Peter Was Sleeping

Acts 12:5-17

When this next section of Acts opens up we find two things happening. First we find the church in prayer, and second we find Peter sleeping. In our previous section we saw Peter arrested, tossed into a maximum-security prison and King Herod’s intention to kill Peter after the Passover.  This week we see Peter is chained to two guards, with two more guards standing at the door. In addition to these guards there were likely many more guards on duty in the prison. This sets up what looks like a hopeless situation for Peter.

The young church certainly sees the problem and the danger. When faced with this hopeless situation the church turns to God in prayer. We do not know how long they were praying for, but it was probably around a full week. We can make that guess because the Passover lasts one week, Peter was imprisoned after the killing of James and Peter’s execution was delayed until after the Passover. That gives us an estimate of a around a week of non-ceasing prayer.

This prayer shows a level of belief and understanding that in part is missing from the modern church. They believed God not only could do, but also would do the impossible, and they believed that prayer worked. Today when we face impossible trails, it seems the last thing we would thing of is prayer, yet through out history prayer has caused the very hand of God to move.

Also worthy of noting in this section is the simple statement “Peter was sleeping.” This might be missed if just reading through, but given the circumstances Peter is facing, one has to be amazed that he can sleep. He is chained to two guards in a Roman prison awaiting his execution and yet his is not only a sleep, but it becomes apparent as we read on he must have been deeply asleep. The peace he must have had at this time to allow such a deep sleep is far beyond human understanding.

Isaiah 41:10 and Philippians 4:6-7 speak of this peace. David speaks of it in Psalm 3:5 which describes a time when he was running from his own son who was trying to kill him. We see this same peace through out scripture. When a person is fully surrendered and in God’s will nothing can shake them. Stephen had this peace even while being stoned to death. (Acts 7:54-60) It should be of great comfort to us to know that when we are in God’s will, he will take care of us, even through the gateway of death itself.

As the account unfolds we see the answer to prayer comes in the form of an angel. This angel has to wake Peter, and it seems if Peter was slow to wake. We see this in that the angel has to pretty much give Peter step-by-step instructions and lead him out. It is not until Acts 12:11 that Peter seems to finally grasp what is going on.

As we follow this account it is obvious that Peter has a part to play in his own rescue. God is handling the impossible pieces, but apparently Peter is expected to handle the mundane parts, such as putting on his sandals and walking. This brings to mind something commonly quoted as scripture that is not actually found anywhere in the Bible, “God helps those who help themselves.” That actually comes from a story about Hercules, and not from any Christian source, but there is some true in it.

God could have whisked Peter right out of the prison and in to the prayer meeting where they were asking for Peter’s deliverance. God could have made Peter’s clothes just jump right up on him, and not even wake Peter up. God could have handled this in a number of different ways, but God choose to use a way that would require Peter to do something. This appears to be the most common way in which God works. He will handle the impossible, but he fully expects us to do our part. He does not need us to obviously, but he does choose to work in that matter.

If we think back to many of the Old Testament stories we see this same pattern there. For example, David had to kill Goliath with the sling and sword. God could have smote Goliath down, but he choose David to be empowered to do that. Many times when God sent Israel to battle he gave them the victory but they had to do the fighting. The story of Moses and the plagues from Genesis is the same idea, God sent the plagues but Moses delivered the messages and did the rituals to start them. God saved Noah from the flood, but Noah had to build the ark himself.

Of course there are examples in scripture of God just acting with out any human agents, but it does seem that God prefers us to take a part in his great works. This gets back to why we are still here. If you think about it, once a person is saved, the best thing, at least humanly speaking, for that person would be to be whisked straight to Heaven where they could not backslide, and would be free form all evil, yet we are left here in the cursed world. This easily brings up the question, why am I still here? The answer is simple, God expects all Christians to be the means in which he gets his message to the lost of the world.

It is the same thing we see illustrated in this story. God is doing the impossible part that is making us righteous. We like Peter are to do the mundane part, which is to share the good news with the lost. If Peter did not follow the orders of that angel he might have been killed as soon as the next morning, but since he did, he found freedom. If we do not share the message of life with the lost world, they may never get it and find the freedom that we have in Christ.

Peter will walk out of this scene, and we will not see him again in the book of Acts, other then a brief mention in Acts 15. We know he traveled and preached for a while after this, but we do not have a lot of good information on exactly what happens to him. Tradition tells us he was crucified upside down, and that seems to fit the prediction of John 21:18-19, but we do not know that for sure. We will just have to wait till we see him on the other side of this life to find out what happened.

In closing we can take away from this section of scripture two main points. First is that when the going gets tough, the believing church should get on its knees.  Through out history, both in the times recorded in bible and beyond, earnest prayer has changed world events. In our modern day we accounts of people being cured of incurable diseases, droughts being ended, prisoners being freed, and much more all through the power of prayer yet we still tend to leave it to be the tool of absolute last resort, and even then most of us seem to do it out of duty and not belief. One has to wonder if we will ever learn.

Second we see that God often expects us to get up and do. We are to be a people of action. As James says, “faith without works is dead.” (James 2:20) We are here for a purpose and that purpose is to spread the Gospel of life to a lost and dying world. God has taken care of the impossible through the death of his son, its up to us to handle the mundane part of sharing this with others.