The Current Order (08/06/26-08/07/26)

In this confrontation we are met with representatives of most of those who constituted the current order in the Temple, and thus, in society.  We have the priests, of course, those who officiated over the sacrifices and other rites and ceremonies of their religion.  We have the Levites represented in the captain of the Temple guard, a guard drawn from their number and serving as the enforcement and defense arm of the Temple polity.  And then, of course, we have the Sadducees, to which sect belonged the majority of the high priestly families.  These being, or representing the chief earthly authority of religious life, let me start with the Sadducees.

We know relatively little about this sect in part because the events which would ensue in the years ahead, as we read the record of Acts, would all but eradicate that sect.  With the Temple destroyed, their political usefulness was, one supposes, reduced if not eliminated.  Of the Pharisees, one can find proud descendants and adherents to this day.  But of the Sadducees, there is effectively nothing more than a historical footnote.  But we do know that there were certain distinctive features in their beliefs which set them apart from, and at times, at odds with the Pharisees.  It is worth noting that unlike the Pharisees, those distinctive beliefs held by the Sadducees were, we are informed, largely unknown to the public at large.  They were something of an elitist group, concerned with their own positions and none too keen to deal much with the public.  That, I observe, says something significant as concerns the event before us in this passage.  For them to be here, in the outer court amongst the masses, they had to have been very disturbed indeed.  And that, in turn, must suggest that somebody in that crowd had seen fit to run off and inform the authorities of what was happening.

So, what do we know of their beliefs?  Well, the single most obvious distinction was that they saw no support for belief in resurrection.  They did not, in practice or in thought, accept the idea of any kind of afterlife.  There is debate as to what degree this extended to denial of all spiritual beings (God Himself being, presumably, excepted).  That certainly is the commonly received perception of their beliefs, that angels and demons were no more real than the afterlife.  But their basis for rejecting the afterlife and resurrection lay in their upholding of Torah alone as the final arbiter of faith.  They were, in this regard, not so far from the Protestant position of Sola Scriptura.  But they were more restrictive; let us say, Sola Pentateuch.  If Moses didn’t record it, or more, perhaps, of Moses said otherwise, then the rest of Scripture, the Prophets and the Writings, must bow to his authority.

They saw nothing in Torah to explicitly uphold any idea of an afterlife, and on that basis, they rejected the concept of resurrection.  This, of course, put them at odds with the Pharisees.  As to their rejection of spiritual beings, which is often thought to hinge on this same basis, Fausset points out that Torah does explicitly mention angels.  That being the case, they suggest a more accurate understanding of their position would likely be that they rejected the idea of further angelic communications in their own day.  Without delving into it further, I would simply observe a caution here for those who in like fashion insist that the charismatic gifts we find operating in the early church have ceased in our day.  I will readily agree that much of what passes for the exercise of those gifts today is counterfeit showmanship and prideful display.  But then, the same could be said then.  And I will happily hold with the Reformed position that Scripture is complete, in need of no further revelation.  Certainly, the Apostolic order has passed from the stage centuries ago.  There is no more an Apostolic office than there is an office of the Roman emperor.  That’s all done and dusted.  But the gifts?  I find insufficient cause to suppose them inactive, and I suppose I would have to say that experience of their very real activity (at least so far as I can assess reality) renders it impossible for me to reject them outright.  Yet, experience of their very much counterfeited activity prevents me simply accepting such things at face value.  May I not, however, grow too assured of my own wisdom, and remain pliable to the Lord’s instruction.

I will finish my thoughts on the Sadducees with this, from Buck’s Theological Dictionary.  Summing up the beliefs of the Sadducees, that book observes that they taught of man as, “absolute master of all his actions, without assistance to good, or restraint from evil.”  This is, I would say self-evidently, a very worldly perspective.  It is the stance of modern philosophy, and has been for ages.  If anything, the present variation differs only in that it has little to no regard for good and evil at all, barely admits to them as categories.  There is only man and what he feels.  Absolute master indeed!  And hasn’t that been the siren call of sin all along?  For my part, I must say that if man is left as master of himself, then all hope is surely lost.  One need not look very far afield to see the foul fruit of such conclusions.  It is the enticement first laid before Adam and Eve in Eden.  It is the enticement that led to Lucifer’s fall.  It is the enticement that most readily entangles and besets man in every age.  And it must be resisted.  Yet resistance is not in us.  If we are to be strong to stand against that temptation, it shall only be in the power of the Lord.

Turning to the priests, we meet the second tier, if you will, of the temple hierarchy.  These were not of the high priestly families, necessarily, but were still of the tribe of Levi, and they served in the performance of sacrifices and such other rites as applied.  Unlike the Sadducees in the upper ranks, these would have no choice but to interact with the people.  Still, they would be somewhat apart, their clothes and their position marking them out as something special.  We may assume a greater variety of beliefs among them, though the scene before us suggests that they remained primarily associated with the Sadducees.  We do know that the Pharisees had their representation as well, though it’s not at all clear to me to what extent that held true within the ranks of the priesthood.  Clearly, they had a presence in the Sanhedrin and amongst the rabbinical order.  But are rabbi and priest the same thing?  That’s not a question I choose to pursue at present, this being already somewhat of an aside to the present passage.  But I would say that the rabbi was primarily a teacher whereas the priest was primarily an officiator.  The priest was the one to offer sacrifices, which is not something I see attributed to rabbis.  Neither do I recall encountering an example of a priest serving as teacher.  Whether this was a clear cut division of labor, though, I am not certain at all.

So, come back to this aspect of offering sacrifices.  That lies at the basis of the term, whether it is applied to those in God’s temple, or to those pursuing idolatrous gods.  Further, as the EDBT reminds us, God had, from the outset, declared His people to be a kingdom of priests.  We associate that with Peter’s letter to the churches.  “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1Pe 2:9).  If ever there was a verse to make you stand proud with chest full!  Oh yes!  That’s me!  This is what God has said of me!  But Peter is quoting something far older.  He’s gone back to Moses, back to Mount Sinai.  Let’s join him.  “Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among the peoples, for all the earth is Mine.  And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:5-6a).  I have to say, it’s far more thrilling in Peter’s framing of the matter, for there we see the Gospel at work:  He has called you out of darkness into His light!  With Moses, the onus remains on me:  If you obey, if you keep My covenant.  And the people answered.  “All that the LORD has spoken, we will do!” (Ex 19:8).  Of course, what else could one say with God there and present in their midst, and so obviously present!  But it was the rush of adrenaline rather than the voice of reason.  Had they not heard the terms?  Had they no self-awareness?  As I said a few paragraphs back, this wasn’t going to happen except God undertook to make it so in them; in us.

But the promise holds:  You are a chosen, royal priesthood and a holy nation.  You are God’s own possession, selected out of the nations of the earth.  And you, as priests, have yourselves this responsibility to offer sacrifices unto God.  It was observed that prior to the giving of the Law it had fallen to fathers, to kings, to firstborns to perform the service of sacrifice.  I’m not entirely certain as to that inclusion (or restriction) of the firstborn.  If that were the case, then Cain would have been right to make an offering, but Abel ought not to have done so.  And yet, it is Abel’s offering which is accepted, and Cain who was rejected.  But leave that aside.  We are a royal priesthood, called into service to proclaim God’s excellencies, and to offer sacrifices unto Him.  This, of course, does not consist any longer in the blood of goats and bulls.  Indeed, we would hold – we must hold – that Jesus Christ our Lord and King made once for all the only real sacrifice for sin.  That is the robust testimony of the Scriptures.  “The death that He died, He died to sin, once for all” (Ro 6:10a).  He does not need to make daily offerings like the high priests of old, so as to cover His own sins first, and then those of the people, for He did so once for all when He offered Himself (Heb 7:27).  He died once for all, the just for the unjust, so as to bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit (1Pe 3:18).

As I recall that last, I find myself wondering to whom that last clause is intended to apply.  Certainly, Jesus was Himself put to death in the flesh, yet alive in the spirit.  And yet, in His resurrection, it was not so much that He was made alive as that His life triumphed over death, and it was both spirit and flesh which were found to be alive.  For us, on the other hand, the flesh is very much alive and it is the spirit which is dead within us prior to the work of Christ in us.  Then, His atoning sacrifice applied – by Him on our behalf – we find our flesh put to death and our spirit made alive.  We are no longer bound by the necessity of pursuing the lusts of flesh, but are empowered to resist sin’s temptations, to truly walk holy in this life, even though it is not in the perfection of holiness.  We have now a choice which before this point had never been available to us.  Or let us say that while it was available, we were blind to that fact, and so could not choose it.

And still:  You are a royal priesthood.  As a royal priesthood, you have yet this official duty to offer sacrifices unto God.  Let me suggest that in this present condition, it is not the sin offering that you bring.  You cannot atone for sins, nor have you need to do so, for He has done it.  But there remain thank offerings, wave offerings, freewill offerings.  There remains the offering of a broken and contrite heart, the which God will by no means despise (Ps 51:17).  There remains the sacrifice of rejoicing in all things, even the trials which come our way.  And they do come.  And they will continue to come.  But we can rejoice, knowing that whatever motivates those by whom trials come, God remains at the wheel, working all things for our good (Ro 8:28).  And if He, in His loving providential care for us, has seen fit to permit this trial, then first off, we can rejoice in the knowledge that He deems us able to bear up in this trial.  It is evidence of His assessment of our maturity that it has come to pass.  He does not seek to break us, but to prove us, and that proving is primarily to ourselves.  He, after all, already knows.  But second, we can rejoice in the assured knowledge that whatever the present circumstance, it is producing for us a godly fruiting of righteousness and peace in the Holy Spirit.

So, then, we are called yet to sacrifice, as this holy nation of God’s chosen.  And what are the sacrifices we offer?  Our bodies.  Our being.  Our existence.  We don’t lay ourselves out with a gun and commit suicide.  We don’t draw some ceremonial blade and plunge it deep within our own breast.  We are to be a living and holy sacrifice, this being our acceptable, spiritual service of worship (Ro 12:1).  In what then, does this sacrifice consist?  “Be not conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Ro 12:2a).  Think no more highly of yourself than you ought (Ro 12:3a).  Serve with the gifts God gives you, devoting yourselves to brotherly love, honoring your fellow believers, being fervent in spirit (Ro 12:4-11).  And then, the culmination:  “Rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer” (Ro 12:12).  That is your high and holy calling.

At one and the same time, now that I have so built up this image of our role as priests unto God, it must be recognized that all along there remained in parallel to this a specific order of priests charged with maintaining the relationship of God’s people to the Lord.  Thiers was the task of administration in the sanctuary.  Theirs was the task of promulgating and enforcing the Law of God.  After all, if all are priests and there arises a difference of opinion as to practice or interpretation, who is to resolve that difference?  There is a message for us in this parallel hierarchy of order alongside the priesthood of all believers.  The latter does not obviate the former.  We are not to be each of us a law unto ourselves.  That way lies the sin of Eden, the influence of the devil.  No!  We are to devote ourselves to our God, and that devotion in part consists of submission to His order.  “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints” (1Co 14:33).  “Let all things be done properly and in an orderly manner” (1Co 14:40).

That holds as true in the households of the saints as in the communal fellowship of the Church.  The Apostles, in their day, had an authoritative position in the Church as it grew.  They still do, though it is now through what we have of their writings.  They, in turn, appointed elders in the churches as the churches were established, and these elders were to preside over the churches in which they served.  Their authority did not extend to the church in the next town, or the church down the street, but within their local church, they were to be heeded.  And they were to be prayed for, as leaders of God’s people, that God might indeed work through them, and they might indeed be faithful unto Him.

Here, of course, we are considering the priesthood of the old order, the temple order.  And what must register with us most clearly is the official honor that would have been their due from those gathered to hear Peter and John.  All that I have been saying about acknowledging and submitting to those authorized by God as having oversight of His temple and His people comes to bear.  It comes to bear on those listening.  It comes to bear on Peter and John, as also authorized by God to speak and to do.  It had come to bear on their Lord in His own turn, had it not?  Even as that leadership showed itself most utterly corrupt, violating all the rules of the law they supposedly represented and enforced, He remained subjected, of His own will, to their authority.

And that authority is further emphasized by the presence of the captain of the guard.  One presumes that if the captain is present, so too are others of the guard.  This guard would have been drawn from among the Levites, those of the tribe, but not of the proper lineage to serve as priests.  Theirs was the physical care of the temple, and one presumes, the protection of those who officiated at temple.  I don’t imagine that last aspect required a great deal of them.  It seems to me the greatest danger to the priestly orders came from their own ranks, particularly as concerned those who might seek to be high priest for a season.  But this is the strong arm of the law presented, and yet, it remains a presence redolent of Mosaic order.  This was also by God’s ordained intent, though its present development might be more difficult to see.  When we first find the Levites assigned their duties in the desert, it is not apparent that they had anything of military function.  Theirs was the task of bearing the tabernacle and its furnishings, of setting up and tearing down.  How could they, with care of these loads, be at arms?  Indeed, they were kept at the center of the other tribes, those forming a defense on every side.  But with the settled position of the temple, it seems the role had modified somewhat.

Suffice to say that the temple order had arrived in force.  The language here is all to that point.  They ‘came upon them,’ a matter of sudden and rushed arrival.  One must suppose that Peter and John, as they faced those listening, could see the rippling motion of this crew coming through the crowds from deeper in the temple complex.  I wonder how far Peter had made it in his message before this began.  It does suggest that the message as we have it is summarized, rather than truly verbatim.  But it offers an enticing possibility that they arrived in time to hear that point about them acting in ignorance when they – they – clamored for Jesus to be put to death, and for a murderer’s release.   We then read that they ‘laid hands on’ Peter and John.  There is no mention of any resistance to this, not from Peter and John, not from the crowds gathered around them.  Again, this was the officialdom of Israel acting, and this crowd, large as it was, excited as it was, would do nothing against that officialdom.

Note as well that mention of jailing them overnight.  This is something of a casual observation on Luke’s part.  But it is telling.  They put them in jail because it was already evening.  So what?  Well, that mattered because according to proper order, they were not to undertake judicial proceedings at night, only in the light of day.  And yet, that proper order had been absolutely disregarded in the case of Jesus.  This is not, then, some casual aside from Luke, but a thoroughly pointed commentary on their actions in regard to our Lord.  It rather counteracts Peter’s softer statement regarding their ignorance.  No.  They had not acted in ignorance, at least not entirely.  They had acted with malice aforethought.  That is abundantly evident both in the deliberations of the Sanhedrin prior to His arrest, and in the actions taken upon His arrest.  Nothing about that was in order.  Nothing about that was accidental.  They may have been ignorant as to His true Person.  I suppose they would have to have been in order to pursue their course.  But the ignorance was willfully self-imposed.  The evidence was there.  The knowledge afforded by Scripture was there.  They refused to see.

Before I close out this heading, let us take this point and apply it to our present day, to our personal situation.  We are not immune to willful blindness.  We are fully capable of becoming so hidebound in our adherence to our own opinions and training as to become impervious to truth.  It is not just a problem with others around us.  It is a problem with us.  We dare not look at the Sadducees and merely shake our heads at their corruption and stubbornness.  We are corrupt and stubborn.  If we think otherwise, then frankly, we are not thinking.  Spiritual pride is rising up to cloud our vision, and we must needs pray for the work of the Holy Spirit within us to allow clarity once more.  We can become so bullheadedly certain of our take on things as to reject without thought any opinion that speaks otherwise.  I would not call us to become so open-minded as to accept all truth claims as having equal validity, nor to hold our beliefs so loosely that any least wind of proposed doctrine shifts our course.  But neither can we afford to be so hidebound that we find ourselves rejecting the course change that the Holy Spirit is directing in and around us.

I think of my own reaction to the course change of our church, as we seem to be moving in the direction of changing our identity, as it were.  A change of focus I could accept, a change of emphasis, perhaps, from the cerebral to the manifest and active.  Yet, I would not willingly sacrifice the one for the other.  It seems to me that what is called for is more a both/and, than an either/or.  I feel much the same with the insistence that it’s not learning about God that’s called for, but relationship.  To be sure, if we stop at mere intellectual pursuit we will fall far short of anything like a living and lively faith in God.  But if we do not incorporate such intellectual pursuits of Truth, on what basis can we claim to have any relationship to the God Who has thus revealed Himself?  On what basis shall we know the God we have in mind is indeed the God Who Is?  And yes, I know there is as strong, conservationist tendency in me.  It was very much in the nature of my time as active elder in this church.  To reject our DNA, as it were, seems neither right nor safe.  Yet, to retain childhood habits will never result in maturity.  I don’t know how this is all going to play out.  How could I?  I am not God.  I am not even in leadership.  I’m just present, and even at that, less so than I would like.  But changes are occurring, and while they don’t sit easy with me, I must needs seek to understand whether those concerns I have are from God or merely from a desire for comfort.  I must needs seek to understand if my actions in my own home, in my workplace, in my private moments, are from God or merely from a desire for comfort and constancy.  I must check for my own blind spots, seeking that God would open my eyes to see what’s before me with the clarity of His vision.

Even so, Lord, let it be done unto me as You will.  It seems to be a season of growing.  Grant that I might accede to what You are doing, abiding in Your presence and Your power, following where You lead, resting where You set me.

The Offense (08/08/26)

So this group of officials has come out from the depths of the temple to confront Peter and John.  To be clear, it is a purposeful encounter.  They didn’t just happen by.  I don’t expect that they had witnessed the healing of this man that was with Peter and John.  But somebody had.  And somebody had heard what they were teaching, as well, and felt that to be deserving of attention.  The Sadducees, hearing of what was going on, agreed, and so strongly as to bring with them not merely a random contingent of officers, but the captain of the guard, presumably with a contingent of his men.

This word which Luke chooses to describe their state of mind covers something of a range of feeling.  Diaponoumenoi:  It can signify merely being troubled by the matter, or it could signify that they were all rather worked up by it.  Their coming out in such force suggests the latter.  Let us note that this word can speak of being pained and offended as well.  And I have little doubt but that these leaders of the temple were in fact very deeply offended, and not only offended, but concerned for their positions.  Nothing troubles the powerful so much as a threat to their power, and make no mistake; what they heard about Peter’s preaching struck them as just such a threat.

Luke’s indication of the troubling thought, depending on the translation, seems almost too politic, too polite.  I suppose a physician – and especially one functioning as a talented slave rather than with the authoritative nature of the modern doctor – delivering hard assessments in politic fashion would be a necessary talent.  But we have this variously translated phrase about proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.  That particular wording comes from the NASB.  In any translation, attention comes to rest on the matter of resurrection, and it is quite clear that this was a prominent and central part of the Gospel message as it was preached by the Apostles.  Not to get off track, but I would have to suppose that it ought to be every bit as central to our message today.

Yet, discussion of resurrection would not, in and of itself, drawn such a response from the Sadducees.  They were long used to functioning alongside the Pharisees, to whom resurrection was an accepted belief.  Face it.  Most of the populace would have accepted it without too great an issue.  They might, like Martha, have held to it more in the theoretical, or as some far future event.  But the idea was not shocking.  Neither was it cause for armed confrontation, taking the propounders of such such a theology into custody.  Face it.  Judaism was quite used to tolerating various sects, very much like the Church today is used to there being such an array of denominations with their varied beliefs concerning what we deem to be secondary matters of theology.  Nothing prevents us confessing to be colaborers in Christ’s vineyards.  Nothing prevents Pentecostal and Reformed individuals from worshiping the same God, from accepting each other’s faith as genuine.   It might strain shared times of worship, given the wild divergence of style, but it need not strain fellowship as brothers in Christ.

One thing that is particularly telling, it seems to me, is that we have no mention of any representation from the Pharisees here.  For one, talk of resurrection would not bother them in the least.  And as I say, their beliefs would seem to make it plain that it wasn’t strictly speaking the claim of some future resurrection that had the priests and Sadducees riled up.  It was that little clause Luke uses to describe what Peter was proclaiming.  It was ‘in Jesus.’

That brings us to this tiny little preposition, en.  For such a small word, it carries a large variety of meaning.  It is a term describing, at base, a pause in the motion of the action.  It’s not moving into, nor is it moving out from.  It is at rest.  It is amidst.  But it can also bear the force of indicating instrumental means.  And that meaning, it seems, comes to the fore when we have the word accompanied by a dative object of person, which is the case here in verse 2.  It is en to Iesou.  We can dispense with the article, given the Greek propensity to use it far more widely than would we.  But it is in Jesus, in the nature of Him, or in the person of Him.  It is Jesus in whom this power of resurrection is operative, in whom resurrection is manifested.  Do you begin to see the problem for these officials?

Still, there is the challenge of drawing the full meaning out of the translated words.  Let me try a few other translations.  I will grant that most of these are far more inclined towards conveying the meaning rather than the literal, word for word translation.  But in this case, that seems most needful.  We can start with the TEV, which tells us that, “the two apostles were teaching the people that Jesus had risen from death, which proved that the dead will rise to life.”  Or try Goodspeed, who says they were, “declaring that in the case of Jesus there had been a resurrection from the dead.”  Both of these move us from the simple declaration that resurrection is true doctrine, to resurrection has actually happened.  And even that really wouldn’t have been enough to cause trouble, would it?  After all, everybody had heard about Lazarus.  It was common news in Jerusalem, had caused no little stir itself.  That had, of course, instigated the action against Jesus.  But it had not instigated such overt action as this.

I’ll offer the CJB as a last variation.  They indicate that this group was, “very annoyed that they were teaching the people the doctrine of resurrection from the dead and offering Yeshua as proof.”  And that, I think, gets us to the point.  If Jesus was being declared as alive from the dead, this was something far more dangerous to them than Lazarus had been.  The danger of Lazarus had always been, for them, the danger of Jesus.  He, after all, had already acted against them in twice acting to clear the marketplace they had made of the court of the Gentiles.  He had threatened their position, in no small degree, by showing them up in open, public debate, if you wish to call it that.  Of course, they had brought that on themselves, seeking to show Him up with their clever, unanswerable or entrapping questions.  And every time, He had turned the tables on them every bit as much as He had overturned the tables of their moneychangers.  Jesus was trouble.

Jesus was all the more trouble given how they had handled His arrest, in which they had violated all the rules of order, as Luke kind of hints here in noting how Peter and John were held overnight, “for it was already evening.”  No night trials.  It is the way we do things.  Well, except when it comes to this Jesus fellow.  And before Annas, who was not even the sitting high priest!  Never mind that there were multiple high priests extent, when it had been established by God through Moses as a lifetime appointment.  But the biggest problem for them was that they had staked their reputations on promulgating the lie that these disciples had somehow managed to slip Jesus’ dead body out of a sealed tomb while a contingent of Roman soldiers stood guard over that place.  They had paid off those soldiers to back their claims.  But I suppose anybody seeing those soldiers still extent after such a failure of duty might well be asking how they had avoided execution for their dereliction.  The great danger here was that their whole story was falling apart.  And so, they acted, and acted swiftly.  This must be stopped, and stopped now!

To back this up we need only go back to that passage which has been at the forefront of my thoughts as I worked my way through Peter’s message.  It’s the sharp, pointy tip of that message.  “You put to death the prince of life, whom God raised from death” (Ac 3:15).  And don’t miss this!  This was, “a fact to which we are witnesses.”  Now, I suppose we could argue which fact Peter is referring to, their involvement or His resurrection, but I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.  He was, as Luke says, “proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection.”  He was the evidence as well as the power.  It was no longer some theoretical nicety of religion.  It was established reality.  But if that opening salvo was effective upon those listening, who had, after all, quite likely played a part in that mob clamoring for His crucifixion, however valid the claim of ignorance; what of those who had been instigating their clamoring for His blood?  Who had stirred them up like that?  This was more than a disappointed response to seeing their mistaken expectations of Messiah fail.  That, after all, had happened any number of times when their expectations fell on some false messiah or other.  What was one more?  Something pushed them into a frenzy, and that something was now present before them in the persons of the Sadducees, and the priests.  They were furious.  For this message of Peter’s laid the blame directly on them, called them ignorant (Ac 3:16)!

Peter may have offered that as an ameliorating condition, but in their pride and power, I suspect they heard it more like a slap to the face.  Us?  Ignorant?  How dare you, you untaught, unwashed Galilean!  But it was to be tinged with fear, for whatever lies they had promulgated in regard to that empty tomb, they knew that they were lies, and they knew the truth threatened their position, their prestige.  It could very well threaten their sect as a whole.  No.  I don’t suppose even this would have sufficed to convince the general populace to reject the priests or those of high priestly descent outright.  I don’t imagine it would have led to booting the Levites out of the temple.  After all, this was what Moses had established, what God had established.  And for the Jew of that day, the Temple was everything.  It’s overthrow and destruction was unthinkable.  It remained unthinkable those years later when the forces of Rome laid siege to Jerusalem, and that, despite what must have been by then the obvious corruption of those who occupied the Temple.  It was too great a calamity to allow into conscious thought. 

It hardly bears comparison, but it does rather put me in mind of the responses we see to the exposing of Fauci’s duplicity.  It cannot be admitted.  Too much was vested in lifting this man up, propounding him as the only truth speaker amidst an otherwise duplicitous administration.  I still recall those signs over in Rockport, proudly proclaiming, “In Fauci we trust.”  A more foolish and mistaken mindset would be hard to imagine, except for the way this clearly indicates a rejection of God as the sole deserving grounds for trust.  I don’t wish to play with these thoughts too much myself, given that this is a discussion of Scripture, not current events.  But the comparison is helpful, I think, to help understand the responses we see here.  Truth cannot be admitted entry.  Whatever it takes to keep the facts under wraps must be done.  And that just leads to greater criminality.

But at least, these men, threatened as they are, recognize that this time, they act under the gaze of public scrutiny.  So they must play things by the book.  They will arrest.  And we can expect that the outcome of that trial was already all but a foregone conclusion.  Facts would not, could not be allowed to matter.  But they would have to weigh perceptions, choose carefully how they responded so as not to further exacerbate their troubles.

The central, troubling point for them remains the notice of Jesus resurrected.  This was an existential threat for them.  And here are these two (and who knows how many more?) saying they were eye-witnesses to that fact.  On the testimony of two or three the truth is established, yes?  Well, here’s two.  And what do we have?  How does one begin to suggest eye-witness testimony to the negative?  How could they hope to prove He had remained dead when they could not possibly produce the body?  Who would the public believe?  These two men who had clearly just performed something miraculous, or the rumored word of some Roman soldiers caught asleep at their stations?  Who was more likely to be lying?

If Jesus is the proof of resurrection, then He Himself is resurrected.  If resurrected, He is alive.  If He is alive, then all the bold pronouncements of the temple authorities in regard to this matter are quite evidently fraudulent.  And if their statements are fraudulent, it must be that they themselves are fraudulent.  The whole house is coming down around them, and of course, they are desperate to prevent that outcome.

And again I must caution.  We are ever at risk of a like response when our favored doctrinal distinctions are threatened.  We, too, can become so caught up in defending our positions that real correction, coming from God Himself, cannot gain a hearing with us any longer.   I’ll say it again.  This is no cause to blithely bend to every new and novel matter of theology.  That way lies madness, and deadly danger to the soul!  But we must remain teachable.  We must remain humble.  We must not allow ourselves the foolish pride of supposing we have all the answers.  We must allow the Word of God to teach, to revamp our thinking, to guide us back upon the Way when we have wandered too far in our own thoughts.

Thanks be to God that we can indeed trust Him to give us that guidance.  Praise be to Him that we can also trust Him to so work within us as to keep our eyes and ears open to what He is saying and doing.  May we prove swift learners when learning is needful.

The Response (08/09/26-08/10/26)

We have now spent the better part of a month considering what Peter had to say in this brief sermon.  We have seen that it was in fact a quite powerful message.  But the most powerful message remains as nothing except there is an appropriate response to what has been said.  And it must be said that reading such a powerful message avails us nothing except we, in our turn, respond.  This book of Acts is a history of the church.  But if that’s all it is to us, it is rather pointless to pursue.  It is written for our benefit.  To benefit from it, we must discern not only what happened in that day, but why the Holy Spirit deemed it beneficial for us to have the record of this event.  What are we to learn from it, and how should we respond?

In hope of arriving at an answer to that question, I want to first back out somewhat from the picture.  We are primarily faced here with the Sadducees, which puts us in contact with probably the least familiar of the sects that defined Judaism at the time.  We just don’t know encounter them that much, apart from mention of whoever happened to be high priest at a given point in time.  We are probably familiar with the way that office in particular had been politicized, and draw from that a sense of the ambitions that might be part of that group’s general mindset.  But as we have read, they were generally somewhat withdrawn from dealings with the people, and we can add that, come the destruction of Jerusalem, they largely disappeared from the stage of history.

They remain, however, one of the three main sects of Judaism.  The others are not mentioned in our passage, but I do want to bring them into the picture briefly.  We have the Herodians, who we know primarily as having adopted various aspects of Greek culture.  And then of course we have the Pharisees, the strictest of the sects, as Paul observes, determined to appear righteous, ever so careful to stay clear of any possible violation of the Law, and then, also of the various traditions they stacked up alongside the Law.  Interestingly, all three sects proved to be quite antagonistic to the rise of Christianity.  I could note the Essenes as well, though they don’t seem to have ever made much of an impact, and we really don’t know how they responded to Christianity.  At least, I don’t.

Reading through Fausset’s article on the Sadducees, an interesting point is made in regard to these three primary sects, and it that point which I wish to focus upon here.  The article observes how these three represent for us three common points of attack on Christianity.  We have the attack of superstition, seeking to conjoin itself to sound faith and so corrupt it.  We have the attack of spiritual pride, with its heart-hardening effect that leaves us unwilling to hear the voice of correction as our Lord speaks to us.  If it doesn’t match my current perception of Scripture, or if it damages my confidence that I am in compliance, then I don’t want to hear it.  That’s the message of spiritual pride.  Then, of course, there is the common assault of worldliness, compromising our faith to enjoy what the world has on offer.  Oh, we just want to be able to get along.  After all, who’s going to hear our message if nobody wants us around?

All three of these come with subtle variation.  They don’t announce outright that they are seeking to divert us from the course of faith.  They are seductive whispers, ego strokes, enticements designed to draw us away from the path of Truth without our noticing, in hopes that we will be so fully lost before realization comes that we can find no way back.  Praise be to God that we have a faithful Shepherd in Christ Jesus, who will not suffer His sheep to be lost.  But the danger remains real.  We are too ready to be led by one or the other of these false messages.

The first we may readily see in the various propensities of the Pentecostal and Charismatic branches of the Church.  That’s not to say you won’t find them in other places as well, but the enticements of superstition find a more receptive audience there.  If you’re focused on the supernatural to the exclusion of sound doctrine, it’s but a slight deviation that leads into superstition.  I suppose we could toss things like the prosperity gospel into that same category.  Let me widen it further.  Anything that moves us to reduce our faith and practice to catchwords and ritual, any sense that we can move God to act according to our desires if only we use the right words, the right amount of praying and fasting or what have you moves us into the place of superstition, the place of the Magic Christian.  It’s a place of deception; a place where the trials and tribulations of walking holy in this fallen world become seeds of destruction.  Any least disappointment in regard to our pursuits becomes cause for doubt, if not of God, then of our faith.  But in the end, doubt as regards faith is doubt as regards God, for faith is by God’s grace.  It is not a magic power to be worked up and developed as we make progress.  It is a gift given, a seed planted and watered by the Holy Spirit, granted us that we might grow and mature, and in doing so, might help our fellow Christians to do likewise.

Worldly compromise, of course, is only too familiar.  It is perhaps the most widespread affliction of the Church in our day.  Look at all those venues which proudly display their compromise and call it welcoming embrace.  Oh, God doesn’t care about that.  He didn’t really say this was a sin.  He understands.  He embraces all.  He doesn’t require change, only inclusion.  You can have it all!  Of course, one need look no further than the letters to the churches in the Revelation to discern the falsity of that mindset.  It is an attack as old as time.  Indeed, we can trace it right on back to Eden, with the serpent whispering in Eve’s ears.  Oh, He didn’t really say that, did He?  You should have your own say as to what is good and evil.  You should be god.  That’s really what it comes down to in the end.  You should be god, and this God fellow, wherever He is, should answer to you.  “I am the captain of my life.”  That’s the call of worldliness.  I can do what I want, safe in the assurance that He will forgive me, already has.  My actions, you see, have no meaning, only my stated beliefs.  But your actions do state your beliefs; far more accurately than do your words.

Then, of course, we arrive at spiritual pride.  This is, I suspect, the hardest deception for us to recognize, because it comes to convince us that we are so very right in all that we think, say, and do.  And if we are right, this one telling us we are wrong in some particular must in fact be wrong himself.  We have the example of the rich young ruler, absolutely confident that he was in full compliance with all the requirements of Mosaic Law.  “I have done all these things from my youth!”  And when the corrective response came, he could not bear it.  Something in him knew his lack, or at least that he was lacking.  But faced with the reality, he could not change, would not at any rate.  If that’s what real, saving faith requires of me, I’m out.  I suspect we have all hit this wall at some point or another.  I suspect we hit it more often than we care to recognize.

I could account this probably the greater danger to my own spiritual well-being.  It is something of a family trait to be convinced of our rightness. It is something, as well, of the engineering mindset, if not at its best, then at its more common.  We have done our homework.  We’ve examined the problem, assessed the options and arrived at a solution, and now, absolutely certain that we are right, we proceed.  And it will take an awful lot of countervailing evidence to convince us to change our answer.  Indeed, the more we work at it, the less willing we become to alter course, no matter how compelling the growing pile of problems.  It’s hard to throw out all that effort and start again.  Yet, it is often the course of wisdom.

We can find spiritual pride in that mindset that says, “I can’t have been wrong about everything.”  The truth is, it is quite likely that we have been wrong about great swaths of what we thought we knew to be true.  I can turn yet again to that period when I was studying Romans and found some of my most strongly held ideas about how this faith worked and where we stood were shaken from their foundations.  Praise be to God they were replaced by a much sturdier structure.  But I do wonder betimes if I have become that much more resistant to necessary change because of previous changes.  Hey, look!  I already examined myself on this matter, found my error, and changed my thinking.  Surely, I must be right this time.  But of course, there’s nothing at all certain about that.

I suspect one could find spiritual pride either at root of, or mixed together with either of those other two issues.  The superstitious become pridefully committed to clinging onto their superstitions.  The worldly become pridefully committed to asserting their liberty, maintaining that their chosen points of compromise do nothing to diminish their faith and salvation.  But it is such a great danger, and so difficult to perceive.  Only God can root it out, really.  But even knowing that, what is our reaction?  It is likely going to be either a bullheaded determination to work through it in our own strength regardless, or to become utterly complacent and do nothing about it at all.

The sum of it all is this:  How do you respond when the piling evidence for necessary change is growing, is demanding a course change?  Do you dismiss the evidence as false, cover your eyes and pretend the pile isn’t there?  That’s a popular option in our day.  Call it cognitive dissonance.  We may occasionally have to admit that the pile exists, but we will continue denying any that it holds significance as concerns our mode of life.  Do you attack it as lies, as misinformation, as an attack of the enemy?  Ho!  There’s a deadly danger in that, isn’t there?  To accuse God’s attempts to correct you of being the work of the devil?  Risky business, that.  Do you insist on your greater understanding, the wisdom of your own ideas, and on that basis disregard any and all statements to the contrary, however obviously valid?  Do you insist to God that you don’t really need His help in this, because you’ve got it covered?  Any response other than, “Yes, Lord, I hear You, and ask You to help me turn this around and get it back on course,” is begging for more trouble.  It’s not that God is going to lash out at you for being stupid or headstrong.  It’s that the Shepherd’s staff is inflicting its necessary discipline upon you to get you back on course.  If that’s not enough, He can do more.  But He won’t give up on you, and your persistence on the current course is only going to increase the pain of correction.

The Sadducees, in this scene, are faced with just such a moment.  The evidence is before their eyes every bit as much as it is before the eyes of those who have crowded around the Apostles.  When they speak of Jesus resurrected, the Sadducees know better than most that they speak truly.  They may not be ready to accept the concept of resurrection, but you know what?  Something happened to the body.  Something left those grave clothes empty and neatly folded.  Something slipped past that guard contingent, moved the stone uphill, rubbing against the hillside the whole time, and did so without making enough noise to waken a sleeping guard, if one supposes they were asleep.  But they rejected the evidence.  Now, there stood before them a man made whole, a man who perhaps wasn’t as familiar to them as to those gathered around, but familiar enough, I expect to be known to them.  And, we might observe, Peter’s message here has been drawing from the Pentateuch to make his point.  Yes, he has referenced the prophets as well, but he’s gone right back to the promise to Abraham, the promise to Adam.  And still, they want nothing to do with it.

Granted, in their case, civil matters come alongside spiritual pride.  This was, as we have seen, a threat to their credibility, not solely because it gave evidence of resurrection, but also, because it exposed their lies, their connivance in seeking to bury the evidence.  And if the ostensible guardians of Truth are shown to be liars, who will leave them in their position?  Isn’t that, in part at least, why we become so pridefully resistant to anything that appears to make us wrong in our beliefs?  To steal the line from the old Tarryton adds, “We’d rather fight than switch.”  And that’s so often exactly what it comes down to.  I’d rather fight to maintain my appearance of being right than switch so as to actually be right.

We are by nature creatures of habit.  We crave continuity.  There are, to be sure, those, particularly of a younger age, who wish to toss over all order and establish something new and fresh.  But experience shows that this tends to fade with age and wisdom.  At least I would propose that wisdom is involved in the shift.  And we come to value that which has been.  We recognize a solidity to custom and tradition, and to sense potential danger in sudden change.  This is well and good up to a point.  But that desire for continuity can lead to hidebound thinking, incapable of recognizing the call to change course for the better.  It cannot accept any change, will not allow any change, because change entails risk, and we prefer our comfort.  But the call of the Gospel was never intended to be comfortable.  It was and remains a call to leave behind all that we have been accustomed to in order to follow this new Way, the Way that leads to life.

The question for us becomes whether our feet are still on that Way, or have we veered from our course at some juncture?  If it is indeed the Shepherd of our souls who is trying to point us in the right direction when our habits have caused us to drift, how will we respond?  This wrong way has become the habitual way, the comfortable way.  For all that it is leading us headlong into danger and peril, it is familiar.  Better the troubles we know, right?  But our Shepherd says, “Wrong!”  Turn while yet you are able.  Trust your Shepherd.  Don’t just believe He exists, but believe His guidance.  If He is indeed pointing the Way, best we shift course and follow Him.  His sheep will.  That is His assurance.  What, then, does it say of us should we insist on our own course in spite of His call to correct it?

I will say this.  Rather like a GPS, He is persistent.  If we will not turn when He has said to turn, He will begin urging another turning point.  And another.  As many as it takes.  God is persistent, and He does not fail, and take great comfort in that.  I take comfort in it because I know I can be too committed to comfortable certainty, too sure of my own understanding, and unwilling to brook any suggestion that things are otherwise.  I take comfort in that for my loved ones, whose opinions and practices are so very different from my own.  I know, or believe I know, that God has called them, and yet it seems to me that they are very much off course, and to their detriment.  I must be willing to admit that it may very well be me who has gone astray, but if I’m honest, the best I can manage right now is that it might be a both/and situation.  That seems entirely probable to me, that each of us have our own blind spots, our own points of erroneous conviction.  But God is persistent, and He does not fail.  And my faith, at the end of the day, is not in me, but in Him.

Still, this bears strong consideration for me, particularly in light of how I find I continue to react to this exercise in rebranding at our church.  If a name is of no real consequence, then why the change?  On the other hand, if a name is of no real consequence, why this resistance, why this desire that we retain our identity as is?  Is it so simple as me being a bit distrustful of the chief proponent of that change?  Or is it simply that I wish to be comfortably constant?  There have been other changes which I would have resisted, were I in position to do so.  The dismissing of adult education, for one, has struck me as a terrible dereliction of our very DNA.  This church was founded from a Sunday School outreach, and Christian training has always been there at our core.  It is all well and good to say, “There must be more.”  And that is quite true.  But more suggests adding to, not replacing wholesale.  The great danger, it seems to me, is that in striving for some perceived more, we shall wind up with less.

But if indeed we have godly leadership to whom the Holy Spirit is giving impetus and direction, then it behooves me to accede to their decisions.  This is not blind acceptance.  And until such time as my own spirit within me arrives at a greater peace with the change, I don’t know as I could account it wise to just drop my concerns and commit.  Neither am I particularly comfortable with the sort of passive dismissal that seems to be my present state.  I want nothing directly to do with it, but I’ll not do anything directly to counter it.  Is that just the desire for comfortableness surfacing again?  With all that’s going on in life for me just now, that would not surprise me at all.  After all, very little is comfortable at the moment, and much like my beloved, it seems to me that part of what is happening here is being willing to let go of the controls.  Yet, to be out of control is hardly to be considered the goal.  But to be willing to change as He leads?  To be attentive to His guidance so as to follow it?  Oh yes!  That is eminently to be desired.  That is the Way of wisdom.

What happens, then, when our Lord says, “Change!” and everything we know of life and society and religion says, “Hold course!”?  That is the dilemma it seems to me this crowd is facing in this moment.  Here is an obvious miracle, with all that implies as regards the one through whom that miracle has taken place.  There is no possibility of fraud in this event.  They know the one who was healed.  His legs, as they had seen for years now, gave full evidence that his affliction was very much real.  He’s not like those we may find at the stop light on the way to the mall, claiming all manner of hardship, but quite likely just trying to make an easy buck with no bosses.  No.  His lameness was no fakery, and his present wholeness of body was abundantly evident.

Add that Peter’s message had brought to bear the testimony of Scripture.  He was not in it for himself.  Indeed, he had made himself less than nothing, pointing all to this Jesus he preached, attributing all to this Jesus he preached.  And they knew that Jesus, too!  They had been hearing about Him these last few years, may have even been privy to what He taught, and more, what He had done.  This wasn’t some theoretical spin on doctrine.  This wasn’t a philosophical difference.  This was firsthand witness.  “We are witness to these things.”

And yet, here are the trusted pillars of society, the Sanhedrin, the priests, and the Levites, all come out to stop these men from speaking.  What appears to be God-authorized is being countermanded by those we thought to be God-authorized.  And those latter have the reins of power, at least such power as remains in the hands of our people.  This had to have an impact on them.  This, it seems to me, pushed them further into the moment of crisis.  They would have to respond, and it must have strained them to the uttermost to arrive at a response.  To reject the message must be felt to have been a rejection of God Himself, Who had clearly put His stamp on the proceedings.  But to reject the Temple authorities?  To account them false leaders?  I mean, if they are wrong, then the whole order of society is wrong.  And if the whole order of society is wrong, what will become of us should we step out of that order?  We will be crushed!  We will be ostracized, made anathema to all that we know, all who have known us.  Where, then, could we go?  How, then, would we live?

Some in other lands know that dilemma today.  In much of the world it is a deadly dangerous thing to come to Christ.  For a Jew to believe is very likely to result in being disowned by family, marked out as a traitor to their people.  For somebody in Muslim lands, it is a death sentence.  Even family would gladly take their lives if they refuse to refute their conversion and come back to Islam.  Even amongst Hindus the reaction to family members converted to Christianity is utter rejection or increasing pressure to return to the old ways.  Here in the West, it becomes increasingly uncomfortable to be openly Christian.  It causes rifts in the family, even if they are a bit more polite.  It can cause unneeded friction in the workplace, in the marketplace.  Start talking to neighbors about the need to come to Jesus and it’s pretty likely you’ll find those neighbors studiously avoiding you.  And yet, where Jesus leads, we must follow.  And yet, as He commands, so we must do.  And in following, in doing, it must ever by that we make clear that the good that comes of doing so is from Him, and not from ourselves.  We are but vessels, channels of action through which He moves.  We are instruments in the hands of a Master, and the sweetness of the song which results is all down to Him.

And so, we find this crowd, plunged into a crisis of faith, a crisis of belief.  And as we see from the final clause, many chose God.  They recognized the greater claim to faith, the stronger argument, if you will, and they pursued the course thus argued.  After all, they were now eyewitnesses to what had just transpired.  And there could only be one conclusion, really.  This is real!  His healing is real.  And if that impossible action has really taken place, then what precludes receiving the other impossibility these men have declared themselves to have witnessed?  They say they have seen this Jesus they preach, this Jesus we know full well died on the cross not but a few months hence, know to have been dead and buried, and know to be no longer in the tomb in which they laid Him, alive and well.  Besides, even the Pharisees have taught that there is a resurrection to come.  And as these men have been saying, the whole was declared from of old.  The Torah, the Prophets, the Wisdom, it all testifies to this rising to life.  What, after all, was Ezekiel’s vision in the valley of dry bones, if not a resurrection to life?  And so, they believed.  They believed the evidence.  No blind leap of faith here.  It would take a greater blindness, at this juncture, to continue following the temple leadership, who seemed clearly to be rejecting the plain evidence set before them.

And then it comes to us.  We, too, come to our crisis point.  We, too, are handed the evidence not just of some dusty tome.  We, too, are handed the evidence, not just of tradition and culture.  Indeed, more and more, what we are being handed defies current culture, and defies recent tradition.  To believe is, at this point, counter-cultural.  To pursue a life of righteousness and self-sacrifice is counter-cultural.  To even confess that there is such a thing as truth, not my truth versus your truth, but Truth, adamantine, unyielding Truth; this is counter-cultural in the extreme.  And yet, we believe because we must.  And yet, we believe, not because we have worked belief up in ourselves.  Far from it!  Even this crowd gathered to hear Peter and John, witness to their arrest as well as to the healing that had transpired, believed not solely because of the incontrovertible evidence, but because this God, this Jesus had, by His grace, worked upon their hearts, opened their mental eyes to not merely see the evidence, but perceive its truth and its implications.  The same holds for us.  The Gospel is indeed the very power of God to save.  His Word is powerful, piercing to our deepest depths, exposing our most hidden thoughts and feelings to His marvelous light.  And by His work in us, we come to believe His words.  We come to believe He is Who He is.  We come to know His shocking, wonderful love for us in spite of who we have been and who we continue to be.  We come to recognize that great change has come upon us, not because we have demanded change; not even because we have particularly wanted change; but because change was most definitely needful.  And as His word insists, all of this has come our way because He has done it.  Praise God, He has done it!  By His own right arm, nothing left to us that we might boast of having helped Him, He has pulled us bodily from our subjection to sin and sin’s miseries, set us on this Way which leads to life, and now guides us faithfully, relentlessly, inerrantly, towards that home He has prepared for us in His kingdom.  Glory, and praise, and honor, and majesty, and dominion be unto Him forever and ever!  Amen!