Amen. I'm going to read in Acts
chapter 12 as we get ready to deal with the latter part of
the ministry of the Apostle Peter in preparation to move into the
first and second missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul with his
emissary Barnabas. I'm going to start at verse 11
and read through just to give our context. Again, and when
Peter was come to himself, he said, now I know of a surety,
this is verse 11, that the Lord had sent his angel and had delivered
me out of the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the
people of the Jews. And then we want to jump down
to verse 19 and follow it through. And when Herod had sought for
him, that is Peter, and found him not, he examined the keepers
and commanded that they should be put to death. And he went
down from Judea to Caesarea and their abode. And Herod was highly
displeased with them of Tyre and Sidon, but they came with
one accord to him. And having made Blastus the king's
Chamberlain, their friend desired peace because their country was
nourished by the king's country. And upon a set day, Herod arrayed
in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto
them. And the people gave a shout,
saying, it is the voice of a god and not of a man. And immediately
the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory. And he was eaten of worms and
gave up the ghost. But the word of God grew and
multiplied, and Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem
when they had fulfilled their ministry and took with them John
Mark whose surname was Mark. Thus is the reading of God's
word. We are at the last part of Peter's deliverance and God
is shifting now from what we were looking at over the last
several weeks. The analogy of Peter's deliverance
being a type of the deliverance of all of the people of God.
And then we looked at last week the responsible behavior of the
apostle to not simply take his deliverance personally and gloat
in what God was doing, but to use it as a form of comfort.
That's point number eight in your outline with three sub points
we dealt with. Our deliverance is designed to
encourage others. That's the takeaway from what
happens when God delivers you. Why would we say that? Why would
we say our deliverance is designed to encourage others? Because
our deliverances are testimonies. Our deliverances are testimonies. And because they are testimonies,
they become an opportunity for God to echo in the hearts of
others who may, at the very time that you are being delivered,
are themselves in bondage. And all they need to know is
that God is still delivering. Sometimes all we need to know
is God is still delivering. Our hope is real. Our hope is
valid, but we have not yet been delivered. And so our hope may
be weak, real, valid, but weak. Have you ever had a weak hope?
Sure you have. You've had times where life has
been so difficult and you have been looking for the empirical
evidence of God to move in a way that would affirm that he's with
you and nothing seems to be happening. your hope then is diminished.
It's not, it didn't evaporate, it didn't disappear, it simply
diminished. It brought you low. And for the
believer, we are excited when God delivers other believers,
unless you're a narcissist. Now, if you're a narcissist,
the only time you're happy is when God's blessing you. But
if you are a mature enough child of God, what you understand is,
is that God calls you, He calls you to rejoice, with others in
their joy. He calls you and I to suffer
with others when they suffer. This is a really critical point
of truth. When God saves you, he places
you into the body of Christ. That means that you and I ought
to always be thinking in terms of our life impacting others
and vice versa. So it would be obvious that with
Peter being a leader in the church, being an apostle and therefore
pastor teacher, he would take this massive work of grace, this
miracle that he experienced, the angel intervening to keep
his life from being expired, exterminated by this maniacal
antichrist in Herod of whom we're going to be dealing with here
shortly. He would take this occasion where he has just escaped death. to go encourage the saints to
let them know, as we have in our outline, that God still delivers. That's a good word in our day
when we are often troubled by difficulties. Is that not right?
That God still delivers. I think sometimes we don't necessarily
believe that, that God still delivers. so we need to hear
it we need to see it and so as we saw last week that's what
Peter did he quickly went back to the house of Barnabas's nephew
Mark and Mary the mother as we read in verse 13 and following
and wrote up The damsel told them that Peter was there and
they went through that whole sort of jubilation and doubt
and happiness. And Peter came in. He finally
let them know what was going on. And you and I saw quickly
that Peter, he did not stay there long. He quickly left over in
verse 17. It says, but he beckoning unto
them with hand to hold their peace, declared unto them how
that the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said,
go show these things unto James and to the brethren. And he departed
and went to went into another place. He did that because we
are in a context of persecution. He did that because he had to
be on the move. He did that because he knew the next day that Herod
would be sending his soldiers to pursue him. So Peter could
not stay there. But we marked while we were contemplating
Peter's strategy to comfort the saints, to remind them that God
still delivers. And this is where we left off
last week, contemplating Daniel 3.17. Remember the three Hebrew
boys made it clear to Nebuchadnezzar. that God is able to deliver us. But if he doesn't deliver us,
we're still not gonna worship you. We're not gonna worship
your golden idol because God is able to deliver. Now this
is a critical truth too. So you get this for free. This
will be attached to Sunday's message where the apostle Paul
is really trying to teach the church at Rome how to live, how
to live free in Christ. This is something that we've
got to learn what it means to be free and how to live free.
What the three Hebrew boys did when they told Nebuchadnezzar,
we believe that God is able to deliver us. But if he does not
deliver us, we are still not going to bow down to your God.
Now, the reason why they had that kind of faith was because
they understood that the grounds of their justification, being
absolutely free from any eternal condemnation, rewarded them with
the absolute promise of one day being resurrected from the dead.
So now I want you to grasp this point when it comes to your hope
in Christ, because I won't get a chance to develop this this
Sunday. If you and I do not have a healthy
and a deep commitment and understanding of the promise of the resurrection
of our body, If you don't have a healthy commitment to an understanding
of the implications of the promise of the resurrection of your body,
you can go through a lot of trials in this life that will make your
joy diminished and insignificant by way of suffering, by way of
persecution, by way of sickness, by way of illness, by way of
troubles and afflictions in this life. Because we have to deal
with three enemies the world the flesh and the devil This
point is critical. Okay, you may not have a personal
adversary that you're dealing with and you may not be specifically
aware of any of the External foes that are coming at you in
terms of the atmosphere of the world But you still have your
old fallen nature with what you have to deal with that can really
trouble you in the evil day And all of us go through evil days.
This is why you were told in Ephesians 6 to put on the whole
armor of God, because we all have evil, evil days. Louis,
would you put the air on? Let's get some air circulation
in here, but make sure that it's a balanced temperature too. I
don't want my sisters freezing, but I don't want nobody going
to sleep on me tonight either. So let's see if we can work that
out. So I just want to touch on this just a little bit. If
you and I don't have a healthy comprehension and understanding
of the hope of the resurrection of the body, you can easily find
yourself not enjoying your walk in Christ because there are going
to be many things that you and I will be confronted with that
will be impediments to our expectations on a temporal level. You may
want to be married and God won't let you get married. You may
want to live a certain lifestyle economically and God won't let
that happen. You may want to live in a certain
place or be involved in a certain ministry, this or that. There
are multitudes of desires that we have, of which God may not
allow you to have. And if you fail to understand
that the ultimate goal is the resurrection of the body on the
last day as the grand exclamation on God's part for snatching back
everything that evil is taking away from you, you will lose
your joy in Christ. So I'm just giving you that as
a caveat because I think sometimes what Christians will do is that
they will only love God, only enjoy God, only bless God if
God gives them a whole lot of earthly temporal material blessings.
If life is wonderful down here, then hallelujah. But if it's
difficult, I don't even know God exists. Right. And that's because you have a
flawed view and a diminished view of the ultimate goal that
God has called you to. Now, you're going to learn some
of this on Sunday, but we're going to be in Romans chapter 6 for
about three weeks because the apostle wants us to understand
how to enjoy what it means to be free in Christ. So let me
go back now to the three Hebrew boys. Those men were free, even
though they were slaves in Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom in Babylon. They were
free in their soul. They were free in their heart.
They were free in their mind. They were free in their resolve
because they didn't qualify their relationship with God based upon
temporal outcomes. They didn't say, we believe God
will deliver us, period. See how you're putting conditions
on God at that point? That's a mind over matter thing
that'll get you in trouble all the time. So let me go to melon
just a little bit. You know how we have religious
folks who always talk about demanding God and commanding God. God's
got to do this because he promised it. Now you and I know that God
will not do anything other than what God wants to do. And you
and I better hurry up and get on God's page because God's going
to be God. It doesn't matter how much we
frame our theological arguments, expectations, worldviews to plop
on God, to get God to do what we want him to do, which is nothing
but what we would call rhetorical flattery. You can build a bunch
of Bible verses, as it were, to suggest that God actually
has to do this because I got a mountain of Bible verses that
will affirm that God will do this. And God's not going to
do it. Because God's going to stick to his will because his
will is best for you and me. Now, the thing that God left
you and me here to do after he justified us freely by his grace
and washed us in the blood of the lamb is learn how to get
along with his will. That's what he left us here for.
He left you and me here to learn what it means to enjoy God according
to his will. Now, to the degree that you fight
against that principle, to that degree, your liberties are going
to be diminished. Think just for a moment again
with our three Hebrew friends. They are facing the fiery furnace.
They are facing cremation. Get the question frequently about
You know whether believers should cremate or whether believers
should bury and you guys already know my doctrinal position It
should be burial if you understand that God owns you lock stock
and barrel Lock stock in a barrel that you don't own yourself that
to live unto Christ and to die unto Christ are both the same
with God so that you would want to glorify God in your death
just as you would in your life and And so therefore believers
have historically buried because they believed in the resurrection. Are you guys following the logic?
And so when we, uh, when we die, we try to make a provisional
where in the gospel is preached and the hope of the resurrection
is inferred by that person dying happy in Jesus. But today people
are wanting to save a few dollars. So everybody getting burned up.
But the analogy of being burned up really corresponds more with
the wicked and the ungodly than it does with the believer. I'm
getting ready to support that point in a second with one of
our sub points when we talk about the expectation of the wicked
being cut off. So Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
were just about to face cremation, weren't they? That is the burning
to the pitch. in this fiery furnace of which
people now are doing on a practical level all the time. And that's
because Nebuchadnezzar is a great type of Satan and Babylon is
a great type of the arch enemy kingdom of God. And that is the
Babylonian system as opposed to the kingdom of God represented
in Jerusalem. But Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
believed that God could raise them from the dead even if they
were burnt to pitch. So for them, being thrown in
the fiery furnace in faith would still glorify God. Do you guys
see that? It would still glorify God because
they were the only men out of hundreds and thousands of dignitaries
who bowed the knee. When everybody else bowed the
knee, there were three men whose heads were still standing up.
That's how Neb knew. And this is what we mean by the
witness of our life, the testimony of our life, the public exemplar
of our life being committed to the true and the living God.
This is what I mean by the freedom that was in their heart. Can
you sense what I'm getting at? They were free. They weren't
in bondage. They weren't trapped by an expectation that does not
correspond to the will of God. See, had they had an expectation
that was unbiblical, it would have been very much like point
number C. The expectation of the wicked shall be what? Cut
off. Now, what if they expected God to actually do it and God
had another plan? Their expectation would have
been what? Cut off. You read in the book of Hebrews chapter
11, where some of the believers who walked by faith were given
to the sword, weren't they? They were given to the burning
flame, weren't they? They weren't delivered. They chose the resurrection. and not deliverance from physical
and earthly and temporal circumstances. See, now that's true faith. True
faith is willing to cast itself upon a sovereign God who can
do whatever he wants to with us whenever he wants to, so long
as he maintains and preserves our faith in the process so he
can get glory in our death. If God wants to have me die,
give me grace to die in your glory. Remember a few weeks ago,
we were reminded of our dear brothers on the border of Libya,
who were taken by ISIS and killed. And remember what they said?
Please allow us to glorify God before you kill us, so that everyone
might know that we did not bow the knee, that we did not capitulate,
that we did not recant, that we did not depart from the living
God. Let it be known all over the world, we are dying for Christ's
sake. You know what we call that? Freedom.
That's freedom of the soul. And I'm saying that because people
don't walk in freedom because their views of God are temporal
and earthly and often secular and carnal. And if God does not
deliver them into those things, they don't have the joy and the
liberty that the gospel calls them to. So under point number
eight, let's quickly work our way through this. Our deliverance
is designed to encourage the saints And the encouragement
is that God is able to deliver. Also, our deliverance is designed
to encourage the saints in this, that the expectation of the wicked
is cut off every time God demonstrates his power and mercy in the salvation
of his people. You remember what we read in
Acts chapter 12 verse 12 or 11 rather? This is what Peter said over
in verse 11. And when Peter was come to himself,
he said, now I know of a surety that the Lord has sent his angel
and he had delivered me out of the hand of Herod and from all
the expectation of the people of the Jews. The deliverance
of Peter cut off the expectation of the wicked. So deliverance
is working from two vantage points. It's encouragement to God's elect
and its discouragement to those who are foes of God. It's important
for the wicked to see God deliver his people from time to time,
as we are about to now pour into our next text. But before I do,
I just want to read a couple of Proverbs. Proverbs chapter
10, verse 28, just to get this into your mind. When I say the
expectation of the wicked shall be cut off, that's a deep, deep
theological reflection itself. The ungodly do not believe that
they will have to answer God on the last day. That expectation
will be cut off. The ungodly do not believe that
whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. That expectation
will be cut off. The ungodly does not believe
that God rains down upon men and women who reject Him, snares
and judgments and consequences for them living in an open rebellious
state against Him. That expectation will be cut
off. But in Proverbs 10, 28, it says, the hope of the righteous
shall be what? But the expectation of the wicked
shall what? That's right. And then look again
over in chapter 11 verse 7, Proverbs 11 verse 7. Mark this. When a wicked man dies, his expectation
what? That's right. You know what that
means? His whole hope is in this world. The whole of his joy, the whole
of his being, his identity, his expectation is in this world.
For him, dying is horrible because there's nothing after that for
him. He has cast the whole of his existence, the whole of his
pleasure and hope in this life. For him, he doesn't ever want
to think about dying because his joy is here. What a pitiful,
pitiful mental condition. to be trapped in bondage to believing
that joy is only on this side of the grave. What a horrible
thought process. What a limited, limited mindset
to believe that this world is it. You've heard the colloquialism. You only live once. I beg to
differ. Every man will live twice. They
will live in this life and in the world to come. One in the
darkness of damnation, the other in the bliss of light and glory
in Christ. The expectation of the wicked
are cut off when they perish, but the hope of the unjust man
perishes as well. This is why the New Testament
talks about when you die outside of Christ, you die a hopeless
death. Hopeless death one more proverb. Let's see 1123 proverbs 1123
The desire of the righteous is only what I love that but the
expectation of the wicked is what now see you got to be very
careful with that verse because these pros and these these Paradoxical
statements that you read in the proverb underscore what I've
been teaching you about the path of Adam one and the path of the
last Adam See Adam one and Adam all what? That's right, but in
Christ all shall be what made alive. See there you go that
there these are the two eternal streams that run from the mind
of God in eternity past into eternity future and For the desire
of the righteous what God says it is only good now You know
the verse that comes to mind for me Romans chapter 8 verse
28 all things work together for good to them that love God All
things work together for good to them that love God. And notice
what it says. The desire of the righteous is
only good. It doesn't say every aspect of
his life is only good. It doesn't say his life is filled
with only good. It says the desire of the righteous. That means when I am mature,
I understand that the basis upon which I have hope is rooted in
God, is rooted in Christ, is rooted in eternity, is not rooted
in time. Everything that you and I go
through down here is not good. Every situation that we experience
is not good. It results in good, but it's
not good. You guys understand the difference,
right? I think I'll be sort of developing that here shortly.
But the expectation of the wicked is what? That's amazing because
the statement here really is speaking to what the wicked can
expect, not what the wicked thinks. The wicked doesn't think and
look for and long for the wrath of God. They suppress the truth
and unrighteousness. That's Romans chapter one, verse
18. But what they can expect is the wrath of God. So what's
what's being stated in verse 23 is not the subjective thinking
of the wicked, but the objective reality of the way of the wicked.
You guys understand what I'm getting at is not what they think
is what God has determined, that the way of wickedness is death
and the way of righteousness is life. Now let's look at that
as it materializes in our context. Go back to Acts chapter 12, and
let's see if we can make good on some of these Proverbs. Point
number nine, the fate of the Antichrist Herod. So I'm not
using hyperbole when I call Herod the Antichrist. I've already
talked to you about Herod the Great, his grandfather, the wicked
ungodly man, and now we're dealing with Herod Agrippa, there was
Herod Antipas in between him and Herod, the great wicked men,
ungodly men who as a dynasty lived in utter and open wickedness. His grandfather was the Herod
that sought to kill Jesus when he was a baby. And I share with
you Revelations chapter 12 verses 1 through 4 where it describes
the heavenly counterpart to the earthly historical context. In Revelation chapter 12 verse
1 through 4 it speaks of a woman being clothed with the sun, moon
under her feet and 12 stars on her head. And she was pregnant
with child and the dragon stood before the woman to swallow up
or to kill the child as soon as it be born. and the child
was caught up to God, as it says, and there appeared another wonder
in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and
ten horns and seven crowns upon his head, verse four. And his
tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast
him to the earth. And the dragon stood before the
woman. Mark, the hostile oppositional position of the dragon. He's
before whom? The woman. So now, one of my
sisters asked me this in our women's theology class yesterday.
Because in our biblical theology class, what I am teaching is
the redemptive theme of scripture. And my sister was asking, we
can see how that God had to protect the seed from the days of Adam
all the way up to Christ, because Christ was that what? Seed. That's
Genesis 3.15, the first proto-evangel, right? Your seed shall crush
his precious head. He will bruise your heel. That
seed is Jesus. And so God had to protect the
ethnic groups that got used to bring Messiah into the world.
And so the question was appropriately asked. So now that Jesus is here,
is God still protecting the seed? And the answer is yes. Why? Because inside the seed of Christ
is the elect and every one of them is destined for glory. And
that elect child, no matter where he is, she is in the world. When
they come into the world, they come into a war. And if the devil
could, he'd kill every human being he possibly could just
to kill God's elect. So the elect have to be protected
by God's sovereign providence until he brings that child to
salvation to secure their eternal destiny in a rebirth experience. So the Bible says he stood before
the woman. Why the woman? Because our ladies have already
learned that the woman is the covenant as much as the man is.
That the covenant purposes of God are accomplished by the complementarian
relationship of the man and the woman. That the seed is not even
brought forth without the woman and the man. So that every one
of God's elect child is the consequence of the conjugal relationship
of a man and a woman. The man and the woman that we
are talking about in the largest celestial truth is whom Christ
in the church The work of the church is the preaching of the
gospel by which God's children are birthed into the world So
the church being the woman is obedient to Christ In her obedience. She must also admit she has an
enemy Who is her enemy? Her husband's enemy is her enemy
and that is the devil. You see it in the text, don't
you? So so mark this now when you become a child of God Authentically
invisibly and publicly God's enemies become your enemies That's
right. And so God has to protect the
believer in the same way He had to protect Christ until it was
time for that believer to leave this world You guys see the parallels. It's very important to see now
watch this So the dragon stood before the woman which was ready
to be delivered ready to be delivered of what the manchild for to devour
her child as soon as it was born. See that last clause, that's
the whole of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That's the whole of
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The devil was there when he was
born looking for him. And so God sent him down to Egypt.
When Herod the great died, God brought him back. The angel of
the Lord told Joseph going on back, he's dead now. But his
son, still in his insecurity as a phony king, is worried about
John the Baptist and Jesus, as you know. And so his son kills
John the Baptist. Why? Because John the Baptist
is one of the godly seed too. And they're going after Jesus,
and finally Jesus gives up when it's time for him to give up.
But this same evil wicked spirit inspiring now Herod Antipas is
where we are in the book of Acts. And guess what Herod Antipas
is doing? Pursuing the woman. Who is the woman? The church.
The combination of both Jew and Gentile in one body, which is
the church of the living God. Now I want you to mark what it
says in the last verse of Revelation chapter 12, just so you can gain
this point. And then we'll go back. Let me
go there. The last verse around verse 13, listen to what it says
in Revelation chapter 12, verse 17. Let me start back at verse,
um, verse 15, Revelation 12, verse 15. Watch this. And the
serpent cast out of his mouth water as a what? After the woman. See, you see that his battle
was against the woman. Why? Because the son has been
called up to heaven now. He's on his throne. And the serpent
cast out water, cast out of his mouth water as a flood after
the woman that he might cause her to be what? Carried away. And what that means is removed
out of her position. taken away from her stance, her
proper position, her lane. This is one of the strategies
of the devil. His goal is to knock you off
course. See, the floods are designed to keep you from making progress
toward the kingdom of God. You can see the waters coming,
right? And you can see how it destabilizes your feet, knocks
you off your feet, and then takes over your life and runs you in
directions that you didn't mean to go. That's the goal of the
devil. With the flood of ungodly doctrine,
ungodly teaching, ungodliness in the world, the pervasion of
ungodliness in the world is designed to distract you. You remember
we talked about the five deeds of the devil last week, didn't
we? Did we talk about them last week? I'm getting old now. Did
we talk about them last week? Or was that last year? Was it
last year or last week? I want to see if you get no now.
All right. So here's the point. His goal is to distract you because
if he can't destroy you, at least he can keep you from blessing
others. This is what you must understand.
He'll take whatever he can get. If he can't send your soul to
hell, what he wants to do is keep you from making sure that
other souls get to heaven. If he can keep you distracted
all your life by distortions and delusions and denials of
the truth, he's happy because you now no longer are facilitating
the edification and growth of other believers. See, every believer
that's born again is a subject of hell delivered. Every believer
that's born again is a captive, lead captive out of the prison
house of sin and death. Every time a man or woman is
born again, the gates of hell have been plundered and his foils
have been recovered by the spirit of the living God through the
preaching of the gospel. You guys follow the logic? This
is a radical analogy and I don't think the church gets it. Long
ago we were taught that the church is an institution that's military
in its metaphor down here We're supposed to be an army, but we
don't think like that today because you and I are in la la land Me and a bunch of my men are
in a conference right now a Bible conference right now and the
basic paradigm for the conference is the pilgrims progress and
So the scholars that are teaching us and preaching to us right
now are reminding us that John Bunyan told us that the pilgrim's
journey is a journey of difficulty, a journey of trouble, a journey
of wars and battles and conflicts along the way. It is not some
primrose garden journey. The battle that the pilgrim is
engaged in is a fierce warfare around every corner. and he's
only going to make it in as he puts on the full armor of God,
puts up his shield, pulls out his sword and thrust through
the wicked gate. I believe that with all my heart.
I believe that as long as men and women do not understand that
they are in a battle, they are useless in the kingdom of God.
I believe that with all my heart. I believe we don't understand
how fierce and tenacious and unending this battle is, how
pervasive and how much it's even penetrated into the church. I
think we're deluded and deceived by Vanity Fair. See, Vanity Fair
is the place where all of the entertainment and all of the
goods and all of the material things like stands in the marketplace
with all of their wares and goods there to distract you here and
distract you there and distract you yonder just to keep you off
your purpose. That's the flood of ungodliness. that comes out of the mouth of
the dragon to carry away the woman. Verse 16, watch this. And the earth helped the woman.
We've seen that before, haven't we? And the earth opened her
mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of
his mouth. What on earth is the earth doing helping the woman?
Well, the earth is just like the enemy who himself is seeking
to destroy the believer. The earth is more than willing
to absorb the evil and the deceit and the lust and the passions
of this life. The term earth here is a metaphor
for those who are not saved, who are not born again. The earthly
people, the carnal people, the people who are materialistic
in nature, they can absorb the things of this world. It's their
nature to do so. And so as the enemy is seeking
to cause the believer to stumble, by and large, the earth absorbs
most of the water and it gives the believer an opportunity to
maintain stability to get through. It is a kind of escape. It's
a kind of escape. When your and my ungodly friends
and neighbors go after the things of this life, there's a certain
blessing in that. for you and me, because the word
of God has taught you and me plainly that we are not to follow
a multitude to do evil. What that means is when I'm losing
my mind and have failed to realize my identity in Christ, which
is what I'm going to be teaching us, the only way you're going
to enjoy your liberty in Christ is to maintain your identity
in Christ. Apart from your identity in Christ,
your liberty is always in jeopardy. And if my identity in Christ
is clear, secure, sound, vivid in my presence, in my consciousness,
when I see the world rushing after things, I'm not going to
be pulled by it. Because my identity is going
to help me understand that when they go left, Jesse, you go right. When they go right, Jesse, you
go left. Because you are not of the world.
You are not of the world, they are of the world. And so when
you see the mass is taking hold of deceptive things, then you
know that God has revealed to you that's not the way you go.
That's the broad road that leads to destruction. And many be that
go that way. Every now and then you'll find
a believer in his ignorance or her ignorance trapped by that
broad road. Don't you follow even then. Warn your believing friend. You're
going the wrong way. That's not your identity. Those
are not friends of the kingdom. That path is not the path to
glory. And should they not heed your
words, leave them alone. You and I are not to follow not
only a multitude to do evil, but we're not even to follow
a remnant to do evil. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
It doesn't matter. See, some believers are just not comfortable
in the skin of Christ. because their identity has not
been forged through the gospel clear enough for them to stand
for the cause of the gospel. Like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach
and Zechariah. Those three boys, they looked
around and said, too many people go in that direction. I know
this can't be right. The too many people bowing down
in this direction, just by that multitude, I know it can't be
right. And so they stood for the cause of the God. And you
know what they weren't doing? They weren't opining, where are all
the other believers? Who cares? See, they weren't
opining, where are all the others? I hear this often. Well, where
are all the saints? Why are you worried about all the other saints?
Here's what you can be sure of. God has 7,000 elect sheep who
will never bow the knee to Baal. But here's what God will do.
He'll make sure that you don't see them so that you don't idolatrize
what you see. Instead of looking to him who
is invisible and remembering the promises of God and remembering
who you are in Christ and saying come hell or high water I'm not
leaving Christ because because Christ is all I got Christ is
all I got and so this is this is the issue now watch what it
says and he sent out Water and the earth opened her mouth and
swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth
look at verse 17 and this is my basic point before we go back
and the dragon was angry with the woman and Now why is he angry
with the woman? His battle was with the son.
The son got past him in the resurrection. Why is he not pursuing the son?
Because he has no more right in heaven. I think I've taught
some of you guys that most churches are still missing this. The devil
does not have free access to the throne room of God anymore.
He's been cast down every since the cross work of Christ. He
has dominion in this world But not in the world to come nor
does he have access to the throne of God? He's been disbarred from
the courtroom of God. His license are taken away He's
a defunct lawyer who can get into your head, but he has no
rights The only reason that people buy into his proposition is because
they're ignorant of the gospel Am I making some sense? So he's
down here deceiving people that he has authority and power when
in fact all of his power has been stripped. But only those
who know their Bible understand that. Again, in two weeks, in
a couple of messages, we'll get into that because Romans 7, verse
6 declares that we must understand whose authority that we are under.
It declares that you must understand that. But here's what goes on.
What it goes on to say, the dragon was angry with the woman and
went to make war. Here it is with the remnant of
her seed. Do you see that? So you're still
coming after the church. And now we have an exegetical
or an explanation of who the seed is. You call yourself a
believer in Christ, then you're calling yourself the seed of
God. The word means children. But here's what the children
of God do. They keep the commandments of God and have the testimony
of Jesus. Got it. That's how you know you're the
seed. You hold to the Word of God and you trust Christ. That's
how you know you're the seed. Otherwise, the devil doesn't
have to come after you because if you're not holding to the
testimony, if you're not holding to the Word of God, then he knows
that you can't be effective. He can go on and find somebody
that got a Bible and means something with their Bible. So he can come
after them. Because the only people he's
really furiously attacking are people who are committed to Jesus.
You guys got that? Because the rest are on his side.
Whether believers or not. All right, let's go back to our
next point under point number eight our point number nine the
fate of the antichrist herod This is quite humorous, but it's
true His emissaries are condemned Everyone that serves the devil
is condemned right along with the devil everyone who worships
Idols is condemned right along with idol worshipers everyone
who submits themselves to the powers of darkness are Condemned
with those powers of darkness and the fate of the devil is
the fate of the servants of the devil Two examples will affirm
this first. You will notice in our text verse
19 of Acts chapter 12 and when Herod sought for Peter because
he had what escaped and when Herod sought for Peter He did
not find him, it says, and when they found him not, he examined
the keepers. See, you're in trouble when you
work for the devil. See, when you work for the devil, there's
no grace when you work for the devil, no redemption, no mercy,
no second chances with the devil. You get one shot at working for
the devil. You fail, you're doomed. He's
a hard taskmaster. And you know, people talk about
God not being fair. The devil is not fair. He's a
liar and a murderer and a thief. But you knew that when you started
working for him. Why should you expect the devil
to treat you right? Here all these fellas are doing
is their job, right? But the problem is they're on
the wrong team. Whose team are you on? That's
the real question. They're on the team of the temporal
earthly power And while the temporal earthly power is able to execute
and exercise his authority, they think they're cool. This is just
how it is with our ignorant folk who attach themselves to gangs. and groups of people who are
marauders and thugs and criminals because they exercise temporary
powers over people through fear and coercion and abuse and violence. But the emissaries of these groups
almost always get the short end of the stick. Don't they? Don't
they end up in prison? Don't they end up with the sentences?
Don't they end up dead while the people at the top often get
away? Sounds like I'm talking about
politics, huh? Because I am. Because I am. I'll give you a little secret.
This is free. Even though I know this is going
on the air, I'll probably get some hits for this. In order to become
a politician, you have to be a thug first. That's right. Here's what, this is how it works.
This is how it works. You start off thugging, go to
mugging, go to crooking. You get real good at it. Make
a bunch of money and then all of a sudden you pay your way
into the system. You become too powerful now to
just be an ordinary thug. You now can be a congressman
or a congresswoman or assemblyman or assemblywoman. How many of
you know that what I'm talking about is true? If you've been
living for five minutes, you know what I'm saying is true.
If you've been living for five minutes, you know what I'm saying
is true. See, and so our politicians who swear to treat us right,
when they have a whole litany and legacy of thugging in their
whole family, they're not in there to treat us right. They're
in there to secure their wealth from generation to generation.
And this is why I say politics is the greatest art of deception
on planet earth apart from false religion. That's why the two
beasts in the book of revelations is politics and religion And
when people are deceived by both they can never ever see the truth
This whole thing of rushing out to go vote for somebody you're
voting for thugs They will lie to your face And they have no
respect of persons and they come in all colors and in all genders
Are you hearing what I'm saying? So you start thugging, you go
to mugging, you get good at it, make a bunch of money, and then
all of a sudden you think about running for office. So you go
to church for a month because you got to clean up your character
for a second. Get your big Bible with a big old fat cross on it.
You pay enough people off. You can go through a conversion
and they let you in. Nations have been built this way. Do
you understand what I'm talking about? Nations have been built
this way. And it's an analogy of the dark
kingdom of Satan. Here Herod has been pleased to
entertain the Jews in killing Christians. If we understand
what I've established in the beginning of our series, we're
dealing with two kingdoms, right? The false authority of the apostate
kingdom in national Israel, in coercion with the political system
of Rome, coming against the church of the living God, which is the
true kingdom, legitimate authority and so God allows these two battles
to take place frequently in order to show himself sovereign he's
already delivered the Apostles before and he's delivering them
again here Peter is delivered for the second time from the
maniacal political religio power of Israel under Herod and when
Herod had sought for him and found him not he examined the
keepers and commanded that they should be what a Ah, do you see
what happens when you're an emissary of the devil and he gives you
an assignment to go kill the saints? If you don't execute
your job, the loose that you thought you were going to hang
on them is going to hang on you. You remember the book of Esther.
You remember more to Ki and Haman. and how Haman ended up hanging
on the very noose that he thought he was gonna hang Mordecai on.
You remember that, right? That's the proverb. The pit you
dig, you shall fall into it yourself. And this is the way this dark
kingdom works. This is where the believer has
to be very clear on whose side you are. You gotta be very clear
on that because these battles that are taking place in our
world are for keys. He examined the keeper and commanded
that they should be put to death. Put him to death. If I couldn't
get Peter, I'm going to kill you. Do you remember what happened
in Daniel chapter 3, when Nebuchadnezzar in a fury said to his soldiers,
get them and throw them in the fire. And as they were rushing
to throw them in, guess what? They fell in themselves. Do you
guys remember that? No, you don't. Pull the text
up. They don't remember. They don't remember. Cause my,
I'm, I'm preaching to a postmodern culture that does not read their
Bible. Daniel chapter three, verse 22, Daniel three 22. Watch
this. Therefore, because the King's
commandment was urgent when he said, throw him in the furnace,
watch this. And the furnace was exceeding high. The flame of
the fire slew those men that took up Shadrach, Meshach and
Abednego. Do you see it? Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing, the sovereignty
of God and His acuteness to be able to deal with His foes? Isn't this humor amazing? God
has a sense of humor. He does that for His elect. He
gives us comfort when He says, now just watch these fools. That's
my translation. I know some of you are struggling
with the word fool. But see, you are a fool when
you fight against God. You are a fool when you fight
against God. They turned that furnace up seven
times. It must have been hot somewhere
about a hundred yards around the furnace too hot for anybody
to get close to Which speaks to symbolically the torment that
men must go through when they persecute God's people The torments
of the conscious that men must go through when they persecute
God's people It is not a good thing to put your hands on God's
elect Because your conscious will be tormented by the very
assignment that the devil gives you. But once again, the devil
doesn't care. He's constantly tormented. So
the reward that you get for serving the devil is torment of conscious
and then ultimately torment of life. Now am I telling the truth? Now watch this, saints. You and
I are not worth a hill of salt in ourselves. Just accept that.
But in Christ, we are as precious as God's darling son. You know
what that means? You know what that means? When
a man or a woman or a group of people even think evil of you,
the flame gets hot around them. The flame gets hot around them.
Life gets difficult around them. The torment starts immediately
upon their evil thoughts towards you. Do you hear what I'm saying? You see, if I was to do just
a juxtaposition between these soldiers who were given these
folks who were commanded to throw our three brothers in, what they
were experiencing while they were trying to throw Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego in versus what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
were experiencing, I bet you Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
would say, man, it's nice and cool out here. You know, we headed
to the furnace, man, but I'm cool with it. How about you?
I'm cool with it too. There is an extra extra special grace
here right now. That's hard to explain But you
know what? We're drawing near to the fire
and these dudes sweating and and everything's going well with
us How come because god is adding grace? To his people as he often
does when they are in trouble grace in measures that you and
I don't know because we haven't been brought to those kind of
extremities. But when you have heard of the testimony of saints
being persecuted and how they talk about how present and sensible
God is in the midst of their sufferings, you know it's the
Lord putting his hand of mercy on them in a supernatural way. See, if I was to stay on Shadrach,
Meshach and Abednego, The closer they got to the flames, the more
liberated they were. See, what I'm talking about is
liberty as a consequence of us understanding our standing before
God. See, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
were bound. They were tied up. Remember that?
And when Ned threw them in the flame, what happened? The flame
just loosened up all their bands. They experienced liberty in the
flames. They experienced liberation in the flames. Do you hear me?
Liberation in the, the, the, all of the bonds of the wicked
came off of them. They're walking around loose,
loose in the midst of the fire. Can you imagine that? Verse 23,
verse 25. And he answered and said, hello,
I see four men. What? Yeah. The old Jewish midrash has said
that they were dancing in there. Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego
were dancing, not only walking, dancing in the fire. That's what
got Nebo bent out of shape. They were in there dancing, doing
the old Hebrew dances. And then he said, but wait a
minute, I see a fourth cat in there. One like the son of God. Right. And so what we are recognizing
by this account is that the Lord draws nigh to them that are his. when they draw nigh to him because
they are his, especially in the midst of trouble. It was the
presence of Christ in the midst of the fire with them that liberated
them. But more than this, if you can
grasp the principle of union that I'm trying to drive home
as the grounds of your identity in Christ, they were always aware
of his presence because they were aware of who they were in
him. And it was merely the fire that
made manifest the presence of Christ. It wasn't that he came,
he was already there. Lo, I am with you always, even
to the end of the world. It's the fire that manifests
the presence of Christ in the life of his people. Am I making
some sense? He was always there. He was always there. He's the
one that's always there when we are walking by faith. He was
always there. They were not surprised when
they all four were loose in the flame because faith is able to
see him that is invisible. He was always there. Remember
Stefan, the Lord pulled the curtains back. Christ was always there,
always there. Let's go back to our text, move
on to our next point then. So then the expectation of the
wicked is cut off. The fate of the antichrist, Herod,
His emissaries are condemned. Secondly, his audience are blasphemers. This is ridiculous. Let's just
look at this ridiculous, ludicrous account that takes place because
this is a sort of turning of events headed towards the climax
of the account so that we can learn some things about how mad
and insane the wicked are when they pursue God's people. It
would have been fine for Herod when he discovered that Peter
was gone. and that something beyond natural
had occurred, it would have been fine for Herod to just go on
about his business. Go on about his business. You
know how we say to people, just go on about your business, man. You know when you're telling
them, just go on about your business. You know what we're saying, right?
Go on about your business. Just go on about your business. See, I'm trying to drive it home
right now. Go on about your business now. You're free to go about
your business. I'm not going to do anything
because I got other things to do. Go on about your business now. All
I'm letting you know, you're free to go. You did mess up.
I can get at you now, but I'm going to just let you go on about
your business. Herod, go on about your business. No, Herod's not
going to go about his business. OK, so it's coming. Because he
didn't learn his lesson, did he? He didn't learn his lesson. So here it is. In verse 20, it says, Herod was
highly displeased with them of Tyre and Sidon. But they came with one accord
to him, having made Blastus, the king's chamberlain, their
friend, and they desired peace. So he's shifting temporarily
from his defeat. The jaws of death were opened
and God's choice servant was delivered from Herod. And so
he moves into his more Sort of a secular vocation is gonna be
hostile towards his subjects. And what do they do? They basically
begin to placate him the text says And they desire peace because
their country was nourished by the king's country in other words
Herod obviously was head over several regions and this area
of Sidon was under the auspices and blessings of Herod and this
is in verse 21 and upon a set day a Herod, arrayed in royal
apparel, sat upon his throne and made an oration to them.
These are these conventions and these events, these conferences,
these big meetings that our world leaders have frequently in the
course of a year when they gather together with all of the powerful
people. And generally behind closed doors, very seldom are
these events made public where we can hear the actual content
of their speeches. But anyone that has been involved
in politics to any degree, and I'm actually thankful for where
we are today with surveillance, with the ability for us to hear
and see things on levels that we never have before. So I'm
going to use this as a caveat and to this point. Before we
have had the universal and almost ubiquitous satellites in the
skies and the ability to listen to phone calls and make phone
calls all around the world. And before we had the opportunity
to have cameras virtually on every street. Have y'all figured
this out yet? Have you figured out that the
media in a sort of subtle way is letting you know we can see
everything? Have you figured it out yet?
Have you scratched your head and say, how on earth did a camera
catch that? Have you started asking that
question? Because long ago when most of us were in second and
third and fourth grade and they were telling us about big brother,
big brother was already here. It was just a matter of time
of getting all the cameras everywhere where they need to get them.
Because ladies and gentlemen, some of the stuff we are seeing,
it's like who on earth put a camera in the garbage can in the back
alley of a one-way street? The government did. The government
did. Those trucks drive up, plop up
those little black unassuming little cameras, hook them to
the telephone poles, and today we don't even need that because
of satellite and because of internet. We have the ability now to transmit
without wires. Watch this now, virtually everything
can be seen everywhere, anytime. We can actually now pierce through
concrete bricks and see into your homes. Not only can we see,
we can hear. So isn't it amazing that you
and I are able to now get news about events almost instantaneously? And so now watch this. Most of
our media information is visual, not audible. They tell us what
they perceive a thing to be, but it comes along with a visual
of it. So you and I are highly visual
creatures now. We're seeing it everywhere. And
in fact, you and I would be bored to death If the anchorman or
anchor woman of the news came on and sat in front of you with
a big old globe behind them and all they had was papers. Today
in New York, there was an event that occurred and he flipping
his paper and reading to you, you would be wanting to see something
because we are used to seeing things.