Analog Church 10: Praying for Boldness

Acts 4, 23 to 31.

When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priest 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 through 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 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 all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of the Word of God with boldness.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Okay, good morning.

Welcome to church this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

Welcome to Redemption Church Denver.

I'm the lead pastor here.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

We are in the midst of our series called Analog Church.

And what we're doing is we're moving through the first four chapters of the book of Acts, and we're looking at how the early church, the church when it first started, can work as a sort of analog or an analogy for our church today.

How can we see the sort of day one clarity that they lived with in the early church?

And how can we apply that same sort of clarity to our lives today?

So that's sort of the project we're working on with this series, Analog Church.

And I want to provide a bit of context for where we are in our series, but first I'd like to pray together.

So would you guys mind praying with me?

Father, we pray that you would attend this time.

As we move through your word, I pray that you would, by your spirit, make it pierce our hearts.

That we might see you more clearly, and that we might know and enjoy you more deeply.

Lord, as we read in the prayer this morning, that quote from Augustine, our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

And Father, I pray that we would find that rest today.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So, uh where are we in the story?

Last week we saw Peter and John were brought before the council of the ruling authorities, the ruling religious authorities of their day.

The reason was because they uh had healed a man who was born lame from birth, and crowds gathered around this healed man, and they were wondering, how has he been healed?

What has happened here?

Has that he been healed because Peter and John are these incredibly special types of people?

And Peter and John were like, no, that that actually is not the case at all.

He was not healed by our power or piety.

He was healed in the name of Jesus Christ.

The one who just a couple months ago was crucified.

That man has been raised from the dead, he ascended to the right hand of the Father, and he's ushering in this kingdom that is going to be marked by events like this, by events like this healing.

So this man's healing is just a sign of Jesus' authority moving into the world, of this good news that healing is coming upon the world.

And the ruling authorities of the time were, it says they were greatly annoyed that they were preaching the resurrection.

They didn't believe that resurrection was possible, as many of us, we can be sympathetic with that position.

Coming back from the dead is a tough thing to wrap our heads around.

But uh they were greatly annoyed at this sort of teaching, and so they arrest Peter and John, bring them to trial, and uh basically command them to stop speaking in Jesus' name, and they don't.

They don't stop speaking in Jesus' name.

They approach the situation with this sort of incredible boldness, and uh they uh the council tries to threaten them, uh, but they realize there's there's nothing they could really do.

And that's because the man who was healed was standing next to them.

And he had been uh lame from birth, and so he he was 40 years old at the time, and everyone in Jerusalem sort of knew him.

And so there's this undeniable evidence of the power of the gospel moving in the world that when threatened, it couldn't really be stopped.

So that's where we are in the story.

They get released after being threatened, and they're like, don't speak anymore in the name of Jesus, and they're like, We're we're going to do that.

Um and then uh that brings us to today.

They're released, and they go and do a very normal thing.

They go and they just tell their friends.

Like, oh my gosh, okay, it's good to be out of jail.

Let's go talk to our friends about what just happened.

It's like you're not gonna believe the story of the past two days.

Like we there was a man and we healed him, and we were arrested, and then uh we brought before the council, and it was the same council, like the same guys that condemned Jesus to death.

And so we were nervous, but we just we said what we thought we should say.

And they come together, they relate this information to their friends, and then they they pray together for boldness.

That's what we're going to be looking at today.

It's this prayer for continued boldness.

The gospel has gone public and it immediately faces opposition, and they realize if this is gonna keep moving forward, if we're gonna see more people healed, it's gonna take a boldness that we don't necessarily find in ourselves right now.

And so we're gonna have to find what is this boldness that we need and how can we live with it.

So, boldness, that's what we're talking about.

It's like impact.

If it were a font, that's the font we'd be talking about today.

We're uh talking uh about that type of buoyancy, right?

That poise when you face opposition and you're able to still move forward, when you get bad news and you keep progressing, when you have something that's hard to say and you actually say it.

Boldness is a tough thing.

It can be a tough thing to apply to the world.

A lack of boldness is the reason that you missed the sale, and uh too much boldness with your boss is the reason that you got fired.

It's a tough thing to apply to the world.

And we have sort of caricatures of what boldness looks like, and we've known people in our lives that seem particularly bold.

And I think often our experiences we've known people that are very bold and we think you shouldn't be, and then we've known people who aren't bold at all, and yet we see that this sort of chaos surrounds both individuals.

Both the person who lacks any boldness, any ability to speak what's really in their heart seems surrounded by chaos, and then the person who is unable to censor anything is surrounded by chaos.

Boldness is tough, and it's really exposing because it seems deeply related to this idea of courage and vulnerability.

To be bold means to say something that you really think, that you that you really identify with and think is true, and then to put that out into the world so that it may be critiqued or judged.

It's really exposing of yourself.

So, how do Peter and John and this group that they're with, how do they cultivate this type of boldness?

We know without it, nothing good could possibly move forward.

And with it misapplied, it seems like we could bring a lot of bad into the world.

So, how do they approach boldness?

How can we build this into our hearts?

That's what we're looking at today.

And what we'll see is that boldness to Peter and John is deeply related to dependence.

Those are two things that we often see as sort of opposed to each other.

As though if you're really bold, then you finally become independent.

You're a differentiated person, you don't, you aren't depending on something else.

That's why you're able to stand on your own two feet and say something that may be otherwise difficult to say.

That's what makes you bold.

And yet we can imagine that boldness is almost always connected to some sort of dependence on something.

If you're being bold, you're depending on something for that boldness.

You're depending on your track record, you're depending on the effort that you put into your argument, you're depending on some sort of guiding principle that says, look, you have to express yourself in the world.

Or you're depending on the uh validation that you think you'll receive from what you're saying.

There's some sort of dependence at play.

And what we see with Peter and John is that they're dependent on the right thing.

They're dependent on God's provision.

And because of that, they have this incredible boldness that's coupled with this amazing humility.

Two things that we don't often see together.

So let's go ahead and look at their first moves.

After they're set free from the trial that they were at, uh, let's pick up in Acts 4, 23 to 24a.

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, We'll stop there.

So Peter and John are released from custody, and the first thing that they do is just go tell their friends.

And the first thing that they do as friends, after they hear it, their impulse is to lift their voices to God and pray.

That's the impulse of this group.

They're given this bad news and immediately they turn to God in prayer.

What we're gonna see here, by the way, is like a bad news masterclass.

If you want to learn how to receive bad news, which would be a great skill to have, if you're human, and watch the news, there's a great skill to have would be to receive this bad news.

And what we'll find in this sort of bad news masterclass is well, first let's look at the things that they they didn't do.

One thing that the apostles didn't do is they didn't hide their bad news.

They didn't think to themselves, and this is something that might have been easy to think.

Like, look, we're kind of the leaders of this thing, we put our necks out there.

Uh if we go back and we share the opposition that we know we're now facing, this is gonna melt the hearts of the people we're working with.

We this is something that we kind of need to play close to the chest and probably just need to bear ourselves.

They didn't take that approach.

And the reason, I think, is because they were too self-aware.

They knew what they were really made of, and they knew that their boldness would ultimately come from this dependence.

And so it understanding themselves enough that look, if this is the type of thing that we keep just trying to bear ourselves, we're gonna flame out.

We have to bring other people into this.

We have to bring a community even into our bad news.

Do you see how the boldness, all the mechanisms for boldness sort of hinge around this vulnerability idea?

This exposing of dependence.

It's hard to share our bad news.

We did that's not what you're making a snap of or your Instagram.

Remember when Instagram and Snapchat were different things?

And now they're exactly the same thing?

Yeah, I remember that too.

So what we're seeing in how they receive this uh bad news, they don't hide it.

They bring other people into it.

Next, they don't hide from their bad news.

It's one thing to hide the news in yourself from others, but they don't hide from their bad news.

One way that they could have done this is to imagine, okay, look, we just met with this council, they warned us to no longer speak in the name of Jesus, so here's our move.

We can find ways to communicate this message without using that name.

You know, there's ways to get the principles or the things that are really beneath this out into the world, and we can do this safely now without using the name Jesus.

And so a lot of our tendencies when we receive bad news of clear opposition is okay, that's fine.

I can strategize a way to sort of squeeze through this and remain unharmed.

Instead, they confront the reality of the situation as it really is.

They say, look, we've been warned by the most powerful people we know to not to no longer speak in the name of Jesus.

And we know that the truth of this whole message, the reason that man can walk, is because of Jesus, who's not a concept, but he was a man with a name whose hand we could reach out and shake.

To remove him and to make him just this principle, it removes the story, the power of what we're really dealing with here.

And so the reality of our situation is that these two facts really are in direct opposition to each other.

And for us to keep moving forward, we're just gonna have to face that.

We're not gonna hide from the difficulty that's really here.

We're going to step into it.

And when we're stepping into difficulties that we've made it clear to ourselves, we've made explicit, we realize we're going to need this thing in us that moves us through those situations, what we're calling today boldness.

There's gonna have to be something that when I when I look inside or when I when there's nothing else moving me forward because the opposition seems so great, I'm gonna have to have this thing in my gut called boldness that actually moves me.

So they don't hide their news, they don't hide from their news, and then we'll see this looking in to the prayer itself.

But what they don't do is they don't pray that God would just take away the problem.

Uh it one of the most fascinating things about this prayer that we'll look at is they don't pray, Lord, we're facing this opposition, take away this opposition.

They pray for boldness.

They pray that God would look at the opposition that they face and then it make them compatible with it, it make them able to overcome that type of opposition.

They looked and they said, okay, here's the opposition.

Now what type of person will I need to become in order to move through this?

And that's what they prayed for.

They prayed to become that type of person.

And so now this opposition is no longer something that's just against them, but it's actually something in the world that is really making them.

So those are three things that they didn't do.

And in each of those, we can see that these are the term that I wrote in my notes, because I I couldn't do any better, is these are whole people.

These are the types of people who are moving through the world and they look at opposition and they say, yeah, that really is opposed to me.

And I really have to face it.

And I'm not gonna deny it, and I'm not gonna try and pretend it isn't there, I'm not gonna retreat in some strange way, but I'm just gonna keep moving through.

You know.

I'll probably get to this part later, and I'm probably stepping on my own toes.

But I think we can become really thin people.

I think that if we had faced news like they faced, it would just kind of it would just kind of be the end of the story.

If it was, look, this is the decree we got from the the biggest authority that we know said you have to stop.

I think that would be enough for many of us.

Like if you really, if you you you're really honest with yourself to just say, okay, I guess that's the answer.

We'd probably say things like, I guess that's the answer God gave us.

He just closed that door.

And we wouldn't become anymore.

You know when we're brought into situations where we need to be bold, what's happening is the core of ourselves is getting exposed.

And oftentimes we find there there isn't much there.

This core thing that we thought was really in ourselves, it turned out this was just sort of a wrapping around of an invisible man with some sort of accomplishments to justify ourselves, or some sort of style to justify ourselves, or all these aesthetics that we pull into our lives to try and bolster some boldness.

But when something's really on the line, we really get exposed.

Okay.

So that's all that they didn't do.

Now let's look at what they did do.

Let's sort of go through their bad news masterclass.

What we see initially is, as I mentioned before, this group of friends reflex was immediately to pray.

When you put pressure, when you put bad news onto a group of people, you're gonna see what their core really is.

And theirs was we immediately need to turn to prayer.

That means they didn't start by giving advice to one another.

They didn't start by thinking, okay, the answers have to be in this room, and the heads in this room.

They started by turning to God.

That's an incredible reflex that they had as a group.

This showed that they were living in such a constant dependence on God that when they faced this initial bad news, it was just like, well, we know where to turn.

We have to turn up for this.

And with that reflex, sort of among friends, it's worth noting that they, Peter and John, after leaving the council, they went directly to their friends.

What I think that means is their dependence on God is reflected in their dependence on their friends.

You know, they make tangible their dependence on God by showing this real dependence on their friends.

And I think that's something that we're often afraid of.

We think if we need to show a dependence on our friends, then that demonstrates that we don't have a real dependence.

On God.

But with the early church, we see just the opposite.

Their dependence on God is reflected in the fact that they know themselves well enough to say, you know, I'm gonna need help through this.

I need some people in my corner.

And so I'm gonna demonstrate my dependence by going to them.

This is something that uh Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out in his book, Life Together.

He says, God has willed that we should seek and find his living word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of a man.

Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's word to him.

He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth.

The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother.

His own heart is uncertain, his brother's is sure.

When you face bad news, are you thinking to yourself, okay, this is something I just have to bear, I just have to put this in myself, uh, this is something that I need to keep my friends from, or uh, or are you thinking, you know, I gotta bring other people into this?

Are you self-aware enough to realize your need for dependence?

So that when you face something that's really difficult, and a reaction of yours is, I gotta bring some friends around me.

Because this is gonna require something that I'm just gonna need to hear truth from outside my own head.

Next, so we see their dependence on their friends reflects this dependence on God.

And as we move through the rest of the prayer, we're going to see that in their prayer they request boldness, and throughout the prayer, they cultivate boldness in themselves.

So remember, this is a bad news master class.

So we can get really practical with this.

When you hear bad news, this is how you both request from God the boldness that you'll need to face the obstacle that's ahead.

And it's how you cultivate in yourself, with friends, even better, that type of boldness that you'll need.

This is about becoming.

So in their prayer, we see four things.

We see God's glory.

They pray to bring their attention to these four things: God's glory, God's promises, God's action, and God's care.

So let's start with God's glory.

In Acts 4, 24 says, and when they heard it, they we read a bit of this, 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.

The first words out of their mouth when they pray is, Sovereign Lord.

You know, they had just been before the highest authority that they had known.

And then when they get together and they realize what they're facing, what they focus on is, Lord, you're the only real authority.

If there is any authority in the world, it comes from you.

You are the sovereign Lord.

All of this is in your control, none of this is out of your hands, and that's where their prayer is immediately directed.

And then they make that concept tangible by saying, you're the, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them.

They see like, look, your sovereignty is is around me.

It's these things that I engage with every day.

This is not outside of your purview.

This is not outside of your realm of understanding or action.

We're right in it.

I noticed uh this past week, I was like, okay, because just paying attention to this prayer.

And I noticed, okay, where do my prayers start?

And I picked up on this thing that I say, like almost every prayer, uh, which is like, Lord God, uh, and then I and then I pray like in like third person.

This is weird.

This is weird.

But this is the way that I've been praying, and it's weird.

So here you go.

I'll say something like, Lord God, I come to you now, and which is like, why do I say that?

It's like I'm narrating, like, and Lord, here I am in this chair.

And I'm right, and I come coming to you now, James says as he thinks about praying to you.

And Lord, I I come to you now from this place of of weakness and you know, and uh fear and whatever it may be, and I'll start my prayer there.

And so the way that my prayers are starting is like, okay, Lord, yeah, uh I'm just gonna I'm gonna start my prayer, which is talking to you, but I'm just gonna be looking at me the whole time.

Like for the first couple sentences of this prayer, I'm just gonna be looking in at myself.

And then when then by the time I get to the prayer part of like asking for something, I'm so discouraged that it's like, Lord, you know, I'm s I here I am in this weakness.

I come to you again and I'm praying far later than I anticipated praying today because I wanted to look at Facebook and I made a waffle and knew it would get cold if I kept.

And so by the time I get to what I'm actually praying for, I'm so I'm so bummed out of just where I am uh that I I've lost any confidence to ask for anything.

And my situation has gotten way bigger because I've become the key agent in it, and I've gotten way smaller.

That's not the way they prayed.

That's not where their focus went.

Their focus went to here's we they know the situation they are in, but look, sovereign Lord, the one who made everything.

I'm facing this opposition, but you're the one who's in control of all things, and you're the one I'm talking to.

What wouldn't they ask for at that point?

Their eyes aren't on themselves.

They're dependent.

Their strength is in the dependence.

Next, we see God's promises.

This is the next thing that they move into.

They address God, they frame their minds on Him.

Then they see God's promises.

This is Acts 4, 25 to 26.

These are just the next verses.

It says, You, God, who made everything, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, Why did the Gentiles rage and the people's plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.

What they reflect on is a scripture.

This is the first couple of verses from Psalm 2 that they're quoting.

They reflect on the scripture that relates directly to the type of situation that they're experiencing.

And the scripture is this Psalm 2, and it's saying, you know, the Gentiles were raging, the kings and the rulers and the peoples were gathered together against you, God, and against your anointed.

And then when they see that, when they see that this type of situation is precisely what God had promised they would encounter.

Now all of a sudden, it this depth of fear can be relieved because they can know, okay, this opposition that I'm facing doesn't mean that I'm out of his story.

I can see from what he's promised in Scripture that I'm in it.

That can be a balm to a weary soul.

That can be a fact that if you know it, it can keep you going when you otherwise would have turned around.

Just hearing this.

Yeah, this is normal.

It really is that hard.

That can be an incredibly helpful thing for me to hear.

Like with an almost two-year-old.

Just hearing from other parents.

Like, yeah.

I was like, are we doing something wrong?

Because this is this seems this can't be the way it's supposed to be.

This can't be how we all got here.

There'd be like six of us.

And then just hearing, like, no, yeah, it's just, it it really is.

It's just that hard.

You're not out of it.

It's just that hard.

It's like, okay, I guess I'll just keep going then.

I was talking to a friend earlier this week who uh don't worry, he doesn't go here and he's not gonna listen to the podcast.

So I'll just talk about him openly.

You can find him on Instagram at um, but he just broke up with his girlfriend, and he was explaining, he was explaining why, and it was like, well, you know, like we were we were getting these little arguments, and there were these things about her that just started to bother me, and they didn't used to bother me before, and you know, it just didn't seem like we had the passion that we had for the first like eight months of our dating.

And I was like, Yeah, that's a relationship.

What you were in, that's that what you were in was the thing.

That's called being in a relationship.

It's just that it's just that heart.

You're there's going to be seasons where the passion goes away, and you're gonna have to be like, yeah, okay, I'm still in the relationship.

I didn't get there in time, they already broke up.

Um, what do I do now?

And I was like, I don't know.

We'll laugh at his pain together.

The uh but there's when they look in the scripture and they see, okay, we ought to expect this type of opposition, we ought to anticipate this type of suffering.

Look, it says right here that the the rulers and the authorities and the peoples will be gathered together against the Lord and his anointed.

So this nothing's going wrong.

And when they've seen God's sovereignty first, and then they've seen God's promises, that allows them to properly interpret the situation that they're in.

And what they look at then is God's action.

So they quote this scripture that paints this picture of a situation, and then they relate that scripture to directly what they're experiencing.

It says in Acts 4, 27 to 28, 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 peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

See, this scripture from Psalm 2, that was this sort of generic description of a future event, they now are able to put names and faces to.

So when it says the Gentiles rage, the people's plot in vain, the kings of the earth set themselves against the Lord and against his anointed, they say, that was exactly right.

Because look, in this city, all the Herod, Pontius Pilate, the rulers, they have names and faces now.

And the Gentiles, the peoples of Israel, which is another way of saying everyone, were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

We know it was predestined because we can see it right in Psalm 2.

This is a perfect description of what we saw happen.

Now, what they get that cultivates this boldness in them is they see that this opposition that they are now facing, they've they've seen it work before.

And it looked like the most horrible thing that you could imagine happening.

The Lord's anointed, the one whom God anointed, all of these people rallied against.

And you know what?

All those people who rallied against him, they succeeded in what they wanted to do.

They really did kill him.

They really did crucify him.

And yet, how do they describe this event?

They describe it as to do whatever your hand in your plan had predestined to take place.

They see this most horrible event as not just the plan of God, but they they say the hand of God.

This is something that God was in some sense doing.

Now, those are hard things to hold together.

But what it means is that there is real opposition in the world.

And yet, even when that opposition mounts to its highest point, to be as adversarial towards God's purposes as we can imagine, God's purposes are never thwarted.

But they are even accomplished through that opposition.

Because yeah, they killed Jesus.

And what did that mean?

But the redemption of the whole world.

And so this opposition that they are now facing, they can have this incredible boldness to move forward into it, knowing that even if they start to face something that looks like imminent failure, it will still mean a share in this redemption of the world.

There's something about that that's undefeatable.

When they see how God's action really plays out.

This continues on, right where that psalm moves.

You can see how this psalm, Psalm 2, is in the back of their minds throughout this whole prayer.

In Psalms 2, verses 4 and 6, it says, He who sits in the heavens laughs.

Psalms 2:4

The Lord holds them in derision.

He says, As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.

So all those that are gathered together against the anointed one, against God and his purposes, what's God's response to this?

The sovereign Lord that we've looked at.

Our response to that is like, oh my gosh, these authorities, this is terrifying.

And God's response is like, oh my gosh, this is so lame.

These people I can't believe these, they're really, they don't know what they're doing.

They really don't know what they're accomplishing.

You know, he's standing next to the chief priests and the scribes are like, we're gonna kill Jesus, and it'll all be over.

And God's like, yeah, kill Jesus.

Atone for the sins of the world.

And then that will raise him to the position of king of the universe so that his glory will pour out over everything and every knee will bow to him.

Good plan, guys.

That'll defeat my kingdom.

He's laughing at them.

He holds them in derision.

He's literally mocking them.

He mocks.

He says, You got it, you, you have no, you have no concept of what's really happening here.

You know, that's where they are in this, that's the way God describes this in this psalm.

You know, think of that type of boldness.

Like it's you know, there's there's nothing more dangerous than somebody who has nothing to lose.

And that's the position that Peter and John are in when they understand this.

Is look, even the things that you're using to oppose us, because of our sovereign Lord, they will only accomplish his will.

It's like this cosmic jujitsu.

Where anything, any punch thrown, you know, it comes right back at you.

I'm rubber, you're glue.

Whatever.

Alright.

The next thing they see is God's care.

And this is the only request in the prayer.

In Acts 4, 29 through 30, after remembering these things, they say, And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while they stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.

They don't ask God to look at their obedience.

They don't say, God, look how we were bold for you before.

Don't let us down now.

They say, God, look at their threats.

Lord, look at what's coming toward us.

And then would you give us a boldness that's sufficient for that?

Make it so that this thing that is coming towards us doesn't stop your will moving forward in my life, but create in me something that is sufficient to meet this very thing that you've called me to.

Look upon their threats.

Notice they don't even ask for vengeance when they say look upon their threats.

But what they ask for, as they ask to continue to speak with boldness, they say, look upon their threats, give us this boldness while, what are you going to be doing, God?

While you stretch out your hand to destroy those people that are opposed to us.

That's not what they pray for.

They say, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.

You know, when we face opposition, it's easy for us to get distracted and start to consider that what it means to win is for their destruction.

And we lose sight of the mission that we're really on, which is Christ's kingdom, which is marked by healing and forgiveness and reconciliation.

And you know, in the same way you can tell that this psalm, this prophetic psalm about Jesus written by David, is what's echoing in the back of their minds.

In Psalm 210 through 12, the last verses say, Now therefore, O kings, be wise, be warned, O rulers of the earth.

Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the sun, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

It's that common refrain throughout the Psalms and the wisdom literature.

Be wise and be warned.

Because look at the God that we're praying to, who is sovereign, and even your greatest opposition to him will ultimately work to accomplish his purposes.

And so what we extend to you in hoping that you're wise and warned is this invitation that all who trust in him will be blessed.

That you don't have to continue waging war against his purposes, but that you can come in in the same way and honor him as he deserves to be honored and share in his blessing.

Ultimately, their boldness moves forward as an invitation.

Their boldness doesn't move forward to destroy, it moves forward to invite, to reconcile, to redeem.

And then, well, I'll share this.

I like this little quote.

It says, What the offer means is that there is no refuge from him, only in him.

And that's what their boldness announces.

Now, their prayer for boldness is immediately answered.

It says, 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.

John Chrysostom, who was a preacher in like the 300s, says, the building was shaken and that made them unshaken.

Their prayer for boldness was answered with a sign that honestly that's terrifying.

If we prayed and the building started to like shake, we'd be like, oh man, this is what I thought I wanted, type of situation.

But it wasn't terrifying to them.

But it emboldened them.

And it's because they knew the person that they were praying to.

They knew the power that he had.

They were dependent upon it.

And that was the source of their boldness.

And so before we take communion, I want you to take some time to consider.

Consider how and where you act boldly in your life.

And then what are you depending upon for that boldness?

Because there's something.

There's something in there that you are depending upon.

Then you need to consider is this something that it's reasonable to depend upon for my boldness, or is this something that would likely let me down?

Are you depending upon your degrees to finally give you permission to step into the areas that you know you should go?

Are you depending upon some sort of validation?

You know, some core of something that someone said to you that you think, okay, if that's true about me, then I can be bold.

You know, we prop up these fickle things in our hearts to make up the core of who we are.

So take some time and reflect and consider.

What if my boldness was marked by dependence on the God who was in control of everything?

What couldn't I move through then?

You know, that's a boldness that doesn't need to terrify you or expose your weakness.

It's a boldness that assumes your weakness.

So we can be incredibly weak people, accomplishing incredibly bold things when it's based on a dependence in God.

So consider those things before we take communion.

If we have time, I'll take one question.

But I sense that I went a little long.

No questions today.

Even better.

We're just as good.

All right.

Let's pray, then we'll take communion.

Father, I pray that you would make us the type of people that are so dependent upon you, so safe and secure in our dependence on you that we can stand even comfortably in precisely who you made us to be, against the real opposition that we face.

Opposition as personal as our families, as distant as our coworkers or bosses or employees.

Father, that you would teach us to be unshaken, knowing who we are depends on you.

Father, teach us that in the core of our hearts.

Lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.