There are several Herods in the gospels and in Acts.
This is the 3rd Herod. The first one was King Herod the Great. He
was the one that tried to kill Jesus when Jesus was a baby. He died in about 4
B.C. The next one was Herod Antipas. He was the guy that interviewed Christ the
morning that he was crucified. This guy, King Herod Agrippa the First, he is
different than Agrippa the Second who we’ll see later on in the book of Acts;
Paul is going to testify before him. This is Herod Agrippa the First. It’s kind
of interesting how God keeps trying to witness to the Herod family, none of
them seem very spiritually interested though. This guy only ruled in Jerusalem
for about 3 years, from 41 to 44 A.D. The events that we’re reading here
tonight, they took place either in 42 or 43 A.D. It says,
he began to persecute some believers in
the church.
In fact, it says he went so far as to,
have the apostle James (the brother of
John) killed with a sword.”
This is James, the son of Zebedee. Not only was this
guy one of the original 12 apostles, this guy was one of the big 3, the inner
circle: Peter, James, and John. If you remember, in the gospels shortly before the
death of Christ, John and James actually got momma Zebedee to come with them.
They go up to Jesus as Jesus is headed into Jerusalem to face his own cross,
this is like a week or two before the cross, and they get their mom to ask
Jesus, ‘can my two sons sit at your right hand and your left hand when you come
in your kingdom.’ And Jesus, he was like, ‘are you sure you guys are prepared
to drink the cup of suffering that I’m going to drink?’ And James and John are
like, ‘Oh yes.’ And Jesus says, ‘well you know what, you guys are going to
drink that cup of suffering, but ultimately it’s up to the father to decide
who’s going to sit in these positions of honor at my right and at my left hand,
that will be based on the principle that the last shall be first. Whoever’s the
least will become the greatest.’ I wonder if in that moment if Jesus could’ve
seen 10 years into the future, and he saw that this is how James would meet his
death. He would be the first of the apostles to die the death of a martyr. He
definitely got his share of suffering.
I also wonder if Jesus could see 50 years further
beyond into the future to see the death of John, son of Zebedee. Yes John,
James’s brother would outlive his brother by 50 years and would have to watch
over the course of his life every single one of the other apostles die for
their faith. The last we hear from John, he’s writing from exile, a prison
exile camp from an island in the Mediterranean. And so, James and John, the
sons of Zebedee, James dies first, John dies last. Why does God allow Christian
workers to be killed right in prime of their lives? Right when they seem to
have so much ahead of them? I have no idea. All I know is they used to be
three, and now there are two. John and Peter. Well,
King Herod, saw how much this pleased the
Jewish people, [so] he also arrested Peter.
Intending to do the same thing to him apparently.
This took place during the Passover
celebration.
There were a lot of pilgrims in Jerusalem at this
time. Apparently, Herod didn’t want to kill him during Passover week and so
threw him in prison. Here’s a shot of the temple mount.
You can see on the left here this is a scale model of
the temple in the day of Jesus and also the day of Herod and Peter and John
here that we’re reading about. Let’s not forget how big this Temple Mount was,
the whole temple grounds. They would be 50% larger both in length and in width
than Ohio Stadium, the football stadium. This was enormous, 300 by 500 yards.
But what some people fail to notice is over here built right into the
North-West corner of the temple grounds. This was called the Fortress of
Antonia. When Herod the Great built up the temple he also had a fortress built
right into the corner of the temple so he could keep an eye on things. And this,
most scholars think, is where Peter would’ve been held in prison awaiting his
trial and his execution. This would’ve been crawling with soldiers. Luke tells
us that,
[Herod] imprisoned [Peter], placing him
under the guard of four squads of four soldiers each.
This was common, they would rotate them out every
three hours. They would chain one soldier to each of the prisoner’s arms, and
the other two guys would be stationed down the hall along the only escape
route, that way if, somehow, he could fight off the two guards the other two
would be there. They would change the shift every three hours because they
wanted to make sure that at night the soldiers stayed alert and the prisoner
didn’t get away. Remember in Acts 5, God had already set Peter and the apostles
free from a time when they were in jail. He sent an angel, and he did it
through miraculous means. I don’t know if Herod Agrippa knows about that and he’s
trying to set up an extra guard there to make sure that Peter stays captured.
But he was an important prisoner, and he was intending to curry more favor with
the people by having him executed. So he’s under the guard of four squads of
four soldiers each so if he could somehow get away from the two guards he’s
chained to, get passed the other two guards, get passed the rest of the guards
in the fortress, there was still a huge iron gate at the front of this fortress
that there’s no way he could’ve gotten through. Things are looking pretty bleak
for the apostle Peter. The Christians in Jerusalem had to be wondering if they
were going to lose not just James, but also Peter within only a week or two of
one another. This would’ve been devastating.
Herod intended to bring Peter out for
public trial after the Passover.
Herod is sitting there with his soldiers, with his
fortress, and the church turns to the only weapon that can we wielded to the
powerless. It says in verse 5,
While Peter was in prison, the church
prayed very earnestly for him.
You see the two sides aligned here, each wielding
their weapons. When it says they prayed very earnestly for him, this word ‘very
earnestly’ is only used one other time by Luke. This was used of Jesus’ prayer
when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane when he was praying so fervently that
it was like he was being crushed under the weight of the cross that he was
going to have to face that very next day. What were they praying? Well, they
were probably praying for his release, maybe for a favorable verdict, maybe an
acquittal, or at least a lesser sentence than what James got, which was
beheaded by the sword. But they might’ve been praying for other things. They
might’ve been praying for Peter’s family. You know he had a wife, may have had
kids. They may have been praying that Peter would have boldness like Paul. The
apostle Paul asked for that when he was going to his trial before Caesar. He
says pray that I can be bold in proclaiming the gospel when I’m on trial and
not shrink back in fear in any way. Maybe they were praying that the carnage
would stop here, that even if this resulted in death for Peter that this would
not spread to any further Christians, they had enough problems as it was. Maybe
they were praying for one another, that they would each stand firm. Perhaps
they were reminding one another of the promises of God, that could be a good
thing to do during prayer meeting. That’s what they were doing in the prayer
meeting we read about in Acts 4. They were praying scripture and encouraging
one another. That Christ promised that we would suffer, but that he would be
with us through our suffering. Christ promised that no matter what happens
we’ll all be together in heaven for a sweet reunion.
This was going on throughout the city of Jerusalem,
but they’re coming down to the wire here. They had probably prayed for James;
he hadn’t gotten released and now Luke tells us we’re down to the very last
night where the next day Peter has to stand trial. He said,
The night before Peter was to be placed on
trial, he was asleep
How do you sleep at a time like this? Was this like
the peace that passes understanding? Is this some sort of like just exhaustion,
depression sleep, I don’t know. But it says he was,
fastened with two chains between two
soldiers.
That can’t be very comfortable. And then,
others stood guard at the prison gate.
Yeah this was lockdown. And Peter, regardless of what
he’s thinking it was clear he has no idea about what’s about to happen. Luke
tells us in verse 7,
suddenly, there was a bright light… and an
angel of the Lord stood before Peter.
Peter who’s still lying on the ground still asleep.
The angel struck him on the side to awaken
him
struck him pretty hard.
And he said, Quick! Get up!
He was trying to wake him up, Peter is looking for the
snooze button.
And the chains fell off his wrists.
I don’t know what the guards are doing, must be in a
trance or sleep or something.
Then the angel told him, “Get dressed and
put on your sandals. And he did.
Still a little stunned.
Now put your coat on and follow me,’ the
angel ordered. So Peter left the cell following the angel.
He’s walking down the hall, he sees the other two
guards. It says,
all the time he thought it was a vision.
He didn’t realize it was actually happening.
He’s like wow this is really some dream I’m having.
They passed the first and second guard
posts and came to the iron gate leading to the city.
I don’t know how they’re going to get through this.
But Luke just tells us,
it opened for them all by itself.
It’s like when
you go to Kroger.
So they passed through and started walking
down the street, and the angel suddenly left him.
You got Peter standing there on the streets of
Jerusalem, he’s still got chain marks on his wrist, he’s got the lines on his
face maybe from the floor. He’s standing there and it says,
Peter finally came to his senses. “It’s
really true!” he said. The Lord has sent his angel and he saved me from Herod
and from what the Jewish leaders had planned to do to me.
He had no idea this was coming. And so, what does he
do? It says,
when he realized this, he went to the home
of Mary, the mother of John Mark
This was the family home of John Mark. John Mark’s a
guy who’s going to figure in a bigger way later on in the book of Acts. This
home, his mother Mary, she was probably widowed as it doesn’t mention her
husband. His mom was named Mary just like everyone else in Israel back then.
There was probably a house church that met here, this home, some people even
think this was actually the home where Jesus had the last supper with his guys
the final night of his life. John Mark, this is the guy who wrote the gospel of
Mark. He wrote for Peter, wrote Peter’s memoirs. Some people think Mark
actually followed Jesus and his guys out there on the last night of Christ’s
life and was watching the whole scene. It tells about this young man in Mark 14
who gets grabbed by the guards and it says he gets away by wriggling out of his
shirt and running off naked through the Garden of Gethsemane. Some people think
that was him. Sharing his eyewitness recollection there. Anyway, John Mark’s
house. Peter goes there hoping there’s going to be some people there. It’s the
middle of the night by this point. But it says that,
many were gathered for prayer.
And so, we see that the prayers being offered up for
Peter across the city of Jerusalem, this was not individual Christians down on
their knees begging God for the life of Peter. No, this was Christians clumped
together in groups of ten, and twenty, and thirty, and praying as a group for
the life of Peter and whatever was to come. When Christians get together to
pray, pretty awesome things start to happen. The Christians are gathered here,
and miracles start to take place. God starts working in ways you wouldn’t
believe, and Jesus said, ‘when two or three are gathered together in my name
he’s somehow there, right there in our midst, in some sort of a special way.’
And that’s what they were doing here. They were there praying in the middle of
the night, and they were still praying because they were so terrified about
what was going to happen. Praying probably just as fervently as Christ was in
the garden of Gethsemane. This is a little lesson here for our prayer lives,
that suffering can be pretty good for growth in prayer. We see Jesus praying
fervently when he was suffering the greatest, we see them praying fervently in
a time of great need. If you’re asking God to grow your prayer life don’t be
surprised if he does it in the usual way, allowing suffering to come into your
life, drawing you closer to him through that. The question is are you drawing
closer to God through the suffering that’s happening in your life, or are you
shutting down and turning away? These guys responded the right way. Peter goes
up, and
he knocks at the door in the gate, and a
servant girl named Rhoda came to open it.
Who is it? Rhoda it’s me, Peter, Simon Peter, you
know, the Rock. Let me in. Well Rhoda recognizes his voice and she’s so happy.
It says,
She was so overjoyed that, instead of
opening the door, she ran back inside and told everyone, ‘Peter is standing at
the door!’
It’s really him, he’s there! Interrupts the prayer
meeting.
“You’re out of your mind!” They said.
Rhoda come on; we’re trying to pray for Peter here.
This is serious, he’s probably going to be killed tomorrow, God knows what else
is going to happen. We need to pray, okay?
But she kept insisting, no it’s really
him! And some of them are like, “It must be his angel.”
God why? Oh God when will all the carnage stop? Where
were you God? We prayed and prayed and now he’s dead!
Meanwhile, Peter continued knocking.
Whoever says God doesn’t have a sense of humor, just
the way he talks about us is so funny. Peter’s wondering what’s going on here.
Well eventually,
When they finally opened up the door and
saw him, they were amazed.
This Greek word means to be in a state in which things
seem to make little or no sense. So, they’re praying for Peter to be released
and so God releases Peter, sends him to the prayer meeting while they’re
praying for the release of Peter, and he’s knocking at the door. And they’d
rather believe either that Rhoda’s crazy or it’s Peter’s angel than to believe
that God has actually released Peter and sent him to them. Do you ever wonder
if maybe my prayers aren’t being answered because I’m not praying with enough
faith? Because stories like this should dispel that. What scripture says is
it’s not the amount of faith that you have. The question is, do you have enough
faith to pray? Jesus said you can have the smallest amount of faith imaginable,
the faith the size of a mustard seed, which is like the smallest thing they
could talk about. He says that’s all you need, and you could do amazing things
through faith. The question is where are you putting your faith? Did you have
enough faith to pray because if so, my friend you’re in good shape. Well done.
That’s all that God asks. Even the Christian life starts this way. Where we
come to him, not with all of our good works and our fervency of devotion, but
we come to him with just the little faith that we have with empty hands, and we
say I’m trusting you with my eternal destiny. That’s what it means to become a
Christian. That Christ is knocking at the door, and you open the door and let
him in. Hallesby says that’s the essence of prayer. Christ is knocking, we open
the door and let him in. He’s the one that’s taking the initiative. We just
need enough faith to go to him. Let your helplessness drive you to him. The
other thing I think we can learn here is that it’s pretty easy to miss answered
prayers. Afterall, he had already in Acts 5 sent an angel to release Peter and
some other guys from prison, and now here they’ve forgotten that. They don’t
even see that God has answered their prayer right in their midst and they just
want to keep going on praying and feeling bad that God hasn’t answered their
prayers.
[Peter] motioned for them to quiet down.
You can imagine how exciting this must’ve been. I’d
hate to be the guy that skipped out on that prayer meeting. He finally settles
the group, they’re so excited, and he
told them how the Lord had led him out of prison.
He says, ‘Tell James and the other brothers what happened.’
The whole church wouldn’t have fit in this room, but
he says tell some of the other guys what happened, okay? I’m not going to be
able to stick around to tell them. You see James starting to rise up to a more
prominent leadership position in the Jerusalem church here. We’re going to see
him show up several times again throughout the rest of the book of Acts, every
time they’re in Jerusalem. He says, tell James and the other brothers,
and then [Peter] went to another place.
Doesn’t say where, he went into hiding. Remember in
Acts 5 when he got set free, God sent him right back into the temple to preach.
He didn’t do that this time. He gets out of there and he goes somewhere else. You
can image Herod wasn’t too happy about this.
At dawn there was a great commotion among
the soldiers about what had happened to Peter.
The guards are sitting there, the chains on their arm,
the other chain is empty. I don’t know what happened with the guys in the hall.
But it said,
Herod Agrippa ordered a thorough search
for [Peter]. When he couldn’t be found, [he] interrogated the guards and
sentenced them to death.
This was standard practice, if you’re a guard and lose
your prisoner you get what they would’ve gotten. That’s why it’s so strange that
when Jesus rose from the dead and got out of there that the guards were like
yeah, the disciples stole the body. Why would they admit that they lost their
prisoner? Anyway, it says
Afterward Herod left Judea to stay in
Caesarea for a while.
This was up further on the coast, major Roman city.
We’ve seen Caesarea actually several chapters in a row in the book of Acts.
It’s where Cornelius was. Just a little epilogue here on this story, what ended
up happening to Herod after killing James and trying to kill Peter. Luke tells
us,
Now Herod was very angry with the people
of Tyre and Sidon.
These were the regions just to the North of Israel. So,
the people of Tyre and Sidon,
they sent a delegation to make peace with
him because their cities were dependent upon Herod’s country for food.
Kind of a negotiation, diplomatic maneuver.
The delegates won the support of Blastus,
Herod’s personal assistant, and an appointment with Herod was granted.
This next scene actually takes place in this theater
that archaeology has uncovered. A theater at Caesarea Maritima looking West out
onto the Mediterranean Ocean, just beautiful. Herod would’ve stood right there
in the center of the theater for the speech he was about to make.
When he arrived, he put on his royal robes,
sat on his throne and made a speech to them. The people gave him a great
ovation shouting, ‘It’s the voice of a god, not of a man!’ Instantly, an angel
of the Lord struck Herod with a sickness, because he accepted the people’s
worship instead of giving glory to God. So he was consumed with worms and died.
Didn’t work out too good for Herod.
Meanwhile, the word of God continued to
spread, and there were many new believers.
I guess he didn’t stop the church after all, did he?
Well you’re like this sounds like mythology, this sounds like fiction. Come on,
give me a break. This is completely not credible. What are we reading here? Well
actually we’re reading pretty good history. If you read Josephus, a Roman
Jewish historian. John Stott tells us of Josephus’ account of the death of
Herod Agrippa the First. Look what Stott writes
Josephus also described in graphic detail the
circumstances surrounding Herod’s death. (Antiquities, XIX.8.2.)
You can read it for yourself if you want. But look at
Stott’s analysis. He says,
His account and Luke’s differ from one
another in a few details, which shows that they are independent. But their
general outline is the same. Both agree that Herod was in Caesarea at the time,
although Josephus said he had gone there to participate in a festival in honour
of Caesar, which was attended by a large crowd of leading citizens. Both
mention the royal robes he was wearing, while Josephus adds the detail that his
garment was ‘made wholly of silver and of a contexture truly wonderful’, which
shone so brightly in the morning sun that the people hailed him as a god. ‘Upon
this’, Josephus continued, ‘the king did neither rebuke them, nor reject their
impious flattery.’ Luke and Josephus agree, therefore, that God’s judgment fell
upon him because he glorified himself instead of God. Although Luke says ‘he
was eaten by worms’, Josephus is content with the more general statement that
‘a severe pain … arose in his belly’, which became so violent that he was
carried into his palace, where five days later he died.
John R. W. Stott, The Message of Acts: The
Spirit, the Church & the World, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England;
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 212–213.
Pretty cool. I love it when the bible lines up with
secular history like this, especially when you’re tempted to be skeptical of
this account.
Anyway, what are some lessons we can draw from this
story in Acts chapter 12? I just want to make a few observations. One, we see
Christians praying in groups. No lone ranger Christianity here, we see
Christians banding together. And like I mentioned earlier, Jesus says there’s
something special that happens when Christians get together in groups to pray. A
lot of our home churches have prayer meetings, a lot of us pray in small groups
all the time even if it’s just two people meeting for some study, for some
fellowship, but also some prayer ends up being part of that.
I just wanted to add a few tips, a few pointers, for
how to make the most of our times of group prayer. What I would say is show up
for that prayer meeting. How would you like to be the guy that missed the
prayer meeting here where they saw Peter, his first account of how the angel led
him out of prison? You can miss a lot if you miss out on the prayer meeting
that your home church has each week. You miss a lot if you pass up on
opportunities to pray with other believers. Also, if you show up, pray. I’m
always kind of surprised when people show up to prayer meetings and they won’t
pray. It’s like, what did you think we were going to do here? And when you pray
in groups like this you want to pray nice, short, and loud prayers. In fact,
the larger the group the shorter and louder you should be. There’s nothing
worse than somebody rambling on and on with a five-minute mumbling prayer in a
group prayer. That is not good. That’s good for when it’s just you and the Lord,
but when you have a group of people you need to keep it shorter. There’s a
certain energy you get as multiple people pray short, loud, enthusiastic
prayers.
Affirm other’s prayers. Our church in general could
stand to be a whole lot more affirming. There you go, that sort of thing is
what I’m talking about. We need to affirm people’s prayers. This is the way we
get energy; this is the way the whole body of Christ can be like I also count
myself in on that prayer. We get multiple people affirming these prayers and
the more people affirm a prayer it kind of guides the group, it kind of teaches
people how to pray by which prayers the group affirms. It also encourages
people too who are scared about praying to affirm their prayers.
Make sure we have both gratitude and prayer requests
in our meetings. We don’t want to get together and ask God for all kinds of
stuff. We also want to make sure to thank God otherwise we overlook the things
God has done. I do think it’s good to keep a prayer list. It kind of gives some
guidance, some structure to the prayer meeting. Most groups even have somebody
assigned to lead the meeting to try to keep things moving along. But one nice
thing about the prayer list is when a prayer gets answered you know it. It’s
written right there for all to see, and it’s pretty amazing. I’ll look back on
prayer lists from a year ago and I’m like, I can’t believe that person used to
be on our prayer list. They’re like a member of our group now. They’re a worker
in our group.
Finally, one feature you see in the Acts 4 prayer
meeting is they’re praying scripture. What a cool way to both pray prayers of
gratitude and praise, but to pray scripture. Wouldn’t that be a cool way to thank
God and praise God? Praying short bursts of scripture. I’ve actually found this
to be pretty cool for my own personal prayer life as well. Kind of gives the
language of prayer, not that we repeat the same thing over and over again, through
rote memorization, but we pray from the heart the language of scripture. And so,
Christians pray in groups. We see here in Acts 12; we see it in our fellowship
today. We need to make the most of that and not just go through the motions.
We noticed that all you need is enough faith to pray. That
they didn’t even really believe that much that Peter was going to get released.
They were shocked when he was released. What this means is no matter how much
faith we have we need to find a way to pray. We need to find a way to pray
every day, and I think the starting point for prayer is to stop berating
yourself for not praying fervently enough or often enough. I used to start
every prayer session with God I’m just so sorry I haven’t been praying enough
lately and it’s been like a week here. I’m looking at the date on my last
prayer journal entry and I’m just like this is pathetic. It’s been like two
weeks, whatever. And I would just start like feeling so terrible. That is not a
way to build a prayer life. Stop worrying about how you haven’t prayed enough
or how you don’t pray enough, just pray. Start by talking about what God thinks
about you, how much God loves you, how much God longs for you. That’s the
starting place for prayer, and that’s what’s going to grow your faith and make
you want to pray more and more.
The other thing is we need to find a way to pray every
day. I think this is a great goal. That I’m going to have a daily prayer time,
and it’s going to feel weird if I go a whole day without getting prayer time.
You’ve got to find something that works for you. I think it’s good to have a
place you can focus. Maybe you need a big, honking pair of headphones to tell
your roommates I’m praying right now, your prayer headphones. My wife will
actually put the exact same classical music on every single day when she sits
down to get her word and prayer time. It’s almost like it just triggers her
body into Oh, we’re spending time with the Lord now. I think trying to minimize
distractions, if you need to turn your phone off do that or go airplane mode.
Something to be able to focus in. We’ve got enough barriers to prayer; we don’t
need to add any to our prayer space.
Prayer lists or prayer cards. Those are ones you read
a lot in the prayer literature. You talk to people that pray and they usually
have something along these lines. One barrier I used to have is I felt like every
single bullet on my prayer list I had to pray for 5 minutes over. I think going
a little more quickly though these has helped me and my prayer life. I always
hesitate to talk about my prayer life because I start talking about things that
are working and then they stop working for me, but I’m going to risk it here
tonight. But prayer lists or prayer cards can both be pretty good. Prayer cards
are just index cards with a person and then some things written for them on
there. It comes out of Paul Miller’s book Praying Life.
Prayer journals or prayer walks also. Some people like
to walk and pray. Prayer journaling can be pretty good, it’s maybe a little
easier to process through what happened yesterday or the day before that.
Whatever things are going on in your life with the Lord. Maybe a little easier
to listen to God sometimes. We’ve got to shut our mouths sometimes when we’re
praying and listen to what God might be saying to us. Waiting on the Lord. I
think it’s a good idea to read some books about prayer and interview people
that are good at prayer. I find that every time I read a book on prayer my
prayer life gets a boost, and so maybe that’s something you can try if you’re
looking for ways to boost your prayer life. But we need to find a way to pray.
We need to find a way to talk to our heavenly father and when we do that that’s
how you’re going to see your faith grow. That’s how you’re going to find
yourself wanting to pray more. Think about what a fellowship would look like if
every single person was going before God every single day, both in praise and
gratitude, for who God is, what God has done, affirming what God thinks about
me, and then turning and beseeching the God of the Universe to move in specific
ways and in specific people’s lives. I can’t imagine what would happen under those
conditions.
It’s also easy to miss answered prayers, that’s
another thing we learned from this story. It’s easy to miss answered prayers. That’s
why I think we need gratitude. We need to intentionally build gratitude into
our prayer lives. Reading back over old journals can be really good as well. This
is something I’ve done in the past and it really is faith building to look back
and see the ways God has moved. Prayer group can help with this too. When you
pray as a group other people might remember ways God has answered prayers and
you kind of benefit from their good memory, from their spiritual way of
recounting things.
And finally, God doesn’t always answer prayers in the
ways that we would expect. That’s what you see in this narrative as well. I
think especially when Christians face suffering. God does not exempt us from
suffering, pain, and death. In the face of suffering, sometimes really tragic
suffering when tragedy strikes in our lives, some people never even give him a
chance to answer. Either they never ask God for rescue, for deliverance, for
God to work in this situation, or they compromise. They give up. They find
unethical ways to get out of the bind they’re in. They just lower their
commitment level. That’s unfortunately how some people respond to suffering.
Sometime though you get what Peter got, you get a miracle. You see God come
through in these amazing ways, and when that happens, I say praise God. That is
awesome to be a part of, and we see that all the time in our prayers in this
fellowship. But then other times, unfortunately, it turns out like it did for
James. Where they were probably praying just as much for James and he died. God
didn’t answer that prayer the way they hoped that he would, and it was super
painful. God doesn’t spare his kids from pain, suffering, or death. No,
sometimes he allows that into our lives.
In cases like that, for some people their faith is
shattered. I’ve known people that have faced down death and they sunk into this
misery, this gloom, this unbelief. They went on strike in their prayer lives.
They went on strike against God. They allowed their thoughts, their doubting
thoughts, just to go on and on and on without answering them, and their
spiritual lives completely dried up. Some are not even walking with God today
because of what happened when they faced tragedy. Maybe some of you here in
this room have faced tragedy, and you’re doing really bad spiritually, you’re
on strike spiritually because of what God allowed to happen. I’m pleading with you,
don’t go any further down that road. Turn back to him in faith. Allow him to
comfort you. Get answers for your doubts. Don’t allow your faith to be
shattered. I’m glad these Christians kept praying even after the death of
James. They didn’t give up on God, and they saw God come through.
For some people when they face tragedy their faith
comes alive for the first time. I’ve known many people who were Christians very
compromised who were living for the world, and then something terrible happened
and it woke them up. They realized living for the world is miserable. This is not
the way I should be living, and they started following God with the clarity
they just didn’t have before. God can use suffering like a megaphone to rouse a
deaf world.
But for some people, they’re walking Christians,
they’re healthy Christians, and tragedy come into their lives, and they’re
broken, and their world is shattered, but they draw even closer to God and they
shine with the love and hope and faith that can only come through breaking.
They are a testimony to a watching world. They are a comfort to other people in
the future who are going to suffer in this same way. God is always going to get
the last word, and if it seems like he hasn’t gotten the last word that’s
because the last word hasn’t been spoken yet. Whether it’s in this life,
sometimes he comes through in this life in ways that we can see, but he
promises no matter what happens in this life, he will make things right on that
day. Whether he will judge evil, he will judge sin, and he will vindicate his
people, and all the world will see the reality of the love of God.
That’s the story of Peter. It’s our last real Peter
story in this book.