Fourth of July 2021 Acts 4:24-31 Pastor Barry Kerner
Fourth of July 2021
Acts 4:24-31
Pastor Barry Kerner
Fourth of July fireworks are an American tradition that comes around every year, no matter how loudly or softly Freedom has rung throughout the land in the year since our last display of civic pride. Sometimes the Fourth can feel a lot like Christmas – it can have us wishing we were children again, innocent celebrators of a story, whose symbols are colorful and exciting; young players in a story whose deeper meanings didn’t really concern us kids much. We could simply enjoy the tinsel, or the sparklers, the reindeer or the marching band.
There’s a lot to love about celebrating the birth of our nation and our principled commitment to freedom. Patriotism has a definite allure, it reminds us that we are part of something larger than ourselves. It makes us feel we belong.
I grew up outside of Pittsburgh in a Borough called Forest Hills. It was a community with good schools and strong citizen involvement. Perhaps it was a bit like Delphi Falls, or the small town where you grew up. Our kids loved the Fourth of July celebration in Forest Hills. Everyone would walk to the high school where the fireworks display drew hundreds of families. We would throw down our blankets beside our neighbors and strike up conversations. All the kids ran freely amid the crowd, yelling and trying not to step on the smaller children. Patriotic music played over the loud speaker. As the sun descended, anticipation rose…things quieted, and the kids found their way back to their family blankets. Everyone settled down, passed around the bug spray, put earphones over the babies’ ears; and the youngest children, a little afraid of strangers and loud booming noises, tried to look brave. As the first rockets flew overhead and burst into color and light…we all looked up.
Looking up into the evening sky, is, I think, a primal human impulse. We look up at billowing clouds and at menacing ones too – just as our ancestors did on the plains. We look up at the sunset and gaze at the stars in the heavens– as humans have done since the beginning of time.
Job 35:5 tells us to, “Look up at the heavens and see; gaze at the clouds so high above you.”
Psalm 8 proclaims, “1 Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. 2 Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. 3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?
In Psalm 123:1the Psalmist declared, “To You I lift up my eyes, O You who are enthroned in the heavens!”
Isaiah 40:26 reminds us, “Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, Not one of them is missing.
There are many people who don’t turn their eyes to the heavens which declare God’s glory. Instead, their eyes are cast downward focusing on the things of this world, their cares and concerns, and their circumstances. When that happens we often forget that that the one who gave us life, the one who loves and cares for us is seated on His throne in the heavens and that his son Jesus Christ sits at he right hand.
Proverbs 3:6 reminds us, “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
Psalm 4:1 implores, “Answer me when I cry out, my righteous God! Set me free from my troubles! Have mercy on me! Listen to my prayer!”
Exodus 23:25 tells us, “But you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water; and I will remove sickness from your midst.”
Many Christians want God to bless them and to care for them but they fail to acknowledge Him, spend the time to fellowship with him through prayer and the studying of scripture or wholeheartedly serve Him. Think about the difference it would make if we would. The early church certainly experienced the benefits. Let’s look at an occasion when the Apostles were commanded to preach no more about Jesus.
Acts 4: 24And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is: 25Who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things? 26The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ. 27For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, 28For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done. 29And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word, 30By stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus. 31And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.
This exciting Scripture shows us what can happen when you decide to choose to acknowledge, pray and serve the Lord. Today, I want you to think through this text with me and see what God does for his people in a time of peril. He will do the same for America today if we will acknowledge Him, pray to Him and serve Him as the early church did:
WHAT GOD CAN DO: HE ANSWERS THE PRAYERS OF HIS PEOPLE
All the incredible things that happened in the above passage, happened because the people prayed. They went to God in prayer. As it has been said, “Much prayer, much power! Little prayer, little power!” Dutch Sheets taught in his book on Intercessory Prayer that there are things that God does for us, that would not be done, if we had not prayed. James wrote in the book of James, “We have not because we ask not.” Whatever your theology, you cannot walk away from a reading of the Bible without admitting that there is a relationship between desperate faith-filled prayer and God’s intervention into the affairs of men and nations.
WHAT DOES GOD DO: HE DOES WHAT HE WANTS TO DO
He alone is the Sovereign Lord and Creator. The early church prayed knowing that their prayers did not violate God’s Sovereignty. He is still God and is not taking applications for His replacement. This is the tension between prayer and Sovereignty. We ask but God is not bound by our prayers. This is actually good news. Thank God because He sees what we don’t and knows what we don’t, and that He will move in our best interest.
Why pray? Because God in His Sovereignty has chosen to partner with praying men and women in carrying out His plans and purposes. Our prayers do make a difference and our faith in God’s Sovereignty only increases our confidence that God’s will will be done. I also believe that the absence of our prayers can create delays and detours. This again is the tension of human responsibility and Divine Sovereignty. God is Sovereign and Just! He can do what He wants because He is God. He never gets pinned in a corner by man.
There was a time in our nation when our President saw this at work. President Lincoln during the Civil War saw the Sovereign Hand of God at work.nThe Civil War produced the death of more Americans — almost half a million — than any war before or since. With Americans dying on both sides, the War taxed everyone’s ability to understand what God was doing here. This was no holy war against the pagan infidels; this was a war that turned brother against brother, father against son, and Christian against Christian. This was a God-forsaken war if there ever was one, and yet Lincoln saw God using this war to set straight the course of history.
“Both parties deprecated war,” Lincoln proclaimed in his Second Inaugural Address, “but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came….Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. The prayers of both can not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”
“If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.”
“Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid with another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’“
WHAT DOES GOD DO: HE HONORS HIS WORD
The early church prayed the word of God that was relevant to their situation. Believers should seize God’s promises relevant to our nation’s crisis situations as well.
Listen to the words of one of our former Presidents: Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States said, “There are a good many problems before the American people today, and before me as President, but I expect to find the solution to those problems just in the proportion that I am in prayer and the study of the Word of God.”
Let’s hold to God’s Word regardless of what the media tells us. Our current circumstances do not make null and void the Word of God. This is the time to demonstrate the power of God’s promises to people.
WHAT DOES GO DO: HE RULES THE RULERS OF THE EARTH
Psalm 33:12 says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.”
Proverbs 21:1reminds us, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it wheresoever he will.”
1 Samuel 13:13 Samuel said, “You acted foolishly, You have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time.”
Listen to America’s founding President, George Washington,who understood his need for God’s hand upon his life. “Direct my thought, words and work, wash away my sins in the immaculate Blood of the Lamb, and purge my heart by Thy Holy Spirit….Daily frame me more and more into the likeness of Thy Son Jesus Christ.”
Other Presidents understood this as well. Listen to them:
George Bush, 41st President said, “The Lord our God be with us, as HE was with our fathers; may He not leave us or forsake us; so that He may incline our hearts to Him, to walk in all His ways…that all peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.”
Harry S. Truman, 33rd US. President said, “We can all pray. We all should pray. We should ask for courage, wisdom, for the quietness of soul which comes alone in them who place their lives in His hands.”
WHAT CAN GOD DO: HE CONFUSES THE PLANS OF THE ENEMY
The early church prayed, “Behold their threats…” and the plans of those who stood against them were thwarted. In Israel He caused the enemy to turn on himself. Gideon attacked with clay pots and torches and God caused the enemy to be scattered David armed with just with a rock and sling took down Goliath and ruined the plans of the Philistines. God knows and will often reveal what the enemy is up to. The Lord showed Elijah what the king was thinking in his chambers. With God’s help Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar what he dreamed.
WHAT CAN GOD DO: HE PROVIDES PROTECTION FOR US
In 2 Kings 6:16 the enemy had surrounded the Prophet Elisha and the inhabitants of the city. “Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?” the servant asked. 16 “Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” 17 And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. 18 As the enemy came down toward him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, “Strike this army with blindness.” So he struck them with blindness, as Elisha had asked.
Our nation’s history is filled with remarkable stories of how the impossible became possible because of God’s intervention. There was a phrase in the 1840’s that was bandied about in Europe: “A special Providence watches over children, drunkards and the United States.” While the comment was undoubtedly meant to be derogatory toward the then-young nation, there is no doubting that there was some truth to it. American history is littered with truly bizarre moments where the U.S. has managed the impossible. Whether because an accomplished enemy suddenly made a rookie mistake, an American got lucky or the weather itself interfered, the United States certainly has some colorful stories that cannot be read as anything less than divine intervention.
WHAT DOES GOD DO: HE RESPONDS TO OBEDIENCE
The early church knew their charge and mandate. To preach the good news of Jesus Christ. When told to stop, they prayed for the power to GO! The place was shaken, the Holy Spirit empowered them and they were enabled to speak the Word boldly
Go: the smallest of words, the biggest of meanings. It may be one of God’s favorite words. Sometimes life is calm. Secure. Peaceful. Nothing scary, each day much like the one before. That’s usually when God shows up. That’s usually when God says, “Go.”
Sometimes God calls dramatically, in miracle and flame. Sometimes He calls subtly, in stillness and whisper, so soft we won’t hear if we aren’t listening. Sometimes through His Word, sometimes through a friend, sometimes through life events.
However He speaks, God calls to us all. We are called for different roles, in different ways, at different points in our lives: one season holds one purpose, the next holds another. We are God’s people, His instruments, and He wants to use us. As Romans 8:28 puts it, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” According to His purpose. God has plans for each of us. He has work for us to do, work He prepared a long time ago, work He has equipped us to accomplish. Ephesians 2:10 reminds us, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
The mandate still remains unchanged for the church. We must collectively come together and rise up through the power of the Holy Spirit and take forth the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations.
WHAT CAN GOD DO: HE CAN BIRTH REVIVAL OUT OF THE ENEMY’S ATTACK
This persecution against the early church brought the church together in powerful prayer and precipitated another outpouring on the early church. It’s said that what Satan weaves God reweaves.
Joseph, Son of Jacob, Graduated with honors from the University of Hard Knocks. He went on to become the Director of Global Effort to Save Humanity. How? How did he flourish in the midst of tragedy? We don’t have to speculate. Some twenty years later after his brothers sold him into slavery the roles were reversed, Joseph as the strong one and his brothers the weak ones. They came to him in dread. They feared he would settle the score and throw them into a pit of his own making. But Joseph didn’t. And in his explanation in Genesis 50:20 we find his inspiration, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
We all have heard of Jim Elliott and Nate Saint and their companions who were martyred in the 1950’s. But through their suffering the Gospel spread among the Auca Indians in South America. Similar stories could be repeated throughout the centuries and around the world.
Through the power of the risen Christ, we too can continue the destruction of the works of the devil. If God be for us, who can be against us? 1 John 3:8 says, “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.”
Finally, WHAT CAN GOD DO: GOD CAN HEAL THIS NATION.
In 2 Chronicles 7:14 God tells us, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
To bring real revival to our nation, we as Americans need to humble ourselves, acknowledge God in all our ways, continually be in prayer and wholeheartedly serve the one true God.