Our scripture lesson this morning comes from the book of Acts chapter 12. Acts chapter 12, and we'll be reading verses 11 through 19. When Peter came to himself, he said, Now I am sure that the Lord has sent an 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, and where many were gathered together and were praying. And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Verona 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 that when the day had come, 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 in order that they should be put to death. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there. After a two-week hiatus, we return to our series in Acts, which providentially brings us to such a personally relevant text regarding Peter knocking on the door of the house there in Jerusalem. But before we go into it, let's pray together to God and knock on the doors of heaven in the name of Jesus. Father, we come to you through Jesus Christ's atonement, his intercession, his blood, Righteousness is glorious resurrection, the power of the Holy Spirit. We ask you to bless this sermon to the hearts of your people. Cause them to be built up in their most holy faith. Give them confidence and boldness before the throne of God to continue to come to you and to pray and to not give up. We ask this in Jesus name, Amen. On the gravestone of my father, these words after his name and his place in the United States Navy the date of his death it will say you bless us ASK Matthew 7, 7 and 8. ASK has to do with my father's like to teach his children and his family, his loved ones to ask, seek and knock with regard to God and to receive from God the Father all the good things that he has for his children in Jesus Christ his son ASK. It's a very worthy memorial of our Father's love for us. Providentially today's text finds Peter knocking at the door of a churchman's home in Jerusalem and the people inside find it hard to believe it's actually the Apostle standing at the gate. Now let me quote for you before we go too far those famous words from Matthew 7, 7 and 8 taken toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount as you recall the Sermon on the Mount encompasses Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7 And seven and eight read this way, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives and he who seeks finds and to him who knocks it will be opened. Therefore, in light of this encouragement from the Word of God, let us make it our bold goal this morning to persist in our faith in Christ, seeking the Lord with all our hearts. In a little while, we're going to be studying together Acts chapter 12, verses 11 through 19. The title of the sermon this morning is, Knock and the Door Shall Be Opened. Note with me the doctrine. We believers are to persevere in our fervency, knocking until the door is opened. It's so important, dears, not to give up. Keep knocking. Peter did. Peter didn't give up because Rhoda the servant girl who showed up at the door couldn't believe it was him and left him standing there instead he kept tapping or perhaps even pounding on the door until he was granted admittance and we are to do the same thing as we bring our request boldly before God faithfully in the loving name of Jesus and even if it takes a while for God to answer our prayers as it took a little while for Peter to finally enter that domicile that day. Let us not give up, but persist in our faith and fortitude. So we believers are indeed to persevere in our fervency, knocking until the door is opened. This is our Savior's clear instruction. Now I already referenced for you and read for you the great verses of Matthew chapter 7. verses 7 and 8 but the context of that instruction that the Messiah gave the church is very intriguing and interesting because as you read the Sermon on the Mount, dears, and many of you understand and have read it and studied it and it's a great sermon and I'm still trying to comprehend it fully and we've been helped by some excellent Sunday School series over the years in it As we read it, we find out that Jesus gives us impossible commands to obey for the glory of God and in the power of the Holy Spirit. He gives us humanly impossible things that we're supposed to do. Be perfect as our Father is perfect. Love your enemy. Do good to those who hate you and despitefully use you. There are all kinds of things in the context of this sermon. And then Jesus tells his disciples, now I want you to ask and seek and knock because you need to receive from God things that you just don't have in yourselves. And that's a good and holy thing for us to consider as well. These are unimaginable blessings we're to ask God for. We're to seek from him things that we could never garner by the strength of our own arm, or the flesh, or human beings. These things come from heaven. Ask for them. Seek them. Knock on the door of heaven. God is pleased when we make outrageous requests that are completely consistent with his will for his church and his word written down for us, as in Matthew 7, 7 and 8. Therefore, what is it today, dears, in your life and mine, what is it that you just can't deal with, that is outside of your control, that is beyond your ability to do anything about? You can't do it. It's impossible. I say, by the power, inspiration and authority of the Word of God, keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking until the Lord grants you your God-honoring petition. After all, if ours was like everyone else's false religion, we wouldn't need God or Christ because it's a false religion. It can be done in the power of the flesh, but ours is a supernatural faith. that calls upon a powerful risen Christ who intercedes for us at the Father's right hand. So this is our Savior's clear instruction to persevere in our fervency and keep knocking until the door is open and it demonstrates the reality of our conversions. You know you can always tell eventually a true Christian from a false Christian. Do you know how? A true Christian will never ultimately give up on Jesus. Hypocrites always eventually do. They may hang in there for a while, even months, perhaps even years in some cases, but eventually they give up. They can't take the gospel anymore. They can't take their works and their law and their flesh being hammered and they just quit. And you can always tell the difference. This is manifested in faith or the lack thereof, and faith is demonstrated in prayer or the lack thereof. And when Christians quit praying, quit asking, quit knocking, quit seeking from God, it's evidence that they've quit their religion, their faith, their Messiah, their alleged Messiah. Again, dears, if Peter, to use the door knocking illustration of today's scripture lesson, had said after hitting the door a few times, and Rhoda shows up, and Rhoda's excited, goes in, and she's trying to argue with the people that Peter's really at the door, and Peter keeps knocking, and finally he just gets tired of it, and he says, you know, I have other Christian friends down the street here, and I just go spend some time with them, If Peter had done that, the church gathered there for that prayer meeting, it was meeting for Peter's own welfare, would have been deprived of a great blessing. And so it is that we rob ourselves too when we cease or fail to persevere, to persist, and to continue in our most holy faith manifested in prayer. And therefore, let me encourage you this morning, set your eyes on Jesus, the eyes of your heart, set him at the center of your focus, your attention, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, run the race of faith to the very end, and pray, and seek, ask, and knock. There's our doctrine. Let's do the Acts of Jesus looking together at verses 11 to 19 of Acts chapter 12. And consider with me now how the divine knocking opening dynamic works. You know, today's scripture lesson lends itself to a lot of practical application and encouragement that you and I need today. And we're going to need it through this week and the rest of our lives. from the miracle of Peter's release from prison to the incredulity of even believing saints that their prayers had already been answered. Let us now discern just how the divine knocking opening dynamic works. Verses 11 to 14. God sets us, his children, at liberty in Christ. And when Peter had come to himself, he said, Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent his angel and has delivered me from the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the Jewish people. So when he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying. And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a girl named Rhoda came to answer. When she recognized Peter's voice, because of her gladness, she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter stood before the gate. It took a while for Peter himself to comprehend what had happened to him. Three weeks ago we preached that sermon on Peter's release, and many of you expressed a lot of encouragement from that sermon. It was a very practical one. You saw where God had released a man who was chained up to powerful Roman soldiers and a whole squad of them around, and God just got him out of there miraculously in the power of the Holy Spirit. We applied that to our own lives. You know, it took Peter a while to realize, wow, something amazing has happened to me. He's walking down the street. The angel's gone. He comes to his senses, as it were, and he understands something had happened. And so it is for even us, dears, even us the children of God, the children of grace in Jesus, that our freedom in Christ is so fantastic, so amazing, so huge, so bountiful, that we often don't understand what we have in our inheritance in Jesus. And it takes us a while to figure it out, to factor it in, and to apply it to our hearts. We don't grasp it right away. Remember this whole story, this whole pericope here in chapter 12 is about Peter being freed. God was committed to liberating his apostles so he could go plant more churches and preach the gospel and lead the people of the church and the Presbyterian in Jerusalem. And the people there, the saints in Jerusalem that were still in that city, they were committed to this goal too. And they show it by meeting together at Mary's house, the mother of John Mark, the author of the second gospel, who lived there. And they wanted to see Peter get freed too. And it's interesting that here a church is praying, and the believers are asking God for something that he had already attended to. Now the Old Testament talks about that in terms of the New Covenant, that the blessings will be so great that the reaper will overtake the sower, as it were, in terms of the blessings of God in Christ in the New Covenant age in which we live. And in this case, they're praying, God please help Peter, free him, we don't want him to die at the hand of Herod, he's in that horrible prison, maximum security, soldiers all around. He'd already done it. Of course, they didn't know that until this point here. John Mark's mother's residence was a place in Jerusalem where believers typically gathered So the Apostle knew right where to go from the jailhouse to the churchman's house. Isn't it great when we have that in our parish, we have these folks open their home to people that need some support, need some encouragement, need some hospitality, a place where it's safe to go and pray and spend time in fellowship. When the saints show up at Mary's house, That's what God does for us. We go from the kingdom of darkness and sin and death and hell into the kingdom of the light of God in Christ in the New Covenant Church in Jesus in the fullness of the Holy Spirit and our sins are forgiven. We go from death to life. Paul, Peter here goes from certain death to a much longer life of ministry as well. Peter was able to wander the streets of Jerusalem because a sovereign God had overruled every human contrivance to keep him restrained and held down. The same is true for all you, dear churchmen, who love Jesus. And despite the struggles that you have, God would enjoin upon you to continue to persevere. To keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking. So how the divine knocking opening dynamic works, God sets us as children at liberty in Christ, which freedom we share with the whole church, verses 15 through 17. But they said to her, that's Rhoda, you are beside yourself, yet she kept insisting that it was so, so they said it is his angel Now Peter continued knocking and when they opened the door and saw him they were astonished but motioning to them with his hand to keep silent he declared to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison and he said go tell these things to James and to the brethren and he departed and went to another place. Peter's mission at Mark's mother's house there in Jerusalem was very clear, almost military in its precision. He goes and he informs them of what God had done, which was amazing. He gives God the glory for it. And he also says, now the ministers of the church need to know about this. We're working together. Tell the rest of the presbyters about what has gone on, my happy news, the good things, so we can plan together. Let them know that I am released. and we will meet up again sometime soon. Now in the meantime the believers could go back to their prayer meeting if they want and address God with other concerns like how Peter and the apostles and the rest of the church would spread the gospel to the world around them. Especially now that such a dramatic event had happened in their city and the apostle had been freed once again. They might also check their theology a bit with regard to their thinking that Peter's angel was standing at the door. They might want to open up their Bibles and take a little bit closer look about that. And they might get their faith a little bit of a facelift with regard to good news coming to them, like Rhoda saying, hey gang, we got Peter here, here's the answer to your problem. No, it can't be him, it must be his angel. So, a little gentle reprimand, perhaps, to their faith by the fact that they had not believed Rhoda's report. But all is well that ends well. All is well that ends well. And certainly, without a doubt, the saints clearly rejoiced to see their under-shepherd leader, Peter, again safe and sound. And so keeping with our theme this morning, in verse 16, where Peter continues his knocking until someone finally grants him entrance into the domicile, let us also do exactly that. And then once we are given the answer to our prayer, let's communicate it to the rest of the body of Christ. Let's share the good news, what God has done. Let's give him the glory. and all the honor for it in answering our prayers so how the divine knocking opening dynamic works God sets his children at liberty in Christ which freedom we share with the whole church and the unbelieving world feels its powerful effects verses 18 and 19 and as soon as it was day there was no small stir among the soldiers about what had become a Peter But when Herod had searched for him and not found him, he examined the guards and commanded that they should be put to death. And he went down from Judea to Caesarea, that is Herod did, and stayed there. At this point, it's getting around the Roman army that no one wants to guard Peter and the apostles. It could be very damaging to your career and your life. I mean, seriously, we don't want to make light of it. It's interesting that this event cost the lives of 16 strong young strapping Roman soldiers who were the cream of the crop of the Empire. Not just the nation but the whole Roman thing. If you were a Roman soldier that was the top banana. Many families grieved that week in the Roman Empire because the vile Herod saw to it that he killed them, he executed them because for something completely outside of their control God had released Peter, but you know there's a greater sacrifice that took place. You think about those soldiers sacrificed, but how about the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for us, the church, our sins, bearing the penalty for us, becoming sin for us, being cut off from the Father for a moment, for a time, as he bore our sins. Yes, there has to be someone to take the blame. In the world of Herod, in the world of Jerusalem, in the world of the Roman army, in the world of prisons at that time, if you were a guard and your prisoner got free, you lost your life in turn for his being released or finding liberty in some form. And that is true for us. It's true on the judgment day. It's true right now that someone has to die for our sins. Somebody's got to pay for your sins and mine. And somebody will. Either be ourselves and ourselves in hell forever or it'll be Jesus who bears it. in the perfect person of who he is the glorious beautiful son of God who is both God and man second person of the Holy Trinity able to bear the sins of all the elect church because he is that great one drop of whose blood can forgive a world of iniquity and cleanses away our sins It wasn't just the people of God, the church in Jerusalem, but the whole world was impacted by Peter's release. Herod knew it. The soldiers knew it. The soldiers' authorities over them knew it. The city of Jerusalem knew it. The prison knew it. The fellow prisoners knew it. The unbelievers there knew it. Everybody knew it. God does nothing in a corner, in a secret place, When he does a marvelous work, he does it for all to behold, to see. When Jesus is on the march in the power of the Holy Spirit through his church to spread the gospel in every place using the appointed ministers and elders and deacons and parishioners that he has appointed for that task, nothing can stand in his way. He operates in different ways. He allows James to be slain by the vile Herod. but not Peter who goes on and gets free and is out to preach more. Herod himself gets involved in the process. He investigates, he passes the buck and the blame on to the squad of those 16 unhappy men who were assigned the impossible job of restraining one of God's own. Can't be done. Everyone from Herod to the soldiers knew that God had done it. Something miraculous. It's an amazing thing. A great sacrifice of Jesus for us, dears. Sacrifice on the cross. Well, we've done some doctrines and acts of Jesus. Let's do a little more application. Not to say we haven't done some, but let's do some more and consider why we Christians should always pray and trust and not lose heart. Peter the very Apostle who did the knocking on Mary's Jerusalem house door also taught us this in his first epistle of Peter chapter 4 verse 7 quote but the end of all things is at hand therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers now let us look at one of the principal reasons why we Christians should always pray and trust and not lose heart because the church serves a living God. When Jesus Christ rose from the dead, past tense, this has become for us, the church, the hallmark of our Christian faith. We'll be celebrating Easter coming up in April, I think, next year. And we do it every Sunday, actually. It's the New Covenant Sabbath day, the Lord's Day, the Resurrection Day. We serve a God who is alive. Everyone else in the world, outside of Christ, serves dead gods. Dead gods. Some of you get the daily devotions, you notice how the Bible mocks the Philistine gods in 1 Chronicles, I think at chapter 15, where They lug their gods onto the battlefield. You know, they got their guns and knives and weapons and bows and arrows and swords and armor and they also have to lug their gods. And David and the Israelites defeat them on the battlefield and the Philistines leave their poor gods in the dirt of the battlefield and flee without their gods. That's the world of false religion. Dead gods. They can't help you on the battlefield? They're just a weight on your soul? Do you know good anyway? But we don't serve a dead God, we serve the living God. And the second person of whose trinity the Lord Jesus is both God and man. If Christ was not alive, he could not have freed Peter from that prison. And do you think Peter would have given his life years later, crucified upside down, if he didn't know that Jesus Christ was alive? He was a rational, sane person, filled with the Spirit. Your Christian God is alive today in you, in your church, and in your world. It's just incumbent upon us to believe it, dears. How are we going to believe it? By faith in Christ. What will be the evidence that we believe? Continuing to pray, worship, means of grace, hear sermons, take the sacrament and pray. The day we give up is the day that we die and it's the day of the evidence that we never were alive to start with. Always seek his face, never give up, persevere to the end. What is it today that you need to ask God for? Seek and knock with regard to the Lord in prayer about. I say to you dears, keep doing it. You say, well pastor it's been a long time, I've been doing it a long time, keep doing it. Knock and the door shall be opened. But there is one major prerequisite and we're going to consider that in closing. Why we Christians should always pray? Because the church serves a living God who loves those who are purchased by the blood of Christ keep this in mind the promises of this text and all the Bible in Christ only apply to believers the true church don't apply to unbelievers that's why we invite unbelievers to become believers so that They also can enjoy all the promises and the privileges and the benefits of answered prayer in God's good time. As we keep knocking, seeking, and asking. She might be asking, how do I know if I believe or not? It's a good question. Well, you can have an instant answer right now. You've heard a gospel sermon. It's almost over. And the question is, when you hear these words, do you agree with them? Do you accede to them? Do you say, yes Lord, that is me, that is you, that is true, that is the gospel? Or not? If you do, then you are in Christ. You have believed in the gospel of grace. You have moved from the prison, dark, dingy place into the glorious kingdom of light. All the inheritance of the church is yours, including full access to the throne of God, because by grace you believe in Christ. If you hear these words and you don't believe, you resist, you hold out, you're stubborn, you're going to take God on, you want your own idols, you're outside of Christ and the wrath of God hangs over your head. That's the truth. You need to repent and believe the good news of the gospel. These promises are great, but they're not for all. They're for the faithful church. Dear faithful church, let us be like Peter and continue to ask and seek and knock. Let us put our faith in the Christ of the gospel. This asking, knocking, seeking dynamic is the universal gracious principle of Almighty God. Will we have the holy audacity to do it and to continue knocking until the door is open let's pray shall we father we thank you for the word of God today and how wonderful it really is how applicable it is St. Peter standing at that door knocking and finally being given admittance, making a glorious testimony of who you are and what you've done. May we do the same, even as we close today with a singing of our closing hymn to the glory of God. Thank you that you've released us and given us grace, abundant and free, full and incomprehensible in Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.