First Opposition

Good morning.

Today's text is from the Book of Acts, chapter 4, verses 1 through 22.

Acts 4:1–22

And as they were speaking to the people, the priests 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.

And 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 men came to about five thousand.

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, 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 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 as 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 recognized 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 had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another, saying, What shall we do with these men?

For that was a notable sign that was performed through them, that has been performed through them, and is evident to all the inhabitants 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.

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 is 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, and they let them go, finding no way to punish them because of the people, for all were praising God for what had happened.

For the man on whom this sign of healing was performed was more than forty years old.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

And I don't know about you guys, but I'm driving a little bit behind the car this morning.

It is sleepy out here.

And somebody snuck in in the middle of the night and stole an hour from me.

I don't know if you guys had a similar experience.

But uh it's a joyful thing to get together together with the saints on the Lord's day.

Even if we have an hour less sleep, we have the energy of the Lord to tend to us.

We have a great God who sees us and who knows and understands our frame and who desires to meet with us this morning to share his word, to inhabit our praises, that we might join at the glorious praises in the heavens towards him.

That's what we get to do this morning.

So let's pray.

Holy Father, we are small and frail, and we are subject to incredible forces that we do not have control over.

Lord, we are subject to the forces of time, which apparently can shift right under our feet.

And all of us must agree to it.

None of us can stand and resist it.

Holy Father, we are subject to the forces of governing powers and authorities of principalities and powers.

Lord, of our of the forces of our own governments, our own structures, Lord, that we must comply with.

We are subject to the forces of principalities and powers in the heavenly places, Lord, that move and we can feel tossed about, caught in the rush of great waters.

Lord, we are subject to the forces of the time and place of our birth, Lord, which we did not choose.

How can we find rest when we are tossed about by such things?

Lord, we know that these are all in your hands.

We know that the principalities and powers in the heavenly places are subject to you and to your authority, Lord.

You are the Lord of Lords.

We know that the governments are in your hands and that while they plot against you, Lord, that you laugh at them and hold them in derision, because you are the King of Kings.

Lord, we know that you have set our boundaries in a wonderful place.

Lord, that you have set all of mankind precisely where you have us, even in our own lives, born to the families that we were born into, in the time and place that we are born into them, and you have laid them out so that we might find you, although you are not very far from us.

Lord, our only hope in this world is that your Son, Jesus Christ, is a sufficient offering for our sins.

Lord, that he entered into the particularities of our lives and the particular time and the particular place that you had him at the fullness of time, just as you determined in eternity past, so that as we look to him, we will be saved.

There is no other name given among men by which we must be saved.

It is only the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, Lord, you have shown us him.

You have revealed fully yourself in Jesus Christ, and you have given us your Holy Spirit so that we might be enlivened to believe in him and to put our faith in him.

Lord, as we are tossed about by all these forces, even the sin in our own hearts, Lord, you have given us a power for salvation in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Lord, let our hearts rest in that as the only true foundation.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So Peter and John last week were on the way to the temple to worship, and as they were headed towards the temple, there was a man who was paralyzed from birth.

And that man was carried to the temple daily so that he might sit in front of it and ask for alms.

And as they were passing by, they make eye contact with the man, and as he asked for alms from them, Peter says that I don't have any silver or gold that I can give to you.

But he says, What he does have, he can give to him freely, and he tells the man to rise up and walk.

And the paralyzed man, by the power of the name of Jesus, rises up and walks.

Now, this, of course, draws a crowd.

I think last week I called it it's like an inverse car wreck, like the way a car wreck draws a crowd because we see something go so terribly wrong.

This draws a crowd because we see something go uh so unthinkably right.

How could the paralyzed man be standing up and walking?

And more than walking, he was he was leaping and running and praising God.

Because if you can't walk, then suddenly you can.

That's something that you're gonna try, and he tries it right away.

And he's praising God.

And the crowd gathers around, and Peter has learned not to neglect the crowd.

He understands his mission as an apostle is to testify.

And so this is a great opportunity to testify to the power of the name of Jesus.

And as they gather around, and the crowd is admiring Peter and John for the miraculous power that they seem to hold in themselves, he shifts their perspective and he shows them that this power is not because of their own piety or because of Peter and John's own goodness, but the power by which the man was healed is just through the name of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the power.

He is the reason that the man is now standing before them well.

And the crowd hears this, and many of them are captivated by it.

And just the proclamation of the name of Jesus, the sensibleness of the resurrection, the undeniability of the man who was paralyzed, who can now walk, many of them believe.

And the number of the people that day goes from 3,000, that's our last count.

Now it expands to 5,000 people.

5,000 people now believe in the name of Jesus just by hearing.

Just by hearing the proclamation of the gospel.

They believe in the name of Jesus.

But now what we've seen so far are these incredible miracles and the proclamation of the gospel on two occasions by Peter, mass conversions that are taking place among the people of Jerusalem.

And now it begins to face its first opposition.

Peter and John receive their first opposition to the gospel.

It's the first resistance to the spread of the gospel.

And that's the story that we see this morning.

And what we recognize in this is that growth and resistance always go together.

It is not a problem for the gospel to be taking place in your own heart.

You will offend no one.

You will draw no ire by the gospel taking place in your own heart.

The problem comes when the gospel becomes a public declaration.

Oftentimes when I share my faith with people, it is met with a they're happy for me.

They're happy that I have found something that works for me.

You know what life's like, you know what it's like out here.

It's a catastrophe, you know.

And I've found something that works for me.

And they hope one day perhaps they find something that works for them.

It's this idiosyncratic match for their own heart.

And then the pivot happens when the drama begins to unfold in a conversation where it's, I don't think this just works for me.

I think this is the only thing that could work for you.

This isn't just true for me.

It's not a just happenstance that this old story happens to fit with the idiosyncrasies of my personality.

This is the foundational truth of all reality.

And there is no other name by which you can be saved in the name of Jesus Christ.

This is what Peter and John are proclaiming.

And now that the truth goes public, now that the proclamation of the name of Jesus expands by number into the world, it begins to draw the ire of the world.

And so growth and resistance are always the same thing.

A private faith is a faith that does not grow and therefore experiences no resistance.

There's benefits to a private faith.

It's that you experience no resistance.

But that which does not grow, that which does not take root and multiply, this is not a living organism.

This is a dead organism.

If it does not grow, if it doesn't take root, if it doesn't multiply.

And so in order to have a living faith, we must understand that it is necessarily a public faith.

It is necessarily a faith that encounters resistance.

And that's what the apostles begin to experience.

We are shown this clearly in the story of the early church.

So in our text today, in Acts 4, 1 through 12, 1 through 2, it says this.

Some of them heard and they said, This is incredible news.

Look at the man that was healed.

This finally makes sense of these strange rumors that I have heard regarding what happened to Jesus of Nazareth.

And they become Christians.

They believe in him.

But others, the captain of the temple and the Sadducees, they come and they hear what's being proclaimed, and they become annoyed.

I like that word.

I like that the initial experience of the Sadducees is they're annoyed by it.

It's like a it's like a gadfly, you know, it's like this little pesky nuisance.

And they're especially annoyed because the Sadducees, what is one of the fundamental aspects of their belief system is a denial of resurrection.

They deny any of the interpretations of the Old Testament which point towards the promise of a resurrection, which point towards the resurrection of eternal life.

The Sadducees have a very imminent faith.

They have a faith that is earthy and grounded and imminent and present, and it does not expand into the eternities.

It doesn't deal with questions like that.

It is a faith of morals and ethics and ethical principles and right living for the here and now.

It is not distracted by such fantasies as resurrection.

And so now, when they see that they are proclaiming the resurrection from the dead in the name of Jesus Christ, they are greatly annoyed.

We've got a problem on our hands.

We had a pretty strong grip on the doctrine of the people that we taught in the temple when they came.

And it's starting to slip.

Not in a completely catastrophic way.

Not every person to a T, but enough that it needs to be shut down, enough that it's annoying.

This is the expectation you should have for the proclamation of the gospel in any sort of public environment.

You should expect mixed reviews.

This should be your expectation.

The reviews will be mixed.

And they can be mixed in a way that's so shockingly disorienting, it's almost hard to imagine.

It's hard to come to grips with.

It has a sense of it's just annoying.

So they, the apostles receive this sort of mixed review.

And the Sadducees hearing the proclamation of the resurrection from the dead in the name of Jesus, they understand this is something which must be stamped out.

Now, I think part of their annoyance is they thought they had already stamped this out.

You know, it was just a couple of months ago, you know, maybe 55 days or 57 days ago, that something that they had that this really rear its head in a very public way, and they were able to rally the people for the crucifixion of Jesus.

This whole resurrection problem, this whole teaching of resurrection, this whole proclaiming Jesus Christ as the Messiah problem had already been stamped out by them.

So you can see why when it rears its head again in a very public way, they might be annoyed.

This is about as long ago.

The crucifixion of Jesus is about as long ago as New Year, as the New Year's from us.

It's not that long ago.

I thought we had dealt with this problem.

This is annoying.

So they arrest Peter and John.

They bring the present kerfuffle of this crowd that's gathered around and the healed man, and they just arrest them.

And it's late in the evening because remember it was 3 p.m.

when the man was healed, and so you gotta figure a couple hours and the sun's setting.

So they say, let's arrest him, and then we'll handle this in the morning.

So Peter and John go to prison for the night.

They're they're captives for the night, and then in the morning they're brought before the trial.

Verses five through six says 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.

So who is it that Peter and John are brought before?

What is this gathering of a trial that is uh being that who are the rulers that Peter and John are brought before?

Something that you have to notice is this is not just the same office that condemned Jesus to death on blasphemy charges.

It's not just the same office.

It's not like this is another district court judge, and these are some other district court judges that they are brought before, just like how Jesus was brought before them.

These are the same men.

They are the very same men who they had witnessed Jesus be condemned by.

They know that these are the type of men who are capable of condemning Jesus to death because they've already seen him do it.

These are the very same men that when Jesus was on trial before them, Peter was outside listening in and three times would deny that he even knew Jesus.

This is high stakes.

You ever have a hard conversation coming up?

Have you ever read about these?

And on the on the cusp of that hard conversation, one of the things that you start to remember is all of the times in which you have betrayed yourself in the midst of those conversations.

Where in an effort to maintain some some sort of pseudo-piece, you haven't said what you really thought.

You you haven't owned what you really had that you had to say.

And so on the cusp of those conversations, you start toiling and wondering how many I hope I don't, I hope I just say the truth here.

I hope I don't betray myself in this high-stakes sort of circumstance.

And the anxiety starts to mount on how, on, on whether or not you will be faithful in the moment that you know is required of you to be faithful in.

And you have and the most salient memories to you.

On the cusp of those sorts of conversations, are the times when you haven't held fast.

Imagine this for Peter.

Imagine this moment for Peter.

It is not what memory does he have to draw on, what self-confidence does he have to draw on that he might think, in this very circumstance I will be faithful.

All he has to draw on is a memory that when this circumstance happened before, and what I ought to have done is stood for the name of Jesus as stood by my friend when he was in the flesh, all he has to draw on is a memory of his betrayal.

So he can't draw a self-confidence in order to move into the moment, in order to go into the hour where he knows what's required of him is to tell the truth.

But what we see demonstrated here is uh a remarkable courage, an otherworldly courage.

Because what he must testify to before the man, before these men, is the power of the man that they killed.

And that the man that they killed was truly the Messiah, the Son of God.

And that these men find themselves opposing God.

Now, how could he how could he have the strength?

Why would he have the strength this time to make that testimony?

Well, he does.

He does, and in a glorious way.

In verse 7, they pose the question, said, and when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, by what power or by what name did you do this?

We learn later in the text that the man who was healed, the paralytic man, he's in the courtroom.

Now we don't know if he was arrested with Peter and John.

It doesn't say that.

So what's more likely is that he heard that this trial would be the next day and he went to it.

And you know how he went to it?

I'm gonna bet he walked.

He got word of something that was happening the next day, and he said, Yeah, actually, let me check if I can go to that.

Let me uh I gotta reach out to my friends who can carry me.

No, I don't.

I'll just walk there.

And what will I do when I'm in the room?

I think I'll try standing.

So, what's not in question in the trial is whether or not the miracle happened.

That's not what's on trial.

The evidence is in the room.

This is always the way it is.

The fact is in the room.

What must be brought to bear is the interpretation.

The interpretation is the risk.

The interpretation is saying, here's what this means.

That's the risk that must be taken.

And so the all of the leverage in the room is on this question by what power or by what name did you do this?

It's almost like a dare.

You know, out there we heard you saying that this man, we're not denying the man is walking.

Perhaps not even, we're not even against him walking.

It's congratulations again on the walking.

Remember those alms that I gave you a couple times on the way in?

We have nothing against the man.

But we'd overheard that you were talking about resurrection in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

This is the off-limits part of the conversation.

This is where all the power of the room rests.

This is where all of the resistance that Peter would experience, he he there's there's nothing but opportunity.

This is an opportunity to deny that the reason that the man is walking is because of the name of Jesus.

If he just doesn't mention Jesus, if he just says, wow, this is quite a miracle, isn't it?

And he and why did this happen?

Well, of course, you know, me, I spent all that time with Jesus, and it's been a rough couple of months, so I bring him up.

I still bring him up, old habits.

You know, you know what it's like.

And there's all this opportunity to skirt the Jesus question.

Now, why would he skirt the Jesus question?

Because this is the room that killed Jesus.

Because in order to identify with Jes, the cost of identifying with Jesus in this room means the cost of life itself.

He knows they kill for the name of Jesus.

And now here is the pressure that he is experiencing in the room.

The question is like a dare.

And so here's how Peter answers it.

In verses eight through nine.

Then Peter, filled with the Holy 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.

I'll stop there.

We'll notice, first of all, Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit.

This we've got to get used to this phrase and expect what's to come.

When somebody is filled with the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, it always leads to their proclamation of the truth of Jesus.

This is what the Holy Spirit empowers them to do.

When they are filled with the Holy Spirit, you should be able to guess.

Like when you read filled with the Holy Spirit, you should look around and be like, I bet a speech is coming.

Because that's what happens in the book of Acts.

This is what the Holy Spirit empowers them to do.

The Holy Spirit empowers them to proclaim the name of Jesus.

That's what happens in the book of Acts.

So Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit, so you should think, here comes the speech.

He's gonna say something.

I bet he goes all the way, too, because he's filled with the Holy Spirit.

And he addresses them with honor.

He honors those to whom honor is due.

And he says, when the apostles, he says, um, rulers of the people and elders.

He addresses them with the honor that they are due.

But then he makes clear what the this is that's being talked about.

They say, by what power or by what name did you do this?

And Peter wants to make sure that we all know exactly what we're talking about.

This is the hardest thing.

What we're going to see Peter provide is a master class in saying simple truths out loud when all of the pressure of the room is to get you to be silent about the most obvious things.

This is the master class to say simple truths out loud.

And so to begin with, he says, Well, let's define this.

What we are on trial, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, and by what means this man has been healed.

That's where he goes on.

What we're being examined for, by the way, when you say this, what you're talking about is he can walk.

He's standing right there.

There was a good deed done to a crippled man.

That's what we're talking about.

Let's not gloss over that.

This is the central fact that's happening here.

And what it does is it draws the whole trial into question.

Oh, but isn't it terrifying to say a simple truth out loud?

When all the pressure in the room is against you saying a simple truth out loud.

That is what, that is the pressure that Peter is experiencing.

And he makes plain, we're talking about a crippled man who had a good deed done to him.

Then in verse 10, he said, he continues, he says, 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.

He took the dare.

All the pressure in the room is don't mention Jesus.

All of the safety of the room is he is fine if he just doesn't mention the name of Jesus.

But he says the simple thing out loud, the undeniable thing.

The matter of fact that the reason that the man is walking is because of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Now, which Jesus Christ of Nazareth is Peter talking about?

The man you crucified.

This is not the thing you bring up.

That's that's the this is all of the pressure in the room is on not saying that.

What he should have done is he should have equivocated in some way.

He certainly shouldn't have named it out loud.

Said, well, this was done by the Messiah, by the Messiah who has come.

And there is a Messiah who has come, and this is the good news of it.

You guys might not, you know, you may feel resistant to this news.

No, he just names it.

Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the one you crucified.

And what happened to him was God raised him from the dead by this man, by him, this man is standing before you well.

He has brought the dividing line.

And what he is saying is, you are standing opposed to God when you stand opposed to the proclamation of the name of Jesus.

And even more simply, in fact, they they might say, you're standing opposed to the crippled man walking.

Do you want to find yourself as the ones that are standing opposed to good deeds?

Well, what is the source of these good deeds?

It's Jesus of Nazareth, whom you crucified.

Do you feel how the weight has shifted?

Who's on trial now?

Who's on trial in the room?

When they walked in, Peter was on trial.

But all of the leverage against the proclamation of the simple truth that Peter had seen with his own eyes, which was the resurrection of Jesus, that he had witnessed by the power of this man being healed, all of those simple truths, the only threat against them was the leverage of the room.

There was no argument that could be posed against what Peter has to say.

When there is no argument that can be opposed against it, then we rely, then it's then it's called we do a little social pressure.

Then we're going to make sure that to say this simple truth out loud is going to be extremely costly.

And they'll know that it is extremely costly.

For Peter, this his courage, it should be inspiring.

It should also feel like how could anyone do this?

Is there anything harder than when all of the public pressure is against it, when all of the relational pressure is against us, saying a simple truth out loud?

Then in seeing Peter uh do this so wonderfully by the power of the Holy Spirit, it is equal parts inspiring and humiliating.

You know, I've brought up this movie several times.

It's um uh and it has a name too.

It's early.

You know, when I'm forgetting movie references, it's early.

It's called A Hidden Life is the name of this movie.

It's by Terence Malik, probably the best living director.

And Terence Malik uh put together this story in A Hidden Life, and the story is about an Austrian man who's recruited to join the Nazi army, and he becomes a conscientious objector.

And so, because he's a Christian, and so he doesn't join to fight alongside the Nazis, and it follows his story of uh non-compliance and of saying these simple truths out loud, and it shows and it's cutting back between him and his wife and child at home, who he doesn't get to be with.

And they're going through an incredible suffering because of his refusal to join the army, and all of the reasons that are given to him throughout the movie to join, to simply recant, to recant of this absurd position that he has taken because of his faith in Jesus.

He's given so there's so much pressure.

His his priest comes in and explains to him how he ought to submit to these governing authorities because they've been placed into him.

It's one of the most masterful uh manipulative presentations of Romans 13 that I've ever seen put to screen.

It's the only one.

But it's a very good one, nonetheless.

And it there's there's these incredible arguments that that he must receive and this weight of social pressure.

And then all he does is he he doesn't cave to it.

And that movie ruined my life for like six months.

Because I felt so so struck to the heart by the cost that he was willing to bear for the sake of the simple truth being spoken out loud.

Peter does this here in this uh uh inspiring, this completely inspiring way.

And what he wants to show, and what Peter does, and what he has done by saying these simple truths out loud, is he has shifted the foundation of the argument.

And what he wants to, and what he makes this explicit by shifting the argument to a conversation about foundations.

It becomes a conversation about foundations.

So he says this: he says, 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.

Says, You've brought me into trial to discuss a good deed done to a crippled man.

But what we have to talk about in order to understand this is the foundation of reality, the foundational truth that is actually at stake here.

And the foundational truth is whether or not Jesus is God, whether or not he really came back from the dead, and whether or not there is any other name that we might put our faith in so that we might be saved.

Now we are arguing about foundational principles, and their whole view of the world is now on trial.

There's a difference in tack here.

The council wants to talk about anything other than foundations.

What the council wants the center to be on is maintenance of the norm.

What they want to talk about are how to maintain social cohesion in a very complicated world.

That's the project that they have.

And that is not a foundational project.

That's a very floaty sort of thing.

That's a thing that you're moving around all the time and you're pivoting here and you're pivoting there, and you're trying to make appeals in ways that that uh, in a sense, win the masses over and gain you credibility with the masses so that you might guide the masses and hold the masses together based on the the uh the emotional state or the the uh sympathies that the masses happen to happen to hold.

That has no sense of a gr of of desiring to talk about the foundations.

What they want to say is things like, and the way that they will consult is things like, look, this is getting out of this this whole sort of movement.

If a movement like this actually takes off, what does this mean for the temple itself, which has been given to us by God and has provided this sort of social cohesion that we need and allows us to have this sort of status that we enjoy?

And look, we're not perfect, but the status that we enjoy is beneficial to the masses because we are the most educated, we are the expert class, we do know what's best for them, and we want to be able to maintain this sort of peace and order that's in the world.

The question that they so what they want to have is a tactical conversation.

They want to talk about things and most value things.

How could we explain these truths in the ways which are most tactically beneficial for maintaining our position of power and the social cohesion that we enjoy?

They want to have a tactical conversation.

You know, a tactically beneficial way to convey the gospel is to say, it really works for me.

And I hope you find something that works for you too.

And then you leave.

That's a tactically beneficial conversation because it violates none of the assumptions which we hold most dear in our culture.

It violates none of the assumptions which would be held most dear by the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the council that was gathered together.

But Peter is saying, we're gonna talk about foundational truths.

And we're going to go down to the very bottom of reality, to things which are undeniable because they have happened, to matters of fact.

And I'm not going to talk about what might be tactically most helpful or most beneficial for maintaining the peace of the crowd so that this diversity of beliefs can be held in in some sort of uh uh peaceful order.

Instead, I'm going to talk about the beliefs themselves.

We're going to talk about whether or not we are living in the truth, whether or not we are living in a peaceful stalemate, that is, that the price of admission to that peace is agreement with lies.

So he says, This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.

What does that mean?

All of our claims of faith are built on Jesus of Nazareth, this man whom you crucified.

It means that there is a foundation, there is an ultimate truth claim, one which we all must deal with.

I have to deal with it, you have to deal with it.

That's the way Peter is talking.

He's standing before the council and he says, look, here's the here's, let's get to the bottom of this.

The bottom of this is that Jesus of Nazareth is the only name given to us under heaven by which we must be saved.

It is a radically exclusive claim.

It is not the type of claim which is able to maintain peace among a diversity of beliefs.

It is a claim which challenges any peace which requires an agreement with lies.

It is a forceful claim.

And hear the glory that's shared in it.

There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

It is the bedrock claim of reality.

Now, what is their impression of Peter in John, when they they go straight to the heart of the matter?

It's a very hard thing to wriggle out of at this point.

So we're talking about the heart of the matter.

Verses 13 and 14 it says, Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished, and they recognized that they had been with Jesus.

What a verse.

What a verse.

They see the boldness of Peter and John.

What is the boldness?

You know what they're wondering in themselves?

If my life was on the line, would I own this in front of this room?

If if I had because you know the the the a council like this, Anis and Caiaphas, Anis is um Caiaphas's father-in-law.

He married into the business of high priests, became high priest the old-fashioned way, you know.

And what what if in Caiaphas there's this little tinge of the man is walking?

And that reminds me a lot of the stuff that Jesus did when he was around.

And it seems like that same ministry of Jesus that we had stamped out, it seems like that same thing is still happening.

And he starts to feel well up in himself this this recognition, this agreement with the truth, and he knows what he does when he starts to feel that.

He he stamps it down because he knows the cost.

What would it cost me in this room?

It's going to be very uncomfortable with my father-in-law later.

My father-in-law isn't right there.

Hey, Keith.

It's a scary thing to imagine.

They know that if they start to feel disagreement with this simple truth, this almost undeniable evidence that they what they they would do what they've always done.

They would stamp it down.

And they would pivot the conversation.

To something more tactical.

You know, yeah, it seems like they've got some argument here.

But can you but do you see the way that they were stirring up all this chaos outside of the place and how they're gathering all this crowd?

And if we were to play that out, if they were to actually play out what would happen there, if this would result, the whole thing would fall apart.

And if it weren't for uh clever people like us who could spot things like that coming down the line, then this whole place would just disintegrate.

And so they stop talking about foundations.

And they start talking about tactics.

Because they don't care about the truth.

They don't believe in it, they don't believe there's such a thing.

Peter has the courage to speak these simple truths out loud, and because of that courage, and because they know the state of their own hearts, they're astonished by it.

They are astonished.

I can't believe the risk that we're seeing taken right in front of us.

And by who?

Common, uneducated men.

And what do they conclude?

They were with Jesus.

They were with Jesus.

What does it require to speak about the fundamental claims of reality?

What does it require to discuss truth with your friends or family members?

What does it require?

It does not require some great education.

It does not require knowing all of the potential arguments that might come your way when we're discussing matters of fundamental truth, of fundamental reality.

You don't need to know all of those things.

You don't need to be a master apologist.

You don't need any of that.

You need the courage to say a simple truth out loud.

What is simpler than this?

Jesus really was God.

He really became a man.

He really died.

It really happened.

He really came back from the dead.

There's no hope of salvation outside of him.

There's no hope of interpreting reality such as it is without the inclusion of that fact.

There's no hope of arriving at a reasonable ethical frame while neglecting this fact.

Jesus is God.

And so he astonishes the room.

And where did this boldness come from?

Where did this boldness come from in Peter?

How did he cultivate it?

Where did it come from to speak so foundationally, so straightforwardly, so simply about who Jesus is?

Because it wasn't there just like two months ago.

Just two months ago that he didn't have this in his heart.

We saw him run away at a social pressure that was far, far less than this.

He ran away and denied Jesus.

Well, you guys, the resurrection has happened.

He's seen that the Jesus who was killed came back to life.

There is an undeniable fact that he can't work his way around anymore.

He has experienced being filled with the Holy Spirit.

He himself has received the grace of Jesus Christ so that he might be restored into fellowship with Jesus Christ.

His heart has been transformed by the grace and mercy that had been given to him by the Lord Jesus Christ.

And he has seen with his own eyes that Jesus came back from the dead.

And the man who Jesus healed is standing next to him.

He can't deny the reality of what has taken place.

And by an acknowledgement of the foundational truth, which he has seen, which he is testifying to, by the acknowledgement of the reality of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, by his standing on the foundation, his recognition of the cornerstone, then his life is aligned with the truth of Jesus.

His faith to him is not another mechanism of maintaining social cohesion.

His faith to him is not another ethical framework on par with the Sadducees and the rest of the council.

That is not what his faith is to him.

His faith to him is not one option among many, which he happened to choose, and he's hopeful that other people choose options which will amount to the same sort of social cohesion that he desires for himself.

His faith is standing on the foundation of reality.

It is standing on truth itself, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That is the difference.

That is why he's able to stand with such confidence, because he's standing on the truth itself.

Now they have no argument against this.

And so what they do is they call them, and in verses 18 to 20, it says, 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.

Says, you be the judge.

Whether it is right to do what you say or to do what God says, do we have such a category?

Do we have a category where we say it is sufficient that God requires it of me?

And because God requires it of me, I can't budge from it.

I can't budge from it.

In that movie, you guys gotta watch this movie, it's like three hours long and it's a lot of dreamy cinematography, and his movies are full of loud whispering.

So if you like that, then you'll like this movie.

And there's this moment where he's being interrogated by this German officer who's just trying to get him to, and they're like perfect opposites of each other.

You know, there's like the the officer who's climbed through the ranks and now he's in the position of power and authority, and then there's this guy who's a prisoner now.

And the officer is just telling him, You have to recant of this, you have to recant of this position.

And he says, There is a thing that God has put in me.

It's something like this.

There's a thing that God has put in me, and there's a voice.

And I find if I betray that voice, then I might as well be dead.

And so I can't betray this voice.

Do we believe that the truths of our faith are that fundamental?

You can think of it in ways like how how is this just something that we happen to believe, or is this the fundamental claim of reality?

Did Jesus really live?

Did he really die?

Did he really come back from the dead?

Does he really reign in heaven now as the king of the universe?

If so, then the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the only foundation for our beliefs that is sufficient for anything that we would argue.

But how silly does that sound?

How absurd to say that out loud.

How absurd to say that the re- you know, the reason that I think my life should be structured in this way, and that I think that we should, you know, honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy, or I think that adultery is wrong, or I think that I think that stealing and theft are wrong.

I think that it's it's you know, the the all the strange little idiosyncratic ethical claims that we make as Christians.

And we would say the reason that we make these claims is because Jesus was real.

He's reigning in heaven now.

He really lived here among us.

He was crucified, he was died, he was buried, and he rose from the dead.

And he is the truth, he's the way that I know the truth, he's the only way that the truth can be known.

What an absurd claim.

What an insane way to ground an argument, and yet Peter rushes into that spot.

And he says, We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.

Did it really happen?

Did it really happen?

Acts 4, 21 through 22.

And when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way to punish them because of the people.

Remember, they don't care about truth.

They only care about tactics.

They care about tactics.

So why can't they punish them?

Here's one way they could have punished them.

False.

Jesus didn't rise from the dead.

This man had a genetic condition that resolves after turning 40 years old.

You're proclaiming falsehoods in the temple, and so for that we condemn you.

Why do they not do that?

Why not say that?

Why not make a counterargument?

They don't care about truth.

They hate truth.

When truth shows up, they desire to destroy it.

It's annoying.

Truth is annoying.

When they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way to punish them because of the people.

Because of the people.

It's just a tactic.

If they had the people, they'll punish anyone.

If they have the people, there's nobody they won't punish.

For all were praising God for what had happened.

That was annoying.

You know?

For the man on whom this sign of healing was performed was more than 40 years old.

They just couldn't deny it.

They knew the man.

Everybody knew.

Everybody knew.

This is the first confrontation with these sort of ruling authorities.

And what happens is they get threatened.

And then you will see that this threatening, the next time that they get arrested, which is shortly after this, they'll be beaten.

And then after that, the next confrontation that we'll see them have with the ruling authorities, after they've been threatened and after they've been beaten, Stephen will be killed.

Stephen, the first martyr, will be killed for his proclamation of this very same thing.

This is the tactic.

And you know what happens to the church in the midst of all that opposition?

It's just growing like crazy.

It's growing like crazy because there is this unthinkable.

Because they because there's this witness being born by all by these masses that are seeing these men say these simple truths out loud, and they know that it could cost them their lives.

And they see that and think, I think this is true.

I think this is true.

And if they could say this simple truth out loud, perhaps I could say the simple truth out loud.

But that is the way that it goes.

It is a they threaten, they threaten, and then they beat, and then they kill.

You know what works?

Here's something that works: terrorism.

You know why people do that?

Because it works.

Because it stops people from talking.

Because it keeps them from saying a simple truth out loud.

What would it take for an entire culture to suddenly find themselves confused about what boys and girls are?

What type of effort would this take?

To where that's a costly thing to say.

That sort of simple truth out loud.

How fundamentally simple could this possibly be?

How fundamentally simple of a tree.

This is this is much less than saying I God became a man and rose from the dead.

What type of work?

To where we could say we could have peace by agreeing to this lie.

We'll have peace by agreeing to this lie.

It would take a lot of effort.

But you know what works?

Threatening works.

Beatings work, terrorizing works, all those things work.

But you know when they didn't work is when these men had faith that Jesus Christ was truly the Son of God.

That he was undeniably with them.

Now, the foundational claim of our liberal society, one of the foundations that our liberal society is built on, is that religious claims are for the private space.

And you are free to practice your religion in your own private piety.

This is what freedom of religion means in our culture.

That you are free to practice your faith in your own private piety, and everyone is free to practice their faith in their own private piety.

But the public space is for matters of objectivity, facts, and reason.

Now that sounds great.

You know, that's a nice white paper on what is enlightenment from Kant, which is where we get that.

That public-private division.

But we have a problem, don't we?

Because if we're going to talk in the world of objectivity and facts and reason, there is this tremendous fact that has broken its way into our reality.

You know what that fact is?

Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, he died and was buried, and then he rose from the dead.

That did not happen in our own private piety.

That happened in the world of facts, in the public realm, in the same reality that we all share.

And he is the truth.

He is the cornerstone.

And so there's this implicit pressure to not place Jesus into the realm of uh, into the public realm of proclamation, to that he cannot be the foundation on which a civil society is built, that Jesus could not be the foundation of an ethical principle, that if you're making a public argument, that you could not ground your public argument on this, Jesus says that's bad, so we can't do it.

But what other foundation do you have?

Do you have another name given among men by which we might be saved?

Do you have another ruler of the universe that you can appeal to?

Do you have another cornerstone in which you are able to base this on?

There isn't one.

There isn't one.

The one that we have is Jesus of Nazareth.

There's no other name given among men by which we might be saved.

So that means that just as Peter and John were required to offend the sensibilities of the Sadducees, we are required to offend the fundamental sensibility of our culture.

But this is normal.

This is ordinary.

When we see this happen in other cultures on missionary expeditions, we don't even bat an eye when we see this.

When people go to stop sex trafficking on the other side of the world, we say sex trafficking, that's terrible.

That's a bad thing.

The Christians there should stand up against that.

When we enact prostitution laws to make legal prostitution in our own state, we say, but don't you understand the oppression that these sex workers are under?

And it's a private contract between two people.

Do you see how silly we are when we analyze ourselves?

How enculturated we are into this public-private distinction?

And how Christ will not allow it, and how the apostles themselves demonstrate courage in the face of it that we ought to find inspiring.

Do you see it?

Do you see it together?

It matters so much that Jesus was a real man in our real space.

He really rose from the dead.

That is the central fact.

That is the cornerstone on which all else is based on.

It's horrifying.

How could we have a face like that?

Well, we would need to be like Peter.

We need to recognize in ourselves that what are we?

We are the type of people that have betrayed Jesus Christ as Lord.

And what is Jesus Christ?

He is the type of Lord who receives us in fullness of grace and mercy.

And that for all the people that we know and love, he has an unthinkable, an inexhaustible amount of grace to give to them.

And that when we proclaim him as Lord, we are proclaiming not merely our own personal salvation, but the salvation of the world.

Because there is no other name given among men by which we must be saved.

It is Jesus Christ, the cornerstone.

It's him who we praise.

Oh, may he give us the courage to hold fast to him.

May he break in to our own hearts with the reality that he broke into the world by his Holy Spirit.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless our church in the way that you blessed the apostles and that you blessed the church that was forming around them.

Lord, in this initial opposition, they gather together, what we'll see next week, and they gather together with one another for mutual encouragement and building up.

As they recognize the opposition that they face, they do not shrink from it.

They do not try and tactically undercut one another, but instead they they seek that they might have hearts that hold fast to you, and they pray that you would provide that boldness.

Lord, when we look back on our own lives and we consider our past and think, what do we have to draw on that would make us self-confident that we would hold fast to you in the future, we find that it is insufficient.

Lord, we cannot do this by our self-confidence.

We cannot do this by our strength of ego, our ability to stand up in rooms that are counter to us in order to proclaim the name of Jesus.

Lord, we require that you must work into our hearts the matter of fact of the resurrection, that we would trust in you.

Lord, that we would look to your word and we would see that it is one thing for a paralyzed man to be able to walk again, but that what you have accomplished in each of our lives is far greater than that because we were dead and now we're alive in you.

And that this work that you have done in our hearts, that we would have confidence, that you'd be able to do this in the hearts of others.

And that we would have hope for the world.

Because you came into it and you bore an incredible cost at the hands of sinners against yourself.

So you know how to comfort and encourage those who bear that same thing.

Lord, help us grow in confidence in this, not for our own sake, so that we can stand self-confidently in a mirror one day and think, yeah, I didn't fail.

Not for that sake, Lord, but for the sake of the praise of your name.

That you would be glorified, that the Lamb that was slain would receive the reward of his suffering.

We pray that that would be the case in our church and in our hearts for your glory.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.