Whatever Works [A]

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Transcript:

All right, if you turn with me to Acts chapter 5 this morning, Acts chapter 5, we’re continuing on with a look at some of these passages in scripture that are sometimes misinterpreted, sometimes misapplied, sometimes just twisted, sometimes beyond recognition, some of them. I’ve said for years that the scriptures can be, and I don’t mean this disrespectfully in any way. But the scriptures can sometimes be a lot like a POW.

If you twist them and torture them enough, you can make them say just about whatever you want them to do. And I don’t think that, I’m not trying to be disrespectful either toward the scriptures or toward prisoners of war. But I’ve heard, you know, I’ve never been in the military, but I’ve heard people in special forces talk about their training part of it when they’re under interrogation is to misdirect.

You, instead of not saying anything or instead of telling the truth about sensitive information, you say something else. You lead them in a totally opposite direction. And some people like to twist, whether they realize they’re doing it or not, like to twist and torture the scriptures until they get them to say whatever they want them to say.

And that’s really what this series has been about. What are some areas where the world at large or other churches, or sometimes in the case of last week, What are some things that I’ve taught wrong that need to be corrected? And what does the Bible really say?

What is the Bible really teaching about some of these more frequently misinterpreted passages? This morning we’re going to be in Acts chapter 5, and we’re going to look at the story of a man named Gamaliel. To set the stage about what this is talking about and how it’s misused a lot of times, I’ll come back to my experience in gardening, which has been mixed.

Some years I have, some years I can’t even function for all of the, what am I going to do with all these vegetables? I can’t even do anything with them because they’re coming so fast and furiously at me. Other years, I’m lucky to get an okra and a zucchini.

I don’t mean a plant, I mean an okra and a zucchini. That actually happened two years ago in Arkansas. That was my harvest the whole year.

So you never know. But I’ve talked with a lot of you. A lot of you garden and do things and can relate to this.

You know, this year I planted a lot of things, not nearly as many as I have in the past, trying to space them out a little better. One thing I was really excited about and didn’t get was okra. And I planted okra, and one thing you have to do with it is you have to make sure it’s got the right conditions.

You’ve got to make sure it’s got the right kind of soil, dry soil. You’ve got to keep the ants away. There’s something about okra that draws ants.

You’ve got to make sure the weeds are clear. You’ve got to make sure it gets enough hot, burning, direct sunlight, the kind that would disintegrate me, but they like it. The okra likes it.

You’ve got to make sure it’s got all the right conditions, and you’ve got to keep it clear of weeds. Weeds will kill your garden faster than anything else. What kind of sense would it make to plant a whole plot of okra and then see the little sprouts start coming up and, oh, they’re so cute.

I love the little sprouts and I love taking the kids out and showing them. You know, we stuck those seeds in the ground a little while back and here’s what they’re doing now. Okay, you’ve got those starting to sprout out of the ground.

What sense would it make to see, oh, there’s something else growing in between it and it’s not okra? Let’s just give it a little while. It’s probably a weed because I know what okra looks like and I know okra is the only thing I planted in this plot, so that’s probably a weed, but let’s just give it a little while and see what it does.

And then we give it a little while and see what it does. Now, I have done that at times when I’m not sure what I planted and I let it grow a little while to see what it turns out to be. But if I know I’ve only planted okra there, and we’re going to give it a little while, let’s just see what happens.

And then you give it a little while, and the okra grows, and the other plant grows, and you realize, well, this doesn’t look like anything I recognize. This doesn’t look like anything edible. But if it’s anything good, it’ll grow really fast, right?

It’s usually the opposite of how it works. If it’s anything good, it won’t grow fast. If it’s anything good, surely it’ll grow fast, so we’ll just let it go. Oh, wait, that’s growing faster than the okra.

That must be what I want. I’ll let it, I’ll just let it bloom. And pretty soon you’ve choked out the okra because you’ve let what’s growing faster by assuming, Oh, that’s good.

You’ve let it grow and grow up and kill everything else. Now, you could substitute any plant in there that you want, whether it’s okra or squash or corn or whatever. It doesn’t matter.

Weeds will take over anything. Now, no gardener in his right mind would say, well, whatever grows best or grows fastest is what I want anyway. That’s probably going to be what’s best. So I’ll let that stay.

No gardener in his right mind would hold to that standard and say, well, if it’s growing fastest and if it’s growing most plentifully, that must be the thing that I want to have. And yet in our spiritual lives, in the life of a church, in the life of a nation, sometimes we will allow that to go on and say, well, this seems to be what’s working. This seems to be what’s progressing fastest. This seems to be what’s getting the most results.

Forget what kind of fruit it’s bearing. Forget what kind of results those are. It’s producing something.

It works. and if we’re not careful we will buy into a whatever works mentality. Some people have used what this man Gamaliel says in Acts chapter 5 to say well see the Bible says if God’s in it it’ll work and if God’s not in it it won’t work so we don’t really have to think about anything we don’t have to study the scriptures we don’t have to discern anything we’ll just look and see the results.

Oh, children, that is far the opposite of what God is trying to get across here. God is not a whatever works kind of God. If we were to hold to the standard of whatever works, let me ask you, you know, statistics, depending on where they come from, are kind of notoriously unreliable.

But according to some studies that, some statistics that have been shown, Do you know what two, I won’t say the two fastest growing religious movements in America, but I’ll say two of the fastest growing religious movements in America? Mormonism and Islam. Oh, whatever works, if God’s in it, it’ll grow.

You want to try that again? If God’s in it, it’ll grow. No, because sometimes the things that grow the fastest are the things that are against what God says to begin with.

So let’s look at Acts chapter 15. No, sorry, chapter 5. Chapter 5.

If you’re in chapter 5, you’re good. We’re going to start in verse 17 and look at this passage. Look at what people say it means and then talk about what it really means here.

Starting in verse 17, Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him, which is the sect of the Sadducees, and were filled with indignation, and laid their hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison. So they were enraged because the apostles were preaching Jesus Christ. Now it points out that it was the Sadducees who were enraged this time. The Pharisees and Sadducees, we hear those names, we think they’re interchangeable.

The Pharisees would be the extreme right of the religious spectrum of their day. They would be the legalists. And the Sadducees were the extreme left of the Jewish religious spectrum of their day.

They would be the liberals. So you’ve got your legalists and your liberals, and we see that still today even in Christianity. The Sadducees were the ones who say, yeah, we’re Jewish, but we’re going to deny a lot of the supernatural stuff.

We’re going to deny a lot of the scriptures. They didn’t believe in angels. They didn’t believe in life after death.

After death, they didn’t believe in resurrection. And what irritated them, the Pharisees, don’t get me wrong, they were irritated by the apostles preaching Jesus Christ. But the Sadducees were particularly incensed when the apostles preached Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected. Because they said, not only do we not believe Jesus Christ is the Messiah, but this resurrection thing does not happen.

Now, I submit to you that we’ve got ample evidence that resurrection not only does happen, but it has happened. And I feel like I’ve been through that several times. We might come back and revisit it again, because it’s something we as believers need to have nailed down.

The resurrection is the fulcrum of our faith. It’s the cornerstone. And if the resurrection isn’t true, we might as well throw all the rest of this out.

But we’ve got ample evidence that the resurrection did happen, and in their day especially. I mean, there were eyewitnesses still running around loose in Jerusalem who could have said, yeah, I saw him dead, I saw him buried, I saw him alive. I don’t know how you add all those up together and get anything other than resurrection.

The equation wouldn’t work if it was anything else. But they were indignant, they were enraged, especially the Sadducees because they were preaching Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead. They’d already in chapter 4, they had been beaten and thrown in prison and told to not preach anymore in Jesus’ name.

And then Peter ends up speaking up and telling them there is neither salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. And they realized they could not stop the apostles from preaching and kind of let them go. Well, here again, they’re out preaching again after they’ve been warned.

And the Sadducees, especially this time, were indignant because they were preaching the resurrection. They laid hands on them and threw them in prison. But it says in verse 19, But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors and brought them forth and said, Go stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.

So it wasn’t just that God sprung them from prison and said, Go hide, be free. You’re not in prison anymore. Go escape.

God said, Here, I’m letting you out of prison so you can go back into the temple and do the very thing that got you arrested and thrown in prison in the first place. God says, they’re not going to stop my word from getting out. And when they heard that, they entered into the temple early in the morning.

Folks, they didn’t wait until it was convenient. They went as early as they possibly could into the temple and taught. But the high priest came and they that were with him and called the council together and all the senate of the children of Israel and sent to the prison to have them brought.

So the Sanhedrin again gets together and decides they want to have these men thrown in prison. But when the officers came and found them not in prison, they returned and told, saying, The prison truly found we shut with all safety and the keeper standing without before the doors. But when we had opened, we found no man within.

So they want to have these men arrested for teaching. Somebody says, wait a minute, aren’t they in prison already? They send the guards to go back and check, and they say, what’s going on here?

Because the prison is still locked up tight. The guards are standing right there, but there’s nobody inside. Now when the high priest and the captain, verse 24, Now when the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief priest heard these things, they doubted of them whereunto this would grow.

So they began to talk amongst themselves. What are we going to do here? How do we stamp this out once and for all?

They’re not just wanting to arrest the apostles. They are wanting to stamp Christianity out. They are wanting to consign it to the dustbin of history before it gets out of control.

Let’s deal with this right here and right now. Then came one and told them, saying, Behold the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people. Thanks for the news flash.

We’re already on top of this. But somebody else comes and says, Hey, these guys are preaching in the temple. Okay, people are starting to notice.

They’re starting to hear. They’re starting to, word is getting out. We’ve got to do something now.

Then, verse 26, went the captain with the officers and brought them without violence, for they feared the people, lest they should have been stoned. Now this was a day and age where police brutality, if we want to call it that, would have been no big deal. I mean, it’s the Romans. We’re going to arrest you however we want.

We’re going to treat you however we want. But in this case, the authorities realized that the people, even though they weren’t necessarily all believers, they wanted to hear what these men had to say. And to go in and arrest them in the temple and to do it brutally, to do it violently, would have brought a backlash from the people.

So they sort of went in with the approach, would you mind coming with us downtown for some questioning? We really would appreciate it. They came and brought them without violence because they didn’t want the people to stone them.

And when they had brought them, they set them before the council, and the high priest asked them, saying, Did not we straightly command you that you should not teach in his name? And behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us. So the high priest questions them and says, Wait a minute.

Is it my imagination or did we not already talk about this? Didn’t we already tell you not to preach in Jesus’ name anymore? Knowing full well, yeah, we did.

I can’t believe they really thought that they were going to get him to stop. But somehow they actually believed that they were not going to do it anymore. He said, and yet you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine.

What’s this doctrine? It’s the idea that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. You filled Jerusalem with this doctrine and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.

Ideally, yes. I mean, what could be. .

. They don’t realize that what he’s saying is a bad thing could be the best thing that has ever happened to them. I mean, what could be better for them than to be under the blood of Christ, to be forgiven of their sins?

Yet what he’s talking about is you intend to make us guilty of this man’s blood. Well, if you think about it, every time they’re preaching, they’re saying this man whom you crucified, the one who you put to death, the son of God who you killed. I mean, it’s always reminding them there is a guilt here that, let’s be honest, is not just on the Jews.

There are some throughout the last two millennia who wanted to blame the Jews for the crucifixion of Christ. How many inquisitions were launched in medieval Europe with cries of Christ killer against the Jews? Yes, you know what? The Jews ordered it.

The Romans carried it out. But we’re all guilty. It was all of our sin who put him there.

His blood’s on all of our hands. But he’s saying you want to accuse us and bring this man’s blood upon us. Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, I love this, I’ve got this underlined in red in my Bible.

We ought to obey God rather than men. You want to know how we interact with the government? In any country, it’s right there.

We ought to obey God rather than men. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t obey the government. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be good citizens.

It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t follow the law. But anytime there’s any contradiction between the laws of God and the laws of man, there should never be a question even for a moment about where we stand. We stand with God.

And our first loyalty and our first obedience is to Him. Now I submit to you, if the government’s doing what it ought to do, that makes us better citizens, not a threat to the country. But he says we ought to obey God rather than men.

Well, that’s not a statement that the high priest could or should disagree with. The high priest should be in agreement. I mean, these aren’t the secular Roman leaders.

These are the leaders of the Jews. He should have been able to say the very same thing. Well, yeah, you ought to obey God rather than men.

Now, clearly they have a disagreement here about what it is that God’s saying to do. And so Peter, before the disagreement can even arise, starts up in verse 30 and says, the God of our fathers raised up Jesus, here we go, whom you slew and hanged on a tree. Now there’s talk in the Bible about him being killed on a tree and cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.

And we sing about Christ being killed on a tree. And this confused me. It’s really not that difficult.

But it confused me for a lot of years. Why does it talk about a tree in some cases? And why does it talk about a cross in some cases?

What was the cross made out of? Anybody? Made out of wood.

And wood comes from a tree. All right, so they’re just being poetic with it. whom your father slew and hanged on a tree.

Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a prince and a savior for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. He’s identifying Jesus Christ as the Messiah whom they’ve been looking for. He says, and we are his witnesses of these things.

And so is also the Holy Ghost whom God hath given to them that obey him. He says, Jesus was sent to you and you killed him. And God has said he is the Messiah, he is the anointed one, he is the promised one whom God has told about for thousands of years of Old Testament prophecy and says that we are his witnesses along with the very spirit of God who testifies that he is exactly who he claimed to be.

When they heard that, they were cut to the heart and took counsel to slay them. Now I have said for years, conviction, the one thing it will not allow you to do is stand still. conviction will either drive you to God or it will drive you away from God, but it will not allow you to sit still and ignore it.

Sometimes we’ll see in the book of Acts that somebody was pricked to their hearts and they’ll throw themselves down and say, what do we need to do to be saved? And other times they’ll be pricked in their hearts and they’ll say, we need to kill that guy. It’s conviction.

It’s because in the heart, the Spirit speaks to us and says, you know you’re wrong. You know this is sin. You know this is wrong.

We’re either going to repent or we’re going to rebel, but we’re not going to stand still. Obviously, they decided to rebel. When they heard that, they were cut to the heart and took counsel to slay them.

Then stood there up one in the council, a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, had in reputation among all the people and commanded to put the apostles forth a little space. So sort of the elder statesman of the group, a Pharisee, not a Sadducee, one who was on the very conservative end of things, but very respected apparently by the people and by all those in the Sanhedrin, even those who disagreed with him, stood up and it says, commanded to put the apostles forth a little space. Hang on, let’s just think about this for a minute.

Let’s consider this for a minute. Maybe even give them enough rope to hang themselves. Just as the conservative usually does, hey, let’s just stop and think about this for a minute.

Let’s not rush into anything. Let’s not radically change it. Let’s just cool our heels.

And said unto them, Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what ye intend to do as touching the men. He says here again, think about this for a minute. Take heed, consider what you’re going to do about these fellows.

For before these days rose up Theodos, boasting himself to be somebody, to whom a number of men, about 400, joined themselves, who was slain and all as many as obeyed him were scattered and brought to naught. He said there was a man once before who rose up and claimed to be somebody. Now was that somebody a military commander?

Was that person, was that somebody the Messiah? We don’t know from this passage exactly who that somebody was that Theodos claimed to be. But we know he built up a following.

He caused quite a ruckus among the people. But Gamaliel says, ultimately, even with his following and even with the ruckus that he caused, it came to nothing. He said, eventually, he was gone.

Brought to naught. After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing and drew away much people after him, he also perished, and all, even as many as obeyed, were dispersed. Now, I believe I remember reading about him from history where there was someone who claimed to be the Messiah.

And Theodos might have also. There were several people who claimed to be the Messiah before Jesus and even after Jesus. And Gamaliel is saying here, Judas also, in the same way, stood up and claimed to be the Messiah, developed a following, we were worried, then he burned out.

His movement ran out of steam. He ended up dying. He was not the Messiah, and it all fell apart.

They were dispersed. He said in verse 38, And now I say unto you, refrain from these men and let them alone. For if this counsel or if this work be of men, it will come of naught.

But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest happily ye be found even to fight against God. He says, leave them alone. If this is just man’s work, nothing will come of it.

He says, but if God’s in it, it’ll succeed. Now, I want to point out there’s truth mixed with error in what Gamaliel says. He is absolutely right that if it’s of God, you cannot overthrow it.

Ultimately, you cannot overthrow what God’s plans are. God sent Jesus to save the world and Satan threw everything he had at him and could not overthrow his plans. That doesn’t mean that though that God determines that everything he wants should look wildly successful in the eyes of the world.

And that, unfortunately, is the greater point of what Gamaliel says. And that, unfortunately, is the point that so many have taken from this passage and said, well, see, it teaches right there in the Bible that if God’s in it, it’s going to be successful, and if God’s not in it, it’s going to fall apart. That is not entirely true.

That’s not entirely true. We want to be careful when we’re reading the Scriptures and read it in context. And just because the Scriptures say, hear me on this, hear very carefully, because you could end up getting mad at me if you misunderstand what I’m saying.

I believe wholeheartedly in the inerrancy, the infallibility, the inspiration, and authority of the scriptures. But, with that said, be very careful. When you read that the scriptures reported that somebody said something, that doesn’t make it true.

Now, when the scriptures say they said it, the scriptures are true in what they said. The scriptures are true that Gamaliel said this. That does not mean that Gamaliel was inerrant in what he said.

Does that make sense? If I said to you, Brother Dacus said the moon is made out of green cheese. He hasn’t said that to me, by the way.

If he really said that, then I’m correct in reporting that he said that. He’s not correct in what he said, though. So the Bible inherently and infallibly records this statement by Gamaliel, but it doesn’t mean that Gamaliel was correct in what he said.

You want to be careful. You want to be careful about it. Because there are other people, there are other times in the New Testament records somebody said that the apostles stole his body.

That doesn’t mean the Bible supports the idea of the apostles having stolen his body. It means it records that somebody said something that wasn’t true. So Gamaliel made the point here, if God’s not in it, it won’t be successful.

If God is in it, it will be successful, so we just need to leave it alone. That’s not biblical. I mean, it’s in there that he said it, but it’s not in and of itself. That point is not biblical. And we need to be careful against using what works as our standard of what’s right and what’s wrong.

Because a lot of things work for our society that don’t square with what God said. And to him they agreed, verse 40. And when they had called the apostles and beaten them, so they’ve decided we’re not going to punish you, we’re just going to beat you a little bit so you know, so you remember your place.

When they had beaten them, they commanded them that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and they let them go. And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. That’s an incredible attitude right there.

They were beaten, and they thought, this is great. What? That’s a level of spirituality I have not quite achieved yet.

I’ll be perfectly honest with you. They said, this is great that we should be considered worthy. to share in his sufferings and in his shame.

Not that we want to suffer, but don’t you want to get to that point in your spiritual thinking where you can look at the suffering that way? And daily in the temple and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. They did exactly what they’d been doing all along and what God had told them to do. Now tonight, tonight we’ll look at what we can take from this passage, which really, really is more about Peter than Gamaliel.

there’s more here that we can learn from Peter than Gamaliel but this morning I want to talk to you just in the next few minutes that we have left about why it’s so important that we don’t look as Gamaliel did at whatever works being our standard for what’s right and wrong there is a whole school of philosophy that I don’t know that it was influenced by this scripture but an entire school of thought and philosophy that they taught us like day one or day two in philosophy classes at OU that’s grown up around this idea. It’s called utilitarianism. Whatever works best for the most amount of people.

That sounds great. Whatever is to the biggest benefit for the largest amount of people is what must be right. That sounds great on the surface of it because we think, oh, it’s helping the most people until you realize utilitarianism could be right, could be, excuse me, there was a utilitarian influence in Nazism.

Who cares that we’re getting rid of a few Jews, a few communists, a few homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses and gypsies and disabled people. Who cares when it’s going to be to the benefit of the rest of society? And you know what?

I am not speaking in support of this in any way, but I’ll say there was some perceived benefit to the rest of the society when they were confiscating other people’s property, when they were using other people as slave labor, and they were using them to run their economy. You know, the Nazi government was able to mass-produce an affordable vehicle that regular Germans could afford. Call it the Volkswagen today.

Not that today’s Volkswagen has any basis. I mean, the Volkswagen company, I’ll just say, has come a long way. That’s what I’m trying to say.

They mass produced radios so that the people could get information and entertainment. For the first time, they were giving German workers free paid vacations. Not just paid time off, but the state would subsidize your vacation to go to the Mediterranean or wherever you wanted to.

For a lot of people, there was a lot of benefit gained by some horrible conditions on other people. Is that really where we want to go as believers, as churches, as society, to say whatever’s to the greatest benefit for the largest amount of people. I don’t want to go that direction.

And I don’t believe that’s the direction God calls us to go, is this utilitarian direction of whatever works. And to use this, what I’m saying is whatever works. You may be thinking, what is he talking about?

Well, you know what? Let’s quit preaching so hard about sin, if that works. You turn on the TV today.

Don’t. But you can turn on the TV. TV today.

And you can watch broadcasts of messages from some of the largest churches in America. How’d you get so big, brother so-and-so? Well, we just focus on positive things.

We just focus on positive things. Cotton candy. We don’t talk about sin.

We don’t talk about the cross. I tell you all the time about that horrible video I watched where they were trying to lead kids to Christ at that church in Australia, and they’re just talking to them about wanting, you want Jesus to be your best friend, raise your hand. That’s not the gospel.

I mean, the gospel is that God commended His love to us while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. If you take out the cross, if you take out the blood, if you take out sin and judgment, there’s no good news without the bad news.

But you know what? If it works, if we stop talking about sin, maybe quit hitting this book so hard. I’ll just put it aside and I’ll preach to you out of a magazine article.

I’ve seen that happen. We could do some things and we could bring lots of people in here that love it. Don’t get me wrong.

I’d love to have lots of people in here. But just because it works to bring in lots of people doesn’t make it right. Doesn’t make it correct.

We could compromise with sin. Lots of churches find themselves compromising with the prevailing culture and saying, well, the Supreme Court settled it. We’ll just go along with it.

I’m not going to hate anybody or be angry, but I’m sorry the Supreme Court doesn’t settle anything because there’s a Supreme Court in heaven who’s already decided the important things. By the way, since when Roe v. Wade, Dred Scott v.

Ferguson, I’m sorry, Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, since when did the Supreme Court become infallible?

They’ve been wrong a lot of times. We could compromise. We could stop doing a lot of things that we’re doing and start doing a lot of things that we’re not doing.

And by the way, I’m not against trying new things. If it’s not in Scripture, there are no sacred cows. I’m not against trying new things.

But folks, we could start doing things that are against God’s Word real easily because they work. We could. As a church, in our personal lives, well, yeah, I know God’s word teaches I shouldn’t cheat on my taxes, but look how big a refund I got.

That worked. That was easy. You see where this is going.

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