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Is God Anti-Strength? Gideon’s 300 and the Problem of a Broken World · Relish: a Christian podcast

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  Can we give praise to the Lord in every situation, even if he cuts our army down to 300?
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  What did we do to deserve wasps? Why do we have dangerous animals and creatures and things like that?
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  The things we do for our kids, you know, to make sure our kids don't turn out
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  like we do. Yeah. It's an investment.
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  Relish. Pleasing or zestful flavor? A quantity just sufficient to flavor,
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  to be pleased or gratified by, enjoy.
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  We are hoping that what we bring to your table today might add some spice to your life.
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  Welcome back to another episode of Relish. I am your host, Jerome Miller.
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  This is Pastor Don Patterson. Don, how are you doing today? I'm doing well.
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  Doing well. Warm. Yep, staying warm.
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  It's hard in these irely winters. It is. Yeah.
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  We've had a respite, but now that's over. Yeah. Yeah. So we start with your
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  question? Might as well.
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  How did your upbringing impact your faith?
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  I think it made it fairly easy for me.
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  I haven't had a ton of challenges or hard times with faith or other things in
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  my life that would necessarily turn me away from God.
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  So, just being rooted in faith from the start and having people in my life that
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  are very firm believers and living it day to day in their life has helped me a lot. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.
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  It does. It does help. It brings you out of it. Yeah.
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  Generations of good, solid believers in your family. Yeah. I can attest to that.
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  I get role models in my family and life, so.
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  Yeah. Cool. So now the difficult part. Yeah.
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  You know, see, we need to restate the premise here is the fact that Rowan comes
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  with questions that I have no idea what's coming.
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  And I try to answer in as well as I can without having studied the question for a week ahead of time.
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  That's the comic relief. He gets a good couple seconds to think about it, actually. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Okay. So, I think we're ready. I think we're braced. All right.
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  First attempt to fool Don here. Yeah, there you go. Why did God want Gideon's
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  army to be 300 instead of 32,000?
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  Well, I think the biggest thing is he wanted to make sure, God wanted to make
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  sure that instead of Gideon taking credit, God would be given credit for the victory.
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  Okay. And I think we see that theme lived out in the Old Testament a lot more
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  often than maybe we make note of it. Yeah.
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  So all of our life, all of our victories, as well as, you know,
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  one thing would be say, okay, God orchestrated my defeat.
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  But in reality, we learn more from sometimes our defeat than we do from our victories.
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  Can we give that to God as well as the victories and say, yes,
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  the Lord got me through, you know, positive or negative.
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  In Gideon's case with the judges and everybody was doing what was right in their
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  own eyes in Gideon's time.
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  And Gideon was sort of one of those guys that, well, you got to prove,
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  Lord, that you are who you are.
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  And so when you take that story from the beginning and he says,
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  well, you know, prove it by making the fleece wet and then prove it by making
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  the fleece dry and the ground wet.
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  God had to sort of prove himself to Gideon. So then after Gideon gets this whole
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  army together and God says, nah, nah, cut it back.
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  And nah, nah, cut it back some more. Nah, nah, cut it back some more.
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  And Gideon has the faith to say, okay, yeah, I believe enough in God that I'll do that.
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  Right. And then go with these 300 guys and their pots and their torches and away they go.
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  So I think the essence of that story, the essence of that account is to.
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  Remind God's people, it's not about us.
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  We're about God's business, and we leave the victory to Him.
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  And give Him all the honor and glory and praise. It's not about us.
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  And boy, what would happen to us as Christians if we lived with that kind of
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  faith in our day-to-day lives?
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  That, okay, yeah, I've got this big exam, you know, and I'll give you all the...
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  Honor and glory, if you help me through it and I get an A, I mean,
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  we could take that attitude.
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  What if we, we've all probably done that a couple of times. I remember high
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  school. I remember college. Right.
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  And some times in seminary.
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  Help me through this paper.
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  And some of those exams were in person in front of the professors where you
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  did not write your answer.
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  You had to give a verbal answer to why you wrote what you wrote in your paper,
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  like a defending your dissertation kind of thing. Right.
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  And that's not something, you know, really easy to do. Right. Right.
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  Can we then live into every moment that we give it to God and the outcome is
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  also the Lord's and we acknowledge that there might be a reason for the outcome
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  as it, you know, if it doesn't turn out so great,
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  maybe the Lord had a plan in that,
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  that it wasn't supposed to turn out great because we learn more from that.
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  But can we give praise to the Lord in every situation, even if he cuts our army
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  down to 300, and he still gives us victory?
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  Well, this is cool, Lord. Yeah.
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  Remember in Matthew 6, it says, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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  That's what we want. That's what we're rooting for. And I think that's what
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  Gideon was rooting for. Finally, at the end, you know, after God got him convinced
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  that he really was guiding the battle and the outcome. Yeah.
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  So, can we give the Lord praise?
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  In every situation. Work on it, yeah. Was there something, if I remember right,
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  there was one of the times when the Lord decreased his army,
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  they were drinking from a lake or water or something.
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  And it was there, like drinking with hands or whether they went all the way
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  down. Was there something? Yes, exactly. Exactly.
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  So, well, symbolic in that is the fact that, I mean, when I look at it and I
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  see it, I think that it's, how would you say?
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  I thought it was sort of unsanitary, the one bunch did.
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  This is in Josh. Yeah, Judges 7. So Gideon took the men down to the water.
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  There the Lord told him, separate those who lap the water with their tongues
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  like a dog and those who kneel down to drink.
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  Lap the water with their tongues like a dog from those who kneel down to drink.
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  And so it's not capping it in your hand.
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  This is actually sticking your tongue in the water or getting your lips down
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  close enough to the water that you're sucking it in.
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  Okay.
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  Have you ever seen a leech? When I see this passage,
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  I sort of think, oh man stick their tongue down in there and some get your lips
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  down on the water suck it up you know what all could be in that water yeah yeah
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  you know we don't do that nowadays yeah no no no,
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  and so uh that that's how he separated them yeah
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  i i you know i read it right now
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  and i thought they were cupping it and putting it to their lips and
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  that's not the case they were actually getting
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  right down and dirty with it yeah yeah
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  that's still too many and you know and it gets down to that and all the rest
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  got down on their knees to drink yeah and so the brave ones the brave ones were
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  the ones that got all the way down on their knees got their heads in the water and drank,
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  what i don't know i could get my lips on the water without getting my head in
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  the water yeah it's That'd be tough. Yeah.
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  There's no straw there. No. No straw here. No straw. No coulee cup.
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  No ice in the cup or anything.
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  And 300 men lapped it up. Yeah.
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  How many did those 300 men take down then? The whole army.
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  Sword. Yeah, boy. Yeah.
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  The camp. 300 trumpets. And they put the whole army to...
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  It usually says right there in the beginning or end of the passage.
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  I don't see it. Yeah. Against the camera. They can do their research at home,
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  I guess. Yes. Judges chapter 6 and 7.
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  7 is the battle. And I don't see the numbers.
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  Just see that of the Israelites. Yeah. Oh, well. Yeah.
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  Three companies, 300, yeah. They put the 300 men into three companies, a hundred.
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  I don't see it. I'm sorry. That's all right.
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  They can figure it out. But being... A lot.
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  Yeah. A lot more than 300. Being one of those soldiers and you look around and
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  you can see exactly 300 and then look across to the other, to the Midian ice, was it?
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  Yeah. Right. And they can't even number them, but... Yeah.
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  Yeah. Yeah. The next one we'll move into here is what, what did we do to deserve wasps?
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  And like, why do we have dangerous, dangerous animals and creatures and things like that on the earth?
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  Yeah. What did we deserve the wasp and the tick and the, uh,
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  uh, chigger leeches and leechers and chiggers?
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  What did we do to deserve that?
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  Well, what I see between Genesis chapter 2 and Genesis chapter 3 is everything
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  in Genesis chapter 2 seemed to have a balance and an origin and work together.
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  And then when we get to chapter 3, the sin missing the mark.
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  And when we talk about missing the mark, it's missing exactly why God said what
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  he said and being obedient. and,
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  Okay, so they had it laid out before them that they could eat of anything except
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  the one tree. I mean, really.
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  You talk about 99% of everything there they could, you know, and then one tree.
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  Yeah. I mean, really. It's like go to Iowa. Percentages. You can eat at any
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  restaurant, but not McDonald's or something like that. Okay, yeah.
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  And they'd still have plenty of places to eat, right? Right. Yeah.
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  But in the same thing here, it was a whole beautiful garden.
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  It was planted by God. It was formed for Adam and Eve. It was created for man.
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  It was as if God was living into this brand new creation and bringing it the best that he could.
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  And all man had to do was be there
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  and chill and do what work needed to be done and to keep it balanced.
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  And then...
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  He listened to the snake or the serpent, whatever you want to say.
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  And you can blame Eve if you want.
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  I mean, it's still human. Even if you blame Eve, it's still the humans.
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  And this human temptation that all of us have to do that, you know,
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  well, God said this, but, you know, what's he really mean?
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  And we all tend to do that. Did God really mean? And all Satan had to do was bring that up.
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  We always think there's got to be an exception or something. Yeah. Yeah.
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  And then you have all these things that come out of that. And so the woman has
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  her thing. The snake has his thing.
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  Cursed are you above all livestock and all animals. And then to Adam,
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  cursed is the ground because of you. and you'll have thorns and thistles and
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  the sweat of your brow and return to the ground when you die.
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  And see, Eve is in there somewhere. Oh, yes.
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  And your desire will be for your husband, childbirth. Okay.
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  At some point or another, it seems like that, which like thorns and thistles,
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  you don't see that in creation otherwise in the, in the first part of creation.
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  But we see it in the curse.
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  And can I think wasps and chiggers.
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  Leeches. Like that, yeah. are part of the curse i mean it's just the downside
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  of humanity or creation because of our decision,
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  and you know we can limit the number of wasps that are around us right we do
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  have control over that yeah and and we can uh take care of the environment around
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  us so that there aren't leeches,
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  on our feet all the time uh there are things that we can do and that's sort of what,
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  Adam gets to do for the rest of his life is through painful toil,
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  you'll eat all the days of your life.
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  It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat of the plants of the field.
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  And so there's always going to be the downside of our upside.
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  And if you're a farmer and you know these things, you're going to plant a really
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  pure crop. You're going to get your seed all pure.
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  You're going to put it in the ground and you'll still get weeds, right?
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  That's just the way it is to it. And that's part of farming.
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  That's part of our creation that we're living in right now. So, yeah.
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  And what's interesting is then when you go to chapter six and you've got the
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  second purge, if you will, the flood,
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  somehow wasps must have been on the ark.
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  It's true they can't just be flying over the water you know to think that maybe the,
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  the wood ant wood eating ant and the termite you know yeah termite on the ark
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  you know it was two by two and didn't take long to be four and,
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  and so but it's it's God's creation he still saved his creation right on the
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  ark yeah and uh we we are every everything that lives now is a product of that somehow,
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  god still understands that we need the downside to understand the upside and
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  so if we had nothing no downside, no wasps, no leeches,
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  no hornets, no termites, would we understand the upside,
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  and that we live into the upside, we take care of things, we cultivate crops,
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  and we make sure that we take care of as many weeds as we can because we can't
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  have a crop with too many weeds.
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  We labor into the present.
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  And even wasps have a spot. Yeah.
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  So are these dangerous animals, creatures, were they created in the first six days?
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  Or were they things that they were?
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  So then they were just living in harmony in the garden at first?
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  In fact, there's a little place in here in chapter 9 where you realize that...
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  Okay, let's just read it. Chapter 9, verses 1. Then God blessed Noah and his
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  sons, saying, Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.
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  The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air.
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  Upon every creature that moves along the ground and upon the fish in the sea,
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  they're given into your hands.
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  Everything that lives and moves will be food for you.
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  Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
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  It's as if there's a shift here, as if before chapter 9, before the flood, they didn't eat meat.
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  And then all of a sudden, now they eat meat. But you must not eat meat that has the lifeblood in it.
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  And for your lifeblood, I will surely demand an accounting.
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  I will demand an accounting from every animal. And for each man,
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  too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.
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  Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood shall be shed.
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  For in the image of God has God made man. And as for you, before it will increase.
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  So it almost seems like in chapter nine, there's a shift from men and women being vegetarian.
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  Praise the Lord.
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  I'm sorry. I'm with you on that one. Some of our audience understand my avoidance of the greens.
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  And so praise the Lord. In chapter nine of Genesis, we've been given privilege to eat meat.
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  I'm sorry. We just had to go there. And yeah.
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  Isn't that interesting? And now I establish my covenant with you. This is verse nine.
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  And with your descendants after you and every living creature that is with you,
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  the birds, livestock, and the all wild animals and all those who came out of
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  the ark with you, every living creature on earth, I establish my covenant with you.
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  Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood.
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  Never again will the flood destroy the earth.
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  Yeah, that's in that neat. And the sign is, is that, uh, is the rainbow.
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  I don't know what's more interesting, that or trying to picture you eat only vegetables.
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  Well, yeah, there'd be a challenge there for sure.
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  My mom had the challenge for a long time and she tried her very best to get
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  me to eat vegetables. And I remember vegetables in many various forms.
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  Yes. Now, I will say that because of my children, I would eat broccoli.
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  And so when Charlene made broccoli for our family, I would eat broccoli so that
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  they knew that, yeah, they could eat vegetables and it was all right.
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  Now, all my children eat vegetables. It's just me that's a weirdo. That's good.
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  I think my mom has the same story with her dad.
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  He's not a vegetable guy, but he didn't win the kids who were around growing up.
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  The things we do for our kids, you know, to make sure our kids don't turn out
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  like we do. It's an investment, but it's well worth it.
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  And grandkids, you know, now my grandkids eat too. And I have one that is only
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  French fries. Really? Yeah.
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  That one kid just likes French fries terribly. Over anything else,
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  he will eat French fries. Yeah. Oh, well.
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  He'll figure it out. Over time. Yeah. Yeah.
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  I think that about wraps it up. Maybe it should wrap it up. Yeah.
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  I'm getting a little hungry now. Yeah.
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  Thank you guys for joining us. Hope you enjoyed it and send in any more questions that you have.
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  And that'd be great. Yeah. If we didn't cover a topic thoroughly enough for
• 21:32
  you, then let us know. We'll come back to it.
• 21:35
  Yes. Sounds good. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Lord willing.
• 21:40
  Thank you for joining us for this podcast. Feel free to become part of this
• 21:44
  ministry by sharing it with others.
• 21:46
  Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
• 21:49
  and his calling to us in our daily lives.
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  Thank you again for joining us, and may God bless your day.