What the scripture says about amen

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Lesson: What the scripture says about amen Date: April 7, 2024 Teacher: Pastor Conley Owens

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Hymn number one, yes. All people that on earth do dwell, sing to the
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Lord with cheerful voice.
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Him serve with fear, his grace foretell.
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Come ye before him and rejoice.
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The Lord, ye know, is God indeed.
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Without our aid he did us make.
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We are his folk, he doth us feed.
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And for his sheep he doth us take.
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Oh, enter then his gates with praise.
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Approach with joy his courts unto.
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Praise, Lord, and bless his name always.
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For it is seemly so to do.
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For God is good.
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His mercy is forever sure.
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His truth at all times firmly stood.
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And shall from age to age endure.
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Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this time we get to spend looking at your word.
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I pray that you would guide us and you would assist us in our worship of you, that it would be holy and blameless and acceptable before you.
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In Jesus' name, amen. All right, today we are going to be looking at the topic of the amen in worship.
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So you see in the Bible, the word amen is used several times, and it's even spoken of as a thing that you would do in worship.
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Not just demonstrated, but even spoken of that way. First Corinthians 14 says, it speaks about saying the amen.
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It says, otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say amen to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying?
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And then Second Corinthians 1, it also talks about the amen. So what is the amen?
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And what role should it have in worship? It's obviously a part of our culture.
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Say it at the end of prayers. What does it mean? It isn't important.
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I would say it is important. You have these two passages that speak of it as an aspect of worship, as an important aspect of worship.
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So it's not just something culturally that they did, but something that we are supposed to be doing in worship is saying amen.
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And this is something that's so important that it was actually the subject of several heresies.
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There was a number of groups that were focused on very mystical things that spoke of the amen as having special power.
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Like, for example, are you familiar with the Gnostics having their various aeons right there, like the 30 aeons?
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And so if you take the Greek letters from alpha to eta, which are the vowels that compose the amen, and you count them up, because each one corresponds to a numeric value and the number six is skipped, it adds up to the number 30, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta.
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That adds up to 30. And so going from alpha to eta, you have the vowels of the amen.
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And so if you say that, you're invoking the power of the aeons, basically.
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So this is something that was so significant in worship that it became something that even cults used in significant aspects of their doctrine.
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That's what I'm getting at. This is not a minor feature of Christianity. It's actually a fairly significant feature.
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Just like Jesus Christ himself is the subject of many erroneous teachings, and cults form around denying his deity, et cetera, cults have formed around the amen.
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So let's talk about the amen. What is it? The definition
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I wrote down that I think works well, because I didn't quite like some of the other definitions I saw.
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An utterance of religious approbation and affirmation. So an utterance of religious approbation and affirmation.
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Approbation meaning approval, and affirmation meaning agreement. So it's not just, so first of all, it's not just agreement.
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It's also approval of this thing, an acknowledgment that this thing is good. And it's not just a casual approval and acknowledgment.
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It is a religious one. It is a serious one. Perhaps not quite the same as an oath, but very similar.
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And the way you see this used in scripture, it's very similar to how an oath would be invoked. You know, Jesus, when he says, verily, verily, or more literally, amen, amen, what is he saying?
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He's saying this is true, this is true. And a very religious and I swear to you kind of sense these things are true.
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So as we go through what scripture says about the amen, there's a couple of things to consider.
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The first is that one thing that makes this a difficult doctrine is that the amen is subject to a lot of text critical issues.
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If you're familiar with textual criticism, what that's referring to is the fact that we don't have any of the original manuscripts the apostles wrote, or the
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Old Testament for that matter, any of the prophets. What we have are copies of those things. And small details like spelling or articles sometimes change in between these various manuscripts because they were writing them by hand.
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And a small word like amen is fairly subject to this.
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Some well known ones are at the ending of the Lord's Prayer, the amen doesn't appear in a lot of the older manuscripts.
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In the ending of Mark, the amen doesn't appear. And then there's a lot of other ones where some manuscripts have amen and some don't.
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So that makes it a little bit difficult, just a heads up if you try to go study this, some of the things you might encounter.
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However, there are enough amens that are very clear and certain that let us know what's going on here.
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So what categories of amens are there? Or what kind of events prompt an amen?
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So the first category is blessing God as the source of blessing.
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Now, I've been trying to figure out how I wanna do this, if we wanna go through each one and have people read them.
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I think we'll do that at least for a few. If someone wants to look up Nehemiah 8 .6, and then somebody else, 1
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Chronicles 16 .36. And then we'll also do, let's do
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Psalm 41 .13. Okay. When anybody has one of those, just go ahead and raise your hand and I'll call on you.
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Yeah, go for it, Francisco. Yeah, 1 Chronicles 16 .36. Okay.
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So when they describe God as blessed, what does it mean that someone is blessed? Someone is blessed either if they are receiving blessing or if they are distributing it, right?
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To be blessed is to be happy, to be contented is to have everything that you need, right? And God has everything that he needs in a special category where he is not just receiving things.
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You know, when someone calls you blessed, you know, hashtag blessed or whatever, right? It means like you've gotten a lot of things, right?
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When we describe God as blessed, typically we are talking about him being the source of blessings.
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He has so much, he is overflowing with it, not that he's received it, right? And so that's what this is getting at.
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He is blessed, blessed be Jehovah, the God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting. All the people said amen, praised him.
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Who wants to take one of those other, either Nehemiah 8 .6 or Psalm 41 .13?
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Jonathan. Okay. All right, so yeah, here you have him blessing
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God, which is acknowledging that he is the source of blessing and the people answer with a double amen and in a worshipful way, you know, this is prompted by these worshipful hearts.
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Okay, Psalm 41 .13. Okay, cool.
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Yeah, so very similar to the others and then I'll go ahead and read one. And there are a few of these in the New Testament.
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Romans 1 .25, where a statement of truth is ended with a statement about God and then an accolade about God and then an amen.
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So Romans 1 .25, for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever, amen.
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And so there might be the question of, well, what is he amending? Is he amending the whole sentence or is he amending the fact that God is blessed forever?
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Amen. And it seems to me, now I wouldn't have a problem with him amending the whole sentence, but the pattern that you see when you see these amens at the end of sentences like this, there's always some kind of statement about God being blessed forever, right?
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So it's, I'm inclined to think that the amen is in response to the statement that God is blessed forever, not to the whole statement.
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All right, yeah, and then 1 Corinthians 14 .16,
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which we just read, otherwise if you bless with the spirit, how will he in the position of being unlearned say the amen?
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You're giving of thanks, seeing that he does not know what you say. So if you give thanks to God, you're acknowledging him as a source of blessing and then the response is supposed to be amen.
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And this is what we desire the unbeliever to do when he comes into the assembly is to acknowledge that God truly is, in a worshipful way, to acknowledge that God truly is the source of blessing.
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Okay, so that's one category. I've got about, I don't know, three or four other examples written down and I did catalog every single example.
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So that's where this is coming from. We're just gonna go through a few, I suppose, but I do have a sense of how many there are in each category.
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All right, so then there is blessing God as the tell us of blessing. So like the target of blessing, right?
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The focus of our blessing. So not him being the source of good things, but him being the one to whom good things are, right?
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Okay, so let's have one person do Romans 11 .36, another
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Ephesians 3 .20, another 1 Timothy 1 .17. Ephesians 3 .20.
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Yeah, maybe next time I'll like point to regions so that there's vague senses of assignment here.
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So to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever, amen. Okay, yes,
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Josh. Yes, okay.
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And I think the other one was Romans 11 .36. Okay, thanks, good.
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All right, so you've seen a pattern here. To him be glory forever, amen. Let me throw out a few more here that I find significant.
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Romans 16 .25, so this is the ending of the book of Romans. Now to him that is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept in silence through times eternal, but now is revealed and by the scriptures of the prophets according to the commandment of the eternal
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God is made known to all the nations to obedience of faith, to the only wise
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God through Jesus Christ to whom be the glory forever, amen. All right, and then
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Revelation has a couple of these or has three of these that are worth looking at.
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Revelation 5 .13, okay, we'll do Revelation 5 .13 over here and then
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Revelation 7 .11 through 12 from someone over here. Oh yeah, 13 through 14 over here and then, sorry.
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5 .13 through 14, 7 .11 through 12. Somebody have it over here.
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Revelation 7 .11 through 12. Good, so you see this is part of the worship in heaven, this amen, right?
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So this is not just like, you know, once again, it's not just a cultural thing, it's not just an earthly form of worship that we might have in our own cultures.
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It's something that you even see in heaven. Revelation 19, one through three,
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I'll just read that one for us. After these things, I heard, as it were, a great voice of a great multitude in heaven saying, hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our
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God. You know, more giving things to God, right? These things go to God. For true and righteous are his judgments, for he has judged the great prostitute, her that corrupted the earth with her fornication and has avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.
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And the second time they say hallelujah and her smoke goes up forever and ever. And the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped
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God, who sits on the throne saying amen, hallelujah. So this is in response to all the things that were said before, including that statement about God being the end of all glory.
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All right, so we've got, let's see, got five more in this category.
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We'll just go ahead and skip those, though. Let's not get a little too tedious. All right, now there are a few examples where there is a mix of blessing people and blessing
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God. Now these are ones where I believe the amen is about the blessing of God. It's not about the blessing of people.
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But the way we think about it, because culturally we think about, okay, we receive a blessing, we say amen to that blessing we receive, right?
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I don't believe that's exactly what's happening here. So Galatians 1, three through four, through five, one, sorry, one, three through five.
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And let me point out what I'm trying to get at. I think saying amen at the end of prayer is right.
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I think saying amen to blessings is right. But biblically, you will see an entirely different emphasis on where the amens are going.
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And you actually, I don't believe, other than these potential examples, I don't believe you see it at the end of a, as an end to, as a response to blessing.
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And I don't think you see it as a response to prayer even, unless you count the Lord's prayer as one example.
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But there he's simply blessing God and saying the amen. And we're gonna get to why that is in a minute.
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Grace to you in peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present evil age according to the will of God the
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Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Actually, this might not have been one of the examples
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I meant to grab here. But Hebrews 13, 20. Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, with the blood of an eternal covenant, our
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Lord Jesus, make you perfect in every good thing to do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever.
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So, you know, this is a statement of blessing. Now the God of peace, may he do all these things to you. But then, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen.
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I believe the amen, once again, is for that statement of blessing to Jesus, not the statement of blessing to the people.
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Now there are also amens at the end of letters that come with blessings, right?
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And so the question is, is the amen, is it in a response to the blessing, or is it a statement that everything in this letter is true?
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I will just read these and we'll talk about this in a minute. But here are more examples where it may actually be a response to blessing the people, or not a response to receiving blessing, but rather a response to giving blessing, that the one giving the blessing is saying, indeed, this is true.
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Now the God of peace be with you all, amen. That's Romans 15, 33, comes at the end of Romans 15, which kind of forms one end of Romans.
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And then Romans 16, 24, which is like, Romans 16 being a new section, says the grace of our
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Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, amen, at the end. First Corinthians 16, 24, my love be with you all in Christ Jesus, amen.
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Revelation 22, 21, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with the saints, amen. Galatians, Philemon, Hebrews, all these books end with an amen.
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And so they end with a blessing on the people and then an amen. And blessings often happen without amens.
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I believe the primary thing being amen here is the actual close and the statement that everything you've, everything, and not just this last statement, but everything you've received here is true.
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All right. Now I think we're gonna see some things that clue us in a little more of why you see the amen in the certain places you do, and maybe not others, where you would, as a modern day evangelical, expect it just at the end of prayers or things like that, right?
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Okay, so there are contentious blessings. First Kings 136.
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Somebody on the side look that up, First Kings 136. And then I'll go ahead and read
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Jeremiah 28. Yeah, let me go ahead and read Jeremiah 28. And it came to pass the same year in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth month, that Hanani, the son of Azur, the prophet, who was of Gibeon, spoke to me in the house of Jehovah in the presence of the priests and all the people, saying, thus speaks
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Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, saying, I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two full years
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I will bring again this place, all the vessels of Jehovah's house, that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, took away from the place and carried to Babylon.
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And I will bring again to this place Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, with all the captives of Judah, that went to Babylon, declares
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Jehovah, for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. All right, so Hanani breaking
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Jeremiah's yoke. Anybody familiar with that period of history knows that this is not what came to pass.
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Nebuchadnezzar did not bring everything back. And the prophet Jeremiah said to the prophet Hananiah in the presence of the priests and in the presence of all the people that stood in the house of Jehovah, even the prophet
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Jeremiah said, amen, Jehovah, do so. Jehovah, perform your words which you have prophesied, bring in the vessels of Jehovah's house, and all of them of the captivity from Babylon to this place.
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So Jeremiah is in a way conceding that that would be desirable, but, and I did not write down more of this quote, which would have been helpful.
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So I'm gonna have to find that. That's Jeremiah 28.
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All right, then the prophet Jeremiah spoke to Hananiah, et cetera. Yet hear now this word that I speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people.
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The prophet who preceded you from me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms.
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As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes to pass, then it will be known that the
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Lord has truly sent the prophet. And then, yeah, and then Hananiah breaks the yoke bars from the neck of Jeremiah to signify his prophecy and, and yeah, and then later at the end of the chapter,
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Hananiah dies. So here you have Jeremiah responding almost sarcastically, right, or as a statement that, yes, that would be desirable.
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You know, may that happen. However, what has been prophesied is this. Okay. All right, 1
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Kings 1, 36. Who wants to read that? You can read it. Thanks. Right, and what's happening in that context, does anyone know?
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So here Solomon's being declared king and in a contentious situation, right, there's split loyalties.
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There's different priests, different, you know, yeah, there's different people taking sides right now between these different kings that could be.
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Now Adonijah, the son of Haggath, exalted himself, saying, I will be king, right. And these people that are mentioned here,
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Benaiah, Benaiah was not invited to the coronation.
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And then, yeah, and so he takes sides. And so this is like a swearing of allegiance almost.
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Like, amen, this is God's chosen king, right. So it's this contentious matter. Now where you see a lot of amens is around curses.
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Numbers 5 .22 says, and this water that causes the curse will go into your bowels and make your body swell and your thigh fall away.
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This is to a woman who's suspected of adultery. She drinks muddy water and then if she has sinned, this curse will come upon her.
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And the woman will say, amen, amen. So she's acknowledging the goodness, the rightness of her being cursed in the event that she was an adulteress.
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Deuteronomy 27, full of these all in a row. I'll only read a few, but. Cursed be the man who makes a carved image or a molten image, an abomination to Jehovah.
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The work of the hands of the craftsmen and sets it up in secret. And all the people will answer and say, amen.
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Cursed be he who sets light by his father or his mother and all the people will say, amen. Cursed be he who removes his neighbor's landmark and all the people will say, amen.
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And it just goes on through tons and tons of curses. All the people responding with amen. Nehemiah 5 .13,
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and I shook out my lap and said, God shake out every man from his house and from his labor that performs not this promise, even thus be he shaken out and emptied.
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And all the assembly said, amen, and praised Jehovah. And the people did according to this promise. So lots of amens in reception of conditional curses.
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Jeremiah 11 .1, the word that came to Jeremiah from Jehovah saying, hear the words of the covenant and speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and say to them, thus says
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Jehovah, the God of Israel, cursed be the man who hears not the word of this covenant, which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace saying, obey my voice and do them according to all which
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I command you so you will be my people and I will be your God. That I may establish the oath which
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I swore to your fathers to give them a land flowing with milking and honey as to this day. Then I answered and said, amen, oh
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Jehovah. So once again, you know, responds with an amen to the curse. Isaiah 65 .16,
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so he that blesses himself in the earth will bless himself in the God of truth and he who swears in the earth will swear by the
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God of truth. Now, that is how that appears in most English versions, but that word truth there is the word amen.
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And so it's basically saying the God of the amen. So the one who swears, you know, the one who invokes some kind of, you know, if I don't do this, then, et cetera, he will do this by the
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God of the amen. Isaiah 65 .16, yeah.
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Yeah, so let's, I've got more categories, but let's stop there.
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Why is it so common with, when people are receiving curses, but not when they are receiving blessings, right?
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Now, there's arguably a lot of times when someone's giving a blessing and they'll say amen with it, but not so much with the receiving of it.
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So why is that the case? Why do you think? Because they deserve the cursing and don't deserve the blessing, okay?
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So if an amen is an approval and it's affirmation, you know, that would make sense to approve and affirm, you know, a blessing.
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Oh, amen, that's a great blessing. Why do you think you don't see that as much? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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I think you hit the nail on the head. These are situations where, of course you're going to agree, doesn't require demonstration that you agree.
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Of course you agree, right? But it's these things where, do you agree with this? This is a hard truth.
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You know, do you agree with this? These statements about God being blessed forever. We live in a world that does not acknowledge God is blessed.
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It's important that we be saying the amen to that. Right, there's, it's, can you receive the fact that, you know, that this curse would be right if you don't uphold your end of the bargain?
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For you to say amen to that, you know, a solemn approval and affirmation is really saying something.
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And so all these conditions where amen is given, are, there is a contentious truth at hand, right?
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Amen, you are the king, even though others have rejected you as king. Jeremiah with the false prophet, you know, almost sarcastically saying amen to his false prophecy.
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The idea being that, well, we're at odds, we're in contention, you know, do I agree with you? Well, I agree that that would be great, you know.
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But let me tell you this, you know, the other prophets have said otherwise from, for a long time, and I'm saying the same thing.
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All right, so as we continue on, let's look at a few more of these that, that show similar things, you know, similar contentious truths at hand, so contentious narratives at hand.
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Revelation 1, 7, or contentious promises. Behold, he comes with the clouds, and every eye will see him, and they that pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him, even so, amen.
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And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write, these things says the amen, this is another time where you see
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God called the God of the amen, right? These things says the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.
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He who testifies these things says, yes, I come quickly, amen, come Lord Jesus. You know, is
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Jesus coming back? Is this true? Amen. You know, that's something that's hard to, one of the
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Christian truths that's hard to embrace, well, he hasn't come back yet, is he coming? Yes, amen, he is. And then 2
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Corinthians 1, 20. For however many be the promises of God, and him is the yes, therefore also through him is the amen to the glory of God through us.
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So this is a passage in 2 Corinthians that speaks of that. The promises of God are yes, but through him is the amen because he is so certain we can respond with a religious affirmation of it.
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Amen, because it is so certain. All his promises.
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And then, now if you look at the number of amens in the Bible, over half of them are coming out of Jesus' mouth when he prefaces his statements with, amen, amen,
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I say to you. Right, yeah, the actual
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Greek word that's being used there is amen. Yeah. Right, so he's saying, every time he's saying, amen, amen,
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I say to you, and so this is the same kind of, here's a truth that you might find hard to believe, but I'm telling you with religious sincerity that this is true.
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And yeah, there are a ton of these. There are 99, actually, in most.
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Like I said, you know the number of amens may differ across Bible versions, but yeah, there are 99 in the particular one
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I was using. All right. Yeah, and then you have occasionally the double amens.
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We've looked at a few of those, simply an extra statement of more serious.
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Amen, amen. And then, let me go ahead and read a couple of historical quotes.
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Well, just a couple from one guy, Justin Martyr. So if you're not familiar with Justin Martyr, he's a second century apologist who is, yeah, he's doing a lot of explaining the
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Christian faith to those who have never encountered it before. And when he has concluded the prayer, so he's talking about what a worship service looks like in a
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Christian church. And he's describing pretty much the conclusion of everything.
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When he has concluded the prayers and thanksgiving, all the people present express their assent by saying amen.
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This word amen answers in the Hebrew language to ginoyto. Excuse me, ginoyto.
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I haven't written in English, so I'm trying to imagine what it would be written in Greek. But yeah, so be it.
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So it's interesting that we see this word frequently in the New Testament, but it's just a
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Hebrew word that they were using that's being transliterated to Greek. Justin has to explain to his audience what amen means, because they've never, his
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Greek audience has not heard this word before. They don't know what it is. Then we all rise together and pray, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread, and this is a later section of the same book.
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When our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought in the president, meaning the one presiding over the ceremony.
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And like manner offers prayers and thanksgiving according to his ability, and the people assent saying amen.
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And there is distribution to each and participation of that over which thanks has been given.
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And to those who are absent, a portion is sent by deacons. So they were distributing communion at that time, which
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I wouldn't say is a good practice, but you can see how early some of these practices stepped in.
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Maybe it'd be good if we shared this with people who weren't able to come. All right, so this is something that existed fairly early on and exists in response to, at the end of that prayer, all the people saying amen, agreeing with their thanksgiving to God.
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Okay, and then another thing that I've already mentioned here is that it is what the worship looks like in heaven.
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Now, before I move on, any questions at this point? Yes, Bianca. Did you say that the
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Lord's Prayer? Other than potentially Jesus' prayer, right, the Lord's Prayer. But there, is he just amening the blessing of God, right?
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Or is he amening the whole prayer the way we might, right? Yeah, I don't have any examples that are clear -cut examples of amening prayer the way we would.
36:44
It's distributed. Right, right.
36:52
Well, I think you have examples like this where he says that when he concluded the prayers and thanksgiving, all the people expressed are sent by saying amen.
37:00
So if you're in a worship service and you are, you're conducting it, and at the end of a significant portion you pray, all the people are amening everything that has been, all the thanksgiving that's been given to God, the blessing of God, everything that's come before, all that's given an amen, right?
37:17
And so it is right to amen prayers, but just know what you're doing when you're amening prayers, is you are, it's not some magic word that makes your prayer get answered, right?
37:28
It's a, it's a, any contentious truth in here, right, I'm saying
37:33
I'm religiously affirming, which if you're just praying, please give me this, and then you say amen, that's not really the way the word amen is meant to be used.
37:44
It's actually, you know, you are a wonderful God, and if you include petitions in that, that's great, but you know, but it's the, it's the contentious truth that needs to be amened, not the request for something that needs to be amened, maybe the assurance, you know, and I am assured that you have the capacity to do these things, amen, right?
38:08
All right. So yeah, parts of worship, which parts of worship should be amened?
38:14
And know that when I, this is something that I've been working with, we as pastors went through a book on worship, and we studied the amen a little, maybe not with all the examples that I'm giving here, but it's been something that I've been working through, and I know in myself requires a lot of reformation, that I want to be one who is amening all the parts that I should be amening.
38:38
So when you hear any of this, and I describe how the amen should be given, don't judge us based on how you've seen me respond in worship, rather know that this is something that I myself am trying to improve, yes.
38:57
Yeah, I believe he's affirming the truth of the whole letter. Yes. What does
39:03
Paul mean when he says amen at the end of his epistles? Yeah, and right, and I'm saying that I think there's a good chance he is affirming the entirety of what he has said.
39:18
All right, so yeah, in response to the word of God being declared, the word of God is a contentious truth.
39:25
We should respond with an amen to the reading of Scripture. That includes the call to worship, it includes the benediction, the statement that God's peace is accessible.
39:37
We are amening it, saying that, not just that, well, I like that truth, which is part of, it's just half of it.
39:44
The other half of it is this is a contested truth, that this promise is real, and I am affirming that that contested truth is true.
39:52
I'm willing to back it with my amen. And then in prayer, like I said, not as some kind of word that would make a request get answered, but rather, in as much as we are stating religious truths in our prayer, calling on the promises of God's, giving thanks to him, acknowledging his goodness, things that other people would not agree with, right?
40:21
We should be amening prayer. And then when we sing, these are contested truths that we sing.
40:27
It's right to say amen at the end of song, and I really like that we're at a church where we sing the amen at the end of the song.
40:36
You can still say it afterward if you like to, but you can even sing the amen. In fact, something
40:42
I've always thought would be neat, and I don't know what this looks like in churches that do it.
40:48
I don't even know if there are, or how many churches do it, or I've never heard of a church that does it, but on page
40:53
Roman numeral 17 here, right after the doxology and the hymnal, there's a set of amens that you can learn to respond to worship so that you can sing the amen to anything, not just the songs.
41:09
But there's a two -fold amen you can learn to sing, a three -fold amen, and a seven -fold amen. And it's got four parts, so you can imagine if we as a congregation learned each a part, we could sing as a response to aspects of worship, you know, a seven -fold amen.
41:26
I think that'd be really cool. I don't know what that would look like to do it, but yeah, anyway, this is something that is in our hymnal and is in other hymnals, and people do, is they sing amens in response to worship, not just saying it, too.
41:49
Yeah, and so this would include a response to the Lord's Supper, the statements about the Lord's Supper. So consider some of the implications of this.
42:08
You know, when we worship, we are not worshiping as spectators, right? It's not a consumer thing where we're just receiving.
42:16
To worship, to offer God worship, is to really be giving, okay, so we're giving our attention.
42:22
That's one thing. But we are supposed to be giving our amen, too. And really, you know, as I've looked at my own heart and my lack of amens, the thing,
42:33
I have to ask myself, well, am I really worshiping if I hear this truth and I don't respond to it?
42:40
Well, yeah, I can respond to my heart. Oh, yeah, that sounds good. You know, but God, I believe he calls us with all these examples, and then, you know, the express statements that the amen is part of worship, right, from Paul when he's describing what a worship service looks like.
42:55
We're just responding to this truth with amen. Now, that could include, you know, in the middle of a sermon, the way people do, but even to each aspect of worship, you know, each reading of scripture, et cetera.
43:09
I've been trying to do that lately when I read the, when I do the scripture reading in the mornings, and I almost always forget, and I'm really trying to amen, though.
43:19
I wanna be someone who amens, you know, these truths of scripture. Yes? Yes. Yes.
43:39
No, you can do both, yeah, but I think there's something especially,
43:46
I guess, expected, you know, like the minimum would be to amen the parts of worship at the end of the declaration, at the end of the, you know.
43:58
Right. Oh, yes, yeah, our heart should be responding to all of it, yes, and it's okay to do so audibly.
44:05
Please do. Yeah, so the question I have to ask myself, well, am
44:10
I even really worshiping, you know, if I'm not responding, if there's not something coming from me, if I'm not giving anything, you know, am
44:17
I worshiping? One other implication and application of this is the third commandment, if third commandments don't take the
44:28
Lord's name in vain, if the amen is actually something serious, if it is a religious affirmation, then is it right to be used jokingly?
44:39
I used to use it jokingly occasionally, you know, amen, or whatever, right, just like when someone says something that, you know, you like to hear, and there, gosh, there was one time
44:50
I was in a, I think it was a numerical analysis class in grad school, and my professor said something about that we were gonna have some kind of, you know, he was going to buy pizza, but he wasn't gonna buy soda, and he wanted other people to buy soda, and he said he didn't believe in, he didn't believe in drinking soda or something like that, and I said amen, because I don't like soda either, right?
45:12
But I thought later, like, maybe that was, maybe that was too sacrilegious, and on top of that, maybe he's a
45:17
Mormon, and like, maybe he thought I was a Mormon, too, after. You know, Mormons don't drink caffeinated drinks, so.
45:28
Anyway, yeah, one of the implications of this, I think, is, you know, in my own life, I used to do that, and I, other than, you know, for illustration right here, explaining what
45:37
I've said in the past, I wouldn't say amen outside of a serious religious affirmation of something.
45:46
All right, any questions? Any questions about this? Yes? Like they say it in Chinese?
46:13
Yeah, mm -hmm, right.
46:52
Okay, yeah, I, yeah, I would say there's, okay, the
46:58
New Testament church, speaking in Greek, carrying through to the New Testament, carrying through to, you know, other languages as well, chose to keep the
47:08
Hebrew word amen, right? They didn't, they didn't change it, even though Justin has to translate it for people, saying this is ginoto, right?
47:19
He translates it for his Greek audience so that they know what it means. He still uses the word amen.
47:25
And why I think that is good, and not, I'm not saying that someone couldn't speak in their own language and mean the same thing, but there's some significance to the ceremonial aspect of something by using a particular word that has that embedded meaning, right?
47:43
So when people, you know, when people swear, they raise their right hand, or they put their hand on the Bible, there's some sign, right?
47:50
And when you're using a word that's reserved just for this context, you're making it very clear what you mean, that you don't mean it like you would have just meant it if you had said it in your own language, right?
48:11
Oh, intention, I see. Right, yeah,
48:19
I don't know, I mean, it sounds kind of similar, I'm not sure. I don't know if intention only applies to, like, what
48:26
I intend to do, but. But yeah, my sincere desire, yeah, desire, desire sounds right, you know, there's an approbation and affirmation, right.
49:21
Right, yeah, it doesn't preserve the ceremonial significance of the word, right. Any other thoughts or questions?
49:33
Well, if I knew how to sing any of these amens, I would love to teach you, but. Yeah, that'd be so cool, anything else?
49:47
Yeah, if I, I was thinking I could get a, yes. Yeah, because, yeah, yeah.
50:06
I think the answer is because ah is a more open vowel sound. So when you sing, a lot of times, especially if you listen to pop, like a lot of pop singers, they'll really stretch their vowels to sound more like O's, every vowel kind of sounds more like an
50:20
O, so that you can get more oomph behind it. So ah is a lot easier to sing than A is.
50:32
Well, in Greek, in Hebrew, it's pronounced amayn. Yeah, so, amayn, and this is also, and I'll be preaching about this today, this is also likely part of the etymology of the word mammon, mammon being, you know, sounding kind of like amen, mammon, with a
50:59
M on the beginning, because what is mammon? It's what you're putting your trust in, right?
51:06
And so that's why, I believe that's why Jesus uses that, that word in that context in Matthew and in Luke 16 that we'll be looking at today.
51:14
It's because it's something people put their trust in. Okay, yeah, one thing
51:22
I was thinking about doing, I was thinking about explaining more of that, the numerology behind, you know, the amen being, representing, you know, the invoking of the aeons, and a lot of that goes back to Pythagoras.
51:37
If you all, yeah, if you all haven't read Church Fathers, the ones that write against heresies, they pretty often talk about Pythagoras, because a lot of people would adopt his, well, he was really into numerology and spiritual things, right?
51:49
He was not just, you know, dealing with triangles the way we do in our math classes. You know, he had some weird ideas, and a lot of Christian heretics would pick up those ideas and incorporate them into their, yeah, into their cult or whatever.
52:06
Yes, that's right, yeah. Okay, let's go ahead and end in prayer.
52:16
Dear Holy Father, we thank you for your word and for your guidance and worship. We would not know how to worship you if you did not tell us.
52:23
We would not know what pleases you, but you are a good God, and you have given us great things, and so we thank you for that, and we ask that you would assist us in the worship of you this afternoon, or this morning.
52:35
We pray that you would grant us everything you need, and we trust in you for all your power and all your promises, in Jesus' name, amen.