On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported
all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their
voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the
heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the
mouth of your servant, our father David: ”‘Why do the nations rage and the
peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the
rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.’
Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
Peter and John had just come off of
a success. They had healed a beggar who
was crippled from birth. As a result
they were arrested and threatened not to say anything. Instead, they boldly confessed that salvation
was in no one else but Jesus Christ.
They were threatened again, and released. The first thing they did was to return to the
church and tell them about what happened.
You would think they would be all rejoicing and just full of themselves at
this point. But sometimes it is just
after a great success that we let our guards down. We think, “Nothing can stop me now! I’m on a roll.” You think, “I showed the devil on that
one! He will now give up. The war is over. The enemy will just give up and walk away.” Satan loves overconfidence; he loves
pride. When we think we are standing
firm; it is at that point where we usually fall.
The apostles don’t make this mistake.
It is not in a moment of weakness but a moment of strength that the
apostles pray this prayer. It is not a
prayer of arrogance or pride; it is a prayer of humility; a prayer for continued
strength; even from people who had already proved themselves to be strong. Why?
Because they knew that they would need much more strength in the days to
come. It is a prayer we need to speak as
well.
Lord, Give us Great Boldness to Speak
I. Boldness comes from hearing who the Master is
Strength. Courage. Boldness.
Is it something you pray for? Is
it something you feel you even need? Or
have you resigned yourself to a role of weakness? Have you made a peace pact with
timidity? Do you methodically plan your
life in a way that you can avoid confrontation?
Have you started to accept the excuses that you just don’t like to make
waves?
How can we expect or even really hope to live this way? God’s Word describes every person who is born
into this world as living in darkness, under the control of Satan, dead, blind
and hostile to God and His Word. Jesus
said, “In this world you will have trouble.” (John 16:33) “I have come to cause strife
within families!” You will need strength
and boldness to deal with a confrontational and violent world. Having just been threatened and imprisoned
Peter and John knew this well. You need
to understand this as well. Now is not
the time to retreat or hunker down. Now
is the time for boldness and strength to live in this world. This prayer is for us to pray even more so.
Let’s look at the prayer again. At
first read there seemed to me to be a disconnect. He starts off by talking about creation, and
then jumps to Psalm 2; a Psalm of David; which talks about the plots of kings
against the Christ. What do these two
have in common?
Let’s look at the part about creation first before we answer that
question. “Sovereign Lord,” they
said, “you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” Here they almost seem to be reminding
themselves of who the LORD is and what the LORD has done. They use the term “despot” which is
translated “Sovereign Lord” in the NIV.
It literally means a “master,” and is used to speak of slave masters in
the book of Timothy. In the book of
Revelation the souls in heaven pray to their “master”, (whom Jude specifically
calls the Lord Jesus), to hurry up and come back from heaven in order to
provide justice on those who persecuted and murdered them. So the term is a way of saying to the LORD,
“You are my master. You are in
charge.” Here specifically it associates
His mastery to all of creation. The
master in charge of the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in
them. “Everything” means
everything. If Jesus is master of it
all, then He can direct it all and tell it what to do. This is His right by virtue of the fact that
He is the creator of it all; it is made to answer to Him.
This is why the doctrine of Creation is on the chopping block and it is
offensive to the atheist and unbelieving world.
Christopher Hitches adamantly denies creation because he knows that the
very concept of creation carries with it a master who is over us and whom we
must answer to for our actions. Evolution
is the exact opposite. It introduces a
world of chance and randomness; a world of responsibility only to the self. This is the kind of world they want and this
is their gospel which they are trying to spread; it is directly contradictory
to creation. When professors are able to
convince our children that evolution is a scientific fact, when it is not, they
are also then taking them into a world of godlessness; unaccountability; and
ultimately unbelief.
The apostles first of all reflected their faith in the Master of
Creation. They believed that the Lord created
and is still the master of everything.
He doesn’t just create and let it go.
He maintains power over all; even after the fall. This is hard for us to understand even as
Christians, because the Bible also says that the whole world is under the
control of the evil one. The evil one is
called the “murderer” from the beginning.
He is associated with a wind that blew down the tent of Job’s family and
killed the people inside. So these kinds
of things make us scratch our heads.
They make us wonder, “Who is really in charge?” They seem to be contradictory; but the Bible
says that the devil still has to answer to God as his Creator. So in
the end God is still the master. We live
in a world which God allows to be controlled by evil; which then makes God seem
evil when we see what the devil does around here. But nonetheless the Word beckons to us from
Creation to believe that the Master is still the Master. How can this be?
The Psalm quote connects the Creator’s power with this whole concept of
evil happening on earth. Here’s where
this opening phrase connects with the Psalm.
Long before Jesus was ever walking and talking on this earth; long
before He was ever crucified; Psalm 2 predicted that this very thing would
happen. This was written by David about
one thousand years before Herod and Pilate every walked on tis planet. Yet this is what it said,
You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father
David: ”‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of
the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and
against his Anointed One.’
So there is a connection here. If the LORD predicted it and knew it was going to happen; and if He is the powerful Creator; then He could have stopped it. He didn’t stop it. He didn’t cheer on the kings of the earth. He called their actions evil. He didn’t make them to be evil, yet they were still born this way. Instead of eradicating evil the Master decided to offset their evil; to use it for good. Instead of forcing evil to be good, the Master allows evil to be evil; but through the evil He works it for good. This is exactly what they say in their prayer.
Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.
All that Herod
and Pilate did was put Jesus to death.
They figured out how they could do it and where they could do it and
they got the job done. But by nailing
Jesus to the cross they were also providing a place for sin and death and God’s
wrath to take it’s course; to find it’s destiny.
When you are driving through the mountains you will notice short little
roads on the side of the mountain that go almost straight up hill and are
filled with sand. Those are places
specifically designed for semitrailers to go if they get out of control. Gravity and weight and bad driving causes
this to happen. Sin and Satan caused
death to occur. It is bound to happen
under God’s wrath. But this one place of
the cross was designed and planned by God long before the truck of humanity
went out of control. His power and will
decided that this is where He would aim the world of sinners who had been
hijacked by Satan. He who allowed man to
rebel and Satan to take over His creation also planned for a way to buy people
back from slavery and hell; called a cross.
Now, you might ask why the Lord allowed the truck to be hijacked or
Satan to come and hijack the truck; but those are questions that the Master
doesn’t answer. He just shows us what He
did with all of the evil and the death; He put it on the cross.
So whether it’s through creation or
the cross the prayer reflects that the Master is in charge one way or
another. He created it and He redeemed
it. He anointed Jesus for that very
purpose and design. He predicted it
would happen this way. As much as things
may seem beyond His control and design; they are exactly according to His
design to save the world through Jesus.
II. Boldness comes from seeing how the Master
works
The legend is told of the Trojan
Horse; you may remember it. The Greeks
tried for years and years to conquer the city of Troy but couldn’t over come
it’s defenses. So they decided to build
a wooden horse and put 30 men inside of it.
They pretended the horse was a parting gift to the people of Troy;
admitting their defeat. They put the
beautiful horse outside of the gate of Troy and then sailed off. The people of Troy allowed the horse to come
in. They left it in the city
square. During the night the 30 soldiers
got out; opened the gate; and allowed the Greek army entrance. The beautiful horse was only a deceptive
wrapping of destruction on the inside.
The Master of the Universe works the opposite way with His Creation. Creation is marred with death and
destruction. Even when Jesus, the author
of Life came to our earth and walked and talked among us, He too was plotted
against by Satan and the kings of the earth and put to death. But hidden underneath this death on the cross
God’s Word tells us that He was taking God’s wrath on His shoulders. Death swallowed Jesus, it seemed to have won,
but three days later God opened up the Tomb of Christ, and from that empty
grave God revealed Life and salvation through faith in the dirtiest death of
all; the death of Life. So the Master
hid life under the most awful death. He
delivered life and salvation through suffering and death.
This is the way life is. It is filled with death and destruction. Satan seems to have His way. Yet the Word reveals what is within this
“Trojan Horse” of life. Everybody who
sees creation and death cannot reason it out in their brain. They say to themselves, “How could a loving
and merciful God allow this?” They come
to the natural conclusion that either God is not in charge or if He is in
charge then He is a butcher. But God’s
Word says, “No. God is in charge and He
is not a butcher. He is a God of
mercy.” His Word shows us this. Everything that God’s Word predicted would
happen to Jesus happened exactly as He said.
This was not a situation that was out of God’s control; but one that was
still under His control. In spite of all
of the plotting and planning for Herod and Pilate to shut Jesus up and get rid
of Him, their crucifixion only worked to magnify Jesus’ words all the
more. God used Jesus’ death to scream
His love and mercy to the world. God’s
Word shows us where to find Himself; not in health and in riches but in
sickness and in death. The Word trains
us to trust that His will is good and gracious, even in the midst of threats,
murders, and hell.
The problem for us today; and the
problem for the apostles was that God’s Word also took Jesus up to heaven. So there He remains hidden from our eyesight
yet today. He went through the hell; He
survived through the death; but He still has left us behind. He isn’t here to walk and talk with us. He isn’t here to suffer for us now; He isn’t
here to take the attacks. Since He is
gone, Jesus even predicted that the kings of the earth would then take their
stand against His children. The book of
Revelation predicts how bad it will get for His children on earth. A beast will rise from the earth and the sea;
representative of the government and the church. Both will work in cooperation to oppress the
true believers. It happened at the time
of Constantine when church was combined with state. It happened at the time of Luther and before
when the church in conjunction with the state put what they deemed as heretics
to death. It happens overseas under
Muslim governments; and I can foresee it happening here also; when under the
guise of love and acceptance the freedom of speech will be punished under rules
and regulations. It is happening in
Canada that those who speak against the sexual sin of homosexuality are
punished in the courts. This is what
Jesus predicted in His Word. It is
destined to happen that way because of the sinful world we live in.
What can we do? What did the apostles do? They first and foremost held onto to the
truth. When the leaders threatened their
lives and told them to be quiet, they went back to creation and Psalm 2 to
remind themselves that all of this was predicted in the Word. They used the same verses and words that they
had memorized from youth and they took comfort in it.
This is why God gives us His Word.
This is why we have our children memorize Bible verses and even
hymns. Through it we want our children
to have the ability to listen to God still speaking to them; so that He can
comfort them in the midst of threats and danger. He wants us to use our reason and place it
under the Word of God. If God predicted
that He would deliver Jesus from death and He did so, and if God’s promises
have come true time and again; if God is still the creator and He still works
everything out according to His good and gracious plan; then I can trust that
God knows what He is doing even today. The
Word will keep me from retreating in the face of threats, if I remember that
God is still God in the midst of all that is going on.
Just a mere knowledge of God’s Word is not enough. How many children do we know that have
memorized plenty of Bible verses and yet caved in to the pressures of our
society; given in to the devil and their own flesh? The apostles do more than that. They also pray, “Now, Lord, consider their
threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out
your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of
your holy servant Jesus.” A key component to Bible study is also to
pray; pray that the Lord would send His Holy Spirit to strengthen us through
the Word and give us the boldness that we need.
Sometimes it can happen that a person knows his Bible left and right; yet
this same person is easily dominated by anger or fear or lust. Somehow God’s Word has become for that person
a fact book; a mere intellectual exercise in which he or she can just explore
spiritual writings or history; a club he or she can use to illustrate his
dominating knowledge; or a work righteous loop that the person must jump
through in order to do his or her duty.
God’s Word is written to be more than that. It is living and active; sharper than any
double edged sword; penetrating the heart and the soul. It is meant to encourage and strengthen us so
that we don’t give up. So we need to pray
that the Holy Spirit would work through His Word to enable us to give us
courage and boldness; the ability to speak.
The apostles were given an opportunity to speak through the healing of a man who was crippled from birth. Because they were able to perform this miracle, people came to see. When they came to see, they spoke. They told the people that Jesus healed the man. They also told them that the same Jesus whom they crucified was was alive and well as the resurrected Lord; the master of the world. They needed to repent of their evil deed or perish. It took boldness to speak this Word the first time; a boldness that would have to ignore all of the threats of very real and painful . The threats were continuing; the same threats that they made against Jesus. So the apostles asked the Holy Spirit to continue to bless them with boldness to speak the Word; so that others could hear and repent and believe. The Lord answered their prayer. After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
The Lord commands us to pray. Prayer keeps us in a position of servanthood;
it reminds us who the Master truly is.
We cannot manipulate the Lord, not through prayer or even through
memorization of the Scriptures. Even as
we learn the Word, we need the Holy Spirit to bless us with strength and
courage. Prayer reminds us that we are
constantly at the mercy of the Master, who must send His Holy Spirit and give
us strength. The Master answered the humble
prayer of the apostles. He gave them
strength and enabled them to speak the Word boldly. And if the Master was willing and able to do
that for them in that house, then He is able to give us boldness in this house.
Epiphany is the season where we don’t
want Jesus to remain hidden. We, like
the apostles, want to go out in the world and reveal to them our secret to life
and heaven. We want to reveal to the
world their sins and show them how Satan has corrupted this world; so that they
see the need for a new Master; a new Lord; one who frees them from their sins
with their blood. This is going to be a
war; because people don’t want to see the light; they don’t want to accept the
truth. We need boldness; a God given
boldness to proclaim the truth; to show people the light. We need to pray for the gift of the Holy
Spirit working through the Word, just so we can speak. Lord, in the face of death and disaster, as
the world threatens us and commands us to be quiet, give us courage to speak
your Word boldly and confidently; knowing that you are in charge; that you work
through death to give life; that you Lord Jesus are our hidden and glorious
Master. Amen.