The Cost and Offence of the Gospel: Examining Emotions in Acts 4:1-4

Feeling annoyed, disturbed, or maybe even grieved? The Apostle Peter's bold preaching in Acts 4 wasn't met with polite applause—it was met with annoyance, anger and a strong desire to shut it down by people who allowed their emotions to rule over them.

This sermon explores the incredible cost of proclaiming Jesus and the cost of letting our emotions go unchecked. Our emotions can serve as a warning sign, prompting us to humbly examine our hearts and run to the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, who endured the ultimate grief so we never have to.

Please note that the transcript below has been AI-transcribed from the sermon’s audio recording and may contain transcription errors.

Acts 4:1-4: The Cost

Good to have you here with us this morning. We have a lot to cover, so if you have a Bible with you, I am going to invite you to turn to Acts chapter 4 as we continue our series there. I am just going to read the 1st 4 verses this morning. The verses will also, sorry, be on the screen here behind me. And this is what the word of God says:

Acts 4:1–4

Peter and John Before the Council

And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand.

There is a sense in which any Sunday, any preacher, could say, and sometimes does say, "Look, I am just as submitted to the word of God here in what I am going to be bringing to you as I think anybody in this room should be." I want to you to know this: I feel particularly that way this morning because what I want to speak to you about this morning from the word of God deals with our emotions. And I have found, again, as I and many who preach often do, just even in preparing this, the Holy Spirit preaching to me first and encouraging me to preach this to myself. So I just want to say we are on a journey in this together, alright? So please, please know that as we look into this this morning.

And certainly with that said and with that in mind, I am going to pray—that would be the most appropriate thing for me to do right now—and ask for the Holy Spirit's help as we do this.

Gracious God, thank you that you know how we are, you know how we are made because it is your doing. And you have made us to be emotional beings. And you are a God, the God with emotion, except your emotion is pure, your emotion is holy, it is perfect in every way. And we know ourselves enough to know that the same could not be said of us. But God, thank you for your patience towards us. Thank you for your tenderness towards us, and I do pray this morning as we look at this from Acts 4 together, Holy Spirit, just be ministering to us, be ministering to me, be ministering to those in this room who know that when it comes to their emotions, when it comes to our emotions, oh God, help me, help me. I need your help to hold these things well, these important things well. Holy Spirit, would you come and do that very thing for the glory of Jesus, and I pray in his name. Amen, amen.

Well, here is where we are going to go this morning. The first is this: the cost of faithfully proclaiming Jesus. The second is the cost of being annoyed by Jesus. You might not have been expecting that, but it is here in the text. And thirdly, the cost paid by Jesus.

Context: Peter and John's Boldness

So just to catch us up a little bit on this, Joel has been taking us through Acts chapter 3 over the past couple of weeks. And what happened there, following on from the very beginning of this book of Acts in the New Testament in our Bible, the Holy Spirit has been given to the church, and the Holy Spirit came in power to those early believers. Jesus said that would happen: "You will receive power, power to be my witnesses." And that power comes, the Holy Spirit comes, is given to the church, and so what we end up seeing is men who only days before were cowering in fear. Peter, in this case, even on the night that Jesus was betrayed, Peter himself saying, "No, I do not know him, do not know him, do not know who you are, do not know who you are talking about." Only days later, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the giving of the Holy Spirit, Peter and others filled with boldness. Filled with boldness, moving in the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of the resurrected Christ in ways that they had not done before.

Well, that continues certainly into chapter 3 when Peter and John are making their way into the temple. And if you have been with us over the past couple of weeks, you have heard Joel teaching on this. There is a man who is lame, not able to walk from birth, and he says, "Can I have some money?" Peter says, "I do not have silver or gold, but I will give you what I do have: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." And not only does that lame man rise up, he rises up and walks and leaps, jumping and leaping, praising God. And there is a crowd around watching this. They know this lame man. They had seen him day after day after day. And they are witnessing this, and it has caught their attention.

So as this crowd is witnessing this and looking on and "what in the world is going on here," Peter, again living out in this boldness, this new boldness that he has been given through the Holy Spirit, seizes the moment and preaches. And that preaching comes at a cost. His proclamation of Jesus Christ comes at a cost. So that is where we are picking things up this morning here at the very beginning of Acts chapter 4.

The Cost of Proclamation

So the cost of proclamation, it is important that we understand this. In the context of the time, Jerusalem at that time was, was something as it has been throughout history, really something of a highly charged political atmosphere. The same could certainly be true today, and it certainly was true then. In some ways, I suppose a little bit like Ottawa, but they were not quite as Canadian about it. We, we will, you know, have our political conversations and we will end them with saying an awful lot of "sorry" and "eh" and that sort of thing and letting kind of people have their own beliefs and their own space, but inside still we can come to judgments, we can come to drawing conclusions about other people's beliefs. Well, in our culture, it is rare—not impossible, but it is rare—when that shows itself in a really aggressive way. It does happen, of course, but it is rare when it shows itself in a really aggressive way. In this culture at that time, for there to be highly explosive political debates and situations and people really going at each other, well, that was a lot more common. And Jerusalem was certainly an environment where that was quite prone to that very sort of thing happening.

So in one verse here at the beginning of Acts chapter 4, we are told about this highly volatile environment in Jerusalem because we are told about the people that are really upset at Peter and John for what they are preaching, not just for what they are preaching, but that they even are preaching and that they are teaching the people.

So we read about the temple priests, some of whom were likely Sadducees, and I will mention them in a moment. But the temple priests, they were the ones who were really, really the ones responsible for the teaching of the people. The captain of the temple as well: I thought that this individual was assigned to the temple by Rome because Jerusalem at this time was under Roman rule, but Rome was very interested in making sure that Jerusalem did not cause any problems—that there were not uprisings—that, you know, if people had their religious views, their political views, whatnot, fine, as long as it did not cause a problem for Rome. So the captain of the temple was there in part to ensure that there were no problems that were stirred up. And then of course we also have the Sadducees, that is a particular sect among the religious leaders, and particularly for them, they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead.

Now there is no assumption here in the book of Acts about any sort of right to religious expression or rights to religious freedoms, you know, things that here in Canada we do get to enjoy to a wide degree, not perfectly, but to a wide degree we get to enjoy those things, but it is not actually something that we see here in this book. We certainly do not see it here in the book of Acts and in Acts chapter 4. There is nothing in here about religious freedoms, and if anything, what we see, including here in Acts chapter 4, is that freely proclaiming the resurrected Christ will be costly.

As Canadians, as Christian Canadians, at times we can land on this thing of thinking because the government of Canada, and this is true of many, not all certainly, but many governments around the world, give a certain amount of freedom for religious expression, we then often conclude that to follow Jesus in a country such as ours, such as Canada, therefore will not be costly, and that is, that is not the case. That is not a promise that scripture gives us. It will be costly to faithfully proclaim Christ, no matter what the laws of the land may be. It just will. Jesus said that it would be, and there is story after story after story here in this book of the cost of it.

Well, why was it costly for Peter and John in this case? Well, Luke tells us in these verses that they were teaching the people and proclaiming the resurrection of the dead. And as I said, the teaching of the people, that was really the job of the temple priests, not of some uneducated fishermen from up north. That is essentially how they would have been thought of. "How dare they come and teach the people? How dare they teach the people here?" Priests would have been thinking that, "That is our role, that is what we do, that is who we are." Sadducees certainly would have felt the same, but they would have added to that that it was even worse that they were teaching about the resurrection of the dead, namely the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And remember we need to think back to what Peter has just been proclaiming. Right? Everybody in the crowd is looking, and he says, "Why, why are you looking at us as if, as if we healed this lame man by our own power? This is not our own power. It is the power of Jesus Christ, and He is alive." That is what Peter is saying. "He is alive, the resurrected Christ." Sadducees would have been hearing that and going, "No way. No way," because that is what they were known for. They were the ones included with the other priests who would have been involved in the instruction of the people, but particularly for the Sadducees, they, they never would have taught about the resurrection of the dead. And then of course I have also mentioned the captain of the temple as well. So this is a real powder keg type of situation, and it needed to be shut down, and needed to be shut down fast, and that is the very thing that we see happening here in these opening verses of Acts chapter 4.

The Cost of Being Annoyed by Jesus

But all these reasons that I have just mentioned, these are all fairly external reasons, are not they? They involve the political situation of the day. They involve the religious views of others and religious convictions of others. And here we are today in Ottawa, all these years later, and I recognize that it could be very easy for us all these years later to think, "Well, maybe that is an interesting history lesson, but what, what, what does that have to do today? Like political views and and expressions of religious convictions, they kind of come and go to a certain degree. What does that have to do for me today with my life today?"

Well, there is something that Luke, who is the writer of Acts, writes in here that I think is deeply personal for each of us, even if you may find yourself as I am sharing all this thinking that all seems like ancient, literally ancient history. And I want to focus in on what that thing is that is deeply personal to each of us. And it is here in Acts chapter 4 verse 2. There is a word that Luke uses to describe why these three groups, or kind of two groups and that one captain of the temple, why they were so quick to get Peter and John to put a stop to all of this, or I should say they were so quick to put a stop to it themselves. And the Greek word that is used in Acts 4:2 is translated in the ESV, which is what we teach from on the Sunday mornings here in Grace City Church, is translated here as greatly annoyed.

That is what was going on in them that caused them to put a stop to it and to arrest them, to arrest Peter and John. Why? Is it just because of the different, you know, political views that I have been mentioning? Is it just because Jerusalem was under Roman rule? Yeah, all of these things mattered greatly to them. But here Luke is speaking about something that is common to each of them in their hearts. They were greatly annoyed, and that is worth our attention this morning.

Because again, you may not know a lot about the history of that period and that time and what was happening in that land, but if you are here this morning, you are susceptible, as am I, to becoming greatly annoyed. Just to help us out, just put your hand up if you have never been annoyed. Great. So from here at least we are all on the same page, right? We are all in this together. We have some things to learn from this book about this.

The NIV, which many of you will be familiar with, this is another translation of the scriptures, it does not say greatly annoyed, it says greatly disturbed, but the King James Version, which the ESV and the NIV kind of build themselves on, but as you may know, a lot of the language is older English language, but the King James Version says something that I think is particularly helpful here, it says that they were grieved. That is the word that is used, grieved.

So I want to us to hold all of these different ways of expressing what is happening in these people who are opposing Peter and John: greatly annoyed, greatly disturbed, and greatly grieved, and let us look at this together. All of these words are fascinating, but this one of being grieved, at least to me, is particularly fascinating because you can be annoyed at many things. I do not know how many of you went camping this summer, but if you did, I suspect that you got annoyed at mosquitoes. We are really good at getting annoyed at mosquitoes, this feeling of just kind of like just constant irritation that way.

But then there might be times when you feel greatly disturbed by something. There are times when I read news headlines myself, and that is certainly how I feel. It is something that goes beyond annoyance for sure, seems to go into a different level, and reading about something that happens maybe even in our own city or beyond and feeling really greatly disturbed by it.

But then the language that the King James Version uses, I feel, goes to an even deeper level of being grieved. That word speaks about a cost. When do we grieve? We grieve when we lose someone certainly or something that we love, right? That is when we grieve. We grieve when there is an immense cost to it for us.

The priests would have been greatly grieved, not only because these uneducated upstarts were teaching, but also because the people seemed to be listening. That is what would have grieved them. And if they were listening to them, these men without education, without credentials, what would come of the priest's own teaching if people were listening to these others?

The captain of the temple would have been grieved because if this commotion could not be shut down, his Roman superiors would have called into question his ability as a force for Roman rule. And no longer seen as an example of the strength of Rome, he could be seen as an embarrassment to Rome. No doubt he was counting the cost of, if this is not shut down, what the cost would have been to him, which may not have been good, may have involved being called to Rome and being called into question for that very thing.

The Sadducees would have been greatly grieved about simply being seen as wrong. It was known that they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. This was one of the things that they were known for. But now because of the resurrection of Jesus, which remember happened most likely less than 100 days before this. OK, we are really in the early days here. The recent resurrection of Jesus and now this lame man that so many would have known, so many would have recognized, clearly being healed, and those who are involved in that healing saying, "It is not us, it is Jesus. It is in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. That is whose power has caused this to happen, and He is alive." The Sadducees, if this had not been shut down, if they had not, if they did not try to squash it, they could be seen as being wrong on this. And if they are wrong on this, surely people would say, "Well, are they wrong on other things too?" Of course they would. Of course they would. That is why we see this word grieved being used certainly in the King James Version.

And it is not that the NIV and the ESV are trying to say different things, they are not. I actually, I find that looking at all three of these and the way that they articulate is actually quite helpful because we see something of a progression. We see something that starts with annoyance, moving into being disturbed, or maybe then being greatly disturbed, and then being grieved and being greatly grieved. We see something of a journey here.

The priests and the Sadducees that are mentioned have become so consumed by this grief that it causes them to despise the very thing that they should prize, and that is the compassion and power of a holy God. Is not that interesting in this story that when this is happening, at no point do the priests or the Sadducees or the captain of the temple say, "You know what, we should just pump the brakes a bit and look at the evidence. Like this guy could not walk. We all saw him. We have seen him for days, months, years, in fact, could not walk, now he can. Let us go and put on a little bit of a conference, a little bit of a council, and just consider this." They do not even go there, they go straight to, "We have to shut this down."

That is what our unchecked emotions sometimes can cause us to do. It can cause us to completely miss the very thing that God is doing right in front of our eyes, not only to miss it, but to be angry about it. Is not that fascinating? It is a living out of what we read in Psalm 112 verses 9 and 10 where Psalm says: "He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor. His righteousness endures forever, his horn is exalted in honor. But the wicked man sees it and is angry. He gnashes his teeth and melts away. The desire of the wicked will perish."

That sounds like what is happening in Acts chapter 4. These men, the priests, the captain of the temple, the Sadducees, have seen what is happening, following Peter and John, freely giving what they have to the lame man. They have seen the power of Jesus of Nazareth at work. Many people are watching in amazement, but not everyone. Some people do not respond with awe, the wicked man sees it and is angry.

Have we become so used to people being apathetic towards God that we have ruled out the possibility that there are some who do not respond to the goodness and grace of God with apathy, but rather with anger? Have you considered that?

There is a story that I once heard by a wonderful preacher named R.C. Sproul who tells a story that he, so this is a story of a story, that tells a story that he has heard of Billy Graham, OK? Just so I cite this correctly. Billy Graham went golfing one day with a couple of men, and one of these men was later asked, "Wow, you went golfing on Saturday with Billy Graham. Like, how was that? Like golfing with Billy Graham. How was it?" And he said, "Oh, it was horrible. It was horrible. He was just, he just judged me the entire time. The entire time I just felt that he was, he was just judging me every, every, every hole we played, everything we did, everything we spoke of, everything. Nothing was good enough. He was just judging me the entire time."

The other person said, "Oh, wow, wow, that does not, that does not sound like Billy Graham. That is, that is, wow, I am sorry that that is what happened that day for you." And the other person said, "No, you know what? You know what, that did not happen at all. It was actually really, really lovely. He is a really, really lovely man." What the man was referring to is such a sense, not in Billy Graham himself because of Billy Graham, but such a sense of the holiness of God. Such a sense of purity, such a sense of righteousness, again, not because of Billy Graham, the man, but because of who Billy Graham carries and just what exudes from him that it provoked this other man to the point where he felt angry.

Dear friends, often that is the response to being around holiness, to seeing holiness, again, not of Billy Graham, but of the God that he and that you and I worship. It is not just apathy. Often the holiness of God is met with anger. Often the compassion of God, including here in Acts 4 being shown to this lame man, is met with anger. Often the mercy of God on display, which again is happening here not only in the healing of the lame man, but in what Peter is proclaiming to others who are listening, that is an expression of the mercy of God. Often that is met with anger.

To faithfully preach Christ at times, not only for the preacher, for the follower of Jesus, for the son and daughter of God, at times it will be met with anger. It is in the Bible, it is written about here. Friend, we must expect it.

Now you must also know, we must also know that when that happens, God is not in the heavens looking down on us going, "Told you so, told you so." That is not his heart towards you. He is filled with compassion for you, he is filled with mercy for you. He comes alongside. "Tell me how it hurts, tell me how it is costly for you." He walks this with us, but it is very, very clear in this book that it will be costly.

Why? Because in those moments we see what is happening in our hearts and in the hearts of others, and here I find this amazing because again we are only 4 verses in Acts chapter 4, and there is such an examination of what is happening in the hearts of these others who are greatly annoyed, greatly disturbed, and greatly grieved. What is happening is something in their hearts.

Remember what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 15. He says, "What comes out of the heart, what comes out of the mouth, proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person, for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander." And you know what, with each of these examples of evil thoughts, they do not start with the things that we often label as the big sins, right? They do not start that way. I have never asked somebody who has been in this position, but I suspect for those, and I do not say this lightly, for those who have committed murder, it does not just start with "I am going to do that." It starts with something small, maybe it starts with annoyance.

Something as small and seemingly inconsequential as annoyance. Maybe it starts there: unchecked annoyance that is allowed to grow and grow and grow and ends up resulting in this enormous, heinous act. It could be said that this is the very thing that actually ends up happening with Peter. Here in Acts chapter 4, we see this starts with annoyance of others and Peter and John then being arrested. So the others being annoyed with Peter and John. But Christian tradition holds to Peter being executed at the hand of the Romans, not necessarily at the hand of the same men who are involved here in Acts chapter 4, but definitely at the hand of men who also perceived Peter to be a threat to their own kingdom. And I suspect for those men later on in Peter's life, it started with annoyance. It started with unchecked annoyance and it ended with his murder.

Dear friends, we must keep check on our emotions. We must watch, say, "Is it right that I feel this way? Why is it that I feel this way? Left unchecked, how could this feeling be allowed to grow? What could it end up causing me or encouraging me to do?" rather than just letting it rule over us.

When we first moved into our neighborhood, there was a tree on the other side of our back fence. There was a fairly young tree, and as we were there, over the next probably 2 or 3 years, kind of watched this tree grow a bit. And I remember sitting on our back deck and having coffee back there and looking out over the fence and it is a fairly nice tree that is there. But as the tree continued to grow and it continued to strengthen, there started pushing in on the fence. On the very top of our fence, it kind of has this latticework section, and eventually the tree, the trunk had grown such that it pushed the latticework section off its screws. So we had this one section of the fence that was kind of leaning in a bit. "Well, it is interesting. I should probably keep a little bit of an eye on that."

And then as the tree continued to grow, it then started pushing it on the back of our garage that is in the backyard. And sometimes I would be in the backyard, and I would be watching if there was a lot of wind blowing from the north, it would push that tree kind of southward towards the fence further, and I would watch the tree. I could see the fence moving because of the force of the tree on the fence, and I could hear it scraping along the back of our garage and I thought, "OK, we have to do something about this."

The tree was on city property because it was on the other side of the fence. So I called the number and they sent somebody out. And I said, "Look, I am a little bit concerned about this tree because it is growing, it is pushing on the fence. I think it is going to end up, if it, you know, if it keeps going, it could end up taking the fence down to the garage down, or worse, in a big windstorm, maybe it will even fall on the house. I do not know, but can we do something about it?" And I will never forget what the guy said. He said, "Oh yeah, that tree," he said, "that tree is a Manitoba maple." And I said, "Oh," my thought was, "Thanks, not helpful in the moment." OK. But his next comment was, "It is actually a weed." And all of you from Manitoba are really upset right now. But notwithstanding, it is: a Manitoba maple is actually a weed, it is an invasive species, and it can grow anywhere and it grows quickly and it just takes over wherever it is. And he said, "Yeah, we will get, we, we see this a lot, we will go and we will get rid of it."

Unchecked emotion can do the same thing in our hearts. It is just there. "Oh man, I feel a person did that, or somebody at work did this, or a family member did this. I feel, I feel annoyed about that." OK, everybody feels annoyed, no big deal. But that can grow, and it can take root. And then, "Man, I feel really disturbed about that. I remember feeling annoyed about it, but man, it is on my mind a lot now." Can go from that to being grieved, like it taking over you, affecting your rest, perhaps. This thing that started as a seed has grown and grown and grown. We must be careful.

Now you may be hearing this and thinking, "OK, so Rich, is the point of this sermon that our emotions are bad?" No, no, that is not the point of this. We have been made in the image of God. We are emotional beings. Do you know what that means about him? He is an emotional God. And something about that frightens us a little bit. You know why? I will tell you why in one word: Mondays. That is why, OK? Because you are here at church and you are enjoying your free coffee and the seats are comfy and things are OK here, but tomorrow morning is Monday, and we have all had this where on Monday morning we wake up what? Annoyed, but what is the other expression? On the wrong side of the bed.

And we as people who often think less about being made in the image of God, and we think that God is made in the image of us, we often fear that God will wake up on Monday morning on the wrong side of the bed. And that he is as prone to these wild emotional swings as sometimes we feel that we are. So when people like me sit at the front of a room, I said this morning, often stand at the front of the room and say, "God is an emotional God," for many of us, that is actually an unsettling thought because we are seeing it through the lens of our own emotions. We are seeing it through the lens of how we often struggle to control our emotions, but dear friend, God is not like you and I.

Every emotion he feels, he feels perfectly. He feels it within his holiness. That includes emotions like anger. It includes emotions like anger. When God is angry, he is perfectly angry. When God is desiring justice, when he is jealous for justice, he desires it perfectly. He feels a sense of wanting justice and moving towards justice perfectly. When God feels annoyed, here is this, how is this for a question? Do you think God ever feels annoyed? Read the book of Exodus. God can feel annoyed. He feels it perfectly.

But the inverse of this, the other side of this is also true. The love that God feels towards his people, he feels it perfectly. And that is why when he sees something threatening his people. Remember the way that he speaks to Pharaoh, and if you are with us for the Exodus series, catch up online if not, remember what he says? "Israel, my son." He speaks about what Pharaoh is doing to his people. He speaks about his people as his son. He is upset about it. We want to God to be upset about these things.

A number of years ago, one of my kids, we were walking to the park at the end of our street. And one of our kids dashed out across the street seconds before a car blew by, and I was annoyed at my child for doing that. I was greatly disturbed at my child for doing that, and I was greatly grieved. You know why? Because I love them. Because I love them, I do not want any harm to come to them. I want them to be safe. I want them to prosper. I do not want them to give themselves to threats like that. And your Father in heaven is the same with you. All of the emotions that he feels towards you, he feels perfectly, and they are all aimed for your good.

You do not need to be afraid about him waking up tomorrow morning on the wrong side of the bed. It is not going to happen. It is not going to happen. He is for you, he loves you, he is tender towards you, even in the times when he displays his anger, he is not displaying an anger towards you. His anger was poured out on Jesus on the cross in your place, so that you would not have to experience that yourself. Yes, it means at times that we receive correction. Yes, it means at times that we receive discipline, but not because he is angry, it is because he is good. It is because he loves you, it is because he is kind and he wants to protect you from harm. He is a good, good God. He is a good, good father.

The Cost Paid by Jesus

One last thought when it comes to emotions and particularly being deeply grieved, and that is this: on the cross, Jesus was deeply grieved for your sake and for mine. Matthew's Gospel, Matthew 27, we read: "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour, and about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli lema sabakhani,' that is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'"

That Jesus endured that grief and suffered that death so that you and I would never need to know the greatest of all griefs, and it is this: The greatest of all griefs is the grief of eternal separation from God. That is what hell is. It is not just the way in which we often picture it and the caricaturization of it, it is the grief of being separated from God for all of eternity. If you are going to be deeply grieved, be deeply grieved about the thought of that.

But if you are here and you are here in Christ, and you are covered by his righteousness and covered by his finished work on the cross, you do not need to be fearful of that. Because that is not your story. You have been rescued from that. So dear friend, my question to you this morning is, have you been?

Well, how do I know if I have been? Well, let us get back into our text for a moment. Acts chapter 4. How do I know if I have been? How do I know if my story is not that I will spend all of eternity grieving being separated from God? It is simply this: do you believe? Do you believe?

Acts 4:4, we read about some who were there believing. Notice that the text does not give us that everybody there who believed was not annoyed at all. They were not annoyed by what Peter and John were preaching. The text does not give us that. I suspect, given the number of people that were added to the church that day—and we read that there were 2,000 or so that were added that day. We know from earlier on in Acts there were 3,000 who were added and others who were there in the upper room waiting for the Holy Spirit. So the church now, it is amazing. The church now, and even in these fairly brief days, 5,000 people now. 2,000 or so on that day alone.

I suspect that some among those 2,000 as they heard Peter preaching, that they were annoyed. They were annoyed. I mean, go back and read Peter's sermon. Friends, there are, there are aspects of the gospel that are annoying. "You were dead in your sin. Dead. Alienated from God, held off at a distance." There was a stench to you. There was a stench to me before we came to Christ. Spiritually speaking, we reeked. That was our state. There is something about that that is offensive.

Let Your Emotions Lead You to Jesus

What do you do with the offense? What do you do with the annoyance? What do you do with the feeling of being disturbed, of being grieved? The encouragement of scripture to you this morning is: let it serve you. Let your emotions catch your attention. And then plan your next steps very carefully.

We can double down like what we read of these others doing here in Acts chapter 4. "This has to be shut down. We are not going to have this. I am annoyed about this. I am disturbed. I am grieved, so I am going to shut it down." Or, we can be shocked by our emotions. "Whoa, this, this has got my attention," and we can approach it humbly.

Dear friend, this morning, I am not setting out to annoy you or disturb you or grieve you just for the sake of it, that is not our mission here. But we know the message of this book, we know the gospel enough to know that it can annoy, it can disturb, it can cause one to grieve. What do you do with those emotions? Let them do to you what it has done for others here in the text. Let it help you run to Jesus. Let it help you run to faith, let it help you run to belief.

Approach your emotions humbly. "Why is this agitating me so much? Maybe there is something in this that I need to hear, that I need to examine." That is a good exercise for each of us, friends, even those of us that have given our lives to Jesus. It is not as if when we do that, we are not then subject to our emotions at all, right? Far from it. Still, let us pump the brakes. Let us ask brothers and sisters in the church, "Hey, can you help me with this? I am feeling this about the situation. I just, I wonder if I am feeling it out of proportion. Can you help me?" That is a good thing for a church family to be doing together, I think, a really good thing. And we can use even our emotions, as impure often as our emotions are, as flawed often as our emotions are, still, we can use them to help us to run to Jesus in whatever we are feeling, whatever doubts, disappointments, frustrations, whatever it might be in bringing them to him.