Tumors and Mice

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Sunday school from January 12th, 2020

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OK, grab a Bible, something to write with. We're going to be in the book of Leviticus.
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Not, sorry. That was muscle memory. Numbers, numbers.
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There's almost an uprising. That was almost a career -ending movie.
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We're going to read Leviticus backwards now. Oh my, what a weird thing.
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Yeah, let's pray. Blessed Lord, you have caused all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning. Grant that we may so hear them, read
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Mark, learn, inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and ever hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life through Jesus Christ our
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Lord. Amen. OK, as is our practice, were there any questions because of the sermon?
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The Bruce is not here. And I will say this, the sermon,
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I way nerded out on that one. So in fact,
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I almost think that I followed the Dwayne Cleven method of putting a sermon together.
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Since I've never tried it, I'm not sure what that is. Lots and lots of biblical data that kind of played into it, but the themes are just so amazing when you consider the creation themes.
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And I would also, I would just add this kind of a thought to it. New creation attached to baptism, you can kind of see it all over the place.
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For instance, you do see it in Genesis, you see it again in the flood.
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So there's Noah and his family in the ark, and they're waiting for the waters of the flood to subside.
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And what kind of bird does Noah send out? A dove, and so there's the dove.
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You know, again, Merekephet, this hovering, fluttering over the face of the waters and can't find a place to go down.
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And so you'll note that that was like the ultimate return of chaos and the home. And so you can see that, you know, so new creation is there.
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But then there's also deliverance themes that come with water. For instance, when you look at the crossing of the
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Red Sea, the crossing of the Red Sea, the people of Israel having been freed from slavery, God defeated their oppressor, the false god,
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King Pharaoh. And first order of business is their baptism in the Red Sea. And in the
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Red Sea, God drowns their adversaries and their foes. And I would say this, just kind of on a nerdy level again, sometime this year, the fellows who put together the
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Patterns of Evidence Exodus documentaries. Have you seen that?
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Have you guys seen that Patterns of Evidence Exodus? Not yet. Okay. Bits and pieces of it.
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Okay. So there's two documentaries in the series, and it's, funny enough, it's a
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Minneapolis, Minnesota -based documentary filmmaker. But if you have an opportunity to watch either of them or both, it's really good.
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The name of the documentary is called Patterns of Evidence, and it's looking at the
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Exodus because there's a whole group of modern -day scholars who say that there is no archaeological evidence for the
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Exodus. And it's like, what? What? And so this documentary filmmaker has basically, his hypothesis, and it's a great one, is that the reason why they say that there is no evidence is because all the evidence that exists, it is dated differently than what they would expect the
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Exodus to be. And the reason why there's confusion along these lines is, for instance, in the
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Book of Exodus, it says that the city that the children of Israel were forced to build was...
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I'll give you... Let me duplicate this real quick. And I'm going to look for a particular word,
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Ramesses. All right. So here's...
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This is like Exodus 1 gives us a problem, talking about the children of Israel. Therefore, they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens.
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They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Ramesses, but the more they oppressed, the more they multiplied.
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All right. So here's the issue, is that when you look at the name Ramesses, well, that means that Ramesses is the
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Pharaoh of the Exodus. No. Here's the issue. The city of Ramesses was built on the ruins of another city from a different time period in Egypt's history, and the name of that city is
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Avaris. And so what we're seeing here is that somebody monkeyed with the biblical text in order that people might know where their people were oppressed.
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Nobody knew where Avaris was anymore. They said, oh, Ramesses is where it's at.
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And so... But all the archaeological evidence is from a different dynasty period within Egypt's history.
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And so as a result of it, the evidence that's there is actually amazing evidence, really amazing evidence.
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And so you have to deal with archaeologically, how do you get around what's called the Pharaoh Ramesses theory, because that thing messes everything up.
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Ramesses himself is a contemporary of Solomon. That's a whole other story.
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But that's how far off the dating is. So the documentaries are
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Patterns of Evidence, Exodus, Patterns of Evidence, the
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Moses Controversy. And so this is another controversy about the
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Hebrew language and Moses being the author of the Pentateuch. And then this year sometime, they're coming out with another installment of it, and they sent out a dive team into the
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Gulf of Aqaba, which is one of those fingers coming off the Red Sea. And we got high def dive footage showing what remains of Pharaoh's army at the bottom of the
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Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea. And this is going to be fun to see when it finally comes out.
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I'm nerding out here. Did you have your hand up? Yeah, I have a question. Could you restate again why
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Christ had to be baptized? Okay. I was going to write down, and I lost the words, and I wanted to just have a statement.
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Okay, so the why is tricky. So in Jesus' own words, if you were to use
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Jesus' own words, it's to fulfill all righteousness. But Jesus is not in need of righteousness.
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We recognize that. So let me do this. I'm going to hunt this down real quick.
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And I should probably send this out. This is one of those times where I nerded out so much,
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I actually had all of my notes. These are my notes, and they're published on a website.
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Hilary of Poitiers, I'm going to read his quote for you because that's in my text.
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Let me find it. So Hilary kind of puts it this way. In Jesus Christ we behold a complete man, thus in obedience to the
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Holy Spirit, the body he assumed fulfilled in him every sacrament of our salvation. He came therefore to John, born of a woman bound to the law and made flesh through the word.
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Therefore there was no need for him to be baptized because it was said of him he committed no sin.
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Where there is no sin, the remission of sins then is superfluous. And Hilary's right. It wasn't for that.
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So it was not because Jesus Christ had need that he took a body and a name for our creation. He had no need for baptism.
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Rather, through him the cleansing act was sanctified to become the waters of our immersion.
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So the way the church fathers see it is that Christ's baptism in the Jordan River then becomes the act by which all other baptisms are sanctified.
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This is the first Christian baptism. And in this first Christian baptism we see what happens to us in our baptisms.
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And so Christ going into the waters of baptism then sanctifies the waters of baptism for everybody who follows.
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That's the way the church historically has looked at Christ's baptism. Yes, Michael. I have a question.
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In the beginning, Jesus is referred to as the light.
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Yes. So when there was darkness over the land, Jesus hadn't arrived yet or what?
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Okay. That would probably be a wrong way to put it because Christ is
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God the Son and therefore the second person of the
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Holy Trinity is omnipresent just like the Father is everywhere present. So by giving you an analogy, think of it this way.
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There's Jesus spending time teaching and preaching and healing with his disciples.
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And one day he climbs up a particular mountain. We're not sure which. They get to the top of it and all of a sudden, blammo, out comes the light.
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He's transfigured before their eyes. So I would see a parallel then because Christ is omnipresent.
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God the Son, second person of the Trinity, is omnipresent with the Holy Spirit and the
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Father. And so basically what we're seeing here is something akin to the transfiguration.
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That the first order of creation is, like I said, backing up the dump truck in the darkness, dumping all the matter out.
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And God, probably the Father, says, Yehior, be light.
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And vayahior. And light was. There was. And so since Christ is light, it's not saying that he just came onto the scene.
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He's always on the scene in the creation. It's just that at that point comes the working light. Now this then, and I want you to think of it this way, is that in the
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Hebrew mindset, which they're taught this really in the scriptures, when we talk about outlines, we begin with the
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Roman outlining system. So you've got major point number one. And then from there, capital
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A. From there, you know, sub point one. And then lower case a, and it goes this way.
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That's not how outlines work biblically. The way outlines work biblically is that you have your first major idea, that from there flows another idea, flows another idea, and then when you get to the bottom, you have almost an opposite counterpoint to it, and it builds itself out.
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So there's these perfect mirror bookends in the way biblical outlines work. And so I would point this out, that this happens in the
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Bible as well. So when you look at, let's go back to Genesis 1 real quick, and let me make this a little bit bigger.
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All right, so in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void.
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So here we've got the tohu vabohu, and the face of the deep, the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
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And then we get to verse 3. God said,
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Let there be light. And there was light. And then you have this declaration. And the light,
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God said, God saw that the light was good. He didn't say that it was good.
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He saw that it was good. Kind of an interesting thing because the rest of the time he's speaking. Vayomer Elohim, God said, and God said, but here's
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Vayar. God saw. He saw the light, that it was good. And so you'll note the light itself is given the quality, is declared to be the light itself is good.
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And then we learn from the cross reference in John 1, Christ is the light. So if you're looking for Jesus in the book of Genesis in chapter 1, we can say with certainty that they're the spirit, the ruach elohim, the spirit of God is hovering over the waters.
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God the Father is probably the one saying, let there be. God the
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Son is the light. Now, bookend this then, come back, to bookend this, go back then to what,
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Revelation 21. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. First heaven and the first earth had passed away.
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The sea was no more. And I'm going to note something here. When you think
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Hebrew outlines, which again the scriptures are the ones who teach us these. Let me put this over here.
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There we go. I saw a new heaven, new earth. First heaven, first earth had passed away.
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The sea was no more. Why is it important that the sea doesn't exist?
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There's no sea. What is the sea representative of? To home, chaos.
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And before the throne of Christ, there's a what? There's a glassy sea. It's this picture of the non -existence of chaos.
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This is kind of a major theme in there. So the sea was no more. I saw the holy city and the new
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Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride. And I heard a loud voice, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
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He will dwell with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them as their
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God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.
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Anyway, the former things have passed away. Then he would say, Behold, I am making all things new.
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And then he goes on, and let me point this out. Let me find this real quick because there's another detail here.
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So when this new Jerusalem comes out of heaven, it's perfectly cubed.
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Here we go. Verse 22, I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the
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Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb. And the city has no need for sun or moon or shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the
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Lamb. So I'm a photographer.
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I like taking photographs, which means it's all about looking for good light. Best light is like right when the sun comes up or right when the sun is going down.
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That's the golden hour. You've got that rich golden light. You've got these beautiful colors and hues in the clouds and stuff like this.
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That's great light. So you get a note. If I were a photographer in the new earth, am
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I waiting for golden hour? No. I have no idea what the quality of this light is or what colors it will have or anything like that.
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I can only tell you the source of it, and the source is the who? The Lamb. Who's the
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Lamb? Christ. So you'll note, Revelation 21, the
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Lamb is its lamp. The Lamb is its light. John 1, now working our way backward,
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John 1 verse 9 specifically says that Christ is the light. You go all the way back to Genesis here, and then in the bookend here, you'll note that Revelation is bookending what we see in Genesis 1.
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Last chapters of Revelation are bookending the first part of Genesis itself, and we're going back to a light source for the creation that predates the sun, the moon, and the stars.
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And so a good way to think of it then is that the sun, the moon, the stars, the galaxies, everything that we see,
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Christ has assigned his light to them. But in the new earth, he's our light.
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How does that work? I have no idea. God can do whatever he wants. But you'll note consistently then from the beginning to the end of Scripture, Christ is the light.
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And God saw, Vayer, Vayer Elohim, God saw that the light was good.
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The light is good. Ah, yeah, the light is good, but no one's good except for God alone.
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You kind of get the idea. That's why I put that in there because it kind of helps flesh this out. When you take the rest of Scripture and pull the cross references together, you can see that in the opening chapter of Genesis, there is so much going on.
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You almost can't do it justice. Almost can't. Does that make sense?
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All right. More sense, okay. More is better than less. Good. So I didn't make it blurrier.
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That's always a good thing. I always hate it when I do that. Someone comes to me with a question.
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Could you clarify this? And at the end, they sit and scratch their head. He's like, I have no idea what just happened. Okay. All right.
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We are no longer in the book of Leviticus. If I go there, I'll be fired. We are in the book of Numbers.
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And working our way through, we did the first three chapters a couple of weeks ago when we had our church service online during our big snowstorm.
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I do find it hilarious that some of the names they've chosen for the winter storms this year. So you notice that Ezekiel ravaged
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America, and then right now Isaiah is ravaging America. You could say that these winter storms are of biblical proportions this year.
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I write my own material. My apologies. We are in Numbers 4, and so we'll just keep working our way forward through Numbers.
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I will say this, is that if we get to a part where there's a lot of census type of data, if there's a lot of numbers in Numbers, we'll skip through a lot of the numbers.
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So I reserve that right for ourself. So Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, take a census of the sons of Kohath.
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Sons of Kohath are going to be one of the tribes of Levi, from among the sons of Levi, by their clans and their fathers' houses, from 30 years old up to 50 years old, all who can come on duty and do the work in the tent of meeting.
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So you'll note that it's men from the tribe of Levi who do the work in the temple or in the tabernacle, and the window for your career of doing priestly work is a window that starts at 30, ends at 50, mandatory retirement at 50.
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So I would say if we were going according to Levitical rules there, that I would have been forced into retirement a year and a half ago.
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So I'm glad that I can keep working in the new covenant, all right? So when the camp is to set out,
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Aaron and his sons shall go in and take down the veil of the screen, cover the ark of the testimony with it.
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They shall put on it a covering of goat skin and spread on top of that a cloth of blue and shall put in its poles over the table of the bread of the presence.
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They shall spread a cloth of blue, put on it the plates, the dishes for the incense, the bowls, the flagons for the drink offerings, the regular showbread also shall be on it.
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Then they shall spread over them a cloth of scarlet, cover the same with a covering of goat skin and shall put it on its poles.
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And they shall take a cloth of blue, cover the lampstand for the light with its lamps, its tongs, its trays, and all the vessels for oil with which it is supplied.
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And they shall put it with all its utensils in a covering of goat skin and put it on the carrying frame.
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And over the golden altar they shall spread a cloth of blue, cover it with a covering of goat skin and shall put in its poles and they shall take all the vessels of the service that are used in the sanctuary and put them in a cloth of blue, cover them with a covering of goat skin and put them on the carrying frame and they shall take away the ashes from the altar, spread a purple cloth over it, and they shall put on it all the utensils of the altar which are used for the service there, the firepans, the forks, the shovels, the basins, all the utensils of the altar, and they shall spread on it a covering of goat skin and shall put in its poles.
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And when Aaron and his sons have finished covering the sanctuary and all the furnishings of the sanctuary as the camp sets out after the sons of Coeth, shall come to carry these, but they must not touch the holy things lest they die.
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These are the things of the tent of meeting that the sons of Coeth are to carry."
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So you'll note then very explicit instructions which clan of Levi is responsible for these particular tasks because every time the children of Israel would move, they had to break down not only their individual tents, they had to break down the tabernacle, which was a very complex tent, and everything had its place, had its coverings, and in the midst of it you had to take them down in such a way that you didn't touch them.
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They are holy, you are not. And touching something that is holy, if you are not holy, results in death of the unholy thing.
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That's you. And so we'll note that that's kind of a fascinating thing. I think about one of the stories that happened when the
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Ark of Israel was returned, the Ark of the Covenant was returned to Israel after it had been captured.
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Y 'all remember the story about Dagon? Yeah? All right.
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This is always worth reviewing in this regard because you'll note that God did.
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1 Samuel 5. Okay. So what happened in the opening portion of 1
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Samuel is that the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant. They captured it.
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This was in part due to God's punishing of Israel because of the wickedness of the sons of the high priest at the time.
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His sons were bedding the girls who were helping out at the tabernacle and also abusing those people who were bringing their offerings and taking portions of the offerings that were not meant for them because they wanted those rather than other cuts of meat.
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And as a result of this, God punished them and allowed the Ark of the Covenant to be taken captive.
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But you'll note that Philistines are not believers in the one true God. And what ends up happening here is a fascinating study in all this because yes, it is historically absolutely accurate that at the time of the ancient theocracy of Israel, coming in contact with the holy things of the tabernacle could, well, cause pain, suffering, interesting things happening to your deities.
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And then if you touched the holy things of God contrary to the command no matter how well -meaning you were, you would be stricken and die.
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So 1 Samuel 5 says, when the Philistines captured the Ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod.
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Then the Philistines took the Ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. Dagon kind of looked like a merman, half fish, half human kind of deity.
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And this is going to be, I'm sure Dagon started getting really nervous as soon as that happened. And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold,
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Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the Ark of the Lord. So they took
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Dagon, put him back in its place. But when they rose early the next morning, behold,
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Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the Ark of the Lord. And the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold.
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And only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. Poor fellow, just so sad.
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We'll have to call him Stumpy. Okay. This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon and Ashdod to this day.
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The hand of the Lord was heavy against the people of Ashdod. He terrified and afflicted them with tumors. And both
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Ashdod and its territory, when the men of Ashdod saw how things were, they said, the Ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for his hand is hard against us and against Dagon our
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God. So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, what shall we do with the
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Ark of the God of Israel? They answered, let the Ark of the God of Israel be brought around to Gath. So they brought the
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Ark of the God of Israel there. But after they had brought it around, the hand of the Lord, Yahweh, was against the city, causing a very great panic.
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And he afflicted the men of the city, both young and old, so that tumors broke out on them. So they sent the
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Ark of God to Akron. But as soon as the Ark of God came to Akron, the people of Akron cried out, they have brought around to us the
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Ark of the God of Israel to kill us and our people. So they sent, therefore, and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, send away the
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Ark of the God of Israel. Let it return to its own place, that it may not kill us and our people.
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For there was deathly panic throughout the whole city. The hand of God was very heavy there.
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The men who did not die there were struck with tumors, and the cry of the city went up to heaven.
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We continue into the next chapter then. So the Ark of the Lord was in the country of the
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Philistines for seven months, and the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, what shall we do with the
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Ark of the Lord? Tell us with what we shall send it to its place.
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They said, if you send away the Ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty, but by all means, return him a guilt offering.
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Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why his hand does not turn away from you. And they said, what is the guilt offering that we shall return to him?
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They answered, five golden tumors and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the
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Philistines. For the same plague was on all of you and on your lord, so you must make images of your tumors and images of your mice that ravage the land and give glory to the
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God of Israel. Now, I'm going to point this out just because it's funny, but Tehor, from the
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Hebrew Ephel, there's a couple of different ways to translate this, and one of them is found in the
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King James, and let me find this real quick, a little small. So they said, verse four, what shall be the trespass offering we shall return to him?
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They answered, five golden emeroids. And so,
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I would say that there are other translations that do just spell it out as hemorrhoids. So, that would be an interesting thing.
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I point it out just because that's kind of one of those things where different translations in the
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Hebrew word kind of make that kind of an interesting translation.
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I do think tumors is a more polite translation of Ephel, and in some respects shows a more general concept of a tumor rather than a singularly located one is the best way
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I could put it. But I will note that in Christian history past, the translations that translated
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Ephel as hemorrhoids did give the impression that this was a very, that people had a hard time sitting down as long as the
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Ark was in their presence. So, I will just say that. And of course,
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I would like to know what does a golden hemorrhoid look like? How does one cast such a thing?
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So, okay. See, this is why I don't... Okay. I've been doing this too long.
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All right. So, you must make images of your hemorrhoids and images of your mice that ravage the land and give glory to the
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God of Israel. Perhaps He will lighten His hand from off of you and your gods and your land. Why should you harden your hearts as the
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Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? And after you dealt severely with them, they did not send the people away and they departed.
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Now then, take and prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there has never come a yoke and yoke the cows to the cart but take their calves home away from them and take the ark of the
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Lord and place it in the cart and put in the box at its side the figures of gold which you are returning to Him as a guilt offering.
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Then send it off and let it go its way and watch. If it goes up on the way on its own land to Beth Shemesh, then it is
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He who has done this great harm. But if not, then we shall know that it is not
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His hand that struck us. It happened to us by coincidence. So the men did so and they took the two milk cows, yoked them to the cart, shut up their calves at the home and they put the ark of the
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Lord on the cart in the box of the golden mice and the images of their tumors and the cows went straight in the direction of Beth Shemesh along one highway lowing as they went.
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They turned neither to the right or to the left and the lords of the Philistines went after them as far as the border of Beth Shemesh.
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Now the people of Beth Shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley and when they lifted up their eyes and saw the ark, they rejoiced to see it.
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The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh and stopped there. A great stone was there and they split up the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the
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Lord and the Levites took down the ark of the Lord in the box that was beside it in which were the golden figures and set upon them the great stone and the men of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrifices on that day and when the five lords of the
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Philistines saw it they returned to Ekron. So these are the golden tumors that the Philistines returned as a guilt offering to the
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Lord. One for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ashkelon, one for Gath, one for Ekron and the golden mice according to the number of the cities of the
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Philistines belonging to the five lords both fortified and unwalled. The great stone beside which they set down the ark of the
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Lord is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh. And kind of interesting that they used stones as witnesses and he struck some of the men of Beth Shemesh, God did, because they looked upon the ark of the
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Lord he struck 70 men of them and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great blow.
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So what happened in this account is we see that they opened up the ark to kind of look inside of it and 70 of them were struck down by God.
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So kind of a sad event. And then there's a similar account then in 2
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Samuel 6. 2 Samuel 6 and this is when David is bringing up the ark from the tabernacle to bring it into Jerusalem.
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He wants it to be located in Jerusalem. So in 2 Samuel 6 it says David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, 30 ,000.
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David arose, went with all the people who were with him from Baal HaJudah to bring up from there the ark of God which is called by the name of Yahweh Sabaoth who sits enthroned on the cherubim.
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And they carried the ark of God on a new cart and brought it out of the house of Amminadab which was on the hill and Uzzah and Ahiyo the sons of Amminadab were driving the new cart with the ark of God and Ahiyo went before the ark.
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David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord with songs, lyres, harps, and tambourines and castanets and cymbals and when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it for the oxen stumbled and the anger of the
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Lord was kindled against Uzzah and God struck him down there because of his error and he died there beside the ark of God.
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Now I've heard one scholar kind of put it this way that Uzzah died because he thought his hand was more holy than the ground.
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That's not a bad way of putting it. Alright? So we must remember that when God says these things you are not to touch them.
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He means it. He means that. So Uzzah died because he put out his hand there.
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Now a little bit of a note. I'm going to throw some bonus information in real quick.
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Since we're in numbers I'm going to do this real quick. Duplicate. Okay. Nachash.
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Alright, there. That's good. And I need another cross reference here. Duplicate.
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Isaiah 6. Okay. Now, a little bit of a note.
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This was additional information. I'm going to come back to my sermon for a second. When we talk about the fall of humanity into sin.
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Alright? In Genesis 3 who is it that's talking to Adam and Eve?
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Satan, yes. In what form? Serpent. Alright? He's a serpent.
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Now I'm going to show you this in the Hebrew and you'll kind of start to get it. A lot of people when they approach this without a proper understanding of the biblical texts what often times happens is that they scoff at the story of Adam and Eve and go, come on.
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A talking snake? Really? A talking snake?
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How come Adam and Eve didn't say to the serpent what's this?
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A talking snake? And not have a conversation with them. Now, let me question your knowledge of the devil himself.
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What was Satan's job before he rebelled against God?
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Yeah, he was an angel. He was in the very presence of God and we know that he was an extremely beautiful angel.
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Alright? Hebrew word, one of the Hebrew words for an angelic being is cherubim.
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Alright? Our depiction of cherubim they are these chubby little baby -like creatures with wings and kind of like Cupid they have bows and arrows.
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Can we see that again? No. But, okay.
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But there is another word for angel in Hebrew.
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Cherubim and Seraphim. Ah. What is a seraphim?
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Huh? Yes. Okay, let me show you this. In Numbers 21 the
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Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and the people came to Moses and said, we've sinned for we've spoken against the
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Lord. Pray to the Lord that he would take away the serpents from us so the
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Lord said to Moses, make a fiery and here's our Hebrew word. It's really small.
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Let me make that bigger. Hang on a second here. Make a fiery.
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There. Here we go. Here's our Hebrew word and that's way too dark but there we go.
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Seraph. Seraph. And in Hebrew when you want to add so this is going to be a singular.
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So this is a fiery seraph singular. If you were to make it plural when we make it a plural we just add an
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S. In Hebrew when you want to make it plural you add the suffix im.
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So if this were multiple serpents these would be seraphim. Alright?
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Now I'm going to show you this in the Hebrew then in Isaiah. In the year that King Uzziah died
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I saw Yahweh sitting upon a throne high and lifted up and the train of His robe filled the temple and above Him stood same
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Hebrew word seraphim. What do these creatures look like?
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They're serpentine. The seraphim are serpentine looking angels.
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Yeah. Okay. So if Satan ha -satan is a fallen angel and he is what type of fallen angel is he?
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He's a seraph. He's one of the seraphim. And he was considered to be the most beautiful stood in the very presence of God creature.
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So who was it that was talking to Eve and Adam? A fallen seraphim.
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He didn't have his legs and stuff all dirty.
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Correct. Yeah. He probably looked a lot different. Right. There's certain features of the seraphim that we see in Isaiah that are taken away from the serpent who spoke to Adam and Eve.
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Okay. On your belly you will go God says. Yeah.
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Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Alright. So that's a little bit of Bible nerdy trivia kind of stuff but I bring it up just because it comes back to the sermon in this particular case and it was a piece of data that I didn't want to work into the sermon but I had forgotten
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I wanted to talk about it. But now does that kind of change your understanding of the story of Adam and Eve a little bit?
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It's like oh my goodness no wonder he's a serpent he's a seraph. That's exactly what he is. He's one of the seraphim.
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He's a fallen adversary of God. He stood in the very presence of God and when you look at Isaiah then listen to what the seraphim that they are doing in the presence of God let me find it here we go so each had six wings with two he covered his face with two he covered his feet with two he flew so these seraphim have feet and one called to another and here we've got the triple holy kadosh, kadosh, kadosh
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Yahweh, Sabaoth Which verse of chapter are you on? I'm on Isaiah 6 3 and they called to one another saying kadosh, kadosh, kadosh
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Yahweh, Sabaoth melolah, melokal ha -eretz the whole earth kal -eretz is
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I want to how do I want to pronounce this one? kavod, that's right it's filled with his glory the whole earth is filled with his glory holy, holy, holy so here we get this just tiny brief this is the only time we really see this picture of the very throne room of God the very presence of God is there and the type of angels that are in the very presence of God are the seraphim and these are serpentine creatures with wings and feet so there you go throw that all in now all of a sudden
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Genesis is really making sense really, really, really, really making sense and it does and it should okay, coming back to numbers then
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I have a question yes ma 'am did the unbelievers and those who had stolen the ark have to follow the rules too?
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yeah, they did so how, I mean, how did they know the rules? they learned them the hard way trial and error and kind of the same way
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I always like to picture a primitive man learning which fruits and nuts will kill you and which ones won't it's like, well you go ahead and eat it
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I'm not going to eat it you go ahead and eat it if you die then we know it's poisonous great, thanks, okay yeah, it's trial and error so did they really think it was worth it?
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my question is why did they hang on to this thing for seven months? okay, for seven months and you'll note in the ancient world's culture and this is kind of an important thing is that deities were considered to be territorial so not to rub any of this in I understand this is the territory of the
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Vikings I get that, I'm talking about the football team and we won't talk about the glorious thing that happened last week regarding New England but anyway dangerous
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I would say this that Dwayne, he's a fish out of water because he is in the territory of the
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Vikings and he dares to invoke Brady bring it on so it's kind of the same way that football teams are territorial and you root for the team that's in whichever territory you're in for them that's kind of how things in the ancient world, deities were considered that in fact, if you crossed a river or a border then what was believed is that you were leaving the land of one deity and going into the land of another this then becomes the thing that's in play here which really screams to the ancient world this story speaks because here's the reason why the
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Ark of the Covenant of God is in the territory of Dagon and Dagon is powerless against Yahweh in the way the ancient mythos worked that shouldn't be happening the reason why they put the
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Ark of God in the temple of Dagon was to celebrate Dagon's defeat of Yahweh which in the ancient world at that time would have been considered a big deal because it was
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Yahweh who defeated the Egyptians the deities of Egypt so, hey, our fish dude he beat
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Yahweh well, that didn't last very long because he became stumpy really quick but then you'll note then they held onto this thing moved it around what's working against them is this belief that Dagon is supposed to be in charge here but he's not and then this then this mindset of the ancient world about deities being territorial becomes the reason why the
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Christian Church is named the Catholic Church Catholic means universal and so Christians very early on adopted and self -identified as being
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Catholic and this was in contradistinction to the idea that deities were territory that God was calling all people everywhere
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Jews and Gentiles whether you're Roman, Parthenian, Mede doesn't matter
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Elamite, Syrian it doesn't matter all human beings regardless of their geography, territory or national descent are to believe and trust in Jesus and that this was a religion that was for everybody everywhere and there were no borders that Christ couldn't cross and so as you read the book of Acts then you read the missionary journeys of the
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Apostle Paul he's going from territory to territory to territory and people are believing and trusting in Jesus this is the activity of a
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Catholic way of thinking about a religion rather than a territorial does that make sense?
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all this little bonus material has nothing to do with picking up the tabernacle and moving it but I was going stream of consciousness today alright we'll keep reading then
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Numbers 4 Eliezer, the son of Aaron, the priest shall have charge of the oil for the light the fragrant incense the regular grain offering the anointing oil with the oversight of the holy tabernacle and all that is in it of the sanctuary and its vessels by the way the fragrant incense and the anointing oil were the first the first ingredients or first products of the ancient world that were copyrighted okay and what
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I mean by that is that the that God forbade people to make these things for themselves the ingredients list and the way in which it was used
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God said these are only to be used in the service of my temple anybody who makes a copy of this for home use is to be put to death so the very first copyrights of the ancient world regard you know the incense and the anointing oil and that copyright was enforced with the death penalty just want to let you know so it's an interesting way to think about it so the
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Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying let not the tribe of the clans of the Kohathites be destroyed from among the
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Levites but deal thus with them and they may live and not die when they come near to the most holy things
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Aaron and his sons shall go in and appoint them each to his task and his burden but they shall not go in to look on the holy things even for a moment lest they die so one group one group was allowed to cover the stuff the other group yeah we gotta make sure you don't even look at it okay you don't even get to look at this stuff no yeah so you can't touch it with your hands or your eyeballs and the
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Lord spoke to Moses saying take a census of the sons of Gershon also by their fathers' houses and by their clans from 30 years old up to 50 years old you shall list them all who can come to duty to do service in the tent of meeting this is the service of the clans of the
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Gershonites in serving and bearing burdens they shall carry the curtains of the tabernacle and the tent of meeting with its covering and the covering of goatskin that is on top of it and the screen for the entrance of the tent of meeting and the hangings of the court and the screen for the entrance of the gate of the court that is around the tabernacle and the altar and their cords and all the equipment for their service and they shall do all that needs to be done with regard to them all the service of the sons of the
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Gershonites shall be at the command of Aaron and his sons and they are all to carry in all that they have to do and you shall assign to their charge all that they are to carry this is the service of the clans of the sons of the
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Gershonites in the tent of meeting and their guard duty is to be under the direction of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest as for the sons of Merari you shall list them by their clans and their father's houses from 30 years old up to 50 years old and you shall list them everyone who can come on duty to do the service of the tent of meeting and this is what they are charged to carry as the whole of their service in the tent of meeting the frames of the tabernacle with its bars pillars and bases and the pillars around the court with their bases pegs and cords and all their equipment and all their accessories and you shall list by name the objects that they are required to carry this is the service of the clans of the sons of Merari the whole of their service in the tent of meeting under the direction of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest and Moses and Aaron and the chiefs and the congregation listed the sons of the
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Kohathites by their clans and their father's houses from 30 years old up to 50 years old everyone who could come on duty for the service in the tent of meeting and those listed by clans were 2 ,750 this was the list of the clans of the
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Kohathites who all served in the tent of meeting whom Moses and Aaron listed according to the commandment of the
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Lord by Moses those listed of the sons of Gershon by the clans and their father's houses from 30 years old up to 50 years old and everyone who could come on duty for the service of the tent of meeting those listed by their clans and their father's houses were 2 ,630 this was the list of the clans of the sons of Gershon and all who served in the tent of meeting whom
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Moses and Aaron listed according to the commandment the list of the clans of the sons of Merari we'll just say was 3 ,200 and you'll note this is very very detailed information a very specific number three different clans listed who was of age above a particular age and below a particular age and you're sitting there going why is all of this in here
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I think it's quite helpful that it is now I spoke about this reason when we launched into this study but that was also a day that we had to have the divine service online because we couldn't get here and I will note this that when you listen to the scoffers within the visible church today these are people who for whatever reason and I do not understand why are permitted to be pastors and seminary professors and they spend their entire career undermining and attacking the authority of the word of God you think of the late
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John Shelby Spong of the Episcopal church this guy spent his entire career writing books attacking every cardinal doctrine within the church and nobody censored him nobody stopped him and if you listen to somebody like John Shelby Spong or if you were to listen to the people who are in the emergent church movement or these weird postmodern liberals and their social justice agenda and you were to sit there and say so what do you believe regarding the bible what do you believe regarding it oh it's a book of myths it's a book of legends none of it really happened there's no there's no history there it's some kind of genre of book that there's no grounding in reality
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I always point out these types of passages that have all of this detail in it that doesn't read like myth doesn't read like myth at all these types of details just scream historicity because when you write myth a long time ago in a galaxy far far away in the ancient sands of time look at how
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Aladdin starts is Aladdin history? no it's not it's supposed to be once upon a time this is how myth and story goes but you'll note throughout the scriptures especially in the
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Old Testament you have detailed data specific census lists names of particular clans and here's the best part is that when you go and take a shovel and you dig in Israel today you can find artifacts with names like this on it that can back these things up how is that possible if this is a book of myths?
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I would note that today in the ELCA seminaries in the
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ELCA seminaries if you apply to go to seminary in an ELCA seminary and you have the same view of the
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Bible that Jesus has that is the authoritative Word of God your application will be denied you will not be permitted to go to seminary if you hold the same view of scripture that Jesus has in any of the
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ELCA seminaries I'm going to just put this out there when you hear people attacking the
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Word of God they do so with an agenda alright so here's let me just kind of put it in crass terms let's pretend
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I didn't believe that the Bible's the Word of God that it's authoritative that it's history that the miracles took place in it
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I didn't believe that now my ordination vows require me to confess that I do my ordination vows require me to preach as if I do but if I don't what am
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I supposed to do as a pastor? answer leave okay if I don't want to be a
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Lutheran pastor anymore then I should leave but here's what heretics do they don't leave they want to change the church to conform to their beliefs and so in order for that to happen you can always tell when a pastor's preparing the way for false teaching because the thing that gets pushed down attacked scoffed at undermined is the
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Word of God we're going to beat up on the Word of God so that when I finally introduce what
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I really believe people will say well yeah of course that's got to be true because we can't trust the
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Bible it's a series of attacks that groom a congregation for false teaching and that's the best way
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I can put it so when you hear today's conservative evangelicals who are beginning to attack the
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Scriptures and I'm seeing that more and more it's because what they're trying to do is to get away from the doctrines of Scripture that would bind them and keep them from affirming certain things and in the evangelical world in the conservative world right now the people who are attacking the
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Scriptures this way they're doing so in order to get to a point where they can bless same -sex marriage or justify women's ordination those are the two things that are always on the table that they're trying to move towards and so you've got to attack the
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Word of God it's just a bunch of myths Beth Moore on social media just a few weeks ago attacked
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Christians and said we do not worship the Apostle Paul and that Jesus' words have more weight than Paul's do which is a false dichotomy it's a false dichotomy because let me ask you this how many books of the
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Bible did Jesus write? zero alright when he sent his apostles he gave them the authority to write the
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Scriptures and the Apostle Paul is an apostle of Christ he's an apostle of Jesus not just any old apostle he's an apostle of Jesus Christ and so Peter recognizes that what
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Paul writes is Scripture he even says so in 2 Peter so is there should
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I sit there and go well I put more weight on the red letters found in the Gospels than I do on the writings of Paul that's a game it's a game to attack the prohibition against homosexuality and the prohibition against women's ordination you attack the
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Apostle Paul it sounds so pious too I piously think that Jesus' words carry more weight well
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I would point out that Jesus is God the Son second person of the Holy Trinity in human flesh has
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God the Son Holy Spirit or Father ever disagreed with each other? is the
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Holy Spirit acting as a rogue renegade when he has people write into Scripture prohibitions against particular particular forms of sexual immorality or the prohibition against women ordination no he's doing so with the full approval of the
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Son of God and so when we say the Bible is the Word of God we're saying the