SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, everyone, and welcome. The uh Old Test my name is uh Cor Vanderwell, and the Old Testament reading is found in Psalm 2, verses 1 and 2. Why do the nations rant? Why do the peoples rave uselessly? The earth's rulers take their stand, the leaders scheme together against the Lord and against his anointed one. The word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

The New Testament reading is found in Acts 24 4, verses 23 through 31. After their release, Peter and John returned to the brothers and sisters and reported everything the chief priests and elders had said. They listened and then lifted their voices in unison to God. Master, you are the one who created the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them. You are the one who spoke by the Holy Spirit through our ancestor David, your servant. Why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers gathered together, as one against the Lord and against his Christ. Indeed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with Gentiles and Israelites, did gather in this city against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and plan had already determined would happen. Now, Lord, take note of their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with complete confidence. Stretch out your hand to bring healing and enable signs and wonders to be performed through the name of Jesus, your holy servant. After they prayed, the place where they were gathered was shaken. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking God's word with confidence. The word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

And I tell you, ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. Everyone who seeks who asks receives. Whoever seeks, finds. To everyone who knocks, the door will be is opened. Which father among you would give a snake to your child if the child asks for a fish? If a child asks for an egg, what father would give the child a scorpion? If you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children? How much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? The gospel of the Lord.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

Let's pray together. Hallelujah. Hallelujah, God. Our God reigns. Father, I pray that your presence would be near to us today. And as we open your word and look at the scriptures and look at how the church leaned in to seek you to pray. I'm just reminded of the words of the disciples when they asked Jesus, teach us to pray, God, their eagerness, their desire, their desire to know you more, God. And I pray that that would be the posture of our heart this morning as we open your word. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. You can grab a seat. Good morning, everyone. If you're watching online, I want to say welcome. I've already received a few texts from people that I know are at home, sick, or after surgeries. So welcome to you. We miss you. We love you. We hope you feel better soon. It's so good to be together this morning. Um, it's good to be reminded of the things of God, the things of God's kingdom. We all come in differently this morning. I've had a super sick kid at home, so I come in tired. And I come in with my hands extremely dry from washing them hundreds of times a day. So if they start bleeding or my finger falls off, you'll know why. Um, but however you come in this morning, I just want to say uh you're welcome here. We are a community of disciples formed in a common faith, through a common life, and for the common good. And we're so glad you're here this morning. My name's Stephanie too. I don't know if I said that. Um well today we're back in our act series, which is called Kingdom Movement. We have been in this series for a couple months now. We took a couple weeks off for our Easter season. And before Easter, Pastor Brock taught in Acts chapter three, and he talked about Peter and John and this miracle, this boldness that they had in telling a man who had been sitting outside the beautiful gate. He was 40 years old and he had been disabled his whole life. And they told him in the name of Jesus, get up, you can walk. And this was the first recorded healing in the book of Acts after the Holy Spirit had filled the disciples. And Luke, who is the author of Acts, he spends two chapters, three and four, talking just about this one miracle and the effects it had. And Luke was using this miracle as a launch pad for something much bigger. He wanted his audience, his readers then and us now to see that the unstoppable expansion of the kingdom movement was beginning. And so Luke uses this story to show what's happening in Acts. And he wants us to know that this was not a new kind of ministry, it was the continuation of Jesus' work through his followers, Peter and John. And we see that they were mirroring what Jesus did when he was on earth through his ministry, because when Jesus would teach about the kingdom of God, he would always confirm it with signs and wonders and miracles. And this is just what he was doing through his followers in this miracle. And so after they did this, just to catch you up to speed, if you uh missed a couple of these, Peter and John, they're then taken to the Sanhedrin, the rulers, the elders of the Jewish community, but they can't really find anything to accuse them of because this man is healed, and the people are in awe, many of them putting their faith in Jesus. So after the rulers give the disciples multiple threats and like really shake their finger at them, they let them go because they can't really hold them for anything. And the disciples return to their companions, their brothers and sisters, as we just heard, and they report what happened. And these friends, they were likely eagerly waiting for them, right? You can imagine they knew they were being held, they knew they were being questioned, but they didn't know what was happening. Peter and John, they weren't updating their social reels right then, so they were like, what is happening? And when Peter and John return, you can imagine the relief of the friends. And if they tell them what happened, how they were threatened, how the leaders and the rulers said, You can go, but you may no longer use the name of Jesus. You may no longer heal in the name of Jesus. And what would you imagine would be the church's response when they hear this from Peter and John? I would imagine that many of them were angry, right? Defensive. How dare they threaten us? Some of them likely started going into problem-solving, brainstorming mode. They start gathering a church committee to solve this problem. And some of them likely were just full of fear, maybe thinking this feels really risky, this whole Jesus thing. Maybe we should plan to leave or flee. All of these reactions from the church, they would have made sense. Because in the midst of chaos, in the midst of threats, in the midst of crisis, in the midst of the unknown, these are often our go-tos. Anger, fear, anxiety, problem solving, even isolation or avoidance. These are the things we go to when we receive crisis or threat. And this was the first major crisis that the church had experienced. So all of these responses, they would have made sense. They would have made sense. But Luke writes here in chapter four that when the church hears these threats and recognize the crisis, they do something completely different. They go to prayer immediately. And we heard Donna read that prayer. Thank you, Donna, for all those verses. I'm sorry that was so long. You did so beautifully. They go to God in prayer. And I think it's important to recognize that coming to God in prayer is a learned practice by Jesus' followers. Acts 1 says that they joined constantly in prayer together. Acts 2 says that they devoted themselves to praying daily. We know that Jesus taught and modeled what it looked like to pray for his disciples. And for us as a church community, we often talk about practices, practices of Jesus. Or another word for this is spiritual disciplines. And this would be like practicing Sabbath or fasting or living simply, living generously. Over the last two years, our meal groups have been going through a curriculum called practicing the way, the way of Jesus. But with spiritual disciplines, I think it's often to confuse intentions, what we intend, with training. See, in sports or music, everyone assumes if I want to improve, if I want to get better, I need a training plan. I need to practice. My son Judah's currently learning how to play the piano, and he practices multiple times a week. And sometimes when he's learning a new song, he gets really frustrated. It's not fun. His fingers don't know where to go yet. But slowly over time, as he practices, his mind, his fingers, his muscle memory pick up, and it starts to be more enjoyable for him. A couple weeks ago, I was in an exercise class, and we were doing some stretches and holding some poses, and there was this man next to me, and every time we moved, he just went oooh and through the whole class, all 60 minutes. And what he was showing and telling everyone around him that what he was doing, what he was practicing was hard, right? I also thought that. We just need to have our intentions set on it more, and then it will happen. But this isn't fair. It's not fair to us. It's not fair to approach the ways of Jesus like this. And my guess is that the early church, they didn't just intend, they didn't just desire to want prayer more. No, they had practiced this. And that's why when this threat came, their first response, Luke tells us, is that they went to prayer. They had practiced it. They had likely struggled with it at times. They'd probably done it weird or wrong or said weird things or wrong things, but they were practicing it. John Mark Homer, who leads practicing the way, says a spiritual practice is a concrete, repeatable activity that trains you to become more like Jesus. So we can't just try to be different. We can't just intend to be different. No, we have to train to be different. So what can we learn from the way that this Acts Church prays? How can we practice praying similarly so that our first response when threat, when crisis, when unknown comes, is to turn to God in prayer. How does prayer move from something that we just do or check off to something that we actually become? There's an acronym that Pete Gregg, who's the director of the 24-Hour Prayer Movement, uses that I have found really helpful in my practice of prayer. This is modeled after how Jesus taught his disciples to pray with the Lord's Prayer. And it's also modeled here in how the Acts Church responds in prayer. And this is a super simple acronym. Um, I hope if you're anything like me and praying is is one of the harder spiritual disciplines. I hope that this helps you. And also, this is a 20-minute talk on prayer. We could probably talk for years on prayer. And so if there are things that we don't talk about today, I just want to recognize that this is not exhaustive when it comes to prayer. There are so many things about prayer, so many questions that we have about prayer that we will not address today. But this is the acronym that Pete Gregg uses that has been really helpful to me. It's just pray, P-R-A-Y. Pause, rejoice, ask, and yield. And so we see that in Acts, there's this pause that they have. See, pausing as you begin prayer, it helps connect the mind and the body. When we pause, we directly affect our body and prepare our hearts and our minds to remember who God is and be present with him. This is like that verse to be still and remember that he is God. And pausing in our culture today, in the pace that we keep, pausing is an act of resistance to the manic pace that our culture tells us to keep. Pausing requires intentionality. One of the best ways to pause is to breathe. Because breathing can calm your mind and your body and move you to a calm body, to clearer thoughts, to more emotional stability. And so we pause when we begin prayer. And we see that the Acts Church, they start their prayer with a word master. Some translations say sovereign Lord. Jesus started the Lord prayer, the Lord's Prayer with our Father. And this is like their exhale. They're being still, they're remembering that He is God, He is Master. And they're putting God in His rightful place as Lord over all. So pausing can be a great start when we are praying. And next we see that the church rejoices. They say, God, you made the heavens and the earth, you made the sea and everything in them. So in the midst of their chaos, in the midst of their fear and all the unknowns, they worship God not in their circumstances, but they worship God because of who He is. And when we worship God, it refocuses our view of God that might be skewed. Because worship can be difficult when we've been let down by God or when our prayers in the past have not been answered, when our picture of God is distorted. Because these things often affect the feeling of wanting to worship God. When our circumstances don't lead to rejoicing, scripture, like we see here, helps remind our souls who God is. Scripture and praying God's word is often the best place to go when crisis comes, because it anchors us in the truth of God. This is one of the reasons that we sing together when we come in on Sundays, when we sing for 20 minutes. And I don't know about you, but this is my favorite moment in church because it reminds me that all of the stuff that I come in with, everything that I've carried in for the week, when I'm worshiping God, when I'm turning my focus on him, when I'm reminding myself, our God reigns. It lifts my eyes to him and it takes me away from my circumstances. My circumstances haven't changed, but it changes my point of view. And the church got this. See, praying scripture also helped shape their worldview and communal identity. They used scripture to reorient their story with God's story. They come back to this truth that God is in charge, not the leaders, not the rulers. And they pray these first lines in Psalm 2, which we've now heard twice in Psalm 2 and in Acts 4. And I'm gonna say it again. They say and they pray, why did the Gentiles rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth took their stand and the rulers gathered together as one against the Lord and against the Christ. They are reminding themselves that what is happening now is not new. There remains this battle between God's kingdom and humans' kingdom that they have seen before. And through praying this scripture, they're reminding themselves that God is sovereign, he's master over all other events, including Jesus' death. See, the leaders who put Jesus to death just weeks before, they acted freely, but their actions fell within God's overarching plan. And so by praying scripture to God, the church is letting scripture form them. They're not using it to prove their point. They're not using it to predict the future, but they're using it to frame how they understand what is happening currently. And often we see in the New Testament, when we see a line of scripture quoted, often from the Old Testament, we should look at the larger context because the speaker or the author, they would have been assuming this larger context of well as well. And so in Psalm 2, I encourage you, if you have time this week, read all of Psalm 2. It's not super long, it's like 10 verses. And they're using this and they would have known the whole thing. And the last verse of Psalm 2, it ends with something like this: depending on your translation, blessed are those who put their trust in God, or blessed are those who take refuge in Him. They would have known this in their hearts when they were praying back this scripture to God. And they were letting scripture form them. They were letting scripture shape them. They were reminding their souls of God's story. And we are all being formed by what we take in. We're all taking in things at every moment of every day, both intentionally and unintentionally. These are the things that are forming us. And Luke wants us to see the importance that scripture is foundational in our formation. So next, this leads the church to ask. And if we went around on the street just interviewing people, what is prayer? Most people would say, asking God for something. And the Bible tells us that we can ask God to provide for our needs, petition. We can ask God to provide for others' needs, intercession. But the ask in prayer is one of the most vulnerable parts of prayer because we never know what's on the other side. Of it. My son Ezra, he has started this weird habit of asking me like super backhandedly questions, probably because I say no a lot. But he'll ask, like, we probably, um, I'm not thinking we can, but just we probably can't like watch video games today, right? Because it's or play video games today, can we? Or um it's not likely you were gonna be able to have dessert tonight, right? And he's he's sort of asking, but he's also setting himself up to be told no. He's setting himself up for letdown. And in some ways, this crushes me because I don't want him to just expect to always play video games or eat dessert, but I do want him to be able to come to me and ask anything, even if my answer is no. And I think this is the heart of the father too. He wants us to be able to come to him and ask anything. And I think the heart of the father isn't to give us, isn't to give us a scorpion, or isn't to give us a stone like we just saw in Luke. This is contrary to what Jesus teaches about God's kingdom. He teaches that we can come, we can knock, we can ask, and he wants that from us as children of God. And God gives based on who God is, not based on who we are, not based on what we've done. Love doesn't have to be earned, grace doesn't have to be measured. We shouldn't ask, we shouldn't have to think that what we're asking is too much. But I think this is one of the hardest parts when we talk about prayer, because when talking about unanswered prayer, there's so many. There's so many unanswered prayers. And this can affect the way that we come to God, similar to how my son comes to me. It can be easy because we've experienced unanswered prayer to come to God with our head down, expecting a no. But unanswered prayer is a normal part of our faith. It's not a sign that God has failed you, it's not a sign that you have failed God, and it's not a sign that you don't believe enough. But many unanswered prayers are just outcomes of human freedom in this broken world we live in. And they're just this mystery with prayer on this side of heaven. And so the Acts Church, they take what they know to be true about God. They take what they know to be true about Scripture and about God's kingdom, and they turn their prayer to petition. They ask God boldly for what they need. And they use this practice of prayer to stay in relationship with God, even uncertain of their outcomes, even uncertain of how God will answer them. They use this practice of prayer to stay in relationship with him. And if there's one thing you can remember today about prayer, if there's one thing I could say that I would want you to remember, it would be that. That God wants us to stay in relationship with him through prayer. So the church, they pray, God, consider the threats of the leaders and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. They ask for signs and wonders to be done in the name of Jesus. They ask for boldness. They don't ask for a way out. They don't ask for the conflict to be resolved. They don't pray for the removal of threats, but they pray that God would enable them, his servants, not his leaders. They don't pray for Peter or John, they pray for all of them. They pray for boldness for all of them. They want to speak the word of Jesus and they want to do so boldly. And this word boldness, parasia, we see this multiple times in the book of Acts. This is an outspokenness, freedom of speech, cheerful courage. It's the opposite of timidity and fear. And this is a word that we know we're gonna see again, and they knew that they needed, because more opposition was coming. They knew that they would need this boldness to continue the ministry of Jesus with a fearless confidence, not stopping because of the threats, the persecution. And as we continue in Acts, we'll see even through death. They needed a boldness to continue this ministry. And ultimately, the church knew that they needed to yield to God's plan. So this is the last letter, the why. They yield, the church trusted that God would work through opposition. They trusted that God would work through their suffering. And Luke, the author, he doesn't just tell us that the church trusts God. He shows us. He shows us with how they turn to God in this crisis. And this is like a chicken and egg scenario, right? Did the church trust God more because they prayed, or because they prayed, did they trust God more? Yes. We don't know which it was, but it was probably both. And after they prayed, verse 31 says, the place where they were meeting was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God boldly. This was a biblical theophany, a manifestation or sign from God to show them that he was with them. He was endorsing their prayer, he was endorsing their mission. And when the earth shakes like it did here, we always see that God is present. We see this at Mount Sinai with Moses. We see this through the Easter story on Good Friday, on Easter morning, at Pentecost. We see that when the earth shakes, God is present. And it feels like there's a lot of shaking right now. Maybe you feel like this personally in your life. All you have to do is open your phone or turn on the news. There's a lot of shaking right now, globally, politically, economically, relationally, even physically. In Hebrew, Hebrews 12, there's this picture of the kingdoms being shaken. But what we see in this picture is that everything built on earth is shaken and removed. But God's kingdom is shaken and remains standing. It remains unshakable. And so when the shaking comes, it doesn't just expose what is temporary, temporary, but it drives us to be reminded of what is eternal in God's kingdom. So the goal isn't the escape from the pressure, but the transformation, the formation through it. And when the Holy Spirit comes like he did in this moment, the circumstances they didn't change, but the people did. And I think that's the same for us. When there is shaking, when the Holy Spirit comes, the circumstances might not change, but there is an invitation for us too, for something to be transformed in us through the shaking. The Holy Spirit filled that church with boldness so that the kingdom movement could continue. And I'm so glad it did because we wouldn't be here sitting here today if it hadn't. So the early church in Acts 4, they didn't start with this. They didn't start with boldness. They started with threats. They started with crisis. They had every reason to panic, to retreat, to protect themselves, but instead they chose to trust God and to do what Jesus had taught them to pray. So again, this word pray, they paused. They remembered that God is sovereign. They rejoiced, they recentered their view on God. They asked, they asked for boldness, not a way out. And they yielded their lives back into God's hand. And they were changed. They were changed because of this prayer. And this is still how God wants to work today, because the goal of prayer is not to escape the world or to avoid the problem, but to become the kind of people who can faithfully trust God. God doesn't always change our circumstances. Sometimes he does, but he doesn't always change our circumstances. But he always promises to change us, to form us in the process when we stay in that relationship with him. So maybe this week, as you're thinking or praying on your own, or you're with your family or your friends, your roommates, or your meal group, just talking about this. This is a great question to be asking yourself, to journal, to reflect on what transformation is happening in your life because of your prayer life? Because of your relationship with God and the way that you are staying in relationship with Him. I want to invite the worship team and Sarah up. This morning, as we come to the table, there's this beauty that we always come back to the table. We always come back to solid ground. We always come back to this truth. We always come back to our Father who gives freely. We always come back to the table, which is God's unshakable kingdom. And as we close this morning, just as you're seated, I want to invite you to say the Lord's Prayer with me together. This is the prayer that Jesus taught us, his followers, to pray. So, in whatever wording or version is in your mind and in your heart, let's say the Lord's Prayer together as we close. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever and ever. Amen.