they knew them. And to this day, no explanation for the empty tomb fits the facts, save one: Jesus Christ rose bodily from the grave—which was the very thing these disciples were witnesses of, the very thing they taught, the very thing that created so much trouble, but the very thing that is bedrock!
• No disposition on the part of these leaders to actually believe what these men were saying, or if there was, they suppressed it, perhaps because of peer pressure
IV. The spiritual conflict: Between Jesus and any other way to God
• The kingdom of religion, as in any and every other religion in the world, and the kingdom of God
• Peter saw this man’s physical healing as symbolic of the spiritual healing that he proclaimed could take place through Jesus alone.
• The word Peter used has, in the original language, a double meaning, both signifying restoration to health physically and preservation from eternal death spiritually. And he says that there is no other name by which we can be saved!
• “You can’t teach in Jesus’ name” – there’s the rub; it’s the name of Jesus that’s the sticking point!
• Problem: without Jesus, we have no message!
• Our message at Red Oak isn’t moralisms—“be kind, be a better person, play nice, blahblahblah”…
• Our message at Red Oak isn’t self-help
• Our message at Red Oak isn’t the denominational line
• Our message at Red Oak isn’t political involvement
• Our message at Red Oak isn’t political correctness
• Our message at Red Oak is Jesus Christ, crucified for our sins and risen again for our salvation
• If you take away Jesus, we have nothing to say! Same with disciples…and I think that perhaps one of the biggest problems of the contemporary church is that Jesus could be subtracted and there’d still be some words that could come out of their mouths and pulpits. W/o Jesus, I’ve got zip!
• I can’t give you any tips for improving your marriage without Jesus.
• Or raising your kids.
• Or handling your money.
• Or being fulfilled in life.
• Or relating to your co-workers.
• Or what to do in the voting booth, the neighborhood, or the bedroom.
• Or morality, or ethics, or social responsibility, or environmental stewardship, or anything else.
• Bob Alderman on marrying two non-believers: “I have no idea what I’d say!” Same is true of me—we have no message without Jesus, for He is the way to God.
Practical Application
• There is a time for compromise, but never when truth is on the line.
If it’s about our preferences, then there’s room for compromise. Karen and I celebrate 25 years of marriage tomorrow, but we don’t always see eye-to-eye on matters of preference and issues of taste—and there’s plenty of room for compromise when it comes to those types of things. To insist on one’s way in some matters is selfish and stubborn.
But if the issue is truth, there is no place for compromise. The disciples were threatened to no longer speak of Jesus, but they really had no choice in the matter. They knew what they’d seen. They knew what they’d experienced. It had changed their lives, and to compromise in such a situation was something that they simply could not do!
• When the choice is between pleasing God and pleasing men, the choice is clear: please God!
Temptations:
• Wilt under pressure
• Softpedal convictions
• Change message to please people
Peter’s response:
• No “claiming his rights”
• No denying the charges
• Confession: we did it in the name of Jesus (oh, and by the way, He’s the One you crucified)
• In other words, the very thing that got Peter and John in trouble is the thing that Peter proclaimed (in other words, he proudly pled “guilty”!)
• And this they kept right on doing—because on those occasions in life when we are faced with a clear choice between obeying God and obeying man, we obey God.
• We please God only through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ!
What produced the courage that these men had? Consider that this Peter was the same guy who
• Had had the gall to rebuke Jesus (Matthew 16)
• Had had the cowardice to deny Jesus during His crucifixion, just a few weeks before this
• Something radical had happened in this guy’s life, there’s no two ways about it, to cause such a transformation.
• It is this: Peter was utterly convinced that Jesus Christ was Who He claimed to be.
o He claimed to be God come in the flesh
o He claimed to be the only way to Heaven
o He claimed to have all authority in Heaven and earth
o He said He would rise from the dead, and He did!
o He received the worship of His followers—for a person to receive worship would make that person either a blasphemer or God!
Peter made a very exclusive statement in 4:12, one that comes with a thud to rest upon the ears of contemporary people; it isn’t politically-correct in the least, but rather very much an offense to many. But whether that statement is arrogant/obnoxious/narrow-minded, or whether it is dead-on, turns on whether Jesus Christ really is Who He claimed to be. Because here’s the thing: we can’t have a nice-guy Jesus Who wasn’t the exclusive Savior of the world. It’s impossible; can’t be the case; Oprah’s idea of Jesus is just not even possible. Jesus told people to trust Him with their eternal souls. He told people that He was their only chance to be reconciled to God. If those things are true, then we’ve got to listen to them and act upon them; if they’re false, then Jesus is an impostor, a colossal waste of time, a fraud and a phony par excellence.
Jesus can’t possibly be a “religious leader” on par with other religious leaders. He can’t go on a shelf with Mohammed and Buddha and those guys, because as we said, He’s either a liar or He’s the Lord of the universe. You can reject Him; you can say “that’s too narrow”, but you’re really not thinking deeply when you say that.
Here’s some good news, though; He is exclusive, but He is inclusive as well! He is the only Way, but He is the Way for all the earth; “for God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” Whoever believes…irrespective of your past experience, your past sin, your past whatever!
Peter made a very confident statement in 4:12 because he’d seen the resurrected Jesus Christ. Paul staked everything on the resurrection of Christ. Why? Because the resurrection sets Jesus apart. If He said He would rise from the grave—and He did say that—and then He rose from the grave—and He did that—then His cred is pretty good, right?
And the way to God is simple: it involves placing our faith in Jesus Christ, He having proven His credentials by His death and resurrection, trusting Jesus to forgive our sin. And just as He did everything He promised He would—and changed thousands of lives right there 2000 years ago in Jerusalem, in the generation that had witnessed the awesome things He had done—so He is still in the business of changing lives today.
