Judges Study - 2026-09-02

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.

We're going to be in Judges 4 tonight, continuing our study in Judges.

Oh, got a few more people on the way.

You guys can turn to Judges 4 while you're at it.

If you brought a Bible, if you're into showing off your spirituality,

you can turn to Judges 3 tonight.

All right, so last week we looked at Judges 3.

Man, you have the pleasure of having me two weeks in a row,

and you'll get Jamie at the end of the month.

He had to switch.

He had a big something this week that he, or last week, that he needed somebody to switch out for him.

So you got me this week, and we're going to be looking at Judges 4.

Last week, we looked at Judges 3.

And if you guys were here, or if you know Judges 3,

it's really centered around three of the judges of Israel,

Othniel, Ehud, and Shamgar.

And we talked a little bit about the sin cycle

and how Israel would just get in this perpetual cycle of

being in covenant relationship with the Lord.

And then they would draw away from the Lord.

They would begin to worship idols and mix with the people of the land.

And then they would become enslaved by the people of the land

and oppressed by the people of the land.

And many times, the text explicitly says that the Lord sold them into the hand of the local people,

the local kingdoms surrounding Israel.

And this was on purpose because the Lord is wanting to draw them back to his heart.

And then what we see is the people of Israel cry out to God

once the oppression becomes too strong.

And then the Lord raises up a deliverer or a judge,

or we could say a savior to come and save the people of Israel

and deliver them from their bondage and their oppression, their oppressor.

And then that restores the covenant equilibrium with the Lord and Israel

because Israel had made an agreement with the Lord to walk in his ways and to be faithful only to him.

And so what we see is the Lord is continually covenant, faithful covenant.

He is continually faithful to his covenant.

But what we see is the people of Israel are continually breaking that covenant.

And in the end, the Lord will send the ultimate savior, the ultimate judge,

the ultimate apostle, Redeemer, who is Jesus Christ, to ultimately save us

and bring us into eternal life and the new heavens and the new earth with the Lord.

And these stories point to that, as Luke 24 tells us, that all the prophets and the law point to Christ.

So here again, in chapter four, we find ourselves in a similar place,

in a similar setting as chapter three.

And we're going to dive in and I just want to pray quick and then we'll start reading.

So Lord, we thank you for this time.

Thank you for everybody who was able to make it.

And Lord, we pray that you would just teach us about your word, teach us about you,

teach us how to live in covenant relationship, in covenant faithfulness with you today, Lord.

And we thank you that you are always the one who reaches back to us, who prods us,

who pursues us and redeems us, Lord, when we stray and when we are

not completely faithful to the covenant.

So we thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.

So verse one, by the way, one note just on the sin cycles came up in the discussion

last week, afterwards.

But I'm calling it the sin cycle because that's what the cycle of judges is commonly known as.

You don't have to call it that and not my intention to emphasize the sin part of it,

but that's just what it's commonly known as.

So if you're like, why is he keep referring to it that way?

It's just sort of the name that's commonly known as.

So verse one, and the people of Israel, again, did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

And we see, if you look one verse up, Shamgar saved Israel.

So we have a period where they had a savior deliver.

And then now they're repeating it again.

That's why it's called a cycle.

And the people of Israel, again, did what was evil in the sight of the Lord

after Ehud died.

And the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin, king of Cana, who reigned in Hazor.

The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harishath, Hagoyim.

Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help, for he had 900 chariots of iron,

and he oppressed the people of Israel cruelly for 20 years.

Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, was judging Israel at that time.

She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Rama and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim.

And the people of Israel would come up to her for judgment.

So what we see here is in verse 3, the people of Israel are crying out to the Lord.

So that's the key part in this cycle of judges, where the Israelites are being sold into the hand

of an oppressor, a local oppressor, and they're being oppressed cruelly.

The Lord is actually sovereign in this whole process.

And he's waiting for the moment where they will realize that the Lord is the only one who can

get them out of this situation.

And I touched on this a little bit last week, but the idea that crying out to the Lord

and groaning to the Lord, so many times our first knee-jerk reaction isn't to go to the Lord.

And I think it doesn't exactly say when the Israelites decided to cry out to the Lord

within these 20 years, but you've got to think that if we look at Scripture,

a lot of times the people of Israel spend a long time being oppressed,

and then they cry out to the Lord, and then the Lord is fairly quick to answer them.

We see that in Exodus, where the people of Israel are oppressed, and I think it's Exodus,

the end of Exodus chapter 2, they cry out, they groan out to the Lord because they're slaves,

and then the Lord raises up Moses, a deliverer for them.

But what is, and this is one of our questions for discussion, but what is the role of prayer

in calling a nation or turning a nation back to the Lord?

And prayer is one of the most important things we can do in order to ask the Lord

if He would move in our midst and move amongst our family and move amongst our nation

and draw us back to the Lord. And we just see this, it just struck me again as I was studying

for tonight, that we see this again and again in Judges and throughout the whole Bible that

the Lord desires us to come to Him in prayer, and He desires us to come to Him and cry out to Him,

because prayer really is just such a peculiar device. It's a place where you don't do

anything yourself. You're quiet, you're still, maybe you're on your knees, you're alone,

maybe you're with a group of people, but you're just asking the Lord to do things.

And for whatever reason, I guess it's in the Lord's nature that this is the way that He

desires to commune with us, and also this is one way that He desires sovereignly to work

good on the earth. It's very weird. You can get into, you know, you can go down

that rabbit hole, and you can go down the whole predestination free will. You can get three or

four PhDs doing that in philosophy, discussing all of it. But what we see in Scripture is clear.

If we just take it from what we see, when people pray, when people devote themselves to the Lord,

the Lord answers, and He is kind and He is good to answer. There was a prayer movement. Have you

in Germany, and he was a wealthy man, came from a wealthy family, and

he had a series of encounters, and one of the encounters went something like,

he was speaking with a man, and the man asked him, what are you going to do for the Lord?

And this set him on a series of journeys, and it was a long, long life story. But what he

basically like a prayer center called Herrnhut in Germany, and you can still go there,

and it was a time where they basically had a hundred year prayer meeting day and night

for a hundred years. And out of this prayer movement, they began to pray for the world

to be reached for the gospel. And out of this prayer movement, they basically were able to almost,

I think, it wasn't exactly just the Moravians, but through the Moravians and through their

successors, they were basically able to send missionaries to every country on the earth.

This, the Moravian movement birthed sort of the student volunteer movement, and I think

they overlapped a little bit, but through that, they were able to send missionaries

to every country on earth. And it was quite amazing. And it was just one guy with a community

of people crying out to the Lord and asking the Lord to do things. And so many times

in scripture, and I think, yeah, it's just a good reminder for us of the importance of prayer,

putting prayer at the center of our lives personally, speaking to myself as well,

but also within community, it's so important to engender this. And it's not easy. Prayer is not

everybody's natural spiritual gift, right? Prayer can sometimes be boring and it can be dry,

but we see clearly in scripture that it is one of the ways, mysteriously, that the Lord uses

to rot his purposes on earth. So anyhow, we see that in verse 3, that again, they cry out,

they oppressed people of Israel, they were crying out to the Lord for help.

Moving on to verse 4, now Deborah, a prophetess of the wife of Lapid Doth,

was judging Israel at the time and she used to sit under the palm tree. And so at this time,

Israel had judges and they weren't just hearing cases and deciding on cases. It was a function

of government as well. And so Deborah was basically exercising governance over Israel

at this time and she used to sit up on a hill underneath a palm tree and the imagery here

in the ancient near east would have been that a palm tree is a symbol of strength and of

straightness and therefore righteousness, that she is sitting underneath this kind of cathedral

of righteousness. And so she is there exercising her authority. Verse 6,

she sent and summoned Barak, the son of Abinoam from Kadesh Naftali, and said to him,

has not the Lord of the God of Israel commanded you? Go gather your men at Mount Tabor,

taking ten thousand from the people of Naftali and the people of Zebulun. And I will draw out

Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops

and I will give him into your hand. Now from here, I'm just going to read through the rest

and then kind of jump back. But I think it's important just to get the whole story

in one shot. So buckle up for a few minutes here. So Deborah says to Barak, go gather your men

and then the Lord God is saying, go gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking ten thousand from the

people of Naftali and the people of Zebulun. And I will draw out Sisera, the general of

Jabin's army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops and I will

give him into your hand. Barak said to her, if you will go with me, I will go. But if you will

not go with me, I will not go. And she said, I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road

on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a

woman. Then Deborah rose and went with Barak to Kadesh. And Barak called out to Zebulun and

Naftali to Kadesh. And ten thousand men went up at his heels and Deborah went up with him.

Now Hebrew, the Kenite, had separated from the Kenites the descendants of Hobab, the father-in-law

of Moses, and had pitched his tent as far away as the oak in Zenninim, which is near Kadesh.

When Sisera was told that Barak, the son of Abinoam, had gone up to Mount Tabor,

Sisera called out all his chariots, nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the men who were with

him, from Harishath, Hagayim, to the river Kishon. And Deborah said to Barak,

Up, for this is the day in which the Lord has given Sisera into your hand. Does not the

Lord go out before you? So Barak went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men following him.

And the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army before Barak by the edge of the

sword. And Sisera got down from his chariot and fled away on foot. And Barak pursued the chariots

and the army to Harishath, Hagayim, and all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword.

Not a man was left. But Sisera fled away on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of

Heber the Kenite. For there was peace between Jabin, the king of Hazor, and the house of Heber

the Kenite. And Jael came out from the tent to meet Sisera and said to him, Turn aside, my Lord.

Turn aside to me. Do not be afraid. So he turned aside to her into the tent and she covered him

with a rug. And he said to her, Please, give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.

So she opened the skin of milk and gave him a drink and covered him. And he said to her,

Stand at the opening of the tent. And if any man comes and asks you, is anyone here, say no.

But Jael, the wife of Heber, took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand and she went softly to

him and drove the peg into his temple until it went into the ground while he was lying

fast asleep from weariness. So he died. And behold, as Barak was pursuing Sisera,

Jael went out to meet him and said to him, Come, and I will show you the man whom

you are seeking. So he went into her tent and there lay Sisera dead with the tent

peg in his temple. So on that day, God subdued Jabin, the king of Canaan,

before the people of Israel. And the hand of the people of Israel pressed harder and harder

against Jabin, the king of Canaan, until they destroyed Jabin, king of Canaan.

And then just real quick, we're basically done with the chapter, but there's a

song that they sing in chapter five. And then at the end of the song, in verse 31,

it says, So may all your enemies perish, O Lord, but your friends be like the sun

as he rises in his might. And then the last piece here, which is, I think, good for our benefit

that we just tacked this on. And the land had rest for 40 years. So after this battle,

the land had rest for 40 years. And then sort of the next chapter of the story of Judges

continues in chapter six. But we're not going to go through chapter five in detail tonight. So

we have this interaction with Barak and Deborah. And this interaction is very interesting. And

you could read this a couple of different ways. And I'm going to give you guys two scenarios.

And maybe you will think both of them are right, or one of them's right, one of them's wrong.

But the interaction between Barak and Deborah, Barak, it seems that he is a little bit timid and

shy, right? And this is kind of the first reading of this and kind of the knee jerk reaction of

when you read this text is that he loses his reward because he is timid and shy,

and he doesn't go up to the battle and he has to get called out. Basically, like a mom calling a

young man out of bed like, hey, get up, go to school, do your job, right? So this is

a pretty straightforward reading of the text, which could be 100% true. But what I like to do

sometimes is dig around and see if there are any other ideas or any other thoughts in the text

that might kind of shed some light, or maybe the contrast of it could peak wonder or maybe

some tension in us as we're studying it. And this interaction with Barak and Deborah,

many of the rabbis take a little bit of a more, should we say, nuanced approach to this. Now,

the thing about the ancient Jewish people and the way that they think

is that we as Westerners think mainly in a straight line. We have Proposition A, Proposition

B, Proposition C, and we move in a straight line. The rabbis kind of move in a circle.

And there's the old joke that wherever you have two rabbis, you always have three opinions.

And it could also be maybe true of Jewish people as well that generally love to argue

and love to hash things out. But I just want to submit this to you because it was something that

I came across that I found was interesting. Some of the rabbis say that Deborah is presumptive or

actually arrogant in ordering Barak around. And that Barak wants Deborah to actually come because

she symbolizes the power and the presence of God. Now, this interaction is interesting because

it makes it read a little bit differently than what you would see originally. Because

maybe both could also be true. Maybe Barak is a little bit afraid. Maybe he

is not completely confident. But look at how when he goes to Zebulon and Naftali, how quickly he

can raise an army of 10,000 men. So he must have some clout militarily. And it might not make sense

that he's just afraid. How could he be in a position to rally and galvanize that many people

together if he was really afraid? Maybe he was in piety just saying, hey, I want the Lord

to be with me. Or I want the prophet to be with me. Now, the prophet is Deborah being a woman

maybe makes this a little bit interesting because he's wanting to bring a woman along with him.

But yeah, this is an interesting contrast there. The first reading definitely could be true of,

hey, Barak just loses his reward of glory. But the second one might also be, if you look at

Hebrews 1132, I believe it is, it says that Barak is listed among the great heroes and men of faith.

And that he was counted amongst one of them. And so it's very interesting that

perhaps maybe a secondary reading or maybe they support each other together. And this is something

where I'm not going to come out and say, yes, this is the only way to interpret it. But maybe

there's some nuance here and it'll be good for us to discuss that in our groups together. And

maybe you'll disagree and that's totally fine. But yeah, Barak is listed among the great men

of faith. And so we see here also that, what is it, in verse

nine, when Barak asked Deborah to go with her, Deborah says, I will surely go with you.

Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory,

for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. And then Deborah arose

and went with Barak to Kadesh. And so then you see that Barak calls out Zebulon Nefthali,

and he's got 10,000 men behind him. And so that's a pretty serious army. Now, Sisera also has a

serious army of 900 chariots of iron. And you could probably think of those as like tanks.

So maybe 10,000 men versus like 900 tanks, maybe that's not really the best

matchup. So maybe Barak was scared. Maybe he was like, this guy has a good army.

I'm going to need the Lord. But notice, if he was just afraid, then

making sure that the Lord's prophet of the day with him is a pretty good move, wouldn't you say?

So like, maybe he is just actually afraid. And he's like, hey, I can't do this in my own

strength. I need the Lord to come with me. And the Lord was speaking powerfully through

Deborah at that time. And so maybe the Lord would give him some revelation during the battle.

And so we have this interesting phrase here where Deborah says,

Barak, this is not going to lead to your glory. For the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand

of a woman. And here's, here's an interesting fork in the road. So this lady, JL, or jail,

JL, I don't know actually how to say her name. But she's the one who drives the steak

through the head of Sisera. And it's interesting. Do you guys think that Deborah,

I mean, just you could raise your hand if you agree, who thinks that

when Deborah says the glory is not going to be for Barak, the military commander,

which it normally would be, but it'll be for somebody else. Do you think Deborah was

talking about the glory is going to be for Deborah or the glory is going to be for JL?

Let me see where I'm going with that. Mostly Deborah. Yeah. At first reading, my knee jerk was

that JL would be the one that gets the glory. Now, actually, I'll be completely honest. And I

think probably a lot of people, I won't put this on other people. But as I looked at this story,

I know this story vaguely from Sunday school and from reading the Bible,

through a couple of times. But in my mind, it wasn't clear that Deborah wasn't the one that put

the steak through the head. Does it make sense? I was thinking Deborah is the one that kills

the king of Sisera. And then as I've read it through again, I was like, okay, right.

That's not right. It was another lady. But if you asked people who are in church who read their

Bible, who do you think would be able to come up with this name, JL, that she was the one in

the story of Deborah and Brock that drove the spike through the opposing enemy's head.

Probably not that many people would be able to say that, oh, yeah, it was JL wasn't Deborah.

But that's just an interesting, interesting point. Now, she is JL is mentioned in chapter

five, verse 24, as most blessed amongst women, which is a very high commendation. You can see that

in verse 24, most blessed of women be JL, the wife of Hebrew, the Kenite,

the 10 dwelling women of 10 dwelling women most blessed. But Deborah is the one who's really

center stage here. And even throughout all of Judaism, there are only seven

prophetesses in Judaism, major prophetesses. Now, I want to see if collectively you guys can

name them all. And I just you can just start shouting them out. But who do you think are the

other six? Yeah, Deborah, who do you so there's seven, who do you think are the other six major

prophetesses within Israel? And I will be, I'll be very impressed if we get them all.

Holda, Miriam, Anna. Well, okay, so it's got to be Old Testament Abigail.

Okay, so we have we have holda, Miriam, Abigail, Deborah, and then

Esther. Not Ruth. So Debbie kind of said one. And I said yes, because

Anna is the Old Testament or Anna is the Greek name for Hannah, actually. So but Hannah was one,

the mother of Samuel. And there's one more. I can't believe that you got hold up because that

was the one I had never seen before. So that great job Bible trivia. Anyone think of the other one?

Any last guesses? Yeah, Sarah. So the seven prophetesses within Judaism are Sarah, Miriam,

Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, holda, and Esther. And holda is the one I didn't know,

but she was a prophetess during the reign of, do you know, which prophet, which king she was

a prophetess under? I'm asking Dina because she's the one you're guessing.

No, it's Josiah. Yeah, so anyway, but yeah, so Deborah has a, Deborah has a center stage place

within Judaism and within Christianity. Whenever you think of a woman leader in the Bible,

the first name that comes to mind is Deborah, right? She was probably the most explicitly powerful

woman within the whole Bible. And women have held different positions of power and offices

in the Bible and even in the New Testament in a lesser degree, but Deborah is the one who's

really front end center. So, I mean, I would think that the glory would, that Deborah's talking about

is actually, she's talking about her own glory because she's the one that actually has even more

glory than Barak, who Barak is even named in like the Hall of Fame of Faith in Hebrews chapter 11.

So that's just an interesting, interesting thing because I think at first reading,

I think, oh, the glory is for the one who killed Sisera, which her name was JL, but I actually

think that that Barak, for whatever reason, he was timid or it was just the Lord's sovereign

plan that he wouldn't get the glory, that Deborah would get the glory. And so, so yeah,

one other, one other point here on JL, we will talk about her.

Let's see, what is that? Okay, verse 11. Now, Hebrew, the Kenite, had separated from

the Kenites the descendants of Hobab, the father-in-law of Moses, and had pitched his tent as far away

as the oak in Zananim, which is near Kadesh. So, JL was a Kenite. So, who were the Kenites?

The Kenites were descendants of Hobab, the father-in-law of Moses. So, this tribe,

the Kenite tribe, was connected with Moses's family, was connected with, uh, Jethro is the

kind of the name I think most people know of as Moses's father-in-law, but another name

that he goes by is Hobab, and Hobab means beloved or cherished. So, not sure how he got this name,

maybe it was like a, it was a nickname or a name that he got in honor of his position later on,

but it speaks to the fact that he was loved and beloved of the Lord. And so,

when Moses fled to Egypt, he settled in Midian, and he married Zipporah, the daughter of the

Midianite priest, Jethro, or Hobab. And then Jethro himself, in Exodus 18, he blesses the Lord,

and he said, blessed be the Lord who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians.

And then even in 1 Samuel 15, Saul is about to attack the Amalekites, but he warns the Kenites,

and he tells the Kenites to depart from the Amalekites before he, they go and attack the

Amalekites, because it says, you showed kindness to all the people of Israel when they came out of

Acts 15. And then Judges 1 verse 16 says that some of the descendants of the Kenites actually

went up with the people of Judah. And so, some of the Kenites are actually attaching themselves

to the people of Israel. And then probably JL's relationship is somehow connected,

and her executing the king of the king, or king Sisera, is somehow connected to this relationship

between the Kenites and the Israelites. Now, what's the point? This is a personal

thing, so I'm dragging you along on my personal journey here a little bit. But I have been

focused and pondering a lot the relationship of Old Testament

peoples into how they participate in the story of God in terms of salvation. And I've had this

conversation with several of you, and Pastor Chris gave me a book on it last week, actually.

But what was the mission of Israel in regards to, let's say, we use a New Testament term, evangelism,

or outreach within the Old Testament? And when you begin to ask this question, you begin to see

little crumbs that you may not have seen before. Like we talked a couple months ago about

Caleb, who was a Kenizzite, who the Kenizzites were actually a tribe within Canaan, and the

Kenizzites, in order to be a Kenizzite and also be an Israelite, you would have had to

join yourself to the Israelites who were the covenant people of God. So you have a tribe,

the Kenizzites, who were not believing in Yahweh, and now you have Caleb, who either he joined it

himself or his whole family joined Israel, and now they're beginning to worship the one true God.

And so as I'm reading this about the Kenizzites and about Jethro and about Jael and about her

service to the God of Israel by serving the Lord's military commander, it just got me thinking

about how perhaps these Old Testament people were also believers and followers of Yahweh,

and how we may meet them in the age to come, or when, you know, in eternity.

And there's not really like a huge take-home from that. It's more of just,

I'm kind of letting you guys into my thought process and framework about what was God doing

with drawing people to himself even in the Old Testament. And that wasn't, it's not front and

center staged like it is in the New Testament where we see Jesus' command literally to go

and to preach the gospel to all nations and to make disciples and baptize them.

But what we see is that in the Old Testament people are joining themselves to Israel,

and Israel is called the light of the nations in the Psalms and in the Old Testament.

And yeah, so there are like three main views that evangelicals have about what happened

to people who weren't Israelites back in the day. Like let's say if you were not a convert to the

community of Israel and the covenant of Israel and therefore you were participating

in covenant relationship with God, what happened to people who weren't Israelites?

And so there's just a couple major views, and I'll just lay them out, but I just find this

interesting. But there's the exclusivist view. Salvation ultimately requires explicit faith in

God's revealed promises of redemption, although the amount of revelation required varies according to

the era. So like, you know, Paul talks about Abraham, how he was justified through his belief

and through his trust in God. And then as there was more prophetic revelation about the Messiah

and about the age to come, then continued belief in accepting those ideas would have been

added to the requirement to believe in those promises. So that's what it means. The amount

of revelation required varies according to the era. So that's the exclusivist view that you

have to explicitly believe in the revealed promise of the redemption. And then the

inclusivist view is someone who genuinely responds to the revelation of God available to them

may be saved through Christ even without knowing his name. So the exclusivist would say like,

somebody like JL would actually have to probably go and join themselves to the promise of Israel

and to the covenant of Israel. The inclusivist view would say that if they have heard sort of

gospel from the Israelites, that they could actually still participate in salvation and

have an inheritance in the age to come or basically be saved if we use New Testament language

in the sense of that our soul and body will be saved and regenerated.

So it was like kind of like exclusivist is like the highest level and then inclusivist. And then

some people say, which, you know, I would probably say this was one that should be treated with

maybe a little more caution, but passages, some people believe that passages like Romans 1 that

speak about knowing God through creation and knowing him through general revelation would be

enough to save some Gentiles who would respond appropriately to revelation available through

creation and conscience. I think, yeah, it's just interesting to think about. And it's something

I think that people often question like, oh, what about, you know, God just elected this little

tribe and they're kind of wandering around and doing their thing in the desert. But what we

actually see is that the Lord is drawing people to himself and the Lord, they're constantly

people being added to the covenant of the Lord. They're being either they're like,

they're like JL where they're kind of loosely connected through the tribe of Midian, but

they're not actually Israelites, but Israel seems to have this kind of familial relationship

with them. And so maybe she has enough faith or she's responding in obedience to the Lord in

order to be saved. But I think it's, yeah, and I just share this because one, I think

that it's interesting. I don't have like a clear conclusion or nice like neat tied up doctrine

to present to you guys, but it kind of opens up this window of like, of wonder and of mystery

into the story of God. And I think that for me, I find that fascinating and exciting as like what,

what was the Lord doing in throughout history? And it motivates me to go to the scripture and

to look in there and to search, search out more clues about, Hey, who else is being joined to

the Lord? What are these people doing? How are these people involved? Like, I, you know, you

can read the Bible and just blow past like, you know, stuff like JL was a Kenite, right?

And you don't even know who that is. But if you go in and you look, you can see

the threads actually lead somewhere. So anyhow,

one last thing to wrap this up. And then we have some questions.

The land had rest, chapter five, verse 31.

I think this is just such a, such an amazing way to tie up this, this section, because at the end,

at the end of the battle, at the end of the struggle, at the end of our lives,

at the end of the world, the world is going to have rest. We're going to have rest.

We are going to enter into the rest of God. Hebrews four talks about entering into his rest

and entering into the promised land. And I, I think this is, this is so amazing

because it really just wraps up the whole story really well. And

it's saying that, yeah, there is struggle in life. We have to battle sometimes with our faith. We

have to battle physically sometimes. There's war. Thank God we haven't had a serious

all out conflict in a long time. But it wasn't that long ago that we, we did have a serious conflict.

And this is just a reminder. And this speaks of eternity, that the land will have rest and our

souls will have rest and we will spend eternity with the Lord if we are in Christ and if we,

if we are in covenant with him. And I think this is, this is just an amazing,

yeah, this is just an amazing truth to take home. And, and yeah, I was, I was struck by that

as I was reading it. So anyhow, I hope, I hope that tonight you leave with more questions than answers.

And I think that the questions, questions are good. Questions produce, if you respond

rightly, they produce a desire to want to answer them and to want to discriminate amongst ideas

in the scripture to a greater degree. And anytime you are moving towards the Lord with

the scripture and studying it and able to, you know, even if it doesn't really make sense as to,

well, I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to use this. The Lord is working and the seeds of the

word are going in. So, so yeah, let's pray. And then we will do some questions. So Lord,

we thank you for this time. And Lord, we ask that you would continue to give us greater revelation

and just move, move in our hearts. And Lord, we say that we love you. Lord, we want to,

we want to just, yeah, live our lives that might reflect your glory. Just help us to be strong

and courageous Lord and to fulfill what you're calling us to do. Jesus' name. 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!