Clough Acts Lesson 12

Special: The Doctrine of Civil Disobedience - Acts 4:13-31

We’ll continue our study of this portion of early church history; in particular a portion of early church history that involved the rise of the first official persecution of the church. Acts 4 is a classic passage in the Bible, for the lack of anything else we’ll call the doctrine of civil disobedience; a very unpopular area and one often identified with unsavory element but nevertheless a very bona fide area of Scripture. Those of you who have worked for various candidates will understand something about politics and some of its weaknesses and by now I hope you obviously see some of its limitations, that the state is not God walking on earth; politics is a serious business but it’s not ultimate business. The Word of God is the ultimate business, but nevertheless, some of you have picked up some acquaintance with the political process so I hope you remember some of the things you have learned so as the battle heats up in coming years between the church and the state you will be equipped mentally to handle yourself however you have to handle yourself at that time.

Acts 4 is another part of your repertoire of weapons to be used and though this passage may seem utterly unconnected with modern day operations, it actually is a quite vital passage. This passage, as we have seen, saw the two apostles, the leading two spokesmen for the Christian faith, arrested; arrested because they taught the Word of God openly, and brought to official trial before the state. Therefore we have before us a model of how the Holy Spirit did work in that situation, though it’s not exactly how He’s going to work in every other situation, nevertheless it does provide us with some guidance as to how the Holy Spirit thinks we ought to behave if we get ourselves in this kind of a problem. The apostles have given their speech before the Sanhedrin; it ended in verse 12.

Now in Acts 4:13 we pick up the response of the authorities in government. “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they were marveling, and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. [14] And, beholding the man, who was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it. [15] But when they had commanded them to go outside, out of the council, they conferred among themselves, [16] Saying, What shall we do to these men? For that indeed a notable miracle has been done by them is manifest to all those who dwell in Jerusalem; and we cannot deny that. [17] But that it spread no further among the people, let us threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no man in this name. [18] And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.”

Very briefly, Luke gives us the first official confrontation between church and state. Notice how it begins in verse 13, “they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant,” now be careful of those two things. “Unlearned and ignorant” does not mean that John are some sort of characters that couldn’t tie their shoes. These apostles were quite smart men; this has nothing to do with their lack of intelligence. What it has to do with is the means of their education. The word “unlearned” means they were informally taught, they had not benefited from the formal system of education; that’s the point that’s being made here, not the point that they are stupid people. They are not stupid people; they simply are people who have been taught a lot of doctrine by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and because of this they surprise the people, how are people who don’t have a degree after their name able to handle Scripture so well? I think this should ring a familiar bell with some of you who have been here at LBC for a while; it’s always encouraging to me to watch people who may not have a high degree of formal education, you may be walking around with an inferiority complex because you never finished college or something and therefore this makes you on the social totem pole a low class citizen. Not at all; you shouldn’t hang you head because you don’t have a degree after your name. If you want to see the greatest collection of nitwits go over on the campus sometime, spend five minutes in the sub and just watch the creatures that drift, fly and crawl through that place and you will no longer have an inferiority complex because you didn’t finish college. The greatest duds on the surface of the earth often are people who have degrees after their names. And the reason, and it’s a good reason, is because formal education causes you to specialize and specialize and specialize to the point where you’ve lost all contact with the big picture. And this is why you have people who are brilliant come up with the silliest stupidest decisions that you can imagine. How can anybody with a PhD make that kind of a decision. It’s very simple, in that area he’s completely stupid, he doesn’t have any common sense in these areas. So he’s lost it by the formal process.

These men did not lose it; the “unlearned” marks them as men trained under the Lordship of Jesus and men who therefore knew the overall area. We’ve seen people come into LBC, take in the Word of God over 4 or 5 years, patiently, sometimes in deep frustration. I’ve seen some people, we had one person come in here and discover that I use a few four or five syllable words, they went out and bought themselves a dictionary. They’ve turned out real well, we’ve seen that happen in a number of cases, that people who thought oh gee, I never went to college, this is all above me, I couldn’t possibly learn, but they’ve stuck it out and they’ve taken in the Word over, day by day, week by week, month by month, and all of a sudden after a year or two suddenly they notice something; they never saw this in their life before but they’ve noticed the ability to go into a group of people, sit there, understand what’s going on and carry on a conversation over many, many different topics and they’ve never had the ability to do this before. And moreover, and of more spiritual benefit, they’ve had the ability to introduce divine viewpoint, prepare the way for the gospel of Christ with these people in their own backyard. Before it used to be a case of walking into a group of people and thinking now let’s see, how am I going to bring the conversation around to the gospel; do I flash a tract, do I shove a Bible in front of their face; what technique do I use to turn the conversation to Jesus. Well, after you learn enough doctrine you realize you don’t need that kind of a technique because sooner or later because these people, like everyone else are made in God’s image, you don’t have to talk about a special topic, just talk about anything, you can talk about their business, you can talk about something else, and eventually a plug goes back to doctrine because if you’ve learned that doctrine applies to every area of life, there’s not one area that eventually you won’t get to.

Now some of you, I’ve noticed, when you try to win someone to Christ you get all tense about this thing; so here’s this person out here who’s an unbeliever and say they have their favorite area over here, and they’ll be very much at home talking… it might be football, baseball or something and they may be very much at home and comfortable in that area. You’ve got to learn something; you can’t come up as a Christian and say I’m praying for that person, I want them to come to Christ, which is all very legitimate, but you come driving in with your little sweet approach and they tune you out. And the reason they tune you out and the reason you haven’t got to first base is because you never established a communication length; you talked the gospel too quickly. What you’ve got to do in a one on one situation is come on over here and if they want to talk about football, talk about football for a little while. And then just get to know how they think; you don’t even have to lead the conversation to the gospel the first couple of times, just be a good listener and ask yourself, now what am I learning about their soul in all this, how does this person think, what’s their set of values in life, what’s their outlook. See if you can be kind of like a spy and find out some intelligence on how the other side thinks. Then you’ll find, once you kind of do a reconnaissance in how they think, you’ll find lots of things, sometimes you have to think about it, you go away and you’ll have to pray about it, think about it, and ponder it in your mind and then maybe the third, fourth or fifth time in conversation with them you get a good entrée. Now I know, some have this idea well, what if there isn’t a second or third or fifth time in conversation; you’ve got to drop your load in the first five minutes or you might never have an opportunity again. Bologna! Who’s sovereign? Who’s sovereign? Who controls these situations, God or us?

So the point remains, just relax and trust the Lord to work out the situation, if it’s not going to be you it’ll be someone else, and besides, if this person goes on some place you’ve learned a little bit more about how an unbeliever thinks, that’s good information for you, it’ll help you next time. So don’t get so tense and so uptight and panic that you’ve got to witness all the time. Now it’s good to have concern for these people’s souls but be relaxed about it; you convey and telegraph to this person to tune you out before you open your mouth by how tense you are. I wonder, what kind of a person is this, what’s going on? So these people, as we see the early church operating, were not that way at all, they just moved on, they may have been “unlearned” and they may have been “ignorant” by the world’s standards at that time but nevertheless they were relaxed people and you’ll notice what the conclusion was in verse 13, they noticed that “they had been with Jesus.”

Now what was it that reminded these state officials that Peter and John “had been with Jesus?” You can argue, usually you get it, well they had just such a holy aurora, you didn’t even have to turn on the light, there was just kind of a glory that came in the door with them. Not at all! How they learned that they had been with Jesus was by the sermon that was just given, all the way from verse 8-12, that’s how they knew they’d been with Jesus; they say wait a minute, we’ve heard this message before. What was the message? The message was that every Old Testament passage points to Messiah and Peter fielded the questions so beautifully that he could start with, say for example, Deuteronomy 18, he could start with 2 Samuel 7 and the Davidic Covenant, he could start with Psalm 2, Psalm 16, Psalm 89, Psalm 110, he could work over into Isaiah 9, Isaiah 53, he could work with Daniel 7, he could work with a number of passages; he could work with Zechariah 14, he knew that no matter what area his people were in, he could lead them to Christ, he could lead them to Messiah from that passage. In other words, these men recognized very, very clearly at this point, these two guys may not have degrees but we know who’s been their teacher and of course, Jesus as the greatest teacher who ever lived.

In Acts 4:14 we see another factor about this trial and this episode, “And, beholding the man, who was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it.” And with that we find something else that Christians over the centuries, the dozens of centuries, hundreds of years of church history have used and that is facts; historic objective facts have always been used by Christians to minimize and hinder persecution. In the early days when the Christians would to into the streets announcing the good news of Jesus Christ they would be often challenged. They’d say wait a minute, wait a minute, you prove this. Do you know what the early Christians used to do? Sure, we’ll prove it, you go to the nearest Roman military barracks and go into the CO’s office and find the annals of orders and you go through those annals of orders and you find for us the trial of Pontius Pilate. You don’t buy it, go to the official Roman record, you’ll find it, it’s there. Or, if you don’t buy it go to the Roman investigation of the empty tomb. See, these documents we’ve lost but those documents were available to those first few generations of Christians and when challenged about their Christian faith those Christians didn’t do this subjective retreat and say well, I don’t know but I just feel deep down in my depraved heart that it’s true. See, they didn’t base their faith on their feelings; it’s not a question of your feelings, some days you feel good and some days you feel bad, does history change because of your feelings? Not at all. Our faith has to be grounded on something other than our feelings and it has to be grounded, therefore, on something objective and these people grounded it on something objective, they had the evidence standing there on his two feet in the courtroom during this trial. This was one technique the early Christians used; okay baby, you want to persecute us, go ahead but you’re going to fly in the face of all this evidence; what are you going to do with the evidence; constantly saying what about the evidence.

Verse 15, “But when they had commanded them to go outside, out of the council, they conferred among themselves, [16] Saying, What shall we do to these men?” Verses 15 and 16 have always raised questions in the mind of scholars of this passage. In fact, down through the years there’s been about four or five answers to this question raised by verse 15. Here’s the question: if John and just Peter were put outside of the courtroom for a closed hearing, how do we know what went on in the courtroom. If all the Christians were excluded from the courtroom then who reported what was going on in the court? There have been several answers: (1) Paul told Luke what happened in the court and how did Paul find out what happened in the court? Because his professor, Gamaliel was there in the courtroom when this happened. That’s one source of information. (2) Possibly a second answer, the apostle John told Luke what happened. How would John have known? Because John was friendly with Caiaphas, the high priest. We don’t understand that relationship but John, who appears to be a middle class fisherman in Galilee had some relation with the high priest who was ruling in Palestine at that time. He tells it to us in John 18. (3) Or it could have been Nicodemus as well as number of other, perhaps, silent believers or men on that trial council who later became Christians and said hey, do you know what happened that day that you guys were cast out, I’ll tell you what went on in the inner room. But somehow we know what went on.

And what went on is very, very interesting from our point of view today. “What shall we do to these men?” Notice what the concern of the court is; the concern of the court is not what has been done by the men; the concern of the court is because what has been done is clear to all them who dwell in Jerusalem; that’s the problem of the court. You see by this time early Christians numbered 10,000 plus, if you count women, the Bible at this point only counts men, 5,000 but for every man there’s got to be a woman some place so we count 10,000. And then there were about 30,000 people in the city of Jerusalem and so if you figure that, that’s 33% of Jerusalem were believers at this time. Think of the phenomenal impact to Christianity and why the authorities were deeply upset by this sect. So if there was that much, what do we have, what do these figures tell us? In modern parlance what are we looking at here? We’re looking at political pressure, that’s what we’re looking at and that has always been a means by the Holy Spirit to suppress Christian persecution. This is why Solzhenitsyn has gone to the west, to gather political pressure against many of the persecutions that are being done against the Christians behind the iron curtain. If enough political pressure can be generated any government… any government will topple. No government can stand, I don’t care if it’s Hitler or Khrushchev or anyone else. No government can stand against terrific public political pressure. And so at this point that’s what it is, that is the name of the game in verse 16. Yes, the Holy Spirit is working but He’s working through the secondary means of political pressure and clout. They don’t dare lay a hand on these believers in a sharp way because they’re afraid of the kickback from one-third of the population in the city of Jerusalem.

Acts 2:18, they finally command them, they called them back in and they give them the ultimatum, we command you. [18, “And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.” ] The word “command” means order and it is by the state. So at this point we come to kind of excerpt as we’ve done several times in the book of Acts. In Acts 2 we got into the middle of Acts 2 and gave a whole Sunday on the doctrine of tongues. Today we come to the doctrine of civil disobedience.

What is civil disobedience? When is it all right and when is it not all right. The Bible gives us certain criteria. By way of introduction let’s understand the doctrine of the divine institutions. Just to review, God has organized society into various spheres. The early Protestant Reformers, John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Knox, Zwingli and others spoke in terms of these divine institutions. Today you mention the word divine institution and nobody knows what you’re talking about but that’s a reflection on them, not on you. Back in the days of the Reformation everyone knew what a divine institution was. A divine institution was a segment of society that operates under God’s laws for that sphere. In other words, these spheres operate almost independently of each other. All right, let’s look at the first sphere:

Divine institution number one, the first divine institution. What is the first divine institution? It is the basis for all human freedom, it is human responsibility, that man has the right to make his choices, that God even permits man a choice and so when you have that choice violated by the state or something else you have an invasion of the first divine institution. It is human responsibility, not autonomous freedom to do anything you want to but responsibility for your actions.

The second deals with sex and marriage. This is a sphere all itself under God’s creation that operates in and of itself. The third divine institution is children, family, the family structure which is the basic social unit. Then divine institution number four is the state; it is one of the divine institutions that was generated after the fall and therefore is an institution that by its very nature it must deal with sin. Now the other institutions, nor necessarily. Adam and Eve before the fall had divine institution one, they had divine institution two, and theoretically could have had divine institution three; but when it came after the fall and after the flood we go into divine institution four where we have justice, law and punishment.

And when we deal with justice, law and punishment we are face to face with the power of the state. Now the Bible recognizes that God has given to man collectively, in Genesis 9, reconfirmed in Romans 13, the power to take life. Now there are eventually some legal authorities who are always trying to debate the legitimacy of capital punishment; usually the argument is that well, we can’t administer capital punishment justly, therefore let’s not administer it. That argument flounders in one very obvious historical fact and that is that God the Father ordained capital punishment when He in His omniscience knew that under the wheels of an inappropriately and wrongly administer capital punishment He would lose His own Son. I’ve never heard anyone answer that argument. God ordained capital punishment knowing that the greatest travesty of justice in history would occur because of it, yet God went ahead and ordained capital punishment anyway, knowing that He would lose His Son by its maladministration. And the reason is that the power of the state ultimately has the power to take life, that’s it, period.

Then the fifth divine institution is the division of the human race into various tribes; Ham, Shem and Japheth, not necessarily races as such but as various tribes with their own cultural contribution. And finally in our age it’s the church but in previous ages it was known by other names, is the sphere of grace. To have prosperity at any point in any society at any time, there is one, and it’s not simple, but there’s one formula for prosperity for any society and that is when all of these spheres operate in balance with each other you will always have a superior civilization. Whenever one of those or a combination of those gets out of kilter, and leapfrogs into another one and begins to transgress into the other domain, you have a weakened society.

Now look what happened; throughout history there has always been a tendency to expand divine institution number four, for divine institution number four to come over here and start dictating the value of your currency, for example; for divine institution number two to come over here and say what certain things… now you see, the latest invasion of is ERA, to break down the structure between male and female, there are a lot of good things in the motives of the ERA, we’re not knocking the idea that woman ought to be treated justly, and that’s not basically the issue; the issue is that we have certain people who have abandoned the Christian world and life view and are now going to impose certain rules upon women for which they are not designed and for which they are going to suffer in years to come. And now we have the third divine institution, when the state comes in and argues that you cannot pass your inherited wealth on to your children, that biblically is an invasion of the third divine institution by the state. And when you have the state come over here and say that in the name of world law we will bring all nations under world government, that’s an invasion of the fifth divine institution. Whenever you have this you’re going to have war and you’re going to have discomfort and you’re going to have suffering. Suffering is always caused by a maldistribution of these divine institutions. The only time when these work correctly is when you have a maximum number of your citizens, not only born again Christians but born again Christians who know the word and make that influence felt.

With that preparation and introduction of the divine institutions, let’s go to the doctrine of civil disobedience and see why it happens. The first question that we’re going to deal with is why is it necessary to have civil disobedience. Why, if God made all these divine institutions, why civil disobedience. Why the thing? A very simple analogy: one of those institutions was the institution of marriage. Marriage was designed to be until death; that’s why we take a vow. However, we obviously recognize from the Torah and other places the right to divorce or the right to fracture that institution. So, we have introduced into history, as a result of the fall, the fracturing of the second divine institution which is divorce. Now it shouldn’t seem so strange that the fourth divine institution is the same way; because of sin, not because we like it but there do come those times when the fourth divine institution has to be faced down, and that we call civil disobedience. So civil disobedience is to the fourth divine institution what divorce is to the second divine institution.

Now why is this necessary? Why this fracturing? It goes back, primarily to the kingdom of man. Now the kingdom of man is the opposite of the kingdom of God; it is an opposite motion in history, particularly since 586 BC of Satan to gather human society into a certain orientation. The believer of the Bible doesn’t accept all sorts of ideas that the Jews are the international bankers or the communists are behind all history. We accept the fact that there might be plots, and counter plots and hundreds of plots but no one group of men down through history can possibly control history. Satan is the key conspirator of history and he has various formats that he uses. We studied him in Daniel; there are four elements to human society that Satan tries to cultivate and bring out into strength because if he can bring these four elements into strength, as he will finally with the antichrist, he can dominate human society. It doesn’t matter how many believers are there, all he has to do is have these four elements perfectly functioning and he has got his long sought after kingdom of man.

Here are the functions: one contribution from Babylon and that is government dominated finance the economy. If the government can totally dominate economy, can totally value or devalue currency, can totally control banking through the central bank system, if that can happen then Satan can control the system. This is taught in the book of Revelation where in the final days before Christ returns, when Satan finally triumphs with Babylon the great whore, she is known for the fact that no person can buy or sell without the mark of the beast. What does that mean? It means a totally, what we would call a cashless society in which you don’t have any medium of value on a free market sense; what you have is a credit system where the government decrees what the credit is at any point in your transaction. And in that case the government therefore can say if you don’t accept the deity of this man who is declared to be the beast, if you don’t accept that, we turn your little economic spicket right off and you see if you can buy your food in the supermarket tomorrow; you can’t because your currency does not have value in and of itself; it has value of what the government says. If the government says your particular currency, because you don’t have the mark is not valuable, no cashier is going to accept it and if no cashier accepts your currency you’re in bad shape because you’ve just lost all your value, everything is gone down the drain by government fiat. So that’s the problem with the Babylonization of culture. Satan has always tried to do this, he is still in the business of doing it, of having government trying to control all financial transactions.

A second factor that Satan has always tried to invade culture with comes from Persia, the second kingdom in the book of Daniel. Persia has always had and is known in history for the first kingdom that stretched all the way from Europe, Turkey and Europe, the eastern end of the Mediterranean, all the way east to India and the Persian Empire was the first great marriage of east and west. So therefore Persia stands in history as the commingling of world culture or the internationalization of culture, the demeaning of the contributions of individual people and mixing them all up into one great mixing pot. That is a Persian influence; I think you can see Persian influence quite strongly, for example, in American history.

The third kingdom in the book of Daniel is Greece and what has been Greece’s contribution in history. Greece’s contribution in history has been the autonomous reason of man, that man will conquer by means of his intellect. When you mention the word ancient Greece what does your mind think of but Aristotle, Plato, and the early philosophers. It is Greece that defines intellectually the kingdom of man and therefore even when the Romans invaded Greece the Romans in turn were subdued by Hellenism. Hellenism has always been a strength in our society; the worship of man’s autonomous reason independently of the authority of God’s Word.

And finally the fourth; Rome. What has Rome been known for in its contribution to human culture? Bureaucracy, order, organization, and law. Rome has always been the great organizers. You realize if you trace back the idea of world government it goes back to a man by the name of Dante, and where did Dante write? Italy, part of the Roman Empire. If you trace back to the Renaissance, where did it arise? It arose in Italy, Rome. And so we still live in the off scouring of these four satanic movements in history.

Now that’s the kingdom of man and because you have the rise of these four elements, like dogs on a leash, growling, held by restraint but always ready to take over, every society potentially is in danger of being taken over by these elements; every society. And the Christians, if they are to be salt of the earth as citizens have to ask themselves, now I’m not going to vote for this person because of how they part their hair or because they have some other great image; I am going to ask myself, wait a minute, does this person stand between me and this {taps on board}. I fear that as a Christian; as a knowledgeable Bible-believing Christian I have great fear for these forces; I respect the power of Satan in history and I must guard myself and I must guard my loved ones from this breaking loose in our day. And therefore I measure candidates by how well they are going to protect the fourth divine institution and rule it as it ought to be ruled and keep these elements out of the system.

So as long as the elements are here what we have is a potential war actually, it’s an uneasy truce between the Church and the kingdom of man; constantly there, and this truce can break down at any moment. So why the doctrine of civil disobedience. Why is civil disobedience allowed by God and why does it have to occur at times in history? Answer: because of the uneasy truce that exists between the kingdom of man and the Church. It’s like a sphere charged with negative electricity and another one with positive, same capacitor and it builds up a charge and builds up a charge and at any time it can discharge into a paroxysm of violence. And so the Christian who has ear to the ground, who knows doctrine, will constantly ask himself, how close are we in our day to a discharge of these capacitors. Are the forces of the kingdom of man increasing? And then, are the forces of the Church increasing, and you can measure it various ways; you can measure it by asking yourself, in my day is the Church of Jesus Christ increasing in strength, because where in history we’ve had problems is where you’ve had the kingdom of man rule over an area, the kingdom of man would be dominating, and then you have the introduction of the Church into it, and as the Church expands it bumps into the kingdom and right there is where you have your conflict.

This is happening in Acts 4. The kingdom of man has dominated Palestine; the Jews are intimidated by Roman presence. You have had the Hellenization described in the 1 and 2 book of the Maccabees, and all during this time the kingdom of man has dominated. Now the Church begins to expand and expand and expand and expand and sooner or later it collides with the kingdom of man and the issue it collided with is given in this chapter.

Continuing with out doctrine of civil disobedience, we’ve answered the question why is it necessary, because of this great background tension. What are some modern illustrations in the United States of tendencies toward collision. I’ll give you two specifics; in and of themselves this does not say that the evangelical church is in danger of Acts 4 but it does say that if these trends continue, you in the next 5-10 years are going to be placed in a position of having to personally choose one way or the other. Here are two issues where there’s… shall we say it’s the smoke before the fire. It’s the little friction that’s developing between the Church and the kingdom of man in our country. There are many examples, I’ll just pick a recent one; the California Supreme Court has decided in favor of Caesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union to enter at will the private property of farmers without their consent in order to organize workers on those farms. Said Judge Stanley [?] as he wrote the majority opinion, (quote): “It should hardly be necessary to reaffirm the principle that private property is held subject of the power of government to regulate its use for public welfare.” (end quote) Now that’s true but what its ultimately saying is that the state is ultimate owner of all property. Notice that, ultimate owner of all property; it’s called imminent domain and its anti-Biblical.

Proof: 1 Kings 21 where you have the Naboth vineyard incident where God thoroughly condemned imminent domain. In that case Naboth and his family had an inheritance and the state even offered just compensation, Ahab, for this vineyard and what happened. Naboth said no, this God has given to my family, I can’t sell this, I’m prohibited under the Mosaic Law from selling this, this is God’s gift to my family. I will not take either silver or gold for it. And so you know the story, Ahab slaughtered Naboth and because he did we had Elijah damn his administration with the curse of God upon it for the violation of this principle. So if the state is ultimate owner of all property, it takes little imagination to think of what can be done under certain conditions with this axiom.

Second illustration: The Ohio State Supreme Court is now passing on the case of the State versus Rev. Levi [?] over the Tabernacle Christian School issue. In this issue Ohio parents, evangelicals, have gathered together and formed their own Christian school, a Christian school that meets the academic requirements of the State of Ohio, but does not meet certain other requirements of the State of Ohio, such as who they’re going to have on their counseling staff and what philosophy is going to dominate the method of teaching at this particular school. And Rev. [?] has very wisely, and the parents very wisely have said we are paying for this school out of our pockets, we will pass any exam you public school authorities offer our children; we will prove to you that we can educate our children better than the state can educate them. But that is not enough for the servants of Ohio; Ohio must go further and they must smash the school, arrest the parents and arrest the minister who heads the school. Said the prosecutor, “These parents have no philosophy of social conformity.” This is the same thing here with Peter and John, poor men, they don’t have any philosophy of social conformity. And then he went on to say, “the State of Ohio does have a great right in the education of our children and religion must give way to the education of our children.” Now notice the words, those are very dangerous words that prosecutor uttered. Do you notice his clever use of the personal pronoun “our.” That is what’s threatening more than the case itself; listen to the mentality of this prosecutor: “the state has a right in the education of our children.” What has he just said? That the state, in addition to being the ultimate owner of all property is the ultimate owner of all souls. Now this is the spirit that is rising in America in 1976. And you’ve just seen just a little brush fire here and a little brush fire there, today in 1976 no problem, but you mark my words, this tendency has been going on. I am in communication across this country with other pastors involved in this kind of thing and they all tell me this part of the country is mild; we live in paradise compared to what’s going on in many, many other parts of the country. You ought to be glad you live in the state of Texas; in other parts of the country it is not like this and the battle is brewing and it’s coming, and Acts 4 is going to be one of those passages that believers, at least in other states, may shortly be called upon to use.

Why do men insist upon this? Before we get into the tactics of civil disobedience we have to answer one other question; we’ve answered the why of it, we’ve dealt with some modern illustrations of it but now we’ve got to deal with what is the spirit behind this state controlling everything. What is the spirit? Turn to Isaiah 30, here is a spiritual analysis of this kind of thinking. People say oh it doesn’t have any spiritual… it has no spiritual bearing whatever. Oh no, read carefully Isaiah 30:1-3, here’s why God condemns it. Now I’ve argued and debated and discussed with these people, people who think this way, I grew up in New York which is a leader in this kind of thinking and I know well the arguments; I’ve heard them for 20 years and this is always the argument that you get back: why, if the state doesn’t control all property and if the state doesn’t control all children, who is going to control it, it’ll be all chaos unless the state steps in and brings order out of chaos. That’s the philosophy.

Now watch what Isaiah does, because in Isaiah’s day they had a similar deal. The deal this time involved foreign policy; Israel was a weak nation and the people argued, Isaiah, we’ve got to make a treaty with Pharaoh of Egypt because if the state of Egypt doesn’t step in to bring order out of chaos nobody will; same argument. Now all of you know what the symbol of Egypt is. When you think of Egypt what symbol comes to your mind? The pyramids, the most stable form of architecture, the pyramids. Egypt pawned itself off in the thinking of ancient history as stability; everything for Pharaoh. Just let Pharaoh do it, he’ll give you stability, you don’t have to worry, put all your eggs in this one basket of Pharaoh and he’ll never drop them, they’ll perfectly be preserved.

So in Isaiah 30:1-3 we have, “Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD,” that’s woe to the children of Israel who think in a statist way, that if the state doesn’t do it no one will, “Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of Me; who cover with a covering, but not of My Spirit, that they may add sin to sin; [2] Who walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, to trust in the shadow of Egypt! [3] Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.” What is the spiritual analysis of this kind of thinking? It’s a false faith; it’s a faith that ought to have been directed for God himself that is now directed to the state, the state from whom all blessings flow, the state who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, the state who giveth our children and educations them and takes them away, all blessings to the state. That is a religious state and that is what God hates. It isn’t a political calculation; don’t kid yourself, that’s not a judges argument merely, that is a religious faith that has injected itself; it is damnable in God’s sight, that men should trust in the power of the state more than they trust in the power of Jesus Christ. That is the collision that’s forthcoming in our time.

Now we come to the last point, and that is the particular points or the particular propositions to civil disobedience itself. We have four steps in the process of civil disobedience. What are these four steps? The first step is the most important because there’s always a tendency because people are fallen, people have sin natures, you get in a rebellious thing like this and it takes you over until you finally rebel against all authority and show disrespect. The first thing is that civil disobedience is authorized only for certain narrowly defined issues in the Bible. Civil disobedience cannot be done at the will of some individual. It is done over certain issues. So the first point is civil disobedience is limited to several very narrow issues, and I’ve looked through the Bible from cover to cover and I can’t find any other issues than these. When these issues come up civil disobedience is authorized but not until these issues come up. What are these issues? The model we have, the book of Daniel; whenever the state invades the sphere of grace by proscribing the mode of worship, by proscribing when and where it is going to take place, and by describing the theology of the worship. When the state intrudes here we have a divorce occur with the fourth divine institution, and the rise of civil disobedience. Examples of verses from Daniel: Daniel 1:8; Daniel 3:7; Daniel 6:7. Whenever the state intruded in these spheres Daniel said no, I’m sorry, we cannot go along with this.

Along with this point let me show you something else. Daniel, it vexed his soul to see some of the human viewpoint legislation cranked out politically but Daniel knew he was living in the kingdom of man so he never was a political purist. He understood to the degree that God gives me room to move, I impose wisdom in the process but if I don’t have any room to move I don’t do anything. So in Daniel 6:24 you have a very obvious hostile cruel legislation and Daniel stands by as the Secretary of State and says, yes sir, and allows it to go on. Daniel had to bend a little bit with the process and he had to bend with the process because it was not an issue that was that significant to fight about. You save your civil disobedience only for the real, real crucial issues. Other models of civil disobedience would be genocide, and this is obviously a persecution directly against believers, such as Exodus 1 and Joshua 2. That’s the first step in civil disobedience. You must have a legitimate reason. Most of the reasons people cite are not legitimate.

Second, you start to implement the tactics of civil disobedience and then the implementation of the tactics of civil disobedience there are several things to remember: one, show respect to all authority. Daniel does this, Peter and John do this, they do not defy the office; they are simply saying I’m sad, but you’ve asked me to do something I cannot honestly do before my God and I’m not going to do it, and that’s it. There is respect for the office of the fourth divine institution. Besides this basic respect, and you can look at Daniel 1 as an illustration of how the boy Daniel faces rulers; you can look at Acts 4, besides this there is always the attempt to, what I call the pragmatic sell; before it gets too bad you try to sell your Christian position on a non-Christian basis. That sounds like a paradox but here’s what I mean. You don’t go up to an authority who’s obviously anti-Christian and say “the Bible says … therefore we’re going to do it.” Daniel didn’t do that. What Daniel did was he went up to the authority and said you know, you’re doing things this way, and this is going to be the result of it. Now how about doing it this way and let this be the result from it. He didn’t mention the Bible; he sold it on a pragmatic basis, appealing to the long-range effect. He tried to sell them his believer’s program, he tried to avoid the confrontation by the pragmatic sell. In Acts 4 we’ve just seen the pragmatic sell work because Peter and John have preached to so many people in the city of Jerusalem that when their trial occurs the judge is looking out his window and he sees thousands of people milling around and he dare not defy that many people. That is a pragmatic sell, maybe not so subtle as Daniel but it’s still a pragmatic sell. You don’t quote Scripture, you simply sell it to the non-Christian on the basis it’s better for him if he do it this way.

Another point about the tactics and implementing these tactics is that all the while you’re doing this you’re praying 1 Timothy 2 type prayers, Lord, let us live in peace. See, that’s what that 1 Timothy 2 prayer is all about, it’s not talking, necessarily, about foreign policy; it’s talking about Lord, let us stave off a confrontation between church and state because boy, when you get into that position you’ve got holy war and it’s cruel on both sides, because you’ve hit an ultimate snag, either side can’t compromise. And if things ever get to that point we just haven’t seen what war is like, the tragedies down through history of holy conflicts where one side considers it’s its ultimate cause to destroy the other side completely. But that’s the horror of a church/state conflict, ripping apart families, countries, groups of people like they’ve never been ripped apart before. It’s a horrible thing and so you pray 1 Timothy 2 prayers, “Lord, let this not happen.”

And finally, be prepared to take the consequences of your choice. Acts 4, the apostles are ready to go to jail if that was necessary; we’ll evangelize the jail but we’ll go to jail. If they want to lock us up let ‘em, they can’t take away our freedom, they can put us behind bars but that doesn’t take away our freedom. Be ready to take the consequences.

Now let’s come back and finish this passage in Acts 4. That’s a rough outline on the Biblical teaching on civil disobedience. So Peter and John in Acts 19 respond to the government’s threat. And this is a classic response; it’s like Socrates in Plato’s Apology. Acts 4:19, “Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it is right in the sight of God to hearken unto you,” the state, “more than unto God, you be the judge. [20] But we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” And they defy the state at that point; they are in utter civil disobedience in verses 19-20; that is Holy Spirit directed civil disobedience. It is orderly, it’s not a big hairy row, but it is a very serious, serious thing to those first Christians.

So in Acts 4:21, “So when they had further threatened them, [they let them go, finding nothing how they might punish them, because of the people; for all men glorified God for that which was done,]” and notice the authorities, that’s all they do is threaten them because they’re afraid, the pragmatic sell has put enough pressure on so they can’t really destroy these men. To show you how serious it was and what a mistake the authorities made from the Jewish point of view in verse 21, here’s what a Jewish scholar says about verse 21. Joseph Klausner in his book, From Jesus to Paul, says this: “This was the first mistake which our leaders made with regard to the new sect of Christianity. And this mistake was fatal; there was probably no need to arrest the Nazarenes in the first place, thus calling attention to them and making them martyrs, but once arrested they should not have been freed so quickly; the arrest and release increased the number of believers, for this event showed on the one hand that the new sect had power which the authorities feared enough to persecute and yet on the other hand it proved that there was no danger ever in believing and being a disciple of Jesus. And thus, because of the people…,” notice verse 21, underline that, because of the people, they feared the pragmatic forces of the moment, “…because of the people they dared not persecute any further.”

And it goes on to describe in verse 23 how Peter and John then went back to the church for a report. And they accounted this, it was a very serious moment in church history. Never before had the Church faced this kind of a threat and so policies had to be made; discussions had to occur; men of the leadership had to think Lord, what do we do now, now we’ve got ourselves in a real mess, now what are we going to do. The result, and Luke remember is summarizing this very rapidly for us, we’re going through it even more rapidly but he’s summarizing what took hours and hours to discuss and therefore in the next verse, when you read that, understand this wasn’t just one prayer meeting. [22, “For the man was above forty years old, on whom this miracle of healing was shown. [23] And being let go, they went to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them.”]

In verses 24, 25 and 26, in those verses he’s summarizing the gist of the prayers that were being made all over the city of Jerusalem. [24] “When they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord,” that means they had gotten together, they said okay, this is going to be our policy, do you agree with it or not, and probably elders from one part of Jerusalem, the east section of Jerusalem, the west section of Jerusalem, they got together and they said hey, what do you think we ought to do. Well, here’s what we ought to do. And so “with one accord,” after they discussed the whole problem out, they came up with this prayer request, notice they gave thought to their prayer request. It wasn’t just O God, O God, why did this happen to me and what are we going to do, and O God help us and all the rest of. This prayer request was a very carefully engineered petition to God the Father. Watch what they did.

“…they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, Thou art God, who has made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is;” now why do you suppose they began their prayer with a praise item? What particular doctrine does verse 24 remind you of; the doctrine of God, man and nature. Think of the divine viewpoint framework, creation, the foundation of the divine viewpoint framework; the source of it all. Why do they go back here? Because in the two philosophies of state it is God over man and the state, or it is state over man and his religion. And those are the options, and therefore they chase it all the way back to the philosophic base, O Lord, You are the One who created nature, man, and the social institutions in nature. Therefore we approach you. And the word “Lord” here is not the word “Lord” normally used, it’s despot, it means dictator. “O dictator, You have made all things,” and therefore they are focusing in on God’s authority.

And then in Acts 3:25-26 they quote one of the great Messianic psalms, Psalm 2. Those of you who have sung Handel’s Messiah should immediately recognize where verses 25-26 come from, “Why do the heathen race, and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against His Messiah [Christ].” Now besides showing their great insight into the Old Testament, there’s something else this verse shows and it’s not, unfortunately translated too correctly in the King James, but here’s the way it looks in the original Greek: “you spoke through your servant, David,” then in apposition they make two statements, and these are really bombshells as far as conservative theology is concerned today as to what our authority is and to prove to you that it wasn’t the 19^th century fundamentalist who invented inspiration of Scripture, “through your servant David, our father,” apposition now, “the mouth of the Holy Spirit.” Now if that isn’t a strong declaration of the inspiration of Scripture I don’t know what one looks like. They are calling David the mouth of the Holy Spirit. Isn’t that phenomenal? What a phenomenal thing; they said when David wrote those Psalms he was acting as the mouth of the Holy Spirit. And so they have full credence, full confidence in an inerrant Scripture. And this church/state controversy culminating in Messiah.

Then in Acts 4:27, having quoted Psalm 2 they say, “For of a truth against,” notice what they do in 27, they go back, they interpret their situation in the light of the Word. They have Psalm 2 and they say hey, you know this situation we’re in; why it’s the fulfillment of Psalm 2 all over again. “For of a truth against thy holy,” and it’s not child, it is servant, the word translated “child” should be translated “servant” because in the Greek Old Testament it is used in what great passage? Isaiah 53. So when you see that little word “child” or “servant” in verse 27, understand that that is referring back to Isaiah 53. Why is that important? Because contrary to critics it shows that within the first generation of Christians they understood very clearly that Jesus was the fulfillment of Isaiah 53. “For of a truth against they holy suffering servant, Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, and the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together.”

And then the phenomenal statement in Acts 4:28, “To do whatever Thy hand and Thy counsel determined before to be done.” I don’t think you have to be a Calvinist to get the sort of sensation out of verse 28 that something about sovereignty is being said there. And that’s what you need in a persecution type situation. Think of what it must have been like for those guys to be in a POW camp, to be in solitary confinement for four or five years. Don’t you think, the thoughts that must have went through their mind, what about my wife, what about my children, will I ever see them again, the fact that I’ve lost control over everything, that’s the feeling that must come upon someone like this, the utter hopelessness, I’ve had it, there’s nothing, I can’t get out of the cell, I can’t write, I can’t talk, I can’t even tell my family I’m alive. There’s a complete cutoff of every human work that I can do, and facing that situation I have to trust in somebody who’s in charge of the mess, and that’s why you’ll see this in the book of Acts again and again, when faced with this kind of a discouragement, this kind of a pressure situation, how did those people respond? Lord, You’re in charge; that’s how they responded, they went back to the basics; they went back to the essence of God Himself. God is sovereign; because He is, all things work out together for good and they went on from there

And they weren’t fatalistic because in verse 29 they prayed for certain things to happen; they weren’t content by saying well God, we know Your sovereign so whatever will come to be will come to be. That’s fatalism, don’t get in that trap. God’s sovereignty means that God’s program will come to pass but it will be by means of our choices. Sovereignty includes human choice, and so this is why in verse 29 they said “Lord, look at their threatenings; and give,” the word “grant” means “give us something that we don’t have now, “give us boldness that we may speak Thy word.” Translated a little bit more bluntly what verse 29 is saying, “Lord, give us the strength to carry on in civil disobedience.” Give us the strength to defy the state decree against us and let us defy it every square foot of the land; we didn’t ask for this, the state came in upon us, but since the state has, give us power to defy it at every point.

Acts 4:30, “By stretching forth thine hand to heal;” and even here these people are thinking biblically. When you think of the Old Testament what picture does that conjure up, of a great prophet with a staff, stretching his hand out over something. That’s a picture of the Exodus. And what’s the Exodus mean in the Old Testament? Political freedom. So what they’re really praying is Lord, give us the power to defy the state, but let us, through the signs and the wonders get our freedom back so we can carry on. That’s what they’re saying. “…and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of Thy holy suffering servant, Jesus. [31] And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak the Word of God with boldness.” Again it’s emphasizing that they are now in fellowship, collectively, like we would say boy, when so and so did that he was really in fellowship. One of the feedback cards said the NASV indicated in verse 8 that it has just been filled; well that’s not what the Greek says, it just means they were filled. As I said when I taught that passage, it’s just like we would say, if you see some believer out doing a tremendous job, boy they were really filled with the Spirit when they did that. That’s what this is saying, they were filled with the Spirit and the outward sign they were filled with the Spirit is that they could continue, “speak” is imperfect, they began and they didn’t shut up, they went on and on and on and on and on, all through the city of Jerusalem teaching the Word, teaching the Word, teaching the Word. And the state says you can’t do that, you can’t do that, you can’t do that; we’re going to do it anyway, we’re going to do it anyway, we’re going to do it anyway. And there’s rising tension between church and state all during this period of time.

Next week we’ll see the results of this but I hope that this Acts 4 passage will show a little bit of what believers in the past had to do and give you a model of the faith that was held by fathers and brothers and sisters back centuries ago. Maybe some of you will even be stimulated to pray 1 Timothy 2 type prayers that we don’t have to go through this, because quite frankly the way things are shaping up if Christians are to retain their authority we may have to go through this; we hope we don’t, but one reason I’m teaching you this is so we know what to do if we ever get ourselves in that kind of a situation.