Acts 12:1-19 Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church.… We have here a royal persecution in its beginning, progress, and end. We see it in its success, failure, and punishment. We have before us a whole career, in its pride and its humiliation, its triumph and its discomfiture, its short-lived arrogance and its frightful dismay. That is the aspect of the chapter towards them that are without. Its aspect towards the Church within shows what danger, anxiety, and death itself is to the Christian; enough to bring out great graces and to exercise faith and patience, but not enough to make a single true heart doubt where safety, strength, victory lie. Let us look — I. ON THE DARK SIDE OF THIS PICTURE. There is a king stretching forth his hands to vex certain of the Church. 1. His first act of aggression was directed against an apostle. "He killed James the brother of John with the sword." Such is the short record of the first and only apostolical martyrdom of which we have any record in Scripture. Far more was told of the martyrdom of the deacon Stephen. Such is the character of the Scriptures. One thing is dwelt upon and another briefly told. Simplicity, naturalness, undesignedness, absence of rhetorical trick and stage effect, this we notice throughout, and we think we can see it to be of God. Thus one of the chosen witnesses passed away early from his work to his reward. It was scarcely fifteen years, I suppose, since he had first heard that word which had changed him from a fisherman into a fisher of men. He had been one of the favoured few in various striking occurrences of the Saviour's life and ministry. He had been one of two brothers, who, in days of ignorant zeal, had proposed to call fire from heaven upon a Samaritan village, and who, again, in days of a no less ignorant ambition, had asked to sit on His right hand and on His left hand in their Master's glory. Boanerges, sons of thunder, He had named them, in days when the impetuosity of nature had not yet been checked by the influence of grace. But now this was past; past too the mighty transformation of Pentecost, and the devoted years of the ministry which that day had opened. To him, first of the brothers, is that prophecy fulfilled, "Ye shall drink indeed of My cup," etc. And see how lightly the inspired record passes over that great transition. Not one word of the circumstances. No death bed scene, no dying testimony, save indeed that best of testimonies which the death itself afforded. He had given his life in one sense; now he gave it in another. Nothing is made of it. He did his duty; and to him, as a matter of course, belonged the recompence of the reward. 2. The fate of the next destined victim is widely different. He too seems to be marked out for martyrdom. The appetite for blood is ever whetted by its indulgence. It was a crowded time in Jerusalem: strangers from all parts of the world flocked together to the festival; and the spectacle of an apostle's execution was to be their pastime in the intervals of religious duty. Such is religion when it is once possessed and saturated with bigotry, fanaticism, and party zeal! All seemed to promise well and surely for the persecutor and his people. Peter then was kept in the prison: by night and by day he is the one care of sixteen armed men. Surely nothing can elude such vigilance? So might man well judge. There is one, there is but one, impediment, which brings us to — II. THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THE PICTURE. 1. "But there was fervent prayer going on by the Church unto God concerning him." Is there not great meaning in that little word "but"? The Church below was calling in a help, not of man, to counteract man's design. Little would Herod or his friends account of that; but He who neither slumbers nor sleeps has Israel in His keeping, and let no man presume to say, apart from Him, what one day or one night may bring forth! 2. The last night is come, but not gone. Peter sleeps, while the Church prays: it is their time for action, it is his for repose. "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength"; "Cast all your care upon Him, for He careth for you." What if his martyrdom is to follow close upon that of James, and they who were so lately partners in a fisher's calling, and have since been associated in a noble ministry, are to be speedily reunited in a blessedness not of this world — "lovely and pleasant in their lives, and even in their deaths not divided"? 3. "And, behold an angel of the Lord stood near," etc., etc. God does nothing in vain: He begins where man must end, and ends where man can begin. Deliverance achieved, reflection follows. "He comes to himself," and to the right conclusion. 4. And whither shall he now betake himself? He knows the deep anxiety with which the Church of which he is a pillar must have regarded his imprisonment; so he bends his steps first to one of the homes of the Church. His knock brings to the door a maiden of the household; not at once to open — for they were hard and evil times, and peril might lurk in the admittance of a stranger — but to hearken to the voice which should tell its errand and report upon it to those within. The voice which calls to her is one well known. She had heard it often, we doubt not, leading the devotions of that pious home: she knew it at once for Peter's, and for very joy ran in before she opened. Her tidings were incredible. "They said, It is his angel"; one of those ministering spirits who have in their charge the heirs of salvation, and who, in the character of the angels of Christ's "little ones, do always behold the face of His Father who is in heaven." But no; there is no mistake here, and no apparition; the angel's office is ended, and Peter himself, in flesh and blood, is seen, when they open, to stand before the gate. Silencing with a motion of the hand their eager and wondering exclamations, he tells his own story and bids them, while he departs elsewhere for security, to carry the report of his miraculous deliverance to James, the Lord's brother, and to the brethren at the headquarters of the Church. III. THE NARRATIVE WOULD BE INCOMPLETE WITHOUT A RECORD OF THE END OF THE PERSECUTOR AND HIS INSTRUMENTS. 1. Just as when the faithful three were thrown into the furnace, "the flame of the fire slew those men" who acted as his executioners; even so the activity of Peter was fatal to the soldiers to whose charge he had been consigned. Disappointed rage must have its victim. If it cannot be an apostle, it must be an apostle's keeper. But the retribution ends not there. 2. Herod himself goes down from Jerusalem to Caesarea. There was at this time a feud between him and the people of Tyre and Sidon. They were ill able to part with his friendship, and came to him therefore imploring reconciliation. This was the crowning point of Herod's triumphs. With an ambition glutted with success, and a vanity inflated by flattery, he appeared gorgeously arrayed. Flattery ran on into impiety, and they all with one accord shouted, "It is the voice of a God and not of a man." This cry was the signal of the Divine punishment. "Immediately an angel of the Lord smote him," etc.Conclusion: 1. The chapter before us is an epitome of all history. In it the world and the Church are arrayed on opposite sides, the hosts of God and of Satan being marshalled for the encounter. On the one side there is kingly power, on the other poverty and insignificance; but the one calculates without the Divine arm on which the other depends. For a time the one succeeds, in the end the other wins. Herod is eaten with worms, but the Word of God grows and multiplies. 2. The practical lesson is to learn the power and practise the grace of that effectual fervent prayer which availeth much. (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church.WEB: Now about that time, King Herod stretched out his hands to oppress some of the assembly. |
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