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.
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.