This one is just special. The lessons I took from the passage mean very much to me personally, and I have been deeply gratified to hear from others that the sermon helped them through critical moments in their lives. The whole sermon could be summed up in one idea: God is working out something great, and there is never a time when He's not. When we really grasp what that means, there is genuine liberation of the heart. It does require faith, however....
Let’s think for a moment about everything that was going on before the twelfth chapter of Acts. First, you had Jesus Himself fulfilling His mission on the earth. The disciples followed Him for three years. It seemed to be a successful, joyful period. Crowds were gathering to hear Jesus. The disciples were ready to set up God’s kingdom on earth, when suddenly – the cross. The end. Everything finished. But, not so! On the third day, Jesus rose. And then He ascended to heaven, and then came the Holy Spirit, and thousands of people turned to the Lord. A new beginning, a mighty movement, “full steam ahead”, when suddenly – Stephen is stoned to death. Shock, grief. Oh, yes, the Church knew that such a thing could happen. But knowing something might happen and seeing it with your own eyes are two different things. I can imagine the newborn Church suddenly grew profoundly grave and reflective. Could it be... maybe... this is the end? Perhaps the Lord gave us a very brief time, indeed, to spread the news and now, we will be led as lambs to the slaughter? Perhaps His coming is already at hand? Quite possibly such thoughts circulated among them. After all, they couldn’t know that we would be here talking about them two thousand years later! As they were going through these things, these weren’t storybook events, they were real live, happening-right-now-to-us things. And the question was (as it always is), what will tomorrow bring?
Earlier in my life I did a fair bit of acting on the stage. It’s a lot of fun to play a part in a play. For a little while you live in a different world, you’re a different person. And you know all the words you’re going to say, and everything that’s going to happen to you, and how others are going to treat you and how you’ll react to them. And, you know how the play ends. But real life isn’t like a play. When you wake up in the morning you don’t have the day’s script sitting by your bed where everything’s written down – exactly what you’ll say, how others will reply, how they’ll treat you, how you’ll react, or even whether this day is going to bring you more joy or more grief. Real life isn’t like that. But we easily forget that the people we read about in Scripture were people just like us, not characters in a book. These are not figures in a painting by Da Vinci. Peter didn’t have a book of Acts sitting by his bed, where he could check it in the morning and find out, “Ah! Today the Holy Spirit descends on us in tongues of fire and I preach a sermon to three thousand people!” It’s important to remember that Peter and all the others in the Bible were the same kind of people living in the same kind of real world as us. Why is it important? Because God moves in the lives of real people, not in the lives of storybook characters. We discover this in the scriptures and we can take encouragement from it.
Let’s read Acts 12:1-5 (read).
Why did Herod do this? Did he do it because the Bible told him to do it? Of course not. Like Peter, Herod also didn’t have such a “script”. He did this because this is the kind of person he was. Herod thought mighty highly of himself. You remember what he did at his big birthday party? He pronounced a proud promise to demonstrate to one and all just how magnanimous, and rich, he was. But then, in order not to lose face in front of the guests, he fulfilled his foolish, foolish promise, even though he really didn’t want to. Herod behaved like a fool, worrying about what others thought of him. He was ready at any moment to commit reckless, cruel actions if it meant that he’d get honor and praise from others. And so, Herod – the same Herod who killed John the Baptist – now kills James, because it made the people happy. And again, imagine the jolt this was for the young Church! James, a young man, all at once, gone. But he was one of the ones who walked with Jesus for three years, he was one of the special three who saw the Transfiguration, the raising of Jairus’s daughter, he was with Jesus at the last supper and in the Garden, he was in the upper room when the Risen Jesus appeared and on the Mount when Jesus ascended to heaven, he was there at Pentecost, at the birth of this mighty movement of God, one of the Twelve destined to lead the Church for years and years, maybe even till Jesus comes again. But they killed him, he’s gone. Just like that. It can’t be. There must be a mistake. It seems totally unfair, wrong. But it’s reality. For James the road came to an end far sooner than anyone expected. God allowed James to glorify Him with his early and heartbreaking death. It was truly a sacrifice, a loss for the Church.
And so, Herod, steered by the opinion of the people, next arrests Peter. If the death of one of these Christians added points to his popularity ratings, then why not two? And now Peter has every reason to think that the end has come for him, too. But it turns out that God has other plans for Peter.
(Read vv.6-11)
In the midst of a very serious situation I find, nevertheless, a bit of humor. Peter wasn’t expecting an angel. When the angel appeared, Peter didn’t say, “Well there you are, finally!” On the contrary, Peter thought this was all a dream! And the angel deals with him rather like a child. First he gives him a nudge in the side, says, Hey, get up! Peter opens his eyes but he’s still in a dream-world and blinded by the light, and I think our dear Peter would be lying there still if the angel hadn’t micromanaged the situation, telling him every single thing to do! First the chains fall off, and then the angel says, “Get dressed”, so Peter gets dressed. Then the angel says, “Put your sandals on”, so Peter puts his sandals on. Then the angel says, “Put on your coat and follow me”, and Peter does it all like an obedient child, though he has no idea what’s actually happening. And you know, there are times in life when we, too, cannot grasp what is happening. Here Peter is like a helpless child. None of us likes being in a position like that. We like to present a completely different image, as people completely in charge of things. But there are those times when we stand face-to-face with the depths or our helplessness. It reminds me of the catastrophe of September 11th. That morning a lot of people came to work, at the World Trade Center – executive directors, computer specialists, international bankers, the movers and shakers of the world economy. And suddenly, all in a moment, they were trapped, at the windows of the 90th, the 100th floor, and all that they had left in life was a choice: to jump to their death, or to burn to death. Utter helplessness. Blessed is the person who always recognizes his helplessness and God as his helper. When we know this, then God will send into our lives a multitude of surprises, but we can accept them, with God as our helper. Surprise, James! Today, you will give you life for Christ and enter everlasting joy. Surprise, Peter! Today isn’t your day. For you there’s still work to do.
(Read vv. 12-17)
The Church was praying. What words do you think they were praying? I strongly doubt they were praying anything like, “Lord, please send an angel who’ll make the chains fall off of Peter and then lead him out of the prison. And make sure that the gates open up all by themselves and none of the guards even notice Peter walking out. Could you do that?” Even though I’m sure the early Church had enough faith to accept that God could do such a thing, I doubt they had the imagination to ask for it! They were asking God to save Peter, though they had no idea how He might do that.
So then Rhoda hears knocking and goes to the door and sees the last thing in the world she was expecting to see – the answer to their prayer! Surprise! Do you know that God will performs surprises like that in your life, too? He will answer your prayers in ways you never imagined. And sometimes you will need more faith to accept the answer than you needed to make the request. As for Rhoda, she couldn’t believe it!
Again, I find humor in this scene, when they finally let Peter in. Peter had to wave his arms to shush them all up! Why? Because they were making a racket and he had to quiet them down to get a word in edgewise. It is kind of funny here how Peter has changed roles. The one who was just the dazed child whom the angel had to lead by hand has now become the papa who has to quiet down his over-excited, chattering children! I imagine some of them were already expounding their theories on how Peter got out, while others were asking, “What were we praying for? Peter’s not in prison – he’s right here!” And nobody’s listening to poor Peter, who happens to know exactly what happened. ‘Cause he was there! So finally he quiets them down and says, “Now I’ll tell you all what happened.” And when we, like Peter, will allow God to take us, too, by the hand and lead us in ways we don’t understand, then at the end of the day we all will have something to tell others, and with authority, because we know. We were there when God worked.
And then Peter leaves for another place. God didn’t save Peter for Peter to march boldly into Herod’s palace and say, “Ha, ha! You see how God saved me?” God gave Peter, and us too, common sense. If God saved Peter from Herod, it meant Peter other places to work, other deeds to do for Christ. For Peter this wasn’t the end. But for others, it was.
(Read vv.18-19)
These guards were sort of in the same position as those people who came to work at the World Trade Center that terrible day, never imagining that that day was their last day. But it was. And not only for the guards but reading a bit further we find that Herod’s life suddenly came to a miserable end. At precisely the moment Herod was basking in the praise which rightly belongs only to God, he received an absolutely unexpected blow, from a Power higher than his, and he died in agony, with his body consumed by worms.
At the beginning of the sermon I asked, “When is the end?” You might ask, “The end of what?” Actually, it could be the end of anything! Maybe the end of a difficult period of your life. When is the end? Even the end of a wonderful chapter in your life. When is the end? Perhaps the end of particular suffering, pain, illness, trial. When is the end? Or life itself. When is the end? And what will it be like? We don’t know when it will be or what it will be like. And we usually don’t know, as a rule, what new beginning these endings in our life will lead to. But we know this: God is for us and not against us. God is the helper in our helplessness. God is real and moves in the lives of real people – people like James, and Peter and you and me. And when we trust Him, then He will turn that unknown ending – whatever it might be the end of – into the occasion for His glory. And He will turn every ending into a new beginning, most of all that ending when we take our final breath, and then begins our real, never-ending story.
