Fight the False Narrative

Scripture Interprets Scripture and the Exodus as Our Story

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

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

Give us love to be of one mind and to serve one another in Christ. Then we will not be afraid of that which is disagreeable, nor of the rage of the arsonist Satan, whose torch is almost extinguished. Dear Father, guard us so that his craftiness may not take the place of our pure faith.

Grant that our cross and sufferings may lead to a blessed and sure hope and of the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ, for whom we wait daily. In Jesus' name, amen. Are there any questions that came up before the sermon?

It was an interesting read. You'll note that I took our Gospel text and worked it through the details of the crossing of the Red Sea. So, again, one of the major principles of Scripture is that Scripture interprets Scripture.

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

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

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

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

But that's on you because you had the opportunity to ask questions if it's the second, so my conscience is clean. So anyway. All right, we're back in the book of Exodus. When we left off, we were in Exodus chapter 23.

Christ Preparing a Place and the Exodus as Type and Shadow

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

Behold, I go and prepare a place for you. You know, in my Father's house there are many mansions. And so Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, is personally working on your new abode, if you would. 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.

And this is something that we must consider ourselves as a part of. We are part of the Exodus. This isn't their story. This is actually our story. We were not enslaved in Egypt, but we were born enslaved to the devil and to sin.

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

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

It all works together. So, Behold, 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, you know, what little we know about angels.

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. 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. 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.

When My angel goes before you, and brings you to the Amorites, the 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. You shall serve Yahweh your God, and He will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from you.". Now, notice here.

Does God command the children of Israel to coexist with idolaters? The exact opposite. And so, it's one thing when the world puts bumper stickers on their vehicles that says, 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. 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 God.

Don't be so arrogant as to think that somehow you can know whether or not that Muslim's truly worshiping God or not, or that Buddhist, or that person who's into Hinduism, or that person who's into Wicca.

And so, this was kind of the major appeal of the emergent church movement which bought into post-modernism. There was a book written better than a decade ago now by Brian McLaren. And the name of the book was 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. And to show that he practiced what he preached, shortly after he wrote the book, Brian McLaren observed Ramadan with the Muslims.

Does that sound right to you guys? No, it doesn't make any sense. But I have a question. Sure. When a Muslim, or a Buddhist, or whatever, if they then say that they believe as we do, or they pray to God just like whatever...

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. 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.

Then I would...

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, Janet, it wouldn't be good if you went in there. No, it would be very good if you went because...

There was kids in there. That woman's lying. I know, but there was kids. That's a false narrative, by the way. Right. So that's what I'm saying. So as they portray that they're just like us, and they pray to our God and to our Jesus just like us, and they are out there portraying that to some young minds.

Right.

Exposing the False Narrative of Coexistence

So let's talk about this for a second. And I saw... This is good. 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.

Okay. So here's the narrative. The narrative behind this is that you Christians, you people in Western society need to stop getting so uptight about us Muslims. Because we're just like you. We worship the same God.

We believe in Jesus and all this kind of stuff. That is a load, literally a load of bovine scatology. Okay. Best way I can put it. All right. Work it out. And the narrative itself is the thing you have to go after.

And when you hear a false narrative like that, you stand up and you say, what you just said, that whole narrative is factually false. And Muslim, Islam itself, teaches that. Okay. This is where a little bit of knowledge of the Quran helps.

The Quran teaches that Jesus is not the son of God. That he is a prophet similar to Muhammad, but Muhammad is greater than Jesus. Is Allah the same as God? Technically, no. All right. Allah is not triune.

Yeah. Allah is not triune. Yeah. No. The details matter. Because the God we worship is the Holy Trinity. One God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The God they worship, Allah, is one God, one person.

Okay. That's what I meant.

To them, Allah is God. Yeah.

Not in the same way that we understand it, though, because they would identify us.

As polytheists. Right.

They think we're polytheists for worshiping a trinity. 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 Quran and quote the Quran back to them and say the Quran says that Jesus isn't the son of God.

The God is not triune. 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 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.

I challenge your motives because somebody who's lying like this cannot be doing so with a good motive. You are purposely trying to deceive these people, which means you have an agenda. And say, what is it?

Challenge the narrative, challenge the agenda. Right. 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.

Well, you don't understand the Quran, so you just ask them, do you believe that Jesus is the son of God and that God is a trinity? Yes or no? Stay on point. Do you believe that Jesus is God? Yeah. Do you know God?

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

You tell that person, you need to grow up, you're being naive. Because that simplistic approach, well, Allah just means God, means you have not put any thought into this.

Therefore, obviously the same God. So here's the idea,.

In blowing up the narrative, it might require you to rattle somebody just a little bit. Not meanly, but firmly basically saying, what you're saying is so simplistic and naive, you need to grow up. Because you're being immature here.

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

It's not just Islam that does this too. This is actually a very similar narrative that you get when you're discussing Mormonism. You know, oh, they're Christians, they're you know, just another denominator.

And it's like, no, one of the basic tenets of Mormonism is that as God is, man can become. Yep. That's not.

Yeah. Christianity. Yeah. So, 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. Either they are intentionally lying, or they're being naive.

And you need to challenge that. Okay? 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. I have a question.

Yeah. So there's an agenda, especially like when we don't want the kids to fight. We want them to believe that they're all in this together. So when you say, my agenda is peace. And it's like, 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.

Right. Now let's talk about. I need to clarify something.

Go ahead. They were not teaching. They were not teaching. Okay? And it was in the classroom, and the kids could ask any questions that they wanted to ask. The one child asked about, your religion is different than ours.

And this is where she said, no. So they were not teaching. It was a question and an answer to get to understand the different kids in our.

Right. But she was listening when she answered the question.

But we're enjoying the discussion. She said, Janet, it's a good thing you weren't in.

The floor recognizes Mr. Matson.

One way to rebut that would be to say, what you are expressing to that person who said that, you are expressing an American educational perspective. You will never get that answer from a Christian who lives in a Muslim country.

Yeah. Good point.

Not only that, the Muslims don't treat the Christians in Pakistan like they worship the same God at all. No. That's a great point. That's a fantastic point. Not at all. Now, a little bit of a note here.

You had talked about the agenda of it being peace. Let's talk about that just for a second because this is a major issue in Western society right now. And the social justice left of both America and Europe are guilty of something that we have to call out.

And 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. And these Muslims do not buy into our values and they are engaging in criminal activity.

And if you question Islam or challenge Islam, they literally react with the type of force that could get you killed. Now, and so here's what's happening, is that they are suppressing free speech in these countries and in parts of the 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. And here's the problem. They're punishing the wrong group.

You come to our country, my constitution says I have the right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. And I have the right to challenge Muhammad and Islam and the behavior of people who are Muslims.

And nobody can take that right away from me. But if you're going to react to what I'm saying with violence, you're a criminal. 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.

What the country needs to do and what Europe needs to do is punish the Muslims. And I know what 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 Islam, the problem is with you.

If you're going to come into our country, you will be a law-abiding citizen. You will go by the rights that we have, and you do not have the right to behave this way. 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 Muslims are doing. That's backwards. You punish the lawless, not the law-abiding.

And that's the problem we're facing right now.

One of the deep underlying reasons for this particular... the motivation behind this type of behavior, at least in regard... is actually due to extreme racism, the racism of lower expectations, saying that, well, they're lesser than us, we can't hold them to our standards of living in a society.

You can't expect them to not react violently. Yeah, we can.

Yeah, we can, yeah. Christians learned how to do this a long time ago. Okay? Because, I don't know if you've noticed, but Christianity gets criticized quite sharply, and unfairly, within the media. And when was the last time Christians in mass had a big rally and then murdered somebody?

Or raped a bunch of women? Because somebody said something terrible about Jesus. You think about what happened to those cartoonists in Paris. They had put cartoons out criticizing Muhammad and Islam. They were murdered in cold blood.

And the problem wasn't that they spoke... that they criticized Islam. The problem is that the Muslims are not held in check and are not punished for their wicked and evil. They're going to have to... If they want to be...

If they want to live next to us, in our country, then they're going to have to learn that I have rights. I have the right to say that religion is evil. And it's wrong, and it's false, and Muhammad is a false prophet.

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

Maybe in Pakistan. But not here. It's important to insist that we're not taking away their rights, either. They can criticize Christianity all they want. It's just evilizing things.

Let your reaction be with words, not with violence. They don't have the right to do that. They do not have the right to destroy public property that recognizes the holiday of Christmas.

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

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. And that we respect each other's right to say certain things.

And I have a right to disagree with you. No, you're not. No, you don't. All right? You don't. Our whole country is based on the idea of differing political ideas and viewpoints and perspectives and solutions.

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!

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

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

How far should you take the freedom of speech, though? 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...

Okay, so let's put this in the perspective of the church first, and we'll talk about the statewide. Okay? 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 gonna hear from their pastor and call them to repentance.

That's straight out sin. We are all made in the image of God and there is no room for that in Christianity. Period. And we're gonna hold that up there with, like, idolatry, murder, and adultery. 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 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, 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

And it doesn't matter what color your skin is, and they've redefined racism. Racism now is about hatred of another race combined with power. So it's not truly racism unless you're in power, which is nonsense.

That's a bogus definition. But it's always been about power. Yeah, it always is about power. Racism does seek some type of group power based upon an identity,.

Based upon your skin color. 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. 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 racist right now in America are white people. This is not true.

But here's how they do it. White people oppress minorities, and they have power. Therefore, as a group, they are racist. And then you say African Americans or the 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.

Until they have power, they're not racist. That's playing with a funny deck. You're dealing from the bottom here.

When you say something hanging down your door saying you offended them, you're under arrest. Right. And the problem with making an offensive cartoon and then getting killed for it and then saying the N-word and then people just look at you like, oh, you're, you know, how dare you.

That's, you know, that's an insult and you shouldn't be saying that, you know, in a polite conversation or 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 here. That's what's happening in Europe. I know, and that's the problem with their speech.

No, the problem is, is that their behavior in their offense is lawless and it's not right.

With that, Mark, in the United States of America, we actually have a very different system than anywhere else on the planet. We have the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, we got ourselves the Second Amendment, and many cases have been brought before the Supreme Court in order to actually bring about a definition of hate speech.

And every time... Well, I didn't say you should or shouldn't. I asked a question. No, no, no, no, no. What I'm getting, what I'm doing is, I'm just saying that we, as a nation, we're, the 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. So much so that it becomes ad nauseum. And people will say, well, you can't say these words because that is hate speech, to which anyone... The Constitution and the Supreme Court says there is no such thing as hate speech.

There just isn't. Now... You should be punished. But I disagree that the cops can't arrest you for it. But if you are causing public skirmishes or whatever... That's because... Because you're saying that, they have the right to keep the peace.

And take you out of the situation. That's a little different. There actually are categories of speech that are technically not protected by the Constitution, such as... Causing the action. Yeah. Incitement of violence through speech is not protected.

There are categories that are not protected. And what about my other issue,.

That should you be allowed to draw cartoonish figures of Muhammad? When they find that, everybody is as offensive as the N-word is to the blacks.

The reality is, is that Muslims will not endure any criticism of Muhammad. Think back to... Was it the 90s? Then it is wrong... Like Marx says, then it is wrong to do it. Think back to the 90s. You remember Solomon Rushdie?

And the Satanic Verses? I mean, that guy... I mean, he practically lived in Hinsa for the rest of his life. And he wrote a book that was not salacious. Right. Was not designed to be some kind of a, you know, a crass critique of Islam.

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

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

Which shows me they have no confidence in their religion, because we'll take anything. We'll argue with you. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Because we know we're right. Right. See, that's the issue. Everybody knows this fact about Islam. They will not allow their narrative to be challenged. You challenge their narrative at the risk of losing your own life.

Period. And here's the thing. On our soil, in our country,.

You don't have that right. Period. You do not have that right. 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.

Yeah. Opposite groups. Yeah. That's what was done with the cartoon. But, you know, so far at least.

Yeah. At least so far. People aren't killing each other over it. Yeah. 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.

Well, if that's the case, then I, then the whole liberal media has got to go, because pretty much every day I'm offended by what they say. Literally. I mean, and then every year at Easter time, you know, Newsweek or a major magazine publishes a hit piece against Jesus, calling into question the historicity of the 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. 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.

That's their agenda.

Well, and you see cartoons or different things of very unflattering portrayals of Christ or Christian figures, especially like Mary gets portrayed in some crazy ways, and they have the freedom to do that.

I'm offended by that. What was an 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, you know, a see-through vat of urine.

And that's supposed to be art. Was that Mapplethorpe or something? Huh? Was that Mapplethorpe or something? 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, I think, and look where we've been.

Wow. Okay. Well, I think the question about coexistence, 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 God. Yeah,.

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 American value. If coexist means all religions are the same, all God, you know, all religions lead to the same God, or as you had pointed out, God dresses up in different garb, you know, He appears to the Muslims as Allah, He appears to, you know, people in the East as Buddha, He appears as Shiva, Vishnu, and, you know, to those in India, and Zeus to the 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, then no, that's a false narrative we've got to reject. Period. And so, this is part of the reason why we, as Christians, preach the Gospel to people who believe in other gods.

Because we believe they are enslaved to, as Scripture says, no joke, worthless things. Consider the Apostle Paul's actions. Apostle Paul, in Acts 17, fantastic section. Paul was absconded away, because, you know, I don't know if you've noticed this about the Apostle Paul when he preached the Gospel in places, sometimes they had it out for him.

They wanted to murder him, kill him. So, this is one of those situations where Paul had to leave town, because the Jews in Thessalonica, or today's modern pronunciation, Thessaloniki, they went after him.

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

Raised the rabble. So, they wished Paul off to Athens, ancient Athens.

And, while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, Acts 17, 16, the Spirit was provoked within him, for he saw that the city was full of idols. So, he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews, and the devout persons, in the marketplace every day, with those who happened to be there.

Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him, and some said, what does this babbler wish to say? Others said, well he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities, because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.

So, this is a perfect example, New Testament example, of a New Testament apostle, called by Jesus Christ himself, who is not getting along with people who are worshipping false gods. So, this is a Christian value, because this is a moral command of God.

You will have no other gods before me. First commandment. So, Paul is preaching Jesus and the resurrection, so they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting, for you bring some strange things to our ears.

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. Sounds like today.

So, Paul is standing in the midst of the Areopagus. He said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I pass along and observe the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, to the unknown God.

Now, important point. Paul doesn't go throughout Athens and look around and say, alright, there's Zeus and there's Athena and there's Mars and Hercules, and then say, 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.

That's not what he does. At all. It's too loaded. So he finds an altar with an inscription, to the unknown God. Because the Athenians at this point are kind of hedging their bets. Maybe we didn't know about one.

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. And so, if that God ever shows up, we can say, see, we knew you were out there, to the unknown God.

Glad you finally made yourself known. So, here, Paul kind of capitalizing on that, says, here's the God you didn't know. The unknown one. He happens to be the only one, and the rest of them are false.

That's his point. To the unknown God. So, what therefore you worship as unknown, this now I proclaim to you. The God singular. Ha-the-os. Ha-the-os. Singular. The God. He didn't say the gods. And they are all polytheists.

Now he's being provocative. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man. Notice he's going after the whole narrative. They believe in God's plural.

And that the God's plural live in temples made by man. The inner sanctum of like the temple of Zeus, would have a ginormous statue of Zeus inside of it, in the inner sanctum. 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 C4 on it, and just going, and then, blowing the whole thing up. He does not live in temples made by man. Nor is he served by human hands. What? The whole temple part of the economy, of the Athenians, they have a whole segment of their economy that is based upon this.

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. He gives him everything. He made from one man, every nation of mankind.

Does Paul believe in Adam and Eve? Yep. He made from one man, every nation of mankind, to live on the face of the earth. Having determined a lot of periods, and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God.

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