Thankfully the man’s details were marked on a label attached to the briefcase and, after a few enquiries with SNCF (the French train operator) it turned up, unopened, several hours later.
Only then did Kathie see why this man had been so distressed about losing his luggage. He opened it up in front of the Consulate staff and to everyone’s amazement it was chock full of banknotes!
It was a surreal moment and you might think I’m exaggerating. You would be forgiven for thinking I’ve just made it up, but I haven’t. It is absolutely true. Ask Kathie about it.
It’s one thing for a Civil Servant to lose a USB stick with sensitive or confidential files. We sometimes hear of mishaps like that.
But just absent-mindedly leaving a briefcase full of cash on a train beggars belief doesn’t it?
What we find at the beginning of Acts chapter 12 has a similar “did that actually really happen?” feel to it.
And, of course there has been no shortage of liberal theologians who take a pair of scissors to everything in scripture they don’t believe - which is most of it – who just dismiss it as a total fabrication.
What we’re about to read is a major security breach demanding a public inquiry. Either it’s incompetence on a Keystone Cops scale, or it’s a coincidence against impossible odds – or it’s a miracle that shows God’s power to set captives free.
Let’s read it together.
About that time King Herod Agrippa began to persecute some believers in the church. He had the apostle James (John’s brother) killed with a sword. When Herod saw how much this pleased the Jewish people, he also arrested Peter. (This took place during the Passover celebration.) Then he imprisoned him, placing him under the guard of four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring Peter out for public trial after the Passover. But while Peter was in prison, the church prayed very earnestly for him.
The
night before Peter was to be placed on trial, he was asleep, fastened with two
chains between two soldiers. Others stood guard at the prison gate. Suddenly,
there was a bright light in the cell, and an angel of the Lord stood before
Peter. The angel struck him on the side to awaken him and said, “Quick! Get
up!” And the chains fell off his wrists. Then the angel told him, “Get dressed
and put on your sandals.” And he did. “Now put on your coat and follow me,” the
angel ordered.
So
Peter left the cell, following the angel. But all the time he thought it was a
vision. He didn’t realize it was actually happening. They passed the first and
second guard posts and came to the iron gate leading to the city, and this
opened for them all by itself. So they passed through and started walking down
the street, and then the angel suddenly left him
Peter finally came to his senses. “It’s really true!” he said. “The Lord has sent his angel and saved me from Herod and from what the Jewish leaders had planned to do to me!”
When he realized this, he went to the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many were gathered for prayer. He knocked at the door in the gate, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to open it. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed that, instead of opening the door, she ran back inside and told everyone, “Peter is standing at the door!" “You’re out of your mind!” they said. When she insisted, they decided, “It must be his angel.”
Meanwhile, Peter continued knocking. When they finally opened the door and saw him, they were amazed. He motioned for them to quiet down and told them how the Lord had led him out of prison. “Tell James and the other brothers what happened,” he said. And then he went to another place.
Prayer…
A few years ago, I read a book called “The Heavenly Man” by Brother Yun.
By the way, I lent it to someone and never got it back, so if it was you, and you are being convicted by the Holy Spirit right now, I forgive you, but you owe me a beer.
Yun is a church leader from China who spent years getting hunted down, beaten up and locked away for his faith.
After
serving many years of a long custodial sentence, just for leading a church, he
broke out of Zhengzhou Maximum Security prison, from which nobody had
previously escaped.
He describes in the book how he heard the voice of the Holy Spirit telling him to simply walk out of the heavily guarded series of prison gates.
At risk of being shot dead on the spot, he obeyed the voice of God, and walked, heart pounding, straight past many prison guards and through several steel gates that were inexplicably standing open.
He walked across the prison yard and finally straight out of the main gate.
Yun says that it was as if he had become invisible to the guards who seemed to stare straight through him.
Official records show that some prison officers did lose their jobs at that time for what is vaguely described as an ‘embarrassing mishap’.
The book says that an official investigation by the Chinese Government concluded that “Yun received no human help in his escape.” But it doesn’t say anything about divine help!
Yun’s testimony has since been confirmed by numerous inmates who were detained at that time.
To this day, Brother Yun is the only person to ever have escaped from this notorious maximum-security prison.
The background (v1-3)
Let’s look a little closer at this amazing passage of scripture. Verses 1-3 give some background. It says that King Herod was on the throne at the time.
This is not the Herod you hear about at Christmas but actually his grandson, Herod Agrippa.
Herod is a puppet king, controlled by Rome. If he lets civil unrest get out of hand on his watch the Romans will just get rid of him and impose direct rule.
So to stay in power Herod has to keep the general population happy.
How’s he going to do that? He has two options. 1) He can put taxes down. Classic move, always popular… but that would mean cutbacks on his own extravagant lifestyle. So that’s a non-starter.
The second option is a much cheaper way to raise his popularity ratings - execute a villain.
So he has the idea of disposing of a few Christians. He beheads the apostle James and, when he sees how much people love that, he has Peter arrested, jailed and set up for a show trial when the Passover feast is over.
Why is the general population so upset with the Christians? It’s because, at that time, many are feeling threatened.
Synagogues are emptying and churches are growing. The successful spread of the Gospel is making them worried that their faith will die out altogether.
So Herod orders the trophy arrest of Simon Peter and he chooses the week of Passover to do it because that’s when the place is packed with Jewish people.
It’s a golden opportunity to get rid of a leading Christian, bump up his popularity rating and consolidate his power.
And it seems that Herod is aware of Peter’s previous escape in Acts 5, so just to make sure lightning doesn’t strike twice he steps up the security arrangements.
Impossible odds (v4-6)
The conditions described in v4-6 are to help us understand this; that any attempt at escape faces overwhelming odds. It is Mission: Impossible.
For a start, Peter isn’t even awake at the start of his prison break so it’s no credit to him.
Secondly, he is situated between two guards, he’s an arm’s length from being pulled back at the first movement he makes.
Thirdly, he is attached to each of them by a length of iron chain.
Fourthly, his cell is locked and bolted.
Fifthly, there are additional sentries stationed outside the cell door, just in case.
And sixthly, there is the small matter of the outer prison wall.
Verse 4 says that Herod had Peter secured by four squads of soldiers. The four sets of guards would have each consisted of four men each, making 16, and they would have rotated their watch every few hours around the clock.
Herod is going over the top to make sure that there is no possible way that Peter will get away this time. For Peter it looks hopeless. Death by decapitation after a sham trial is a few days away and even Houdini would be hard pushed to get out of this one.
What are you facing in your life at the present time that feels totally impossible?
Difficulties with your children that you just can’t find a way through? The spiralling cost of living that your means cannot match? A marriage that’s hit the wall? Bad news from the doctor? Do you need a breakthrough today?
The escape (v7-11)
Well, v7-11 explain, step by step, how the power of God is able to burst into the realm of the impossible and unlock every door.
We know that nothing is impossible for God. His voice can still any storm.
His power can heal any disease. His authority can bring down any regime.
The love he proved by enduring the cross can melt the heart of the hardest criminal. “His blood can make the foulest clean.”
Jeremiah 32.17 says “Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you… Great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord Almighty, great are your purposes and mighty are your deeds… You performed signs and wonders in Egypt and have continued them to this day.”
And look, Acts 12 bears the hallmarks of a factual report.
Consider this: there is no attempt to build Peter up as a kind of mythical hero which a propaganda story might do. The way Peter is unceremoniously woken up in v7 with a thump in the ribs is unflattering.
The angel telling him to put on his sandals and wrap his cloak around him in v8 is incidental. In other words, it appears that is only there because someone remembered things happening that way.
In v9 Peter is again portrayed as clueless and half asleep, not a superman who singlehandedly overcame the mighty Roman Empire.
Verse 10 looks very similar to what Brother Yun experienced in China, walking through doors that open in front of him one by one.
It isn’t until v11 that Peter realizes this isn’t a dream.
But I think the greatest evidence of this story’s authenticity is that the New Testament is honest enough to tell us about other men who weren’t released and who died in prison. Both John the Baptist and James were executed and it says so here.
If every imprisonment in the Bible resulted in a miraculous release it might look a bit contrived, but there is no attempt to hide the fact that some believers did die in prison and were not miraculously released.
For all those reasons I take this as a factual, trustworthy and true account of what happened that night. Nothing is impossible with God.
So whatever pain you carry, whatever hardship you bear, whatever despair you face, whatever suffering you endure, know this; God… is… able.
God is able… especially when Christians pray - which is what I want to turn to now.
When Christians pray together (v12)
Verse 12 says Peter went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying.
While an angel was escorting this half-asleep prisoner out of jail, Christians, we’re told, were praying “fervently.” Do you know what praying fervently looks like?
The Greek adverb translated “fervently” is in fact a medical term which was used to describe the stretching of a muscle to its extreme limits. This was prayer stretched as far as it could go.
The same word is used in Luke 22:44 for the way Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke writes, “Being in anguish, [Jesus] prayed more earnestly, (there’s the word again - fervently) and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.”
Earnest, fervent prayer is an awesome weapon. Satan absolutely hates it.
In the 1982 Falklands War a British paratrooper unit made an assault on the Argentinian base at Goose Green but they got into trouble and the advance stalled.
Their inspirational leader, Colonel H. Jones, was killed (he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross), they had taken severe casualties, many of their troops were down and they were now outnumbered by the enemy by 3 to 1.
The British troops were out of ammunition and low on supplies. They were exhausted, having been on the go for 40 hours non-stop and were now facing an imminent counter-attack which would certainly have crushed them.
They were given orders from above to advance on Goose Green and attack it but they simply did not have the resources do it. They were in real trouble.
Two of the soldiers approached their Major, a man called Chris Keeble, and said “what are we going to do?” Keeble was a devout Christian said, “give me a few minutes.”
He went off to a place which had previously been shelled, with the smell of death and burning all around him, and he knelt down. He took a prayer he had written out of his pocket and just gave himself afresh to God and in absolute desperation, knowing this day could be his last, he prayed, asking the Lord for help.
And God spoke to him. It must have been God because what came into his mind was so left-field, he would never had have come up with it himself.
God said, “ask the Argentinians for their surrender.” So he went back to his troops and said, “Right what we’re going to do is this; tomorrow we are going to ask them for their surrender.” His men just looked at him!
The next morning a couple of Argentinian prisoners of war walked down to Goose Green with the message that massive British reinforcements were imminent (which was a bluff) and, to avoid a bloodbath, that they were offering terms of surrender.
And they accepted, so the battle ended right then with no more bloodshed. Amazing things can happen when we earnestly seek God in times of great pressure.
The believers in Acts 12 were praying like Chris Keeble prayed; fervently, passionately, wholeheartedly, energetically.
They were also praying like Jesus prayed in the Garden the night he was betrayed; when they prayed the answer was “yes” and that’s why Peter was released.
When Jesus prayed the answer was “no” and that’s why we’re here today, because Jesus drank the cup of suffering that God did not take away, he went to the cross, he suffered and died so that sin can be taken away, and then he rose again.
In both cases that stretched muscle praying led to great release; immediate release from jail for Peter and, praise God, eternal release from hell for us.
Fervent prayer... Do you want to pray like Jesus prayed? You don’t even need great faith. God blesses faith but he also blesses obedience.
Did these Christians have super strong faith? They were praying obediently but not, it turns out, with very much faith.
It seems it was one of those prayer meetings where there’s more heat than light! Have you ever been to one of those? I always imagine it as a stonking, revivalist style gathering with fiery language, much shouting and loud cries of “Do I hear an Amen!”
But, of course, the comic element is that when Peter actually turns up, they don’t believe it’s him. Clearly, these people are not expecting their prayer to be answered – at least any time soon. But even with a little faith, God is a great God, and where there is prayer, he moves.
Have you been praying for something for years and still await God’s answer?
Some of you know that we have a son we had not seen in years as he cut himself off from us. We prayed daily that God would intervene and wondered at times if we would ever live to see the answer to our prayers. But three months ago, he made contact and a month later we met up. God is faithful.
Pete Greig from 24/7 Prayer says, “Often the Church is less than honest about unanswered prayer, but when you read the book of Psalms, half of it is lament and the word Israel means ‘struggle’. We have been baptised into a faith that is about fighting and wrestling.”
Queen Bertha of Kent arrived in England in about 570 AD from France to marry King Ethelbert, who was a pagan.
But her parents would only let her marry him if she could freely practice her Christian faith. So King Ethelbert restored an abandoned church in Canterbury so that Bertha could have a place to pray.
17 years of prayer later, 40 monks arrived from Rome with the purpose of introducing the gospel to England.
They were welcomed by Queen Bertha, and even used her prayer chapel as the base for their mission, which is why Canterbury has such significance in the Church in England today.
Her husband King Ethelbert reluctantly agreed to meet the Christian monks, but over time he converted to Christianity.
As a result of his conversion - and thanks to Queen Bertha’s years of prayer - the gospel spread across England, a great movement broke out, and it later officially became a Christian country.
Queen Bertha was an amazing woman who was devoted to Jesus; who persevered in faith, and who God used powerfully and miraculously to impact the faith of a nation.
Ending
I’m an extravert. And as such I find it easier to pray with others than alone.
I’m also an activist. I find it hard to slow down. I like working long hours. But some time ago I learned this lesson: “When I work, I work. But when I pray, God works.”
There’s no short cut if we are going to see God move in power – every revival is preceded by prayer and the spiritual breakthroughs that we long for won’t happen without it.
Pray for your neighbours. Pray at work. Pray for the streets as you drive walk or drive around. Pray when you can’t get to sleep at night. God probably woke you up!
But Acts 12 says pray with others. Pray in life groups. Pray with your children. Pray in triplets. Pray as couples. Pray with friends. And keep going even when nothing seems to be happening. Never give up.
The theologian Jim Watkins once said, “A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.”
Let’s stand to pray…
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 10 July 2022
