Understanding Unbelief
- David Fairchild
- May 6, 2007
- Series: Acts
INTRODUCTION
It is important to understand that the book of Acts is not merely a historical look at the early Church; it is also the instructional work which equips us to live out God's mission in our time.
Acts is the only eye-witness original source document for what happened within the early Church. People love to comment on what they think Christianity is and how it looks without ever going to the original source. Whenever we attempt to discern the truth about a particular person or historical event, we need to go after the original historical document and this is exactly what Acts gives us. This then teaches us who we are as the church and as individuals and how the model of the early life of the church becomes our goal as we live out the same faith in our day.
Thus far in this great book we have seen the first sermon, the first worship service, the first collective gathering from various nations, and this is the first persecution that breaks out. This is the first place we see the world react with hostility and hatred toward the early Church. Let's read the passage:
TEXT
Acts 4:1-20: "And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, 2 greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. 3 And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. 4 But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand. 5 On the next day their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, 6 with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. 7 And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?' 8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, 9 if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, 10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead--by him this man is standing before you well. 11 This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. 12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.' 13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. 14 But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. 15 But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another, 16 saying, ‘What shall we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. 17 But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name.' 18 So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. 19 But Peter and John answered them, ‘Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, 20 for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.'"
Wow, this is such a great passage. What we see here in this persecution illustrates what Jesus told us in John 15:
John 15:18-23: "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. 21 But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 Whoever hates me hates my Father also."
This is a frightening yet very important passage for us to consider as we desire to love our city and seek its welfare even though we know we'll be misunderstood, taken advantage of, and even hated.
What we learn is that unbelief of and opposition to the Gospel is not a simple thing but a complex thing. It is not a simple lack of something but the presence of something else. It's not just a lack of persuasion but a spirit of deep hostility and confusion. It is deep and pervasive.
Let's take a look at this passage so we can understand it. What we are shown in this passage is:
I-The depth of unbelief
II-The structure of unbelief
After we've looked at these two things we want to ask:
III-What difference does this make in my life? How does this influence us?
STUDY
I. The Depth of Unbelief
By depth we mean that it is far more than what it appears to be. Usually we think it is purely intellectual but the truth of the matter is that it is not; it is far deeper than that.
First, notice that the people who opposed Christianity had nothing in common intellectually except that they all hated Christ and His Gospel. For example:
Verse 1: "the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them"
Verse 5-6: "On the next day their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, 6 with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family"
We don't have time to go into the background of each of these people or groups but let me point out a couple of things.
Sadducees were the religions liberals of their day. They believed that religion and morality were necessary for civil order but they denied the truth claims of the Scriptures. They didn't believe in the supernatural, they didn't believe in miracles, they didn't believe in the resurrection, they didn't believe that the Bible was true, they didn't believe in the spiritual world. They were basically secular Jews. They were moral rationalists, religious liberals.
On the other hand you had the "teachers of the law" who were the Pharisees.
Pharisees were the fundamentalists. The Pharisees were hyper-religious. They believed in miracles, the resurrection, and the importance of believing the Bible is true. They were very legalistic and moralistic. They were more "mental" than they were "fun." They should be called "mentalists" in our day.
You also have in this passage the rulers of the, priests, the captain of the temple, etc.
So what do we have here? These are people who had nothing in common, they hated each other. They had no intellectual common ground at all. Yet they were absolutely united as a group by one thing, their hostility to the Gospel.
It is typical for individuals who don't believe the Gospel to say that the reason they don't believe is simple, "We are educated and modern people. There are things in the Bible we can not except now that the culture accepted back then. We now know..." It is posed as an intellectual problem but it's not.
People always say, "we now know," and they've been saying it for thousands of years. Every hundred years or so we think we've leap-frogged in our intelligence and have jumped up one rung on the evolutionary ladder. The problem is that every hundred years or so what was considered important and profound is considered outdated and silly.
What you think you now know which disproves Christianity is probably going to be proven false or simply silly for disbelief in a hundred years. A hundred years ago the leading secular thinkers of their day agreed that they didn't need God to create a great society. They would say, "we have science!" Science was supposed to fix all our problems and make us more moral, kind, gracious, and happy people. Has it? Have the sciences of anthropology, sociology and the empirical sciences made us a perfect society as they promised? No.
They assumed they would get rid of poverty, sickness, crime, injustice, and selfishness and all societies would look the same. This would do away with religion. You might think this sounds a little idealistic, naïve and a little silly.
Most secular thinkers today look at that idea of modernism 150 years ago and hate that idea. The hate the triumphalism and arrogance which marked thinkers 150 years ago. They say today that this kind of thinking is culturally imperialistic and naïve to make such claims. It is repudiated by thinkers of our day.
Yet one thing remains constant: though they are in intellectual disagreement with one another, one thing they hold in common is their hostility and hatred towards the Gospel. The critics of this century and the critics of last century have no common ground except that they despise Christianity.
What does this show? It means that you can't say that the reason you don't believe is "because of the modern knowledge I have now." Every century has its modern knowledge and says that the reason it can't be true is because of its modern view. Every century the popular modern view changes so we should be more humble about our objections today which will laughed at tomorrow.
To say "we're educated now" betrays a truth of the culture in which the Scripture was written. It was filled with many individuals who were highly intelligent. What do you do with Paul who was brilliant and Peter who was uneducated and both of them believe in the same Christ. Does anyone here really think they are a far deeper thinker than Paul? If so, you haven't really read what he's writing and you probably don't understand it.
How about Augustine, Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Bach, Newton, Wilberforce, Rembrandt, Edwards, and a multitude of other Christians who were incredibly deep thinkers and who were profoundly committed to Christ?
You see? You can't say, "well, intelligent people believe," or, "we now know." I say this not to boast in the fact that there are deep intellectuals in the history of Christianity, but simply to say that unbelief goes deeper than these objections.
It is not an intellectual thing; it's not based on modern knowledge, it's not based on the rational at all. This comes out most clearly in verse 2.
Verse 2: "greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead."
They were greatly disturbed and there was no emotional detachment here. They were infuriated by what was being taught. The word "disturbed" actually means to be deeply grieved and troubled, angered and stirred up inside.
Clarifying Pascal's Wager
This is the only way you can understand Pascal's wager. It wasn't necessarily written as a proof for the existence of God.
Pascal's wager basically teaches us that if a Christian is wrong in His belief in God, then it only costs him in finite ways: he may not have had as much fun as he could have had, etc. But if the unbeliever is wrong, then it costs him infinitely because it costs Him for eternity away from the presence of God in agony.
Pascal was saying that the believer can not empirically prove the existence of God by placing Him in a laboratory to be scientifically tested and proven, yet we believe and know He exists and judgment is coming. But, what Pascal was proving was that the unbeliever could not scientifically prove that God did not exist through the scientific method either, yet they believe that there is no God and no judgment. Pascal's point was, "who stands to lose most if they are wrong?" He was not trying to prove that God existed in this argument. He was making a point about disbelief.
The reason he posed this question was due to the relationship he had with his friends. Pascal was a brilliant mathematician, physicist, philosopher and theologian. And he ran in circles with the intellectually elite of his day. These individuals would dismiss his belief in God in a very cavalier way. He was simply making the point that they shouldn't dismiss it by saying, "Oh, that Christianity, nobody believes that, phhht!" They were disturbed and disgusted. "I'm a modern thinker, you can't really believe that nonsense," they would say. Pascal was responding by saying, "Hold on, before you blow it off you'd better think a bit more about what's at stake here. This is not just an intellectual problem, it's an emotional one."
Pascal knew that something was driving his friends to blow off the Gospel and it wasn't simply intellectual. It was irrational to dismiss it in such an emotional way, something else was at work. They were disturbed.
Unbelief is not the absence of something it is the presence of something else, namely a spirit of opposition. It isn't merely intellectual; it is emotional. This attitude of opposition and disturbed emotions drives us to be hateful of the Gospel.
That's the depth of unbelief. What's the structure of unbelief?
II. The Structure of Unbelief
This is pretty fascinating when we look at it. This next passage shows us the structure of unbelief. Let's look at the general principle of the structure and how it's illustrated here in the passage. It's a pretty great case study.
Let's go back to verse 2 again.
Verse 2: "greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead."
It says that they were greatly annoyed. Why? Because the Apostles were teaching the people. Why would they care? Let's look at verse 7.
Verse 7: "And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?'"
The emphasis in this sentence in on "you" in the Greek. They were saying, "Who do you think you are?" They key to this is in verse 13.
Verse 13: "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus."
Here's what's going on, in verse 11 Peter said: "This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone"
Peter proclaimed this boldly to them and they were astonished at his courage.
Everyone Has a Cornerstone
There is a principle that we need to consider when we look at this passage. Everyone has a bottom line, a center, a cornerstone of their life.
This is really important when we think about unbelief. Every one of us has a cornerstone. All of us have a center which is our life-system we have built to make sense of our lives and the world around us. It's a bottom line, a center; it is something from which we make our ultimate value. It becomes the basis for our security, our meaning in life, our value, and our wisdom to inform our lives.
Your cornerstone (the thing which you build your life upon) could be your education, your morality, your family, your possessions, your accomplishments, your career, or a variety of other things. This thing becomes the bottom line, the center of your life and guides your identity and what you do. It is your security and your confidence.
If your cornerstone is your career or your sophisticated education or your family, that becomes your great confidence. It's what helps you feel good about yourself and helps you look the world in the eye.
It also becomes your wisdom. It informs your whole life. It's how you view who the good people and bad people are. It's how you perceive what's wrong with the world. When you look at the world you have a theory about what's wrong with it. What you think is that if everyone had what you had the world would be fixed. In other words, if everyone had your center, the world would be a better place.
Jews and Greeks
Paul said that the cross was on offense to the Jews and Greeks. In the various communities around the Mediterranean there was a Greek and Jewish influence. The Jews and Greeks had a different cornerstone. They had a different center.
The Jews were a hard working, working class people who were also very moral. Today this may be the middle-class, Midwest, blue collar republican who is very patriotic, not very educated, but is a hard-worker and is very moral. Their confidence, their center, comes from the belief that they're hard working moral people. These individuals see themselves and being pretty good people. That's what holds them up in times of trouble. It's how they gain their identity and how they survive failures and heartaches. These individuals often pride themselves on their word and how they keep their promise. They are proud of the fact that they don't have a sophisticated education because they are straight shooters that tell it like it is. American is built upon this, though the number of people in this category is declining.
The Greeks were quite different. They were the sophisticated people. They were probably eating in outdoor cafés before they were popularized in France! They sat around and talked about philosophy and made sophisticated arguments because they were well educated and proud of their education. This is how they felt confident. They had their credentials and degrees and saw themselves as deep and profound thinkers. They would laugh at the uneducated laborers and wished all people were just like they were. They had their poets, philosophers and playwrights. This is like the French today. Perhaps this is why Americans and French don't get along. They have different bottom lines, different centers for their lives.
The Jewish people knew that what was wrong with the world was that people were not decent moral people who loved to work hard like them. The Greeks knew that what was wrong with the world was that it was uneducated and simple minded and should think more deeply.
Whatever people decide is the cornerstone of their life becomes their confidence, their security, their wisdom and their meaning for life.
Here's why the Gospel shakes these people. It isn't that the Gospel merely shakes them intellectually. We know that the Pharisees and Sadducees totally disagreed on the resurrection, but yet they were united in their hatred against Christianity. Why? Because the Gospel came and attacked their cornerstone.
The real problem was that their life-system was being shaken. The Gospel comes and points out your real cornerstone and says, "This is inadequate and here's why." Unschooled unlearned men like Peter and John, who were blue-collar simple fisherman, were part of the old pecking order of society. The old pecking order had no problem with you being a hard-working decent person but the ones at top were the sophisticated and educated who called the shots.
Here are these men who were shuffling around their culture in this old system, perhaps some of their persecutors even knew them. And now all of the sudden they have this great courage, this great boldness as they stand up and speak truth to both the elite as well as the common people of their day.
Peter, the one who denied Christ, was now proclaiming with a loud voice the beauty and splendor of Jesus Christ. He was preaching without credentials, teaching the people. Where did this confidence come from?
The old life-system from which Peter and John came had been smashed to pieces by the Gospel.
The Gospel came in to say, "all people are sinners." And it says it to the Greeks and it says it to the Jews. It comes to the Jew and says, "You might think you're moral, but do you realize that before you've been washed of your sins that even your best of works and righteousness are an utter moral failure and no better than the worst of pagan sinners." It says to the Greeks, "You might think you're profoundly intelligent, but without knowing Christ you have no access to true knowledge from God and therefore you are utterly ignorant and no better than the most uneducated peasant."
But if you believe in Jesus who has lived for you and died for you, you can be kings and priests, forgiven and washed, thoroughly cleansed, accepted by God. If you believe in the Gospel you can have access to the infinite Creator God who loves you and saves you to Himself and desires to lavish you with knowledge of Himself so that you might know Christ who is truth incarnate.
All of us fall short and only through faith in Christ can we be restored and renewed and see clearly. There's a way through Christ alone.
Whenever the Gospel comes to you, it doesn't just say, "you have to believe in the existence of God," which you respond to by saying, "sure, I have no problem with that, big deal." The Gospel comes after your cornerstone and shows you that what you've built your life upon fails utterly to carry the freight of you life. It can not hold up before God and will not sustain the weight of your life. The Gospel shakes you up as it attacks your center.
If you've built upon your career, or your family, or your education, or your looks, or your accomplishments, you're unstable. You're touchy. It's unstable because it's subject to your performance and circumstances. You can never rest.
How do you know your career won't end tomorrow? How do you know your children won't turn out like the Children of the Corn? How do you know that you won't get into an accident tomorrow and your looks are stripped from you? How do you know that the incredible paper you just wrote which is applauded in your field won't be debunked by someone younger and smarter than you tomorrow and all your peers will laugh at you? You see? You don't, so you're touchy, you have to protect it. You're always afraid if you've built upon anything else besides Jesus because you can't be sure.
But here's the beauty of Christ, and here's what's so attractive and unnerving about Christians: Christians are sure. It's their courage. This is what irritated the Pharisees and Sadducees; it was Christians' courage that bothered them.
A Christian is someone who says, "I know that God loves me. I know that I'm saved. I know that I know God." The Bible is full of this language, but the people who hear this can't stand it. It bothers those who have a different cornerstone for their life. Apart from Christ, every other person has to build their cornerstone upon their own performance and therefore they are never sure.
A Christian realizes that their cornerstone is not them, but another, and He will never fail. He perfectly succeeded and will never let them down. Because their cornerstone is not themselves, they are radically humbled. This means that though they are incredibly confident they are at the same time incredibly humble because it isn't their performance that centers their life.
From the outside, anyone who is sure looks like they're arrogant don't they? Christians are individuals who have been so radically humbled that their confidence should never be arrogant but humble, yet still overwhelmingly confident.
The reason the Gospel bothers us is because it comes in and wrecks our entire foundation because it shows us how impossible it is to keep up our lives. It breaks apart this old system of works and performance and causes us to be truly sure for the first time in our lives.
Why are people so nervous and touchy? Because their cornerstone is not Christ. For those who have this confidence it can appear to be foolish to those who do not. It looks like arrogance but yet it has a sense of gratitude and appreciation instead of being critical and judgmental towards others. If all our cornerstones are inadequate and Christians base theirs on Christ, there really is no room for boasting or self-promoting is there?
Cain and Abel
Here's how we know we really understand the Gospel: Cain and Abel.
1 John 3:12-13: "We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you."
Cain comes to give his offering to God as he points to himself by giving to God the work of his hand as a tiller of the field. Abel comes and slays an animal as I'm sure he remembered what God told his mom and dad about the promised one coming to defeat the enemy and deliver us from him and from evil by being wounded. Abel points to sacrifice of this animal, Cain points to the work of his own hands.
Abel looks to God's grace; Cain looks to his performance. Abel knew God accepted him (this is what Hebrews 11 shows us) but Cain wasn't sure. Cain hated Abel, but Abel loved Cain.
How do you know if you really trust the Gospel? Cains hate people who are sure, Abels love people who are not sure. Cain's heart was closed in hatred towards Abel, Abel's heart was open to Cain's in love.
Do you get offended when someone says, "I'm sure God loves me and accepts me"? If so, you're a Cain. That's the reason these people were so upset at Peter and John and their preaching. Their preaching contradicted their entire life-system and was trying to dig up and destroy their cornerstone.
"How could you be so confident? How could you be so sure? I hate that!" This is their attitude when Peter preached what he did in verse 12.
Verse 12: "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."
Cains are going to react emotionally and hate the confidence we have in Christ. It isn't intellectual; it's emotional and personal because Christ shows us all how inadequate our center is.
This is the one thing about Christianity with which most people have such a hard time. They say, "I am happy to accept everything else about Christianity, but that Jesus is the only way that someone can be saved." They might even go so far as to say, "If you can just accept that all people can reach God if there a good person, I would become a Christian."
If Peter and John would have been preaching that all roads lead to heaven, they wouldn't have had the confidence and boldness they did, and they wouldn't have been opposed by the leaders.
If someone wants to change that one little nuance, what they really want is to change the whole thing. The reason Peter was able to get up, unschooled and ordinary, was because they knew it wasn't their good deeds or education that saved them. Nothing saves but Jesus!
When someone says that "all good people can make it to God," what they are really saying is, "good works are enough." Peter and John would never had had the courage to stand up to the religious bullies and proclaim what they did if they thought that we can all make it by our goodness and works. They knew they weren't good.
If being a good person is enough, then I can't even preach to you today, and neither would Peter and John have been able to because we realize that we're not good people and pure at heart on our own. If we all knew our hearts, none of us would ever try to center our lives upon ourselves.
That's the structure of unbelief.
III. What does this mean? What difference does it make in my life?
When you begin to understand that unbelief isn't just a lack of persuasion but a deep abiding hatred towards the idea that our good deeds can not save us, and that there is only one good person, Christ Himself, you can begin to change.
Do you know why you're so touchy if you're a Christian? Do you know why you're so unhappy and disappointed? Do you know why you're so stressed and anxious? I do, because it's the same reason for me. You might say, "I believe the Gospel" but you really don't. At least not enough for touchiness, criticism, anxiety and disappointment to go away. You believe it enough to be positionally saved but you have yet to believe it enough so that it begins to fundamentally change your life in profound ways.
The main reason for your touchiness and critical attitude is the same reason for the touchiness and critical attitude of unbelievers in this world! It is fundamentally a disbelief in the Gospel. Inside your heart there is unbelief. You say, "I believe the Gospel," but you don't, or else you wouldn't be trapped in the anxiety or frustration that you're trapped in today. Peter says this in 2nd Peter 1.
2 Peter 1:5-9: "For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins."
2 Peter 1:12: "Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have."
We don't need new information to change; we need to have the Gospel which we do know become fresh to us. This is why Peter is saying that he will never cease to remind you of these things. Why? Because there is resident in all of us a disbelief that has to be constantly torn up by the Gospel.
If your fears are not being dealt with, if you're not becoming more patient, if you're not learning to love those who are hard to love, if you're not changing the way that you think about yourself and others, you need to be reminded again and again of the Gospel and believe it in a fresh way because unbelief is still there.
You see, it's not just out there somewhere. It's not just that the world is unhappy because of unbelief; you are. That's the reason why the most mature Christians go back again and again to the Gospel. They realize their problem is not primarily a need for new knowledge but that the knowledge they have would be new to them every day.
Lastly, if you understand unbelief you're going to see that that isn't just the world's main problem but ours as well. Also, we need to understand that if we are going to believe in this kind of Gospel and this kind of Christ with this kind of courage, we will be persecuted.
2 Timothy 3:12: "Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted"
People do not hate you for being good alone. It is a life in Jesus Christ. It's a life that is devoted to Christ which will become offensive to others.
If you're sure that God loves you because of Christ, and you know you know God and that you're secure in Him, someone will hate you. Somebody somewhere is going to hate that. If nobody is coming after you, if nobody is persecuting you, you're being a coward. You're not letting others know you're a Christian.
This doesn't mean we bring on persecution because we're arrogant jerks. This is not persecution; this is just a proper response to people who are religious jerks.
We're talking about the kind of persecution that comes from speaking the Gospel and loving Christ enough to show that it not only makes a difference in your life, but that it can change everyone else's life around you. It is truth and love-not just truth, not just love-it's both.
If you live as Christ lived, both loving and truthful, you'll be persecuted in some form or another. If you're never persecuted, you're being a coward. But when you are persecuted, if you know that you're only saved by what Christ did and not what you do, that you're sinful and needed a savior, you'll love them like Abel instead of hate them like Cain.
When you understand unbelief in this way, you'll be gentle because you'll realize that it isn't just intellectual. They are confused, they are offended, they are hurt, and they are anxious because their life-system is being shown for what it is: inadequate. This will remind you of Christ and His tenderness. It will remind you that when Christ was ridiculed and reviled, He didn't pay back His enemies.
Instead, what did Jesus say upon the cross? Father, forgive them for they do not know what they're doing. You can be like Christ and like Stephen because you realize that Christ's prayer was not in general, it was for you. You didn't know what you were doing and His prayer was answered because your Father forgave you.
Don't you see that the unbelief of those caught in the trap of sin and of their center is what is causing them to do what they do? Forgive them for they don't understand, they don't belief, they don't know what they're doing.
Every Christian knows it was our sin which put Christ upon the Cross and it should cause us to live with boldness and humility to a world that will probably not understand.
How did the early Christians act when gored by lions in the arenas? They loved God and considered it a joy to be persecuted for Christ's sake.
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