"Praying for Boldness" (Acts 4:23-31)

Transcript:

Well, last week we considered, as we studied the story of the suffering and the persecution of the apostles Peter and John, the reason why Christians can suffer boldly for the name of Christ. And the reason we stated was found in Acts 4:12, that there is no salvation or there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. And if it's true, which it is, then we Christians can suffer boldly for the name of Christ, because in him is our hope of salvation. But the way that I phrased last week's theme was setting up for this week to say that Christians can suffer boldly. You may have been tempted to think, well, maybe this is only a theoretical possibility, maybe it's something that other people have to deal with, but that maybe it's an option or something that I can sidestep in my own life with all the blessings of freedom that we enjoy in this country today.

Well, this week, the assassination of Charlie Kirk was a sobering reminder that this world hates the advance of the Gospel and this world hates a faithful testimony, a biblical worldview related to the things that this world worships. Our world, our modern age, does not necessarily set up physical graven images that we worship. We rather don't need them because we carry our idols around in our bodies. We worship personal autonomy over human sexuality, over over gender identity, and over the sanctity of life related to abortion and end of life care. All of these things were faithfully proclaimed and Charlie Kirk was hated for it and was gunned down because of this, because the world hates whatever is the idolatry of the day.

So what's the church supposed to do? Well, what this passage reminds us is that the church cannot shrink back in cowardice, but it means that we must come to grips with the fact that we will not be safe even if our methods are peaceful and seek only to reason with people from the Scriptures. The world rages against the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, whether or not we will suffer, or we would suffer or we want to suffer, the that's irrelevant. We are called in the Scriptures everywhere to prepare for suffering.

It may or may not come in that particular form in the course of our lives, but one way or another, Christians will suffer for Jesus. And what this passage reminds us is that Christians must suffer boldly for Jesus. That's our theme this morning, that Christians must suffer boldly for Jesus. Now, there are two parts to this short sermon text this morning. First of all, that Gentiles rage against believers in verses 23 through 28, Gentiles rage against believers.

And then number two, that believers pray for boldness. Believers pray for boldness. So first of all, Gentiles rage against believers in this first section, verses 23, 28. One of the things this passage reminds us is that the world's hatred against God's people is not new. Now, the reasons and the motivations and the justifications for it change in every age, change depending on who is in power or what the idolatry of the day might be.

But whatever the idolatry of the day is, if it's an idol, then Jesus Christ opposes it and Jesus Christ is a threat to it, and therefore the world will hate it. Now, we were reminded of the passage last week. As we come into this passage, it's important to remember the context. That Peter and John had been arrested for doing a good deed that they had, by the power of the name of Jesus Christ, miraculously caused a man who had been lame his entire life to stand so that he was able to go into the temple to worship for the first time in his life. And the religious leaders called them to account and asked why they were preaching and teaching in the name of Jesus.

And they wanted to shut them up, to stop them from speaking this word. But at the very end, the most they could do is read this in verse 21. Because they found no way to punish them because of the people. For all were praising God for what had happened. The most they could do is just tell them, well, please don't do this.

They could threaten them and release them, and that was it. Well, now in verse 23, the apostles come back. And we read that when they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. Now they reported, I think, for a number of reasons, what had happened, first of all was to advise the whole church. This was not a closed conversation with the apostles alone.

They reported this to the church to. To advise the church of the danger that had arisen to them. Because if the world's rage lashes out against the leaders of the church, every believer needs to understand that they too could be in the crosshairs. But the second is to encourage other believers about what the Lord had done in the face of this danger. That even though they faced this danger, God had provided for them, now they would ultimately suffer.

John would not give his life. John was the only apostle who died of old age, as tradition tells us. But Peter would ultimately suffer much throughout his life and then be martyred for his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But for now, the Lord had saved their lives, had saved them from the face of danger. And so the third and primary reason where we see this passage going is the reason they were reporting this to the church is to draw the whole church together to seek the Lord's power in the midst of this danger they were facing through prayer.

This is in fact, the goal for the prayer meeting that's going to follow this service, to draw the church together, to pray in exactly what we are seeing the apostles in the early church model for us here, and to look at what the early church does. We read in verse 24 that when they heard it, when they heard this report, they lifted their voices together to God. Now, that translation hides a little bit of the strength of what Luke has written here. It's not that they lifted their voices. It's singular.

They lifted their voice. And the word here for together is, I think, something of a weak translation. You'll notice in verse 26 that there is also the word together. The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together. That's a totally different phrase than what we find here, because the word here is not just that they were in the same place, which is what that means in verse 26.

They were all together in the same place. What this means is it describes something of acting with one impulse. It describes having the same passion or the same spirit. It means one. And it's a word that often you would translate as wrath.

It means they have the same strong feelings together as they lifted their singular voice to pray to God. I mentioned several weeks ago that nothing unites the church like prayer, but no prayer unites the church like prayer in the face of persecution. And that is what is calling these believers together as they lift their voice with one impulse to God. Notice what they pray. They pray, sovereign Lord, the word here is the word that we get our word despot from.

Now, the idea is the same in that language as in ours in some respects, but in others, not. Lenski in his commentary, says that a despot in this word has the same idea of absolute, unrestricted power. But it does not have the idea that we typically associate with despots, namely, a tyranny, a king who is only in it for his own will. And the reason? Because despots in this world are wrongly doing what belongs to the despot of heaven and earth, namely, trying to wield all power and authority in heaven and on earth.

And so they use that power invariably, wickedly. Now, in terms of the Sovereign Lord's power. Notice what they affirm. Now, they don't have to. They don't have to say the next thing, but it's not just filling space.

This is not a vocal pause while they are sort of clearing their throats and deciding what it is that they actually want to pray. What they pray here is essential to the logic of their prayer. Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them. They are affirming, they are confessing that God is the creator of heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them. Now, this is stock Old Testament language.

You may or may not remember this, but we just confess this in the Ten Commandments. We are not to make an image of anything in the heavens above or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth, because all of those images were. All those creatures that we might make an image of were created by God. God alone is the Creator. Therefore he alone is worthy of our worship.

Now, this is not just a theoretical discussion about the origins of the world. It is a reminder in the course of their prayer that the same God who spoke all things into existence is the same God who is sovereignly powerful to control everything that happens in this world, whether for good or ill. The one who spoke all things into existence is still in control.

Now, in the next section, they turn to the passage that's in view. And in verse 25, this is the third time now that David has been identified as a prophet, Satan, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We saw that in Acts 1:16 and Acts 2:30, 31. And for the third time, David is cited as a prophet inspired by the Holy Spirit. And they quote Psalm 2.

Why did the Gentiles rage? Now, this word for rage is a very visceral word. Another commentator, Bach, writes that in its everyday use it refers to spirited animals such as snorting horses before a race. You can just see him just kicking, just chomping at the bit to get after something. Not a race, but the persecution of God's people to rage against the Lord and against his anointed.

Why did the Gentiles rage? Why did the peoples plot in vain or plot a vain and empty, a hopeless thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together. That's in the same place against the Lord and against his anointed, that is, against his Messiah, against his Christ. Now, if you know Psalm 2, you understand that Psalm 2 is a promise there of triumph, the triumph of God's Christ over the Gentile enemies.

Who plot against him. And certainly it was understood that way throughout the entire context of the Old Testament. But what's fascinating here is they apply that passage and they indict the whole world, Jew and Gentile alike, as having gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed. Look at all the people groups named in verse 27. For truly, in this city, Jerusalem, they were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, whom you set apart as the Christ, both Herod.

Herod is neither Jew nor Gentile. He is an Edomite, a descendant of Esau, a cousin to the people of Israel. And Pontius Pilate. Pontius Pilate is a Gentile of Gentiles. He is a Roman along with the Gentiles.

But then also he says, and the peoples of Israel, the whole world, is indicted in this, Jew and Gentile alike. And what have they done? They have not simply raged as though there was this unstoppable force that God just helplessly watched without any ability to do anything about it. They gathered together verse 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. The wicked rage wickedly, but their wickedness ultimately fails to accomplish their purposes because the wicked end up as much as they rage against God, they end up fulfilling God's plan.

Because God is always there to bound and bind and to keep their evil from spreading as far as it can.

And he is also the one who is constantly even working through the wicked to bring even their evil toward his ultimate holy conclusions. Now, we need to note the logic here. Note first that in their prayer there is a logic to their prayer. They are not just saying things. There is a logic here.

First of all, they remind themselves that the sovereign Lord is sovereign over creation itself. But second, that the creatures rage against God and against His Christ. But despite these creatures raging against the Lord, God is still sovereign. The Creator has not lost his grip on his creation. You may know the story of Richard Vonbrand, the founder of an organization called Voice of the Martyrs.

If you want to know about how to pray about for persecuted peoples around the globe, Voice of the Martyrs is always giving wonderful up to date information about the people of God who are persecuted throughout the world. Richard von Brand was a man who lived in Romania under the communist regime of the Soviet Union. And he was a pastor. And as a pastor, he knew that it was just a matter of time before he was going to be arrested by the secret police. And so in preparation for that eventual day, he studied and memorized passages from the Bible that exhorted Christians not to fear.

And what he discovered is that there was a very interesting number of passages in the Bible that tell Christians not to fear. There were 366 of them, one for every day of the year, including a year that would encompass.

Now, there was a day when he eventually was arrested, and there's a video, sort of a documentary about his life. And if you watch sort of the dramatic reenactment, it shows him in the cab with the secret police. And suddenly you see this man who is going to no small amount of torture. He says, wait a minute, what day is it? And he's just giddy.

He says, what day is it? They say, well, it's 1948. But what day is was February 29th. It was leap year. He had memorized 366 verses, and now he had one for the entire rest of the year.

God was sovereign over that, and that gave him confident boldness to stand before his persecutors with the horrific acts they committed against him. Now, the believers in this section are not just lamenting. In the next section, they're getting ready to pray for boldness in verses 29 through 31. This brings us to the second section. Notice what they say in verse 29, and now, Lord, now is a word that connects what happened to Jesus, to your holy servant Jesus, as all the nations of the world conspired against him.

And now, Lord, this persecution, they're saying, is still happening. And now, Lord, it is spilled out on Jesus and is splashing onto us. And so what do they pray? Lord, make it go away, Lord, let it not come to me. Peter and John, I get it, that's part of the gig.

But let it not come to me. No, that's not what they pray. They pray, and now, Lord, look upon their threats. Now, there are many commentators who read this and they say they never really pray for their own safety. They never really pray for the Lord's vengeance.

But I think that does a little bit of short shrift to what's happening in this phrase. Look upon their threats. You see, in the context of the Old Testament, especially the Psalms, for the Lord to see something, to look upon something, means it expresses a confidence that the Lord will judge it. You see, the wicked are constantly boasting in the Old Testament that God cannot see what they are doing. But in Psalm 10, verse 14, the Psalmist affirms, but you do see, for you note mischief and vexation that you may take it into your hands.

That's the confidence they're Expressing they are entrusting the judgment of the wicked and praying for the protection of themselves. And they're entrusting all of that to the Lord to do as he sees fit. But it is true that that's not their main request. Instead, they go on, and their main request as regards their own persons, as they say, grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness. Judgment of the wicked belongs to the Lord.

It is not for us to obsess, to plot, certainly not to fantasize about judgment for our enemies. Our job is to speak God's Word with all boldness in the face of the opposition of our enemies, even calling our persecutors to repent and to seek faith in Christ for their own ultimate, eternal salvation. Richard Vernbrand loved sharing the Gospel with Soviet soldiers. He'd boldly go up to them in the days when he knew his rest was coming and start to talk to them about the Gospel of Jesus. That's boldness.

If God, the sovereign Creator, is still indeed the sovereign sustainer of all things, it means that we can speak His Word boldly, even in the face of persecution, because we can trust Him. He didn't mess up creation. He will not mess up human history.

Now the main request then, in verse 30 in general, is to ask for God to continue to confirm His Word while you stretch out your hand to heal. And signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus. Throughout the Scriptures, signs and wonders are given for a season to confirm the reliability of a prophet that the Word is true. And in these early days the Word was given, signs and wonders were given to confirm the New Testament Gospel as it was being written. Now, God can still work miracles, however he normally works today through ordinary miracles means, through the Word, through prayer, through baptism, in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

While we cannot necessarily expect God to work through extraordinary means, we can and we must expect the ordinary things that God calls us to. And so here in verse 31, we have something extraordinary and we have something that is ordinary, something that was given for a reason and for a season in the time when this happened, and something that, that we are still called into. The extraordinary thing we read in verse 31 is that when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken. Do not be disillusioned if after the end of our prayer meeting there is no earthquake. God does not promise such things for today.

But look at what God does promise. Throughout the rest of the New Testament, we are constantly called to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And we read and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. Notice they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. They all continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

The word here is not the word for speak that we might translate better as preach or proclaim or teach, something that a pastor might do. The word here really is just the word speak. Speak. It's a very general word for the speech that everyone engages in. Michael Green wrote this wonderful book, Evangelism in the Early Church.

And one of the things that he talked about is the way the early church simply gossiped the gospel everywhere they went. You may know there's a conference coming by Mid America Reformed Seminary in October called Gossiping the Gospel. That's where they got that phrase, everyday evangelism. And it's about speaking the word of God, being people filled with the Holy Spirit to speak the word of God in all boldness, just like happened in the early church. Well, the application.

The application that I wrote before anything had happened is pray for boldness.

Pray for boldness. That's what this text is calling us to do. Now, I want to think about what prayer means. In Philippians 4. 6, Paul reminds us, do not be anxious about anything.

But in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

Now, there is a way to pray where we simply let a laundry list of requests be made known to God. God, remember this. God, heal this. God, please take care of that. And we're just sort of going through those laundry list requests.

And that's a good thing to do. God wants us to make our requests known to him. But there is another kind of prayer where we are not just simply going through the content, the requests, but where we are turning with all our heart, soul, mind and strength to the Lord. Now, for most of my life, and maybe you can understand this, I think my prayers have largely been categorized and characterized by the first kind of prayer that I'm really just trying to get through my list often, too often. But there have been times of deep personal anguish where God has taught me through that anguish, something about that deeper kind of prayer.

In those times when I would read through the Bible, it was not simply to check off my task for the day. I found myself scouring scripture to hear God speak. And sometimes the way this looked is I would take these passages and I would write them out in full. I was typing them. But you understand the meaning and even Just going through each word by word as I was repeating it, writing it down.

I lingered over every word and. And listened carefully to every word. And I appealed to God on the basis of every word, pouring out my heart to him for my life and my situation. And what I found is that I prayed God's word back to him, is that sometimes I found the encouragement that I needed in times of deep distress, especially not to fear. Many times, however, the Lord rebuked my sin.

I saw this is exactly what I'm doing. I forgive me God, but every time I walked away with the Gospel, the promise of who Jesus Christ is and what he has done for sinners like me. Because the main lesson I needed to learn more than anything was to have confident boldness in God's sovereignty, just like this early church, to recognize that even the suffering in my life, God is working out his plan for my good and for his glory. God's sovereignty is something I believed in my head. I had to pass ordination exams where I was asked questions about this.

I've preached sermons about God's sovereignty. I've taught lessons in Sunday school and other places on the point. But in the times when my life has felt like it was unraveling, I needed to do what this early church does here. To plead with God from His word, speaking through the Scripture, and to think about God's sovereignty in the life of Jesus as it extends all the way to someone like me. Now, the fruits of this kind of prayer.

If Paul said first in Philippians 4. 6, that we shouldn't be anxious about anything but pray in everything, in the next verse, Philippians 4. Seven, he says, in the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds. In Christ Jesus. I had peace.

But more than that, I felt emboldened. It was remarkable. When you cast your cares upon the Lord, knowing that he cares for you, you feel a boldness to speak into a variety of situations, to confess my sins and failures to God and to other people, to correct others lovingly in their sin and errors. To. To call people together who are struggling to call people, to trust in Christ in the middle of a difficult situation.

We need to pray, and we need to pray for boldness. But we find no better guide than the Scriptures. Not because the Scriptures offer magical words that we can chant like an incantation. That's a pagan view of prayer. Jesus warns against that.

Don't heap up empty phrases like the Gentiles do.

But in the Scriptures, as we listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking and more, as the voice of the Holy Spirit fills us with the boldness to follow Christ into His mission. We find the word of God as wind in our sails, even when we must sail into seasons of suffering.

Now, I would encourage you to consider the way from this passage. We might pray. And after this service, there will be a part a time, a meeting, where we can pray together as a church seeking for the Lord's Holy Spirit to fill us with boldness. Because this is what we need more than anything. Prayer is important for the individual.

It is important for the church. It is important when the church is persecuted and and it is important when we, in the midst of this, are called to continue to march forward into this world, to speak God's word with all boldness. So let's pray toward that end. Pray with me.