Living Under Persecution

From Lesson 206 of the Biblical Framework Series

Charlie Clough

In Acts 9, another passage you should keep in mind, the Damascus road experience of Paul. What did Jesus Christ say to Paul on the Damascus road? Here Paul is going along, what does he have in his hand? He has police orders to put Christians in jail; he’s killing Christians here. So here he is on the road to Damascus, the Lord appears to him and what does the Lord say? It blows his mind; Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me? Wait a minute, he’s looking up in heaven and he sees the Lord in heaven and the Lord is heaven is saying you’re persecuting Me. Paul isn’t reaching into heaven, who was Paul persecuting physically? Believers down here. I believe that the Damascus road experience in chapter 9 is the source of the whole idea that Paul got about the body of Christ. I believe that’s how God revealed the body of Christ to Him. I think it started right from the very first day that he saw the Lord Jesus Christ, that when he thought about it… Paul’s a brilliant person, and he’s sitting there reflecting on what the Lord said to him. And he says how can I be persecuting You? You’re in heaven, so if I’m persecuting You in heaven when I touch a believer on earth, what does that mean about the union between that believer on earth and the Lord in heaven? It means that somehow believers physically here on earth are in union with Jesus such that when somebody lays a hand on a believer they’re laying their hand on Jesus Christ. How’s that for unity? That’s Acts 9.

Now if you were Satan, how would you take advantage of this? You can’t get Jesus because He’s far above you, but if Jesus is unified with believers on earth, how can you get at them? How can you make Jesus feel pain? By persecuting believers. So in the Sudan where we have black Christians being slaughtered by black Muslims, where we have white atheists persecuting white Christians in various places on earth, it used to be communist states where that went on, where you have Semitic Arab Muslims killing off Arab Christians, wherever you see this it is a satanic attempt to hurt, to inflict pain and to cause grief to the person of Jesus Christ. That’s how serious martyrdom is on the earth. There’s more to it than just people dying; there’s more to it than this, there’s a big chess game going on behind the scenes. In one sense we as Christians can be very thankful for that. So I want to turn to how Christians experientially handle that problem.

This is a neat example of early Christians dealing with this martyrdom issue. Turn to Acts 4, this really isn’t martyrdom in Acts 4 but it’s a technique that the early Christians used and we ought to learn this because it may not be too many more years before we’ll be practicing this. In Acts 4 the problem is that Peter and John have gone in and they’ve healed somebody. What really ticked people off is that they didn’t just heal him; they had to go blabbering around the name of Jesus. They couldn’t do it in the name of religion, be ecumenical, all things to all men. They had to be this narrow fundamentalist type approach where they talked about the name of Jesus. Now watch the authorities here and watch what the Church did. Verse 15, here they are, these are the rulers, these are the guys that are pulling the plugs on the whole society here, these are the backroom boys that make political deals.

Verse 15, “But when they had ordered them to go aside out of the Council, they began to confer with one another,” good politicians, get the press out of the way, get people out of the way, then we can talk the real stuff in the smoke-filled rooms. They said, now what are we going to do with these guys, “For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place through them is apparent to all who live in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.” See they tried to do that, but this one they couldn’t keep quiet, this got on the 6:00 o’clock news. Verse 17, “But in order that it may not spread any further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to any man in this name.” Now watch how many times in this passage the word n-a-m-e shows up. Remember, what’s the “name” associated with? The ascended, seated Lord Jesus Christ; in that day it would be the authenticated true Messiah. Verse 18, “And when they had summoned them, they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus,” second time, “in the name.”

Verse 19, “But Peter and John answered and said to them, ‘Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge;’ [20] for we cannot stop speaking what we have seen and heard.” [blank spot, may read: verse 21, “And when they had threatened them further, they let them go (finding no basis on which they might punish them) on account of the people, because they were all glorifying God for what had happened; [22] for the man was more than forty hears old on whom this miracle of healing had been performed. [23] And when they had been released, they went to their own companions, and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them.”

Now watch what the Church does beginning in verse 24. This is super. Here’s a classic case of praying the Scripture back to God. Watch what these guys do. In verse 24, “And when they heard this, they lifted their voice to God with one accord and said,” now they begin to pray. Would you notice in verse 24, here they are under a pressure situation, they’re confronted by the authorities, they have no legal recourse, they have no lawyers on their side, they have nobody to go to court with, they’ve got no troops, no soldiers, no arms, they’re completely disarmed, don’t have any legal advice. So they go as helpless believers to the Lord in prayer. What is the first thing that they do, they pull out of the Framework. Notice, what was the first event in the Framework? Creation! Why? Because it’s the act of creation that defines God, God man and nature. Remember the doctrines; they all come out of creation. So what do they do first? They go back and they quote the Old Testament. “O Lord, it is Thou who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them.”

Why do you suppose they did verse 24? Let’s think about it, let’s get inside their heads because you’re going to have to do this some day and you might as well get your head straight. Why did they go back to creation in this kind of a situation? What does that do for them? Here they’re facing political power. What do they need to do? They need to have assurance of what? That God is in control of these people, these people are powerful people and I’ve got to know when I’m praying if I’m going to be stable and I’m not going to fall apart and turn into a whining crybaby over this thing, and be a nervous wreck and get my blood pressure up to 200 and something, what am I going to do? I’ve got to rest somewhere, so where do I put my feet? Where do I get a resting point? I go back to who God is. I go back to the fact that He is sovereign, He is righteous, He is just, He is loving, He is omniscient, He is omnipotent, etc. etc. etc. Go back to that essence of God, He is the Creator. And you can calm your soul very often doing this; it’s just a mental exercise to go through this. It takes you about two minutes to run through the attributes of God and it’s just like cleaning your soul, like an internal bath, nice warm bath and it calms you down because now it’s not you, it’s not this situation, it’s not that person. You can focus and rest on the God who has created, notice the last part of that quote; He has “made all things in them.”

Verse 25, having rested in the character of God they’re going to go on, they’re going to quote another Psalm, another passage of the Old Testament. So see how their Scripture controls their prayers. This is what it means when someone says praying the Scripture back to God, it’s not talking about the rosary or something here, this is not just blah-blah stuff. This means to think through the Scriptures and you quote the Scriptures back to God. Why does that work? Because God said it, you can at least be guaranteed your petition is going to be right if you based it on what He told you to think. So all they’re doing is protecting the design of their petition back to God by going back to the Scriptures. Notice, do you recognize where verse 25-26 is coming from? It’s a passage we’ve covered. If you have a study Bible look in the margin. Were does it come from? Psalm 2. We went back to Psalm 2 and we said Psalm 2 was used by the early Church to define the “Son of God,” one of Jesus’ names; it comes out of Psalm 2. Isn’t that interesting, they’re going right back to what we call a Messianic Psalm to deal with this issue.

The Messianic Psalm is quoted only in part; notice they don’t quote the part of Psalm 2 that talks about the King inheriting the world because that hasn’t happened yet. What has happened is there’s an objection against the King. Now verse 27, here’s the key of praying in faith, and this is a key that you grab hold of this and it will be a powerful stabilizing device in your life because what they do in verse 27 is take the Word of God and they connect it point by point with the circumstance. Watch how they do this. They don’t just quote the Bible, verses 25-26, they quote it but they understand it and in verse 27 they apply it.

Here’s what their explanation of it is? “For truly in this city there were gathered,” now where does that verb come from, look back in verse 26, see where “gathered together occurs in Psalm 2? They’re going to use the vocabulary of the Scripture they quoted to bracket and control the circumstance. This is what we call strategic envelopment; here’s the problem, some big mess that’s happened. And you’ve got to get a handle on this or you’re going to be flubbing all over the place. So you’ve got to get a handle on what’s going on, so what they’re going to do, they’re going to surround that problem with the Word of God and they’re going to crush it. This is the process, step by step they’re surrounding it.

Now look what they do. This is so cool how they’re doing this. Here they are, they’ve got the promises of God, they matched this part of God’s Word with this part of the problem, boom they connected it. Then they connected another part, see what they’re doing, they’re connecting things in their circumstance with things in that verse. They’re drawing the wires tight; they’re tightening up on this thing. Now what they do, because they started in the right place, because verse 24 is the Creator made all things, now see how they conclude, verse 28. These guys, these politically powerful men did “whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.” In other words, these guys meant it for evil but you meant it for good. There’s something good that’s going to come out of this. This is Rom. 8:28. Verse 28 is nothing but Rom. 8:28 in the context of acts 4. It’s the same concept, God is in control and Pilate may have thought he was the big boy on the block; Herod might have thought he was the big man on campus, but in the final analysis these guys are just doing what you’ve allowed.

Remember what Jesus’ words were in the trial, when the priest got really ticked off and he said answer me, I’ve got authority over you. What did Jesus say back to Him? You don’t have any authority over Me except that which God gives you. How’s that for a putdown. This is the way you put things down. Verse 28 is a knockdown verse. It’s a spiritually powerful club that can be used to suppress things. It’s a powerful tool. Verse 29 is the concluding petition out of this prayer, “And now Lord, take note of their threats, and grant that Thy bond-servants may speak Thy word with all confidence, [30] while Thou dost extend Thy hand to heal, and signs and wonders take place through the name of Thy holy Servant Jesus.” They go back to the “name.” What was their answer to the priest? Give me strength Lord so I can speak some more. Were these guys intimidated? The early church wasn’t intimidated because they had a lot of hot air and bologna people complaining. It wasn’t a threat to them; it really was a threat to them but they managed the threat. They responded to the threat; they crushed the threat in their soul first before their environment.

Notice the battle is in the mind. 90% of your suffering and my suffering occurs right here and the battleground is right here. The battleground in your life isn’t out there, it’s right here and this is the battleground they faced. This is a wonderful passage of Scripture to show how they managed the battle up here, so that when they went out in society they weren’t trying to be angry with these people. Don’t get the wrong picture. These guys did not belligerently seek a fight, they’re being very gracious, very courteous, but very determined. You can’t stop these people. This is what Jesus meant, “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against My Church.” Why? Because these people took it to God in prayer and they asked God, “give me boldness” and you can see at the end of verse 31 He did give them boldness, He answered their prayer all right.

So that’s the emergence of the Church, a powerful new thing, the body of Christ.