"You Can't Oppose God" Sermon: Acts 5:12-42

“You Can’t Oppose God”
[Acts 5:12-42]
August 30. 2009 Second Reformed Church

Peter and the other apostles regularly did signs and wonders among the people. The people brought their sick and the demon-possessed, and all of them were healed – they were even bringing the sick in from the neighboring towns – not just Jerusalem. The people held the apostles in high esteem. And multitudes of men and women came to faith in the Lord.

After the violent and terrifying deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, everything seemed to go well for the infant Church. Yet we know that did not and could not continue: Jesus promised that the Gospel will flourish in persecution.

Before we move on to the persecution in this morning’s Scripture, let us remember two things: first, the fact that the apostles did signs and wonders tells us nothing about the existence of signs and wonders today, because there are no more apostles. By definition in the Scripture, an apostle must have sat under Jesus’ teaching while He was alive on earth, and an apostle must have been an eyewitness to the ministry of Jesus, in His Flesh, on earth, after His Resurrection.

But even more importantly, let us understand that the miracles did not happen separate from the preaching of the Word of God. How do we know that? Paul wrote, “But how are they to call on him whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’ But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?’ So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:14-17, ESV).

Miracles, alone, by themselves, cannot convince anyone of the Gospel; they cannot convey faith to a person. No one ever believed simply by seeing or experiencing a miracle. The only way the Scripture acknowledges for the impartation of faith – for a person coming to faith – to belief – is through the preaching of the Word of God. As Jesus reported of the rich man and Lazarus: “‘And [the rich man] said, “Then I beg you, father, to send [Lazarus] to my father’s house – for I have five brothers – so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.” But Abraham said, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.” And he said, “No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” He said to him, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead”’” (Luke 16:27-31, ESV).

We need to be on guard against those who would say nice things and moral things and claim to be able to heal, but do not preach the Word of God. The Word of God is primary and central in Christianity, and there is no conversion – no faith or belief – without the preaching of the Word. Since a multitude of men and women believed in the Lord, we know that the preaching of the Word of God accompanied the miracles that God did through Peter and the apostles.

Now, what should our response be if we find out that there are multitudes of people coming to Christ – believing faithfully in Him – at a neighbor church? We should rejoice, shouldn’t we? Shouldn’t we give thanks to God for His Mercy and His Work of Salvation in the lives of all those people?

Luke tells us that the high priest and the Sadducees were jealous of the apostles. It was not just a matter of people believing in Jesus and His Physical Resurrection. It was not just believing in Him as the Savior. They weren’t just angry about theology any more. They were jealous because the people were holding the apostles in high esteem. The people were flooding to the apostles for healing and to be taught. The high priest and the Sadducees were jealous of the apostles – the apostles were getting all the attention and they were better liked by the people than the high priest and the Sadducees! Can you imagine?

I’m sure we can – we probably all know people who, above everything else – even above the truth – there are people – pastors, too – who want to be liked and to be popular. There are some churches that are filled with people and money – not because the pastor is preaching the Word of God – but because he has done everything he can to be popular and well-liked by the people.

The high priest and the Sadducees were like that, and they had the authority to imprison people, so they threw the twelve apostles in jail. But during the night, an angel came to them, unlocked the door, unlocked their chains, set them free, told them to go to the temple and preach the Word of Life – the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And then, apparently, the angel locked the prison door and left. The apostles went to the temple and began to preach again.

In the morning, the high priest called the whole counsel and senate together – not merely the Sanhedrin – which would be the high priest and the serving elders – but the whole counsel – something like our Great Consistory – all of the elders (and deacons) who have ever served on the Consistory – it was a much larger group. They gathered together to see how the apostles had fared with the night in prison – to see if they might have decided against preaching in the Name of Jesus now. So the officers went to the prison, unlocked the door, and no one was inside. “Now when the captain of the temple and the chief priests heard these words, they were greatly perplexed about them, wondering what this would come to” (Acts 5:24, ESV).

“Where’d they go? I know we put twelve men in here last night, but now they’re gone!”

Can you hear God laughing? That’s not sacrilegious to say, remember what David wrote about Jesus’ Coming, “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.’ He who sits in heaven laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, ‘As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill’” (Psalm 2:1-6, ESV).

What the high priest and the Sadducees didn’t understand is that though we have the freedom to sin against God – to do what He has forbidden or to not do what He has commanded – ultimately, it is impossible to oppose God. And that is good news for us – God cannot fail. God’s Plan will come to pass, exactly as He planed it from the foundation of the world. Jesus has won! God cannot lose. Even when the high priest and the Sadducees are throwing us in prison, God’s Will for us will not fail to occur. Everything God intends will happen. You and I will be received into Paradise with our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Well, the high priest and the Sadducees did not find the apostles’ disappearance funny, and they found it even less funny when they received word that they were back in the temple, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ So, they marched to the temple, and because they were afraid of the people – who held the apostles in high esteem – they quietly took the apostles aside and set them before the council.

They were angry: “We forbid you to preach in That Man’s Name. And here you are – again – filling Jerusalem with teaching about That Man. You are trying to put That Man’s Blood upon us.” Isn’t it interesting – they were so mad that they couldn’t even say Jesus’ Name – it was always “That Man.”

Peter responded as we have seen him respond before – the way that we ought to respond when we are asked what we believe about this Jesus – “That Man” – Peter told them that they could not obey the council – just as we cannot obey any authority that commands us to sin, “We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus” – YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, raised Jesus from the dead – in His Physical Body – “whom you killed by hanging him on a tree” – you are guilty of His Blood, as are all those who deny Him throughout their lives – and you killed Him through the cursed method of hanging on a tree. But God – “God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins” – God restored the Son – now as the God-Man – to His Eternal Throne – at the Right Hand – which we remember means that Jesus has all of the authority of God – He is Leader – in the sense of being the First One, the Originator, the Prince of the Faith – and Savior – the One God Who would Incarnate, Live, Die, and Rise, able to forgive the sins of all those who believe in Him and credit each one of them with His Righteousness, so that they will be eternally saved from the Wrath of God and live eternally with Him.

And, Peter continued, they were eyewitnesses to all that Jesus said and did – twelve eyewitnesses – far more than the courts required as proof. And God the Holy Spirit is also a witness to all these things – God witnesses to Himself and His Work – and the Holy Spirit inhabits all those who believe in Jesus.

When we consider all those things that might be done against God – ways that someone might try to oppose Him – there is no greater way than to try to stop God from providing the Savior that He Promised – especially through murdering the Savior – and murdering Him through crucifixion. Paul wrote, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us – for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’ –“ (Galatians 3:13, ESV). And Peter wrote, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to Righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (I Peter 2:24, ESV).

Christ is risen! The greatest attempt by the devil and those who follow him failed by doing exactly what had to happen for Jesus to save us. If “the most spectacular sin” did not defeat God but completed His Plan for Jesus, how can we doubt that God will bring to pass everything that He plans? Jesus gives us hope in confidence as He said to Simon, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18, ESV). Jesus promised that Hell itself cannot not prevail again Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matthew 16:16, ESV).

That does not mean that bad things won’t happen – they do – you know they do. We get sick. We fall. We lose money. We die. We don’t get the job we wanted. Our children don’t do what we would like them to do. Our bodies betray us. Our friends betray us. We are uncomfortable. The Church suffers against the evil in the world and in the Church. If our hope was in this world, I couldn’t say how we should go on, but our hope is not in this world, but in Jesus Christ and His Coming Kingdom. If our eyes are on the Promises of Jesus, we can cope with this world, we can even enjoy this world, despite its fallenness. God’s Plan is sure – from before the Creation, God’s Plan stood and God has won and will return triumphant to claim all that is His.

I hope you see and believe what good news that is for we who believe. Once we recognize that everything is about Jesus and Jesus is victorious – there is sure hope for us. If we keep our eyes on that, we need not worry about the noise of Satan and his followers.

We can imagine the high priest and the Sadducees screaming and tearing their robes as Peter spoke – they were so enraged with what he said, they were prepared to kill all of the apostles. But God had placed the Pharisee, Gamaliel, in their midst – we will see him again as the rabbi of a man by the name of Saul of Tarsus, and Gamaliel said, “Wait a minute – let’s not kill them out of hand – let’s think about this.”

Gamaliel brought two historical examples to their memory: There was a man named Theudas, who had about four hundred followers. Theudas claimed to be a magician and said that he could dry up the Jordan River. But after Theudas was killed, his followers disbursed. The same thing happened with Judas the Galilean who, with his followers, opposed the taxing by the Romans at the time of the census. Once he died, his followers disbursed. There had been rebel-rousers in the past, but once they died, their cause went with them. Therefore, Gamaliel gave the advice to let the apostles go, based on this observation: if a thing is not of God, it will pass. But, if a thing is of God, you will not be able to overthrow it – you don’t want to try to oppose God – and, in the end, you can’t oppose God. God is the Almighty, and God will do what God wants, and God’s Plan will come to pass, exactly as He planned it.

It is foolish and futile to try to oppose God. We will see, Lord willing, as Jesus confronted Paul, He said, “‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads’” (Acts 26:14b, ESV). A goad was a sharp stick used to keep oxen moving. If they stopped, or kicked back against it in anger, they would be pierced – stuck – by the sharp stick. How much was God and His Plan hurt by Saul kicking against a sharp stick? So when someone tries to oppose God, he only hurts himself. You and I only hurt ourselves when we sin, right? Maybe sin feels good for the moment, but it really only hurts us. God will accomplish what God intends. If something is not from God, it will pass away – it will die out. But if something is from God, no one can stop it. No one can oppose God.

Gamaliel’s only mistake was to passively wait. Gamaliel should have known that God expects us to test the things that come before us to see if they come from God or not. Paul approvingly said of the Berean Christians, “Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11, ESV).

And we ought not merely see if what is taught and if what comes before us is true, but we ought to act on it. Whatever we find in the Scripture that God says we are to do – we are to do it. And all those things that God says we are not to do – we are not to do them. In response – in love and thanksgiving for our salvation – we ought to act on what we find in God’s Word.

Instead of killing the apostles, they beat them, as though they were guilty of something, and then threatened them again not to speak in the Name of Jesus, and then they let them go.

How did they leave? Did they slink off and nurse their wounds and get depressed about the way they were being treated as Christians? No, “[t]hey left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name [of Jesus].”

Paul similarly responded, “From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17, ESV). And remember what we saw in Peter’s letters: “But rejoice insofar as you share in Christ suffering, that you may rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (I Peter 4:13, ESV). And Jesus said, “‘If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: “A servant is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you’” (John 15:18-20b, ESV).

If we suffer for the cause of Christ – for His Name – we prove ourselves to be His – and in that we should rejoice. That is what the apostles were doing as they left their beating.

And they continued to follow God by teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ – the Savior – in the temple and from house to house – day after day – every day. The apostles obeyed God and not the chief priest and the Sadducees. They continue to preach and teach Jesus Christ as the Only Savior – the Only Hope for humanity.

Let us remember that the suffering we endure – our trials and tribulations – these are only temporary. Let us live in the sure hope of Christ’s Victory and Mighty Power. Let us be sure that we understand what is of God and act on it. Let us trust in the Almighty God – that He will bring to pass everything exactly as He has planned and promised. That is our hope.

Let us pray:
Almighty God, we thank You that You never fail us. We thank You that we can trust You and place our sure hope in You and Your Plan. Strengthen our faith and belief. Instruct us in Your Word. Lead us confidently forward to do all that You have called us to do and to keep from all those things which You have forbidden. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.