How are Christians supposed to respond to really, really bad guys, especially those in positions of leadership?
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How are Christians supposed to respond to really, really bad guys, especially those in positions of leadership? Welcome to the podcast with your host, Craig T. Owens. Craig's new book, When Sheep Bite, is available now at CraigTowens.com. In Acts chapter 12, we meet a man named King Herod. Now, that name might sound familiar to you because we run into several people that are named King Herod throughout the New Testament. They're not necessarily all the same guy, but they all come from the same family line, a family that was ruthless and unscrupulous and stooped to just about any levels that they could to maintain their hold on power. Now they were in power, not because they came from the family line of King David. They were in power because somebody in Rome placed them in their position of leadership. Even the Jewish leadership didn't care for them too much because of their family lineage. They were Edomites. And so they were very repulsive to the Jewish leadership that they were in these positions. And they held onto their position of authority by any means that they could. Sometimes they stabbed people in the back, literally, they killed their own family members. Sometimes it was through incest. Sometimes it was through deception. They did whatever they could to maintain their power. In fact, take a look at this family line. It starts with King Herod the Great. We see him on the scene at the time that Jesus is born. You'll notice that there are three of his sons who were executed. That's Herod killed his own sons. He was also the one who tried to have Jesus killed shortly after he was born. But you'll notice in here as well a family line where you have an uncle married to a niece and then he convinces that niece to divorce her husband while he divorced his wife. And then they got married. That led to the execution of John the Baptist because he spoke out against that marriage and talked about how illicit that was. You see brother and sister married to each other in this family line as well. But the Herod that I'm talking about is the one that is called Herod Agrippa the first. This guy decided that to curry favor with the Jews. He said it appears that the Jewish leadership is in conflict with these upstart Christians. And so he took one of the leaders, James, the brother of John, who had been one of the original 12 apostles of Jesus and he had him executed. And then when he saw that he got some attaboys from the Jewish leadership, he said, well, I'm going to continue this. And so he grabbed Peter, the apostle Peter, also one of the original 12 apostles and he put him in prison and we read in Acts chapter 12 that Herod had plans for him that he was going to abuse him, mock him, make a spectacle of him and ultimately have him executed as well. So Peter's in prison while he's in prison. I want you to notice what the church isn't doing during this time. They're not complaining among themselves. They're not starting a campaign, a petition to try to pull Herod down. They could have appealed to the Romans. They could have gotten the Jews on their side and said, look, we don't really like this guy either. Let's do something about it. Let's make a big noise. Nope. We don't see any of that. Instead, what Luke writes for us is that the church was praying hard for Peter while he was in prison. That's it. They were praying for Peter. They were in a house, not even praying publicly. They were praying privately in a house for Peter's release and God heard the prayer and he responded and sent an angel and Peter was miraculously delivered from prison. In fact, they were so surprised that when Peter showed up at the house and was knocking at the door, they could hardly believe that it was actually Peter that was there. But he came in and he explained to them, he said, here's what happened and I'm going to move away to a safe place now. I kind of need to get out of the reach of King Herod Agrippa so that he doesn't arrest me again. Later on, I want you to see what Peter wrote when he's writing back to the church because he still has this incident in mind. Undoubtedly, he carries this with him the rest of his life. But listen to what he writes to the church. He says, show proper respect to everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God and honor the emperor. Now, he might have still had King Herod Agrippa in mind, but specifically now he's talking about the Roman emperor Nero who might have been more ruthless than the entire Herod family put together. This is the man that later on, he's going to take Christians and burn them at the stake as torches to light his garden. He's going to be the one that actually results in the death of the apostles Peter and Paul because of his ruthlessness. And yet here's Peter telling the church to respect his area of leadership. We see the church responding in prayer throughout their history. We see it in Acts chapter four when the religious leaders told them not to speak about the name of Jesus anymore. Don't tell people about that. They went to prayer and said, give us boldness to continue to share about prayer. They didn't complain about them. They just prayed about them. And then we see Paul writing that to Timothy as well. He says, Timothy, it is good for us to pray for these people that are in leadership. We need to pray that God will grab ahold of their hearts. And I think that that's why it's counsel for us today. Let me go back to my original question. What do we do when there are really, really bad guys in leadership? Well, we need to follow the example that we see in Scripture. We need to pray. We need to pray for them that their hearts would be softened. See later on, Paul has a chance to speak to one of the Herod's. And that guy says to Paul, you know, you almost persuade me to be a Christian. Paul had a chance to talk to somebody who was married into the Herod family. And that guy as well was almost convinced that he should give his life to Jesus. So pray that their hearts would be softened. I think we need to pray as well for fellow Christians to be bold, like we see in Acts chapter four, where they say, we're not going to be silenced, we're going to continue to speak out. We're going to continue to preach Jesus, but you know, friends, we need to pray for ourselves as well. We need to pray that our response is an otherworldly response, that we behave ourselves like citizens of the kingdom of heaven, and that people on earth would see that we're responding differently, and it would become a testimony. It would get their attention. So let me repeat it again. How do we respond when there are really, really bad, ruthless, unscrupulous people in positions of leadership? We need to pray for them. We need to be in prayer for those people, for our nation and for ourselves that will handle this situation in a way that glorifies God. Craig's new book, When Sheep Bite, is available now. To order, go to CraigTowens.com. [Music] (gentle music)
