Obey God rather than man
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Text: Acts 512-32
Directly following the altercation in the Worship of God in this early church. Annanias and Saphira lay dead and buried for the sin of lying to the Holy Spirit. Following which the Bible says ,
And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.
Following this the apostles are right back to work.
And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; (and they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch.
The Apostles are out in the public seeing people healed. This is not just some magical verse like so many charismatics use today. These wonders and signs had a purpose. Paul tells us why he did miracles.
Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.
These were always about the validation of the one who speaks on behalf of Christ. You see it was Christ who was doing these miracles as a proof that he was infact sent from his Father.
Say to them that are of a fearful heart,
Be strong, fear not:
Behold, your God will come with vengeance,
Even God with a recompence;
He will come and save you.
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
And the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
Then shall the lame man leap as an hart,
And the tongue of the dumb sing:
For in the wilderness shall waters break out,
And streams in the desert.
In this work of declaring the Gospel with evidence of the Gospel. Catch that the miracles were never meant to be the point. They were and means to the end of connecting with the source.
By the way we have the same miracles today.
I. I have the recorded miracles.
understand people that won’t listen to the proof of Scripture won’t follow faithfully just because you could raise the dead.
II. I have the miracle of the Bible itself.
Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
III. I have the miracle of the Gospel.
The Gospel is doing the work of making the dead live.
The conclusion of this work is persecution. (17-18)
Why did they get arrested?
I. The Agenda Challenged
II. The Authority Consigned
III. The Audience Convinced
In the face of Persecution, Cancellation, public shame, Phobia-d, musunderstood, misinterpreted, unliked, ignored, hated, deplatformed, anethamatized, even death.
The call to obey God rather than men remains an urgent obligation today, just as it was when the apostles first proclaimed it. When faced with a choice between obeying human authorities and God, there should be no hesitation. God is our Ultimate Authority, and our values must align with His revealed Word.
Ligaya Mishan In their article for the New York Time: The Long and Tortured History of Cancel Culture By Dec. 3, 2020
“CANCEL” Is a consumerist verb, almost always involving a commodity or transaction. Readers cancel magazine subscriptions; studio heads cancel TV shows; bank tellers cancel checks to show that they’ve been exhausted of value.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/t-magazine/cancel-culture-history.html
The last thing anyone wants is to be rejected, put out or thown out as if there is no value left in them. Understand it is hard to be pushed out of the society or out of the culture. Yet the Apostles had one answer for this.
Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.
Wait a second preacher why did they claim they were obeying God. Well they were.
But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said, Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.
And they were left with either obeying God or the highpriest
Saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.
One command was given by God through an angel and the other was given by these preists that were trying to protect their own interests.
By the way we saw this before.
Saying, What shall we do to these men? for that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem; and we cannot deny it. But that it spread no further among the people, let us straitly threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no man in this name. And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.
The apostles felt the same way then.
But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.
Wait a second preacher aren’t we supposed to obey our authorities?
Generally yes,
Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.
Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work,
Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.
not only that but scripture commands that we pray for our rulers,
But here is where we find a distinction
“God uses crooked sticks to draw straight lines.”
Parents
Teachers
Police
Pastors
Govenors
Very simple instructions
Children obey your parents
Servants Obey your masters
Wives submit to your husbands
In the church obey them that have the rule.
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.
Here is the principle:
Obey as obedience to God, not as protection of yourself only.
Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
Obey our authority is about honoring Him. These same three influences do not just exist at the Ruler level.
We live in a day where these elements are and should be challenged.
I. The Agenda Challenged
II. The Authorities Consigned
III. The Audience Convinced.
All of these are present in our culture.
They declare things like
You can kill the child in your womb
Its just a clump of cells
My body my choice
They declar things like
A man can be a woman
A woman can be a man
Music is neutral and doesnt affect the soul.
They declare things like
Marriage is outdated
Porn addiction is normal
You should be free to explore sexuality.
And they will declare their agenda with strong authority, and will fight for the same audience that God desires we reach with the Gospel. To disagree with this agenday, to quesiton their authoriyt and to argue so clearly thei audience sees the light may cost you.
They will call you phobic, They will call you a hater, they will call you toxic, they will call you racist, they will call you outdated, They will announce that you are on the wrong side of history. Because cancellation has been the plan since the beginning.
Different tools- same tactic.
And it is this same culture and authority that you could see Jesus just a year earlier walking into the high priest turf under their authority and grab the edge of the table, throw his hands, and sent things flying.
You see they can’t kill the truth the Apostles preached dor they preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
That is the beauty fo the gospel. According to the Gospel they canceled Jesus and he came back again.
And they threatened to cancel the disciples but you can’t scare them with cancellation.
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.
The opinion of the Apostles is clear.
I can either obey the ones who provide death or I can fear the one that who conquered it.
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Get practical
Understand here today…
Teens your are facing an agenda that is built on a lie. Sadly, no one under its hold can see the lie. They are locked in on this is the truth.
To live a life for Jesus will be seen as racist, homophobic, transphobic, hate speech, and fear mongering.
And I want you to know they use those words because they hurt. There is no preacher that I know preaching God’s truth in a hateful way. Many who have been called racists serve every culture and see no distinction between the bond or the free the Jew or the Gentile. But our culture has bought a lie.
We love people. Understand we love people who have chosen a gay, or trans lifestyle. We would minister to them and show them grace and honor. But we confront them with the word and we would expect any wanting fellowship with our church to renounce those lifestyles and obstain from them. And obeying Jesus in this will get Knollwood and Pastor Phobic…
In the face of cancellation we will be called to hold to truth. We will be called to stand for what is right. and we will be called on to pray for our enemy.
Mom’s and Dad’s
You will get a choice you can raise your children with the nurture and admonition of the Lord. OR you will be asked to cave to the opinion of the masses. Sadly they are equipped with a lot of really important sounding words. They can tie you up in a million circular arguments. and you will have to chose to patiently and lovingly correct and guide your kids. And you will be labeled angery, small, and abusive.
Christians being a light in the workplace is more important now than ever. As DEI finds its way into the Mieleu of your work culture you will have to be more and more wise like a serpent and harmless like a dove. You will have to demonstrate love and refuse to compromise. You will be called to demonstrate Jesus. Who was full of mercy and truth.
And if not you will be cancelled.
Ligaya Mishan In their article for the New York Time: The Long and Tortured History of Cancel Culture By Dec. 3, 2020
In “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” (2020), the American journalist Isabel Wilkerson reaches back to the Book of Leviticus to examine one of the mechanisms underlying hierarchy and the insistence of exclusion: the scapegoat, or sa’ir la’aza’zel — a literal goat, ceremonially endowed by the high priest with “all the guilt and misdeeds” of the community and driven out into the wilderness. The Greeks practiced a kindred rite, using a human sacrifice, the pharmakos, who was beaten and promenaded in the streets before being exiled, which was considered a kind of death. (Some historians believe that executions took place as well, but others find the evidence inconclusive.) This was at once diversion and atonement, a way for a dominant group to label an “other” as evil and cast that evil out, as if it would then no longer abide within them and they could imagine themselves “free of blemish,” Wilkerson writes.
The modern scapegoat performs an equivalent function, uniting otherwise squabbling groups in enmity against a supposed transgressor who relieves the condemners of the burden of wrestling with their own wrongs. What is lost, the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor argues in “A Secular Age” (2007), is the ambivalent, numinous duality of the sacrificial victim. (“Pharmakos” comes from “pharmakon,” which is both itself and its opposite: medicine and poison at once, healer and killer.) No longer is it acknowledged, however tacitly or subconsciously, that the scapegoat, whether guilty or not of a particular offense, is ultimately a mere stand-in for the true culprits responsible for a society gone askew (ourselves and the system we’re complicit in). Instead, the scapegoat is demonized, forced to bear and incarnate everyone’s guilt, on top of their own.
This author did everything inside their power not to mention one such scapegoat that was taken out of the city and hung on a Cross. It was there that he took all our shame and guilt and became exile from the presence of God. So that you and I will never know real loneliness or real shame. For Jesus has already been canceled for you.
What are we to do…
1. Speak the Truth in Love
But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:
2. Have integrity
Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.
3. Focus on Faithfulness not Acceptance
For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.
4. Grieve Over Sin
5. Win Souls, Not Arguments
6. Stop hurting your Brothers
10. Cling to this book