Always Within Reach | Acts 12 | June 28, 2026

Here at the village chapel, we preach through books of the Bible.

And so I want to encourage you to open up God's Word to Acts chapter 12.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

If you don't have a paper copy, but you'd like one, some friends are now gonna scoot up and down the aisles.

And if you'd like a paper copy, just slip your hand up and they will be happy to bring one to you.

This morning, as we look into Acts chapter 12, I want to work from the theme always within reach.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

As a somewhat newly minted grandparent, uh, my uh oldest grandchild just turned three years old, so I still feel like I'm I'm in the I'm getting used to this again phase.

I have relearned uh the value of keeping those little crumb crunchers within reach.

Uh they they are they are so small and yet they are so quick uh to get into a cabinet, to pull something down, uh to scoot off in a direction that you didn't mean for them to do.

It is this idea that um I really do want to care ever so much for Amelia and Oliver, our two grandchildren.

I I also don't want them to break my stuff.

Uh I I I I have yeah, there's certain books in my library that I'd rather them not tear pages out of or color in the middle of, or uh, there's certain things in the kitchen that we want them to keep their hands off of.

And and so there is this value of keeping them within reach.

I also want to keep them within reach because I love them so much.

I have uh I have our our two grandchildren live in Omaha, Nebraska, which is not near here, by the way.

And so when we visit and we get to do extended visits uh and spend as much time as possible with them, uh on the last visit, I finally got Amelia uh conditioned with a response that when I would say to her, Who is my favorite little girl in the world?

And she'd look at me and a little smile would come across her face and she'd say, I am I want her within reach because I want her to know just how deeply love Pops has for her.

As we look at Acts chapter 12 today, I think that we're gonna see that deeply reflected in terms of the deep and abiding love that God has for us as well.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

Uh will you pray with me just one more time before we read God's word?

Father, it is uh by your grace and mercy that we know we have entry into the throne room where we can speak to you, that we can hear through your word, that your Holy Spirit can teach us.

And God, I know that the people before me are precious in your sight.

And I would ask that you, by the power of your Holy Spirit, would teach us what we do not know, equip us for what is going to come next, and mold us so that we might look evermore like Christ our Lord.

For it's in his name that we pray.

Amen.

Acts chapter 12, uh I'll uh begin at at verse one, of course.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

Now, about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some of the church, and then he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword, and because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also, and now it was during the days of unleavened bread.

So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover.

Let me pause there and just say that as we move through this theme today, that I do want you just to carry this idea with you, even as we see the beginnings here of James and Peter and what seems to be dire circumstances, is that no matter who we are or what has been done, we are all within the reach of God.

Now, that is not something that our culture necessarily believes.

Uh, by all accounts and purposes and intents, uh sociologically, uh, we can now say that anywhere between 20 and 25 percent of the population of the United States of America are sociologically considered to be nuns.

And that's not the little old ladies in black robes.

It's the when you ask them what is your ref uh religious affiliation, they will answer none.

And it's not that they have uh rejected the idea of God necessarily or a creator or a divine being, they have just grown cold and somewhat apathetic to the idea.

And so whether it is a fellow parent at the ball field or at the swim meet or it's a coworker, or maybe it's a niece or a nephew or a sibling or a neighbor, there are so many people that surround us daily that it is not necessarily that they think, well, I'm out of the reach of God.

They simply don't think about God.

This morning when you awoke and the the thought that ran through your mind of, well, what time are we leaving for worship service this morning?

That thought didn't run through their mind.

The question of, are we going?

did not run through their mind.

Uh and I think oftentimes that the question behind the question of, is God there, the real question is, if he is there, does he care?

Is he involved in any kind of way?

And and in Acts chapter 12, although it starts off feeling kind of rough, we are going to see that God is deeply caring and mindful and involved.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

Now, to set the stage, what we have here is uh Herod the king.

He stretched out his hand to oppress and to persecute the church.

This Herod is the grandson of a previous Herod that we've heard about, Herod the Great.

He is the king infamous for what we find at the beginning of the Gospels of what has become known as the slaughter of the innocents.

He is the king that at the birth of Jesus commissions his soldiers to go out and to slay all of the little Jewish infants because he has heard that there has been born among the Jews a rival.

Herod the Great then has a number of wives and a number of sons.

One of them is Aristobulus, and Aristobulus was a relatively faithful son to the king, and he became eventually a favorite son to the king.

But some other members of the family began whispering in his ear after Aristobulus had given uh his wife had been given uh given birth to the Herod now that we have before us in this passage.

And when this Herod was three or four years old, Herod the Great has his own son executed because he thinks he's going to make a play for the throne.

And so now you have little three or four-year-old Herod, who becomes Herod Agrippa I, is sent off to live with family in some other part of the empire.

But he grows and he grows in favor with the Romans that uh have power.

And eventually he is appointed as the king of Judea.

In kind of common parlance, he's now the king of the Jews.

He is now uh grasping, and this is important to hold on to, for power and authority, both in the political sphere and in the religious sphere.

Seeing that he's got this little faction that has arisen in his empire, he decides, well, the best thing I can do is harass and scoff and mock, and when necessary, I'll even execute one.

And what we have here is very tragically the execution of James.

But it is not unprecedented.

We've already seen, as we are been studying through Acts, that lots of the believers have been imprisoned, arrested, beaten, flogged, that some have already lost their life.

And this was something that was also foretold.

This is James, who is the brother of John.

And you need to remember back into the gospel messages that Jesus with his 12 apostles had kind of the three insiders of Peter, James, and John.

Peter and uh is uh uh also uh the guy who kind of puts his foot in his mouth every once in a while.

James and John are brothers, and they get nicknamed the Sons of Thunder because they were always kind of making a little bit too much noise.

And at one point, uh, even prodded along a little bit by their mother, they they approach Jesus and they ask him a relatively weird question.

Back in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, uh in verse 35, they go to him and they say to Jesus, Teacher, will you do for us whatever we ask?

Mark 10 · chapter mention

Now, if you're a parent, you know that's a dangerous question if that ever comes up.

Verse 36, Jesus said to them, What do you want me to do for you?

They said, Grant us that we may sit one on your right hand and the other on your left in your glory.

But Jesus said to them, You do not know what you ask.

Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?

And then they said, Oh, we're able.

So Jesus said to them, You will indeed drink the cup and drink that I drink with the baptism I am baptized with, you will be baptized.

But to sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give, but it is prepared for those whom it is prepared for.

And in this passage we see where this is fulfilled.

James winds up drinking from the cup that Jesus drank from.

He he loses his life.

And though not given details of this all, I can't help but think that this must run back and race to the front of his memories, that he remembers, oh, just as my Lord was taken from us by violent means, so now my life is coming to an end as well.

And seeing how happy that this makes all of the culture around them, including the religious leaders, Herod says, Oh, well, if one is good, two will even be better.

So he goes and he rests Peter and he throws him in jail.

But it's during the time of the Passover, and the day of Passover is followed by a week called the week of unleavened bread.

It was a little bit out of even uh, you know, the kind of courtesy for someone to be executed during that religious feast.

And so Herod decides, well, I'll just hold him in prison for a week, and when this is over, then we'll have another public execution.

So then we pick back up at verse 5.

Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.

That idea of constant prayer there in verse 5 is one of uh deep, longing, passionate prayer.

Something that when he said constant prayer, he didn't just mean, by the way, as I'm working, every now and again when I thought of that need, I kind of shot an arrow prayer up to heaven.

But rather, this is an intense meeting of the church.

And when Herod was about to bring him out that night, Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers, and the guards before the door were keeping the prison.

So now we've come to the end of the week of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

So it is going to be the next morning.

The next morning is when this is gonna happen, where Peter is gonna be brought out.

This has to be known to Peter.

This is not gonna be something that is a surprise to him.

He knows how this goes, but also this is not the first time Peter's been in prison.

Verse 7.

Now, behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the prison, and he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, Arise quickly, and his chains fell off his hands.

Now, this is a little bit of a comical scene.

I mean, in the midst of what is is terrible, like this is horrible.

Uh, one of his best friends has just not a few days ago had his head lopped off by a Roman soldier, probably in the city square.

And Peter has now been arrested, likely beaten in the process, and he's been chained up between two guards for a week inside of the inner uh sanctum, as it were, of the prison where there's likely no windows, no airflow, no fresh food, no fresh water.

He has been stripped down to his bare skivys, and he is shackled in between two of the guys that are on the brute squad.

And an angel shows up, and a light beams through the prison, and Peter's still asleep.

More about that in a moment.

And he has to poke him in the side to wake him up and get him to, and he has to kind of grab him by the scruff of the neck to stand him up.

And he says, Arise quickly, and the chains fall off of him.

And then the angel said to him, Gurge yourself and tie on your sandals.

And so he did, and he said to him, Put on your garment and follow me.

So he went out and followed him, and did not know what that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.

Peter has seen the miraculous.

He watched Jesus cast out demons, heal the blind, heal the lame.

He saw him raise people from the dead.

He he had witnessed the resurrected Christ.

He himself has survived a great many things already to this moment.

And yet at the moment of his rescue, he thinks this is all just a dream.

I'm just seeing an angelic vision.

Like this cannot be real.

Even though the light is bright, he's been pulled up by the angel, his shackles have fallen off, he is now kind of trudging forward out of the out of the jail cell, all the while the brute squad are still asleep or they're blinded to this whole thing.

Verse 10.

When they were past the first and second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads to the city, which opened to them of its own accord.

And they went out and went down one street, and immediately an angel departed from him.

And when Peter had come to himself, he said, Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent his angel and has delivered me from the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the Jewish people.

It was not until he is a couple streets down the road from the prison and the cool night air hits his lungs that he realizes, oh, wait a second, this is all actually happening.

That he has walked past two different posts of guards.

Remember, he is being guarded by four squads of soldiers.

There are 16 Roman guards that are supposed to be watching over him.

And a door has miraculously opened from the prison to the outside street, and he's down the road a little bit now, and the angel poofs and vanishes, and he suddenly realizes, he looks around, and he says, Oh, wait, that all actually happened.

So when he had considered, it says in verse 12, this he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, and many were gathered together praying.

John Mark is going to start showing up for us pretty often as we uh travel through the rest of the book of Acts.

And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a girl named Rhoda came to answer.

In a Middle Eastern home of this era, there you would have your house, but you would often have a wall around the actual property, essentially your yard, where there would be a wooden gate or wooden door that could be taller than a man.

And common courtesy uh called for that when you knocked on the door, you also announced yourself so that the person on the other side would know what's going on, and especially after the sun went down, and now we are somewhere in the middle of the night.

And so he stood before the gate and he and and he knocked on the door.

And it says there in verse 14 when she recognized Peter's voice.

Peter was a well-known guy.

I mean, he had preached a lot, he was around the church all the time.

Everybody knew Peter was the guy.

And so she immediately recognizes his voice, this young uh servant named Rhoda.

And because of her gladness, she did not open the gate.

Come on! Let the poor guy in.

But ran in and announced that Peter stood before the gate.

Now, who does she announce it to?

The church that is gathered praying for Peter to be miraculously released, either by the political officials, or just God would move his hand and do so.

Verse 15, but they said to her, You are beside yourself.

You're crazy, you have lost your mind, or as they would say, in my home state of Alabama, you are off your nut.

Yet she kept insisting that it was so.

So they said, It is his angel.

Essentially, they're saying, it is one of two things.

It can't be Peter.

We're praying for Peter right now to get out of prison.

It can't be Peter.

So they think it is either an angel that has come to announce that Peter has likely died, or it's actually his spirit.

It is like his ghost is coming to let them know, oh, by the way, I didn't make it through the night.

Now Peter continued knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.

Much like you and I get when God answers our prayers.

But motioning them to with his hand to keep silent, he declared to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison, and he said, Go tell these things to James and to the brethren.

And he departed and went to another place.

And then as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers about what had become of Peter.

But when Herod had searched for him and not found him, he examined the guards and commanded that they should be put to death.

And he went down from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there.

This was the normal course of action.

That if you were a part of the brute squad, that you are a prison guard.

And I use that pejoratively, but it is a pretty accurate representation.

In order to be a prison guard, you basically had to just be one of the toughest guys in town.

You didn't have to be one of the best soldiers, you didn't have to be one of the best trained warriors, you just had to be a brute.

But if you let anybody go, there was only one payment for your services, and that was death.

If you let any prisoner go, you were executed.

And so Herod, when he finds out that the soldiers did not keep this one lowly Jewish fisherman, that he had somehow overpowered them all, they were executed.

And then the last passage of this chapter, verse 20.

Now Herod had been very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and this is where he had run off to.

But they came to him with one accord, and having made Blastus, the king's personal aid, their friend, they asked for peace, because their country was supplied with food by the king's country.

These are people that have now come to bow the knee and kiss the ring because they needed food from Herod's properties and from all the lands and territories he oversaw.

So on a set day, Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat on His throne and gave an oration to them, and the people kept shouting, the voice of a God and not of a man.

And then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give glory to God, and he was eaten by worms and died.

It's like the teenage version of the Bible.

But look at verse 24 and 25.

But the word of God grew and multiplied.

And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their ministry, and they also took with them John, whose surname was Mark.

There he is again.

This is the word of the Lord, of course.

Thanks be to God for it.

The death of Herod is not just found here in the scriptures.

It is also the ancient Jewish historian Josephus that also records the death of Herod, that he was on this particular day arrayed in such fine regal robes that it appeared to be as if he was wearing silver.

And that he had given a great speech at which everyone had lauded him for his great oratory and rhetorical flares, but that suddenly and inexplicably he had fallen ill while on the throne as if something inside of him had burst.

And so what we find once again is the Bible helps us to better understand all of human history.

As I think about this particular passage, there are five different ideas that I want to quickly just give to you to consider as we think about how it is that when we read a passage like this, it is tempting for us to say, well, just what are all these people doing in the midst of this?

But I want you to press in to always ask that question, well, what is it that this passage tells us about God?

Because what we find is that we are all, no matter our station in life, within reach of who he is.

The first thing that I would point your attention to is that the natural posture of the Christian should be and can be one of peace and prayer.

This should be the default setting of our life based on the goodness and the providence of God.

Peter had learned early on that you could trust in God, even though he often did not.

When they were on a boat with Jesus and a storm had swelled up and was raging around them, and the apostles were running around the deck of the ship like little children, declaring that we were all going to die, we're going to drown.

But Jesus is down in the bow of the boat taking a nap.

It was then later on when they were on a boat by themselves, and Jesus came walking out across the top of the water miraculously.

And Peter, because he's the, he's, he's, because he's Peter, says, Well, Jesus, if it's really you, call me out and call me to walk across the water as well.

Peter, of course, uh loses sight of Jesus and starts looking around at the choppy waves and begins to sink, and Jesus has to pull him back up to the top of the water.

Peter was learning this lesson through life.

And what I love about this passage is here he is at the end of the week of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, is the next morning.

Everybody knows he's going to be pulled out into the city square, and likely he's going to be beheaded just like his best friend James had happened just a week earlier.

But what is Peter doing?

He's asleep.

Folks, I work for a big multinational company.

I don't sleep on a Tuesday night because of a spreadsheet that I've got to build the next day.

And here Peter is about to lose his life, and he has his shoes kicked off.

He is down to the most comfortable set of clothing that he's got, with arms stretched out and chained to two Roman soldiers.

He's just dead asleep, not worried about a single thing, knowing that his Redeemer lives, that Christ is enough.

And so he's not worried about it.

And then meanwhile, what is the church doing?

Well, the church is praying and not some pedantic pedestrian performative prayer.

Sorry, I am Baptist, I had to get in some alliteration there.

But rather, they are praying through the night.

They are in the middle of the night praying.

This is not something that they had a little get together right after dinner and let's pray for a few minutes and then it's over.

But these guys are holding an all-night prayer vigil and likely have been for days.

One of the things that I love that Charles Spurgeon says is that prayer moves the arm, which moves all things else.

It is by prayer that we align our hearts to the heart of God, that we move into the place where we know what it is that God wants to grant to his children.

And the nighttime prayer was the normal thing, which is why it's a normal thing here at TVC.

And let me just like give you a little spoiler warning for the end of our service.

I want to say to you that if you find yourself in a place in life where things are hard, things are difficult, whether you've made them difficult for yourself or others have made them difficult, there is some burden on your life.

Right at the conclusion of our service, right back there in that back corner, are just a little small contingency of TVCers who love to pray for people.

And you don't have to tell them all the details of what's going on in your life, but I want to encourage you that at the end of the service, you just wander your way back there and just walk up to one of the folks that'll be waiting in that little section.

And you can just say, I just need somebody to pray for me.

You tell them all that you want or nothing at all.

And they will say, gladly, happily, let's do it right now.

What is your name?

Let me take you and your name before the throne of God, our Creator, our Father in heaven.

Prayer ought to be the natural posture of God's people.

And we should never take it lightly and we should never make it small.

Phillips Brooks said in one of his books, called The Abundant Life, he said, pray the largest prayers.

You cannot think a prayer so large that God, in answering it, will not wish that you had made it larger.

Pray not for crutches, but for wings.

It is the beauty of prayer that we can ask the God of the universe, who has all power and all things under his authority, for him to answer our deepest needs, for him to meet us at our lowest points.

Pray larger prayers.

A second thing I'd want you to see from this passage is that delay in deliverance reveals a conspicuous providence.

Waiting is often in our culture accounted as weakness and passivity.

We are a pull yourself up by your own bootstraps kind of people, which I've never understood how, like physics, how that actually works.

Nevertheless, I'll get there one day.

But often it is in the waiting where God does his greatest work in our lives.

And I take this particular phrase, a conspicuous providence, it is built from a statement named by one of the great preachers of a century ago, Alexander McLaren.

He said, delay tests faith, and makes the deliverance when it comes not only the sweeter, but the more conspicuously divine.

The delay often is the signal that everything I tried didn't work.

All of the wisdom that I thought I could bring to it was not enough.

All of the answers, the solutions, and the sometimes manipulations were never going to be enough.

But waiting upon the hand of God to move and then to see everything so conspicuously divine work out.

It is the way that we can have peace and live by prayer because God is powerful and he is sovereign over all things, even at the moments when deliverance stuns us, as it did both Peter and the church.

It is in that delay that we maybe find our greatest joy in what God is doing.

A third idea that I want you to see is that the progress of God's work is often made through the instrumentality of his creation.

In this passage, we see God working miraculously, gates open without anybody pushing on them.

We see angels show up both to deliver Peter, but also to dispatch Herod.

But then there is also the human instrumentality in it as well.

That God will do the miraculous of working by his own hand or with angels.

But think about what Peter had to do.

The angel shows up and snatches him up and pokes him in the side and the chains fall off, but he says to Peter, put your sandals on.

God could have miraculously just dressed Peter, but he didn't.

Peter had to participate.

And then the angel leads out, but Peter has to step past the first post of guards.

Nervously, sheepishly.

Then he has to step past a second post of guards, furtively, shaking a little bit.

Then he has to step out into the cool night air beyond the prison walls, knowing that there are people guarding that gate.

Peter has to participate.

Peter is called, and you and I, we get the privilege of being a part of what God is doing.

Warren Wearsby once said, God alone can do the extraordinary, but his people must do the ordinary.

So as God is calling you as a parent, as a spouse, as a sibling, as a neighbor, as a coworker, as a witness of his grace, God can do the extraordinary and simply show a vision to your neighbor.

But he has called you and I to actually tell them the gospel and to show a life that displays it.

He is calling you and I that as he is answering our prayers to walk in the grace that he gives us.

Can God do it all?

Yes.

Does he want you involved?

Absolutely.

So don't be surprised at the work of God, but instead join him in it.

Two other quick ideas that I want to leave you with.

Number four is that man's greatest tragedy that we see in this passage is insisting on receiving the glory only due to the Lord.

At the end of this passage, Peter has joined with the church and now he's kind of gone off to a separate place, a bit into hiding, as it were.

Herod, though, takes a different tact.

He doesn't go into hiding.

He instead goes and finds a throne to sit on.

Rather than responding in humility with peace that comes from God and prayer that shows dependence upon God.

Herod responds with angst that he didn't get his way and pride that somebody better bow to me and better do it quick.

John Piper has uh a well-known statement.

I've heard it from uh Pastor Tommy and other pastors at our church.

Uh John Piper once said that God is busy doing a thousand things in the background and we might be aware of three of them.

Uh very flawed, infallible Philip Nation uh would tack on to that.

It is likely that I am sinning in a thousand ways and likely only aware of three of them.

And so it is necessary that you and I remind ourselves that sin is never little.

It is always great, and it is always tragic.

And eventually, the godlessness in our lives attempts to take the throne.

That is where we are always angling toward is the throne of how we can control, of how we can be in charge.

The one thing that only God desires, deserves, that we ought to recognize is that if we will give him the glory, do him.

But that is the great tragedy, is that we are glory thieves, trying to take it away rather than enjoying the good will and mercy and grace of the God who reigns, who wants your good and redemption, and who dies to purchase just that.

This is the place where both Jesus and Herod have something in common is that there is no problem in this world that they did not think some bloodshed would solve.

It's just that Jesus was willing to give his own for you and I.

The last thing that I want you to see is you in this passage.

Number five, God is always moving his people so that they will move the gospel forward.

The chapter ends with a touch of beauty and triumph and joy here, where it says, the word of God grew and multiplied.

Where here comes Barnabas, Saul, and John Mark.

These guys are the B team of the followers of Jesus.

This is not the A team of leaders.

Peter and James were the A team.

Peter, James, and John, those were the those were the guys.

And now James is gone, and Peter is going to begin to fade in terms of his profile because God has this plan of this ruffian named Saul, who he's going to rename Paul later on.

And a guy who is not the most compelling of personalities, Barnabas.

I mean, his nickname is Son of Encouragement.

He's your really kind uncle that comes along and punches you in the shoulder and says, Boy, I love you.

And John Mark, well, we don't even know who in the world this guy is yet.

And yet, now God is going to take these unlikely, yet inevitably kind of humble, in the background characters to take forward the presentation and the proclamation of the gospel to multiply it across the world.

Let me just conclude with one of my uh Alexander McLaren, is one of my favorite characters from church history.

And he said this.

And what had the handful of Christian people?

Well, they had prayer and they had Jesus Christ.

And that was all, and that is more than enough.

And I want to just remind you today that you are not outside of the reach of God.

Because no matter what it is that you face, whether trial, tribulation, self-imposed or not, Jesus is enough.

Let's pray together.

Father, I thank you for your word that encourages us in so many different ways.

And I pray that you would bless us with a sense of the stirring work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

Lord, as we come away from a passage like this, it is with a certain amount of encouragement that