Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts chapter 12, highlighting the church's response to persecution as King Herod violently attacks its leaders. He emphasizes that while opposition is inevitable, God's sovereignty is incomprehensible, and prayer should be our first response. The sermon encourages graduates to keep their eyes fixed on Jesus and trust in God's plan, illustrating that true peace and freedom come from reliance on Him. Ultimately, the message concludes with the reminder that God's word prevails, and we must build His kingdom rather than our own.
Welcome and Introduction
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Amen. Thank you, Patty.
I'm glad that song says that God's grace isn't dependent upon my goodness and my greatness, but it's all because of Him, so I'm thankful for that. If you have your Bibles, we'll be in Acts chapter 12 today.
This is going to be concluding the first portion of Acts. We're going to break in the summertime, do some little one-off studies and look at Psalms again in the summertime, and then we'll pick back up at the end of summer and finish the book of Acts out in the end of the year.
I enjoyed my wife reading last week. I'm going to ask her to come and read again, not because my voice is bad, but she reads a whole lot better than I do, and so she's going to come and read Acts chapter 12 to open up
the service. If you have your place and stand, I'll read in God's Word, and the words will be on the screen as well for you.
About that time, King Herod violently attacked some who belonged to the church, and he executed James, John's brother, and the sword.
When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter II during the festival of Unleavened Bread.
After the arrest, he put him in prison and assigned four squads of four soldiers, each to guard him, intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover. So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was praying fervently to God for him.
When Herod was about to bring him out for trial that very night, Peter, bound with two chains, was sleeping between two soldiers, while the sentries in front of the door guarded the prison. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the cell.
Striking Peter on the side, he woke him up and said, Quick, get up! And the chains fell off his wrists.
Get dressed, the angel told him, and put on your sandals, and he did. Wrap your cloak around you, he told him, and follow me.
So he went out and followed, and he did not know that what the angel did was really happening, but he thought he was seeing a vision.
After they passed the first and second guards, they came to the iron gate that leads into the city, which opened to them by itself. They went outside and passed one street, and suddenly the angel left him.
When Peter came to himself, he said, Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod's grass and from all that the Jewish people expected.
As soon as he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many had assembled and were praying.
He knocked at the door of the outer gate, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer.
She recognized Peter's voice, and because of her joy, she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the outer gate. You're out of your mind, they told her, but she kept insisting that it was true, and they said, It's his angel.
Peter, however, kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were amazed.
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 his brothers, he said, and he left and went to another place.
At daytime, there was a great commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. After Herod had searched and did not find him,
he interrogated the guards and ordered their execution. Then Herod went down from Judah to Caesarea and stayed there.
Herod had been very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon. Together they presented themselves before him after winning over Blastus, who was in charge of the king's bedroom. They asked for peace because their country was supplied with food from the king's country.
On an appointed day, dressed in royal robes and seated on the throne, Herod delivered a speech to them.
The assembled people began to shout, It's the voice of God and not of man. At once an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give the glory to God, and he was eaten by worms and died. But the word of God flourished and multiplied.
After they had completed their relief mission, Barnabas and Saul returned to Jerusalem, taking along John, who was called Mark.
Prayer as Our First Response
Thank you for that reading. Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. I pray that you have your will and way in the service today. And bless your word as it's read this morning. In your name we pray. Amen.
You can be seated. I think that in looking through this passage and studying through this passage,
it's one of those passages where Luke, in his writing, had a lot of fun writing things. If you've ever wrote a note to someone or wrote things down, Luke is sort of amused by the story and loving the interpretation of it. And you can't help but laugh in multiple moments of this story
leading up into the execution of Herod. And we're going to look at that. And so I want to start out by a story that I know Logan will appreciate. But this was in 1954.
This was back in the prime of Mim. And this was when the world was witnessing some legendary moments.
She was, the moments were in sports history. The showdown was known as the Miracle Mile. A guy named Roger Bannister of England had just become the first man, and get this, this is fascinating to me, to break a four-minute mile.
This was an impossible feat at the time. Just weeks later, a guy named John Landy of Australia broke it again. And the world was stunned. Two men had broken this record.
And so they decided to put together one race to see who was the fastest man in the world. And so one record was going to happen. And so naturally, they were pitted against each other, one from the British Empire Games and the other from Vancouver. The race of the decades, they called it.
Landry versus Bannister.
The two fastest men on the earth, rivaled by reputation,
stepped up at the starting line. Thousands of spectators watched as Bannister had this strategy that he was going to stay close to Landy and then surge before him in the last stretch. And that's exactly what happened.
For most of the race, Landy led with ease. And as they rounded the final term, something tragic and symbolic occurred here. As Landy was leading, he looked over his left shoulder to see where Bannister was.
And as he looked, Bannister passed him on the right. That day, Bannister won the race and was claimed the fastest man in the world. And when they interviewed Landy later, this is what he said, that if I hadn't looked back, I would have won.
Today, we all step out onto the stage of a race of life. For our graduates this morning, they are stepping out into a new race, a new decision,
new freedoms, new battles. But the truth is, life isn't just a straightaway. There's turns, there's pitfalls, there's things that are gonna happen in our life. And we must be ready to look forward and look at what God has for us. There's gonna be rivalries in our life. There's gonna be setbacks.
There's gonna be moments where we feel like we have the lead. And there's gonna be times where we're tempted to look back to fear, to doubt, and even wonder and say, is it even worth staying faithful in what I'm doing? In Acts 12, it talks about this story. This story talks about this.
This is the setting. James, one of the leaders of the church, this is one of the followers of Jesus, is killed. Peter is thrown in prison.
Herod is out of control and in control over a lot of things. And what do we find the church doing?
Facing Uncertainty with Faith
The church is praying. They're not scared. I'm sure they are scared, but they're not outwardly showing that. They're simply going to the Lord and they almost are at this end of saying, is this the end of the church? Is this the final conclusion of what's gonna happen?
Herod is now changing what we're doing and he's beginning to kill people. And all of a sudden, what is gonna happen? And then in the middle of their story, God shows up, not the way they expected.
And oftentimes, that's how it is in our life. God shows up in an unexpected way where we sort of question and say, okay, God, I didn't really expect you to do that, but I'm listening. I'm here for you.
And so as we begin to look through this, the question I want us to ask ourselves this morning,
whether you're a graduate, I'm gonna sort of curtail a lot of this message to our graduates this morning, is will you keep running your race with your eyes fixed on Jesus or are you gonna look back?
Are you gonna look back at what had happened in the past or are we gonna look forward and say, God, I want to grow closer to you.
I want to grow in a way that is gonna honor you and I want to ultimately be someone who at the end of my life says, I fought a good fight. I've kept the faith. I didn't look back. I just continued to press forward.
And we begin to see the very first part here. The first five verses is the evil attack. I found out this week, my kids try to guess my blanks and Brody does a wonderful job every week of getting every single one of them wrong. And so the evil attack,
okay, and when faith is tested, the very first, it opens up with these words, at about that time, King Herod violently attacked some who belong to the church.
The Herods all throughout scripture hated Christians. They hated Jews. They hated anything that was against them. At the very beginning, Jesus' birth, what did Herod do? Herod commissioned a law that any male-born son under the age of two were to be crucified and be killed. He didn't want anyone to come against his rule. He had another son.
Later on, they're all Herods. Oftentimes when you read through the Bible and you read the Herod, you're like, okay, is this that Herod? Is this this Herod?
But they're all related in some way, shape, or form. It was a dynasty of leaders.
And then we see later on where John the Baptist comes before Herod. And John the Baptist, in front of him in the Gospels, looks at him and rebukes him. And what does the Herod do? He chops his head off.
So now we fast forward and we're at the church beginning and another Herod is in charge and the church is under attack.
And Herod says, I'm going to do something different. Saul, when he began going out, he went house to house, finding individuals, you and me, that were in our house worshiping Jesus and he would question them. And if they were, say they were a Christian, he would pull them out of their house. He would take them to Rome.
He would take them to the jail and he would persecute them that way. Well, the Herod's here in this moment, he said, what Saul was doing wasn't quite working. We're going to do something different. We're going to go after the leaders. If we can get the leaders and we can attack the leaders,
then maybe the church will crumble. And so he goes after this man named James. This is one of the inner circle of Jesus, Peter, James, and John. This was James, the brothers of thunder, the sons of thunder.
This was James and he's coming to the sons of thunder and he says, you're one of those ones that follow Jesus. You were one of his part of his inner three. All right, you're dead. And he kills James and he throws Peter into prison.
And so the church now is under attack and there is this testing that's going on. What I want to start out by saying, the church this morning and graduates as well, opposition is inevitable.
Opposition will happen in this world. It's not when, it's not if it's going to happen, but it's when it's going to happen, when opposition is going to come and how are we going to respond? Herod's persecution reminds us that following Jesus will always have resistance.
There's always going to be someone against you. There's always going to be something coming against you. Satan, his demons,
his workers of iniquity are coming after us and we have to ask ourselves, are we ready for it?
Are we ready for the battle that's coming? Are we ready for what is going to happen in our life? As our graduates step into this world of uncertainty, this world will, not always is going to applaud you for your faith.
When you step up into the job interview and they ask you questions and your questions are shaped from a biblical worldview,
they're going to start asking questions and they're going to say, hey, we don't want that kind of thing in this workplace. Are we going to silence our message in order to get a job?
Are we going to silence what we believe in order to advance ourselves in this world? Again, as I read with Addy's Life verse, John 16, 33, in this world you will have trouble, but fear not because I have overcome the world.
And this morning, church, we must ask ourselves, are we in that fear or are we trusting in the Lord that's overcome the adversities that are coming against us?
God's Sovereignty in Adversity
I want to think about a diamond. A diamond is formed under immense amount of pressure and heat and adversity that's coming against us.
And when that diamond comes out of that coal, it comes out because of the pressure, because of the intense heat, and because of the amount of struggle that it went through in order for that diamond to come out.
And we, in the same way, our faith comes under fire, and our faith in that pressure, in that fire is refined in a way that's going to stand up and say, God, I am here for you and I'm standing for you.
As I was studying through this and I was meditating on this even last night, the Lord brought this statement to my mind that the King will always win. Jesus, the King, will always win. He's in control and He is never going to be beaten.
He is in control and He always gets the victory at the end. Where is our trust at? Is our trust in self or is our trust in the King who never, ever loses?
And ultimately, are we willing and ready to stand before the King, Christ, when our time is over, when we stand before Him and the crowd walks the other way and we stand before Christ and we say, Christ, I did everything I could do. I'm standing for you even when the opposition comes.
Are we ready and prepared for that day? Number two, God's sovereignty, big word here, is incomprehensible.
It's probably spelled wrong because I'm not a grammar major. Allie's making fun of me because I'm learning Spanish as well. We're getting ready for our Nicaragua trip at the end of the summertime and so I'm going through Duolingo and she's making fun of me the way I say things.
So our God's sovereignty is incomprehensible. Right? James is killed. As Luke's writing this story, if you were writing this story,
is that how you would start the story off? James is killed, one of the faithful three. Oh, and by the way, one of the other faithful three, Peter, we're going to throw him in jail. This is not how we write the story.
This is not how we say, this is how my life wants to be.
And all of a sudden, when we begin to reflect in our life and we begin to say, this is how I have my 5, 10, 15 year plan, these are the things that I have planned,
God sort of steps in and he says, you know, maybe there's going to be some adversity in that 5 year plan. Maybe there's going to be some heartache and some loss in that 10 year plan.
And we don't understand it but looking back, we understand that we all of a sudden don't get clear answers but we know that God is still in control. Even when things don't make sense, God's still in control.
Even when the things that happen in our life are not the way we would write them down in our life, God says, I'm still in control, I'm still here for you and are you trusting me? I love how Isaiah puts it, Isaiah 55, 8 and 9,
my thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not my ways.
This is the Lord's declaration. Go to verse 9, as far as heaven is higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts. This morning church, God's plan is not always predictable. We always can't predict what's going to happen.
Some people look at the stock market and they predict the ups and the downs and the highs and the lows. They look at the housing market and they say, now's the time to buy, now's the time to sell. Some things in life are predictable.
God's plan is not predictable but I promise you his plan is always perfect.
His plan is always perfect in our life if we trust him and we follow him and we say, God, God, I just want to surrender my life to you. I want to go forward in my life and I want to trust in what you have for me.
I want to trust that you are the one that is there for me. God gave us his son.
God doesn't promise us to give us an explanation for what he's going to go for in our life but he has given us the promise that by trusting in him, it's going to change everything of our life.
He raised Christ from the dead and one day we'll rise from the dead too if we trust in him and if we believe in him and one day we're going to dwell forever beside the king of kings, the Lord of lords if we will trust in Christ.
So God's sovereignty is incomprehensible, opposition is inevitable but prayer should be our dependence.
This is the part of the story where the church comes in. The end of chapter, the end of the verse 5 here, verse 4 and verse 5, the church begins to respond to what's going on. Herod attacks them with the sword.
Herod cuts off the head of James. Herod cuts off John the Baptist. Herod crucifies Jesus and how does the church respond? The church counters with prayer.
The church doesn't pick up arms. The church doesn't pick up a gun. The church doesn't pick up some type of weapon but the church falls on their needs and they begin to pray for God to move in their midst.
The Power of Prayer
While Peter sat in prison, the church began to pray more fervently than anything else. Prayer this morning, church, should not be our last resort. Prayer should be the very first line of defense that we go to.
It should be the thing that when problems happen in our life we fall on our knees and we say, God, I don't know how I'm going to do this. God, I don't know what I'm going to do. I just need you to guide me and direct me in everything I do.
Prayer is the first line of defense. It's the first response. Prayer isn't a retreat from battle but it's an act of defiance.
It's stepping up and saying, I'm going to trust in the one that is in control not the people that are around me. And we place our trust in the only one that matters. Graduates, this morning,
prayer must remain your lifeline while you're in college. While you go to your career, while you go off into your college, prayer is the lifeline to God that we must survive and grab onto with everything we've got.
When we cling to prayer and we cling to who God is, that brings us that source of satisfaction in our life that we can trust in Him. What would it look like in your life if you made prayer the first step, not the fallback request?
What would it look like if when things happen in your life the first thing you did was, hey, let's pray about this. Let's pray about what's going on.
Let's pray about what God can do and how God's working in this midst and I don't know how it's going to happen but we're going to trust in God instead of the fallback request, the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth
thing that we do. It should be the first thing that we do. So we see the church under attack, the evil attacking happening but now we see the Lord's aid. We see that God begins to step into the moment of this story.
God steps in and God says, hey, I've got something great planned for the church.
I've got something really, really cool set up and Luke has some really cool things here when you begin to look through it and I love the way that Luke has this as he's writing this. It says in verse six that Peter was sleeping between two soldiers. Man, the peace that Peter had
was so powerful. The peace that Peter had in this moment, think about it. It says that four soldiers
divided into four different times of the day so eight hours a day, four different sections of the day, four new soldiers came in.
Two were chained to him and two were at the front gate, at the front guard. And so everywhere he went was always with someone during this time. And yet in the midst of this, it says in the middle of the night, Peter slept between them.
I don't know if I would be sleeping right now. I'd probably be wringing my hands,
trying to figure out what's going on, who's going to come and save me, what's going to happen, is the church there, does my family care about me?
All of a sudden my mind's going to go through all the hundred different scenarios and the last thing I'm going to think about is can I sleep right now? Right?
I probably don't even have my CPAP machine there so I'm not going to be able to go to sleep anyways. But Peter, no one thought that was funny.
I thought at least one person would laugh, one Jade laughed and we're good. All right? Peter is here and he's in the midst of the prison and he's trusting the Lord. Look, I almost think that he, right before he lays his head down, his mind goes to Psalms 147,
146 verse 7. Look at what it says. Executing justice for the exploited and giving food to the hungry, the Lord frees prisoners. I'm sure Peter probably said, you know, the Lord's in control.
God's going to take care of this. He said he frees his prisoners whether by death or by freedom. I'm going to be freed. All I can do is go to sleep and he laid his head down and he went to sleep and this is the story that Luke tells. Luke says that,
and I'm sure Peter had fun telling this, right? Peter's the guy that liked to talk.
He liked to make people laugh a little bit. He liked to ask questions of Jesus and all of a sudden it says that an angel came to Peter and he was so hard asleep that he had to start kicking him in the side to wake him up. Look, it says he struck him on the side and woke him up.
Like he's like, hey Peter, wake up. Hey Peter, this is like me trying to wake my kids up in the morning. Peter, wake up. Peter, wake up. He's shaking him. Peter, wake up. He strikes him on the side. Peter's like, oh, what's going on? I woke up.
I gotta get up now. And he's like, I don't know what's going on. He's like, hey, follow me. He walks through the gate. Says he comes to another gate. He walks through that gate. He walks through the iron gate.
It opens up and he walks through it. And he's like, what's going on here? Is this a vision? Am I having another vision?
I just had a vision a couple weeks ago after I had tacos and it was about these animals coming down on the sheet and it was a vision. Maybe this is just a vision.
And I'm getting out to the middle of the street and now it says, the angel's gone. Well, it can't be a vision because I'm out here in the middle of the street. The prison's behind me. The gate's open and I'm out here. What is going on?
And all of a sudden in this moment, he begins to see that God is breaking the change in his life and Peter's chain fell off and now he is free and there is peace. It reminds us as we think of this for the Lord sets free the prisoners,
God's Deliverance and Grace
God sets free the prison chains around our life. Just as the prison chains of Peter's life fell off, the addictions in our life, the heartbreak, the pain and suffering that oftentimes can hold us bondage, God says, I'm breaking free the chains that are holding you around you.
Jade this year did a whole project on Corrie ten Boom and how Corrie ten Boom was in a concentration camp as a Jew and this is one of the things that Corrie ten Boom said. She said, there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still
and she set her life's mission into setting prisoners free from Nazi regime and releasing them from that and smuggling them out of the country and she understood that God is bigger than any pit, God is bigger than any
desire, anything that's in our life, God is bigger and deeper than any of those things.
And as we think through our life in the middle of the unknown, understand that God can give you rest. God is the one that is there for those who are brokenhearted and he's there to help us. Not only is peace powerful, but grace is overwhelming. Peter didn't earn this rescue.
There was nothing that Peter did in this moment other than wake up and walk out that got him rescued. It is that by sheer grace of God's knowledge that this grace was given that overwhelmed him. The angel wakes him up. The angel leads him out. The angel delivers him.
And in that moment, Peter doesn't even realize what's happening. It's almost like the Bible says in Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved. It's not of yourselves, but it is the gift of God. God says that it is the grace of God that it saves you.
It is nothing of yourself because the grace of God is overwhelming and the grace of God is so huge in our life that we don't even understand it at times. How God could send his only son in this world to die for us.
How God could give the most precious, valuable trophy in heaven to be born among humans, to be born among those who are going to kill him. And God says, I'm going to give you that grace. But think about Peter right here. Peter goes to Mary's house.
James' mom, the mom of her son who's just beheaded, he goes to James' house and he knocks on the gate and this little girl named Rhoda comes to the gate and goes, it's Peter.
The story, I love the story I'm telling you. I have thoroughly enjoyed studying this all week. Rhoda comes, I think of like Jade and some of the kids in men's class, they come to it and they're like,
Peter's here. How did Peter get here? And she's like, bye Peter.
She was so excited she didn't even open the door to let him in. She was like, I got to go tell everybody. She runs to the people and she was like, hey, Peter's here and they're like, no, you're just a crazy little girl. Don't talk to us.
You don't know what's going on. She's like, no, I'm telling you Peter's out there. It's just the angel of Peter. Bless your little heart.
You don't really know what's going on. Just go back to your class. This is Rhoda here and all of a sudden she's like, no, listen to me. Like she goes, Rage Monster. Many times I've seen this in Jade. Rage Monster comes out, come see.
She pulls me over there and they're like, oh, it's Peter. He's out there and they still don't let him in.
He's still standing out in the middle of the street. He's standing out here and he is like, I don't need to be out here, guys. Do you remember I was just in prison? Do you remember they were wanting to kill me because they just killed James? Let me in.
And they're like, oh yeah, we got to let this guy in. So they let him in.
He gets in and he begins talking and he begins ministering to them and he begins showing them the grace of God. Our story has a powerful meaning to it when we begin to tell others about the grace that God has given us.
We must no longer rely on our merit but rely on what God has done.
And when we go out into this world, when we go out to work, when we leave from our college, when we leave from these places that we're around and we are encouraged, we must go forward in grace striving
to tell other people about the grace of God and how overwhelming it is. And then we see in verse 17 the power that God has is unending. It says in verse 17, what the Lord has done will not cease to happen.
This was not a coincidence. This was a divine intervention that God's will is going to be done. That God's will is unending.
That God's power is unending. And God's strength is unending this morning, church. Ephesians 3 20 says it like this. God can do immeasurably more than anything that we can ask or think.
God's plan, God's will is so much more than what we can imagine. I like how George Mueller said, I'm going to speed up just a minute. George Mueller said like this, he prayed for daily bed to free hundreds of thousands of orphans and God provided oftentimes in the very last minute.
Don't underestimate what God can do. Through someone who just simply sits back and says, God, I don't know what you're going to do. I don't know how you're going to do it. Just do it and I'll jump in behind it and I'll just trust in you. Are we dreaming dreams that only God can fulfill?
Are we dreaming of dreams so big that if it were to be fulfilled, the only answer that is there is by God.
Oftentimes people say, you've got a vision that's bigger than life itself and I don't want to put God in a box. I don't want to say God can only do these 17 things and after that God's done. No, I want to put God to the test.
I want to see what God can do. I want to see what God's going to do with the people that truly serve him, that love him, that pray for him to do a mighty work in our lives and say, God, just bust the doors open and
just do something great in our community and when it's all said and done, you're going to get the glory. You're going to get the honor of everything that's said and done.
We're just going to jump on the back of it and just trust in you as you begin to work in our lives. And then we get to the end of this, the final word that happens, the last five verses, when pride collides with God's plan,
the final word, when pride collides with God's plan, the end of Herod came because of pride and self-righteousness. God says that he opposes the proud. He opposes those who are prideful. He opposes those who are boastful. And when we oppose the Lord, we lose.
Just as God's in control and God always wins, if we go against him, we always lose. And so let's look through here very quickly three things.
Herod's Pride and Its Consequences
The first is Herod's self-praise. Verse 22, it starts out by saying, the people begin to shout out, this is a voice of God, not of man. Man, they're raising Herod up.
The pride that is in him is deadly. Herod, in his mind, through his lineage, every single one of the Herods, they lived for the praise. They lived for the beauty of applause in life. And it becomes his downfall. There's a historian named Josephus Flavius.
If you like history, I'm a history buff. If you like knowing things about some of these early days of Christ, pick up Josephus Flavius' book. It talks about the Roman victories. And he details outlines about what Herod looked like this day.
This is what he says in detail. He said that when he saw Herod, he was in glistening silver robes and they worshiped him as God. If you can imagine, it would be like an Avenger movie.
Peter is watching this. The people are watching this. And Herod comes out in his most shiny outfit, his most glistening outfit, the perfect crown, the sepulcher.
He's like ascending as a God coming out of heaven on this platform, in this arena. And everyone's worshiping him. And everyone says, look at how great he is. Look at how, this isn't even speaking like a man. He's speaking like a God. And Herod walks out, puffs his check back. I am somebody.
I am the man that's leading you. And be careful this morning, church, of what we crave. Man's approval is fleeting.
When man begins to puff us up, it can be quickly vanish and disappear. But in this moment, the Bible says in Proverbs 16, 18, pride goes before destruction,
a holiday spirit before the fall. Church this morning, graduates this morning, do not build your life on a platform, but build it on the foundation of who Christ is.
And say, I'm going to trust in the Lord. I'm going to trust in who he is. And that's going to be my foundation. That's going to be everything that I build my life on. And whatever happens, happens because of the Lord.
And then it says, the next part is, is Herod's end. In verse 23, it says that he was struck down because he did not give the glory to God. God says that he appoints kings and rulers and everyone. He appoints them in their position. And our job is to glorify him.
And all of a sudden, in this moment, because he didn't give the glory to God and turn the praise back and say, none of the people, it's not about me, it's about God. God says that he sent an angel down. Get the contrast.
Peter was struck to be woken up. He was in peace.
He was there. He was okay with what was going on. The angel had to strike him to wake him up. And yet Herod was glorified to a position that was highest in the land.
He was the ruler of all. And the Bible says that he was struck down to show us that God cares about his business.
And that God is a jealous God and God cares about who we are. God cares about who we worship and that no one is going to take his place. And in this moment, Peter was struck to be woken up and a miracle happened. And yet in this moment,
Herod was struck down to put an example for each and every one of us. That example is this. God has the last word always.
God says, I'm going to judge the righteous and the unrighteous. I'm going to make my will be known.
Building God's Kingdom
Are we trusting in him? Pride will always lead us to fall when we rob God of his glory. The last thing we'll look at in verse 24 is the words of victory. It says, but the word of God spread and was multiplied. The contrast here is clear. Herod dies. God's word lives.
Herod, the ruler of the town, the ruler of this nation, the ruler of everyone around, he is put to death and God's word doesn't die. God's word lives on. God's word continues.
God's word says, it says that it spreads like wildfire and was multiplied. I like how John Piper said, it says, if we stay with Jesus, we win. And if we oppose him, we lose. This morning, church, know that God's truth always outlasts
earthly powers. We can put our faith in man, that man's going to fail us. We can put our faith in the stock market, it's going to fail us.
We can put our faith in all the other things in this world, but until we put our faith in God, it's going to be the only thing that stays true and stays just in our life. This morning, church, we must humble ourselves before God.
Try not to be God, but stay as close to him as we can. Stay close to his word.
And almost every one of the graduates, as I wrote in their Bible, I wrote this statement, stay close to God.
Stay close to his word. Don't let it leave you. Go to it every single morning. Allow it to absorb into your life to lead you into greatness. Because God's word is the only thing that's going to last forever. Invest your life into what matters.
What matters is God's word and the gospel going forth in his people, telling other people about who Christ is.
This morning, as Terry comes and closes us down in invitation with a song here, I want to ask yourself, whose kingdom are you building? Are you building your own kingdom?
So that one day, when everyone comes by and sees our body, they say, man, he built a great thing. Or are we building God's kingdom?
Are we saying, God, I don't care about the name. I don't care about the recognition. I don't care about what, what you're going to do with my life. I just want to see souls saved. I just want to see lives transformed by the gospel. And I want to see your name lifted high.
You see, life will be filled with opposition. We serve a mighty God. We serve a God who is greater than everything that we can ever think or imagine. We need to trust in him. The Lord trusts,
the Lord aids those that trust him. If we trust in him and we walk in peace and we walk in grace and we walk in power, God's going to come down.
He's going to wrap his loving arms around us and he's going to show us the grace of God in a mighty way. God's final word will always have the final word. It's not my word. It's not what I think.
Oftentimes, I'll share scripture and someone will say, well, I don't agree with that. It's fine. You don't have to agree with it. It's scripture.
It's not what I'm saying. It's what God's saying. And he's going to have the final word and he's going to get the glory and I'm just going to trust in him. A great revival preacher named C.T. Studd penned these words down.
One and only life which will soon be passed and only what's done for Christ will last.
This morning, church, what are we doing for Christ that's going to last for eternity? Not what are we doing for self?
Not what are we doing to raise up our own name and our own image? But what are we doing for Christ that's going to last?
As we go forward from this place, as we go forward and serve the Lord this summer and go into a new year of school here soon, are we trusting that God is still in control? His power is forever and as our testimony, one that is God reigning forever.
Father, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. I pray that you'd have your will and way this morning in the service. Help us as we respond that we would trust in you, that we would honor you in everything we do. In your name we pray. Amen.
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