24But the word of God continued to increase and spread.
25When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark. (Acts 12:1-25)
Today’s passage starts out with “It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church...” What time was this time? According to the last paragraph in chapter 11 (verses 27-30), it was the time when a prophet had come to Antioch and predicted that there was going to be a severe famine throughout the Roman Empire. The disciples in Antioch had decided to help the brothers in Jerusalem by sending a gift. It says that they each provided according to their own means.
I think that, because of persecution, the church in Jerusalem probably had an especially hard time. (Actually, the reason there even was a church in Antioch was that God (as you may remember) had used persecution to scatter some of the believers from Jerusalem around the Roman Empire to spread the gospel as they were supposed to have been doing but weren’t.)
Anyway, Jerusalem was where the persecution was and Christians probably had a hard time getting work or doing business in Jerusalem. There are certainly places like that in the world today, too. There are persecutions for Christians and they have a hard time getting work or operating a businesses. And in case you don’t think anything like that will happen in the United States, it’s has already started to. Some major corporations will not promote you or may even fire you if you don’t support homosexual rights, for example. Universities have fired professors because they spoke against evolution, preferring to believe that God created all things rather than random chance. (I happen to believe, by the way, being a scientist, myself, that evolution is scientifically impossible. The whole thing seems to me to be more like politics than science.)
Anyway, what King Herod was doing in today’s passage was all about politics, too. (King Herod, by the way, was Herod Agrippa who was the grandson of Herod the Great. It was Herod the Great who had tried to get rid of Jesus by having all the boys under two years old in the vicinity of Bethlehem killed when the Magi told him about Jesus. It didn’t work, however, and Herod the Great didn’t last too long after that either. He died. Herod Agrippa didn’t last too long either. As we read, he was dead by the end of today’s passage.)
King Herod (the King Herod of today’s passage) was a politician. He was in the position of being responsible to the Roman emperor and to the Roman government. He had the power to put people to death. His decisions, however, had very little to do with justice or Roman law. They had everything to do with what was necessary (in his view, anyway) to keep the peace and make both the Roman government and the Jewish people and their leaders happy. It appears that he thought that it might make them happy if would persecute the Christians. So he had some of them arrested with the intention of persecuting them. (Literally, it says to do evil to them.) Then he had James killed.
When Herod saw that having James killed pleased the Jews—the Jews were probably mostly the Jewish leaders, certainly not all the Jews—he decided to arrest Peter.
Peter and James were both apostles. James was the brother of the apostle John. (James and John were the one who wanted to reign at Jesus’s right and left when his kingdom was established.) Peter and James would have been leaders in the Jerusalem church, so I presume that Herod figured that putting them to death would do the most harm to the church and be the most pleasing to the Jews. Probably putting James to death was an experiment to see how they would react.
By the way, Herod, as I said, was motivated by a desire to keep the peace by pleasing the Jews without any consideration of truth, righteousness or justice. How many times do we compromise truth and righteousness in order to keep the peace? How many times do we say or do something that we know isn’t quite right (or maybe not right at all) just to please people? It’s just something to think about.
Herod decided to keep Peter in prison until after the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Apparently he wanted to get as much mileage out of Peter’s arrest and execution as he could by having a public trial.
It also says that he had Peter guarded by four squads of four men each! And Peter was in chains! (It says that his chains fell off when the angel released him.) What was Herod guarding against?
Well, maybe Herod though the Christians would try to rescue Peter, I don’t know. But, you remember that the Jewish leaders asked for guards to be stationed at Jesus’s tomb after he was crucified. They reasoned that the disciples might steal his body and say he had risen from the dead. Well, Jesus did rise from the dead and there was nothing the guards could do about it. And, in the present case, Peter’s chains fell off and he walked out in spite of four squads of four guards each! (If God determines that it’s going to happen, 4,000 squads of soldiers won’t make any difference!)
Now look at verse 5. Verse 5 says. “So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.” How do you suppose the church was praying for Peter? I heard someone suggest one time that they were praying for God to strengthen him not to deny Jesus. After Jesus was arrested, Peter denied that he even knew Jesus three times. They may have been praying for Peter to be released, but that in any case, that he would not deny Jesus. (Sometimes when I pray for God to heal someone who is dying, I pray, “Father, I pray for you to heal this person, but in any case, don’t let him die without Jesus.”) If you look on a little further in today’s passage, it sure looks like they were certain Peter was going to die.
Now let’s look at verses 6 through 11. I’ll read them:
6The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. 7Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.
8Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. 9Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.
11Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating.” (Acts 12:6-11)
Well it looks like maybe Peter wasn’t expecting to get out alive either—and this even though he had been let out of prison by an angel once before. The angel even had to tell him to get dressed. (He probably wouldn’t have thought he needed to get dressed for a vision.)
After they had walked right past the guards, the gate to the city had opened by itself and after they had walked a block or so, the angel suddenly left Peter. It sounds like the angel just vanished. (Do you ever wonder why God does things the way he does? Philip the evangelist, after he had baptized the Ethiopian eunuch, was simply snatched away by the Spirit of Christ and deposited in Azotus where he continued to preach. Why didn’t God just snatch Peter out of the prison and deposit him in the house of Mary the mother of John Mark where he finally wound up. I don’t really know. God always has a reason. But one thing I do know. God goes out of his way to make sure we don’t start to think he works according to formulas. He discourages us from starting to fall into the belief that we can somehow figure him out.
You know, when we pray, most of the time we add, “In Jesus’ name, amen,” to the end of the prayer. Jesus told the disciples, “I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name,” so we add, “In Jesus’ name,” to the end of the prayer.
Well, I doubt if anyone (any reasonable person, anyway) would say that God will be required to grant your request if you append “in Jesus’ name” to the end of it. But, if you fail to say, “In Jesus’ name,” do you have a vague feeling that God is less likely to answer your prayer? In any case, when you actually pray in Jesus’ name (as opposed to just appending the words to the end of your prayer), you are praying with the knowledge of who Jesus is. His name represents who he is—that he is God who came in the flesh and that he is now at the right hand of God the Father. And there are other conditions, too. You have to be praying according to God’s will and in obedience to him. (Nevertheless, we have to say, “in Jesus’ name,” or the next person will not know when to start praying.) In any case, God doesn’t work according to formulas, but according to his wisdom and purpose.
By the way, have you wondered why God let James be killed and freed Peter? I’ll give you my answer: “I don’t know.” But God is sovereign and almighty. And he is good. He has a good reason for doing all the things he does. And “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Rom. 8:28)
Now let’s look at verses 12 through 16:
12When 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. 13Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer the door. 14When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
15 “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
16But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. (Acts 12:12-16)
Rhoda recognized Peter’s voice right away, but was so excited that she forgot to let him! She went back to tell everyone else She knew it was Peter, but the others thought she was crazy. They were so certain that God would not answer their prayers (at least their prayers for Peter to be released) that they didn’t even think it was possible that Peter could have been released. When Rhoda insisted it was Peter, they said that it must have been his angel. (I don’t know what they meant by ‘his angel’. Some say that they meant his spirit, meaning they thought he was dead. But it says angel, not spirit. Maybe they thought it was his guardian angel, also probably meaning they thought he was dead.)
Peter didn’t give up. He kept on knocking until they answered. They were astonished to see that it was really Peter. (o what is your attitude toward prayer? How do you expect that God will answer your prayers? How do we expect that God will answer our prayers?)
Now let’s look at verse 17:
17Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the brothers about this,” he said, and then he left for another place. (Acts 12:17)
Do you remember last week when Tom pointed out that the story of the angel visiting Cornelius and Peter’s vision instructing him not to call anything impure that God had made clean was repeated in detail when Peter was explaining his going into Cornelius’s house to the Jewish believers? The point was that the narrative could have just said that Peter told the story to them without repeating it in detail. But God repeats the important stuff in detail. What Peter was explaining was that God had the same salvation for the Gentiles that he had for the Jews. The story was worth repeating in detail. In today’s passage it just says that Peter described how the Lord had brought him out of prison—no details—not even a mention of the angel! Peter’s getting rescued from death seems to be no big deal, not compared with God giving salvation to the Gentiles!
After Peter told them about how he had been brought out of prison, he told them to tell James and the brothers about it. Then he left. I guess he had important things to do. James, of course, (“Tell James and the brothers”) is not the James whom Herod killed. He is James the Lord’s brother. He was also one of the leaders. In Galatians 2:9, the apostle Paul, referring to he and Barnabas’s being accepted by the church in Jerusalem, says, “James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me.” James was one of the ‘pillars’ of the church in Jerusalem. (We’ll hear from James again in a few weeks.)
Now let’s look at verses 18 and 19a:
18In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. 19After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed. (Acts 12:18, 19a)
There was no small commotion. There sure wasn’t. There definitely would have been a BIG commotion. Herod had a thorough search made. I image he didn’t just search the prison, but had the whole city searched. But he didn’t find Peter.
Herod cross-examined the guards. What do you suppose he found out? The Bible doesn’t tell us what actually happened to the guards while the angel was leading Peter out of prison. It just says that they passed two guards on the way. I’m sure the guards could all testify that they weren’t negligent and that they didn’t just let Peter go. (The two guards Peter had been sleeping between may well have been chained to Peter.) Herod had to choose between saying the guards had been negligent (something that they would have had no incentive to be—the penalty was death) and saying that God had released Peter. Herod had the guards all put to death.
Now let’s look at verses 19b through 23:
Then Herod went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there a while. 20He had been quarreling with the people of Tyre and Sidon; they now joined together and sought an audience with him. Having secured the support of Blastus, a trusted personal servant of the king, they asked for peace, because they depended on the king’s country for their food supply.
21On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. 22They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” 23Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died. (Acts 12:19b-23)
It actually says in verse 20 that Herod was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, not that they were quarreling with each other. They wanted peace with Herod because they depended on him for there food supply. They got Blastus to intercede for them and when Herod came dressed in his royal robes and gave a speech, boy did they ever lay it on thick: “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” Herod didn’t give glory to God and God had him struck down and killed. He was eaten by worms.
Have you ever been praised for doing something that you really knew God did and didn’t give glory to God? If you have done this, you obviously haven’t been struck down and eaten by worms—yet. But this account of Herod’s death is part of the word of God. It’s in there for a purpose. So, heed it.
Also, beware of false humility. If you give praise to God, it has to be sincere. You can’t do it just for appearance—just because it’s good form. (I have noticed lately that a lot of people on Christian radio will talk about receiving praise for something they did and say, “It was so humbling.” How can something that sounds like it might be flattery be humbling—embarrassing, maybe, but humbling? But it seems like this is the proper response to praise these days. Maybe someone can explain it to me.
Anyway, chapter 12 started out with Herod’s persecuting the Christians and killing James and ended with God’s killing Herod. (But it doesn’t say that God killed Herod because he was an evil and unjust murderer, but because he refused to give God the praise.)
Now let’s look at verses 24 and 25:
24But the word of God continued to increase and spread.
25When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark. (Acts 12:24, 25)
Did you notice that whatever happens, the gospel spreads? It’s still spreading today. It will continue to spread to the ends of the earth. It’s the gospel—the good news—of God’s kingdom—of his grace and mercy and forgiveness—of his salvation through Jesus Christ his Son and our Lord! Praise the Lord! Amen!
May the Lord bless you and keep you!
[prayer]