Acts 12: Praying Anyway - Darren Rowse

[SPEAKER_00]: A reading, a reading from the Book of Acts, chapter 12, beginning at verse 1.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_00]: It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them.

[SPEAKER_00]: He had James the brother of John put to death with the sword, when he saw that this met with

[SPEAKER_00]: This happened during the festival of Unleavened Bread.

[SPEAKER_00]: After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each.

[SPEAKER_00]: Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.

[SPEAKER_00]: The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains and centuries stood guard at the entrance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell.

[SPEAKER_00]: He struck Peter on the side and woke him up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Quick, get up, he said, and the chains fell off Peter's wrists.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then the angel said to him,

[SPEAKER_00]: wrap your cloak around you and follow me the angel told him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening.

[SPEAKER_00]: He thought he was seeing a vision.

[SPEAKER_00]: They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city.

[SPEAKER_00]: It opened for them by itself and they went through it.

[SPEAKER_00]: when they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then Peter said to him, came to himself and said, now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from her at his clutches and from everything that Jewish people were hoping would happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying.

[SPEAKER_00]: Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Roder came to answer the door.

[SPEAKER_00]: When she recognized Peter's voice, she was so overjoyed, she ran back without opening it, and exclaimed Peter is at the door.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're out of your mind, they told her, when she kept insisting that it was so, they said, it must be his angel.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Peter kept on knocking and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.

[SPEAKER_00]: Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tell James and the other brothers and sisters about this, he said, and then he left for another place.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter.

[SPEAKER_00]: After Herod, Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him.

[SPEAKER_00]: He crossed exam in the guards and ordered that they'd be executed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then Herod went from Judea to Caesar's rear and stayed there.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was the word of the law.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Michael.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Church this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Darren for those of you who I haven't met and it's good to have you with us.

[SPEAKER_01]: So in 1949, a man by the name of Joseph Campbell wrote a book about mythology.

[SPEAKER_01]: He'd spent years reading the old stories from all over the world through different cultures, through different points in history.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he looked at all of these different stories and he noticed that they were all telling much the same story.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not the same details, but they all had a very similar shape to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I actually forgot my clicker so I might need that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the shape that he noticed, he called the hero's journey.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is how it's often portrayed in a circle, and there's lots of stages to the hero's journey.

[SPEAKER_01]: And each kind of person interprets it slightly differently, but you'll notice the same shape.

[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody ordinary gets called out of their ordinary world, the world that they know, and they cross a line into a new place.

[SPEAKER_01]: A place that they didn't plan to go to,

[SPEAKER_01]: that they can't control, and in that place they meet a mentor or a helper, they are tested in different ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: They meet enemies, they fight enemies, and they always come to a low point at the bottom of the circle, and then from that low point they travel through that and they come out of it changed, and they often come back carrying something for their people back at home or for themselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: You will be very familiar with this story because it's in almost every movie that you watch, almost every book that you read.

[SPEAKER_01]: George Lucas, for example, read Campbell's Heroes Journey before he made Star Wars.

[SPEAKER_01]: In Star Wars, we meet a farm kid.

[SPEAKER_01]: He gets a message that he wasn't meant to see.

[SPEAKER_01]: He goes to a place that he didn't plan to go to.

[SPEAKER_01]: He meets a mentor with a sword.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has lots of trouble.

[SPEAKER_01]: He fights lots of different enemies and down at the bottom of the circle.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's mentored eyes, spoiler alert, sorry.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the kid has to work out whether he believes any of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, he comes out of it into a different place.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can run this story, this circle, through most of the films that you've ever watched, even our kid's stories.

[SPEAKER_01]: This morning, I want us to focus not on the whole story, but the low point in the story at the bottom of the circle.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right at the lowest point, different people give it different names.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's called the ordeal.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's called the abyss or the crisis moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the bit in the story where everything has gone wrong, where hope isn't coming, where the plan has failed.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when you genuinely don't know how things are going to turn out, it's the point where the character comes face to face with something that they cannot beat.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what they choose to do in this moment will tell you everything about them, and what they believe, and what they will move on to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: In the lot of the rings, it's Frodo at She Lob's Lair, alone in the dark at the edge of the enemy territory where Sam's been sent away and got them, he realizes he's been playing him all along.

[SPEAKER_01]: In the inside out too, it's rarely sitting on her own in the middle of a game, having a panic attack, and she can't stop it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or maybe it's your team four minutes left in the grand final.

[SPEAKER_01]: 17 points down the other team has just gold momentum is going their way your backs are against the wall.

[SPEAKER_01]: The bells sound and the opposition's fans make more noise than you've ever heard before at a football game.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a dark moment and what your team does in the next four minutes will go down as one of the greatest grand final comebacks there's ever been.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry for your fans to really live that again.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why do we keep telling these stories?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why are we attracted to these stories?

[SPEAKER_01]: Particularly ones with these crisis moments.

[SPEAKER_01]: partly it's because they just make for good drama.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I think there's another reason, and I think it's closer to home.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think we keep telling and retelling these stories because in all of our lives, we have these moments.

[SPEAKER_01]: In all of our lives, we have a best moments, or deal moments, crisis moments, whether they be health crises, financial crises, crises in our work, in relationships, in our faith.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not just individuals who have these abyss moments.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's groups of people as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: Families have them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Work places have them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Churches have them.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, whole cities have them.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're in Christchurch, early in the year.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we saw this city that had lived through an earthquake and came out of that experience and worked through it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they are a very different city because of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: They moved through and came out into a new world.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some would say that our whole world is in the middle of one of these moments as well at the moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there are many crises going on.

[SPEAKER_01]: The climate crisis, the cost of living, the wars that are going on, the polarity in politics, the mental health epidemic.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really aware that as I talk about these crisis are best moments that I'm not just talking about a theoretical thing here, I'm talking about a lived one.

[SPEAKER_01]: But why am I talking about it?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the story we've just had read to us from Acts 12, we find the hero of Acts the church in a crisis moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: They are at their lowest point, particularly the church in Jerusalem.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let me set the scene for you, because Luke kind of rushes past it.

[SPEAKER_01]: The years AED44, about 12, 13 years after Jesus'

[SPEAKER_01]: Herod a group of like his grandfather and his uncle, who are both called Herod before him, got where he is because he was really good at politics.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was raised in Rome, he had friends in the Imperial family, he had great connections, and once he came home he worked really hard at looking like a devout Jewish king.

[SPEAKER_01]: because that's what got people on side, which is where we find ourselves at the start of Acts 12 when we read, it was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them.

[SPEAKER_01]: He had James the brother of John put to death with the sword.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now it's really easier to rush past this introduction and to get to the miracle that happens and we'll get there in a moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: But this is a real turning point for the early church in Jerusalem.

[SPEAKER_01]: You see, James, who Herod puts a death, was such a central figure in the story of Jesus and the early church.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was one of the first four that Jesus called.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was one of three men who went up onto the mountain side with Jesus and saw him transfixed, shining with the glory of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was one of the three who went to the inner part of the garden of Gethsemane with Jesus on his last night where the others were told to wait outside.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was not only in the twelfth, he was one of the three that were on the inner circle of the twelfth apostles.

[SPEAKER_01]: He spent three years with Jesus living, eating, traveling with him, and he spent another dozen years helping to lead the church.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when he dies, Luke only gives him 11 words, which I find quite amazing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, of course, the church had seen this type of trouble before.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you've been with us through the series that we've been working through over this year, you'll know that the church has had a lot of trouble in the first 11 chapters of Acts.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's been arrests, there's been appearances before.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Jewish Council, there's been flogings, there's been imprisonments, and there's even been a stoning, the first martyr.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the church knows what opposition feels like, but this is different.

[SPEAKER_01]: because at this point something shifts up until this point the persecution has come from the religious establishment, but now it comes from a king.

[SPEAKER_01]: Look at how James dies.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not stoned like Stephen, he's put to the sword.

[SPEAKER_01]: Stoning was a religious penalty.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Stephen's death has the feeling of a mob that's gone out of control.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the sword is something quite different.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is the kings.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is what the state uses.

[SPEAKER_01]: When it has decided that you are a problem, it's legal, it's official, there's a signature on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so the heat's not just turning up, it's coming now from a different direction to where it's come before.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's no longer just a theological argument that's turned nasty.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now it's the government.

[SPEAKER_01]: targeting you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the Christians have gone from just being a sideline kind of religious nuisance to being a target of the throne.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then in verse 3, we read, when he hered saw that this execution had met approval with approval among the Jews.

[SPEAKER_01]: He proceeded to seize Peter.

[SPEAKER_01]: He decides to seize the momentum.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a popular move to kill James, so he's going to do it again.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so he arrests Peter.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, he arrests Peter during the Passover, and so he's not allowed to put him on trial.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's certainly not allowed to execute him yet.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so he puts him into prison.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he's not taking any chances here.

[SPEAKER_01]: He puts 16 men around Peter, this middle-aged fisherman.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just a security arrangement, you see Peter and John have escaped from prison in the past through a miraculous encounter, and Peter and Harriet doesn't want to run that risk again.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is sending a message.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's not going to get away this time.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a power play.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so this is where the church is at verse 4.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of the 12 is dead.

[SPEAKER_01]: Their remaining leader, the best known one, is in a cell, and he has a death sentence hanging over him.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's the most powerful man in the kingdom who has done it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he has room behind him and he has the religious establishment applauding and he has the crowd on his side.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is no appeal.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's no plan.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's no one coming to save them.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the bottom of the circle.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so here's the question I think this passage is asking.

[SPEAKER_01]: What do the people of Jesus do when the heat comes on?

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it's probably worth saying what they can't do.

[SPEAKER_01]: Firstly, they can't fight.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're not soldiers, they have no money, they have few weapons, they have no standing, no one in Jerusalem is scared of them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they couldn't take to the streets either like was the dumb thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: They couldn't ride because they were small in number, and the crowd wasn't on their side.

[SPEAKER_01]: which only leaves them a couple of options really.

[SPEAKER_01]: Firstly, they could run, they could scatter, and they've done this before in Acts chapter 8 after Stephen was killed, many of them scattered, and it worked pretty well.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, it was the reason that the message spread, and so they could have done that again, or they could have gone quiet.

[SPEAKER_01]: There've been asked to go quiet, time and time again, chapters four, chapters five, the Council tells them to stop preaching in Jesus' name and they'd said no on both occasions.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that was when the worst that could happen to them was of flogging.

[SPEAKER_01]: But now James is dead, something has changed, the rules have changed.

[SPEAKER_01]: The temptation to go silent, to step down, must have been something that they considered.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Peter was kept in prison, but the church earnestly was praying to God for him.

[SPEAKER_01]: This strategy is to pray.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now I suspect for some of us, where a little disappointed by that answer, it's not a real strategy on some levels.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the right answer.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the answer that you would call out and Sunday school when someone says, what do you do when you have a problem?

[SPEAKER_01]: You pray, of course.

[SPEAKER_01]: But is it really a strategy?

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, we've all heard people say when a problem is presentable, pray about it, and one did, are they going to pray about it?

[SPEAKER_01]: We've all seen people on social media post about a problem or a disaster in the response is, thoughts and prayers.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thoughts and prayers, the sympathetic noise you make when you walk past a problem, you have no intention of doing anything about.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thoughts and prayers is that's what going on here.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think so.

[SPEAKER_01]: Look at the word that Luke uses to describe the type of prayer that has been done here.

[SPEAKER_01]: The word there is earnestly and in Greek, the word is ectenous.

[SPEAKER_01]: And earnestly goes part way to describe what ectenous means.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ectenous in the Greek means to be stretched.

[SPEAKER_01]: It means to strain.

[SPEAKER_01]: It means to be extended to your limits.

[SPEAKER_01]: Picture a runner at the end of the race.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is what external means.

[SPEAKER_01]: You extend yourself to be first across the line.

[SPEAKER_01]: You stretch yourself out to your extreme.

[SPEAKER_01]: Luke uses this word twice to describe prayer in his gospel and in the book of Acts.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here in Acts 12, but also he uses it to describe another prayer.

[SPEAKER_01]: The prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane in Luke 22.

[SPEAKER_01]: The prayer where Jesus is described as being in agony.

[SPEAKER_01]: As he's praying, his sweat is falling off him like drops of blood.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus is not doing thoughts and prayers here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus has stretched out before God, emotionally, spiritually, physically, stretched and straining before God.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is extent of prayer and this is the prayer of the early church when they are praying for Peter.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's no wonder why they had nothing left to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is their last option, and they were in a crisis moment.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're very existence on the line.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's no wonder that they prayed this way because this is a group of people who just ten or so years before had been with Jesus and they had seen Him pray in this way.

[SPEAKER_01]: He had modeled it for them.

[SPEAKER_01]: He had taught them to pray.

[SPEAKER_01]: He told them when you have a problem ask and you will receive.

[SPEAKER_01]: It they had walked through the fields with him, and he pointed at the birds and the wildflowers and said, look, your father feeds them and clothes them, how much more is he gonna look after you?

[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's no wonder that we find this group of people who had been with Jesus praying, not just here in this desperate moment, but right throughout the Book of Acts.

[SPEAKER_01]: This week I read through the first 11 chapters of Acts and counted all the times that we find people praying.

[SPEAKER_01]: There were over 17 encounters in those 11 chapters, right from the very first thing they do in Acts 1, we find them praying.

[SPEAKER_01]: Every decision they made when they met to decide who would take Judas Place, what did they do?

[SPEAKER_01]: They prayed.

[SPEAKER_01]: When the church is described in Acts 2, with four distinct markers, one of them is prayer.

[SPEAKER_01]: When Peter and John are arrested earlier,

[SPEAKER_01]: and God filled them with courage when Stephen is being stoned.

[SPEAKER_01]: What is he doing his praying?

[SPEAKER_01]: When Peter comes across a dead woman, he kneels down in praise and she sits up.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a group of people who prayed.

[SPEAKER_01]: Prayer was a part of the rhythm of their life, and they knew prayer was a weapon.

[SPEAKER_01]: They'd seen it effects.

[SPEAKER_01]: John Stock puts it beautifully.

[SPEAKER_01]: He says, here in this story are two communities, the world and the church.

[SPEAKER_01]: There are a raid against one another.

[SPEAKER_01]: Each wielding inappropriate weapon on one side was the authority of having with the power of a sword and the security of a prison.

[SPEAKER_01]: On the other side, the church turned prayer, which is the only power which the powerless possess.

[SPEAKER_01]: They knew prayer was a weapon.

[SPEAKER_01]: But before we imagine that this premier meeting that the church had on this night was a room full of faith and boldness.

[SPEAKER_01]: We need to remember what happened just a few days before.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because this was a group of people who no doubt prayed when James was arrested too.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can imagine that when he was arrested and before he was executed that the word went through the community and they gathered in a house like they did on this night to pray.

[SPEAKER_01]: surely that happens.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not in the text, but we can assume it did.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we have two faithful men followers of Jesus, two beloved and respected followers of Jesus, the same church praying to the same God and one of them dies by the sword and the other one is walked out of a maximum security prison by an angel and Luke doesn't explain it.

[SPEAKER_01]: He tells the same story of these two men, and he sits on the side by side, and he lets it sit there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you've been in church for any time now, you know this is not just an academic question.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some of you have prayed, extend, or prayers.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know what it is to be stretched out before God take into your extreme and your limits before Him.

[SPEAKER_01]: And some of you got Peter, a miraculous rescue and some of you prayed exactly the same way with exactly the same faith and you buried your James.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can't tell you why.

[SPEAKER_01]: Luke doesn't and I won't pretend to know more than he does.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what I do believe is that when we don't receive answers in the way we hope for, it doesn't mean that our, it's a sign that our faith is weak.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't believe that it's a sign that our prayers weren't good enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: As we saw just a couple of weeks ago in Daniel, there's so much more going on than we can see or understand.

[SPEAKER_01]: And why God chooses to answer some prayers the way we pray, them, and other times in other ways, we do not know.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what I do think we can be encouraged by in this passage is by this group of people

[SPEAKER_01]: who no doubt prayed for James and saw him die.

[SPEAKER_01]: Gathering again just days later, still grieving, still confused, still disappointed in God, perhaps even angry at God, and they're praying anyway.

[SPEAKER_01]: They continue to come back to God in prayer.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so we have Peter in prison, and we have a church praying earnestly, and we come to verse 6, the night before the trial, and this is just staggering to me.

[SPEAKER_01]: We find Peter sleeping.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, centuries all around him.

[SPEAKER_01]: and knowing the next morning is about to go on trial and executed most likely, and he's asleep.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm told I'm a very good sleeper and that I can sleep through a lot.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I know I sleep through a lot.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're our bedroom is right next to the front door and we have two 18 and 20 year olds.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there's lots of coming and going at night and I hear none of it, but this is on a whole other level.

[SPEAKER_01]: Peter's not lying awake rehearsing his defense for the next morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's not up even praying.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's asleep so deeply that when an angel shows up and fills the cell with light, the angel literally has to hit him to wake him up.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now of course, I don't know about you, but Peter has seen someone like this sleep before.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm reminded as I read this story of another time of another person sleeping through something very similar, where Jesus was asleep in a boat, and the disciples all around him are panicking and thinking that they're about to die, and they have to shake Jesus to wake him up and get him to do something.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Peter on that night, must have wondered how can someone sleep through a storm?

[SPEAKER_01]: And now here he is, the same man sleeping through his own storm.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, somewhere between that boat and this cell, here's learnt how to sleep easy.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that can only come through a relationship with Jesus, he's learnt to sleep.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is something that we sometimes describe as a peace that goes beyond our understanding.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then he's woken up, he's hit by this angel, and watch the rescue.

[SPEAKER_01]: And look at how the work gets divided up here, because God does some stuff, but Peter also does some stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: The angel appears and there's light, and the chains fall off Peter's wrists, and then they walk past guards, and the guards either don't see them, or they're asleep, or

[SPEAKER_01]: There, made powerless, we don't really know.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then the big iron gates going onto the street is open for them.

[SPEAKER_01]: In the Greek it says, the word there is auto mate, which is where we get automatic.

[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody touches the gate.

[SPEAKER_01]: It opens up.

[SPEAKER_01]: All of these things are God doing something that Peter couldn't have done.

[SPEAKER_01]: God came up with the plan.

[SPEAKER_01]: Peter doesn't have to pick locks.

[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't have to overpower anyone.

[SPEAKER_01]: The impossible work is God's.

[SPEAKER_01]: But notice how the angel talks to Peter because it's almost funny.

[SPEAKER_01]: It reminds me of how I speak to my kids on the mornings that they sleep through their alarm.

[SPEAKER_01]: Get up, quickly, get dressed, drop your bell, find your sandals, wrap your cloak around yourself.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now follow me, it's how I talk to my teenagers when they wake up, groggy, and they're walking around like aimlessly.

[SPEAKER_01]: They don't know what they're doing.

[SPEAKER_01]: We kind of walk them through it, we tell them what to do, but they still have to do the things.

[SPEAKER_01]: Peter doesn't even know what's going on.

[SPEAKER_01]: He thinks he's dreaming, but he does have to do some things.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is not carried out.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's not wafed through walls or smuggled out by the angel.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has to walk and he has to get dressed.

[SPEAKER_01]: The impossible part was gods, but Peter has to participate in it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if the instructions of the angel sent for me to, they should.

[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, Acts 12 happens during the Passover.

[SPEAKER_01]: What is the Passover?

[SPEAKER_01]: The Passover is the Jewish festival web.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jewish people remember how God rescued Israel from chains, from bondage, from slavery and Egypt.

[SPEAKER_01]: And on the very first Passover night in Egypt, God tells them to eat and then he tells them to get dressed.

[SPEAKER_01]: To put on their sandals, to fasten their belts because by morning they're going to be walking out of slavery into freedom.

[SPEAKER_01]: And many scholars, people like Susan Garrett say that Acts 12 is another Exodus experience.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is God leading Peter out from bondage.

[SPEAKER_01]: Peter's getting dressed for his own Exodus.

[SPEAKER_01]: God does the things that God can do, but He tells us to put on our sandals and to get ready and to get walking.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the extraordinary thing here is that Peter doesn't really know that any of this is real.

[SPEAKER_01]: The chains are off his past the guards, his through the gate, his walk down a street, and he still doesn't know until the angel leaves him.

[SPEAKER_01]: when he comes to himself and up until this moment he's literally been inside a miracle and he has no idea and it's only in hindsight that he sees what God has done and he says perhaps one of the most obvious statements in the Bible now I know without a doubt the Lord has sent His angel and rescued me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Really Peter?

[SPEAKER_01]: He's rescued me from Herod's clutches.

[SPEAKER_01]: To Peter suddenly realize God has done something.

[SPEAKER_01]: How often does that happen to us?

[SPEAKER_01]: We're inside America and we don't even know it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's only with hindsight.

[SPEAKER_01]: We can see that God has been at work.

[SPEAKER_01]: which brings Peter and us to the house where the church is praying in verse 12.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's Mary's house, John Mark's mother.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Luke tells us there's a prayer meeting going on there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And perhaps Peter can see through the windows, the people, and the shadows.

[SPEAKER_01]: And perhaps he can hear the murmurs of prayers or someone seeing a him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Peter knocks on the door of the 80th out of gate of the house and a servant girl named Roda comes to answer.

[SPEAKER_01]: I find it interesting that it's a servant girl.

[SPEAKER_01]: Last time he met a servant girl, he denied knowing even Jesus existed and yet here we have another servant girl and she hears his voice through the gate.

[SPEAKER_01]: and she's so overjoyed that Peter is alive that she completely ignores him and goes into the house.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's comedic.

[SPEAKER_01]: She burst into the prayer meeting and she says, Peter's at the gate and the prayer meeting who spent the whole night praying that God would help Peter says to her, you are mad.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to read these verses from the ESP because I think it brings out a bit of repetition here.

[SPEAKER_01]: It brings out the comedy of the moment a little bit more.

[SPEAKER_01]: They said to her, you are out of your mind, but she kept insisting that it was so, and they kept saying, it is his angel, which means it is his ghost in first century, but Peter continued knocking.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at the Greek of this verse, you notice Luke has written it in a very interesting way.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's used three imperfect verbs.

[SPEAKER_01]: And imperfect verbs mean that the thing that's being described keeps on happening.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, really what's happening here, wrote a keeps insisting Peter's at the gate.

[SPEAKER_01]: They keep saying it's his angel, and Peter keeps knocking.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Luke is saying that this goes on for some time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here we have this scene where they just keep going in circles.

[SPEAKER_01]: Literally, the church is arguing about whether God is answering what they've been praying for all night.

[SPEAKER_01]: While Peter is standing at the door, knocking.

[SPEAKER_01]: Given the choice between God has done the thing we've been asked him to do all night, and Peter's dead and wrote us in in a ghost, they went with the ghost.

[SPEAKER_01]: Which raises a couple of really interesting questions for me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is it possible to pray for something you don't actually believe will happen?

[SPEAKER_01]: And God will answer it anyway.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think the answer is yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And is it possible to pray for something and not recognize the answer when it's knocking on your door?

[SPEAKER_01]: I think the answer is yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love this story because it's so human.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have a man of God who doesn't recognize God is doing a miracle in his life until after he's been rescued.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we have a frightened yet faithful church praying in desperation for him, seemingly not believing God will do what they're asking for, but they're asking anyway.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then they don't recognize the answer when it's literally knocking on their door.

[SPEAKER_01]: Remember where we started today?

[SPEAKER_01]: What you do in a crisis shows what you actually believe.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we see here very clearly what this church believes.

[SPEAKER_01]: They believe enough to pray, even if they don't really believe that there's going to be an answer.

[SPEAKER_01]: They pray anyway.

[SPEAKER_01]: How often does that describe the way we pray?

[SPEAKER_01]: If I'm honest, it describes my prayers pretty perfectly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because I often pray with a confusing mixture of faith and doubt.

[SPEAKER_01]: Does anyone else do that?

[SPEAKER_01]: You find yourself asking for something big and kind of believing it, but also going, is this gonna be answered?

[SPEAKER_01]: How often do we pray that way?

[SPEAKER_01]: And how often do we only realize God has answered our prayers with hindsight?

[SPEAKER_01]: God answers anyway.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I'm really aware that I've run out of time, and I've only gone half away through the chapter.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's worth saying, Harrod doesn't do too well at the end of this chapter.

[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't read it before, but he gets struck down and killed.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the way he dies is gruesome.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's consumed by worms, and then he dies.

[SPEAKER_01]: Notice the order.

[SPEAKER_01]: Think about that when you're going to bed tonight.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then we get this amazing verse just after a verse 24, which is a refrain of Luke.

[SPEAKER_01]: Luke says, and the word of God continues to spread and flourish.

[SPEAKER_01]: In the face of the King's persecution, God's word just keeps on marching on.

[SPEAKER_01]: The multiplication just keeps on marching on.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so wonderful.

[SPEAKER_01]: The last thing I kind of want to say here is to notice the shape of this chapter.

[SPEAKER_01]: And many commentators notice that this chapter actually has a really familiar shape to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It opens with a death.

[SPEAKER_01]: It happens at Passover, the same festival Jesus was arrested at.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a condemned man shot in the dark.

[SPEAKER_01]: a sleep like the dead, and then light, an angel, chains falling off, an opening gate that nobody touches, and the man walks out, and the first person to work out that he's alive is a woman, and she's so overwhelmed with joy that she can't do the obvious thing, and when she tells others they don't believe her, they tell her she's out of her mind, and then they

[SPEAKER_01]: Does that sound familiar?

[SPEAKER_01]: It should.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the last chapter of Luke's own gospel.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's written this story before.

[SPEAKER_01]: The stone rolled away is the gate that's open.

[SPEAKER_01]: The woman who worked it out first and wasn't believed.

[SPEAKER_01]: The disciples who thought they were seeing a spirit.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the same story.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the shape of Easter.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's also the shape of the Passover.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the shape of what God does.

[SPEAKER_01]: and it tells you who this church is praying to.

[SPEAKER_01]: They are praying not to a force, they're not putting thoughts and prayers into the universe, they're not praying to a distant God.

[SPEAKER_01]: They are praying to somebody who has been to the bottom of the circle himself.

[SPEAKER_01]: and who came back from that place from death, carrying the thing that we need.

[SPEAKER_01]: The claim of the Christian faith is that Easter really happened once, but it's not just something that Jesus did.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's something that Jesus does, and He continues to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is the one who brings life out of death.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not just once, but he continues to do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is the one who brings light out of darkness.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is the one who brings hope out of despair.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the line of work that Jesus is in.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is his work then and now and he will continue to do it again and again.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he is the one that we can pray to in our moments of abyss and ordeal and crisis.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so what is the application today?

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's pretty clear, it's prayer.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not just thoughts and prayers, it's extend us prayer, stretching yourself in prayer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Becoming a people like the people in Acts who did this regularly, they built a rhythm of prayer into their lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: They prayed and they prayed.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes not even believing what they were praying for, but they prayed anyway.

[SPEAKER_01]: Over the last few weeks, it's just been quite remarkable.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've been asked time and time again to pray for people more in the last three or four weeks than I've been praying for people for the last year, or being asked to pray for people in the last year.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the best parts of my job.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if I'm honest with you, there's times every time I pray for someone after a service and a gathering where I catch myself thinking,

[SPEAKER_01]: What am I praying for?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm stumbling over my words.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like my prayers are so inadequate.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's those little doubts in my mind, even as I pray.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I come away from praying from people going, oh, God, I'm really didn't pray well.

[SPEAKER_01]: What was I doing?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I have so many doubts about my prayers.

[SPEAKER_01]: But over the last three weeks, every Sunday, someone has come up to me and told me about how God answered those prayers anyway.

[SPEAKER_01]: People had come up and said, a relationship has been restored.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've been healed of something, and I don't know how to explain it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or I found that job that I've been looking for for two years.

[SPEAKER_01]: And none of those answers of prayers came about because my prayers were good, they weren't.

[SPEAKER_01]: The person I was praying for must have thought I was crazy at times, because I just was stumbling so much.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it reminded me that when we pray God moves, even our imperfect prayers, even our prayers that are prayed with a mixture of faith and doubt.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so my challenge this week is to become a people of prayer and pick something this week to test it with.

[SPEAKER_01]: For some of you would be the crisis that you're in.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're at the bottom of the circle.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's obvious what you need to pray about.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your health, your finances, your work, your faith, your family, someone you love, maybe it's the crisis of someone else.

[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe the crisis that you want to pray about this week is the crisis of our world.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're not in a season of crisis and you can't see any crisis in your life or praise God for that, we occasionally have that happen in our lives and that's something to be thankful for.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I want to encourage you if you've got no crisis to pray for our church.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because next week we're going to have vision Sunday and Tim is going to share some stretching stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to need to be a people who pray.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so this week I want to challenge you to choose one thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: and to set some of reminders up in your phone or some alarms or to put a poster note on your mirror as you brush your teeth and to set up some rhythms of prayer.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to challenge you to actually do it this way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Test it, a dare you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Choose one thing and pray for it every day.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not just thoughts and prayers stretch yourself a little.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sacrifice a little, put some time aside this week.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're saying to me, Darren, you don't understand.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've been praying about this thing for years.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to encourage you to be like this church who continue to pray, even in their grief and disappointment.

[SPEAKER_01]: They continue to pray.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you are someone here today and you go, I don't even know how to pray.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know if I believe in the God that you're talking about praying to.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to challenge you to do it too.

[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to have it all worked out to pray.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, talking to God is perhaps the best way to work out what you believe.

[SPEAKER_01]: So choose one thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: and start talking to God about that this week.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I believe that if we do that, we're gonna see God move.

[SPEAKER_01]: If may not be the way we expect, but God moves when we pray.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna ask the band to come up now.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I just wanna give us a moment to begin that process, that begin that, that extend us pray.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I want you to just close your eyes and you might want to extend your hands as sort of a symbol of the extent us prayer if you feel comfortable.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to encourage you to just name the thing you're gonna pray for this week in your mind.

[SPEAKER_01]: And picture that thing and picture it in your hands which you've extended.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I want you just in the moment in the silence, just to say to Jesus, this is what I'm giving you in prayer this week.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus, we come to you this morning, and we thank you that you are here with us, present in our midst.

[SPEAKER_01]: and that you invite us to bring the things we carry.

[SPEAKER_01]: The burdens, the way it's down, the areas of our life that feel dark, the situations that feel like death.

[SPEAKER_01]: We thank you that you, other one, who brings life out of death.

[SPEAKER_01]: You did it once, but you continued to do that work.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're the one who brings light out of darkness.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hope out of despair.

[SPEAKER_01]: You did it once on the cross, and you continued to do it again today.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we bring you these things, and we ask that you would do it again.

[SPEAKER_01]: We thank you that you are not put off by our state of believing, by the questions we might have alongside our prayers.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're not put off by our lack of eloquence, that your work is not dependent on us at all, but it is accomplished fully by you.

[SPEAKER_01]: We thank you that you are faithful.

[SPEAKER_01]: We thank you that we can have confidence in you and so we leave these things in your hands this morning and we ask you to do the impossible in Jesus' name we pray and I'm in

[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to sing a song now about Jesus doing that work and he does it.

[SPEAKER_01]: He did it then and he's going to do it again and as we sing I just want to encourage you to continue to bring the thing that's on your mind to him and to ask him to continue to do that work.