“When The Heathen Rage”
Acts 4:23-31
Life is always good, right???
What happens when you are persecuted for doing nothing wrong, but simply sharing with others what the Lord has done.
We have a great example before us to consider the next time you are sharing a testimony and others decide to make life ruff for us.
Illustration:
There were 40 Roman soldiers, in the famed Twelfth Legion of Rome’s imperial army; and in AD 320 Emperor Licinius had sent down an edict commanding all soldiers to offer a sacrifice to his pagan god. Forty of the soldiers were followers of Christ, who refused to renounce Christ. They were stripped naked and taken to a frozen lake near Sebaste (present-day Sivas in Turkey). They were instructed that if they renounced Christ, they would be freed and taken to a hot bath nearby in order to recover. Throughout the night the men stayed together, singing their song of victory.
The 40 soldiers persevered until one man relented. He renounced Christ and was taken to the hot baths to warm up, leaving 39 soldiers on the ice. However, one of the guards watching the 39 saw the supernatural glory resting on these 39 confessors of Christ; he stripped naked and joined them on the ice, thereby restoring the number to 40.
William Borden:
In 1904 William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school. As an heir to his family's fortune, he was already wealthy and for his high school graduation present, William Borden's parents gave their 16-year-old son a trip around the world. As the young man traveled through Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, he felt a growing burden for the world's hurting people. Finally, William Borden wrote home about his "desire to be a missionary".
One friend expressed disbelief that Bill was "throwing himself away as a missionary."
A story often associated with Borden says that, in response, William wrote two words in the back of his Bible: "No reserves."
During his first semester at Yale, Borden started something that would transform campus life. One of his friends described how it began: "It was well on in the first term when Bill and I began to pray together in the morning before breakfast.
Borden's small Morning Prayer group gave birth to a movement that soon spread across the campus. By the end of his first year, 150 freshmen were meeting weekly for Bible study and prayer. By the time William Borden was a senior, one thousand of Yale's 1,300 students were meeting in such groups.
Borden's missionary call narrowed to the Muslim Kansu people in China. Fixing his eyes on that goal, Borden never wavered. He also challenged his classmates to consider foreign missionary service. One of them said of him: “He certainly was one of the strongest characters I have ever known, and he put backbone into the rest of us at college. There was real iron in him, and I always felt he was of the stuff martyrs were made of, and heroic missionaries of more modern times.”
Upon graduation from Yale, Borden turned down some high-paying job offers. It has been reported that William Borden wrote two more words in his Bible: "No retreats."
William Borden went on to do graduate work at Princeton Seminary in New Jersey. When he finished his studies at Princeton, he sailed for China. Because Borden hoped to work with Muslims in China, he went first to Egypt to study Arabic. While there, he contracted spinal meningitis. Within a month, 25-year-old William Borden was dead.
When the news of William Whiting Borden's death was cabled back to the U.S., the story was carried by nearly every American newspaper. "A wave of sorrow went round the world . . . Borden not only gave (away) his wealth, but himself, in a way so joyous and natural that it (seemed) a privilege rather than a sacrifice," wrote Taylor in her introduction to his biography.
Was Borden's untimely death a waste? Not from God's perspective. Prior to his death, Borden had written two more words in the back of his Bible. Underneath the words "No reserves" and "No retreats," he is reported to have written: "No regrets."
Buried in a forgotten cemetery in Cairo Egypt and left un-attended as a Christian Cemetery lies the body of William Borden but never forgotten to those he touched with the Gospel message.
Jim Elliott, another promising young missionary killed in his prime, could confidently say some 40 years later, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
I am not here to recruit anyone into the ministry; but I do remind you that the cost of serving the Lord can seem to be very high.
But not in Christ.
In Christ it is a little sacrifice to give one’s life into God’s will.
I. A Time To Testify
Vs. 23 “And being let go, they went to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them.”
Pastor Woodfield used to remind us; “Give a testimony not a groanimoney.”
They came back to rejoice of the opportunity to see so many saved and to testify to the leaders of the Temple of how Jesus is.
II. A Time To Praise
Vs. 24 “And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is:”
I cannot say for anyone else but I can remember many times when told to choose between my faith and my duties that Christ came first as I preformed my duties.
Story:
There was a time in 1981-1985 when many of my co-workers in the Navy were Christians. We would meet at lunch to pray, sing, and testify about the Lord. One day our Division Officer gave us an order that we would no longer bring our Bibles to work nor pray even at lunch time. That day we gathered hand in hand and prayed. After work I took a brand new Bible around to the other 13 men and each signed it knowing I was going to give it to the Division Officer in the morning.
The next morning I walked into his office and respectfully refused to obey an unlawful order; then I gave him the Bible we had signed.
Several years later in 1992 I saw this man and he invited me to come to his office where I noticed the Bible sitting on his desk. He smiled and said that he had trusted Christ as his Saviour and now carried that same Bible to work every day.
III. A Time To Remember
We are reminded of Psalm 2:1-3 “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? 2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, 3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
Vss. 25-28 “Who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things? 26 The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ. 27 For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, 28 For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.
Psalm 2: 12 “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”
God will have His deserved worship and I for one desire it to be without His anger.
IV. A Time To Ask In Prayer
Vs. 29 “And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word, 30 By stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus.”
I am reminded of three (3) Hebrews who were given the order to bow before a statue or die and there response brings courage to as many who would trust the same God.
Daniel 3:16-18 “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. 17 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. 18 But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”
I cannot testify that I was given this choice, but I can testify that we are given, each day, opportunities to testify and often do not.
So my prayer is often the same… “and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word,…”
V. A Time of AWE
31 “And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.
Could this be just explained away as a freak of nature?
An earthquake?
Sure but it did not say the city was shaken only “the place was shaken where they were assembled together”
They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.
Their being filled with the Holy Spirit here rather denotes their being inspired with confidence or boldness more than being given new powers.
We do not need new powers to be a testimony; we need a burden for the lost and a willingness to move when the Lord shows to us the next step we must take.
Conclusion:
What time is it in your life?
This may be the time you realize you need to be saved.
This may be the time you realize the life I live does not really belong to me, but to God
This may be the time to just praise His Holy Name.
But it is always time to tell others of Christ!
