“Fighting Against God”
Acts 5:12-42
July 15, 2007
“Honey, it’s the dentist,” I say, “I just know it. All the signs point that way. Everything lines up. He had to be the murderer,” I say.
“No,” my wife Karen will reply, “It was her brother-in-law.”
“But it can’t be her brother-in-law,” I protest, “He had an iron-clad alibi! But just look at the dentist; he just looks shady.”
“No, I’m telling you,” she’ll say, “Trust me, it’s her brother-in-law.”
And though the names and occupations and relations change, it’s never the dentist. It doesn’t matter the movie or the show, more often that not, Karen’s right; almost always, Yours Truly is wrong. Just about the time I’m saying, “it was Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a candlestick”, it comes out that it was Professor Plum, in the Conservatory, with a ball point pen or something. If you want to know whodunit, you don’t want me to be the man on the case, that’s for sure. Somehow, I get lost in the twists and turns of a story, and by the time the mystery man is uncovered, I’m still in the bakery. I wasn’t even that good at guessing the culprit on Scooby-Doo; the only thing I knew was that somebody at the end of every show would repeat the same line: “I’d have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”
A good story has a lot of twists and turns; it might go in a lot of different directions; it leaves an element of mystery as to the final outcome. Such is today’s narrative, found in Acts 5. Every time we see the word “but”, for instance, we know that what is about to be described is set in opposition to what has come before, and there are a lot of “buts” in these verses of Scripture. We see things going from good to bad and back to good and to bad again several times for the apostles, who were chosen by Jesus Christ as the representatives of His message. We begin with a good:
I. Success - :12-16
God was doing some amazing things in the early church in Jerusalem in the days just following the resurrection of Christ and His ascension into Heaven. Signs and wonders were taking place; people were being healed; despite the rumblings of persecution, people continued to be added to the church, though there were some who were unresponsive and kept their distance. The early church enjoyed a great reputation among those who weren’t even part of it. They were riding the wave; it was all good, or at least almost all good. The message of Christ was going forth, and notice something pertinent to us: the message wasn’t being watered down or made more palatable to contemporary sensibilities, but rather it was boldly proclaimed just as it was.
That’s a temptation that I fear some are giving into in these days, to tone it down a bit, to round off the edges of the message, to flatten the “bumpy” parts, to sugarcoat and namby-pamby around the truth. If we’ll just emphasize the “positive parts”, we can get a big crowd. And yes, it’s certainly true that some draw lots of folks with a watered-down, feel-good approach—this is what the Bible predicts will happen. But that didn’t happen in the early church, and by God’s grace, it won’t happen at Red Oak. We’re not charged to make the gospel politically-correct or more palatable to modern sensibilities; we’re just charged to share it. The early church grew as it proclaimed a bold, countercultural message. But then the good quickly turns to bad:
II. Arrest - :17-18
Pity the poor “religion boys”. The high priest and the religious council had cornered the market, pretty much, on the “religion thing”, and so it is a natural human reaction that we see rising up in them as a result of the astounding success of this movement they considered heretical, dangerous, and subversive: jealousy. They thought that they’d rid themselves of this Jesus fellow when they’d consented to His crucifixion, but now it seemed like the problem was bigger than ever. The people were following Jesus more after He’d been crucified than they had when He walked the hillsides of Palestine, and now, his apprentices were healing people, preaching that Jesus had risen from the grave and condemning the religious hypocrisy of those very leaders. And the common people were following this dangerous sect instead of the religion boys. They were jealous! And so they had the apostles arrested and thrown into prison for the night. Bad, right? Well, next plot twist:
III. Deliverance - :19-21a
Now the delicious irony here is that the Sadducees, who were the dominant party on this ruling council, were the religious liberals of their day: they didn’t believe in the existence of angels, for instance. And yet, in a touch of perhaps divine humor, God used an angel to release His men from the prison arranged by the Sadducees in the first place!
God can deliver His people. Sometimes, He chooses not to, for His own glory; most all of the apostles, we are given to understand, died at the hands of persecutors, and yet we have record of some of them being miraculously delivered by the hand of God as well. God can deliver His people. He is sovereign, in control, and has a purpose and a plan for your life, and it revolves, not around your benefit, but His glory. Sometimes, that plan will be on this earth of immense benefit to you personally—and God can deliver you; always, God’s plan will involve His own glory. And ultimately, eternally, it will redound to your benefit as well. God can deliver His people. Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego were thrown by an enraged king into a fiery furnace to be obliterated; just prior to that, rather than recant their faith in God, they said, “we know that our God is able to deliver us, king, but even if he chooses not to, we will not bow down to the idol you have made. God can deliver His people—and He delivered those 3 Hebrew children. And God can deliver you, according to His purpose, plan, and will.
Now normally, when an “escape” takes place, the convicts get as far away from the situation as possible. We’ll never know whether Frank Lee Morris and the Anglin brothers survived their escape attempt from Alcatraz, but one thing we know for sure is that they didn’t escape and then take a gig in a night club just across the bay! They got as far away as possible. But the apostles stayed right there, in Jerusalem, and obeyed the angel.
“Go…and speak to the people all the words of this Life.” Capital L. Life in Christ; He is our life. “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men” (John 1:4). Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life, and might have it more abundantly.” Hey, are you living, or merely existing? Are you marking time until the Grim Reaper does his grim duty, or are you living life in relationship with the One Who created life in the first place? Good, right? Well, yes, but the next plot twist brings more bad:
IV. Trial - :21b-28
The religious council must have assumed that the disciples had been busted out of jail (rather than an angel releasing them), and thus that there were people—maybe many—who would risk their lives to defend these men. Added to their jealousy and confusion, then, was an element of fear (v.26). These guys were a mess. Ironic, as Polhill points out: the very ones who had wanted to stone the disciples had themselves become fearful that they might be stoned by the people! And so, gently in manner, they had the apostles escorted away from their preaching to stand trial in an inquiry before the religious council.
And they said, “didn’t we you not to ever talk about this fellow again? You seem determined to defy us!”
“This name” and “this man’s blood” – they couldn’t/wouldn’t bring themselves to actually say the name of Jesus. It is upon the name of Jesus that everything turns, though. People today are pretty comfortable talking about God; you might even get the generic “Lord” out of a lot of folks. But there is something about the name “Jesus” that causes people to recoil! In the case of the religion boys, it was in part because they were directly culpable for Jesus’ crucifixion, and with the popularity of the Jesus sect now, if folks started putting things together, they might be the ones who’d be in trouble, and so they didn’t dare to even speak His name for fear. Of course, they didn’t want to lend any legitimacy to Christ either, and so “this man” was as much as they could muster. This sure looked bad, because they had the apostles dead to rights; there was no denying that Peter and the boys were defying their order. But then the plot twists again:
V. Defense - :29-32
Notice that Peter’s concern was not to defend himself nor his fellow disciples, but rather to exalt the name of Jesus; his “defense” is to essentially own up to the charges against him! Boldly Peter obeyed Jesus’ commission to him, and then entrusted his cause to God. He turns things to the gospel right pretty much right away.
“Hanging Him on a tree” – the religion boys had inflicted upon Jesus the ultimate disgrace: the Old Testament tells us that a curse attends anyone who is hung on a tree, as Jesus had been. Their rationale for obeying God rather than men is simply this: they were convinced that Jesus was not some criminal deserving of execution—the position of the religious council—but rather the One raised up specifically by God for the purpose of being the Savior and Leader of the world, of forgiving sins. This explains their boldness; they were witnesses of extraordinary events (the crucifixion and the resurrected Christ), and these events had transformed their entire lives. Cf. I Peter 2:24; Galatians 3:13. What a good opportunity, what a great turn of events. Except that this led to
VI. Anger - :33
The religion boys didn’t have the authority to kill the apostles, but they’d have done it if they could, and they weren’t above maneuvering to achieve just such an outcome; they’d done this with Christ. It looked bad for Peter and the apostles, until
VII. Reprieve - :34-39
Of this Gamaliel, it was written, “since rabbi Gamaliel…died there has been no more reverence for the law; and purity and abstinence died out at the same time.” This was an “elder statesman”, an influential man who though of the minority party, the Pharisees, was able with his words to persuade the whole council against taking rash action against the followers of Jesus. His words were wise, in that they were words of restraint when rashness was the order of the day for the council.
The old saying is, “give him enough rope, and he’ll hang himself”, and that’s certainly in the ballpark of Gamaliel’s counsel to the religion boys. If this is nothing from God, it will eventually come to nothing; if this is from God, then you guys will find yourselves fighting against Him, and that’s no position to be in!
Fighting against God is no position to be in; hold that thought…
We sometimes make mistakes when we judge things too quickly. Several months ago, I listened to a biography of Harry S Truman. Truman was, during the time of his presidency, one of the least admired presidents; his poll numbers were very low, and people thought him a simpleton and a fool. Viewed now, though, Harry S Truman is seen by many as one of our better presidents; certainly in my estimation, from what I can tell, he was one of the best presidents of the 20th century.
Had it not been for Gamaliel, who was of the minority Pharisees party, they’d have likely trumped up some charge so as to hand the disciples over to the Romans, who had the power to carry out capital punishment; his calm words rescued them. Good? Well...
VIII. Punishment - :40
Probably thirty-nine wicked strokes with something like a cat-o-nine-tails, which would brutally tear and rip the muscles of the back, cause almost intolerable pain, and scar the recipients for life. Bad? Sure, but look at the ending of the story:
IX. Joy - :41-42
They rejoiced in that they had found themselves now joined to Christ in a different way: in His sufferings. This is a Biblical theme, one that Jesus promised (Mat 5:44, “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”), and one that Peter further expounded upon in his first epistle (I Peter 4:12).
Just when it looked like things were bad, God turned things around for the apostles in a twisty-turny, how-will-it-end story. Which is our first
Practical Points
o God’s Story
God is writing a story called “history”, and in fact, we can dissect that very word—“history”—and call it “His story”. He has graciously revealed Himself to us in many ways; we see His handiwork in the world around us, and while some would say, “I see no evidence that God exists”, I say, “look around; how can we miss Him!” First,
o The Bible
God reveals, in the Bible, exactly what He is up to in His world. The Bible is the story of God’s glory, which is the underlying theme upon which the book rests: a holy, sovereign God is bringing eternal glory to Himself through His plan for this world. Further,
o The Book of Acts
Unfolds the plan of God more fully, specifically what God the Holy Spirit is doing in and through the church of Jesus Christ. I’ve entitled this series “Unleashed” to focus on the fact that the Spirit acts in a free and powerful way. This is the book called the Acts of the Apostles, but more accurately, it is the Acts of the Spirit working through those apostles. We have a specific story in
o This narrative
God shows us what He wants from us by using the very acts of history to illustrate His purposes and plans. I began this series in our CG meetings several months ago by remarking that a book called “Acts” wouldn’t be of significance in many of the world’s major religious faiths, because history isn’t of consequence to them. But the Bible proclaims a God Who enrobed Himself in flesh at a point in history, and that the significance of the actions of that God-in-flesh, Jesus Christ, hinge on whether or not they really occurred in space-time history. Paul the apostle said, “If Christ be not raised from the grave, then our faith is all in vain.” We’re wasting our time and spinning our wheels today, in other words, if the things the Bible represents as happening didn’t. We learn from this story today, but the story isn’t finished:
o God’s ongoing story
We might say that the joy shown by the apostles and the church is the end of the story, but God is still writing His ongoing, eternal story; we follow in a line that stretches back to this 1st-century group of apostles and followers of Christ. We today find ourselves as players in that same story. And Peter expressed
o The heart of the story
It’s right there in Peter’s words. It’s the story of God working through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, raising Him from the grave, exalting Him as Savior and Lord of the world, granting forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit to every person who in faith turns to Christ. And if you’ve not yet put your faith in that Christ, God calls you today to do so.
I won’t sell you a bill of goods regarding coming to Christ; Jesus didn’t! Know that if you are considering becoming a committed follower of Jesus Christ, there is eternal gain to be sure, and there is forgiveness of sin, a release from sin’s guilt, and a freedom from sin’s enslavement. Know also that just as was true for Peter and the apostles, there may well come things into your life that are unpleasant, simply because you follow Jesus. Know that Jesus meets you where you are, in your sin, but He doesn’t intend to leave you there, that He will change your life in ways that will be for your eternal good and His glory, but that will involve your relinquishing of some things that you might hold pretty dearly right now.
o Your Story
Where do you find yourself today? Where do you fit into God’s story? Maybe you’ve never thought about yourself in those terms, but rest assured: your existence, and your presence here this morning, are no accident. God is writing a story, and it involves you, but here are the twin questions as we conclude:
o Where are you cooperating with God?
o Where are you fighting against God?
If God is indeed writing a story, if everything about our universe and our existence is part of that story, and if He invites us to take part in that story, then at any given moment in time, we are either cooperating with God, or we are fighting against Him. Wise Gamaliel, though not a follower of Jesus, had this counsel for his fellow council members: let this thing play out. If it’s nothing, then it’ll dissolve, but if this Christianity thing is of God, then you won’t be able to stop it and you’ll find yourself in the unenviable position of fighting against God Himself.
And God is calling you today. Maybe you profess to be a follower of Jesus already; hey, in your life, where are you cooperating with God, and where are you continue to fight against Him? Maybe you’re in the position of considering whether or not to become a follower of Jesus. The Bible says that by nature, we are the enemies of God—not a pretty thought, but in other words, if I’m not following Christ, I’m fighting against God. Would you take a few moments right now to quietly and prayerfully consider where you find yourself this morning?
