Righteous Intentions (11/02/26)

I want to start this study with a brief consideration of what was going on with the Sadducees.  Luke’s words, translated to English and perceived through the lens of modern ideas of meaning, convey a very negative picture of them.  Perhaps that is the intent.  After all, Luke is not Jewish, though it seems likely that he is conveying to us what his Jewish brothers recalled of these earliest events of the Church.  So, we read of their jealousy, and conclude the sort of jealousy that we might have for a rival.  And to be fair, the term will accept such a meaning.  Strong points us to that sort of jealousy a husband might feel.  That, however, can prove either a very positive or a very negative thing.  But we incline to take it negatively, I think.  We suppose that jealousy indicates a certain lack of self-confidence perhaps, of inadequacy.  In a work setting we might suppose it indicates a bit of imposter syndrome.  In the marital setting, it suggests a husband who does not feel himself sufficient to satisfy the needs and desires of his wife.

That might play into our scene here, but I don’t think that’s it.  There’s another sense to the word which speaks to a more religious zeal, zeal in pursuing one’s faith, or defending it.  And defense of the faith was, at least in part, the right and proper role of the high priest, and of this council.  The term is not often encountered, appearing only twice in Scripture, and both cases here in Acts.  The second occurrence comes in Acts 13:45, Paul and Barnabas ministering in Pisidian Antioch, and that city turning out to listen.  Jews in the crowd (not all, by any means, but some subset of them), saw the crowds and grew jealous.  They began to speak contrary to what Paul was saying.  And again, we see perhaps a bit of a hissy fit here.  They’re just upset because these two are getting all the attention.  They want to be the popular ones.  No.  That’s not it.  This is, to their thinking, an attack on the ancient faith, and they rise in defense of it.  Paul, quite frankly, does much the same when he sees false teachers troubling the Church.  And no wonder!  He was trained to this mindset.  Faith is worth defending!

The NET supplies us with a footnote on the matter of this jealousy, noting that in Judaism, this was a significant term, indicating ‘religiously motivated rage.’  And what motivates that rage?  “A desire to maintain the purity of the faith.”  Again, this is rather the job of the High Priest, and the priests in general, is it not?  Consider how jealous God was to see His worship kept pure, back when Abihu and Nadab, even at the very start, began to corrupt their office (Lev 10:1-3).  Go back farther, to Aaron introducing corruption at the very foot of Mount Sinai, whilst God delivered the covenant terms to Moses on its peak (Ex 32:4-5).  God is a jealous God (Ex 20:5).  It’s right there in the delivering of those covenant terms.  And His jealousy is not, cannot be, a bad thing.  It is righteous jealousy, one might even say, such jealousy as a husband may feel.  And indeed, that’s an image God utilizes often in dealing with His own, particularly when they have strayed.  Why do you suppose there is this drumbeat of denouncement of all manner of harlotry and sexual sins?  It is an offense against the marriage of God to His people, which marriage the marriage of man and woman ought rightly to reflect in like purity and singleness of devotion one to another.

This aspect of jealousy must be seen to apply in the case of the high priest arresting the Apostles and summoning the Council to session.  Let us assume the best we can of them.  I know it’s hard.  After all, we have this other drumbeat running through the narrative of the New Testament, something present in each of Peter’s sermons that we have recorded here:  “You killed Messiah!”  That’s going to play a key role in the trial here.  They feel the weight of that charge, and the threat of it.  But with all that, let us, just for a moment, try and perceive events through their eyes.  They think they are acting to safeguard the faith of Israel.  God told them to worship no other gods.  That’s where that note of His own jealousy arises.  You shall have no other God besides Me.  He doesn’t share His glory with another.  And here are these twelve speaking of Jesus as if He were a god.  In Israel!  Such a thing was simply not to be tolerated.  Had God Himself not instructed them to purge any such thing from their midst, to stone the blasphemer lest the land be polluted by their sin?

In their minds, I dare say, they fully believe they are acting as the office demands they act.  Here is a threat to the purity of the temple, and of the worship God’s people give unto their God, and it must be addressed with utmost vehemence, lest it spread.  And it was spreading.  How could it not?  They were doing signs producing wonders on the regular.  Of course that’s going to garner attention.  But they weren’t, to the Sanhedrin’s thinking, honoring God, giving Him the glory.  They were honoring Jesus, giving Him the glory.  And they simply could not accept that this man, who had spoken with them, who had bled and died before them, who had been destroyed, so far as they were concerned, and that, for claiming to be God in the first place, might actually have been speaking truly.  There was no place in their doctrine for God appearing at all, let alone in human form.

Consider this, particularly for the Sadducees, whom we see as the primary instigators here.  They did not accept the concept of angelic beings, nor of any sort of afterlife.  For them, dead was dead, and that’s the end of it.  So, the very idea of one coming back to life after having been crucified, pierced by spear, and lain in the grave for days was just plain inconceivable for them.  The mind rejected it on contact.  Even had He appeared to them personally, I suspect it would have changed nothing.  They would write it off as some sort of illusion, trickery, perhaps the result of a lack of sleep on their part or some such.

And yet, the evidence kept mounting, or what was being treated as evidence by the public at large.  Of course, their opinion of the public at large was not particularly positive.  But still, they had a duty to guide these poor benighted commoners.  Recall that these were something of an aristocracy, and no doubt suffered the aristocrats lack of regard for those beneath their class.  But still, I think we have to perceive one last thread of a possible sense on their part that they were doing what they were supposed to do.  This was their duty, to protect the pure faith of Israel.

And so they ‘rose up.’  And there again we run up against a wording that cannot quite convey the significance of the action.  Zhodiates indicates that in this second aorist form (and I must confess, I had either complete forgotten there was such a thing or simply not come across that fact before) the term speaks of acting in hostile opposition.  Well of course!  From their standpoint, these men were proclaiming a false God, and must be opposed most vehemently.  They could either repent of their foolishness, or pay for their blasphemy by their lives.  Those were the options.  And I’m not sure how strongly they held to the first option as a real possibility.  No.  This was, by their lights, a corrupting influence on the spiritual health of Israel, and it must be shut down.  It’s nice and all that people are being healed, but this runs deeper.

As it turns out, of course, they were quite incorrect in their assessment, and in fact were themselves the corrupting influence.  The scene unfolding overnight makes this clear as day.  Their position as guardians of the faith has been revoked.  I think we must recognize that it had already been revoked even before Jesus was turned over to Rome for execution, even before He had been put on trial, such as it was.  They had been judged before Judas was convinced to lead them to the Man.  The guilt of all the righteous blood shed on the earth would fall upon them who had stoned prophets, scourged the wise, persecuted the faithful.  “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How I wanted to gather you to Me, but you were unwilling.  And now, your house is being left to you desolate!” (Mt 23:34-37).

They thought themselves the defenders of the faith, but now, the faith was being defended from them, and in due course, that defense would prove quite final.  Observe how, at the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the fall of the Sadducees as a sect, and the Sanhedrin as a meaningful force resulted.  That which they feared they brought upon themselves, even as Gamaliel warned later in this chapter.  But it begins with this evening deliverance of the Apostles from prison, and that’s the point we shall pursue in the next portion of this study.

For now, let us take counsel from the error of this council.  We mustn’t allow holy fervor to move us from reasoned and reasonable faith.  We are too prone to mistake our opinions for divine truth.  We are too inclined to be absolutely confident of our beliefs even when our beliefs are in error.  Let us instead pray for the humility to accept correction when God so graciously provides it.  I’m not advising such an openness to novelty as leaves us with no place for doctrine and no regard for Truth.  But we must needs recognize our own fallibility, and accept the possibility that we might just be wrong on certain details.  If God is correcting, let us not be found rejecting.

Let me set a counterbalance on that point, though.  If the spirit is troubled, let us pray for wisdom and clarity.  We are not called to simply accept every teaching at face value.  We are called to hold fast to the clear truth of Scripture.  If things feel like they’re going awry, it may very well be that the Spirit is giving us warning in our conscience, and we ought properly to seek wisdom to know how we should respond, whether in defense, or in departure, or in correcting our own views.

Pray for wisdom, and do so in the confidence that God will provide.  He will not leave or forsake you.  Don’t leave or forsake Him.

Firm Rebuke (11/03/26)

What has happened here is that there has been a reversal of the court’s decision in arresting the Apostles.  As court proceedings go, the flow of events is a bit disordered.  Normally, the court would first issue its ruling, and then a higher court might take opportunity to correct their decision.  Here, however, the decision has been reversed before ever a hearing has been held.  One could wish that justice were so swiftly restored in the case of miscarriages in the civil arena.  But this is swift indeed.  They arrested the Apostles, apparently late in the day, when the council was no longer in session.  Before morning, the next opportunity for that council to meet, God had seen to it that they were released.

Recognize this.  For all intents and purposes, the Apostles were being hauled before the Supreme Court.  There was no higher court of man to which they might appeal such decision as might be handed down come morning.  And should that court decide that they were preaching heresy, well!  This could result in a death sentence fairly immediately imposed.  And the Sadducees were known to be swift with the punishment.  God was swifter.  There was and is still a court to which man may appeal even the decisions of the Supreme Court.  There is Another to whom the highest court must ultimately answer.  The Sanhedrin seem to have lost sight of this fact, or perhaps simply come to assume that their decisions did in fact reflect God’s decisions.

But they were wrong, and God was letting them know it.  Not only was He letting them know it.  He was also making sure the Apostles knew it, and the people as well.  There are, then, three distinct aspects to the significance of this jailbreak.  First, we are considering it from the perspective of the Sanhedrin.  They had, by the arrest, made their opinion clear already.  And they thought themselves the arbiters of God’s justice.  They were, I expect, quite convinced that they acted for God; like the pope views himself, God’s spokesman on earth.  And by and large, the people of Israel accepted that this was so, to such a degree, we are told, that even those living in distant lands took their rulings to be binding.  God, however, did not.

The very first thing to take way from this is that God is offering a rebuke to these representatives of His.  If indeed they were still truly of His, then I think we must understand there to have been the potential for repentance in this rebuke.  God doesn’t just smack His own upside the head out of frustration, and then walk away, giving up on them.  The rebuke comes, as the author of Hebrews makes plain, as fatherly discipline, issued in hope of being a corrective action, rather than punitive.  It is possible, though, that they had made such an idolatrous mess of the ancient faith that God was now come against them as He had come against Egypt so long ago at the birthing of the Israelites as a nation.  That is to say that this action might just possibly be accounted a war against false gods.  If that is the case, then I don’t suppose repentance really was a possibility for them.  Hearts were hardened because judgment had already been made.  Had Jesus not made the clear in His teaching?  “He who believes in the Son is not judged.  He who does not believe has been judged already, for not believing the authority of the only begotten Son of God.  The judgment is this, that light has come into the world, and men preferred their darkness, for their deeds were evil” (Jn 3:18-19).

Do you see this?  Those who don’t believe have been judged already.  It’s almost as though one could say that their unbelief is the sentence imposed upon preceding judgment.  The case is already closed, and the result we see is the sentencing phase.  That would, I suppose, leave unbelief as both cause and cost.  It is the sin which led to sentencing, and its continuance unrepented of is the punishment imposed.  God acts, in this case, by not acting.  He does not move upon the heart so as to encourage an approach to the Light, but rather leaves that heart to pursue its own evil desires.  This is what is indicated in the hardening of the heart.  It’s not that God forces the unbeliever to disbelieve, but rather, that He does nothing to counter the fallen tendencies of such a one’s nature.  He effectively says, “have it your way.”

The NET takes this scene before us to be a clear, and rather final, declaration that in fact the Sanhedrin did not represent Him.  What they put forward as true religion was no longer true, and barely religion.  That which is announced in this scene would be delivered in clear and complete fashion at the fall of Jerusalem, and if one reads the accounts of the siege that led to that fall, it will become quite plain that these men of power had no regard for God any longer.  They carried their connivances and intrigues right into the very temple grounds, did nothing to address the needs of the people they supposedly served to shepherd, but left them to eat their own.

So, was there still an opportunity for them to repent?  That’s unclear to me.  For some, I expect, this did in fact come as a wakeup call.  Gamaliel might be such a one, but we are given no indication that he came to faith.  Perhaps the die was already cast for each of those seventy one.  We know there were a few who believed – Joseph of Arimathea for one, probably Nicodemus as well.  But the majority were more focused on their prestige, their settled opinions, and refused the very possibility of being in need of correction.

Now, to the Apostles.  There was a message for them in this event as well, which I suppose is pretty obvious, given the command given them.  Go, stand, speak.  Declare the Gospel openly, and in their face.  That may sound a bit off, but it’s there.  Go right back in there where they arrested you and pick up where you left off.  Here’s the message for them:  The Sanhedrin is not in charge, I AM.  There’s a second, though by no means secondary aspect to this announced command.  They no longer represent Me (haven’t for some time, really), you do.  And they had clear evidence in the very fact of this divine release that they, as His representatives, stood on the basis of His power.  They knew this already, I’m sure.  They had, after all, been seeing signs and wonders happening on the regular as He worked through them.  But this particular aspect of it may not have been so pronounced as yet.  Sure, they had the example of Peter and John, who had already been before this court and been released.  But this was an escalation, certainly, both in the arrest and in the escape.

It may be my own particular bias towards certain verses, but this feels like a clear marker of Jesus’ words of assurance.  “I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.  My Father has given them to Me, and He is greater than all [even the Sanhedrin].  No one is able to snatch them from His hand.  I and the Father are One” (Jn 10:28-30).  That, I would note, was taken as occasion to stone Him by those who heard, for the claim was unmistakably clear.  In the events which had culminated in the arrest of these Apostles, and now, even more so, in their release through locked and guarded gates, the veracity of that claim was abundantly clear.  And still, the Sanhedrin would refuse to see it.  The Apostles, however, could not help but see, and seeing, they gained the resilience of faith to do as commanded, as well, the reverent awareness of God’s power to do so without hesitation.

If this release was a message to the Apostles that they now stood in relation to God as the Sanhedrin had thought themselves to stand, which is to say, as the official spokesmen for Him, and the arbiters of true doctrine, this same message was being declared to the people at large.  Notice that God did not merely tell them to proclaim the Gospel in spite of threats.  He told them to do so in the temple.  Go right into the center of their power and demonstrate Mine.  This is not, I suppose, the gates of hell, but it is a firm and undeniable declaration to all who were paying attention that God had made His choice, and His choice was the Church established on the doctrines these twelve proclaimed.  Here are the words of life.  The Sanhedrin have only words of judgment, which must result in death.  There has been a coup, if you will.  But it is headed by God Almighty Himself.  You wanted deliverance from the power of worldly oppression, and here it is.  That oppression wasn’t centered where you thought it was.  It was coming from inside the house.  That house is now being purged, flushed out, torn down and replaced.  And that, people, imposes upon you a choice that must be made.  Here is another of those, “choose you this day whom you will follow,” moments, just as it was with Joshua and the people entering the Promised Land.  The true Promised Land has now been set before you, and these men mark the entrance.  God’s kingdom lies ahead for those who will go forward.  Nothing shall be left for those who remain behind.

That choice continues to be laid before an undecided world.  There are, I suppose, three classes, though it resolves to two.  There are those who have believed, and as such, are already past judgment, their sins having been blotted out from the record of heaven’s court.  There are those who have refused to believe, and as we have already noted, are already judged; their unbelief continuing unabated as punishment.  But there is this third group out there, containing elements of both those other two, which has not as yet reached their conclusive moment.  Make no mistake.  The decision has already been made, was made for each individual before the first moments of Creation.  But there remains the real outworking of the life of the creature, the real exercise of personal will and decision.  God knows their final estate, but it has not as yet been made evident to them or anyone else, and won’t be until that individual faces his moment of crisis and decision.  The die is spinning, but has not yet stopped, and so long as that remains the case, it remains possible that they shall be revealed as brothers when the message of Life has been sufficiently proclaimed to them.

We who believe are called to hope on their behalf.  Love bears all, believes all, hopes all, endures all (1Co 13:7).  Why?  Because while breath remains, hope remains even for the most hardened reprobate, that we might yet discover them brought to living faith in the authority and power of the only begotten Son of God Almighty.  They might yet choose this day and come into His light.  Let us pray that they do.  Let us labor that they might have opportunity to hear and respond.  Let us, in short, be as faithful to the task of declaring His message as were these twelve.

Real Life Parable (11/04/26)

It may be that I ask too much of the events of this passage, but it does seem to me that in its telling we are seeing a parable play out in real life.  Perhaps you have known such things to happen in your own experience.  We might call it a life lesson, or something we shall put down to experience.  The thing is, the significance of the event has been found to be larger than the event itself.  There was more there than met the eye.  If we paused to ponder it at the time, chances are it has stuck with us through the years.  The details may have faded a bit, but the meaning remains clear.

So, as we see those prison doors opened, and the Apostles set back on their mission, is it not a parable of sorts, conveying to us a visceral representation of the Gospel opening the doors of that prison in which sin had us bound?  Satan had us locked up, but Jesus set us free.  Make no mistake, sin imprisons, puts binders on hand and foot, leaving the sinner with no choice but to continue sinning.  And it is a cruel jailor, inflicting pain and harm even when its demands are complied with.  Paul speaks of it in terms of slavery, but slavery is in itself s sort of imprisonment, is it not?  But through His crucifixion we have died to sin, freed from its binding constraints, liberated to live to God (Ro 6:2, Ro 6:6-8).

It being a parable we are considering, we do not wish to press the elements of the image too hard.  I am not prepared to go so far as to suggest that the Sanhedrin were Satan, though they had certainly acted as motivated by Satan in condemning Messiah.  They had done so every bit as much as Judas, and they were thus condemned before the court of heaven, every bit as much as Judas.  Yet, does not Jesus’ prayer from the cross apply to them as much as to any?  “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34).  Or do we suppose He spoke only of those soldiers given charge of the task?  Perhaps only the general populace, but not their leaders?  It’s possible, certainly.  He did not specify who He meant, and couldn’t very well point them out.  I incline to take it as inclusively as possible, but there is the fact that the Sanhedrin, and the Sadducees particularly, were in fact judged with a finality.  What, however, would have come of them had they repented, even at that point, or even at this one set before us?  Breath remained.  Repentance remained an option.  Yet, in their case, they would not, and I would have to conclude that in the will of God, they could not.

We don’t like to hear that last.  We don’t like the idea that in the end, it falls out as God chooses.  We’re okay with that when it results in salvation, but somehow, when it results in condemnation, we feel it unjust, not in keeping with God’s character.  But the reality is that it’s simply not in keeping with our own sensibilities.  It’s uncomfortable to know God’s judgment.  The authors of Scripture understand this.  The author of Hebrews, for example, observes that “it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:30-31).  He is a God of vengeance, where vengeance is called for.  He will judge, and that begins with His people.

And that holds here.  It holds in both the positive and the negative.  As we observed yesterday, His decision to free the Apostles was a judgment, and such a one as overruled the judgment of those earthly representatives.  Indeed, it was a judgment upon them as well.  You can construe it as a warning shot, or as final assessment, but judgment was rendered.  You claimed to act on My behalf, but you did not.  We could go back to that passage in Leviticus that I reference so often, concerning the proper treatment of one who falsely claims to speak for God.  The punishment for such presumption is death.  The punishment for every sin is death, and the every punishment of sin that was due us has been fully visited upon Messiah Who sets us free from the condemnation that is our just expectation.

The court intended, one expects, to impose that sentence upon these Apostles, and thus the immediate overruling of their decision, so immediate as to precede even the official deciding, though they no doubt had already reached decision in their minds; a decision no trial proceeding was going to change.  But the Gospel opened the doors of that prison.  The sentence of death was lifted from these men, and they were sent forth to proclaim life.  “Go.  Stand.  Speak.  Deliver the whole message of this Life to all the people.”  Your job is not finished, and these have no power to prevent you from doing so.

Beloved, have you heard the good news?  Have you received that call to believe?  Do so, if you have not.  He’s serious.  He’s real.  It may be that you have not sufficiently contemplated your own condition as to recognize the bonds of sin.  Satan does, after all, tend to put his blinders upon us, lest we perceive our true estate.  But Jesus is able to remove those blinders, as well as those binding sinful propensities.  He is Life, and gives life to whom He will.  If He has called, receive Him.  Get to know Him, and to truly, fully comprehend the extent of His love for you.  You don’t have to continue as you are.  That way lies only death, and beyond death, an eternal perishing.  It’s not oblivion that befalls man at the end of his days, but something far worse, if he has refused his true Lord and King.

Yet, the way lies open to redemption.  The gates of hell’s prison cannot stand against the Gospel any more than the gates of the Sanhedrin’s prison could contain these men of God’s choosing.  The Gospel cannot be imprisoned.  God cannot be contained.  That was the message we heard from Paul in Philippians.  That is the message being broadcast loud and clear from this scene set before us.  Whom the Son sets free, he is free indeed (Jn 8:36).  That is not some libertine grant of immunity such that one can just get back to sinning without concern.  No!  It is liberation from the rebel camp, to come and serve the living God.  It is deliverance from the place of humiliation and shame into a place of honor.  It is Life in its fullest sense on offer to those born dead.  And with that release comes purpose. 

You aren’t given life to just wallow about, self-content with no concern for any other.  No!  You are granted a part in the grand mystery of Christ.  You are no longer just going through the motions, doing what you must until breath finally gives out.  You have purpose!  You have significance!  You have the word of this Life, and you have the capacity to share it with those yet in need of hearing it.  You could be the one they finally hear to good effect.  Or perhaps you shall find you are equipped for other duties, such as instructing those already come to faith so that they may grow.  Perhaps you shall find you have been equipped to take something of a supporting role, working behind the scenes to enable those who bear the message.  There were but twelve Apostles, after all, yet the church numbered now in the thousands.  And each had a purpose.  Each had a gift by which to contribute to the work of God among the people.  The Church must now number in the billions, I should think.  And the picture hasn’t changed.  Each has a contribution to make, a purpose in the body of Christ.  And how wonderful it is to have purpose in life.  How wonderful it is to have life in His purpose.  How glorious the liberty of the sons of God, that they may serve Him wholeheartedly, may make Him known to all by the evidence of His presence in them.  How gladsome to have been set free from the prison of condemnation, and to have within us the keys to deliver others from that same prison.  Let us, then, by no means condemn those around us who have not heard, nor even those who have most vehemently rejected the word of Life.  Who knows but that they may yet be changed?  But let us offer freely that which we have so freely received.

Righteous Resolve (11/05/26)

I have set verse 20 as the key verse for this passage, and how could I not?  Here is the command come from heaven, and it comes as reiterating the Great Commission, at least in part.  As with the Great Commission, it begins with the command to go.  Here, it is ‘go your way.’  There, it is just ‘go.’  But there are implications of going to the nations, for how else does one make disciples of the nations except one goes to them?  But in this moment, the scope is specifically the people of Israel, and the place they are to go is specified as the temple.  But this is not the end goal.  This is the starting point.  And really, it’s a command to keep doing what they’ve been doing, and to do so fearlessly.

It wouldn’t be too great a stretch to find some echoes of Moses at the burning bush in this scene.  Like him, these men were being instructed to return to the place of greatest danger to themselves.  Moses, returning to Egypt to confront Pharaoh, was at serious risk of finding himself arrested, imprisoned, and likely executed in due course.  The twelve, had already been arrested and imprisoned, for all that they were out and free at this point.  And here, they are commanded to head right back into the very place of their original arrest, the place of the Sanhedrin’s greatest power.

I wonder how you or I would have responded to such a command.  Really?  You want me to do what now?  Are you mad?  Are we just going to keep doing this like a routine now?  Preach in the morning, go to prison, get released?  But for these, there is no questioning the command.  Go.  And they went.  First opportunity they went.

There is a second command here.  “Stand firm.”  Now, the word firm is not found in the text, but it is found in the term being translated as stand.  It struck me as interesting that the command is given in the passive voice.  It seems like maybe it should be understood more as, “be caused to stand.”  But in this case, the voice apparently informs the meaning.  Stand firm is one possibility, and it is the one I have chosen as most closely fitting the imperative mood of command.  But it also has this idea of being established.  There is a certainty involved, and that certainty is not just some prideful emotion they’ve worked up in themselves, but rather, the work of the same Holy Spirit of God Who was at work in them that day of Pentecost not so long ago.  And He has been at work in them since, as evidenced by the signs and wonders accompanying their daily teaching there at the temple.  So perhaps that’s the passive voice aspect of this that we should perceive.  Go and be established – by God – to speak – for God.

What is it that establishes them to be able to obey this with no apparent fear, no regard for their own safety?  It is the absolute assurance that God is with them.  That had to be clear in the very fact of their present circumstance.  How is it that they are here, outside the prison, receiving this command in the first place?  It is because God is with them.  Why was it that they were arrested?  It is because God is with them.  He was investing their words with power, confirming their message with wonders, and this was bound to get the attention of those in charge at the temple.  It could go one of two ways, I suppose.  They could perceive that God was with them and seek to come alongside in the work, or they could perceive a threat to their power and seek to silence them.  Of course, we know their choice.  So did God.  And this return of His representatives to the temple, the court of those who supposed themselves to be His representatives but were not, was a clear declaration of their being deposed.  It is an unmistakable announcement by the final Authority, that their authority had been rescinded, as they had failed in their duties, and failed as well to change their ways.

And so, to the final command:  Speak the whole word of this Life, and speak it to all.  The whole word.  Leave nothing out.  Take your time.  Make sure they hear it all.  Make disciples.  We’re back to the Great Commission.  You don’t make disciples by creating an atmosphere where emotions rise, and you can cajole the visitor to come forward and recite the sinner’s prayer.  There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, I suppose, but that’s not making disciples.  That’s checking a box.  Making disciples takes time and effort.  It takes instruction, an answering of questions, a correcting of misconceptions.  It takes setting an example, and allowing them into your life close enough that they can both see and emulate the example you set them.

I encounter a lot of talk about how the Jewish mode of teaching was or is so superior to the Greek mode.  It seems the general perception in those who make the point is that our modern system of education is largely built on the Greek mode.  But that isn’t really true, is it?  It’s more built on the Prussian mode.  Just hammer the data into place in each child.  Any more, it’s more fashioned on the Soviet mode, I fear.  Don’t instruct.  Whatever you do, don’t teach them to think.  Teach them to puppet your points.  Teach them to recite as fact the ideas you instill, and never to question them, however much reality may contradict.  The reality is that the Greek mode and the Jewish mode were not all that different.  Terminology might vary.  But how had Jesus taught?  It was a combination of didactic discourse, engaging His hearers in thoughtful consideration of His stated points, and being present, demonstrating in His own life a life shaped by these doctrines in order that those He taught could, by emulating His example, be likewise shaped.  The schools of the Greek philosophers were not so very different.  Students did not merely come to hear a lecture, and then get on with whatever they were doing outside of school.  They came because they saw in the man something they would wish to be like, and thus, sought to learn from him what made him what he was.

This is the model for the Church.  It’s not just the sermon on Sunday, though the sermon is a critical component.  It’s not just the gathered worship in all its component pieces.  It’s the life shared.  That is what we saw previously of this first church.  To borrow my pastor’s favored phrase, they did life together.  It’s not the communal nature of their chosen form that’s in view.  It’s the interaction, the shared experience, the constant rubbing against one another, and in so doing, discovering the work of the Holy Spirit both in themselves and in those around them.  It is great encouragement to see God moving strongly in a brother or a sister.  It is easier by far, I think, to pray together than to pray alone.  Even Jesus found that to be the case, didn’t He?  That last night in Gethsemane, what was His great desire?  “Come pray with Me.”

But here, it’s not the prayer times that are put forward, but the time to work.  After all, the Church had already prayed, and that prayer included a prayer for boldness, the sort of boldness that comes of knowing that God is with you, the boldness that comes of being established.  Here was boldness commanded.  And in their immediate response, here is boldness supplied.  God is with them.

This command comes forward to us in our own time and place.  The Apostles can no longer go out and speak the word of Life to the people.  But they have left that word for us, written down lest it be distorted in the long chain of tellings and retellings.  Peter famously responded to Jesus’ question as to whether they were going to give up on this mission as others were doing by saying, “Where else would we go, Lord?  You have the words of life” (Jn 6:68).  This is what has been entrusted to us, each one of us who have come to believe.  And it has not been entrusted to us in order that we should carefully stash it away in a safe.  It has been entrusted to us with the explicit instruction to share it with any and all who will stand still long enough to hear.

Now, let me look at this last piece of the command and dig a bit into the word choices.  I start here:  speak the word.  In speaking, the word before us is lalia.  It is not lego, as we might have expected.  Zhodiates, for one, tends to draw sharp distinction between the two, seeing lalia as indicating little more than audible noise, where lego would indicate intelligent discourse.  But here, it is lalia, and the subject matter is identified as life.  This is not mere noise.  But there is a point being made in this choice of words.  Do not be silent.  Do not be silenced.  That, after all, is the thrust of the Sanhedrin’s threats.  Speak no more.  God’s response is, speak no less.  Proclaim this message.  And leave nothing out!  Speak the whole message.

Here, we are come to a term familiar from my Charismatic days: rhemata.  Ooh!  A rhema word!  There’s an entire ministry out there built on the conception they have of this term as indicating a word charged with significance for this present moment.  This gives it a certain cachet that logos doesn’t seem to deliver.  Logos is too rational, too logical, it seems.  Where’s the emotional charge in a logical, didactic lesson?  But a rhema word, unpremeditated as far as we know, spoken direct from God into this moment!  That’s signs and wonders territory.  Yet that is not what is being commanded here.  How can one command unpremeditated speech?  I suppose that in its way, Scripture actually does command exactly that.  “Don’t agonize over what you are to say.  You will be given what to say in that moment.”  Yes.  It’s there.  But it’s not the injection of message trance-like, as with the Delphic oracles and such other fantastic, esoteric experiences.  Rather, it is the Holy Spirit recalling to mind what Jesus taught.  As I have often taught, you cannot recall to mind what has not been stored away there already.  That is a large part of what these times of study are about.  That’s what our attendance to the preaching of the Gospel is about, why we gather to study God’s word, why we read books about this Christian life.  We are filling our storehouse in order that, when the time for action comes, we have the necessary information stored away, in order that the Holy Spirit might index through it to bring to mind the particular message needed for that moment.  So, yes, the rhema word is an apt word, but it’s not necessarily some revelatory telegram being delivered.  The main point of it is that it has specific meaning to impart.

Don’t just speak at random.  Don’t go piling up words hoping to make your point by overwhelming.  Don’t make it a theatrical event, gesturing wildly, working the applause lines, dropping in the amusing anecdote, or the tug on the heartstrings.  Speak to the point.  And the point is specified:  this Life.  I love that the NASB opts to capitalize that last.  It’s not about this earthly life.  It’s about this Life!  It’s about the way this Life never ends, nor will it for those who reject the prince of Life.  It’s about the fact that we have been dead since the day we were born, but because of Christ Jesus, because God provided the Way in His precious blood, we may be reborn into Life as it was intended to be, life that transcends the arc of this present existence, continues on into eternity ensured of being present in heaven, granted the distinct honor of beholding our Savior and our God as He truly is – in His full perfection, in a state of true holiness ourselves, stripped of all sin and every temptation, so as to enjoy His immediate presence forever in glory.  Life!  Life at its fullest, blessed beyond all that this world could possibly provide.  And yet, it is life experienced in the here and now, though it be only in part, as a downpayment on that which is to come.

That’s the message we have, if indeed we have it.  If we have it, we will stand fast, for He Who indwells us, He who saved us, is able to make us stand, to give us the backbone, to lend us of His own power that we may play the man.  If we have it, we will not be silent, but will speak, and we will speak the word of Life, both in its great promise and in its necessary impact on the character and practice of the one who receives it.  Teach them all that I commanded.  If all we address are the rewards, we fail.  If all we impart are demands, we fail.  We must speak all the message of this Life, and we must do so freely, boldly, and truly.

Lord, let it be so in us, in me.  I know too well my propensity to remain silent.  But that is not the way.  I know my concerns for trends I see around me, and I pray that there, too, You would act to safeguard Your church.  Keep us on course.  Keep us true.  Keep us on mission.  And empower us to indeed stand fast and boldly proclaim, however strong the tides that move against us.  We are Yours and that is enough.  We are Yours, and we desire nothing so much as that we might demonstrate this wonderful fact in all we say and do.  Forgive us that we so often fail.  Correct us that we may do better.  Work in us that we may work in You.