Day 18 — Arrested for Preaching (Acts 4:1-4) | May 13

The doors swing open and the religious authorities walk in right in the middle of it. So the sermon's over. Uh but the real test of opposition is just getting started. Let's look at Acts four, one through four.

While they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple police and the Sadducees confronted them. Because they were annoyed that they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead, and so they seized them and they took them into custody until the next day, since it was already evening. But many of those who heard the message believed. and the number of the men came to about five thousand.

So the religious leaders interrupt the sermon very deliberately. the captain of the temple police and the Sadducees, they all show up together. That they they weren't on this wasn't some kind of routine patrol and they just happened to stumble upon this gathering of people. No, this is a deliberate show of force. This is the same kind of institutional muscle that that showed up the night Jesus was arrested in the garden.

So the Jerusalem establishment had thought that they had put this movement down uh about eight weeks ago when they crucified Jesus. And here are two of his followers preaching in the temple courts to a crowd of thousands, and they're not gonna let this continue.

Luke says they were annoyed, which is, you know, kind of an understatement. Th these weren't people who were mildly irritated by a noise complaint. You know, this is not like, you know, the guy in the apartment next door is playing his music too loud. That they were threatened to the core. The Sadducees controlled the temple and much of the political machinery of Jerusalem.

They were the uh the theological liberals of the day. They were bucking all of the traditional views, and they rejected the resurrection entirely. And so they they this was the group that said there was no afterlife, there were no angels, there were no spirits, there were no supernatural interventions of any kind.

Sadducees believe that when you die, you're done. And so their whole theological system was built on this life and this life alone, which is probably why they fought so hard to protect their position in it. And into their kind of hardened system, Peter walks, standing in their temple, announcing that a man they'd helped execute had walked out of the grave.

And the the resurrection wasn't just good news to the crowd. It was a direct assault on everything the Sadducees had staked their lives on. He's picking at the one incident that they don't agree with. And so it's no wonder why they arrested him. But there's also something worth noticing about who's leading the opposition in Acts. It's the religious establishment.

This is not the Roman soldiers anymore at the base of the cross. This is not street level skeptics or atheists. This is the people with the most theological investment in things staying exactly as they are. Uh again, Jesus ran into this same resistance. Institutions that have confused their own preservation with faithfulness to God are gonna always push back against the Spirit's movement because the Spirit rarely stays inside the lines that they have drawn.

And so Peter and John get haul off into custody, and it's evening, and it's too late for a formal hearing under Jewish law, and so they spend the night. And Luke doesn't tell us how they spend those hours, but we're about to see in the next few days that whatever happened in that cell, it didn't shake m didn't shake them. And then Luke drops a line right in the middle of the arrest account, sandwiched between the seizure and

uh of the men and their overnight detention. Luke says many of those who heard the message believed and the number of men came to about five thousand. So again, think about this timing. The the the preachers are being led away in custody, and the harvest is still coming in. So so you can lock up the messengers. But you cannot lock up this gospel message. The authorities thought they were shutting something down. Instead, they're actually just clearing the stage for the next act.

five thousand men, which likely means the the total community of believers was significantly larger when women and women and children were added to that number. Now following Jesus because two fishermen wouldn't shut up talking about him. And again, this is less than two months after the crucifixion, in the very same city that Jesus died in. And so this is Luke's consistent argument that runs through all of that. Every attempt to stop the gospel ends up advancing.

Persecution doesn't kill the church. It plants seeds for the church. And Paul would say it this way decades later from his own prison cell. The word of God is not imprisoned, nor will it ever be. So what might a step of ordinary obedience look like today? Let me give you a reflection today. So resistance has a way of rattling us. When somebody pushes back on your faith, it's easy to assume that you must have messed up or you must have stepped out of line.

So I want you to think about an area of your life where following Jesus has created some friction. Maybe it was with a co-worker or a family member. Maybe it's a conversation you've been avoiding. And I wonder if you've been reading that friction as a sign that you're doing something wrong, or is it possible it's a sign that you're doing something right? And here's what I'd love for you to reflect on proximity to Jesus