40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Kings 8:28-53 (Episode 301)

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

Solomon continues his prayer of dedication for the temple. Forgiveness is going to be needed in all things. Word of the wonders of God will spread. And why we should ask God to be who He has always been. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! HWSS Regional Conference 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you go to the events page because we've got a Here We Still Stand regional event coming up in northwest Arkansas April 22nd and 23rd. It's only $99 to come hang out with Chad and me, Eric Sorensen and Scott Keith and Kelsey Kambara

and Dan Van Voorhis and Caleb Keith and Andy Gullahorn, Jill Phillips, Scott Davis. All these people are going to be there, and it's going to be a good time because it was a great time last year, and we've got exciting plans for it. So make sure you register for that. We'd love to see you there. Make that the first, you know, traveling event you go to in 2022.

That could be the one. You can go to 1517.org, go to the events page, and you can find all the information there, or there's a link in the show notes, and you can do that. Chad, happy seventh birthday. It's a good biblical number. Happy seventh birthday. Yeah, this was on January 20th, which is the day we're actually recording this. 2015 we uh we dropped our first episode of four dimensions the old testament here we are

seven years later which means of course if we're kind of sticking with the biblical biblical numbers we have to take a sabbatical i think we should no we better not i just i just know that that means that when we started that you were in your uh 40s and i was in my 30s and that has now changed that that has now altered yeah that's changed we've gotten old chad in the last seven years yeah yeah yeah i'm uh i'm 51 now yeah so yeah and i i i am now i'm now 40 i'll be 42 this year so my beard has definitely more gray in it now than when we started so you know it's definitely longer than when we started too yeah yeah it's growing it's growing yeah you know my beard has exactly the same amount of gray in it i don't know what's going on fountain of youth

yeah something something yeah it's been it's been an interesting seven years especially the last two obviously but uh yeah it in a lot of ways that that went by pretty fast when you said seven it doesn't seem like seven years uh seven years to me and what we're on like 301 episodes and like that so yeah i mean we've uh spent a lot of time doing what we do what we do and uh yeah here we are in first kings we still have a ways to go job security right we got a lot long way to go still that's true that's true i will say this just as a thanks to all the people that that listen um I do think that when we dropped that first episode seven years ago, I was not anticipating the podcast ever having the amount of listeners that it does right now.

No, no, I didn't either. That's been a welcome surprise. Yeah, so we really do appreciate a bunch of you who I know have been around since the beginning because we see those messages and stuff. And then all the people that have jumped on over the course of the last seven years. And we've had a lot of growth recently The last few months has been The fastest growing time

In the podcast history So welcome to all the new people that listen to this And thank you to all the people who have been here For a long time We've got a good seven years left to go I think We've got plenty of material As long as God continues to

Let us hang around We'll just keep working our way through the text Well alright We are picking back up in 1 Kings 8, and Solomon, you know, he did some dedication of the temple in front of some people, gave a little speech that was, you know, maybe a little self-serving, but talked a little bit about the promises of God, and Solomon made sure to let people know that he was integral in making those things come about. But now he's offering a prayer, and this prayer is way better than his

speech. And you see some real honest stuff from Solomon. We kind of ended at a pivotal point in verse 27, where Solomon asks a really interesting question and says, but will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built. So Solomon has this moment where he's standing in the glory of the new temple that he's just built. And people are pretty excited. And Solomon realizes that he is actually talking about building a house for God who created everything. And maybe this whole endeavor is starting to seem a little ridiculous in the moment that he's praying to God. What Solomon doesn't know is that God's ultimate plan to dwell with man is far more ridiculous

other than that temple yeah it's a rhetorical question that solomon asked right well will god indeed dwell on the earth well of course not right so uh yeah he doesn't realize yeah what uh what's coming what's coming down the road that yeah god's gonna dwell on the earth it's not gonna be a house it's gonna be actually in in flesh in flesh and blood so it's a when you know the whole story and you read verses like this it's it's almost comical because you realize that he doesn't quite get it that uh in fact yeah the the the coming incarnation will provide a very positive answer to that question yes god will indeed dwell on the dwell on the earth you know i was thinking too when we were looking at these uh these couple of verses that uh it probably good just to kind of

step back remind everybody to just of the the israelite view of how the world is structured because we have a couple of references here to two at least of the what you might call stories in the world so that the uh i mean there's some variations of this on in the old testament but basically israelites believed in a a three-tiered or three-storied universe and the top of that would be what we refer to as heaven here as a reference to heaven in the highest heaven highest heaven is probably just another way of referring to the like the uttermost reach of heaven so in the israelite imagination in their mind you had the top the top part of the world was heaven and you had according to genesis 1 you kind of have this dome above which is our storehouses

of rain and snow and sleet and whatnot and then in that dome you have the you have the stars you have the sun you have the moon so that's what you think of as as the top so that's that's the heavens and then we dwell of course on the earth and the earth is pictured as or the land is pictured as kind of a a big island or series of islands that are floating so they're below the heavens but But they're above the sea, and the sea then is going to be, or the ocean, is going to be the lowest part of the world. So you have the three stories. You have heaven, then you have earth, and then you have the seas or the deeps. And some of that's reflected here in the way that Solomon describes.

Solomon asks these questions. So will a god indeed dwell on the earth right here at this temple? And then he says, behold, heaven and the highest heavens can't contain you. So even the heavens themselves, which are described elsewhere as the throne of God, this is where God looks down from. So even they can't contain you. So if the heavens can't contain you, then this house is certainly not going to, as it were, box you in or contain you. Now, getting back to what we were talking about at the beginning, the great irony here, of course, is that when the Son of God does come down, When he does, as John says, become flesh and tabernacle among us, or becomes the temple, then it is quite appropriate, not only appropriate, but necessary to say that the entirety of God is in the temple of Christ's body, or the entirety of God is in the tabernacle of Christ's body.

As Paul says in Colossians, that all the fullness, not most or not a third or not 99%, but all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in Christ. Yeah, that bodily is important. Yeah, it's hugely important. It's not as if here you have the body of Jesus, and then outside the body of Jesus you have more divinity. Yeah, it wasn't sort of like the divinity of God rested upon Jesus or anything like this. is that he is the God-man, and that the fullness of God dwells in him bodily. It's contained in that way, which is sort of the opposite of what Solomon is saying.

It's like, man, nothing can contain you, and God is going to say, well, I'm going to contain myself within a man. Yeah, so that we know no God apart from Jesus Christ. Right. He reveals the Father, the Spirit is from him, so that our understanding of who God is, where God is, how God acts, all of that is completely centered in the person of Christ. And so Solomon's questions, which are rhetorical questions, become actually real questions for us. And in the Incarnation, they're answered in the affirmative. And this then becomes, really, I mean, this is everything.

This is the entire hope of Christianity. If God is not fully bodily in Christ, then we have a big issue. But as Paul says, he is bodily fully present in our Lord. Yeah, I mean, if the answer to the question, but will God indeed dwell on the earth? The answer to that question is no, then Christianity is all for naught. We are to be pitied more than all men, as Paul says. None of this matters. You can shut the podcast off.

We're all wasting our time if the answer to that question is no. Yeah, so thank God the answer is yes. And yeah, it's fun to take passages like that and to look at them outside of their immediate context in the bigger story of salvation and realize that they receive an answer that Solomon did not envision

when he actually said these words. So the reason he says this, of course, is because he's dealing here, as we're going to see through the rest of this prayer, Solomon is dealing theologically with a couple of different truths from his perspective. He's thinking of the transcendence of God, but he's also thinking of the eminence of God.

So heaven and the highest heavens cannot contain you. True, Solomon would say. However, we have built this house, and so what's its purpose? Why exactly is it here? And he's going to begin to answer that question through the rest of this prayer. This prayer is phenomenal, by the way. We're going to see in 27 and following that he's going to list a lot of different scenarios where God's people are going

to cry out to him for help in all these various situations, and God's going to hear, and God's going to answer. And we're going to really see how the temple functions, and not just how the temple functions, but really what God is all about, what kind of God we're dealing with that is going to be addressed by all these various people in these situations. So to begin with in 28, having said this about heaven and the highest heavens in the house, he goes on to say, yet have regard. So even though this is true, Solomon says, nevertheless, have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O Lord, my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this

house, the place of which you have said, my name shall be there, that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offers toward this place and listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. And listen in heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive. There's a lot in here that's going to be fleshed out in the verses that following. I just want to point out a couple of things and we'll see more examples of this as we go on. So Solomon, as we find elsewhere in scripture, will talk about how it's not so much God that dwells in the temple, although that language is sometimes used, but there's a special focus upon God's name being in the temple. So he says here, of which you have said, that place of

which you have said, my name shall be there. So there is a sense in which God has, there's a distinction, as it were, between God and his name. And this is the distinction that we've seen in a lot of different ways throughout the podcast. Back in Exodus, we saw a distinction between Yahweh and his messenger. In Proverbs, you can see a distinction between Yahweh and wisdom. In the Psalms a lot, you'll see a distinction between God and his name, or sometimes God and his power. We certainly see a distinction between God and his spirit already in Genesis 1-2. And when you take all of these together, they become illustrations of how there is this, I think we've talked about this before, there is this complex monotheism that God is one, and yet there's a complexity to him, which, of course, is the Trinity. That, I think, is what this is ultimately leading us to.

When God says, my name is in the temple, he's not saying that he is somehow not in the temple, but he's making a distinction here between himself and his name. and it's especially in john's gospel where you see christ being identified with the name of god so i i read these in the big picture of scripture when god talks about putting his name in the temple this idea of the son is there my name is is there he is in he who will become the temple in the flesh is already in this temple waiting there to hear the prayers that you offer toward this place. Yeah, and it seems that Solomon knows that these prayers or these inquiries are mostly going to be pleas for forgiveness, right? So, I mean, he says, listen to the plea of your servant and the people of Israel. When they pray towards this place, listen in heaven

and your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive. Solomon is acknowledging that the prayer that you're going to hear most commonly is a confession of sin and a request to be forgiven of that sin? Yeah. So first of all, the verb that's used here in Hebrew is salach. And consistently, every time, in fact, that this verb is used in the Old Testament, God alone is the subject. So there's multiple occasions. We've encountered it elsewhere in the past, but there's going to be multiple occasions in this prayer where Solomon talks about forgiving or forgiving the sin or forgiving and acting. And every single time the verb is salach and that is that verb like create bara all of both these verbs in the old testament always have god

alone as a subject that's kind of that's the background by the way of when jesus forgives the paralytic and his i can't think of it's the scribes or pharisees whoever it is they say you know who can forgive sins but god alone that's what they're getting that from it's this idea that god alone slacks in the old testament he's the only one who can forgive and jesus as it were says yeah you're right so guess who i am yeah yeah i am i am the god who forgives i am the god who silox uh so yeah you see this in a lot of these petitions where the temple is there for people to cry out in all these various kinds of afflictions whether it's a you know drought or whether it's captivity or whether it's defeat and war and they're asking god over and over to

forgive he's because well that's who god is he's a he is the forgiver and so one of the purposes of the temple is for god's name to be there so that when his people do cry out that god can do what god delights to do and that is to forgive his people so we have seven different scenarios here and the first one begins in verse 31 so i'll just quickly go through these just summarizing them so So the first one is if a man sins against his neighbor. Second one is when your people, Israel, are defeated. So that's going to be a military context. Third one is when heaven is shut up and there is no rain.

So, of course, that's going to be a drought context. 37 is like it if there's famine in the land or pestilence or these other kinds of natural phenomena. Next one is if a foreigner, so a non-Israelite, comes and cries out to you. and then verse 44 if people go out to battle against their enemies so that's another scenario and then 46 the last one is if they sin against you and you're angry with them and they get taken into captivity then hear them so that's the seventh petition so if this happens or when this happens or when this happens so each of these are going to be slightly different there's some duplication but each of these is slightly different than than the other ones and in each of these

cases, this is a highly structured prayer. So you have seven scenarios. You also have seven times the phrase here in heaven. So tishma hashmayim in Hebrew. So when this happens here in heaven, when that happens here in heaven, every single time Solomon says, when the people are faced with this scenario and they cry out to you, then here in heaven. So there is that distinction then between God putting his name in the temple, but God hearing in heaven. So the temple is sort of this medium, if you will, mediator between the people's prayers and God hearing in heaven. So the prayers, as it were, pass through the temple and then up into the ears of God so that he hears from heaven and then he acts on behalf of his people. Yeah, I love this in there in verse 46. Solomon

shows he's a pretty good theologian at times, where he does say, if they sin against you, this being the people, and then adds, and there is no one who does not sin. Yeah, that's a great line. Maybe the reason that he starts this by saying, hey, this would be a great place to have an outpost of forgiveness. He ends then by saying, hey, when we sin, which of course is going to happen it's going to happen yeah i i love the the built-in realism of of the scriptures too i mean there's no idealism here that you know if a person sins because you know not everybody is going to there might be some ideal perfect person out there who never sins the bible's like no no everybody's

gonna sin but yeah this is this is uh not the same not the same thing either as saying you know And if someone sins because nobody's perfect, it's not like that. If you sin and there is no one who does not sin, this isn't just like, hey, we're all flawed. It's not like that. Like, no, you're dealing with sinners here. It's like, as it's Psalm 14, God looks down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there's anyone who does good. He's like, nope, there is not one. Every single one of them have gone astray.

so solomon yeah a good theologian here points out the fact that because everybody sins everybody therefore is in need of having this place to cry out to god that god might actually forgive them so let's work our way through uh through these we're not spending a whole lot of time with each of them but just to kind of give you a flavor for how they go so the first one starts out in verse 31 if a man sins against his neighbor he may to take an oath comes and swears his oath before the altar then here in heaven and act and judge your servants so basically asking god to be the ultimate judge to condemn the guilty and to vindicate the righteous because of course god has established earthly judges israel had earthly judges and solomon as we've already seen the king was sort

of the one man supreme court so if there was like moses had been earlier so if there are cases that are not dealt with or can't be dealt with by minor judges, if you will, they ultimately come up to the Supreme Court, which is one man, Solomon. But Solomon and all these other judges, they're nothing more than, at least they're supposed to be nothing more than, the mask of the heavenly judge to pronounce whatever the verdict might be. But God behind them is the ultimate judge who will, as we say in the creed, will judge the living and the dead. so that's number one scenario and there's no forgiveness there because this is a case of basically him making a judicial decision declaring the innocent to be righteous declaring the guilty

to be to be uh guilty next we move to a military context when your people are defeated before their enemy because they have sinned against you i love the kind of the assumption there is that they wouldn't be defeated if they were doing your will. Yeah, this is exactly how Solomon views this, it seems, that if we are walking uprightly, if we are worshiping the way that we ought to worship, then

we're going undefeated. Yeah. There's no problem with victory if we're actually doing what we should be doing. But in this case, they're defeated because they've sinned against you. So, again, he's acknowledging this could happen and probably will happen,

And so he says, if they do that and they turn again to you, acknowledge your name, pray and plead with you in this house, then once more here in heaven and forgive. There's that verb again to forgive the sin of your people and bring them back again to the land you gave to their fathers. Now, there seemed to be built into this also the assumption that when this happens, there's going to be exile involved. because bring them back to the land you gave to their fathers is then implying that they're going to be and as commonly happened in ancient warfare, if you were defeated and you were a POW,

well, you're going to be sold as a slave. That's just kind of the way it happened. You can be kept by the ones who were the victors or you're sold as a slave to another people. Yeah, this feels mildly prophetic too. Yeah, there's a lot of that in this. There's a lot of this in this prayer, especially when you get to the very last petition.

It's like, man, Solomon is, as it were, filled with the prophetic spirit, and he's looking ahead down a few generations to what's going to happen at the very end of the southern kingdom when the Babylonians come in. Third one is when the heaven is shut up and there's no rain, again, because they have sinned against you. And they pray toward this place, acknowledge your name, turn from their sin. When you afflict them, then again, hear in heaven and forgive. and then it goes on to say and teach them the good way in which they should walk grant lane upon rain upon your land which you have given to your people as an inheritance so this is a one more case we've seen hundreds of these where in the israelite mind there are no kind of primary and secondary causes of things so everything is is attributed directly to god god is the one who

gives the rain god's the one who withholds the rain god is the one who sends plagues god is the one who withholds plagues so everything is there is there are no primary secondary as we tend to talk it's all directed to god next one is very similar verse 37 uh if there's famine so if there's famine in the land and then it lists a whole bunch of other things that could happen such as pestilence or blight or mildew or locust or caterpillar or if an enemy comes in it besieges all of these things that are listed there then he calls upon everyone to stretch out their hands toward this house and when they do ask god to hear in heaven your dwelling place now let me pause there just for a second because i think this is interesting so if you go back to verse 13

verse 13 at the beginning of the chapter he solomon says i have built you talking to god of course i built you an exalted house a place for you to dwell in a place for you to dwell in forever now he's talking of course about the temple this dwelling place of god now when you go so that was verse 13 now when you go to verse 39 that i just read to you he says now here in heaven your dwelling place that's the same phrase that occurs in back in verse 13 so solomon is is walking a theological tightrope here because on the one hand he says i built you a dwelling place this temple but then he goes on to say you know of course heaven and the highest heavens can't contain you much less his house and then he goes on in verse 39 to describe heaven as the

dwelling place of god so we might be asking ourselves well which is which is god's dwelling place is it the temple or is it heaven and of course the answer is both just in different sorts ways so here in heaven your only place again forgive act render to render to your people then one of my favorites actually uh in this in this prayer it begins the verse 41 likewise when a foreigner who is not of your people israel so we're talking about gentiles here you would think that solomon being like in jerusalem at the temple the center of the israelite life would be focused just upon the israelites but he's not he says when a foreigner not of your people israel comes from a far country for your name's sake and then he has in parentheses for

they shall hear of your great name and of your mighty hand and of your outstretched arm so when this happens and when this foreigner comes and prays toward this house here in heaven your dwelling place and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you as do your people israel and that they may know that this house that i have built is called by your name yeah this is this is pretty nice That's amazing. Yeah, that's good. That is good.

I mean, he's basically saying that when people start hearing the rumors and they hear the murmurs and they decide to come and explore this God, be merciful to that person. Yeah, it's really, I think it's Solomon looking at the big picture of God's dealings with the children of Abraham. and Solomon knowing that already back in Genesis 12, God promised Abraham that he would not be a blessing to the people of Israel, just to his descendants, but he would be, in fact, a blessing to the entire world. Now, in your seed shall all the nations, not just the Jews, but all the nations

of the earth be blessed. And at the same time, so he's looking at the Abrahamic promise that through Abram's seed, the entire world would be blessed. But I think Solomon is also reflecting upon the fact that in Exodus 19, God said that he is establishing the Israelites as a kingdom of priest in a holy nation. And as a nation of priest, the basic job of the Israelites were to be the ones who took the truths of God and brought those to the nations. So I do think we tend to have this view that the outward focus of the people of God only began with Genesis 28 and the Great Commission. That's not the vision that we have from the Old Testament, beginning with not just Abraham, but even before them, of course. But with Abraham especially, we have this focus

upon God's will for all the nations to come to the truth. And then you certainly see this happening with prophets like Jonah and other prophets who talked to the nations, where there was always this built-in desire on the part of God for the Israelites to take the message that they had been given and to be that light to the rest of the nations. Now, by and large, they failed miserably at that, but it wasn't like God all of a sudden decided in the New Testament that this is the way things should be. It just so happens that that's what began to happen after the ministry of Christ. Yeah, it's not as though Israel is overly evangelistic.

However, the evangelism that does take place is the proclamation of all the mighty things that God has done. And Solomon suspects that others are going to hear about this, and that God wants others to hear about this, that they might be drawn in. Yeah, and we've seen that happen a few times. I mean, we saw that happen in the case of Rahab, of course, in Jericho. We see that we're going to see it happen later with Nahum and the Syrian. And probably a lot of unrecorded cases. We've already seen people like Uriah the Hittite and other foreigners who are part of the people of Israel.

For whatever the reason might be that drew them in, they have become part of the people of Israel. And we're going to see that in the reign of Solomon, too, of course, where the Queen of Sheba comes, as assuming also that other peoples came from far distances in order to find out not just about Solomon, but about the God who had given the wisdom to Solomon. And Solomon therefore sees the temple as not just, well, it's an Israelite temple, but it's more than that. It's a temple in Israel for all the nations. And Jesus himself is going to reflect this when he He, you know, overturns the tables of the money changers and says that his house is a house of prayer. And it's a house of prayer, not just for the Israelites, but for all, all the nations.

OK, 44 is the next one. Next to last one, actually. If your people go out to battle against their enemy and they pray toward the city that you have chosen, the house, then here in heaven, your prayer here in heaven, their prayer and their plea and literally do their justice, which is the ESV translates as. maintain their cause. So this is just basically envisioning a time when there's going to be a battle and people of Israel cry out to God to give them victory. Now, the last one, the seventh one, is this. This is the one that you referred to earlier, Dan.

If they sin against you, for there's no one who does not sin, and you're angry with them and give them to their enemies so that they are carried away captive to the land of their enemy, far off or near, yet if they turn their heart in the land into which they've been carried captive and repent and plead with you in the land of the captors saying, we have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly.

If they repent with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies who carried them captive and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city that you have chosen, the house that I built for your name. That's a long like, that's a long if.

it's all there in verses 46 through through uh 48 so if this happens basically if they're if they're exiled which is going to happen it's going to happen in the northern kingdom in 722 it's going to happen to the southern kingdom in 586 so not if but when this happens and they're in captivity in exile and they repent and they cry out to you and they they confess their sins then verse 49 then here in heaven your dwelling place their prayer maintain their cause forgive your people and then he adds grant them compassion in the sight of those who carry them captive and then he goes on to talk about you know what else he what else he wants god to do basically but this one is is by far the longest of them it takes up verses 46 through 53 it's

longest of these, when this happens. And it kind of makes sense because this is really going to be the ultimate punishment that the people of Israel suffer. In fact, there's a lot of Exodus echoes in this. In fact, he talks in verse 51 about how God brought them out of Egypt from the midst of the iron furnace. So even in this prayer, he makes reference to that original Exodus that takes place. Yeah, it seems like he very much is saying, if we get carted off, make sure that you deliver us like you did the other time, right? So he's asking God to do what he has already done. And you see, he even brings up Moses at the end in verse 53, where he says, for you separated them from among all the peoples of the earth to be your heritage as you declared through Moses your

servant when you brought our fathers out of egypt he's saying like there might be a time where we might find ourselves in a egypt-like situation uh due to our sin what would be great is if you also if we also found ourselves in an exodus-like situation following that and that becomes a major part of the preaching the prophets yeah much later on you see that all over isaiah you see well basically there's no prophet except maybe you know some of the shorter prophets like maybe you don't see it in Nahum, but most of the prophets, certainly all the major prophets, Isaiah, you see it, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, they all talk about this plea to God to act and to bring his people home from exile, just as he did during the days of the Exodus.

So the Exodus becomes the go-to divine action by which the Israelites in their current plight in their current exile, say to God, basically, hey, what you did back then, do now. In fact, it even goes back further. So if you go to, I believe it's Judges 6, it's the beginning of the Gideon story, the land is kind of in an exile in the sense that the Midianites, the Malachites, and the people of the East are oppressing the Israelites,

and Gideon is hiding out. He's threshing wheat inside this wine vat. He's like hiding. And the messenger of the Lord comes and says, hello, or how he greets Gideon. Then he says, the Lord is with you. And Gideon says, oh, yeah. Well, if God is with me, then why hasn't he provided his relief like he did for our forefathers in Egypt? So even in Gideon's day, there was this idea that when you want God to act in the present, you ask him to act now the way that he did in the past. so that becomes the basis on which the prophets preach over and over for god to act in the present and in the future and then that all translate this this whole thing the original exodus the

exiles that follow that the need to return from exile all of this then then uh works its way into into the new testament that's why exile and return and exodus language becomes so dominant in the gospels all of this stretches all the way back to the exodus itself and then the hope of the prophets for God to enact this exodus that will out-exodus all other exoduses in the return of his son from the exile of death, and then our return in him to life again. Yeah, I mean, you definitely see this in Jesus' day. I mean, the people at that time are still asking God how long it's going to be before they are, you know, delivered from the hand of their oppressor. I I mean, so, you know, in Jesus' day, it's not like being carted off into Babylon necessarily,

but it's still not exactly living in your own country, being free. Yeah, you know, they'd been just under foreign oppression for centuries. First it was the Assyrians, Babylonians, then the Greeks, and then the Romans. It was just like outside of that one century of relative freedom under the Maccabean rulers, they were under basically they were in home exile you might say right well what they're yeah what they're really crying out for is a sort of moses david hybrid messiah right so they want a deliverer but who's also a warrior you know moses not not much of a warrior that we know of anyway that's not the reputation he has but he has a reputation as as deliverer for sure if you're oppressed at

home uh the the person you're wanting is the the deliverer warrior so you're like if i could get this sort of moses-like yet david-like messianic figure that would be great and that would that would solve the problems yeah and that's and that's what they get it just not not what they expected yes yeah the son of david comes and uh the the prophet like moses comes uh he just doesn't fit their preconception of what he what he should should be like uh he rides into jerusalem not to thrash the romans but to get crucified by the romans yeah yeah they weren't expecting a dude to come riding in talking about tearing the temple down no no it was uh he uh he upended all their all their expectations but i mean that he yeah he upended their expectations but he was actually

doing exactly what god had planned all along just uh you know people have their own ideas of how god should work and god has his ideas of how he should work so the exodus does happen and the people who are in exile are brought home from the very ends of the earth it just so happens that they're brought home by becoming part of this son of david this this moses we are our our baptisms are our repatriation from the far off land back into the holy land because we are brought out of death and darkness and we're brought into the body of the body of christ so we each have our we have our exodus each of us do when we're baptized and united to the body of christ yeah well you know jesus shows up and they want him to do one thing and he's he's busy trying to

work this forgiveness that solomon is requesting he's like i'm trying to get that worked out for you so yeah so anyway that's that's the prayer we uh we finished it uh i know we didn't finish the chapter but uh there's a lot of a lot of great material in there well next time we're going to get to what solomon says afterward his his benediction to the people and then we got a ton of sacrifices he's going to offer some we got some blood to shed a lot of blood shit yeah all right man uh guys make sure that you register up for the event if you want to come hang out with us in april chad i'll see you next week all right see you then We'll see you next time.