The Power of Repentance

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Sunday school from January 13th, 2019

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let us pray and then we'll get into our study of Leviticus again and see what we can dig out.
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We'll also ask if there were any questions from the sermon and things like that. Let's pray. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the
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Father, we again thank you that everything we have comes from your hand, our life, our breath, our being, our soul, our salvation and we recognize our complete need for you to recognize and understand your word properly.
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We pray that in studying your word that you would show us what to believe, convict us of our own sin and shortcoming, affirm us and build our confidence and faith in you for the forgiveness of our sins so that you may be glorified in all that we do.
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We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, any questions regarding the sermon?
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Yes, yes ma 'am.
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Yeah, yeah, no. Here's the funny thing is that Saul himself, not only was he anointed, he received the
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Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit came upon him and yet he grieved the Holy Spirit horribly and would not, he's not a man of faith is the best way
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I can put it and punishment for his lack of faith, willful disobedience to God is that God punished him with a tormenting spirit.
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I mean when you read the details of it, I mean it sounds like this is a guy who like completely lost his mind.
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He displays tendencies of being a narcissistic sociopath who also has some kind of schizophrenic delusions, constant suspicions and things like this and what we learn in scripture is that sometimes, and you can't say this always, sometimes that type of outcome is a result as a punishment of sin and in his case it kind of reads out like that.
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So you sit there and go, well did the Holy Spirit really fall on him? Yes. No, he grieved the
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Holy Spirit continually through his persistent lack of faith and disobedience to God and so I think in Saul's life we see an example of a person who like any
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Christian starts off, you know, forgiven, graced by God with the Holy Spirit and then through wanton, willful disobedience and a focus on himself ends up grieving the
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Spirit and God withdraws his hands. I think we see in Saul an example of somebody who has lost his salvation.
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So I think he's of that stripe. Maryland, Maryland.
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So do we need the recipe for that anointing oil? The recipe is Minnesota tap water and it was applied to you here in, you know, at the font how many years ago, right?
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Yeah, yeah. So God has, the best way I could put it is he simplified the recipe.
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So, and I gotta admit that baptizing people with water is a lot easier to clean up than if I were to anoint them with oil.
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You know, the times when I have had the opportunity to anoint the sick with oil, it's here, you're gonna need this.
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Cleaning up is gonna be a little tricky. So, alright.
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Any other questions as a result of the, hopefully you saw the type and shadow connection.
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Motor oil. Synthetic, yes. Right, yeah.
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So it can ionically bond to my forehead, right? Oh man.
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Alright, so we've been working our way through the book of Leviticus and what
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I find fascinating about this book, and we noted this last week, that each time around the track we seem to learn a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more as it relates to these sacrifices which we already showed from the book of Hebrews has their, you know, their fulfillment in Christ and they are the types and shadows pointing to the sacrifice of Christ.
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And so as we worked our way around we noted that with each pass we get a little bit more information regarding some of these to the point where we even learned last week that all sacrifices, all offerings ended up being salted.
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You know, which was a weird theme but, you know, you sit there and you go, I had no idea that every sacrifice had to be salted.
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So Leviticus, as we noted last week, is a book that requires you to be in it and kind of work yourself through it.
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There are portions of it that as a pastor, as I read in Leviticus, I think we're in Leviticus 4 today, that when we get in, oh yeah, we talked about unintentional sins last week, when we, there are certain portions of the book of Leviticus that will tell you that what is required of the
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Levitical priesthood that I'm so thankful are not part of the pastorate. We'll see this in the days ahead as we work our way through this, that one of the ones that I'm so thankful I don't have to do is we're going to see that Levite priests were required, so if somebody has a skin rash, a disease, or leprosy or something like that, they had to show that to the priest and the priest had to make a decision regarding their cleanness and there were certain procedures for that and I'm just sitting there going, you know, there's a reason why my dad, my stepdad, he's a medical doctor and when
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I was a young kid, he really wanted to inspire me to become a physician, to become a doctor like he was and so he got these medical journals and he was an emergency room physician, so ER doctor work is like, you know, somebody's coming in, they're bleeding, their arm is hanging off their body, their legs are mangled, just horrible things happen to people, that's why they end up in the emergency room and so he would sit me down and say, take a look at this month's emergency medical journal, what do you think of this and what do you think of that and I'm and so I was traumatized as a child, so I may be overly sensitive when we get to some of the parts ahead but you kind of see how this all plays out.
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So last week we talked about unintentional sins and the fact that when somebody even sins unintentionally, even unknowingly, it still requires a really expensive full -blown sacrifice that is costly.
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In Leviticus 4 .5 we noted that the priest shall take some of the blood of the bull, a bull is sacrificed for an unintentional sin, you know, you're thinking, they're going, well that was just an oopsie,
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I had no idea, I didn't really intend to do that, why do I have to sacrifice a bull? Well, all of our sins are, they have, there's a magnitude to it that we have to, you know, take into consideration.
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So Leviticus 4 .13, if the whole congregation of Israel sins unintentionally, how do you as a nation, whoops, how do you do that as a whole nation?
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Not purposely setting out to defy God, but you sit there and you go,
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I had no idea. You think of that time in the
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Old Testament when in Israel they weren't reading the
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Word of God and it got lost, and so what they ended up doing was they decided to have a fundraiser to refurbish
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Solomon's Temple, to repristinate it, you know, put some new paint on it and gussy up the place, and while they were doing the renovation, they found a copy of the
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Torah, and they brought it to the king, and the king upon reading it tore his clothes, and he realized, oh my goodness,
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I had no idea, and at that time there were false idols, there were idols inside the temple itself within the holy place to the starry host, and to Asherah, and to Baal, there were literal images to false gods inside of the temple at that time, and so you think of that fellow, that king who didn't know
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God's Word, he didn't realize that all of that stuff that he'd grown up in, that was part of his everyday life, that that was sinning against God, so he was, the whole nation of Israel was sinning against God, some people knowingly, but as a nation, you know, the
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Word of God had fallen so far into the background, they were not informed by it, that they were sinning against God, and didn't even recognize they were doing it, it was totally unintentional, and so when the king hears this, he tears his clothes, and it results in a reform, it results in a reform at his time, where he takes the idols out of the temple, he tears down the altars in the high places set up to the false gods, but it was, for lack of a better way of putting it, almost too little too late, so the subsequent generation, he did not experience the wrath of God in being brought into exile in Babylon, but his son did, so you know, all that did was kind of push back the inevitable, but that would be an example,
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I think, of somebody who didn't sin intentionally, but yikes, so you know, think of it this way, there are places that call themselves churches today, and there are children being raised in these churches today, and they're being taught all kinds of false doctrine.
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One of the things I was really disturbed by last summer was the
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ELCA's youth event, in the ELCA's youth event, you had these small children being indoctrinated and catechized into the belief that homosexuality is something that God embraces, something that God blesses, and so these children were being fed a complete lie, so they're going to grow up thinking that it's
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Christian to affirm homosexuality, transgenderism, the
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LGBTQ community, and all this kind of stuff, and in the case of the people who are indoctrinating them into this, those people should know better, but those kids are going to be embracing this, thinking that they're on the side of God, and the archangel
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Michael, and the host of heaven, and they're actually directly in defiance of what his word says.
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Yes, yeah, yeah, that's the other piece of this, is that when you point out what scripture says, you are automatically branded the bigot.
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Just a quick response for that kind of tactic when we experience that, so we have to recognize that for what it is in the moment.
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It's a slanderous breaking of the eighth commandment, so Don says, and I'm going to pick on Don, Don says, you know, scripture says homosexuality is a sin.
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Somebody comes at him and says, Don, you're a bigot. All right,
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Don goes, you know, and they come on really strong, because this is how they, you know, they're very, very emotional when they charge.
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You just sit there and say, yeah, you just broke the eighth commandment. What do you mean I broke the eighth commandment?
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I'm not a bigot. You're lying about me. I'm just affirming what scripture says. You're slandering me and tearing down my character.
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Now, in the Christian church that works. It should work. Okay, it should work, because the the rules of engagement that we're all called to play by, the rules of engagement are what?
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The ten commandments. So when some, you know, somebody says, well, the reason why you do that is because you think that you're better than I am.
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They just broke the eighth commandment. They just slandered you, and you don't have to defend yourself in that situation.
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You don't have to sit there and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't think I'm better than you, because when you do that, you're actually playing by their rules.
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You just stop and you say, no, you just broke the eighth commandment. You need to repent. What you said is a lie.
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Push it back on them. Firmly, lovingly, calling it out for what it is.
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Sin. By the way, there's only one solution for sin. Only one.
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Christ and his death on the cross, and the forgiveness of our sins. That's the only solution. So as Christians, then, we want to lovingly and firmly admonish one another when we see that they are falling short and sinning, and push them back, point them back to Christ in the forgiveness of their sins.
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All right, so the whole congregation of Israel now is unintentionally sinning, and the thing is hidden from the eyes of the assembly, and they do any one of the things that by the
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Lord's commandments ought not to be done, and then they realize their guilt. And they realize their guilt.
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How does one come to realize one's guilt? The Word of God.
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The law of God. And when the sin which they have committed becomes known, the assembly shall offer a bull from the herd for a sin offering, bring it in front of the tent of meeting, and the elders of the congregation shall lay their hands on the head of the bull before Yahweh, and the bull shall be killed before Yahweh.
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Then the anointed priest, the Mashiach. I love pointing that out.
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You know, the anointed priest. I think it's fascinating that it makes the point. Anointed priest. Anointed.
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The anointed priest shall bring some of the blood of the bull into the tent of meeting. The priest shall dip his finger in the blood, sprinkle it seven times before the
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Lord in front of the veil. He shall put some of the blood on the hordes of the altar that is in the tent of meeting before Yahweh, and the rest of the blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering that is at the entrance of the tent of meeting.
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And all its fat shall take from it and burn on the altar. Thus shall he do with the bull as he did the bull of the sin offering, so shall he do with this.
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And the priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven.
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Yeah, that's the other part of it. How important it is to hear from God that you are forgiven.
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So, the whole nation sins against God unintentionally. They realize their guilt. The law of God has confronted them regarding their collective sin.
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Not individual, but collective. They've repented. They've offered the sacrifice, and the priest can say the sacrifice has been made.
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Y 'all are forgiven. Is that not what we do every
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Sunday here? Every single Sunday. We confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean.
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Well, I can point you to the cross now. I can point you to the fact that Christ has bled and died. He's not a bull.
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That bull that is mentioned here in Leviticus. That bull is for all of our sins.
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That's Christ. He's bled and died, and he's gone behind the veil, we heard in Hebrews. And he has taken his own blood.
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He's our prophet, our priest, our king. He's taken his own blood and poured it out on the real mercy seat.
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And so I can declare to the community here, y 'all's sins are forgiven.
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So he should carry the bull outside the camp, burn it, as he burned the first bull, and does the sin offering for the assembly.
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When a leader sins, doing unintentionally any one of all the things that by the commandments of Yahweh his
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God ought not to be done, and then he realizes his guilt, or the sin which he has committed is made known to him, he shall bring as his offering a goat, a male without blemish.
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Now a little bit of a note here. I can think of a fellow who was a leader in Israel who sinned, and it had to be made known to him.
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Now, let's talk about marriage dynamics for a second here. Okay, maybe it's just me, but I've noticed that marriages sometimes, there's a dynamic.
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And the dynamic goes something like this, and it works both ways, from either the husband or the wife. One of the members of the marriage sins.
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One of the members of the marriage does something boneheaded, stupid, hurts the other person, right?
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And here's what happens. Here's what happens. The person who is hurt is hurt, and they stew on it, and they're waiting.
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They're waiting, and they're waiting, and they're waiting. And what are they waiting for? For the light bulb to go on in their spouse, for them to realize that what they did hurt them, and what they did was wrong.
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But the other spouse just goes along their merry way, right?
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The silent treatment, okay? Now, so it has a name, okay? The silent treatment.
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Going about their business, right? Doing their thing, right? And they're getting angrier, and angrier, and it's like putting a pot on the stove, right?
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It starts off cool, and it starts to get warmer. Some steam starts to come off it, and finally gets to a rolling boil.
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And you know you're right about at the rolling boil when you say to your spouse, hey honey, I love you.
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How are you doing? Fine. That word, it sends ice through my veins.
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Yeah, what's the matter? Nothing. Nothing. Oh no,
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I'm in trouble. And then you say, what did I do? Why are you angry?
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If I have to tell you, if I have to tell you why
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I'm angry, then your apology means nothing. And so you start running through the Rolodex of like the day, the past couple days, the last weeks, like I'm not seeing it, okay?
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I don't get it, right? And so they finally, after some collisions emotionally, end up saying, okay, you did this out of the other thing.
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And you go, oh my goodness, I didn't even realize that. I'm so sorry. Well, I'm not accepting your apology because if you were really sorry,
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I wouldn't have had to tell you. That doesn't work biblically.
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It doesn't work biblically. Consider King David. King David, he's getting old enough where heading out to war isn't the thing he ought to do.
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I mean, he's gone from being a player on the field to being a coach, right? And so the armies head out, you know, in the season for fighting wars, and he stays back, he's up on his balcony, and whoa, who's that?
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And we all know how the story goes, right? And you're gonna know along the way,
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King David had ample opportunity to recognize his sin, confess it, and be forgiven, and turn away from it.
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But our sinful nature has this really amazing ability to justify the unjustifiable.
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And so he sleeps with Bathsheba. He should have felt remorse and confessed to sin at that point, and he doesn't.
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She sends word that she's pregnant, and he doesn't sit there and go, oh my goodness,
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I need to repent, this is horrible. He decides he's going to cover all of this up, and in the moment, the thing that's totally escaping his mind, that his behavior is utterly sinful.
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So the cover -up involves sending Uriah, her husband, back to Jerusalem, thinking he's going to spend time with his wife, and well, that didn't work.
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And when that plot was foiled, he had the ability to repent, did he? Nope. You think he would kind of get the hint.
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This isn't working out for him. It's as if maybe God's opposed to him here. So his solution,
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I know, I'll tell you I'll come up with a way of murdering Uriah the Hittite, and make it look like, you know, he died in war.
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Guys die in war all the time. You know, sword takes one guy, takes another. So he has him murdered.
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He gets word back from Joab. The deed is done. Did he repent?
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No, not at all. He's compounded his sins now. Sin upon sin upon sin upon sin.
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And then he marries Bathsheba. It was one of those quickie marriages, you know.
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And it makes you wonder, I mean, does he look like some kind of a hero? Oh, this poor, this poor, beautiful, hot widow.
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You know, I'll take her, because she's got nobody. But I will grace her by taking her to be my wife.
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So he does that. So God says, all right, calls up Nathan the prophet.
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Hey Nathan, need you to go talk with David. So Nathan goes and confronts him.
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Only when he was confronted did he repent. God works through means.
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And the word of the prophet, Nathan, was the word of God. He confronted him with his sin.
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And what does David do? Immediately, I've sinned against God. And he receives an absolution from Nathan.
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God has put away your sin. There were consequences that followed, but he had true repentance, true reconciliation.
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And he didn't come up with this by himself. He needed a little bit of assistance from God.
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And the reality is this, is that each of us needs assistance from God. And there may be sins that you're struggling with, sins that you've committed, that are completely blind to you.
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And God is going to work through means. So you're reading your Bible one day, and you realize, oh wow, man,
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I really dropped the ball there. Oh Lord, have mercy on me. What have I done? Now that might look like you came up with the idea, but you didn't.
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God's word confronted you in the moment. The spirit working through the word confronted you with your sin. But then again, you might need somebody to assist you, who lovingly desires your repentance, and to be reconciled, and for you to be reconciled to God, and those whom you've hurt.
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And so you have to lovingly say, hey listen, brother, sister, don't know if you know this, but you've sinned.
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I know it's so non -Norwegian, right? It's very uncomfortable.
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But this is the mechanism for reconciliation. The mechanism of telling the people the truth about themselves.
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So when a leader sins, doing unintentionally any one of all of the things by the commandments of the Lord his God, ought not to be done, and he realizes his guilt, or the sin which he has committed is made known to him, true repentance oftentimes will require the assist.
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He shall bring as his offering a goat, a male without blemish, and shall lay his hand on the head of the goat, kill it in the place where they kill the burnt offering before Yahweh.
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It is a sin offering. And then the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger, put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and pour out the rest of its blood at the base of the altar of burnt offering.
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And all its fat he shall burn on the altar like the fat of the sacrifice of peace offerings, so that the priest shall make atonement for him for his sin, and he shall be forgiven.
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Full stop. That's the best part. And he shall be forgiven.
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So if any one of the common people sins unintentionally in doing any one of the things that by the
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Lord's commandments ought not to be done, and realizes his guilt. So you notice we're going to round this track a few times.
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We're going to cover everybody. Or the sin which he has committed is made known to him. He shall bring for his offering a goat, or a female without blemish, for his sin which he has committed.
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And he shall lay his hand on the head of the sin offering, and kill the sin offering in the place of the burnt offering. And the priest shall take some of the blood with his finger, put it on the horns of the altar of the burnt offering, and pour out all the rest of its blood at the base of the altar.
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And all its fat he shall remove as the fat is removed from the peace offerings. And the priest shall burn it on the altar for a pleasing aroma to Yahweh.
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And the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven.
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Full stop. He shall be forgiven. Now this is the other part that is talking about interpersonal relationships.
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Oftentimes we like to sit there and go, I'll believe he's really sorry, or she's really sorry, if she cleans up her act.
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Only then will I believe it. There's a difference between an absolution and bearing fruit in keeping with repentance.
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And so the idea here is that when somebody apologizes to you, confesses their sin, we forgive them.
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Full stop. No buts. But eliminates the absolution.
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Full stop. No buts. I forgive you. And don't sit there and go, and I'll really believe that you are truly sorry if you...
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Yeah. All right. All right. So find a way then to discuss what bearing fruit in keeping with repentance looks like without the conjunction but.
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Yes. Yes. We as human beings have a natural proclivity towards this concept of penance.
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And I think penance is a bad concept because it's somehow...
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I now need to demonstrate that I was truly sorry. Do you see that?
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Now we're muddying up the biblical definition of what repentance is. True repentance will lead to a change in behavior and a modification of our lives, an amendment of our lives.
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In fact, true repentance cannot help but do that.
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That's just the reality of the situation. Now, that being the case, some behaviors, sinful behaviors are so ingrained, turning them around is going to look just miserably, awfully feeble from day to day.
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You think about the fellow who struggles with alcohol addiction. An alcoholic.
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And so they come to realize, oh Lord, I've sinned against you. Your word is so clear that drunkenness is a sin.
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Have mercy on me. I have sinned against you. And then they receive an absolution.
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And then two and a half hours later their hands are shaken because they need that next drink. And in the moment they might give in to their body's craving and need.
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Are we to say that they weren't forgiven and they weren't sorry if they fall off the wagon? No, because here's what ends up happening.
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They fall off the wagon and the cycle repeats. And then they realize, I'm not going to be able to stop this until I get some help.
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And so they might have to spend some time in a hospital and detox and get assistance. They, after that, might have to join a recovery group.
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And the recovery group guys, they count their sobriety one day at a time.
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One day at a time. And the one thing I think is fascinating about that approach is that they recognize, today
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I could fall back into this. I could easily fall back into this.
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And so it is a grace for them if when they make it through a day sober. And so that's the reality of the situation is that our sanctification worked by the
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Holy Spirit through the means of grace. We must recognize we're not going to have perfection this side of the return of Christ.
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And that our progress in that sanctification at any given moment may look completely feeble or weak or even going backwards.
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That's how difficult this is. And the reason why it's difficult is because we still have a sinful nature.
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I cannot wait until the day when I do not have a sinful old
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Adam clinging to the new man that Christ has made me. And have to have this battle internal.
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Where on the one hand the new man in Christ sits there and goes, I want to do these great things and worship and praise
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God and serve my neighbor. And my old Adam sits there and goes, I don't even want to get out of bed. What are you talking about?
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Let's go downstairs and pop a movie in and just veg. Come on.
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But it's a work day. So? Right? And we know the struggle of sinful nature has appetites that it requires that to be filled.
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But again, note the wonderful full stop. He shall be forgiven.
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Full stop. Now if he brings a lamb as his offering for a sin offering, he shall bring a female without blemish, lay his hand on the head of the sin offering, kill it for a sin offering in the place where they kill the burnt offering, and the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger, put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and pour out all the rest of its blood at the base of the altar, and all its fat he shall remove as the fat of the lamb is removed from the sacrifice of peace offerings, and the priest shall burn it on the altar on top of the
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Lord's food offerings, and the priest shall make atonement for him and for the sin which he has committed, and he shall be forgiven.
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Notice here though, it says the priest is the one who makes atonement. He's not making atonement for himself.
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The priest is making atonement for him and then declaring him that he is forgiven.
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Full stop. Now if anyone sins in that he hears a public adjuration to testify, and though he is a witness, whether he has seen or come to know the matter, yet he does not speak, he shall bear his iniquity.
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Yeah. Now an adjuration has to do with legal proceedings.
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So think about it this way. Remember when Jesus was on trial, and granted that the whole court case shouldn't have been happening the way it happened, yet the high priest was there in his office, and he says to Jesus, I adjure you to tell us whether you are the
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Christ. So an adjuration is a call to testify.
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So you've seen a crime. Y 'all remember you know the final episode of Seinfeld?
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All right. I thought it was brilliant by the way. The show that was about nothing ends with them going to prison for doing nothing.
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So yeah. Huh? You haven't seen it?
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You had time. You had time. Plenty of time. Yeah.
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We will not hold this against you. But the idea was is that they witnessed a crime, and they should have done something about it.
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In a similar way if you are a witness, and you know that a crime has been committed, you're a witness to it, and you remain silent and refuse to go to court, you refuse to actually bring your testimony for the purpose so that somebody can receive justice, yikes.
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That's a bad thing. So you're going to note then that the Word of God in looking out for your neighbor also requires you to bear witness in court proceedings if your witness testimony is going to be vital in making sure that justice is attained.
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Or if anyone touches an unclean thing, whether a carcass of an unclean wild animal or carcass of an unclean livestock or the carcass of an unclean swarming things, and it's hidden from him, and he has become unclean, and then he realizes his guilt.
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Or if he touches human uncleanness of whatever sort of uncleanness may be with which one becomes unclean, and it is hidden from him when he becomes known to him and realizes it, you notice that this is a very long sentence.
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Or, lots of conjunctions here, or if anyone utters with his lips a rash oath to do evil or to do good, any sort of rash oath that people swear, and it is hidden from him when he comes to know it and realizes his guilt in any of these.
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When he realizes his guilt in any of these and confesses the sin with which he has committed, he shall bring to the
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Lord as his compensation for the sin that he has committed, a female from the flock, a lamb, a goat, or a goat for a sin offering, and the priest shall make atonement for him and for his sin.
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Now a little bit of a note here. There's a lot going on here. So we have sins of omission, now we've got sin of coming in contact with an animal carcass or an unclean thing.
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I want you to think about this as part of, remember the story of Samson? Remember the story of Samson in the book of Judges?
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Samson is just a troubling character. This guy is so messed up, and yet he's one of the judges of Israel, and he saves
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Israel. And so you look at Samson, and there's a piece of his story that comes into play here.
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Let me duplicate the tab here. Samson, a book of Judges.
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All right, we talked about the theophany regarding his parents when the angel of the
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Lord appears to his parents, and then the the angel of the
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Lord goes up in their sacrifice. But we'll continue with the story for a little bit.
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Judges chapter 14. I want you to consider the details of this text. So this is after Samson's born.
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Samson went down to Timnah. At Timnah, he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines, which no
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Jewish boy is supposed to be marrying a Philistine girl. That's just not allowed. So the story is screwed up on so many levels.
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So he came up and told his father and mother, I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah.
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Now get her for me as my wife. But his father and mother said to him, Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives or among all of your people that you must go and take a wife from the uncircumcised
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Philistines? But Samson said to his father, Get her for me, for she's right in my eyes.
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Wait, what? You're not supposed to do this. So his father and mother did not know that it was from Yahweh, for he was seeking an opportunity against the
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Philistines. At that time, the Philistines ruled over Israel. So then Samson went down with his father and mother to Timnah.
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They came to the vineyards of Timnah, and behold, a young lion came toward him, roaring. Then the spirit of Yahweh rushed upon him, and although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the lion in pieces as one tears a young goat.
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Now, I don't know how one tears a young goat, but I'm pretty sure I'd have difficulty along those lines too.
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You know, maybe we could add this to our festivus rituals, you know, as part of the feats of strength, you know, the tearing of the young goat ritual.
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But I mean, so he tore this young goat, like he tore a lion like the way you tear a young goat, but he did not tell his father or his mother what he had done.
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Then he went down and he talked with the woman, and she was right in Samson's eyes. And some days, after some days, he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion.
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Behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion and honey.
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And he scraped out into his hands and went on eating as he went, and he came to his father and mother and gave that some to them, and they ate.
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But he did not tell them that he had scraped the honey from the carcass of the lion." What?
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Okay, now I want you to consider this for a second. Samson just disobeyed
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Torah. He has not only been in the presence of the carcass of a lion, he ate the honey that was inside of it.
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Oh, and he gave some to his parents too. So he's spread the uncleanness all around.
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Talk about unintentional sin. Have Samson's parents sinned? Yep, they have, quite unintentionally.
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They're oblivious to this fact of what he's done. This is part of the conundrum, by the way, of Samson.
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How are we to deal with that? And so this little lion with the honeycombs inside, it becomes part of a riddle that he'll tell to his soon -to -be
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Philistine relatives, in -laws. But yeah,
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I mean, that's part of the story. And you go, what is going on here?
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I mean, Samson, out of all of the characters in Scripture, is the one that stands out as not only making no effort to obey
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God's law, he just seems to be breaking it left, right, and center over and over and over and over again.
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Delilah, what type of woman was she? Huh? Yeah, she had a, shall we say, sketchy vocation.
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Right? Yeah. So what do you make of Samson? How do you make sense of him?
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I mean, I brought him up because that's a perfect cross -reference to what we're reading in Leviticus. So what do you make of this fellow?
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I mean, he's making himself unclean, he's sleeping with sex workers, you know, he's, yeah.
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Dave, what do you think of him? Oh, he knew.
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He knew. He's a catechized Jewish boy. His parents didn't know, yeah.
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They're oblivious to the sin that they've committed, totally oblivious to it. Uh -huh, uh -huh.
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All right, well, so the devil's at work here. Well, what do we do with this then?
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You take a look at Hebrews 11, the great hall of faith passage, and in the great hall of faith passage, we learn about Samson.
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Here's what it says, and what more shall I say? Hebrews 11, 32. Time would fail me to tell you of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephah, of David, Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms and forced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became put foreign armies to flight.
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He's held up as an example of a man of great faith. What? All right, let's,
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I said, rather than leave you wondering, maybe we should take a look and see if we can figure out what's going on with this Samson fellow, right?
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All right, so let's keep going with the story then, see if we can figure this out. We have enough time to figure out
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Samson. So his father went down to the woman, and Samson prepared a feast there, for so the young man used to do, and remember,
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Samson's not allowed to cut his hair. So out of all the Old Testament patriarchs, he's the guy with the dread locks, you know, from the time he was an infant.
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And as soon as the people saw him, they brought 30 companions to be with him. Samson said to them, now let me put a riddle to you, if you can tell me what it is within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, and then
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I will give you 30 linen garments and 30 changes of clothes. But if you cannot tell me what it is, then you shall give me 30 linen garments and 30 changes of clothes.
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And they said to him, put your riddle, that we may hear it. And he said to them, out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet.
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Okay, so in three days they could not solve the riddle. So on the fourth day, they said to Samson's wife, entice your husband to tell us what the riddle is, lest we burn you and your father's house with fire.
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Okay, give us the answer, or you're a dead woman.
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Have you invited us here to impoverish us? By the way, changes of clothes, you didn't go to Walmart back then to get them, they were very expensive.
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So Samson's wife wept over him and said, you hate me, you don't really love me, you put a riddle to my people and you've not told me what it is.
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So he said to her, all right, behold, I have not told you what my father nor my mother, and shall I tell you?
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And so she wept before him the seven days that the feast lasted. So the entire wedding feast, she's just weeping and crying.
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So on the seventh day, he told her because she pressed him hard, and then she told the riddle to her people, and the men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, what is sweeter than honey, what is stronger than a lion?
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And this is one of the best responses in all of scripture. He said, if you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle.
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Oh wow. Now watch this then.
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And then the spirit of Yahweh rushed upon him. What happens next is from God himself, the spirit of the
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Lord rushes upon him. He went down to Ashkelon, struck down 30 men of the town, took their spoil, gave the garments to those who had told the riddle.
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In hot anger, he went back to his father's house, and Samson's wife was given to his companion, who had been his best man.
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Apparently women can be just handed off really easily like that. Now after some days, the time of the wheat harvest,
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Samson went to visit his wife with a young goat, and I guess that's what you did back then, rather than a bouquet of roses, you know.
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They didn't have florists, they had people who sold young goats, and that's how you impress a girl. And so he said,
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I will go into my wife in the chamber, but her father would not allow him to go in. And her father said,
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I really thought that you utterly hated her, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she?
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Please take her instead. So Samson said to them, this time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines when
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I do to them harm. So Samson went and caught 300 foxes, took torches, and he turned them tail to tail and put a torch between each of the tails.
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And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines and set fire to the stack grain, and the standard grain, as well as the olive orchards.
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And when the Philistines said, who has done this? They said, Samson, the son -in -law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.
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And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. And Samson said to them, if this is what you do,
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I swear I will be avenged on you. And after that I will quit. And so he struck them hip and thigh with a great blow.
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And he went down and stayed in the cleft of the Rock of Atahm. Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehi.
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And the men of Judah said, why have you come up against us? They said, we've come up to bind Samson to do to him as he did to us.
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And then 3 ,000 of the men of Judah went down to the cleft of the Rock of Atahm and said to Samson, do you not know that the
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Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us? And he said to them, as they did to me, so I have done to them.
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And they said to him, we have come down to bind you that we may give you into the hands of the
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Philistines. And Samson said to them, swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves. And they said to him, no, we will only bind you and give you into their hands.
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We will surely not kill you. So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.
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And when he came to the Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. And then the spirit of Yahweh rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that had caught fire, and his bonds melted off of his hands.
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Now, a little bit of a note here. Samson's hair is like a sacrament. In fact, it is kind of sacramental, you know, because the promise of his strength is connected to his hair.
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Which is kind of interesting. So this guy has super human strength. He was one of the earliest avengers,
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I guess, something like that, right? You're looking at me with incredulity. I got to work on my cultural references.
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Okay, so keep in mind his hair is a sacrament here. So he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey and put out his hand and took it, and with it he struck one thousand men.
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And Samson said, with the jawbone of a donkey, heap upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey, I have struck down a thousand men.
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It actually rhymes a little better in the Hebrew, but you kind of get the point. He's speaking in verses here. So as soon as he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of his hand, and that place was called
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Ramoth Lichai. And he was very thirsty. He called upon Yahweh and said, you have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall
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I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised? You're going to note he recognized that the winning of this battle against the
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Philistines was that God had worked salvation through him. But this guy's a mess.
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How is that possible? So God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it.
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This hearkens, by the way, to the miracle that God did before the children of Israel got to Mount Sinai at Mount Horeb, the split rock of Horeb, where he split the rock, and out came the water of the rock.
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It's like a redoing of that. And we learn from the Apostle Paul in the New Testament that that rock was
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Christ. Type and shadow, it's crackling here, but you're sitting there going, but Samson's a mess, all right?
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So when he drank, his spirit returned. He revived. Therefore, the name was called Enhachor.
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It is at Lehi to this day. So notice a water salvation here, a miraculous water salvation.
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It's one of the themes of Scripture. So he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines for 20 years.
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Next chapter. So Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute, and he went into her.
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The Gazites were told, Samson has come here, and they surrounded the place, set an ambush for him all night at the gate of the city.
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They kept quiet all night, saying, Let us wait till the light of the morning when we will kill him. But Samson lay until midnight.
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Midnight he arose, took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and of the two posts, pulled them up bar and all, and put them on his shoulders, carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron.
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And after this, he loved a woman in the valley of Sorok whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the
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Philistines came up to her and said to her, Seduce him and see where his great strength lies.
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And by what means we may overpower him so that we may bind him to humble him.
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And we will each give you 1 ,100 pieces of silver. So you're going to notice
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Delilah is now betraying Samson for pieces of silver.
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Who does that sound like? Sounds like Jesus. Jesus was betrayed for pieces of silver as well.
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Now granted, Delilah gets paid a lot more. Okay, she's getting paid a lot more.
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But still the themes, the type and shadow themes are consistent. So Delilah said to Samson, Please tell me where your great strength lies and how you might be bound that one could subdue you.
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So Samson said to her, Well, if they bind me with seven fresh bow strings that have not been dried, then
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I shall become weak and be like any other man. The guy straight up lies to her. Okay, but then you have to sit there and go,
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Yeah, but she's like totally trying to figure out how to entrap him in order to have him killed.
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So the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh bow strings that had not been dried, and she bound him with them.
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And now she had men lying in ambush in an inner chamber. And she said to them,
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The Philistines are upon you, Samson. But he snapped the bow strings as the thread of flax snaps when it touches the fire.
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So the secret of his strength was not known. So then Delilah said to Samson, Behold, you've mocked me and you've told me lies.
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To which he should have said, Well, behold, you're trying to kill me, right? This is such a story.
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So please tell me how you might be bound. And he said to her, All right. If they bind me with new ropes that have not been used, then
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I shall become weak and be like any other man. So Delilah took new ropes, bound him with them, and said to him,
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The Philistines are upon you, Samson. You'd think by this time he's realizing, You know what? I get the feeling this lady is trying to kill me, right?
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So the men lying in ambush were in an inner chamber, but he snapped the ropes off his arms like a thread.
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So then Delilah said to Samson, Until now you have mocked me and you've told me lies. Tell me how you might be bound.
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And he said to her, All right. If you weave the seven locks of my head with a web and fasten it tight with the pin, then
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I shall become weak and be like any other man. You're going to note the seven locks of his head kind of points to dreadlocks, right?
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He's got seven major pieces coming off. So while he slept, Delilah took the seven locks of his head, wove them into the web.
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She made them tight with the pin and said to him, The Philistines are upon you, Samson. But he woke from his sleep, pulled away the pin and the loom and the web.
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And she said to him, How can you say I love you when your heart is not with me?
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This woman's like a black widow spider, man. No. You have mocked me these three times and you've not told me where your great strength lies.
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How can you say you love me? And so when she pressed him hard with her words day after day and urged him, his soul was vexed to death.
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And he told her all his heart and said to her, Listen, a razor has never come upon my head for I have been a
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Nazarite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me and I shall become weak and be like any other man.
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Now a little bit of a note here. You're going to note this about Samson. He in a real way is a type and shadow of Christ.
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The connections are undeniable. He has supernatural divine strength and at the same time, he's also a man, you know, which kind of hearkens to the incarnation a little bit.
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He's a savior of Israel, but we'll see how the type and shadow works when we consider then his ultimate demise.
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So he's now let on that his hair is sacramental. So when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called the lords of the
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Philistines saying, Come up again for he has told me all of his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her, brought the money in their hands.
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She made him sleep on her knees and she called a man and have him shave off the seven locks of his head.
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Then she began to torment him and his strength left him. What? You don't really love me,
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Delilah? What? I didn't see that coming. All right.
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So he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out as at the other times and shake myself free. But he did not know that Yahweh had left him.
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And the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes, brought him down to Gaza, bound him with bronze shackles, and he ground at the mill in the prison.
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But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved. And there's the definitive statement here.
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So his hair started to come back. He's got a little stubble going on there. Now the lords of the
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Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon, their God, and to rejoice.
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And they said, our God has given Samson, our enemy, into our hand. And when the people saw him, they praised their
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God for they said, our God has given our enemy into our hand, the ravager of our country who has killed many of us.
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And when their hearts were merry, they said, call Samson that he may entertain us. So they called Samson out of the prison and he entertained them.
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They made him stand between the pillars. And Samson said to the young man who held him by the hand, let me feel the pillars on which the house rests so that I may lean against them.
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Now the house was full of the men and the women. All the lords of the Philistines were there on the roof. There were about 3 ,000 men and women who looked on while Samson entertained.
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Then Samson called to Yahweh and said, oh Lord God, please remember me.
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Please strengthen me only this once, oh God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines from my two eyes.
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So Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested. And he leaned his weight against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other.
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Let's think about that for a second here. Samson's doing this.
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Who does that look like? So he's going to die and his body is making the sign of the cross.
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All right, so his left hand on the other. Samson said, let me die with the Philistines. Then he bowed with all his strength and his house fell upon the lords and upon all the people who were in it.
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So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed during his life. Then his brothers and all his family came and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Esh Taol in the tomb of Manoah, his father.
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He judged Israel for 20 years. Undeniable, this guy is a type and shadow of Christ and his death is so stark.
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He's making the sign of the cross. So what do we think about that then? You'll note that he is absolutely scandalous.
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I cannot point to a single thing in Samson that I like at all. Morally, it makes no sense whatsoever that God did the things that he did through Samson to save Israel from the
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Philistines. Have you considered this?
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God has laid on Christ the iniquity of us all. Have you considered the scandal that Jesus is the one who becomes the sinner of all humanity?
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And so I think in type and shadow, Samson reflects the sinfulness of Jesus after all of our sins are laid on him.
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And yet the sinner Jesus, who bleeds and dies for our sins, destroys the dominion of darkness through his death in the same way that Samson destroyed the
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Philistines in his death. That's kind of how that works. So he looks like a moral train wreck due to the fact that when
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God lays on Christ the iniquity of us all, Jesus becomes the moral train wreck of all of humanity.
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Kind of a fascinating thing. I love pulling in the cross references in Leviticus because you can kind of see how all this stuff works together.