Yusuf Ismail and Deuteronomy, and Further Response to Abu Zakariya

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. Here we are live again. I sort of feel like I did this yesterday. I was on Iron Sharpens Iron with Chris Arnzen yesterday for two hours. Well, he has a 12-minute break at the top of the hour, which is really odd, so it wasn't really a full mega Dividing Line.

But anyway, discussing the, I don't know what we'll call it. Evidently, it's either the Useful Idiot Controversy or the White Bot Controversy. Those are some of the terms that are being thrown about out there by some folks.

Have a couple of things I need to say about that and then transition into today on the program. I was listening to a debate last evening between Yousef Ismail and Oussama Dakdak from like two months ago.

Really recent. Stop that. I wouldn't have reacted quite as strongly if it wasn't for someone on the other side of the window. But yeah, it was, wow. In the olden days, we used the term Donnybrook, but I don't know that anybody uses that anymore and we don't even understand what it meant anymore.

But it was Donnybrook. It was, Oussama went first, so he had the opportunity of setting, shall we call it the temperature, for the discussion. And he put it on full blast, just we're gonna have ourselves a knock down, drag out fight here and we're just gonna yell at each other and we're just gonna talk past each other and we're just gonna throw out as much Arabic as we possibly can from both sides and call it good.

And that's sort of what it ended up being. And of course, Yousef just went toe to toe. He can give as good as he takes and Oussama set the pattern and he followed through and it was nasty. So I want to look at some statements that were made in that debate and actually invite everyone to take your Bibles and we're gonna look at some tough texts.

And if you've not had the opportunity to, well, most of you have had the opportunity, whether you've chosen to take that opportunity or not. Last year, approximately a year ago, I was in the middle of a sermon series at PRBC on really the toughest Old Testament texts there are.

I mean, we didn't skip anything. We went for all of them. We went for, we did the Holiness Code. We did, if it was a tough, difficult, what in the world does this mean text in regards to God's law in the Mosaic Covenant, we attempted to deal with it.

And this came up in the back and forth between Oussama and Yousef. And it was interesting because of the fact that at one point, basically, at least in my experience, people involved in Islamic apologetics, when Muslims push back with Old Testament texts, people just go, hey, I just follow Jesus and Jesus told us to love everybody, so I don't even worry about that stuff.

And I don't know how anybody can do that, but I certainly can't do that. I've heard some pretty well-known Christian apologists say, hey, it's good reason why we don't follow Moses anymore. And I'm just like, how can you do that?

Jesus taught people, Jesus obviously honored that very law. You can't just throw that law under the bus. It just, again, I try to take the long view. If a person, if your witness is used to bring a person into the Christian faith, what are you going to want them to do?

Are you just going to put a notch in your gun belt and say, got another one, move on from there and just leave them to themselves? Or is it your desire that these individuals who grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and they will end up with questions, they will end up reading these texts, and they may very well discover that Jesus honored that law, and then what do you do?

So, excuse me, I can't, I just, I can't take that perspective when it comes to doing apologetics. But what I really want to do is look at what texts, two particular texts that Yusuf Ismail brought up and point out that if we were to attempt to deal with these texts in a meaningful fashion, it could never have been done in the context of this debate.

Not only were the timeframes just such, well, Yusuf always wants to have really, really long opening statements, 30 minutes, 30 minutes. That's his standard. And it did here as well. And maybe you could, if that was the focus in 30 minutes, do something with particular texts, but especially with the heated nature of that stuff, you just, you could never really address these things.

So we're gonna take a look at that. And then we want to get back to the response to Abu Zakaria and look specifically at Trinitarian issues. So it's gonna get sort of deep. Why is it everyone's saying I need to drink water?

I did interval training this morning, really tough intervals stuff, not only on the bike, but on the rower. And when you're going all out, when you're pushing your heart rate to max doing sprints, I think it was a little dry and I sort of irritated something in my lungs and either that or I sucked a bug down there.

That's a possibility too. Sometimes you never know. So I just got this little thing and it was just due to how hard I was working this morning. Intervals hurt, but they're really, really good for you.

And I'm just glad that I can still at least try to do them. So anyway, so let's talk a little bit about what happened over the weekend briefly. Two major things since the last program. One was a broadcast from Reformed Baptist in Ireland.

And I actually put the audio into audio note taker. I was gonna play some stuff and I just decided, no, I'm not gonna invest that level of time. Fundamentally, what really took me aback by this particular webcast, not only was the unfairness of it.

I mean, the expressed intentions that I as a Reformed Baptist have very clearly put out there. Well, that may be what your intentions were, but we're gonna judge on a completely different grounds, completely different basis.

Pretty strong bias and prejudice expressed in regards to Muslim people as a whole, but it was the biblical interpretation that left me going, really? For example, I was faulted for referring to, and this is one that just left me stuttering.

I was faulted for referring to Yasir Qadhi as a Muslim believer, a believing Muslim. And because only Christians are believers. And I'm like, what? I mean, so you can't refer to a believing Jew, a believing Buddhist?

You can't use the term believing of anybody but Christian? I don't even know how to interact with that. Everybody knows exactly what I was saying. Here is a person who really believes Islam, not a ishy-squishy liberal, but someone who actually believes that the Quran is the word of God and that Muhammad was a prophet and all the rest of that stuff.

And which is, when you get into conversations with most Muslims that you're gonna be trying to witness to if you try to witness to Muslims, that's where they're gonna be coming from. And so, that kind of thing, I don't even know how to...

Someone who would bring that up is not out there reaching out to Muslims and these other people. That kind of criticism only comes from people that are holding them at arm's length. And I just don't, you know.

And I've seen this attitude, sadly, in a number of contexts. And part of me just doesn't even wanna have to waste my time with it. And part of me is just tired of it. If you can't tell what I meant by believing Muslim, and if you think that's a reason for criticism, well, okay, fine, whatever.

I find it absurd. I'll just tell you that right now. That's not the kind of exegesis and hermeneutics that brought us Reformed theology or Trinitarian theology or anything else, but there you go. The fact of the matter is, we have, you know, there's a strain of fundamentalism even within Reformed groups.

There really is. And I think that's where some of that comes from. But then there was a lot of stuff, you know, trying to connect this to the Israelites going down to Egypt and Jeremiah and stuff like this.

And I'm just going, wait a minute, we're talking here about seeking to understand what someone else believes so that we can be more effective in engaging them for the gospel. What on earth does this have to do with any of that?

There are clear, straightforward, biblical texts. 1 Peter 3 .16, when you give that apologia, when you give that reason with hopes within you, you do it with gentleness and reverence. How about talking about that?

I really don't think what happened in the latter chapters of Jeremiah is overly relevant. And if you think it is, well, okay. Blessings to you. So anyway, that came out and it was like, okay. And then on Saturday, an article hit americanthinker .com by James Simpson called, When Evangelicals Become Useful Idiots for Islamism.

Now you need to understand, how many times have you been sitting around and some kind of thing has happened politically. And normally what I hear is people from the left coming out and they're all using the same language.

Remember when Bush chose Cheney for vice presidential nominee? What was the term that the next day? Gravitas. Everybody was using a word that nobody had ever used before. I mean, the talking points thing was just so obvious.

And I'm used to seeing people on the right exposing people on the left who are just, they've been given their talking points and they're just babbling heads, okay? Guess what? Doesn't just happen on the left.

It happens on the right too. And this useful idiot thing, we know exactly where it came from. We know who the first one to use it was. This is a talking point. And this is a organized effort to get this stuff out, to try to destroy this ministry.

That's all there is to it. It has been decided that this idea of reaching out in love and compassion in an uncompromising way to adorn the gospel of Jesus Christ. Can't allow that. That's against the meme.

A lot of these people have completely different reasons why they're doing it. Very different reasons. Some it's money, some it's their own little, some it's personal. There's lots of different reasons.

But they're using the same talking points. And so as soon as I see this, first of all, I realize American Thinker, I used to subscribe to that on my RSS feeds. I haven't seen it for a while. But I start looking through it and it's pretty much copied straight from Brandon House.

There's not much that's been added to it at all. All the connections stuff, connecting Yasir Qadhi to everybody and their second cousin. Same type of stuff that Brandon House spent pretty much the first hour of his program on.

So it didn't take much work to do this. It was 2 ,500 words. And so down at the bottom, of course, there's Twitter, Facebook for James Simpson. So I throw out there to James Simpson, is it your normal practice not to contact the people that you're writing about?

I may have thought about putting the people you're calling useful idiots, but I didn't. And I didn't really expect to hear anything back, but I did. And he said, well, maybe we should have done that. Maybe we should have done that.

It's not, it does not take any journalistic acumen to be able to find the phone number for this office. Given the phone calls that we get here, it takes none whatsoever to find the phone number. It's on the front page of the website and Google is still working.

But no, we were never contacted. And so I followed up and I'm gonna need to change the thing here because I have this up. Is that the, I think that's, yeah, I think it's the right one. Is that the right one?

So here's the follow-up tweet that I sent. Quick follow-up. One, read any of my books? Two, seen any of my nearly 160 public debates? Three, listened to my refutations of Brannan House? And in true modern 2017 journalistic fashion, Jim Simpson, author of the American Thinker article says, why should I?

You are wrong. Why should I do research? Spend time? Do you realize I got a 2 ,500 word article into American Thinker for only 12 minutes worth of work? I've got swimming to do. What do I care if I throw a Christian minister under the bus and call him a useful idiot when he's out there doing debates in mosques and writing a book on Islam and been doing this for years?

Why do I care? I don't have time for this stuff. So, well, okay. That doesn't surprise me. We got called by another reporter last week, early last week, I think. And I started talking with him. And he asked me a question.

Why would you sit down and talk with an imam about what he believes? And I'm like, so I can better understand his position and communicate the gospel to him. First words out of his mouth is, you're naive.

Oh, okay. You're, I'm sorry. I was laboring under the illusion that you're actually a reporter, not someone, well, yeah, we recognize it. Vast majority of these folks are not writing as reporters or journalists.

They have their memes, their themes, their positions, and they're just out there to promote that. And whether it's truthful, accurate, fair, what does that matter? But just to give you an idea, it's been said many times that lies fly around the world before the truth gets out of bed and puts its shoes on.

And just to give you an idea, that article was picked up by some Christian networks. And within six hours before they were pulled down, it had over 30 ,000 shares, 30 ,000 shares. People love lies. People just love to believe the worst about people.

They don't, people love lies. Even sadly, Christian people love lies. And once it's out there, my goodness. In our day, the internet is the greatest means of communication ever, but because of its nature, it is likewise the greatest means of promulgating lies and deception that has ever been designed.

I mean, think how many times we have to deal with abject foolishness that comes out of the Zeitgeist movie, just simply because it's out there and it'll remain out there. It's been refuted over and over and over again.

It's been so blown full of holes that it doesn't even offer wind resistance anymore. I mean, it is completely decimated, but it just continues on because that's the nature, that's the nature of these things.

And so there you go. It's a shame. We'll come back to that subject in a second with Osama Daqdaq and that debate, but I did want to look at one other tweet just briefly because I need to make mention of it anyways.

As sad as it is, I haven't listened to it yet. I need to grab it and go through the torture, I guess. If I'm gonna do an outside ride later on this week, I'll probably do it then because I'll already be suffering enough as it is.

But here is a Catholic Answers tweet. And never expected to see this one. And there it is. The Bible Answer Man Finds the Eucharist. Listen to this captivating interview by Cy Kellett of Hank Hanegraaff.

And there's the link to Hank Hanegraaff's appearance on Catholic Answers. And I mentioned this primarily due to the fact that when Hank announced his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy, he kept making the statement in his defense of his move that my beliefs haven't changed.

I've been promoting mere Christianity all along and I've got 30 years worth of books and I still believe all of that. And all the rest of that stuff. And we all kept saying, that can't be true. This is not what you've been teaching for 30 years.

There is a fundamental paradigm shift here. And if you can go on Catholic Answers to talk about what you as an Orthodox person has in common with Roman Catholicism as the Bible Answer Man, I think most folks will go, maybe you're not really considering the extremity of the change that you have made.

Because I think you're missing part of it. And yeah, that would be the case. So it was sad to see that. I don't have any comments on what was said because like I said, I haven't listened to it yet. And I'm not sure that I actually will.

So anyways, let's get to this video because we're already 23 minutes in. Like I said, Osama Daqdah set the theme very, very strongly with his opening statement. He had queued up statements from Yusuf Ismail.

So he had already gone on the attack. And the alleged topic, that's the only way to put it. The alleged topic was, is ISIS Islamic? And that seems to be the primary thing that Osama Daqdah is focused upon.

And so once Yusuf got going, he was already pedal to the metal, full throttle as well. So it was just hand grenade versus hand grenade versus hand grenade, back and forth, back and forth with a lot of heat that was going on.

But one of Yusuf Ismail's approaches and he's found it useful because for the vast majority of Christian apologists, as I think of those who actually deal with Islam, very few have written anything, done any presentations on the nature, a consistent understanding of the nature of God's law.

And it is pretty unusual. I'm trying to think right now of people that are known, I would imagine about the only person I can think of off top my head, at least here in United States, Canada, that has obviously done work in that area would be Tony Costa, where he's done both Islam and as well as dealing with God's law and things like that.

Cause he's a theologian, he does theology. The vast majority have just never really given much thought to it and just dismiss it, just simply say, hey, I'm a New Testament Christian, I don't worry about that stuff.

And so that's why Yusuf Ismail has found it to be a rather effective way of sort of deflecting things. So what he does is he basically excuses the passages that Osama Daqdaq is presenting, gives them another interpretation, which you can do simply because, as I say, I don't believe that the sources are consistent with themselves.

You can also always come from a different direction and say this, that, and the other thing. And so often we don't know enough about the original context to be able to really judge one way or the other.

But then he turns around and he throws these texts out in regards to Deuteronomy especially and says, see, if you're gonna fault what your understanding of what you're criticizing ISIS for, maybe ISIS is following the Bible and not the Quran.

Maybe it's your problem, not ours. And that's sort of what we get in this section. So let's play a section of it here and it'll give you an idea. Who does ISIS follow? Do they follow the Hadith?

Or do they follow maybe the Bible? Deuteronomy chapter 13, verse five, it says, the prophet of the dream of dreams shall be put to death because he has spoken to turn you away from the Lord, your God.

If your brother, your son, your mother, your daughter, your wife says, let us go and serve other gods which have not known nor their fathers, then thou shall not consent him. Thou shall not hearken him.

Thou shall not pity him, but thou shall surely kill him. Deuteronomy chapter 13, verse eight to nine. Let me stop right there.

Let's take a look at it. We will not join those who take that perspective and say, well, that was just back then. That's not now. Not gonna do that. We believe that all scripture is theanous to us. It's God-breathed and it's profitable and it's been given to us for a reason.

And I have a very high view of God's law. I believe that we should look at these texts and that we should understand what they're saying, understand what their usefulness to us today is. And the problem is, I think, what you can immediately see is that to seriously deal with some of these texts in the context of a brief, timed, and acerbic encounter is really next to impossible.

I think God's law should be honored. I think God's word should be honored. That's why I've become less and less of a fan of the bomb-throwing type of encounters because I just don't think that they're beneficial.

And if we wanna get into the serious discussions, then we have to do so on a level that if everyone is emotionally ready to go to fisticuffs at any moment, then it doesn't really matter. So here in Deuteronomy chapter 13, I guess I could, well, no, I'm probably not gonna be looking at any particular text as far as illustrating something, so I'll just read it here.

You have, in Deuteronomy chapter 13, a section that is talking about the necessity of pure worship on the part of God's people. Remember, the holiness code given to the people of Israel, that's in Leviticus, given to the people of Israel so they might know how to live in light of the fact that God is now dwelling amongst them.

You have the people doing things that brings plagues upon them and brings death upon them because they are now dwelling, the Holy One of Israel is dwelling amongst them. And so when sin breaks out, there is the resultant wrath.

And in Deuteronomy, you're going past just the mere externals and you're actually going to, and this is where Israel always, outside of those elect of God who were changed in their hearts, this is where they always stumbled, this is where they always failed.

Now you're addressing hard attitudes. And this is a very sobering section because a lot of people are familiar, sorry, sad, one of the main reasons I'm familiar with Deuteronomy 13 .5 is because it is something that comes up frequently in talking about Joseph Smith and the nature of false prophecy and true prophets and so on and so forth.

But that prophet of that dream of dreams shall be put to death because he has counseled rebellion against Yahweh your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery.

This was in reference to an individual who may get according to Deuteronomy 13 .1, if a prophet or dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder and the sign of the wonder comes true.

So you had two different tests for a false prophet. The one test was if someone prophesies about what's gonna happen in the future, they gotta get it right. But, and the sign of the wonder comes true, they get it right.

Concerning what you spoke to you saying, let us go after other gods whom you have not known and let us serve them. So he gets it right, but then says, let us go after other gods. The absolute necessity of pure worship of Yahweh alone is the focus of Deuteronomy chapter 13.

The people of God are told, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For Yahweh your God is testing you to find out if you love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

And so this dreamer of dreams has been allowed to come amongst the people and to even get their predictions right. And it's a test and it's a test of the people's love. And of course, I think it's very important to point out that when we can stand back from a pan-biblical perspective, recognizing old and new covenants and everything that God has done, what we see is that the only ones who could ever really hear these words and live in light of them are people whose hearts have been changed through regeneration.

And that means the covenant bearing Israelite the covenant sign bearing Israelite who is not themselves regenerate will find these commandments to be burdensome because they speak to a changed nature which they don't have.

And what is the primary, there's a lot of things that God brings judgment upon the people of Israel for, but what's almost always the first thing? Idolatry, the giving of worship to something other than the one true God that has delivered the Israelite people.

So what you have here is a section about idolatry and about the fact that God requires of his people, specifically of his people. And again, I would emphasize that when you have these laws that are connected to the confession of Yahweh as our God, if you're talking to people who are making a profession by their activities, by the clothing they wear, by not wearing mixed fibers, by the festivals they keep, by all these things, they are making a testimony to the world that they are followers of Yahweh.

And so this is specifically for the covenant people. And if you're part of the covenant people, then you are to detest idolatry and detest anyone that would draw you away. Even if it's a person that claims to be a prophet, doesn't matter, doesn't matter.

You shall follow Yahweh your God and fear him. You should keep his commandments, listen to his voice, serve him and cling to him. But that prophet, that dream of dream shall be put to death because he has counseled, rebelling against Yahweh your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you.

From the house of slavery to seduce you from the way in which Yahweh your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you. And so this is a very, very straightforward command to the covenant people that there can be no impurity amongst them when it comes to this matter of the worship of only one God.

And yet, is that not the first step we see over and over again throughout the prophets that brings judgment from God against the people of Israel is the syncretism, the not necessarily just rejecting the worship of Yahweh, but joining that to all these other kinds of worship.

That's exactly what happens, which demonstrates that they don't love Yahweh. They do not cling to Yahweh. They are not thankful for Yahweh's deliverance, so on and so forth. And then you get this section.

And again, I'm not going into as much depth on this as I did in the sermon, but if you go to Sermon Audio, go to Phoenix Forum Baptist Church, go down to the sermons link, the sermon series, you'll find the holiness code.

And I don't know how many sermons there are in there. Is it 30, 35, something like that? But they're broken down by text. And if you want to look up Deuteronomy 13, 6 and following, then you can go into a little bit more depth on this.

But if your brother, your mother's son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul entice you secretly saying, let us go and serve other gods whom neither you nor your fathers have known of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you, or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other ends.

In other words, any form of counseled rebellion amongst the people, amongst the covenant people to go serve other gods. And it can be the God from the people across the river or down in Egypt or anywhere else.

It doesn't matter. It is a secret, hence rebellious counseling of rebellion against Yahweh amongst the covenant people. You should not yield to him or listen to him. And your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him, but you shall surely kill him.

Your hand shall be the first against him to put him to death and afterwards the hand of all the people. Now, so you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the Lord, your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery.

Now, one of the objections, and there are a couple of sections I could have played from Yusuf's comments, because at one point he said, now, if you believe Jesus is Yahweh, then this is Jesus doing this.

And yet he was doing that because each time he brought these up, Osama Dakdak's response was, well, I'm a New Testament Christian. I don't follow any of that. Jesus says, love one another. And that stuff is not what we need to be concerned about.

So Yusuf's rebuttal is, but if you believe Jesus is Yahweh, then this is Jesus. You can't make that kind of simple distinction there. And at that point he would be correct. But what he missed is he just basically said, you shall kill him.

Sort of like you just rise up yourself. It's obvious that in the context of the Deuteronomistic law, in the context of the Mosaic law as a whole, you didn't just walk up behind this person with a rock and bash him over the head.

When it says your hand shall be first against him, that means that there has, person's been brought to the elders. The testimony has been given to the elders. The elders have found this person as a covenant breaker to be guilty of idolatry and seeking to cause others to engage in idolatry and rebellion against Yahweh.

And the execution takes place under the authority of the elders and the law. That means there had to be basically, due process is what we would call it today. It wasn't just simply taking personal vengeance or something along those lines.

But what's being said here is it doesn't matter who it is. It's one thing if some guy says, psst, psst, psst, hey buddy, hey, look at these idols I've got. You wanna come worship down the dark alley with me with these idols and like?

You know, it'd be pretty easy at that point to point this person out and say this person is counseling, rebelling against Yahweh. But the point here is that you shall love the Lord your God and serve him only.

And your love for him should be above everything else. It should be in a personal affront to you that anyone would seek to cause you to be disloyal to that commitment to the covenant God who has redeemed you, gives you all of your blessings, gives you life, et cetera, et cetera.

And that really when Jesus says hate father, hate mother, follow me, it's the same concept. It's the same concept of the absolute primacy of the commitment to one's maker before anything else. And you know what's ironic to me is that I, you know, part of this current attack upon me originates due to the fact that a few years ago, I responded to the hit piece on Yasir Qadhi by Robert Spencer theologically.

And I theologically pointed out that it makes perfect sense given the fundamental beliefs of Islam for Yasir Qadhi to have said that someone who is an idolater is filthy in God's sight. That that's Islamic belief, that it should be accepted as Islamic belief unless you're gonna pull a Bernie Sanders and say you don't have the right to teach that.

It's shocking to me how many Christians because of their prejudice, will look at that and say, that's just terrible for that Muslim to think that. And then you turn around and go, okay, so wrath of God cross, God's wrath is being revealed present tense, Romans chapter one against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

So the Christian can believe that God's wrath is being poured out against all unrighteousness. And that that means idolatry is worthy of death. Remember the end of Romans chapter one? They know that those who practice these things are what?

Worthy of death. And they not only practice them, but encourage others to do that. Remember that part? That's in our Bible. That's in our scripture, right? How can you on the one hand say, I'm just so offended by what this Muslim says, when you on the other hand are saying the same thing.

Now your solution's different. I get that, but we can't get to talking about what the solutions are if we can't get past this unfairness issue that allows both sides to define themselves first. The power of the gospel is the demonstration that once we understand what both sides are saying and we've allowed both sides to have their say, we have the answer.

The gospel is the answer. I mean, you know what's so sad is that so many of these Christian people in their zeal to be anti-Muslim missed some of the most important stuff that was in that dialogue. Did you, how, could you have, could anyone have put, could anyone have provided a stronger contrast between the two positions?

And you saw, if you just, if you would just have listened to the dialogue, which thankfully the people in there did. And of course I can simply trust the Holy Spirit of God to make these things come alive in the heart of his elect people.

That's why I can rejoice even in the midst of all the insults and everything else. But did you hear what Yasir Qadhi said about their understanding of justice and works and reward? I mean, he was very straightforward.

You know, God rewards us for the things that we do. And it's the scales of justice type thing. And it's right there. It's right laid out. What do I do in the mosque? We're dead in sin. We're under God's wrath.

We need someone else's righteousness. And that righteousness comes in and through faith in Jesus Christ. You don't even, you don't even get, you don't even get any mention of that. The primary reason being that for many of the people that are attacking the dialogue, they don't have a theological dog in the hunt.

They don't care. Gospel, what does that matter? It's all about the politics. So, okay, I get that. But the people who pretend to be theologically concerned, how can you just skip over that? Oh, well, it's the rest of the stuff.

But you didn't hear that? Yeah, that's pretty amazing. So anyway, this is the text that, what's it telling us? Let's put it this way. Can you divorce this text? Can you say, oh, that was just then? Now we recognize that there are elements that were just then.

There was a theocratic nation with elders who judged based upon theocratic law. And these were people that had taken a covenant at Mount Sinai to be God's people. And so there were certain things they had to do.

And there were certain ways they had to behave. And the whole issue of penology and stoning and execution for idolatry. Yeah, you've got to recognize the church is not given the context for that in the modern world.

We're not focused in one little strip of land. And we're not worried about who has this parcel of land and that parcel of land and all the rest of that kind of stuff. The gospel goes all over the world and therefore it's a different context.

But you see, the problem is when people recognize that, then they just throw out the whole moral content of it and go, ah, I don't have to worry about it. I'm not in law, I'm under grace. And you just go on from there.

What is the application today? Well, it just seems for a lot of folks, for a lot of Christians, they look at this and they go, oh, this is terrible. How much more should we as spirit indwelt believers be absolutely horrified by idolatry in our own lives than these people were then?

Look at how much more light we have. I mean, think of these people looked back upon the miraculous deliverance from Egypt. We look back upon the cross, the death, burial, resurrection of the son of God.

And God has in his grace, unite us with him and given us all these things. Who should be more terrified? Who should be more repulsed by idolatry than ourselves? And yet how many Christians give, how many Christians get up in the morning and have even the first bit of concern?

About committing idolatry in our own lives. So my, you know, Yusuf uses it as a baseball bat. And given the ignorance of his own audience, who doesn't have a clue about the book of Deuteronomy, 99 of his followers have never read Deuteronomy.