The True King | Sunday Sermon

So for the past several months, we've been journeying through the book of Acts, and one of the things that I've really been enjoying about the way that we're studying Acts is that we have two different opportunities each week to take a look at the text.

On Thursday mornings, we slow down, we look at the background, we look at the context, we we try to step into the world of the first century.

And so we study history and we study geography and we listen to voices even outside the Bible, historians and geographers, writers who lived during these same times and same years as the apostles.

And it's been really interesting to understand just the world and to get into depth.

But if you're someone that enjoys getting to understand the Bible like that, I would really encourage you to come Thursdays because we've been having a good time and we've been sort of trying to go, we've been going deep, right, Marie?

Yeah, I've been in, we've all been enjoying that, I think.

But this morning we're gonna approach the passage a little bit differently.

And um rather than focusing on background and context, rather than me just walking through the whole story and explaining the whole thing to you, what I want to focus on is one question this morning.

Why did the Holy Spirit preserve this account in the book of Acts in chapter 12 for us today?

In other words, what does he want us to learn through it?

As I was walking through the book of Acts over and over again in chapter 12 this week, I found myself seeing something that I hadn't necessarily noticed all the way before.

What Luke is doing here is he's painting a picture of what it looks like to rest in the power and in the goodness and in the sovereignty of God.

The circumstances of the people in this chapter couldn't have been harder.

The apostle James has been executed.

The apostle Peter is in chains in prison, and he's about to be executed.

And this powerful king, Herod Agrippa I, seems to be holding all the cards.

And so the church feels helpless to change their situation.

And yet through the chapter, we see some interesting things happen.

We see a church that prays against all odds.

We see an apostle who rests in Christ in the middle of an impossible situation, and we see a God who reigns over every other throne and every power and every authority.

In verse 1, it says, About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church.

Now, this is, as I said, King Herod Agrippa I.

It's not the same one who built the temple, the one who slaughtered the infants.

It's not the same one who did the trial with Jesus.

This is actually his nephew.

Okay?

But Herod has spent his life.

He was shipped off to Rome when he was four years old to save him from assassination.

And he grew up in Rome around the powerful and the politically elite.

In fact, Gaius, who became the Emperor Caligula and the Emperor, the one who, Claudius, who became the Emperor Claudius after him, he grew up with them.

And so he knows how to gain influence and power.

He understands politics, he understands public opinion, he understood that if he could keep the favor of the Jewish people, then he could keep his throne.

And that was the pursuit of his life.

Everything Herod did, every political decision, every alliance he made, every compromise, every calculated, manipulative move he made was all about preserving his kingdom and his influence and his reputation and his name.

And Herod was in tune to what was happening in his kingdom.

He understood that the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem didn't like these Christians, these people who insisted that this guy Jesus, whom they had killed, was Israel's Messiah.

And so it makes sense when Luke tells us that Herod begins to persecute the church.

And in verse 2, it says he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword, and when he saw that it pleased Jesus, 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.

I think verse 2 happens so quickly.

Luke just kind of passes right by it that it can be easy to miss the weight of what he's saying right here.

The Apostle James is dead.

The brother of John, one of the sons of thunder.

One of Jesus' earliest disciples, in fact, one that Jesus invited into his inner circle.

James was one of the three with James and Peter, who was on the mountain of transfiguration when Jesus was transformed into the glory he had with the Father before the world began, as he spoke with Moses and Elijah.

He was one of the few that was invited into the room at Jairus' house when Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the dead.

In fact, in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night before Jesus was going to be betrayed and condemned, he asked Peter and James and John to just come a little closer and wait and pray with him.

And now he's dead.

The Apostle John has lost his brother.

And so the church is in mourning.

And to make it worse, now Herod has Peter in chains too, and he plans to do the exact same thing.

And the only reason that he hasn't already done it is because it's the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

And he knows that it would make the Jews mad if he executed somebody on the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

And that's the reason he's doing it.

He wants to make the Jews happy.

The problem is that where we are in the story, it's the night before, the last day of the feast.

And Herod's plan is the very next morning he's going to bring Peter out of the cell, and he's probably planning to make a big spectacle out of him and parade him around in front of the people.

And then when he gets everybody's blood lust up, he's going to murder and kill Peter right in front of all of them, just like he did to James.

And so you can imagine what the church must have been feeling in this moment.

They're mourning, they're hurting, they're afraid, they're feeling desperate, maybe hopeless, but it says they're praying earnestly to God.

They had no physical power.

They had no political influence.

They didn't have the strength or the power or the ability to do anything about the situation.

Peter's in prison.

And he's not taking chances either.

He's assigned four squads of soldiers to guard Peter.

That's 16 men.

Sixteen.

No, that's five.

It's sixteen.

That's a lot.

And just think about how much we feel.

You know, Herod is like the king.

He has the power, he has the army, he has the soldiers, he has the weapons, he has the throne, he has the influence, he has the support of the emperor and the church.

They've got prayer.

But I don't want you to misunderstand me when I say that.

Because I think we we often think about it that way.

As if prayer is some kind of last resort.

Like when I've exhausted every other option and done everything in my own ability to figure out the problem that's in front of me, when I've asked all my friends and I've asked all my relatives, and I finally get to a place where there's no hope left.

Finally, I pray, God.

But I don't think that's a very good way to look at prayer.

The church didn't have prayer as a last resort.

What the church had was they had access.

They had access to the one who holds all power and all authority in heaven on earth.

You remember what Jesus said right before he commissioned the disciples?

He said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

See, these disciples, these Christians were feeling powerless.

James is dead, Peter's in prison, Herod's holding all the cards, but they also understood that what feels overwhelming and powerful to us is nothing to the one who holds true authority.

And so the church is believing, they're praying, they're gathered in the house of Mary, and they're praying earnestly to God for Peter.

In verse 6, it says, Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison.

Question.

What did he just say Peter was doing?

How?

He was cozy between the two guards.

Yeah.

Cuddled up in his chains.

If you were Peter thrown in prison, chained between two Roman guards, you know the very next morning Herod's gonna parade you around in front of the people and then slaughter you with the sword in front of the nation.

Would you be able to sleep?

I think I'd just probably sit up all night praying and crying and asking God to do something.

Mercy.

Praying for mercy.

I was thinking about this week.

How could Peter sleep the night before his execution?

As I was thinking about that, I thought about another story.

Mark 4.

Jesus is with his disciples and they're teaching on the Sea of Galilee, and he's teaching the parables, and he teaches the parable of the sower, right?

The sower scatters seed and some falls by the wayside, and some falls among the thorns, and some falls among the rocks, and some falls on the good soil.

And then he teaches the parable of the mustard seed, the parable of the growing seed.

He's teaching parables all day long, and it says, when evening came, he told the disciples, let's go across to the other side.

And so they get in this boat, and Jesus has been teaching all day.

And so he goes and he lays on a cushion in the stern in the front of the boat.

He lays down and he falls asleep.

And so the disciples are, you know, taking him across the lake.

They're all traveling in this boat.

It had to be a decent sized boat for them all to fit in there.

And so they're traveling across.

But at some point on the journey, there says a great storm arose.

And this was not just a normal storm.

This was a great storm.

And the waves are getting so big that they're coming into the boat and they're filling up the boat.

And you need to understand that a lot of these disciples were fishermen.

They had spent their entire lives on boats on the water.

They knew about boats.

Okay, they knew about what it was to be on the water, how to survive storms.

But it gets so bad that even these experienced fishermen are panicking and they're fearing for their life.

And so finally they go to the front of the boat and they wake up Jesus and they're like, Lord, don't you care that we're perishing?

And it says, Jesus awoke and he rebuked the wind.

And he said to the sea, Peace be still.

And there was a great calm over the waters.

And he said, Why are you so afraid?

Do you still have no faith in the disciples?

It says, We're greatly afraid.

And they said, Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him?

See, Jesus slept peacefully through that storm because he knew exactly who he was.

The eternal Son in perfect union with his father, holding all authority in himself.

And you need to remember that Peter was there that day.

He saw his Lord sleep peacefully through the storm.

He had seen Jesus' power over creation as he commanded the very elements of the earth and they obeyed him.

And now Peter is in a storm of his own.

But the thing is now he's seen what his Lord is capable of.

Jesus had stood in a very similar situation to what Peter was in, hadn't he?

In his trial, he's standing before Pilate, and Pilate's like, What, you don't want to talk to me?

Don't you know that I have authority to release you or to condemn you?

And Jesus told him, You would have no authority over me unless it was given you from above.

See, Peter knows that nothing can happen to him outside the will of his God.

He knows who Jesus is.

And I think there's a lesson in this for us.

See, I don't think we're unfamiliar with what the church was going through in this chapter.

And of course, I don't mean prison and execution.

I mean, we might be unfamiliar with that.

What I mean is we know what it is to feel powerless.

I think one of the greatest desires that human beings have is to feel like we have some sort of control and stability.

We spend our lives trying to gain this sense of stability, don't we?

We try to find a sense of contentment, of happiness, of success, but so often things happen to us or to people that we love that we can't control.

Relationships go wrong.

Financial trouble hits us when we least expect it.

We lose a job or an opportunity that we really needed.

We receive a diagnosis that terrifies us.

Or we just look at the condition of the world around us and we just feel overwhelmed by problems and circumstances that are way bigger than we could ever handle.

We know what it's like to feel powerless.

But the message of God in this passage is that when we face storms in our lives, we don't have to rest in our own ability.

We can rest in the ability and the love of our Savior.

In Psalm 4, King David, he was a man who faced a lot of challenges in his life.

Any of you heard the things that King David went through?

Being pursued by Saul through the wilderness, being accused of things he didn't do, not being able to go home to see his family, having to live in caves.

He went through horrible times and it went on for years and years and years, but he wrote in Psalm 4, In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for you alone alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.

When Peter finds himself beyond his own ability, he just looks up.

And he rests in the ability of Jesus.

And so on the eve of his execution, Peter undressed and folded up his clothes and he went to sleep right there in his chains between two Roman soldiers.

Because he knows that his God can deliver him from death.

And that even if he doesn't deliver him from death, he knows that he can deliver him through death into eternal life.

Because to die for Christ is to be ushered directly into the presence of the Savior Himself.

I don't think Peter thought it was a bad thing to be reunited to his Lord.

In verse 7 it says, And behold, an angel of the Lord stood right next to him, and a light shone in the cell, and he struck Peter on the side, and he woke him, and he said, Get up quickly.

And the chains fell off 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 was real, but he thought he was seeing a vision.

And when he had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city, and it opened for them of 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 didn't open the gate, but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate.

And they said to her, You're out of your mind.

But she kept insisting it was so, and they kept saying, It's his angel.

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

And so as Peter sleeps, as he's trusting in the sovereignty and the providence of God, as the church prays, believing that the Lord holds the ultimate authority and power, God does what only God can do.

He delivers.

And he doesn't need to send an army either.

He just sends one angel who stands in Peter's cell, and the light shines off the angel, and the chains fall off of their own accord, and doors and gates open of their own accord.

And Peter finds himself standing in the city of Jerusalem, free, delivered out of the wicked plans of Herod, from the bloodlust of the people.

And so he goes to the place where he already knows the disciples are going to be gathered, to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark.

And these people have been praying.

You know, just remember, these are the disciples gathered together.

There might have been apostles there.

This was the early church.

They're in the house of Mary.

They've been praying.

The feast of unleavened bread has been going on for seven days.

We don't know how many days they've been there praying and fasting and believing and asking God to deliver Peter.

But when God finally answers their prayers and does for them everything that they asked of him, they don't believe it.

Peter comes to the gate and he knocks and he's calling out to them.

And Rhoda, the servant girl, she hears his voice and she recognizes Peter's voice because obviously Peter's been there often before, right?

And so she recognizes his voice, she gets excited, and she goes running.

And Peter's here, Peter's here, he's at the gate.

And these pillars of the early church, these powerful early Christians from the first century.

They don't believe her.

They're like, you're crazy.

You're out of your mind.

Go away, little girl.

Can't you see we're praying?

Obviously, Peter's not here, he's in prison.

What do you think we're praying about?

Ah, dumb girl.

But Peter keeps knocking.

And he keeps calling out.

And what I love about this moment is that it shows us that we aren't the only ones who struggle to believe that God will answer our prayers, are we?

I like that Luke doesn't write this in a way that kind of smooths over the flaws and the failures of the disciples.

It actually makes it more believable.

It gives them more credibility.

He's not trying to write this fantastical tale about these perfect people that never fail.

He's talking about human beings just like you and me.

People who face really tough situations and we pray and we try to believe, but we, you know what?

We we struggle and we have our doubts, and we're like, is he even hearing my prayers?

I don't see anything happening.

And then when he finally answers, we're like, oh my gosh, he actually answered.

But the amazing thing about grace, the amazing thing about the incarnation, the amazing thing about salvation is that it never depended on our ability to believe.

It didn't depend on our ability to stir up enough confidence.

Oh, if you're not praying confident enough.

I can't answer it yet.

Try to stir up a little more.

No.

God knows our frame.

He understands our frailty.

He understands our doubts and our fears.

And he loves us anyway.

But I think there's one more important thing that Luke wants us to see, and I want to show you that before we close.

In verse 18, said, Now when the 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.

He 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.

And immediately the 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.

Through this whole episode.

Of Herod's persecution of the church in Jerusalem, it seemed like there was no way the church could overcome.

It seemed like Herod held all the cards, he had all the authority of the throne, he had all the wealth, he commanded the armies, he had the favor of the emperor, he had a gift for oration.

People were praising him as a god and not a man.

But in Psalm 2, David gives us the perspective of heaven.

He says, the kings of this earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed.

And in verse 4, it says this He who sits in the heavens laughs.

Herod thought he was in control.

He was a man who had spent his entire life building his own kingdom and protecting his own throne and preserving his own name and holding on to his own power.

And to do so, he killed James and he imprisoned Peter and he executed the soldiers, but in the end, he couldn't even keep himself breathing for one more second than God allowed.

Everything that Herod had spent his entire life building, he ultimately lost.

Jesus had told Peter, on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

When Herod tried to prevail against Christ's church, what happened to him?

Well, he died.

But Luke finishes this way, he says, But the word of God increased and multiplied.

I think that the word that the Spirit wants you to hear today is this.

Every single one of us will eventually face something that's bigger than us.

Circumstances we can't change, burdens that we're not able to carry, a future that we can't control.

But Acts 12 reminds us that the power to overcome in our lives, the power doesn't come from ourselves.

It's not looking to our own ability.

It's in lifting our eyes to the one who is able.

The church was facing the power of a king.

They prayed, but they prayed to one who was higher.

They prayed to the king above all kings.

When Peter's life hung in the balance, he couldn't save himself.

He rested in the power of the one who had calmed the storm.

He could close his eyes and sleep in peace because he knew exactly who Jesus is.

But the question for us this morning is do we?

Do we know?

Do we realize who Jesus is?

I think it's important that we do.

Because when the moment comes for us, as it inevitably will, that we have no power to stand against some obstacle in our path or in our faith, our hope has to rest in that same Savior and Lord and King who possesses all the authority in heaven and on earth, before whom every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father, the one who ever lives to make intercession for us and who upholds the universe by his power.

Church, that is the one who holds you.

And you can trust him in your storm.

Father, we love you and we thank you for your word.

Spirit, we pray that you would help us to receive it and to hear it.

Pray, God, that you would give us strength, Father, to believe you in every circumstance of life, in the good times and in the bad.

Knowing that you have the power to deliver us from death.

You have the ability to deliver us from everything that we face.

And we know that ultimately you have the ability and the power to usher us in to your very presence, where we will ever live for all eternity with you.

We love you, God, and we thank you.

We worship you today.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.