Well, I think that it’s probably been the theme of this morning that life doesn’t go the way you want it to go.
Not even just sometimes, but most of the time. I think if, especially for people who have maybe a little bit of OCD personality, like I want, here’s my day, here’s this, I’ve got my week planned out, I’ve got my month planned out, this is what this is going to look like. And a lot of times, it doesn’t happen that way. Sometimes it’s in the smaller details of life. Sometimes it’s in the much bigger things. Maybe it’s people passing away or people getting hurt or broken relationships causing an issue. All that to say, if you don’t know it, you are not in control of your life.
And that’s a difficult thing to hear, honestly, and it’s a difficult thing to believe, because we live in an age, we live in a day when you’re told you be king of your life. You have things. You have things your way. That is very much so a cultural theme of 21st century life, unfortunately. But I think the good news for us as a church is we can stand apart from that and say, regardless of what happens, the Bible teaches me that God is sovereign. And a lot of times we have these terms, I think, and pastors are guilty, throwing around these big terms and everybody amen them, and that’s a good one, God’s sovereign. But what does that mean? And how do I connect something? Something like the sovereignty of God to practical everyday life. I think that’s where big theology meets practical everyday living. And I don’t think you can have one without the other. I don’t want to be like this bookworm in my Christian life. It’s this intellectual pursuit, but neither do I dislike, you know, I don’t want to get too deep in theology. I just want to be practical and love people. Well, friends, we can’t love God and love people well in practical everyday life until we know God’s Word so that it can inform us. So I both need to be informed in my mind so that I can know, but also that needs to bleed down into my life so that it comes outward. So Christians should be a people who, when we lose control, we don’t become an anxious people. We don’t become a fearful people. We have joy in the midst of that because the Scriptures teach us that God is sovereign. And that’s really the hope of the church in Acts. Really from the onset. From the onset, the birth of the church, there is this underlying belief that God is in control. And so I want us to turn this morning to Acts chapter 4.
We’re going to be in verses 23 to 31 this morning. I’m going to read it for us.
It says, 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 threw the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, Why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples 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… They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. So really, up until chapter 4 here in Acts, the church is very much so experiencing a honeymoon phase, if you will. Jesus has come back from the dead. Great. He’s with them for about 40 days, teaching them. So, I mean, Jesus was who He said He was. But Jesus says, you go to Jerusalem and you wait. Just go and wait. So they go and they wait and they go and they pray. And what happens, the Holy Spirit falls on them. The church is born. They’re filled with… It says tongues as of fire. They’re speaking in all different languages.
And it’s proof to the world that these people don’t know these languages and they’re speaking them. Their God must be real. They replaced Judas, who had betrayed Jesus, with another apostle now. So they got the team back together. It says that at Pentecost, Peter stands up and he preaches. Thousands of people get saved. And they’re coming together as a community. They’re eating together. They’re fellowshipping together. They’re learning together. They’re being taught by the apostles. And it says they have favor with all people. So this is very much so a glory story, a mountaintop experience. Everything’s great. Everybody loves us. We love one another. We’re learning. We’re all growing in Jesus. Everyone’s discipleship looks perfect right now. Everything’s just fantastic, right? But it only lasts three chapters. There’s 28 chapters. So it doesn’t… It doesn’t last very long. What happens is Peter and John, they get confronted by Jews and these rulers. And they see what they’re doing. They see what they’re preaching. And so the first time, persecution sets in. For the first time, they lose, since Christ’s resurrection, they lose control. There’s an outside force they didn’t want to have to deal with. And they’re having to deal with it. And it’s coming into their space. But I want you to see what they do.
And really, all they do is what Jesus already told them to do.
Jesus, when He went back to heaven, did not say, go and figure things out. Go and… Go and… Man, y’all strategize, and y’all plan, and y’all come up with a bunch of fancy language and some words. And I want y’all to, like, think things through. And, man, y’all can do this if you put your heads together. That’s not what Jesus said. Jesus said, go to Jerusalem and wait.
Sounds very counterintuitive. But Jesus, if you want to conquer the world with your love, if you want to conquer the world with your love, we need to go and do. But Jesus said, no, I want you to first actually wait. Because Jesus makes it clear, until you have my Spirit, you’re not going to be able to do anything at all. It’s really always and only God’s Spirit, God’s power working in us and through us. So Peter and the apostles, that’s exactly what they do. They go back, and they don’t say, what are we going to do? Let’s freak out. Let’s move out of town. Like, how can we strategize? What if we start a campaign, and, like, we get the city on our side against these Jews? Like, they’re not… They’re not doing maybe a lot of things that we do today when we see the world pushing back against our faiths. It’s really not what they do. They go back to waiting.
They go back to praying. They go back to saying, Lord, we never had any answers. We don’t even pretend like we got any answers. Lord, here’s the situation. What do we do? That’s what they do.
And what they do is, instead of simply seeing the enemy, which I don’t think is wrong to see the enemy and size the enemy up, what they do is they take into account who the enemy is, but then they take into account who their God is. They keep their eyes on Jesus.
And the first thing they do is they address God for who He is.
They say, Sovereign Lord, who made heaven and earth and the sea and everything in them. The Greek word is despotes. And it’s not like somebody that’s in charge. It means, like, you are the sole ruler. Everything that happens, happens because you said it. It’s going to happen. It’s that of even a slave-master relationship. So they’re from the onset, saying at the beginning of this prayer together, hey, we are slaves to your cause. Whatever you say is going to go. We can’t do anything if you don’t move. So there’s an incredible humility here when terror strikes, when their world falls apart, not to do, but to wait on and remember who God is. God who made everything. They know who has real power and authority. They recall who God is. But secondly, you know what they do. And it’s a good spiritual discipline you and I should have. They remember what God has said about Himself. They quote in this prayer to God, Psalm chapter 2. And I’ll read it more fully. Psalm chapter 2. I don’t think I have the verse up there for you, but I’ll read it. It says, Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His people. His anointed saying, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. But verse 4 says, He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. Then He will speak to them in His wrath and terrify them in His fury. So they recall that God has said, Hey, whoever’s going to stand against Me will be terrified. Whoever stands against Me, I’m going to mock them and laugh at them. So it’s something to do, friends, when things go wrong. And it’s the first thing you don’t want to do. The first thing you want to do, I want to do when things go wrong, is I want to go inward. How can I fix this? What can I do? I’m left alone and I run from God. Rather doing what they did, it’s the right spiritual impulse, they ran to the Lord.
God’s enemies are raging, it says. Why do the nations rage? The imagery that we’re getting there from Psalms, it’s like this horse that keeps bucking and it needs to be bridled. And God says it doesn’t matter how much they do that. He says it’s in vain. It’s vain that anyone would do this against God, against God’s people. The vanity is an empty-handedness. Imagine someone with a sword and the other person with an imaginary sword. This is what God’s sizing Psalm 2 up to be to the point that it says God laughs. God mocks at those that would stand against Him.
So friends, in the very same way, in everyday life, believe God is sovereign. Because when you believe that God is sovereign, you can wait on Him and know that this God is the God of all creatures, of all creation. And whatever happens, He’s allowing it to happen for His good purposes. And I know that seems really extreme in the 21st century. Things aren’t that simple. There’s evolution, there’s processes, and things happen that way. We can’t be sure how this happened. I’ve been hearing about this really weird thing called the simulation theory. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this. It’s kind of popular, but there are these hierarchies, they’re being somewhere, and we’re all in a big simulate. We’re one of many simulations. We’re just a simulation that’s being ran. This is a very popular theory coming out right now. But if you want to go with the Bible, which I would like to do, the Bible says that all matter, all things, all people, all creation, all creatures, God created X and the helo. He created it out of nothing.
Substance itself is because God allowed it to be. So God didn’t find craft, crafty, like, oh, here’s some material. I’m going to make some stuff up and see if that can come up. That’s not what God did. The Bible plainly teaches us that God created what is out of nothing. He did that. Which means what? It means that you and I, we exclusively live in God’s universe. It’s not a universe in which we are and God is, and I hope God is smart enough to figure things out, help me if He can work it out. He’s so busy. It’s not the case. It’s His universe. And things are happening the way God says it happens. People are doing what God says they can do. Nothing is independent.
Creation, people, are a tool in the hand of God. Paul says in Romans, all things are from, all things are from, all things are through, and all things go back to God for His glory. Which means this, nothing that anyone does, good or bad,
nothing that happens, good or bad, is outside the scope of God’s control. It doesn’t mean that God does evil or does wrong, but it does mean that God in His infinite power and wisdom is over everything that does happen so that He will work it for His glory. So that’s good news, friends, because when you have an enemy standing against you in your faith, when you have people, when you have things that are weighing down on you,
it means this. Well, hold on. God is in control of that person. The authority they have, it’s limited to what God says. They can have it for the time they can have it. And it’s for a certain purpose, which is always going to go back to God getting glory, even if it hurts right now. God works all things for the good of those who love Him. So, friends, that is the hardest truth to believe when you’re in the bottom of the valley.
Oh, you want to believe God has forgotten you, God has abandoned you, like what’s gone on, my faith is misplaced, like there’s all these different variables I can’t control. But, friends, the Scriptures remind us. They, it encourages us to believe that power alone is God’s. And within His good purposes, He allows men to possess a measure of power for a time and for His purposes. So then this must be true. Choosing to live in the fear of another human being is choosing to deny God’s self-identification as the sole authority and power over them. Every time you and I choose to fear someone, we are believing God is not in control of that person. God is not in control of what’s happening. This person figured out a way to get outside the scope of God’s control. It’s an impossibility.
Every enemy of God will be subdued and brought to nothing in God’s perfect will and perfect way. Pilate was a tough dude. I would not have wanted to have been Jesus standing there in front of Pilate. Herod was a brutal dude. All of that family, I mean, remember we went through that in the beginning of Matthew. Herod was slaughtering the children trying to get to Jesus. These were bad people. But you think about that text in Matthew about all those children being slaughtered. Jeremiah prophesied it was going to happen. And God did that. He allowed it to happen for His good purposes. So friends, we can always believe that God is good regardless of the evil that’s happening around us and to us.
And I’m reminded of Peter. I think we have to think about Peter because Peter is the one coming with John. Like, hey, this is what’s happening. Let’s not freak out. Let’s not run. Let’s not hide. Here’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to wait and pray. Which is astounding because Peter just a couple months ago was the one who denied Jesus three times.
Peter just recently was the very case of what we’re talking about. Jesus said, Peter, you’re going to deny Me three times. No, I’ll die with you, God. It doesn’t happen, does it? Peter denies Jesus three times because he took his eyes off Jesus and Jesus’ power and he looked at the situation around him. He looked. He looked. He looked at the limited authority that God had given people around him. Yet here Peter, by God’s grace, has come to his spiritual senses and he says, you know what? Jesus is in control. Let’s wait on Jesus. Let’s see what Jesus is going to do about this.
Friends, don’t miss the opportunity
to thank the Lord when you have enemies in your spiritual life because it is an opportunity to grow in faith. It is an opportunity to see how God will sustain you. It’s an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to see how much God loves you.
I think that, again, and I know I say this all the time, I think a lot of it comes back to quote-unquote wasting time meditating on who God is. Right? We’re so busy. I’m going to have my little devotion in the morning. I’m going and I’m going. And I think Jesus was just really good at wasting time with the Father. And I think until you build that rhythm in your life and not like, alright, I did that and now I’ve got to move on. And I’m guilty of that. I’m not getting any better because I’m a pastor. I’m terrible about that. I’ve got to do stuff for God. Martin Luther said, I have so much to get done today, I must spend at least three hours in prayer. So I think there’s just this real sense when we understand only God can give us the power we need to do anything well for Him. He is our strength. He is our goodness. And it’s just a spiritual discipline of remembering.
It’s not like, how did it get this way? Like, lucky for Satan. No, like Satan loves that you’re so busy. Satan loves that we live in a, in a productive society. Like, Satan loves that you’re told to like, you go be the best you and you figure things out and you do things. Because it runs so counter to the Scriptures that say, why don’t you just wait? Have some humility. You can do nothing and just trust in the God who says He loves you and He’s died for you and He’s going to take care of you. It doesn’t mean I’ll do nothing. I’m just going to sit around and do nothing. But I’m going to wait on the Lord. I’m going to wait for Him to come through. I’m not going to have fear. I’m not going to be an anxious person. Like, anxiety. Like, I can be so anxious. My wife can attest to that. Like, I can have some anxiety. But hopefully, by God’s grace, I’m not as bad as I used to be. Like, what if this happens? What if this happens? Like, it’s supposed to be like my day off. But I’m thinking about this thing and it’s like, where is faith in Jesus? The Jesus who lived and died and was raised to a new life, friends. God is the God of all creatures and all creations. Do we believe that? Not, you know, philosophically up here, but do you believe that in the way you live your life out? That’s where it counts and that’s where it matters.
So how does the sovereignty of God then evolve? How does it affect the everyday life?
I’m going to go back to verse 27 in chapter 4. It says, 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 people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
So again, I think it’s interesting if you know the word,
that the psalmist uses in 26,
against the Lord’s anointed. And if we were to run through all the texts in the Old Scripture, like the anointed one was the one, and we’ve talked about this in different settings at different times, the anointed one was the one who was going to come and fix what was broken, who was going to protect God’s people, who was going to deal with the sin problem. But the Scriptures are very clear, the anointed one was the one who was going to come and suffer. He was going to be the suffering servant that Isaiah, very popular, that we love to read those servant songs of the suffering servant, that’s Jesus, who will be pierced for our transgressions, right? So it’s not even an idea in Jewish thought that some king’s going to come and everything’s going to be great. I mean, if you’re a good Jew, a lot of them weren’t. If you were really tuned in to your Scriptures, whoever was coming, he was going to be broken. So it’s not a last minute idea on God’s part that you’re going to come and fix what was broken. That Jesus shows up and is mocked, whipped, beaten, has his beard ripped out, you know, he’s mutilated essentially, crucified. Like, that’s not like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe that happened to Jesus, like God thought that up. Like, very much so, and Luke here, the writer of Acts, uses the word predestined. It was something that God had predestined to take place.
And I think on the one hand, again, it goes back to that control issue, like God predestines things to happen. I mean, what can I do? Doing that, like if God’s predestined, like what matters? Well, the Scriptures are very clear that yeah, God predestines a lot of things to happen. You can’t look at the cross, you can’t look at the bondage and slavery in Egypt. God said, I will put you in slavery for 400 years, but I’m going to do it to save you. And so I think any time we see things like that in Scripture, we can say, hold on, where’s my control? Or we can rest and say, hold on, this God who is sovereign and predestines things to happen, He’s also good. So if God is good and predestines things, that means, that He’s always working, past, present, future, for my good, and I can be okay with not understanding God.
I can be okay with not totally grasping the way God works. The Scriptures say, God’s thoughts are higher than my thoughts. God’s ways are higher than my ways. So I’m going to come to this brick wall if I’m constantly wanting to understand, God, why did you let that happen the way that you let that happen? Like, I would have really preferred for it to happen this way, and now I’m seeing you’re doing this thing here. Like, what are you doing up there? But if you read the Scriptures and you sift through prophecy, like, God’s always in control, not of the moment, but of the moments to come. And again, I think that can push you to say, like, I want my own freedom and control. Or you can say, you know what? I don’t have freedom. Well, I have freedom to choose, but I can rest in God’s sovereignty in my situations. And I know that, again, in the mystery of God’s sovereignty, though He is in control, I do have the freedom somehow to obey God. If it’s true God’s in control, I am free to, you know, I’m going to trust God here. Like Paul says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Like, it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be difficult. But you do that. Like, you work hard. God has set you free to trust Him that He’s in control. Like, you can always be working hard because you know by God’s grace He has done something for you you can never do for yourself. So, again, situations, circumstances, the way that the world spins, friends, you are free to live in the power of God’s grace and always do what the Lord says you do. That’s what God’s calling you to do because He’s both in control and He’s good. He’s in control and He’s good.
I think that a lot of times when we deal with that, you want to have that pushback. Like, if God’s good, and we’ve all heard this a thousand times, if God is good, why did He let X happen?
And how many times, I mean, I guess I have, I’m sure you have, if you’re not personally, you’ve heard like, well, I was a Christian, but if God really, you know, loved me, He wouldn’t have let that happen. He wouldn’t have let that happen if God is good.
And I think the only thing to do in that situation is go back to the gospel. Like, hold on, God was good to us.
We broke it. God could have, in that moment, executed justice on us in the garden and said, no, you’re done. But God says, I’m going to let you live. Because, you know, the Scriptures say, the day that you eat of the fruit, you shall surely die. But we did not die. Man lived another day. Then man lived another day. So you and I deal with the consequences of our own sins. So the bad things that happen around us, those aren’t God’s fault. God is still good in the midst of those things. So again, there is the choice to believe God is good in the brokenness around me, or I can believe, you know what, because God let this happen, He doesn’t love me, which is a lie of the enemy, which your flesh would love to give in to.
Friend, God hasn’t called you to maintain control over your life. He’s called you, He’s called you to trust Him. He’s called you to believe in Him. He’s called you to love Him. And the proof of our love is obedience. And it is trust.
That’s so often where the rubber meets the road to know if we truly love God, it’s obeying God when it’s the hardest. And I love that last song we sang, because it says, I’m going to trust Jesus simply because He said His way is best. And can that be enough for you? Jesus said, hey, my way is best. Is that enough?
Peter, I think, has to stay a theme here because he’s the one coming back with John. Not only did Peter deny Jesus three times, Peter’s the one who sank in the waves. So here Peter said, hey, let me come out there. And Jesus says, alright, come out, Peter.
And he’s walking on water because he has his eyes on Jesus.
But what happens? He takes his eyes off of Jesus. And I think you get this very real illustration of the spiritual truth and reality here. He sees the waves and he lets the waves, he lets his surroundings be so much bigger than Jesus is.
And can you trust that God is always the God of your times? Every single second. It is allotted, not to make your life boring, not because you’re a wind-up robot, but because God loves you and He’s working the good and the bad in your whole life, always for your good and for His glory. That’s a very popular phrase you hear. But I think we need to hear it often, that God is always working for our good and His glory. And you know what our good is? God’s glory. We were created for God’s glory. So I can always trust whatever’s happening, God, You’re doing it for Your glory. And I’m going to ultimately be satisfied when You are revealed in Your fullness. And a lot of times, much like the Lord Jesus Christ, we’re brought through suffering and pain to arrive at glory. God is growing us. He’s disciplining us so we can arrive at the same place where Jesus is.
Can you have the humility to give up control? Probably not all at once.
But praise the Lord, He doesn’t give up on us and He works with us and He works through us.
Verse 29 in Acts chapter 4, it says, 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. Friends, it boils down to this. If we believe the Gospel of Jesus, it means we believe in the sovereignty of God because the Gospel of Jesus is proof that God is sovereign over our sin mistakes. God is sovereign over the enemy. In the midst of our sin, God said, I’m going to send a seed through the line of the woman and that seed is going to undo what you did. God was never second guessing. He was never wondering. He was never wondering. He always knew what would happen and He always knew how He would deal with it. His Son Jesus would come and His Son Jesus, who is over all creation, over all creatures, who is the Creator Himself, Jesus who is sovereign over every situation, over all the circumstances of our lives, that Jesus, He got up on a cross and He bled and He died and He was raised from the grave as proof that He and He alone is our sovereign God and trusting in Him alone. Friends, we are free to live bold lives for Him because we have His power at all times no matter what happens. And that’s exactly what happened for these people. They looked at their Jesus and when they looked at their Jesus, they were reminded of His power, of His sovereignty, of His goodness and they were emboldened to move onward, to continue preaching the Gospel and living out the implications of what it means to be a follower of Jesus with joy.
And, you know, cool things happen in Acts. I wish it would shake. You know, all those earthquakes in California right now. Yeah. I don’t know what I want. An earthquake, per se, but, you know, it shakes. The place shakes, you know, and I’ve never spoken in tongues either, but you see these cool things in the Scriptures and you’re like, well, I don’t know that God’s going to give me the same things He gave necessarily in every unique situation, but I do know the Scriptures are clear. If I trust and I pray, God will give me power in the Holy Spirit and He will give me a love and a joy in the Gospel and He will give me a boldness to move onward. And that’s what I want. Amen. I don’t necessarily need a… I don’t need a writing on the wall. You don’t need writing on the wall. What you need to do and I need to do is believe in the Jesus who already was raised up from the dead. Believe that the tomb is empty. Believe that the power of the Spirit is in us now. We can be a bold, joy-filled church together and we can make it to the very end and follow Jesus into the very end. Friends, that’s just good news for us this morning. All right. So let’s pray together.
Lord, much like these believers in Acts, Lord, we have the opportunity, we have the opportunity every day in so many ways to be afraid and, Lord, to wonder and to fear. But, Lord, we pray we would have the proper Spirit-led, Spirit-given impulse to trust and to believe that Jesus, You didn’t just do something for us, but You are with us and You love us and You’re working all things together for us for Your glory and for the Father’s glory, Lord. So I pray our hearts and our minds would be restored. They would be restored. They would be renewed just with the truth of who You are that we would be overwhelmed. Lord, if we’ve lost our amazement with who You are, we’ve lost our amazement with the Gospel, we’ve lost our joy in being part of a community of believers where we can pursue You together, Lord, I just pray You would remind us of what a blessed gift it is to be in the church, following Your Son, Lord, with other people. Lord, we get to lock arms and we get to pray together and we get to encourage one another and we get to be filled with the Spirit and we get to preach the Gospel, Lord. So I pray we would not see any of this as a have-to, but Lord, let it be just a blessed get-to. We get to know Jesus. We get to live for Jesus. We get to be equipped by Your Spirit to live out Your will for our lives, to be holy and to be righteous and to reach others for Your name. So I just pray that would fall fresh on us this morning. We’re in the midst of a variety of things that are happening in each and every life this morning. I just pray for that still, quietness, to know that Your Spirit is here and in Your Spirit, Lord, we are provided for and we are loved and we are guided. So we just bless the name of Jesus this morning.
Friend, I would just ask you this morning, just there in your seat, if you don’t really know Christ, maybe you know about Christianity and you know about Jesus, but you’ve never said, you know what, I’m just going to be a true just prayer. I’m going to wait. I’m just going to be the kind of person that has all faith in this Jesus. I would just encourage you, there’s no time like the present just to trust in this Jesus and just call Him your very own. He loves you. Father, we just bless Your name and we just love You. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.