Distress And Deliverance

Acts 12:1-4, “Now about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church. 2 Then he killed James the brother of John with the sword. 3 And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now it was during the Days of Unleavened Bread. 4 So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover.”

I want to shed some light on Herod because if you have spent any amount of time in reading the New Testament, you come across Herod a lot; and He can appear to be like a cat with nine lives because twice we find record of Herod dying only to find him resurfacing later in another passage or two. How do we make sense of Herod dying twice, appearing again after he has died? The simple answer is that Herod was not one person. Herod was a series of persons, all from the same family. You see, Herod is not a name, Herod is actually a title that meant ruler or sovereign. When you come across the name “Herod” in the Scriptures, just understand that it is identifying him as a man with authority, a ruler or a guy that was in charge, like a governor or such. The Herod family consisted of several successive generations of these rulers beginning with a man that we know as Herod the Great. I want to kind of distinguish these Herods in the Scripture so that you know when you come across them, “Oh, this is a different guy than who I thought it was who I’d read about before.”

Herod the Great is the one that in Matthew 2 had put out the command that all of the infants, all of the children two years old and under, were to be slaughtered there in Jerusalem. That was his attempt to try and extinguish the life of Jesus who, he had heard from the wise men, had been born a King of the Jews. Herod was a paranoid man, and anyone that was a threat to him he wanted to get rid of. In order to try and extinguish the young life of Jesus, he commanded that all of the young children in Jerusalem be slaughtered. By the time you get to the end of Matthew 2, this Herod had already died.

Then we get to Herod Antipas, which was Herod the Great’s son. He is the one who beheaded John the Baptist. We find him again in Matthew 14, so it seems like Herod died in Matthew 2 and is there again in Matthew 14. But it’s not a problem if you realize it’s two different Herods, one was Herod the Great and the other Herod Antipas. Not only did that Herod behead John the Baptist, that is also the Herod that Jesus would stand before when Jesus was put on trial.

Then we get to Herod Agrippa I, that was Herod the Great’s grandson. I hope you’re following me on of all this. That is the Herod that we are reading about here in Acts 12. It is Herod the Great’s grandson. Herod the Great, the one who slaughtered the children; followed by Herod Antipas, the one who beheaded John the Baptist; followed by Herod Agrippa I, who would be the one that would kill the first of the twelve disciples that would lose their lives here in Acts 12. We actually get to Herod Agrippa II later in the book of Acts when the Apostle Paul has to stand before him and give a defense of himself. This is just kind of a side note, it’s not really what I wanted to get to in this story, but for the sake of understanding when you come across the name “Herod” in the Scriptures, just know that’s a title not a name and you need to maybe figure out which Herod is actually being talked about.

Let’s get to what’s going on here. These were tough times for the apostles. James has just been killed. He is not the first Christian to die or the first Christian to be executed, I should say, I’ve already mentioned that Stephen was the first martyr of the church, and he was killed in Acts 7. This is the first of the original twelve disciples, the followers of Jesus. James would be the first to lose his life, but, like I said, he would not be the last.

Peter, though, is then arrested. Why? Because Herod saw how it pleased the Jews what happened to James. Wanting to please the Jews, he decided, “I’m going to go get me another one.” He had Peter arrested with the intent, likely, to put him to death as well, except for the fact that at the time of his arrest, they were in the midst of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It was the time of Passover, and it would’ve been wrong for him to do an execution during that time period, so he was going to hold Peter until after the feast was over and then bring him out to be executed.

There is James dead, Peter in prison, likely to be killed when Passover is over. No doubt, knowing that that was the intent, Peter is there in prison maybe contemplating why these things are happening. Now, he was not a stranger to persecution. He had seen the way that Jesus was treated during His earthly ministry. Not only that, but Peter himself has already been thrown into prison two times before this. The first time that he was thrown in prison in Acts 4, he was threatened never to speak in the name of Jesus again. He disregarded that, and when he was released, he went out and spoke in the name of Christ only to be rearrested; and this time they upped the ante, he wasn’t just threatened, the second time Peter was beaten before he was released. Now, here, the third time, he is facing execution. Each time that Peter is arrested, it seems like the persecution was getting just a little bit more intense.

When we hear stories like this, there’s a certain part of us I think that gets a bit unsettled because it seems to go contrary to the way that we think things are supposed to operate, if we are followers of Christ. Yes, we do expect there to be persecution, we do expect to go through trials, but in the grand scheme of things, there is this expectation that if you follow the Lord and you do good, that what’s going to happen is protection and blessing, and good things are going to follow after you. But if you choose to live your life contrary to God’s will, you choose to do your own thing, you live badly, there’s an expectation that bad things are going to follow. So, be good, and God blesses you; be bad, and God’s going to punish you. That is the expectation, but sometimes it happens just the opposite. We see those that are living evil lives, prospering, and we see those that are living godly lives, suffer. Maybe you’ve noticed that.

There was a psalm written my Asaph, Psalm 73, in which Asaph really addresses this exact thing. He is writing speaking his mind in Psalm 73, maybe you want to take a look at that later. What he notices is that when he looks at those in society, that it seems like those that were the most evil, those that made the worst of all choices with their lives, were the rich ones, were the ones that were prospering. And then he looked at the godly people that he knew and saw how much they struggled just to make ends meet, and it did not make sense to him because he, like us, has this overarching expectation that good people will get blessed, the bad people will be cursed. Do good with your life, God will honor you; do bad with your life, and things are going to turn sour for you.

Asaph is expressing himself in that psalm, and he’s saying, “Why is it that the bad people prosper and the good people are suffering?” He expresses it in such a way where he actually says in verse 16 that it pained him to see this. It was difficult for him to watch this unfold right before his eyes. But then verse 17 happens, and he says these words: “Until I went into the sanctuary of God; Then I understood their end.” You see, something changed when he went into the house of God, he got God’s perspective on things. When we’re left to our own perspective, we can come to all kinds of wrong notions. But when we get God’s perspective on things, it changes. We begin to realize the truth of the matter, and that’s what Asaph came to realize is that, “Yeah, I was looking at things all wrong. Once I realized things from God’s perspective, I understood that this is not the end of the story. What I am seeing is a chapter in the story, but I’m not seeing how this story ends. God is the One who is going to bring it to an end, and God is going to make all of the wrongs, right. He’s going to fix everything that was broken,” and like Asaph, I think that we need to have God’s perspective on things.

Maybe you’re going through a time right now where you’re really wondering, Why is it that if I’m trying to live my life for the Lord, that life’s such a struggle for me, that things aren’t falling into place because I know plenty of people that don’t know the Lord, don’t want to know the Lord, and are living totally contrary to the Lord, and they seem to be doing pretty good. But here I am struggling. You might be in the middle of a dark chapter of your life, but you’re not at the final chapter, and that’s what this chapter, Acts 12, is going to show us. We might be going through a dark time, just like they were, but we haven’t reached the end of the book, and God is going to make everything right.

By the time we get to verse 4, it’s not looking very good. It’s looking pretty bleak. James is dead; Peter’s in prison awaiting execution; and Herod, the bad guy, seems to be doing just fine. Let’s see what happens now. Look at verse 6, “And when Herod was about to bring him out,”—that is, Peter—“that night Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers; and the guards before the door were keeping the prison. 7 Now behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the prison; and he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, ‘Arise quickly!’ And his chains fell off his hands. 8 Then the angel said to him, ‘Gird yourself and tie on your sandals’; and so he did. And he said to him, ‘Put on your garment and follow me.’ 9 So he went out and followed him, and did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. 10 When they were past the first and the second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads to the city, which opened to them of its own accord; and they went out and went down one street, and immediately the angel departed from him. 11 And when Peter had come to himself, he said, ‘Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel, and has delivered me from the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the Jewish people.’”

It’s interesting to me that here is Peter in a place where he is no doubt going to be executed not many days following, and he is sleeping. Obviously, he’s not very anxious about his situation. How could he be sound asleep in those circumstances? Well, Peter wasn’t always the calm one, as you know. In the gospels we get the story of Peter, along with the other disciples, in a boat out on the Sea of Galilee and a storm rose up. They’re rowing against the storm, and these were seasoned fishermen, many of them. This was not probably an unusual event, they’d gone through things like this, but maybe on this occasion it was more severe than they had faced before because they were getting a little bit freaked out. What also freaked them out is that Jesus was in the boat, but He was sound asleep. While they’re fearing for their lives, Jesus is just enjoying the rocking of the boat like he was in a cradle, evidently. He was at total peace. When it got really bad, and they felt like, “We may drown,” they wake up Jesus, “Jesus, don’t You care. Don’t You care that we are about to die?” And, you know the story, Jesus got up, probably rubbed His eyes a little bit, and then spoke to the wind and the waves and suddenly everything became calm.

Peter was in that boat when that happened, and he, like the other disciples, thought to himself, Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him? Well, over those three-and-a-half years that Peter had followed Jesus, what he had seen is that his own heart was very wishy-washy, but Jesus’ faithfulness to His Word was always true. Maybe by now at this point, Acts 12, he had gotten to the point where he trusted the Lord, I don’t know why this is happening, but it’s happened; and I know I’ve got Jesus, so I’m not really worried about it. You know what? That’s a great place to be, if you’re in that place.

I will tell you, it is better to be in the middle of the storm with Jesus in your boat, than to be on calm seas without Him. I think that Peter was in that place while he was in the prison cell knowing full well what may happen to him. He was at peace because he knew who Jesus was in his life. Though he didn’t know the outcome of the current situation, and he knew that it may be just the same as what happened to James, he could be at peace because he knew that he was in the Lord’s hands. But, lo and behold, the Lord had something else in mind, Peter was going to be delivered. The angel of the Lord showed up, poked him in the side, woke him out of his slumber, told him to get up, and as soon as he did so, the chains fell off of his hands. He told him to put on his garment, and suddenly gates are flying open and Peter is following this angel, at that time thinking that he is in some sort of a dream state, having a vision, and it is not until he is all the way out and around the corner that the angel departs from him and now his grogginess is gone and he realizes, “This is real. This is actually happening.”

The first thing that Peter wants to do is get to where his friends are, and he knew where they were hanging out. Likely, that was the location, it tells us in the text that it was at Mary’s house, not Mary the mother of Jesus but another Mary, and that would be the place that Peter would run to. When he got there, he would find out that they were praying for him.

I want you to look at what it says in verse 5. I’m backing it up a little bit because it mentions the prayers offered for Peter, actually before Peter’s release. In verse 5 it says, “Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.” The church was praying for Peter. Now, I’m reading from the New King James Version, and it uses the word “constant prayer.” Other versions of the Scripture use different words there. It may use the word “earnest prayer” or “fervent prayer,” but it simply came from a Greek word which meant to stretch or strain. It was a term that was used of someone who was stretching their muscles to the absolute extreme, as far as they could possibly stretch, was the word that was being used. In fact, that same word was used to describe how Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before He would be crucified knowing full well that He was about to be hung upon a cross. You remember the agony of prayer that Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, same word is being used, so you need to understand the kind of prayer that was being offered for the sake of Peter.

Maybe you have had moments in your life that you’ve prayed like that, that had an intensity that was greater than most of your other prayers. There was a need in your life that was greater than maybe any need that you have ever had, a situation that you saw as absolute desperate that unless God intervenes, “I’m going to be in real trouble,” that kind of situation, that kind of prayer that you offered—it was constant, it was fervent, it was earnest. That’s how they were praying together, and then all of the sudden there’s a knock at the door. Maybe they’re in the middle of praying, someone’s praying, and they hear the rap, rap, rap at the door. Because they’re in a prayer meeting, they don’t want to be disturbed, so they continue to pray. I’m kind of making this up, but this is what I imagine in my mind, because they just keep praying. Maybe they’ll go away. Maybe it’s just a salesman, someone who wants to get us to buy something, a magazine subscription or whatever. But the knocks keep coming, so finally they tell a young girl named Rhoda to go to the door.

I want you to look, beginning in verse 13 of the chapter, “And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a girl named Rhoda came to answer. 14 When she recognized Peter’s voice, because of her gladness she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter stood before the gate. 15 But they said to her, ‘You are beside yourself!’ Yet she kept insisting that it was so. So they said, ‘It is his angel.’ 16 Now Peter continued knocking; and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. 17 But motioning to them with his hand to keep silent, he declared to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, ‘Go, tell these things to James and to the brethren.’ And he departed and went to another place.”

It’s so interesting that here they are in fervent prayer, and their prayers literally are being answered at the very moment that they are praying these prayers, yet they don’t believe it could happen. Even when the young girl comes back to them and says, “I hear Peter’s voice. He’s still outside.” Their first response is, “You’re nuts. You’re a crazy woman. You’re imagining things.” When she insists, “No, it is true. I know his voice. That is Peter outside the gate.” They said instead, “Well, maybe it’s his angel.” That was a way of saying that maybe he has been executed and a servant of the Lord, a representative of God, an angel, is coming to inform us that, “You can stop praying now, he’s already dead.” Either way, it was a prayer that they were praying that really didn’t expect an answer, at least not the answer that they wanted.

How often do you find yourself praying that way? We know that prayer is a good thing. We know that we ought to pray when we have needs, and we can lay those needs out before the Lord, but how often are we praying but not really expecting that the answer that we are asking for is actually going to be the answer that we get. I think the unfortunate thing is that, 1) we neglect prayer when we ought to pray; 2) even when we do pray, we’re not really expecting a good answer. That seemed to be the case with them is that they prayed and even prayed with fervency, but even when the answer to their prayer was right in front of them, they had a hard time believing.

Do we pray to a God who answers prayer? Yes, we do. Do we pray to a God who always answers it the way that we pray it? No, it does not always play out the way that we prayed, but I tell you what, it always is answered better than you prayed. Whether it is the way that you want it or a different way, it will always be better the way that God answers it than the way that we envisioned. We are to pray like they prayed, with fervency. We’re to pray with earnest, but we are to pray believing that God is actually going to answer those prayers. They couldn’t believe it when it happened, and it’s kind of funny because we get astonished, too, when we get answered prayer, do we not? “Hey, I prayed for that and it happened!” We act surprised that it happened. I think we should act surprised when it doesn’t happen, but accept it as a response from God that, “Okay, if God did not answer that prayer, that means that God either wants me to pray differently or that wasn’t something that He intended for me. God’s got a better plan.”

Peter’s out, and Peter goes to his friends, shows them that he is out, but then it says that he kind of goes to another place. It doesn’t tell us what place that was, but it might’ve been to a place that Herod was not going to find him again. Then, we get to verse 18, and we see Herod’s response, “Then, as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers about what had become of Peter. 19 But when Herod had searched for him and not found him, he examined the guards and commanded that they should be put to death. And he went down from Judea to Caesarea, and stayed there.”

Herod, evidently that day, the day following Peter’s exit, had intended that that was going to be the execution day because he sent for Peter and they came back saying, “Peter’s not there.” He does a little investigation. Not getting the answers that he wanted, he has all of those soldiers, those 16 soldiers that were guarding Peter, executed. It was common back in the Roman government that if you were a jailer, if you were a guard in a prison, and you allowed a prisoner to escape under your watch, in many cases you would then assume the sentence that was going to be given to that prisoner—if they were going to serve five years, you would serve their five years; if they were going to be executed, you would be executed. The fact that these 16 soldiers were all executed, it’s a good indication on what Herod’s intent was with Peter himself.

The story isn’t over yet, because we get down to verse 20, and an event is going to happen that now is removed from being tied to James and to Peter, but it does involve Herod. In verse 20 it says, “Now Herod had been very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon; but they came to him with one accord, and having made Blastus the king’s personal aide their friend, they asked for peace, because their country was supplied with food by the king’s country. 21 So on a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat on his throne and gave an oration to them. 22 And the people kept shouting, ‘The voice of a god and not of a man!’ 23 Then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, because he did not give glory to God. And he was eaten by worms and died. 24 But the word of God grew and multiplied.”

Herod had a tense relationship with the two cities that were mentioned there, Tyre and Sidon. It was some sort of a conflict that had developed between the two, and the people of Tyre and Sidon really wanted to get this thing solved because they were dependent upon Herod to supply much of their food. It was not good for them to be at odds with Herod, so they reached out to him and invited him, apparently, to come to their region and to give a speech. Herod is responding to that here in this passage to go there and to give a speech to these people. It’s interesting the way that this story is told. We’re given some detail, but there is another source that we have in history, a historian that lived during that first century by the name of Josephus that also wrote about this same occasion, and interestingly enough, he added some color to the story. I want to kind of interweave for us what the Scripture says as well as what Josephus says about this same story.

First, here in the passage we’re told that Herod was, “ . . . arrayed in royal apparel,” but Josephus elaborated on what that apparel actually was, that it was literally a woven fabric using literal silver that was shimmering in the daylight as he is standing in front of all of the people and the sun is shining down upon him. The light of that silver fabric is now radiating off of him creating these beams of light, Josephus would say, which was stunning for the people to see this because they maybe had never seen any fabric like this before. As Herod is giving his speech, they begin to shout these words, “These are the words of a god and not those of a man!” Not only do we read that here in the Bible, but that is also what Josephus had written about this occasion, that the people began to elevate Herod to the level of being a god. As we read here in the Scripture, it tells us that “ . . . an angel . . . struck him . . . And he was eaten by worms . . . because he did not give glory to God,” the One that was deserving of the glory that was being thrown at him. Because he did not give glory where glory was deserving, “ . . . an angel of the Lord struck him . . . and he was eaten by worms.”

Josephus gives us a little bit more detail about that. It says that as he was giving his oration, that suddenly he had these intense stomach cramps to where he had to be carried away, and he suffered for the next five days with these intestinal cramps until he finally passed away. We read in the Scripture that it appears that all of this is happening all at the same moment, but Josephus tells us, “No, he didn’t die on the spot, he died after five days of intense agony, and then his life was over.” The one who had inflicted such harm on God’s people was now dead, and I love the way that the chapter begins to wind down, verse 24, “But the word of God grew and multiplied.”

There is something about this story though that I think that we ought to ponder a little bit. I think it’s important for us to think it through because here we have three characters in this story. We have Herod, who we’ve spent time talking about; we have Peter, who was delivered out of the prison cell; and then we have James, the one that was executed. We could look at that story and wonder, “Okay, God delivered Peter, why did He not deliver James? Why didn’t He rescue both of them out of the hands of Herod?” Those are the types of questions that we may often ask in our own situations and circumstances because we all have been in places where we have suffered and someone else has been delivered from their suffering. We’ve known people that have gotten sick and then recovered; we’ve known people that have gotten sick and have lost their lives. We have known people that have had been financially destroyed, yet it did not bring them under, they were able to get a new job, they were able to recover from that; we’ve seen other people that have lost their homes, they’ve lost their cars, they’ve lost their businesses because of financial ruin.

Why is it that there are some people that are rescued and other people that are not rescued? Why is it that God will come alongside of some of His kids, but apparently with others, He does not show up, if I could put it that harshly, because these are things that we a lot of times we don’t say out loud, we’re not going to think them out loud, but we are going to contemplate them in our heart much like Asaph when he wrote Psalm 73 wondering, Why is it that the wicked people are the ones prospering and the godly people are the ones suffering? Why is it that in certain situations, even among Christians, that some Christians get their prayers answered and others don’t get the answer that they were looking for, that they wanted?

In this story, it appears that Peter is the one that had the great victory, but James is the one that had a great tragedy. But I want to beg to differ. We can look at it that way from our perspective, but not if we’re looking at it with the right perspective. You see, I would argue that James is the one that actually got the greater deliverance. You see, Peter was arrested, but he was set free only to continue to live his life going through continuous persecution and worldly suffering until one day his life would eventually be over; where James, who lost his life in this chapter, was ushered into the presence of God where he would suffer no more pain, no more guilt, no more temptation, none of the things that we, this side of heaven, have to face in our earthly life.

Sometimes we look at those that are suffering here on this earth and then lose their life as the ones that have lost when in reality they are the ones that have been delivered. Peter was delivered from prison, but the prison cell, only to return to a place of persecution and opposition and struggle. James was delivered from all earthly restraints and was given the words from his heavenly Father, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord.”

Everybody’s story is different. All of us have a different story, and there are some that are going to face lifelong struggles where it’s just one trial, to the next trial, to the next trial; and others seem to have life a lot easier. Some are going to be afflicted physically, have all kinds of medical issues, where others seem to be healthy for their entire lives. Some will seem to prosper, others will seem to struggle from paycheck to paycheck. We don’t really get to choose many things in our lives, but what we do get to do is believe that the Lord knows what our needs are, and there will be prayers that are answered and there will be prayers that are not answered. The end of the story is that one day we will all be in the presence of the Lord, and ten thousand years from now, we won’t really care what happened to us here on this earth. It won’t really matter that much a hundred thousand years from now how hard our life was. All that will matter is that we are in the presence of our God, able to worship Him, and experience all of His goodness.

One of the joys I have about anticipating heaven is what we don’t know. We’re told a few nuggets in Scripture about what heaven’s going to be like, but there’s a whole lot that we don’t know. I don’t know about you, but I was the kid that did not want to know what he was getting for Christmas. You might’ve been the kid that was shaking your gifts a week before Christmas, that was not me. I did not touch any of my gifts under the tree until it was Christmas morning because I wanted the surprise. There’s a part of me that is just so excited about what it’s going to be like and all of the things, and I’m going to think, This is what I imagined, God, but what this is is so much better than anything my little pea-brain ever could think of.

You know, in this world, Satan is going to continue to war against God’s people. We will suffer persecution. We will go through trials. But we’ve read the end of the book, and we know how it ends, and we should not get bogged down in the day-to-day struggles that we face, if we keep our eyes on where we’re headed.

In this story, it starts out with James dead, Peter in prison, and Herod prospering. But I want you to see how it ends. In verses 23-24, “Then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him,”—that is, Herod—“because he did not give glory to God. And he was eaten by worms and died. 24 But the word of God grew and multiplied.” The chapter starts: James dead, Peter in prison, Herod prospering. The chapter’s going to end: Herod dead, Peter free, and the Word of God prospering. It’s such a contrast from the beginning of the chapter to the end of the chapter, and I want to assure you, whatever you are facing in this life that is your battle, your struggle, one day the worms are going to eat it and it’s going to die, and you’re not going to face it anymore. That struggle will be over, and you will be in the presence of God. Like the Apostle Paul said, “All of our suffering this side of heaven is not worthy to be compared to the glory which will be ours.”

Some of you find it hard to believe that. You think, You don’t know the severity of my problems. I would argue, “You don’t know the greatness of the glory that is ours because the greatness of what God has in store for His kids is not worthy to be compared to any shortcoming that we face here in this life.” Amen? We’re not to live at the beginning of chapter 12, we’re to live at the end of chapter 12. We’re not to live in the time when James is dead, Peter’s in prison, and Herod’s prospering; we are to live with the expectation that Herod is dead, Peter is free, and the Word of God is prospering. Let’s pray.