Key Scripture: Acts 4:23-31

“And being let go, they went to their own companions and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them.
So when They heard that, they raised their voice to God with one accord and said, “Lord, You are God, who made the heavens and earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the mouth of your servant David have said,
            “Why do the nations rage,
             And the people plot vain things?
            The kings of the earth took their stand,
            And the rulers were gathered together
            Against the Lord and against His Christ.”
For truly against Your Holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before-hand to be done.
So now Lord, look on their threats, and grant to your servants that with all boldness they may speak Your word, by stretching out your hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Your Holy Servant Jesus.”
And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with all boldness.”

Introduction:
The background of this chapter is that a man has been healed. The church is growing, and moving forward in the great commission. Peter, James, and John have been arrested because of the healing and are being held by the Sanhedrin. They start preaching, and are commanded not to speak in the name of Jesus. Peter basically says, “Yeah, right! Do we obey you rather than God? You be the judge.” Then they are released.
Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones makes a bold statement, as an evangelical, with regard to the day of Pentecost. “The day of Pentecost is one of the greatest acts of God, equally as important as the incarnation, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus.”
Your life as a Christian is to be lived with the involvement of the Holy Spirit working in your life. It is to be miraculous and supernatural by definition. You will not be able to understand it all. God’s design is that His Holy Spirit works through people. God’s plan is that the church be bold.

I. It is God’s plan

It is not based on personality type- we’re servants of God!

The prayer in Chapter 4 does not mention personality types. It just states, “Grant to your servants… that with all boldness”
What we are to pray for:

Give us boldness.
Speak your word.
Stretch forth your hand to heal.
Vindicate your holy name in this city.

We are not taking the view that boldness is just for extroverted people. It’s a mom stretching her hand forth over the table praying for a friend who’s hurting. It’s hearing a story of illness, and saying, “I believe Jesus heals today, can I pray with you?”

Being used by the Holy Spirit moves us away from our own needs and requests, and focuses on God in the lives of others.

I believe that the power of the Holy Spirit flows out of the naturalness of conversation. It’s not putting on some preachy voice, wearing a white suit and having music played in the background. It is you, being who you are, letting the Holy Spirit flow through you to another person.
It’s also not thinking that you can’t do anything, because you don’t know the names of the spirits that are binding a person, or having to identify the names of the strongholds of your city before you can help anyone. That might be a method that would work, but I don’t find it in the scriptures.
When Paul entered the city of Philppi, a heathen city, he gathered people, he sat down, and he spoke the word to them. It doesn’t say he preached, it says he spoke. He spoke to Lydia and the Lord opened up her heart. He spoke and she and her whole family were saved and baptized.
They didn’t go out pouring oil on four corners of the city and identifying and casting out things. He proclaimed the light and the darkness left. When you go into a dark room, you don’t speak, or rebuke the darkness. You turn on the light. And that light is the reality of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and the power of the cross, and the death and resurrection of Jesus. It has already happened. The proclamation of the Apostolic prayer is the declaration of the power of the cross. It is not about you, but the Lord, and what He has done.

II. Who does the Lord use?

He uses unlikely people. He uses the unqualified, the folks who don’t have it all together.

1 Cor. 1:26-31- Here is a description of the people that God uses. “Not many wise, not many noble, and not many mighty.” If you’re wise, mighty and noble you can be used as well, but there’s not many of you out there. Boast in the Lord!
Illustration: Every pastor needs a welder. I went to buy a welder from Craig’s list, and did it just the way you’re not supposed to. (You drive a long distance and you’re not sure if a person will show up.) We met in Warrenton. When I got out of my truck, I heard the Lord say, “Pray for him.” I said, “Lord, I’m here to buy a welder.” The Lord says. “That’s what you think!”

The conversation went something like this. I asked about his life. He is a builder. He loves music, wrote music, so I asked if he liked gospel music. He said he’s been away from gospel since his wife died unexpectedly. “The pain of trying to raise teenage kids by myself was too much. I just recently got remarried. My daughter left home, made many wrong decisions, and she’s a broken girl. She may be going to MU next month.” As I listen to him, I asked him if he would like for me to pray for him. “Would that be okay?” He looks at me strangely and cocks his head, then he says, “Yes. O.K., I would.” We’re sitting in the parking lot of McDonalds, on the tailgate of his truck. I’m praying for someone I met 10 minutes before. I talked to him about Jesus, and prayed that the darkness would go and the light of Jesus would come. The light is in us.

III. Boldness and humility

Boldness mounts a powerful assault against our pride, and serves to establish humility in it’s place. Pride just wilts in the place of boldness.

I know myself. I’m a sinful, flawed, broken, yet forgiven individual.
When you and I take steps in boldness, we find ourselves opening up to others and others opening up to us. God uses us for His glory.
Why should anyone be shocked to hear of my struggles about my past, my present sin, when the cross has already told me that I’m a desperately sinful person, yet I am forgiven. We are forgiven.
So in a safe environment we can open up, as it says in James 5:16, and “confess your sins to one another and be healed.”

IV. Our greatest hindrance to boldness- the fear of man

Boldness puts the fear of man into proper perspective.
Ephesians 2:1-10 (read all)

It’s not that you’re out there in the sea of life and someone throws you a life preserver, and the person that threw it is Jesus, and he’s actually the life preserver too. It’s not that He pulls you over onto the gospel ship and now you’re sailing away and your sins are forgiven, and you’re on your way to heaven
Another illustration is that you are on your deathbed, dying, and someone gives you the right antibiotics and you get better. The gospel pill, the Jesus pill, really worked. No, it didn’t! There is no use of a gospel pill or a Jesus life preserver. You were dead.
According to Ephesians you were dead and gone. There was no life in you. Do you know what dead means in the Greek? It means dead, “deado”. It means you were a corpse.
A corpse has no life. You were lost, dead, without hope. You were gone. That’s what we say when a person dies. “They’re gone.” You were gone and the power of Jesus made you alive. You were born again. He took you from darkness to light. He took you from death to life!! God saved you.
If God can raise us from the dead, the fear of man can’t control us. Why? Because we are alive in Him.

V. The Holy Spirit lives in you to make a difference.

You begin to realize, “If He did it for me, He can do it for them. I’ll pray into that situation and see what God will do.”
Pray with great boldness.

You will see the increase of God in the situation.
You will see where God leads you, and with His help, you’ll do what He asks you to do.
How do I know that God is leading me? How do you know that God is leading you? You won’t know 100%, all of the time. But as it says in John 7:37- “out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” Sometimes you will get it right and sometimes you won’t.
It’s not about us, it’s about Jesus. Don’t be ashamed of the gospel.

Romans 1:16- “ I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.”

We don’t deserve it.

We don’t deserve to be useful to God.
We don’t deserve to be free from the power and the guilt of our sin.
We don’t deserve the privilege of intimacy with God.
We don’t deserve the word “forgiven’ written over our lives.

God in His great grace has forgiven us, and we are what we are by His grace.

We don’t want any portion of His grace to prove to be vain(useless) in our lives.
We can all give a long list of what we are not. My personal list is very long, but here are just a few:

I’m not a good debater.
I’m not a great scholar.
I don’t carry a presence when I walk into a room.

The greater fact is that we were dead in our trespasses and sins. Now we’re alive, and in God’s providence and design, He chose us to be involved in building His Kingdom.
Acts 9: 10-17 Paul is on his way to Damascus to put Christians in jail, to cause them great harm. On the way he is blinded by a great light. Christ speaks to him. Days later God speaks to a man by the name of Ananias. He tells him to go to Damascus, gives him the street address, and says

“ You will find him (Paul) He’s blind, go pray for him. The Lord says “Lay hands on him that he will be healed.” It sounds just like Acts 4:21-33! But Ananias argues with God. “He’s a church terrorist! He’s bad, He’s evil!” God basically tells Ananias that He will take care of the evil in Paul. Ananias does it reluctantly. He argues with God. When God chooses to use us, do we question God, or do we do it? Do we obey?

Acts 22:12-16 describes this man Ananias:

He was a devout man, well spoken of by others. He was a man of good testimony among the Jews. You can only know if a person is a good testimony if they are in one place long enough. This man was dedicated to be in that local body of people that we would call the church. He lived it out.
He was just a plain vanilla guy. He’s not an Apostle, Prophet, Pastor, Teacher, or an Evangelist. He delivers what God told him to do, and it thrusts Paul forth into his ministry. Ananias even says to him, “What are you waiting for? Get baptized. Get on with it!”

Can you imagine the angels looking down from heaven? It is spoken about in 1 Peter 1:10-12, that the angels want to understand more of salvation, and if they can peek out over heaven, I can imagine them saying, “Look what’s going on at Straight Street. He’s doing that Acts chapter 4 thing. He’s laying his hands on Paul!” Or they could say, “Now it looks like there’s one of God’s saved ones at Starbucks; the one with the double latte’, grande mocha, whatever. She’s proclaiming the greatness of God to her friend. She’s now praying for her, asking her Father for a miracle!
We can all do this. God wants to use us to do this in this city!

VI. The Fear of man robs us.

It robs us of the Now that we can have in God.
It is horrible, it is paralyzing.
We need to pray for boldness.
We need to pray for boldness because of what God wants us to do in this city.
We need to have a holy brazenness to believe what God says, to enjoy what He offers, and to do what He commands.

It takes boldness to be a parent in this day and hour in which we live; to take care of toddlers and still survive. I was speaking to David Boyd this last Sunday. He and Audrey are going to have their first child this year. I asked him, “Are you ready?”

David’s parents have taught a class called Growing Kids God’s Way her at Christian Fellowship and have done that class with variations for years. So I asked David, “Are you ready for parenting?” David looked at me and said, “ Well, I’ve been through a Growing Kids class 15 times with my parents, so I guess I’m ready.” He was only joking, I think. I think most of us know that it doesn’t always work out the way you want it to. He and Audrey will need the working of the Holy Spirit.

It takes boldness to share life with others in church life; in a small group, or a ministry team. It takes boldness to lead a small group. I’m praying that we’ll have 100 small groups. Get involved in church life, it is more than attending a service.

VII. Thy Kingdom come

A. I’m not preaching and declaring this because I believe we as a church are failures, but because the need and the hardness of this world is so great. I’m praying this for you, “Thy Kingdom come.”

B. Who will God send you to this week? Who will He send to you?

I pray as one of God’s leaders that I would comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I want our lives to be more than meaningless, random events.
Ask God, “What are you giving me? What do you want me to give?
Why do we shy away from boldness? Here are a few reasons:

We are living in sin.
We are disobedient to God.
We are hiding and running.
We are lazy in our Christian walk.
Personal dryness overwhelms our life.
Our past hurts, pain, failures are overwhelming us.
We have prayed prayers that were not answered the way we thought they should be answered. That’s our reality.

We need a personal shaking- Acts 4:23-31 When they prayed the very building shook. I think this building could stand a little shaking, but I wonder if the real shaking is a shaking in our lives; a personal shaking. Shaking says, “I want more of the Holy Spirit working in my life. I want current stories that are not years old, but hours, or days old.”
Are you filled with the power of the Holy Spirit? You could ask is being filled with the Holy Spirit really different? Yes, It’s supernatural.
From the Gospel Primer: “Boldness is critical. Without boldness, our lives, our stories, will be one of great deeds left undone, victories left un-won, petitions left un-prayed, and timely words left un-said.”
We don’t need boldness if we want our lives to be lived in a small portion of the life of God. Who wants that kind of boring life?
Let’s pray as a church for boldness; for God to stretch out His hand, and that He will heal people physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Discussion Questions:

What are some false concepts of being used by the Holy Spirit that you have encountered in your life?

What are some of the main hindrances in your life to being bold in praying for others?

According to Ephesians 2:1-10, why can we boldly pray and minister the gospel to others?

According to 1Cor. 1:26-31, who has God chosen to proclaim His Kingdom and why?