It is always thrilling for Christians, as it must have been for these first Christians, to belong to a church that is vibrant and growing. And the church in Jerusalem was certainly vibrant, and it was indeed (as Luke catalogues in these early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles) growing rather dramatically. It had begun (Acts 1:15, says Luke) with around 120 believers. After the day of Pentecost that number had been increased to at least 3120. We are told in Acts 4:4 that by this time there were 5000 men, besides others; in Acts 5:14 that there were multitudes in the church; and in Acts 6:7 that even that number had multiplied. And something unprecedented was happening in the city of Jerusalem. People, we are told by Luke, were talking about what God was doing. Even those who had not become Christian believers looked with admiration and favour, we are told, on this new Christian community.

This was a congregation that was now admired almost universally throughout the city of Jerusalem. Almost universally, but not quite! Because, of course, it is a written law of the kingdom of Jesus Christ that wherever the gospel advances, wherever the church truly grows, it always meets with opposition. “They persecuted Me,” said the Lord Jesus in John 15, “therefore they will persecute you.” And in a way it is not difficult to understand why persecution was arising. In Acts 3, when Peter had spoken about the Gospel and about the power of the Gospel, and then as he had addressed the people, his ministry had exposed the spiritual powerlessness of the religious leaders. His ministry had exposed their guilty consciences. In his preaching he called them to repentance. And the result, we are told in Acts 4:1, was that as they were speaking the Sadducees, the captain of the temple, the priests were greatly annoyed. They were enraged, because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And later on in Acts 5:17 we are told that these same leaders were profoundly jealous.

And so often this is what happens through the preaching of the Gospel and the strengthening of the church of Jesus Christ. False religious leaders become angry and are deeply jealous because they see, being affected by the power of God in Jesus Christ, what they themselves in their spiritual powerlessness cannot accomplish. And characteristically in the New Testament the response is a response of intimidation.

You see this again and again in the New Testament scriptures. As the Gospel is preached, as the church grows, opposition always follows. And the first tactic of that opposition is to seek to intimidate the Gospel into silence and to intimidate the church into weakness. And so as they speak to James and to John, to the apostles, to Peter, they gathered together in all their religious power. We are told in Acts 4:5 that scribes, Annas, Caiaphas, the rulers, the elders, John, Alexander, all who were of the priestly family - and they seek to silence the apostles by their intimidation.

Then as the apostles return to the fellowship of God’s people here in Acts 4:23 we discover their response to this intimidation. Their response is to gather their friends together and to give themselves to prayer. And here in Acts 4 we have, it seems to me, in Luke’s account of the growing church, an illustration, an example, a model, of how the early church met together for prayer. It is one of the places where most obviously in the New Testament we would begin if we wanted to know how the church learns to pray and how I learn to pray.

Expressing Confidence in their Prayer Hearing God⤒🔗

I want you to notice first of all how they begin. They begin by expressing their confidence in their prayer-hearing God. This is a very interesting prayer because under this enormous pressure the apostles spend more time describing God and His character than they do making intercession for their needs. Why should most of this prayer be taken up with this magnificent description of who God is? It is almost as though their specific requests are simply tapped in at the end. Why should that be the case? What difference does that make to the way in which they pray? It is this: they are expressing their confidence in His character. They are recognizing what He has promised to be to them. And as they praise Him for the marvels of His character they are essentially saying to Him, “Oh our Father in heaven, this is the kind of God You are, and You have promised to be this kind of God to us!” In other words, the largeness of their petitions is determined by the largeness of their vision of the glory and power and majesty of their God. As we sometimes sing: “We are coming to a King. Large petitions we will bring.”

And you see it is always this way. Those who come to a small God ask for small things. Those who recognize they come to a glorious God ask for great things. And so often our problem exactly here is the kind of problem that Luther at the time of the Reformation said was the problem of the great scholar Erasmus. He said, “Erasmus, your problem is your God is too man-like. Your God is too small.” And so their prayer is driven by their sense of the majesty and the power and the glory of God. This is not a matter of liturgical formality. This is the principle of the book of Daniel - that it is those who know their God who are strong and do exploits.

And so you see how they address Him. They address Him as the “Lord of creation.” And they use a word that is used very rarely in the New Testament. It is the word from which we get the word "despot." Absolute sovereign master. And as they speak about Him as the Sovereign Lord who has made the heavens and stretched out the earth, you see what that does for them? They have just come from seeing the Jewish leaders arrayed in all their pomp and finery and power and they recognize that this opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is just a drop in the bucket by comparison with the majesty and the glory of God. And they are encouraged to pray. And then they address Him not only as the Lord of creation but as the author of Scripture. You are the One “who through the mouth of our father David, Your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,” and they begin to rehearse the second Psalm, “Why did the Gentiles rage, and the people's plot in vain?”

And you see they go on to say that is exactly what happened here in Jerusalem. Our religious leaders and our political masters plotted together to overthrow the Lord and His Anointed. But what took place was prophesied by God. How does that encourage them? Because they understand not only are these threats simply a drop in the bucket to this great Creator and Sustainer, they understand that none of this has taken God by surprise. He is the One who prophesied that this would take place. And if He is the Lord of providence who has master-minded the glorious redemptive work of His Son, then He is not surprised nor paralyzed by the opposition that is arising to the preaching of the Gospel in Jerusalem through the apostles. And so you see, although they have been intimidated, although they have been brow-beaten, they are able to come to God and say to Him, “Oh Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, You promised that it would be so, and it is so.” And so we come to express our confidence in God.

You see my dear friends, when we do not pray we are practical atheists. And when the church does not pray it expresses its unbelief in the God of creation and the God of providence and the God of Scripture and the God of salvation. But when the church comes to look up to heaven and see the glory and majesty of God, and look into providence and see how He has superintended all of His wise and saving purposes, the church is bold and strong to make appeal to God.

Spreading their Needs before their Prayer Hearing God←⤒🔗

And so while they begin by expressing their confidence in their prayer-hearing God, they continue by making intercessory requests to their prayer-hearing God. Now, how did they pray? For what do they ask? Well, you notice that they do two things. The first thing they do is this (so important to see this): they spread their situation out before God. They say to Him (do you notice how they put it in verse 29?), “And now Lord, look upon their threats. See our situation, Lord.” And it is as they spread that situation out before the Lord, then they come to Him and ask Him to move.

When I was a student I used to attend a prayer service in the church I attended. It met on a Saturday night. And I think back on those days particularly remembering one of the older saints who used to pray so magnificently in these meetings. He would spread before the Lord some situation in the world or some situation in the church, some dire need that one of the fellow members might have. And then I was always waiting as a youngster for the point of transition in his prayers. He would spread the matter before God and then he would say, “But we are coming to Thee about this.” And it was just the very confidence in which he expressed these words I felt to myself as a youngster, “God is bound to answer this prayer, because here is His child having spread his needs before Him, and now he is saying, ‘We are coming to Thee about this.’” “Thou knowest, Lord,” he would say, “and Thou art able to act.” And that is what they are doing. They first of all spread their situation before the Lord.

And then they lay their desires at His feet. And in some ways this is even more telling. What are their desires? Well, here they are. They are persecuted, they are in danger, they are afflicted, and you would think the instinct would to be to say, “Oh Lord, please protect Peter and John and the other apostles. Oh Lord, we are frightened and we don’t want to suffer here in Jerusalem. Oh Lord, see us in our weakness and in our need and come and meet our practical needs.” But however legitimate it might have been for them to pray these things, what they actual pray for is, “Oh Lord, look upon their threats and grant to Your servants to continue to speak Your Word with all boldness.” What are they concerned about? They are concerned about this: that whatever their needs, whatever their weaknesses, whatever their inadequacies, whatever they might suffer, that the Lord would use all these things to enable them in every circumstance to speak about Jesus Christ with boldness. You see, they are far less interested in being shielded from persecution and far more interested in the advance of the Gospel, even if there is to be and even through that persecution. And so in a very startling contrast with the way we often, we are ashamed to say, pray. We who are so often obsessed, short-sightedly, with our needs! They see that their needs are simply the instrument that God can use to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Here is the apostle Paul in prison as he writes to the Ephesians and encourages them to wear the whole armour of God, and has every reason to appeal to them and say, “Look, I am in prison and I am in need, I am suffering; please pray that I will be delivered from prison.” Not a bit of it. “Please keep on praying that I may open my mouth to speak boldly about Jesus Christ as I ought to speak.” Now, isn’t this the very thing that we do every time we say the Lord’s Prayer? Yes, we have need of our daily bread. But the first thing is: “Thy name to be hallowed; Thy will to be done; Thy kingdom to come.” So as they spread their needs before the Lord and make their request to their prayer-hearing God, because their focus is on the advance of the kingdom of God there is absolutely nothing that will be able to stand in the way of the advance of the Gospel in this Christian fellowship.

Receiving their Response from their Prayer Hearing God←⤒🔗

And so in a way we are not surprised thirdly to see how they receive their response from their prayer-hearing God. They express their confidence in Him; they spread their needs before Him; they receive their response from Him. And so we are told, “When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken.” Incidentally, that is neither the first time nor the last time that the people of God have sensed, as God has come down among them, that there is a sense in which they feel that the whole building in which they are sitting, the whole place in which they are praying, seems to be so filled with the presence of the majesty and power and glory of God that they feel the building cannot contain the presence of God coming down upon His people. My dear friends, this is the most important thing in all the world for the church of Jesus Christ: that as we gather together in worship, prayer, ministry, and service, there should be such a sense of God coming down in response to the requests of His people to come among them that we feel we could never be the same again, having been in the glory of His presence!

And not only was the place shaken as they were overwhelmed with God’s blessing, but we are told they themselves were filled again with the Holy Spirit. Here they are, crushed and intimidated, but now they are filled with the Spirit. They are enlarged in dignity and grace and confidence by the coming of God’s Spirit upon them. And we are told: “they continued to speak the word of God with boldness.” You see how these three things go together? The coming to God and recognizing how glorious is His majesty and power and grace and sovereignty and wisdom. “We can trust Him with everything, even in the face of ruthless intimidation,” they are saying. And how they spread the situation before the Lord. “Lord, You see our situation. You see our needs.” This is not a perfunctory opening of a meeting. This is bowing before the Lord who knows and sees the needs of His people and saying, “Lord, You see our situation, and we are coming to Thee about this.” And as He pours out the overwhelming sense of His presence and fills them with the Holy Spirit, they are so full of God, full of Christ, full of a real sense that God is active among them that they almost cannot help themselves going out into the world and talking about what God has done for their souls in Jesus Christ.

We can organize strategies, we can devise plans for evangelism, but what we most of all need to see is the church on its knees and the majesty of God coming down. That is why in the great Welsh revival at the beginning of the 20^th century the motto of that revival became: “Lord, bend the church and save the people.” God does not ordinarily save sinners in numbers without first bending His church to its knees in prayer. Oh my dear friends, may it never, ever, ever be said of you and of me, “The reason you did not have was because you did not ask.” May God help us to be on our knees and to experience the power of God in answer to prayer!