June 8, 2025 - Acts 5:28-30 - "Obeying God Rather Than Men"

Acts 5:28-30

"Saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood upon us. Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree."

Who were these that were commanding the apostles not to preach the Gospel?

They were none other than the religious leaders of the day—those charged with instructing the people in the inspired Word. Yet they preferred to teach the traditions of men rather than Him who is the subject of all Scripture: Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

The attacks of works religion against the Christ of grace go all the way back to the fall of Adam. There, Satan (the seed of the serpent) questioned the authority of God in commanding Adam and Eve not to eat freely of the Tree of Life (a type of our LORD Jesus), and not to partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:9; 3:1–6). God declared that, for the rest of time, there would be enmity between the seed of the serpent—those of Adam’s race whom God purposed to condemnation, along with the devil and his fallen angels (Matthew 25:41)—and the seed of the woman. That enmity continued early on when Cain killed Abel—a contrast between works and grace (Genesis 4). Cain was angry that God accepted Abel because of his blood sacrifice (a picture of Christ and His sacrificial death), and rejected Cain, who brought the fruit of his hands and hard labor. “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22).

It was this same enmity that crucified our Lord: “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain” (Acts 2:23). The death of our LORD Jesus was plotted in the hearts of self-righteous, religious works-mongers and carried out from the very synagogues where they preached. After Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, the apostles faced the same hostility. They sought to lay hands on the apostles because they could no longer lay hands on the risen Lord. In response, the Spirit of the LORD moved Peter to declare, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”

What is it to obey God?

1. To obey God is to hear God. The word obey here means to hearken to. To hearken to God, the Lord Himself must, by His Spirit, grant spiritual ears to hear: “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10–12).

Any who truly hear God, hear His Son and are drawn to Christ in repentance and faith. In hearing His Word and following Him, they obey Him. Our LORD Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).All are, by nature, children of disobedience in whom the Spirit of God has not revealed Christ: “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). But all who are made sons of obedience are those whom the Lord has caused to obey the faith—the Gospel revelation of Jesus Christ.

2. To obey God is to be submitted to the LORD Jesus as God's righteousness. The apostle Peter declared his allegiance to the God of their fathers—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—over and against the traditions of the religious establishment. His faith in the God of the patriarchs was faith in the One He had sent into the world in the fullness of time to redeem those under the law (Galatians 4:4–5). Christ so effectively paid the debt that those for whom He died have been, once for all, declared justified before God. When this is revealed in the heart, the believer no longer looks to the works of his hands or the traditions of his forefathers as his hope, but to the Person and work of the LORD Jesus Christ alone.

3. To obey God is to believe the record He has given of His Son. “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son” (1 John 5:10).To believe the record God has given of His Son is to bow to the one righteousness of God—a righteousness the LORD Jesus came, earned, and established on behalf of His people: “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Romans 5:9–10).

The bold declaration of the apostles in Acts 5:28–30 reminds us that the true Gospel is the message of the crucified and risen Christ, whom God has exalted as both Prince and Saviour. Though men rejected and crucified Him, God raised Him again in triumph. The command to stop preaching in His name was met, not with fear, but with unwavering obedience to God. So it is with all who know the power of His resurrection—they must speak of Christ. For in Him alone is repentance granted and sins forgiven. May we, too, who are His redeemed ones, be found faithful, declaring His name above all.