Sermon Tone Analysis

Main Idea

Speak Life at all costs

Happy New Year!

Can you believe it is already 2023?

New Year has always been a time of new beginnings.

We naturally assess the year that has just passed and do our best to craft a fresh start with new possibilities, new goals, and new perspectives.

As we make these new goals with a fresh outlook as a believer in Christ, hopefully, we are also reminded of how we are new creations with a new purpose and a new Life.

And it is this Life that I want to talk to you about today.

After a few months' break to review our Core Values, we are now jumping back into the world of the first-century Church.

To help acclimate us back into the setting, I thought it would help to recap the recent events.

A lot of things happened in a short period of time since the believers were empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

We saw multiple accounts of the growing congregation sacrificing land and possessions to meet each other’s needs.

We also watched a terrifying event take place in the congregation - a swift and fatal judgment on Ananias and Sapphira - a couple who lied to the Holy Spirit and sent a wave of righteous fear rippling through the early church.

We witnessed a lame man at the temple gates stand to his feet after being miraculously healed and leaped like a deer into the temple.

Then, we saw Annas the High Priest pull together a meeting of the Sanhedrin, arrested Peter and John, and forced them to stand trial the following day for that healing (oddly enough).

This was the first semblance of persecution.

Even though another human being and fellow Jew was made whole, the religious leaders didn’t like their authority challenged, especially when the person being championed was the man they just had executed on a Roman cross.

But, despite their paltry efforts to stop the spread of the news that Jesus is the Messiah, the good news continued to spread to the point where Jews from the surrounding villages were coming out of the woodworks and filling the streets of Jerusalem to hear the message of the apostles and to be healed from their afflictions!

And this is where our text begins today, so, please turn in your Bibles to Acts 5:17-32.

Outline & Passage

In studying this passage, I noticed that it mostly gravitates around the angel’s commission in verse 20, which reads:

So, our outline for today is going to center around two hinge-points and that one word: Life.

Outline

I - Opposition to Life (vv.

17-18)

II - Command to proclaim Life (vv.

19-26)

III - Foundation to speak Life (vv.27-32)

I - Opposition to Life

First, we see a direct opposition to this life.

Annas, the High Priest, is back at it.

He has circled the wagons again around the apostles in an effort to squash the message of Jesus being the Messiah, but we get a better glimpse into his motives.

He, along with the Sadducees, is likely annoyed at the apostle’s success and popularity.

We got a sense of that last time.

But we are told plainly in this passage that they are jealous.

The attention of the people is on the apostles, which means it’s not on them.

Annas is acting like a toddler who has noticed that his sibling is getting all the attention, so he pushes them out of the way to get the spotlight.

How often does that work out well in real life?

Filling.

But, there is an important concept at work in this verse that we need to see.

Annas wasn’t just jealous, he was filled with jealousy.

That word, filled, is the same word to describe how Peter and the others were filled with the Spirit at Pentecost and many times afterward.

So, we see these two conflicting types of filling, which highlights an important truth.

You can only pour out what you are filled with.

If you fill up a pitcher of sweet tea and have guests over for lunch, they won’t be drinking lemonade.

They can only be served what is available.

Our hearts and minds are the same way.

We can’t dispense what we don’t already have.

In the early church, they were about the business of devoted prayer and serving through the Spirit’s power, and therefore, amazing things happened!

God was at work through His people because they were consistently being filled - like the sailboat on the water being moved along as the wind fills its sails - by the Spirit of God.

On the other hand, Annas was filled with a bitter root of jealousy, and because that’s what already existed inside of him, that’s what poured out.

As the leader of the Jews as High Priest - a man who was supposed to lead people closer to God - he was actively doing the opposite!

All because he was filled with the wrong thing.

How’s that for a personal takeaway!

What are you filling yourself with?

Therefore, as an outpouring of the jealousy he held on the inside, he gathered his posse and had the apostles thrown into prison again.

Even though he failed miserably the first time, he did the same old thing expecting a different result.

But, unlike the last time, the apostles didn’t stay in prison overnight, because an angel of the Lord came to bust them out.

II - Command to proclaim Life

This is also a delicious bit of irony, since the Sadduccees, being the liberal and theologically lite portion of the Sanhedrin, didn’t believe in angels.

But, despite their inability to grasp basic biblical truths, the Angel (who indeed exists) flung open the prison doors and led them away from the prison by miraculous means.

While it would be thrilling to talk about how he achieved this and brainstorm all the cool ways that they escaped: like maybe the guards were sprinkled with sleeping dust, or the apostles became invisible, or they were transported through walls... the miracle isn’t the focal point.

What matters is the command that came next, and is our first hinge-point.

Hinge-point 1.

The Angel of the Lord told the apostles to go back to the Temple and speak all the words of this ‘Life’.

This command is really interesting, for two reasons.

Why they were rescued.

The angel did not deliver them from prison so they could escape and hide.

He pulled them from prison so the fighters could get back into the ring.

God didn’t choose runners.

He chose fighters.

And the fighters can have confidence in knowing their God can deliver them at any point if He wills.

The Kingdom didn’t expand and grow through weak followers who shrank back and hid when the heat intensified.

It grew through faithful followers who were willing to lose their life to see the message delivered.

They were willing to speak life at all costs.

Are you that type of follower?

What they were to proclaim.

In some translations, like the ESV and the NASB, the word Life is capitalized, signifying that it is not just a noun, but is specifically a name or title.

They were not supposed to simply advocate for life in general.

Rather, they were to proclaim the person who is Life, and scripture is abundantly clear about who that is.

There is no higher calling than to make known the Author of Life.

Those in darkness need to see it and we who are in the light need to see it more clearly.

As we’ve seen before, persecution is simply fuel for the fight for these guys, and the angel is giving it to them.

So, once released from a brief timeout, the apostles seemed more than eager to keep throwing punches, because they didn’t waste a single bit of daylight.

They immediately went back to the Temple, the place of their previous arrest, at the break of dawn to preach Christ as they were commanded.

Meanwhile, Annas is busy calling together, not just the Sadducees, but the entire Sanhedrin Council.

And, while he is doing this, Luke is busy crafting a lovely bit of comedic relief.

Now that the Council has convened, they call for the prisoners, completely unaware they are currently at the Temple doing the exact thing the Council commanded them not to do.

And we see the officers of the Temple Guard coming to Annas vexed, because the prisoners are gone, even though the doors were still securely locked and the guards were still positioned beside them.

At this point, I’m sure they were beginning to wonder which heads would roll because of this massive blunder.

But, before they could point any fingers, someone arrived on the scene, saying, “I found them!

Look! They’re at the Temple, doing exactly what you told them not to do!”

And so, the officers went to the apostles again and took the men to the Sanhedrin, and the apostles came peacefully.

They didn’t resist or fight back, and it’s quite possible that the officers asked nicely, because they didn’t want to start a riot among the people who held the apostles in high regard.

In fact, we are told in verse 26 that the Captain of the Guard and the Officers were afraid of being stoned by the masses!

Clearly, they were walking on a razor’s edge from the Temple to the Council chambers.

III - Foundation to speak Life

At this point, Annas is not happy.

The apostles have disobeyed a direct order and have made him look foolish in front of the Temple Police by their disappearing act.

Another filling.

What follows is another mention of filling, but instead of an individual being filled with something that directly controls their actions, it is a filling of Jerusalem with the apostle’s teaching.

By their dedication to being filled with the Spirit, the entire city was being filled up!