Acts #7: Can we really stop spreading the Gospel? (Acts 5); Patrice Berger

Summary of the passage from Acts (The passage is in the sidebar)

We follow the book of Acts.

Situation in Revelation

In the Bible, the book of Acts is anchored in the beginnings of the church, in the biblical sense of the term Christians (the set of people who attach themselves to Christ).

So we are after:

• the death,
• the resurrection
• and the ascent

of Christ.

Location in the Book of Acts

The introductory verse of the book of Acts, verse 8 of chapter 1, gives the common thread of what is told to us in this biblical book.

The mission of the apostles

The disciples of Jesus must be the witnesses of all that they have:

• seen
• and lived

with Christ, and the gospel must be spread:

• locally,
• regionally,
• nationally,
• and internationally.

It’s Possible with the Holy Spirit

This impossible challenge is made possible for every believer because the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, constantly accompanies the believer to help him in this task.

Response to the Gospel

The life and testimony of the apostles brought to all of Jerusalem, allow thousands of people to be finally reconciled with God through Christ.

Duplicity vs Transparency in the Church

Last time, we shared the shocking text that tells us about Ananias and Sapphira where their duplicity is unmasked by God who strikes them down.

It reminded us that:

• God knows everything,
• He stays
  • true,
  • transparent,
  • luminous,
  • Holy

and desires that people who are attached to Christ may live and reflect the same attitude toward life

• like Christ
• and with the help of the Spirit.

And that in no case, the Church of the redeemed by Christ has a place where the double attitude would be more or less tolerated.

The text

This morning’s text is going to be precious: Acts 5 from verse 12.

Gospel

The text is going to tell us about the spreading of the Gospel.

Can we really stop its distribution?

Miracle

It gives clues about the normality of miracles.

Should this be a habit for believers in Christ?

Obedience to authorities

Obedience to authorities?

How far?

Text: Acts 5: 12-14

Continuity

Luke, the author of the book of Acts, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, leads us to make this observation, it is exactly the same Spirit

• who animated Jesus
• and who animates the apostles

and it shows.

• They face the same reactions: enthusiasm or hatred and jealousy

The same extraordinary miraculous signs accompany the exposition of the Gospel.

The announcement of the message of life has a resounding echo

The message “of life” has a remarkable echo.

“Preach to the people all the words of new life” these are the terms used by the Angel to speak of what Christ has done for men through his death and resurrection.

The crowds are moving.

As in the time of Jesus, the crowds move to follow the apostles.

The same extraordinary signs accompany these moments.

Judea?

It is said that the people came from neighboring towns: would Judea not be affected?

Illness, occult world

The cures for the disease and the occult world are obvious and come in support of the announcement of life in Christ.

Shadow

In this moment of grace, people even hope that the shadow of Peter can do something for people in distress. The text does not say if this had an effect.

Same as Jesus

Still, we find here the same context as in the time of Jesus:

• the teaching of the message of life,
• a particular manifestation of the power of God to men

Same with the Spirit

Clearly, God is pointing out to us in this text that the Spirit of God is exactly the same as during the ministry of Jesus.

It’s the same message:

• there is a continuity between Jesus and the apostles,
• there is the same credibility.

Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm:

• increase in believers,
• all of Jerusalem is informed of the Gospel,
• people even come from neighboring towns (certainly from Judea) in search of healing.

The centrality of the proclamation of the Gospel

This text reasons as a reminder of what we have already seen in Chapter 4.

Judea?

Does it signify the progress of the gospel in Judea on one hand?

Central mission

And at the same time, as if God, through the Holy Spirit, led Luke to show the central point of the mission of the apostles:

• communicate the Gospel: this new life in Jesus Christ.

God watches over the spread of the message of life and over the church

If the enthusiasm is obvious, at the same time we see that it arouses the same opposition as with Jesus.

Jealousy

The religious world thought it was over with the period of Jesus, but not only is it prolonged, but it is also growing!

Of course, their only answer is strength because there is nothing to oppose life.

God is watching

What is interesting to note is that even if men hatch plans,

God is not overwhelmed by their strength and strategies.

Angel intervention

God demonstrates this through the intervention of the angel on behalf of the imprisoned apostles.

The message of life

The occasion of their presence before the tribunal makes it possible to expose the message of life again:

30 The God of our ancestors raised Jesus, whom you killed by nailing him to the wood. 

31 God raised him up at his right hand as Prince and Savior to give Israel repentance and forgiveness of sins. 

32 We are witnesses of these events, as well as the Holy Spirit which God has given to those who worship him.

What did this mean for the religion of that time?

The Lord has revealed Himself in the history of humanity through the people of Israel, from Abraham to now. On which you rely to imprison us.

It’s the Lord who raised Jesus,

whom you killed by the ignoble and shameful death of the cross.

It’s also the Lord, who raised him to the highest place, that is to say on his right (place of the son of God, Messiah)

He is therefore the Saviour,

for those who want to repent of their sins.

We can affirm it because we have seen and touched it.

God attests to this reality because He has equipped us with His Spirit, we who put our trust and our life in Christ.

It is His Spirit that works through us.

What would that mean for us?

For us, nothing has changed and we can go back to these verses to understand the message of life accomplished by Christ:

God reveals himself

• God makes himself known by revealing himself in the history of humanity, notably through the people of Israel

Through Christ’s condemnation and victory over sin

• God, in Christ, suffers the condemnation of sin by His death and has victory over it through His public resurrection.

Christ’s royal prerogatives

• God approves the work of Christ by placing him in the highest place and proves it in those who put their trust in Christ through the gift of the Holy Spirit

What response should follow God’s works?

This text is not only there to give info but to know what answer we give to the message of life so carefully accomplished by Christ.

• The furious anger was like the religious people of that time who preferred to stay in what they thought, rather than question themselves clearly in the face of the obvious action of God.
• or recognize the outstretched hand of God through Christ and say:

“ Forgive me, I am a sinner and I accept you Christ as Lord and Savior of my life because you bore and conquered my sin ”.

Answers

In the time of the apostles, some remained faithful to their reasonings, and their positions, far from life, and the others finally lived life.

And we, will we be sufficient on our knowledge or will we accept Christ and what He has done for us?

God watches over the spread of the message of life

Faced with opposition, God intervenes twice:

• the intervention of the angel for the imprisoned apostles;
• God allows the intervention of the doctor of the law Gamaliel to emphasize that:
  • if it’s from God, we can’t do anything about it, it will continue (and it seems to me that it still is, it’s up to us to draw conclusions),
  • if it is not from Him, it will stop quickly.

It is clear that the gospel has come to us!

Gospel: a combination of circumstances?

It is not only a circumstance of history, as for the two examples cited by Gamaliel, with Theudas and Judas the Galilean, or as we would still like to believe.

But the solution to the number 1 problem of humanity, put in place patiently by God who watches over its distribution with the same attention, nothing can stop it, it’s too important.

God watches but leaves corporal punishment.

However, God did not intervene in the torture, probably 40 lashes less one, 1/3 on the stomach, and 2/3 on the back.

God does not apply the extraordinary all the time

It is interesting to underline: conclusions that are a bit easy could lead one to think that normality would like God to remove all pitfalls for the disciple of Christ and that, as in the book of Acts, God is going to work miracles in my life so that I have a carefree life.

However, we are not in heaven

We are neither in the Garden of Eden nor in a carefree paradise.

God’s grace preserves us from many things, but evil, the expression of sin, is a working reality.

Accompanied in the face of difficulties

On the other hand, the big difference for those of whom Christ is the Savior is that Christ is with His own, even when sin expresses itself by evil in our lives or around us.

Happy Disciples Even Through Difficulty

The most astonishing demonstration is that after this torture the apostles were happy, yet they were not masochists!

This does not mean that we have the “banana” in every trial but, with the support of Christ, the hardest moments are experienced quite differently.

Proclamation in a difficult context

I notice that, finally, the proclamation of the message of life quite often took place in a hostile context, the history of the biblical church shows it, but God watched and the message came to us.

The disciple is not greater than the master

Jesus had warned the disciples that the proclamation of life opposes what reigns around them and arouses opposition.

The words of Jesus were still to ring in the ears of the apostles:

Matthew chapter 10 verses 17-26

16 Behold, I am sending you as sheep among wolves.

So be

• cautious as snakes
• and pure as doves.

17 Beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and flog you in their synagogues. 18 Because of me you will be brought before governors and kings to bear witness to them and to Gentiles. 19But when you are arrested, do not worry about how you speak or what you say: what you have to say will be given to you at the same time. 20For it is not you who will speak, it is the Spirit of your Father who will speak in you. 21Brother will deliver brother to death, and father his child; children will rise up against their parents and put them to death. 22You will be hated by everyone because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved. (It is not a conditional but an encouragement to perseverance in seeing the certain outcome) 23When you are persecuted in one city, flee to another. I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of man comes. 24A disciple is not above a teacher, nor a servant above his lord. 25It is enough for the disciple to be treated as his master, and for the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, they will all the more gladly call the people of his house that way! 26So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing hidden that must not be revealed, nor any secret that must not be known. 27What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light of day; and what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the housetops. 28Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather dread him who can destroy soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? However, no one falls to the ground without your Father’s consent. 30 Even your hair is numbered. 31 Do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

This text could raise two questions

• This morning’s story in the book of Acts could raise two questions:

1) The apostles with God’s help perform many miracles.

We too benefit from the Spirit, shouldn’t we do the same?

2) Clearly, the apostles are breaking local law at the time.

Can we also break the law and what should we do?

Miracles.

Indeed, the beginning of the book of Acts opens us to many extraordinary signs. They are almost always related to exposing the message of Christ but should that be normal?

Torment therefore no normality for the apostles

Already there, in the text, we see that the apostles were not delivered from the torture of the whip, which would mean that God does not always intervene in everything, even for very hard things and even if it is to carry His message.

The Bible Doesn’t Always Talk About Miracles

In all the centuries that the Bible covers, we see that the extraordinary aspect of miracles is not general. In fact, the great periods of miracles were with Moses, Elijah, and Elisha, during the ministry of Jesus as well as at the beginning of the Church with the apostles.

These periods with more miracles coincide with crossroads in the history of God’s people where He reveals Himself in a special way:

• Moses
  • liberation from slavery,
  • the precariousness of the journey of all His people in the desert.
• Elijah and Elisha were God’s witnesses in a regime similar to that of North Korea.
• Jesus attested to his divinity by showing that He had all power over:
  • the elements,
  • disease,
  • the death,
  • the occult world.
• The apostles showed at the beginning of the church the same signs as Jesus by thus showing the irrefutable link between them and Christ then even at the end of the book of Acts, this attenuates or even disappears. In the epistles, the mentions are very rare and the apostles themselves do not benefit from spectacular cures for their illnesses. Yet they were not bad Christians and they were not lacking in faith.

Jesus showed what He had to show

God is no less powerful and able, but what He wanted to show was done.

God remains the same

Can God still act like this today? Of course!

And if we are balanced observers we see that this type of spectacular and miraculous intervention is often done in hostile contexts and on a smaller scale (we don’t see cities emptying out to see what is happening).

However, this does not prevent us from expecting Him to manifest the full extent of His power.

The miracle is not the norm

On the other hand, the Word does not invite us to expect in a mandatory way that God will intervene in an extraordinary way in every difficult aspect of our life.

• If God were to act in this way, we would be in the same conditions as those of Eden:
• our human lives would be endless (because God would erase all the difficulties),
• God would be a liar because He said that, for sin, there was a judgment: death, therefore with all that leads to it.

God, the great genius of Aladdin?

If God is for us the great magician who repairs everything, it is because we do not know him completely and we will inevitably be disappointed, between our expectations and reality.

Miracles Performed by the Apostles

This text tells us that miracles were done by the apostles and they were sought for (like Peter) when there were sick people to present, yet there were several thousand believers.

Stephen

We will soon see: Stephen is a deacon, he does miracles linked to the proclamation of the gospel.
 

I don’t see any clues for generalization

Reinforces the intention of continuity

Is this text telling us that the miracles were, at a particular time, done mainly by the apostles to show the continuity of the message of Life between Jesus and them as well as to attest to the presentation of the first gospel announcements?

This seems to be the case because the rest of the book of Acts shows fewer miracles but much more urgency to announce the gospel.

This is what the book of Acts seems to show us!

Ethics, compliance with laws

We mentioned it in chapter 5 of Acts.

Acts chapter 5

20 “Go, stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of new life.”

 21 After hearing this, they entered the temple early and began to teach.

 27b The high priest questioned them, saying, “We had forbidden you to teach in that name, and now you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and want to bring that man’s blood upon us!”

The subject in opposition to the authorities

What is clear here is that it is only a question of one aspect, that of transmitting the message of life, i.e that of Christ. This precedent would in no way justify being above the law in other respects.

Jesus respects the law

For example, we see Jesus paying taxes.

The apostles also, moreover apostle Paul writes in Romans 13:

1. Let everyone submit to the authorities that govern us, for all authority comes from God, and those that exist have been established by God. 

2 Therefore whoever opposes authority resists the order which God has established, and those who resist will bring condemnation upon themselves. 

3 For rulers are not to be feared when doing good, but when doing evil. Don’t you want to fear authority? Do good and you will have his approval,

4 for the magistrate is a servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be in fear. Indeed, it is not for nothing that he carries the sword since he is a servant of God to manifest his anger by punishing those who do evil. 

5 It is, therefore, necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of this anger but still for reasons of conscience. 

6 This is also why you pay taxes because magistrates are servants of God who apply themselves entirely to this office.

 7 Render to every one his due: tax to whom you owe tax, tax to whom you owe tax, respect to whom you owe respect, honor to whom you owe honor.

The base

We must respect the laws, it is an aspect that demonstrates our real fear of God.

The exception

However, when they are against the One who instituted the principle, by compulsion or by obligation, we must continue to carry the message that saves lives through Christ.

The focus of this text

Title

The sermon is titled

“Can we really stop the proclamation of the Gospel? »

Two propositions were raised by Gamaliel:

• if it’s men, it will stop
• if not, it is from God (watch out for those who get in the way)

The Urgency of the Apostles

Let’s announce the Gospel!

This was the primary concern of the apostles.

The Gospel in all its dimension

Transmit the Gospel

• so that it is understood and accepted,
• to be lived.

With a different receptivity

On all occasions, sometimes simpler than others.

• Thousands of people received it with joy,
• others still not, even if they are abusive.

God knows

With different conditions

Whether it is more natural, easier, or more difficult in favorable circumstances, we also see that God gives the mission to an angel to free the apostles or even God allows the favorable intervention of an opponent (Gamaliel). But God also allows imprisonment and whipping. In everything, God watches over this transmission of the Word of Life.

Encouragement for us

It is the same for us, the announcement of the gospel will encounter moments of exceptional listening and moments of rejection.

What assurance to know that both are in the hand of our Lord, had He not said to the disciples:

Matthew 28: 19

Go [therefore], make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

20 and teach them to do all that I have commanded you.

And I am with you always, until the end of the world.”

The verse that I retain from the text of Acts this morning:

Acts 5 verse 20

Announce to the people all the words of new life.