Please turn to page eight and follow along as we read the sermon text this morning and make God at His blessing to the reading of this holy word and bless us that we might hear it. Oh, man Now about that time herod the king laid hands on some of those who belong to the church yet or to mistreat them and he had James the brother of John put to death with her sword When he saw that it pleased the Jews He proceeded to arrest Peter also Now it was during the days of unleavened bread when he had seized him He put him in prison delivering him to four squads of soldiers to guard him Intending after the Passover to bring him out before the people We go to verse 18 Now when they came there was no small disturbance Among the soldiers as to what could have become of Peter When Herod had searched for him and had not found him he examined the guards and ordered that they be led away To execution Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and was spending time there Now he was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon and With one accord they came to him and Having won over Blastus the King's Chamberlain They were asking for peace because their country was fed by the King's country On an appointed day Herod Having put on his royal apparel Took his seat on the rostrum and began delivering and addressed to them The people kept crying out. This is the voice of a god Not of a man And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory and he was eaten by worms and died But the word of the Lord continued to grow and be multiplied The grass withers and the flower fades But the word of please pray with me what an awful evil King
Herod was father like his uncle Who had done on the Baptist beheaded? He was a terrible man and Claim for himself glory that belonged to you and how I pray the father that if Nothing else this morning that you would accomplish the Accurate portrayal of your superiority over such a wicked King That you would stand forth in a way father That your gracious character Would be overwhelming to everyone here Christian and no Christian alike that your chamberland Jesus Christ and how different he is from blastus would stand forth and the contrast would be overwhelming and Would win our hearts Oh father how we need to be reminded again That you are King of kings and Lord of Lord you are over all things and you are superior in every respect to every other Pretender to the throne of our lives and I plead with you this morning father to exercise your Kingly authority to draw us away from lesser things To give you the glory to claim none of it for ourselves father There is a lion in this text. There is a lion that I pray you will set loose now in our midst Father your strength and your beauty need be released and so I pray for the ministry of your holy Spirit to strengthen and encourage and feed and nourish the hearts of the saints and to win with converting power The hearts of those who entered this room as unbelievers Lift blindness and cause the death to hear father Cause the lane to leap for joy. I pray in Jesus name. Amen Well my one of my favorite parts of The lion the witch in the wardrobe And there are so many if money were no limiting factor. I would probably see it every day See the movie every day But not only money but relationships are important my family would wonder where I was But one of my favorite scenes in the movie which I had loved in the books in the book But just felt with the new power in the movie is Aslan's visit after his resurrection to the to the witch's courtyard and How he leaps over the the wall comes into the courtyard and that courtyard as you remember from the movie is is populated by a bunch of Frozen statues of people from Narnia who have transgressed the white witches Will and she has frozen them or or made them into some kind of statue some kind of lifeless statue and Aslan walks around the sanctuary and breathes on these statues He just walks up to them and it is authority. He just breathes on them and they The color returns to them and they come to life. I Love that picture that is and and and watching Aslan overpower the witches spell and enchantment and set those People from Narnia free makes me love Aslan all the more Because he's done this after his resurrection and you know, he is he's concerned about other people to put it mildly And I love Jesus Christ in the book of Acts because that's exactly what he does I love him for exactly the same reason after his resurrection. He sends his church into the courtyard of the world And by the power of his Holy Spirit reclaims people from death who once were trophies of Satan and Gives them life and restores life where death has rained as gives sight where blindness has rained and gives Gives hearing where deafness has rained I love Jesus Christ in the book of Acts because that's exactly what the kingdom is about as it expands Through the world because the courtyard of the world my friends is full of dead lifeless statues and Jesus Christ is intent on seeing that every corner of this world be liberated by his power That's what happens in the book of Acts. That's what he's entrusted to us That same work. It is a glorious thing to watch real life come into Other people's lives through the power of Jesus Christ But in order to properly appreciate a liberator, right, you have to have a very clear sense of what the slavery was like before the liberation happens And that's why I love in the movie We see in a number of different places before Aslan ever shows up in the courtyard We see what those statues look like and we see that they are dead and lifeless and our text this morning I think gives us a very close up picture on a certain kind of slavery that holds people captive The book ends you'll notice the reason well you won't know the reason until I tell you But you'll notice what I've done with our passages more is I've tried to take the book ends of chapter 12 because I think they're united By a common thing There are two deaths you'll notice in those two halves Herod shows up in both of them and Both of those deaths are attributable to the same form of slavery It's a slavery that that binds many of us in this room It's a very bitter kind of servitude In one sense or another we've all been or still are victims along with James of this particular form of slavery It's so pervasive. I really I don't know anyone who's entirely free from it It's so oppressive that it bends and twists our conduct we lie in Service of this slavery we we flatter people with lies We fear other people's anger. It makes us cowards This kind of slavery fills us with anxiety and and and it leads us into a lifestyle of using people Rather than loving them and worst of all what this slavery does is it makes God a little grasshopper in our sight It's a very serious form of slavery What's the name of it? What could possibly be so oppressive? What could possibly be so God belittling? The Puritans had a name for it. They called it the sin of man pleasing hyphen between those two words the sin of man pleasing that's that's the term that they use to describe But what we would say in various quarters is a living for or by the approval of other people Now you might not have come in here saying I'm guilty of the sin of man pleasing But I'll guarantee you everyone in here is a slave at some level To the need to have other people's approval And it's a deadly sin it leads to James's death and it leads to Herod's death So you have to take it seriously in our passage confronts us with an ugliness So what I want to do is I want us to look very carefully at how How Acts 12 depicts this slavery and what it does and how it distorts relationships and worst of all what it does in terms of obscuring our vision of God and Then what I want to do is talk about the contrast because the kingdom of God, right, is about a liberator is About a king whom it is easy to please His name is Jesus Christ who comes as the liberator in order to empower us to please God So it's worth looking first at the slavery and seeing if we recognize any part of ourselves in it With both Herod and the people from Tyre and Sidon We see this operating I think very tragically in the text Let's deal first with the people from Tyre and Sidon that's in verses 20 through 23
They're convinced right that Herod's angry at them Herod's angry at them Luke tells you that Herod was very angry at them We don't have the fagus idea why Herod was angry at them But they're so motivated by Herod's anger that they they go higher Alabias, don't they they go straight to the Jack Abramoff of Herod's kingdom they go straight to Blastus his chamberman chamberlain and Presumably they have to bribe them and they get his favor But what they want more than anything else is for Herod not to be angry at them anymore and so they'll bribe the chamberlain Why because they are afraid that if they don't have Herod's favor they won't eat Think about your job that way I mean, what a mistake right who is it who goes daily bread? Is it Herod or is it God is it your employer or is it God what do you believe and Look what it does to them It motivates them to do something so extreme It's terrible how it distorts Their life and robs them of dignity now Herod is Herod's a king don't think that that if you're a king you can't be a slave to this Don't think that if you're a husband you can't be a slave to this don't think that if you're a boss You can't be a slave to this or if you're a parent you can't be a slave to this because look Herod is a king And he's a slave to the same sin of an pleasing It's what accounts for both the rest of James and Peter It's what accounts for James's murder and it's what accounts for his kind of game of Fishing from the tyronia tyranians and the Cydonians for their approval look and look at what what Luke describes very clearly as his Prevation why is it that Herod had James arrested? Why is it that he was motivated to mistreat some people in the church? Why is it that he put James to death? Why is it that he then arrested Peter one simple reason verse three? He saw that it pleased the Jews That's very dark, isn't it? Somebody would need the approval of other people so badly He'd be willing to threaten starvation of a whole Couple of cities that he would be willing to put somebody in prison That he would be willing to have them be headed Why also he could have the approval of other people? Now don't think that because you haven't had anybody murdered or because you haven't threatened Starvation upon a city that you're immune from this. It's just a spectrum. You manipulate people just like I do in Pursuit of this goal. Let's look at two kinds of damages from this sin first It it insolves other people. That's probably the most obvious When we live for and by the approval of others, we use people like puppets instead of loving them That's exactly what Herod has done James and Peter James's execution the people of Tyre and Sidon all of that is Herod Manipulating other people and using them like puppets. Why so that he can feel better about himself? So that he can have approval. He's a king. How upside down is that? Parents, do you ever not confront your child about their disobedience because you're afraid that you need your child's favor and approval? Do you ever hold back in your obedience to God because you feel like you need your child's acceptance of you Husbands you ever do that with your wives? Wives you ever do that with your children? When you do that and when you don't tell people the truth and when you transact a relationship with them That isn't based on the truth. You and slave them to a lie. So are you a Herod? Are you somebody who lives off of the approval of others? Do you manipulate people like Herod manipulates them? Living by and for the approval of other people is is radically unsafe for them. It's the opposite of love It is that you move towards people in order to get something from them and that is not love That's using somebody Okay, for your benefit. I can't think of anything less like the life of Jesus Christ than that Who came right as the son of men not to be served but to serve and to give us life a ransom for many That's a very dark side of this slavery. It enslaves other people. It uses them But there's another aspect to the damage and that is that it enslaves us Makes us slaves as well If Herod illustrates the harm that the sin of man pleasing and living for and I the approval of other people inflicts on them the people of Tyre and Sidon are an excellent illustration of how self-destructive that really is and And this is where I suspect that that that more of this will resonate for us. I mean We all tend to be more selfish than we should so when we talk about the effect of our sin on other people We tend not to be as motivated by it as though we should be as we are when we see how it destroys us Now look at what happens to the people from Tyre and Sidon They're so desperate for Herod's approval and to win his favor They are willing to make themselves slaves through flattery. Do you think that they actually believe he's a God? They don't care. They'll say anything. They just want their pantries full They'll do anything that this Too-bid egotistical tyrant who doesn't have either the will or the power to care for them He doesn't have the will or the power to care for them. They're willing to sell their dignity
That's a very very dark. What kind of slavery is that? I mean that is so serious. They kept crying out luke said the voice of a God and not of a man They know he's a man. They say things. They don't believe in order to survive Even though the outcome is uncertain will it be good enough to please Herod this time or not? Even though the outcome is uncertain and even though he doesn't have control over the things that will ultimately Guarantee whether they can eat or not can Herod control the weather by the way I mean what is real payoff are they really going to somebody who has power? Why would you why would you commend as somebody as a God and not as a man? Why would you elevate somebody who has neither the will nor the power to really care for you? Why do we do that with certain relationships? Why do we make ourselves Flatterers of other people. Why do we lie to them? Why are we afraid to tell them the truth? Why are we afraid to confront them and to not say what they want us to say? Why? What's in it for us? Who are you flattering? Right now. Who are you anxious to keep happy with you? Who's anger makes you really nervous? Who are you desperate To have approval from? Who is your Herod?
Are you willing to compromise honesty for that? Are you willing to compromise your convictions? Are you in a situation at work or in your neighborhood or in the family where there's a There's a very clear boundary about what This relationship this person whether it's your boss or somebody in your family has asked you to cross and yet you know What God's will is in that situation, but you are so afraid of displeasing that person that you compromise truth and you swallow
If you do that you've made yourself a slave You've made yourself a slave Who do you say things to that you don't really believe in order to make sure you're on the relational Indiet and not on the relational outside We all have those people You know Richard Baxter Was a Puritan pastor He When I was getting ready for this message, I decided I wouldn't look and see what he had to say about the sin of manteliesing and this in this book called a Christian director He was about this thick and the pages are about that big and the print is like that big and he has 20 pages on this sin And you know, he said the best line that I read I thought this was so helpful to the person who is Addicted to the sin of man pleasing has as many masters as beholders That's very profound You want a lot of masters you want everyone you see to be your master That's slavery And so fence the kingdom of God is a glorious a glorious alternative to that but there there's an even worse damage Then being enslaved or enslaving others what this sin does most deeply and more profoundly is it denies God honor It robs him of glory because what it does is it obscures the importance of God's opinion If we are scurrying about in our lives Desperate to obtain or manipulate the favor of other people if we're willing to spend our dignity and our integrity In the pursuit of other people's approval or their pleasure or their delight and we are scurrying around and we're acting as though Our welfare depends on getting it back. You know what we've done. We've made God this big Because nobody has both the will and the power to care for us as God does people might have the will To care for the safeguard us, but they don't have the will and the power and only in God do those two things meet See the people from Tyre the people from Sidon and Herod their their their dance with each other illustrates something that I think is at the heart of What we experience in the world in our own lives And it shows what the world really thinks You see this drama being worked out in chapter 12 and what you what you notice is that they neither one of them seems to care what God thinks Notice that God isn't even on the radar God isn't on the radar for Herod God isn't on the radar for the people from Tyre and Sidon This is a microcosm of the condition of the world that needs the church to move forward into it With the news of the kingdom of God in the reign of Jesus Christ It is a world that does not care what God thinks Though it should People do not care What God thinks we care far more about what we think about each other we're more preoccupied with ourselves than we are about what God thinks You and I both are prone to care far more about what we think of each other than about what God thinks of us
People from Tyre and Sidon Herod all driven by the same vision Now shouldn't it be exactly the opposite of that? If God exists if he is who we say we believe that he is who the Bible teaches us that he is Isn't it the case that it ought to be reality ought to be exactly the opposite of that? Who's whose favor should matter more to us whose favor should define us whose Positive opinions of us or dis favor tortoise should motivate us most strongly It's God's and so if we believe in God why is it voice so small and tiny In our lives Why does it matter so much why is it that one criticism in your life can can capsize you and be outweighed by 47 compliments You ever think about that in your life If I if I get one Critical letter it outweighs it outweighs the pile of wonderful letters I've gotten why is that is because the voice of God is too small in my life It's a lot easier In uh in relationships. I mean you're tangible. You're right there. I see you. I hear your voice I see the freckles on your face. You're tangible. You're right there. So when you tell me I'm okay Or I'm good or I did that right That's real easy for me to believe But you see in order for me to believe the power of God's words I have to walk by faith and not by sight See with you with each other horizontally we can walk by sight and by faith But it requires faith Right to to trust that God's verdict over us is more compelling and more powerful and more defining than our opinions of each other And we would just quite frankly always prefer to walk by sight rather than by faith with me
Non-Christian If you're here with us What you need more than anything else is to know that God's opinion of you is the most important opinion Bar none Bar none if God exists then his opinion of you should matter more to you than any other opinion including your opinion of yourself Christian if God exists As we believe that he does if he has acted as we believe he has acted Jesus Christ as as the scriptures teach us then his opinion of us Should define us more than anything else, right? Do you realize what you have Christian? Why is it that we're still so inclined to be so disappointed? So excuse me wrong direction so disappointed or so elevated when we receive or don't receive the favor of one another Is because God's voice is far too small in our lives So don't repeat the mistake of the people from Tyre inside and they see that there's a threat to their well-being they see That it's of such a serious magnitude that they drop everything else And and make sure with one accord that they have worked to gain Herod's favor But I wonder I wonder if we've really learned from their lesson are we wasting time on lesser kings And seeking the favor of lesser kings Are you doing that anywhere in your life Has God become secondary if you have the favor of someone else besides God is that what satisfies you Or is God's pleasure or opinion of you what shapes your life You see life in the kingdom of God is about a radically different kind of living It's it's a life in which Slavery is thrown back not by our efforts. We do not liberate ourselves But it is by the power of God speaking into our lives The reason we fall prey to other people telling us who we are is because we were made Right we were made to understand who we are not in a vacuum. We were made to understand ourselves in relationship to community And I didn't know who he was until God told him who he was I am wired to understand myself from the outside But the problem is in the fall what did I do? I cut myself off from God so the only thing outside now is what each other And so what ends up happening is I will listen To what anyone else says outside And God needs to speak into my life he is the one he as my creator And he as my redeemer is the only one with the power and the authority to speak into my life to tell me who I am And so what it means to be liberated by God in Jesus Christ is to not listen To the other things that other people say or don't say about you But listen to God's verdict of you in Jesus Christ. It is so easy It is so easy to please the king through Jesus Christ Why anybody would want to chase after the herds of the world is a complete mystery to me Why my heart still moves in that direction Why I still fall prey To the logic of the world's Messages is such a frustration to me we live in an age my friends where it's ambiguous, right? It's an ambiguous age the powers of the age to come with Christ's resurrection the powers of the age to come have broken into the present The kingdom of God is here, but it's overlapping with the present age and so it's ambiguous And so in order for me to lay hold of those things I must do so by faith and not by sight And again that is so hard It is so easy To please the king through Jesus Christ it costs us absolutely nothing You ever thought about that? It costs us absolutely nothing there's no bribe that we need to give to The king's chamberland Jesus Christ has paid all the price for us to please the king God the father is nothing like herod He is nothing like herod reality is that God is not a tyrant God is generous God is not capricious God is not arbitrary And the sun is not somebody who has to be want over Here's how you pay Blastus here's how you pay God the father's chamberland Jesus Christ you come and you say I'm poor I'm weary I'm guilty. I have no resources I come in you to win the king's favor because you have won it for me God the father is not like herod And the father and son are not reluctant whatsoever but they say come They say come in Christ you have pleased me Come and more gloriously of all right the ease of pleasing the king through Jesus Christ There's only one master What would it be like my friends to live in such a way that you knew That your heart was deeply persuaded As far as you could go down that there was only one master He had to please in life The one master who had both the will to safeguard you and the power to do and that they would meet together in Jesus Christ As his greatest guarantee of that What would that be like how would that free you in your relationships with people
But not only is it easy to please the king And it doesn't cost you anything But there's there's actually a very high cost of pleasing the king It's going to sound like I'm talking on both sides of my mouth There is a very low threshold to please the king if you come to Jesus Christ As his representative as his champion for you That's all that's required But beware of what happened to James Beware of the cost of pleasing the king through Jesus Christ Because not only does it cost nothing it costs absolutely everything No area of life is withheld The only reasonable response to the reality of what God's done in Christ Is that all of our lives is owned by him more than any master Not only is he easier than any earthly master But he also asks for more than any earthly master James's fate is a very sobering reminder This is the first time that an apostle has been martyred James who was one of the sons of thunder He was the apostle John's brother James who was there at the beginning of Jesus' ministry James who was there at the transfiguration in Mark 9 James was there in the Garden of Guestemini James who was in the inner circle of Jesus' followers Now is is killed
And we should learn from that that we should not expect deep devotion to Jesus Christ to build friendship with the world Our expectations need to be adjusted James's death reminds us that the cost of growing closer to Jesus Christ is that you're going to move away from the world There's going to be a point at which friendship with the world is no longer possible You're going to be in the world but the world is not going to like you As we move away from the world in loyalty to Jesus Christ The world is not going to be happy Just as it wasn't with James The world seeks our friendship But a very definite and very conditional terms The world does not appreciate it when we begin to move out of its orbit And the closer you get to Jesus Christ the less the world will approve of you So not only should we be freed from the world Okay By the vision of pleasing and having pleased in Christ the only true King But we should recognize what we have to expect from the world Don't don't go to the world expecting to gain favor that Jesus said it was going to deny you Listen to what Jesus said Matthew 10 22 you will be hated By all because of my name
You will be hated by all because of my name but it is the one who has endured to the end Who will be saved John 15 18 through 19 If the world hates you You know that it has hated me before it hated you If you were of the world the world would love its own But because you are not of the world But I chose you out of the world because of this the world hates you
The fighting line I think for survival is right there God's voice his approval and disapproval must loom larger than the worlds in our lives and that means that God that will only happen if God's Value looms larger in our minds and hearts than the world's value in the end What it means to know Christ I think is to understand that the world's approval in the end means absolutely nothing You can buy nothing that lasts with the world's approval Nothing Not safety Not well-being Not comfort Not health And certainly not Citizenship in the kingdom of heaven But the favor and approval of God means everything If we know Jesus Christ Truly we will by his own promises like the Apostle James experience losses and limits in many relationships And in many situations because of our allegiance to him many of you are probably experiencing that right now friends Family members neighbors parents children Professional associations will be compromised and in perhaps we may ultimately end up where James ended up That's the ultimate expression right of the world's disapproval is it kills you
But friends the kingdom of God has come and I call you to faith in what you cannot see The world's approval or disapproval is totally powerless in the universe The ultimate expression of the world's disapproval is weak Because God has enthroned the world through its disapproval and What it means that someone who is totally powerless has the approval of God in their lives sets them above and beyond anything That the world can ever take away because it means that you have God himself No matter what we lose We will not and we cannot ever lose God if Jesus Christ has given him to us listen to the words of Hebrews 13 5 and 6 For he himself has said I will never desert you nor will I ever force a cue So that we confidently say the Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid. What shall man do to me? Let's pray Father God now we thank you For your favor towards your people in Jesus Christ And I pray father for us that you would grant that our insecurities Would be vanquished and our hearts totally healed by Your superior verdict in Jesus Christ over our lives. I pray father that your favor For us as his blood but children would sweep into every corner of our lives That it would uproot every poisonous tree A father of addiction to the approval of others And that you would plant there totally different seeds the seeds of your kingdom father That would give us a readiness to go outside the camp A willing a witness that having received your favor in Christ We would be willing to bear the reproach of the world And so show ourselves a father to be those united to Christ. I pray for that This is so hard for us Father set captives free so that we do not fall into the folly of Herod and the people from tyrant side and do not allow us To stay beholden to lesser kings who have neither the will nor the power to care for us as you do We pray in Jesus name. Amen