It’s an X and an R. It looks like a P, but this is the word for Christ. The first two letters is C-H. Even you see the symbol here, the IHS. It’s Latin taken from Greek, and it’s just the first three letters of Jesus and the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The church has used colors from the beginning because the Lord has instructed us to use colors. We see that in the prescribed colors in the tabernacle. We see that in the words of the prophets describing and using colors and symbols and imagery for events of the Lord. Our lives are regulated by secular holidays and the colors associated with them. Our children all know pink hearts, pastel bunnies, black and orange jack-and-lanterns, red Santas. How much better it would be to see the changing of colors that celebrate in the church the life of Jesus? And to that end, that’s why we do that and why we bring these colors in, because it highlights the work in the Ministry of Jesus and the symbolism that comes with that. And so if you have any question about that, I just encourage you that we print out these all the time to take one and to read that.
Why we use colors the way that we do, that we would have in our hearts and our lives oriented around the person and work of Jesus Christ. Well, Acts 4. Peter and John were going to the temple to pray, and along the way, they healed a lame man, and everyone was amazed. Peter started telling people about Jesus, and the religious leaders had him arrested and brought before the council, and they charged him to not speak at all or teach in the name of Jesus. And when they had left and come back to the disciples, this is what they prayed together. But as we look through the reading of God’s word, please join me in prayer. Father, indeed, you are merciful. All the blessings of light come from you. To us, even in our darkness, you are still near. And we praise you for your manifest goodness. We thank you for your Holy word delivered to your church for the faith which has conveyed it from one generation to the next. And we ask or two that we might convey our faith in Christ to the next generation, abounding in joy and grace. Amen. Picking up these words of prayer in verse 27.
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 in the people’s plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and their rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed. For truly in the 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 in your plan had predustined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their hearts and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness. The word of the Lord. In the early 2000s, some of you might remember the sitcom, Malcolm in the Middle. It had this theme song with a refrain, You’re not the boss of me now. It was a catchy tune. It captured the little guy standing up for himself. We have a list of songs that are filled with this type of theme. Resisting the herd, Standing against the Man, Being our own boss, Going our own way, Roar, Born this way, Break my stride, My Stride, My Way, I won’t back down, Survivor.
The list goes on. It’s tons of songs like this. It’s a part of our identity. Think, too, of the Revolutionary War flag, the Gatsun flag is Don’t Tread on Me. It’s unofficial flag. It’s Nobody tells me what to do. And while it’s very American, we can hardly claim its originality because it goes all the way back to Genesis 3. Instead of treading on the snake, Adam and Eve, listen to it. Open rebellion against their creator. And we’ve been in rebellion ever since. The apostle Paul, he gives a summary of all this in Romans 1. He says, For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. They became foolish. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and serve the creature rather than the creator. The Bible shows us this. We do not want anyone telling us what to do. We don’t want to be submitted to anyone. We are in rebellion against our king and in his rule. And yet we refuse to submit to the Lordship of Christ. In one hand, we end up in submission to something diabolical on the other. In attempting to chart our own destiny and absolute freedom, we always end up in willing slavery to our sins.
We can blust or, Don’t tell me what to do or how to live my life, and I’m the master of my own destiny. And we end up being easily mastered by the very things that we’re think we’re free to do. But because the Lord is our King, we must submit our lives to him in order to be truly free. Our West Münster Shorter Catechism asks this question, how does Christ execute His office as king. It says, Christ executes the office as king in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, in restraining and encouraging all his and our enemies. We need King Jesus first to do our own hearts. We need him to rule, to defend us, to conquer his and our enemies. We think, well, how does he do this? Well, first he enters into the raging of the nations. We see this quote from Psalm 2, Why do the nations rage in the people’s plot in vain? It’s quoted by the disciples in Acts 4. This is after this incredible miracle of the healing of this man who was lame from birth earth, Peter and John are threatened and commanded not to preach about Jesus.
And what do they do? They gather God’s people together and they pray. And the prayer begins with an acknowledgement of God’s absolute sovereignty over everything. Sovereign Lord who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them. Then they looked to Psalm 2 as the prophetic fulfillment of what they just experienced. This experience they just had with the opposition of the ruling people, they saw as a fulfillment of Psalm 2. Psalm 2 is one of the most quoted in the New Testament or alluded to. And it speaks of this Royal Messianic Psalm, of this one who would come to rule in the line of David. They take it up in verse 25, Through the mouth of our Father David, your said by the Holy spirit, why do the Gentiles rage in the people’s plot in vain? It’s a statement of astonishment. It’s foolish to raise against Almighty God. But they do anyways. The kings of the Earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together. They set themselves in opposition. They take a stand against God. They’re marshaled against the Lord. They’re conspiring together. But this tempestuous stand against God is not just against him, it’s against his anointed.
The anointed, it speaks of a king. That’s the Hebrew word for Messiah means anointed, and the word Christ in Greek is the Greek word for anointed. So in the Psalm, it first speaks of the king and the lion of David who would be anointed as king. And the Messiah, the future Davidic king who would come and rule forever, it flows out of this idea. And we see the description of this anointed king in Psalm 2. It quickly eclipses as David or any of his descendants. They are a shadow, but the Messiah to come is the reality. And even when they were in exile in Babylon, Psalm 2 became the messianic hope for Israel. One day the king would come. The true king would return. And they continue, verse 27, For truly in this city, Jerusalem, they were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Piah, along the Gentiles the people of Israel. They recognize it as both Gentiles and Jews who are raging against God and his Messiah Jesus. Consider Romans 8, where Paul tells us, For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law.
Indeed, it cannot. Romans 8:7. The mind set on the flesh is hostile to God. We underplay our rebellion, but the Bible puts it in its proper place. The God of the Bible is offensive to man. We want to rule and reign as our own kings. We’re told that the Lord is to be a priority over every competing love, and that’s offensive. We’re told that we must forgive even our enemies. That’s offensive. We are told that our circumstances are under his control. Offensive. We’re told that our sexuality is under God’s rule, certainly offensive to our culture. And when you tell people this, they’re not just generally indifferent. They’re hostile, they’re angry, at God. They rage. Some may have that quiet internal rebellion, others it pours out an open hostility. But it’s opposition, hostility to God. It’s open rebellion. And it’s in the midst of this that the disciples took up their cause to the Lord in prayer to be bold believers amidst all of this raging. To be a bold believer. And so they acknowledge God’s sovereign rule. Verse 28 said, To do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. Now, these kings and the rulers are rebellion against God, but they’re actually doing what God had planned from the beginning.
None of this was outside of his control. For all of those who want to leave their own life, to do whatever they want, it’s like, well, God is still orchestrating His events through all that. No one is doing something that took God by surprise. And in fact, the very surprise they think they’re living out is just in plan with what he has ordained from the very beginning. The opposition that Jesus faced is now on his people, just like Jesus told us. They oppose me, they’re going to oppose you. Don’t be surprised. And so as they continue this prayer, verse 29, said, Lord, now look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness. They pray for the Lord to grant them boldness in light of Jesus ruling as Messiah. So what did boldness look like for them? It looked like them continuing to proclaim Jesus. It looked like they’re sharing as a community meeting one another’s needs. It looked like them staying on message even through persecution. They did pray for God to continue to work through them with his power, but they recognize the part that they could do.
They asked to be able to speak with boldness. That’s their job. And they recognize that God must do the rest. In verse 30, he says, While you stretch out your hand. Allow us to pray with boldness while you stretch out your hand. God is the one who has to do that? And God answered their prayer in a very visible way. Verse 31 said, When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were filled with the Holy spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. Jesus. Now, this filling of the spirit is not some second blessing or second Pentecost. It’s the enablement to preach Jesus with boldness. He empowered them to do the very thing they’re asking him for, to be proclaimers, to not back down. In light of all the opposition they’re facing, they are choosing to obey God rather than man. And they are submitting themselves to God’s sovereign rule and reign by continuing continuing to stand united and continuing in this proclamation. And we see the fruit of this as they willingly submit themselves to persecution and some even to death. Now, they’re not taking up their arms and rebelling against the rebels.
They’re following King Jesus, and they’re laying down their lives like he did. The Book of Luke and the Book of Acts are volume one and volume two. In the Book of Luke, it’s what Jesus did. In the Book of Acts, this is what Jesus people did. Luke tells us the actions of Jesus, and Luke tells us in the Book of Acts, the actions of the church. How did Jesus react to persecution and opposition? Well, he depended on his Father to carry out the mission for which the Father had sent him. And he brought together a band of disciples, committed to following after him, proclaiming his message. Okay, how did God’s people react to persecution in opposition? As one writer puts it, they depend on God to carry out the mission he has called them to, to band together in prayer to show corporately their commitment to proclaim the message. See the connection between Jesus and Jesus people? Submitting to Jesus is submitting to the Father’s plan and purpose. To the degree that you have given your life under the Lordship of Jesus, your life will hold together. Why? Because that’s what you were made for.
Go it alone and you start to come apart. Now, may be successful in one way on the outside, but enslaved to the very things you flaunt as freedoms to do. People who are enslaved to impurity and to sexual sin, people who are enslaved to performance and proving themselves, enslaved to the very notion of freedom and human autonomy by giving their life to empty and futile pursuits. That’s death. There’s no life there. There’s nothing good to come by trying to be the king of your own life. And then that question comes, Well, how do I enter into the Kingdom of the Messiah? In Paul’s letter to the Colossians in chapter one, he gives his prayer to these Christians there. He says, I give thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness, transferred us to the Kingdom of his beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Who qualified them? The Father. The Father qualified them in Christ by what he had done. He delivered them. They didn’t. He took from the domain of darkness and transferred them into the Kingdom of his beloved Son.
It isn’t something that we figured out and we somehow did. We accept what Jesus has already done. If we choose to stay in our own self-determination, we will continue to come apart. Jesus willingly came apart for us in our rebellion so that we would find true and abiding life in him. He died the death of a rebel for us rebels. And because of this, Jesus has qualified us. We’re entering into Advent next week, celebrating the first coming of Jesus as we wait the second. Very familiar words to us. Behold, wise men coming Jerusalem saying, Where is he who has been born, king of the Jews? O Bethlehem, the land of Judah, by no means least among the rulers of Judah, from you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. The words of the angel, the shepherd’s, Fear not, behold, I bring you good news or great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in a city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord. Or Isaiah 9, For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be on his shoulder.
His name will be called Wonderful counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end on the throne of David over his kingdom to establish it, to uphold it with justice, with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. That’s what we celebrate. The first Adam brought sin and death into God’s good world. The second Adam brings forgiveness and life into this now broken world. Jesus is to be our King. He has to call the shots. We submit to him saying, Lord, you know what is best for me. And we do so without putting conditions on the Lord for what we’re willing to do or not do. I will serve you, Lord, if you make my life happy and blessed, if you give me this thing that I need, if you make my kids follow you, if you will bring about these circumstances in my life, I will serve you. No, you can’t. You have to give up everything. You can’t hold any part of yourself back from King Jesus. If we will not take his yoke upon us, that means we will submit to other yokes.
We will be enslaved. Jesus alone can provide the yoke that’s truly free. But this freedom is not absolute human autonomy. That is the way of death. And when you speak, especially to Americans, about freedom, that’s the freedom they think of. Freedom to do whatever I want to do. Freedom to call all the shots. And that is death because we were made to have God on the throne. There can be no part of our life that’s walled off from King Jesus. And that question always is, is there a part in your heart that you’re struggling to submit to him, to his circumstances, to the things in your life that seem to be out of your control, that you want to be different? And because of that, is in there a limit to what you’re willing to do for him? Is there a limit? God will remove the limit stop because he loves his people. And along the way, sometimes people get fed up with the ways of the world and with The world is doing them. They say, They try to fight back using the world’s methods. I’m going to fight fire with a little fire.
No, you can’t. That’s not the way of Jesus. The disciples did not love their lives, even unto death. They went in the way of Jesus and in his likeness. They pray for boldness, not to shrink back, but to proclaim him, to entrust their lives to his purposes, even when they couldn’t make sense of it at times. It doesn’t make sense that in the early church, James is put to death by Herod. You’re like, Well, he was one of the three. Why did Jesus invest so much in him to have him taken out right at the beginning? Because Jesus doesn’t need James to bring about his purposes. James needed Jesus, but Jesus didn’t need James. And we recognize that. I’m going to tell you something obvious. The election is over. What are you talking about now? What does Jesus as king look like for you in your life? You’re a student, you’re a teacher, you’re a husband, you’re a wife, you’re a son, a daughter, a grandparent. What does Jesus look like as king in your life in those areas? And as those who are following King Jesus, what are the words coming out of our mouths as we talk to the world around us?
Is it the bold proclamation of Jesus from a spirit of love and life that encourages, invites people to see, I don’t know much about this Jesus, but from how you speak of him, I want him to rule and reign in my life. That’s what we have the power to do. We don’t have the ability to change the outcome of events and circumstances, hardly at all. And most time, when we think we do, it’s just our own imagination wanting that. What can you actually control? You can control the words that come out of your mouth. That’s why they’re praying for boldness. They’re not saying, God, smite these people and call down thunder and lightning and fire upon them. They’re leaving that to God. God, you see their hearts. But for us, give us boldness to proclaim. And that proclamation is living out the life of Christ. And they did so in their community, in the church, in unity, in love for one another, in care for one another. Because that’s what the rule of Jesus looks like in the lives of his people. There’s no part of our lives that are untouched by that. So you go back, what can you control?
You can control what you say and how you say it. The people can look at you and say, this man, this woman is living their lives submitted to the rule and reign of Christ in her life. And there’s something so radically different about this. And you think, well, what is it that I’m being called to at this moment? I’d simply tell you, wherever your circumstances, wherever they are, that you would pray to God to say, God, what is it in my life right now that I am not submitting to you? Or what part of my life right now, Lord, would you have me to have the rule of Christ come out in in a way that would make your name great? Those are dangerous prayers. Not that I keep on with the life I’m living in a piece in the calmness or that I would be able to chart through life with health, wealth, and prosperity. No. Pray and ask God that his rule and reign, Christ as King, would profoundly impact you and me in the very places that he’s put us. There would be no area of your heart, no area of your life that you will cordon off from him.
No people or place you will not be willing to go to when your king commands it. In Psalm 2, the Lord says, Ask me and I will give you the nations. It’s your inheritance. Speaking to the Messiah. And that Messiah in Matthew 28, he says, All authority has been given to me. Go and make disciples of the nations. The raging of the nations is going to be quelled by the good news of Jesus Christ, ruling and reigning. Brothers and sisters, we’ve been called to go make disciples of the nations because they have been given to Jesus as his inheritance. Pray with me. Father, as we come before you, we say thank you. Thank you that you have qualified us by what Jesus has done. And Lord, we pray that you’d help us to see that. Father, that you would continue to show us in any area of our heart where we have not submitted ourselves to your rule and reign. And Lord, by your spirit, you would enable us to walk in a bold submission to you. That Jesus would be glorified. And Lord, we would remind you of your promises to your son. You’ve given him the nations.
And Father, we ask then, please take the nations for Jesus, and may it please you to to that end. For it is in his name that we do pray. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.