This Present Darkness

0:00 Let me just explain for a, a, a a a a moment longer. Uh, you know, we used to recite Kaddish, only one Shabbat out of the month, the first Shabbat of the month. And then when, when the war started and, and when everything began to emerge, uh, the, the atrocities in Israel. And as Israel continued to wage war, we continue to recite Kaddish each week. Last week, a ceasefire was reached, which I talked about for just a few minutes last week. And, and subsequently, three of the hostages were released. Yeah, it's great. Listen, it's, it's, it is good

0:46 to praise the Lord that lives are still alive. Uh, and, and actually I can, I can report to you that four more. The four IDF lady soldiers were released today. And, and at least the last I checked, the last I checked, they were in, they were in, um, what do you call in, uh, with the Red Cross. The Red Cross was seeing to them, I haven't seen if they've crossed to Israel yet. Um, but I'm saying that because it, on one hand, it looks like some people are saying the war's over. On the other hand, it's a ceasefire. I don't really know what to say other than you can continue to pray for the release of hostages.

1:32 You can continue to pray for those in Israel who have been infected, which I'm gonna tell you is everyone. There's not a single person in the land of Israel who has not been affected, uh, on some way or some level. Uh, everyone has been affected and traumatized. And, and when you think about it, it's a nation living in trauma and also having to wage war at the same time. Now, that being said, a ceasefire has been reached and, and some hostages are being released, uh, in, in, in exchange for the four ladies today, the four ladies soldiers were 200, uh, 200 prisoners, 121

2:18 of whom were serving life sentences for murderous acts against Israel. I I'm telling you that to understand what there is a cost, and, and Israel is being forced into something that no other country in the world has ever been forced into do. And, and that's hostage negotiation. And, and really more than a one for one, uh, exchange at that rate. So You can continue to pray for the release of hostages. You can continue to pray, uh, for a, a ceasefire that holds.

3:04 Um, but Israel's been a, has had multiple ceasefire agreements since 2005 when Hamas took over, well, I guess I, maybe they took over in 2006, somewhere, right around there when Hamas took over Gaza, it's never stopped Hamas from breaking the ceasefire. It's always held Israel to account and the rest of the nations in the world hold Israel to account. But nobody holds Hamas to their own agreement. Man, I tell you, two weeks in a row, I get to transition and throw the ball to someone else. Uh, on a, on a difficult note. I would like to, you know, I just realized this is my first time introducing you. We are not a part of Brook Hashem.

3:49 So I'd like to invite Dr. Daniel VA to come. Daniel and his family are here, uh, and have been here since the beginning of January. Daniel leads a congregation in Sydney, which I just bat Shalom. Oh, Bates Shalom. See, I'm so used to introducing as part of our own community. I didn't even think to memorize your own congregation, stand from Beit Shalom in Sydney, Australia. And so, uh, he has a table, and you can, if you haven't met Daniel, uh, and you want to know a little bit more about their ministry, um, he and Monica both, maybe we'll be at the table.

4:35 There's a table right outside these doors, uh, to your right after service. And you can sign up for their newsletter. You can connect their ministry. You can learn how you can support them. You can do all of the different things, which I would encourage you to do. A Venus sha may our father in heaven. Lord, I thank you for Daniel. Lord, I thank you for the VA family and their desire, uh, to serve you, Lord. Lord, I pray that you would, uh, continue to provide for them, Lord and I. And Lord, I thank you for Daniel's diligence, uh, to prepare so that we can hear from you today. Lord, we bless you in Yeshua's name. Amen. So I invited, I, I'm just gonna keep talking for just a moment. I invited Daniel to join our Acts series. We're in the middle of Acts, partially

5:21 because Daniel was here when we started Luke and, uh, was a part of that. And so also it helps that Daniel taught Acts in Sydney as well. So, Dr. Daniel, Thank you so much, Harry. Well, it is good to be back. Um, it's been, been more than two years since last time we, we saw each other. And, um, it feels like longer for us. Uh, being in ministry and being upside down is very difficult, um, in Australia. So yes, it's good to be back. I wanna thank Rabbi Aen and his family for all the love and support, uh, they've given us throughout,

6:08 um, the time away. And also, um, being here. Um, I'd like to give us a, give you an update of what's been happening in Australia. Um, but I'm gonna leave that to the end if that's okay. Um, I think the word of God is the most precious treasure that we have. And so we're gonna give the word of God the first place, and we are gonna hit straight, um, into the passage for today, which is in the Book of Acts. As Ari was saying, rabbi Ari was saying, um, and I hope you've been following up, uh, up until now. I'm gonna see these now.

6:53 Hopefully we get the slides working. There you go. Um, so today we'll be in a Acts chapter 12. You can follow along on your, uh, devices or, or physical bibles. Um, but we'll be also on the screen. Many of you probably know the story of, um, that I'm gonna just share with you. You probably have heard this before. Apparently they say there was a, a fire in a building and there was a guy there who was trapped in the fire. And, and this guy was praying to the Lord, was praying to God, God, please

7:42 save me, send help for me and save me. Few minutes later, an ambulance rocked up and um, they put a large blanket and they say, jump, jump. But the guy was, I'm waiting on the Lord. And so he didn't jump. Later on the fire truck arrived, the firefighters, and they, they placed a large inflatable down at the, uh, at the bottom outside of the building. And they encouraged him to jump, but the guy kept praying, I'm waiting on the Lord. So he didn't jump. Finally, a helicopter came and, and a robe came down and a little, the little ladder, and,

8:30 and he didn't climb the ladder. He was waiting on the Lord. And finally the building of the fire burned everything. And, and the guy died. And, and he still went to heaven. And when he gets to heaven, he, he meets God. And he says, why didn't you save me? God said, man, I send you an ambulance. I send you a fire truck. I even sent you a helicopter and you didn't take my help. You probably have heard this story, right? And it's kind of funny, kind of interesting.

9:17 Um, but it doesn't mean that the lesson from this story, it does not mean that we should reach out and do whatever we can to achieve things. It means that God is behind the means that are in front of us, even when those means seem ordinary, right? Like an ambulance or a firetruck. Would you agree with me that this man, according to this story got supernatural help? Yeah, he got supernatural help. At least in the story. God tells him that he sent all those, um, resources.

10:07 But just imagine this. What if it was not only the help which was supernatural, but the fire that caused the building to go in flames was supernatural too. Have you thought about that? What if I tell you, maybe I'll give you more information. What if I tell you that this guy, he was a rabbi, but they were doing a Shabbat service while two men got in the building and lit it on fire and the rabbi managed to get everyone out, but in the end, he got himself trapped in the building.

10:54 What was motivating those two people to start a fire in that building? What if they also were sent by some spiritual force? What if there's someone that opposes God's plans? And sometimes we cannot see that? Because think about it, in the same way God's intervention was in a sense, not visible to the man. This enemies intervention maybe is not evident either. I think today we're gonna look at some of this in our passage in Acts 12.

11:40 I hope you remember, um, last, last week's passage, uh, the beginning of chapter 12. You remember what that was about? There was a prison, right? There was an, an angel. There was escape, A miraculous escape. Yeah, you remember all that? Okay, that's good. Now we want us to take a different look at the same passage because it fits the whole structure of the chapter 12 in Acts. And here we go. Acts 12 verse one. Now, at that time, Herod the king ceased some of, uh,

12:25 from Messiah's community to do them harm. That is the first verse of the section. And look at the last verse, verse 19. It says, after Herod made a search for him and did not find him, he interrogated the guards and commanded that they be led away to execution. Then he went down from Judea and stayed in Caesarea. You can see the section starts with Herod and ends with Herod starts with describing Herod's actions and intentions. We see how he's trying to cease Peter as well.

13:13 He tries to kill Peter. Last week we saw that, but God intervenes and saves him. And the account ends with Herod executing his own soldiers. This type of structure is called inclusive. I know some of you might like that, others don't care, but it's called I Inclusio and it's a literary device typically used in Jewish narrative. So these two repetitions or occurrences, the limit a section there. And I'm going to argue that chapter 12 focuses on Herod as the main character from this

14:00 and from what we are gonna see in a minute. Now, this is quite unusual, not the inclusive, that's a normal, uh, device used a lot. But the unusual thing is that Herod is the main character of a whole chapter. We have seen, if you remember from the book of Acts, Yeshua being the main character. We have seen Peter, the tdi, the disciples being the main characters. We have seen Cornelius, uh, Gentile being the main character. But this is the first time an antagonistic character is the main character, a whole chapter dedicated

14:45 to Herod. So who is this king? Who is this? Herod? Um, well, here's the structure, proposed structure that I, I'm proposing to you today about, uh, chapter 12, Herod against God's people and Herod against God. And we are focusing on the second one. Uh, so Herod is, I just put it in in white 'cause it's just hard to tell. It doesn't matter, even if you were able to see the names, it's just confusing. Okay? That's just Herod's uh, family. Herod de Great was the grandpa of King Herod Agrippa, the first, that is the King Herod in our passage. Herold Agpa the first.

15:31 So his grandson from Herold the Great, and at the bottom even, you might not be able to see the names. We have Jela, who was Herold Ag GPA's, the first daughter, and she married Felix of Felix, the governor, governor Felix Andrew Sila are gonna come up later on in acts. So it is very interesting that Herod's family, it is somehow linked to Yeshua's family throughout the years. They end up interacting with each other. So this king Herod Grpa, the first he came to power, he inherited, uh, his dad or his grandpa's empire in 41 Ce, uh, appointed

16:19 by Kula and Claudius for those who like his history. And, um, we're gonna look at this, this character Herod Agri, the first, so verse 19, that's how last week ended. And it ended with Herod moving from Jerusalem to Caia. And I say Jerusalem because we saw that he came to Judea to celebrate Pesa, and therefore he would've been in Jerusalem, right? That's where the temple was. That's where you go to celebrate Pesa. And so he moved from Judea to Cesarea. Uh, Josephus tells us that this Herald Apa, the first

17:07 was close to the Pharisees. And so there he was celebrating Pesach in Jerusalem. Cesarea, do you remember Cesarea? Just to give us a bit of, uh, uh, it comes before in the Book of Acts is the, uh, center of Roman activity in the area. Cesarea also was where Cornelius was appointed. And when Cornelius and his house was, uh, they were, they accepted the Kodesh, they received the Kodesh. You remember, that's Acts chapter 10. So what we see here is like in a movie, the camera follows the main character. Then Herod went down from Judea and stayed in Caesarea.

17:55 So we see the camera now is just gonna continue moving with Herod in the following section. And this is our section. Today is verse 20 of chapter 12. Now, it happened that Herod was furious with the people of tire and sedan, soar and sedan. And so they came to him, united, having won over blasters the king's personal aid, they began asking for peace because their country was supplied with food from the king's country. We can see there's a change of gears here. There's a new plot beginning. It has nothing to do with what we were looking at

18:43 with change setting with changed city. And we see that Herod is violently very, very furious with the people of tire and sedan. Now, tire and sedan, okay? You can see that, uh, there are two cities today in current Lebanon. Uh, they will be Sioux and Sada cities in Lebanon. But there were two ancient cities in the coast of Fania. Fania was this region, and Fania was rule under the Roman Empire from the first century, uh, BCE to the fourth century, CE Veia was divided into four kingdoms, or four yeah, areas.

19:32 Uh, there were vessel or vessel kingdoms. They were serving the Roman empire, but they, they had certain autonomy. And those kingdoms were sedan, tire, uh, are va and Bilos. Having said that, it seems from the context here in our passage that the survival at this stage in history of Esia was very much dependent on Herod, because we are told that Herod was supplying food to these, uh, to these cities, to these kingdoms. Maybe that was part of the famine that is described earlier. We don't know. But that's the main reason that these people, the people of Sed dont unite, unite

20:18 and come to here to appease this anger because they really need him to continue to supply food for them to survive. And we are told that in order to do that, they achieve, uh, blast us. The king's personal aid, uh, servant, they achieve or they gain him, gain him his trust, and through him they come and ask for peace or reconciliation to Herod. So now I want us to look at this, 'cause it's very interesting. I know this, this passage seems a bit odd. We're gonna try to figure out what is this little story doing here in the Book of Acts,

21:03 but look at the contrasting parallel. There is a parallel, uh, to chapters before in Acts chapter 10. This is what we read that Peter opened his mouth and said, I truly understand this is right after Cornelius Cornelius and his household received the Kodesh. Uh, Peter says, I truly understand that God is not one to show favoritism, but in every nation, the one who fears him and does what is right and acceptable to him, you know, the message he sent to Benet Israel proclaiming shalom peace through Messiah. He's Lord of all. So what does this have to do with what we just read in Acts chapter 12?

21:51 Well, what is the main difference in Acts 10? The king's servant Messiah, Yeshua achieves shalom, peace for the nations. That's what we say here to Benet Israel. But the context is Cornelius and the nations, the gentiles. Now in chapter 12 of Acts, we have the nations uniting together, winning over the king's servant favor And try to achieve peace for themselves. You see, the process is a bit different there. One is the king's servant obeying the king's voice,

22:36 initiating a process of shalom for everyone. And the other one is the people trying to win shalom from this king through the king servant. That is just interesting of what we're going to see or is related to what we are gonna see in a second. So let's continue reading verses 21 and 22. On an appointed day, Herod done his royal robes and taking his seat upon the throne began to make a speech to them. The people who were shouting the voice of a God and not a human. Wow, must have been a really good speech.

23:21 The people of ti and sedan, in an act of idolatry, they elevate Herod to the position of God. They give him a position that is not his, obviously he's not God. But in doing that, they complete the parallelism that we were talking about with Acts 10. Now, Herod is God, his servant has mediated for the people to unite and come and achieve peace. Look what happens next. Immediately, an angel of the Lord struck him down because he did not give God the glory

24:08 and he was eaten by worms and died. Wow, what did just happen? We thought there's gonna be another nice story. We that's a quite an abrupt ending for Herod. What's going on here? Herod is giving this speech to the people apparently like really, really good speech. He would've won the elections with that speech. And the people say the voice of God, the voice of God and not a human. And boom, Herod is killed by an angel of the Lord.

24:56 How did this happen? Well, we are told how this happened. He was eaten by worms and died. Now, um, some of you remember, I, I was a physician, kind of, um, have died inside of me. And when I read something like this, I, I think something's wrong here, right? The order is not, is not right. You usually die and then you are eaten by worms, right? But here it is, like, okay, the worms ate him and, and then he died. That's, that's very interesting. Uh, that must be quite painful to be honest.

25:43 Um, it is like pointing at the fact that header was already rotten inside. He was even before being dead, he was already rotten inside. And so the worms ate him. Now, the worms in the Hebrew scriptures, they tend to be a sign of judgment. It's a sign of judgment. Now, fus, the Jewish historian, he recounts Herod's, uh, herpa the first death as well. He says that during his speech, the people cried out Ries and declare him to be a God that Herod was carried away

26:30 by the flay and immediately was struck with severe stomach pains. And according to Josephus, he died five days later, Which But it says that the worms, Luke is saying the worms were the immediate means, but he reveals that an angel of the Lord was responsible with, responsible for, uh, a striking Herod with, with the worms why this did happen. Why this happen to Herod? Why do you think God sends an angel

27:15 to kill Herod, the Texas? Because he did not give the glory to God? We call that pride, right? When we do not give God the glory, we are being prideful. We think we deserve the glory. So what is all this account about King Herod tyrant sedan, the voice of a God and not a human divine punishment? What is Luke trying to do here? Well, you have to remember, to whom did Ru look

28:02 right this account? Do you remember that? It's in look one and it's in Acts one, two, Theophilus, right? Theophilus, who was a priest who would've known the Hebrew scriptures and whom Luke was trying to reinforce in his faith in Messiah, that this is not something new, but is something that it was prophesied all, all the time in the Hebrew scriptures. And so if you think about this, Theophilus is reading this is reading this, this account, and he would've been straight away, taken back

28:49 to a passage in Ezekiel. Why? Why don't we go and and read that passage together and see what he says. Let's go to Ezekiel 28. Ezekiel 28, I think I got it on the screen. There you go, Ezekiel 28. And we're gonna read a few verses there. It says, the word of Adonai came to me saying, son of man say to the prince of T, thus says, Adonai Elim. So your heart is exalted and you say, am God, I sit in the seat of Gods in the heart of the sea.

29:35 Yet you are human, not a God. Even if you set up your heart like the heart of a God, see, you are wiser than Daniel. No secret is hidden from you by your wisdom and by understanding you have made wealth for yourself and have gathered gold and silver into your treasuries. In your great skill by your trade, you have increased your wealth. So your heart is exalt, exalted by your wealth. Therefore, thus says at denial Him because you have set up your heart like the heart of God. Behold, I will bring, where am I?

30:22 Strangers against you, the ruthless of the nations. They will draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom that will def fire your splendor. They will bring you down to the Pitt. You will die the death of those slain in the heart of the sea. Will you still say, I am God before the one who slice you, yet you are man and not a God in the hand of those who pierce you, you will die. The deaths of the uncircumcised at the hand of strangers for I have spoken, it is a declaration of Adonai.

31:09 We could agree to an extent that the prophecy of Ezekiel 28 was later fulfilled when Alexander the great conquered tire in 30 32, BCE and completely destroyed half half of the city of tire, which was a pretty amazing city. King Arthur, hers destroyed sedan. Um, also called conquer sedan. And so we could say that's when Ezekiel 28 was fulfilled. And that may be the case. But prophecy works in this way

31:56 because Ezekiel 28 actually speaks about this prince of tire, right about this leader of tire, a man with pla with power who claims to be God. Well, by judging to the events in Acts 12, it just, they contain a whole lot of parallelism and allusions to Ezekiel 28. And you could see there's a resemblance between this prince of tire and Herod, Herod and the prince of tire. It is like the prophecy of Ezekiel 28 has some level

32:42 of fulfillment in Acts 12 with Herod. If that's the case, and this I could be wrong, uh, let's continue reading Ezekiel 28 because I think there's more to it. Ezekiel 28, verse 11, it says, the word of Adonai came to me saying, son of man, lift up a lament for the king of ti say to him that says, A, you were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God.

33:29 Every precious stone was your covering Ruby to pass and diamond burial, onyx and jasper sapphire, turquoise and emerald, your settings and your sockets, a work machine, workman's ship of gold in the day you were created, they were prepared. You were an anointed guardian, op or cher. I pledge you on the holy mountain of God. You walked among stones of fire. You were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created until unrighteousness was found in you by the abundance of your trade.

34:15 They fill you within, they fill you within with violence so you have sin. So I threw you out as a profane thing from the mountain of God. I made you vanish guardian Carib from among the stones of fire. Your heart was exalted because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom because of your Splenda splendor. I threw you down to the earth before kings. I set you as a spectacle. We're gonna stop there for the sake of time. According to Ezekiel 28 in this text now, there's a lamenting prophecy about

35:03 the king of Tyre. We just said that the previous section was about the prince of tire and there was a correlation between that and the events and Herod and this prince, but now is the king. And if we look at the language and this many scholars, and many of you would agree about this, the language here is very difficult to take as a human being described, right? It looks way more than just a human king because look at this, look at the, the words here. You were the sign of perfection. You were in Eden who was there other than Adam.

35:48 And if you were in Eden, the garden of God, you were an anointed guardian, cherub in the holy mountain of God. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created. That doesn't look like a human. Uh, but your heart was proud because of your beauty. You can tell by reading this that is not talking about a regular human. Um, what God is telling Ezekiel here, it's about this king of tire, but it's just really hard to fit with any human that we know, right? This description seems to fit with this angelical being

36:35 the son of the morning, the star of the day, Lucifer or Ma, commonly known as the adversary or Hasan Satan. Would you agree that it is kind of the language here? And so if Acts 12 points back to Ezekiel 28 or fulfills Ezekiel 28 or retro shadows full, you know, you can, you can, you can throw in all the language you want, but it seems like there's a connection. And if Herod is the prince of tire in Ezekiel 28, then maybe, maybe the real king, the one

37:21 behind Herod with the king of this world is Hasan Satan. Herod embodies spiritual opposition to God in chapter 12. He embodies spiritual opposition to what God is doing. What is God doing? God is in the process, in the business of freeing people who are enslaved to sin. The context here again, is Pesach, the slavery from Egypt, the freedom from slavery in Egypt. But God is in the business of freeing people from the slavery of sin

38:07 and from the rule ship of Satan. Herod hates the work of God and opposes it by accusing and killing his followers. He killed James that's mentioned at the beginning of chapter 12. And he tries to kill Peter. And in his pride, he believes what people say to him, that he's more than a mere human, that he's God, he believes in his own power, his ability to control things. And God says that's enough. God strikes him down. But we have to remember that meanwhile in the shadows,

38:57 Satan, the ruler of this world, continues to oppose God. I think chapter 12 of the book of Acts depicts spiritual warfare. And that is the reason why he's there and why Herod is the main character. Because at this point, Luke wants to know, he's trying to help us realize that God is doing things, but there's someone else in the back doing opposing him. From this point onwards in the book of Acts, we're gonna see a little bit more of a spiritual warfare where it'll be more evidence of it.

39:44 We have a, a problem because in our western Hellenistic mindset, which most of us would have, you have grown up in the West, um, we tend to think that everything is bipolar. That everything is a dichotomy, that everything is either physical or spiritual. And so like the man waiting for God to save him, we often mistake that there are physical things happening that carry spiritual meaning. And there are the same time spiritual. Why? Because we are both physical and spiritual.

40:34 I believe Herod was more than just a human, a Roman ruler. I think he also was the means of the enemy to oppose God and his followers. In the end, Herod is stricken by the angel of the Lord. And even in his death, Herod also points to the fact that the enemy, Satan, one day will be stricken by the Lord himself. You can see more parallelisms, we're not gonna go there, but in Isaiah 14 about this. So our section ends, chapter 12 ends with a contrasting victory.

41:23 There's defeat for the enemy, but there is victory on God's side for those who follow him. Verses 24 and 25 they say, but the word of God kept on growing and multiplying. In contrast, God's business keeps prospering. And Barnabas and Saul returned to Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their service taking along John, who was also called Mark, This is a means of epilogue. If you remember, this is a bit, a few chapters before Paul and Barnabas had been sent by the Messianic community of Antioch with food to distribute throughout Judea

42:08 because there was a big famine. Hope you remember that. So the elders send them, they do that and they return to Jerusalem. That's what Luke is uh, describing here. And they pick up Mark, John, mark, John. Mark would've been in Miriam's house when, where they were praying for the liberation of Peter. So you, it's, it's all connected here. We're just, Luke is bringing all this uh, together and we are gonna see, or you guys are gonna see next week, how um, they take John Mark and they go back to Antioch. The word of God keeps on producing fruit, the word of God in the end,

42:57 in spite of the battle, in spite of Herod, in spite of the enemy, victory follows those who follow Adonai. So there's a summary, a summary of what we have seen today. Pride is at the core of all sin. Pride was the end of Herod, right? We've seen that pride takes us all the way to the beginning, to Genesis, because pride, as you might remember, was what led Adam and if to be expelled from Eden

43:44 and to be separated from God because they wanted to be like him. Like God. Unfortunately, pride runs our society. As a society. We want to be our own God. We want to manage our own lives and living in this way, it is like the spicing our creator, the spicing God telling him that we know better than him, that he has created us, that we don't need him. And so we continue to fall. We are in a free fall. We keep falling. But this is what is worse.

44:31 What is worse is that we do not realize that pride connects us not with God. It connects us with the enemy, with Hasan who did trick Adam. And if in trying to be like God, it was Hasan, he told them, oh no, the day you eat from this, you will be like God. And Satan keeps tricking us in the same way, letting us think that if we do this right, if we buy the next thing,

45:18 the next Tesla, I'm just kidding. If we buy whatever, if we do whatever, we will be better. We will be closer to God. And that the only thing it does, it leads us away from God and closer to the enemy. Even when we do not see it, it might not be evident to us. But you know, what is the best way to know if there is pride in your life? There's one test to see if there is pride in your life. See, how do you react to flattery, to compliments, to praise?

46:06 Check yourself when someone tells you, Oh, You are so good, check your heart. You know, rabbis struggle with this a lot. I struggle with this when someone comes and gives me a complimentary of praise and I hope someone does it at the end. But when that happens, while someone is doing that, I'm thinking, I'm praying. And sometimes I even say it, bar Hashem, praise the Lord.

46:52 And it's almost a prayer. I'm saying to myself, Daniel, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Because every time someone gives you a praise or a compliment, at least this is what happens to me deep inside, like really deep. There is a beast that awakens, a beast that is sleeping, but a beast called pride that is always, always hungry. He's always hungry and ready to be fed by anyone that throws a compliment and a prays to you. I would say that rabbis are just

47:39 human like anyone else. And therefore I would say that you also have this beast of pride sleeping inside of you, ready to come out at any given point in time when you are praised. I'm not saying that praise is a bad thing, I'm saying that our flesh is bad, that pride is within us, and that we have to be aware of that and be vigilant. Pride is at the core, is at the core of all sin, and it can lead to your destruction. To Herod, it was literally immediate death for him. Now, it's not just pride that we are dealing with, right?

48:28 There's something else. There's spiritual warfare and is real. And we better realize of this. Pride is not the only problem we face or danger we face. There are things around us. They don't want us to be successful. They don't want us to be close to God. They don't want what's best for us, but the opposite, they want our decline, our death. They want evil and they are around us. Absolutely. Paul would say to the Ephesians as a reminder

49:13 that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the worldly forces of this present darkness. This is the world we're living today, and that's the title of this message, this present darkness. Our fight is against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. They're going to entice us, telling us a whole lot of lies about if you do all these things, the rewards you're gonna get, but in the end, there's death. I think chapter 12 is telling us about this reality

50:04 that there is a reality of spiritual beings around us. And they are at war. They are at war. The Bible called them angels or maim. If, if they're with God and fallen angels or demons, if they fight against God and they are the enemy side, we are both physical and spiritual. And therefore we are impacted by this reality, by this spiritual reality. I believe Herod Agpa, the first was influenced, influenced and used by the enemy to, um, oppose God in Acts 12, the language

50:52 that Luke uses is pointing to that reality. He receives immediate judgment. And in the Book of Acts, there is another just few chapters before act of immediate judgment. Very much like this one. Do you remember that one? There were a couple Ananias and Sfi in chapter five, if you remember. Um, they sold their possessions and they kept some of the benefits and they lied about it, and they fell dead at the feet of Peter.

51:42 In verse three of that same chapter, it says, Hasan Satan filled their hearts. He was the driver, the initiator of that, uh, event. I'm convinced that Satan Hatfield herpa as the first heart and that he was deeply under his influence. We are not alone in this fight. We shouldn't be terrified or afraid or scared, although it can be daunting if you think about it. But in the same way, Peter received assistance

52:30 of an angel last week. We receive assistance of God's angels even when we do not see them, right? We might just see the ambulance, but we receive spiritual aid. Now, you gotta remember from last week, there was an antecedent, something that happened before the angel was sent to Peter. Let us remember that. So Peter was kept in prison, but prayer, prayer for him was being offered fervently to God by Messiah's community prayer.

53:19 And so prayer is key in the spiritual warfare. It might be daunting, it might be scary, but we, we have help. We are not alone in anything that we are facing. And in the end, victory belongs to the Lord. We gotta remember that we remind ourselves every single day that whatever we're facing, victory belongs to the Lord. Don't be afraid of the spiritual reality. Be aware of it. And if at some point there is some fear, good run to the Lord.

54:07 Run to the Lord and pray. John says, you are from God children and you have overcome them. The context here, it's evil spirits, the spirit of the anti Messiah, evil spirits you have overcome them, says John, because greater is he who is in you. Who is in you, the spirit of Messiah, the kodesh Holy Spirit. Great is He who is in you than He who is in the world. God is in control of everything.

54:53 Whatever you are going through, whatever we are going through, whatever Israel is going through, even in the middle of the battle, God is there. It does not mean, and we have to remember this, okay? I don't want you to walk out thinking, okay, I am invincible, I'm Superman. Nothing is gonna happen to me. We're gonna remember that this does not mean that we are going to be spared, that we are going to be immune, that attacks are not going to happen, that persecution is not going to happen. And maybe death is going to happen

55:42 At the beginning of this chapter, chapter 12, the book of Acts James, one of the 12, is killed by Herod. Why there were not angels available that day? What happened? Why Peter and not James? Was James more sinner than Peter? Don't, don't go that path. That's not, that's not the answer. That's Sometimes God intervenes and saves and other times God intervenes and saves. Yeah, You've heard that, right?

56:27 Sometimes God intervenes and saves and other times God intervenes and saves. So what is the difference? Our perception of that is the difference because we do not see it, because we do not understand. It does not mean that God is in the business of protecting his children, his children. That is something that you might need to wrestle with. It's in the scripture, I can tell it to you. But I know that until you experience that, until you find yourself in a building on fire, you're not gonna see God's intervention, whichever that is.

57:15 God shows up in the midst of hardship. Remember the rabbi in the building of fire, in fire, God intervened, but he didn't see it in the same way God may be intervening in your life, even when you don't see it. So just remember, and this is important, whether we see it or not, whether you see God's intervention of not or not, he's intervening, intervening, and therefore we should always give thanks to God for his grace.

58:01 That is what we should be doing all the time. 'cause God is good. He's good all the time, and his grace is never ending towards his children. Stay away From anything that feasts feeds the beast of pride. Stay away from anything that points to you doing something instead of God doing it. So here's my double application for you to today, for this week. Okay? It's 10 plus five. You know where 10 plus five is is 15, right? 10 plus five is 15. So, uh, my application today is that this week

58:46 we spend time in a scripture, 10 minutes every day and five minutes praying, 10 plus five, 10 scripture, five prayer every day, 10 plus five. Why? We have the Ru hakodesh inside of us. If you have trusted in Messiah, you have his spirit in you. But the spirit needs a sword. And the sword of the spirit is the word of God. So we need to take the sword every day and let the spirit use it. How does the spirit use it? Well, first it goes inside and it's painful.

59:34 It kills the pride. Okay? We need the sword of God to kill the pride through his spirit in us every day, 10 minutes. And what it also does is used against our enemy. And then you can pray and you can pray with our right heart, a heart that is humble because the word has humbled you already. And you can pray to the Lord and use his word, use his promises against the enemy, against disease, against anything that we are facing. So it's just easy to remember 10 plus five,

1:00:19 10 scripture, five, prayer. Do not think, do not think that we have to spend the whole day. You can repeat this as many times as you want. You have a lunch break, 10 plus five, you can do that. But just remember to spend time with the Lord and pray ab mal, our Father and king, we just thank you so much, Lord, for what you have done in Messiah. We thank you because greater is the one living in us, or greater is the Holy Spirit living in us that the one ruling this world.

1:01:05 And we know that even when we have, we suffered the defeat in battle of the victories, yours, Lord, we just long for the day when you will come back with your sword to completely defend, defeat the enemy. Lord, we thank you so much because you have given us everything we need in your word, Lord, for living with you, close to you, in intimacy with you through the blood of the landlord. I praise you and we give you all the glory because from you and through you,

1:01:51 and to you be all the glory forever and ever. And let us say amen. Alright, Thank you. Uh, not too much clapping, you know, Um, I was gonna step down, but, uh, I realize I, I I need to share a little bit about the ministry in Australia. And, and truly it is the word of God doing what he does. Um, we started two years ago with, uh, a group of, uh, a Bible study group of about 20 people, um,

1:02:38 quickly transitioned that group into a, a congregation. And we, we didn't know what we were doing. I mean, we're in Australia, you can tell I'm not from Texas, right? Um, was born in Spain, we're in Australia planting a Messianic congregation. So we are Lord, yes, we might have some skills, but we don't know what we're doing. And so what we're gonna do is just stick to this, okay? We're just gonna preach this, you know, whatever it takes, whatever passage you throw in front of us, we're gonna go

1:03:24 through it and just help us. And the Lord is faithful and his work never comes back empty or without fruit. Um, we are part of Celebrate Messiah, uh, celebre Messiah is the Australian Branch of Chosen People ministries. Some of you might be more familiar with Chosen People ministries here in the us but chosen People Ministries has, um, presence in about, well, 20 plus countries around the world. Australia is one, and there it's called Celebrate Messiah. Uh, the vision, uh, of Celebrate Messiah is to give all Jewish people the opportunity to hear about the Jewish Messiah that is, uh, at the heart

1:04:12 of everything we do. And, um, we have three congregations, uh, in terms of congregational ministries. Uh, we have three now, Beit, he in Melbourne. We have HIA in Canberra. And our, uh, young congregation, uh, in Sydney, be Shalom Sydney, uh, here is, this is, uh, where we meet, um, at a local church building, um, be Shalom Sydney. The Lord has blessed that that Bible study group and what we started to do. And so this is, um, what our congregation looks like in a regular Shabbat. Uh, we do a number of things. Um, we, we try, even though we are small,

1:04:59 and so, um, we have worship, um, we didn't, we didn't know that we were supposed to do worship or like when I say we, I'm talking about my, my wife and I. Um, you can, you can tell that I have a great, uh, musical voice. And, um, we, we've never done this before, but there, there, there we are. Um, we, by the grace of God, we, um, received a Torah scroll, uh, about six months ago. So, um, we have Torah services now once a month. Uh, so we read from from the, we can from the Torah scroll, and that's a blessing. Uh, we have, um, discipleship meetings at our house.

1:05:48 Uh, there's young adults coming and, uh, this is our, you're gonna laugh at this. This is our Hanukkah in August celebration, right? Um, yes, Australia is in summertime right now. Okay? So, uh, when it's winter and it's cold, it feels a bit more like Hanukkah. Um, in our Hanukah celebration, we were a hundred degrees. And so, yeah, um, that's the beauty of being down under, um, every month we stayed for lunch after the service. Uh, we have Bagel Nas, but, uh, we also have lunches every month. We had a, uh, congregational retreat this year,

1:06:35 our first, uh, retreat. And it was a, a blessing to be out there. Um, this could be anyone's backyard, by the way. Don't think that we went to a special place, but Australia is just, it just bush, basically with pockets of civilization. Um, so that's our retreat, be Shalom retreat. And this is, uh, this year's, uh, Pesa event, our Passover Eder, uh, we did it at a, at another congregation or church building. And we had about 200 people attending our, uh, biblical feast celebration. The Modi are the main, um, community activity. That's when, uh, we invite everyone. So we have lots of, uh, Jewish people and gentiles coming,

1:07:22 and it's just, uh, we triple the numbers. Um, we have a lot of, uh, impact. It's, it's great that the Lord is blessing that, uh, this is our last, uh, Hanukah just a day before coming, uh, to Texas. We had our Hanukah service. So we have, uh, extra kids doing that service. And this is the congregation in our Hanukah service. The building only holds 135 people. And that day we beat the record of attendance. We had 175 people. Uh, we only had, that's, that's the Lord. We only had food for 140.

1:08:10 We, we just, we thought, let's think big, okay, we're gonna think like, if, if the building was completely full, maybe a bit more, 140. And, and my wife was, uh, Monica was involved in the cooking. And so they, they were working hard and, and they, they thought, this is 140 at the most, and we had 175, we had lots of leftovers. So the Lord keeps multiplying the food. Um, it's all the Lord's doing. It's just amazing to see him in action. And we have had both Jews and Gentiles come

1:08:56 and join our services. Some people who told us, we have been praying for a long time for Sydney to have a Messianic congregation. Now Sydney is a big city, right? We're talking about, um, I dunno how many million people, but, um, there is approximately, approximately, um, 60,000 Jewish people. There was zero Messianic congregations. And so we got a lot of visitors, some people that live very far similarly to what happens, maybe, uh, Baruch Hashem for some of you, but people that live, uh, hours away and they come maybe once a month or for the feasts. But the Lord has been blessing the ministry and we are really thankful, um, Baruch Hashem,

1:09:43 it's a great part of what's been happening. Maybe you don't know us. Uh, some many of you do, and you guys have been supporting us. You have been encouraging us and praying for us. And, um, it's been a blessing to be honest. So, uh, we wanna thank you for, uh, partnering with us, and we ask you, you please continue to do this. Just last Hanukkah and what we have been experiencing during this 2024, if that continues, we might need to move. And we don't have a place to move to or to go in this congregation building. We are not paying rent, we are just paying the cleaners. Um, so it's a blessing and we, we need a place to go.

1:10:31 So please pray for the Lord to show and provide, um, a place if, if he keeps blessing, which he probably knows, right? He bringing people. He's also gonna bring a building for the people to meet at. But, um, it's always, um, it's always a, yeah, a burden when you are trying to lead a congregation. So, um, there are a couple more ministries that we do, especially from the congregation out. One is we bring gifts, um, to Jewish people in the community, friends, uh, during the holidays, which is something that is very traditional to do. And we try to establish, uh, friendships and support, uh, the Jewish people in Australia, which is,

1:11:17 has been really hard to be Jewish, uh, in Australia after October 7th. Uh, that might be true for many places, but, uh, you probably saw the Palestinian, uh, protest in front of the Sydney Opera House just a week after October 7th. That is something that has continued this week. There was a, a school that was burnt, uh, a school attached to a synagogue, and there are constant, constant demonstrations of antisemitism. So it hasn't been easy for the Jewish community. So we try to show them love and care, uh, through this initiative. And then we host Israelis.

1:12:03 Australia is one of the places in the world, along with South America, where lots of Jewish people, uh, after they finish their IDF service, in this case, it's been the war, right after they finish that, they come to Australia, they get this time off and they come to, to relax to meet new people. And so we are hosting Israelis. Uh, we do that in our homes, in our houses. We also have a, um, a house particularly, um, that we've, the ministry has bought to do that, but we host, um, Israelis and we share, uh, the good news of Messiah and we invite them to our congregation. And, uh, it's just a way of, of blessing Israel.

1:12:51 So that is a nutshell of what we're doing. And I wanna say more, um, if you wanna, uh, be part of that and partner with us, you can go to chosen people ministries or chosen people.com staff Daniel and Monica Valley. Uh, you'll find us there and we have a, a table outside with some materials, uh, free materials that you can grab and, and pray for us as you do. And, and this is something new. We have this, we need help. Okay? We are a small congregation and basically Monica and I are doing a lot. You can, you've seen this, uh, leading worship, well,

1:13:38 you don't wanna hear me Caning Torah, but yeah, I do that too. Uh, Monica leads the youth, uh, the youth. So the youth group, uh, the children's ministry. We do all, it's all our family basically. And we we're raising leaders and we're discipling them, but we need your help. So if you ever thought about ministry overseas, I don't say I just, I like that word, just serving the Lord far from home all the way down under, um, grab one of these. There are different options and ways in which you could help and come and we would look at, uh, providing, uh, means

1:14:23 and, and help you do that. Uh, so please pray about, uh, serving in Australia. Uh, it's kind of cool, you know, you have koalas, um, um, yeah, there are other dangerous animals, but I'm not gonna mention them, so I'm gonna scare you. Um, so yeah, please come and yes, praise and serve the Lord together. Thank you so much. 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 you and give you peace.

1:15:45 In the name of our Messiah, Yeshua. Amen.