The Church The World Hates (part 1) - [Acts 5:17-42]

I would invite you to open your Bibles to Acts chapter 5, Acts chapter 5.

You know, this is another one of those messages where my ambition greater, you know, exceeded my skill.

I mean, I thought, oh yeah, let's just do 26 verses in one week. You know,

I want to make sure I stay ahead of Mike, you know. I only preach like 10 times a year.

He gets a lot more. But I just thought I'm going to beat him to the end of Acts. But we're going to cover less of Acts chapter 5 this morning.

How many times have you heard this? Persecution is coming to the church. Persecution is coming.

Persecution is almost here. Persecution is knocking at the door. Well, why do people say that so much?

Christians, why do they say that? Because it's true. But sometimes, and this is just me, this is probably a personal thing, but sometimes they grade on me.

Why? Well, for one thing, persecution is always going to be here.

What did Jesus say in John 15? They hated me. They're going to hate you.

Here's a bulletin for you. But today we see many churches where you would think, oh, they should be aware of persecution, because it's coming.

What do they do instead? They just accommodate to the world.

They engage in what we used to call in basketball, matador defense. What's matador defense?

It's when you're supposed to be watching some guy, and he's got the ball, and he's dribbling. And you just go, Ole! And there he goes, right to the basket, lays it up and in.

That's matador defense. The church ought not to practice that.

But we've seen it even in the last few weeks. Here comes the bull of persecution, as it were, and the church plays the matador.

Will the world persecute a church that agrees with the world?

A church which accommodates its teaching so it's not objectionable.

We already know the answer. The answer is no. Recently the SBC had a real knockdown, drag out

Donnybrook of a convention. I think most of theirs are these days. Why?

Because there was a huge debate over whether Saddleback Church How many of you have been to Saddleback, by the way?

I can raise my hand. There are a few men who have been there. By the way, we went on Saturday, so it was fine.

Saddleback ordained some women. I saw a meme, I couldn't help but post it, sorry. It was from Babylon Bee, where Rick Warren is saying that he ordained more women to ministry than Jesus.

It's true, problematic, but true. But the

SBC voted out Saddleback Church. I think it was like 88 point something to 11 point something.

Voted them out for ordaining women to be pastors. Think about the number of churches that you'll drive by, even on your way home today, that are going to have rainbow flags, or that are going to have these signs out front that say,

All are welcome, love is love, etc, etc. What are they really trying to say? They're trying to say that it doesn't matter how grievous your sin is, bring it in.

We would say, we don't care how grievous your sin is, we want to call you to repent. They would say, hey, come just as you are, and stay just as you are.

The world looks on those churches and applauds. But the world looked at the church in Acts, did not applaud.

So please turn your Bibles to Acts chapter 5. I want to give one more little illustration. I was recently asked by someone of note, whether a homosexual, listen carefully, could join our church.

Not attend, because I asked that, I said, do you mean join, like become a member, or just attend the church?

They said, join. And I said, no. Because we wouldn't let someone join the church that we would immediately have to excommunicate.

1 Corinthians 6, 9 says, Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And that's all true, and so we wouldn't let any of those categories into the church.

Then what does Paul say? And such were some of you.

That's what the church is for. It's for people who repent of their sin, who long to be forgiven of their sin.

Not people who want to revel in their sin. Let's read our text this morning.

Acts chapter 5, beginning in verse 17. And when they heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak and began to teach.

Now when the high priest came and those who were with him, they called together the council, all the senate of the people of Israel, and sent to the prison to have them brought.

But when the officers came, they did not find them in the prison. So they returned and reported, we found the prison securely locked and the guards standing at the doors.

But when we opened them, we found no one inside. Now when the captain of the temple and the chief priest heard these words, they were greatly perplexed about them, wondering what this would come to.

And someone came and told them, look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people.

Then the captain with the officers went and brought them, but not by force, for they were afraid of being stoned by the people.

Now this is Luke's second book in the New Testament, obviously the first being the gospel according to Luke.

And he gives the theme in the words of Jesus, right before Jesus miraculously ascends.

The theme of the book is in Acts 1 .8. Jesus says, speaking to his disciples, but you will receive power when the

Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all

Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. That's their mission statement.

That's what they're to do to testify of Jesus Christ. Because they were with him from the beginning.

They saw him, one of them saw him crucified. They all saw him resurrected, and then they all saw him ascend miraculously into heaven.

And the Holy Spirit begins his work in building the church on the day of Pentecost, with 3 ,000 souls being added in one day.

Peter and John in chapter 4, actually chapter 3, are arrested after healing a man who had been lame since birth.

They testify before the Sanhedrin and are admonished to stop teaching in the name of Jesus.

To which Peter replied, in Acts 4 .19, 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 by this time the church had grown to more than 5 ,000 people.

And of course we've read and heard that the church was exceptionally loving and generous to one another.

But it wasn't perfect as evidenced by the sin of Ananias and Sapphira who conspired.

It's one of the great stories. You don't want to scare the kids. We're in the story of Ananias and Sapphira when two of them are getting together and lying.

There you go. You know what happened to Ananias and Sapphira, kids. Take care that it did not happen to you.

And then the last time we were in Acts, in verses 12 and 16 of Acts chapter 5, we saw the apostles confirmed.

They did miracles by the power of God. Signs and wonders. The apostles caused rifts.

Some people were afraid. Some were respectful. And some believed. And the apostles cured.

They healed people of diseases and cast out demons. And I love the way verse 16 goes.

The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem. They're getting outside of Jerusalem.

Remember Jesus said, you're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem. Then Judea, well it's starting. Starting to spread.

But bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits. And listen. And they were all healed.

Every one of them. This morning I have, of course, illumination.

Alliteration. Five V's. And you'll notice that they're all positive.

Why would the world hate this church? This church of Jerusalem? Because Christ loves her.

And that's the way every church ought to be, right? It's not that we are looking for a fight. But that we're standing up for the truth.

And because we do that, the world will hate the church. Essentially, the

Bible does what? It groups all mankind into two groups. Believers and unbelievers. We see them as the mission field.

Unbelievers. They view us, that is to say, unbelievers look at the church and they see us with bemusement, suspicion, sometimes hatred.

I'm not going to call this sermon the world versus the church, but that's kind of the tone of this whole section of Scripture.

Our first V here. Visited by grace. Visited by grace.

Verse 17, But the high priest rose up, and all who were with him, that is the party of the Sadducees, and were filled with jealousy.

Why are they filled with jealousy? Because of what the apostles have been doing. They're getting this good reputation.

They're going around Jerusalem. They're healing people. People just want to be in the shadow of Peter so that they can be blessed.

This catches the attention of the high priest, the Sanhedrin. The high priest is in charge of the temple and the

Sanhedrin. And I think it's fair to say that he thought that the followers of Jesus would disperse, that they would split up, that they would scatter after the crucifixion of Jesus.

And to some extent, they did and they would have if it weren't for the resurrection. But suddenly he's receiving reports of this growing sect numbering many thousands now, and they're led by these apostles doing these signs and wonders, works that only

God can do, that he does through his messengers to show his approval for them and their message.

Their response is jealousy. Well, who are these Sadducees? We often talk about them. We don't talk much about them.

You know, we hear the little quip, they were sad, you see. Why were they sad? Are you

Sunday school teachers? You know why they were sad. Because they didn't believe in the resurrection. Now, that's enough right there.

You just think, if you're hoping in this life only, right? If there is no resurrection, then what are you doing?

But they were literalists. They didn't even... It's amazing to me that they and the

Pharisees could work together even in the Sanhedrin, but I think that's because of Rome, primarily.

But the Pharisees were... They had all these rules. The Sadducees rejected all of that.

They rejected everything that the Pharisees taught, including about the resurrection.

The Pharisees believed in the resurrection. The Sadducees rejected it. The Sadducees were the party, as it were, of the elites.

They were the wealthy. They were the powerful. They were the 1%.

They were the well -connected people. The Pharisees were mostly composed of the common people.

They ran the synagogues. And they, unlike the...

The Sadducees were mostly concentrated in Jerusalem. The Pharisees were spread out all through Israel.

They vastly outnumbered the Sadducees. But the Sadducees had something going for them, and that was this.

They weren't really so upset by the presence of the Romans because they cut a deal with the

Romans. They welcomed the cultural influence of Rome while rejecting the idolatry, but they liked the fact that the

Romans kept them in charge. The Romans kind of saw them as a stabilizing influence to keep the rabble of the

Pharisees at bay. But in Acts 23 .8, we get some insight.

Paul talking about the Sadducees, he says this, For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, listen, because this will become important, nor angel, nor spirit, but the

Pharisees acknowledge them all. It does make me wonder what the

Sadducees imagined the purpose of life was at all. With no resurrection,

I suppose they might have had a spiritual idea about the afterlife. But what they believed in full is not known, and there's a basic reason for it.

As I said, they were concentrated in Jerusalem. They were concentrated in the temple. In 70 AD, the temple gets destroyed by Rome, and everything that the

Sadducees wrote went up and spoke to. Back to our text, the high priest, when it says he rose up, it's not talking about he literally stood up, but he was taking notice.

He was ready to act. The Sanhedrin had ordered these upstarts, these apostles, not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus, but they did it, and they were collecting more and more followers.

So now, they're going to take action. Consequences. Look at verse 18.

They arrested the apostles and put them in public prison. If you recall, when

Peter and John healed the man born lame, what happened?

It was just those two who were arrested. They were the only ones who went to jail.

And it seems like they were held in a what do

I want to call it? Confidential. Just in a quiet little place that nobody could see them and nobody knew where they were.

But this time, they go into a they're put into all of them arrested, and they're put into a public prison.

It's like the Sanhedrin wanted to send a message. So the people hold them in high regard, the people think they're doing great, well, many people held

Jesus in high regard too. And what did the Sanhedrin do? They worked on the

Romans and they worked on the crowd so that eventually they crucified him. And in one sense, putting them in jail, subjecting them to public ridicule was a bit like what they did with what the crowd said, someone in the crowd said to Jesus in Luke 23, 35.

He saved others, let him save himself. If he is the Christ of God, his chosen one.

Listen, these apostles are doing these signs and wonders, great. Let them do a sign and a wonder for themselves.

If these men can really do miracles, we'll see it. This is also though, bigger picture, right?

If we talk about the forces of darkness, forces of unbelief versus the church, that's what this is.

This is, if I could put it this way, and I can because I'm up here, the forces of Satan moving against the forces of Christ, of God.

Will Jesus, who commissioned these apostles to be his personal messengers, to take out his message, will he allow them to be imprisoned and his mission to be stopped?

The world hated them. They had been visited by grace, they'd been granted all this favor, and now the world is responding.

Second V, visited by an angel. This is really the divine jailbreak in verses 19 and 20.

But during the night, they're in this public prison where people can see them. But during the night, an angel of the

Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and said, go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life.

Jesus was not going to allow his church to be stopped. What did he say in Matthew 16, 18?

I will build my church in the gates of hell, Hades, death. The most powerful forces there are, not even the

Sadducees in the Sanhedrin will stop me from building my church. So he sends an angel to free his men.

And as I said, irony number one here, the Sadducees don't believe in angels. But their effort to contain an apostle, or contain and embarrass the apostles, is thwarted by an angel.

And note well that this is an angel of the Lord. The text says an angel of the Lord. And it's not the angel of the

Lord. The significance of the angel of the Lord, of course, is that's the pre -incarnate Christ.

And you know what? Here's a little secret because I looked it up. The pre -incarnate

Christ doesn't show up anywhere in the New Testament. Why is that? Because he's incarnate.

Duh. It would be wrong.

Right? He has a body. So he no longer has to show up as the pre -incarnate

Jesus. So this is one of his messengers. He's not given a name. This is just an angel of the

Lord. And the angel has some specific instructions. The angels are to go right back to what they were doing before.

And they're going to go right back to where they were before. What does it mean when he says, you know, go preach all the words of this life?

Well, it echoes of a few other places in Scripture. John 6, verses 66 to 68.

If you recall the scene, Jesus is talking really about the sovereignty of God.

And he says a lot of things here which cause a number of people to leave him.

In fact, the text says, John 6, 66. Yes, John 6, 66.

After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.

How could that be? Because they were there for the food. They were there for the free meals.

As soon as Jesus started with the hard teaching, they just said, what? This is hard teaching. And they left. Verse 67,

So Jesus said to the twelve, to his hand -selected disciples, do you want to go away as well?

Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Listen, you have the words of eternal life.

The words of eternal life. The words of this life. And again, from his sermon, after healing the man born lame,

Peter says this, But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you.

And you killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead.

To this we are witnesses. The Sadducees, again, irony, denied the resurrection of anyone, let alone

Jesus. The Pharisees did not deny resurrection.

They believed in a resurrection, which is why some of them came to faith,

I believe, in Christ. Joseph of Arimathea, one other that's escaping my mind, who went and got his body.

But look at the disciples' response to this. The angel comes and says,

Do this. Go back to preaching the gospel. And their response, verse 21. And when they heard this, when they heard this order from the angel, they entered the temple at daybreak and began to teach.

The apostles don't debate, they don't discuss things, they obey. They went right back to the temple where they were warned not to go, and they go back to doing what they were arrested for.

In law enforcement, we call that recidivism. Repeat offenders.

But in this case, it's obedience. Remember Peter said, you guys have to decide whether it's right for us to obey you or to obey

God. But we're going to obey God. These men are filled with the

Holy Spirit, they're commissioned by Jesus, and because of that, they're absolutely fearless. What can you do to our bodies, right?

Ultimately, our souls are going to Christ, our resurrected bodies are going to be with Him forever.

They go to the temple, and listen, they go there before morning, before morning sacrifices, they get there, before I even get up in the morning, they're there at 6 o 'clock in the morning.

And they start proclaiming Christ and all the words of life. In other words, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So they're visited by grace, visited by an angel, and third, we see vacating the cell, vacating the cell.

Luke has done such a masterful job, really, of setting this up. Consider that it is the

Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, via the apostles, who've caused, who've irritated the high priest, who then responds sinfully, right?

In jealousy. The high priest thinks of himself as being in control. He's in charge.

And he's going to deal with, I mean, I can almost see him, with a hood over his head, talking about he's going to deal with the rebel scum.

So he has them arrested and put in prison, where everyone can see them. Perfect. Everything is perfect. It's going according to plan.

And so now it's time for the high priest to kind of flex, to bring them in and set them right and put an end to all this nonsense.

Look at verse 21, the second half of it. Now, when the high priest came, he's coming in to the

Sanhedrin, into the chamber. And those who were with him, they called together the council, all the senate of the people of Israel, and sent to the prison to have them brought.

This is 71 men. This is Sadducees and Pharisees, the whole governing council of the nation of Israel.

I mean, sure, Rome ran the government, but these are the religious leaders.

These are the ones who run the temple. These are the ones who are responsible for the religious life of Israel. And once they're all in place, they send to have the apostles brought before them.

They're going to do just like what they did with Peter and John. They're going to, you know, sit in these chairs above them, in this chamber above them, while they're down there, the 12 of them, and they're going to tell them what's what.

It's very much like a movie scene, except it really happened.

Look at verse 22. But when the officers came, they get to the prison.

They did not find them in the prison. So they returned and reported. We found the prison securely locked, the guards standing at the doors.

But when we opened them, we found no one inside. Now I've seen a few escapes.

I think probably the worst one I ever saw was, thankfully I wasn't in the building at the time, but somebody had smuggled in a saw blade and cut their way through these bars in an outdoor little area, push those things through, put a cart of laundry in front of it, and then taken some of the laundry, tied it to some bleach bottles, threw it over the wall, cut themselves going over the razor wire, but they got out.

But we could trace exactly how they got out. We could see it. There was evidence, step by step by step, what they did.

But I can just imagine the faces of those guards. Because guess what they're going to do? They're going to go in the cell.

They're going to look around. They can't find these guys anywhere. So then they're going to start looking for evidence of how they got out.

There's no tunnel. There's no laundry cart. There's no poster covering up a hole in the wall.

There's no way out of this cell. How did they do it? And worse, from the guards' perspective, how are we going to explain this?

We've got to go to the boss and tell him what happened. What are we going to say? These officers know that things are not going to go well.

But making the Sanhedrin wait is not a good answer. So they go back to them. So we've seen visited by grace, visited by an angel, vacating the cell, and now vexing the

Sanhedrin. Verse 24, Now when the captain of the temple and the chief priest heard these words, they were greatly perplexed about them, wondering what this would come to.

What is the captain of the temple? Simon Kistenmacher says, this is the person responsible for the security of the prisoners.

He is a member of a prominent priestly family who serves permanently at the temple. But he's an officer.

And like most officers, they send the enlisted people out to do the grunt work. You guys go get those dudes out of the prison.

I'll just wait here. Have some coffee with my buddies here on the Sanhedrin. Don't take too long.

But he does work for them. And if there was any reasonable explanation for this escape, he would give it.

But the captain and the chief priest he reports to are mystified. They're bewildered.

There is no earthly explanation. And they don't believe in unearthly explanations. So they're really stuck.

They know the apostles have not vanished. But there's no way they could have escaped. So where are they?

I'm sure for just a moment, they might have thought, you know what? This could be good. What if they've escaped and they've just fled

Jerusalem and we don't have to deal with them anymore? Fifth V.

Vindicating the apostles. Vindicating the apostles. Oh, they're found.

Look at verse 25. And someone came and told them, look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people.

Someone, very likely a priest or someone else who had responsibilities at the temple early in the morning, gets to the temple for, maybe it's just an attender, somebody of some kind of prominence because he's able to just kind of walk into the

Sanhedrin. But somebody sees them up there preaching and says,

I've got to go tell the Sanhedrin. And the reason I think it's a priest is because he knew they were meeting. So he hustles to the

Sanhedrin, probably ran from the temple to the

Sanhedrin to alert them. And it's like, if this were a movie, it's like the villains have just found out that their foolproof plan didn't work.

It's been turned on its head. Sanhedrin put them in prison, but God let them out.

They're supposed to be standing on trial before the Sanhedrin, but God has them standing in the temple preaching about Jesus.

You took them, the Sanhedrin took them out of the temple, but God put them right back.

Sanhedrin told them not to teach the people about Jesus, but God commanded them to do so, and they did.

The Sanhedrin think they're dealing with 12 simple men.

But the reality is they were with the very God they would claim to serve.

They are convinced, the Sanhedrin is, that they are children of God, but their goal is no different than Herod's.

If you recall early on, what did Herod do? He ordered that every male child under the age of two be put to death.

Why would he do that? Because he was demonic.

Because the forces of darkness want to obey their master,

Satan. They could kill Jesus in his infancy, then there is no

Redeemer. These men want to kill the church in its infancy.

Jesus said, I will build my church. Satan says, I will slaughter the church. And then, the apostles are retrieved, they're fetched back from the temple.

Verse 26, Then the captain with the officers went and brought them, but not by force, for they were afraid of being stoned by the people.

The last time, when the officers went to pick them up in the morning and found them gone, the captain stayed behind.

This time he went with them. But it's interesting that Luke makes a note out of the fact that they're brought without force.

Well, why is that? Why does he even mention that? Because it's typical to use force in those days.

And the way they were treated before, the object was to intimidate them, to let everybody know who was in charge.

This time, they treat them with the kid gloves. In fact, the officers fear for their own safety.

They know that the apostles are popular because they've been healing people and casting out demons.

The people hold them in high esteem. And so, Luke says, they were afraid of getting stoned, and if you know anything about Israel, that's always a danger.

Because there are rocks everywhere, and they're good -sized rocks. And this was the habit of people when they got upset, and we're going to see it later on in Acts, when they get upset, they grab the stones.

It's like the old -fashioned Second Amendment. They just go for it. They were afraid of the people.

So we've seen visited by grace, visited by an angel, vacating the cell, vexing the

Sanhedrin, and vindicating the apostles. As I've said, in the days of the apostles, as we're looking at here, there was no neutrality.

The world was divided into those who loved the risen Savior, and those who hated Him. There were those who trusted the author of life, and those who sought to silence

His ordained preachers. We like to think that there are people who are neutral now. Maybe there are people who don't know about Jesus now.

So they're neutral. Maybe neutrality is okay for the church, but if we look at the church in Laodicea, what did

Jesus say about them? He said they were lukewarm. Why did He say that?

In verse 17 of Revelation 3, He says this, For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.

In other words, they were content with their physical conditions. They were comfortable. But He goes on to say, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

Scholar Leon Morris says this, he says, this church says, habitually present tense, I am rich.

Sounds like many churches today. I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.

Laodicea was self -reliant. But there is an article before wretched which yields this sense.

You, Jesus says to this church, you are the wretched one. The wretched one par excellence.

This church is pitiful. It is poor, blind, and naked. And He goes on to say, for this three -fold deficiency, that is their lack, the remedy is in Christ.

They were unbelieving. They imagined themselves to be neutral, but they were not.

Now, we know that the church ought not to invite persecution. We ought not to go out of our way to get persecution.

We would know that if we looked at 1 Timothy chapter 4, I'm sorry, 2.

We should pray for those in charge of us. We want to live in peace.

However, if the decision comes down to obeying man or obeying God, the church cannot bow.

And the issues are all around us. Our society is busily redefining marriage, sexuality, and all but declaring war on the innocence of children.

This is just in the paper. Let's see how many days ago this was. Four days ago in the Worcester TNG.

Representative said this. He praised the governor for recognizing the importance of investing. This is about education.

Investing in the well -being of the state's youngsters and for taking action to ensure they are seen, heard, and supported.

He's quoted here. In some states, educators are not allowed to speak of LGBTQ plus identities or are just allowed to frame it as a negative.

The article goes on to say the state, well, actually Governor Healey said, this is

Governor Healey said, wants to ensure that students have medically accurate, age -appropriate, and inclusive information on which to base life decisions about sexuality and relationships.

Included in the framework will be discussions on bullying, dating violence, respect for one another, and how to make informed choices regarding relationships.

That's what I was doing with my kids. That's what parents do. Dating violence, respect for one another, how to make informed choices regarding relationships.

I thought I was the dad. Now the schools want to take that.

The state wants to teach morality. Not parents, not the church, but the state. Just as Leon Morris said, the remedy is in Christ.

We must stand against sin regardless of how much discomfort it causes us.

We do that by doing what? Speaking to the people, to everyone around us, all the words of this life.

All the words of this life. We tell them about the one who eternally exists as God, Jesus, took to himself human flesh, went to the cross to die for sin.

And why? Because we are by nature, and by choice, sinners. We fall short of the glory of God.

We don't want his glory. We must be born again.

It's only when the Holy Spirit causes us to be born again that we then trust in Christ.

We rest in Christ. We know who he is. This is what we must preach.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word.

Even as we imagine, we think about what these men, what the apostles dealt with.

The hatred and contempt for doing what you commanded.

Father, we thank you for giving them your spirit. We thank you for sending an angel to free them.

Father, we don't have an angel. We're not going to be visited by an angel.

We're not going to have that level of spiritual maturity.

But Father, we have your written word. We know what your truth is. Let us not shrink from it, as a church or as individuals.

It may cost us, but you are a

God of truth and we are your people. Help us to honor you.