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Acts 4:1-22 READ IT.  That’s the whole point of this 🙂 If you don’t have a Bible nearby, you can read it here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%204%3A1-22&version=NIV

Honestly this was such a mess for the Jewish leaders who just wanted Jesus to go away. And there’s a tiny piece of me that can empathize with them. Literal centuries of law and tradition seemed to be being thrown to the side. Yes, they should have read the scriptures more carefully. The truth was there all along. But to be fair, it took a brilliant mind like Saul’s who was a star pupil in the scriptures to have a crazy blinding experience in order to start connecting the dots (sorry, spoiler alert lol)

I guess they must have focused their studies on other passages – the ones about how to keep the law perfectly. I mean, they came from long lines of people who were so dedicated to honouring the law that they started making up extra rule books so that people would know exactly how to keep each law. Laws about laws about laws… and then there’s Jesus and he says “repent” and they’re like, “for what? If I do something wrong I sacrifice x animal at x time in x way and I’m good with God. I don’t need to repent. I’m following the law.” But Jesus wants them to see that it’s the “doing something wrong” that is the issue. And all the sacrifices just cover the sin, they don’t heal it, they don’t compensate for it.

And just like me (if I’m honest) they want Jesus to just agree that they are good people. They don’t want to have to actually repent and recognize they aren’t.

So when Jesus wouldn’t play nice they finally got rid of him and breathed a sigh of relief…and then things actually. got. worse.  

Suddenly everybody is saying the guy (who they clearly watched die) is alive. And he’s stirring up all the people that his death sent into the shadows. And after a while he just disappears, and suddenly his previously timid followers are almost rabid! 

They’re causing more commotion than he ever did. It’s chaos! People who were just intrigued by Jesus are now claiming they belong to him and are following him. Little rallies pop up all over the city with fishermen preaching and crowds responding in droves. And now Jesus, who you killed and seemed to have finally gone away, is a bigger problem than when he was alive making a fool of you in debates in the temple courtyards.

So their plan is, “Let’s just shake up some of these followers of his and tell them they can’t be preaching like this. We’ll give them a scare (can’t do much more than that or the crowds will lynch us) and shut them up.”

And we all know how well that went. Over two thousand years later, people are still obsessed with the guy.  

On the one hand you’d like to shake these leaders and say, “Do your research! Listen to what is being said! Consider the possibility!” But I can also kinda see how panic just set in and they ranted and raved and missed the most important point in history.

I guess it’s kind of a warning to us to KNOW the word. People have a lot to say about what the Bible says these days, but has anyone read it? If someone came along and started saying some prophecy was being fulfilled, or we have been misunderstanding what the scriptures were teaching and it’s actually saying x… would I know the word well enough to evaluate it? Scripture has been being taught by humans to humans for millennia now and there are some differing understandings of how things are supposed to be interpreted. Do I know it well enough to look into it for myself?

I mean, if living in an age of social media has taught us anything, it’s that people lie. Everyone lies. It’s really hard to know if what is being said has even a shred of truth. So, I’m going to say right now that if you feel like you have found a media personality or a website or news provider that you trust, you are about to be let down. Even godly, sincere people get it wrong and typically people with a platform get paid to get it wrong on occasion.

If you don’t know the word of God, and if you are unwilling to keep studying the word of God, you are going to get sidetracked by a human interpretation that is motivated by something other than glorifying God.

One of my all time favourite verses is 1 Thess 5:21 “Test everything; hold fast to what is good.” (ESV)

First of all, it’s saying listen to what people are saying.  How can you test everything if you don’t hear what is being said? The fact is people, even good sincere people, get stuff wrong. And as followers of Jesus, we don’t want to misread him in anything. He has proven his way is THE BEST way to navigate this life. Following him IS abundant life even when circumstances are challenging. So if someone thinks Jesus said something that you never really saw before, don’t immediately respond with defensiveness. Check it out. If they will interact, ask them where they see that in scripture. Then read it and research the position you have always understood to be true to see why people who hold that position believe it to be true. 

Never be afraid of discovering a new truth. There is no such thing. Truth is truth. It is established in the mind and character of God which is unchanging. If God says it’s true, it always was.

Now let me state this unequivocally. Please hear this. When I say check it out, I mean look IN THE BIBLE. Compare it to the truths that are clearly spelled out in there. Measure it against the standards that are drawn in there. Obviously there are tons of things in life that aren’t spelled out in the Bible, but many are, and there are principles and precedents in scripture that help us evaluate all of life.

We are told in 2 Peter 1:3 “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,” (ESV)

That means we have what we need to evaluate every situation in life. And what he gave us to do that is the knowledge of him who called us. And where do we find this knowledge? IN THE BIBLE.

By all means, listen to people. The verse preceding my verse in Thessalonians basically says don’t ignore when people claim to be giving prophecy. But what are we to do with that prophecy? Test it! Test it against the word of God. And if it is good, grab it, hold fast, cling to it.

You and I? We don’t have it all figured out. We are not looking at life through the unclouded eyes of Jesus. Lean in while I shock you: we might not have everything quite interpreted perfectly! So humbly listen, but I don’t care who tells you something, TAKE IT TO THE BIBLE. Does it check out? Does it reflect the mind and character and clear teaching of the God you see in there? Cling to it.

Does it contradict the word? RUN. There are some Bible teachers I deeply respect. I have had the joy of testing things they have said, finding them true to the word and then clinging to those truths. There are humans who have shown me things in the scriptures I never saw. Some of those teachings have been used by God to dramatically shape the way I walk with him. I am so thankful for fellow believers, some of whom have been and are well known names in the culture of western Christianity, who have taught me things I missed and in so doing revolutionized my walk with God. 

But if tomorrow one of them says something that contradicts the word of God, I will discard that teaching. If it’s not true, I don’t want it. But that doesn’t mean I have to toss everything I have learned from that person that did check out. Truth is truth. Prove it and then, CLING to it.

In fact there are people who don’t know Jesus at all who have a ton to teach me. Truth is truth. If it’s true, grab it. If it’s not, chuck it.

But the only way you can be sure that you are grabbing the right thing is by knowing the Bible.

Some of the most respected scholars of Jesus’ day missed out on knowing him because they didn’t check his teachings against the word of God. They assumed they knew it and didn’t check out what he was teaching. And the verification was in there. After Saul’s dramatic experience on the Damascus road, he dug into those scriptures he thought he knew so well and he found out he missed something, the most important thing. 

I don’t know about you, but what I have found of Jesus is too good. I don’t want to miss a thing!! I want to keep learning. But I also don’t want to be misled. I don’t want to get it wrong. And the only way to make sure I am learning truth is to read the word of God.

So ya, once again a long-winded rant to say a very simple thing. Read your Bible. Know what it actually says. Read your Bible. Know the one who called you. Read your Bible.

And these poor religious leaders had missed the fact that Jesus was the fulfillment of the scriptures they claimed to love, study and teach.  The disciples were preaching a different story and it was taking Jerusalem by storm.  Adding to the problem was a life-long lame beggar leaping around the temple claiming to have been healed in Jesus name.  They desperately wanted to shut these guys up and make it all go away. But how? What could they do?  They decided to let Peter and John off with a warning and hope they had been scared into submission.  Their response, “If we have to choose between obeying you and obeying God, God’s gonna win this round,” was not encouraging.  With a few more threats they released them.  Anything else would have started a riot!