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The Vision of the United Baptist Church is to be a praying, growing church that glorifies God and actively meets the spiritual and physical needs of our church members, the people of Ellsworth, Hancock County and beyond.
I'm sure if we think back, most of us can recall a time in our lives when we were a bit lost. For many, the teenage years and young adulthood were defined by this lack of direction. Or perhaps you recall being given an assignment or certain parameters for your work and not understanding how they fit with your job or with the company's stated mission.
You may also recall times or situations when your direction in life was very clear. I think that a contrast of these two situations can really make you stop and appreciate what a difference it makes to know where you're going and why. It can certainly be confusing at times to discern our direction in specific areas of life. But as Bible believers, our lives are given very clear direction.
We are to go and make disciples. Jesus is command in Matthew 28 was not ambiguous, but it does assume something. It assumes that we have good reason to obey. This morning we will begin a two week look at Chapter 12, where Luke continues laying forth for Theophilus, his sponsor. The events that took place after Jesus's resurrection and ascension.
As this chapter builds on all that has come before showing the unstoppable advance of the Gospel, it also shows through its events the reason that the disciples were so eager to carry out their mission. I hope through these two messages to convey one simple point that can redirect your whole life. God gets the glory, and I hope this morning to convince you, as Luke sought to convince the oflice that the opportunity we have to dedicate our lives to God's glory is worth any price.
God, you are so good. You're so good to invite us to take part in your work for you this morning. As your words preach that it would be you speaking. You would become great in this place, in our hearts and our minds. You would open ears, open hearts, and then we would go forth from here, desiring to bring you glory.
In Jesus name, Amen. The events of today's texts in Acts took place roughly 12 or 15 years after the Ascension. I don't know if that's a surprisingly long or a surprisingly short time for some could be both. 12 to 15 years in our past puts us in Obama's first term, which may also seem like yesterday or like eons ago.
But think of how this affects our understanding of acts. The pace of Luke's writing doesn't allow us a lot of room to think in terms of a decade and a half. He jumps from narrative scene to narrative scene fairly briskly, seeking to convey the scope and significance of what God is doing rather than pieced together a timeline. When we stop and ponder just how much the Gospel of Jesus had accomplished in this time, though, 15 years becomes a much more impressive number.
In this uncertain span of time, the Gospel has gone out from an upper room and spread across the city of Jerusalem like wildfire. 3000 converted by a single sermon. From here, it went through Judea. Worn by pilgrims and the persecuted, it traveled to Samaria, landing like a bolt of lightning in the midst of a people thought immune to Jewish influence and completely upending their society as they joyfully received the word of God.
And from there, the Gospel exploded all ethnic and cultural bounds, spreading down roads and highways over rivers, across mountain ranges and beyond the seas to the end of the earth, all in less than a generation. This is the power of the Gospel of God. Of course, the spread of the Gospel was not unchallenged as we know. We have seen that the opposition to God's work has intensified steadily, along with the progress of that work.
The hardhearted religious establishment, who Jesus called Sons of the Devil, took up the devil's work in earnest from arguments in the street to hearings before the Sanhedrin to imprisonment, to the stoning of Stephen, and vicious and widespread persecution. The kingdom, the scribes and the Pharisees had built fort to defend itself from the rise of the Kingdom of God in Christ.
And now in Chapter seven, Chapter 12, we see yet another escalation. In verses one through five, we see that Herod has taken notice of this new sect among the Jews, the intrusion of the nark, the Rome appointed ruler of the ethnic Jews into this religious turmoil is significant. Herod, more than any other aspect of his personal or political life, represents the authority and the absolute power of Rome.
His fascinating history and his complex relationship with Israel are surely factors that would have impressed much on Theophilus. We might get into a bit more of that next week, but for us this morning, these verses reveal two vital facts about Herod. He sides wholly with the Jewish leaders for political reasons, and he wields the power of Rome to its fullest and most deadly extent.
We read that Herod the King laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. James, the brother of John, the son of Zebedee, is put to death and other others of the faith suffer. The state sponsored violence that Rome so frequently employs. But as we see so often in Luke's writing, an event of great importance is mentioned almost as a footnote.
There is more to be said of James's death, in particular. Luke, however, moves on, leaving the first martyrdom of an apostle and the first Roman persecution of Christians as the background for the two stories to come. I want to paint focused mainly on this background and on the first story today and pick up with the second story next week.
But through both weeks, I hope we can see God's working as consistent here. God is continuing to send forth His Word using various means and reigning sovereignly over a variety of circumstances. We see a tragic death, a miraculous rescue, and a divine judgment. But through it all, God gets the glory. So continuing in verse three, and again, speaking of Herod, when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.
Whatever Herod's original motivation in assaulting the disciples and killing James, Peter is now held as a pawn in Herod's political game. And of course, this isn't the first time Peter has been arrested. We read back in chapter four of Peter and John being held overnight by this Majesties. And in chapter five, the High priest throws the Apostles into the common prison Here.
In the beginning of Chapter 12, though, Herod likely has Peter imprisoned within the Antonia fortress where the Roman garrison is housed. This garrison is large enough to patrol the entire Jerusalem area and respond to incidents of unrest among the people. Peter was essentially inside a military base in the maximum security prison, guarded by four squads of Roman soldiers who took shifts guarding him so closely that they were literally chained to him.
Unlike with James, Herod, did not act swiftly with Peter because of the feast of unleavened Bread. The Jews would have been offended by a trial and an execution during the Holy days. So Peter was kept in prison until the business would resume after the Passover. But earnest prayer was made for him by the church. EARNEST prayer? We could also read this as fervent prayer or even unceasing prayer.
And no matter how scattered the church was at this point, this verse also leads us to believe that prayer was being made throughout the entire church. There was a uniform and passionate intercession being made for Peter. As the days of this festival progressed, God's throne was receiving a steady stream of petitions. And again, Luke does not dwell on the significance of this statement about the disciples praying.
But I'd like us to for just a minute, one of the keynotes that makes up the tenor of this passage is the weak versus the strong. Here the believers are facing the most severe threat to their existence. Yet Rome was very strategic and efficient in their empire building, and much of that strategy involved the calculated and often very extreme use of their military power.
One of Rome's enemies stated of Rome that to ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles they call empire. And where they make a desert, they call it peace. It was not long before this period and likely during Jesus's lifetime that the Romans crucified 2000 Jews as punishment for a single rebellion, becoming the enemy of such a ruthless and seemingly omnipotent government must have been terrifying.
At least with the Jewish leaders, there was some hope for legal procedure or cultural and religious similarities to help in making your case. But as those under Roman occupation, without the status of Roman citizens, you could only hope that the far off administrative calculations of Caesar might somehow be directed to temper the whims of the King. In this case, Herod had no such orders to treat the Christians well, and as we read, he gained the favor of the local leaders by his persecutions.
This leaves the church with nothing but prayer. Of course, if you're familiar with prayer and with how God's Word reshapes our understanding, then you know that being left with nothing but prayer is far from being left with nothing. The other display of weak versus strong in Acts 12 is the contrast between earthly power and heavenly power. This contrast is the heart of the chapter, and we see that it is so surprising that even the believers who have realized their own weakness and are calling out to God are thrown off.
When God moves. Peter is in jail, awaiting trial and presumably execution. Picking up in verse six now, when Herod was about to bring him out on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains and centuries before the door regarding the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him and a light shown in the cell.
He struck Peter in the side and woke him saying, Get up quickly. And the chains fell off his hands. I don't know if you've been in situations that seemed hopeless before. They're not uncommon in this world. When we think about being in this kind of situation, facing something that's never been faced before by these Christians, having nothing left but prayer, it's a bit of a scary thought.
Oftentimes when we're left with nothing but prayer, it's because we've exhausted every other avenue. It's because we've tried and we've tried. With our wisdom and with our strength and with our efforts and with our resources to get where we think we need to go in our timetable. Oftentimes for our glory, they have nothing else Rome can do to them.
Whatever they want. And so they pray and God moves from this point. With the angel striking Peter in the side, Lou goes into fairly great detail about Peter's rescue. And ironically, I'm not going to spend much time exploring these details. It is significant that the Lord sent an angel yet again to free Peter from prison. This already occurred as we read in chapter five and how great an assurance to see God's continuing and consistent deliverance played out in the same way.
Perhaps more interesting is the fact that Peter thinks he's dreaming until he's been brought out into the city and is left alone on the street. Is he just sleepy or does Peter have trouble believing his own deliverance is occurring in verse nine? It says that Peter thought he was seeing a vision. Perhaps this is simply a statement reflecting how marvelous and ethereal this angelic rescue was, even to a man familiar with God's power.
Regardless, Peter's freed, and when he realizes that his rescue is real states 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. Peter immediately confirms that his deliverance was unexpected. When he goes to a friend's house and even they don't believe it.
Peter's reception at the house of his friends who were gathered together and were praying is comic, to be sure, and perhaps ridiculous to some. But I think perhaps we should reserve judgment here. It's a little hard to pin down exactly what was in the hearts of these believers at the house of John Mark's mother. For one thing, we don't know what they were praying for.
They may have been praying earnestly and faithfully that Peter would stand strong on the day of execution, just as James had so recently done. Luke doesn't indicate that there is a cause to condemn a lack of faith here. He simply conveys that Peter's rescue is so shocking that even his fellow Christians can't wrap their minds around it. And I think we can relate to such amazement.
If we're honest with ourselves. I know there have been times in this congregation where God has way made a way where there seems to be none, where initial tests indicated disaster, but follow up tests were inexplicably clear, where rock hard hearts were softened, seemingly overnight, where provision dropped suddenly out of the sky, as it were. We too have been caught by surprise, not necessarily because we didn't believe, but simply because our perspective is too small to predict the works of the Almighty.
As creatures made from dust. Leaving amidst the confusion and distraction of this world and of our own hearts. It's easy to forget that God is present and that God is always acting according to His supreme power and authority. God is very present in Acts Chapter 12, and He is defying expectations. He is making his power known among the nations.
We'll look more closely at this idea next week at Herod's place in this story. But for now, I want us to step back and look at the place of James and Peter in Luke's narrative and to ponder what God is doing here. These 24 verses of Acts 12 end with yet another of the recurring statements of Luke's theme.
The Word of God increased and multiplied. This statement directly follows the story of Herod's death, but it relates also to the story of Peter's imprisonment and, James, his execution. James was one of the inner circle, one of Jesus's closest friends, and his death is described in a single sentence. Peter is rescued here in glorious fashion. But as we continue in acts, we will find that from this point on, he's barely mentioned.
These two central figures in the early church are seemingly written off by Luke for the simple reason that this is not their story. As I believe Pastor Scott mentioned at the beginning of this series, though, the book is called The Acts of the Apostles. It might more accurately be called The Acts of the Holy Spirit. And though we see the church persevering in their faith throughout this book, Chapter 12 reinforces a point we would do well to remember.
It is not the church that is unstoppable. It is God's Word. Peter, who could well have had to live in hiding from this point on, later wrote to the churches to help them prepare to suffer. Well. First, Peter, four versus 12 and 13 state beloved. Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you.
But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's suffering that you may rejoice also and be glad when his glory is revealed. Did you catch that? We're not to rejoice because we will always prevail when something bad happens. And Peter doesn't say You will be glad when your troubles are all in the rearview mirror. It is in reflecting Christ that we find fulfillment and it is the glory of God.
That is our goal. It's not our story. It's the story of Christ and His gospel. And when I say the church is not unstoppable, I mean the people in the church where God has established God will preserve.
We may be preserved. We may not. But God's word will go forth.
James, in dying for his faith, was exactly where God wanted him. And he was there willingly. And Peter's rescue and rescue was not a testament to his irreplaceable city within the church. Peter fades into the background of the story after this, and he, too, would be executed in time. But God's word increased and multiplied. I hope this morning you have seen that the glory of God is the central theme of today's text.
And I hope also that you will keep in mind the story of the acts of the Holy Spirit has not ended. God's Word is still increasing and multiplying. Today it is increasing in believers taking ever more its proper place in our lives as we let God's Spirit and His gospel shape our understanding and direct our path. And God's Word is multiplying.
As faithful servants continue to preach that gospel. The good news to friends, family, neighbors, coworkers. As we turn away from trying to write our own story and enter joyously into the work of telling the old old story of Jesus and his love. I'd like us to reflect together as we close the service on the two passages that accompanied our reading and acts today.
Psalm Chapter 40 combines two thoughts regarding the help of the Lord and the cause. We have to rejoice in the Lord. The first thought is reflected, but is reflected by the verses Tim read. It is praise for the past mercies of God, the remembrance of what He has already done for us. If you are in Christ, you have that tale to tell.
You have that remembrance to cling to of the mercies of God, of how He brought you out of the miry clay, of how what was dead was brought to life. The second thought from Psalm 40 is a declaration of trust in the Lord's future Deliverance, based on God's steadfast love and faithfulness. The Psalmist in both sections is repeatedly declaring that God is to be praised, and in verse 16 He proclaims, May all who seek you rejoice and be glad.
And you may. Those who love your salvation say continually. Great is the Lord.
What then, should we conclude about the saving power of God? James's faith makes it clear that he does not always save us from every circumstance. But the psalmist song is one of confidence, reflecting the same faith that James had, not faith that he would be kept from death or hardship struggles or chaos or confusion or frustration, but faith that the Lord's salvation was greater than any of those things.
The salvation of God is not a salvation from all life's hardships, but a salvation that provides eternal hope. Beyond the weight and the pain of this life and the full and complete rest that God desires for us in the life to come. If you're here this morning and you don't know the loveliness of that salvation of the salvation offered through the blood of Christ, know that it is available to you.
And it is a salvation that transcends circumstances, that it is a salvation that can give you hope in the midst of any hardship. Know also that there are many here who would love to talk to you about it. Specifically, our elders will be around the front of the sanctuary after the service and we'll be happy to connect with you.
But there are many here who love the Lord's salvation, who know its sweetness and who love to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love. As for those here who are living in the joy of that salvation, let's be sure that we are remembering whose story we are a part of. In Philippians, our third Scripture reading this morning, Paul centers his entire letter on one goal that binds together every reflection and exhortation that he offers to his readers.
It is a letter that reflects Paul's life, a life devoted wholly to the advance of the gospel. And Paul had an idea of what it might cost him when he wrote to the Philippians. His faith was not being put to an abstract hypothetical test. But Paul had determined that representing Christ and bringing the message of the Gospel to a world that desperately needs it was worth standing before Caesar and risking execution.
Paul's desire to glorify God was stronger than his desire to breathe. He writes, For to me, to live is Christ and to die His gain. God would receive the glory regardless of what happened to Paul. Leaving Paul content to play whatever part was given to him. We don't face execution for being Christians in America yet, and it is hard to deal in hypotheticals.
But we do have a mission, a direction, a clear path forward. We are to go and make disciples because the power of God has saved us so that we might bring Him glory. God is calling each of us to be His faithful servant in whatever we face, whether we are facing down death or our own pride doesn't matter.
Giving up control of our lives is a job that will always challenge our selfish hearts. It is our love for Christ that will turn those challenges into opportunities to glorify Him. Let's take the opportunity we have to assist the unstoppable advance of the Gospel to recognize the might and the beauty of Christ, and to make it the theme of our goings and our doings, and to trust God to take our lives and make of them what He wills so that we too might rejoice in God getting the glory.