Reverend Jonathan Waits
Sermon: Doubling Down (Acts 4:23-31)
Date: October 27, 2024
So, my baseball team is not playing in the World Series right now. We could have. Our pitching was certainly good enough. Our manager definitely deserves great credit for his part of the effort. The Royals are one of three teams in baseball history to have gone from losing more than 100 games in a season to making the Playoffs the next. That kind of a turnaround doesn’t happen on talent alone. And for most of the season, we hit the ball pretty well. We were way ahead in the runs scored versus runs allowed statistic. Almost 100 ahead in fact. That was a pretty dramatic change from last year all by itself. In fact, we scored more total runs this season than Cleveland who won the division. If we had won as many games as our runs scored versus runs allowed stat suggested, we would have won the division instead of them. But from the All-Star break forward, we gradually hit the ball less and less, and as a result, we scored fewer and fewer runs. We didn’t do the things that had propelled us to first place in the division more than once earlier in the season. As a result, our success waned. And our Cinderella run ended.
When we experience success of some kind, the best way to respond to that success is not merely to sit back on our laurels and enjoy it. The best way to respond is to double down on the things that brought about the success in the first place in order that we can experience more of it. The Royals experienced more success than they have at any point in nearly the last decade. This was the first time we had finished above .500 since we won the World Series in 2015. But then our bats went cold. We coasted as long as we could on the success of the first half of the season, but when you cut the engine out on the plane while it’s in mid-air, it’s only a matter of time before it hits the ground. The only question is how hard the landing will be.
Today we are witnessing and celebrating together God’s work in our midst. We are seeing some of the fruits of your faithful labors for the Gospel come to bear. We have seen it in the baptisms we delighted in a little while ago. We experienced it as we remembered where all of this activity comes from in the first place with the Lord’s Supper. We can rejoice together at the fruits of our collective commitment to sacrificial generosity. You have so far committed to give almost a quarter of a million dollars to our effort to expand and renovate our old sanctuary building over the next three years, and the commitments haven’t stopped coming in. If you haven’t yet made your commitment to this effort, and if God is so leading you, last week was not a one-shot affair. Don’t miss your chance to be an active part in God’s provision for us to continue to be a part of His work unfolding in our midst and going forward to see His kingdom expand outward from here.
All this month, we have been talking about how we can experience and continue to extend that very thing. It starts with a commitment to living a sacrificial lifestyle. Growing God’s kingdom requires us to walk a path of sacrifice. But it’s not enough to simply say no to the things that could prevent us from doing that. We have to actively surrender ourselves to God’s call, willing to follow His lead instead of our own. The way forward when we do this isn’t always immediately clear beyond the first step or two, but God’s record of faithfulness is clear. Surrender means saying yes even when we can’t see how. Yet while saying yes is necessary, it’s not sufficient on its own. We have to follow through on that yes with a commitment that holds up over time. As we talked about last time, God always blesses this kind of a commitment from His people. God honors a life of commitment to His kingdom.
If we do all of these things, kingdom success will never be far behind. But doing them just once, while good, only gets us so far. We have to be willing to continue doing them again and again and again over time. If we want to continue experiencing the success we have enjoyed, we have to keep doing the things that contributed to the success in the first place. In order to help us see this together, I want to take you to one of the most powerful stories in Luke’s history of the early church we call Acts. If you have a copy of the Scriptures with you, find your way with me to Acts 4. This story is as powerful as it is incredible. And it all starts with a church that was experiencing some pretty potent Gospel success.
Over the course of His final conversation with the disciples before the ordeal of the cross, one of the more stunning things Jesus told them was that they were going to do even greater things than He had done. Given the kinds of things they had seen Him do, this had to seem to them to be a pretty far-fetched claim. How were they going to heal people like He had? How were they going to teach so powerfully? How were they going to meaningfully advance God’s kingdom? And yet, early on after the church exploded into existence, the disciples found themselves doing just what Jesus had done and more. They taught powerfully. They faced down the religious elite of Jerusalem. They healed people. There were even reports that people were healed merely by having Peter’s shadow pass over them as he walked past.
All of their miraculous activities and charismatic teachings were starting to attract quite a following. The Jewish religious authorities were not a fan of all of this. After overseeing the crucifixion of Jesus, they figured they had dealt with the problem of His troublesome but far-too-popular heretical ministry. Now His followers were out doing and saying the same sorts of things. Didn’t these fools realize that if the religious leaders had had their Teacher crucified they could oversee their own deaths as well?
Luke tells us in the beginning of Acts 4 that the Sadducees had Peter and John arrested while they were preaching in the temple for being annoying to them. After letting them rot in a cell overnight, they brought them to their chambers the next morning for questioning and a thorough dressing down. For their part, the pair responded with incredible conviction and courage. These guys hadn’t had any of the formal training that should have been necessary for them to be able to defend themselves and in deeply scriptural terms as they were. The only explanation the members of the Sanhedrin could come up with is that they had been with Jesus. Besides, the man whose healing started this whole commotion was standing next to them still healed. The council members had themselves seen him lying lame along the entrance to the temple complex so they couldn’t very well deny the truth staring them in the face.
They warned Peter and John to keep quiet about all of this Jesus stuff from now on, but the pair retorted, “Whether it’s right in the sight of God for us to listen to you rather than to God, you decide; for we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.” In the end, all they could really do was to warn them again, threatening them with even more punishment if they didn’t toe the line. Rome wouldn’t let them go any further than that. So, after doing that much, they let them go.
When Peter and John were released, they went back to the rest of the believers to tell them what had happened. The group had been gathered and praying fervently for them. The report of the two courageous disciples spurred them on to even more prayer. Luke managed to find someone who remembered the prayer that was prayed. Matthew was probably there taking notes. Look with me at Acts 4:24.
“When they heard this, they raised their voices together to God and said, ‘Master, you are the one who made the heaven, the earth, and the sea, and everything in them. You said through the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of our father David, your servant: ‘Why do the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot futile things? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers assemble together against the Lord and against his Messiah.’ For, in fact, in this city both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, assembled together against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your will had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, consider their threats, and grant that your servants may speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand for healing, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
Now, we have talked about this before, but this is a remarkably powerful prayer. It is a remarkably bold and courageous prayer. The people could have prayed for a lot of things here given what Peter and John had just been through. They could have prayed for protection or preservation or caution. They could have prayed for God to keep any bad things that the Jewish religious leaders had planned for them from happening. But they didn’t do any of that. They prayed for boldness. More specifically, they prayed that God would enable them to speak His words with all boldness. They had gotten a taste of the results of Gospel boldness and they wanted more.
Again, though, we have talked about all of that before. What I want to draw your attention to this morning is what happened when they prayed. When God’s people, the members of the very first church, got together and prayed in response to the challenges they were facing from the religious authorities of the Jewish people, something happened. Luke tells us about it in v. 31: “When they had prayed, the place where they were assembled was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God boldly.”
So, what is this? The people prayed for boldness in response to the ministry successes, but also challenges they had been facing together. In return, God answered their prayer. Boldness had gotten them into the trouble they had just made it through. But it was a kingdom-directed boldness. Jesus had told the disciples that this kind of response would be coming when they sought to proclaim His kingdom. He had told them that responses like this were evidence they were on the right track. And so, as a result, when they did what Jesus said and experienced what Jesus told them they would likely experience for doing it, they doubled down on it and asked God to help them experience more. And so He did.
What Luke is describing here is not something like a physical earthquake. It isn’t something physical at all. He’s talking about a powerful movement of God’s Spirit among them. In filling them with the presence of His Spirit, in giving them by that the assurance that He was indeed with them, He was equipping them with the courage to continue boldly proclaiming the resurrection to anyone who would listen. And so they did. They began to speak the word of God boldly. And wouldn’t you know it, the church kept on growing. God’s kingdom kept on advancing. There was more pushback and persecution. Eventually one of their number was martyred and many of them had to flee the city so they weren’t killed as well. But they couldn’t stop speaking about what they had seen and heard and experienced with gracious, courageous, gentle boldness. And the more they did, the more people believed it; the more God’s kingdom grew.
We have experienced the movement of God’s Spirit in our midst here lately, and it has been really powerful to behold. Challenges have come and will continue to come. No, no one has attacked our church, but I know many of you have experienced personal challenges that were aimed and designed to throw you off your faithful track. Some of you still are. Some of you encountered new ones just this week. Yet we have persisted together. We have boldly walked forward even to the point now of publicly committing our resources to seeing His kingdom advance through the expansion and renovation of our facilities here.
My friends, now is not the time to sit back and rest. Now is not the time to simply idly enjoy what God has given us. Now is the time for us to continue to push forward together toward His kingdom. Now is the time to double down on the efforts that have brought us to this place with God’s abiding presence and help. Now is the time to celebrate by committing to even more kingdom growth together. The best way to celebrate God’s work is to commit to even more of it.
Let this be a moment that whets our appetite, not satisfies it. God has done great work. He’s done it in our past. We are experiencing it together in our present. There’s not a single reason in the world to think He doesn’t have more planned in our future. We want more. So, let’s pursue it. Let’s make our pursuit of it the substance of our celebration. The best way to celebrate God’s work is to commit to even more of it.
And how do we do that? By continuing forward with the same boldness that has gotten us here with God’s help. Remember? That’s what the church here in Jerusalem did. Boldness got them into their mess. God got them out of it. So they kept moving forward with more boldness. They prayed for boldness. They actively sought out more and more opportunities to grow God’s kingdom, to proclaim the message of the risen Christ in word and deed. They gained the favor of all the people around them who weren’t already committed to opposing them by living out the love of Christ with faithfulness and boldness. These same approaches even started to convince their biggest critics. They celebrated their Gospel success by boldly pursuing more of it, and so more of it was exactly what they got. The best way to celebrate God’s work is to commit to even more of it.
So, let us commit to it together. Let us commit to engaging with the Scriptures regularly and consistently wherein we find the words of the Lord that reveal His identity and purposes to us so that we can align our own with His and Him. Let us commit to engaging with God through prayer regularly and consistently so that we can come to know Him more as He reveals Himself to us as individuals and as a group. The more we know Him, the more we’ll trust Him. The more we trust Him, the more we’ll be willing to do life His way. The more we do life His way, the more the people around us will see what kingdom life looks like and be drawn to it. Let us commit to engaging with the church regularly and consistently by being here. God will give us all the resources we need to accomplish all the ministry and missions He has planned for us to do. A major part of those resources is sitting and looking at me right now. We can’t do what God has called us to do without you. And you. And you. All of us together as one pursuing the bold advance of God’s kingdom. The best way to celebrate God’s work is to commit to even more of it. Let us do that and rejoice in what He does together.