Acts 12:6-25

⁶ Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. ⁷ And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his hands. ⁸ And the angel said to him, “Dress yourself and put on your sandals.” And he did so. And he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” ⁹ And he went out and followed him. He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. ¹⁰ When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him. ¹¹ 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.” ¹² When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. ¹³ And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. ¹⁴ Recognizing Peter’s voice, in her joy she did not open the gate but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate. ¹⁵ They said to her, “You are out of your mind.” But she kept insisting that it was so, and they kept saying, “It is his angel!” ¹⁶ But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened, they saw him and were amazed. ¹⁷ But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, “Tell these things to James and to the brothers.” Then he departed and went to another place. ¹⁸ Now when day came, there was no little disturbance among the soldiers over what had become of Peter. ¹⁹ And after Herod searched for him and did not find him, he examined the sentries and ordered that they should be put to death. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there.  ²⁰ Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, they asked for peace, because their country depended on the king’s country for food. ²¹ On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. ²² And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” ²³ Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last. ²⁴ But the word of God increased and multiplied. ²⁵ And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark.

This is college football season, which means that many of us are living vicariously through the lives of young men who do not even know we exist.  But we get caught up in it because it is fun or because we have an allegiance to this or that school as alumni, or because it is a matter of state pride.  Truth be told, college football probably serves the same purpose for many men that soap operas serve for women:  an external emotional and psychological stimuli in which we immerse ourselves in a larger drama that, in truth, could take us or leave us.  But we watch and we cheer and we cry and we rage because, for whatever psychological reasons, these things matter to us.

Technology has helped the experience a bit because now, through the miracle of the internet or of DVR, we have the ability to watch the live broadcast tied in emotional knots then, afterward, to watch the recorded and replayed broadcast in a much more calm manner.  Why is this?  Because in the first instance we do not know what is going to happen.  In the second, for good or for ill, we do.

Watching replays of games is especially fun if you win a close game or come from behind and win.  In the replay experience you do not develop ulcers or nervous disorders no matter how far you are behind at the beginning of the fourth quarter because you know you are going to win!  When watching a replay of a come-from-behind victory, for instance, you are at peace, telling yourself, “I know we’ll win in the end.”

I would like to suggest that the Church throughout the ages has been in a similar boat.  No matter how dire things look, no matter how bleak our circumstances appear, and no matter how victorious the forces of darkness appear, we know we win in the end.  The first viewing of the story can be emotionally and psychologically grueling, to be sure.  There are times when we are tempted to think we might lose and the enemy might win, but the hope of the gospel reminds us time and time again that this is not so:  Christ our King has secured the victory!

Even so, it can be tough going.  Acts 12 is a chapter in which we can see this phenomenon at work:  the Church struggling to believe that it will win.  We see two players in this chapter, the struggling Church and the despotic King Herod.  It sets up perfectly as a contest between two forces, the one apparently weak and lowly and the other apparently strong and mighty.  John Stott summarized this chapter nicely.

Here then were two communities, the world and the church, arrayed against one another, each wielding an appropriate weapon. On the one side was the authority of Herod, the power of the sword and the security of the prison. On the other side, the church turned to prayer, which is the only power which the powerless possess.[1]

Let us watch this fascinating contest.  You will be encouraged by this!  Everybody loves an unlikely victory!

The Church thought their leader was dead, but God said, “Not yet!”

The early Church had seen some amazing highs and some heartbreaking lows, but this was one of their toughest seasons yet.  James had been beheaded and Peter was imprisoned awaiting, undoubtedly, the same fate.  The Church, then, can perhaps be forgiven for assuming that their earthly leader, Peter, was as good as dead.  Even so, God said, “Not yet!”

⁶ Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. ⁷ And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his hands. ⁸ And the angel said to him, “Dress yourself and put on your sandals.” And he did so. And he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” ⁹ And he went out and followed him. He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.

The angel has to wake Peter up in a rather persuasive manner! Parents of teenage children will understand the feeling.  “He struck Peter on the side” and led him out of the prison.  Interestingly, Luke tells us that Peter assumed he was having a vision.  This is understandable, of course, because Peter had recently received his amazing vision of the lowered sheet and the unclean animals.  This current situation had to seem as unusual as that, so he assumes that he is seeing a vision.  But he is not.

¹⁰ When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him. ¹¹ 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.” ¹² When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. ¹³ And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. ¹⁴ Recognizing Peter’s voice, in her joy she did not open the gate but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate. ¹⁵ They said to her, “You are out of your mind.” But she kept insisting that it was so, and they kept saying, “It is his angel!” ¹⁶ But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened, they saw him and were amazed. ¹⁷ But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, “Tell these things to James and to the brothers.” Then he departed and went to another place. ¹⁸ Now when day came, there was no little disturbance among the soldiers over what had become of Peter. ¹⁹ And after Herod searched for him and did not find him, he examined the sentries and ordered that they should be put to death. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there.

Peter goes to a house where he knows the gathered church is praying intensely for him.  Stott notes that, “Luke uses the adverb ektenōs (JB, ‘unremittingly’; NEB, ‘fervently’), which he has previously applied to Jesus’ intense agony in Gethsemane.”[2]  This was likely a prayer mixed with cries of deliverance and protection.  They were praying for Peter to be delivered, but one wonders if they did not feel a measure of skepticism perhaps.  After all, James had been beheaded and Peter was surely going to face the same fate.  We may see a measure of this uncertainty in the fact that they cannot bring themselves to believe that Peter is actually standing at the gate outside of the house.

There is a note of humor here.  The servant girl Rhoda runs to the gate.  She is so stunned at the sight of Peter that she runs back in the house rejoicing…but leaving Peter still outside!  One cannot help but chuckle imagining Peter in this episode.  After all, he would very much like to get inside the house, especially given that he is a recently escaped fugitive!  The humor is intensified by irony when the gathered church, praying for Peter’s deliverance, refuses to believe that Peter has been delivered!  We must admit that it really was a rather abrupt answer to their prayer!

So they tell poor Rhoda that she must be mistaken or that it is Peter’s angel.  They may mean by that that it is Peter’s spirit or soul, assuming that he had been executed.  That, however, would be an odd usage of the word “angel.”  They more likely mean that it is Peter’s guardian angel or something along those lines.  Regardless, they cannot bring themselves to believe that this is so.

I am struck by this.  It does seem that the darkness is sometimes so dark that we have trouble believing that the light can break through…even as we are calling on God to let the light break through!  They cry out for God to save Peter but cannot bring themselves to accept that God had saved Peter.

Have you ever felt like this?  Have you even been so distraught that even as you pray you cannot bring yourself to believe that He might actually answer your prayers?  Something like this phenomenon was going on in the church in this episode.

The darkness and evil of the world can be suffocating.  It can disorient us.  Even those of us who know in the middle of the contest who wins in the end can have trouble really believing it.  Thus, the early Church had seemingly resigned itself to the inevitably of their earthly leader’s demise, but God said, “Not yet!”  Indeed, Peter would die a martyr’s death, but not yet!

There is a parallel to the resurrection account in this passage, and it is not difficult to see.  In both cases the struggling Church was gathered together under a sense of doom when they were caught off guard and shocked by resurrection:  the Lord Jesus’ from the dead and Peter’s from prison.  It seems that God is always catching His church off guard with resurrection, is He not?

This unlikely deliverance of Peter from a sentence of death was a reminder to the Church then and now that we are not allowed to despair, to give up hope.  We must believe that our God is the God who still speaks light in the darkness.

Perhaps another, more recent example will help.  The great New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce, in commenting on the deliverance of Peter from prison in Acts 12, pointed to the example of the Indian Christian and missionary, Sundar Singh, as a parallel to our text.

By order of the chief lama of a Tibetan community [Sundar Singh] was thrown into a dry well, the cover of which was securely locked. Here he was left to die, like many others before him, whose bones and rotting flesh lay at the bottom of the well. On the third night, when he had been calling to God in prayer, he heard someone unlocking the cover of the well and removing it. Then a voice spoke, telling him to take hold of the rope that was being lowered. He did so, and was glad to find a loop at the bottom of the rope in which he could place his foot, for his arm had been injured before he was thrown down. He was then drawn up, the cover was replaced and locked, but when he looked around to thank his rescuer, he could find no trace of him. The fresh air revived him, and his injured arm felt whole again. When morning came, he returned to the place where he had been arrested, and resumed preaching. News was brought to the chief lama that the man who had been thrown into the execution well had been liberated and was preaching again. Sundar Singh was brought before him and questioned, and told the story of his release. The lama declared that someone must have got hold of the key and let him out, but when search was made for the key, it was found attached to the lama’s own girdle.[3]

Yes, God is the God who speaks light into darkness and still says, “Not yet!” when things look most hopeless.

The world thought their leader was a god, but God said, “No!”

If the Church sometimes assumes less of the Lord God than we should, the world, conversely, assumes more of its leaders than it should.  The Church thought their leader was dead but he was not.  The world, however, proclaims their leader to be a god, but God decides to show them otherwise.  Here we see the demise of wicked Herod.

²⁰ Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, they asked for peace, because their country depended on the king’s country for food. ²¹ On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. ²² And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” ²³ Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last. ²⁴ But the word of God increased and multiplied. ²⁵ And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark.

What a startling scene!  It is as startling in its terror as Peter’s deliverance was startling in its beauty.  The people shout out and proclaim Herod a god.  Josephus wrote that Herod looked godlike in this scene because of the sun reflecting off of his silver armor.[4]  God, however, does not share His glory and He strikes Herod down in a way that is jarring and unsettling.  “An angel of the Lord struck him down…and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.”  Why?  “Because he did not give God the glory.”

Herod made the fatal mistake of believing and embracing his own blasphemous press.  Leaders are wont to do such, and history is full of kings who came to believe that they were gods.  This scene reminded Jaroslav Pelikan of what John Dryden said of Alexander the Great:

With ravished ears,

The monarch hears;

Assumes the god,

Affects to nod,

And seems to shake the spheres.[5]

They seem to shake the spheres, but they actually have no power that is not granted them from on high.  If the Church needed to be lifted out of its despondency by an amazing display of God’s grace, the world needed to be humbled by an unforgettable display of God’s wrath.  While it seems as if the trajectory of the world is toward the victory of the fallen structures of the world and the continued diminishment of the life of the Church, this story reminds us that this is not ultimately so.  God wins!  Darkness is not destined to have victory.  Wicked kings do not get to play God forever and persecuted believers are not forever destined to die martyrs’ deaths.

Which is simply to say that, in the end, the kings of the earth will be brought low and the lowly Church of Christ will be exalted.

T.R. Glover, in commenting on Nero having the Apostle Paul executed, famously noted that the day would come when men would call their dogs Nero and their sons Paul.  And precisely this has come to pass as Christianity has advanced in the world.  Where is Nero?  He has been cast onto the trash heap of history.  And Paul and Peter and the apostles?  We continue the message that Christ bequeathed to them to this very day.  We stand with the cloud of witnesses who have refused to abandon the light for darkness and who have dared to believe the heralded message of the inevitable victory of Christ!