MERRY WEDNESDAY BY PARRIS
“For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” Act 4:20
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE OBEDIENT DISOBEDIENT? My response to “Let us Worship” and to our city. “Now as they spoke to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came upon them, being greatly disturbed that they taught the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them, and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening.” Acts 4:1
Peter and John were looked down on as poor, ignorant fishermen. They became a little army with tremendous resolve. The world has never seen a transformation like that. “The earthly government commanded them not to do what God had directed them to do. In a conflict of this kind there is only one course, that is, to obey God.” People Commentary
The love of Christ becomes morally irresistible and compels us to pursue a course where “we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard”. People Commentary goes on to say; “Christianity has been treated as criminal, because of its beneficence to bodies and souls. So, in the first round of the world-long battle between the persecutors and the persecuted, the victory is all on the side of the latter. So it has been ever since, though often the victors have died in the conflict. ‘The Church is an anvil which has worn out many hammers,’ and the story of the first collision is, in essentials, the story of all.”
The beauty of it all, we are not alone; even the high priest when they looked at Peter and John realized they had been with Jesus. His presence goes everywhere we go and carries us to our desired destination; he is with us in our various labors throughout the day and sits with me while I compose this. His presence encircles me and causes me to speak out as if “fire were shut up in my bones”. “A soul habitually in contact with Jesus will imbibe sweetness from Him, as garments laid away in a drawer with some preservative perfume absorb fragrance from that beside which they lie.” (People Commentary)
Peter’s words take rank with the ever-memorable sayings of mighty heroes; that he must ‘obey God rather than you,’ his words join with endless rubble of ignorant men that are obedient disobedient. The full river can never be dammed up. After Peter and John were released, signs and wonders broke out and there came an extraordinary shaking of the place with the Holy Ghost. Thats what happens when the people of God become a hammer!