When they heard this, the high council was furious and decided to kill them.
But one member, a Pharisee named Gamaliel, who was an expert in religious law and respected by all the people, stood up and ordered that the men be sent outside the council chamber for a while.
Then he said to his colleagues, “Men of Israel, take care what you are planning to do to these men! Some time ago there was that fellow Theudas, who pretended to be someone great. About 400 others joined him, but he was killed, and all his followers went their various ways. The whole movement came to nothing. After him, at the time of the census, there was Judas of Galilee. He got people to follow him, but he was killed, too, and all his followers were scattered.
“So my advice is, leave these men alone. Let them go. If they are planning and doing these things merely on their own, it will soon be overthrown. But if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You may even find yourselves fighting against God!”
The others accepted his advice. They called in the apostles and had them flogged. Then they ordered them never again to speak in the name of Jesus, and they let them go.
The apostles left the high council rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus. And every day, in the Temple and from house to house, they continued to teach and preach this message: “Jesus is the Messiah.”
Prayer: Lord Jesus – Help me to discern what is right and true. May I be obedient to the leading of your Spirit… and may I be faithful to your Word. To the end that, one day, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess – “Jesus is Lord!” Amen.
Spiritual Song: “None But Jesus” – Brooke Fraser
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The secular powers that be are putting pressure on pastors to limit their practice of the Christian faith to just the four walls of the local church.
That’s why the current administration has emphasized a restricted “freedom of worship” rather than the First Amendment’s robust guarantee of Freedom of Religion; it’s why believers concerned about the redefinition of marriage are being told to shut up and go along, and why organizations such as Catholic Charities face crushing fines if they don’t provide contraceptives to their employees.
Now of course, we all know that some churches and ministers have been accused of becoming too involved in partisan politics. Even when we’ve been right to enter the political arena for good causes, too often we have been self-righteous, a tad arrogant, and sometimes beholden to this party or that.
But just because sometimes we get it wrong doesn’t mean we should stop altogether. As G. K. Chesterton observed, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
Fortunately, we have plenty of good examples of how pastors can be effectively and biblically engaged in the issues of the day-pastors who stood tall as our Republic was being founded.
The Colson Center‘s T. M. Moore points to certain men in black. “The British,” T.M. says, “referred to colonial pastors as the ‘Black Brigade,’ men in robes who fought against them by the words of their mouths as effectively as the colonial militia did with their weapons. To show their disdain of the American clergy, the British quartered their horses in the churches when they could.”
That harassment did not deter the clergy, however. “Many sermons urging the revolutionary cause,” T.M. says, “were printed as broadsides and circulated up and down the eastern seaboard, where they were read and discussed in what were called Committees of Correspondence. These ‘small groups’ were highly effective in preparing the ground for the Revolution.”
Now T.M. isn’t advocating a revolution-except, perhaps, in our thinking about the role of ministers in the American experiment. “Ministers helped to lead the way to a new country,” he says. “Their preaching was bold, visionary, and soundly biblical, and many of their sermons worked to rally their people to the patriotic cause, but within the framework of a Kingdom vision.”
That kind of preaching-and thinking-is rare in our churches today. And that’s why as we approach the Fourth of July, T. M.’s “Pastor to Pastor” e-newsletter is focusing on classic sermons from the revolutionary era: to encourage today’s pastors to rethink their own callings as preachers, especially in the light of our nation’s great need for revival, renewal, and awakening.
You-and your pastor-can get “Pastor to Pastor” in your inbox each day. Please come to BreakPoint.org, click on this commentary, and sign up.
Just to whet your appetite, here are the words of John Witherspoon, from his sermon, “The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men:” “There is not a greater evidence either of the reality or the power of religion than a firm belief of God’s universal presence, and a constant attention to the influence and operation of his providence. It is by this means that Christians may be said, in the emphatic scripture language, ‘to walk with God, and to endure as seeing him who is invisible.’ ”
T. M. says, “What our nation needs today is ‘greater evidence of the reality and the power of religion.’ Why is there so little evidence of these among the members of the Christian community today?”
For the answer, and for inspiration, please come toBreakPoint.organd sign up for “Pastor to Pastor” today!
The high priest and his officials, who were Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail.
Liberation of St. Peter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1667) Hermitage Museum
But an angel of the Lord came at night, opened the gates of the jail, and brought them out. Then he told them, “Go to the Temple and give the people this message of life!” So at daybreak the apostles entered the Temple, as they were told, and immediately began teaching.
When the high priest and his officials arrived, they convened the high council — the full assembly of the elders of Israel. Then they sent for the apostles to be brought from the jail for trial.
But when the Temple guards went to the jail, the men were gone. So they returned to the council and reported, “The jail was securely locked, with the guards standing outside, but when we opened the gates, no one was there!” When the captain of the Temple guard and the leading priests heard this, they were perplexed, wondering where it would all end.
Then someone arrived with startling news: “The men you put in jail are standing in the Temple, teaching the people!” The captain went with his Temple guards and arrested the apostles, but without violence, for they were afraid the people would stone them.
Then they brought the apostles before the high council, where the high priest confronted them. “Didn’t we tell you never again to teach in this man’s name?” he demanded. “Instead, you have filled all Jerusalem with your teaching about him, and you want to make us responsible for his death!”
But Peter and the apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead after you killed him by hanging him on a cross. Then God put him in the place of honor at his right hand as Prince and Savior. He did this so the people of Israel would repent of their sins and be forgiven. We are witnesses of these things and so is the Holy Spirit, who is given by God to those who obey him.”
Prayer: Heavenly Father – Help me to listen to you and obey you… to share with others the “message of life” through your Son Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus – Keep my eyes on you… my beginning and end. Holy Spirit – Shut out all the din and chatter that would distract me from my primary purpose… to glorify and enjoy God. Amen.
Hymn: “Trust and Obey” – John H. Sammis (1887) ___________________________________________
The apostles were performing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people.
Apostles Peter and John Pieter Aertsen, 1575
And all the believers were meeting regularly at the Temple in the area known as Solomon’s Colonnade. But no one else dared to join them, even though all the people had high regard for them.
Yet more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord—crowds of both men and women.
As a result of the apostles’ work, sick people were brought out into the streets on beds and mats so that Peter’s shadow might fall across some of them as he went by.
Crowds came from the villages around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those possessed by evil spirits, and they were all healed.
Prayer: Lord Jesus – Advance your Kingdom purposes in our time. Fill your people with your Spirit… heal the sick and demonized… and expand /and enlarge your family into every tribe and nation throughout the world. To you be all the honor and glory. Amen.
Peanut Gallery: Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia issued a wake-up call to all Christians. Full text may be found here.
“[T]he latest IRS ugliness,” he wrote, “is a hint of the treatment disfavored religious groups may face in the future, if we sleep through the national discussion of religious liberty now. The day when Americans could take the Founders’ understanding of religious freedom as a given is over. We need to wake up.”
“The day when Americans could take the Founders’ understanding of religious freedom as a given is over,” said the archbishop. “We need to wake up.”
Chaput, who leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, pointed to Obamacare’s sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation as one example. The regulation, issued by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, requires almost all health-care plans in the United States to provide coverage for sterilizations, artificial contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs to all women of reproductive age–even if the person or employer providing the insurance coverage and even if the female beneficiaries themselves do not want the coverage and believe it is morally wrong and violates their religious beliefs.
“[T]he HHS mandate can only be understood as a form of coercion,” the archbishop wrote in a recent column posted on the website of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The column is entitled, “Religious Freedom and the Need to Wake Up.”
Last year, the Catholic bishops of the United States unanimously approved a statement describing the HHS regulation as an “unjust and illegal mandate.” The unanimous bishops said the regulation not only violated the religious freedom of religious institutions but also the “personal civil rights” of individual Americans who will be forced to comply with it either as employers or employees.
Archbishop Chaput noted that the bishops believe “basic medical care is a matter of social justice and human dignity.” That principal, however, does not empower the government to force Americans to violate their moral and religious convictions.
“But health care has now morphed into a religious liberty issue provoked entirely–and needlessly–by the current White House,” the archbishop wrote. “Despite a few small concessions under pressure, the administration refuses to withdraw or reasonably modify a Health and Human Services (HHS) contraceptive mandate that violates the moral and religious convictions of many individuals, private employers and religiously affiliated and inspired organizations.”
The archbishop noted that the administration’s disregard for religious liberty in the enforcement of this regulation is in line with its refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act and its advocacy in the Hosanna-Tabor case.
The Defense of Marriage Act says that a state cannot be forced to recognize a same-sex marriage contracted in another state and that for federal purposes marriage is between one man and one women. The Supreme Court is now considering the constitutionality of DOMA, and the administration has asked the court that the law be thrown out, arguing that opposition to same-sex marriage (which is the position of the Catholic Church and many other religious denominations) is the constitutional equivalent of racial discrimination.
In the Hosanna-Tabor case, the administration argued unsuccessfully in the Supreme Court that the government could tell a Lutheran school it must restore as a “commissioned minister” a person who violated the teachings of the Lutheran faith.
“Coupled with the White House’s refusal to uphold the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, and its astonishing disregard for the unique nature of religious freedom displayed by its arguments in a 9-0 defeat in the 2012 Hosanna-Tabor Supreme Court decision, the HHS mandate can only be understood as a form of coercion,” wrote the archbishop.
“Access to inexpensive contraception is a problem nowhere in the United States,” he said. “The mandate is thus an ideological statement; the imposition of a preferential option for infertility. And if millions of Americans disagree with it on principle–too bad.”
The archbishop went on to observe that abortion advocates use fraudulent language in describing their position.
“The fraud at the heart of our nation’s ‘reproductive rights’ vocabulary runs very deep and very high,” he wrote. “In his April 26 remarks to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the president never once used the word ‘abortion,’ despite the ongoing Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia and despite Planned Parenthood’s massive role in the abortion industry.”
The archbishop noted that the scandal “involving IRS targeting of ‘conservative’ organizations … also has a religious dimension.”
“But the latest IRS ugliness,” he wrote, “is a hint of the treatment disfavored religious groups may face in the future, if we sleep through the national discussion of religious liberty now. The day when Americans could take the Founders’ understanding of religious freedom as a given is over. We need to wake up.”
But one member, a Pharisee named Gamaliel, who was an expert in religious law and respected by all the people, stood up and ordered that the men be sent outside the council chamber for a while.
The Peanut Gallery 