A message this morning, let's turn to the
Acts of the Apostles, chapter 12, and we're
still thinking about a people of action, and
we want to read the first 19 verses
here of Acts chapter 12, and just think
on them for a few moments together.
And really they give us three pictures of
a church in action, and so we'll look
at that.
Acts chapter 12 and verse 1 says, Now
about that time Herod the king stretched out
his hand to harass some from the church.
Then he killed James the brother of John
with the sword, 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, 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.
Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant
prayer was offered to God for him by
the church.
And when Herod was about to bring him
out that night, Peter was sleeping, bound with
two chains between two soldiers, and the guards
before the door were keeping the prison.
Nigh behold, an angel from 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.
Then the angel said to him, Gird yourself
and tie on your sandals, and he did
so.
And he said to him, Put on your
garment and follow me.
So he went out and followed him and
did not know what was done by the
angel was real, but thought he's seeing a
vision.
When they were past the first and the
second guard post, 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.
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.
So when he had considered this, he came
to the house of Mary, the mother of
John, whose surname was Mark, where many were
gathered together praying.
And as Peter knocked at the door of
the gate, a girl named Rhoda came to
answer.
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.
But they said to her, You're beside yourself.
Yet she kept insisting that it was so.
So they said, It is his angel.
And now Peter continued knocking, and when they
opened the door and saw him, they were
astonished.
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.
Then as soon as it was day, there
was no small stir among the soldiers about
what had become of Peter.
But when Herod had searched for him and
not found him, he examined the guards and
commanded that they should be put to death.
He went down from Jerusalem to Caesarea and
stayed there.
Father, this is your word, and we ask
that you would just encourage our hearts through
it this morning in these few moments together.
Lord, may we know your touch upon us.
In Jesus' name, amen.
I just dropped my CD, so put it
back where it belongs.
This morning, as I say, there are three
pictures in these verses of people of action.
God's people are always a people of action,
and the Herod who is mentioned here is
Herod Agrippa.
He's one of those people that history teaches
us was a politician.
And you say, John, what do you mean
by that?
He was a king.
Well, he was a politician in that when
he was with the Romans, he did as
the Romans did, and when he was with
the Jews, he did as the Jews did,
and he would enjoy pleasing people and gaining
advantage through things like that.
And so he had a plan, and his
plan is to move against the church, the
people of God.
And you know, it's not so surprising as
he takes the leadership and starts to move
against them.
Jesus, in fact, himself told us that there
are some things we can expect.
We don't need to be defeated by them,
but we can certainly expect them.
In John 16 and verse 33, the Lord
Jesus himself, as he spoke to his disciples,
said this.
He said, in the world you will have
tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have
overcome the world.
And you know, those things that come against
us can sure knock us down in a
hurry, can't they?
But it's important for us this morning just
to remember that Jesus is the victor.
He has victory over all the things that
can come and touch us and defeat us
or discourage us and so on.
And so as we think about three pictures
of the church this morning, here's the first
one.
You notice, first of all, they are a
persecuted people as this chapter opens.
And I find it interesting, the words that
are used, it says they were harassed.
Do you ever feel harassed?
Some of those guys that Brad just read
about, I think, remind me of this word,
harassed, and especially the one moving the sign
on the deer.
There are all kinds of things that can
come against the people of God, aren't there?
You see, we might ask, why persecute the
church?
Good question, isn't it?
Why?
I mean, God's people are loving and compassionate
and gracious, and we looked last week at
how we need the grace of God.
But as you think about it, you know,
the church is a people called out, and
they have one king and leader whose name
is Jesus.
And there's something about that that disturbs the
world that we live in, because the Christian
is someone who knows what it is to
be changed from the inside out.
The Christian is one who knows what it
is to be committed to walking on with
Jesus no matter what.
And that sense of being called out to
follow after him sometimes can bring us surprising
things.
I remember so well when the Lord Jesus
saved me in that little bedroom in Ireland
so long ago, and I remember going to
work the next day and thinking, this is
great!
But you know, it was shocking.
When coffee break or tea time came, and
I said to my co-workers, guess what
happened to me last night?
They weren't excited at all.
In fact, the question came back, what?
I said, I got saved!
And remember Ken Moffitt saying, the only time
you'll get saved is if somebody pulls you
out of the river lagging because you fell
in there drunk.
And you know, I thought, those are not
the kind of comments that I expected.
You see, there's a difference, isn't there, between
those who are called out, who belong to
God.
Their perspective has changed, their allegiance has changed,
and they're no longer walking in the way
of the world.
So they are here in our text, they
are harassed, and it's Passover week, and they
would have been thinking about the Passover previous
when the Lord Jesus took the bread and
the wine, and then went to the garden
to pray, and then went to the cross
for you and for me.
And it's in that season that Herod moves
against them in persecution.
And maybe you've noticed that things can be
going so good spiritually, and that is often
the time that something comes along to try
to kick the legs out from under you.
Someone who should understand doesn't.
Those who ought to be full of encouragement
and strength aren't.
Those kind of times come along for all
of us, don't they?
Why persecute the church?
Because, you see, the truth always brings conviction.
And when the truth is preached as it
has been through the early chapters of the
Acts of the Apostles, there's a sense of
that which is right and that which is
wrong.
I was down in Indianapolis week before last,
and one of the things that I spoke
about was the fact that troubles me most
in our media and so on is I
hear all kinds of things, but I never
hear the words right and wrong.
You notice that?
Because the world would have us believe that
everything's okay.
But you see, the church are the called
out of God, and they are those who
know the truth.
And there's great freedom in the truth.
It comes to build on the inside and
to strengthen us in all kinds of ways.
Now you say, now John, why would you
say it's because they were preaching the truth
that this persecution comes?
Well, you know, in the early chapters of
the Acts, we see what happens when the
truth is preached and conviction comes upon hearts
and lives.
For instance, in Acts chapter 7, Stephen goes
through a whole list of the history of
Israel.
And you would think that everybody would have
agreed with him and said, oh yeah, but
you know when he says, this is how
we know that Jesus is true and that
you took him and crucified him, there is
such conviction and it is rejected.
That is to say the leaders did not
accept the conviction of God, and when conviction
is rejected, it brings forth anger.
You see, there's something with the pride of
the human heart that resists that truth and
that comes back out as anger.
And then in Acts chapter 9, we see
an instance where there is conviction in the
life of one man whose name is Saul.
And as he is cast to the ground
and hears the Lord speaking to him and
calling to him, he accepts the conviction that
he needs a turnaround in his life and
trusts in Christ fully and goes on with
the Savior.
And you see, when conviction is accepted and
dealt with, it brings about that depth of
truth that says I can no longer live
the way I used to.
I must follow him all the way.
And there's another instance I'll just quickly mention
of conviction in the early chapters.
It's in Acts chapter 5, and it's what
happens when conviction is extreme.
Ananias and Sapphira tried to lie to the
church and to lie to God, and when
conviction comes, their lives end.
They just die and are carried out.
Wow.
You see, this thing of the truth is
such a vitality, and when it is resisted
and when we try to manipulate it, we
always are the losers.
Scripture here says that the church was harassed.
James, the brother of John, had been killed.
He would have been executed with a sword.
And you know, he and his brother were
dubbed the sons of thunder.
They were somewhat loved for Jesus.
Maybe that might explain why he is the
one who is taken.
And the other James that is mentioned, in
case you wondered when Peter said in verse
17, go and tell James, he wasn't talking
about the James who had gone to heaven
to be with Jesus.
He was talking about James, the half-brother
of Jesus, who wrote the Epistle of James
and who had become the leader of the
Jerusalem Church.
Peter is arrested and imprisoned.
He's under guard, and I wonder what it
would have felt like to be chained to
Peter.
I have this Irish imagination, as you know,
and I sometimes think about these things.
Here they are, chained to him.
That Scripture doesn't tell us how long, but
it must be a significant time because it
says, after the Passover, although he was arrested
before it, but after the Passover they were
going to bring him out for execution and
so on.
So he must have been chained to them
for a while, and I wonder what things
they might have discovered of God, chained to
that man.
It's kind of like a little man I
know whose name is Bill McLeod.
He'll be speaking at that conference next weekend.
He's 91 years old, and I had the
joy of flying down to Indianapolis with him
from Winnipeg, and we didn't have seats together.
He was in the seat behind me, and
flying from Chicago to Indianapolis, I could hear
Bill saying, you know, I'm 91 years old,
and God has been so good to me.
Could I ask you, sir, do you know
anything of the goodness of God?
And the man said, no, not really.
And the conversation, I was carrying on a
conversation with the person beside me, but I
was listening, you know, at the same time,
and as we were moving toward that decline
into the Indianapolis airport, I could hear Bill
saying, so would you like to trust Jesus
as your Savior?
Would you like to get to know him?
And you know, I could hear the man
saying, I really need to do that.
Yeah, just thinking about those who take a
position and a stand, it still works.
It still works.
I need to move us along.
Secondly, we see a picture of a praying
church.
In verse 5 and 6, it says that
although he was arrested and taken and chained
to those men, and they must have discovered
something of Jesus in that, what was the
church doing, the action of the church?
Well, I'll tell you, in our terms, we
would have gotten together a petition.
No amen?
Or maybe we know a politician who could
get something done with this.
Or perhaps there's someone who has the ear
of the king, and we could find a
way to get the word to him and
smuggle Peter out of time.
But you know, I love the acts of
the apostles because the early church did none
of these things.
They just prayed.
And as we look, it was constant prayer
and fervent prayer and earnest prayer and persistent
prayer because they kept at it and at
it and at it all the way through
the text.
Indeed, it was united prayer, corporate prayer.
And there is, you know, these days something
that says we don't actually need the church
to come together to pray.
And dear friends, I think this is why
we have such weakness and such discouragement.
Because, you know, when you look at the
early church, when they came together and prayed
and sought the Lord, oh my, that was
how they dealt with every contingency that comes
upon them.
When they were doing well, they prayed.
When they were challenged, they prayed.
When they were persecuted, they prayed.
I think there's something in this that we
somehow are missing in these days and times.
There's a little book about the Great Awakening
under Jonathan Edwards that speaks about prayer before
that great revival, and part of the title
of the book is that it is an
appeal to the people of God for united
explicit prayer in agreement seeking Him for revival.
That's just part of the title.
It's not the whole first chapter.
You see, there's something about that togetherness in
it that really touches and brings forth the
right response.
And notice the timing.
The timing goes right to the wall.
They did not quit.
It's the night before he is to be
executed, and they are still praying.
You gotta love it.
They are still there petitioning God.
And I think that it was not the
kind of prayer meeting where there's a quietness
to it.
Indeed, I think it might have been like
some of the Vietnamese prayer meetings that I've
been in, where you might have a couple
of hundred people in the room, and they
all pray at the same time, out loud
and with great gusto.
And there's a sense of, wow, God, you
can hear every single word from every single
person.
I cannot comprehend it, but he does.
This is the people of God in action,
facing an impossible situation, and yet God specializes
in them.
So, Glen Cairn, let me grow personal for
a moment.
How long have we had the land at
Prince of Wales?
I see lips going, but I don't hear
any words.
About 20 years, 23, 23.
Okay.
Where will God give us an answer for
this thing?
It is at this place of prayer, and
this is exactly what I want to get
across to you this morning.
And if you don't hear one other word
that the preacher says today, hear this.
It's not even my words.
I learned it years ago from that same
little man, Bill McLeod, when I was graping
about money one day.
You ever do that?
No, it's okay.
You don't have to put your hand up.
This is what he said.
Just quietly, he said to me, John, if
God knows your need, who else needs to
know?
What is that desperate need that's in your
heart this morning?
Isn't this a great place to bring it
to him?
Have you been hurt and rejected, struggling with
pain?
If God knows the need, he can act
on it.
It's a great longing in your heart to
see a move of God like there is
in mine.
Let me talk about my other life for
a minute.
You know why I do those things in
the revival, things that I do?
Because I believe that one day in the
midst of it all, God is going to
come and every human voice will just be
stilled, and when he moves, every human need
will be met, because he can do more
in five minutes than I can do in
50 years.
That's why the early church prayed.
They knew they didn't have the strength, they
knew they didn't have the ability, they knew
they didn't have the education, they knew they
didn't have the funds, but they knew who
did, and they laid hold of him in
such a way.
My friends, if great preaching could bring revival,
it would have happened years ago, but it's
great praying that brings God into the midst.
He specializes in these impossible situations.
There's a young pastor in 1964 in Zaire
in a village.
His name is Zebedeo Edu.
He has a wife, two little children.
The Simba communist rebels come and take over
that part of the country, and they arrest
hundreds of people, and they set aside a
day when they're going to execute these people.
The pastor was one of those arrested, and
as he is taken out to a big
truck where they're loading all these prisoners to
bring them to the town square for execution,
the trucks won't start, so they make the
prisoners push them until they start.
When they get there, the authorities are furious
because this execution is running late, so they
just line them all up in the square
and say, number off, one, two, one, two,
one, two, one, two, one, two.
Then for some reason, the man in charge
of it all says, all you number twos,
get back in the truck and go back
to jail, and as they're driving out of
the square, they can hear the machine guns
start up, and all those who had number
one are gone into eternity.
Back in the jail, the pastor says, my
hope is in Christ, and I don't know
what's going to happen to us now, but
those of you who can hear my voice,
you need to trust in Jesus.
Eight people came to the Lord that day,
and the next day, the authorities came and
said to the pastor, we arrested you by
mistake.
You can go home now, and when he
got home to his village some walking distance,
guess what the church was doing?
Yeah, he walked into a prayer meeting where
they were saying, God, would you protect our
pastor?
God, would you somehow set him free?
What do you think that felt like?
Isn't it the same picture that we have
here?
Exactly, exactly.
Third picture, very quickly.
There is not only a persecuted church and
a praying church, but there's a prevailing church
in verses 6 through 19.
Why would you say prevailing, John?
Prevailing means overcoming.
How can you see that in the text
here?
Here's how I see it.
Peter is the recognized leader of the church.
He is prevailing, but he's in jail, John.
He sure is, but he's prevailing.
How could even an Irishman come up with
that?
Look at the text.
Look at verse 5 and 6.
What does it say Peter was doing the
night before he is to be brought out
and executed?
He is sleeping.
I can tell he's not Irish.
I'd have worried all night.
He's prevailing because, you see, he knew that
when he fell asleep that night, that probably
before the sunset the next day, he would
be asleep in Jesus forever, and he has
no concern whatsoever.
This world and the things of this world
have no pull on him, not at all.
Neither the world, nor the flesh, nor the
devil has any victory over him.
He just goes to sleep.
Brad so rightly said, it's God who does
it all, and Peter knew that and trusted
him anyway.
And there comes in this supernatural intervention when
an angel walks in to that room, and
scripture says this, a light shone in the
prison, just like John 1 5 says, the
light shines in the darkness, and the darkness
cannot overcome it.
And as he stands there, he touches Peter
on the side.
I think, why not the head?
Or why didn't you just kick him in
the foot?
But he touches him on the side, because
that's closest to his heart.
And my friends, God hears the cry of
your heart and comes to touch your heart
and says, it isn't mine.
Here's a couple of thoughts just on this
text.
That angel would not do for Peter the
things that Peter could do.
He said to him, get up, put your
sandals on, get dressed.
Now don't you think if you can come
from heaven straight into a prison cell, that
with one stroke or request, he could have
had Peter up, dressed, and ready to go?
I think the chances are strong.
But he would not do for Peter what
Peter could do.
But he did do for Peter the things
that Peter could not do.
Forgive me for a minute, because I love
this.
Are you facing some things that you cannot
do?
Then you're a candidate for some supernatural intervention.
Peter couldn't get rid of the chains.
But when he obeyed that angel and stood,
they fell off.
And I might be speaking to someone this
morning, and there are some chains around your
heart.
There are some things in your life that
you wish were not there.
If you will trust the Lord at his
word and obey him and come to him,
those chains will fall.
Might be a habit, might be a hidden
sin, might be a besetting sin, something that
you wish you could get rid of.
But whatever it is, he has the strength
and the power to do it.
He opened the doors.
Are you facing some locked doors?
I've only been a part of the church
for about the last seven years, and I
want to say this.
I think there have been some locked doors,
and sometimes it seems like, where do we
find the way forward?
Friends will find it in corporate prayer.
We'll find it at the throne of God.
We'll find it in the ministry of his
Spirit, and he can open what we cannot.
I had the privilege one year working with
the Graham people to have two Crusades in
very opposite places.
One was in Newport News, Virginia on the
Atlantic coast, and the other was in Anchorage,
Alaska up in the far Pacific coast.
And Anchorage is on the same time zone
as Honolulu.
That's about as far apart as you can
get.
I was asked to go start the Crusade
in Anchorage in November, and I was told
the meetings are the first week of March.
That's usually 18 months to set up for
a Billy Graham Crusade, so I don't know
how many months that is.
My math has never been good, but you
can count it out.
Could be five, I think.
And when we met with that group, this
is the first thing they said to me.
Probably if we soak the place with advertising,
we can get maybe a thousand or fifteen
hundred people to come, and Sullivan Arena holds
8,500.
So they said, what do you think, John?
You know, being Irish, you can stick your
neck out once in a while.
It has nothing to do with being Irish,
actually.
I said, I wonder where are you gonna
put the overflow?
Where are you gonna put the thousands who
can't get in?
Because you see, that's our God.
And Lincoln, where are we gonna put them?
We need him.
And we need to be a people at
the throne of God.
About 200,000, I think, in this city
or close to it.
If you took all the evangelical churches in
town and put them all together, I think
you'd have a very hard time finding 10
,000 in that crowd.
In fact, you might have a hard time
finding 10,000 in all the churches in
the city.
We need to lay hold of him and
to move in his strength and power.
I promised to preach short this morning, and
I've been long, so let me give my
apologies and just conclude.
By the time you get to verse 19,
all the plans of man have fallen apart.
Peter's out, and there's not a thing that
the world can do about it.
The church is moving on, and there's nothing
that can stop it, because Jesus is the
Lord of the church, and his power and
strength and spirit are rolling, and all the
glory goes to God.
You notice in verse 17 what Peter says,
the Lord has delivered me.
There's no credit to anybody but him.
Oh, may we be a praying people, and
may the glory go to him.
Let me close with this little thought.
There's a school in Itasca, Texas.
Before World War II, it had a fire.
263 children perished in the fire, so when
after the war they rebuilt the school there
in Itasca, they installed the most modern, the
best, the greatest sprinkler system that you have
ever seen.
In fact, they took tours through the plants
to show people all the sprinklers and all
of the safety and so on, and after
the war, as the economy expanded, so did
the population of Itasca, and they needed to
add on to the school seven years after
it had been built.
And you know when they started to put
on the addition?
They discovered that that sprinkler system had never
been hooked up to the source.
Now why would I finish a message with
a story like that?
Because sometimes that's the problem for us.
In our busyness and all the rest, we
can be so removed from the source and
just go on through the motions.
Let's change position for a minute and stand
together as we come to the Lord in
prayer.
There's a persecuted church in this passage and
a praying church and a prevailing church.
Jesus said the devil comes to kill and
steal and destroy, but I have come so
that you might have life and have it
more abundantly.
As I close this morning, I just want
to ask you, are you living in the
abundance of Jesus?
Better is one day in his courts than
thousands elsewhere.
Are you in that place, that sweet spot,
close to the Lord Jesus this morning?
Or might it be that as we close
this morning, you could say, I wish to
be closer to him.
Now, you know I don't do this every
Sunday and I don't do this lately either,
but I wonder this morning if we might
not just respond to the Lord to say,
Father, I do want to be nearer.
Lord, I don't want there to be any
change.
I want to see you open those locked
doors and lead me as I'm committed to
you.
My friends, even as in Acts 12, it
all started at the place of prayer, so
it is the same today.
So just before I pray, I ask you,
has the Lord been to your heart this
morning?
If so, step out from where you are
and come.
Let's just come before him here at the
altar at the front.
Take a few moments just quietly to seek
him, to draw near to him, to know
his touch and his salvation in every way.
So I'll wait for a moment or two
as the Lord has been speaking to your
heart.
Let's simply gather for a moment or two
of prayer as the people of God, the
corporate, united people of God.
I want to ask you this morning just
to do three things.
The first is simply this, just to say
to the Lord, Lord, would you put your
finger on any sin in my heart, things
that hold me back?
And as the Lord may bring something to
your mind and heart, confess it to him
and forsake it.
He'll cause those chains to fall away.
The second thing I'd ask you to do
this morning is just to say to him,
and in this sense, I think we're just
like as Brad said, all idiots.
Lord, so often I try it in my
strength and my way and my power.
And just to acknowledge that to the Savior
this morning and to ask him just to
refresh that trust and that relationship of complete
dependence upon him.
The third thing, my dear friends, brothers and
sisters, is just to say to him, Lord,
I need the fullness of your Holy Spirit.
Father, here we are as your people around
the altar.
And indeed, as you bring things to our
mind, we confess them to you.
Sometimes, Lord, there's pride.
Sometimes, Lord, there's unforgiveness.
Sometimes, Lord, there's just a sense of knowing
that I can do it and I so
often fail.
Lord, we acknowledge we can't do it in
our strength.
We need you to cause the chains to
fall off and the doors to open before
us.
And so, as your people, we come to
your throne this morning, united together in fervent,
explicit prayer.
Father, let your Spirit fall fresh on us
and fill each one who's in this room
with a sense of your love, your grace,
your forgiveness, your power.
Lord, we worship you.
We thank you for your Word, for that
still little voice speaking to us in our
hearts this morning.
Lord, we want to ask, would you take
us and build your church?
Not our church, Lord, but yours.
And we plead with you for the souls
of this city, for the darkness that's all
around us.
Let the light shine.
Father, we can't do it, but lead us
to be the people who are trusting you
and watching you build your church.
I ask, Father, that as you minister to
us in the power of your Spirit in
these moments, would you heal those hearts that
are broken and hurting?
Would you lift those who are discouraged and
despondent?
Would you come alongside those who are lonely?
And may your strength and your ministry just
flow into hearts.
In Jesus' name we ask.