00:00:00 – 00:00:10
Clint Loveall
I have to use my… Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Glad to have you starting out a Monday with us as we begin the week in the fourth chapter of the Book of Acts.

00:00:12 – 00:01:05
Clint Loveall
Peter and Peter has made this speech, and now he and John are going to be kind of called to account. And this is, I think, Michael, a theme that we see throughout the Book of Acts. There is preaching at the grassroots level. there are these encounters. But then every now and then, either religious structures or in Paul's case, even governmental structures get involved. And so for Luke, that's another unfolding reality of the gospel, is that it begins to interact with the world, both in the religious sense and in the secular sense or the empire sense. And you have scattered throughout the book, these kind of encounters with authorities of one kind of another. And I would say that's essentially what we move into today.

00:01:07 – 00:04:01
Clint Loveall
Anything? No. Okay. So, fourth chapter, I'll start reading here. I'll probably read through about 12 verses or so. We'll come back and we'll talk it over. When Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priest, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came to them, much annoyed, because they were teaching people and proclaiming that in Jesus, there is resurrection of the dead. So they arrested them, put them in custody till the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who heard the word believed it, and they numbered about 5,000. The next day, the rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem with the high priest and Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, all of the high priestly family. When they had made their prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired by what power or what name do you do this. Then Peter filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, but has become the cornerstone. there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved. So, again, we have this moment where Peter and John here are confronted. The elders call them to account and ask them about this preaching that they are doing, this new message that they are teaching. Clearly, this echoes some of the conversation we see in the Gospels where Jesus is questioned by high priest and authorities as well. Essentially, they're told to explain themselves. And here, I think, Michael, we see several themes of acts. We see boldness. We see a kind of willingness. It's going to be more evident later, but a willingness to kind of stand apart and maybe even to suffer. We see not quite accusation, but we see a strong declaration of the role that the religious leaders have played in the death of Jesus and this promise that those who know the truth are being saved. So I don't want to call this typical, but in some ways it is a good example of the kind of thing. we see as the disciples go out and witness and have these occasional and maybe inevitable conflicts with others.

00:04:01 – 00:07:09
Michael Gewecke
There's a story that's going to keep unfolding here in Acts, and it always starts with a form of proclamation, and that proclamation is often paired with the arrival or presence of God's spirit at work in the situation. So here, this situation is preceded by a healing, right? The disciples are going to the temple to worship, and we've talked through all that. This man is healed. That leads to a response. And you have this kind of proclamation, revelation, followed by response over and over again. And what's interesting is how Luke details the various complicated, nuanced ways that impacts various people in this story. And one of the fascinating things about this book, Clint, is how varied the people are who do respond to the gospel. And here, let's just point out how quickly this happened. We're in chapter four, and we're already talking about the high priest, right? So the movement of this from Jesus was crucified, died, and then resurrected and ascended, from that to Pentecost to church living to now is happening in a radically fast clip that already the people who are hearing the proclamation and who have become aware of this healing, this revelation, this miracle, these people are already now being given an opportunity to respond. And I think what's really interesting, just on that front part, and there's more to say, I think, about what Peter does here in the proclamation, but I think what we can say at this point is that we are always going to ask, well, how will this character respond to the telling of the gospel? What impact will it have on them? And make note of the fact that here, Peter doesn't pull punches in front of the very people that Luke and the other gospel writers tell us were part and parcel to the trial and the prosecution and ultimately the killing of Jesus. He literally says that this is the man staying before you, the one who was healed by Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who you crucified, which is a bold statement, a strong statement in front of these individuals. And it's a way of saying that when the apostles, when Peter is going to be giving account of the gospel. It doesn't matter if he's doing that in front of a crowd of people or if he's doing that in front of the height of religious power in Israel. He's going to tell the same story in both cases. He's not going to embellish it. He's not going to dumb it down. He's just going to tell the story this. And then the question that, of course, hangs after that is how will they respond to that? What will happen now that this is done? But the movement from God does a thing to the thing then has a response that's going to continue on.

00:07:09 – 00:09:46
Clint Loveall
Yeah, and I think that fits with this word we've seen used several times already in the book of Acts, witness. What does a witness do? A witness testifies to what they've seen. A witness gives testimony of what they experienced, of what they know to be true, of what they have saw, what they saw, what they know. And that's the story here. If you want to know how he was healed, I'll tell you. He was healed in the name of Jesus Christ. And you know who Jesus is, you put him to death, but God raised him up. And now we have life and salvation in his name. This is the proclamation of what Peter knows and believes to be true. And I think, again, one of the characteristics of this kind of story in the book of Acts is the boldness by which the characters who are filled with the spirit. in other words, they're not there of their own strength, but in the power of the spirit, they proclaim truth even at risk of their own life, their own safety, risk of punishment. They stand boldly and tell the truth as they understand it as they've experienced it. And the question, I think it's a really good insight, Michael, the question that hangs over all these encounters is, what will people do with it? how will people respond? How will people react? And we get, we don't get the full accounting of that yet in this case. We'll see that tomorrow. But we do get a clue that many, verse four here, many believed they numbered about 5,000. And I'm not, it's not clear to me. Maybe it's clear to others, if this is counting the 3,000 we already saw, or if this is 5,000 in addition to 3,000, these are big numbers, but it's Luke's way of saying that this initial period of preaching and teaching and living together. It had a significant impact. It is making a difference. It is bringing people to Jesus. It is bringing people to church. This is very likely. why the elders and the chief priests and such get involved so quickly and how it so quickly moves up into their circles, because this is affecting a lot of people. This is moving the needle in big chunks of the population, and it gets their attention.

00:09:47 – 00:12:53
Michael Gewecke
I think one of the words here that should jump out to us, Clint, is in verse 12, where we're told there is salvation in no one else. And the Gospels, of course, are telling the story of the Savior, but now what you see is the proclamation after Jesus's ascension to be naming clearly what Jesus has done and who Jesus is. And this is a very bold proclamation in front of the, basically the who's who of the religious order in Jerusalem. This is the top of the pyramid. And to go there and to say with such boldness, you know, he's the stone that was rejected by the people who should have known him, who should have been the expert architects, you should be experts at choosing the right person. And yet, you didn't. And now that one not chosen was always God's chosen, and he is the cornerstone. And it's upon him that everything else has belt. built, and that is where salvation flows. Now, Clint, this is going to be a fodder for theological conversation for the rest of time. As theologians look at that, and they ask, well, what does what does it mean? That under heaven, there's no other name, right? What does this sort of salvation theology? What should we take from it? Here, I don't think that we should receive this as some kind of theological treatise. It's not really an essay trying to work out exactly how Jesus is the Savior. It's simply to say to the people who killed him, hey, Jesus has done a thing. You see the power of it still alive. This man here, he's been healed, right? And so in the face of that healing, the miraculous power of Jesus Christ continuing on in the spirit that he promised, here the apostles are just simply saying, hey, Jesus is going to be the one who is not just the one who died, but the one who is the Savior. He's going to be the one who's going to be giving life and vitality to the people of Jesus Christ. And so we're a long ways away from the temple being destroyed, but you're already beginning to see the separation there in the way that this is presented, right? Basically, are you going to be the people who see in Jesus the way, the truth, the life, or are we going to see Jesus as a disruptor? We're going to see him as a problem. And, of course, as we go through the Book of Acts, people are going to see Jesus in all these ways and many more. But here, the dividing line is already showing up in chapter four. And I think that you can imagine what can become apparent, as we've already seen these men in prison for what's happening. you can imagine that persecution is going to be one of these responses that we're going to see more and more frequently in this book.

00:12:53 – 00:15:23
Clint Loveall
I think one of the struggles in a verse like 12 is that we have a tendency to read a word like salvation and think it means going to heaven, which is certainly a part of what Christians understand that concept to be about. But the actual word is far bigger than that. It means to be secure. It means to be safe. It means to be redeemed. It means to be rescued. It means to be cared for. It's a holistic word. It's a large word. And conceptually, it seems that part of what Peter is saying is that if you want to experience godliness and connection and reconciliation with. God, then there is no other name under heaven by which that happens than the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified and risen. This is, I think, for Peter and for the New Testament, far, far bigger than the idea of what happens to us when we die. Yes, it includes that, but if we think of it exclusively in those terms, I think we really miss the power of this concept and the power of this word. It is more than that. The last thing I'd say, Michael, and I don't want to get, I don't want to get too far off script, but I think there's a, I think there's a good challenge in texts like this for us, both in the healing of the man and in the proclamation here, the preaching and the standing up to the authorities. For Peter and John, they're doing these things exclusively because they are followers of Jesus Christ. And I think the wonderful challenge that gives the rest of us is a reminder that there ought to be things that we say or that we don't say or that we do or we don't do that really can only be explained by the fact that we consider ourselves disciples. We ought to be people who are motivated to and away from things that are most easily explained because we follow Christ. And I think you see a nice snapshot of that here.

00:15:26 – 00:16:00
Clint Loveall
Sometimes we allow ourselves to think that being Christian is kind of the synonymous with being nice or being a good citizen. And yes, it overlaps. but there ought to be in our life some things that we, again, do or don't do, say or don't say that the clearest explanation for is, well, I try to follow Jesus. And so that's what that means for me. And I think we can, is that directly in the text? I'm not sure, but I think it's a helpful jumping off point.

00:16:00 – 00:18:02
Michael Gewecke
And I'm not going to rush ahead, but I do think we'll move on to other things tomorrow that needs said here, that you're going to see. that these men are not because they're scholars and not because they have all the fancy words. And this is a worry and an anxiety that people often have. Well, my prayers don't sound good enough. And I think you should push on that because what do you mean sound good enough. You're making assumptions about what a good prayer is when prayer is relationship with a living God. Or people say, you know, I don't really know how to talk about my faith. Well, do you mean that you don't feel like you can use a certain vocabulary about your faith? We kind of, I think, need to be careful about this because these men, yes, this is in our scriptures and clearly there's a kind of confidence to name Jesus as the stone that was rejected, right? This kind of thing has that tenor and tone of scripture, but I just think it's worth noting. The thing they're going to be named for is their boldness. It's the fact that they show up and they say clearly, what is true from their vantage. That's what it is to be a witness, is to be bold to say, hey, this is what I see, this is what I've seen, this is how it's changed me. Whatever language, I mean, from vocabulary to literal language you used to do that, it's also the glory of Jesus Christ. And so I do think there's also a kind of naming of the fact that God can use anyone in this task. And Peter, if you know the story that has come before, is a bit of a surprising pick for somebody who's going to be this kind of bold leader, and yet he is. And so that's good news for all of us. And I do think, to your point, Clint, directly, it is a challenge to us because nobody gets a free pass. We're all called to be witnesses in our own way. And that will be unique to God's spirit's work in you because, by the way, God created you as an individual to be an bearer, image bearer of God. And so therefore, you are equipped to do that work wherever God has placed you.

00:18:02 – 00:18:26
Clint Loveall
I think there's some wonderful opportunities to continue that conversation in the conclusion of this story and hope you can join us tomorrow. I want to thank you for being with us today and hope that there's something in this conversation that connects you to something in this book of Acts, which is a really challenging and wonderful blueprint for some aspects of the Christian life. So thanks for being part of it.