9If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, 10then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. 11He is
12Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:9-12 –NIV)
The Jewish leaders couldn’t figure out what to do with Peter and John. They wanted to punish them. But since it was obvious that they had done an outstanding miracle, they couldn’t because they were afraid of the people. So they warned them not speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. Peter and John told them to judge for themselves whether it was right in God’s sight for them to obey them (the Jewish leaders) rather than to obey God. They threatened Peter and John further and then let them go. (Threatening, by the way, is what you do when someone needs to be punished but you don’t want to punish that person. We do it with our kids when they need to be punished but we don’t want to take the trouble to do it. Threatening really doesn’t work.)
I want to say one more thing. The Jewish leaders warned Peter and John not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus to keep this thing from spreading, to use their words. What did they want to keep from spreading? What they apparently wanted to keep from spreading was the healing of crippled beggars and the message that men were sinners and needed a savior—and that that savior was Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom they had killed, but whom God had raised from the dead—that salvation was (and is) found in no one else—that there is no other name given to men by which we must be saved. The Jewish leaders rejected all of these things and wanted to completely suppress them.
Now, Peter and John had preached the message of the gospel very plainly to the people who had witnessed the healing of the crippled beggar and then again to the Jewish leaders. And one of the points I want to make today is that the more plainly the message of the gospel is preached—the message that we are sinners, that we are utterly lost in our sins, and that our only hope of salvation is in Jesus Christ—the more plainly that message is preached, the sharper is the distinction between those who accept it and those who reject it. Let me say that again: The more plainly the message of the gospel is preached, the sharper is the distinction between those who accept it and those who reject it. The truth of the gospel divides. If it doesn’t, it’s not being preached plainly enough. (And by the way, we preach the gospel at least as much by what we do as by what we say.)
After Peter and John were released, they went back to their people and reported all that the chief priests and elders, the Jewish leaders, had said to them—I think primarily that they were told not to teach or preach in the name of Jesus. The immediate reaction of the people was that they raised their voices in prayer.
And I might ask at this point, what would we do in a situation like this? (In fact, how often have we even run into a situation like this?) I think more often than not when something like this comes up we act like we’re incensed, complain and demand our rights—and then maybe pray. But these people raised their voices together (the King James says, “with one accord”. According to the story, the apostles rode around in a Honda. They were all in one Accord). These people raised their voices together, with one accord, in prayer to God.
How did they pray? First of all they acknowledged who God is: “Sovereign Lord (literally, Master), you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” God is Creator and Master, Sovereign Lord, of all the universe—of everything there is. He made it all, including us, and he is in absolute control of everything (including us). He is Master of the universe. That’s who he is! The believers were making it plain to whom they were praying!
Then they prayed (in verses 25 and 26):
25You 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?
26The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.’ (Acts 4:25, 26 –NIV)
They were acknowledging the fact that a thousand years earlier God, through his Holy Spirit, had given David these words to write. What they quoted was the first two verses of Psalm 2.
(The Holy Spirit, by the way, is a person—a person in the same way that God the Father is a person and that Jesus, the Son of God, is a person. The word translated Spirit means, among other things, breath. The Holy Spirit is the breath of God. The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:16, 17: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” You see, God gave us his word—his Scriptures—thorough his Holy Spirit. All Scripture is breathed by God.)
The believers quoted the first two verses of Psalm 2. I’m going to read all of Psalm 2 and talk a little bit about what God is telling us “through the mouth of his servant David”. The entire Psalm fits very well with what was going on in Acts back then (and, in fact, is still going on today). Listen while I read Psalm 2: (Father, bless our reading of your word.)
1Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?
2The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.
3 “Let us break their chains,” they say, “and throw off their fetters.”
4The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.
5 Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
6 “I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.”
7I will proclaim the decree of the Lord: He said to me, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.
8Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.
9You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”
10Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth.
11Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.
12Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalms 2:1-12 –NIV)
“Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?” (The New Testament says rage. Some of the Old Testament manuscripts say conspire and some say rage. Some of the translations say conspire and some say rage.) The nations that conspire or rage are the Gentiles—everyone who is not a Jew. The peoples who plot are Israel—everyone who is a Jew. In other words, this includes everyone—both the Jews and the Gentiles. They are conspiring and plotting in vain.
Why in vain? They are conspiring and plotting in vain because God is Sovereign. He made the heavens and the earth and each of us. His purposes always stand. Plotting and conspiring against his purposes is absolutely in vain. He is almighty! We need to think about these things and pray for God to show us his will before we decide what “we” are going to do. What actually gets done is what God has determined will get done. (I believe that God gives us much freedom, but we need to pray.)
“The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One. Let us break their chains,” they say, “and throw off their fetters.” The Lord’s Anointed one is Jesus. The chains and fetters are God’s laws and commandments.
You remember that the chief priests were Sadducees. The Sadducees denied that there was a resurrection of the dead. If there is no resurrection, when you die, you go out of existence. If you no longer exist, then there is no judgment. You are neither raised to eternal life nor are you raised to eternal shame and contempt. There are no eternal consequences for your actions in this present life. The Sadducees and other leaders wanted to break God’s chains and throw off God’s fetters. Our leaders (and a big percentage of the population) want to throw off the chains and fetters of God’s law, too.
I received a news letter the other day from James Dobson of Focus on the Family. He quoted some statistic to show that marriage is becoming less and less relevant. He also quoted a couple of people who are considered experts on the trends that are leading to the breakdown of marriage in our society. One of the experts, a professor from Princeton University, said that unless something is done to stem the tide, traditional marriage will cease to exist in any meaningful capacity within two to five years’ time. The other expert, a woman from an organization called The National Organization for Marriage said it will in fact happen in only two years. I was somewhat shocked to hear that experts are predicting such things. So was Mooma.
25 or 30 years ago when the big push to make homosexual behavior an acceptable life-style was beginning to rev up, I though, “If you believe sex outside of marriage is wrong (and it had actually been illegal up until that point, believe it or not)—if you believe that sex outside of marriage is wrong (regardless of what you actually practice), how can you say that homosexuality is acceptable. It’s definitely sex outside of marriage!” Well, I’ve noticed just recently that that’s been taken care of, not because same-sex marriage has been established, but because it’s now our right to have sex outside of marriage. (And, of course, if you are still a little squeamish about sex outside of marriage, we, as a country, are working toward same-sex marriage.)
Two to five years the experts say, or only two years until traditional marriage will cease to exist in any meaningful capacity. As I said, that sounds shocking to me. But they say that it’s already happened in some of the western European countries. People rarely marry. Marriage has already become irrelevant. And I observed many, many years ago (when I was still young) that whatever bad thing happens in Europe, the United States follows about ten years later. The same thing happened with pornography. It’s now happening with laws forbidding the criticism of the homosexual life-style. It’s happening with euthanasia, too—and, of course happened a long time ago with abortion. All of these things have already happened in Europe and they are now happening here.
Now listen again to what God says—Psalm 2:4-6:
4The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.
5 Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
6 “I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.” (Psalm 2:4-6 –NIV)
God is not laughing because what they are trying to do is humorous, but because it is completely absurd. God is in complete control. They are trying to defy him—and he’s angry: He rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath. (How do you think the people who are defying God will feel when these things happen?)
God proclaims, “I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.” We all know who his King is. It’s Jesus! You know, when Jesus fed the 5,000, they wanted to make him king by force, but he wouldn’t let them do it. But God has done it. God does everything according to his plan and timing. He has made Jesus king and Jesus will reign until all of his enemies are submitted under his feet.
Now listen to verses 7, 8 and 9. This is Jesus speaking:
7I will proclaim the decree of the Lord: He said to me, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.
8Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.
9You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery.” (Psalm 2:7-9 –NIV)
Well, so much for gentle Jesus. He was gentle when he came the first time. And relative to this, to what is stated in Psalm 2, he was even gentle when he rebuked that Pharisees and teachers of the law: “Woe to you Pharisees and teachers of the law. You hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean.” Those Pharisees and teachers of the law who didn’t repent will certainly wish they had.
Now let’s look at the last three verses in Psalm 2. This is God’s admonition to the kings and rulers of the earth through David who wrote this Psalm:
10Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth.
11Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.
12Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalms 2:10-12 –NIV)
This is a warning to the rulers of the earth, but it certainly applies to each of us, also. Do we serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling? Or do we serve the Lord half-heartedly and with grumbling and complaining? Jesus’s anger can flare up in a moment. What should we do? Kiss the Son! We have to accept Jesus! After all of this scary Psalm—really, this terrifying Psalm if you take it even a little bit seriously—the last sentence is most wonderful: “Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” If we take refuge in Jesus, we are blessed. The HCSB translation, which I use frequently, says, “We are happy!”
People think that God’s commandments are like chains and fetters. They want to break God’s commandments and throw them off. They think they are like a prison—like chains. But Jesus says that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. The real prison and the real chains are in trying to rebel against God. The real freedom is in taking refuge in Jesus. Blessed are all who take refuge in Jesus.
Now let’s go back to the Acts passage. Verses 27 and 28 say:
27Indeed 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. 28They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. (Acts 4:27, 28 – NIV)
Indeed, just as God had declared, both the Jews and the Gentiles conspired to put Jesus to death. But, as Jesus told Pilate, he could do nothing unless God gave him the power to do it. God had determined before the beginning of creation that Jesus would die for our sin and rise from the dead—that we would have salvation through him and through him only.
Now I can make this observation. Everything that the believers had said up to this point was not a request—not the prayer proper—but an acknowledgement of who God was and what he had done and was doing. Now we get to their request.
What would you have requested in this situation? The Jewish leaders had threatened and commanded Peter and John not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus at all. How would you have prayed—for protection for Peter and John—for protection for yourself? Well, they prayed directly according to what Peter and John had reported concerning what the chief priests and elders had said to them:
29Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. 30Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” (Acts 4:29, 20 –NIV)
Verse 31 shows how God answered their prayer:
31After 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. (Acts 4:31 –NIV)
They received an advance confirmation! The place where they were meeting was shaken. And, again, it’s not us but it’s the Holy Spirit who gives us both the desire and the power to do what God has set before us to do. They were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly!
All the way through these accounts in Acts, you can’t help noticing the effect that speaking the word of God boldly has. I talked about it earlier. The more boldly and plainly you speak the word of God, the more clearly it divides those who rage and plot in vain from those who take refuge in Jesus. Let me ask you this. What do you think is happening in this country at the present time? How boldly are we speaking the word of God and how clearly are people being divided?
Pray that we may speak the word of God boldly—the message of the gospel. It’s spoken from the pulpit quite a bit, but rarely by individuals in everyday situations. The message of the gospel will separate those who accept Jesus from those who reject him. Jesus said that he came to bring a sword, not peace—that the message of the gospel would divide people—that families would be divided. My prayer has been for families all to believe so they won’t be divided. But nevertheless, some will be divided and some have been. Pray for those who have been divided to be reunited in Christ.
Pray for God to give us power through his Spirit to speak the word of God boldly. Jesus says that if we, as fathers, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. Let’s ask.
[prayer]