But Prayer was Made without Ceasing – Acts 12:5

I don’t know if everyone agrees with me; in fact I don’t know if anyone agrees with me,

But I picture myself as an optimist.

I would much rather look on the bright side than on the negative side, and I generally do.

When things aren’t going well, I more often look away than get myself upset by looking directly at the problem.

I realize that may be more of a fault than a virtue.

One of the effects of this is that I generally look for good things in people, especially if other people are attacking them.

That means that I tend to be slow to criticize people.

And when I do, I later second guess myself and wonder if I was correct in criticizing them at all.

I’ve been thinking about the church in Jerusalem and their reaction to Peter’s knock on their door.

My initial response was to criticize them.

I still think that they deserve some rebuke and exhortation, but I’m not sure if it should be as severe as I was first thinking.

If you were Peter what sort of things would you be preaching to the church the next time that you were in the pulpit?

Let’s think about the prayer of the church using these three points:

THEREFORE, PRAYER FOR and FURTHERMORE.

Verse 5 says, “Peter THEREFORE was kept in prison.”

Obviously, this was the reason for the prayers of the church.

In my further study about Herod Agrippa, I ran across some additional, interesting information.

Caligula was the Roman Emperor at this time – the infamous Emperor at Rome.

The egos of just about every man who became Emperor exploded when they took office.

Never was the axiom “absolute power corrupts absolutely” more true than with those emperors.

Their native depravity turned some into homosexual pedophiles, some into mass murderers, and some into demanding that people worship them as if they were god.

For Caligula it was just about every perversion imaginable.

I am told that it was his intention to have a statue of himself erected in the Jewish Temple,

But despite his friendship with Agrippa, his appointed King in Judea wisely balked at the idea.

So even though the two men had been friends, and Agrippa was king because of that relationship,

This, otherwise, amoral man, stopped short of desecrating the temple.

That meant that gaining the unqualified support of the Jews was that much more crucial.

He had taken one step in the right direction,

But if there was going to be trouble with his boss,

Then Herod Agrippa wanted to have the Sanhedrin behind him as much as was possible.

This may have been the real reason for the sham of Herod’s “conversion” to Judaism.

And this was the reason why he had taken up the sword against the Church of God.

Peter was within hours of his execution, when the Lord miraculously released him.

The church in Jerusalem had already suffered a terrible loss with the death of James,

And they were not looking forward to another funeral so soon.

So having no other recourse, they went to the throne of omnipotent grace.

There are lots of ways to get into prison.

Herod could walk toward his prison and every door open automatically at his approach.

He should have gone to prison and stayed there.

Prison guards and other officials go to jail every day and come home at the end of their shifts.

Sometimes a visitor can reach into its innermost bowels and to walk back out.

As a pastor, I have been to the visiting room of jails and talked with prisoners through thick plexiglass.

And of course, there are millions of people who have been in prison because they have broken the law.

But it is also possible to be in prison for serving God, and that was the case with Peter.

Herod needed Peter to be in prison and that was what he was there for.

And Peter was the one that the church went to PRAYER FOR.

We are told that “prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him.”

And we read that Peter was miraculously released from prison on the eve of his execution.

Does that mean that since James was not released, and that he was executed,

That the church did not pray for him?

Of course it teaches no such thing.

As I pointed out last Sunday to draw arguments and doctrines out of the silence of the Scripture is foolish and criminal.

Of course the church prayed for James.

I’m sure that they prayed for all of their members who had been arrested through the years.

But as an apostle, James was one of the most important members of the church.

He may have even been one of the pastors of that great congregation.

Certainly Herod thought of him as important enough to be killed.

And the church pleaded with the Lord to have him released.

But it didn’t happen.

Our sovereign Lord must be trusted to determine who lives and who dies.

And we should not determine by such divine decisions that one man is more important or more righteous than another man.

The Lord may have special reasons for a man to die which we will never know this side of Heaven.

Can anyone say that there wasn’t a Saul of Tarsus in the life of James, just as there had been in the life and death of Stephen?

The Lord had His reason for permitting the death of this apostle.

And He had His reasons for ordering the release of Peter.

“The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

In this chapter, the church was praying for Peter.

How did they pray? About what did they pray? Does the scripture tell us?

If I had to guess, I’d say that James was arrested and executed prior to the Passover, in the same way that the Lord Jesus was crucified before the Passover.

Then these verses seem to suggest that Peter was arrested after the Passover but during the Week of Unleavened Bread.

So apparently Peter was in jail for at least a couple of days and perhaps even longer than that.

And if I may use my own heart to understand the prayers of those saints,

I’d say that the first day or several days, the church was praying for Peter’s release.

They may have also petitioned the King and some of his deputies.

But when they realized that Herod had every intention “after Easter to bring him forth to the people,”

In addition to their prayers for his release,

They began to pray more fervently that the Lord would grant Peter comfort and strength to endure what appeared to be inevitable.

The words “without ceasing” here in this verse have special meaning, and I’ll get to that in a minute,

But they do suggest to us that the members of the church were praying around the clock.

I really doubt that the whole church was gathered at John Mark’s mother’s house that night.

I think that it was very likely that a group of members agreed to meet there from midnight to 6:00 a.m., or from 3:00 a.m. to 6:00.

And then another group planned to meet at another home to begin praying at 6:00, and another group agreed to meet and pray at 9:00 or at noon.

There was 24-hour prayer for Peter.

I think that they may have pictured themselves holding his hand through their prayers.

They may have thought that they were going to loose him,

But they were giving him their fellowship as best they could in this prayerful way.

Could it be that they were surprised to learn of Peter’s release because they were no long praying for his release?

That isn’t to say that they shouldn’t have been,

But isn’t it possible that they were praying about other things.

All that the scripture says is that “prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him.”

The words “without ceasing” here come from the Greek word “ektenes” ( ek-ten-ace’ ).

That is not the same word that is used in I Thess. 5:17 and elsewhere, where we are told to “pray without ceasing.”

The church in Jerusalem was not only praying CONSTANTLY, but they were praying FERVENTLY.

The only other time this word is used in the Bible is I Peter 4:8, “And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.”

What this tells us is that the church was about as earnest in their prayers as humanly possible.

They were fervently and constantly beseeching God for Peter, who they probably thought was going to die just the way that James had died.

But in this case that was not God’s will that he die.

It was the will of the Lord that Peter be arrested,

And it was the will of the Lord that he sleep peacefully between two of his guards.

The prayers of the saints might have had something to do with Peter’s calm heart.

Furthermore, he was released.

Luke’s account here is quite explicit, yet with lots of details left out.

Either with the angel or preceding the angel, a light flooded the prison.

Does the Bible say that it was only in Peter’s cell? No, is doesn’t.

But Peter was sleeping so soundly that the angel had to get his attention.

Did the guards see the angel or had they fallen into a deep, God-caused sleep themselves?

Then Peter’s manacles just opened up and fell to the floor.

Why didn’t the angel carry Peter, or why didn’t he just find himself outside the prison?

We notice that Peter had some responsibilities in his release, however small they might have been.

First the cell door opened, and then they went into the first ward,

Then another locked door swung open, and they went into the second ward.

From there a huge iron gate opened and Peter was free.

Somehow the apostle knew to go to Mark’s house even though it was the middle of the night.

Could it be that someone had told him where the prayer meeting was being held?

There he announced his release and either went home or to someone else’s house.

Was he worried about being arrested again? I rather doubt that it concerned him at all.

One question remains: How important were the prayers of the saints?

For that I have no direct answer.

I suppose that it depends on the meaning of “important.”

We don’t know for sure what the church was praying for.

Was it important that those people pray? Absolutely.

Were the hours of lost sleep really lost? Not for a minute.

Did those prayers convince God to do some thing that He hadn’t intended to do? Absolutely not.

Should we be unceasing and fervent in prayer? Absolutely

Whatever else the prayers of that church should teach us, they tell us that God was pleased.

And THAT is what this Christian life is all about.