Acts 12:5 – Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him.

Acts 12:6 – And when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains: and the keepers before the door kept the prison.

Acts 12:7 – And, behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison: and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands.

Acts 12:8 – And the angel said unto him, Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals. And so he did. And he saith unto him, Cast thy garment about thee, and follow me.

Acts 12:9 – And he went out, and followed him; and wist not that it was true which was done by the angel; but thought he saw a vision.

Acts 12:10 – When they were past the first and the second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city; which opened to them of his own accord: and they went out, and passed on through one street; and forthwith the angel departed from him.

Acts 12:11 – And when Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I know of a surety, that the Lord hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews.

Hello readers, thanks for reading this blog. I hope you’ve had a good week. The year is flying by now and in Adelaide we are on the verge of Spring after a decent winter. So much for global warming right! I hope this blog is a blessing to you, hopefully you give it a good read and get pointed to the Lord in it. Honestly, just like with all blogs, I’ll barely touch the hem of the garment of this chapter. There’s so much in here. The Bible is an infinite resource, we are so blessed to have his more sure word in our very hands no less, our hands have handled of the Word of life as 1 John says. Anyway here we go, in Acts 12 is the story of Peter getting miraculously delivered from prison. Are you in a prison reader? Maybe you don’t even realize you are in a prison. Peter was asleep in his prison when God found him in this story. And sure, your prison may not be physical… and hopefully not so, but the even worse prisons in our life are spiritual prisons, a place Satan has got us in our lives where we are stuck and chained up in darkness and not going anywhere at all. We have no freedom, we have no deliverance, no liberty, no life, no purpose, no light… our lives are dark, lost, helpless and hopeless.

Prisons are horrible places. Peter found himself in chains in a dark place, and in a dark spot in his life. It’s a dark place when we are in our prison. I’ve had and have a few prisons in my own life. Prisons that keep us from going anywhere in life, that keep us from trusting God, that keep us from walking as a free child of God. Prisons that are bondage, bondage to sin, bondage to fear… why be in a prison when you can be set free by Jesus Christ? Well, Satan wants to imprison us just as Herod imprisoned Peter. Satan wants to keep us in our little cell chained up in our heads and minds and hearts and souls and spirit. But that’s not where God wants us. Often the enemy really looks like they’re always going to win in our life. They seem to have all the power. Herod seemingly had all the power. What chance did Peter have? Hey this Christian life requires the power of God. I can’t save myself, I can’t deliver myself and I can’t live the Christian life without God supplying the grace and power. Deliverance from our prisons takes a miracle, it takes the illumination and power of the Holy Spirit of God in our lives. You’re not going to be able to do life without the Holy Spirit really being there in your life, leading you, freeing you, guiding you and taking you all the way to heaven. So often we live spiritually dead mindless lives, even Christians, and that’s why we have no deliverance, because we need a real Saviour and a real salvation to get out of the real prison we are in. Dead religion just ain’t gonna get it done.

Whats stopping you from being free in your life, what’s stopping you from being free to follow God? To serve him? To bring glory and praise to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ? What’s stopping you from believing on Jesus Christ and living a life serving God? What’s stopping your victory over sin? If you are unsaved, you are in the prison of sin. Make no mistake about that. Satan’s got you, you’re as chained as Peter was, and you aren’t going anywhere, and the sentence of death is on you. It was on Peter. He was a dead man in Herod’s estimation, he was being held to be killed. He was a living dead man, and that’s the lost unsaved sinner’s state. That prison is keeping you… for death. We don’t realize prisons aren’t just bad places in life here and now, they’re also holding you back from getting saved and delivered and set free. This world doesn’t want the deliverance Jesus freely gives. How stupid can you be to reject forgiveness of sin, a purged conscience, guilt taken away… and eternal life? It’s mind blowing isn’t it. How many people don’t get saved and don’t believe because they’re chained so very fast in their prison of sin. If you are saved today, you were given life and set free by Jesus Christ… but often our life is chains and death and it ought not be so. When we depart from truth, when we get into sin, when we get entangled in the world, when we go our own way, when we live in the power and energy of our flesh… well we can end up in prison. And instead of soaring like an eagle, we’re instead in chains in our prison.

Christians sure do get into prison. Satan and this world wants to stop Christians from growing in faith and impacting the world. That’s why Herod killed James and chucked Peter in prison. The gospel had been spreading, the church was growing, and here comes Satanic opposition and oppression. Whenever God is at work, Satan is also there to resist. We can so easily and quickly get taken captive by the devil. And before we know it, we are in prison where we have no freedom, no liberty, no life, we’re in darkness and we’re chained. Lust is a prison. Pride is a prison. Our flesh is a prison. We end up in prison in our minds, when we should be set free to serve righteousness we are instead bound by guilt, by a defiled conscience, by a life that is in the vice of sin. We can find ourselves in all sorts of prisons that God wants to deliver us from. But he didn’t create us to be prisoners, and he doesn’t want us to be in prison… but yet here we are in chains.

Well, the angel of the Lord came and found Peter in his prison. The Christian life takes the power of God to start, continue and to finish. We need the Lord’s deliverance. And we never stop needing it. We have no power to deliver ourselves from our prison. What we need is some light in our prison. And light came flooding in in the night. It also shows the power of prayer, because people were praying for Peter, so often our lives aren’t paved with prayer. But here’s something a bit weird, the angel smote Peter! Wow, you wouldn’t think that’s what Peter needed in his dark chained place in life. But it’s exactly what he needed. To wake him up. And that’s sometimes that’s really what we need. We need a rude awakening. We need to snap out of our spiritual sleep. We need to wake up in our lives. The only way that’s going to happen is God smiting us. That’s when the Holy Spirit rebukes our sin, where someone who really loves us tells us the truth that we don’t want to hear but really need to hear. You see, we get comfortable and fall asleep in our prison. I mean, we spend long enough time in our prison and we get to preferring it in prsion, we don’t know how to live free. People often can’t live outside of prison when they been in it so long. Satan jails us, and we live our life out our cell. We know our limits, we never have freedom and liberty that God gives us to serve him, follow him, obey him, and live a victorious life and have a testimony of his deliverance toward others.

The angel said arise, and those chains fell right off. Imagine that. Peter didn’t need to do anything to them. He didn’t need his file and a lock pick. They fell off. You know a lot of things just fall of when we get saved which God just made fell off. It was a miracle. The guilt, the shame, the penalty of sin… all just fell off when we simply humbled ourselves and repented. So often we are trying to unchain ourselves, and we despair because the chains we find ourselves in have no fleshly solution. Our flesh can’t deliver us from our prison. Our flesh got us there. Salvation is a rising, because we are dead in sins, but then get risen with Christ when we believe on him. Sin has had us asleep, but God wants to put us on our own feet. In this woke world, the true awakening we need is the spiritual awakening that only the Holy Spirit can supply in the mind and heart of individuals and nations. Well, Peter got up and girded himself, he put on his sandals, and he put his garment on. We need to get things back together with God’s help in our lives. Satan’s taken many things off us. He’s taken our resolve, our walk, our faith. We need to put some things back on. To get out our jail, we need to get some truth back into our lives, we need to put back on things that we should never have put off… we need to get the cross back central to our lives, we need to get repentance and truth and humility and brokenness back in. God doesn’t want you sleeping, he wants you up and going, and walking right out that prison you’re in.

By the way, the angel of the Lord said arise up quickly. See, don’t put it off. When you hear truth, do something with it then and there. Don’t let Satan steal it from you. Today is the day of salvation. Imagine if Peter had said, not now I’m sleeping, can you come back in a few hours? Also, quickly is just how quick the Holy Spirit saves a sinner. When you believe on Jesus Christ, God saves you instantly. It’s not a process, it’s not a life of earning salvation, when you call upon Jesus Christ with a repentant heart, he’ll save you then and there and change your life in that same moment.

Peter couldn’t believe what was happening. He was in a bit of a dream. It can be like that can’t it. It’s unbelievable when you’re saved, when God sets you free. It’s just unbelievable. He couldn’t believe it could be and possible and so simple. He couldn’t believe he was free. It was all done for him. You know your freedom from sin, from it’s penalty, from it’s power and it’s presence is all done for us. So often we are fighting a losing battle because instead of simple childlike faith, we’re trying to be religious, we’re living the Christian life in our own energy rather than calling upon God for power and deliverance, rather than walking a life that springs out of a heart faith in his word, his promises. Those same promises he also performs. Often we don’t believe the gospel because it’s unbelievable that the solution can be that simple. The solution to our prison is the gospel of Jesus Christ. He comes and finds us. We are all lost sheep that needed finding and saving. All we have to do is believe in him. Simply believing in Jesus Christ’s deliverance that he extends freely to us. Peter experienced God’s grace. Peter experienced a miracle, a miracle that can be yours today to get out of that dark dungeon you’re stuck in in life. We don’t have the ability to get out our prisons, but Jesus has the power as the risen Saviour, who ever lives to make intercession for us… he has the power to deliver you.

Well, on the way out, Peter came to a big old iron gate. This is really what I want to talk about today. So often in life, our lives are stopped and guarded by a big iron gate. That gate that looks closed, that’s heavy and mighty, that means we can never leave. There’s a gate that we just can’t go through in life to be finally free. There’s a gate that keeps us in. It’s like a mountain that looms up before us which we can’t cross. The iron gate seemed impossible. And the gate that keeps our prison… well God’s just going to make it swing open of it’s own accord for you. We have sin in our lives that we just can’t beat. Problems in our lives that seemingly have no answer. I’m never going to get past that. I’m never going to get through that. We’re in our prison and we don’t see the door to our prison that’s been opened already, and the chains that God’s taken off us. In serving God, there is a big iron gate between us and sharing the gospel with others, but we start talking to them and wonder why we ever doubted. Peter did doubt, but he went through.

After Peter went through this gate he said now I know. Jesus Christ is never going to be real to you until you’ve stepped out in faith. Until you’ve believed his word and decided to obey, to walk in that faith in life. Then you’ll know. Because when that big iron gate swings open of his own accord for you, you’ll know of a truth deep in your soul that his word is truth, that Jesus Christ truly lives and has all power in heaven and earth. The reason people don’t know is because they don’t have a real faith, and they don’t step into the flowing flooding Jordan by faith. They may have intellectual and head knowledge, but there’s no heart faith. There’s no reality, there’s no substance… faith is the substance remember in Hebrews 11. They don’t have a proven tested faith. See, God let Peter get into his prison… so that Peter’s faith would be proven, so he would know Jesus Christ even more, so God would get the glory. You think Peter grew in faith in this chapter?

Prisons in our lives are for God’s glory people. Because when he sets you free, you really can do what Peter wrote of in 1 Peter 2:9 … that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. You think Peter saw marvellous light that night in his prison? When the glory of God shone in on his life? He sure did. You can get out your prison through Jesus Christ, through simply trusting him, through simply going through the gate that swings open before you of it’s own accord. You’ll realize Satan can’t keep you, his power is gone. Such a big gate stops us from ever going out our prisons of lust, of pride, of fear, of sin. Why did we ever doubt, why do we ever depart from the God who has gloriously saved us, who’s called us out of our dark prison into his marvelous light. You can have the deliverance Peter has, Jesus Christ came to save you, he came to set you free, and he will do that if you call upon his name in sincerity and truth today.

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