Acts, 12:1-25

Okay, here in the book of Acts, we have some questions to look at here. Acts 12, 1-25, which is the whole chapter. And so our questions go like this. Since Peter was imprisoned by a proper Roman authority, does his being broken from prison make him in conflict with Romans 13, 1-7? Romans 13 1-7 says to be subject to the governing authorities, right? And I'm giving the brief version of it. So if we look at that, be subject to the governing authorities, and here is Peter walking right out of a prison.

Is he in conflict with Romans 13, with the truth that's revealed there? What do you think about that? No, you're saying no. Okay. How come not? Why is he not in conflict with Romans 13? He didn't break himself out. If he had said, hey guys, I'm in here and I want you to come in and break me out of this prison here, because it sure is downright uncomfortable, that would have been a different deal. The Lord is the one who grants authority and the Lord himself is the one who grants any exception to that authority. And he did that here, didn't he? Yeah. Okay, so Peter doesn't have to lie awake at night for years on end wondering whether he'd done some vile thing, right? Okay.

How about the second question? Here's Herod Agrippa I was neither better nor worse overall than some of the rest of the Herod family. We pointed out last week that, here's this Herod guy. Let me see if I can get this thing to go backwards on me. Here we go. Herod Agrippa Is this fellow on the third column on the bottom, second one in from the left?

That's the guy that we see in Acts 12 who died. We have the insight from Josephus. He died over a period of about five days of worms. And the final quotes that Josephus has match up with what we have recorded in Acts. You know, you've attributed me to being a god. And that's what we see here in Acts as well. Now, why is it so particularly miserable? Why? I mean, other leaders in the Roman Empire would do this. Every single emperor claimed to be deity. People, in fact, had to go to the emperor's temple. Why did Herod Agrippa get this treatment?

Yeah, Tom. Ah, yes. Very good. And why did he know better? How do we know that? Yeah. One of the things we mentioned last week is that he was descended from, you look through the family tree there, Marianne I was part of the Jewish Lineage to the back to the leaders who had taken over for about a century long period from the the Greek ruling government and ruled for about a century until Rome came in at 63 BC and So he was descended from that line. He was well regarded by the Jews because he did have that lineage and seemed to be well versed in what the Old Testament required and things of that sort. So here's a guy who indeed, as Tom points out, knew better. He clearly knew better than to go and basically carry over this Greek and Roman cultural idea of, yeah, you're a god. So, big difference there, isn't it?

Okay. I want to put you through a few slides here, if you'll bear with me for a minute. This we've shown the picture of Antioch, modern Antakya, okay? And this is kind of the satellite photo. Boy, I wish Paul could have seen these. These would be cool, you know?

But anyway, here's what we call Turkey, Asia Minor, and then regions of it, you know, had names too, but Asia Minor, and then Cyprus, and then Lebanon over there, and then Israel off to the right. Egypt, what you see there in the dark area, is the Nile Delta. Alexandria was off to the west or left end of that. And then off to the very left of the screen would be Cyrene. This is where some of the people who were involved in the church in the Antioch were from. It is where Simon, who carried Jesus' cross, was from. So Cyrene is off to the end there.

So here's kind of the eastern Mediterranean there in one satellite shot. Here's where Antioch is. There's a bit of a peninsula. Antioch is built just inland on that peninsula. And then there's a minor port, we'll take a closer look in a minute, where Antioch, you know, anything going or any people going through Antioch that are headed out through the Mediterranean go through that port. Okay, here's the aerial view a little more directly on Antioch and Cyprus. There's Antioch the picture of a modern site there. And so it's located about here. Seleucia, which you see referenced there, is the port city where they take off from there, and there it is today. Obviously there's some updates.

And then we head over to the island of Cyprus. Now Cyprus is real interesting. It's a fairly sizable island, enough that today Turkey and Greece with a UN ban there to keep them from squabbling with each other, a UN zone, Turkey and Greece split it. Greece the west end and Turkey the east end. It's of course got lots of coastline and in those days had major port cities at each end.

Here's Solomus, which is the first one that's mentioned. Of course, coming from Seleucia, they'd sail over to Solomus. And then here's some of the columns left of Solomus there. And then Paphos is on the other end there. And Paphos is an adequate port, but it's not a great port because it isn't like Ephesus where it was protected, or one of those places.

Anyway, it gives you some familiarity with where the places are that are described there in Acts 13. Let's see, I think that's it. There we go. Okay, now let's take a look at the handout up there, Acts 13, 1 through 43. As I read through this, personally, I get excited about it.

And one of the reasons I do is here is a church being established outside of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is sort of the natural place for the church to begin. That's where everything began with the temple. But here's a place outside of Jerusalem. It's a place of real mixed ethnic background. Lots of different ethnic groups coming through. Lots of different religions and philosophies flowing through. the city on the eastern most major city that had goods flowing through it as well as ideas and religions coming through the Silk Road from the east. And the route coming from the Silk Road had by this time been going on for a couple of centuries. So it was a long-standing pattern. So here's this very international buying with Ephesus for being the third largest in the Roman Empire. Very international city, and here's this place where you're bringing the church together.

Look at it. It says there were prophets and teachers. If there were others, and there may well have been, we don't know their names, but there are five names given here. A couple of them will be familiar to us, and a few of them may not be. Let's take a look. One of the things you'll note is that every single name has some kind of description or explanation along with it. They don't just list a name and then just drop it. Every single one, they've got some description.

Barnabas, who is a Levite who came from the church in Jerusalem. Here's Barnabas. He's a Levite. What does that mean? He wears Levi's? Probably not. What does it mean that he's a Levite? Yeah, he is from the tribe of Levi. It's the one tribe who did not have a land inheritance. They were the priestly tribe. So you're going to have of that tribe a priestly background. What's interesting is we, today, many of the Jews, I would say most of them, have a hard time telling, you know, which tribe am I from. But, there may be some clues.

Cohen means priest. Do you hear the name or know anybody named Cohen? I used to have a friend when I was a kid. His last name was Cohen. Or Levi has a last name. Or Levitt. Any of those or similar sounding names may well be indications of their lineage from the tribe of Levi.

So here was Barnabas. If he was of that tribe, he may well have had some priestly training. We don't know, for example, for sure, who authored the book of Hebrews, for reasons I won't go into right now. Barnabas would be my first choice, just examining some of the evidence.

It talks about the sacrifices. It makes frequent reference to, and you saw our overhead picture of Cyprus, lots of port and coastal city. Hebrews makes frequent reference to nautical terms, shipping terms. So, anyway, possibility. Here's Simeon, who is also called Niger, basically means black, possibly a North African. It's even possible he's a black man. At least perhaps dark-skinned. But something would have differentiated him. And why not? Here's Antioch, a very mixed city in terms of backgrounds.

And even the way that the Gospel got there, we saw from chapter 11, 19 and 20, the gospel got there in a rather indirect way, especially among the Gentiles. The next one, Lucius of Cyrene. We saw that Cyrene was in what is now Libya, off to the west of the Nile Delta. So here's Lucius. And then Manan, who had been with Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch, in his younger years.

And when we say had been with, we don't know whether he was raised, for example, as a stepson or whether he was just a friend. We don't have any further information than that, but apparently some closeness and proximity there, and some identification there. Here's Saul, the Jew, still called Saul at this point in time, who would later be called Paul, the Apostle.

So we've got all five of these. We know something about them, in some cases much more, but at least something about each one of those. These are gifted men. We see that they're prophets and teachers. Saul would most certainly later be identified as an apostle. Here's a question. I've got a footnote there. Some or all of these men may have been serving as elders, but we don't know.

It doesn't say so explicitly. And one of the points we made before, we'll get on this elder issue again, but Outside of Jerusalem, we don't know for certain the name of any single elder in any of the churches, even though we find a repeated reference to elders. It's interesting that elders are anonymous in great part, other than a few we know by name out of the Church of Jerusalem. You get outside of that, and the Bible makes repeated reference to the elders of the church, but doesn't mention names and tie it to any of the titles that we would call this person as an elder.

So interesting. None of these men are from Antioch. Isn't that interesting? It's again a city with a lot of come and go, mix and match, people from different places. None of them are from Antioch. They're all from elsewhere that the Lord has seen fit to have listed here. There should be a map in your map set, like this, Paul's First and Second Missionary Journey, and this is the first one, it'll be the top map, and so it'll show the first trip there, from Antioch to Seleucia, and then over to Cyprus, through Salamis, and then to Paphos.

It's interesting, here's Paul and Barnabas, and they go, the first thing they do is they go to Cyprus, and this is, we know from Acts 4.36, this is Barnabas' homeland. Barnabas is going back to his home turf. And it's interesting, We never have any description at all of Paul ever going back to Tarsus to work with and even establish a church there. Isn't that interesting? And yet here we have Barnabas, first place he goes, first place they send him is this island where he was raised, where he's from.

Real interesting connection there. How many of you are from the Denver area? We do have a few, right? Most not, huh? Interesting. We live, as they did then, in a culture where there's a significant portion of the population mobile. Moving around from one place to another. Real interesting.

They didn't even have U-Haul in those days. So here are these guys, they're coming back to Cyprus. Have you ever been back to a place where you were from and then tried to figure out Gee, what kind of reception did I get? It's interesting, when I'd been out of high school for 12 years, I went back to the same high school and taught. I lived through it, but it was an awful experience. Things had changed, and I couldn't believe I was doing what I was doing. I'd been a civil engineer, and I told them I took a 60% pay cut in order to come here. You must be out of your mind.

But the Lord, not too long, took us out of there. My brother, younger brother, who also went to the same school and is almost 10 years younger than me, is still there, lives there in the house that I built but never got to live in, and is a pastor at a church there.

So it's interesting, the Lord may, in one case, like Barnabas, appoint him, hey, the first place I'm going to send you is the place where you're from. And yet of Paul, who makes several missionary trips, as we'll see, he passes through Tarsus at best, but no indication at all. So it's interesting that the Lord does not always have a cookie cutter, you know, rubber stamp pattern in the way that he carries about ministry. He may send you back to the place where you were from, or the background that you have, or he may not. It's very interesting. The Lord may appoint certain things, and it might be very surprising where He puts us, where He sends us.

Let's think, why would it be of value for you to go back to some place where you're familiar, where you know everybody? Why would that seem to be of value? Yeah, Todd? Okay, there's some familiarity there, right? Yeah. And so you have a basis for communication with them. You know the story.

This little valley where my brother is, for example, has its own language, historically, called Bundling. And they actually taught English in school, and they taught Bundling in school. So here's this little valley in Northern California, and it has that unique characteristic about it. And so he's got some history and connection there that's kind of special and unique.

The Lord appointed him here to be where he's at. Instead, the Lord says, Vern, I want you to go here, and here I am in Denver. So the Lord can appoint people in different places. What would be an advantage of going to a place very different from where you've been raised? Why would that be of an advantage? Yeah, maybe you didn't like it. Okay, it might be one reason. Good. Think of any others. Ah, yes.

What was the reaction to Jesus from some who said, isn't this the son of Mary and Joseph? Isn't this the carpenter's son? Didn't he grow up right along with us? How can this person be that kind of guy? There can be a reaction on the part of people that instead of seeing you as you are now, They put you back into the mold that they saw you in. Yes. Good point.

May I suggest also that at times the Lord may put us out of our elements so that we trust Him. Put us out of a place where we've got all the background, where it would be easy to fall back upon the things that we say, oh, I've got this covered. I'm familiar. I know what it takes and I've got what it takes. And instead, instead to say, Lord, this is really something I can't pull off. You've got to do it. So there may indeed be the Lord's reason for that as well.

Okay. Now, something else here. We've got a guy who is included in this group named John, also called Mark. And in order to clarify it, some people just say John Mark. Okay. And we've got several different things on the Book of Acts. I'll let you take a look at that because there are several different references. It is thought that it is John Mark's mother who had the place called the Upper Room where the Apostles also met.

There's a reference there in Acts 12.12 to that room. So if those are indeed all the same places, it would be a 12.12 reference. There would be also possibly the Acts 1 place where they were meeting, and then also the Last Supper. So all those places may have been one and the same John Mark's mother. Let's take a look at page 2 here. Here's Barnabas, Saul, John, Mark.

They leave port there, Seleucia, and they head for the Cyprian port, Salamis. You can easily see that as they're going along this road between Salamis and Paphos, that while we don't have explicit description, that they would also stop along the way and share the gospel there too, right? It would make sense. So they may have stopped at various towns and cities along the way, and also shared the gospel just as they had been, but it isn't explicitly recorded for us. Now, they got to Paphos here, the provincial capital, and they were opposed though they're trying to see this proconsul, Sergius Paulus. They were posed by a man named Bar-Jesus, that means like son of Joshua, also known as Elimath. He was called a Jewish false prophet.

Now, real interesting, when you get among the Greek-speaking peoples, they often times turn Judaism on its head. Judaism, the Jews were by law not allowed to be involved in magic and necromancy, communicating with the dead, a lot of the wizardry and that sort of thing. They were prohibited from being involved with that. But when you go into the Greek and Roman culture, the Jews oftentimes were placed in a position of being magical because they were Jews.

We even have a record of people faking being Jews because it gave them better marketing appeal as they went among these various people, kind of marketing their magic. So, Elimus here, from what we can tell, appears to be a true Jew, but using that as a launching point for his magical behaviors.

This is a Jewish false prophet and magician. We've seen it already in Acts 8, 9 through 24, where here's among the Samaritans some of the same kind of element. We're going to see it again in Acts 19, where they'll talk about the Jewish high priest, the seven sons of Sceva. There's no Jewish high priest in Ephesus, but that's one place we're going to see it.

It's part of that same pattern where you get Jews in the Greek and Roman lands, and they would oftentimes get cast in the position of being Magicians of some kind a very odd cultural phenomenon. It's caught entirely contrary to law, but the Greeks and Roman Greek and Roman cultures oftentimes put the Jews in that mold, okay Then we see the path of their travels on this accompanying map they go inland to sit in Antioch and And the reason that they had several Antiochs, just like I think initially there were over a half dozen places called Alexandria. And so you had to end up differentiating.

This is Cydia is the region. And so that in order to clarify it, Cydia and Antioch is what they called this place. One point I'd like to make that I don't think I got in here, and that is you'll find mentioned in this passage about prominent women. And you say, well, why do I mention the prominent women? We're going to find it comes up again in Acts chapter 16. And here's why.

In Sidi and Antioch, that region, and over around in Philippi and Thessalonica, those were areas of exception for the social and legal structure regarding women. Most of the Roman Empire Women were minimally allowed to own property and have businesses, things of that sort. They were not allowed to participate in government. It was just contrary to law and culture.

But, the city of Antioch is one of the places, as you read through the passage, you'll see an exception, because it mentions the prominent women, and also in Acts 16. So what we find is the exceptions in the Roman Empire Luke mentions exactly at the right places. It fits the historical facts that we have. So when we see that, take note of it, it's not incidental. Luke mentions it because it is fitting to the culture and laws of that particular area.

One example we'll encounter is Lydia. Remember it was the first convert there in Philippi? Lydia was a woman, right? And she had enough to invite some people to stay with her, some kind of household, and was able to offer some hospitality there. She had a business, which ordinarily in the Roman culture the women would not have.

But it's because Luke, writing either from first-hand personal testimony, or by writing by those who were eyewitnesses was able to establish this record based on historical fact and not something made up. It fits the places that we know that this was culturally and legally the pattern. So one of the things we see here, Many of the people well aware that in Israel there were Pharisees and Sadducees. It was the Pharisees who were the more missionary about their beliefs. Once you get outside of Israel, you don't find Sadducees. That would be a rarity. Why? Because the Sadducees didn't go out in a kind of a missionary mindset.

It was the Pharisees that were missionary and went out into the Gentile lands establishing synagogues and setting up Jewish synagogues in the various towns and places where they went. This word synagogue, interesting, here's a Greek word that the Jews adopted and still use today. They have synagogues now, right?

So here's this Greek word, it means to lead together. So these gatherings would include ethnic Jews and God-fearing Gentiles, and you will see as we read through the accounts and acts those kinds of references. You'll hear about Jews, and you'll hear about God-fearing Gentiles, or sometimes it'll be translated proselytes. And that's what that is. It's Gentiles who have kind of come through the Jewish door, if you will. So you're going to see both of those, okay? All right.

So here's Saul, he speaks to the people at the synagogue, he recounts the history of the Jewish people, and then God's faithfulness. Then Paul presents Christ as the fulfillment of God's faithfulness. Christ is indeed the Son of God, and then telling about his death, burial, and resurrection. One of the things we ask the question, what's the gospel? What are the things that you need to believe in order to be saved? and it's Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that he died and was buried and raised again on the third day. Do you believe it? Then you're saved. So what did he do? He presented that Jesus was the Son of God in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies and that he died and was buried and was raised. So that's what he did. He went into the synagogue and presented the gospel.

That's exactly what we see recorded there. So then in Acts 13, 38 and 39, Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, that through him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the law of Moses. Now that was the shocking part. Among Jews, I mean, what are you going to do? You're going to say, hey, we've got the law, boy, here it is.

Study it. Dig into it. Absorb it. Soak it up. But what's he going to do? He's going to come along and tell them, you could not be freed from sin. You have forgiveness of sins. How? Believing. That's it. It's that simple. He lays out the gospel before them. Spells it out there. Okay. I see a fan going on here. How about if I open a window or two? Feel free to use the fan, but I'm in I guess what that's doing is giving me clues here that maybe we're not getting enough air in here. Excuse me a minute. James, you might want to open that one up back there if you would. Okay. Now we've got these questions before us.

Some have said that Antioch was a model church. Should we use the descriptions of Antioch in this passage and in subsequent passages in Acts as the model church simply on the basis of what is described in Acts? On what basis do we say that it's a model church or not? One of the points that we've brought up, and of course this question is for you to think about now. We're not going to answer them yet. But, one of the things we've mentioned is that Acts is a story of transition, isn't it? This is recording what happened. But what we see there is not by itself automatically a pattern.

So, you know, I've seen several people say, oh boy, this is a great model church. And I mention myself, this is exciting stuff. This is neat to see some neat things happening in this church. And yet, To what extent is it a model, and on what basis do we say it's a model? So, something to think through, check out on your own. Then the other question there, what should be different now, if anything, from the church at Antioch in the first century?

What were the two kinds of gifts that we see mentioned there, that we talked about earlier? These five guys, they had what gifts? Pardon? Prophets and teachers. Is there anything different now than then that would make this not automatically a model? So, check that out. Think that through. Question two. The passage starts off with five men being presented as prophets and teachers.

Do any of them have others' roles in and outside of the church that we know of? It should be other roles. Correct that? Did any of them have other roles in and outside of the church that we know of? If so, what do you know about these other roles? It says they were prophets and teachers. Were there other things that they carried out besides just being prophets and teachers? What did Barnabas do outside of being one of those? What did Paul do outside of just being a prophet or a teacher? Did he have any other gift or role outside of that?

So, take a look at that, examine that, see what you come up with. Now the third one, Bar Jesus, this Elimas here, was a magician, and magic was certainly viewed negatively in the passage, and again in Acts 19. We see in Acts 19 that they're actually burning magical documents. And they even added up the monetary value. They'd pumped a lot of money into this. We're not talking about a few coins here. Should believers avoid involvement with and support of everything that's called magic? Why or why not? If you go to a David Copperfield show, is that sinful to the max? And if you say yes, why? And if you say no, why? So give that some thought. Think about that.

As we're looking at this, and we're basically looking at what's oftentimes called, and you see it on the map, Paul's first missionary journey. At this point in time, he's not even called Paul yet, is he? He's still called Saul. We're beginning to see, and we'll continue to see next week as we move on into the next chapter, the latter half of Paul's first missionary journey, even the very first one, and we'll see how things get carried out.

As you look at this, I think it's interesting to put yourself in Barnabas' shoes, put yourself in Paul's shoes, or Toga's, or however you want to think about it. Put yourself in their place. And think of what this is like. You don't have this book of Acts to look at. You know to some degree what the rest of the story is, right? They don't. Imagine putting yourself in their place.

What are you learning as you're going? What are you finding out? How are you being changed by the very process that the Lord is putting you into? And think through, as we've been asking from time to time, what do they understand? And what do they not yet understand?

This is amazing stuff. They are learning day by day. They are learning new things as they go. This is a church in transition. And it's not just a church in transition, but it's individuals in transition, making discoveries. Making discoveries as we step into the places that they're stepping into. Amazing things to discover at each point. What is the Lord going to do next? How is this going to work out? Is the Lord just going to open all the doors and everybody just going to welcome the gospel with open arms? Do they know the answer to that yet? Not necessarily. Do they know, oh, as we walk into this place, people are going to receive it with open arms, but this other places, they're not. They don't know that yet, do they?

In Acts 17, we'll see that the Bereans were more noble. They examined the scriptures daily. They compared things to scripture, right? Other places, not. It says they were more noble. So some were less. So you've got differences of reaction, differences of response.

They didn't know when they walked into a place, what's it going to be like here. This is an amazing learning lesson for them and for us to be able to step into it and realize the things they're discovering for the first time is phenomenal stuff. This was exciting times. Scary sometimes too, but exciting. Questions or comments here? Yes? No? Yeah? Tom? Ah, okay.

Tom's asking the question, is it vaguely probable that Lucius is Luke, Dr. Luke, among this list of teachers? Thoughts on that? Yeah, that's a good question, the one I didn't ask. But are there Are there reasons to think that that could be? What does it say about Lucius? What do we see there in the handout that says about Lucius? Well, let's see. That brings up an interesting question.

Is Dr. Luke Jewish? You say you're thinking not. I would suggest for you, and I'll have you look this up, there's one place where Luke is referred to as Luke the Beloved Physician. Look in the context and you'll see there's a differentiation of a group of people who are Jewish of Paul's Jewish background and those who are not.

See which group he's in. Take a look at that. I'll leave that for you to look up. So that's one question. Is he Jewish? Maybe not. Any other thoughts on this? Do we have any other clues or indications? Is this Lucius identified with Dr. Luke? I'm glad you brought that up. That's a good point. He says where he's from, which is where? Cyrene. Okay. All right. And so that would be interesting. We have no other indication that Dr. Luke was from Cyrene, although frankly, we have no explicit indication of scripture as to where he's from.

I'll share these pieces of information. There is a tradition outside of scripture that Dr. Luke was from Antioch. It's outside of scripture, so it doesn't have the reliability of scripture, but that's one piece of information. So that would make an interesting connection, although as far as we can tell, these five guys were not from Antioch. So that would be one piece of information.

The other thing is that there are indications only by implication, not by definite statement, that Luke was either from or spent a fair amount of time in Philippi. He uses language that talks like somebody talking like a local. So, interesting. And it may only be that he went to medical school there, because there is a medical school in Philippi.

So, some interesting clues there. That would be one to check out. Thanks for asking that, Tom, because I think that's something where we've got several pieces of information to bring together. The other thing for you to look up is look up the Greek behind Lucius here, and look up the Greek behind Dr. Luke. You can check those out. We've got interlinears here. So you can check that out and see if they're a match.

It sounds close, but we've got a match there. They're different in the Greek. Similar, but different in the Greek. Slightly different. Slightly different names. Is it possible that those two are somehow equivalent? Anyway, I'll let you check that one out. That's a good one. Other questions or thoughts or observations here on this passage? I've got one to throw at you.

How do they determine to go to these places? Do we have any indications as to how it was determined that these are the places that they go to? When they were sent or as they were going? Do we have any indications as to how it was determined? You're going to go here and then go here and then go here. As you can look at that map that we have on the back of the section, they went to, you know, this kind of circuitous path How did they figure out how to get there? Was it mapped out right out front when they were sent from Antioch? Or was it something they figured out as they went? And either way, how did they figure it out? How did they decide it?

Do we know about that? Yeah, Todd? We will encounter that. I think I know what you like, a message to come to Philippi was one of them. We'll take a look at that. I think it's a good question for us to examine because it has also to do with the question in our own lives, how do I determine God's will? How do I determine God's will?

Here's Ruth. She's got an interview in her recent past here over the last week. Looking forward to another one tomorrow. Make it others. How does she decide what God's will is? So it has relevance to that, doesn't it? Yeah. How do I figure this out? So we'll take a further look at that and keep asking that question as we go. Because it's an important one. Alright, any other thoughts, questions, comments? I think I'll open up at least one more window for cross ventilation. Alright, any other thoughts? Going back to chapter 12, on the first question, you have your own restrictions versus giving the order. Do you feel like the rulers have a guideline that they're supposed to follow too, and that they come out of that on their own?

To answer that really fairly would require studying that Romans 13 passage. What's interesting and what's clear is the Lord has put certain authorities in place and the Lord can remove certain authorities. Can't he? The Lord has not chosen to have just authorities and fair authorities at every particular situation. Sometimes people have endured horrible authorities for a period of time. What the Lord makes clear, here's Jesus before Pilate, and Jesus doesn't say very much to Pilate, but the one thing he does say is, you would not have any authority at all if God had not granted it. God is the one who grants authorities.

And yeah, what is clear is we're called to be subject to the governing authorities, and yet the governing authorities are not without direction as to what ought to be their character. A number of, for example, the Proverbs are directed to those who have a position of judges or authorities and is directing them to make fair judgment and not to be biased and swayed. It's a lot of the Old Testament law. told the Jews not to be biased and swayed. They gave them explicit things to make sure that they stayed fair and objective. So yeah, there's direction both ways.

But what's interesting is that when Paul wrote that in Romans 13, the Romans certainly had a great many horrible leaders. And what's interesting, there wasn't an instant call, you go rebel against this guy because he's awful. Each of the Roman leaders, the Roman emperors, claimed to be a deity. We know that. We know that they had temples in place and people were required, later on they had to get a certificate certifying that they'd actually been in the temple and had worshipped the emperor. allowed all sorts of sexual sins left and right. Murders were committed and all sorts of injustices carried out.

And yet there was not a call to rebel against them because of it. So, real interesting. There is direction given to those authorities. We are given explicit places where a refusal of the authority is given. Like we've seen in Acts. Peter says, you know, hey, we're not going to stop telling the gospel because God has told us to do this. So there are explicit places where we're called to disobey the authority because God's the higher authority. But that is not necessarily just because the authority is unjust.

Yeah, Todd? Sure, I mean, just like we saw with Herod there in chapter 12, there was a misstatement way outside of the truth as to what the character of that leader or emperor was. They would call Herod, in chapter 12, they would call him a god. That's what they called all the emperors. They were a deity. And they didn't mind what other deities you worshipped as long as you included the emperor as one of them. The Jews, by the way, were the only ones excluded from that requirement.

Other thoughts, questions? Yeah, it is interesting. It is interesting. I'm glad you pointed that out because it's interesting with the various traditions that came up later. Here, Peter, even though in subsequent centuries, the second and third century, it was considered to be kind of super spiritual to be a martyr, as Josiah pointed out.

And yet, and yet, here, Peter could have just said, Hey, guys, I got out, but I want to come back and get under your tutelage here. He didn't do that. We saw earlier that there was an attempt to bow to Peter. Remember at Cornelius' house at Caesarea? Bow down to Peter. Peter says, get up. And of course in our own era we have the Pope claims to be a successor of Peter. I know it says that multiple times even in the Roman Catholic Catechism. But here's the supposed first pope, and what does he say? Don't bow to me.

Interesting. Yeah, it's the very behavior, including what doesn't happen, that's a denial of some of the things that came up later by tradition. Good point. Good point. It's valuable to not only see what is there, but also what isn't there, including what Josiah just pointed out.

Okay, we're out of time. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this, thank you that you've given us this account so that we can see this inspired account of how you have worked in the lives of men and women through the course of the beginning of the church here. And how people began to learn day by day the things that you were to do differently in the church. Things not heard and not done before. And we thank you for these things that have been revealed, and we'll continue to see in the weeks and the months ahead. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.