The Resurrection and Resistance

If you have your Bibles and you're able to turn to them, turn to Acts chapter 5.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 5, we'll be reading verses 17 through 32 as we continue our way

Acts 5 · chapter mention

through the book of Acts.

Again, if you're able, let's stand together as we listen with honor and reverence to the Word of God.

This is what you're about to hear, the holy and inspired Word of God.

But the high priest rose up, and all who were with him, that is,

the party of the Sadducees, and filled with jealousy, they arrested the apostles

and put them in the public prison.

But during the night, an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought

them out and said, Go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life.

When they heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak and began to teach.

Now when the high priest came and those who were with him, they called together

the council, all the senate of the people of Israel and sent to the prison to have them brought.

But when the officers came, they did not find them in the prison.

So they returned and reported, we found the prison securely locked and the guards standing at the doors.

But when we opened them, we found no one inside.

Now, when the captain of the temple and the chief priest heard these words,

they were greatly perplexed about them, wondering what this would come to.

And someone came to them and told them, look, the men whom you put in prison

are now standing in the temple in teaching the people.

Then the captain with the officers went and brought them, but not by force,

for they were afraid of being stoned by the people.

And when they had brought them, they set them before the council,

and the high priest questioned them, saying, We strictly charged you not to teach in this name.

Yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring

this man's blood upon us.

But Peter and the apostles answered, We must obey God rather than man.

The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on the tree

God exalted him at the right hand as leader and savior And to give repentance

to Israel and forgiveness of

the sins And we are witnesses to these things And so is the Holy Spirit,

whom God has given to those who obey This is the word of the Lord You can be seated,

Let's pray together.

Lord, we pray for your Holy Spirit to be with us, guide us,

direct us, help us to see here in this text, in this passage,

all that we need to see, all that we ought to see, so that we might love and

obey and follow and honor our Savior, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

So as we move into chapter 5, we have a situation in which the apostles are

arrested, imprisoned, broken out of prison, as it were, by an angel of the Lord,

and then called to answer.

And then their answer is very close to the answer that we heard them say once

already, and that is, we must obey God and not men.

That idea is not coming just out of the blue because they're stubborn or because

they don't like the Sanhedrin or because they're just typically rebellious people

like Protestants or Presbyterians or something like that by nature.

They do it because it's connected to the doctrine of the resurrection that they have been teaching.

And if we go back, and the good thing about preaching through books of the Bible

is that you can go back to the beginning and remind these, where did we start here in Acts?

Here we have the apostles preaching, they're in prison, they're broken out,

they're back in the temple preaching.

But what precedes it? And what are they teaching?

Remember, I hope you've noticed that what they're teaching and central to it

always, and central to the conflict always, is the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead on the third day,

and they witnessed, we witnessed in Acts chapter one, that he ascended in a

cloud of glory to be seated and enthroned as the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

And it's not just a disconnected doctrine.

This seated Lord of glory, the one we confessed in our Nicene Creed, right?

He's seated above. And from there, he will come to judge the living and the dead.

This is a doctrine that's connected to real life here, particularly for the

apostles who are told, don't do this, when Christ has said, do this.

Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the great commission that they have, they say, no.

You're going to hear me say that off and on today, because I know some of you

are old enough to remember Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign to drugs.

But it's not that simple. But the apostles were able with a resounding resurrection

power to look the authorities in the eye and say in the name of Jesus, no, no.

And this is a no that didn't just surprise and perplex the Sanhedrin.

This is a resurrection no that has

echoed throughout the centuries and has transformed Western civilization.

I'm all throughout this sermon, I'm really going to try to restrain myself to

the text because there's so many other avenues I'd love to just get into and enjoy.

Maybe we can have a Sunday school someday on Christian resistance.

Elders? I don't know. But anyway, but if you look at the Great Commission,

it says, all authority, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore, and that's not the command, by the way, It's as you're going,

the command is make disciples and baptize as we have.

Make disciples and baptize all the nations.

When Christ was resurrected, when he ascended on the throne,

remember we've read it. God said to him, ask of me and I will give you the nations.

Jesus is enthroned and seated in heaven and he is calling forth his church to

go in the power of the great commission, make disciples of the whole earth.

Teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold,

I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

This select group of apostles was told, start in Jerusalem, go to Judea,

to Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth, to the ends of the earth.

My old King James comes out once in a while. It's to the uttermost parts of

the earth is how I remember it.

And these apostles begin to do that and they encounter conflict with earthly authorities.

Keep that great commission in mind. it's quite powerful. All authority in heaven

and on earth has been given to Jesus Christ.

Now they confront an earthly authority who says, stop doing this,

but Jesus has said to do it, and they say, no.

Now part of the motivation for the Sanhedrin is quite honestly jealousy and strife and power.

Like many earthly authorities, they want power for themselves.

They want it all centered on themselves.

And so they take them, arrest them for the second time. This time they throw them in a common prison.

And when you see the description common prison, it's not like the Clinton County Jail.

I haven't been there, but I've seen the Montgomery County Jail,

and I've seen jails in Africa, and I'd way rather be in jail in America,

not in the days of Paul and the apostles and Peter.

These are dungeons. These are places where you're shackled. These are places

where you don't get three squares and watching TV.

These are places where if you get food and water, your family brings it.

That's it. They're thrown in there. We're going to see a testimony quite common

to them, and they also are full of joy in it.

You might seriously ask yourself, and I hope you do, because if you don't, I will.

Would you really respond like that in the face of such hardship for the sake

of Christ? Their joy, their singing, they're full of joy.

The story continues that they, in Acts chapter 4, earlier than this,

Acts 4 · chapter mention

remember, they had prayed for boldness.

Be careful what you pray for. They'd prayed for boldness, and they were in the house.

And remember, when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together

was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the

word of God with boldness. They go out with boldness.

The church prays, and behind the preaching and teaching of the word are the

prayers of the saints, always girding up.

But you see something interesting, and I keep wanting to show you this because

when you look at Luke's structure in Acts, you see it.

And I'm just going to keep pounding away at this because we live in a time,

just saw a YouTube video popped up the other day, like, Why I Do House Church.

I think they're listening to me and to what I'm talking about,

but why I do house church.

And it's just these house churches and these individuals that are doing their

own things all the time have missed an important part of the entire foundation

of the church, that the church of Jesus Christ is not just an optional gathering of people.

It is central to the work of Jesus Christ.

The work of Christ is ongoing in the work of the church, and the work of the

church is the work of Christ.

Luke does this actually in the very structure of what he does.

You might miss it as you're reading the stories, but you see striking parallels

between what happens in the life and ministry of Jesus and what happens in the

life and ministry of the apostles.

The discharge of the apostles out of prison by an angel was a resemblance of

Christ's resurrection itself. And by the way, by the same guys.

These are the same guys who said to the soldiers, put a rock,

put a stone over the grave.

Don't then put soldiers and guard this guy. Keep him in there.

And then he was released by an angel of light where they said,

we don't know what happened but the tomb is empty. Very striking parallels between our own story.

While the crowds were thickly gathered, and Luke says, he began to say,

this is an evil generation who wants a sign, but the only sign they were going

to get was the sign of Jonah.

For those of you who were in Sunday school, it's going to be a bit repetitive

because I'm going to go back over a little bit about Jonah and what happened there.

Jonah, and by the way, many, many stories in the Bible are like this.

Jonah's story is a striking pattern of what was going to happen in the life

and ministry of Jesus, projecting forward, projecting forward.

How do we know this? Well, when Jonah described himself as when he jumped,

when he was thrown off the ship, he was swallowed by a great fish.

And he describes this descent literally into Sheol, into the realm of the dead.

He says, then I have said, I've been cast out of your sight,

yet I will look to your holy temple.

The waters surrounded me. We remember reminded in Sunday school that the very

structure of Jonah reminds you of swirling waves as Jonah is being sucked further

and further down into the abyss.

I went down to the moorings of the mountains, the earth with its bars closed behind me forever.

Yet you have brought up my life from the pit. We know Jonah was spit out on dry land.

Resurrection, he was brought back from the dead after three days.

And that story we know is going to be a sign that was pointing to the work and

ministry of Jesus. Why? Because Jesus says it.

For as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also the son of man will be to this generation.

The queen of the south will rise up in judgment with these men and condemn them.

For she comes from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and indeed

a greater than Solomon has come.

The men of Nineveh will rise up in judgment with this generation and condemn

it for they repented at the preaching of Jonah and indeed greater than Jonah has come.

That greater than Solomon, greater than Jonah ministry of Jesus Christ is now

also seen in the life and ministry of the apostles, who also take the words

of the resurrection, not merely just a theory that Jesus rose from the dead,

but the reality of the resurrection into their own ministry.

And by the way, the Old Testament is filled with these stories of people who

also incidentally defied authorities, like Daniel.

The government said, don't pray. What did Daniel do? He obeyed God rather than

men. What happened? He was thrown into the lion's den. And what happened?

He was raised up from that death pit to new life.

What did Joseph do? Same sorts of things, down into a dungeon and out into life.

All of these are pointing to the ministry of Christ, but the apostles' ministry

are drawing on the ministry of Christ themselves as they go about their ministry.

Similar to the apostles, they are thrown into prison and the darkness of night is upon them.

Luke's describing them thrown into the dungeon, thrown into prison at night.

You'll notice a lot of Luke, both in the Luke gospel as well as in Acts,

a lot of dramatic scenes happen at night, particularly at midnight.

The apostles were raised up from the prison to preach the light of the gospel.

They were given a command as was Jonah.

When Jonah came out of the fish, God said, go to Nineveh and preach to those

people in Nineveh, to the Assyrians.

And so now the apostles say, go and preach. The angel says, go and preach this life.

What is he talking about here? This life. The word in Greek is a word that our

charismatic friends love. It's rhema or remata.

It's literally a spirit word of life. It's revelatory.

It has this character of bringing new revelation to someone or something, revelation from God.

So the apostles are told, go preach the word of this life, the power of the

Holy Spirit in this life. which life?

The life and ministry of Jesus Christ in their lives.

The angel makes it explicit between their release from prison and the message of this life.

In the meantime, again, as the stories are going, in the meantime,

the Sanhedrin's back. They send for the prisoners. Similar story to Jesus.

Grave where the spot, they had been well guarded, but no prisoners were found.

The guards were shocked and the priests were shocked and everyone was confused.

Their plans had failed just as they had failed with Jesus. Very similar parallel

to what happened in Christ, with Christ.

What sends them even further into confusion is the discovery that their former

prisoners are not only not in prison, but they're back in the temple preaching.

So the apostles' message have been enhanced and strengthened by multiple miracles,

but this particular miracle of the resurrection from the dungeon to this new

life, and now preaching the life like Jonah did.

When Jonah was spit out, he went to the Nineveh and he said,

man, you'll never believe what happened.

And the apostles are now also saying, people are trying to arrest us and throw

in prison, but God sent an angel of light and we were out of prison and the

doors weren't even broken open.

The Sanhedrin re-arrests them now, right? With timidity, like most politicians,

with timidity, we don't want to make the people mad. They were actually afraid

themselves of being stoned.

Great leaders. Don't you love it? So these are great leaders who are like,

let's go get them, but be careful.

You don't want to get in trouble with the people. Their plans had been failed

and foiled multiple times, and they re-arrest them.

Now, it would be a bit like going back into Minneapolis after the George Floyd

riots and trying to arrest a handful of people with a handful of cops.

So they had to go into this very carefully.

They didn't wanna disturb the crowd. So they went and carefully rearrested them and took them back.

And the court begins to scold them and remind them of their previous warning.

Hey, we had told you not to do this, which they had already said,

right? We're not gonna obey you, we're gonna obey God.

And then they said, you're going to be bringing this man's blood on our hands, which it was.

Remember, these arrogant, prideful, foolish, timid leaders are the same one who killed Jesus,

locked him in a tomb, covered it with a stone and guards, and when Jesus was

resurrected, paid the same people to lie about it. Talk about corrupt politicians.

These people are the same ones, and now they're realizing. A lot of times you

see it, we'll see it later when Gamaliel says, look guys, if this is really

from God, leave it alone because you can't stop it.

But they're realizing the more they ponder it, wait a minute,

we did it the first time to Jesus. We've done it now to them.

And they're going around telling everyone that this Jesus whom you crucified

has been raised from the dead, bringing this man's blood on our heads, which was true.

So the doctrine, the ironic thing here is that the main doctrine of the Sanhedrin

was a denial of what? The resurrection of the dead.

There's great, juicy, delicious irony here in our story.

We're having a bunch of timid, arrogant, proud liars, corrupt politicians who

go in and try to lead the people, deny the resurrection, and then they're the

ones who can't stop the resurrection with Jesus and can't stop the resurrection with the apostles.

It's seriously ironic.

No matter how hard they tried, they could not stop the resurrection power of

Jesus Christ going forward. They couldn't stop it.

It's a mockery. It's like the

Psalm 2 mockery. Why do the nations rage and the people's plot in vain?

The Lord in heaven looks and laughs at them.

This is a form of providential laughing. You don't believe the resurrection?

Jesus has been raised from the dead and you did it. You don't believe the resurrection?

The apostles have been raised virtually from the dead again and you tried to

stop them. You can't stop it.

It's interesting, too, that the angel, this is a little bit speculation,

but I think it's connected.

The angel may very well have been the same angel that announced the resurrection

of Jesus Christ. We're not given a name in our story.

One preacher says his appearance was like lightning. He was not pictured,

by the way, as a cherub or a beautiful little boy like Cupid.

He was like lightning. He did two things at the tomb. He moved the stone in

front of Jesus' tomb to show that Jesus was already resurrected and gone.

He spoke the message to the two women from the mouth of God,

and the message was that they were to go and tell everyone about the resurrection.

In this instance, the angelic appearance, we also see the angel of the Lord,

Kurios, similar angel, doing two things.

In total blackness at nighttime in the dungeon-like tomb, he appears inside

the prison as lightning.

In tomb-like judgment, he appears like a light, and he moves an immovable object,

the prison door, like the stone.

And Without disturbing the guards, like at the tomb of Jesus, he releases them.

And then he speaks the message to them that they should go and speak these words, the words of this life.

Just as with the arrest and murder of Jesus, these angry rulers could not stop

the sovereign will of God. You can't stop the resurrection power of Jesus Christ.

It's impossible. The false leaders of Israel not only failed to stop the gospel,

but in their attempt to stop it, like with Jesus and like with the apostles, they promoted it.

This is the mockery of God against all those who stand against his plans.

Try to foil the plan of God, and he will mock you with his providence as things

are reversed in a way you never could have imagined being reversed.

And then when they confront these guys, and this is the connection to this idea

of resurrection and resistance, the apostles enunciate a vital facet of the

church's position as God's representative on earth.

In the face of overwhelming threats and persecutions, they say, we obey God, not man.

They essentially say, no, no.

Say what you will, do what you will. We will follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

The church understood their place in history as the and fulfillment of prophecy, do we?

This is an aching thing that I'm seeing in our nation today where the church

no longer sees itself as an agent of the prophecy of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus was exalted to heaven and no earthly ruler can change that.

And no earthly ruler can do anything.

And no earthly ruler can say anything to stop it.

The church knew nothing could stop the gospel.

And they knew they had a duty. This is where I'm gonna try to walk a fine line

the whole time. They had a duty to resist.

There is a duty of Christian resistance that I think we've forgotten in the American church today.

It's not just an option if you're forced to. It's a duty to resist in the face

of a command contrary to the word of God.

Now, our story is limited to this direct command. As much as I would like to

get into the American Revolutionary War and the Scottish Covenanters and a lot

of cool things, which this all came from, by the way,

Our story is basically limited to a direct command that is contrary to God's command.

At least let's strengthen ourselves on that.

The apostles are willing to accept the consequences, by the way.

This is not a story about where the Christians and the apostolic church started

to organize armed resistance or militia groups.

They didn't start protesting and say, let's have a silent protest and block the temple gate.

Like we see today so much. Let's block the temple gate and see what happens.

No, they just said, no, and they accepted the consequences. And the consequences,

as we'll see over the next few chapters, are horrendous and difficult.

The church leaders stood face to face with earthly authorities and simply said, no.

It's an ordinary act, but it echoed greatly through the very spine of the Sanhedrin

and all the way up to Caesar himself.

And it's an activity that the church has been doing that has resounded throughout

what we call Western civilization today.

This simple rejection and resistance to earthly authority would resound through

the ages like a global earthquake. It would change everything.

It will be, as we'll see, that one of the main fulcrum points of all such problems

that church is going to have, especially with earthly authorities who want to

stop the resurrection and have a command and have an authority God has never given them.

Again, they're not organizing, you know, they didn't start a clean up the prison campaign.

They were in prison. They didn't start that kind of group.

But they did, in this ordinary resistance, begin to lay a principle that says

there's no earthly authority that's absolute and arbitrary. There is none.

The principle, perhaps more than any other in Acts, I think has had a profoundly

shaping effect on all the things we assume to be the case today.

Constitutional governments, the rule of law, the right to have a trial by all

these things that developed, laid the principles from this very simple statement,

we will obey God and not man.

And the resurrection of Jesus Christ requires us to think about all authority in this way.

There is no authority on earth that is absolute and arbitrary.

And that includes, by the way, don't

think this just cuts to the civil government. That includes all of us.

Fathers, you don't have absolute arbitrary authority over your children.

You have delegated and limited authority, and the authority that's been delegated

to you is limited to the purpose for which the authority has been given.

So you shouldn't expect absolute obedience from your wife and children,

especially if you command them to do something directly contrary to the Word of God.

Pastors have no absolute or arbitrary authority.

I would like to give my advice on some things.

I need to be careful not to do it from this pulpit, because I'm supposed to

only say what God wants me to say.

And if I tell you to do something God hasn't said to do, you don't have to do

it because my authority is also limited.

The elders' authority is limited. Police authority is limited. The judges are limited.

Every authority on earth has been given by God, has been delegated and put here

by God for God's purposes.

It cuts both ways, by the way, too, because those under us can now look to you

and authority and say, yeah, but you're supposed to do what God says.

Husbands, fathers, elders, pastors.

This is a profound principle that changes everything. We just read in Romans

13, we need to try to square this a little bit with it because this is the big verse.

I heard this a lot during COVID, by the way.

I'm going to tickle COVID a little bit. All I heard through COVID was,

love your neighbor and be subject to those who rule over you.

Those are two things as if Protestants everywhere in America just knew two sections of the Bible.

Let every Christian, let every person be subject to the governing authorities,

for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

They're given their authority by God and delegated.

Whoever resists these authorities resists God. Well, what's going on here then?

They resisted the authorities.

That's because the authorities were resisting God and telling them something

contrary to what God has said.

It doesn't mean that we can resist anything the authorities tell us because we don't like it.

It's talking about a very specific and limited thing. When the authorities say,

don't worship, the church says we must obey God rather than man.

Or do we? Did we?

Submission is at the forefront of Romans 13. Why? Because it means ultimate submission to God.

However, we must think about Paul is saying because it cuts both ways in terms of submission.

Rulers also must submit to God.

Rulers also must answer to God and give an account for the use of their authority

as it should be in concert with why they were given it.

The Great Commission tells us that the only earth authority on earth that is

absolute is Jesus Christ.

All the rest of us got bad news because I used to love to use this when I was a dad with young kids.

Get your coat on, get your shoes on, but dad, why? Because I said so.

I'm not the only one that's used that one, I'm sure. Because I said so.

Now, dads take comfort. It works a little bit in a small run.

Don't worry. But ultimately, it's not really true.

Don't do it because I say, I don't have authority in myself.

There's nothing in me except what's been delegated by God.

It's reality. And I realize you don't have time when one's running out with

no shoes and the other forgot their jacket. But because I said so works sometimes.

But in reality, the children, you need to obey your parents because God wants you to.

It's fitting for you. Children, obey your parents and the Lord for this is right.

This is fitting. It's why he made you. It's why he made your parents,

All authorities answer to Jesus. And as much as I would like to delve into other

issues, I would like to at least mention the issue of COVID and worship.

Because I think it was a bit apocalyptic, that it was revelatory.

When I look at the book of Acts and the way the apostles were fearlessly and

fearsomely moving forward with the gospel, imagine someone telling them, wait, we don't have to.

They did. Did you just not read it?

They said, stop this. And they said, you judge. Should we obey God?

And I don't want to get into, I kind of do, but I don't want to get into all

the mask mandates and the social distancing and the vaccinations and all that.

Although I didn't hear people reasoning the way I just outlined it,

people saying, well, wait a minute, a medical science doctor giving us medical

advice, it should be based on real science.

It's a different question, the mask. That's a Sunday school discussion.

But it was interesting to me that one of the heart of the problems that I noticed,

and we were over in Africa, by the way.

We're sitting in Africa. We lived in a dictatorship, essentially.

We lived in a benevolent dictatorship. We had a good dictator. There is such a thing.

And we didn't have rights. We're there on visa. We had to do what we were told.

March 2020 comes along. They said, shut down your schools, shut down your churches.

You can't be on the roads. You can't even drive around for two or three weeks

without a special government permit.

Taxi services were closed. The markets were closed. Everything shut down.

Seven o'clock curfew everywhere. And they beat you with canes if you were out after seven.

They didn't have Fourth Amendment rights in Uganda.

And they were sitting there and we're like looking at America thinking,

well, we're visitors, what to do?

We're not going to like create much of a stir we kicked out of the country.

But I'm looking to America and I thought, okay, and by the way,

let's all give ourselves four to six weeks of, you know, laxity on it.

Nobody knew what was happening. I didn't.

We were there in Uganda. We were told you'll die without a ventilator.

We look around, there were two ventilators in the whole nation.

It's like, well, we may die in Uganda. We didn't know. Nobody knew.

But after about four to six weeks or so, we kind of all knew,

and I don't mean to diminish COVID.

I'm not saying that at all. My friend almost died of it. He had a comorbidity.

It was a serious thing, but for elderly people and people of infirmity,

but for the vast majority of the rest of us, it was a very bad flu.

And the government here was saying in different states, you can't worship.

And I was thinking, oh, the American Protestants. I mean, think about the apostles.

Think about our history. You know, we were born of resistance and they're like, okay.

Okay. It struck me as interesting that I think we may have lost the resurrection

resistance of this apostolic church.

When a government says you can't preach or you can't worship, we say, no, we will.

We must because you judge. That's what the apostle said in the earlier,

you judge. Is it right to obey God or man?

And simply to say, no, no, you have no right to do this.

By the way, it's particularly true in a nation where you guys here,

we have a First Amendment right.

The government is not to prohibit the free exercise of our religion.

With God's word and a constitution, the church still just said,

okay, we'll do what you say.

Again, I don't mean to just berate and belittle, but I watched COVID,

and again, the mask thing is pretty interesting.

But when it came down to God says, don't forsake the gathering of yourselves

together, and the government said, stop it.

The church eventually should have said, and thanks be to God,

a man like John MacArthur rose up and said, no.

Old, ah, it takes those Baptists. You gotta give the Baptist credit because

the old man said, no, sue me. And they did.

Shut my electricity off. And they tried. Cut out my parking lot.

And they did. And the church grew like crazy.

Just like the, it's very similar to the apostolic church where the government

said, do this. And the church said, no.

And in the fear, many churches in the fear of man said, okay.

In the fear of God, the old man, MacArthur said, no.

By the way, he went all the way to the Supreme Court and won, as he should have.

But I wondered at that. I thought to myself, man, if I go back to America and

can preach somewhere, I'm going to preach through Acts.

And I'm going to bring that up. And now I am.

The phrase, obey God, not man, means that when men command us to do something

that God has said not to do, or they say not to do something God has said to

do, we simply say, no. No, we will obey God and not man.

It doesn't mean that children that you can say no to your parents because you

don't like it. It's when it's a direct contrary command to Christ.

And by the way, it's not that I want to stir up in any of you a rebellious spirit. You read Romans 13.

As a whole, our attitude towards those in authority should be submission to God.

I don't want to have to call our local attorney and have you taken out of jail

because you're resisting arrest or something like that, screaming, I'm obeying God. No.

Don't want rebellious people. We're not trying to organize pickets or protest,

but we do have to get the resurrection nerve back in our bones again.

The church was born of this, born of the resurrection and born of the apostles

living the life of the resurrection and saying, no, no, we will obey God and not man.

And you can see again, the implications of this for the developments of governments

throughout Western civilization, the ideas that we live and breathe,

but we have long forgotten in our land.

They didn't come out of nowhere. They didn't come from Islam.

They didn't come from entirely, some of them from Rome, but mostly they came from Christianity.

No man on earth can claim ultimate authority. Obeying God rather than man has

always made the church a terrible threat to oppressive governments and a powerful

institution for preaching the gospel because that's ultimately what's it about,

what this is about, the gospel.

In the end, they just resist the authorities so they could get one up on the Sanhedrin.

They resisted the authority because out of that prison and out of that darkness,

they said, there's life here.

There's life here. And there's life worth living. That's the power of the way

the apostles preached and lived.

And that's the way we should live as well. The liberating power of the gospel

that says, I was once lost, but now I'm found.

I lived, I was under transgressions and sin, but now Christ has made me alive.

The absolute connection between resurrection as a doctrine and resurrection

as a way of living is found here in this passage.

Christ died for our sins, rose again on the third day, rules from heaven,

and calls us to preach, proclaim, and live this life, the life of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Sin no longer has dominion over us. Beloved, this is the way to live.

Without fear of men, just like these guys are. It's very liberating.

It's the way God designed you and me to live.

It's how we should live. Without fear of man, without fear of oppression,

without even fear of death.

Because you think about it, that's what the earthly authorities have.

We're gonna arrest, you know what they told you about? We're gonna arrest you,

been there, right? We're gonna throw you in prison, been there too.

We're gonna kill you, we don't care.

We don't fear death anymore because it takes us right to heaven through the

resurrection power of Jesus Christ.

The only ultimate tool that men ultimately have against us is death and death

has been defeated through Christ and the resurrection.

Even death in martyrdom that we're going to see where people said,

I'm gonna preach, I'm gonna teach, even if I die, praise be to God.

And they went about living simply and powerfully singing praise to God as a

presentation of the gospel in their life. This is what our church needs as well.

We need to live this doctrine, say no to what we ought to say no to and let

the chips fall where they may and live a glorious, liberated,

gospel-centered life. Amen? Let's pray together.

Fathers, we come to the Lord's Supper. Help us to feel that liberation,

to feel that power, to feel the grace and love of Jesus Christ who died for

us, died for our sins, took on those sins himself.

Bore the curse for us, and then exploded out of the grave, was resurrected on

the third day and even now, O Lord, sits in heaven on our behalf.

As we come to this table, Lord, humble us, call us back to the fear of God properly

that we may never fear man, that we may be fed this morning and encouraged and

strengthened to live the way you designed us to live, that you may bless your people here.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen.