I Am God (Acts #16)

How many of you like movies? Most hands go up every time I ask. But have you ever asked yourself why?

Some of you would say you love filmmaking, or photography, or great acting, or sharp dialogue. But strip all of that away and what you really love is a story. I doubt anyone’s favorite film is a two-hour loop of ocean waves rolling onto a beach. That might be lovely on vacation. It might be fine in the background. But you’re not riveted by it, because there’s no story.

And for a story to be captivating, it has to have tension. Nobody wants to watch ninety minutes of an ordinary guy waking up, brushing his teeth, going to work, coming home, eating supper in front of a screen, and going to bed — only to repeat it. You need an interruption to the repetition. Something has to go wrong.

Sometimes storytellers create that tension through peril: someone gets lost in the wilderness, or survives a plane crash and has to get back to civilization. Sometimes it’s the struggle to reach a dream, or a health crisis, or a marriage coming apart. But one of the most common ways to introduce tension is to pit good against evil — to put a villain in the story.

Think of the most iconic films ever made. Almost all of them have one. Darth Vader. Thanos. Voldemort. Sauron. Gollum. And, if you have any taste at all, the two burglars from Home Alone.

I bring this up because today, in Acts 12, we get a villain — and we get to watch his defeat.

The Text

Open your Bible to Acts 12 and join me at verse 20:

Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, they asked for peace, because their country depended on the king’s country for food. On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last. But the word of God increased and multiplied.

If you’ve heard more than one sermon in this series, you’ve caught on that Acts is a historical record. Luke the physician is a phenomenal historian, and he’s given us all kinds of detail as he chronicles the first-century church. And like a lot of good history, it comes to us in stories — stories with tension. We’ve watched tension from outside the church, as Jewish leaders persecuted it. We’ve watched tension inside the church. And in many of these stories there have been villains, some named, some not.

Today we get a name. And not just the name and the tension — we get the demise.

Meet Herod Agrippa I

We met this villain last week in verse 1, and we saw his villainous résumé. He had James, the brother of John — one of the apostles — arrested and executed. When he saw how much that pleased certain Jewish leaders, he had Peter arrested with every intention of killing him too. And later in the chapter, after Peter miraculously escapes, Herod interrogates the sixteen soldiers who had been guarding him and has them all executed.

There are three different Herods in Scripture, and they’re easy to confuse. This one is Herod Agrippa I. He’s the grandson of the most famous one, Herod the Great — the king who heard about a newborn in Bethlehem, decided the child was a threat to his throne, and sent soldiers to kill every baby boy two years old and under. Villainy runs in the family.

Then there’s Herod Antipas, who was both uncle and brother-in-law to Agrippa. (I’ve said before that family reunions must have been awkward.) Antipas was ruling in Galilee when Jesus was crucified. When Pontius Pilate discovered Jesus was a Galilean, he was thrilled — he didn’t have to make the decision himself, so he shipped Jesus off to Antipas. Antipas was excited to finally meet Jesus, but when Jesus wouldn’t speak or perform, Antipas sent Him right back. And Luke tells us Pilate and Herod became friends that very day. By the time we reach Acts 12, Antipas is gone.

Herod Agrippa I is half Jewish. His grandfather was fully Idumean; his father was Idumean and his mother was Jewish. He leaned hard into his Jewishness while ruling in Jerusalem, and the Jewish people actually liked him because he presented himself as one of them. But he’d also been educated in Rome, and he was personally friendly with the highest officials of the empire. That’s why Rome handed him complete authority over the region without a Pilate figure to supervise him.

Which is exactly what convinced him he had the freedom to arrest apostles and kill them. He was using genuine power for villainous ends.

The Shimmering Robe

Now the villainy goes a step further. Tyre and Sidon were cities north of Galilee, in Phoenicia — outside Israel and largely Greek. They were under Herod’s authority and dependent on his territory for food distribution.

Some conflict arose. We don’t know what it was, but it angered Herod enough that he appears to have cut off their food. So their representatives grew desperate, and they worked through Blastus — the text calls him chamberlain, but think chief of staff — to arrange a meeting.

Herod had gone to Caesarea, where he had another palace, so the delegation came down to negotiate for peace and for grain.

Luke tells us there was some pomp involved. Herod puts on his royal robes and takes his seat on the throne. This isn’t a back-room conference table conversation. He wants to be seen in his splendor. Josephus, the Jewish historian, records this same event, and he describes the robe as woven with silver. I don’t know whether the whole garment was silver or whether it was threaded through, but picture it: sunlight catching the fabric, the man shimmering as he speaks. It’s a display of power.

Then he delivers one of the finest speeches these men have ever heard, and they cry out, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!”

We don’t know whether they meant it. It’s entirely possible they were flattering him — appealing to the narcissism every good villain has — because if he believes they adore him, maybe he’ll release the food. But it’s also possible they meant every word. They were Greek. Greeks had many gods. They heard a magnificent oration from a man glowing in silver, and concluded that no mere mortal could be this impressive.

Luke’s Jewish readers would have gasped a little at that line. They know the first commandment: you shall have no other gods before Me. To them, this is utterly absurd. There is one God.

But notice — God doesn’t discipline the crowd for their blasphemous shout. God disciplines Herod.

Because He Did Not Give God the Glory

Luke tells us why, right there in verse 23: because he did not give God the glory.

When Herod sat on that throne in that shimmering robe and heard “the voice of a god,” he accepted it. He believed it.

Contrast that with Peter two chapters earlier. Peter walks into Cornelius’s house in Acts 10, and Cornelius — who had received a vision telling him to send for this man — falls down to worship him. Peter’s reaction is immediate: Stand up. I’m just a man like you. Let me tell you about God.

Herod doesn’t do that. He never has the moment where he thinks, “Hold on, everyone — I’m just a man. Yes, I’m richer than you. I have better clothes than you. But I’m a man.” Instead he drinks in the adulation, and for a moment he genuinely thinks: I am God.

And we know that’s what he thought, because we’ve been watching his actions. I can decide whether you eat. I can arrest apostles. I can execute them. I can wipe out my own soldiers on a whim. I have the power.

Except we’ve already watched that claim collapse. He arrested Peter and stationed sixteen soldiers around him, two of them chained to his wrists — and God walked Peter straight out. Herod could do nothing about it. He was not God. But he wasn’t about to let an inconvenient detail like that ruin his moment. He’s just wowed a crowd. He looks magnificent. He holds all the power. Maybe they’re right.

So God does to Herod what Herod could not do to Peter.

Struck Down, Eaten by Worms

Verse 23 used to confuse me, because the first phrase and the last phrase sounded contradictory. “Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down” made me picture an angel drawing some spiritual sword — one strike, and Herod drops dead. But then the verse says “he was eaten by worms and breathed his last,” which sounds slow and agonizing.

Josephus helps enormously here. He records the same event: right after the oration, Herod collapses in immense pain, unable to walk. His guards carry him back to the palace, where he lies in bed for five days and dies.

They had no medication for roundworm. They had no surgery for a tapeworm. Something got in, and it was a slow, excruciating death. And in the ancient world, to die by worms was widely read as a sign of divine judgment. Even if Luke hadn’t told us God struck him down, everyone would have known.

“But That Doesn’t Sound Loving”

Some people are genuinely bothered by this. We talk constantly about the love of God and the mercy of God, and then God kills a man with worms. It doesn’t sound loving. It sounds petty. The guy is guilty of what amounts to identity fraud — surely that’s prison time, or maybe a bad rash. Death? Is God really that thin-skinned?

If that’s where you are, I want to say something surprising: I’m glad it bothers you. I’m glad Herod’s death doesn’t sit comfortably with you, because it means that deep down you still value human life.

We live in a culture that does not. We live in a culture that celebrates death. We celebrate it in our films — I’ll confess I’ve watched all four John Wick movies, and the body count in each runs past a hundred. We celebrate it in video games; Grand Theft Auto is on its sixth or seventh installment. And we do it in our politics, where we take a culture of death, reframe it, and give it gentler names.

Let me tell you about something that happened last week in Panama. A Canadian mining company’s twenty-year copper contract had expired. Copper is in enormous demand right now — it’s going into microchips for computers, smartphones, and watches — so the company wanted to renew. But the existing mine was nearly played out, which meant expanding onto land where people lived, and some of those people didn’t want to leave. Others were raising alarms that the mining was contaminating drinking water and endangering their children’s health. Protests broke out and road blockades went up, at one point costing the economy something like eighty million dollars a day.

Last Thursday a seventy-seven-year-old retired lawyer got caught in one of those blockades. Sitting in his car, he reportedly said, “This ends here,” reached into the glove box, pulled out a gun, and walked up to the protesters demanding they clear the road. They refused until the government met their demands. He waved the gun. They still refused. He started dragging debris out of the way himself, until he hit a rock too heavy to move. He waved the gun again. And when they wouldn’t move it, he shot and killed one of them. People scattered. Another man came at him — what are you doing? — and he shot and killed him too.

Both of the men he killed were schoolteachers.

He valued his time more than he valued their lives. Maybe those protesters were wrong in what they stood for. Maybe they were wrong in how they were protesting. They were not worthy of the death penalty. But he decided they were.

And the reason I’m telling you this isn’t only what he did. It’s what came afterward. On social media I read comments like “my man.” “My new hero.” “When this guy makes bail I’m buying him a beer.” One person posted a rewritten headline: Hostage kills two while escaping confinement. Someone put up a poll asking simply whether the man was right or wrong. Within about a day, more than seven thousand people had answered — and fifty-eight percent said he was right and justified in killing two protesters.

So if you were bothered by Herod’s death because you value human life, I applaud you. You are in the minority.

But then let me press you: apply it consistently. It is not coherent to protest that God would kill Herod slowly and cruelly while quietly celebrating when someone you dislike dies. That means valuing the lives of Jews and Palestinians right now. It means valuing those who look like most of us and those who don’t. It means valuing the elderly and the unborn. Human beings bear the image of God. He loves them. He is passionate about them. So we value what He values.

Whose Creation Is It?

There’s something else worth noticing. This wasn’t an assassin slipping in at night. This wasn’t a coup. There was nothing unethical in the means. This was God making a decision and God executing judgment — and I believe God has the right to do that.

Many of you know I’m a wannabe graphics designer. I’m nowhere near the level of the people who do it professionally — I’m a hack — but I enjoy it, and a lot of the graphics you see around here are mine. It’s common for me to design something, look at it later, and cringe. Sometimes I’ve already rolled it out and you’ve all seen it, and I wish I hadn’t. And if I want to, I can delete it. Because I made it.

But if I release something you don’t like, you don’t have the right to delete it. It isn’t your creation.

Humans are God’s creation. They bear His image. So if anyone has the right to end a human life, it’s God. And thankfully He doesn’t do it out of boredom or a bad day. He is just. He is good. He is fair. He is consistent.

In Herod’s case, I think there were several reasons the judgment was right.

First, Herod claimed to be a Jew. And one of the central texts of Judaism is the Shema. Many of you know the second half without knowing its name — you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Jesus quoted it when asked for the greatest commandment. But the line before it is the one that matters here: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

If Herod were truly the Jew he claimed to be, the instant that crowd shouted “the voice of a god,” something in him should have snapped to attention: Hear, O Israel — the Lord is one. There is one God, and I am not Him. Instead of being like his robe and reflecting the glory back to God, he tried to be a sponge and soak it up. He bought his own press.

Second, look at the pattern of his behavior. He believed he had the right to kill James. He believed he had the right to kill Peter. He believed he could execute sixteen of his own soldiers. He believed he could deny people food — the most basic necessity of life. He was already acting like God. This isn’t an ordinary man who got a little too big for his britches. This is a megalomaniac using every ounce of power for himself, when God had entrusted him with responsibility to care for people.

The Chiasm at the Center

But I think God is communicating something to us as well. Whether or not Luke consciously designed it, the Holy Spirit has placed a chiasm inside Acts 12.

A chiasm is a literary structure where the outer elements parallel each other and work inward, like an arrow pointing at a center. The first line pairs with the last, the second with the second-to-last, and so on — and the middle is the point.

Here, the chapter opens with the death of James and closes with the death of Herod. And sitting right in the center is the rescue of Peter.

Through that structure, God is saying: I am a God of rescue. Just as He brought Jesus out of the tomb alive, Peter was in a kind of tomb — hours from execution — and God brought him out alive. So instead of fixating on how God struck Herod down, notice what’s at the center: God saved Peter.

Which means Luke, wittingly or not, is pointing at the gospel. You were born in spiritual death. You will die a physical death. And in the middle of that, God can rescue you — bring you out of spiritual death, so that even when your body dies, you remain spiritually alive forever. The chiasm is God saying: I love you. I’m for you. I can rescue you. I can make you alive. And He accomplishes it through the death of the true villain.

I AM

There’s a warning here too.

In Exodus 3, God has a conversation with Moses. Moses had been born to a Hebrew family, raised in an Egyptian one, and then killed an Egyptian and fled for his life. He spent forty years as a shepherd — until a bush caught fire and didn’t burn up, and God spoke out of it.

God tells him: go back to Egypt and bring My people out of slavery. Moses does everything he can to get out of it. They’ll recognize me. They’ll arrest me. I’m not a good leader. I’m not a good speaker. And at one point he tries: “Well, if they ask which God sent me — what’s Your name?”

God answers: I AM.

Some translations render it “I AM WHO I AM.” But notice what God does not say. He doesn’t say “I am who I say I am.” He doesn’t say “I am who I feel that I am.” He simply is. God always has been and always will be. You had a start date and an unknown expiration date. God has neither beginning nor end. It’s why the author of Hebrews can say of Jesus that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

God simply is. Herod was not.

And yet standing there in silver, absorbing applause, Herod was effectively saying: I am. I am the one who gives food or withholds it. I am the one who kills apostles or lets them live. I am the one with the power.

God’s answer — to Herod, to Tyre and Sidon, to all Israel and the whole Roman Empire — is: No. Not even your greatest is the I AM. Only God is.

Two Pits

We’d be foolish to file this away as a Herod problem. We make the same mistake in smaller ways.

Have you had moments where you were demanding? Where you were insulted by a slight? Where you craved the spotlight, or resented someone else getting it? Where you sulked because somebody else received credit, or because you didn’t get the attention you thought you’d earned? In those moments you are acting like Herod — wishing someone would recognize your greatness and confirm that you are.

But there’s a second pit, and it belongs to the crowd. Sometimes we don’t claim to be God ourselves; we simply install something else in His place. Whatever gets your primary attention, adulation, and affection is functioning as your god. It might be your job. It might be a specific person or relationship. It might be money, or technology, or entertainment. Almost anything qualifies. Whatever takes your thoughts and your energy — there’s a real chance you’re calling it god.

I think all of us fall into both pits at different times. But most of us tend toward one more than the other. Which is yours? Do you struggle with pride, wishing it were all about you? Or do you struggle with putting something else where God belongs?

Confess and Declare

As we come to communion, do two things.

First, confess. Hold the elements and name which pit you fall into. Herod’s, or the crowd’s. Say it honestly to God.

Then declare. Take a moment and say it: He is God. I am not God. That thing is not God. That person is not God. He is I AM.

Then thank God for Christ as you take the bread and the cup — the bread representing His body broken for you, the cup His blood shed for the forgiveness of your sins.

If you’re with us today and you’re not yet a follower of Jesus, I’d ask you to respectfully let the elements pass. Not because we’re withholding anything from you, but because I want you to see something first. This God — yes, the one who struck down Herod — did it for you. He wants you to see that He is powerful, and that He is able to rescue. You were born in spiritual death and you will one day die a physical death, and He is able to give you spiritual life right now.

You are not here by accident. You didn’t join us online by mistake. God wants you to hear this, because He loves you and He is for you. When most people realize the truth of the gospel, they mark the moment in prayer — confessing their sin, naming the pit they’ve been living in, and saying, “Jesus, You gave Your life for me, and now I want to give my life to You.” In that moment you are reborn.

The word of God increased and multiplied. The villain fell. The rescue stood at the center all along.