Prayer (2)

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and Lord Jesus Christ. It is a great privilege to share the Word of God with the saints of Durbin Memorial Baptist Church.

In my mind, the Christmas season is marked by being a time of waiting. Waiting with anticipation. It seems like all of the season is designed for anticipation to rise and a rise until finally IT’S CHRISTMAS MORNING!

Think about it, my wife starts playing Christmas music on November 1. That’s almost two months of music all about this one day. We decorate the house and look at it for a month or two until its time to celebrate the day and take it all down by New Years (unless you’re the type to leave the lights hung up all year round). Even the whole concept of gift giving is predicated on anticipation and waiting. In some ways its torturous. AR doesn’t quite get it this year, but I know he will next year. It’s like this, we tell people we love we got them something very special that they are really gonna enjoy. We’ve put it in fancy paper and set it in a special place under the tree. We say to our kids, “There it is! And I can’t wait for you to have it!” BUT DON’T TOUCH IT! Not yet! It’s not time yet. We make them just sit and look at it.

Then we make the kids count down every single day with a variety of festive advent calendars. Each day teasing that we’re getting closer, but not there yet!

But maybe the anticipation is worth it! The day finally arrives and we have a joyous time gathering together and celebrating the birth of Christ through tangible expressions of our love for one another.

Maybe all this is appropriate. You see waiting and anticipation has always been a part of the story of Christmas. The wise men traveling from afar must have been filled with anticipation as they sought out the one who had been born King of the Jews. Mary and Joseph were waiting for their Son to be born. But the waiting goes much deep er than just those folks directly mentioned in the Christmas Narrative’s we know well from the gospels of Luke and Matthew.

Christmas ultimately celebrates the Birth of the Son of God, at least it ought to. We can take this reality for granted a bit, because we’re looking back on Jesus’ birth as an event that happened roughly 2000 years ago. In our world of constantly flashing news-cycles, we are tempted to devalue the significance of Christ’s birth because its “old news.”

To combat this, I’d like us all to imagine being Israelites in the time immediately before the birth of Christ. The faithful Israelites were living at the peak of anticipation. It had been 400 years since they had heard God speak through the prophets. 400 years of silence. They knew from God’s Words to Moses that God would be sending a particular Prophet. They had heard the words from the prophets like Isaiah and Ezekiel. All the way until Malachi records God as saying:

Malachi 4:5–6 ESV

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

Alright! A Prophet is coming to renew repentance in the Land and bring the people back to God! How exciting! The Israelites are given this mysterious and wondrous message and then! __________. *Go silent*

silence. Nothing for 400 years. Those verses there are the last two verse of the Old Testament. The Israelites can do nothing more but wait with great anticipation. They must have thought, “When will this prophet come? When will God speak to us again?”

Unfortunately for them, they had no advent calendar to count down the day. They just had silence.

And in that time of silence, “The Israelites eventually came under Roman rule. They had returned to their land from exile, but they faced heavy taxation and oppression from the Roman government. … Throughout this time, there was no word from God, no prophet giving the people encouragement and instruction from the Lord. But this all changed one night in Bethlehem. That night, the Word of God broke through the silence, and heaven met earth like never before. The anticipated Prophet came. Yet He was completely different from what people expected. The Word of God was a baby boy born in a manger.”

John 1:14 ESV

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The anticipation of the Israelite people culminated in the birth of Jesus Christ who would live THE perfectly righteous life, proclaim the gospel of repentance and faith, die on the cross as the atonement for sin, and raise from the dead assuring believers of eternal glory.

I can say quite confidently, what God had planned to accomplish in the fullness of time was well worth the wait.

I hope that in our Christmas celebrations, we may be filled with waiting and anticipation, but we can use that to better appreciate God accomplishing His will in the fullness of time.

In fact, in many ways we are still waiting. The Promised Prophet came, and that is to be celebrated as we do each Christmas, but we’re also told in Scripture that He is coming again. In fact we’re told in Scripture that this whole world is groaning, awaiting the time for Christ to come back and vanquish the sting of sin and death. When we look at the Christmas story, we can see that God does what He promises He will do. As we sang this morning: “Hope of the Ages, Isaiah’s great light Abraham’s offspring Blessing of Jacob, Judah’s might Hope of the Ages, David’s true Son Desire of nations, promised salvation God with us”

If God accomplished that in the first coming of Christ. We can have hope and confidence in the second coming of Christ as well.

This leads us to our text today in Acts 4. Turn there with me now, if you would. We’re going to begin in verse 23.

Acts 4:23 ESV

When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them.

I may have gone a little quick there in turning to our text, so feel free to keep flipping over to where we’re at. This verse serves as an introduction today and reminder to what we have been looking at for the last few weeks. Peter and John visited the temple in Jerusalem during the hour of prayer. By the power of the name of Jesus, God used Peter and John to heal a man who was over 40 years old and had been paralyzed since birth. This caused quite a scene in the temple. Peter used the commotion as an opportunity to preach the gospel to people. The religious leaders, the Sadduccees, did not agree with the message of Christ’s resurrection. They threw Peter and John in jail. When they questioned Peter, he told meets their opposition with a presentation of the gospel. The Sadduccees can’t find a reason to keep them in jailed up, but they tell Peter and John to stop talking about Jesus. Peter and John respond that they listen to God, not men. They are released and that is where we are picking up right now.

After they are released, they gather with their friends, their fellow believers and explain everything that they had just gone through.

What do you think the climate was in the room? Before we look at the rest of this, try to imagine how we might have reacted in this situation. We should also note that this is happening directly after the disciples had spent 40 days with the Resurrected Jesus, learning about the Kingdom of God. They know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is going to restore His Kingdom. They asked Jesus when this was going to happen and He said its not for them to know, but that they needed to wait and in their waiting be faithful to the mission He has given them. As soon as He tells them that He ascends upward and is taken out of sight by the Shekinah glory of God. As they’re marveling at what they saw, an angel appeared beside them and said, why are y’all looking up? Jesus was taken into heaven, and in due time He’s coming back the same way He went.

So then the disciples get to work! The day of Pentecost arrives! The empowerment of the Holy Spirit is shown in a glorious way. Over 5000 people believe in Jesus and join the early church. The waiting probably wasn’t too difficult during that time! There was a lot of good goin on! But as we saw in our recap this morning, the going just got tough! Other than a few scoffers at Pentecost, this is the first time the early church has really faced any opposition since the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I think the natural reaction to this would be some form of outrage! At least I think that’s what it would be if it happened to us today. Could you imagine what the reaction of the church would be if I reported this morning that I had been arrested for street preaching just a couple of days ago? We’d either be scared witless or ready to lead a revolution against the tyrannical government. It’s safe to say that if the church in America faced some real persecution that many of the self-proclaimed Christians would decide the risk is not worth it and leave the church all together. The Modern person claiming a cultural connection to Christ would likely decide His promises are not worth the wait if waiting incurs getting a hang nail, much less the threat of a hanging.

But that’s not the response of the early church and the friends of John and Peter.

Church as we progress through the rest of our text this morning, we will see the Spirit-filled believers response to Persecution as we await the promises God has for us. Like the Israelites before the advent of Christ, we too are waiting, but unlike the Israelites, we have been shown the glory of Christ-incarnate, Emmanuel God with us, and so we can hold on to the faith, waiting with hope because God has been true to His Word and will remain so into the future!

Let’s see how this group responded to the report of persecution:

Acts 4:24 (ESV)

And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said,

Before we get into the content of their prayer, I want to stop right here because this is massively important for us to note. What was the response of this group of believers in the face of persecution? Were they outraged? Were they terrified? Were they ready to bail on it all? No. The response of this group was prayer. They lifted their voices to God. One commentary noted that this gathering was , “A concert of prayer with not one voice "off key!" It was a harmony of symphonic prayer to God. It was many voices, many hearts, but words ascending as one voice, because of their oneness in Christ wrought by the Spirit of Christ. What a prayer meeting it must have been!”

This is a beautiful scene. Some claim the King James Version is more poetic, it contains more beauty, and I’d agree at least in this case. This group was not just praying together, but as it says in the KJV, “they lifted up their voice to God with one accord”. You see they weren’t just praying together at the same time, they were praying together with the same mind!

Difficulty and persecution can often times be the catalyst for unity! MacArthur noted, “Perhaps one reason for the disunity in today's church is the lack of external pressure. And the false unity being attempted through compromise and indifference toward true doctrine only compounds the problem by moving the church ever further from the true unity that comes out of confrontation by the truth. If we confronted the world system more aggressively, the resulting opposition would drive us closer together and enrich our mutual dependence.”

We can clearly see here in verse 24 that the believers were united in action and intention. They were praying together in one accord, with the same mind and the same Spirit. But what would be the content of their prayer? What would be the united refrain of these believers waiting for the return of Christ while facing direct opposition? Would they ask God to remove their enemies? Would they ask for smooth sailing? Would they express their discomfort with what He is allowing in their lives?

Acts 4:24–29 ESV

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 to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness,

They begin their prayer not with request, but with rejoice!

Before we get into the content of their prayer, let’s just pull out a general point that we need to be reminded of: Our prayer doesn’t have to limited to our list of demands!

So often we treat talking God like a cosmic Santa Clause! We only go to see Him a few times a year when there’s something we really want! Instead of writing a letter we send up a prayer in our hour of desperation. But that is such a limited and reductive view of what prayer is supposed to be! Remember, we’ve talked about this before. in prayer, we are not bending the will of God to meet our own. Sure we do take our concerns to Him in prayer, but in prayer God is aligning us to His Will!

“Ultimately, the main purpose of prayer is worship. When we pray to the Lord, recognizing Him for who He is and what He has done, it is an act of worship.”

In prayer we are communicating with God, we may mention our requests and bring them before Him, but we above all we pray to God because through faith in Jesus Christ we have been enabled to do so and reconciled to God. Church in our bulletins we have been going through 40 weeks of prayer for church revitalization. Many of those prayer prompts are requests for God’s action in our church, but I have intentionally designed it so that just as many or more include the ideas of praising God. For instance this week as you read through the great commission, our prayer prompt is to Thank God for the Mission He has given us! That is simply tell God how thankful you are that He has a purpose for your life. When we go to God in prayer we don’t always have to be asking something. Yes, we are utterly dependent on Him, but He is worth so much more than our honey-do lists. He is worthy of our worship in prayer. Let’s look specifically at what the group of believers in Acts 4 prayed for:

They begin their prayer by calling God the Sovereign Lord. The group is highlight the absolute ownership and mastery over creation that God has. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. They continue to highlight that God created everything on earth and beyond. He made the heaven, the earth, the sea and all the inhabitants there of. Think of the sheer grandeur of God!

If you’re every wondering what you should pray to God without dropping a list of all your desires, start here! Simply declare to God all that He has done. Why? Does God need us to stroke His ego? Absolutely not. But He is worthy of our praise! When I met Jared Lorenzen, the Hefty Lefty, I had no problem or shame telling him how much I enjoyed watching him play football. If you ever saw him play, you know it was a sight to behold. It wasn’t odd for me to tell him I was a fan. He had accomplished great things and it is nature to give praise for that. Multiply what Jared Lorenzen accomplished by infinity and you just begin to scratch the surface on all that God has done. He has created everything we know of in existence. It is right and natural for us to praise Him for that!

The group continues on to recount God’s goodness by reciting God’s Word back to Him. They say that God, through the mouth of David (v 25) inspired Psalm 2 where he wrote, “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”

Two things to note, one practical one theological. On the practical side we see a biblical basis for praying God’s Word back to God. Once again, if you don’t know where to begin in your prayers, maybe start with God’s Word. Open the Psalms read and pray the words back to God who gave them to you to use in your praise of Him. On the theological side, the group praying Psalm 2 to God right now is showing their understanding of God’s workings in creation to accomplish salvation. The believers saw the Jewish leaders' opposition to Jesus (and to them, his appointed representatives) as fulfilling this ancient prophecy. It’s so ironic that the Jewish rulers themselves took the place of the raging Gentile nations and became the object of the church's mission. Make a note to go home this afternoon and read through the rest of Psalm 2. In Luke’s presentation here in Acts 4 the group only recites the first two verses, but when you read through the psalm with the context of Jesus being the Lord and the gentiles being those who oppose Christ, the psalm lights up with beauty and deeper meaning. Your heart will sing as you read the divine refrain, “Blessed are all who take refuge in Him.” Him being Christ.

So after quoting Psalm 2:1-2 the group then explains there usage of the verse by remembering that in the city of Jerusalem many worked directly against Jesus Christ, the holy servant, the anointed one. He was opposed by the political and religious leaders, the gentiles and the Jews, Jesus was killed on the cross at the hands of those who opposed Him. This was a concerted effort by individuals and groups who did not even like each other! So great was their hatred of Jesus and His message that these enemies began united as "friends" on this one occasion.

And the believers are recalling all of this in their prayer to God. Why? Did God need the reminder? No, that becomes very clear in verse 28. God had allowed all the opposition to Christ to occur in order that His plan for redemption and reconciliation could would take place. A plan predestined to happen. A plan first hinted at in the garden of Eden at the Fall of man and reiterated through the promised Prophet Moses spoke about, the King that David could only hope to be, the Priest who perfectly made sacrifice to atone for sin. All of the Old Testament was pointing to Christ! God was always working out His plan of redemption in Christ. And the group brings this up now in their prayer to God while they are waiting for Jesus’ return and facing persecution. Why? “These believers are acknowledging that although kings and rulers came against Jesus, God had long before planned and allowed these events to occur. In so doing they are praising God for His omniscience.”

This group of believers knows they don’t have to remind God of the good He has done like He’s insecure or may have forgotten. They recount what God has done as a praise for His omniscience and ability to work all things, even what man meant for evil, for His ultimate good.

Church, as we are waiting for the second coming of Christ, we can take it to the bank that God is still working everything out for His good. We may get discouraged by the things going on in the world around us. We may not like what we see. We may not see how it is possible. But we can take it to the bank even in a time like this, God is omniscient and working all things out in accordance with His plan. That should give us peace in the storm. And if you find peace hard to come by in this moment, you should ask your self if you really believe God’s in control. The testimony of history shows us He is. Our doubt and self-reliance shake our peace.

After praising God for His mastery of Creation and omniscient weaving together all things for His plan of redemption, then the group in Acts make a request. Read with me verses 29 and 30:

Acts 4:29–30 ESV

And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to 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.”

Notice the request. It’s not that God removes the obstacles before them. It’s not that they would have an easy and comfortable life. It’s not that Jesus would come back right this second and end all of their toiling. They pray that God would enable them to be bold in the gospel of Jesus Christ, that they would speak unashamedly about Jesus Christ, while God works out everything He is going to do until Jesus comes back.

Church, this is the posture we have to have in a time such as this. We need to be bold with the gospel. If we truly believe that Jesus paid the cost of our sins through His death on the cross and sealed us for glory in His resurrection, then we have nothing to be afraid everything to be proud of. When I say proud, I’m not talking about being proud of ourselves, we’re nothing. But we can boast in the cross of Jesus Christ, by which the world and all the worries therein have been crucified to us, and us the world. Through what Jesus accomplished on the cross, we are a new creation. That is something to boast about. That is a story to tell. That is a message that ought to be shared in our neighborhoods, our families, and our workplaces.

So how do we get this posture? How do we become a bold church? Well, its granted to us by God. We seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and ask for His Sovereign Hand to provide opportunities to share our faith and be bold. But as I’ve talked about with a brother in this church, be careful when you start praying for opportunities to share your faith, because very often the Lord is quick to provide!

Church, let’s pray for boldness. Let’s ask God to provide opportunities to do our part all the while knowing that He is still working out His plan. He is stretching out His hand to heal. Any signs or wonders that come are through the power of Jesus Christ. And one day, He will come again ushering in the new kingdom. Until that time we are to be bold in our waiting.

Acts 4:31 ESV

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.

Church, While our God is not likely to shake our room while we are praying, we need to remember that He is still the omnipotent God Who desires to answer the petitions and pleas of His children, especially when we ask Him for holy boldness to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

May we leave here today ready to tell the world the Gospel.

Three Circles