Acts 4:28

4:23-31 Christ's followers do best in company, provided it is their own company. It encourages God's servants, both in doing work, and suffering work, that they serve the God who made all things, and therefore has the disposal of all events; and the Scriptures must be fulfilled. Jesus was anointed to be a Saviour, therefore it was determined he should be a sacrifice, to make atonement for sin. But sin is not the less evil for God's bringing good out of it. In threatening times, our care should not be so much that troubles may be prevented, as that we may go on with cheerfulness and courage in our work and duty. They do not pray, Lord let us go away from our work, now that it is become dangerous, but, Lord, give us thy grace to go on stedfastly in our work, and not to fear the face of man. Those who desire Divine aid and encouragement, may depend upon having them, and they ought to go forth, and go on, in the strength of the Lord God. God gave a sign of acceptance of their prayers. The place was shaken, that their faith might be established and unshaken. God gave them greater degrees of his Spirit; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, more than ever; by which they were not only encouraged, but enabled to speak the word of God with boldness. When they find the Lord God help them by his Spirit, they know they shall not be confounded, Isa 1.7.

The apostles mind not so much second causes in what my Saviour or themselves suffered, but see and acknowledge God in all; who makes a straight line with a crooked stick; and is holy, wise, and good in overruling and permitting the greatest evils; and does deserve to have praise for all things, Ephesians 5:20 : see Acts 2:23 . Thy hand and thy counsel; thy power and right to dispose of all persons and things; alluding to Leviticus 16:8 : as the lot cast for the two goats (the disposing of which being from the Lord, Proverbs 16:33 ) did determine which of the goats should be sacrificed, and which should escape; so it was not without a Divine disposition, that Christ was made a sin offering for us; though this no way excuses the wicked instruments of his death and suffering.

Acts 4:28 . Ποιῆσαι , to do ) They could not do more, though they wished it. Construe this with, were gathered together , not with, Thou hast anointed : for the subject of the verb to do are the enemies gathered together, concerning whom the prediction had been given. Comp. ch. Acts 2:23 , “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God :” Acts 3:18 .— ὅσα , whatsoever things ) not fewer things, but not more.— ἡ χείρ σου καὶ ἡ βουλή σου , Thy hand and Thy counsel ) The order of the words is worthy of observation. The hand of God is felt sooner than His counsel. His power and His wisdom are meant.— προώρισε ) determined before .

Verse 28. - To do for for to do , A.V.; foreordained to come to pass for determined before to be done , A.V. To do (for the sentiment, comp. Acts 2:23 ; Acts 3:18 ). They were gathered together for the purpose of executing, their own will, as they thought, but really to fulfil the purpose of God (see also Isaiah 10:5-15 ; Isaiah 37:26, 27 ). See here the comfort to the Church of looking upon God as the δεσπότης of the whole earth. Acts 4:28

28 . for to do , &c.] God made the passions, which the enemies of Jesus indulged, to be the instruments for working out His will. So men when they suppose they are choosing their own way, have the ends thereof shapen by God “rough-hew them how they will.” Their misdeeds are made to execute the will of God, yet they are not on that account exempt from blame.

(28) To do whatsoever thy hand . . . .—The great problem of the relation of the divine purpose to man’s free agency is stated (as before in Acts 1:16 ; Acts 2:23 ), without any attempt at a philosophical solution. No such solution is indeed possible. If we admit a Divine Will at all, manifesting itself in the government of the world, in the education of man kind, in the salvation of individual souls, we must follow the example of the Apostle, and hold both the facts of which consciousness and experience bear their witness, without seeking for a logical formula of reconciliation. In every fact of history, no less than in the great fact of which St. Peter speaks, the will of each agent is free, and he stands or falls by the part he has taken in it; and yet the outcome of the whole works out some law of evolution, some “increasing purpose,” which we recognise as we look back on the course of the events, the actors in which were impelled by their own base or noble aims, their self-interest or their self-devotion. As each man looks back on his own life he traces a sequence visiting him with a righteous retribution, and leading him, whether he obeyed the call, or resisted it, to a higher life, an education no less than a probation. “Man proposes, God disposes.” “God works in us, therefore we must work.” Aphorisms such as these are the nearest approximation we can make to a practical; though not a theoretical, solution of the great mystery.

Acts OBEDIENT DISOBEDIENCEActs 4:19 - Acts 4:31 . The only chance for persecution to succeed is to smite hard and swiftly. If you cannot strike, do not threaten. Menacing words only give courage. The rulers betrayed their hesitation when the end of their solemn conclave was but to ‘straitly threaten’; and less heroic confessors than Peter and John would have disregarded the prohibition as mere wind. None the less the attitude of these two Galilean fishermen is noble and singular, when their previous cowardice is remembered. This first collision with civil authority gives, as has been already noticed, the main lines on which the relations of the Church to hostile powers have proceeded. I. The heroic refusal of unlawful obedience. We shall probably not do injustice to John if we suppose that Peter was spokesman. If so, the contrast of the tone of his answer with all previously recorded utterances of his is remarkable. Warm-hearted impulsiveness, often wrong-headed and sometimes illogical, had been their mark; but here we have calm, fixed determination, which, as is usually its manner, wastes no words, but in its very brevity impresses the hearers as being immovable. Whence did this man get the power to lay down once for all the foundation principles of the limits of civil obedience, and of the duty of Christian confession?

His words take rank with the ever-memorable sayings of thinkers and heroes, from Socrates in his prison telling the Athenians that he loved them, but that he must ‘obey God rather than you,’ to Luther at Worms with his ‘It is neither safe nor right to do anything against conscience. Here I stand; I can do nothing else. God help me! Amen.’ Peter’s words are the first of a long series. This first instance of persecution is made the occasion for the clear expression of the great principles which are to guide the Church. The answer falls into two parts, in the first of which the limits of obedience to civil authority are laid down in a perfectly general form to which even the Council are expected to assent, and in the second an irresistible compulsion to speak is boldly alleged as driving the two Apostles to a flat refusal to obey. It was a daring stroke to appeal to the Council for an endorsement of the principle in Acts 4:19 , but the appeal was unanswerable; for this tribunal had no other ostensible reason for existence than to enforce obedience to the law of God, and to Peter’s dilemma only one reply was possible. But it rested on a bold assumption, which was calculated to irritate the court; namely, that there was a blank contradiction between their commands and God’s, so that to obey the one was to disobey the other. When that parting of the ways is reached, there remains no doubt as to which road a religious man must take. The limits of civil obedience are clearly drawn.