The following sermon is from the Westminster Pulpit, extending the worship ministry of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We are a local congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Please contact us for permission before reproducing this message in any format. We're looking at Acts 12, moving on in the understanding of what God was doing in the early church to an event which will actually be the second jailbreak that Peter has been part of. It happened earlier, you might remember, when he was jailed the first time. Once again, God intervenes and gets Peter out of jail. But I'm calling your attention to this passage even more so for what it might teach us today about prayer. Listen as I read Acts 12, one through 19. About that time, Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. He killed James, the brother of John, with a sword. And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the days of unleavened bread. When he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending that after the Passover, he would 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, 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. He thought he was seeing a vision. When they had passed the first and 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. 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 the brothers. And then he departed and went to another place. And when the 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. And he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there. This is God's holy word, his revealed truth without any error, completely trustworthy in all that it reports. I put before you today this thesis that prayer is not about getting God to do things that he is in any way reluctant to do. Rather, in prayer we begin to discover how much God is willing to do for us. Saying it another way, I could say prayer is not an argument that we propose to convince God about what we need. It is instead a living conversation in which he opens our minds, our eyes, and our ears to behold the great things that he has already done and is continuing to do in this hour. People have many questions about the why, what, and how of prayer. And I think sometimes they imply, well, I don't really understand how prayer works, so I don't know if I can pray. Well, I can confess to you as an American male, I don't really understand how an automobile works. I can find the air cleaner and, you know, put the oil in and put the washer fluid in the right spout and a few other things, but if you ask me to take apart a fuel injector and explain it to you and put it back together, that's not going to happen. I don't understand much of the technology under the hood of my car. and yet I seem to be able to get in that car and guide it to places that take me where I want to go. We are generally rather slow to connect the dots between prayer and many everyday events that go on in the life of any Christian. We might pray and we do that sort of in a compartment over here and then things happen and we do that in a compartment over here And we don't often think, well, wait a minute, there's a line of relation between my prayer and something that happened over here. We have before us today in Acts 12 an unrecognized answer to prayer. These Book of Acts believers had a hard time comprehending that exactly what I assumed they were asking for was on their doorstep. I think it's one of the really, one of the funniest scenes of the New Testament. The scene of the young girl, and it's so specific it even gives her name, she wasn't an important person, she was just a maid in the house, who went to the door, wrote a, recognized the voice, it's Peter. She ran in and said, it's Peter. They said, no it's not, we're praying for Peter, it couldn't be Peter. It's funny. And it would be funnier if it didn't so aptly demonstrate things that we almost exactly do in our own experience. Historically, just as a background, I want to point out to you that this scene is almost the disappearance of Peter in the book of Acts. He will surface in chapter 15 at the Jerusalem council very briefly, but other than that, When we read here in verse 17 that Peter departed and went to another place, that's basically the end of Peter for the Book of Acts. He didn't die. He just went other places, and he wasn't on the stage any longer. And starting at chapter 13, Paul is going to be the premier apostle who is spoken about most of the time in the Book of Acts. Peter now was a fugitive. He probably had a price on his head. and he simply fades out of sight. We know that he wrote two letters that are in the New Testament with his name on them. We know that he ended up eventually in Rome where he also died by the sword. But beyond that, we don't know a lot about Peter's movements past this point in the book of Acts. Now Acts 12 opens with this mounting persecution towards Christians. One of the several Jameses is killed. It's a little confusing because we read that James the brother of John is killed in verse two, and then you might be confused when Peter says later on in the passage, tell these things to James. Peter knew which James had been killed. The James that he was wanting things to be told to was James the brother of Jesus, or James the just, the same one who wrote the epistle of James. These are two different men. Keep your history straight here, it's a little confusing. We read here of an amazing display of the power of God intervening to bring his apostle out of prison and have an escape from what would have been, we know, sure death. Now, a phrase that probably is on one of my all-time list of phrases that really irks me, it really irks me if a Christian says this. I guess all we can do now is pray. How often have you heard that? What does that usually mean? When somebody says that, particularly a non-Christian, they're saying, well, we've done everything in our power. We've called the congressman. We've, you know, we've petitioned the town council. We've worked as hard as we can. We've exerted every possible effort. We've pulled every string we know how to pull. I guess all we can do now is pray. In other words, everything effectual has been tried. And that which maybe would just be a little bit comforting to us or make us feel good, but we really don't think would do anything, I guess we can do that too. Christian, don't ever let me catch you saying that in my hearing. I guess all we can do is pray. You know, we Christians in 2013 face crises and threats and difficulties every bit as big as what Peter faced. Believe me, the church was alarmed. One of the 12 had just been killed suddenly and swiftly. Another one, the premier apostle Peter was in jail and they assumed the same thing was going to happen to him. This could completely bring to an end the whole movement of the church. and they were praying. We read they were earnestly. There's some amount of passion communicated in verse five. Peter was in prison, but earnest prayer was being made. But earnest prayer was being made. It's like that phrase that, you know, there was a great preacher in England who had a sermon one time. It was a wonderful sermon. The title of the sermon was But God. and he went through the Bible and pulled out dozens of places where this was happening, this was happening, this terrible threatening event was occurring, but God, well that's what we have here. Terrible threat, damage has already happened, Peter's in prison, about to die, but earnest prayer for him was being made by the church. I hope you don't think this was some last resort, good feeling thing that people were doing because they couldn't really do anything that would be effective. I have two points today and the first one is longer than the second. Acts 12 gives us a basis to give some thought to a large subject that's, you could plummet in all directions and not hit its bottom. The subject of the sovereignty of God and prayer. the sovereignty of God in prayer. This James who was killed is the very same James among the original 12 disciples whose name is linked with two others. Frequently in all the gospels, you know, Jesus singled out three who were kind of the inner circle, right? Peter, James, and John. How often do you hear that? He took Peter, James, and John with him to the mountain and he was transfigured before them. Peter, James, and John, those three names, James and John being brothers, sons of Zebedee, are a trio, and now one of them has been swiftly executed. Actually, Jesus warned, these are the same two whose mother came and said, Lord, will you have my two sons, James and John, to sit in your right hand and your left? She was a pretty ambitious mom. And Jesus responded to tell them in Mark 10, you too will drink of my cup of suffering. Interesting, James was the first to die, John was the last of the twelve disciples to die. But they drank of his suffering too. Let me help you with a little history too because the Herod's are about as confusing as anything could be in the Bible. There are actually five of them. really hard to keep them straight. Herod the Great was the one that was the threat at the time of Jesus' birth, who spoke to the Magi and said, let me go worship him too, and so on, and then killed all the children in Bethlehem. He was kind of the head of this wicked family. This one, Herod Agrippa I, he's not given that full name here, but that's who it is, in 12.1, is the grandson. of Herod the Great. There's an uncle in there, Herod Antipas, and two others. I don't have to rehearse what they all were. But here was the grandson, a relatively weak man who knew how to curry political favor and loved people's applause. He was in favor basically with Caesar back in Rome. He had grown up in Rome, and Caesar liked him, at least at the present time. You never were in Caesar's favor very long, it seemed. But Agrippa liked the fact that he got the applause of the temple leadership for killing John. So he said, hey, I'll do that one better. I'll get the chief apostle, Peter. And when I kill him, I'll really be the champion against these pesky Christians. And so you see Peter arrested. It says they were holding him until it appears the Passover would be over when the maximum number of people would be in Jerusalem, almost as if this is gonna be the crowning political display to the Passover feast, killing Peter. And they were going to ensure, you know, they had a memory, they remembered Peter had gotten out of jail before. You can go back a few chapters and you'll find where that happened. So this time, no fooling around, no more nice guy. Four squads of soldiers, four men within sight of him all the time, two of them chained to him. Every six hours they would shift. The text describes these high security measures. There will be no slip-ups. The deck is stacked entirely in favor of the ruling authorities and against the believers. But earnest prayer was being made for Peter by the church. Now, you know, we ask the question, in the light of the sovereignty of God, why did James have to die and Peter got off? There's a mystery. Did James' death happen so fast that nobody even had a chance to pray? Is that the reason? Was God looking the other way and caught by surprise when James was killed and he was paying full attention to help save Peter? I don't think so. God and his sovereign purpose had different purposes, both for his glory. for these two disciples. You remember how Paul once presented it in Philippians 1.20. He said, I pray that I may have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be glorified in my body, he said, whether by life or by death. Paul was saying Christ can be glorified in my body if I die for him. Do you think God was glorified in the death of James? You say, oh, it's a tragedy. Just think, he didn't get to go on having decades to teach like his brother John did. That's terrible. How can you find anything good in that? Well, I can say to you there's no reason whatever to believe that the Lord God loved James any less than he loved Simon Peter. He loved both of them, and he had separate purposes for them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the 39-year-old martyr to Hitler in World War II. in the last couple of weeks before his prison camp was liberated by the Allies. He died because he stood up for the Christian faith and opposed Hitler when most people were silent. Bonhoeffer, a couple of years before his own death, wrote something about the sovereignty of God. Here's what he said. If we meet suffering and death from man's violence, we are no less certain that everything comes from God. The same God who sees no sparrow fall without his full knowledge allows nothing to happen unless it ultimately can bring good to his children. Bonhoeffer the martyr said before he knew that he would die, although he suspected it was coming, we are in God's hands, so fear not. That could have been said about James and Peter. The love of the heavenly Father attends a Christian who is cut off in death, whether by martyrdom or by disease or by stroke or by accident, as we call it in this world, or the person who lives a long life and dies in old age. God loves the one no differently than the other. He loves and cares for all His people. He has different plans. We say it's an untimely death. That's an interesting word for a Christian to use. What does untimely mean in the sovereignty of God? The scripture says, shall not the God of the earth do what is right? Was God doing what is right when James the apostle was slain? We have to believe he was. He did what was right both for Peter and for James. Now I'd just point out a couple things about this jailbreak and how it shows God's wonderful sovereign working here. One thing you have to know, this is absolutely a miraculous work. There are commentators who will try to take this passage and say, well, you know, the word angel, angelos, means messenger, so when it says God sent a messenger, maybe this was just a human being, and this was kind of an inside job by somebody who was favorable to the Christians, who got a key, and unlocked the chains, and bribed the guards, and everything opened up, and it was nothing but a human plot. I'm sorry, Luke wasn't that stupid. The Scripture says, an angel of the Lord, same word for angel of the Lord that's used in Luke for the Christmas appearance to the shepherds. An angel of the Lord stood next to Peter and a light shined in the cell. This is a miraculous work of God. by a heavenly being appearing. The reason for the heavy security, it seems that Luke described it, all the chains and the four guards and all the doors, especially so you would understand nothing but the power of God would get Peter out of there. No Christian had enough money to bribe all those guards because we find out at the end of this chapter what the penalty was to them for Peter being gone. They died. Because that's what happened. when guards didn't do their duty in a time like that. So it wasn't simply a coincidence that somebody left a door unlocked or something like that. This was God's almighty work. And it was God's almighty work exquisitely timed exactly as God would have it be timed. Verse six says it was the night before the trial. Boy, don't we have a problem when we try to understand answers to prayer with God's timing? Sometimes God does exactly what we ask Him to do, and we say, oh, eventually, thank you, God, that you did exactly what I asked you to do, but why did it take you so long? I thought I told you the timetable on which I needed the answer to happen. I need it tomorrow, God. The day after tomorrow will be too late. How impertinent that we dare tell God the schedule on which he would do anything. I would dare say many of you don't know about Dr. Light's special watch. I'm gonna get him in a lot of trouble because you're all gonna be bothering him about this, but Dr. Light has a special watch. It's a wristwatch, it was given to him by his father-in-law. He nicknames it, this isn't my name, he calls it the atomic watch. because this watch is a special watch somehow tuned by a radio signal or some kind of a signal to a government clock somewhere so that this watch is not just within five seconds of the right time, it is supposed to be within a split second of the correct time always. So because I see John often, I will often say, John, what time is it? And if John says it's 2 minutes to 12, and my watch says the old Seiko runs okay, but it's not atomic, and mine says it's 5 minutes to 12, guess what? I don't argue with John. I change the Seiko to be 2 minutes to 12, because I believe that his time is very accurate. Now all of you are going to go ask John what time it is, I know. He's already had it happen from the first service. What's the lesson? God's time is correct time. And if His time differs from my time, I set my time to His, not vice versa. I don't demand, God, you can only answer prayer on my schedule, in my way, according to my specific demands. That's not what prayer is about. Prayer is about learning to know my Heavenly Father and understanding that His ways are not my ways. But his ways are best. His ways are right. Because he's perfect and he's wise. And he's loving. And I go to him and ask him for band-aids for a cut, and it turns out he knows that what I really need is minor surgery that's going to take a while. So he does minor surgery. And I go to him and whine, why didn't you just give me a band-aid? I only wanted a band-aid. God knows what's right. And some people will approach a text like this and see that very clearly we're being told that Peter was released when the church was praying, and they'll say, well, God would have released him anyway. It's just coincidental. Of course, humanly speaking, it was good that the church was asking for this, but God didn't do this because of prayer. He would have let Peter out anyway. Well, I don't think that's the implication of this passage at all. This passage very clearly wants us to understand that God acted in a marvelous and powerful way because His people prayed. And oh, we get all turned around between the cause and effect idea. Do our prayers cause God to do things that He wasn't going to do? And so we could have long discussions about that. The wonder of prayer and divine sovereignty is an almighty, all-wise God chooses to condescend, to allow his actions to coincide many, many times with the earnest seeking of his people of faith. Is that cause and effect? I'm not ready to debate that with you. I only know that it's the way God condescends to work. Our Westminster Confession chapter five says in these words, God in his ordinary providence makes use of secondary means, yet he is free to work without, above, or against them according to his good pleasure. If he chooses to use prayer, of course he can use prayer. If he chooses to work without prayer, of course he can work without prayer, the wonder is. that he wants us to be involved and attentive to what he's doing. He often wants us to ask so that we will give thanks when we recognize the gift or what he has done. And so we conclude that God, in the great mystery of his sovereignty, ordains both the ends, the goals, the things he's going to accomplish, and the means by which he's going to accomplish them. And prayer is one of his means, very clearly here. Our praying. is a means by which God works powerful things. Now secondly, a shorter point, I ask you, are we going to be able to do any better than these disciples at recognizing God's answers to prayer? Again, it's almost a comic scene. Why were all these praying believers not better prepared to expect God's intervention? Well, when I ask that question, it has to bounce right back to me and ask me, why am I not better prepared to interpret the things that God is doing in the world? Maybe I see them sometimes much after the fact. Rarely do I see them while they're going on. I love the scene of Peter being awakened. It even seems like he had to get some kind of a good slap in the side here to wake up. It says the angel struck Peter. That's how my wife has to wake me up at 2 a.m. It's not just a gentle whisper, it's wake up. And he woke up and the chains fell off. And he had to be told to get dressed, put your shoes on. And he stumbled out thinking he was dreaming. You know that, you know, you awaken from a dream and you're sort of still half in the dream, but you know it's a dream, and you want to awake, and there's that funny twilight zone in between. We all experience that. That's where Peter was, stumbling out of the jail, thinking this was some kind of a dream, and only in the cold air of the outside, when the angel departed, did he suddenly say, now I get it. This was God working. He had stumbled through, but he understood, and then he goes, of course, to the house of the, mother of John Mark, and by the way, that's the first mention of John Mark, who's gonna become an important person in Acts. And he goes to that house and calls out, hammers on the door, servant girl comes, recognizes, it's Peter, runs back in. Hey folks, I'm sorry to interrupt the praying, Peter's out there. Oh, you're crazy. I mean, people actually told her, she was out of her mind. People actually told her, no, Peter's dead, it must be his angel. What were they praying for? You know, maybe some of them were praying that, oh, Lord, Peter's going to die, spare him too much pain, make it a clean, quick death. Oh, Lord, may we remember and follow in the example of Peter. Were they saying, Lord, release Peter? Because if they were, you have to wonder about their faith. And finally, somebody says, why are we having this argument? Let's go see who's at the door. And there was a babble of voices, excited and joyful. Why do I know that? Because it says Peter, with a motion of his hand, silenced them. That means there was a noise going on. Motioning with his hand for them to be silent, he told them. All excited. God worked. God did this wonderful thing. What were they praying for? Wasn't their prayer rather full of unbelief? Ladies and gentlemen, I think we do not understand what a powerful thing is available to the people of God in Jesus Christ when God invites us to pray. And he doesn't invite us to just pray timid little prayers. God, maybe you can do something here. No, I haven't been able to do anything, so I'll see if, can you possibly do something? I don't know what you would do, but could you do something? That's not the way we're invited to prayer. We're invited to pray boldly. James wrote, by the way, this is James who was still alive, James the just, the brother of Jesus who wrote the letter of James. James 5.17 says Elijah was a man like us. But he prayed that it would not rain for three years and it did not rain. I'd be happy if some of you would get together and pray that it does not snow for the next 10 years, but I'm not going to ask you to do that, and I'm not one to trivialize the text either. But I want to say this, we expect very little from God. We ask God little things, tame things, because we think to ourselves, well, I better not ask anything too big or too bold, because when it didn't happen, God would be embarrassed. I would embarrass God's reputation if I asked for something big and it doesn't happen, so I'll just ask for something little. We ask for band-aids when what is needed is surgery. And I wonder how many magnificent answers to prayer are knocking at the gate of the church while the people inside maybe are praying, but maybe they're not praying for anything very bold or very much requiring the power of God to bring it about. I've said from this pulpit and I'll keep on saying it many times, Christian prayer is not like putting coins in the candy machine and pulling the right lever to get the right candy bar to drop in the bottom. By the way, I remember when you could do that with a dime. Not anymore. That's really what we think prayer is. It really is. No matter how many times Christians are told that's not prayer, we still think that. God, I ordered a candy bar, you either didn't hear me because you sent the wrong candy bar or you were much delayed in sending it or something. Prayer is not the candy bar machine. Prayer is not about getting God to do things he is reluctant to do. It is about discovering in dialogue with him the wonderful things that he is willing to do, has done, and will do for his people. Things you haven't even imagined or asked for. They're so much better than the things you ask for. A man named Alexander McLaren was a British preacher of a century ago. Here's something he said. God's mercies to us often come suddenly with a rush and a completeness that runs us off our feet. They overwhelm all our expectations and powers of immediate comprehension. In other words, God is doing something and it's like whoosh, it goes right by us and we don't even quite get it. McLaren continued to say, later reflection by us discovers more of heaven and God's design happening in the moments of our lives than was visible to us while we were living through them. That's why we need to reflect and think and look for reasons to be thankful and we will find them because we'll say, oh, God was at work and I didn't know it. Do we believe God is really a God of total and sovereign control or not? It is prayer in dialogue with God, prayer individually and prayer corporately that allows us to start hearing, sometimes in fits and starts and flashes, but nevertheless hearing and discerning what God is up to. And if you're not praying, You don't have too much idea most of the time what God really is up to. Listen to the prophet Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 33, three. There the Lord says, call to me and I will answer you. I will tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know. One more to close with. Another prophet, Isaiah. Isaiah 65, 24, I love this. I've searched this one up, down, and sideways, and it never fails to inspire me to pray. As the Lord says there in Isaiah, before they call, I will answer. And while they are yet speaking, I will hear. Thanks be to God. Our Father. We're convinced that prayer is a greater thing than any of us have really comprehended or tried. We're sorry for those who say all we can do now is pray. Call us to this wonderful participation of exploration and learning and growing understanding of what you're doing in this world. Teach us to pray. expectantly, in faith, trusting you, knowing that whatever comes, you have allowed it, you have designed it. However bad it seems, you are at work in the lives of your people. So Lord, teach us again to pray for Jesus' sake, amen.