The Lord’s Day
Evening
July 2, 2006
Acts 4:1-22
“To the End of the Earth (8): The Cost of Discipleship”
Dr. Derek W. H.
Thomas
Now turn with me if you would to The Acts of the Apostles
once again; and we have a fairly lengthy reading from Acts 4, and we’re going to
read together the first 22 verses of Acts 4.
Let’s pray together.
Father, again we thank You for the gift of
Scripture, this holy, inerrant word of God, and we pray blessing as we read it
together, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Hear the word of God:
“As they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of
the temple guard, and the Sadducees, came up to them, being greatly disturbed
because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection
from the dead. And they laid hands on them, and put them in jail until the next
day, for it was already evening. But many of those who had heard the message
believed; and the number of the men came to about five thousand.
“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. And they had
placed them in the center, and 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 CORNERSTONE. 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. But when they
had ordered them to leave the Council, they began to confer with one another,
saying, ‘What shall we do with these men? For the fact that a noteworthy miracle
has taken place through them is apparent to all who live in Jerusalem, and we
cannot deny it. But so that it will not spread any further among the people, let
us warn them to speak no longer to any man in this name.’ And when they had
summoned them, they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of
Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said to them, ‘Whether it is right in the
sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we
cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.’ And when they had
threatened them further, they let them go (finding no basis on which they might
punish them) on account of the people, because they were all glorifying God for
what had happened; for the man was more than forty years old on whom this
miracle of healing had been performed.”
Amen. And may God add His blessing to that reading of His
word.
Well, as we recall from last Sunday evening, this
extraordinary miracle has taken place in Solomon’s portico, in the Colonnades on
the outer sections of the temple, where this cripple (we read here in verse 22
that he was over forty years old) has been brought probably on a daily basis by
friends or family to beg–a well-known figure. They would have seen him in the
temple probably every day, and this man has been healed, and he’s leaping and
walking and praising God. And Peter and John are now brought to give an account
before what is effectively the Jewish temple Sanhedrin.
A man by the name of E. K.
Maltby used to say that
Jesus promised His disciples three things: that they would be absurdly happy;
that they would be completely fearless; and, that they would be in constant
trouble. Well, that’s what we have here. They are in trouble. It is of course
what Jesus had warned them in the upper room: “In this world you will have
tribulation.” That was only a couple of months ago, on their reckoning. Barely a
few weeks have passed since Pentecost.
You would think, wouldn’t you, that the healing of a
cripple in the temple would have brought the Sanhedrin joy? But they are so
caught up in rules and regulations, and especially the name in which this
miracle was performed: the name of Jesus – “Jesus the Nazarene” as Peter refers
to Him. That’s probably not a term of endearment. It may well have been a term
that was given to peter and John and the early disciples, that they were
followers of “Jesus the Nazarene.” You remember what Nathaniel said about
Nazareth: “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” he said. Nazareth was up in
the north; it was the hill country; it was “out in the boonies”, as you would
say. And these disciples are followers of some country prophet from up north. It
is their teaching — in verse 2, “…being greatly disturbed because they were
teaching the people.” It’s an important word. You remember what Luke has
said as he has described the four characteristics of the early church: that
“they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine, and fellowship,
and breaking of bread, and prayers”; and the apostles’ teaching…it’s
the same word. And this teaching, this doctrine, this preaching
of the apostles was of course suffused with Jesus. They were constantly talking
about Jesus. They were talking about His work. They were talking about His life.
They were talking about His death in Jerusalem. They were talking about Calvary.
They were especially talking about the resurrection, the physical manifestation
of the human body of Jesus after He had been dead for three days.
Three things now come quickly to the surface.
I. The phenomenal growth of the
church.
After Pentecost, Luke tells us that the church at
Pentecost was “about three thousand souls”, is the word he uses. Here he
talks about five thousand men, and he uses the gender-specific term,
meaning men and not women. In other words, the church was likely to have been
probably now in the region of 15,000 and maybe a few more. In a space of a few
weeks, the church has multiplied and grown at a rate that is extraordinary. It
is perhaps in itself a manifestation of what Peter had alluded to in the sermon
he’s just preached in chapter three, where he speaks about “times of refreshing
from the presence of the Lord.” And they’re experiencing a time of refreshing.
They’re experiencing a time of a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit, when
blessing has come upon them–what we commonly call today a “revival.” [Not the
kind of revival, now, that you see on Baptist billboards around the state saying
“Revival next week on Wednesday evening, running for two months”…or whatever.
Not that kind of man-made idea of revival, but a sovereign work of God in which
God does what He ordinarily does, but He does it in great numbers, and He does
it all at once, and it’s accompanied by a sense of His presence and a
responsiveness on the part of the people of God to the word of God, and a
sensitivity to sin, and great boldness and great courage in preaching and
teaching.]
They’d seen that on the Day of Pentecost, of course,
and there’s a sense in which what we see here in Acts 4 (and we will see it many
times as we go through The Acts of the Apostles)… there’s a sense in which
what happens here is related to Pentecost.
Now there’s no mention here of the extraordinary
gifts. There’s no mention of prophecy; there’s no mention of speaking in tongues
here. It’s as though if you think of Pentecost as an earthquake, these are the
aftershocks–the rumblings that are still continuing in Jerusalem. Now, the
church is going to spread out of Jerusalem as we go through The Acts of the
Apostles, but for now it’s confined to the city of Jerusalem, and Luke draws
attention in particular to one particular feature in verse 8: that Peter was
“filled with the Holy Spirit.” And I think that Luke is saying more than just
something that was true of Peter since the Day of Pentecost, when, you remember,
on the Day of Pentecost they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And Luke
isn’t saying, ‘Oh, by the way, Peter is still filled with the Holy Spirit.’ I
think Luke is saying here, as he will say again in verse 31 about others in
Jerusalem, that there is a special and particular filling of the Holy Spirit
that enables Peter to meet the exigencies of the hour, namely the persecution
that’s about to break out, and the courage and the boldness in that particular
circumstance is the result of the filling of the Holy Spirit.
Now, the teaching of Scripture elsewhere tells us
that every Christian is filled with the Spirit. Every Christian is baptized with
the Spirit. If we don’t have the Spirit of God, we aren’t in communion with
Jesus Christ. Paul, in Ephesians 5, will make the specific exhortation: “Be
filled with the Spirit…keep on being filled with the Spirit”; but there seems
to be in The Acts of the Apostles teaching that suggests that in particular
circumstances of need, of stress, of trial, of persecution, the Spirit comes and
He enables. He is the Helper. Jesus referred to the Spirit as the Paraclete,
the paracletos. And one possible rendition of paracletos is
the helper. He’s the Helper, He’s the sustainer. He equips; he gives Peter
this extraordinary boldness and courage. This is Peter, after all! You have to
pinch yourself…this man who, just a couple of months previous, was cowering,
frightened by this very body, this Sanhedrin body, cursing and swearing that he
didn’t know Jesus–and what a change has come about. What a change in a short
space of time has come about, and it’s because he’s filled with the Spirit. He’s
been filled with the Spirit.
A phenomenal growth of the church — a work of the
Holy Spirit…it’s right, it’s proper for us to pray that we might see that
again, as God has come in various centuries and periods of time and epochs, when
God has come and caused His church to grow “like a nation born in one day” the
prophet says; and in this day and age, that God would pour out His Spirit and
draw men and women to Jesus Christ and revive His church as He did here in Acts
4, the phenomenal growth of the church.
II. The sustained hostility of
the world
Secondly, the sustained hostility of the world,
because just as we see, and to the extent that we see, the growth of the church,
we also see in parallel with it the sustained opposition of the world. And
it’s exactly the same today. The principle is exactly the same today: that
wherever you see zeal and boldness and courage, you will see opposition, because
if there’s something that the devil hates and fears more than anything, it’s
zeal that is according to knowledge…boldness, courage in preaching and
teaching and witnessing to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
One of the earliest English Puritans, John Geary in
the late sixteenth century, wrote a tract. It became very famous, and was called
The Character of an Old English Puritan. And in it he speaks about his
motto. His motto was vincit qui patitur, in Latin, which means he who
suffers, conquers. And what you see is exactly what Jesus had predicted
would happen. He had warned the disciples – He’d warned Peter especially at
Caesarea Philippi, that occasion when He had said, ‘On this rock I will build My
church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Jesus builds His
church within sight of the very gates of hell, and to the extent that Jesus
builds His church, to that extent Satan will try to oppose it. And you see it
here. In the next three chapters you will see three particular waves of
opposition. In this chapter, it’s opposition that’s coming from outside that
needs to be resisted by faith in Jesus Christ. In the next chapter, it will be a
subtle hypocrisy from within: the story of Ananias and Sapphira, that needs to
be dealt with quickly and decisively; and in the following chapter, Acts 6, it’s
to come in the form of an unhappy division in the church, where the church is
divided into two sides and needs to be resolved with patience and wise, wise,
counsel. And in every instance — in chapter 4, in chapter 5, in chapter 6 — in
every instance the real opposition comes and originates from the powers of
darkness. The prince of darkness trembles when Christians speak with boldness
about Jesus. He trembles. And one of the great lessons that we learn in this
passage is that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual; mighty
through God to the pulling down of strongholds.
III. The response of the
apostles.
But there’s a third thing I want us to see, and
that is the response of the apostles. And the response is three-fold, and
we won’t get to the third part. We’ll be looking at that next week. But the
response of the apostles first of all is…what does Peter do? They’ve been
arrested, they’ve spent a night in prison, and they’re brought before the
Sanhedrin in the morning and they’re asked all kinds of questions. And what does
Peter do, in front of the Sanhedrin? He does the very same thing that got him
into prison in the first place. He preaches the gospel. He preaches about Jesus.
It’s his third sermon so far. There’s a sermon in chapter 2, there’s a sermon in
chapter 3, there’s a sermon now in chapter 4. He’s doing, of course, what he
will exhort his readers to do when he comes to write an epistle: “Be ready to
give a reason for the hope that lies within you,” he will say, writing to
Christians who are also going to face terrible, terrible, persecution. Some of
them are going to lose their lives, and Peter could see it coming and he’s
saying to them ‘Be bold and be strong, and be courageous and stand up for the
truth; and be ready with winsomeness to give a reason, with gentleness and
respect…to give a reason for the hope that lies within you.’
Do you notice several things, very quickly, in this
sermon? Did you notice how once again (for the third time) he tells his
Sanhedrin audience that ‘It was you who put Jesus to death’?
Now, this isn’t anti-Semitic, you understand.
Peter’s a Jew himself. There’s no hint of anti-Semitism here, despite what the
wonderful John Chrysostom said in his sermons, and what Luther did in his
sermons. This isn’t anti-Semitic. This is making them realize the truth of the
matter as to what it is they had done: they had crucified Jesus of Nazareth,
whom God has now set forth as both Lord and Christ.
And rocks…Peter had a fascination for rocks and
stones. I think every time Peter went by a building…you know, if he’d been
here seeing the building going on…and did you notice when you drove in? If you
drove in on the north side there are bricks everywhere, obviously with a view to
being put up at some point, and some of them on that side are wrapped in
cellophane, and I was tempted to go and have a look at them, what kind of stones
they were…specially ordered, shaped. Ever since Jesus had said to Peter in
Caesarea Philippi, “You are the rock, and on this rock I will build My church,”
and on the profession of Peter that Jesus is the Son of the living God, I think
Peter couldn’t see a rock or a stone without thinking about Jesus, and he quotes
here, as he will do in his first epistle, he quotes from the 118th
Psalm: “The stone which the builders rejected…” (You can imagine some of those
builders, you know, looking at this brick and it’s sort of out of shape or
something, and they just toss it aside and they choose another one) “…and that
stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.”
And then, the absolute exclusivity of Jesus: that
there is no other name under heaven given amongst men whereby we must be saved.
What an extraordinary statement that is! What an arrogant statement that
is…unless it’s true that Buddhism cannot save, that Islam cannot save, that
Hinduism cannot save, that Shintoism cannot save: only Jesus, faith in Jesus
Christ saves.
You know, in our post-Modern world, it’s not the
statement that Jesus saves that is offensive. It isn’t the least bit offensive
in our post-Modern world. It’s the statement that only Jesus saves that
is offensive to the world.
Isn’t this bold, my friends? In this age when we are
being pressured to water down our message, in this ecumenical age in which we
live? He was reflecting of course what he had heard Jesus say: “I am the way and
the truth and the life, and no man comes unto the Father but by Me.”
So what does he do? First of all he preaches, and he
preaches the same message. He preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ, and of Jesus
Christ alone. But the second thing that he does, he makes a resolution, a
resolve, a public resolve in the face of the threatenings of the Sanhedrin. When
the Sanhedrin says to him not to preach any more in the name of Jesus, what does
he say? What he says effectively is, ‘I must obey God rather than men. This is
something that I cannot obey, because I must obey God first of all.’
It was the church throwing down the gauntlet, you
understand. Things would have gone very differently if Peter had conceded to the
demands of the Sanhedrin not to preach publicly in the name of Jesus, that this
sect of the Nazarenes wouldn’t spread.
Do you know James Guthrie? He was one of the early
Covenanters in Scotland, whom Oliver Cromwell called “the small man who wouldn’t
stoop.” He was hanged for his faith in 1661, at the accession of Charles II. And
when he was tried before his judge and jury, somebody turned to him and said to
him, “Mr. Guthrie,” and, quoting an old Scottish proverb that says something
like that if you duke (now, duke in the old Scottish language
means “to duck”), “if you duke a little [if you duck a little], you won’t get
hit by the wave. Mr. Guthrie, we have an old Scots proverb: ‘Duke, that the wave
may not go over you.’” And do you know what he said? “There is no duking in the
kingdom of Christ.” You cannot stoop, you see; you cannot bow, you cannot give
in, in the kingdom of Christ. He paid the ultimate price for that, and they
hanged him…the wonderful, extraordinary, James Guthrie.
I’ve been reading the past couple of days a brand
new book by a friend of mine called Helen Roseveare. I’m sure some of you know
Helen Roseveare. Helen Roseveare lives in Belfast, in Northern Ireland. Some of
you will remember in 1964, she was a missionary — a medical missionary, she was
a doctor — in what was then the Belgian Congo — what is, I think, Zambia, today.
And in June of that year, 1964, in a rebel uprising, they came to the village
where she was working and captured her. You know her story, I’m sure. She was
tied to a post and raped for three days, over and over. It’s a horrendous story.
She’s an extraordinary woman. I count it among one of the greatest privileges of
my life to have known her. She’s a godly woman of the old fashioned sort. There
was no compromise with Helen Roseveare. And this is her latest book…she’s
retired now. (Well, she’ll never retire! But she’s sort of retired.) And when
she was tied to that post, and when she was being abused, she says that she
heard a voice. It wasn’t an audible voice or anything like that; she says it was
just God speaking to her through her recollection of what Scripture demanded of
a Christian in that kind of situation. And this is what she heard: “Can you
thank Me for this, even if I don’t tell you why?” That’s what she heard. “Can
you thank Me for this, even if I don’t tell you why?” And she said in her
biography, she said it out loud: “Yes,” she said, “if this fulfills Your
purpose.” I wish I could bring her here tonight and let you hear her voice and
see her demeanor, and see her strength. She is still a stalwart soldier for
Jesus Christ to this very day.
That’s Peter, and that’s Helen Roseveare. And you
know…I know the time has gone, and my last sentence now…but you know, it
really, really convicted me yesterday, this afternoon. Would the Sanhedrin have
to ask you not to speak in the name of Jesus? Would they have to warn you not to
speak in the name of Jesus? Now go home and think about that question.
Let’s pray.
Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank you
for the courage of Peter. We see it as the work of the Holy Spirit. Mold us,
shape us, bend us, break us; make us into soldiers of Christ. Forgive us, O
Lord, for our weakness. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Please stand; receive the Lord’s benediction.
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.