And our text will be from Acts chapter 4, verses 21 to 34. If you're using the Pew Bible in front of you, you can find that on page 1160. It's 1160, Acts chapter 4. I'll give you just a moment and we'll begin reading from verse 21, pardon me, from verse 23 to 31. This is the word of the Lord. When they 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 people's 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, they 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. So far, the reading of God's word, may he write it upon our hearts. So I'm not a big fan of social media. I almost never post anything, and I really just kind of use it to look at articles from blogs and news groups. And... I frequently come across maybe an interesting post from the BBC or the New York Times, Wall Street Journal. And then I just do the absolute most terrible thing and look at the comments section. And I start to wonder if there might actually be something wrong with me to keep looking. It's just absolutely painful seeing some of the things that are said. It's almost every single time, and it seems like almost no matter what topic, there just seems to be at least one person who's mocking Christianity. Especially when there's a tragedy or like a shooting or certain political controversies. Someone will sarcastically say something like, let's all just send some thoughts and prayers. That'll be helpful. But the gospel of Jesus Christ isn't something that we should be ashamed of. There always has been and always will be those who mock our God, as Christians will never be without opposition in this world. But prayer is one of those remarkable gifts that God has given his people, and it's a serious threat to the kingdom of darkness. We see this, I think, quite clearly here in Acts 4, in our passage. Today we'll be considering just three things. Thankfully, they're all starting with P, so hopefully easy to remember, and they all have to do with prayer. First, we'll be looking at the priority of prayer. Why is it we pray? Second, the prompt of prayer. How should we pray? And third, the power and posture of prayer. Again, that's the priority, the prompt, and the power of prayer. And hopefully we'll see by the end how this ties into what we've read a moment ago in our catechism. So, the priority of prayer. You may have noticed that at the very beginning of our text here tonight, verse 23, we're right in the middle of a story. We're right in the middle of a big narrative here. And the first word of verse 23 is picking right up. It actually starts with a conjunction, like and or but. So it's telling us that Luke is directly tying this passage to what has just come before, in chapter 4 and in chapter 3. Luke is recounting how, after healing a beggar, the Apostle Peter had preached a powerful sermon where many came to believe, increasing their numbers to 5,000. But then Peter and John are arrested by the Sanhedrin, a group of influential rabbis and elders who judged over religious matters. This is the tribunal, the court of Israel who recently put Jesus Christ to death. Now they have some of his followers doing the same things that Jesus was doing. They're walking around healing the sick and the lame and teaching things against the popular understanding of the law and telling people to repent. The church was growing rapidly, and now the disciples of Jesus Christ are even walking around and saying that this man rose from the dead. They're confessing him as God. Now, in fact, as Peter and John stood in the court, they were emboldened by the Holy Spirit, and they started preaching this very message of the gospel to their judges. The Jewish leaders were hesitant to do anything to the apostles, though, because many people were praising God through the events of the previous chapter. The people were listening to them. And so they end up letting the apostles go with the condition that they just stop teaching the name of Jesus, because they're definitely going to do that. They then release the men. And Luke continues the narrative with John and Peter, In this passage, with the two returning to the Christians and telling the brothers, telling the fellowship about everything that just happened. Now, I'd like to ask, if the elders of this church were arrested and brought before the authorities for proclaiming Christ, and then may be released, and they return to you and tell you all this that had just happened about the opposition, about the time in jail, I want to ask, what do you think your response would be? How might you react to that? How would you encourage them? Are there fears that would be upon your heart? I think this question is highly practical, given current events in our society with a growing hostility to Christianity. We certainly don't hear a lot about imprisoning maybe in our country right now. We don't hear persecution by the sword. But there is growing hostility. I think you would all see that pretty plainly on the news, maybe in your day-to-day interactions and conversations. And I think a related question comes up at some point in the mind of every Christian, why do we pray? Especially as we're formful. God is sovereign, right? He does things according to his own will, his own purposes. So why does it matter if we pray or not? Well, the very first thing I want to quickly point out with how the church's prayer in our passage starts out in verse 24. their very first phrase is sovereign Lord. This group of early Christians are acknowledging right out the gate the complete lordship of God. I think that's quite interesting. We'll come back to this in just a moment. Now, the discipline of coming to the Lord with our praises and our concerns, our requests, our petitions, our pleas, our thanks, is a key feature of God's people. Paul commands the Thessalonians to pray without ceasing. And the reason he gives is that this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. I think it's safe to say that we get a strong sense then that prayer is crucial. Now, children, you all know that to live, you have to breathe in and breathe out. And it's really something automatic. We do it all the time, at least we should be doing it all the time, without telling ourselves, breathe, breathe. I find that prayer is like breath to the Christian spiritual life. It enlivens the soul. If you stop breathing, you'll faint. You can do some serious damage to yourself, even death. Not being in prayer is also deadly to the spiritual life. Because when trials and temptation to sin, when doubt and anxieties and suffering come, you're just devastated. You get exhausted. You get crushed. We need to be in the habit of praying every single time that the opportunity comes up, like a natural reflex, just like breathing. When someone throws something at you, sorry, it should be a natural reflex when you're just breathing. In other words, praying is a way for Christians to step back and practice coming before God in complete dependence on him. I think you can notice the priority of prayer in verse 24. When the fellowship heard everything that happened to Peter and John, they didn't discuss how to better plan their evangelizing strategies, And they didn't talk about how to retaliate or whether or not they should run and hide from the authorities. No, those ideas might have their place. But their first response is to raise their voices together in prayer to God. The situation was absolutely serious. Persecution was on the horizon. In just a few chapters, you'll start to see the Jewish leaders start just really hammering down on the believers. The apostles get arrested, the disciples start getting slandered, and Stephen is murdered. But at this time here, in chapter 4, prayer isn't the last resort or the trump card. It's the first response. It's the priority. These Christians know that through the Spirit dwelling in them, they have an unlimited source of strength and boldness to face whatever comes their way. Well, let's look then at the prompt of prayer. How is it that we're to pray? Well, the address here, as we mentioned a moment ago, starts with the recognition of God's supreme authority over all things, even granting requests. Sovereign Lord, they said. Sovereign Lord. They're speaking to him like a servant would address a king or a master. Children, if you had the opportunity to meet President Trump, how would you address him? Would you say, hey there, Donald, what's up? How's it going? No, I think that would mortify your parents. That would be disrespectful. When in front of someone with authority over us, we should recognize their position and address them with humility. But with God, it's not just his position and authority over the Christian, though, that's being recognized. They acknowledge his very being, his godly characteristic, that sets him apart from all else in creation. all else in existence. They say, you made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. The Gospel of John starts off confessing that very thing. Through him all things were made and without him nothing was made that has been made. Nothing is unknown to God. Nothing escapes his notice and nothing happens without him decreeing that it come to pass. And this recognition of God's flawless will is the first and foremost posture that any prayer should begin with. For there is comfort and peace in confessing Sovereign Lord, our Father in heaven. It's not our will be done, but God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. the fellowship in Acts 4 don't respond to coming oppression with fear and doubt or anger. Though I'm sure that was there. But they don't respond with it because they know that God is in control. I think we see this in verses 25 to 28 where they confess to the Lord that what just happened with the Sadducees was the very fulfillment of ancient prophecy. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father, David. They then pray the words of Psalm 2, which we sang just a moment ago. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers bend together against the Lord and against his anointed one. The wicked men and the powerless kings of this world wage war against God's kingdom by seeking to live however they want. They think that they are wise and that they can bring about change by their own hands, their own means. Though cultures and technology has changed very much since the time of Psalm 2, since the time of Acts 4, And the unrighteous of these passages aren't very much different than those in our world today. Now, presently, there's studies that would agree that Christianity is still the most persecuted people group in the world. Especially in Africa and in India and China. Believers in those areas are being murdered and assaulted, imprisoned. Their churches and their homes, their meeting places burned down. Several organizations, such as the Voice of the Martyrs, estimate that a believer is killed somewhere in the world every six minutes for a total of somewhere around, really anywhere between 274 to 438 deaths each day. And that's just deaths. That's not the beatings and the torture. That doesn't include the arson and the muggings and so on. Christians are still the most persecuted people group of our time, but where do you hear that in the media? Where do you hear that out in your week? As I said earlier, we don't exactly see persecution here in our streets. They're not storming our churches and locking up our members. But in our society, a different war is being waged against God. People live as though they are themselves a wise king, creating their own truth and identity. I was on Facebook this morning reading a news article on Is Christianity Dying Out? Another one of those articles. What is the most popular and fastest growing religion in the world today? And the article answered Islam. On average a 32% increase so far this year alone. And I did the terrible thing of looking in the comment section on Facebook. And I see people's reactions of, if we're educated, we can just leave religion behind. If we're just educated and put away the silly myths and stories of our parents and just start listening to science, then we can actually do some good in this world. We can finally change things. Another commenter had said, I tell my son all the time, you're your own God. It's in your power, in your choice to change things, to make things happen. No one can make you do anything you don't want. You have to live for yourself. This is the world we live in. I don't think it's changed very much since the ancient times. People live as wicked kings and rebellion against God and against his people, hoping to put down the church. Now, whether it's actual persecution or just voiced opposition, the fact of the matter is that the nations do continue to rage against the Lord and the Anointed One. You and I are considered as fools that are obsessed with talking about our imaginary friend. The word I saw today was Sky Dad. the world desires to snuff out the church. But even the greatest act of war against God is not outside of his control. The Jewish leaders and the Roman officials had conspired against the Holy Messiah, the Anointed One. They nailed him to a cross. Verse 28 tells us that the Christians confessed, They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. This is why the rebellion of the wicked is in vain. Everything in history is for the purpose of the father's suffering servant to have crushed the head of the serpent and tear down the kingdom of darkness and to advance and build up his kingdom, his eternal kingdom, for his eternal reign. and this was done through the ultimate display of both perfect submission and perfect power, Christ's death and his resurrection. So we see that the believers here in the early church not only confessed God's sovereignty over the entire universe, they're not only confessing his will and making all things occur, but they're also confessing the glory of the Son. And it's by this truth that they recognize that they're able to bring their request before God. The point I'm making here, if I may put it another way, is that these Christians do not begin their prayer merely with requests and thanks. No, about three-fourths of their prayer is praise and worship. And then they pray about other matters and requests in verses 29 and 30. Now, what prompted these believers to confidently pray for boldness was the knowledge of God's sovereign power rather than focusing on their own limited creaturely abilities. And so when we pray, our focus should also be on God's will and his kingdom that is coming. It should be upon his word which promises all such things. And this prompts us to align ourselves with God's decrees and go forward accomplishing his plans and not our own. We then gain the perspective that the world's desire for independence or rebellion is absolutely in vain. Where God's way is power. We'll now consider the power of prayer and its, if you will, practicality. So the Christians of the early church in Acts, they knew the spiritual power of prayer. Not just in their personal downtime as devotions, but as a community. Verse 24 is about corporate worship. Praying together. Does a soldier run out into the middle of a battlefield to face his enemies on his own? maybe in a movie or a book, but we know that that soldier would get slaughtered. Just like the early church, we gather not just to sing or hear a sermon, some three points to take for the next week, but we also gather to pray. And our prayers can be pretty long, right kids? Sometimes you just wonder when it will end, and even though it's such a valuable time, Our bodies can start to feel a little restless and maybe you're dozing off a little bit. Praying like we do, though, is a time of great blessing where we get even just the slightest glimpse of the joy that we'll share in eternity with the people of God for all time. It's the time of the week where we get to come together and praise God and encourage one another and ask for our Lord's care for the sick and the needy, the shut-ins, for your children, for your home, for the nation and for the church and for persecuted Christians. We may not always like sitting through the pastor's prayers, but we need it. But right now, our relationship with the Lord is by faith and not by sight. And if you've tried your hand at some gardening, you may know that you have to place the seed in the ground and water it and care for it. But the plant doesn't always just pop up from the ground, does it? Not immediately. But there is growth underneath that soil. And soon there are roots that start spreading out and a little sprout sticks its head over the face of the earth and it buds and eventually you have a plant. I think likewise we have to be patient when we pray whether alone or together for there's real power at work beneath that soil to really drive home this power of prayer though I'd like us to consider really quick the result of prayer which you can see in verse 31 when the Christians have 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. This first tells us that God hears his people's cries and he answers mightily. Of course, this doesn't mean that when we really get into prayer, when we really have a handle on it, that God's going to start shaking the room. It's not always the case. No, his response is often not visible, but he does respond. We get, I think, a bigger picture of the power of prayer in Revelation 8.5, one of my absolute favorite passages. It reads, I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer. with the prayers of all God's people on the golden altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God's people, went up before God from the angel's hand. So what's going on here in what I just described from Revelation is that when the church faces opposition and oppression, their very cries rise up to heaven like smoke from a chimney. And heaven becomes silent, is the description we get. And the angels are given trumpets to sound off when God brings divine retribution and judgment for his namesake. The golden censer mentioned in Revelation is meant to make us think about the temple worship system in the Old Testament. This censer was a golden container that the high priest would bring with him when he went alone to meet God in the Holy of Holies, the furthest back sanctuary of the temple where he would bring the petitions and pleas of the people of Israel to God on their behalf. He would light incense in this container and the smoke would fill the room. And this picture is used in Revelation 8 to encourage the church to know that through Christ our intercessor all our prayers are being brought before the throne of God like much incense filling the heavenly chambers. Beloved, the head sympathizes with what the body is going through and no prayer received by Christ's people is ignored. Revelation 8 goes on. Then the angel took the censer, and he filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth. And there came peals of thunder, and rumblings, and flashes, and lightning, and an earthquake. Congregation, our worship, and meditations are not of this world. They are spiritual and heavenly. There is real power in prayer occurring, for our God is a powerful God, the maker of heaven and earth. we should know that the response to prayer is also spiritual and sent from heaven. The angel casts a pure and holy fire to the earth and the forces of Satan and the flesh are ravaged. And there's the source of our boldness to speak the word of God, even in the midst of opposition. We don't see God. But when we are walking around and facing things in this earthly life, our Father who is in heaven hears every groaning of your heart. And He's at work in and through our circumstances and despite our sins and our miseries. Why is that? Well, friends, the reason why God wants us to pray, the reason why God listens to our prayer through Jesus Christ is because of his love and his tender mercies and compassion upon his children. And it's this love that makes us bold even as the world mocks and murders, even as they jeer and plot in vain. But though the Christian is emboldened before others, we must also pray to God with humility. As we read from question 117 in the Catechism, with prayer, we are to recognize our sin and misery and humble ourselves in his majestic presence and rest. Rest in the unshakable foundation of his perfect and wise ruling. Catechism says, I know I don't deserve, but God will surely listen to the prayers of his people because of Christ our Lord. Let us end our day and our time here in the Word. Remembering that the proud shall not inherit the kingdom, but the humble and the poor in spirit, the persecuted. And we're reminded that you, dear children, are from God and have overcome. For the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. Will you join me now in going to our Lord in prayer? Our Heavenly Father, Maker of all things, our Sovereign Lord, God, it is good that you have brought us to that saving knowledge of you, to be able to come to you and call upon your name as our Father, as adopted children through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Lord, may we take these things that we've heard today, these things that are true, may the Spirit apply them to our heart and compel us towards prayer and praise. For you are a God worthy of praise and you care and love deeply for your children. We thank you, Lord. Grant us these things we ask in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you.