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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
Acts 12:1–19
About that time, Herod
the king laid violent hands on
some who belonged to the church.
He killed James, the brother of John,
with the sword, and when he saw that
it pleased the Jews,
he proceeded to arrest Peter also.
This was during
the days of Unleavened Bread.
When he had seized him.
He put him in prison, delivering him over
to four squads of soldiers
to guard him, intending after the Passover
to bring him out to the people.
So Peter was kept in prison,
but earnest prayer for him
was made to God by the church.
Now when Herod was about to bring him out
on that very night,
Peter was sleeping between two soldiers
bound with two chains, and centuries
before the door were guarding the prison.
And behold, an angel of the Lord
stood next to him, and a light shone
in the cell.
He struck Peter on the side and woke
him, saying, get up quickly.
And the chains fell off his hands.
And the angel said to him, dress yourself
and put on your sandals.
And he did so.
And he said to him,
wrap your cloak around you and follow me.
And he went out and followed him.
He did not know that
what was being done by the angel was real,
but thought he was seeing a vision.
When they had passed the first
and the second guard,
they came to the iron gate
leading into the city.
It opened for them of its own accord, and
they went out and went along one street.
And immediately the angel left him.
When Peter came to himself, he said, now
I am sure that the Lord has set his angel,
and rescued me from the hand of Herod,
and from all that
the Jewish people were expecting.
When he realized this,
he went to the house of Mary,
the mother of John,
whose other name was Mark,
where many were gathered together
and were praying.
And when he knocked at the door
of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda
came to answer,
recognizing Peter's voice in her joy.
She did not open the gate,
but ran in and reported
that Peter was standing at the gate.
They said to her,
you were out of your mind, but
she kept insisting that it was so,
and they kept saying, it is as angel.
But Peter continued knocking,
and when they opened
they saw him and were amazed,
but motioning to
them with his hand to be silent,
he described to them how the Lord had
brought him out of the prison.
And he said, tell these things to James
and to the brothers.
Then he departed
and went to another place.
Now in day came,
there was no little disturbance
among the soldiers over
what had become of Peter.
And after Herod searched for him
and did not find him,
he examined the centuries and ordered
that they should be put to death.
Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea
and spent time there.
Well
welcome to the weekend here
at Christ Community Chapel.
My name is Zach.
I'm one of the pastors here,
and we are so glad
that we get to be part of your weekend.
Hey, before I start the sermon
and dive into the passage
that we just read,
I have what I think is some exciting news.
We've just received confirmation to say
this is firm-ish.
All construction news is firm-ish,
but we've received confirmation
that the chairs in the sanctuary
should be coming in on time
so that the first weekend of December,
we will be in the new sanctuary.
How exciting.
Now that sanctuary holds
more people than any space we've ever had.
And so here's what we're going to do,
at least to get started.
We're going to keep
all of our service times 5:30, 6:30, 7:30 on
Thursday, 9:15, 10:30, and 11:45 on Sunday.
But we're going to move
everyone into the sanctuary.
So instead of having multiple services
at each hour, we're going to all be
because I just think it'll be good
for us to be all together.
We've been all over the place
for a long time.
I want us to be all together.
We'll see how long we can do that.
But that's that's
where we're going to start.
And so here's what that means
for all of our services.
That'll be just fine,
except for maybe 10:30 on Sunday.
So if you're watching this,
you typically come to 10:30 on Sunday.
Let me say this.
You're going to want to get here early,
because if you get here five minutes late,
you're really going to be 55 minutes
early for the 11:45
service, okay,
because every seat is going to be taken.
So if you
if you want to make it more comfortable,
consider just going to 9:15 or 11:45
and not having to fight the crowd
because 10:30 will be full.
But again, I think it's just going to be
good for us to all be together.
I really, really am
looking forward to that.
All right, let's pick up in acts
12 chapter, chapter 12,
verses one through 19.
If you have a Bible, you can turn their.
Otherwise
it'll be on the screen behind me.
This is week nine of our sermon series.
Going through the early part
of the book of acts.
We've been calling it room for more,
and the reason for that is pretty simple.
Two reasons actually.
One is,
it is impossible to read the book of acts
and not come to the conclusion
that God is always making room for more.
God is wanting more and more people
to hear
and respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And if we're going to be
a biblical church, a New Testament church,
a church
that is joining God in his mission,
we also are going to always
be making room for more.
We will never gather in here
without at least partially thinking
about those that are out there.
That's just because that's who God is.
Here's the second thing.
It's also impossible
to read the book of acts, at least for me,
and not realize
I need to make room for more
in terms of what I think God wants to do
and can do.
I've grown up in church, and somewhere
along the way I've settled for kind of
just a nominal, average
experience of church.
I don't expect too much,
but when I read the book of acts,
it is clear to me
that the local church is meant to be
the most exciting place on the planet.
God wants to do incredible things,
and we as a church
are just growing in our desire to say,
God, if you want that, we want that.
If you're on the move.
We want to be here.
We want to be part of it.
So much so that this sermon series
is culminating for us
on November 15th
in what we're calling a healing service.
We're just inviting people to come
and to be prayed with for other people
to come and pray over them,
because we're saying we just want to look
in the book of acts and look at our church
and see the same thing.
That's it.
I want to look at the Bible,
look at our church and see the same thing.
So we're we're moving towards
that two weeks away
now, and with two weeks to go
before the healing service,
I cannot think of a better passage for us
to spend time in the next chapter 12.
I'm so, so excited.
So let me introduce you
to my outline for points.
And they go like this
I want to show you why we pray,
how we think prayer works, how prayer
actually works, and how to get it right.
Okay, why we pray,
how we think prayer works, how prayer
actually works, and how to get it right.
Let's start with the first one.
Why we pray.
I just want to own that.
On this first point.
I'm being a little simplistic.
There are lots of reasons people pray
you know that, and I know that.
I guess the question I'm asking is, what's
the most fundamental reason people pray?
Like like what is the most guttural reason
that people pray?
And I think you'll agree once I say,
and certainly the Bible bears this out,
that the simplest reason people pray
is that they
they come up against something in life
they cannot handle by themselves.
Human helplessness
is the experience that leads us to prayer.
You know, most of my day, most of yours,
we encounter things we're used to, right?
We we have the answers.
We move through on autopilot.
We're able to navigate things.
But but every now and then,
we come up against something
that we know
we don't know what to do with.
And then is usually when we pray.
And by the way, when I say we,
I don't just mean Christians.
You might be here this weekend
and you might be the furthest thing
from a Christian.
You might be the furthest thing
from a person of faith.
But here's what I guess you have at least
once in your life, tried to pray.
And when you did, here's
what I bet was happening.
You were facing something
you didn't have answers for,
and you might have thrown up
a prayer like,
I don't even know if you're out there.
I don't even know if I think you're real.
But just in case, I need help.
Look,
you know this. If you've been coming.
I had a back injury in early September.
It devastated me.
I now know when you hurt your back, you
either shut it down and you get shut down.
I chose the second one.
Okay?
I remember there being a day
I was getting worse and worse.
My leg was hurting.
I told my wife,
I'm going to lay on the bed and just.
Just rest a little bit.
And I laid on my bed
diagonally on my stomach.
This is not an exaggeration
and then didn't move for eight days.
I just laid there.
And I can tell you
one of the main things I did
while I was laying there as I prayed
because I didn't know what to do, and
I would ask God, God, would you heal me?
And then I would say, if you're
trying to teach me something, what is it?
And then I would say,
I'm really, really ready to learn it.
Like right now
I've never been more ready. Right?
Because because I didn't
I mean, I'm very type A in a prayer.
I'm just being honest.
Being vulnerable with your prayer
doesn't come naturally to me
because I like to meet a challenge.
That's the way I'm wired.
So but in that moment, laying on
my stomach is like, I'd zero answers.
And it was the most natural thing
in the world to pray,
because human helplessness
is what leads to prayer.
Have you been there?
Do you know what I mean? By the way?
That's what's happening in acts
chapter 12.
Look with me at the first five verses.
I want you to see the helplessness
that is motivating this prayer meeting.
Here's what it says.
Acts chapter 12, verse
one says this about that time
Herod, the king, laid violent hands on
some who belonged to the church.
He killed James,
the brother of John, with the sword.
And when he saw that it pleased the Jews,
he proceeded to arrest Peter also.
This was during
the days of Unleavened Bread,
and when he had seized him,
he put him in prison, delivering him
over to four squads of soldiers
to guard him,
intending after the Passover
to bring him out to the people.
So Peter was kept in prison,
but earnest prayer
for him was made to God by the church.
Here's the context, the situation.
So Herod has decided to attack
the early church,
and he kills James, one of the apostles.
And then that improves
his approval rating.
And he realizes, oh, man, one way to gain
popularity is is to kill Christians.
So then he arrests Peter, who's the most
famous Christian at this time.
And he's like, great, I'm
going to kill him.
That'll make my approval
rating go even further.
He puts Peter in prison
and it's a holiday.
So he's waiting after the holidays,
getting maximum television ratings.
You know, he puts Peter in prison
and he has four squads of soldiers.
Guard Peter.
Because you remember the last time
they imprisoned a Christian, it was Jesus.
And he got away.
So they're like, we're going
to put four squads of soldiers.
That's not going to happen this time.
And the church has no answers.
They don't know what to do.
James is dead.
Peter is their leader.
It looks like Peter is going to die.
And so they do what you do when you don't
have any answers, they pray.
I want you to stand.
That part of doing a healing service,
for example, is a recognition
that we so often find ourselves
physically, mentally, emotionally,
relationally, spiritually in situations
where we're broken
and we don't know how to fix it.
What do you do with that?
What do you do?
Well, here in acts chapter 12, they pray.
That's when you pray.
How human helplessness leads to prayer.
By the way, human
helplessness leads to desperation, right?
I mean, when I was praying,
laying on my stomach, on my bed,
I wasn't like, hey, God,
you know, if you're not too busy.
I mean, I was saying, God, remember me,
the pastor, you know,
it's like laying my credentials out there.
They need me.
God, I gotta get, you know,
it's really not me I'm asking for.
Its them, you know?
I mean,
I was praying prayers of desperation, but
that that begs the question, doesn't it?
Because when you get helpless and
when you get desperate, yes, you'll pray.
But in the back of your mind, what you're
asking is not just should I pray?
You're asking,
is there any chance this prayer will work?
Is there any chance this is going to work?
That actually leads me to my second point.
Not just why we pray,
but how we think prayer works.
Tell me if you resonate with this.
Here's how I think.
We think prayer works.
I have, you know, I have five kids.
Last Christmas, my in-laws got us.
I got them in the Cedar Point,
like all season pass.
You know, where you tell yourself
you're going to go like eight times,
you go twice.
They know what they're doing.
That's how they they make their money.
And and my youngest kid is Ella.
She's seven,
but she looks like she's four.
Okay. She's very short, very short.
And we didn't know
if she was going to get to ride.
And he rides.
So a week before the first time
we're going to go to Cedar Point.
Everybody's coaching her.
You know how to stand really straight,
what shoes to wear, how many socks
you can put underneath your foot.
You know, just trying to to booster.
And then we get there and we're walking up
to the first roller coaster,
and you have to be 48in
tall to, to ride it.
And it's close, right? It's close.
And what I know is we're really
at the mercy of like the 15 year
old who's policing this. Right.
And so we get up to the first one
and we're like,
oh, is she going to be tall enough?
Is she going to be tall enough?
Because we know if she's not tall enough,
there's nothing we can do.
You know,
I think that's how we think prayer works,
that when we pray to
God, God has a measurement,
the measurement of faith.
And if we have enough faith,
if we have 48in of faith,
then we'll get our prayer answered.
And if we don't, we won't.
And so every time we pray, God
gets out his measurement,
his measuring stick, and he says,
let's just see if you believe enough.
Let's see if you have enough faith.
And if we do, maybe we get lucky.
And if we don't know chance,
where does that come from?
I think it comes from two places.
One is it comes from projection.
You know what that is?
If we were God, that's how we would do it.
Someone would ask us for help we like.
Well, I don't know.
How much do you think I can do it right?
We get out our measuring stick.
So if we're like that,
we think God would be like that.
But the second place it comes from,
if I can just nerd out for a minute,
is something called
the word of Faith movement.
You don't realize this,
but the preachers on TV, they belong
to the word of Faith movement,
the the preachers who who are in the news
because they have private jets,
you know, people
who who they tell you to have more faith.
And somehow faith always involves
writing them a check.
Right? Okay.
What they
they teach in the word of Faith movement
is that they'll come in
and do a healing service.
And what they say is healing is available
to everybody who believes enough.
And if they pray for you
and you don't get healed,
what they'll say is it was your fault.
You didn't believe
enough, should have had more faith.
And that idea because it's on television.
Because we all probably have an aunt
or a grandma or grandpa who believes that.
And it's kind of it's
kind of worked its way into our psyche.
The problem with that way of thinking,
though,
is if the only passage of the Bible
I had was acts 12,
it would be enough to know
that's not true.
So. So Peter's in jail, right?
They have a prayer meeting.
It's bust Peter out of jail.
Prayer night. Right.
But what I want you to see
is what happens when Peter gets out.
Okay? Look at look with me at acts
chapter 12.
We're going to skip over the miracle.
We'll come back to that acts
chapter 12, verse 12.
The he here is Peter. Okay.
When he realized this Peter,
when he realized, oh man,
I got out of prison,
he went to the house of Mary,
the mother of John,
whose other name was Mark,
where many were gathered together
and were praying.
So he goes where the prayer meeting
is natural place to go.
And when he knocked on the door
of the gateway,
a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer,
recognizing Peter's voice in her joy.
Gotta love this.
She didn't open the gate. She leaves.
Peter there, runs in and reports
that Peter was standing at the gate.
Now listen, this is Bus Peter out of jail.
Prayer night.
Okay.
These are the people who really believe
God can get Peter out of prison.
They're there at the prayer night
praying about it.
So, you know, when Rhoda,
sweet little Rhoda, gets there
and she goes, God did it.
Peter's at the gate.
They're going to be like, yes!
Awesome, I knew it.
No, look what happens, Rhoda.
Sweet Rhoda says he's out. Verse 15.
They said to her, listen,
you are out of your mind.
But she kept insisting that it was so.
And then they kept saying,
it is his angel.
What they meant was
he's dead. That's his ghost.
But Peter continued knocking,
and when they opened, they saw him listen.
And they praise God. Nope.
They celebrated. Nope. They were amazed.
Listen, Peter.
They get what they were asking for.
When the proof that God has answered
their prayers comes to the door,
they go, no!
You're crazy.
So here's my question
how much did they really believe
God was going to do it?
I'm just being logical, right?
If the answer to
your prayer is at the door and you go,
I don't believe it.
No way. Zero chance.
Then what I know is, look, some of them
believed, you know, not like some people.
I mean, like they believe 20%, 40%.
They believed enough
to go to the prayer night.
They believed enough to ask,
but they disbelieved enough to doubt it
even when it was standing at the gate.
You see, here's the problem.
If God requires 48in of faith,
then Peter would have died in jail.
If that's how prayer worked.
There's no miracle in this story
because they don't have 48in of faith.
Of course, that begs a different question,
doesn't it?
Well, then, how does prayer work?
If it isn't that we have enough faith that
that somehow we measure up,
then how does prayer work?
Well, to answer that, let's leave acts
12 just for a second.
We'll come right back and go to Mark
chapter nine.
I love this story.
In Mark nine, there's a dad who comes
to Jesus to ask him to heal his son.
His son is demon possessed.
And it's it's pretty nasty.
I mean, his son is going to die
if Jesus doesn't do something.
And I want you to notice
the interaction he has with Jesus
when he asked Jesus for the miracle.
This is Mark
nine verses 22 to 24 to be on the screen.
Here's what it says.
This is the dad talking, and it has often
cast him into fire
and into water to destroy him.
Listen. But if you can do anything,
have compassion on us and help us.
And Jesus said to him, if you can,
I just want to stop 48in of faith.
No, the dad goes
if you can. Jesus is offended.
He goes, if you can listen to what
Jesus says, all things are possible
for one who believes.
Sounds
almost like the preacher on TV, right?
Except for here's what happens.
Listen to what the dad says.
Immediately the father of the child
cried out and said,
listen, I believe.
Help my unbelief.
Do you see what he's saying?
He's saying, Jesus,
I got like 35in of faith, man.
I mean, I believe a little bit
or I wouldn't have come,
I believe enough to make a fool of myself
in public.
I believe enough to beg, to cry, to plead.
But what he's saying is, is Jesus,
this is a dad and a vulnerable moment
going, Jesus,
if the only way you're going to heal
my son is if I have 48in of faith,
then I have no hope.
I will be the reason my son isn't healed,
because I believe kind of.
But I don't believe all the way.
Here's what happens verse 27
But Jesus took him him
as the little boy by the hand
and lifted him up, and he arose.
In other words, Jesus did the miracle
because let me teach you something.
The hope of prayer
is not the strength of our prayer,
but the strength of the one
we're praying to.
Just going to say that again,
the hope of prayer is not the strength
of our prayer, but the strength of the one
we're praying to.
Listen, I grew up in church.
I know what we do.
We ask God for something.
We spend 30s asking him for it,
and then 30 minutes explaining
why we're okay, that we know
he's not going to do it. It's no big deal.
We understand.
And that's not even bad theology,
but it's theological
wrapping for our doubt.
But this man just comes to God
and he says, I believe, sort of
I believe kind of I believe mostly
I believe, help my unbelief.
And he gets the miracle.
The prayer meeting for Peter
is full of people who believe 36in worth.
They don't have 48in of faith.
But here's what happens in acts 12.
They pray. Here's
what God does. 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 doors were guarding the prison.
And behold, an angel of the Lord
stood next to him, and a light shone
in the cell, and he struck Peter
on the side and woke him, saying,
get up quickly!
And the chains fell off his hands.
And the angel said to him, dress yourself
and put on your sandals.
And he did so.
And he said to him,
wrap your cloak around you and follow me.
And he went out and followed him.
Listen,
he did not know what was being done by
the angel was real,
but thought he was seeing a vision.
Peter doesn't have 48in of faith.
Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
Look, look what happens.
Verse ten, when they had passed the first
and the second guard,
they came to the iron gate
leading into the city.
It opened for them of its own accord, and
they went out and went along the street.
And immediately the angel left him.
And when Peter came to himself,
he said, now I am sure I wasn't.
Now I am sure that
the Lord is in his angel,
and rescued me from the hand of Herod,
and from what
the Jewish people were expecting.
Listen to me.
Acts chapter 12 is included in this book
to let you know.
The hope of prayer
is not that you have 48in of faith.
It's that the one you come to with
however much faith you have,
is able to do
what you're asking him to do.
So that leads me to my fourth point.
How do we get it right then?
How do we get it right?
And I just want to teach you this lesson.
I just want you to understand something.
If God never does another thing for us,
he's done enough.
I need you to hear that.
What he's done in Jesus through
Jesus life, death and resurrection.
Forgiving our sin.
Rescuing from his judgment,
guaranteeing us eternity.
Friends, listen to me.
All healing is temporary.
All healing is temporary.
I hope on November 15th,
God heals some people.
I hope he does. We're going
to we're going to ask him.
But even if he does, the people he heals
will one day die.
You see, our problem
is not that we ask God for too much.
It's we ask him for too little.
We measure his love.
And whether he gives us
the temporary thing
when he's given us the eternal thing.
So the healing service
is going to be a night of worship
and prayer
and listen,
we're going to sing at the beginning.
And then afterwards,
even if God does nothing,
we're going to sing
because he's done enough.
He doesn't have to prove himself to us.
We know his mercy. We know his love.
We know his goodness.
But because we know those things,
we're going to ask.
In other words,
we're going to come to God
with absolute confidence in his character
and a little less confidence
and whether or not he will display
his character in the exact way
we're asking him to.
The Apostle Paul puts it this way in
Ephesians chapter three.
Love this.
You're going to love it.
Here's what he says now to him
who is able to do far more abundantly
than we ask or think,
according to the power at work within us.
To him
be the glory in the church and in Christ
Jesus throughout all generations,
forever and ever.
Here's what Paul says to him who is able
to do more than we ask or think.
You see Paul saying, God is always able
and we will always
think too little of him.
He'll always be a little more
than we ask or think because we're we're
broken people living in a broken world.
We'll never think big enough.
But I'm November 15th.
We're going to try.
We're going to try,
and we're going to come with 24in
of faith, or 36in of faith
or four inches of faith.
It's not going to matter
because the one we're asking is able.
In fact,
when you come to the healing service,
well, if you want healing,
we'll we'll ask you two questions.
Here they are. You have them in advance.
We're going to ask you,
what do you want God to do?
And then we're going to ask you,
how will you glorify him if he does it?
Because that's what we're after.
God, we want to see your glory.
We want our neighbors and our friends
and families to see your glory.
We want them to know you're real.
We want them to come to us
and say, explain to me what I just saw,
and then we want to tell them about Jesus.
The friends.
Listen, that's in two weeks tonight.
Here's what I'm saying to you.
Stop letting
your little bit of faith
keep you from God.
Stop staying away from him
because you don't think you're
tall enough.
That's not how prayer works.
Come to him and say, I believe.
Help my unbelief.
In fact,
I'm going to end this a little different.
Nate, are you in here? Will you come
up? Nate's going to play for us.
Would you just bow your heads?
We're going to pray for him.
Going to pray for you.
I'm going to pray for you.
He's going to play. I'm going to pray
because I'm just convicted.
I wish I'd done this at 530,
but I missed it
that some of you need to acknowledge
before God,
just in your own heart, in your own head.
God, I have stayed away from you
because I didn't feel like I measured up.
I thought prayer was about me
and how much faith I had.
And so now, for the first time
in a long time,
I'm coming to you with a little bit
that I have, I believe, help my unbelief.
I'm just going to give you space.
I'm going to give you a minute or two
to pray,
do your own business with God,
and then I'll pray us out of it.
We'll go to communion.
God, every time I read Mark nine, I'm
struck by the desperation of that dad,
Jesus, you said to him,
all things are possible if you believe.
And in that moment he was crushed
all the way.
I believe all the way walking to you,
Jesus.
He was trying to get the 48in.
He was trying.
He did not want to be the reason
his son wasn't set free.
But in that moment,
you weren't challenging him.
You were loving him.
You were teaching him.
You were teaching us.
The power of prayer
is not in the strength of the one,
the one praying, but the one being prayed
to and God in this room.
I know there are people who know
that desperation.
It's been a long time
since they talk to you,
because they knew
they did not have the 48in of faith.
God, my prayer is right now.
They would know you have been
waiting for them to come back.
It has never been
about how high their faith can stack.
It has always been
about the one who is able to do more
than we ask or imagine.
We believe God,
help our unbelief.
In the name of Jesus we pray.
Amen.