Miracles and Conflict

Acts 5:12-16

Do you want to see a miracle this morning? Actually I did not say that right. DO YOU WANT TO SEE A MIRACLE THIS MORNING? That’s how it is usually said.

We like miracles. Miracles are exciting. Evangelists and faith healers use miracles to attract people to their meetings. “Come see a miracle!” shout out billboards for the rallies of one evangelist.

This past week archaeologists announced they had discovered what they believe to be Herod the Great’s tomb. This was the Herod who ordered the destruction of male babies in order to eliminate the rumored rival to his throne, Jesus. It was one of his sons to whom the adult Jesus was brought when he was on trial. This Herod looked forward to seeing Jesus, hoping he would see a miracle. As the musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, put it, Herod said to Jesus, “Prove to me you’re no fool, walk across my swimming pool,” and “Show to me that you’re divine, change this water into wine.”

I like miracles. I wish I could see a lot of them. I think it is in large part because we like miracles that we enjoy reading the book of Acts. Like the gospels, the book of Acts is filled with wonderful stories of people suffering from some illness or possession and being healed and delivered. The stories themselves are great but when we stop to contemplate the difference this made in the lives of those healed and delivered and in the lives of their friends and families, these stories are astounding. Lepers who lived lives apart from their families and their community could now reenter life. A woman who walked behind the corpse of her son was able to hold her son’s hand as they walked home together. A community who lived in fear of a man possessed by demons now watched as this man walked with his family and friends in a sane state of mind and properly dressed. What wonderful miracles!

This is the third spring that I have turned to the book of Acts for our preaching. Last year I ended the series of sermons on Acts when I preached on July 2 from the story of Ananias and Sapphira. We pick up in Acts this morning at a summary of the early church.

There have been two summaries thus far in the book of Acts. The first led up to the account of Peter and John being brought before the Sanhedrin. The second led to the account of Ananias and Sapphira. Listen now to the third summary of life in the early church.

Acts 5
The apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon’s Colonnade.  13 No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.  14 Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.  15 As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by.  16 Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed.

Each of these three summaries tells us about life in the early church. This third summary reminds us that miraculous signs and wonders were a characteristic of the early church. People were being healed and delivered on a weekly, perhaps daily basis. As Jesus had healed those who came to him, now as the risen Lord, his ministry continued through the apostles.

It was not difficult to find someone who had been healed of some illness or malady. If you were new to the church and had not come into the church because of some miracle, it did not take long for you to see for yourself the power of God at work.

The temple in Jerusalem covered 35 acres (14 hectors) and in one part of that, Solomon’s Colonnade, the believers gathered to meet. This was their spot and here the disciples taught the new believers. Here they prayed and worshiped the risen Christ.

Although they were highly regarded by the people, probably because of all the miracles that were taking place, only the believers gathered at Solomon’s Colonnade. The report of what had happened to Ananias and Sapphira had spread and although the miracles were exciting, playing with this group was like playing with dynamite and you could get killed in the process. So the attitude seemed to be to appreciate and maybe admire these followers of Jesus, but keep your distance.

Even so, despite the fear inspired by what had happened to Ananias and Sapphira, people were attracted to this new life and more and more people crossed over and became followers of Jesus and joined the group at Solomon’s Colonnade..

So powerful was the power of healing being displayed that those who were sick were healed when Peter’s shadow touched them. In the gospels is an account of a woman who was healed when she touched the hem of Jesus’ robe. Jesus said that his followers would do even greater things than he did and this appears to be what happened with Peter. Just his shadow passing over a sick person brought the healing of Jesus. There was no need to touch the hem of Peter’s robe, just his shadow would do.

As you can imagine, word of what was happening spread very quickly. Jerusalem was about the size of Azrou and everyone in town knew what was happening. It was the talk of all the places where people gathered. And that news traveled. Soon those who had been healed in Jerusalem or had witnessed the healings, when they went back home, brought the sick and possessed from their village to Jerusalem to be healed. The roads leading into Jerusalem must have looked like a traveling hospital ward with people bringing the sick and disabled to seek healing.

This was an exciting time in the history of the church. Wouldn’t it be exciting if this happened here in Rabat? Wouldn’t it be exciting if this week we began to see the healing power of Jesus at work with dramatic scenes of the lame walking and the blind seeing and the possessed set free? Can you imagine what would happen?

Hold on to that and let me ask a question. Why does God heal people?

The gospels say Jesus acted out of compassion when he healed and healing is an act of God’s love. Healing is also the inevitable consequence of the Kingdom of God advancing into the darkness of this world. With Jesus came the Kingdom of God into this world and ever since, it has intruded into the suffering of this world. Hope is brought where there is no hope. Life is given where death has dominated. Healing comes where disease has ruled.

In John’s Revelation, the Kingdom of God is described as a place where (Revelation 21:3-4)
the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

This reality has been pushing against this world, but the Kingdom of God is not fully here. It is a present but still a future event. When we eventually come into the fullness of the Kingdom of God, there will be no illness, no pain, no sorrow. But until then we will experience those things.

So while some will be healed, some will not be healed. Evidence of the Kingdom of God intruding into this world will be seen in one person being healed of cancer when prayers are offered while another person, also prayed for, will die of cancer.

This is not just true today. Even in the time of Jesus, not all people were healed. Jesus spent a lot of time in Jerusalem over the three years of his public ministry. He passed many times by the man born lame who begged every day at the Gate called Beautiful. Many times he heard the man call out for help but did not stop to heal him.

It was after the death and resurrection of Jesus that Peter and John were walking by this man when it was time and God’s healing came.

It has always been like this, some are healed and some are not. And there does not appear to be a pattern to those who are healed. It is not that the best and most faithful Christians are the ones who are healed. It is not that the most poor and destitute are the ones who are healed. If there was any pattern to those who were healed, we would study this and assign a probability factor to those seeking to be healed.

Is healing a random act? I do not believe God acts randomly. God acts with purpose. God’s compassion will ultimately, in this world or the next, bring everyone who calls on his name to complete health and wholeness. But it seems that in this world, there are strategic purposes for God’s healing acts.

When we look at the book of Acts and in church history, it seems that among the strategic purposes of God, he uses miracles and wonders to grow the church. When the church experiences rapid growth, miraculous signs and wonders accompany the growth.

It is not that there are periods of time when God heals and times when he does not, but there are times when there is a concentration of healing and deliverance.

Peter Wagner, who was a disciple of John Wimber of the Vineyard Church, points out in his commentary of Acts that the early church grew in quantity and quality. The numbers of the believers in the early church grew but so did the quality of their faith. The church became larger and the faith of those in the church deepened. They became more devoted to Christ, better able to persevere in their faith.

Wagner points out in his commentary that miracles develop the quantity of the church; miracles are used by God to grow the church. But miracles do not develop the quality of the church.

When God wants to get the attention of people, miracles and wonders are used to do this. Miracles bring people to the church but they do not deepen the faith of the church.

To draw on Jesus’ parable of the sower, miracles may cause people to come to the church, but the test of whether or not they have fallen on rocky soil or among weeds or on fertile soil is yet to come. It is the disciplines of the Christian faith, prayer, fasting, studying the Scriptures, giving, fellowship and persevering through trials and tribulations that deepen faith and cause Christians to grow in their character.

This is not to despise miracles or demean them in any way, only to say that a church that focuses only on miracles and constantly seeks miracles will be a weak, superficial church that will not endure when it becomes difficult to be a Christian. Such a church seeks entertainment and thrills and will not be prepared for the hard decision points of life.

Those attracted to Christian faith because they want to see miracles and never move past that, will fall away when a difficult decision needs to be made. Such Christians do not want to count the cost of following Jesus and take the easy decision.

The church today desperately needs believers who will stand with Jesus even when it will cost them. The church needs Christians who will stay married even when their marriage is difficult. The church needs Christians who will forgive when they have been wounded. The church needs Christians who will persevere even when it costs them their ease and comfort of life; even when it costs them their lives.

When the power of God is revealed in healing and deliverance, the church begins to grow. And when the church grows in an environment that is not sympathetic to Christian faith, conflict is inevitable.

Acts makes this perfectly clear. The first summary of the church in Acts 2 is followed by a specific example. The man crippled from birth is healed by Peter and John and immediately they are called before the Sanhedrin, the same body that had just a couple months ago orchestrated the crucifixion of Jesus. They were flogged, warned not to talk anymore about Jesus and released.

This morning’s summary in Acts 5 is not followed by a specific story, but with all the healing taking place and all the resulting attention being given to them, the apostles were arrested and put in prison to once again face the Sanhedrin.

Twice in the first five chapters of Acts, Luke wrote about the disciples healing many people and then being brought before the Sanhedrin.

You have to understand the dynamic. When the healing power of God is unleashed and people are healed and delivered, the church grows. When the church grows, the world view of the church comes into contact with the world view of the culture and if they are in conflict, a storm is the inevitable result.

Just as a cold front meeting a warm front results in a thunderstorm, so does the meeting of two conflicting world views result in conflict.

When the early church grew, as recorded in the book of Acts, those who became followers of Jesus defied the dominant religion of their culture. Everyone in town went to the synagogue and listened to the Rabbi tell them how to obey the Law. These followers of Jesus disrupted the traditional religious practice.

They were a theat to the dominant religion of their culture; they were a threat to the culture that wrapped itself around the dominant religion; they were a threat to the business community that had learned how to make a profit from the dominant religion; they were a threat to the political establishment that had learned how to work with the dominant religion. The world view of these followers of Jesus made them trouble makers.

When one person decides to follow a different religion, it is not a big deal. A village can deal with one disruptive person and learn to live with him. But when a lot of people make that decision, the threat becomes real and opposition is inevitable.

There was an example of this recently in Turkey. Three pastors in Turkey met with five Turkish men who said they were seeking to know what was true. These five men came to the Bible study with knives and rope and killed the three Christian pastors. Initial reports said that they had been tortured with hundreds of knife wounds, but these reports were not true. Their bodies did not show signs of torture – but they were killed. Why these reports were so grossly exaggerated is interesting speculation, but not our concern.

The point is that as the church has grown in Turkey, it has come in contact with the established culture of Turkey and that resulted in these killings.

These killing left three women without husbands and children without fathers but the church will grow from this as it always has grown from the suffering of saints.

As our world has become smaller, the various world views have come into closer contact and this is resulting in storms.

The church is growing and as the church grows, the inevitable conflict is increasing. Every week I receive reports from some part of the world of cultural, political and religious persecution against those who are choosing to follow Jesus.

Are you seeking miracles? Would you still be willing to seek miracles if you knew they would result in persecution?

Think again about what would happen if God were to unleash his healing power here in Rabat. What if you were walking through the medina and God led you to speak to one of the many beggars who are lame and blind and announce that in the name of Jesus he was healed? What would happen if the beggar who was lame stood up and began to jump and run? What would happen if one of the blind people being led down the street received his sight?

Can you imagine the excitement? Can you imagine the questions that would be asked? Can you imagine what would happen?

Who knows the mind of God? We can only prepare ourselves to be obedient and faithful to God whatever circumstances come our way.

In the next two to three years, many of us will no longer be in Rabat. We may return to our home countries. We may be living in one more foreign country. Wherever we are living, God will be at work growing his church.

As the church grows and opposition rises, how will you respond?

In the history of the church, when persecution has come, it has only been a small minority of the church that has chosen to stand with Jesus. Most people in the church have denied their faith in Jesus as a way of escaping persecution.

It may be that you will never face significant persecution, but if you do, how will you respond?

I know that for some of us there is more cost to coming to church than for others, but for most of us it is pretty easy to come to church.

If our church is representative of the historical church, most of us would deny Jesus if it came to a choice between our lives and standing up to say we will follow Jesus no matter what the cost.

When it becomes difficult, what will we do?

Peter and the other apostles and the rest of the early church are an inspiration to us. When opposition rose, they did not become timid. They responded with boldness, ready to face whatever came and in fact they rejoiced that they were able to share in the sufferings of Christ.

I feel the need to encourage you to be prepared for what might come. The church is growing and it will not grow without opposition. We need to be prepared with more than bold pronouncements that we will never deny Jesus. Peter tried that and failed.

Next week we will look at the reaction of Peter and the rest of the early church to the persecution that rose up against them. And we will see what we can learn about how to respond to persecution as they did.

I encourage you this week to read the book of Acts and to focus on how the early believers responded to the persecution it experienced. Pray and ask God for wisdom as we prepare for what may also be our experience.