Summary
Rescued
Scripture is full of rescues. Jonah is delivered from the belly of the great fish. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walk out of the fiery furnace untouched. The infant Jesus is whisked away to Egypt before Herod's sword can find him. Acts 12 tells of yet another: Peter, chained between two soldiers on the eve of his execution, led out of prison by an angel of the Lord. Because every Christian stands in need of rescue, this episode in the life of the early church has much to teach us.
The setting is grim. King Herod, politically vulnerable in Rome, courts favor with his Jewish subjects by giving them a common enemy—the Christians. He has James, the brother of John and one of the inner three of Jesus' disciples, killed with the sword Acts 12:2. When this pleases the crowd, Herod arrests Peter, intending a public execution after the Festival of Unleavened Bread. Peter is placed under maximum security: chained to a soldier on each side, with two more guards posted outside the cell. Humanly speaking, escape is impossible. And what does the church do? It prays. "Earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church" Acts 12:5. When rescue is needed, God's people do not turn away from him; they turn toward him.
Peter himself models a second lesson: he sleeps. So deeply that the angel's light does not wake him, and the angel must strike him on the side to rouse him Acts 12:7. How can a man sleep on the night before his execution? Because he trusts the word of his Lord. In John 21:18 Jesus had told Peter that he would die for the faith when he was old. Peter is not yet old. So he rests on the promise of God. To trust the omnipotence, omniscience, and care of Almighty God in the moment of crisis is to be able, even in chains, to sleep.
A third lesson is harder but no less important: sometimes the rescue does not come on this side of heaven. Why is James killed and Peter spared? Both were faithful apostles; both belonged to Christ. The only sufficient answer is the sovereign will of God. Yet in both deliverances—James through martyrdom, Peter through release—God was glorified. Tradition even holds that the soldier who guarded James was so moved by his witness unto death that he became a Christian and was executed alongside him. Whether our rescue comes here or in glory, what matters most is that God is glorified through it.
Fourth, the rescue is not always recognized as it happens. Peter follows the angel past the first guard, past the second, through the iron gate that opens of its own accord, and only when he is alone in the street does he come to himself and say, "Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me" Acts 12:11. So it often is in the Christian life. Only in hindsight do we see why a door closed, why a path turned, why circumstances bent the way they did. The provision was there all along; the eyes to see it came later.
Above all, Rescued (May 26, 2019) directs us to the rescue beneath every other rescue. Through the cross and the empty tomb of Jesus Christ, God has looked upon our miserable estate and delivered us from sin, death, and the devil. Claimed in the waters of Baptism, we have been transferred from an eternity destined for hell into the beauty of heaven itself. Whatever situation we face in the here and now, we view it through the lens of that ultimate rescue—already accomplished, already ours, sure and certain in the grace of God.
Video citations
- "Rescued" May 26, 2019 — Rescues. Rescues. We see them throughout Holy Scripture. I think for example of the rescue of Jonah from the belly of the whale, that was the rescue, wasn't it? Or how about the rescue of Shadrack,…