God or Man?

INTRODUCTION: As we continue our journey though Luke’s continuing account of the workings of Jesus we find ourselves seeing something that is truly amazing. This small Pentecost community growing into a massive title wave, a ancient Tsunami (on screen) that was threatening to cover everything that was in its path, including the “status quo”

PROPOSITION: Things were changing, the old dynamic was transforming not only for the diseased religion of Israel, but for the fledgling church. Today we look at that change and its implications for us as a body and as individual believers

BACKGROUND: The status quo had been threatened and now was threatened with total extinction. This rag-tag group of believers was growing as a rate that the religious leaders never expected and refused to tolerate. These men were doing great things, their wonders even seemed to surpass those of Jesus, which He predicted would happen (John 14:12) In the mind of these religious leaders something had to be done, or they these “frozen chosen” would lose their power and position.

Again these pompous ecclesiastics have the Apostles arrested and through attempted intimidation tried to shut them up; their motive unchanged (Acts 5:17-18) While trying to maintain their control over the people they again made themselves look like fools. The establishment was fearful and defensive, upset that the Apostles had disobeyed their directive, and that they continued to blame them for Jesus’ death, even though they willingly took responsibility for it (Matthew 27:24-25)

These men had the same response to the Apostles as they did to Jesus.. KILL THEM. (Acts 5:33) what a stark contrast we see between the establishment and the Apostles. The establishment had a “message of death,” and the Apostles had a “message of life.”

In light of this tenuous situation a voice of reason arises, a voice that even the High Priests don’t dare challenge, the most respected Rabbi of that century, and one who’s revered to this day; Gamaliel. He sided neither with the Apostles nor the establishment, taking the middle ground, and using a lesson from Israel’s history to do it. He told of rebel leaders who claimed to be the Messiah, and of how their movements failed after their leaders were killed (Messiah Tablet) He warns the counsel that they must be cautious in their actions, or they might find themselves fighting against God. He isn’t advocating acceptance of the Apostles work, but simply being a pragmatic and shrewd politician, advocating a “wait and see” response. He fully expects this movement like all the others before it to fail

Gamaliel’s argument won the day, and the ironic thing is that the counsel listened to a man (Gamaliel) over God (thought the Apostles). The Apostles weren’t killed only flogged to which they responded by rejoicing that they had been worthy to experience disgrace for Chris’s sake

TRANSITION: This power struggle is one that we now expect to see between the Apostles and the High Priest’s and Jewish counsel, but there’s another struggle taking place, even the new church as strong as it is has its own…

I. POWER STRUGGLES

a. As the church continued to experience exponential growth, the needs within that