Prison Break

At the beginning of his message on this passage, our pastor Mark Davis asked, “Have you ever been arrested?” My pulse went up, my breathing got shallow, and I was seconds from a cold sweat. “No!” thought I. “Never!” Now, don’t get me wrong. There have been a few times when maybe I should have been, but just the thought of being locked up does its deterrent work on this generally law-abiding citizen. (Speed limits are not just suggestions, right?)

For the folks in the New Testament church, arrest was a common and dangerous reality. Accompanied by beatings, stonings and civic expulsion, arrest was an ever-present threat for Christians and often only a short-term formality preceding execution.

But why? Being a Christian wasn’t against the law. There was no Roman rule that said following Jesus was illegal. That bit of legislation wouldn’t come about for several decades. Yet the first followers of The Way often found themselves on the wrong side of the dungeon door, usually because of the ire they had caused the religious establishment in town. They were imprisoned because they kept telling everyone who would listen that Jesus was alive and that he was The Messiah.

So there they sat. Imprisoned for preaching the Gospel, the apostles were in a seemingly silenced, hopeless predicament. And you know what happened? An angel showed up in the middle of the night and set them free. I wonder if they thought they were dreaming. Maybe they were so scared they thought they had hallucinated their release. But the punch line of the account is that the angel didn’t just “turn them loose,” but also gave them instructions. “Go and stand in the temple, and speak to the people all the words of this Life.”

What? They had been arrested for preaching, freed by a direct miracle of God Almighty, walked past sleeping guards, and then told to go back to the center of town…and preach some more! But this time the audience would be different. They would wind up preaching the Gospel to the very leaders who had attacked them in the first place. They were beaten, roughed up for good measure, and then released.

How did they respond? It’s remarkable. They offered praise to God because they had been counted worthy of suffering for Christ. “And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.”

And that’s the way with the followers of Jesus, isn’t it? God is building His church in and through His faithful servants. God’s Kingdom will prevail, empowered and emboldened by the same Holy Spirit that empowered Peter and the others. Who will you tell today?