There are a couple of biblical realities that have not only been evident on the pages of Acts, but they are realities we might have experienced ourselves or may perhaps experience in the future. On the one hand, Jesus promised hostility from the world simply due to being associated with him. We have seen plenty of that in Acts. On the other hand, the Bible speaks of God thwarting the plans of the wicked and even frustrating rulers’ desires to do evil against God’s people. We have also seen plenty of that in the book of Acts. So on the one hand Jesus teaches this in John 15:18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
On the other hand, we read passages like Ps. 37 during our Scripture reading time or Ps. 2, which has already been quoted by the church back in Acts 4–1 Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? 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 burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” 4 He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. 5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, 6 “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”
So God guarantees hostility, but also sometimes frustrates plans of hostility. We live in the middle of these two teachings, not knowing for sure which one will play itself out in each specific circumstance of our life. This means we may always pray and plead with God to perform these evil-blocking actions, but in his perfect plan, he may not turn away malicious intentions and practices. In those cases, we must press on doing what God has called us do, namely to testify to the grace of Christ to others, all the while guarding ourselves from the evil of unbelief and/or bitter unforgiveness or retaliation. As we have been saying all along, when we are following the Lord’s revealed will, we are in the safest place we can be, regardless of our circumstances.