Dr. Philip Nation: Here at the village chapel, we preach through books of the Bible.
Dr. Philip Nation: And so I want to encourage you to open up God's Word to Acts chapter 12.
Dr. Philip Nation: If you don't have a paper copy, but you'd like one, some friends are now gonna scoot up and down the aisles.
Dr. Philip Nation: And if you'd like a paper copy, just slip your hand up and they will be happy to bring one to you.
Dr. Philip Nation: This morning, as we look into Acts chapter 12, I want to work from the theme always within reach.
Dr. Philip Nation: As a somewhat newly minted grandparent, uh, my uh oldest grandchild just turned three years old, so I still feel like I'm I'm in the I'm getting used to this again phase.
Dr. Philip Nation: I have relearned uh the value of keeping those little crumb crunchers within reach.
Dr. Philip Nation: Uh they they are they are so small and yet they are so quick uh to get into a cabinet, to pull something down, uh to scoot off in a direction that you didn't mean for them to do.
Dr. Philip Nation: It is this idea that um I really do want to care ever so much for Amelia and Oliver, our two grandchildren.
Dr. Philip Nation: I I also don't want them to break my stuff.
Dr. Philip Nation: Uh I I I I have yeah, there's certain books in my library that I'd rather them not tear pages out of or color in the middle of, or uh, there's certain things in the kitchen that we want them to keep their hands off of.
Dr. Philip Nation: And and so there is this value of keeping them within reach.
Dr. Philip Nation: I also want to keep them within reach because I love them so much.
Dr. Philip Nation: I have uh I have our our two grandchildren live in Omaha, Nebraska, which is not near here, by the way.
Dr. Philip Nation: And so when we visit and we get to do extended visits uh and spend as much time as possible with them, uh on the last visit, I finally got Amelia uh conditioned with a response that when I would say to her, Who is my favorite little girl in the world?
Dr. Philip Nation: And she'd look at me and a little smile would come across her face and she'd say, I am I want her within reach because I want her to know just how deeply love Pops has for her.
Dr. Philip Nation: As we look at Acts chapter 12 today, I think that we're gonna see that deeply reflected in terms of the deep and abiding love that God has for us as well.
Dr. Philip Nation: Uh will you pray with me just one more time before we read God's word?
Dr. Philip Nation: Father, it is uh by your grace and mercy that we know we have entry into the throne room where we can speak to you, that we can hear through your word, that your Holy Spirit can teach us.
Dr. Philip Nation: And God, I know that the people before me are precious in your sight.
Dr. Philip Nation: And I would ask that you, by the power of your Holy Spirit, would teach us what we do not know, equip us for what is going to come next, and mold us so that we might look evermore like Christ our Lord.
Dr. Philip Nation: For it's in his name that we pray.
Dr. Philip Nation: Amen.
Dr. Philip Nation: Acts chapter 12, uh I'll uh begin at at verse one, of course.
Dr. Philip Nation: Now, about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some of the church, and then he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword, and because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also, and now it was during the days of unleavened bread.
Dr. Philip Nation: So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover.
Dr. Philip Nation: Let me pause there and just say that as we move through this theme today, that I do want you just to carry this idea with you, even as we see the beginnings here of James and Peter and what seems to be dire circumstances, is that no matter who we are or what has been done, we are all within the reach of God.
Dr. Philip Nation: Now, that is not something that our culture necessarily believes.
Dr. Philip Nation: Uh, by all accounts and purposes and intents, uh sociologically, uh, we can now say that anywhere between 20 and 25 percent of the population of the United States of America are sociologically considered to be nuns.
Dr. Philip Nation: And that's not the little old ladies in black robes.
Dr. Philip Nation: It's the when you ask them what is your ref uh religious affiliation, they will answer none.
Dr. Philip Nation: And it's not that they have uh rejected the idea of God necessarily or a creator or a divine being, they have just grown cold and somewhat apathetic to the idea.
Dr. Philip Nation: And so whether it is a fellow parent at the ball field or at the swim meet or it's a coworker, or maybe it's a niece or a nephew or a sibling or a neighbor, there are so many people that surround us daily that it is not necessarily that they think, well, I'm out of the reach of God.
Dr. Philip Nation: They simply don't think about God.
Dr. Philip Nation: This morning when you awoke and the the thought that ran through your mind of, well, what time are we leaving for worship service this morning?
Dr. Philip Nation: That thought didn't run through their mind.
Dr. Philip Nation: The question of, are we going?
Dr. Philip Nation: did not run through their mind.
Dr. Philip Nation: Uh and I think oftentimes that the question behind the question of, is God there, the real question is, if he is there, does he care?
Dr. Philip Nation: Is he involved in any kind of way?
Dr. Philip Nation: And and in Acts chapter 12, although it starts off feeling kind of rough, we are going to see that God is deeply caring and mindful and involved.
Dr. Philip Nation: Now, to set the stage, what we have here is uh Herod the king.
Dr. Philip Nation: He stretched out his hand to oppress and to persecute the church.
Dr. Philip Nation: This Herod is the grandson of a previous Herod that we've heard about, Herod the Great.
Dr. Philip Nation: He is the king infamous for what we find at the beginning of the Gospels of what has become known as the slaughter of the innocents.
Dr. Philip Nation: He is the king that at the birth of Jesus commissions his soldiers to go out and to slay all of the little Jewish infants because he has heard that there has been born among the Jews a rival.
Dr. Philip Nation: Herod the Great then has a number of wives and a number of sons.
Dr. Philip Nation: One of them is Aristobulus, and Aristobulus was a relatively faithful son to the king, and he became eventually a favorite son to the king.
Dr. Philip Nation: But some other members of the family began whispering in his ear after Aristobulus had given uh his wife had been given uh given birth to the Herod now that we have before us in this passage.
Dr. Philip Nation: And when this Herod was three or four years old, Herod the Great has his own son executed because he thinks he's going to make a play for the throne.
Dr. Philip Nation: And so now you have little three or four-year-old Herod, who becomes Herod Agrippa I, is sent off to live with family in some other part of the empire.
Dr. Philip Nation: But he grows and he grows in favor with the Romans that uh have power.
Dr. Philip Nation: And eventually he is appointed as the king of Judea.
Dr. Philip Nation: In kind of common parlance, he's now the king of the Jews.
Dr. Philip Nation: He is now uh grasping, and this is important to hold on to, for power and authority, both in the political sphere and in the religious sphere.
Dr. Philip Nation: Seeing that he's got this little faction that has arisen in his empire, he decides, well, the best thing I can do is harass and scoff and mock, and when necessary, I'll even execute one.
Dr. Philip Nation: And what we have here is very tragically the execution of James.
Dr. Philip Nation: But it is not unprecedented.
Dr. Philip Nation: We've already seen, as we are been studying through Acts, that lots of the believers have been imprisoned, arrested, beaten, flogged, that some have already lost their life.
Dr. Philip Nation: And this was something that was also foretold.
Dr. Philip Nation: This is James, who is the brother of John.
Dr. Philip Nation: And you need to remember back into the gospel messages that Jesus with his 12 apostles had kind of the three insiders of Peter, James, and John.
Dr. Philip Nation: Peter and uh is uh uh also uh the guy who kind of puts his foot in his mouth every once in a while.
Dr. Philip Nation: James and John are brothers, and they get nicknamed the Sons of Thunder because they were always kind of making a little bit too much noise.
Dr. Philip Nation: And at one point, uh, even prodded along a little bit by their mother, they they approach Jesus and they ask him a relatively weird question.
Dr. Philip Nation: Back in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, uh in verse 35, they go to him and they say to Jesus, Teacher, will you do for us whatever we ask?
Dr. Philip Nation: Now, if you're a parent, you know that's a dangerous question if that ever comes up.
Dr. Philip Nation: Verse 36, Jesus said to them, What do you want me to do for you?
Dr. Philip Nation: They said, Grant us that we may sit one on your right hand and the other on your left in your glory.
Dr. Philip Nation: But Jesus said to them, You do not know what you ask.
Dr. Philip Nation: Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?
Dr. Philip Nation: And then they said, Oh, we're able.
Dr. Philip Nation: So Jesus said to them, You will indeed drink the cup and drink that I drink with the baptism I am baptized with, you will be baptized.
Dr. Philip Nation: But to sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give, but it is prepared for those whom it is prepared for.
Dr. Philip Nation: And in this passage we see where this is fulfilled.
Dr. Philip Nation: James winds up drinking from the cup that Jesus drank from.
Dr. Philip Nation: He he loses his life.
Dr. Philip Nation: And though not given details of this all, I can't help but think that this must run back and race to the front of his memories, that he remembers, oh, just as my Lord was taken from us by violent means, so now my life is coming to an end as well.
Dr. Philip Nation: And seeing how happy that this makes all of the culture around them, including the religious leaders, Herod says, Oh, well, if one is good, two will even be better.
Dr. Philip Nation: So he goes and he rests Peter and he throws him in jail.
Dr. Philip Nation: But it's during the time of the Passover, and the day of Passover is followed by a week called the week of unleavened bread.
Dr. Philip Nation: It was a little bit out of even uh, you know, the kind of courtesy for someone to be executed during that religious feast.
Dr. Philip Nation: And so Herod decides, well, I'll just hold him in prison for a week, and when this is over, then we'll have another public execution.
Dr. Philip Nation: So then we pick back up at verse 5.
Dr. Philip Nation: Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.
Dr. Philip Nation: That idea of constant prayer there in verse 5 is one of uh deep, longing, passionate prayer.
Dr. Philip Nation: Something that when he said constant prayer, he didn't just mean, by the way, as I'm working, every now and again when I thought of that need, I kind of shot an arrow prayer up to heaven.
Dr. Philip Nation: But rather, this is an intense meeting of the church.
Dr. Philip Nation: And when Herod was about to bring him out that night, Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers, and the guards before the door were keeping the prison.
Dr. Philip Nation: So now we've come to the end of the week of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Dr. Philip Nation: So it is going to be the next morning.
Dr. Philip Nation: The next morning is when this is gonna happen, where Peter is gonna be brought out.
Dr. Philip Nation: This has to be known to Peter.
Dr. Philip Nation: This is not gonna be something that is a surprise to him.
Dr. Philip Nation: He knows how this goes, but also this is not the first time Peter's been in prison.
Dr. Philip Nation: Verse 7.
Dr. Philip Nation: Now, behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the prison, and he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, Arise quickly, and his chains fell off his hands.
Dr. Philip Nation: Now, this is a little bit of a comical scene.
Dr. Philip Nation: I mean, in the midst of what is is terrible, like this is horrible.
Dr. Philip Nation: Uh, one of his best friends has just not a few days ago had his head lopped off by a Roman soldier, probably in the city square.
Dr. Philip Nation: And Peter has now been arrested, likely beaten in the process, and he's been chained up between two guards for a week inside of the inner uh sanctum, as it were, of the prison where there's likely no windows, no airflow, no fresh food, no fresh water.
Dr. Philip Nation: He has been stripped down to his bare skivys, and he is shackled in between two of the guys that are on the brute squad.
Dr. Philip Nation: And an angel shows up, and a light beams through the prison, and Peter's still asleep.
Dr. Philip Nation: More about that in a moment.
Dr. Philip Nation: And he has to poke him in the side to wake him up and get him to, and he has to kind of grab him by the scruff of the neck to stand him up.
Dr. Philip Nation: And he says, Arise quickly, and the chains fall off of him.
Dr. Philip Nation: And then the angel said to him, Gurge yourself and tie on your sandals.
Dr. Philip Nation: And so he did, and he said to him, Put on your garment and follow me.
Dr. Philip Nation: So he went out and followed him, and did not know what that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.
Dr. Philip Nation: Peter has seen the miraculous.
Dr. Philip Nation: He watched Jesus cast out demons, heal the blind, heal the lame.
Dr. Philip Nation: He saw him raise people from the dead.
Dr. Philip Nation: He he had witnessed the resurrected Christ.
Dr. Philip Nation: He himself has survived a great many things already to this moment.
Dr. Philip Nation: And yet at the moment of his rescue, he thinks this is all just a dream.
Dr. Philip Nation: I'm just seeing an angelic vision.
Dr. Philip Nation: Like this cannot be real.
Dr. Philip Nation: Even though the light is bright, he's been pulled up by the angel, his shackles have fallen off, he is now kind of trudging forward out of the out of the jail cell, all the while the brute squad are still asleep or they're blinded to this whole thing.
Dr. Philip Nation: Verse 10.
Dr. Philip Nation: When they were past the first and second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads to the city, which opened to them of its own accord.
Dr. Philip Nation: And they went out and went down one street, and immediately an angel departed from him.
Dr. Philip Nation: 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.
Dr. Philip Nation: It was not until he is a couple streets down the road from the prison and the cool night air hits his lungs that he realizes, oh, wait a second, this is all actually happening.
Dr. Philip Nation: That he has walked past two different posts of guards.
Dr. Philip Nation: Remember, he is being guarded by four squads of soldiers.
Dr. Philip Nation: There are 16 Roman guards that are supposed to be watching over him.
Dr. Philip Nation: And a door has miraculously opened from the prison to the outside street, and he's down the road a little bit now, and the angel poofs and vanishes, and he suddenly realizes, he looks around, and he says, Oh, wait, that all actually happened.
Dr. Philip Nation: So when he had considered, it says in verse 12, this he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, and many were gathered together praying.
Dr. Philip Nation: John Mark is going to start showing up for us pretty often as we uh travel through the rest of the book of Acts.
Dr. Philip Nation: And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a girl named Rhoda came to answer.
Dr. Philip Nation: In a Middle Eastern home of this era, there you would have your house, but you would often have a wall around the actual property, essentially your yard, where there would be a wooden gate or wooden door that could be taller than a man.
Dr. Philip Nation: And common courtesy uh called for that when you knocked on the door, you also announced yourself so that the person on the other side would know what's going on, and especially after the sun went down, and now we are somewhere in the middle of the night.
Dr. Philip Nation: And so he stood before the gate and he and and he knocked on the door.
Dr. Philip Nation: And it says there in verse 14 when she recognized Peter's voice.
Dr. Philip Nation: Peter was a well-known guy.
Dr. Philip Nation: I mean, he had preached a lot, he was around the church all the time.
Dr. Philip Nation: Everybody knew Peter was the guy.
Dr. Philip Nation: And so she immediately recognizes his voice, this young uh servant named Rhoda.
Dr. Philip Nation: And because of her gladness, she did not open the gate.
Dr. Philip Nation: Come on! Let the poor guy in.
Dr. Philip Nation: But ran in and announced that Peter stood before the gate.
Dr. Philip Nation: Now, who does she announce it to?
Dr. Philip Nation: The church that is gathered praying for Peter to be miraculously released, either by the political officials, or just God would move his hand and do so.
Dr. Philip Nation: Verse 15, but they said to her, You are beside yourself.
Dr. Philip Nation: You're crazy, you have lost your mind, or as they would say, in my home state of Alabama, you are off your nut.
Dr. Philip Nation: Yet she kept insisting that it was so.
Dr. Philip Nation: So they said, It is his angel.
Dr. Philip Nation: Essentially, they're saying, it is one of two things.
Dr. Philip Nation: It can't be Peter.
Dr. Philip Nation: We're praying for Peter right now to get out of prison.
Dr. Philip Nation: It can't be Peter.
Dr. Philip Nation: So they think it is either an angel that has come to announce that Peter has likely died, or it's actually his spirit.
Dr. Philip Nation: It is like his ghost is coming to let them know, oh, by the way, I didn't make it through the night.
Dr. Philip Nation: Now Peter continued knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.
Dr. Philip Nation: Much like you and I get when God answers our prayers.
Dr. Philip Nation: But motioning them to 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.
Dr. Philip Nation: And he departed and went to another place.
Dr. Philip Nation: And then as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers about what had become of Peter.
Dr. Philip Nation: But when Herod had searched for him and not found him, he examined the guards and commanded that they should be put to death.
Dr. Philip Nation: And he went down from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there.
Dr. Philip Nation: This was the normal course of action.
Dr. Philip Nation: That if you were a part of the brute squad, that you are a prison guard.
Dr. Philip Nation: And I use that pejoratively, but it is a pretty accurate representation.
Dr. Philip Nation: In order to be a prison guard, you basically had to just be one of the toughest guys in town.
Dr. Philip Nation: You didn't have to be one of the best soldiers, you didn't have to be one of the best trained warriors, you just had to be a brute.
Dr. Philip Nation: But if you let anybody go, there was only one payment for your services, and that was death.
Dr. Philip Nation: If you let any prisoner go, you were executed.
Dr. Philip Nation: And so Herod, when he finds out that the soldiers did not keep this one lowly Jewish fisherman, that he had somehow overpowered them all, they were executed.
Dr. Philip Nation: And then the last passage of this chapter, verse 20.
Dr. Philip Nation: Now Herod had been very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and this is where he had run off to.
Dr. Philip Nation: But they came to him with one accord, and having made Blastus, the king's personal aid, their friend, they asked for peace, because their country was supplied with food by the king's country.
Dr. Philip Nation: These are people that have now come to bow the knee and kiss the ring because they needed food from Herod's properties and from all the lands and territories he oversaw.
Dr. Philip Nation: So on a set day, Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat on His throne and gave an oration to them, and the people kept shouting, the voice of a God and not of a man.
Dr. Philip Nation: And then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give glory to God, and he was eaten by worms and died.
Dr. Philip Nation: It's like the teenage version of the Bible.
Dr. Philip Nation: But look at verse 24 and 25.
Dr. Philip Nation: But the word of God grew and multiplied.
Dr. Philip Nation: And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their ministry, and they also took with them John, whose surname was Mark.
Dr. Philip Nation: There he is again.
Dr. Philip Nation: This is the word of the Lord, of course.
Dr. Philip Nation: Thanks be to God for it.
Dr. Philip Nation: The death of Herod is not just found here in the scriptures.
Dr. Philip Nation: It is also the ancient Jewish historian Josephus that also records the death of Herod, that he was on this particular day arrayed in such fine regal robes that it appeared to be as if he was wearing silver.
Dr. Philip Nation: And that he had given a great speech at which everyone had lauded him for his great oratory and rhetorical flares, but that suddenly and inexplicably he had fallen ill while on the throne as if something inside of him had burst.
Dr. Philip Nation: And so what we find once again is the Bible helps us to better understand all of human history.
Dr. Philip Nation: As I think about this particular passage, there are five different ideas that I want to quickly just give to you to consider as we think about how it is that when we read a passage like this, it is tempting for us to say, well, just what are all these people doing in the midst of this?
Dr. Philip Nation: But I want you to press in to always ask that question, well, what is it that this passage tells us about God?
Dr. Philip Nation: Because what we find is that we are all, no matter our station in life, within reach of who he is.
Dr. Philip Nation: The first thing that I would point your attention to is that the natural posture of the Christian should be and can be one of peace and prayer.
Dr. Philip Nation: This should be the default setting of our life based on the goodness and the providence of God.
Dr. Philip Nation: Peter had learned early on that you could trust in God, even though he often did not.
Dr. Philip Nation: When they were on a boat with Jesus and a storm had swelled up and was raging around them, and the apostles were running around the deck of the ship like little children, declaring that we were all going to die, we're going to drown.
Dr. Philip Nation: But Jesus is down in the bow of the boat taking a nap.
Dr. Philip Nation: It was then later on when they were on a boat by themselves, and Jesus came walking out across the top of the water miraculously.
Dr. Philip Nation: And Peter, because he's the, he's, he's, because he's Peter, says, Well, Jesus, if it's really you, call me out and call me to walk across the water as well.
Dr. Philip Nation: Peter, of course, uh loses sight of Jesus and starts looking around at the choppy waves and begins to sink, and Jesus has to pull him back up to the top of the water.
Dr. Philip Nation: Peter was learning this lesson through life.
Dr. Philip Nation: And what I love about this passage is here he is at the end of the week of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, is the next morning.
Dr. Philip Nation: Everybody knows he's going to be pulled out into the city square, and likely he's going to be beheaded just like his best friend James had happened just a week earlier.
Dr. Philip Nation: But what is Peter doing?
Dr. Philip Nation: He's asleep.
Dr. Philip Nation: Folks, I work for a big multinational company.
Dr. Philip Nation: I don't sleep on a Tuesday night because of a spreadsheet that I've got to build the next day.
Dr. Philip Nation: And here Peter is about to lose his life, and he has his shoes kicked off.
Dr. Philip Nation: He is down to the most comfortable set of clothing that he's got, with arms stretched out and chained to two Roman soldiers.
Dr. Philip Nation: He's just dead asleep, not worried about a single thing, knowing that his Redeemer lives, that Christ is enough.
Dr. Philip Nation: And so he's not worried about it.
Dr. Philip Nation: And then meanwhile, what is the church doing?
Dr. Philip Nation: Well, the church is praying and not some pedantic pedestrian performative prayer.
Dr. Philip Nation: Sorry, I am Baptist, I had to get in some alliteration there.
Dr. Philip Nation: But rather, they are praying through the night.
Dr. Philip Nation: They are in the middle of the night praying.
Dr. Philip Nation: This is not something that they had a little get together right after dinner and let's pray for a few minutes and then it's over.
Dr. Philip Nation: But these guys are holding an all-night prayer vigil and likely have been for days.
Dr. Philip Nation: One of the things that I love that Charles Spurgeon says is that prayer moves the arm, which moves all things else.
Dr. Philip Nation: It is by prayer that we align our hearts to the heart of God, that we move into the place where we know what it is that God wants to grant to his children.
Dr. Philip Nation: And the nighttime prayer was the normal thing, which is why it's a normal thing here at TVC.
Dr. Philip Nation: And let me just like give you a little spoiler warning for the end of our service.
Dr. Philip Nation: I want to say to you that if you find yourself in a place in life where things are hard, things are difficult, whether you've made them difficult for yourself or others have made them difficult, there is some burden on your life.
Dr. Philip Nation: Right at the conclusion of our service, right back there in that back corner, are just a little small contingency of TVCers who love to pray for people.
Dr. Philip Nation: And you don't have to tell them all the details of what's going on in your life, but I want to encourage you that at the end of the service, you just wander your way back there and just walk up to one of the folks that'll be waiting in that little section.
Dr. Philip Nation: And you can just say, I just need somebody to pray for me.
Dr. Philip Nation: You tell them all that you want or nothing at all.
Dr. Philip Nation: And they will say, gladly, happily, let's do it right now.
Dr. Philip Nation: What is your name?
Dr. Philip Nation: Let me take you and your name before the throne of God, our Creator, our Father in heaven.
Dr. Philip Nation: Prayer ought to be the natural posture of God's people.
Dr. Philip Nation: And we should never take it lightly and we should never make it small.
Dr. Philip Nation: Phillips Brooks said in one of his books, called The Abundant Life, he said, pray the largest prayers.
Dr. Philip Nation: You cannot think a prayer so large that God, in answering it, will not wish that you had made it larger.
Dr. Philip Nation: Pray not for crutches, but for wings.
Dr. Philip Nation: It is the beauty of prayer that we can ask the God of the universe, who has all power and all things under his authority, for him to answer our deepest needs, for him to meet us at our lowest points.
Dr. Philip Nation: Pray larger prayers.
Dr. Philip Nation: A second thing I'd want you to see from this passage is that delay in deliverance reveals a conspicuous providence.
Dr. Philip Nation: Waiting is often in our culture accounted as weakness and passivity.
Dr. Philip Nation: We are a pull yourself up by your own bootstraps kind of people, which I've never understood how, like physics, how that actually works.
Dr. Philip Nation: Nevertheless, I'll get there one day.
Dr. Philip Nation: But often it is in the waiting where God does his greatest work in our lives.
Dr. Philip Nation: And I take this particular phrase, a conspicuous providence, it is built from a statement named by one of the great preachers of a century ago, Alexander McLaren.
Dr. Philip Nation: He said, delay tests faith, and makes the deliverance when it comes not only the sweeter, but the more conspicuously divine.
Dr. Philip Nation: The delay often is the signal that everything I tried didn't work.
Dr. Philip Nation: All of the wisdom that I thought I could bring to it was not enough.
Dr. Philip Nation: All of the answers, the solutions, and the sometimes manipulations were never going to be enough.
Dr. Philip Nation: But waiting upon the hand of God to move and then to see everything so conspicuously divine work out.
Dr. Philip Nation: It is the way that we can have peace and live by prayer because God is powerful and he is sovereign over all things, even at the moments when deliverance stuns us, as it did both Peter and the church.
Dr. Philip Nation: It is in that delay that we maybe find our greatest joy in what God is doing.
Dr. Philip Nation: A third idea that I want you to see is that the progress of God's work is often made through the instrumentality of his creation.
Dr. Philip Nation: In this passage, we see God working miraculously, gates open without anybody pushing on them.
Dr. Philip Nation: We see angels show up both to deliver Peter, but also to dispatch Herod.
Dr. Philip Nation: But then there is also the human instrumentality in it as well.
Dr. Philip Nation: That God will do the miraculous of working by his own hand or with angels.
Dr. Philip Nation: But think about what Peter had to do.
Dr. Philip Nation: The angel shows up and snatches him up and pokes him in the side and the chains fall off, but he says to Peter, put your sandals on.
Dr. Philip Nation: God could have miraculously just dressed Peter, but he didn't.
Dr. Philip Nation: Peter had to participate.
Dr. Philip Nation: And then the angel leads out, but Peter has to step past the first post of guards.
Dr. Philip Nation: Nervously, sheepishly.
Dr. Philip Nation: Then he has to step past a second post of guards, furtively, shaking a little bit.
Dr. Philip Nation: Then he has to step out into the cool night air beyond the prison walls, knowing that there are people guarding that gate.
Dr. Philip Nation: Peter has to participate.
Dr. Philip Nation: Peter is called, and you and I, we get the privilege of being a part of what God is doing.
Dr. Philip Nation: Warren Wearsby once said, God alone can do the extraordinary, but his people must do the ordinary.
Dr. Philip Nation: So as God is calling you as a parent, as a spouse, as a sibling, as a neighbor, as a coworker, as a witness of his grace, God can do the extraordinary and simply show a vision to your neighbor.
Dr. Philip Nation: But he has called you and I to actually tell them the gospel and to show a life that displays it.
Dr. Philip Nation: He is calling you and I that as he is answering our prayers to walk in the grace that he gives us.
Dr. Philip Nation: Can God do it all?
Dr. Philip Nation: Yes.
Dr. Philip Nation: Does he want you involved?
Dr. Philip Nation: Absolutely.
Dr. Philip Nation: So don't be surprised at the work of God, but instead join him in it.
Dr. Philip Nation: Two other quick ideas that I want to leave you with.
Dr. Philip Nation: Number four is that man's greatest tragedy that we see in this passage is insisting on receiving the glory only due to the Lord.
Dr. Philip Nation: At the end of this passage, Peter has joined with the church and now he's kind of gone off to a separate place, a bit into hiding, as it were.
Dr. Philip Nation: Herod, though, takes a different tact.
Dr. Philip Nation: He doesn't go into hiding.
Dr. Philip Nation: He instead goes and finds a throne to sit on.
Dr. Philip Nation: Rather than responding in humility with peace that comes from God and prayer that shows dependence upon God.
Dr. Philip Nation: Herod responds with angst that he didn't get his way and pride that somebody better bow to me and better do it quick.
Dr. Philip Nation: John Piper has uh a well-known statement.
Dr. Philip Nation: I've heard it from uh Pastor Tommy and other pastors at our church.
Dr. Philip Nation: Uh John Piper once said that God is busy doing a thousand things in the background and we might be aware of three of them.
Dr. Philip Nation: Uh very flawed, infallible Philip Nation uh would tack on to that.
Dr. Philip Nation: It is likely that I am sinning in a thousand ways and likely only aware of three of them.
Dr. Philip Nation: And so it is necessary that you and I remind ourselves that sin is never little.
Dr. Philip Nation: It is always great, and it is always tragic.
Dr. Philip Nation: And eventually, the godlessness in our lives attempts to take the throne.
Dr. Philip Nation: That is where we are always angling toward is the throne of how we can control, of how we can be in charge.
Dr. Philip Nation: The one thing that only God desires, deserves, that we ought to recognize is that if we will give him the glory, do him.
Dr. Philip Nation: But that is the great tragedy, is that we are glory thieves, trying to take it away rather than enjoying the good will and mercy and grace of the God who reigns, who wants your good and redemption, and who dies to purchase just that.
Dr. Philip Nation: This is the place where both Jesus and Herod have something in common is that there is no problem in this world that they did not think some bloodshed would solve.
Dr. Philip Nation: It's just that Jesus was willing to give his own for you and I.
Dr. Philip Nation: The last thing that I want you to see is you in this passage.
Dr. Philip Nation: Number five, God is always moving his people so that they will move the gospel forward.
Dr. Philip Nation: The chapter ends with a touch of beauty and triumph and joy here, where it says, the word of God grew and multiplied.
Dr. Philip Nation: Where here comes Barnabas, Saul, and John Mark.
Dr. Philip Nation: These guys are the B team of the followers of Jesus.
Dr. Philip Nation: This is not the A team of leaders.
Dr. Philip Nation: Peter and James were the A team.
Dr. Philip Nation: Peter, James, and John, those were the those were the guys.
Dr. Philip Nation: And now James is gone, and Peter is going to begin to fade in terms of his profile because God has this plan of this ruffian named Saul, who he's going to rename Paul later on.
Dr. Philip Nation: And a guy who is not the most compelling of personalities, Barnabas.
Dr. Philip Nation: I mean, his nickname is Son of Encouragement.
Dr. Philip Nation: He's your really kind uncle that comes along and punches you in the shoulder and says, Boy, I love you.
Dr. Philip Nation: And John Mark, well, we don't even know who in the world this guy is yet.
Dr. Philip Nation: And yet, now God is going to take these unlikely, yet inevitably kind of humble, in the background characters to take forward the presentation and the proclamation of the gospel to multiply it across the world.
Dr. Philip Nation: Let me just conclude with one of my uh Alexander McLaren, is one of my favorite characters from church history.
Dr. Philip Nation: And he said this.
Dr. Philip Nation: And what had the handful of Christian people?
Dr. Philip Nation: Well, they had prayer and they had Jesus Christ.
Dr. Philip Nation: And that was all, and that is more than enough.
Dr. Philip Nation: And I want to just remind you today that you are not outside of the reach of God.
Dr. Philip Nation: Because no matter what it is that you face, whether trial, tribulation, self-imposed or not, Jesus is enough.
Dr. Philip Nation: Let's pray together.
Dr. Philip Nation: Father, I thank you for your word that encourages us in so many different ways.
Dr. Philip Nation: And I pray that you would bless us with a sense of the stirring work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.
Dr. Philip Nation: Lord, as we come away from a passage like this, it is with a certain amount of encouragement that