Three Attitudes about Christ (Part 2)
Acts Series
Chuck Sligh
April 19, 2015
NOTE: A PowerPoint presentation of this sermon is available upon request by emailing me at chucksligh@hotmail.com.
TEXT: Acts 5:29-33 – “Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. 30 The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. 31 Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. 32 And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him. 33 When they heard that, they were cut to the heart, and took counsel to slay them.”
INTRODUCTION
When I took a speech class in college we were taught that every audience contains three groups of listeners: those who will be opposed to what you say, those who are neutral to your position and those who have a favorable disposition toward you or your point of view.
Last week we began a two-part sermon titled “Three Attitudes about Christ,” and those three positions I just mentioned are clearly seen in the attitudes of the participants in this story about Christ and the preaching of the cross.
If you recall, the Jewish religious leaders were doing everything in their power to destroy the fledgling Christianity that was newly blossoming in Jerusalem. They had already jailed Peter and John and commanded them not to preach in the name of Jesus any longer. But that night Peter and John were miraculously delivered from prison by an angel and instructed to return immediately to the temple and proclaim Christ.
Peter and John just wouldn’t “stay put” in the jail.
Illus. – This reminds me of the Bugs Bunny cartoons I used to watch as a child. Elmer Fudd, all decked out in his hunting gear, would imagine he had FINALLY trapped Bugs down a hole. As Elmer is guarding the entrance, Bugs would stroll up behind Mr. Fudd— casually munching on a carrot—and ask, “What’s up, Doc?” Elmer Fudd would always be surprised, and he would never be able to keep Bugs still long enough to get a clear shot at that “waskowy wabbit.”
In the same way, the Sadducees thought they had a lock on the apostles. It was even the public jail where people could see them behind bars and thick walls. The problem was that BARS ARE NO MATCH FOR ANGELS! They escaped with the angels’ help and went right back to the Temple to preach Christ. Just as Bugs’s constant escapes made Elmer Fudd, “vewy, vewy angwy,” so the Jewish leaders viewed Peter and John’s miraculous escape with extreme consternation.
This is where we saw the first of the three attitudes towards Christianity.
The high priest and the Sadducees personified a spirit of OPPOSITION. Chuck Swindoll used to say, “Where there’s light, there are bugs.” Whenever truth or light are proclaimed, somebody, somewhere won’t like it.
And the Jewish council definitely didn’t like it! They showed open hostility to Peter and John, and resorted to violence—the beginning of persecution of God’s people in Acts.
What the Jewish leaders did not realize was that it was persecution that would fuel the expansion of Christianity throughout the world. Early church Father Tertullian said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Persecution only served to PURIFY the church, making it even more formidable.
A Pharisee named Gamaliel, who was on the Jewish council, exemplified the SECOND attitude about Christ: the spirit of COMPROMISE. His advice was for the Jewish leaders to go slow and not take a position on Christ and these disciples; to just wait and see how things would work out.
That seems at first to be reasonable and wise and I’m sure he meant well, but as we saw last week, it was really DANGEROUS thinking. It was based on flawed human reasoning that anything that grows and prospers is blessed by God, which is clearly not true, as there are many false doctrines and false religions that have grown large and prospered, but are clearly not of God.
But worse, Gamaliel’s advice was characterized by NEUTRALITY. The truth is, you cannot be neutral about Christ. You are either FOR Him or AGAINST Him; you are either on God’s side or the side of His enemies; you cannot be a fence-straddler!
We now come to the last attitude about Christ, the attitude of discipleship. In our text, we see that their discipleship, which means following in the footsteps of Christ, revealed itself in two ways in our text. There are several other characteristics of a follower of Christ, but we’ll focus on just the two in our text this morning. As we personalize the points, note with me two ways to be a disciple in this passage:
I. FIRST, OBEY GOD!
We see this first of all in verses 20-21. The angels had supernaturally opened the prison doors for Peter and John and once out of prison, the angel instructed them to go right back and do exactly what put them into prison in the first place!
Look at verse 20:21: “Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life. 21 And when they heard that, they entered into the temple early in the morning, and taught….”
The angel, speaking for God, told them to stand in the temple and preach, so that’s exactly what they did.
Peter and John explain to the Jewish leaders that the reason they were preaching in the temple was because they were obeying God. The Jewish leaders said, “Did we not clearly command you not to teach in Jesus’s name, and what have you done but go and fill Jerusalem with your doctrine!” Look at the disciples’ answer in verse 29: “Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.”
Obedience is at the very heart of our relationship with God. We can’t have a healthy connection to our Father if we have a disobedient heart.
Illus. – But there’s two motivations for obedience, and it’s illustrated by Obedience School for dogs. I don’t own a dog (we’re cat people), but I read this week that the philosophy of dog obedience has changed over the last few decades.
The old philosophy was, “You better obey me, because I’m your master. And if you don’t obey me, bad things will happen” It was based on punishment of bad behavior. If the dog disobeyed, you punished it, saying a firm, “NO!”; raising your voice to get the point across if necessary. And that method works: A dog trained this way will obey, but it obeys out of FEAR.
The new philosophy is not based on punishing disobedience, but rather rewarding obedience. You don’t yell at him any more with a firm “NO!”, but whenever you catch him doing something good, he gets praise and rewards. The thinking is that the dog is going to want to do the things that make you happy, because positive things happen to him when you’re happy.
Both obedience philosophies get results, but they produce very different dogs. The old way produces a dog that is terrified to do the wrong thing. The new way produces a dog that is eager to do the right thing.
I said a moment ago that obedience is at the very heart of our relationship with God and that we can’t have a healthy connection to our Father if we have a disobedient heart. This is what Jesus meant when He said in in John 14:15, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”
Peter and John did not obey God here because they were afraid God would strike them down, but because they had a connection with God; a relationship so deep and strong, that their prime motivation was to please God. Peter and these disciples willingly obeyed God rather than man in order to be faithful disciples of Jesus; to follow in His footsteps; to keep in close fellowship with Jesus; to please their loving Father….
Let me ask you, will you obey God today?—Or will you obey man, or what we might call the voice of our culture.
• OUR CULTURE says, “Don’t be a fanatic.” – JESUS said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. “ (Matthew 22:37)
• OUR CULTURE says, “Don’t worry about going to church; and if you do, once a week is more than enough.” – GOD says, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:25)
• OUR CULTURE says, “Keep your religion to yourself.” – GOD says, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.” (Mark 16:15)
• OUR CULTURE says, “Be cool, man. Be like the world. Don’t be different. Just go with the flow.” – GOD says, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1 John 2:15)
• OUR CULTURE says, “Hey, you can sin and get away with it. Look how much FUN we’re having.” – God says, “There is pleasure in sin for a season…” (Hebrews 11:25)—but oh! how tragic when the season of sin is over because Galatians 6:7 says, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
• OUR CULTURE says, “Be loose.” – GOD says, “Be pure.”
• OUR CULTURE says, “Be happy.” – GOD says, “Be holy.”
• OUR CULTURE says, “Live for pleasure—Eat, drink, and be merry.” – GOD says, “Joy and fulfillment come not from abandonment to the flesh, but through a close walk with the living God.”
Let me ask you, are you following Jesus and keeping His commandments? Are you seeking to obey Him in every area of your life, even if you often fail? Is there some area of your life you’ve refused to give up for the Lord and you’re walking in disobedience to the Lord? If so, I hope you’ll turn from the path of disobedience by sincere repentance and obey God this morning.
II. THE SECOND THING WE SEE IN ACTS 5 WE SHOULD DO TO BE A TRUE DISCIPLE IS TO BOLDLY SHARE THE GOOD NEWS OF SALVATION IN JESUS.
You could not shut up these disciples. The Jewish leaders told them to pipe down—not to preach in the name of Jesus. But they couldn’t shut up; they couldn’t keep it in. So they put them in prison; and God sets them free to go right back to preaching Jesus.= After hauling them back into court, they forbid them again from preaching Christ and then had them scourged before setting them free to get their point across.
But they still could not be quieted. They were courageous and faithful to share the good news of Jesus Christ and His death, burial and resurrection and His power to forgive sin and give eternal life. NOTHING could stop them; They WOULD not stop.
Now let me go to meddling again and make this personal:
• When was the last time you shared the Gospel with someone?—Have you ever even done it once?
• When was the last time you gave a Gospel tract to someone?—Have you ever even done THAT?
• When was the last time you invited an unbeliever or an unchurched friend to church so that he or she could get under the sound of the Gospel? (Remember, Paul said in Romans 10:17 that “…faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”)
Oh, that we had the boldness and indomitability that these disciples had!
CONCLUSION
So we have examined three forces at work in Acts 5:17-42:
• The spirit of OPPOSITION TO TRUTH – Those who hate and oppose the cause of Christ.
• The spirit of COMPROMISE – The fence-straddlers.
• The spirit of DISCIPLESHIP that manifests itself in obedience and bold proclamation.
Today my focus has been on believers and God’s call to us to follow Christ in discipleship.
1) May God help you to be obedient to God.
What must you do this morning to return to the path of obedience? What sacrifice is God calling you to make for Him to be obedient to Him?
2) And may you have a willingness to stand for Christ and to share Him with others.
Isn’t it time you stopped being worried about what others will think if they know you’re a Christ-follower? Isn’t it time that when opportunities arise to share Christ with others, that you become bold and courageous like these disciples were? Isn’t it time you reached out to share the Good News with your friends and co-workers and neighbors so that they too can know that Jesus saves and gives new life?
I believe God has called me and other preachers like me in our Christian churches in this age of sin and laxness about serving God wholeheartedly to challenge us to WAKE UP and love and serve God with all our hearts, minds and strength…and not to be sidetracked and distracted by fear of man, fear of rejection, or fear of persecution on the one hand, or sin and self-centeredness and selfishness on the other.
Look at these disciples!— They were single minded! They were not fearful of men. They were sold out. They could not be distracted or sidetracked.
Illus. – On a balmy October afternoon in 1982, Badger Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin, was packed. More than 60,000 die-hard University of Wisconsin supporters were watching their football team take on the Michigan State Spartans. It soon became obvious that MSU had the better team. What seemed odd, however as the score became more lopsided were the bursts of applause and shouts of joy from the Wisconsin fans. How could they cheer when their team was losing? It turns out that seventy miles away the Milwaukee Brewers were beating the St. Louis Cardinals in game 3 of the 1982 World Series. Many of the fans in the stands were listening to portable radios, getting distracted and sidetracked, and in the process, seemed to be cheering for the wrong team!
May you, a disciple of Jesus, not get sidetracked or distracted from what Jesus has called you to. May you, like these disciples, live with a single-track purpose to serve and please the Lord Jesus Christ who redeemed you and gave you eternal life.
