Now shall we turn for our meditation to
the Book of the Acts in Chapter 12
and to the passage that was read for
us by Mr. Lowe earlier in the service.
I have given it the title, The Spirit
in the Heart with Death at the Door.
This is the last but one of the
series we began some time ago now and
called it From Simon to Peter.
I was tempted to pass over this, but
on second thoughts I found it irresistible and
have had to turn to it for some
of the precious things that it has to
tell us.
So I bid you turn with me this
morning to the passage, though I'm not going
to read any one, any particular verse from
verses 1 to 19.
We shall be looking at the passage and
its message as a whole.
Now that the Holy Spirit dwelt in Peter's
heart hardly needs proving.
Readers of the Book of the Acts and
those of you who have been with us
here over the last number of months will
need no proving at this point that the
mighty Spirit of God came into the heart
of this man to dwell.
We remember something of the initial glory of
his entrance in power and with great grace
on the day of Pentecost.
We have seen something of the abiding glow
and grace of that Spirit.
Circumstances have changed, but the sufficiency that Simon
Peter experienced on every plane is such as
to prove that this once fallible and always
feeble man, naturally speaking, is now in touch
with God.
He is indeed more than sufficient in and
through him who is his Lord and his
Savior.
With each new exigency or demand, the mighty
indweller seems to cast the mantle of his
sufficiency around God's servant, to raise him up
above what he would normally be.
To make him wiser than the wisest of
his foes and stronger than the strongest.
And it's a remarkable sight.
It's a remarkable spectacle.
To see this, let me repeat, this once
very feeble, foolish man now reigning in grace.
You see him moving from one circumstance into
another on the pages of the Book of
the Acts, but always having all sufficiency in
all things.
And the reason?
The Spirit of God reigns and rules in
his heart.
And the Spirit makes present to the believer
the unchanging grace and sufficient power of God
in glory.
Now, in the incident before us, Simon Peter
is found looking straight into the eyeball of
death.
Death stands astride his pathway in all its
gaunt arrogance.
And humanly speaking, there is no getting death
away from the door.
Peter's in prison.
Four squads of soldiers, making sixteen in all,
have been deputed to keep an eye and
a hand upon him until the morrow, when
the execution is to take place.
There's no getting out of it.
There's no wriggling out of the situation.
He's with us back to the wall.
He's looking death in the face.
What does the Spirit of God do for
a man in a circumstance such as this?
Well, let us look.
Let us see what the passage is to
tell us.
But before we come there, I want to
say one other thing.
Will you please mark this well?
The saints and the servants of God have
to die and to suffer.
Now that may sound quite unnecessary to be
told, but it is.
There is no such thing as the utter
and eventual avoidance of death or of suffering.
The saints of God have to suffer in
one way or another.
And the leader of the Christian church, Simon
Peter, has here to suffer.
Don't you believe in any doctrine of healing
which suggests that anybody can ultimately escape pain,
persecution, which is suffering, and death?
There are times when God breaks in healing
power upon the body and upon the mind
as upon the spirit.
That is true.
But there is no such thing in the
New Testament as absolute deliverance from suffering and
pain until the day when the trumpet shall
sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible
and we shall receive a body which will
know no pain and in which we shall
know no sorrow.
In the meantime, the saints of God suffer.
In fact, the case could well be made
out that the saints of God have more
sorrows and more sufferings and more trials than
those who are outside of Jesus Christ.
If you're a Christian this morning and if
you're witnessing to your Lord, you will have
problems, you will have burdens, you will have
sorrows that the man of the world doesn't
know anything about.
You will have a dimension that gives you
pain and distress that the man who knows
not Christ has never, never known and never
will.
For in the midst of all these things,
says Paul, we are more than conquerors through
him that loved us.
That's what we have here.
Peter is in prison.
Peter is threatened with death.
I don't know whether he thought it.
Expositors of the passage looking back upon it
have concluded, erroneously of course, but have concluded
that it must have appeared to Peter that
his Lord's prophecy was about to come true.
You remember Jesus said to Peter, it's recorded
in John 21, 18, Truly, truly, I say
to you, when you were young, you girded
yourself and walked where you would.
But when you're old, you will stretch out
your hands and another will gird you and
carry you where you would not wish to
go.
John explains.
He said this to him referring to the
kind of death that he would ultimately die.
Is this the end then?
Simon might well have asked the question.
It was destined not to be the end.
But as Simon Peter looked at it in
prospect, he may not have been sure.
And so that as far as he was
concerned, he's looking death in the face.
His hands are bound.
There is no escape.
Let's see what did the Spirit do for
him.
Now the first thing I would like us
to notice, one can speak of in these
terms.
Let us look first at the powers that
were arraigned against this Spirit-filled man.
And then we shall see of the power
that is for him.
You remember Paul's great appeal of praise at
the end of Acts chapter 8.
If God be for us, then who can
be against us?
Now we have that enacted here in the
experience of one man.
There are those that are against him, but
God is for him.
And because God is for him, he is
more than conqueror.
It's an illustration really of that Pauline teaching
in Romans 8.
Briefly then let's look at the powers arraigned
against this Spirit-filled man, Simon Peter.
There are many.
Though we shall now have to confine ourselves
to the more obvious.
First of all we think of Peter's human
foes at this point.
The first and the most obvious of course
is Herod the King.
May I read to you again the first
few verses?
About that time Herod the King laid violent
hands upon some who belonged to the church.
He killed James the brother of John with
a sword.
And when he saw that it pleased the
Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.
And when he had seized him, he put
him in a prison and delivered him to
four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending
after the Passover to bring him out to
the people.
Now that unscrupulous tyrant was Herod Agrippa I.
Those of you who are acquainted with the
history of the times will know that he
was the son of Aristobulus and the grandson
of Herod the Great, an Edomite brought up
upon the best that Greek culture could provide.
But he was a pagan and a miserable
pagan.
He was a man who was given to
lust.
He was a man who was dissolute.
He was a man without principle.
He was a man who cared not for
the things of God nor for the things
of men.
He was a man who was virtually his
own God.
About the only consistent rule in this man's
life at this time was the way in
which he was determined, whatever it cost, to
hold on to his throne and his power.
Now that is the only thing that you
find consistently emerging in his life and in
his history.
He will do anything.
He will go anywhere.
He will pay any price if only he
can remain in power.
Now, of course, he's not the only one
that's walked that path, but he did.
And it is for these political reasons that
he went out of his way to please
the Jews.
It's almost uncanny, if you didn't know the
whole story.
This man, pagan though he was, would begin
his day just as a Jew did, with
a sacrifice.
Not that he believed, but he wanted to
please the Jews.
He wanted to be on good terms with
the Jews, lest they should make an insurrection
and somehow or other his power would be
less secure and his authority and his reign.
He not only did that, he observed all
the customs of the Jews.
He coveted their good.
When, for example, the Roman Gaius arrived in
Palestine and wanted to have a statue of
himself in the temple, this pagan, this profligate,
this immoral character championed the cause of the
Jews.
Not because the temple was a place that
he honored or respected at all, but he
wanted peace, you see.
And if there was any trouble in the
country, well now, he might conceivably lose control
and lose his power.
His motivation was miserably selfish.
He would do anything to please the Jews
to avoid any slightest discord.
And it was because he thought that it
would please the Jews that he murdered James
with a sword.
Now at that point he didn't quite realize
what a pleasure that gave to the Jews.
But then, after the event, he saw it
and he recognized it.
And he said to himself, My, if I
can please these people by bringing one life
to an end, let me see, I must
get one of the chiefest of the people
that they dishonor and dislike.
And so he decided that he'd get Peter
into prison and straight after, you notice, after
the days of unleavened bread, after the Passover,
he's just as scrupulous in these things as
a Jew.
When the festive season is over, he'll do
exactly the same with Simon Peter as he
did with James, just because he wanted to
please the Jews and secure peace at any
price.
And with peace, the continuance of his own
power.
So you see, behind the power of Herod,
you see the power and the authority and
the influence of the same generation of Jews
who sent Jesus to his cross and crucified
him.
So then there is Herod and the Jews.
Secondly, I want you to notice Peter's psychologically
harassing circumstances.
James was already slain.
James is already dead.
Now, the link between Peter and James was
a very long one.
They were both brought up in the same
town.
They became fishermen and later on in life
they became partners in fishing.
Luke tells us that in chapter 5.
So you see, James and Peter, along with
John, were very intimately friendly.
Moreover, they'd not only begun to follow the
Savior together, but these three, Peter, James and
John, had been given privileges denied to the
other nine disciples.
I don't need to go over the details
of that.
But James and Peter were always together.
James and Peter and John.
Peter, James and John.
James has already been killed.
One doesn't need to say more.
You can imagine how Peter felt.
Herod has raised his mighty hand and has
murdered his friend.
He is already in prison and he is
guarded well.
There is no conceivable way of escape, humanly
speaking.
Not only that, Peter is, as we've noticed,
there in prison and he is there at
a particular time.
Will you notice the calendar?
They tell me that when you're in prison,
if you have your sanity, you think more
than you do on the outside.
Whether that is true or not, I'm not
sure.
But if Peter was thinking at all, he
would remember the time of the year and
he would think about this because he was
a good Christian man and he respected the
Jewish calendar as well as the Christian.
It was the time of unleavened bread leading
up to the Passover.
In other words, this is the very time
of the year when Jesus Christ was crucified.
Peter could never forget that.
This was the time of the year when
Peter denied his Lord.
He wasn't in prison then.
He was in the high priest's courtyard.
He had his freedom, he had his liberty.
But one taunt, one jibe from a young
damsel's lips and Peter denied his Lord with
oaths three times over.
Can you see what a psychologically significant moment
this is?
And then behind all these things, can I
just make a passing reference to the fact
that we have the archenemy of mankind and
of the saints and of the church and
of the Christ especially.
We have Satan at work.
Satan must have been infuriated at his lack
of success in relation to the disciples of
Jesus Christ and to the church.
In the first place, he had failed to
hinder Peter becoming a disciple.
He had failed and failed miserably.
For whatever he made Peter do, however he
tempted him, the Lord Jesus Christ lifted him
up again, forgave his sin, gave him fresh
grace and sent him on his way rejoicing.
And Satan's ploys and designs were all in
vain.
Then he had miserably failed in the death
of our Lord.
Oh yes, he managed.
He managed to get a disciple who would
sell him for thirty pieces of silver and
he had other human agents involved in the
whole plot and Jesus was nailed to the
cross but he was raised from the dead.
The lamb that was slain upon the tree
became the triumphant Lord.
He is risen.
How disappointed he would be.
Then you remember he tried very early in
the history of the Christian church, this side
of Pentecost, to see poison into the minds
of the community and he introduced hypocrites into
the midst of the saints.
Ananias and Sapphira, for example, in order to
pollute the spirit.
But he failed.
The church is going on.
The church is marching forward.
You hear the trumpet of the gospel sounding
forth unequivocally that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Satan is infuriated.
Now he will try another tactic.
And this is what it is.
He whips up the fury of Herod.
Peter's in prison.
Now then, that is the first part.
That's the background.
Now let's come to the other side.
These are the powers, the main powers, against
the apostle of the Lord.
Now how does a spirit-filled man approach
this?
What does the grace of God do in
times like these?
I can only give you a little picture
this morning but it's a precious one.
The parties who were active on Peter's behalf
Blessed are they who with Elisha of old
in the Old Testament days when surrounded by
enemy hordes could say to his servant Don't
be afraid For they that are for us
are greater than those that are against us
And I'm sure his servant must have thought
that he was pulling a fast one Pulling
wool over his eyes Where are they?
The young servant might have asked I don't
see anybody for us I only see the
enemy all around us and there's no way
of escape But the eye of faith could
see beyond the human And the man of
faith could see that God was on the
field And he was And here Simon Peter
was unafraid And Simon Peter was kept And
Simon Peter was released Not forever, Simon had
to die eventually But not before his work
for God was done In other words, Herod
and his hordes can never ultimately frustrate the
work of God At this stage let us
not indulge in a comparison of these powers
For and against Let's just simply look at
the way God dealt with his servant And
the first thing I want you to notice
is this God ministers his grace to this
spirit-filled man via a praying church I
read in verse 5 So Peter was kept
in prison But earnest prayer for him was
made to God by the church This is
very important, far more important than you might
at first think A spirit-filled man cannot
do without the fellowship of the church If
he tries to, he will be the loser
And I am tremendously impressed by the fact
that the Lord in glory Did not deal
simply on a personal plane with Simon Peter
here He made his own church the vehicle
of blessing He made the church pray and
in answer to the prayers of the church
in part He communicated the benefits that are
recorded here and the victory But let me
come to the praying of the church Again
this may strike us as something very normal
But you know it wasn't normal to this
church It wasn't normal to the early church
Praying has become a new thing to them
since Pentecost The whole genius of the Old
Testament I'm oversimplifying, I'm aware Nevertheless let me
put it like this The whole genius of
the Old Testament is to show that The
way into the presence of God is not
yet opened There is a veil that separates
God And it only opens up once a
year and that for the high priest But
as for the commonality of men They're told
to keep out and keep up day because
we are all sinners And when the high
priest went in on the day of atonement
He had to go with blood for himself
and for the people he represented In other
words the word is keep away, keep your
distance God is holy, you are sinful And
therefore prayers were very formal in Israel Those
that we have in the book of Psalms
and elsewhere are exceptions They are men and
women of faith that have seen the coming
Messiah And on the basis of what God
is going to do They leap with faith
and with hope but they're exceptions In other
words the ordinary Jew kept away He kept
his distance and the better the man he
was The more the distance he kept, the
further away The good man in the Old
Testament was a man who was aware of
his degradation Aware of his need, aware of
his sin And had the fear of God
and the designation fear of God Is related
to this sense of lostness But now you
see Jesus has come He's taught, he's lived,
he's died upon the cross He's made atonement
He's offered his own blood once in the
fullness of the time And the veil of
the temple has been rent in the midst
And the spirit of sonship has come and
he's come to dwell in the hearts of
men And so you see with the rent
veil in front of them And the spirit
of the sonship of Jesus within them They
must pray It's the natural thing to draw
near to God now To come to God
With the advent of the Messiah and all
this They must pray May I say it
by way just as a passing remark You
see this is why it is still true
as in the book of the Acts of
the Apostles One of the proofs that a
man is a Christian is Behold he prayeth
That was a signal that was given to
that saint Who was the first man to
deal with Saul of Tarsus You go says
the angel to him You go says the
Lord to him via his servant You go,
you can trust yourself He's praying The veil
of the temple has been rent He's drawing
near to God And the spirit of sonship
is in his heart He's a changed man
You see a Christian is a man who
draws near to God So then, just think
of it This church finds it almost spontaneously
right and proper and natural To carry Simon,
Peter and his needs Into the Shekinah, into
the glory Into the Holy of Holies A
praying church Oh blessed is that man Who
belongs to a praying church Time was when
the whole church prayed Now I may be
chiding now Will you take it kindly But
it's only in lands like Korea today That
we have a whole church meeting for prayer
In one or two places in Europe We
don't have it In the early days the
whole church met for prayer Nowadays it may
be a representative of the family Not even
that from time to time Just a few
Time was when the church prayed And I
say to you blessed is that man Who
belongs to a church that can pray for
him when he's in prison And bring the
grace of God to bear upon his situation
in a cell I'd like to see a
church like that I tell you if I
were in secular employment And I were moving
from one place to another The first characteristic
of a church I would look for would
be this A church that can pray for
me A church that can put her arms
under me when I'm going down and sinking
And lift me up A church like that
will always be orthodox The church whose prayers
God accepts Will always be an orthodox church
But you can be orthodox without praying And
Peter belonged to a church like that And
when they knew that Peter was in prison
The first thing they do is this They
gather around They put their arms together And
they lift their voices to God And they
carry the needs of Peter to the Lord
And pray for him Though Peter was spirit
filled God used means to release him One
means a praying church The body of Christ
at prayer Another means that God used is
an angel Verses 6 and 7 The very
night when Herod was about to bring him
out Peter was sleeping between two soldiers Bound
with two chains And sentries before the door
were guarding the prison And behold the angel
of the Lord appeared Now let's put this
in its simplest terms and briefly An angel
is simply a messenger An angel of God
is a messenger of God Sometimes God's messengers
are very human Very human As human as
you are As human as I am You
read Matthew 25 and 26 And you will
see what stress our Lord puts upon this
How we are meant to visit those in
prison And the sick Go to James How
we are meant to visit the fatherless and
the afflicted The widows In other words Some
of God's angels are human Some of God's
messengers are human And an angel is a
messenger You know Let's be careful here In
the book of the Revelation The minister of
the church is called an angel Now I
don't want you to call me an angel
But it's true It's true to fact, you
see An angel is but a messenger A
messenger A messenger of God An angel of
God is a messenger of God But you
know there are times when God's human angels
Physical messengers Can't do His will For example
They can't always get into prison They can't
unlock prison doors And they can't get into
the windows And they can't get in any
other way But you see God has His
messengers His angels Who can get in where
human angels Human messengers can't He has His
special His refined angels And He has only
to command them And they're there Where?
Anywhere At His bidding Anywhere Now don't let's
get into the details of the doctrine of
angelology Let's just take the simple and the
glorious truth of this God has at His
command Every kind of servant necessary To fulfill
His will And to save His people Whatever
their circumstances Now that's the point It doesn't
matter whether it's human or angelic It doesn't
matter at all The point that the passage
is making is this We can fail to
see the wood for the trees here What
the passage is saying is this When no
other man can get into that prison and
do anything about it God sends one of
His servants that can And that was an
angel He's the Lord of hosts I like
this Old Testament appellation Some people say that
refers to the stars Well that's true He's
the Lord of the stars He's the Lord
of the sun It's setting and it's rising
He's the Lord of the elements He's the
Lord of all He's the Lord of hosts
And within the hosts of the Lord There
are angelic beings And this angel goes into
prison And he tells Peter Look on Peter
Wake up man Peter was sleeping Wake up
man He says get up Dress, put on
your sandals And then your mantle And then
follow me And he leads him out So
then we have first of all a praying
church Then a ministering angel But now Most
important Finally We have the sovereign God Himself
This is where I want to end this
morning Over against the combined might of Herod
and the Jews The psychologically unnerving situation And
Satan's maneuvers We have a praying church An
angel of God And God Himself And God
Himself The point I want to make is
this God's church And God's angel Contribute nothing
originally To the situation Please notice that Neither
the church nor the angel can do anything
originally That is in and of themselves The
only thing that the church and the angel
are able to do is this It's to
bring the word, the message of God And
the grace of God And the provisions of
God To Peter where Peter is It's God
must act And it is God who does
the acting It is God who snaps the
chains His chains fell off Who snapped the
chains?
I tell you who snapped the chains It
is God who does that And when they
came to the outer gate We're told it
opened to them of its own accord Who
opened the prison gate?
I tell you it was God who opened
the prison gate So that on the scene
here We have the church praying in the
background We have an angel that's come right
in But with the angel Alongside of Him
And near to Peter And in Peter's heart
giving him peace And sleep on a night
like this Is God Himself By His Spirit
in a prison Now in the knowledge of
all this Simon Peter was unmoved at the
prospect of death Let me repeat He was
sleeping soundly until the angel woke him up
Twice before God has delivered him from prison
And if it is His will God will
do it again I suppose he argued like
that Oh blessed faith Oh wondrous peace Though
death has arrived on the doorstep The Spirit
in Peter's heart Ministers the comfort of knowing
that God can again deliver him If that
is God's will And His will Is God's
will Can you not see what's happening here?
It's a long time ago When Jesus said
to Simon Ha ha So you are Simon
the son of Jonah I'll make you a
new man A man of rock A man
of stone A man of character A man
of stability We've waited a long time to
see the rock in Peter Here he is
Sleeping between two soldiers The night before his
execution Unwilling to recant or to withdraw To
do anything at all to come to terms
with his enemies Willing for whatever God wills
And going on With God My good friend,
I don't know what your need is this
morning But you and I are not imprisoned
anyway Here we are And yet we may
be imprisoned within a set of circumstances That
are terribly trying Do you belong to a
praying church?
Where you can be loved and surrounded And
prayed for Do you yourself as a Christian
do that for others?
Can you do anything to make our church
here at Knox More of a praying, pleading
church That nurses every member from the crib
to the grave And carries the need of
all its people Every week throughout the year
To the throne of grace And pleads the
merits of the name of Jesus In relation
to every circumstance May I remind you that
God still has his angels Though some of
them are very human Others of them are
not human at all They can meet you
where you are But more and still more
important Is the fact that whether he sends
his servants from the church Or his angels
from his immediate presence Neither of them can
do anything unless God comes in To break
the chain And open the door And lead
you out And take you on And this
he will do If like Peter Your will
this morning Is God's will Oh may the
Lord bring us there That we have no
will but his And then We shall know
no grace Less than his