Jerusalem Finally Rejects the Apostles, Kingship Ceases in Israel, And The Word Of God Goes On Multiplying (12:1-24).
The new centre for world evangelisation having been set up (unknowingly at the time) at Antioch, Luke wants us to know that the old will now be dispensed with. The message of chapter 12 is simple. Jerusalem was faced with the choice between a new ‘king of Israel' appointed by Rome, but beloved to their hearts, and the Messiah sent by God. This was not just the case of another tyrant whom they did not want. This was a king whom they respected and loved. And so they chose the king sent by Rome, and sought to destroy those who represented the King sent from God and enthroned in heaven. The result will be that Peter ‘departs for another place', the king is smitten for blasphemy and Jerusalem will no longer be required in furthering God's purposes.
The point is being emphasised here that, as had their fathers of old, they have chosen a Roman appointed self-exalting king-god, and rejected the God-appointed, God-exalted Holy and Righteous One. The words of Stephen are being borne out yet again.
In order to consider this chapter in context we shall once again consider the plan of the first part of Acts which leads up to it. In chapter 1 we analysed the first twelve Chapter s as follows. It will be noted that they follow out a telling chiastic pattern:
a Jesus speaks of the things concerning the Kingly Rule of God (Acts 1:3). He is asked, ‘Lord will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? (Acts 1:6). His reply indicates that God's present concern was to be the establishment of the Kingly Rule of God throughout the world in accordance with the teaching of Jesus, through the preaching of the word. Any other idea of a kingdom was to be left with God.
b He declares the Great Commission - they are to be His witnesses and the Good News is to be taken to the uttermost parts of the world, and the resulting preparations for this are described (Acts 1:7-26).
c Through the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus, life is given to the people of God at Pentecost. God is revealed as among His own new people (Acts 12:2).
d Through Peter's ministry the lame man is made to leap like a deer indicating that Messianic expectation is being fulfilled (Acts 12:3).
e Persecution comes under the High Priest and its results are described, resulting in the proclamation and further revelation of the Messiah (Acts 12:4-5).
f Within this scenario comes sin within the church - Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11).
g The ministry of the Hellenist Stephen (Acts 12:6).
h The pivotal speech of Stephen and his martyrdom (Acts 12:7).
g The ministry of the Hellenist Philip (Acts 12:8).
f Within this scenario comes sin within the church - Simon the Sorcerer (Acts 8:18-24).
e Persecution comes under the High Priest and its results are described, resulting in the further proclamation of the Messiah (Acts 9:1-31).
d Through Peter's ministry the paralysed man is made to walk (Acts 9:32-35).
c Through the resurrection, life is given to Tabitha - and to Joppa - God is revealed as among His people (Acts 9:36-42).
b The Good News goes out to the Gentiles confirming that God has given to the Gentiles ‘repentance unto life' (Acts 9:43 to Acts 11:30).
a Israel choose their last and final earthly king who is destroyed because of blasphemy (thus following the ancient pattern) and because he has attacked the Kingly Rule of God and rebelled against God's Messiah. The kingdom is definitely not to be physically restored to Israel, and Jerusalem itself is now no longer important in God's saving purposes (Acts 12:12).
It will be noted that in ‘a' the proclamation of the Kingly Rule of God is emphasised, with the instruction that they should ignore the idea of an earthly Kingdom, and in the parallel in chapter 12 the Kingly Rule of God is contrasted with a physical earthly Kingdom of Israel, a Kingdom whose king is brought into judgment and whose people are rejected. God will not at this time restore the kingdom to Israel. In ‘b' the commission is to go as witnesses to the end of the earth and in the parallel the Good News has been offered to the Gentiles who have been granted ‘repentance unto life' with the result that a large church has been established in Antioch.
It is clear therefore that according to Luke's literary pattern, and by comparison of ‘a' with ‘a', chapter 12 is closely related to both the idea of the Kingly Rule of God being promulgated by the Apostles as described in chapter 1, and to the idea of a setting up of an earthly kingdom in Israel, which takes place here under Herod. Two ideas of kingship are in opposition. And this is evidenced by the attacks on the Apostles whose position as representatives of the true Messiah can be contrasted with the rule of ‘Herod the king', which is a false attempt at the restoration of the physical kingdom by the Jews. Theoretically it could have been a triumph. The king could have recognised the Messiah (Psalms 110:1) and the Kingly Rule of God could have been given a physical dimension. But it was not to be so. Jerusalem wanted anything rather than its Messiah.
As a result Israel's physical king then sought to destroy the representatives of the true King, the Messiah, and the true Kingly Rule of God, in order to try to prop up and establish his own kingdom under the old Israel. It was Satan's further attempt to set up his own Messiah (compare Luke 4:6). But as this chapter will reveal, the Lord will step in to rescue His own, and will destroy the Usurper, from then on dispensing with the services of Jerusalem. From now on Jerusalem will drop out of the frame, the hope of the earthly kingdom will cease, and the outreach to the world will take over as being what is of prime importance, carried out through the Holy Spirit from centres such as Syrian Antioch, which has already been prepared as a full functioning church ready for takeover (Acts 11:19-30).
It is true that the facts of history prevent Luke from dropping Jerusalem completely (while using history he never alters it to suit his purpose). He has to introduce it in chapter 15 because what is described there happened in Jerusalem, but it was there as a venue where they could establish the rules which would galvanise the Gentile mission, not as an attempt to evangelise Jerusalem or to reach out to the world. And it is later seen to be the trap by which Satan seeks to destroy Paul in chapter 21. Otherwise, as far as Luke is concerned, Jerusalem no longer has any evangelistic importance to the great commission. The main task of the church in Jerusalem was now the maintenance of the faith of those thousands of Hebrew and Pharisaic Jews who still remained (Acts 21:20) who would affect no one but themselves (except harmfully). By its acceptance of Agrippa and its rejection of the Apostles Jerusalem had made its final choice. How often Christ would have gathered them under His wings, but they would not. From now on the Good News would go out to the Gentiles, and it would start from Antioch.
The chapter begins by revealing that in the reign of the Emperor Claudius Israel once more had a genuine king. His name was Herod Agrippa I and he now ruled over all Palestine, over the equivalent of ‘Israel', with the given title of ‘King'. Although he was a grandson of Herod the Great, and had spent much of his time growing up in Rome, (where he had had a doubtful past), he was the first recent king who was pleasing to the Jews, and that was because his grandmother was Mariamne, who was descended from the Maccabees, and he was therefore seen as a Hasmonean. In turn he himself sought to please the Jews and piously observed the Jewish faith in accordance with the tenets of the Pharisees, and at the same time defrayed the costs of large numbers of Nazirites. Josephus eulogised him, and expressed the views of most Jews when he said, ‘It was his pleasure to reside continually in Jerusalem, and he meticulously observed the precepts of his fathers. He neglected no rite of purification, and not a day passed without its appointed sacrifice.' (This behaviour was for home consumption. He behaved differently when abroad).
The Mishnah also portrays him as a king approved by the people. It describes an incident when he was performing the reading of the Law at the Feast of Tabernacles, saying, “King Agrippa received it (the scroll) standing, and read it standing, and for this the Sages praised him. And when he reached, ‘You may not put a foreigner (he was half-Edomite) over you who is not your brother' (Deuteronomy 17:15) his eyes flowed with tears, but they called out to him, ‘You are our brother, you are our brother, you are our brother'.” (M Sotah Acts 7:8). Thus it is clear that they who rejected the trueborn Messiah according to the Law, were willing to ignore the Law and accept a half-Jewish king contrary to the Law. It is illustrative of the continual attitude of the Jews in those days.
The growth of his rulership, which built up gradually, commenced with his ruling territory north east of Palestine. It then continued with the taking over of Galilee and Peraea under Gaius (Caligula), whom he had known in his youth and to whom he had given support, and was further augmented by the rulership of Judaea and Samaria, given to him by Claudius, whom he had aided in his bid to become emperor. (He was good at wooing the right people). His reign and seeming piety probably stirred up many hopes in Israel of the possible arrival of the Messianic kingdom, for he was the first recent king that they had really been willing to acknowledge, and they loved him for his seeming love of Israel.
This now meant that in Jerusalem two kings were in competition. There were two rival claimants to the loyalty of Israel. The first was Jesus through His Apostles. He had been declared Messiah and Lord, and His Apostles had been seeking to bring men under His Kingly Rule for a number of years, and had been working vigorously in Jerusalem to that end. They wanted Him ‘crowned' as King of Jerusalem. The other was King Agrippa I, one of Satan's upraising as his final end shows, who would begin to seek vigorously to dispose of the Apostles of the Messiah Who was claiming Jerusalem. And Jerusalem had to choose between them as to whom they would have to reign over them.
In Acts 1:6 Jesus had been asked, ‘Lord, will you at this time restore the kingship to Israel?' And Jesus had simply pointed out to them that what God would do in the future, and when, was at that time no business of theirs. But now a physical kingship had arisen over Israel, one that was accepted by most of the people, and it faced all Jerusalem with a stark choice, Christ or Agrippa.
In the face of the choice Jerusalem did not sit on the fence. It made its selection. And its selection meant that it chose Agrippa and rejected Christ, and therefore encouraged the execution of the Apostles. This comes out in that for the first time since the initial outreach, it is the people as well as the leaders who approved the targeting and slaying of the Apostles and revealed their willingness to uphold Agrippa in doing so.
But Luke points out that as soon as ‘Herod the king' began to target those of the twelve Apostles who were in Jerusalem, and slew the first one, (as with Stephen, Satan was only allowed one of the leaders), things began to go wrong for him. Such opposition to God could only have one result, and after being humiliated by the rescue of Peter by a Greater than he, Herod Agrippa withdrew from Jerusalem and was himself finally destroyed. His reign had proved a false dawn. His kingdom was revealed to be like the kingdom that had been offered to Jesus by Satan, which He had turned down (Luke 4:6), earthly and based on false and unenduring premises. And the consequence was that from now on Jerusalem became almost ignored as far as evangelism was concerned. It had indicated its final rejection of the Messiah. It had made itself impossible as a source for the evangelising of the world.
So Jerusalem had failed to recognise that God's everlasting kingdom, promised to the prophets, could not be of this world, as Jesus had clearly told Pilate (John 18:36). This should have been obvious, for if it was earthly it could neither be heavenly nor everlasting. But as Stephen had already pointed out they clung too much to physical things and failed as ever in the recognition of God's Saviour. The truth now was that the Kingly Rule of God must rather be eternal, and therefore enjoyed in the presence of God in the Beyond, with the picture presented by the prophets being fulfilled in a deeper dimension, in spirit rather than in word (compare John 4:21-24), as a result of the resurrection, and man's final reception of the spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:44; compare Isaiah 26:19, the latter still thinking of a physical body).
Yet even today there are some who want to hold on to the dream of a Millennial earthly kingdom, an idea nowhere mentioned in the New Testament. But it is only a dream, and it simply arises from a literalism with regard to Old Testament prophecies which could never be fulfilled, and if taken literally as a whole is merely contradictory. Consider what they tell us. Outside the Temple the wolf will dwell with the lamb, the calf with the young lion, and the leopard with the kid, the children will be playing with the asp. There will be no shedding of blood. All is at peace. Meanwhile, it is only the children's fathers, inside the Temple, who unaware of this idyll outside. They will be shedding gallons of blood and butchering animals galore, and these not as genuine offerings and sacrifices as the Old Testament demands and as the prophets prophesied if taken literally, but as a totally unscriptural and unnecessary ‘memorial offering' with no atoning purpose, and described as such nowhere in the Old Testament or the New. That is the illogical picture demanded by extreme literalism. But as will be observed, they do not treat the text literally after all, for as soon as they come to a problem like the sacrifices and offerings they begin to alter their significance to suit their purpose, imagining things the prophets never dreamed of. Perhaps we should thus have said that theirs was a nightmare and not a dream. What we need to recognise is that all such prophecies were pointing forward to greater spiritual realities, in the same way as the Jerusalem and heavenly garden in Revelation 21-22.
But turning back to this solemn chapter it is clear that Luke, by his use of the material in the way in which he does use it, is seeking to indicate that Jerusalem has hereby forfeited its last chance. Its kingship has died horribly, it has rejected the Apostles, who have left it ‘for another place', and thus apart from the small, rather inward looking Jewish Christian church, whose light glows on but is relatively dim, (there are no signs and wonders, although healing by the anointing with oil goes on - James 5:14), Jerusalem is left with no witness to that Kingly Rule of God which it has rejected by its rejection of the Apostles. From this time on the Apostles will no more be depicted as openly witnessing in Jerusalem. No more will signs and wonders be described as taking place there. From this chapter onwards there will be no further thought of massive outreach and evangelism, or signs and wonders in or from Jerusalem. It will be as though all such had ceased. Rather, in Acts, the only use for Jerusalem will be as a base where the Apostles and elders come together in order to agree decisions with the Jerusalem church for the benefit of the Gentiles (Acts 15:1-29), and as a snare with which Satan seeks to entrap the Apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 21:17 onwards), although with the assurance that the Jerusalem church itself continues to flourish (Acts 21:20).
It is not, of course, strictly true to say that all witness immediately died in Jerusalem, but there can be no doubt that it had grown less strident. Some of the Apostles did gather there from where they were ministering when called on to do so (Acts 15:2; Acts 15:6), but only Peter and James, the Lord's brother, are actually mentioned as being there, while by Acts 21:18 it certainly seems that only James, the Lord's brother, remained, and he as a very Jewish Christian in a position of leadership in the Jewish Jerusalem church. He was held in high respect by both Christian and Jew, and after the death of Jesus was heir to the throne of David, which while it had no practical relevance, would give him standing in Jerusalem. He was very Jewish as a Christian, continuing the practise of circumcision, demanding conformity to the whole law by Jewish Christians in accordance with general Pharisaic teaching, stressing Sabbath keeping on the Jewish pattern, and observing worship and daily prayer in the Temple (in other words continuing very much like Jesus had while living on earth). However, he remained true to the Gospel as his letter makes clear.
He was to be martyred by an angry crowd as a result of the jealousy of the High Priest Ananus, at a time of Roman inter-regnum, a martyrdom which the Pharisees, who admired James' religious fervour, strongly opposed, but such persecution was rare. And that was probably because the church in Jerusalem became smaller and more inward looking, with those who wanted to enjoy the freedom of the Gospel going elsewhere, and ever more accommodating to its Jewish neighbours, burdened down by its need to satisfy the full requirements of the Law (Acts 21:20), its submission to circumcision, and its loyalty to the Temple which remained paramount, although these no doubt continued along with its belief in Christ and presumably the maintenance of baptism and the Lord' Supper, which were now its only distinguishing features. By remaining so Jewish it escaped much persecution, which only arose spasmodically in exceptional circumstances, but its witness was thereby more limited. And finally it fled to Pella prior to the final invasion of Jerusalem, where as far as we know it died a slow and lingering death, although clinging on for centuries as an oddity, and possibly dividing up into two (or more) sections, the Nazarenes who continued to be very legalistic but remained in fellowship with the worldwide church and believed in the virgin birth, and the Ebionites who were also heavily legalistic, but became seen as heretics because of their rejection of the virgin birth and some lack in their teaching about Christ. They both clung to a Hebrew ‘Gospel of Matthew'. It must be recognised, however, that the information we have is scanty and based on unreliable information, with its detail not certain, for the groups were isolated and mainly ignored for centuries.
However, returning to chapter 12, it must surely be seen as significant that once this chapter is completed, apart from the gathering of the Apostles and prophets to consider the question of what Gentiles should be required to observe of Jewish Law in chapter 15 and Paul's last abortive visit, Jerusalem fades from the scene. In the beginning of Acts everything had centred on Jerusalem, but from now on it ceased to be the centre of the ongoing of the word. As far as Luke is concerned it has descended into insignificance. That privilege now goes to Syrian Antioch. Luke seems to be saying that Jerusalem has had its opportunity, and is now dropped. The Good News is to go to the rest of the world, but it will no longer be from Jerusalem. We could apply to it the words of Paul in Acts 18:6. Jerusalem is put aside. Only its church lives on.
At the same time Jerusalem's final attempt at establishing a kingdom of God in Israel is also seen as having collapsed. It is as though in this chapter the earthly city and the earthly kingdom are being written off as far as Luke is concerned, as a result of their having finally taken their decision to slay those who are the foundation of God's everlasting future (Ephesians 2:20; Revelation 21:14). It is a signal that Christians must no longer look to the earthly Jerusalem, but to the Jerusalem which is above (Galatians 4:25-26; compare Hebrews 12:22 - where the heavenly Jerusalem is the city of the living God), and to the everlasting Kingly Rule of God ruled over by Jesus Christ in heavenly glory, in which they now partake, and in which they will rejoice hereafter. This is what the first eleven chapter of Acts have led up to. And to the question, ‘will you now restore the kingdom to Israel?' they receive the firm answer, ‘No!' (See the analysis above). And we could add, ‘and Jerusalem no longer counts in the purposes of God'.
With regard to Herod Agrippa I and his behaviour which we must now examine, it is clear that the animosity of the Pharisees and Sadducees towards the Jewish church must have contributed heavily towards it, together possibly with the fact that Christians were said to follow a Messiah and be looking for the Kingly Rule of God. This would have been enough in itself to set him against Christians, but his desire to ingratiate himself with the Jews as a whole no doubt increased his willingness even more. And this may well be why he began to ‘lay hands on' certain of the church on the grounds that these troublemakers needed teaching a lesson. (Even so, in spite of the dark days, ‘the word grew and multiplied' (Acts 12:24)).