Small, Yet Significant

Acts 4:5-13

Eighteen years ago, a book came out called, The Prayer of Jabez. The basis of the book was two short verses in 1 Chronicles 4 (in the midst of a genealogy, no less) in which Jabez prays that God would bless him, and God grants his request. The passage is one of those which we typically would gloss over, but this book brought it to the fore and made it prominent. Of course, all Scripture is God-breathed and useful (2 Tim 3:16), but the Jabez movement seemed to make more of this passage than it warranted. It’s hardly a passage around which one should build their life. Ultimately, I think that the Jabez movement serves best as a cautionary tale of what not to do with Scripture.
This short passage in Acts also would seem to be one of those passages which we are tempted to gloss over. A couple of apostles are in jail for preaching the Gospel and healing, and now the authorities are interrogating them for this work. If you read Acts enough, this sort of thing becomes par for the course. The obvious lesson is that one should preach the Gospel even though the authorities might punish you or even when you are under duress. Like the passage on Jabez, it looks like there is not much here for us to consider, and it looks like it would be inappropriate to take anything more from it.
Looks can be deceiving. Nestled in the middle of this passage are some important words which have much more significance than one might expect: “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them…” (4:8). We might think that it is common knowledge that the apostles and early church had the Holy Spirit in this way, so there is not much special about Luke mentioning this here. The thing is, though, that this is the first fulfillment of the promise Jesus gave to his disciples on two separate occasions. First, in the early part of Jesus’ ministry, he told his disciples, “On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matt 10:18-20). The second time was at the beginning of Acts when Jesus told his disciples, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The Holy Spirit would be with them as they testified on Jesus’ behalf, and now it has come true.
Rather than a throw-away remark, what Luke shows here is that God was faithful to his promise in the relatively small matter of giving the Spirit to aid the disciples’ witnessing. What makes this particularly significant is the context in which this promise is fulfilled. Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, is telling the story of a much bigger promise which God has fulfilled: God promised to rescue his people, and he did so through his Son, Jesus Christ. The juxtaposition of these two fulfilled promises serves to highlight the fact that God is faithful to his people in the big and small promises. Far from being a passage to gloss over, this is a passage which really shines forth the truth of the Gospel: We serve a God who will be faithful to save us just as he promised. Now that’s a message worth building your life around.

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