Man Vs God

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Amen.
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If you would, take out your Bibles with me and turn to the twelfth chapter of Acts.
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You can hold your place at the first verse.
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Ever since the fall of man, mankind has been at war with his Creator.
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It is surely a battle which rages in vain, and yet one which men seem pleased to fight.
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The battle began with the promise that Eve could be like God in Genesis 3.5.
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She believed that she could be like God, trusting in the serpent.
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Her husband, too, in some way believed that.
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They were cast out of the garden, and as a result, men have been continuously fighting with their Creator ever since.
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And this war between God and men is a battle which tends to be fought from the top down.
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What I mean by that is it seems that those most interested in fighting God are those who are in power themselves.
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Consider a moment, a brief bit of biblical history.
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We have record after record of kings and rulers who sought to do battle with God.
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The Pharaoh in Egypt comes to mind.
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God demonstrates to him His power in successive plagues, these judgments, over and over and over again.
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And what did Pharaoh do? He doubled down every time, and then even at the death of his son, he weeps and he sends Israel away.
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But then what does he do? Go for them, and he sends the armies after them.
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And he doubles down even after the death of his son.
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King Nebuchadnezzar is another who did battle with the Almighty.
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He demanded the worship that is reserved for God alone, and even sought the lives of those who would not worship him as such, casting Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace simply for not bowing down to his statue.
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He also claimed that he had built his kingdom off of his might, and he glorified himself, and that caused God to teach him a humble lesson.
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And only after that time of judgment did Nebuchadnezzar come to a realization that the God of this world cannot be overcome, and it is only a fool who fights Him.
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King Ahab and his wife Jezebel also raged in their hatred of God.
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They set up a house of false worship to Baal, the false god.
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They attacked the prophets of the one true God.
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And in 1 Kings 16.33, I read this this week, and I thought, wow, how amazing.
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The epitaph of this man says, And Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.
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He did more to make God angry than everybody who came before him.
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Imagine that epitaph.
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He did more to anger God.
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Because of that, both Ahab and his wife Jezebel met with terrible ends.
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Ahab was killed in battle, as had been prophesied about him, and Jezebel was thrown from a tower, and her body was eaten by dogs, according to 2 Kings 9.35.
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This morning we're continuing in Acts, and in our text today we're going to see another ruler who made it his business to do battle with God, in that he did battle with God's people.
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And what will be obvious in this lesson, I hope, and I hope and pray that this is what you take away from this lesson, at least one of the things, is that when man versus God, God is always the victor.
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That being said, let's stand together.
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We're going to go through the whole chapter, but we're going to read the first five verses while standing to give us a setting for today's lesson.
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Acts chapter 12, verse 1.
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About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church.
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He killed James the brother of John with the sword.
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And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.
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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.
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So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.
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Father in heaven, I ask for your mercy as I seek to give an exposition of your word.
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I pray as always, Lord, that you would keep me from error.
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I pray that you would protect your people from any words that I say which are incorrect.
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I pray, Lord, ultimately that your Holy Spirit would be the one who would teach our hearts and our minds this morning.
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I thank you for this narrative that we have here, which reminds us that though men may seek to do battle with you, that the battle is already won.
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And those who rage against you truly rage against you in vain.
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We thank you, Lord, for your word.
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Help us to be faithful to it in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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The twelfth chapter of the book of Acts is what some might call an aside.
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In the eleventh chapter, we see the ministry of Barnabas and Saul, which is going on establishing the church in Antioch.
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And then the thirteenth chapter, we see back in the church of Antioch, the commissioning of Barnabas and Saul on their first missionary journey.
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So we see Antioch in chapter 11, Antioch in chapter 13, but then there's this sort of, this narrative which sort of sandwiched in between those two situations, telling us about the serious persecution which has not ended in Jerusalem.
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You'll remember, we've been going through Acts, and the persecution began in Jerusalem.
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First Peter and John were arrested, but they were let go, and then later Stephen was arrested.
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He was stoned, and that sort of created this dispersion where the people began to go out from there.
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It sort of pushed the first bit of evangelism outside of Jerusalem, was because of persecution the people had to get away from these people seeking their life.
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And even though they have gone away, not every Christian left Jerusalem.
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There's still men and women there who believe the gospel, who are proclaiming the gospel, and they're still under persecution.
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And though there were times of respite, times when their lives weren't as imperiled as others, it was never a safe time for the early church there in the center of Judaism.
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And this entire chapter takes us through the rise and fall of the persecution of King Herod, which is why I want to address it as a unit.
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It's hard to preach a whole chapter in one week, but I really do not want to stretch this to two weeks, because the focus of the message is one singular focus on the sovereignty of God over men, and over the lives of men, and even over rulers and kings.
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So I want us to kind of stay focused, move briskly, not too quickly, but as briskly as we can to move through this chapter so that we can see the whole thing in one shot.
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Let's look first at what we just read.
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Herod is making war against the church.
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We see that in verses 1 through 5.
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We see there in verse 1, it says that about that time Herod the king laid violent hands.
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This means injurious.
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He was attempting to injure the church and some who belonged to the church.
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Now to keep in your minds just sort of some context here, this is not the same Herod that was in the situation with Jesus, and it's not the same Herod that was in the situation with the birth of Jesus.
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You'll see Herod used to reference different people.
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Herod the Great was the king when Jesus was born.
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He was the one that had all the babies murdered there in Jerusalem.
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Herod Antipas was the king that Pilate sent Jesus to when Jesus was there before him, and he said send him to Herod so that Herod could investigate him.
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Okay, so that's a different Herod.
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This is Herod Agrippa.
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He is the nephew of that Herod.
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Okay, just again giving you some context as to who we're talking about here in the situation.
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He is the nephew of actually Herod's wife Herodias.
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Remember Herodias? She was the one who asked for John the Baptist's head on the platter.
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Well this is her nephew.
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It's a dynastic title is what we're dealing with.
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The Herods were known as people pleasers.
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This is especially the case with this particular Herod.
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He's Herod Agrippa I, and he was known for doing what he could to gain favor with the Jews.
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He was known for being very meticulous in the keeping of certain days.
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In fact, we see that here.
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He didn't want to bring Peter out during the feast time.
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He wanted to be very meticulous in the keeping of the law.
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He wanted to gain favor with the Jews, and when he found out, we'll see this later, when he finds out that killing Christians makes the Jews happy, oh, that's great.
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Now I know what to do.
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Now I know what I can do to gain favor with these people.
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So we see in verse 2, he killed James.
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This is his major act because this is the first death of an apostle.
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Remember Jesus' apostles were the men that he chose specifically to follow after him.
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James and John were brothers.
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They were called by Jesus Boanerges.
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Boanerges means sons of thunder.
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They were a rambunctious pair.
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Jesus gave them their name, sons of thunder.
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And here we have James, who had been a leader, an apostle in the church, and he's the first apostle to be taken and killed for his faith.
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It's interesting that this is really in the fulfillment of a prophecy here.
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Because I don't know if you remember James and John, they had a mom who went to Jesus and they asked the mom, you know, kind of on her son's behalf, and you moms might understand, you know, she wanted her boys to be in a prominent position in Jesus' kingdom, you know, because they all kind of thought Jesus was going to set up an earthly kingdom.
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And she said, can my two boys sit at your right and left? Can they sit beside you on your throne? And Jesus said, you don't know what you're asking.
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You don't even understand this issue.
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But then he said to them, it's in Matthew 20, Jesus answered, you do not know what you're asking.
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And he says to the boys, he says, are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink? They said to him, we are able.
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He said to them, you will drink my cup.
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And he goes on to say, but to sit at my right hand is not mine to give, but the father's.
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But that phrase, you will drink my cup, you will experience persecution.
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And it's interesting that the one that Jesus says this to, one of the two, we know John was persecuted as well, but his persecution came in the form of exile.
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But this one who Jesus said, you will drink my cup, is the first one to experience death as an apostle for the name of Jesus Christ.
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Another interesting point about James before we move on from verse two is that James' witness was so powerful that Eusebius, a later writer, recounts that the man who he was chained to, and by the way, that's how they tried to keep prisoners from escaping, is they would chain them to the soldier.
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And it is kind of hard to run with a 200 pound backpack, you know.
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And so they would just, especially when it's fighting against you.
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So they chained them to the soldier.
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And the soldier that James was chained to converted to Christ.
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And as a result, when James was beheaded, so too was the soldier that held him.
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Because he would not renounce Christ.
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It's an amazing story.
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It's found there in the Eusebius Pamphilius Church History book two, if you're interested in reading the story.
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So the son of thunder died a faithful son of God.
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And a witness, an evangelist as well, even to his captor.
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And then we see in verses three and four, this political motivation Herod sees in this.
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It says, and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.
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This is a good thing.
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It pleases the Jews.
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So we're going to now do as much of this as we can.
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Political expediency was what moved Herod more so than hatred of the Christians.
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Herod probably could have cared less whether a person was a Christian or a Jew or what.
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But because he wanted to garner favor with the Jews, and he saw that killing Christians was the way to go to do that.
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Well, let's go to the top.
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Peter is a recognized leader, of course, among the apostles.
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Peter is one who has gained attention as one of the leaders in Jerusalem.
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He was one of the first to be arrested.
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We know who Peter is.
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If we're going to kill somebody, let's kill him.
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So, in verse four, it says, and when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers.
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Four squads, each squad is four soldiers.
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So there's four squads of four soldiers to watch him.
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As if he were some type of a violent criminal.
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They wanted to ensure that he would not get away.
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And so we see, also, I want to mention something in verse four.
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If you're reading a King James Bible, you will notice this is the only place in any Bible that uses the word Easter.
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I want to read it from the ESV, which is what I'm reading.
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It says, 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.
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If you're reading a King James, it will say after Easter.
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This isn't really, this isn't something I want to spend a whole lot of time on.
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It's certainly not a hill I'm going to fight on.
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But the word Easter is not a Christian word.
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We like to use the word Easter, but it's not a Christian word.
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And it's not in the Bible.
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That word is Pascha in the Greek, and it means Passover.
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It does not mean Easter.
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Easter is taken from a derivative of Ishtar, which is the goddess of fertility.
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Which is why when people celebrate Easter, they do it with bunnies and eggs.
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Because bunnies and eggs both represent what? Fertility, in case you didn't know.
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They represent fertility.
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And this is why when you come here in the springtime, we celebrate Holy Week.
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We celebrate Resurrection Sunday.
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You won't see advertisement banners that say Easter.
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Now if you use Easter as a word, I'm not condemning you.
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But I'm trying to give you a reason for why I don't.
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And why it's not really a biblical word, though you will see it in the King James.
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The Greek word is Pascha.
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It means Passover.
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Just a little tidbit of history for you that I thought was important as I was writing my notes.
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We see in verse 5, So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made by the church.
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So this is the setting situation.
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You've got Herod, who wants to gain favor with the Jews, and in doing so says, I'm going to murder Christians.
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We have the person who is representing the leadership of the church.
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First James, who was an apostle, he's murdered.
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He's got his head cut off.
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Later we see Peter is also taken into prison, and now the church is earnestly praying.
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And by the way, that word earnestly only shows up one more time in all of Luke's writings.
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And it's when Jesus was praying the night before he was crucified.
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It says Jesus made earnest prayer.
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It's the same exact Greek word which is used here.
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So they are on their face.
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They are crying.
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They are weeping.
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They are distressed over what they know is about to happen to Peter, because they've seen it happen to James.
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They know the personality of Herod.
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They know the situation.
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They know what's going to happen.
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Peter is marked for death.
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And they've got themselves prostrate before God on behalf of their pastor, their leader, their apostle.
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And then we see in verses 6-11, God intervenes on behalf of Peter.
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It says, 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 regarding the prison.
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You see, he's chained up to these guys.
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They do not want to lose this guy.
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He's very important.
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And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and 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.
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You know what gets me every time I read that verse, I think? If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, would I sleep soundly tonight? There's an element of faith that's demonstrated by Peter.
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He's sound asleep.
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So much so that the angel who filled the room with light still had to whack him in the side just to wake him up.
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I don't know, I have a feeling if you were going to die tomorrow, you might be on your knees praying, you might be a little anxious, you might be a little fearful, but he was sound asleep.
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Just an interesting little part of the story.
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It says in verse 8, And the angel said to him, Dress yourself, put on your sandals, and he did so.
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And he said to him, Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.
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And he went out and followed him.
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It doesn't say what's happening with the soldiers at this moment, but apparently they are oblivious to everything that's going on.
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God is blinding their eyes, he's closing their ears, they don't see what's happening, they don't know what's happening.
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Later in the story, we find out when they wake up, they're all, what happened? And even Peter's sort of oblivious because it says, He did not know what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.
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See, Peter was one who had had visions before.
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If you remember, it was a vision that led him to Cornelius' house.
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He'd seen the vision of the sheet coming down.
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He saw that vision three times.
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So Peter understands the idea that there are times where he would have visions of something that was happening.
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And so here he is walking out, these soldiers aren't waking up.
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He's got this angel that's leading him out and he thinks, Well, it's just a vision.
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Verse 10, it says, When they had passed the first and second guard, apparently oblivious to the guards, they came to the iron gate leading into the city and it opened for them of its own accord.
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And they went out and went along one street and immediately the angel left him.
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Okay.
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Now, verse 11, when Peter came to himself, he said, Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.
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So here, he's led him out and left him.
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Now this guy, this is public enemy number one.
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He is the criminal of criminals.
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Everybody's looking forward to this guy's death the next day.
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All the Jews and everybody, they know what's about to happen to him and the angel just sort of leaves him in the street.
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What's going to happen now? I got to find a place to go.
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I got to go somewhere.
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I've got to, I can't just stand here.
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I'll get right back in prison.
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So verse 12, when he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose other name was Mark.
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This is John Mark.
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He's mentioned later in the text where many were gathered together and were praying.
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This is apparently a fairly big house.
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The text doesn't tell us everything about it, but it does say it has a courtyard and a fence, which is representative in that time of someone who had real estate.
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This is, scholars have conjectured that this may have even been the place Jesus had the last supper and the fact that John Mark's mother was a true follower of Jesus.
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And when he knocked at the door of the gate, verse 13, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer.
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Recognizing Peter's voice and her joy, she did not open the gate, but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate.
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Now, I imagine Peter was a little frustrated at that moment.
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I'm trying to get off the street.
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Can you shut up and let me in? I don't know if he said it like that.
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He probably a little nicer than me.
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But he's like, what's going on? She's so excited to see him, she runs inside to tell everyone that he's there.
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Then verse 15, they said to her, you are out of your mind.
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And the great you crazy, that's the vernacular.
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You crazy.
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But she kept insisting that it was so and they kept saying it is his angel.
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Interesting, one, that they didn't believe God had answered their prayer.
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And two, they still have a little bad theology.
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What am I talking about? Well, in this time in Jewish theology, the idea was every person had a guardian angel and that that guardian angel could take that person's form at certain times.
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So they were sort of reverting back to some of that bad Jewish mysticism, some of that bad theology.
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That's not Peter, but okay, if you saw anything, you must have just seen his angel.
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It's not him.
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But Peter continued knocking and when they opened, they saw him and were amazed.
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Verse 17, but mentioning them with his hand to be silent, he shushed them because they're being loud and he's a prison escapee.
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And motioning with his hand for them 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.
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Now, James already died.
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Who is he talking about here? This is a different James.
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This is James, the brother of Jesus Christ, who we know would go on to be a very prominent leader in the Jerusalem church because by chapter 15, James is going to be the one who makes the pronouncement of judgment at the Jerusalem council.
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He stands up and makes a pronouncement of judgment indicating that he has a leadership role, likely that of an elder there at the church in Jerusalem.
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And he is the one most likely who wrote the book of James, which we have in our Bible.
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So this isn't James, the apostle.
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This is James, the brother of Jesus.
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It says, tell them to James.
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It's like what's happening here.
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Why is he saying tell it to James? Why is James not there? It's likely that the church was broken up in different houses because, again, they're persona non grata.
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They're not welcome.
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So they're having to sort of hide out.
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And he says, go and find him.
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Let him know that I'm safe.
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Let him know what happened.
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Let him know what's going on.
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And then it says, then he departed and went to another place.
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This is a hugely important moment in the book of Acts because it is at this moment that we see really the ending of the ministry of the apostle Peter, at least what we see in Acts because from here on it shifts to the work of Paul.
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Now, I'm not saying Peter didn't minister anymore.
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Don't get me wrong.
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Peter ends up going and dying on a cross.
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Church tradition says he died upside down on a cross for his faith.
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So I'm not saying as an evangelist he was done or as a minister he was done.
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But the only other time we really see him in Acts is at the Jerusalem council.
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So this is a major shift in theological history where the focus goes from being on the apostle Peter, which the first 12 chapters really have been about Peter.
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It's now going to move to being about the apostle Paul and his missionary journeys for the church.
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Verse 18, Now when day came, there was no little disturbance among the soldiers over what had become of Peter.
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And after Herod searched for them and did not find him, he examined the centuries in order that they be put to death.
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Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there.
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The Roman law was very simple.
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If you as a soldier were in charge of a prisoner and the prisoner escaped, then you would owe whatever debt or whatever fine or whatever time in prison or even death in their place.
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You substituted for them.
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Now Herod wasn't bound by that law.
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In one regard, he could have in his administration alleviated such a rule, but he chose not to.
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He chose to have these men put to death because they had lost his prized prisoner, Peter, the one for whom he was going to get all the accolades.
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All of Judea, all the Jews would love him if he could kill this guy.
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And no, he didn't.
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Now verse 20, it says, Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon.
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And it seems like, I won't make a point, this seems like the story is shifting and sort of going a different direction.
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And in a way it is, but just know that everything we're about to read is tying back into what just happened.
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Because here we have Herod, he hated the church, he attacked the church, he attacked God's men, he attacked James the Apostle, killed him, tried to kill Peter.
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God didn't allow him to kill Peter at that time.
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And now Herod, it goes on to this little anecdote about his life, this little story.
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And it says in verse 20, it says, Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon.
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And they came to him with one accord, and having persuaded Blastas, the king's chamberlain.
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Chamberlain is simply his right-hand man, the man who's in charge of his business.
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Chamberlain simply means a person in charge of your bedroom, chamber person.
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But the idea though is he was his worker, this was the guy.
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If you wanted to get in with the king, this was the person you wanted to speak to.
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And they asked for peace because their country depended on the king's country for food.
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And on the appointed day, Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne and delivered an oration to them.
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An oration is simply a speech, he spoke to them.
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And the people were shouting, The voice of a God and not of a man.
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You see they're trying to win some favor.
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See at the beginning of the story, Herod is trying to win favor with the Jews.
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But at this part of the story, Tyre and Sidon who need him for food are willing to do what? Call him God.
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You're this, this isn't man speaking, you are a divine being.
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You are a God and not a man.
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Verse 23, Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.
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Now what's interesting is this is one of the times in biblical history that there is an extra biblical source which provides us with some information that we might not have gotten just from the text of Scripture.
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And I've reminded people a lot, the Bible is not meant to be a history book.
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The Bible is redemptive history.
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The Bible tells us what we need to know about salvation, about God, about His plan for us.
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But it doesn't give us every single detail about historical events, which is why some people come at it from a historical perspective.
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The Bible is always proven true, it's never proven to be an error.
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But it doesn't give us every little thing.
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So it's nice sometimes to have these other historical accounts.
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And there's a man by the name of Josephus.
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I'm sure you've heard of Josephus, the Jewish historian.
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And he wrote about this situation.
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And he tells us some things like that the outfit that Herod wore that day was made with silver, so that he shone like the sun.
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That when he walked out, that he literally glowed.
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That he was shiny like the sun.
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And it tells us also that the people were crying out to him, voice of a God and not of a man, voice of a God and not of a man.
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But they say it, I want to just read to you what Josephus writes here.
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It says, Presently his flatterers cried out, one from one place and one from another, though not for his good, that he was a God.
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And they added, Be thou merciful to us, for although we have hitherto reverenced thee only as a man, yet shall we henceforth own thee as superior to mortal men.
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Now, Josephus says something weird there.
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He said they didn't say this for his good.
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What does he mean? They were saying it for their own good.
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They needed something from him.
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So what did they do? You're like God to us.
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Give us all that we need, oh mighty God, man.
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Upon this, I'm going to read from Josephus again.
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Upon this the king neither rebuked them, nor rejected their impious flattery.
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But shortly afterward looked up and saw an owl sitting on a certain rope over his head.
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And immediately understood that this bird was a messenger of ill tidings.
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Remember this isn't scripture, this is Josephus.
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But this is what Herod saw.
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Josephus had once been the messenger of good tidings to him, and he fell into deepest sorrow.
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A severe pain arose in his belly, striking with the most violent intensity.
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He therefore looked upon his friends and said, I, whom you call a God, am commanded presently to depart this life.
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While providence thus reproves the lying you just now said to me, and I, who you called immortal, am immediately to be hurried away to death.
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You see when that pain struck him on the inside, he looked to his friends and he said, you guys call me God, and now I'm dying.
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Josephus goes on to tell us it took him five days to actually die.
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But it was five days of gut-wrenching agony.
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And the idea of being eaten by worms is something that is somewhat of a euphemism in scripture, used of many people who died.
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The idea of some type of an intestinal issue.
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It's not intended to be necessarily a medical explanation, as much as it is to be a euphemistic explanation of he died from the inside out.
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I want to end with verses 20.
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I'm not ending the sermon, don't get excited.
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I want to end reading the text, and then make application.
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Verses 24 and 25 make an interesting back to the church.
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It says, but the word of God, and I love the fact that it says but.
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Here's this guy, he made war against the church, he hated God's people, he was himself willing to accept the title of God before the people.
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He's dead, but the word of God increased.
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And not only increased, it multiplied.
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The man who allowed himself to be called God, DRT.
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That means dead right there.
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He was dead right there.
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But the word of God continues.
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The grass withers, the flowers fade, but what? The word of God will stand forever.
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And thus the word of God continued.
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Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark.
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And next week we'll begin chapter 13.
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But let me just, now that we've looked at the story, we've looked at the situation, I want to make some application from this text.
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As we begin to draw to a close.
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And you have in your notes, if you want to write these down, what I see as application from this text is really very simple.
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We see examples of God's sovereignty.
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And I know as a Reformed theologian, Reformed theology, people think we spend too much time on sovereignty.
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You can't spend too much time thinking about the sovereignty of God.
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It's what undergirds so much of how we understand God.
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So, here's the thing.
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What do we see in this text? Well, one, we see the sovereignty of God over death.
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God chose to spare Peter.
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God chose to kill Herod.
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And God chose not to save James.
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See, we often don't think about that.
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We think, well, the hero won, Peter, and the villain got his comeuppance, Herod.
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But there's another man in this story who did die when violent hands were laid upon him, and that was James.
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And I want to tell you this, and I want to speak to every person who leans, maybe just a little charismatic.
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Let me tell you this.
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I do not believe that James died because of his lack of faith.
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James died at that moment because God had ordained it to be so.
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It was not Peter's moment to die, and thus God intervened.
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But as Wody Bauckham said, and I believe this is true, he says God was sovereign when that soldier walked James to the stump as much as He was sovereign when that angel walked Peter out of the cell.
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It's the same God.
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He's the same sovereign God.
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And what you must remember is Peter was killed also, just not then.
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Because Peter was not done glorifying God and what God had planned for him to do.
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But when he was done, he went to an upside-down cross.
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God is the one who is the sustainer.
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A saint will not live one moment longer than God has ordained, neither will he die one moment before God has determined.
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God is sovereign over death.
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Number two, the sovereignty of God over prayer.
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God heard the fervent prayers of the saints and He released Peter, and we know that prayer is an ordained purpose of God.
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He does use prayer as a vehicle for growing His people and honoring their faith, but that in no way means, and listen again, it does not mean that they named and claimed Peter's escape or his release.
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I've heard name-it-and-claim-it teachers use this verse to try to prove some type of heretical magic potion that comes from prayer.
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These people didn't name or claim anything.
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You want to know how I know that? Because they were surprised when it happened.
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They didn't believe that it had happened.
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People say, oh, if your faith was just strong enough.
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Obviously, their faith didn't even believe it could, but it did.
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They didn't name and claim nothing and neither did Peter.
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He was asleep.
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I'm not saying they didn't trust God.
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I'm not saying they didn't believe God by the power of prayer.
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What I am saying is they knew God was sovereign and that He will do in accordance with His will.
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And our prayer should always be, nevertheless, not my will, but Thy will be done.
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I heard a pastor this week say, if you pray that, you're calling God a fool because you should never pray, nevertheless, my will, but Your will be done.
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I'm like, dude, you're rebuking Jesus.
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Jesus is the one who taught us to say, Thy will and not my will be done.
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We do not command God by our prayers.
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We seek God and trust God with our prayers.
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But we are not sovereign.
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It is He who is sovereign.
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And finally, we see the sovereignty of God over rulers.
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Herod thought he was God.
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He was wrong.
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Herod warred with God.
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He was foolish.
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But ask yourself this question and be honest.
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How many of us are as foolish that we war with God in our lives? How many of you are living this day in rebellion thinking that somehow you are going to come out on top? Somehow you are going to trick or fool the Almighty.
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Somehow you'll be the one after 7,000 years of human history.
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Yeah, I'm a young earth guy.
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After 7,000 years or however long, 10,000 years of human history, you're going to be the one who when it comes up man versus God, you're the one that's going to end up on top.
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How many men live such a foolish lie? I was reading this week about Ernest Hemingway.
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Ernest Hemingway was a famed author.
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Most of you have heard of him.
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And he once wrote, All thinking men are atheists.
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Hemingway told a writer from a very famous magazine in 1956.
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He said, What is immoral is anything you feel bad after doing.
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So that's all immorality is, is whatever makes you feel bad once you've done it.
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And by his own standard, he had impeachable morals because nothing made him feel bad.
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The article goes on to say, People with different ideas about morality would call him a sinner.
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Yeah.
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It goes on to say, And the wages of sin, they say, is death.
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Hemingway has cheated death time and time again to become a scarred and bearded American legend, a great white hunter, a husband of four wives, and a winner of the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes.
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Sin has paid off for Hemingway.
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That's what the article said.
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Ten years after this article was written, Hemingway put a shotgun in his mouth and ended his life.
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Nobody wins when they fight God.
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And sin does not pay in positive dividends.
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God is sovereign.
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And if you come to me later and you say, You reformed folks talk about sovereignty too much, I'm going to tell you this.
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I find it hard to overemphasize the fact that God is in control.
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And I find it hard to overemphasize the fact that to war with Him is foolish.
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There's comfort in His sovereignty.
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There's strength in His sovereignty.
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There's beauty in His sovereignty.
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There's assurance in His sovereignty.
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If the God you serve isn't sovereign, the God you serve isn't God.
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The God of the Bible is all powerful.
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He is not to be trifled with.
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We can submit to Him, repent of our sins, and trust in His goodness, or we can continue to fight a battle that has no possibility of success.
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So I call you today, if you are fighting with God, repent, and trust Christ to save your soul.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the opportunity to look at a whole chapter of Your Word.
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Oh, what a blessing.
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Father, I pray that if there are those today who are fighting against God, if You have been, Lord, working on their hearts, and You've made it Your purpose to open their hearts today to the gospel of truth, I pray that that would be today, and that they would be able to cry out to You in repentance and faith.
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And Father, I pray for all the believers in the room, Lord, who still have the capacity to grieve the Spirit by our disobedience.
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I pray, Lord, that we would look into our lives, look for any places where we've tried to sit on the throne, and remove ourselves from that throne, and Lord, allow Christ, have Christ sit there, and Lord, submit to Him.
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Father, may it never be that we seek to be Lord, but rather may it be that we seek to know our Lord and live as Him.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.
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Let's stand together and sing.
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If you have a need, please come as we sing.