An Army Bold

Acts 4:23:

“When they”—that is, Peter and John—“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 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.’ 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.”

Amen.

Just a brief prayer—an old Anglican prayer:

Father, what we know not teach us. What we have not give us. What we are not make us. We ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.

Well, I have actually been following what’s been going on here, at least the last couple of weeks, so that I had some context into which I would come. And I know that you are in Romans chapter 1. I hope that you know that, because you are. And you also know that you have been purposefully delayed on the sixteenth verse for the last two weeks. And that is on account of the fact that Matt has been dealing with the unashamed testimony of Paul to the gospel of the Lord Jesus and the importance of that not only understood but lived out.

I found that very helpful, because the thought that I have had in mind to bring to us this morning has in many ways followed along from that. Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel.”[1] He then writes to Timothy, and he says to him, “And I don’t want you to be ashamed of the gospel. Don’t be timid about things. You haven’t been given the spirit of timidity but of power and of love and of self-control. Therefore, do not be ashamed.”[2] That is actually a hallmark of Pauline ministry. When he writes to the Thessalonians, he reminds them, “We had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict.”[3]

And it is that very characteristic of boldness that Luke is careful to record for us here in relationship to what Peter and John are both doing and saying. They’re going to be brought before this council, and they’re going to have to give an answer for the hope they profess,[4] and the way in which they do it is not only an historical record of fact, but it is in many ways a pointer to the church in every generation as to how we communicate that gospel.

It has occurred to me in preparing, as well, that while we are familiar with many metaphors for the church—a vine, a branch of the vine, a flock, a building, a body, a family, and so on—one of the metaphors of the church which in earlier generations, and perhaps understandably so, was very much at the forefront of things is the metaphor of an army: that the people of God understood that, according to the Westminster Confession of Faith, we are involved in “a continual and irreconcilable war.”[5] Paul is urging Timothy to be “a good soldier” of Jesus Christ.[6] He writes what ends up being virtually a whole chapter at the end of Ephesians concerning the importance of putting on the armor of God.[7] And yet it seems to me that there’s a certain reticence—and I may be wrong on this, but you can think it out for yourselves—it seems to me there’s a certain reticence in the present climate that almost tends to silence the church because we are afraid of appearing to be something that we’re not.

In 1882, the Church of England began an evangelical thrust into England under the auspices of a newly founded organization called the Church Army—an army of people who were going to go out into the streets of England and proclaim the good news. That was quickly followed, actually, within six or seven years by William Booth establishing the Salvation Army and the idea of a bold army moving into the communities in which it is set to provide the good news that is so desperately needed, aware of the fact that the armor is provided, that the victory is assured, and that the weapons of the warfare which are able to bring down strongholds have been entrusted to us in both prayer and in the ministry of the Word of God itself.

So you might think, therefore, that given that kind of emphasis at the end of the nineteenth century, the church would be immediately engaged. J. C. Ryle, who’s a friend of many of us from distance, actually bemoaned in that same time period what he referred to as a kind of “‘jelly-fish’ Christianity …, a Christianity without bone, or muscle, or [sinew]”[8]—a vague, foggy, misty, creedless Christianity. Now, that’s at the end of the nineteenth century. When a Scottish Presbyterian comes to deliver lectures at Yale Divinity School in the 1950s, J. S. Stewart on that occasion made a similar comment. He referred to the fact that now, at that point in the twentieth century, it wasn’t uncommon to encounter what he referred to as a proclamation that was harmlessly vague, hopelessly accommodating,[9] a kind of Christianity that will accomplish nothing—nothing anywhere, anytime, except to undermine the gospel itself.

So if we’re going to take that to heart and then come to the passage that we’ve read, we realize that what is being described there, both by the end of the nineteenth century and in the mid-twentieth century, is something that is very far removed from what we have in the record that Luke gives to us. They are unashamed in their testimony. They’re saying again and again, “Jesus, whom you crucified, God has raised up, and we are witnesses of that fact.”[10]

Very well, then—all that by way of introduction.

What we have in the text that we read—if you allow your eyes to scan it, you will see that we have a report and then the response to the report. When James and John “were released, they went to their friends and reported.” That’s the report. And then “when they heard it”—they heard the report—then they responded to the report.

The Report

So, what we need to do first of all is make sure that we understand the report. It is provided for us in chapter 3 and into the beginning of chapter 4 in the third person by Luke, giving us a record of it.

But the people who heard it, heard it; they didn’t read it. And so, at the risk of incurring your wrath, I want you to hear it. And in order to do that, I need to take on the persona of Peter—which will stretch your imagination immensely, imagining this Jewish boy with a Scottish accent and so on. But try your best. Maybe close your eyes; it will be easier that way.

The opposition to them was forceful, and the reaction was clear. So imagine Peter is giving the report. Is this what he would say? It’s what is in the text.

“John and I were going up to the temple at the usual time for prayer, three o’clock in the afternoon. As we made our way into the temple precincts, we encountered a man who was a fixture at that time. He would be brought there by people every day. He was banned, himself, from access to the temple because of his invalid status, and clearly, he was looking for a handout. When he gestured towards us, I said to him, ‘Look at us!’ And he did. And I said to him, ‘You know, what you are hoping for I cannot give you. But I want to give you something far greater.’ In fact, I said to him, ‘Silver and gold have I none, but what I have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,’ I said, ‘rise up and walk!’ And taking him by the use of my right hand, I lifted him up. I was amazed! Because he didn’t just stagger to his feet and try baby steps. He started leaping and jumping and praising God. And he joined John and myself in going into the temple. Quite an encounter at a prayer meeting, I think you would agree, to have this man, of all people, jumping and leaping around!”

“The reaction, of course, by the crowd was astonishment. They were amazed. They knew this man. They saw him there on a daily basis. But they’d never seen anything like this before. And so I couldn’t let the opportunity go. And so I said to them—first of all, I actually said, ‘Why are you staring at us? Why are you staring at us? Do you think that we did this? God did this—your God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ I also was very straightforward. I told them, ‘You made a bad choice when you chose Barabbas.’ And I urged them to repent and to turn to God that their sins might be blotted out. I told them that that was the message that the prophets had been proclaiming and was pointing always to the Lord Jesus.

“It was while we were having this conversation that the establishment showed up—Roman authorities, priests, Sadducees. And they were, to put it bluntly, not particularly excited about what was going on. In fact, they were indignant. They were greatly annoyed. And the reason they were annoyed was not because we were troublemakers, it was not because we were trying to overturn something, but it was because we were unashamedly proclaiming Jesus Christ, the resurrected Lord, risen from the dead.

“They took us into custody. Just last night, they took us into custody. But they didn’t know what they were doing. In fact, their animosity was ultimately futile. And this morning, they brought us out to interrogate us, to find out just what was going on. And they asked us straightforwardly, ‘By what power or in what name did you do this?’ Well, I didn’t have a prepared speech. But I remember that Jesus said, you know, ‘When you’re going to have to give an answer, you’ll have an answer.’ And I did.

“I said to them, ‘Are we being examined today for being kind? I mean, are you interrogating us because of a good deed done to a crippled man? Is that your concern?’ Well, that was rhetoric. They never really answered it. But clearly, they thought they were in the ascendancy. After all, they were educated. They were established. We were just a couple of fishermen that had been with Jesus. But this just put the cat among the pigeons. They didn’t know what to do. They couldn’t deny what had happened. And so they talked amongst themselves, and then they said, ‘Well, we’ll just tell them to stop.’ And that’s what they said: ‘We charge you that you won’t preach or teach any more about the name of Jesus.’

“Well, our response to that was equally clear: ‘We can’t stop! We can’t stop! Our lives have been transformed because Jesus is the person that he claims to be.’ And so, with no charge against us that would stick, they eventually said, ‘Well, we’ll just have to let you go.’ Because, after all, all the people in the community were completely overwhelmed by this. They were praising God. And the numbers were actually growing the harder they tried to stop it!

“I remember that occasion when Jesus said—after my great profession of the fact that ‘You are the Christ, the son of the living God,’ remember what he said? ‘Oh, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.’

“Well then, we came back to our friends, and we gave them this report.”

The Response

Now the response. And the response is in the text there for you.

In short order, if I gave you the challenge in a home Bible study and said, “We’re going to deal with the verse 23 to 31; give me a summary statement of what we find there, having read it,” what is the response? In short order, the response is prayer. Or, if you like, it is praise and prayer. The reaction of the people to the events that have just unfolded as reported, as described, is to pray.

And I want to just observe, simply and briefly, four aspects of that prayer—first of all, to notice that it was communal. That it was communal: “they.” “When they heard it,” plural, “they,” plural, “lifted their,” plural, “voices together to God,” and then they prayed, and they “said…” So it wasn’t as if just one person was doing this, but the unanimous reaction was to go to God—to go to God in prayer. We often say, you know, “You can do more than pray, after you[’ve] prayed. But you [can’t] do more than pray until you[’ve] prayed.”[11] And so, together they lift their voices. There is a sense, you know, in which when we say the Lord’s Prayer, you can’t really pray it on your own. You can’t say “Our Father” on your own. It’s communal. We’re together.

A. T. Pierson, who was a Presbyterian minister that followed Charles Haddon Spurgeon to the Metropolitan Tabernacle, in one of his books makes this observation: “From the Day of Pentecost, there has not been one great spiritual awakening in any land which has not begun in a union of prayer, though only among two or three; no such [on]ward, upward movement has continued after such prayer meetings have declined.”[12]

Spurgeon himself had people praying always in what he referred to as his “boiler room.” There was a big boiler that generated all that was necessary in the Metropolitan Tabernacle. But what he was referring to was the prayers of his people. Now, I’m sure you don’t have a boiler room here, but you should all be signed up for the Trails Boiler Room group. And what I mean by that is: They all prayed while Spurgeon preached.

Do you know how important it is to pray, not only before your pastor as he prays but for your pastor as he preaches and after the preaching has ended? That was what they did. That was their response—communal. If you take the average evangelical church calendar, as I roam this country, perhaps the most obvious and glaring omission in the calendar of events is any communal gathering for prayer.

It was not only communal, but it was at the same time theological. Because notice how they address God—in two ways: first, they affirm the fact that he is the “sovereign Lord,” and second, that he is the Creator.

First of all, “sovereign Lord.” It would have been very, very easy for them, when they got Peter and John back in, to start to try and unpack why this happened, and how they could ever prevent it happening again, or “What have we done that we’ve allowed…” or whatever it might have been.

But they don’t do any of that, apparently. They just look up! They know that “the Lord God omnipotent reign[s].”[13] It doesn’t always seem so, but it is so. And at the very heart of our prayers, as we think about our prayers for our children, or for our grandchildren, or our office workers, or our future, or our fears, or our failures, or our great tragedies in life, we have to come and say, “You are sovereign, Lord!” That’s where I start from. That’s where we have to start from.

At the very heart of our prayers, we have to come and say, ‘You are sovereign, Lord!’

And when you read your Bible, you find that that is the ongoing melody line, if you like. If Mary didn’t believe the Lord was sovereign, how would she have gone on? The angel comes and tells her, “You’re going to have a son.”[14] “You’re going to have a baby, one. It’s going to be a boy, number two. And by the way, we’ve already picked out his name.” What does she say? “How [shall] this be, since I am a virgin?” Answer: “Nothing will be impossible with God.”[15] That’s the answer. Because he’s a sovereign Lord.

You have the same thing in Genesis 18, when Sarah laughs because the messenger comes and tells her, you know, “You’re going to have a boy.”[16] And she laughs, and she says, “After I[’m] worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” Answer by the messenger: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”[17] If he is sovereign, he is sovereign. Therefore, he’s sovereign over the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Father, I know that all my life
Is portioned out for me;
The changes that are sure to come
I do not fear to see;
I ask thee for a [humble life],
Intent on pleasing thee.[18]

When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I’m lost
In wonder, love, and praise.

Because

Unnumbered comforts to my soul
[His] tender care bestowed
Before my infant heart conceived
From whom those comforts flowed.

For you boys on the front row:

When in the slippery paths of youth
With heedless steps I ran,
[Your hand] unseen conveyed me safe
And [brought] me up to man.[19]

That he’s sovereign—that was at the heart of their praying.

And he is the creator God. The creator God. I love with my grandchildren, at the tiniest level, just to make this point to them again and again. ’Cause they’re growing up in a world that doesn’t believe there is a personal Creator. And that’s why hymn writers, for me, have always been so vitally important, including the contemporary present. And Cecil Frances Alexander, who was the wife of the Archbishop of Londonderry, Northern Ireland, wrote hymns expressly to teach truth to children. She wrote “There Is a Green Hill Far Away” to teach the atonement, she wrote “Once in Royal David’s City” to teach the incarnation, and she wrote “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small,”[20] to teach the doctrine of creation.

Read Psalm 139. Remind yourself, “You made me. You know me. You keep me.” I put it to you that it is that kind of theological underpinning—not the kind of “Our prayers go with them” from Fox News, ’cause I don’t even know what that means; it’s none of my business what it means—but a foundational conviction that God, the creator of the universe, has his hand upon things for good. That is how they prayed.

Communal, theological, and scriptural. There’s no surprise in that. How could it be theological if it weren’t scriptural?

What they go on to point out is that the God who spoke the world into being spoke by way of the Holy Spirit through the mouth of David. And that is where you have the opening quote from the Second Psalm, which I will assign for your study for homework. That Second Psalm was a thousand years old by the time they quote it here. So they said, “The Holy Spirit was at work through the mouth of David”—King David—“to give us the Second Psalm.” “Why do the [nations] rage, and the people[s] imagine a vain thing?”[21]

So they’re basically saying, “Why would we be surprised by the opposition?” Why would they be surprised then? And why would we, at this point in the twenty-first century, be surprised now? Surely any kind of even superficial view of contemporary Western culture and its impact throughout the rest of the world finds you saying, “God is never taken by surprise. The nations continue to rage, and the people continue to imagine vain things.”

There was a British Empire once. When I went to school, we used to sing on the bus, “Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!”[22] We can hardly put a meaningful vessel on the sea at this point in Great Britain. Our stuff, compared to American aircraft carriers, looks like something that somebody got out of a secondhand shop somewhere. And I say it as a member of both nations, as it turns out. But the fact of the matter is, the state of affairs in our world is such that unless we start to view the news through our Bibles rather than viewing our Bibles through the news, we’re going to find ourselves in trouble.

Word before world. Word before world. You can leave all the news until you get your perspective. How do you get your perspective? In acknowledging who God is—the God who continues to speak.

We need to understand the fact that when you read Psalm 2 and it says that God laughs from the heavens,[23] that is just simply the inevitable, derisive response of the vastness of God to the futility of little princes and kings and peons and presidents, as if they somehow or another are going to take care of affairs. But don’t overstate it. Because the same God who’s described as laughing in Psalm 2 is the God who gave his only Son because he loved the world so much, so that people believing in his Son would not perish but would have everlasting life.[24]

Now, the group is just made aware of that. They’re made aware of the fact that God is sovereign. You can have coffee and talk about verse 28 when you’re on your own—that all the actions on the part of animosity, where the people did what their hand and plan was, was actually under the overruling hand of God’s providence. When you think about the cross, you realize that God employed the wickedness of sinners to deliver sinners from the consequence of their wickedness.

And the last thing concerning their prayer is not only communal and theological and scriptural but purposeful. Purposeful: “Now, Lord, look upon their threats. We’re asking you to take care of that. And would you grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness?” Because that was what they were doing. It was “when they saw the boldness of Peter and John,” and they realized that they were largely uncredentialed, unlearned in relationship to theological structures, that “they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.”[25] So they said, “Lord, make sure that we don’t give up on this part. Make sure that we are bold so that as we go about our business, you will stretch out your hand, and you will perform signs and wonders and healings and so on”—all the things that, as we read through the Acts of the Apostles, were taking place.

When you think about the cross, you realize that God employed the wickedness of sinners to deliver sinners from the consequence of their wickedness.

And then, when they had finished their prayer (that was their response, to pray), it actually says (and I think this is so good), “And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken.” “Shaken.” I haven’t been in an earthquake, I don’t think, but I guess it shakes things. It’d be kind of cool if, like, we were in a prayer meeting, and you said to the person next to you, “Did you move your chair?”—just a little shake, not a big shake. Not a whole lot of shaking going on, just a little bit. We could at least pray, “Lord, shake us.”

“And they were … filled with the Holy Spirit.” And so we could pray, “Lord, fill us.” And they “continued to speak the word of God with boldness.” And we could pray, “Lord, enable us to speak your word with boldness.”

The challenge that is before us is learning how to live as a Christian in a society that doesn’t like what we believe. Learning to live as a Christian—not learning to live as a political person but to live as a Christian. How are we going to live as Christians in a broken world unless we can proclaim the one who deals with the brokenness? That the real brokenness is between a holy God and sinful man. That broken-down relationships are an evidence of that ultimate brokenness. That the state of alienation that runs through a large core of our culture is on account of an alienation between man and God that Jesus has come to deal with.

We don’t want to become like these two old men on the Muppets. I can never remember their names, but it seems to me—forgive me, Mr. Muppet people, if this is wrong—but it seems to me they never made any kind of meaningful contribution to the proceedings at all. They sat up, and I don’t know if they actually had proper words. It was just like [grumbling]. You exist just to do that? That’s what you do? That’s your role in life? That’s not a Christian perspective—sit up on the balcony and admonish a world that is without Christ. How do we expect people to live without the power of Jesus Christ within them to live? How will they ever know there is a power? That’s our part. That’s God’s design.

What an immense privilege at this point in history, here in broken-down nations, broken-down families, broken-down communities, to be able to go out and, in a combination of kindness and boldness—not brashness! We have enough brash. I’m not going to say any more than that. But we got enough brash that is overbearing, selfish, aggravational, animosity, disruptive. Boldness is not brash. Brash is admonition. Boldness is mission. You’re on mission.

Look at this place! God spares me, I hope I come back in ten years, and you’re not only here, but there’s thousands of people here because this community, your church family, said, “We’re going to proclaim good news; we’re going to do good deeds. We’re going to be bold, and we’re going to be kind, and let’s see what God chooses to do.”

Let’s pray:

Father, thank you that your word is fixed in the heavens.[26] Thank you that the plans and purposes that you appoint for it will be successful. Thank you that the strong reminder that comes to us is that without Christ, we’re done. And we remember that when Paul had said to Timothy, you know, “Don’t be ashamed, Timothy,” then he said to him, “Be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”[27] Lord, help us to go out to live for Jesus in the awareness that we can’t do it on our own—not I but Christ who strengthens me.[28] We commit ourselves to that in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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[1] Romans 1:16 (ESV).

[2] 2 Timothy 1:7–8 (paraphrased).

[3] 1 Thessalonians 2:2 (ESV).

[4] See 1 Peter 3:15.

[5] The Westminster Confession of Faith 13.2.

[6] 2 Timothy 2:3 (ESV).

[7] See Ephesians 6:10–20.

[8] J. C. Ryle, Principles for Churchmen: A Manual of Positive Statements on Some Subjects of Controversy […], 4th ed. (London: Chas. J. Thynne, 1900), 97.

[9] James S. Stewart, A Faith to Proclaim (New York: Scribner’s, 1953), 16.

[10] See, for example, Acts 2:32, 36; 3:15; 4:10; 5:32.

[11] S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Prayer (1904), chap. 1.

[12] A. T. Pierson, quoted in Arthur Wallis, In the Day of Thy Power: The Scriptural Principles of Revival (London: Christian Literature Crusade, 1956), 112.

[13] Revelation 19:6 (KJV).

[14] Luke 1:31 (paraphrased).

[15] Luke 1:34, 37 (ESV).

[16] Genesis 18:10 (paraphrased).

[17] Genesis 18:12, 14 (ESV).

[18] Anna Laetitia Waring, “Father, I Know That All My Life” (1850).

[19] Joseph Addison, “When All Thy Mercies, O My God” (1712).

[20] Cecil Frances Alexander, “All Things Bright and Beautiful” (1848).

[21] Psalm 2:1 (KJV).

[22] James Thomson, “Rule, Brittania!” (1740).

[23] See Psalm 2:4.

[24] See John 3:16.

[25] Acts 4:13 (KJV).

[26] See Psalm 119:89.

[27] 2 Timothy 2:1 (ESV).

[28] See Philippians 4:13.