A CHRISTIAN PRISONER
‘Peter therefore was kept in prison.’
There are prisons and prisons. If we could read each other’s hearts, I am afraid we should find many a disciple needing deliverance to-day almost as much as St. Peter did on this memorable occasion. Look at this story as a picture of the deliverance which God still works for His own people in their time of need. Notice first the prisoner. Who was he? and what was his condition? Well, he was—
I. A Christian in danger.—St. Peter was in Herod’s power, that is, he was in Satan’s power, for Herod was Satan’s instrument. It is an awful reflection that Satan can use not only wicked men, but sometimes even good men to oppress Christ’s servants. Let suffering saints trodden under some insolent Herod’s heel remember St. Peter and be comforted.
II. A Christian in the dark.—Further, St. Peter was in the dark. Yes! But remember there are different kinds of darkness. There is the darkness of sin and there is the darkness of suffering. St. Peter’s was the darkness of suffering. There is a special promise for that kind of darkness (Isaiah 50:10). As a father might say to his children on a journey ‘When you come to a tunnel, sit still till you are through,’ or, as I have sometimes said to my fellow-passengers in a tunnel, ‘Look up and you will find light from above.’ As Dorothea Trudel used to say, ‘We may sit in darkness provided the darkness does not sit in us.’ Still we cannot limit the great salvation. Let the sadness be the gloom of sorrow or of sin, or what it may, at Christ’s approach the darkness turns to day.
III. A Christian asleep.—St. Peter was asleep. That was to his credit personally. Thank God he could sleep in such circumstances. It was the night before his execution, but he was sleeping as calmly as a child on its mother’s breast. How was it that he was so composed? When Sir Walter Raleigh was about to lay his head upon the block he turned to the executioner and said, ‘My friend, it matters little how the head lies so long as the heart is right.’ Yes,
‘Jesus can make a dying bed
As soft as downy pillows are.’
That was the secret of Peter’s tranquillity. His heart was right. But Peter’s sleep on the eve of his execution is a picture of a very different sort of sleep too. Is it not a sad reflection that many souls still are both in prison and asleep? Some men, it has been well said, use the doctrines of the Gospel as a man does his bedclothes—they wrap themselves up in them, and you hear no more about them. How is it with us? (Ephesians 5:14).
IV. A Christian in chains.—St. Peter was not only asleep, he was bound between two soldiers, and his guards must answer for him with their lives. It seemed a hopeless case enough. There were the fetters and the foes and the fortress. How could he escape? There were the fetters—what are they? Christian, you know what they are—the chains of your besetting sin, the chains of evil habit, the chains of lust and pride and worldly conformity and the like. Have you been set free from these? And then still subtler bonds, silken and slender, almost invisible sometimes—the love of praise, the love of ease, the love of gold, what are these? Are these not fetters? Then the foes, the guards who stand sentry at the gates—are they not real? Sometimes in this struggle to escape from prison a man’s foes are ‘they of his own household’ (Matthew 10:36). The old companions, the worldly friends, yes, they may be foes indeed. Last, not least, the fortress, the great wall of circumstance that hems you round, the circle in which you move.
Are any of us really free? (John 8:26).
Rev. E. W. Moore.