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Is Self-Defense a Sin? Revelation, Sabbath, and Bible Questions · Relish: a Christian podcast

• 0:00
  How should we read the book of Revelation? Terribly.
• 0:06
  Part of me cares as much for the intruder as I do for my family.
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  I have a place in my heart that says, what's driving them?
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  We're going out stoning. I do remember a congregation that because the pastor
• 0:19
  mowed on Sunday, they fired him. Really? Yeah.
• 0:26
  Relish. Pleasing or zestful flavor. A quantity just sufficient to flavor,
• 0:31
  to be pleased or gratified by, enjoy.
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  We are hoping that what we bring to your table today might add some spice to your life.
• 0:40
  Welcome back to another episode of Relish. I am Rowan Miller.
• 0:44
  This is Pastor Don Patterson. Don, how are you doing today? Doing all right.
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  I'm glad the sun's out. It's, yeah. Oh, yeah. We enjoy days like this.
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  It's springtime. Yep. Doesn't get any better than this. Grass is green.
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  Yes. Yes, no, every, but that's his green. Now we get to mow.
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  That's all part of it. Yeah. Yeah. So I've got a question for you. And, uh, okay.
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  What has been your approach to reading the Bible and how has it changed over time?
• 1:12
  Yeah, I think it definitely has changed as I've gotten older.
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  Um, definitely it wasn't, didn't start as a habit.
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  Um, kind of just, you'd read it on Sundays for me personally,
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  Like as a kid, I wouldn't go home and read it too much.
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  You'd read some Bible stories and some of the books, but, um,
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  definitely not just straight scripture.
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  Um, and then so I got older and.
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  Uh definitely moved to more like some
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  just reading it straight through kind of um on
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  your own yeah on my own cool um and then
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  now it's definitely more uh like i don't know if meditative is the correct word
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  but read a passage and think on it pray about it and reflect on that rather
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  than just reading straight through and didn't you start a bible study at school
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  this last year uh yeah Yeah, I thought you did.
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  A couple of my friends are in there. Cool.
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  Yeah. That's pretty motivated to get into the word that much.
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  And you have some event coming up really soon. I do.
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  He's graduating, folks. He's graduating from high school. Can you imagine? Yeah.
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  Since I've known you from a toddler age on up, it's just really hard for me
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  to wrap my little head around. Yeah, I think every year of my life as I've gotten
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  older, it's just went by faster.
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  Hang on, brother. Just have more things and more things and just, where did time go?
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  There's not much sitting around anymore.
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  I think consolation. It doesn't slow down for much for a while.
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  I mean, yeah, so we're about, what, 50 years apart. Yeah, it doesn't slow down. Sorry.
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  50? 40. 40. 18? 1968,
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  Oh, that is 50. Yeah. That is 50. Okay. Moving right along.
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  That's enough of that for today. All right. 50 years. That's a,
• 3:18
  wow. I didn't realize it was that. I thought we were brothers, you know.
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  All righty. These, these questions are still from. Oh, wow. The rest of the episode. So.
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  Yeah. They did really good. They had really good questions. Yeah.
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  And a lot of them are, a lot of them are more than, they were just more than
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  just yes or no questions. That's true.
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  Part of the reason that they were taking this. I had one correction I needed to make.
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  Okay. I made it two weeks ago. I made a reference to Isaac and I said Watts
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  and it should have been Newton.
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  Okay. Instead of Watts. Sorry.
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  But I, I, my, it's my gray matter. It's not quite.
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  When i do those uh answers after we go down the rabbit trail you know sometimes
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  i have to go back and well i got half of it right you know 50 ain't bad yeah
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  i mean there's that's what are you doing there's so many references to that you make and,
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  well i gotta go back and make sure we get them right that was wrong yeah well
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  that's the only All right.
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  How should we read the book of Revelation? Carefully.
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  Very carefully. Well, it's a beautiful book and I know it scares a lot of people,
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  but the book of Revelation is just that.
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  It is a revelation. In other words, being prophetic in its nature and apocryphal
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  in its background. So it's talking about something in the future that,
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  unless you read it carefully.
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  You have a hard time getting it into the here and now.
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  So if you read the book of Revelation as if it's a prophetic book,
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  much like Daniel, then realize that part of it has already happened.
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  Some of it is currently happening and most of it's in the future.
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  So that, and I think John's intention behind it was to make sure that the Christians,
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  would be able to recognize the signs of the times, much like Jesus was talking about in Matthew 24.
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  You'd recognize the signs of
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  the time, knowing that it's getting close to the time Christ would come.
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  And as we go through the book of Revelation, you get to chapter 13 and you realize,
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  okay, they are trying to put things on us that identify us.
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  And, you know, they put chips in people in Sweden or Norway.
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  One of those two Scandinavian countries, so that you don't have to carry your
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  wallet with you anymore. You can just scan your hand, and that's what you do for commerce.
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  That is a sign, definitely a sign, that is pointed to in Revelation.
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  Which is interesting because many people would say Revelation was for the Christians
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  of the first century who were in persecution under Nero.
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  Well, I could buy that in part. But they didn't have that.
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  They didn't have a sign on their forehead or on their arm that was specifically for commerce.
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  So then you, how can that be? I personally read Revelation this way.
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  There's an introduction and there's a closing piece, 21 and 22.
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  And in the middle, if you keep track of it, you'll see seven vignettes.
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  And each of those vignettes have seven movements. And so it's like sticking
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  something out here and I see it from this angle and it's wide and it's black.
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  You see it from that angle and you see all these colors and it's narrow yeah
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  your view is legitimate my view is legitimate but if you go all the way around
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  it and say this was a cylinder or something like that if there were seven views
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  of it those seven views would be slightly different,
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  yet they would be looking at the very same thing and so you look at it and look
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  at the seven seals and on the scrolls, you see the seven bowls,
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  then you begin to say, well, there's something slightly different between one and the other.
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  Well, yeah, right. There's something slightly different.
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  So I look at the book of Revelation as being one that gives us a total view
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  of a singular set of events that will culminate mankind.
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  No. Interesting. I'm not sure he totally swallowed that one.
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  But anyway, it is a way of looking at the book of Revelation and trying to make
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  sense of the complexity of it. Yeah.
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  And being that it is prophetic, you get down to 1917, 18, 19,
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  and you realize that this is going to be a dramatic event.
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  Have you ever heard the song mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,
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  maybe I feel like I've heard the lyric well it's called the battle hill of the
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  republic but there's nothing about republic,
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  in it and so it was used after the civil war but it comes directly from the
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  verses of chapter 13 and 14 of Revelation,
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  so yeah it It has fascinated Christians for a long, long time.
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  Yeah. But it's to be a comfort to us, to help us with the trials and tribulations
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  that come to us very often because we're Christian, because we're following Jesus.
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  And John was trying to give us some comfort in the middle of that.
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  Because almost every time persecution comes, we're thinking the same thing.
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  Well, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Well, this is marking out how he'll come.
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  Yeah. Excellent question. What was the question again?
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  See, this is about revelation. Oh, yeah, yeah. Very good. You got the whole load on that one. Okay.
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  Is violence in self-defense a sin? What about in self-defense of others like family?
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  Oh, yeah. I wrestled with that with somebody else's last week.
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  Well, first of all, we as individuals are to be accountable for our own actions.
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  In other words, I don't have to be accountable for your actions.
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  You don't have to be accountable for mine, praise the Lord. And then when we
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  are accountable for our own actions, then it's what we do for others that is
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  our act of vengeance or grace.
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  Okay. So, uh, I care for you. If I stand between you and the bullet coming to
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  you, that's probably grace.
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  Uh, if I duck behind you, that probably isn't grace.
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  Uh, that means that in any given activity, and of course this is,
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  this is one of those, uh, rejected kind of things that we're trying to figure
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  out an action for before it's ever happened.
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  And uh those are sort of dangerous because life
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  doesn't happen that way life i
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  mean if you decided well i'm going to do it this way right now and you were
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  given that situation whether or not you would actually spawn that way is actually
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  deeper in our core than thinking about it yeah it's going to be an unconscious
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  immediate reaction to the situation it's going to come from your heart and,
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  those things that you've thought through and laid there for a long time.
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  Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's a specific part of your brain that does that type
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  of thinking also in this situation.
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  Yeah, the frontal lobe is really right away. That's your first reaction.
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  And that's why we don't trust anybody less than 27 years old,
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  because that frontal lobe isn't quite developed now.
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  But it's always in development.
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  But they say by 27, it should be developed.
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  Yeah. And, you know, we're going to, we talk about our gut. It's really our front of the lobe.
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  So in that situation, what's right? What's wrong?
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  I guess my life is not so precious, but what I'd be willing to pour it out for
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  somebody else, especially people I care for.
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  Now, does that mean I'm going to take them out? You know, I'm not sure what
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  I'd use to take them out because I'm not a marksman.
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  I don't use a gun. I don't, uh, maybe a monkey wrench or a pipe wrench.
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  I don't know. On the counter.
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  Whatever's on the counter. Uh, would I, would I do that?
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  Part of me cares as much for the intruder as I do for my family.
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  I have a place in my heart that says, what's driving that person to do what they're doing?
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  And that's part of the reason I'm a minister and I'm working with people who
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  have broken lives because I want them to find Jesus. I want them to find something better.
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  That means to take them out with a 30-30 probably isn't a good idea.
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  It's really hard to get the gospel through somebody you've just nailed with a .30-30 hollow point.
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  I don't know. That's what I know about guns. I just remember doing coyotes.
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  Oh, yeah. And the hollow point really did a number on them. Yeah.
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  You could stop a coyote with a .30-30 scope hollow point.
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  I don't know that I want to do that to somebody. So is it wrong?
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  It would be wrong for me.
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  Yeah. I don't know the parameters that will come up in that situation,
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  but let me answer it that way. It would be wrong for me. Yeah.
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  Because of what the people I care for and the fact that I care for that person
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  who's doing this dumb stuff.
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  I know a lot of people who do dumb stuff. and
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  i care for them but they still do dumb stuff like uh
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  trying to steal something or trying to take somebody or
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  take away somebody i i love and
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  appreciate so uh for me
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  it would be wrong yeah i still want
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  to keep all my family safe i heard of
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  a story i think is the elderly lady
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  was getting like there's a home invasion like somebody was
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  trying to rob her and she just started praying
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  and like didn't know like she couldn't defend herself
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  obviously so she was just praying and then the that robber got like brought
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  down to their knees because they were just crying and like yeah started just
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  confessing that lady and yeah holy spirit is self-defense huh right i I like
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  it. I like it. I wonder where you heard that story.
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  I agree with that 100%. Is that from you? I don't know. I'm not going to say.
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  But what it does, that story, what that does for us is bring us to that spot
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  that says, you know, there is our defender and our defender is the Lord.
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  Yeah. And that would be a good place to turn at those times.
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  All right. Next question. What should and shouldn't we do on the Sabbath nowadays
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  compared to the Old Testament? And why did that change?
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  Well, it wasn't that long ago that we talked about that Numbers 13 story where
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  the guy was picking up sticks on the Sabbath day and they stoned him to death.
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  Even though he wasn't part of the covenant group, he was a immigrant in their
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  group and he picked up sticks on the Sabbath day and they said,
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  well, he's just as guilty as anybody else and stoned him to death.
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  Yeah. So, yeah, really hard repercussions of that.
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  I mean, especially our youth group, we've breaked leaves on Sabbath. It's happened.
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  To me, okay, this is me. To me, it makes a difference.
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  Okay, my relationship with Jesus Christ, how do I honor my Lord?
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  As I look at the Ten Commandments and how I live them out, those are ways that
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  I honor the one I call Lord.
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  Yeah. And if I honor the one I call Lord, then what I do is going to reflect my Lord's values.
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  Not my own, but my Lord's values.
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  Did a sermon here not long ago on the book of Ruth.
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  And a limeleck means, my God is king.
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  But do you remember what Elimelech did?
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  Basically, Elimelech didn't have enough faith that God would take care of his
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  family in a time of famine.
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  So he goes from Bethlehem to Moab. In other words, to the enemy.
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  Yeah. My God is my king. And then he goes to the enemy for food.
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  My God is my king. He takes his family with him. The boys end up dying.
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  His wife ends up a widow, their wives end up widows.
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  And that gives the background for the book of Ruth.
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  So to me, what we do on the Sabbath reflects.
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  Do we honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy because we honor the King, King Jesus?
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  To me, it's a reflection more of our relationship as to how we keep it than
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  being, okay, we're going to go
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  out and stone that guy because he picked up sticks on the Sabbath. Right.
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  We're going out and stone him. I do remember a congregation that because the
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  pastor mowed on Sunday, they fired him. Really?
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  Yeah. Of course, they didn't realize he didn't have any other day that week
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  he could do it. But that wasn't me. It wasn't me.
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  I wasn't mowing on Sunday. I don't mow on Sunday. But I just remember that.
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  And it was in this community. So I sort of remember it happening.
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  What do we do? Well, I really think it's a reflection of our faith as to how we keep the Sabbath.
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  So is it right or wrong? Yes.
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  And that's a great way to end that episode. Is it right or wrong? Yes.
• 18:34
  Okay. It's like when you're playing that, was it 20 questions game or whatever,
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  and you ask your brother if it's a not yes or no question, and they just say yes. Yes.
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  Yeah. About like we started this.
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  Exactly how we started it. Alrighty. Well, thank you guys for joining us.
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  Thank you, Don, as always. We hope to see you next time. Lord willing.
• 18:58
  Thank you for joining us for this podcast. Feel free to become part of this
• 19:01
  ministry by sharing with others.
• 19:03
  Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
• 19:07
  and is calling to us in our daily lives.
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  Thank you again for joining us and may God bless your day.