Grace Bible Fellowship Meeting in the classroom next to the Gymnasium of Renew Church (formerly Florida Blvd. Baptist Church) 10915 Florida Blvd. Baton Rouge, LA 70815
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Grace Bible Fellowship 6512 Lawnridge Drive Baton Rouge, LA 70818
"On an appointed day Herod, having put on his
royal apparel, took his seat on the rostrum and began delivering an
address to them. The people kept crying out, "The voice of a
god and 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
to be multiplied." (Acts 12:21-24).
While Herod's death won't find its way on
television's "A 1000 Ways to Die," it does
present a thousand ways to preach - here are a few: First, pride
has a way of rearranging where you fit into the food chain. From
Herod controlling the food intake for Tyre and Sidon (vs. 20) to
becoming the food intake for worms is no coincidence. Pride
doesn't just come before a fall (Prov. 16:18), it determines
the downward acceleration. The greater the ego with power, the
greater the humiliation with pain - just ask Nebuchadnezzar (Dan.
4:28-33) about that law of physics.
Second, God's math isn't the same as ours;
multiplication of the word came through subtraction (vs. 2). An
angel sets Peter free, but doesn't stay the sword from James.
Why allow one apostle to die but miraculously deliver another?
Because each of us is appointed to, not only die, but die in such a
way as to bring glory to God (Jn. 21:19). Not only that, it caused
a chain of events that leads to a greater output of His kingdom:
the word grew. Tertullian, an early church father, said: "We
multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians
is the seed of the Church" (Piper, desiringgod.org).
Third, never underestimate the power of prayer. The
small house church praying with fervency (vs. 5), yet struggling
with belief (vs. 15), caused the release of an Apostle and the
death of four squads of soldiers and a king. Sometimes when we ask
for a way through the wilderness, God bulldozes a canyon down Main
Street. It's not the size of the voice but of the ear that
determines outcome.
In 1717 when France's Louis XIV died, his body lay in a
golden coffin. He had called himself the "Sun King," and
his court was the most magnificent in Europe. To dramatize his
greatness, he had given orders that during his funeral the
cathedral would be dimly lit with only a special candle set above
the coffin. As thousands waited in hushed silence, Bishop Massilon
began to speak. Then slowly reaching down, he snuffed out the
candle, saying, "Only God is great!" A lesson Herod, and
many like him today, never learned.
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