Shocked into Action

SERMON: 2013-07-14--ac13102--shocked-into-action SOURCE DURATION: 00:32:43.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with theological exposition reviewing previous points and continues through the end with pastoral application and concluding thoughts. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:22:34.100-00:22:38.280, 00:24:10.720-00:24:28.980, 00:24:57.420-00:25:05.840, 00:25:16.840-00:25:24.940, 00:25:49.820-00:26:08.280, 00:26:20.960-00:26:38.360 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, we were looking last week at the question, why the one and not the other? Why does James get his head cut off when he has been arrested by Herod? And why does Peter, who faced a very similar lot, get miraculously rescued by the angel of God? And so far together we have looked at two of three insights that scripture gives us into that question of why not. The first is simply the sovereignty of God. Obviously, James' race was done, Peter's race was not yet done, God chose to save him. The second reason that we have looked at is part of Satan's strategy. In fact, God thwarted Satan's strategy because Satan's strategy is cut off the head and kill the whole being. If he can remove leadership from the New Testament church, then he is hopeful the rest of the church will begin to fall apart. And that brings us this morning then to still a third reason, and I introduced it briefly last week, and that is to shock the church into action, to shock the church into action. Listen again to verse 5, "Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him." Here Peter was arrested during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Herod could not, given the religious sensitivities of the people of his day, put him on trial during the holiday season, he needed to wait until the Passover was passed, had planned to bring him out to trial then, that gave opportunity and time for the church to earnestly pray to God for Peter's deliverance. And as I pointed out last week, James' sudden arrest and immediate execution must have taken them totally by surprise because since the day of Saul's conversion, persecution had stopped, and other than Stephen being martyred early on in Acts chapter 7, there is no record of leaders being arrested or executed, in fact the leaders somehow managed to evade arrest up until this period of time. So it is this prayer meeting then which is being called in desperation for Peter's life that sets in motion the events that are described in this particular passage that we have just read together. And in the time that we have this morning, I want to point out four what I think are fairly interesting and important elements as the story unfolds. We'll try to walk through that as quickly as we can this morning. The first is Herod's preoccupation with security. Listen again to verse 4, "After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each." Four squads of four soldiers each. Now the text does not explain to us how these sixteen soldiers were deployed, chances are pretty good that they each had one shift of eight hours and therefore Peter was guarded around the clock by four soldiers at a time. We do know that there were two in the cell with him and that there were two on guard outside him. Herod was preoccupied with Peter's security. Who can remember why that might be? Earlier on, you may remember in Acts chapter 5, there is a similar episode where all the apostles are arrested and placed in prison. Who remembers what happened then? Well, they got miraculously delivered. Listen again to these verses, Acts 5, 19 and 20, "But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. Go stand in the temple courts, he said, and tell the people the full message of this new life." As you read that story, it is indeed fascinating because next morning when the guards go to find the apostles, the doors are closed, the guards are standing outside the door, but the apostles are nowhere to be found until word comes to them that these nasty people are preaching again in the temple square. You can imagine the kind of head scratching that took place. How did they get from there to there? Well, Herod knows that story. It's likely the very same jail. Herod is not going to take that chance and so he assigns four soldiers to guard Peter and he makes sure that two of them are in the jail and that Peter happens to be shackled to each one of them. Little does he know about the power of God. So Herod is preoccupied with security, but interestingly enough, Peter is fast asleep for six. The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers bound with two chains. Two things about that that I find fascinating. First of all, as I said a moment ago, he is shackled to two soldiers, one on either side. I can't imagine that that would be a particularly comfortable situation for sleeping. Can you? I mean, how many times do you turn over in the middle of the night? You imagine trying to turn over with a soldier on each one of your arms, poing, poing. See if that really works. And yet he's sleeping like a baby, but not only that, the text says he's going to be brought out to trial the next morning. He's going to be paraded in a kangaroo court before a people who were eagerly anticipating his death because remember Herod arrested Peter because he curried favor with the Jews and when he saw how excited they were about James's execution, he was licking his chops and so were the people. Now I don't know if you've ever faced a situation where the next day you had a very difficult appointment or you faced a difficult interview or maybe a major examination, let alone a major court trial that would seriously affect your future, but I'll bet you anything that if you're anything like me, that would not be your best night's sleep. Isn't that true? I mean we toss and we turn and we imagine all kinds of scenarios and here's Peter sleeping like a baby, sleeping so hard that the angel has to poke him in his side till he come out. What does that tell you? Well, it tells you that Peter was totally comfortable in the sovereignty of God. He knew that his life was in the Lord's hands and he knew that God would either deliver him or he would go to be with the Lord. In either case, he could echo the words of the Apostle Paul in Acts chapter 20 verse 24. This is towards the end of Paul's life. He's speaking to the Ephesian elders who are crying because he is going to Jerusalem where he is going to face persecution and trial and eventually death. I consider my life, he says, worth nothing to me. If only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace. To live is Christ. To die is gain. I love that little story about the young boy, medieval England. Persecution rages against Protestant believers and in the religious wars of the day, one of the saints of God is being executed by being burned at the stake and has happened so commonly in those days, the crowds gathered to watch the spectacle and this young boy stood there among the crowd and an older person saw him, took him aside and said, "You really shouldn't be here watching this kind of thing happening. It's not good for you." The young boy looked him squarely in the eye and said, "I've not come here to watch the spectacle, I've come here to learn how to die for Jesus." That's the power of martyrs who die for the Lord. Peter was fast asleep. And the third thing to notice in this passage then is that the church's response is incredibly human. And I say that for two reasons. The first is they begin to pray earnestly. Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him. Very human response, is it not? There is nothing like an emergency to put us on our knees and to make us recognize that we need God's help because we're in a very difficult situation. As the old saying goes, "There are no atheists in foxholes," or as President Reagan many years ago observed in the context of the ongoing discussion in the United States about whether or not prayer was allowed in the public school, he said, "As long as there are exams, there will be prayer in the schools." Meditation as a way of making us pray. And so that's what the church does here. Notice this is the middle of the night. Remember Peter's fast asleep. But many of the saints are gathered, and they're gathered in the home of Mary. Now Mary, we're told, is the mother of John Mark. John Mark, as I recall, is also the author of the gospel according to Mark. He is the companion of Paul later on on his missionary journeys, and they have some difficulty, as you may recall, in getting along. But Mary is also the sister to Barnabas. And that's why Paul and Barnabas had a disagreement later on because Barnabas favored his nephew, but Paul didn't like him because he bailed out very early in their missionary journey. So they're gathered at their house. They have this midnight prayer meeting crying out to God for God to have mercy on Peter. That's fascinating enough and human enough, but what I really like about the story is what happens when Peter shows up at their doorstep. We've read the story together. Peter is knocking on the door, servant girl by the name of Rhoda, her name by the way means Rose, hears him knocking, recognizes his voice, and is so flustered she leaves him standing there while she goes back to the rest of the prayer meeting to say, "Peter is at the door." What was their reaction? "You're absolutely crazy, Rhoda. We may be praying for Peter's release, but we're not really expecting it to happen." And then when she keeps on insisting that it is Peter and that she recognizes his voice, what's their response? It must be his angel. Now that can mean one of two things, in Hebrew thought every believer was thought to have a guardian angel. I think we can make a biblical case for that. You know, we've all been in situations where we would have been dead or injured if it wasn't for some divine intervention, I strongly suspect in many instances that that is the angel that the Lord assigns to each one of his people, but there's another possible interpretation and that is that it was his spirit or his ghost. In either case, their interpretation was that Peter had been executed and that in spirit he was there to tell them about that reality. They didn't clue in that it really could be Peter. And I love that reality because it is so very human. We have this treasure in earthen vessels, isn't that true? We pray but we cry out and we say, "Lord, I believe but help my unbelief." It's like going to a prayer meeting, praying for rain and leaving your umbrella at home. It's not really going to happen because who can figure out the Lord? And part of the story here is to emphasize the importance of prayer and God's willingness and God's desire to respond to the earnest prayer and pleading of God's people. And I suspect we do far too little and we expect far too little in terms of the interventions of God in the difficulties and the challenges of life. Because remember, when God's kingdom comes, the enemy comes against you like a flood and it is only the collective prayer of God's people that can stand against that. Because one of the reasons God allows things to happen is to shock the church into action. He wants us to know that he's growing us up as his sons and his daughters and he wants us to be co-workers, co-laborers with him in the coming of his kingdom. We can't all be preachers, we can't all be knocking on doors, we can't all be occupying perhaps significant positions of leadership, but we can all be down on our knees and we can intercede in the power of the Holy Spirit. And God is faithful to move heaven and earth by the prayers of his people. It was said years ago of Queen Mary, Queen of the Scots, that she was more worried about the prayers of John Knox, the great Presbyterian reformer in Scotland, than she was about all the battalions of Europe. Because she knew that when that man was on his knees crying out to God, all heaven took note, God hears the prayers, the effectual prayers of the righteous man or the righteous woman. So, Herod's preoccupied with security, Peter's fast asleep, the church's response is we believe but help us Lord in our unbelief, and then of course we have the deliverance itself and that is nothing short of miraculous, suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared, a light shone in the cell, he struck Peter on the side and woke him up, quick he said get up and the chains fell off Peter's wrist. Angels the Bible says are ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation. Matthew Henry in his Bible commentary makes the observation that it is only in the New Testament when angels show up that they shine with light, I haven't had a chance to check that out myself, don't know if that is true or not, but he puts it in the context of the coming of God's kingdom. And what I find fascinating about this is not only that the angel has to poke Peter awake but that he says quick get up, it's like we got to get out of here which strikes me as kind of odd because if an angel shows up, you know, I'd say you can take your time really because what is there to worry about, if it's that big of a miracle he can keep those guards asleep and everybody else that way too, so the doors open up automatically, he walks past the guards out on the street, they go the length of the street, the angel disappears, Peter finally wakes up to the fact that this is not a vision, this is not a dream, this is really happening and before you know it he ends up at Mary's house knocking on the door, has a little chat with him and then disappears again because he knows Herod is going to come looking for him and there's no sense in putting other people at risk and tempting providence and so you have here this amazing miraculous deliverance of Peter and as we all know not everybody that is in jail, not everybody who finds himself in a bind even for the gospel sake necessarily receives this kind of miraculous deliverance but every so often God for his own purposes and to encourage his people steps into our situations and accomplishes what we cannot possibly imagine that he could do so that his name will be glorified and his purpose is accomplished. I don't know how many of you here are familiar with the book The Heavenly Man by Brother Yun, it was originally published here in Belleville and now has become a worldwide best seller, some of you may remember that Brother Yun spoke at a joint Belleville ministerial service a couple of years ago, anybody remember that? Anybody there? Some of us do. Brother Yun's story is a very close parallel to Peter's story, powerfully converted by the Lord, got into a lot of trouble with the Chinese authorities, served many, many years in prison, was seriously tortured for his faith and towards the end was imprisoned in a maximum security prison in the city of Zhengzhou which interestingly enough was the last city that we and I visited together on our trip in China a number of years ago and that's where happened a miracle that is a very close parallel to the story of Peter here and here's a five minute video clip where he tells this story I believe at a Benny Hinn crusade, video quality is not very good but I think you'll get the message as you listen to the story. Watch this, "Jesus is greater than any prison and any hopelessness." When I was first time captured in China thrown to special security prison, 107 senators and congressmen of United States and President Clinton wrote a letter to China and asked them to release me but it didn't help me at all. My children in China went back to that first Christianity in tears they started to fast and pray without drinking and eating food on our behalf and God started to move on the fifth day and after they had been praying for five days Jesus walked into my solitary cell where I was lying on the ground and Jesus said to me, "Brother Yun, stand up and walk out from this prison." [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:24:10.720; remove through 00:32:43.000] There were four control gates between me and the prison [CUT] yard. And I said to Jesus, "This is a top security prison. You don't walk out places like this." And Jesus said to me, "Your prison is real but I am the truth and the truth will set you free." Few weeks earlier in torture they were really mad on me and they said, "Why do you insist the preach at Aspal and they crushed my bald legs from ankles and say you never going to walk again?" They were so upset who commanded you to preach the gospel in China and I said it was Lord Jesus himself and they didn't like what they heard so they just continue with the torture and they totally cut off my legs. When Jesus came to my cell I totally forgot that I don't have legs to walk with anymore so I stood up and I did what he said and I started to walk out from the prison. Hallelujah. I didn't have any keys to these special doors between me and freedom but I had a heart. I said, "Lord, I'd rather die for you than to be disobedient." So I walked and every door became like an automatic opening door. They were open for me right after. Like Peter the Apostle. Hallelujah. When the Lord calls you, he gives you the doors open by themselves. Somebody shout hallelujah. Hallelujah. My God, my Lord. I was so busy obeying the Holy Spirit, he was pushing me from the top to the bottom. I didn't have time to go to the prison office and tell them I'm going to take a walk about and when I came to the main gates of the prison they were open for me and Jesus sent a taxi and he opened the door and I jumped into the taxi. Hallelujah. When I first read that story I wondered if it was really true because sometimes in Christian circles people make up stories and the bigger the better. But I've done some research since then and the Chinese authorities acknowledge this is precisely what happened. In fact, some of the prison guards lost their jobs on account of this escape. He is the only person to have ever escaped from this prison and the Chinese authorities in their final investigation determined that Yun received no human help in his escape. And if you listen to the rest of his story, the taxi driver asks him the question, where do you want to go? He has no idea where he's going to go. He just wants to get out of there so he says just drive away from here as fast as you can. And then as they were driving along he recognized a high rise building where he knew Christian believers were gathered. And so he runs up to their apartment in order to get money to pay the taxi, knocks on their door and guess what, they won't let him in because they're suspicious that the secret police is coming after them. And so the story goes on. And as I said, a very close parallel to the story that we read here in the Book of Acts. And you've heard me say many times when the enemy comes in like a flood, God raises a banner. And you and I may not find ourselves in similar situations and we may not experience a similar deliverance. But we need to understand that our God is much bigger than what we give him credit for. And there is much more that God will do and can do if he can unite his people together in prayer to storm heaven so that mountains will move for the coming of his kingdom. And in that regard I have a very specific request to make of you this morning. As many of you know we have been working for a number of years now on the Chinese translation of Blessings and Curses. That translation is now completed, it's been a lot of work, and we are in the process of typesetting it and in the process of trying to find a publisher. Now in China there are two ways of getting your book published. You can get it published through the church which is allowed to distribute it among the churches and the Chinese government has said no to that request. The second way is to approach secular publishers, ask them to publish the book, to pay for it and to distribute it through secular channels but even that I suspect needs government approval not only but it costs a lot of money simply to get them to look at it in order to put it into print. So would you pray with us that the Lord will show us what our next steps need to be? How best can we get this into the hands of the billions of people that live in China? Remember many, many, many of them particularly the older generation have been traumatized by all the history that they have experienced and the memory of persecution continues to be fresh because in China it goes through cycles when we and I were in China the underground church was pretty much free. In fact one of the meetings that I attended took place right in the shadow of the police station because one of the believers father was a police officer and he kept an eye on them in a good way. But more recently there again have been stories of persecution because at the end of the day you see it's all about to whom are you loyal? Are you loyal to the state or are you loyal to Jesus and that is a conflict that has cost many people their lives and has seriously traumatized people. So the message of blessings and curses how God in Christ reverses the curse, promises to pour out his blessing on his people is a critical message not only for North America but especially for a country like China. In fact Weba is just back from another South Asian tour I don't know how in the world he manages these things he's been everywhere Tibet Malaysia Burma or Myanmar and one of his next projects is to try to get the book translated into Tibet don't know if he will succeed in that he's also talked about getting it translated into Spanish we'll do some follow up with that but would you pray with me that God will unite us in prayer to remove obstacles to show us the way so that we can get this particular message into the hands of as many folks in China as possible because God will use it to heal and to restore lives there as he has here. God is a miracle working God. Amen. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:32:43.000; resume after this marked segment]