Sunday Night, June 6, 2021 PM

Christian Resistance to the State in Acts and the Teaching of Jesus

We're going to be in the book of Acts tonight. Acts tonight. I ran across a quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn the other day. He said, we know they're lying. They know we know they're lying. We know they're lying.

They know they're lying. They know we know they're lying. We know they know we know that they're lying. And they're still lying. Double down, triple down. Book of Acts, and we're talking about a doctrine of Christian resistance to the state.

When is that appropriate? How do we see that worked out in the scriptures, especially given the institution of the civil government as a minister of the Lord to execute his vengeance and his wrath against evildoers, and that we are to give honor to whom honor is due, and that we are to submit ourselves to the governing authorities as God's minister, and that we are to pray for all men, for kings, and for judges, for magistrates, and so on, and that we are to live in a way that is above any kind of ill report.

We are to have a good conscience, and be good citizens, and so on. And how does that fit with living under civil governments that are anti-Christ, that are committed to tyranny? What happens when the lawbreakers are the ones who hold the sword, and are supposed to be judging lawbreakers and the evil ones, but they themselves are the criminals?

They themselves are the lawbreakers? How are we to understand these complex issues? Well, we've read through Matthew chapter 10, where Jesus gives some basic instructions to his disciples. And he shows them that as they go forward preaching the gospel of the kingdom, going from city to city, they are going to make waves.

People are going to start complaining. And the end result is going to be divisions, disruption in the civil society, and that his followers are going to be dragged before kings and councils. They'll be put on trial.

They'll be thrown into prison. They'll be scourged in synagogues. They're going to face opposition, governing opposition from more than one source. How are they to think about these things? And we saw some general principles that Jesus gave to his disciples, things like recognizing really what the situation is.

You are sheep among wolves. You are to be as harmless as doves and as shrewd as serpents. You are to recognize that there's no glory in experiencing resistance and persecution and then staying there to make sure that you get martyred.

He talked about shake the dust off your feet and move on. You've got things to do. So he gave some very practical counsel. He reminds them that, hey, look what they're doing to me. Look what they say about me.

So expect this as you are my followers. I'm the teacher. You're the student. Expect these kinds of things to happen. So in the book of Acts, we begin to see the disciples put into practice a great many of these principles that Jesus taught them.

But remember that in the book of Acts, the primary persecutor of the church is not Rome. Who is the primary persecutor of the church? The Jews are, and they have their governing structures. The Sanhedrin, the Jewish elders in each city, whatever the synagogue was.

Sometimes the leaders of a synagogue would be more noble minded, like in Berea. And sometimes they were very antagonistic and hostile, like in Thessalonica. But you're still going to have governing authorities of some level acting in the interest of their group.

And there's going to be all sorts of interactions. In the book of Acts, we see all manner of tensions occur where sometimes we see the apostles working with civil magistrates, working through the system of the law, making appeals, refuting decisions because not all the facts are in, looking for protection under the heading of a civil magistrate.

And then sometimes we see them working totally around the civil magistrates. We see them skirting around the legal authorities, working directly against what the authorities say to them, and so on. How do we make any sense of this?

Early church, of course, experienced persecution of the Jews, and then later on, the Roman persecution began in earnest with Nero. And it was picked up again and again by various Roman emperors over time.

But early church fathers would definitely disagree on the relationship of Christians and the church to the civil government. One church father, Tertullian, was convinced he was only bound to obey a civil magistrate if he thought that their rules were good.

If it sounds reasonable and good to me, I guess I will. If it doesn't, I'm not going to. He was very much what we call a libertarian today. On the other side of it would be the historian Eusebius, who was bound to declare any edict from the empire sacrosanct.

Oh yes, we must obey in honor of God. And throughout church history, we have these polar oppositions and disagreements coming from both sides. And so we could name different theologians and different works and different theories and so on, but what's I think best for us is to start with the word of God and see what kind of dynamic is in the example that we have when the church was really beginning to wrestle with these questions.

Can we think of anything right off the bat in the book of Acts? Maybe a favorite story that you have that deals with the relationship between church and state. And what does it demonstrate? Does it demonstrate the church cooperating with the civil magistrates?

Or does it show the church working against them, around them? Anybody have a favorite example? Acts chapter four? Exactly. So remember, Peter and John go up to the temple at the hour of prayer. They go through the gate called Beautiful.

There's the man lame from birth. And by the power and the name of Jesus, he is healed. And this is the prelude to Peter and John preaching for hours in the temple. Now, the temple is the turf of the Sanhedrin, of the Sadducees, who made up the majority of the Sanhedrin and the chief priesthood.

And they had their own temple guard. And they've got something along the lines of, it's not really a riot or anything, but there's a whole lot of people who are excited about Jesus of Nazareth being the Messiah.

And boy, they can't have that. They've got a disruption. There's heresy being preached upon their grounds. And so they send the guards to come and they arrest Peter and John for preaching that which is not approved.

They did not preach with approved speech. And so they are put in prison. Though 5 ,000 come to faith in Christ through this preaching. Peter and John are then instructed by this governing body, do not teach or preach in this name.

And then Peter and John's reply, what do they say? Well, we can't help it, yeah. But it's like, okay, you be the judge in this manner. Should we obey God or obey man? Now, the Sanhedrin probably bristled at that.

Why are you putting us in opposition to God? What a awful assumption you're making about us and so on. However, that's the way it was. And that's the way that Peter and John understood it. And they were correct.

And so they left and then they went and they prayed and they rejoiced in the Lord. And they asked him to give them more boldness and power to keep preaching the word of God. And the Lord blessed the growth and the work of the church.

Now, remember that they had gone to the temple. They had preached on the temple grounds and they got in trouble. So they get, basically they get kicked out of the temple. Don't you ever come back here preaching and teaching in that name.

What follows in Acts chapter five is that through the signs and wonders in chapter verse 12 and so on, all sorts of signs and wonders were being done. And people began to pour in from the suburbs and from the villages.

And Jerusalem became filled with people who were eager to taste the power of Jesus Christ, the risen and reigning one. Of the Messiah. And so what was before a big outbreak of gospel preaching in the temple, now it was like citywide and countryside wide.

And now the Sanhedrin has even a bigger problem on their hands. But I want you to notice something particular in verse 12 of Acts five. And through the hands of the apostles, many signs and wonders were done among the people.

And they were all with one accord in Solomon's porch. Trivia, where was Solomon's porch located? In the courts of what? Of the temple. What we have here is a clear example of Peter and John and the apostles defying the order from a civil governing body.

I know they were religious, but they were also in charge of this area. Why could not the apostles gone somewhere else? Surely they're just spoiling for a fight by going back to the temple to preach the gospel where they got arrested in the first place.

Surely if they were Christ loving, peace loving, just loving in general people, they would have realized that this was too confrontational and they were stumbling people. And there's no way to win people to Christ by being so confrontational.

And they should have gone to the marketplaces or they should have done the John the Baptist thing and gone out to the Jordan. But don't go back to the temple where the fight happened, where you got arrested.

But here they are back in the temple courts, back on the turf of the Sanhedrin, back where the temple guard can get at them again. What's going on? Are they sinning? Are they? No, they're not sinning.

It was their understanding that the gospel of Jesus Christ was to be preached to everyone beginning at Jerusalem. And that was the place where everybody was. Solomon's porch was a big area full of columns.

And it was a big area where they could all meet together. And by this time, 3 ,000 at Pentecost, 5 ,000 from the other day, and who knows how many other. And eventually they stopped counting because there were so many.

They needed a place to meet. And when they're gonna come all the way together, can you imagine? You know, thousands and thousands of recent converts coming together, singing the Psalms, but now knowing that it's Christ Jesus that they're singing of, and the joy that they have together.

And they're proclaiming this witness as Christ through his Holy Spirit works wonders of deliverance and healing and so on. And you just see this explosion of the new covenant. And well, they got arrested again.

The high priest rose up, verse 17, and all those were with him. And they were filled with indignation. They were unhappy. And lay their hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison. So they got arrested again.

Now, we have to be careful here. There is a way that in the name of Christ, you can always get yourself arrested. Okay, you can always go get yourself arrested. You can go stand in the middle of I -240.

With your sign and your Bible. And preach trusting that you wouldn't die from the traffic. And eventually you're gonna get arrested. Probably sooner than later. And you're going to, you know, it's like, well, you know, you can't do that.

You know, Jesus is Lord of the highway. Okay, and you were correct. But you were incorrect in what you were doing. Okay? You are not, first of all, you're not showing wisdom. You are getting everyone's attention.

But you're endangering all sorts of people and so on and so forth, okay? You can definitely get yourself arrested in the name of Jesus anytime, anyplace. You mean, you can engineer that, you can manage that.

That's different than what this is. This is what God had called them to do. Go stand and speak. They asked for the boldness. And they have been granted this. And they're going and they're preaching the gospel so that the lost Jews will turn away from the shadows and turn to the substance.

And they will trust in the one whom they had earlier cried out to crucify, but now they see him as savior. So they're preaching the gospel to them. And the governing authority said, they didn't say, look, they didn't even say, look, you can't preach in the temple.

They just said, you can't preach in the name of Jesus anywhere. And they said, can't follow that order. And they went on and kept on preaching. Now, is it wrong for them to go back to the temple? Now, verse 19, but at night, an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and said, go stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this life.

So now we have angels of God involved in civil disobedience. The angel busts them out of jail. This has always been considered civil disobedience. A jailbreak is just classically defined as civil disobedience.

And we have an angel involved in it. Not only that, he tells them to go back to the place. They've been arrested twice. What kind of approach is this? Now, this is certainly not the approach that says, well, this government obviously is anti-Christ.

So I'm not gonna obey any of their rules. They say don't steal, but hey, we need food for the church. Let's just take whatever we want, okay? Certainly not whatever we wanna do is fine in the name of Jesus.

And it certainly isn't, well, the government said it. It must be of the Lord. If we disobey, then we're bad Christians. This is something that repents of both of those. And it's not a synthesis of the two either.

This is simply saying Jesus is Lord. And in this case, we're going to go do what he has told us to do, even though the civil governing authority has said not to. It's a humorous story at some points as well, because then they get like, go call them out of prison.

Let's have our trial. Like, they're not there. Where are they? They're in the temple preaching. It's pretty funny. Okay, that's a classic example. It's robust. It runs from chapters three to chapter five in Acts with some extra stories put in there.

And it's a clear example that when ordered to not preach Christ, we must still preach Christ. That's a great example. Acts four is the heart of that. Okay, any other examples that we have? Yes, yes. I was just thinking of Acts.

Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, so in this case, Paul learns he's worn out for his arrest, basically. He's gonna get arrested. He's going to get captured, right? If he sticks around, if he tries to go out through the city gate, they're lying.

I mean, they're gonna arrest him. So what is the Christian thing to do in this situation? Ride boldly through and be arrested for the name of Jesus. I think it's an option. Oh, he hasn't worn out from an arrest.

Well, they are the governing authorities. We must submit to them, so I best go get arrested. Make it easy on him, right? All right, Paul goes over the wall in a basket. Can't catch me. I'm going on to the next town.

In this case, Paul has not broken the law of God. He has not. Now remember, in Romans 13, the governing authority is a magistrate, a deacon, a servant of the Lord for punishing evildoers. And if we do, anyone who does evil should be afraid of the sword that the governing authorities bear.

Was Paul doing something evil? Was that why they wanted to capture him, arrest him, put him in prison, put him on trial? Was he doing things that were evil? He was not. He was doing things that were righteous and good, and therefore, and he was doing so in obedience to the Lord, and so his mandate continued to keep on doing that when the governing authority would call evil what Christ calls good.

Has no bearing on his, remember, the guy who went over the wall is the same guy who wrote Romans 13, right? The guy who went over the wall and is like, you know, not today. So this is something that we have to keep in mind.

The basket illustration is a good one. Any other examples in Acts? Yes. Yeah, please.

Yeah, that's right.

And in this case, remember that one of the values in Rome was their sense of justice. Now, of course, you know, whether that was just or not, they made a big deal out of it. And in this case, it was manifestly unjust what had happened, and they're wanting to just kind of forget about it.

This is something that's going on in Canada right now. The pastors who have been arrested illegally against the actual orders that have been given in ways that were not approved of by any laws on the books, and put through all manner of injustice.

And now the government just wants these things to go away. But the lawyers for the Christians are saying, no, we're gonna have this trial, and we're going to demonstrate that this was unjust. And there's a lot of trouble that you have to go to.

It's a lot nicer to just simply say that the government's dominion of Canada or the province of Alberta or whatever says, oh, yeah, we're just going to go ahead and forget about this and move on. And they're hoping you'll say, yeah, okay, fine.

Glad to get this behind me. They don't want to have a big deal made out of it. In this case, you see that Paul thinks more of the law. He thinks more of the civil governance than they think of themselves.

He thinks that the civil governance should be used to punish evildoers, and they should be righteous in how they conduct their business. He thinks more of the state than they think of themselves. He says, no, you guys did everything wrong here.

You need to fix it. And he's holding them to account. Now, this too is a form of resistance. We're saying, I'm not gonna simply cooperate with your bullying tactics of where you arrest people and you treat them in ways that are unlawful, and then you want to forget about it.

No, we're going to expose the sin and the injustice here because that's what would be pleasing to Christ. Yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah, and that's part of that testimony that Christians are supposed to have above reproach.

And so that's an important point that Ken is showing that they needed to show that Paul and Silas weren't doing anything wrong, evil, illegal, and so on. It was the authorities that overreacted because they were put under pressure.

They were put under public pressure, and so they used their sword in a way that was not appropriate. Okay, any other examples in Acts that we can think of? Yeah, this is what happened. This is why Paul and Silas got arrested is because they cast out the demon from this slave girl.

Her masters responded to that by getting a big crowd together and basically threatened more disruption if the magistrates didn't do something about this, right? So in this case, notice that Paul and Silas were doing something kind, merciful, compassionate, good, delivering her from demon possession.

And once she was freed from demon possession, she had no longer any reason to be the slave of these men. And so it was a double emancipation. And for this, they were targeted because it disrupted the way that the civil society was running.

It was disruptive because they had a different authority. Any other examples? Yes. Yeah, that's right. So there were things about the civil governance that was in play that Paul was able to use as like, look, this is unrighteous for you to treat your citizens.

This is your own law. You've stated, these are the rights of our citizens. We're not gonna do X, Y, and Z to our citizens unless we have a proper cause. We have a way of treating our citizens. And Paul points out that they're breaking their own laws, that they are not keeping what they themselves have said they would do.

And in this, that they stand guilty. They have gone against their word. They have broken their own laws. And that's something that's happening right now. Why Newsom and the state of California are paying millions upon millions of dollars in lawsuits that the churches have won against the state because of all the unlawful activities that they have engaged in.

And this is an example of saying, here's what you've stated as your laws. Here's how you broke your laws and you can't just simply get away with that. We're gonna hold you accountable to your own rules.

And we're gonna do so. And it costs us a lot of money, but now you have to pay for our attorney fees. So that's something that's happening right now. Why would that be appropriate for churches to do? Well, you see Paul right here saying, look, you've stated this is how citizens are to be treated and you didn't do it.

You need to be held accountable to that. David, did you have one? That was it. That's right. Yeah, whoever's next on the list of noncompliance in that sense. Norm? Yes, sir. Yeah, so today the natural assumptions are unless it gets reported on a wide scale, it's not valuable.

But here's where it's valuable. When you, for instance, the pastors in Canada, more than one of them were offered release if they would agree not to continue with those activities. Right, and they refused it.

Now that is, and they explained why. Every one of these pastors has had several interactions with various police officers, legal magistrates, prison guards, so on, where they're having to explain why they're not doing this according to these things.

That makes an impact. Okay, there's an impact there. Makes an impact on the church that they're pastoring and serving. And then from there, it makes an impact among those, encouraging those who fear the Lord.

And then there's a wider impact later on. It does, it ages very, very well to fear the Lord. And in the end, these things are proven to be right and true. So at the first, yes, you know, state propaganda is not going to run that.

Not going to, you know, they'll say whatever they wanna say, you know, prov de style to spin it. But that's not where the success is. That's not where the hope is. Right, exactly. Yeah, so God will succeed in showcasing the message of Christ, even through the suffering of the church and the faithfulness of the church.

I think one last example is gonna be just Acts 12. Just Acts 12. And I'll use this as our conclusion, but notice as well, I think it's very important that we see how every step along the way, when the church, when the apostles, when the servants of the church, you know, even Stephen, you know, the deacon and so on, when they are persecuted and threatened by governing authorities, we see time and again, the people of God are reflecting upon the words of Christ.

They're reflecting upon the teachings of Christ. The word of God, they're quoting scripture. We see them engaged heavily in prayer. Time and again, we see them engaged heavily in prayer, praying for one another, praying for what they need from the Lord.

We even see Paul and Silas singing, singing hymns in the prison. And what are these things? These are things that are often despised by the world, but how essential they are for our Christian resistance, when necessary, that we would fear the Lord throughout the whole thing.

You know, it's not a matter of giving in to rebellious impulses in our depravity, saying, I like to defy authority. It's, I want to submit to the authority of Christ and rebel against the fear of man, that's so tempting in my own heart.

And I'm willing to do what the Lord calls me to do. We have to do so in dependence upon him. And these simple things are spoken of again and again in the life of the church, when they're resisting. Now in chapter 12, verse one, now about that time, Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church.

Okay, so persecution and harassment had already been going on, okay? This is something, now Herod is an Idumean, right? He's not, ultimately he's not a Jew, but he's currying favor as a politician with those whom he is governing.

And he sees how zealous they are to stamp out the way. And he thinks this is a good way for him to get on their good side, okay? So what does he do? He harasses the church. In fact, he kills James, the brother of John with a sword.

The sword, remember, the sword is the instrument of the state to punish evildoers. But Herod here uses it in that utmost perverse manner and kills one of these, and James, Peter, James, and John, the inner circle, here is one of the pinnacle apostles and he is murdered by Herod.

He is slaughtered by Herod unjustly. Notice, and because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also, right? So he sees, oh, this curries favor with my constituents. So I'm going to up the ante.

I'm gonna keep this up because I want to gain political power and political favor. And this is what many politicians and governing authorities have done throughout church history and still do today. If they think it will gain them popularity, they will harass the church, right?

Because their morality is, I have power, I want more power, I want to keep my power, and that's the basis of their entire morality, you know? And so they'll lace it with all kinds of language, but if they can get favor, this is what they'll do.

Jesus put it differently in Matthew 10. He said, beware of men. That's like, just beware of men. Now, it was during the days of unleavened bread. So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him.

Four squads, it's like 16 soldiers, to bring him before the people after Passover. They were probably on rotation, you know? So they were always wakeful guards around him. But once again, once again, an angel of the Lord busts Peter out of prison.

Now, the church, of course, is praying, praying for Peter's deliverance. Oh, God, deliver Peter, deliver us. We've lost James, we don't want to lose Peter as well. God, please deliver us. Please deliver Peter from prison.

And Rhoda comes in and says, hey, Peter's out of prison. Shh, we're praying. Another very humorous moment in the book of Acts. God has answered your prayer. We're praying. No, he's already answered your prayer.

Peter's here. Now, we see here, again, we were reminded, look, as much as whatever we're called to do, let's do it in the name of Jesus, but it is not our strength, it is not our political power, it is not our political savvy, it is not our financial resources, it is not our strength of character, it is not the height of our intellect or anything that is going to successfully bring glory to the name of Christ in resisting a tyrannical state.

God delivers us. That's it. That's it, God is our deliverer. Christ is our savior. And he cares more about the way the church is treated than we do, as Sol of Tarsus. Jesus cares about us, he loves us, he will guard and tend to his sheep.

So God is the one who delivers us. That's what we're told again and again in the book of Acts. It isn't because we're really good at a resistance movement, it's because God is our deliverer. And to put that point home is the end of chapter 12.

Remember the beginning of chapter 12? Herod puts James to death, he arrests Peter, he rises up against the church. Now at the end. Now Herod had been very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, but they came to him with one accord and having made Blastus, the king's personal aide, their friend, they asked for peace because their country was supplied with food by the king's country.

So on a set day, Herod arrayed an royal apparel, sat on his throne and gave an oration to them. And the people kept shouting, the voice of a God and not of a man. That's how they viewed the state. Then immediately an angel of the Lord, you know, the one that busted Peter out, same expression, an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give glory to God and he was eaten by worms and died.

But the word of God grew and multiplied. You see that? The persecutors of the church, those who would use the state in tyrannical fashion to try to harass and oppress the people of God, they will not last.

But the word of God grows and multiplies. So, you know, we've got to be faithful, worship the one true king, do what he calls us to do, and he will deliver us. And ultimately it's the word of God that endures forever.

Men are just grass. They fade, right? They're like a flower in the field. They just fade and they're gone. Word of God lasts forever. Well, that was our whirlwind tour of the book of Acts, probably a lot more we could say about that.

Next time we have opportunity, we'll begin looking directly at Romans 13 for a little more clarity on this matter. I think it's been helpful for us all. Brian, would you come up here and lead the doxology?