True Confession

Acts 4:1-4 The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. 2 They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. 3 They seized Peter and John, and because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. 4 But many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand.
 
WE cannot know the anger in the ruling Jews’ hearts. They had worked so diligently to defeat and destroy Jesus. Everything was nicely settled when the blasphemous rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, was entombed. His threat to their power was defeated!
   But then these unschooled men from Galilee, John and Peter, roused the crowd with a remarkable healing of a lame man. Was this real? The Pharisees had rejected Jesus’ healings as the devil’s work: Mark 3:22 And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.” Even worse in the rulers’ view was that John and Peter were preaching Jesus was raised from the dead! The authorities had to do something to stop them. So they did what sin always does: they locked up the truth. The persecutors put the apostles in jail…kept them from the crowds. That stopped them.  
   But the temple authorities could not stop the Spirit from the crowd. No power could stop the church. Jesus had told his apostles, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:18-19)
   Jesus singled out Peter because Peter had voiced the disciples’ belief in Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” (Matthew 16:16) Jesus did not say he would build his church on Peter. Instead he declared he would build his church on faith in the true identity of Jesus. Nothing can stop the church as it confesses, “Jesus is the Savior, the Son of the Living God, resurrected, ascended and coming again.”
   It did not matter that John and Peter went to jail. The church ultimately is not founded and grown solely on human effort. God grew his church that night to 5,000 people because hundreds of anointed people in the temple courts confessed their faith in Jesus.
   Confess who Jesus is. Worship him. Submit to him. Love him. The central truth of Jesus must be the central doctrine of his church.