When Simon Peter was seized by Herod’s soldiers, he was placed in a maximum-security prison of his day. In this sermon, R.C. Sproul takes us back to the unforgettable night when an angel from God loosed Peter’s chains and escorted him out of prison, drawing out applications from this passage for the Christian life.

Let us turn our attention to the book of the Acts of the Apostles, where today we begin chapter 12. I will be reading Acts 12:1–19:

Now about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church. Then he killed James the brother of John with the sword. And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now it was during the Days of Unleavened Bread. So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover.

Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church. And when Herod was about to bring him out, that night Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers; and the guards before the door were keeping the prison. Now behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the prison; and he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, “Arise quickly!” And his chains fell off his hands. Then the angel said to him, “Gird yourself and tie on your sandals”; and so he did. And he said to him, “Put on your garment and follow me.” So he went out and followed him, and did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. When they were past the first and the second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads to the city, which opened to them of its own accord; and they went out and went down one street, and immediately the angel departed from him.

And when Peter had come to himself, he said, “Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel, and has delivered me from the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the Jewish people.”

So, when he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying. And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a girl named Rhoda came to answer. When she recognized Peter’s voice, because of her gladness she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter stood before the gate. But they said to her, “You are beside yourself!” Yet she kept insisting that it was so. So they said, “It is his angel.”

Now Peter continued knocking; and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. But motioning to them with his hand to keep silent, he declared to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, “Go, tell these things to James and to the brethren.” And he departed and went to another place.

Then, as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers about what had become of Peter. But when Herod had searched for him and not found him, he examined the guards and commanded that they should be put to death.

And he went down from Judea to Caesarea, and stayed there.

He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let him hear. Let us pray.

O Lord, as we attend to this narrative that has been preserved for us by the singular care of Your providence and given originally under the supervision of the Holy Ghost, we pray that its meaning and significance may be impressed not only in our minds but also upon our souls. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Herod Agrippa

We could start today by saying, “Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem . . . ” Last week, we ended with Paul and Barnabas at Antioch. We read of the visit of Agabus and a band of prophets who predicted a severe famine. The people in Antioch who were under the tutelage of Barnabas and Saul took up an offering, and all the disciples gave from their own goods to help the saints suffering from the famine in Jerusalem. They commissioned Saul and Barnabas to return to Jerusalem to bring relief from the famine with their gifts.

Chapter 12 picks up again back in Jerusalem, where we read of an outbreak of a whole new measure of persecution directed not so much at the rank and file of the Jewish converts to Christianity but against the leaders, the Apostles, who were singled out.

In verse 1 we read, “Now about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church.” Who is this “Herod the king?” This is not the Herod who slaughtered the infants at the time of the birth of Jesus. This is not Herod the Great. In fact, it is the grandson of Herod the Great, the first Herod Agrippa that we encounter in the book of Acts.

When Herod the Great died, his dominion was separated into four parts to Archelaus, Aristobulus, and others. Often when you come to the New Testament messages, you hear of somebody such as Philip who is called a “tetrarch,” which means a ruler of a fourth. Those were the immediate descendants of Herod the Great who shared one-fourth of his domain.

By the time we get to this chapter in the book of Acts, we see an entirely different set of authorities had been established. In the year 7 BC, the father of Agrippa, whose name was Aristobulus, the son of Herod the Great, was killed. They were fearful in the family that vengeance would be further wrought against the grandson of Herod, so to keep him safe, the mother and family sent the four-year-old Agrippa off to Rome.

Agrippa was raised in the confines of the royal household and close to Gaius, who was the grandnephew of the reigning Caesar Tiberius and his exact contemporary Claudius. He was raised almost as a family member of the Caesars. When Tiberius died, Gaius ascended to being the emperor of Rome, and in AD 37, around the time the text is telling us about, Gaius appointed his old friend king over Israel. No longer was the kingdom divided into four parts, but almost all the parts were initially given into the hands of Agrippa.

A few years later, Gaius died, and he was replaced by Claudius. Under the reign of Claudius, the rest of the nation, including Jerusalem and Judea, which traditionally had been governed and ruled by a Roman prefect like Pontius Pilate, was given back into the hands of one of the Hasmonean dynasty of kings, King Agrippa. He now had control of the entire country. He was king, but a puppet king.

When Agrippa came to Jerusalem, he was immediately aware of the sect of Jewish Christians who were upsetting the rest of the Jews in Jerusalem, and he set out to put them to rest. So, the first thing he did in his harassment campaign was arrest James and have him beheaded by the sword.

The First Martyred Apostle

Let us take a moment to understand which James this text is talking about. He is identified in the text as James the brother of John. When Jesus called His disciples, He called the sons of Zebedee, or the sons of thunder, James and John. Peter and Andrew also joined. The inner circle of disciples throughout the earthly ministry of our Lord consisted of three people: Peter, James, and John. It was this James, who not only was one of the original Twelve but was in the inner circle of the original Twelve, who was singled out by King Agrippa to be executed.

From early sources of church history, we have a tradition that when James was beheaded, his guard was so impressed by his faith and testimony to Jesus that at the time of the execution, the guard professed faith in Christ and was then summarily executed along with James. Another irony here is James was not the first Christian martyr. That was given to Stephen. But Stephen was not an Apostle, and James was the first of the Apostles to be martyred.

According to church history, eleven out of the twelve Apostles were martyred. Only one lived to old age and died as an old man by natural causes, and that was James’ brother, John. So, of the two brothers, the sons of Zebedee, one of them is the first Apostle to die and the other one is the last Apostle to die.

Peter’s Arrest

Let us get back to the narrative. So, after Herod killed James, he kept his eyes on the population. He was conducting his Gallup polls, so to speak. How were they reacting to the death of James? Were they going to get excited like they did when they killed Jesus? The polls said the populace approved of his persecution against James, so he decided to go after the big one.

Herod went after the big fisherman, Simon Peter, subjected Peter to arrest, and threw him into prison. It was during the celebration of the Passover, and Jewish tradition would not approve of an execution during the paschal feast, so Herod had to wait until the feast was completely over before he could execute Peter. Therefore, Herod locked Peter up in prison. We are told that Herod sent four squads of soldiers to guard Peter and keep him there until he could execute him afterwards.

They had four squads because they had four watches during the day. There were four teams of four—sixteen Roman soldiers in total—guarding Peter in prison. Two of them were inside his cell with him. Peter had one leg chained to the leg of one guard, and his other leg chained to the leg of the other guard. In the meantime, the outer gates were each guarded by a separate Roman guard. This was high security imprisonment imposed upon Peter. That is part of the narrative we do not want to miss.

God Always Answers Prayer

“Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.” I will interrupt the narrative here for didactic reasons.

We are besieged all around us today by the health-and-wealth gospel, wherein preachers promise people that God always wills healing, God never wills suffering, and all you have to do to escape from any malady is to “name it and claim it.” If you are blind and want to be healed, you must claim and have faith that you can see, even if you cannot see. If you receive the gift of prayers of intercession for you and you do not receive your sight, the problem, according to health-and-wealth teaching, is that you did not have enough faith. This is based upon a premise I heard spelled out recently on the radio that we must learn the art of praying in such a way that God will answer our prayers.

This morning, we sang, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” In that song, we sing about what a blessing it is that whatever burden or care is cast upon our souls, we can go to Christ because He is our Intercessor.

Some people teach about seven ways to have an effective prayer life, seven ways to get God to hear us, and how we can get God to answer our prayers. Let me tell you this: God is not deaf. God has no impairment in His hearing. I can say with absolute certainty that God Almighty hears every prayer you pray. You do not have to speak it any louder in order to get His attention. He hears our prayers.

Sometimes in our Christian walk, we say, “It’s wonderful when God answers our prayers,” but we wonder why He does not always answer our prayers, and we ask, “Why not?” That is a false question. He always answers your prayers. Sometimes, however, the answer is “no.” We tend to insult God’s intelligence when He does not answer our prayers the way we ask Him to and we do not consider it an answer.

Do Not Abandon Prayer

Did Jesus walk away from His agony in Gethsemane after crying to the Father, “Let this cup pass from Me”? Did He walk back to His disciples, wake them up, and say, “I prayed, but God didn’t answer My prayer”? No, God answered His prayer, and He said, “Drink the cup.” Jesus then prayed again for the strength and courage to do what God had commanded Him to do.

Let us not confuse prayer with magic, or God with a cosmic bellhop who is there to do our bidding, and when He does not get our order right, we send it back to the kitchen and refuse to give Him a tip. That is not how prayer works.

I am laboring this point for a reason. When James was arrested, the Christians in the first-century church surely got on their knees right away and prayed for his rescue. But in God’s providence, He was pleased to allow James to be martyred. The answer He gave to the people’s prayers for James was the exact opposite of the answer that He gave to the people praying for Peter. But the people did not despair of prayer. They had prayed for James, and then they were devastated to see that James was executed, and now it was even worse. Peter was taken, and the authorities were ready to execute him. But the church did not abandon prayer. They prayed all the more earnestly, and they were praying with all their hearts.

The Angel Frees Peter

Peter was in prison, but let us look at what happened: “Constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church. And when Herod was about to bring him out, that night Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers; and the guards before the door were keeping the prison. Now behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the prison; and he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, ‘Arise quickly!’ And his chains fell off his hands.”

Think of the words of Charles Wesley in his hymn “And Can It Be That I Should Gain?” when he talked about his experience of conversion, when he talked about being in dark dungeon, and he said the Spirit of God came on him, and his chains fell off, and he stood up and followed Christ. He likely had this text in mind when that happened.

The angel startled Peter, jabbed him in the side, and said, “Get up.” The chains fall off, and the angel said to Peter, “Gird up your clothes, and tie on your sandals.” In those days, the men wore what we would think of as dresses down to their ankles. If they went into battle or into sport where they had to run, they had to hike up their dresses so that the hems were raised above their knees and their belts tightened to keep the hems raised so they could run. They would gird up their loins, freeing their knees so they could pump their legs and run as fast as they could.

The angel was saying to Peter: “We’re going to move. Gird up your loins. Tie your shoes. Put on your coat. We’re leaving.” In the meantime, Peter did not know what was happening. He thought he was having a dream. He was totally confused, but he did what he was told. Peter went out and followed the angel.

Peter did not know that what the angel did was real. He thought he was seeing a vision. The text continues, “When they were past the first and second guard posts, they came to the iron gate.” The description suggests that Peter was being held captive in the Antonian Fortress in Jerusalem, where the governor would traditionally stay.

Peter and the angel came to the iron gate that leads into the city. You would think that was the end of the escape route. They were rid of the guards and got through the preliminary gates. But the big gate of the city is the iron gate, and no one could get through that gate. But when they arrived at the gate, it opened.

Here is something I’ll give you to remember this work of God in history. The next time you go to the mall or any building with automatic doors, when you approach the door and the door swings open without your touching it, remember what God did this night in Jerusalem. In fact, I hope for the rest of your life, any time you approach a door that opens without your touching it, you will say, “Oh yes, that is what God did for Peter without the benefit of an electric eye.”

The gate “opened to them of its own accord; and they went out and went down one street, and immediately the angel departed from him.” Luke then tells us that when Peter had come to himself—that is, when he was fully conscious, fully awake—he realized this was not a fantasy nor a dream, but reality. He said, “Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel, and has delivered me from the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the Jewish people.”

John Mark’s Vocation and Mary’s House

“So, when he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose surname was Mark.” Here we are introduced to John Mark, who went with Paul on a missionary journey and did not work out very well as a missionary. Paul fired him.

A lot of people have been fired, and they think it is the end of the world. John Mark was devastated when he was fired by the Apostle Paul. How would you like to have that on your record for the history of Christian service? “I went on a missionary journey with Paul himself, but he fired me.”

After that happened, however, John Mark came back and essentially became Peter’s aide-de-camp, and to keep himself busy, he sat down and wrote a book called the gospel of Mark. So, he had a higher vocation than his missionary apprenticeship with Paul.

In any case, Peter went to the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark, and it was obviously a splendid edifice. By this time, the church in Jerusalem had become so large that there was no building big enough—no cathedral in the middle of Jerusalem—that would accommodate the worship of all the Christians there. As a result, they would meet in house churches, and they would meet in the houses of the wealthiest people among them who had the largest properties.

Perhaps the most splendid was the home of Mary, and that was where Peter went immediately. He had to sneak there, and he had to get there fast because he knew as soon as his escape was noticed from the prison, Herod and everyone else were aware of Mary’s house, and that was the first place they would go to look for him.

Astonished at Grace

Peter was in a hurry, and he rapped on the door. He was standing outside waiting for somebody to open the door, and nobody opened it because they were so earnestly engaged in prayer that they did not listen for people rapping at the door.

As Peter knocked, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer, and she said—we have to read in between the lines here—“Who’s there?” She heard, “It’s Peter.”

“Peter? It can’t be Peter. Peter’s in jail. Somebody’s playing a trick. They’re trying to get in here and arrest us all.” She did not know what to do. “Who is it?”

“It’s Peter.” But she recognized the voice, just like Mary Magdalene did in the garden when she recognized the voice of Jesus.

When Rhoda recognized Peter’s voice, she was so excited, so happy, that she forgot to open the door. The text says, “Because of her gladness she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter stood before the gate.” You’d think they would have said: “Praise the Lord. Isn’t it wonderful how God answers our prayers? Let’s let him in.” But that is not what happened.

Rhoda came running and said, “Peter’s standing at the front door.” But they said, “You are beside yourself!” Do you know what it means to be beside yourself? That is a euphemism. They were saying: “You’re out of your mind. You’re crazy. It couldn’t possibly be Peter out there, even though all we’ve been doing for the last several days is praying that God would deliver Peter. But now you’re going to expect us to believe He has done it?”

We are not the first generation to be weak in recognizing God’s answers to our prayers. But Rhoda would not stop. She kept insisting that it was so. So, they decided to compromise, and said: “Maybe you’re not your of your mind. Maybe there’s someone out there who sounds like Peter. It’s probably Peter’s angel.”

Many people in those days believed, though we do not know for sure if it is a biblical truth or not, that every person has a guardian angel. We know, for example, that Elisha had a whole army of angels guarding him in the Old Testament. “Maybe it’s Peter’s angel,” they said, and the disciples decided to put this question to rest by an empirical test. They went to the door. By now, if Peter knocked too loudly, he would have the equivalent of every policeman in Jerusalem descending upon the place instantly. But he was getting a little antsy, so he pounded a little harder on the door, and we read, “Peter continued knocking; and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.”

Every time I hear the song “Amazing Grace,” I think of two things. On the one hand, we should never be amazed by grace because God is so gracious that when He pours His grace upon us, it should not come as a surprise. On the other hand, there is a certain sense in which we ought always to be amazed by grace, in the sense that we should never presume upon the grace of God. But here was an astonishment born not of faith but of unbelief. They could not believe that God had answered the very prayer they had prayed. We are so like that, are we not?

Peter’s Second Opportunity

But Peter motioned to them with his hand to keep silent. They were all excited. They wanted to rejoice loudly. But Peter told them to be quiet, motioning with his hands, and said to them, “Go and tell James and the brethren what God just did in delivering me from prison.” He told the story and told them to go and tell James.

Does this indicate that Peter did not know that they had just killed James? Does this mean Peter was asking them to go do a séance and try to communicate with the departed soul of James? No, of course not. Peter was not talking about the same James. He was talking about a different James, not James the brother of John, but James the Just, and by chapter 15 of Acts, we will see that James was the presiding leader of the church in Jerusalem. This was James the Just, the fraternal brother of Jesus Himself, the one who wrote the book of James.

Peter said, “Go, tell these things to James and to the brethren”—that is, the rest of the Apostles. He wanted them to be told that God had delivered him from prison. Then it says, “And he departed and went to another place.”

“Then, as soon as it was day”—I love the understatement of Scripture—“there was no small stir among the soldiers about what had become of Peter.” This was a panic situation that broke out in the prison when they could not find Peter. The text continues, “But when Herod had searched for him and not found him, he examined the guards”—he interrogated this relay team of guards—“and commanded that they should be put to death.”

That was not just an arbitrary act of Herod Agrippa. That was the implementation of the Justinian Code in Rome that applied to all prison guards. When a prisoner escaped, whatever the punishment was for the prisoner under their care—whether beating, scourging, crucifixion, beheading, whatever it was—if the prisoner escaped, the guards were subjected to the same punishment prescribed for the prisoner.

We will see this later when Paul and Silas experience an earthquake, and the jailer sees his prisoners leaving by the earthquake and asks, “What should I do to be saved?” But that is another chapter, which we will look at later. All we are told here is that the guards were executed, and as a footnote we are told that Peter went down from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there.

God willing, next Sunday we will look at one more brief transition before we begin our study of Paul’s missionary journeys. It will be a footnote that tells us of the fate of this man, Herod Agrippa, who killed James, harassed the church, and tried to execute the Apostle Peter, but failed in his endeavor as the people of God were on their knees before the Lord of Glory, who sent the angel to rescue His saint. Let us pray.

Father, how we thank You for these records of Your marvelous works in history. We thank You that You gave this second opportunity for Peter to continue his ministry for many years to nurture Your church. We pray that we may learn to pray as these Christians prayed, but to pray with the confidence that You always hear our prayers. Give us the grace to be as satisfied when You say “no” as when You say “yes.” For we ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.