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So Acts chapter 4 and verse 23. And being let go, they went to
their own company and reported all that the chief priests and
elders had said unto them. And when they heard that, they
lifted up their voice to God with one accord and said, Lord,
thou art God, which has made heaven and earth, and the sea,
and all that in them is. Who by the mouth of thy servant
David hath said, why did the heathen rage? And the people
imagined vain things. The kings of the earth stood
up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and
against his Christ. For our truth against thy holy
child Jesus whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate,
with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together,
for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before
to be done. And now, Lord, behold their threatenings,
and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may
speak thy word. by stretching forth thine hand
to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy
holy child Jesus. Amen. This little section in
Acts is absolutely packed full of wonderful teaching. Now I say that, not that And
there's any part that has not got teaching. But if you know
what I mean, it's kind of concentrated in these verses. Lots of parts
of angst are narrative. They tell you who went where,
and where they went, and what happened, and so forth. It's
narrative. Now, of course, there are principles there, and that's
fine. But there's a concentration in
these verses. And the more you look at them,
the more you realize There's so much here, so much here, almost
too much for us. But anyway, we look at it, I
hope not too superficially, but we will look at it and of course
the context again is all important. We won't go through it again
because by now I'm sure you realize And here are the apostles who
was the first persecution in chapter 4. They had a good time
thus far. They've been preaching, and people
have been saved, and thousands have been brought to faith. And
now the authorities, the religious authorities, are hearing about
it. And they're not very happy about it. And they call Peter
and the apostles to account. And you know the story. They
tell him, you shouldn't be going around preaching and teaching
about this person, Jesus of Nazareth. And Peter responds and said,
no. we we can't stop in effect all right and explain the gospel
explain what they believe about Jesus and Nazareth and say that
they can't stop whether it's right to hearken to God or to
you judge you we cannot verse 20 for we cannot but speak the
things we have heard Now, they've got a problem, these religious
authorities, as oft they did, and it's a political problem
in the sense of they don't know what to do, they know what they
want to do, they want to put them in prison and lock them
up and throw away the key. They can't deny that a miracle
has taken place, and the people have seen this miracle. They've
seen this man who was lame. They've seen him leaping and
skipping and praising God, and they can't deny that. And they
don't know what to do. They're a bit of a pickle politically,
religiously, whatever. And so they decide what they'll
do. They'll let him go, but tell
him to behave themselves and not to do it again. I was quite
saddened this week to read about the new bishop, archbishop I
think he is, of York. And he's all smiley and a nice
picture of him. And there's a comment that he
believes in same-sex marriage and all the usual. I thought,
how appalling that the second most highest person in the history
of England is now taking this stance. And things would follow
from that. And all the homosexual vicars
and bishops, and there are sadly too many of them, they will say,
well, if he believes in it, he agrees with it. And they've done
this deliberately. This has been a political, in
my humble opinion, a political appointment. And how sad it is.
And you've seen it all over the place. So what they do, tell
them off, keep quiet. And verse 23, I'm being let go. So we know the background, let
go, what do they do? They went back to their own company.
They go back to the folk with whom they'd been previously,
and reported all the chief priests and elders said unto them. It's
good to have reports from folk who've been there, been involved
in something, and come back and tell us. It's nice to have Gary
when he comes back to us and tells us about his exploits in
Sri Lanka. And so we're in the picture,
and we can pray meaningfully for the situation and so on.
So you go back, and it's not just them. It's the people behind
the scenes who have supported them, who've been praying for
them, whilst they've been up front on the cold face, as we
used to say, in front of the battle. So they come back, and
then we have a prayer meeting that is a result of this persecution
and their being before the chief priests and so forth. And my,
what a prayer meeting it is. The prayer that's uttered from
23 down to 30 is an amazing prayer. And I love the way it starts
off. Now, I mentioned this, I think,
much previously. The first thing they say, verse
24, and when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to
God with one accord and said, Lord, thou art God which has
made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them. They don't start by saying, oh,
thank you, we've been delivered. Their first consideration is
not themselves. How difficult it is for us to
grasp this principle, this precept, this highest of principles. We must not start with ourselves. Now it's difficult. I find it
difficult. You find it difficult. It's difficult in the prayer
meeting. We want to just rush in and say, Lord, Thank you for
deliverance. Now we need more deliverance.
We need this. We need that. This person needs this. And it's
sad, really, because that's not how people prayed. Sometimes
they cried, Lord, save me, OK? But in this context, it reminds
me of another situation where a similar prayer is offered.
And if I just read the verses to you and then explain the context,
and you may guess it from the verse. Hezekiah is praying, and he's
praying, and this is what he says in Isaiah 37. Let me just
read it to you, just two verses. And it came to pass when King
Hezekiah heard it that he rent his clothes and covered himself
in sackcloth and went to the house of the Lord. Sorry. That's right, he went to the
house of God, and then this is what he said. Now here's a man, the situation
is, he's surrounded by enemies. He's surrounded by the armies
of Syria. And there seems no hope for him. And the enemies
have boasted against not just Israel and Jerusalem, but against
Jehovah, against their God. And they've said such blasphemous
things. Don't trust your king. Don't trust Hezekiah, who tells
you to believe and trust in Jehovah. What have we done to the other
gods? Other peoples have trusted in their gods, and we've smashed
them. And we are about to do the same to you. So don't let
that king say, oh, trust in the Lord. He'll look after us. He
delivers. Because he won't. We are indestructible. No one can defeat us. Not Israel
or Israel's little God. What terrible things they said.
So, you would think Hezekiah would come into the house of
the Lord and he has this communication, he lays you, and he says, Lord,
save us! Lord, deliver us! Lord, have mercy upon us! He
would rush in with his petitions. Of course, I don't know how he
said these things, I can't read the words, but I'd like to think
he's completely calm about this. And he starts by worshipping
God. Oh, Lord of hosts, God of Israel. You dwell between the
cherubim and the seraphim. Thou art God, even thou alone,
and all the kingdoms of the earth. Thou hast made heaven and earth,
and so on. He's worshipping God. He's not rushing. He's just worshipping
God. He's almost poetic, eloquent
in his words. He's reminding God of who God
is and thereby reminding himself he was the sovereign God. He
was the God who created all things and in whose hands everything
is. Kingdoms of the world, the stars,
the sun, the moon, the angels, every situation is in God's hands. And there's no need to panic.
There's no need to panic. Now, the context of that is not
dissimilar to the context of Acts 4. Here are these rulers,
and these chief priests, and all the rest of it. And they're
seeking to keep these people quiet. They're seeking to make
sure that they don't propagate this gospel about this Jesus
of Nazareth being crucified. They knew that was a fact. But
being risen, they didn't like that bit, and that he was the
Messiah. And so they start praying. They lifted up the voice of God
with one accord and said, Lord, thou art God. Thou hast made
heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them. You
are God. You haven't changed from Hezekiah's day. You haven't
changed from all the events of history, biblical history. You've not changed. You're still
God. You're still almighty. The force of change. It's not
now the king of Syria. It's others. But the fact of
opposition has not changed your people. The fact of hatred for
the gospel, for the good news, hasn't changed. But you are still
God. You are still almighty. And you're
still sovereign. We need to pray like that. We
need to pray like that. And you see, by doing so, you're
reminding yourself of who and what God is. I mean, sometimes,
if you're like me, you look at the world and you're very tempted
to be despairing. And you think, what can happen? Can anything happen to stop this
tide? It's almost overwhelming us.
God is God. God is sovereign, and we can
trust him to do as he wills. Anyway, they go on then, and
then they quote a psalm. Who by the mouth of thy servant
David hath said? And they quote Psalm 2. Now what I'm going to do, and
you may like to join me if you can, is turn to Psalm 2. This is the psalm they quote. Now, another little lesson I
trust for us is that the New Testament people of God quoted
oftentimes the Psalms in their prayers. Now, sometimes it's
obvious, all right? Sometimes it's not so obvious.
Sometimes it's explicit. Sometimes it's implicit. And
I've always said and feel it's a good thing to do. It's a good
place to start to quote God's own words to him. Lord, you have said, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah. And I am concerned. Let me be a bit personal tonight.
I am concerned that we don't do this enough. And we ought
to be doing it all the time, but particularly when we're studying
the Psalms. I mean, we had Gary Deal with
the Psalm, was it 61, 62, and about the rock that is higher
than I. Now, that's a great verse, and
the verses around, to go to God in prayer. That should be the
immediate response. In my humble opinion, that should
be the immediate response. Lord, we thank you that you are
this rock. Our savior is this rock. Higher
than I. That's what we need. A rock that
is higher than I. A rock upon which we can run
to free to fall upon. And then other verses that you
can quote in worship and prayer. Now, this is not too difficult.
I don't know why it is, but it's almost, there's an adverse reaction
somehow, someway, and I don't know why it should be. It wasn't
always the case. Many of us will remember being in prayer meetings,
particularly with the old saints, as they say, and often they would
start with a psalm or with another part of scripture, and they'd
bring that before God. We need to recover that. We need
to recover that. So, they pray this psalm. They pray particular
verses in this psalm. Now, is that significant? Why didn't they take Psalm 61
or 62? Why did they particularly choose Psalm 2? I think they
were led of the Spirit to do that, and the Spirit led them
to record that in Acts, and it must be significant. Let me just
remind you of Psalm 2. Why do the heathen rage and the
people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves
together and rulers take counsel together against the Lord and
against his anointed, saying, let us break their bands asunder
and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens
shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in delusion.
Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in
his sole displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my
holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree. The
Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten
thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee
the heathen for thy inheritance, and yet it was parts of the earth
for thy possession. I shall break them with a rod
of iron. I shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings. Be instructed, ye judges
of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and
rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son, lest he be hungry,
and he perish from the way. And his wrath is kindled but
a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. Now, why do they quote that?
I'm sure because it has to do with opposition and the heathen
raging. People imagine vain thing. The
kings of the earth set themselves together and rulers. There's
a conspiracy against God. But it's not just against God
in general. It's against God in particular because it's against
the Lord and his anointing. You see, these chief priests
and others in acts, they're not just against the apostles as
servants of the Lord. They're not just against God
in a sense they wouldn't say they were against God because they
claim to worship God, worship Jehovah. They're against the
one who claims to be his son. They're against the one who claims
to be the anointed. They're against the one who claims
to be the Messiah. That's their problem. That's
their problem. and the New Testament writers
interpret this psalm as particularly, as we would, particularly and
especially referring to the Lord Jesus Christ as Messiah. And
the opposition that is coming against the Messiah, now it's
not just against the Messiah in the context of Psalm 2, it's
against the Lord himself. I confess, I listened to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Wednesday
on Acts 4, and he spends 50 minutes of his 60 on Psalm 2, because
obviously Peter votes, and so the good doctor deals with Psalm
2. And it was an amazing message, absolutely amazing. And it was
preached in 1965. And the things he said there
could have been said last Sunday. about this world and raging. And people imagine vain thing.
And they think they can take over. They control everything
they can do to bring about social reform and peace and all the
rest of it. And of course, he points out
in his own inimitable way how that's failed miserably. He mentions, for example, the
First World War. Many of us know what the First
World War was. We're born much later than that.
But the First World War, the war to end all wars. There never
again will be a war like this. We must get together. Nations
must come and must talk and communicate. And men, men organize this. And men organize the League of
Nations, all the rest of it. And then, bang, 1935 or whatever,
the Second World War. And you'd think, after all that
we went through, or some folk went through the Second World
War, there'd never be any other wars, whether World Wars or any
other. And since then, there'd be a succession of wars all over
the world. Wars and rumors of wars. And
still, there's conflict in many parts of the world. Man has not
got the answer. Because man is in sin. And man
is, at heart, rebellious against God. It's not that he just doesn't
want to follow God's law. He hates God at the root of man. And but for the grace of God
in his common grace, and then in his sovereign grace, we will
be like the same. We will be the same. Oh, I never
hated God. What if you never hated God?
It wasn't because you were particularly good or nice, but God in his
preventative grace had his hand upon you, even in the days before
you were converted. Kings of the earth set themselves
together, rulers take counsel against the Lord, against His
anointing. What are they saying? Let us
break the bands of sundown and cast the cords from us. We don't
want to be bound by a God whom we can't see. We don't want to
be bound by the old-fashioned rule, the Ten Commandments, and
all these kinds of things. We want to establish our own
morality. We want to establish our own
laws. We want to decide what we do and with whom we do it.
We want to be in charge. You want some god to tell us
what to do, what not to do. We want to be free. Now, it's a supreme irony, isn't
it? In their desire to be free, the
world is in bondage to sin and self and Satan. They're in bondage. The man says, I'm free. I can
do as I please. All right, stop doing things
which are wrong. Stop sinning. Oh, I can't. I won't. I don't want to. freedom. And then God's reaction. Oh, we love this. I mean, we've
got to be careful, right? I know we've got to be careful.
He that sitteth in the heavens Be careful, because it's a human
anthropomorphism describing laughter to God. He's not sitting in the
heavenly chair and a good chuckle. Be careful of that. But the idea
we need to be that God looks at them and says, you silly people. You are so silly. You're so foolish. You don't know what you're doing.
And you don't realize that the further you get away from me,
the deeper you are going to be in bondage and chaos. The Lord shall have them in derision.
But you see, the Lord is not indifferent to their rebellion
and to their conspiracy. He doesn't say, oh, well, I don't
care less. You do what you like. I'll do what I want, and that'll
be the end of it. God visits these people in wrath and he
vexes them in sore displeasure. I think we rarely speak about
God's wrath today, God's displeasure. Who is God to be wrathful? Who
is God to be displeased? Who is God to judge? And we hesitate
to talk about judgment in this world. We hesitate to talk about
judgment of individuals or of nations. And yet the Bible talks
about a God who judges nations, who brings his wrath upon nations,
who destroys nations. Now, we have to go carefully.
I'll give you a little illustration, all right? You make of it what
you will. But then I will give you what I think and then a proper
biblical response. I mentioned some months ago what
happened in Australia, where a rugby player said, a national
rugby player from Australia, that he believed that marriage
was for a man and a woman. He also said that he believed
that homosexual practice was a sin. Well, you just say what
the Bible says. Nothing particularly spectacular
about that or revelationary about that. That's just what most of
us have always said and believed. Now he was taken to task, firstly
by his club, then by the International Rugby Board, and then the whole
of Australia turned against him. People who had nothing to do
with rugby, nothing to do with sport, all turned against him. Not because
he'd been out there beating up homosexuals, or suffered from
some homophobic attacks, or had caused them attacks, because
of what he said. Just what he said in his church. and lost his job, and all kinds
of things. Now, Australia has suffered the
worst fires in a generation. There will be some people who
will link the two. In fact, he himself said it. He wonders if
this is God's judgment. Now, if it had just been a little
club, or even the International Rugby Board in Australia, well,
that's not much. But it seemed that the whole
country, even to the government, against this poor little fellow
Israel. And they've had the worst fight. Now, I am not saying this
is a direct result of that particular persecution of that Christian
and of their stance on homosexual practice. I'm not saying that.
It might be, but I'm not saying it. Why am I not saying it? Because
Jesus said this. The Lord Jesus, in answer to
a question, And the question was, a folk came to him and said,
the people who were killed by Pilate when he sacrificed pigs
on the altar, all right, and there was a riot, and he slaughtered
them all, were they great sinners? Because of something they did.
And the other question they asked, they were building this tall
tower, and it fell on them. I don't know how or why it's
not recorded in the Bible. These two events are not recorded,
but they did happen historically. And this tower falls, and lots
are killed. Now, were they bad people because
this tower fell down? It was the mentality in those
days. If something bad happens to you, you're a bad person.
So were these people who were slain by a pilot? Well, there
must have been something wrong with them. These people who were
killed by the tower, there must have been something wrong with them.
They were sinners. And Jesus says this, do you think they were worse
sinners than anybody else? No. The biggest problem is your
sin. Except you repent, you shall
perish. In other words, it's not a particular
thing that's brought about this particular judgment. It may be,
but we cannot tell. And you wonder, I wonder, and
you can't say this publicly, can you? If I or some politician
or somebody high up, if the Archbishop of Canterbury, I doubt he'd ever
say something like this. But if he dared even to suggest
that, they'd be up in arms. When AIDS was prevalent amongst
the homosexual community, and people say this is a judgment
of God. I don't think you could say that. Albeit, I think the
Lord has built into the system an effect whereby certain things
occur as a result of a bad lifestyle. But that's another medical thing. But God is a God of wrath. God
is a God of vengeance. And that's real. And I just,
I'm uneasy, because we're afraid to think about this, because
what would people say? Now, amazingly, but perhaps not
so amazingly, because he was a real evangelist at heart, Lloyd-Jones,
at the end of the message I've just told you about, he comes
on to, as bad as we are, there is a savior, and there's good
news, and so on. And it's a great application
at the end. I watched a little program last
night, Michael Petillo. I enjoy Michael and his train
journeys. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then forgive
me. But he goes on a train, and he's got a good little travel
book, and he goes out places. He does the British Isles, and
at the moment, he's in Thailand. Well, not at the moment, but
when this was filmed. And he went to Thailand. And he said
there, I think it was 80% or perhaps 90% of people in Thailand
are Buddhists. And he didn't say, this is paganism. Of course, he couldn't say that,
could he? This is paganism. Absolute superstition. And he
went into this big shrine. There was a great statue of the
Buddha, and it's all covered with gold. And all these people who
worship the Buddha and all the rest of it, and they chant and
do these things, and they believe in reincarnation, as you know,
and all that kind of stuff. And I think, this is dreadful, this
whole country in paganism. what is God going to do about
it? I don't know. And I read that Thailand is one
of the worst places for drugs and child prostitution and various
other horrendous things. And I think we're entitled to
say Buddhism hasn't done much for them, has it? Now, all these
applications you can use all throughout the world. Now, I'm
not saying a particular. You can't say that. You can't
say there's a man in Halesham and he's having a terrible time.
Well, he's a great sinner. He may be, but it may not be.
What he's suffering is because of his sin. If God visited the
sinners of Halesham as he deserved, there'd be a plague throughout
Halesham. But God is gracious. He's still
gracious. Now, there's so much we could
say about this. I don't want to be overlong,
because we can only kind of keep till next week. But we need to
think about some of these things. Because if we don't, we're not
being faithful to the Bible. I'd rather talk about the love
of God. And in a sense, God is love against
the background of all this sin and degradation. I'm sorry to go on about this. I heard that in Northern Ireland
this week, a holocaust, celebrated it. The mayor of Ireland, Belfast,
stood up and said all the things that you would expect him to
say about the holocaust. And then he added, and of course
the same is happening today to homosexuals and lesbians and
trans people. They're being persecuted. And
I thought, what on earth are you bringing this into this holocaust? It was just, and I'm afraid it
was therefore commented, we have sunk to such depths. And you
think, well, but if I read Romans 1 right, this is part of the
judgment. God is saying, you go with it,
you have it, you do all that you want, and see where it will
lead you. And something will happen, I
don't know what it will be, but something will happen. They'll reach a point and they'll
say, this has got to stop. You can't keep teaching our children
this horrendous heresy and behavior. I don't want my granddaughter
in a school with a loo and a little boy comes in because today he
wants to identify as a little girl. I don't want my granddaughter
to go through that, and neither do you. There seems to be a power
that's to stop it. But God, God will intervene somehow,
someway. And the very people who now were
advocating freedom will realize that it's not freedom. It's bondage
to a very, very small minority who are very vocal. And I would
dare to say a true esteem and possess. Well, we'll stop there
for tonight. There's so much in this, and
thank God that God brought them and delivered them. But the focus
was on this Messiah, and we'll come back to that next week,
the king on Mount Zion. That's just bow our heads. Father,
we've looked at this passage, and it's quite a dire passage
in a sense. The reference to Psalm 2 and
the king's raging, Rulers coming together against God and against
His Anointed. And we feel we're in that world
today. Peter and the Apostles felt a little of it, but we're
in it worldwide, where the opposition to the Gospel is increasing.
But not just to the Gospel, to creational values, to foundations,
the very foundations of life and of family and society have
been not just corroded, but spoken against. And there's no proof
that things are any better. It's not working. It's not working. Oh, Father, the God of this world
is blind in the eyes of those that believe not. Lest the light
of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine into their hearts,
and they be saved. Father, our prayer is in wrath.
Remember mercy. We don't know what else to say.
We pray and plead with Thee, Father, in spite of our great
sins, as a nation, have mercy upon us. For Jesus' sake. Amen. Amen. We're going to sing another
hymn in the same line as to the first. 712 or 714? 715. Soldiers of Christ arise
and put your armor on, strong in the strength which God supplies.
Acts 4
Series Acts
| Sermon ID | 22201222543301 |
| Duration | 35:05 |
| Date | |
| Category | Prayer Meeting |
| Bible Text | Acts 4 |
| Language | English |
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