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Reading Acts 12:12-23 where Herod is unsuccessful in destroying Peter and stopping the gospel, but the Lord makes an example of Herod by destroying him. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
Proverbs 16 .4 says the Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble. The Lord used Herod to show how the Word of God would prevail mightily over the word of a man.
When we understand the text.
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Here's our host, Hester Gape.
Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the book of Acts. We've been looking at chapter 12 this week. And I'm going to begin reading in verse 12 through verse 19. This is right after the angel had freed Peter from prison.
When Peter realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer.
Recognizing Peter's voice in her joy, she did not open the gate, but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate. They said to her, You are out of your mind. But she kept insisting that it was so.
And they kept saying, It is his angel. But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened, they saw him and were amazed. But motioning to them with his hand 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 and to the brothers. Then he departed and went to another place. Now when day came, there was no little disturbance among the soldiers over what had become of Peter.
And after Herod searched for him and did not find him, he examined the sentries and ordered that they should be put to death. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there. And we'll pause there for a moment.
I'll try to finish up the rest of this section of Acts when we get to verse 20. But first, going back to verse 12, Peter, having come to his senses now and realized that this was not a vision that he saw, but an angel actually came and visited him and led him out of the prison.
Peter then goes to a place where Christians are gathered, praying for him. Remember what we read in verse five, Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. And one of those places where the saints were gathered and were praying was the house of Mary, who was the mother of John, whose other name was Mark, also known as John Mark.
Now, Mary was a wealthy person. John Mark came from a wealthy household. It was likely that a church met there in her home. So she had a large enough house that it had a gate out front and, you know, would have led in to like a little courtyard area or something like that before you get to the actual dwelling portion of the house.
So this was a very rich establishment, a wealthy establishment. And some of the church in Jerusalem gathered there in her home. Now, John Mark was is a person that would become very valuable to Peter.
He helped Peter write his first epistle. First Peter was likely written by Mark as it was dictated by Peter, just like Timothy would be the one who would write Paul's letters while Paul dictated it to Timothy.
So that was probably the relationship between Peter and John Mark as well. The gospel of Mark, most scholars believe, was written by John Mark, and he wrote down the gospel the way that Peter preached it.
You think of the gospel of Luke being the gospel the way that Paul preached it. Mark was the way that Peter preached the gospel. So this is this is the John Mark who is eventually going to pen some of the books that we have in the New Testament.
He's a very young man, an immature individual. And this could be the reason why the apostle Paul contends with Barnabas over him, which we'll talk about a little bit later on. That'll come up later. In the meantime, we have Peter coming to this house of this young man who will turn out to be very instrumental in Peter's ministry.
But he he comes to the gate and he's knocking. It says there were many gathered together there and they were praying. And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer.
She recognized Peter's voice. And in her joy, she did not open the gate, but she ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate. They're praying for Peter who is in prison. And remember, I mentioned yesterday that Peter probably thought this was his hour.
This was going to be the time when he was going to give his life for the gospel and he was going to die just as his Lord had died. Jesus even kind of indicated to him at the end of the Gospel of John that Peter was going to die the way that Jesus died, that he was going to be crucified.
And the way this is understood in church history is that Jesus or I'm sorry, Peter's death was by crucifixion, but he requested to be crucified upside down because he did not want to die the same way that Jesus did since Christ's death was was so much more than Peter's death.
Christ's death was for the sins of the whole world. Peter's death was because he had been preaching the gospel of the forgiveness of sins for the whole world. So Peter didn't want to be crucified as Christ was crucified.
He requested to be crucified upside down. So again, this may be that hour that Peter thinks I'm going to die. This is it. This is me sharing in the sufferings of Christ. I delight to do this to suffer with my Lord.
I am giving my life for the cause of the gospel. But the Lord had other plans and the angel freed him from prison. The Christians who were gathered and were praying for him, they may have been thinking the same thing as Peter.
They thought there's no way Peter's getting out of this. Herod is surely going to put him to death. And so they're praying for Peter and they're praying for courage among the brethren as well that the word of Peter's death is not going to discourage people from believing in Christ.
On the contrary, many Christians are going to come to rejoice in the deliverance of Christ when they hear that Peter had been freed by an angel from prison. So Peter's standing at the gate knocking and we get kind of a touch of humor here.
When Rhoda comes to answer the gate, she recognizes Peter's voice, but she doesn't open the gate. She runs and reports that Peter's standing at the gate. So that's comical. That's funny. Oh, it's Peter should be letting the guy in.
Now, remember, he's just escaped from prison. There might be somebody looking for him, but she leaves him outside as she goes and says Peter is standing at the gate. And they said to her, you are out of your mind.
But she kept insisting that it was so. And they kept saying it is his angel. It would have been akin to saying it's his spirit. It's as though they thought, well, he's already been put to death. Herod has already killed him.
He's gone ahead and done it early. And so now his ghost is standing at the gate or because he was a saint and was delivered by Christ, delivered up by Jesus, then maybe he's something more than just, you know, a ghost or some kind of a spirit.
He's become an angel. Now, we don't really become angels, although what our sanctified form is going to look like in glory will probably be so would probably be so glorious to us. If we were to look at it now, we would think of it as being an angel.
But of course, that's not what we become. We don't turn into angels. Angels are beings that are different than mankind. But we do have in first John three, two, that we will see him as he is because we will be made to be like him.
And the apostle Paul explains also to the Corinthians in first Corinthians 15, that what we are now is not what we will be. For the perishable must put on the imperishable in order for us to live in immortality.
And then our spirits are not going to be coming about and visiting other people on earth. That's not what happens after we die. But but some of these myths surely still existed even in the early church.
So they think if that is Peter that's out there outside the gate, well, it must be a spirit. It must be a ghost or it must be his angel. But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened, they saw him and were amazed.
But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. Tell these things to James and to the brothers, he said. And then he departed for another place.
And this is actually the last we see of Peter here in Acts. Well, with the exception of the Jerusalem Council, he comes back in and Acts chapter 15 at the Jerusalem Council. But so far, Peter has been the central apostle figure in our study of Acts.
After this, attention shifts toward Paul and Peter never comes back into the story again. Peter will. Well, again, he does in the Jerusalem Council, but we don't see the end of his life that doesn't get mentioned here in Acts.
And the understanding that we have of how Peter died comes down to us through church tradition, through history. It's not mentioned to us in Scripture, with the exception of Jesus saying in John 21, the way that Peter was going to die.
And then, of course, church history affirms that was the way that Peter died, that he was crucified just as Jesus was crucified. So this kind of comes to the end of the section of Acts where Peter is that main teaching figure, mostly to the Jews, but a little bit to the Gentiles.
Of course, going to the house of Cornelius, Paul is going to go out to the Jews, but even more so to the Gentiles when we get to his story that kind of takes over the rest of Acts. Luke doesn't tell us where Peter goes after this.
It just says that he departed from there and he went to another place, but safe from the hand of Herod. Herod never gets his way with Peter. But Herod does take out his anger on the guards that were supposed to have been watching Peter.
And that's what we get to next, verses 18 and 19. Now when day came, there was no little disturbance among the soldiers over what had become of Peter. In other words, they were going crazy. They were absolutely beside themselves.
Where did he go and how did he get out of here? They were in quite a tizzy. And this is the day that Herod was going to be summoning Peter or summoning for Peter to bring him out before the people and make a demonstration of him.
Look, I'm not afraid of these apostle guys. I'm not afraid of this Jesus whom we had crucified a couple of years before. And they say that he came back to life. I've got no fear of any of this. And Herod was going to use Peter before the people to gain favor from the people and also assert himself in his power.
But then after Herod searched for him, verse 19, it says, after Herod searched for him. And this may have been Herod himself. So not just Herod sent guards to search for Peter and he wasn't found. Herod himself came down and said, how could you guys be so incompetent as to lose this man?
He was chained up. You had sentries at the door. Where did he go? Herod searched for him and did not find him. And he examined the sentries and ordered that they should be put to death. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there.
So Herod is ordering that that the sentries who should have been watching Peter, they're going to receive Peter's sentence. Peter was supposed to die. But because apparently he's gone and the sentries didn't do their job, they're now going to lose their lives to satisfy Herod's anger.
You might say his wrath was appeased when he had killed the guards in Peter's place. So then it says he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there. That was a more heavily Roman area where Herod had gone.
And we don't know how long he was there, because, you know, sometimes we have Luke telling us exact spans of time or exactly who was ruling at a certain time or which year this was. But then there are other times when he's not so specific with the time.
We don't know how long a period that would have been. So it says he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there. So it's possible that he was there for a little while. It wasn't like he immediately went down to Caesarea and then immediately died there.
But the way that Luke tells this story, those events appear to be in succession, though there could be a longer span of time that is elapsed between what we read in verse 19 and what we read in verse 20.
So then we get to verse 20 where it says Herod was angry with the people of Tyree and Sidon and they came to him with one accord and having persuaded Blastus, the king's chamberlain, they asked for peace because their country depended on the king's country for food.
Interesting thing about that word chamberlain literally translates as chamber man, like the person who cared for Herod's bedchamber. That may not have been his actual title, but that's how the word translates.
It was certainly somebody who was very close to Herod. And so they persuade Blastus to appeal to Herod for peace because their country depended upon Herod to have food. They have a famine going on in their land.
We're going to languish and die unless Herod has mercy on us. So verse 21, on an appointed day, Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne and delivered an oration to them. And the people were shouting the voice of a god and not of a man.
Now the interesting thing about these robes that Herod put on, they were actually lined with silver. And the reason he did this was so that when he walked out and the sun hit him, he would shimmer and have a godlike appearance.
That was the reason why he did that. Remember he's in Caesarea, which is a very Roman area. And the Romans at this point would think of their Caesars or their rulers as being gods. Antiochus Epiphanes IV was really the first one to exalt himself as a god.
This would have been second century B .C. And he was the first to put on currency, on Roman currency, that he was theos, meaning that he was God. So Herod wanted the people to have that impression of him.
And here he's kind of manipulated things among those persons from Tyre and Sidon to think of himself as being merciful. Yeah, I've cut you off from being able to receive food, so now I'm going to show mercy to you and you're going to have food again.
And it says that they exalt him as being a god. Verse 21, on an appointed day, Herod put on his royal robes. He took his seat upon the throne and delivered an oration to them. And he sat on the throne in the Hippodrome where these gladiatorial games were being held there in Caesarea.
This was according to the historian Josephus, where he talks about how Herod Agrippa died. So in verse 22, the people were shouting the voice of a god and not of a man. And it says in verse 23, immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down because he did not give God the glory.
Now, according to Josephus, it took Herod five days for him to die. But there in the presence of all the people, Josephus even records this, there in the presence of all the people, a great pain came upon Herod in his belly.
And he announces to the people that he's in a tremendous amount of pain. In fact, it says he was doubled over and lying prostrate on the ground. He could not keep himself from weeping. That's the way that Josephus records it.
Took him five days then to die. And here's the possibility, and I'm sorry for the gruesome details here, but this is according to what we have in Acts chapter 12. The possibility is that he had worms or some kind of parasite that basically ate his insides out.
For it says he was eaten by worms and then breathed his last because he did not give God the glory. He exalted himself as a god and the people indeed praised Herod. Josephus even records that the people praised Herod and that they wept for him when this illness had come upon him.
This was unlike Herod the Great, who was his grandfather. This was Herod when Jesus was born. That guy was a tyrant. That guy just killed people and attempted to lock people up in the Hippodrome in Jericho so that when he died, those persons that were locked in the Hippodrome would be put to death so that there would be national mourning instead of praising the fact that this tyrant, Herod the Great, had perished.
What ended up happening though was that Herod the Great died and then the people that he had locked up in the Hippodrome were released and his order to have them executed upon his death was not carried out.
By the way, I talk about this in my book 25 Christmas Myths and What the Bible Says, what it was that happened with Herod the Great after he was unsuccessful in putting the Christ child to death, how the Lord came upon him and judged him.
So check out that book. You can find it on the website www .utt .com or go to amazon .com and just type in the number 25 Christmas Myths and you'll come up with the book and order it that way through Amazon.
As you can tell here, my voice is starting to fade on me. This is a problem that I've been having all week long. So let's bring this to a conclusion. In verse 24, the word of God increased and multiplied.
The word of Herod counted for nothing. The word of Herod resulted in his own judgment and destruction. He would not praise God. He exalted himself as a God and God destroyed him. But the word of God increased and multiplied.
Herod was unsuccessful in stopping it. The church continued to grow. Verse 25, and Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark.
And it's from here that the story is now going to shift in the direction of Paul and the ministry that the Lord has called him to in the preaching of the gospel to the world. The Jews first and then also to the Greeks.
We'll start with Acts chapter 13 next week. Let's conclude with a quick prayer. Heavenly Father, I pray that we humble ourselves before you and we see that it is not by our will or our power that we come into your presence, but it is because you are gracious and merciful toward us and revealed to us your son through the preaching of the gospel so that we may submit to Christ and live for him daily.
May we be so grateful for this gospel, knowing the power that is behind it to forgive a man of his sins and grant him eternal life, that we are emboldened to preach this gospel to others so they may also hear and live.
Be with us this day and as we go throughout our week. In the name of Christ, amen.
You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.
On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.