Sermon Tone Analysis

Who Can’t Handle the Truth?

(Acts 5:12-16)

September 12, 2021

Read Acts 5:17-42 – A guy who had avoided the scale for a few years finally got the nerve to step on, but couldn’t read the numbers.

He got off, grabbed his glasses, got back on and said to his wife, “What do you know?

These glasses weight 50 pounds.”

That’s a man living in denial – something many people do with the eternal spiritual truths of the Word of God.

The Bible says, “There is a way that seems right to a man (reasonable, sure, truthful), but its end is the way of death” (Prov 14:12).

What seems so right can be fatally wrong.

Here we see how 4 groups of people view God’s truth.

All think they have it right.

They serve as a warning to all of us.

The Council: Attacking the Truth (17-28)

A. Emotionally Driven – Out of the blue, the apostles are arrested and put into prison.

Why?

For preaching?

For the miracles?

For speaking of Jesus?

Yes, peripherally.

But mainly the opposition 17c) “were filled with jealousy.”

They were used to being top dog – to getting the chief seats – to being deferred to and called Rabbi.

They were used to being at the top of the totem pole; they liked it there, so they were filled with jealousy.

The Green-eyed monster had them by the throat, so they sprang into action – legal or not.

They typify people who attack God’s truth out of an emotional rejection, not intellectual.

It’s not that God’s Word is demonstrably wrong; it’s not that people can’t believe; it’s that they don’t want to believe.

They are in denial.

Richard Dawkins, one of the new atheists who claim they reject God for intellectual reasons, was asked in a debate what proof would change his mind.

He replied “even if a 900-foot high Jesus strode in and said, ‘I exist.

Here I am,’ I would not change my mind.”

Rejection of truth is not an issue of the mind; it’s an issue of the heart; and it makes intelligent people turn dumb.

God knew this.

Psa 14:1: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’

What drives this intellectual suicide?

They want to call their own shots.

Answering to no one.

But in so doing, they violate what deep down they know to be true.

Rom 1:19: “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.”

But – “by their unrighteousness [they] suppress the truth.”

Truth attackers, therefore, live lives of denial – because they choose to.

B. Divinely Enabled – God enables attacks on truth?

How can that be?

Well, in the same way all actions are divinely enabled.

Those who oppose the truth willfully ignore that every move they make is only possible because God allows it.

At one point in His trial, Pilate asked Jesus, Jn 19:9b, “Where are you from?” Jesus didn’t answer which ticked Pilate off.

Jn 19:10: “So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” 11) [now watch] Jesus answered him, “You would have NO authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.”

Even the power to reject comes from God.

Look how this truth plays out with the apostles.

They’re thrown in jail.

Okay! 19) But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out.”

Catch the humor.

The Sadducees didn’t believe in angels.

So, God sends angels to undo the arrest!

It’s Psalm 2 all over.

In Psa 2 David tells how “the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord” (2:2).

Like these guys!

Going against God’s apostles.

But what’s God doing?

Psa 2:4: “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.”

What fools rejecters are.

God gives them just enough authority to hang themselves unless they come to their senses.

So the high priest sends for the apostles.

And guess what?

The guards are in place and the doors are locked, but inside, it’s empty.

They eventually find the apostles preaching like before, and bring them in for questioning.

But they never ask the obvious: “Okay – how’d you do it?

How did you get out?

Never asked.

Why? Bc the opposition is living in denial.

They don’t ask bc they don’t want to know.

This is so beautiful!

God is giving them irrefutable evidence that He is in charge, not them – and they refuse to see it.

They never ask because they don’t want to know.

But they’ll never be able to stand before God and say, “You didn’t show us.

You didn’t reveal yourself.”

God will answer, “Let me count the ways.”

He used humor here to overturn their arrest; He showed them in a much greater way when He when He raised Jesus from the dead, overturning their verdict that He was a blasphemer.

But you get the point.

Those who oppose God can only do so on His authority.

It’s grace urging them to re-think, to repent.

But they refuse.

Nancy Pearcey tells of lecturing at Harvard one time showing how the Xn worldview is superior to naturalism at explaining life as we find it.

It was a powerful refutation of a natural worldview which can explain how things work, but has no idea how they started.

Afterward, one prof came up to her, visibly shaken at the criticism she leveled at those who refuse to look beyond the material world.

He said, “We know our theories don’t explain ordinary life outside the lab.

But why throw it in our faces?”

Why?

To give them a chance to reconsider, to re-think, to humble themselves before that God who gives them the rope to hang themselves.

To attack truth is a serious business, Beloved.

II.

The Apostles: Affirming the Truth (29-32)

This was a re-run for Peter and John.

The question they get isn’t a question at all.

It’s a diatribe.

28) “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.”

What do the apostles to do? Affirm the truth they affirmed before.

“Yes, we are teaching in Jesus’ name.

And yes, you do have His blood on your hands.

But there’s good news.

There’s hope.

God took what you meant for evil and made something wonderful out of it.”