Civil Disobedience and Gospel Proclamation

Bible reading this morning is taken from Psalm chapter two. Psalm two. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs.

The Lord holds them in derision. Then He will speak to them in His wrath and terrify them in His fury saying, as for me, I have set my king on Zion, on my holy hill. I will tell of the decree, the Lord said to me, you are my son. Today, I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the earth or the ends of the earth your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel. Now, therefore, O kings, be wise. Be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest He be angry and you perish in the way, for His wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in Him. Thank you, Phil, for that reading from Psalm two. I'll refer back to that later on. But our text this morning is from Acts chapter four, congregation, and it will be helpful if you leave your Bible open at that passage this morning. So last time I was here we were in Acts three and we looked at that time at where our focus should be, and that often our focus is in the wrong place.

And in Acts three, we saw how God wants our focus to be on Jesus and on Jesus all the time. This morning we're going to go to the next chapter, Acts four, and what's happened is that it was a result of the preaching by Peter and John when the layman is healed. They're arrested by the Sanhedrin, that's the Jewish council, and they're thrown in prison, and because it's late in the day, they leave the meeting of the Sanhedrin till the following morning. So I want to pick it up at verse five of Acts four and read to our text from there. So hear the word of God from Acts four and verse five.

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 their midst, they inquired, by what power or by what name did you do this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers of the people and elders, if we're 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. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished and they recognised that they had been with Jesus. But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. But when they commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another saying, what shall we do with these men? For that a notable thing has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and we cannot deny it.

But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name. And then follows our text. So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. And when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way to punish them because of the people, for all were praising God for what had happened.

The man on whom this sign of healing was performed was more than forty years old. Brothers and sisters in Christ, there was a young lady who worked as a personal assistant for a company manager. One day he asked her to falsify some documents in which the company was making claims against a client. I wondered this morning if you were that secretary, would you do what your boss asked you to do or would you disobey? Would you follow orders or would you refuse and take the consequences?

This lady was told twice by her boss to do that, and each time she replied by saying I don't think so. The result was that she was twice cited for insubordination and eventually had to leave the company. What must Christians do, brothers and sisters, when they're asked to do wrong by those in authority over them? Let me give you a more sobering example that comes from Coventry in England. The year is 1510 and the Bible you use is in Latin.

Bibles in English are banned. Children need to memorise the ten commandments, the Lord's prayer and the Apostles' Creed, but all of them in Latin. Five men and one widow are arrested for teaching those things to their children in English. Eventually the authorities have pity on the widow and release her from prison. Since it's nighttime, one of the jailers offers to accompany her home.

On the way, the officer hears something rustling in the sleeve of the woman's gown and he finds there a small scroll with the ten commandments, the Lord's prayer and the Apostles' Creed all written in English. So she's taken back to the jail and in April 1510, she is burned at the stake together with five men. Question for you to think about, brothers and sisters. If you were in that situation, would you obey the government and stick to Latin or would you disobey and use English? Would you submit or would you refuse and face the horrible consequences?

You see, that's the kind of choice that the apostles are facing here in Acts chapter four. And maybe I should really add this morning, it's the kind of choices that your children and your grandchildren may one day have to face the way our country is going. The hostility of the authorities towards the apostles is very, very clear in this chapter, isn't it? The reason for it is also very, very obvious. These men hated Jesus Christ.

They hated Him with a passion. They'd even had Him executed. And now the apostles are going around preaching that this Jesus whom they crucified is alive. To prove it, a layman forty years of age has been miraculously healed. And when the crowds gather, Peter and John take the opportunity to tell them the story of Jesus, the gospel, the good news.

And the result is that two thousand more people are added to the church. In just a few days, Christianity is made to gain a following of five thousand, and that's just the men alone. Makes it easy for us this morning to understand the anger and the hostility of the authorities. They thought they dealt with Jesus Christ once for all. It was over.

It was finished. And now here are these uneducated apostles filling Jerusalem with Christ's teachings and people are joining this new faith, this new religion in droves. And so they drag Peter and John into jail and then the next day they interrogate them and they ask that question, by what power or what name did you do this? And of course that provides Peter and John with another wonderful opportunity to preach Christ. And so in a very simple way highlighting five key things, they present the gospel to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council, and that really arouses their rage.

The Jewish council is angry. And so we have here, friends, for the first time in history, the persecution of the Christian church. The world's opposition to Christ is now also brought to bear on His church, on His people. This opposition comes about as the authorities grapple with the growth of the Christian church. And the big question they want to address is how can we stop this from going further?

They discuss that, our text tells us, in closed session. They've ordered Peter and John to withdraw for a time and then together they face this huge dilemma. On the one hand, it's undeniable that a miracle has happened. Everyone in Jerusalem knows it. On the other hand, the spread of this teaching about Jesus Christ must cease. At this point, the question arises as to how Luke happened to know what the Sanhedrin dealt with in closed session.

I don't know whether you wondered about that as we read it. I guess one possibility is that the Holy Spirit made it clear to Luke, the author, by special revelation, but I doubt it. I think we need to remember that Gamaliel was a member of the Sanhedrin and Gamaliel was Paul's mentor. Gamaliel may even have had Paul with him there as an observer, but he undoubtedly would have told him. Or there's another possibility.

Later on in Acts, we read that there were some priests who also joined the faith, embraced the message of Christ, and some of them may previously have been members of the Jewish Council. And so we've got good inside information as to the deliberations of this hostile Sanhedrin. What's important though, friends, is not so much their deliberations as their conclusion. And their conclusion shows their hatred of Jesus Christ. It's so patently obvious.

They say we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name. Do you see how full of hate they are? They can't even bring themselves to mention the name of Jesus. Instead, they talk about this name. And then they call the apostles back in and command them to silence.

I want to say to you this morning, congregation, that that's always the tactics of the enemy. Silence the messengers. Keep the preachers quiet. Shut off the word of God. That's why the Lollards in 1510 were not allowed to have Bibles in English, only in Latin, which no one understood any longer.

That's why they don't like you talking about the Lord in your workplace. That's why some people don't want Christian chaplains and RE teachers in our public schools. It's why some letters to the editors of our major newspapers never get published. Here are the apostles seriously threatened, even in verse 21, all in order to silence the church, to terminate the message of the gospel. So friends, let me ask you, what are we to do when people in authority tell us we're not allowed to speak about Jesus?

Or for that matter, what do you do when someone who's in authority over you commands you to falsify some company documents that threaten a client? Well, historically there have been four ways, four different ways of dealing with opposition to things Christian. First of all, there's what people call a monastic situation, that's always been quite popular. We withdraw into monasteries. The world doesn't like us.

Let's just go away from the world. Let the world go its own way, and we'll go ours. If they disagree with our ethical standards in our workplace, don't fuss. Go and find a Christian business to work for. If we're not allowed to speak about God in our schools, we'll just retire back into our Christian ghettos, and we'll build our Christian schools, although we do that for other reasons especially.

The second answer, congregation, is the secular response. It's kind of where we say, well, I live my daily life in a real world and that doesn't really impact my faith, which I keep private. And so I keep my religious values and my ethical standards out of the workplace, out of the classroom, out of the workshop. And when I go to the workshop, I kind of hang up my faith with my coat in the locker room. Third solution is the way of compromise.

That I find some way to excuse what I'm doing. I make it sound okay to myself. I justify it. Why not falsify those documents? I mean the way that client treated us was horrendous.

And if the boss doesn't want me to talk about religion, that's okay. God will find other ways to reach him. And then this morning there is for us this fourth option that we want to consider what we might call, and I've called in the title of my sermon this morning, civil disobedience. Here's where we take a bold stand and say, this is wrong. I cannot do what you are asking me to do.

It's the position of that young woman who said to her boss on two occasions, I don't think so. It's the civil disobedience of the Lollards who taught their children those things God's law decreed, the Lord's prayer, the Apostles' Creed in English. I want to say this morning, friends, that this fourth option is at times not an easy choice for Christians. It often presents us with a dilemma.

You see, we as Christians have a strong sense of being people under authority. Doesn't God teach us in His word about authority very early in life? I'm thinking about that commandment that was drummed into us as kids, earliest childhood. It says, honour your father and mother that you may live long in the land. And we saw that behind that, we were taught that behind that looms the whole issue of being people under authority.

And we've been brought up with other texts that teach us to be submissive. I'm thinking of Romans 13 where Paul says, everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities. And hey, friends, Paul was not saying that in the context of a democratically elected government. He was saying that against the background of the horrible reign of Nero, the emperor of Rome. Well, let me remind you of some words from the letter of Peter.

Peter says, submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution. Did you hear that? Every human institution, whether to the king as the one in authority or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. Means, friends, that we as Christians are bent over backwards to conform to the laws of the land. Okay.

Sometimes we struggle with conforming to those laws of the land. We do it with many failings. And there are even some laws of the land that we're not all that scrupulous in following. Do you want an example? I'm thinking of speed limits on the road.

Someone once said, the accelerator foot is the last part of the body to be sanctified. Well, confession time, even pastors get picked up for speeding. I've had my share of tickets over the years. You know, there was one pastor who once said to the policeman, he said, I'm the pastor and I'm doing the Lord's work, and the policeman happened to be a Christian and he said, what a coincidence, so am I. He said, I'm doing the Lord's work too, and he sent me out into the highways and byways and to compel them to come in.

Lovely response. Okay. The point is that sometimes we have our struggles, but generally, I have to say that God's people are law abiding citizens. And now the big question is, how far does that submission to authority go? Where do we draw the line?

Verse 19 of our text, Peter lays it on the line and he zeroes in on the heart of the matter. If you go to your Bible and look at it again, at times when human rules contradict God's rules, and that verse makes clear what we do then, doesn't it? In those situations, Peter is saying, human authority, when it conflicts with God, then God's commandments always trump the commandments of the authorities. In other words, when push comes to shove, we must obey God and not man. This morning, I could give you many examples of that also from the Bible.

Let me give you three of the more prominent examples from the scriptures. Remember the story in Exodus one where Pharaoh told the Hebrew midwives to kill the baby boys? Did they do it? No way. Those women didn't throw in their jobs either.

They didn't comply with Pharaoh's request saying, well, we've been taught to submit to human authorities, so okay, we'll do it. They refused his command, recognising God's commandment not to murder. They obeyed God rather than man. Well, think of the story in Daniel three where Daniel's three friends refused to bow to the idol that Nebuchadnezzar had made. Now they could have said, well, let's just go through the motions.

Let's just pretend we're worshipping, but they didn't. They recognised God's command trumped the commands of the king to worship God alone. They disobeyed, and they were prepared to take the consequences, the fiery furnace. A third example, Daniel chapter six, where King Darius is tricked by some enemies of Daniel to declare that for thirty days folk may pray to no one but to the king. So what does Daniel do?

Does he say, well, that's cool. I can manage thirty days without prayer. That's only one month. Does he say, well, then I'll just pray quietly in my mind because God knows what goes through my mind? No, he doesn't.

He does what he always does. He throws his windows open and he prays to God in heaven, and for that, he's thrown to the lions. Here in our text we notice the boldness with which Peter and John make this declaration. There is no timidity on the part of the apostles, friends. There is no hesitancy.

As a matter of fact, when I read Acts four and I suggest you read it again at home, you'll see the point. When I read Acts four, it doesn't seem to me that the apostles are the accused who are having to defend themselves. There is a sense when I read Acts four that they are the ones who seem to be in control, not the Sanhedrin. They're not only telling these authorities in Jerusalem that Jesus lives and Jesus reigns, but they're saying to those authorities that Jesus whom they serve has a greater authority than theirs. They put it in the form of a challenge.

You be the judge. Is it right in God's sight to obey you more than God? Isn't it wonderful, congregation, that Christians can take a stand like that with a free conscience? Not just timidly, but boldly to refuse the requests of the authorities to remain silent. And you and I can have boldness when we realise that Jesus lives and Jesus reigns.

That ultimately, we're living under the authority of Almighty God. That's why I wanted Phil this morning to read Psalm two. Nations raging against God's people. What do we read in the next verse? God sits in heaven and laughs.

Can you imagine that? God's people being persecuted and God, I don't want to sound irreverent, but God's having a bit of a giggle. Don't these stupid humans realise what they're doing? Point is you and I don't ever need to fear the consequences. And I think on one occasion where Jesus taught His apostles, He said, what people do to us only lasts a moment, but it's what God does to us that can last for all eternity.

And so we need to be like the reformer, the Scottish reformer, the Presbyterian John Knox. Of him it was said that he so feared God that he never feared the face of any man. Just in case we didn't get all this the first time, when you read Acts chapter five, you find it repeated. And the Sanhedrin must have been people with pretty thick heads because they didn't get it the first time. They put them on trial a second time and in chapter five verse 28, they again command the apostles to silence, and again the apostles state the principle. When push comes to shove, we must obey God rather than man. It's wonderful, congregation, when that principle is fearlessly applied in a world that wants us to compromise.

I think of a young man who I know very well, who was asked to fiddle the books in a real estate office and he said to his boss, sorry, as a Christian, I cannot do that. His boss said to him, well then you better clean out your desk and leave. And he did, but he told me later on that he was so thankful that he had the ability to obey God rather than man. One of the great examples of that kind of stand was taken by the reformer Martin Luther. He was asked to recant, in other words, to deny the teachings he'd been promoting of the gospel of salvation by faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone.

And Luther said, I cannot do that and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. And then he added those famous words, here I stand. I can do no other. Friends, Luther said that because he knew not only that obedience to God must come first, but also ultimately that God would guard and God would guide. And he put it so well in that famous hymn, a mighty fortress is our God.

And it has that line in it, the body they may kill, God's truth is abiding still, His kingdom is forever. Brothers and sisters, in an increasingly hostile environment, we as Christians today need to have that perspective on life. I know sometimes we struggle with it and some of us struggled with this during the COVID lockdowns. When must we take that stand? When must we draw that line in the sand?

It's not always that easy. One other perspective on this text that comes out in verse 20, and that I want to just deal with this morning too. It may seem at times that the choice between obeying God and obeying man is a very difficult choice, especially if it should cost us our life. But there's another sense in which it's not a difficult question at all. This obedience to God in a sense is very natural for us as Christians, and the apostles give a second reason for refusing to remain silent.

And in doing so they show that obeying God rather than man is not an onerous duty. Listen to it. They say for we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard. Their inability to be quiet is put very, very strongly. The Greek text actually uses a double negative at this point.

So if I was to translate it literally, it would read, for we are not able not to speak of the things we've seen and heard. What the heart's full of, congregation, that's what the mouth speaks about. And don't you and I see that so often? Someone is just bursting with some glorious good news. Telling someone like that to be quiet is useless.

They can't hold it back. It's gotta come out. That's the way it is with Christians where this glorious good news that there's forgiveness for all our sins, past, present, and future in the work of Jesus. Wonderful news that He's given us life and hope for glory, and that one day He's coming again and that we'll reign with the glorified Christ forever and we cannot keep quiet about that. Let's just think through this a little further.

What is it that they're not able to be silent about? It's not about the great questions in life, why am I here? Where did I come from? Why is the world a mess? It's not about teaching all the deep things of God about election and predestination and so on.

It's not trying to communicate the truth of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. No. It's simply to state what they have seen and heard. And what they saw and heard was about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Again, friends, that highlights something about the nature of the communication we want to share, the simplicity of it. Those five simple things that Peter and John said when they first spoke to the Sanhedrin.

Jesus died on a cross. God raised Him from the dead. He's still at work. He fulfils the scriptures, and salvation is found in no one else. Couldn't be easier.

Secondly, this speaking about what we've seen and heard puts the emphasis on being witnesses and we come across that so often in the early chapters of Acts, over and over again. You see, you and I are not really called very often to give a twenty minute three point sermon. I do that on a Sunday, but you're not called to do that. I'm not in my situations during the week. What we're generally not expected to do is answer all of life's tough questions.

After all, you know, a fool can ask far more questions than a wise man can answer. We're just called to say what we know and have seen and heard and what Jesus has done for us, what He means to us and about that we cannot be silent. Dear brothers and sisters, we have the undeniable nature of Christian experience. People can argue with you about a thousand and one things and they'll want to argue about it with you. But the point is no one can argue about what you've seen and what you've heard and what you've experienced.

It's a wonderful example of that in John chapter nine. Jesus heals a blind man. Man was born blind in fact, and the Pharisees want to argue whether Jesus was actually able to do a miracle like that. And the blind man's answer just silences all debate. He says, one thing I know, I was blind, but now I see.

And surely that's our experience of Jesus Christ. Great motivation for Christian witness. People will want to argue with you about the existence of God. They want to argue with you about evolution, but we just want to tell them what we've seen and heard and experienced. We want to share what's happened to us.

We say to them, once I was blind, but now I see spiritually. Once I was a sinner but now I'm forgiven. Once I was restless and scared, now I have peace. You see, brothers and sisters, why the apostles in this chapter act with such boldness? They're not behaving like people who have to defend themselves in a court of law.

They're not in defence mode in this chapter. They're on the attack and they're on the attack with great courage, not only because they knew that it was the truth, but they knew that they were able to stake their lives on it. God had them in His hand. This morning, friends, we're sitting here in churches, people who know the truth and I pray that during this coming week, as God gives us opportunity, we may also share something of that truth with people around us. Let me lead you in prayer.

Our Father and our God, we pray for forgiveness for those moments, Father, where we've caved into pressure to do the wrong thing, where we've succumbed, Lord, to just being silent and we pray give to us that holy boldness that is prepared to say once I was blind but now I see the truth. Once I was a sinner but now I'm saved. And it's all because of Jesus and His saving work on the cross that we're going to commemorate this morning in the Lord's Supper. Our Father and our God, we do thank you for opportunities you give us. We thank you that your church is still growing and so often, Father, especially in those places where there's persecution.

You've shown us, Lord, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. We pray in those places where there is oppression, where our brothers and sisters are not able to meet this morning for worship the way we do, that they do it in secret. We pray give them much boldness and may they see the fruit of their labours in people won for Christ. We pray that in His precious name as we say together, Amen.