“What Should We Do?” - Acts 4:23-31

Amazing Grace!  Somebody tell me what God’s grace means to you? One of the things I think of when I think of God’s grace is 2 Corinthians 4:1 that says, “¹Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.”  It is God’s grace that allows us to meet as a church.  It is God’s grace that we have this beautiful building.  It is God’s grace that has allowed us to minister to the poor, the addicted and the incarcerated so we don’t lose hope.  Why should we lose hope?

You have been my models for what a church should be lately. Almost every day I see somebody do something that models the first church. I see compassion and giving, stepping up to do something that needs to be done instead of just expecting somebody else to do it. I see people teaching and cleaning and singing and leading and ministering, giving of themselves, their finances, time and resources and I’m just so proud to be a part of this church.

I’m so proud to be a part of a church that just wants to be obedient to what God would have us do; a church that’s not as concerned about their own comfort as they are going, doing and being what the Lord wants. I want to be a part of a church whose highest priority is not being entertained but instead leading people to have a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ-no matter what it takes.

As I have said lots of times, this church is very much like the first church in the New Testament. That church started out small with just a handful of people and prospered in a time when following Jesus was extremely unpopular. It was a time when the national leaders were corrupt and full of pride and it seemed like if they would just open their eyes and truly see what was going on they would understand but their pride and love of power blinded them to the truth. Maybe things haven’t changed much in 2000+ years.

We all knew that when we started this church that it was going to be difficult. We didn’t go into this with our eyes closed. We all knew the difficulties of starting a church like this and what I love is that nobody was interested in just “playing church”.  Nobody wanted a cookie-cutter, plain Jane, run of the mill church like is on every corner in most towns. We don’t have a lot of rules around here. The criteria for starting this church have always been that we wanted a place where we can worship in Spirit and truth and a place where we can minister to the community. There is really no other reason for us to be here and it is biblical and Godly and since we have been obedient in this we have seen God bless us, haven’t we?

The problem is we all know what comes next. When we are obedient then God blesses, right? And what always happens next? Satan attacks. Satan can’t stand it when a group of people get together and put themselves last and other people first. He is highly offended when people give of themselves to help people who will probably never be able to repay them. It ticks him off when people get together and truly worship when everyone else said, “You can’t do that. You don’t have enough people. You don’t have any talent or experience and you have too much debt and too much baggage.”

And all this church said was, “You’re right. We can’t do it but God can and it was His idea and His will for us to be here and so we will do it as long as He wants us to!” And when Satan hears talk like that he gets scared. He is scared of us here at Christ Fellowship. All 6 (or 10 or 12) of us! And when Satan gets scared he attacks. You see it all through the Old Testament to the New Testament and right on into our lives and in the life of this church. When the people are obedient God blesses and then Satan attacks.

It happened to the first church and it is happening to us. God has allowed us to get here and get started and get our legs under us and He continues to bless us as we worship and minister in the community. But now we are under attack and the way Satan likes to attack is to do so in ways that you don’t realize it’s him. He wants us to think that it is just sickness that’s going around, a bad economy and a spiritually apathetic world. He wants us to think that somebody is not doing us right and that we are being taken advantage of and we need to stand up for our individual rights instead of just talking about Jesus.

But, make no mistake, we are under attack. Our battle is not against flesh and blood and it never has been. Our battle is against the prince of the air, the father of lies and the roaring lion who wants to kill us dead. The question is, “What should we do?” Well, if you don’t know the answer to something you can always Google it or ask Siri. But I would like to see what the Bible has to say about this. In fact, there is a wonderful passage in the book of Acts that tells us what the first church did in a very similar situation.

In the first part of Acts we see that Jesus has left the disciples and ascended back to Heaven leaving them with the monumental task of spreading the Good News to the entire earth. The church officially starts up with just a few folks but grows quickly in spite of the difficulties and the disciples and all the church are obedient to what Jesus told them to do and so God blesses them with a time of peace and refreshment; a time that they can get their breath and prepare to do battle. And that is what we see happen here for the first time. The church is attacked.

When Jesus left He promised to send the Holy Spirit Who would give them power and in Acts chapter 3 we see that Peter and John are arrested for healing a crippled beggar. They are sent to the Sanhedrin who were some of the same people that tried Jesus just a few months before and sentenced Him to death. The Sanhedrin threatened Peter and John and warned them not to speak about Jesus ever again and then sent them on their way.  Let’s pick up the story in Acts chapter 4, verses 23-31 and we will see what the first church did in the face of Satan’s attack.

²³ On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them.²⁴ When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. 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? ²⁶ The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one.²⁷ Indeed 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.²⁹ Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. ³⁰Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”³¹ After 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.

A little boy was saying his bedtime prayers with his mother. “Lord bless mama and daddy, and God, GIVE ME A NEW BICYCLE!” Mom said, “Son, God’s not deaf.”  The little boy answered, “No but grandma is and she’s in the next room.”

So many of us know that we are to pray but we pray in a way that is not the best. We think if we say just the right words in just the right way that maybe, hopefully, possibly God will hear a little bit of it. But in this prayer of the disciples we see one of the most powerfully effective prayers in the entire Bible and there are really only 2 aspects of it. I want us to see the 2 aspects and they are:

1) Acknowledge God for Who He is

2) Ask God for what He wants

It says that the very first thing that Peter and John did was go back to their friends at their church and they prayed. That is the answer to the title of the message. What should we do when Satan attacks? We should pray. But there is more to it than just telling God what we want to happen. There is more to it than just naming off some names on the prayer list and some wishes off the wish list. Prayers like that show a misunderstanding of Who God is and how He works. The first church knew God to be sovereign and they said so in the first word of the prayer.

In verse 24 they pray, “Sovereign Lord…” That word, “sovereign”, is the same word from which we get our word “despot”. A despot is a ruler that exercises absolute authority and power. Simeon used the same word when he held baby Jesus in the temple in Luke 2. When we use the word today it is almost always used negatively but when used in reference to God, what a comfort it is, as Simeon felt, to know that God is in complete control of our circumstances.

It was knowing that God is sovereign that allowed Peter to later go to sleep in chains between 2 guards the night before his trial. It was the knowledge of God’s sovereignty that allowed Stephen’s last words to be, “Lord, don’t hold this sin against them” as they stoned him for preaching the Gospel. It was because God is sovereign that Paul and Silas had the peace to be singing Amazing Grace at midnight in their jail cell. And it is because God is sovereign that we can get through whatever Satan throws at us. Maybe God will perform a miracle and our chains will drop off like they did for Paul and Silas and maybe we don’t make it out alive like Stephen. But whatever happens we know that God is in control and since we believe John 3:16 and know that God loves us it will not affect our peace or our obedience.

And it not only helps to know that God is sovereign but we also see here that the first church knew that God was the Creator. In verse 24 they tell God they know that He made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them. In Nehemiah 9:6, Nehemiah prayed the same way. I bet Job wished he would have prayed that way because since he didn’t, God reminded him. When Job was whining for 37 chapters about why God had done this to him, finally God answers him with, “Where were you when I told the oceans where to stop? Where were you when I told the eagle where to fly? Where is the place where the lightning and the winds are kept?”

It’s not that we need to tell these things to God to flatter Him and hope that He shows us mercy based on that. We aren’t reminding God of Who He is and what He has done. We are acknowledging God for Who He is and reminding ourselves of our place in this world compared to Him. When we see Who God is and who we really are, our prayer life will change dramatically. The first church acknowledged God for Who He is and we should too when we pray.

The next thing we see the first church do is to ask God for what He wants. They got their minds right about their relationship with the Sovereign Creator and then asked for God to do a few things. Let’s look at it again in verses 29-30.

“Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. ³⁰ Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

It’s very interesting to me what they did not pray for. They didn’t pray for the building to collapse on the Sanhedrin. They didn’t pray that they would not be persecuted or for God to even change the minds of the Sanhedrin. They simply asked for God to be mindful of their situation but they were asking so that they would be more effective witnesses for God. Do you think God will answer a prayer like that? Absolutely!

Oh, but I hear what you’re saying. “Yea, but they also prayed for healing.” Yes, they did but do you know why? They asked for miraculous signs and wonders. Do you know what signs are for? They point you in the right direction. A sign does not point to itself. It points to something else. These miracles that the apostles and others were able to do pointed to Jesus. They didn’t have the canon of scripture like we do to share with others so they used miracles to validate their testimony. They weren’t just praying for Aunt Bessie to feel better. They were praying for more opportunities to point others to Jesus. That’s a prayer God can’t wait to answer.

I want to close by looking again at that last verse.  Read verse 31.  “After 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.”  I want that.  Oh, I don’t care about the building physically being shaken.  I want the power of God to be obvious in this church.  I want it to be obvious to people even as they drive past much less when they walk in that those people in that church could not have done that without supernatural help because that is absolutely the truth.

There was a little church in a community like this one time that caught fire.  Everybody in town went running toward the church to help put out the fire, even the town atheist.  As they got to the fire one guy turned to the atheist and laughingly said, “Well that’s the first time I ever saw you run toward the church.”  The atheist said, “Well, that’s the first time I ever saw the church on fire.”

I want a church so on fire for the Lord that even the atheists will come running and when they do, I know this church will welcome them just like the first church did.  And we will because we know that they need that same amazing grace that we found when we first met Jesus.  It is grace that says that we are all sinners (Romans 3:23) and what we deserve for that sin is eternal death (Romans 6:23) but that what we will get is eternal life in Heaven because of our belief in the risen Jesus.

In Acts 2, Peter preached his first sermon and it says that ^37” When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?" ³⁸Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.”

Repent – turn away – from your sins and ask for and receive God’s forgiveness.  That’s grace and that’s amazing!