Book of Nehemiah Part 11

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Sunday School Ezekiel Part 12

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So let's pray, and then we will get into our study. Lord Jesus, again, as we open your word, we ask that your

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Holy Spirit help us to rightly understand what you have revealed there, that we may not despise these details, but see your hand in the scriptures and recognize what your word says, that all scripture is

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God -breathed, theanoustas, and is profitable for teaching, correcting, rebuking, so that the man of God may be complete.

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Without your word, we are incomplete, Lord Jesus, and we recognize that and we pray that through your word you would complete us in you.

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We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so when we last left off in the book of Nehemia, the people there in Jerusalem decided that they were going to make a covenant with God.

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Now, you're gonna know, this is a different covenant. This isn't technically a biblical covenant that God is making with human beings like we see in the covenant of Abraham or in the covenant of Moses or in the

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New Covenant. This is a covenant altogether of the people vowing that they are going to return to God's word and that they will obey

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God's command found in the scripture. And so this is a covenant that they're making with God of their own volition and they are invoking curses on themselves if they do not follow through with this covenant that they are making.

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But you can kinda say, you see that what they're trying to do is like basically re -covenant the

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Mosaic covenant. And that's the idea of what's happening here. Let me see here,

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I wanna just scroll back up. We had just finished that wonderful prayer that was in chapter nine, and so at the beginning of chapter 10, we're gonna get a lot of the minutia.

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And I will not be reading all of the names of all of the people, but here's the thing.

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And you'll note that when you read portions like this of scripture, especially if you're not trained to speak or to read

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Hebrew, these names are difficult to read, all right? You know, Hakaliah, Zedekiah, Saraiah, you'll note that they have these vowels all kind of all stuck together in difficult places for us

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English speakers to read. But here's the thing, when you read a text like this, this minutia screams at you, this is not myth.

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This is not legend. This is real, right?

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These names are legit. These people are, you know, for real. So one of the things

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I have had the unfortunate displeasure of having to deal with is dealing with modern day neo -Nazis, right?

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These people are no bueno. And in my camera roll in my

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Lightroom catalog, I have photographs from a

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Holocaust memorial from Wiesbaden, Germany. And one of the things that the folks of Germany have had to come to grips with was the crimes and the mass murder committed by their family members, by the generations that have preceded them.

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And one of the ways in which the current generations have come to grips with this is by legitimately hunting down, investigating, and collecting the names of the people who died, the people who lost their lives in the

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Holocaust. It's a terrible list of names, but in Wiesbaden, they've set up a

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Holocaust memorial wall with all of the names of the people from in and around Wiesbaden, Jews that were rounded up and arrested and sent off to concentration camps.

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And then, if that were not enough, one of the things they've also done is as you're walking the streets of the old part of Wiesbaden, you know, you won't find this in the new part of town, but in the buildings that were standing at the time of the

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Third Reich, you will see on the paving stones little brass memorials, if you would, with names on them, and the names of the actual people who lived in this place, where they lived or where they owned a business, so that the coming generations can never deny that the

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Holocaust took place. And I would note, there are people today who deny the

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Holocaust took place. It's frightening when you think about it. I have family members who served on the

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Russian front who, while coming back from the Russian front, on retreat because the

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Russians were advancing, who happened to march through and stumble across not one, but two or three different of these concentration camps.

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And in my family, one of my great -uncles, when he would tell the story, he says he would never forget the smell.

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Never forget the smell. That was the thing that haunted him for the rest of his days while he was still lucid, the memory of the smell of one of the concentration camps.

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And yet, in our day, people deny it. But I would point to the fact that we know the names of the people who were in these concentration camps, who didn't come out.

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There are survivors to this day, granted, they're really old if they're still alive, that still have the tattoos that were put on them.

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And they have names, and they have faces, and we know who they are. And so the idea to say that the

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Holocaust itself is some kind of a ruse, some kind of a legend created by those who hated

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Nazis because they were righteous and true or whatever, which is belogna, right? We have the evidence.

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We have the photographic evidence. We have the names of the people who died. We have their shoes.

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We have their golden teeth. We have their spectacles. We have all of these things, right? And to deny that is ridiculous.

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Similarly, though, when we look at a text like Nehemiah chapter 10, we can see the names of the people who sealed themselves at the time of Nehemiah.

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That being the case, this is not the detail that you get when you're telling legend, when you're telling myth.

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This is not the detail that you get here. So you'll note, this is, so after that great prayer where they confessed their sins, and in their prayer demonstrated their understanding and knowledge of God's word, having applied themselves to it, and made a point of hearing it on multiple occasions.

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So these then are the people having prayed and asked God for forgiveness. They've set up a covenant, and these are the men who basically signed up for the covenant.

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We know their names. It's not the end of the document. It's at the beginning of it. And so here were the obligations of this covenant that the people of Judah made with God.

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So the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, and to the law of God.

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So you'll note, this is a separation. We are not going to follow the false gods of the people, the

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Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Uptites, and the Balletites. We're going to separate ourselves instead to what?

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The law of God. But is this not the same as what we do in the new covenant? Christ has separated us from the world by uniting us with him in the waters of our baptism.

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We are buried with Christ. We are raised with Christ. And we are then separated from the world and warned by God that friendship with the world is what?

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Enmity with God. And we are separated then to hear the words of Christ, to follow the scriptures.

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So the world says that great -grandma and great -grandpa Amoeba jumped out of the pool of ooze and climbed up a tree and became monkeys, and then dropped down later and became human beings.

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And we sit there and go, nope, the word of God says that God created in six days. And they say, no, that's stupid.

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And we look at them and go, no, no, the whole monkey story, that's stupid, right? You get the idea.

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So they separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, all who have knowledge and understanding.

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Knowledge and understanding of what? The scriptures, right? Now, a little bit of a note here.

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I recently heard a really great argument, okay? And let me see if I can,

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I have not prepared this argument for you. So we're gonna walk through it again. By me retelling it,

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I'm gonna learn it again, all right? That we are all slaves of Christ, slaves of righteousness, right?

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This is what the scripture says. So if I were to like, maybe go to Romans, hang on a second,

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Romans maybe like eight, right? Set the mind on the flesh as death, set the mind on the spirit as life in peace.

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You, however, are not of the flesh. Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive, right?

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Okay, let me do a quick search. I'm gonna look for slave and righteousness.

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And let's see if I can find that. Oh, wow, that seems to be a biblical concept, all right? Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.

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Having been set free from sin, having become what? Slaves of righteousness.

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And in case you're wondering, what's the word for slave there? It's slave, edulis, it's slave. You are slaves of righteousness.

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You are slaves of Christ now, right? And what a great, what a great master Jesus is.

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Now, in the Old Testament, if you were in slavery, and slavery was the

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Israeli way of doing welfare, okay? When we do welfare today, so somebody hits hard times and they go on welfare, how do we help them?

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With food stamps. We give money to them, right? That has a tendency to lead towards a lot of mischief and graft, right?

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But back in Israeli time, they didn't cut you a check, there were no bank accounts, and there was no social security, things like this.

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So if you speculated on a bad business deal, and you lost everything, and went bankrupt as a result of it, what happened to you?

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If you were a Jew? You, all your assets were sold to help pay off your debts, and then you and your family were sold as well, right?

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For how long? Seven years max. Okay? And so in the worst case scenario, you're a slave for seven years.

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At the end of seven years, what happens? You're set free. It's a little bit more than that.

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Okay? Not only are you set free, but the guy who purchased you is required to save up, and to basically give you a financial foundation.

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It could be a part of his flock, a house, things like this, so that you're on your feet when you leave slavery, right?

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When you are a slave, and you have children as a slave, who do those children belong to?

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The master. They belong to the master. Now think this through for a second. Great argument.

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Okay? We as Christians, we're slaves. We have children in slavery.

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You know, we bear children in slavery. Who do those children belong to? God. They belong to Christ. It's the best argument

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I've heard ever. Yeah. They belong to him. And it just drives me nuts when people say, well, we have to wait for our kids to grow up so that they can make a decision whether or not.

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No. Balogna. Balogna. That's not how this works. Right. Correct. Balogna.

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Okay? Anyway, I digress, but you know. So, all who have knowledge and understanding, they then join with their brothers, their nobles, and they enter into a curse and an oath to walk.

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Halakh. Yep. Halakh. In God's law that was given by Moses, the servant of God.

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All right. So here you can see this Hebraism. Paul uses this too. Right? Walk.

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How's your Christian walk going? You've heard people talk like this. We get that from the Bible. What does it mean to walk in God's law?

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It conduct your life in accordance with. Does that mean you're gonna obey it perfectly? Nope, because nobody do.

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Okay? I don't do that perfectly. You don't do that perfectly. And yet we still conduct our lives accordingly.

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So, we know what's right and we know what's wrong. We know what's good. We know what's evil.

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And we also recognize that our sinful nature desires the evil bit. And so, we by the power of the

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Holy Spirit put to death our sinful nature and daily walk in repentance and walk according to God's law and say

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God's laws are holy. They are just. They are right. They are true. They tell us the truth. In other words,

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I will never use different pronouns because God gave me pronouns when He gave me a particular body.

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Right? It would be contrary to God and His law and His word to basically say

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I decided that I'm gonna use the pronouns of zim, zam, and zum. Right?

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That's just ridiculous. Right? I'm a he. Because God made me a he. And you she's out there, you're a she's because He made you she's.

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This is how it works. Right? And so, we are to observe and do all the commandments of Yahweh our

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God and His rules and His statutes. Which, by the way, obeying God's law is freedom.

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Disobeying God's commandments is slavery. Disobeying God's commandments is slavery.

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Pastor Wolf Miller had a great example. And Wolf Miller, he cracks me up. He does this stream of consciousness kind of thing that what he's teaching.

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And so, he says, so imagine that you're in an old west town. He's all, but if you're living at that time in an old west town, just imagine that you are.

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You know, he just comes up with these weird things. So, you're in an old west town. There you are, you're walking down the wooden sidewalks, you know, past the saloon, you know, in front of the sheriff's office.

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And the sheriff's door is open and there's a guy in the jail cell and it's the devil. And the guy in the jail cell goes, psst, hey, what are you doing out there in slavery?

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And you sit there and you go, what? You know, what do you mean I'm in slavery? Yeah, it's slavery out there.

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You've got the sheriff looking over you, looking at everything you do and scrutinizing your life and making sure that you walk the straight and narrow.

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It's freedom inside of here. I can do whatever I want, right?

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It reminds me of Tom Sawyer trying to convince the kids to paint the fence for him, right?

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Yeah, it's that same kind of logic. So, the devil would convince you to be in the jail cell. That's real freedom, right?

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And you think, you know, you've lost your mind. But how many of us have fallen for that, right?

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As I was scrolling through social media while I was in San Antonio, man, it was hot there too.

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102, 103, 60 % humidity. Go outside wearing this in that and you will believe in the fires of hell, okay?

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But, so I was in the cool, air -conditioned climate of my dorm room, which is not a good place to sleep, by the way, just saying.

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And I was scrolling through social media. I saw that CNN had put a story out on social media about a family who was fleeing

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Florida for their lives. Fleeing Florida for their lives.

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I'm thinking, what? What's happening in Florida? Is crime hit an all -time high or something like?

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So, I think, okay, I'm gonna click on this. I just gotta know, right? Why is this family fleeing

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Florida? Answer, okay? So, they do this in -house interview with this family and you've got the sappy music playing in the background.

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They have been oppressed. These are people who've been under the boot of the Nazi regime or something, right?

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And the reason why they're fleeing is because their son thinks he's a girl and DeSantis has put new legislation in place that is not going to be affirming of his gender choices.

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And so, they've got to flee the state of Florida because of the oppression, the oppression of DeSantis' administration that isn't going to affirm that their boy is a girl.

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What was that? They can go to California, yeah. Yeah. Four. How many brain cells did

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I lose? And so, you look at the world, right? And the world basically says this.

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You must affirm me in all of my feelings, right?

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And you are oppressive and diabolical.

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And you are dictatorial and you are tyrannical if you do not affirm me in all of my feelings.

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That's not freedom. That's slavery. And is it any wonder that people who go down this road and mutilate their own bodies, that there's such a huge rate of suicide among these people?

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But we all know this too. We all know this too because we don't like it when people confront us with our sinful decisions and our sinful feelings, right?

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We would prefer to be left alone. But we all know at the end of the day that when we obey our sinful passions and that when we follow the road of sin, at the end of that road, are you satisfied?

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Is there anything really, truly satisfying about sin?

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At the end of the day, you are left in shame and in tatters, worse off, and you sit there and you go, now

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I'm beginning to see it. Sin is slavery, walking according to God's commands, that is freedom.

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I've said it before, I'll say it again. Keep your eyes focused on the hope that we have in Christ.

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The hope that we have in Christ is what we heard in the sermon today from Revelation. Behold, I make all things new.

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Is there any death in the new earth? The wages of sin is death.

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Does that mean there's any sin in the new earth? No, there is no sin.

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Because of that, there's no mourning. There's no end of days. Will there ever be a time in the new earth where somebody is slandering you and gossiping about you and destroying your reputation among your friends and family and neighbors?

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Nope. Will there ever be a time when there is a couple that has their relationship blown apart because of adultery?

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Nope. Will there ever be a time when you put something down and you leave it for a second and come back and it's disappeared because somebody has absconded with it?

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Nope. All right, and we went and saw that movie,

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The Sound of Freedom. Whoa, rough movie to watch, holy smokes. Will there ever be a time when a child is stolen from their parents and sold in sex slavery in the new earth?

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No. Does that sound like hell to you? Or does that sound like paradise?

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So you'll note then that in this life now, we by the power of the

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Holy Spirit are given the strength to mortify our sinful passions and begin to walk and obey

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God's commands and begin to act like the free people that we are and practice for what's coming, right?

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We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.

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Now, here's an important thing I'm gonna make a point about. Why would it be important for Jews to not give their daughters to Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites and Uptites and Balletites?

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Huh? Well, there's so few of them, yes, but what religions do the peoples of the land practice?

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Paganism, right? So the command of the Mosaic Covenant is not about interracial marriage, okay?

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So if I were living back then, okay, and I were a

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Moabite who converted to Judaism, could I marry a virgin daughter of the sons of Levi or Judah?

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Yeah, I could, right? There are notable interracial marriages in the scriptures.

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Let me name a couple of them so that you can kind of track with me here, all right? You guys remember Rahab the prostitute, okay?

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Not only was she a Canaanite, and she was, she was also a sex worker for a living, right?

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Who did she marry? Nope, nope.

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Who did Rahab the prostitute marry? Boaz's father.

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That's correct. And Boaz's father's name is what? Hang on.

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Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. His name is Salman, okay?

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So when you look, let me go to Matthew 1. Hang on a second, let me see if I can find him in here. All right, so we got

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Abraham, Ram, Abinadab, Nashan. Ah, here we go. Abinadab, the father of Nashan.

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Nashan, the father of Salman. Salman, the father of Boaz by Rahab.

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And Boaz, the father of Obed by Ruth. So you're gonna note here, was it sinful for Salman to marry

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Rahab? No. She repented and she believed in the one true

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God. She's as Jewish as I am, which means she's not

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Jewish at all, right? And yet she marries into the line of the Messiah. Was Salman rebuked for marrying this woman?

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In fact, let me kind of help you out here. Since the story of Jericho is a type and shadow of Christ's return and glory to judge the living and the dead, right?

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That's legitimately what it is. How do we know this? Remember when we read the story of Gideon, right?

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What was one of the ways in which I connected it to the eschaton and the return of Christ?

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What was the audio thing, the audible thing that you heard in the text that said, okay, this is a key that kind of connects us to Christ's final judgment and his return in glory?

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The trumpets, all right? So there's the children of Israel. And they are marching around Jericho.

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And they are marching around silently, one day, two days, three days.

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And they just go around at once. On the seventh day, how many times do they circle the city? Seven times.

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And at the end of the seventh, what do they do? They blow the trumpets. And the walls of Jericho came a -tumbling down.

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That's how the song goes, right? And who survives? Who are the only survivors of the sacking of Jericho?

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Rahab and her family. And what was the thing that she had to do in order to survive this ordeal, to show her faithfulness?

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Scarlet cord, right? She hangs a scarlet cord outside of her apartment in the wall of Jericho.

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And by the way, in one of my archeology books, I have a photograph of that section of the wall.

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It stood still completely, just like Christ said it would, just like God said it would.

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And I have a photograph of it. I should bring that in sometime so you can see where Rahab's, where her thing was.

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But since the story of Jericho is the story of Christ's return and glory to judge the living and the dead, because the children of Israel, after the fall of Jericho, that's the first attack, the first city to fall as they are taking what?

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The promised land. Promised land is a type and shadow of the new earth, right? So when

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Christ returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, he destroys all of the earth. What's the first order of business after the destruction of the world and the judgment?

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Big party. You Norwegians are gonna have to get over your uptightness on this, right? There's a big party, there will be wine, and it's the marriage feast of the lamb, right?

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In fact, we read about part of that in the book of Revelation today in the sermon.

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So note, right after the fall of Jericho, it's not written in the details, but shortly after the fall of Jericho, there's a marriage between Salmon, who's next in line in the line of Jesus and his ancestry, and this

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Canaanite prostitute chick, who I think is a great stand -in for the bride of Christ.

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Right? But you'll note, Christ takes his bride and he washes her and cleans her and presents her to himself in splendor and glory, and Rahab, the prostitute, and you can always kind of say

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Rahab, the former prostitute, who's now the mother of the next in line for the

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Messiah. It's a beautiful, beautiful story, but she's not Jewish, she's a

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Canaanite. Then you have the best chick flick in all of human history, the story of Ruth in the book of Ruth.

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I've read it on a couple of occasions here at Kongsvinger, my favorite chick flick, okay? Is Ruth a

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Jewess? She's not an Israelite. What is she? She's a

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Moabitess, right? Is Boaz permitted to marry a

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Moabitess if the Moabitess is an impenitent pagan believer and false gods? No.

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But, you know, poor Boaz, you know what he was before he got married?

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He was ruthless. What? Why is everyone shaking their head like that?

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What's wrong with you people? And... He's married and he won. Yeah. Right?

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But Boaz marries this Moabite and she becomes the mother, he's the father of Obed, and Obed's the father of Jesse, and Jesse's the father of David.

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Right? So when we see here in the book of Nehemiah, them renewing their covenant with God and saying, we will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons, the prohibition, the reason why, is because they don't want to intermarry with unbelievers, which the scripture forbids.

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Now, we live in a day where it's really, really, really, really hard for the young people to find marriage material in either a potential husband or a potential wife as it relates to finding a believing

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Christian spouse to marry. And as a result of it, there's a growing number of younger kids who are going single for a lot longer because it's harder to find a good

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Christian spouse. Are we as Christians permitted to marry unbelievers?

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No, we are not. If you are married to an unbeliever, when you become a

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Christian, you are to stay married to that spouse. But so many kids, they want to cut these corners, and when they cut these corners, it just brings all kinds of difficulty and misery into their lives.

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And believe me, I've never seen it end well. I've never seen that work. And so my admonition for you young kids out there is wait, be patient, and pray.

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And your identity is not based upon whether you are married or single.

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Your identity is in Christ. And as somebody who's been married for a long time, I said it last week, and I'll kind of reiterate and explain what

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I meant by it. No marriage is going to bring to you the thing that you expect it to.

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And the reason for it is this, is that you are going to marry a sinner like yourself, okay? A good friend of mine, he likens marriage to having to eat vegetables, okay?

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Vegetables, when he was a kid, he didn't like them, but his mom made him eat vegetables, and it was a good thing that he ate his vegetables.

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Marriage can be a difficult thing at times, but the thing that you are looking to make you whole and complete is not a spouse.

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The thing you are looking to make you whole and complete is Christ. And that's hard for us to come to grips with, because we do not like it when we experience negative or difficult feelings.

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And feeling alone is not fun. Feeling alone in this world, feeling lonely in that way, not having somebody that you can share your life with like other people, creates anxiety within you.

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And the issue is, you've got to be comfortable with the fact that Christ has said,

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I will never leave you or forsake you. You are never alone. And a spouse, a godly spouse, is a gift from God, and a godly spouse is still a sinful spouse.

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And when you find one, you will still have difficulty, and you'll wake up from the hormones one day and recognize, oh my goodness, what have

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I done, right? Always cracks me up when you see young people when the love hormones are going through their brains and stuff.

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Holy guacamole, you cannot reason with people like that. The person they're in love with walks on water.

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He can never do anything wrong, and they go into a full panic if it's been more than four minutes since he last sent a text message.

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It's like, chill, what on earth? But that's all chemically driven, by the way. And when those chemicals wear off, and they do, you're gonna wake up and look at the guy that you married and go, he passes gas.

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He looks terrible in the morning, and he smells awful. And, oh my goodness, what have

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I done? When the chemicals wear off, all of the sheen comes off of your spouse, okay?

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It's, and then you're gonna realize you're in this for life, you know? But it's true, you know?

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So, and we who've been through these chemicals, we know exactly what's happening to you, honey, and it's just, we know that you're just gonna have to ride it out, and we can't explain it to you.

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You'll just have to experience it for yourself, and then later you'll come to me and go, I had no idea. I had no idea, right?

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All right, so we will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons, and if the peoples of the land bring in goods or any grain on the

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Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy them on the Sabbath or on a holy day. Now, this is interesting.

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This is really interesting, and the reason why is because I like the way they're approaching this.

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They recognize that they are living in a circumstance where not everybody is a believer in God.

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Their consciences are bound by God's word and the Mosaic Covenant's requirements regarding the

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Sabbath because the Sabbath is the sign of the Mosaic Covenant, but when I lived in Indiana, it drove me nuts, okay?

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There was one day a week I was not permitted to buy any alcohol.

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What day of the week do you think that was? Sunday, right? I'm a

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Lutheran, okay? I should be allowed to buy any old day I wanna buy it, okay?

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But you get a note here. They didn't say, we're going to pass a law and we're gonna make it illegal for any merchants to sell anything on a

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Saturday, which is the Sabbath. Instead, they just said, we're not going to purchase anything on that day.

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What do they do in Colonial America? Yeah, Puritans, you know.

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Yeah. Yeah, right, just to institute their own.

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That's the thing, Puritans are Puritanical, and the reason why there's a word for Puritanical is because they do not properly distinguish the law and gospel, right?

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And so, you'll note here, they didn't impose this on the pagans. They just imposed it on themselves.

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We're going to obey God's law, so we're not buying anything on Saturday. By the time

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Jesus rolls around, things had changed to the point where a Puritanical, Pharisaical regime was in place, and they had guys enforcing the

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Sabbath, and so much so that if somebody was caught carrying a mat on the Sabbath, but they were accused of breaking the

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Sabbath, and especially since Jesus is the one who healed guys on the Sabbath, they were constantly zinging things at Jesus, right?

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And then note here, we will forego the crops of the seventh year, and the exaction of every debt, all right?

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That's all part of the Mosaic Covenant, and that is that, so this is known as what's called the

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Shemitah year, the seventh year, and that was the year that they would let everything lie fallow, and they would live off of the crop that came up during the sixth year, let everything lie fallow, and then at the end of the seventh year, they would cancel every debt, and set the captives free, and then all of that culminates then in the big

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Shemitah, which is the Jubilee, the 50th year. We also take on ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our

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God, and here's what we're gonna note here, is that God gave them the gift of the temple, but it was their responsibility to keep it up.

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A few months back, I made the point that here at Congs of Inger Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minnesota, we are the recipients of the good gifts given by the generations that preceded us here, who gave us this building and this beautiful facility that we are, that we are able to gather together.

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It's up to us to maintain this property, and maybe even improve upon it, right?

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And so you'll note then that that requires paying your pastor's salary, not that I make a big one, but that's part of the deal, making sure the place is painted, and the roof is, and all that kind of stuff.

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We're doing some improvement projects as we speak, and this is all our responsibility.

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Now, if we want to meet in a basement, we can do that, of course, but we're enjoying the good gifts that the previous generation has given us, and so we want to pass this gift off to the next generation, and by keeping it up, and giving them something that they can continue to maintain themselves, but you'll note this is still our responsibility.

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So they've got to provide for the show bread, the regular grain offering, the regular burnt offering, the

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Sabbaths, the new moons, the appointed feasts, the holy things, the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our

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God. 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, also to bring to the house of our

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God to the priests who minister in the house of our God the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle as it is written in the law, and the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks to bring the first of our dough and our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the wine, and the oil to the priests, and there it is.

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To who? The priests, okay? So back in the day, how did priests make a living?

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By serving in the temple. And you'll note then that the fruit didn't spoil.

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The sacrifices didn't, you know, didn't molder and disappear.

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The sacrifices were all given to the priests who then fed their families on it.

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Scripture says in the New Covenant, God wills that those who preach the gospel will make their living by the gospel.

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Now, that does not say that you need to sow a seed offering to my ministry so that I can get a private jet, okay?

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What it does say is that, you know, those who are preaching the gospel to you, they are to make their living at it just like the

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Levites did in the past. And that's the idea. To the chambers of the house of our

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God, to bring to the Levites the tithes from our ground, for it is the Levites who collect the tithes in all of our towns where we labor, and the priest, the son of Aaron, shall be with the

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Levites, and the Levites receive the tithes, and the Levites shall bring up the tithe of the tithes to the house of our

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God. So there's a tithe of the tithe that belongs to God, right? To the chamber of the storehouse for the people of Israel, and the sons of Levi shall bring the contribution of grain, wine, and oil to the chambers where the vessels of the sanctuary are, as well as the priests who minister, and the gatekeepers, and the singers.

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We will not neglect the house of our God, okay?

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Now, the leaders of the people lived in Jerusalem. The rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of 10 to live in Jerusalem, the holy city.

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So here's the issue. There are not enough survivors of the exile to fill the city and the countryside.

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And the natural thing to do in a situation like that is just let the city go to seed, because you would rather be on the land where you can grow crops and things like this.

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So they cast lots to decide one -tenth of us were going to be living in Jerusalem.

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And let's just say the housing market is completely tanked, because the population's gone.

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You can pretty much pick wherever you wanna live, right? So nine out of 10 remained in the other towns, and the people blessed all the men who willingly offered to live in Jerusalem.

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You can see some guys going, okay, I'll do it. Oh, thank you. Thank you for doing that.

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So these are the chiefs of the province who lived in Jerusalem, but in the towns of Judah, everyone lived on his property in their towns.

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Israel, the priests, the Levites, the temple servants, and the descendants of Solomon's servants, and in Jerusalem lived certain of the sons of Judah and of the sons of Benjamin, of the sons of Judah, and then it gives the list, and we will not do the whole thing there.

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But you're gonna note here, all the sons of Perez who lived in Jerusalem were 468 valiant men.

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This is like a census. And these numbers are not impressive. What's impressive about these numbers is how unimpressive they are.

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We're talking a scant population, tiny, and the only way they're going to survive is by the help of God, because they're gonna be living on a razor's edge in the decades and months ahead.

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So these are the sons of Benjamin, and it gives the name of his men of valor. There's 928.

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It's not a big number. Of the priests, Jediah, the son of Joi -Arib, and of his mighty men, 128.

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This is not a lot. And the Levites, it gives the list, and of all the

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Levites in the holy city were 284. There's more people in Oslo, Minnesota than that, right?

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This is a tiny population. And then it talks about the different people in their occupations, the gatekeepers, who kept watch at the gates.

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There were 172 of them. The overseers of the Levites. Again, not a big number of any of these people.

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You get the idea. As for the villages, with their fields, some of the people of Judah lived in Kiriath Arba and its villages, and in Dibon and its villages, and in Jech Abzael and its villages.

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And so it lists the different villages where people lived. Now, one of the points I made in my first lecture at Higher Things, we're talking about the reliability of the gospels as eyewitness testimony, okay?

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And I've, so if you've been in my catechism class, you've kind of heard me make this example. How many of you can name for me a major city in Southern California?

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All right, Stephen Elliott, give me a name of a major city in Southern California. Mm -hmm,

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Los Angeles. Can anyone think of another one? San Diego, all right. Okay, can you,

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Stephen Elliott, have you ever lived in Southern California? Can you tell me how far

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Arcadia is from Duarte? No? How far is

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Arcadia from La Cunada Flint Ridge? No clue, you have no idea.

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Okay, Marilyn, what freeway would I take if I were traveling from Duarte to Huntington Beach?

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You have no idea? All right, Josh, what freeway would I take if I were going from Duarte to Huntington Beach?

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Yeah? 91. No, no, no, no. No, wait, 210 to the 405. 405, how would you get from the 210 to the 405?

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Through the 91, no. No, 605. 605. 605. 605. No, 55. No, it's not, you're gonna take the 55.

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Yes, I am. What time of the day are you taking that? Middle of the night. Middle of the night, that makes sense.

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Okay, so here's the idea, is that when we talk about places, if we've grown up or lived in those places, we not only know the major towns, we also know the smaller villages.

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So it's really possible that somebody might be familiar with Grand Forks, North Dakota, reason being is that this is an

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Air Force town, right? But do you think that when the Soviets were pointing nukes at the

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Air Force base in Grand Forks, North Dakota, that any of them could name some of the surrounding places?

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Had any of them ever heard of Oslo? How about Warren or Crookston? Yeah, right, exactly.

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You know all these little places. And when I first got to Kongsvinger, and people would say something like, yeah, you know, you just head out to Crookston and then you head south and you go to,

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I'd sit there and all I'd hear was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, none of it registered, okay?

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It took some living here before I figured out where all these little towns were. This is an important detail, because not only do we get in this account names of people, we get the names of villages.

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And in the Gospels themselves, when you read the Gospels, okay, what was the name of the place where the two disciples were walking to on the day of the resurrection when

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Jesus, Emmaus. In the days before Google, if you lived outside of Judea, would you know where Emmaus is?

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Probably not. Of course, Jesus, he did ministry in Capernaum, Bethsaida, and there's a whole lot of other little villages mentioned, and there's even walking distances mentioned in the

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Scriptures, right? The going ups and going downs, right?

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So going up, you go up to Jerusalem and you go down from Jerusalem.

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If you lived in Egypt, okay, in ancient Egypt, going up would have you traveling which direction?

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South. Going down would be what direction? North. Reason, which direction does the

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Nile flow? North, it flows, it goes from south to north. So you go down to Alexandria, you come up to Thebes.

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Does that make sense? Right? So all these little details play into something, and here's the thing.

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The Gospels get all of that minutia correct. Did I say it backwards,

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Marilyn? Yeah, that's right.

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Because here we think north is up, right? Sargos, yeah, that's right.

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Fargo isn't in the north, you know? Right. Right.

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So in ancient Egypt, we would be going down north, okay? Which makes no sense.

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But here's the thing. In the Gospels themselves, this type of minutia is there.

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From weather patterns to when the grass is green and to tiny villages, walking distances and things like this.

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This screams at us, eyewitness testimony. I couldn't fake it if I said

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I was from Southern California and I wasn't. Even with Google. And a friend of mine, after my lecture, came up to me and said,

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I was so interested to hear you call it La Cunada Flintridge. And I said, well, why is that,

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Kurt? And he said, well, I was living in La Cunada in the late 60s and early 70s when they incorporated it and brought

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Flintridge along with it. It used to be only La Cunada. And I said,

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I never knew it any other way. And what was really funny is he said, if you were older and you called it

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La Cunada Flintridge, I would have known that you weren't telling the truth. Isn't that interesting?

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Okay, so that level of detail is found in the Scriptures. It's found right here with all of the names of these different villages.

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It's found throughout the Gospels themselves, not one of them, all four of them. Which tells us we're dealing with eyewitness accounts.

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When you compare the so -called Gnostic Gospels, which all the skeptical scholars love these

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Gnostic Gospels, how do they do when it comes to geography and details like this? They do miserably.

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About as good as the Mormons. Yeah, about as good as the Mormons. And that's the thing, when you read the Book of Mormon, holy guacamole, it gets everything wrong.

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Okay, from coinage to metallurgy to animals to names of cities, it gets the whole thing wrong.

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It doesn't get a single thing right. But the Scriptures get it all right.

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Legitimately, every last bit. And this is the thing, the Gospel writers had every opportunity to fall down on all of this minutia, but they didn't.

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They jumped every one of those hurdles and got every one of those details exactly correct as we now know from archeological evidence.