On the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes were gathered together in Jerusalem;
and Annas the high priest was there, and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of high-priestly descent.
When they had placed them in the center, they began to inquire, "By what power, or in what name, have you done this?"
Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, " Rulers and elders of the people, if we are on trial today for a benefit done to a sick man, as to how this man has been made well,
let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead--by this name this man stands here before you in good health.
"He is the STONE WHICH WAS REJECTED by you, THE BUILDERS, but WHICH BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone.
"And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved."
Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.
And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they had nothing to say in reply. (vs 5-14)
From the moment the Apostles came out of the upper room in the power of the Holy Spirit, their message was attracting people, either in a positive sense or a negative; but attract people, it did.
They who had abandoned Christ in the garden of prayer, who had received news of His resurrection with a mixture of shock and incredulity, now went forth in a newborn confidence, not in themselves any longer, but in their Lord, and the world would never be the same again.
What a page turner the book of Acts is!
After the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth I’m sure things had gone pretty much back to normal for the Romans.
They may have been hearing some rumors of a resurrection and some low rumbles of gossip and speculation among the Jews because of it. But let the Jews have their religious delusions and their debates and their rituals, as long as they weren’t rioting or stirring up trouble.
As far as the Jewish religious leaders were concerned, there had to have been a bit more cause for concern in their minds than the Romans. After all, they had crucified this Nazarene to shut him and his followers up so the Romans wouldn’t come down on them and take away their freedoms, and then there was this very troubling news that they could not openly refute, of his having come back from the dead.
And since then there had been little news bytes coming back to them of sightings of this risen Jesus in various places around Galilee. Nothing they could put their finger on to put a halt to it, just rumblings; and that had to be unsettling to say the least.
We have recently been seeing news stories focused once more on Mt. St. Helens in Washington state. Most of us will remember the eruption of that volcano in 1980 that killed 57 people, 21 of whom were never recovered from the ashes, and now it is showing activity again. As I prepared this sermon it was spewing out some gasses and some ash, and authorities had cordoned off an eight mile buffer zone around the mountain in case another large eruption takes place. For the moment, it was just rumbling and spitting a little.
I imagine post resurrection, pre-Pentecost Judea being like that. Just rumblings, restlessness, whispers, furtive glances that communicate a sense that something is up; something is about to happen. But what?
Then the day of Pentecost comes and very suddenly, about 9 o’clock in the morning, the streets around the temple area are packed with people listening to a man speaking, and he is very boldly declaring the resurrection and Lordship of this Jesus, calling Him the Messiah, testifying that many witnesses have seen Him and been with Him, indicting the entire population of Judea for crucifying Him in the first place, and people are crying out in anguish and asking, “what must we do”, and they’re then going to the temple pools to be baptized, and, oh, the volcano has erupted!
BANG!
Then Luke gives us this account of a lame man at the temple who gets healed of a life-long debilitation when Peter grabs his hand and lifts him to his feet, and then loudly gives this Jesus credit for the healing, and when the crowds gather in amazement, for they all know who this formerly crippled man is and they can’t deny he has been healed, Peter once more repeats his accusations, and his declarations, and his invitations, and about five thousand more end up running to be baptized!
Then we’re seeing Peter and John arrested and interrogated. Then we see them back out preaching. Then they’re arrested and put in jail. Then they’re miraculously released and caught preaching again, so they’re flogged. But they keep on preaching and rejoicing and teaching in the temple and from house to house, …
…and no matter what comes, Stephan’s stoning, the persecutions by Saul of Tarsus, all the attempts of the Jews and later of the Caesars to stop it, the church is flourishing according to the plan and purpose of the Mighty Holy Spirit of God, and trying to stop it is like stomping on mercury. With all their desperate efforts to crush it, they can only spread it, as believers go forth with boldness and continue to proclaim the resurrection.
CONFIDENCE WELL-PLACED
Well, we’ve talked before, and I’m sure you’ve considered before, the change in the Apostles wrought by the indwelling and empowering of the Holy Spirit.
Today I’d like to examine this newfound confidence of theirs a little closer, and make some comparisons.
After all, the Pharisees were confident too, weren’t they? And the Sadducees were confident in their own beliefs, which differed sharply on some issues from those of the Pharisees.
So we might deduce from this, and even more as we consider all the various political and religious groups around our world, to whom we have such instant access through the news media and internet and so forth, that it is apparently not the degree of confidence a person has, so much as what his confidence is in, that is so important.
Many of you may have heard the very old illustration of faith that asks if you’d have faith that an accomplished tightrope walker could push a wheelbarrow across a rope stretched over Niagara Falls.
Then after you declare your ‘faith’ that he could, you are asked, “Would you have the same conviction of faith if you were in the wheelbarrow?”
The performer’s confident demeanor would then mean not so much to you perhaps, as the condition of the rope and the wheelbarrow, wind direction and strength, the tightrope walker’s past history and present physical condition; you’d be taking a lot more detail under consideration, wouldn’t you?
Well what I see happening in the book of Acts is men and women suddenly very willing to put their lives on the line, with boldness. So I think it would be helpful to us, since we claim the same Savior and the same beliefs, to closer inspect their confidence and compare it to our own.
First, by way of definition, the word in chapter 4 verse 13 that is translated ‘confidence’ in the NASB and ‘boldness’ in other translations, refers to a ‘freedom of speech’.
Now that is not meant in the same way that immediately comes to mind for us here in America when we think of the goals of our founding fathers and the first amendment to the Constitution.
It means simply, ‘unreservedness of utterance’ (Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words);
speaking freely without ambiguity, plainly.
Vine’s Dictionary goes on, “…the absence of fear in speaking boldly; hence, confidence, cheerful courage, boldness…” and adds that the same word is used elsewhere indicating, “…the deportment by which one becomes conspicuous, acts openly, or secures publicity.”
This same word is used in our text chapter in verses 29 and 31. In verse 29 the people prayed, “And now, Lord take note of their threats, and grant that Thy bond-servants may speak Thy word with all confidence…”
And in verse 31, “And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak the word of God with boldness.”
The days of hiding and cowering behind locked doors were over, weren’t they?
So what gave them this confidence? What gave them this ‘cheerful courage’ to speak plainly and boldly in the face of opposition from some very powerful sources?
Well the first thing that comes to mind that we must stress as the foundation for their boldness, is the presence of the Holy Spirit. That should be obvious. Before He came as the Comforter sent by the Son as promised, this boldness was certainly not present.
Going hand in hand with that, we remember that Jesus said that apart from Him we could do nothing.
So we are careful to credit Christ’s atoning work and subsequent call to belief and indwelling with His Spirit, for all and any Godly evidence in us or Godly accomplishments through us.
Having said that, we note that the coming of the Holy Spirit did not represent a sort of spiritual coup over our minds. We did not become puppets, to be mindlessly manipulated by the Spirit in us. That is why we say ‘indwelling’ and not ‘possession’.
Granted, we would all be much better off if we would surrender ourselves to be increasingly ‘possessed’, as those belonging to Him; bought with a price. But that is not the kind of possession I mean.
We are indwelt and filled for service and led to Christ and taught of Him and His word.
But we still have the capacity to observe and reason and decide and act accordingly.
So while we may accurately say that the coming of the Holy Spirit gave them life and enlightened them to truth and equipped and emboldened them for service, we must not miss that they went out armed with the knowledge of certain truths upon which their message was founded; the absence of which would have turned them all into a sort of ‘flash in the pan’, with no substance.
It would have been like a troop of well-trained, highly motivated soldiers, getting all pumped up and fired up, and yelling ‘charge!’, and running out into battle having left their gear and all their weapons back in the tent, and consequently being mowed down in the middle of a field.
These new believers had seen the risen Christ. They had heard Him, touched Him in some cases, eaten with Him, received personal charges from Him for future ministry.
In addition, and here is perhaps the aspect that applies more strongly to us, since we are not in a position to have all that physical contact with the risen Jesus, they were suddenly awakened to scriptural truths, passages from their scriptures which they had heard and studied all their lives, that were fulfilled in Christ and upon which they could now take a solid stand.
From his first sermon there in chapter two, through his address to the religious leaders in chapter 4, we hear Peter quoting Genesis, Deuteronomy, I Kings,
II Samuel, Nehemiah, the Psalms, Daniel, Joel, some of these books several times.
Before I pass on from here, let me point something out from Jesus’ final discourse to His Apostles before His arrest.
In John 14:26 He said to them, and not in the context of being on trial, but surely it can be applied, “But the Helper, the Holy spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”
We might do well to apply that to ourselves, and consider that when we are in a place of opportunity to give account for the hope that is in us, it is the things Jesus has ‘said to us’, in the scriptures and to the extent that we have hidden His word in our heart, that will most readily come to mind to share.
Peter and John and the others stood before thousands, and then stood before those who would most strongly oppose them in those early days, and were able to say, not with cockiness or self-aggrandizing, but in cheerful courage and freedom of speech, ‘we must obey God rather than men’, because their confidence was established on what they knew in their hearts to be true, based on their own investigation and examination over a period of more than three years, and confirmed by the witness and testimony of the Holy Spirit in them, who points to truth and exposes error.
CONFIDENCE MISPLACED
In sharp contrast were the Pharisees and the Sadducees, whose confidence was in self and the knowledge that self can gain, which is always, being subject to the sin nature, colored and confined by man’s prejudices, preconceptions and previous input from others.
They had a religion without power. The cold, dead letter of the Law. Their pride was in their tenacious study and adherence to the Law and their study of the prophets, and although Christ was on every page of those scrolls, they couldn’t see it, and they weren’t about to let anyone change their thinking.
Confidence, misplaced, is like bungee jumping off an 80 foot cliff with a 90 foot cord.
What good does it do me to have confidence in error? None. Worse, it is dangerous to me and my relationships with others.
Yet all around us today, in the church as well as in the world, people are declaring and demonstrating confidence and conviction in things and ideas that they themselves have never tested or thought through.
In the October 1991 issue of Bits & Pieces, a periodical designed to help managers understand their people, Sydney Harris is quoted as saying;
“I am tired of hearing about men with the "courage of their convictions." Nero and Caligula and Attila and Hitler had the courage of their convictions--but not one had the courage to examine his convictions, or to change them, which is the true test of character.”
Christians, I would submit to you that one of the reasons society sees the church today as a bunch of Pharisees, although few of them would put it that way, but that is what they mean when they use words like ‘self-righteous’ and ‘hypocritical’, is that so many in leadership in the modern Christian church have ceased being able to pray from an honest heart that the Lord would alert them to any error in their doctrine and in their thinking on Biblical issues, and they have ceased being willing, if they ever were willing, to go to their Bibles and study the issues for themselves.
They are told in bible college or in seminary, or at some seminar or pastor’s conference what to think on an issue, and they are given scripture references to support the teaching they’ve received, and years and years later their position on that issue is so ingrained in their thinking, and they’ve preached and taught it so many times themselves, that they have completely failed to notice that they have never themselves, studied and thought it through and let the Lord be their teacher in that area.
So it shows in their attitudes toward people, including those outside the church. Unwillingness to learn or change always expresses itself in legalism, intolerance and self-righteousness.
This is what Peter and John were up against, and it is what every true believer and teacher of God’s word has been up against throughout the history of the church. “We know the truth, we aren’t going to change so don’t come to us with your heresy and your strange teachings”.
And if you corner them with a biblically sound argument that exposes their error, you get either a silent shrug of the shoulders and a blank stare, or you make a life long enemy. Because they are confident. They have convictions. They are sincere. And it matters not that they are sincerely wrong; just don’t dare suggest they think!
It doesn’t take courage to have convictions! It takes courage to let those convictions be challenged, and stand willing to change if your convictions don’t line up with God’s truth!
It takes courage to pray, ‘Lord, I know You are never wrong, but I may be. So as I go to my study please show me if I am wrong, because I want to be like You’.
Lynn and I recently watched a late September program of Larry King Live. The topic for discussion was “God, Anger, War & Religion”, and his five guests were a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, a Roman Catholic priest (and I thought it interesting that he saw Christian and Catholic as two separate entities), and one Dr. Deepak Chopra, M.D., under whose name they put ‘Spiritual Advisor’.
Now, I do not know why he calls himself a spiritual advisor, because at the end of the program, when Larry King asked each of his guests for a closing statement, addressing their views of where the world is going, this was Dr. Chopra’s closing statement.
“I believe we will make things better if we commit ourselves to doing so…we should become a part of the peace army of the world.”
The camera broke away from him to Larry King, and as Mr. King opened his mouth to speak he was interrupted as Dr. Chopra continued, almost as an afterthought.
“I will never give up hope, Larry. On the other hand, if we were wiped out it would not make a bit of difference to the universe. We are just a speck of dust in the mindless void; in the junkyard of infinity.”
Now I have to ask,… whose spirit is he advising on a day to day basis? Specks of dust don’t have spirits, do they?
There is a man speaking with confidence. But confidence in what?
If I believed the way he believes, I wouldn’t give a whit about any ‘peace army of the world’, whatever that is. If I truly believed in my heart that we are all just “specks of dust in a mindless void; the junkyard of infinity”, my friends, I’d be partyin’ hardy!
Please don’t take me wrong, but I wouldn’t care about you or anyone else, as long as I get what I want, and get it now! Why not, if this is all there is, and none of us is really worth anything?
“Oh, but you should want to leave behind a legacy of doing good and loving people” Why? If everyone else, including those who come after me, are just specks of dust, why bother with anything?
This is the thinking of a world without God, folks! No wonder they’re shooting each other over a position in traffic, and raping and stealing just because they see what they want and can’t see any reason why they shouldn’t have it.
This is what they’re being taught from Kindergarten up, and it’s no wonder that our society, after 40 + years of this poison being poured into people’s heads, is largely filled up with self-serving, self-seeking, angry, murderous brats who will stop at nothing to be on top, and so often end in self-destruction and suicide.
Why not? They’re just “specks of dust in a mindless void; the junkyard of infinity”.
And I want you to see, Christians, that although his is a very clear and blatant example of the foolish and ungodly thinking of the dead, it is the same kind of mindless acceptance of information, neglecting to pass it through the test of revealed truth and common sense, that will keep a Christian bound to legalism and joyless Christianity for years, under the burden of something he has accepted as biblical truth just because some teacher said it was so.
WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE?
So to me, the question comes down to this. Who’s in charge here? Who should we be turning to ultimately, for scriptural truth? For our doctrine? Our theology?
I’m not advocating tossing out all the preachers and teachers, now. I are one!
But ultimately our Teacher is the Holy Spirit, and we are responsible for taking all that we hear and read to Him for confirmation and approval.
And believers in Christ, please listen to me today. Any position that tends to bring strife and division in the body of Christ should be suspect. Any issue that takes the focus off of worship and bringing glory to God, should raise big red flags.
As an example of what I’m saying, the on-going debate over types of music in the worship service is a prime one. I don’t think in my years as a Christian, that I have ever heard such empty-headed, drooling down the chin nonsense, as churches fighting and crying and splitting over what kind of music is going to be used.
What is the real issue? I’ll tell you what the real issue is, and it’s not the music. It’s a bunch of spiritually dead, selfish, carnal, religious people struggling over who is going to be in control; and who cares if God gets worshiped at all, as long as I get my weekly warm, fuzzy feeling from my music!
Moving right along then… Any question over doctrine and practice that fails to unite in Christian love, and keeps people from being able to pray together, should be taken very humbly before God in prayer, asking His Holy Spirit to lead into truth and expose error.
He is in charge. He is in charge. And our churches need a lot less confidence in the traditions of men, and a lot more of the confidence that Peter and John had; the kind that comes from knowing deep, deep, deep in your heart that your message is truly from God; the kind of knowledge that gives you courage and confidence to say, ‘we must obey God rather than men’, even if what men are commanding is adherence to their great sounding doctrines.
The kind of confidence that isn’t afraid to speak the truth, but speaks it knowing that its ultimate message for all who will believe is salvation, the gift of the Holy Spirit, being bathed in God’s marvelous, infinite, matchless grace, and eternal life with Jesus!
RETURN TO THE UPPER ROOM
I’ll close with this.
We need to return often to the upper room.
The Apostles and the approximate 108 with them had gathered there having left all vestiges of self-confidence outside the door with their shoes.
We need to be willing to go often to the Throne of grace, with God’s word opened in front of us, and reevaluate what we think we know, and what we have perhaps clung to for years as sound Bible truth, just because someone said so, and pray, ‘Lord, You are never wrong, but I may be. By your Holy Spirit, teach me. Teach me concerning this particular issue. Show me more on this point over here. Take me deeper, but even more important Lord, teach me clearer.’
Maybe our attitude in the end should be, ‘I’d rather know nothing, than cause division or cause a brother or sister to stumble because of what I think I know’.
Lord, fill me with your Holy Spirit, and give me the kind of confidence that Peter and John had. The kind that will ultimately shut the mouths of those who oppose you, but at the same time will make them recognize that I have been with Jesus.
Amen.
