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This old-world story is full of encouragement and instruction for the men today. It teaches —

I. GOD KNOWS ALL ABOUT HIS CHILDREN. Beyond the bare fact of Peter's arrest, the disciples were in profound ignorance. The secrets of the Roman prison house were well kept. But God kept watch over Peter, knew in what cell he was confined, the names of his guards, and just where, when, and how to send His angel. Peter had no occasion to feel solitary or forsaken. God's children are never alone. The shipwrecked sailor adrift on a spar in mid-ocean; the traveller lost in the trackless desert; the pauper dying in the attic with no friend to speak a word of comfort — all these, if they are God's children, are cheered by His presence. Human experience is so full of enforced solitudes that this is the most precious of all truths. Our recognised afflictions are not the hardest to bear. The tears we shed in secret, the disappointments of which we never speak, the sorrowful hearts which we hide under smiling faces — these are the things that test and strain the fibre of manhood. It greatly helps us to bear troubles like these, to remember that God knows all about them.

II. GOD KEEPS HIMSELF INFORMED ABOUT HIS CHILDREN IN ORDER TO HELP THEM. He kept watch of Peter in order that, when the right time came, He might deliver him from prison. He keeps watch of you and me that, when our need is too sore for our unaided strength, He may put the right hand of His omnipotence underneath the burden. Providence is pro-VID-ence — the foreseeing and arranging that precedes helpful doing. Men have too mechanical an idea of life. Our common blessings are supposed to come in what we call the "order of nature." The farmer who rejoices in a bountiful harvest says: "It was because the seed was good, and the soil was good, and the season was propitious, and I spared no pains." True, but back of all these recognised conditions was God, giving the seed its vitality and the soil its fertility, etc.

III. WHEN GOD HELPS HIS CHILDREN HE EXPECTS THEM TO HELP THEMSELVES. It was possible for God, in working a miracle for Peter's deliverance, to have wrought out every item of it. But that is not the Divine method. There were some things which the apostle could do for himself, and only what he could not do for himself was done for him. In the Divine economy of the universe there is no provision for idleness. Prayer is not such a power as allows men to fold their hands, and expect results which they might secure by the proper use of means. Frederick Douglass says: "When I was a slave, I prayed earnestly for freedom and made no attempt to gain it, and I got no response; but, when I began to pray with my legs, my prayers began to be answered." Men pray for a revival of religion, and make no attempt to secure it by more consecrated lives and more earnest effort, and the revival does not come. If anything comes, it is a temporary surge of emotion, as fatal as it is evanescent. Pilgrimages to Lourdes, and the modern "faith cure," are only different phases of the same mischievous delusion. Prayer and effort are designed to go hand-in-hand. We are "workers together with God," and, so long as we are idle, the heavens keep silence.

IV. WHEN GOD MOVES IN BEHALF OF HIS CHILDREN NO OBSTACLE IS TOO GREAT FOR HIM. Humanly judging, how many and what insuperable difficulties stood in the way of Peter's deliverance! But how easy for God to do that which was impossible for man! He had but to will it, and the keepers were helpless and asleep. He had but to command it, and chains melted like wax in the heat of His word. He had but to say it, and every door opened wide. And yet how apt men are to limit the range of their petitions to the things which it seems to them can be done, and have no heart to ask God for what seems too hard for them. Our philosophies of prayer often ignore the fact that Omnipotence is at the head of the universe. The scientist argues the futility of all prayer, because inflexible laws of nature block the way. As though God were not more than nature, and His assurance, "Ask and ye shall receive," as much a factor in the conduct of the universe as gravitation! We have nothing to do with probabilities. The hand that holds all worlds is able to work beyond our thought.

(Sermons by the Monday Club.)

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KJV: Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him.

WEB: Peter therefore was kept in the prison, but constant prayer was made by the assembly to God for him.