They had Further Threatened Them

Today's reading: 2 Chronicles 4-5; Acts 4:1-22


Acts 4:21 So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way of punishing them, because of the people, since they all glorified God for what had been done.

The disciples had been used by God to heal a lame man at the temple and because it had caused such a ruckus the religious leaders felt compelled to find out just what was going on so they took Peter and John into custody for questioning. It didn't take too long for them to find out what was going on and what they heard must have sent shivers down their collective spines. These uneducated, unrefined fishermen had healed a man and they were giving credit to Jesus of Nazareth. The same Jesus they had put to death and had come up missing from the grave. They thought they were done with Him but they weren't. In the case of Jesus they felt that had some grounds to put Him to death for blasphemy, even though they had gone about it illegally. Now they had a another quandary because if they accused the disciples of blasphemy for healing in the name of Jesus they would be admitting Jesus was right and that they were guilty of sending the Messiah to His death. But if they don't try to stop the disciples from preaching and healing people in Jesus' name then things would get out of hand. They decided to threaten the disciples because there wasn't really anything they could do.

There's an old series of commercials for an investment company that played on this theme. It would show people trying to ignore a guy who was wearing a shirt that said 'retirement' on it and no matter what these people tried to do 'retirement' would continue to show up creating awkward situations. It's always interesting how every time someone tries to deny the truth about Jesus and bury Him back in some vacant tomb of their mind, He suddenly shows up and won't be silenced. Whether it's through the voices of friends and family members or even the radio or television, Jesus just won't stay away and He creates awkward situations that have to dealt with. No one can ignore Him forever.