Acts 4:1-12
Please remain standing and turn
in your copy of the scriptures to Acts chapter four. Our reading will be today, verses
one through 12. Remember the pattern in the book
of Acts is generally an event takes place. So it was the healing
of the man born lame. Then there’s an outrage from
the officials. So Peter and John will be held
accountable for that today. There’s also an explanation,
a sermon, and then we’ll see next week a response from the
church community. Before we read God’s word, let’s
ask for his help and blessing. Our Father, we thank you for
your word. It is a light to our feet, a lamp to our path. We
have so many voices week by week calling for our allegiance, but
we want to be sheep in the fold of the good shepherd and hear
his voice alone. And so we ask that you would
calm our hearts, settle our minds, that you would give us eyes that
can see and ears that can hear, but hearts that can perceive
and give us hands and feet willing to leave this place today and
go and serve you in the manner in which you call us to do so.
Help us. We pray in the name of Christ.
Amen. Hear the word of God. This is
The first verse of chapter four of the book of Acts. This is
speaking of Peter and John. And as they were speaking to
the people, the priest and the captain of the temple and the
Sadducees came upon them greatly annoyed because they were teaching
the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the
dead. They arrested them and put them
in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. But
many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number
of the men came to about 5,000. On the next day, their rulers
and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem with Annas,
the high priest, and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all
who were of the high priestly family. And when they had set
them in the midst, they inquired, by what power or by what name
did you do this? Then Peter filled with the Spirit
said to them, rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined
today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what
means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you
and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ
of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead,
by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone
that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the
cornerstone, and there is salvation in no one else. For there is
no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be
saved. Amen. The word of the living
God. You may be seated. There are a couple of images,
biblical images, which we ought to keep in mind. as we think
of this passage. The first biblical image harkens
back to the trial, the death, the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. It’s an image we should also
pick up in today’s passage, and it’s from Psalm 2. Psalm 2 is
a royal psalm. It’s a messianic psalm. It points
to the coming of Jesus and a brief Paraphrase of Psalm 2 is something
like this. The psalmist says, why do the
nations rage? Why do the peoples plot in vain? Why do they set themselves against
the Lord and against his anointed one? It goes on to say, God sits
in the heavens and he laughs. He laughs at all the machinations
of the leaders of this world. They think they’re big and strong.
Remember, Some of you will from our study in Genesis several
weeks, maybe a few months back, the tower of Babel, we’re going
to build a tower. We’re going to make it big and
tall up into the sky, a stairway to heaven. And God chuckles and
says, I think I’ll go down and see what it is they’re doing.
Uh, this is the image of Psalm two men on the earth. They plot
men on the earth. They rage men on the earth and
their little nations and city States. They think that they
can take care of business against God and his anointed. And we
see this throughout the Bible. God promised to Adam and Eve
when they were in the garden, they sinned. They were Adam,
Eve and Satan lined up in front of God. You’ve sinned Satan.
You’re going to crawl on your belly. You’re going to eat the
dust of the earth. Adam, your work is going to be futile. Eve
going to have pain and childbirth. Marriage will be hard on and
on. God lays out what’s there, but he says there will be constant
enmity. Constant strife between the offspring
of Adam and Eve and the offspring of Satan. There will be constant
battle, constant heel nipping at Christians from Satan. And all of this is under the
eye of God, the sovereign one who sits in the heaven and he
laughs. When Herod wanted to kill baby Jesus, he sent warning
in a dream and by night they went and escaped. and fled to
Egypt and the Lord was protected. And on and on we can go looking
through the scriptures, how God in his mercy sees the plotting
and the wickedness of rulers on this earth. And he says, you
won’t get my Messiah. you won’t get my people. And
so there’s this constant battle in the Christian life of the
evil forces against the church. And this was really on display
about 50 days ago in the life of Jesus. 50 days ago, not from
us, you know, August, 50 days ago from our passage, 55 days
maybe, this same group of people sat in a semicircle and they
brought Jesus before him. Are you the King of the Jews?
Are you the promised one? Are you the Messiah? Are you
the son of God? And on and on they asked and they plotted in
vain and they sent him to the cross. But God raised him from
the dead. And here the same image must
come to mind. Peter and John before the Sanhedrin.
You could read the names, you could read the groups, you could
read the. foreboding of all that is to take place as we look at
this passage. There’s another image in addition
to Psalm 2 and the nations raging and plotting against God, but
God sitting in the heaven, looking down, laughing and saying, I
got this. There’s another image and it’s
the image we read of in Psalm 118, but also comes up in our
passage today. It’s the image of a stonemason.
And he’s building a house. And the first stone you lay in
a stone house is a cornerstone. It’s going to hold the walls
together. It’ll be the foundation stone, as it were. In Israel,
through the traditions of religion, through the ways of the Pharisees
and the scribes and the Sadducees, they have been building a spiritual
house, which God has said it’s bankrupt, it’s empty, it’s going
to crumble and fall. because you didn’t build it on
the cornerstone, Christ Jesus. And he’s going to say the stone,
the builders, the stonemasons tossed over their shoulders.
God has selected to be his cornerstone. And on that cornerstone, he is
building a spiritual house, his church through the ages to last
into eternity. You rejected him. but God has
selected him and it is marvelous in the sight of the people. Those
are two big images going on in this passage. Now, Peter and
John, we’re jumping ahead of ourselves a little bit, but they
get thrown in jail. And what do you think they did in jail?
They had good food. They had cable television. They
got to make license plates. They had these cushy beds. They probably prayed all night.
Oh God, we are before those who plotted in vain and killed Messiah. Tomorrow we will stand before
them. And did you know, depending on
how they answer, the death penalty could have been issued for these.
You could blaspheme the name of God very easily. So you know,
they fasted, they prayed. There was probably very little
sleep, but here’s the one thing I’m sure of. They had the Psalms. on their minds. They probably
sang the Psalms. They were flowing out of their
heart and giving them great comfort. And as they go before the Sanhedrin
the next day, what they thought about, what they prayed about,
and what they sang about probably flowed with the power and help
of the Holy Spirit before them. But these are two images that
we must keep in mind. The Sanhedrin, the religious
officials, they’re still at it. They’re still trying to snuff
out the message and the faith of Jesus Christ among his followers. Now think for just a moment about
where we are in Acts. At the beginning of the book,
120 followers were in the upper room waiting on the promised
Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit rushed upon them like a mighty
rushing wind. The flames, the tongues came
upon and rested on each of their heads. They were able to tell
the gospel. in the language of all the people of the earth who
had gathered in Jerusalem for Passover. And so they’ve been
preaching, they’ve been healing, they’ve been gathering together
for prayer and apostles teaching and fellowship. And now we find
them in the temple precincts. Remember Peter and John were
on their way to the afternoon prayer, the third hour, the ninth
hour, three afternoon. They were on the way to pray.
They were in the rush of people going through gate beautiful.
There was a beggar. Seeking alms, silver and gold
have I none, Peter says. But what I give you, I give you
in the name of Jesus, rise up and walk. And remember, you know
the song, he went walking and leaping and praising God. So
there’s this great commotion in the temple of this man they
all know. Lame from before birth, carried every day to the gate
beautiful, a beggar of alms, and now he’s running. He’s leaping
and he’s singing God’s praises and he’s clinging to Peter and
John. And so Peter preaches a sermon. We looked at that last week.
He’s in the grand porch of Solomon’s portico. And you can imagine
from all those ancient stones, the voice of Peter preaching
the word of God is echoing throughout the temple. And the religious
leaders, oh, they’re not happy. They got their little walkie
talkies. He’s at it again. Get over here. And so the temple
guards are there. The Sadducees are there. Now, why do the Sadducees
particularly despise this teaching? They don’t believe in the resurrection.
And so the Sadducees are there. The temple guard is there. And
they’re intimidating. I’ve had to preach with unhappy
people before. There’s a couple other preachers
in the room. You know what it’s like when you’re preaching and
there’s just people sitting there like this and, you know, they don’t
like you. But could you imagine the temple guard all around the
crowd? Could you imagine the Sadducees
just discussing everything? And yet Peter continues on with
boldness, preaching and proclaiming. And what does it say in our passage?
You can Well, you can get, there’s two responses to the message.
There are those who believe. And it’s gonna say the number
of the church reached about 5,000 that day. But then there are
those who are annoyed. There are those who are annoyed
and they get up their hackles, they’re gonna arrest these men
and they’re gonna try them the next day. Belief, annoyance. But one thing continues, and
you see it in this passage, the church grows. And I want us to
think about this passage and the growth of the church through
three significant themes in this little portion of scripture.
The church grows through proclamation. The church grows through the
proclamation of the scriptures. We’re a reformed church. We come
out of the Protestant Reformation, the heritage of Wycliffe and
Huss and Luther and Calvin and on through the Scottish church
history where our associate reform Presbyterian roots come from
John Knox and Presbyterianism. And one of the things we remember
about the Protestant Reformation is it assumes that there was
at one time a formation. The church was formed and it
was up to its ideals and then it goes through a stretch of
sin and weakness and well, we call that deformation. And so
what happens when something is formed but over time deforms,
it needs to be reformed. And so the Protestant Reformation
said of the Roman Catholic Church, it has deformed, it has downgraded
and two of the major Things that needed to be fixed in the Protestant
Reformation were worship and preaching. Worship needed to
be emptied of all the Roman ceremonies that meant nothing and were not
commanded by the scriptures. Our Wednesday Ladies Bible Study
have been studying the confession of faith recently on the chapter
on worship. There’s a statement in our confession,
whatever is commanded, we must do. But whatever is not commanded,
we must not do. And so part of the Protestant
Reformation, particularly the bent of John Calvin, was to empty
the church of its ceremonies that were not commanded, not
biblical, not beneficial. We want worship to be regulated
by the Lord and his word. And they put back front and center
in the church, not the altar, but the pulpit. And so the word
of God was read and preached and proclaimed in the language
of the people. And friends, that’s what’s taking
place here in the book of Acts. Peter and John and the rest of
the apostles are simply proclaiming the truth of almighty God. It is our job as a church. It
was the job of the apostles and it will be the job of the church
into the ages to come should God tarry to read the word, to
preach the word, and to let the Holy Spirit convince and convert
sinners and comfort and build up the saints. That is the simple
task of the church. Oh, but enter American history.
Oh, the church has become a shopping mall and you can you can enter
the doors of the church and it’s it’s like a Starbucks. It’s like
a Barnes and Noble. It’s like a a gymnasium, it’s
a concert hall, it’s all these things. But the simplicity of
the church is the worship of God with the proclamation of
the scriptures at the center. We read the word, preach the
word, and we let the Holy Spirit convince and convert sinners
and comfort and build up the saints. We preach and teach the
whole counsel of God. And we let the word do its work. You know, the only way this topsy-turvy
world will be put back right, the only way truth will be sent
throughout the world is, well, it’s through preaching. Remember
the apostle Paul in Romans 10, he said, quoting Isaiah, how
beautiful are the feet of him who brings good news. I have
a cushion. It used to be up here. It’s not
here at the moment, but to stand on. It’s one of those gel cushions,
one of those chef’s mats. And a couple of years ago, I
was complaining that my hips hurt from standing up here. And
so somebody, I think I know who, snuck it up here. And they put
a note on it that says, how beautiful are the feet of him who bring
good news. And without preaching, People
cannot hear without the word proclaimed. And so that’s exactly
how the church grows. It grows through proclamation.
But there’s a second way the church grows, and this is not
a way we’d like to think of church growth taking place. Church growth
occurs through proclamation, but also through opposition. Opposition makes the church grow,
the great Church father said, the blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the church. The church will not grow and
strengthen unless through hardship. And I don’t know where America
is headed politically. I think I can tell. I think I know a little better
where America is headed religiously. We are headed for a dark age. And unless we are part of a church
that proclaims the truth, unless we are a people, both corporately
and individually, who live that truth, we’re gonna fall to the
wayside of what the American church has become, entertainment,
me-centered, emotionalism. It’s an event that really has
nothing to do with the worship of God or the proclamation of
his word. And so we are headed towards
very dangerous times where I think not only will the church be persecuted,
but the church will be very small, but the church will be very strong.
Churches thrive under opposition. Now we experience opposition
in our day from within the church. I don’t like the music, I don’t
like the preacher. I didn’t like the Sunday school
class. The preacher went to meddling today. They put in green carpet
and I wanted red carpet. They painted the walls beige
and I wanted blue. You get the point. Most of our
opposition is from within and it’s about nothing doctrinal.
And it’s about nothing having to do with Jesus being the only
way of salvation. It’s just nitpicky, nitpicky,
nitpicky. I didn’t get on the budget committee.
I didn’t get elected elder. I didn’t get whatever. That’s
the opposition. And Satan’s sitting back on his
lawn chair on the French Riviera when that’s all it takes. But
opposition will also come from without. I think direct attacks
of Satan, we see it when a leader falls into sin. But sometimes
there’s a direct attack on the word of God and we see it in
the mainline churches of the United States. You take away
the inerrancy of the Bible and you’ll ordain anybody to the
clergy. You take away the inerrancy of the scripture and you’ll do
anything in worship but please God. You take away the inerrancy
of the scripture and you’ll come up with a way that all dogs go
to heaven. Or to say it more seriously,
Any old way will get you there. In fact, isn’t it all the same
God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob? That’s the soup of the day, so
to speak, in the American church, the mainline church. And so we
live in a time, we live in a time where Satan will attack from
the outside, but we are also seeing social media. You know, a lot of churches over
the last 18 months have had to go virtual. And so when YouTube
catches wind of your content, you preach and proclaim the word
of God, salvation through faith in Jesus. You proclaim a ethic
for Christian living. Guess what YouTube will do? They’ll
take your sermons down. Our sermons are hosted on Sermon
Audio. Sermonaudio.com is doing everything
possible, spending all kinds of money to make sure that their
content, our content is on servers. that are as immune as possible
from political sway from big tech. You know, we don’t have
to say it out loud, who owns most of the server farms, who
owns most of big tech. It’s just a few companies and
well, they’re in cahoots with Satan. And so it would be very
easy for a church in the next 20 to 30 to 40 to 50 years to
lose its ability to bank and to lose its ability to host
content on a platform out in the world. But couldn’t we still
be the church? Couldn’t we gather in the catacombs
as the early church did? Yes, we can. And we can proclaim.
And so that the church can still grow through proclamation for
sure, even though that’s fallen on hard times, it can grow through
opposition. And here in our passage today,
we have a strong opposition from outside the church. They haven’t
had an internal squabble yet at the church at Jerusalem. That’s
going to come with the widows and the deacon issue. But this
is a mix of academia and political strength and religion in the
Sanhedrin, the 70 rulers of Israel. This is a mix of the who’s who
of culture, and they are both pragmatic, whatever works, keep
Rome happy, and they are protective. Their standing in the world brought
them great wealth and privilege. And so the opposition comes on
the church. We’re watching you. We’re harassing
you. We’re going to put you in jail.
Peter and John are going to stand or sit in the middle of their
circle with these leaders being condescending and threatening
and questioning. Uh, it kind of reminds me, I
probably shouldn’t say this, but it reminds me of, uh, of
Nancy Nadler and Schiff, uh, delivering the articles of impeachment
just so ceremonially, um, before, uh, the eyes of the American
public, uh, these men aren’t messing around. They’re going
to snuff out the gospel. They’re going to snuff out, uh,
Peter and John and the other apostles. But guess what? The church is still going to
grow because it proclaims Jesus and it’s still going to grow
through opposition. Why? The Holy Spirit empowers
both. Well, there’s a third way that
the church will grow. It’s through proclamation. It’s through opposition, but
it’s through it’s through fidelity. It’s through fidelity or faithfulness
to the ways of almighty God. Some of you have been watching
the news, a pastor in Alberta, the province of Calgary, arrested
multiple times for holding worship. We must worship God. We can’t
disobey God in order to obey men. That’s what he says. But
he gets off a plane a few weeks ago. He’s arrested. You’ve seen
the images. He’s face down on the tarmac.
Four years ago, some of you remember the mayor of Houston. The mayor
of Houston had a really good idea. It was a great one. Every pastor in the city needs
to send their sermon in to City Hall before Sunday so that we
can scan it for hate speech. Now, there’s a big problem with
that. Most of us don’t have our sermons ready in time to send
them to City Hall, so there’s that. But it was met with public
outrage. It was met with great outrage.
And so we have these other things like this with YouTube and the
web services and server farms threatening to remove our content,
threatening to remove us from social platforms. But what is
required of us? We still proclaim. We still march
through opposition, but we must remain faithful. That’s the third
way the church can grow in hard times. It’s through fidelity.
So what about a night in jail? So what about a long morning
before a group of men who hate you and your Lord? So what if
it’s scary? So what if they threaten you
with the death penalty? The Lord of heaven and earth
has given you his great commission. Go into all the world. And he
doesn’t say and water down the gospel and make it palatable
for 21st century Americans. He doesn’t say go into the world
and change your doctrine for the sake of the times. Go into
all the world and shift things so that the church will grow.
James Montgomery Boyce said it so well years ago, what you win
them with is what you win them to. And if you water it down,
if you dumb it down, if you change it around, You’ll win people
to that. But what happens when you do
the old switcheroo? Well, we’re gonna start being biblical. Well,
we didn’t sign up for that. What happens if they start having
the conviction of sins and church is no more fun? It’s serious. What you win them with is what
you win them to. Dear friends, I’m afraid we’re
entering an era. I thought it would come in the
lifetime of my ministry towards the end, but I think it’s coming
earlier. It’s gonna be harder. and harder
and harder to be faithful Christians in a faithful church in America,
the land of the free. Yet the great commission is still
before us. The commands of Christ are still
there. The claims of truth are still
ours. And so we must hold fast to the
inerrancy of scripture. God’s word does not err. We must hold fast to the law.
God is a holy God and he demands righteousness from his people.
We must hold fast to the gospel that Jesus came into the world
to save sinners. We must preach grace freely offered
by God through his son. We must proclaim Christ as the
only way, the only truth. and the only way to be reconciled
to God. We must worship God in the purity
of holiness and the spirit and truth. We must worship not in
ways invented by man, but in ways commanded by the scriptures.
Oh, it’s unpopular. Oh, it has its critics. Oh, it
doesn’t work. But don’t you know, Peter and
John, this night in prison, this night in jail, they thought through
it all. They counted the cost. And they said, we’re gonna stand
before these people tomorrow. Christ is worthy, and he is going
to make it possible for us to stand in faithfulness. They remembered
the words of Jesus. In this world, you will have
trouble. They remembered the words of Jesus. You will be hauled
in before judges and officials and magistrates. You will be
beaten, you’ll be flogged, you’ll be jailed, you’ll be left for
dead. I’ll give you the words to say. And we’re gonna see Peter
boldly say, boldly proclaim, look, you wanna know how this
man was healed? It wasn’t by our power. It wasn’t
by our piety. It was done in the name of Jesus,
whom you crucified, whom you killed, whom God raised from
the dead. He is the cornerstone of the
spiritual house, the church. You rejected, God selected him.
It’s marvelous in our sight. Friends, this is how the church
continues from generation to generation through hardship,
by proclamation, opposition, and by fidelity. And our prayer
ought to be this, that God would keep us true to his word, true
to his church, and true to the spread of the gospel on God’s
terms, not our terms or the world’s terms. And God will make it glorious
in our sight and the ends of the earth will praise our God.
Let’s look to him in prayer. Our Lord, we thank you for this
little picture of what took place in the early church. And boy,
does it help us in our day. There are those who would circle
around us and threaten us and harass us and say, no more hush
up. This exclusive claim of salvation
through faith in Jesus is wrong, but we know the gospel. We know
the love of Jesus and how though we must call men to repent of
their sin and come to faith in Jesus, you welcome the world. You welcome all to come and to
rest in you. So let us trust in you and keep
the faith and press on in hardship, proclaiming and Staying faithful
to the way Jesus commanded us to do, church. Help us, we pray
in the name of Christ, amen.