A Devastating Martyr, a Miraculous Rescue, and a Just Punishment Part 1
a commentary on Acts 12 (Context)
Thank you, Lord, for this day. May it be used for your glory!
Good morning everyone and welcome back to Biblit!
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Today we are jumping back into Acts 12 where we will continue our Peter story. For the last few Biblits we have been focused on some of Peter's accounts, while we take a break from Saul/Paul.
At the end of this chapter, we will transition away from Peter for a moment and into Saul’s first missionary journey.
But for now, we will focus on Peter and what I think is a pretty overlooked, but insanely powerful narrative!
Let’s jump in!
Context
This chapter has a lot of similar names, so I will do my best to tell you who everyone is.
We pick up with a huge downer. Herod is now violently attacking the church. This particular Herod was Herod Agrippa I. This is the grandson of Herod the Great, who was in charge during Jesus’s birth story. The one that ordered the killing of thousands of baby boys. So Herod Agrippa I comes from a pretty awful line of leaders.
This Herod is in control of more territories than Herod the Great ever was. It is said that he tried to maintain good relations with the Jews so there wouldn’t be an uprising or anything. He even stopped idols from being placed in the Temple and supposedly would read the Torah. As to keep the peace.
Or more so, because he was a massive people pleaser and loved being praised.
However, around this time, being friends with the Jews, meant you were an enemy to the church.
So King Herod starts this chapter off by attacking the church and killing James. This is James, John’s brother. One of the 12 apostles of Christ.
Well, the Jews loved this!
And Herod loved being loved so he decided to take it further and go after the main man, Peter.
He arrested Peter during the Festival of Unleavened Bread, planning to bring him out to kill him on the Passover.
For those who don’t remember, these are Jewish holidays that extend back to when God freed Israel from Egypt. Passover was the day when they spread the lamb’s blood over the door posts and the angel of death would pass over and not kill their firstborn.
All pointing to Christ.
Passover was the day that Jesus instituted communion at the Last Supper before He went on to be crucified.
The Festival of Unleavened Bread was a 7-day feast that culminated with the Passover.
So why didn’t Herod just kill Peter instantly like James, you may ask? Well, it all goes back to the people-pleaser inside of him. See, the Sanhedrin had their own law addendums to God’s law, and this is one of them:
“In case of capital crimes no trial can commence on Friday or in the eve of any major holiday”. (Sanhedrin 4:1)
All that to say, Peter might have just a few more days to live. This also means we are right about to come up on the very first Easter Sunday! One year since Christ shared the Last Supper with Peter and Peter went on to deny Christ 3 times. Crazy how much he has changed.
Well, the night before Herod was to bring Peter out, something miraculous happens. He had put tons and tons of guards, more than normal, to watch Peter.
But no matter, God put them into a deep sleep and sent an angel. This time, it wasn’t the angel of death, though. He sent an angel to free Peter!
Peter, thinking he was seeing a vision the whole time, got up and followed the angel right out of the prison.
When he was in the city the angel disappeared and Peter came back to reality, realizing it was always reality.
Peter then ran to Mary’s house. I’m not sure how he knew to go there. And just to clarify, this is (from what I can tell) not a Mary we know yet. This is Mary the mother of John. Again, not a John we’ve met before. John is also called Mark.
Now, we do know Mark. He has an entire book in the Bible named after him.
Tradition also says that this John Mark is the young rich ruler whom Jesus commands to sell all his possessions and give to the poor. (Mark 10:17-27 CSB).
Which adds an amazing end to that narrative.
And we’re going to see a lot more of this John Mark fellow, but until then, we are focused on Peter going to John Mark’s mother’s house.
They seem to be potentially wealthy, more proof he was the young rich ruler, so a large group had assembled at her house to pray for Peter.
I suppose Peter knew they were there praying and went to tell them the good news.
When he knocked on the door a servant named Rhoda answered, recognized Peter’s voice, and was so shocked she basically slammed the door in his face and ran away to tell everyone, leaving Peter in the dark at the doorstep.
I’m sure he thought it was pretty humorous.
The rest of the people told Rhoda she was crazy and that it was probably Peter’s angel.
But after she kept pressing and Peter kept knocking, they relented to go see what was up and were amazed!
Peter told them to go tell James and the brothers what had happened. I couldn’t find much detail but I think this has got to be referring to James, the brother of Jesus and author of the book of James. I mainly think that since James the Apostle died at the beginning of this passage.
Then Peter leaves.
After he leaves, we don’t see him again for a few chapters and we pick back up with Herod. Now, once morning rises, Herod goes to get Peter to kill him and sees he is missing.
Not good.
After interrogating the guards, he has them all killed.
Now, Herod is a crazy man, but this was not an unusual thing. The Roman law said that if a guard let a prisoner go (on purpose or accident), then they would have to endure the punishment that the prisoner was to undergo.
In this case, death.
Then we move on with Herod and we see him give this great speech to a group of people he was angry with.
The group of people was a combination of people from Tyre and Sidon, which are both cities in Phoenicia.
We don’t know the conflict going on, but they are upset over something and they ask for peace because they need the food of Herod’s country. See, these two cities have very good ports and are known for trading, but they have no room to farm food themselves. They require trading with other countries.
Herod, again was upset with them. To even gain an audience with Herod, they had to convince his chamberlain, Blastus. A couple of commentaries told me that many assume “convince” here really means bribery.
And it worked too! Not surprising with this leadership to be honest.
They gained an audience, brought their issues to light, and waited to hear Herod’s big speech.
Well, they loved Herod’s speech so much that they started to call him a god.
Since Herod enjoyed that and did not give glory to the One True God, God immediately struck him down and he died.
The end of Herod.
Then, here in the final verse, we pick back up with Saul.
If you remember, the last time we saw Saul, he and Barnabas were going down to Jerusalem with some relief money because it had been prophesied to them that a famine was coming.
Well, now we pick back up with them, they have dropped the money off in Jerusalem and are on their way back up to Antioch. And who do they take with them?
None other than John Mark.
With that, we will call it a day. Tune in tomorrow and we’ll dive in a little bit deeper!