Plymouth Congregational Church - January 25, 2015 What Will People Think? 25 But someone came and reported to them, “The men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people!” 26 Then the captain went along with the officers and proceeded to bring them back without violence (for they were afraid of the people, that they might be stoned). One of the hallmarks of our culture is its reliance on or trust in polls and surveys. This is certainly apparent during election campaigns. Unfortunately, reliance on polls in general is based on wrong reasoning, i.e., the majority must be right. Not necessarily. Leo Tolstoy said this, “Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.” And, Mark Twain phrased it this way, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” Putting it another way, God does not consult George Barna or count “Likes” on a Facebook post in His governing of the universe. Not surprisingly, Scripture speaks to the fallacy of popular opinion as well, e.g., Luke 6:26, Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way. And, John 6:15 (after feeding the 5000), 15 So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone. Stop for a moment and reflect on these two verses. The Luke 6 reference indicates that popular opinion is weak on discernment. One of the most remarkable illustrations of this is found in 1 Kings 22. Let’s look at verses 12-14, 12 All the prophets were prophesying thus, saying, “Go up to Ramoth-gilead and prosper, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.” 13 Then the messenger who went to summon Micaiah spoke to him saying, “Behold now, the words of the prophets (about 400) are uniformly favorable to the king. Please let your word be like the word of one of them, and speak favorably.” 14 But Micaiah said, “As the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, that I shall speak.” Here, the majority was tragically wrong. In John 6, we see that popular opinion is often based on circumstances; the well-fed crowd was probably unanimously speaking well of Jesus. Why would they not? You can almost read their minds: If we put Jesus in charge, we’ll always have plenty to eat - and its free. But these (and other) references we’ll look at in a moment show the clarity of thought of Jesus with respect to popular opinion. If the lead-in to this morning’s text had been written in our time, we might reasonably assume that the religious leaders in Jerusalem had been following polls. We know from the Gospels that Jesus’ popularity increased and decreased dramatically. The crowd wanted to make Him king (John 6). They followed Him from place to place and, when He entered Jerusalem during Passover week, they shouted “Hosanna, blessed is He whom comes in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 21; Mark 11; John 12). During most of this popular period, the authorities walked on eggs where Jesus was concerned. There were a few efforts to make it appear that He was either rejecting Moses or encouraging rebellion, but they failed spectacularly. But, a few days after the crowd shouted “Hosanna,” the shout was changed to “crucify Him” (all 4 Gospels). The only way Jesus could have maintained His popularity with the people was by meeting the expectations of the crowds: food, miracles, chasing the Romans into the Mediterranean Sea, and restoring Israel. Obviously, His popularity with Rome would not show a corresponding increase. Irrespective of popular opinion, Jesus continued steadfastly on the mission for which He was sent - to bring redemption to the lost. How was He able to not be affected by public opinion? John 2:23-25 gives this reason, “23 Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. 24 But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, 25 and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.” Psalm 103:14 put it this way, “For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.” Where or to whom we look for approval is important. Popular opinions come and go; political opinions come and go. What people think about us changes, often frequently. If we count on family approval (especially if parenting teen-agers), we’ll be disappointed on a regular basis. Count on job approval? That may change with the next change in management. What God thinks of us (not what we think of Him) should be the most important factor to consider in our lives. Principle: One of our most important choices is selecting whose opinion we value. Application: On whose opinion do you place the greatest value? When you activate this application, it would be well to consider that you wouldn’t be as concerned what others think about you, if you realized how seldom they do. Curiously, the religious leaders apparently decided to ignore popular opinion when they arrested the apostles. We learn in Acts 5:17 that their motivation was jealousy. Large crowds were listening to the apostles’ preaching and professing faith in Jesus; and, the apostles were performing miracles, in the name of Jesus. But, both the Old and New Testaments affirm that God’s messages will be given, no matter how severe the opposition. In any event, God commuted the apostles’ sentence; their work was not finished. There are more than a few places in Scripture where it would have been interesting if video recordings were available. This is one. The expression on the religious leaders’ faces when they learned that the imprisoned apostles were not only free, but back in the temple preaching would have been priceless. God was giving the leaders a message, a warning, if you please, but as we move along in Acts, it becomes clear that they failed to act on the warning. Look at the contrast between Acts 5:18, They laid hands on the apostles and put them in a public jail and 5:26 Then the captain went along with the officers and proceeded to bring them back without violence (for they were afraid of the people, that they might be stoned). Acts has multiple reminders that following Christ can have its risks. Some are physical, some are emotional (Jeremiah’s situation in our Old Testament reading involved both), some are challenging for other reasons. In this last category, Isaiah 20:1-3 comes to mind: “In the year that the commander came to Ashdod, when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him and he fought against Ashdod and captured it, 2 at that time the Lord spoke through Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, “Go and loosen the sackcloth from your hips and take your shoes off your feet.” And he did so, going naked and barefoot. 3 And the Lord said, “Even as My servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefoot three years as a sign and token against Egypt and Cush,” This is a good passage to consider the next time you think God is asking you to do something too hard. The apostles were realists - the persecution they encountered did not come as a surprise. They did not pray to escape persecution; they prayed for boldness to proclaim the message. Let’s pause here a moment to discuss the message. They were proclaiming “all the words of this Life.” They were proclaiming God’s gracious act in sending His Son as the Redeemer, crucified, buried, resurrected, and ascended. And that, by placing their faith in Him, men and women would have their sins forgiven and receive eternal life. And, they chose not to rely on their popularity with the crowds. It is worth nothing two things which the apostles did not do which many would regard as logical: first, they did not escape from Jerusalem when they were freed. Also, they went back to the most public place possible to preach rather than taking their message to neighborhoods or homes. Second, even though they knew they were currently popular with the crowds, had lots of “Likes” on their Facebook page, they did not try to bring the crowd to their rescue (the arresting party had every reason to fear being stoned). They had just miraculously experienced God’s deliverance from prison; they had every reason to trust His ability to do it again, if He so chose. They also had the memory of the events recorded in John 7, when the religious police were sent to arrest Jesus, but returned to the leaders empty-handed (John 7:45-46, 45 The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” 46 The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!” The text indicates that this response did not go over well with the religious authorities. We probably should pause here to remind ourselves that God does not always act as we think He should or want Him to; sometimes His actions run absolutely contrary to human logic. Scripture has many examples of God delivering His messengers: Joseph, Shadrach/Meshach/Abednego, Daniel. But we read this in Hebrews 11:35-36, “Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. 36 Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword.” The writer of Hebrews could have included John the Baptist in this record of the faithful. If the religious leaders had feared God instead of the crowd or had greater regard for God’s opinion of them than the crowds’, their response would probably have been different. Scripture does not record that the leaders were restrained from violence by what recently befell Ananias and Sapphira nor by remembering Old Testament records of God’s protection of His servants, some of which we just discussed. What we know from Scripture is that they feared a violent response from the crowd. But even though they may have feared the reaction of the crowd, they did not respect or value them. Continuing on in John 7:48-49, we read 48 No one of the rulers or Pharisees has believed in Him, has he? 49 But this crowd which does not know the Law is accursed.” Principle: In a broken world, we should expect truth to be opposed. Application: How should we respond if we are opposed for being truthful? Stop and think for a moment about Acts 5:23 in relation to this morning’s text, “We found the prison securely locked and the guards standing at the doors, but when we opened them we found no one inside.” It would not be unreasonable to think, “Why didn’t the religious leaders appear to take this event into consideration?” At least as far as the biblical record is concerned, they seem to have disregarded it. I submit that a likely reason is that they were determined not to believe; their minds were closed. C. S. Lewis phrased it this way, in “The Magician’s Nephew,” (one volume in “The Chronicles of Narnia”), ‘Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.’ The religious leaders succeeded spectacularly. Scripture is silent, but I will speculate that one or more of the leaders had an alternative explanation for the apostles’ release, probably along the same lines as their attempt to discredit the resurrection, “The disciples stole the body;” or, in this case, “Somebody bribed the guards;” or, “They must have forgotten to lock the door.” Remember Jesus’ words in Luke 16:31 to the rich man separated from Lazarus and Abraham, “But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’” In closing, it would be inappropriate not to consider this event in comparison with today’s news stories. In more than a few areas of our world, the idea of counting the cost to profess faith in Christ has much greater weight than in our country. As the writer of Hebrews (12:4) put it, we “…have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.” We have not, but many others have. Some time ago, I read that there were more martyrs in the 20th century than the total of the previous 19 centuries. I believe this to be an accurate statement and the pace doesn’t appear to be slowing in the 21st century. It also is arguable that our country is not as Christian-friendly as it once was. Friendly or unfriendly, our instructions are unchanged from the first century - keep on task; as we will see next Sunday, “We must obey God rather than men.” To do that, we will frequently need to leave off worrying about what people think.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:49:06 +0000
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