Turn for a scripture reading to the Book of the Acts, Acts of the Apostles. We turn to chapter 4 and read the portion of Scripture that is also our text, verses 13 through 22. Acts 4, begin to read at verse 13. Just to give the context, the apostles have been in Jerusalem after a season of great blessing, the Lord having extended the church from 120 members to 3,000 on the day of Pentecost. The Apostles John and Peter were in Jerusalem going to the Temple Square at the hour of prayer and there met a man who was lame. A miracle was done in that he was declared in the name of Jesus to rise and a great star arose. gathered large crowd and Peter preached the gospel. But the leadership in Jerusalem was not pleased with the name of Jesus causing a stir once more in the city of Jerusalem. And so they arrested John and Peter, put them in prison. The next day there was an account to be given. Peter used the opportunity, as we saw last week, to preach about the Lord Jesus. And it's after Peter had given his defense and declared his witness that we pick up the reading in chapter 4, verse 13. And that key verse just precedes it, that there is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled, and they realized that they had been with Jesus, and seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it. But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves, saying, What shall we do to these men? for indeed that a notable miracle has been done through them is evident to all who dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But so that it spreads no further among the people, let us severely threaten them that from now on they speak to no man in this name. So they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said to them, Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way of punishing them. because of the people, since they all glorified God for what had been done. For the man was over forty years old on whom this miracle of healing had been performed. Thus far the reading of Scripture. May the Lord bless the reading of His word to our hearts. The Psalter we just sang, Congregation from Psalm 2, asks the question, why do the heathen rage and the kings and counsellors take counsel against the Lord and against his Anointed? The only answer to that must be the hatred against God and his Anointed Son, Jesus Christ. We see an example of that in the early history of the New Testament Church, as the apostles are worshipping in the temple and declaring the name of Jesus as they were commanded by the Lord to go into all the world and preach the gospel, beginning at Jerusalem, also in Judea, and in Samaria, and in all the parts of the earth. And so, in accordance with that, they were doing that, obeying the Lord. We saw last week that they confessed the name of Jesus as Savior to all. The Lord Jesus has come into the world, and there is no other name by whom we must be saved. There is only one name of the Savior, and that is the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Peter was doing that. He was prepared to preach the gospel wherever the Lord sent him. But it got them into trouble. in Jerusalem, in the very city of the king. He came to his own, his own received him not. They crucified the Lord Jesus. But even after Jesus had died in Jerusalem, and had risen and had ascended into heaven, and so you might say there was no visible presence of Jesus anymore, Jerusalem was not done with Jesus, because the Spirit of Jesus was poured out upon His disciples. the doctrines of Jesus' Gospel was in the minds of his disciples. The love of the Lord Jesus was in the heart of his disciples, and they could not keep quiet. They had to declare his work. Today we will see that the Church does not only confess Christ in the face of persecution as the only Savior, but they also in this time obey Him as Lord above all. So here we see that a problem has risen as a result of Peter's faithful testimony of the Lord Jesus as Savior to all, a problem has risen because as he has preached the gospel, there has been an arrest. He has given his witness to the Sanhedrin, and now we wonder, what is the Sanhedrin going to do? The problem can certainly arise when we faithfully confess Christ. And we ought, in a sense, to expect that. Didn't Jesus prepare us for that? If they have hated me, they will hate you. The Lord Jesus has prepared us that we will expect opposition when we confess him as Savior. But when you run into problems, when you run into opposition, when you are arrested or when you are forbidden to continue to witness to Christ in your place of employment or in your school or in your neighborhood, what do you do? Do you submit to the world? Do you submit to the hatred? Do you stop confessing Christ? Or will you obey Christ as Lord above all? As we look at this passage in front of us, we see three things. I want to divide it in accordance with these three points. We see a challenging witness. Secondly, we see an authoritarian opposition and thirdly, a faithful disobedience. Now, these points are not in your bulletin. I didn't give them, but if you want to just jot them down, I'll repeat them. A challenging witness, an authoritarian opposition, and thirdly, a faithful disobedience. That last point sounds a little bit contradictory, but you'll understand what I mean when we get to it. First of all, we see here a challenging witness. Peter has just spoken and the Sanhedrin reflects and reacts to the testimony of Peter which is climaxed in this well-known verse, Acts 4 verse 12, there is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved. The proclamation of the exclusive Saviorhood of Jesus. There is no other Savior. This is the aspect of the Christian religion that today in the multicultural culture in which we live and the relativistic philosophies of religion that are so so well-known today, it's certainly the offensive doctrine of the Christian faith, isn't it? That Jesus is the only Savior, the only one by whom we must be saved. And Peter declared that with no doubt in his mind or heart and with no hesitation in his voice. Notice how they react. Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. So, first of all, we see that there was a challenge given to the Sanhedrin. And earthly authorities and civil governments are challenged by a bold and consistent Christian witness. They have to take notice of it. They have to sit up and say, now we at least do respect them for the way in which they're speaking. They are consistent with their faith. The disciples certainly proclaimed the gospel that way. Earlier, the same Sanhedrin, the same gathering of elders and scribes and Pharisees and priests and high priests, the same gathering had heard Jesus. And he, according to what the Apostle Paul says later, gave a faithful witness. Yes, he proclaimed, as we can see in John 18, the truth concerning the gospel, and that he is a king, but that his kingdom is not of this world. He proclaimed faithfully the declaration of all the truth concerning himself as the Son of God and the Savior of the world. And the Sanhedrin also had to take note of his witness. But now they hear from the disciples of Jesus. And they must have been aware that some of these disciples were rather timid before. Peter had even denied the Lord. But now this is impressive, the way they are speaking now. They are speaking with boldness. they are declaring the truth concerning Jesus. The apostles were preaching in a way that was not only powerful in its manner, but it was also convicting and persuasive in its message. It was the message of the suffering, the exaltation, the glory of Jesus Christ. Not only was there a boldness in manner, there was a convicting message, there was also a miracle that confirmed what they had seen. The man, verse 11, who had been healed was standing next to them. It was a good tactic, if you're going into a court case, to take Exhibition 1 with you. You know, right next to them there is the irrefutable evidence that this miracle that had been taken place in the name of Jesus was an effective miracle. The man was not sitting. He was not lying. He was standing. He was a lame man and he was standing in the courthouse right next to them as they were giving their witness. He didn't say a word. But his very standing was a witness of the power of the name of Jesus. Because it was in the name of Jesus that he was called to stand up. And the last verse of our Scripture reading tells us that By the way, it was more than 40 years that this man was lame. Very impressive miracle. What impressed them was not only the boldness of these men, the content of their message and the confirmation of the authority of the name of Jesus, but also that they did all these things as uneducated men. Now, we do value seminary training for ministers of the Word. But let it be encouraging to each one of you. You don't have to go to seminary to be a witness of Jesus. These men, they came from Galilee, and they probably still spoke in their Galilean accent. And that would cut through all their prejudice. that challenges their prejudice. Even people from that part of the country, you know, they would say, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Do you expect anything good of the province of Galilee? Maybe we have our own territorial arrogance and look down on, well, the people from the East, for instance, or we look down on the people from Newfoundland, or we look down on people from upcountry and city folk. walk around with their nose in the air, but when it comes to the gospel, there's no reason at all to be arrogant toward one another. There is one name that stands above all other names. That's the name of Jesus. And through his name, all others are leveled. And so these men were uneducated. They were untrained. And all of this caused the Sanhedrin to marvel. What an amazing testimony! And they couldn't contradict the authority of the name of Jesus. Why then press these procedures? Why go through this court case? Why put these men on trial? There seems to be no other explanation for putting these men on trial than these two points. They hated Jesus. They hated the name of Jesus. And they felt their authority threatened. They had crucified Jesus and they wanted the name of Jesus forever to be wiped out. That is the nature of unbelief against Jesus. How do you explain, then, that these men were still bold, that in the face of the hatred that they expected, they still spoke in the name of Jesus? How do you explain this? Well, these men, as hateful as they were against the Lord Jesus, they had an explanation. Notice the last phrase in verse 13. They realized that they had been with Jesus. That's the explanation. They marveled at the testimony, yet they would proceed with their trial against them. But one explanation they gave, even in the midst of their hateful thinking, was a right connection. And that was the only explanation for the boldness of these men is that they had been with Jesus. Do the people around us notice that about us? Do they notice from the way we live, from the way we witness, the way we speak of Jesus? Do they notice that we have been in fellowship with the Lord Jesus? They realized that they had been with Jesus. In John 15, we see that the Lord Jesus in fact promises that that connection would be made. In John 15, verse 27, He has said in verse 26, the Helper, that is the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, will come and I will send him to you from my Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father. And he will testify of me. It's the Holy Spirit who is testifying, Jesus, in the heart of these disciples. And in that way you shall bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning. If we are complaining that we don't seem to be able to witness concerning Jesus, we need to ask ourselves the question, is it maybe because I've not been in fellowship with Him? I have not been in fellowship with Him enough. Or possibly, I have not been in fellowship in saving relationship with Him at all. That I still need to be saved. that even though I'm going to church and I feel rather safe to be in agreement mentally with the doctrines of the gospel in the congregation, but when I'm out in the world, then I feel so much that I'm among people of my own nature and of my own world and life view that I don't say anything. on behalf of the name of Jesus, because, in fact, I am not in communion with the Lord Jesus. We need to ask ourselves the question, if they do not realize that we have been with Jesus, is it maybe because we have not really been with Jesus? Now, there is an authoritarian opposition here that we see secondly. There is no basis for this opposition except, as I mentioned, that the Sanhedrin hated the name of Jesus and they felt their authority threatened or challenged by these men. If there would be a continuation of this trend, after all, they realized that there was 121 day, then the next day there were 3,000. And if we read what has happened here in just the preceding passage of chapter 4, then we realize from verse 4 of chapter 4 that the number now is up to 5,000. And possibly that's just the number of the men in the congregation of the Jerusalem church. The authoritarian Sanhedrin realize they're losing control of the people. And something has to be done. This is a political emergency as far as they're concerned. And so, these hateful authoritarians will gather together and come up with a solution. What will they do? It's interesting, as we notice the various aspects of this, that there are parallels between this and the way civil government today will react to Christians and the way apostate churches even will react to those who are zealous to keep the church of Christ pure. First of all, we see that there is an impression. An impression is made. In verse 13, they marveled. The boldness, the knowledge, the Christ-likeness of the disciples impressed them. And there are going to be those opportunities in which we declare the truth concerning Jesus. And there may be a reaction, well, there's a lot we like about this. We're very impressed with your zeal and there'll be some polite responses about that. But at the heart of it, there is no real love for the Lord. And we profess. Secondly, we see that there is an expression of frustration. They are unable to control this movement. Whenever there is a movement among the people, as long as it can be squeezed into a little container somewhere, or off into a little room, as long as these zealous Christians just keep their zealous Christianity in their church halls, or maybe in their homes, but don't bring it out into the schools and the public square. have influence upon the trends in the culture, as long as they just keep their religion private, we're okay. But when it's becoming a public movement, then the hateful authoritarians take note and feel something needs to be done. And notice that they couldn't say anything against the fact that this miracle had been done. But yet in verse 17 we see that there is a concern to yet stop the movement, that it spreads no further. Don't you marvel at that? Aren't you amazed that they would make a statement like that? That it spread no further. What don't you want to spread further? I mean, it would be terrible if people would be going around the country and meeting lame people or paralyzed people and telling them to stand up and getting them out of wheelchairs in the name of Jesus. You know, you wouldn't want that kind of thing to spread. That would be rather upsetting. That would call way too much attention to the name of Jesus. What's there not to like about people being healed? Well, the problem that causes them frustration is not so much that there's healing. It's that the name of Jesus is threatening their authority. They want the control over the people. And so, what do they do? They consult. They consult together. Isn't it interesting that they sent these men out while they consulted? This is executive meeting. You can't hear what we're saying now. The disciples of Jesus may have met behind locked doors only because they're afraid someone's going to come in and arrest them. But the disciples could say later on, none of these things were done in secret. This is not some kind of a secret cult. I don't think the doors are locked. We would allow anyone to come in off the street and hear what we have to say here. The gospel is open for public consumption. as part of the symbol of the publicity and openness of the gospel that the church door is open to whoever wants to come and hear the gospel. But these haters of Jesus take counsel together. They send the disciples out. They take counsel. What are we going to do? Whisper, whisper. Plot. plot, knife. What do we do? Political strategizing. Pragmatic procedures. What's the goal? That it spread no further. And there's a limitation. In verse 18 we read here, So they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. Have you ever thought that possibly you might be told that? Would they be successful? Don't ever talk to anyone in school, young people, about the Lord Jesus. If someone ever told you that who was in the government of the school, would you submit? Are you not aware that you have religious liberty guaranteed to you by the Constitution of this country? Were you willing to even risk the hatred of the government officials or of the university campus officials in order to be faithful? Would the Prohibition against public evangelism in our place of work, provided, of course, that it doesn't threaten our productivity and we carry out our task, like at a lunch hour or coffee break or whatever. Would such threats succeed in keeping you quiet? Or are such threats not even necessary? Because you don't speak in the name of Jesus anyway. Have you been with Jesus? Notice the answer of the apostles as they are given this clear mandate not to speak ever or to teach publicly ever in the name of Jesus. There is a faithful disobedience here. A faithful disobedience. This is called civil disobedience. Civil disobedience can be defined as a disobedience of those in authority over us in civil or ecclesiastical, for that matter, government based upon one's conscientious understanding of biblical truth in the face of being forbidden to do what I'm clearly commanded, or commanded to do what I'm clearly forbidden. And in such a case, We are called upon to appeal to the higher authority of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do we notice the apostles' answer? Peter and John answered and said to them, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. It was kind of Peter and John to allow this to be a question or allow them to give the answer to this charitable on their part that they would assume that those who are in this religious church board, surely they should know which is better, to obey God or man. But apparently they didn't get it. because they went on to make them obey man rather than God. In chapter 5, verse 29, I just enjoy pointing that out because Peter remembered that he had given the Sanhedrin the opportunity to make the right judgment on this matter and to let them go and to leave them free to obey God rather than man. But in chapter 5, After, verse 28, the Sanhedrin repeated their prohibition, did we not strictly command you not to teach in this name? And look, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine and intend to bring this man's blood on us. Then Peter said, we ought to obey God rather than man. So apparently you didn't get the right answer last time I left it with you to judge. You judge. You didn't make the right judgment. Well, let me give you the answer now. Here's the answer. We ought to obey God rather than man. And don't misunderstand this apostolic teaching of just civil disobedience. It doesn't mean that now we can all get in our cars and race by the speed limit signs and just thumb our noses at the government and think, well, you know, we don't have to obey man. No, no, no. Don't get it wrong. We ought to obey every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. Peter later writes that very clearly in his letter. Only in those cases where the commandment of the government or of civil authorities clearly commands something that Christ forbids in his Word. Or where they forbid something that God clearly commands. Only when there is that contradiction between man's Word and God's Word must we appeal to the right of civil disobedience. This raises the question of facing the conflict of conscience between obeying human authority and God's authority, even in the church. Most often this has been applied in civil government, but there is a special lesson here also for the church. After all, the Sanhedrin was really part civil government in Jerusalem, part church government. You might say, this was the central committee of the Jewish church. And they forbade them to preach in the name of Jesus. In such a case, the disobedience of the Apostles clearly denotes the church orderly breach of the Old and New Testament, or rather of the Jewish Church and the Church of Jesus Christ. Here's where, as they walk out of this governing body, there is a split between the Jewish Church and the Church of Jesus Christ. But it also raises this question, do we as consistories apply any regulations that are violations of the conscience? We have a church order. We also have a Confession of Faith article that says that the church may not lord it over the conscience of any. Now there are those situations where an individual may have a conscientious conviction that they must do or must not do something. and that it runs into a clash with the things that the elders asked for. One of the most recent examples of this being the teachings of Christian liberty affecting the keeping of Christian feast days. And it takes wisdom then to back off and to say we will not impose something which is a regulation of human tradition upon the conscience of someone who believes it is against the Word of God. Because it is better to keep everyone in obedience to God. even if there is a difference of conviction as to what God requires in that particular situation. The Christian obligation is to submit to all the powers of church and government. Let every soul be subject to the powers that be. Romans 13, etc. 1 Peter 2, verse 12 and following. When must we disobey? Only when there is a clear contradiction in our conscience between what man requires and what God requires. Notice that the positive motivation that is given here in verse 20 in the answer of the apostles is, for we cannot but speak the things that we have seen and heard. There is such compulsion. Our heart is so full of all the gospel of Jesus Christ and we have been filled with His Spirit and we love Him for dying upon the cross for us. We cannot but speak. Is there that compulsion in our hearts? What a glorious state it will be for any church when all the members are so motivated to speak about the Lord Jesus because they have their hearts full of the glory of His person. The perfection of His work and the power of His Spirit. They cannot but speak. Oh, if we lack such compulsion, let us pray that the Lord would fill us with that Spirit. And then not only we, but also the community will be glorifying God. We see that in verse 20. Because all the people glorified God for what had been done. That's the purpose of it, isn't it? is that God would be glorified even if we are put in prison, even if we are executed for obeying Him faithfully. But the glory of God is the goal of it all. He is so worthy to be praised. May the Lord so bless us with His Word and Spirit that they in the community, those around us, those among our friends, those even in the civil authority positions would have to conclude these people have been with Jesus. Amen.