Sunday Night, July 21, 2019 PM

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Sunday Night, July 21, 2019 PM Michael Dirrim Pastor

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The first question I got is this. It says, what is praying a hedge?
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Is it in Scripture? If so, where? Is it biblical to pray a hedge around a loved one in order to repel influences of the world or the devil over their lives?
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Okay, so what is praying a hedge? Well, the language about the hedge comes from two places in the
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Bible, Job chapter 1 and Isaiah chapter 5. Okay, so if we go to Job chapter 1, we have the story.
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We have the story about God speaking with Satan and it says, you know, have you considered my servant
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Job? And the story is going to end up being a very critical part of biblical revelation in that we see an importance of understanding that when bad things happen to people who do not justly deserve them, there's no one -to -one correlation.
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I, you know, I did this bad thing and kept it secret, therefore I had this divine judgment upon me.
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When bad things happen to people who are upright and trying to serve God and so on and so forth, we learn all sorts of things through the life of Job.
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How God is, you can't criticize
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God, cannot say that he's done something wrong, can't accuse him, that what
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God is after is something that will bring glory to him and good to us ultimately, and that when we're in the thick of it, we may be grasping for all kinds of answers, but ultimately some of the lesson is that at certain points we just have to put our hands over our mouth, you know, and let
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God be God. And in this way, Job is a very helpful partner to Proverbs, wherein
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Proverbs shows you the flow of the way that God made the universe. Righteous people do well and foolish people do poorly, and that's the general rule, but sometimes the wicked prosper, which the psalmist complains about a lot, and sometimes the righteous suffer, which the psalmist cries out to God to correct.
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And then we have the the book of Job where the righteous suffers. So we have these partners in the wisdom that we have here in the scripture.
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Okay, so in Job, the Lord is setting Satan up, and he says, have you considered my servant
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Job? And he says there, verse 8, there's no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing
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God and turning away from evil. Then Satan answered the Lord, does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has on every side?
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You have blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land, but put forth your hand now and touch all that he has and he will surely curse you to your face.
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Okay, so what do we see here? Satan describes it as a hedge, and he says it's up to God whether Job prospers or not, whether Job does well or not.
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It's all entirely up to God. He says, you're the one who's making him prosper now, but if you were to change that, what would he do?
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And so we see the absolute sovereignty of God in the matter. And so no one's praying a hedge of protection here, but Satan acknowledges that the
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Lord had a hedge of protection about Job, and in particular, it was a hedge that protected house and possession, and that was what the hedge was about, that God protected the possessions and the house, the material possessions of Job.
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So there was a protection against any kind of loss. Okay, so Isaiah 5, in Isaiah chapter 5, we have the parable of the vineyard from Isaiah.
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A parable, by the way, that has a sequel in the way that Jesus tells it in Matthew.
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But here in Isaiah, we have God speaking of Israel as his vineyard.
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Let me now sing for my well -beloved a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard. My well -beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill.
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He dug it all around, removed its stones, and planted it with a choiceless vine. He built a tower in the middle of it and also hewed out a wine vat in it.
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Then he expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones. And now,
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O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?
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Why when I expected it to produce good grapes, did it produce worthless ones? So now let me tell you what I'm going to do to my vineyard.
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I will remove its hedge, and it will be consumed. I will break down its wall, and it will become trampled ground.
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I will lay it waste. I will not be pruned or hoed, but briars and thorns will come up.
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I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it. For the vineyard of the
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Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his delightful plant. Thus he looked for justice, but behold blood shed for righteousness, but behold a cry of distress.
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And so, as God is saying, I did everything that needed to be done to to set
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Israel up to live righteously, to do well. And they did not do well. So bad grapes, not good grapes.
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And so he says he's going to remove the hedge, and it will be consumed. And he uses the figurative language about the vineyard being destroyed.
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And of course this happens through the judgment of the nations, incrementally by Assyria and the surrounding nations, but ultimately
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Babylon coming through and just laying it waste. So again, this hedge that God speaks about has to do with protecting the land and protecting possessions, building structures, so on and so forth.
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Okay, so now the question is, is it biblical to pray a hedge around a loved one in order to repel influences of the world or the devil over their lives?
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Well, I think it's traditional, it's become traditional to pray a hedge of protection, though we probably don't know what it means.
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We think about a hedge, that's a very cultural kind of connotation, that someone would plant a hedge around something to protect it.
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Normally if we want to protect something, we put up a fence, or a wall, or something like that.
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But they would grow a hedge. Also, there's, in the
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Scriptures, there's hedges of thorns that God will frustrate someone's life with. It's also in the
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Scriptures. But it's some kind of barrier, in fact. So now, is it biblical?
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Well, I think it's perfectly fine to pray in accordance with the way Jesus told us to pray.
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In Matthew chapter 6, we asked, you know, how are we supposed to pray? How is the biblical way to pray?
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Jesus acknowledges the fact that our Father in heaven knows what we need before we even ask him. And part of what we are to ask him is for protection.
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In other words, to deliver us from evil. Now, it says, deliver us.
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There's a corporate prayer here. We're praying not just for me, myself, and I, but we're praying for others as well.
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We need deliverance from evil. We need deliverance from the evil one. We need protection. We recognize that we are not the ones who are powerful and strong.
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We are but the fearful soldiers in the army of Israel, and the anointed one is going to face the enemy.
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The one that follows the giant isn't you and I, it's God's anointed one. It's David or it's Christ.
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So praying in the need for protection, I think, is biblical in order to repel influences of the world or devil.
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So it's important to recognize that when we're entreating God to do something, we're asking God to intervene in someone's life, to take an active role in someone's life in a special way.
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We are warned against any kind of formulaic praying, as if the putting together of certain words accomplishes anything.
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We are warned against crafting formulaic sayings.
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We have it here in Matthew 6, and it says in verse 7, when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the
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Gentiles do. They suppose they'll be heard for their many words. We need to be careful that we're not using meaningless repetition, that we use a phrase over and over and over again as if it for some reason helps.
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When we're praying, we're praying to our Creator, we're praying to the God of the universe. How would we speak to someone that we greatly respect, who has a lot of authority?
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If you do respect the governor of Oklahoma, let's say, and he comes here and he has a lot of authority in our state, how would you speak to him?
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Would you use vain babble? When you're talking to him, you wouldn't say, for instance,
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Governor, I just want to thank you for being here. Governor, we're so thankful for you being here. Governor, would you please talk to us a minute,
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Governor, about the good things, Governor, that you're doing in the state, Governor? At which point, his security detail escorts you outside for a breathalyzer.
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But why do sometimes we use that way of praying to God? That's vain repetition, it's vain babble.
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We don't get extra points for adding words in. Remember the the seven sons of Sceva in Acts, who thought that they had found a new good formula to use in spiritual warfare, and in the name of Jesus and of Paul, they're going to go cast out demons and show that they've got a new magic formula.
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And that did not work very well at all. So, is it biblical to pray for the protection of our loved ones?
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Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And the word about a hedge is a biblical term, because we have it in Job 1 and we have it in Isaiah 5, just so long as we know what we're talking about, and not using it as a formula.
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When you pray it this way, because it's more effective than if you pray it this way, right?
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That's not biblical. Okay, this is a good question.
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Okay, another question. After reading through the the
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Gospels, I noticed that there were a lot of people possessed by demons during the time of Jesus's ministry.
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Why was that? A lot of people possessed by demons during the time of Jesus's ministry. Yeah, there were, weren't they?
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And the manifestations of those were sometimes somewhat different. Sometimes a tragic, you see these parents who have a child who's being cast this way into that fire or the water.
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Sometimes we see someone like a legion who was out in the tombs possessed by a legion of demons.
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But in any case, we do see these stories a lot in the
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Gospels. And I don't know if the Gospels themselves tell us exactly why that is, but what we do see time and time again is who the
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Lord of the universe is, over and over again. Now, part of this is a polemic.
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Part of it is an apologetic. The Gospels are written probably late 40s, early 50s.
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Okay, John may have been later. But these Gospels were written and sent out throughout the whole
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Roman Empire. The technology had just arrived in world history where books could be written in form that were sturdy and easily replicable.
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They were moving away, even at this time, they were moving away from scrolls and into books. They still use scrolls a lot.
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So these were written to be spread throughout the whole Roman Empire. And the
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Gospel was going out to the Jew first, and then also to the Gentiles. And you can even tell that they had that concern in the
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Gospels that they were writing. And they were saying, they were giving, they would tell, this was the custom of the
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Jews to, you know, for Gentile audiences, so you know what's going on here. But it was also written for, they were all written for Jewish audiences as well as Gentile audiences.
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Now, and I didn't get to this part this morning, but you remember in Hebrews it says that the
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Old Covenant was, the Old One was obsolete and ready to pass away, but it had not yet passed away.
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When did the Old Covenant go away? A .D. 70. The temple is destroyed,
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Jerusalem is destroyed, biblical Judaism ceases on the face of the planet. And has since.
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Biblical Judaism is still not in operation. How can you have biblical Judaism when you're not having a high priest go into the
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Holy of Holies and sprinkle the blood of a sacrifice upon the Ark of the Covenant? You can't have biblical, you have rabbinical
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Judaism. You have rabbinical Judaism that follow the Talmud, but you don't have biblical
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Judaism anymore. The Old Covenant ended in A .D. 70. In the meantime, the greatest persecution of Christians was meted out by the
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Jews. When you read the book of Acts, when you read the book of Acts and you read the
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Church Fathers, the people who were killing the most Christians were the Jews. And you can understand why, right?
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Think about the Apostle Paul who killed Christians, okay? He was trying to stay true, trying to stay true, okay?
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Now, I say all that to point out that when the Gospels went forth, what are they saying?
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What are they demonstrating? They're demonstrating that the religion being practiced in that day, the temple - centered,
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Pharisee -advanced Judaism of that day was powerless.
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Absolutely powerless. The blind were still blind, the lame were still lame, the woman with the blood issue went to everybody and nobody could help.
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Look at all these people who were demon -possessed, and the religion being practiced in that day was empty, void, and powerless.
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It was like a fig tree with no figs on it. Plenty of leaves, but no figs. Yet when
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Jesus comes, what does he do? He heals, he heals, he casts out demons.
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Not only does he do all of that, he forgives sins. He's a walking temple.
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When he shows up, people get healed, demons flee, and people get their sins forgiven wherever he shows up.
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Yeah. And so when you're reading the Gospels, that's part of the apologetic, that's part of the polemic saying.
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You can imagine Christian Jewish converts going into the synagogue and sharing this with the
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Jews and saying, here's the fulfillment, here's the truth.
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Messiah has come. Look here. And so I think it's one of the reasons why we have so many stories.
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And John reminds us, of course, that all the things that he didn't write down could fill, you know, books that the world could not contain.
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So we don't know all the things that Jesus did, but the stories that are included are included to demonstrate who he is.
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So I think that part of the question is, too, why wasn't it that way prior and why wasn't it that way now?
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Part of that's, you know, why don't we see this, you know. Well, Paul says that idol worship was demon worship.
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There was some kind of power that was of a genuine sort, some kind of power going on in all the idolatries of the nations for so long.
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And the devil did hold sway the nations, captive in his deceit.
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And that's why when he tempted Christ, he said, bow down to me and I'm going to give you all these nations.
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Well, they were in his grasp, okay. He had them. They were his possessions. And the demons were fueling the idol worship throughout all the nations.
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What Jesus does in his death and resurrection is bind the strong man and rob him of his possessions so that the devil no longer has the power to enslave the nations and keep them in perpetual deceit, but the gospel is going out to the nations.
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And people from every tribe, tongue, and nation are coming to know Christ. So in one sense, that's why we probably see a reduction in demonic activity.
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I do not say the elimination of demonic activity, okay. Paul says we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, rulers of darkness of this world.
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So, but I think there was a highlighting of it when Christ came precisely because there was a direct challenge.
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There was a direct challenge that Christ was giving to the strong man. And obviously Christ prevailed.
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All right, more. In Isaiah 49, for example, servant is capitalized, as well as several pronouns, as well as in many other places.
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Is there something in the original text that directs that? Or is this an interpretive decision by the translators?
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So in Isaiah 49, and we, you know, we're in the middle of the servant songs. Earlier in the servant songs, there's going to be the term servant that is not capitalized.
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But then later we come to Isaiah 49 and other places. For instance, in Isaiah 44 in verse 21, it says, remember these things,
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O Jacob and Israel, for you are my servant. And I'm using the New American Standard 95 update.
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There's no capitalization there. The translators don't capitalize that term servant. He says,
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I have formed you, you are my servant. Again, so lowercase s. O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.
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I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud, your sins like a heavy mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you.
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Okay, so there's an example of the term servant that is not capitalized. But then we come to Isaiah 49, and for instance in verse 5, it says, and now says the
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Lord who formed me from the womb to be his servant, capital S. And to answer the question succinctly, yes, that's a translation choice.
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There's nothing in the manuscripts that would indicate one way or another whether this is capitalized.
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So when you, in Hebrew, and in Hebrew, they don't have capital letters, you know, one way or another.
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So you're not given an indication of whether you should capitalize this or not. Okay, but translators will sometimes do that to give a little extra help in trying to keep track of what's going on here.
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For instance, the term seed or offspring or the term seed will be capitalized when it refers to Christ.
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So it's really the context that if, that when you read through it and then see how the
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New Testament takes these passages, it's obviously talking about Messiah, it's talking about Christ, and therefore to give them due honor, they capitalize the name.
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Okay, and I have a very long question.
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I'll do my best to answer some of it. Let's go with, it says, you said this morning that the
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New Covenant is not like the one that God made with Israel after he brought them out of the wilderness. This is new and the old is done.
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We are spiritually children of Abraham by faith, as you brought out in Romans 4, and if you are in Christ, then you are
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Abraham's offspring and heirs according to promise, Genesis 329.
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That may be Galatians 329. That is clear, but Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34, does not say that this
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New Covenant is not like the one God made with Abraham, just that it is not like the one God made with Israel at Sinai.
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If the Abrahamic covenant is one of the shadows leading you to Christ, like circumcision, which has identified a covenant member and all that has passed away, then why are
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New Covenant members called spiritual children of Abraham? If those who are in Christ are spiritual children of Abraham by faith, then what is the difference between the
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Abrahamic covenant and the New Covenant? Well, I think, I'm not sure how to answer all of that, but part of what this is, is that there is a progression in God's revelation of what it means, of how he saves, and what it means that he is
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God and that he has a people. Again, this language, the language that is given to Adam and Eve, the language that is given to Adam and Eve, is said again to Noah and his descendants, is said again to Abraham and his descendants, is said again to Israel, and is said again to David, and all of it is said again, ultimately, in Christ.
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Now, it's not the exact terminology, it's not the exact terms given in a formulaic, in a precise thing, but all the things are repeated again and again and again, all the same language is repeated again and again and again.
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So, I think on the side of the unity of the thing, when we're reading in Galatians, for example, which would be a great study before next week, is to read through some of these chapters in Galatians, if not all six, it would be very helpful, that when
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Paul begins to deal with these issues, he transitions very seamlessly from talking about Abraham to talking about Sinai, right?
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So, he moves straight through it. So, for instance, he connects them.
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So, let's just start in verse 1 of chapter 3 of Galatians. You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes
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Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? This is the only thing I want to find out from you.
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Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun by the
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Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain?
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So then, does he who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the law, or by hearing with faith?
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Okay. And so, then he begins to talk about Abraham, how he was justified by faith, how he was justified by faith, and then he continues from that to then talk about the law.
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Yes, Joel is on hand. There we go.
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Yay. Okay.
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So, we don't have time to go through Galatians 3 tonight, but what I would encourage you to do is to read through and see what connections that Paul is making between Abraham and the law that was given at Mount Sinai.
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At the end of it, he says, after talking about that faith has come, we're no longer under a tutor.
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Verse 26, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
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There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free man.
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There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you're Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise.
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So, I know that doesn't answer the question, but that I think that's a starting point to begin to meditate on.
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So, I will and I will do some study on that as well. So, I'll try to be as clear as I can, as far as I can understand what the scriptures say in this matter.
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Okay. All right. Well, let's go ahead and close with the doxology, and after that, truth group, we're planning to meet.