In the sermon titled 'Lessons in Providence,' Peter Allison explores God's providential works through the events described in Acts 11 and 12. The narrative focuses on Herod's persecution of the church, including the martyrdom of James and the miraculous escape of Peter from prison. The sermon emphasizes the power of prayer and God's sovereignty in orchestrating events for His glory, illustrating how God used the church's prayers to deliver Peter. Herod's actions are depicted as driven by a desire to please the people, which ultimately leads to his downfall as God's judgment strikes him. The sermon highlights God's holy, wise, and powerful governance over all creation, underscoring the church's role in constant prayer and faithfulness. Through these events, the sermon illustrates the growth and multiplication of God's word, despite persecution and challenges.

Our scripture reading is Acts chapter 11. I'd like to pick up the last two verses there, because they tie in with the end of our text. So Acts 11, 29. Hear God's word. Then the disciples, according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea.

This they also did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul. Now about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church. Then he killed James the brother of John with the sword. And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now it was during the days of unleavened bread.

So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover. Peter was therefore kept in prison. But constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church. And when Herod was about to bring him out, that night Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains, between two soldiers, and the guards before the door were keeping the prison. Now behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the prison, and he struck Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise quickly!

And his chains fell off his hands. And then the angel said to him, Gird yourself and tie on your sandals. And so he did. And he said to him, Put on your garment and follow me. So he went out and followed him and did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.

And when they were past the first and second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads to the city, which opened to them of its own accord, and they went out and went down one street, and immediately the angel departed from him. And when Peter had come to himself, he said, Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent his angel, and has delivered me from the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the Jewish people. So when he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying. And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a girl named Rhoda came to answer. And when she recognized Peter's voice, because of her gladness, she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter stood before the gate.

But they said to her, You are beside yourself. Yet she kept insisting that it was so. So they said, It is his angel. Now Peter continued knocking, and when they opened the door they saw him, and they were astonished, but motioning to them with his hand to keep silent, he declared to them how the Lord had brought him out of prison. And he said, Go tell these things to James and to the brethren.

And he departed and went to another place. Then, as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers about what had become of Peter. But when Herod had searched for them and not found them, He examined the guards and commanded that they should be put to death. And he went down from Judah to Caesarea and stayed there. Now Herod had been very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, but they came to him with one accord.

And having made Blastus the king's personal aide their friend, they asked for peace because their country was supplied with food by the king's country. So on a set day Herod arrayed in royal apparel, sat on his throne and gave an oration to them, and the people kept shouting the voice of a God and not of a man. And then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give glory to God, and he was eaten by worms and died. But the word of God grew and multiplied. And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their ministry, and they also took with them John, whose surname was Mark.

May Jehovah bring His judgments of old to mind and comfort us in them. Gracious Father in Heaven, Your Word is truth. It is refined seven times. Please purify us And grant to us, Lord, to be transformed. May our minds and thinking be renewed.

May You move us and equip us to greater faithfulness and obedience and fidelity to Your Word this morning. And please sanctify my sinful lips that they may proclaim the Gospel of grace that Christ has died for our sins according to the Scriptures. In Jesus' name, Amen. The message this morning is titled Lessons in Providence. Because this passage is an account of several accounts of God's providential dealings.

Now what are God's works of providence? The Catechism has a ready and handy answer for that question. And it is this, that God's providence, God's works of providence are His most holy, wise, and powerful, preserving and governing all His creatures, ordering them and their actions to His own glory." That's a compact sentence, but there's a lot in there. It's God's most holy, so God's ways are separate from ours. And wise, that all that He brings to pass is done in wisdom.

Maybe it's a wisdom that we don't see at the moment, we don't understand, because His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are above our thoughts. So we're not always going to see the wisdom in God's providence immediately. We will eventually, but not immediately. And it's his most holy, wise, and powerful, powerful, preserving and governing all His creatures.

There's power in God's works of providence. And He doesn't need us to accomplish anything. He doesn't need us to accomplish any of His works of providence. He uses us, yes. And we're grateful that He does.

And He does command us to do things, certainly. But He doesn't need us. Think of, if He wants to get some cows that have just had calves somewhere, He just makes them go. He doesn't need us to go there with our cattle prod and drive them along. We'd have a hard time taking cows that have just had calves and getting them to just walk away from their calves and leave them there.

But if God wants them to do that, they will. It's a powerful governing of all of His creatures. Not just people, but Everything. From the animals, to the stars, to the wind, to the waters, where the wind blows, where the rain falls. These are all God's works of providence.

Holy, wise, and powerful. Governing all of their actions, everything, every little thing is governed by God. And ordering them, ordering those actions, The timing of those actions is governed by God. It's His providence. And He does this all to His own glory.

Everything He does for His own glory. Even the salvation of sinners. That God's grace and God's power and God's wisdom might be glorified. And so we could summarize this passage that we just read as an account of God's most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing His church. Directing them, both the people and the officers, directing them and everybody around them, and all the kings around them, and all the people around them, directing all of these things and all of their actions in such a way as to glorify Himself.

That's what this passage is about. So the context, it opens and closes with this famine and the reference to it. God ordered the weather. God ordered the geopolitical landscape, as we looked at last week, to create a very high price for wheat. A price that meant many of the poor people in society would not be able to buy enough food for themselves.

That was ordered in God's providence. All those affairs, all those events. Where the rain fell, what the bugs ate, what the bugs didn't eat, what the geopolitical machinations were. All of that God worked together. He ordered it to create a situation that poor people, the poor of that society were not able to buy enough food.

He did that for his own wisdom. And we might ask, well, where's the wisdom in that? Well, God also moved the church in Antioch to send the acanel aid to the church in Jerusalem by Paul and Barnabas. So that aid was collected. They gave it to Paul and Barnabas and trusted it to them because he didn't have wire transfers.

Somebody physically had to carry gold or coins, Copper, silver, whatever money they were using, carry it down to the saints in Jerusalem. You would want trustworthy people to carry that. And they figured Paul and Barnabas were trustworthy people. They were prophets. And they sent that relief to them.

And then the text says that it was right at this time, about this time, that there arose this persecution. Between their going to Jerusalem in Acts 11-30 and their return in Acts 12-25, there are three separate accounts of God's providential dealings with the Jerusalem church. So God is moving Herod to persecute the church in Jerusalem right as Paul and Barnabas are traveling to Judea. That means that there's a certain element of danger in this trip that they're making. They're going into a region where people are dying.

Apostles are being killed by the government. And so the first account here is that in God's holy, wise, and powerful governing of His church, James, the brother of John of Peter, James, and John. James and John were the brothers, sons of Zebedee, the sons of thunder. In God's Holy, wise, and powerful ordering and governing of His church. James, this brother of John, one of these three closest disciples to Christ, is murdered by Herod.

Killed with a sword. Beheaded, probably. This Herod is the grandson of Herod the Great, who killed all the babies in Bethlehem when Jesus was born, trying to kill this other king of the Jews that the Magi told him about. This Herod is the nephew of Herod Antipas, who beheaded John the Baptist and put him in prison because he didn't like what John was saying about his wife and himself and their marriage, their unlawful marriage. And remember Herod Antipas killed John the Baptist because he wanted to look, he got put in a bad spot in front of his people and wanted to look good in front of them.

And this Herod here in this verse that killed James, he's the father of the Herod Agrippa that Paul spoke in front of in Acts 26. We'll get to that sometime later, Lord willing. Josephus describes this Herod, who comes from this line of people who killed the saints. Every one of his relatives, even Herod Agrippa didn't deliver Paul as justice would have required. Josephus describes this Herod as someone who wanted to please the Jews.

He wanted to be liked. He says, now this king was by nature very beneficent and liberal in his gifts and very ambitious to oblige people with such large donations. And he made himself very illustrious by the many chargeable presents he made them. He took delight in giving and rejoiced in living with a good reputation." In other words, he was governed by people. He was a people-pleaser.

And his actions were directed by what would bring favor to the people. Josephus goes on to say a little bit later that he loved to live continually at Jerusalem and was exactly careful in the observance of the laws of his country. He therefore kept himself entirely pure, nor did any day pass over his head without its appointed sacrifice." So He's outwardly fastidious in observing all of the ceremonies of the Jews in order again to be pleasing to them. And so when the people of Jerusalem, the Jews, turn against Christians, Herod saw an opportunity to carry favor with them by killing James. See, instead of ordering his life according to the Word of God, instead of asking what pleased Jesus, he asked what pleased the people.

He did those things that made himself popular with the people. And this was a snare. This was a snare. And it led directly to His death. Proverbs 29 says, the fear of man brings a snare.

What he demonstrates is an extreme fear of man. He put great weight on what people thought of Him and the things that they said to Him. The fear of man brings a snare. In this case, that snare was his life. But whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe." Well, when Herod saw how much James' death pleased the people, then he arrested Peter as well, and threw him in prison, intending to kill him too.

And so he was going to make, in his idea, he was going to have an execution every several days or weeks and just continually feed the people what he thought they wanted, what would make him popular with them. Very much like our present politicians, always looking at the polls, right? Seeing what the people want and then growing and doing it. Sort of the opposite of a leader, right? That's a follower.

So he assigned Peter to four man detachments. The Greek is very clear about this. The English, it's not so clear. It says four squads, but that word for squad is actually a four man detachment. So it's four man detachments.

That's 16 people that are assigned to guard Peter. I think that was probably to provide a squad of four guards for each of the four three-hour watches or shifts in each day and night. So they divided the day into these three hour watches or shifts from midnight to 3, well from 6 to 9, 9 to 12, 12 to 3, and 3 to 6 a.m. So, in scriptures, Matthew talks about the fourth watch of the night. That would be like between 3 and 6.

So, there's these four shifts. So, he had four guards to man each of those four shifts. So there's always four on watch at any one time. And so Peter is chained to two guards. He's got one guard on either side of him.

And then there is two guards at the two doors to the prison. We read later that there's two doors that they go through. So it's probably two guards chained to him and a guard at each of the doors. And so that's the watch. They would have watched three hours and then the next squad would have taken over and they would have rotated that.

So in other words, in a 24-hour day, they would have spent six hours on duty and 18 hours off. And interestingly, that's the same schedule that we typically kept in the Navy with our watches. Six hours, we would have watched for six hours, and then 18 hours off, and then you come back on. So that's what's going on here. 16 people are dedicated to guarding Peter.

He wants to ensure that this guy who's has a knack for getting out of prison does not get out of prison again. Remember, this happened before, and he's not a fool. Peter was put in prison. Peter, early on in Acts, when they went up to the temple, they'd put him in prison. They weren't trying to kill him at that point.

They were just trying to stop him. They put him in prison overnight, and the next day when they went to get him out, they came back and said, he's not in prison. And they found him down at the temple teaching. And so Herod knows this. He's not domineering.

He's not forgetful. So He assigns 16 guards. He's going to ensure that Peter doesn't get out of prison again. He didn't know about God's powerful ordering of all things. Well, the church, God in His providence, caused the church to raise up a constant prayer for Peter.

He wanted to put Peter to death as a sport. God in His providence ordained the church to come into constant prayer. Constant prayer for Peter. And just hours before, Herod was going to bring him out to be killed, God delivered Peter from prison in this most miraculous manner. An angel appeared to him in the middle of the night in the prison.

It says that very night before Herod was about to bring him out, this angel suddenly appears at Peter's side and a light shines in the prison. It's dark. It would have been very dark. A light shines there. The guards apparently are oblivious to what's happening.

This light doesn't wake them up because the angel of the Lord or God, through some means, has caused them to be oblivious, to not see what's happening right in front of Him. And He strikes Peter on the side. Wake up! Arise! Get up!

Get dressed! And there's some urgency in this. Quickly! Do this quickly! And Peter's chained to two people.

The chains fall off. The Bible doesn't say, we could assume it's the work of angels, that took the chains off. As far as Peter was concerned, the chains just fell off his arms. And he gets up and he puts on his... He girds himself, he gets dressed, he puts on his sandals, And the angel says, now put on your garment and follow me.

And so Peter, in what would appear to be a bit of a daze, he thought he was seeing a vision. He thought he was having a vivid dream. And dreams are not uncommon. God has appeared to Peter in visions like this before. Remember the animals came down?

We read about that. That was a vision. And Peter sees this vision. So he's thinking that he's seeing another one of these visions again. And so he does what he's told.

He gets up and he follows the angel. And they get to the first gate, and they just walk right through it. The guard that was there is not aware of what's happening. They walk through the second gate, and then they come to the iron gate that leads to the city. And when they got there, that gate just opened all by itself.

Again, God used angels probably to open that gate. And they walked right out. And this angel took him a block away from where the gate was. And then the angel was gone. And then it says when Peter came to himself, he's standing there now all alone, the light is gone, it's dark, it's the middle of the night, Maybe the third or fourth watch in the night.

And he realizes all of a sudden, this is not a dream. This is real. I'm really standing here. I'm not in the prison anymore. When Peter had come to himself, he said, now I know for sure that the Lord has sent His angel.

And He's delivered me from the hand of Pharaoh and from the expectation of the people. He was prepared to be made a fool and to be humiliated and to be mocked by the people. And he's realized in order to please the people. And he realizes Now the Lord has delivered him from all of that. And so he goes to the mother of Mary, the mother of John Mark's house, and starts knocking on the door.

Now the church is in there praying. They've been making constant prayer for Him. This is the middle of the night. So they're praying through the night here. We don't know if this is probably the second or third watch.

It says Herod was about to bring Him out, which would have probably been in the morning, 7 o'clock or so. So this is probably the fourth watch. And the church has been praying for him constantly since he went and was put in prison. So they're at this house and they're praying. And so he starts knocking on the door.

They have the door locked. That's a precaution. They're living in a dangerous time. And they've locked the door. So he starts knocking.

And knocking and knocking. The servant girl comes, but she doesn't open the door. She sees it's Peter, and she's so surprised that she runs back and tells the people that Peter's at the door. And they don't believe her either. But here's an interesting thing.

They think that it is an angel. And I think that's very interesting that they sooner believed that an angel was standing at their door than that Peter was standing at their door. It says something about their view and understanding of angels. So if we compare these two accounts of God's providence, His ordering and governing the affairs, In the first account, God did not deliver James. And we might ask, well, where is God's wisdom in that?

What was God doing? Well, sometimes He doesn't reveal His purposes, but we can say a number of things in His Word. One, this was a victory for James. This was a victory for James. He died as a martyr.

And it was a great honor to die as a martyr. Revelation brings that out. The honor of those who die as martyrs. It would have been an encouragement to the church to see James die as a victor. Paul said that his chains and imprisonment emboldened the church in Philippians 1.

He said, But I want you to know, brethren, that the things that happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the Gospel. Paul was in prison. He was in chains. And Bonjie, he's saying, actually, brothers and sisters, this turned out for good, for the encouragement and the emboldening of the Church for the furtherance of the Gospel. See there, God ordering all things for His own glory in the advancement of His Word.

And so it's become evident to the whole palace garden and to all the rest that my chains are in Christ, and most of the brethren in the Lord having become confident by my chains are much more bold to speak the Word without fear." What did God do for the church by causing James to be martyred? Well, one, It was a victory for James. But two, it was a strengthening and emboldening of the church. When you see these things, when you go through these things, they are one way that the Lord conquers fear. I know He conquered fear in my life in having to deal with CPS and a lawsuit by my own children threatening to take them away.

It's how the Lord teaches us not to fear. So He's teaching His church to be emboldened and not to fear. It's also immediate glory for James. Paul could say, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. So the church benefited, but James benefited.

He's now in immediate glory. For him to die was gain. For I know this will turn out from my deliverance through your prayer in the supply of the Spirit of Christ Jesus. According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness as always. So now also Christ will be magnified in my body whether by life or by death, for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

But if I live on the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor. Yet what I choose, I cannot tell." And Paul says he's hard pressed between the desire to depart for glory right then and there, and his love for the church to be with them and to minister to them. So this is immediate glory for James. This is a gain for James. We don't need to feel bad for James.

And it was also a blessing to the church. But it's also one other thing. It's a storing up of wrath against Herod. Here is Herod killing a saint. The Lord notices these things.

And He is a just God. And He visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children of the third and fourth generation, but He also visits it upon them as well. And so this is in God's holy, wise, and powerful ordering of all affairs. This is storing up wrath against Herod. In the second account, God delivers Peter.

In God's providence, He raised up this constant prayer from the church. He strengthened the faith of the church and brought great comfort to them to see Peter delivered so miraculously from prison. They're astonished right here. They've been praying for hours, days, through the night. Day and night, they're praying constantly for Peter.

And all of a sudden they see him standing in front of them. You see, in arresting Peter, Herod thought he was sending a message to the church that they were in danger. But it was God again ordering and governing in this affair as well, because God is sending a message to the weak among his flock that he, Jehovah, is powerful. God is sending a message through this deliverance of Peter that he was the one who powerfully preserves and governs all His creatures, even wicked kings. And even despite their best efforts to put Peter behind sixteen guards, behind three doors, and to chain him to two guards, continually, God delivered him.

And there was nothing they could do about it. He ordered and governed in this affair for his own good and righteous purpose. Now, we have to note that means are not contrary. The use of ordinary means is not contrary to God's providence. Sometimes this doctrine of God's providence is abused.

And people don't use medical means because, well, they're trusting God. Or they don't use insurance to cover their financial liabilities because, well, they're trusting God. Now it's one thing if you can't afford the insurance and you have no other choice, then yes, we trust the Lord. But the Lord does use means. And let's look at some of the means that God uses here in this text.

Peter, first of all, we see, is repeatedly urged to hurry. Why? Because speed and quietness is important in a prison break. If you're breaking out from prison, you don't amble and walk slowly. You've got to walk quickly.

That's pretty obvious. And the angel is telling Peter, hurry! He's urging him, hurry! This is a prison break. The means are important.

The secondary means are important. Arise quickly. Put on your garment. Let's go. Secondly, we see Peter exercises prudence in not attracting unnecessary attention.

First of all, we see the door is locked to this house because they're taking precautions. They're using means to protect themselves from somebody wandering in and interrupting. It gives themselves at least a few moments to stop, hide what they're doing or whatever they need to do to try and protect themselves. They're meeting in secret. And so Peter doesn't do anything radical to get their attention.

He just continues knocking at the door. He doesn't run around and try and bang on the windows or create a commotion to get in. He's discreet. And then he comes in, he tells them all to be quiet, because quietness is important when you're trying to be in secret. He tells them what happened, he gives them the information, and then he doesn't hang around there.

He goes to an undisclosed location for his safety and for the safety of the church. What imagine about the people there if Peter's found in their midst? Now they're harboring this prisoner. That would put them in danger. So Peter doesn't stay there.

He goes to an undisclosed location. Again, he's using ordinary means for his protection and the protection of the church. He hides himself from Herod and the soldiers. He didn't stay around where he might be more easily discovered. That would be tempting God.

Now, God also here provides an opportunity for extended prayer. Extended prayer. He didn't deliver Peter immediately. He waited right up until the Herod was about to bring him out of the prison, it says. So probably the fourth watch of the morning, of the night.

See, this is how we are to pray. Romans 12, rejoice in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer. Colossians 4-2, continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving. 1 Thessalonians 5, rejoice always, pray without ceasing. He gives an opportunity for the church to pray, because prayer keeps us from pride.

It's an acknowledgement that we can do nothing on our own. Constant prayer enables us to do all things through invoking the inexhaustible power of the Holy Spirit. And prayer is the means through which God is pleased to work. And so the Lord provides this opportunity for this extended prayer by the church. Prayer is the means of deploying the armor of God.

Right after telling us what the armor is in Ephesians 6, Paul says, praying always. We're to put on this armor of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for the saints. We also see them praying constantly until God grants deliverance. Praying constantly until God grants deliverance. Constant prayer was offered.

And they didn't stop. They prayed right through the night. God works through our prayers. He's ordained the prayers of His saints to be the means through which He acts. And when we don't pray, God doesn't act.

Prayer is also connected with the work of angels. And I think that was on the saints' minds because that's what they thought. When Rhoda said there's somebody at the door, Peter's at the door, They say, oh, it's His angel. They must have been thinking about the work of angels. Psalm 91 speaks about that.

Because you have made the Lord who is my refuge even the most high, your dwelling place, no plague shall come near your dwelling, nor shall any evil befall you, because God will give His angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you up lest you dash your foot against the stone." God will give His angels charge over us. And Angels began working as soon as Daniel began to pray. Psalm 34 says, This poor man cried out and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and deliver them.

And Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 5, 21, I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things. So the angels are watching. Little ones, Jesus said, have angels who watch over them. And so the next thing we see is that We shouldn't stop praying. We should keep praying until God brings our requests to pass, or says no in some final way.

About ten years ago, while the missionary was in Central Asia, And you can think of all the countries where Christianity is a crime, or conversion to Christianity is a crime, or proselytizing is a crime. Anita rose for about a thousand pocket New Testaments. And of course, they couldn't find any in that country in such a short time. And so they contacted somebody outside that country who could supply them, but they said they would not be able to deliver them. They would have to send somebody out of this country that needed the Bibles to go to a neighboring country, and they would have to pick up the Bibles and bring them in.

So they could print the Bibles, supply them, but they couldn't deliver them. So after some discussion, somebody in their midst volunteered, said he had a friend at the Customs and Border Patrol, and that with the help of his friends, he thought he would be able to bring the Bibles into this country, Bibles being illegal contraband. So they bought a ticket for him. He flew out to the destination country. He received the shipment, and he called to say He would be on the 5 PM flight expecting to arrive at 8 PM.

And so this missionary and another believer went down to the airport to pick him up. And the flight landed at 8 45. And after most of the passengers had come out through the exit doors, they didn't see their friend that had the Bibles. And when he didn't come out by 9.30, they concluded that he had been caught. And so now they faced a dilemma.

What were they going to do? They figured he would be tortured, and under the extreme torture would end up revealing what the plan was and who was there to pick them up and so forth. And so they had a real fear for their own lives at that point, that they were here at the airport and waiting for this person who had this illegal contraband. And So they all began to think of their own situations. A missionary, his son was just turning 18, and his youngest son, graduating, his friend had a wife who wasn't well and needed him to take care of her.

And so they were thinking that this could turn into years of imprisonment and so forth, but they couldn't bring themselves to flee. They started praying. They decided that if this was the Lord's providence, that they would receive it with dignity. So they began to earnestly beseech God for His intervention and aid. They began to pray.

And they didn't stop praying. Every time somebody came out or came close to them, they would think, oh, they're coming now for us. And the hours went by. And a few minutes, and they continued to pray. They didn't stop praying.

They made constant prayer. Right there in the airport. And a few minutes past midnight, their man came through the exit gate with all the bags on his push cart, looking like he'd survived a train wreck. It turned out what had happened, his friend wasn't at the customs checkpoint, and so he was randomly selected to put his bags on the x-ray machine and he was confronted by the officer who asked him what he had in those bags and so under intense questioning he finally said they're Bibles. So immediately the airport security, next level airport security is notified and this big bearded man looking like someone who jumped out of the pages of the Who's Who of the Taliban showed up and he was escorted to an isolated office, ordered to sit down.

The man took out his form to write up the charge and before making the arrest and putting him in prison, he took out one of the books and he started to read it and examine it. And soon he was so completely engrossed in reading it, and for the next two and a half hours he was reading it, thumbing through its pages, shaking his head, reading more. Finally he burst out and said, we need to have shiploads of this book brought into our country. He stood up and tore up the report and told the man, you're free to go. And he said, oh, may I keep this copy.

That's the Lord's providence, powerfully ordering and governing all His creatures and all their actions for His own glory. But the Lord uses means. He used the prayers, the constant prayers of the two men that came down to pick Him up. Now the third account is the untimely death of Herod himself. God destroyed the destroyer, the persecutor of the church.

This church, remember from Acts 2, they saw the attacks on the church and on God's people as part of the rage of the nations against the Messianic reign of Christ. That's how they understood this. And that's how they prayed in Acts 2. They prayed that God would take notice of their rage and of their injustice and of their cruelty. And they prayed for God to act.

Luke 18 tells us an example of praying for God to bring justice even through wicked people. And in Luke 18, this unjust judge refused to grant the request of the widow. But after a while he said, though I don't fear God or regard man, yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.' And then the Lord said, hear what that unjust judge said, and shall not God avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them, I tell you He will revenge them speedily." Speedily. And God did. This church was praying that God would deliver them from the hands of this wicked king.

And He did so in a very dramatic and remarkable way that left no doubt that it was the hand of God. And it was through Herod's own desire to be a people pleaser. That he listened to the flattery of the people from Tyre and Sidon who wanted his favor. They wanted his food. And so they come and they're flattering him and They're buttering Him up and giving Him all this praise, saying it's the voice of a God and not of a man.

And He's basking in it because He's giving a speech in front of these people because this is what He lived for. And the angel of God struck him because he didn't give glory to God. And he was eaten by worms and died. Josephus records that he died after five days of intense pain. And this happened as well to Arius.

Arius was likewise a great troubler of the church. He's the source of Arianism, that Jesus is not God. And he was a great thorn in the side of Athanasius and the faithful saints in the church in his day. This was the cause of the Council of Nicaea meeting, from which we get to Nicene Cree. But Arius died in a similar remarkable way.

He had just been received back into the church through his conniving and lying, and Constantine had recognized him, and he is on his way to the church to go to church and receive the Lord's Supper. And all of a sudden, he's overcome. He wonders where there's a bathroom, an outhouse. And he goes and all his bowels gushed out. Everything.

And he died. And it was a horrific sign that God was providentially ordering this and delivering and ridding His church of this horrible blight. And this is what He did with Herod. The end result of this is that God's Word grew and multiplied. God orders and governs the affairs of men and all their actions for His own glory.

And that's what God did here. Verse 24. The Word of God grew and multiplied. It grew through the apostles being martyred. It grew through the Apostles being martyred.

It grew through the Apostles being delivered from martyrdom. And it grew through God's enemies being destroyed as the church prayed for God's blessing. May God give us that constancy in prayer that we see God's hand in providential ordering, whether it's in martyrdom, or it's in deliverance from martyrdom, or in the deliverance from wicked rulers. Heavenly Father, we thank You for such encouragement in Your Word. Encouragement to constancy in prayer, encouragement to see that and be reminded yet again that You are the Sovereign God who orders and governs all things, all the affairs of men, all of their actions of kings, all of the motions of the heavenly bodies, and of everything that happens on earth.

Lord, You govern it all. And You govern it all for the good of your people, as well as your own glory and the advancement of your Gospel and the advancement of your Kingdom. Lord, we ask that You would strengthen us and encourage us to give us this boldness, but also to give us this great faithfulness and constancy and fervency in our prayers. Lord, may we be a praying people. Praying without ceasing.

Rejoicing in everything always and giving thanks in everything. This we ask, Lord, by the supernatural power of Your Holy Spirit, through Christ. Amen. Thanks for watching!