Deliverance – Acts 12:7-12

Jan 21, 2015 | Acts

There are a great many things that set our church apart from most others.

Some of these things we implement very seriously, and others are just our own peculiar idiosyncracies.

For example, the things that we believe about the Lord – our basic doctrines – are non-compromiseable.

And we aren’t shy about talking to people about what we believe.

Where many churches and pastors seem to hide what they believe, we feel that what we believe defines who we are.

Also, we deliberately avoid most forms of contemporary worship.

We sing old hymns to the sound of a piano and organ, without electric guitars or drums.

And we believe that the music part of our service is preparatory to the purpose of that service; it is not the main event.

We don’t have skits and movies, slides and videos,

Because as the Bible teaches us, it’s the preaching of the Word of God that should be foremost.

This means that we will probably never have a large congregation,

And if it was necessary to have movies, plays and Christian rock music in order to be large,

Then we prefer to remain a small congregation.

It is our desire to please God rather than man.

We also take the Bible and our worship very seriously.

Despite enjoying a laughter as much as anyone else,

We never laugh at the Bible, and for the most part our worship services are reverent.

We believe that the church service should focus on the Lord, Who is holy, rather than humans who are usually just the opposite.

Also, in regard to taking the Bible seriously, we believe that it should be understood to say what it says.

We have found that even though the Bible teaches very high and very deep subjects,

For the most part, it is easy to understand with just a little bit of study.

Acknowledging that there are scriptures that are “hard to be understood,” they are not as common as a lot of people would like us to believe.

And furthermore we don’t look for hidden meanings behind every other word.

Having said all of that, I confess to you, that I’d like to take our scripture this morning in a direction that the Holy Spirit didn’t intended when Luke first wrote it down.

I want to look at these verses as if they were a parable or an allegory of something far more important than they originally were.

Verses 7 through 12 tell us about the deliverance of the Apostle Peter from prison.

SHOULD these verses should be understood literally? No.

The fact is they MUST be taken literally.

They describe a literal historical event, and must be understood to say so.

But for the sake of this one message, I’d like to use these verses to illustrate a higher truth.

If we pretend that Peter in jail was a picture of a man chained by his sin,

We are given here an illustration of deliverance.

We have a picture in these verses of salvation from sin.

Permit me to allegorize this historical event to preach to you the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s think about Peter’s IMPRISONMENT, his DELIVERANCE and the glorious LIBERTY of the children of God.

First, the IMPRISONMENT.

Why was Peter in jail?

Peter was incarcerated because he had been serving God contrary to the will of society.

He was a Christian, a citizen of Heaven; his allegiance was to a different King than Herod Agrippa.

So he was disturbing the peace of Israel by preaching that the Lord Jesus was the Messiah.

WE KNOW that this was a very good thing, and that he was actually bringing peace to Israel,

But that was not the way that society looked at it. So Peter was arrested.

You might say that he was in jail through no fault of his own.

But in a way it WAS his fault:

He knew the risk in preaching Christ ,because he had been warned and arrested before,

But he persisted in his rebellion against the wishes of the Jewish and Roman governments.

Turning that around, think about people in general – ourselves and our neighbors.

We are born into God’s kingdom, and under His holy and perfect laws.

But we are the children of sinners, and everyone of us are born as sinners ourselves.

Almost immediately we begin to behave as sinners, rebelling against the laws of the Lord.

We lie; we steal; we are filled with pride; we don’t worship the King as they should.

We hate the wrong things; we love the wrong things; wWe envy; we lust; we hoard.

You are a sinner in the sight of Almighty God.

We not only deserve to be in God’s prison house, but in reality we ARE in that prison.

Paul said, “we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin.”

We are “sold under sin.”

“The scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.”

“There is not a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not.”

All human beings by nature are criminals according to the laws of God.

What does this chapter tell us about Peter’s immediate future?

On the night of his deliverance, he was under the sentence of death.

The next morning he was going to be taken out and publically beheaded.

In this too Peter is a picture of the rest of humanity.

Of course, the world takes a very light view of sin.

The average man doesn’t look at sin as a crime.

But in a sense each and every sin is a crime against God.

And they are capital crimes; crimes that deserve execution of the criminal.

“The wages of sin is death.”

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

 PLEASE HEAR ME NOW, YOU ARE A SINNER BY BIRTH AND BY DEED,

And because of your sinfulness you are under the sentence of death – both physical and eternal.

Until the grace of God comes along, the wrath of God abideth on everyone of us (John 3:36).

 The future didn’t look very good for Peter, and for the children of Adam, eternity looks even worse.

“And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”

Notice that Peter was chained: there was a pair of manacles, with one attached to each of his wrists.

Some people have the idea that if they really wanted to quit their sin, they can just get up and walk away.

But that is not the case.

The Lord Jesus was teaching in the temple one day as we read in John 8.

“Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come.”

He said, “Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.

I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?

Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.”

 The Lord could have said “Whosoever sins is a slave,” because that is what the word means.

If Peter had tried to escape from that prison, could he have done it?

Among the many things that kept him there were the chains that bound him.

And I’d like to point out that there were guards to keep him there as well.

There in John 8 the Lord Jesus went on in his discussion of the people’s slavery to sin.

He said, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”

 There is a hymn which reminds us that this world is not a friend to help us on to God.

Not only are we born sinners, with a propensity toward sin and even a love for sin,

But our friends, our neighbors, our government, our entertainment, our jobs, and just about everything else in our lives, apart from the things of God, encourage us to go on in our sins.

Driving down the road that billboard with that sultry motel encourages us to sin,

And so do those scantily clad kids walking down the sidewalk.

And so does that fancy car that pulls up beside us at the red light.

And so does the music that pours out of its windows.

And so does that sign at the gas station advertizing the beer and the lottery tickets.

Sometimes the chains are long, and sometimes they are short, but we are chained to our sins, and only the grace and power of God can break them.

Furthermore, look at Peter sound asleep in that prison and chained to his guards.

As far as the actual history goes, we are happy for him.

To be able to sleep soundly under those conditions meant that the peace of God ruled in his heart.

His conscience was clear and he was ready to stand before his God the next morning.

But as far as our illustration is concerned, the fact that Peter was asleep is scarey.

How many of our neighbors are living in and enjoying their crimes against God without the slightest realization of the danger that they are in?

I could describe some of the immoral behavior of my neighbors, but I won’t.

I’m sure that they refuse to consider that what they are doing is condemned by the Word of God.

In one or two cases that is probably why it’s impossible to get them to say more than “hello” to me, whom they know as a minister of God.

Deep in the depths of their hearts they know what they are doing is sin, but they are too rebellious to even admit that they are rebels.

And over the years of their rebellion they have learned to sleep comfortably in their wickedness.

They have filed down the sharp stabbing of their consciences until today it works more like a massage than an ox goad.

It appears that before the arrival of God’s angel, Peter’s cell was shrouded in darkness.

I might be mistaken, and there might have been a small candle there to help the guards to do their duty, but other than that Peter was in the dark.

And that is just the way that the Bible describes sinners:

They are blind:

“The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”

“Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.”

 Sinners are in darkness:

Jesus, the light, “shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” Why?

Because “this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

When we use Peter as a picture of the sinner, we see that he is in trouble.

He’s chained in his sin and condemned to die;

In fact, he’s as good as dead already.

 But, praise God, Peter was DELIVERED.

Thus far, I have been very careful not to say that Peter “escaped” from his prison.

The word “escaped” suggests that it was something that Peter did himself, and that was not the case.

He didn’t escape; he was RESCUED; he was DELIVERED.

And it was entirely by grace, the unmerited favour of God.

There is no perfect human or earthly illustration of saving grace, because there are no equivalents to God.

Ideally, for this to be a better picture, it would have been Herod who saved Peter.

But in some ways that would have hurt the illustration even more, because Herod was a wicked man.

And undoubtedly if he had released the apostle it would have been for some ulterior motive.

God’s deliverance comes entirely from Himself and is for Himself.

And if Herod had delivered Peter it would have been salvation from an unjust legal system.

Peter should never have been arrested in the first place.

Ah, but the sinner in prison is exactly where he deserves to be.

 Clearly this parable falls short of its intended purpose, but let’s make the most out of it.

There is the sinner, locked away in his sinful prison, chained to his keepers and asleep to his predicament.

He isn’t praying for his deliverance, in fact he doesn’t even know that he needs deliverance.

It is the grace of God, in the form of an angel which takes the first step, second step and every other step.

There may be a hundred prisoners incarcerated in that filthy dungeon, but sovereign grace only released one of the hundred.

Other fine men had been in that prison, and perhaps in the very same cell, but they were taken out and killed by the sword.

It is purely by grace that Peter was delivered, after James had been beheaded.

All of a sudden, in the middle of the night, the prison was flooded with light.

“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined” – Isaiah 9:2.

Peter wasn’t groping around in the darkness trying to find the light switch.

He was asleep and didn’t know that he was in darkness,

And besides, at that point he didn’t care.

The details of God’s deliverance of different people has lots of peculiar and special twists and turns,

But there are always several similarities.

At some point, those sinners begin to “see the light,” in the sense that they understand their need for deliverance.

Perhaps it’s a fear of death, or of God, or of the future.

Perhaps somehow the Word of God has been ministered unto them, and they begin to understand.

Perhaps it’s God’s love that breaks through to them.

Perhaps it’s what the Lord is doing in the life of another person that awakens them.

But all of a sudden a little light goes on in the darkness of their heart and a little bell rings in their ear.

And where they had once been asleep, they are now beginning to awaken.

But in a lot of cases, it takes a swift kick in the side.

The word which is translated “smote” in verse 7 is interesting.

It’s meanings range all the way from lightly patting someone, like a mother trying to awaken a baby, to smiting with a sword or even with a deadly disease.

So it’s hard to say exactly how this angel aroused Peter.

But in an almost cartoonish fashion I picture him having to nudge the man with his angel boot.

I think that there was a little bit of pain involved.

And I know for a fact that there is pain when the Holy Spirit is working on a sin-calloused heart.

When we read of the conversion of Saul, the Lord spoke of his struggle against the ox-goad, the sharp-pointed stick which the Lord was using to get him awake.

“Awake sleeping sinner, you’re execution is tomorrow. Get up. The Lord is delivering you from the prison of your sins.”

And then we see the omnipotence of the Almighty.

The manacles of his sins fell from the man’s wrists.

The guards who were ordered to keep him in prison were powerless to raise a finger against him.

The door to his cell easily opened, because no lock could stop the angel of God.

The door out of that particular ward was just as easily opened and they entered into the court yard.

Then as the two of them walked toward the gate that opened out into the city, the angel of the Lord didn’t even have to turn the handle, because it opened of it’s own accord.

The power of God looks as effortless as batting an eye-lash.

But look once again at the omnipotence of God.

It takes the power of God to deliver a sinner from the bondage of his sin.

The law of God is against him; so is the holiness of God, the angels of God and the mind of God.

Ah, but the heart of God is something else.

The Lord Himself has taken the steps necessary to deliver this sinner.

The law against that sinner is satisfied.

The penalty that it demands is paid by Jehovah Himself.

Again, notice that earthly illustrations always fall short of the heavenly perfection.

If this was a true picture of the reality, the angel who released Peter would have himself, sat down in the place where the sinner sat.

He would have put his own hands in the chains that Peter wore.

And he would have gone to out to be executed the next morning, taking the place of the sinner.

Because the price of the sinner’s deliverance was the death of the eternal Son of God.

The Lord’s own dear son felt the whip, the slivers, the nails, the glares, the spear and scowl of God.

Salvation from sin is not merely an accountant’s note in the leger of the law.

Salvation from sin required that the penalty against us be paid.

And it was paid in the brutal death and crimson blood of the Son of God.

When Jesus died on the cross it wasn’t done that the prisoners who wanted to escape would find a key to their cell doors in their pockets.

Jesus didn’t die potentially for all sinners everywhere.

He died for a specific number of specific souls, whose names were recorded in the Lamb’s book life before they were ever born; from before the foundation of the world.

The Saviour has walked into our prison cell and given us liberty, purchasing it with His own blood.

 Now briefly consider that LIBERTY.

I believe that Peter was a liberty the moment that the manacles fell to the floor.

There wasn’t a cell door or iron gate in that prison that could stop him, if he wanted to depart.

But still the angel had to smite him on the side,

And Peter had to bind on his sandals and cast his garment around him.

It was necessary that Peter follow that angel out of the prison in order to enjoy his deliverance.

Isn’t it true that there are a lot of professing Christians who still wear the chains of their sins?

I’m thinking of people who are truly redeemed by the blood of the Lord Jesus.

They have been justified, regenerated, converted and delivered,

But they are still bound in the prison house of sin.

They have liberty to go or to stay, but to use their liberty as an excuse to continue in sin.

What a sad and shameful situation.

Can we really be sure that the man who chooses to remain in that jail, is really free?

Do you have liberty and salvation in Christ?

Do you believe and trust that the Lord Jesus died as your substitute?

Has the Holy Spirit filled your heart with love for Christ and repentance of sin?

We know that we possess God’s deliverance by experiencing that deliverance – by walking out of our sinful prison and by loving and serving Christ the Saviour.

Are these characteristics of your life?

Then kneel at the cross today.

 I’d be delighted to show you from the scriptures what it is to know the free pardon of sin.