Joshua Study - 2026-05-06

Welcome to the Lansdale Life Church podcast.

If you're seeking a closer relationship with Jesus Christ, this podcast is for you.

Thank you for joining us today.

All right.

How's everybody doing today?

Good, good.

So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Danny and I've been going to this

church for quite a long time since 2016, but you haven't seen me for that

a whole period because part of that time, my wife and I were serving in Turkey.

Those of you who know, who knows Sarah, so we weren't here.

So sometimes I see people I'm like, Oh, have you been going here like less now?

But when we came back from Turkey two years ago, I was like, Oh, have you

been going here, you know, a long time.

And they're like, yeah, two years.

What about you?

It was like, yeah, quite a kind of a long time.

It's get a little confusing without diving into the whole story.

So, but for those of you who I don't know that well, I'm looking forward

to getting to know you guys and tonight we're going to be in Joshua 11.

So if you have your Bibles or your phone, if you can tolerate all the

messages on there and stay focused, you can open up your phones to Joshua 11 as

well, and my title for tonight's, uh, teaching is the holy war.

And so, uh, going back just a little bit, I'll recap a little bit of the

historical context so that I can kind of set the message.

Uh, but during this time in Joshua, the Israelites are basically realizing

the covenant given to Abraham to possess the land.

And as you probably all know, God's story is so much about covenant and his

covenant relationship with people.

And particularly in this stage of the story with Israel.

And so God had promised Abraham to possess the land.

And then in Joshua three, Jamie covered this like about a month ago, Joshua

three, they cross over the Jordan and into the promised land.

And one important thing there that struck me as I was reading through

Joshua was the Lord says, consecrate yourselves for tomorrow.

Uh, and Jamie touched on this point when he went over the chapter, but

this is incredibly important, setting yourselves apart for tomorrow.

The Lord will do wonders among you.

And this whole, this whole message tonight is really centering around

holiness and consecrating yourself to the Lord.

Now to consecrate, it just means to set yourself apart.

Basically another translation would say sanctify to make yourself

holy. Well, holy has been such a, uh, talked about term in church.

It just means to set yourself apart or reserve yourself for something.

And so that's the same word in there is make yourself holy.

And so what is Joshua saying?

He's saying, make yourself holy unto the Lord because you're going to go

in and conquer the land and you need to be consecrated to the Lord.

And does anybody know, just call it out.

Does anybody know what crossing over the Jordan symbolizes in the

Christian life today?

No takers. So symbolizes baptism.

And so they cross over the Jordan.

So now they've been baptized and the promised land symbolizes anybody

want to take a shot at that?

What does the promised land symbolize for us today as believers?

New life, salvation, exactly.

And so you're baptized.

You consecrate yourself to the Lord.

You enter covenant with the Lord and Israel's entering covenant.

They've already entered into covenant with the Lord, but now they're

about to realize that covenant.

And so they set themselves apart.

They go through baptism.

Baptism is ritual purification.

So they're purifying themselves for the covenant and then they're

readying themselves to actually lay hold of that promised land of

that salvation that God has promised Abraham through the covenant.

So it's really important to just frame this whole chapter within

that narrative.

And then they go through Jericho, you know, the walls.

Come tumbling down and then they go through a couple of other

battles and we're not going to really hit on that too much.

But then they come.

We come to Joshua chapter 11 and I'm not going to read through

exactly the whole chapter, but I'll touch on a few verses.

But basically, Joshua chapter 11 is just a series of

decisive God ordained victories.

And so it's just victory after, after victory, after victory.

I just, I forgot to pray.

So let me just pray real quick.

So Lord, we just ask you for just your power to come tonight.

Lord, we ask you for your presence.

We ask you that you would change and transform us tonight.

Lord, we just invite your presence to come and rest on us.

Lord, I pray that this wouldn't be just a message, but it would

be something that changes and transforms us.

Lord, if we come here and don't meet you and aren't changed by

you, Lord, what are we doing?

So God, we just ask you to come, change us, transform us, and

let us leave knowing you more and sanctify more in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So Joshua 11.

So Joshua has a lot of military momentum.

Verse one and two, the kings are organizing against them.

They're making alliances.

Versus four, or verse four says, they came out, all the

kings in that region came out with their troops, a great

horde in number like the sand that is on the seashore, with

very many horses and chariots.

And all these kings joined their forces and came and encamped

together at the waters of Marom to fight Israel.

And the Lord said to Joshua, do not be afraid of them, for

tomorrow at this time I will give over all of them, slain

to Israel, you shall hamstring their horses and burn their

chariots with fire.

So Joshua and all his warriors came suddenly against them by

their ways by the waters of Marom and fell upon them.

And the Lord gave them into the hand of Israel who struck them

and chased them as far as great Sidon, Mishrifoth, Mayim, and

Eastward as far as the Valley of Mizpah, and they struck them

until they left none remaining.

So they go through here and they basically just rout all

the kings.

Not going to read every verse in here, but if we look at

verse 23 at the end says, so Joshua took the whole land

according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses and

Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to

their tribal allotments and the land had rest from war.

So God had given this land for the Israelites and they

are basically walking it out.

And according to these verses, it looks like everything is

going great.

They're obeying the Lord.

They're they're having courage in battle.

I'm sure they lost some men fighting.

These are bloody close contact wars like you see in the

old movies.

You know, they're probably hacking each other.

Blood is everywhere.

I'm sure Israelites died.

We don't have any record of that, but we can assume that

some people died.

So it's it's real.

This is real life and there's a lot of enemies, but the

Lord is just with them and they're mowing it down, doing

great.

So one one piece that I want to just deal with real quick,

which I think this can be a stumbling block for a lot of

people.

And I know I wrestled with this before in my journey with

the Lord.

Like when I was, you know, first wrestling with a lot of

faith topics and developing my own personal walk with

the Lord, but as to the idea of judgment, people a lot of

times will say like, well, why did God just go and wipe

out all these people's right?

I mean, you've probably heard that before.

Like, oh, the Old Testament is so bloody or, you

know, God changed.

He was like one way then now he's another way.

And it can be kind of confusing, but I used to

struggle with that too.

And people say, you know, that's like not just whatever.

Let me just say that God is just and we want to start

there and everything he does is just and true.

And God's command is that they are to be completely

wiped out.

And many people have and do struggle with the level

of judgment and violence that is present throughout the

Old Testament, particularly in these verses.

You can look at verses 11 through basically 17 and

then verse 20, they're basically wiped them out and

put them all to death.

And verse 20 says, for it was the Lord's doing to

harden their hearts that they should come against

Israel in battle in order that they should be

devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy

but be destroyed just as the Lord commanded Moses.

And so before you throw up your hands and protest

and say, hey, this is I didn't know that was in

there, blah, blah, blah, like maybe this is not my

vibe.

If you look at Genesis 15, 16, you can see that God

is promising Abraham the land.

And he says, in four generations, you're going

to have the land of the Amorites, which is the

land basically synonymous with the Canaanites.

It's basically these people.

But he says the sin of them is not complete yet.

The iniquity is not complete.

So there's, there's this idea that God is not

judging the people there at the time of Abraham

because their sin is not sufficient where he is

giving them time to repent of their sin because

we know that God is also merciful as he is just.

But he also knows that they're not going to

repent. So therefore he's knows that this

battle is going to happen.

And let me just paint this picture because this

is one thing that has helped me to kind of

understand the context of who these people

actually were.

So does anybody know, maybe we don't ask the

questions, but there's three things here that I

have that were dominant factors within these

cultures that were embedded in the cultures that

were very, very wicked things.

Does anybody want to throw one out?

Yeah. Child sacrifice, right?

Making your child walk through the fire.

Have you guys ever heard that?

It's referenced several times in the Bible, but

the Canaanite kings and the Phoenicians,

which they're a little bit further up along

the Mediterranean coast, Tyre and Sidon.

But they were famous for making their children

walk through a fire and burning them alive in

sacrifice to Molech was the regional deity at

the time. And so this was something that the

Lord God abhorred and was something that was

regular. Now, can you imagine if there is a

society that was hell bent on maintaining that

practice of child sacrifice?

I don't know any society today that does it that

way. Now, you could argue that America has a

version of that with abortion for sure.

The spiritual stronghold over one of them over

America is the spirit of Molech per se.

I don't know if that's what it's called, but

it's that in that same spirit of rebellion

against God and against life to commit, you

know, it's what, tens of millions of

abortions. That's not really the topic of

the sermon today, but just imagine like babies

are alive and they're being burned alive.

And people are like, that's good.

That's worship to these Gods.

Second thing is ritual prostitution tied to

cult Gods such as Baal and Ashira.

You can reference this in Deuteronomy 23, 17

and 18. And so it was common that you would

have like they have this in India today, too.

There's just women living in a temple and men

go in there and they have relations with them.

And that's considered to be worship.

They're cult prostitutes.

And so this was also a common thing that

they would have.

Other examples and clues into what these

cultures practice were incest, homosexuality.

Like, do you guys remember that story with

Lot and how when those two angels came to see

Lot, this is nuts, and then they, the people

from the town in Sodom and Gomorrah or Sodom,

they were banging the door down saying, we

want to have relations with these angels.

Right. And Lot was like, no, please take my

daughter. And you're thinking, oh my gosh, if

this is the relation of Abraham, you know, how

much more depraved are these other guys?

And so this is happening for four

generations. And the Lord is saying, even at

this point, like this level of, well, Sodom

and Gomorrah got judged, but this kind of

level of perversion of child sacrifice, ritual

cult prostitution, incest, homosexuality, is the

Lord is still giving leeway for repentance

there. And so this is kind of just to set

the frame of that. If, if there is no

repentance at this level, then this is a kind

of a clue as to when society deteriorates so

much that the only thing left God has to do

is to actually just basically send an army to

judge that society. And the Lord says, I'm

going to use you, Israel, to do that because

I'm just, and if you do these things, I'm going

to raise up an army and send them to judge

you. And he actually does that twice. The

Assyrians come in, what is it, 733, and they

take the Northern tribes because the

Northern tribes had walked away from the

Lord. And then the Babylonians come in

something like 571, I think, and they take the

Southern Kingdom and they exile them. And

because the Lord says, I'm just, I did this

to the people living in the land. And so

now I'm going to do it to you if you also

walk down those ways. So a lot of times

we don't think of that other side of the

coin where the Lord is judging his own

covenant people with the same standard

that he's judging the people of. Well,

he has a little bit of a different standard,

but he says, I'm going to judge you as

well. So I hope, I don't want to make

that the focal, whole focal point of

the message, but I wanted to deal with

that quickly because I think that that

provides a little bit of context and a

little bit of a window into God's heart.

He's not just, he's not just wiping out

like a relatively like decently nominally

Christian population. He's, these are

literally like wicked people who are

burning their own children alive and

they think it's worship. And so the

Lord wants these people out of Canaan

so that the Israelites don't fall into

these same kinds of practices. Okay.

So God is just, if we start there,

one other thing I just about God's

justice. One other quick point is we,

I got this question just so many times

over the last five, six years in the

ministry, but people are like, well,

how can you know God is just? And I

just tell them, well, we know that

scripture says it, bears witness to it.

But also I just say, listen, you will

not get, I guarantee you that we will

not get to the last day where God is

judging everyone at the great white

throne of judgment and see the way he

judges and think, wow, that is not good

judgment. That was a lot, but

basically we will be happy with the

way God judges. We will, we will

agree with the way God judges when

we know and we have the same

information that he knows. Does

that make sense? Because we, part of

the problem with courts is the

courts are trying to do a lot of

discovery. God doesn't have to do

discovery for information. He knows.

And so he will judge what is

according to his own justice as

well. So anyway, we will all agree

with his judgments on that last

day. That's what I cling to. If I

get to be like, well, maybe this,

maybe that, but no, you just stick

with what the Bible says. Anyway,

does that make sense? So getting

back to the main narrative, the

Lord commands the conquest of

Canaan. And on the one hand, this

looks like a brilliantly executed

campaign. It's commanded by God.

It accomplishes all of his

purposes of expunging the people

from the land. And you know,

verse 23, like we talked about

Joshua took the whole land

according to all that God

committed Moses and the land had

rest from war. So it seems like

everything's good, right? Smooth

sailing, mission accomplished,

could send the boys home.

Actually, this is not how it

ends. Turn with me if you want

to, to Judges chapter one and

look at verse 27. Now this

always perplexed and puzzled me.

And so I want to make sure, I

want to make sure to deal with

it and kind of we'll wrap up

with this. And then we have some

questions that we'll go over.

But in Joshua 11, you see that it

seems like Joshua and the

soldiers, they complete the

victory. You turn to Judges

chapter one, and you look at

verse 27. And in my ESV Bible,

it says as the heading failure

to complete the conquest. And

then we'll just do a quick tick

down line by line. It says the

tribe of Manasseh did not drive

out the inhabitants of Beth

She'an and its villages. And the

Canaanites persisted in dwelling

the land. Verse 28, Israel

grew strong, and they put the

Canaanites to forced labor, but

did not drive them out

completely. And Ephraim did not

drive out the Canaanites who

lived in Giza. So the

Canaanites lived in Giza among

them. And you can see, if you

just kind of scan down through

verse 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, it

basically seems like it's

contradicting Joshua chapter

11. So Christian and Jewish

scholars alike have been

aware of this sort of tension

and where most of them end up,

and this is where I end up too,

but feel free to, you know,

conduct your own due diligence

is that in Joshua, they're

referring to the military side

of the campaign completed and

the victory and the battle has

been won and the Canaanites

have laid down all of their

arms. And then what actually

is happening here in Judges is

that they are not fulfilling

the mandate to exile them all

out of the land and the

territory. And something

really interesting here happens.

It's a failure to completely

obey God, but also there's a

really interesting twist and

you guys probably picked up on

it. But instead of either

putting them to death, the

Canaanites to death or

exiling them, just sending them

away, they do something very

interesting. And this this

stuck out to me. But it's in

verse 28 in Judges chapter one

says when Israel grew strong,

they put the Canaanites to

forced labor, but they did

not drive them out completely.

And we're going to we're going

to come back to some of this

to some of this stuff. But

isn't that interesting? God

had a command for them and it

looked like things were going

well, but then they had a they

had a pivot and they thought,

whoa, what? Wait, wait,

wait, why would we why would

we dispose or send these people

away? How about we use them

to make our lives easier,

making them our slaves. And

this is only one or two

generations after Egypt. So

that's that's the backdrop

here. And I relate this to

basically holiness. Like

there's the historical truth

of the story. But for us

today, this this story to me

is is really analogous to our

Christian lives and the holiness

that the Lord is asking us to

have. The Lord gives us a

command to fully possess the

land, to fully possess your

body, soul and spirit, and to

rid your body, soul and spirit,

to rid your entire being of

sin. Just like He commanded

the Canaanites, the Israelites

to rid the promised land of

the Canaanites because they

had wicked practices. The Lord

after we are saved and

baptized, we cross over the

Jordan. Now we are to possess

the land and we are to live

in the covenant promise that

God has given us. And we are

to live in in the land flowing

with milk and honey. And we

are to actually clear out

everything in our life that is

not of God. And so this is

what I mean. You obviously you

understand when I say holy war,

what I mean in the natural

historically what happened, it

was a holy war. God was was

saying, hey, wages this war

for me so that you can have a

home and we can live in

covenant together. But for us,

it's to wage war against sin.

It's to wage war in the, in

the upward pursuit of fully

giving ourselves to the Lord.

And so how do we do that? If

you look at, well, let me

ask you guys this. Anybody

know real quick, there's a

specific verse I'm thinking of.

What is the will of God for

our lives? Anyone got it on the

top of their head? Sorry,

anyone? What did you say that

or Roger? Yeah, that's, that's

part of it. That's not exactly

what I'm thinking of, but

that is, that is part of the

will of God. But there's a

verse, it's 1 Thessalonians 4

3 and it says, for this is

the will of God, your

sanctification, basically you

abstain from sexual immorality

that each one of you know how

to control his or his own

body in holiness and honor,

not in the passion of lusts

like the Gentiles. You can

think of the Canaanites who

do not know God and the Lord

is an Avenger of these

things. God has not called us

to impurity, but to holiness.

And so, Roger, to your point,

one of the ways that we, that

we enjoy God is actually

through being holy unto him.

Now holiness, depending on

your background, might not be

like the most cuddly word to

you, right? The holiness

movement, you know, or, or

like, uh, the old Pentecostals,

you know, um, or like the

Baptists, right? Be holy, be

thou holy, Moses, you are

on holy ground, right? But

really holiness is about

enjoying God and being fully

set apart for him. Like you

can think of it like marriage.

Like when you get married, you

forsake all other lovers. And

the wedding vows, um, read

like this. Do you promise to

love her, comfort her, honor

her, keep her in sickness and

in health and forsaking all

others? To be faithful unto

her as long as you both shall

live. And this is the essence

of covenant holiness. It's the

essence of setting your life,

your mind, your body, your

spirit apart, disconnecting

from everything in the world

and throwing it on God and

covenanting with, covenanting

with him and, and saying, God,

you are going to be my chief

pleasure. Now, this can

either, you can either make

this, you can either do this

the right way or the wrong way.

You can do holiness two ways,

the right way and the wrong

way. Okay. The wrong way is

you just try really hard. Okay.

You just try to live your life

good. You try to please God.

Right. This is just not the

gospel. I think we all can

realize that, but we realize

to do it the right way that we

are positionally already holy

because of Jesus's blood and

his sacrifice on the cross and

what he did for us. And so we

walk in our positional holiness.

Right. We've already been

justified. We've already been

saved. Right. But this

salvation and this positional

holiness at its beginning is

like a seed and the seed must

also grow. And just like the

seed, when you put it in the

ground and you cover it with

soil and you begin to tend it,

it doesn't seem like much.

Over time, it grows into this

big, beautiful tree. And so

that's really the, that's

really the trajectory that God

has us on. And so we do

holiness through relying on the

Lord's grace. There's a verse

in Titus that says you will

be, the grace of God trains

us in all Godliness. And so

it's actually the grace of God

that empowers us to say no to

sin and say no to, and to root

out all of the areas in our

life that are, you know, so

called Canaanites in our

lives and our promised land. And

all these things actually, they

keep us from enjoying God.

Because when you're so caught

up in sin, you can't actually

enjoy God. I remember just in

in when I was in college, I

used to think like, well, if I

if I give up certain things,

then like, I'm gonna lose

those things and my life isn't

gonna be as good as I thought

it was. But if you've been

following the Lord for a little

bit, you know that it's

inverse is that when you give

those things up, and you give

them to the Lord, and you put

yourself in a position where

you're receiving God's grace

and his love and his

faithfulness, then he actually

gives you satisfaction and

pleasure from him, you get to

enjoy him and glorify him

forever. And he also gives you

these side gifts too. Like I

never thought honestly, I was

the Lord called me to be a

missionary in 2014. I hemmed

and hauled didn't get on the

field until 2016. And I

thought I was never going to

get married. That was it. I

was just like, I guess I'm

just not going to get married.

And I wanted to be married.

But through that, I gave that

desire up. And the Lord just

gave me a beautiful wife. She's

a great, great woman. A lot of

you know her. Now we have two

little kids and my life is

amazing. And it's just, but I

was willing to give that up in

order to let the Lord do

something greater in my life.

And then the Bible, like the

Bible says, he just adds it

back. You know, all these seek

first the kingdom of God and

all these things would be

added unto you. So, but

holiness, really the essence of

it is, and, and I don't have a

verse for this, but it's my

personal experience and

conviction that the more you

grow in holiness, the more

you put yourself, just the

more you just hook yourself to

the Lord, latch yourself to

the Lord and pursue him in

covenant faithfulness by his

grace, knowing that you're

already positionally holy and

you just disconnect from the

world and those habits that

you have, the more you

actually enjoy God and the

more you enjoy life. So I

think there's a, there's a

correlation in life between

the level of holiness, actual

holiness that you receive and

the level that you actually

enjoy God. And when I talk

about levels of holiness,

what I really mean is like,

I'm just using this in the

scale of like Paul talks about

being mature and complete in

the Lord. And so I don't

personally believe in, you

know, perfect sanctification

where like you lose the

capacity to sin, which I

don't really know if anyone

believes that, but some

people believe in like a

higher level of personal

sanctification. But I do

believe there is a place

where you arrive with the

Lord, where you are entering

into his rest and you stay

there for a while and you're

not caught in these cycles of

sin, like we see happening

in the book of judges. So

the interesting thing is,

and we'll wrap up with this

and then we'll have some

questions. But the

interesting thing is the

Israelites, they disobey

God's commands, which is

also important part of, of

growing in holiness is to

read his word and obey God.

Those who obey me love me,

he says, but they trade the

commandment of God for their

own idea. And I thought that

was really interesting. Like

a lot of times the Lord

will speak something to us

or he'll highlight something

in scripture that we should

do or change. And then we

maybe do it for a little

bit, but then we kind of

pivot. And what this creates,

what we see in the biblical

narrative is this creates in

judges what is called the

sin cycle. And you guys

ever hear of the sin cycle

in judges. So after Joshua,

there come judges and

there's 12 judges in the

book of judges and Israel

goes through this cycle of

rebellion and then they, they

fall into trouble and it's

it's sin. And then the Lord

raises up a judge and he

saves them. And it's just

kind of like you, if you

look it up on Google,

there's like a, it's like a

flywheel that goes around

and around. And this

happens 12 times. And if

you've ever, you know, if

you're caught in cycles of

sin, you, it's probably

because at some point you

didn't clear out all the

Canaanites in your life.

And the Lord, his desire for

us is not to be caught in

these cycles of sin. And

what we see is Israel, they

don't get out of this sin

cycle. The sin cycle is not

broken until the Messiah

comes. And I mean, small

M Messiah, which is David.

Because Messiah just means

anointed one. And Samuel

anoints David in order to

lead the people. And Saul

was anointed before David,

yes, technically. But David

was the one who really

led the kingdom forward and

was representing Christ in

that capacity. But he even

fell short. And so the

whole testament up to

Christ is basically like

pointing to Jesus, but

everyone falling short. And

then Jesus comes and he is

the one who fully redeems

us. But the thing is, if

we're caught in a sin cycle,

the only one who can get us

out of it is Christ. And if

you're caught in a sin cycle,

you just need to call it to

the Lord, repent and Jesus

will come and help you. But

you also have to, by his

grace, partner with the

Holy Spirit in order to

clear out the Canaanites in

your life. And so that is

basically the end of where

the message is going to be.

That's basically the end. But

yeah, we wage a holy war, a

Holy Spirit, grace-filled

holy war on sin. And we

don't stop until we reach

what Paul calls maturity or

completeness. And even then

you don't stop because at

that point you're just

enjoying God so much. Like

there's two ways to do it.

Like I said, you can do it

the one way holiness where

you resist and then you

just try hard and that

never works. You'll just

fall into the cycle of

sin, probably, or you can

rely on the Lord and you

can ask him to basically

just teach you what covenant

holiness means, teach you

what intimacy means, teach

you what being set apart to

the Lord actually means.

And how you can, and he

will teach you how you

can actually obey him in

order to root out all the

different areas in your

life that are not yet

submitted to him. Does

that make sense? So it's

kind of a bit of a lot in

there. But I do have a

couple of questions for us

to go over. So I think we

could get into groups. I

have six papers. Oh, it

actually didn't bring,

didn't bring all the

papers. Is there like, like

a group chat or does

anybody want to write some

of these down? I think we

can break up into groups,

right? Do you guys still

do that? Break up into

groups? Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We'll pass, we'll

pass the paper around. But

the questions are, what

does your personal holiness

journey look like? How are

you seeking to grow in

holiness? Are there any

Canaanites left in your

personal promise land? What

commands of God do you

find enjoyable and easy?

Which ones do you find

hard and difficult? And

what are your thoughts on

holiness as it relates to

our covenant with God? And

these are just guidelines.

If there are other things

in the text or in the

message that you want to

talk about or discuss, you

guys can feel free to do

that as well. So yeah,

let's just pray. Lord, or

do you want to, yeah, that's

a good point. Um, and the

Bible, this is a common

saying, but the Bible was

written for us, but not to

us. And a lot of the

language in there that's

used, we just miss a lot of

it because it's in

English, a, but also a

lot of it's most, at

least all of it is 2000

years removed from us. So

we're removed from the

culture. We're removed

from the idioms. We're

removed from the nuance

of the conversations of

the day. And then the old

Testament is even more

difficult because one of

the things is they have

a paradigm. Like we

question whether or not

God exists in our culture,

not us anymore, hopefully.

But, um, if you do,

that's okay. We could

talk, but yeah, we should

talk. But one interesting

point is that when we do

history, we're very

focused on accuracy. Like

tonight we would say, you

know, we would count every

person in the room and we

would make sure we got the

number correct. Right.

But they, in the ancient

world, um, they weren't

so much focused on what

actually happened in

history. They were

focused on the events,

but it was all about

what were the Gods or

what was God trying to

communicate through

history because they had a

paradigm in a worldview

that God was always

moving through history or

that the Gods, depending

on their religion at the

time and the different

culture, obviously the

Hebrews were, uh,

worshiping Yahweh most of

the time. So they had a

view that God exists and

he is making everything

happen. His sovereign

hand is in everything. So

they were operating from

quite a different historical

paradigm than we were,

which also lends itself

to, um, like sometimes you

can see the numbers don't

completely match up like

in certain senses,

censuses and that kind of

thing. But that's also

because they just weren't

as, um, focused on those

details. And, you know,

there are ways to

reconcile those as well,

but so cool. Well, why

don't we quick pray and

then we can have

discussion groups and I'll

let you guys just take

photo of these questions.

But Lord, we thank you

for this time. We thank

you just for your word.

And Lord, we thank you

that you would just help

us to grow in love for

you, grow in love for

each other. And Lord, we

pray that you would just

help us to understand

what it means to be fully

holy and devoted to you,

Lord, Jesus. Amen.

Thanks for joining us at

Lansdale Life Church as

we praise God and

discuss his word. Don't

forget to join us for

Worship Live Sunday

mornings at 10 a.m.

Eastern on YouTube. Be

blessed and have a great

day.