“But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was respected by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered the men to be taken outside for a little while. He said to them, ‘Men of Israel, be careful about what you’re about to do to these men. Some time ago Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a group of about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed and came to nothing. After this man, Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and attracted a following. He also perished, and all his followers were scattered. So in the present case, I tell you, stay away from these men and leave them alone. For if this plan or this work is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You may even be found fighting against God.’ They were persuaded by him.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Baptists love to have meetings. Better yet, we love to have business meetings. If you hang around a Baptist church long enough, you will eventually have the chance to attend a business meeting. I daresay you would be hard pressed to find a Baptist church that doesn’t have regular business meetings in some form or fashion. Our next one is coming up here in a few weeks. I had the chance to attend the annual meeting of the Baptist State Convention this week. As far as meetings go, it was about as vanilla and uncontroversial as you could have hoped for. But on the last afternoon, something grabbed hold of my attention in a big way. I will almost certainly develop it into a whole sermon at some point. It really was that powerful. Let me tell you about it.

I should perhaps give you just a bit more background on what the Baptist State Convention is and why Baptists love meetings so much. The reason for this is baked into our organizational DNA. Baptists operate under what’s called a congregational polity. That’s a fancy way of saying each individual church is responsible for its own operation. There is no higher body telling us what to do like exists in other denominations. And because each congregation is responsible for its own operation, and because of our belief that every single member is a representative of Jesus and thus are all equal in importance, everybody gets a vote in what happens in the church. That goes for individual churches. That goes for whole groups of churches operating together.

My own church is part of a local Baptist association and the state Baptist convention. The difference between a convention and an association is not entirely semantic, but in terms of day-to-day function, there’s not a lot of daylight. The primary difference is that one is composed of churches in the same region as mine, and the other is composed of churches from all over the state. We are also part of the international group of Baptist churches called the Southern Baptist Convention. My guess is that you’ve heard of that both for good (I hope) and for ill. Our primary impacts are the local and state groups.

In any event, individual churches have regular meetings where members come together to make decisions on things like how the monies they give to the church will be directed (i.e., the budget), and who will serve in which constitutionally and by-laws mandated positions in the organization (this is usually called the “nominating committee report”). There are more votes than that because the whole thing operates according to Robert’s Rules of Order, but those are the most significant regular votes. Well, just like local churches do this, whole groups of Baptist churches who have committed to working together to advance God’s kingdom further and faster by their cooperation than any of them could do on their own do the same thing.

Asking church leaders and laity from all over the state to gather in a single place just to have a meeting that really only needs to take about an hour is a lot. As a result, the people whose job it is to organize the meeting each year work really hard to make it a value-add event. They invite various ministry partners to come and set up booths to share about their organizations. They line up all kinds of different ministry leaders and organizations to come and share best practices about a variety of different ministry-related topics. They include worship sessions. The various agencies supported by the convention share reports on what they have been doing for the last year. And they include the opportunity for the group of mostly preachers to hear from good preachers–something we don’t often get to do.

Generally speaking, they try to invite at least one pretty big-named preacher to come and share a word with the group. This headliner will ideally be someone who can draw a crowd to encourage as many churches as possible to take part in the operation of the organization they support and which would not exist without their monetary gifts. Well, this year, that speaker was Shane Pruitt. Shane serves in multiple roles, but he is most widely known for being the National Next Gen Director for the North American Mission Board. In plain English, he’s the youth ministry guru for the Southern Baptist Convention’s mission group focused on North America.

Shane speaks all over the country and world to tens of thousands of people each year. He’s pretty good at what he does. His sermon was basically an encouragement for churches to care about and invest in the next generation. He reminded us that the youth of today aren’t just the church of tomorrow. They are the church of today. His message was rooted in a passage from Acts 5 where the disciples had gotten in trouble yet again with the Jewish leadership of Jerusalem for proclaiming that Jesus had risen from the dead. They had been told to stop more than once, but they just wouldn’t quit. Their defiance was beginning to grate pretty hard on the patience of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council.

Honestly, the group was ready to put them to death just like they had engineered the death of Jesus a few weeks before. They had hoped that Jesus’ death would stamp out His movement, putting an end to His nuisance, and the threat He posed to the carefully balanced order they had erected with Rome. And it had seemed for a few weeks like they had succeeded. But then, out of nowhere, His followers who should have all been so demoralized that they never again climbed back out of the hole where they had hidden themselves after His death, started proclaiming loudly and boldly that He had risen from the dead. They were doing this right in the middle of the temple complex no less! They were going to have to be stopped.

Into this vigorous discussion a Pharisees named Gamaliel added his voice. Gamaliel is well known to us from history. His teachings on the Jewish law are still studied by Rabbis today. One of Gamaliel’s students–perhaps even at the moment he spoke up in this meeting–was a man named Saul who would eventually encounter this very Jesus on a trip to Damascus and become an impassioned believer who later changed his name to Paul. Gamaliel was a highly respected member of the Sanhedrin, widely recognized for his righteousness and wisdom.

His counsel was caution and moderation. Flying off the handle and putting these men to death mob-style wasn’t the way to go. He said this, “Men of Israel, be careful about what you’re about to do to these men. Some time ago Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a group of about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed and came to nothing. After this man, Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and attracted a following. He also perished, and all his followers were scattered.”

In other words, we’ve seen this same kind of thing before: A Messiah-pretender pops up, attracts a big following, and then Rome violently puts them down. Once the head of the snake is removed, the body quickly dies. The implication of this quick review of history is that Jesus and His movement will likely go the same way. Rather than getting their hands dirty trying to put a stop to Jesus’ followers now that He was off the scene, and occupying time that could be better spent on other things, their wisest course of action was to do nothing. “So in the present case, I tell you, stay away from these men and leave them alone.” This seemed like good counsel to the group, and “they were persuaded by him.”

I know this story well. I’ve preached this story at least two times that I can remember. There were literally no surprises to me in this passage. Or so I thought. But as Shane preached these words, the Spirit showed up and did one of those things He occasionally does where He draws your attention to a passage you have read before and you suddenly see it with new eyes.

After telling the Sanhedrin to leave the disciples alone (which they only sort of did seeing as how they had them all beaten before dismissing them), Gamaliel gave his reasoning. Check this out: “For if this plan or this work is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You may even be found fighting against God.”

Read that again slowly. Now read it one more time just for good measure. I’ll wait.

…

Gamaliel’s counsel to the Sanhedrin was essentially this: Listen, if these guys are acting on their own, history suggests pretty clearly that the problem they are presenting to us will take care of itself. Their enthusiasm will burn itself out. The people will get bored and move on to something else. And, if they get too loud in their shouting about a risen Savior, Rome will take care of the problem for us. History bears this out.

And although that would have probably been good enough counsel to convince the Sanhedrin to leave them alone by itself, Gamaliel adds that next part. If this is just these last few followers of Jesus making a lot of noise in their grief and anger over losing their Rabbi, they’ll eventually go away. But on the off chance that there’s something more going on, we don’t want to get in the way. If this really is something God is doing, we’re not going to be able to stop it anyway. And if we try, we’ll be–to borrow a modern phrase–on the wrong side of history. Worse than that, we’ll be on the wrong side of God. Just in case, let’s wash our hands of the whole thing and leave it alone.

If this plan or this work is of human origin, it will fail. If we set out to do something for God and He’s not behind it, we’re not going to succeed. We can convince ourselves and as many others as possible to think and act otherwise, but if we’re operating by ourselves, we’re not going anywhere. We’re not accomplishing anything. We’re wasting our time and energy and resources, and we’re inviting others to join us in that waste. What a waste!

But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. When God is the one who is behind the effort, it can’t fail. When we set out to follow God in a work He is doing, it doesn’t matter how utterly impossible it may seem to us, as long as we remain faithful and obedient to His command, success is lying at the end of our journey. No one and nothing will be able to stop us. The reason for that is simple: No one and nothing can stop Him. Without God, failure is all we will know; with God, failure won’t be possible to achieve.

As Shane went on to point out, much to Gamaliel’s point, after 2,000 years, the church is still here. The kingdom is still advancing. The Gospel is still being proclaimed with boldness. The love of Jesus is still being shown in abundance. God’s people are still multiplying throughout the earth. No effort of man has ever been able to stop our advance, because our advance is His advance. Many have taken Gamaliel’s advice and left us alone merely hoping we would go away quietly. Many more have not taken his counsel and worked vigorously to stamp us out of existence. Both paths have ended in disappointment and failure. Every. Single. Time.

Believer, if you are working to advance God’s kingdom using God’s power with God’s character as your guide, you can march forward with boldness. You won’t be able to fail. No power of Hell or scheme of man will be able to thwart or even slow your advance. This is not a call for pride or triumphalism, but of humility and trust. His is the power, not ours. We can afford to be gentle and patient and kind and generous in everything we do. We can afford to love with boldness. We can speak the truth with confidence and resolve. Our victory is already assured. We are not merely marching to victory, we are marching from victory. If you are growing weary, take heart. Your efforts in the Lord are not in vain. Keep at it, relying not on your own strength, but on the strength God provides. If He has not abandoned His people in the last 2,000 years, He won’t start now. Keep going.