How to Handle Persecution, Part 1
Acts 4:1-12
We come now to the study of the word of God. We'd like to ask you to turn in your Bibles to Acts Chapter 4. As I was coming down the aisle, I heard somebody say how long is going to get through that outline. And I realized when I told the girls in the office that the text was Acts 4:1-37, they almost fell over. We'll not at all cover all those morning, obviously. Okay, Acts Chapter 4. I've titled this whole Chapter really through verse 37, how to handle persecution. And we're going to just begin to dive into a little bit this morning an initial statement through verse 12.
And persecution, of course, is a very, very intrinsic part of the Christian picture and always has been. And here we have some tremendous truths given to us in the example of the apostles as they handled persecution. Now persecution was a blessing to the apostolic church just as it is a blessing to all churches and all believers. Five times in 11 years hands were stretched forth to persecute the church in Jerusalem on an organized basis. And this chapter records the first of these persecutions and really the beginning of the persecutions of the church that are still going on today, some 2,000 years later.
During the first 300 years of the church's existence or the first three centuries really, there were ten persecutions of major proportions brought against the church. Beginning with Stephen and extending nearly to all of the apostles, death became the common way to go, if you were a Christian. The first persecution, for example, broke out under Nero Domitius, the sixth Emperor of Rome and about the time A.D. 67, which isn't too long after the church began.
And Nero contrived all kinds of punishments for Christians. He sewed some up in the skins of wild animals and then turned hungry dogs loose on them. He used others dressed in wax shirts and attached to trees to be lit as torches in his garden. The next persecution under Domitian was perhaps even more inventive. Christians were imprisoned. They were put on racks, they were seared, they were broiled, they were burned. They went through scourging, stoning, and hanging. Many were lacerated with hot irons. Others thrown on the horns of wild bulls.
In the fourth persecution beginning about 162 A.D., some Christians were made to walk with already wounded feet over thorns, nails, sharp shells. Some were scourged until their flesh was gone. Others were beheaded and so it went. Under the eighth persecution at Utica, 300 Christians were placed alive around a lime kiln and told that they were to make offerings to Jupiter or be pushed in. Unanimously they refused and all 300 of them perished in the lime.
That was only the beginning of what the church has undergone. And Satan's persecution as time has progressed, has become all the more subtle than it was then. It's not nearly as obvious how it is that Satan persecutes today. And incidentally, today apparently much more successfully, Satan's techniques are working. Now are text records for us the first persecution. This is the beginning of the steady stream of persecution that has gone on since the commencement of the church. In one way or another the Christian church is always under persecution. It is not always political. It is sometimes personal. It is sometimes religious. It sometimes comes from illegitimate Christianity.
That is the greatest persecutor of evangelical Christianity is probably liberal Christianity, at least in the American situation. And one way or another then, the church has suffered persecution ever since what we're going to see in Acts Chapter 4 began at all. And as I said, persecution is subtle today. It's not what it used to be. Satan usually directs the persecution today not at the physical body, but at the ego. He directs his persecution at pride or acceptance or status, etc. And it's really very effective.
He doesn't threaten the Christian by saying if you witness, I'll cut your head off. He threatens the Christian by planting within his mind the fact that if you witness you might lose your job or your status or somebody might think you're strange. In these days, persecution has a tremendous effect in a very subtle way. The form of persecution in the early church made heroes out of those who died. And it came to be such a normal thing for Christians to die, that many Christians developed a martyr complex and just went around trying to put themselves into positions where they could be martyred. I mean, they wanted to belong, you know.
But today the persecution that comes is more effective. It doesn't make heroes out of anybody. And it's a sad thing, while the church today is not being killed physically, the church has succumbed to a kind of living spiritual death. I suppose the perfect illustration would be the church at Sardis in Revelation Chapter 3, verse 1, which says "And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write these things saith he which hath the seven spirits of God or the Holy Spirit and the seven stars, the ministers of the seven churches, I know thy works that thou hast to name that thou livest and art dead."
Satan has killed the church in terms of its spiritual effect without ever having to kill the Christians in it. In fact, by letting them all live in an insipid kind of godless Christianity, he has a greater effect than if he wiped them all out and had to face the issue again that the seed of the church is the blood of the martyrs. And so Satan whose persecution in the past has slaughtered Christians physically, has found it much more effective to kill the church by making it complacent, indolent, fat, rich, socially oriented, and accepted. And insipid as its watered down its theology to accommodate the world.
Must more effective than if all Christians were boiled in oil. Now there are some places in our world where persecution does reign, physical persecution. Even some places here in America. But one way or another Satan is antagonistic to the church. He persecutes the church. Obviously and flagrantly and blatantly, physically or subtly by the persecution to become involved in the world to strip off that which offends in order that you might maintain your prestige, your status or whatever it is that you desire from your ego.
Now Jesus in John Chapter 15 warned the church in the statement to His disciples that they might as well expect persecution. In verse 18 of John 15 we read this, "If the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own." You see that's why John says, "love not the world." What happens when a Christian falls in love with the system is, the system no longer really is hindered by this guy. They are no longer offended by this guy, and Satan has accomplished a greater persecution than if you had taken that guy and killed him physically, because he has destroyed his effect. In fact, he has made him a negative.
"If you are of the world, the world would love its own, but you're not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." And they'll persecute you. Verse 20, "Remember the word that I said unto you, the servant is not greater than his Lord. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you." Verse 2 of Chapter 16, "They'll put you out of their synagogues, the time comes when whosoever kills you will think that he does God's service." Religious persecution.
So there is always persecution. Jesus stated it. Peter went on a step further in 1 Peter 2:21 and said this. And this is an important statement. He in effect said we should expect it. "For hereunto were you called because Christ also suffered for us leaving us an example that you should follow His steps. If you confront the world, the world will react violently one way or another. Now you may succumb to the persecution of Satan so that you fiddle out and kind of get laid by the wayside long before you ever confront the world, because you're really doing that to save your ego from being persecuted.
But Paul said to Timothy, 2 Timothy 3:12, "You," pardon me, "Ye, and all that live Godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution." Now that's a very clear statement. Ye, and all that live Godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution." You say well, you know, I go along and I don't suffer persecution. Read the verse again. "All that live Godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution." If you're not suffering persecution, why aren't you? Because you're not living Godly in Christ Jesus, just that simple.
If you live the kind of life that God intends you to live in Christ, you will by the very nature of that life butt heads with the world and when I say world, I mean the system. If you are not suffering some persecution, you have either fallen right into the flow of the system so that they don't know the difference or they haven't discovered yet who it is that you really are. You've hidden it well. But you begin to live openly and Godly in the world and you're going to bang heads with Satan and with his establishment. You begin to confront the world and the persecution is automatic.
Now, we see this in the early church. First of all, it looks so great. You know, we always say if you really live a Christian life, the world will be drawn to you. Sure they'll be drawn to the beauty of your person, but as soon as they find out what it is, then all of sudden that which draws them to you, unless they come to Christ turns to be a negative. The early church, for example, in Chapter 2 and 3, everything looked real positive. Chapter 2 the world was amazed at them and they found favor with all the people and everything looked great. And all of a sudden they found out what it was they stood for and everything shifted gears mighty fast.
Now in Chapter 3, you'll remember that Peter had gone with John to the temple and there he had healed the lame man. A crowd had gathered together in the courtyard. Peter and John had stood in Solomon's portico up off the floor a little bit of the courtyard and he and John had between them the lame man and Peter began to preach. And he preached a powerful message regarding Jesus as Messiah or the Christ, God. And he indicted Israel for executing Christ. He closed with an invitation to them in verse 19 "repent and be converted." And he really let them have it.
You see he confronted the world. He stood up in the middle of their thing, right smack in their temple where they were doing their religious duties and he said this is wrong, you have blown it, and he confronted them face to face. Now that's the kind of confrontation I'm talking about. That's the kind of confrontation that brings hostility. But that's the kind of confrontation that God expects us to be involved in.
It is not that kind of a mealy mouth hiding in order to protect our ego, our status and our prestige and our name among the world. The response to what Peter did was very interesting. Look at verse 4 of Chapter 4 and we're kind of begin to look at our text. "But many of them who heard the word believed." Now that's what we're trying to affect. We're not trying to hide, because if we hide, not only do we not suffer, but nobody gets saved either. That's the problem. Sure you say well if I do that, I'm liable to get really messed up. That's right. You're liable to get messed up and somebody else is liable to get straightened out. And your life is expendable my friends, so is mine. True?
My life is expendable for the sake of somebody else. As soon as I start trying to live to protect my ego and to protect my status and to protect my prestige, then my life has become self-centered and it's no good to God or to anybody else. If I'm not willing to confront the world for the sake of the salvation of those in the world, then I don't have really anything to offer God or anybody else, and I'm only kidding myself.
Now it says in verse 4 that "many of them who heard the word believed and the number of the men was about five thousand." Now the word was about should be translated came to be five thousand men. That means this is the total of men at this point, this is the membership role of the church. This is the male volume anyway. And there are two words for men in the Greek, two really most dominate words, anthropon or anthropos and that word has to do with man generically. Man as a race. Then the other one is andros, or here tonandron, plural. This means man as opposed to female. And it would be best translated males. And so what it says is this, "And the number of the men came to be or the number of the males came to be five thousand." That means in addition to that, they were probably at least another five thousand women and children.
That's a large church for such a fast beginning and you never hear another listing of how many from here on out. It grew so fast from this point that they it got past the possibility of keeping an accurate account. But many believed and that was the reaction. Now that was worth the price that Peter paid. It's always worth the price. To confront the world that God may do his work. If we never confront the world, we blow it because it is to the world that we are sent with the gospel.
You say well, I might lose my job. Praise the Lord, so lose your job, who cares about your job? I mean, God can handle you. He can provide everything you need and promises that He will. Now this doesn't mean you're to be a lousy employee and waste all your time preaching the gospel. You better reread Ephesians. You're to work like you ought to and give an honest days work for an honest days earning. But wherever you are in this world, they ought to know that you stand for Jesus Christ.
Now let's look at the text and see two things, the persecution manifests first of all in the first four verses and then the persecution met. And then we'll look at the principles for meeting persecution and just kind of look at a few of them this morning. We don't have much time to look at all of them. And I'm excited about this, because this is going to give you some practical things, some real tools that you can use. First of all, persecution is manifest in the first four verses, verse 1. "And as they spoke," while they were speaking, "unto the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them."
Now the idea of came upon them is with anxiety, anger to arrest them. I mean, they absolutely grabbed them, this is the point. This crowd had been gathered into the temple courtyard. They had seen the miracle and the official people of the temple and Israel were really getting uptight about it and so in the middle of Peter's sermon really it isn't fully the middle because he's already wrapping up with his conclusion, but while he has yet speaking, they arrive at Solomon's portico and they grab them. They came upon them it says.
Now I want you to see who's involved in this. It doesn't say oh the robbers and thieves and crooks in town and so forth and so on. It says, number one, the priests who were to represent God, which immediately shows you where the priesthood had gone. Long way from where God intended it. It's interesting too that there were 24 courses of priests in the Levitical order and there were so many priests that they divided them into 24 courses, and of those courses only certain priests ministered every week. So when the priests were ministering in the temple, that meant it was their week. And you waited a long time for your week and when your week finally came, it was a big deal. And least of all, did you want all of this commotion going on during your week that you'd waited so long for?
And so here in the middle of the week of these particular priests, all of this hubbub is going on and they're really concerned. This is religious opposition. And remember as I said earlier, persecution of the church often comes from religious groups. Still even often from Judaism. All right, second person that we meet is the captain of the temple, the Sagon, and this is the head of the temple police. Here is the political opposition. In some parts of the world, there is political opposition against the church.
In China today, there is political opposition against the church. In Russia, there is political opposition. Did you read in the Times the other day about the big hassle in Russia now because so many of the Russian leaders are getting connected with religious groups and now Russia is tremendously concerned to untangle these people who are in important positions in Russia from various religious groups. There are certain places in the world where there is political opposition. And that we get from the captain of the temple who was the head of the temple police.
Now the Roman government was very tolerant, but against disorder publicly they were merciless. And so he wasn't about to get himself in a position where there was a riot or he would really be in trouble. Then we meet the most important group and that is the Sadducees. Now you say what are the Sadducees? Well, within the framework of Israel there were many groups. There were the Pharisees and there were the Zealots and so forth, and one interesting group was the Sadducees. Now we don't really know where that name comes from. Some say from Sadock, but there's really no way to tell.
But Sadducees were a religious and a political group. So they combined the worst of both in their persecution. They were the power sect in Israel. They were the religious liberals. They were the high priestly family. All the high priests at this point were Sadducees. They were the opposition party to the Pharisees, like the Republicans and the Democrats with a religious flavor. They were the opposition.
Now the opposition of the Pharisees dominates the gospels and the opposition of the Sadducees dominates the book of Acts. So both of them get into play. It's also very interesting that they were very wealthy. The Pharisees tended not to be wealthy, they tended to be extremely wealthy. They were also the collaborationist party. They were the ones who were always scratching Rome's back for the mutual scratch, you know. They really didn't care that much about the common people. They only cared about maintaining the status quo and keeping their power and their prestige in Israel. So they maintained a collaborationist attitude with Rome. Kept on friendly terms with Rome in order to maintain their prestige, power, and their comfort.
They were a small group, very minority, but were greatly dominate in the political influence of Israel. They didn't care for anything about religion other than the fact that it was social custom. And so they were strict liberals. They were strict social religionists. In fact, I'll give you just four points of their theology. Won't take more time than that. We'll get into it a little later in the book. But number one, they believed that only the written law was binding. And no...none of the oral tradition. That is none of the rabbinical laws were binding. All of those things that the Pharisees lived and died by.
Secondly, they believed there was no resurrection of the body. There was no future reward. There was no future punishment. Typical liberal line. Thirdly, they believed that the existence of angels and spirits and the spirit world was a myth. Fourthly, they believed that man was the master of his own destiny. That God was not involved in calling the shots. That there was no such thing as sovereignty or predestination, but man mastered his own fate.
So here they are, the religious ranking liberals, the VIPs of Jerusalem, the bluebloods, and they're the ones that come after Peter and John. And the reasons they did it are very clear in verse 2 and I want you to see them. Very clear. "Being grieved that they taught the people and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead." Now I want you to notice the word grieved. Now that sounds in the King James like oh they were so sorry. They were so sad in their hearts, but that is not what the word means. It is a very strong word and it means they were thoroughly pained. They were in terrible, mental anguish.
It's not the kind of sorrow that oh things are getting all distraught. What a sad day for Israel. It's the kind of anguish that's based on indignation and wrath. That's the word. In fact, it's used again in Acts 16:18 where Paul say the woman at Philippi under the power of an evil spirit and he had the same kind of attitude. It's an angry indignation. It's not just simple sorrow. Now they were really angry. This is standard bigotry, you see. They really got uptight. They got...they got very disturbed. Very indignant. Very angry. And they had three reasons.
Number one, let's look at verse 2. That "they taught the people." First of all, they were upset that they were teaching, Peter and John. Now you see they believed that they had the corner on all truth. That they had all right to teach and nobody else had a right to open his mouth. I mean, that was all...that was the way it was. Theirs was the prerogative of teaching and nobody else had the right. And least of all to walk right in the temple where all of these teachers were, stand up and teach contrary truth to that truth which they had been teaching.
They were really upset because these two were teaching. Who were they to teach? They're not approved. And interestingly enough, look at verse 13. "When they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men they marveled." They were unlearned and ignorant. Now that's two interesting words. And you don't get the total impact by just reading those words. Let me show you what it means. Unlearned means that they didn't know the sacred writings and the Jewish law. They weren't versed in Jewish theology. These guys are not even Jewish theologians they said.
They're ignorant of rabbinic law. They haven't been to the proper schools. How can they know anything? You remember they accused Jesus of the same thing. Who is He that's saying all of this? He's never been to our school. Where's He getting His information? And then Jesus answered, I get it directly from God. Oh, you know, school is a little extraneous.
And secondly, it says not only were the ignorant in terms of Jewish theology, but the second word ignorant means that they are commoners. They are not professionals. They are strictly amateurs. Who are these uneducated amateurs? That's exactly what they're saying. And to make it even worse, they were from Galilee which, of course, was the ultimate in despising. And so they had no right to step into the narrow world of the instructors and stand up in the very temple and teach doctrines contrary to their own. And they were mad, because they did not agree with their theology.
Now whenever you stand up in the face of opposition and you proclaim and truth that they deny, you're going to get in trouble. And so they were angry. They had every reason to be from their perspective, because they needed to preserve their own position. So it bugged them that they taught. That they even stood and taught. Secondly, it bugged them what they taught. Look at the first two. They preached Jesus. They preached through Jesus the resurrection, but they were preaching Jesus and that they hated.
They had determined that Jesus was a blasphemer and here they were back announcing all over town that Jesus was Messiah and you all have killed your Messiah. Now that is not real popular stuff. And you try announcing that today in the midst of a congregation of Jewish people and you're going to find some reaction. Peter proclaimed Jesus is Messiah and he indicted the whole nation of Israel for missing the Messiah and he got a reaction. So they didn't like that he taught and they didn't like what he taught.
And thirdly, they didn't like the resurrection idea. He preached through Jesus, the resurrection, from the dead. He kept announcing that Jesus was alive. Well, that's a fearful thought. I mean, if they have executed their Messiah and he's back alive again, that's scary for them. Because what would hinder him from moving right out to bring about the vengeance that they would justly deserve? And let's be honest enough to think that they knew they were hypocrites. I don't think they covered that up very well.
I'm sure they knew they were hypocrites in their hearts and the probably took a second thought and thought well, maybe we did blow it. Maybe we did execute our Messiah. Boy if we did and He's alive again, this is bad news. Better to shut these guys up. A part from the fact that the Sadducees theology did not permit a resurrection which irritated them to death. And do they didn't l