“What Should We Do? – Part 2 – Acts 12:1-17

Have you ever heard a little child pray?  Is there anything so precious…or sometimes funny as hearing a child talk to God?  I found these real examples of children praying and thought I would share.

Dear God: Please send a new baby for Mommy. The baby you sent last week cries too much. Debbie, 7

Dear God: Who did you make smarter? Boys or girls? My sister and I want to know. Jimmy, 6

Dear God: How many angels are there in heaven? I would like to be the first kid in my class to know the answer. Norma, 8

Dear God: This is my prayer. Could you please give my brother some brains? So far he doesn't have any. Angela, 8

Dear Lord: Thank you for the nice day today. You even fooled the TV weather man. Hank, 7

Dear God: Please bring me a new brother. The one I got socks me all the time. Agnes, 6

Dear God: Please help me is school. I need help in spelling, adding, history, geography and writing. I don't need help in anything else. Lois, 9

Dear God: Do you have any helpers in Heaven? I would like to be one of Your helpers in Heaven when I have summer vacation. Natalie, 7

Dear Lord; Tomorrow is my birthday. Could you please put a rainbow in the sky? Susan, 9

Dear God: I need a raise in my allowance. Could you have one of your angels tell my father. Thank you. David, 7

Who do these kids think they are?  Who do they think they are to be able to ask such things of God?  Who do they think they are to have the right to come before holy God and ask for rainbows and babies and for help?  I’ll tell you who they are or I will tell you what the Bible says.  It says that children are fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psalm 139)

They are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb - a reward. (Psalm 127) In Matthew 19:14, “Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."  They are precious to God and we should be more like them sometimes especially when we pray.  Does God hear and answer the prayers of little children?  Absolutely.  Does God hear and answer our prayers today?  Absolutely.

We have talked a lot about the difficult time that our church is going through lately.  We have all been attacked by Satan and we have all had some real issues happening with us and it sometimes makes trying to minister around here a little discouraging and difficult.  It just seems harder to do than it was for our parents and grandparents.  Does anybody else feel that way?

For some reason it seems that when we speak of power in the church it is always in the past tense. If that is the case (and it is) then the natural question would be: “what happened”?
i. Is it that the Lord has changed? Absolutely not! - Malachi 3:6 for I am the LORD, I change not…
ii. Is it the wicked society that we live in? - Elijah experienced God’s power during the reign of Ahab. So what is stopping us?

iii. Is it government oppression? - Peter, James & John had to deal with persecution from the Religious & Governmental leaders of their day and we read that “The Lord added unto the church daily”
iv. Is it the songs we sing? - No! Whether you like the beat or the melody the songs that we sing are biblical based songs that glorify Jesus.
v. Is it the sermons we preach? - If the sermons are biblical (and they are) then that is not the answer as to the lack of power in the church.  (Kevin L. Jones)

So, what is different?  I was reading a book a while back entitled Revival Fire that traced the great revivals of the early 19^th and 20^th centuries that spread from England to the United States to Australia and all over the world.  Chapter after chapter told about how revival broke out in So and So England when two people started praying. 

It spread to Such and Such Germany when this little church over there started praying.  On and on it went until it wasn’t all that interesting, to tell you the truth.  The story was the same everywhere.  People started praying and God started moving.  It was never the president or somebody famous who started the praying.  It was always one or two lay people would start and then the local church and then the community and it would just spread like fire.

Why don’t we see revival like that anymore?  Why don’t we see communities and countries changed like that?  Why don’t we see God move like that anymore?  It’s because the people don’t pray like that anymore.  It’s not “rocket surgery” but it’s not exactly easy either.  Let’s look at a good example of what James 5:16 says about how the fervent prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. 

Last week we looked at the prayer of the first church when Peter and John got in trouble by the religious leaders for preaching about Jesus.  Acts 4:31 sums it up by saying that when they were through praying, the place where they were meeting was shaken and they spoke the Word boldly.

This week we are in Acts 12 to see another instance of the first church praying and this time Peter is in trouble again but it’s even more serious.  King Herod was trying to make nice with the Jewish people, especially the Jewish religious leaders – the same people who had killed Jesus and had been persecuting the first church – and so Herod had James murdered.  Now he has Peter in jail and he is about to kill him but for now he has him chained up pretty tight so he doesn’t get away again.

Turn to Acts 12 and let’s read verses 1-17.

It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. ² He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. ³ When he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. ⁴ After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.  ⁵ So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.  ⁶ The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. ⁷ Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.  ⁸ Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. ⁹ Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. ¹⁰ They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.  ¹¹ Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.”  ¹² When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. ¹³ Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. ¹⁴ When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”  ¹⁵ “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”  ¹⁶ But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. ¹⁷ Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the other brothers about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.

When I watch a movie on TV, I like to watch a show that is at least somewhat believable.  I’m not into sci-fi or cartoons or stuff like that so if they made this story into a regular movie, I would probably turn it off.  It’s just too much with angels and chains falling off and doors opening by themselves.  Nobody would believe that, right?  The first church evidently had a hard time believing it too.  It says they were astonished.  Peter himself thought it was a dream for the longest time.

When we read a passage like James 5:16 that says the fervent prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective, I think most of us believe that but we don’t really think about just how powerful and how effective it really is and I think it is in part because we have never personally seen such a miracle happen as a result of prayer.  Have you?  Have you ever known someone who was in prison and just walked out with the help of an angel like Peter did?  Probably not.

So, since we have never seen a big, flashy miracle come through prayer, we relegate our prayers, or at least our faith in our prayers, to little requests of God.  “God, please give me a good day.”  Maybe the really faithful will ask God for wisdom or for patience but since we have read this passage or others like it and we have tried to get God to give us a big, flashy miracle and He hasn’t then it must mean that He doesn’t do that kind of thing anymore.

I’m gonna start preaching here in a minute but before I do I want you to realize that even in Bible days that big, flashy miracles like this were fairly rare.  We can point to dozens of them all through the Bible but, think about it.  From the miracle of creation to the parting of the Red Sea to Elisha making an axe head float to Peter getting his “get out of jail free” card was thousands of years.  Also, God performed those miracles before we had the whole canon of scripture and most were before the Holy Spirit came to live in all believers like He does now.  That doesn’t mean He is out of the miracle business.

That’s not a cop-out for God nor is it me saying that I don’t believe God still does miracles.  He absolutely does.  But do you know what God wants more than people believing in Him because they saw a miracle?  John 20:29 says, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."  Like I said last week, I don’t need the building to shake.  I just want to see God at work in the life of this church and into this community.  If you also want to see that then I want you to see 3 quick things from this passage in Acts 12 today.

When you look at this passage you see the reason why the first church prayed.  The reason was they were being persecuted.  Herod was about to start picking them off like Troy does dove on September 1^st.  They were in fear for their lives and especially for the life of Peter who was in prison and we have every reason to believe he would have been killed the next morning.  It’s time to start praying.  They were helpless.  There was nothing they could do to help Peter.

To those who mistakenly say that God will never give you more than you can handle, how do you explain this?  This was way more than any of them could handle.  It’s time to start praying.  He was guarded by 16 men in rotating shifts, constantly shackled to two of them and behind at least 3 different walls and gates.  He is in a cell inside a cell inside a cell with 4 armed guards always with him.  Jesus Himself had told Peter that upon Peter’s faith Jesus would build His church.  The reason they prayed was not just for the life of Peter but what could very well have been the life of the first church.

Why should we pray?  What reasons do we have to pray?  First off, we are commanded to.  1 Thessalonians 5:17 says to pray without ceasing and that is just what the first church was doing.  So, that should be enough but if you want other reasons, how about the fact that without prayer the life our church may be in jeopardy as well?  Without prayer, the reputation of this church is in jeopardy.  Without prayer, this community could be completely without any corporate representative of Jesus.  Who is going to minister to the poor, the addicted and the incarcerated around here if not us?  That’s just some of the reasons to pray for our church as a whole, not to mention the need to pray for us as individuals.

So, you see the reason why the first church prayed.  You see the reasons why we should pray.  Now see the responsibility they had to pray.  Look at verse 5.   ^“So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.”  The King James says they were praying without ceasing.  It is basically the same word as James used in James 5:16 about the fervent prayer of a righteous man. Fervently, earnestly, without ceasing.  It literally means to be hot or worked up, putting out effort and literally to be stretched out like a horse jumping over a fence or a ballplayer leaping horizontally for a ball.

While we are looking at the responsibility they had to pray we need to keep in mind the command to pray without ceasing but we also need to remember that prayer is conversation with God.  It’s not a monologue and do you know what keeps it from being a conversation?  Do you know what keeps God from hearing and your prayer and speaking back to you?  Too often it is sin in our lives that does it.  In John 9, Jesus healed a blind man and that man spoke truth when he told the Pharisees “We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will.”

Now, we are all sinners but he is talking about someone with unconfessed sin in his life; someone who continued to live in that sin, maybe even justifying it to himself that it’s not all the bad.  Isa 59:1-2 says, “Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. “(KJV)

Are you praying and praying and still not hearing from God?  It could very well be that there is sin in your life that is putting up a wall between you and God.  You can’t expect God to hear and answer your prayers like you want or to bless you at all if you are being disobedient to Him.  It doesn’t work that way.  Driving down the road 100 mph and praying that God will protect you is not a good prayer.

I’ve quoted James 5:16 a couple of times and I love to because it is so powerful.  I love to say that the fervent prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective but sometimes I forget how that verse starts.  It starts out by saying that we should confess our sins and then pray.  Without a confession of sins, we aren’t righteous at all therefore we shouldn’t expect to have powerful and effective prayers no matter how fervent we pray.

In his book Why Prayers Are Unanswered, John Lavender retells a story about Norman Vincent Peale.

When Peale was a boy, he found a big, black cigar, slipped into an alley, and lit up. It didn't taste good, but it made him feel very grown up. . . until he saw his father coming. Quickly he put the cigar behind his back and tried to be casual. Desperate to divert his father's attention, Norman pointed to a billboard advertising the circus.  "Can I go, Dad? Please, let's go when it comes to town."  His father's reply taught Norman a lesson he never forgot. "Son”, he answered quietly but firmly, "never make a petition while at the same time trying to hide a smoldering disobedience." 

This church, like the first church has reasons to pray.  We have a responsibility to pray and to pray without ceasing and to pray without a wall of sin blocking our petitions to God.  Now, let’s see the results of that church’s prayers.  Did God answer their prayers?  How do you know?  What do you think they were praying for?  I think they were praying specifically for Pete’s release. 

In Mark 10, Jesus meets another blind man.  The man is crying out louder and louder for Jesus to help him and Jesus walks over and says, “What do you want me to do for you?”  Then the man said, “Oh, Almighty Deity of Omnipotence.  Hallowed be thy name!”  NO, he didn’t say that.  He said, “I want to see!”  He was specific and he was passionate and he saw results.  He saw God’s power when Jesus healed him right then and there.

We are never guaranteed healing.  We are never guaranteed that God will answer any of our prayers like we want Him to but you will see God at work and you will see His power and His glory when you pray fervently and without ceasing, specifically asking Him your request.  We may not understand His answer since His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are higher than ours but that’s okay.

This church will be a house of prayer and we will do what we are called to do and we will minister without losing heart and we will let Jesus be the builder of this church and if this place blows up or collapses in on itself tomorrow we will know that it was not because we didn’t pray.  We will do what we are supposed to do and trust Him to answer according to His good and perfect will and when we do that, we too, will see results.

Let’s do that right now.  If you would like to come forward to the altar, feel free.  Or if you want to pray right where you are, that’s fine too.  But pray!  Pray for forgiveness.  Pray fervently.  Pray specifically and pray expecting results.