Prayer -- Going Beyond Rub A Dub Dub Thanks For The Grub Series

Act 4:23-31

Prayer – Going Beyond “Rub a dub dub, thanks for the Grub”

Introduction

A. God is great God is good let us thank him for our food Amen

B. Lord bless this bunch as they munch there lunch

C. Rub a dub dub, thanks for the Grub

D. (Find some more “cute” prayers)

E. Is that all prayer is?

F. Is it just a couple of quick, lets get this over with and where good to go?

G. No need for hands, how many of you have gotten into the rut of quickly praying and it becomes just something you say and you give no thought to what you are saying?

H. Prayer has to be more then that right?

I. As we continue to look back to move forward we get to this passage in Acts 4

J. WE going to look how the first church handled prayer

K. We are then going relate it to our lives

L. The first thing we learn about pray is:

I. (23-24a) How To Respond

A. Explanation

1. Peter and John after there “normal” outing to go and prayer return to were their people were

a) Understand when they start off on this journey they thought that they would go to the Temple pray for a while come home and eat supper

b) That is not what happened, I do not think they ever made it to the prayer service, they healed the guy, and then got the opportunity to tell others about Jesus

c) Then got thrown into Jail

d) Got up the next morning, had to have a little conference with the Sanhedrin

e) Got threaten that if they kept talking about Jesus, bad things would happen

f) And finally were let go, and they return to their people

2. You could imagine the reaction of the people when they heard the whole story

3. Quite and eventful experience

4. Well something had to be done

5. So they appointed a committee to investigate the legalities of the threat imposed on Peter and John

6. Then another committee began a petition to the Sanhedrin that Peter and John should be allowed to do this

7. While another group was angry about the trouble they caused, they did not want to ruin the reputation of the Christians

8. No, sadly that is probably how we would have responded

B. Application

9. Take a look at how the first church responded

10. “They raised their voices together in prayer”

11. There was not the group in dissention

12. There was not a regularly schedule Board Meeting

13. The first thought, and their only thought, was to pray

14. After event like this, there is only one way to respond, prayer

15. Homework assignment number one:

a) What events in your life should you not respond in prayer?

16. Think through that one

C. Illustration

17. Do remember what happened on September 11th 2001? That evening there were tons of people who went to their churches to prayer, their were people who pulled out their Bible dusted it off and started to read it, there were people all over the country meeting at Starbucks and praying

18. These meeting were not a result of a decisions that was made by the Elders

19. These meeting were not a result of a Pastor preaching about the importance of a healthy devotional life

20. These meeting were not a promotional event were if you prayed you got a free cup of coffee

21. These were people who responded to the situation

22. When we face any situation, we need to respond like that beginning of the church responded

23. With Prayer!

II. (24b-28) Who to Recognize

A. Explanation

1. They began with recognizing God as Creator

2. Realizing that He is all and always will be All

3. Take the opportunity to thank Him for all that He had done

4. Despite how bad that whole Sanhedrin experience was There way Peter and John

5. Unharmed, still in good health

6. They also realized something very important

7. Being that they were of Jewish decent they were well versed in the Jewish Bible, which we refer to as the O.T.

8. They quote Psalm 2:1-2 then they realize that Herod and Pilate met together, and thus Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Psalm 2.

9. Now we do not know if this was a word by word transcript of the actual prayer

10. My guess would be that it isn’t. The only way they had to record prayers was by pen and paper, it is hard to keep up with recording all that

11. My guess would be this is a summer of the prayers of the people, this is in essence what they were praying, a completion of the prayers offered