Friday 7 Nov 2014

November 7: Acts 5:26-32

Key Verse: Acts 5:29
But Peter and the other apostles answered and said: “We ought to obey God rather than men.

Devotion:
After the resurrection and after Christ had shown them in no uncertain terms that He was very much alive, Peter and the other apostles did not have any further problems telling the rest of the world about Christ. They were commanded by the people in charge to not teach about Jesus because that was showing the law they were trying to uphold as being false and coming from man instead of from God.

Whether it was out of ignorance or out of pride that these leaders were trying to stop the apostles from teaching about Jesus is not really our concern. What is paramount is that we take notice of what the important things was here. To Peter it was that he did not turn his back on Christ any more. Peter had already done that by denying that he knew Jesus just before He was hung on the cross. Now he was not going to go back to that place of denying Jesus or of walking away from Him.

We need to be sure about our own convictions as well in that we should not keep wondering whether we should believe, whether we should tell others of Christ or whether we have enough faith to do this all. The point must be that we stop following what man lays down as the law and start following what God has given us as the law.

If God gives us direction to go and do work for Him we must not turn our backs on Him and must follow His instruction. It does not matter what man will try to do when God has given us clear direction; what matters is that we listen to God. We may find ourselves in deep water just as the apostles did, but we would be in even deeper water if we turned our backs on God! Lift up your voices and lift up your God.

Points to Ponder:
Do you look to man or God?

Whom do you actually obey?