Acts 12:1-19 - A Sovereign God and A Sleepy Fisherman

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Welcome to Tabernacle Talk, a Bible study podcast hosted by Bryon Self, pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church. We hope this time in God's Word will be an encouragement to you. Let's dive right in.

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. Today, we are in Acts chapter 12. And as we've been reading through the book of Acts, it has primarily been good news.

It has been people being saved by the thousands. We saw 3,000 saved at Pentecost. We saw 5,000 people saved at Solomon's Colonnade.

We saw even those that were deeply against the gospel and against Christians being saved. We saw those that were ostracized, the Samaritans, the Ethiopian eunuch, the Greeks, the Gentiles. Everyone's getting saved.

Everyone's getting in on the party. And it's been mostly good news so far.

With the exception of the story of Ananias and Sapphira with kind of that attack from inside the church where Satan convinced them that they needed to try and trick God and trick the church and trick people, and they listened to him in that.

Then we saw in the story of Stephen where he gave his life confessing Christ and how God used that to then spread the gospel out across all of that area.

Jesus had told the disciples, you will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.

Everyone was kind of staying in Jerusalem right at the beginning, and then God, through the suffering, through the persecution, managed to send the gospel in every direction. And even in the hard times, God was still working.

And lives were being transformed. Now in chapter 12, we are seeing again some persecution that is taking place against them. Now, about that time, Herod the king laid hands on some who belonged to the church to do them harm.

And he had James, the brother of John, executed with a sword. James was one of the 12 apostles, and he was one of the sons of thunder, and he's gone off the pages of history with just a few words.

And what a thought that if even the apostles themselves, their whole lives can end just like that. How much more us Christians today? Many times we have very elevated views of ourselves.

We think that we're really important and that God might be really lucky to have us, or we can't imagine what maybe our church would do or what those in our life would do without us.

But we need to constantly remember the words of Scripture, that we are simply dust, that we are a vapor, we are a mist that is here today and is gone tomorrow.

That doesn't take away from the value that our life has, as we talked about a few days ago, that we are made in the image of Christ. But we do not need to think more highly of ourselves than we should.

If you hear my daughter in the background, I apologize. She's calling for her mama, and unfortunately, I am not her mama. So here, James, the brother of John, is executed with a sword.

When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter as well. Now, these were the days on leavened bread, so it was the Passover week.

This could have been anywhere from, oh, if I remember correctly, somewhere between one and ten years from the Passover week when Jesus was crucified. So he arrests Peter. He's already killed James.

That's two-thirds of Jesus' kind of inner circle of the ones that he took up to the Mount of Transfiguration with him, of some of the ones that were closest to him, nearest to him, even in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Two-thirds of them have now been arrested by Herod. James the brother of John was killed, and it looked like Peter was going to end up in the same boat.

He says, When he had arrested him, he put him in prison, turning him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending only after the Passover to bring him before the people.

So Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for him was being made to God intensely by the Church. What are you intensely praying for?

I know that as I read those words, it's a conviction in my heart of as a pastor of a church, as a member of a church, I need to be spending my time intensely praying to God.

We can pray things that through love of people, maybe we might have in a list that we want to remember all of these people that are praying, that we are praying for.

And so we might put it in a list, but what are the prayer requests on your heart that you don't need a list to pray over, that it's just burning in you? If there is nothing in your heart that you are really seeking God for, I would encourage you.

I know that it's something that I constantly try and think of in my mind. Okay, who do I pray for? What am I praying for them?

Not just generic, God bless all the people and all of the world. But what am I praying for? Am I praying specifically for people to be saved?

Am I praying for young believers to remain close to the Lord and to grow in their Christian walk? Am I praying for those that are in leadership in the church?

I know every day, in addition to the members of our church, I'm praying for our church elders and deacons, that those that are in leadership, we know Satan would love to derail them from their walks with the Lord so that it would then derail all of

the people that are looking at their lives as examples of what it is to live spiritually, spiritually mature walks with the Lord. So the church is praying intensely for Peter to be freed.

On the very night when Herod was about to bring him forward, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers bound with two chains, and guards in front of the door were watching over the prison.

The picture that Luke here is painting for us is he was trapped. He was trapped, trapped.

It says, Behold, an angel of the Lord suddenly stood near Peter and a light shone in the cell, and he struck Peter's side and woke him saying, Get up quickly, and his chains fell off his hands.

I think it's so cool here in the Book of Acts, how many times the angels are mentioned, how many times heaven is working on behalf of the people. And there are many superstitions that there are about angels.

There are many things that people say that are not accurate to Scripture. But if we believe that God is real, and if we believe that the devil is real, then we know that the angels and the demons are real as well. And the demons do the work of Satan.

And while they don't quite have the organizational skills that sometimes they are accused of having, the angels that serve God do so in a wonderful work.

I think of even what Satan tried to tell Jesus in his Temptation, where he quotes Psalm, I believe it's 90 or 91, where he says, He will give his angels charge concerning you lest at any time you dash your foot against a stone. Do you know this?

You can't stub your toe without God specifically allowing it. That he has angels that are protecting you, that are watching over you. What a comfort that is.

That whatever suffering we do endure, it's because God has a purpose for it. There is no suffering. There is no pain.

There is no trial. There is no temptation. That God does not have a specific goal for your betterment, for your witness, for you to grow closer to the Lord, for you to witness to someone else.

There is nothing that we can go through that God is not specifically allowed. Here, God wanted Peter in the cell until such a time as he says, All right, Peter, you're not going to go to trial. You're not going to be killed today.

I have a mission for you. So the angel, it says, struck Peter's side and woke him, saying, Get up quickly. I can imagine here it's the fisherman Peter.

He's kind of, I imagine him as a rougher, stronger guy. You know, he cut off Malchus' ear, the servant of the high priest, when they were arresting Jesus.

You know, here's, I imagine, a very, very strong man, and I could see him snoring, perhaps, and the angel has to whack him in the side and says, get up quickly. His chains fell off his hands. Verse number eight.

The angel said to him, put on your belt and strap 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 continued to follow. And yet he did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision, which we read just a couple, I think it was two chapters ago, where he had experienced a vision.

And so he thought, oh, this is just another one. How cool is this? Now, when they passed the first and second guard, verse 10, they came to the iron gate that leads into the city, which opened for them by itself.

And they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel departed from it.

When Peter came to himself, basically he woke up completely at that point, he said, now I know for sure that the Lord has sent forth 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, who was also called Mark.

We would know obviously John Mark from at this point back in the Gospels, where during everything that was happening with Jesus, and I believe his arrest, that there was a young man, and it says they grabbed his clothing, and he ran and left his

clothing in their hands, literally ran out of his shorts. And so this is that John Mark, his mother, Mary, says where many were gathered together and were praying.

Peter here goes to the place where he says, okay, I know where the church, I know where part of the church at least is going to be, and it's going to be at Mary, the mother of John Mark's house.

When he knocked at the door of the gate, a slave woman named Rhoda came to answer. When she recognized Peter's voice, because of her joy, she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter was standing in front of the gate.

She says, Peter's here, and she's so excited she doesn't even actually let Peter in. They said to her, verse 15, you are out of your mind. But she kept insisting that it was, so they said, it is his angel.

It's his spirit. Like he died, they killed him, and now his spirit is with us. It's so funny that here they were praying.

They were praying intensely for Peter to be released. And yet when Peter was right there, they didn't believe it. May we be ones that when we pray for something, let's pray something so big that it would be unbelievable for God to answer that prayer.

And let's pray in faith, believing genuinely that God could accomplish that prayer. Verse 16, But Peter continued knocking, and when they had opened the door, they saw him and were amazed.

But motioning to them with his hands to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had let him out of the prison. And he said, Report these things to James and the brothers.

This James would be the brother, the stepbrother of Jesus, Mary and Joseph's son, James. And he was kind of the pastor of, or at least kind of one of the main overseers, pastors of the church that was at Jerusalem.

He wrote the book of James that you could read later in the New Testament.

So after he says, Report these things to James and the brothers, then he left and went to another place, because I'm certain a lot of noise was made when they discovered that Peter was free.

Verse 18, Now when day came, there was no small disturbance among the soldiers as to what could have become of Peter. When Herod had searched for him and had not found him, he examined the guards and ordered that they be led away to execution.

Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and was spending time there. And we're going to see tomorrow what happens to this Herod, one that delivered Jesus and here killed James, the brother of John, and attempted to kill Peter.

And we're going to see what happens to him. He is, I believe, the son. It might be grandson by this point.

I'll look it up before the next episode of the King Herod that had ordered the deaths of the babies in Bethlehem. And he was a very, very wicked man and the son of a very, very wicked man. And we'll see what God does with Peter.

What God does with wicked rulers tomorrow.

But I want to encourage us today, whether God leads us to heaven like he did with James the brother of John, or whether he leads us into deliverance and freedom like he did with Peter here, God is still good.

And whatever he ordains for us, we can take as marching orders, as mission. When something happens, it's not God. It's not God, why did you allow this as in I don't deserve any of this?

It's God, why did you allow this as in what is my purpose as a result of this? God, you have me in the prison. God, am I here to praise you?

Am I here to be rescued out? God, am I here to witness to a guard? What is my purpose?

And I'd encourage all of us in times of difficulty and sadness and trials and hardships, don't ask God, why is this happening to me? Ask God, what do you have for me to do? When we suffer, God is saying, I am putting you in the place of Jesus.

Jesus was the suffering servant, the one who bought salvation for all mankind. He was acquainted with grief. And when he does, that means that he is suffering those trials, so that he is able to help everyone that is going through difficulty.

The same is true for us. We are priests like our Messiah. And if God puts us through suffering, it's for an incredible mission, an incredible goal.

And let's pray for that heavenly mindset that says, God, I'm not focused here on this earth. Things aren't the important thing. My health isn't even the important thing.

What the important thing is, is people. Help me to realize how I can reach people, how I can serve people, how I can love people, how I can pray for people through what's happening here.

As you do so, remember, there are angels that he has surrounding you, guarding you, and anything that comes comes through his express command.

And we can rest in the sovereignty of God that he has good plans, even if in the moment, they don't seem like good plans to our natural, earthly-minded eyes.

Hope that would be an encouragement to you today, and look forward to seeing the downfall of Herod tomorrow.