The Church Prays for Boldness

Acts 4 and the Church’s Prayer After Persecution

Once again, if you'll turn in your scriptures with me to the book of Acts, chapter four, Acts chapter four. We continue with our study in the book of Acts based upon the papyri P45, picking up where we left off this morning in Acts 4 .23.

Let's ask the Lord to bless our time together. Our Heavenly Father, once again, as we open your truth, and especially this evening, as we listen to your church praying, may we learn from these blessed saints of old, great truths that we might apply in our day.

So we might respond to persecution and difficulty in a way that is honoring and glorifying to you. We thank you for these words you have preserved for us. May we benefit from them by the work of your spirit.

We pray in Christ's name. Amen. This morning, we saw the end of the encounter between the Sanhedrin and Peter and the rest of the disciples that were involved in the healing of the well-known man there at the gate of the temple.

And because the chief priests and the Sanhedrin feared the people, recognized that the people themselves were glorifying God for the great healing that had taken place, they let the apostles go, having threatened them and warned them and commanded them to no longer preach or teach any man in the name of Christ.

And so what we see, the name of Jesus specifically, Messiah, would also be very offensive to them as well. And so what we see in tonight's text is the reaction. What is the reaction of having your leaders taken into custody, threatened and warned, and basically said, you're told to stop doing what your Lord has commanded you to do to bear witness of what God has done.

The Church’s United Response to Threats

Here is the church's response in verse 23. And when they had been released, they went unto their own and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard this, they lifted up their voices to God with one accord.

And they said, Lord, it is you who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, all that is in them, who by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our father, David, your servant said, why did the nations rage and the peoples devise futile things?

The kings of the earth took their stand. The rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Messiah, his Christ, his anointed one. For truly in this city, they were gathered together against your holy servant or your holy child, Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.

And now Lord, take note of their threats and grant that your bond servants may speak your word with all boldness or all confidence while you extend your hand to heal and signs and wonders take place to the name of your holy servant, Jesus.

And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness. And so here is the response of the church to the persecution that has come against them from their own leaders, from the people of Israel.

And so you have to wonder, you have to ask the question, once this small group, and it still remains a relatively small group, is faced with the very leaders of their people, the people that yes, during Jesus's ministry, they've come to understand, have their own purposes.

And they would have heard Jesus in what is contained in Matthew chapter 24, for example, very strongly condemn these leaders. So it's not like there was going to be a tremendous amount of shock and surprise on their part, that there was going to be opposition.

And Jesus himself had told them, there is going to be opposition. They've persecuted me, they will persecute you. They've hated me, they will hate you as well. And so they come together, they find their own and they report to them all that was said to them.

I can't imagine that the one who was healed did not accompany them. We don't hear anything more about such individuals, but it is always interesting to consider what their role might have been in later years and in following of Christ.

But those are things that maybe we'll find out someday in the expanded version of church history available to us in the eternal state. But they gather together and they inform the church of what has been said to them.

And I would imagine that they needed to let the church know, look, we have been told firmly that we are to no longer speak in the name of our Lord. They are going to oppose our proclamation. You need to be aware of this in wherever you're going and whatever you're doing.

When you testify to what you have seen and heard, then you can expect a reaction that will be in line with what has been said to us by the leaders of our own people. Because they would obviously, this was as yet a rather Jewish context in which we are speaking.

And so when the church heard this, when they've been given accurate information concerning what has been said, and there wasn't any need to exaggerate, there wasn't any need to make anything else up and make the chief priests and the elders sound any worse than they were.

They could give accurate and truthful information. When they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord. And so there was unity. You did not have division. There were not some people saying, well, you know, I think that's pretty much it.

We need to wrap things up. We've done what we could and we need to go on. Or, well, you know, let's try going someplace else. Or, well, could we try this without using Jesus' name? There's no, none of this is going on.

There is one accord. There is one mind. And it's interesting that when they address God, they begin with the term despotah, despotah. This is not kurios, which is the normative term for Lord in the New Testament.

They use the term despotah. And some people might ask, you know, why, why might that be? Well, that term, as you would imagine, and unfortunately has come over into our language through a bit of a process that has led to it to have a primarily negative meaning.

And so when we think of a despot, we think of tin horn dictators in Central or South America who uphold their government by the use of force and bribery and corruption. That is not, of course, what the term meant, but it was a term that referred to one who had singular power that was not dependent upon any secondary source to uphold their power and authority.

And so it is frequently used in the context of rulership, governmental power and authority. And so that certainly makes sense in addressing the Lord in this way as despotah, because of the quotation that is used, it is you who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.

Now, isn't it interesting that the first quotation that comes to the united mind of the church in the face of persecution is God is still in control. There is a creator who has made all things. There is one who stands over all of these things and he stands above any authority.

Any authority that exists here upon earth is subservient to the despotah who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, which includes any king, any emperor, any high priest, any Sanhedrin, any of these lesser things stand under the authority of the sovereign God.

We cannot begin to underestimate the massive importance in truly Christian, really truly theistic thinking, but especially within Christian thinking of the reality of the fact that if there is a personal creator who has made for his purposes and his glory, then everything else, including all of mankind's governmental systems, all of man's philosophy, art, science, it is all to be subjugated under that category of created by God.

And when you abandon that understanding, which was fundamental to the development of Western thought and government and culture, when you abandon that, that is the very cement that holds it all together.

We see it coming apart in the West. The reason being that in the thinking of the intellectual elites of the West today, there is no creator. There is no purpose. There is no transcendent meaning. There is no way to relate together science and governments and rulership and beauty and philosophy and everything else.

It's all just the random result of molecules bumping into each other. And so even the search for a consistent way of viewing these things is futility. And so as a result, we see what's happening around us, but the early church doesn't function upon that perspective and the church can never function upon that perspective.

One of the problems we have today is so many flooding through the doors have that perspective and it's not challenged and dealt with through the ministration of the word of God in an authoritative fashion.

And so you begin with a recognition of who God is, that he is the creator. He's the maker. He stands over all that is in them, including all human authorities. And then honestly, there's three or four really good sermons in this one section.

There really are. You could stop there and go for a long time on that. But then the beginning of verse 25, who by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our father, David, your servant set. Here is one of a number of texts that when you put them together, give us insight from the scriptural perspective, from the mind of the writers of scripture itself, how they understood the origination of the divine text.

Here you recognize David, God's servant, spoke just as Peter would say later on, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. You recognize that they used differing terminology and differing words.

Anyone who reads the letters of Paul and compares them to those of, to the writings of Luke or to Mark or Peter will see a fundamental differences in the style and vocabulary and grammar. So men spoke from God.

They used their language. And yet in all of this, this recognition of the human element, the fact that our father David actually existed, he wasn't just simply a mythological character into which priests or others had placed certain words, which of course is what is taught in the large majority of theological seminaries today.

They didn't have that perspective. Instead, they recognize that David had existed historically and yet by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our father David. And so the words that come forth, the words that are quoted in regards to the nations raging from the second Psalm, these words are divine.

They find their origin in the work of the Holy Spirit of God. We put a text like this together with what Peter says and what Paul says and what Jesus himself says in the gospels when he likewise quotes from the Old Testament and makes similar statements in regards to the origination of the text, gives us an understanding that the writers of scripture themselves had the highest view of the scriptural text and includes the Old Testament text.

Some of you may have seen recently a fairly well-known, I guess the term today is still evangelical preacher, very, very large mega church in the Georgia area teaching that if we're going to keep Christianity credible, we need to unhook our faith from the Old Testament.

We need to recognize that that Old Testament, that the most important thing is just simply what Jesus said and the resurrection of Jesus. Of course, the fact that Jesus himself expressed the purpose of all those things in the words of the Old Testament seems to have escaped this particular individual, but this is the kind of thing that we have going on in the world today.

This is not how the early church viewed it because obviously this citation comes from the only scripture they possessed. There was no New Testament at this point in time. Of course, they're about to interpret the entire Christ event, the whole purpose of Christ's coming in light of what that Hebrew scriptures said in regards to these issues.

Why did the nations rage and the peoples devise futile things? The kings of the earth took their stand and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ, his anointed one. The fundamental reason for the application of the text is that this opposition had been prophesied.

This is actually a fulfillment of the statements of the Old Testament text. It is only going to become more fulfilled when you have a singularly higher powers. That of the Roman Empire itself only in the next two decades would be brought to bear against this movement.

Within a few hundred years between 250 -260 and the peace of the church in 313, you have empire-wide persecution against the entirety of the church. Certainly, those early believers saw in these words the same kind of fulfillment that the early church saw here.

They go to the scriptures and then in light of that, listen to the words of the prayer. For truly in this city, there were gathered together against, and it is your holy paida, your child. A paida can be a child, a servant.

It can be translated both directions. But this took place in history in this city. This was not some fictional event. Truly in this city, there were gathered together against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed, and that's the same root as the term for Christ, Messiah, the anointed one, who was gathered together against Jesus, the anointed one of God.

Well, you have Herod and Pontius Pilate, and it says both Herod and Pontius Pilate, because who do Herod and Pontius Pilate represent? Well, they represent the nations. They represent the Gentiles. They represent Rome in its power, and specifically as individual rulers and leaders.

And so both of them together, they're grouped together because of their specific role as leaders exercising power amongst the people, along with, so together along with them, the nations, the Gentiles, and the peoples of Israel.

That's quite an amazing conjugation of people, conjunction of peoples. Herod, who history tells us was probably insane. I mean, that's probably the nicest thing that we can say about Herod. This particular individual, we would not identify as balanced in any fashion.

And you could contrast him in a sense with Pontius Pilate, who was not insane, who was very much a politico, very much an individual looking out for his future. He finds himself in a difficult situation being put into this particular area, which was not only the backwaters of the Roman Empire, but a no-win situation for him in trying to advance his career.

There was only a small chance he could get out of that mess without rebellions and being blamed for all sorts of things. And so much of his actions, much of his political cowardice should be put to the credit of his attempting to have something left of his career once he finally got out of this particular station that he had been assigned to.

So he's very different than Herod, who isn't looking, who isn't thinking about any of those things. He's just not really all there to begin with. And so you have these two put together, very, very different motivations, very, very different individuals.

But they gather together against the one that God has anointed, along with the Gentiles, which would just simply be the people's, the Roman people, the Roman soldiers and military might that was utilized to not only subjugate the people of Israel, but to bring about the execution of Jesus and the peoples of Israel.

And so there is no way around the recorded fact of history that the Jewish leaders stood before Pontius Pilate, they accused Jesus, they said, we have a law, by that law he ought to die, and even had said, let his blood be upon us when they began to cry out, crucify, crucify.

You may remember years ago, I forget what the year was, but I remember preaching a sermon from this pulpit about a movie that was about to come out by Mel Gibson. And it was about that particular event.

And I remember speaking on it on a Sunday evening. Later in the week, I believe when I saw it, I had already seen that one of the great controversies had been that in that scene, in the original of the film, and it was still there in Aramaic, if you understand enough Aramaic, you could figure out what they were saying, but there were subtitles in English.

And so before the film could be released, they edited the subtitles. And so what eventually comes out when you watch it is at the point where they're saying, let his blood be upon us and upon our children.

They still said it in the audio of the film. And if you understood the language, you could hear it, but they erased the subtitles so that it wouldn't be anti-Semitic. Obviously, assuming that no one in the world could understand Aramaic, though the actors were saying it correctly, I'm not really sure how they figured that out.

But anyway, there is this, since World War II, since the Holocaust, an incredible embarrassment on the part of many of the texts in the New Testament that specifically implicate the leadership of the people of Israel in the crucifixion of Jesus.

You're not allowed to say that in New Testament theology any longer, but it's right there in the text. Just as much as Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles, you have the peoples of Israel all gathered together against God's holy servant Jesus, whom God the Father had anointed.

And so it's important to recognize that all of these people had completely different motivations for what happened in the crucifixion of Jesus. The Roman soldiers, they didn't, they could care less. They were just Roman soldiers.

They were doing what Roman soldiers do. They had crucified hundreds, if not thousands of people themselves. They had lined roadways with crosses of agonizing, screaming rebels. This was nothing new to them.

It was very untasteful. The people that you would assign to this would not be your best people. But at the same time, they had to get the work done or they'd be themselves in trouble. So they had to be good enough to at least make sure that it was done effectively.

But they didn't care who was being crucified. But the peoples of Israel, the Jews, they delivered Jesus up out of jealousy, out of rage for his exposure of their hypocrisy, exposure of their self-centeredness, their ignoring of God's law.

Just read Matthew chapter 23 and you'll see why they were as angry as they were. Pontius Pilate, he's just trying to get through the political mess. He's trying to get through another Passover season without some massive rebellion breaking out that would require the bringing into the Roman legions and probably end up with him in prison or at least with his career ruined.

And as we said, Herod was just looking for a show. Huge differences in motivation and the personality types and everything else. And yet, in light of all of that, the very first words of verse 28, to do whatever your hand and your will predestined to occur.

God’s Sovereignty, Human Responsibility, and Boldness in Witness

Here's the church. Here's the church facing opposition and persecution. And what is the ground upon which they stand? They started with God as creator. God is sovereign over all things. He's the one who made all things, including everything in his creation.

He stands above all these things. And here you have all the representations of Rome and leadership and power and the people of Israel. And yet, what they did was whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur.

Now, unlike Acts 13, 48, which we'll get to eventually, there's just no way around what is said in the original language. There's no textual critical issues. There's no way of trying to turn a passive into a middle or any of these types of ways to try to get around the meaning of the text.

The early church believed in the absolute sovereignty of God over the actions of men in time and the crucifixion of Jesus. There is absolutely no question about it. They understood that what had taken place and realized this isn't all that long after the event.

And so there has been some teaching. There has been some reflection. The Holy Spirit of God has come and they have a very different perspective than, for example, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who were saddened and confused.

They didn't understand how could this be. Now the early church has a rock to stand on to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur. Now, in light of that, there would be many who would tell us, ah, well, what that means.

Is we can't hold Herod accountable for what Herod did. We can't hold Pontius Pilate or the Gentiles, the peoples of Israel. If they were just simply doing what God predestined to occur, then they're just puppets on a string.

It's just a play, right? How many times have we heard that in talking to our friends in various traditions? It's exactly what comes back. But there is no evidence whatsoever that the early church understood it in that way, because you'll notice the very next verse, and now, Lord, and it's interesting at that point, it switches from despot to Kuti, to Kutios, because they are beseeching him as their Lord.

Now, Lord, take note of their threats and grant that your bond servants may speak your word with all confidence. And so they recognize that these are individuals that God, God take note of their threats.

They're asking for justice to be done. They're asking for protection. You see now, looking in the past, we can have absolute confidence. We can recognize if this is what God has brought to pass, then we can see what His decree is.

We can see what His will was in each of these situations. Once we look to the future, we no longer have that information. All we know is God is going to continue to be just. He's going to continue to be righteous, but we don't know what His intentions are going to be.

We cannot command Him to do certain things. And so, Lord, take note of their threats means these are real individuals. These aren't puppets on a string. God is going to hold each one of those responsible for acting upon their desires, just as He did back in Isaiah chapter 10, when He brings the Assyrians against Israel, and then judges the Assyrians for the intents and thoughts of their hearts.

Just as He held Joseph's brothers accountable, Joseph didn't say, oh, you didn't sin because God intended this to happen to save many people alive. No, they did intend His death, but God did not allow that to happen.

In each one of these situations, you see the reality of man being held accountable before God for acting upon the desires of His will and the overriding reality that God accomplishes what God intends to accomplish.

No one was forced. You do not have Herod as some balanced, wonderful leader being forced to do evil things by a mean-spirited God. Pontius Pilate wasn't some zealot for justice that God overrode his good instincts and made him do something bad.

In none of these situations do you have individuals who were forced to do something against their nature. If anything, what you see in the story was God restraining their madness. There had to be a certain time.

It had to be done at a certain time in a certain way to fulfill prophetic scripture. And so God even restrained their actions. How many times did they try to arrest Jesus? How many times did they try to take Him, to cast Him off a hill, whatever, and Jesus walked straight through the midst of them?

The time was not yet. He restrained the evil of men. How many men would have liked to have killed the Messiah, but He didn't allow it to happen? God did not allow it to happen. He restrained their evil.

And so the church recognizes that what took place in the crucifixion of Jesus, to do whatever your hand and your purpose predestined to occur, can we really think that now when it comes to how they are to face the threatenings of the world, that it's like, well, but that was the only time you really exercised your sovereign providence.

Just in those, it's just in the big events. Now we don't, you know, we're just going to do the best we can. And we know you really don't have a purpose now. No. In light of the reality that God is the sovereign creator now, Lord, take note of their threats and grant that your bond servants, your duloi, your, your slaves may speak your word openly with confidence, even in light of the fact that they have said, don't do this.

We know that it is absolutely your intention and will that we do do this. And so we want you to grant that your servants, your slaves may do exactly what we've been told not to do. Speak your word with all confidence while you extend your hand to heal and signs and wonders take place in the name of your holy servant, Jesus.

They had seen what had happened when that man had been raised up. Now they didn't, they didn't get together as a group and say, you know what we need to do guys, we need to get down to the pool of Bethesda.

And all we got to do is we just got to, we just got to heal everybody lying around that pool of Bethesda. And then you take one guy and I'll take another guy and we'll just go out. And that's how we'll evangelize in the light of a bunch of miracles.

They didn't focus upon that. When the disciples have been going into the temple, they had been going to the temple to pray. It had been a, an encounter that they had not intended when they met that man, but God had given guidance.

And so here in this very early period, it is absolutely necessary that there be the testifying to the divine nature of the gospel and the fulfillment of the prophetic word by healings, signs, and wonders.

And that there to take place, how? Through the very name that they had been told not to speak in any longer, through the name of your holy servant, Jesus. And so what is the church's response? The church's response is a theological response.

Now, not for a second am I suggesting that they did not have a deep emotional commitment here. They know what they're going to be facing. They know what the results may be. And if they didn't know now, by the time Stephen comes along, they will know then, but it was not primarily an emotional response.

It was first and foremost, a recognition of the God they served and their relationship to him. They are his do-loy, his servants, his slaves. He is their ultimate authority. And he has commanded them to bear witness to who Christ is and what Christ has done.

And so they pray, give us boldness, give us confidence that we may speak, not our word, but your word that has been granted to us. And then accompany that message by extending your hand to heal and signs and wonders taking place in the name of your holy servant, Jesus.

Use your divine power to establish not who we are and not to draw people on the basis of the miraculous, but to establish the reality and the truthfulness of your word, which is being proclaimed. And as a result of that prayer, when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness, or that's the very same term that was used earlier, confidence, a confident boldness.

God granted their prayer because their desire was to be used by God as he chooses to use them, no matter what the personal consequences might be to them individually. So their response is a theological response.

It is grounded in God's truth. It is grounded in the highest view of God. It is grounded in the decree of God. But the result, and this is, is this not constantly what we hear? If you tell people that God is in charge, if you believe that there is a divine decree, that will be the end of bold speaking, of true witnessing.

It is only when we have an understanding that witnessing is an appeal to the creature rather than a proclamation of the creator's message. It is only when we focus upon the human element at the expense of the divine content of the message that you can come up with the idea, well, if you tell people that God's sovereign, they're not going to evangelize and there's going to be no evangelism.

Well, if you define evangelism as an appeal to the almighty will of the creature, well, then I guess the early church didn't do that either. But if you recognize that evangelism is the proclamation of God's message that he then uses by his spirit to draw his people unto himself and the proclamation of the message by which God then brings judgment upon those who rebel against that message and prove what fills their heart, even in the presence of God's truth, there's always both sides.

Once you understand that as the task of the church, then you recognize how empty these objections are to teaching the whole counsel of God, because it is in the whole counsel of God that you see that this is what is taking place.

So what we also need to see is that even though they recognize the absolute sovereignty of God, they don't then just sit back and go, well, Lord, sort of like my Muslim friends say, inshallah, if God wills, you know, whatever, whatever will be, will be, that's not what they did.

So here are people, they recognize God's absolute sovereignty. They see God's hand in the predestination of what takes place in Jesus. And what's the result? Is it sitting back, becoming lackadaisical?

No, we want to, as your servants with boldness and confidence, proclaim your word. We've been told not to do it. We want to do it, grant that we would be able to do it. There was a zeal that comes from the recognition of the sovereignty of God and our high calling as his servants.

And this is what is going to result in the willingness of the church to experience persecution. And it's going to lead very directly in a short period of time to the murder of Stephen, the stoning of Stephen.

We clean that up a lot. But if you've ever seen stoning, and sadly it still happens in many places in the world today, it's a horrific thing. It's a horrific, horrible death. That's where it's going to lead.

And it's only going to be the beginning. There are going to be many in the next, well, some would say there have been more in the past 150 years than there had been in all the time leading up to that.

I don't know. I know who does know. God knows. But the fact is the church's response to persecution was based not upon emotion, it was upon theology, scripture, and as a result, a desire that God would embolden them to speak the word of God.

And so we ask ourselves the question, if the time comes in our culture when it is finally all the pretense is dropped, for example, just quick application. While I was overseas, the decision came down regarding the cake baker.

And everyone's like, yay, that's great. Did you read it? Did you read the decision? It's actually frightening. Because when you, it looked like, well, it's great for him. Yeah, for him. But if you read it, you'll see why.

The why was that the authorities had expressed a bias against the man's religious beliefs, but left wide open the door for doing what they wanted to do and to actually force him to do these things if they had not expressed the bias against his religious beliefs.

Don't think that the other side didn't get that message. They're going to do this again, but this time they're going to make sure that they keep their hands clean and zip their lips and use all the right words about fairness and inclusivity and rights.

And basically what the decision from Kennedy was, if you did it the right way, that decision could have been 7 -2 the other direction, or at least 5 -4 the other direction. And we all know within the next couple of decades, the makeup of that court is going to change, and there aren't going to be any more 5 -4s or anything like it.

The point is that the time's going to come, unless God grants repentance and grants a change, unless something major happens in the direction of Western society. And looking at the current younger generations, I don't see much in the way of repentance happening.

The time's going to come when it's going to be argued that to say what is said about Christ is hate speech. It is a fundamental denial of the rights of others to their sexual expression or whatever they will come up with.

You see it happening all over the place. What will we do? How will we differ? But here you have governmental authorities saying to the church, do not speak in the name of this one whom you say is the only way of salvation.

Pretty much a straight parallel. How did the church respond? These people were willing to give up their physical possessions, their comfort, their relationships to one another, because when they put you in prison, they don't necessarily put you all in the nice same place.

They asked, God, make us bold to speak your truth. Our prayer should be, Lord, whatever would keep me from praying as the early church did, start dealing with me about it now. Remove those idols from my life that would keep me from being able to pray the prayer of Acts chapter 4.

Show me what would keep me from being able to be your servant in that situation. That needs to be our prayer. Even now, we may think it's way down the line, but it needs to be our prayer. Even now, let's pray together.

O King of all the ages, we do confess that you have created all things. You have made the heaven and the earth and all that is in them. You reign over them and you are accomplishing your purpose. And Lord, in your purpose, you bring judgment upon nations and cultures and peoples, and yet you call your servants to be your faithful servants, whatever the situation.

That's what we desire to be. Deal with our hearts even now. Ground us in your truth. Make us to be faithful. Make us to be bold in your proclamation. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.