Sermon Tone Analysis

Believers Pray for Boldness.

Last week we talked about service.

We Jumped ahead a few chapters because I believe God is casting a vision of biblical service in this church.

It’s important to point out biblical.

As we discussed last week we have this need to remove all that isn’t biblical and focus on things the first century church focused on.

It doesn’t mean we do church the sam way, but our focus should be on the same thing.

This week we are going to discuss Boldness.

Acts 4:23-33

As we go through this mornings verse I want to point out some things on the road to boldness.

If the bible is supposed to our guide than we must learn to ask it questions.

Peter and John stood before the Council of the “Spiritual Elect” and their lives we threatened.

They immediately went to find the church and set themselves to pray.

Now the first question I usually ask is

How can I apply this to my life?

As of right now there isn’t a whole of physical persecution in the United States.

So my main enemy at this point, and one could argue even Peter and John’s main enemy, is demonic forces.

Spiritual attacks of the enemy.

Attacks of the mind.

Attacks to sin.

Attacks to give up.

How do we safe guard ourself against the onslaught of attacks the demonic realm is constantly rushing us with.

And if not demonic forces how can we disarm the desires of my flesh—the persecution of myself.Because if we are honest some of our biggest battles aren’t the enemy it’s our own natural desire gone haywire.

Sexual sin-something God made and human prevented.

Anger, jealousy, the desire for more.

None of the has to come from Satan because we are prewired for these desires, but in the right context.

Jesus was angry.

Jesus desires more, more of us, more souls.

The Old Testament is very clear that we worship a Jealous God who doesn’t want to share us.

Christians need to understand that Yes persecution is around around, but our biggest persecutor is inside of us.

How do we defend against that.

This may or may not have been the first time the disciples were brought in front of the court, but it’s the first one we know of and I find it interesting that’s Peter’s first reaction isn’t to bash those in authority, but to run to his Spiritual family, the church.

The first verse we come across this morning is

When they were released they went to their friends.

They explained what happened.

and in VV24 they prayed...

TOGETHER

Why is it in our lives that for many of us the church is the last one who finds out about our struggles or the bad news in our lives.

My wife, on Friday, brought my attention to Kanye’s new album.

Now as a rapper he is an amazing writer.

vocals eh, but his words have power.

He wrote this one song hands on that when he gave his life to Christ Christians were the first one to judge him, hated him, reject him but what amazed me the most is the end where he says he just wants someone to pray for him.

When the first century church heard about persecution they came together and immediately prayed.

Now as I don’t commend the bashing of Christians I do believe his words shed light on some major areas we as the church need to work on.

When we hear juicy gosip the first thing out of our mouth shouldn’t be slander it should be prayer.

We are going to crack open what the churches prayer was.

Sovereign Lord

- The term sovereign means a person who has general authority of others,

Especially denoting ABSOLUTE OWNERSHIP and UNRESTRAINED POWER.

Galatians

And there are many more verses that all call us to remove ourselves and give God Absolute authority over us.

The First century church knew that it was an all or nothing deal.

In order to defeat our flesh we must put it to death.

If we were capable of controlling ourselves we wouldn’t need a Sovereign God to rule over us, but we aren’t I haven’t seen anyone master their flesh on their own.

In order to fight we must first know to whom we belong.

Secondly they came to Him as Creator

Creator

When I read this I asked myself

Why is the term Creator important?

They already said Sovereign so why go into creation?

By calling God creator they are stating that they are not only dependent on Him, But he is the Absolute reason, everything depends on Him.

It’s goes past the submission of self and into realizing that everything is under his submission.

Understand this was the first action God did-He created…everything.

Secondly I want to look at Vv 29

What did they go to the Creator for?

Boldness

Why?

I recently took my wife’s van to the shop.

They drove it and couldn’t get it to respond the same way it had for my wife.

They ran some tests and when they couldn’t figure it out the called Chrystler.

Why?

Because they understood that if Chrystler made it they intimately know all it’s features and all the problems that vehicle line has.

No one knows a Chrystler vehicle like Chrystler.

They have ultimate authority and knowledge of the vehicles they make.

The same is true with God.

He has ultimate authoirty and knowledge of the world he made.

He knows what they need to fix the issue.

The biggest problem we Christians face is that we look at a

Symptom

and called it the issue.

When you got to the Dr. to treat the flu.

The doctor doesn’t treat the flu they manage the symptoms of the flu until the flu passes.

If they treated the flu we wouldn’t have the flu anymore.

They cannot attack the flu because they didn’t make it, they don’t know how to stop it.

So they treat the symptom.

We as Christians do this same thing.

Lord, stop the persecution.

Stop the pain.

Stop the disease.

All of those are symptoms.

Of what?

A system that isn’t dependent on the Creator.

God knew fixing persecution wouldn’t solve our issues.

He knew that in order to fix the problem we have to increase in boldness to preach his word so that more will become followers of Christ.

You want to end persecution EVERYWHERE—Preach the gospel Everywhere until all people know God.

ONce we are all truly following the same God in the same direction there will be no more persecution.

The issues wasn’t the behavior it was the lack of boldness to preach the gospel.

Satan isn’t going to go away.

So we have no choice but to get stronger.

The flu isn’t going to go away, but it is proven that those who take care of themselves are less likely to get sick.

This amazes me.