Acts 12, "The Word of God Unchained"

The gospel is political. It is the good news that God is King. His kingdom is at hand, and anyone who will repent and believe in Jesus as the Messiah will enter the kingdom of God no matter what other kingdom they may belong to on earth. In other words, God becomes their King. They will live according to His word. So, don’t expect the kings of the earth to like it very much. They can’t have subjects that have a higher allegiance.

The word of a king is law. If he has people going to God’s word for their direction, meaning, and purpose, he loses power. This will lead to conflict between the community on mission with Jesus and the kings of our world. So, as the community on mission with Jesus, we need to understand how we engage power and authority. Today we will see the community on mission with Jesus fights its battles with the rulers of this world through prayer to our sovereign God, who has unleashed His word to overthrow all other kingdoms and establish His own. Or you could say, the power God’s word is unleashed when we pray, trusting that God is in control. We’ll take three lessons from our passage.

People Pleasing Leads to Bondage

One way people engage power in our world is through pleasing people. We see this in everyone from the popular kids at school to the populist politicians of our day. In our passage, Herod Agrippa was a people-pleasing politician. He wielded power by keeping people happy.

His grandfather was Herod the Great, the king that had put Israel back on the map under the Roman Empire through power and wealth. The generation in between had squandered their inheritance, but Herod Agrippa was determined to restore the former glory of his grandfather’s kingdom through political alliances. On the Roman side, he befriended Caligula, betting he would become emperor, and won. On the Jewish side, he did everything in his power to protect their religious and cultural heritage from Roman overreach, becoming as Jewish as he could as an Edomite convert to Judaism. Walking this delicate tight-rope, everyone liked him. This kept him in power.

But pleasing people leads to bondage. Herod is put in the position of needing to do something about this Jesus movement that is disturbing the peace of his kingdom. To please the Jewish leaders, he executes James, brother of John (sons of Zebedee). The positive response from the people leads him to up his game. He aims at Peter, the leader of the apostles. He makes a spectacle of him during the Passover week celebrations. It appears that Herod’s people pleasing has led to bondage for Peter, but there’s more to this story, as we will find out later.

In the meantime, the disciples of Jesus, when their leader is wrongfully imprisoned, take to the streets in protest and storm the Antonia Fortress. No, the community on mission with Jesus takes action in a very different way. This is our next lesson.

Persistent Prayer Leads to Surprising Answers

The church has two offensive weapons. The first doesn’t look offensive. It looks like a community on its knees.

Acts 12:5 (ESV)

So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.

The text doesn’t say exactly what they prayed for Peter. What we do see is that when God answers their prayer by freeing Peter through a miraculous night-time escape led by and angel, no one believes it. Apparently, this isn’t what they were expecting. God may not answer our prayers in the way we expect. So we should not measure success in prayer by how many times God has done what we ask. Success in the kingdom of God is measured by the faith you practice when you seek God as your ultimate authority when you are faced with challenges. Leave the answer up to Him.

We could spend time looking at this amazing and humorous story of Peter’s deliverance. But my question is, why does God wait so long to answer this prayer? Clearly He intended to free Peter all along. He could have delivered Peter at the beginning of the week. But He waits until the end. God wants to teach us persistence.

Luke 18:1 (ESV)

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

Then Jesus tells a parable about a widow who is persistent in seeking help from a judge. And the lesson is

Luke 18:6–8 (ESV)

"And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

God’s timing is not like ours. What seems like delay to us might be speedy to God. Jesus says that when you cry to God day and night with no answer, it doesn’t mean God is delaying His answer. His answer will rush in at just the right time. He is patient, and when He has decided to act, He does it quickly. Somehow what seems long to us is not to Him. So,

1 Thessalonians 5:17 (ESV)

pray without ceasing,

He is helping our faith to grow. And here’s the lesson for the church today. For the suffering church on earth, we pray that God will deliver them and help them. We pray for justice to be done for the unborn in our legislature and in the courts. We pray that God will bring justice for the families of our Congolese and Angolan brothers and sisters. And the answer is coming one day.

In the meantime, we keep praying. We keep seeking God’s face because He is the ultimate authority. We keep praying in the Spirit because it is a spiritual battle in which we are engaged. The authority I am fighting against is not an earthly king, it is the rulers, authorities, powers of darkness and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. So I bring my appeals to a higher authority. And it is a better thing for me to pray with persistence than to pray until I get the answer I want. Because prayer is the process of learning surrender to God as my king. This makes you more powerful than your own wisdom, power, or influence.

The third lesson tells us about our second offensive weapon as we engage the rulers of this world. Luke teaches us by telling a joke.

Powerful Punchlines Come from God’s Word

The joke here is on Herod. Herod’s plan is defeated by God’s plan in a dramatic way. Herod’s plan was to stop the spread of the gospel of Jesus. Now, Peter is loose, we know not where, to spread the gospel of Jesus. Luke just says, he went to “another place”. I guess that’s all we need to know.

Luke tells us the rest of Herod’s story, and we find out the joke isn’t as much funny as it is pointed. Herod is humiliated. He abandons Jerusalem, which is the seat of God’s authority and power. He goes to Caesarea, the center of Roman power for the province. While he is there, some people, who fear his power, come to him with an appeal for mercy. Luke tells us,

Acts 12:21 (ESV)

On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them.

The Jewish historian Josephus tells us about this same event.

Herod Agrippa “put on a garment made wholly of silver, and of a contexture truly wonderful, and came into the theater early in the morning; at which time the silver of his garment being illuminated by the fresh reflection of the sun's rays upon it, shone out after a surprising manner, and was so resplendent as to spread a horror over those that looked intently upon him; and presently his flatterers cried out, one from one place, and another from another, (though not for his good,) that he was a god; and they added, ‘Be thou merciful to us; for although we have hitherto reverenced thee only as a man, yet shall we henceforth own thee as superior to mortal nature.’” Josephus, Antiquities

Josephus focuses on the garment, but Luke focuses on his voice and words. The word of the king is law.

Acts 12:21–22 (ESV)

On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!”

This people-pleasing king is back at the height of his power. Because of his gracious words, he is worshiped as a god. But he isn’t God. God designs that this “god-king” is brought down by a worm. Here’s the punchline. The words of Herod brought his downfall. On the other hand,

Acts 12:24 (ESV)

But the word of God increased and multiplied.

Jesus is risen from the dead. His is alive and on the loose, and working through the church proclaiming God’s word through the gospel of Jesus. As the Apostle Paul puts it in a letter to a young pastor,

2 Timothy 2:8–9 (ESV)

Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound!

Our power as a church does not come from keeping people happy. In fact, we should expect opposition, conflict, and persecution in this world. Our gospel is the proclamation of a new king. We should no longer expect that the rulers of the world, whether a king in a provincial capital or the electorate living in our town or state, to be at peace with our allegiance to Jesus as our higher authority.

Our power does not come from our ability to influence political outcomes. Our power comes from extended time spent on our knees, praying with persistence to the One who is in control of all things. We surrender our lives and the outcomes to Him. And if He doesn’t answer in the way we want, we should not be surprised. He will direct us. His answer might simply be, “Keep speaking My word.” If you can’t do it in Jerusalem, do it in another place.

When we do speak, God’s word has much more power than our own. I don’t mean quoting the Bible to everyone as if they will obey its authority. I mean giving testimony to how King Jesus is giving you life and the kingdom of God is at hand for anyone who will repent and believe the good news.

Communion

Questions for Discussion

Whose words have power in your life? Who are the people that have influenced you in powerful ways?

How would you describe the relationship of the church and the world around us right now?

What are some ways we see the rulers of this world using their power to do justice? In what ways are they using power to do injustice?

In what ways does the temptation to keep people happy lead to bondage and injustice?

Why should we pray with persistence? How does prayer change anything in our spiritual battles?

What lessons can we learn from the release of Peter and everything that follows?

What do we learn about God in this passage?

Why does Luke tell us Herod’s story in verses 20-24? What is the message?

How will you respond to this passage this week?

Who is someone you can share this passage with this week?