Published: February 25, 2024 | Speaker: D. Aaron Wells | Series: Deuteronomy - The Law Is Good, If One Uses It Lawfully 1 - Part 8 | Scripture: Deuteronomy 3:22-4:4
Transcript
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seven I can't remember um we'll get there if you can't tell I'm I'm just a I'm apparently a little bit suffering from some brain fog so please bear with me I have a little bit of a shorter um lesson prepared today both really
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because um last week was so dense and heavy and I'm I'm well aware that we were covering some things that were both difficult and
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difficult and obscure um so I want to take a few minutes to open up for questions after just a a brief Prelude here and I want I
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want you to know that the reason I would go into such obscure topics as that of Giants and large people uh in in
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scripture is Is Not Mere Fascination and similarly why we why I would bother to cover textual difficulties uh and even
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entertain Notions that I know some of us are very uncomfortable with um I think invest the investigation of those things needs to happen within the church and I I do not
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mean them as as mere Fascinations but rather to study them as historical realities uh because these historical realities that seem very fful to us from
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our cultural background and from our distance in history from them these historical realities were deep in the gut of Israel I came across a passage
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this week by chance uh we'll say um from the prophet Amos uh in Chapter 2 that I think illustrates the importance of what
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we were studying all the way back in Deuteronomy for the people of Israel because their prophets brought these same things up in their oracles uh in chapter 2: 6 thus says
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Yahweh for three transgressions of Israel and for four I will not revoke the punishment because they sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a
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pair of pair of sandals those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of The Afflicted a man and his father go in to the same
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girl so that my holy name is profaned they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge and in the house of their God they drink the
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wine of those who have been fined yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them whose height was like the height of the Cedars and who
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was as strong as the Oaks I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath also it was I who brought you up out of the land of Egypt and led you 40 years
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in the wilderness to possess the land of the Amorite and I raised up some of your sons for prophets and some of your young men for nazarites is it not not indeed
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so oh people of Israel declares Yahweh but you made the nazarites drink wine and commanded the prophet saying you shall not
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prophesy behold I will press you down in your place as a cart full of sheaves presses down flight Shall Perish from the Swift and the strong shall not retain his strength nor shall the mighty
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save his life he who handles the bow shall not stand and he who is Swift of foot shall not save himself nor shall he who rides the horse save his life and he
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who is Stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day declares Yahweh hear this word that Yahweh has spoken against you oh people of Israel
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against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of
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Egypt you can so you can see in the imagery in the middle of that talking about the Amorite whose height was like the height of Cedars and strength like the oak these were things deep in the identity of Israel deep in their history
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and the prophets bring them out as historical realities as evidence that God had been entirely faithful to Israel and had given them his word but they had
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no interest in listening nor in acknowledging the faithfulness of God by being faithful to him so these things do have uh
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tremendous significance and the rest of scripture and for us to delve into them in detail I think is important for us to get deep in our gut what was deep in
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their gut um so that's my best U argument for why why the minutia and why look into the textual issues I think those parentheses in particular just incredibly helpful in bringing us into
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the setting uh of Deuteronomy and and they deserve the the best treatment I know how to give them but for the next few minutes maybe 10 um if uh I'm I'm open to questions on on what we
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covered last week or in weeks in weeks previous um yes I'd like to add to your comment before you go to question sure I think you're absolutely right
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that these facts are woven through scripture through the whole narrative but I think we also have to understand that these are the points at
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which since the enlightenment liberalism has sought to tear down Christianity yes while Orthodoxy has simply said we
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believe it because the Bible says it we don't we don't deal with it and if we don't deal with it then we can only be confident in our faith when we're among ourselves yes and we're sending a
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generation we have been now for several Generations we're sending a generation out into the world like sheep froms they go to these universities and they cannot defend their FA because
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they're brought up these things are brought up textual variants are brought up right which they've never heard of which they've never heard of they've never dealt with and they're destroyed it makes a shipwreck of their faith so
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while it's not comfortable it's it's imperative that we deal with these things within the church so that we're able to deal with these things in the world right exactly I mean us us dealing
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with them with them here also provides us the the love that we need as our environment around us to deal with hard issues we we raise
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children and often lessons are learned within the home that we don't want them learning out there uh the hard way we want them
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want them learning learning about their limitations and learning to use their gifts in an environment where they can come for a hug literally um and I I expressed last week
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I'm I'm entirely sympathetic to the to the notion that like what I was talking about about the idea of these the par the parenthetical statements being added
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later is later is just is very very hard I'm entirely sympathetic to that I came across that the the the moral just the I don't know
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the melstrom of information um without any preparation um so I'm sympath itic to being hit in the face by it and so to bring it up here within the congregation
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is important to me because this is the place where I would have wanted to hear about it and understand it uh and and learn to discern truth from error uh in
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in the various fact claims and the power of new information is something that strikes me as being at the root of of much of um much of these very um I I suppose uh heartfelt stories
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of deconstruction of deconstruction um where you listen to them and you think yeah but all you did was go from one set of information that you didn't really understand to another set of
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information that you didn't really understand and and I aim as part of my charge here not to let everyone leave without understanding at least um the
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the possibilities or the or the boundaries of a of a healthy discussion in the scriptures um but as I again as I said last week the idea that those things were added later is not something
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that I'm going to it's not a hill I'm going to die on but it is going to I am going to flesh out the implications of that idea because I think that a lot was
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added to what I saw uh Deuteronomy accomplishing for us by by realizing this is a possibility uh in in
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understand inad I I was just thinking when when Moses was talking to people did he have he didn't have a recording he had to come back at some point
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[Music] muchus because it's so difficult to understand yes I think I don't know into
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something so yeah the the question is are we just angling toward too much of an ability to explain the mechanics of how we got scripture even though that isn't expressly told us is that sort of
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okay sure what do we do that we just sit there and try to over analyze the thing but I think I think we're just leing C to to their issues they are not of the spirit they
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will not it so for us to delve into it I don't know if that's um okay that's fair I do so
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knowing that you're going to hear about it at some point um and culturally speaking I know that that I'm predisposed toward being overly
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analytical about it one way or another um the the the reality is that the helps that you have to consult for help in
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understanding the language and the and the meaning are are going to deal with these issues one way or another um I actually came across a section in John gild about um yayer the monite and he
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just States very plainly like this looks like another guy by the same name you know reasserted control over the region later he's very sure about that and that's fine uh I'm fine with that um I I
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want to uh not but I also don't want to deny what what my eyes can see uh in it and that is at least the possibility of of later
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Edition something that we see clarification being made in other in other sections of scripture um we see that same thing being done and as we
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pointed out last week the the same thing being done within Deuteronomy itself the the writing of of the narration of how it is that Moses went up the mountain and died before before the Lord he was
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alone uh at the time and certainly did not um I say certainly did not write about his own death um he very well could have written in the spirit but I
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but I think that that almost is trying too hard to explain something that's perfectly on its face explicable that another appended all that all that he
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spoke in Deuteronomy with a a brief narrative about his death um that isn't so different from uh parenthetical statements uh earlier in the text or in
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the middle or between his discourses uh we'll look at another passage where uh a bit about how he assigned Cities of Refuge to the to the people of Israel um
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it's a narrative portion in the middle of something that is overwhelmingly speeches um who wrote that him someone else it it almost doesn't matter
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um believe word believe word God can I don't know seems to sometimes why does it
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matter don't know who wrote Hebrews in fact there's quite a number of books we do not andin the Book of Daniel there's
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languages it's a what we what we believe by faith is that it's the revelation of God it it is only in the last century and a half we worried about who wrote it who wrote each word but on the face of
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it why does that matter it does not matter so so we know that Moses most likely did not write about his own de and the disposition of
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body so it doesn't really matter in fact it may illuminate the purpose of the statements to understand that they may have been added
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later to help the people understand where they now are and and I I think that if we don't deal with this we are actually playing
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in the hands of the liberal and we're not prepared to defend our Fai we're called to be skilled Craftsman right which means we need to be able to handle every tool in the Box I'm probably gonna
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send is one of right I'm probably gonna seem overly analytical um to to to some of you no matter what that that's my B
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I'm bringing I'm bringing my skill and Analysis to this because this is this is the very best that I can bring to it um if uh if it seems overly
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analytical I I'm again I'm sympathetic to that there are sometimes where I read the things um that are written by both believing and um uh unbelieving
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commentators and I think okay you completely lost the plot uh through all that detail um but as far as my own look at scripture looking at the detail of
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why does it why is it phrased that way is is the very best that I can bring and try to bring out to you its significance um Erin did you have a I just wanted to
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say I would have never noticed those as being parenthetical at all I definitely have always wondered about the
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Moses and not ever Noti a grammatical change I guess that's what Daddy saying is why why time to that people but I think that not people I tend to details
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shouldn't I also get confronted with with people throwing darts at my belief and I tend to myi is weak and so
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what they might because and it think so like being know wouldn't I
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think if I ever contct someone
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now they're more ly to come out in a in a rather sharp form at a Christian University I think I said to somebody at one point several weeks ago that you may not see the the the need to study these things for yourself personally but your
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children will um they they will wonder if you don't wonder your children will wonder um my my my own parents um are
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have their own particular gifting this is something I had to encounter on my own they were not wondering about these things I was and a lot of the wondering about it came after my third reading of
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Deuteronomy too because the first time I'm not going to go into it thinking well now which one of these are the words of Mo I don't think that's the way that you should approach uh the the text
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of scripture on on first or second reading at all I I think you should read it historically first and and getting down to some of the literary
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aspects of which I would classif by last week's as more of a literary uh look at it um that c that can and should come farther down the line um I'm trying to
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cover a broad base here um and uh I I also put enough uh enough milk out and enough meat and try to make a balance
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there so like I said this week this week should be a lot um a lot lighter I hope uh and then there'll be some that are that are heavier but right you're you're
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going to get it one way or another and I would like for you to get it here say also even outside of just like defending one's Fai I find comfort in that study
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of those parentheticals just because it seems like God provided later explanation to the people who came later as to what he was talking about and I just find I think I find comfort in that
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just because it seems God Is providing expan to the ler isites
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as a lense and they're at least worth studying on their own because of how much they illuminate that subject without them without that and they are an interruption in in the whole it's a beautiful structure that he that he's
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got going uh in in that oratory but it as interruptions they're they're incredibly important because otherwise you wouldn't understand the subtext of
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what's going on the people who were stand standing there got all that at at a basic basic level this is what their fathers had most feared this is why they were they had been out in the wilderness
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some of them their entire lives in the first place and they didn't need the explanation we do so whether Moses chased a rabbit for a second uh or
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or whether someone else added it as explanatory notes that's less important to me than their significance for being there and also as far as our disagreements with one another as to
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approach we're going to have those to me whether you agree or disagree with what I said last week is less important than why um if if you disagree for for reasons of of Love of God's word um
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again I'm I'm perfectly good with that uh let's together grow up into maturity uh whether whether I turn out to be right or not um but I want you to see
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the significance of some of these things things that you might not notice and um whether you agree with my analysis is not so much important I'm trying to I'm only bringing them out not to get into
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the weeds of analysis but rather to show their importance one way or another and try to deal with that as best as I can let's um I want to reiterate I I
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wrote down three major goals of this study I I covered this in the introduction I just want to reread these and then we'll get into the text that we're going to uh look at today I had sort of three major goals that I'd laid
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out for the study the one was that we learn how to read scripture with the mindset of the original audience okay second that we learn how we are to view the law as a people not
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under law but under grace okay and third learn how to deal with scriptural prophecy using Deuteronomy as a case study since the end of those things
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prophesied can be known uh and what we looked at last week really addresses goal one and three together um it's going to take me some time maybe a significant amount of time
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to fully flesh out how that third one gets served but at very very least and that's why I read that passage out of the prophets uh we should get that this was deep in their deep in their gut and
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it should be deep in our gut too even though it's the stuff that seems the most obscure and the most just a matter of Fascination U to us um so let's uh let's look at Deuteronomy 3 uh starting
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at I believe verse
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22 I got get back to my back in my notes here okay let's start with verse 22 you shall not fear them speaking of these peoples for it is Yahweh your God who fights for you and I pleaded with Yahweh
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at that time saying oh Lord Yahweh you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your Mighty hand for what God is there in heaven or on Earth who can do such works and mighty acts as
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yours please let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan that good Hill Country and the Lebanon but Yahweh was angry with me
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because of you and would not listen to me and Yahweh said to me enough from you do not speak to me of this matter again go up to the top of pija and lift up
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your eyes Westward and northward and Southward and Eastward and look at it with your eyes for you shall not go over this Jordan but charge Joshua and
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encourage and strengthen him for he shall go over at the head of this people and he shall put them in possession of the land that you shall see so we remained in the valley opposite
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bate peor and now oh Israel listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you and do them that you may live and go in and take possession of
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that land that Yahweh the god of your fathers is given you you shall not add to the word that I command you nor take away from it that you may keep the
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Commandments of Yahweh your God that I command you your eyes have seen what Yahweh did at bahal peor for Yahweh your God destroyed from among you all the men
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who followed the bahal of peor but you who held fast to Yahweh your God are all alive today so I've put up here our
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signposts Yahweh was angry with me okay the three times that Moses says that and we already talked about Moses emphasizing the jealousy of God for his
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name these three times particularly the first one okay in chapter 1: 37 we saw that Yahweh willed to destroy that first generation that old generation for their
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unbelief and he was so zealous for his name that even Moses ends up lumped in with that old generation uh because he disbelieved God's promises concerning
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new so yahweh's jealousy for his name did not even exempt Moses and he would die as we see in this passage last of all of the old generation the second one we just read in uh verse 26 of chapter 3 um seeing
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that Yahweh was unwilling to relent even for Moses uh that he even even when asked um that Yahweh was fighting for the new
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generation uh as okay as um as certainly as the old generation died in the wilderness so in
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a in an odd way to us God's refusal to listen to Moses asking again and again about going in even though Moses is praising his works and rightly so God's
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refusal to listen to that it is in a way the this corresponds to the strength and the certainty of his promise to the new generation they will go in you
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disbelieved that you have no Port you have no part with them you will see the land but you will not go over encourage Joshua so not only to the new generation
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but also to the new leader uh that as surely as Yahweh is about Moses will not go in he is sure of Joshua Leading the
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People in um certain in his judgments and willing to purge unbelief from the congregation that even Moses received no clemency uh if God did not spare Moses
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how much more those who went astray of the new generation which is uh what we see uh in the affair of bate peor which we'll look at in a second um but
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regarding that regarding that generation in the wilderness um I think it'd be good to look over at what the writer of Hebrews says about them uh I've made
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reference to this a couple of times um but it's good to review it
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um starting in verse 12 of chapter 3 take care Brothers lest there be in any of you an evil unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the Living God but
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exhort one another every day as long as it is called today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin for we have come to share in Christ if
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indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end as it is said today if you hear his voice do not Harden your hearts as in the Rebellion for who were
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those who heard and yet rebelled was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses and with whom was he provoked for 40 years was it not with those who
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sinned whose bodies fell in the wilderness and to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest but to those who were disobedient so we see that they were
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unable to enter because of unbelief therefore while the promise of entering his rest still stands let us fear lest any of you should seem to have
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failed to reach it for good news came to us just as to them but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not United by by faith with those
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who listened the former generation was unable to enter because of unbelief okay and the new generation would not be able to enter God's rest if
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they did not persist in belief either uh which is what we'll see that he's referencing in the affair of be peor and I I'm not going to go into the
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sophisticated argument that the writer of Hebrews is making about the Sabbath rest for the people of God that really deserves its own treatment and its own time because he and he says that it
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applies to we who by faith enter that rest but the picture that we have painted for us by Moses here uh at the moment is of the certainty of God's
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promise juxtaposed with the possibility of continued apostasy in the congregation um and this is shown Us by this key low point from for the new
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generation which is the affair of b peor um if you turn over to numbers uh I did not mark it which was
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dumb um says after the after the moabites in fear of the Israelites hire balam um a diviner to utter a curse in
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Israel's God's Own Name against Israel and he came do it uh four times I think he tries to do it uh and can't 25 thank
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you yes chapter 25 um and it turns out that it was his idea don't worry they'll fall they can fall under the curse of their God uh by going after other gods
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um so Yahweh won't curse them but um we can surely ens snare them uh just use your women uh this was apparently his idea we're not told that uh in at this
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point in numbers but um it worked spoiler alert it worked uh chapter 25 while Israel lived in chatim the people began to with the daughters of
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Moab these invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods and the people ate and bowed down to their gods in this way Israel yoked himself to Baal of
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peor and the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel and Yahweh said to Moses take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the sun before Yahweh that
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the fierce anger of Yahweh may be turned away from Israel I just point out that word hang is to impale on a post um that's important for what
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follows and Moses said to the judges of Israel each of you kill those of his men who have yolked themselves to bahal of peor and behold one of the people of Israel came and brought a midianite
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woman to his family in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole Congregation of the people of Israel while they were Weeping at the entrance of the tent of meeting when fenos the
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son of Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest saw it he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of
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them the man of Israel and the woman through her belly in this way the plague on the people of Israel was stopped nevertheless those who died by the
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plague were 24,000 men um this event is assigned a very similar
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importance uh in later scripture to the golden calf uh I found it to be treated at least as many times uh in the Psalms and the prophets as uh as the golden
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calf was um there's a later event where the the tribes that have inherited on on this side of the Jordan having gone over and been released to go home after
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setting Israel in the the uh sort of core of their inheritance they build an altar on this side of the Jordan um and their meaning of that is we worship The
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God Who promised to set his people in the land of of his promise when we are one people and we worship over here with the
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rest of the people of God their meaning is taken by the congregation because they don't explain themselves uh before they do it uh their meaning is taken by the congregation to be already they're
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setting up uh unauthorized altars and unauthorized worship and not only that doing it on our side so in investigating
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the matter before going to war against those two and a half tribes they send a delegation and they ask to know what are you doing doing uh and the question they
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ask is very poignant uh this is in Joshua 22 um have we not had enough of the sin at peor from which even yet we
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have not cleansed ourselves and for which there came a plague upon the congregation of Yahweh that you too must turn this day away from following Yahweh
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and if you too rebel against Yahweh today then tomorrow he will be angry with the whole Congregation of Israel he doesn't they don't mention the
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golden calf that's not their example their example is what happened at peor uh similarly Hosea makes use of that Rebellion uh in chapter nine of his
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Oracle saying like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel like the first fruit on the Fig Tree at its first season I saw your fathers but they came
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to Bal peor and consecrated themselves to the thing of Shame and became detestable like the thing they loved this this is one of the stories
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like the like Sodom and Gomorrah that become a paradigm yes through the rest of scripture right but it's not one that we deal with much right yeah we don't
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notice it a whole lot but it is extremely important we know the golden calf but this one's more obscure to us and yet this one I would argue has at least as much if not more importance because and I'd say it fits this is the
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generation that did that made the cast metal calf they all died in the wilderness this is the generation that hoed after the Baal of peor they went in so their
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descendants are the ones being spoken to in the prophets this event is relatively of little importance this one's big because this was their fathers the ones promised to go in the new generation
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wasn't prevented from entering the land because of this event uh but they experienced severe suffering because of it and I'd point out especially the tribe of Simeon of which the man who
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took the woman into his tent in the sight of all the congregation um the tribe of Simeon fell by over half they number the people right after this and the difference in numbering for when
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they started and when and after this event Simeon was was cut in half it's really unbelievable and then that forms the this is just a matter of interest
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that forms the historical basis for why they needed to be kind of lumped in with another tribe in order to even have an inheritance I just going to ask you talk
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about the old generation almost as if they were elip out of God's promise yes and that and that is that put me in mind of when God tells
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Moses get out of the way I'm going to destroy this people and I'll make the people out of you and Moses debates with them but he did destroy I mean he destroyed them to the point where their
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sins don't even get used in discussions of proper rightous living to the Israelites to the the promise to Abraham was that I will give to to you and to
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your seed okay and the the essence of the meaning of that phrase was not fully known to Israel in the Wilderness at
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this time but and and Paul tells us that not to your seeds but to your seed meaning Christ that doesn't mean that the
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phrasing of the promise was um unsignificant to the fact that they were having they had them and their children that that promise still was
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characterized the same way no matter where you stood in Israel's history they were the ones who said our little ones will become prey and God in fulfilling
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his promise to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and I think it's important for Jacob because I I covered this in a in a previous session that it was to his 12 sons he spoke in the name of Yahweh to
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them about their future when they inherited in the land it was very important that Moses not be the one raised up as a nation unto himself he was from but one tribe and that would be
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faithlessness to the promise to Jacob but the but yes that their fathers in the wilderness are in a sense excised from the promise Jacob's children still
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went in uh but if you will not believe that the promises to you and to your seed you have rejected the land that God promised you have rejected God's promises and you're like Esau you're out
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I had never seen it the way just mentioned it that God actually did destroy from them destroy them from you before right and yet he did it in a way that preserved the 12 tribes right yeah
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and a big deal is made out of that in in um in the passages we've already looked at um when it says that um uh this is chapter 2:1 14 and the and the time from our leaving cadesh Bara until we crossed
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the brook zared was 38 years until the entire generation that is the men of War had perished from the camp as Yahweh had sworn to them for indeed the hand of
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Yahweh was against them to destroy them from the camp until they had perished and what we're going to see in his second oratory is that he will begin his second oratory by taking them
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historically back to the mountain of Horeb and recasting that entire history without the old generation at all it's kind of interesting that Moses
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himself is married to aite woman which caused some problems that are a bit obscure in the Tex but I however you take that it does seem to underscore his
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connection to the old generation he still not that he participated in this
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well I also need to point out for the historical purposes that when we read about Midian we can be reading about any number of groups the midianites were notoriously disunified um they attached
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themselves to other people problems God you know fought with Moses and then he had to circumcise his sons and she was not
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few verses interpret that but there's clearly some issue going on yeah yeah I think there is um um that would be an interesting thing to chase down
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um uh he he ultimately is upheld uh in that um and and I think that his marriage to her was not wrong uh they were a kindred people to uh the people
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of Israel and it is later in the law that you read about certain prohibitions for example that they should harass Midian for as long as it exists uh and that the moabites were not to the child
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of a moabit although not uh forever prevented from the assembly was not to enter the assembly until a certain number of generations had passed um so not an illegal marriage just a
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restricted marriage but because of what they had done to them not because it was inherently wrong to uh take a wife from from here it was because of his in in
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history what they had done to the people of Israel was the reason they were under the ban yeah I'm not saying it was sinful I'm saying it was for whatever reason it was clearly problematic it was problematic yeah I agree with that well just to close the circle on that comment
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about him excising I think you could maybe learn a little about we're often presented well what is it is it God's will or is it man's will we see Moses arguing with God so did Moses change
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God's mind like when Abraham arcues with God about well if there's one righteous person and people make a big deal of that we see God doing his will and yet
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also honoring his promises that are presented to him by his people yeah I think we can see the thrust of the thrust of his promises being being upheld and the um whatever you do with
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the fact that there seems to be a very tense back and forth between uh Moses and and Yahweh the certainty of his promises is upheld and I think that's I personally think that's the reason for
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the episode is that we might see through Moses the man whom God appointed saying but but your name okay um so Yahweh was
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willing then so then then looking at this one and this is looking a little bit ahead is that Yahweh was willing to establish his Covenant with the new generation and their descendants after
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them okay Moses was going to die and he will make this point uh in in in further down in his oratory but they would go over but if Yahweh would cause Moses to die
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outside the land for an act of unbelief how much more would their descendants die outside the land if they forgot Yahweh their God that is the point he makes later on so these are our
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signposts the old generation the new and their seed um looking at the affair of peor uh briefly there's also a a progression in the text um you have uh
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329 down to and I don't like this uh but I have to because it's two parts of the same verse um okay so you
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have bait peor meaning the the the region the area you have um Bor uh getting a little more specific about the location and then it switches
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to he switches to the Baal of peor and I could not help but see a certain gravitational pull in that progression through the beginning it
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also helps us connect what is across your chapter designations which is very unhelpful um it also helps you connect them um you also see in verse 2 and four
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an antithesis he says you shall not add to the word that I command you nor take from it and then after saying you have seen what he did at Balor he says but
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you who held fast to Yahweh your God are all alive today relating them holding fast to Yahweh their god with his word and this is going to be the main focus
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of the final movement of this oratory the go the go ahead I'm losing you what is your distinction there I mean I see the l
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what does that mean um this this is referring to these are referring to these are geographical designations and then this is very specific about the God of the Baal of
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this region that is worshiped in that region um the point I the point I think Moses is making is that there is a certain gravity of the human heart okay
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and and I'm I'll get into that in just a second I'm kind of running out of time um first that the people could not by proximity or by clinging to Moses remain near to
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God the people had been at the very Mountain where God made his voice heard and yet it did not profit them because of their of their unbelief Moses had spoken with Yahweh
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face to face and yet his ministry was ending how were they to be near to their God this is the question that Moses the the the thing that Moses is going to
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solve here for them but he first points out that the natural gravity of the heart of unbelief would be away from the Living God and toward the gods of those
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around them U this reminds us very much of the progression in the text that you may be familiar with of Genesis where lot uh in separating from Abraham uh
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Begins by pitching his tents toward sodome and then later when he's captured we find that he was living within the City by that time and then by the time
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we see him again and the two angels show up to look about the city and assure its destruction he's sitting in the gate in a place of prominence as a magistrate uh
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in the city the gravity of lot when he left the place where God had made his name known which was in that case wherever Abraham
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wherever Abraham was in separ sear ating himself from Abraham he steadily declined toward Sodom and there's a a great object lesson in that and it's the same object
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lesson that Moses is doing with his language he's saying we camped opposite bate peor and you've seen what Yahweh did at Baal peor when you yoked yourself to the Baal of peor that that in
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leaving in in leaving the the word of God behind they're the only place for them to to go was to list toward other
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gods um Abraham was where God was to be found in lot's day but where was God to be found when Israel had left the mountain and then The Shining face of Moses was
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no longer to shine among them his answer is all who held fast to God through his word are alive this day and all who hold fast to God through his
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word will live the people of Israel would need as the law prescribed to Resort regularly to the Tabernacle service and hear the reading of the law
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as their connection to God and for us we need to recognize that this is the trajectory of our hearts that that when we as Paul says make
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provision for the flesh th this is where we're going to that to to distance ourselves from God's word we're in the same position they are in a way that to
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distance oursel from God's word is to list toward Sodom or to to list toward the gods of the Nations um but at the same time we
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occupy uh a very privileged place in the Fulfillment of all these things and so then we can look farther down in uh back in Hebrews where we were in in chapter
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4 and I'll close with this for if Joshua had given them rest God would not have spoken of another day later on so then there remains a Sabbath
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rest for the people of God for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his let us therefore strive to enter that rest
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so that no one may fall by the same sort of Disobedience this this is what Moses is saying you have seen that those who held
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fast as to Yahweh their God are alive today okay and those who did not were not alive literally in history at this point but this is what writer of Hebrews is saying let us therefore strive to
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enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of Disobedience for the word of God is living and active sharper
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than any two-edged sword piercing to the division of soul and of spirit of joints and of marrow and Discerning the thoughts and intentions of the
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heart and no creature is hidden from his sight but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account since then we have a great high
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priest who has passed through the heavens Jesus the son of God let us hold fast our fast our confession for we do not have a high
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priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin let us then with confidence
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draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find Grace to help in time of need let us not list away toward the
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things of this world either but draw near to God through his word and through our prayers let us
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pray father thank you for this object lesson please help us as we as as we live in a world fraught with corruption please help us as we deal with the reality of our flesh as we've as we've been taught uh in our
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assembly as we deal with the fact that even when we look into your perfect law it it has the power if if given to
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our flesh to be used against us but thanks be to God through Jesus Christ Our Lord thank you that you have provided for us
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by putting first your spirit within our hearts giving us the right to call upon you to be near to you whenever we call upon you and to find grace and mercy in
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time of time of need thank you for this reality that we enjoy and thank you in Jesus name