and then we'll get to the reading of the text. So let's pray together. Our gracious God, we thank you and praise you. You are a delight to us, you are indeed our portion. And Father, we take special delight in the fact that in the last Psalm that we sung, we are reminded that we are among the nations who have been engrafted in. Father, we thank you for this and praise you. And as we look at the text this morning, Lord, we learn why that is the case. So Father, we ask that you'll give us wisdom and we pray that you'll guide our thoughts. But Lord, we pray that you'll not only do these things in our head, but we pray that you'll treat us as whole people and that you'll cause our hearts to love you, our wills to seek your will, our whole selves to praise you. So we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Well, today we're gonna bring, in some sense, we're gonna bring what I'm looking at as the first section of Acts to a close. And I'm looking at Acts in terms of that schemata we're given in 1.8 where we find that it's a gospel that's gonna go to Jerusalem and parts of Judea, we've already seen that, and then it's gonna move to Samaria and then the ends of the earth. And so when we get to chapter six, we begin to realize this is a move, that is, we're being shown why it is that the gospel moves outside of Jerusalem and Judea and how it moves into Samaria and why. But today we're gonna close out a section. We're gonna close out that first section that we've been looking at. And I said to you early on that authority is a really important part of this section. This text has really the question of authority behind it. And authority is an important thing. You know that as well as I do. Authority stands behind or frames the fifth commandment. And so it's part of the commandments of God. And the commandment applies to not just parents and children, but it applies to all areas of life. Wherever there are superiors and inferiors, there is authority, whether that be in the government or employment or in the home. But that is also true of the church. Now, there's a bit of a difference when we think about the church, and it's an important difference. There is authority in the church, but that authority is not magisterial. In other words, magisterial authority has the power of the magistrate behind it. This isn't a room where I can order your arrest, for instance. You're thankful for that. But it is a room where I exercise ministerial authority. And the elders exercise that kind of authority. Now the question is, what is that kind of authority? Well, it's an authority of persuasion. And you see a wonderful example of that in the book of Hebrews. Hebrews is really dealing with the same kind of situation that we're dealing with here in chapters three and four of Acts. And the question is, how does the author deal with the question of authority? People were thinking about, threatening to, and even leaving the church of Jesus Christ and going back to Judaism. And so how does the minister seek to persuade them to either stay or come back? And it's a beautiful argument. What he does is he opens up in chapter one the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then it's in the end of the book that you begin to see what he's actually doing with authority, at least authority ecclesiastically construed. He tells them in 13.7, he says, remember your past leaders. And then he says in verse 17, remember and obey those who rule over you today. But the conceptual center of that chapter is about Jesus, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And there we realize, oh, I get it. It's not about leaders or any one leader. It's about leaders whose lives, whose examples, whose teaching conform to the Jesus who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Jesus that was introduced in chapter one. That's where authority rests. That's the ministerial authority. That's the persuasive authority. And so ministers are to be persuasive, at least persuasive in Jesus Christ. Nonetheless, that is, Authority. Now, we have a question of authority. And the question of authority that is here is a very simple one. How is it that the disciples of Jesus Christ could simply cast off the authority of the early church? The heads of the early church were telling them one thing, and they were saying, that's not what we're going to do. It's a question of authority. And how is it that they could so easily reject ecclesiastical authority? So let's turn to our text and let's finish up this section. It's in chapter five. I'll start in verse 27, and then I'll read through the end of the chapter. Listen to God's word. This is his infallible, inerrant, and authoritative word. 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 are, yet here you have rather 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 men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him." When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them. But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, held in honor by all the people, stood up and gave orders to put the men outside for a little while. And he said to them, men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. For before these days, Thutis rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about 400, joined him. He was killed. and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him, Judas, the Galilean, rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered. So in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone. For if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail. But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God. So they took his advice. And when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. Then they left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. And every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus. Again, this text is something of a conclusion to what we've been thinking about. It's really answering the question, how should we distinguish between Judaism on one hand and the church on the other? In other words, let me put it to you this way. When going through this text, we shouldn't even be thinking, at least not until chapter five, about the church. We should be thinking that this is Judaism, and Judaism has received its Savior. And so naturally, Peter and John are going to the temple in chapter three. They're going to the temple because their Savior, the Jewish Savior, has come. And so there's a sense in which the church, or the church underage, or Judaism, whatever we want to call it, should have recognized and received her Christ. But they didn't. And when we get to chapters three and four, we realize that this all comes to a head through the simple healing of a lame man. And that creates a stir. Why is that? It's because Peter and John are claiming to do what they did, that is heal the lame man, in the name and by the authority of the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, who is the Christ. And that's who Jesus is. He's the Messiah. The one, they said, who was foretold by the prophets. Now it's natural enough, isn't it, for them to say this is the Messiah, this is the one that we embrace, the one God has promised, but that creates division. That creates a division in chapters three and four and we find that the Jews line up on one side and the disciples line up on the other. And the interesting thing about it is this. We pointed out along the way that the two sides could be divided up in terms of the ecclesiastical group, those who were leading the church, those scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Sanhedrin, all of the council, and on the other side, those who were not scribes, those who were common lay people, the idios. It was the ecclesiastics against the idiots. And the ecclesiastics, the leaders of the church, did not recognize their own Messiah. But it was the idiots, the common people, the lay people, who recognized that Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah. And the question that chapters three and four dealt with was a simple one. Who is right? Who is right? Now that raises the question, how do the ecclesiastics who have rejected Christ as Messiah, how do they respond? And this text deals with their response to the Messiah. And I want us to look at that response. And it's kind of an interesting one when you think about it. We're treated to an emotional response. Secondly, we're treated to a cognitive response. Thirdly, we're treated to a behavioral response, and fourthly, I wanna just take a glimpse at the church's response. So we have, on the part of the ecclesiastics, we have the emotional response, the cognitive response, the behavioral response, and then we're gonna take a peek at the church and her response. Now, let's first of all look at the emotional response. Here we find the Ecclesiastics and they hear the accusation. And the accusation is that you killed our Messiah. You killed Jesus Christ. And the interesting thing is, they go on to say, we must obey God in this rather than men. I want you to just think about that for a minute. They don't say, we must believe God rather than you, the leaders of the church. They reduce them to mere men at this point. And then they say, God has granted you, God will give you repentance if you just repent. In other words, you, the church, or at least you who thought you were the church, now need to turn in repentance toward God. And they were enraged. They had this visceral response. It came from deep within. In fact, the ESV translates it, they were enraged. Euphemistically, it's they were cut to the quick, they were cut to the heart, but literally, the word is they were sawn in two. Now that's saying something, isn't it? They were sawn in two, that's how they felt. And you know, when you do a comparison, you go back to chapter two in verse 37, it's a different word, but when the Jews there heard the preaching of Peter, they were cut to the heart as well, but they were cut to the heart leading to repentance. These ecclesiastics were not cut to the heart in such a way that led to repentance. One scholar says, and I like this, and I think we ought to take this to heart, he says, preaching that does not saw people in two doesn't bring them to faith. Here it didn't lead to faith, it led to anger. You know, that's something I want to pause on this morning. And maybe you recognize that, maybe you recognize it in yourself, or maybe you recognize it in somebody else. You know, it's one of those interesting things about preaching that I've always been fascinated by. And after you've preached a number of years, you realize that people have a tendency to have roast pastor over the lunch table at times. Hopefully not all the time, but there are times. And oftentimes, that's not necessarily something that the pastor has said other than what is in the scriptures. At least, I hope that's not the case. In other words, there can be an anger about what's said because of the doctrine itself, because of the belief that is emerging from the scriptures. But that's not just the church. In fact, it happens more often outside in the world. You go out into the world and you just happen to drop the name of Christ into the conversation and you realize how angry people can be over the name of Jesus Christ. And yet it is in the church, isn't it? I'll never forget years ago, this was in a church I served, it was a congregational church. I decided that I was coming to reformed convictions more and more, and part of that has to do with your view of the law and your understanding of the law in relation to how it's a guide to the Christian. And so I decided that I was gonna have a series on the law. And so I started, and as I started through and I got one commandment after another, I had this man come up to me after church one Sunday and he said, you need to stop this. And I said, Stop what? And he said, you need to stop preaching through the Ten Commandments. It's legalistic, it's bringing us back under the law, it's doing all these horrible things to us, and you need to stop. And I said to him, I said, you know, the interesting thing is, after every message, at the end of every message, I always talk about how Christ fulfilled the law, and I talk about how this is ours to keep as it reflects and embodies Christ, and wherever we fail, there's forgiveness for our sins. How is that leading us back under the law? And he didn't say anything, and what he did do was he got a couple people to say the same thing to me, and then it was about six months later it came out that he was having an affair. And I realized at that moment in time, right, I realized that's why he wanted me to stop preaching through the law, because we were going to eventually get to the command about adultery. You know, the word of God sometimes makes us angry because there are sins in our lives that we simply don't want to give up. And that's staggering and scary. And I'll tell you why it's scary. It's scary because if you're a believer in Christ, you don't need to fear the law because Christ has come under the curse of the law for you. And having come under the curse of the law, all you need to do is go to him in repentance, and you'll find that you have an advocate who cleanses your conscience. But I'll tell you what, when you stand apart from Christ himself, then the law looms large over you, and you realize, and you realize, whether it's true or not, right, whether, I'm not commenting on your spiritual state, but I'm commenting on your position in the moment, you realize you're facing the law on your own, at least that's the way it feels, and you see it crushing you, and it will. And that's the whole point of our need for the gospel. that it crushed Christ as our mediator instead so that we can have forgiveness in him. Now can you imagine, can you imagine being the leadership of the church under age? Can you imagine having studied the scriptures your entire life? And you get to the point where you actually reject the Messiah. I mean, think about it, they knew, the scribes knew everything about him. Herod summoned the scribes, he said, where's the Messiah to be born? Oh, well, that's easy, Micah 5 tells us that. And here they are, they reject him. Think about the crushing weight that they were under. And that crushing weight, it manifests itself, it manifests itself in their emotional response. They're holding down the truth in unrighteousness. But I'll tell you what, an emotional response is always accompanied by a cognitive excuse. And that's what we see next. We see this cognitive response. It's at this point that the collective is led by the individual. Gamaliel stands up. I want you to notice how he's introduced. He is a teacher of the law. He's a council member. He's a Pharisee. He is a man held in honor by all. He is a man of standing in Israel, a man of ecclesiastical standing in Israel. What is he? Well, I'll tell you what he's not. He is not an idios. He is not an uneducated, common person like the disciples. He is an ecclesiastic. And so he says, men, I have a word, put these men outside. So they put them outside and I want you to remember, I wanna just pause, I want you to remember, this is the church, or at least this is the church as understood. He says, I wanna tell you something. You men need to take caution. You need to be self-reflective. You cannot jump to conclusions at this point. You need to remember your history. You know, this almost, I hate to say it, but this almost seems like a good speech, doesn't it? You need to take the long approach. We've watched this play out before. You remember Thutis. Thutis came along. He had a following. And he perished. You remember Judas. Judas came along, he had a following, he perished. Men, what do you think is going to happen to this man? You know, you almost wonder, you almost wonder if he might have said something like this. Men, isn't he dead? These men are following a dead man. And his followers will suffer the same fate that he suffered. Now, I want you to think about this. He's not, I don't think, and there are some who do, there are some who think that what he's saying is we need to take a balanced approach. We need to be reasonable about this. This may well be our Messiah. And if he is, we'll find that out. I don't think it's a balanced approach. In fact, I think there's something here in the text that actually is really interesting, if not striking, and a lot frightening. What's his advice? You see his advice? His advice is keep away from these men, verse 38. Keep away from these men. Now, you say, well, okay, I don't see it. Let me read that word to you in the Greek. He tells them to be apostate. Now, what's the word apostate? Now, we've heard it before, it's a word we know. An apostate is somebody who stands apart from someone or something else. An apostasy is a bad thing because an apostate is someone who stands apart from the church. They've rejected the church. They've rejected the teaching of the gospel. And this is what he's telling them, and I can't help but think to myself, even though this may not have been one of those technical words that developed at the time, at least for the life of the church, it was certainly understood then, what he was saying, stand apart from these men. apostatized from these men. Now, you gotta understand that word is not just an ecclesiastical word, it is a political word. We learn in extra-biblical literature that that word is used for apostasy when it comes to rulers who are negligent and so forth. So I get it, I'm not arguing that what he's saying is become apostates religiously, but what I am saying is this, the Holy Spirit inspired this text and when we read it like this, we should understand that what he's saying is stand apart from the faith. Now, here we are. Gamaliel is telling the church leaders to be apostates regarding the Messiah that they were to embrace by faith. And he persuaded them. Now, let me pause just a minute. One of the things that I find so striking is when you look at this text, you go back to chapter four, for instance, at the end of the section on the lame man, and there are the idios, they pray. And one of the things that we learned was God sets his imprimatur upon the idios. He shakes the building where they are in, and then they pray. They have two prayer requests, one for boldness and one for signs and wonders, and God answers both of them. God answers both of those things. And so what we learn is that God is with the idios. He's with the common people, the non-scribes, the non-ecclesiastics. He's answered their prayer, but I'll tell you something else. If you go back up to that section that we just read, the one that we looked at last week, 27 through 32, this is what Peter says. And Peter doesn't say it just for himself. He says it for all the apostles. He says this. He says, we're brothers, listen to me. He doesn't say that. They're not brothers. He says, listen to me, men. Men of Israel, listen to me. We're witnesses of these things, and then this, and so too is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a witness to the, how do we know? Because God gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey him. So there's not only an internal testimony of the Holy Spirit to this witness, but there's an outward conformity to Christ himself that bears witness that these things are true. In other words, God is with the idios. And we know that they are, that is the ecclesiastics are apostatizing from the Messiah himself. Now, that's the cognitive rationale. What about the behavior? The behavior. It's interesting, when you get to the end of this passage, it says in verse 39, they took his advice, and verse 40 leads right into the behavior. They called the apostles back in and they beat them. They called them back in, they beat them. I think we have a tendency to read over these things very lightly in the text. Oh, they were beaten. You know, the 40 lashes minus one could kill people. It was that brutal. I'm not saying that we need to dredge up imagery in order to kind of shock ourselves, but what I am saying is this, it would be good for us to just pause in a text like this one and just reflect on the fact that these men suffered. because they recognized Jesus was the Messiah. And then they charged him. Do not speak in this name. Same charge they gave them before. Do not charge in this name. Do not speak rather in this name. Do not speak in the name of the Messiah. And I want you to know something that settled the matter. The ecclesiastics had chosen wrongly, and they were no longer the church. they ceased to be, that is, the church became, or the church now was recognized to be the idios. How do I know that? If you go to chapter 5, here's the story of Ananias and Sapphira, and it looks an awful lot like the story of Achan. In fact, at the very end of the story, a story that looks like Achan, the people going into the promised land, and here's this new manifestation of the church. And at the very end of the story, it's striking because it says this, this is the first occurrence in the book of Acts, verse 11, and great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things. In other words, here's the pronouncement, this is the church and not that. The idios is the church, not the ecclesiastics, not Judaism. And if you're an ecclesiastic, if you're a scribe, a Pharisee, It's now for you to join the idios. And that's exactly what we saw in Barnabas at the end of chapter four. Barnabas, remember, a Levite. What's he do? He joins the idios. He joins the church. Now, what's the church's response in all this? There are two basic things here that I want you to know. Two basic things. I want you to know, and I've been saying this, these two have special application to Pentecost. But, and I've said that enough that you get it, but what I want you to also know is that there's carryover. That is, the things that apply specifically in specific ways to Pentecost can also have general applications to us, and we find that here. I want you to recognize that these people, these apostles, these disciples rejoiced that they had been beaten. Why? They rejoiced because they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name, for the name of Jesus Christ, their Messiah, our Messiah. They rejoiced. You know, that's a lesson that we need to learn as a church today. I think that I'm not eager to suffer any more than anyone else. But when we suffer, it's telling whether we lean into the Savior or flee from the Savior. You see, that's the difference, isn't it? The difference is when difficulties come, the question is, am I going to lean in to my God who's revealed himself in Jesus Christ, or am I going to take flight? I want you to know something. If you lean into him, you will be conformed to him. You'll look more like him. And you see, that's what he wants. I mean, you look at the New Testament, it tells you that all over the place. Acts chapter 14, Paul says to the churches, it's through many tribulations that we will enter the kingdom of heaven. But he also says this, he also says, he says, you've been given the Holy Spirit, the spirit of adoption to cry out, Abba, Father, when you face this kind of suffering and persecution and difficulty and toil. He's not left us as orphans. He loves us so much that we have this Holy Spirit within us who prays and we cry out through him, Father. And then Paul says in Philippians 1.29, he says, been given to you to believe. And we say, oh, that's wonderful. We're Calvinists. It's been given to us to believe. And then he goes on to say, it's been given to you to believe and to suffer for His name's sake. And at that point we say, what? And I'll tell you, let me tell you something. It has been given to us to suffer for his name because he wants us to be conformed to his image. You say, yes, but wait a minute, doesn't the New Testament talk about exaltation? Yeah, Peter says, humble yourselves now under the mighty hand of God and he will exalt you at the proper time. It's for you to walk in the humiliation of the Savior here and now and leave the exaltation to Christ. You know, one of the things that was true of them, and that is that they counted suffering, they counted it as joyful because it showed them to be worthy of the name. I want you brothers and sisters to hear me. If we can't take the little annoyances of life, then how will we suffer for the name? So that's first. Secondly, they did not listen to men. And that's what I want you to see. That's what the ecclesiastics were reduced to, men. In fact, he says this, he says, we must obey God rather than men. In other words, there's this recognition that you are ecclesiastics, but you are not the church. God has put his special imprimatur on us. And what does God do? God raises up elders and deacons out of the church. And we're gonna see, one of the beautiful things that you're gonna see is sort of the networking of ideas that just emerges in the book of Acts. For instance, it's the apostles who are leading the church right now, You know, there are only 12 apostles. And they're not gonna live forever, they're gonna die. And so what you find is you find elders are being raised up in the church and at the Jerusalem Council where there are apostles who could make decisions for the church and make them wonderfully, it says that there were apostles and elders. Why? Because the Lord was preparing his church for the time when his apostles would be no more. and there would only be elders in the church. And so there's this wonderful network of ideas that help us to move through this early Pentecost stage of the church. But right now, we see it very clearly, that is, that the idios is the church, and they recognize the church for what it is, men who need to repent because they're outside of the kingdom. The church listens to God, not men. But there is repentance held out to Israel. There's repentance held out to all. But it was the idios who were the church. And that being the case, they did not cease preaching and teaching that the Messiah is Jesus. And that's the conclusion of the section. Verse 42, and every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that Christ, the Christ, is Jesus. And then chapter six comes along and chapter six says, now let's just prepare you for the next move of 1.8. Let's see how they're gonna move out of Jerusalem and Judea and be scattered throughout Samaria. That's the next move. But I'll tell you what the church's resolve is in this move, and the next move, and the move to the ends of the earth. I'll tell you what the church's resolve is. It's very clear, it's very simple. Jesus is the Christ. And that ought to be our resolve. That Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. The only name under heaven where men can find salvation. That's our resolve. Gracious God, thank you for this day and for the blessing of life in Christ and for the reminder of your word that you are God and you've expressed your rule and reign through the Lord Jesus. Thank you for that. We praise you for it. And we offer this prayer in his name. Amen.