00:00 Introduction and Holiday Countdown

00:22 Real Estate Market Insights

00:54 Property Taxes Discussion

01:50 Acts 11 and 12 Overview

09:07 Peter's Miraculous Escape

12:37 Herod's Downfall and God's Judgment

17:32 Concluding Thoughts and Prayer

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Questions or Comments? Email us podcast@compassntx.org

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Introduction and Holiday Countdown

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Hey there everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. What's up, party people? Hey, it's 35 days until Christmas, by the way. 35 days. So get your shopping done now. That's right. 'cause it's black Friday month. That's right. Yeah, it's true, man. It's been Black Friday since like October.

I've been getting emails already, like Black Friday savings on the docket. Here's things that you can get now. I'm like, it's not even Thanksgiving yet guys. It's crazy.

Real Estate Market Insights

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That's right. So now's the time to buy. Yeah, it really is a buyer's market. I've seen a lot of houses for sale that have been for sale for quite a while. Yeah. So if you wanna buy a house and you're in California and you wanna move to Texas and be part of this church plant, we would encourage that. We would love for you to do that.

Yeah, you could. You could get on the uptick 'cause this is the downtick right now. It'll turn around for sure. Just a matter of time. We're gonna wait it out. Yeah, we will. We'll be here when it swings back up, right? I sure hope so. I hope so too. Unless Jesus returns.

Property Taxes Discussion

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But less property taxes. Not complaining about that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and take some pictures of some of my patchwork in the house. I'm for all of these. Suggestions that, hey, we need to abolish property taxes altogether. I know Greg Abbott has been great with that, but what government is gonna be like, you know what?

We have too much power. We were taxing you too much. Let's just give it back. Yeah. I don't know. I don't see that happening. I don't necessarily see it happening either, but I'm just saying I wouldn't fight it. I'd be I with, I would be that, no, I'd vote for it. Yeah. If it was on the docket and I got to vote, I'd be for sure for that thing.

But I don't know. Well, I don't know that that's gonna happen. Yeah. I'm not holding my breath. Yeah. That's fair. That's fair.

Acts 11 and 12 Overview

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And we've mentioned that a couple times, but the church was on the scene. People were inviting people, people were hearing about the gospel, and the gospel was exploding at this time. And even though we've talked about differences, the descriptive versus prescriptive, I think one of the things that is prescriptive is that a strong living, healthy organism is gonna grow.

And that's what we're seeing in the church in the early age. We'll tell you right now. That's what we wanna see for our church too. In that there was no secret sauce for the early church here that we don't possess today. That the spirit is able to work and move and add numbers to the church today, just like he did back then.

They do have apostles though. Just, they just saying. Yeah. I mean, that's fair. That's fair. But unless you want to claim that you're an positive. No, I don't. Okay. I definitely don't. There was one named Peter. Yeah, but not me. Okay. Yeah. Different guy, but, man it's on us. And we have the ability to go out and share the same gospel that they were sharing and call people to faith in the same Christ that Peter and Paul and the others are calling these gentiles and these Jews and everyone to believe in.

Oh, fantastic. Come to my church. Right? Come to me, come to our church on Sunday. It's not gonna save them necessarily, but it does at least open the door. It gives you an opportunity to say, yeah, I'm a Christian and here's why. Yeah. In fact, when I went to California, it was really cool. Some of my family members were like, why are you in Texas?

Yeah. What are you doing? Why are you a pastor? And it occurred to me that a lot of my family just doesn't know that story. Yeah. And I was grateful and delighted that I got to share some of that. So just opening the door and telling people what you're doing and why you're doing. Is really helpful when it's time to talk about Jesus and better to get it outta the way sooner than later.

And we're in a season where people expect you to talk about Jesus. Yeah. We're in a season where people Christmas are waiting for you to invite them to church. You let me be the first to say, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. All right, well Happy New Year. There you go. Kwanza, you wanna throw that one in there?

He has risen.

So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him. I thought about Galatians here because. This is running in the back of Peter's mind. I imagine when Paul has to stand up to Peter in Galatians for this very thing. Yeah. When some believers from Judea come up to visit Peter stops eating with the Gentiles because he's worried that they're gonna see him eating with the Gentiles.

They're gonna judge him for that. And so this is some of the back background for that. And so there's this question, what do we do here with the Gentiles? Can we welcome them in Foley? And so in verses four through 18, Peter's gonna give a report here that's gonna win the Jewish believers over. But we're gonna see later in acts that this subject's not, again, not gonna go away easily and again.

Yeah. Who was I to stand in God's way is Peter's refrain. I love that. It's like I'm not God. He gets to make the decisions. I'm just gonna let God do what God does. Right. Talk about verse 18, though, that second half of verse 18 where he says then to the people, they say then to the Gentiles also, God has granted repentance that leads to life.

Can you talk about why God granting repentance is phrased that way as opposed to then God has let them get saved, or that these people have turned in repentance to God? Is there anything that we should catch on by that granting of repentance? Yeah, I think we've hit on it before and it's worth following up again because it's not isolated to one section over another.

The Jewish people were always supposed to be a light to the world. They were al always supposed to be evangelistic. And we see some evidence of the fact that they were in pockets, even in the Old Testament. But now this is the flood gates of. Been thrown open by God to make it generally available to all people.

And there are gonna be some that he has granted, repentance, leading to salvation. And those are part of the flock. When Jesus said, even in John 10, there are sheep that are not of this fold, and it must bring them also. And those are some of the gentiles that we're seeing the gospel expand to here.

Yeah. That idea for granting tells us that this is a work of God. Yes. And that means then in your evangelism, as you go out and talk to your neighbors about coming to church or about knowing Jesus, you really ought to be praying to God for them. Yeah. That's gonna be the key to the effectiveness of your evangelism.

But there were some. Some of them men of Cypress and Cyrene, who I come to Antioch spoke to the Hellen also preaching the Lord Jesus. And so again the gospel's beginning to go out and this is why it's going to turn out that it says in verse 26 that it was an Antioch. The disciples were first called Christians.

Why? Because the people were beginning to notice this isn't just, this isn't Judaism the way we've always understood Judaism. This isn't the Jewish people, the way we understand the Jewish people. In fact, some of the Jewish people are really angry at this group of people over here who keep talking about.

Christ the Messiah, and so they're gonna be called Christians, which means tiny Christ or little Christ, to distinguish them from the Jewish people because the gospel was separating them out from traditional Judaism at this point.

Just so you know, as you guys are reading through, this is an area of scripture where it's really helpful to use your maps at the back of your Bible. Yep. You are gonna see three missionary journeys from Saul, Paul, Barnabas, and you. You're gonna wanna trace that if you can, if you have space on your desk, wherever you're reading your Bible.

This is a place where it's helpful to have orientation to where Paul and Barnabas are traveling. And one of the issues that you're gonna see is that there's. More than one Antioch. There's Syrian Antioch and there's Persidian Antioch. So there's one that's on the Mediterranean coast on the east, and there's one that's north of the Mediterranean, north of Cyprus.

Whatever maps you use, let me just encourage you, use them. They're super helpful.

Peter's Miraculous Escape

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Yeah, well, chapter 12, we get another miraculous event here where James, unfortunately, the brother of John is gonna be arrested and killed by Herod. And when that meets rave reviews from the crowds from the Jewish people he's gonna go after Peter and he arrests Peter and yet.

Peter is not gonna be the same fate. Peter is being kept in prison, earn prayer it says, with being made for him by the church to God. That says that in verse five, and Herod's gonna bring him out. And yet the very night that Peter was gonna be brought out to be executed he's asleep, which shows Peter's confidence in God's sovereignty.

Right in that situation, there's an angel that comes, strikes Peter on the side, frees him from this, says, Hey, get up, dress yourself. Let's go. We're gonna get outta here. And Peter does follow the angel, gets himself out of jail, walks outta jail there, and then goes to the house and knocks on the door.

But what this section reminds me of is this James dies. Peter lives, both of them were faithful. Both of them were being used by God at this time. Both of them were being called to go on and make disciples. Both of them were apostles and yet James is gonna die. God could have stopped that. Yes, Peter's gonna live.

And it just reminds us that God has different plans for each of his saints. Each of his saints are gonna live different lives and glorify him in different ways, whether by life or by death. Paul is gonna say later in Philippians that, look, I'm gonna glorify the Lord. I know that whether it's through my death or through my life, I'm gonna glorify the Lord here.

That's a little bit of just hit me this time reading it. Both of 'em are faithful and yet they both have very different outcomes. By the way, this is James, the brother of John, not James, the brother of Jesus. James, the brother of Jesus is gonna show up later on in acts as well. But this is James, the brother of John, one of the sons of Zee.

Yeah. The thing that stands out to me about what you were saying is that this is where. Peter, I dunno if you remember in the back of at the last part of John's gospel, he's asking the Lord, what about that guy? What about this guy over here? What about John? And the Lord says, you worry about you and you follow me.

Don't worry about what he's got going on. And the same thing happens here. You could be concerned about your neighbor and why God blesses his work and why that woman's husband is more faithful or more godly. He has these qualities. I wish my family had these things. I wish my family had these resources.

As to say, how can we grow in this? How do we be faithful to God in this particular season? Yeah. Yeah. You'll notice the second James that I referenced there, he shows up in verse 17 when it says, he said, tell these things to James and to the brothers. And that's James, the brother of Jesus. That's the one that's the head of the Jerusalem church there.

But yeah. Peter says in verse 11, just to follow up on that, he says, now I'm sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from the, all of the Jewish people were expecting not always true. James didn't get rescued. Yeah.

Herod's Downfall and God's Judgment

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From here we find Herod who is angry and he brings everybody together.

And the contrast is in verse 24. So the words of Herod come to an end. The people we're saying of the words of Herod, these are the words of a God. The actual word of God. Verse 24, increased and multiplied and kept spreading. So this is just a reminder, I think in the book of Acts here, that the opposition of man is not gonna slow down what God is doing here, and God is gonna see justice brought to, to to bear.

Not always this quickly, but in this instance it was this quickly. So we saw earlier in the Book of Acts that God was quick to judge Christians for their their at least hypocrisy anani since a fire struck down, they're dead. They depart. Here you have an unbeliever who's taking honor and taking glory that he should not take.

God strikes him dead deals with them. Why doesn't God do this today?

This took place over I think a couple weeks. He was afflicted with some kind of sickness that eventually killed him, some kind of maggot or parasite that also afflicted his body with pain. So this is a compressed event that likely took longer, but here we have. And evidence scripture's telling us this is because he took credit, he should not have taken right.

And an s immediately struck dead because of their faking something. So yeah, why don't we see this in the church? Yeah. Why don't we see this in the world? Why don't we get news reports about this in the Dallas News or USA today? I think we do see the discipline of God in the world. We just don't necessarily recognize it as such all the time.

Are we left to just say we don't know, maybe Yeah, I think we gotta be careful with it no matter what you've, the most egregious form of it is, what is it? The Baptist Church in Oklahoma, Hillsborough Baptist Church or whatever that is up there. I know who you're talking about. I think that's right.

Yeah. Where they hold up the signs and every natural disaster is a punishment on homosexuality and this, that, and the other thing. Yeah. And they're looking for God's judgment everywhere. They can. They can find it. I think we have to be careful to directly say, this is God's judgment on this person because they did this.

Instead I think we can say, okay, does God still do this? The answer is yes. And does God judge his people? Yes. In fact, we're gonna read that in, in Hebrews, that judgment starts with the house of God. We're so sorry. Hillsborough Baptist Church. Forgive us. It's Westboro. Westboro. Thank you Hillsborough Faithful church man.

He's also dis disciplining unbelievers. And so it's gonna be hard for us to say with certainty because we don't have the words of God saying thus says the Lord. This is the discipline of God. But I think we need to be mindful of that fact and I think as Christians, this is. The writer of Hebrews gives us a warning passages over and over and over again about the dangers of drifting and the dangers of falling into the hands of an angry God.

I think we need to read things like this and say, okay, God does still do these things, and there should be a healthy fear that we have even as believers, as we talked about recently on the podcast, that some ate the Lord's supper in an unworthy manner and they got sick and they died. Some of them from that right.

First Corinthians 11. Yeah. So we should be careful ourselves to go, I need to be a Galilee person because God does still do this even though it's not happening. Acts chapter five, style within Inance fire immediately being struck down and killed. So this is still evidence of the way that God interacts with this church.

So it's always a good question to ask and my inviting God's discipline to examine your life, to see if there's sin that needs to be confessed and repented of. And if we don't do this we very well may suffer under the hand of God and never be fully aware of it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Concluding Thoughts and Prayer

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All right, well, let's pray for the rest of our days. Wherever you are, whatever you find yourself in front of. Let's let's go ahead and go to the Lord and then we'll finish up this episode. God, we thank you for your word that we've been able to ingest today. We pray that we would take it and learn from it and apply it and live it out as we navigate whatever you have in front of us today.

And we can't fully explain, but we want to be faithful to not doubt you, doubt your goodness, challenge your goodness, but to trust it all. And so we thank you so much for your kindness to us in this. We pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep your new Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition at the Daily Bible Podcast.

See you. Bye.

Bernard: ​Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.

PJ: Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said