Acts 12 is our text for today. I encourage you to follow along with your Bible or Bible app. The story takes place in Jerusalem.
12 It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. 2 He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. 3 When he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. 4 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.5 So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.
King Herod rounded some Jesus-followers up and had plans to persecute them. He made a strong statement out of the gate by having James, one of the 12 disciples, put to death. If he could make an example out of James by killing him, perhaps he could squash the Jesus-movement. When he saw that seemed to go well for him politically, he seized Peter as well. He put Peter in prison and instructed that he be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. 16 soldiers were going to be working, probably in shifts, to guard Peter. He was obviously perceived to be a huge threat.
Now, if you were Peter, and James had just been put to death with the sword which means, he had just had his head cut off, what do you think would be going through your mind? Would you not be convinced that your own death was imminent? Peter had no reason to think he was going to get out of this situation alive, but verse 5 says, the church was earnestly praying to God for him.
Can I just tell you that prayer changes things for people even when nothing changes? Look at verse 6: 6 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.
We see in this one verse the difference prayer makes. How does a person go to sleep when they are bound with chains and are tethered to two soldiers? I can’t sleep just anywhere. I can’t sleep in the car. I can’t sleep on a plane. I sometimes have a difficult time sleeping in a hotel just because it is a different bed. I can’t sleep if the temperature isn’t low. I can’t sleep without several white noise mechanisms to drive my brain into a relaxed mode. I can’t sleep without the right pillows. I can’t sleep without a noise machine that vibrates that I put right beside my head. How in the world was Peter sleeping on a cold, dirt floor, with no pillow, probably half sitting up and at the mercy of the guards whose movements would impact Peter’s position?
In addition, how could he sleep when James had just been beheaded and he was next on the chopping block? He should have been an anxious mess. This wasn’t Peter’s first time to be in jail. He had been arrested twice before, but only by the Sanhedrin guards who had no authority to execute a prisoner. Now, however, he finds himself a prisoner of Rome, and his friend and partner in the Gospel had just been executed. The stakes couldn’t have been higher!
Peter could sleep because the church was earnestly praying to God for him! I don’t know if James’ beheading had caught them off guard. We don’t read that they were holding a prayer meeting for him when he was imprisoned. God had provided escape from prison for all of the apostles in chapter 5 when an angel came at night to open the doors and let them out. Perhaps, the church figured that would simply be the way God operated any time release was needed. After James’ death, however, the church ramped up their personal efforts to intercede for Peter, and as a result, he was able to sleep in the most uncomfortable and threatening situations.
There is peace in the midst of the storm that is promised by God to God’s people, and prayer helps us attain it. Peter wasn’t just lightly sleeping. He didn’t just doze off. He was sound asleep. How do I know that? Because an angel of the Lord appeared to him and shone a light in his cell. Peter still didn’t wake up. Y’all, if my cell phone is sitting by the bed, display side up, and just that light goes off, I am instantly jarred and up for two hours. A light literally shone in the cell, but Peter was still asleep. The angel had to smack Peter in the side to wake him up.
That is almost comical to me. The angel that comes to liberate Peter had to hit him to wake him up. We don’t read that the guards got involved. We don’t read that the bright light disturbed them or that they were jostled in any way when the angel smacked Peter even though they were attached to him with chains. Somehow, their awareness or ability to engage was suspended as the angel just worked with Peter. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.
Not everyone will see the way God works with you. Not everyone will understand the supernatural help that comes to you when you pray. They don’t need to. That’s ok. I think God was teaching Peter something that those guards didn’t have to witness. I think God wanted Peter to know that our enemy can be rendered powerless at any time and in any situation when God deems it so. I think God wanted to teach Peter that no one can contain or constrain the person on mission for God. God literally kept Peter’s enemies asleep, rendering them powerless in that moment. Maybe that detail in the story was in direct response to something that was being voiced at the prayer meeting!
Peter thought he was dreaming. Any time you are wakened from a deep sleep, you are a bit disoriented, right? He didn’t have his bearings. He didn’t know what to do next, so the angel started talking him through what was about to happen. He was going to give him step-by-step instructions. Let me draw this conclusion: Prayer reveals the next steps we are to take. Sometimes we don’t know what step to take in a situation. We can get overwhelmed when we don’t see a way out. Through prayer, we can begin to understand what those next steps are. Peter first had to stand up. That sounds elementary, but when we are bound and brought low in a situation, sometimes we feel so defeated, we don’t even believe we can stand up. As a result of prayer, God will give us the power we need to defy that which has bound us. Maybe somebody needs to pray today for someone to be able to stand up and to defy their chains!
Verse 8: 8 Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” (Good idea since he was leaving prison!) And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. 9 Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 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.
Peter and the angel just walked out, past the guards on duty, the ones guarding Peter and the next two sets of guards. When they got to the prison gate, it opened for them by itself! The angel got Peter about a block away and then vanished. That was the moment that Peter realized he had just been set free.
Listen, God is still using angels to bring aid to His people. Sundar Singh was a missionary on the Tibetan border. On one occasion, by order of the chief lama of a certain Tibetan community, Singh was thrown into a dry well and the lid securely locked. His crime? Preaching the gospel in the marketplace.
Dr. F. F. Bruce tells the story this way: 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 crying to God in prayer, he heard someone unlocking the lid of the well and removing it, and then a voice spoke, telling him to take hold of the rope which 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 right arm had been injured before he was thrown down. He was then drawn up. The lid was replaced and locked, and when he looked around to thank his rescuer, he could find no trace of him. The fresh air revived him, and his injured arm was whole again.
When morning came, he returned to the city where he had been arrested and resumed preaching. News was brought to the lama that the man who had been thrown into the execution well for preaching had been liberated and was preaching again. Sundar Singh was brought before him, questioned, and he told the story of his release. The lama had declared that someone must have gotten hold of the key and let him out, but when the search was made for the key, it was found attached to the lama’s own belt! That is a true story!
11 Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.”
Sometimes we don’t recognize God at work when we are walking through a situation. Sometimes we are unaware that God is escorting us away from trouble. We can’t always see God in the middle of chaos, but He is always working in response to the prayers of God’s people.
12 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. 13 Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. 14 When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
Rhoda left Peter outside. I’m sure Peter was thinking, “What in the world?!” He had been supernaturally released from prison by God in a situation where an iron door was automatically opened for him only to find himself on the other side of a closed door because someone couldn’t believe God had answered their prayer! He waited for Rhoda to return, knowing that if God sent an angel to rescue him from prison, he was unlikely to die at Mary’s doorstep!
Rhoda wasn’t the only doubter! 15 “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
They could believe Peter’s guardian angel had showed up on their doorstep, but they couldn’t fathom that it would be Peter. Go figure. It wasn’t a quick second for Peter standing outside the door. The text says 16Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.
I’m not sure the believers had been praying with the kind of faith we would think would open prison doors because they couldn’t believe their eyes!
17 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 other brothers and sisters about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.
18 In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. 19 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.
Allow me some additional observations. The disciples knew that the Holy Spirit had been poured out after they had met for prayer in Acts 2. With the Holy Spirit’s coming was a demonstration of miraculous power as people spoke in languages they hadn’t learned so that people could hear the Word of God in their own language. It was an epic miracle. I’m not sure all of those 120 Upper Room disciples connected the power of their prayers with the Pentecost outpouring of the Spirit. They had simply been told to wait in Jerusalem together. They hadn’t been told to wait and pray, but to wait. However, pray, they did. Prayer was what they knew. It was a go-to. I believe here in chapter 12, they were being taught that there was a connection between prayer and God’s miraculous work on earth, that prayer moves the hand of God. Prayer precedes miracles.
Prayer isn’t simply something we do because it is a religious exercise, but it is a gift God has given us to be partners with Him to bring deliverance to people and situations here on earth.
I also believe that they were learning that Our prayers have an impact beyond the moment. The prayers you are praying now are setting things into motion for weeks, months, years and decades.
The believers who had gathered to pray for Peter had prayed for God to move. We don’t know the content of their prayers, but they had to be praying for more than for Peter to be able to get a good night’s rest and to be able to be released from jail. James had been beheaded. The stakes were high. They could be next. If their leadership was all killed where would that leave them as a group? What did James’ beheading and Peter’s incarceration signal for the movement as a whole?
I believe they prayed for more than Peter’s deliverance. I believe they began to understand the nature of the war they were in. I believe they called out those who threatened God’s people. I believe they prayed for protection from wicked and unreasonable people. I believe they asked for God to move opposition out of their way.
Do you know we could pray that way? Do you know we can ask for everything that would oppose God’s will in our lives to be removed? Do you know we could pray to be insulated from the attacks of the enemy? I believe the prayers of those people who prayed for Peter and the strengthening of Jesus’ followers, were still being worked out long after his release.
Just like the times when Jesus was threatened, when people tried to kill him before what the Scripture calls “the appointed time,” the same was true here with Peter. He was eventually martyred for his faith, but it wasn’t God’s appointed time. He wasn’t to die in that prison cell. God wasn’t through with Peter. Not only did God deliver Peter, but He also dealt with Herod as well demonstrating His willingness to remove threats from His people as they proliferated the Gospel.
Then Herod went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there. 20 He had been quarreling with the people of Tyre and Sidon; they now joined together and sought an audience with him. After securing 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.
21 On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. 22 They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” 23 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.
That is pretty dramatic stuff, right there. The word for “struck” here is the same word that was used when an angel struck Peter in the side. He was literally knocked off of his throne! No one could say Herod died of natural causes. Everyone who saw what happened, and it happened in public, while he was on his throne and while his subjects were praising him as a god, they saw an angel strike him down. You don’t unsee a person being eaten by worms! The timing was significant. The people had to know that God was bringing judgment on Herod and on them as they had worshiped him as if he were god.
24 But the word of God continued to spread and flourish.
Allow me one more big observation. Prayers of faith turn Satan’s schemes back on him.
Satan wants to silence the church. He wants to threaten and intimidate and try to incarcerate God’s people to keep the Gospel from spreading. It is impossible. The gates of hell will not prevail against God’s church, Matthew 16:18. As we pray, God takes what the enemy means for evil in our lives and turns it on him, making it for our deliverance and for the spread of the Gospel.
Peace in the midst of turbulence happens when we pray.
The enemy is rendered powerless when we pray.
Divine help comes in unexpected ways when we pray.
Miracles take place when we pray.
Deliverance happens when we pray.
Next steps become clear when we pray.
Future answers to prayer get set into motion when we pray.
Satan’s plans are thwarted when we pray.
The Gospel is advanced when we pray.
Let’s pray!
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