Greatest Movement

There's a story, an ancient Chinese philosophy story that tells of a man who owned a very powerful spear, and he also owned a very powerful shield. In the story, this man is trying to sell both of these items, the spear and the shield. When he's asked how good this spear is, he says, "This spear can pierce any shield." Then when asked how good his shield is, he replies, "This shield can block any spear." Then one person, and there's always one, asked him what would happen if he were to take his spear and strike his shield?

And the seller couldn't answer. In Western philosophy, we have a similar paradox. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? An unstoppable force meets an immovable object. This morning, we come to a part in scripture, the story of the church in Acts, where a man predicted the greatest movement the world would ever see.

The greatest revolution of humanity. A movement which began in the most surprisingly insignificant way in the most backwater part of the world, a place called Judea. But the movement had, and has had, the single most significant effect in the world we live in today. If you have your Bibles with you, let's open to that moment in the book of Acts, chapter five. And we're going to be doing a little bit of reading.

We'll start from verse 17 and reach the end of the chapter, just to give us a bit of context. We see here, just before we start, that the disciples, the apostles, had been preaching and had been healing a lot of people in Jerusalem countryside. And in verse 17, we read that the priest, the high priest and all his associates who are members of the party of the Sadducees were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. But during the night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out.

"Go, stand in the temple courts," he said, "and tell the people the full message of this new life." At daybreak, they entered the temple courts as they had been told and began to teach the people. When the high priest and his associates arrived, they called together the Sanhedrin, the full assembly of the elders of Israel, and sent to the jail for the apostles. But on arriving at the jail, the officers did not find them there, so they went back and reported, "We found the jail securely locked with the doors, with the guards standing at the doors, but when we opened them, we found no one inside."

On hearing this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priest were puzzled, wondering what would come of this. Then someone came and said, "Look, the men you put in jail are standing in the temple courts teaching the people." At that, the captain went with his officers and brought the apostles. They did not use force because they feared that the people would stone them. Having brought the apostles, they made them appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest.

"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." 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." When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honoured by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them: "Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do with these men. Some time ago, Theudas appeared claiming to be somebody, and about 400 men rallied to him.

He was killed. All his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered. Therefore, in the present case, I advise you, leave these men alone.

Let them go. For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is of God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God." His speech persuaded them.

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. The apostles left the Sanhedrin rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the name. Day after day in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ. So much for our reading.

Before we get to this point in the story of Acts, we see that the church had been experiencing some early stages of persecution. They were experiencing also at the same time a great time of growth, fast growth. At one point in Acts 2, 3,000 people came to faith in Jesus Christ as Lord in one sermon. People, it seemed, were ready to receive the gospel. Miracles were happening.

The poor were being looked after. There was fellowship. People, in fact, we are told, sold their houses, sold their fields, and gave it to the needy. In Acts 2:42, we see the picture of the perfect church. We see in Acts 2 that the believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

All the believers, Acts 2 says, all the believers were together and had everything in common, selling their possessions and goods, and they gave it to everyone as they had need. It was the most unified picture of the church that we'll ever have. It's been a bit of a downhill slope since then perhaps. But we see that things started changing as the chapters sort of moved on. The Jewish religious leaders started becoming jealous.

Started becoming jealous of this new vibrant faith and spirituality. They started getting jealous and probably scared of their positions of power in the Jewish community. And so they had the apostles arrested. They were about to execute these apostles, these men for what they were saying, for what they were claiming. And then we come to this point where the wise old Pharisee, Gamaliel, stood up and said, "Let these men go because if their efforts are purely on a human level, then it will fail.

But if it's from God, nothing and no one will be able to stop it. Not even us." And as a reader, as someone that sort of understands the story, we're a bit surprised that someone like Gamaliel, who seemed to be part of this strong resistance against the gospel movement, would say something so wise and insightful. But it becomes the turning point of the entire story, of the entire chapter we see here. It predicts not only the unstoppable way in which the Holy Spirit directed the flow and the outgoing of the gospel into all the ends of the earth, which is the story of Acts, but it also predicted the unstoppable spread of the gospel throughout all of history.

And I want us to focus a little bit on this because I think there is some great rich theology that comes out of the words that we find on the lips of Gamaliel. Gamaliel said three things that I believe are important for us to reflect on. The first thing he said is that if the purpose or the activity of the disciples was of human origin, it would fail. Human effort will fail. A fundamental part in accepting the gospel as Christians is our understanding of what is called depravity.

It is one of the tenets, points of Calvinism. And when we use this word, it's a technical word. It means basically the condition of an unregenerated heart, a heart that has not given itself over to the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, the renewing work of God's saving grace in our lives. It's a condition of our heart that seeks to run away from God. We talked about "choose life" before in Deuteronomy.

It's a heart that chooses death. It does the wrong thing, and we see in Israel's history that is what they did exactly. When the Holy Spirit opens our eyes, however, to see the magnificence of God's grace and love, we are regenerated. We are born again. We come to understand more and more the sinful condition of our hearts, and we realise we cannot save ourselves.

Human effort, we realise, fails. Human effort cannot save. Human effort cannot change permanently. Our efforts will fail. And we see that this is exactly the case because Gamaliel points to two examples where human effort tried to change God's plan.

He mentions a man called Theudas, who was able to speak convincingly and motivate people and was able to gather 400 men to his cause and try to revolt against the Roman oppressors and bring and establish God's kingdom on earth. What we don't always realise when we read the gospels is the messianic expectation that was there in that time. People were expecting the Messiah to come, and they would flock to people who had a great vision, who could speak well, who could convince and argue well. And there was actually a lot of these people in Jesus' time before and after in the first century. And this man, Theudas, was one of them.

He seemingly had a bit of a following. He was a bit of a history maker, but Gamaliel said he was caught, he was killed, and all of his followers scattered. Then another one came, called Judas, the Galilean, and he came sort of in the time of the census. If you remember the census which took place at Jesus' birth, it was roughly that time, maybe about April or thereabouts. And again, he was persuasive, and there was a commotion, and people started following him, but he was also caught and killed and that whole thing came to nothing.

Gamaliel is saying these were all part of human effort to force God's hand, human effort to bring about something that wasn't necessarily part of what God wanted to happen. And it failed. There had been many so-called messiahs, but it all came to nothing. And so the first thing for us to remember is that human effort, although it is impressive at first, does not bring lasting change.

It cannot save. It cannot redeem. It cannot fix what is broken. The second thing that Gamaliel said is that God's efforts will never fail. Just like that unstoppable spear that can pierce any shield, God's plan and purpose will not be stopped.

It cannot be corrupted. It cannot be altered. It cannot be manipulated. It cannot be corroded or undermined. Isaiah 55:11 says, and this is God speaking of His own will, of His own royal decree, that His word is a word that does not return to Him empty, but accomplishes what He desires and achieves the purposes for which He sent it.

Gamaliel spoke the truth when he said, "If this is from God, not even we will be able to stop this. If this is from God, no one is going to put an end to it." And what a prophetic statement this was. Within the lifetime of the apostles, the gospel would spread to the furthest reaches of the Roman Empire within forty, fifty years. That's an incredible feat.

Some archaeologists and historians in fact believe that it even got so far as the barbarians in England and Germany, outside the Roman reaches. We might become disheartened at some things that don't go our way. But the great story of humanity is all working according to a plan. We can struggle with the consequences of sin, our sin or someone else's sin. We can deal with that.

We can be we can feel lonely. We can feel sad, depressed, restless. But when we keep the big picture in mind, the big picture that God is preparing and growing a kingdom that is that will be perfect and that He is in the process of redeeming every square inch of the world for the people He loves, then our problems and the things that we struggle with and the consequences of our sins or someone else's sins on us seems very small in comparison. If you are wrestling with worry or doubt, know that God's efforts will never fail. God's efforts will never fail.

Whether that is God's plan specifically for you, whether that's God's plan specifically for your life, your family's life, or the bigger picture of humanity, God's purpose is an unstoppable force. It is that unstoppable spear. Nothing can stop it. Nothing can prevent it. No superpower can end it.

No China, no US can end it. No dictator, no nasty boss, no unrepentant husband or wife, not even our own sin can stop the unstoppable purposes of God. What a comfort. The third thing then Gamaliel says is that fighting against God's will is futile. Fighting against God's will is futile.

In verse 39, the second half, he says, "You will only find yourselves fighting against God himself." And who wants to take on that challenge? If you try to swim upstream against God's will, you will only find yourself squaring up with God Himself. God's will is like the unstoppable spear, but it is also like the immovable shield. You will smash yourself to bits trying to push against it.

Gamaliel warned the Pharisees that whoever tries to stop God's effort sets himself up for disaster, and yet they still continued to resist God. The question is this morning in 2013, where are the Sadducees and the Pharisees now? Where did they end up? Who won that battle? Roughly twenty years later, the Jewish temple would be gutted and torn down.

The entire worship system in Jerusalem, which these guys, the Sanhedrin, the Sadducees and Pharisees, were so zealous to protect. And remember, these guys were wealthy men, lived right in the city, penthouse suites. These men who tried to protect these positions under so-called religious reasons, everything was destroyed and taken away by the Romans. Where are the Pharisees and the Sadducees today? It was as if God had said in that time, "Enough is enough.

You didn't listen to My Son. You didn't listen to My apostles. Now I will take away your biggest crutch." I don't think we can imagine just the massive spiritual vacuum that happened in the lives of so many Jews when the temple was destroyed like that. And I believe that many, many people were then persuaded of the validity of the Christian gospel.

Meanwhile, through all of this, the church grew and grew and grew. I believe there are some valid points we can learn from this as Christians. Remembering and reflecting on the fact that human efforts fail, human efforts apart from God's will, that is, motivated simply by our motivations and our desires. It means that plans and acts apart from God's will or in direct opposition to God's will fails. Either it fails in not reaching that goal at all, reaching that goal that we really want apart from God's will, or it fails in that we might reach that goal but destroy everything else that is good in our lives in pursuit of that goal.

And therefore it fails. For example, we can chase after an ideal that isn't God's will. You make it work in such a way that you get what you want, but in pursuit of getting what you want, you sacrifice family, you sacrifice health, your faith is sacrificed in order to get it. That's when you know that it was based on human effort. But again, in Deuteronomy 29, we read, "Choose life.

Choose God's will," because we know that when we strive for God's will, when we desire to achieve it, not only will you reach God's desired ideal for your life, but everything else in pursuit of this ideal gets blessed. Your family gets blessed. Your health gets better or is maintained. Faith is strengthened. Relationships grow.

God said it in Deuteronomy 29, "If you desire to be prosperous in this land, I am freely giving you, follow me and my decrees." Second thing we see: that God's effort doesn't fail. God's plans don't fail. The unstoppable energy of God's will doesn't return to Him void.

When we act in God's will, whether that be simply obeying God's word in the general day-to-day life, choices that we make, treating other people with love and grace, forgiving others as we have been forgiven, living a self-controlled life amongst people that don't, remaining faithful to our spouses, all those sort of simple things we see as Christian ethics are part of God's will. When we live in God's will like that or in a more specific will for our lives, whether we are in choosing to be a civil engineer or a mechanical engineer, whether you are in pastoral ministry or working as an optometrist, we have the deep security that God's will for our lives will not fail. It is a deep and lasting security. That security and assurance will see you through the most difficult points in your life. I've heard of missionaries that have served in some terrible places and have not seen any fruit in their ministry for ten, fifteen, twenty years.

They seemingly are bashing their head against a wall in their mission field. But they will tell you that the only thing that gave them peace and prevented them from giving up was knowing that God had sent them there and wanted them to be there. The only thing that kept them going was that sense of calling to be there. When we know that we are doing what God wants us to be doing, like the disciples in Acts, we have the assurance, we have the assurance and the peace that God's will cannot be frustrated. It will not fail, and that gives us a deep satisfaction and peace whatever the circumstances may be.

Thirdly, we see that fighting against God's will is futile. Communist China sought to destroy Christianity and all forms of religion in the sixty years that it's been a communist nation. Sought to rid it out, executed people in thousands. Yet today, it has the fastest growing rate of Christianity in the world. Individual stories of salvation and protection for people that are part of God's plan have a particular, you know, calling on their life.

Someone like my friend, Zaki, I've mentioned him before, the Afghani refugee, who survived shark-infested waters, starvation, thirst, exposure to the elements, all because he became a Christian in a Muslim village. The amazing story of his protection as a refugee all the way to Australia shows that God's will, God's purposes, cannot be frustrated. Now, Zaki is in Australia learning the Bible, getting educated, learning English, becoming much more of a usable tool in God's kingdom than he would have been in Afghanistan. God has a particular purpose for this man. And hopefully, I'm going to have him here at the Salt and Light service to give us a bit of a story of, you know, a testimony of his life.

But it is an incredible story. And God has brought him here. He's protected him through so much because he has a plan for Zaki. And it will not be frustrated even by radical Muslims, by sharks, by border security, or the like. Fighting against God's will is futile.

Where did the Pharisees and the Sadducees end up? Did God's enemies destroy the gospel message? In our lives, resisting God's will, pushing back against that will, will mean that you come off second best. We have to realise that pushing back against the God of the universe is probably not going to work very well for us. And God is not our drinking buddy.

He's not a girlfriend we have lunch with once in a while. He's the God of history. And this God of history will unerringly direct the story of humanity and the world to its final chapter and end the story the way He wants it to be ended. It's good for us to remember that when we decide to do God's will or not, to be in His will or not. Human efforts will fail.

God's will does not. Resist His will, try to frustrate His plans for your life, and you will find yourself hurt. You will find yourself smashed to little pieces against this immovable object. Gamaliel said to the religious leaders, "If their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is of God, you will not be able to stop these men.

You will only find yourselves fighting against God." Resist His will, try to frustrate His plans, and you will find yourself coming against the might of His glory. You will find yourself coming against the majesty of His relentless purpose. This morning, know the power and the security of choosing to be in God's will. Seek His will.

Seek His glory in your life, and nothing else, nothing else will make as much sense as being in that perfect will, being in that perfect place of God's perfect will.