The Folly of Fighting God

We'll remain standing for just one moment longer. I'll be reading from the book of Acts, chapter 12.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

If you have that, you may get that and follow along.

Acts, chapter 12, beginning with verse 1.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

And do give careful attention to what you're about to hear, because this is

God's holy and inspired word.

About that time, Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church.

He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. And when he saw that it

pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.

This was during the days of unleavened bread. And when he had seized him,

he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard

him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people.

So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.

Now, when Herod was about to bring him out on that very night,

Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains and centuries

before the door regarding the prison.

And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and the light shone in the cell.

He struck Peter on the side and woke him up, saying, Get up quickly.

And the chains fell off of his hands. And the angel said to him,

Dress yourself and put on your sandals. And he did so.

And he said to him, Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.

And he went out and followed him.

He did not know that what was being done by the angel, but whether it was real,

but thought in fact he was seeing a vision.

When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate

leading into the city, and it opened for them on its own accord.

And they went out, and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him.

When Peter came to himself, he said, Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his

angel, and rescued me from the hand of Herod, and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.

And when he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John,

whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying.

And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer.

Recognizing Peter's voice in her joy, she did not open the gate,

but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate.

They said to her, you're out of your mind. But she kept insisting that it was

so, and they kept saying, it is his angel.

But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened, they saw him, and they were amazed.

But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the

Lord had brought him out of the prison.

And he said, Tell these things to James and to the brothers.

Then he departed and went to another place.

Now when day came, there was no little disturbance among the soldiers over what had become of Peter.

And after Herod searched for him and did not find him, he examined the sentries

and ordered that they should be put to death.

Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there.

Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him

with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, the king's chamberlain,

they asked for peace because their country depended on the king's country for food.

On an appointed day, Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne,

and delivered an oration to them.

And the people were shouting, the voice of a god and not of a man.

Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down because he did not give God

the glory and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.

But the word of God increased and multiplied, and Barnabas and Saul returned

from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing with them John,

whose other name was Mark. This is the word of the Lord.

You can be seated. Let's pray together.

Father, as we ask before we hear your word that your spirit would be with us

now, that you would help us and guide us, convict us, and ultimately,

Lord, draw us completely to Jesus Christ. We pray in his name, amen.

Have you ever fought with God? You don't have to answer out loud right now.

Have you ever found yourself fighting with God?

And I can tell you as a pastor, as a minister of the gospel,

and this is a bit understated. There are several portions of our text that are understated.

Let me tell you, as your pastor or as visitors, just as a preacher, don't fight with God.

Don't do it. It's not a good idea. In fact, in our story this morning,

we see Herod, and this morning I'll be focusing on Herod and the judgment of God to Herod.

Next week, we'll go back, circle back to the same story, and look at the church in prayer.

You ought to, from this story though, and I almost apologize in advance,

there's a lot of gory details in this story.

There's a lot of grotesque, gory details even connected to not just this Herod,

but this previous Herod and the whole notion of divine judgment.

And it's something we should think about. And I can tell you this morning,

if you're afraid of anything in this world, you should be afraid of this.

Don't fight with God, because if you do fight with God, they'll be answering to take.

I noticed that these days, sorry, he knows what's coming.

There's judgment in the sermon, so maybe if you do fight with God, you should fear it.

A lot of people I noticed, I'm trying to get a pulse of the culture,

like what are people afraid of today?

I know some people are super afraid of alien invasions. We've talked about that in Sunday school a bit.

But another thing that's coming to the forefront over and over again is superintelligence.

People are afraid of superintelligence. What will it mean if we can create an

AI agent that is so powerful it takes over, it takes over the world and decides

that humans are not necessary and causes us to go extinct?

And that's, I'm a little afraid of that, I'll admit. But let me just remind

you as we think about fear in this story, particularly fear of the judgment

of God for those who fight against God. Jesus said this, He said.

Jesus' warnings will guide us throughout our text this morning,

because when you look at this text, when you're moving through the book of Acts

and reading it, and many of the commentaries that I read, they all wonder,

like, what is chapter 12 doing here?

Isaiah 12 · chapter mention

If you actually took it out, went from chapter 11 to chapter 13,

there would be no disruption in the story whatsoever.

It would just be continuing along in the story of the church and the apostles.

But this story is interesting. John MacArthur, in his commentary,

said, he entitled the whole chapter of 12, he said, basically could be summarized

of the folly of fighting with God.

The folly of fighting with God. And it's pretty powerful.

So when you look at the story, Herod, for instance, we haven't heard of Herod

yet. He just sort of pops into the story almost out of nowhere.

He just is there. What's the function of that?

When you're reading any story, but particularly biblical stories,

you say, well, what's the point of this and how does it fit into the whole?

When you ask that, certainly you see that Herod here stands as an example that

we've already seen in Acts. It's just recurring again.

Luke is a good storyteller because sometimes he'll tell you the same things,

but slightly differently.

This serves to push the church into the forefront of history as a triumphant

instrument of the kingdom of God.

And it serves as a reminder that all who fight against this kingdom will not

merely die. They will come under severe divine judgment.

They will come under severe divine judgment. And here now we see Herod Agrippa.

It's an interesting story. The whole story of Herod's family is a story that's

sort of the same story over and over again.

Herod the Great that we saw in the Gospels, if you remember the Gospel stories,

you read the Christmas stories.

One of the bad parts of the Christmas story is this guy named Herod the Great.

Remember, he pretends, he tells the wise men, yeah, come on in,

tell me where he is. I'd like to worship him too.

Instead, he wants to destroy him because Jesus and his birth in Bethlehem was

a rival to Herod's kingdom.

He wanted to build his own power. He wanted to build his own kingdom.

So Herod Agrippa, his grandfather, Herod the Great, was that terrible man who

was so vicious in protecting his kingdom when he couldn't find little Jesus, he said, what?

Kill all the children in the whole area of Judea under two years old.

This is a slaughter that causes a mass lament throughout the nation of Israel.

Calling back to the prophets about how the women will cry out in lament.

That's Herod Agrippa's grandfather, popularly known as the Great,

because he built a lot of buildings.

But Herod King, Herod the Great, died. Listen to the description.

Now, in the Gospels, it just said, after he's striving against the kingdom, it just says Herod died.

One historian, and the end of it will come from Josephus. I'll be using him off and on.

He died in Jericho shortly after a lunar eclipse. Within those days,

everyone thought that's a big sign.

He died of some sort of unknown gangrene or some unknown necrotizing fasciitis.

Here's how the historian Josephus describes it.

His symptoms included respiratory issues, convulsions, intense abdominal pain, foul-smelling breath.

Violent tremors and worms or maggots in his genitalia.

Again, in advance, many of the things you're going to hear today are disturbing.

And it's not just because, in fact, I thought about this. I thought,

we're celebrating the 50th wedding anniversary.

We're celebrating graduations. And now we're going to talk about maggots and destruction and hell.

So what I do to comfort myself in this, because this wouldn't be my choice.

I'm just going through the book of Acts and doing the next thing,

is that I comfort myself by saying, well, if it's the next section, we need to hear it.

Okay. I did think about it. Sorry, Randy and Diane, too late.

It was Friday. I thought, should I do something on marriage or 50th wedding

anniversaries? But I'm sticking with the text.

So here we have this disturbing death of Herod Agrippa's grandfather.

And then we see Herod Agrippa himself. And you see the family is a long line

of corruption and perversion.

Herod Agrippa was also called Herod the Great because he was establishing building programs.

He had actually, at four years old, was sent by his mother to Rome.

And he grew up in Rome as close friends with the imperial family,

most notably Claudius, his contemporary and future emperor of Rome.

These connections with the imperial family gained him fortune and favor in Judea

as a leader, but it also connected him to the perversion and corruption common

among the Roman emperors.

In fact, Caligula, well-known for his strange perversions and bizarre corruptions,

was one of the contemporaries of Herod Agrippa himself.

And Herod, in our story, like his grandfather, would lash out at the coming

of the kingdom of God to try to put it to an utter end.

Instead, he comes to his utter end in frustration.

So it's interesting that both Herod the Great and Herod Agrippa,

as they rose in power, increasingly wanted the people to recognize them as what? a God, a God.

I am the king of this area. I am even a God of this area and no rival,

whether his name is Jesus born in Bethlehem or James or Peter or this Jesus

church thing that's going on. I want to destroy it.

And as I destroy it, I'm trying to exalt my own position and my own power as God of the land.

And you'll notice in the story, it's precisely that motive that caused the Lord's

angel to come and say, I'm striking you down with maggots and worms in your

intestines, in your abdomen.

So this is a man who's ruling the Jews in this story. Given this vivid picture

of Herod and his attack on the

church, it should come as no surprise that he's a killer and a murderer.

Our story in Acts chapter 12, 2 says, he killed James, the brother of John, with a sword.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

And then when he saw when it pleased the Jews, that's interesting.

Hey, they liked it. Let's kill some more. He just decides, let's take Peter.

Peter, after all, is the known representative of the apostles.

So he said, let's just kill Peter. But I'm going to wait. It's going to be particularly

nice because I'm going to wait until after this festival and I'm going to present

Peter as another gift where I can murder him before the Jews or before the Jews to win favor.

You'll notice, by the way, the book of Acts, and if you don't notice,

I'm going to keep reminding you to notice,

that these cycling stories about a Herod who comes up to threaten Jesus is cycled

back in the lives of the apostles in the church.

So another Herod rises to try to stop the progress of the church.

There's a pattern in the book of Acts where the things that Jesus faced,

his apostles face, except they face it, and they face it in resurrection power.

Unlike Jesus who did it of his own authority, the apostles are now speaking

in the name of Jesus so that the church is central to history.

The work of the church is the work of the resurrected Jesus Christ.

We have to keep that in mind, especially in days when people don't care about

the church. They don't respect the church.

They don't even think they need to join a church. What's a church? What does that matter?

So the church of Jesus Christ is also the ongoing work of Jesus himself.

There's also a pattern of resurrection here. We've seen it in Peter already

that we'll get to, but Peter is as good as dead.

He's chained. He's put in this dungeon, so to speak.

And in the end, the darkness and impossibility of his escape is overridden by God.

Just as Jesus was put in this grave, was killed, put in the grave,

and guards are centuries and stones and so forth. In the end,

the angel of the Lord came and the centuries fell down, the stone was rolled

away and Jesus was raised from the dead.

The scene for resurrection is set when James is murdered and Peter is next on

the list. He wants to kill Peter, he's as good as dead.

Luke tells us that Herod saw that it pleased the Jews so he decided to do more of it.

We're reminded again of the pattern, and here it is, that no matter how powerful,

no matter how much authority, no matter how much it seems like you're winning,

there is nothing you can do to fight against God and his kingdom. Nothing.

In fact, it leads only to frustration. Remember I said at the beginning,

if you're thinking about fighting with God, even if you're in a situation in

your life where you're resisting God, you say no to God, I'm the God of my own

life. I'm the one setting to my destiny.

You better think again, because not only will you not triumph over God,

your resistance and your fight will end in frustration, as it always does.

Even though at first it looks like the apostles are losing. Remember,

we see that over and over in Acts.

We said that many of God's most greatest triumphs are cleverly disguised as disasters.

Oh no, James is killed. Oh no, Peter is arrested.

Oh yes, Herod will be destroyed. The kingdom of God will go forth in even greater

majesty and power than ever.

So here we see in Acts chapter 5, Peter had already been through this. Remember the story?

Acts 5 · chapter mention

Please say yes. Anyway, if you don't, it's in Acts chapter 5, Peter was arrested.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

The same kind of thing happened where he was burst out of jail or prison from the angel.

But this is in Acts chapter 5, the angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

Now we see in Acts 12, 18. Now when the day came, there was no little disturbance

among the soldiers over what happened to what had become of Peter.

By the way, this is Luke, as he often does with what we call understatement, right?

It was no small disturbance. That means all you know what was breaking.

Herod was angry. He was going crazy. He was screaming.

This is no small disturbance. I love the way Luke writes.

The whole of the royal household was just like in Herod.

Remember when Herod the Great realized, they said all of Jerusalem was disturbed. Same sort of thing.

So it says the next morning, he realized what had happened, knowing the king's

brutality and what would happen.

You see the story, by the way, Peter is sleeping between two soldiers bound

with two chains and the centuries before the door were guarding the prison.

This is a multi-layered prison.

This isn't just some jail cell, you know, where the deputy's there sleeping

with his feet folded and the keys are on his chain, like Barney Fife sort of thing.

This is like, this is an impregnable, inescapable dungeon.

That's how, because there are multiple layers. He's chained together.

One scholar said, it looks like Peter is bound with chains, fastened with one

guard on one side, one on the other.

The other two guards of the squadron of four stand watch over the doors of the

prison in multiple layers. They're going out.

The chains break free. The light shines. He tells them to get dressed.

They move. Another sentry, another sentry. And finally, the iron gate at the end.

Again, this is no small prison break.

And the iron gates burst open and open on their own Much like the stone that was rolled away.

Revealing to us the folly of fighting against God No matter how powerful Herod's

prison was It was no match for the angel of the Lord And his arrogant attack

on the church would not go unpaid This is where the text moves us very quickly

into the judgment That's going to come to Herod By the way.

Anyone, anyone who fights against the Lord and against his kingdom.

So it says here, now this is also, I love the way Luke does it because Luke

will use irony to transform something.

So Herod is frustrated, but it said he goes to Caesarea, which is the Roman

capital of the province, and he decides to have people fawn all over him again.

So it says, verse 21, on the appointed day, Herod put on his royal robes,

took his seat upon the throne and delivered an oration to them.

Now, Josephus, again, has an interesting take on this. He records that on the

day of his death at this spectacular feast, Agrippa was happy to come to the

festival because he was frustrated with what happened in Jerusalem.

And so he goes to this festival, and according to him, they had an incredible new silver robe.

This is not in the text, but Josephus says that according to this,

he entered the theater at the break of day, and his silver robe shined and glittered

as the sun's reflection created a dazzling display, right? So he's shining. literally glowing.

The brilliant resplendence of this flittering light, all the people around him,

they trembled and gazed as they cried out as he appeared to be a God.

So as the sun was shining on that glorious glittering robe of Herod,

the people were like, this is a God.

And then when he spoke, they were continuing to say, the voice of God and not a man.

The voice, you can imagine the people clear, and you know in the heart of Herod,

because the Lord tells us, he was saying, yes, I am a God.

I've just killed James. I'm going to destroy this church. These people are fawning

over me. They need me. I am God.

And then he meets this character that if you know your biblical history,

your redemptive history, he's shown up before.

He's called the angel of the Lord. Remember? Pharaoh met him.

The angel of the Lord came down. The Assyrian army met him. The angel of the Lord came down.

There's a long history in the Bible about people who fight against the Lord

and who meet the judgment of the Lord.

Solomon himself says in Proverbs 21, 30, there is no wisdom nor understanding

nor counsel against the Lord.

In other words, there's no way to fight against God.

Don't do it. Many have tried throughout the centuries and all end up the same

way, in the same place, under judgment.

The first such ruler we have recorded who met the angel of the Lord was Pharaoh

in Egypt. Again, a ruler who fancied himself a God.

Moses simply said, let my people go that they may go worship.

And Pharaoh said, who is this Yahweh? Who is the Lord? Man, I love that. I love that question.

When he said, who is this Jewish deity that I should listen to him?

Well, he met him and he found out, not just under multiple plague after multiple

plague, but the final plague was when Pharaoh met the angel of the Lord,

the death angel that passed over the land of Egypt and passed over those who

were covered by the blood of the lamb and slaughtered all the firstborn of the household.

All throughout the Bible, you see this. I want to draw your attention to this

because this is just a recurring theme that if you're considering fighting against

God, you better listen carefully to this theme. It won't work.

It can't work. There's nothing. Think about this. There was a King Arad,

the Canaanite, who fought God and was destroyed with his people and his armies, Numbers 21.

And then there was a unique King of the Amorites, King Sion,

who fought against God's purposes.

Then there was King Ar of Moab, King Og of Bashan, and all of them were slaughtered

and massacred in the land they possessed. These are in the Psalms,

by the way, when the people of God are singing, you slayed Baag of Bashan,

you slayed these people because they resisted the Lord.

The people of God were going to the promised land. And these arrogant,

foolish, godlike kings said, no, we're in charge.

Then there was Balak, the king of Moab, who tried to fight against God,

plotted against him with no success.

Then there were the Midianites, and God slew them and all their males,

including five kings of Midian.

Then there was King Ai, who decided to fight against God and was hanged.

And you remember the five kings in Joshua chapter 9 who fought against God and

Joshua 9 · chapter mention

they plotted clever devices.

There's always these people with clever devices. This will work.

This will get them. This will stop them.

Maybe we won't give them bread. Maybe we'll get a prophet to curse them.

And it's always the same end.

Death, destruction, and judgment. Then there was a number of kings in northern

Palestine who fought against John.

Joshua, remember, hemstrung their horses.

Little boys love these stories, by the way. I used to love when the enemies

of God got hanged in public or stabbed and all these things.

So this is powerful stuff.

I know I was a naughty boy. But it brings out this prevailing notion that if

you think you can fight against God, look around.

Look at what happens. When you leave the book of Joshua, you come into Judges,

1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, on and on it goes.

Of the kings who rose up, even the kings of Israel after Solomon,

which we read from 1 Kings 14, even they thought they could manage their affairs

and they could resist the Lord, even Jeroboam. And you'll notice the language

and again, it's it's grotesque language.

It's a language that's uncomfortable But we need to see it. It's disturbing,

But it's what god wants us to hear It says

the prophet says I will bring calamity on the house of jeroboam and I will cut

off jeroboam every male Both bond and free in israel and I will make a clean

sweep of the house of jeroboam as one sweeps away dung It's the nice version

of the word Until it's all gone anyone belonging to jeroboam who dies in the

city the dogs will eat it.

He who dies in the field, the birds of the heaven will eat, for the Lord has

spoken. Why the grotesque details?

Why do you think it is? So that little boys will pay attention in Sunday school?

What is it with the worms and the dogs eating flesh and the vultures poking out corpses?

Judas, when he died, remember the story? He fell down and his guts,

his intestines split out over the rock.

What is God doing by giving us these grotesque details?

Again, the little boys love it, but why is it there for? Why is Goliath's description so graphing?

David chopped off his head and held it up like it was a barbarian event.

God wants us to see these stories and see these people, the head of Goliath,

the intestines of Judas, the dogs, what about Jezebel, the dogs eating her flesh?

And why in our story, why the worms? Strikes me, why worms? In the Bible,

worms are usually used as symbols of decay, mortality, human frailty.

They're used for a number of things. They're symbols of humility.

They often are symbols of the destruction of our comfort. Jonah,

by the way, that's a pretty big story. Remember Jonah?

He shouldn't have run from God, right?

And even in the end, when Jonah was finding some consolation and comfort in

this gourd, the shade, a worm came and ate away and destroyed it in a moment.

The worm destroys the comforts of men It reminds us of mortality and corruption

But ultimately I think here Here I think the worms are symbols That drive us

directly to the images That Jesus himself used of hell.

Of hell. You don't hear the word hell very much these days. And again,

honestly, I'm a little bit like C.S. Lewis. C.S.

Lewis said, if there's one thing I could take out of the Bible,

it would be hell, but I can't do it. So it's uncomfortable.

I get that. But it's here and it's real.

And it's the place where the enemies of God are going to go.

It shouldn't give us any pleasure, the thought of someone that we know and love

dying and being in an unending torment where the worms do not die and the fire

is not quenched, it should cause us to lament.

If you find yourself happy about hell, we need to talk at the fellowship meal.

It's not a good thing. It's discomforting. And yet Jesus says so much about

this in contrast to coming to him, going to heaven. He marks it out against hell.

Mark 9, he says, even if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out.

It's better to enter the kingdom with one eye than with two eyes and be thrown into hell.

Where, listen to this, where the worm does not die and the fires are not quenched.

And everyone will be salted with fire.

Here he's quoting from Isaiah 66, verse 24.

Isaiah 66:24

It says, and they shall look out on all the dead bodies of the men who have

rebelled against him, for the worm shall not die.

The fire shall not be quenched and they shall be an abhorrence of all flesh.

This is, Jesus used the illustration of Gehenna, a garbage dump just outside

of Jerusalem, a place called Gehenna.

He used it as an illustration of the ceaseless, endless torment that the enemies of God will face.

It was a dump, a garbage heap on the south side of Jerusalem,

a place where there was constant burning because rubbish and trash were always burned there.

We don't do that these days. We lived in Africa, by the way.

And when you were in slums, there were these rubbish places,

big ones, that always had a fire.

The rain would come and put it out and people would shovel more rubbish on it

and get the fire started. There's never ending fires in these rubbish heaps.

And there were all kinds of household trash, animal carcasses,

and in the case of Jerusalem, even convicted, the bodies of convicted criminals

were just thrown into that heap of burning fire where there's worms and fire

and burning and rubbish.

In both texts, the word translated worm could be translated even maggot.

Again, I don't know about you, but whenever you see the maggot wiggling and

squirming in the flesh in which it's eating, it just brings a horrible picture,

a picture that we're to think of in regard to hell.

Better to enter heaven with one hand missing than to go to this place,

this hellish place with both hands intact.

And those who fight against God will face those maggots, those worms that never die forever.

And Herod is a classic example. All families, plots, and ploys to make his reign

powerful will never last.

It's actually not only a warning for those of us, but an encouragement as well.

There is no plot. There is no president, no prime minister, no United Nations,

no council, no peace treaty, no nothing that could ever be established that

will stop the kingdom of God from moving forth according to Jesus' plan.

And the Herods of that day built cities and built walls and built inescapable

dungeons that God simply allowed them to escape from because the angel of the

Lord opened the doors and brought light to the prison.

And one of the problems we sometimes face is that we sometimes,

when you hear about worms and fire and hell, you sometimes fear hell,

but you'll notice what Jesus was saying.

He wasn't so much saying you ought to fear hell, you ought to fear the God who can put you there.

It's not just about that terrible place. It's about the power of God.

Listen to what he says again.

Don't be afraid of those who can kill, but I warn you, fear him who after he has killed you.

He, God, has the authority to cast you into hell. Hell is not horrible only

because of the implements of torture or the temperature.

It's described in scripture as outer darkness and a lake of fire.

We don't know the exact nature, but it's everlasting punishment.

And one theologian, Michael Horton, and I think I agree with him,

he says, it's not the absence of God in hell, but his eternal,

infinite, and holy presence there that provides the torment.

It is the God to whom you should have submitted that you fought against that

will be fighting against you and punishing you for eternity.

It's not just about the fire, but about the God who controls this.

The real terror awaiting the unrepentant is God himself.

And that's true of all of us. The real terror is not so much hell,

but the God who will put you there.

And we need to realize, by the way, don't worry, it ends happily on a note of the gospel.

Because they don't want to just scream hellfire and brimstone.

But in the end, the hope against hell. What's the hope? It's Jesus Christ.

When we take this Lord's Supper after this sermon and this service,

we will seal the grace and goodness and the mercy of God in our lives that we

did not get what we deserve. We deserved hell.

But Jesus reverses the punishment of hell by taking on to himself all those

punishments that we rightly deserve,

by taking them to himself on his death on that cross by paying the full penalty

of sin through his infinite sacrifice. He satisfies divine justice.

The hope we have is not fear for hell. But now, by the way, I want to turn your

attention to an earlier portion, the fear we now have.

If you're not following Christ and you're fighting God, you should fear him and hell.

But if you're willing to turn to Jesus Christ and stop fighting against God

and come to him in mercy, then your fear of God will change.

You still need to fear God.

But now the fear is transformed, not in a fear of punishment and hell or worms

or fire. Now your fear is one of awe and amazement at the love of Jesus Christ,

that he took hell for you.

And that fear is still a fear, but it's a different kind of fear.

You're not fleeing like a fugitive. You're not fleeing like one who will get

this punishment. You're fleeing to Jesus Christ as one who is amazed at his love.

So if you're not in Christ this morning, if you are stubborn and fighting against

God, I urge you this morning, flee to him. Come to him completely.

And you will not receive the judgment of hell that you deserve.

But the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.

Fear does play a role in this. What fear do you have this morning?

As you come to this table, I hope it's a fear full of awe and wonder at the love of Jesus Christ.

But fear plays a role. I'll quote Jonathan Edwards.

Might as well, right? I'm doing a sermon on hell. So I'll quote from the sinners

in the hands of an angry God.

But it's interesting how he says this. He says, and I quote, and on this I'll close.

He says, when you have looked intently into the eyes of God's punishment,

you are able to drink more deeply from the refreshing waters of redemption.

You drink them in, and they are sweet and soothing.

We wince at the awesome and fearsome countenance of God's anger,

and we are driven back to the kind protection we find in the shadow of the cross.

Amen. Let's pray together.

Lord God, we thank you for this story of Herod, for this story in the history of your church.

As it grows, we would encourage us to know that no Herod, no ruler,

no king, no prince, no president will ever stop the kingdom of God.

For in Christ Jesus, you will move your kingdom forward. Lord,

you will glorify your son. You will save the people that you have intended to save.

And so as we come to you, Lord, at this table, we pray that indeed our eyes

would be turned to the sweet and smoothing grace, soothing grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That our fear of hell would be driven back by a sweet and kind fear and love and awe of Jesus Christ.

In whose name we pray, amen.