Samson Pt 3

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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So now after a while, in the time of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat, and he said, I will go into my wife in her room, but her father did not let him enter.

00:11

Her father said, I really thought that you hated her intensely, so I gave her to your companion.

00:17

Is not her sister more beautiful than she? Please, let her be yours instead.

00:23

And Samson then said to them, this time I shall be blameless in the regard of the Philistines when I do them great harm.

00:30

And then Samson went and he caught 300 foxes, took torches, turned the tails, turned the foxes tail to tail, put a torch in the middle between the two tails.

00:40

And when he had set fire to the torches, he released the foxes into the standing grain that the Philistines harvested, thus burning up both the shocks, the standing grain, along with the vineyards and the groves.

00:51

Then the Philistines said, who did this? And they said, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion.

01:02

So the Philistines came up, burned her and her father with fire.

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Samson said to them, since you act like this, I will surely now take revenge on you.

01:10

But after that, I will quit.

01:13

He struck them ruthlessly with a great slaughter.

01:16

And he went down and he lived at the cleft of the rock of Edom.

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Then the Philistines went and went up and they encamped Judah and they spread out at Lehi.

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And the men of Judah said, why have you come up against us? And they said, we have come up to bond Samson in order to do to him what he did to us.

01:34

Then 3000 men of Judah went down to the cleft at the rock of Edom where Samson was at.

01:40

And they said to Samson, do you not know that the Philistines are the rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us? And he said to them, as they did to me, so I've done to them.

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And they said to him, we have come down to buying you so that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.

01:59

And Samson said to them, swear to me that you will not kill me.

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So they said to him, no, but we will bind you fast and give you into their hands.

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Yet surely we will not kill you.

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We will not kill you.

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They then bound him with two new ropes, brought him up from the rock.

02:16

And when he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him so that the ropes that were in his arms were as flax that is burned with fire and his bonds dropped from his hands.

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He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey.

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So he reached out, he took it, he killed a thousand men with it.

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And Samson said, with a jawbone of a donkey, heap upon heaps.

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And with the jawbone of a donkey, I've killed a thousand men.

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When he had finished speaking this, he threw down the jawbone that was in his hand and he named the place Ramathlahi.

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And then he became thirsty and he called to the Lord and he said, you have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant.

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And now shall I die of thirst and now fall into the hands of these uncircumcised Philistines.

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But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi so that the water came out.

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He drank, his strength was returned and he was revived.

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Therefore, he named the place in Hakor, which is in Lehi to this day.

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And he judged Israel for 20 years in the days of the Philistines.

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All right.

03:25

So last week we saw that Samson wanted to intermarry the unclean.

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That was a violation of Mosaic law.

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He then dishonored his parents by seeking, he did this in multiple ways.

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He did that by seeking an unclean wife and he also did it by having them do what? Remember, eat the honey that had come out of a carcass.

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So this is twofold.

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He touched that which was dead.

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What else did Samson do last week that was in there that we remember that violated the Mosaic covenant or the Nazirite vow? There was a specific type of feast that he threw.

04:57

That's the feast.

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In the Hebrew it's a Mishtah and it means drinking feast.

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What was Samson not to do? Drink strong wine or strong drink.

05:09

So basically last week before he gave out the riddle, he had a seven-day drinking feast in which he basically had a seven-day bachelor party and whether he was trying to make a trap, obviously the Lord was doing that, to make a trap to make harm to the Philistines or whether he just got a little lit and made some jokes.

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We have no idea.

05:39

Ultimately, as Andy said, the Lord was making an occasion for him to take on the Philistines.

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So he violated.

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This is it.

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Not commendable.

05:53

So that brings us to chapter 15 where after he had went and however he did that.

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Andy was reading that.

06:06

I can't help but read some of this stuff and chuckle because you go, all right, here it is.

06:11

He made a bet to get 30 changes of clothes.

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Samson was going to make out on the deal.

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He was going to get 30.

06:20

He was only going to owe them one a piece.

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They figure out the riddle and then he goes and however he does it, whether he chokes them out, whatever, he brings back these clothes from these aristocrats or these men from Ashkelon, which were most likely noblemen, and he brings them back to him.

06:37

Understand that what he did on that day was an act of vengeance.

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Everything that Samson does is this.

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I'm going to put it over here.

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He is self-centered, self-indulgent, led by his lust, no regard for the law of God.

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That's Samson.

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That's not a good dude, man.

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Now, Andy made a very good point last week.

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Who is this a picture of at this point in time in life? That's the nation.

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They're self-centered, they're self-indulgent, they do whatever they want to the lust of their own heart, and they have no regard for the law of God, and how ironic that God is to use a man that is just like them to deliver them.

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Amazing.

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So, that brings us to chapter 15.

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So, after Samson did whatever he did, brought them people back their clothes, the 30 people's clothes, his wife was given to his best man at the wedding, and that brings us to the time of the wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife.

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Remember, where did Samson go last week after he choked out these men, took off their clothes? Remember? He forgot to leave and cleave, fart, and he went back to mom and daddy.

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So, he goes back to mom and daddy's house, and that's where he's at.

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But in the time of the wheat harvest, Samson then wants to visit his wife, and being the Casanova man that he is, he's going to take a young goat with him.

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So, he takes a young goat with him, and he goes to the Timnites' house, knocks on the door.

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Imagine dad's face.

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Oh, my goodness.

09:09

Samson's here.

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Tells the young girl, hey, go get cleaned up, because I'm going to have to give you to this man, because I gave your older sister to his best man.

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So, father says, hey, I really thought that you hated her intensely, so I gave her to your companion.

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Is it not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Interesting that at this point, Samson could reach out, grab that joker by his throat, and crush him, but he doesn't.

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This man obviously thinks that, because what does he do? What does he appeal to? What does he appeal to? To the lust of his eyes.

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He says, you know what? Why don't you take her sister? She's more beautiful than she.

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Please let her be yours instead.

10:00

And here it comes.

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Samson said, this time I shall not be blameless in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm.

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Once again, we see Samson right here.

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Ain't nobody going to tell Samson who he's going to marry.

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He does to this lady's daddy the same thing that he did to his daddy and mama.

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Ain't nobody going to tell me who I'm going to marry.

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Ain't nobody going to tell me what I'm going to do.

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Samson's going to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, and how he wants to do it.

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That's Samson's goal.

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Samson then says, this time I shall be blameless in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm.

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Interesting, as we get to this point right here, and when he says blameless, it's almost as if he has a recognition that maybe what he did was out of the wrong mode of the last time.

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Would you not agree? If you disagree, then we would have to explain blameless this time.

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That means he felt at some point maybe he was something to be blamed.

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So then it says in verse four, Samson now went out, he caught 300 foxes and torches.

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He turned those foxes tail to tail, put one torch in the middle between the two tails.

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First of all, what a strange thing to do.

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I mean, I don't know about y'all, but if I was wanting to get some revenge, it wouldn't be chased down.

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Does anybody say jackals? Somebody say jackals? So it's interesting that that's what he decides to do.

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I mean, this obviously would have taken some time, although jackals and foxes do run in packs.

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We're talking about 300 of them.

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But interesting, if you want to go back and you want to read Leviticus chapter 11, unclean animals were animals with paws.

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What does he grab 300 of? 300 unclean animals.

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And it says he takes these torches and he puts them between their tail.

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Also one of the Mosaic covenant was what? You do not exploit or mistreat animals.

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There is no way you can say that when he set these tails on fire with torches in them that they didn't torch them foxes.

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Look what it says it does.

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He said he sets them into the fields.

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He released the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines.

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How do we know it's the standing grain? Because it's the time of the wheat harvest.

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So he releases these foxes with torches between their tails, making, if it was 300, he ties them together, he puts a torch in the middle, he's got 150 fireballs of mass destruction, and he just releases them.

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Now how he does that, I have no idea.

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But it's interesting that he has the strength to tie two foxes' tails together, put a torch, and let it go.

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He not only does he let it into the standing grain, he lets it into the fields, the groves, and the vineyards.

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And in the Gregian culture, what was vineyards, and grapes, and grain? That's it.

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Food.

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Food and money.

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Food and money.

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What's that? Peter? Peter.

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Peter.

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Peter.

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Oh, I was like, well, in his Italian, I can never know.

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Peter.

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Yeah, they would be raising a stink at this point.

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So he releases them into the field.

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He burns up their economy.

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He burns up their food.

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He's burned up whatever's in the groves in the fields.

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Now they're going to have to figure out how they're going to eat for the next year.

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And it says in verse 6, then the Philistines said, who did this? I think it would have been pretty obvious.

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You see this man with big, crazy long hair, and tying foxes together, and letting them loose into the field had been obvious.

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And it says he was told that it was the son-in-law of the Timnite.

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Now, Samson had not yet consummated the marriage.

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So this was really not his wife, but because she was betrothed, that's kind of how the understanding of it, the feast would have lasted about seven days.

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And then the night of consummation would have been on that seventh day.

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If you go back, remember, he got a little aggravated about four days into it.

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They plowed with his heifer.

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And then she tells the people the truth.

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So before the consummation of the marriage, Samson takes off.

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That's why when he comes back, it said it was given to his friend.

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But they still understand that this is why he did what he did, because it was supposed to have been his wife.

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But then he says this.

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Samson, the son-in-law, did it.

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He took his wife, gave it to his companion.

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So the Philistines came and burned her and her father with fire.

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Understand, this is exactly what they wanted to do the first time.

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It's what they wanted to do.

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These monks are ruthless, man.

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They were guilty by association because of who Samson was.

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I'll even go so far as to even say when Samson waltzed into the city, that there was something about Samson that they knew that this man might be up to no good.

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Jewish people just didn't walk into the land of the Philistines by themselves.

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I would imagine, and I don't know for sure, so this is my opinion.

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You can throw the chair or whatever at me.

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It would be my understanding that as these times of great deliverance have taken place through people that word had gotten around, that God continually raises somebody up to chasing his people and to smack the Philistines.

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I don't know that for sure.

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So if you disagree with me, no problem.

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It says here, so the Philistines came, and then in verse 7, Samson said to them, since you acted like this, I will take revenge upon you.

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This right here, although God is doing it, what's the motivating factor? The motivating factor to be the deliverer of Israel for the glory of God? Nah, man.

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Me, myself, I'll keep doing that.

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That's who Samson cares about.

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Samson now is going to go.

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He's already set the groves and the fields on fire.

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Why? Because Samson came looking for love, and now he ain't got it.

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Now he was tipped off.

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He's going to burn up the place.

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He set the city on fire, basically.

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Now the retaliation is to burn where he burned the groves and the vineyards.

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They now going to burn them up.

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They burned the family.

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So now Samson says, now that you have acted like this, watch this.

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It says, and I will take vengeance on you, and when after this I will quit.

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Interesting that he would say that.

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That he says now, all right, I'm fixing to take revenge, and then I'm going to quit.

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I even went to the Septuagint to see how it says the same thing, and it says exactly the same way.

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Sometimes you get a better understanding.

17:53

Does it mean I'm just going to quit for now, or was the idea that he was actually done with fooling with them? And the idea that it comes when you read the Septuagint is it says, and then I will be executed, meaning he's done.

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He's complete.

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He's not going to do anything else, but we know that God's not done because we know, continuing on the story, that God's not done with Samson.

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So he says, I'm going to go make, I'm going to take revenge, and then when I'm done, I'm just going to quit.

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In other words, hey man, I've got to take just one more time, just one more, one more act of revenge, and then I'll be done.

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Then it says in verse 8 that he struck them ruthlessly with a great slaughter.

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Does anybody's translation say hip and thigh, shank and leg, hip and thigh? Hip and thigh.

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Now, the Septuagint says with a great slaughter.

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The Tanakh, which is the Hebrew translation, says with a great slaughter.

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In the original rendering, it says shank and thigh, meaning hip and thigh.

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Don't know for sure, but the way that I would understand that is the way that he went with the ruthless slaughter would be he went and he broke them and slaughtered them by the hip and the thigh to inflict as much pain and as much injury to them and their suffering.

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And why do I believe that? I believe that because Samson is a trained warrior.

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It's sitting your average Joe Blow here.

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He understands that when I go in here and I'm going to lay waste to something, I'm going to do it hastily and I'm going to inflict as much pain on these individuals as possible.

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And when you're doing something out of revenge, do you not want to inflict pain? Yeah, they just burned up his wife.

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He came there with a goat and some flowers and some chocolate.

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He came there for love.

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So, he slaughters them.

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Not yet, but boy, he still laid claim to her.

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No, the first one.

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But he didn't know that until he came back.

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And it said they burned him and her family.

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Set her on fire.

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My understanding is he burned the whole family.

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Reason being because when he came and knocked on the door, who was there? And the younger sister and the older sister.

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I would assume, I could be corrected, but I would assume he says, hey, I gave her to your companion.

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He knocks on the door.

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He said he didn't let her in.

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He says he didn't let him in.

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The understanding would be if he lets him in, he's going to see beautiful Tim Knight that enticed him to come the first time.

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Don't know for sure, but we know this.

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They were burnt.

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Then you get to, after he does this ruthless slaughter in verse 8, you get to the end and it says, and he went down and he lived in the cleft at the Rock of Etom.

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Notice he didn't go home.

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Now, we don't know why he didn't go home.

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I know when we get, when Andy gets to the killing of the Philistines and then Samson's revenge on his eyes and all of that, we do understand that at the end, it says that after he died, his brothers come and get him.

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However, you understand the brothers, they get him, they come and get him and take him.

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They bury him with his father.

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So my understanding, if he didn't go home, maybe at this point, mom and daddy are dead.

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Could be.

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Don't have any, not for sure, but it's interesting that he didn't go home this time.

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He went and he lived in the cleft.

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So verse 9, then the Philistines went up, they encamped Judah and spread out at Lehi.

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The Judah, the men of Judah then said, why have you come up against us? Do you remember at the beginning of Samson, the story, the narrative of the, of the nativity that here the Philistines are now oppressing them, but there was a part of the refrain that you continually hear through judges that you do not hear in the, the, the narrative with Samson was that they cried out to the Lord.

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They did not cry out to the Lord.

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And I'm going to argue the fact that they didn't cry out to the Lord because of right here.

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It says, do you not know that they have, uh, where it is? The men of Judah then said, they have come up against us and they have come back.

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We have come to get Sam, uh, Samson or to do to him what he has done to us.

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It says, then the 3000 men of Judah went down to the rock of Edom and said to Samson, here it is.

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Do you not know that the Philistines are ruling over us? They were completely content with the Philistines ruling over them.

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Basically.

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Yeah.

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Don't rock the boat.

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What should these men of Judah been doing? They should have been raising up arms with Samson killing Philistines instead of Samson drinking with the Philistines getting smashed with the Philistines earlier in this narrative.

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What did he should have been doing? He should have been smashing Philistines.

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So now you have the Judah, the Judahites, which if you go back in judges in chapter one, who were the ones that got sent by God to start taking the land military conquest, it was Judah.

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So now you have Judah going down to bond.

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Samson says here, it says, and what then this that you have done to us? And he said to them, as they have did to me, so I have done to them.

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So basically he said, they're saying to him, you're out here, you're causing all this conflict.

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Now, this military conquest that's been taking place is not going to take place on us.

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Now, all this stuff you're doing, they're going to take it out on us there.

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No, they can't touch you.

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And he said to them, we're going to come down to bind you so that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.

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Interesting to hear that as Andy said last week, sometimes we see portraits of Christ.

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This is actually a, this does point to here, the deliverer of Israel is here and who turns them over to their enemies? His own people.

24:37

What happened to the Lord Jesus Christ? Here he was the deliverer of Israel and who turns them over to be crucified to the, to the enemies of the Jews, his own people.

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And it says here that Samson said to them, swear not to me that you may not kill me.

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It's interesting.

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He says that here it is, this man's untouchable, right? Who can touch Samson? He's probably the most wanted man in all of the Philistines, Palestine right now, but who's going to serve the warrant on him? Yeah, nobody.

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And here it is, the Judahites come down there and they say, hey, we're going to bind you and we're going to give you over to the Philistines.

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And he goes, please, please, please don't kill me.

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Come on, Samson.

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Like you're really concerned.

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He said, please don't kill me.

25:27

And they said, you know what? Better than us killing you.

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We're not going to do it.

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We're not going to kill them now, but we will bind you fast and we will give you into their hands, but we're not going to kill you.

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So no, uh, no worries.

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We're going to let somebody else do the dirty work.

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So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

25:50

Now we get to verse 14 and it's at this point when he had struck ruthlessly, hip and thigh, the great slaughter does not say that the spirit of the Lord came upon him.

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I'm not saying it didn't.

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It's just interesting.

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It doesn't make that statement.

26:10

And also when you get, you go back up a little further when he went and he, uh, he caught 300 foxes.

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It doesn't say it there either.

26:22

But when you get to here, it says, when he came to Lehi, the Philistine shouted as they met him and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him.

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The word there in the Hebrew is Watisla.

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It's only used in the, with two great deliverers of Israel.

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One is David and the other is Samson.

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It's used one other time.

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That particular word for mightily comes upon you and it's used with Saul when Saul was commissioned as a King.

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It's the only time it's used.

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You back up and you get to the, where it says that the spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon.

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That's not the same word.

27:14

It's lobesh and lobesh means to be clothed or to be wrapped.

27:18

It's not the same word.

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When you look at what happens with Jephthah, when it says the spirit of the Lord came upon him, not the same word.

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It's lobesh.

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It's the same thing.

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It means to be wrapped.

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It does not mean like this.

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So there's a distinction that the Lord is making when he empowers Samson and David, the two great deliverers of Israel, with a specific word to define exactly what, in other words, he's giving them extra power strength to take and do this great slaughter.

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When we look at David, when he ripped the lion asunder, if you back up, when he was commissioned as King, it says the spirit of the Lord came upon him or rushed upon him, came mightily upon him from that day forward.

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It never left David.

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In this case, we see Samson, it coming and going.

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It never left with David.

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And then it says here, the spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily.

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The ropes that were on him were as flax.

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They burned up.

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His bonds that were on his hands, they dropped.

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And here it is.

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He reached down and he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey.

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Carcass.

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Again, fresh.

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That's a dead giveaway, ain't it? Fresh.

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So he sees a dead donkey there.

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He reaches down, grabs the fresh jawbone of a donkey, and he reached out and he took it and he killed a thousand men with it.

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Reached down and grabbed the jawbone of a donkey.

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What would have been in that jawbone if it's fresh? Teeth.

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Man, he's got a blade on one side of that jawbone and he's got a serrated edge on the other.

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And Samson goes to work, probably something like gladiator, and just goes to whacking.

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And it says that he took the fresh jawbone of a donkey.

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He reached out, he took it, he killed a thousand men with it.

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And then Samson said, with the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, and with the jawbone of a donkey, I've killed a thousand men.

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That is a poetic saying.

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And I'm surprised at King James because it's more poetic.

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It doesn't keep exactly what it says in the Hebrew.

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It's crude.

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I'm going to tell you what it says.

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It actually says in the Hebrew, with the jawbone of an ass, I heaped asses upon asses.

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What is he saying about the characters of Philistine? They're donkeys.

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That's actually what it says in the Hebrew.

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The Hebrew language does not have vowels.

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To me, the guy that I planted the church with, one was a Greek scholar and one was a Hebrew scholar.

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He says, Mike, Hebrew's a whole bunch easier to learn.

30:29

I'm going to tell you what, no it's not.

30:30

It's a funny looking language.

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There's so much of curly Q stuff and a bunch of sharp angles and it's just weird looking.

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But it doesn't have vowels.

30:37

It has vowel points.

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So when you have heaps, some of yours says heap, right? Heap is made up of the same three consonants as donkey or ass in the King James.

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It's made up of the same three consonants.

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So when determining a Hebrew poetry word, and the same words felt the same way, the second line's defined by the first one.

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Anybody understand what I'm saying? That's how you come to the conclusion that it says, with the jawbone of a donkey, it would heap donkeys upon donkeys, basically.

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And then it says that with the jawbone of a donkey killed a thousand men.

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So here it is, the poet, once again, Samson, makes a little jingle and he's bragging about what he's just done.

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And it says in verse 17, and when he had finished speaking, he threw down the jawbone in his hand and he named the place Ramoth-lehi.

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Then he became very thirsty and he called to the Lord and said, right there we do see somewhat of a glimmer of hope, don't we? I would imagine after he just slayed a thousand Philistines, he is probably bloody, it's probably a mess, and he's probably a little thirsty.

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But notice what Samson does not do.

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He does not thank Yahweh.

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What does he do? He says, you have given this great deliverance by yours truly, me your servant, and now are you going to let me die and fall into the hands of these uncircumcised Philistines? So this glimmer of hope that we see right here in Samson is still squashed in self-centeredness.

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It's squashed in the fact that, okay, I've just made this great deliverance, although it was by you, and now are you going to let me die and be handed over to these uncircumcised Philistines? But God graciously pops open the cleft and gives him water.

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I'll say this, at least at this point, Samson did realize he couldn't make water, and he's thirsty, and he's like, all right, God, can you just give me some water? And God gave him some water.

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The only glimmer of hope we see.

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He only speaks out to the Lord twice, both times self-centered.

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Never once gives glory to God.

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Never once says, Lord, thank you for this great defeat.

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Never once says, Lord, thank you for giving me the strength to do what I did.

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Know what he says? Give me, give me, give me.

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And then you get to verse 19, where he splits the rock, and then he says that he drank it, his strength returned, he revived, and he named the place in Hachor, which is in Leahy today, and he judged Israel for 20 years.

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Even when he named the place Jawbone Hill, self-centered Samson refuses to give God glory.

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How do we know that? Read the text.

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Read the text.

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Who said it? Who said that? Read the text.

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Does it say anywhere in the text that he gave God the glory? We can only interpret the text by what it says.

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What does it say about Hebrews? Well, we're not in Hebrews, buddy.

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We're right here.

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I agree with you.

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Does it say I'm a great man of faith in Hebrews? It does.

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But would you have known anything? Andy made the statement too last week.

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Would we have known anything for 1500 years or longer before we get to Hebrews? And it never says in Hebrews that he was a man that gave thankfulness to God.

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It was a man of faith.

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Did he trust God at this point, the faith, to give him water from the rock? Okay, we would agree with that.

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Did he trust, and I'm not going to get too far into it because Andy's going to do that next week because I may finish next week.

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Did he trust that God could be the one that could give him the strength to slay the Philistines the last time? That's it.

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So that's all we know about Samson's faith.

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That's all we know.

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We can't read into the text something that we don't know.

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We have to interpret the text in light of what it says, and there's nothing in Samson's life that's exemplary.

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Well, to say that he did, you're casting the same.

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I have to interpret the text in light of what it says.

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You can disagree with me, brother.

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I'm fine with that, but there's no exegetical conclusion that you can say that he gave God glory.

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Point to me chapter and verse, and I'll stand right here today and say, hey man, I was wrong, but I can point to you chapter and verse where he did not.

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Hey man, let's not make Samson out to be some great hero.

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Yahweh's the hero.

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God is the hero, not Samson.

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Jephthah, not the hero, God was.

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Tola, not the hero, God was.

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Gideon, not the hero, God was.

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Yahweh is the hero.

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He uses men that are self-centered, that want to be worshipped.

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We could go back to all the other ones in Judges.

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They want to be worshipped themselves.

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One makes an ephod for his own self.

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He wants to be worshipped.

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Jephthah wants to be, hey, I'm going to be the ruler over you.

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All these other things, and they were all fall short of the great deliverer that would come, that would be the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who would have no character flaw.

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No character flaw.

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These men, Samson is the most self-indulgent, self-centered, lust-driven, emotionally-driven man in all of scripture.

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Search high and low, far and wide.

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And if anybody can show me someone more different than him, I will stand here next week and say, hey man, I was wrong.

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Samson had no desire for nobody but himself.

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Samson, at this great defeat, should have bowed to his face on the ground and gave glory to God for giving him the great defeat.

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And he did not.

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He did not.

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He was worried about himself.

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Now you're going to let me thirst to death.

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And even when we come to where he, the last time, his vengeance is not for making God's name to be eradicated at that day.

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It was, let me do this for my eyes.

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That's what it says.

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Samson is not an exemplary person.

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You can disagree with me, but I can point to you chapter and verse.

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As a matter of fact, I can point to you four chapters where he is not.

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He says he judged Israel 20 years.

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We don't know anything else what he did for those 20 years.

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We have no idea.

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We don't know if he went out under the palm tree like Deborah or the tree.

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We don't know.

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All we know is what the text says and the lifestyle in which the scripture gives us to talk about Samson.

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From a lost man's perspective, Samson was a man's man.

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He was chasing wild women and ripping and tearing.

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From a lost perspective, man, he was a man's man.

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But from a regenerate perspective, looking at it from this side of redemption, Samson was not a man to be revered.

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We can say that Samson under Hebrews chapter 11, where it says he was a man of faith.

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Okay.

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He was a man of faith in the fact that he knew that God was the only one that could give him the strength to make the last delivery of deliverance.

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And it says he killed, you know, more in that day than he killed in his whole life.

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That's all we know.

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We don't know anything else.

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I mean, I would even say if you want to go through that whole text of Hebrews, we could say Gideon.

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Gideon failed in his faith as well.

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God had already given him the, given him, says, hey man, you're going to deliver it.

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And three times he laid the fleece out, doubting what God told him was true.

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Jephthah.

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He says, you're going to go in there and do it.

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Then what does Jephthah do? He makes a stupid vow and then goes in and makes a vow to, to give his daughter, whether you understand it as being given over to virginity or understand it as being get burned as a burnt offering.

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He made a stupid vow in which God had already given him the victory.

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So that's what we know from what only what the text says that look, judges is not, um, is not for us to try to sanitize these judges.

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It's to put it in light of every one of them had a character flaw that was huge.

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And God, as Andy said last week, you had, and I wish we had it up here from last week where he had the secret will and revealed will.

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You have God's decree, which is what we would say, secret will.

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We don't know what that is, but I can promise you this.

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No judge, no immoral man is going to thwart the purposes of God.

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Nobody.

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God's purposes are going to be accomplished.

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God's purposes through the, through Samson was to slay Philistines.

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Was it not? Did he use a man that was self-centered, self-indulgent reaching out for the lust of his flesh? Did he still use him despite his sinful inclinations? Yes.

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That's what we should praise the Lord about because he's the hero that he still used a vessel under his decree that was unworthy.

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Well, I mean, there's no worthy vessel and he used him to carry out his purposes.

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Hey, Samson broke every revealed law that was revealed to him.

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Remember right here, we had, I know he had a different word for that.

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Revealed.

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Did Samson not break every revealed law that was given to him? Every one.

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Do you wave? I do.

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I can't see because you're standing right in the white.

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It's the halo around my head.

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The white sign, the white sign's right behind your head and you're glowing.

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It just follows me.

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And maybe a good way to help Phil.

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Sure.

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And we said that at the beginning.

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To present his redemptive purposes even with a people who stood there.

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And certainly that's the whole point of the book of Judges.

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That God raises up the deliberate because God is faithful even though Israel is not.

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God's faithful to his promise.

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So I think when you take a step back, you can see that not only in Samson, not only in Jephthah, you can see that across the whole of the Old Testament in the progressive revelation.

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Yeah.

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And God's not bound to used qualified people because there's no qualified people.

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Everybody's unqualified.

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Is anybody in here qualified to be a Bible teacher before they came to faith in Christ? Anybody in here qualified to be a godly woman to her husband before she came to faith in Christ? Is any man qualified in here to love his wife as Christ loved the church? No, all unqualified.

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And Andy said last week, very good point is we're all jacked up.

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We're all jacked up or messed up.

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I'm sorry.

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We're all jacked up.

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We're all messed up.

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And God uses messed up people to carry out his purposes.

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That's what God uses.

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And we should be thankful for that.

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Now, under this side of the cross, we have the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us into all truth.

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That's part of the new covenant.

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That is the sign, seal, and stamp of the new covenant that these Old Testament saints did not have.

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They did not have what we have today.

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So that's why when you do get into the New Testament, and we have to go, when we do get into the New Testament and you see someone who does chase after wild women, who is out there being vengeful, when it says vengeance is mine, I will repay, and we see someone under the new covenant being a vengeful, unforgiving, bitter person, or we see someone that's out there chasing prostitutes, just as Samson did, that's why we can say, hey, man, you're not doing and acting in a way that's consistent with New Testament theology.

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That's why we can say, hey, the Bible says if you continue down this path based on Hebrews, this is going to show us the fact that, you know what, you may not be converted.

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A person can't stay in sin under the new covenant.

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Why? Because we have the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit that enables us to lead us, guide us into all truth.

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That's why Jesus says, hey, I know it's going to bother you that I got to leave.

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He said in the Upper Room Discourse, but it's to your advantage that I go.

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Imagine telling your people, it's to your advantage.

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Imagine telling your kids, I'm leaving, you don't understand, I've been taking care of you for all this time, but it's to your advantage that I go.

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They did not understand.

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Once Jesus was ascended, He was sitting at the right hand of the Father, He sent the Holy Spirit, and then they knew.

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Jesus Christ can't be with every one of us, but He sent forth His Spirit that can live in each one of us, that will lead us and guide us.

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I think at that time, we'll be able to open up a lot more of this.

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We really can't do it just looking at isolated situations like life in Samson, or life in this one, or life that one.

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So I think once we get to the statement of faith, get through the book of Judges, and we'll use that as almost a stepping stone, and we'll see if we'll be able to open it up more, and put it in, you know, in a complete kind of picture.

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Yeah, if you want to look, yeah, from that perspective, but we do need to understand that Judges, how we look at the book, I'm not disagreeing with you on that part, but when we look at Judges, we have to teach it the way that Judges gave us.

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And there's nothing in Judges, by the narrative, that gives us any indication that these men were godly men.

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Were they faithful to the purposes of God? Yeah, but why were they faithful to the point Yahweh's the...

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We should just take Judges, put a big line over top of that, and put Yahweh's the hero.

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Yahweh's the hero.

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Let's pray.

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Father God, thank you for your word.

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Father, thank you for Samson.

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Thank you, Father, that we can look to his life and see that God that you used, a man that was ill-equipped for your purposes, and through the power of your spirit, Lord, coming upon him, you enabled him to carry out those purposes.

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Father, thank you for your word.

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Thank you, Father, that we can look into it.

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We can study it.

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We can reflect on it day in, day out.

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Thank you, Lord, that it's unchangeable.

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It's immutable, and that it's without error.

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It's without flaw.

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There is no contradiction between doctrine and theology, and Father, we can look at it day in and day out and know that this is how you've revealed yourself to us.

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Father, I pray that you would take your word, let it penetrate our hearts, lead us to love you and serve you better.

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In Christ's name, amen.