Today's post is the sermon I was going to preach this morning, but had to give cliff notes due to heater being broken...:)
13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.
Last week, we left Peter in the company of Christ’s religious enemies, boldly declaring (through the presence of the Holy Spirit) that Jesus was the only way to salvation. I challenged all of us to carefully consider what was being said by Peter and to apply that challenge to our own thoughts about Christ.
Today, we get to read the response that Peter received from the Sanhedrin Council, which you could call Jerusalem’s Grand Jury. It was uniquely made up of both members of the religious moralistic right – the Pharisees – and of the progressive academic left – the Sadducees. Both of these opposing groups had come together to face a new foe – the Christians – a radical grass roots movement that was beginning to upset the status quo.
Both sides in the Sanhedrin were shocked by the simple courage that both Peter and John displayed. These were uncultured and uneducated, unsophisticated and ignorant men. Luke even uses the Greek words ‘agrammatos’ and ‘idee-o-tace’ to describe them, which can be interpreted to mean ‘illiterate idiots’, or as the Scots and some Southerners would say, “Peter and John were a right pair of eejits.”
The Sanhedrin didn’t know what to make of them. On the one hand, they were two coarse and common fishermen from the boonies of Galilee, who were just a comical novelty to the sophisticates of Jerusalem. But on the other hand, a miracle had taken place in which a well-known crippled beggar had been completely healed in the name of a religious rabble-rouser whom they had sent to be crucified by the Romans.
18 Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.
Peter and John were annoying to the temple priests; they were offensive to the self-righteous lawmakers; and they were a potential threat to the recent peace that Jerusalem had experienced after Jesus was killed. The Sanhedrin had to do something quickly and effectively, so they opted for the usual punishment that all reactionary authorities use against radical movements: they threatened Peter and John and censored them from speaking or teaching at all in the name of Jesus.
You know on this day (Nov 7) in 1793, the illustrious leaders of the French Revolution abolished Christianity in their land. They wanted to do away with Christ and set up their own religion where Human Reason, Intellect, and Enlightenment were glorified and worshipped. They tried to replace God entirely by putting their own achievements on pedestals and deifying their own deeds. They even had 2000 churches destroyed and Christian leaders either executed or exiled. But within a decade, their revolution was dead and within a generation, the church was re-established across France.
It seems to be that when Christ and His followers are ridiculed, oppressed, silenced, and censored, then an amazing thing happens: the Church goes underground and begins to grow at an amazing rate. This is what is happening to Christ’s church in China – so many millions of people are becoming Christians annually that within 25 years Communism in China will go the way of that in Europe – it will fail and it will fall – and up from the ruins of a misguided 20th century idealism, the Christian church will emerge triumphant.
The Sanhedrin thought that they had solved their problem by censoring Peter and John. Little did they know, however, that their troubles had just begun.
19 But Peter and John replied, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God.
In another Holy Spirit filled statement, Peter pushes back against the pressure and conditions that the Sanhedrin was imposing upon the two fishermen. He boldly and defensively, but not defiantly, informs them to judge for themselves what is right or wrong in the eyes of God about their situation. As for Peter and John, they simply insist that they cannot help speaking about what they have seen and heard. In other words, they know the truth about the miracle and no amount of priestly oppression or clerical censorship will dissuade them from preaching and teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Every generations of Christian believers since then has had to deal with the same issue. It comes to us in different forms, at different times, through different cultures, and in different circumstances, but the challenge is always the same: will Christianity cave in to societal pressure and seek cultural acceptance, or will it boldly declare the Gospel Truth, even although it may be unpopular?
My friends, the courage of Christianity is found in the faithful lives of ordinary believers who do not give in to peer-pressure, but instead they display divine power in their dedication to Christ. They simply know what is honestly right in a world gone horribly wrong.
Peter and John, by the powerful in-dwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, knew that simple truth on the day they faced the Sanhedrin. On the other hand, the religious leaders had surrendered their hold on God’s truth, in order to appear to be politically correct to the Roman authorities. In their efforts to maintain the status quo and to appease their rulers, they relinquished their divine right to spiritually lead the nation. Peter and John had spoken the truth; they had performed the miracle in Jesus’ Name: they could not deny this, nor could the Sanhedrin…and what was the outcome of their faithfulness to Christ?
V20 All the people were praising God for what had happened! Amen.
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