August 17, 2025
In The Shadow Of Giants: Boldness in the Battle
Acts 4:1-22
Last week, we began to look at our giants, those things that cast large shadows and keep us from walking totally in the light of God and reflect His goodness into the darkness of this world. We were challenged to take the first step by declaring just as David did, “I will fight this giant!”. I pray that you have taken to heart the seriousness of having giants in our lives, because today we start to fight.
Years ago, on the mission field, I met a woman who had to fight a giant that I pray no one here will ever have to fight. She grew up in the Middle East and was abandoned by her father when she was young, so her uncles took her and her mother in. Her uncles were Islamic militarists who were very harsh on her, enforcing the unrealistic legalistic standards of Islam on her all the way through her teenage years. This drove her into depression and led her down a very dark path. However, through some miraculous and unbelievable circumstances, she learned about a God who is a Father to the Fatherless and that she could have a relationship with this God through Jesus Christ alone. She surrendered her life to Jesus, and in that moment, she was immediately changed — everything about her changed instantly. So much so that she knew that everyone would notice immediately that something was different. She didn’t want to hide it, so she started telling everyone, no matter the consequences. The first person she told was her Mom. She called her and told her what had happened. Her Mom instructed her to go home and wait while she went to get her uncles to deal with her. She knew what this meant. She was to be killed that day because of her faith in Jesus, and it was well within the law for her uncles to carry out such a heinous act. So she went home and waited, trusting and praying to God the entire time. She soon heard the door to her home slowly open, and her Mom came in with tears flowing down her face. She said, “Please tell me about Jesus!”. That day, the giant of false religion and fear came tumbling down in their lives, and God was glorified. This victory did not come from a stubborn girl who just did her best to be courageous and fight. This victory was supernatural. Like we said last week, even though our giants are very present in our present world, our giants must always be fought in the spiritual realm, as well as the physical. So this morning, I want to talk about how we start to fight in the spiritual realm, and that is to fight with boldness. Not as human boldness, it is a boldness that only comes from the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. There is no better place to look in Scripture to learn about this than in the Book of Acts. If you have your Bibles this morning, turn with me to Acts 4 as we see spiritual boldness for the first time in the early church as Peter and John face a giant who quickly comes upon them, bringing many earthly fears with them.
The Giants Gather - Acts 4:1-7
1While Peter and John were speaking to the people, they were confronted by the priests, the captain of the Temple guard, and some of the Sadducees. 2 These leaders were very disturbed that Peter and John were teaching the people that through Jesus there is a resurrection of the dead. 3 They arrested them and, since it was already evening, put them in jail until morning. 4 But many of the people who heard their message believed it, so the number of men who believed now totaled about 5,000. 5 The next day the council of all the rulers and elders and teachers of religious law met in Jerusalem. 6 Annas the high priest was there, along with Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and other relatives of the high priest. 7 They brought in the two disciples and demanded, “By what power, or in whose name, have you done this?”
Peter and John had just come off a whirlwind of events before we got to the events in this morning's passage. They had seen Jesus crucified and die. They saw Him buried, and they saw Him raised again on the first Resurrection Sunday Morning. They were restored by Jesus, and they saw Him ascend. They had the Holy Spirit come to them, and they started to preach the Gospel. They were instrumental in the formation of the church. I can hardly imagine what these two went through physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It was undeniable that God was working through them as they followed in obedience, carrying out the Great Commission. As this account begins, we are told of a well-known beggar who was crippled from birth. Begging at the temple was his custom. It was at the gates of the temple that he asked Peter and John for some money, and famously, they responded, “Silver and Gold have I none, but what I do have I give to you, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk,” and the man did just that. God had given them this ability to show physically the authority that they had been given from Jesus (Matthew 28:18-20). After this miracle, Peter and John continued into the temple and preached the Gospel, telling people that through Jesus that they can experience the resurrection, and they called people to repentance. The people listened intently, and God was moving in their midst. However, there was a group that didn’t like that and decided to step in and cast a shadow on the lives of these two apostles. You see, the Sadducees, who were over the day-to-day operations of the temple, heard what Peter and John were preaching, and they got upset. One would think the problem they had was doctrinal because these Sadducees did not believe in the supernatural at all — no afterlife, no resurrection, no angels or spirits, no God who interacted in their daily lives. These doctrinal issues were not the issue. The problem was in the minds of the Sadducees; this preaching was promoting rebellion. Rebellion meant that they would lose the power and money they had because they kept the peace for the Romans. If the Romans were not bothered by riots and rebellion, their wealth and power would remain and be sustained. However, if there was a problem, all of that could go away. Money and power are two of the top 3 things that motivate all of mankind, and these Sadducees only saw these men as those who would take both from them. They took the temple guard with them and arrested Peter and John and placed them in prison overnight. When our giants start casting shadows into our lives, we usually think of this as a bad thing, but do you see the sidetrack in verse 4? The circumstances that Peter and John were in were not their focus; it was merely a diversion. The focus is that Peter and John were faithful to God’s commands and His call on their lives. Because of their obedience and the grace of God, people were being born again. 5,000 men (not including women and children) had been forgiven and set free by the blood of Jesus since Pentecost. Our giants want to distract us from our mission as members of the Church, and they want us to be silent. When we are faithful to sharing Jesus with the world, God will bless in His timing, and people will come to know Jesus as Lord. The giants were not finished with Peter and John yet, if you remember from last week. When our giants come, they try to bring fear and control into our lives. The Sadducees did just that by bringing the men in front of the Sanhedrin and demanding how and why they were doing these things, specifically healing the lame man. Not only was this scary because they were going to have to speak in front of 71 religious elders (Numbers 11:16), but these were the same people who had Jesus killed. This was the same tribunal that turned Jesus over to Pilate to be killed. This was the same council that Peter let influence him and denied Jesus outside of their assembly. The religious leaders thought they could keep them from preaching just because of their position and their history. Peter and John had something that they didn’t have the last time they met — Peter and John now had the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit Spurs - Acts 4:8-12
8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers and elders of our people, 9 are we being questioned today because we’ve done a good deed for a crippled man? Do you want to know how he was healed? 10 Let me clearly state to all of you and to all the people of Israel that he was healed by the powerful name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, the man you crucified but whom God raised from the dead. 11 For Jesus is the one referred to in the Scriptures, where it says, ‘The stone that you builders rejected has now become the cornerstone. 12 There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.”
Peter starts to fight the giant, but he does not do so on his power. He had tried that before and failed, but instead, he fights like all followers of Jesus must fight. We all must fight in the Holy Spirit. That’s exactly what He does; it tells us that he was filled with the Holy Spirit, and that is what we must be if we are going to fight our giants. We need to understand what this means here. This phrase has (at best) been grossly misunderstood and, at worst, used to abuse believers for many years. However, to understand what it means to be filled with the Spirit, we cannot rely on feelings or even experiences — we let Scripture define Scripture. When we do this, we need to start with a promise Jesus made in John 14:15-17, “If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.” Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come and would not leave them. This had not happened before, as the Spirit would come and go upon the lives of people throughout the Old Testament. God speaks through Paul as he writes the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 6:19, “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself”. When we put our faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior, we experience salvation by grace through Jesus Christ. At that moment, the Holy Spirit comes and lives in us and will never leave us. This is the only time someone is filled with the Spirit, and that is at salvation. It’s at that moment we have the same Spirit in us that these apostles did as they fought the giants of the Sanhedrin. If you have been a Christian for any length of time, you know there are times we don’t feel like we are emboldened by the Spirit. It’s because even though we cannot lose the Holy Spirit, we can quench (1 Thessalonians 5:19) or grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30). The work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a follower of Jesus is very clear in Scripture. He gives us direction in life (Acts 13:2; Acts 15:28). He transforms our circumstances (Philippians 1:19). He encourages us (Acts 9:31). He empowers us to share the gospel (Acts 1:8; Acts 6:10). He does the sanctifying work of changing us into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18; Romans 15:16; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 Peter 1:2). When we willingly and sinfully push back against the Holy Spirit's work in our lives, we begin to quench the Spirit. Then, through rebellion, we quench the Spirit. We start to see less of the work of the Spirit in our lives, and that usually starts with less of the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Will spill over into all the ways the Spirit leads us. When we are not filled with the Spirit, we are filled with something else — with sin, with pride, and with selfishness — all of which will lead us away from being able to fight our giants. Don’t forget that we serve a God who lavishes us with grace and mercy. When we are not filled with the Spirit, we are called to repent of that sin. 1 John 1:9, “But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” We must first bring our sin before God, ask to be forgiven, and turn our back on it. When that happens, we are forgiven, and the Spirit is no longer quenched in our lives, and we can start to fight again, as God intended. We can only fight in the boldness that comes from the Holy Spirit when we are walking daily in obedience and truth. There is another key to fighting in boldness that is mentioned here besides walking in obedience and not quenching the Spirit, and that is using the Sword of the Spirit. Notice when Peter begins to fight the giant, it’s not wit or worldly knowledge (he probably had neither), but it was with the Word of God and the Word of God alone. It’s the same thing that Jesus fought with when tempted by Satan in the wilderness, and it’s what we must fight with as well, not only to wield against the enemy, but for us to know how to live in obedience. It’s impossible to know what it’s like to live like Jesus. When listening to anything other than the Bible to define what it means to walk with Jesus. However, because we have a single source of information, we must be in that source constantly. I will venture to say that if your exposure to the Word of God is limited to Sunday mornings and occasionally in a Bible Study, you will struggle to overcome your giants. You must rely on the Sword of the Spirit in your life and every situation and the giants you fight. Peter and John’s giants took a hit, but they weren’t out and were ready to strike back.
The Giant Strikes Back - Acts 4:13-18
13 The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus. 14 But since they could see the man who had been healed standing right there among them, there was nothing the council could say. 15 So they ordered Peter and John out of the council chamber and conferred among themselves. 16 “What should we do with these men?” they asked each other. “We can’t deny that they have performed a miraculous sign, and everybody in Jerusalem knows about it. 17 But to keep them from spreading their propaganda any further, we must warn them not to speak to anyone in Jesus’ name again.” 18 So they called the apostles back in and commanded them never again to speak or teach in the name of Jesus.
This was not like David and Goliath. It wasn't a “one and done thing” when it came to the giant that was before Peter and John. Like we mentioned last week, we cannot let that discourage us. When we are faithful and obedient to God’s Word, God will always work through us. Not only were people being saved, but God is still working even if our giant does not fall quickly. The giant could not deny what God was doing. They knew that these men had been with Jesus (when was the last time someone accused you of that?). However, that didn’t stop the giant; it came at them with threats and tried to instill fear and manipulation. Because these two men were Christians and had the Holy Spirit, they no longer had the spirit of fear. They were full of love, power, and disciples (2 Timothy 1:7). Therefore, they were walking in the light, and the shadow of this giant was growing smaller.
Glory goes to God - Acts 4:19-22
19 But Peter and John replied, “Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him? 20 We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard.” 21 The council then threatened them further, but they finally let them go because they didn’t know how to punish them without starting a riot. For everyone was praising God 22 for this miraculous sign—the healing of a man who had been lame for more than forty years.
Peter and John do not back down. They point their giants to God. They knew the truth that Paul would write about later in Romans 8:31 when he said, “If God is for us, who can ever be against us?” They were with Jesus to the end, no matter the cost, and they weren’t going to stop sharing the Gospel of Jesus. Because of how they handled their giants in the Spirit, the giant was stumped with what to do next because all it knows is fear. They weren’t buying into that and were letting their good deeds shine before man so that God would be glorified, and everyone was praising God because of what they had seen. Peter and John could never have done this on their own. God delights in using the unequipped because God’s strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). It’s the same with us. When we look at our giants and think there is no way we can conquer them, we are right. We can't, but nothing can stand against our Lord and Savior. We must fight in the Spirit and with boldness, not worrying about anything except serving and pleasing the Lord. When we do, we will start to see victory after victory, and the giants cannot stand in the light of our Lord any longer.
