Book of Nehemiah Part 10

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Book of Nehemiah Part 11

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Let's pray and we will get started. Lord Jesus, again, as we open your holy, sacred word, we confess our struggles to be attentive to your word and we ask your

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Holy Spirit to help us mortify our sinful flesh and its sinful passions, that would lead us astray from your word and cause us to cast your word behind us.

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May we ever be attentive to it, may it inform us so that we believe properly according to its sound, true words, and that our lives will bear fruit in keeping with repentance, in true love towards you and in love for our neighbor, we ask in Jesus' name.

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Amen. Oh yeah, I gotta do that bit. Okay, hang on a second here.

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I feel out of sorts, you know, that's okay. I'm gonna mirror my screen to the great room.

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Voila, there we go. All right, we've been working our way through Nehemiah, that's the

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English way of pronouncing it, but it's Nehemiah in Hebrew, and last week we were looking at the great confession of sins of the people of Israel, and if you remember in our sermon today,

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I made reference to the prophet Ezekiel, and Ezekiel had an unenviable task of preaching the word of God to a stiff -necked people, that these are the folks who would not listen to Jeremiah, and as a result of it,

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God legitimately brought Nebuchadnezzar, and it resulted in the death of 90 % of them.

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It's a huge number of people that died in impenitence and rebellion against God, and when

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Ezekiel began his prophetic ministry, they were still listening to the wingnut YouTube prophets who were telling them they were going to be going home in two years, and that didn't pan out.

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I like the fact that the 70 years created a long time for the people of Judah to recognize, wait a second, that guy who told me that Yahweh said

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I'd be going back to Jerusalem this year, he lied to me. He is not really hearing from God, and it's with that time that the false prophets lost all credibility, and the true prophets in their preaching of repentance, that then

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God's word begins to bear fruit in their life where they truly confess their sins, and you're going to note what little we know of the exile.

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Read Daniel, read Esther, not the easiest of circumstances, harrowing circumstances for these people.

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Those who are confessing the one true God in danger of losing their life in every conceivable way, and you'll note it wasn't by accident, it was by the machinations of people who legitimately were working and maneuvering things politically for their demise, and God graciously spared them, and so you'll note

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God's word has now borne fruit. The people of Israel are confessing their sins, and in this great confession of sin, it is rich with summaries regarding the scriptures.

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In fact, as we consider this, this is an important aspect of the life of a

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Christian. The scriptures say, the prayers of a righteous man availeth much, and our normal response to hearing a text like that is to say, well, that's good for him, good for him,

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I'm glad that his prayers availeth much, yeah, but certainly that does not apply to me.

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Now, in and of yourself, that is absolutely true, but you remember that the word of God, and it's only the word of God that teaches this, you cannot find this written in the philosophers of the earth, that the word of God teaches us that by faith in the crucified and risen and ascended

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Jesus, that each and every one of us are clothed with the sinless, perfect, glorious righteousness of Christ.

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You see, the great exchange that took place on the cross cannot be understated.

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Christ bears in his body the sins of the whole world, the sinless, spotless lamb of God, God lays on him, imputes to him the iniquity of us all, and then we, by faith in Christ, are then clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

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A baptism being such a beautiful picture of how all of this takes place. When we are baptized, we're buried into Christ's death and into his resurrection.

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Our sins are washed away, and Christ takes his bride, that's all of us, and he washes away her sins to present her to himself in glory and splendor.

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And so, that being the case, the scriptures so clearly teach us that yes, the prayer of a righteous man and woman avails much, but only those who trust in Christ are those who are declared to be righteous.

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And because we have been declared to be righteous, then we should not, ought not, dare not be prayerless in our lives.

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I think certain times in my life, prayer was an annoyance.

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Prayer was something that made me uncomfortable. Prayer was something that I was completely inattentive to.

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I still struggle with it daily, and I don't even begin to think that I recognize how important it is.

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And you wonder, well, how? What do we pray? How do we pray?

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And this prayer of the people of Israel there in Jerusalem is beautiful because you're going to know, what are they doing?

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They're praying back the scriptures to God. Praying them back to God.

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And have you ever stopped to think that God is so kind and gracious? Not only does he provide everything that we need for our salvation, but he doesn't leave us guessing as to what it is that we ought to pray.

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I love the fact that the Gideons in Kenya, that they hand out testaments like one of the ones

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I received when I was a kid, right? New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, right?

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And I, when I was a kid, I hated, hated the Psalms. Didn't understand it because I thought it was like stupid like, you know, poetry.

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Roses are red, violets are blue, you stink like poop and so do you. You know, I just hated it, right?

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But as I've gotten older, I have come to realize that the Psalms are the prayer book of the scriptures and they teach us to pray.

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And the reality is that the struggles that we go through in this life, and Tito, I would note this, even wealthy

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Americans suffer. We may not suffer in huge poverty like many people do in Kenya, but yet God makes sure that we are to suffer.

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We suffer in broken relationships, we suffer the consequences of our sin, and we suffer for not paying attention to God's words.

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We suffer differently than many people in the world, but still we are made to suffer. And it's important because suffering produces perseverance.

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Perseverance, character, character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, right? And so we are made to suffer.

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But in the midst of our suffering, how many times are we reticent, slow, that it doesn't come to our mind to actually pray to God?

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And in the midst of our troubles and our difficulties, our suffering, our failing health, as we're watching

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Western civilization collapse in darkness, growing darker by the minute in our own country, do we even consider to stop and to pray?

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And as we work our way through, we've worked our way through this prayer, I keep coming back to just how important it is to pray, but have you ever noticed that it just seems like God is far off?

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He's not there. Where'd he go, right? There's a prayer for that in the scriptures.

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Psalm 13. And listen to this prayer. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?

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How long will you hide your face from me? How many times have you prayed and just felt like your prayers ricocheted off the ceiling and hit the floor?

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That God wasn't listening, that he was far from you. And then we imagine, well, the reason why this is the case is because God is not interested in us anymore because we've gone too far, we've sinned too much, we've outstripped his patience and his kindness and his love and his forgiveness.

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So we can't expect God to be coming around anymore. Read the story of David, okay?

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David, who is held up as the pinnacle king of Israel, the one who typifies

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Christ so much that he's called the son of David, right? Called the son of David.

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I need to share my screen with the online. All right, hold on a second here.

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I thought I was. I'm sharing. All right,

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I'll redo it. Hang on a second here. All right, redo. Share again.

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There you go. All right, it's back. Okay, good. But listen to this prayer again. David, the guy who's the king of Israel, the one who typifies

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Christ, how did his career in the scriptures start off? In the palace? He was hunted like a dog, right?

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The reigning king of Israel tried to pin him to the wall several times with a spear. I always like to say that the reason why

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Saul failed in pinning David with a spear is because that spear was reserved for the side of Christ when he was on the cross.

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Ultimately, the devil succeeded, but that spear was not meant for David. It was meant for Jesus. And so he's the one who writes, how long,

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O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

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How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? And when we read the

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Psalms, we just kind of blow through them. We don't slow down and consider just what is this guy saying?

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I remember teaching this one time to one of y 'all, you know, teaching you how to pray, walked you through this.

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And it was somebody here at Kongsminger, a younger person, and he said to me, are we allowed to talk to God like that?

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Yeah. Apparently, yeah, right? So he cries out, consider and answer me,

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O Lord, my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death, lest my enemies say

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I prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

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So in the middle of all this, his problems have not gone away. His suffering has not gone away.

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His enemies are still hounding him. And then you get the big but, okay?

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And I've made the point before, I'll keep saying this, pay attention to where the buts show up in Scripture, because the word but always erases the thing before it.

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And I can't help it, but you know, it reminds me of that stupid song, I like big buts, right? Can't lie.

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And the reason why I like these kinds of big buts is because they erase the sin, right?

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One T. Yeah. Instead of two T's. Yeah, it's a one

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T'd but, not a two T'd but. Did I call Ashera? Yeah, I did.

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Yeah, I'm kind of down on her right now, so. You needed to get

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Kay Nash on it. Yeah, right. But note here, this but, it erases everything before it.

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But, I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall, future tense, it will rejoice in your salvation.

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I will sing to Yahweh, because He has dealt bountifully with me.

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My protestations, when I feel like God is not listening to me, never end on such a positive note.

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But they should. And this is why we need to pray these Psalms. See them for what they are.

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They are the prayer book of Scripture. They will teach you how to pray. And so, let me throw this into the mix.

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Y 'all remember the golden calf incident, okay? There's Moses on the top of Mount Sinai, with God, in the glory.

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God has written down the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone. And, you know, they're talking about building the tabernacle.

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God's given them all these instructions. And Moses has gone for just long enough that the stupidest thing happens.

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The people of Israel totally forget that they had just agreed that they were going to obey

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God's commands, right? I am the Lord your God. I've taken you out of Egypt. I'm the one who's brought you here and set you free.

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And you will have no other gods before me. And he gives them the whole Ten Commands. And the people say, we, whatever

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Yahweh says, we're going to do. All right. Well, how long did that last?

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Okay. Longer than my New Year's resolutions, I would note. Okay. At least they lasted 40 days.

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But in Exodus 32, consider the incident. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves again together to Aaron and said to him, up, make us gods who shall go before us.

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As for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we don't know what's become of him. So Aaron said to them, take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters, and bring them to me.

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Now note here who we're talking about, Aaron, who in just a little while is going to be consecrated as the very first high priest of Israel, a type and shadow of Jesus Christ himself.

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Notice he doesn't sit there and go, wait a second, guys. We said we would worship no other gods except for Yahweh.

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What you're doing is wicked. I got to put an end to this. There's no way I'm going to participate in Does he say that?

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No. Make us gods, he's all, okay. What kind of gold you got on you, right?

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Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, your daughters, bring them to me. So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears, brought them to Aaron.

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He received the gold from their hand, fashioned it with a graving tool, made a golden calf. Who made it?

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He did, okay. And they said, these are your gods, oh

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Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, tomorrow shall be a feast to Yahweh.

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That's what the text says, right? We're going to worship

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Yahweh with a golden calf and proclaim false deities.

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This is a great example of what we call syncretism. A lot of churches specialize in this nowadays, right?

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If you don't believe me, just go to herchurch .org, okay?

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Don't go there, but if you want, if you don't believe in syncretism, they believe in the divine feminine there. It's an

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ELCA congregation, right? It's just paganism dressed as Christianity.

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Isn't that the same as what's going on here? Nothing new under the sun. They would have done well in the ELCA with that golden calf, right?

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Yeah, so they rose up early the next day, offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

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This is the first burning man conference, you know, so you kind of have to think of the pagan debauchery and things like that.

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That's what it's talking about. So Yahweh said to Moses, go down for your people. Oh man,

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I always like pointing this out, okay? Being a husband and a father was fun, okay?

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When my kids were young, my wife and my son did not get along. And of course,

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I had to go to work every day, and sometimes when I would come home from work and I would walk in from the garage,

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I would peck my wife on the cheek and say, how was your day? And she'd say this horrible word, fine.

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Oh no. Yeah, at this point, you began running through the memory banks.

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Okay, what did I do? What did I do? What did I do? And then she would say these words, that son of yours.

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He was no longer her son at that point, he was mine. And of course, in my sinful nature,

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I would sit there and go, whew, thank God it's not me. Right? Note the words.

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God says, go down for your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.

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God's totally like, they're not my people anymore, they're yours. They've turned aside quickly out of the way,

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I've commanded them, they've made themselves a golden calf, they've worshipped it, sacrificed to it, said these are your gods, oh

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Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And Yahweh said to Moses, I have seen this people, behold, it's a stiff -necked people.

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Now, therefore, let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them, and I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation of you.

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Just consider how deep the sin is. God, at this point, is legitimately entertaining this option.

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He's going to nuke the entire Israeli camp. The only survivor is going to be

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Moses, and he's just going to start again. And all the

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Norwegians said, oofta. All right? So Moses now intercedes, he implores

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Yahweh, his God, he said, oh Yahweh, why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, whom you brought them out,

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God, with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say with evil intent that he bring them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth?

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Turn from your burning anger, relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, Israel, your servants to whom you swore by your own self and said to them,

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I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised

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I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever. Hello, what did he just do there?

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He quoted back to God the word of God. He knew the promise that was given to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and basically said, hey,

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God, time out here, dude. Don't smoke me, but I need to remind you, you made a promise to Abraham, to Isaac, and Jacob, and said,

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I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and I will give you this land. You can't nuke the entire

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Israeli camp because of your promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What's he doing?

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He's praying to God, back God's words. Over and again, as a pastor,

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I listen to women and men who lament that when they were raising their kids, they raised them in a bad church, and as a result of it, their kids no longer attend church anymore.

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They won't darken the door of a Christian church because they were abused, they were manipulated, they were taken advantage of.

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What they were taught was complete wingnut wackerdoodle -ism. It wasn't real biblical Christianity, right?

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And so they say, what do I do? Answer, pray.

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What do I pray? Prayers that go something like this. Lord, your word says that it's not your will that any should perish.

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So, God, you've got a problem, right? And you need to be true to your word because I am bringing before you my prodigal child who, because of partly my fault, was taught wrongly and has rebelled against the church, but they've rebelled against something that was false, not true.

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Please have mercy on my prodigal child. Help them to hear the gospel, to hear the words of God, to hear the truth, and to repent and return, all right?

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But you've got to know in that prayer, what are you doing? You're praying back God's words to him.

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The scriptures are to be read, they are to be marked, they are to be memorized, they are to be prayed.

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The scriptures are practically everything. And here, Moses is praying back to God these exact words that he has heard.

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And so, for having God's words prayed back to Yahweh, watch what happens.

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So, Yahweh relented from the disaster. How could he not, right?

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I've used the metaphor before, I'll keep using it. You'll note that God had a wrestling match with Jacob, and what a complete lousy, worthless individual he was, okay?

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Completely robbed his brother blind of his of his birthright.

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Completely lied to his father, because mommy told him to do it. Stole the blessing for himself.

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I mean, this guy, there's like no redeeming qualities to him, at all, right?

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And when he's on the run after his brother says, I kill you, for doing what?

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For stealing the blessing. Do you know that the story of Jacob is the first recorded instance of identity theft in human history?

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Right? I want you to think about this. And he's the good guy.

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He's the guy named Israel, all right? That should give you hope, right?

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Because we're all in good company, right? But this guy, he's on the run, heading out of Israel, because his brother's going to kill him, and rightly so, with Cain and Abel's about to happen all over again.

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And God appears to him, Jesus appears to him, from Jacob's ladder, at Bethel while he's sleeping.

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And Jesus doesn't descend the stairs and sit there and go, you worthless pile of poop, you know, how dare you do these horrible, miserable things?

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What does God say to him? I'm going to be with you. I'm going to bless you.

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I'm going to make a nation out of you. And I'm going to bless all the nations of the earth through you. Say what?

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Some might accuse God of enabling behavior. There wasn't even a hint of a scolding, right?

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But you're going to note then that through the suffering and difficulty that he experiences in Haran, and don't think that he didn't suffer at all.

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The guy had four wives, all right? My point stands, okay?

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And he had a completely worthless, good -for -nothing, scheming, conniving, never kept his word, always trying to work things in his favor father -in -law, right?

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And in the process of all of that, hard nights, working as a shepherd, long hours, having to pay for any lost sheep, all this kind of stuff,

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God begins to produce in him real faith. And when it comes time for him to return to the promised land, on the eve of his first encounter with his brother who he stole the blessing from,

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Jesus shows up and wrestles with him. It makes no sense.

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I mean, what kind of God are we dealing with here? First of all, he doesn't get the tongue -lashing, scolding, moralistic preaching that we should have expected from God at this point, because he's on the run.

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He's a fugitive for doing evil. But then on his way back, okay, he's afraid that his brother's finally going to kill him.

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And Jesus shows up and says, hey, want to wrestle? Okay. What kind of God is this?

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But isn't that the point? You're going to know we are all wrestling with God.

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And God legitimately wants us to wrestle him and to defeat him in our wrestling the same way a father with his young son will wrestle with him and let the young son win, but make a good spectacle of it.

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Jacob gets the better of Jesus in that wrestling match and gets a blessing. And his name is changed to Israel, he who wrestles with God.

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But you're going to note that then starts kind of as a metaphor for all of us.

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You and I are just as worthless and conniving and evil as Jacob was.

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And Christ doesn't show up here to give you a good scolding week after week after week after week.

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This would not be a very fun place if that were the case, right? Who'd want to show up for that? But what does he do?

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He comforts you with his words, forgives you of your sins, feeds you copious amounts of the scriptures, gives you his body and blood given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins.

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And he's in the process of healing you. And so through the scriptures, then we wrestle with God.

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And wrestling with God for us doesn't mean the physical wrestling, but the wrestling that comes through the suffering that we go through and crying out to God, where are you?

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But praying back the actual words that are written in the scriptures, that's what Moses has done here. He's wrestled with God and he defeated

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God with what? God's own words. Prayed back to him. But then the story continues.

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And so Yahweh relented from this disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. And then Moses went turned and went down the mountain and two tablets of the testimony in his hand.

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Tablets were written on both sides, on the front and on the back, they were written. Tablets were the work of God.

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The writing of the was the writing of God engraved on tablets. I can hear Indiana Jones say, they belong in a museum, right?

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Right. And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, there's a noise of war in the camp.

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Poor Joshua doesn't even know what's going on. But he said, it's not the sound of shouting or victory or the sound of the cry of defeat.

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That's the sound of burning man that I hear, right? That's the point he's making, by the way. It's in the original

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Hebrew. And as soon as he came near the camp, he saw the calf and the dancing. Oh man.

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And Moses, his anger burned hot and he threw the tablets out of his hands, broke them at the foot of the mountain.

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He took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, grounded in powder, scattered it on the water, made the people of Israel drink it.

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And then Moses said to Aaron, what did this people do to you that you brought such a great sin upon them?

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Now, this is like the most egregious example of deflection and gaslighting that I have ever read in all of the scriptures.

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Okay. Aaron said, well, let not the anger of my Lord burn hot. You know the people, they are set on evil.

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For they said to me, make us gods who shall go before us. And as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don't know what has become of him so far so good.

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So I said to them, let any of you have gold, take it off. So they gave it to me and I threw it into the fire and poof, out came this calf.

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It's a miracle. Hallelujah. So a seed offering here, right? This is the stupidest lie

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I've ever seen in my life. It's still in the annals of human history. This one is at the top, right?

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Right. Yeah, that's right. It's his fault. He was touching me. Okay. Right.

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And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose and had let them break loose to the derision of their enemies and Moses stood at the gate of the camp and said, who's on the

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Lord's side? And what happens next is a bunch of people who were in gauging in their frolicking and sexual immorality of the moment of the burning first burning man.

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They died and they had to bury a lot of them.

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Horrible, horrible thing. But the story continues because now we've got a problem.

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And that is, is that God has basically said, I ain't going with you. You guys are on your own now.

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It's been nice knowing you, but not that nice. Asta, right? Yeah.

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And so Yahweh said to Moses, depart, go up from here. You and the people whom you've brought up, here we go again, whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt to the land, which

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I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob saying to your offspring, I will give it. I will send an angel before you and I'll drive out the

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Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites. Go to a land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up with you, lest I consume you on the way for you are a stiff neck people.

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And what follows next, as you read this account, is that Moses legitimately is trying to figure something out.

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He has come to the realization that he himself personally has the favor of God.

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But by this sin that has been committed by the people of Israel, they no longer have

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God's favor and that the breach is so big, he doesn't know how to fill the breach.

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And he is going to try to work the problem in several different directions in order to have

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God's favor be brought back to the people of Israel so that the presence of God would go with them.

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And so what's fascinating here is that without the completed scriptures, without a word from God, Moses doesn't know how he has

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God's favor. He just knows that he has it. He has not been able to study the scriptures well enough because he's the author of them, right?

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He has probably, he's just barely begun them at all. And he hasn't really considered the deep meaning of the phrase that Abraham believed

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God and it was credited to him as righteousness from the book of Genesis chapter 15. And so Moses is left kind of fumbling in the darkness, looking for a solution to the problem because it is a big deal that God is not going with him.

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And without the words of God to guide him, he doesn't know what to pray for.

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He doesn't know what to believe. He doesn't know what to do. And so he heads out kind of on his own to try to figure out how he can, how he can fill the breach.

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In 33 12, it says, Moses said to Yahweh, see, you say to me, bring up this people, but you have not let me know whom you will send with me.

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You're going to send an angel. Which angel is it? Is it Gabriel? Is it Mikael? Is it, is it, is it

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Raphael? No, that's the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Sorry. Right.

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Yet you've said to me, I know you by name and you have also found favor in my sight.

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So God, so note what Moses is saying here. You said this to me. You say to me, I know you by name and you have found favor in my sight.

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He knows that Israel needs this. So now, therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight.

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Consider too that this nation is your people. He's basically saying, how, how did

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I get this? Because remember what, one of the things we know about Moses, the man is a fugitive murderer.

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At this point in time, his face is still on the, is still on the bulletin boards at the post offices in Egypt, right?

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Every Saturday night, you know, that, that Walsh character comes on television, says, have you seen this man?

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His name is Moses, right? He murdered an Egyptian. God really picked some really good people.

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You know what I'm saying here? Which, when you think about this, let me kind of fast forward a little bit.

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You got Jesus, you know, he's called Levi the tax collector. He's having dinner at his house and there are the

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Pharisees all upset. Do you, does your, does your rabbi not know that he's eating with sinners? Haven't you guys read about Moses?

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The guy found favor in God's sight and he was a complete abject murderer.

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Kind of gives us hope, right? But Moses here hasn't figured it out. He doesn't know how did I get God's favor?

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So this was, this was his first attempt at trying to figure out how to get the favor, you know, figure out, all right, how did

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I get it? Show me your ways so we know what we need to do, God, so that we can then have your favor, right?

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Does anyone earn God's favor by doing good things?

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No, without faith it's impossible to please God. So he, so God says, well, my presence will go with you and I will give you rest.

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And he said to him, if your presence will not go, it will not go with me, do not bring us up from here, for how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight and I and your people, and your people, your people,

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God, okay, is it not in your going with us so that we are distinct,

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I and your people from every other people on the face of the earth? And so Yahweh said to Moses, well, this very thing that you have spoken,

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I will do for you have found favor in my sight and I know you by name.

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That hasn't worked, has it? Okay, and what I religiously call the greatest

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Hail Mary pass of all time, all right? This, it's like you have four seconds on the clock, it's fourth quarter, and you've got 99 yards to go to get a touchdown, okay?

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This is how dire the circumstances are. It sounds like just a normal game for the, you know, for the, for the patriots now.

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Well, let's see we call that karma, right? For the Vikings and others, right?

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Anyway, so this is how bad it is, and so what does Moses say? Please show me your glory.

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I, what is he thinking? How is this going to solve anything?

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I mean, where does this even come from? It is the most impractical thing I have ever heard in my life.

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It makes me wonder if this question, this request doesn't come from something deep inside of him as he's meditated on who the character of his

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God is. Because he's been up in the glory with God face to face, talking with him for 40 days.

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He saw the feet of Jesus on the sapphire pavement when the 70 elders of Israel went up Mount Sinai to commune and have a meal with God.

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It's, so this, this comes out of nowhere, but at the same time it has to come from somewhere.

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It has to come from his dealings with God, and so he says, please show me your glory.

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God says, all right, I'll make all my goodness pass before you, and I'll proclaim before you my name,

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Yahweh, all right? And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy to whom

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I will show mercy. You know what? It's like God's sitting there going, oh no, you figured it out. Uh -oh.

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You know, like you ever play a game with a kid? You hide something, and then where is it? Well, you're cold. Oh, it's freezing. Oh man, it's, it's

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North Dakota winter, man. It's, it's January. It's 30 below. Oh, you're getting warmer. You're getting warmer. Oh, it's Barbados.

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It's hot, hot, hot. Oh, you're hot. It's kind of like that, right? So you can tell

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God's going, uh -oh, you're getting warmer, right? But I'm gonna have mercy on whom I'm gonna have mercy. Okay, God, all right?

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But he said, you cannot see my face. Man shall not see me and live. And so Yahweh said, behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by,

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I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.

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And then I will take my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.

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All right, this is getting interesting. So Moses makes two new tablets.

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He goes up, he goes up the mountain. The Lord descended in the cloud, stood with him there.

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What an interesting, what an interesting verb. Yatsav, he stood with him there, and he proclaimed the name of Yahweh.

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So Yahweh passed by before him and proclaimed, Yahweh, Yahweh, a

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God merciful and gracious, with a long nose, abounding in steadfast love.

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Yes, that's what it actually says in the Hebrew, with a long nose, because God can take in the stench of our sin for a long period of time, patiently, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

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He does what? He forgives iniquity and transgression. Notice here, although Moses can't see the glory of God, the glory of God is to forgive and pardon sins.

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He hears it. These are God's words. They're recorded for us in Scripture.

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And how many times when you read your Old Testament, do you not see these same words? The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

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That was first proclaimed by God himself. Moses heard it with his own ears as he passed by while Moses was hidden in the cleft of the rock.

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He will by no means clear the guilty, which means Christ has to die for them. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation, and Moses quickly bowed his head toward the heaven, toward the earth, and he worshipped, and watch what he does.

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He said, if now I have found favor in your sight, and he knows now how he has it, God has forgiven his iniquity.

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Blessed is he whose transgression is covered, whom the Lord will never remember or call to mind or hold against him.

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If I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff -necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us for your inheritance.

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Pray the Scriptures back to God. That's what we saw the

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Jews doing in Jerusalem after they came back from the exile.

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They, hearing the Scriptures, prayed back to God, confessing their sin. Moses here, hearing the words of God, prayed them right back to him.

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All right, I now know how I got favor with you. You pardoned my iniquity. If you pardon mine, well, you got to pardon theirs too.

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You need to forgive us, Lord. And note, God immediately springs into action, and so he said, behold,

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I am making a covenant before all your people. I will do marvels such as have not been created in all the earth.

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That is the fastest turnaround I've ever seen from God. One minute, it's your people, your people.

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I'm not going with you. Forget it. I don't want to have anything to do with you. And all of a sudden, I'm making a covenant.

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I'm going to do marvels and wonders. It changes everything. You're going to note that when we forgive our spouses when they sin against us, it oftentimes takes us a few hours or sometimes days, depending on the transgression, to have things return to normal, right?

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Okay, I know a thing or two about being in purgatory. I've been there for many, many, many days. But all of that being said, no purgatorial thing going on here.

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As soon as God pardons, God immediately jumps for joy and rejoices and gets right to the business of repairing the breach himself.

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Are you beginning to think that God's really is a lot deeper and more meaningful and more important than you've given it credit for?

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I don't want to make it sound like it's everything, but it's everything. You know, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ.

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You are a new creation in Christ because the word of God has reached you through the preaching of the gospel or has reached you in the waters of baptism, the washing of water in the word.

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You are alive because God spoke the universe into existence and created all of us. God does not leave us to figure this all out on our own as if we could after the fall anyways.

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The one thing that Moses figured out and the one thing we need to be keen on, and we see this in the prayer of the people of Israel in the time of Nehemiah, is that they recognize that not only is

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God's word everything, it informs our very prayers. He who has an ear, let him hear.