1 Samuel Chapters 5 & 6

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Proverbs 20

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Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him.
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Therefore, neither the priest of Dagon nor all who entered Dagon's house tread on the threshold of Dagon and Ashdod to this day.
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Now the hand of the Lord was heavy on the Ashdodites, and he ravished them, and he smoked them with tumors, both Ashdod and its territories.
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And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, the ark of God of Israel must not remain with us, for his hand is severe on us and on Dagon our God.
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So they sent and gathered all the lords of the Philistines to them and said, what shall we do with the ark of God of Israel? And they said, let the ark of God of Israel be brought around to Gath.
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And they brought the ark of God of Israel around, and after that they brought it around.
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The hand of the Lord was against the city and with and smote them with a very great confusion.
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And he smote the city of both the men, the young and the old, so that tumors broke out on them.
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And they sent the ark of God then to Ekron.
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And as the ark of God came to Ekron, the Ekronites cried out, saying, they have brought the ark of God of Israel around to us to kill us and our people.
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And they sent therefore and gathered all the lords of the Philistines and said, send away the ark of the God of Israel and let it return to its own place, so that it will not kill us and our people.
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For there was a deadly confusion among the city, and the hand of God was very heavy there.
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And the men who did not die there were smitten with tumors, and the cry of the city went out up to heaven.
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Now the ark of the Lord had been in the country of the Philistines seven months.
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And the Philistines called to their priest and a diviner, saying, what shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us how we should send it to its place.
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And they said, if you send away the ark of God of Israel, do not send it empty, but you shall surely return to him a guilt offering.
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Then you will be healed of it, and it will be known to you why his hand has not been removed from you.
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Then they said, what shall be the guilt offering which we shall return to him? And they said, five golden tumors, five golden mice, according to the numbers of the lords of the Philistines, for one plague was on all of you and of your lords.
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So you shall make likeness of your tumors and likeness of your mice that ravaged the land, and you shall give glory to the God of Israel.
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And perhaps he will ease his hand upon you, your gods and your land.
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Why then do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and the Pharaohs hardened their hearts? When he had severely dealt with them, they did not allow the people to go, and they departed.
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Now therefore, take and prepare a new cart to milk cows on which there has never been a yoke.
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Hitch those cows together to a cart, take them from their calves away from their home, and take that the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart, and put the articles of gold which you returned to, and return to him as a guilt offering in a box by its side.
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Then send it away the way it should go.
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Watch if it goes down by the way of its own territory to Beth Shemesh, then he has done us with this great, he has done with us with this great evil.
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But if not, then we will know that which was not of the hand of God what was by chance.
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Then the men did so.
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They took the two milk cows and hitched them to the cart, shut up their calves at home.
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They put the ark of the Lord on the cart, and the box of the golden mice, and the likeness of their tumors, and the cows took straight way in the direction of Beth Shemesh.
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They went along the highway lowing as they went, and they did not turn aside to the right or to the left, and the Lord to the Philistine followed to the borders of Beth Shemesh.
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Now the people of Beth Shemesh were reaping their wheat and the harvest in the valley, and they raised their eyes, and they saw the ark, and were glad to see it.
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The cart came to the field of Josh with the Beth Shemite, and they stood there where there was a large stone, and they split the wooden cart, and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord, and the Levites took down the ark of the Lord, the box which was in it, and that which had the articles of gold, and put them on a large stone, and the men of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed that day to the Lord, and when the five lords of the Philistines saw it, they returned to Ekron that day.
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These are the golden tumors which the Philistines returned to the guilt offering to the Lord, one for Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron, and the golden mice according to the numbers of the cities of the Philistines belonging to their five lords, both the four to five cities and the country villages, and the large stone on which they set the ark of the Lord is a witness to this day in the field of Josh with the Beth Shemite, and he struck down some of the men of the Beth Shemite because they had looked into the ark of the Lord.
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He struck down of those people 50,070 men, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great slaughter, and the men of Beth Shemesh said, Who is able to stand before the Lord? This is a holy God, and to whom shall we go up from us? So they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kiriath-Jerim, and said, The Philistines have brought back the ark of the Lord.
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Come down and take it to you.
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Wow, interesting.
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First and foremost, we remember that Aphek would have been...
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Aphek's not there.
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The battle of Aphek would have been up here, if I remember right.
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Ebenezer, probably right here somewhere it would have been taken.
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I'm gonna put a question mark there because that's debatable because the other one is down here.
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Then you had Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron would have been about right here, and yeah, it would have been the Mediterranean Sea.
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Over here somewhere would have been the Jordan River.
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Okay, so it went, the ark went from captured here, ended up here.
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That's the first place it went from Ebenezer.
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It said, and when the Ashdodites, this is in, they took it and put it in the house of Dagon.
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Who was Dagon? Anybody remember who Dagon was? Okay, do you remember what kind of god he was? He had a fish of a, he had a half of a body of a fish.
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The upper part was a man, but he was actually the grain god, but he was called the fish god because of his half fishy body.
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Okay, if you remember when they took, it was kind of an insult to Samson when he was put in the the temple of Dagon.
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It's like, here it is, now you're going to, remember when he killed all the grain fields? They put him in there, you know, milling grain to taunt him for when he took all of their wheat, basically by burning it up in their grain.
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So he is the grain god, got a fishy body.
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Okay, so they set him up in there.
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It says in verse three, When the Asherites arose up early the next morning, behold, Dagon had fell on his face to the ground before the ark of God.
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So they took Dagon and set him up and placed him again in this place.
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But when they arose early the next morning, this is verse four, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark again.
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And the head of Dagon and both his palms and his head were cut off, and the only thing left was his trunk.
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So here it is, the first night it happens, there's the ark of the Lord, this deity, which is really no deity at all, but God's showing his presence.
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He makes this false god bow down in front of him and falls to his face.
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So they prop this thing back up, says okay, we're going to establish this thing is really a god again.
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And the next time, next morning, it's actually been cut into pieces.
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And then there's some superstitious stuff in verse five.
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It says that therefore, neither the priest of Dagon nor all who entered Dagon's house tread on the threshold of Dagon and Ashdod to this day.
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That's very superstitious, like there was something crazy about the threshold.
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In verse six, now when the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the Ashdod, and he had ravaged them and smote them with tumors, both in Ashdod and all its territories.
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So here it is, this city, which is really established because it did have a temple of Dagon there, where they would have had migrants come to worship, smote them with tumors.
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I think yours says hemorrhoids.
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Anybody else say hemorrhoids? Hemorrhoids, no.
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And yours actually says hemorrhoids? Oh, well hemorrhoids is actually where we get the word hemorrhoids.
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I thought hers actually said hemorrhoids.
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I'm like, oh wow.
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I'm like, really? They did the interpretive work for you.
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Well, it does say it.
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That's where the emirate is where we get the word hemorrhoid from.
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So that is why some commentators say it's hemorrhoid.
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And I do think in one of the one translations we read through it, one of them does have it translated, I think at the last city, when y'all was reading, maybe King James, New Kington, I can't remember.
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It says it was in their private parts.
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So the original Hebrew doesn't say that, okay? So they're trying to give you the idea, if you're following the idea of it being an emirate, which would have been a hemorrhoid, hemorrhoids are in your private part, okay? I said we'll just probably stop right there if you understand what I'm saying.
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Yeah, secret part.
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There you go.
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All right.
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Yours does say that? Okay.
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In the secret parts.
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So we would take it that they had an inflammation of the backside and he was causing a great slaughter and he was smoting them.
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Now you get to verse 7, and the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, and they said the ark of the God of Israel must not remain here with us, for his hand is severe on us and on our God Dagon.
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So they sent and they gathered the lords of the Philistines to them and said, what shall we do? And they said, let the ark of Israel go to Gath.
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Here we go.
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Making a migrate.
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So now they're in Gath and it says, and after, in verse 9, after they had brought it there, the hand of the Lord was heavy against that city.
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Anybody know what it means for the hand of the Lord to be heavy upon something? First of all, does God have a hand? What's trying to be explained here? It's called an anthropomorphism, and don't ask me to spell that, like you did syncretism.
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I can't spell it.
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Anthropomorphism is attributing to God something that a human thing has that God does not have so that we can understand it.
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Does God have a hand? No, he's a spirit, but where he's trying to convey that God's hand was actually intimately involved in inflicting this pain upon these people.
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So it says, the hand of the Lord was heavy and was great among that city.
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It's called great confusion.
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He smote the city, both young and old.
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Look, God was not a respecter of persons.
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He was an equal opportunity offender.
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He was offending them all.
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It said, so they sent the ark then from there to Ekron.
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So now that's where we're at.
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And as the ark of the Lord came to Ekron, the Ekronites cried out.
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Apparently they had already heard of problems.
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Saying, they have brought the ark of God of Israel around to us to kill us and our people.
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So this is like, have you ever played hot potato as a kid, or this is basically what this is, or egg toss, or just, hey man, you get it, you take it, you take it, you take it, you take it.
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And the reason why is because it was killing him.
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And it says here that it was there to kill us and our people.
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They sent therefore and gathered all the Lord of the Philistines and said, send away the ark of the God of Israel.
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Let it return to its own place so that it will not kill us and our people.
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For there was a deadly confusion throughout the city.
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And here it is again, and the hand of God was very heavy there.
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And the men who did not die there were smitten with tumors and the cry of the city went up to heaven.
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So we have the tumors.
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That's not all.
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There's people dying in droves.
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So we get to chapter six.
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Now the ark of the Lord had been in the country of the Philistines seven months.
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So from the time it left here and made its little trip through this triangular action would have been about seven months.
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It says in the Philistines called for the priest and the diviners.
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The priest would not be the priest of Israel.
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It would be the priest of the Philistine gods, the diviners, all of those.
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But interesting enough, they did have an understanding of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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Because listen to what he says.
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What shall we do with this ark of the Lord? Tell us how we should send it to its own place.
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And they said if we send away the ark of the God of Israel, don't send it empty, but you shall surely return it to him with a guilt offering.
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In other words, what was a guilt offering? We've actually offended this God and we know that we're guilty of what we have done.
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So we're going to basically send it and we want to placate him with something so this heavy hand that is upon us will stop.
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And then it says, and then if you send it away, do not send away empty, but you send it with a guilt offering, then you will be healed and it and it will be known to you why his hand has not been.
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Okay, so if we send this away and it doesn't, then it's not going to be because his hand was heavy on us.
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It says in verse 4, then they said, what shall be the guilt offering which shall return to him? And they said this, five golden tumors and five golden mice according to the number of the lords of the philistines for one plague was on all of you and of the lords.
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All right, so they're gonna send five golden tumors.
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In the earlier part of the narrative, we didn't see this in the in the Septuagint.
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It talks about in the earlier part, it does actually say in the Septuagint, it's a Greek translation of the Hebrew text and a Masoretic text.
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Some others do say it was plagued with mice, so that's why this.
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So this, they were having tumor or hemorrhoid breakout.
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People were dying and mice was ravaging the land.
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And they're saying, okay, when we send this back, we're going to make a an offering to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob of gold.
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One, God don't need no gold.
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They're just trying to placate God.
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They're trying to manipulate God like all the false prophets and all the false teachers, all from before, before this time and even now.
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They're trying to manipulate God to do something.
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And it says, for one plague was upon you and all of your lords.
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Now, they're sending it out one for each city.
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We don't know what was going on in these two cities by the narrative, but I would assume by what it says, it was attacked by all of your lords and all of your cities.
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So we would take, remember there was five lords of the Philistines.
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We remember that? One for each city.
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And it says here, all of them were afflicted, but the ark only went to those three cities.
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Then he says here, he will ease the hand from upon you and your gods and your land.
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And in verse six, why then do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? You understand that they still have an understanding of something that happened 500 years earlier.
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These Philistines did that when Yahweh sent through the mouthpiece of Moses and he said, let my people go.
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What did Pharaoh do? He hardened his heart.
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That's actually, and it actually uses the very thing here.
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Harden your heart.
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Harden your heart like the Egyptians did.
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So they had recognized that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not to be, not to be trifled with.
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He says, and when he had severely dealt beside it, they're gonna put these jobbers.
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How was the ark supposed to be transported? Poles.
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Poles.
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Anybody.
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That's how it was supposed to be.
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So we, we're gonna see the ark transported by a cart one more time in 2 Samuel.
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And it didn't work out well.
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It did.
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What happened to Uzzah when he touched the ark? He died.
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Hey, we think about that and go, man, that was harsh.
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You remember what happened? The, the, the, the cart hit a rock and it went to fall and Uzzah for, for in honor of the ark to not hit the ground, he thought of himself to be higher than dirt.
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He thought that he was better than dirt.
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And he touched the ark of the God, got him.
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That's harsh.
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That's actually what God should have done to these men here.
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But God chose not to for whatever his purposes are.
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Well, I mean, we, when they hauled it away from Ebenezer, they just hauled it off.
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The glory, the glory of the God had departed from it at that point.
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So now that it's here, God's just, God's just demonstrating his wrath to, hey, you're, you're messing with the wrong one.
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Now, technically speaking, it was to be transported by the poles by the Levites.
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That's technically how it was supposed to be done.
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We're going to see some Levites touch it here shortly and that could be some of the reason why we see some of them die.
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We're going to get out here in just a minute.
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So they put the ark of the Lord, excuse me, on the cart, the box with the golden mouses and the tumors.
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Hey, how about the guy that had to make these things? I mean, is that a good-looking tumor? Is that a bad-looking tumor? Is that a cute mouse? Is it an ugly mouse? Is it a big tumor? I mean, just like, all right, man, just make us some of those to put in this box and send it on its way.
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And in verse 12, and the cows took straightway to the direction of Beth Shemesh.
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And they went along the highway, lowing as they went, and they did not turn aside to the right or the left.
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And the lords of the Philistines followed them to the border of Beth Shemesh.
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Now, this is kind of where the border of the Philistines line would have been.
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Something like this here.
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Kind of would have been like this.
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What in the...
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here, border here, here.
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Beth Shemesh would have been about right.
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So, they send it on its way to here.
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Interesting.
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It didn't need anybody to drive the cattle, did it? All that they did, just head that direction.
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We're going to head it towards that city where we know some Levites and the priests and the people of God are, and just let it go.
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And as it went, the cows bellow and do whatever they do on the way.
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Understand, too, they took these cows away from their calves while they were nursing.
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Took them away.
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Put their, put the calves and locked them up somewhere else.
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They'd quit all the trying to nursing it and just sent these these these female cows on their way.
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It's interesting that that they looked to see whether or not they would go back to their, try to go back to their calves.
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Yeah, yep.
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And if not, they knew.
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And the bellowing is somewhat, okay, they wanted, they were wanting their calves.
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That's kind of the idea.
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They were wanting their calves, but man, they were going by the providence of God.
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They were heading this way to bring the ark back to its land.
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I just think it's cool that God's people, God didn't need his people to protect himself.
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He was doing it all on his own.
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He was afflicting these people and they had never seen the glory of God.
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Hey, this thing was not even covered.
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Remember, when the when the ark was to be transported, it was to have a tarp thrown over top of it.
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So this is just God inflicting, just for his, the very object of what that represent.
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God was inflicting pain and punishment and slaying people.
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We're fixing to see a huge amount here in a minute.
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It says, so the people of Beth Shemesh, so this would have been the harvest time, as they were reaping the wheat in the harvest in the valley, they raised their eyes and they saw the ark and were glad.
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So here it is, seven months ago, the glory of the Lord had departed.
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Imagine you being an Israelite, and I can say this, imagine being a Levite and knowing that the ark of the Lord had been gone.
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You're probably thinking it had been destroyed.
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The thing that contained the covenant between you and the national people and God in there is completely gone or devastated.
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The very article in which showed that God provided for them for 40 years in the wilderness and the priesthood document per se, which would have been Aaron's rod that budded, which showed that God had established him a priesthood from among the people.
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These people think this thing is gone forever and probably destroyed.
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Well, here it is.
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They see it coming down the road, you know, sort of like if a procession comes, you hear horns honking in a car, they hear these cows bellowing.
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And as it comes to the city, they're happy, and they should have been.
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And it says that the cart came into the field of Joshua the Beshamite and stood there where there was a large stone, and then they split the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord.
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All right, now, what was the prescribed burnt offering to the Lord? Bull.
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Bull.
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Now, were there some, under the Mosaic legislation, were there some times you could use a female bull or a heifer or a female cow or a cow a goat or a lamb? Yes, there was, but not for burnt offering.
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Burnt offerings, sin offerings, those were supposed to be for either a bull or a lamb or a goat, one year old, and without blemish.
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Well, here it is.
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These come in.
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They're going to offer these up as a burnt offering.
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They use the very cart for the wood.
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They kill these cows, female nursing cows, and they put it upon the altar or their own altar.
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It says in verse 15 that the Levites then took down the ark of the Lord of the box, which was in it, which were the articles of gold, and put them on the large stone.
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And the men of Beshamesh offered burnt offering and sacrifice to the Lord that day.
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And when the five lords of the Philistines saw it, they returned to Echron that day.
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So, they were happy that people had got their possession back into their hands.
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The very thing that they stole to show that they had conquered the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that they had defeated Yahweh, was now noticed that they did not defeat Yahweh.
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They were a defeated foe.
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Now, God will leave us alone because he's got his stuff back with his people.
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And it says, and in the golden tumors, which the Philistines returned for a guilt offering to the Lord, one for Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Echron, the golden mice, according to the number of the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, those fortified cities and their country villages, the large stone on which they set the ark of the Lord is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua and Beshamesh.
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Excuse me, in verse 19, he struck down some of the men of Beshamesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord.
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Now, what was anybody not supposed to do? Look into the ark of the Lord.
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It's interesting to me when you're reading this narrative, we never see where the Philistines try to pry that top open.
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You know, to wonder, what is in here? We never see that.
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Well now, who do we see doing it? The people that should know better.
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And on top of that, the Levites should have known better.
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Now, let's give them the benefit of the doubt.
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I know if that would have been me, and I would have saw that thing coming back, and I'm like, oh man, I wonder if the tablets are in there.
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I wonder if the document showing that Aaron's priesthood had been established, if the man is still in there.
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So, logically thinking, we should probably check that out, but the Mosaic law says don't do that, and they did it.
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It said, and he struck down all the people, 50,070 men, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great slaughter.
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Now, how many translations in here say 70? I can't see.
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Raise them up.
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70.
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70.
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How many say 50,070? All right, here's the deal.
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The oldest Masoretic text, the Septuagint, which was established 200 years before Christ, all say, in its actual language, says 70 and 50,000.
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So, the understanding is this, that it was the 70, 70 in that city, and then the 50,000 total of the plex, okay? The reason why your translations, the newer translations, have it just 70 is they follow the, anybody in here know who Josephus is? Okay, Josephus was a Jewish historian in the first century, and he struggled with what the Septuagint said.
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He didn't like it, so they follow his writings and his book of the Antiquities, okay, and you can look at it's in Antiquities book, I think it's chapter six, and he says that that just seems a little bit much, so we're going to say it was 70.
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Okay, so you do have here a, dude, that is a huge number.
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I get it, okay, but understand, scribe that could be, and when I say this, listen to me clearly, God's word is without error in doctrine and theology.
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You understand what I'm saying, okay? Scribes make errors.
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Anybody understand that? Anybody knows a difference what I'm saying? Okay, there's a difference, and not to get, this is not a textual criticism, but I could take everybody in here and show you in your Bible where there's two different times, where there's two different numbers recorded that are completely in contrary with one another, okay, and it's in any translation, so I want you to understand when we talk about this here being without error, it's in doctrine and theology.
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Scribes make errors, and so do publishers.
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I don't know if Sybil remembers, I ordered a 1599 Geneva Bible.
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I couldn't wait to get it.
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Man, it came in.
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I was like, man, I got the Bible, John Calvinist, you know, so I get there, and I start flipping through it, and I was like, man, this is missing Isaiah chapter 41, and then I keep going, and it's missing that whole, I don't know if you ever looked at your Bibles, but they're in little leaflets, little, like little booklets, and they're all put together.
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Man, it was missing from Isaiah to Ezekiel, and I was like, no way, you know, okay, you see, understand, that was a scribe, that was what we would call a scribal error in old times, but a publisher error on this on this end.
31:02
Those do happen, so what we have in this case, one saying 70, one saying 50,070, that is it.
31:09
How we reconcile them is the oldest manuscripts all say 70,000, I mean 70,000 and 50,000, all of them, all of the most accurate, oldest, reliable manuscripts say that, and I always lean heavily, not just because I'm better at looking at Greek than I am Hebrew, the Septuagint was all established as a legitimate and valid translation by all the apostles, and Jesus himself quoted it, okay, so that's why I go to the Septuagint to see what it says.
31:42
Anybody? Yes, sir.
31:45
Who? No, it was saying 50,070, but the original wording, if you look at the original wording, we have it as 50,070 in our English translation, it's not what it says in the Hebrew, or even the Septuagint, it actually says 70 and 50,000, which is a weird way of saying, you know, normally we would say 50,070, so that's even so when we're translating it, they even translate it in such a way that to where the more word-for-word translations, as I think my numeric and standard says it, what does the ESV say? 70.
32:28
Really? That's odd.
32:31
You don't have a footnote telling you they're wrong? I'm just kidding.
32:36
It doesn't have a footnote saying anything there? It said I'm on my phone, sir.
32:41
Oh, I got you.
32:42
It tells us what the Hebrew is.
32:45
What is it? Okay, see it? That's how it's worded.
32:53
Yes, ma'am? You're too quiet, I can't hear you.
33:06
Septuagint.
33:08
And 70, yeah.
33:10
Yeah, 50,070.
33:14
It's the way it's worded, though, it'll be, they're separate, it's not a number.
33:17
Yours has a, whose has a number? Yeah, okay, it's the number.
33:22
It's worded in the translation, I mean, in the original language.
33:25
It's not numbers.
33:27
The big difference between inspired word of God and man's translation.
33:32
Sure, and if anybody wants to, you know, look, there was some smart aleck on the radio one time, and he's like, oh, if anybody can show me where there's two contradictions in anything in scripture, I'll write him a check for a hundred grand.
33:45
I was like, I'm gonna call this dude, he better get his pen ready, because he's gonna have to write two checks.
33:50
Because to open your mouth like that, because you're talking about publishing issues that can take place, but when we talk about God's work, look, there's nothing contradictory in doctrine, theology, about the nature of God and salvation.
34:05
Understand what we have in our hand is accurate, and it's good, and it's right, but hey, man, it may come from life way, and it might be missing something, okay? Sure, sure, but in this case, all of the oldest Masoretic texts and the Septuagint all say 70 and 50,000 or 50,070, however you want to say that, and that's where I lean to.
34:30
One, it would be hard for me to believe that in Beth Shemesh, there was 50,070 people there, okay? That would have been a really metropolitan city at that time, and on top of that, of a Jewish people, okay? Now, we could say, oh wow, there was 70 people there.
34:48
That would make, that would actually be more probably consistent with the amount of people would have been there.
34:54
That would have been the Levites that would have been there to take care of the ark when they saw it coming.
35:01
So, back to end of verse 19, 50,070 men, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great slaughter.
35:13
The men of Beth Shemesh stood and said, who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? You know, we hear that quite often through the Old Testament with the prophets.
35:27
I don't know if you remember when I preached a few weeks ago, one of the things that Nahum said, who can stand before God? Who? All the prophets said that.
35:38
Who can stand before God? Nobody.
35:41
Who can stand before God in his anger? Nobody.
35:45
Who can stand before God in their own righteousness and think they're going to be acquitted of their sins? Nobody.
35:51
You can follow that all the way to the end, to the book of Revelation, and you hear him say, you hear John the Revelator say this, in sorrow, who can stand before God? And then you got that great thing that happens right after that, only those who've been sealed by the Holy Spirit.
36:08
So, we know this.
36:09
There is some people that can stand, but you're not going to stand in front of God's presence on your own.
36:14
You're going to stand in the presence of God, clothed in the righteousness of his son, Jesus Christ, and you're going to be standing there sealed with the power of the Holy Spirit to your final day of revelation.
36:25
That is who can stand before God.
36:29
And it says, and to whom shall we go? Who shall go up from us? So, here it is.
36:33
They're going, all right, this great slaughter's happened.
36:36
Now, we need to figure out who's going to go from us.
36:41
They sent messengers to Jeriath, I mean, I shouldn't have got rid of it, but if you'd have left here, it kind of went this way.
36:50
This would have been where the where the ark's going to go.
36:55
So, they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kiriath-Jeriam saying, bring to Philistine, I'm sorry, the Philistines have brought back the ark of the Lord.
37:03
Come down and take it upon you.
37:06
Hey, they're just like the Philistine.
37:08
Yep, here it goes.
37:09
Let's throw it down, kick it on down the next place and see if we can slow down the slaughter.
37:17
One, one thing we need to remember out of this whole thing, God's holy.
37:23
It's the holiness of God that's striking these men and women, whomever it is, dead.
37:28
God's holy.
37:30
And just as he struck down Nadab and Abihu, what did he say? What did Moses say to Aaron? God will be approached as being holy.
37:40
Everybody did in this whole narrative approach God like they could just do what they wanted to do.
37:45
God says, I won't be that way.
37:46
There's instructions on how to approach me.
37:49
That's one thing we need to we need to look at, and the other is that God doesn't need us to take care of his business.
37:56
God needs us to be obedient.
37:59
Notice they didn't, it's interesting that none of the none of the Israelites sent a convoy to try to take back the the ark.
38:09
Nobody ain't trying to set up some seal team six and we're going to try to go get it.
38:14
No, they said, you know, it's gone, let it be.
38:17
And God brought it back.
38:19
God brought it back to his people.
38:21
And yeah, we got three minutes for riots.
38:25
Yes, sir.
38:50
You know, we'll leave that for us.
38:52
But then they'll also see the contrary side of that.
38:54
Whenever God's wrath is against the Israelites, he'll just take them to, he'll allow the Philistines to just go in there and level them out.
39:00
And you can kind of see how, that would have been confusing as a Philistine, like, oh, the ark of the covenant's in with us and, you know, he's doing all this bad stuff to us.
39:07
And then, you know, we go to battle and they're supposedly, that's their God.
39:10
Their God is all-powerful.
39:12
He just, you know, smites with all this, you know, stuff.
39:15
And then we go beat him in battle.
39:16
Like, imagine how confusing that must have been to the Philistines.
39:19
They could really tell when the Israelites were walking with God and when they weren't.
39:22
Oh, sure.
39:23
Because it, I mean, at the Mount Gerizim and Mount Nebo, it was the, when they were blessing, the hollering of the blessing and cursing before they entered the land.
39:30
Remember, Deuteronomy was the last, it was the giving of the law the second time to that next generation.
39:35
God came up from the unbelieving generation.
39:38
And he was there saying, all right, if you do this, you'll live.
39:41
If you do this, you'll die.
39:43
Hey, every time the people were being obedient and doing what God required of them, they were prosperous.
39:48
And what did God say through Moses? When you do these things, you will be prosperous in the land.
39:56
Your enemies will not defeat you.
39:57
They will not ever come up against you.
39:59
And even in the times when you're supposed to leave the the seventh year, to leave the land fallow, they're not going to come in and bother you.
40:07
When you're having your feast times, like I've told you, their enemies are not going to come in around.
40:11
I'm going to protect you.
40:12
But they did not listen and heed the word of God.
40:15
Yes, sir.
40:56
Yeah, they saw bodies washing up on the seashore.
41:10
As he was saying that today we're honoring God, but we should.
41:28
And even several times he Israelites knew that different enemies and God said, this is holy.
41:39
You know, you've got to honor and respect me as that.
41:43
And just how quickly they forgot.
41:45
Sure, even from the exodus, even to now, and you'll even see through all of the prophets if you read, just the raw display of God's power.
41:56
You know, that doesn't convert anyone.
42:00
I mean, God wiping out all of the the world with a flood doesn't convert one soul when someone hears about that.
42:10
God, what's that? Sure, it's the loving kindness of God that leads a man to repentance.
42:17
And you go, okay, man, they saw in the rebellion of Korah, they saw 250 false prophets and false followers of Korah get swallowed up.
42:29
And what did they come doing the next morning? All of them started complaining about what Moses had done.
42:34
And what did God do? He killed another, I think it was like 17,000.
42:38
Hey, and people still didn't get converted.
42:40
They still murmured.
42:42
It always amazed me that Pharaoh, you would think a normal, straight-thinking person would say, on about the third plague, I need to start thinking differently.
42:55
But because God's heart is his heart, he didn't.
42:58
You know what I'm saying? Yeah, well, and the fact that he did at one point, and he changed his mind.
43:02
Okay, I will.
43:03
Yeah, then he started thinking about the consequences.
43:05
Hey, man, I'm gonna have my slave labor's gone, you know, and he went back.
43:10
Yeah, so just like I said, just the raw power of God as far as a display of judgment or even in a display of healing.
43:20
Yeah, I mean, that doesn't convert.
43:22
It takes a special revelation of God to convert a person's soul, even in the Old Testament.
43:28
I'm open to that conversation.
43:30
Every time somebody wants to do that about regeneration and how that worked out in the New Testament versus circumcision of the heart in the Old Testament.
43:37
But the Old Testament, a person, raw power did not give a person the circumcision of the heart.
43:42
It took God doing something in that person.
43:46
Do we know all the systematic way that took place in the Old Testament? No, because it's not laid out for us like it is in the New Testament.
43:55
But God had to do something in the heart of that Israelite or that pagan who become a proselyte for that person to actually replace faith in Yahweh and repent of their sins.
44:06
Raw power never did it.
44:09
No, but he heard the voice of the Lord when God called his name and he was bowing down to pagans and Ur of the Chaldees.
44:20
And then God says, pack your stuff and go.
44:22
And what did he do? He packed his stuff and went.
44:26
Yeah, well, we got to pack our stuff and go or we'll be in trouble with Kiefoski.
44:32
All right.
44:33
Father God, thank you once again for your word.
44:35
Thank you that you have preserved it where we can read it, study it, examine it and see how it applies to our life today.
44:43
Father, thank you that you gave us a special revelation that points us to the only way of salvation, which is through your son, Jesus Christ.
44:49
Now, as we go into this time of singing and the giving of offerings and the taking of the Lord's table and the preaching of the word, father, we pray that we would do it with such a way that would be honor and pleasing to you in Christ's name.
45:01
Amen.