Matt Slick Bible Study Parables, #2

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Can you hear me Charlie? I just realized I didn't put the URL on Facebook. If people want to, you want to do that, you can, you know how to do it, right?

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Well, it's going to Facebook anyway. What am I saying? It's going to Facebook. It's, oh, I didn't put it in Odyssey, but it's going to Facebook and YouTube anyway, so no big deal.

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Okay. Why is that? I'm looking. Why is that camera up there? It's a, there we go.

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That's the right one. Thank you. Technical stuff. All right.

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You ready? Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for your word that you've given us.

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Lord, we ask that you'd bless us as we study it. I ask Jesus that you would open up our minds, open up our hearts to truth of your word.

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As we look more into parables that you would just be with us. I ask

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Lord that you bring listeners, viewers, who you ordain would hear and see, and that they might be edified in your presence.

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Lord, thank you for saving us. Thank you for bringing us together. Thank you for Julia being here from Albania.

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We ask you bless her too. We just thank you, Jesus. We ask this in your name. Amen. All right.

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Now I'm going to ask you guys which ones you want to go to first. We can do, I got lots of notes, the fig tree.

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We can do the friend at midnight and the great banquet. Fig tree.

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Fig tree. That's a kind of figured it'd be the fig tree. And I don't know why, because I'm a prophet. No, it's because I think that's what it would be good.

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So if you go to Luke 13, now these are Lukan parables. So Luke was a very good historian.

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As I said before, Luke wrote most of the New Testament because the number of words written by one person, that's

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Luke. He wrote the book of Acts. He wrote the book of Luke. Paul wrote more epistles, but Luke wrote more words.

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So what I'm going to do is just go through verses one through nine, one at a time, instead of reading it,

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I'll just go through one verse at a time. This is the parable of the fig tree, but there's a context of this because the fig tree parable comes out after Jesus talks about some other stuff.

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Now, verse one, now on the same occasion, there were some present who reported to him about the

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Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. All right.

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Now, so Luke is writing this and he's mentioning this atrocious thing.

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This is really something we can't fathom in our culture and understanding to mingle the blood.

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Pilate is a pagan who had killed people and forced their blood to be mingled with the sacrifices to God.

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It's horrible. One of the ways we might be able to relate to it would be to say we're in a church service and a gunman comes in and just starts shooting people.

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There's blood everywhere. There's mayhem. Children are killed. It's just reprehensible. It's just evil, that kind of idea.

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This is brought up and you've got to understand the context because the

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Jews were under the oppression and dominance of the Roman Empire. They did not like it.

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Now, they were a united group, the Jews were for the most part, but they did not want

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Roman rule. Now, there's a theory that Judas Iscariot, Judas, that he wanted, he was a zealot, which was a political, semi -military, quasi -military group, and that they wanted the

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Messiah to free Israel from the oppression of Rome. One of the theories, incidentally, is that the reason

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Judas turned Jesus in was to force his hand and then deliver

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Israel. Now, we don't know if that's true, but it fits within broad cultural things.

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We don't know what he was really thinking, but that kind of a thing. So verse two, and he answered and said to them, do you suppose that these

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Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? So instead of Jesus saying, well, you're right, that was really horrible.

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I sympathize with you. He says, well, do you think they were greater sinners than the others? Well, that's not what the response is expected from Christ, because Jesus is the blonde -haired, blue -eyed,

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Caucasian surfer guy, and he's standing at the door of your heart and knocking, and he's asking permission, and it's about you and your comfort.

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And so, yeah, of course, it's so bad. Oh, I feel empathy with you. Nope. You think they were greater sinners than these guys?

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Well, that's not the answer we would expect. He says, I tell you, no, unless you repent, you will likewise perish.

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That is not the kind of thing you would expect Joel Osteen to say. Okay. Now, I don't know,

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Uly, if you know who Joel Osteen is. Yeah, he's bad. Okay. He's horrible. And so this is something

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Joel Osteen would never say. Yeah, you will likewise perish if you don't repent. Joel Osteen wouldn't say that.

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He'd say, well, you know, Jesus loves you so much, and you just have to, you know, and the great

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I am, and get my book on the I am. So he doesn't comment on the atrocity, and it was an atrocity.

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It really was, and it was horrible. Yet he does not, my God, it's in my nose, he does not address the atrocity.

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He uses it and says, look, because Jesus is constantly the teacher. So instead of sympathizing, instead of offering therapeutic theological advice, the seven steps to a better non -Galilean massacre, what he does is uses it.

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And so he says, do you think you're going to suffer the likewise fate? Now, he brings up the issue of sin, and we've got to make sure we understand that there's not a one -to -one correspondence here between their sin and the sin of those who were sacrificed earlier, whose blood was shed.

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A lot of times people think, and this is a tough one to go through, it's a tough one, about one -to -one correspondence of sin.

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It's actually something I struggle with. And the reason is because in two days, it'll be 45 years since I was involved in an accident, a very bad car accident.

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And if you get close to me, you can see scars and stuff like this. June 19th, 1976, it took me two years to recover, fully recover.

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Now, the reason I bring it up is because about a year earlier,

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I was involved in a car race, and it was a bad accident as a result of it, and I left the scene.

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And I've since dealt with that before God, before people, and things like that. But when I was in the hospital,

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I got out of ICU, and I was in the hospital for a few days. A pastor from the church

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I was attending came in, and one of the few clear moments, I had a severe brain concussion, severe.

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And I said, now we're even, one for one.

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And he says, that's not how God works. But when you have guilt, sometimes you carry things with you, and you say, well,

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I deserve this punishment. And I've got other things that I suspect are, well, you did this, and you did that.

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Now, David, King David, he committed adultery, had

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Uriah killed, Bathsheba's husband, and then he lost his son, and he had penalty.

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Now, there was a correspondence, but Jesus isn't addressing that. And so the

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Jews are gonna be thinking this kind of a thing, because they're legalistic. It's our natural tendency.

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Now, I believe that God will deal with us in certain ways to teach us and to help us not be rebellious and stuff like that.

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We can get into more discussion some other time. But at any rate, I remember John 9, the man who was born blind.

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The disciples asked, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind? So they had this idea that the consequences that were negative, that were bad to you, were the result of your sin.

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Now, what movement do we have within Christianity that teaches the same thing? Prosperity, the word of faith stuff.

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Yeah, you're not healed because you don't have enough faith. You sinned, that's why you're blind. You sinned, that's why you're deaf.

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You sinned, that's why you have ringing in your ears. You sinned, that's why my wife had to have open -heart surgery. And this is false teaching.

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But we have to learn to separate our feelings of guilt from the actuality of our consequences, because we sometimes think legalistically that it's a one -to -one correspondence.

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But I don't believe God works that way. I believe that He very carefully allows things to occur to us to teach us.

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And that if all of our past is given to Him, that He will use that as well to teach us, because God is very merciful and very kind.

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And so we could say that sin is forgiven, but the effects of sin continue. But I don't believe there's a one -to -one correspondence necessarily.

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Verse four, do you suppose that those 18... Now, Jesus brings up another bad thing. Those 18 on whom the

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Tower of Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who lived in Jerusalem.

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Now, the word culprit really is the word from, I think it's a root, of Ophielema, debtors.

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And so they had a problem. Now, sin is a legal debt, because 1 John 3, 4, sin is breaking the law of God.

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Well, Jesus says, you know, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. And in Matthew 6, 12,

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He says, forgive us our debts. In the parallel, in Luke 11, 4, He says, forgive us our sins.

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So Jesus equates sin with legal debt, because sin is breaking the law of God.

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And so do you think they were the worse culprits, worse debtors than others?

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Now, a transgression of the law is a purposeful, usually a purposeful transgression.

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But sin isn't always purposeful. We can sin accidentally, but transgressions generally were understood to be those things,

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I know this, I'm going to go do this, you go transgress that law, generally, but not always the case. Now, so, because a transgression is the breaking of the law.

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Okay, now, okay. So verse 5,

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I tell you, but no, unless you repent, you will always, you will all likewise perish. Now, wait a minute.

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Jesus wouldn't hurt anybody. He would not say anything negative to anybody. He's always very comforting.

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He's always there standing at the door of your heart, asking for permission to get to let Him in, because it's up to your wisdom, because He's so nice and kind.

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And yet Jesus saying, and you're going to perish likewise if you don't repent. He is very stern. He's telling them the truth.

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Now, who's He speaking to? He's speaking to the religious people. Now, it's not wrong to be religious, but it's wrong to be religious to the point where it becomes your norm.

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It becomes a thing that governs you, that you judge others by. Now, there's a weakness within some

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Christian circles, and in a lot of Christian circles, but in the issue of you can lose your salvation. So what do you do to keep it?

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You do certain things to keep your salvation. And in some groups, that has led to arrogance.

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Well, I do these things. I keep myself right with God, but you, you believe you don't lose your salvation, so you can sin all you want.

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You're not going to heaven. Just like Patrick today, I think he's

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SDA, the investigative judgment, because he's talking about that. And so Jesus, He's not what a lot of people want

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Him to be. Now, you think about this. In Mormonism, Jesus is taken and adapted.

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It's too cold for you? Okay. You guys cold? Okay. If it gets too cold, let me know, because I got this fan on me.

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Now, I forgot what I was going to say. Dang it, it's okay. Mormons will take Jesus. I was just testing you.

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Mormons will take Jesus and turn Him into what they want Him to be. The Jehovah's Witnesses will take

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Jesus, turn Him into what they want Him to be. The Muslims will do that, and the secular world, because Jesus was,

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He would never be what the Christians say He was. And I have an article that I've written on Karm, would

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Jesus ever say mean to anybody? Yes, He would. You whitewashed sepulchers, you're your father, the devil, you brood of vipers.

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No, no, no. Jesus is nice. He wouldn't do that. All right.

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Now comes the parable. But before we get into the parable, I'm going to read out of Leviticus 19, 23 to 25, because this is the background of that parable.

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And when you enter the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall count their fruit as forbidden.

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Three years it shall be forbidden to you. It shall not be eaten.

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But in the fourth year, all its fruit shall be holy, an offering of praise to the

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Lord. And in the fifth year, you are to eat of its fruit, and its yield may increase for you.

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So this is the background of this fig tree thing. So they were told in Leviticus 19, 23 to 25, that they would plant a tree and they could not do anything with it for three years.

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Couldn't eat of it. The fruit that was there, three years, don't do it. And the next year, the fourth year, that fruit was for God.

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And the fifth year, you could eat of the fruit. The fifth year is when you could start eating the fruit. So it took a while.

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Now Leviticus, I mean, Luke 13, 6. And he began telling this parable.

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A certain man had a fig tree, which he had planted in his vineyard, and he came out looking for fruit on it and did not find any.

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Now, wait a minute. So he's looking for fruit. Why is he looking for fruit?

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Doesn't say exactly. Didn't find any fruit, right? So the next verse gives us a clue of something.

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And he said to the vineyard keeper, behold, for three years, I've come looking for fruit for this fig tree without finding any.

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So that means it's about the fifth year. The plant is five years old because three years is holy.

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The fourth year to the Lord. Now the fifth year, you just start looking for fruit. But for three years now, that means the tree is now five, six, the fifth year.

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So it'd be the fifth, sixth, and seventh. The tree's at least seven years old. Seven years old.

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Three years, plus other numbers, seven years old. Seven's a perfect number in the Bible.

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And he says, there's no fruit. Didn't find any. All right.

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So the owner has a right to expect a fruit from the vineyard. So what does the fruit represent?

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What does the tree represent? Class. Anybody take a guess.

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What? We're close. Most probably it represents

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Israel. Okay. Israel is also called the vine of God.

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God's vine. Now, and Jesus says, bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance.

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Years and years ago, I came across a tract, a little witnessing tract that said, no fruit, cut it down. That got me right away.

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I'm going to read this one. Hope I have enough fruit, don't get cut down. And if we go to John 14, Jesus says, if you don't abide in him, and if you don't bear any fruit, you're pruned, you're taken out.

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So what he's talking about is alluding to the stuff of Leviticus, that 19, 23 to 25, you're obligated as a people, particularly the people of Israel, to bear fruit.

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What is that fruit? What were they called to do? They were called by God to be a light to the world, because through them the

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Messiah would come, and Jesus was sent only to Israel, but the Jews biblically should have known that through the

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Messiah, all nations shall be blessed, because that's Genesis 12, 3.

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So they're supposed to already know that, that even the Gentiles are going to be included, but they became so legalistic that they became entrenched in their own ability to keep their own law, they became self -righteous and judgmental.

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And this is a problem. In fact, I just thought about it. What if the Jews thought they could lose their salvation, probably because they were legalists.

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I'm going to use that sometime. Okay. So what are some of the fruit that we're supposed to bear as Christians?

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Just Matt to himself, because no one's really listening. I just, all this keep talking, because I mean, yeah. So what are some of the fruit we're supposed to bear?

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What? Repentance. Evangelism. Evangelism. The fruit of the spirit.

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The fruit of the spirit. Galatians 5, 22, 23, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, the one fruit in Greek.

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What else? Presenting the gospel. Presenting the gospel. Honesty, integrity, faithfulness, long suffering, love for one another, loving

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God, all the good things. It's the fruit. We're supposed to be bearing these things in our lives as Christians.

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Now we don't do them perfectly. That's for sure. I certainly don't. My wife would be sitting right there going, amen to that.

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But, and so the, he said to the vineyard keeper, behold, for three years,

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I've come looking for fruit on this fig tree without finding any, cut it down. Why does he even use up the ground?

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So this thing is seven years old, not bearing fruit, destroy it. This is representative of Israel.

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And said to the, the vineyard keeper said, let it alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put in fertilizer.

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And if it bears fruit next year, fine, but if not, cut it down. So there's a little bit of mercy given.

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Hey, let's, let's see, we'll take care of this, this tree. Now the idea of the parables, we'll get to this, explain this a little bit more.

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This is not a super theologically deep one, but it's good. Israel is the one who's supposed to be the bringer of the light of the truth of God's word, not only to the

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Jews, but to others as well. And in the Psalms, I don't know the exact verses.

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It talks about the light to the, of the world. It talks about going forth. They're not doing their job.

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And this is a time bomb. And I think about this parable, you've heard this, you're a, you're a

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Jew, you're a Pharisee, a Sadducee, you're just kind of legalistic, a lawyer, a scribe, whatever it is. And you're, you're, you're at home after we're talking about it.

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And after a while you go, wait a minute, he just insulted us. It'd take a while to figure it out maybe, because that fig tree is us.

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He's saying, we're not bearing the fruit. Who is he to say such a thing?

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Who is this teacher to speak in such a way that he's judging Israel, the people of God?

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You see how important this is? He's speaking these things and he upsets people.

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He upsets people a lot. Now it's not that he's upsetting them on purpose, but he's upsetting them because the truth is what offends.

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The truth is what offends. This is something I struggle with on the radio sometimes, because I want to say the truth, but I know that, that in fact, you know,

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I'm reformed in my theology, you know, and people will say, can you lose your salvation? I'll say, no, you can't.

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Look what Jesus says right here. You know, and when we started the radio on this network four years ago or whatever it was, we actually had a conversation where the owner of the network told me, he says, we know you're a

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Calvinist. He said, I'm that too, but we don't really want to talk about that on the radio. And I said to him, well,

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I said, I understand that. I don't need to bring it up unnecessarily, but it's going to come up because people know who

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I am. They know what I say. They're going to call me up and they're going to ask me and I'm going to tell them the truth. They said, well, you got to do what you got to do.

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You know, he's a very good guy. And so now I'm known as the Calvinist radio guy.

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I'm not trying to be known, but why is that an important thing? Because Christians seek division when they don't like something that they think

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God is supposed to be. And when they find out he's not, they get upset. And so I've had many people over the years tell me that the things that I've taught them have upset them a great deal.

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But I've also had people tell me the same people come back and say, but I went and looked at the scriptures and what you taught was right there in scripture.

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That's why I quote the references, go to Romans 5 .19 for original sin and the

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Aorist passive indicative and what it means when you cross -reference it with Philippians 1 .29.

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Go here and check this out. And that's what I want people to do. Check it out.

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All right. Now, the spiritual leaders of the household of the faith are planted in God's vineyard and are expected to produce fruit.

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People produce fruit. Now we as Christians are supposed to be producing fruit.

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Now there's different kinds of fruit that we can produce. We can write books. We can be on radio. We can witness to our neighbor next door and by mowing his lawn or her lawn, we can go to the store and wear a shirt.

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We can support missionaries. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You don't compare yourself to others.

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You judge yourself by what God has for you in the position and place you are so that you can use your gifts for God.

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And so Rachel here does sign language. So we're going to try and implement sign language into the videos that I'll be doing.

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We're going to work that out. Don't know how it's going to work out, but we're going to try that as another means to reach out and to bless people with skills.

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But I don't speak sign language and you know who else here does. So that's a gift thing she has.

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So she's going to do that, but we're not responsible to do that. Just like she's not responsible to be on the radio and not responsible to go to your job and be a good witness at your job.

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We have different callings for different reasons at different times, but we are to bear fruit and we don't judge one another by each other.

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We judge one another, each other by what Jesus, the standard of Christ. He's our standard, not ourselves, not each other.

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All right. So another lesson out of this parable is that God will not deal or he'll be patient with you if you don't bear fruit, but not always.

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He'll deal with you. He'll deal with you if you don't bear fruit. That's why I remember once I said this to a guy,

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I was working at a corporation in Southern California and they knew I was a Christian. Everybody always knows I'm a

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Christian. They find out because I don't lie. I don't cheat. I don't do bad jokes, you know, and they find out.

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And so then they come to me and start asking me questions, blah, blah, blah. Okay. This one guy, I still remember this. He came to me and we got talking about Christianity and I said it before I really kind of thought about it.

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And he said he was a Christian. And I said, you are? I said, I couldn't tell. And I realized what

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I just said. And he went, it shook him up because I couldn't tell that he was a

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Christian at work. Now that's not to say that you have to have, you know, I'm a Christian t -shirt or whatever, but there should be something that distinguishes you from the unbelievers to some degree.

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And if there's not, that's not a good sign, but not always, because sometimes in certain contexts, it just doesn't come up.

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And that's, we understand that we're just talking about, there's gotta be fruit someplace sometime, but not all people can produce fruit either.

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People can die on their deathbed, not really have any fruit. You can also have bondage to various sinful habits.

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And I know, I've known people who were older, who raised during depression and it left mark on them and had to go through World War II and rationing and had some tough things happen and became

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Christians. And yet some of those scars are with them. And they don't, there's not that victory.

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Does that mean you're not Christian? That doesn't mean you're not a Christian. So when we talk about fruit, we gotta be careful that we don't judge a person by their fruit, but we're supposed to say, normatively speaking, yeah, they have fruit.

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They're supposed to manifest it somehow, somewhere. And so God won't deal with this.

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I mean, he won't be patient with us forever if we don't have any fruit, but he is patient nonetheless.

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And the vineyard keeper interceded and said, well, let's take a little bit longer.

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It's okay. So intercession is something we can learn from here as well. It does make a difference.

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We can intercede. And I believe that God should destroy

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America because America has produced pornography, has produced and promoted homosexuality and abortion and secularism and transvestitism.

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We've got stupid shows on TV, you know, Pride Month. Okay, so why is

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God not destroying America? Because the Christians are there saying, Lord, please deliver us.

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And God is patient. And as Israel was allowed to be destroyed in 70

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AD, God's patience ran out. I too believe that his patience will run out with America.

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Now, some will say, well, it's going to happen after the rapture, the pre -trib rapture.

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We could talk about that. That's just not going to happen. I don't believe in that at all. And so we're going to go through persecution.

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Maybe I can present some information to you. I've been studying for a while and really make you depressed.

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All right. Now, how about this one? Let's do the great banquet next. All right. Luke 14.

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And then we're going to get to a friend at midnight, which is going to be interesting. These are not some of the most studied parables.

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I'm going to turn that air co. It's getting a little cool in here now, isn't it? Okay. So put this here and then

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I'll go over here. Excuse me. Okay.

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Now we go to Luke 14, the great banquet. And the

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Old Testament background is in Isaiah 25, six through nine. A lot of times the parables have references to the

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Old Testament and allude to it. And this is what it says there. Isaiah 25, six through nine.

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And the Lord of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all people on his mountain, a banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow and refined aged wine.

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And on this mountain, he will swallow up the covering, which is over all peoples, even the veil, which is stretched over all nations.

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He will swallow up death for all time. And the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces.

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Oh, I just thought of something else. Okay. Sorry. And he will remove the reproach of his people from all the earth for the

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Lord has spoken. And it will be said in that day, behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that he might save us.

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This is the Lord for whom we have waited. Let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation. Now notice what it says.

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He'll prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain, a banquet of aged wine, because aged wine is really good back then.

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Choice pieces of marrow, bone marrow, that's the good part and refined aged wine.

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So the wine is really good. Now what people, sometimes people say Jesus did not make wine, real wine, alcoholic wine on in John chapter two, but yes, he did.

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Yes, he did. And that's another topic. We can go to that sometime. Now let's go to Luke 14, verse 15, and let's start.

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And when one of those who were reclining at the table with him heard this, he said to them, blessed is everyone who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.

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So that's another way to say, eat a meal. I remember we talked about, I think last week, when they ate in that culture, they didn't do it like we do, table and chairs and silverware and stuff like that, but they were on their left arm and their feet were away from the table.

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They took a piece of bread, tore it, put it into the sop, the stew kind of a thing, and they would use it as a fork.

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They would use it as a spoon and put stuff into it and eat it. We kind of do that too, make a sandwich.

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We just kind of combine bread and stuff, but we just do it a little bit differently. Okay. So verse 16, he said to them, a certain man was giving a big dinner and he invited many.

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Now, we got to remember the culture here. So when you would give a big dinner, you would invite people, right?

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So if I want to have a dinner here at the house and I'm going to say,

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I'm going to go out and two rotisserie chickens and order a large pizza, am

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I going to be feeding 200 people? No. I might be feeding five to 10, depending on how they are.

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Okay. How big they are, that there's going to girls eat more, whatever, you know, guys don't or whatever. Okay.

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So he was giving a big dinner and he invited many people. So he's planning this. Okay. He's planning this and a meal was prepared in advance according to the number of people.

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That's how it would be. We couldn't just go down, like five extra people showed up, which our house, if that happened, okay, great.

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No problem. Come on in. We'll just drive down and get another chicken and we'll, you know, no sweat.

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Give us 20 minutes. I don't care, but we couldn't do that back then.

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All right. Now a chicken, for example, would be for two to four guests, right? A duck, maybe five to eight, a lamb, maybe 10 to 15, a sheet, maybe 15 to 35 and a calf, 35 to 75 people, depending, but you get the idea.

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Different animals would be for different, you know, things. So the amount and type of meat would depend on the number of people who accepted the invitation.

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If I invite 10 people and four say they're going to show up, we're going to prepare for four people.

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And my wife and I, you know, that'd be six people total. That's what we all do, right? RSVP, you know, respond, s 'il vous plait, right?

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Okay. Now, that means that people who are, have been invited are going to say, yes,

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I'll be there. That's why you're preparing it because it says, he's giving a big dinner and he invited many people.

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And at the dinner hour, he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, come for everything is ready now.

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So there's people who have been invited and the culture, remember this is important. The number of people had to be known and the amount of food had to be prepared in advance.

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And the wine had to be prepared in advance because you didn't just have a refrigerator. Oh, we'll get another bottle of wine, go down to the store, get another bottle of wine.

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Wine took some time to prepare. The food took some time to prepare. This is a big deal. This is a big deal.

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So if you say you're coming and you don't come, there's got to be a good reason. You know, why didn't you come?

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My wife broke her arm. I had to tend to her. All right, good enough. Okay. Well, why didn't you come?

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Well, an alien abducted me. I was on Venus for a couple of days. All right. That, that works too. So if you've got a good reason why you couldn't make it, well, you think that doesn't happen?

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It happened to me last week. It was rough. Gosh, it was bad. The air pressure there.

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Anyway, that's another story. So he says, come, everything's ready.

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Come on in. Right now, this is what's interesting, but they all, oh, and the

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Greek word is a participial form. Keep coming. Okay. Tell them to come in because it's like, you've already been invited.

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It's the whole process of going there. The whole process they're preparing to. Oh, another thing is they had to prepare to travel.

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Now, if we're going to, you know, like you guys drove in the car, you know, to get here, if we're going to have a dinner sometime, you got to get in the car.

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You got to travel, right? Even if you're next door, you got to travel, but not everybody lived next door.

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Sometimes, you know, you'd marry this family over there, this family over there. So it took time. So this is a big deal.

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Okay. It's a big deal. And they all alike began to make excuses.

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What? Everybody started making excuses. What? You've already accepted. We've already made plans.

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You're supposed to have already known about this. The first one said to him, I bought a piece of land that I need to go out and take a look at it.

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Please consider me excused. Well, oh, okay. So I just bought some land and now

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I got to go look at it. How many of you buy land without first looking at it? Right. I just bought a house.

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I haven't seen it. I don't know what it looks like. I got to go check it out. Excuse me. You know, that was a lame excuse, right?

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That it's lame. And how many, if you had done this and you know, you invite someone, they go, well,

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I just bought a house and I haven't seen it yet. I can't make the big dinner plan we've had for two months.

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See you later. You're not inviting him again or her again. This is bad news.

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That's lame excuse. Lame, right? All right. So when you buy a field in the

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Middle East, you have to know what kind of rocks are on it. If there's water on it, if there's a wadi, a wadi is a temporary water supply, like a stream.

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A stream is constant. A river is constant, but a wadi is during this season, there's water in it.

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The next season, you know, like say in the spring, there's water, but in the fall, there's no water. It's called a wadi.

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W -A -D -I. All right. So there'll be a temporary source of water. That's what a wadi is. I learned that in seminary.

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Okay. And so you have to look at all the quality and everything about it before you even begin to discuss the price to purchase it.

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This takes a while to do this. And you know, we have a realtor here. How many, it might happen in this market here.

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How many realtors, I mean, people say, I don't care what it looks like, just buy it. Is it happening? Not like that.

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Okay, good. I'm trying to make my point, make it stand. Otherwise I'd be in trouble. It wouldn't look good. Bad illustration.

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All right. Another one, verse 19, another one said, I bought five yoke of oxen and I'm going to try them out.

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Please consider me excused. You can see this is another lame excuse.

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I mean, come on. You try a team of oxen, you try a team of horses, they're for plowing the field.

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I bought them, but I don't know what they look like. I don't know how big they are. I don't know if they have any broken bone. I don't know if they're healthy.

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I don't know how well they work together as a team because believe it or not, I've learned this over the years and I'm not a farmer.

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I don't know this stuff. I'm a computer tech wacko dude, but I've learned that the yoke, you put them on, on oxen.

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If some oxen were good and they would work together and some did not, because you might get them to go like this and it won't stay over here.

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So you don't buy oxen without checking them out first. And there's a way to do it.

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If there was a team that was being sold, it was public, they were publicly portrayed as being sold and they were taken to a field where they could be demonstrated that they could do this.

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When I go buy a car, we bought a car for my wife. We test drove it before we bought it.

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Okay. So it's like, you know, I could say this, I mean, honey, you know,

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I know you've been planning this dinner with all the neighborhood friends, all the friends from your childhood and everything.

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And, and we've been known about it for weeks, but I just bought another computer.

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I gotta go check it out. Bye. I'd be sleeping out in the backyard in the shed out there for a couple of days and then get something thrown at me afterwards, pan or something.

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And I deserve it, but I could see that'd be worth it for a computer. I could, I could see that, but anyway, that's just me.

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You know, I don't know about you guys, particularly if it's got DDR form and 32 gigs of DDR for Ram for the video thing you got for,

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I could see that. Verse 20. And another one said, I have married a wife and for this reason,

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I cannot come. Okay. So when you married someone, there was a celebration and it was planned out and they wouldn't say, yes,

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I'll accept the dinner invitation. Oh, by the way, I'm getting married the same day, but I've accepted your another lame excuse.

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Right. So like you want me to perform your wedding ceremony on, on the third. Right. Okay.

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So what if I were to come to you a week beforehand and say, Oh, I have to go fishing with some people.

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I can't make it. You know, she, she'd like, right. She'd be like, she would get with my wife and say, when he comes in the door, you throw this at them and I'm going to hit it with the pan, you know?

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So, you know, it's just like that. Right. You don't do that kind of, these are lame excuses, lame excuses or not.

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They're no good. So, all right. I can't come. I've got a wife. What? You know, maybe it was a shotgun wedding.

39:57

Another topic. And the slave came back and reported this to his master. Then he, the head of the household became angry, said to the slave, go out into the streets and the lanes of the city and bring here the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.

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The city is the community that they're in. So, the people who are specifically invited, lame excuse.

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They're not interested in the real truth. The fellowship with the banquet giver. This is the

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Lord God represented here. The people are the Jews. They're not doing what's right. The religious leaders, they're not doing what's right covenantally.

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They're not doing what they got to do. And so, okay, then if these Pharisees, the

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Sadducees, the scribes, all these guys and girls who know all the truth and they're uppity about it, well, they don't do it.

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We're going to go out to the average Jew and just invite them, the crippled ones, the lame, the ones who are not ceremonially clean, who weren't really accepted into the

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Jewish fold in the official level. We'll take care of them. Now, this is an insult to them because they're breaking one of the commands of God, Leviticus 19 .18.

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God says, love your neighbor as yourself. They're not doing it. They're not being loving.

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They're not being giving. They're being self -righteous. Now, this is a very difficult thing for me to deal with and maybe others as well, but I don't like to love people that I don't want to love.

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I don't like to love everybody because they're not as nice as me, as good looking and as humble as me.

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They don't dress as, well, they dress better than me and that makes me jealous. And so people bother me and I don't want to have to love them because they're not like me.

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And we judge people by our own selves and our own standards sometimes, but you can say I've by standard with at least a couple of guys here, but that's okay.

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And so God tells us to love people and he's telling the Jews to love your neighbor as yourself.

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And how many are doing that? It's easy to sit and talk and teach.

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It's not so easy to do it. It's easier to say what needs to be done than do it.

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So I've been teaching for a great many years, but I've done nine years of prison ministry and did another year out here and used to go to the beach in Southern California, not bragging, used to do things, go door to door, do a swap meet ministry, trying to reach out.

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And the idea is to go out there and to love your neighbor in some way, somehow.

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Now, sometimes that might mean that a wife, for example, his wife is an example, staying home, taking care of their children.

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They can't go out and do some of the other things that other people might be able to do. That's okay because they're raising children for the glory of God.

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It's a very important, very valid ministry. As I said before, different fruit, different ways, different times.

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But the religious leaders were not loving their neighbors like you're supposed to.

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See, love was sacrificed to legalism. Legalism deals with the hand, but love deals with the heart.

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And God wants us to love. So then if we're loving God and loving our neighbor, we will accidentally fulfill the entire law.

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So if I'm loving all of you, I'm never going to lie to you. Okay. I'm never going to deceive you.

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I might make mistakes with you and mess up. Okay. But I'm not going to do anything intentionally to injure, to harm, to do anything like that because I can't if I'm going to love you.

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Right? All right. And the slave, verse 22, the slave said, Master, what you have commanded has been done, and still there's room.

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See, there have been people who've been saved, but there's room for more. Master said, go out into the highways along the hedges and compel them to come in that my house might be fulfilled or filled.

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Wait a minute. Now it's not the local. Now it's not your local neighbors. It's the Jews who are understood to be their fellow

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Jews. Now go out to the highways. That means different places, different nations, different groups go out there.

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You take them in. Now imagine a Pharisee, Sadducee, religious leader thinking about this parable.

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You know, we got to stop this Jesus guy because he is obviously not following how we're supposed to be teaching people.

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We're supposed to be teaching them. They got to obey the Sabbath. They have to do what's right. And those people who don't do it cannot be considered true believers like us.

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Loving them? No, we don't do that. Good Samaritan we talked about last week? No, that's not what it means.

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They're so blinded that they can't even see the lack of love that they have for others. Remember 1

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John 4, 8, God is love. God wants us to love because that's a manifestation of his essence, of his character.

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And we have to be able to manifest that and love on people. And one of the ways I love on people, believe it or not, is to insult them.

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And I tease people because it's just what I do sometimes. And I tease people and they feel, somehow, people say, yeah, man,

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I can tell you love me because you insult me. Because if I like you, I'm going to insult you. But I care for the ladies though, because they're delicate flowers.

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And you got to be careful with delicate flowers. But I will insult my wife by saying something like,

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I would have more respect for her if it wasn't for her taste in men. Because she married me, so I can't trust her judgment.

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That's how I insult her. But with the guys, guys have different ways of showing love.

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Have you ever thought about how a guy hugs another guy? You ever thought about it? You hug, I'm loving you, but I'm hitting you.

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That's how guys are. Girls, it's so nice, look at your hair.

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I told you I love each other. I can't, I don't get that. If I went to a guy, oh, your hair looks so good.

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What? Oh, sorry. And the message that go out into the highways could take everybody, right? Go to get everybody.

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That's what Gentiles are. That's everybody. And now this is what's really interesting.

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We don't know if the command is filled because it ends at that point. Go do this.

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It's open ended. Israel's time has passed. Now the time of the

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Gentiles is there. He says, if I tell you none of those who were invited, she'll taste of my dinner.

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Okay. So the leaders of Israel were the original guests and they rejected.

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The outsiders were within the house of Israel and the guests, the highways and the hedges and stuff, those are the

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Gentiles. And one of the things that parable teaches is that you cannot enter into the kingdom of God unless you've been invited.

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The banquet is by invitation. You have to be invited in order to come in.

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And we'll get into that another time, but that's that. All right. Oh, I was going to jump into some stuff like that.

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But we do choose because we're enabled to choose, but God invites, he calls.

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And that's why, so he calls us and the word for to call in Greek is kaleo.

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In Greek, when you make something past tense or in the aorist, you put an Epsilon, an

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E on the front. So we put E D on the end, I know walked, talked, but in Greek it's reversed.

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The E goes on the beginning. So, and then the verbs change.

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So kaleo, the called. All right. And we also have three main

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Greek words for calling and choosing. Eklegei, Eklegemai, and Eklektos.

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And the word for church is Ekklesia. So we are the called out ones. We're the ones chosen, the ones called, the ones invited by word to come in.

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But God had covenantally called Israel because the Messiah was sent to Israel and the covenant requirement of that, one of the stipulations of the covenant was that the people of Israel were to receive the

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Messiah and believe and trust in the Messiah and proclaim the Messiah to the world. And they failed to do that.

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They didn't recognize him. So they failed covenantally. All right. Let's go to a friend at midnight,

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Luke 11, one through 13. Is this interesting? All right. All right.

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How many people are in the chat or in the room? 40, just went to 40. It was 39. Now I just had 40. Now 41.

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There's 41. I'm counting. There we go. I can see the numbers in there. All right.

49:29

Luke 11, one through 13. The friend at midnight. This one's interesting. There's a little bit of a textual issue we're going to look at.

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And it came about while he was praying in a certain place after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him,

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Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you pray, say,

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Father, how holy is your name? Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread.

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This is a shorter version of the prayer in Luke 11. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who was indebted to us.

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That's a word of feeling. Sin and debt are equated, but at any rate. And lead us not into temptation. Okay.

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That's a short version of the prayer. Okay. In verse five, and he said to them, suppose one of you shall have a friend and shall go to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves.

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So he, wait a minute, he teaches to pray. So he does. He goes, now, jumps right in.

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You got a friend. He comes at midnight and says, friend, give me three loaves.

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Lend me three loaves. It means he doesn't have three to lend, means I'll pay you back.

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Okay. Suppose one of you has a friend and shall go to him at midnight and say, give me three loaves. So you're asking for a favor.

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Now, bread is something that sustains life. Bread is, let me get this right here.

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I think there we go. So bread is very important. It's sustenance of life.

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Give me some bread, please. And remember, Jesus had just given the prayer, give us our daily bread.

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So now, wait a minute. So how does this work? God will do this, but how are you? Because you're saying,

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God, give us our daily bread and forgive us our sins. But is it just that in this prayer, what we're to do is only receive because the working out of the forgiveness is also from us outward.

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And now remember last week, we talked about how a community was very important and how a home in the community was important because if a stranger from some land or a visitor came in and it was in your particular house, you then represented the community.

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If you treated that person badly, then the community looked bad. So it was very, very important.

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So we've got a visitor coming in late at night. The guy is out of bread.

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He wants bread for his friend. He's obligated to take care of him and he's going to go get help. Now, believe it or not, in the

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Middle East, this kind of thing is in Islam. Now, Islam is a false religion, but in the culture,

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I've been told this many times that if a Muslim invites you into his home, he's responsible for your safety and comfort.

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And some of the aspects of some of the area, the Muslims, they will defend your life at the cost of their own.

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It's actually something that, hang on. And remember the movie with Mark Wahlberg and he,

52:50

Lone Survivor, I don't know if you guys saw it. There were some guys in Afghanistan and they went in to go do something and it fell apart and everybody got killed except for him.

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And he ended up, he was shot, wounded, beat up, whatever it was, and ended up going into a Muslim village.

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And they had this practice there of this, there's a word for it, where if a stranger comes in and you take care of it, you're obligated, you're obligated by your life to take care of them.

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And the movie, part of the movie is about that very thing. True story.

53:26

And the Muslim leader defended this American against the

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Taliban. And it's worth saying, okay, just for that, there's a

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Pashtuni, I think it's something, I don't remember what the word is. So that culture is still alive.

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And so the reputation is very important. You take a stranger, you've got to take care of them. So you go to your neighbor,

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I need some bread. The neighbor would, should know right away, this is very serious.

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It's a serious thing. Yes, I'll give you bread. And it doesn't say this in the parable, but let's just say this kind of thing happened.

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If say the neighbor didn't have bread, it would not be unreasonable for the neighbor to go back with the friend and go back and say,

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I don't have any bread, I'm sorry. The apologies would be necessary. It would not be beyond comprehension to say that.

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All right. Because he says in verse six, for a friend of mine has come to me on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him.

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Now, and from inside he shall answer and say, do not bother me.

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The door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. Wait a minute.

54:37

Here goes Jesus again, saying something in a parable that doesn't sit well.

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Remember, the Samaritan turned out to be the good guy. The prodigal son is the one who wastes his father's goods.

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These are things like, what? No, Jesus, you don't understand how to tell a story. You don't tell it like that.

54:59

Of course you're going to take care of the neighbors. Jesus, you don't know what you're doing. People who are listening are going, what is he doing again?

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I would just bet you that in that culture, when he starts talking to people going, what's he going to say this time?

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What's he going to do? What's he going to say? Don't bother me. You don't say that. Bad people said, don't bother me.

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I don't want to talk to you. It reminds me,

55:27

Nathan, his friend committed suicide. I'm going out there

55:32

Saturday and Cameron's going to go. We're going to drive two and a half hours out, two hours out.

55:38

Are you going? You guys going? I'm going. Whatever. We're going. I told Nathan, because Nathan, we're friends.

55:45

I trust Nathan with my life. I trust Nathan with my wife's life. I would, and vice versa.

55:52

If Nathan were to come to me and say, I need your help. I said,

55:58

I'm not going to help you. It would be a big insult, a big insult. I told

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Nathan, I said, you name it and I'm there. I will be there for you. That's how it's supposed to be.

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That's how it's supposed to be in this culture. You name it. I'll help you. What do you need?

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Don't bother me. The door's already been shut and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.

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I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, that's the word we're going to look at.

56:37

He will get up and give him as much as he needs. Now, the word in Greek is anidion, and there's a way of looking at the word in Greek that it can mean two things.

56:54

Slight textual variant is a slight variation in the word. Let me give an example of something in Greek.

57:01

Mano, only, ganao, to beget. Mano, ganao, in Greek.

57:08

Mano, ganao, only, and beget. Only begotten. Mano, ganaes.

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Mano, ganaes, it's only begotten. Mano, ganao. But in past tense, you put the e on front, mano, eganat, right?

57:25

Then the form. But because you have an e and an o that come together, they form what's called a diphthong.

57:32

And there's rules, which I've long since forgot, and that the two vowels come together, they form another vowel.

57:38

They do this, they do that, like you want, you just listen to Greek. And so, the word mano and ganao, begotten, past tense, becomes mano ganaes, only begotten.

57:54

But mano ganaes is also the word for unique. It's the same word for unique, spelled the same.

58:02

But the word unique is not a diphthong contraction. It's just the word. But mano ganaes, only begotten, is.

58:10

And if you were in that culture, you'd know that. Well, we don't know it. I've explained it. All right, so words can have meanings, right?

58:18

They can be changed slightly. So, the same thing goes with anadaion.

58:24

Because it can mean persistence, it can also mean shame. Okay? Now, oh, this is interesting.

58:36

So, if it's persistence, then it's the persistence of the borrower that will get the result.

58:44

Because, I tell you, even though he will not get up and give anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

58:54

Now, that's a legitimate translation. Because you're so persistent, then God will, or the guy will get up and do it.

59:02

You know, keep knocking until you do this, right? And that makes sense. But then the antecedent of the persistence refers to the borrower.

59:12

The borrower is the one who is persistent. But the petitioner, changing the mind of the father.

59:19

Now, this represents God, obviously, in the prayer. Because it comes up later, we'll get into the seek and find and stuff.

59:25

And so, this is what's going on here. But a lot of people aren't going to know this. But you know, we don't change

59:31

God's mind, okay? We don't change his mind as we pray for something, because God works all things after the counsel of his will,

59:37

Ephesians 1 .11, and his decisions are always eternal. But from the human perspective, we see this.

59:43

All right. If it is translated as shame or shamelessness, then the parable takes on a slightly different meaning.

59:51

Then it would be dealing with the one who's doing the lending. Then the reference would be, because of his shame, because of the shame of the man inside that door, because of his shamelessness, because he will be shamed, because he has honor to keep, he's going to get up and do what's necessary.

01:00:08

Or if it's persistence, it's because the man who is persisting is going to get what he wants.

01:00:14

So, the parable then, depending on how we're going to look at it, could mean the persistence of the individual or the honor of the other person.

01:00:22

And either way works, because God is honorable, but yet we're also to be persistent.

01:00:29

Now, I've never heard anybody talk about this. I got this out of the book I told you about last week, okay? Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes by Kenneth Bailey, which

01:00:38

I recommend everybody get. It's fantastic. And I didn't know this until I read that. I went, oh, very, very interesting.

01:00:45

Okay. So, because he'd be shamed in the state of the community. Now, remember, this idea is consistent with the unrighteous steward.

01:00:53

We were over that last week. The unrighteous steward was able to count on the goodness and the honor of the landowner, even though the unrighteous steward said, how much do you owe?

01:01:04

$50, pay 25. How much do you owe? $100, pay 50. Because the landowner's honor, you know, because he represented the landowner, was going to say, okay, well, this is the landowner that's doing this and the landowner is good.

01:01:18

And because of his honor, he honored what the steward did, even though what the steward did was wrong, but because he's counting on the goodness.

01:01:27

So, the idea of the honor of God and the goodness of God is something very important.

01:01:33

A lot of people don't realize this. God is good. He doesn't break his word. He is always faithful.

01:01:39

He is always the one we can count on. This is the reality of him. These parables, in a sense, show us a different side of God.

01:01:48

Now, we're persistent to God, God will bend. It's rather Armenian -ish, semi -Pelagian -ish.

01:01:57

But if it's by the honor of God, as we go to him, because of the honor of God, he's going to do what he says. That's a different perspective.

01:02:03

And it has a different idea and different applications. Then he goes on and he says, and I say to you, ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.

01:02:17

Now, remember, we talked about chiasm last week, chiasm. There's different kinds of chiastic structures.

01:02:23

They can go like this on paper. They can go like this on paper. They can go like this on paper.

01:02:29

And I'm not being very clear about what all that means, but chiastic. I have them on my parables thing. And I went over this last time also, because Jesus says, for he who asks, receives.

01:02:44

He who seeks, finds. To him who knocks, it shall be opened. Now, suppose one of your fathers is asked by his son for a fish, you will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he?

01:02:55

We're asking God for something. I think that the parable that he gave deals more with the honor of God than the persistence of the individual, because Jesus follows up with, if you ask your father this, he's going to give you what you need.

01:03:09

He's honorable. If you ask for a fish, he's not going to give you a snake. And this is because in the

01:03:14

Sea of Galilee, there's a skinny, narrow fish. And I've been in the ocean many times, many places and different trips.

01:03:23

And I love the ocean. I love snorkeling and stuff. And there's these long little fish.

01:03:29

They're this big around, and they're this long. It looks like a snake. God's not going to give you something that looks like the real thing, and yet you're faked out by God.

01:03:38

He doesn't do that. And he says, he won't give him a snake.

01:03:45

Or verse 12, or if he's asked for an egg, he won't give you a scorpion. And the reason he says egg and scorpion is because there's a scorpion in the

01:03:53

Middle East, that when you scare it, do something, it curls up and resembles the shape of an egg.

01:04:00

And I don't think it's in this one where it says, the other version, it says, if you ask for a stone, if you ask for bread, he won't give you a stone.

01:04:09

Why? Because when they bread, they would cook a flat, they'd take a round thing, they'd cook it on a plate, and it would just round.

01:04:16

Well, there's a lot of stones there that took the same color and shape as the bread. So he's not going to fake you out.

01:04:22

If you're asking for that which is good from God, he's going to give it to you because of who he is, not because of who you are.

01:04:31

That's why I think the parable deals with the honor of the giver and not the persistence of the individual.

01:04:39

That's my opinion. And so if we ask

01:04:45

God for something good, he's going to give it to us. This is important because back in seminary,

01:04:54

I was having a real spiritual struggle. And I was thinking things

01:05:00

I should not think. I was angry when I shouldn't have been angry. I was lusting when

01:05:06

I should not have lusted. I was being prideful when I should not have been prideful. I'm reading great

01:05:12

Presbyterian divines, and I'm in class with great men of God, and they don't know my struggle.

01:05:20

And I'm not as good as I need to be in order to be a minister of the gospel. This is a real struggle

01:05:25

I was having. I wasn't out killing and shooting and raping and pillaging. And I was starting to doubt my salvation.

01:05:36

And I said, well, I've been praying, and I've asked God to save me, but am

01:05:43

I really trusting him that he's saving me? Or am I thinking I'm trusting that he's saving me?

01:05:49

And am I trying to con God by my sincerity? But if I'm trying to be sincere to get him to do what

01:05:56

I want, that's evil. So I'm having this struggle. There was a professor that a lot of students wouldn't trust.

01:06:04

He was just that kind of a good professor you could sit down and just talk to. I mean, he's one of the guys that had more degrees than a thermometer.

01:06:12

And I said, I need to talk to you. And we went into the chapel.

01:06:20

There was nobody else there. And I told the story recently before, but I said, I just dumped on him.

01:06:26

I said, I'm having a struggle. I said, I'm doubting my salvation because I'm not ready to be in my heart and my life and my this and my that.

01:06:36

Seminary is very stressful, incidentally, and it causes a lot of pressure. It really does, unnecessarily so,

01:06:41

I think. They work it too much, but very difficult time. And my wife and I were having struggles.

01:06:47

It's just, and I said to this guy, I said, I'm not sure if I'm really bearing the fruit

01:06:53

I need to bear. And it's making me doubt my salvation. I've asked God many times. I've confessed my sins so many times, and yet I can't help but wonder if I'm really saved.

01:07:06

And he listened the whole time. And when I was done, he said, and he gave me a lot of good stuff, but he went to this place.

01:07:15

If you ask God for a fish, he won't give you a snake. If you ask him for bread, he won't give you a stone.

01:07:21

If you ask for a neck, he won't give you a scorpion. And he said, Matt, because you've asked God for salvation and forgiveness.

01:07:29

He knows how to give good gifts to you. He won't fake you out. And he said it better than what I just said.

01:07:36

And it was what I needed to hear. Instead of me, what he had to do was correct something.

01:07:43

I was looking at me instead of Christ. I was looking at my fruit instead of Christ's faithfulness.

01:07:51

If I look at my fruit, I'm always going to fall short. That's a fact. Now, yes,

01:07:57

I've got fruit. Yes, I do struggle. Okay. But it was becoming, from this, it was becoming this.

01:08:05

Well, look at me. Look at me. Look, I'm not this. I'm not that. And God let that happen to teach me a lesson.

01:08:13

When you look to yourself and your own ability, you're going to have doubts. But if you put your eyes on Christ, you're going to be okay.

01:08:22

And I needed to hear that. I needed to hear it. And so he taught me. And it took a day or two or three to, that's right.

01:08:30

I am saved because of what Jesus has done. The struggle I have and the awareness of my sin and failure that I have is because of his redemptive work in me.

01:08:42

And I said, I can't look to me as a standard of me being saved.

01:08:48

Jesus is a standard of perfection, which I will never attain to, but I'm justified by faith.

01:08:55

And though I wonder sometimes, do I have real faith or mostly real faith?

01:09:00

As in Princess Bride, just mostly dead. I just mostly believe. And I have this phrase,

01:09:08

I say, my heart betrays me because I don't even know what depth of betrayal

01:09:14

I have in my own heart. So I look to God and I say, Lord, what faith I do have, you've granted to me.

01:09:21

Philippians 129. So I trust in what you've given. And I put all my hope, all my security, all my everything in your hands.

01:09:32

Even my insecurity, even my manipulative heart, even while I'm confessing this,

01:09:39

I lay before you hoping that those words will convince you to believe. My heart betrays me and I stop.

01:09:46

Lord, I'm in your hands. And this is one of the things of redemption.

01:09:52

And once you go through these struggles and you realize, okay, all right. You know what?

01:09:58

The fig tree is bearing fruit and the banquet I've been invited to.

01:10:04

I'm the Gentile out in the hedge. And if I ask the father, he's going to give it to me.

01:10:11

And I have to trust in his goodness and not my own evil, not my own wickedness.

01:10:17

And I've let that become the deciding factor in my life and my heart. And from then on,

01:10:23

I had peace, peace with God. I'm peaceful with him because I know

01:10:29

I'm going to heaven because Jesus is the one who, when you knock on that door, because of his goodness, will answer and provide.

01:10:40

And he won't give you something that's fake. And that's good. And these parables and all this, it's right there.

01:10:48

Amen. Amen. All right. Now, this is a new record.

01:10:54

It's a new record because we've only gone 10 minutes over instead of another hour in our studies.

01:11:02

And so, slick and quick. And if anybody has questions online,

01:11:09

I can read them now. I have my laptop down here and I can read anything you guys say and we can answer questions.

01:11:15

So, if you have questions, just go ahead and type them out and I'll see them. And if you guys want comments or questions that you guys have,

01:11:21

I'm open too. Laura's there. And Melissa Owens.

01:11:28

Melissa's been faithful. Laura's been faithful. Charlie Spine, he's okay. Charlie, Shirley J.,

01:11:36

new. And Jill Baxter. All good, Peggy, for a great Bible study. You're welcome. So, if you've got any comments or questions, let me know.

01:11:43

You can ask anything you want. Doctrine questions, you can ask about. If you have anything about Albania, we have someone right here from Albania right now and can ask you or answer stuff on Albania.

01:11:55

Can I just put the camera? What's that? Comment and a question. Comment and a question. Can I the camera?

01:12:01

Can I show the camera? It's okay? Say hi. This is Yulia from Albania.

01:12:07

Yulia. Yuli. Okay. She's Albania. They're engaged.

01:12:15

Uh -huh. Yeah. There we go. All right. There you go. Okay. So, this last parable, it's about God giving good things.

01:12:28

It's not about uh, it's not related with 1

01:12:34

John 5, when it says that if you ask something according to God's will, he will give it to you.

01:12:41

So, this parable, it's about God giving good things, not bad things. That God gives good things.

01:12:46

Yes. And this one, it's only related to God will give once according to his will.

01:12:52

Yes. So, these are not related with each other. They are ultimately related because the same Lord will teach one thing here, one thing there, we put them all together to learn the totality of what he teaches.

01:13:05

How they what? Okay. When we ask God for good things, he gives us good things, but ultimately, it's according to his will.

01:13:14

So, what I think is good, Lord, I need that new car. It may not be good. And so, ultimately,

01:13:20

God is this one who's sovereign, who's sovereign over what it is we do. But the point that he's saying here is that God gives good.

01:13:28

He's not going to fake you out. He gives you really good things. That's the point. He's not a deceiver. He's a good, a good

01:13:35

Lord. And that's the point there. But the other point is there, you can ask stuff, but it's got to be according to his will, but he's still good in that.

01:13:44

And that's what's going on. So, they harmonize together. Good. What's that?

01:13:52

That's good. Oh, you would say, salutum.

01:13:57

Salutum. Salutum. Salutum. Salutum. Salutum. Salutum.

01:14:07

Salutum. Salutum. Salutum. Okay. What's that mean?

01:14:15

You're welcome? That means, yeah, you're welcome. Okay. You're welcome. I say, you're welcome in.

01:14:20

Yeah. You're welcome. You're welcome.

01:14:26

So, like, your index finger touches your chin and then it goes. Oh, your index finger, like that. Okay. You pronounce that very well.

01:14:35

Better. There you go. All right. Let's see. A big amen.

01:14:41

Let's see. So good. I need to change my Scooby -Doo avatar. That's good.

01:14:46

Gary, Charlie suggests, do we choose God or does God choose us? God chooses us and enables us to choose him once we regenerate because regeneration precedes faith.

01:14:56

Tell Dave she's beautiful. Yeah. Yes. And when you see him sitting there, there's quite a contrast, like my wife, because there's a picture of my wife there.

01:15:08

She's pretty. And people look at me, which is, yeah, same kind of thing.

01:15:15

Poor women, they have to pick guys. We look like we've been mauled by dogs, but, you know, we do, you know, like a pack of dogs, you know, got a whole like, and, you know, then the girls got to marry us, you know, because there's nothing else they're going to pick from.

01:15:31

But girls look good. You know, they just kind of look good. Like, yeah, look at that. Good everywhere. Poor women.

01:15:40

Cool question. Okay. The part of the passage we just went through,

01:15:47

Luke 11, 5 through 9, or 5 through 8, is about the man who won't give his friend when he has to go to the store.

01:15:56

And then 9 through 13. So the point is to contrast man versus God. Yeah.

01:16:03

See, I think it's important to understand that that word can mean persistence or shame.

01:16:10

And I think what Jesus is getting at is, it's an issue of God will give you.

01:16:16

God will provide. That's what I think. They're connected that way. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I guess

01:16:23

I'm missing it. Like the structure of this man won't give his friend what he's asking for, but God will give what you ask for.

01:16:33

Yes. If it's according to his will. Yeah. So God is ultimately better than man. God won't. Oh yeah.

01:16:39

Then man will. Yeah. Yeah. Because you know, being a father, know how to give good gifts to your children.

01:16:44

How much more will God give? Right. So someone in here said, women have a much lower bar than men.

01:16:58

That's why they marry us. I think it's because they want to have babies and they need us and they're stuck.

01:17:05

And I think it's because it's the mothering instinct gene that kicks in. And I know how to make that mothering instinct gene activate.

01:17:13

What you do is you have them over your place and you take a bunch of laundry that's different colors and you walk towards a washing machine and they go.

01:17:21

And so that activates the mothering. It's going to take care of you. And that with a bewilder filter, they start liking you and yeah.

01:17:31

And then, and then what you do is you start making a bad sandwich. They got to get in and fix it. And so that's what

01:17:37

I think. She might be watching, probably is not.

01:17:43

And cause she's with her brother and they're catching up. No, right now

01:17:49

I can tell you right now, my wife's going, something's wrong. I've sent this to her. What's Matt doing?

01:17:56

I can see her texting me. Are you saying something stupid again? Could happen. It could happen. All right.

01:18:03

Did Jesus pay for future sins too? Yes, he did. Colossians 2 .14, he canceled a sin debt and the sin debt was done on the cross.

01:18:11

Colossians 2 .14, the chirographon and that chirographon, the sin debt is what was all our sin that was always future to him.

01:18:19

So it has to be future sins. Okay. It's also retroactive because the sins of the people in the old Testament, I think it's because people oppose propose in a letter.

01:18:28

So romantic. I proposed to Anik by writing her a letter.

01:18:35

I did. I proposed by writing a letter to her and she accepted by sending me a telegram.

01:18:44

And the story was I was in college and before the internet back in the eighties and she was, she went to do a mission in France and I just realized

01:18:56

I loved her and needed to marry her and didn't have any way to get ahold of her. No phone, nothing because I didn't know where she was because she'd be here or there because her

01:19:03

French relatives. And so I knew she'd be at a certain place. So I wrote a letter to that person with an envelope inside of that letter.

01:19:11

And that person speaks English. And I said, Hey, give this to her. And I proposed in the letter because it's the only way

01:19:17

I could function. I couldn't write. I couldn't study. I was in college. I needed to get this over with.

01:19:22

I couldn't deal with it. And so I did. And then Anik told me that she went to that house.

01:19:29

She spent the night there and got up for breakfast and the mail was delivered and she put the envelope right there.

01:19:38

And that's how it happened. And she read it. She took a couple of days and then she telegrammed me back.

01:19:43

Yes. And she made you wait a couple of days. No, she had to think about it because I was a doofus. And because because we had, we got, oh, it's a long story, but she, you know, she knew.

01:19:56

And then she, she prayed about it just to make sure. And then, um, so I was in college and I got this, you know, come up to the office and I get this telegram and I could take you down to Irvine, California, take you to the campus.

01:20:11

I could say, see the sidewalk? I was on this one right here. This is the block of cement

01:20:16

I was walking on when I went, stopped walking and went. Because in French, je t 'aime is

01:20:22

I love you. And so what we say to each other, we've been saying it for decades, just, just t 'aime, you know, we'll sign it, you know, email, t 'aime, you know, just love you.

01:20:31

So just t 'aime, T -E -M, that's what we do. And so all I saw was all this, these letters and all this stuff.

01:20:37

And, and what was that? Y -E -S -T -E -M -N -E -E -K, all one thing.

01:20:45

Yes, Tim Neek. And I'm engaged. And that's how we got engaged.

01:20:52

Now, some people think it's really romantic. And my wife goes, yeah, a letter.

01:21:00

And I, and just to make it even more romantic, I, uh, drafted the letter on a

01:21:06

Macintosh computer and printed it up on a nine pin dot matrix. I went all out and that way

01:21:15

I could really do it and then do that. And I had to tell you this, that I was, I didn't know computers and it became the computer, uh, geek guy in the computers.

01:21:24

And, uh, so we've had these rows of computers in college. So the butt of each of those big, big computer, big screens, you know, and, uh, one day, uh, some girls would always come into this one computer and I'm sitting there, you know,

01:21:36

I'm the computer guy. You'd come to ask a part of a part -time job I had on campus. So I took the monitor plug from theirs and mine and switched them so that what

01:21:46

I typed is what they would see. And so I'm sitting here and they come in, they log in and I hit some, you know,

01:21:53

I could tell by the ski, ski strokes, I did this to that. The screen came up and they said, okay, type in,

01:21:59

I could hear him talking. Okay. And then I wrote in, why do you want me to say that? And they both went quiet and they're staring.

01:22:10

Right. And I'm going, don't laugh. And, uh, did you see that?

01:22:17

Did you hear whispering? What the heck? And I wrote like, what? Question mark, you know, just very quietly.

01:22:24

And they go, so, and I had them going for like a full minute. They, you know, they type something in and I was responding like, what the heck?

01:22:32

And then I'm laughing by then. And then I see this head come around. I'm going, I didn't want you, you did this.

01:22:45

That's how you get women. If you're annoying, they're going to love you. Any other questions, comments?

01:22:54

You can do any theological thing you want to talk about. Predestination and elections coming up. Is that next week?

01:23:01

No, Charlie's putting in links for predestination. I mean, someone's doing that. John, share your thoughts on sovereign grace,

01:23:10

Ephesians one, five through six. Okay. Let me do that. Ephesians one. Hey, come on.

01:23:17

Let me get this. Ephesians one, five through six. Let's see. Ephesians one, four. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we'd be holy and blameless for in love.

01:23:27

He predestined us according to the kind intention of his will. That's verse five. I'm not sure what verse six is. So let's see.

01:23:33

Ephesians one, five, kind intention of his will to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.

01:23:41

So he predestined us. Predestination is the action of God by which he brings into the faith and causes certain things to occur by his sovereign decree.

01:23:49

And in the context here, he chose us. I could go into this quite a bit, these two verses, but has to do with election, federal headship, predestination, and necessitation of limited atonement.

01:24:03

I mean, it depends how much you want me to get into it, but that's what's going on there. Any other questions, comments?

01:24:12

Joanne Hayes. Did you guys enjoy the study? 49 people.

01:24:18

We get to 50. I have a

01:24:23

Mormon I've been talking to who said that their temples are not

01:24:30

Aaronic temples, but Melchizedek temples. So I went to Hebrews 9, 11, and that's where I'm talking with him.

01:24:36

Where would you go to elsewhere to talk about the proper temple?

01:24:44

Let's say, show me. What I would do is ask them, because they're going to have to go to the Old Testament. Show me the temple.

01:24:51

If you say it's a Melchizedek temple, show me a Melchizedek temple. There is one.

01:24:56

It's Jesus. He's the temple, and we are in him, and he's the high priest. We have a priesthood, but not a high priesthood.

01:25:04

So I'd say to them, show me the priesthood, or show me the temple, the Melchizedek temple, in Scripture. They can't do it because it's not there.

01:25:13

Good, good, good. And then you go to Matthew 27, 51. I think it says there,

01:25:20

I think that's where the temple veil was torn. And what I'll ask them is, if you have the true temple veil, and at the

01:25:30

Melchizedek temple, I'd say, if this is what you say it is, then there's a veil in the temple.

01:25:35

Show me in the Bible where the veil in the temple occurs. And they're going to say it's Aaronic, but it's not.

01:25:40

It's just the temple, because the Aaronic and the Levitical priesthoods were inside the service of the temple.

01:25:46

And I'd say, why is it that God destroyed that veil? And I'd ask them that question first. Why did

01:25:51

God destroy the veil? Because it separated the holy place from the holy of holies. And as the veil ripped, because it was about this thick, okay, it was this thick, it was like nine feet tall or eight feet tall, whatever it was.

01:26:03

And what? 40. 40 feet tall? In the temple, but not in the tabernacle.

01:26:09

I was thinking the tabernacle, because it was 10 by 10 cubits. When they rebuilt it, it was originally 30, but then they made it 40.

01:26:17

40, okay. And so that was torn. So that symbolizes the, there's no longer separation between God and his people, because the blood of Christ has been dead.

01:26:29

So I asked Mormons, why do you put back with the temple veil what God destroyed? That's what I, you know,

01:26:34

Matthew 27, 51, I think that's what it is. Okay, good.

01:26:41

So that's what I'll ask them. And stuff like that. Show me the Melchizedek temple scriptures, which they can't do.

01:26:48

And then I'm going to ask them, by the way, why do you put back what God destroyed? I've been asking

01:26:53

Mormons that. In fact, when we go to Pocatello, temple opening, yeah.

01:26:59

Oh, what is it? Okay. Okay. Well, then

01:27:06

Eric Johnson will probably want to go. I'm going to go. We'll probably have some others here go. We'll go to a hotel, we'll do, or an

01:27:12

Airbnb, and we'll go out. And one of the things I'll do is I'll ask them, I'll yell, why did

01:27:19

God destroy the veil? And they're looking. I haven't done anything anti -Mormon yet.

01:27:24

He destroyed the veil. Teach them. Why do you put it back? Why do you put back what

01:27:31

God destroyed? Then the heads turn away, and they could, now they get the point, and they look away because they're no longer interested in talking.

01:27:41

That's what I do. Sometimes cause problems. Praise God. Praise God. That's right.

01:27:48

In fact, when you said Harvest Church, was it? No, Harvest Church? Yeah, the Harvest Church is off of Pine Street in Meridian.

01:27:56

Yeah. One of the first thoughts I had was go out there with a sign. Why do you have women pastors? But the scripture...

01:28:04

I heard they were pretty cultic. Pretty what? Cultic. Probably. Oh, Harvest off Meridian.

01:28:10

I know about that church. Sorry. I know about it. It is cultic. I've had dealings with some stuff. Yeah, you got to stay away from that.

01:28:16

It's bad news. It's a bad news church. Yeah. I know it's what you're talking about. I went there with one of my co -workers with them to check it out.

01:28:25

Yeah, it's bad news. Yeah, it is. Right across the street is a good cafe.

01:28:32

Sunrise? Sunrise. She was trying to witness to one of my co -workers who was a non -believer, and she said, my friend would say, like in prayer

01:28:45

I get baptized, that she had the power to cure this person of her diabetes and everything else.

01:28:54

Wow. She personally had the power? That's what she said. And my friend asked her, like, are you a disciple?

01:29:01

And she goes, well, yeah, I guess I am. And when they share the story with me, I asked her, and I said, and if God doesn't answer, then what?

01:29:10

And I said, what are you going to say then? Why do you think so,

01:29:19

D? Yeah. Ask a basic question. God said, let us reason together.

01:29:29

So one of the things, so you have the power to cure diabetes. Yeah. Do you also have the power to cure mental issues?

01:29:37

Yes. How about stupidity? Yeah. Go look in the mirror, and then...

01:29:46

So I don't know if that's influenced by the New Apostolic Reformation, but yeah, they're all over the map.

01:29:54

Yeah, they're bad. Are you joining the church?

01:30:01

I said no. Are you what in church? She was asking, she goes, are you joining the church?

01:30:07

Are you joining our church with that? I said, no. And then she said, what would you do if I got up there, one of the other women got up there and preached?

01:30:18

And I said, run. And I said, step outside, get my boards, come back.

01:30:23

And I said, demand that you step down, the leadership step down if they're not going to repent. And then they always go to like, oh, you're just a chauvinist.

01:30:34

That's when you got to quote the scriptures and references. Okay. Shirley says, do you judge people on whether you think they are saved or not?

01:30:44

Well, if someone were to say Jesus is not God in flesh, then you can talk to them and say, well, he is, let me show you in scriptures.

01:30:51

If they continue to deny that, then you can say, well, you're probably a false convert. Like I did with Patrick today in the radio, in the after show, because he was clearly teaching works righteousness.

01:31:03

And I said, sorry, I can't call you a brother. And then there's the moral issue.

01:31:09

And there are certain doctrinal ones, I haven't gone into it too deeply. I just used one of them, but there's several that if they deny you're not a

01:31:15

Christian, you can't be a Christian. But you always have to ask them and teach them. If they continue to deny the essentials, then you say,

01:31:21

I'm sorry, you're a false convert. But then there's the moral issues too. So if someone says they're a

01:31:27

Christian and is committing adultery, and you say, look, you can't do that. And they say, I don't care what you say,

01:31:33

I'm going to continue to do this. Then you have to assume they're not really regenerate. And that's why

01:31:39

I say you assume they're not regenerate, because there's no conviction, there's no spiritual, whatever.

01:31:45

And I've had people tell me, well, God understands me. So yeah, he does understand you. And if you claim to be a

01:31:51

Christian and you're doing fornication, well, he understands my problem, my issue. I said, well, yeah, he may kill you, may kill you.

01:32:00

And you go to 1 Corinthians 5, a man having sex with his father's new wife, deliver him over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so his soul will be saved.

01:32:09

And I say, you don't hear that taught in church very often. But I said, I've told people, you're lucky you're still alive, because God may kill you soon.

01:32:16

1 Corinthians 5, what? Just five. Just five. So I start reading, yeah, in the first few verses.

01:32:24

I've heard that there's a great something among you that not even the pagans or the unbelievers or the

01:32:31

Gentiles will do or something like that. And he goes on. Okay, you have any questions, comments? Come on, make some good ones.

01:32:41

What kind of stuff in Albania? Is there anything different in Albanian theology or Christian, stuff like that?

01:32:47

Anything? I don't know. Nothing? The same stuff? I was hoping there'd be some really different thing

01:32:56

I wouldn't think of. We have different questions because we have Muslims. You have

01:33:02

Muslims. Yeah, I can teach on Islam, too. Islam's bad, bad, bad, bad, evil.

01:33:10

And it is. Islam is evil, but most Muslims don't follow true

01:33:16

Islam. And so most Muslims don't know how bad Islam is. It's like Mormonism.

01:33:22

Yeah. Because they don't read the Koran. If they read the Koran, they would see what it says. If they believe the

01:33:27

Koran. The ones who read the Koran, all the Koran, and they follow it, and they do what it says, they're the bad ones.

01:33:35

Those are the bad ones. The Koran is evil. Only 18 % of Muslims in the world can read

01:33:41

Arabic. And so most Muslims don't know what it really teaches. But in the Arabic, the

01:33:46

Koran teaches some pretty bad stuff. And the Hadith, the deeds and the sayings of Muhammad, a lot of bad stuff in there.

01:33:53

So the real teachings of Islam are evil, but not to say that all Muslims are bad.

01:33:59

Most Muslims don't know. And so most Muslims want to be nice people, but they're still on their way to hell, unfortunately, because they have a false god.

01:34:07

They don't have a true messiah and a sacrifice. But yeah, many people who are

01:34:13

Muslims are good people. And a lot of times you can trust them and stuff like that. I had a guy sitting literally outside the back.

01:34:21

And I don't know what country he went to, but it might have been Albania. It was one of those countries over there where he was teaching

01:34:28

English. I don't know what country it was, but it was in that area. And he told me a story about a

01:34:35

Muslim and a Christian man, two fathers. He sat right out there and he told me this.

01:34:43

I'll never forget it. He said they'd known each other for 25 years. Their children would spend the night at each other's houses.

01:34:50

They had each other over for dinner. When their children were born, they would exchange gifts.

01:34:56

They would go over to the hospital. They would, you know, they were close. They were very close.

01:35:01

And they trusted each other with their families. They trusted each other. You can come, here's the keys to my house.

01:35:09

And the imam, the minister of the Muslim mosque, told the

01:35:16

Muslim man, kill that Christian man in front of yours. And he did. They were friends.

01:35:28

Now, Asura 551 in the Quran says, do not take Jews and Christians as your friends.

01:35:34

Specifically says, do not do it. And Asura 95 and 29, it talks in particular verse 29.

01:35:40

It says when the sacred months are done and all this stuff, fight. The word fight in Arabic means fight to kill.

01:35:48

Now, Islam is, Islam is actually very, very evil. And it's, it could be proven to be false.

01:35:54

That's another topic. I could teach on Islam sometime if you guys want. But all right, let's see. A lady at church works righteousness always reverts to you must believe.

01:36:02

I've told her that even faith is granted by God. She just doesn't get it. That's, Randall, that's

01:36:08

Philippians 129. Okay. And it's what's called the

01:36:13

Aorist passive. Aorist means past tense. Passive means it's the action received.

01:36:20

So God grants it to them. So they, it's, they're caused to be believing.

01:36:27

That's what it's saying. Okay. So it's granted to us. All right.

01:36:32

Can an LDS person be born again and still believe in the LDS doctrine? I think that's possible in a very limited sense.

01:36:40

I think a Mormon could not understand Mormonism very well and trust in Christ, be born again.

01:36:48

But it would be very evident very quickly that there's a problem. And they could come out in ignorance and say, well, there's three gods.

01:36:54

And they even thinking that they go, something's not right there. And they could come out and gradually, I think it's possible.

01:37:00

But normally speaking, no, you could not be a, you know, a born again person and continue to believe in LDS doctrine, just continue.

01:37:09

No, you cannot. Okay. But I'm talking about, I think it's possible for microseconds or seconds or a few hours or a few days in their ignorance, that kind of a thing.

01:37:18

All right. Let's see. Gary Wright asked, the elect, did God choose or no?

01:37:24

He chose. That's Ephesians 1 .4. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world,

01:37:30

Ephesians 1 .4. He chose us so that he did the choosing. He chose.

01:37:36

All right. That's what it means. That's how to understand it. He doesn't know. You got to understand there's a problem with the idea of he just knows who's going to believe him.

01:37:45

First of all, it denies the doctrine of total depravity because total depravity says the unbeliever is a slave of sin,

01:37:51

Romans 6, 14 through 20. A hater, a God who does no good, doesn't do any good at all. Romans 3, 10, 11, and 12, is by nature a child of wrath.

01:37:59

Ephesians 2 .3, cannot receive spiritual things. 1 Corinthians 2 .14. And because of that, no one is ever going to freely choose

01:38:07

God. Furthermore, to say that God knows who will pick him is to adopt what's called

01:38:13

Pelagianism or semi -Pelagianism. A full Pelagianism or just Pelagianism says that when a person is born, their nature is not sinful and that they're innocent.

01:38:25

Semi -Pelagianism, and there's views in that, says, well, you're mostly good, but you have a little bit of bad in you.

01:38:32

And so that you're still able to believe in God of your own free will. And then from that view, semi -Pelagianism, which is what most

01:38:41

Christian churches teach and it's false doctrine, they'll say that God knows who's going to pick him on his free will.

01:38:47

Well, then that means that God, in one sense, learns because he'll look in the future to see who's going to pick him under different circumstances and he'll pick them.

01:38:57

This also gets into Molinistic counterfactuals, which we don't have time to get into or I could later.

01:39:04

And so then that would mean that God's choice is based upon man's choice. And that would mean that God is reactionary and not sovereign.

01:39:12

And that's another reason why it doesn't work. Why do so many people hate Calvinism? Because they're totally depraved.

01:39:20

Simple. In fact, when I debated A .K. Richardson last week on total depravity, he got, he didn't do well.

01:39:28

We watched nine minutes. We're like not having fun. We're going to turn it off. And so I said to him at the end,

01:39:36

I said, the fact that you deny total depravity proves it's true. And it was meant as a joke, but yeah.

01:39:44

I do have a question. Okay. Psalm 2. Are you able to understand everything

01:39:53

I'm saying, Yulia? Wow. Good English. That's good.

01:40:00

Specifically, 7 through 12 talks about the sun. Just wondering what the original audience would have thought about that.

01:40:06

What the original audience? Like, what was their understanding of the sun? I don't know what they originally would have thought.

01:40:14

The original audience. Now I get it. But back then, I don't know. Before Christ, what would they do with that? I don't know.

01:40:21

But I can tell you that in seminary, our Hebrew professors, our Old Testament professor also said something very interesting.

01:40:29

He said that there were theologians way before Christ who were Jewish, who were writing about the possibility of God existing in a plurality.

01:40:41

And it was a hint towards Unitarianism because let us make man in our image, et cetera. And so that tells me that there were people who understood more than we might give them credit to.

01:40:55

So I think within that, if you had a Zechariah 12 .10, God is speaking, they will look upon me whom they have pierced, you know?

01:41:03

And— Someone says, well, that's why— Yep. —they're very happy. Wouldn't that be what they would expect?

01:41:11

Maybe. But I'm saying that some probably would have expected that. Some would have said, I have no idea.

01:41:17

And some might have said, my son, the son of Yahweh, that would imply he's divine.

01:41:26

And so I think there would be a scope of beliefs that they would have held to.

01:41:34

And so what would all of them thought? Don't know. I think there's a theological scope that they would have adhered to.

01:41:42

That's what I think. Okay, let's see. I told

01:41:52

AK that he had a merciless view of a merciful God. You just told him? Good. He can come in here if he wants.

01:41:58

We can debate some more. Let's see. Okay. Hey, they stand—

01:42:04

Okay. So you guys saw the debate. Okay, let me ask you. Well, wait. Man cannot judge whether someone is saved or not, not even

01:42:10

Matt Slick. My Savior Jesus Christ will be the judge. You know what, Shirley? Let me ask you. If someone says to you,

01:42:17

Shirley, if someone says that Jesus is not God, did not die on the cross, and did not rise from the dead.

01:42:25

If someone says that, Shirley, would you say they were a Christian or not a Christian? Would you say they were saved or not saved?

01:42:33

Remember, 1 Corinthians 2 .15 says a spiritual person can make spiritual judgments.

01:42:40

So if someone were to say that to you, would you be judging them and saying they're not saved? Because if you say no, you can't even do that, then you don't understand biblical theology.

01:42:54

Okay. Jesus is God. Yes, he is. Colossians 2 .9, John 1 .1

01:43:00

and verse 14. But what if someone denies it? Because Jesus says in John 8 .24, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

01:43:09

So Jesus says that in John 8 .24, and then John 8 .58, he says, before Abraham was, I am. They want to kill him for saying that.

01:43:16

So Jesus is saying, unless you believe that I am, you'll die in your sins. So if someone denies he is the I am, then we can say, you're going to die in your sins.

01:43:24

You're not a Christian. So it's not me pronouncing, it's me revealing. It's disclosing the truth to them.

01:43:32

Okay. Oh, Shirley is a Mormon? Is Shirley a

01:43:39

Mormon? That would explain a lot of things. No disrespect, Matt, but Mormons don't have a very good theological understanding of issues.

01:43:49

And also for the Mormons, go to 1 Kings 8 .60. Jehovah is

01:43:55

Elohim. Mormons will know what that is and why that's a problem. Good article for Shirley.

01:44:03

According to Charlie, do we have the right to make these judgments? Yes, we do. That's right, Matt. Melissa says, what's right,

01:44:10

Melissa? What's right, that she's a Mormon? Or that we have the right to make judgments? Because her complete sentence is not spoken, so I don't know what the thing is.

01:44:19

The owner of our local Bible store told that if God chose certain people and didn't give everyone a chance, that that would make him a monster.

01:44:28

I told him to be careful of what he said. Very good, Randall. Very good.

01:44:35

What? Joseph Smith said something similar. Yeah. About the idea of a trinity. Oh, yeah.

01:44:41

He'd be a monstrous God. Yes. Yeah. Well, you know what, Randall?

01:44:46

I would have said, well, what does Romans 9 say? Because God is unjust. Yeah. She's a

01:44:53

Mormon. Shirley even said, okay, so she's a Mormon. Okay. All right. Well, Shirley, since the

01:45:01

Mormon church teaches in History of the Church, Volume 4, page 461, that the Book of Mormon is the most correct book of any book on earth, and a man could get closer to the precepts of God by following it than by any other book, that means the

01:45:13

Book of Mormon is more correct than the Bible, which means you put the Bible underneath the Book of Mormon.

01:45:19

You don't trust the Word of God. And so, therefore, you're not going to believe that what I'm telling you is the truth. So you guys want to get going?

01:45:28

Okay. I am just saved by grace, by the works of Jesus Christ, and I'll be forever grateful to God as long as I live.

01:45:34

Amen. You guys going to get going? You're okay? I can give you a really super -packed, concentrated coffee, and then for three days you'll be...

01:45:49

You don't want to have coffee? Oh, you want to sleep. Oh, okay. I can help you out. I make good coffee.

01:45:59

I make good coffee. Yes, I make good coffee. You come over sometime, I'll make good coffee. I can make decaf so there's no caffeine in it.

01:46:07

And I can use this really neat cup I got from Albania. Well, when you come, bring the cup, we'll make you

01:46:13

Turkish coffee. Man, I really like it. I'm serious. I like the cup. And my favorite cup, coffee cup, has a crack in it because I like things that are broken because I'm broken and Jesus loves me and I'm broken.

01:46:25

And so my favorite coffee cup is broken, but that's my new coffee cup. The only way it could be better, if it had a crack in it.

01:46:33

We were trying to look for the ones we didn't have. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. I would have loved it if it was cracked.

01:46:40

Oh, I would have just loved it. Oh, this is perfect. But I like it. It's good. And when

01:46:45

I show my wife, I'm serious. I show my wife, she goes, oh, that's beautiful. And I go, look, they got it like this with coffee.

01:46:51

She goes, oh, that's awesome. She loved it. That's what a girl does. That's good. I went, yes, nice.

01:46:59

That's what a guy does. But a girl, oh, it's so cute. Oh, you're saying more than that now.

01:47:04

What's that? You're saying more than that now. Yeah. She got me. That's true.

01:47:10

That's true. I like it though. Okay. She's on to me. She's got me figured out.

01:47:18

Okay. You showed it to us last week. What's that? You showed us the cup last week. Yes, I did.

01:47:23

That's right. I did. I'm not just saying it. I like it. In fact,

01:47:29

I washed it just so I could have coffee in it today. I don't wash things until I have to. But I'm a guy.

01:47:37

You know, just lick it out. You know, give it to the cats. They finish it. Put coffee in it.

01:47:43

I get that. You hear that? The cats. Yeah. Here's like that cat. That's right. Then you can make sure what you end there.

01:47:49

Anyway. So, okay. We can quit if you guys want. Or we can just do more theology or just stay here and talk.

01:47:56

Got questions? Nobody has any questions? What do you want to talk about next week?

01:48:05

You decide. Charismatic. End times. End times.

01:48:11

We could do eschatology. And we could do covenant. Okay, let me just run some stuff by eschatology, UFOs, the occult.

01:48:20

We can do eternal security. We already had baptism.

01:48:26

I thought that was interesting. We could do, let's see, charismatic gift.

01:48:32

What? Marriage. Marriage. We can do marriage. Theology of marriage. We could do that. We could do eschatology, which

01:48:39

I call depresscatology. Do you get that? That pun? The joke? To be depressed.

01:48:45

You know, you're depressed. And then eschatology, the study of end times and the study of Jesus coming back.

01:48:52

So depression and eschatology, depresscatology. So that's what

01:48:58

I teach. I make people, when they leave, they go, oh man, that was bad. It's going to get bad.

01:49:04

That's my goal. Make them, you know, not going back. But then they keep coming back for more punishment.

01:49:13

So we can talk about that. What other things do you want to talk about? Eternal security is a good one.

01:49:19

Eternal security? That's easy. I'm talking about Patrick Hussain's book. Yeah, we can go into Patrick.

01:49:26

Do you have any questions, theology? Because you're the guest. You're new in this country and stuff.

01:49:32

So if you want to talk about something, I could study it and we could teach on it. If not, that's okay.

01:49:39

Up to you. What the divine love is? Marriage. There's a movie.

01:49:47

Have you ever seen the movie Princess? I know it's heresy. What's heresy? He said what divine love is.

01:49:55

Oh. And I said David, and I said, I know it's heresy. Yeah, he's making a joke. Okay, I'll be any joke.

01:50:01

That's all right. Yeah, that's true. I've known him a little while. So what do you guys want to talk about?

01:50:09

End time. Okay, let's do it. Okay, who wants end time? Desiccatology, raise your hand. Four. How many want eternal security?

01:50:17

I can do that too. Okay, three. Dave, what do you want? You're flexible.

01:50:28

I'm responding. Your comment thread right now is blowing up. Exploding it. Oh, it is?

01:50:34

If you're flexible, that means you could be open to eisegesis. That was a reach.

01:50:42

That was a reach. Flexible interpretation, eisegesis. And you guys go home going, what am

01:50:48

I doing there? Dispensationalism. Okay, so where do you guys want to stay?

01:50:59

Down. Okay, boy, let me try this again in English. Anybody suggesting within the chat room what you guys want?

01:51:07

I can teach on. I love eternal security and I could do end times.

01:51:13

If we do end times, I'm going to have paper for everybody. And we'll go through scriptures and have you map it out.

01:51:21

And you will end up believing just like I do because I'm right. Okay, that's what happens. She's smiling.

01:51:28

If we do an internal security, we can go through that too. So Andrew Gesuntite Chikola says eternal security.

01:51:42

And she says the Bible eternal security is good. I could share. I'm going to let the people here decide. But look,

01:51:49

Andrew says eternal security again. I think it's because Andrew's just not so sure about himself. And he's got mental issues and stuff like that.

01:51:56

It's obvious because he lives in Wales. Oh, wow. Wales. What time is it right now?

01:52:02

What time is it? It's in Wales. Oh, in Wales. Hey, what time is it in Wales? My wife will do that.

01:52:08

What time is it? Well, I'll tell her. Probably. Well, let's see.

01:52:14

Why is he up? It's like five or six in the morning. What time is it in Wales?

01:52:24

Come on, you can tell us. Can we do covenant? We did covenant a while back. So it's down between eternal security and eschatology.

01:52:32

You guys decide. Is it 4 .24 a .m. there? 4 .24, I guess so. Is that right?

01:52:42

Okay. Like I said, Andrew's got issues. If you'd have seen his beard, he looks like Sasquatch.

01:52:51

That's you. I don't look like Sasquatch. I don't have a beard. No, you don't remember? What? Oh, yeah.

01:53:00

That's right. It was a great picture. You did. You took it.

01:53:05

Do you have it on your phone right now? Yeah. Can you show it on the phone here? What people, because they don't know what it is.

01:53:11

It was a baptism. I went in the water and realized, dang, it's really cold. Who's baptism?

01:53:18

Oh, it was mine. Your baptism. It was in March. So there was still snow. It was the Boise River in March.

01:53:24

It was really cold, like in the 30s or low 40s. It was. Yeah. The one where you have the both.

01:53:33

Do you have the both thing? The believe. I'll put it in front of the screen so people can see it.

01:53:43

I didn't make the meme, so I'm not sure. The Queen of Heaven, Heavenly Mother, go to Revelation 12.

01:53:52

The Queen of Heaven. She's in childbirth, in pain. But it has something to do with, it's not the

01:53:58

Mormon mother thing. Because the God of Mormonism is an alien. The God of Mormonism is an alien because another planet.

01:54:08

The God of, there's a star called Kolob is where he rules right now, but he's exalted from another planet. So technically, the

01:54:14

God of Mormonism is an alien. Tell you what we'll do. Next week, we'll do eschatology.

01:54:21

The week after that, we'll do eternal security. All right. Okay. Are you reformed in your theology?

01:54:28

Calvinistic? You know? Don't know? You do?

01:54:35

What? You are? Oh, good for her.

01:54:40

That's a good answer. I believe in the Bible. Yes. Shirley, you are invited to call Matt weekdays live.

01:54:46

Yeah, that's right. Call me anytime on the radio. My show goes out there in Salt Lake. Shirley, are you in Salt Lake? There's no corruption in the

01:54:53

Bible. Yeah. That's technically not accurate.

01:54:59

We have, I did a thing today on manuscript evidence on the radio with a common

01:55:04

Jehannium, John 8, woman caught in adultery, and the ending of Mark.

01:55:11

Which Christ, Shirley? I left Mormonism because it led me to a false Christ. That's right. Oh, that's you. Jake Miller's saying that.

01:55:21

Yeah, you could talk to Jake. Jake, you know, he's a real, he's a really nice guy. And he'd be a great person to talk to.

01:55:31

Seriously, if you're interested. Boy, I died, didn't

01:55:38

I? I just kind of went. I don't think I've ever seen it like this before. That was weird. All right.

01:55:47

What we'll do is we'll shut it down now. Next week we'll do eschatology, depressed eschatology.

01:55:53

It's going to take a couple hours. Okay. Oh, it's going to be interesting. Read Hebrews 7 through 10.

01:55:59

That's correct. That's correct. And also Isaiah 4. Actually, just go to 1

01:56:04

Corinthians 6, 16. Oh, I found it. You found it?

01:56:10

Okay, good. Here's the picture. Okay. So I took a, I baptized

01:56:15

Jake here. He's right behind us. And when it got out of the water, it was super cold.

01:56:22

I'm going because it was really cold. And here's the picture someone put together.

01:56:41

See, it's Bigfoot. We call him Bigfoot here in America. You see it? That's good. Yeah. Who put it together?

01:56:50

I think it was AJ. Yeah, I cracked up right away. It was howling. I passed around that picture.

01:56:55

And then he's like, send that to me. Yeah, that was good. He actually thought I'd be offended. I go, are you kidding?

01:57:01

That's awesome. It was funny. It was. Sasquatch looks more attractive to me.

01:57:11

That was Charlie. That was Chuck. Oh, man.

01:57:21

Hey, thanks a lot for getting my back, Charlie. So I insult everybody.

01:57:27

They insult me back. I just get a kick out of it. It's good. Would you add me on Facebook or give me?

01:57:33

Oh, okay. That's just Shirley. Jake said, Shirley. Okay, good. Praise God. All right.

01:57:41

I love Matt. Andrew, be careful what you're saying. I take his insult as a badge of honor.

01:57:52

Sometimes I answer the phone. Somebody will call and I'll go, what? And they start laughing. Okay.

01:58:03

All right, you guys ready? We'll close it out so you guys can, whatever. We'll stay and talk if you want to stay and talk.

01:58:10

Okay. So I'm going to close this in prayer. Okay. Okay. Lord Jesus, thank you for our fellowship that we have in you.

01:58:20

And I ask, Lord, that you would just bless everyone here. Bless our time together, Lord, and friendships. And thank you for your word.

01:58:28

And next week, Lord, as we look into the future, eschatology, we ask for your mercy on grace as you present stuff.

01:58:36

May you be glorified in it. We look to you, Jesus. We give you thanks. We ask this in your precious name,

01:58:41

Lord. Amen. All right. Okay. Here we go.