Judgment Day – Acts 12:18-23

I read in many of the journals which I receive that we are living in a pluralistic society.

I don’t know that they use that word in the news reports that you hear, but it will come up from time to time.

And it is true.

But “pluralistic” is one those words which first has a general meaning & then a more specific meaning.

We live in a society made up of hundreds of religions, & philosophies, & dozens of races & peoples.

The word “plural” simply means “more than one.”

There is no doubt that we are surrounded with people who are different from ourselves.

But that word has lately come to mean that we are supposed to think that all these people, and all these religions and philosophies are equally true and should be equally accepted.

But that is a fool’s paradise.

Only a fool would think that the Christian, the Muslim and the atheist are all equally correct,

And yet that is exactly what we are being programed to believe.

Only a fool would think that homosexuality and heterosexuality are equally acceptable life-styles,

But again that is what we are being told to think.

And some of the propagandists for this pluralistic idea even abuse the Bible to try to prove their point.

For example sometimes they will go to the Lord Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and quote Matthew 7:1-2:

Jesus said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

So, these people tell us, even Jesus tells us not to judge our homosexual neighbor or that Muslim.

But they fail to point out that the next verses says, “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

What the Lord was actually saying was to be careful about making judgments, because every judgment that we make will eventually be used to judge us.

When we refuse to agree with a statement which God makes about a subject, we condemn ourselves before the Lord.

In John 7 the Lord Jesus said, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.”

In my simplicity, it seems to me that Christ is authorizing me to judge positions and the people that hold them.

But – I am responsible to base that judgment on the highest possible standard, which of course is the Lord and His Word.

Any sane person knows that we are making judgments all the time.

“Which ice cream should I buy? I like this flavor, but not that one. I like this brand, but it’s too expensive.”

We make judgments about who will become our closest friends.

Many times those decisions are completely arbitrary.

Sometimes we change the rules of the judgment and sometimes we change the judgment itself.

It is ironic that some of the people who tell us not to judge others, bombard us with political ads judging and condemning their rivals in the upcoming elections.

And then the people who tell us not to judge others, break their own rules by judging us.

In light of the fact that we do make judgments all the time, John 7:24 is important advice:

“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.”

In these Acts 12 verses, we learn some things about righteous and unrighteous judgment.

The most unrighteous judgment ever made is when . . .

Man judges GOD.

Let’s try to strip away all the secondary facts and events and dig down to the root of this chapter.

Herod had ordered the arrest and incarceration of Peter.

When he saw how his execution of the Apostle James had pleased the Jews, he thought that he’d win a few more points by killing the Apostle Peter as well.

“And he killed James the brother of John with the sword.

And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also.

And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.”

Do you suppose that the sixteen soldiers whose responsibility it was to keep Peter in prison had any personal hatred against him?

It’s possible, but unlikely.

They may have hated Jews, but they probably didn’t have any particular hatred against Peter.

They were just doing their duty and obeying their superiors, who got their orders from Herod.

And do you suppose that they had beaten Peter or in other ways mistreated him,

As the soldiers had done to the Lord Jesus when they had Him in prison?

And as the jailor in Philippi will do to Paul in days to come?

If they did abuse Peter, it was just for fun & probably wasn’t the result of personal problems between them.

And again, why did Herod arrest Peter?

Was it because Peter had insulted the King?

Or that he was raising an insurrection against the Romans?

No, the Bible clearly says that Herod did what he did in order to please the Jews.

So why did the Jews hate James and Peter?

It was because those two men were servants of the Lord Jesus, Who claimed to be the eternal Son of God, the Messiah.

It was because they had been repeating the accusations that Christ made against Israel.

It was because they had been prophesying the judgment of God upon their nation just as Jeremiah had done so many years before.

In other words, the problem here was basically the Jews’ disagreement with Jehovah.

This nation judged God and didn’t find Him to their liking, so they were rebelling against Him.

The arrest of the Apostle Peter was in actuality a rebellious attack upon Jehovah.

Isn’t this still the kind of world in which we are living?

Why are there still thousands of abortions performed every year in the United States? Rebellion.

Why is there all the ruckus over legalizing homosexual marriages? Rebellion against God.

Why was that judge kicked off the bench for elevating the Ten Commandments?

The Name of the Lord is right in the middle of the problems in Iran and Afghanistan.

Beginning with Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, mankind has been judging God and condemning His judgments.

We live in a world constantly putting God in the scales of OUR judgment and finding Him wanting.

“Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.”

In fact, aren’t even most of us infected with this idea about judging God and judging the judgments of God?

“Lord, I refuse to give up my sin of lying, it works so well at getting me out of responsibilities I don’t like.

And I don’t care what you tell me about being more faithful to the house of God, I think that time with my family is more important than hearing the Word of God.

Give up my independence and become a servant of Christ? God, you must be kidding.

Tithe? Yes, I tithe according to my own rules, but give above my tithe to support missions?

If anything needs my financial support it’s my own addiction.

Baptism? Church membership? God, I can’t see where these things are important?“

Don’t most of our Bible’s look like sieves because we’ve chosen to cut so many commands and lessons out of the scriptures?

There is a sense in which every day is judgment day.

But it is foolish and disastrous to stand in judgment against God.

Another kind of judgment is MAN AGAINST MAN.

There is a sense in which the day of verse 18 was supposed to be Peter’s judgment day.

He had been arrested either prior to the Passover or during the Week of Unleavened Bread.

Herod had determined to wait until after the pagan celebration of Easter to bring him out of jail for a public execution.

But the same night when Herod would have brought him forth, the Lord sent his angel & delivered him.

Over and over again in the Scripture we see God overruling the judgments and decisions of men.

This not the first time that Peter has been miraculously released from prison.

He and others had been unjustly arrested for being Christians, but God delivered them.

When the soldiers and the mob came to arrest the Lord Jesus in the Garden,

The Saviour proved that they had no real control or authority over him, by making them all fall onto their backsides.

He didn’t knock them down with his hand or a blast of divine wind,

He simply willed them to the ground and that’s where they found themselves.

Jehovah is the Master of His creation and every creature in it. Amen?

When the morning’s light began to pierce the dungeon where Peter had been chained between two soldiers, those guards came to realize that they where chained to nothing but air.

Immediately they began a quick search of the building, but Peter was gone.

They aroused the other men in their quaternion, and the other quaternions as well.

Quickly they ran out into the streets surrounding the prison.

And there was no small stir among those soldiers.

They began making accusations against each other:

“You let him go! No, I didn’t so it must have been you.”

Then when Herod sent for his prisoner, news spread quickly that Peter, once again had escaped custody.

And a search was then made of all the places where he was known to frequent.

But as Matthew Henry said, “Who can find whom God hath hidden?”

Ahab searched for Elijah and couldn’t find him even when he was right under his nose.

When Jehoiakim searched for Jeremiah and Baruch, they couldn’t be found because “the Lord hid them.”

Saul couldn’t find David even though he had eyes and ears around the country-side.

Praise God for the protection that the Lord gives to His saints.

Christian, not even Satan can find you when the Lord has hidden you.

Did you know that the saints of God have been given the Biblical nickname of “Hidden Ones?”

Psalm 83 begins with these words:

“Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God.

For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head.

They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thy hidden ones.

They have said, Come, and let us cut them off. . . ”

But as the Lord Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.”

Peter was being kept as the apple of God’s eye, hidden under the shadow of the wings of the Lord (Ps. 17:8).

“One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.

For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.

And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the LORD” (Ps. 27-4-6).

“Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues” (Ps. 31:20).

Oh, isn’t it a wonderful thing that the judgments of men against the righteous shall not stand.

On the other hand, there were the poor soldiers.

At least one quaternion of soldiers were executed at the command of Herod,

And I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that all 16 of those men were executed for dereliction of duty.

“And when Herod had sought for him, and found him not, he examined the keepers, and commanded that they should be put to death.”

When the Bible says that Herod “examined” those guards it was a judicial or forensic examination.

He was trying to determine who among them had conspired to release the prisoner.

He checked bank accounts to determine who is was that had been bribed look the other way.

And it appeared to the king that there must have been more than one soldier involved.

And just because it couldn’t be proved that there was a conspiracy, it couldn’t be proved there wasn’t.

So they were executed.

Most modern Bible readers picture Herod as some sort of sadistic monster for killing his own soldiers,

But it needs to be realized that this was common military practice.

That is why the jailor in Philippi was ready to take his own life, when he assumed that Paul and Silas had escaped during an earthquake.

And that was why the soldiers on board the ship taking Paul to Rome wanted to kill the prisoners during the storm at sea, least any of them escaped.

The life of the guard would be required if the a prisoner escaped.

Herod judged the men under his command and ordered their deaths.

Could God have intervened and saved their lives? Certainly.

I believe that is exactly what the Lord did to save the lives of the guards at Jesus’ tomb.

But that was not the will of the Lord in this case.

Our last point this morning is in regards to GOD’S JUDGMENT OF MEN.

I don’t suppose that there was just one reason why Peter was delivered.

It might be argued that God simply wanted to show Herod and the Jews that they were not gods.

Or it might be thought that the Lord spared him for his future preaching ministry.

Maybe Peter’s family was still in great need of Him.

It might have been for the sake of the church in Jerusalem.

And then it might have been to say that “the Lord He is God; the Lord He is God.”

For reasons of His own, God judged that Peter was not worthy of death at the hands of Herod.

On the other hand those soldiers were worthy of death or they wouldn’t have been killed.

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

And “the wages of sin is death.”

Those men were sinners and were going to die for that reason whether at the hands of Herod or at the hands of old age.

It is appointed unto all men, once to die and after this another, more important, judgment.

And then we turn to God’s judgment and the execution of Herod.

While visiting in Caesarea, ambassadors from Tyre and Sidon paid the king a visit.

For whatever reason, they did their best to puff up his ego, even to the point to proclaiming him divine.

Of course, people are going to say whatever they want and for whatever purpose.

But we don’t have to believe their lies, or to permit ourselves to be wounded by them.

And neither do we have to accept the lies which are called “flattery.”

As a professing Jew, when those heathen dignitaries started shouting,

“It is the voice of a god, and not of a man,”

Herod should have silenced the crowd, walked away or at the least denied it in his own heart.

But he refused to give Jehovah the glory.

And the scripture clearly says that the angel of the Lord smote him, causing him to die a very painful death.

No man can win attempting to judge the God of Heaven and Earth.

No man can win in rejecting the testimony of God against us.

We are sinners in the judgment of the Lord; we are in need of an Intercessor and a Saviour.

If we refuse to bow before the Lord Jesus, repenting of our sin and trusting the blood of His sacrifice to pay for our sin debt before God, we shall all likewise perish.

Herod was a wicked, wicked man, and there would be few human courts in the world today who wouldn’t find him worthy of life in prison.

But there are two additional facts:

God’s Word says that he was worthy of death, not just jail.

And secondly, you and I are no less worthy of the same judgment.

“For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

“Accept a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

And that means you.

Now, going back to the soldiers who died – permit me to close with an allegory.

They had been given the responsibility to keep the servant of God, a gift from the Lord, so to speak.

They were executed because they failed in their duty.

And to you, likewise, has been committed several gifts from the Lord.

The first is your own eternal soul, granted to you at the time of your conception.

If you let that escape, then you will die the second death.

You will be “cast into the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.”

AND – you have also been granted exposure to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Perhaps this message hasn’t been a clear declaration of salvation.

But I have pointed out that you are a sinner and in need of a Saviour.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is that Saviour, the only sacrifice available to deliver you from your sins.

If you let this opportunity to bow before Christ slip away you will be held eternally responsible.

“He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.”

You may have this opportunity presented to you again some day, but then again you may not.

How shall you escape if you neglect so great salvation.

“Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

Permit me to show you how that Jesus died for sin.

Permit me to take you to Calvary.