The Laborers' Podcast- Genesis

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Please join us as we discuss an overview of Genesis.

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Welcome to the Laborer's Podcast. We are thankful that you are joining us tonight. We are going to look at a
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Laborer's overview of the book of Genesis. We hope you will stick around.
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Now let's join our laborers for tonight's broadcast. My apologies for that intro.
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I stumbled like crazy. Something on the screen shocked me and I wasn't used to seeing that and so it just made me stumble.
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But thank you for watching Laborer's Podcast. We're going to do a Laborer's overview of Genesis tonight and I'm thankful to have
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Big John with me, Pastor Jonathan, Jesse the Chicano Knox, Tyler, and Claude.
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Thank you guys for joining us. Check out all their ministries. Bible Theory Podcast with Chicano Knox, Bread of the
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Word, Real Talk with Big John, Your Outstanding Theology Podcast with Claude Ramsey, and Verticast coming soon with Pastor Jonathan.
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Awesome, awesome, awesome.
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All right. Genesis. We're gonna try to go through the books of the Bible. We won't go consecutive to break it up a little bit.
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We'll throw in some other topics, but I'm looking forward to going through the books of the Bible and hearing from these men.
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Tonight we're gonna be looking at Genesis. So here's my first question. I want to set it up.
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Genesis 1 .1. It says, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
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So here's the big question. And it's a serious question because we get it.
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We get it from children. We get it from skeptics or atheists. So the first question is, where does
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God come from or where did God come from? The Bible in verse 1 assumes his existence, that God exists and he's the one who created everything.
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But where did he come from? How would you answer a child, a skeptic, or an atheist? Anybody can jump in or we can go around.
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Whatever you guys like to do. I answer the same way with all three of them. He's eternal.
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He always has been. And while it sounds like an oversimplification, it's because it is an oversimplification.
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And I don't understand the boundlessness of God. But there's a guy by the name of William Lane Craig.
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I don't know if anybody has ever heard of him or not, but he he uses what's called the cosmological argument to explain the existence of God.
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And he says that God is the unmoved mover or the first single or first cause or something like that.
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He's got a plethora of ways he words these things. But the idea is that nothing can't create anything.
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So there has to be something powerful than everything to initiate anything.
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Did I say that right? Somebody who listens to William Lane Craig more than I do. Did I say that right? Yes.
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Okay. I knew Tyler knew who he was. I should have even asked Tyler. Well, if you weren't going to go down that road,
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I was prepared to take it that way. I had the same thing in my head with the uncaused cause.
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Yeah. So the idea that you can take all the contents of the universe and put them in a bucket and anything come out of them besides what you put in the bucket is just common sense, right?
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You don't pick yourself up. You don't do anything. Something always has to be acted on by an outside force before anything happens to it.
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It's universal, right? So the thing that created everything is
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God. And he must, by definition, exist beyond the bounds of the things that have been made.
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And eternal is the word we use to ascribe to that thing. And that's about all
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I got. That's why I taught it to my children and atheists and agnostic and critters that don't believe.
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Well, speaking of children, I mean, they're really not going to. We don't understand.
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But of course, they're not going to understand all these big words and terminology that we're using.
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So would it be OK just to just to speak the truth? You know, just just put it out there and say he's always existed and leave it at that with a child?
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Or do you guys have a different approach with children? You could say that he's always existed or you could like set up some dominoes and say that everything that's ever happened has been caused by another domino falling down.
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But at the beginning of that line of dominoes, there has to be something else that knocks over the first domino.
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It's not a domino. God is not a domino. I had this exact question
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Sunday morning. I got a little girl who sits on the second row every Sunday, a
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Bible open, taking notes. Praise the Lord. This is the exact question she asked me on a
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Sunday morning. She gave me a little note. She has like eight questions on there. And that's like one of her big questions.
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Where did God come from? Who created God? And I'm responding back to her this week.
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So it's kind of good. This is helping me in devoting my answers. But what
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I've arrived at when Moses was talking with God, and when they asked when
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Moses said, Who do I tell Pharaoh that sent me? It's the I Am. The Alpha and Omega.
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The one who was, the one who is, and the one who is to come. And that's really the only answer we have.
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You know, that God, in His sovereignty, has chosen to not reveal a beginning or an end to Him.
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There is no beginning or end to Him. He was, and He is, and He is to come. And we're asking from a framework of people who are limited by time and space.
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And so He was before us. He is with us. He forever will be with us.
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And so that's the only answer we can give. And at that point, there's no logic that we can reason with.
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There is faith. And so I'm thankful the scriptures do give us a lot of things that we can logically approach.
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But this is one of those questions you can't. And I think it's on purpose. It requires tremendous faith.
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So we can scientifically see a lot of things and the laws that God has put in place in the earth to describe
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His nature and His order. Just like you guys were saying, you know, the causality of things.
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But beyond that, there's no logic except He is. He is the
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I Am. Yes. Well, to me, this kind of touches on the conversation that we were having prior to the video starting.
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Jonathan brought up the discussion about those who hold to Sola Scriptura.
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But also, or more than that, or apart from that, they use creeds, confessions, statements of faith to make their arguments or to find their doctrines, even though they're claiming
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Sola Scriptura. But this is one of those doctrines. We kind of lean on our creeds and confessions to kind of put it all together.
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We rely on reason and logic to make sense of the eternality of God.
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So I didn't know if any of you guys wanted to touch on that. Is there evidence from Scripture to speak to this eternality of God, or is it just the
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Bible says it and explains God in that way? And that's our authority, so therefore that's where we stand.
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Well, I think going to the Scripture, number one, is the key, right? And to define these terms, right?
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We're not like when we're talking to children or to adults, that we talk in the exact same way, that we use the exact same terminology, and that we get our terminology from, like Jonathan was mentioning earlier, from the
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Scriptures, right? So concerning God, how do you explain God to a child?
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Well, the same way we explain God to a 45 -year -old, to an 85 -year -old, an atheist, whatever the case may be, whoever they may be, male or female, it's still going to be the same.
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We go back to the eternality of God, right? And to what it means when
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God says, like what Jonathan said, I am that I am, or when we read capital L -O -R -D, right?
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We're talking about Yahweh, which is the eternal, self -existent
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One. So that's, when you read capital L -O -R -D, that's what we are, that's what's being spoken of, who is being spoken of, the eternal, self -existent
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God, unexplainable with the tongue, right? Incomprehensible, as S .M.
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Lockridge says about Jesus, right? He's incomprehensible. He's beyond our comprehension.
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I wonder if you know him. Yeah, exactly. I quoted part of that at the
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Open Air Theology Conference, exactly. He's, I mean, the infinite, and I know this probably leads into the next part, but it's about God's character and nature, right?
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I'm not trying to jump ahead, but it logically flows to that, right? The character and the nature of God, that He is, number one, infinite.
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So He's, before the beginning, He just was the eternal, self -existent
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God. What does this tell us about God? It tells us that God is at the, and we use these terms, children need to know these terms, omniscient, that He knows all, right?
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That He's omnipresent. He's everywhere, but we're not talking about pantheism, right?
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And it just, it opens all kinds of opportunities when we, when we start, and God's the beginning place.
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When we start talking about theology, if we start anywhere other than God, we're off base.
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I mean, Job 38 is where my mind immediately went when
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Job is questioning God's goodness, His sovereignty, and it says that God answers him from the whirlwind.
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He says, where were you when I established the earth? Tell me if you have understanding, which is exactly what
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Jonathan was just saying, that we can't wrap our heads around this. We can't fully grasp this, that God is not me.
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He is not like me. And so I'm limited in my ability to comprehend the
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Almighty that was there in the beginning, and yet has no beginning and no end.
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That He just is. That that name, Yahweh, is I Am. That He, He simply is.
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Right. Which, again, this, again, I know it takes us into other theological terms, but man, if we will teach our children these theological terms, like at church,
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Jonathan, and there's a seven -year -old girl at our church, man, I'll be honest with you,
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I'll take her into theological war with me over most 50 -year -old
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Christians. This little girl knows her stuff. I mean, she'll argue with me every
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Sunday when we go to class for catechism. I mean, she will get with—if I don't say it exactly like the old catechism says, right?
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I mean, she knows her stuff, but what Tyler just said is the aseity of God.
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The absolute otherness of God. The absolute separateness of God.
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There's not a fine line between God and man. There's a stinking chasm.
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One of the things I was gonna say is, I don't have a problem at all with sola scriptura.
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One of the things to consider is that this isn't the first and last time that you see, or this isn't the last time in Scripture that you see this exact same language in Genesis 1 and 1.
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You see this over again, over again, in the Old Testament, New Testament. So I think that it's totally useful to use the divine revelation of Scripture in conjunction with the general revelation that God's given us with the thing that I rest my hat on, right?
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With our minds that He's given us, and take the rest of Scripture to back up your point. I mean,
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I think the point, at least the way I understand it, the point of sola scriptura is that Scripture has final say.
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We use Scripture to interpret Scripture, right? We don't use confessions to interpret
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Scripture, but Scripture is interpreted rather in light of Scripture as we're led by the Holy Spirit. So yeah.
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I like Psalm chapter 90 verse 2. Before the mountains were born, you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting.
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And that context is a pre -earth everlasting, so everlasting from our perspective looking back, everlasting, to everlasting from our perspective looking forward to everlasting.
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It says, and you are God. Amen. Drop the mic. That's right.
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So from everlasting to everlasting, you're God, and that's it. That's all we can say, guys.
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You know what I mean as far as just trying to explain those kinds of things? I mean, He's God. There is no other.
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There's plenty of evidence to prove His existence, but we have nothing to compare that would share
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His beginning or end because there is nothing. So all creation points to His existence,
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His power, His order, His character, His law, His divine attributes.
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All the creation is pointing to that. That man ought to read Romans. Yeah. Let's go to Romans 1.
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You know, there is no beginning, no end. It's the Alpha, the
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Omega of the earth, and in everlasting before the Alpha, He was God.
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In everlasting after the Omega, He'll still be God. He is who was, is, and is to come.
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I've been auditing a class online on physics because I'm a glutton for punishments.
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So I've been listening to lectures on Einstein and the concept of time. Did you know we have been arguing about what time is for 2 ,000 years?
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Absolutely. Time's not measurable. Yeah. In and of itself, time cannot be measured.
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It is when you plug in. 2 ,000 years, and we still don't have the ability to understand time. How can we understand the one who is
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Lord of time? Amen. Now you're right.
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Time is funny. Time is measurable. When you start clocking into work, that's when you start measuring it.
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Other than that, you don't care. Time is always measured in conjunction with something else. There's time where you don't care, and there's work time.
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You have to clock in, and you're like, giving the money. Well, I wanted to make these questions in such a way that it's not just a simple overview, something more than what you can just open up your
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Bible and read an introduction to these books. So as we call this the laborer's overview of Genesis or Leviticus, that's how
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I'm going to pose these questions, hopefully in a unique way. And so I want to look at these first four sections of Genesis in this way.
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What can we learn about God's character? And that first section, of course, is creation.
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Through the creation story at the beginning of Genesis, what are some characteristics of God that we can learn through that event?
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I think it's omniscience. The special calculated and perfectly organized structure of everything shows a supremely intelligent.
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The prophets were right. His ways are so much higher than our ways. Things that are so consistent that they have to be upheld by something, right?
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And I don't know. I like the subject of physics. I spent a lot of time in the field of engineering and mechanics, and I understand some of these things better than I understand theology.
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And, you know, acceleration of gravity is consistent no matter where you're at in the universe. It doesn't make any sense how it works, but it's thoroughly consistent, right?
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You can measure almost everything by it. And nobody seems to draw into question how in the world something that has happened by some cosmic accident, according to physicists, is so consistent everywhere that you can set your time by it.
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You can set your days by it. It's incredible. The intricacies and the precision of creation.
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Well, if we compare this, and we put the book of Genesis in context and look at some of the other myths from the time, and you look at like the
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Mesopotamian myths, um, they saw man as just a plaything of the gods.
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They were almost like an accident, and they were just kind of there. And the reason the flood happened, according to the
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Mesopotamians, is because the sound of people living on the earth was too noisy and the gods couldn't sleep.
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And so the idea of man in the Mesopotamian worldview is that they were just, they were just like the toys of the gods, and oftentimes they were a nuisance.
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They were an annoyance. But Genesis says God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created them.
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He doesn't just make them. He crafts them. He creates them. There is a certain craftsmanship to how he does things.
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There are very specific Hebrew words here for creating, for making, that are not just like how we make things, like a potter, that he takes something else and turns it into something else.
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And that's, that sounds weird, but there is a different substance here in comparison with all these other myths, that this is a different book.
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And there's, there's a secular intellectual that I've listened to from time to time. He is not a believer, but he's looked at this and said, this is not like any other book.
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Any civilization that dispenses themselves from this book does so at its own peril. And he's, he's not exactly arrived at what that is yet, obviously, but the reality is this isn't like any other book.
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This is not just a book. This is the God of the universe. This is the God who created us, not for, to be his plaything, not to be cast aside because we're too noisy, but to share in his character, to bring glory to himself.
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I would argue that Genesis chapter one and chapter two, there's probably not any other two chapters in the
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Bible that more explicitly have a revelation of the character and attributes of God in cross -reference with other scriptures.
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And notice I'm saying it's in cross -reference. For example, God said, let there be light, but the earth was void and darkness and without form.
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And then God said, let there be light. And it was so. So then light shone and God is light.
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And in him, there is no darkness at all. And so you can go all the way through those creation statements and you can find an attribute of God that is developed from each specific step of creation that is revealing his divine nature and ability and who he is.
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And at the end of every one of those creative moments, it is good. Every single one of them.
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It is good. God is good. It is good. And then he creates man and man is very good.
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The only thing that was created in the image of God is very good. And so, so that's the first thing
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I'll say. The second thing I'll say in that first portion of creation, I love this psalm.
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I looked it up real quick because I did not pre -screen the questions. And so I'm fine as we go.
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So I love this psalm, Psalm 33. It says, by the word of the
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Lord, the heavens were made and by the breath of his mouth, all their hosts.
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In other words, breath stars were made just by speaking by his breath.
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Our son began to shine. And by the way, according to our scientists, our son is really not that impressive and compared to other stars throughout the universe.
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So just by his breath, stars are created. The host of the heavens are created.
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And then he goes on to say, he gathers the waters of the sea as a heap. He puts the deeps in his storehouse.
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Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
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For he spoke and it came to be. He commanded and it stood firm.
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So the results of this, you can see all of these attributes, all of the order, all of the beauty, all of the authority, all of the power.
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And in our response, really should be let all the earth fear the Lord and let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
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There's nobody can do that except our God. So I get really excited about Genesis 1 and 2.
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And I get really frustrated with Genesis 3. We have such a disappointing result as man's decisions in the earth versus what
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God had created. But there's so much packed into Genesis 1 and 2 that we could spend the next year just unpacking and unpacking and all this kind of things.
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But that's two of my most favorite books of the Bible, chapters of the Bible and two of my favorite to preach, especially when you're dealing with the attributes of God.
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Amen. I'm just going to squeeze this in. Isn't it an amazing thing that we don't have to have all the things that we think we need to have to have a worship service?
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I mean, this conversation just puts a smile on my face to hear you guys exalt
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God and glorify him, just pondering on his character. I mean, we're having a worship service.
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I've got chills. Amen. I mean, how many of those psalms go back to creation? Right. Amen.
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Let's go to the fall of man. Brother Jesse, chime in whenever you're ready, brother.
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The fall of man, what can we learn about God and his character through this event, the fall of man?
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Well, yeah, a lot of you guys are saying really good stuff. The fall of man is where it all began for us in sin.
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Man, if the fall of man didn't happen, you would not have Romans chapter five. You would not have
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Romans chapter one. You won't have like eighty eight percent of the
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Bible if Romans chapter three didn't happen. So yeah, Romans chapter three is definitely a huge chapter.
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I think it's an umbrella chapter. It's the paradigm we all live in, right? The fall of man.
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Man is disobedient to God, listens to the serpent, and it is cursed, you know, to to die.
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And now it has a broken relationship with God. And he is driven out immediately from the presence of God, from the from the communion of God, from the favor of God, all these different graces and blessings that Adam enjoyed.
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Think about it. God visited Adam and the cool part of the day, pretty much every day.
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We don't know for how long, but they had a communion with him. And, you know, and this is historical.
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You know, all, you know, Genesis three, Genesis one, Genesis two, Genesis three is very historical.
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It's not there's nothing allegorical. There's nothing metaphorical about it. There's a lot of metaphors that you could draw from if you want to read
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Jesus on every page, right? But when you want to take solar scriptural to its to its full extent, it's historical.
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And you see how Genesis three is is used throughout scripture. Paul, the apostle, uses it as a huge reference point for Romans chapter five, for example, when he's talking about the fall of Adam and Adam being the representative of mankind.
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Adam was like technically the first human, right? The first man.
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He was the patriarch of all humanity, him and his posterity. He represented everybody.
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So when he fell, he represented everybody. We all fall. So original sin comes in and death comes in.
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And Paul uses that. He uses Adam to say, hey, through one man, sin comes to the world and destroys everything.
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And he's like, well, it's the same way with one man with Christ. Righteousness comes to many.
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So so that language is being drawn from Genesis chapter three.
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Genesis chapter three is also a gospel point. We see the gospel, the earliest prototype of the gospel is found in Genesis chapter three, where God shows mercy to them and he could have just killed them being holy and just.
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But he did it. He showed him mercy. He provides a sacrifice. So everything, all the elements of covenant are there.
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Right. If you really want to get covenant, theologies are there. There's so many elements in Genesis chapter three.
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Well, one of my favorite elements is the gospel. You all over the place in Genesis chapter three, that's what's going on.
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Genesis three, twenty one. And they made a sacrifice and clothed them with the skin of an animal.
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Praise God for the righteousness of God. Amen and amen. Amen. Amen.
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Yep. What can we see in the third section of Genesis?
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We're talking about the flood and Tyler brought that up a little bit earlier. What can we learn from the character in nature and maybe some of some similar things that we see in the fall of man and in the flood, some of the similar characteristics of God.
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But what can we learn about God in the flood account? One of the things that I see right off the bat with the fall and with the flood is that God isn't going to,
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God isn't going to skirt whatever he says because you mess up.
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Right. And whatever he says is authoritative and absolute. So if God says, don't eat of the fruit of this tree and the day that you eat of it, you'll die.
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That's precisely what it means. Right. And whenever he looks and sees that his creation is constantly just completely obsessed with violence and all their thoughts.
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And the Bible says he repented that he made man. He was sorrowful that he had made them.
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I'm not going to settle. I guess that's what I'm looking for. I'm not going to settle for something less than what
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I want. God's not the kind that settles for anything. This is it.
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And there's going to be a standard. And like Jesse said, the standard is
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Christ. And the gospel is going to be the flag that is flown on. And you see a remnant, a very small amount of people survive this flood.
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And there's only one avenue of salvation. And that's the avenue in which God allows salvation to happen.
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And God kept them by that way. And then later there will be an entire ordinances and covenants that God would set up.
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That man were lived by and that God would honor for the rest of our days.
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And I think that when I see that, I see that it's man's desire most of the time to go with the majority rule and to settle for whatever is good enough.
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It's not God's way. God's ways have to be yes and amen and perfect.
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And I know that sounds very exclusive and that's because it is.
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And it's his way or no way. And I see that.
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At the same time, I also see grace. I also see favor. I see a
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God who is kind when he doesn't have to be merciful whenever he's completely justified in the eradication of everybody.
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So you have to weigh this out. He's absolutely unapologetically not going to slide on this standard.
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At the same time, he doesn't desire to see anyone perish. So he makes a way of salvation, but it's his way.
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And it will always be that way. Go ahead.
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I'm sorry. Go ahead. You go ahead, sir. I would like to call you a footnote when it comes to the flood section.
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I think it's very interesting. Christians of all kinds, we sometimes do it, too, who are closer to the reform side, but not so often.
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And it's very easily to get swept up, if I could use flood language, swept up into the fashion trends of hermeneutics and the fashion trends of sci -fi when it comes to the flood, because there's a lot of potential dangers and distractions when it comes to the flood.
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For example, there's a lot of interesting things in the flood. Like was the world all one giant piece of land?
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Yeah, perhaps. It doesn't say that. But yeah, there's scientific data, blah, blah, blah.
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But is that what the text is trying to drive home? Probably not. If you really want to stick with Sola Scriptura as your main principle, like a flag on a ship, you ride it to where it sinks.
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Sola Scriptura will demand of us that we read Jesus on every page and take it home.
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Now, it doesn't hurt to say science says all the earth was one. That's fine.
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But Genesis six is not about the world being one. The Genesis six is about God's judgment on the whole world now.
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And then, you know, the Nephilim and the UFOs and the pyramids were on the water.
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We like to get into these things that are like tertiary rabbit holes, huge distractions, billboards that says, buy now, save later, stuff like that, that are distractions that are that are either scientific data, extracurricular afterschool activities that has nothing to do with your geometry class.
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You know what I mean? So it's like you need to pass geometry, but you're staying after school for extracurricular stuff that has nothing to do with your geometry class, but you fail geometry.
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Does that make sense? So we a lot of Christians get caught up with these these interesting things that are legitimate in their own way.
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Elsewhere, but we lose sight when it comes to the to the text of Scripture, Genesis chapter six, and it's like, what is
36:21
Jesus doing in Genesis chapter six? That is the question. Jesus is the question who what is
36:28
Jesus doing in Genesis chapter six that applies to us, right? It's not the Nephilim. It's not
36:34
UFOs and underwater 600 feet, whatever. Those things are interesting, but that's not the text.
36:40
So Christians, I'm saying this to Christians of all types, shapes, colors and creeds.
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We need to be real careful when we handle Scripture, because just like the just like the
36:53
Bible, they're a thin page. And if you turn too hard, you can rip it. If you if you if you like to twist
36:59
Scripture, that's on you. Here's my last my last sentence. Twist churros, not
37:06
Scripture. So to end to I would add to on on the flood specific to to name specific attributes of God's character, holiness, righteousness.
37:25
Those these are these are really in the big picture, non communicable attributes of God.
37:35
So when you talk about the character and nature of God, right, we got to talk about it. We're talking about his attributes. And these are things that are unique to God.
37:44
They're like what what John was saying, our big John was saying there that what he was explaining was the righteousness of God, that right.
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True righteousness means that, like John said, you're not going to you're not going to get slide on it.
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And like Jesse said, the whole point of the Scriptures when we look at them is to see
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Jesus on every page. Right. And that's what we see. That's what we see. We see the holiness and the righteousness of God, that God, though though he made man in his image, man, sinned and fail.
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Right. And then in six, the heart of man was only said on only evil continuously. And so God sent the flood judgment.
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He sends judgment. Right. But he provides an arc. Again, Jesus, he provides the arc of his grace, you know, that that that is the only way a man will be carried through the flood out of sin, the only way.
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And then God opens the door. God closes door. We see all that. But we see that in God's character and God's nature.
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And we see it all pointing to Christ because God is righteous. And he told and he told man this was going to happen.
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Like John said, he did it. And because God is righteous, he could not let sin go.
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Right. The scriptures of the apostle Paul and preaching to the guys on Mars Hill and act 17.
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Right. For the times of this, for the times many men's ignorance,
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God winked at. Right. But he didn't let it slide because he sent his son, the one man who would judge the world in righteousness.
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Do it, bro. Yes. Yes. Yeah. He sent the one man, his son that would judge the world in righteousness.
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And that that Jesus was the picture of that arc that bore the weight of the storm, that bore the weight of the sin, that bore the weight of death and hell itself.
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And he arose victorious over death, hell and he arose. That's exactly right.
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It's one of my favorite. I'm about to I'm about to get happy there on that. Go ahead.
40:03
Go ahead. I'm glad you guys brought in the fact that it's all pointing to Jesus.
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And I also I think that speaks of the character and person of God in the fact that his his perfect genius, his brilliance and his power to be able to to weave a story of millions and millions of people where you've got you've got these events happening.
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Yeah. For a purpose. And they're pointing to Jesus. That's right. And he works all those things out because of his power, his genius and his brilliance that we can't comprehend that you spoke of earlier.
40:46
It's a man. One more thing in there real quick. Yeah. I mean, like, shoot, nobody's
40:54
I've been waiting for somebody to bring up the other part of the covenant because we talk about the rainbow and this is what.
41:02
Yeah. Yeah. And and the reality is this. I love this study and I challenge you guys to go study it.
41:08
The Hebrew word is not rainbow. It's just both. Oh, but we know we know rainbow because we think it's in the sky.
41:18
Yeah. It's really the weapon that's used for hunting or battle is the Hebrew word. And if we draw it as a bow, it's pointed up.
41:27
It's not pointed down. Exactly. So who is going to take who's going to take the affliction?
41:34
Yeah. And it's shocked. And so there's a pointing there's a directional aspect of it that God's wrath when he says now never pour my wrath out in this way ever again.
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That's right. Where is his wrath going to be shot to? Where is the wrath of God? But this flood and the bow is now turned the opposite direction is pointed.
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So it's a foreshadowing of Christ. It's a point of the future covenant. So I don't have an air horn button, but I got to bring in the keys here.
42:05
Here we go. Oh, yes.
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The covenants of the gospel are in every one of these chapters. Absolutely. And so so discovering that, you know, in every single one of these stories, it seems tremendously horrible that this wrath was poured out the way it was.
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And you think about and what a tragedy, bro. What a tragedy when when when preachers and practitioners of scripture of all types and shapes come along and they take that passage, those passages.
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And there's a certain group that steal the rainbow, by the way. Sure. You know what I mean? That's a travesty.
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And there's other groups that steal God's glory from that passage. And they point to these like distractions.
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Like I said, it's like there's nothing wrong with like, OK, investigation. Go look at Ken Ham.
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Go look at other guys who I who I would trust on those issues. But outside of that, it's very scary when when you start looking at the, you know, like, oh, you know, aliens and the book, you know, and like, you know, all these things.
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And it's like, you know, all that stuff is garbage. It's a huge robbery of God's glory.
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I've been really convicted the second Corinthians where Paul told the Corinthians, I didn't come to you with flattering words, fear and all and trembling.
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Now, I preach to you, Christ, been crucified. So so as ministers of the gospel.
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Now, there are those that are called to be apologists, great apologists.
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And I'm thankful for them. And they can they can work in that realm to proclaim the gospel.
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It doesn't mean I don't have an apologist slant to us to be ready to give a defense or give it an answer.
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But at the end of the day, my job, my calling, and I believe hires around this circle is we are men of the gospel.
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We proclaim the good news, Christ, and we discover the truth of the gospel in no matter what chapter, what verse of the
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Bible was there since either a foreshadowing of the message of or the the the revelation of the gospel, the person of Christ.
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And so so these so that's just can't miss the real cool things that God is saying.
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And there's a lot of stuff there in the flood. God always has a messenger. You know, is there any time in the earth that there's not been a messenger to proclaim, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand, you know, repent, crying out for repentance.
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And I've prayed many times, God, please don't make me a Noah or please make me a
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Jeremiah. You're preaching for one hundred and twenty years and there's not one single convert.
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And it's the same message that Noah preached on. I'll never forget listening to Paul Washer preach on this one time.
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And he said he preached the same message is going to rain.
45:34
That's right. And and so but but where did there's so many, so many things that can be brought out in these chapters to encourage pastors and create encouraging ministers of the gospel to persevere, to stay faithful.
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And even when God's feels delayed, can you imagine there had to be at some point?
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I mean, it's not recorded. There had to be some time. But Noah's like, you know, God, it's been one hundred and twenty years since you told me this.
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I'm still preaching and I'm still still building this daggum boat. But are you going to do anything? You know, and then
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I was six hundred years old when the flood came. Tell you that finally the word of the Lord said, all right, get your crew in the boat.
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It's kind of, you know, in the end, what do you think? You know, I mean, so anyways, and then just the cries of people.
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I think there's a there's a huge humanitarian side of this that we have to I wanted to mention a second or two that we we should acknowledge.
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We should not rejoice in in the destruction of the wicked. You know,
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I imagine being on the boat hearing the cries of people, you know, but then Noah being justified in his effort of preaching faithfully
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God's word. So you had every opportunity. And so anyway, this is a ton of stuff that you can draw out of there.
46:59
Well, you're talking about the length of time that it took, you know, 120 years. No, being 600 years old, you know, and we if we were him, we could sit and contemplate, you know,
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Lord, why aren't you answering my prayer? Lord, why are you taking so long? But I think what you guys were speaking to and pulling out or what
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I wanted to pull out another attribute of God is his long suffering. Amen. It's not that he is.
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You know, he's not answering my prayer is that he is being long suffering with those whom he's showing mercy.
47:32
Precisely. Oh, thank you,
47:38
Daryl. Thank you, Daryl, for making some comments. We appreciate it. And I did forget to mention that the comment line is open.
47:43
So we'd love to hear from you. Say hello or ask questions. And we'll try to answer them.
47:49
Well, let me encourage you all to in this. If you all haven't ever read the book, I encourage you to get this book,
47:56
Even If None by Ryan Denton. I'm serious.
48:02
Yeah. Yeah. Ryan's a great guy. But even if none, because the idea is right.
48:10
We've been kind of mentally trained that if just one believes it'll be worth it all.
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Well, if none believe Christ is still worth it. And he's still worth proclaiming despite.
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And I believe that's the mindset that the Old Testament saints had that that Moses had that Jeremiah had that they wasn't worried about because we're trained to to measure success by the amount of response that we receive.
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But it's not us to receive the response anyway. It's Christ. It's Christ that receives the glory.
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And Christ will be glorified in the damnation of men and in the salvation of men.
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So he's going to be glorified either way. So that's an encouragement for us to keep on preaching the gospel.
49:00
Don't quit. Folks throw dead cats at you like they did with field. Yeah. Preach on.
49:06
That's right. If they throw money at you, preach on. But don't get a big head. Might be monopoly money.
49:16
We're not sure. It might be Bitcoin. Here you go. If Noah would have had some pizza parties and a concert, he probably could have got some more numbers, but he just didn't learn his lesson.
49:30
I'm going to start combining questions. So the last one looking at the character nature of God is in the fourth section, the dispersion.
49:39
And then the second question related to that is, are there any practical lessons for us that we can learn from the
49:47
Tower of Babel? Yes, absolutely. Well, I think the first mistake we have a tendency to make with the
49:55
Tower of Babel is thinking it's solely about the tower. But what is the acclamation that they make before they start building the tower?
50:05
Let's make a name for ourselves. Yeah. Otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.
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There was an element of wanting recognition and wanting to safeguard their future by their own means.
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Come on. Come on. And so that is the that is the disposition that led to the tower.
50:30
Yeah. And so it says in verse five, then the Lord came down to look over the city. And while we recognize that God is omnipresent, that he is all knowing, as we've already talked about, for reasons that we don't fully understand as finite people,
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God feels comfortable communicating himself to us as if he had to come out and check things out, that he presents himself in a personal fashion here.
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The Lord came down to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building. He already knew they were building a tower.
51:03
He already knew this was going on. But he communicates it this way for a purpose. And it says, if they have begun to do this as one people having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
51:16
That there is a there's a unity here. We talk about unity a lot these days, but this is not good unity.
51:23
This is unity around falsehood. And so he lays it to waste and he brings confusion.
51:31
It says in Ecclesiastes that God has given us distractions during our time on earth.
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That's a hard truth to wrap our heads around, but the reality is he gets in the way of that unity they had of this attempt to grab the instrument of their fate.
51:50
He takes that from them. But if we flip over to chapter 12, what does he promise
51:57
Abram? I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you.
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I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. He takes the very thing that they wanted at the
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Tower of Babel and he turns it on his head and gives it to Abram. That he goes from the negative to the positive.
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From the lesser to the greater. From them to go, we will build ourselves a city.
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To God's thing, I will build you a city. Amen. And I yield my time.
52:31
Hi, Mr. Moderator. Can I have a... You got it. Go ahead. All right.
52:37
Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Definitely we see a curse.
52:42
We see God cursing again. God comes down and curses them and scatters them. So whenever we see a dispersion,
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God doing this, it's a curse. God curses us. We see this throughout the Old Testament, God curses the armies and they get confused and they start killing each other, which is weird because it's like they all have the same uniform.
53:04
It's like why... They're turning on each other. Yeah, it's like ancient Irish, you know, from like the second century.
53:10
It's like fighting against each other all the time. So it's like, so when you see a dispersion, it's a curse.
53:17
And like what Ty was just talking about is basically the promise of that reversal of that curse.
53:27
So in Acts chapter one and verse eight, he basically reverses the curse.
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Now they are allowed to disperse and speak all kinds of languages. Languages.
53:42
That's right. And usher in this promise of Abraham is now fulfilled and now is the reversal of the
53:52
Tower of Babel. I'll push back on that just a little bit with respect if I can. I think that much like you see the reason for the flood and the reason for the fall,
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I believe is one of the reasons why you see the dispersal to begin with. Chapter nine, verse one.
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And God blessed Noah and his sons. And he said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
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And they didn't. They stayed in one place and decided they knew best.
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They decided they would bypass God's way and do things their way. Does this sound familiar? This fruit looks good for food.
54:34
I'll just take it because after all, what does God know? You know, I mean, this is man.
54:40
This is the fallen nature of man, right? Man will just. It's like your kids. They'll do what you really want them to do as long as you don't ask them to do it.
54:49
Right. And I see God do two things.
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First of all, I believe that God being jealous for for himself, for his bride, for for the son.
55:05
You're not going to worship anything other than me. And let me let that go. Right.
55:11
This is pre commandment free. Any kind of any kind of covenant where God walks around.
55:17
God's not walking around with Nimrod and the rest of the guys as they're building this tower. So he says, you're not going to worship anything other than me.
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So we're going to put a stop to this right now. I'm putting a stop to this nonsense. That was for their good.
55:32
Yeah. It is for your good that you don't worship anything other than God. And I'm not going to let it go down.
55:39
So God confounds their languages. We've got to remember that whatever God does, even in judgment is really for our good.
55:47
That's right. Honestly, his judgment is redemptive in nature.
55:55
So the fact that I believe I wouldn't call this necessarily a curse, brother, just as much as I'd call this a judgment, a judgment on man.
56:06
I do believe that God wanted the whole earth to be full of his glory and full of full of his creation, testifying of his goodness based off of what we see throughout the rest of Scripture.
56:19
And when he empowers the church in Acts chapter one and two, it is for what? For the proclamation of the gospel to go into all the earth and spread the gospel and teaching these to baptize the ordinance name, the father, son, and the
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Holy Ghost. So while God did judge man in the dispersal, ultimately, all the curse was answered on the cross and in the resurrection, not in the reunification of God's body through the church in Acts chapter one and two.
56:50
That's all. I mean, I'd push back a little bit on that with respect to not in total disagreement, but I think the language change may be effective.
57:00
I yield the rest of my time to the speaker from Tennessee. I guess he yields as well.
57:10
I could respond to why. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Oh yeah. I'm in Tennessee. Okay. I thought you knew that.
57:23
I'm tired y 'all. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah.
57:28
So I would argue here that I think you're both on point there.
57:38
Again, it was a curse though, but Christ became the curse for us, right?
57:46
But you just about quoted it there at the end of your speech there, big
57:52
John. Galatians 310, for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse for it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide in the written in the book of the law and all that's written in the book of the law.
58:05
Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law for the righteous shall live by faith.
58:10
Of course, he's talking about Abraham there, but the law is not a faith rather the one who does them shall live by them.
58:16
And then it says this, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the
58:32
Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith.
58:38
Amen. There, now that I know what state I'm in.
58:45
That includes everybody, all those volunteers down there in Tennessee too. Well, I say roll tide.
58:52
I don't care about the volunteers anyhow, but I'll quote Minnie Pearl right here.
58:59
You're pretty close to the border, so we'll let you go. We'll let you slide. You're pretty close to that border.
59:08
Let me combine this question because we're running out of time. And so you guys just, you know, pick one if you can, but we want to hit all four of these men, the last four of Genesis, the patriarchs,
59:19
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. So I'll ask it in this way. In what way did
59:26
God make these men that they point to Christ? How in their lives, how
59:34
God made them, did they point to Christ? Maybe one aspect, one characteristic.
59:40
Abraham's faith. Every access and entryway we have to God is through Christ is done by faith, faith alone.
59:52
I stole that from Claude though. He just read it. That's what I was thinking too, big
59:57
John. That's exactly what I was thinking. I just read that. You just read that, yeah. All right, you up Pastor Foster.
01:00:06
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We just got through reading the story of Joseph as well.
01:00:17
And the one thing I guess I'll say is God's divine providence that his plan will not fail.
01:00:27
Amen. Abraham was a godly man. If you look at Isaac and Jacob, sniffing a little wimp that he was.
01:00:42
It's great. I think what you find in each one of those characters is you'll find faith and you'll find flaws and you'll find men.
01:00:52
I guess I'll just mention this when I think about it. I think every one of these are pointing out the fact that man can never save himself, that we have a savior -type complex.
01:01:08
We have a person that God makes a covenant with, the Adamic covenant, and Adam failed, the
01:01:16
Noahic covenant, and Noah failed, the Abrahamic covenant. And God set that one up different.
01:01:24
The covenant with Abraham, now that this covenant is not dependent upon Abraham and only his descendants, but God is the one that made the covenant pass through the blood of the covenant.
01:01:35
So therefore, this covenant with Abraham is dependent upon God. And the only way this covenant would ever be broken is if God himself dies.
01:01:44
And so therefore, that covenant still stands today. We are of the seed of Abraham.
01:01:52
And so Abraham, and then we see that lineage then,
01:01:57
Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and on to Moses, and on down the line to David, and on down the line to Christ.
01:02:07
So I think that's the beautiful part of Genesis. It starts us down a direct line in the lineage, down that path, praise
01:02:17
God, bringing us to Christ. And so there's a ton of stuff that could be said, but in me, in my heart, that's the shortcut.
01:02:24
It's been a long time talking about these guys, but that's the shortcut that man can never save himself.
01:02:30
There's no righteousness in man, no power in man. So God just proves that he uses weak, and frail, and flawed people to ensure that his plan of a
01:02:42
Savior coming into the world would not be thwarted. Amen. May I rest in that, that we cannot, no power of this earth can thwart the plan of God, and he will prevail.
01:02:55
Amen. Let me jump in here for where Rob does, because Rob usually is the guy asking this, but I'm going to take a liberty here,
01:03:04
Rob. So your last question here, preach the gospel, or your last statement on our questions, preach the gospel of Jesus as if you just preached a text from Genesis.
01:03:15
So let's pretend, Rob, that you just spent an hour and 10 minutes on a podcast.
01:03:24
We'll call it the Laborer's Podcast, just because that's what it's called.
01:03:31
And you already testified that you're just rejoicing in the goodness of God, and hearing the attributes about the character and the nature of God in the book of Genesis.
01:03:44
So Rob, preach the gospel of Jesus as if you just preached a text from Genesis.
01:03:51
And then, Tyler, would you pray us out? Absolutely.
01:03:59
You didn't expect that, did you, Rob? I did not expect it. Instant in season, out of season, brother.
01:04:04
In season and out of season. We can spend our whole lives trying to find our own path and our own ways, and we can continue to repeat what we see in Genesis.
01:04:26
If we were to open our eyes and we will see what we see in Genesis, we see mankind who continue, examples of man who continue to seek their own path, seek their own righteousness, seek their own good, seek their own desires, over and over and over and over again.
01:04:47
Things that they're not supposed to have, but it's what they want, and they go after it. A way in which they're supposed to go, and yet they desire to go a different way.
01:04:57
They want to reach the heavens. They want to rule themselves. They want to be their own god, be their own king.
01:05:06
They don't want to listen to preaching, listen to the word that's presented to them, over and over and over again in Genesis.
01:05:18
We see examples. If we would just open our eyes and learn that lesson that no matter what path we take, if it's apart from God's way, then we will ultimately always fail.
01:05:35
In this situation, when it comes to our relationship with God, failing is more serious than what we could ever imagine because failing in this way leads to destruction.
01:05:47
Failing in this way is called sin, and because we sin against a holy
01:05:53
God, there must be a holy and other punishment.
01:05:59
As Claude was mentioning the otherness of God, there must be a punishment that we can't fathom because we have sinned against a
01:06:07
God we can't fathom, a holy God. Would it be that we learn that lesson from these people in Genesis that our own path and our own way will lead us to destruction?
01:06:23
But what we can also see over and over and over again in Genesis, besides the continually failing of man, is the continual mercy of God, the continual patience of God, the continual long suffering of God.
01:06:42
If we'll open our eyes to that, we will see a loving and merciful
01:06:50
Savior because not only are we learning about our
01:06:56
Creator and how He is patient and loving and kind and merciful and gracious, but also wrapped up in that story is
01:07:04
He is pointing to how He is going to satisfy His justice so that He doesn't have to punish us for our sin.
01:07:12
All throughout Genesis, as we've talked about, He is pointing to His Son whom
01:07:17
He is going to send to take on the sin of the world, to take on His wrath so that we don't have to.
01:07:24
If we will just turn from ourselves and our sin and turn to God through faith in Jesus Christ, His Son.
01:07:34
Jesus came to this earth, fulfilled all those prophecies of the Old Testament. He was born of a virgin.
01:07:41
He lived a sinless life. He died at the hands of men.
01:07:47
He suffered. He died on the cross, was buried, rose on the third day, and then
01:07:54
He ascended into heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father, and He has been granted all authority in heaven and on earth.
01:08:01
He reigns as King of kings and Lord of lords, and so we must submit to Him, or we can continue to follow our failing path which will lead to destruction.
01:08:11
So our call to you and everyone who's listening that has not turned to Christ is tonight, turn to Him, turn from your sins, and turn to Jesus in faith.
01:08:23
Amen. Let's pray. Father God, we are people who wrestle with you, like Jacob, but in different ways.
01:08:36
That we wrestle with this idea of who you are. We've tried to grab you and bring you down to our level, to say, what is your name?
01:08:46
You said that you are not like us. You are more than us.
01:08:51
You are more than we could ever be, more than we could ever fathom, and yet you have been gracious enough to show us glimpses of who you are through the person and work of Christ.
01:09:06
That what you would have us to know about yourself, you had us to know through the
01:09:12
Son crucified on the cross. And God, we are amazed anew at that tonight, that the
01:09:20
God who saves has made Himself known to us. The God who created the world in six days out of nothing knows us, and that we through the cross can know you.
01:09:38
God, let us keep sight of that. Amen. Thank you guys for your participation.
01:09:46
I really appreciate your input, and thank you everybody who watched. We pray and hope that you were edified and that God was glorified.
01:09:54
Join us again next time for the Laborers' Conference. Lord willing, it will be next Thursday. We hope to see you soon.
01:10:01
Thank you for joining the Laborers' Podcast. Remember, Jesus is King. Live in the victory of Christ.
01:10:09
Speak with the authority of Christ, and go share the gospel of Christ. Be sure to tune in next time for the