Book of Nehemiah Part 9

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Sunday school from July 9th, 2023

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Book of Nehemiah Part 10

Book of Nehemiah Part 10

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All right, let's pray and we'll get started. Lord Jesus, again, as we open your word, we ask, Lord, through your
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Holy Spirit, to help us to rightly understand what you have revealed there. Pray, Lord, that we not assert ourselves and wrongly understand your word and put ourselves into the middle of it rather than you, and instead see that you are the center, the heart, and the substance of the scriptures which assures us of our salvation.
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Give us ever -growing confidence in your forgiveness, your love, your mercy, and grace, and then through the power of your
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Holy Spirit, we ask, Lord, as penitent sinners, help us to lead lives of repentance and help us to have the strength to produce the good works, to do the good works that you have prepared in advance for us to do that we may serve our neighbor in true love for their sake, not for ours.
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We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, last week, we have been working our way through the book of Nehemia, otherwise known as Nehemiah, if you wanna kinda use an
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Anglo -Saxon twisting of how that's supposed to be transliterated.
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All that being said, we were in the middle of this prayer, this great prayer that is being offered in chapter nine, and this led to me to go down one of my proverbial bunny trails, which
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I enjoy doing. If I can go down a bunny trail that will lead to more scripture getting taught in a lesson, all the better, right?
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And so let me remind you of what kinda led us down that road, and then we'll back up just a little bit in the story of Gideon, and then continue, because it was all making a point, and that was an exegetical one.
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In Nehemia chapter nine, verse 26, "'Nevertheless, they were disobedient. "'They rebelled against you.'"
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Talking about the children of Israel, the ones coming out of Egypt and into the promised land. "'And they cast your law behind their back.'"
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You see, there's your problem right there. You cast God's word, you cast his law behind your back.
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It's always a problem, and it's fascinating to me that you have entire denominations that are built practically on making sure that you not come up with a right understanding of what
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God's word teaches. It's the most bizarre thing ever. They'll sit there and say, well, that teaching isn't biblical, and then you look at them and you go, do you not see what's happening in your church?
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You got everybody speaking in tongues, people falsely prophesying, and just weird practices, and it's clear that they don't know
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God's word. I mentioned this in the men's and women's Bible study yesterday.
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I mentioned it again. Coming out of the Nazarene church, one of the things that really struck me is that in the lessons, in the sermons, in the small group
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Bible studies that I was a part of, I really was not in dialogue with any of the saints that had gone before us.
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In fact, if you want details, like when Barbara and I would attend small group
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Bible studies, because that was the day when those were just coming on the scene. Everybody wanted to be part of a small group
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Bible study, so we were part of a small group Bible study. I can't remember the couple who, I don't remember their names, but I remember their faces, but we would sit in their living room, and we'd all be, some people would sit on the couch, basically effectively creating some kind of a circular type of thing.
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We're all facing the coffee table, the important place where the Doritos were, and the lady leading the study, she would open up a biblical text, and she would read one, two verses, and then she'd say, let's pray, and then we'd pray.
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Of course, we all had to hold hands for that, and I hated that, because I didn't like holding hands with men, it just creeps me out, and my pronouns are still he, him.
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Anyway, all that being said, then the study would begin, and the study was not, here's what this text means, here's what
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God is conveying, or anything like this. Instead, we went around the room group therapy style, answering this question, what does this verse mean to you?
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What does this verse mean to you? And you'll note that that type of activity is really deceptive, and the reason it's deceptive is because when you finished that Bible study, and you have to put the word
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Bible study now in air quotes, when you finish that Bible study, if someone said to you, you didn't study the
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Bible, you'd say, are you crazy, what are you talking about? Of course we studied the Bible, we all brought our Bibles.
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We opened our Bibles, you had the text read to us. And of course we had a
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Bible study. No, you did not. You had a lot of pious, self -reflective, psycho -babble activity, but you did not legitimately study
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God's word. And I remember when Barb and I first came out of the latter rain movement, I mean, we went into that thing whole hog.
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I mean, and it was the precursor to today's new apostolic reformation.
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And prophets had just been restored to the church according to the latter rain at that time.
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But when we got out of there, Barb looks at me and she goes, I don't know who we can trust.
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You know, we had been so deceived and so abused and so manipulated by the false prophet that was over that particular congregation.
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Actually, prophetess, I have to make sure I get my gender right on that, because it was a she who was running the place.
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That we didn't feel like we can trust anybody. And I remember telling Barb, I said,
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I don't know who to trust. I think we can trust the Bible, but I'm pretty convinced we don't know what it means. And what a horrible thing to think about.
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Because my parents had spent tens of thousands of dollars in order for me to attend a private
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Christian high school. And it wasn't cheap, you know?
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I almost think I would have done better if I'd gone to Pagan Arcadia High, you know?
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At least then I wouldn't have been spinning my wheels, because even when I was at Maranatha, I can think of only one of my
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Bible teachers, we were required to take Bible, I can only think of one Bible teacher who legitimately tried to engage in some kind of meaningful exegesis and tried to teach us some discernment.
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And I thought that it was a complete waste of time. Legitimately. And it was
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Mr. Houston who was the teacher who taught us, who tried to teach us the word of God. He even went so far to do comparative stuff between Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and things like this.
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And I remember taking notes and listening, but thinking Mr. Houston, ya -da -da -da -da -da, you know?
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This isn't very spiritual. And over and again, one of the things I think is fascinating is talking to people coming out of these churches is the complete culture in these churches where people who take the
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Bible seriously, who really read the scriptures, that they are considered to be weird.
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And that somehow the Bible is a hindrance to what the Spirit wants to do today.
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It's crazy. So you'll note that if this is your story, it's mine too.
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And so I'm always looking for reasons to pack as much Bible into a sermon or lesson as possible.
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But you'll note that children of Israel, when they got there, they took God's word and they just threw it behind their backs. And then they killed the prophets who had warned them in order to turn them back to you.
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And they committed great blasphemies. It's happening today. Therefore you gave them into the hand of their enemies, you made them suffer, and in the time of their suffering they cried out to you, and you heard them from heaven, and according to your great mercies you gave them, it doesn't say judges, it says
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Moshiach, saviors. God gave them saviors. And so I was making an exegetical point.
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When you read the book of Judges, last week we began to take a look at the story of Gideon.
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And the standard way in which it's preached nowadays is you're Gideon, okay? You're Gideon.
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And God's gonna show up one of these days while you're threshing your wheat in your wine vat, whatever that means, right?
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And he's gonna say to you, oh, mighty warrior. Really, me, a mighty warrior?
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Yes, you, I knew I was so important, you know, right? You know, this is just crazy stuff.
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And the reality is that, again, Scripture interprets Scripture. And so you'll note that the
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Bible invites you in to dialogue with God, invites you in to read its wide expanse.
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And you'll note that working your way through the Bible is similar to kind of like traveling the world, if you would.
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There are certain places, certain destinations that are well -traveled. There are certain landmarks in the
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Scriptures where everybody wants to take a selfie in front of it. That's totally understandable. But I think the better parts of Scripture are the ones that are less traveled, you know?
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From time to time, I really enjoy travel YouTube channels. Like, you wanna know how I spend my
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Mondays? Okay, I watch, you know, anyway,
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I watch travel YouTube channels, or photography channels that deal with travel photography or street photography from London or the
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Netherlands or places like this, right? But you'll note that when we talk about travel, there's like the places where everybody goes.
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And then I like Kara and Nate's YouTube channel. If you haven't seen that, it's worth a watch,
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Kara and Nate. They like traveling to places and embedding themselves in the people who live there.
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Totally different way to travel, right? And that is unique.
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You know, and you get to see things that you don't normally see. How many times do you wanna see the Eiffel Tower? I don't really wanna see it again, okay?
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I've seen it plenty of times, even though I've never seen it with my own eyes. I've seen photographs of it, I've seen video of it.
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I know pretty much how the land is laid out, and I know that there's a line to go up to the
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Eiffel Tower, and you're supposed to do it once in your lifetime kind of thing. But that's a whole other thing than living with a family who has a flat in Paris, you know?
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And going with them for breakfast at a little cafe, and sitting outside and drinking some coffee, and talking with the neighbors as they're walking their dogs and stuff like that.
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That's a totally different thing. And I like to think of the lesser travel portions of scripture as kind of like that.
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And the reason why the books like that are a little harder for us to get at is because we have to be educated a little bit on the culture.
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We have to stop thinking as Americans and stop thinking in terms of red states and blue states, and Biden and Trump and all this kind of nonsense, right?
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You have to put all that away. You're traveling to a foreign shore. You've got to stop, you've got to listen.
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This is a different time, a different place, a different people. You know, the Bible, because it's living and active, you know, always cracks me up when
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I'm scrolling through TikTok. You know, it's one of the things I use to go to sleep nowadays because it's just complete nonsense, you know?
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And next thing, you know, funny thing, I'll be kind of scrolling through TikTok and next thing you know, I've realized,
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I've listened to the audio on a video explaining to me how to make Bundt cake, like, you know, six times, you know?
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And I'm having dreams about making Bundt cake. It's like, turn this thing off, right? But the fascinating bit is that as you're scrolling through these things, you come across people and things and places that you've never encountered before.
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You, that's the wonderful thing about TikTok is it kind of brings you into people's homes that you never would be able to get into.
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And those are the kinds of social media posts that I like. Yes, Dwayne? It's the difference between having the image of something and then, as opposed to truly experiencing it.
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Right, exactly, the image of truly experiencing. And then on TikTok, there's whole videos dedicated to, is time travel possible?
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Okay, it's funny that the TikTok algorithm knows me so well that it knows I'm a nerd.
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It knows that when something scientific or has to do with astrophotography or astronomy comes up,
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I'm gonna stop and watch. And so, yeah, I always get sent these videos that have to do with time travel.
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But I want you to think of it this way. Time travel for a
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Christian absolutely can happen on a day -to -day basis. And here's the reason why.
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Not because of wormholes or things like this, but because the word of God is living and active.
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When you open up the scriptures and you go back and you read the story of Nehemiah or you read the story of Gideon, because the word of God is living and active, this is not merely a retelling of ancient history.
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There's an aspect to this that in almost kind of, do you guys remember the video game
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Myst when it came out? This book would grab you and suck you in and take you somewhere else, right?
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And you'd travel to different places. The Bible's kind of like that. Believe me, you cannot master it, it will master you because it has a mind.
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It knows what it's doing and it has a voice and it has something to say. And one of the things
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I love about reading the church fathers is seeing their dialogue with the text.
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Hearing what they came to the conclusion of as they wrestled with the text.
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And the worst pastor on planet Earth would be the one who grabs it, purchases a sermon from purposedriven .com
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and just downloads them and delivers them complete with the PowerPoint presentation that goes with it. And the reason why that would be the worst pastor in the world is because this is a guy who's not in dialogue with the text.
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He's not wrestling with these things. I got to admit that my sermon prep this week, it consumed me for like four days.
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Not because I didn't know what I was going to say, it's because I knew what I needed to say. And it bothered me.
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One of those things that just, it bothered me. I felt like, you ever have like a splinter that's just under the skin and you can't quite get it out and it's irritating and you keep picking at it hoping that the thing will pop out eventually.
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It was kind of like that in my sermon prep this week. It was a lot like that. I knew exactly what
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I needed to say, but the thing is is that I wanted desperately to do it justice.
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Because it's so vital to get that. So all that being said, the text here, talking about the judges refers to them as what?
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Saviors. Hmm, that means the judges, I'm not Gideon, you're not
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Gideon. I always like to sit there and go, thank God I'm not Gideon. Listen to the people narcijete these texts.
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You need to go out and slay your Goliaths. I don't even want to get off the couch, are you kidding me?
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You want me to get out of my desk chair and stop sitting and reading and you want me to go out and slay a giant?
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Are you nuts? Okay, my wife has a hard enough time getting me to mow the lawn. But the wonderful thing is that the story of the judges aren't about you.
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You can locate yourself in this text as the one who sinned against God's holy law, took his word, cast it behind your back, and God has sold you into slavery.
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And you sit there and go, well that's not a very flattering picture. It's the truth, okay? Rather than it being the
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Midianites or some flea -bitten half -tribe somewhere in the Middle East, he's sold us into slavery to sin, death, and the devil, right?
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These are all little pictures of our own salvation. And so when we left off with Gideon, Gideon had realized that he was now looking at Yahweh, that he had seen the angel of the
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Lord and he was afraid that he was gonna die, okay? That's a standard operating procedure in the Old Testament, by the way.
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You come in contact with the angel of Yahweh, okay? The angel of the
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Lord. People think that they're gonna die. It occurs several times in the Old Testament. So Gideon perceived that he was the angel of Yahweh and Gideon said, alas, oh
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Lord God, for now I've seen the angel of Yahweh face -to -face. And God says nobody can see my face and live, right?
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So he thinks he's gonna die. But Yahweh said to him, peace, shalom be to you. Do not fear, you shall not die.
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So then Gideon built an altar there to Yahweh and called it Yahweh is Peace.
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To this day, it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Aborizerites. Now this is not
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Oprah, it's Ophrah. Just wanna let you know that. So that night, and here's where things are gonna get interesting, kind of dicey for poor
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Gideon. Yahweh said to him, take your father's bull and the second bull, seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has and cut down the
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Asherah that is beside it. You want me to do what? My dad is gonna be so mad at me.
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Seriously, God told me to do this stuff. Now there are sins that you can commit against your elders.
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And then there are sins that you can commit against your elders. I remember when I was in high school, one of my best friends, he lived with his grandfather.
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And his grandfather had one of these newer fangled computers and he had just purchased the
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Ghostbusters 2 game for his computer. And you know what this fellow did?
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He kept the door to his office locked, okay? And so my friend calls me up one summer night and says, my grandparents are out of town for the next two days.
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And I said, how do we get in there to play that game? He says, I don't know. I said, do you know how to pick a lock?
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He says, no, I don't know how to pick a lock. But we found a way to use some kind of a shim or something like that to get into that office.
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And two nights in a row, we went into the wee hours of the night playing this stupid Ghostbusters 2 game.
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And I'll never forget that. But it was a sin against this fellow's grandfather. But here
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Gideon is pulling down his father's idol altars, all right?
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So, so pull down and cut down the Asherah that is beside it. Build an altar to Yahweh your
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God on the top of the stronghold here with stones laid in due order. Then take the second bowl, offer it as a burnt offering.
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Oh man, pull down the altar and then sacrifice one of his bowls. With the wood of the Asherah that you cut down, you can tell that God is really not keen on his girlfriend.
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You know, Asherah, he just does not like that chick. So Gideon then took 10 men of his servants and did as Yahweh had told him.
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But because he was too afraid of his family and the men of the town to do it by day, he did it by night.
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Okay, again I pointed out, today's standards, this would be considered a religious hate crime, right?
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He's going to federal prison for this. So then the men of the town, they rose early in the morning. Behold, the altar of Baal was broken down and the
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Asherah beside it was cut down and the second bowl was offered on the altar that had been built. He left all the evidence there.
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Oh wow, you know, CSI is coming in, crime scene investigators. We still have the bowl sitting on the altar.
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Oh my goodness, right? It's a good thing they didn't have fingerprints. Right, right, right. So they said, and you're gonna note here, by the fact that the men of the town noticing this, that means that this altar, which was set up by Gideon's father, was being used as a religious center by everybody in the town.
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So Gideon's father was kind of a self -made, idolatrous priest.
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He was considered a religious figure, one of the chief religious dudes of this town.
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And so they said to one another, who has done this thing? And after that, they searched and inquired.
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They said, Gideon, the son of Joash, has done this thing. They had 10 men helping him.
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How long before you think one of them turned state's evidence here, right? So then the men of the town said to Joash, bring out your son so that he may die, for he has broken down the altar of Baal and cut down the
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Asherah beside it. But Joash said to all who stood against him, will you contend for Baal, or will you save him?
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Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, then let him contend for himself, because his altar has been broken down.
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Therefore, on that day, Gideon was called Jeroboam, which is kind of an interesting name, let
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Baal contend against him. So Jeroboam, the one who contends against Baal, because he broke down Baal's altar.
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So he escapes, he doesn't get put to death, and it's kind of fascinating what's going on here.
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Now all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East came together, they crossed the Jordan and they encamped in the
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Valley of Jezreel. But the spirit, the ruach of Yahweh, clothed
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Gideon. That's an interesting way of phrasing it, okay? So the Holy Spirit comes upon Gideon in a way that the
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Hebrew describes it as he's now clothed with the ruach of Yahweh.
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And so he sounded the trumpet, and the Aborizerites were called out to follow him. And he sent messengers throughout all
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Manasseh, and they too called out to follow him. And he sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they went up to meet them.
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So then Gideon said to God. Now, by the way, this is another very famous twisted text.
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Let me point this out here. This is not a text that is prescribing a practice or a practice, okay?
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So here at Kongsvinger, we're making a decision as to which contractor will be used to work on repainting.
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We were surfacing, working our stuff out here, moving the dyke and all this kind of stuff.
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So the one thing we're not going to be doing here at Kongsvinger is grabbing a sheep fleece and sticking it out at night and say, if it's this contractor, let it be wet, and if it's this contractor, let it be dry.
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This is not a prescription. So if you've ever talked to somebody who says, you know,
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I know that you have a tough decision that you need to make, brother, but maybe you need to put a fleece out on this one.
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I don't even own a fleece, okay? So I'm not putting no fleeces out, all right?
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We are not instructed to do this. This is legitimately, you're gonna note
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Gideon, for all of his mighty men of valor talk that God gave him, he sure does seem to be a very cautious individual and does not want to behave or act presumptuously.
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And so he needs God to give him signs so that he's not, he doesn't think he's crazy, right?
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That's what's going on here. So if anyone prescribes to you and says, brother, you need to put a fleece out on that decision, no, you don't, okay?
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You need to look that person in the eye and says, bless your heart, you need to stop twisting God's word, okay?
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So then Gideon said to God, if you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said, behold,
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I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece alone and it is dry on all the ground, then
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I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said. He's looking for a sign.
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He needs God to validate what he's doing. He needs a sign so that he doesn't think he's acting presumptuously.
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And it was so. So when he rose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl with water.
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And then Gideon said to God, let not your anger burn against me, let me speak just once more.
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Please let me test just once more with the fleece. Please let it be dry on the fleece only and on all the ground let there be dew.
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Best two out of three, okay God? And so God did so that night and it was dry on the fleece only and on all the ground there was dew.
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You, by the way, are not promised that if you lay a fleece out that God's going to do this same thing for you.
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You don't have that. You don't have that kind of a thing going on in your life. So you're gonna have to act differently.
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Then we got the story of Gideon's 300 men, which is a hilarious kind of story when you think about it. And there's a reason why
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God whittles this army down to 300 and he explains it in the text. So then
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Jeroboam, that is Gideon, I love how they now changed him, you know. The one who's contended against Baal.
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And all the people who were with him, they rose early and encamped beside the spring of Harad.
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Now since Gideon is a stand -in for Christ, you'll note that one of the ways we can talk about Jesus is
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Jesus is Jeroboam. He's the one who contends against Baal. He's the one who contends against the false idols and tears them down.
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Indeed he does. So all the people who were with him rose early and they camped beside the spring of Harad and the camp of Midian was north of them by the hill of Mora in the valley.
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And Yahweh said to Gideon, the people with you are too many for me to give the
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Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying my own hand has saved me.
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You'll note that this flies in the face of all military doctrine. Okay, all known military doctrine.
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If you're attacking a position and the other position is defending, you need what, two, three, four times the number of men than the defenders need.
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That's just kind of standard military doctrine. And so 22 ,000 men show up and God says, uh -uh, you got too many.
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What do you mean we got too many? Right, and so God's making this clear. I want to whittle this down to such an obscenely small number for this purpose because if I don't, the people of Israel are so wicked, they're gonna say, woo -hoo, we won the battle.
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So God is saying, we're gonna whittle this down to such a number that nobody can say that, okay? So now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people saying, whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home and hurry away from Mount Gilead.
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Now in military terms, if somebody legitimately flees the scene because of fear, they get shot, okay?
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You're not allowed to do this. But God's like, hey, are any of you guys afraid? Yeah, I'm afraid I'm gonna die.
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Go away, go home, okay. So 22 ,000 of the people returned, only 10 ,000 remained.
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Okay, so then Yahweh said to Gideon, the people are still too many. Take them down to the water and I will test them for you there.
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If anyone of whom I say to you, this one shall go with you, shall go with you. And anyone of whom I say to you, this one shall not go with you, shall not go with you.
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So he brought the people down to the water and Yahweh said to Gideon, get this, everyone who laps the water with his tongue as a dog laps, you shall set by himself.
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Likewise, everyone who kneels down to drink and the number of those who lapped, they drank from the river like a dog, sticking their face into the water and go, you okay?
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He's gonna take the most feral of the Israelites. These are the ones who haven't even learned how to use a fork, a knife, a spoon, or a cup or anything like this, right?
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You can imagine having these guys over for dinner would be really gross. So the number of those who lapped, putting their hands to their mouths was 300 men but all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water.
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And Yahweh said to Gideon, with the 300 men who lapped, I will save you and give the
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Midianites into your hand and then let all the others go, every man to his own home. You want me to fight the
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Midianites with 300 feral men who, holy smokes, okay. So the people took provisions in their hands and their trumpets and then he sent all the rest of Israel, every man to his tent but retained the 300 men and the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.
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Now, this is an interesting thing and this requires you, when you read the scriptures, to do a little bit of pattern recognition.
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The scriptures legitimately cross -reference themselves and hyperlink to different passages but even some of the best cross -reference systems that I've seen don't really key in on how certain patterns work.
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And so let me explain to you what's going on here by doing a little bit of work here. We're gonna go to 1
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Thessalonians, hang on a second here. All right, let's see,
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I might need to back up just a little bit but, coming of our
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Lord, okay. So let's do a little bit of work. So here's our context for this and watch the pattern.
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But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
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For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
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For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive who are left until the coming of the
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Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with what?
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A cry of command, a voice, with the voice of an archangel and with the sound of the trumpet of God, okay.
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So you're gonna note, in the New Testament, we see this. There's a kind of a pattern.
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When you have description of Jesus' return and glory to judge the living and the dead, several passages in the
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New Testament will talk about this trumpet, the cry of command and things like this.
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And that that is, these are patterns, these are details that show up in the scriptures related to the day of judgment, okay.
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So when we look at Gideon and his story, and you'll note there's several stories of these different saviors, these judges of Israel, where when they finally overcome the bad guys and they finally have victory over them, they reflect different aspects of what
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Christ has done or will do. In their case, since it's Old Testament stuff that he will do.
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So you think about one of the most difficult, to wrap your head around, of the saviors of Israel, and that's
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Samson, all right. Samson is a complete and utter moral train wreck.
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I mean, if anyone gives me hope that I can be saved, it's Samson, right. And yet he's a savior and he's a type and shadow of Christ.
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How does his death take place? His death takes place because he ends up laying down his own life, sacrificing himself in order to defeat the enemies.
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And the way he does it is his arms are against these two pillars, and he pushes the pillars out, which causes the whole superstructure of this building where all the
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Philistines are in to come collapsing down. He killed more people in his death than he did during his lifetime.
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But you gotta know, Samson with his outstretched arms, that sounds a lot like Jesus being crucified on the cross.
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But, so you know, Samson picks up that aspect of Christ, and the whole reason why Samson is a moral train wreck is because of the scandal of the cross itself.
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Okay, God lays on Jesus the iniquity of us all, and we considered him to be cursed and afflicted by God and smitten and all these kind of things.
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And so, the best way I can put it, there's an offense to this idea of taking our sins and laying them on Christ, and Christ bleeding, suffering, and dying for your sins and mine, which becomes then a stumbling block for Jews.
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Because the Bible says, curse is everyone who is hung on a tree. How can Jesus be the Messiah? He is cursed.
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Right. And you say, what do you mean, right? He was cursed for you, in your place, you should have been the one cursed.
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That's kind of the point. So, Samson picks up that aspect of it. But we then, when we look at Gideon, and his defeat, or God's defeat through him of the
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Midianites, it has a different focus. And so, the idea here, this is going to be a type and shadow of Christ's return at the end of the age.
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And you can see it in the pattern recognition based upon the details. And another place where you see these details show up, also, is in the fall of Jericho.
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All right, when Jericho falls, okay, what do the children of Israel do? They circle Jericho once a day for how many days?
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Six days. And then on the seventh day, they circle it again. And then at the end of the circles,
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I forget how many, it was seven on the seventh day. What happens? They shout, and they blow their trumpets, and the walls of Jericho come a -tumbling down, right?
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That's a type and shadow of Jesus's return and glory to judge the living and the dead as well.
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The details of the shout, of the trumpet, and these things, they hearken to what
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Christ, what the New Testament reveals regarding Jesus's return. So Gideon is not merely a stand -in for Christ, but his defeat of the
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Midianites invokes Christ's second coming and his final judgment.
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Does that make sense? All right, let's take a look at the details, and you can see this. So that same night,
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Yahweh said to him, "'Rise, go down to the camp, "'for I've given it into your hand. "'But if you are afraid to go down, "'and go down to the camp with Purah, your servant, "'and you shall hear what they say, "'and afterwards your hand shall be strengthened "'to go down against the camp.'
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So then he went down with Purah, his servant, to the outposts of the armed men who were in the camp.
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And the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the people of the east lay along the valley like locusts in abundance, and their camels were without number, as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance.
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When Gideon came, behold, a man was telling a dream to his comrade, and he said, "'Behold,
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I dreamed a dream, "'and behold, a cake of barley bread "'tumbled into the camp of Midian, "'and came to the tent and struck it "'so that it fell and turned it upside down, "'so that the tent lay flat.'
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And his comrade answered, "'This is no other than the sword of Gideon, "'the son of Joash, a man of Israel.
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"'God has given into his hand Midian and all the camp.'" Huh, that's interesting.
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Not only a dream, but it's an interpretation, and it's spot on, all right? You'll note that when
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God has decided that he's gonna act and he's going to defeat, he cheats, he absolutely stacks all the cards in his favor, everything, he works all the details.
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So as soon as Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped. And he returned to the camp of Israel and said, "'Rise, for Yahweh has given the host of Midian "'into your hand.
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"'Then he divided the 300 men into three companies "'and put trumpets into the hands of all of them "'and empty jars with torches inside the jars.
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"'And he said to them, look at me and do likewise. "'And when I come to the outskirts of the camp, "'do as I do.
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"'When I blow the trumpet and I and all who are with me, "'then blow the trumpets also on every side "'of all the camp and shout.'"
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Sounds like the day of judgment. That's the point. This is a dress rehearsal for that. Yahweh, say, for Yahweh and for Gideon.
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So Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch.
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And they had just set the watch. And they blew the trumpets, smashed the jars that were in their hands, and the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the jars.
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In other words, this is a sneak attack. This is a nighttime sneak attack. And one minute they're playing cards in the camp.
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Next minute they are hearing trumpets and they are seeing torches. And they have no idea where any of this came from because their scouts didn't see any of this coming.
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So they held in their left hand the torches and in their right hand the trumpets to blow. And then they cried out, a sword for Yahweh and for Gideon.
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And every man stood in his place around the camp. And all the army ran. They cried out and fled.
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And when they blew the 300 trumpets, the Lord set every man's sword against his comrade and against all the army.
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And the army fled as far as Beth Shittah toward the Zerahah as far as the border of Abomolohah by Tabath.
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And the men of Israel were called out from Naphtali and from Asher and from all
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Manasseh. And they pursued after Midian. Gideon sent messengers throughout all the hill country of Ephraim saying, come down against the
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Midianites and capture the waters against them as far as Beth Barah and also the
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Jordan. So all the men of Ephraim were called out and they captured the waters as far as Beth Barah and also the
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Jordan. And they captured the two princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb. And they killed
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Oreb at the Rock of Oreb and Zeeb they killed at the winepress of Zeeb. And they pursued
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Midian and they brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon across the Jordan. Story of salvation, right?
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Who won this victory again? God did, right? So then the men of Ephraim said to him, what is this that you've done to us?
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Not to call us when you went to fight against Midian. And they accused him fiercely.
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And he said to them, what have I done now in comparison with you? Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the grape harvest of Abiezar?
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God has given into your hands the princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb. What have
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I been able to do in comparison with you? Then their anger against him subsided when he said this.
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And then Gideon came to the Jordan, crossed over. He and the 300 men who were with him, exhausted yet pursuing.
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And so he said to the men of Sukkoth, please give loaves of bread to the people who follow me for they are exhausted and I am pursuing after Zeba and Zalmunna, the kings of Midian.
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And the officials of Sukkoth said, are the hands of Zeba and Zalmunna already in your hand that we should give bread to your army?
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So Gideon said, well then, when Yahweh has given Zeba and Zalmunna into my hand,
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I will flail your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briars. And from there he went to Penuel.
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He spoke to them in the same way. And the men of Penuel answered him as the men of Sukkoth and answered, and he said to the men of Penuel, when
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I come again in peace, I will break down this tower. Now Zeba and Zalmunna were in Karkor with their army, about 15 ,000 men, all who were left of all of the army of the people of the east, for they had fallen 120 ,000 men who drew the sword.
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Whoa, that's a big loss. And Gideon went up by the way of the tent dwellers east of Noba and Jagbahad and attacked the army and the army felt secure.
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And Zeba and Zalmunna fled and he pursued them and captured the two kings of Midian, Zeba and Zalmunna, and he threw all the army into a panic.
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How is he doing this with only 300 men? You'll know it, God's the one doing the fighting, right?
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So then Gideon, the son of Joash, returned from the battle by the ascent of Heres, and he captured a young man of Sukkoth and questioned him.
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And he wrote down for him the officials and elders of Sukkoth, 77 men, and he came to the men of Sukkoth and said, behold,
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Zeba and Zalmunna, about whom you taunted me, saying, are the hands of Zeba and Zalmunna already in your hand that we would give you bread to your men who are exhausted?
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And he took the elders of the city and he took thorns of the wilderness and briars with them and taught the men of Sukkoth a lesson.
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Whoa. And he broke down the tower of Penuel and killed the men of the city.
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And then he said to Zeba and Zalmunna, where are the men whom you killed at Tabor? They answered, as you are, so were they.
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Every one of them resembled the son of a king. And then he said, they were my brothers, the sons of my mother.
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As Yahweh lives, if you have saved them alive, I would not kill you. So he said to Jether, his firstborn, rise and kill them.
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The young man did not draw his sword, for he was afraid because he was still a young man. So then
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Zeba and Zalmunna said, rise yourself and fall upon us. For as the man is, so is his strength.
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And Gideon arose and killed Zeba and Zalmunna. He took the crescent ornaments that were on the necks of their camels.
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Oracle of Islam, I don't know, right? So then the men of Israel said to Gideon, rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also, for you have saved us from the hand of Midian.
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Interesting, right? Great story. But all that was to make a point here. Gideon is a type of Christ.
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And when you let the scriptures teach you from some of the less traveled portions of scripture, pay attention to the way scripture talks about itself.
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Then you are able to key in and say, okay, I see this. I'm not Gideon. Gideon is a savior.
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And these are all pointing to God and Christ's salvation for us. These are all little different vignette stories of Christ's victory, his works, and the things he does to save us.
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So going back then to the prayer. After they had rest, they did evil again before you.
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And you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies so that they had dominion over them. Yet when they turned and cried to you, you heard from heaven and many times you delivered them according to your mercies.
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And you're gonna note, when you read the book of Judges, Israel falling back into idolatry happens like every other chapter.
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Doesn't happen once, doesn't happen twice, doesn't happen three times. It's just a recurring problem, right?
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How about you, right? And yet God delivers us according to his mercies.
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And you warn them in order to turn them back to your law. Yet they acted presumptuously. They did not obey your commandments.
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They sinned against your rulers, which if a person does them, he shall live by them. And they turned a stubborn shoulder at a stiffened, they stiffened their neck and they would not obey.
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Many years you bore with them and warned them by your spirit through your prophets.
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Yet they would not give ear. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands.
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Nevertheless, in your great mercies, you did not make an end of them or forsake them for you are a gracious and a merciful
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God. You'll note here that a good way to think about this is that as long as somebody is alive, they are not a lost cause, right?
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And so note the great patience, the great kindness, the great mercy of God, who in his steadfast love doesn't make a full end of these rebellious sinners who refuse to hear his words and kill his prophets and have gone their own way.
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He, in his great mercy, did not make a full end to them. And I would note that is a mercy for you and for I as well, because where's the
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Messiah in all of this? The Messiah's line continues to just march along, go back to the story at the beginning of Matthew chapter one.
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All of those names are invoking these stories from this family, from this clan, right?
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And so you'll note God was using these Jews and showing great mercy to them in the face of their idolatry and rebellion in order to bring
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Christ so that we can be forgiven. So now therefore our God, the great, the mighty, the awesome
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God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardships seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and all your people since the time of the kings of Assyria until this day.
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We have this in common with these folks. That is that we all experience hardship and difficulty in our lives because of our sin too, right?
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It's not the exact same hardship, but yet we all suffer hardship as a result of sin. Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us for you have dealt faithfully and we, we have acted wickedly.
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Our kings, our princes, our priests, our fathers have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them.
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Even in their own kingdom and amid your great goodness that you gave them and in the large and the rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works.
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Behold, we are slaves this day in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruits and its good gifts.
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Behold, we are slaves. And you'll note that that's a humbling thing to have to say, but it's true.
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At one point, they were free. They were the ones who sovereignly had control over their own nation and they used their freedom for wickedness.
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And so God has brought them back under a yoke of slavery. Now they're slaves. They're a vassal state under the great
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Babylonian empire. And that will soon change. They'll change hands and be under a vassal state of the
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Greek empire, you know, because of Alexander the Great.
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And then after that, they will become a slave state, a vassal puppet nation under the
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Roman empire, right? And all of this because of their sin. So we are slaves.
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Its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies, over our livestock, as they please, and we are in great distress.
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Because of all of this, we make a firm covenant in writing. On the sealed document are the names of our princes, our
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Levites, and our priests. And so they're making a covenant with God to return back.
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So on the seals are the names of Nehemiah, the governor, the son of Hekeliah, Zedekiah, Zerahiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashur, Amariah, Melchijah, Hatush, Shabaniah, Maluk, Kharim, Meramoth, you get the idea.
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These are all the people who signed this after their prayer. So the rest of the people, the priests and the
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Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of God.
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Their wives, their sons, their daughters, all who have knowledge and understanding, join with their brothers, their nobles, and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God's law that was given by Moses, the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of Yahweh, our
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Lord, and his rules and his statutes. We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.
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You'll note that this is actually forbidden in the Mosaic Covenant for this very purpose, is that they would then, the people of the lands are idolaters, and that they would be a snare to these people, right?
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And this is not some kind of a blanket statement that says, well, we need to engage in racial segregation.
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No, the segregation was based upon religious reasons, right? I always like to remind people,
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Rahab, the prostitute, what was she? Canaanite, right? And who did she marry?
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She married one of the sons of Judah, in fact, the guy who was in line, who was the descendant of Christ.
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And then you remember Ruth, right? She was a Moabitess, and yet she believed in Yahweh.
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So Rahab believes in Yahweh, Ruth believes in Yahweh. And so they are grafted in, whereas the reason why the prohibition exists in the
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Mosaic Covenant forbidding people to marry the people from the nation surrounding them is because they're all idolaters, all right?
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You know, those idolaters chicks are really hot. They're also really sexually loose. All the more reason you should avoid them like the plague, right, yes, yes, yeah,
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I can think of a particular king of Israel, son of David, by the name of Solomon.
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He had how many wives again? 900?
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You know, 900, okay? And his wives were not believers in Yahweh, and they wanted to worship their false gods, and they pestered him day and night, and he gave in, right?
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So they became a snare for him. And so, same for us, right? What do you think about Lutherans marrying non -believers?
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Don't do it, scripture forbids it, don't do it, all right? Well, what if I decide that I'm gonna marry a
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Roman Catholic chick? She's gonna have you praying to marry inside of two years, all right? Don't do it, this is not how this works, all right?
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And so if the peoples of the land bring in goods or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the
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Sabbath or on a holy day. So you know, things in Jerusalem had gotten so bad that the markets were still open on the
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Sabbath, right? And so now they've made it, they basically said, we're not going to buy on the
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Sabbath, and we'll forego the crops of the seventh year and the exaction of every debt. Interesting.
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So they are returning back to the Mosaic Covenant and deciding to keep it because they've been hearing it, and they realize from the word of God that the reason why they went into exile and now they're slaves in their own territory is because of their sin and rebellion.
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We also take on ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third part of a shekel for the service of the house of God and for the showbread, the regular grain offering, the regular burnt offering, the
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Sabbath, the new moon, the appointed feast, the holy things, and the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel and for all the work of the house of our
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God. Oh yeah, we're also going to pay for the upkeep of the temple, kind of important.
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I like to remind the folks at Kongsvinger here, the preaching is free, but upkeeping this building is not.
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So keep that in mind. So we the priests, the Levites, and the people have likewise cast lots for the wood offering to bring it into the house of our
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God according to our Father's houses at times appointed year by year to burn on the altar of Yahweh our
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God as it is written in the law. We obligate ourselves to bring the first fruits of our ground and the first fruits of all the fruit of every tree year by year to the house of Yahweh.
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Now note here, they're already obligated to do that by the Mosaic covenant.
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What their covenant with God is doing is recognizing that they are obligated and that their intent is to obligate, not only be obligated by God, but to obligate themselves to follow these things.
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Now you're going to note here, they start off well, but during the intertestamental period who also rises up.
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So if you do a comparison, this is where the devil's super sneaky. The people of Israel, the people of Judah during Jeremiah's time, open, rank, defiant, idolatry, and rebellion against God and a refusal to hear his word, right?
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They come back from exile, they're totally humbled, they are listening to, studying, hearing, meditating on the word of God, and they've obligated themselves to keep the law and to obey
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God's word and to hear it. It is during the next centuries that the
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Pharisees rose up. And you can almost hear their pitch meeting, right?
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Listen, we've obligated ourselves to keep Torah, but we have a better idea, okay? We're going to add a thousand more commands to the 600 of scripture.
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And if you keep our commands, you'll never break the 600 in God's word.
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And this way, it'll guarantee that you can keep them. It doesn't work that way, right?
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Yeah, Marilyn. They slid into the opposite ditch. Yeah, they slid into the opposite ditch. But you're gonna note something here.
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It's still a sneaky form of idolatry, okay? Because we are commanded by God that we are not to add to or take away from his word.
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In other words, God's word is sufficient. The Pharisees come along and say, oh, well, there's two
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Torahs. There's also this oral Torah and the tradition of the elders and all this kind of stuff.
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And we're obligated, we're gonna add to all of these things and all this kind of stuff. They're adding to the word of God. And so what happens is that when
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Christ arrives on the scene in history, the
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Jews of his time are every bit as idolatrous as the
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Jews of Jeremiah's time, except for it's cloaked itself now in a cloak of Bible -ish piety, but it's by the addition of scripture, adding to the scripture rather than taking away or ignoring it.
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So they end up going in the opposite direction. It's a fascinating thing when you consider it.
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And so the scriptures, again, warn us not to add to or to take away from God's word.
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It's sufficient and we need to hear it. We cannot despise it, cast it behind its back and we need to be attentive to the voice of God in the scripture, right?
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So I think what I'm gonna do here is this is where I'm going to at least end off for today.
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And Jacob says, 900 wives, that's too much. I can't even handle one. Okay, you know, one is more than I can bear.
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All right, too much work, okay. All right, I'm kind of backing up, making sure.
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No, no, no, okay. Yeah, so there's talk about shiny, happy people.
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If you haven't seen that, that is an eye -opening documentary, sad in all of its ways. The shouts from the army of Gideon and Christ's return are also referenced to the cry, the shout from Christ upon his death.
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That's not a bad way of looking at it also, John. You know, Christ defeats his enemy, is on the cross and he cries out, it is finished, right?
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Yeah, I like that reference too, John. I don't think you've overcooked your typology. I think that's a great reference, thank you.