SPROUL: “And being let go they went to their own companions and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. And so when they heard that, they raised their voice to God with one accord and they said, ‘Lord, You are God, who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them and who, by the mouth of Your servant David, have said, “Why did the nations rage and the people plot vain things? The kings of the earth took their stand and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ.
” For truly against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilot, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done. Now Lord, look on their threats and grant to Your servants that with all boldness they may speak Your Word by stretching out Your hand to heal and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Your holy servant Jesus. ’ And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the Word of God with boldness.
” He who has ears to hear the Word of God let them hear. Let’s pray. Father, indeed our souls are thrilled when we hear accounts such as these of Your visitation upon the early church with the power of the Holy Spirit that changed these fearful people into people of great boldness.
We pray that You would do that same work in our souls in this day. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I believe that it was George Bernard Shaw who invented the idea of the declension of personal adjectives. Now if you remember your grammar from elementary school you decline nouns and not personal adjectives; but what Shaw had in mind with the declension of personal adjectives was something like that. Here’s the way it works: I am confident, you are cocky, and he is arrogant.
That’s the way we decline personal adjectives. Another way to do it would be like this: I am bold, you are brash, and she is fool-hearty; because that’s the way, depending on how we are looking at things, we use adjectives to describe people. When we describe ourselves, we tend to choose an adjective that sounds virtuous, but when the same property is manifested in somebody else we tend to diminish the virtue of it, and that’s what Shaw had in mind.
But if we’ve been paying attention to the last weeks in our study of the book of Acts in the early church, the adjective that comes over and over and over through the pages has to do with the boldness of Peter and John and the early church. And when the New Testament speaks of the quality of boldness it is describing an attribute of virtue, an attribute that is to mark the life if the church in every generation. Well let’s look now to the text as we see it working out here in Acts four: “Being let go,” that is after their overnight imprisonment, after the kangaroo trial in front of the Supreme Court of Israel where Peter and John were commanded no more to speak in the name of Jesus, to which they responded saying, “Whether it be right to obey God or man, you be the judge,” and they made it manifest that they were not going to submit to this rule.
And out of fear of the people, the Sanhedrin let John and Peter go. And so here we’re looking at what happened afterwards. “And being let go, they went to their own companions” – they came back to the early church – “and they reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them.
And so when they heard that, all of them” – this whole body of Christian people in the first century – “raised their voice to God with one accord, and they said, ‘Lord, You are God. ’” What could be more obvious than that, and why were they doing it? They were saying, “What we’ve just experienced before the highest court of the land – we’ve been before the highest authority that this world can say to us, but we are saying now in our prayer, acknowledging You, O God, are the Lord, and it’s to You that we bow in adoration and submit to Your authority.
” “You,” he says – “Lord, You are God, and You are the one who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them. ” Then notice what happens next. “Who by the mouth of Your servant David have said, ‘Why do the nations rage and the people plot vain things?
The kings of the earth took their stand. The rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His anointed. ’” Immediately, in the midst of their prayer, they’re reminded of the Word of God, the Word of God that came to Israel through the lips or the pen of David in the second Psalm.
And if you’re familiar with Psalm two, it begins with a question: “Why do the nations roar? Why do the heathen rage and the kings of the world take counsel together and set themselves against the Lord and against His Messiah, against the Lord’s anointed? ” That’s the question.
And what is being described in Psalm two is a summit meeting of the most powerful rulers in the world, where those who refused to submit to the dominion of God and to the reign of God, who will not have God reign over them saying, “Let’s cast His bonds asunder; let’s break loose from His reigns. ” This was separation of state from God with a vengeance in antiquity, and this is what David predicted: that there would be an international conspiracy, not limited to one country or to one group, but the rulers from all over the world would assemble together in defiance against the lordship of God Almighty and against His anointed Son. When David describes this scene of the summit meeting, of the enemies of God we are told that the Lord sits in the heaven and laughs.
He looks at the assembly of all of the power and the might of the kings of this world as they gather together and they aim their bombs, their arrows, their guns, their tanks at God and against Christ, and God looks down from heaven. “What is this? ” He’s amused at first with the power and the strength of the kings of this world.
And He makes fun of them. “The Lord would have them in derision,” he said, but only for a moment because then, God’s amusement, the psalmist tells us, turns to wrath, and He warns the kings of the world, “That I will strike their knees with the rod of iron. I will take their armies, I will take their weapons, and I will destroy them like a potter’s jar is smashed against the ground.
” The latest generation of tanks will be scooped up by God in His hand, and He’ll turn it over and crush it against the ground into smithereens. And He warns them, “Kiss the Son” – S-O-N. “Kiss the Son, kiss my Son lest He becomes angry and you perish in the way.
” John and Peter go back to the people of God and tell them what happened, and they begin to praise God, “God, You are God. You are the one who made the heavens and earth…” And they remember. Now we know what David was talking about, about the rulers of this world taking counsel together.
And listen to what he says, “For truly Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, the people of Israel, and all of them were gathered together to do whatever they wanted to do against Him. ” That’s not what it says. He said, “They gathered together in an unholy alliance to do whatever Your hand, O God, to do whatever Your purpose determined beforehand to be done.
” You see the early church had no debates about Calvinism and Arminianism. There wasn’t an Armenian to be found in the early church. Every Christian believed in the sovereignty of God, and they believed in it absolutely.
They never negotiated the sovereignty of God because Jesus revealed exactly who God is and the power of the Almighty against all of the machinations of the people of this world. And so the early church said, “All this power that we’ve seen by the Romans and the gentiles and the Sanhedrin – nothing; Just a few weeks ago Your Son was delivered into the hands of these people to be executed by Your hand and by Your determinant purpose and counsel from the beginning of the world. ” The last time we had the Lord’s Supper, I read to you from Isaiah fifty-three where in that passage on the suffering servant of Israel, what does the text say?
“And it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. ” Our Lord Jesus would not have suffered a scratch simply by the conspiracy of human enemies against Him were it not for the determinant counsel of the Father, who ordained from all eternity that the Son should suffer at the hands of these wicked men for your sake and for my sake. And so they understood that in the drama of redemption, despite all of the antagonistic actions of those in this world, God was still sovereign.
God was still in control of all of this and he said, “Now Lord, look on their threats. Look on these threats that these same kings and rulers are breathing out against us and grant to Your servants that with all boldness they may speak Your Word. ’ And a moment later,” we read, “and when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the Word of God with boldness” – boldness, boldness, boldness.
Can’t you see the character of the first century Christian church was marked over and over and over again of unparalleled boldness? And yet, just a matter of weeks before this moment, when the lanterns were appearing in the Garden of Gethsemane as the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, His disciples fled in panic. At Calvary when Christ was being executed, yes there was John, yes there was Mary, but where were the rest of them?
Peter huddling over there in the corner cursing, denying that he ever even met Jesus. Boldness? The book of Revelation, when it speaks of the final judgment of God, when He talks about those whom He will send into the Lake of Fire, the murderers, the adulterers and so on, what’s the first group that goes into the Lake of Fire?
The cowards. If anything marks the church of the beginning of the twenty-first century it’s cowardliness. If anything that describes the difference between us and the first century church is our lack of boldness.
But yet we see this sudden transformation. Again, just a few days before that they’re in the Upper Room hiding, cowering, terrified, locking the doors for fear of the Jews, and now they’re standing up against the highest authority in the land fearlessly. What happened?
Two things: The resurrection and Pentecost. The resurrection galvanized the faith of the early church. When they saw the risen Christ, when they saw His victory over death and over His enemies, when He burst alive out of the tomb, a faith was born in the breasts of the apostles and the disciples that the whole world could not extinguish.
And adding to the power of that faith was the power of Pentecost, in which God the Holy Ghost came upon them, and they began to proclaim the Word of God fearlessly into the whole world. I told the people at the eight o’clock service that this past week Jack Parr died, and I remembered, when they announced his death, an experience I had when I was a sophomore in college. I’d only been a Christian a year, and it was announced that on the Jack Parr program Billy Graham would be his guest.
And so all of the Christians that were gathered on our campus went to the one television set in the dorm where we could watch the late night program with Jack Parr. And here came Billy Graham onto the program, and Jack Parr in his inimitable fashion wanted to speak frivolously and silly with Billy and be the comedian and say, “Oh Billy, I guess you’re coming here tonight to talk to me to try to save my soul. I guess you’re trying to straighten my life out.
You’re probably going to try to get me to repent. ” Billy smiled and he said, “Well Jack, have you thought about repenting? Because you know you need to, and yes, I am concerned about your soul because without Jesus, Jack, you’re going to perish.
” And I’m standing there as a college kid listening to this, and I said, “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. ” Billy Graham wasn’t nasty. He wasn’t mean.
He wasn’t insensitive, but I’ll tell you what he was, folks: He was bold before the whole nation. He wasn’t going to be manipulated into being silent about the truth of Christ. Where is that boldness among us?
Yes there’s a difference between being brash, being fool-hearty, being obnoxious and as offensive as we possibly can be. That’s not what I’m talking about, but I’m talking about being done with cowardliness and living the proclamation of the Gospel with the boldness that characterizes a Christian who has been persuaded of the resurrection of Christ, of the defeat of death – that we may have the same change in us that was in these men, who, from the moment they celebrated the Last Supper with Jesus, went into infidelity in fearfulness, but the Christ who fed them that night was raised from the dead and raised them from their fears and turned them into valorous saints.
