Praying When All Seems Lost

The 02/22/2011, ten years ago, one of the worst peacetime disasters hit the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. A powerful earthquake took a hundred and eighty five lives that day. I remember I was studying at bible college at the time, and remember reading a newspaper article with the opening line, the search for survivors from the Christchurch earthquake has changed to one of the recovery of bodies. It was a week after the event, and experts had informed the Christchurch mayor, Bob Parker, that there was no hope left to find anyone alive. The mayor was visibly upset in front of reporters, told the media that the decision to move into recovery mode was a sad day for the community.

He said, we were perhaps holding out hope against all hope that we would find life. And you may remember that event, and perhaps like me, you remember finding yourself praying, praying that someone may still be rescued alive. Perhaps you prayed for a miracle, but felt the anxiety go by as each day came and went with no sign of life. You felt the sadness when the inevitable news came. The search for survivors has to be called off.

It's time to start recovery of loved ones. What do we do when our prayers aren't answered? When children pray for their mum's recovery from cancer and she passes away. When we pray for a life mate and God doesn't seem to send one. When we've prayed for peace in Afghanistan for twenty years and in the space of a week, it seems we have come back to square one.

How do you explain that to your own heart, to your own mind? Do you call it bad luck? Just a series of unfortunate events. Is it a lack of faith as you prayed for those things that you did not believe that this was possible enough? Or is it perhaps because the God you believe in doesn't care about those situations?

How do you explain that when our prayers aren't answered? This morning, we're continuing our look at the book of Acts as we have the last few weeks. We are moving through some selected events in the story of the early church. And this morning, we look at Acts chapter 12 and a profound miracle that happened in the life of this small and vulnerable group of Christians known as the Jerusalem church. Let's turn to Acts 12, verses 1 through 19.

Acts 12, verse 1. About that time, Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. He killed James, the brother of John with the sword. And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the days of unleavened bread.

And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people. So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him saying, get up quickly.

And the chains fell off his hands. And the angel said to him, dress yourself and put on your sandals. And he did so. And he said to him, wrap your cloak around you and follow me. And he went out and followed him.

He did not know that what was happening was being done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him. When Peter came to himself, he said, now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting. When he realised this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying.

And when he knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. Recognising Peter's voice in her joy, she did not open the gate but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate. They said to her, you are out of your mind. But she kept insisting that it was so, and they kept saying, it is his angel. But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened, they saw him and were amazed.

But motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he described to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, tell these things to James and to the brothers. Then he departed and went to another place. Now when day came, there was no little disturbance among the soldiers over what had become of Peter. And after Herod searched for him and did not find him, he examined the sentries and ordered that they should be put to death.

Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there. So far, our reading. Even as we marvel at the miraculous story of Peter's angelic release from prison, we begin this story by hearing the context in which it all happened. And it is this context especially that we consider when we deal with the question of unanswered prayer. We read in the opening verse of chapter 12, the tragic ending of one of Jesus' own beloved handpicked disciples, the disciple James.

Verses one and two says it was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church intending to persecute them. He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. It is a brutally short statement. James, brother of John, this is John the apostle, was put to death by the sword. That's all the information that we are given about his martyrdom.

But even as we reflect on the miracle that happened after this of Peter's release, notice this comparison being made. Peter is saved, James wasn't. It's in light of James' execution that Peter is arrested. Herod intended to do exactly the same thing he did with James to Peter. We're told that Herod saw that James' execution had brought him popularity, so he proceeded to capture Peter as well.

We are told Herod intended to bring out for public trial Peter after the Passover. It was because of the Passover, and it being a little on the nose culturally to kill people during this time of so called peace in the festival, that the execution of Peter was delayed. We are told that Herod saw this previous execution had made him quite popular amongst the Jews, but the situation for Peter is horribly bleak. We find him with four sets of four Roman guards taking turns guarding Peter. He's held what commentators believe to be the Tower of Antonia, which was part of a very well guarded temple complex in Jerusalem, which so happened to be the garrison for the local Roman soldiers as well.

It was probably the Fort Knox of Jerusalem. Peter is essentially imprisoned in a maximum security prison. Humanly speaking, escape is a hopeless prospect. Meanwhile, we see a church that is desperate for God's intervention. Verse five.

So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him. These aren't token prayers. Luke uses this word earnestly, which in the Greek means to pray with fervency, to pray with unrelenting intensity for Peter. And yet, time was running out. It was the night before his trial and his probable execution.

And we still find after all this time, Peter still chained with two guards next to him and two more in front of the prison gate. No one in the Jerusalem church was sleeping that night. It was a restless night of wrestling with their anxiety and their fear and their desperation for their leader, Peter. The church is found to be praying. I wonder what your last night on earth would be like.

Have you ever played that game? What would be your last meal? You know, in the US, before a criminal is executed, they get their one wish for a last meal. And some of the wishes can be really interesting to listen to. Steak, lobster, McDonald's.

What would your last night on earth look like? Well, I'm not sure what my last night on earth would look like, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't look like Peter's. Verse six tells us Peter is fast asleep. He is sleeping like a baby. In fact, is so fast asleep, Luke tells us, that when an angel of the Lord appears in his cell and the whole cell fills with light, not even then does Peter wake up.

I'm not sure if a thousand watt spotlight shining directly into your eyeballs would wake you up, it would definitely wake me up. But even then, with that light, Peter doesn't wake up. The angel stands there in anticipation of Peter's surprise. Seeing this miraculous intervention, probably poised with the words, be ye not afraid, I am a messenger of the Lord, Peter. Meanwhile, with a great anticlimax, Peter is catching some serious z's.

So much so that the angel has to punch him in the ribs. That's what it says, verse seven. He has to strike Peter on the side of his body to wake him up. Poor old Pete is obviously not a morning person because he has to be told to put his pants on. Dress yourself, put on your sandals, and follow me out of here, the angel says.

Peter is led out. Can you imagine the scene? Past the sleeping prison guards, along the winding stairs, past the crowded prison barracks with hundreds of soldiers. And then just like that, he steps onto the quiet streets of Jerusalem early in the morning. He feels a fresh coolness of the morning air on his face, and there is not a person in sight.

There are no alarm bells ringing. Luke tells us up until that point, Peter thinks he's having a dream or some sort of vision. And while he stands there, completely by himself now, dazed and confused in the stillness of this empty street, Peter realises he's been part of an amazing miracle. Luke wants to stress to us that it is a miracle brought about by the prayers of the church. When Peter finally realises that he isn't dreaming, we are told Peter went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, also called Mark.

Finds and then he says, when many were gathered together praying, verse 12 says. Again, what are they praying for? They're praying for Peter's release. You'd suspect then that when Peter arrives, he would surely have been received with hallelujahs, jubilant scenes. But the comedy continues.

Verses 13 to 15, this is what it says, and when Peter knocked at the door of the gateway, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. Recognising Peter's voice, in her joy, she did not open the gate, but ran in and reported that Peter was standing at the gate. Everyone in the house said to her, you are out of your mind. But she kept insisting that it was so and they kept saying, it is his angel, whatever that means. Imagine that.

You've escaped miraculously a maximum security prison. You've expected the guards to raise an alarm any moment and here you are being kept on the front veranda while people are debating the statistical probability of a miracle happening. When they finally opened the door for Peter, Luke simply sums up their response as, verse 16, they were amazed. What else would you be, I guess? There was so much excitement and noise at that moment when they saw Peter that he had to motion for them to please be quiet.

Don't wake anyone up. So that he could then also explain what had happened. After telling his side, he probably informed, he was probably informed that his rescue had been the result of many sleepless nights of prayer on his behalf. It's an amazing story of God's deliverance. And yet, in the midst of all of this, context still is Peter is saved and James isn't.

The theme is prayer. It was a prayer for a miracle, and it was a prayer for hope against all hope. It was a prayer for the impossible. And here we find a comforting truth that should stay with us as Christians for as long as we can hold onto it. And that is the thing that will give you hope in the most difficult moments in your life.

What we see in Acts 12 is two things. The beautiful interplay between God's sovereignty and the humble obedience of prayer. God's sovereignty and human responsibility in prayer. Let's look at those two points. Firstly, the sovereignty of God in all things.

Several occasions, I've heard this passage focus on God's deliverance of people in response to prayer. I've heard preachers say, wow, God acted mightily to save Peter, and we should trust God to do exactly the same thing in our lives. If we simply remain diligent in prayer and have enough faith, God will do this same extraordinary miracle in our lives. Those sermons often overlook, however, the very significant detail of the non-deliverance of James. James was killed and the fact that the stories of James and Peter occur side by side suggests that there are two ways in which God's will can be expressed in our lives.

God's will sometimes allows for physical deliverance and God's will sometimes allows for that not to happen. Peter is rescued, James was not. Christians, the truth is sometimes people get healed and sometimes they don't. Sometimes people's hearts are changed and sometimes they are not. In both situations, James and Peter would have been faithful to Christ.

James and Peter would have been faithful to Christ. It wasn't a lack of faith. It wasn't disobedience. Both were leaders in the church. They were handpicked by Jesus.

Agents through which the Lord would spread the gospel of the kingdom. But God had different futures in mind for these two men. One needed to be the leader for many years to guide this small church through its turbulent birth. The other had to shed his blood as the first apostle to be martyred. And we will probably never know on this side of eternity why James had to go so early.

But at the very least, we know that his death caused this moment to be all the more poignant, all the more powerful. What we know is that God never wastes anything. The good and the difficult providences of God unfold exactly according to His perfect plan for His kingdom. And so we must always remember that while the Lord invites us into the throne room of His wise counsel through prayer, we have to recognise that God's sovereign wisdom has the final say. Just as the disciples earnestly prayed for Peter's release, I guarantee you they would have prayed for James' release.

Surely they would have. But ultimately, we have a God who will let His sovereign plan for our lives prevail. Some people argue that it's a cop out to say that God is so completely sovereign over all things. And if God is so completely sovereign over all things, it leads us to a dead prayer life. It hinders our prayer life.

But a theology that knows God to be the God of limitless power, limitless sovereignty, including the sovereignty to overrule man's willpower. A Christian who knows God is sovereign over all things prays with incredible confidence because they know that a limitless God has limitless potential. A limitless God has limitless potential. The one who thinks God is less sovereign, that he bends and softens his authority over some parts of our lives. They will have to be satisfied with believing that their prayers can make God lead certain horses to the water, but he cannot make them drink.

That is not a sovereign God. So let me ask you, who prays with more hope? Who prays with more confidence? When we pray and appeal and encourage God to act according to His great plan of salvation, we have the confidence that the plan of salvation includes the miraculous, the supernatural, power to heal, power to restore, power to save. The believers in Acts 12 prayed earnestly for Peter despite the disappointment of James' death.

They prayed despite the incredible odds that they were faced with. Why? Because they knew who God is. They knew God is limitless in His potential. They knew that God is sovereign and He is in control.

And when it seemed that God's plans were undermined by a powerful enemy in Herod, the most powerful enemy the church had seen up till that time, the believers prayed in faith for God's deliverance anyway. How does the story end? Well, obviously, in Peter's release. But let's have a closer look. Herod is embarrassed when he finds out that Peter has escaped.

He is motivated still by his desire for popularity. And so when he heard that an unjust execution of James brought to him brought him a few chairs and wanting to decide, wanting to go down the same path and say, why not Peter as well? Peter's release causes Herod to think, well, I have to save face here. So Herod executes the prison guards. So we see at the beginning of chapter 12, Herod powerfully hindering this fragile little movement known as a church.

He cruelly and strategically starts taking out the leaders of this movement. That's why he has James and Peter imprisoned. But by the end of chapter 12, what is the result? We don't see the church dying. Herod dies.

Herod dies. We don't see God's plans destroyed by his murderous heart. We see Herod being eaten by worms. We're told by the Roman historian, Josephus, that Herod's vanity ran so deep that his royal robes were woven with silver, pure silver woven into his royal robes. And we're told in verse 21, and we didn't read this part of the chapter, verse 21 that Herod put on these royal robes.

And then he sat on his throne and he gave a speech to the people. And the people responded to him at the height of his popularity and said, this is the voice of a God. And Luke gives his editorial insight and says, because Herod did not give the glory to God, because he believed this in his hubris, he has struck down on the spot and he has eaten alive by worms. And we aren't entirely sure what's implied with the eaten by worms statement here. Whether that is, you know, he's eaten alive as he's standing there or as he's lying on the ground, or as, could be very possible, he had something like syphilis, which was a common STD that was incurable in those days.

And syphilis literally caused your private parts to rot so that maggots would eat the rotting flesh. That fits the character of Herod, that fits his immorality. And so perhaps he collapsed in that moment, but as they took him away, they could see what was really causing his death. However quick or slow this process was, the irony is clear. The very public that Herod was so much trying to impress witnessed and heard about a humiliating and painful death.

And so the chapter makes this point. Who is more powerful? Herod or the Lord God Almighty? And not only did Herod smash himself against the immovable object of God's judgment, but immediately after telling us how Herod dies, this is how chapter 12 finishes. But the word of God increased and multiplied.

Herod set himself up against the Lord, but he dies and the gospel of Jesus Christ spreads like wildfire. Who wins? Who is more powerful? If you are experiencing the desperation of illness in a loved one's life, if you've experienced loss and you don't understand why. If you look at the sad state of the church in certain places and our hearts are deeply saddened.

Be comforted by the knowledge that God definitely is still in control. His plans cannot be frustrated. In fact, we may come to the end of our days on earth looking back at our life and see that everything happened in some way to result in God's victory and our good. But the question for us is now, what is our role in all of this? What is our responsibility in this great plan that is unfolding?

What role does the church play in Peter's rescue? If God is sovereign and does all things according to His wise counsel, why should we pray? We look at the human element of prayer. Well, firstly, the reason we need to pray is because the Bible tells us to pray. That should be good enough for a reason.

The Bible shows God inclining His ear to us. And the amazing and simple truth is that this powerful God, powerful enough to work all things to the glory of His name, as we read in Isaiah 55, this powerful God has sovereignly determined to save, to heal, to protect His people in response to our prayers. God sovereignly protects, heals and saves in response to our prayers. It's what happened after Moses' intense intercession for Israel, when God wanted to wipe out the whole sinful bunch. And after praying and fasting for forty days and nights, the Bible says, the Lord relented and did not bring on His people the disaster that He had threatened.

This is why Abraham can negotiate with God over Sodom and Gomorrah, over the outcome of Lot's family. It is a fact of scripture that we must not overlook, that can never be denied. God does answer prayer. In response to our prayers, God acts. And it is this beautiful mystery, how a sovereign God can seemingly change the course of history through the humble prayer of His church.

It's a mystery, and yet it is truth nonetheless. Hebrews 4:16 says, that we may approach the throne of grace with confidence to receive mercy and find grace in our time of need. We don't pray to a God who is far removed from us, a God distant from us by our imperfection. In prayer, we enter the holy of holies and we communicate with God directly. Likewise, we should not be hesitant in prayer because we fear that our prayers may go against God's sovereign will.

Some people have said that. Well, if I know that, you know, what God wants, I'm happy to pray for that, but what if I'm wrong in my requests? We heard again this morning Romans 11 says, His ways are higher than our ways. His paths are beyond tracing out. And we could read that and think, well, why would I pray to God because, well, He probably already knows what He wants to do with my mum's cancer.

By the way, my mum doesn't have cancer, thankfully. Yeah. The problem is, if we stop praying or if we resist praying, you are trying to trace out God's steps for Him. Why? Because a fatalistic understanding that God locks into certain pathways that He's determined.

Well, you've determined that God will lock into those pathways. Does that make sense? I won't pray to God to heal my mum because I assume God is not going to heal my mum. And if God's ways are higher than my ways, that is an arrogant statement, an arrogant position of faith to have when we are told, pray, ask, approach. Even as reformed Christians, believing the sovereignty of God in all things, we must believe that God has committed Himself to sovereignly save, to sovereignly heal and protect people in response to our prayers.

What do we do then? We pray. So what do we do when it seems that our prayers are not answered? What do we do when God doesn't save, doesn't heal, doesn't intervene? We keep praying.

Why? Because we believe that a powerful God is still on the throne, that He is on the other end of those prayers. Even in the face of huge disappointment and despair, a small fragile church prayed for Peter's release and they received it. And so from this story in Acts, we find three things to take home today, that God is in control despite our pain. God's plans will not fail and God invites us to share in that plan through prayer.

Let's pray. Father, we step into this throne of grace. This room, this place where we may approach You with confidence and we can, we can stand before You, Lord, and and simply speak what is on our hearts because we understand ourselves as Your children coming to our Father who is glad to listen to His kids. But our Father is so wise and our Father is so good and He is so powerful that He makes all things work to fulfil His final purposes. Help us, Lord, to draw great hope and strength and perseverance from that knowledge that our days are numbered by You, that nothing happens to us without Your say so.

Thank You, Lord, that we can expect because You are a limitless God, sovereign in all things. We can expect that You can do amazing things. We can hope for incredible miracles. We cannot be surprised because You are that powerful. We cannot be surprised that You will listen to us because You are good and You are our Father.

And yet, Lord, we humbly approach You because we know that You are so much smarter than us. Help us to not lack the faith in not coming to You. Help us to not have a faith that is so small that we expect certain things to be inevitable. Help us to reserve a humble expectation for You to do mighty things even in our lives. In Jesus' name, we pray for hope. Amen.