WWUTT 2632 Peter Visits the House of Mary (Acts 12:12-19)

Peter Is Freed From Prison and Visits Mary’s House

Peter was released from prison. He goes to the house of Mary, who is the mother of John Mark. He knocks on the door, but no one believes that Peter has actually been freed from prison and is there with them.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. As we come back to Acts 12, we're picking up the story of Peter being freed from prison by an angel. Remember that Herod had put him in prison. An angel came and woke him up, released him from the guard.

And when Peter came to himself, he realized this wasn't a vision, but he had actually been set free from his chains by an angel. So now he's going to go to the house where there were Christians praying for him while he was in prison.

Let me pick up reading in verse 12. Hear the word of the Lord. And when he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, who was also called Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying.

And when he knocked at the door of the gate, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. And when she recognized Peter's voice because of her joy, she did not open the gate, but she ran in and reported that Peter was standing in front of the gate.

And they said to her, you are out of your mind. But she kept insisting that it was so. They kept saying it is his angel. But Peter continued knocking. And when they opened the door, they saw him and were astounded.

But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he recounted to them how the Lord had led him out of prison. And he said, report these things to James and the brothers. Then he left and went to another place.

Herod’s Search for Peter and the Guards’ Execution

Now, when day came, there was no small disturbance among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. And when Herod had searched for him and had not found him, he examined the guards and ordered that they be led away to execution.

Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and was spending time there. And then what we have next, closing out Acts chapter 12, is the death of Herod, which we may get to tomorrow. But coming back up to verse 12 here.

So Peter has been released from this prison. And remember, he did not know as the angel was letting him out whether he was seeing a vision or if this was really happening. But then once the angel vanished, and there he is still standing out there outside of the prison, then he realizes, okay, well, I see now.

The Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting. Herod had thrown Peter in prison because he saw that it pleased the Jews. The Jews wanted him to be put on trial and to be put to death.

Now, James was put to death. Herod had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword. Now, that distinction is important because there are so many who are named James. There's James, who is the half-brother of Jesus, and that's the James we're going to be hearing about in just a moment, I'm pretty sure.

So in verse 2, back up to verse 2, he had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. So we have that distinction. And then later, when Peter says, report these things to James and to the brothers, who he's talking about is the leader of the church there in Jerusalem, or the overseer, rather, who would have been kind of the first among equals among the elders, and that would have been James, the half-brother of Jesus.

So we have kind of bookended in this story a mention of James, but it's two different James. James, who was the first apostle to be martyred. He's not the first martyr, but he is the first of the apostles to be killed, and the only one in Scripture whose death is detailed for us.

Though we know that Peter is later put to death, because Jesus kind of alludes to it at the end of the Gospel of John, and we know that Paul was put to death because Paul talks about it at the end of 2 Timothy.

But of the rest of the apostles, we don't have any mention as to what happened to them. We kind of have some assumptions, mostly from church history, but nothing in Scripture is detailed for us about how the apostles die.

Peter is not meant to die here, and the Lord sets him free as he is going to continue to go out and preach the Gospel. Though here, in chapter 12, is the last place that Peter's narrative has a lot of prominence.

We actually won't come into Peter's story again in the book of Acts. He gets mentioned again in chapter 15 with the Jerusalem council. So we'll hear of him again, and he even speaks there at the Jerusalem council.

But as far as Peter's story goes, this is really where it concludes, with his being let out of prison, and then he goes on to continue preaching, but the book of Acts doesn't mention anything else about his story after this.

So this is kind of the last narrative that we have of what happens with the apostle Peter. Now, at least we know, it is not time for Peter to die. He is not martyred, and it's not recorded for us even in the book of Acts.

But the Lord sets him free, and we have the rest of this narrative as we look at it today. It's such a funny thing as we continue on. So he goes, let's go back to verse 12. He realized that the Lord set him free, and he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, who was also called Mark.

This is John Mark, and we believe that John Mark is the author of the gospel of Mark. Now, John Mark is not just mentioned in this verse. He's also mentioned at the end of this particular chapter, where it says in verses 24 and 25, but the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied, and Barnabas and Saul, who was Paul, returned to Jerusalem, fulfilling their ministry, taking along with them John, who was also called Mark.

But somewhere in that, somewhere in Mark's traveling with Barnabas and Saul, he leaves them, and this will later cause a rift between Barnabas and Paul, which we'll talk about that a little bit later on.

He's later reconciled with Paul, even though he kind of divides away from them for a while. In 2 Timothy 4 .11, as Paul is concluding that letter and talking about his imminent martyrdom, he mentions that Mark has become very useful to him.

So at some point, they did reconcile. But then he is—we believe that he is the same Mark that is mentioned in 1 Peter 5 .13, where Peter says, My son Mark. So he was largely believed to have been a disciple of the apostle Peter.

We see here, of course, Peter going to the house of Mary, who is John Mark's mother, probably somebody who was of prominence, who had a lot of money, and so she had a large enough property of sorts that the church could be there with her.

And it wouldn't have been the whole church, of course, because we've recalled that thousands of people have come to faith in Jesus Christ. Many of them have gone out scattered, but there was still a meeting place in the house of Mary for the church to go to.

They weren't in the temple anymore. They weren't in the colonnade of Solomon, Solomon's promenade, as it was called. Many of them would gather there in Mary's house and pray, as was the case here, praying late into the evening.

Everybody's asleep now. Remember, this was in the cover of night that Peter was lifted up out of his prison cell, stirred by this angel and told to follow him out. Peter was even asleep himself. The angel had to wake him.

So this was all in the middle of the night. But there are people there in the house that have been praying for Peter and John Mark among them. So John Mark, it was believed, becomes a disciple of Peter's, and then it is John Mark who writes in the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel the way that Peter would have preached it.

Now, we're reading Acts, which was authored by Luke, and when we were in the Gospel of Luke, I said to you that what we read there in that Gospel is the Gospel the way that Paul preached it, whereas Mark is the Gospel the way that Peter preached it.

Then you have Matthew, which was written directly by an apostle, and John, which was written directly by an apostle. The other two, Mark and Luke, were written by disciples of apostles. Mark was writing what Peter preached.

Luke was writing what Paul preached. It's still the preaching of an apostle. You still have four Gospels that come from four different apostles. But the writing, the actual writing itself, came from men who were not themselves apostles, but rather wrote what the apostles preached.

This is an argument, too, I believe, for the authorship of Hebrews being Luke and not Paul. Even though a lot of the language there sounds like Paul, there are certain hints that we have that lead some scholars to believe that Luke was actually the one that wrote it.

Luke is one of those prominent authors on behalf of the apostle Paul and has written a significant chunk of the New Testament, all things considered. Another hint for us about Mark being the same John Mark.

Mark, the author of the Gospel of Mark, being the same John Mark that we're reading about here, this also comes from the early church historian Eusebius, considered to be like the first historian of the church writing in the early fourth century.

And he noted the following. Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, so when Peter's first epistle was written, it was Mark who wrote on his behalf, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ, but not, however, in order, for he neither heard the Lord nor followed him.

But afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, for he was careful of one thing, not to omit anything he had heard and not to put anything fictitious into the statements. So that's something that we have from an early church historian that says that Mark had this association with Peter and therefore wrote down what it was that Peter had preached.

So again, that's how we make that connection between this John Mark and Peter and then the one who wrote the Gospel of Mark. Okay, so going on, they were all gathered together in Mary's house and they were praying, and when Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer.

And when she recognized Peter's voice, because of her joy, she did not open the gate, but she ran in and reported that Peter was standing in front of the gate. This is like something you would see in a comedy, almost, or at least the comic relief in the middle of a drama.

She goes to the door and she opens it up, and there's Peter, and she shuts the door. Well, it says that she did not open the gate. So she goes to the door, hears Peter's voice, knows it's Peter, but instead of letting him in, she runs in.

She runs into the rest of the house and reports that Peter was standing in front of the gate. She knows it's his voice. She recognizes it. He's probably even told her, Rhoda, open the door. And so she runs off and tells everybody that Peter's standing outside.

I mean, was she waiting for him to be arrested again? And they said to her, you are out of your mind. But she kept insisting that it was so. They kept saying, it is his angel. And I'm not really sure what that means, honestly.

I didn't look into this before this particular lesson. I don't know if they mean that it's his spirit. Like they think that he's died. I don't think that's the case, though, because word has not come to them that he has died.

And why would they continue praying for him if he has died? They're praying that he would be protected and that he would be released. So then saying that it's his angel might be in reference to something like a guardian angel or a messenger on his behalf, because the word angel also means messenger.

As I've heard Wes Huff say, and I think he puts this very well, the word angel is not what the being is. It's actually what the being does. So angel means messenger. It could be that statement was not about an angel like the supernatural holy being that had come on Peter's behalf, but rather a messenger that had come on Peter's behalf.

It could be that that's the case. But the way that it gets translated for us into English as angel kind of leads us to think, oh, like an angelic being, his guardian angel. Maybe that's what they think he is, that has come on his behalf and announced what Peter is doing or something.

I mean, they could think it is like God had designated an angel that was to watch over Peter. That was not an unheard of Jewish belief, because they believe that Michael was the angel that watched over Israel.

That's kind of stated in Daniel 12. So there is an angel over Israel. We've read about demons that are territorial. Like in the book of Daniel, it talks about the prince of Persia that had prevented Gabriel from going somewhere.

So it was like there was a chief spirit that was over Persia in those days. So it could be something like that. The Jews had this idea or this understanding that specific angels would attend to specific persons.

We might relate this to being a guardian angel, though that may not have been necessarily how the Jews perceived it. But this is an angel that therefore comes on Peter's behalf. It could be that that's how that's interpreted.

That's a few different definitions of what we're reading here in verse 15. But altogether, what this indicates is that they really did not have the faith to believe that Peter would just be released like this.

Like maybe their expectation was in praying for his release that Herod would let him go. And if Herod was going to let him go, it certainly wouldn't be in the middle of the night. There might be some announcement that, I find nothing wrong in this man, and they let him go.

That's what they're praying for. But they don't think that Peter's release could be imminent, such as in this fashion. Peter continued knocking, it says in verse 16. And when they opened the door, they saw him and were astounded.

But then he motions to them with his hand to be silent. Again, it's like, what do you guys want? Do you want him to be arrested again? Rhoda just leaves him standing outside. Then those who came and answered the door, they're looking at him, and they're astounded.

They start making noise about it, and Peter has to quiet them down. And he recounted to them how the Lord had led him out of the prison. And he said, report these things to James and the brothers. And then he left and went to another place.

So James, who was leading there in the Jerusalem church, let him know, because then, of course, it would be transmitted to everybody else. Let the other brothers know, who would have been the other apostles.

Remember, it's been said to us that most of the apostles at this time are in Jerusalem. So Peter was saying, report this back to the other apostles. And then he left and went on to continue doing ministry elsewhere.

He was supposed to carry on with his mission. And again, whatever he ends up doing after this, we don't know. Acts does not tell us. Though we do have, again, in Acts 15, a mention of him there at the Jerusalem council.

So wherever he goes on to continue in ministry, it's in the vicinity of Jerusalem and probably in the region of Judea. But this is as far as we get when Peter's narrative is concerned. So now we have these last couple of verses that say, what ends up happening to these guards that we're not able to prevent an angel from releasing Peter from his chains?

Verse 18, now when day came, there was no small disturbance among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. And again, there's nothing in the text that tells us that they were asleep. Nothing in that previously said that the soldiers had fallen asleep.

So we don't know if like the angel caused a stupor to fall upon these soldiers so that they just didn't see that the angel was there and led Peter out, or if the angel had put them to sleep because of their responsibilities, it's very unlikely that that many soldiers that we had mentioned, these guards, these separate guards of soldiers, that all of them would have fallen asleep because if a prisoner escapes under their watch, well, they would be put to death as we clearly see right here.

So what happened to them while the angel comes to Peter and leads him out is not explicitly said for us in the text. But the guards here have apparently all come to themselves and are recognizing Peter's not there.

And when Herod had searched for him and had not found him, now they're tearing the place apart. What would have happened to this guy? And maybe the gate is closed. Maybe it's still hanging open. Who knows?

But Herod examined the guards and ordered that they be led away to execution. They all end up dying. And then Herod went down from Judea to Caesarea and was spending time there. Now remember yesterday I had said that Herod was a bloodthirsty tyrant.

It really was nothing to him to kill James and then even to do the same to Peter, though he didn't do it right away, because he was wanting to earn favor from the Jews. He wanted to do something for them that they were pleased with.

So he was going to keep Peter in prison, wait until after the festival of the Passover, and then once the holy day was passed, then he would bring Peter out and then he would make a spectacle of him. So Herod had no fear of God.

There was no concern here about anything that he did, so that when Peter was not found, what does Herod do? Well, I couldn't kill Peter, so I'm killing all of you. And all the guards who were responsible for watching over Peter are led away to their deaths.

Herod, in the meantime, goes to another place, and that's where we're going to pick up the narrative tomorrow, where we read about the death of Herod. And again, this was the second to last Herod before the reign of the Herods come to an end.

And we will read about his miserable end tomorrow. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read here, and we see how you have kept your promises and continue to work in the lives of those that you had appointed to go out with the gospel of Christ.

May we be fervent in our prayers and desiring to see you work in mighty ways. And may we be faithful to do the service to which we have been called in Christ Jesus. We thank you for how you, by your providence, have arranged that the gospel would go to different places so that those who hear the word of our Lord Jesus Christ, he who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead, and they put their faith in him, will be saved and have eternal life.

May we continue in the way of Christ until we join you together in our heavenly dwelling that you have prepared for us. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.

Prayer, Providence, and the Spread of the Gospel

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