Charles Spurgeon Commentary Acts 4:24-28

"And they, when they heard it, lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, O Lord, thou that didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is: who by the Holy Spirit, [by] the mouth of our father David thy servant, didst say, Why did the Gentiles rage, And the peoples imagine vain things? The kings of the earth set themselves in array, And the rulers were gathered together, Against the Lord, and against his Anointed: for of a truth in this city against thy holy Servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, were gathered together, to do whatsoever thy hand and thy council foreordained to come to pass." — Acts 4:24-28 (ASV)

How strangely this doctrine of predestination comes in just there! They are singing of the wickedness of men, and the triumph which God gains over it, and so this is the very sum and substance of the song, that when wicked men think that God's decrees will be forever put away by the destruction of his Son, they themselves are then actually doing what God had determined before to be done.

The wildest discord makes harmony in the ear of God. Man may be in rebellion against the Most High, but he is still abjectly the slave of God's predestination, and let man sin with his free will, even to the very extremest length of folly, yet even then God has a bit in his mouth and a bridle upon his jaws, and knows how to rule and govern him according to his own good pleasure. The ferocity of kings and priests only fulfills the counsel of God.