By Kenneth O. Gangel
Herod had planned an execution for that day and so, in lieu of Peter’s head, he lopped off the heads of sixteen guards. Was that the angel’s fault? God’s fault? Peter’s fault? None of the above. It was the fault of sin, particularly Herod’s sin.
It demonstrated the reality of life in an unjust world. Herod was perfectly safe in whatever he wanted to do since he had a close friendship with Gaius Caligula. Herod had been imprisoned by Tiberius Caesar and secured with an iron chain. Six months later when Caligula came to the throne, he released Herod Agrippa I and gave him a golden chain of the same weight that he wore in prison. But the sovereign God is not yet finished.
III. A Dead King and a Dynamic Church (vv. 19b-24)
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An Opportunity for Truth (vv. 19-20)
Then Herod went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there a while. He had been quarreling with the people of Tyre and Sidon; they now joined together and sought an audience with him. Having secured the support of Blastus, a trusted personal servant of the king, they asked for peace, because they depended on the king’s country for their food supply (Acts 12:19b-20).
God never boxes in the wicked until they force themselves into the box. We see that with Cain, Pharaoh, Judas, Ananias and Sapphira and many other Bible characters. Perhaps Pharaoh is the classic example against whom God didn’t really bring judgment until he had rejected truth nine times.
On the other hand, God does not necessarily remove temptation from Christians or non-Christians. I love the story about the man on a diet who one day brought a large, calorie-filled coffee cake to work. When teased by his co-workers he announced, “God wanted me to have it.” They were curious about this until he explained, “I prayed that if God wanted me to have coffee cake this morning He would give me a parking place in front of the bakery, and sure enough, on my eighth time around the block, there was a place.”
Herod’s political squabbles with the people of Tyre and Sidon after he went to Caesarea are of little interest to us except that Luke is setting up another execution, and it won’t be a disciple. It must be a terrible thing to come to the end of an ungodly life. The great poet Lord Byron wrote his last poem when he was 36 and titled it “Upon My Thirty-Sixth Birthday.” In it he wrote,
My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flower and the fruits of love are gone.The worm, the canker, and the grief