The Reign of the True King

Herod kills James, arrests Peter, and sets four squads to guard him, and the church's response to real, mortal danger is not strategy but prayer. An angel walks Peter past sleeping soldiers and a gate that opens on its own, while Herod, who let a crowd call him a god, is struck down and dies. Luke's verdict on the whole ordeal is quiet and confident: the word of God kept increasing and multiplying.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right. Well, good morning, church. It is awesome to be here with you this morning as we continue our sermon series in the book of Acts. Um, as Pastor Tim just said, my name is John. I'm a mission group leader here at SMC, and it's my joy to be able to open up God's word with you this morning. As we dive into Acts chapter 12, I do want to begin by asking a question. Question's this How do you respond when it seems like the enemies of Christ are winning? How do you respond when it looks like the enemies of Christ are winning? And I think this is a question that every generation of believers has to deal with at some point. I think that we wrestle with it today and we're going to see some examples of that, but it's really an ancient issue. If you know anything about the Bible, if you know anything about the Old Testament, you recognize that the Old Testament is a book that is just filled with conflict. That seems to be about all it is at times, and it's filled with a ton of conflict. And most of that conflict is nations and kings who are attempting to set themselves against the people of God. One of the first examples that we see of this is the nation with Pharaoh, the eighth, the nation of Egypt. Whenever Pharaoh attempts to keep the Israelite children bound in slavery. We then go on and we see another example with Nebuchadnezzar, whenever he threatens death to any of the Hebrews who won't bow to the golden image that he's made of himself. Or you can even think about someone like Balak and Balaam as they were attempting to speak a curse over the nation Israel. I mean, there are way too many examples in the Old Testament to name them all, but I think David sums it up well when he says this in Psalm chapter 2. He says, Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of earth set themselves, and rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. And they say, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. So this is an ancient problem. The people are the kings of men who set themselves against God and his people. But we still feel this tension today, don't we? In culture, we've seen over the past 10 years, you know, our culture, even in the more conservative factions, we've seen culture reject God's design for marriage. We've seen our culture that celebrates the murder of infants in the children and in the mother's womb. And we saw just a few years ago there was a big push to keep churches closed and to take away the in-person assembly of the saints. We're not too far removed from that. But even with these big item issues, I would even say that, I mean, I as we think through the conflict, there are some of us in here today who might be in a crisis. There's always conflict. In these moments, these conflicts, these crises, they force us to make decisions about how we respond. What do we say about all these issues that we talk about? And when the pressure becomes real and we're forced to make decisions, I think oftentimes our hearts become exposed. And we're tempted, I think, at times, whenever we have to make decisions like this, to do one of two things. I think we either ignore the conflict that presents itself and we sort of give in to the cultural pressure to curry favor with the culture. Or we might be tempted to engage in warfare against the culture that is unhelpful to gospel mission. So as we dive into Acts chapter 12, I think this passage is going to force us to confront our own hearts with honesty. What do we do when the enemies of Christ appear to be winning? So Luke opens this up for us, and he is introducing us to a guy. Well, he's not a guy, he's a king. I said not in the first service, too. He's not just a guy, he's a king, he's a king of Jerusalem. His name is Herod Agrippa. And so if the name Herod sounds familiar to you, there's a reason for that. There are several Herods that you see throughout the New Testament. So who are we dealing with today? Well, you're actually probably pretty familiar with Herod Agrippa's grandfather. His name was Herod the Great. And we learn about him at least once a year during Christmas time. You probably hear his name. He's the one who the wise men come to him and say, Hey, there is this new baby who was born, and he's going to be king of the Jews. Obviously talking about Jesus. And the white and Herod the Great tries to trick the wise men and says, Hey, bring that baby to me. I want to worship him. We know that he had more sinister motives behind it. And so the wise men leave, they have a dream, and they're told to not go back to Herod the king because he's evil and he intends to kill him. And so Herod the Great gets mad and he kills all the male children under two years old. So that's Herod Agrippa's grandfather. You also probably know his uncle really well as well. His name was Herod Antipas. So Herod Antipas is the one that you read about who is famous or infamous for beheading and executing John the Baptist. And he was also present at the trial of Jesus. We hear about him during Easter time quite a bit. He's present at the trial of Jesus, where he is mocking Jesus, and the text says treating him with contempt. So now this new Herod takes the stage. King Herod Agrippa. And he is continuing this legacy of demonic, hostile, generational oppression against the people of God. His family was notorious for opposing God and his people, and Herod Agrippa is taking the torch now. So it's no surprise that when Acts 12 begins in verse 1, that it says this of Herod Agrippa, he laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. So we're past the point of a threat. This is active persecution that the church is facing. And up to this point in the book of Acts, so we remember in Acts chapter 7, we had the stoning of Stephen. But between the stoning of Stephen and the events that we're going to see today, a few years has passed. And there's actually been a respite against persecution. There's not been much persecution going on in the general world in the big cities. And as a result of this lack of persecution, the church in Jerusalem exploded. There were a ton of new converts. And this fact that there were so many new Christians, it was irritating to the Jewish people. And why was it irritating to the Jewish people? Well, we understand Paul's argument that he makes in Galatians 5 when he says that the cross is an offense to the Jews. Why is it an offense to them? Because the Christian message, the gospel message of the cross is that it doesn't matter what your birthright is. You're not going to enter the kingdom of God based on your bloodline, but through Christ alone. The cross requires repentance of sin. It requires total transformation, and the Jewish people did not want that. It was a stumbling block, as Paul says in Galatians 5. So what makes this moment in the church particularly dangerous? So this is a pretty intense persecution moment right now. Herod is highly motivated, and we're going to see why. Herod Agrippa is highly motivated to kill these Christians. So he kills James, as it says in verse 2 with the sword. And then it goes on in verse 3 and it says this. So the Jewish population in Jerusalem were his biggest constituents. If he wanted to stay empowered in the throne, he needed to keep the Jewish people from revolting, from rebellion, from rebelling against him, and ultimately keep them happy. So he's motivated because Herod wants to secure his throne. He wants to remain popular in the eyes of his people. So to put it in more modern terms, he wants his poll numbers to be high. And the way that he's going to do this is by getting rid of the Christians. This was his key to securing his throne and solidifying his popularity and his influence across the kingdom. Get rid of the Christians. But here's an interesting thing about Herod Agrippa. He was a brilliant politician. He was a master politician. But he was also in terms of his actual ruling, he was an ineffective king. He ran debts high in the city of Jerusalem. He was known for food shortages. There was always an issue under his reign. But we know, I mean, we see it in our day too. You don't have to be effective essentially to keep your seat in Congress. You just have to be good at getting votes. You just have to be good at reading your people and knowing what they want. So he knew that the key to securing his throne was not being a better king, not going forward with human flourishing, but he had to get rid of Christians. So it says that he kills James and he arrests Peter. So with this reality facing them, the early church is about to have a really grim night. They just lost their brother James. They're expecting to lose their brother Peter, one of the bigger names of the Christian community at this point. And they're about to have a very dark night that was most likely going to be filled with mourning, with grief, with agony, with confusion. I mean, we could imagine that. But Luke also says this. He says this in verse 5. But earnest prayer for Peter was made to God by the church. So I don't want us to miss this contrast of what Luke's setting up for us. That just sort of naturally flows out. Herod has the throne. Herod has a military. Herod has the influence. The church has prayer. We can't miss that contrast. The church has prayer. And what kind of prayer were they making? Luke goes on to call it, he says that it was earnest prayer. What is earnest prayer? How can we describe that? What kind of picture is this painting for us when we think of an earnest prayer? Well, the Greek word I think is helpful to understand. The Greek word for earnest that Luke uses here is ectinos. And the word ectinos literally means to stretch out. So this is not a passive or repetitive style of prayer. Right? This describes, as Luke says here, earnest, or as the ESV puts it, earnest. Some translations say fervent. It's intense. It's meant to paint a picture of this constant, fervent, earnest prayer. Luke also uses the same word ektinos again in Luke chapter 22 in his gospel account. He uses it in chapter 22 when he's talking about Jesus, when he is sweating drops of blood. It says that Jesus was praying more earnestly in the Garden of Gethsemane, that he started to sweat drops of blood. And I guess the question is: have you ever prayed like this? Have you ever been in a moment of crisis? Maybe you're in that moment of crisis today where you are praying earnestly? Maybe there is some extreme opposition that you are feeling against you that you've never felt before and you're not knowing how and you don't know how to handle it. See, these are those intense moments where you're exhausted, your eyes are heavy, you've probably been carrying a migraine headache for the past few days. And your body, I mean, we see it with Jesus in Luke 22, your body could be physically responding to the stress that you're feeling. And in most of these times, these prayers are that when we are in moments like this, these are not the most sophisticated prayers that we say. They're not going to be the most theologically precise, but they typically go some way like this. It's Lord, if I'm going to make it out of this moment, it can only be by your hand. You are my only hope in this situation. We've been there. Some of you may be here now. But what we see in Acts is that the church was desperately praying for their brother Peter to be delivered from the hands of the evil King Herod. But before we move on, I do want to, I think that there's a looming question that's sort of over this text, one that I had at least. So the church, I believe, so the church we know is praying for Peter. And I think it's safe to say that they were probably also praying for James in the same way. They felt the persecution rising, and I'm sure their brother James and the brother Peter they were praying for. So the church is praying for both James and Peter. God heard the prayers of both for both men. The Lord Jesus loved James and he loved Peter. Yeah, both men have very different endings to this story. As we're going to see, Peter escapes, but James dies. And I want to uh we we have to see here that Luke isn't trying to resolve a theological dilemma here. He's not trying to resolve the idea of so what is, you know, how does God's sovereignty work with the prayers of men? How can we resolve that? Luke isn't trying to do that in this passage. I think what Luke is trying to do and trying to show us is where the confidence of the early church landed. And what we see is that the confidence of the early church was not that God would answer every one of their prayers exactly as they would expect him to. And that should not be our confidence either. The confidence of the early church and the confidence that we hold to today is this is that every time we pray, we are praying to a king who is a good and wise ruler of men. That is our hope, is that we can rest in the sovereignty of God, we can rest in the lordship of Jesus Christ because we know that he is a good and wise ruler. And that's what's driving the early church right now. They understood that Jesus Christ was good, he was holy, he was sovereign, and he was reigning on high. That was the confidence of the church. And they knew that he was always working for the good of his people to the glory of his name, and his purposes would not be stopped. So if you are that person in crisis mode this morning, I would say this just real quick three things that we see from the early church in their prayer life. First thing is that their first response to crisis was prayer. And even when they saw that James died and that Peter got arrested and it seemed hopeless, what did they do? They continued to pray. And here's another thing that we see they did not bear the burden alone. They were praying as a gathered assembly together. And if you're in that crisis mode, I would say this: reach out to one of your pastors, reach out to your mission group leader, join a mission group, and have the saints of God go to God on your behalf in prayer. And lastly, we see from the early church that they trusted their king and they rested in his wisdom. He didn't answer exactly all the time as they expected, but they knew that he was good and that he was working all things to the glory of his name and the good of his people. So, church, we can rest in the goodness of Christ. And so the scene shifts. So we see the church praying, we see Herod Agrippa is on this raid to kill Christians. We see that the church is praying, and then we see Peter. We come to verse 6. The church is praying, he's there, and he's chained up between Roman guards. And actually, historically, what a lot of commentators think the picture of this looks like is that he is literally chained to his guards. Herod Agrippa did not want Peter to escape. He put guards on the outside of the door, he put guards inside, he was chained to them. There was no way Peter was ever getting out of that prison cell. So we see Peter in prison, though. And if all you knew about Peter came from the gospel accounts, how would you expect to find Peter in this moment? I have a couple ideas. I think based on what we know about him, he's either in there, number one, trying to fist fight the guards until they kill him. Or we would think that he's begging for his life, trying to plan an escape to get out of there. That's typically how the gospel paints a picture of Peter. He's either trying to fight someone or he's looking to flee to get away. But what we see is astonishing. Verse 6, what does it say about Peter? What is Peter doing? He's sleeping. And the question becomes: how does a man who is facing execution, who is known for being kind of a hothead, how in the world is he sleeping soundly? That's not who we see. Peter is not the man historically that we would want, you know, in the game whenever the game's on the line. He's sleeping, yet he or he's facing execution, yet he is sleeping. I think one thing that we see is we're looking at a man who has walked faithfully with the Lord for years and whose heart has been transformed by the gospel of grace. And I would say this: if you want a window into your own spiritual life, ask yourself this question: How well do you sleep at night? How well do you rest? Whenever you're in bed at night, are you able to sleep soundly? Have you given all of your burdens to the Lord? And I would say for most of us, I know for me that answer is not at all. It is hard because why? Our culture is built against rest. A fallen world, there in a fallen world there is no rest. But we actually see that rest is actually a pretty important theme that we see throughout scripture. Right in Genesis, we see that God rests on the seventh day and he enjoys his creation, and his creation enjoys him. We see that sin in the fallen world disrupts rest. But by his grace, God assembles Israel to become a nation and he gives them this law, the fourth commandment. Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy, a day of rest. Why? Because this makes you unique from the nations. This is my sign of the covenant with you that you are a people who can rest in their God. And all of this is pointing to our final resting place, which is Christ. In Matthew 11, Jesus calls himself our rest. Come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest. Christ is our very means of rest. And I think what's happening is Peter is living this very reality out. He cast his burdens to the hands of the Lord, and the Lord gave him rest in the midst of the worst circumstances. He's in a prison cell waiting to die. And I mean, think about the picture. You have the guards, you can only imagine what the guards are saying to him. You have the hard jailwood floors, you have the smells and the sounds of a prison. And you have a threat of execution in just a few hours. This is not a time to sleep. But Peter finds his rest. And what's interesting too is that he's sleeping so soundly that we see an angel of the Lord descends into the prison cell. He shines the cell with the angelic light of heaven bursting into Peter's eyes. But Peter still stays asleep. This is why Peter wakes up. The angel of the Lord literally has to kick him in the ribs to get him to wake up. That's how restful and peaceful he was. He was at rest, knowing that his sovereign king was ruling over him. And then we get to the rescue. And you know what's interesting is that there's just like a couple verses about the rescue because at And I think this is the reason is look at how effortless this rescue is. And he actually does it. We we find out in verse 9 that Peter is actually still half asleep as he's escaping. He doesn't have to pick the lock. The chains just fall off of him. He doesn't have to carefully sneak around the guards. The Lord just, I guess, puts them to sleep. We don't know what happened, why, but he just doesn't have to sneak around them. He gets out to the iron gate, and what does it say happens to the iron gate? It opened of its own accord. It's amazing. And think about this too. The angel of the Lord, when he's in there, he tells Peter to get up quickly, but then he even gives him time to get dressed. The Lord was not worried about what was going to happen to Peter in this moment. The Lord knew no obstacle. Hey Peter, take your time. Yeah, we're in no rush. Guards won't wake up. Yeah, we'll get the chains off for you. Oh, the iron gate, it'll open. Don't worry about it. Take your time. Brush your hair. Brush your teeth. Let's get out of here. And when Peter came to himself, verse 11, he said, 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. So Peter, he makes this miraculous escape. The hand of the Lord was with him, and he goes. And where's the first place he goes? He goes to the gathered church. And what is the church doing? Do we read? They were gathered together, praying. And so Peter, he knocks on the door, and this servant girl, Rhoda, she hears the voice of Peter, and she's so excited that Peter's there that she runs upstairs and forgets to open the door for him. And so she's upstairs, she's talking to the other believers, and she's saying, Look, Peter's alive. He made it out of Herod's castle. And we would expect the early church to be saying, Praise God, we knew he would come through. But that's not what they say. What do they say? They say, Rhoda, you are out of your mind. No, there's no way Peter's there. If anything, it's just his angel because there is no way Peter escaped from that prison cell. Think about it. The very people who were praying for this escape, the very people who were praying in agony, praying earnestly for Peter, didn't actually believe that the Lord would come through. And what does it say about our hearts? Isn't this true often of us? We pray, but our hearts are filled with doubt. We ask the Lord to move and to provide, and then we're actually shocked when he does. But I want to give you an encouragement with this is that Christ is not limited by the weaknesses of his people. Yes, we all have way too little faith. And I think about the father in Mark 9 who said this, Lord, help my unbelief. And that is the prayers of the saints. God, help me to believe. Help me to trust in your sovereign reign. Help me to trust in your goodness and your provision that you have made for your people in my life. Christ is not limited by the weaknesses of his people. Then we come to the conclusion of the story. The story begins with Herod, and the story kind of ends with Herod too. So he hears about Peter's escape and not too shocking for Herod. He kills him. Typical of him. No trial, no nothing. He's the law. He crushes them. But then the text actually does something really interesting. So we fast forward a couple months and we see that Herod is on a diplomatic trip to another country. And so he goes out there. It's some sort of trip. There was, you know, there was a little bit of hostility, I think, between Herod and the country that he was visiting. So he's there to try to build favor with them. And they're trying to build favor with Herod. So Herod gets up, it says that he puts on his royal robes and he starts to make this impassioned speech to the people of this country. And we're going to pause there. The ancient historian Josephus actually has a really important detail about what happened in this moment. So Josephus, the ancient historian, he talks about Herod Agrippa being up there. He's giving this impassioned speech. And then we read in the text that the people start to say, This is not the voice of a man, but this is the voice of a God. And Herod makes a fatal mistake. He doesn't correct them. And so Josephus says that in this time he's making the speech, the people are chanting this. This is this man is a god. Lowercase g. And then Josephus records that at that moment Herod Agrippa bent over with strong abdominal pain. And he had to be carried by guards back to the palace. So what happened? What happened to Herod? Well, we see Luke tells us that in verse 24, he was eaten by worms. So from Luke's account and the historical account from Joseph's, what we understand is that the angel of the Lord he struck Herod with a tapeworm. He goes back to his palace, lays there for five days, getting eaten alive on the inside by a worm. That's not the death of a typical king. He died like a normal man. God avenges his people. God makes provision for his people. And there is no enemy too strong that God cannot defeat. Herod stretches his hand out against the church. He kills James. He imprisons Peter. And for a moment it looked as though James is dead. Peter is on his way out. It appeared that the enemies of Christ were winning. But by the end of the chapter, the man who occupied the throne in Jerusalem lied powerless in the grave. In the church, Herod sought to silence, continue to grow, and to multiply, proclaiming the good news of their risen king. We see verse 24 the word of God increased and multiplied, the blood of his saints pushing the kingdom forward. But I think that there's something bigger that Luke wants us to see here. There's a bigger theme that we're seeing that goes beyond the boundaries of Acts chapter 12, and it's this it's that Christ alone reigns supreme above all earthly powers. And his kingdom advances according to his sovereign purpose. His kingdom advances. The kingdom of God will advance. There's no king, emperor, senator who can stand against our king, and nothing can frustrate his purposes. And the Lord works through the suffering of his people. So we go back to the question: when the suffering hits and it seems like the enemies of God are winning, how ought the church to respond? And I think our hearts are often tempted to respond in one of two ways. The first way is this. I think oftentimes when we're dealing with this sort of conflict, we flee from gospel responsibility. When we see culture waging war against the Lord, I think it's oftentimes tempting for us to give in to the cultural pressures and sort of manipulate the gospel message to fit the narrative at the time. So what's an example of this? How do we see Christians who manipulate the gospel message? Well, this is one way. Culture today will say that the greatest problem that mankind faces is low self-esteem and unmet potential. It's the belief that emotional well-being is the end game of the gospel message. It's the temptation to preach Christ as more of a life coach than as a risen king and savior. And rather than pointing people to the scriptures, we're tempted to give them steps to a better life, how to become better versions of themselves. And all the while, this message is being given, and their hearts continue to grow restless. And what does this do? This type of gospel softens the call to repentance, it minimizes the seriousness of sin. We downplay the exclusive claims of Christ that it's Christ alone who can save. And here's the thing Christ Jesus does not need a better version of himself. We couldn't make one if we wanted to. How else are we tempted? I think this is another way. We fight meaningless wars that work against gospel mission. I think there's something inherently noble about standing and fighting. And in many ways, Christians should stand and fight when necessary. Fight for the gospel, fight for truth, fight for what we know is good and true about the Lord Jesus. But what I'm thinking about here is Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he takes his sword out and he slices off the ear of the guard. And then Jesus responds to him and says, If you live by the sword, you die by the sword. See, Peter in the gospel, we go, I'm always picking on Peter. Peter back in the Gospels, he's always trying to fight these, he's always trying to maintain his life, secure his life. And he had a different vision of the kingdom of God than Jesus had. Jesus and Peter saw two very different kingdoms, and Peter was fighting endlessly to try to build his. And I think we have this temptation. I think this is true of Peter, and I think this is what I'm about to say is true of Peter, and I think is true of us today, is I think a lot of us probably don't like to admit, but it's true. Some of us have a lot of Herodian characteristics. Sometimes we have the heart of a King Herod. We want to fight. We want to fight in wars. We look at the unbelieving world. So what does this look like? We look at unbelievers in the world and we see them exclusively as our enemies who need to be destroyed. And rather than our first instinct to be to kneel down and to pray earnestly before God, it's to make some really mean social media post. There's no heart for missions in this. There's just a hardness of heart that is built against the culture. And instead of thinking of missions as church planting or global missions or even service in your local church, I think oftentimes we have the disposition of James and John when they ask the Lord Jesus to call fire down from heaven to destroy the Samaritans. We oftentimes walk with that temptation. But we know that this was not the disposition of the spirit-filled church. Their mission was to spread the gospel to every region of the earth and to make disciples, not crush them. And so when the enemies of the church do appear to be winning, how should the church respond? And I think the answer to this is that we need to look to our Lord Jesus. So Jesus, he faithfully fulfilled his mission. Christ faithfully fulfilled his mission. You see, the greatest attack that was ever launched against the church was not this moment here in Acts 12. It was not Herod going after James. It was not Herod laying violent hands on some Christians and not the arrest of Peter. This is not the worst attack that the church, that the people of God has ever faced. The worst persecution, the greatest attack on the kingdom of God is when sinful men put a perfect, sinless, holy Savior on the cross. That was the greatest attack in the church's history. Earthly rulers were gathering together to stand against the Son of God. You had Herod, you had Pilate, you had all the religious leaders of the day, you had some of the spectators in the crowds who were giving false witnesses about Jesus. They were all conspiring against him. And to all of the apostles, that we know this is true about the disciples, pick on Peter again. He flees. To all of his apostles, to all of his followers, to all of his accusers, it looked like the enemies of the kingdom of God had won. But we read this in Revelation chapter 5. Starting in verse 4, the apostle John writes this. He says, And one of the elders said to me, Weep no more. Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, conquered, so that he can open the scroll. Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its ears, for you were slain, and by your blood ransomed people for God from every tribe, language, people, and nation. And you have made them a kingdom of priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. And the people saying, Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. Christ is the risen king. What seemed to be the greatest defeat in history became our greatest victory. Through the death of Christ, he bore the penalty for our sin. Through his resurrection, he conquered death. And we miss this element sometimes. I think one of the most missed elements of the gospel message is the ascension of Christ. We rarely hear about the ascension of Christ. But what is, what does this mean? What is the ascension? The ascension shows us that Christ is reigning above us. He is the authority. And this is exactly why our passage ends with the word of God increasing and multiplying. The same king who accomplished redemption through what looked like the worst moment in human history will continue to advance his kingdom today, no matter who is reigning on earth. How do we respond then? When the enemies of Christ appear to be winning, how do we respond? I think the answer to that is that we faithfully follow the king. Our hope is not rested on governments. Praise God for that. It doesn't rest on cultural approval or any earthly power. Our hope rests on the risen king who sits enthroned, who sits enthroned above every ruler in authority. Kings rise and kings fall. We saw it with Herod. Empires come and go.