Acts 4:23-28 23Now after they were released, they went to their own people and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24 And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, 25 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? 26The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Messiah.’ 27for truly in this city there 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, 28 to do whatever your hand and your purpose had predestined to happen.
Peter and John returned to the other apostles and disciples (idious, their own), who gathered daily for prayer and fellowship. What a story they had to tell. They had heard and witnessed from a distance Jesus’ own trial before this august body of leaders. They knew what happened to him and what could happen to them, but they had learned an important lesson from him about faithfulness to God’s mission. There were two significant differences between their response to Jesus’ trial and their own. One was the power of Jesus’ resurrection and his name, which represented his power and authority. The other was the presence of the Holy Spirit, who gave them courage and words to say during their trial.
The gathered group rejoiced and praised God for the good news. The unity of the church is made clear with the word together (homothymadon, having the same mind, united in purpose). Instead of complaining about their probloems, they praised God for the victory. Everything had been going so well up to this point, with thousands of people coming to believe in Jesus. The arrest of Peter and John may have been a shock and a wake-up call to the reality of opposition and looming persecution. The group responded in a prayer of praise. As an author, Luke gives a summary of the prayer as the voice of the group and not any one individual. The prayer gives the overall content of the group’s reflections at that moment of initial persecution. We get a glimpse into not only the thinking of the earliest believers but also of Luke as an evangelistic writer seeking to develop the faith of Theophilus.
The first item to note about the prayer is the group’s confidence in God as the Lord (despota). This word has the sense of highest authority, someone in full control, like the master of a slave. The believers acknowledged that God was in full control of the situation, and so they had nothing to fear. He was the creator of all, including heaven, earth, and sea. When trouble comes, we know who is in charge, so we can rest assured that ultimately, everything will work out for our good, even if we have to experience trouble and persecution (Romans 8:28).
The group then turned to Scripture in a reflection on Psalm 2:1-2. A significant insight about the Bible is noted in verse 24 in that they recognized the human author, David, and the divine author, the Holy Spirit. Psalm 2, as with all Scripture, was inspired by the Holy Spirit and given through human agency. The psalm is interpreted as a prophecy of what had just happened, or at least a type of the situation described in Psalm 2. The focus of the quote is how leaders set themselves up against God and the Messiah. Verse 27 indicates that the Jewish leaders were no better than the Pilate, Herod, and the Romans when they should have been the first in line to accept Jesus as the Messiah. Messiah is the translation of the Greek Christos, which is found in the Septuagint quote in these verses (probably cited by Luke, who intends a clear connection). The prayer acknowledges God’s plan and control of everything. Although Jesus’ death came through the agency of the Jewish and Gentile leaders, it was God’s plan all along. Since that was the case, the believers could be confident that they were also part of God’s plan. No matter what the leaders did to them, ultimately, they could rest in their faith in God’s sovereignty.
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