He is Able to Deliver Thee / William A. Ogden
’Tis the grandest theme through the ages rung;
’Tis the grandest theme for a mortal tongue;
’Tis the grandest theme that the world e’er sung,
“Our God is able to deliver thee.”
He is able to deliver thee,
He is able to deliver thee;
Though by sin oppressed, go to Him for rest;
“Our God is able to deliver thee.”
’Tis the grandest theme in the earth or main;
’Tis the grandest theme for a mortal strain;
’Tis the grandest theme, tell the world again,
“Our God is able to deliver thee.”
’Tis the grandest theme, let the tidings roll,
To the guilty heart, to the sinful soul;
Look to God in faith, He will make thee whole,
“Our God is able to deliver thee.”
Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. I read Acts 12:1-19:
Peter’s Miraculous Escape From Prison
1 It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. 2 He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. 3 When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. 4 After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.
5 So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.
6 The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. 7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.
8 Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. 9 Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.
11 Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating.”
12 When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. 13 Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer the door. 14 When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
15 “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
16 But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. 17 Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the brothers about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.
18 In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. 19 After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed.
My Understanding: As I prayerfully considered the words to this old hymn and then asked the Lord Jesus for insight into the truths of his word and what he would want to teach me today, I believe he said that what he wanted me to write about this morning is another “miraculous escape,” and that he has chosen to use this story of Peter’s miraculous escape from prison to illustrate the message he wants me to receive and to share from his word today. The “miraculous escape” he would have me to learn and to write about today is not in the physical realm, but in the spiritual realm. It is not an escape from a physical prison but from imprisonment to sin. Our captor is not an earthly king, but “the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient,” i.e. namely Satan (see Eph. 2:2). And, the chains are not physical chains, but are the sins in our lives that hold us captive and that keep us living defeated lives, still bound by sin’s deceitfulness.
The prince of this world, Satan, oppresses and accuses the children of God. He “arrests” us with temptations to sin and he persecutes us with his lies and his accusations against us in which he tries to convince us that there is still a question as to who ultimately is going to win this battle – Satan or God. He works on our minds and tries to make us believe that Jesus did not already win the victory for us and that we have to fight Satan off with our own resources and strength, which are weak and full of holes, and through which Satan can drive a wedge between us and Almighty God. He also tries to convince us that he is stronger than God and that we have no power or authority over him in which to shake off his “arrest.” And, so, we are led away by Satan who has taken us captive to sin once more and we become his prisoners once again. As well, we even notice that our brothers in Christ have fallen prey to his devilish schemes and many have been put to death with his sword of lies, accusations, half-truths, etc. and thus Satan then has a victory dance over us because he has convinced us that he is all powerful and that we have no choice but to yield.
Sin has now imprisoned us once more and is holding us captive to its will. The spiritual forces of darkness even serve as our captor’s guards who taunt us, who keep accusing us, and who keep feeding us lies upon lies in order to keep us bound and in prison. They may even use the fear of public exposure of our sin to keep us silent and in submission to our captors so that we adhere to their whims and their will for our lives. There may even be believers in Jesus Christ who are praying for our freedom and for us to be delivered from bondage to sin, and yet we remain chained by our captor, convinced that there is no way out of our prison and that there is no hope for deliverance.
Then, an angel of the Lord appeared to Peter and a light shone in his cell. I love this part!! This is the witness of the Holy Spirit within us shining his light on our sin, exposing it for what it is, and teaching us that there is a way out if we will choose to take it, and that Jesus has already provided the way to freedom. Then, the angel struck Peter on the side and woke him. I love this part, too, though not always at the moment that it takes place. Sometimes Jesus needs to “strike us” in order to wake us up, i.e. sometimes he will take us through hardships, discipline, trials and tribulations in order to wake us up spiritually to the reality of our chains, but greater than that, to the reality that he has already paid the price so we can go free. We don’t have to remain captive any longer to Satan and his devices.
The angel said, “Quick, get up!” And, then Peter’s chains fell off. This was a miracle of God and the chains dropped in an instant. This does not have to be a long drawn-out process. When we come to the understanding in our hearts and not just in our minds that God is all powerful, that he is more powerful than Satan, and that Jesus already won this battle for us and that all we have to do is to walk through the door that he has already provided, in an instant our chains can fall off and we can be free. We have to stop resisting Satan like an abused child with his arms folded across his face hoping to not get hit again and trying to cover all the holes so that Satan’s darts cannot get through. If this is our approach, we are bound for defeat, because we believe in our hearts that Satan can defeat us and eventually our arms will drop and he will win. Jesus provided us the way out. He set us free from sin, not just from the penalty of sin, but from the bondage to and the control of sin over our lives. And, he gave us the spiritual armor we need to put on (Peter put on his clothes and sandals) which we are to use against Satan when he tries his lies against us again.
Then, the angel told Peter to follow him. And, Jesus tells us the same thing. If we want to truly be free from the chains of sin in our lives, we have to follow Jesus Christ. This means we need to spend time with him daily in reading and studying his word and in prayer, i.e. we need to sit quietly at his feet and listen while he teaches us how to live the Christian life and how to consider ourselves dead to sin but alive unto Christ. And, then we need to obey what he tells us. If all we do is have devotions each day out of some sense of obligation or duty or perhaps even out of a sense of this taking care of our commitment to the Lord, think again. Jesus does not need our obligations, our rituals or our forms of worship. He wants us, fully surrendered to him, on the altar, not conformed any longer to the patterns of this world, but transformed by the renewing of our minds via the working of renewal of the Holy Spirit in our lives, minds and hearts. We can’t transform ourselves, in other words. This can only be done when we humble ourselves, pray, seek God’s face and turn from our wicked ways (repent). Then God will hear from heaven and will restore us and will renew us and heal us. We can’t expect to be delivered if we are still holding on to our old lives. Peter had to follow that angel and walk through that door in order to be free, and we have to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives and obey his commands if we want to truly be free, as well.
When Peter came to the realization of what had just happened to him, he was overjoyed at his freedom, and he made a declaration to himself and to God of what God had just done for him in truly setting him free. It is good if we acknowledge to God that it is truly His power at work within us that sets us free and we thank him and praise him for what he has done. Peter did that. Peter was not only rescued from the king’s clutches (Satan’s hold on our lives), but he was delivered from everything the Jewish people were anticipating. This is very significant here. We need deliverance from what other people think about us or even what we think they might think about us, too, and we need to give that all over to God, as well. There may be people in our lives who don’t believe us, who are just waiting around for us to fail again, who may even accuse us falsely and say all manner of evil against us, yet we need to not worry about what other people are going to say or think about us. We just need to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives and we need to walk through that door to freedom, never to return to our prisons again. Amen!
When Peter acknowledged to himself and to God what God had done in his life in setting him free, then he went to tell others. When Jesus sets us free, we need to do the same. Yet, even the ones who had been gathering together to pray for his freedom did not believe that he was really free. They doubted. Oh, how that is a rebuke to us who pray for God to do a mighty work in other people’s lives and then we don’t even recognize it or believe it when Jesus actually sets them free. It makes you wonder if we were truly praying in faith. Yet, Peter did not let that discourage him, and we should not let it discourage us, either, if people don’t immediately accept our testimony of freedom in Christ. Perhaps they have good reason to doubt. Perhaps this is not the first time we have come claiming that we are free when we are not truly free at all, so they have good reason to question whether it is true until we have proved it with our lives. That is ok. We should give them that time, but we should not let it discourage us. Just because we are not believed does not make it not true. We should trust God whether we get confirmation immediately from others or not.
But Peter kept knocking. When they opened the door, he motioned with his hand for them to be quiet. Peter, we can assume then, did not knock loudly and he did not pound or knock the door down with his message. He just gently and persistently kept knocking at the door of their hearts until they accepted his testimony of freedom in Christ Jesus. This did not minimize the power of the message by any means, but rather that he demonstrated his changed life through persistence over brute force. Once it was obvious that they had opened the door to faith in Peter’s message of freedom and had believed he was truly set free by the power and working of God in his life, he told them to go and to tell others.
Jesus does the same for us. He keeps knocking at our hearts’ doors for us to invite him inside to fellowship with him (See Rev. 3:19-20), because he needs to show us that he has provided the way for us to be free; and that we no longer have to give in to the chains of sin over our lives. Yet, he reminds us that those he loves he rebukes and disciplines, so we are to be earnest and repent. Once we have accepted the message of freedom in Christ by believing him, as evidenced by our own actions of changed lives, then we must go and tell others, not only how Jesus set us free, but how they, too, can be free indeed!
Spirit of the Living God / Daniel Iverson
Spirit of the Living God, fall fresh on me.
Spirit of the Living God, fall fresh on me.
Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me
Spirit of the Living God, fall fresh on me.
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