God Always Has The Final Word

Please turn with me to the book of Acts 12:1-19 and let's pray.

It’s been observed that when we see someone become an overnight success what we often don’t see are the long years of hard work and disappointments and failure it took for that person to become an overnight success. We see the mountaintops, we often don’t see the valleys, and we can have the wrong idea that it was all mountaintop and no valley. There are very few real overnight successes.

We are in a series on the book of Acts that we entitled Mission Unstoppable because Acts records the unstoppable growth and expansion of the gospel, the church, the ongoing mission of the ascended Christ. And it’s an amazing time for the church - I don’t know if it will ever get better than this. The gospel of Jesus Christ being preached in power, thousands getting saved, signs and wonders, and church planting going on all over the place. The book of Acts records the most amazing time for the church.

But it would be wrong to think that it was all mountaintop and no valley. It would be wrong to think that the church just went from blessing to blessing, and had success after success with no dark valleys, no heartache, no suffering.

I. Sometimes God allows the church (and Christians) to go through dark valleys

Chapter 12 opens up with what was a pretty bleak time for the church. King Herod, whose grandfather was the bloodthirsty Herod the Great who had every male child under two years of age in Bethlehem murdered because he had heard of the birth of Christ, begins to violently attack the church and at some point he arrests and beheads the apostle James and his execution really pleased the Jewish leaders. That would have been a big deal to Herod because he was keenly aware that because he was only half Jewish, and the other half Idumean, he was not qualified biblically to be a king in Israel according to God’s word. So when Herod saw that his poll numbers went up when he executed James he had Peter arrested with the intention of trying and executing him after the Passover.

At that moment it would look like evil was winning the day. James is dead, brutally beheaded, Peter is in prison and all but certain to be dead in a few days too. And all at the hands of a really wicked man. It must have been tempting for the church to ask: why does God seem to be allowing evil to triumphing? Why is Herod succeeding with his evil plans? It’s a legitimate question and it’s been asked before.

Why do the wicked prosper?

Psalm 73 is a psalm written by a guy named Asaph who nearly jettisoned his faith because he looked at the wicked and saw that they were doing pretty good. The more he tries to do right, the more he suffers; the more they do evil, the better it gets for them. And he thinks, something isn’t right here God. Does it even pay to try to be righteous, to follow God? Asaph says honestly, his feet nearly slipped. He nearly lost his faith.

We’ve been talking a lot about our mission as a church and the unstoppable advance of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that is good and right, but we don’t want to think that when the church is right with God, and when believers are right with God things will always just go from glory to glory, from good to better, from blessing to mega-blessing, because the truth is it may well not go that way. Sometimes God allows the church to go through dark and deep valleys. Need to be prepared for them or our feet may slip.

Someday we might face serious persecution for our faith. We don’t right now, but that could change, and our faith needs to be strong enough and have roots that go deep enough to endure those seasons. But dark seasons come in all shades and dark valleys come in all lengths and depths and you might be going through a time that is dark to your soul right now. Maybe some part of your life (or all of your life) seems to be falling apart around you. Maybe your heart is hurting, maybe you are discouraged, maybe you feel hopeless. Maybe like Asaph you feel like your feet are slipping. If that’s where you are, I believe the Lord wants to encourage you with His word this morning. In this passage there are three simple but important reminders for us when the Lord has us going through a dark valley.

II. When you are going through a dark valley, pray!

Verse 5 tells us the response of the church when Peter was arrested. Earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. The situation looked hopeless but they prayed. As Christians, prayer is one of our lifelines, but that is especially true when we are walking through a dark valley. Few things will keep us anchored in our faith or tethered to God as powerfully as prayer. And prayer makes a difference – God promises to answer the prayers of His people. God ended up delivering Peter from the hands of Herod just as they prayed He would. No one was more surprised that God answered their prayers than they were (who of us can’t relate to that?), but they prayed.

a. They prayed earnestly

That means they prayed seriously, from the heart, pleading to God to hear them. There was nothing half-hearted or restrained about the way they prayed. They prayed with everything in them.

Not a “golf prayer”

I have been told by people that I have a loud clap. Years ago Janice was concerned that my clap was distracting during worship and suggested I try to turn down the volume a bit. I tried for a while, I really did. But I didn’t feel like I was really clapping – clapping is something you just need to do with all your heart, you know?

But there is such a thing as a golf clap. The Master’s Golf Tournament ends today and if you watch you’re gonna hear a lot of golf clapping. A golf clap is a really polite clap – you don’t throw your hands into it, you just tap the palm with the fingers of the other hand. It works in golf cause golf is such a refined, polite game – but can you imagine golf clapping for any other sport? Imagine a football stadium breaking into a golf clap when their team makes a touchdown? Golf is just different. When a golfer makes a good shot he fist pumps (even that quietly). When a player makes a great play in the NFL, he spikes the ball, does a backflip and then rams heads with another teammate. Can you imagine Rory McIlroy head ramming his caddy after a great putt? Just different.

There’s a time for a “golf prayer”. When you pray for your food – that’s the time for a golf prayer. If you start crying out to God for mercy and help when your wife puts your dinner in front of you, she may take it wrong. over But when serious stuff is on the line, it’s not the time for a golf prayer – it’s time to pray and pray earnestly. Cry out to God, let it out, pour out your heart. Let God know where you are at, let Him hear your heart. Be honest, be passionate, be desperate, if that’s how you feel. Pray earnestly.

b. They prayed specifically

It says they prayed for him. They were asking specific requests on behalf of Peter, beginning with “spare his life. Don’t let him be killed like James was.” And no doubt they are praying for him not to lose heart, not to lose faith, not to lose hope.

We should ask God to give us the grace to face the darkest this life can throw at us, but it’s not wrong to ask God for deliverance from the trial either. Pray specifically for a specific answer – that is not wrong, in fact Jesus tells us that the Lord will give us whatever we ask for if we abide in Christ when we ask. If our prayers are so vague we never know if they have been answered we need to aim our prayers at specific targets. Pray specifically.

c. They prayed to God

They prayed to the God they knew held James and Peter and Herod in His hands. They prayed to the God who is sovereign and glorious and powerful. They prayed to the God who promises to answer the prayers of His people. Their prayers weren’t aimed at the ceiling, they were lifted to God.

III. When you are going through a dark valley, rest!

What I mean by this is there is a rest of heart and spirit that comes from a deep trust and confidence in God’s will being good for us. That rest doesn’t hinge on a certain outcome, “if I get this, then things will be fine.” It hinges on trusting God’s will for us.

It’s that confidence that enabled Peter to sleep soundly the night before he thought he was going to be executed. Here he is, guarded by four squads of soldiers, two chained to him in the prison cell, and he’s sound asleep! If I was in Peter’s shoes, I would have slept like a baby. I’d be waking up every two hours crying!

We know that Peter wasn’t sitting there expecting to be rescued. The angel had to strike him to wake him up. Then he was halfway home before he realized that this wasn’t a vision. His peace came from the knowledge that he belonged to Jesus and that he had been delivered from eternal death by the atoning work of Christ. No matter what happened, he knew the final word over his life would be mercy.

I mentioned praying specifically, and that prayer makes a difference. But we don’t lean on the answer, we lean on God. We don’t trust ourselves to a certain outcome, we trust ourselves to God. In the dark valley, we don’t tether ourselves to a certain type of deliverance or a certain time frame for deliverance. We tether ourselves to our heavenly Father and His good will. If He takes us out immediately (like He did Peter) we praise Him. And if He calls us to walk that dark valley to the very end, we praise Him. We rest in God, we find our peace in Christ.

In the end, the answer to our prayers isn’t a solution, it’s a Savior. We are His and He is ours – and that’s enough. That doesn’t gut our prayers of specific and earnest asking, it simply builds those specific, heartfelt requests on the frame of our relationship with Christ. As the hymn says, our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

Life isn’t fair

This is really essential, because God doesn’t answer all prayers in the same way. Peter was gloriously delivered – incredible! But consider the family of James. Consider his wife and children if he had any. Consider his parents and close friends. Surely the God would delivered Peter could have delivered him too, couldn’t he? Peter’s wife gets her husband back, James’ wife doesn’t. It’s not fair.

Each of us has stories and if we weighed our stories we’d find they don’t all weigh equally on the scales of hardship, pain, trial, disappointment and regret. We’d find they don’t all weigh equally on the scales of answered prayer and amazing deliverances and blessings.The fact is, life isn’t fair and nowhere does God promise life will be fair. Fairness isn’t really a biblical quality to be sought after. God uses the scales of justice, but He doesn’t seem to use the scales of fairness and as Christians we need to trust God with where the boundaries fall in our lives. There are things I look back on in my life and honestly I wish had been different. Maybe you do too. And then there are things I look at in my life and I can’t believe how good God has been. In both of those things I can ask, why? James’ wife could have asked “why?” She had to trust the Lord’s will. And Peter had to trust God with the question, “why?” Why me and not James? Why was I miraculously delivered and he wasn’t?

In the dark valley, rest in the knowledge that God has a hand-picked road for you to walk in order to glorify and serve Him. Rest in that, whether you turn out to be a Peter or a James. Either way, it’s good. And that brings us to the final point.

IV. When you are going through a dark valley, contrast!

Chapter 12 ends with Luke making a very pointed contrast. Let’s read verses 20-24 together.

Herod has this political problem with the people of Tyre and Sidon but they need him so they come to make things right with him, and he makes a speech, and they figure the best way to get his good side is to butter him up, and nothing quite butters up a king as much as making him a deity, they begin to cry out “the voice of a god and not a man!” Pure sucking up. But the problem is that Herod accepts the glory and as a Jewish proselyte he should have known better and given God the glory. He is a wicked man who hates Christ and loves his own glory. And so God strikes him down right on the spot. Actually it would have been better for Herod if it had been on the spot. God struck Herod that day, but he suffered for five days from what Luke describes as worms. It was not uncommon in those days for people to suffer from worms and sometimes those worms would form a tight ball in the intestines and create an acute intestinal obstruction leading to a painful death. For Herod, it was five agonizing days.

In verse 24 Luke makes the contrast: Herod died a humiliating and agonizing death, but the word of God increased and multiplied. God’s word is unstoppable. God always has the final word. And the final word over Herod was judgment. That’s what Asaph realized in Psalm 73. He’s looking at the wicked doing well and prospering and his feet almost slip, but then he says, “I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.”

He looked at their final end. Luke wants us to look at Herod’s final end. The wicked have a final end and God has the final word. And that’s where the contrast for the Christian is so incredible. For the Christian the final word over us is unstoppable life, unstoppable mercy, unstoppable forgiveness, unstoppable hope in Christ. Not because we are better or deserving because we are not. My sinful heart desires glory just as much as Herod’s wicked heart – the only reason I’m not struck down for my sin, the only reason you won’t be struck down for your sin is because Jesus willingly allowed himself to be struck down for our sin. On the cross the final word was “it is finished” and because it is finished and Christ paid in full for our sin, the final word over everyone who believes in Christ is mercy. Forgiveness. Deliverance from the valley.

When you are going through a dark valley, contrast. Contrast where you’d be if not for Christ. Contrast what the valley would be like if you did not have the Savior walking through it with you. Contrast what your hope would be if all was trouble-free here but you faced an eternity of God’s wrath. Whether God delivers you from the valley like He did Peter, or like He did James, He will deliver you safely to His eternal kingdom and into His loving presence.