Sermon Tone Analysis

At offering time introduce /Highlights/ hidden picture

What is the point?

Sometimes the thing we are looking for is right in front of our faces.

That was certainly the case in Acts 12.

Back in Acts 7 we saw the first Christian martyr, Stephen.

And then in Acts 8 & 9 we saw that a great persecution arose and Saul (who later became the apostle Paul) led the way in bringing Christians to trial & execution.

At the beginning of ch. 12, the persecution now touches the 12 apostles.

James, the brother of John is put to death at the order of King Herod.

This is Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great.

When he saw that this pleased the Jewish leaders, he arrested the apostle Peter and had him put in prison, intending to execute this key Christian leader as well.

Because it was the Jewish holiday of Unleavened Bread (after Passover) Herod was going to wait until the holiday was over to execute Peter.

READ Acts 12:1-17

I love it.

Even Peter, the one who is released, doesn’t believe it is true.

He thinks he is dreaming.

It is only when the angel left him that he shook his head and realized this wasn’t a dream.

Peter goes to the door of Mary, the sister of Barnabas and the mother of John Mark.

He knocks and a servant girl comes to the door.

Upon hearing Peter’s voice, she runs in and insists it is Peter.

Can you think of another similar instance in Peter’s life? 

| ?

|

/Luke 22:54-57- Then seizing Jesus, they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest.

Peter followed at a distance.

But when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them.

A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight.

She looked closely at him and said, “This man was with him.”

/

/But he denied it.

“Woman, I don’t know him,” he said.

/

The word *παιδίσκη* [paidiskee] (servant girl) is used in both instances written by Luke.

The first time the servant girl announces you are Peter, he tries to deny it.

This time that a servant girl announces it is Peter, he wants desperately for her to let him in, but no one will believe her.

Instead, the church declare that it is “his angel”

I first thought that they meant that he has died and his soul has appeared to let them know.

But that wasn’t the understanding of the soul at that time.

The Jews believed it was his guardian angel.

There was at that time the belief that every person had a guardian angel who looked after them, and sometimes took on the form of the person himself~/herself.

Now the humorous question that arises is: either way, if it were an angel…why did he need to knock?

Why not just appear in the room?

In spite of the church’s slowness in recognizing that God had answered their prayer, they prayed.

We miss the entire point of the narrative if we miss the connection that Luke clearly intends us to make between v. 5 and v. 7a! True enough, we see the mysterious side of the life of prayer here; no doubt the church had prayed for James as well and with equal fervor.

But Luke wants to show us that the church moved forward to the sound of prayer and corporate prayer in particular.

The church could have been praying for steadfastness on the part of Peter or for perseverance in the face of certain death.

If so, that might explain their slowness in seeing what God had done, but none-the-less, they believed in the power of corporate prayer.

But whether they were actually praying for his release or not, they didn’t believe Rhoda when she came in to report that Peter was at the door.

As funny as this account may be to us, what lessons can we learn from this story:

1.      *Expectation **is the gift we offer the Lord in response to His gift of prayer.*

They prayed, but they did not really expect God to free Peter.

Expectation is what we bring as an offering for our communication with Him.

Expectation is a blend of confident trust and sanctified imagination.

It gives us the capacity to ask the Lord for what He wants to give.

Jas 1:6-8: /But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt,//// because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

7//Those who doubt should not think they will receive anything from the Lord; 8//they are double-minded// and unstable// in all they do./

Now the reality is many of us struggle with doubts.

I believe the important question is, “What do you do with your doubts?”

Do they paralyze you?

I believe the church in Acts 12 had doubts, but it did not stop them from praying…and praying earnestly.

That encourages me.

When I pray, even if my prayers and my faith are not perfect, God still hears and will answer.

*2.

**The Lord answers all prayer.

*

*We talk of unanswered prayer.

There is really no such thing.

*God answers.

But knowing so much more than we do, He grants some, refuses others, and delays still others.

A delay is an answer!

To have what He wants for us without His timing would be disastrous.

Look at the Bible and you will find many times when God said yes to prayer.

We remember these stories so well.

* Of course we have here, where the church is praying for Peter’s release & he comes knocking at the door.

* Abraham’s servant prayed for God’s direction in finding a wife for Isaac, and God led him to Rebekah.

* Moses, standing before the Red Sea, prayed for Israel to cross over on dry land.

* David prayed for strength, and was able to defeat Goliath.

We tend to forget, however, that there are many times in the Bible that God’s answer was “No.”

* Moses begged God to let him lead his people into the Promised Land.

Moses died on Mt.

Nebo, his prayer refused.

* David prayed day and night for his newborn child to live, but the baby died anyway.

* Paul prayed three times for the removal of that "thorn in the flesh."

He never tells us exactly what that meant, but whatever it was, he prayed earnestly that it would be removed from his life.

But it wasn’t.

Instead, he was compelled to make the best of it for the rest of his life.

* Even Jesus prayed a prayer that to which God said no:  Jesus cried out in the garden, “take this cup of suffering from me.”

He prayed that he would not have to suffer death on the cross.

Instead he had to suffer the pain of it.

Why does God say no to our prayers?

That is a complex question and it is not a one size fits all sort of question.

There are different reasons for different situations.

*Sometimes, our prayers are not answered because our hearts are not right with God.*

* James, in his New Testament book, says, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”

(James 5:16).

He may be pointing us to an area of sin in our lives.

* In Proverbs 15:29, we read, “The LORD is far from the wicked but he hears the prayer of the righteous.”

* In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus warned us that if we go to the altar and in the middle of our worship remember that we are in conflict with another person, we should interrupt our worship in order to repair the broken relationship.

(Matthew 5:22-24)

*Sometimes God says no because we don’t have the big picture.

God’s ways are not our ways.

*

      Quote from “The Shack” p. 126

*Sometimes we misunderstand prayer.

*

We pray out of selfish motives.

* True prayer is God-centered.

But we often turn prayer into a self-centered activity.

* In the New Testament book of James, we are told (James 4:3), “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”