Sermon Transcript
When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David your servant said by the Holy Spirit, why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed. For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant 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 plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.
And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.
Most people in the United States pray As it turns out, 55% of our population prays daily. Daily, 55%. Did you know that? 77% of our population prays at least occasionally. And even atheists I’ve spoken with who I know well enough that they would be honest with me, they admit there are times when they kind of pray without even really thinking about it, like they’ve been waiting on a phone call, maybe about a job offer or a medical test result or the auto repair shop after the car breaks, and now the phone rings, right?
Like, this is the call where they are gonna get the news. How, how much will it cost? Or do I have the disease? Or will I get the job? So the phone phone rings and before they answer it, they just kind of reflex whisper something like, please let it be good news.
Right? Like, ring, ring, ring. I see who it is. Waiting on news. Deep breath.
Please let it be good news. Before I answer it.
Please let it be good news. Who are you talking to? Are you whispering, please let it be good news, to your phone? You think speaking sweetly to your phone is going to change how much the repair bill is going to be for your car? Car?
Can your phone do that? I mean, I know the iPhone is a pretty sophisticated piece of technology, but I don’t believe it can, as of yet, um, intercept an incoming digital signal and modify it to your liking as a result of your whisper. Who are you talking to when you say, please let it be Good news. So, let’s just admit it, wherever we are on the spiritual spectrum, there is an instinct in us that believes someone or something out there is powerful enough to act on our behalf if only we would whisper our request to the air. Even the most hardened atheists I know admit that they catch themselves speaking to the wind sometimes.
They say, I know it’s silly. I know it doesn’t really fit with what I say that I believe, but yeah, it still happens. Yeah, it still happens. I think we all pray. We all do.
If you are the exception to that rule, if you’ve really never once whispered anything to the wind, in your whole life, I’d love to hear about it. Tell me who you are. But I think honestly we all pray, even if it’s unintentional or if it’s against our stated beliefs, we still do it. We all do it. The question is, are some forms of prayer better, more appropriate, more effective, than other forms of prayer?
Do we need to pray on our knees, for example? Do we need to fold our hands when we pray? Do we need to pray to Jesus? Those are all good questions. So, today we’re going to look at one of the very few, actually, recorded prayers of the earliest church.
Surprisingly, we don’t have the content of very many of their prayers. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t pray. They prayed all the time, in fact. Even a cursory reading of the book of Acts, the emphasis on prayer in the early church, it’s overwhelming. The book of Acts records around 30 times in only 28 chapters when Jesus’ earliest followers stopped in order to pray.
Acts 1:14, they all joined together constantly in prayer. Acts 2:42, the church devoted devoted themselves to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Acts 6:4, the apostles gave their attention to prayer and the ministry of the Word. Acts 12:5, the church was earnestly praying to God for Peter while he was in prison. Acts 13:3, the church at Antioch fasted and prayed before sending out Paul and Barnabas.
Acts 14:23, Paul and Barnabas prayed and fasted when they appointed elders. Acts 16:25, Paul and Silas prayed in prison. Acts 21:5, Paul prayed with believers in Tyre as he left. They prayed all the time. When Paul instructed the church in Thessalonica to pray continually, that is maybe the type of prayer that he had in mind.
But again, the question for today isn’t, did they pray? But our question for today is instead, what did they pray? Acts 4 gives us a rare example. So, let’s set the stage for this prayer before we get into it. It occurs after Jesus’ death and resurrection, as the whole book of Acts does.
And in this time period, the disciples have gone out and they’ve started telling people, hey, Jesus defeated death, there’s fantastic news. But the religious powers that be were trying to shut them down, trying to silence them. So the religious powers that be have the disciples arrested, and then they threaten them. These authorities say to the disciples, if you keep talking about Jesus, there is going to be consequences. Maybe they would get flogged, maybe they would be imprisoned, maybe they would even be executed like Jesus was executed, all of which happened later in the book of Acts.
Some of them were flogged, some of them were imprisoned, and at least James and Stephen were executed. All of that was going to be in the future, but at this point when they offer this prayer, they were only threatened. They were threatened, if you speak in the name of Jesus, if you keep telling people about Jesus, there are going to be consequences. So, these authorities have threatened Peter and John, then Peter and John go back to the rest of the believers, and now Peter and John and the rest of the believers are going to pray. So, the setting is under the threat of corporal punishment, under the threat of imprisonment, under the threat of potential execution, they are now going to offer a prayer to God.
So, as we look at Acts chapter 4 today, we will observe 4 aspects regarding their prayer, all of which can add richness to our prayer lives today. So, the 4 aspects we are going to see are sovereignty, Scripture, submission, and Savior. Sovereignty, Scripture, submission, and Savior. So, first, sovereignty. They confessed God’s rule in all matters.
As part of their prayer, at the very start of it, they say, God, You are in charge of everything. That’s how they begin. They literally start their prayer, Sovereign Lord. So, there is an immediate awareness, the person to whom I am speaking, the God to whom I am speaking is the one who orders every atom in the universe the way he determines it to be. They say, I’m addressing the one with unlimited power.
I’m addressing the one who cannot be questioned, who cannot be threatened, who has no rival, who has no equal. Now and forever, God, you reign. That’s the one to whom I’m speaking. I once heard Francis Chan begin a sermon with a prayer but he prepped the prayer by commenting the one to whom he was about to speak is the one who would determine whether everyone in the room would take their next breath. God wants you to take your next breath, you will.
He doesn’t, you won’t. And now you are coming before Him. That’s how these earliest followers of Jesus started their prayer, Sovereign Lord who made heaven and earth and the sea and everything in them. And then they continue that theme of sovereignty. They say, not only did You make everything, but You knew everything was going to happen before it happened.
They say, God, you spoke through the prophets before any of the recent events came to be, but these events came to be exactly as you said they would happen. So, when you and me are praying, especially if we are in a difficult circumstance, maybe you have been cheated, maybe someone stole something from you, maybe somebody lied about you, maybe your company shut down so now you don’t have a job, and maybe Maybe your spouse left you, someone died unexpectedly, and now you are praying.
Are you in one of those moments right now?
If we pray like the earliest church prayed, we would say, Sovereign Lord, these events didn’t surprise You. They surprised me. Me, but they didn’t surprise You. You knew all of them before one of them came to be.
That’s how they start their prayer. And if that weren’t enough, they go one step further into sovereignty. They say, verse 27 and verse 28, remember this is right after Jesus was crucified and came back to life and ascended into heaven. So, that’s the moment at which they are praying. And they say, verses 27 and 28, the people who gathered against Jesus when He was executed, and then they name some of them.
They say, the people who conspired against Jesus, the people who arranged the sham of a trial, the people who executed an innocent man when they executed Jesus, they say, everything that those people did, verse 28, they did what God’s plan and God’s hand had predestined to take place. They say, God, this is part of their prayer talking about God’s sovereignty, they say, God, those murderers acted according to your plan.
I know that makes us uncomfortable, but don’t argue with me, argue with the text, right? You read it, Acts 4:28. There was no doubt in their mind who ultimately ultimately determined the sequence of events that they had just witnessed. They saw Jesus falsely accused. They saw him railroaded to the cross where he met his death.
And they said, these disciples of Jesus said, the perpetrators of those events, of those evil events, they acted according to God’s plan and God’s hand.
Even though I know that makes many of us uncomfortable, here is the surprising comfort in that if we can bring ourselves to see it, believe it, say it, which I have experienced personally. Charles Stanley said on an interview one time, Charles Stanley said the biggest comfort in his decades of ministry when someone had mistreated him or attacked him him, falsely accused him, blamed him for something, right? If you’re truly innocent, you get falsely accused, right? The biggest comfort in those moments, Charles Stanley said, is if you can believe that those attacks, those false accusations, that they ultimately came from the hand of your loving Father in heaven. If you can believe ultimately God is behind all of it, it will help you through those tough circumstances more than anything else.
That sounds a little crazy maybe, but here’s how I have seen that work out. Let’s say you’re going to sit down with the person who attacked you or falsely accused you. You’re gonna try to reconcile with them because God commands you to reconcile. Or let’s say, just imagine the apostles, the disciples were going to sit down with Pontius Pilate Pilate and Herod and the religious leaders. They’re gonna meet with them, try to talk it out after these people are responsible for killing Jesus.
Now, how much of a difference does it make? So, just imagine meeting with your attackers with 2 different narratives playing in your mind. One narrative is, as you sit down to meet with your attackers, or the attackers of your leader, your best friend in the case of the apostles, One narrative, how could they? How could anyone be so evil? How could anyone be so selfish?
How could anyone be so blind to the truth? How could anyone do what they did? Imagine having that playing in your head as you go to meet with the person. How’s that meeting gonna go?
Or compare that to narrative number 2.
You believe the narrative in your head is the person who attacked me did what God’s will, what’s God’s plan, what God’s hand determined beforehand should happen.
How’s that meeting going to go? Which narrative takes the heat and vitriol out of the moment? And which narrative adds gasoline to it? Now, I know we have some theological questions around evil people doing what God’s hand, will, plan had decided beforehand should happen, so that’s fine. Send me those as your sermon questions this week.
That’s great. But practically, if you believe that the person acted in accordance with God’s plan, it immediately makes the situation better. You are immediately more calm. If you can get to where the apostles were, right, they, they thought about the darkest event that has ever taken place on our planet, the execution of the innocent Son of God, and even that Even that they understood as part of God’s plan. If you can get there, you will find peace.
Okay, second aspect we see in their prayer, Scripture. Scripture, they listened to what God had already said in Scripture. When the disciples started praying in Acts 4, they quoted Psalm 2. They reminded themselves of, hey, what does God say about this kind of moment? So they didn’t start with how they felt when they started praying, which would be okay.
There’s plenty of prayers in Scripture that start with our feelings, but it isn’t where they started. They didn’t start by saying, God, we’re freaking out! People are threatening our lives! What are we going to do? That’s not what they did.
Even in that intense of a moment, that’s not what they did. Instead, they went to Scripture, like, what has God already said about this? In other words, instead of speaking their thoughts to God, they listened to what God had already said. They put themselves in the context of Scripture. They were trying to understand their setting or their circumstances theologically.
They came to God trying to learn what God thought about the moment instead of telling God what they thought about the moment. So, they went to Psalm 2, and Psalm 2 speaks of various peoples of the earth plotting against God’s Messiah, God’s Anointed, God’s Savior, turned out to be Jesus, which was the exact situation that they found themselves in, right? Various people had plotted against Jesus, attacked Him, killed Him, and now those same people were threatening the disciples who had stood up and started talking about Jesus. So, they were like, hey, I guess we are living out Psalm 2. There is nothing strange or unpredictable that is happening to us.
They took a little bit different angle than we often do, right? We, we often think, if I’m following Jesus, if I’m promoting him, if I’m drawing attention to Jesus with my life, everything should go pretty easy for me, which is false. Scripture says it’s false. But then when we hit a bump in the road, when people are attacking us, we kind of freak out and we say, what’s going on? We don’t understand.
We say, God, how could you let this happen? But if, like the disciples, we had oriented ourselves to Scripture. If we had let God speak first, we’d realize we are right where God’s people often find themselves, threatened, under attack. What does Jesus say? John 16:33, in this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.
Matthew 5:45, Jesus says the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous. James, Jesus’ brother, says, James chapter 1, beginning in verse 2, he says, consider it pure joy when you experience trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. Or Paul says, Romans 8:38, God works all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. When you go pray, let’s say you’re in a tough spot.
Let’s say you’re in a tough spot right now. Do you first listen to what Scripture says about tough spots, or do you ask God, or do you first ask God like, where are you, God? I feel abandoned, right? I mean, do you tell God, I feel abandoned, without first remembering Hebrews 13:5 where God says, I will never leave you, I’ll never forsake you?
Right? When you are in a tight spot, when you are angry, when you are confused, and justifiably you are angry and confused, it is okay to have feelings. Have all the feelings. Great! Maybe you are falsely accused.
Do you only throw your feelings at God or do you first stop and listen to Scripture where God says, yes, you will have trouble, but I have overcome the trouble. Yes, you will suffer, but it will result in good for you in the end. I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. Do you orient yourself to Scripture before you speak, or do you just speak like one without knowledge?
Here’s what we learn from this passage. Listen to what God has already said first and then speak. It will make a big difference in what you eventually say when you speak if you first listen to Scripture before you say it. Okay, so what did they say when they actually got around to speaking. Third aspect of their prayer, submission.
Submission. They deferred to God’s wisdom. They confessed God’s sovereignty, they have listened to Scripture, and now they submit to God’s wisdom. It is so interesting, their lives are threatened, right? Like, they really might get hunted down and killed like Jesus was.
That really might happen.
And they don’t pray, they never pray, please spare our lives. They don’t pray that. Not that there would be anything wrong with praying for your life to be spared. That’s okay to do that. That’s just not what they pray.
All they say is, Lord, look upon these threats. That’s it. Just look upon these threats. Other translations say, consider these threats. Lord, consider these threats.
Like, Lord, would You just reflect on the fact that our lives are in danger? Just check that out for a second. I mean, we are not asking You to spare us. We’re not asking You to get us killed either, up to You, just asking You would give this whole matter that we are in some thought.
Astounding, isn’t it?
What do we pray when we might get fired, when cancer might kill us, when we’re forced to wear masks again? What do we pray. We pray, get us out of it, protect me, heal me, free me. And those aren’t bad prayers, right? There’s plenty of those kind of prayers in Scripture.
It’s just not what the earliest church prayed. Now, we’re left to guess why they prayed like they did instead of praying like we do, but I think we have a pretty good guess. They had just confessed God’s sovereignty surrounding the perilous events of Jesus’ death, and now they are thinking about their own perilous situation. Jesus’ death, which they thought was terrible, and it was, it was darkest event in our history, it actually turned out to be the greatest event in the history of the world. It’s how God made salvation possible for all mankind.
It’s how God begins to reverse all the damage of sin. It’s how God reverses death. It’s the single greatest event ever in world history, and the disciples understood it to be great once they were on the other side of it, looking back on it, they were like, oh, wow! That was the most wonderful thing God has ever done for us. But when they were in the middle of those events, when they were actually watching Jesus be crucified, they thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen.
It was the death of their dream, the death of their leader, the death of the movement, all hope was gone. In the moment, they didn’t get it. Only afterward did they understand it. So now they’re in another moment that seems pretty bad, not as bad as watching Jesus crucified, but pretty bad. And I would guess, especially since they just confessed God’s sovereignty in Jesus’ execution, they are now thinking, If Jesus’ execution turned out to be so wonderful, if God knew what He was doing when Jesus was crucified, I mean, we didn’t get it, it seemed terrible to us, but if God knew what He was doing, then He probably has a handle on these threats that we are currently experiencing now.
He probably has a plan for all of this to turn out wonderful as well. So we’re not gonna try to pray it away. If God has a wonderful plan for us in the midst of these threats, we want the wonderful plan to happen. So we’re just gonna ask God, hey, you got this, right? Would you consider our situation?
We trust You. We submit to Your wisdom. We just want to check in with You, ask You keep an eye on it, consider it, look upon it.
Listen, whatever you’re going through right now, however dark it is, however terrible it is, and we would never say it isn’t terrible, the crucifixion was terrible. God just turned it for the good of the world. Your situation, legitimately terrible. But however dark it is, it isn’t as dark as the crucifixion.
And if God had a plan to use that for the good of the whole world, you can trust Him with your struggle.
And really, probably, all we actually need to pray is, God, would you look upon me? Would you reflect on my problems?
I defer to your wisdom.
Okay, final aspect of their prayer, Savior, Savior. Their primary desire was to magnify Jesus. That’s what they asked for. Can we magnify Jesus, please? They didn’t ask for their suffering to end, surprisingly, but they did ask that they could speak the message of Jesus with boldness.
They asked for powerful signs and wonders to occur so that people would be convinced convinced about Jesus. In other words, they cared more about people flocking to Jesus and finding Jesus than they cared about their own comfort. Their comfort, even to the extent of whether they were going to live or die, barely entered their mind. In regard to themselves, they only consider these threats against us. But in regard to Jesus, they pleaded.
They’re like, we really want to speak your message with boldness and for people to find Christ. If we’re gonna ask for one thing, God, that’s the one thing that we are gonna ask for. May our lives boldly show Jesus to the world. That’s what they wanted.
So to bring this back to us. Maybe we’re facing a financial difficulty. If we are, do we pray for a massive influx of funds, or do we pray, Lord, look upon our financial situation, but really more than that, would you enable us to make much of Jesus?
Like, as a church right now, uh, we’ve talked about giving is below where, where we would want it to be. But how do we pray about that? I mean, we’re going to tell you guys, our regular attenders, we’re going to tell you, please give so we can continue all of our ministries the way we have and even launch some new initiatives. We will let you know the need. But when we’re praying about it, how do we pray, right?
And it’s okay to ask. Obviously, it’s okay to ask for very specific things, for our needs, but if we are praying like the early church— and there are other examples of prayer in Scripture, so other ways to pray aren’t wrong. We are just saying if we are going to pray like the early church, how we would pray would be, Lord, consider our need.
But really, whether we suddenly get millions of dollars in donations or giving drops to zero, whatever happens, Lord, here’s what we really want. Here’s our top priority. May we always make much of Jesus. May we be known for talking about him. So if you’re facing employment termination or a health crisis, All right, if you’re praying like the, uh, or like the early church— and you can pray other ways too— but if you’re praying like the early church, you pray, Lord, whether I get promoted or fired, whether I’m healed or I don’t make it until tomorrow, look upon that, Lord, give it some thought.
But no matter what, please, Lord, one thing: may I make much of you. In these days. May I speak your word with boldness. May I be known as one of your followers.
As we say in one of the songs we sing, I pray it’s said about my life that I lived more to build your name than mine.
That’s how the early church prayed.
They wanted to magnify Jesus.
Let’s pray. Father, we do pray that we, that we would magnify Jesus. We pray we would be known more for making much of Him than worrying about ourselves or talking about ourselves. I pray this church would be known for lifting Jesus more than it is known for anything else, Lord. We confess your sovereignty.
We know that you order all things as you would have them to be, and you have a plan for them. You knew about them before they happened, before any of them came to be, Lord, and you will use all things for our good. We thank you, Lord. We love you. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen.
