Hi, everyone. My name is Pete Scuzaro. I want to welcome you today to the Emotionally Healthy Leader podcast. I'm going to share with you a message that we will call palace or cave where true power resides. Palace or cave where true power resides.

Why did God put Jesus and Herod on the world stage at the same time?

He was trying to teach us something, really, what Christmas actually is all about. I mean,

you've got the contrast of Bethlehem and Jesus being born in this small village of 100 to 300 people

in a cave, actually, a manger, we manger we say and you know a overpowering

smell not very pretty and in contrast we've got herod living in one of the biggest palaces in the

world with all the comfort power and glory not not far away from that place. And God's drawing an extreme picture for us about

true power that things are not as they appear to be. So you're going to hear a lot of interesting

data in this message about Herod in particular, contrasting it with Jesus. Now, this material came from

two sources. One is, at that time, Jerry took around that time a trip with Ray Vanderlawn out of,

some of you are familiar with his name. He's got a ministry call that the world may know, and she took a

trip to Israel for a couple of weeks with him and a larger group and really got deep into the background of

first century Judaism and the world at that time. And so she came back with some insights. And

then it caused me to pull back and remember a course that I took at Harvard Divinity School.

The seminary was out, had a partnership with Harvard.

And so I took a course there on the history, culture, and religion in the Hellenistic Age with a world scholar named Helmut K-O-E-S-T-E-R, the world scholar in first century, Roman Empire,

culture, economic, society, politics.

And we looked at the Roman Empire in all this different provinces and religions,

and of course we studied Herod the Greats.

Enjoy this message on palace or cave where true power resides.

So Matthew chapter two and I'd like to begin reading at verse one.

I read a study that said,

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