Open your Bibles to Acts chapter 11. We're reading chapter 11 verse 19 through chapter 12. Chapter 11 verse 19. Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but the Jews only. But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene. who when they had come to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them. And a great number believed and turned to the Lord. Then news of these things came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem. And they sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch. When he came and had seen the grace of God, he was glad. and encouraged them all, that with purpose of heart, they should continue with the Lord. For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch, So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. And in these days, prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch. Then one of them, named Agabus, stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar. Then the disciples, each according to his ability, determined to send relief for the brethren dwelling in Judea. This they also did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas in Saul. Now about that time, Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church. Then he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now it was during the Days of Unleavened Bread. So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover. Peter was therefore kept in prison. But constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church. And when Herod was about to bring him out, that night Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers, and the guards before the door were keeping the prison. Now behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the prison. And he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, Arise quickly. And his chains fell off his hands. Then the angel said to him, gird yourself and tie on your sandals. And so he did. And he said to him, put on your garment and follow me. So he went out and followed him, and did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. When they were past the first and second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads to the city, which opened to them of its own accord And they went out, and went down one street, and immediately the angel departed from him. And when Peter had come to himself, he said, Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent his angel, and has delivered me from the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the Jewish people. So, when he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark. where many were gathered together praying. And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a girl named Rhoda came to answer. When she recognized Peter's voice because of her gladness, she did not open the gate, but ran in and announced that Peter stood before the gate. But they said to her, you are beside yourself. Yet she kept insisting that it was so. So they said, it's his angel. Now Peter continued knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. But motioning to them with his hand to keep silent, he declared to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, go tell these things to James and to the brethren. And he departed and went to another place. Then as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers about what had become of Peter. But when Herod had searched for him, and not found him, he examined the guards and commanded that they should be put to death. And he went down from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there. Now Herod had been very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon. But they came to him with one accord, and having made Blastus the king's personal aide their friend, they asked for peace, because their country was supplied with food by the king's country. So on a set day, Herod arrayed in royal apparel, sat on his throne and gave an oration to them. And the people kept shouting, the voice of a God and not of a man. Then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give glory to God. And he was eaten by worms and died. But the word of God grew and multiplied. Well, at the beginning of this text, we have this transition where we've got the Gentiles coming in at the beginning of chapter 11. And we have a defense by Peter about the Gentiles coming and not having to go through the Jewish rites, the old types and ceremonies, not having to deal with the circumcision, for example, or the kosher laws. And so what happens is there's The fact that Peter obviously received a vision and then went and talked to Cornelius, and there's an acceptance by some of the brothers that are with him. He has six witnesses with him, right? And they agree with what has happened about the baptism of the Holy Spirit on the Gentiles, and then there's a defense given by Peter when he returns back. And so then we have from there, now the blessing on the Jews from the Gentiles, where the Gentiles being brought into the church are now giving support. And so we talked last time, I went through and I talked to you about certain principles of giving. And I I made a slight modification, not that I changed any of the points, but I changed the order because I think order of thinking is important, right? When you look at the book of Ecclesiastes or the book of Proverbs, the book of Proverbs is a bunch of proverbs, but they're ordered. And so you look at the book of Ecclesiastes, and at the end of it, it talks about those who are scribes, essentially those who are writers, who are wise men, who seek to figure out how to teach. It's an importance not only to what is said, but the order in which it is said. And so that's important because you actually see this, for example, in Acts chapter 15, when we get to the debate about the ceremonial law and what happens with it. Initially, James proposes kind of an explanation of what should be said in this letter. And then the council changes the order a little bit because they think that it's better to capture it in writing slightly different. They don't change any of his points. They just try to make it more clear, and they try to make it in an order that they think is more useful. Having spent some more time thinking about this, let me remind you of some of these principles of giving we discussed. We talked about the fact that giving is a duty in many circumstances. And so we had the giving that occurs where Agabus comes. And so we talked about, after Barnabas, last time we went into verse 27, and in these days prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch. Then one of them, named Agabus, stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar. Then the disciples, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea. This they also did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul." So if it's throughout all the world, wouldn't that include Antioch? So by the way, all the world here, does this mean like including like Mesoamerica? Right? The point is that the world here, and this is important to remember in the New Testament, the world here is often referring simply to the Roman Empire as a way of talking about the empire as a synecdoche of the world, because it's the great empire of the world. So it's throughout the empire. And so you see things about prophecies about the word going out to the ends of the world and stuff like that. And there's obviously going to be a filling of the whole earth with the knowledge of God. But there's also stuff that happens in the lifetime of the apostles. where the word goes out to the ends of the empire. Okay, so this is an example of that kind of a text. We're talking about here, the empire. So there's going to be a famine that's empire wide. And this famine, this empire wide, is something that would obviously impact Antioch. So why would the Antiochians think, oh, well, we need to send money to Jerusalem? Because in Jerusalem, they were under persecution. Remember, this is after the Stefanic persecution. Right? There's Stevens killed, and then the rest of the church gets persecuted. And there's this scattering. So what's worse, famine or famine plus persecution? Typically, adding persecution doesn't make anything easier. Right? So they're thinking, okay, so there's famine, and we're all gonna be dealing with famine here. But these people have recently been displaced. They're being persecuted. They're losing their jobs. They're being persecuted by the public authority. They're being persecuted by the synagogues. They're being persecuted and they're losing property. And there has been a burden on that church to send out missionaries and to also be able to support things. There's already been a consuming of the wealth in Jerusalem because they had the prophecy about the fact that, well, Jerusalem's going to be destroyed pretty soon here. Within the lifetime of these people who heard the Olivet Discourse, Jesus is saying, hey, within a generation, this place is going to get destroyed. And so they're recognizing that. And they don't know exactly when at this point. So they're just going, OK, well, let's do our duty. Let's throw our resources into this. Let's liquidate. So that's a rational behavior. But with the persecution plus the selling of their capital goods. They're no longer in a place where they're really doing well enough to be able to support themselves. It's a sending help. Now this is notice this is additional giving. This is not the tithe. But you don't you don't choose whether or not to do the tithe. The tithe is a duty. God says do it. And you're obligated to do it. This is additional giving. Okay, so they are choosing to do that. And Paul talks about this in his letters to the Corinthians. He talks about the importance of when you've made a commitment to pay something that's over the tide, that you actually fulfill it. Don't just promise to do it, but actually do it. And so there's that. And sometimes promising is necessary, because you have to plan, right? So you go, well, it'd be worth doing this thing. But if we can't get enough funds, it doesn't make sense to do. So you sort of go around and talk to people and get commitments to be able to do a good work. And then when the time comes, you expect them to fulfill their commitments. Alright, so giving. We talked about last time that the first, the most important thing is that giving is in the name of Christ. And when your faith is known more broadly, you don't have to do as much each time you give something. In the context of the church, you have hospitality. If people come, they understand that it's in the name of Christ. You pray before you eat, and you are trying to have fellowship during the time. That makes it clear that it's in the name of Christ. And occasionally, it might be good to remind. But when your faith is not known, when you're dealing with people you don't know, you have to make it more explicit. Okay, so is that clear, does that make sense? So then the second principle is covenant institutions have relative duties in them, and you need to go from your more basic duties to your less basic. So you deal with yourself, and your household, and your church, and the state, right? And so this ordering of responsibilities of who you have an obligation to provide for. That also results in covenant institutions from more local to less local. More local to less local. So, your local church rather than your Presbytery or General Assembly, in terms of what you have obligation to help to provide for. And so the people in Jerusalem had an obligation to provide for themselves before the people in Antioch did, right? And yet, out of the overflow of extra, of the prospering that they had, the people in Antioch gave. Look at what it says in the verses. Verses 27 through 30, let's read again. And in these days prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch, Then one of them, named Agabus, stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar. Then the disciples, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea." So this determination is their own choosing to do, and it's according to their ability. Now, In Marxism, and in various forms of socialism, you'll have people talk about the idea of from each according to ability, to each according to need. Well, on a daily basis, what you need is to cover your nakedness and enough food and drink to keep you from dying. So that's not the idea here, that we have to give everything except for that. Because we have duties for the household, and we have duties in various ways. And one of our duties is to exercise dominion, which means we have to accumulate capital to start businesses, to make things happen, to do things, to employ people. And so it's not a sin to own a house. It's not a sin to have property. It's a good work. It's commanded. And so this verse sometimes gets cited that each, according to his ability, determined to send relief. And they'll say, see, everything you're able to send, you have to send. You have to give away everything you're able to. And that's silly. There are interesting Marxist interpretations of the Book of Acts, liberation theology. That's the label under which you see a lot of it. And it's just bogus. It ignores, it does not read the Bible systematically. It looks for excuses to preach Marxism. So verse 29, then the disciples each, according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea. The point there is not that they sent everything they were able to send. The point is that they made determination that was in accordance with their ability. And so if you don't have the ability, then you don't give because you have other duties you need to provide for first. But when you have additional property, then you make determination. And so we'll talk about again, work in a second here. And this is important. Right? People, you know, there's a my my oldest son gave me a story recently out of a book, a business book that I encouraged him to look at called the personal MBA. Okay. And this has a story about there's a man, and you know, he's he's fishing, and he's making a living isn't some third world country, but he's happy he's fishes enough to provide for himself to sell some and He's able to go and relax, and he can play the guitar, and spend time with his wife, and spend time with his kids. And so he's got this relaxed life, and he's providing for himself. And so there's this American businessman, and it's supposed to be this joke about how Americans are stupid. And the idea is, the American businessman comes in and says, well, you know what you should do? Look how great this fishing hole is. What you should do is, you should hire some guys, start a business, bring in the fish in greater quantities, sell them off, you'll make more money. And the guy says, well, why would I do that? What would I do after I make the money? What would I do? He said, well, then you would spend time with your wife and with your kids, and you'd play the guitar, and it's supposed to say, look, if you just have a relaxed life all the time, you can do the stuff you want to do anyways. Let me tell you what. The purpose of getting rich should not be to live a relaxed life. The purpose of getting rich is to have more resources to glorify God by exercising dominion over more. The goal of life is not to make enough money to have a permanent vacation. The goal of life is to work, to exercise dominion, which increases the wealth that you're possession so that you can use it to bring glory to God, which means providing for yourself, then providing for your household, then having enough to help to make sure that you can get the tithes of the church, making sure then you have enough also to pay your taxes, lawful taxes. And when you have all that taken care of, you have extra resources that you can use to invest, to grow dominion, to hire people and have a Christian culture, to give extra money for those who are in need, to pass an inheritance on to future generations, to help them so that they can do more, faster, and better. That is what it looks like to live the good life in Christianity, which means that you don't just constantly throw away savings, you don't have no planning for the future, which is an abuse of the Christian ideal for property. It's not what the Bible teaches. So giving according to ability has to do with only if you've already done a good job of exercising dominion, are you going to have actually you can give to anybody. Paul says stop stealing work so you have enough to provide for yourself and also give to others. So giving There are principles of giving, first in the name of Christ, second, the institutions in order from more basic to less basic, and then from more local to less local. Fourthly, deserving poor with oversight first, before you give to undeserving poor. I had that at the end last time, and I thought, in your decision-making process, you go, it needs to be in the name of Christ, I have an order of duties that's from more basic to less basic, and from more local to less local. Then from there you go, okay, so which people in those groups? Well, first for those deserving poor, people who are doing their duties and are not getting by. Somebody's working hard and another person's not working hard. Which one? And neither one's getting by. Which one should you give to? And sometimes people will answer and say, well, we just give to both. You don't have enough. You don't have enough time. You don't have enough money. It's not enough. You don't have enough. You've got to pick. You've got to prioritize. You have an infinite number of potential wants that you could use your money on. And so does everybody else. As soon as you satisfy one desire, you immediately think about something else you want to do. And people try to make that into sin. It's not sin. That's rational. It's reasonable. That's what dominion is about. People try to make it so that this idea of trying to exercise dominion, building wealth, is somehow sin. It's not. What's sin is worshiping money. When you put money to the service of God, it's not sin. It's good. And this is the kind of stuff you can do. You can keep your brothers who are going through famine from starving. You can keep your brothers who are being persecuted from starving. You can help them to flee. You can support them. There are Christians all over the world being killed for being Christians. You don't think about it very often because you don't have time. You've got too much going on. if you have more wealth and you have more freedom of time that you can spend on helping to save them. And people are probably familiar with Schindler's List. And there's this supposed to be this famous thing about him looking at his wealth and going, oh, no, you know, this I could have saved five more or 10 more if I hadn't spent money on this. That's the kind of attitude about dominion that we need to have. And I don't mean to make it so that we go, oh, no, we don't trust in the sovereignty of God. But we have to redeem the time and redeem our resources and use it for what is good. And it's the good life. And we just trust God. Deploying our time, deploying our money to use it for the glory of God. Giving is a part of that. So, deserving poor with oversight first. With oversight. With oversight. They didn't just send the money to Jerusalem and say, let's see what happens. They sent Barnabas and they sent Paul. And then they handed it over to the elders for the administration. So I emphasize that. then to the undeserving poor to encourage repentance with instruction, with evangelism. And only if there's repentance and commitment to do what is good do you continue to support. You have initial support to help them out of immediate desperation, immediate problem, and then you stop if there's an unwillingness to commit to doing what's good. Sixthly, there's more personal involvement to less personal involvement. when convenient. Now, that means it's not I mentioned last time I said something to the effect of, you know, if you just hand people money, you're just paying to make the problem go away. That doesn't mean that it's everybody's responsibility to go administer a charity, or to go administer the church public offices. What I'm trying to say is, Your attitude about giving money has to be that you're trying to glorify God. You have to seek not just to kind of make somebody go away and leave you alone, but your goal is to make sure that the giving is for the glory of God. So with more personal involvement to less personal involvement, And convenient, you know, we think of now convenience. We go, the microwave's convenient because it gives me food that's warm in 30 seconds. What I mean by convenience is the idea of what allows me to be most effective in glorifying God, what is going to be most efficient. So we give good gifts with instruction, and that instruction could be, if we don't, if we aren't able to do it ourselves, we have number seven, which is through intermediaries. So to be clear, You know, if Michael Jordan were a Christian and he is making, you know, a million dollars in his heyday, a million dollars per game he plays or something like that, right? You go, it would be inefficient to have him go and quit that job and to have him instead become a clerk for this administration of giving out alms. Instead, he could earn the wages of 20 clerks in a day for a year, right? 20 years of clerk wages in a day by doing this thing he's highly, highly paid for. And so you would do this other task that you're highly paid for, for the glory of God, with both the public intention and the actual exercise of trying to give that. So this is applying economic principle. So I want to make this more clear. And I hope this order is useful for thinking it through for yourselves and helps to think this through. So again, these intermediaries need to be people who can teach good doctrine along with the giving of gifts. It has to be in the name of Christ. you're finding somebody who's qualified to be a steward of it. Okay, so moving past the giving part again. So there is, in chapter 12, we have Herod as the king, he stretches out his hand. Now you remember earlier on, we talked about the hand of the Lord going out back in verse 21 of chapter 11. It says, and the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord." He says, the power of God. Now we have the hand of Herod. And I think this is a rhetorical drawing together. Here, King Herod reaches out, stretches out his hand to harass some from the church. So this is kind of like Pharaoh. We're going to see who is greater, God or Pharaoh. Now we're going to see who is greater, God or tinpot dictator Herod. Because Herod is kind of a joke compared to Pharaoh. And so, I think this is supposed to be comedic. I think the idea of Herod stretching out his hand is supposed to be comedic. And so, about that time, Herod, the king, stretched out his hand to harass some from the church. God stretches out his hand to caused people to be converted, and Herod stretches out his hand to try to stop that, to harass, to make it stop. Then he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. This is one of the apostles. Kills one of the apostles. Kills an apostle. One of the guys that's fallen around. Jesus. This is one of Jesus' close friends. James, John, and Peter. This is one of the brothers of thunder. Sons of thunder, sorry. He's dead. With the Twelve Apostles, those three are the most frequently mentioned. James, John, Peter. James just gets killed. This is like a surprise scene in a movie where you've got something going on and somebody's being developed and you think he's a major character and then he's just dead. And he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. Now, killing with the sword here, we are used to thinking about Jewish punishments in terms of stoning. But there's actually, when a man causes a whole village to apostatize, to go after a false god, you're supposed to kill that man with the sword. And also those who followed him. And so this idea here is supposed to be that he, as an apostle, is this public figure who has done that. And so the Jews would have been really happy that he was killed with the sword publicly. Because it's like a pronouncement that here's a guy that's leading whole groups astray. And so that death, he kills James, the brother of John, with the sword. And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, He proceeded further to seize Peter also. What do you think he plans to do with Peter? Now it was during the days of unleavened bread. So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers. It's four squads of four. So 16 guys. Very expensive, high security. 16 to one. You can't do this to that many prisoners. That shows how high of a value prisoner Peter was to Herod. Four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover. They would bring him before the people after Passover in order to execute him, right? And that's the context of James and the killing with the sword. Now, the intention here is perhaps to emulate the killing of Christ, who was killed right after Passover. forgive me, I might be wrong here, but I think it's the 15th of Nisan. Okay, so it would be on the same day as Christ. So there's an intention here to do that. And the other thing is, maybe even if it's not an intention to do that, it would just be a remarkable coincidental thing. So, but to the reader, that would be something that should be coming out. The idea that, oh, well, that's when Jesus was killed, right after Passover. And so, Why would this also be beneficial for Herod? Well, this would be with the largest possible assembly of the Jews, the Passover being the biggest, most attended of the pilgrimage feast days. We've got the largest crowd. So he's waiting, and right before the people would leave, kill him so they can leave and go back and say good things about him in their villages. which would help his popularity rating to go up. Rasmussen is handing Herod some poles and saying, you need more popularity amongst the Jews. He's going, OK, I'm going to do this. How does killing Peter rate in terms of their preferred policies? And so that's what he's trying to do here. Now. Verse five, he was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church. Constant prayer. Constant prayer. Constant prayer. The frequency of prayer is rare. Now, a lot of the times when we pray, we displace other ordinances of God. And so the difficulty is, we have to be taking in the Word. We have to be taking in the Word. And we also need to be praying. And so, you know, well, I don't know. I've got a lot going on. I don't have enough time to do it all. I struggle with that. You know, people always do what they most want to do. People always do what they most want to do. And you can want to do lots of things, right? You can go, I want to do this and that and the other thing, right? I have that all the time. I've got all this stuff I want to do, and I don't do it. But I always do the thing I most want to do. And so do you. You always do what you most want to do. And that comes from our perception of what's most worth doing. And so that should help you to see how much you lie to yourself, right? I mean, I look at my day a lot of time and I go, okay, let me look at my list. What was the stuff I, what's the important stuff I need to do? What did I actually do? I go, beat myself up over my foolishness, stupidity, misallocation. It's like, I'm not working. I'm not sitting there playing chess to tell people I play chess and to stop believing me. But you know, I'm not sitting here playing chess. What I'm doing is I'm trying to get the work done, but I pick the wrong work sometimes. sometimes I'm being generous to myself. And that's, that's what you probably experienced while you're looking at yourself, you're not misprioritizing, or I should focus on this or whatever. And, you know, you've probably seen growth in it where you go, I'm good. I'm glad I'm not doing as much misallocation as I used to do. But the littleness of our prayer should be like blaring alarm bell, red light flashing recognition, the misallocation of our time. constancy of prayer. Now, there's a way in which there's occasional praying, right? Where you go about your day, and we talk about living before the face of God, and you're thinking about the Word of God, and applying it to little things, and you're shooting up little prayers. But I'll tell you what, I think a lot of people lie to themselves about how constantly they're in prayer, just going on throughout the day. And if you don't have the forms of set time to pray, it is very difficult to actually maintain a mind that isn't just worldly. Set time for worship. Set time for prayer as a part of that. So you're filling your mind with the Word. Meditation on the truth first. Prayer second. It's the order of need. If you don't take in the Word, you're not going to pray rightly. If you don't take in the Word, you're not going to pray rightly. So, taking in the Word and praying out the Word. And so, we've seen already that there's this dedication to the Apostles' doctrine earlier on in the Book of Acts. And that leads to prayer. Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the Church. Now, later on, we see they're surprised that he's out, right? They go, ah, it's his angel. No, there's no way Peter's there. They don't even expect their own prayers to be answered. Little faith, little faith. They have enough faith to be motivated to pray, But then they don't actually expect it to be answered. And that's a rebuke to us, because how often do you pray not really expecting it to be answered? If we ask anything that's according to the will of God, we know it's to be answered. So here, there's prayer to deliver Peter from the hand of the oppressor, Herod. So we have been praying, and I talked to you in the announcement about the fact that Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died. And so there's a seat in the Supreme Court that's open. And we are praying for the over one million babies a year that are killed at the hand of the oppressor. Godless, lawless wickedness against them. And we should have expectation of answering. I'll tell you what. If it doesn't happen now, it's going to happen in a way, a far more horrific way. The God of justice, the God that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah in fire, the God that killed the population of the earth by a flood, the God that brought judgment on the northern tribes and the southern tribes, and then in 70 AD, destroyed Jerusalem He's not an impotent god. And he is not a god who fails to discipline, and to chastise, and to punish. What he does is he brings curses on his enemies. And so we see Herod. And what did he do to Herod? Well, at the end of this chapter, in chapter 12, Herod is stretching out his hand, and he is trying to exercise his power against the god of heaven. and is stretching out his hand against the God of Heaven, he is thinking himself to be God. This is the same sin of Adam and Eve, where they chose to reject the law word of God and to choose their own law word, to do what you will. Instead of do what God says, do what you will. Listen to Satan. And then, curse. And what Herod has done is instead of listening to to God, he's doing what he will. This is autonomy, self rule, a law unto himself as opposed to theonomy, the law of God, that God gives law. Right. And in doing that, what happens is, he deceives himself, this is self deception, more and more and more. It's it's self reinforcing, this increase creates strife. And it brings further curse. This is a darkening of mind, like it talks about in Romans. Look what happens in verse 20. Now Herod had been very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, but they came to him with one accord, and having made Blastus, the king's personal aide, their friend, they asked for peace, because their country was supplied with food by the king's country. So on a set day, Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat on his throne and gave an oration to them. And the people kept shouting, The voice of a God, not of a man. They're flattering him. If you want to destroy somebody, flatter them. Don't do it, right? It's breaking the law of God to flatter people. But when you reinforce their own vanity, when you flatter them, you set them up for a fall. You give them pride. Now, what happens? The voice of a God, not of a man. You remember when Peter had somebody bow before him. He said, get up. I'm a man. When angels have that happen, they say, stop it. I'm a servant like you. Get up. What does Herod do? He says, And the people kept shouting, The voice of a God, not of a man. Then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, because he did not give glory to God. What does that mean, didn't give glory to God? It means when somebody says, Oh, look how glorious you are. If you don't deflect that glory to God, you are just accepting it. You're going, Yeah, that's right. Glory to me. If somebody says something that's blasphemous, like the voice of a god, not of a man, you have the obligation to say, no. No. Stop it. Like Peter. Then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, because he did not give glory to God. And he was eaten by worms and died. So, I don't know if this is talking about parasitic worms that were in him already, that this was preparation, and all of a sudden it reached a breaking point. Or if there's a miraculous accelerating, or if there's a miraculous causing, you know, the process to accelerate or what, I don't know exactly what's going on here. But something happens where he has these worms. And there's this dying. So is this a is this a chronological order, and he was eaten by worms and died? Or is it just, and these things happen without a chronological ordering, right? Because most people are eaten by worms after they die, if they're buried. But it says that died is really, and breathed his last. Which suggests order, chronological order. And so, I don't know which it is, but I'm inclined to say that this is chronological. Even though it makes it so there's something difficult, what's going on? And so I think that we have to say that there's miraculous and supernatural use of acceleration of some sort of process that happens here. In comparison, his curse and self-destruction and consuming of himself, we have 24, the word of God grew and multiplied. Now this eating of worms, okay, this should also remind you of where the worm does not cease, right? There's this eating away at the inside. It's a part of hell. So this is a sign of hell. This is the judgment of God in sign form. And so he is, the idea of being eaten away here, there's this reality that you will always feel guilty if you don't repent and believe, that hell has this increasing awareness of guilt in a way where you constantly push to suppress it. And so when you do evil to pursue something and you recognize that your conscience is there, You have guilt and what you do is you pursue something to help you to stop thinking about that. And so you pursue amusement, you pursue excess in pleasure, you pursue things to drown out. And so alcoholism, drug use, these are all ways of trying to avoid that guilt. And so boredom and guilt are psychologically substantial things that encourage us to suppress the truth further and further and to then do worse and worse sin as a way of helping to drown that out, right? More and more excess. And in that process, we, we, we are self darkening, and that's controlled by God, right? Romans one, two, three, is this process Romans one and two, in particular, is that a process of darkening that occurs in people who reject God and suppression of the truth. And so, this is what happens. Our enemies are brought to destroy themselves. And Leviticus is this idea that when you sin and you do not repeat, God will bring chastisement. And if you still don't, sorry, you don't repent, that you will, God will bring chastisement, and then he will bring further chastisement if you still don't repent, times seven, right? And then again, times seven. And then again, times seven. And then ultimately, just destruction of the institution or the person, if you still won't repent. And so I said, if we as a nation do not repent, then something far worse will happen that will bring us to change. And that's the kind of thing. So this seems a little bit extreme. I mean, who in America is calling themselves God? Well, I'll tell you what. Who in America is saying, you know what we need to do? We need to take the word of the Lord God Almighty, and we need to submit to it. It needs to be the basis of law and order. All civil magistrates need to kiss the sun, lest he be angry. And God-given rights must be recognized as something we have no right to change. Law must become stable. Men must be oath keepers. There must be a careful, careful, careful application of justice. Who is saying that? Who is saying the Word of God rules us? We are subservient to the King of Kings. Where is that said in the public? Where is that said by magistrates? They are calling themselves God. When they say, I have the right to give you the right to go kill somebody, they're calling themselves God. You know who has the right to tell you when to kill somebody? God. When the Supreme Court tells you, contrary to the law of God, when you can kill somebody, they are claiming to be God. When the legislature submits to it, they're submitting to the Supreme Court as though it were God. And when the executives Submit to it as though the Supreme Court had the right to tell them that. They are declaring the Supreme Court God. We are in a time when the God of our land is the Supreme Court. And it's appropriate in a perverse way, because there is no one who looks so much like a priest as these black robed panel of nine. There is no holier institution in the land. The god of secularism that reigns in our land has its tax-supported churches called public schools, where Christianity is forbidden. It has the places where it tears down its idols. You may not post the Ten Commandments. You may not post things that would remind us of Christianity, unless there's some historical recognition purpose. If anybody tries to put up the Ten Commandments to actually appeal to the law of God in the public, that is unconstitutional. That is contrary to the Supreme Court's will, the infallible, immutable, omnipotent will of the Supreme Court. And so we must tear down the Ten Commandments. That is what has been ruled. It's illegal to teach Christianity in the public schools. It is illegal to post monuments to the Ten Commandments. So let me ask you, has our government called itself God? We think Herod is so much more primitive than what we're dealing with. But the nature of man has not changed. And so we need to be in constant prayer that there would be a delivery from evil. If the church was in constant prayer for Peter, Right now, in this moment, in this moment of trial, this time, this time, where by the hand of God, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been removed from office by death. If we do not pray to be delivered and to have a magistrate put in place who will stop the slaughter, when will we pray? When will we say this is the priority? Our time should be spent in prayer now. We should be praying for deliverance. Brothers, sisters, now is the time to pray, to be in constant prayer. If you find a free moment, pray. Today's the Sabbath. Find time to pray. Do we expect our prayers to be answered? Do we expect God's name to be hallowed, the kingdom to come, the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven? Or do we toss them up as vain words And if we pray, we should not just say, be warmed and filled, but we should do works that accord with it. Right? This is a call to work, to do dominion work, to preach the word, to speak, to be bold. But now is at least a time to pray. It is at least a time to pray. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would spare us from progressive curse in our land, from going further. We ask that you would bring this nation to repentance, that the plague that you have brought, that the slaughter of the unborn that you have brought, that the economic difficulties that you have brought, that all of these things that you have brought would cause us to stop and to think that you are God and we are not. We ask that you would help us to be in constant prayer, to take in your word, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to pray. I ask Father that you would give us a godly magistrate, a man who is able, who fears you, who loves the truth and hates covetousness. And Father, I ask you to help us to not put our trust in princes, but to trust in the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace. Father, I ask that you would help us to have a confident desire, to have real hope, to have a confident desire that your word would be done. Father, I ask that you would help us to joy in prayer, to joy in reading your word, and to seek out with increasing zeal ways of applying your word and putting our time and capital to good use to bring glory to your holy name. And so we pray this in Christ's name, amen.