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‘Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the Church unto God for him.’
Act_12:5
‘But withal prepare me also a lodging: for I trust that through your prayers I shall be given unto you.’
Phm_1:22
I. The similarity in the two cases.—The circumstances are almost identical. The differences are only in names, and times, and places. In both cases we have a portion of the Church of Christ bowed in earnest prayer before her Divine Head, beseeching Him to rescue His faithful Apostle from the power of a blood-thirsty tyrant; and in both cases the prayer is answered, and the Apostle is freed.
(a) The region into which prayer may enter. The only sphere to which prayer properly belongs, men say, is that which is personal, and inward, and spiritual. To pass from ourselves to the outside world, to affairs of human government and human laws, to the natural universe, is foolish and vain. The examples here given are against such statements. In matters that concern the free action of our fellow-men, the arrangements of human life, and the laws of nature, prayer has a voice, prayer may be offered.
(b) Prayer has direct results therein. A good-humoured sceptic might say, ‘Pray for others as much as you like. Pray that they may be delivered from the destructive action of Nature’s laws, or from human evil and wrong. It may do you some good in the way of deepening your sympathies, but any outward results are impossible.’ This is to deny the facts and statements before us. Through the prayers of the Church, St. Peter and St. Paul are restored to liberty.
(c) Prayer does not always receive the answer desired. There came a time when St. Peter and St. Paul were again in prison, and their lives imperilled. Without doubt the Christian Church prayed for their release as earnestly then as now. But the petition was not granted, at least not in the way expected and desired. The apostles were released, but by death—released, not to earthly toil, but to heavenly rest. It is a mistake to suppose, and a misrepresentation to declare, that the Christian Church teaches that the good asked in prayer is always given. Christians pray, if they pray aright, not with a desire to impose their will upon God, and upon His universe. And where the answer is not given according to their desire, they are content to believe that it is in respect of things they themselves would not have desired, could they have known as God knows.
(d) Prayer is a mighty power in the affairs of men, a mighty weapon put into the hands of the Church. How unequal seem the forces arrayed against each other! Herod with his royal resources; Nero with his imperial power, walled prisons, and armed men: on the other side a few weak men and women bowed in prayer. Yet against those prayers, and against the will of Him to whom those prayers are addressed, king and emperor, prisons and guards, are ineffectual, and the Church rejoices in the restoration of St. Peter and St. Paul. The Church of Christ is resistless for the purposes of her great mission, when fully armed with the power of prayer.
II. The distinction between the two cases.—The same answer is given, but in very different ways. In the first case, there is a direct Divine interposition. No man who belives the Scriptures can doubt the Divine answer. God’s hand is seen, thrust out of the thick darkness in which He hides Himself, touching and conquering all obstacles, and lifting His servant into liberty and life. In the other case there is nothing strange and miraculous. St. Paul is summoned before the imperial tribunal, is allowed as a Roman citizen to plead his cause, and, as the result, he is set at liberty. Men might say, ‘There is no answer to prayer here. St. Paul regained his freedom through a tyrant’s whim, a passing gleam of good nature in the savage Nero, a momentary impression made upon him by St. Paul’s evident sincerity and earnestness, or through the circumstances of the time when the fury of persecution had for the moment glutted itself.’ But St. Paul himself testifies, ‘Through your prayers I shall be given to you.’
(a) The blessedness of the man who lives and moves in an atmosphere of prayer; around whom cluster thickly, as guardian forces, the ceaseless petitions of the people of God; upon whose head descends continually the anointing oil of a thousand benedictions.
(b) The exalted privilege of being identified with the Redeemer’s visible Church. Men might speak lightly of it, but is it a light thing to be remembered daily by thousands in their prayers, who pray that we may be strengthened amid our temptations, comforted in sickness and care and sorrow, delivered from threatening evil, and preserved in faithfulness to Him Whose name we bear?
III. The relation of the one case to the other.—The one explains the other. The intention of a miracle, as one has well put it, is to manifest the Divine in what is common and ordinary. A miracle is designed to teach men that God is everywhere working, and that the ordinary operations of nature and life are but as the veil behind which he screens Himself from our beholding, and which, in the miracle, is for the moment removed. God delivered St. Peter from prison by a miracle, in answer to the prayers of the Church, not that men might think that by this method only He answers prayer, but that we might expect and discern the answer when it is given by ordinary and natural means.
(a) Learn not to expect supernatural appearances and supernatural operations in answer to prayer.
(b) Learn to recognize God in that which is natural, and to accept the answer when it comes in the ordinary course of events.
Illustration
‘I have read of a king who led forth his steel-clad chivalry to place a despot’s yoke upon a free people. Just before the battle was joined, he saw their ranks bending low to the ground. “See,” he cried in exultation, “they submit already.” “Yes,” said a wise counsellor, who knew the men better than his master, “they submit, but it is to God, not to us.” And in a few hours the king and his army were scattered in shameful rout. Let the Church of Christ, as she stands face to face to-day with so many opposing forces, submit herself to God in humble, earnest prayer, and every foe shall be vanquished, and a glorious victory won.’
‘Peter therefore was kept in prison.’
Act_12:5
I. A Christian in danger.—St. Peter was in Herod’s power, that is, he was in Satan’s power, for Herod was Satan’s instrument. It is an awful reflection that Satan can use not only wicked men, but sometimes even good men to oppress Christ’s servants. Let suffering saints trodden under some insolent Herod’s heel remember St. Peter and be comforted.
II. A Christian in the dark.—Further, St. Peter was in the dark. Yes! But remember there are different kinds of darkness. There is the darkness of sin and there is the darkness of suffering. St. Peter’s was the darkness of suffering. There is a special promise for that kind of darkness (Isa_50:10). As a father might say to his children on a journey ‘When you come to a tunnel, sit still till you are through,’ or, as I have sometimes said to my fellow-passengers in a tunnel, ‘Look up and you will find light from above.’ As Dorothea Trudel used to say, ‘We may sit in darkness provided the darkness does not sit in us.’ Still we cannot limit the great salvation. Let the sadness be the gloom of sorrow or of sin, or what it may, at Christ’s approach the darkness turns to day.
III. A Christian asleep.—St. Peter was asleep. That was to his credit personally. Thank God he could sleep in such circumstances. It was the night before his execution, but he was sleeping as calmly as a child on its mother’s breast. How was it that he was so composed? When Sir Walter Raleigh was about to lay his head upon the block he turned to the executioner and said, ‘My friend, it matters little how the head lies so long as the heart is right.’ Yes,
‘Jesus can make a dying bed
As soft as downy pillows are.’
That was the secret of Peter’s tranquillity. His heart was right. But Peter’s sleep on the eve of his execution is a picture of a very different sort of sleep too. Is it not a sad reflection that many souls still are both in prison and asleep? Some men, it has been well said, use the doctrines of the Gospel as a man does his bedclothes—they wrap themselves up in them, and you hear no more about them. How is it with us? (Eph_5:14).
IV. A Christian in chains.—St. Peter was not only asleep, he was bound between two soldiers, and his guards must answer for him with their lives. It seemed a hopeless case enough. There were the fetters and the foes and the fortress. How could he escape? There were the fetters—what are they? Christian, you know what they are—the chains of your besetting sin, the chains of evil habit, the chains of lust and pride and worldly conformity and the like. Have you been set free from these? And then still subtler bonds, silken and slender, almost invisible sometimes—the love of praise, the love of ease, the love of gold, what are these? Are these not fetters? Then the foes, the guards who stand sentry at the gates—are they not real? Sometimes in this struggle to escape from prison a man’s foes are ‘they of his own household’ (Mat_10:36). The old companions, the worldly friends, yes, they may be foes indeed. Last, not least, the fortress, the great wall of circumstance that hems you round, the circle in which you move.
Are any of us really free? (Joh_8:26).
Rev. E. W. Moore.
‘Prayer was made without ceasing of the Church unto God for him.’
Act_12:5
I. There was unity—the Church met together. Like Daniel of old (Dan_2:17-18) the early Church believed in the power of united prayer. There were no dissentients, they were of one heart and one soul. Their prayer-meeting was held at ‘the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark’ (Act_12:12). It may be that the ‘upper room’ of Acts 1 was there. Evidently this house was a sort of centre and was given up to Christ’s service.
II. There was intensity. The word in the Greek, rendered ‘without ceasing,’ means literally ‘stretched out.’ Stretched out prayer was made. One great reason why our prayers do not prevail is that they are not stretched out, they are not intense. There was an agony in these people’s prayers—they could not let God alone, their whole soul was in their petition. Though the case seemed hopeless and though they could not believe the answer when it came, still the Spirit of God constrained them to urge their request.
III. There was definiteness.—‘Generalities are the death of prayer.’ There are some prayers that seem to ‘aim at nothing and hit it.’ These people had something to pray for. They knew what they wanted and they asked for it. When these three marks, unity, intensity, definiteness, are found in our prayers they will succeed as this one did.
—
Rev. E. W. Moore.