Peter, James and Herod

Call to Worship

Psalm 30 ESV

A Psalm of David. A song at the dedication of the temple. I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me. O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit. Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name. For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.” By your favor, O Lord, you made my mountain stand strong; you hid your face; I was dismayed. To you, O Lord, I cry, and to the Lord I plead for mercy: “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me! O Lord, be my helper!” You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!

Sermon

Several weeks ago when I planned this series, I had planned to speak on chapter 12 this week. And in chapter 12 of Acts, it tells of three men, Peter, James and Herod. And essentially what happens is a good thing happens to a good man, a bad thing happens to a bad man, and a bad thing happens to a good man, and I’m still going to talk about it. But something that I could not have ever planned, is that the fires would have taken out so much of our province this week, and as I’ve reflected on this chapter, and also reflected on the events of the past week, I find myself asking the same question… why do bad things happen to seemingly good people? We’ll read this chapter, try to answer the question in the context of the chapter, and then also try to answer the question in the context of the events that have been happening this week.

Acts 12:1–23 ESV

About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword, and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the days of Unleavened Bread. And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people. So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his hands. And the angel said to him, “Dress yourself and put on your sandals.” And he did so. And he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” And he went out and followed him. He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him. When Peter came to himself, he said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.” When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. Recognizing Peter’s voice, in her joy she did not open the gate but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate. They said to her, “You are out of your mind.” But she kept insisting that it was so, and they kept saying, “It is his angel!” But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened, they saw him and were amazed. But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, “Tell these things to James and to the brothers.” Then he departed and went to another place. Now when day came, there was no little disturbance among the soldiers over what had become of Peter. And after Herod searched for him and did not find him, he examined the sentries and ordered that they should be put to death. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there. Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, they asked for peace, because their country depended on the king’s country for food. 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!” Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.

Sometimes we read scripture, and we’re reminded that much of it can’t be wrapped up in a nice little bow. Sometimes scripture gets gritty, it makes us feel uncomfortable, and that’s ok. This chapter is one of those chapters for me, I read about Herod’s actions and it doesn’t sit right with me. I read about what happened to Herod and it turns my stomach even more. I read chapter’s like this and I end up asking God, “why?”

“Why did you put this in your word?”

“Why did you cause and allow these things to happen?”

“Why is this so gruesome?”

“How can you be all loving and yet at the same time allow one of your closest friends and followers to be brutally murdered?”

“Do you pick favourites? Why did you choose to save Peter and not James?”

“Why do you sometimes end people’s lives so brutally?”

These questions, or variations of them are all questions that many people ask of God all the time, I know that that’s not the first time I’ve asked them, nor do I imagine will it be the last, as we look at this world around us it can feel like everything is falling apart, like the whole world is a terrible place, and we wonder why it sometimes seems like God isn’t doing anything about it. Or at least anything that we can see. And these questions, sometimes there’s an easy answer, and in a few months, weeks, days, or even hours we’ll realize what God is doing, but sometimes we never understand what it was He was up to, and sometimes we don’t know how to make sense of it.

People try all the time to make sense of the sorts of things like what we just read, and in some strand of logic we feel like we have answer. We’ll say things like, a good thing happened to Peter because he was a good man, and good things happen to good people; and we’re glad that he was saved. Or we’ll rationalize what happened to Herod, saying he was a bad man, from a line of bad men, his grandfather was the one that tried to kill Jesus as a baby, and his uncle was the one that beheaded John the Baptist; he got what was coming to him. And sometimes when death or suffering come to bad people we celebrate, I remember in early 2020 reading about the parades in Iraq when Quasem Soleimani was assassinated. And so it’s odd we celebrate when good things happen to good people, and when bad things happen to people we think are bad.

But then we see situations like James, where he was brutally murdered by no fault of his own, all he did was tell people the good news that Jesus had come to die and save them from their sins, and for that he’s killed by Herod. And we’re left wondering why did God spare Peter but not James? We’re left with the same question every time that something bad happens to a good person. We experience something that feels unfair and we ask God why? But what makes something unfair or unjust? And by what standard do we determine why something is just or unjust?

I was reading Job over the past little bit and in Job the same questions are being asked, Job’s done nothing wrong, and he’s confused why so many terrible things keep happening to him. God has even said that Job is a good and upright man, and so Job rightly is confused why God is causing, or at least allowing all of these bad things to happen to him, it doesn’t seem to make sense. And Job’s friends they agree with the logic that Job holds that God would not allow something so awful to happen to someone that is holy and righteous, and so they think that Job must have done something wrong.

And the entirety of the book of Job is Job and his friends going back and forth about this and their train of though over 37 chapters essentially boils down to this:

Job claims that he is innocent, which implies that his suffering is not according to God’s justice, which means either God is unjust, or the world is not run according to God’s justice

Job’s friends claim God is just, and imply that God does run the world with justice, so their conclusion is that Job must have sinned, or that is suffering is a warning to avoid future sin and his suffering is building character

And Job gets to the end of these conversations and throughout the book he makes claims to and about God, in anger and despair asking why God would allow this. And as I’ve thought about our Acts passage I wonder if the disciples perhaps considered these same questions and claims that Job made, Peter is rescued but he is mourning the death of one of his closest friends. And I wonder if he considered some of Job’s claims, I’m going to read a couple of them now, but they feel so accurate in moments that I know that I have wondered why God is allowing suffering to happen.

Job 27:2 “God hasn’t treated me fairly. The Mighty One has made my life bitter.”

Job 16:9 “God is angry with me. He attacks me and tears me up. He grinds his teeth at me. He stares at me as if he were my enemy.”

Job 9:22-23 “It all amounts to the same thing. That’s why I say, ‘God destroys honest people and sinful people alike.’ Suppose a plague brings sudden death. Then he laughs when those who haven’t sinned lose hope.”

Job 27:8 “What hope do ungodly people have when their lives are cut short? What hope do they have when God takes away their lives?”

And he gets to the of his rope, he makes this final claim.

Job 31:35 “I wish someone would listen to me! I’m signing my name to everything I’ve said. I hope the Mighty One will give me his answer. I hope the one who brings charges against me will write them down.”

And God answers Job in chapters 38-41, and essentially what God does is give Job a tour of the cosmos, and God asks Job a whole series of questions, we’re not going to read all of them now, but here is the first little bit of the section.

Job 38:1-21 “The Lord spoke to Job out of a storm. He said,

“Who do you think you are to disagree with my plans?

You do not know what you are talking about.

Get ready to stand up for yourself.

I will ask you some questions.

Then I want you to answer me.

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

Tell me, if you know.

Who measured it? I am sure you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

What was it built on?

Who laid its most important stone?

When it happened, the morning stars sang together.

All the angels shouted with joy.

“Who created the ocean?

Who caused it to be born?

I put clouds over it as if they were its clothes.

I wrapped it in thick darkness.

I set limits for it.

I put its doors and metal bars in place.

I said, ‘You can come this far.

But you can’t come any farther.

Here is where your proud waves have to stop.’

“Job, have you ever commanded the morning to come?

Have you ever shown the sun where to rise?

The daylight takes the earth by its edges

as if it were a blanket.

Then it shakes sinful people out of it.

The earth takes shape like clay stamped with an official’s mark.

Its features stand out

like the different parts of your clothes.

Sinners would rather have darkness than light.

When the light comes, their power is broken.

“Have you traveled to the springs at the bottom of the ocean?

Have you walked in its deepest parts?

Have the gates of death been shown to you?

Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?

Do you understand how big the earth is?

Tell me, if you know all these things.

“Where does light come from?

And where does darkness live?

Can you take them to their places?

Do you know the paths to their houses?

(And here God get’s really sarcastic with Job)

I am sure you know! After all, you were already born!

You have lived so many years!”

And God just keeps going for quite a while, and shows Job all the different things in the world and asks if Job can explain them. And of course Job cannot, and so God continues.

Job 40:1-14 “The Lord continued,

“I am the Mighty One.

Will the man who argues with me correct me?

Let him who brings charges against me answer me!”

Job replied to the Lord,

“I’m not worthy. How can I reply to you?

I’m putting my hand over my mouth. I’ll stop talking.

I spoke once. But I really don’t have any answer.

I spoke twice. But I won’t say anything else.”

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said,

“Get ready to stand up for yourself.

I will ask you some more questions.

Then I want you to answer me.

“Would you dare to claim that I am not being fair?

Would you judge me in order to make yourself seem right?

Is your arm as powerful as mine is?

Can your voice thunder as mine does?

Then put on glory and beauty as if they were your clothes.

Also put on honor and majesty.

Let loose your great anger.

Look at those who are proud and bring them low.

Look at proud people and make them humble.

Crush evil people right where they are.

Bury their bodies together in the dust.

Cover their faces in the grave.

Then I myself will admit to you

that your own right hand can save you.

This is heavy, it’s hard for us to wrestle with all of it, and I’m sure it was hard for Peter and James and the apostles and we see that it was certainly hard for Job. I was listening to a podcast from the Bible Project on this topic, and here’s something that they shared:

“The point seems to be this: Job claimed that God has fallen asleep at the wheel in running the universe, and because of this divine neglect he’s had to endure unjust suffering. God’s response is indirect, and it shows how his attention is actually on every single detail of the operations of the universe. In fact, God is privy to all kinds of perspectives and details that Job has never even imagined and never will.”

They used an analogy of teaching a child about having good morals. And they get confused because they only see the world in black and white. And so for example: you tell the child it’s not good to lie. And so they think in all cases lying is wrong, I should never lie, there will always be consequences for those who lie, and I can get rewarded by always telling the truth. But then in a more complex example, let’s say you were in Nazi Germany and needed to hide the Jews, you lie, and your child gets confused and upset and starts telling you off telling you it was wrong for you to lie, and that they don’t think they can trust you or that your a good person because you didn’t follow the principle, but then you turn to them and explain that they don’t have all of the answers, this is may more complicated than they realize and what you’ve done is right and wise, even if they can’t comprehend it, because they aren’t seeing the bigger picture.

And that’s essentially what God’s response to Job is; humans don’t have the full perspective, we like to think that the world will always be ruled justly and fairly, and God’s response is I am just, but not everything that happens in this world is just, there are so many more complex things than any of us will ever understand, and so He rules the world with His wisdom, allowing somethings to happen, and preventing or interceding for other things. We are not always going to understand why these things make sense:

Why there are fires taking the homes of so many in our province

Why our loved ones pass away so much sooner and younger than we feel like they should have

Why a global pandemic wiped out thousands of people

We don’t have the answer to that; I’m sure when Herod was struck down dead, Peter and the others were asking: God, if you were going to strike him down why couldn’t you have done it before James was killed?

And the hard part is that for a lot of this the bible never answers our questions, it never gives us an exact reason for suffering, not a direct one, or even always a satisfactory one, but God’s answer to Job is what we have and what those in Acts had: God is sovereign, and knows far more than we ever will, and so we need to trust Him that He is good, and even when we can’t see it He’s continuing to work.

We often will say that good people suffering isn’t fair...

And yet God reminds Job in Job 40:10-12, if we were to see all the things that were happening in the earth we would not be able to set a solid standard, we do not have the wisdom to know who deserves what, and at the end of the day, the truth is that everyone who has sinned, so all humans, deserve death, and nothing more the only one that never sinned and deserved life was Jesus and He is the only one that died to give life to all.

The most unfair thing in all of time is that Christ was brutally murdered, and that the rest of us were given life. And yet our hope is in exactly that.

I found a quote recently that I find really sums up exactly what we’ve been discussing, it’s from a woman named Joni Eareckson Tada, she’s a quadriplegic who writes about the theology of suffering, and she said that her entire view on suffering has come down to these 10 words: ““God permits what He hates to accomplish what he loves.”

God allowed James to be killed, it didn’t mean he wanted to, God allowed Job to lose everything, that didn’t mean he wanted to, He allowed His only son to be brutally murdered in front of Him and I know with everything in me that He did not want that.

But sometimes He allows the evil in this world to triumph for a brief moment, so that the victory of all that is good and righteous and holy in the world will be all the greater. Sometimes He allows the devil to work, but we’re told that the devil is like a dog on a leash, he’s not in control, and he has no power next to God.

I heard the story of a young teenage girl just recently, and she recounted all of the hard things that had happened in her life, how she grew up without a Dad, how she had been emotionally hurt by a previous boyfriend, how her friends had hurt her, and how she had struggled with mental health issues, and how she had been angry at God for things that He hadn’t caused, but instead the devil had, and she ended by saying this, she said: “ the annoying thing about the devil is he can make himself look an awful lot like God to us.” And that’s true often we look at the evil in this world and we blame God for it, and yet the bible tells us that every good and perfect thing in this world comes from God. And we’re not always going to understand why He allows certain things to happen, but we can hold to the fact that He has a plan even when we can’t see it, He continues to work, to bring about more good than we could ever fathom, He is good and perfect and holy and as hard as it is for us to grasp He doesn’t ask for us to understand the difficult things in life, He knows that there are some things we will never understand, but He does ask us to trust Him.

And by trusting Him we can hold to the hope that Jesus Christ came to rescue us and save us, and that because God allowed even Himself in human flesh to suffer, we are promised an eternal life to come without any suffering.

From our human perspective we can look at James and Peter and Herod, and we can think, oh good something good happened to Peter, and oh good someone as evil as Herod was struck down, and yet we think that James, a good man had something truly terrible happen to him, and yet the truth is that although for a brief moment he suffered, what he gained was worth it all, because he was called home, and he was the first of the apostles to get to see Jesus again in heaven. And we can often miss that when we think about death and suffering, we ask why God would allow people to suffer and die, but when we hold to the grace and hope that Christ has given to us, we can have confidence that death is not the end, we have something far better waiting for us, and we can trust that God in His wisdom has figured out far more than we ever will in our limited wisdom.

As we think about the passages from both Job and Acts, and as we reflect on our own suffering and of those suffering because of the fires, I’m reminded of a quote from a pastor named Rev. E.E. Daley who preached to hundreds of people days after the Halifax explosion. He said this: “I do not designate the evil that has fallen upon us as judgement, and yet even in judgement there is mercy and mercy’s face has been no strange one in these dark days through which we have just come.”

And that’s how I make sense of all of it, how I make sense of Peter, James and Herod, how I make sense of Job, and how I make sense of the suffering in Nova Scotia right now.

We don’t understand the mind of God, but that’s a good thing, because I heard a pastor recently say this: “if God was small enough for our minds, He’d be too small for our need”, like Rev. E.E Daley said about the Halifax explosion it is hard to tell if suffering is judgement, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t, but the hope we hold to is that even if it is there is still mercy, and just like God faithfully showed mercy to the survivors of the Halifax explosion, I know with 100% confidence that He is faithfully providing mercifully for those affected by the fires. He is so so good, and even when we don’t understand what He’s doing, we can trust that His heart is just as full of mercy towards our province as it was when He went to the cross. We're loved by an incredible God, and even amidst this fear and loss, there is nowhere else I’d rather be than in our province watching and waiting expectantly to see how God will use this suffering for good, because that’s who He is, the one that takes pain harder than we can bare, and turns it into something more beautiful than we could ever imagine.

Let’s pray.

Communion

1 Corinthians 11:23–26 ESV

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Benediction

John 16:22 ESV

So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.