Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 1st, 2015 | Route 66 - Judges

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March 1st, 2015 | Route 66 - Judges · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Since first service, since first service, which you think of as being a little older, since they always clap through that, I thought, you know, why not?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: So how are you doing this morning?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Good to see you.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you thought it was gonna be icy, and it's really great weather.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're visiting this morning, uh if you're here for the first time, uh, whether you're sitting over here or across the street, we're in a series called uh Route 66.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a road trip to the Bible.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Coincidentally, there are 66 books in the Bible.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Get it?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: How lucky was I! And um we're in the seventh uh rest stop, seventh town along the way from Chicago to LA, and this is Judges, and the title I've given it for this morning, is Descent into Darkness.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: It turns out, by the way, I'm glad I'm getting a second chance after 20 years to do this again.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Turns out to be a lot darker book than I thought it was in the past.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: So uh let me start with a word of prayer and we'll go.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, I pray for all of us.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh this is uh quite a book.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh more of a book and more uh has more punch to it than than I thought.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I pray that all of us will recognize ourselves and our friends here and uh and that and that we'll turn to you as a result.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I start with a question how many of you have children or grandchildren who ask you to tell them a story?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've got six-year-old and a three-year-old uh grandsons here in town, whose the most common thing they say to me is, Papa, tell us a story.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: My three-year-old, and and it's usually Papa climbs in bed with us and tell us a story.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's at night.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And about once a week I do.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And my three-year-old's always saying, Papa, tell us a story about when you were young.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh they like the same old stories that I've told before.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And they're most popular, the story I think they like the best, and the first one I ever told them was uh when I was 10 years old, my brother Steve was nine, and uh we did everything together as the oldest two sons in a large family and a small farm in Oregon.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And my dad had decided, once we'd gotten rid of the smelly pigs, he decided to add to the menagerie, menagerie of our small farm, some Emperor geese.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we had cows, we had calves, we had rabbits, we had chickens, we had goats, and so he decided to bring, you know, a couple dozen of these white geese with the orange head things, you know, and so forth, and put them in the pen the pigs used to be in.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and they were evil.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the pigs were smelly, but these things you could not get in there as kids and feed them because they'd fly at you and they'd pick and so we just threw the feet over, and dad was okay with that.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Which is why we didn't know about the eggs until you could smell them from a mile away.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh smelled this odor, and my dad realized that over in the corner of the pen there were a couple dozen eggs.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Big eggs, emperor geese eggs, been there a lot way too long, unfertilized, rotten, smelly.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So he got a big uh plastic bucket and he filled the bucket with the eggs, brought it out, put it by the bar, and he looked at me and he looked at Steve, knowing us, and he said, Don't touch those eggs.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna bury those eggs.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: You could smell those eggs.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was terrible.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: The skunks uh left our farm for a year.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they, you know, they were gone.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, those eggs, he didn't bury them for a couple days.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: The favorite thing for Steve and me was to go to club, like like a wana, it wasn't called, but midweek club at our church and play dodgeball.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So one afternoon, one afternoon we made this deal that we would not tell.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Which our IQs weren't all that high at that point, I guess, because I guess we uh just because the bucket the bucket was empty, would you know what we'd have figured dad would know something was wrong.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: But so we took the bucket out of the pasture and we divvied up the eggs.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: We paced ourselves 20 paces apart.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, basically, we didn't draw a line in the pasture, it was sort of uh, you have to stay on that side of that cow pie, and I'll stay on this side of this cow pie.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Then I'm telling you it literally, I'm everything I'm telling you today is exactly the way it was.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's true.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's true.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we divvied up the eggs, we each had a dozen eggs.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so then after that, we start heaving the eggs at each other, and our little arms weren't all that great, and we could dodge better and so forth.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the great thing was, though, that even though the eggs missed, when they hit the ground, it wasn't just that they burst.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: They were like hand grenades, they exploded, you know, in a shower of yellow and white odor, you know, just the mist spread over covered the sky for a space of a half an hour.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it was just amazing.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: But then as the eggs were almost uh done, I made one of the greatest throws in my young life.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I I faked right, and he dodged left, and I nailed him like David nailed Goliath right in the middle of his forehead with a sound like a rifle shot.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: That beautiful huge egg just exploded, the white shell staying in his hair, and his face just showered with this most melodorous, beautiful egg yolk and white.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what would then happen would never be forgotten by us.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I would suffer for it temporarily, and he would suffer for it for the rest of his life, for I held it over him.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because what he did is that twerpy little nine-year-old started shrieking and started running for the house to tell daddy.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: With me running after him saying, Steve, you promised, Steve, you promised.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I never got close enough to tackle him before he told dad.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I got the licking of a lifetime in the backyard that afternoon.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And decades after that, Steve and I would be sitting there in silence, and he'd say, I'm still really sorry about the egg thing.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't have ratted on you.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd say you should be sorry, you know.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I tell that story to my grandkids, they love that story, and as I tell stories like that to my grandkids, I am reminded of several things.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: First, how often I was deliberately disobedient.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Deliberately, consciously deliberately disobedient to something my mother or father had specifically told me not to do.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And second, how with perfect regularity I suffered for it, how many spankings I got.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Third, I remember how happy my child my childhood was, despite all of the all of the discipline.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: But fourth, I always think it's a good thing that Steve and I weren't running the farm.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we'd been in charge with our ethic, we would have turned that place into, and this is a popular word these days, into a dystopia.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you have heard the word dystopia?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a word especially uh fond in Hollywood, because you can't go to Hollywood 14 theaters these days without seeing at least one dystopian movie.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Dystopia is the opposite of a utopia.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Utopia is a perfect place, dystopia is an awful place.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: A dystopia is a society, is a country, is a home that is full of savage brutality, pain, poverty, injustice, violence, things like that.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's uh a well-known word today because of uh uh of some recent movies.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: The Hunger Games, a famous dystopian set of films and books.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And divergent, I think Veronica Roth, by the way, is a is a is a believer, the way she talks about her life after that.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Divergent that creates a dystopian world.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: But even before that, you're familiar, perhaps some of you, the book of Eli, or I am legend, or even way back in sort of the beginning of dystopian worlds, 1984 by George Orwell, or Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I come to you this morning to tell you that I have learned as I have studied the book of Judges, inside and out, that this is the dystopian book of the Bible.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is a book that is at times uh makes you laugh, at times makes you cry, but at other times it makes you want to run for cover because of how full it is with incredible violence and savage brutality and rape and injustice and crime.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: For we read twice in the last five chapters of the book.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: In those days there was no king, no dad, no mom, nobody in control in Israel, and everyone did whatever they wanted to do.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a study sheet, grab it out of your bulletin for a moment, you'll see that that verse is on the top of page one.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the key verse in the book.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: At the bottom of page one, you'll see the outline.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: This page one is sort of a survey of the book for your sake.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll find that I think the book falls into a prologue, the first couple chapters.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have the famous part of the book, you know, with all those judges that are famous, like Samson and Gideon.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have an epilogue to the book, which is so dark and so awful that you will not find it ever taught in Sunday school or in church, ever.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not in synagogue either.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll get to that later, because of how savage and awful it is.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: On the back, uh, I want to share with you the lessons from this book about how good people, how God's people, how Christian people can descend, yes, they can, descend into darkness, how the nation of Israel did.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is the book, dark as it is, that gives you wonderful insights into how a nation delivered by God, God's people, descended into awful darkness.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And step one, interestingly enough, is a family breakdown.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter two, the summary chapter of the book, verses six through ten, tells us that the first mistake Israel made is that they failed to pass the faith on to their children.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: We read, Joshua sent the people away.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, General Joshua had come in and helped them conquer the land.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: He was a great man, and the Israelites went to take possession of the land, each to his own inheritance.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the people, this is all good, worship the Lord throughout Joshua's lifetime.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: During the lifetimes of the elders outlived Joshua, for they'd seen all the Lord's great works he'd done.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And Joshua now he died, son of none, servant of the Lord died at the age of 110.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: That whole generation gathered to their ancestors, but here's where it all turns.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And after them another generation rose up who did not know the Lord or the works he'd done for Israel.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't they know?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because their parents had failed to pass the faith down to them.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Alexander Solzanitsyn, once, this is years ago, he's now passed away.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: He said at Harvard University that the West, meaning the Europe and Europe and America, were destined to fall.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're doomed to fall.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And New York Times reporter asked him, why do you say that?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Because they have forgotten God.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the accusation made of the Israelites, that they, that second generation, forgot God.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's interesting in this book, you find that Moses' own grandson, whose name is Joshua, starts a cult in chapter 18 of this book.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, somehow that faith, even with the best of people, didn't get passed down.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, that's the way God plans it.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: God, the way we're supposed to pass the faith on is sort of the way you pass on a baton and a relay race.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way God's designed it.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he came down Mount Sinai, he wowed that generation, you know, and so forth, and he gave them the Torah, gave them the law, but he didn't come down in the second next generation or in the next one.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the end of that next generation, the end of Deuteronomy, you've got the people saying to Moses, we want him back down again.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And very interesting, God says, Don't say in your heart, bring bring it back down from heaven.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, that word is close to you in your heart and in your mouth.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Pass it on yourself.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's how God's designed, that's his pattern.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: That dad and mom are supposed to pass it on to their children.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because we know that even if God came down again, it wouldn't help.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And same thing's true, by the way, in the days of Jesus Christ.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus was there.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, they saw his miracles.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: He dies, he resurrects.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, this is great.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Then comes the next generation.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is sort of the leader in the next generation.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know what he says in Romans chapter 10?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Stop saying in your heart, quoting Deuteronomy, stop saying in your heart, who will bring Christ back down for us?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we want to see him again.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing the miracles again.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: He says, No, no, no, no, don't say that.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: The word, it's close to you in your heart and in your mouth.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Just pass it on.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's the pattern God has laid down.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And dad and mom, it will not do to say, I'm too busy.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: It will not do to say I'll leave it up to the pros at church or Christian school.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: It will not do to say, uh, I don't quite know how.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: It won't do to say, you know, I think I'll leave the choice up to my children when they get older.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: All the studies show that that's how faith is passed down from parents, not through professionals, but through parents.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Study some years ago was confirmed here recently.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: This book's published by Oxford Press last year called Families in Faith: How Religion Is Passed Down Across Generations.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: A USC professor decided to analyze 3,500 children, grandparents, and parents and so forth, and has done this uh longitudinal study and has just published this book and has all these statistics.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, if you boil it down, if a dad and mom bring their children to church, then three out of four of those kids will go to church as adults.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Just just it's just one of the many many illustrations.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if only one of them, dad or mom, bring children to church, then half of the children will be in church later on.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: If neither one bring the children to church, but send the children to church, only one out of ten of the children will go to church as adults.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And now this study, I don't know if you if you've looked by now, you can see there are two different colors.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: The one color, the orange color, is what if dad or mom get along if they get along really well with the kids.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: The other color, the the gray, is what if dad's distant or mom's not really close to the kids.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting, isn't it, that if dad is close to his children and he brings them to church, then 67 far left here, 67% of the kids who come to church.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: But if dad is distant and not really close, that plummets 16 percentage points down to about half.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, anyway, uh I don't want to get into that too much, just simply to say that's God's pattern that faith is supposed to be passed down from one generation to the next.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the second mistake, second step downward, was uh, frankly, a faith breakdown.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about the last two weeks, so I won't talk about this, but just simply quote uh verses 11 through 13.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites abandoned the Lord who'd brought them out of Egypt and went after other gods.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And this happens, you've seen it.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: People abandon the Lord who saved them.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of us knows stories.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: When I was young, my brother and I just idolized a guy named Tom.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: He'd been a military policeman in the Philippines, and he used to show us how he'd kill people.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: That was exciting.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: But but he was also a semi-pro baseball player.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: We went to his games and we idled and he and so forth, and then something happened.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, he got mad at God and he drifted away, and then he moved to California, and then all of a sudden he died in his 40s.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And for us and our family, Tom's always been the example of someone who for some reason drifted away and abandoned his faith and never was happy after that.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's step one and two.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the heart of the book, chapters three through 21.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: The most famous part of the book is uh it just should be three through 16, is this spiritual descent into darkness.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this these are the stories you and I know and love, okay?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it's a cycle repeated seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve times.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: There are 12 judges total, seven major ones.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is that every generation does the same thing.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: First, they conform to the world.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Second, they suffer God's discipline.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Third, they cry, help, Lord! And fourth, God delivers them.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or the four S's, sin, suffering, supplication, salvation.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably seen this cycle in your own life.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens in the last part of the book is that going through the cycle repeatedly sends them into a downward spiral.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: They repeat that cycle until they descend into the dark.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So let's take each one of these individually.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: First uh step is we conform to the world.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's when we take that step away from God and we begin to conform to the world.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I chose that phrase is partly because it comes from the New Testament, Romans 12, 2, be not conformed to this world, or as some of you know it better from one paraphrase, don't let the world squeeze you into its mold.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: The way Detroit squeezes a piece of metal, you know, in into uh into part of a car, don't let the world do that to you because though the world is a nice word in society today, in the Bible, the world is a system controlled by Satan that is in enmity with God and is passing away.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So don't let the world, the system controlled by Satan that is an enemy of God that's passing away, do not let this system press you into its mold.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Don't conform to this system, don't go along in order to get along.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I chose that partly because uh perhaps the best commentary on this book, a recent one by a guy named Daniel Bloch, teaches at the graduate school Wheaton College, uh, entitles this book, The Canaanization of Israel.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: What does he mean by that?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he means, you know, Israel's gone into Canaan, and instead of conquering Canaan, Canaan is conquering the heart of Israel, and Israel's becoming like the world around it, like Canaan.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: They are conforming to the world.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now let me show you how that shows up in this book, because it shows up about seven times.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Judges 2, the summary statement, the Israelites did what's evil in the Lord's sight, worshiped the Baals, abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: They went after other gods from the surrounding peoples.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, they went along in order to get along.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And they bowed down to them, and that infuriated the Lord, for they abandoned him and worshipped Baal.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: The Canaanization of Israel.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: So then we start working our way through the generations.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Israel settled among these Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, and so forth.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the Israelites took their daughters as wives for themselves, gave their own daughters to their sons.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, that was a no-no for Israel at that time, needed to stay pure, and they worshiped their gods.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or we find in chapter 3, they did the same thing.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Israelites, next generation, did what was evil, they conformed to the world.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 3, verse 12, 40 years later, the Israelites again did what was evil in the Lord's sight, gave Agon, king of Moab, power, and so forth.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel Bloch points out that again did, which in Hebrew is added to, is, he said, best thought of as a relapse into a pattern of behavior.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the Israelites, you've seen it in your own life, lapsed, they've relapsed into doing, to conforming to the world.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 4, the Israelites relapsed, again did what was evil.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 6, after 40 years, next generation did the same thing.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 10, next generation did the same thing.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 13, the Samson story begins with the words, the Israelites again did what was evil in the Lord's side.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make any sense?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you have a conformity to the Did anybody ever see the um, you can, I think you can still see it on YouTube.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: The candid camera where the guy walks into the doctor's office and everybody's sitting there in their underwear, reading magazine, drinking coffee, chatting with each other.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see that?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he sits there and he's so uncomfortable because he's he's out of step, you know, and so eventually gets up and he takes off his shirt and his pants, and he sits there in his underwear.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: He sort of assumes that the doctor said everybody needs to get ready.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going fast today or something.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's just a riot.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or have you seen the one where the where the guy walks into an elevator and girls?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, they just keep showing it.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's on YouTube.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And walks into the elevator and turns around and suddenly realize everybody else in the elevator is facing the back wall.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's just really cute.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: You watch this and finally you see them kind of turn like this.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's conformity that we go along in order to get along.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, those are old, but the studies are showing that there is an even a higher tendency to conform today.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Psychologists argue about whether it's, I think maybe it's the technology puts us at a distance from people.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we try even harder to please our peers because you know we're we're we we don't have uh as much face-to-face connection as we used to.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the study that was done here in the last couple of years started in Europe and and started by uh uh getting a whole bunch of college students in a room and showing them uh a seven-minute PowerPoint.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and a number of the students, of course, were let in on it ahead of time, and at different points during that PowerPoint, at first obvious places, places of political correctness, right?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Just clapped, and and eventually all those that didn't know that they clapped during a PowerPoint of all things.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and so but then they started clapping at stupid, you know, just really crazy places.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they found that the other college kids would, after waiting for a while, would clap too, and then all the people who are on the know, the college kids are in the know, they would suddenly stop clapping at a signal, and the others would stop immediately.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just very interesting studies that show that we are simply made.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's something inside us that wants to get along, and so we go along in order to get along, and that's okay with clapping.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe, and it's okay in an elevator.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not so sure about the doctor's office, but but you know, it's not okay when it comes to, you know, well, everybody else in my office cusses, so I'm gonna cuss, or in my foursome.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not okay when, you know, I was out with the guys and everybody else overdranks, so I, you know, I really couldn't stop myself from over-drinking.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: See, see, there's some places, you see, where you can really hurt yourself by conforming to the So that's number one.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Second step down is then, of course, we suffer God's discipline.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Wake up in the morning cranky, we're unhappy, we've lost our joy, we don't like to hang around the nice people we used to hang around.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know how it is?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Don't want to go to church, don't want to do this, don't want to do that.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you find these stories in judges that immediately, when when people rebel against him, the Lord's anger burned against them.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: He handed them over to marauders who raided them, he sold them to the enemies around them.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever they went out, the Lord was against them, he brought disaster, and they suffered greatly.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: The next generation, the Lord's anger burned against Israel, and this is the first judge, his name's Athniel, and he and and and Israel had sinned, and he sold them to Kushan Rishathaim, king of Aram Naharaim, literally Aram of the two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, and the Israelites served him eight years.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm gonna stop here somebody because I know that you've never stopped here before.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you've seen this, and just share with you how this is really remarkable.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Aram Naharayim is clearly the strongest enemy in all of the book of Judges.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Controls this, uh, the Arameans were a powerful nation up north-northeast.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: We oftentimes just called Syria today, but Syria was huge back then, rivaled Egypt for uh you know the power in the world in that day.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: So this guy, Kushan, was sort of like a world emperor status.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, what's really interesting to me is I was looking at this, they own part of Syria and Iraq.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is almost precisely, precisely the same territory that ISIS covers today.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Part of Syria, part of Iraq.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: So here you've got, you've terrestres, you've got this incredibly powerful kingdom that is coming down from the northeast past the Golan Heights, and coming down and oppressing Israel for eight years.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they're so powerful that how in the world are we going to ever get deliverance?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why the Lord raises up a guy who turns out to be the greatest of all the judges, though you may never have heard of him.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: But that's that's the suffering of God's discipline with this incredibly powerful world empire.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Judges chapter 3, the next generation.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites again did what was evil.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: He gave the king of Moab power over them, and the king of Moab grabbed uh, it says, the Ammonites and the Amalekites.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Moab is just to the east of the Dead Sea, even today it's called that.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he went up north, the capital of Jordan today.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Amon Jordan, A.M.M.A., and he got them to join in.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it says they uh what's the city they took?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they took possession of the city of Palms.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: The city of Palms is the city of Jericho.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: So so this was uh, you know, the second spate of the Lord's discipline.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not not as strong an enemy as the previous.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: But so you have, as you go through, uh, one after another.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Judges 4, the Lord sold them to the hand of Jabon, king of Canaan, who reigned up in Hotzor.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hotzor still the largest town in Israel, up north of the Sea of Galilee.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Sisera was the commander.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: He had 900 chariots, and he oppressed Israel 20 years.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: God's discipline in chapter 6, the Gideon's story.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Midian was the enemy there, and they had camels as many as the sands of the sea.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: They took all the Israelite crops.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites are starving, they have no food, they have no animals.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're like a swarm of locusts, he says.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: The Midianites came.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, what discipline that was.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 10.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: So he sells them to the Philistines and Ammonites for 18 years.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 13, Samson's story.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: We have the Philistines again.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so having suffered God's discipline, the next step is, wow, Lord, help us.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that happens.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: You do it too.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: I hate the life I'm living, Lord.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Will you save me from this?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we cry out, and the amazing thing is the Lord hears us.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, almost word for word, that's their cry seven times in this book.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites cried out to the Lord.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: So Israel became poverty stricken because of Midian.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites cried out to the Lord.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you read that, if you just read the book of Judges, you go, how cool is that?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're having a revival.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not the way God thinks of it.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with Vance Havner, wonderful man of God he used to listen to, he's now passed on, who says revival should not be necessary.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: God never meant that his people should live by fits and starts in alternate periods of backsliding and repenting.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: If we had more Bible, we wouldn't need revival.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love that guy.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: We would live in normal spiritual health all the time, without shots in the arm twice a year.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what they did.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: And notice, and one of the most interesting stories, when they cry out for help, God says, I don't want to help you.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: They cried out to the Lord saying, We've sinned against you, we abandoned God, we worship the Baals.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord said to them, Hey, wouldn't they all these big enemies, the Egyptians, Amorites, these seven enemies oppressed you and you cried out, didn't I deliver you from their power?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you've abandoned me.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: You've worshipped other gods, so I'm not going to deliver you again.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Go cry out to the gods you've chosen.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let them deliver you in the time of your oppression.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the Israelites said, We sin, deal with us as you see fit.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Just deliver us today.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: So they got rid of the foreign gods among them and worshiped the Lord and love this line, and God became weary of Israel's misery.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: What a great God we have.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, I am not gonna deliver you again.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: But then he gets so tired of seeing them cry out and whine, and he goes, Okay, I'll save you anyway.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he does, sends Jephthah.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you gotta you gotta love a God like that.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Who, though we continually sin, then we suffer, and then we beg him help, he continually delivers us.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just remarkable.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord raised up judges who saved them from the power of their marauders.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: And now we have everybody's favorite part of the book where you have these judges, seven famous ones.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, they're spread out through the land.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these stories overlap.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you add them all together, it's 410 years, which is too many.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: But they overlap.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: First one up at the top, Athniel, the second one is the second from the bottom, Ahud, and then you have Deborah, Gideon, Jeff, then Samson.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so God sends these heroes to rescue Israel.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the first one, Judges three.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that huge nation, Isis up there?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the Lord raised up this second lieutenant, just a minor officer from south of Jerusalem, Athnel, okay?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Caleb's younger brother, though.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's Caleb, remember, look up that word.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: As a deliverer, uses a very interesting word in Hebrew, Moshiach.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Same as the word Messiah, as a savior.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: The first two guys, the first two judges are called saviors to save the Israelites.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the Spirit of the Lord came on him.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: You take a lowly second lieutenant, you add the Spirit of the Lord, and he can conquer one of the great world kingdoms.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And Othniel went out to battle, and the Lord handed over Cushon, king of Aram to him.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, what a deliverance! But a generation later, they needed it again, so he raised up a guy named Ehud, son of Gerah, left-handed Benjamite, which you're supposed to make all the Israelites laugh because Benjamite, Benjamin means son of my right hand, but he was left-handed.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of a joke.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the fact that he was left-handed is a sort of foreshadowing of what he would do.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: He uh, in those days, right-handed, you know, right-handed, so you know, um, so you had to always be showing your right hand, you know.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want your right hand in here, or else they'd know you might be an enemy.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: So he walks in there because he left handed and he's waving his, he says, I'd like to speak to King Eglon.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: They go, What's the deal?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: I just need to talk to him privately.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he's made himself, he handmade an 18-inch blade that he hid underneath his uh lovely stories.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes in there, and by the way, in the Bible, if you look at the words carefully, Eglon's not only fat, but it calls his whole army basically fat and dumb.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he's clearly kind of stupid.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: So he walks up, I got something to tell you, and then he pulls him out and he sticks the shiv in, and Eglon's so fat it says the fat closed over the blade and he couldn't take it back out.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry about that, but that's just the story.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of book you have when you have the book of Judges.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it calls this guy a deliverer and he saves Israel.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, anyway, that was extra.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Judges chapter 4, you have Deborah.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: In the early part of this book, women have a really important and noble role.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Deborah is a prophetess, and she summons the general of the army, because he's a wuss.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Barak, Barak means blessing, and they're going against Sisera, who's got 900 chariots, and Sisera runs to a woman's tent named Jael.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: He thinks that she's harmless.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: She gives him some warm milk, and then look at this.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Jael took a tent peg, grabbed a hammer, went silently to Sisera, and you'll have to read the rest of that story yourself.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: But that's Judges 4, and then he delivers them with Gideon in chapter 6, and then with Jephthah in chapter 10, and finally with Samson in chapter 13.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I know that you think, because I've always thought that Samson's this huge hero.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I preached for like six months on this guy.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look carefully at these deliverers or judges in this book, they deteriorate all the way down to Samson, who is the worst of all of them.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he runs through four women.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, first is his mother, but the other three, you know, uh in this story, and he is all that Israel is.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's born by a miracle birth, like Israel was.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's given this high and holy calling.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's a Nazirite, you know, no cutting of the hair and all, he's supposed to be pure, like Israel, but he is totally, totally hooked into his own lusts and desires, like Israel, right?
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he's taken captive and blinded.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Israel's spiritually blind and taken captive.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: So he cries out for help.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the saddest first of all, chapter 16, verse 20, is Samson did not even know that the Lord had abandoned him.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: He probably met some former Christians, you think of them.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Don't even know that the Lord has abandoned them.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: They've walked away.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the story of the nation of Israel.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is that a cycle doesn't just stay a cycle.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: This cycle of sin, suffering, supplication, salvation is insanity.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you keep going around this merry-go-round, as Einstein said, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: What insanity.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: Just go back and forth.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's like a few years back, someone apparently, you know, the walk and wait sign in New York, and they put over the top sin over the green and repent over the red.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, what a hoot.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people just walk back and forth.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sin, yeah.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Whoops, repent, sin, you know.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then and that's what's happening in the book of Judges, just this continual back and forth of sin, a repent, a sin, repent, sin, revival.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: God hates that.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons He hates it is that this cycle turns into a spiral that goes downhill.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't stay that way.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to stay safe, friend, you need to get off the cycle.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: I love the Calvin Hobbes cartoon, you know, of whether in the sled, you know, and the snow and Calvin, and he loves to go down, and he always runs into a tree or goes over the edge of the cliff.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And on this end, this in one of my favorite cartoons, he's got two pillows in his hand.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he says to Hobbes, here, Hobbes, take a pillow.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Hobbes says, Why?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: What for?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and he says, Hold it in front of your face.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: It'll sort of be like an airbag, you know, and it'll keep you safe.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: And Hobbes is on the sled at that at that point.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: He gives him the, he gives him that.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: He holds it in front of his face, and and and and they start going.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh and Calvin goes, so I do you feel safer?
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Hobbes has now has gotten off the sled as the sled's moving, and he's standing there with a pillow under his arm, and he goes, I certainly do feel safer.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and it seems to me that if you're going downhill, uh uh going around and around with your addictions, with sin and so forth, so you have to it you the safest thing is to get off that cycle.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: My Melody's dad was a counselor in Dallas, he had a counseling center, and we'd sit down there and and he'd come home and he'd talk about generational sin.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know all about this generational sin, where you know, daddy was full of anger and violence and so forth, and son is so and then you'd get it just passed down, or daddy was an alcoholic, or there were these addictions, you know, and they get passed down.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: And and he'd always talk about how he was trying to get people to break that cycle, you know, to break that the generational cycles.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's precisely what you and I have to do, because what happens is that the cycle turns into a spiral, and that's the message of judges.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: See, that there's this downward spiral that these people go on, where the first judge is the best, but if you keep needing the same thing, then you keep going downhill.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if you if you keep repeating that spiral, you finally descend into the dark, into an awful place.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Chapters, last chapters of the book.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Judges 2 starts off by expressing it when the Lord would raise up a judge.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord was with him and he saved him, and everything was hunky-dory, but when he died, the Israelites would act even more corruptly than the previous generation.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so in 17 through 21, you have what I call the darkest chapters in the Bible, what a woman professor calls the texts of terror, full of corruption and betrayal and rape and torture and murder and even dismemberment, cutting a girl into pieces.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because everyone is doing whatever they want to do.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then the two most recent commentaries on this book first when a friend of mine down at Dallas Seminary, Bob Chisholm, wrote Women who at the beginning of the book inspired Israelite men to great deeds and then played the role of national deliverers, were then raped, slaughtered, and kidnapped by their countrymen at the end of the book.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: There are no leaders present.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, Israelite men war with each other and bring untold suffering on Israelite women.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: The other newer commentary, male treatment of women declines precipitously in the book.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Abuse and crimes against women, climax in the final episodes, the final paragraph.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: The manner in which men treat women today, he says, serves, according to this book, as a barometer of the spiritual climate of a nation, society, church, or family.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let me conclude this way with a confession, because I know it's your confession as well.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: These are the words of the Lord passed down through Hosea.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: My people are determined to turn from me.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we are.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's just something inside us that keeps on turning from God and going downhill, and we descend into darkness.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God that they're in the dark.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: A loving God silently waits.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm going to ask you as we come to the table to pray short prayers based upon a couple of quotes here.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Charles Simeon said a couple hundred years ago, however advanced a man may be in piety or in age, he is still in danger of falling.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, say this in your heart.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I don't want to embarrass myself or you.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Please stop me any way you choose, lest I fall.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Charles Adam Spurgeon, on the last words of Psalm 119, I've gone astray like a lost sheep, writes, Yes, I have, often, willfully, wantonly, and even hopelessly, save for thy grace.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: Even now I am apt to wander and in fact have roamed already.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, God, restore me.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: As we sit around the Lord's table today, let's pray, Lord, please forgive and restore me right now.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you that your blood washes away my sin.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray, Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are the God who hides in the dark waiting to rescue us.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Pray for anyone here who hasn't yet taken that step onto your side, who hasn't yet experienced that miracle birth, who hasn't yet trusted your son Jesus as their personal savior.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: Bring them to that place and then, Heavenly Father, like the rest of us, save them from that downward spiral into darkness.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: That is so, so painful.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you that your blood washes away all our sin in Jesus' name.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, come forward.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the bread and the cup are going to be passed out to you now, but take and eat them whenever you're prepared.