Persecution, Pleasing, and Prayer

0:00 It has now been 15 months, if you can imagine that since the massacre of October 7th in Israel. I'm not gonna share too many details today because we still have all the children in, in, uh, well, most of the children still in the sanctuary. But I just would ask, continue to ask as I have for 15 months, that you would continue to remember that you would continue to pray for those hostages that remain in captivity. Uh, something in the, in the neighborhood of around a hundred. And there's thought to be about 40 or 50 of them still alive, that you would continue to remember to pray for them. That, that the, the Lord would instill hope in their lives and in their minds as they've been in captivity

0:46 now for 15 months. It's about 450 ish plus days, somewhere around 4 50, 4 60, and that they would be rescued speedily. Uh, so that's my update for today. I guess having the children in here makes me a little bit, uh, less long-winded. We are continuing our series in Acts chapter 12. You know, I thought it, I, I I had the idea. I thought it was a new year. I probably should have just started. Ax back over. It's okay. You can collectively groan. No problem.

1:31 Actually, I say that joke because I was walking out, out in the courtyard one day and I said, we're, I can't remember what I said, but someone overheard that I was starting acts over and they were like, what? And I was like, no, no, don't worry. I'm, I'm not actually starting over. We're just continuing on. So here we are, continuing on in Acts chapter 12. Just wanna remind us where we left off last week. Last week, Barnabas went to Tarsus to go get Paul and has brought Paul back to Antioch. And, and things are going on in Antioch. And here we have in chapter 12, Luke continues and says, now, at that time, Herod the king seized some from Messiahs

2:17 community to do them harm. He had Jacob, John's brother, that you, you may also know Jacob as James, depends on your, uh, translation. John's brother put to death with the sword seeing it, please, the Judean leaders. He proceeded to capture Peter as well. This was during the days of Matza. After seizing him, he put 'em in prison, handed him over to four squads with four soldiers each to guard him. He was intending to bring him before the people after Passover. So Peter was kept in prison, but prayer for him was being offered fervently to God by Messiah's community. So we're gonna go through this one chunk at a time, and I unwittingly came up with three Ps

3:03 for us to remember as we go through this, it's very rare that you'll ever get this from me. So you may get it from your seminary professors, but not from me. Uh, but we will see persecution, what is pleasing and prayer. And these are the three things that we're gonna take a look at today in this passage. So here in, in verses one and two. Now, at that time, Herod the king seized from Messiah, some from Messiahs community to do them harm he had Jacob, John's brother put to death with the sword. So we're gonna do this like I do every week, and we're gonna go chunk by chunk, and we're gonna start with the very beginning, which is now at that time, at what time?

3:49 At 11:47 AM on Jan. What is today's date? I don't even know what today's date is. January 4th. On January 4th. No, this, that's not what Luke says. It's at that time. It's a, he's connecting the passage from Luke 11, right? Luke 11, yeah. The previous chapter, Luke 11, where Barnabas, uh, goes to get Paul brings him back, and then Agabus comes down and Agabus gives a, a, a, uh, a prophetic word that there's gonna be famine in the land, or actually the, what Luke says is all over the world, there's gonna be famine. And, and he ties it in, in the text to Claudia's Reign, emperor Claudius. It's at that time, the time of the famine.

4:34 So this is what has just been talked about. Maybe if you're used to movies, it's meanwhile at a different location. You know, we've had a shift of, uh, of scenery a little bit, if you will. So this is happening over here. Meanwhile, at this time, this is what's happening. The king has seized some from Messiah's community. And so it's during this time of famine. And if you remember from last week, I know it's a long, we've had a, we've, we've gone a whole year since last week. Thank you, Amanda. Thank you. It is been a long time since last week, but if you remember from last week, it, they took up a collection to send support to the community,

5:22 Messiah's community in Jerusalem. Why? Because it seems like they were the hardest hit. And we talked about last week why it could have been that they were the hardest hit. We talked about Emperor Col, ua ua. Did I, I think, yeah, that one, the emperor before Claudius, uh, we talked about him. He wanted to set himself up in the temple, a statue of himself to be worshiped. And as happens to almost all of our enemies. Well, all up until this time, what happens? That doesn't happen. And, and why? Because we have a jealous God who refuses to share his glory or his space of worship with someone else.

6:10 So it's interesting because he's overthrown at that time. And now we have Claudia's reign. But in reaction to this, I mentioned last week that the, the agrarian culture of Judea stopped their harvest and protest to his attempt to, uh, uh, to put a, a, um, an image of himself in the temple. And the next year, there's a fa Oh, no, no. The next year, I mentioned that there was, I think I mentioned this last week, but it's thought that that was the sabbatical year. What happens in the sabbatical year? You don't plant, so there's no crops. So now we're here we are three years. And you can imagine the food scarcity that's happened

6:58 in this time period we're, so we're, I, I don't, I rarely put dates on, on text unless the text says it, but we're somewhere in between 41 and 43. And if, if you were to just push me real hard, I would tell you we're in 42. Uh, but we're we're right in that area, plus or minus a year and a half, uh, just because of the timing. We'll get into the timing in a minute, but it's now gotten worse. Famine has gotten worse, and they're, they're needing to be, um, to be supported. And so they, they send Paul and Barnabas, they're, they're sending them with, with, uh, food to distribute, or at least money to distribute.

7:49 And here is how I get to my time period. I would, I say 42, I'm put 42, maybe 43. So like, that's my wiggle room. Uh, Herod the king. This is Herod Agrippa the first. So this is not Herod the Great, you'll read Herod throughout the scriptures. There was Herod the Great who tried to kill Yeshua when he was born. There was Herod Antipas who was consulted before pilot crucified Yeshua. And now we have Herod Agrippa, the first whose Antipas nephew. And I'm pretty sure, if I remember right, he's Herod's the great's grandson. But also by some way, there could be a sun connection.

8:36 Like their family tree is really weird. I would connect it to some particular area in the United States, but I don't want to offend anybody. Um, there's multiple generations of people having intercourse with other people's wives and, and having children. And so his, his family tree is quite awkward when you actually look at it. So Herod Agrippa is here mentioned he assumed control of Philips, uh, Archy in 37. He added control of the Galilee and Par in 39 when Antipas was exiled. And he added all of Judea in 41.

9:23 So, so I can tell you without doubt that it's after 41, because he's in charge of Judea now. But he, he, his reign ends at the end of 43, beginning of 44. So it's before that, because we'll see the end of his reign in two weeks. Uh, at the end of chapter 12, which is such a fascinating scripture. He's friends with the emperor who became emperor in 37, and that's how he became tetra. And, and you'll see all when you, when you get into political world, everybody's connected somehow, whether or not they tell you, but there's some, there's some connections going on. So he becomes in power. And now it says that he sees some from Messiah's

10:09 community to do them harm. It's quite fascinating because actually, some commentators think that he seized not just Jacob who's mentioned just a moment later, but also John, you'll, if you remember, there are three who form what I would call Yeshua's inner circle, and they're with him at the most important times. And who is it? It's John Jacob or James and Peter. Who does he have? He's put, well, we're about to read. He's put to death Jacob, and he's grabbing Peter. It would make sense that John was in that group also. Uh, but it doesn't, Luke doesn't tell us that. But there's this rise in persecution in Act seven and eight under the supervision of Paul, if you'll remember.

10:58 And, and it led to the scattering of some of the followers, but not the dis, not the, not the, if I can use this word, this terminology, the capital A apostles, um, they stayed. Now, Peter, Peter went around and did some journeys, as, as is noted, and we've covered, but here, under Herod's rule, it leads to the execution of one of the apostles. And at a minimum, the arrest of one other one, um, two, both of whom were in Yeshua's innermost circle. So it seems to me that they would've been the leaders of the community at large. So here he had said, the text says he had Jacob, John's brother put to death with the sword. This is, again, as I reminded you, this is Jacob

11:43 and John, uh, in one, I think it's in Mark. They're called Sons of Thunder. Uh, the sons of Zebedee, they're fishermen. Uh, and, and what happens is, is Herod has Jacob put to death, which is one of two standard forms of, um, uh, of how shall I call modes of death or execution. Roman execution, one of them we've talked about already with Yeshua. It, it, it includes crucifixion, but it also includes drowning, burning, and violent death in the arena, which you'll see in movies, especially if you went out to the movie theater in the last two weeks. But there's, those are all one type.

12:29 And then the, the other type, which was considered to be, um, more merciful was death by the sword or death by decapitation. It's possible for us to actually view Herod. Now, I, I can say Herod the great in this way. I can say Herod Antipas, and I can say Herod Agrippa. And, and all three, I think it applies, it's possible to view Herod in that time period as a modern day. Pharaoh, the audience, if the audience is listening to this, and they're viewing Herod as a modern day Pharaoh, Pharaoh also commanded death

13:17 by the sword, or death by the hand. It's, they're, they're interchangeable words, death by the hand, death by the sword, in, in an attempt to wipe out the Israelites. And what season is this? That, that, that we've will find out in the very next verse. Peter was taken during or right around the time of Passover. So Passover in the story of Exodus is on the minds of the people. So in fact, let's just go on now at that time, I'm gonna contin, I'm gonna I'll each time, I'll continue to read the previous verses so that you have the context. Now, at that time, Herod the king sees some from the Messiah's community to do them harm. He had Jacob, John's brother, put to death with the sword, seeing it, pleased the Judean leaders. He proceeded to capture Peter as well.

14:05 This was during the days of Matzah. After seizing him, he put 'em in prison, handed them over to four squads with four soldiers each to guard him. He was attempting, he was intending to bring him before the people after Passover. So we've talked about persecution. Now we're gonna talk about what is pleasing to the eyes. You see, it says here in this text that it, Herod saw it pleased the Judean leaders, and therefore it was pleasing to him. Perhaps some of these leaders are some of the very same leaders that were pleased with. The execution of Yeshua were in a time period of,

14:50 within about a decade plus or minus a few years, post the, uh, crucifixion of Yeshua in his subsequent resurrection. And ascension, if you'll remember, the high priest at Yeshua's execution was Caiaphas. But actually the text says that there were two high priests, Caiaphas and, uh, Anis or Ananias, depending upon which text you're looking at. Ananias was Caiaphas, his father-in-law. And Caiaphas was, uh, was high priest until 36. And then it went to his brother-in-law and then to his other brother-in-law who happened to be named Theophilus.

15:35 And now here we are, if we're in 41 to 43 time period, there's a new high priest, which is from a different family, a new high priest named Si named Simon, Ben, uh, BEUs. We'll go with that. But the high priesthood changes from, from that family, by the way, as there is in any sort of political power, there's, there's often multiple families vying for political power. And, and this is true in this case also. It went back and forth between these two families. And in 43, a new high priest came that was from Anani family and was in fact his son.

16:22 Uh, wait, is that his son or maybe his grandson, uh, named Mattias or Ma or Matthew? Oh, no, Matthew's son of Ananias. Okay, here it is. So this is in 43. So this is why I'm, I'm putting the time period right at 43 because I think there's, this is my interpretation, and don't, don't say that I read scripture and this is what I ended up with. But my interpretation is that there is something going at, there is a war, a spiritual war going on between Ananias family and the followers of Yeshua. And you see it over and over again. That seasons of persecution are when his family is in charge, and then it goes through no persecution when his family's not in charge.

17:07 And now all of a sudden his family's back in charge. And what's pleasing to Herod is pleasing to the Judean leaders, which is let's, uh, let's kill them. Let's, let's murder Jacob, and let's try John, and let's go ahead and go for Peter. Let's get the trifecta while we're at it. It, it's quite fascinating. Could it have been pleasing to the leaders because it's the same family that's being pleased here. So he goes after Peter, he's already gotten Jacob, and now he goes after Peter. It seems to me it's cl it seems clear to me that he's going after the leadership of the entire community. If you want a community to fold or, or,

17:54 or to disperse. I mean, this is, you hear this in the military all the time, what do you do? You cut the head off the snake. So you go, Israel has done it now in, in the warfare with multiples of their, of their enemies. And, and what has happened, actually, the, the resistance has just kind of dissipated in many of these cases. However, it seems that at least in the Messiah's community, the community seems to grow stronger. It, it, it, what's the scripture? The the ways of the Lord are different than the ways of men. And so I'm not saying that it pleased the Lord to have Jacob killed, however, the community wasn't built on one man, the com Well, the community was built on one man, Yeshua.

18:42 But the community understands that to follow Yeshua means that you're gonna go through suffering. And so here we have, he's killed Jacob. He's about to, he's about to execute Peter. That's two thirds of, of the inner core. It's one six, uh, or it would be one six if Peter dies of the, of the 12. I mean, just think about that. You think about how, how, um, the loss of Dave, our elder affected our community. Uh, what is it? It's been four months now, three, three and a half months affected. Uh, think about how his loss, he was one of five elders. Now think if, if two or three, like, just think about what would happen in the community here.

19:29 I'm not, I'm not proclaiming anything bad, you know? Oh, nevermind about to say something else. Anyways, let's go back to the time period. This is during the days of Matza, is what the text tells us. It's the same time period when Yeshua was taken the same season. It's in the springtime. And, and, but it was also right at the beginning of Passover that Yeshua was taken and executed on, on a, on a tree. So here he puts Peter in prison, handing him over to four squads with four soldiers, four times four. Luke expects us to know math, uh, is 16, um, but likely they're covering the four different watches. That would be the Roman, the Roman, uh, watch guard time.

20:16 And so he's intending the text tells us to bring Peter before the people after Passover. Why? Well, I wonder actually, perhaps it please the leaders, but perhaps the groundswell of people present actually aren't following the leaders if they actually have sympathy to Messiah's community. And in fact, he's gonna wait until afterward when the groundswell leaves post payoff to execute Peter. I mean, listen, politicians are ruthless then, and now, I, I don't view American politicians much better. Uh, but that's another story.

21:05 So here, Agrippa, perhaps he wants to avoid creating another, if you will, martyr like Yeshua. Even if he, even if he thought Yeshua didn't resurrect Yeshua's death in his eyes has caused this ground swell of people that has grown, why would he try another one at the same time period? And maybe it would grow even more. So he's avoiding, uh, the death of Peter until after the festival. But I just want you to think about this. This is, we go, we, we go so slow through the text that sometimes we forget what has already happened because we're focused on this particular few verses.

21:51 Think about when Yeshua was taken. What did Peter do? Peter followed, but at a, at a point, he was, they said, oh, you're Galilean, you're his must be his follower also. And he said, Nope, not it, it's not me. You don't hear the Texas accent. And me, y'all. And, and he denies following Yeshua three times. And here he is put in prison and knowing after the death of Jacob, what's going to happen to him. And Peter has a completely different response. At least the text tells doesn't tell us that he has the same response. Maybe I should say that Peter seemingly is willing to undergo this type of suffering, and even subsequent execution, the text

22:39 does not mention at all Peter being unwilling or even denying who he is or who he's following at this time. So you can see a transformation in the character of Peter in a 10 year period. And now I'll connect it back to the, to the tour portion. Much like the transformation of Judah, when Judah at first sold his brother, and then at the end says, wait, no, I would be willing to offer myself on behalf of my brother. There's a, there's a massive character transformation that occurs. And, and it's, it's a, this is one of the reasons I will love this week's tour portion. We always look at Joseph as a, as a, um, a, a symbol or a a, a prefigure or a, a type, if you will, of foreshadowing of

23:25 what Yeshua will be. Judah is also, now, Judah represents us as well. And the the ability for us to be able to make decisions that will change and, and will change us and in the future will be a different person. But Judah also represents the Messiah, Yeshua, because he now comes before the emperor, the ruler of this foreign nation, and says, I'm willing to offer myself on behalf of my brothers. This is literally what Yeshua did for us. He offered himself as a, as, as, as the price to pay for our sins. Just like it's the perceived sin of Benjamin

24:11 that he took the goblet and Judah's offering himself to pay that price. Peter here is walking exactly in the footsteps of the Messiah. And so, Peter, we're gonna move on. Uh, we will continue. I'll, I'll continue reading the whole passage. Now, at that time, Herod the king seized some from the Messiah's community to do them harm. He had Jacob, John's brother, put to death with the sword, seeing it, please, the Judean leaders. He proceeded to capture Peter as well. This was during the days of Matza. After seizing him, he put him in prison handing him over to four squads with four soldiers each to guard him. He was intending to bring him before the people after Passover. So Peter was kept in prison, but prayer for him was being offered fervently to God

24:59 by Messiah's community. So we've had persecution, we've had what is pleasing to the eyes, and now we have prayer. Our three Ps. Peter was kept in prison again, it seems like he was imprisoned around the beginning time period of Passover, and he was going to be held until after the end of the Feast for execution. Uh, so he's gonna spend at least about a week in prison. So it's somewhere here in this time period. But also, as I mentioned earlier, Passover is characterized by what, by us remembering our deliverance. Now we, we make it personal, but it's really the deliverance of our forefathers from Egypt, from bondage, from slavery, from prison in Egypt,

25:46 and that the Lord brought them out by his strong hand, by his strong arm. So it's common during Passover for Jewish people to be praying for deliverance from adversaries. Why? Because that's what happened during Passover. So now here we have the community is praying fervently for the release of Peter from prison, and he's been imprisoned by their adversaries, in fact, in this case, by Herod, who seems to be a, a, a figure type relatable to Pharaoh. By the way, we're gonna end here in verse five. But looking forward, in, in, into the rest of this is, is

26:34 actually how Peter gets out of prison, which we'll talk about next week, and then his subsequent interaction with the rest of the community. But prayer for Peter is being offered fervently to God by the Messiah's community. Now, I wanna point out that Luke often presents prayer as a means by which God brings about his purposes in history. I say Luke presents that it's what I would assume most of us actually believe, but that's how Luke presents this. And the prayer increases the depth of our relationship with the Lord. It's much like a conversation, like when we have a conversation with one another, the longer the conversation goes, usually

27:20 the deeper the relationship, uh, at least the more we know about each other, whether or not the relationship gets deeper. That's, that's a different matter. But here it says, this prayer was being offered fervently. This is the same word that you, Luke utilizes when Yeshua was praying fervently in the garden right before his execution. You know, I don't know if you remember the story, but Yeshua goes up into the garden, he takes his disciples, he says, you, you guys stay here. I I'm gonna go off and pray. And he's praying fervently. And it says he's praying so fervently that he's sweating, and it's as, as blood coming down him. And he goes back and he sees all of his disciples, and they're asleep. He goes, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm, I'm literally bleeding from the brow right now,

28:08 and y'all aren't even awake. Uh, but I, I, I know I, I've taught that passage already, but don't be too hard on the disciples. It's somewhere around two o'clock in the morning, and they've had a huge feast. So I just want you to think about Thanksgiving day when you have your huge feast, and then you go sit on the couch and you pass out because you're so full. Your body's just like, I gotta like sleep. I, I can't digest any other way, but sleep. So don't, don't be don't be too hard on the disciples, but Yeshua comes back. But it's in this moment where Luke utilizes the exact same word where Yeshua is praying fervently, and here the community's playing, praying fervently.

29:03 Let me, let me take a detour for just a moment. We, we, at least if you've been here while I was teaching through Luke, we talked about Luke. And, and often you'll see prayer mentioned or, or the offering of sacrifice mentioned in Luke or Acts, and it's often time, uh, uh, tied to what we now know as the three times of day when Jewish people would go to the temple and offer sacrifices and pray. There is structured prayer in the Jewish world, and structured prayer is fantastic, and it's necessary. It's like, if I can put it this way, I,

29:48 I relate our, the relationship that we have between us and the Lord, uh, often like between a husband and a wife, or between a parent and a child, one of those. But there are structured times that you spend together. So in, in the case of a husband, and in the case of a family, uh, well, at least in the case of a family, uh, I'm gonna say 50 years ago, uh, because I don't think it's as common anymore, uh, as it was, but a family would, would have dinner tonight, dinner every night together. They would have meal time together. And during meal time, they would have conversations. And what it, what would happen is the relationship of the family would grow because they're spending time together. And it was a daily time.

30:37 Likewise, our structured prayer time with the Lord is daily time where we get to be with him, and it develops the relationship. I'm gonna tell you, this is, this text is not talking about one of those times. I'm all for those structured times. But in seasons of, um, of persecution or seasons of dire, um, circumstances, trials, we use whatever terminology you want to call it, it takes extra time. And it's like what Yeshua did. He stepped aside and he prayed fervently. He wasn't praying one of the three. During one of the three times of the day, he was praying,

31:24 this was what we would call perhaps extemporaneous prayer. This is intercession. This is, I am down on my knees and pouring out everything that I possibly have. And that's what's happening right now. Sorry, in the text right now with the Messiah's community, because Peter is in jail and the community takes time to, it seems, takes time to assemble, which is fascinating because if Herod is after the leadership of the community, the assembling of the community would be even more in his face. And so you can imagine now they've taken the time to assemble, we'll find out later where they assemble, uh, in, in, I think it's in next week's text.

32:11 They've taken the time to assemble, and they are praying fervently together for the release of Peter. Now, what I will tell you is there is power in prayer. There's even more power in prayer when a community is together, unified, praying for the same thing. And so that's what happens here, the whole community, well, it seems at some portion of the community assembles and they're praying for the release of Peter. They have a singular focus in their prayer. They're not praying for today's lunch or, or tomorrow's dinner like they're praying.

32:58 Not that praying for either one of those is bad. Yeshua tells us, give us this day, when you pray, pray, give us this day our daily meal, our daily bread. This is setting that one aside. This is what we would call in, in, in modern vernacular, or at least in my modern vernacular, intercession, like for the, for a, a particular focus, uh, in, in this case, the release of Peter. So they're assembling, and we're gonna see the power of their prayers next week. I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna kind of leave, I'll just tuck that away as a, you know, that's kind of like the, to be continued at the end of the episode for whatever TV show you like watching. But so what are these three things, the persecution,

33:45 the pleasing to the eyes, and the prayer. What is this? What does this have to do with us at em today? How is this applicable to us? First of all, I wanna say that when Yeshua said, follow me, he meant it. And I know I've said this multiple times, and the longer we get into the book of Acts, you're gonna hear me say it over and over and over again. The follow me was a, was a for real thing. It wasn't a, oh, sure, I'll follow you right now, like it's going, it's going well right now. I'll follow you. That's what he, Yeshua meant it when he said, follow me and his followers. Now, by this point in Acts, you can tell that they mean it when they said, I will,

34:31 because they're now following Jacob has lost his life and Peter's in jail. It may mean the follow me may mean that we have to walk through times and seasons of suffering and difficulty. And James, this is what James has to say about it, James or Jacob, the brother of Yeshua, which we're gonna meet him in about two months, uh, in Acts 15, maybe three months, depending, depending upon how, how slow we go. We're gonna meet, meet James in, in a, in a little bit. But James, the brother of Yeshua, Jacob says, consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials. Now, it all sounds nice to use the word trial,

35:20 but I want you to think about every follower, every disciple, every capital, a apostle whatever, whatever terminology you want to use, with the exception of John died a horrible, gruesome death. And James Jacob knows this says, consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. This is James chapter one, verses two through four, and let endurance have its complete perfect work so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

36:07 You see, the trial, the having the joy in the trial is helpful and it, but it's not the end game. The end game is for the purpose of developing the character that's necessary to continue to walk and follow the Lord in this life into the next. And the testing of the faith produces endurance. So you'll go through various sets of trials, and when you go through them, let me, let me encourage and discourage you. You will do well, and you will fail in those trials. Some you'll do well, and you'll come out and you'll go, oh, it was by my strength.

36:53 And at that moment, you'll get another one, because it's not by your strength at all. In fact, it's, it's by the joy of the Lord that we are able to make it through. And it's all glory and honor due to him when we have endurance and make it through a trial. And with that endurance does is it strengthens our faith. It, if you will, it hardens. And I don't mean a harden like a hard heart, but I mean like when you're making pottery, and at some point it's, it's wet and it's loose, and then it has to go through the fiery trial of being, uh, um, cooked in a, in a, in a kiln. And it comes out able to be used for a purpose

37:38 like drinking or eating or whatever, whatever, uh, whatever the purpose of that particular dish is. You will go through various trials. And by the way, ding, ding, ding, I, I just want you to know you, or should I say in Texas vernacular, all y'all, all of us will go through various trials. I'm not, I'm not trying to like surprise you here, but I'd rather you not be surprised when the trial starts, because if you're not surprised, at least you have one step in the right direction and you know what's coming next. And it's not something easy.

38:23 So don't be surprised when trials come. Why? Because we're following Yeshua or Messiah. And he said, follow me. And he didn't live a trial less life. He went out into the desert for 40 days and didn't have food. And then the devil stood up and said, turn the rock into bread. And what did he say? Do not put the Lord your God to the test. I mean, can you imagine going 40 days without food and all of a sudden knowing you have the ability to turn a rock into bread? Like, give me some loaves of hollow. Y'all like, let me eat some.

39:12 But the testing of faith produces endurance. So your trial won't start with 40 days in the wilderness. I can, I can about say that for, I should say, 90% of y'all. That's not where your trials start. Your trial's gonna start with the next 10 minutes after you leave service. 'cause we live in America. Sorry, pardon me. I'm, I'm ex exerting, exerting a little bit of judgment here. We live in America and our faith is weak, so we can only withstand one hour long trials. But when you make it through one hour, guess what's next?

39:58 Two, after two hours, guess what's next? Three. Once you get to one day, guess what's next? Two days, at some point you'll get to 40 in this lifetime or the next. This is what happens the longer you exercise a muscle, the stronger the muscle grows, the more you exercise the muscle, the faith, the stronger it grows. And guess what? That muscle of faith is exercised through prayer. Now, we're gonna come to prayer in just a moment because I'm not quite done. Herod sought what was pleasing to the eyes and pleasing to others, which tells us

40:47 that we should not do what is pleasing to the eyes or pleasing to others. If, if Herod is the antithesis of who we want to be, then what he did is not what we should do in our lives. We need to focus on only one thing. What is pleasing to the Lord? It may not be pleasing to the I, okay? I I said earlier, it definitely won't be pleasing to the eyes. Maybe sometimes it might be, it may, it may not be pleasing to the eyes, and it likely won't be pleasing to those who are seeking to be powerful and influential. But our focus is to please the Lord. And so how do we do that? How do we know what it is?

41:36 That's to, to please the Lord? We deepen our relationship with the Lord through prayer for the same, the same way we deepen our relationship in our own families with times together. The more times you have together, the more trials you'll be able to withstand. Because every time you're doing something like that, you're exercising the muscle and praying in my notes, I have, praying is an important aspect of our lives as believers, praying is the most important aspect of our lives as believers.

42:21 You know, I, I always, excuse me, when it comes to prayer, I always think about Dave. Prayer is such an important aspect of our lives. We have to exercise it. Whether that starts as praying once a day, having some time dedicated set apart for the Lord to building up that muscle, to being able to pray three times a day, to being able to pray fervently in an off time for a particular matter, unified with others,

43:10 for the Lord's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. But that, that doesn't happen immediately. I want you to notice, since Yeshua prayed fervently, that word hasn't been used again until now in the text, same author going through the story. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm jumping too far out, but I don't know that the community could handle praying fervently before this moment. Maybe they haven't been strong enough. Maybe they had to get strong, you know, maybe they had to eat their greens like Popeye so that they could get strong and withstand the trial and,

43:58 and produce endurance. I'm reading this book right now, and it's quite fascinating because the chapter this week was on prayer that I was reading, and it just so happened that I'm teaching on prayer today. And so this is a quote from this book by Richard Foster. It says, we must never wait until we feel like praying before we pray for others. Prayer is like any other work. We may not feel like working, but once we've been at it for a bit, we begin to feel like working. It's nice when you are, when you're working, when you're doing things, if like, and you're exercising that muscle, it becomes nice. But when you're just sitting on the couch

44:43 and you're like, I don't feel like doing that right now. The energy to go from there to doing it is much greater than the energy required from doing it to doing it more so, and let me continue the, the reading here. We need not worry that this work will take up too much of our time for it takes no time, but occupies all of our time. It is starting to sound like Paul here. It is not prayer in addition to work, but prayer simultaneous with work. We proceed in fold and follow all of our work with prayer. And when you do that, prayer and action become wedded together.

45:28 So that prayer is never just sitting on the couch and praying, but prayer is always action. Even if it's kneeling on the, on the, on the floor of whatever room you're in. That's the action of prayer. It's so interesting because I, I think I, I, I said this, well, it must have been during COVID or no, it was during some natural disaster. And I, and, and I wish I could tell you which one, but we've had too many. But at some point, I, I, I mentioned to to you guys that I had a friend who posted a, a, a picture and it said, sending our prayers, and it was the back end of a, of a semi of, of a semi. And it was empty. Why?

46:16 Because that's the way the world views prayer is that it's empty. It has no power. But the reality is prayer has the most power. It's nothing and everything all at the same time. It's this, this is, this is how when God says, my ways are greater than yours, you can't even fathom what I'm doing. This is one of those, we think we're doing nothing when we pray, but when we pray, we're doing everything. And when we pray while we work, then all of our work becomes prayer. I don't know, we wrapped, yeah, wrapped up in prayer, and then it becomes, we're exercising both a spiritual muscle

47:01 and our regular muscles at the same moment, and we become even more effective. And it's when you become effective in those moments, that then you're not given strength to sit on the couch. It's in those moments when you become strong that require us to be just like Yeshua and to pray fervently and to be just like this community that's mentioned here in the text and to pray fervently together in unity. You see, if we're all praying fervently, but not together in unity, guess what happens? Not a whole lot. I mean, it,

47:48 I just wanna be super transparent for just a moment. I'll often try to have conversations with my wife and she'll start to respond, and then all three kids start to talk to me at the same moment. And it's, it's about five different subjects. Now, you figure out how that works with four of them talking about five different subjects. But I know that that's what happens. And do you wanna know how much of all of that? I heard nothing. But when they're all together, let me, let me pick one. Uh, when all I'm separating my wife for just a moment,

48:35 but when all three kids are like, let's go to the park and all three of them say, let's go to the park at the same time, all of a sudden it made an impression on me. And I'm thinking, Hmm, let's go to the park. Why? That's the same relationship we have with our father in heaven. When we come together, we can impress him. I don't mean impress like we're performing for him, but we can impress upon him what is happening. And it seems to me throughout the tenah that the Lord will say one thing, and for instance, Moses will say, no, no, no, don't do that. And the Lord says, okay, let's not do that.

49:23 Can you imagine that power? And I'm not saying that we should want the power to change God's mind, but we should want to do the Lord's will here. And in those moments when we're being conformed to his likeness, we will be able to find what his will is. And all of us push into that together, and it will appear as if he's changing his mind. You know, when I, when I say when all my, all three of my kids, they come to me and they say, let's go to the park. Do you know who planted that seed? Me earlier I said, I would say something like, I would whisper to Brittany and be like, something, and they would say, park just loud enough

50:10 so that one of them could hear. And I, I'm, I'm revealing my secrets to my children right now. And all of a sudden they start, let's go get dad to take us to the park. And all of a sudden they come with a unified front and they're like, dad, let's go to the park. And I'm like, great, let's go to the park. And we both, or I shouldn't say we both we're all happy because I go to the park with the children and Brittany gets time by herself. Our relationship with the Lord is strikingly similar. When we can come to him together searching and fervently praying after his will, it will happen.

50:57 It, it's, it's just one of those, i i, it just doesn't make sense, but it, it does it, it's like Paul says all of these confusing things, but in the end it makes sense. And, and here we have something relatively similar. Prayer is the most important aspect of what you can take away from this message, from this text today, is that all of them were praying together in unity. And it's when we all pray together in unity, it becomes a powerful catalyst for the Lord to do mighty works in our midst and to reveal himself and to reveal his nature, to make himself known in our midst.

51:43 But it takes all of us praying together. When all, when all three of my kids come to me and they want something different, and they're all talking and I hear five different things, you know what happens? Nothing. We don't do any of them because I can't even hear them. I can't even hear myself think. So it should motivate us, not that our family is the perfect example of, of the family of God, but it should motivate us to all come together with one purpose. And when we come on Shabbat morning, this, this collectively serves as one purpose, by the way. So we do meet together collectively, weekly, with a singular purpose.

52:29 We come together to praise the Lord and to worship his name. That's our purpose. It's why when you see things happen, perhaps you've seen things happen at, at Brook Hashem on a Shabbat is, I would say it's because we're all here together after one purpose. I I'm telling you, we live in a society today where we love to denigrate and to push away the other. And when I say the other, I mean everyone. That's not me. Because the reality is, is none of us are the same. But when we do that, when we polarize and shift everybody to different camps, and they're all, everybody's different feeling, you know

53:16 what happens, all of a sudden there's no way for all of us to be together, unified in prayer, because we're thinking too much about, oh, this president or that president, what should be, what could be, what could have been. We're thinking about other things instead of what is happening and what does God want us to do? Now we're distracted by the world. And I say that including myself, the faith community in America is distracted, I'm gonna say in America, but I I think this is, can be elsewhere, is distracted by the world. To the point sometimes that we've become enamored with the shininess of the world.

54:02 It's time for us to begin to deepen and pray and come together despite our own differences. Now you say rabbi, all right. That's, that's not really possible. Can I tell you something, Brittany? And I don't vote the same. Now you let that sink in for a moment. I always know when I'm going. Well, not always, sometimes, most of the time, often our votes cancel each other out and they don't count for anything. You know what that does in my family? Nothing. It means absolutely nothing because my family is the most important aspect

54:49 of our relationship. And it's to her also who we vote for doesn't mean anything. And it's likewise in this room. I know I'm like talking politics a little bit. And I didn't mean to who you vote for, it doesn't mean anything. I know that everybody's like, it's your civic duty. It yes, it, it is. But your civic duty is also to vote knowingly in what you vote for. And I don't know if most of us know what we vote for, so don't be too, don't put too much weight on somebody else's difference in terms of voting. Because the only thing that matters is that we come together and that we worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

55:36 And that we serve Yeshua in our daily lives and that we let it walk itself out. And you know what allows us to get through each other's differences? Prayer, prayer, prayer permits a lot of things. You know, my kids come to me, dad, or to Brittany, mom, why do we have to eat this tonight? I don't like this food. They come complaining. This is what we do as children. It's what we do when we go to God. We, God, God, did you see this?

56:25 Whatcha doing? And God just kind of chuckles a little bit. And he is like, okay, now take a breath. And now who are you focusing on? Are you focusing on that or are you focusing on me? All it takes is for us to reorient our focus and we have to focus on the Lord always. And if we do that together, guess what? We're all unified. That's just what we do. Okay? I don't wanna keep going. Um, that's it. Uh, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon

57:11 you and give you peace. It's been a while since I've had all three of you

57:58 in the name of our Messiah, Yeshua Shalum.