Blake Allen
Dunbar Cave Campus Pastor
Acts 4:13
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.
This has become one of my favorite verses of all Scripture. After receiving the Holy Spirit and sharing their faith, the apostles of Jesus experienced persecution from the Sadducees. They were told not to continue speaking about Jesus. For them, the apostles were stirring up the crowd. They feared an insurrection would take place and they were there to shut it down. They were also jealous of the apostles for the Sadducees were not favored among the common people. And when the apostles started preaching about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, they had had enough (the Sadducees denied any bodily resurrection).
The Sadducees threatened the apostles. They told them to no longer speak about Jesus. They threw them in prison when they continued, and sent them away with another warning thinking this would stop them. Then, they resorted to flogging when imprisonment wasn’t enough to deter the apostles from their mission. Whatever they tried, it failed. The apostles were convinced that the message of Jesus was worth sharing even if it cost them their lives. As a result of their faithfulness the Jerusalem church was formed, thousands came to know Jesus and were saved, and even those who didn’t accept their message respected their boldness and faithfulness.
What grips me about this story is that they were uneducated and untrained, common men. We typically read the accounts of Biblical characters like Moses, Peter, Paul, etc, and marvel how extraordinary they were. I mean, Peter walked on water! But what’s fascinating is that characters like these in the Bible were ordinary people; they just had extraordinary faith.