Simon Peter No.14 Jailbreak

I am so overweight and overloaded, but God blesses me with my spirit. And when I do need Him, the Lord is always there. He's all mine, and He shall provide for me.

Let us know the greatness of His care, thankfulness, kindness, His love, and His mercy sure. All His gracious grace, His holy name, the Lord shall guide. Let our hearts know the greatness of His love, His care, glory, love, and love shall surely fill the world with life.

Let our hearts be filled with the humble praise of His charitability, of care as I show, the greatness of all His children, and forevermore. Our reading this evening is found in the history of the Church, the Acts of the Apostles, and the remarkable events contained in the 12th chapter. Acts chapter 12.

It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. He had James, the brother of John, put to death with a sword. When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also.

This happened during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.

So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him. The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell.

He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. Quick, get up, he said, and the chains fell off Peter's wrists. Then the angel said to him, put on your clothes and sandals, and Peter did so.

Wrap your cloak around you and follow me, the angel told him. Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea what the angel was doing was really happening. He thought he was seeing a vision.

They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.

Then Peter came to himself and said, now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod's clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating. When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer the door.

When she recognized Peter's voice, she was so overjoyed, she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, Peter is at the door. You're out of your mind, they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, it must be his angel.

But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. Tell James and the brothers about this, he said, and then he left for another place.

In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed. Then Herod went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there a while.

He had been quarreling with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they now joined together and sought an audience with him. Having secured the support of Blastus, a trusted personal servant of the king, they asked for peace because they depended on the king's country for their food supply. On the appointed day, Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people.

They shouted, This is the voice of a god, not of a man. Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died. But the word of God continued to increase and spread.

When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark. This is the word of the Lord. And turning the word of God to the chapter that was read earlier, and let me supplement it with another verse.

No need to turn to this, but it's the gospel of John in the eighth chapter. John in the thirty-fourth verse of that chapter records the words of our blessed Lord. I tell you the truth.

Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

And the Acts of the Apostles in the twelfth chapter. Verse five. So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.

Verse twelve. When this had dawned on Peter, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. When did you last attend a prayer meeting? Do you believe in prayer meetings? Jesus put down a sort of Gallup poll principle.

If you are not with me, you are against me. In other words, our blessed Lord said, you vote by your feet. Not by your intentions, but by your actions.

So my question, do you believe in prayer meetings? Or do you by default vote against prayer meetings? Do you not attend prayer meetings because you believe you've only got a titchy bit of faith? Or do you not attend prayer meetings because the issues are so trivial or on the other hand so ginormous that you don't feel inclined to congregate with a group of people who are engaged in that holy act of intercession? Now you say you're being a little belligerent to start with. Don't you preachers ever read psychology and soothe your audience before you actually start to prise open their conscience and their will? Well, it's never been my habit to apologize for what I say when I believe it's from the word of God. And there is a sense in which you cannot understand the particular passage of scripture and the subject matter that confronts us this evening unless I lead off with asking you about prayer meetings because the whole of this narrative has to do not only with a great dilemma, but a problem that was resolved by prayer meetings.

It's an interesting chapter, is this one. After you get through it, there's a shift. There's a shift in geography.

The church moves from its headquarters in Jerusalem to Antioch. And actually, although we're not through our series on the Peter file, which we've been taking on a Sunday evening, it's the last time you come across Peter in the Acts of the Apostles. It's not the last thing he has to do.

It's not the last thing that's recorded in scripture about him. But it is the finale, as far as Dr. Luke is concerned, bringing him into this exciting account of the development of the Christian church in its infancy. You read in verse 17, and then he, Peter, left for another place.

And that's it, as far as Luke is concerned. This fellow Peter, the leading apostle of our blessed Lord, the one who took over the reins when our Lord was raised and ascended into heaven, this man who knew the baptism of the Spirit and was the sort of principal, if you like, of the apostolic college. What was his worldview? We're talking this week and next week and the following week and the one after that, at least the politicians are in terms of a manifesto and important things that confront our country.

Well, here's a question. What was Peter's worldview? How did he understand society? How did he understand the world? Let's put it another way. How did he understand the church? You'll see what I'm coming at and what I'm moving towards in a moment or two.

How does Peter understand the church? Well, we read, didn't we, come and praise him royal priesthood. Now, that's taken from Peter's first letter when he describes the church in terms of not only a community of priests but also a holy nation. Now, here is Peter at Jerusalem.

And there's a great deal of antagonism towards the church of Jesus Christ. And as far as Peter is concerned, there is, if you please, two nations in our world today. None other.

There is the nation, the community of people who have trusted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and there is the rest. And so he would put together non-believing Jews and Gentiles of every description and he would say that those who have confessed the Lord Jesus as Savior, they are his commonwealth and then there are the others. And amongst the others, within the others, is the power of Satan which causes these people either to be antagonistic towards the Christian gospel or apathetic.

And I ask you this question. Where are you? Not in terms of are you going to vote for Neal Kinnock or John Major or any other politician or leader of a political party. What's your world view? Are you a member of the nation that Jesus came to establish? Are you part of his kingdom? Have you cleansed your sins in his precious blood? Are you one of the redeemed? That's basically what I'm asking.

And if you are, well, you are going to know a certain amount of opposition. You see, there's jailbreaks and jailbreaks. There are freedoms and freedoms.

In this chapter we're going to be speaking about a specific jailbreak. But there is a sense in which the man who's freed from prison was never really enslaved in the first instance. At least not as you read of his story in the 12th chapter.

Because the apostle Peter has been freed by the gospel of redeeming grace. He is a free man. He is a member of the nation that Jesus Christ has come to establish.

Now are you a member? The most important thing I tell you as you leave this church is that you go away with this challenge ringing in your ears. Do I belong to Jesus Christ? Am I a Christian? Am I a citizen of the kingdom that he came to establish? When our Lord was born in Bethlehem of Judea he immediately ran into hostility and opposition, did he not? Have you ever thought that you could almost trace the history of our blessed Lord in its main stages by running it parallel with the history of one family? Wise men come from the east. They are slightly off course by about 12 miles.

They hit Jerusalem. They approach the king. And they say to Herod, where is he that is born king of the Jews? And Herod, not the Herod of the Nativity story, but his son, has the head of John the Baptist brought to him on a plate.

And it's this Herod that Jesus will not have a word to say to when our Lord is on trial, having been passed from pillar to post from Pilate to Herod to the high priest and back to Pilate. Now, you come to the 12th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. It's not Herod of the Nativity story.

It's not Herod who was presiding at the time when our Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross. It's the grandson of the former. It's the son of the latter.

And you read, it was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church. He was representing the nation that Jesus did not found. He was representing hostility and unbelief.

And here in Jerusalem was the beginnings of this great movement which would swell and go throughout the whole world, the kingdom of our Lord Jesus, the nation that He has established. And there is hostility. Do you remember, and all these pieces will come together in a moment, do you remember an over-ambitious lady whose story is recorded in the gospel? She comes to the blessed Lord on one occasion and she says, Lord, You're a king.

I'm in the kingdom. And I know that the kingdom's got a future realization. Lord, when that kingdom comes in all its fullness, my lads, my good lads, one on your right, the other on your left, will you grant it? And Jesus smiles at the lady and He addresses those two boys.

And He said, It's not really my privilege to give those positions, but look, can you take the baptism I will be baptized with? Are you prepared to lay your lives on the line so that you can be used as I will in the establishment of this kingdom? And they said, Yes, we can. And she agreed. And when you come to the second verse of chapter 12 of the Acts of the Apostles, you discover that one of the sons of that lady becomes the first apostolic martyr, Herod, always against the kingdom that Jesus has established.

Has the sword flashed against the head of this man? He's executed. James, the first apostolic martyr, leaving John, John the apostle, who will be the last of the apostles to die, who will be incarcerated on the Isle of Patmos, John who will suffer throughout the whole of his life in the cause of the gospel. These two men feature right at the beginning of this chapter.

And I ask you the question, did our Lord love John more than He loved James inasmuch as James was the first to die? Or could it be that He's teaching the lesson that in the establishing of His kingdom, some will be called to go in one direction and others in another direction? God will move in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. So we go back to Herod. And he's pleased, the unbelieving Jews, by the elimination of James.

And when, verse 3, he discovers that this puts him more in their favor, he proceeds to seize who? Peter, the man whose file we've been lifting out and placarding in front of you Sunday evening by Sunday evening. Now Peter comes into the spotlight and the venom of all that is alien to the establishment of the kingdom of our Lord Jesus is directed at him. Isn't it interesting? We're told this happened during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Passover occasion.

It's a question of deja vu. We've been here before. Verse 4, after arresting him, he puts him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of soldiers, intending to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.

If you're part of the kingdom that Jesus Christ has come to establish, it might be well within his purposes that the role of James will be your role or the role of John or the role of Peter. But whatever, be assured of this, in his overarching sovereignty, God has got a place for you in his nation. Those who proclaim that once you trust Jesus as Savior, you'll be healthy and wealthy, this side of eternity, with no difficult situation, are promising more than what the Bible predicts.

What the Bible says is this, that the kingdoms of this world, all the hostile forces, will one day surrender their authority to the King, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. And there is a sense in which nothing is more important in life but that you be faithful to Jesus Christ, as James and Peter and John were faithful. Now, doesn't it seem as though Herod's gone a little bit over the top? I mean, look at the description of the strategy that's employed by him and those under him.

When Peter is arrested, they have him put in prison, they have him guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. I mean, you'd think that he was armed to the teeth. But Herod is aware, and rumors are rife, that this fellow has broken jail before, and that there are an emerging number of people in Jerusalem who have admitted that Jesus is their Saviour.

So just to ensure that the kingdom of Herod and the clout that it represents is not made to look a monkey, we have four soldiers, four lots of four, guarding this man. So what does the church do? I mean, there are several things it can do. It can have a committee meeting.

Churches are generally good at doing that. We could send a petition round the congregation, Herod, this is not really cricket, a sort of anglicized argument. Maybe we could try and bribe the guards.

Maybe someone could sort of just squeeze through the narrow exit into the place where the palace and the prison are. Listen, verse 5, So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him. Not just praying.

There is only one other place, as far as I can recall, if my memory of the Greek Testament is right, where this word is used. It's used when you see our blessed Lord in the olive groves in Gethsemane, and bloody perspiration is coming down his brow, and he's praying to the Father, and you can't really dynamically translate the Greek. You have to make up your own word, and I'm good at doing that.

He prays stretched outwardly. If you want an illustration, imagine a violin that's strung properly, and all the tensions are there as the strings have gone over the bridge, and the violin is ready to be played. That's how Luke describes the psychological condition of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, and it's exactly the same here.

The church is praying stretched out. There's every reason for the church not to pray. You see, we need to demythologize our understanding of these early Christians.

They're just frail like you and me. They have their temptations. They have their own personal rivals in terms of their prior commitment to Jesus Christ, little things that would erode their commitment as far as discipleship is concerned.

James has been done to death. Prayer obviously was offered on his behalf, but it wasn't prevented. Is there any reason to pray now? My friend, this was the only thing they could do.

It was the only power that they had. They submit to the sovereignty of God despite what happens, but they come before this Lord, and they besiege the gates of heaven, and they say, Father, we cannot do without Peter. Now, Father knows best, and sometimes he takes the ones that we pray for away from us.

I've known many a James for. I've argued before God on many an occasion, keep that man. We need him down here.

And the Father smiles and chuckles and says, ah, but I need him up here, and I've got someone else for down there, and I've still got my hands on both situations. But you see, this is the point. Into the curriculum of the early church, there is a premium put on prayer meetings, and the church never exists as a church.

The church is never powerful. When she reneges on the call that is made by the Holy Spirit for men and women to come in constant intercessory prayer, stretching themselves out before the Father. And we moderns, who are slipshod in our prayer life, communally and individually, would do well to learn from the commitment of the early church, despite the temptations that it as well as we have not to pray.

Our blessed Lord on one occasion said to Peter, Simon has, Peter, Satan has desired to sift you, to throw you up and down. But I prayed for you, that your faith does not fail. And I see that prayer not as just applying to the immediate situation of Peter's temptations and his denial of our Lord.

I see that as a prayer, a promise that our blessed Lord makes to Peter that will follow him all the days and the years of his pilgrimage on this earth. Peter, I am praying for you and the church is praying for you. Charles Spurgeon is one of the great British preachers of all time and he's got a remarkable sermon on this, which I think would perhaps surprise Dr. Luke when they got to heaven and chatted it through.

What he got out of this incident was truly amazing. And he thinks in terms of Peter representing the sinner who's captivated by the power of the evil one and Herod and Satan he sees almost as the same and there is a sense in which Herod represents Satan, as I've argued. Here then is an impossible situation, Peter asleep, Peter chained, Peter in a prison cell, Peter guarded by four men with four different duties during the day.

Do you, my friends, accepting Spurgeon's analogy for a moment, do you pray for your loved ones who spiritually might be in that condition? Or do you think it's impossible? The manacles, the guards, there are so many negatives that would prompt me never to pray for my family. I've given up. Oh, my friend, that's listening to the voice of the devil.

Our God can spring people from Satan's lair. If the sun shall set you free, you shall be free indeed. There has not been a man born from a mother's womb who is outside the possibilities of the restorative grace of God.

And we must pray in that fashion, stretched outwardly, asking God to do what we want in terms of the salvation of our loved ones. And as they prayed, as we go into the literal history of this story, something remarkable happens. There's a divine intervention.

Peter is astonished as he's woken by an angel. Verse 7, the angel of the Lord appeared, a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up.

Quick, get up, he said, and the chains fell off Peter's wrists. I'd love to have had a camera to have got the face of Peter. It would have won a prize.

And Peter moves away with the angel. The doors swing open. Verse 10, they pass the first and second guards.

They come to the iron gates leading to the city. It opened for them. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left it.

You say, what's all this about angels? You don't believe in angels now, do you? Are you telling us that, you man of the 20th century? My friend, not only do I believe in angels, I delight in the ministry of angels. Hebrews 1, 4 says that God has his invisible messengers, ambassadors, his ministering spirits, his servants and our servants who are used in a world that is invisible but nonetheless real to prevent and help and encourage. I don't understand the scriptural teaching on angels, but I do believe that every man, every woman, every child has its angel.

Says Lloyd-Jones, preaching in London 30 years ago, I fear that we neglect the ministry of angels. We do not think sufficiently about it, but whether we realize it or not, there are angels who are looking after us. They are around and about us.

We do not see them, but that does not matter. We do not see the most important things. We only see the things that are visible, but we are surrounded by angels, and they are appointed to look after us and to minister to us, guardian angels.

I do not pretend to understand it all. I know no more than the Bible tells me, but I do know this, that his servants, the angels, are my servants. They're surrounding us all.

They're looking after us, and they are manipulating things for us in a way we cannot understand. And I further know that when we come to die, they will carry us to our appointed place. One occasion I was ministering in Mexico City at a convention of an American Baptist church, and I had a day and a half spare before I flew to Latin America for some preacher's conferences, and there was a man I desperately wanted to meet.

He lived out in the villages of Mexico, and I got into a clapped-out, typical OM vehicle where you take your life in your hands and you prove that your faith is more than just words, and we drove for miles. We found this man. Never forget him from that day to this day.

I've never seen him since. It established a church called Sinai Chapel. It was built halfway up a mountainside.

They built it themselves. It seated 5,000 people. I got there on Monday night.

He didn't know I was coming, and that church was well-filled with people as he tolled the bell and they came streaming in. But that's not the reason for me telling this story. The reason why I went to see this man was that I'd heard that in the 1950s there had been tremendous opposition in that area as a result of Catholic converts to a sort of legalistic Catholicism which was very much against Protestants at that time.

There were some terrible difficulties in Mexico, religiously, and this man and his church had known many martyrs. The associate pastor had been killed. I believe I'm right in saying that the main pastor's son had been killed.

They lost something like 12 men, and the information was rife that the Mexican army was coming and was going to mount an assault against this Protestant village. They didn't know what to do. And so I said, Now you tell me the story, and he's speaking it through Spanish, and I've got a good interpreter.

And he said, On one occasion, as they looked up, they saw on the silhouetted against the mountain slopes horsemen. I just made a mistake in what I'm telling you. They were expecting the Catholics from the local villages to come and attack and destroy the church.

And what the people saw were these horsemen, and they thought it was the Mexican army that had come down from the capital to repulse these villagers and the attack on that church. Well, there were no representatives of the Mexican army anywhere near, anywhere in that vicinity. And those dear and godly people were convinced that they had had an experience similar to that as recorded in the Old Testament of the hosts of the Lord manifesting themselves and protecting the church of the redeemed.

Now you can accept that or reject it as you please, but the man who told me was a very godly and a very mature man, and he's established something like 80, 8-0 churches in that area. The Bible says, The angel of the Lord encamps around those that fear him. Here is Peter on this occasion.

People are praying. He's released from jail. What does he do when he gets out of jail? Well, he goes to the place where the people have been praying.

When this verse 12 dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people are gathered and were praying. Peter knocked on the outer entrance, and doesn't this little touch of humor show the authenticity of the story? A young girl with a beautiful name. Why don't we have people called Rhoda today, I ask myself, and give hint for potential mothers and fathers to think in terms of.

She comes to the doorway, takes a look at Peter, while we've been praying for you, and bombs back, and tells the people what she's seen, but she's not too sure. And that's a real human touch, because we're like that. Lord, don't surprise us by answering our prayers.

Then call us to prayer by all means. But don't give us a heart attack, and do something miraculous. Well, I half jest, but you read what I'm trying to say, not just in my words, but in my attitude.

She recognized Peter's voice. She's overjoyed. She runs back.

She tells the others, it's Peter at the door. And they say, you're out of your mind. They're good conservative evangelicals.

We'll get these people into the tabernacle. And Peter keeps knocking. You'd have needed another photograph of that.

Can you imagine the impatience on Peter's face? Hey, you folks, you've been praying for me all this time. I've been getting out of the jail. It's more easy to get out of the jail than to get into your prayer meeting.

Peter motioned, with his hand for them to be quiet, and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison, and says, tell James, that's the brother of Jesus, not, of course, the brother of John. He's died. Tell James and the brothers about this.

And then he left for another place. And what do you read? Look, there are just two nations, at least blocks, in our world today. Those of the redeemed people, the nation of the redeemed, and the nation of the unredeemed.

And judgment will fall. And there are anticipations of this, sometimes very worrying and dramatic demonstrations of the judgment of God in Scripture. This man Herod, who has inherited the same traits and characteristics of his father and his grandfather, he goes down from Judea to Caesarea, and there he stays for a while.

He's on good terms with the emperor. He resolves a political storm that has been brewing in Tyre and Sidon. And then there's a festival in which the emperor, and I'm now quoting from the Antiquities of Josephus, the Roman historian who writes a parallel account to Luke's history.

They have a festival in honor of the emperor. And Herod has a new suit made out of fine-woven silver strands. And as he comes center stage, the sun hits the silver and reflects and illuminates him as a result.

And the people in their superstition, they say this is not just a king. This is God. And Herod accepts the ascription of praise.

And he's zapped. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. Salvation is wonderful, but judgment is horrific.

This is the voice of a God, not a man, immediately because Herod did not give praise to God. An angel of the Lord struck him down. And according to Josephus, within five days he's dead.

But, verse 24, the Word of God, which is a euphemism for the nation of God, for the increasing kingdom that our Lord Jesus has established, the Word of God continues to increase and spread. And Barnabas and Saul, they leave Jerusalem. They go to Antioch, and they start off on the first of their historic missionary journeys in which the gospel message is pushed into the rest of the Roman Empire.

And they are so successful that by the time you get to the 28th chapter of this book, you discover that these men are credited as turning the world upside down. Now I ask you as I conclude, which kingdom are you a member of? It's the most important question for me to put. The kingdom of this world, with its seeming pomp and materialism and splendor and might, this world and all it stands for is passing away.

It's here today. It will be gone tomorrow. Men and women will bow to the judgment of God if they have rejected the salvation that He offers through Jesus Christ.

But hear me, there is a kingdom, and there is a king that will never, never, never pass away. Are you a member of that kingdom? We cannot guarantee you as a result that you're going to be healthy and wealthy and all the rest of it. But we can guarantee you this, that you will know an inner peace.

You will know a freedom the like of which many people in this world, everyone who is not a Christian in this world, has not known. Be sensible. The greatest jailbreak was not when the Holy Spirit sprung Peter from Herod's prison.

The greatest jailbreak was when Jesus Christ called Peter to belong to Him and reordained him for the ministry after Peter had confessed his fault in denying the Lord Jesus. And it's that selfsame Peter who speaks of the church as a royal priesthood and a holy nation. So I ask you again, are you a member? And if you're a member, do you believe in what? Prayer meetings.

Because the early church did. Acted on it. And things changed as a result.

I should gain my repentance from a traitor before me with the freedom I may gain.