Acts 11 No More Chains

The early apostles and the early church have established a hub in Jerusalem, but now they have expanded into Antioch. The hand of the Lord is with them and many people are turning to the Lord. Barnabas is sent to Antioch to encourage and remain true to the Lord. He is full of the Holy Spirit and brings considerable numbers to the Lord. He then goes to Tarsus to find Saul. They teach the church for a year and the disciples are called Christians. Prophets come to Antioch and predict a great famine. The prophets communicate the thoughts and ideas of God. We're going to continue our study in Acts chapter 11 now. We're going to begin in verse 21, and we're catching up with the early apostles and the early church. They've established a hub in Jerusalem. It's been kind of the main hub of Christianity. But now they've expanded into Antioch, kind of a nasty city. But they've kind of gone in there and they're revitalizing it and making it Christian. So a pretty cool transformation is occurring in Antioch. And word gets back to the other apostles in Jerusalem, so much so that they send some help up for them. So we're going to see more of that tonight, but let's go ahead and go to God in prayer before we get started. Dear God, we thank You that we can come here and worship now through listening to Your Word and applying it to our lives. I just pray that You'd help us all stay out of the way of what You want us to hear and forgive us for our sins. In Jesus' name, amen. So they're expanding their territory, and in verse 21 we continue to see that God is helping them along the way. And it says, And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord. So the hand of the Lord was with them. Such an important part of this whole journey with the early apostles. This legitimizes Christianity. It's another aspect of apologetics is the fact that the early apostles, if this wasn't a legit thing that Jesus died and rose again, that it ended up being like a scam, why would they risk their lives going into dangerous cities and dangerous scenarios and willingly give their life for this new ministry, this new thing called Christianity? And also another thing that helped them know that they were on the right track is that the hand of the Lord was on them. And they knew how powerful that hand of the Lord is. The hand of the Lord is the thing that created the earth. Isaiah 66 too says, For my hand made all these things, thus all these things came into being, declares the Lord. But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit and who trembles at my word. Knowing how powerful the hand of the Lord is in contrast to making the earth and making the mountains and the valleys and the powerful waves in the oceans, he has a tender enough touch to put those hands on us and mold us into what he wants us to be. The hand of God also shapes our life. In Isaiah 64, But now, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay and you are the potter, and all of us are the work of your hand. We often forget that we were designed by God. The earth was spoken into existence. It was molded into existence with his hands. And we are the work of those hands, he says. He doesn't say anything about the animals and guiding them with his hands and stuff like that. He says we are the special. We are molded. And like this quote says here, Yeah, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter. We are the work of your hands, Isaiah 64. It kind of shows you how messy that molding is sometimes. When it first starts as a lump of clay, it's pretty much worthless, right? When we first become a Christian, we're not much good for him. We need to be molded and sometimes pounded back into shape. And then we mess up and then we need to start over. He helps that whole process for us as we go through our lives. But he was helping this early church mold and shape into what he wanted it to be. The second part of that was they believed and then they repented. And then they turned and changed their life around. And that's the most awesome thing when they not only believed but they changed their direction. In verse 22, the news about them reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem and they sent Barnabas off to Antioch. So this early church, God knew that they needed Barnabas for some reason. And I think that reason was to use his number one gift there. The number one thing that probably is a killer of churches is discouragement. You get discouraged, you get down. Even the pastor, the congregants, they get discouraged, they get down, they give up. But here we have somebody that with the skill of encouragement, his name literally meant encouragement in Barnabas. Verse 23 goes on, Then when he arrived and witnessed the grace of God, he rejoiced and began to encourage them all with a resolute heart to remain true to the Lord. So very focused. He wanted us to be resolute and to remain true. What's that mean? Like when something's true, it's aimed at the right dot. It's a true strike. It's a clean strike. And we need to remain focused on our goal, which is to serve Him and the ultimate prize of the kingdom and rewards in heaven and we need to be focused and resolute on those things. So we looked at the character of Barnabas a little bit in verse 24. He says, For he was a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. Now they all had the Holy Spirit, but the difference was he was full of the Holy Spirit. So there's a difference between us too. Some of us may be more full of the Holy Spirit than others. We have to allow the Holy Spirit to come into our life and fill us up. But if we replace Him with sin and neglect and not developing a relationship, pushing Him away, of course He's not going to be evident in our life. And you're not going to... I would say the Holy Spirit's a filling, but a feeling. You have filling and then you have feeling. But when you're full of the Holy Spirit, you almost feel it, don't you? You feel encouraged. You feel motivated. You feel like you have a clear vision of where God wants you to go in your life. But this was what this man was. He was full of the Holy Spirit. And what happened because of him? A considerable number were brought to the Lord. There's nothing greater on earth than to bring people to the Lord and then make them disciples, to teach them and grow them so that they can bring other people to the Lord. That's the number one focus of this early church was to bring people to the Lord. Tell them the good news that, hey, you can be saved from your sin. You don't have to live the way of hopelessness anymore. There's hope here in Christ. And verse 25 goes on, and then he left for Tarsus to look for Saul. So he stopped by Antioch, and then we have this map here. He goes a little bit farther north, northwest to Tarsus, and he's looking for Saul. So verse 26, and when he had found him, he brought him back to Antioch. So there was some work to be done here in Antioch to build up the church further. They didn't want it to have a weak foundation. They wanted to have good doctrine, so they really were focusing a lot on this before they went on. Because if you get too excited and you end up spreading yourself thin and you try to do everything at once, you've got to establish a good foundation first, and that was what this church was doing. And he says, And for an entire year, they met with the church and taught considerable numbers, and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. And we looked in detail about what the word Christian meant. That means belonging to the party of Christ, which is his position as Savior and King and conqueror eventually of this world. But more people were going to Antioch here in Acts 11.27. Now at this time, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. Now we just saw that map. When you think of going down somewhere, like you go down to Fort Wayne, you go down to Indianapolis because that's south, right? Well, when they wrote this, they weren't thinking in those terms. They were thinking in elevation. So they're going down in elevation, actually going north to Antioch, and we're going to look at who are these prophets. One prophet came in and had a significant impact on the direction of the church, and he had a great name. One of them named Agabus stood up and began to indicate by the spirit that there would certainly be a great famine all over the world, and this took place in the reign of Claudius, and another great name, right? But this guy Claudius had a really rough time here. We're going to see how rough of a reign he had. Nothing went right, famines all the time. That has to make me think he probably wasn't a great leader. Maybe they were under judgment during this time, but the Holy Spirit came down, God came down and warned the disciples, hey, there's going to be some bad times coming, so you better prepare. And it's awesome when the secular world confirms biblical principles that are laid out in Scripture, biblical facts, and we have that exact case here. We have several historians that verified that these famines occurred. But who is this prophet? The prophets commonly were just teachers. Wow, there's something really going on out there. Probably the fog or something. Yeah, there's a lot of fog out there. But prophets were commonly teachers, but occasionally, it's not like they were up there prophesying all the time about the future. Prophecy just means you're communicating the thoughts and the mind of God. So when you're teaching the Scripture, you're prophesying the thoughts and ideas of God, right? But in this sense, he was literally telling the future in this one instance. I remember my grandma always talked about this one weird thing. When I was a kid, she wanted me to have a really good relationship with God, so she talked to me after the sermons about what I learned. She said, you know, sometimes God talks through the speakers. I'm thinking, the speakers? Like, literal speakers? So the next service, I was in there trying to hear like this whisper maybe or something, like a subliminal sound like a ghost hunter thing coming out of the speakers. But then as I got older, Grandma Ruth, I figured it out. She was saying that sometimes the Holy Spirit will be active in the pastor and that word connects with you in the way that you needed to hear it. So that's exactly what she was talking about and she's exactly right. Not that it's a prophetic word like fortune telling or telling the future necessarily, but it's an impactful thing that God designs so that you hear specifically what he wants to tell you. So that's pretty cool. But these secular historians confirmed God's word here. It's pretty cool. Dion Cassius mentions a severe famine in the first and second year of the reign of Claudius. He was a historian of this time and he says it was sorely felt in Rome itself especially. And then we have the most common one, Josephus. A second famine happened about the fourth year of Claudius' reign which continued for several years and greatly afflicted the land of Judea. A third famine is mentioned by Eusebius which commences October 48 AD which was so powerful in Greece that a madias which was a financial token was sold for six drachms or a madias is actually a bundle of wheat. And then the drachm is the token. So about three shillings and six pence English. That's a lot going on out there, isn't it? But we have a drachm. So it was sold for six drachms. So how much is it? I like to look into it like how much is that worth today, you know? It's worth about enough to buy enough wheat to fill this bushel or half bushel actually. And I was like, well what's a half bushel look like? Well that's a half bushel. So 26 drachms or $261 today is what it would cost just in wheat. Just in by dynamics just like we have today. But yeah, exactly the same thing. But one drachm is worth $43.50 in today's money. And there's a pretty cool calculator out there you can go to. It's called the Testament Press Money Calculator. And you can plug in these things and it'll tell you. But really that went pretty far relatively speaking. They can make 21 loaves of bread out of that but you would need oil and other things too. So it was pretty rough going at that time. That's a picture of what a drachm looks like and they've obviously found those in their excavations too. So was that it for Claudius as far as his bad reign? Claudius Biden I think was his name. Things weren't going so well for him. A fourth famine was described by Eusebius another historian. We don't often hear these oddball historians. They're very factual and don't talk directly about script or like people of the Bible a lot. But they talk about what things were going on during this time. He said now Claudius has a fourth famine to deal with which took place in the 11th year of his reign. So they must not have had term limits. He's mentioned by Tacitus in which there was such a great dearth of provisions and famine and consequence that it was esteemed a divine judgment. It got so bad. At that time the same author tells us that in all the stores of Rome there were no more than 15 days of provision. That's pretty scary. And had not the winter been uncommonly mild the utmost distress and misery must have been prevailed. That was the historian that wrote those words back then about what happened here that this Agabus foretold. So we have famines. I mean they're common but not so common that you can foretell it within a matter of a year like Agabus was doing. But we've had 128 million people die according to this ourworlddata.org. They track these famines throughout history at least since the 1860s. So imagine 128 million just from the 1860s have died from famine. Isn't that sad? I mean we have a McDonald's on every corner. You know we've never once thought that we would starve to death. I mean if times get really bad you just go knock on the federal government's door and they'll help you out. I mean it's just not that bad but I looked into some of these countries and I'm like well America yeah we've had some rough times but not like in communist China and the Soviet Union. They kind of went back and forth a couple times on famines. But when you have communism, when you have consolidated power that's when bad things happen. And maybe that's what happened here during Claudius' reign. He had too much power possibly, was a corrupt leader, who knows. But we'll continue on here. So here in 29 it says, it shows you what their plan is to tackle this famine that's going to come up. And in proportion that any of the disciples had means, each of them determined to send a contribution for the relief of their brethren living in Judea. So instead of relying on the government to bail them out, they helped each other out. So that's really the biblical design is to help each other out. If something goes wrong with one person, that's what we do too. As long as they're trying and working hard, we'll help them out to get them back on their feet. Not so that they can just sit there, watch TV forever and ever and years on end, but to help them get back on their feet and back on track. And that's what this idea was. Verse 30 goes on, and this they did, sending it in charge of Barnabas and Saul to the elders. Also without God, they would not have been prepared for the worst. Some of them possibly would have died from this famine. God looks out for His people and He looks out for us. The only reason they knew that is because that prophet came down and they allowed the Holy Spirit to speak through Him. But Luke's contrast here is pretty stark from the upcoming. We're going over to chapter 12 now, and we're going to shift over from this loving Christian church who's expanding and growing and giving to each other and is genuine in their faith to now we see the persecution. Everything was going well for them. Now we're going to see a little bit of pullback because any time you do something good for God, the enemy's going to start attacking you. And if the enemy's attacking you, just take it. Take it because that means you're doing something right. If the enemy's not attacking you, you're probably not as worthwhile for God. But Herod Agrippa here in 12.1 says, So who is Herod Agrippa I? Again, in history, they know that he existed. We have this coin that they dug up with his name on it. Kind of hard to see. I don't know how they read that, but it's in Greek, so I don't read Greek. But the Herod mentioned here is Agrippa I, a ruler that was popular with the Jews and the Romans. He was a great ruler. A ruler that was popular with the Jews and he was partly Jewish. How much land did he have? Well, this next one shows you he controlled all the green stuff and all the yellow stuff. So kind of an odd layout. Not a very clear-cut kingdom. And I'm sure he was wanting to expand it a little bit. But his kingdom covered basically the same area as his grandfather, who was super famous. You might remember him as Herod the Great. He's the one that had the little boys killed around the time of Jesus' birth. So this Jewish family line was in power and they were looking to take Jesus off the map even when he was first born. So the enemy used this family line to try to take Jesus out and then try to take his followers out later on. But he was known for doing everything possible. He was a political guy, remember. Everything possible to gain the favor of the Jews. So he found it politically beneficial to arrest Christians and to mistreat Christians and to lay his hands on the Christians, apparently, and to execute James the brother of John, which we're going to see in a minute. But it kind of reminds you of our politicians today. It's pretty gross and disgusting. They'll do about anything to stay in power, some of these guys. We see that sometimes they'll go even to suiciding people. You've probably heard of that. Epstein was suicided by the Clintons, supposedly. But later on they found this. I like the Babylon Bee. I don't know if you guys ever follow them. But they're a parody organization. They're hilarious. We have this next one here. It says, Tragic. Footage of Epstein's suicide found hanging in the cell. So Epstein was suicided. He was killed by the Clintons and then they killed the video so that nobody could see it, apparently. So stupid but funny. And then we have this one, which I didn't know there was this many people. You hear about, I hate to use the word conspiracy theory because almost every conspiracy comes true. But there's 47 people that are tied to the Clintons. Isn't that weird? That committed suicide, literally. I didn't know it was to that extent. So it makes you wonder. Things that make you wonder, huh? Acts 12, 2 goes on. And he had James, the brother of John, put to death with a sword. And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. So Peter's life is on the line here. He was willing to take a life. Imagine a politician that wants power so much and wants the approval of the people so much that they're willing to take a life. And this was publicly. This wasn't like suiciding somebody. It was out in the open in hearty approval from his people. Now it was during the days of unleavened bread. So here we have religious rulers. This king was killing other Christians, probably previously Jews or current Jews even, that had converted to Christianity. So religious rulers, these Jews are hating Christians. But what's worse today is we really have Christians persecuting Christians. Supposedly Christians. For example, we have this quote from this guy, whatever we once were, talking about our nation, whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers, Obama. Now that's not correct at all. I mean, we saw that on Sunday. And then he says, the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. He got into office publicly saying that, hey, I'm a Christian, and he's anti-Christian in his actions. That's the problem we have with Christians today, is they'll say they're Christian, but then they do things that hate God, like they'll hang the pride flags up in these big cities that we've visited in Kalamazoo on the Methodist churches. I don't know, every big city it seems like I go to, there's these flags, and that's hating Christians. That's hating God. That's hating His Word when you don't stick up for His Word. G.K. Chesterton, he's a smart guy I like to quote sometimes, but he says, once you abolish God, the government becomes God. Wherever the people do not believe in something beyond the world, they will worship the world. You take God out of our culture, it's natural. God put it in us to want to fill that hole with Him, but if we reject Him, we fill it with something else. We have to be worshiping something. We were created to worship something. We were created to worship our God. So, they replace it with the world, so that's where you get the global warming ideas come from, where they start nature worshiping rather than worshiping the Creator. They're worshiping the creation, and we see that they worship the government. I mean, it gets too big. So, I wanted to see how big our government is. Our big government feels pretty big, like our federal government feels like it's too big. Well, in 1940, about the time right before the war, we had just under a million people employed by the federal government. I'm thinking, wow, that's a lot, but then, of course, with the war, we needed more staff in the federal government to fight the war, so it spiked all the way up to 3 million, and what happens after something like that happens? Do they really want to give up their positions? Not so much. I mean, they gave up a little bit, but ever since World War II, we've been pretty much riding right under 3 million people. We've tripled the amount because of the tragedy of World War II, and they did not want to give up that power, obviously. So, government gets too big. They start worshiping it, and now Herod is trying to please the people, doing anything possible to win them over. When they had seized him, here's Peter getting seized and probably thinking, I might die, he put him in prison, delivering him to four squads of soldiers to guard him and intending after the Passover to bring him out before the people. Now, there's a lot of respect for the Jewish holidays and stuff, but four squads of soldiers. You know how much a squad is? I'm sure he... Twelve. Well, this one says four. My interpretation is there's actually 16 soldiers here is what it said. So, Peter kept in prison, but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God. So, his life's really on the line here. I mean, just for one guy, they put 16 soldiers in there to guard him. And most likely, probably a couple of the soldiers were tied to him so that he couldn't get away. So, knowing this, do you think Peter's just so stressed out? Do you think he's just out of his mind? I probably would be. Like these January 6th arrestees and stuff are in prison, and that would be a stressful situation. But the church had their back. They were fervently praying, and this word fervently means intently. It means to extend. Or you go above and beyond kind of in this situation. You take extra time because you're in a crisis. You know, just like whenever we face a crisis early on as a country, we would go through a time of prayer and fasting and humbling ourselves before the Creator. And then what did God do? He restored us. He helped us defeat Goliath, basically, when we first were founded. So that's what prayer can do. But let's see what prayer did here in this situation. In verse 6, it says, On the very night when Herod was about to bring him forward, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers. So apparently he was relaxed enough to be able to sleep. Bound with two chains, and guards in front of the door were watching over the prison. Peter trusted God so much that he could sleep. There's a lot of things I think about. You know, heck, after the Packers game, I couldn't sleep. I'm thinking there's like 12 things that could have went right for us that didn't, and I'm like stressed out about this. And here's Peter, you know, being arrested and probably going to die, and he can sleep somehow and turn off, you know. Of course, that's a different situation. But Peter knew he would live to an old age. Did you know that God told him earlier on that he would live to an old age? So he trusted Jesus. He knew that he was telling the truth. In John 21, you know, if Jesus came to you earlier in your life and was like, hey, you're going to live to an old age, what kind of confidence would you have when you faced death at a younger age? I wouldn't worry about it. And that's how Peter was in this moment because he was approached by Jesus in this moment in John 21, verse 18. I'm telling you the very truth now. When you were young, you dressed yourself and went wherever you wish. This is Jesus telling Peter. But when you get old, you'll have to stretch out your hands while someone else dresses you and takes you where you don't want to go. So he's going to live to an old age so much that somebody else is going to have to help him take care of him, right? He said this to hint at the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God and then commanded, follow me. So this gave him a lot of confidence knowing that he was promised this old age. Now he ended up dying a horrible death. But he followed him anyways even though he was going to die a horrible death. And Acts 12, verse 7 goes on, And behold, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared and a light shone in the cell, and he struck Peter's side and broke him up, saying, Get up quickly. And his chains fell off his hands. Did the angel need to, oh, just let me scramble for the key? Did he need to get out the saw? No, not with the power of God. Chains just automatically fall off. There's no effort at all on our part when we trust God with our chains and our burdens. But if we tried to do it on our own, Peter would have tried to break out of that jail cell on his own. Well, he probably would have got killed by the guards. He would never have escaped those iron cuffs. There's just nothing we can do many times in our own life to dig us out of our own holes. We just need to back off and trust God and know he's told us that he has it. So this is the theme throughout Acts. We have this deliverance in spite of opposition. We have this theme of being backed into a corner and then God delivering at the very last minute, it seems like many times, maybe to test our faith. But verse 8 goes on, And then the angel said to him, Gird yourself and put on your sandals. And he did so. And he said to him, Wrap your cloak around you and follow me. Going back real quick to Acts chapter 5, we remember that God did this before. And this high priest rose up in verse 17 along with all his associates. And they were filled with jealousy. They laid hands on the apostles and put them in a public jail. So it didn't say who. So the interpretation is it had been quite a few of them, probably many of the apostles. Maybe all of the apostles were put in jail. So this rule that's putting Peter in jail knew this. So he had to be careful because what happens in verse 19, But during the night, an angel of the Lord opened the gates of the prison and taking them out, he said, Go stand and speak to the people in the temple the whole message of this life. Upon hearing this, they entered into the temple about daybreak and began to teach. Now when the high priest and associates came, they called the council together, even all the senate and the sons of Israel and sent orders to the prison house for them to be brought. So God delivered them earlier on. Now Peter would have remembered that situation. God's going to let my chains fall off again. He's going to open that door again. God's delivered us in the past. God's going to deliver us in the future. God delivers, and David knew this in Psalm 71. He says, In you, O Lord, I have taken refuge. Let me never be put to shame. Rescue me and deliver me in your righteousness. Turn your ear to me and save me. Be my rock of refuge to which I can always go. Give the command to save me for you are my rock and my fortress. Deliver me, O God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of evil and cruel men. For you have been my hope, O sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth. Remember, this is David talking. It's his confidence. God was his confidence to go approach Goliath, this impossible situation. From birth I have relied on you. You brought me forth from my mother's womb. I will ever praise you. I have become like a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge. My mouth is filled with your praise, declaring your splendor all day long. Do not cast me away when I am old. Do not forsake me when my strength is gone. For my enemies speak against me. Those who wait to kill me conspire together. They say, God has forsaken him. Pursue him and seize him, for no one will rescue him. And that's what our enemy does. They mock us. They say that our God is fake. They say that our God can't deliver us. But in verse 12 he says, Be not far from me, O God. Come quickly, O my God, to help me. In David's situation, God was there in the past. David knew that God was going to be there in the future. In Peter's situation, he knew that God was there in the past and he would be there now. And to finish up in verse 9, And he went out and continued to follow, and he did not know, so he's out of the jail now, that what was being done by the angel was real. He thought he was dreaming. When they had passed through the first and second guard, they came to the iron gate that leads into the city, which opened for them by itself. So the chains fell off by themselves. The guards apparently fell asleep and stayed asleep. The door opened to the jail cell. Now the door opened to the street by itself. And immediately the angel departed from him. When Peter came to himself, he said, Now I know for sure that the Lord has sent forth His angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting. When you see God deliver you out of that so obviously and directly, it restores your faith, right? It reminds you of what God had done in the past and we many times forget what God has done in the past. We have a short-term memory. But this one says, It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. We stand firm then and do not be encumbered once more by a yoke of slavery. We've got to remember that Christ has already set us free. Even though we may feel captive at the moment, He can set us free now and in the future too. So let's go ahead and close in prayer tonight. Dear God, thank You for Your Word and how it gives us hope and a foundation to go throughout our lives and to just stay positive and know that You're always there. I pray that You would just help us to be people like Barnabas that are just full of the Holy Spirit and let that be evident to everybody around us. I pray that You'd be with us as we go throughout this week. In Jesus' name, Amen.