The Stubbornness of Human Nature
(Acts 4:1-22)
1. Some people are hard to reason with and won’t take "no" for an answer.
2. Patsy Dancey tells this story:
Hospital regulations require a wheelchair for patients being discharged. However, while working as a student nurse, I found an elderly gentleman already dressed and sitting on the bed with a suitcase at his feet-who insisted he didn’t need my help to leave the hospital.
After a chat about rules being rules, he reluctantly let me wheel him to the elevator. On the way down, I asked if his wife was meeting him.
"I don’t know," he said. "She’s still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown." --Reader’s Digest
3. What seemed obvious to this student nurse was wrong; & this man was easy-going.
4. But sometimes it is the reverse: people reject the obvious, though the obvious is true, and they stubbornly resist truth.
5. This is especially true in the spiritual realm.
6. As you might recall, Peter had healed a lame man who had been a lame beggar for 40 years. Everyone knew him.
7. A crowd gathered as this man went leaping about, and Peter preaches a powerful sermon. But not everyone could see the obvious.
Main Idea: What seems obvious to some seems unlikely to others, especially when confronted with the claims of Christ.
I. The COUNCIL Had Plenty of Evidence to Believe in Jesus (1-22)
A. Some of the SAME People Who Condemned Jesus
1. This council of 71 is called the SANHEDRIN
2. Head of the Council was the HIGH PRIEST
3. They also covered up the RESURRECTION
B. Peter’s DEFENSE (1-12)
1. Peter & John taken by the Temple guard and Sadducees
2. The Sadduccees were powerful, wealthy, and collaborators with the Romans; they controlled the priesthood and were the "successful gentlemen’s" form of Judaism…more than anything, they did not want trouble; disturbing the status quo could only work against them… the devout Jews followed the Pharisees…
3. What is it that irritated them? Preaching the resurrection in Jesus.
4. Why did that bother them so? They did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, period; and they knew they were guilty of a rigged trial to crucify Jesus…
5. The temple guard captain: a priest, second only to the high priest…
6. Jailed, not as a punishment, but because it was too late in the day
7. Many believed, an additional 5,000 males because of this lame man (4)
8. The members of the Sanhedrin met, including rulers, elders, & Torah teachers
9. Annas the retired high priest and Caiaphas the current (son-in-law)
10. “By what power or name did you do this?” (7)
11. Peter is filled with the Spirit. Used in Acts as someone preaches. Jesus had said this specifically to His disciples in Luke 12: 11-12,
"When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say."
12. Note Peter’s speech itself in vs. 8-12
13. “Whom YOU crucified…” How do you think that went over?
14. The Psalm 118 prophesy of the people rejecting a rock that God would make into the cornerstone -- a nice word picture that makes the point.
15. Verse 12 is similar in meaning to John 14:6, and exclusive verse.
16. This would really irritate the Sanhedrin, for they are leaving no room to be neutral about Jesus…
17. And they could not deny this 40 something year old man had been healed…
C. The Council’s DECISION (13-22)
1. They could not deny the courage of both Peter and John -- John’s comments are not recorded here, but he may have also spoken…
2. They spoke with great knowledge, even though they are called "unschooled and ordinary." This does not mean they were untrained, for Jesus was a Rabbi who was allowed to address synagogues, and they learned from him for 3 years; rather, they were not trained by their more prestigious, "ivy league" rabbis!
3. But they had been with a famous popular Rabbi, Jesus
4. The council met privately and determined they were in a pickle: they could not deny the obvious, a lame man had been healed.
5. So, in vs. 18, they commanded Peter and John not to speak anymore in the name of Jesus, like they really thought this would work.
6. But it was council policy to first warn an individual, and then, if they did not heed the warning, to punish them (which is what would happen). Still, in this instance, they would have punished them but could not because the crowd might riot.
7. Peter and John were straight forward: they were going to obey God over the council. It was not merely a case of them "feeling lead" to teach in the Name of Jesus; they knew God obligated them to do so, and they were willing to suffer if necessary.
8. They were simply going to explain what they had seen and heard. Why would the council give them a hard time about that?
II. Human Nature Is TOUGH To Budge
A. Sometimes Driven by EMOTION
• How do most people make decisions?
• When people explain to me how they came to certain decisions, I often hear
o "my heart told me to do this"
o "something told me not to do that, but I did it anyway."
o my suspicion: emotion vs. reason
o supposedly gullible people frequently know better, but they cannot say "no" to their emotions, and are thus easily swayed…
B. Sometimes Driven by FEAR
• Fear of change makes for stubbornness
o Fear driven people often say, "my mom taught me this way"
o Their motto: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If it is broke, ignore it.
o Stubborn, change-resistant people are often, at heart, fearful people
o Sometimes, however, people resist change because they are lazy at heart and do not want to make the adjustments change requires…
o Change does take effort, and one has to determine whether it is worth it…
• Distinction between stubbornness and conviction
• We know that the Council was very afraid. Note the discussion they had when they were consulting about what to do with Jesus less than a year earlier:
"What are we accomplishing?" they asked. "Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation."
Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, "You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish." (John 11:48-50)
C. Sometimes Driven by PRIDE
Nola Pirart tells this true story:
My husband decided to install a light switch in our master bedroom. Cutting into the wall, he discovered a stash of bottles and boxes.
"Honey!" he called excitedly. "Come see what I found!"
I ran in and quickly realized that his next task would be to fix the hole he had made in the back of our medicine cabinet. --Nola Pirart (Reader’s Digest)
• The council was partly driven this way. They were not wiling to admit they had carried out a great injustice when they illegally tried Jesus and had Him crucified
• They hated that Jesus and the Apostles had ascended to prominence apart from the insiders and established protocol. They were amateurs in the professional world of theology and religion, as far as the elite were concerned.
• So people today commonly make mistakes and refuse to admit their foolishness
• Someone who cannot apologize is often pride-driven
• They have to compete by conforming to the protocol, doing what is expected, even in broken systems…
D. Sometimes Driven by an AGENDA
• The council consisted of an unlikely partnering of several "good old boys" networks
• The Sadducees (and priests) were buddy-buddy with the Roman Oppressors
• The Pharisees hated the Romans, but had their own sub-culture and elitist social network
• They had a shared agenda to keep the Jews from accepting Jesus
E. Open Minded People Are Still Often CLOSED to the Gospel
Gamaliel is a prime example of an open-minded individual… He did not accept the claims of Jesus, but neither did he recommend persecuting the believers, as we will see in a future sermon on Acts 5:33ff.
III. God CAN Budge Human Nature
A. Conversion to Christ is a SUPERNATURAL Process
B. Some of these people became believers – LATER
C. 5,000 Jewish MEN embraced Jesus by faith
God is still working, but the work of God is not always as evident as we would like it to be. God often works slowly, over time. And sometimes we think God has worked and later find out otherwise.
• As a result, we see false conversions and find tares among the wheat.
A student I knew at Moody Bible Institute, a young lady, had supposedly been saved in her high school years. After Moody, she went on to a secular college where a professor got ahold of her, messed with her mind, and she became an atheist.
• We also see people that we think will never get saved believe.
A friend of mine had been raised in a Christian home, but completely rejected the Gospel. He got into drinking and drugs while in the military, and then God got ahold of him and he was saved. He has been a pastor now for decades.
We see both ways.
• Yes, God can budge human nature, but He often does not. That’s why we need to be faithful in prayer.
