Grace Chapel Bible Ministries

Worship call 1164 The Sadducees strike back - 2024/10/17

The religious Leaders waited, thinking within time, this Jesus the Nazarene will have been forgotten. Until they receive word that two of Jesus’ Disciples were preaching at the temple in the name of Jesus, and many were believing. Once more there was a claim that they had healed a man who had never before walked in his entire life.

Duration:: 32m
Broadcast on:: 17 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

(light piano music) (light piano music) (light piano music) (light piano music) (light piano music) (piano music) (piano music) (piano music) (piano music) (piano music) (piano music) Welcome to Worship Call with Bible Teacher Buzz Lullbeck. Buzz is the pastor of Grace Chapel Bible Ministries located in Duncan, South Carolina. This ministry is dedicated to the verse by verse teaching of God's word and discipleship programs aimed at strengthening the faith of God's people. Now here's today's message. From the devotional of pursuing God, A.W. Todar, the sacred gift of seeing, your young man shall see visions, and your old man shall dream dreams, acts, to 17. As God created us, we all have to some degree a power to imagine. That imagination is a great value in the service of God, maybe not by some persons who have erroneously confused the word imagination with the word imaginary. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has no truck with things imaginary. The most realistic book in the whole Bible is the most realistic book in the world is the Bible. God is real. Men are real, and so is sin, and so are death and hell. The presence of God is not imaginary. Neither is prayer, the indulgence of a delightful fantasy. The value of the cleansed imagination in the spirit of religion lies in its power to perceive in natural things, shadows, and things spiritual. A purified and spiritually controlled imagination is a sacred gift of seeing, the ability to peer beyond the veil and gaze with astonished wonder upon the beauties and mysteries of the things holy and eternal. The stodgy pedestrian mind does not credit to Christianity. Let's pray. Father, in heaven, thank you for this day and another vine day that you've given us. We pray, heavenly Father, that you open our hearts to the study of your word this morning. May it be a source of blessing, challenge, as we continue to grow and grace in the knowledge of our Lord, say with Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. And I should say this is the fifth day of the week in God's created order, the 17th day of the 10th month, 2024th year of our Lord, and this is another fine day in the Lord, and we will begin this morning as we come back to our passage, and we started in Acts chapter 4 as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to them, being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them, put them in jail until the next day for it was already evening. But many of those who had heard the message believed and the number of the men came to be about 5,000. And certainly the religious leaders must have, by this time, have heard the rumors of the resurrected Jesus. They must have with the stirring and the commotion that I'm sure they themselves haven't experienced the resurrection of Jesus, as we see. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. And you know, you got to laugh because ridding these religious leaders by murdering their opponent did not rid them of their problems, but those problems only intensified. And so they, I guess in their thinking, they were kind of waiting things out, okay? This rumor, like all rumors, it's just going to die out and it's not going to be, and they can get on to business as usual. But that's not happening. And what's making the difference? I want to tell you this right now, and I want you to think about this. What's making a difference? Jesus made his appearance. And if Jesus made his appearance, and he truly did, he did make his appearance, he did appear to many, many people at that time, but over a period of time, it will die out. And people eventually will, those people would die out and it would be just rumored, just going on. I want to let you understand to bring this to your mind. What was the most significant thing that was going on during this period? It was preaching. It was heralding. It was proclaiming. Why isn't it different? It was the proclamation of the man in the pulpit. It was the spread of the gospel. It was through discipleship. It was through the Word. Paul says in Romans, "How will they know without a preacher?" And Peter, and this is Peter, by the way. So far, we get ready to go into the third dissertation of Peter. And what Peter has and his proclamation. It was making a difference. Our prayers, when we attend church and where we sit in the pulpit, one of our duties is to pray for that minister in the pulpit. And it's not praying just for him specifically, praying for that God would use this man in the pulpit to herald his Word and to change the hearts of the people. And so it was quite a crowd at the temple and quite a commotion. A man who had never walked before in his whole life. He was over 40 years old now, and for 40 years he never walked. And all of a sudden here is this man, he's walking, he's leaping, he's jumping, he's going for a person, a person, and they know him. They knew him very well because he sat there in the temple like the man at the pulpit, says that, who was laying for 38 years. And people knew him, they knew his face. They knew he was there. And all of a sudden here is a man walking. They thought the sad you cease and the Pharisees and the scribes thought they had this behind them. And though it was just like Jesus had never been crucified, things were happening. And so this, the God was still at work. And now he was, what did Jesus say to the disciples? You're going to do greater things than these, more in magnitude. Now wasn't just one person they had to deal with, now there was 11. This opened a door again for the second preaching and teaching session of Peter. Many were believing. So the religious leaders were dispatched. The temple guard, along with the Sadducees, went to disperse the crowd to put a stop to this. First of all, you've got a huge crowd. One of the things that the Sadducees had were to do was to keep the peace. They were the religious leaders and they had to keep things in order. So this was something that they couldn't just turn a deaf ear to or walk the other way. This was something that had to be dealt with. The priests were primarily the Sadducees. And in their religious affiliation, they had the order of priesthood. So the principal accusers here were the Sadducees. And remember that the Pharisees, they were the super-legalists. And the Sadducees and Pharisees really did not get along. The Pharisees were the conservatives. They looked to, and they were your religious police, you might say. They were the legalists. They looked to keep the word, what do you call the word police? They wanted to make sure they were restricted here into the scriptures. Whereas the Sadducees, they were more liberals. And as liberals, they had certain characteristics here. So number one, the Sadducees, this belief in a bodily resurrection. They did not believe in a bodily resurrection. And a denial of the existence of angels and spirits. They were post-modern. Priests in the most post-modern world. They didn't believe in this spiritual stuff. They had a loyalty to the Roman government. And I should put this as number three here. They had a loyalty to the Roman government. Number three, they had a status, they desired a status quo to maintain a status quo. All right, they had their position and they looked to maintain that position. And then association with the wealthy class. And number four, they adhered only to the Pentateuch. They didn't, they, the prophets, you had the law, or you had the law, which is the Pentateuch. You had the writings and you had the prophets. They didn't care about the writings and the prophets. The only thing that they looked at was the first five books of the Bible. And let's see, do we have no one there? Nope. I'll get back to that. So Acts 4-1, again, as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to them. Verse two, being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. Disturbed here would be Thea Proth Nahomai. Thea Proth Nahomai to be strongly irked or provoked at something or someone to be irked to be provoked to become angry. The first of all, what were they irked about? What were they angry about? What was it that they were bothered with? Number one, they were teaching the dasco, and the dasco. And that means to provide instruction or formal or informal setting to teach and teaching. The priests, they coveted their position as teachers. They were trained. They did all the hard work. And they worked mildly hard for their position. Teacher was a status, was something that was not given away. And teaching was for the experts alone. It's kind of like, don't try this at home kind of thing. And so now you have these untrained, uncooked fishermen, no less. You've got John and Peter. They're both fishermen. What did they know about any type of teaching? So this might be compared today with journalists. Journalists go to journalism school. They spend their time. They spend their money. They go to become journalists. And now they're out in a field. They've got their positions. And they're showed up by people who laymen who are on the Internet, who's writing articles and blogs and everything. And it shows them up. And to tell you the truth, in today's journalism, they are showed up. They are less credible than those that missed out on the education. But here it is. It's the same life that these Sadducees, they're educated men. They know, at least they know the Torah and stuff. And they felt that they're the only ones qualified to do any teaching. But here is John and Peter out there teaching. John 715, or John 715. The Jews then were astonished saying, "How has this man become learned?" Having never been educated. So Jesus said, "My teaching is not mine, but his sent me." Acts 413. Now, as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated, untrained men, they were amazed and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. So they were irked because, first of all, it was they were teaching. And number two, that they were naming the name of Jesus. Acts 4-2. Being greatly disturbed because they were teaching. And the people were proclaiming. And here is this word, proclaiming. (speaks Hebrew) To announce with focus upon the extent which the announcement or proclamation extends to proclaim throughout to announce. And the announcement of heralding, the lifting up again, Peter says in Romans, "How would they know without a preacher?" And it's the preacher who is, the preacher today who is the herald behind the pulpit is to lift up, is to exalt. It's a part of the preaching is to exalt the name of Jesus. And unfortunately, I think many pulpits today lead Jesus out. Psychological teaching and all the rot is exactly that rot. Without the name of Jesus, people are saved. And you can have the best messages. You can have, you be preaching about God and lifting and lifting up holy hands and singing and everything. But if Jesus is not preached from the pulpit, if people are not hearing the name of Jesus. Let's put it this way, you can do your God talk all day long and your heralding God. But without Jesus, there's no connection with us in God. So they were proclaiming this name Jesus. You could imagine the minds of the Pharisees. Did we not just do away with this? Did we just not, did we not just, did he just die on the cross? Then we just get rid of the Nazarene. This must have really hurt them. Because now, again, they apparently, they got rid of the person but they did not, in their minds, they didn't get rid of the ideology but it was an ideology. It was a person, and this person now sits at the right end of the Father. And by his authority, and Peter's going to go over this. And not only that, that the, and first of all, you could proclaim all day. That is by the authority of Jesus, but here he is. And it's, here it is, that here's a man who's walking, who's jumping around, who has just been, who has just been healed. So how do you answer this, Mr. Sadducees? How do you answer it? Jesus, had they not done away with this Nazarene? Apparently not. So the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. And at once more, they had, along with the Pharisees done away with this Jesus. And if in fact, they did not believe the spiritual realm, this speech was nothing more than to steer the crowds up to a, a fervor. But nonetheless, the crowds were believing it. See, they were successful before. At steering the people clear of the belief of this Jesus, remember, they had to repent. They, they had to turn back. They, they at one point believed in Jesus. They, they were outside that temple and they said, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." Now they were not, they, they were steered, they were deceived by these leaders. They were, they shouted and they, they mocked Jesus and, they, they were steered to that. They did this in ignorance. They had to repent and come back. And why did they have to come back in the first place? Because these people had steered these priests, these religious leaders had steered them wrong. The apostles, these apostles, Peter and John were usurping in their view, usurping their position. Great success because people were to hear it. And one day, a five thousand more was added to their list. And so this, this must have frustrated them greatly. And what did the religious, what did they, what did they offer? They offered nothing. So let's come back to our scripture here. Being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people proclaiming the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them. They arrested them and put them in jail until the next day. For it was already evening. Remember they didn't stop this with Jesus. Remember it's, it's illegal against the law to, to have court at night. No night court. But again, they, they arrested Jesus and they had night court there because of expediency. But in this case, they arrested him. It was late in the day. They had a strong following. They didn't want to cause a riot. So they put them in, put them in the tank for, for court the next day. But many of those who have heard the message believed, and the number of the men came to be about five thousand. On the next day, their rulers and their elders and their scribes were gathered together in Jerusalem. So you've got the, you've got the, you've got the Sanhedrin coming together here. Let me bring that back up. And so you've got them sitting around. And Anas, these are the High Priest now. The ones retired. Anas is retired. But he's going to be there. And the High Priest was there. The Chiapists and John and Alexander. And all who were of High Priestly dissent. All these, all the big wigs had coming in now. When they had placed him in the center, they began to, they began to inquire. By what power or what name have you done this? Okay. Then Peter filled with the Holy Spirit. Said to them, rulers, elders and people. Okay. Next big dissertation. This is a great, another great opportunity. Here it is. You see, this is the large scale. And this is the beginning. And this is the first, who got breath going on that. It's winter or it's fall. But this is a great opportunity. Oh. And for Peter, he must have been excited about this. And, and I'm sure Peter spent, doesn't say this. But I'm sure Peter had spent the evening in jail. Pray. Him and John. They had it. They had, they had a good night's sleep. But they had a good prayer meeting as well. They weren't worried about this because this was in the Lord's hand. And this is exactly what the Lord said in, in Matthew 10 17. This was exactly what he said would happen. And this must have been an exciting form. Let's bring this back up. Matthew 10 17. This is words of Jesus. "But beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues. And you will even be brought before the governors and kings, for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when, but when they had hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say. For it will be given to you any hour what you are to say." And so they stand there and stand a midst of these people and of the leaders to give a witness. What a, and you know, and this is, they're not looking, Peter and John are probably not looking at this as a persecution. They're not looking at kicking the can down the road and saying, "Woe weighs me." They were excited. I'm sure they were. That they were, that they had the opportunity to proclaim the name of Jesus before these leaders, regardless of the consequences. All right, come back to our passage. Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers and elders of the people." Filled with the Holy Spirit, that means that, that filling of the Holy Spirit is at the influence, that the words that are coming from Peter would not be Peter's. There would be through Peter and it would be by the Holy Spirit that's going to school these. You see, when you give an answer for the hope that's found in you, it is in prayer and sometimes I've even dealing with unbelievers and dealing with time. I'd be praying for the right words to say to this person. I'd be praying for the Spirit to use me to speak to this person. So in arguments, when you stick to the Bible and prayerfully within the Spirit, then they're not really arguing with you, but they're arguing with the Spirit that's within you. They're mocking their insults, their attacks. While they might be seemingly levels against you, they're actually levels against the Spirit that's working in you. And so Peter is confident in boldness through the Spirit. He has complete control of the situation. So if we are on trial today for a benefit done to a sick man, as to how this man had been made well, here's a court folks, here's a court. So you got exhibit A, okay, in a court you have the prosecution. The prosecution is the Sanhedrin, the prosecution is the priest. That's the prosecution. They brought John, they brought Peter, and John into court. Okay, for what? For what? What's our crime? What's our crime? Because he was for the defense, which is Peter and John. The defense is, they are accused of inciting a riot. Or maybe they weren't. What were they? Was it a legal assembly? Was they're teaching off bounds? What was their crime? Well, here's a man. He's walking, he's jumping, he's carrying on. Is that our crime? Was our crime so great to make this man walk? Okay, the question is by what power? By what power was he walking? So if we are on trial of the day for a benefit done to a sick man, as to how this man was made well, let it be known to all of you and to all people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by this name, this man stands here before you in good health. It wasn't from us quickly when God is using you. You quickly deflect it because when God uses you, it's for his glory, it's not for our glory. And we must quickly step aside and allow the glory of God to be seen. And this is what Jesus is doing. He's deflecting that and he's bringing. So which he puts the ball in this court of the council, because now the council is standing. You heard the gospel voice. How are you going to respond to it? How are you going to? Because it's by his authority, so therefore you're going to have to, you can do it, whatever you want to do to us. But what are you going to do with this Lord Jesus Christ, whom you crucified? He turns it around, he puts them on trial. What tenacity. Remember that this is the Peter that denied Jesus three times. Close it out. Father in heaven, thank you for this opportunity of fellowship in your word this morning. Thank you for this opportunity to share your word, what a privilege it is. And I pray heavily follow what these words made, sink into our hearts. Father make us preachers, make us all preachers, make us proclaimers of God's goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ of our salvation. Let us look for every opportunity to share this glorious truth in a ton in which we live. We pray these things in Christ name, amen. All right, another fine day in the Lord. Keep your armor on, keep fighting a good fight of faith. Lord, well and spirit guide and wrap your penance. I'll be back here in the A.M. Good morning us. You can hear this message again as well as previous lessons. And get notes by visiting us online at www.gchapel.org. www.gchapel.org. www.gchapel.org. [BLANK_AUDIO]