12. “Supernatural Boldness” (Acts 4)

 

Acts 4

This is something I’m looking forward to us talking together about during Sunday School later today, because this passage speaks about something both deeply practical and deeply important to the mission Jesus has given us. It speaks about boldness. This morning I want us to notice why boldness is so important, to recognize what boldness is (and what it isn’t), and to understand how to get it: why it’s important, what it is, how to get it.

Why It’s Important

I want to suggest something that might sound like an overstatement but that I really believe is true. I believe that this passage records for us one of the most important moments in human history.   

As you might recall from last week, after Peter miraculously heals a paralyzed man and then preaches about the resurrection of Jesus, the religious leaders of the day were “greatly annoyed” at this, causing them to put Peter and John in jail.

That’s where our passage starts. We see quite the A-list of characters assembled: the rulers, elders, scribes, as well as people who were basically seen as religious royalty—the high priestly family. By Jerusalem standards, you essentially have here some senators, cabinet members, powerful lawyers, and even the president and vice president, maybe roughly 70 men all together in some important Jerusalem legislative chamber. These are powerful people. And in what is quite clearly a power move, they, verse 7 “set Peter and John in their midst.” 

Let’s just pause to imagine this: You spend all night in a grimy prison cell, having had no access to a lawyer or any legal recourse. You get barely any sleep, no shower or change of clothes, and minimal, if any, food. Then, finally, you’re taken by guards into a large room filled with people sitting on benches on all three sides, and as you walk in in your bedraggled, smelly condition, you see that these are important people—people you’ve looked up to and always have wanted to meet. You are standing in the middle with all of them looking at you. And their moderator asks you, “By what power or name did you do this?” We know you healed this man. How are you saying you did this?

And you know what would make these leaders happy. You know that what matters to them is that they continue to hold their positions of respect and power. If you can answer in such a way so that they no longer feel threatened: if, for example, you simply say, “It’s by the power of God” and leave it at that—which, technically is true, right?—well they’ll probably nod and say, “Good to hear it—this must have all been a misunderstanding—let’s avoid saying nonsense about a resurrection in the future, shall we?” and you can go home.

What do you think would be going on inside you in that moment? Maybe your heart would be racing; you’d probably feel a bit embarrassed, a bit out of your depth and scared. And you’d be tempted—boy, you’d be tempted to do the easy thing.

I once heard a Washington DC reporter note he’s seen something happen again and again: when important people who might have real concerns with how this government is run—maybe foreign diplomats or wealthy CEO’s, if ever they get invited to speak to the President of the United States about these things, almost always according to this journalist, the moment that person steps into the Oval Office, the same thing always happens. They melt, and they end up saying, “Mr. President, you are doing a wonderful job and our prayers are with you.” Just being surrounded by so many important people in such a powerful place exerts so much pressure.

And now we see Peter, who already has crumbled under far less when a servant girl asked him about his connection to Jesus, being in the equivalent of US Senate Chamber, with nobody else but John by his side, surrounded by very powerful and very angry men. What do you think in that moment you would have done?

Now consider how high the stakes are here—how pivotal this moment potentially could be. This is the first time the early church is experiencing resistance from people about their message. What do you think would happen if Peter and John in this moment backed down, if they chose to speak vaguely about God’s blessing and omit the news about Jesus or the resurrection? Peter and John are the leaders of the early church, whose example others undoubtedly would follow. If they chose here the path of remaining inoffensive, they and the rest of the church quite possibly could have maintained a comfortable, peaceful life: no prison, no martyrdom for people like Stephen or James.  But also, the Word of what happened at the resurrection, the Word of Jesus being King would not have spread beyond that group.

It seems we have here an Achilles heel in the mission of Jesus, a potential weak point in his plan to save this world. Remember, in Acts we’ve seen that there is something extraordinary about this “Word,” this gospel. It has power. When people hear about what Jesus has done—about how he is the risen king who offers God’s forgiveness, lives are changed. Those in darkness and hopelessness can see and are filled with joy. People are brought out of slavery to sin into the glorious freedom of being beloved sons and daughters of the living God, citizens of a new heavenly kingdom. It’s awesome.

But for this powerful transformation to happen, people need to be told this Word, and that is a task the risen Jesus has specifically given to his apostles and his church. Jesus speaks to the world through his people. Which means if the church can be made to stop talking about Jesus, the Word that changes everything will not spread; Christ’s Kingdom will not expand; and sin and death and Satan will have won.

So there’s a very real sense in which the history of the world hangs on this moment with Peter—on what he and John choose to say before the Jerusalem power brokers. If they had backed down in this moment, well let’s just say that you and I would probably not be in this place today and the world would be a far poorer place.

But of course, that’s not what happens. Peter, hearing the question, responds first by basically repeating the question: verse 8, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed…” Perhaps in this moment he takes a deep breath, maybe silently praying while everyone waits to hear what he says. Then he continues, “Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well.” Now Peter could have stopped there, because he’s answered the question. But he’s not finished—he wants to do more than tell the truth: he wants them to understand what this means. “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. 12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

It’s an extraordinary response. He says all the uncomfortable things that he knows they won’t be happy to hear: “This is the Jesus you crucified, the one you rejected” so that even they have an opportunity to respond: “Salvation is found in his name and his name alone.”  

What we see in this response is boldness: no editing, no softening, and also no defensiveness. Just the truth plainly stated. It’s remarkable.

In fact, Luke shows us very clearly that this boldness is more than that. It’s supernatural. Did you notice how verse 8 explicitly tells us right before Peter speaks that he is “filled with the Holy Spirit.” He is being strengthened by the very power of God. And notice the reaction of the leaders: when they see the boldness of Peter and John, they are astonished. This doesn’t happen! People who are so much lower in status and importance than they—country hicks from Galilee who never once were tutored by a rabbi—how is it that they can speak with such certainty and confidence?  

There’s been a lot of this kind of astonishment recently in the land of Israel: when Jesus began preaching, it says people were astonished at his boldly speaking with authority. Later on, the Jerusalem leaders when they were trying to trap Jesus with clever words are astonished at the bold, unruffled wisdom of his answers. And now here, 2 nobodies are speaking like this to them—speaking with boldness? Again, astonishing. And notice what it goes on to say: “And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.” 

I said a moment ago that we have in Jesus’ mission what appears to be an Achilles heel: if the church is silenced, the mission fails. But here in this moment we see Jesus’ solution. Jesus is going to save the world, and so he will not let the Word go unheard: by his Spirit he will grant his church his boldness.

I say that he grants it to his church and not just to his apostles because of what happens after. When Peter and John are sent away—because it turns out the leaders don’t feel comfortable punishing someone that the crowds love for healing a man—when they return to members of their church community, probably gathered in a large house, they relay what happened. And right when they are done, what do his fellow believers do? They pray urgently, because they all understand what this means. These attempts to stop the spreading of the Word won’t be limited only to Peter and John. It’s something they will all face. All of them in their own way will feel the pressure to stay quiet—pressure that will feel too big for them. And so all together they pray, and the heart of their prayer is verse 29, “And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness.” Lord, give us boldness!

Because for the mission of Jesus to succeed, the Word must be spoken. And for the word to be spoken, the Church must be bold. In the face of sin and Satan’s resistance boldness about the Word of Jesus is you and I need to be faithful to our calling. We can only be Christ’s beautiful church for the GOOD of the world as we also “continue to speak Christ’s word with all boldness.” Christian boldness is deeply important.

What It Is

But what is it? What does that mean to speak Christ’s Word with boldness? That’s the second question I want us to consider, and I want us to think carefully, because Christians often misunderstand boldness. Here’s how I think we are meant to understand boldness: It’s communicating the Word with courage, love, and confidence.

• With courage: this is probably the part of boldness we most immediately think of: it’s about speaking the truth even despite the risks, even despite the personal cost.
• The boldness we’re talking about here is also about communicating with love. This aspect of boldness might be easier to overlook, but it’s also crucial, because the message being communicated is described in Acts as the word of God’s grace. When Peter preaches his first sermon it says he exhorts people to be saved, and in the same way even here, he tells these leaders what needs to happen for them to be saved. In other words, the goal is not just to say stuff—to just check off a box: the goal is to help people to hear.
• And yet, at the same time, this boldness of Christ is a confident boldness. And by that I’m not speaking about self-confidence, but rather confidence in the Word. You never see with Jesus or the apostles attempts to manipulate or nag or defensiveness: the goal simply is to allow the truth to be heard and then to let the Word do its work.

Courage, love, confidence. Perhaps it would be helpful to illustrate using an analogous situation. Say you have a close friend with a gambling problem, and you’re convinced that the most loving thing to do is confront him. What does it look like to be bold?

• You could decide that you don’t want to lose the friendship. Having this tough conversation sounds hard and difficult and potentially costly, and so you decide not to have it. Obviously, that’s not boldness: there’s no courage in that.
• On the other hand, you could just in the middle of an argument just yell at your friend, “Oh yeah? Well you have a gambling problem. There, I’ve said it.” You have spoken the truth—you can congratulate yourself for saying the words. But you’re not really trying to help him to hear it. It’s not being said with love—that’s not the boldness we’re talking about either. 
• Or, you could just decide to try to fix it for him. You could try to take away his phone, you could keep mentioning to him how much time he’s spending on those apps, you could keep nagging him to try to stop it. Rather than making your concerns clear and giving him space to consider it, you’d be trying to control your friend. That’s not boldness—that’s pushiness.
• No, boldness is thinking through how to have the hard conversation in the way your friend is most likely to hear it—maybe even bringing another person into it, sitting down, sharing your concerns as plainly and as clearly as possible and then allowing whatever response without trying to defend yourself or force your friend to agree.  

It’s not hard to think of parallels when it comes to talking about Jesus.

• Some of us have close family members who seem to have abandoned Christianity. We so long for them to know Christ, and we so feel out of control, that we can act as if we keep talking, keep pushing, we might somehow convince them into a changed opinion. That’s not boldness, because it’s not showing confidence in the Word. that’s nagging—it’s a form of control.
• Others of us feel a pressure with everyone we meet, the feeling that if we have a conversation with some person we’ve just met on the plane, we should find a way to wedge the gospel in, to somehow just blurt it out. That often keeps us from listening to or even truly seeing the person. Our conversation is less guided by love and more by a feeling of the need to check the witness box off. That also is not boldness.
• But other times we have friends or co-workers that we care about; people with whom we could have a conversation about deeper matters if only we were willing to go there. People we could invite to something like Jazz Conversations, but we’re afraid to, because we don’t know how that will affect our relationship. Boldness is about having the love and courage and confidence to take that risk. 

Notice, boldness doesn’t have to mean standing in front of a large crowd and speaking. That’s Peter’s gift, but it’s not what everyone in the church did. It doesn’t have to mean chatting with a complete stranger about the gospel: that will happen later with Philip because God opens a door for him, but that’s not always how it works. Sometimes it looks like the Samaritan woman inviting her friends: “Come and see.” Sometimes it involves participating in a larger work: Paul tells the deacons that the work they do of serving others makes boldness more possible. What is always the case for this boldness is that it is a loving, confident, courageous commitment to spread the Word of Christ. Because it’s by this Word that Jesus saves.

How to Get It

But let me also say something else. Boldness is hard. Speaking personally, I am someone who has such a strong cringe reflex, I can barely get through an old episode of the Office without hiding my face. And if you put me in a context where I’m uncomfortable, I find it really hard to say something that might look foolish in the eyes of others. Maybe you’re like that too.  

The problem here is not that boldness is foolish or reckless. The opposite is true in fact. Viewed rightly, being bold about the Word of God is the sanest pathway imaginable. Because let’s think about it: we’re talking about being bold not just about anything; we’re being bold about the word of GOD! The one those praying refer to as the Sovereign Lord! The one who made all of this!

Backing up for a moment, when the Jewish leaders let the two apostles go, they first warn Peter and John to stop talking about Jesus. And listen to Peter’s response—verse 19: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than God you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” Did you catch that? 

Peter is basically saying, “Take your blinders off. Right now in this moment, you’re only paying attention to these earthly trappings of power—in this moment you probably feel really strong. But that’s an illusion, isn’t it? There is a God who rules everything, and we are smaller than ants compared to him. All that really matters is how he sees things. And what do you think He would prefer? For us to listen to you? Or for us to listen to him?”

At the heart of Christian boldness is an awareness that we live before the face of a very big God who makes everyone else look comparatively very small. If God is Lord of all, then in the moment when I have the opportunity to speak about Jesus, no matter how vulnerable and uncertain I might feel, I can know that I am in his hands and that I don’t need to be afraid. Realizing that God is in control also means that I can prayerfully wait on him to provide openings, opportunities when a person is able to hear what I want to share about Jesus. And if his Word really is filled with his power, then I when I’ve shared about Jesus, I don’t need to be the person who pushes it and forces it and make it be believed. I can confidently allow his Word and his power to do the work. When I can see the big picture—truly see and believe it, then boldness makes all the sense in the world.

The problem, as I said, is not that boldness is foolish or reckless. The problem of course, is that so often I don’t see what is true. That’s why I, why we, can sometimes fail to be bold. We can know these things in our minds, but in our interactions with others, we don’t live as if God is God and that Jesus is King of all things. 

If that describes you, let me remind you of what our passage has shown us. Peter wasn’t naturally bold. He failed on his own. He was bold by the power of the Spirit. If you remember Ephesians, Paul also is not naturally bold: he asks for the Ephesian church to pray for him that he might be bold to speak about the gospel. And likewise, the early church, so filled with enthusiasm, knew that they were not naturally bold: that’s why they immediately called out to God, “Grant your servants to speak with boldness!”

And then, what happens after they pray? Verse 31: “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.” God answered their prayer. He gave them a boldness that was not naturally theirs, because this is a prayer he delights to answer. Because this is how he is saving the world: through giving boldness to uncertain people like you and me, so that we in love and confidence and courage might speak the Word of Jesus to a world that needs it.

So let’s do what the early church did. Let’s pray.