Sometimes, we get suckered in by the idea that identity and relationship are not important. We buy into Shakespeare’s rhetorical question and answer from Act II, Scene II of Romeo and Juliet:
What is in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet.
We express such sentiments, but when someone asks what political party with which we are most affiliated, we usually answer “Republican” or “Democrat.” When someone asks where we were educated, we usually say proudly, “I attended Georgia Tech” or “I studied at Harvard” (even if we didn’t graduate) or “I graduated from UK” or “I graduated from UW” if that is the case. A lot of alumni have so many license plates, mugs, caps, shirts, and banners from their college or university that you’d think they were still in school. When someone asks our favorite sports teams, we give them a name: Cubs, Braves, Ducks, Thrashers, Lakers, or Panthers. Names are vital in our society for telegraphing our loyalties, our backgrounds, our attitudes—in short, our identitites.
The early church also placed great importance on a name. For the last two sermons, we have been focused on Peter’s healing of the lame man by using the name of Jesus (Acts 3:16). In this morning’s message, we see the results of that use of this powerful name. It is the same result we often face whenever we use it. They faced opposition. (Read Acts 4:1-7)
The healing of the man, the preaching of a sermon that explained the significance of Jesus as the Messiah and confidently proclaimed Him as “risen from the dead,” and the resultant buzz, gossip, shouting, and conversation within the outer courts of the temple was such that it became a public nuisance. Just like handing out evangelistic tracts outside public schools has become a “public nuisance” to be prosecuted in our day, so the “authorities” deemed these disciples to be engaged in disruption of the peace. Just like speaking about Jesus in a public forum or praying in the name of Jesus has now become politically incorrect because the “authorities” think it is “exclusive” language at best and “hate speak” at worst, the priests and the “captain of the guard” decided to remove the so-called “cause of the disturbance” and remove them.
But the Scripture tells us the real reason they were concerned in verse 2. Peter and John were proclaiming the power and miraculous triumph of Jesus, the Messiah that they had proclaimed a Messianic fraud. Worse, they were using Jesus’ resurrection and its empirical proof of life after death to undermine the Sadducees who did not believe in life after death. In the same way today, there are people who resent it when we proclaim Jesus as the ONLY way to salvation. Humankind would like to believe that there are many pathways to salvation so that we wouldn’t have to be beholden to Jesus—it is part of our innate pride to try to find another way. AND, we resent it if someone tells us that we’re wrong. In terms of natural humanity, we humans always think that we’re the special case: “I won’t get fat if I eat too much ice cream—my metabolism is too high;” “I won’t get addicted if I experiment with drugs—I have too much self-discipline;” “I won’t get caught if I rob the bank—I’m too clever;” “I won’t get drunk if I have too many drinks—I can hold my liquor;” “No one will know if I’m telling a lie—I’m too smart;” “I can commit the perfect murder—I have a plan;” or “I won’t go to hell if I just try to do my best—I know more than the Bible does.”
The folks who took Peter and John into custody in order to calm down the mob were saying one thing and acting upon another. They may have said that they put Peter and John into “protective custody” to protect them from the mob, but there was no danger. They may have said that they put the apostles into custody to protect the temple itself from being desecrated by an unruly mob that the apostles had allegedly incited. The reality is that they put Peter and John away for a cooling off period because the apostles were too effective in their message.
Look at verse 4. Now, there are different ways to take this verse. Some take it that there were 5,000 who saw the healing, heard Peter preach, and responded to Jesus right there in the temple environs. This would make the early church at least 9,000 members strong in a city with a population circa 25,000. Some would take the number as purely symbolic—5 meaning a handful, a moderately sufficient amount but not as much as you could carry, times 1,000, the number 10 (as much as you could possibly carry—abundance) cubed (10*10*10 or a divine number of 10s). So, it is a divinely sufficient number, but it is not the divinely abundant number (10,000) or the divinely perfect number (12,000). I think it does mean divinely sufficient—it’s the number God intended to win for now, but not all the early church would win. However, I think it is a real number as well.
When last we looked, the church had added 4,000 and now, I believe it is up to 5,000. The cumulative effect of the Word is that the church is continuing to increase numerically at a phenomenal pace. Now, don’t get me wrong. The verse could be read that 5,000 people believed in the temple at that day, but it seems highly unlikely that you would have that many people together at the temple on an ordinary day to have that kind of response. I think my reading is true to the text and makes sense, but however you read it—the Holy Spirit was miraculously adding people to the church. When we are true to the name of Jesus, people are changed by His life.
So, by the time we get to verse 5, all of the professionals have gotten together. Just as politicians and bureaucrats always think they know better than us mere citizens, the three groups gathered here represent a “hangin’ jury” like we had in our children’s sermon. Note that there are three groups represented. They seem to be the same groups represented in later Judaism as the Sanhedrin, the “beth din” (literally “house of judgment”), that was so powerful in Judaism. Who were they? The rulers seem to be the temple authorities—the folks most likely to lose their jobs and livelihood if the Jesus revolution was to catch on. The elders were likely the wealthy and influential lay persons who represented the practical interests of the community. Today, they would be members of boards of directors and big donors to political races. They’d have plenty of plaques, buildings, and scholarship funds to make sure no one forgets them. Finally, the scribes are those familiar enough with the minutiae of Jewish Torah and tradition to be able to uphold the law and settle disputes. All of them had been contradicted by Jesus’ life and ministry. All of them thought they had taken care of the problem with Jesus’ crucifixion and now, here comes the Master’s students.
So, Annas, the high priest when Jesus was born, Caiaphas, the high priest when Jesus was crucified, and two names that might represent the latter’s sons (Jonathan and Alexander) and as many priests as they could gather together put Peter and John on trial. When they ask them, “By what name…” they are asking the two how they DARE to disrupt the temple ritual and call orthodox theology into question. They imply that Peter and John didn’t go to the right schools and didn’t have the right connections.
Even today, society chides us about praying in the name of Jesus. Even today, they accuse us of being “Jesus Only” bigots who are prejudiced against other faiths. Even today, they accuse us of disrupting the peace by praising God and mentioning His plan of salvation. Once, it was the people who spoke about sex in the workplace who were considered rude and offensive. Now, it is those who speak about Jesus in public who are considered rude and offensive. But take courage, God hasn’t given up.
Verse 8 tells us that Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit. This is not a second or third “baptism of the Holy Spirit.” This is an expression of a continuous relationship with God. God’s people were CONTINUALLY being filled with the Holy Spirit and that filling found its visual expression whenever God presented the opportunity. Peter was able to preach with power and understanding that he had no business having. He was able to engage the authorities as an equal—even though he had no degree, no formal background.
We are supposed to be like this—so confessed up about our besetting sins and so open to God’s presence and work—that we can respond anywhere and anytime. I have seen my father, never a brilliant grammarian and often self-conscious of his inabilities in grammar, speak boldly and impressively to a hostile group of agnostic English Honors students. It had to be the Holy Spirit. I totally devastated a group of Muslim clerics in a head-to-head debate on the Cal State Fullerton campus such that they went away amazed and muttering. It wasn’t me. The Holy Spirit gave me an unexpected approach and it worked. IF we are forgiven and open, great things can happen. (Read verses 8-22).
Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, pulls the carpet out from under them. The question is no longer Peter’s authority or John’s authority. He changes the footing to depend upon Jesus’ authority. So, doing, he points right back at the self-centered and self-satisfied position of the leaders. Worse, he quotes from Psalm 118:22—a psalm that many of them took as meaning themselves as the nation of Israel and a psalm that others took as meaning the king of Israel—and applies it to Jesus in a Messianic sense. He pits the live demonstration of power in the recent healing against the stale, dead casuistry (legal maneuvering) of the Jews in one brief summation, putting the authorities between a rock and a hard place.
We can do that, too, if we focus on God and the saving power of Jesus. Today’s authorities claim that there are many ways to find salvation. Verse 12 tells us that there is only one authority that can provide healing/salvation. I should remind you that the Greek word used here is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to reflect both healing, like the lame man, and salvation, rescue, protection, and deliverance. Peter not only claimed Jesus as his authority, but trumped the authority of the Jews in this statement.
And how do we do so? We focus on Jesus. Claim: There are many different faith expressions that “could” lead one to salvation. Response: That may be true. However, we have encountered the Risen Lord. We know He is real. We read in our Bible that He is the only way and we accept that as real whether you do or not. Why would we expect anyone take a chance that another faith MIGHT be right when we offer them the way that we know experientially to be right. Claim: It is arrogant of you to accept Jesus as the ONLY way. Response: It is not arrogant to speak from experience. Jesus changed our lives. Jesus makes life worth living for us. It would be arrogant and selfish NOT to share Jesus. It is not our goal to speak of the error of other faiths as much as to speak of the TRUTH of our faith. Claim: Your faith has done much more harm than good. Response: As Jesus healed the sick during His life, the church has not only prayed for healing, but the church has sent medical missionaries all over the world. As Jesus delivered those entrapped by demonic forces, the church has not only prayed for deliverance, but the church has provided support groups, rehabilitation programs, halfway houses, counseling services, and educational programs to meet various needs. As Jesus taught wherever He went, the church has not only provided theological and Biblical teaching/preaching in its local groups, but the church was responsible for the spread of education on the frontier of our country and instrumental in the development of public education, instrumental in establishing many of our finest institutions of higher learning, and pivotal in the spread of published material (many printing advances predicated on the publication of the Bible). Why? Because we believe that Jesus is not only the answer for US, but He is the answer for ALL.
And what was the verdict? Verse 13 tells us that the authorities were amazed by the “boldness” of Peter and John. The confident way in which they presented the gospel seemed miraculous in the sense that they were “unlearned and ignorant.” Now, this very likely meant, as the great New Testament scholar C.H. Dodd once wrote, that they were untrained in the nuances of Jewish tradition and law. In other words, according to the authorities, they hadn’t been to the right schools.
And why did they virtually give up? They saw that they had been with Jesus (v. 13) and they noticed the man who had been healed (v. 14) and they realized that they had nothing to stand against that. So, instead of repenting and admitting that they were wrong, they ordered Peter and John not to preach Jesus anymore (v. 18). Peter’s response was that they would obey God instead of human authority (vv. 19-20). If ever there was a call to civil disobedience, this would be it. This is why I prayed in Jesus’ name at the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting and why I pray in Jesus’ name no matter where I am. We MUST be identified with HIM.
And in verse 21, the authorities did what the authorities always do. They upped the ante. They threatened Peter and John, but they couldn’t stop the revival. The crowd knew that the healed man was more than 40 (4 for creation times 10 for abundance—the man was more than of a natural full age before God gave Him new life) and they wouldn’t settle for less than Jesus.
And that’s what should happen with our testimony. Such evidence demands a verdict and you have the opportunity to respond right now.
