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SECTIONS:
None Came
Gaoled
Tried
Beaten |
IF WE ARE not in mission,
we are in stagnation and the result is death. Acts 5 is very
clear on where our priorities must lie. Our goal must be to win
people to Christ.
I have three goals for our church.
I aim to see them fulfilled. They are:
- First, to be a church filled with the Spirit and Glory
of God, worshipping in Spirit and truth.
- Second, that we should be a church actively bringing the
gospel of Jesus Christ to our community in word and in deed.
- Third, that we should be a church bound together into
a loving community in Christ.
Through the years, these goals have seemed to recede rather than
to come closer. Everything has conspired together to keep us
from achieving what we could have achieved. But God is not defeated.
He has his plans, and we will be part of them, or we will be
crushed in the process.
Not that God deals harshly with us. He loves us even when we
fail him. But what we choose can determine where our entire future
lies. Let's choose right!
Our passage shows us how seriously the Apostles took proclaiming
the gospel. In four different situations, their response each
time was to preach the gospel.
In fact, as Peter said,
“We must
obey God rather than men!”
That's as true today as it was
in Apostolic times. Jesus said, “As you go, make disciples.”
To the Apostles, this was a clear directive from God himself.
If God said it, they had to do it. That settled it.
As I said, we see four situations where the Apostles chose to
respond by preaching the gospel.
In the first place, they preached when no one came.
No one else dared
join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.
Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord
and were added to their number.
The story is that the church
used to meet in a covered area of the Temple forecourts, an area
known as Solomon’s Portico. It was a public area where people
were free to gather. I suppose it's a bit like the Country Trains
area at Central Station, or the forecourt of a courthouse. People
can be there for all kinds of reasons. There are places to wait
in groups.
The Christians found their waiting area in Solomon’s Portico,
and they worshipped the Lord Jesus there before they attended
the Temple services.
Because it was a public area, people were always coming and going,
and sometimes someone would come past and say, “Oh, It's
you, Thomas! I haven’t seen you for ages. What are you doing
here?” And Thomas would say, “Well, I follow Jesus
these days, and we are just talking about what he taught us.
That's Peter up there... do you remember him? The one with the
fishing boats in Galilee. No, not Zebedee, the other younger
one.”
And so the person would say, “Can I stop and listen for
a while?” So many of these people who were passing by became
believers — until Ananias and Sapphira came along.
Just imagine how people reacted! “Don’t go near those
people: God zapped two of them for lying.” Just imagine
how the story grew. Some people would say, “God wouldn’t
judge a little lie like that!” There’d be a lot of
speculation about what else Ananias and Sapphira had been up
to. Others would say, “God must be judging them all, and
it will be like staying in an Egyptian home on Passover night:
go in among them and get punished with them.”
Whatever, people took to crossing to the other side when the
Christians met at the Temple.
Yet the church kept growing.
And it couldn’t keep growing if people didn’t know
it was there and it had a message worth taking risks for. The
only way they‘d find out would be if someone preached —
How, then, can
they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they
believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they
hear without someone preaching to them?
...as we read in Romans 10:14
They kept preaching when no one
came.
I know there are differences. People don’t come here because
they don’t know we exist, they don’t think we have
anything important to say, and they don’t find us the kind
of place they want to stay at.
But we must not give up the preaching of God’s word. It
has to be preached here,
where we are as the Body of Christ, and it must be preached out
where the people are.
I often think of Peter Böhler’s advice to John Wesley.
Wesley had come to understand that he was not yet converted,
and he suggested to Böhler that he should cease preaching
until he had faith. Böhler replied, “Preach faith until
you have faith, and then you will preach faith because you have
faith.”
God will supply when his people are faithful. That’s so
basic it’s almost trivial.
“We
must obey God rather than men!”
In the second
place, they preached when they had just been gaoled for preaching.
It’s easy to do something when everyone approves; it’s
harder to do it when people disapprove. Many years ago, someone
chipped me for seeking approval. I laughed. “I am not seeking
approval,” I said, “I’m checking for disapproval!”
I know that a fine line separates the two. But there’s a
truth here. Most of us operate best in an atmosphere of approval.
But most of us also are able to perform reasonably well without
affirmation or encouragement. But disapproval can really discourage
us.
At work, a lot of the time I do boring stuff, checking pages
and pages of figures to see if they are consistent and logical.
They leave me to myself to do that because I know what I’m
doing, and they are happy to let me get it done. The “Thank
you” from the Account Manager when I pass it on is polite.
It isn’t a pat on the back or anything. That’s fine.
I don’t need anything more.
Recently I've been working with a different section, and doing
a lot more writing, research and analysis. I have pioneered one
aspect of a new area of research. I like doing it, and would
probably do it happily if no one said anything. But the project
director told me directly that he thinks I am doing a good job.
I also overheard him telling someone else that something I’d
written on the topic was really good. I have even worked during
my lunch hours to get some of this finished. We all go further
where we are appreciated.
But there was a fellow there before, who got me to do some work
for him. It wasn't easy, he didn’t brief me properly, he
didn’t ask me until he was nearly out of time, and then
he bullied me for not being as fast as he wanted. They all told
me, ”Don’t worry: he’s done the same to all of
us.” But you can guess that I avoided him whenever he was
looking around for someone to do a job for him.
Imagine if you’d just been thrown in the clink for preaching
about Jesus. I don’t think you’d want to go back and
do the same thing.
But the angel told them to, so, first thing, they went back and
preached Jesus again.
If I had been in that prison and the angel had come and said,
“I’m letting you out so you can preach down at the
Temple,” I’d have told him, “Mr A, there’s
no way I’m going into that lion’s den. They’d
eat me alive!” I’d be scared of ending up right where
I had just been rescued from, but for twice the sentence.
But not the Apostles. They went back and preached.
Just before Joshua was born, I had a rather bad smash in my Jaguar,
and had to write it off. It was at a bad corner, where there
are lights now, but back then you had to just find a gap in the
traffic and hope you made it.
Of course, when you have your smash is when you discover how
dangerous the situation really is.
I had to go home that way, but I was really scared for the first
few weeks about going through that intersection. I had to push
myself to go that way, otherwise I’d never have gone back.
Now that I knew the dangers, I was extra careful. But I still
pressed on.
And the Apostles had to keep pressing on, otherwise they might
never have started again, either.
I wonder sometimes. We have had bad experiences. We have tried
proclaiming Christ and we have failed. So did we give up? The
angel set us free: why haven’t we gone out again? They preached
when they had just been sprung from prison. What do we do, when
we have it so much easier?
“We must
obey God rather than men!”
The third
thing we see is that they preached when they were put on trial.
The Sanhedrin said,
“We gave
you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet
you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined
to make us guilty of this man’s blood.”
It was intimidation pure and
simple. But Peter wouldn’t be stopped.
Peter and the
other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than men!
The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead—whom you
had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him to his own
right hand as Prince and Saviour that he might give repentance
and forgiveness of sins to Israel. We are witnesses of these
things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those
who obey him.”
It’s a simple Gospel proclamation:
Jesus died, God raised him to life again; now he sits at God’s
right hand as Messiah and Saviour, and it is all to do with repentance
and salvation. We have experienced it, and the Holy Spirit confirms
its truth.
It might not have qualified to get into the Minister’s Manual
that year, but it was a pretty clear exposition of what the Christians
were on about.
It’s easy to want to clam up and say nothing when someone
puts you on the spot, particularly if it’s someone you think
is smarter or more powerful or more confident than you are.
Peter and the others refused to be cowed, no matter how much
the situation put pressure on them.
“We
must obey God rather than men!”
Finally,
we see that they preached when they got beaten for it.
They called the
apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not
to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.
There have probably been times
when people have laughed at us for our beliefs. Perhaps we have
even been jostled for sanding up for Christ. We have probably
never been beaten for it.
I read recently about those bonnets the Salvation Army lassies
used to war. Did you know they had that particular shape and
design because they acted like a protective helmet: the brim
was strong enough to survive a fairly heavy blow with a stick,
it was deep enough to keep the contents of a chamber pot of a
girl’s face, if it was poured on her from an upstairs window,
and the crown, like the brim, was extra thickness to protect
the top of the head from stones and sticks.
The writer to the Hebrews said,
Consider him
who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will
not grow weary and lose heart.
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the
point of shedding your blood.
It's certainly true of us! We
have not resisted to the point of suffering very much at all,
have we?
Some people find physical suffering the most difficult thing
to handle, while others find emotional pressure harder. We are
all different. But the underlying fact is that we all have our
fears, and it is fear that defeats us, not the battle itself.
We are beaten before we begin!
So, let’s go back to basics.
Peter said,
“We must
obey God rather than men!”
It's a principle which still
applies today. We haven’t had an angel tell us to proclaim
Jesus: that will possibly come. But we have certainly had the
same experience that the Apostles had had of Jesus, saying,
“Go into
all the world and preach the gospel to all creatures.”
Next week we will look a bit
more closely at who should preach and why. But there is a very
simple fact for us all to consider: Jesus never intended only
pastors to do this work. He intended every Christian believer
to have some share in proclaiming Jesus.
In fact, we pastor–teachers are there to do one thing, and
that is to help repair the saints; but you saints have two tasks:
to do the work of ministry and to build up the Church. Look it
up in Ephesians 4.
So, what are we going to do? Yes, the world says to the Church,
“Shut up, you lot!” But God’s word to us is,
“We must
obey God rather than men!”
Whom will we obey?
Here’s what we will do now.
We will confess our failure to
proclaim the gospel:
“Lord, you have told us
to make disciples wherever we go and to preach the gospel to
all creatures. But we have disobeyed your word. We confess our
failure, and we repent of it. Lord forgive us, cleanse us, and
fill us right now with your Holy Spirit.
In Jesus’ name we pray,
AMEN" |
