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Hello, my name is Paula. The Old Testament reading is found in Isaiah 55, 8 through 11. My plans aren't your plans, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my plans than your plans. Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and don't return there without watering the earth, making it conceive and yield plants and providing seed to the sower and food to the eater, so is my word that comes from my mouth. It does not return to me empty. Instead, it does what I want and accomplishes what I intend. The word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

The New Testament reading is found in Acts chapter 12, verses 1 through 5. About that time, King Herod began to harass some who belonged to the church. He had James, John's brother, killed with a sword. When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he arrested Peter as well. This happened during the festival of unleavened bread. He put Peter in prison, handing him over to four squads of soldiers, sixteen in all, who guarded him. He planned to charge him publicly after the Passover. While Peter was held in prison, the church offered earnest prayer to God for him.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

If you're able, please stand for the gospel reading found in John 18, 33 through 36. Pilate went back into the palace, and he summoned Jesus and he asked, Are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus answered, Do you say this on your own, or have others spoken to you about me? Pilate responded, I'm not a Jew, am I? Your nation and its chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done? Jesus replied, My kingdom doesn't originate from this world. If it did, my guards would fight so that I wouldn't have been arrested by the Jewish leaders. My kingdom isn't from here. The gospel of the Lord.

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Please remain standing with me as we pray. Jesus, we ask today that by your spirit you'd speak to us, your people. We want to have ears to hear. So speak, Lord. For your servants, your daughters, your sons, your kids, your people. We're listening. Help us to hear. In your name we pray. And all God's people said, Amen. Well, good morning again, everybody. And uh welcome again, everybody who's new or newer. We're glad that you're here. And uh hello to everybody who's watching online or who's watching later, particularly all of you who are serving in kids and youth ministry this morning, and uh then tuning in later on. We're grateful for uh you and for your service. Uh and happy 150th birthday to the state of Colorado. Uh, we celebrated that yesterday. Uh 100 years after the birth of the nation, came Colorado, hence the nickname the Centennial States. Um, and so we're just celebrating today. We get to live in this uh beautiful and remarkable place uh this week. We're in a series right now called Kingdom Movement through the book of Acts. Today we're gonna be in Acts chapter 12. Uh so if you have a Bible or an app, you can follow along there, or you can follow along on the screens uh behind me. For those of you though who maybe are just jumping in with us at this point, or who like me, it's just really good to have lots of reminders. I want to do just a quick overview of where we're at at this point, and then we'll go into the text. Uh, but one of the things we've continued to stress throughout this series is that Acts is really part two of a two-volume work uh by an author known as Luke. His other work is, of course, the Gospel of Luke. Uh, Luke himself was a travel companion of Paul. Likely, he was a Gentile from Antioch, an important city in the book of Acts. Uh, actually, we looked at last week. Luke being most likely being a Gentile from Antioch would make him the only non-Jewish writer in the entire New Testament. Uh, and he's writing as a Gentile to another Gentile, a disciple known as Theophilus, a Roman official. And one, of course, the key movements in the book of Acts is the movement of the gospel from Jewish roots into Gentiles, those who embrace the gospel from there. So Luke has a particular interest in this topic. The two volumes, though, Luke and Acts, are meant to be read together, sort of like watching Dune one and Dune two were Wicked One and Wicked Two, or now there's a Dune three. So I don't know how that works anymore, but you know, there it is. Um what Luke does in the gospel is that the gospel recounts everything that Jesus did and taught in his body by the spirits. And then what Acts picks up is what everything Jesus continues to do and continues to teach through his body, the church, now filled with the spirit. And everything, the focus of what Jesus did and taught, and the focus of what the church is supposed to continue to do and teach is the kingdom of God, the inbreaking reign and rule of the king. And so Acts narrates that movement of the kingdom ethnically, the movement from Jew to Gentile, geographically from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth. And along the way, the church continually encounters resistance. Persecution ensues as they're faithful to spreading the gospel. Early in Acts, that persecution comes from Jewish leaders, particularly those connected to the temple, and ramps up under Saul, who's also known as Paul. But after Paul comes to faith, the church enters into this period of peace until Acts chapter 12, when the persecution resumes. But this time it's not from the religious establishment connected to the temple. Instead, it's from the political realm connected and associated with Rome, particularly from King Herod. Now, not King Herod the Great from the Nativity narratives, but one of the other Herods that appear in the New Testament. In fact, there are five. They're just all called Herod. So we're like, oh, it's probably the same one. But there's five different ones that we're introduced to through the course of the New Testament. This is the family that was appointed to rule, appointed by Rome to rule over this region. So in this text, we're looking at the grandson of Herod the Great, Herod Agrippa I. He's the first one, since his grandfather to be granted that title king by Rome. At the end of Acts, we now deal with Herod Agrippa II or Junior. Agrippa III is still available for use. So if you've been looking for a baby name, um, you can go with that. But when you learn the family history, it might not be recommended. You're like, I don't think I want that association. Because what we see in this text and in others is the apple with this family doesn't fall far from the tree. But what gets modeled for them gets repeated. What gets modeled gets repeated. The way that they saw grandfather and father lead and rule begins to get repeated in the next generation. This is actually true for all of us, that oftentimes what's modeled for us is what's lived out by us. And when we think about our beliefs or our practices, particularly the way that we relate or that we communicate, or the way that we lead, or the way that we exercise our strength or power or authority within this world, we oftentimes learn those things from our family of origin. Pete Schazero, who's the founder of the Emotionally Healthy Discipleship courses, which are a huge part of our life together here, has this famous line where he says, Jesus may live in your heart, but Grandpa lives in your bones. This is especially true for King Agrippa the first year. And one of the challenges for us as when we become part of the new family of Jesus, if we didn't grow up in faith, or even if we did grow up in a household of faith, there are still things that we often are unlearning. Learning new ways to communicate, new ways to lead, new ways to relate to one another. But this isn't just true in families of origin. What gets modeled gets repeated. This happens in friendship groups, where we model whatever it is that we see happening within our friends. This gets happens in organizations wherever we work or spend our time. Oftentimes character traits and behaviors are repeated in those places. They certainly happen in churches, happens in cities, even happens in countries. So when we think about our lives, one of the important questions for us to sort of think about in our discipleship to Jesus is what ways of life have been modeled for us? Do those ways really match up with the way of Jesus? Or are there things that were modeled for us that we actually don't want to repeat? Some of us have incredible sort of legacy stories inside the families where you can kind of look back and say, oh, I'm getting the chance to repeat all of these things moving forward, which is incredible. A lot of the others of us, like me, didn't grow up in families of faith. And so there's a lot, sometimes a lot of unlearning to do kind of in the middle of that. But then there's another important conversation. It's not only what has been modeled for us, but what are we modeling for others? And we think about those whose lives that we get to touch or influence. We think about the lives of one another or the lives of people in our meal group or kids or students or nieces or nephews or neighbors. When they look at our lives, what is it that they see? The King Herod, Agrippa here, has grown up watching the way that his family, the dynasty has ruled, and he ends up repeating the same kind of patterns. Here we are in Acts chapter 12, verse 1. About that time, King Herod began to harass some who belonged to the church. He had James, John's brother, killed with a sword. And when he saw that that pleased the Jews, he arrested Peter as well. And this all happened during the festival of unleavened bread. And he put Peter in prison, handing him over to four squads of soldiers, 16 and all, and they all guarded him. And he planned to charge him publicly after the Passover. The word harass here is really putting it mildly. Most translations will use the word persecute in the original language. It says he extended or stretched out his hand to do evil. This is what he's doing. He's stretching out his hand to do evil. And in the scriptures, hand is oftentimes just a symbol for power. That he extended his power, he extended his authority, he extended his strength in order to do evil. And that manifests itself with capturing and killing James. This is James, the son of Zebedee, one of the sons of thunder, or for you chosen fans, Big James, in the middle of that episode. And then he went even further and he arrested Peter. Did you notice that he only did that after he saw that the execution of James was well received? Herod is incredibly calculating. James at this point is a lesser-known, lesser seen, lesser involved leader. And so he goes after James first. He started with him. And when he saw that that was a popular decision, a popular move, it emboldened him to go after kind of the face of the movement at this point before Paul, Peter. And this is oftentimes the way of the bully, whether on the playground or the boardroom or in politics, is that they will use their strength, their authority, their power in evil ways, use violence or the threat of violence as a way to sort of protect what they have going on. But what they do is they test the waters. How far can I go and get away with it? And then maybe if there's resistance, they'll pull back a little bit and then try again. Because the other thing that's true in this is that what gets celebrated also gets repeated. Not only what gets modeled, but what gets celebrated. And not even just celebrated all the time, but what gets tolerated, what gets accepted, what gets justified, what is excused. Those things, whatever the lowest common denominator of that is, becomes the new standard. And that standard then oftentimes gets amplified or even escalated. Oh, if this was okay to take out Big James, certainly it's okay to go after Peter. And we see this happen in so many situations, but this is one of the unique challenges for those who are involved in organizational leadership. This is actually multi-directional. That what gets celebrated by those that people lead, by supporters, by followers, whatever gets celebrated, embraced, and encouraged, leaders will oftentimes continue on that and exaggerate it and amplify it. But also what gets celebrated or tolerated or accepted within an organization by the leaders, the supporters, the staff, the followers will continue to amplify and escalate as well. What gets celebrated or tolerated or accepted or justified gets not only repeated but escalated. And so this is exactly what Herod's doing. Oh, that was okay for me to do that. I'm gonna go after the next guy. But of course, behind all of that is the question of why was Herod so threatened by the church? What was it about this early ragtag group of followers of Jesus that he found to be so threatening that he really needed to start picking off the leaders one by one? Of course, despite appearances, Herod, like most people, feel like they have a tenuous grip on power. Rome trusted him, the people liked him, but Herod knew that at any moment that could change. And certainly there's a new movement happening within his territory that's proclaiming that Jesus, not Herod, not Caesar, is king. And that is going to disrupt this false peace that Rome was promising. But now we have this movement beginning to gain traction, it's gaining followers, people are converting, they're changing their hearts and lives, they're beginning to live in different ways, and this poses an existential threat to Herod's rule. So, like anyone with a tenuous grip on control, he just tried to tighten it, extended his hand in evil, and created a showdown between his kingdom and the kingdom of God. Herod has exercised his power in this story to imprison and to kill. And now at Passover, here the people of God are getting ready to celebrate deliverance from an oppressive power. They're remembering in their story in Egypt, they're remembering the story of Pharaoh and Moses. And at the same time, though, they find themselves in an eerily similar situation. This time one of their leaders is locked up. Another one has just been killed, and it doesn't look good. It doesn't look good for Peter, it doesn't look good for the church, it doesn't look good for the gospel. They've been here before with the temple authorities, but now this is Herod. Now this is the king. Now this is Rome. Now this is bigger. Now this is escalated. And the question, of course, is how is the church going to respond? What is the church going to do? What is going to happen next? Which is oftentimes the question for us too, when we find ourselves in similar situations, maybe not with a king trying to kill us, but when we are facing situations where we are scared, where we are worried, where we're racked by fear, where we're unknown, like how are we going to get through this or what the pathway is forward when we're pressed and wondering what is going to happen with this job or this bill or this situation or this relationship. When we find ourselves in a place of going, I'm not sure that there is a way out or a way forward when we find ourselves in those moments where it's like, oh no, our back is against the wall. How do we respond? It's August. And so every time it turns to be August, and especially when it's this hot outside, I'm reminded of when I was in high school and attempted to play football. I wouldn't say that I was good at it, but I played. Part of it's because it was a small town, so you got to play. Um, but August meant two a days. Full pad, full speed practices in a hundred degree heat with a hundred percent humidity. Uh, some of you are like, yes, I remember that. Uh, there'll be counselors available after the service. And when I'm back in those moments, I can still like have these moments where like we're out there early in the morning and starting to stretch. And then my freshman and sophomore year, I had this football coach named Coach Darrell Schumacher.

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And he would walk around every day with this big, deep, booming voice and go, men, today we're not gonna work very long. Six or seven hours, take a break, come back six or seven more, and just go on and on. And he would always kind of get to this climactic moment where his voice would go up, and then he'd say, Men, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. And then he'd just start yelling. You're like, come on, you know, run harder, faster, or whatever. And he's like, Oh my gosh, coach, you're killing us.

SPEAKER_04 19:24

But that phrase, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, so captures so much of our ethos as people. That there's a sense like what we want to do is we want to rise up to meet the challenge. We want to muster our strength or our power. And there's something really noble and even dignified in that. That in those moments, this is where our character is formed, where character is proven, it shows itself in the midst of adversity. That kind of essence, champions, those virtues of hard work and perseverance and grit, all of which are beautiful, wonderful things to be celebrated. And yet it has an underbelly. I think, particularly in the post-Enlightenment West. And the underbelly of that sort of ethos is the myth of self-reliance. That everything that we need is in us. It just needs to be discovered, it just needs to be unlocked, it just needs to be unleashed in some way, that it's there, and if we could just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, then we'll find a way out of this. It's either that or our pace of life, one of those two things, may be the greatest hindrance to our life with God. Our sense of self-reliance or our pace by which we go about our days. But Acts chapter 12 reminds us that there is a different way. Acts chapter 12, verse 5 says this. While Peter was held in prison, what did the church do? The church offered earnest prayer to God for him. The church gathered and offered earnest prayer as their first response to the situation that they were facing. Now, I know that when we read a verse like this, it's actually probably pretty quick to dismiss. There are sometimes we hear a verse like this, and we we might think, well, that's cute. Like, that's great. But what about, you know, the petition or the protest, or like what else are you gonna do from there? Or others you may be here and you're like, yeah, I came back to church, um, and what do I get? A pastor talking about prayer again. Um, like there's a triteness that might sound to it at times. Or for many, like the the sense of when our back is against the wall, taking a moment to pray to pray just sounds incredulous. Like, really? Honestly, like that's the best advice that you can give in this moment? Why would we think that a small group of people huddled together talking to God is going to make a difference in this situation with Peter in any other situation in our lives? Like, sure, say a prayer if that's your thing, but then do something else? Like go along from there. For others, though, I think it's not so much any of those things that we want to that cause us to kind of distance ourselves, but but there's the reality that prayer is oftentimes a part, if not the biggest part, of our disappointment with God. That if we've experienced disappointment with God in our lives, it it usually is somehow connected to prayer. That it's just seemed that prayer didn't work, that it didn't work in the way or the time that we wanted it to happen. And so we find ourselves in our walk with Jesus questioning or doubting the efficacy of prayer in general, or maybe just questioning or doubting the efficacy of our prayers. Like, if somebody else could pray about that, that would be great, but I'm not sure the Lord hears mine. Or at times going to the place where you even doubt the efficacy of God's power. Like, really is why are we talking to God about this? He hasn't shown up before. But I think whatever that story happens to be, what our default posture is then is to remain or to return to self-reliance, is to come back to that place. I'll figure it out, I'll get through, I'll find a way. But the scriptures continually summon us back to prayer. Continually show us a church whose first response is prayer. Continually show us a church that tarries in prayer, that continues to say, we're going to keep coming back to this. So here we are in August and getting ready for many people to return to rhythms of some kind. Summer has been all over the place, and we're kind of thinking, okay, a school year is coming and we're going to get back into rhythms. And I just want to encourage us in that conversation to recommit to prayer. In its various forms, whatever that looks like. It may be just taking moments and expressing gratitude. It may be praying about specific things, it may be interceding for others. And to use whatever help you absolutely need in the middle of that. One of the greatest challenges to my life with prayer is I thought prayer had to look one way. And it had to look like me in a room on my knees by myself and just praying out loud, you know, either in tongues or screaming or doing something, but I needed to be on my knees and I needed to be praying and it needed to be at least an hour. Um, and uh in my you know, dorm room that wasn't really that comfortable. Uh, and most of the time I would wake up 45 minutes later after falling asleep going, Well, that didn't work. And then I discovered praying the psalms, or I discovered, like, oh, our songs that we sing on Sunday mornings are prayers. I can play worship music and pray along to it, or discover the idea of praying as you go, of taking those moments in the car, driving the kids to school and praying for them, or being stuck at a red light, or whatever it happens to be, or apps like the pause app or Lectio 365, like all of those things that can just help us teach us how to pray, or even the importance of gathering together in groups. This Sunday is first Sunday prayer, 6:30 at the Commons. Uh, Pastor Evan the Pacquiao's will be lead leading that. Um, so please, like if that helps, just go and gather with other people. But it's so important because I love how Will Willemann says this the power of the church is the power of prayer. It really is the power of the church. Yes, there are a lot of other things that we can do and become active and all, and we should do all of that in pursuing the common good and our common life and caring for one another. Yes. Yet the church's first language is the language of prayer. Because the power of prayer is really just recognizing that we're relying on the power of God, that whatever it is that we're doing, whether it's on a Sunday morning or in a meal group or anywhere else, what we're relying on is the power of God to show up in our midst. And the early church devoted themselves to prayer. Over and over again, they devoted themselves to this, and this did not mean that life was easy. And it certainly didn't mean that everything worked out. And it certainly didn't even mean that every prayer that they prayed was answered in the way that they thought it was going to be answered. Peter was rescued in this moment. We're gonna see in a second. Like, you know, buried the lead there. Um, but later on he's gonna be executed. There's a tension there that we have to sort of live with. Stephen and James are martyred, more would be killed. But what their commitment to prayer did mean is that at times they witnessed the miraculous. They got to see it and not only see it, but they participated in it. So this is God's great invitation to us to participate. And so Acts chapter 12, verse 6, the night before Herod was going to bring Peter's case forward, so some time has passed. Peter was asleep between two soldiers and bound with two chains, with the soldiers guarding the prison entrance. And suddenly an angel from the Lord appeared and light shone in the prison cell. And after nudging Peter on his side to wake him up, my favorite line. Hey Peter, something's happening. The angel raised him up and said, Quick, get up. And the chains fell off of his wrist. And then what follows in the next couple of verses is perhaps the most comical story in all of Acts. Peter doesn't know what's happening. He gets up, he starts walking out, and the whole time he thinks it's a vision until like the cold air hits him, and he's like, Oh, wait, this is actually real. He thought it was a vision. Then he came to his senses, and he walked over to John Mark's mother's house where the people were gathered to pray. And then he knocked on the door. The person that answered was so excited to see him that she didn't open the door. She just ran back inside and said, Hey, Peter's here. And then this group of people that's been gathered together praying for Peter's release, whose first response is to believe in the power of prayer. They don't believe it. I'm like, oh. Like that's us. Right? Like, we're praying and we're not sure it's gonna happen. And then Peter's there and they're looking for every other excuse. She doesn't know what she's talking about, she's lost her mind. It must be a guardian angel. They thought she was imagining or hallucinating, there was some other thing, but she's like insistent. Meanwhile, Peter's just out there continuing to knock on the door, right? Just waiting. And then finally they're like, oh, let's go see, not expecting to see anything. And there's Peter, and they're absolutely astounded. They're astonished that the thing that they've been praying for for weeks actually happens. Isn't that so like us as people? Well, when the news reached Herod, he was furious. So he questioned and executed the guards. And then we have this abrupt scene change where Herod now goes to Caesarea to a festival, and we're like, oh, we're leaving that story behind and coming to the next thing. And then we read this in Acts 12, 21, on that scheduled day, Herod he dressed himself up in royal attire and he seated himself on a throne and he gave a speech to all of his people. And those who were assembled kept shouting over and over again, this is a God's voice, not the voice of a mere human. And then immediately an angel from the Lord struck Herod down because he didn't give honor to God and he was eaten by worms and he died. We're like, well, that got dark, like real fast. This exact same event is recorded by Josephus, the Jewish Roman historian. On his account, though, it was he emphasizes his attire, that Herod dressed him up in these silver robes to catch the sun and then made him shine and look divine. And this sense that power so often manifests itself in pride. And then here, all of these people began to treat Herod as a god, and he didn't rebuke them or reject their flattery. Instead, he embraced it. He began to believe his own press. And then what we heard all the way back earlier in Luke that the mighty will be brought down, that the proud will be humbled, happens to Herod. Immediately he experiences, according to Josephus, a severe abdominal pain. And then five days later he died, 44 BC. Commentators like emphasize this phrase, eaten by worms, to think, oh, maybe he had a parasite or had gangrene, had some sort of intestinal sort of thing that happened, maybe a burst appendix or something along those lines. Others see it as a not as a reference to the natural decay that happens after burial. So those are your two options. You can discuss it over lunch. Um, which one that you think it happens to be? But the emphasis is here, Herod, with all of his might and all of his power and all of his pomp and all of his circumstance, his life and his reign end in a moment. It ends abruptly and it ends permanently. And then the very next line is this But God's word continued to grow and increase. But God's word continued to grow and increase. This is the ultimate commentary on Herod's life and on all those who oppose God's kingdom. That whatever tactics they try, and even whatever momentary successes they have, however others might extend their hand, their power, their authority to do evil, God's word will continue to grow and increase. And for the people of God, that is where we place our hope. Not in our abilities, not in relying on ourselves, but in Him. And so as the worship team comes forward, I want to spend just a moment looking at that last verse one more time. And God's word continues to grow and increase. It's probably a nod there all the way back to our Old Testament reading on Isaiah 55, where the Lord says this, so is my word that comes from my mouth. It does not return to me empty. It does what I want and accomplishes what I intend. I think what this story is meant to do is to remind us in whatever situations that we're facing, whatever place that we find, like our back is against the wall in life, that we as the people of God live in the unshakable kingdom of God. That we serve a God who keeps his promises. We serve a God who both his power and his character can be trusted. We serve a God who is utterly distinct. We serve a God who is infinitely great. And we serve a God who is entirely good. And for when he extends his hands, he does not extend his hands to do evil. Instead, he extends his hands to do good. And there's no clearer evidence of that. If we remember when we come to the table that we serve a God who loves us so much and wanted to do good in the world, that he was willing to send his son, and his son was willing to go to the cross for us. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. For as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be a world without end. Amen.