What Made the Apostles So Brave?

Tom: We’re in the Book of Acts:5:26Then went the captain with the officers, and brought them without violence: for they feared the people, lest they should have been stoned.
See All.... But, Dave, in our earlier segments, we’ve addressed the issue of truth and so on, and how God’s Word is there for those who want to live a life led of the Spirit of God, want to live a life that’s pleasing to God.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Tom: In 2 Peter, we find that God’s Word is sufficient for all things that “pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him.” So, Dave, our encouragement, as you know, to our listeners is to get into the Word of God. Begin with the Gospel of John if you’ve never read it before. But if you want God’s counsel, you have to get it from His Word. And however you start – a few minutes a day – however you can go about it, but read God’s Word. That’s our exhortation, encouragement – plea, really.

Dave: And it is up to each Christian to come to his own conclusions. You must understand the Bible for yourself. Otherwise God can’t speak to you. How could He speak to you through His Word if you are relying on someone to interpret it for you? You just can’t do that. You must know the Word of God. You must be in touch with Him. You must feed upon the Word of God itself, not what somebody else says the Word of God says.

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And that’s one of the problems, Tom, with these so-called modern translations, paraphrases, and so forth. Let me just mention it once again – Eugene Peterson’s The Message: he dares to push what God has said aside, put his own words in there – even changing the meaning entirely, sometimes to the very opposite of what God has said – and then calls this the Bible. And there are people who rely on this, and that has been endorsed, recommended by leading evangelicals.

Now, we’re talking about the Word of God. If this is the Word of God, then let’s go to the Word of God.

Tom: Acts:5:26Then went the captain with the officers, and brought them without violence: for they feared the people, lest they should have been stoned.
See All...: “Then went the captain with the officers, and brought them without violence [‘them’ being the apostles, who they were rounding up]: for they feared the people, lest they should have been stoned. And when they had brought them, they set them before the council, and the high priest asked them, saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.”

Dave: Tom, we better give a little background. Those who have been following us know that back in verse 18, the apostles – and it doesn’t tell us how many; maybe there were three or four, maybe it was the whole group of them there in Jerusalem – it says, “And laid their hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison.” So they were in the prison; and then, of course what happened was in the middle of the night, the Lord sends an angel, opens the prison doors, their chains fall off of them, and sets them free. And the keepers, the guards, they don’t even know what’s going on; they’re sound asleep. And then the angel doesn’t say, “Okay, guys, hightail it up to the hills! Get out of here!” He says, “Go into the temple in the morning and teach.” [laughs]

Tom: Amazing.

Dave: And I love what it says: it says, “Early in the morning…” They’re not wasting any time. Early into the morning they go into the temple, and when the high priest – he’s calling for these prisoners to be brought out of prison to come before him, and they go to the prison together and they come back absolutely dumbfounded. “Well, we found the prison shut, and all the doors were locked. It was very secure. The guards were there, but when we went inside, no prisoners!”

And then somebody else comes running and says, “Hey, they’re down at the temple teaching and preaching like you told them not to do.” So that’s where we picked it up, Tom.

Tom: I’d like to talk about that a little bit: such obedience! Not only were they miraculously removed from this prison…

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Tom: …but they honored God with their obedience to go into a place to continue to preach that which they knew they were going to get in trouble for again!

Dave: Well, they’d be back in prison again, or they would be beaten…

Tom: Even worse this time!

Dave: Right.

Tom: But their hearts  - this is not the apostles that we knew before – that is, before Pentecost, before them being really empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Dave: Right, they all turned tail, abandoned Jesus… In fact, Jesus said, “You will all forsake me tonight.” And it wasn’t just Peter; we often concentrate on Peter, but it says, “Then they all forsook him and fled.” Not now. It says they take knowledge of them that they have been with Jesus. Something has happened to these guys. They’re like Jesus: they’re courageous, they’re bold, and they don’t compromise, and they are not subject to human beings; they are serving God alone.

Tom: Dave, is this the way it should be for us?

Dave: Absolutely. We don’t fear man; we don’t look to men for approval or commendation. Now, I must qualify that: if anyone can show where we’re not teaching the truth, [where] we are not being biblical, Tom, we must be ready to be corrected.

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dave: But we’re going to be corrected by the Word of God, not by the opinions of people. We’re not going to adjust what we say because then we wouldn’t be popular, or we might be taken off of a station or whatever, or men will turn their hearing aids off and won’t listen to us. We can’t help that, Tom. Paul tells Timothy, “Preach the Word.” We have no choice.

Tom: Dave, I don’t want our listeners to misunderstand us: when we say “we,” we’re not just talking about Dave Hunt and T.A. McMahon, we’re talking about every born-again Christian, everyone who is a new creature in Christ, everyone who has the Holy Spirit dwelling within him or her!

Dave: Exactly. Tom, I remember being on a two-hour program with a Jewish secular host. We were talking about Israel, and he loved what I had to say about Israel. And then he said, “Now, I’ve saved my big question to the end: I’m Jewish. I do not believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Does that mean I’m going to hell?”

And I said, “Whether you are Jewish or gentile, if you do not believe in Jesus Christ who said, ‘I am the way,’ you know, the Christ who died for your sins and my sins on the cross, I don’t care who you are: yes, you are going to hell.”

He said, “Dave, I don’t agree with you, but I do appreciate your honesty. I’ve had many pastors on this program. I have asked them all the same question. You are the first one who has given me a straight answer.”

Well, Tom, sometimes people say, “Wow, you must have a lot of courage to say what you say!”

I say [laughing], “I don’t have any courage! I just don’t have enough sense to know better.” No, it’s not that. We don’t have an alternative.

Tom: Right.

Dave: And Peter goes on in. In the next verse, he says, “Then Peter and the other apostles [we don’t know how many there were] answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.” And, Tom, sometimes I look at some of the things that Christian leaders say – well, in relation to the death of the pope, praising him, and one of the world’s leading evangelists praised him for his Catholic faith. You were Catholic. You know what Catholic faith is: it’s a trust in Mary and the saints and the Mass and everything, not trusting in Jesus Christ alone.

Tom: And, Dave, if folks think that we’re trying to strain at gnats here or be so narrow, they just have to read the Book of Galatians. This was Paul’s concern about those whom he’d brought to Christ.

Dave: Right. Well, Tom, sometimes when I hear what some evangelical leaders say and the compromises they make, I think they must not really believe the Bible! They must not really believe that God exists. They must not really believe that this life is short and eternity is forever. How could they really believe that one day they will stand before God and give an account to Him?

So this is what Peter says: “We ought to obey God rather than men.” We’re not going to do what the majority say or whatever, you know? “Oh, wait a minute, you can’t be on this program anymore if you talk like that.” Well, we are standing before God right now. We’re in the presence of the Lord, and whatever we say, we are accountable to Him; and one day, we will stand before Him, and what men have said, or what plaudits or promotions or benefits we may have received from men in this brief life because we went along with their ideas or we backed off and compromised – Tom, that will be like ashes in our mouths if we did that. And God has the last word, and we have no alternative. And so Peter says, “Whether we ought…” What ought we to do? Ought we to serve men, please men, or God? I think the answer is very simple.