Full Transcript

Welcome back to Share the Word. In this chapter, chapter 4 of Acts, the early Christians are forced to decide whether they should obey God or human government when the two collide. Acts chapter 4: Whom to Obey. Christianity was expanding like a wildfire in the months following Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. After the apostles’ very public testimony in Jerusalem, Luke tells us the number of believers swelled to more than 5,000. The temple bosses and most of the Sanhedrin, Israel’s religious council, were alarmed by this.

They thought they had ended this movement when they managed to get the Romans to put Jesus to death, but now that seems like to have backfired badly, as Christianity was rapidly growing because of the apostles’ powerful public messages. They insisted that Jesus was the Messiah and Savior. They insisted it had to be true because of his resurrection from the dead. Rather than reconsider their position, the high priest dug in their heels. As chapter 4 opens, we see that late on the afternoon of that day that Peter and John healed the crippled beggar near the temple, the Jewish leaders decided the apostles must be confronted and their public preaching stopped. So they sent police to arrest Peter and John and held them in prison overnight.

The next day, the Sanhedrin was convened. Luke notes that all the bigwigs were there. These are the very same people, mind you, Annas, Caiaphas, and others from the high priestly clan, who had arrested and convicted Jesus. Growing Christianity felt so threatening to them that everyone from the religious leadership in Israel was there for the apostles’ hearing. When Peter and John were brought before them, they were questioned about what had happened the previous day. The authorities wanted to know, with regard to the healing of that crippled beggar, by what power and in whose name did you do that?

An indisputable miracle had occurred, so how is what they wanted to know. Peter was bold when he responded to them, Rulers and elders of our people, are we being questioned today because we’ve done a good deed for a crippled man? Do you want to know how he was healed? Let me clearly state to all of you and to all people of Israel that he was healed by the powerful name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, the one you crucified, but who God raised from the dead. For Jesus is the one referred to in the Scriptures where it says, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.’ There’s salvation in no one else.

God has given us no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. Remember our lesson from Luke 20 called Cornerstone, you don’t? Well, Peter did, and he used it to confront the Jewish authorities here. A couple things pop into my mind, I think, about how Peter responded being questioned by these powerful men. One is that Jesus had forewarned his disciples that the day would come when they would be persecuted too because of him. In fact, he had told them, When they arrest you, not if they arrest you, when they arrest you, don’t be concerned about what you do or say.

The Holy Spirit will guide you in how to respond. Another thing is how utterly different this man Peter is than only several weeks before. Remember when Jesus was arrested, Peter denied being his follower three times and hid while Jesus was going through public trials and public execution at the hands of these very men. These are the leaders now who are questioning him. So what changed that man? That’s a very key question I keep bringing you back to, and there’s only one obvious answer.

Peter was extremely bold before the Sanhedrin now because he had been changed by the fact and power of Jesus’ resurrection. Now, sure in that and empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter is a very changed man, a fearless man. The last part of his answer to his questioners about the stone which the builders rejected, the apostles understood to be referring to the Messiah, to Jesus, whose rejection these very men were responsible for. Then he told them further that Jesus’ rejection and crucifixion were to accomplish our salvation, that there’s no other way for people to be saved except through him. Remember, salvation, saved, these are biblical terms that mean whatever it takes to make us right in God’s eyes. Peter is insisting that what it takes to make us right in God’s eyes, anyone to be right in God’s eyes, was accomplished by Jesus.

And he said, There’s no other way under heaven for it to be accomplished. No other way. No other way. No one else can make us right with God except for Jesus. It’s impossible to overemphasize this. This wasn’t Peter’s idea either.

Remember, Jesus’ own emphatic claims: I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through me. It’s why the cross was necessary. There is no other way under heaven for us to be saved. I often hear people who want to argue that Jesus would never be that narrow, or that Bible-believing Christians today are more dogmatic on this point than Jesus would ever intend us to be. Hogwash. Peter heard Jesus’ claims about being the way, about being the door, about being the cornerstone.

He understood there’s only one plan of salvation conceived of by God and only one qualified Savior, and his name is Jesus. Do you see what I mean about a changed man? Luke says that Peter and John’s boldness actually amazed the Sanhedrin members. This is not the way a couple fishermen from Galilee would normally respond to those who had civil authority over their lives. The high priest had the apostles escorted out of the hearing room to confer over this whole situation. Some of them recognized that Peter and John were in fact two of Jesus’ close disciples.

Luke notes the healed beggar was actually present at this hearing. I’m sure many of them recognized him too, since he’d been a fixture for some time at the temple gates. He definitely looked healed. So how could they deny this notable miracle that had happened? Everyone in Jerusalem by now had heard about it. So what could they do?

How should they respond? After their conference, what they decided to do was to see if they could intimidate the apostles into stopping their preaching. They called Peter and John back in and gave them a stern warning to stop publicly preaching in the name of Jesus. That meant no more telling people the good news about why Jesus came and who he was. That meant no more sharing their testimony about being with the resurrected Christ and how it had changed their lives. That meant shutting up about what they knew was the most important truth in the world, that we must be saved through faith in Jesus or else go into eternity and face God’s judgment for sin on our own.

So Peter and John, with no need to confer, replied to their warnings to stop preaching like this: Whether it’s right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to listen to Him, you can make your own judgment. But as for us, we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard. Wow, the authorities were in a spot now. The high priest, I’m sure, would have preferred to do something drastic to shut Peter and John up just as they had done to Jesus. But at this point, remember, there are now about 5,000 believers in Jerusalem, and everyone had heard about this undeniable miracle done in Jesus’ name through these apostles. Many on the council that day were afraid of a riot if they mistreated Peter and John.

So they sternly warned them again, threatening bad things would happen to them if they didn’t shut up about Jesus. But then, after some more bluster, they ultimately let them go. Upon release, Peter and John immediately went back to where the other apostles were staying and filled their companions in on what had occurred. The others were grateful at the outcome, and they expressed their faith that whatever was going to happen was under God’s sovereign control. By that I mean the apostles believed that God could protect them going forward from these enemies if He wanted to, but that God’s purposes were more important than even their safety. Hadn’t Jesus suffered according to the purposes of God after all?

After listening to Peter and John’s report, they prayed together for boldness to go on testifying about Jesus and sharing the good news, and they felt the Holy Spirit’s presence with them and power among them. They were not going to be cowed by the threats of the authorities. They would go on sharing the good news. I think we need to pause in this narrative for a moment and think about a serious application. When Peter and John were arrested that day and warned at the hearing not to continue speaking about Jesus or the resurrection, these were orders coming from the Sanhedrin. This is the 70-member Council of Elders that was the legitimate civil authority in Jerusalem.

The occupying Romans granted that group of men a great deal of leeway to oversee local affairs in and around Jerusalem. We’ll talk about this more later when we come to places in the epistles where it’s more directly addressed. But human governments are an important and ordained part of God’s order for things. Order is, to God apparently, much better than disorder, which means even bad government is better for a society than no government, than anarchy. Government has, in God’s mind, a legitimate role to play, and one important responsibility is the maintenance of order. People are very sinful.

There’s no restraint by authorities. Evil can pretty quickly take over and make life dangerous and unjust for everyone. So authority is built into everything God has ever created, from the smallest human social group, the family, to the largest, like a nation. So why then did Peter and John and the rest of the early Christians decide not to comply, not to obey their legitimate government authority in Jerusalem when they were told to shut up about Jesus? There’s one only acceptable answer, and that is that they believed, correctly, that God’s authority supersedes any human authority if the two ever collide. Jesus had instructed these men specifically to share the good news with everyone, right?

There was no gray area, no lack of clarity about that. Jesus had prepared these men for three years to become the foundation of the Christian church, and for that to happen, they had to be his witnesses. They had to proclaim the gospel. They had the clearest instructions to that end from the highest of all authorities. So when this situation arose, and a lesser civil authority forbade them to share their faith, they instinctively knew that their obedience to what Christ had told them must supersede anything these local officials said to the contrary. That’s why they said, You can judge us if you see fit for obeying God rather than you, but we will go on telling people what we have seen and heard.

I understand people from all around the globe one day may be reading or listening to this lesson. In the West, where I live, for the last 300 years or so, in most places, we’ve been blessed to be able to share and live out our Christian faith with minimal, if any, real government interference. For those of us who have lived nowhere else, and obviously in no other generation, we probably don’t appreciate nearly enough the privilege and blessing that really comes with that. I mean, what a blessing it is to have that freedom. What the example of the apostles and early Christians we read about here in Acts challenges me to is to be more bold because I have this freedom. They were convinced that there was no other name, as Peter put it, under heaven than Jesus by which people could be saved.

So they prayed for boldness to proclaim that. And filled with the Holy Spirit, they did proclaim that message powerfully, and thousands of people responded, and the church was born. Sadly, too many Christians in places like where I live are easily intimidated by public opinion or possible negative personal reactions, so we are timid and we are quiet. We need to share our faith more boldly while we have the freedom to do that. We need to share our faith more boldly, don’t you agree? We need to keep in the forefront of our minds that the gospel message is the only message under heaven by which people can be saved.

Christ has called us and is counting on us to share that with everybody who needs to hear it. And when we have the opportunity and while we have the freedom, we need to follow the apostles’ example here and be that bold and to share it. If you are a believer, pray for boldness. Pray for opportunities to share your faith. And like John and Peter, in the power of the Holy Spirit, when those opportunities arise, seize them. On the other hand, I know there are others who may listen to this lesson in the future, who live in places where, to one degree or another, they may not have that freedom, where they have authorities who are opposed to Christ, who fear the growth of Christianity, much like the Sanhedrin members in the first century in Jerusalem.

For you, in such difficult situations, this lesson contains a bigger challenge. It’s easy for me to say we should be bolder and more open in sharing our faith, but for you. Doing that might have harsh real-world consequences, as we’ll see it did in the chapters in Acts ahead. So what should you do when local authorities or even national authorities set policies against sharing your Christian faith? Well, this is hard, I know, but my best advice is to still look for ways to share your faith because we answer to a higher authority. If you find yourself in such a situation, still somehow hearing this podcast, I hope you will find the courage and boldness that comes from the Holy Spirit to share your faith with others as you can.

If repercussions come, you may have to suffer for following Christ. Jesus warned that could happen. So if it does, find inspiration in the example of these early believers who understood that obeying God Almighty had to supersede obeying civil authorities when something so critical as sharing the only message under heaven by which people can be saved is at stake. All of us who’ve never had to hear the threats that Peter and John have heard, or that you may hear, all of us, we should be praying every day for people like you. All of us who have never had to suffer at all for the cause of Christ must remember you, our brothers and sisters in Christ, in other places who too often do. I know that’s easy for me to say, but I fully believe it’s the truth because it’s God’s promise.

If you suffer for the name of Christ, if you lose anything because of following Him, Jesus Christ has all eternity to make that up to you, and He promises that He will. He promised that those who suffer with Him will also reign with Him. Be told these very men that we’re reading about now in Acts, Blessed are you when people insult you or persecute you or say all kinds of evil things against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because your reward in heaven will be great. Reality is, we who are not having to suffer for our faith have it better right now, but you who do have to suffer for your faith will have it better then. I speak for Jesus today when I say to you, if you find yourself in this very unfair situation, be wise.

Don’t look for trouble, but do take opportunities to share your Christian faith. Obey God rather than men. He will see it. He will remember it, and He will reward it. Let me tell you in closing a big positive, encouraging fact to remember. Luke shows us in his account the opposition the early followers of Jesus encountered did not in any way hinder the growth of Christianity.

It got really rough, as we’re going to see, but as a leader of the early church wrote long ago, the blood of martyrs became the seed of the church. Christians all over the world today should be heartened by that and follow the early Christians’ example. And I’m glad to report most are. Listen to this. The most recent statistics we have say that right now in 2024, around the world, on average, about 13 Christians are killed every day for their faith in Christ. And every day, 12 churches, Christian schools, or clinics are attacked.

Another 12 Christians are arrested, and five more are abducted. The authors of this report rightly comment, We might hear this data and think about how unfair this oppression is. But the list is really just as much about resilience. We might hear this information and think the church is suffering and dying. But that’s not at all what’s happening. In the 15 nations where persecution of Christians is most likely to occur, the number of believers grew from 260 million to 309 million in just one year.

Think of that. That is very encouraging. That means opposition today is not stopping the Church of Jesus Christ any more than it did in the days we’re reading about at the beginning. Jesus once promised this same Peter, we see boldly testifying now on the pages of Acts, I will build my church, Peter, and the gates of hell will not stop it. We, my friends, if we are on the side of Christ, we are on the winning side. The end of chapter 4 describes the spiritual high the early Christian community was riding at this point.

They were growing rapidly even though opposition was beginning to rear its ugly head. With so many joining the new community, the early Christians were showing the kind of love for one another that Jesus had taught. They were sharing what they had to provide for those in need, especially for those out-of-towners. This was not a government program, by the way, we read about here, or compelled of them in any way. Believers were just sharing out of generosity and love for each other. Some well-to-do Christians, like Barnabas we meet here, sold property and homes to build a fund the apostles oversaw to take care of those in need.

Remember, many of these new believers were Jews from the dispersion who just happened to be in Jerusalem for these religious holidays, heard the gospel then, received Christ, were baptized, and joined the early Christian movement. Many didn’t want to go home after that, from wherever they were from. Something awesome was going on, and they wanted to stay in Jerusalem and be a part of it. Interesting twists and turns are ahead for the early Christians, though. Be sure to listen to our podcast next time from Acts chapter 5 as their story continues. Thank you for joining us with this edition of Share the Word, the podcast that explains the big ideas in the New Testament chapter by chapter.

We suggest that you take a moment, hit pause, and open a Bible or the Bible app to today’s chapter. That way, you can make sure what we are teaching is consistent with what’s written there. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.