Latest / Collierville Radio Network / Admonition Podcast - Worship (Lesson 5) - Aaron Cozort - August 26, 2026

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Admonition Podcast - Worship (Lesson 5) - Aaron Cozort - August 26, 2026 · Collierville Radio Network

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Take your Bibles, if you will,
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and open them to the book of Genesis.
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We have been continuing our study concerning worship,
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and we're going to be continuing that this evening.
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We're gonna jump back into the Old Testament.
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We spent a little bit of time,
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a couple of weeks in the New Testament.
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We're gonna spend a little bit more time in the Old Testament looking
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at some matters related to worship.
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And ~ then we'll deal with a few things.
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But as we get into that, we're actually going to begin with some time
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~ spent looking at some of the altars that
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are in Genesis.
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And then also ~ looking at some things related to God's sovereignty.
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But let's begin with a word of prayer and then we'll get into our study.
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Our gracious Father in Heaven,
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we come before you grateful for the day you've blessed us with,
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mindful of those who are ill,
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those who are struggling with physical maladies,
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~ those who are
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facing upcoming procedures and those who are trying to recover from
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~ diseases and and difficulties.
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Lord, we pray that your healing hand be upon them and that their health
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and that their abilities be retained back to their desired state.
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Lord, we pray that you be with those who are from this congregation that deal with
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chronic disease and and hardship.
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And Lord, we pray that you
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Help them as well. Lord, we pray that you be with this nation and this state.
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We pray that you be with this region,
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this city that we belong to. May we have open doors of opportunity.
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May the gospel have an influence throughout this area and throughout this country
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and throughout the world. May we always stand boldly for the truth.
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And Lord, may we be firm in standing.
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To say that we ought to worship you and you alone.
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Lord, we pray that you will forgive us when we sin and fall short of your glory.
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We pray that you will bless the work of our hands and the labor
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of this congregation and the opportunities that it has.
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And all of this we pray and ask in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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As you get into the book of Genesis,
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you find in the beginning of chapter four,
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we've noticed this briefly, the events of Cain and Abel and the worship that
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is offered there. Cain will offer of the what?
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Fruit of the ground. Abel will offer what?
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All right, the firstborn of the flock.
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~ now, one point to make, we're not gonna spend a lot of time dwelling
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on that since we've already looked at it,
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but one point to be made ~ is you find in verse three
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of Genesis four, and in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought
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an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord.
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The one of the contrasts that we see in the text between
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What is stated about Abel's sacrifice and what is stated about Cain's
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is actually found in verse 4. So generically being stated,
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Cain offered of the fruit of the ground.
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But when you notice verse 4, Abel also brought of the firstborn
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of the flock and of their fat,
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and the Lord respected Abel and his offering.
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If you were to just examine the text.
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You would say, okay, well, we could look at the comparison or
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the contrast of offerings. Cain offered of the fruit of the ground.
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Abel offered of the f ~ of the flock.
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Cain, it doesn't state whether his was the first fruit of
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the ground or not. Abel, it specifically states that it
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was the firstborn of the flock.
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Track forward to the days of the Mosaic Law,
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and what does God require of the people?
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The first of everything. All right,
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turn to Exodus chapter twelve.
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Exodus chapter 12, as the Israelites
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are beginning to proceed or about to proceed out of the land of Egypt,
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there is the tenth and final plague,
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which happens in chapter 11, and it is the death of what?
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The firstborn. In chapter 12,
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you open up the text, and the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
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saying,
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This month shall be your beginning of months,
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and it shall be the first month of the year to you.
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Speak to all the children of Israel,
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saying, On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb,
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according to the house of his father,
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a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for the lamb,
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let him and his neighbor take to his house,
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let's sorry, next to his house,
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take it according to the number of the persons.
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According to each man's need you shall make your count for the lamb.
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Your lamb shall be without blemish,
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a male of the first year, you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.
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Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month,
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then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight,
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and they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts,
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and on the lintels of the house where they eat it.
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And they shall eat the flesh on that night,
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roasted in fire, and unleavened bread,
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and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.
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Do not eat it raw nor boiled with all at all with water,
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but roasted in fire, its head with its legs and its entrails.
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You shall let none of it remain until morning,
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and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire,
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and thus you shall eat it with your belt on your waist,
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your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand,
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so you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover.
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For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night,
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and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt,
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both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment.
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I am the Lord. Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where
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you are, and when I see the blood I will pass over you,
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and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
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So this day shall be to you a memorial.
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And you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout all your generations.
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You shall keep it as a feast by everlasting ordinance.
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Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.
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On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses.
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For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day,
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that person shall be cut off from Israel.
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On the first day there shall be a holy convocation.
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On the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you.
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No manner of work shall be done on them,
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but that which every one must ~ but that which everyone must eat,
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that only may be prepared for you.
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So you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread,
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for on this day I have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt.
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Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations
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as an everlasting ordinance. In the first month,
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on the fourteenth day of the month at evening,
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you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening.
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For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses,
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since whoever eats whoever eats what is leavened,
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that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel,
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whether he is a stranger or a native of the land.
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You shall eat nothing leavened in all your dwellings,
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you shall eat unleavened bread.
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Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them,
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Pick out and take lambs of yourself ~ for yourselves according to your families,
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and kill the Passover lamb.
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And he gives them the instructions on what they're to do.
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And verse 29 and 30, you have the death of the firstborn.
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Okay? As God brings this plague upon Israel,
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God institutes the Passover.
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God creates the calendar for Israel all over again.
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Here's the beginning of your year.
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And in the beginning of your year,
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on the tenth day, you're going to do this.
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And on this, the 14th day, you're gonna do this.
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And on the 21st day, you're going to do this.
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But it in the very first year,
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the fundamental thing behind the Passover was
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the plague of the firstborn.
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You step over to chapter 13, and God is going
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to consecrate the firstborn.
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God is going to claim the firstborn of Israel.
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Forever. Notice chapter thirteen.
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Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
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Consecrate to me all the firstborn,
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whatever opens the womb from the children of Israel,
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both of man and beast, it is what?
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Mine. Mine.
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God is going to tell Israel, your firstborn child,
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it's mine. Your firstborn lamb is mine.
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Firstborn cow, it's mine. Your firstborn of everything.
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Ultimately, when you follow this through to the Mosaic ordinances,
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the firstborn of every field, the first fruits.
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Belong to the Lord. Matter of fact,
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there will be a feast of first fruits.
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God is going to tell Israel, the first of everything is mine.
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It's always interesting me when people in the religious world talk about tithing.
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They'll say, Well, God commanded a tithe.
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That is technically accurate in the Mosaic law,
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except it ignores the majority of what God commanded.
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Because God commanded
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The first. And God commanded a tenth.
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And God commanded special feasts.
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And God commanded other things.
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When you start adding it up, God God actually commanded about 25%
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of everything that came out of Israel.
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Okay? So when you start doing the math,
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like, no, ~ you just went with the easiest one to calculate because it's
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in the name. It's called a tenth,
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it's a tithe. But God commanded way more.
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than 10% when it comes to Israel.
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Now, when you look at this text,
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you find an interesting detail with Genesis 3 that what
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God respected in what Abel did is Abel offered
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the first thing.
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Abel, as he worships,
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will offer to God what comes first.
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And if he gives to God what comes first,
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what is Abel by a token of doing that saying about himself?
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That God comes first. Because generally speaking,
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you're going to give the thing that comes first to whoever matters most.
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So if you keep what is first and you give God what is last,
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then who's most important? You are.
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Because you gave to yourself first.
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It's one of the principles because we're.
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All of this discussion is not just to get a history of worship,
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it's to establish what are the principles that we worship by.
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Well, when you think about the offering that we give on the first day of the week,
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should we be setting aside our offering and setting aside what we offer
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to the Lord as the first thing or what's left over?
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I know when I present it that way,
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everybody says, well, the first thing.
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But do we actually do that? When we sit down and look at the money that comes into
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our lives, do we go, all right,
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here's the Lord's. Now I gotta make everything else work because
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the Lord's area is not going to get cut.
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Now, step over, if you will,
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to 2 Corinthians.
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Paul, as he is writing to the church at Corinth
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Is going to discuss this very idea in the discussion of what
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he will say concerning.
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The people in Macedonia, in that they not only give first to God,
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they give more than they could give to God.
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Second Corinthians chapter 8 and verse 1 Moreover,
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brethren, we make known to you the grace of God bestowed on churches of Macedonia,
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that in great trial of affliction and abundance of their joy,
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their deep poverty abounded in riches of their liberality.
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For I bear them witness that according to their ability.
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Yes, and beyond their ability,
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they were f freely willing, imploring us with much urgency that
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we should receive the gift and the fellowship of the ministering of the saints,
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not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord,
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and then to us by the will of God.
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Paul says as he's calling to mind what the Macedonian Christians have done,
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is he's writing this letter from Macedonia to the churches in Corinth.
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He's writing to them and says,
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Hey, I you need to know what the church at Macedonia did.
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First of all, you need to know their state.
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They're in deep poverty. As ~ as Jim McGuigan would say over in
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the book of Revelation, about one of the churches that's described as being poor
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in the book of Revelation.
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There's two words in the Greek for poor.
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There's the one who's poor, and then there's the people who are poor.
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They have nothing. They don't have a they don't have
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a simple lack. They are destitute.
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This idea is destitute. And yet Paul is in their presence,
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and Paul is telling them concerning the state of the churches in Judea,
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and Paul is telling them about the willingness of the Corinthians to give,
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and the Macedonians beg him. They plead with him to accept their gift.
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Paul says is essentially saying,
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listen, we would have just reflect rejected it out of right because they don't have
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anything to give.
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But given that they didn't have anything to give,
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what they did is they gave of themselves first.
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They said, Well, we don't have anything.
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But we'll go get something,
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and then we'll give it. So here you have a group of people
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who are already destitute, and they go get something so they can give
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it before they ever worry about their own state.
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This idea of putting God first.
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Turn over first Corinthians chapter sixteen.
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First Corinthians chapter 16. Now concerning the collection for the saints,
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as I have given order to the churches of Galatians,
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so you must do also. On the first day of the week,
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let each one of you lay something aside,
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storing up as he may prosper, that there be no collections when I come.
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Now, as Paul gave the instruction to the Corinthians preceding the thing that he's
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writing about in Second Corinthians,
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when he gave the initial instruction,
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he says, All right.
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Corinthians. I've given the churches to the Order of Galatia.
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I've told them what they're supposed to be doing in regards to this gift
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to benefit the churches of Judea.
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He says you collect it on the first day of the week and you collect
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it according to what?
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As you have prospered. Now tie what you have from
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the Old Testament to what you have in the New Testament.
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God says the firstborn of everything is mine.
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What if you didn't have anything born?
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You have anything to give?
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No. Wha what if the first ~ fruit of all
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of your field belongs to the Lord and your field doesn't produce anything?
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You have anything to give?
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No. There are circumstances and there are times where God's
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expectation is zero.
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Because ten percent of zero is zero.
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All right. We do the math on that one pretty easy.
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And this was an interesting discussion that that came up when we were
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in the school of preaching because one of the instructors asked the question,
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Is it ever appropriate on the first day of the week to not give?
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And the answer is yes. When you've not prospered.
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Because what God is saying is,
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you give to me first. Now,
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what we have to be careful about is when we look at our bank account and go,
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well, I ~ I I obligated myself to the bank,
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and I obligated myself to the company that sells the boat,
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and I obligated myself to the company that sells the car,
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and I obligated myself to the
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To the company that sells the internet,
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and I obligated myself to the company that sells the cell phone.
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So as a result of that, I don't have anything to give to the Lord.
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That's not gonna work out. Because what you did is you said,
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Well, the house is important and the boat is important and the car
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is important and the cell phone's important,
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the internet's important, but the Lord needs to get what's left.
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Okay?
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So as we consider going all the way from Genesis 3 all the way forward,
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there's this fundamental idea in what God says
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is respected and acceptable when it comes to worship.
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And it is what is first.
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Now, yes, Ava.
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Absolutely. We're we're headed back to Exodus thirteen because one
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of the things that you saw already in the text that we read in Exodus twelve
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is that God said, Hey, everybody's not gonna give the same thing.
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Because not everything is appropriate at the same level.
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He already mentioned, you know what,
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for the number of some families,
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they should give a lamb by themselves.
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But there are other families that by reason of number it is not appropriate
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for them to give a lamb by themselves.
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They and their neighbor can combine together to give.
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Okay? So in this, you have
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God understanding circumstance.
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Over in 1 Corinthians chapter 16,
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Paul understands circumstance.
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Over in 2 Corinthians chapter 8,
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God and Paul both in in the writing of this to the church
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at Corinth are understanding circumstance.
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But the principle behind the giving
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is a manifestation of an attitude that says,
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God's going to come first, as opposed to God's going to come last.
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Turn ~ back to chapter 13 of Exodus.
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In Exodus chapter thirteen
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~ we're going to start in verse eleven.
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It shall be when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites,
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as he swore to you and your fathers and gives it to you.
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Now, first thing to note, when does this ordinance begin?
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When they get into the land of Canaan.
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This is not an ordinance that begins at Mount Sinai.
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This is not an ordinance that begins in a forty year wilderness wandering.
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This is an ordinance that begins when they receive the land
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God had promised them. Okay? So worth pointing out,
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but there are going to be some things that occur along the way beforehand.
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He says, It shall be the case when you bring when the Lord brings you into
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the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to you and your fathers,
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and gives it to you, that you shall set apart to the Lord all that opens the womb.
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That is, every firstborn that comes from an animal which you have,
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the males shall be the Lord's.
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But every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb.
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And if you will not redeem it,
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then you shall break its neck.
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And all the firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.
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So it shall be when your son asks you in time to come,
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saying, What is this? That you shall say to him,
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By strength of hand, the Lord brought us out of Egypt,
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out of the house of bondage. And it came to pass when Pharaoh
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was stubborn about letting us go,
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that the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt,
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both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beast,
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therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all.
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All males that open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem,
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and it shall be as a sign on your hand and as frontlets between your eyes,
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for by strength of hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt.
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So God is going to essentially say,
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firstborn of everything, beast of burden,
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or one of your own children, if it's a firstborn male,
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it belongs to me. Now
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As you track forward in the text,
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you're going to find that God is going to offer to Israel a substitute.
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What is going to be the substitute for the firstborn of every tribe?
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That's correct. The Levites. Essentially,
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what is going to happen is God is going to claim the Levitical tribe as his tribe.
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So the Levites are going to be the substitute.
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And so every year, essentially,
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what they were to do is they were to number the number of Levites.
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And then they were to number the people.
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And they were to basically pay the difference between the Levites and
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the rest of the people.
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So that the Levites stood as the redemption of the firstborn.
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But as we bring these thoughts to mind,
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consider that God is saying,
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the first belongs to me.
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And you have that principle highlighted highlighted already
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in Genesis chapter four. It can is consistently true.
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All the way through the Old and the New Testament.
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Now I want to spend just a little bit of time in the book of Isaiah.
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We're gonna begin in Isaiah chapter six,
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and we're going to consider the idea
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of God's sovereignty. When you think about worship,
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and when you think about this idea of giving the first to the Lord,
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someone might come along and say,
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Well, why? I'm not an Israelite,
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and God didn't save my family out of Egyptian bondage,
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so why should I give the first to the
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To the Lord. And the answer comes from who God is.
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It comes from the sovereignty of God.
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~ that idea of a sovereign.
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What what is a sovereign in a national perspective?
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Alright, something that stands on its own.
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It generally speaking, you would be considering even either a government
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or a king or a queen. The sovereign is the ruler over that
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nation. Okay? They stand on their own,
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and everyone else is subject to them.
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That's what we're talking about.
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Isaiah highlights in a number of passages the sovereignty of.
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The exclusive rule of God.
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In Isaiah chapter six, beginning in verse one,
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we read, In the first year that King Uzziah died,
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I saw the Lord sitting on a throne,
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high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple.
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And there and above it stood Seraphim.
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Each one had six wings, with two he covered his face,
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with two he covered his feet.
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And with two he flew. And one cried to another and said,
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Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
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The whole earth is full of his glory.
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There's a song that we sing that's in our psalm books.
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Holy, holy, holy,
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Lord God Almighty. When you examine that song,
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that song
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Pertains to, it derives itself from Isaiah and other passages,
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but it pertains to the sovereignty of God.
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The declaration from the seraphim here is there's nobody else like
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God. There's nobody that's comparable to God.
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There's nobody who is above God.
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Notice what we read.
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And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out,
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and the house was filled with smoke.
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So I said to me, Woe is me, for I am undone,
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because I am a man of unclean lips,
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and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips,
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for my eyes have seen what? The king.
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Isaiah in division,
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as he sees this, he sees himself and he says,
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Woe is me!
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Now, when Isaiah says this,
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do you think Isaiah is saying,
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you know what? I I I'm really just I'm not a good Israelite.
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I I I don't do what the Lord says.
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Generally speaking, I live a pretty rebellious life against the Lord.
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You think that's what he means?
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No. What Isaiah is saying is I'm looking
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at myself and I'm looking at the Lord,
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and we don't compare.
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I'm looking at his holiness and I don't match up.
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I look at myself and I I realize I
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am imperfect in comparison to someone who is entirely perfect.
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And Isaiah will proclaim himself to be a man of unclean lips,
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dwelling in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
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Then one of the seraphim flew to me,
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having in his hand alive coal which had taken which he had taken from
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the tongs from the altar, and he touched my mouth with it and said,
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Behold this has touched your lips,
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your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.
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As the Seraphim comes from the throne of God,
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he goes to the altar because the remember the picture is happening in the temple.
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Okay? So the if you were to try and envision what Isaiah is seeing,
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Isaiah is seeing in the vision,
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here's the temple, and here's the place by the way,
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here's the place in the holiest of holies in the temple.
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Here's the throne of God. What represented the throne of God that
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had the seraphim over it in the temple in Israel?
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The Ark of the Covenant. When you think about the Ark of the Covenant,
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you have a box overlaid with gold with a lid.
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On the top of the lid you had the mercy seat,
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and over the mercy seat you had the seraphim.
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And so Isaiah in the vision is seeing the temple,
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not Israel's temple. He's seeing the Lord's temple.
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He's seeing the dwelling place of God.
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He's seeing the throne room of God.
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Very reminiscent for those of us who are in the Revelation class
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of Revelation chapter 4 and chapter 5.
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Isaiah sees the temple of God and he sees the throne room of God and
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he sees the seraphim, and the seraphim flies from above the
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throne of God and goes to the altar.
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Takes one of the coals of the altar and puts it on the mouth of Isaiah.
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And he says, Essentially, you're correct,
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you're right. Your lips are unclean.
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But now I've taken your iniquity away.
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I have made your lips holy.
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Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
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Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?
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As Isaiah is seeing this vision,
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he hears a proclamation, he hears a question from the Lord.
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I've got a message, I need to send it through somebody.
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Who can I get to go for us?
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Then I said, Here am I.
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Send me. Another one of the songs in our songbook.
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Here am I. Send me. But Isaiah sees
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the Lord in the vision.
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And his immediate reaction is this individual is
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of such great holiness and of such great power and such great position.
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I am not worthy to be in his presence.
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I am not worthy. My people are not worthy.
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And none of us can open our mouth and speak his words because of how holy it is.
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And yet God will make the lips of Isaiah holy.
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And then God will say, Now I'm going to use your lips.
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Verse 9, he said, Go and tell this people,
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keep on hearing, but do not understand.
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Keep on seeing.
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But do not perceive.
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Now, Jesus used a phrase over and over and over again,
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He that has ears to hear,
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let him hear. The message
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to Isaiah is go cause their ears to be closed.
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You're going to speak the message,
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and they're not going to listen.
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You're going to proclaim the holy message from the Lord,
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and they're not going to hear you.
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He says, Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy,
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shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears
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and understand with their heart and return and be healed.
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Wait a minute, Lord. Don't you want them to repent?
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He did.
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But the Lord knew the heart of the men.
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And the Lord, knowing the heart of men,
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knew that they weren't going to repent.
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But he was going to give them the message anyway.
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So in Isaiah 6,
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you have the beginning of this picture,
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and it's all throughout Isaiah,
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but we're going to jump over to Isaiah chapter 40.
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You have the beginning picture of the sovereignty of God.
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So Isaiah chapter forty, we find more of this picture.
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In Isaiah chapter forty, verse one,
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we read, Comfort, yes, comfort my people,
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says the Lord. Speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to her that
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her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned,
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for she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.
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The voice of one crying in the wilderness,
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prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
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Every valley shall be exalted,
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and every mountain and hill brought low,
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the crooked places shall be made straight,
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and the rough places smooth, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
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and all flesh shall see it together,
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for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
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Now Jesus is going to pray.
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Appropriately and rightfully connect this to the work of Elijah sorry
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of John the Baptist. But Isaiah is told
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to comfort Israel, and here's the comfort that is pronounced:
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Israel, you've suffered, you've gone through the hardship,
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you've gone through exile, you've been brought back,
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you've received double for your sins.
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Now I'm going to send myself.
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To you. But given that the king is going to show up,
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there are some preparations that need to be made.
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There was day and time where quite often politicians would travel
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by railroad and they'd get on the train and they'd make stops.
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Quite often those stump speeches would be made from the back of
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the train where everybody could see them.
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But there would, in many places where said politician was popular,
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there would be banners and preparations and there'd be decorations
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and everybody would be waiting to receive the person
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who is this important person.
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You can think of the receptions that occur down the streets of cities when
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the team that
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Is from that city wins the national championship of this sport or that sport.
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You can think back to the ticker tape parades at the end of World War II.
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You can think of all of these things that help us to visualize what Isaiah
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is being told here. What God tells Isaiah is:
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I'm coming through, and in preparation of me arriving,
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here's what you need to do: every valley needs to be lifted up.
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And every mountain needs to be brought low.
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I need a straight path.
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In preparation for my arrival.
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Now, that in actuality,
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in fulfillment, was going to be John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness
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and all Israel coming out to hear him.
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And what did John tell all Israel concerning who the Messiah was?
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But it wasn't him.
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He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
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Make ready for the Lord.
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Verse 6 The voice said,
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Cry out, and he said, What shall I cry?
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All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
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The grass withers, the flower fades away,
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but the breath of the Lord bl because the breath of the Lord blows on it,
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surely the people are grass, the grass withers,
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the flower fades. But the word of our God speaks.
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Stands for ever.
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God makes it clear I'm king,
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I'm sovereign, I'm holy,
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and when I speak, there's nothing that
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can stop my word coming to pass.
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Interestingly, when you jump over to John chapter 1,
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what is it that John describes Jesus as?
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The Word. In the beginning was the Word.
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And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
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The same was in the beginning with God.
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All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.
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You get this picture of sovereignty.
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God says, I'm King, I'm on the throne,
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I'm holy, and I'm sending my word to you.
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Okay? Go forward to chapter 42.
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In Isaiah forty two.
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In a prophecy concerning the Messiah,
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we read, Behold, my servant whom I uphold,
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my elect one in whom my soul delights.
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I have put my spirit upon him,
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he will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.
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He will not cry out, nor raise his voice,
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nor cause his feet to be heard in the streets.
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A bruised reed he will not break,
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and smoking flax he will not quench.
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He will bring forth justice.
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For truth, he will not fail nor be discouraged till he has established justice
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in the earth, and the coastland shall wait for his law,
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thus says the God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out,
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who spread forth the earth, and that which comes from it,
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who gives breath to the people on it,
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and spirit to those who walk on it,
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I the Lord have called you in righteousness,
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and will hold your hand.
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I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people,
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as a light to the Gentiles, to open blind eyes,
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to bring out prisoners from the prison,
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for those who sit in darkness from the prison house.
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I am the Lord, that is my name,
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and my glory I will not give to another,
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nor my praise to carved images.
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Behold, the former things have come to pass,
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and new things I declare, before they spring forth,
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I tell you of them.
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Sing to the Lord a new song, and his praise from the ends of the earth.
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You who go down to the sea and all that is in it,
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you coast lands and you inhabitants of them,
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let the wilderness and its cities lift up their voices,
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the villages that Kedar inhabits,
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let the inhabitants of Selah sing,
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let them shout from the top of the mountains,
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let them give glory to the Lord,
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and declare his praise in the coastlands.
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The Lord shall go forth like a mighty man,
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he shall stir up his zeal
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Like a man of war he shall cry out,
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yes shout aloud, he shall prevail against his enemies.
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I have held my peace a long time.
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I have been still and my r and restrained myself.
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Now I will cry like a woman in labor,
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I will pant and gasp at once, and I will lay waste the mountains and hills
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and dry up all their vegetations,
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I will make the rivers coastlands,
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and I will dry up the pools.
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I will bring the blind by a way they did not know.
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I will lead them in paths they have not known.
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I will make darkness light before them and crooked places straight.
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These things I will do for them and not forsake them.
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They shall be turned back. They shall be greatly ashamed.
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Who trust in carved images, who say to the molded images,
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You are our gods.
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As Isaiah prophesies concerning the servant,
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the one who the Lord said he would send on his behalf,
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the one who was the creator,
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the one who God says, This is mine,
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I am him. As he speaks concerning him,
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he says, I want you to understand,
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I don't give my glory.
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to anyone else. I don't give my glory to another.
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But as Jesus is raised up out of that watery grave of baptism
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in the Jordan River by John the Baptist,
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what occurs?
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All right. You have the spirit descending like a dove and a voice from heaven
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saying, This is my son.
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You go forward to the Mount of Transfiguration.
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There on the mount, you hear,
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This is my beloved son,
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hear you him.
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And that is in direct response
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to Peter saying, We need to build an altar
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to Moses and to Elijah.
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And to Jesus, who were all present there on the Mount of Transfiguration,
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and God says, no, no, no, you don't.
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Because I don't give my glory to anybody else.
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I didn't give my glory to Elijah.
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I didn't give my glory to Moses.
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But him.
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He is my glory. Jesus said,
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When you've seen me, you've seen the Father.
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All right, so as we examine this idea of sovereignty and as we examine this idea
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of worship, we understand there's this core idea that
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God establishes I'm unique.
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God isn't like anybody else.
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And no one else is like God. He is king of God.
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He is holy, he is sovereign, he is that which should be worshipped,
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and no one else should. And so when he demands the first,
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he's demanding what is his. And when we refuse it,
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we're stealing what is his. And we need to be mindful as we consider.
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How we worship and how we involve ourselves in worship that
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we are not the focus of worship.
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He is. And we need to have more times and more occasions where
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we sit back and have the same mindset as Isaiah,
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woe is me. For I'm in the presence of God,
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and I am not perfect.
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But through his work I am made holy.
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Okay? Thank you for your