Where Does Your Loyalty Lie? || Part 2 of Acts 5-6

In this second part of “Where Does Your Loyalty Lie?”, Anthony High and Jeremy Sensenig contrast the religious leaders with the apostles in Acts 5–6. The leaders reveal misplaced loyalty by fearing people more than God while the apostles model bold obedience. This episode wrestles with the question, “How do we obey God rather than men?” as we explore the marks of a healthy, Spirit-led church and uncover practical insights for everyday faith.

Transcript

Let’s consider the Religious Leaders

The religious leaders were on defense because they had a kingdom and tribe to protect. When the church is in a defensive posture,  it protects itself. It will tend to command pre-eminent loyalty and appearances of unity. It will also tend to lack integrity and have misplaced loyalty.

The Religious Leaders were

Powerfully  Devious

• low on integrity,
• the end justifies the very calculated means,
• the end is ultimately preserving the establishment

In this type of setting,fear of others’ response rules the day

• In V. 26, they feared the people
• They had a defensive misplaced loyalty culture.
• Survival-based fear becomes the dominant decision maker
• Fear also prevents those within from speaking the truth they see. As a result, they silence their consciences.
• Self becomes god, and survival becomes the goal.
• Moves are calculated to eliminate threats and maintain power.
• Yes, this can happen in churches and missions.

The Religious leaders were

Passionately Decreeing

• The religious leaders were high in control.
• V28 – they reminded the apostles that they commanded them not to teach in his name.
• The idea of this movement was destroying their system. They wanted power was too much – they would survive whatever the cost.
• Their mentality: you will obey us and be silent, because we represent God.
• It wasn’t a total prohibition, just a part-way compromise
• They wanted to send the message, “Don’t be so on fire, just keep your beliefs to yourself.”
• They had to silence the movement, because it threatened their system, but it didn’t work.

Purposefully Destructive

When a culture is low on integrity and deep honesty, it tends to weed out those who are sincere.

• When beating and threatening the apostles didn’t work, those leaders realized they needed more drastic measures.
• In Chapter 6, they resorted to murder by killing Stephen
• The end justified the means – their main end was surviving with control.

Recently, I spent some time on a Heralds of Hope team trip to Eastern Europe to connect with several ministry partners. As we toured a great stone monument to one of Türkiye’s former leaders, we observed a clash of cultures.

We got into the discussion of the differences between Western culture and Eastern culture. Western culture tends to be more truth-oriented, with minimal tribal loyalties – the result is intense individualism. Eastern culture tends to be much more oriented to loyalty to the culture or tribe.

It’s Fascinating to observe the culture and tribal loyalty mentality manifesting itself in conservative Christian cultures. There is a strength to that—namely brotherhood. However, the Danger in this way of thinking is that the culture ends up determining truth, which produces in individuals a loyalty to the culture that supersedes loyalty to God. As a result, God’s truth can end up being reinterpreted to fit the cultural narrative, and integrity is lost

As a way to retain group cohesion, culture in this situation then tends to emphasize unity, to the exclusion of those who raise questions about integrity. The Bible does not teach the (church) culture as the sole basis for determining obedience to God. It also teaches us that we are personally accountable and responsible to live in obedience to God. Paul commended the Berean church for comparing what he taught them with the scriptures. Scripture always advocates a brotherhood approach to church culture. Leaders truly as servants (or slaves), and we should have mutual accountability.

Take Aways

• Integrity Matters
• Lack of integrity simply illustrates a misplaced loyalty.
• Loyalty Matters More –  Our Loyalty must be to God primarily, and then to the church brotherhood.
• For integrity to exist, truth and narratives must be interpreted out of a primary loyalty to God.
• Loyalty and unity tend to be a result as a church lives out a unified understanding of truth interpreted through the collective lenses of brotherhood and loyalty to God.
• It is simply summed up in the Apostle’s response, “We must obey God rather than men.”

If loyalty or obedience to our group or tribe is the primary basis of determination for whether we are loyal to God, we are in danger.