The Irritating Gospel Text: Acts 4:1-4
Introduction: The Unstoppable Word
The book of Acts is the record of the Holy Spirit blowing the doors off the hinges of a previously timid and huddled group of disciples. It is the story of the kingdom of God advancing, not like a quiet, creeping vine, but like an artillery barrage. And wherever the kingdom advances, two things happen, and they always happen together. The first is that dead men come to life. The second is that the men who are content with their deadness become greatly agitated. The gospel of Jesus Christ is never neutral. It never arrives in a city and finds a "live and let live" reception committee. It is a declaration of war, and it forces a choice. It saves, and it offends. It brings life, and it brings persecution. And we see this pattern established with crystal clarity right here at the beginning.
Peter and John, fresh from healing a man lame from birth and preaching a sermon that pinned the crucifixion of the Messiah squarely on the men of Jerusalem, are now continuing that work. They are speaking to the people, and the message is catching fire. But you must understand that when God lights a holy fire, the devil immediately starts organizing a bucket brigade. The opposition that rises here is not from the pagan Romans or the rowdy riffraff. No, the opposition comes from the religious establishment. It comes from the men in robes, the men with titles, the men who ran the temple. This is a critical lesson for us. The most potent opposition to the true gospel of Jesus Christ often comes from the respectable, religious men who have the most to lose when the real King shows up.
They were not upset by a generic, inspirational message about being a better person. They were not agitated by a call to civic improvement. They were agitated by a very specific, historical, and theological claim: resurrection from the dead, accomplished in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This was the nerve they touched. This was the intolerable doctrine. And it remains so today. You can preach a Jesus who is a good moral teacher, a revolutionary, or a spiritual guru, and the world will largely yawn. But the moment you preach a Jesus who shattered the gates of death, who is alive right now, and who therefore has all authority in heaven and on earth, you will find yourself in the same conflict as Peter and John. The resurrection is the ultimate proof of Christ's authority, and it is the doctrine that divides everyone.
The Text
Now as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to them, being greatly agitated because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them and put them in jail until the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who had heard the message believed, and the number of the men came to be about five thousand.
(Acts 4:1-4 LSB)
The Unholy Alliance (v. 1)
We see the opposition muster its forces in the first verse:
"Now as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to them..." (Acts 4:1 LSB)
Notice the timing. The confrontation happens "as they were speaking." The preaching of the Word is what summons the demons. As long as the church is quiet, respectable, and keeps its message contained within its own four walls, the establishment is perfectly happy to leave it alone. But when the church takes the message to the people, when it applies the Word to the public square, the establishment gets nervous. Peter and John were not holding a private Bible study; they were making a public proclamation.
And look who shows up. This is a coalition of the powerful. First, you have the priests. These are the religious functionaries, the men whose job it was to manage the temple system. They had a religious monopoly, and these uncredentialed Galilean fishermen were disrupting their business. Second, you have the captain of the temple guard. This is the muscle. He was the chief of the temple police, responsible for order on the temple mount. He represents the civil power, the strong arm of the establishment, tasked with keeping the peace and shutting down any unauthorized assemblies. He is the ancient equivalent of the chief of police being called in because of a disturbance.
And third, you have the Sadducees. Luke mentions them specifically because they are the theological engine of this opposition. The Sadducees were the liberal, aristocratic, theological modernists of their day. They were the deists of first-century Judaism. They controlled the priesthood, they were cozy with the Romans, and they denied anything supernatural. They denied the existence of angels, spirits, and most importantly, they denied the resurrection of the dead (Acts 23:8). They were the materialists. For them, this life was all there was. You can see why the sermon Peter and John were preaching would get under their skin.
The Great Agitation (v. 2)
Luke tells us the precise reason for their anger. It was not a misunderstanding. They understood the message perfectly, and they hated it.
"...being greatly agitated because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead." (Acts 4:2 LSB)
The phrase "greatly agitated" means they were thoroughly annoyed, vexed, and pained. This was not mild disagreement. This was a deep, visceral reaction. Why? Two reasons are given. First, "they were teaching the people." The establishment believes it has the exclusive franchise on teaching. They are the credentialed experts. Who are these uneducated fishermen to be instructing the crowds? This is a turf war. All entrenched bureaucracies, whether religious or secular, despise outsiders who come in and do their job better than they do, and for free.
But the second reason is the core of it. They were "proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead." This was the central offense. For the Sadducees, this was a direct assault on their core theology. They had built a comfortable, rational, non-supernatural religion, and here were Peter and John proclaiming the ultimate supernatural event. But it was worse than that. They were not just teaching a general resurrection at the end of time, a doctrine the Pharisees affirmed. They were proclaiming that this resurrection had already begun, right in the middle of history, in the person of a man the establishment had conspired to execute just a few weeks prior. They were saying, "The man you killed is alive. God has vindicated Him. And His resurrection is the proof that He is Lord and you are not." This is not just bad theology to them; it is sedition. It is a direct challenge to their authority and their entire worldview.
The Establishment's Only Answer (v. 3)
When a ruling class has lost the argument, when their ideas are being routed in the marketplace of ideas, they have only one tool left in their toolbox. And that is raw power.
"And they laid hands on them and put them in jail until the next day, for it was already evening." (Acts 4:3 LSB)
They cannot refute the message, so they arrest the messengers. They cannot answer the argument, so they silence the speakers. This has been the tactic of threatened tyrants from the beginning of time. When you hear the gospel being preached and see the establishment responding with censorship, de-platforming, and imprisonment, you should not be surprised. It is a tacit admission that they cannot win the debate on a level playing field. They lay hands on them. This is not a polite invitation. This is force. They are arrested and thrown in jail.
Luke, the careful historian, notes the time: "for it was already evening." This detail serves a practical purpose, explaining why a formal trial could not happen until the next day. But it also serves a theological purpose. The darkness is falling, and the representatives of the spiritual darkness are making their move. They are trying to put God's light into a dark prison cell. But as we will see, you cannot imprison the Word of God.
The Inevitable Harvest (v. 4)
The authorities think they have solved the problem. They have arrested the leaders and dispersed the crowd. But verse 4 shows us the glorious, ironic, and unstoppable mathematics of the kingdom of God.
"But many of those who had heard the message believed, and the number of the men came to be about five thousand." (Acts 4:4 LSB)
Here is one of the great "buts" of Scripture. The authorities act, "but" God's purpose is not thwarted. They shut down the sermon, but they could not shut down the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who heard it. While the preachers were being hauled off to jail, a revival was breaking out. The message had already hit its target. The seed had been sown, and it was bearing fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.
The gospel is not dependent on the safety and comfort of the preacher. The power is in the message itself, because it is the message of the resurrection, and the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is the one who raises dead sinners to new life when they hear it. The authorities can arrest men, but they cannot arrest the truth.
And look at the result. "The number of the men came to be about five thousand." On the day of Pentecost, about three thousand were saved. Now, after this one sermon, the number of men alone is up to five thousand. This means the total church, including women and children, was likely well over ten thousand people. In a matter of weeks, this small band of disciples had become a megachurch, and they did it by preaching a message so offensive that it got them arrested. The church was exploding. This is what happens when the resurrection is preached with boldness. It creates a crisis. It forces a decision. And many, many people believe.
Conclusion: The Uncontainable Christ
This short episode sets the pattern for the entire history of the church. The world system, particularly the religious establishment, will always be agitated by the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ, authenticated by His resurrection. They will be agitated that we dare to teach the people, bypassing their approved channels of information. And when they are agitated, they will resort to coercion and force. They will try to put the gospel in jail.
But the good news is that the gospel cannot be contained. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical fact that has unleashed a power into the world that no prison can hold and no authority can suppress. The same power that rolled the stone away from the tomb is the same power that converts sinners and builds the church. When the world arrests the preachers, God saves the hearers.
We must therefore take two lessons from this. First, we should not be surprised when the faithful preaching of the resurrection and lordship of Christ causes agitation. If your brand of Christianity is perfectly acceptable to the modern Sadducees who run our institutions, you are almost certainly doing it wrong. The gospel is supposed to be an irritant to the powers that be. Second, we must never be intimidated by their agitation. Their arrests and threats are signs of their weakness, not their strength. They are signs that the Word is hitting home. Our job is to do exactly what Peter and John did: speak the truth about the risen Christ, publicly and without apology, and then trust the Holy Spirit to bring in the harvest, even if we have to watch it happen from a jail cell. For the Word of God is not bound.