-Have you ever had one of those experiences that you can’t stop talking about? Like finding a new restaurant that’s fantastic so you can’t wait to share it with everyone around you? There’s a restaurant that’s on a few of the islands of Hawaii that we visited on our honeymoon called Merriman’s. The primary reason we visited is some of best friends from when we lived in Cheyenne happened to have the last name of Merriman. Turned out it was one of those very fancy restaurants! The food was FANTASTIC, but you pay for it, which was hard to justify in my 26-year-old mind when Burger King was just down the road. But we did it anyway since we were on our honeymoon! Since then, my sister and her husband have visited it, my parents visited it when they were out there, and now you all have a restaurant to visit if you ever get out to Hawaii!
-What we’re going to see in today’s text is how these first disciples couldn’t stop talking about their time with Jesus. It affected everything in their lives, and no matter what other people said or thought, they were going to keep talking about Jesus, which serves as an example for us today. We’re going to cover 3-5, but we’re just going to read the first story together this morning for the sake of time.
READ/PRAY (3:1-10, pg. 968)
-These chapters continue this theme of the way the early church operated. Something would happen, Peter would preach, and would receive persecution. That happens twice in these chapter.
- A New Temple (3:1-26, 4:23-5:16)
-This is one of my favorite children’s songs that I remember singing in Sunday School when I was growing up, and it was mostly because (just like pretty much every kid’s song) there were actions to go along with it, which meant I didn’t need to sit still while we sang it. But even though I can still sing every word to that song, I didn’t understand the bigger point of what Luke is communicating to us through this story, and we need to understand what’s going on here to understand the rest of this section (which will carry into next week’s texts as well). What we’re going to see in this section is the fulfilment of something Jesus said in John 2.
-This story takes place right after Jesus’s first miracle of turning water into wine, then He leads His disciples down to Jerusalem during Passover and runs out all the money changers. When asked by the Jews how Jesus would prove Himself, here’s how He replies:
-One of the descriptions of the church in the NT is the body of Christ, which means we should be looking for a new temple that comes after Jesus’s resurrection, which is what we see here.
-Did you catch how frequently temple comes up in these opening verses? 4 times in the first 3 verses, and then twice more in the rest of this section. What we see Luke doing here is setting the stage for us to be thinking about this temple theme here, and looking back to last week’s text we also see that going to the temple was part of their daily rhythm (and that will come again later!)
-The story starts outside the temple, it says Peter and John were on their way to the temple. And that’s significant, this man wasn’t in the temple, he was placed outside because you were only allowed in if you were ritually pure, and a man who couldn’t walk wouldn’t be considered pure. But one of the things we see about Jesus’s ministry is those who were uncleaned couldn’t stain Jesus, around Him those who were unclean were suddenly healed. Through Jesus, the normal order is upended. Instead of sickness and death spreading, holiness becomes contagious, and the early Apostles were continuing that work.
-Similar to healings we see in the Gospels, this man thinks too small. He wants enough money for a meal from them, but what they give him is a completely new life. Suddenly, this man no longer needs to beg, he’s able to work, and the first thing he does is praise God, and what’s the response of those who see this miracle? Awe and astonishment.
-This is exactly what God said would happen when His kingdom finally broke in. There are 2 OT passages that point to this reality, 1 of them is because of the word Luke uses to talk about the man “leaping,” he uses a unique Greek word that’s also used in the Greek translation of Isaiah 35:6. But that’s not the only one! Listen to the Lord’s description of this new day in Micah 4. And what do we see taking place in this passage? He’s assembling the lame, but just wait, because later on, we’ll read about the scattered being brough back together to comprise this new people of God. God’s sovereign hand means that everything He has promised will happen. We don’t need to live in fear; we need to live in trust and cling to the promises of His Word.
-Just as we saw during Pentecost a couple weeks ago, anytime a crowd gathers, Peter is going to take the opportunity to point people to Jesus.
-He begins by calling out their sin, which is worthwhile for us to think about today. Sin tends to get downplayed because it feels antiquated or like such a negative thing. But this is reminding us that we can’t talk about the Good News without talking about the bad news. For the Good News to be Good, it has to have something bad to be compared to. What is it that Jesus has saved us from? Ourselves! Because we’re sinners we need someone outside us to rescue and redeem us, which is the Good News of what Jesus has done! That’s what Peter goes on to tell them:
-Seasons of refreshing come on the other side of faith in Him. I don’t have time to dig into this further, so I’ll throw it out there for you to go contemplate on your own this week, Anselm of Canterbury, who lived in the 11th century said that we believe in order to understand. You can’t understand what Jesus has done apart from faith in Him, the Bible tells us that it’s going to look stupid to the world, but through faith we can see and understand what God has done, which is where the seasons of refreshing come from. Where the world tells us to earn, Jesus says to trust.
-The last thing I want to point out from Peter’s sermon is how God is in control of every event that takes place. We see that in vs. 18 and 24. Even these people’s sinful rebellion against God was used by God to accomplish His good plans. That doesn’t excuse the sin, but it gives us hope that even in our sin God is still accomplishing His good plans in our lives, too.
-One of the markers of this new temple reality is radical generosity, Micah preached about that last week. In this new temple, not only are the sick healed, but the poor become rich because the rich are becoming poor – what we see as a marker of this new temple is all the divisions the world uses to categorize people are obliterated in the church! Joseph (nickname Barnabas – how cool would it be to have that be your nickname), Levite (priests) he’ll come up again in the story as a companion to Paul. Apparently, Barnabas was very wealthy, wealthy enough to be able to sell a field and donate the money to the church, and I think the chapter break here is unfortunate, because we’re supposed to read the Ananias and Sapphira story in contrast to Barnabas.
-The people of God have always had 2 forces working against them: external and internal, we’ll look at the external forces in the next section, but Ananias and Sapphira are unfortunately in a long line of people want the benefits that come from following God without the change of life required to truly be in the fellowship.
-One of the things you may feel as you read this story is it’s not fair that they’re killed. They told a little white lie, was God right in killing them? And I understand that impulse! But I also want to give a slightly different perspective on this. I think we tend to view sin similarly to the way we view the speed limit. Could a police officer pull you over for going 1 mph over the limit? Yep! Will they? Probably not. We all know they judge on a sliding scale, just don’t go TOO far over the speed limit. Sin doesn’t work like that. Any sin, even something that, in our minds, is minor means we are guilty of treasons against God. Sin is nothing to be trifled with, sin is something to be killed, or else we run the risk of becoming killed by our sin. There’s a story in 2 Sam. 6 about a man named Uzzah who is accompanying the ark of the covenant on the way back to Jerusalem being carried on a cart by some cows, the cows trip as they’re walking and the ark starts to slip off the cart, so Uzzah reaches out to stop the cart from falling down and God immediately kills him. And the text tells us that King David got angry about it! I remember hearing an RC Sproul sermon about that text where he said that Uzzah’s problem was he thought he was holier than the ground that Ark was going to fall onto. God had told the people how they were supposed to carry the ark, and it wasn’t on a cart. They thought they could do it their own way instead of being completely obedient to God. Today, Christians tend to be way too careless with our sin, but it’s far better to die on this side of life than to be separated from God for eternity. Do not trifle with the one true God.
-Another warning for us from this passage comes from David Peterson in his commentary on this text: Last week we saw the joy that comes from the church sharing everything they own, this week we see the warning if we don’t share what we’ve been given.
-We also need to interpret this in the same lens we’ve seen the rest of this, as part of the new temple. Patrick Schreiner writes:
-What that means is that we cannot let our personal piety (practice of holiness) outstrip the depth of your character. Stop comparing your journey with Christ to someone else and focus instead on Jesus. What has He called you to pursue in this stage of your life and growth? There are always more areas for us to grow in, which one is God calling on you right now?
-People respond to this section correctly! Fear. If this God will kill people for disobedience, why would anyone else follow Him? And this seems to lead us to a contradiction in the text, because this verse says no one else dared to join, and then immediately says that more and more people were joining.
-People realized that this group wasn’t something to be taken lightly, yet they couldn’t help but be drawn in by the way they lived and cared for each other. The bar of entry is high, it requires a complete change of your life, but what you get on the other side makes any loss completely worthwhile. Which is demonstrated by the next verses:
-Just a shadow was all it took for people to be healed and think back to what we read in Micah 4, God promised that a day was coming when he would gather the scattered and turn the lame into a remnant of followers. What’s taking place here? The lame are being gathered together and healed, made new.
-One of the things we saw at the beginning of this study was also that geography plays a role: Jesus’s message is starting to spread outside Jerusalem
- New Leaders (4:1-22, 5:17-40)
-I said previously that the church faces pressures from both internal and external forces, we’ve looked at the internal with people who want the recognition of being a part of the community without having a transformed heart. This section looks at one of the external forces that stands against the church, and it follows the temple theme we’ve seen. Each time God moves, we can expect that Satan will do everything he can to fight back against that move. Beginning in chpt. 4, (vs. 1, 5) we see that the supposed leaders of the temple are following the same path as Ananias and Sapphira. I literally LOLed when I read this summary about the leaders in Patrick Schreiner’s commentary:
-Luke lists all the leaders of the temple area here, and do you see the problem they’re going to confront? They’re annoyed! They’re operating under an old idea that’s no longer effective and all their attempts to stop this new movement are going to lead to what we see in vs. 4.
-They’re viewing Peter & John as a threat to the status quo, which means their best option is to throw them in prison, little do they realize that by throwing them in prison, they’re just furthering the spread of the gospel.
-After throwing them in prison for a night, the convene the council once again to interrogate these 2 men, and I think their question gives insight into what they’re concerned about: by what power or what name. Those would have almost been synonymous at this time, you would call on the name of a god to bless your work, so they want to find out what this new religion is all about.
-And Peter jumps at the opportunity. Friends, this is a great reminder for us! Do you take advantage of opportunities to tell people about Jesus when they come up? Do you tell your neighbors and coworkers why you can’t do things on Sunday morning because church is a priority for your family? Do you take advantage of sharing with others why you treat people differently?
-Phil preached about the Pentecost event, which was a one-time thing where all the believers were indwelled with the HS, but here we see a different kind of filling that can also be true of us today!
-What I love about Peter’s response is he cuts straight to the heart of the issue: are you upset with us about a good deed done to this disabled man? Do these leaders understand what they’re doing? Writing in the late 4th century, an early church father named Chrysostom said: “these leaders not only run to do murder but also make a crime of doing good deeds.”
-I wish we could take the entire sermon to dig into vs. 13, that will have to be for a future sermon but notice what shocks the leaders. It’s not their education, it’s not their training, it’s not their work ethic, it’s not their financial portfolio, it’s their boldness. And where did that boldness come from? Being with Jesus. That tells us 2 things for us today: first, we need to be with Jesus! Second, being with Jesus needs to have ripple effects into our daily lives.
-And even these leaders who are upset about what’s going on have to admit that what Peter and John have done is a good thing, which once again leads to a question for us today. Even if people don’t like our politics, our ethics, or our beliefs, can they admit that good things are happening because of us?
-Peter and John won’t back down. They’ve seen something that’s completely transformed them over these past couple of months.
-This is why it’s so important for us to be speaking about what Jesus has done and is doing in our lives. It’s not to brag about yourself, it’s because our job is to be witnesses to the ways God is working and moving around us. As we learn and grow more like Jesus, we have the privilege of sharing that with others, and it doesn’t matter if they know Jesus yet or not! The message is the same to both groups! Jesus is Lord!
-One of my biggest questions on this text was vs. 22. Why does Luke tell us this guys age? We don’t even know his name! Think back to what I said the first week of this sermon: God has expanded his plans to reconstitute a new Isreal that’s made up of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. I think that (once again) what Patrick Schreiner says here is incredibly helpful:
Isn’t our God amazing in the way that He makes sure that His plans will happen?
-That’s not the only time the apostles are put in prison! Starting in 5:17 we see that now the Sadducees are jealous of the increasing influence of the apostles, so this time instead of just taking Peter & John, they arrest them all. And their incompetence continues, because even the jail can’t hold them back! What’s most ironic about this event is the Sadducees didn’t believe in angels, so God used something they didn’t even believe in to thwart their plans!
-And their incompetence get worse because they can’t figure out what happened to them! And as they’re trying to figure out what to do, someone tells them that the apostles are right back doing what they were doing before, and do you notice what it says about fear? The apostles aren’t scared of anything, but the supposed leaders of the temple are afraid of the people!
-Their frustration continues, and they accuse the apostles of filling the whole city with their teaching and accusing them of telling others that they’re guilty, which they are!
-And Peter, as the representative of all the apostles tells them: we’re going to obey God, regardless of what these “leaders” ask them to do. They’re going to continue acting as God’s witnesses, sharing over and over what God has done in their lives.
-And the whole leadership group doesn’t like that! They’re used to being the ones in charge, the ones who enforce the rules, and this new group of people is threatening their power. Which means they want to do to them what they did to Jesus: kill them. That would deal with the problem! But 1 person changes their minds: Gamaliel (who was also Paul’s teacher). He shares the story of 2 other uprisings that fell flat after their leader died, so he advises caution in fighting against them.
-This isn’t something that’s true in all times and places, there are examples of other people taking this approach later in church history and it led to all sorts of problems. We have God’s complete revelation today; we don’t need to test things out anymore! We have God’s Word and the Spirit’s power within us to help us understand what is from the Lord, and what is from Satan.
- The Result: Witnessing to Jesus (5:41-42)
-This section ends with the consequences of the old leaders of the temple trying to stamp out this new group. The true leaders rejoice in their suffering and continue serving as faithful witnesses.
-2 final realities for us today from these last 2 verses. First, do we rejoice when we’re treated shamefully for the sake of Jesus? This can look different for us depending on where we live or work. It could be in getting passed over for a promotion, it could be losing opportunities for more money because you refuse to cut corners, it could be not getting invited to the fun parties because you’re a believer. Do you rejoice in those moments or complain?
-Second, is vs. 42 true about your daily life? Are you daily looking for opportunities to grow closer to Jesus, and share about how to do that with others? I love the wording Luke uses here, he says they were teaching and (my translation) is “gospeling” that Jesus is the Messiah, he uses a verbal form of the Greek word for gospel (good news).
-I mentioned this idea earlier, but I want to land the plane on it: all of us need the truths of the gospel to soak deeper into our lives every single day. We don’t ever grow beyond digging into the realities of the gospel, the gospel message isn’t just to get us across some spiritual line and then move on to other things, we need to be reminded of the gospel every day of our lives because that’s what we’re supposed to be witnesses to. We don’t ever grow beyond needing to be reminded of the implications of this good news, we need to take time every day to give praise to God for the fact that we’re saved. And then we tell everyone around us that they can have that same freedom, joy, and seasons of refreshing in their lives: both believers and unbelievers. So for all of you: trust in the good news that Jesus is the Messiah! Live as if that’s true being generous with every gift God has given you and boldly tell others that the reason you live that way is because of Jesus.
