Meditation on the Text of the Week

As Meek as a Lamb, as Hard as Steel

And now, Lord, take note of their threats, and grant that Thy bond-servants may speak Thy word with all confidence.
Acts 4: 29

People who sit in darkness have very little, if any, understanding of what the Bible really is. They cannot help but see it through the glasses of their Unbelief. To them, at best, it is just one more religious book amongst many, possibly to be respected because of its age or significance in shaping human culture. At worst, it is disparaged as a book of superstitious fables and a monument to the collective ignorance of ignorant ages.

But the Bible remains what it always has been: the very Word of the Living God. Every syllable, every clause carries behind it the eternal and infinite integrity of the Lord Himself. Therefore, the Bible is powerful—not in the sense of some shamanistic divination such as tea-leaves or bones—but in the sense that God has bound Himself to His Word to carry it out and apply its truth to mankind.

When the Word of God comes to a people in the Spirit—which means that the Spirit of God is removing the glasses of Unbelief and is causing men to see and believe the truth of God—usually those who remain in Unbelief react with great hostility and anger—particularly those who control the structures and institutions of power at the time. This is understandable insofar as the powerful of the day find they are confronted with a Power beyond their control or influence. The implicit threat to their power base and the Unbelief upon which it depends usually generates great enmity against the Christians.

Thus it was that Caiaphas, High Priest of the Jewish people, declared that it was politically expedient that the Messiah had to be executed for the sake of everyone else. What Caiaphas meant, of course, is that killing the Lord would preserve the power base of his faction. The following conversation, recorded in the Gospel of John, provides the prototype which has applied when the powerful of the earth are confronted by a Power over which they have no control, and their subjects are turning from Unbelief to belief in the Lord as revealed in the Bible.

Therefore, the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council, and were saying, “What are we doing? For this man (Christ) is performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

But a certain one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.”

Then, John adds:

Now this he did not say on his own initiative; but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation; and that not for the nation only, but that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on they planned to kill Him.

John 10: 47—53

Caiaphas was not only a prophet, he was also a prototype of how political leaders and governors in places of Unbelief respond and react when the Word of God comes with power amongst their subjects. There are the inevitable warnings, threats, intimidation, fines, seizing of children and property, imprisonment, and eventually murder. But none of these suffice. For the Word of God represents and is controlled by the infinite, eternal and unchangeable God. His Word accomplishes what He determines, the opposition of the powerful of the earth notwithstanding. When God converts a soul from Unbelief to Belief there is no power of earth that can successfully gainsay or prevent the conversion.

So, if Caiaphas provides a prototype of how kings and princes of the earth take their stand against the Lord and His Messiah, our text for this week provides a prototype of how God's people are to respond to their threats and intimidation.

Firstly, there is the formal action of asking the Lord to deal with those who oppose. Lord, note their threats. Mark them. When facing opposition, particularly political opposition the citizens of Jerusalem are not to respond in kind, deploying the venal weapons of the enemy. Instead they ask the King of all kings to “sort them out”.

Secondly, they pray for continuing empowerment from God to carry on doing exactly what they have been doing—which is to proclaim the Word of God with all confidence and boldness—that Word which tears down nations and shatters the rock.

Thirdly, they pray that as they do this, God might accompany the Word of God with power—performing healing, signs and wonders. The particular signs and wonders which belonged to the apostolic age—signs which authenticated the Word and the Apostles as God's authoritative and inspired spokesmen, and which warned Israel of imminent judgment and destruction (which eventually came in AD 70—have ceased with the passing of that age.

Nevertheless there are signs and wonders which continue to attend the powerful application of the Gospel to human hearts to this day. Central amongst them is the powerful transformation of broken lives coming out of death to life and of pointed and powerful answers to prayer. There is often a sense that people are in the very presence of God and that they stand upon holy ground. Things are happening far above and beyond what they could ask or think.

This is how the Kingdom comes. These are the weapons of our warfare. They are powerful for the tearing down of every fortress and edifice raised up against the Lord and His Anointed.