WE MUST OBEY GOD RATHER THAN MAN

The title is taken from Acts, where Peter said “We must obey God rather than man.” How should the church look at Covid-19? We must answer this question in the light of the Bible, because it is our final authority in all matters of faith and practice. Many people have their own ideas about how to deal with this virus, but we must go to the Bible. We are called to deal with everything according to the word of God and not according to what people decide. The passages in Daniel will help us understand this, looking at the examples of Daniel and his friends. They dealt with matters in three ways:
||||| Firstly with CAREFUL CONSIDERATION:
Jesus sent out His disciples, telling them to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. These men, Daniel and his friends, were model citizens. We Christians also need to be model citizens like them. They were men who were absolutely faithful to the authorities and to the king. Daniel was faithful to the king and everyone knew it, so much so that his enemies knew that they could only get him trouble if it were something to do with his faith.
1 Peter 2: 13-17 “Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honour everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the emperor.”
||||| Secondly with CLEAR CONVICTIONS:
Sadly, many professing Christians have little or no convictions. They do not understand that we need to stand up against opposition. It is not that we want to be objectionable, but we must do it because of our God and because of our faith. We see this in the life of Daniel and his friends. They were men of great convictions. “Who is the God who will deliver you from the fiery furnace,” the arrogant king asked. Daniel’s friends answered the king saying that they did not need to answer him in this matter, but they went on to tell the king that their God was able to save them from the fire, and that even if God did not save them, they were still willing to suffer any hardship. They had strong convictions.
It was the same with Daniel when it came to the rule about no one being allowed to worship any god/God except the image that the king set up. But the Bible tells us that when Daniel knew about the rule, he prayed to his God three times every day, just like he had always done. This was how Daniel’s enemies could catch him disobeying the king.
So we see that while Daniel and his friends were normally obedient to the king, when the king went against the Lord God, then these godly men were willing to go against the king. They were model citizens but also men of clear convictions.
In Acts 4, we see that the authorities told the apostles not to preach in Jesus’ name. But Peter and John asked back if it was right to follow God or to follow men. "We must obey God rather than men," they said.
In New Zealand, we are concerned about how we are not being allowed to gather to worship. Let us be people with strong convictions. Let us be faithful to God regardless of the outcome. Since the time of the early church, tens and thousands of people have been imprisoned for their faith--- people of strong conviction.
We live in an age of great weakness and very little conviction. People do not take their stand for truth. But we must stand up for Jesus because we love Him. We must do this because we have seen the great sacrifice that our Lord made for us. He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. Should we not stand up for Him, like Daniel, like his friends, like the apostles, like John Bunyan and thousands of others?
||||| Thirdly with COMPLETE CONFIDENCE IN THEIR GOD: Our confidence must not be in ourselves and in our own ability. Daniel’s friends told the king: "OUR GOD IS ABLE to deliver us from the fiery furnace (and He will deliver us from your hand one way or other) . . . we will not bow down to the golden image . . . "
Daniel’s friends had confidence in God’s sovereign will. In Dan 6, we read how God sent His angels to shut the lions’ mouths to protect Daniel. God was with Daniel. So also in the fiery of furnace, God was with Daniel’s friends. The apostles also had that kind of confidence in God. Do we have the same confidence that God is able to deliver us?
We need CONVICTION and CONFIDENCE. Today in beautiful New Zealand, many believers around the world are meeting together secretly in caves and home. Normally they are good, law-abiding citizens. But on the Lord’s day, they break the law. Why? Because they would rather obey God rather than man. They are soldiers of the cross.
Of some such in Bible times, we read at the end of Hebrews 11: “Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”
||||| We do not know what lies ahead for the church in this world? But what has happened to us in New Zealand these days is a wake-up call. Over the next weeks we have to watch very carefully. If we are not allowed to meet for months, we must handle the matter like Daniel and the other saints in the Bible. We must stand in the face of the enemies of the cross of Christ, saying like Martin Luther “Here I stand, I can do no other’, and like the apostles, “We must obey God rather than man.”