If it be of God

Introduction

Text Acts 5:17-42 primarily vs 34-42

History only remembers the successful movements in the past. We remember the American revolution, the civil war, the civil rights movement, the French Revolution, Tienamen square. Good, Bad and ugly we remember the successful movements, but there have been many unsuccessful movements in history as well.

One of my favorite books of all times is Les Miserables which is loosely based during a real revolt in France. In 1830 a King by the name of Louis-Phillipe had been placed on the throne at the will of the people, but during his reign the income gap got wider and wider. The events of Les mis climax during the funeral procession of General Jean Maximilien Lamarque who was a favorite of the people. Crowds gathered to see the funeral procession and some political activists stirred up the crowds. Eventually a shot rang out from the crowd and people began throwing stones at the military. Then they rushed to the barricades. The insurgents were backed into Eglisse saint Marrie where they sent out a desperate plea for help which never came. About 800 people died that day and the insurrection went no where.

In its infant stages, the church could have easily been wiped out if you are looking at it in human terms. In our text today, we see the second persecution of the church and what it means for us today.

I. The persecution vs 17-32

With all this growth that we saw after the death of Ananias and Sapphira, the Religious rulers feel threatened by the message of the Apostles. In this section we see the second persecution of the church, but unlike the last persecution this one applies to all the apostles. Vs 17 says that the Sadducees, the ruling group of priests, were angry about this growth so they arrested all the Apostles and put them in prison. The words common prison refer to a public prison. This was intended to be a public message to the people that these men were heretics. Unlike the first persecution, we also see God deliver them from this prison. Vs 19 begins with a little bit of irony because the Sadducees who imprisoned the apostles did not believe in angels. God sends an angel to open the prison and release the apostles.

Acts 5:20 “Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.” is in direct contradiction to Acts 4:18 “And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.” As we will see later on, when God’s commands are in direct opposition to the commands of the world around us, we obey God. There is irony here as well because one would expect the religious rulers to be giving out the law of God and expecting obedience to God’s commands and yet we see that their commands are not God’s commands. The principle here is that we follow God even when leaders including pastors are not. Paul in challenging the Corinthians to follow his example said in 1 Cor 11:1 “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.” We ought to follow our leaders, pastors example but only when they are trying to follow Christ in that example. This is not blind obedience to authority.

Acts 5:21 “And when they heard that, they entered into the temple early in the morning, and taught. But the high priest came, and they that were with him, and called the council together, and all the senate of the children of Israel, and sent to the prison to have them brought.” shows us their obedience. Notice when the angel released them it was night and when they obeyed it was first thing in the morning. Except during certain festivals, the temple was not open at night for services; so the apostles obeyed at the earliest opportunity. We can gather a lesson from this as well that we should obey right away. To delay is to disobey. In the case of the apostles, they came as soon as the temple was open. For the children, you need to understand that if your parents tell you to take out the trash, unless they say otherwise, they do not mean after you finish you video game. They mean right now. Delaying obedience is disobedience.

The next morning the religious council and the civil governing council were all gathered together, but they were unaware of what had happened. I think most people would have been unaware because according to the witness of the officers in vs 23 the prison was securely shut and the guards were in place, but the disciples were not inside. According to vs 24, the rulers were perplexed by this and worried how far the news would spread. Again to such rulers, this makes no sense. The Sadducees didn’t believe in the supernatural so how could this be.

Finally, an unnamed witness comes in and tells them the apostles were preaching in the temple. Vs 26 says they gently went and arrested the apostles again because they were afraid of the crowd. There are two possible reasons why they would have been afraid of the crowd: 1) the populace according to Acts 5:13 “And of the rest durst no man join himself to them: but the people magnified them.” the people were amazed by the work of the apostles and people were getting saved 2) the more probably reason is that they feared a public stoning like we see in the story of Stephen. If the people saw them getting arrested and were riled up they might take justice into their own hands. Clearly, as popular as the apostles may have been it isn’t too many chapters before we see the crowd doing just this.

According to Acts 5:28 “Saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.” the accusation against the apostles was twofold:

spreading the gospel that they were told not to preach (guilty)

blaming the rulers for the death of Jesus (guilty again) Acts 4:10-11 “Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner.” Peter also reasserts this in Acts 5:30 “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.”

Peter responds similar to the last time he was arrested, “We ought to obey God rather than men.” ought here is actually the word must. It isn’t a possibility that we would do otherwise. God hasn’t given us a choice in the matter. How often do Christians treat the commands of God as options?

1. Evangelism

2. Walking with God

3. Holiness

If God says do it, that should be enough for me. There are no excuses.

II. The Deliberation vs 33-35

On hearing this, the priests and rulers were cut to the heart. Normally, we would read a phrase like this and think they were convicted of their sin. Well, that obviously isn’t the meaning because they want to kill the apostles. The phrase actually comes from a word meaning to saw asunder. The idea is that they were infuriated by what they heard. The imagery is off a heart filled with anger that has been sawn open so that the anger can spill out. They would have killed the apostles right then and there if it were not for an older wiser man standing up in their midst and calming them down.

According to vs 34, a Pharisee named Gamaliel stood up to speak to them. What we know from the text is that he was an expert in the law of Moses, a Pharisee, and respected by the people. From history, we know this Gamaliel was a student of Hillel one of the great rabbis of the day. Later in the book of Acts, we see that Paul was also a student of his. The focus of our message is going to be on what Gamaliel says to calm the enraged priests.

III. The False Messiahs vs 36-37

The Purpose of Gamaliel’s speech is to encourage the rulers to be careful. Acts 5:35 “And said unto them, Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what ye intend to do as touching these men.” In essence, he is challenging them to think before they act. Killing twelve men in the counsel would probably not end up well politically for the Jewish people.

In order to do that he uses two examples on why they should be cautious about killing the disciples.

Theudas- Skeptics have argued against the truthfulness of the book of Acts based on the inclusion of these two names because according to them Josephus mentions a Theudas who led a revolt in AD 44 which would have been after this speech was given by Gamaliel. They are correct that Josephus does mention such a man, but they are incorrect in assuming he was the only Theudas to exist in history. Theudas was actually a pretty common name. Its Greek from was Theodorus which was a translation of Nathaniel. It is probable that this was a different Theudas as there was a Theodorus who led a revolt in AD 6 when Herod Archelaus was deposed from his throne.

Judas is less debated because there was a Judas who led a revolt in AD 7 against the taxation. This Judas was the one who founded the sect of the Zealots of whom the disciple Simon (not Peter) was a member before Jesus called Him.

The point in ushering in these two examples is that they were both Messiahs. The Jews at the time looked for a man to be the Messiah who would bring political freedom. They arose and led people to follow them but in the end they were all killed and their movements died out.

IV. Gamaliel’s Conclusion vs 38-40

Gamaliel’s conclusion is the main point of this message today. He begins his conclusion with the words, “And now I say.”

Acts 5:38-39 “And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.”

Gamaliel concluded that if the work is of men, it will fail inevitably just like these other two movements, but if it is of God, there is nothing we can do to stop it. The word for overthrow here means destroy.

Premise: If God is behind the work of HHBC, then He will make it prosper; but if it is just a work of men it will fail.

We know that God is sovereign and has a plan for our church. And if He is in it nothing can thwart His plans.

Matt 16:17-19 “And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” This verse is not a defensive verse. It is offensive meaning on the offense.

We also know that when it comes to evangelism, no gimick is going to get people saved, God has to be in it. We plant the seed but God causes it to grow.

1 Cor 3:6-8 “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.” We still have to do the work, but God brings the fruit.

Think through church history on how Gamaliel’s statements have been true.

Acts 1 we had 120 believers gathered in the upper room

Acts 2 we have 3,120 believers

Acts 4 another 5,000 were saved to total 8,120

By Acts 5 multitudes are saved and we see explosive growth. Some estimate nearly 20,000 people by this time.

one author estimates that by 150 AD there were about 40,000 Christians

By 200 AD, there were 218,000 Christians and by 250 Ad there were 1.17 million.

As of today, it is estimated that there are 2.2 billion christians worldwide.

Conclusion:

Since this is the beginning of the year, we normally have messages on setting goals and improving ourselves, but today, I would like to use this opportunity to share with you what my goals for the church are and introduce an outreach campaign I would like us to initiate. Harvest Hills as fluctuated in attendance over the past few years. I remember days when we had a lot more people that we do now and there was an excitement to the church. Just think about how it felt the Sunday after Jim and Tanya’s wedding. We had just over 100 people in service that Sunday morning. Now you know numbers are not everything and should not be the focus, but if you have no goals you will never reach them. My vision for this next year is to see HHBC grow to atleast 100 people by the end of the year. That about an increase of 20 people.

To accomplish that goal, we are going to have a series of outreach campaigns to reach out to our community and spread the gospel. Part of that plan is to start a small van route to pick up kids for church starting in the spring. During these colder months, I would like to introduce a hospitality outreach program. Last week in your bulletin you received a half sheet of paper with a diagram on it. If you don’t have one, the ushers will hand them out now.

If you remember last year, I preached a sermon on hospitality asking “Who is my neighbor?” A Neighbor is simply someone who is near us. Jesus has told us to love our neighbors as ourselves. The question I asked is how do we love our neighbors if we don’t even know who they are. This outreach program is going to challenge all of us to get to know our neighbors, to be involved in their lives and to share the gospel with the people who live right next to us.

On your sheet, if you’ll pull it out, there is a house in the center of the diagram. That is your house. Around it are 8 boxes, these represent the houses around you. If you live in the country this diagram may be more difficult but you can adjust it to your situation. In each box is are three letters:

a. names

b. basic information that you could glean from casual meetings like standing in the driveway, or asking for a cup of sugar. This includes info like their job, church they attend, kids, school.

c. in-depth knowledge- this is the type of knowledge you would not know until you have made a read connection with someone. Things like their struggles, dreams, faith and what they believe is their purpose.

Now some of you will have to step out of your comfort zone to do this; some of you may have already started. If we were to divide this up into three different stages, I could suggest some ways to move deeper into relationship with the people of your community:

To get their names, you could just walk across the street and introduce yourself. Pretty simple right. If that seems a little awkward, backing some cookings and bring them over works. If you are still struggling come see me and I can give you some more suggestions here.

Phase two trying to get some basic information may overlap with stage one. But casual interactions help with this. One suggestion that i have read is to create a neighborhood directory for everyone on your street. This gets you in the door talking to people. Being part of a neighborhood watch meeting or HOA.

Phase three will be the most difficult and will take time. Moving from phase two to phase three needs to be organic growth in relationship. But how do you do this? Some easier suggestions would be to start with maybe a coffee meeting or invite them to an activity like top golf or church events. You could go a little further by inviting them over for dinner or hosting a neighborhood BBQ. Volunteering to watch their kids from time to time. For everyone it is going to be different. This is part of truly loving your neighbor but it is also part of evangelism.

People will usually not take an interest in your faith until they know that you care. A song I learned on deputation asked the question, “How can we reach a world we never touch?” This program is intended to get us out from our own four walls and be involved in the lives of our community.

If you want to do some more thinking about this topic and how to do it, I would suggest two books:

The Art of Neighboring by Jay Pathak and Dave Runyon and The Gospel comes with a House Key by Rosaria Butterfield. If you don’t have time for a book, Nancy Leigh Demoss did four interviews discussing The Gospel comes with a House Key on her podcast.

As the year progresses, I have other possible outreach programs that people could do, but I need volunteers who might be interested. If you desire to be more involved in outreach come see me and we can begin discussing different options.

Now to tie this in with todays message. I believe God wants to use HHBC and if he is in the work, it will happen. The question is are we going to cooperate with Him. This program has the potential to see people saved, grow the church and to transform your life for the better. Hospitality is actually commanded in scripture and like Peter We Must obey God rather than men.