Clough Acts Lesson 11

Rise of Opposition - Acts 4:5-12

In Acts 3 and 4 we have one incident, the first actual public witnessing situation that gave rise to the second speech recorded in the book of Acts. You’ll notice that in the first 11 verses Peter using the healing of the lame man, a situation that was not generated by Madison Avenue gimmicks; it was a situation that the Holy Spirit worked out and is a model, therefore, of a real witnessing situation. You see, we Americans have made things to be proud of in our culture. For one thing we are the only country in the history of the world who had the power to conquer the world and we did not. And we are the people who have given money and help and aid to about every country under the sun and have got nothing in return except a lot of badmouthing and a lot of criticism. And in this the American character has something in it that is truly honorable.

Then there are, like all fallen cultures, centers of our character as Americans that are just corruption and one of the areas of corruption that we all have as Americans is a tendency to apply those things that work so successfully in the business world to the gospel. The Madison Avenue approach is fine for selling toothpaste and axle grease but it is not quite the approach to be used to convey the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to society. The reason is that when someone is buying toothpaste or axle grease it’s a very simple kind of decision to make. But when one is considering the God of Scripture and that God’s claim upon their life, that is not a simple decision. And therefore it cannot be approached with a Madison Avenue style and we can’t arrange things. For example, Peter does not have posters all over the city of Jerusalem because this is a gospel issue. And the gospel as such is an issue that cannot be communicated in this way without careful preparation.

See, the reason why we have to rely on the Holy Spirit for the witnessing situation is because you may have various people involved, and here’s the Christian who is witnessing, and person A may have a lot of misunderstandings about the nature of sin; another person over here may have misunderstandings about the nature of God; another person may have misunderstandings about what faith is, and there are too many variables. And as finite limited man we can’t know all those variables and the situation is so complicated when we walk up to this person we don’t know where the Holy Spirit is with that person without an extensive conversation, even then sometimes its dubious, and so we have to rely on the Holy Spirit generating these situations, which is what Peter did. And out of that came a fantastic thing that we saw last week, terminating in Acts 4:4 with the rise of persecution; the rise of category four suffering.

Remember there are six reasons why Christians suffer; the first reason is because of the fall; all reasons for suffering hinge from the fall. Then we have rebellion, because we defy God’s Word at certain points in our life, we add to the suffering that was already there as a result of the fall. We have the identification with other people who are suffering in the divine institutions, so in divine institution three which is marriage we have the problem of somebody married to someone else who is under the discipline of God and because that person is under discipline they suffer. Or we have somebody who is in a national entity with a group of people who are suffering and because that group of people are suffering, therefore the entire nation suffers. It’s identification with the other suffering people within the divine institution. Then we have category four type suffering which is suffering because of our identification with Christ in a fallen world. And this is the kind of suffering that Peter sees here. Then we have suffering because God is trying to teach us a lesson; then we have suffering because of a testimony. So there are many, many reasons why believers can suffer, but these are rational, God is not a genie, He does not operate the universe by chance; there are no accidents in history, no such thing as an accident. All things have reasons behind them and these are the reasons behind Christian suffering.

Now in the rise of the category four suffering we have persecution and Acts is teaching believers how to meet this kind of pressure when the pressure comes on because of the preaching of the Word. This is not meaning pressure that’s due to our own foolishness. This is pressure that comes specifically because of a satanic attack against a ministry of the Word of God. The Word of God has gone forth and therefore because it has gone forth Satan is counterattacking.

Remember last time we showed you how 33% of the city of Jerusalem, some 10,000 plus people are Christians at this point. And since the total population of the city of Jerusalem is only 30,000 we’ve got one out of every three people in the city won to Jesus Christ. And how do you suppose that ever happened? Because they had a 15 minute commercial on radio every half hour, or because they had every billboard on the corner covered. Not at all, but because they had trained believers to took advantage of Holy Spirit wrought situations.

We terminated with verse 4 so today we’re going to begin in Acts 4:5; “And it came to pass, on the next day, that the rulers, and the elders, and scribes, [6] And Annas, the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together at Jerusalem.” Now the reason that these people are gathering together is because of verse 2. Verse 2 tells you why they are gathered together, they are gathered together because the divine viewpoint doctrine of the resurrection of Christ has deeply challenged and offended them. In other words, it is a doctrinal reason; it is not due to the fact that John parted his hair on one side and Peter the other; it is not because Peter was a very gregarious type personality and John was an introvert. It has nothing to do with the personalities, how they wore their hair, what color clothes they wore or anything else. It was because of an issue that was raised; the issue of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and because of that issue and only because of that issue the satanic attack comes about. These people cannot allow this doctrine to influence one-third of the city’s population, they’ve got to do something about.

Now in that day it was the resurrection that was an issue. Today, because human viewpoint has developed far beyond that of Peter’s day and because divine viewpoint too has proceeded we have the clash between the Bible and between autonomous thought and pagan thought developed today so really the issue today is the authority of the Word of God. This is the basic issue that would correspond in that day to the specific issue of the resurrection. Anyone today who is going to seriously take the authority of the Word of God can expect treatment like Peter and John received here. If you are a graduate student and you happen to be in the field of geology, biology, psychology, sociology or education, one of those in particular, and you dare let it be known to your colleagues or your professors that you take the Bible as the intellectually authoritative point of reference in your field, you will be very grace blessed if you succeed at all in your graduate program. That is simply something that a graduate student today cannot let be made known or he can expect massive retaliation on the part of the unbelieving faculty. You will have Christians in these fields who also are ignoramuses and who will therefore try to suppress you. As a graduate student you have no rights, the faculty members have all the shots and they can ruin hours and hours of your graduate program for no reason whatsoever other than their own personal prejudices. So this goes on and if you happen to be a businessman working for some business corporation that is run by the pragmatic philosophy that permeates our country that what matters is just what matters at the moment, if that’s the spirit of your company and you are locked into it and you don’t have any freedom to move, you’re going to quickly find when you begin to seriously take Scripture and seriously use it on a day by day basis in decision making you are going to receive the same kind of treatment that Peter and John received. So what we’re looking at is not something that is peculiar to the apostles; it is something that will probably increase in our day as the world departs more and more from the authority of the Word of God.

So we have the people assembling. Notice it’s made up of three groups, the rulers, the elders, and the scribes. The rulers are the wealthy aristocracy of the city of Jerusalem, the priests, the Sadducees, these are the liberals. These are the people that deny the resurrection. The elders are a mixed group, generally people looked up to in the community, and scribes are the Pharisees. These are the people who were the legalists of the day. So you have a large group. Collectively that group is known as the Sanhedrin. They are actually, in effect, the council that runs the nation.

So now look what’s happened to this incident; this little simple witnessing incident of a lay man; it’s gone all the way from what something happened at 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon to a three hour address by Peter, because they came to a rest around 6:00 p.m. They couldn’t hold the trial because it was night, except when they wanted to get rid of Jesus, then they held trials at night, and the trial was given in the morning. So who is there on trial but the Sanhedrin. Now it starts out with Peter on trial before the Sanhedrin; when Peter gets done by verse 12 it turns out that instead of Peter being on trial before the Sanhedrin, the Sanhedrin are on trial before Peter. Peter turns the tables on the whole group. Now this Sanhedrin, modern archeology tells us where it met and the place where it met is very interesting and we’re going to look at that for a moment, where the Sanhedrin met to tie this little Acts passage together for you and let you see some of the things that were going on there.

[He shows slides] This is a model of the city of Jerusalem at the time of the Lord Jesus Christ or shortly thereafter. This area is the city of David, this is the temple complex. There’s the pool of Siloam. This is the poor section of the city of Jerusalem; this is the ritzy area of the city of Jerusalem, the upper city. And from the upper city over to the temple there is a bridge and just south of the bridge you can see the coliseum there, built by the Greeks during the time of the Hellenization of their culture. Here’s the bridge crossing over from the temple complex all the way over to the upper city. It was this bridge that archeologists thought they knew more than Josephus and the other ancient writers but it turns out when they started building construction recently in the city of Jerusalem they found the pilings for these bridge arches and when they found this they realized the Josephus and the other ancient writers were correct after all.

This is the temple area, here is the outer court of the Gentiles; here’s Solomon’s porch. The interesting thing about this is that the healing occurred over in here, probably somewhere along here Peter gave his 3 hour sermon; he was then arrested at 6:00 pm and brought to the room of the Sanhedrin. That’s where the Sanhedrin met; recent findings have indicated their actual meeting place. So we know now where that meeting occurred, we know with reference to the temple where it occurred. So that’s what you want to see from Acts 4 what’s going on with this meeting.

There at the meeting were all of the hierarchy of the nation, Annas, and Caiaphas, Annas had been the high priest, Caiaphas was his son-in-law, Caiaphas would be the one who orders the death of Christ. Annas and Caiaphas and their sons had quite a big business, it was in money changing. In fact history tells us that millions and millions of dollars each year was made by ripping off all the people who came to Jerusalem and working in fixing the rates of exchange of the currencies so that every time you made change and brought your money there you had to buy their sacrifices at their exchange rates, and anybody who didn’t because it was the priest, if you brought your own sacrifice they’d always get a priest that would make sure your sacrifice did not meet Levitical qualifications. So it was a racket. That’s the racket that Jesus wiped out when He went into the temple and threw the tables around. You want to understand that; Jesus isn’t just going out and blowing His cool in the middle of the temple. Jesus Christ takes on what would be equivalent to the mafia today. And the Lord Jesus Christ did that single handedly; these men were thugs; these men were armed and the Lord Jesus Christ armed himself, for those of you who are sentimentalists and dislike guns and are for all this taking away of guns. The Lord Jesus Christ believed in arming Himself and when He walked into the temple He armed Himself. At the Garden of Gethsemane, before the police came to arrest Him, He told the disciples, go sell your purse and buy a sword. Jesus believed in arms and He believed in killing when necessary; He didn’t have to kill any of the mafia at that time, He just beat them up, that’s all, when He went into the temple.

Acts 4:7, After they had come into the meeting, “when they had set them in the midst,” history tells us that the Sanhedrin met in a semi-circle. Peter and John are being interrogated and they are put on the witness stand, right here, in this funny circular shaped court, and now the trial begins. In verse 7, they begin to ask, “By what power, or by what name, have you done this?” Now right here we want to learn a very important principle, a principle that Satan pulls off every time he persecutes the Church. Every time we make the issue clear he tries to distract the issue. And so what we’ve got here is operation distraction. You see, Satan is a god of darkness and you can bet your last dollar that whatever the confrontation is Satan definitely is not interested in clarifying any major issue. All Satan wants to do is to suppress the truth and if he can distract people’s attention away from the true issue and get you thinking of a false one, he’s won the day.

Now verse 2 told you why this trial is happening; it has to do with the theological reason that the doctrine of resurrection has spread through the whole city of Jerusalem. That is the real reason for the trial. The liberals in all their open-mindedness do not want free discussion and therefore they are about to suppress it by force. That’s always the case, by the way, with your human viewpoint type liberalism. They do not want free discussions; the moment you bring anything supernatural in they hate you and they will oppose you at every point. And so here they are opposing them for that point, but when the first weed out question hits and they interrogate the apostles, notice what they don’t ask them; it’s not “what about this resurrection,” because if they did that would make it the issue of the trial which they don’t want so what do they raise the issue? “By what name have you done this?” Do you know why they’re doing that? Because there’s a provision back in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy 13, about using unauthorized means of worship. And what they hope to get Peter and John to admit is that they used Jesus’ name in sort of a pagan magical sense. And if they can show that they can show people that they are guilty of the sin of blasphemy and hang them on the principle of Deuteronomy 13:1-4. So this first question in the interrogation is operation distraction to get people thinking of something other than the real issue at hand.

It’s like these debates held on campus last year, the issue was creation versus evolution. So what was discussed the next three weeks? Cuddle fish. Now that always happens and don’t get discouraged when it happens to you; you will try as much as you can to clarify the issue and lo and behold people walk off and they’ll be all fouled up. Now this is not new, this happened right here. So right here in the Acts model is comfort that in the middle of category four type suffering we can expect Satan to pull operation distraction. Therefore, application. If you see a category four situation coming on yourself, you happen to be employed in a business and you think you’re about to get the axe because of this situation, you’re about to get this kind of treatment, what are you going to start praying for? Immediately you should be tipped off; one of the first things you ought to start praying for is Lord, frustrate distractive attempts by Satan, let the issue stay where it should stay. Don’t let them get distracted on false points.

So Peter has to deal with it and so in Acts 4:8 Peter stands up to deliver what has to be one of the greatest defenses of the Christian faith. “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said unto them,” now the filling of the Holy Spirit is explained in Ephesians 5:18 and it’s also explained by comparing Ephesians 5:18 with Colossians 3:15-16. We haven’t got time to do that, I’ll just summarize it, but if you compare these two passages, which are synonymic, they’re synonymous in the sense that they’re imbedded in the same context. In Ephesians 5:18 you have “be filled with the Spirit” and then it starts talking about giving praise and then it talks about husband and wives; it talks about employer, employees, etc. on down. Colossians, the same kind of epistle written by the same apostle talks about, this passage that’s parallel to the filling of the Holy Spirit passage talks about praising God, talks about wives, talks about husbands, talks about employer, employees, so it’s the same context. But in Colossians 3 instead of using the term filling of the Holy Spirit, another term is used, “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” That means let Bible doctrine dwell in you so that you are skillful in its use, and that is the meaning of the filling of the Holy Spirit. See, the filling of the Holy Spirit is a term which is misleading in itself because it sounds so weird. It sounds like we’re talking about something emotional; it sounds like we’re talking about some glub, glub, glub, glub experience I’m filled with the Spirit. But that isn’t what the filling of the Holy Spirit means. It means the same thing as letting the truth of the Word of God permeate your soul so that it shines out.

Said another way, we use around here the idea of being in fellowship and out of fellowship. When you become a Christian you are put in Christ; that is your position and on one can take that position from you including Satan. So that’s your position. But in time you’re in fellowship or out of fellowship at any moment. Here is God’s will for you at a given time in your life and you’re either in it or you’re out of it. Personal sin takes you out, 1 John 1:9 puts you back in. But at any given moment it’s either/or; that’s God’s will for your life. Now there are many expressions in the Bible to mean being in God’s will for your life. One is in fellowship, that’s a term, we pick it up from the Gospel of John. Abiding in Christ is another synonym; walking in the Spirit is another synonym, walking by faith another synonym, and filling of the Holy Spirit, another synonym. So recognize that while we have a set of different terms they all mean the same thing, walking with the Lord, being in fellowship.

Now when it says in verse 8 that Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t filled before the trial; he walked up into that semicircle and had sort of an ecstatic experience and spastically walked all over the place for five seconds before he delivered his sermon. That’s not what it’s talking about. The sense of the passage is when you see some Christian they’re doing magnificently in their pressure situation say boy, were they filled with the Spirit when they did that. Now what do you mean, they weren’t filled with the Spirit at other times? No, it just your expression of saying they really were successful and their success is because they were in fellowship. And so here Luke points out that the success of Peter before the Sanhedrin was because Peter used what every Christian has. Filling of the Holy Spirit! Peter, Luke says, was successful because he used what you have. There’s not one believer in the Church Age who does not have the same tool that Peter had; there is not one believer who could not have done the same thing, given the same preparation. Peter was filled with the Spirit.

Now this filling of the Holy Spirit has importance because later on, Acts 4 became the model for persecuted Christians. Acts 4, as we will see next week, is the central passage in the Bible on civil disobedience. Now most of the time and 99% of the time it is out of line, of course, to defy the state because of Romans 13. But there do come those times when Christians are authorized to defy the state. And when these situations hit, when the state intrudes into the inner realms of a person’s religious life the state can go to hell, and that’s the point where a division must occur and where Christians have to stand up to the state and defy it. And Acts 4 is important because it is a model of what to do whenever, if it ever does, that situation arises. It was shortly to arise for many, many thousand of Christians in this time in history. So it was important that the Holy Spirit say look, here’s what you do if you ever run into this situation.

Let’s look at the situation. First notice something about Peter. Peter is prepared. Peter’s problem is not lack of preparation. Peter knows the Old Testament backwards and forwards, he knows how to make the play. What Peter does not know is which play to make. Let’s use an illustration from football. Here’s a lineman coming back to the huddle and he’s talking to the quarterback and they’re discussing the next play in the game. Now the lineman doesn’t take the view so many Christians take, well quarterback, you just show me now how to play. That lineman has been rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed; what do you do for this play, this play, this play, this play, play 21, play 25, what play is it going to be, what options. All that team has been drilled; they don’t need to drill on the play, what they need is a quarterback to tell them which play to deploy. That’s the problem of the persecuted Christian and that’s the problem we’re going to look at now to study why Peter, when he was filling of the Holy Spirit chose to try this approach.

Peter is using, so to speak, the Holy Spirit not as a coach, he’s using the Holy Spirit as a quarterback. The coach was the Lord Jesus Christ, the coach had trained Peter for forty days in the use of the Old Testament. Peter, when you get into this situation, Psalm 118 means this; Psalm 2 means this; Isaiah 53 means this; Psalm 16 means this; Deuteronomy 18 means this. Peter do you know this and he’d go over and over and over and over and over and train, train, train, train, train and Peter came out of that training camp with the Lord Jesus Christ after forty days of intensive indoctrination on proper interpretation of the Old Testament. Peter was then fully prepared for this trial. So don’t get the idea from this that the early Christians had this attitude, well, I just won’t think, when the times comes I’ll just speak from my little depraved heart. That isn’t the way they played the game; they practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced, over and over and over and over and over and over again. But the problem here was which option. So let’s look at Peter’s problem, the options. Here’s the second factor in his problem.

He’s a prepared man but he has to choose the options. What are the options? Two options have historically been available to the Christian faced with category four suffering under the fourth divine institution of the state. The first option is very clear, very well known, it is outright martyrdom. Outright martyrdom, such as when we studied the book of Daniel; remember Daniel’s three companions, what happened. The state ordered them…ordered them mind you, that you must worship the state religion, it is the state that comes first. Like the state of Ohio telling Christian parents that it’s the state, not you, that is ultimately in charge of your child’s education. So in that the state of Ohio and the Roman Empire are about the same, in that the state is making ultimate claim, and here the ultimate claim was being made in Daniel’s day that you must worship. And his companions said no, we’re not going to; lock us in jail, see if it changes our minds; we’re not, you can kill us and we refuse to worship the state; we defy you in the name of Jehovah. That is the course of martyrdom.

It is the course of martyrdom displayed in Daniel 6 when Daniel, they say, is not supposed to make a prayer of intercession in any other name but the name of the state religion of Babylon. And so what does Daniel do? He goes home, he has a big bay window in his house on the second story, he opens the curtains and he stands in his window and prays in Jehovah’s name; he defies the state at this point in the name of Jehovah. There is the first option; option number one is martyrdom, open complete clear defiance of the state in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Higher allegiances prevail at this point.

But then there is a second option that also has been available to martyrs down through history. Turn to Exodus 1; this one is not so popularly known and today among evangelical legalists it is most despised. It is the course of lying, deceit and bribery. Shocked that the Bible allows this as an option. Well, it does. Under category four suffering situation, this is not situation ethics; it’s not like it, in situation ethics you just have this vague rule about loving people, in the situation you invent your own thing. This is not that all, a totally different ballgame. I hope you aren’t confused here because if you are you just miss the whole point. This is an entirely different thing. This is talking about a specific demanded behavior pattern in a situation authorized by God, not by man. In Exodus 1:15, “And the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives,” here you have the state of Egypt officially taking a genocidal policy stand, that is they’re going to eradicate the Jewish race. In this situation, much like the situation in 1967 when Arnold was doing his studies in Jerusalem, he could tune in the radio, turn to a frequency of radio Cairo, and you would hear this marshal music playing in the background and Nasser got up and said we’ll drive every Jew into the Mediterranean, when we are through with Israel they’ll be swimming back to Europe where they came from. And in 6 days the Egyptians were swimming back across the Suez canal.

This is a situation where the state forded a policy of genocidal extermination of the Jew and so in verse 15, Pharaoh spoke to the Hebrew midwives, these were the official medical corps, this is the health department of the state of Egypt. And through officials high in the health department they were going to try baby-killing. So the Hebrew midwives, one of them was named Shiphrah and the other was named Puah. Obviously they had more midwives than this but these women were apparently the executives that ran this part of the health department. [16] “And he said to them, When you do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew woman, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.” It’s very easy to do, the baby is just coming out of the mother and you can strangle it real quick, stop it from breathing and nobody knows the difference, the mother jus thinks it’s born dead. So this is the way they were supposed to operate, it was an official government policy through the government health department to eliminate male Jewish boys and in this way you could break the backbone of the Jewish threat to Egypt. But verse 17, “But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they saved the male children alive,” so they defied the state. They disobeyed the government. [18] “And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have you done this thing, and have saved the male children alive?” And the midwives lied to Pharaoh. They did two things, they defied him and they lied to him. [19] “And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered before the midwives come in unto them.” Verse 20, “Therefore,” because they deceived and because they lied, “God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very mighty.” God blessed lying and God blessed deceit against the state in this situation.

So we have a model of a second option available to Christians under state pressure to give up their faith; they can bribe the state, they can defy the state, and they can lie to the state. Joshua 2, another illustration. Now please don’t walk out of here and say that I prescribe this as normal behavior. Do you know what Clough taught Sunday, you can go around lying. I’m not saying this is a normal operation, I’m saying that this is reserved as a special option at times when the state comes down upon the Church in an official way. For example, do you seriously think that Christians aren’t using this in Africa and behind the iron curtain today?

A friend of mine was in Dallas Seminary was in a class recently and there was a boy from Nigeria there and not so long ago Nigeria had a policy to eliminate all the evangelical churches, they’d go in and arrest them. And this boy had this large basement in his home and he had about half the church down in the basement and the Nigerian police knocked on the door and said we’re looking for the Christians, where are they. He said I don’t know, I think they went down the street some place, so the police went on down the street and went by. And he told this story in Dallas Seminary classroom and some of these legalists got up and said oh, you shouldn’t have told a lie, and he had the classic response to that: would you like to have been in my basement? The point was in that situation he was authorized by the Lord to lie; the police had no right to persecute the church. When the state intrudes into this domain the state has now lost its right to truth. See, they’ve rejected the truth in the person of Christ so violently, so emphatically that there’s privileges that go at being a creature of God. One of those privileges is that you be a recipient of truth, that people tell you the truth. That’s your privilege as a creature but when you have defied God so much that you want to bring about the destruction of His church you just lost your privilege for truth. It’s not an inherent right that God tell truth to all men; not at all; it’s a grace right since the fall and it’s only by grace and grace can be terminated. And so in these situations the state loses its right to know the truth because it isn’t interested in acting on the truth; it is only interested in using truth for false goals.

And so we have Rahab, and in Joshua 2:3, “And the king of Jericho sent unto Rahab, saying, Bring forth the men who are come to you,” she ran one of the biggest whorehouses in Jericho at the time, she was a very prosperous madam, and as a result she was the place where all of the spying activity would go on. This was normal in international relations and so the king knew if there were any spies they’d be down at the local whorehouse, so he went down and gave his order, as the king, to Rahab, and he said, “Bring forth the men who are come to you, who are entered into your house,” no verse 4, she defies the state; “the woman took the two men, and hid them, and said thus, There came men unto me, but I don’t know where they are.” She lied to the state, and for that reason in faith she is taken as a great hero down through the annals of Scripture. This woman, this prostitute, became the great-great-great-great-great grandmother of the Lord Jesus Christ. So God blesses this kind of a response.

So we have deception and lying commended in Scripture under certain occasions. Now even going further we have bribery being used and commended. Proverbs 17:8, [tape turns] … in Scripture, but bribery is not considered to be a sin. Reception of a bribe is considered sin but not the offering of a bribe. Now I’ve often wondered why, in all the times that the Bible condemns reception of bribes, the warning to the judge, don’t you change your judgment because of a bribe, this is repeated time and time and time and time again in the Old Testament. Now why do you suppose, and this is what I wondered when I started studying the Old Testament seriously, how come always the reception of bribes is condemned but never the giving or bribes and you come across a passage like Proverbs 17:8, “A gift [bribe] is as a precious stone in the eyes of him that has it; whithersoever he turns, he prospers.” There’s a good and godly use for bribes. Turn to Proverbs 21:14, it’s astounding that people haven’t noticed this before in Scripture. Remember the Scripture is very tightly worded; God has given us the highest law that men have ever seen in society, a very rigorous strict law code. And yet there’s a whole big enough here to drive a Mac truck through. Why? Do you think God just accidentally omitted this. You’d better believe He did; there’s a reason for it.

Proverbs 21:14, “A gift in secret pacifieth anger; and a reward in the bosom, strong wrath.” Why does God’s Word have this seeming gap morally? Why is there this gap about giving of bribes? The answer is because this is a safety valve to be used in times of intense persecution. Christians can bribe the officials to look the other way and let them alone; it provides a tool, a weapon, to be reserved in those times of emergency when the state begins to crush the Church; then buy off the state, bribe the officials, let them look the other way. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.

Turn to Matthew 5:41, even in the Sermon on the Mount of all places, there’s a suggestion of bribery, authorized by Jesus Himself. Under Roman law the government could demand certain service, conscription from the people. And Jesus says, “Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him two.” Now whereas Jesus is emphasizing mental attitude, in effect that is a bribe; in effect what it is arguing is that when the official harass you, when they come down upon you in an official way, for this is an official request under Roman law, when they come down upon you, do whatever it takes to satisfy them and get them off your back. Go with them too, just do anything, just keep them out of your hair. Why? There seems to be a consistent tendency in Scripture that there are to options for the Church: (1) direct confrontation; (2) the exact opposite, avoid all confrontation, even at the cost of lying, deceit and bribery.

Christians today behind the iron curtain are regularly using lying and bribery; several missionaries I know regularly employ bribery; that’s what Christian giving to many of the underground evangelism is going to, in case you didn’t know that; it’s going to buy bribes to the East German guards so they’ll look the other way while we take our bibles through. Don’t be so naïve to think that the missionaries agencies aren’t using it. They’re using bribes by the thousands of dollars along the iron curtain border, to buy off one guard after another; make him look the other way, he didn’t see this whole package that came through in the bottom of that VW, that kind of thing and it goes on daily and thank God that it goes on because it’s the lifeblood of the underground church. Don’t think the Soviet secret police haven’t been bought off, in great cities like Leningrad recently they couldn’t have enough money to keep the bribery up and they got the press lost. Christians have bribed the KGB in Russia to look the other way. Bribery goes on, it goes on in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ when the state takes an official position against the church. And so we have these two illustrations, from history, from the Word of God. Now I didn’t make this up, I’m just teaching what’s there in the Word of God.

By the way, while we’re going to Acts let’s stop at Luke 12:11 and we come across a very famous promise. “When they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought [be not anxious] how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say, [12] For the Holy Spirit shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.” Now so many people read that and they say oh, what that means is I don’t have to study, I don’t have to prepare, I can just kind of speak. No, think of the football illustration; the lineman, the left guard, the right guard, the center, all these people on that team have practiced the options, they’ve practiced the plays, they’ve drilled and drilled and everybody is out in the pool swimming, the football player is out there sweating in the hot August sun practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing his plays. Now the center doesn’t have to be told what he’s going to do with the ball; the left guard and the right guard and the right tackle don’t have to be told what to do. What they have to be told is what play we’re going to use, by the quarterback.

And so here, this is what that guidance in verse 12 is talking about. The Holy Spirit isn’t going to make up for your lack of preparation but says Jesus, in that hour, when you are hauled before the magistrate, and notice please, lying and bribery and even the martyrdom are not normal operations. Verse 11 specifies, only when there is official government persecution do you have a right to employ these techniques. And when you do, the Holy Spirit will teach you, not before; notice it says, “The Holy Spirit will teach you in the same hour.” He won’t tell you ahead of time what the play is going to be. God won’t tell you, now look, if you get in this kind of a persecution deceive them; if you get in this kind of a persecution, defy them. Why do you suppose the Holy Spirit is not going to tell us what the play is until the hour? Security against Satan; Satan won’t know which way the church is going to move. Satan will move down upon the church ready to crush it, carefully inspiring a civil servant here and another one there, setting the trap to destroy the Church of Christ, but there’s one thing God’s security keeps him from knowing; what’s going to happen when we officially bring those Christians before us, which tactic, which play are they going to do. That is left open in history to the hour in which it happens. And in the hour in which it happens the Holy Spirit will make it clear in some way to the Christians being persecuted which move to make. There’s the context for Acts 4.

Acts 4:8 “Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said unto them,” so now the reason for the filling of the Holy Spirit is now every clear, guidance. Luke puts that in there to show us that Peter actively relied, he and John, on the Holy Spirit in that hour, to tell them which option, option one or option two, and in some way the Holy Spirit made it quite clear to Peter, Peter this time use option one. And you could just see Peter saying from the human point of view saying but Lord, John and I are the only two top leaders in the church, eliminate us and you’ve eliminated the whole church leadership; we’ve got 10,000 converts out in that city that are dependent upon our follow up, wouldn’t it be better to play option two and go underground for just a while until we develop a better core of leaders. No, said the Lord, option one. And so therefore Peter gives this magnificent speech in verses 8-12, option one, martyrdom. He lets it all hang out, he makes it all clear, this is where we stand, like it or not. Option one; let’s see what he says now.

Remember, he has to face the trick question of verse 7; it’s a question to deliberately mislead, “By what name have you done this, so Peter must answer that question and he must answer it so that he gets back to verse 2 somehow and before it’s over they’ll known. Let’s see what he does.

Acts 1:9, “If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made well; [10] Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him does this man stand here before you whole. [11] This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. [12] Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” So Peter defies them; he tells them very clearly what the name is; he is going to answer the question but boy, the way he answered that question is going to tie them in knots. They are going to by the time he gets through be backing up. Peter is going to be charging them, they’re not going to be charging Peter.

In verse 9 he starts out by saying it was a good deed. Notice what he does here; he sets forward the two systems of human viewpoint and divine viewpoint as to their values. Human viewpoint says it’s a crime; divine viewpoint says it’s a good work and so Peter refuses to define it, even from the very beginning of his trial as a crime. He says against what law have we transgressed; this is a good deed, not a crime. And so he attacks their value system. He says, we “be examined,” since we are it’s a first class “if,” “if and we are, “since we be examined by a good deed to the impotent man,” then let you know and let the entire nation know, I’m not going to try option two of hiding it, I’m going to let the whole nation know this. [10] “Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel,” and notice what he does in the middle of verse 10, between the “ye” and “God,” one verb, crucified, the other verb raised; you crucified, God raised. And he is using, if you have the Greek text he’s deliberately hooking the pronoun, the second person plural pronoun on there to show you emphasis; you killed Him, but God raised Him from the dead, implying that you and God are at odds. And “by Him does this man stand here before you whole.” So now the name, it’s not a pagan name, it’s not a blasphemous name, it’s a name of God’s servant.

And then in verse 11 he quotes Psalm 118. Turn to Psalm 118 and then we’ll look at some passages in the New Testament that use these verses to show you that Peter, unlike the liberal critic, did not dream up this interpretation of the Psalms. Peter had been taught this interpretation of Psalm 118 earlier by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Psalm 118:22, in the context it is talking about the triumph of the kingdom. Notice verse 15, “The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents of the righteous,” it’s a picture of an army camped in the field, the tents are the tents where the army soldiers are camped and the victory is they have fought in a battle and they have won, “The right hand of the LORD does valiantly,” it’s a military term for the Messiah. It was the right hand that held the spear and the sword; the left hand held the shield. And so when it says the right hand has done valiantly, the right hand is the offensive weapon, the left hand is the defense, and the offensive weapon has charged and has secured the victory. So it says, “the right hand of the Lord has done valiantly, [16] The right hand of the LORD is exalted; the right hand of the LORD does valiantly. [17] I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD.” That is the restoration of the nation Israel when Christ comes again, the setting up of the kingdom of God. That’s why in verse 19, “Open to me the gates of righteousness,” that means set up urban government that is grounded on the Torah.”

Now in Psalms 118:22, “The stone which the builders refused,” who are the builders? They are the people who wanted to build the kingdom on a kingdom of man basis, on a human viewpoint basis. And the very thing that they needed, the cornerstone, was the stone the builders discarded to build their social and political kingdom, is precisely the stone that God begins to build His social and political kingdom. What man rejects God uses. Men reject Christ, therefore God uses Him. And so in verse 22 the stone is actually the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the builders are the human viewpoint builders of the kingdom of man trying to build a kingdom but on a human viewpoint basis. Notice it says, verse 23, “This is Jehovah’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. [24] This is the day which the LORD has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” That’s speaking of the day of the beginning of the millennial kingdom. Now verse 25, a very famous thing that happened on Palm Sunday, “Save now, I beseech thee,” the “save now, save now” in the Hebrew, Hoshana, Hoshana, from which we get Hosanna, Hosanna and when they sing this to Christ as He came triumphantly into Jerusalem, it’s John putting into the lips of the crowd the divine irony. The crowd is calling “Save now Jehovah, Save now Jehovah,” and in six days Jehovah will save them, on the cross, not quite the way they thought but Jehovah will save them. “Save now, Save now, O LORD! O LORD, I beseech thee, send now prosperity.” Verse 26, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the LORD,” that’s a welcome to Messiah.

Now let’s turn to the New Testament, a few verses, and you’ll see how Psalm 118 has been used earlier, prior to Peter’s use of it. Mark 11:9. When Christ into the cities, when He went in on Palm Sunday, it was Psalm 118 that the people cried out. When Christ went into the city the father, the wife and the children would get out beside the road and they’d pick the palms off the tree; I’ll show slides where this happened, they’d pick the palm tree, just grab a branch, pull it off, and they began to wave it in front of them chanting Psalm 118; it became a mob constantly chanting these verses, Hosanna, Hosanna, and notice what they do with it in verse 9, “Hosanna! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. [10] Blessed be the kingdom of our father, David, that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!” See, they’re interpreting it Messianically, in a kingdom sense, and Christ let them do it. Yes, go ahead on that time.

Mark 12:10, when He gets in and He recognizes that the Pharisees are going to crush Him and He is going to be rejected in His Messianic bid, in verse 10 Christ Himself, not Peter, Christ Himself who first uses Psalm 118 this way, “And have you not read this Scripture: The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner; [11] This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes?” Where was Christ getting that? Psalm 118, He’s saying look you people, fifteen minutes before on the street you were shouting and you were chanting Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna, why didn’t you read the context? That’s what He’s doing; you just had to read two more verses and you would have realized that the stone which the builders rejected is going to become the cornerstone.

One more, Matthew 23:39, another use of Psalm 118. Psalm 118 is one of the most important psalms applied to the person of Christ in the enter Old Testament. Jesus tells about His return to earth and He says that He’s not coming back until a certain thing is done. “For I say unto you, You will never see me again until you say, Blesses is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Do you know what Jesus is saying? My Second Advent is contingent upon the nation Israel officially chanting Psalm 118 and meaning what they say; that’s what Jesus is saying, until the nation Israel comes back together and from Jerusalem or from wherever they are gathered together they are going to have to say Psalm 118. This tells you something, although the rapture will occur and we’ll see it from another place, the people on earth will actually hear the Jews gather together and begin to chant; whether they’re going to do it with music we don’t know but just prior or a couple of days before Jesus returns Psalm 118 will be brought out and begin to become almost a national anthem to the nation Israel, and then will be the signal that Christ is coming.

Now let’s turn back to Peter and see what he does with it and wind up his speech. Peter says, and he quotes Psalm 118, then in Acts 4:12 he concludes, “Neither is there salvation in any other,” now here’s where he is using kind of a pun on the word; we who have been in fundamental circles for a while, we use the word salvation so much in terms of eternal sense we forget that it used to have a temporal meaning. The word “salvation” used to mean health, physical health, and what he’s saying, he’s got two meanings on his mind, he uses the word health like we would say it’s not healthy to get in front of a gun when someone’s firing it, well, we’re using the word “health” but we’re using it with kind of a pun or a nuance to it. And that’s what he’s saying here, there isn’t any health in any other name than the one that has been given. And when he finishes his sermon, already he’s identified the name of course, as Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom God has raised from the dead, but when he finishes verse 12 he’s just going to drop another bomb. It’s not clear in the way the King James is translated and so you miss the point, but actually the strongest part of the sermon comes right here. “Neither is there health in any other, for there is no other name under heaven which has been given,” perfect tense, now look at this; what is the perfect tense? A perfect tense means action that is complete in past time with results which continue to the present.

Now think of that for a moment; read that over again and see if you get the point. “There is no other name that has ever been given among men whereby we must be saved.” What has He just done? He has identified Jesus with Jehovah. To prove that we’re going to conclude by turning to Deuteronomy 12:5, a passage that deals with the giving of the name, and with this you see that surely the Holy Spirit was with Peter’s lips and with Peter’s mind as he prepared this great eloquent defense of the Christian church in its hour of birth. Deuteronomy 12:5, what does it mean, “the name that has been given under heaven?” Verse 5 is speaking of the place of authorized worship, God says in Deuteronomy 12, here’s the land of Israel, the people are outside the land, they’re over here in Moab, the book of Deuteronomy is given to them in the land of Moab, they are about to cross at Gilgal and move into the territory to conquer them. And God says people, when I [can’t understand word] over this river Jordan and when you get down and you settle down over here, let me tell you something; you are going to find thousands and thousands and thousands of Canaanite idols. You’re going to find these altars all over the land, all over the land, when you go in that land I want you to destroy every religious center, every one of them; destroy them completely. That’s what He’s talking about in verse 3, “And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their idols with fire; and you shall hew down the wood, smash their rocks, don’t you permit ever any other altar, any other temple, any other cultic center than the one, verse 5, [But unto the place which the LORD your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put His name there, even unto His habitation shall ye seek, and there thou shalt come.”] where I put My name. My name, Jehovah’s name, and one day Jehovah would say I put My name there, there are Jerusalem, and there and there only do you call upon Me. You call to Me because My name is there; the word “name” means presence, authorized meeting place. My name is there. Now what has Peter just said in the light of this passage? No other name has ever been given to men to be saved; he can only mean… he can only mean Jehovah’s own name.

Now for those of you who have followed carefully let me add another note. Some of you are new today won’t catch it but if you were here when we discussed the impotent man remember where I made a big point about where that man was healed. Here’s the temple, here’s the inner part of the temple, that man was healed right there. As that man was healed he was healed in the middle of the temple, the very temple where God said My name is there; it’s this place and this place only that you should worship. And what has Peter said before the Sanhedrin? We healed this man in the place where God’s name was and we healed Him with God’s own name.

Now who’s on trial? The men who asked the facetious question in verse 5 to distract or Peter who is now attacking them for being out of line, out of worship. Next week we’ll discuss the civil disobedience aspect of this case and go on from there.