Fight the False Narrative

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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All right, grab a Bible, something to write with, and we are going to get started. We're going to go back into the book of Exodus.

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We've concluded our little mini -series on worship and a look at the historic divine service.

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If you have not had an opportunity to hear all of the lessons in that lecture, I strongly recommend it. Let us pray and we will get started today in our study of Exodus again.

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Help us grow in the knowledge of your dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and to remain firm in the confession of His blessed

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Word. Give us love to be of one mind and to serve one another in Christ.

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Then we will not be afraid of that which is disagreeable, nor of the rage of the arsonist

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Satan, whose torch is almost extinguished. Dear Father, guard us so that his craftiness may not take the place of our pure faith.

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Grant that our cross and sufferings may lead to a blessed and sure hope and of the coming of our

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Savior Jesus Christ, for whom we wait daily. In Jesus' name, amen.

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Are there any questions that came up before the sermon? It was an interesting read.

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You'll note that I took our gospel text and worked it through the details of the crossing of the

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Red Sea. So, again, one of the major principles of Scripture is that Scripture interprets

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Scripture. This is how this works. And then the other key component of understanding the

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Scriptures is the Scriptures are about Jesus, not you. Jesus has come to solve the problem that we've created, is kind of a good way to put it.

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But, you know, somebody in need of a Savior is not the solution. Somebody in need of the Savior is part of the problem.

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So that's the idea. And God didn't send us a life coach. He didn't send us somebody who's going to come and pump you up, like Hans and Franz.

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He sent us a Savior and a liberator. And so the themes, then, of that gospel text run through Exodus.

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You can kind of see what's really going on there, and it's vital for a proper understanding. So any questions come up from that?

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No? All right. I always, when there's no questions, I always come to one of two possible conclusions, and I leave it kind of as a question mark.

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Either you totally got it, or I totally talked over your head and nobody got it and nobody wants to say anything.

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But that's on you because you had the opportunity to ask questions if it's the second, so my conscience is clean.

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So anyway. All right, we're back in the book of Exodus. When we left off, we were in Exodus chapter 23.

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Here's what the Lord, then, is saying to Moses. Behold, I sent an angel before you to guard you on the way, to bring you to that place that I have prepared.

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Hmm. That I have prepared. You know, Jesus talks that way, too.

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Behold, I go and prepare a place for you. You know, in my

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Father's house there are many mansions. And so Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, is personally working on your new abode, if you would.

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And so here you've got this great theme, and this is another one of these examples that shows us that the story of Exodus, again, is type and shadow.

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And this is something that we must consider ourselves as a part of.

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We are part of the Exodus. This isn't their story.

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This is actually our story. We were not enslaved in Egypt, but we were born enslaved to the devil and to sin.

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And the world's passions. And Christ has liberated, our Passover lamb has liberated us from that slavery.

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We have been baptized into the Red Sea of Christ's shed blood. And now, as we live out our days, as we head towards the

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Jordan River and the eternal inheritance, the day of our rest, that Christ Himself feeds us with His own body and blood, the manna from heaven, because Jesus is the bread of life.

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That's the idea. So you kind of see how the themes work. Old Testament and New Testament come smashing together and find their ultimate fulfillment and proper understanding in Christ.

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And it takes some time to kind of work that out. Like I said in the sermon, though, once you see it, you can't unsee it.

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And you can't understand the stories of the Old Testament apart from Christ, and you can't properly understand

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Christ's actions apart from the Old Testament. It all works together. So, behold,

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I sent an angel before you to guard you on the way, to bring you to the place that I have prepared for you. You think of the little we know about angels.

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Angels are ministering spirits to Christians, to believers. And so, even we as Christians, we have angels that God helps us on our wilderness wandering.

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So pay careful attention to Him. Obey His voice. Don't rebel against Him. For He will not pardon your transgression, for My name is in Him.

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But if you carefully obey His voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, an adversary to your adversaries.

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When My angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites, the

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Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I have brought them out, you shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.

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You shall serve Yahweh your God, and He will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from you.

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Now, notice here. Does God command the children of Israel to coexist with idolaters?

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No. The exact opposite. And so it's one thing when the world puts bumper stickers on their vehicles that says,

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Coexist. It's one thing when the world says it, but it's a whole other thing when that message makes its way into the visible church.

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That somehow we as Christians are to consider ourselves just one faith community among other faith communities, and that there are many different ways to serve

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God. Don't be so arrogant as to think that somehow you can know whether or not that Muslim's truly worshipping

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God or not, or that Buddhist, or that person who's into Hinduism, or that person who's into Wicca.

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And so this was kind of the major appeal of the emergent church movement which bought into postmodernism.

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There was a book written better than a decade ago now by Brian McLaren, and the name of the book was

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A Generous Orthodoxy. A Generous Orthodoxy. And he was arguing to evangelicals to believe in this idea that somebody can be a follower of God in the way of Muhammad, or they can be a follower of God in the way of Buddha.

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And to show that he practiced what he preached, shortly after he wrote the book,

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Brian McLaren observed Ramadan with the Muslims. Does that sound right to you guys?

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No, it doesn't make any sense. But I have a question. Sure. When a Muslim, or a

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Buddhist, or whatever, if they then say that they believe as we do, and they pray to our

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God, or they pray to God and Jesus just like we do, if they are saying that, what are they trying to portray to us?

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I would argue that they are lying, and they know they are lying. Well, see, the other teachers in the school wouldn't let me go into that classroom to hear this being stated.

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They kept you out? No, they just explained to me, Janet, it wouldn't be good if you went in there and heard this woman speak.

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Next time they do that to you, you say, no, it's my duty. No, they already told me what she said, and then they just said,

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Janet, it wouldn't be good if you went. No, it would be very good if you went. There was kids in there. That woman's lying.

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I know, but there was kids. That's a false narrative, by the way. So that's what I'm saying. So as they portray that they're just like us, and they pray to our

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God and to our Jesus, just like us, and they are out there portraying that to some young minds.

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Right. So let's talk about this for a second, and I saw, this is good.

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This is good that you have your vocation. Hold on to your question or comment phase. So here's the idea. That's what we're going to identify as a false narrative.

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Okay. So here's the narrative. The narrative behind this is that you

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Christians, you people in Western society need to stop getting so uptight about us

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Muslims. Because we're just like you. We worship the same

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God. We believe in Jesus and all this kind of stuff. That is a load, literally a load of bovine scatology.

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Okay. Best way I can put it. All right. Work it out. And the narrative itself is the thing you have to go after.

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When you hear a false narrative like that, you stand up and you say, what you just said, that whole narrative, is factually false.

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And Muslim, Islam itself teaches that. Okay. This is where a little bit of knowledge of the

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Quran helps. The Quran teaches that Jesus is not the son of God.

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That he is a prophet similar to Muhammad, but Muhammad is greater than Jesus.

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Is Allah the same as God? Technically, no. All right. Allah is not triune.

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Yeah. Allah is not triune. To them, not to us. Yeah. No. The details matter. Because the

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God we worship is the Holy Trinity. Right. One God, three persons.

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The God they worship, Allah, is one God, one person.

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Okay. That's what I meant. To them, Allah is God. Yeah. Not in the same way that we understand it, though.

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Right. Because they would identify us as polytheists. Right. We're polytheists for worshiping a trinity.

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So here's the two, there's two moves to this, by the way. The first is you say, that's factually incorrect, and you demonstrate your knowledge of the

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Qur 'an and quote the Qur 'an back to them, and say, the Qur 'an says that Jesus isn't the Son of God. The God is not triune.

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And Scripture says, the Bible says, that God is triune and that Jesus is the Son of God. So we do not worship the same

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God. And now here's the second part of the move. I must surmise that the reason you're saying this false narrative is because you have bad motives.

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I challenge your motives, because somebody who's lying like this cannot be doing so with a good motive.

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You are purposely trying to deceive these people, which means you have an agenda. And say, what is it?

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Challenge the narrative, challenge the agenda. Right.

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Remember, the devil is the father of lies, and when he is lying, he is speaking his native language. Then you say, so then you're saying, if that's their defense.

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Well, you don't understand the Qur 'an. So you just ask them, do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that God is a trinity?

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Yes or no? Stay on point. Do you believe that Jesus is God, because Jesus is the

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God that we worship? Yeah. You don't think he's God, we don't worship the same God. Exactly. The thing is, is that people make the,

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Allah just means God in their language. So it's the same thing, and the details do matter.

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Now, listen to me very carefully on how to work against that.

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When somebody says something like that, it shows that their thinking is very immature. And this is where a little bit of rhetoric might get their attention.

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You tell that person, you need to grow up. You're being naive. Because that simplistic approach, well,

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Allah just means God, means you have not put any thought into this. Therefore, obviously the same

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God. So here's the idea, in blowing up the narrative, it might require you to rattle somebody just a little bit.

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Not meanly, but firmly basically saying, what you're saying is so simplistic and naive, you need to grow up.

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Because you're being immature here. It's like, they think that God is dull, and it's like, oh, he just dresses in different clothes and different cultures.

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And there's the narrative. It's the same thing, it's just that you know him in different clothes and different cultures.

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That's the narrative, and you basically say that's absolutely false. The God we worship does not permit the existence of other idols, does not present proxy worship to him through other gods.

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It's not just Islam that does this, too. This is actually a very similar narrative that you get when you're discussing

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Mormonism. Oh, they're Christians, they're just another denominator. No, one of the basic tenets of Mormonism is that as God is, man can become.

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That's not Christianity. When you're dealing with things like this, identify the narrative, factually blow up the narrative, and challenge them where they need to be challenged.

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Either they are intentionally lying, or they're being naive. And you need to challenge them. Because the agenda behind these narratives is designed at its core to be anti -Christian, and to keep y 'all from telling people the truth.

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I have a question. There's going to be a lot of people who will not believe that their agenda, especially when

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Jen said they're teaching to small children, their agenda might be, we don't want the kids to fight, we want them to believe that they're all in this together.

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So let me say, my agenda is peace. And I feel like you don't need to get everyone to say we all agree on the same thing in order for there to be peace.

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I need to clarify something. They were not teaching. They were not teaching.

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It was in the classroom, and the kids could ask any questions that they wanted to ask.

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The one child asked about your religion is different than ours, and this is where she said no.

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So they were not teaching. It was a question and an answer to get to understand the different kids in our group.

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She answered the question. What the other teacher said, Janet, it's a good thing you weren't doing that.

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The floor recognizes Mr. Mattson. One way to rebut that would be to say what you are expressing to that person who said that.

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You are expressing an American educational perspective. You will never get that answer from a

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Christian who lives in a Muslim country. Good point. Not only that, the

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Muslims don't treat the Christians in Pakistan like they worship the same God at all. That's a great point.

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That's a fantastic point. Now, a little bit of a note here. You had talked about the agenda of it being peace.

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Let's talk about that just for a second, because this is a major issue in Western society right now. The social justice left of both

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America and Europe are guilty of something that we have to call out. That is that here you've got these large groups of Muslim immigrants and refugees or people coming into different nations, ours as well as Western Europe.

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These Muslims do not buy into our values. They are engaging in criminal activity.

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If you question Islam or challenge Islam, they literally react with the type of force that could get you killed.

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Now, and so here's what's happening, is that they are suppressing free speech in these countries and in parts of the

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United States so that the Muslims don't get upset. So they're punishing and taking away the rights of human beings in these nations who are citizens, taking away their freedom of speech, because that speech could upset them.

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And here's the problem. They're punishing the wrong group. You come to our country, my constitution says

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I have the right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. And I have the right to challenge

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Muhammad and Islam and the behavior of people who are Muslims. And nobody can take that right away from me.

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But if you're going to react to what I'm saying with violence, you're a criminal.

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This country does not give you the freedom or the right to murder people or behave violently when somebody says something you don't like.

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What the country needs to do and what Europe needs to do is punish the Muslims. And I know what

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I'm saying is going to be really explosive, but it's true. If you're going to behave like animals, people who have no control over themselves, who cannot even allow the smallest amount of criticism, no matter how valid, the problem is not with the people criticizing

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Islam. The problem is with you. If you're going to come into our country, you will be a law -abiding citizen.

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You will go by the rights that we have, and you do not have the right to behave this way.

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And see, they've got it backwards. The social justice liberals, for the sake of keeping the peace, are punishing the people who are rightly criticizing what the

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Muslims are doing. That's backwards. You punish the lawless, not the law -abiding.

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And that's the problem we're facing right now. One of the deep underlying reasons for this particular...

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The motivation behind this type of behavior, at least in regards to protecting the people that are breaking the law, is actually due to extreme racism.

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The racism of lower expectations. Saying that while these people are stupid, they're lesser than us.

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We can't hold them to our standards of living in a society. You can't expect them to not react violently.

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Yeah, we can. Christians learned how to do this a long time ago. Because, I don't know if you've noticed, but Christianity gets criticized quite sharply and unfairly within the media.

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And when was the last time Christians in mass had a big rally and then murdered somebody?

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Or raped a bunch of women? Because somebody said something terrible about Jesus.

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You think about what happened to those cartoonists in Paris. They had put cartoons out criticizing

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Muhammad and Islam. They were murdered in cold blood. And the problem wasn't that they criticized

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Islam. The problem is that the Muslims are not held in check and are not punished for their wicked and evil.

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They're going to have to... If they want to live next to us in our country, then they're going to have to learn that I have rights.

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I have the right to say that religion is evil. And it's wrong and it's false. And Muhammad is a false prophet.

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And you do not have the right to take my life because I said it. Not in this country, baby.

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Maybe in Libya. Maybe in Pakistan. But not here. It's important to insist that we're not taking away their rights, either.

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They can criticize Christianity... All they want. It's just equalizing things. Let your reaction be with words, not with violence.

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Yeah, kind of continuing. Specifically seeing the video, this past Christmas season, it was wide open on all the

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Christmas trees. And a group of Muslim men literally got up and started climbing the thing and toppled over because, well...

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They don't have the right to do that. But no one was there, just trying to stop them.

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Right. They do not have the right to destroy public property that recognizes the holiday of Christmasmas.

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The same way that we can't destroy their mosques. Exactly. Right. We don't burn down their mosques.

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They don't tear down our Christmas trees. We all get along. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech means that you and I, as citizens, are not all going to see eye to eye.

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And that we respect each other's right to say certain things. And I have a right to disagree with you.

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Why it's so sad that that kid asked, you know, are we not the same?

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He was like, no, no, no, you're the same. You're the same, really. We really all agree. No, you're not. And then the second that they realize that they don't, how do we react?

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What do we do? No, no, no, but you really all agree. It's all fine. In order to get along, you have to agree. No, you don't.

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All right? You don't. Our whole country is based on the idea of differing political ideas and viewpoints and perspectives and solutions.

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But it's like at Christmas time, as the kids are getting on the bus, I'm going, Merry Christmas. Have a wonderful Merry Christmas.

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So our kid goes, you can't say that to me. I don't believe in Christmas. And I said, you know what?

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I said, that's okay. I knew what I said. And because that we are Christians and we live in this wonderful world, that's why you're here.

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So, and then you get two weeks off at Christmas because I believe in Christmas. I said, so Merry Christmas.

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That's right. Right. Right. How far should you take the freedom of speech, though?

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Should whites be allowed to say the N word? Should you be able to draw cartoonish figures of Muhammad when it's so offensive to the?

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Okay, so let's put this in the perspective of the church first, and we'll talk about the statewide. Okay?

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Within the church, if anybody here is going to be engaging in racial slurs and is looking down on somebody based upon their skin color, they're going to hear from their pastor and call them to repentance.

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That's straight out sin. We are all made in the image of God, and there is no room for that in Christianity.

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Period. And we're going to hold that up there with, like, idolatry, murder, and adultery.

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It's up there. Now, in society, in the bigger realm, because our country gives people freedom of speech, if somebody wants to join the

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KKK and try to convince everybody that everybody who isn't white is somehow inferior to those who are, unfortunately, this country has given you the freedom to do that, and I understand that because you have the freedom to do that,

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I have the freedom to call you to repent, and I have the freedom to preach the gospel. So, America is purposely set up so that we are a marketplace of ideas.

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And, you know what? If somebody wants to go out there and convince everybody that being white is what it's all about, and that if you're a different skin color, you're automatically inferior, go knock yourself out.

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But you're not going to stand before Jesus on the Judgment Day and Jesus say to you, good job. You're probably going to hear him say, depart from me,

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I never knew you. That's sin. It's an egregious sin. But in the marketplace of ideas, so you think right and left -hand kingdom, in the left -hand kingdom, unbelievers, yeah, they can do that.

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And as citizens, we can say, that's just disgusting. That's absolutely disgusting. But the reality of the situation is that much of the talk now about racism, the other side is engaging in the same kind of racism while denying that it's racism, which is a straight -up lie.

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If your advocacy and your actions to overdo racism are not based on the idea that we are all created equal in the image of God, that we are all descendants of Adam and Eve, and that we are all made in the image of God, if you're not fighting racism with that underlying premise, but fighting racism with the premise that my group hates that other group, then you're still a racist.

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And it doesn't matter what color your skin is. And they've redefined racism.

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Racism now is about hatred of another race combined with power.

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So it's not truly racism unless you're in power, which is nonsense. That's a bogus definition.

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But it's always been about power if you're racist. It's always been about power. Yeah, it always is about power.

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Racism does seek some type of group power based upon an identity based upon your skin color.

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But they're saying that if you don't have power, if you're poor, if you don't have influence, then you can't be racist.

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Yeah. So the idea then is the way the liberals have worked it out. They've redefined racism so that the only people who can be racists right now in America are white people.

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This is not true. But here's how they do it. White people oppress minorities and they have power.

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Therefore, as a group, they are racist. And then you say African Americans or the

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Latinos or people from South Africa or whatever. They can't be racist even if they have a hatred towards white people because they don't have power.

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Until they have power, they're not racist. That's playing with a funny deck.

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You're dealing from the bottom here. When you say something, you need to say that thing.

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Like if you go around saying the N -word, there's a social stigma that in and of itself is going to punish you. But you're not going to have a police officer coming banging down your door saying, you offended them, you're under arrest.

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Right. And the problem with making an offensive cartoon and then getting killed for it and then saying the

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N -word and then people just look at you like, oh, how dare you. That's an insult and you shouldn't be saying that in a polite conversation.

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Something like that. You have the right to say things, but does the government have the right to come down on you and say, you offended them, now you're under arrest.

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That's what's happening in Europe. I know, and that's the problem. No, the problem is that their behavior in their offense is lawless and it's not right.

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With that, Mark, in the United States of America, we actually have a very different system than anywhere else on the planet.

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We have the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, we got ourselves the Second Amendment, and many cases have been brought before the

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Supreme Court in order to actually bring about a definition of hate speech. And every time -

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Well, I didn't say you should or shouldn't. I asked a question. No, no, no, no, no. What I'm doing is I'm just saying that we as a nation, the

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Supreme Court has knocked it down and said there is actually no such thing as hate speech. You'll hear that word thrown around a lot today.

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So much so that it becomes ad nauseum. And people will say, well, you can't say these words because that is hate speech.

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To which anyone - The Constitution and the Supreme Court says there is no such thing as hate speech.

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There just isn't. But I disagree that the cops can't arrest you for it.

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If you are causing public skirmishes or whatever, because you're saying that, they have the right to keep the peace and take you out of the situation.

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That's a little different. There actually are categories of speech that are technically not protected by the

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Constitution, such as - Incitement of violence through speech is not protected.

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There are categories that are not protected. And what about my other issue that should you be allowed to draw cartoonish figures of Muhammad?

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When they find that, everybody is as offensive as the N word is to the blacks. The reality is that Muslims will not endure any criticism of Muhammad.

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Think back to, was it the 90s? Like Marx says, then it is wrong to do it. Think back to the 90s.

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You remember Solomon Rushdie and the Satanic Verses? I mean, that guy, I mean, he practically lived in Hizzah for the rest of his life.

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And he wrote a book that was not salacious, was not designed to be some kind of a, you know, a crass critique of Islam.

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You know, throwing poop on the face of him or anything like that. No. It was a solid, well thought out series of criticisms of Islam.

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And this and the Muslims literally reacted the exact same way as if you had somehow drawn a cartoon of Muhammad in drag.

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It's the same. They will not permit any criticism of Islam.

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Period. They will not endure it. Which shows me they have no confidence in their religion because we'll take anything.

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We'll argue with you. Yeah. Because we know we're right. See, that's the issue.

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Everybody knows this fact about Islam. They will not allow their narrative to be challenged.

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You challenge their narrative at the risk of losing your own life. Period. And here's the thing.

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On our soil, in our country, you don't have that right. Period. You do not have that right.

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Yeah, just the political cartoons that go back and forth these days, whether you're extreme left or extreme right, are about as offensive to those two groups.

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The opposite groups. That's what was done with the cartoon. But, you know, so far, at least. At least so far, people aren't killing each other over it.

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I mean, the last time I checked, I mean, the way the social justice liberals talk is that somehow there's this underlying right to not be offended.

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Well, if that's the case, then the whole liberal media has got to go, because pretty much every day

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I'm offended by what they say. Literally. I mean, and then every year at Easter time, you know,

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Newsweek or a major magazine publishes a hit piece against Jesus, calling into question the historicity of the

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Bible. I'm offended by that. How come they're allowed to offend me? But I can't say something educationally critical of Islam or of their ideology.

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You see, this is not a two -way speech. What they're trying to do is get rid of freedom of speech altogether and their ideology to come in and get rid of our rights.

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That's their agenda. Well, and you see very unflattering portrayals of Christ or Christian figures all the time, especially like Mary gets portrayed in some crazy ways.

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And they have the freedom to do that. I'm offended by that. Think of the artist.

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What was the artist like 25 years ago, a quarter of a decade ago, in New York, in an art exhibit, you know, basically took a crucifix and put it into a see -through vat of urine.

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And that's supposed to be art. Was that Mapplethorpe or something? Huh? Was that Mapplethorpe or something?

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I forget the name of the artist. All right. So, okay. All we did was say that Christianity, that scripture does not have to coexist,

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I think. And look where we went. Wow. Okay. Well, I think the question about coexistence is whether coexistence is meant to mean we can all get along even though we're different or if it means we're all serving the same

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God. So, here's the deal. If coexist means that you respect the right of your neighbors to believe whatever they want to believe, that's a core

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American value. If coexist means all religions are the same, all religions lead to the same

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God, or as you would point out, God dresses up in different garb. He appears to the

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Muslims as Allah. He appears to people in the East as Buddha. He appears as Shiva, Vishnu, to those in India, and Zeus to the

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Greeks and things like that. Then, if that's what you mean by coexist, which, by the way, that's the predominant understanding of coexist, then no, that's a false narrative we've got to reject.

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Period. And so, this is part of the reason why we, as Christians, preach the

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Gospel to people who believe in other gods. Because we believe they are enslaved to, as Scripture says, no joke, worthless things.

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Consider the Apostle Paul's actions. Apostle Paul, in Acts 17, fantastic section.

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Paul was absconded away because, I don't know if you've noticed this about the

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Apostle Paul when he preached the Gospel in places, sometimes they had it out for him.

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They wanted to murder him and kill him. So, this is one of those situations where Paul had to leave town because the

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Jews in Thessalonica, or in today's modern pronunciation, Thessaloniki, they went after him.

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So, he ended up in Berea and the Thessalonians kind of followed him there and raised the rabble.

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So, they wished Paul off to Athens, ancient Athens. And while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, Acts 17, 16, the

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Spirit was provoked within him, for he saw that the city was full of idols. So, he reasoned in the synagogue with the

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Jews and the devout persons in the marketplace every day, with those who happened to be there. Some of the

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Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him, and some said, what does this babbler wish to say?

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Others said, well, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities, because he was preaching Jesus and the

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Resurrection. So, you'll note, this is a perfect example, New Testament example, of a

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New Testament Apostle called by Jesus Christ himself, who is not getting along with people who are worshipping false gods.

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So, this is a Christian value, because this is a moral command of God. You will have no other gods before me, first commanded.

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So, Paul is preaching Jesus and the Resurrection, so they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying,

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May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting, for you bring some strange things to our ears.

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We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean. Now, all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing, except for telling or hearing something new.

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Sounds like today, right? So, Paul, standing in the midst of the

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Areopagus, he said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.

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For as I pass along and observe the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription,

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To the Unknown God. Now, important point, Paul doesn't go throughout

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Athens and look around and say, Alright, there's Zeus, and there's Athena, and there's Mars, and Hercules, and you know, and then say,

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You know what, Jesus is a lot like Zeus, so let's kind of find the comparative points and the common ground between Jesus and Zeus.

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That's not what he does, at all. It's too loaded. So, he finds an altar with an inscription,

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To the Unknown God, because the Athenians at this point are kind of hedging their bets. Maybe we didn't know about one.

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Maybe we forgot one. There's one out there doing godly things, and we just didn't know who it was, so we want to make sure we hedge our bets.

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And so, if that god ever shows up, we can say, Seemingly, we knew you were out there. To the Unknown God, glad you finally made yourself known.

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So, here, Paul, kind of capitalizing on that, says, Here's the god you didn't know.

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The Unknown One. He happens to be the only one, and the rest of them are false.

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That's his point. To the Unknown God. So, what therefore you worship is the unknown.

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This, now, I proclaim to you. The God Singular.

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HaTheos. HaTheos. Singular. The God.

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He didn't say, The Gods. And they are all polytheists. Now he's being provided.

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The God who made the world and everything in it, being

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Lord of Heaven and Earth, does not live in temples made by man. Notice he's going after the whole narrative.

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They believe in God's plural, and that the God's plural live in temples made by man.

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The inner sanctum of, like, the Temple of Zeus, would have a ginormous statue of Zeus inside of it, in the inner sanctum.

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And they believe that, in some way, that this is where he lived, and where he dwelled. And so he's taking all of their ideas, and just putting

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C4 on it, and just going, voof, and boom. Blowing the whole thing up.

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He does not live in temples made by man. Nor is he served by human hands.

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The whole temple part of the economy, of the Athenians, they have a whole segment of their economy that is based upon this.

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You know, this idea that we serve God by our human hands, as though he needed anything. Since he himself gives to all mankind life, and breath, and everything.

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He gives them everything. He made from one man every nation of mankind. Does Paul believe in Adam and Eve?

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Yep. He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth.

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Having determined a lot of periods, and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek

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God. Perhaps feel their way toward him, and find him. Yet, he's actually not far from each one of us.

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For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring.

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So being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold, or silver, or stone, or an image formed by the art and the imagination of man.

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The times of ignorance God has overlooked. But now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

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And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

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So notice, he's calling them to repent of their idolatry. Paul is not coexisting. Paul is evangelizing.

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And those who are worshiping these false gods need to hear the truth. That they are sinners.

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That they are idolaters. That the things that they worship are not true. They do not exist. They are the result of the imagination of human beings.

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Or even worse, demons. And he points them to Jesus, and his resurrection from the grave, as proof that he is not only

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God, but that he will also be the judge of the world. Politically incorrect.

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In your face. He was offensive.

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He spoke the truth. He did so in love. He didn't compromise the message.

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Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. Come on.

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The dead are not raised. You're a loony. Loony, loony, loony, loony. Right?

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That's what people do. Others said, you know, we're going to hear you again about this. So Paul went on, out from their midst.

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But some men joined him and believed. Among them were also Dionysius, the Areopagite, a woman named

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Damaris, and others with them. So note this. Paul preaches the gospel, and now we get a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little church.

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We know the names of two of them, and there's a few others. It's not impressive. It's not a megachurch.

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But where two or more are gathered in the name of Christ, he's present with them. So the preaching of the gospel, faith comes by hearing.

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Hearing by the word of Christ. The preaching of Christ results in God giving faith to some.

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And it took a while. It took a while for Christianity to take root in Athens.

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But eventually it overthrew the cult of Zeus and the pantheon of the great gods.

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They are a thing of the past. Not an ongoing thing of the present.

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And all of those idols that Paul saw, they're either gone or they're in the museum.

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But they're not worshipped today. Faith comes by hearing.

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Hearing by the word of Christ. And you know, Paul did not compromise regarding the first commandment.

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And Christianity is not called to coexist with idolaters. Not in the realm of truth.

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Love them as neighbors. Tell them the truth about Christ. Coming back then.

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We didn't get too far in Exodus, did we? We have a few minutes. All right. None shall...

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Okay, so God makes promises. You shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them nor do as they do.

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You shall utterly overthrow them. Break their pillars in pieces. And by the way, archaeologically we know this is exactly what happened when the

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Israelis came into Canaan. You shall serve

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Yahweh your God. He will bless your bread, your water. I will take sickness away from among you.

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None shall miscarry or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days. I will send my terror before and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come.

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And I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. I will send hornets before you which shall drive out the

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Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. Can you imagine having an army of hornets?

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That would be cool. That would just be cool. Hornets scare me to death.

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I will not drive them out before you in one year lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you.

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Little by little I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and possessed the land. And I will set your border from the

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Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines and from the wilderness to the Euphrates. For I will give you the inhabitants of the land into your hand and you shall drive them out before you.

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You're going to notice the original boundaries that God's talking about are a lot bigger than the poetry stamp size thing that we see in our world today.

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You shall make no covenant with their gods. They shall not dwell in your land lest they make you sin against me.

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For if you serve their gods it will surely be a snare to you.

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So God and other gods do not get along. Then he said to Moses, come up to Yahweh, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel.

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Worship from afar. Moses alone shall come near to Yahweh, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with you.

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So here, a little bit of a note. There is a time when Jesus sends out seventy.

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He sends seventy out and teaches them how to evangelize. I think that it's a correlation between the seventy who go up on Mount Sinai and this seventy.

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I haven't quite worked it out, but the numbers are identical and there's some kind of a way it works, but I haven't sorted it out.

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Sometimes you have to work on the typology a little bit. And when you work out biblical typology, it's often a good idea to look at the

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Old Testament details. Look at the New Testament details. And then do what that wonderful old children's television show used to do.

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Blue's Clues? We are looking for Blue's Clues. You guys remember this? He would collect up his little things and what would he do?

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He would go to his thinking chair. So in working out typology, take the little details and then go to your thinking chair and kind of work them out.

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See if you can sort through them. That's kind of the idea. So I'm convinced that the seventy elders and the seventy that Jesus sends out, there's some correlation, but I haven't done enough time on the thinking chair to work it out.

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There may be other passages that need to be brought to bear, but I'm just saying there's something there. Alright, so,

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Now remember, God has given them the Ten Commandments and done so with a thundering voice from the top of Mount Sinai with smoke and fire and all this kind of stuff.

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Yes? Yeah, it's kind of similar to that in that sense, but we haven't got the priesthood yet.

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And Moses technically is a prophet at this point. So he's kind of the first prophet. But there's something here.

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Just not sure what. Still kind of working the typology. If anyone wants to kind of work the

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Rubik's Cube on this typology, it does take a little bit of work. Alright, so, Now, a little bit of a note, spoiler alert.

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I'm going to remind you of something that's going to happen very shortly. So they said, How long did it take for Moses to be gone before they built the golden calf?

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It wasn't very long. Moses wasn't gone for that long. Yeah, maybe a month.

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Okay, maybe not even that long. Yeah. Yeah, it didn't take long at all.

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So here's the idea, and you're going to know. How many times have we heard, You shall not worship other gods.

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You shall not make a graven image to bow down to. You shall not worship. I will not. Do not worship other gods.

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Over and over and over. God has said this in multiple ways, multiple times. What's the first thing they do as soon as Moses is out of their sight for just a little bit of time?

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They create an idol. Oy. Oy vey.

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Oy vey. Yeah. So this is really interesting.

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But here we've got them saying, We're going to do these things. No, you're not. So Moses wrote down all the words of Yahweh.

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He rose early in the morning, built an altar at the foot of the mountain, twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes of Israel. He sent the young man to the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the

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Lord. Moses took half the blood, put it in basins, half the blood, threw it against the altar.

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Then he took the book of the covenant, read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, All that Yahweh has spoken we will do.

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We will be obedient. They perjured themselves. And Moses took the blood, threw it on the people, and behold the blood of the covenant that Yahweh has made with you in accordance with all of these words.

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And we remember the words of the book of Hebrews, Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

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And this is one of the major themes you're going to see in this section of Exodus.

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There is a lot of blood. There is like blood everywhere in these texts.

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Here we've got the people being sprinkled with the blood of these sacrifices. And I'm thinking, man,

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I just washed this thing, and now there's blood all over it. Wait until we get to the vestments, to the priestly garments, and all the blood involved in their ordination service.

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I mean, there's just blood rolling everywhere. And without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

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So this blood all has to do with, well, atonement.

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Getting right with God. So then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, the 70 elders of Israel, went up.

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They saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.

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And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel. They beheld God. They ate and they drank.

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So we know what he was standing on. His face isn't described, so we can see the feet of God. And what he's standing on, you see kind of again, pictures of similar things in the book of Revelation, which is fascinating.

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So the Lord said to Moses, Come up to me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandments which

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I have written for their instruction. So this is kind of an important thing, and I'm going to point this out.

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Is that God himself has called Moses up to the top of the mountain for the purpose of writing in stone the commandments.

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Good way to think of it this way. Moses up to this point, how much time has he had to write things?

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Zero. Almost no time to write nothing. And so you go from him being commissioned, sent to Egypt, ten plagues, then you've got the whole

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Red Sea incident, everyone's on the other side, you've got manna coming from heaven, split rock, a whore of Mount Sinai, the ten commandments being spoken by God verbally, and now

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God says, come up here. And so the good way to think about this is that God himself, by writing the ten commandments on stone, those two tablets are the foundation stones or the cornerstone of the

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Bible itself. God wants to be the guy who gets the ball rolling on the writing of the

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Bible. Because up to this point, you could not go to a store and buy any books of the Bible. Genesis hadn't even been written.

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And so the very first thing written down in the Bible is written by God. It's the ten commandments written on stone.

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So whenever you see, you know, that iconic picture of Charlton Heston, you know, with the two stone tablets, right?

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Think of those two stone tablets. That's the cornerstone of the Bible. God kicked off the writing of the

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Bible by writing the ten commandments on stone. You see it?

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It's a good way to think about it. So God's, come on up here. I'm going to give you the stone tablets with the law, the commandment which

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I have written for their instruction. So Moses rose with his assistant Joshua. I love the fact, and this is kind of one of the little things here.

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You're going to see this, just this mention. Over and again, Joshua is mentioned. Joshua. So Moses went up.

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His assistant's name is Joshua. What's Jesus' Hebrew name? Yeshua.

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Same as this guy. Yeshua, Joshua, that's the same. Actually, everyone would have pronounced him Yeshua. So I love the fact that Moses' assistant, the understudy at this point, is

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Yeshua. Because when Jesus is growing up and his mom says it's time for dinner, she'd call up,

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Yeshua, Yeshua, time for dinner. Right? And so here's the funny thing.

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In tight and shadow, Jesus is there, waiting in the wings. You ever thought about that?

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Do you think it's a coinkidink? No, it's not a coinkidink at all. The fact that Moses' assistant is named

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Yeshua, which is the exact same name of Jesus, kind of shows that, you know, that's just a little cue to pay attention.

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Moses' assistant, eventually, is going to be the guy in charge. And he's there the whole time.

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So Jesus is there in tight and shadow with Moses' assistant, Joshua. So Moses rose with his assistant

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Joshua. Moses went up into the mountain of God. And he said to the elders, Wait here for us until we return to you.

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And behold, Aaron and Hur are with you. Whoever has a dispute, let him go to them. So then Moses went up on the mountain.

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The cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai. And the cloud covered it six days.

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And on the seventh day, he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain on the side of the people of Israel.

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Moses entered the cloud, went up on the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

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It would have been up here. How many days did it rain? Forty days.

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Forty nights. When Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness by the devil, how long was He out there? How long were the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness?

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Forty years. This forty thing. You see, they're kind of all interconnected. But we'll leave it there for right now.