This week, almost all of us heard the news that Buddy was in the hospital to undergo emergency, potentially life-threatening surgery. And we were shocked; perhaps we were even shaken.
How could something like this happen? What can we do? What will happen next?
The prayers of the saints have been mobilized throughout Gwinnett, Atlanta, Monroe, and Athens. Members of other churches and schools and businesses throughout the community have told us they’re interceding for the Hoffmans. Emails from around the globe have streamed in saying, “We’re praying for Buddy.”
Thankfully, he is making good progress in his recovery and resting well.
But the questions remain.
What do we do when disaster is at our door? And what is God doing? What will happen next?
This Sunday, we will hear a full update on Buddy’s condition and testimony of how God has been at work. We will open our Bibles to the book of Acts to see how the first believers responded to the very same questions when tragedy gripped their leaders. We will pray. And we will worship, giving God the glory that he is due because, in the Kingdom of God, even death does not have the final word.
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Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: One Story: Digging Deeper
April 21, 2013
Church: Tragedy, Trial, and Triumph
Acts 12:1-24
Good morning. I’m Jon. I know a lot of you, and actually I lived in Buddy’s basement for seven years. There were a lot of young guys coming up in ministry who lived down there. I lived there the longest. I’d like to say it was because I loved Buddy and Jody the most, but actually the truth is, it just took me that long to get married.
I have wonderful parents. I grew up in Milwaukee. They’re now in Charlotte. But for these almost 10 years I’ve been in Atlanta, Buddy and Jody and their family have really been family to me. I know it’s true actually they’ve been like family to a lot of us.
So it has been a wild week. I was talking to Buddy two weeks ago as we’ve been journeying through this One Story narrative of the Bible. It feels like we’ve been in it for months, and we have, but I always remind myself it took God a couple of thousand years to work this out, so we’re actually moving pretty quickly through One Story.
I said, “Buddy, how are you going to approach this story of the church? Where do you want to go with this?” We go through the book of Acts. He was talking. He said, “I really want to focus in on some of the contrasts the church has to live with in this time.” Of course, the big one is that kingdom of God that is already here.
When Jesus stepped forth out of that empty tomb, resurrected and alive, the new creation began in the midst of the old. That kingdom is already here, and yet at the same time, it hasn’t fully come, and it will not fully come until Jesus returns and everything is made new once and for all. We’re living in that tension of the already kingdom and the not-yet kingdom. It’s challenging.
Actually, we were, last Sunday, up in Seattle. We were spending the weekend there doing some training with a church out in Seattle, a JAQ. We trained all day Friday and Saturday, and then we had Sunday off, and so they told us, “You have these amazing tulip fields just north of Seattle where they grow tulips commercially. If you catch it at just the right window of time, you can go visit the tulip fields and see them before they cut them and then sell them.”
We drove up there Sunday morning. My wife heard “tulips,” and she was like, “We have to go.” It was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. Just beautiful tulips! I think we have some pictures here. It was like a rainbow on the earth. Just fantastic. Endless tulips. Literally thousands of these just springing up from the ground.
As I was looking at them, I was really just struck thinking about the kingdom of God and the already and the not yet. What you have here is just spectacular beauty, but at the same time, if you notice, those trenches are muddy and mucky. As we were walking around, it was like at the same time we were seeing this breathtaking beauty, we were also trying to pull our feet out of this sticky muck and mire.
In a lot of ways, that is a picture of the kingdom and where we live now, that contrast. We see beauty springing up out of the ground, but at the same time, we’re walking around with muck and mire on our feet, and trying to figure out, “How do we navigate both of these things at once?” So that fundamental contrast of living as the church shapes these other ones.
Buddy was talking about this. He said, “I want to look at how the church sometimes has to wait and sometimes has to go.” Jesus says, “Hey, hang out in Jerusalem. Don’t go anywhere until the Spirit comes, and then when it comes, you go.” And other ones. It’s interesting because the church in the book of Acts is such a community of people gathered around God’s presence.
If you read selected stories, you say, “Ah man, this is just all about waiting on God, knowing his presence, and everything else,” and yet, in Acts 6, when they find they’re having a shortage, not able to feed the widows as they need to, the apostles get together and they say, “Okay, we need to put together a bit of a program. We need to add some structure to this body so we’re able to fully administer the grace of God as we’re going out.” It’s not just presence, but also there are places for programs in the way the church works.
Then of course, the last one really we were talking about is just the contrast between tragedy and triumph. As you go through the book of Acts, you see amazing breakthrough of God. Tulips just springing up! You go, “Wow! That is like otherworldly beautiful.” At the same time, you see tragedy, brokenness, muck, and mire. What do we do with all of that? We have to learn as God’s people in this chapter of the church to live in that tension, and not just to live in that tension, but to live well in that tension.
It has been a tense week for all of us. When we found out Buddy was going to the hospital with an emergency procedure, it was Tuesday. All the staff was together. We just hopped in the car and drove over there. We got to the waiting room of the emergency room, and we got the update that this really could be a fatal injury, a fatal surgery, that he might not come out. Like Jody was saying, we were just on edge.
Anytime any kind of personnel…like a chaplain or somebody wearing scrubs or a stethoscope…walked through the room, our hearts would just stop, and then they’d start beating. It felt like they were stopped. It was so stressful. One time these chaplains came in. They looked very serious. They called Jody and the kids over and were talking to them.
They came over to us and they said, “We’re going to ask you guys to move locations with your group. We want you to move to another room.” We said, “What? You could’ve like texted us that. You don’t have to walk through with your serious face on.” We were expecting them to say, “Oh yeah, well, it’s over.” Another room? We were just still on edge, living in that tension.
I know that’s not the only tension. Look at our country. You have Boston. Many of you guys were probably watching the news just this week as the bomb was being reported and then the suspects were being pursued and eventually captured. It’s just a stressful time. The explosion in Texas. Wars. Rumors of wars. Syria is in uproar. Iraq. Iran. Earthquakes. All of this stuff.
And then there are all of the individual stories. Buddy and Jody and Gabe and Spring and Joy aren’t the only family who are caught in the midst of tragedy and big questions and challenging times. I know a lot of us also are wrestling with the challenges and the muck and the mire every day brings. So how do we live well in that tension?
We know what it’s like when life hangs in the balance. What do we do when it feels like disaster is just knocking at the door and we’re not sure if that disaster is going to cross the threshold fully into our lives or it’s going to stay outside. How do we live in faith in these times? What should we expect?
Acts 12. If you have your Bibles, open them up. If you don’t have a Bible, slip up your hand, and we will give you a Bible. If you need a blue sheet to follow in the notes, just slip up your hand. We’ll get you a sheet also to trace along. Acts 12 is an interesting chapter in the book of Acts. Of course, last week Buddy talked about Pentecost and how the church was born. Three thousand that first day added to their number.
The gospel begins to move out. There is opposition. They become more organized. It spreads up into Judea and Samaria, outside of Jerusalem. Stephen is stoned, the first martyr. We meet Saul now in chapters 8 and 9 in the book of Acts. We see God is working there. Acts 10. You have Cornelius coming to faith through Peter’s witness and connection there.
What we’re seeing is the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy in Acts 1. He said, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth.” In the persecution the early church experiences, people are scattered, but even as they’re scattered, it says they go up into Antioch, and that’s the first place where Gentiles really started coming to faith.
There are all these questions as the church is growing. We pick it up in Acts 12, which is about 10 or 11 years after the resurrection, so it’s about a decade. There are three stories in Acts 12 we have to read together if we’re going to get a full biblical picture of how to live in that tension between tragedy and triumph. Sometimes we can focus on one or the other and you actually miss the full picture. What we’re going to do is just three chunks. Look at the stories. We’ll do the first one, and actually it’s just really brief, just a couple of verses.
1. Tragedy. Acts 12:1 says, “About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword, and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.” (Acts 12:1-3) The first question…What do we do with this story?
Who is James here they’re talking about? This is James, the brother of John, son of Zebedee, one of the Sons of Thunder. He’s one of the Twelve. If you remember back to the Gospels, Jesus was walking around with the disciples. Of course, in the life of the early church, especially these first 12 chapters of the book of Acts, the Twelve were like the leaders. The apostles are constantly being referenced as crucial leaders in the life of these people, in the life of the early church.
They’re the ones it says who are teaching the Word. They’re devoted to prayer. As people were selling their lands and giving the money, they’re the ones who were distributing it to make sure the poor are receiving and they don’t have any need among them. The apostles are the ones it says several times who are working signs and wonders.
Actually, they are arrested as a group earlier in the book of Acts (Acts 4 and 5), and they are delivered out of prison. An angel comes and sets them all free from the prison. You just have to get the picture. James is one of these guys. These guys are like the rocks the church is growing on. Of course, Jesus is the main rock, but these are the ones who were with the Lord, who saw the resurrection, the eyewitnesses. God was working powerfully through them.
Then one day, Herod… This is Herod Agrippa I. He’s the grandson of Herod the Great, the one who had all the babies killed at Bethlehem around the time of Jesus’ birth. Herod just arrests him and kills him with the sword. He’s not just one of the Twelve. Actually, he’s one of the three. If you think back to the Gospels, even within that circle of twelve disciples, many times Jesus would single out three who were especially close to him…Peter, James, and John.
They’re at Jairus’ house, and the daughter has died. Jesus says, “Hey, just you. Peter, James, John, come with me,” and he raises her to life. The Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus goes up. He says, “Peter, James, John, you guys come with me. We’re going up.” They’re the only three who witness the glory emanating from Jesus’ inner man.
I think about even at Gethsemane, the night before Jesus went to the cross. He’s laboring in prayer. Peter, James, and John are the ones he wants closest to him. So this is James, a serious, beloved, special man and leader to God. Gone. Killed in the space of two and a half verses. That’s it. Tragedy. James is killed. Why did this happen?
It’s interesting to me that the account is so short. I wish actually that Luke, the author of Acts, would’ve given us several more verses to give us a little perspective, “These are lessons you should learn from this. This is what God was doing through this,” but he doesn’t. He says, “Herod came in, arrested James. He’s killed. When Herod saw it pleased the people, he arrested Peter also.”
So we know a little bit. We can say with some confidence from the text that Herod is a wicked man. There is evil afoot. But beyond that, he doesn’t really give much explanation. We want to ask, “Why? Why, God? Why did James die here?” It doesn’t tell us.
It reminds me of a story actually. Jon Courson is a pastor out in Oregon. He has had a big influence on many of us actually. Buddy and Jody were out in Oregon, I think last year. Met him. He’s a good man. Matt Reynolds, the pastor down at Midtown, spent several months with Jon out in the desert. They were doing a pastors’ school in Mexico.
Actually, he preached through the entire Bible verse by verse. You can find the recordings on his website online. There have been many times when I’ve had to preach on a passage, and I don’t know what to make of it, I’ll listen to him. He just has such good practical experience.
When Jon was 29 years old, his wife was tragically killed in a car accident. She was 28. They had three kids, a 5-year-old, a 3-year-old, and a 1-year-old. Of course, it’s a wreck. Jon is a 29-year-old pastor and his wife is just gone. He doesn’t know exactly how to tell the kids. He waits a couple of days to pray about it, and then the second day after, he takes them all out to the beach, about a three- or four-hour drive from where they lived in Oregon.
He dropped the 1-year-old off with his mother and then sat down with the 3-year-old and the 5-year-old and said, “Guys, we’re not going to see Mommy for a while because she has gone home to be with the Lord in heaven.” They kind of processed through that. But they’re young and thinking through.
They drive back to the house. It’s a Saturday night. He has the kids. He put them to bed. The next morning he’s going to have to share actually about what has happened. He has his congregation. As he’s telling the story, he says, “I sat down on that couch, and I just kind of looked up and I said, ‘Lord, why?'” It wasn’t, “Lord, why?” like with his fists; just, “Lord, why? Why did that happen?”
As he’s telling that story, he says the Lord spoke to him in his heart in a way he just knew it was the Lord. The Lord said, “Jonny…” It’s funny, because as he’s telling the story, he says, “God calls me Jonny.” The Lord said to him, “Jonny, I have promised you a peace that passes understanding. Haven’t I given that to you these last days?”
Jon thought about it. Of course, it’s a reference to Philippians 4:7, the peace of God, which will surpass understanding, guarding your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. He’s thinking about it. “God, you’ve promised me a peace that passes understanding. Haven’t you given me that these last days?” He looks up and he says, “Yes, Lord, you have.” Then the Lord spoke to him again.
He said, “Jonny, never seek a peace that comes from understanding.” Jon was thinking about that. “What does that mean?” It just made sense to him. He realized if God were to give us all the reasons about why tragedy strikes our lives and why people we love are taken from us, young wives, mothers, fathers, children, the absolute tragedy, the work of wickedness on the earth, why that happens, if he gave us all the reasons, Courson said we would just argue with him. “Okay, I understand that, but I don’t accept it.”
Sometimes God actually has to go around our understanding and just give us that deep peace in our hearts. Buddy talks about that shalom of God, that wholeness, that entire wellness, the peace that only God can give and that cannot be explained. Sometimes when we’re facing tragedy, when James is arrested and killed with the sword, we just need peace that surpasses understanding. God will give it. God can give it. God does give it.
Of course, when he tells that story, he says in the weeks that followed, and the even the years that followed his wife’s death, he would have occasions when he would pull up to a restaurant or they’d be at a certain place and he would just remember something about his wife, and it would break his heart, and he would cry and be really sad.
He felt it, but still he handled it in such a way that the people around him would come up to him at the church and they’d say, “Hey, you’re not handling this well.” Like, “You’re probably in denial,” or, “You probably need to see some counseling or something because you’re not grieving appropriately.” Jon looked at them and he said, “Okay, the Lord has given me a peace that passes understanding. If I ever lose that peace, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll go to counseling.” It has been 30 years, and he has never gone to counseling. That peace has not left him.
This is what God can do. Now that’s not a rip on counseling. Sometimes God uses the wise men and women in our lives, even counseling, to help us process and understand stuff, but at the deepest level, what we need in the face of tragedy is God to pour out that full peace that sometimes even passes our understanding, that shalom that fills our hearts. What do we need to learn from this little story about James and Herod? How does this set us up and everything else?
Well, maybe one of the things we need to learn is that why is not the most profitable question when we’re faced with tragedy. Maybe one of the things we need to learn is to look into the whole counsel of Scripture and remember like Paul says in Romans 8 that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, that no matter how these situations… When life is hanging in the balance, when tragedy is there, when death is at the doorstep, no matter what way it comes out, God still comes out on top. We cannot lose.
You remember Hebrews 11 and the great hall of faith. It’s telling the way the people of faith through history, through that entire One Story have walked with God and God has been with them. We’ll pick it up in verse 32. He’s talking about, “And what more shall I say?” (Hebrews 11:32) He has already told the story of Abraham and Moses and Sarah and everything else, how they walked by faith.
Then he goes, “And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith…” Listen. “…conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection.” (Hebrews 11:32-35)
You hear that and you’re like, “Yes! Triumph! Victory! People of faith are winning!” Then you get to the second half of the passage. “Some were tortured…” What? I would prefer the first half. “Some were tortured refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword.
They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” (Hebrews 11:35-40)
Of course, there the something better is one of the great themes of the book of Hebrews…the better covenant, the way of Jesus, his death and his resurrection, opening up a kingdom of God and being a part of that kingdom and living by faith, following Jesus as the King so that whether God closes the mouth of the lion or you’re torn apart by the wild animals, whether you survive the fire or whether it consumes you, you still cannot lose because you’re part of this eternal, unshakeable kingdom.
In the end you’ll see no matter what, even when tragedies seem to wash over us like an inundating flood, God was with us, God was in control, and we’re going to be okay, and we can walk with faith no matter how it turns out. This is part of the life of the early church. But then let’s move on to the second story here in Acts 12.
2. Trial. We’ll pick it up in verse 3, the second half. “…when he saw that [the death of James] pleased the Jews, [Herod] proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the days of Unleavened Bread [the Passover time]. 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. So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.
Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ‘Get up quickly.’ And the chains fell off his hands. And the angel said to him, ‘Dress yourself and put on your sandals.’ And he did so. And he said to him, ‘Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.’ And he went out and followed him.
He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him. 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.’
When he 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.” (Acts 12:3-17)
So James dies. Peter is delivered. Interesting contrast. One of the parallels between James and Peter is that James is one of those main leaders in the church, one of the inner three, one of the Twelve. So is Peter. Herod is a constant in the story also. He just arrested James, had him killed. Now he’s arresting Peter, waiting to kill him when the Passover is over.
You can imagine for the church this was a real trial, a real test. Certainly…though the text doesn’t tell us…certainly we know these people are people of prayer. When James was arrested, we can just almost be positive they got together and they prayed that God would release James, and it didn’t happen. Now Peter is arrested. Same situation.
It’s kind of that, “Here we go again.” It’s a trial. It’s a test for the church. Are they going to be apathetic? Are they going to say, “Well, God, you didn’t come through last time. I’m done,” or are they going to get together and they’re going to pray? Are they going to labor once again before God, trusting he is good and he has the power to deliver?
What we see here is they were in earnest prayer for Peter. Verse 5: “…earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.” (Acts 12:5) That word earnest in the Greek is an interesting word. The word means stretched out. Like your hands are just stretched out. Have you ever felt stretched out in prayer? Maybe physically or emotionally, it’s just you’re stretched out.
It’s actually the same word Luke uses in Luke 22 when he’s talking about Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, and Jesus says, “Lord, if there’s any way, let this cup pass from me, yet not my will; yours be done.” Same thing. Luke says Jesus was in earnest prayer. The church here is in earnest prayer, stretching out, together praying.
There’s such power in unity of prayer. You think about the example of children, and think about if one of your children comes to you and says, “Hey, Dad, I’d like to go to the park today.” Maybe you have a busy day. You’re thinking, “Ah, I don’t know if it’s going to work.” But what if all four of your kids come together?
They say, “Hey, Dad, we’ve all talked. We all want to go to the park today.” You’re like, “You guys are agreeing on something. That’s wonderful! Let’s go to the park.” The same thing in some ways can be true with God. When we come to him together, that is a powerful chorus of voices in the way he responds to our prayers.
Another part of that earnest prayer, not just together and stretched out, but there’s an element of desperation to this. When these guys are praying, they know the consequences. They know the potential is there that Peter will be killed just like James was. There’s no Plan B. It’s not like, “Hey, I’m going to do a quick prayer and then I’m going to do all this other stuff over here to make things happen.” It’s like, “This is all we have. God, you have to act. If you don’t, we have nothing.”
That’s how it felt on Tuesday night. We had been at the hospital all day with Buddy. He’d been back in the surgery, and praise God, he survived the surgery. Then they took him to the intensive care recovery area. The doctors came out and talked to the family and said, “We’re keeping our expectations low. Buddy will almost certainly be out for 48 hours. It could be days. It really could be weeks, even a month before he really wakes up, and we’re not even sure what systems are going to be online when he wakes up.”
That was a sobering report. We were thanking God he survived the surgery, but now the recovery was looming. We kind of hung out, and a couple of us just stayed a little bit longer. Folks felt like, “Okay, he’s set for the night.” We said, “Can we just get in? Can we just lay hands on him for like 30 seconds and pray for him?”
They kind of snuck us in. I don’t really think actually it was allowed, but it somehow happened. We got in there. To see Buddy, a man who has been such a rock to us, to so many of us, just incapacitated, lying out with tubes and everything else, sedated, it pierced my heart. I felt so helpless, so powerless. I just knew, “There is nothing I can do except pray for this man.”
We got on our knees around the foot of his hospital bed, and we put our hands on his feet like that, and we just started to pray. It was really groanings too deep for words, the desperation. After about just a short while of praying, Buddy’s foot started moving. We were like, “Whoa!” It was terrifying actually because we didn’t know what was happening.
He started moving a little bit more. The nurses noticed he was beginning to stir, and so they came around, and they said, “Okay, Buddy, if you can hear us right now, squeeze my hand. Squeeze my hand.” We just saw his hand squeeze the nurse’s hand. They came over to the other side. “Squeeze my other hand.” He squeezes. “Move your feet. Wiggle your toes.” He starts moving his feet, wiggling his toes.
“Buddy, can you understand us?” He starts nodding his head. The nurses said, “Okay, your family is here. They love you. Your church is here. They’re praying for you. There are people all over the world praying for you. You’ve been in a surgery, and you’re now recovering. Can you rest?” He understood every single word. We were amazed.
Actually, it was so funny, because here we are praying, “God, just breathe life into Buddy,” and then God actually did it. Just praise God for that, because there wasn’t anything, I don’t think, special about us who’d gone in there to pray. There were literally thousands of people praying. We were just privileged to be there when some of the first things began to happen. Then as he recovered further, Jody and the kids have gotten to talk to him more and have just seen how God has been at work in his life.
But it’s interesting because here we have a picture of the church, and they’re praying, “God, God, please rescue Peter,” but then when Peter shows up at the door, they don’t even believe it’s happening. I’ve thought about that a little bit. Why would the church gathered here not go to the door? First of all, they say, “Well, it’s just his angel.”
If I’m in the living room praying, and somebody says, “Hey, there’s an angel at the door,” I’m going to the door. Whether it’s Peter or not, I would like to see the angel. I don’t know, maybe these guys saw angels all the time. “Ah, it’s just his angel.” But as I’ve been thinking about that more deeply, I really think they probably had a few possible ways God could answer their prayer in their minds.
They’re there in that room. They’re praying, “God, deliver Peter.” They’ve thought, “It’s going to happen this way. Maybe it will happen this way. God, please do it this way.” But I’m not sure it ever crossed their minds that an angel would come in the middle of the night, have the chains fall off of Peter, and lead him out through 16 armed guards. That wasn’t the way they thought God would answer the prayer, so when God actually began answering the prayer that way, it was outside of what they’d been thinking.
That’s a powerful lesson. We’re praying for Buddy, but him waking up right there was not what we were thinking. This is an important lesson about prayer and earnest prayer. We pray to God. We say, “Your will be done.” We stretch out, and then we let God do what he does. Let him answer the prayer as he sees fit. Sometimes the way he answers our prayers messes with us. It’s outside of what we expected. “Whoa. I asked you for this thing, and you’re kind of doing it this way.” We have to let God answer the prayer the way he answers the prayer.
We got the news. They were telling us how the surgeon, as he was reflecting on the surgery and how difficult it was, and then the fact that Buddy was responsive so soon and there and communicative and everything else, he said, “In my world, the word we use to describe this is a miracle.” We were like, “That’s funny because that’s actually the word we use. We have the same vocabulary here. There’s an overlap. We don’t find ourselves saying aortic dissection very often, but miracle, yes. That is a familiar term for us.”
That’s what God is doing. We don’t know how this is going to work out. We don’t know how the recovery will go for Buddy. We’re just grateful he has been answering the prayers in unexpected ways to this point, and we have to keep letting him do that. And in your own circumstances… You have these crises. You have tragedy in front of you. Stretch out in prayer, and then let God do his work. Let God be God and just answer, even if it’s outside of your expectation. Keep your eyes locked on God.
Now the last thing we have to see of this little section about Peter’s life here and the trial, the testing of the church and the testing of Peter and everything else, is that in verse 17, it says he motions for them to be quiet. He describes what had happened. He says, “Okay, tell these things to James.” There’s this other James who ended up being kind of the head of the church in Jerusalem. I think James was a popular name back then.
Then it says, “Then he departed and went to another place.” (Acts 12:17) Peter departed and went to another place. Peter, who has been such a bulwark of the church there in Jerusalem, went away. They don’t actually know where he went. Scholars have argued about where he ended up, but there’s no conclusive evidence we could say absolutely firmly what happened from this point forward with Peter and where he sort of settled in.
But the thing we have to pay attention to is that on the other side of the trial things look differently than they did before. That’s part of what God does. He leads us through these trials. He sustains in these trials, not so that on the other side everything will go back to exactly how it was. Here’s Jody telling the story and saying Buddy was writing out “heaven.” Heaven is totally real. That sort of thing changes you.
Paul says, “I was taken up to the third heaven. I can’t even tell you what I saw.” John, in the book of Revelation, is trying to relate some of the stuff he saw. We don’t know what Buddy saw. We don’t know how that’ll impact him. Here’s what we do know: When God leads people through trials, on the other side things change.
Peter settled in a new place. In our own lives, this is something that has been hard for me, but just learning as a pastor, things are constantly changing. God is constantly developing stuff. Yes, there’s an already and a not yet of the kingdom, but in the midst of that life, there’s still new growth happening, and we have to be okay with that. We have to be okay with God answering prayers outside of our expectations and then letting God change us through these trials.
3. Triumph. The third piece of this story is of course coming back to Herod. We’ve seen these first two stories, and the villain in both of them is Herod. Wicked man. Evil. You think almost like, “What is God doing? How is he letting Herod have this much power to be able to just kill James, arrest Peter willy nilly? Then the guards are all executed because they let Peter go. Let’s pick up the story.
Verse 18 says, “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.
Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre 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.
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!’ 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. But the word of God increased and multiplied.” (Acts 12:18-24)
There is tragedy. We experience trial. Here’s what we have to remember: God is supremely triumphant. Even when it seems like Herod has more power than we would want him to, the moment he does not give glory to God… He receives all that flattery from the people and just eats it up.
I think Buddy preached a sermon on this a while back. Eaten by worms. God just strikes him down. He’s dead. It shows us something very important about God. He will not share his glory with another. That’s what it says in Isaiah 42. It’s what it says in Isaiah 48. God says, “I am the Lord. Yahweh is my name. I will not share my glory with another.”
There are times in our lives when tragedy, when evil, when sin seems to be getting the glory, and we almost spend more time thinking about the disaster around us than we do thinking about God, and we start almost wanting to heap that glory over there, that attention over there, and God is saying, “No! Remember I am the King.”
Buddy has been talking about the metanarrative of the Scripture through the One Story is the story of the kingdom of God. That means God is the King. He’s not a king; he is the King over everything. He sits on the throne. Anytime we are tempted to think evil is winning or anytime we think death has the victory, we have to remember there will come a day when we will mock death and say, “Where is your sting? Where is your victory?”
That final enemy, even the most powerful of enemies, death, will be fully defeated. I know it because Jesus killed it on a cross, and he rose again, and all of us who follow him and trust him can be a part of that kingdom forever. We do not have to be afraid because God is the full, true, powerful King, Jesus seated at the right hand of glory, bringing all things into submission. God is not going to share his glory. He’s going to get his glory.
So what do we do with this? Who’s the King we’re going to follow? Who are we going to worship? How do we respond here? Some of us need the peace that passes understanding. In your own circumstances, in your own life, maybe you’ve been wrestling with something for a long time. Maybe it’s just right in front of you now. Some of us need to ask God to come and flood our souls with peace in the face of the situations we’re looking at, and he can do that. He will do that. We’re going to pray for that in a minute.
We need to keep praying. I think in many ways for us as a little local body here, what’s happening with Buddy is a bit of a trial. It’s a challenge. We need to continue to gather together in earnest prayer. But not just for our own. This situation with Buddy… There are lots of things to pray for. We need to be people of prayer. We need to ask God, stretch out earnestly, “God, work in these situations. Do things that only you can do.”
Just last week, Buddy was preaching out of that Pentecost passage and saying, “Let us be the kind of church where things happen that cannot be explained by human means. Let’s be the kind of church where God’s supernatural intervention is the only possible explanation.” Let us be the kind of church when surgeons say, “Well, the only way I can explain that is a miracle.” Let us be the kind of church that gathers together in earnest prayer and sees God do the sort of stuff to bring forth beauty out of the midst of muck and mire when nobody else expects it.
It’s a trial for us. It’s a challenge for us. There are people around you, sitting next to you, maybe it’s you, they need prayer. It’s such a blessing for Buddy and for Jody and the family. We’re pouring out love onto them, but actually there are a lot of people in here who need that kind of love. You need to look at the people next to you, “How can I pray for you?” Earnest prayer, “God, come. Intervene in ways we don’t expect. Come change stuff on the other side of this trial. Do what you want to do.”
Then the last thing is that reminder, looking at Herod who doesn’t give glory to God and is struck dead for it, is that we need to give God glory. We need to say, “Thank you, God. Thank you for how you’ve sustained Buddy’s life. Thank you for the way you’ve carried this body through this crisis, but Lord, thank you at even a deeper level that you are the King. Thank you that you died on the cross for us, that you loved us so much that you hung there and you rose again. Thank you for drawing us into that kingdom. Thank you, God.”
Buddy uses that phrase defiant worship. In the face of tragedy, in the face of disaster, that we worship God defiantly. Evil seems to be all around us, and we say, “No, but you are the Lord. As for me, I will trust in you, God. You are my God. We will bless you. We will worship you.” It’s not denial. It’s actually a fuller way of seeing the world.
Yes, this circumstance is ahead of me. Yes, this is a rotten thing. Yes, sometimes James dies. Sometimes Peter is released. But no matter what, I know God is sovereign. He is over all and in control. In the deepest places of me, I will yet worship God. Just like Job as his world fell apart all around him, he said, “Though he slay me, yet I will worship God.”
Jody was telling the story about a couple of nights ago when it was just Buddy and her there in the ICU room. One of the other people in there coded and actually ended up passing away. Of course, in a hospital situation, when that happens, there’s a flurry of activity. Everyone gathers around, tries to do whatever they can, and it’s fairly stressful. So Jody was there with Buddy, and she just said it’s shocking, the nearness of death to all of us, but particularly near when you’re in that hospital setting of intensive care.
She said she just had her phone and she put on some Aaron Keyes worship from her phone. She put her hand up and just started to pray. Started to bless God. Started to worship. As all the flurry came around, she’s saying, “God, let that dome, your kingdom of protection now come around.” She raised her hand and defiantly worshiped even as tragedy was all around her. That’s powerful. That is so powerful. That’s what we need to do also.
We need this morning in our lives to stretch out our hands in prayer. We need to open our hands to receive the peace of God, but we also need to be worshipers, defiantly worshiping in the face of tragedy and confusion, terror, destruction, war, yet we worship defiantly. It doesn’t mean we never mourn, but we worship defiantly.
So I’m going to just pray for those things. One last note I want to say. For some of you, we’re talking about God as being the King, able to bring good and victory out of everything, even the bad stuff. That doesn’t make sense to you because you’re not in the kingdom. You haven’t yet opened your heart to Jesus as your King, and it’s quite possible that some sort of tragedy or unmet expectation or brokenness or death along the way has caused you to doubt God, and you’ve wrestled with that.
What I want to tell you is that for those of us in the kingdom, we can testify that Jesus is alive. He has risen. He died on the cross for our sins, but he is now reigning on high, and he is giving us peace. He is leading us. He is sustaining us. He is worthy of our praise. I want you to know. Come to the Lord. Come into the kingdom. This is the place. I cannot imagine going through this week apart from God. I can’t imagine going through life without God. He is real. Heaven is real. Death is real. We need the Lord. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your goodness. You’ve really just ministered to us. You’ve sustained us. Lord, I pray that that same Holy Spirit who filled those disciples with fire and blew like a rushing wind would come now minister that peace to our hearts. Would you come, Holy Spirit, and just give us the peace that maybe is even deeper than understanding?
Lord, we pray you would stir in us also a passion for prayer, ablaze for intercession before you so you would do the stuff only you can do. Like Jody was saying earlier, God, would we see an increase of the miraculous and the supernatural in our midst? Not just in this body, but out in the community where people need it the most. God, please increase the display of your power through both brokenness and triumph.
Finally, Lord, let us just behold you, understand, know you. Let us grasp more fully your sovereignty over us that we might lift a song from our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength of defiant worship in the face of brokenness. Come now, Lord, lead us. Would you be our worship leader, and would you receive our praises? Would you just be glorified even as we sing to you now? God, thank you for your faithfulness. In Jesus’ name, amen.