Acts 4. 23-31

Acts 4. 23-31

Peter and John have just spent a night in jail and a day in court, explaining how it was Jesus who had healed the lame man in the temple.  The court let them off with a  warning – not to speak any more about Jesus.  That was a serious business.  It was almost like a suspended sentence.  If you came back before the court for a similar reason, they could punish you very severely.  What are Peter and John – and the rest of the Apostles, indeed the rest of the Church – going to do?
Immediately, they find the rest of  their group.

All together
“They went to their own people...”  Their Christian brothers and sisters: not the whole Church which by this time numbered many thousands, but those they knew well and related to for support.
That's so simple, so basic, yet  so absolutely essential.  We need each other.  We need the support of “our own” – and that means not just our families, a Mum or Husband or wife or sister.  We belong to one another as the people of God.  We have natural families, and these really do matter.  But we are family. 
Each one of us needs to have  our “own” network of support and prayer within the local Church. When we have a crisis, it's very often the easy thing to do, and the natural reaction – to go off in a corner and lick your wounds.  But the right thing to do is find the rest of the group, your own people; and tell them the situation.  Then there is the joy and strength of supporting one another and prayer together. 
It's amazing how many people respond by offering advice.  I do.  We need to learn to pray together, as the natural response to the difficulties we find ourselves in.  There is strength in being together; there are occasions when two heads are better than one  Sometimes we do need a shoulder to cry on.  But we need each other's prayers, too.

Who do you think you're talking to 
Praise: “Sovereign lord (God is in control) You made heaven and earth, and spoke by the Holy Spirit …” 

From the “lord's Prayer” we learn to say “Our Father who are in heaven...”   Prayer begins with this basic reality:  God.  In our struggles, when we pray we begin with who God is;  He is the Sovereign Lord.  He is in control.  The world is in a mess.  It isn’t the way God wants it.  But God is in control. 

He is radiant with mighty, creative power;  every living thing gets its life from Him.  And in his amazing, unchanging love he has spoken...

It's very easy when we pray – especially in an urgent, emergency situation – to begin by saying “God, we are in a mess here...!”   But it's important that we take the time to remind ourselves of who God is, to focus on him, to worship Him...

Scripture:  “You 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?'”  (Ps 2. 1ff)
They set a context for the problems they are praying about – in God's Word, relevant, powerful; they understood Psalm 2 as fulfilled in their time in the life of Jesus.

How does the Word of God relate to what I am going through or my brother or sister is going through?  In order to be able to answer that question, we need to have some knowledge of the Word of God.  The old Computer adage holds good: Garbage in, garbage out.  Gold in, gold out.  Lies in, lies out; truth in, truth out. Human ideas in, human ideas out. God's word in, God's Word out.   We need to “programme the computers of our mind” with the Word of God.

Jesus:  Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met ... to conspire against your holy servant Jesus.   Their prayer is rooted in and understanding that what  happened to them had happened to Jesus.   And when it had happened to Jesus, it had been something God had sovereignly used for his glory. 

Jn 15. 20 Remember what I told you: “A servant is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.

There was a sense of privilege, of renewed connectedness with Jesus, in going through this experience.  And there was a sense of faith in it.  Trouble wasn't the end.  It didn't mean God had abandoned them. It didn't mean they were  facing oblivion. It meant that they were on the victory side.  And that shaped the way they prayed...

Tell me what you want
At last they talk about the threats made against them. But all they say is, “Lord, take note...”  Isn't that enough?  They expect God to take note and act accordingly. They don't ask that the opposition will be brought down.  That's a foregone conclusion.  It will inevitably happen – in God's time.

They pray for power, strength, courage,  to preach the Gospel effectively. I would be praying for protection and deliverance.  All they wanted was the power to keep preaching the Gospel.

And they pray for power to be released to confirm the word with signs following.  If there are to be any miracles, they want them to be Kingdom miracles that show the character and love of God. It's not wrong to ask for protection, for guidance, for justice.  The Lord's prayer says “Give us this day our daily bread.”  That's OK.  But we need to pray “Your Kingdom come!”

That kind of praying is the result of their correct, God-centered perspective.  We need to get that perspective. It will change the way we pray. We need to be looking for the triumph of God; we need to be desiring the power and courage and insight to live for the Kingdom. We need to be desiring the power to extend the reach of God's reign in or world: to see God stretch his hand forth to heal.  

God says, like the Spice Girls, “Tell me what you want, what you really really want!” There the similarity ends (it really, really ends!)

Revival – whatever that actually is is something we profess to want.  What is revival? It's not really a Biblical category.  The nearest thing I can find in the Bible to “Revival” is the manifest and widespread impact of the Kingdom of God through the Church, in the community. We saw something of that sort of impact on the Day of Pentecost.  We see hints of it here.  We will look at it in greater depth when we come eventually to Acts 19.  For now, the question is, “What are our motives?”  Do we really desire the Kingdom of God?  DO we really want to see the Kingdom make a difference, a visible difference, to Rosyth? 

There's a story told about the Greek philosopher Socrates. He took a young man who wanted wisdom, right into the sea, pushed his head under the water until he began to struggle and panic.  When he pulled him up, he asked “What do you want?” The man answered, “Air!” Socrates said “When you want wisdom, like you wanted air, come back and see me.”

How desperate are we?

 The answer 
The place where they were meeting was shaken.  This is  an OT sign of "theophany" (that is to say, the visible presence of God as seen in  Ex 19. 18; Isa 6. 4) and shows that God is in fact on their case.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.  They get a fresh “mini-Pentecost”, with both interior and external results.  Yes! Exactly the specific things they prayed for happened. The Good New flowed from them all, with courage and authority. And signs, wonders, and healings happened: visible demonstrations of God's transforming power, from an amazing shared life (v, 32) to “many miracles” including healings and deliverances (5. 12-16) 

We are back where we started at the beginning of this prayer, at the beginning of the story of the healing ; indeed on the day of Pentecost: with a community being a community – sharing lives, troubles, joys and even material goods; with a community experiencing the miraculous among them. With a church, being a Church, radically, in the power of the Spirit. With a community at prayer!

© Gilmour Lilly July  2013