As a refresher, yesterday we saw Peter and John heal a lame man, who in turn ran into the temple and ran around showing everyone that he can walk...he had been lame for 40 years and now is walking...running.  There was no denying what everyone could clearly see.  Then we saw Peter do a sermon when everyone placed their attention on he and John, and he leveraged the attention to shine the light on God.  Today we see the next part of the story.

The religious leaders (the Sadducees) saw what was happening, and they immediately reacted to quell the spread of this teaching that Peter was dolling out.

As a side note, there are various mentions of ‘religious leaders’ in the New Testament, and at various times it means the Sadducees, at other it is the Pharisees, and then there’s also the Essenes.  Via wikipedia, according to Josephus, whereas the Sadducees believed that people have total free will and the Essenes believed that all of a person's life is predestined, the Pharisees believed that people have free will but that God also has foreknowledge of human destiny.  And, the ONE thing that we continually find these groups agreeing on is that they want to get rid of this Jesus story...they were all interested in power, not truth.  Think about that for a second.  Think about what that says in terms of a life lesson for us...and what that says about the validity of the stories of Jesus.

Some of the most intelligent people, who were the rare individuals who could both read and write, are no where in history on record refuting what we believe happened...and they had all sorts of motivation to do so.  Why didn’t they?  If something fantastic like a man raising from the dead didn’t happen, it would be incredibly easy to shut this whole thing down.

Instead of that, what did they do?  They decided NOT to pursue truth - they pursued control.  These religious leaders arrested Peter and John.  And Luke gives us a roster of the leaders that were present...we know a little about a couple of them, but this list would have been a whose who of the time in terms of religious leaders.

And when they acted Peter and John about this, Peter and John didn’t pull any punches...they went straight at them and told them that it was God that healed this man.  They didn’t come at them  with anything religious...these are the most religious people on the planet!  They told them that they Jesus they had killed was in fact alive and that they saw him and talked to him.  Again, the leaders didn’t refute them; in fact, the text tells us that they were impressed by them, because they were just ordinary dudes.

So, the religious leaders, with all of their power and control on the line, had a decision to make - get to the bottom of this, or shut it down and maintain their control.  And here we see the motivation that was driving all of the tension between the religious leaders of the day and the disciples, apostles, and various Jesus-following groups of the day...it was power and control.

Today I am reminded that I don’t have to be scared of truth as a Christian.  I don’t have to worry about what science is going to come up with.  I don’t have to have a complex message about what I believe.  It is simple...and it is episodes like this that illuminate this reality.  It also reminds me how powerful and how blinding the motivations of power and control can be...and it serves as a warning that I need to always be monitoring myself, remaining aware of my internal motivations.