But this is the word of God, beginning in Acts 4 verse 23. When they were released, they being Peter and John and the man who had been healed, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, sovereign Lord, who made heaven and earth and the sea and everything that's in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant said by the Holy Spirit, why did the Gentiles rage and the people's plot in vain and 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, we're 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 and 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 filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Almighty God, we praise you and we thank you for the response of the church in this case to the release of Peter and John and the man who had been healed. I pray that we would learn from that and that it would guide our response and our interactions with the world. Use these words to build us up in faith. And as you build us up in faith, Father, I pray that you would do so in such a way that we are called to glorify you and call others to faith as well. If there are those who do not have faith who hear these words, I pray that these words would call them to faith. And I pray that in all things that you were made much of. May you be glorified and honored. May you be praised and proclaimed. And may you do all of this, either through me or in spite of me. In this I pray in Jesus name, amen. We've been talking about sermons and you're probably getting sick of me telling you that this is a book of sermons. And maybe that's a good thing because maybe that means you're getting the idea. People focus and they like to focus on the miracles. But if we're gonna have revival in the church, it's not gonna be because of miraculous events. It's gonna be because of the preaching of God that is honored and focused upon in the life of the church. That's the model that is set for us in the book of Acts. That is what we see in history when true revival takes place. And it will be something that will happen again when people rediscover the place of preaching and the word of God, both in its content and in its hearing. Our text today, though, is not a sermon. It's really a prayer. And more specifically, it's a prayer that is asking God for boldness in their witness. That's verse 29. And even more specifically to speak of, to speak of God's word with boldness, not just to be bold and in your face, but to speak of God's word with boldness. So I was kind of working that through and trying to make sense of what that means, because a lot of times people have some odd ideas about what it means to speak the word of God with boldness. How many times have you been to a place where you've been driving by a street corner and there's somebody out there with a sign that says, you know, God hates whatever, and people are yelling at you. I'm not sure that that's boldness. Boldness is also not silence on the other side. So I was asking myself, what is boldness? And I kind of thought let's, to begin with that question, we ought to begin by asking ourselves, you know, How do people use the term bold in society? Because if we don't clearly understand the terms that are used, we won't communicate very well. If we assume that boldness is just getting in people's faces and being ugly with them, when somebody is gentle with us, we won't think that is being bold. And that boldness oftentimes will just turn people away. So I was kind of thinking through, how do we define the term boldness? Okay, I did what everybody in our generation does. When you want to know the meaning of a word, at least in a secular way, I Googled it, right? That's the way we find out all the information that we know is to go to the great computer in the sky and Google that information. At least to show us how the culture uses the term. It amazed me. the stuff that came up. In fact, I just even went to the picture section, you know, and the first thing that came up with this was this advertisement for the Bold and the Beautiful, some kind of a TV show. I'm assuming that it's a soap opera. I don't know anything about soap operas and TV shows, but let me assume this much based on what little knowledge I have. is if it is a soap opera, basically soap operas really tell you kind of the same story over and over and over again, just with different people. You know, you've got somebody falls in, a boy falls in love with a girl and oh, down the road they find out that really they're twins that were separated at birth and now they can't get married because Well, they're twins. And so one gets angry, runs off in a helicopter, the helicopter crashes and burns, but the person survives just with massive plastic surgery. They came back with another actress to replace them and nobody recognizes them again because they've had all this plastic surgery and the story kind of repeats itself over and over again. I don't think that's very bold. If you're just repeating the same thing over and over again that somebody else has done. I googled bold taste and one of the first images that came up was an advertisement for sriracha sauce. And you know, I like sriracha sauce, but I like spicy things. And so sriracha sauce to me is not very spicy. And it's certainly not what I would consider bold. You know, you want something bold, let's go to habaneros or something a little bit more muscle and heat to that. You see how subjective this term is or can be in the way that people use it in our society? And the problem with subjectivity is not only does not anybody know what you mean, but everything gets interpreted differently in terms of somebody's tastes and preferences. There are be bold energy bars, and we have bold fashion statements. Eclectic probably is a better term than bold for some of the pictures that showed up on Google when I typed that in. Yeah, people like to push the fashion envelope. Maybe that could be considered bold, but again, that's a rather subjective thing. They're bold hairstyles and hair colors. You know, bright red, white, and blues and rainbows in hair colors anymore. But again, that may be just personal expression and style, not necessarily something that is bold. They're bold sharpies. Not sure that that really relates, but I thought that was interesting in terms of things that came up. And there was one of these little memes that came up. And the statement on the meme really caught my attention because it said, be bold and do what the ordinary fear. I scratched my head on that one. Because first, we probably need to define what the term ordinary refers to. What is ordinary in today's Western society anymore? Shoot, I think ordinary is something that really deserves some better definition. And is doing things that the ordinary fear really a bold thing? I've been told for years that the average adult fears public speaking more than anything else that they fear. So when the elders come up in front and speak publicly and give the announcements or read scripture, is that being bold? I'm not so sure that it is. Again, we're stuck in subjectivity. The dictionary defines bold as the ability to take risks, to be confident and courageous. That might be helpful, but it emphasizes something that is outward and still rather subjective. And I'm not sure that that's the biblical model. Think about it this way. If you focus on the delivery Well, that just tells you what man can do and not what God can do. And that's really dangerous. I'll tell you a story from my own life to illustrate that. There's a number of years ago that I used to preach. These are before my seminary days when I was preaching as a Methodist. And there was a church in the area that had an annual Hookstown, it was called the Hookstown Revival. And they had had that revival for over 100 years going back to the days where, you know, in the middle of the summer there was a little bit of a lull in the farms and families could get away for typically a week or so and they would come together at this one spot and they had an outdoor Venue, everybody kind of camped out together, ate together, slept together, and there would be evangelists that would come in and preach in every worship services during that whole week. And I imagine it was a very, very neat time to have that kind of fellowship for that length of time. At the point that I was involved, there was just a weekend and kind of had lost you know, the week thing. And so it was Saturday night and Sunday morning. But I had preached it several times. And this was the last, I was given the opportunity to be the featured preacher the last year before I went to seminary. Got the bright idea that I was gonna bring revival to that little community. And so Saturday night went well, you know, the church responded to the preaching and the worship service. And the next morning I was thinking to myself, well, we've got to bring out the, those were the days where, you know, the Methodists, they still using what they call an altar call. We don't have an altar because Christ sacrifices once and never repeated, but they still have kind of these altar call ideas where you call people forward you know, repent of your sins and give your life to Christ, or recommit your life to Christ. I kind of had it in my head. that I was gonna do that and people would come with droves. So we had everything set up. In fact, I even invited a friend of mine who had a pretty remarkable testimony. He had been in prison and got a witness to him through some other prisoners. And he had come to faith during that time and a remarkable change in his life. And so I had him come and he was gonna share and gonna lead into my sermon. And so everything got set up and so he did his thing. At the end of his thing, he felt led to invite, started inviting people to the altar or give their life to Christ or to recommit themselves. I didn't like that very much. I thought to myself, whoa, wait a minute. That's my job. I don't think so, dude. You know, what's this? This isn't my job. But I sat there, and five or six people came down, and I thought smugly to myself, aha, and only five or six people came down. And just wait till I get up there. They're gonna come down by the droves. So I got up there. It's my turn to preach, and I started preaching. And I started preaching and I got more passionate and I got louder and louder and more passionate as I went. I even got to the point where I was saying things like, don't even wait until I finish preaching, but come down to the altar right now because you may not live through this sermon. God may strike you down here in the middle of the service. Don't waste even but a moment. And nobody budged. They all just kind of looked at me with these big wide open eyes. And so I preached louder and I preached more passionately and I gave everything that I could muster. You notice that word, I, that keeps on popping up in that. At the end of the day, one person came forward. ended up my sermon and knelt down to recommit myself to. I think the person that came forward felt sorry for me and came forward only just maybe to make me stop. You know, I got to say, I was humiliated by that experience, but I learned a lot. I was humbled by that experience because I learned that day that when you rely on what man can do, you're only gonna get what man can give. You've gotta learn to rely on what God can do. And sadly, too many churches, it's all flash, but no heat. It's all bright lights and sound and excitement and all of those kinds of things, but there's no truth. There's no depth. There's no content. It's all about what man can do. Not about what God can do or does do. I learned from that instance. Never again did I fall into that kind of trap. That's not what those Christians were praying for. That's not how they defined boldness. They define boldness very, very differently. In fact, the Greek word that's used twice in the text in verse 29 and 31 that we translate as boldness is defined this way. The use of speech that conceals nothing, outspoken, plain speech, and frank speech. Plus it's a willingness to address those in authority without fear. In this sense, notice that the emphasis is not on style. The emphasis is on the earnestness of the message. Maybe put it this way. Bold does not rely on the guy standing on the street You know, yelling, it does not rely on the man at the pulpit hollering and screaming. It does not rely even on the quiet person that quietly does things. It relies on the truth of the message, regardless of the way it's delivered, though it should always be delivered biblically in love. Which means it's also boldness is not being afraid to rock the boat. Boldness is speaking the truth in love. Boldness is Jesus saying to Nicodemus, do you still not understand what I'm trying to say to you? You're a teacher of Israel and you still don't get it. Boldness is Paul confronting Peter face to face. in Peter's sin. Peter had been hanging out with the Gentiles, but this Jewish party comes from Jerusalem and Peter gets a little bit scared and stops hanging out with the Gentiles and stays with the Jews. And Paul says, look, Peter, you're leading people astray. You know, there's others that are following your pattern and example, and they're sinning. You can't do this. Boldness is also a council member coming up to you, not yelling and screaming, but gently saying to you, saying, hey, we haven't seen you in church for a while. You know, you made a promise and a vow before God that you would be here and that you would sit under the teaching that we have here and that you would learn about God's word and trying to put it into practice as part of this covenant body. And that promise is a good thing, and it's good for your soul, and it's good for your life, and it's good for this church. What's going on? And can we get involved with whatever's going on in your life to help you fulfill those vows? That's boldness. We're gonna talk next week about how the church lived together in community. But I want you to understand Without this kind of definition of boldness at work, we wouldn't ever be able to see the church living together in community. And so this is what they prayed, or this is for what they prayed, that God would give this to them. And God did. He gave that to them. Now, there's some things that I want you to point out about this prayer. Think about your own prayers and how oftentimes you would fall into a rut, for example, into your own prayer life. You know, the Lord, I love you, forgive my sins, heal person X, Y, and Z, and bring person A to faith, amen. None of those things are bad things to pray for. None of those things are things that we oughtn't pray for, but that kind of gets to be a bit of a routine, doesn't it? Even if you use the prayer journal in our bulletins, which helps you to pray through the whole congregation, most cases several times during the year, we still miss, we don't get out of the rut of praying. So one of the things I have found to be helpful in terms of getting out of the rut is by praying scripture directly, like the Psalms, speaking God's word back to him, that idea, or praying in my own words, but letting the scriptural prayers model the words that I use. And this has been a very healthy practice, and it's a practice that I've commended to a lot of people. I can't say that I ever remember somebody coming back to me and saying, well, that was the worst experience I ever had in prayer. I think it's a good, good, healthy practice. And so I want to highlight a few thoughts about this particular prayer and suggest that it be something that you think about in the context of your own prayer life. First in verse 24, God is referred to as the Lord, the sovereign Lord, depending on your translation, who made the heavens and the earth. You know, this brings together the character and activity of God, but the idea of sovereign Lord also has rich Old Testament roots with the phrase in Hebrew, Yahweh Adonai, or the Lord Adonai, literally the Lord of Lords, as we would translate that. It's a reminder of who God is. and what he's capable of doing because it's what he did in terms of creation. I've told you before, I've got a professor from seminary who used to say that when we pray, we ought to get goosebumps. I want to make the little hairs on the back of our necks stand up because we're coming into the presence of the One who is all-glorious and almighty and who created the heavens and the earth and everything that's in them. That's how they're praying here. They're recognizing who it is that they're coming before. And all too often, I fear that we as a society have become very casual in our prayer life when we come before God. And we should come before God as a friend in a sense, which Jesus calls us friends, but we should never forget whose presence we're coming into. Speaks about God's power, his might, his authority as a lawgiver even. It goes on to quote from Psalm 2, again, praying scripture back to him, which by the way, when you see the New Testament or any other part of the Bible quoting from another part of the Bible, remember the whole context is what's in mind. And so when you see this little quote from Psalm 2, you need to recognize that really all of Psalm 2 is in sight here. Psalm 2 is a messianic psalm. Psalm 2 speaks about Christ. And part of that is the nation's rage. And they seek to plan against, to attack and undermine the anointed of the Lord. Yeah, that's Jesus. Psalm 2 ends with some pretty powerful statements. You know, statements about, sure, blessed is he who takes refuge in the Lord, but also, you know, kiss the Lord, lest his anger be kindled against you. Worship him. Send your affections in his direction. Who's this group that have gathered together to stand against God? Well, Materad is Pontius Pilate. It's the Gentiles, i.e. the Romans. Most particularly, it's the people of Israel. It's a whole conglomeration that have come together. This is Psalm 2, being inactive. And so what these Christians are saying is, look, don't miss the fact that Psalm 2 is about Jesus, ultimately. It's also about predestination. And the term is flatly used here in many of our translations of the Bible. Some of our Bibles may translate this a little bit differently. But it gives us God's definition, God's picture of what his predestining work looks like. Because you've got these groups, again, Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, people of Israel. And what does he say? They were there to do whatever your, that's God's, hand had predestined. Literally foreordained, not foresaw, but foreordained. He destined it to take place. So did these people do exactly what they wanted to do, these wicked men? Yes, they did. They did exactly what they wanted to do. But did they do what God had ordained for them to do? Yes, they did do what God had ordained for them to do. Will our finite minds ever truly comprehend this in completion? No, but we need to affirm what the scripture teaches. The wicked men put Jesus to death on that cross, but these wicked men did exactly what God had ordained that they do. Who killed Jesus? Herod did. Pilate did. Wicked Gentiles did. Wicked Jews did. God did. part of God's plan, part of God's design, bringing all of this together to bring about His will. What's the difference in those actions of the people? So what the wicked men did, they intended for evil works and evil purposes. What God intended through their evil purposes was for good. should remind us of Joseph and his brothers in Genesis chapter 50. You know, dad's died, Jacob is dead. And the brothers kind of concoct this story thinking that Joseph's gonna get even with them now that dad's not there to protect them anymore. And they go up to Joseph and they said, Joseph, dad had one last wish, that you not punish us for what we did. That guilt kept on weighing on them, didn't it? And Joseph sadly looks at them and says, you guys just don't get it. He said, what you did, you did for evil. But what God did, he did for good. But as they work through this prayer, They speak about these things in prayer. Not that God doesn't know them, not that they're really teaching God something new, but they're basically reciting God's word back to him. They're basically giving God honor for the faithfulness that he has shown, even in the work of Christ and the death of Christ and the resurrection. What does that look like in terms of the context of your prayers? Is that part of your prayer life? Do you pray thinking about the faithfulness of God through the ages and thanking him for that? Because it's the same God that's been faithful to his church. He will be faithful to you as well. Important. At the end of this prayer, they have a singular request. Just one request, boldness. And God honors that prayer with works and signs. And the people honor God by boldly proclaiming the word. Notice the connection there as well. Who's doing the works and signs, God? What are the people doing? They're not doing works and signs so much as they are being bold. preaching the word of God. We're called to do the same thing. And we believe typically that the works and signs aren't normative for the church anymore. You know, the scriptures have been completed. And so there's no need for those things. Peter calls the word more sure than anything we could experience. What we've been talking about, faith comes by hearing, not seeing. It comes by God's work and not by the works of men. But they have a job to do as well. To boldly, not in terms of style, but in terms of content, boldly preaching the word. May we do the same. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I praise you. And I ask that your grace would be upon us. and that you would be merciful in our weakness. And Father, I pray that in all things that we make much of you and make much of your word. And so we come before you with these prayers and pray that you would work them and enact them in our lives. And this we pray in Jesus name, amen.