Peter, Prison & Prayer

Like a child I will dance in Your presence, I'll let the joy of heaven pour down on me. I still remember the first day I met You, I don't ever want to lose that fire, my first love.

First love. First love. First love. Amen.

He's the one mentioned most of the other disciples. Always the first on the list of the disciples. Always the first in the mentioning of the three that were in the inner circle. And I think it's because we can all really identify with Peter. With his actions and his reactions. With his quickness to respond and how wrong he can be when he opens his mouth and flaps it so often. And so we can relate to that.

And yet how much he loves the Lord and how much he wants to be in the presence of the Lord. How much he wants to defend the Lord and tell others about the Lord. And so I think Peter makes a good example as a disciple, if you will, for all of us. So I want you to see you and Peter in this set of interacting interwoven themes. Second is prison. As I mentioned last week, most of us in our culture have not experienced that yet. But I do believe that if we tarry, if the Lord tarries before he takes us out, that there's a good chance that with situations like that concerning homosexuality that I read, that you and I may face prison.

Jacob on his way, fleeing from Esau, moving to his uncle's place. Stops, spends the night in this rocky place, and while he's there he dreams, and he sees heaven open, and angels going up and down the ladder. What is that? That's Jacob's ladder, we sing songs about it all the time. But what does it represent? What is it that he saw? He saw the fact that he was alone, and he was fleeing from a death situation.

And he didn't know what lay ahead, but God knew, and God was in control. God was sending angels in and out of his presence to minister to him, to carry him, to take care of him, to move him into that particular situation and out of it. Heaven was open, and these ministering spirits are coming to carry those who inherit salvation to their intended place. It so moved him that he called that place Beth-El, the house of God.

On his way back, he stayed there again, remember? Twenty years later, wrestled with an angel of the Lord, probably the pre-incarnate Christ. God touched his hip, put it out of joint, and from that point on, he was totally dependent upon the Lord. Angelic intervention. Joshua is going to Jericho, and on the way, there's the angel of the Lord standing in his way.

Brings him to his knees that he realizes his faith is in God, not in the power of his soldiers. Balaam is called to present a curse upon the nation of Israel. Who stands in the way? An angel of the Lord. Elijah, I've been reading Kings, was in 1 Kings this week. My devotions in 1 Kings chapter 19. Elijah, you know the story. Took care of the 450 prophets of Baal.

It hadn't rained for three and a half years. God told him, tell them it's going to rain. He tells them it's going to rain. It starts to rain. Jezebel finds out that her 450 prophets are dead. She sends a message to Elijah that says, Hey, as they are today, so you'll be tomorrow. Scares him to death, you know. Takes off running. He runs and runs. Leaves his own servant a day's journey behind because he's running so fast, the servant can't keep up.

He just keeps on going. Gets out in the middle of the desert. Heading for who knows where. As far away from Jezebel as he can get. Running away from the Lord. He's worn out. He passes out at night. And what happens? Next verse. God sends an angel to make some cakes for him. Slaps him on the side. Wakes him up. Tells him, you've got to eat this. Your journey's long.

Goes back to sleep. He slaps him on the side again. Eat. And he finally eats. Takes off and keeps running. That amazed me. God's angelic intervention. He's running away from the Lord. He's scared to death. He's not trusting God.

We're going to see angels intervene again in Paul's life on board ship before the ship breaks apart. It's not just Old Testament. It's not just New Testament times. It's now. It's regularly. God's intervening. And most often you and I are so consumed with ourselves. We're so alien to his sovereignty. We don't commune with him other than when we get into trouble or at meals.

We've lost sight of the fact that he intervenes, that he loves us so much that he is actively intervening in our lives. Look back here. Verse 7. Verse 7, it says, suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared. And then down towards the end of verse 7, he says to Peter, quick, get up. And then down in verse 10, as they're walking down the street, suddenly the angel left him.

If you'll look at the different occurrences of angelic appearances in scripture, you'll

Get it done. Back in his presence. What do you have for me next? What do you want me to do? They are, you know, the Bible says that the angels look into yours in my life because they marvel at God's grace and God's salvation that he's extended to us. They peer into our lives. That ought to be enough to get you to stop doing whatever you have.

The angels are so quick to respond, so quick to be obedient. Another thought, the longer they linger, the more the tendency will be for us to worship them. I mean, you get a face that shows up on a tortilla and you got the shrine of the holy tortilla now. Imagine you recognize an angel, you know, you're going to build an altar, you're going to worship him. So they're quick not to allow that.

You remember the different times an angel appeared to Daniel and Daniel fell at his feet. He said, no, no, no, no. John in Revelation, same thing happened. John sees the angel and falls at his feet and says, no, I'm a servant just like you. Stand up. Don't worship me. They don't want to be worshiped. All but one, one wants to be, name was Lucifer. We know him as Satan.

Lucifer means light bearer. He stood in the presence of God and was actually like the guardian of God's glory. The bearer of God's light.

Oh, verse 8. Look at verse 8. It's my stuff blowing around all over the place. Then the angel said to him, put on your clothes and sandals, and Peter did, and wrap your cloak around you and follow me, the angel told him. And something I want you to consider here is that God, as He intervenes, He actively intervenes, but He also always wants us to participate with Him in the intervention.

Follow me with this one. One of the reasons why you may not realize the intervention of God so often is because He wants you to actively participate in what He's doing. He won't just automatically do it for you when He intervenes. It's interesting to me that in that couple of verses, there's a couple of verses there that as the angel comes into the cell, he strikes Peter on his side, wakes him up, and the chains fell off of his wrists.

And then as they get up and start to move out, the gate opens by itself. Now if that could happen, and the angel could do that, don't you think the angel could just, you know, Peter's kind of there disheveled like you and I are when we get up, and don't you think it would be neat if the angel just tweaked his nose or whatever and Peter's dressed, you know, auto-dressed Peter, he's ready to go, couldn't he have done that? Well sure he could, I mean the chains fell off and the gates opened on their own, he could have auto-dressed, why didn't he? Why didn't he?

Because God wants us to participate with Him when He's moving in our lives, when He intervenes in our lives, God wants us to participate with Him. God told Noah to build an ark, now couldn't God have manifested an ark? Sure. God wants us to participate with Him. God told Moses to lay down his rod and it would become a serpent, or to touch the water with his rod and it would turn to blood, or to touch the dust with his rod and it would

become lice. Couldn't He have just spoken those things and they would have happened? Sure. But God wants us to participate with Him in what He does.

They go out front praising God, they hear the rustle of the myrtle trees, they get to the battle and the enemy's all dead, God's already taken care of the enemy. He wants us to participate with Him. Now listen, God, and this may ruffle some, God is not hindered by us. You will not delay God's schedule by your non-participation. You will not delay God's schedule by saying, I don't want to, I don't want to be your mouthpiece

to share with my family, or to share with this person at work. You're not going to delay God's schedule. I've heard that taught a lot, well, you know, if you don't do this, then you're delaying God's schedule and the rapture's going to not happen that much sooner because you're just kind of plodding along and you're not taking care of that. Where's God's sovereignty in the midst of that?

If that's true, then all I've got to do is say, I don't want to, and I've messed God all up. It doesn't happen that way. God has granted you and I the privilege of serving with Him. He's granted us the opportunity to participate with Him. He wants us to participate with Him, to see His goodness, to see His glory, to see His grace that He wants to move in our lives, but God's purposed and what He's purposed

will come to pass because He is sovereign, see? He's granted us the opportunity to do this. And so He has Peter through the angel. You dress yourself. Now, what is that big deal? Imagine how Peter's going to feel every time he puts his sandals on from that point on. Every time he touches his sandals, he's going to think, wow, I was in the presence of God's angels.

God intervened in my life. And every time he touched his sandals, he's going to think about that. I'll tell you what, every time I touch a menu from now on, besides Peter thinks he's dreaming And anyhow, he walks out and he thinks he's seeing this all on film, you know, it's Panavision. Here he's walking out to sell Peter Panavision, no, I'm sorry. Peter came to himself finally, realized it wasn't a dream.

Verse 11, Peter came to himself and said, now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent His angel and rescued me from Herod's clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating. Peter affirms God's sovereignty and God's intervention. It's the Lord. You're in control. Now, I don't have this down yet either, but I'm learning it more and more. And I really believe, especially in these last days, that as believers, you and I need

to grow in that more and more because it's only going to get worse. And you and I need to rest in the fact of God's sovereignty and His intervention. And we just, He'll direct us as He wants us to go. Now, in the midst of this, mixed in with that is the fact that God answers prayer, verses

And they said, Rose, you're a blooming idiot. Must be his angel. See how quickly they were to acknowledge the fact that angels were intervening? It must be, it must be his angel. But Peter kept knocking when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. And Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison.

Now, prayer. They were praying. Do you believe that God answers prayer? Sure. Sure. Probably most of us here would affirm that. We believe that God answers prayer. So let me ask you, then why is it so hard for you to pray? If we believe that God answers prayer, then why is it so hard for us to pray? Why do we have to come to the end of something before we'll pray?

Why do we have to exhaust our own resources before we take the time to really pray, to really see God's face? Let me suggest that there's some different attitudes that we have towards prayer. First of all, we often neglect it. As much as we affirm that God answers prayer, we very often neglect prayer. Why? Because we try to do whatever we can first. We try to get the thing done first.

God's given me the ability and the skills. I ought to be able to handle that. I mean, after all, I know the difference between a paper shredder and a copier, right, Lord? I know what you want done. I can get it out there, run those papers through, no problem. And so we often jump out on our own ability and neglect communicating with Him, neglect really asking Him what He wants.

A lot of times we doubt that He's going to respond. So we neglect to pray because we don't think He's going to. Why pray? You know, it really doesn't do any good anyhow. Why do you think that? What course of events has brought you to that conclusion that it doesn't do any good to pray anyhow?

And then you hear people say, well, if you pray with faith, believing, you have what you ask, and so you're rubbing again a different way, hoping that you can pray with faith in a certain way, get God to respond, and He didn't respond the way that you thought. And so you say, why pray? It's not going to work anyhow. You have a totally wrong, a totally misguided concept of what prayer is all about.

It's not to seek to get God to do something, it's to commune with Him so that you realize His sovereignty, so that you rest in that, and you're His servant available to do whatever He wants you to do, because you realize He's sovereign and in control, you know my down sittings and my uprisings, my words before they're ever formed on my mouth, you know where I'm going, you know what I'm to do, but I rest in that, now just guide me. You can heal me, you can raise me up, or you can take me home, I'm ready. That's what prayer is about. So maybe we neglect prayer because we've misunderstood it.

Or maybe we're hindering our prayer, maybe prayer is hindered by certain things. Personal, unconfessed sin will hinder your prayer. I don't know how often you confess sin to God when you pray. You may not do that unless you're told to do so in a prayer conference or whatever. Usually it's, we're praying because we're praying at the last minute, God help me through

this situation, whatever, you know, help me with this test, help me with this job, help me with this individual, help me Lord, and we seldom take the time to say, Lord I have been neglectful of you, Lord I've been trying to do this on my own, forgive me, you know, or Lord I have this bitterness, I have this grudge, Lord cleanse me from that, forgive me and cleanse me. Unconfessed sin will hinder prayer. David said if I consider iniquity in my heart, you won't hear me. God won't answer in those ways, He hears us, but in effect He's telling us your prayer is being hindered because of that unconfessed sin.

Sometimes we can complicate prayer too. Many of you may get Dave Hunt's newsletter, The Berean Call, I just got this one for June and T.A. McMahan or McMahon or McMahan, however you pronounce his last name, has written an article on prayer gone awry, and I don't have time to really hit everything in here, but he writes at the very beginning, when does prayer cease to be a good thing? And it deviates from the clear teaching of God's Word, and then he goes through a bunch of stuff that's coming out, and maybe you've heard some of these things, maybe you're familiar with some of them, maybe you haven't yet.

I want to share some of these things because they're evidently growing in popularity among evangelical Christians. He says, incredibly, what may be the fastest growing technique-driven prayer among evangelicals today is known as strategic level intercession. According to its promoters, it involves newer varieties of prayer, such as spiritual warfare, territorial spirits, prophetic acts. Now spiritual warfare, I understand we're under spiritual warfare, I'm not negating that.

I understand we battle an enemy, we're told we wrestle against, not flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities, against spiritual wickedness, against darkness and high places. I understand that. There's a whole attitude of praying now that takes on spiritual warfare as, you know, we're going to go take the city for God, and we're going to do spiritual warfare in the city, and we're going to get on these territorial spirits. Since we saw territorial spirits in Daniel, then there must be territorial spirits.

We're to pray against these territorial spirits. The tearing down of strongholds is another one. If you read about the spiritual, the areas of our, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual and mighty under the pulling down of strongholds, if you read that in Corinthians and read it in context, what are the strongholds that are being pulled down? It's not that we're going to go do warfare and we're going to pull down the strongholds of the city and pull down the strongholds of homosexuality and pull down the strongholds.

I don't see us told to do that anywhere in here. I see us being told to do that by the different authors of today that are writing to try and enhance. It's like, it's like the Christian walk's gotten boring or something. And so we're going to enhance it with all this new stuff that we do, new ways to pray. Why has it gotten boring? Let me ask you that. Why has it gotten, if your walk is boring, why has it gotten boring?

Well, according to Scripture, it's because you've neglected your first love. God hasn't changed. The power of God hasn't changed. We've neglected the time with our first love. We've neglected the time to let him demonstrate the fact that he's sovereign in our lives, that he wants to intervene and guide and direct us, and that he loves us so much. We've lost sight of that.

So we're trying to do something to spice it up. So let's get into territorial spirits, three-dimensional praying where you're praying in different types of dimensions. It's like three-dimensional chess. Identificational repentance, where we're identifying ourselves with our forefathers who, you know, went through the Crusades and were confessing their sin. We're never told to do that.

The church is never told to do that. Remitting the sins of nations, prayer walks, prayer journeys, prayer expeditions, all this stuff that's on the horizon. The disciples said to Jesus, Lord, teach us how to pray. And what did Jesus say? He said, when you pray, don't pray as the heathen do, who make much talk with their repetitions, their vain repetitions, but when you pray, pray saying, Our Father, which art

in heaven, holy is your name. Whatever happened to that? Whatever happened to the simplicity of prayer, the simplicity of just talking to our Father, the simplicity of talking to the Lord? It's been all complicated with all this other stuff that we see nowhere in Scripture. The longest prayer recorded of Jesus is in John 17. And nowhere are we told to take our communities for God or to pray against territorial spirits

or ancestral spirits. He says to the Father, Lord, keep him from the evil one. And that's it. The rest of the time, it's a prayer for a oneness between us and the Father. So whatever happened to that? Whatever happened to the simplicity of prayer? See, I think when you hear people praying in all these different ways, it can tend to make you think, well, I can't pray.

Yes, you can. God wants you just to talk to Him, just to take the time, not to neglect Him, not to

And they take him and they get him off to another place to protect him. And Peter will now disappear from the text and Acts until a later time, and we'll see the Spirit of God focusing on the life of Paul. But I just want you to remember those three things. Let's stand together. Go ahead and stand. The daily activity of your own life as you come through those times of your own personal

prison times, as you commune with the Lord through prayer, God will reveal Himself in these mighty ways and show Himself sovereign and sufficient, show Himself delighting to intervene on your behalf and desiring much to commune with you in prayer. So keep your heart open. Times are tense. Things are going to get rougher. And we need to let the Lord just develop this in our hearts so we can just rest in His sovereign

love. Lord, help us as your people to do that. So easy to get caught up in the things of life and really detracted from who you are and how much you love your people, how much you desire to intervene. So much so, Lord, that as you do intervene in our lives, it sometimes ticks us off and

You know what's best. You want us to trust you. So help us to do that. It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.