40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 153 (Numbers 32:28-34:29)

Episode Date: February 21, 2019

What does the common old testament phrase "before the Lord" really mean? God is everywhere, but is He everywhere in the same way? Why does Moses insert a travel log toward the end of Numbers? God commands that all the false gods and worship sites be destroyed before they settle in a land. And we are introduced to the phrase "a thorn in your side." Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network CHF City Events Support The Podcast

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 over to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the things that we've got going on over there. Could be that you're like, man, I've got time for another podcast. I'm 40 minutes in the Old Testament all day, every day because I'm behind. That's fine. You just keep on plugging away until you're caught up.

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are flourishing that's how it works three coming up right bam bam bam yeah march april and may the one that's closest austin and that's that's just a couple weeks away austin is a march 9th so i'll be there chad will be there donovan riley scott keith valerie locklear and daniel in Austin, Texas, you guys should come out. It's free. You can't afford not to. It's free for you. All you got to do is go over to Christville Fast.

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But maybe you're like, Austin, I live in the Midwest, dude. I ain't going down to Texas. That's fine. because we've got you in Des Moines, Iowa, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. So Midwest covered. We'll bring Texas to you. That's right, bringing Texas to you. We're bringing the South to you up there in the Midwest.

We have to schedule those a little later because you guys, in your cold weather, we don't want any of it. So we'll be there in April and May. Iowa and Minneapolis, you can go over to the City Events page, check those out, registration for those, also free. chad what's going on in the book of numbers man we're starting to wind down here i can i can feel the wind down before we get to the longest sermon in the bible yeah we are like you know we have reached the altitude and now we are beginning the descent so it will not be not be long at all

we are uh the beginning of chapter 33 right now i might say one thing about chapter 32 that i don't think i said last time and then uh we're gonna rush on along we'll see how far we get this time but i would say within an episode and a half then uh don't call me a false prophet it doesn't happen but within an episode and a half we should be getting right there to the end of numbers and ready to jump into deuteronomy yeah there you go you know i had someone send us a message and he He said, what book are you guys starting next? And I said, Deuteronomy. He said, oh, yeah, I should have figured that.

Which I took as, I was kind of hoping maybe you guys would jump into something else. Oh, Deuteronomy would be good. Yeah, man. Once you get through, I mean, we got through Leviticus and Numbers, man. Like, Deuteronomy is, like, exciting by comparison. I was like, that's Moses at his finest. That's his swan song. So, you know, it's, you know, it's going to be good.

It's going to be great. Yeah. We'll go, we'll be back in that narrative soon enough. We will be. Yeah. Joshua is, uh, we'll be here for, we know it. So back to, back to 32, one thing I want to say about that, like I, like I mentioned, I don't remember if I actually said this or just thought it, but in chapter 32, that's where you have the two and a half tribes of Reuben and Gad and that half tribe of Manasseh, Joseph's son, where they decide that, hey, the grazing is so good on the other side of the Jordan, the Transjordan, that we're just going to stay here. Is that okay? And of course, Moses overreacts because he thinks that they're rebelling against the Lord's gift. But everything

works its way out in the end because they kind of make a compromise. And these two and a half tribe said listen listen we will be the marines we're going to be the the the first boots on the ground when you cross over the jordan to conquer conquer the promised land and we're going to we're going to bear the brunt of the battle so we're not going to like just stay here and let our brothers cross the jordan and do all the work instead we're going to we're going to go ahead of you we're going to leave our wives and our and our children behind we're going to build some fortifications for them. So they'll be safe. And presumably some men would, would stay behind too, to serve as, uh, to serve as guards for, for the women and children. But for the most part, the men are

going to go ahead. Uh, the fighting men are going to go ahead of the rest of the tribes over the Jordan, and they're going to be the Marines that, uh, that clear the way. So what I wanted to say is that, uh, seven times we have this phrase that occurs in chapter 32, beginning of verse 20. that's in hebrew it's lift nay yahweh uh we usually translate it something like before the lord so verse 20 for instance moses is speaking to them and says if you will do this that is if you will be these these these troops that go ahead of everyone else if you will arm yourselves lift nay yahweh before the lord for the war and all of you will do this etc etc so he's kind of setting up if you will do this then everything's going to be okay now what i want to say is that

this phrase lift me away before the lord occurs seven times and uh it's used in other contexts especially in battle to indicate that what this is talking about is not simply hey you're going to go and you're going to fight and god's going to be there watching over you protecting you blessing you as you as you battle but instead this is a not in this is not kind of an abstract sort of thing like you know god is in your midst or something like that this is a a concrete the concrete terminology for the presence of the of the ark of the covenant with with the army so when they go before the lord that's just not saying hey god's going to be with you and bless you this is saying that god is actually his throne his ark of the covenant is going to be there with

you when you go into battle and we i think a couple episodes ago we talked about that when The Midianites were conquered by the Israelites, and Phineas was there, and it said that they took with them the trumpets and the holy vessels of the Lord. Well, one of those would have been the Ark of the Covenant. So I think that's probably what that phrase, that seven-fold phrase, Lifne Yahweh, before the Lord means, is that God's going to be there, but you're actually going to see his throne covered up. So this is the visible, tangible affirmation that God is in your midst when his Ark of the Covenant goes with you. This is why the Nazis wanted the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yeah, exactly. Everybody who's watched the movie knows the true biblical meaning of that.

That's right. They didn't want to just have God sort of watching them. They were like, hey, we're at war here. Let's get that Ark. We don't want to look at it. We're going to march it into battle with us. Exactly. Thank God for Indiana Jones.

Just imagine what would have happened. Yeah, if they had that, geez, who knows? Yeah, our future would have been different. yeah i saw the man in the high castle right i i flipped through uh i was flipping through tv the other day and uh just so happened that raiders of the lost ark was on and i just stopped on it and it was it was the end of it and uh you know where the dude like opens it up and stuff and like his face melts off those special effects didn't hold up too well over over the last however long it's been 30 years or whatever anytime i uh anytime my wife and i watch an

old movie like that like from the 80s or something you got all these special effects back then we just end up laughing you know it can be like a totally serious scene or supposed to be scary or something and we're just cracking up because the special effects are are so outdated yeah like my daughter was just in there and she was laughing and i'm like yeah i didn't laugh when i saw that no back then that was like wow that was jaw-dropping awesome yeah it was very i was terrifying you know yeah but anyway yeah yeah so yeah so it's not um yeah it's not just you know before the lord so in other words like god sees is going to see you it's that he's going to be in your midst in a and this is an interesting thing about god uh locale right isn't related

but it's related to the locale of god uh sure god's omnipresent right i mean he's everywhere We know this about God, that you can't escape his sight, right? This is a biblical concept. There's no hiding from him. When he's wandering around the garden looking for Adam and Eve, he knows where they are. He sees everything. But God is not located in all places in the same way. So an Old Testament example would be the Ark of the Covenant.

So, of course, God is with them in the sense that he's with everyone. He's everywhere. But he's located where the Ark of the Covenant is in a specific way, doing a specific thing. This is the same kind of thing that happens in, you know, baptism and the Lord's Supper and this kind of thing, like where places that he's promised to be doing a certain thing is different than sort of just the general God is everywhere thing. So the God that you're looking for out in the field of flowers, trying to get spiritual, is not, you're not going to find God there the same way that

you're going to find God in the bread and wine at the Lord's table. Yeah, I think this is one of the truths that is broadly speaking absent in a lot of churches today. This understanding of the localized, eminent presence of

God. And it's not only missing, but when it is talked about, it's Old Testament background is often left off. Because, yeah, you have that already from the i mean you have that actually geographically in the garden of eden right god is in all creation of course but where does he go walking well he goes walking in the garden in the cool of the day that's where he takes his that's where he takes his stroll he doesn't walk

around on the other side of the globe that is the specific place where where he's located and then that becomes that location divine location theme just permeates the rest of the scriptures yeah and And one thing that when they do talk, I mean, the presence of God is a phrase that is not absent from most churches. In fact, it's probably too dominant in a lot of churches, but it's not connected with anything. It's not connected with any word from God that this is where I'll be. It's just sort of the presence of God. And you'll try to usher in the presence of God, which just means that you feel it's a thicker feeling, right? You feel like he's more present than he was earlier, but you don't really have to do that because God has already promised to be specifically present, but with certain things.

So it's very, it's a very rare thing for God to just show up under the forms of nothing. I'm not saying like he doesn't ever do it in the scriptures where God just, you know, the presence of God just shows up like that. I mean, it certainly happened, but you don't have to, like, try to make that happen. And it's a rare thing for it to happen when he said, I'm always right here and I'm always right over here. And this thing, another thing, it's almost connected with these physical things, Ark of the Covenant and, you know, the temple and bread and wine and all of this kind of stuff. This is the way that God constantly reaffirms that he continues to be the creator, right? Right. So it's not like when you're when you're past Genesis chapter two, then God kind of lays aside that work of creating.

He's done. Everything's made. And now he's going to move on to whatever's next. No, I mean, he is the creator. And one of the ways that he continues to manifest his work of creation is by choosing certain elements in creation to make his localized presence available to us. So when you have these elements of creation, whether it's the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament or the Garden of Eden or the sacrifices or whatever it might be, or in the New Testament, the water of baptism or the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper or the spoken word. I mean, all of this stuff of creation where God puts his promises is a way of him continually affirming to us, I am the creator. And I'm not just in the sense of I'm super powerful and I can make all things, but I'm the creator in the sense that my love is embedded in the stuff of creation. This is where I come to you. I might be the creator, but when I'm coming to you and blessing you, I'm coming to you in the forms of creation because you yourself are not this kind of spiritual beings trapped in the body. You are a good and an image bearing creation, part of creation.

And so I come to you not just in sort of ethereal ways, but I come to you in the stuff of creation because that's who you are. and of course all this just funnels into the ultimate manifestation of god and creation that's in the incarnation so you could say that all the old testament is a is a is sort of a the word there's a great old testament introduction by horos homo called the word becoming flesh so it's an old testament introduction but it's the word not be the word became but the word becoming flesh because that's what the old testament is it's kind of this this gradual unfolding of what's going to lead to the incarnation so all these incarnational kinds of things in the old testament prepare the way for this ultimate manifestation of god

making himself part of creation everlastingly in the incarnation yeah and that's why uh you know numbers 32 is about the sacraments uh which you didn't know yeah which you didn't know exactly so uh anyway that's a that's a kind of a recap and a few thoughts more about numbers 32 now numbers 33 moving along is uh it's got uh a couple of main sections to it this is uh the first first part of the chapter it's actually the main part of the chapter the first 49 verses fall into a genre that's known as the itinerary genre which is this basically means that it's going to be a record of the places where they journeyed from and to. And this is actually documented.

So this particular way of describing traveling or journeying is not unique to Numbers chapter 33. There are documents from Assyria that date to around the 9th century. So they are later than numbers, but still part of that whole culture of the Near East that have an itinerary genre that's very similar to exactly what we find here in the Book of Numbers, where you have basically, okay, we start at A, and then we go to B. And then B becomes A in the next section, and B to C, and then go from C to D. So that's the way this is all set up. and also interspersed in there might be on occasion some comments like uh verse 14 uh now it was at rephidim but the people had no water to drink so they they don't not only say okay they go from here to here and from here to there and from there to the next place but they also insert on

occasion these these comments about maybe something that happened there or some geographical feature of the of the place so these ninth century assyrian documents do the exact same thing so we have a parallel to what happens in numbers 33 and some other not just in that those assyrian documents but in some other other documents as well from from egypt and from elsewhere so this is in other words this is part of kind of the way that the people of that time of that culture described uh the way they journeyed from place to place so that's that picks it up that's That rule, the travel, begins really in verse 5. It's introduced with kind of a brief recap of how it all got started.

It starts out, verse 1, So that kind of sets the stage as to what's going to happen later, kind of the heading of the chapter. And it says, moses recorded their starting places according to their journeys and so moses is designated here then as the one he kept track right he was the secretary if you will he kept track of all these places that they that they went to and verse three says it started on the 15th day of the first month on the passover when they came out boldly in the sight of all the israel of the egyptians

literally that's like with uplifted hand you can kind of picture this this sign of victory or or bold defiance, if you will, the Israelites coming out in the presence of all the Egyptians while the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn whom the Lord had struck down. So there's this real stark contrast here. So here are the Israelites who had been slaves now marching defiantly out of Egypt. And that's the one picture. And then the other side of the picture are the Egyptians who had been the masters and the persecutors now they are burying their firstborn sons so you have this this reversal

that the lord puts into place where the high and mighty and the powerful are brought low and the low and the powerless and the suffering are brought are brought high so this is this is that that theme of great reversal that we see all the way through the scriptures that mary herself sings about in the Magnificat, where, you know, the lofty are brought down and the lowly are lifted up. That's the way that the Lord works. And we have this other phrase that we talked about a long time ago, back in Exodus chapter 12. It just pops up here in verse 4 of Numbers 33. It said, the Lord also executed judgment on their gods. So you have to remember when you're thinking about the 10 plagues, that these plagues were not simply directed against the people, against the

Egyptians, against the ones who had held the Israelites in bondage, but it was also directed against the gods that the Egyptians themselves were in bondage to. And that's the reason that the plagues fall out the way they do. The Nile and the gnats and the frogs and all the various elements of creation that were used by god to plague egypt all of those various elements of creation in one way or another were iconic of the egyptian gods at the time you think of a lot of the nile for instance well there was nothing more important than the nile for egypt if if the if the nile did not exist egypt would not exist because it was the annual flooding of the nile that was was the means by which egypt was able to produce the crops that they did so no nile no egypt and

So the Nile was understood to be the embodiment of one of the Egyptian gods, and it was the lifeblood of Egypt. Well, so when God transforms that into blood, this is his way of basically saying, well, I'll show you what a puny god that Egyptian god is because I can turn his waters into blood. So this is the Lord's way of pronouncing judgments on the Egyptian gods and also kind of to sync with what we said earlier, demonstrating that he is the true creator. And he does that by using that which he has created and which idolaters have deified to show that it is nothing more than something of his own creation and thus under his power. It's a judgment on their gods by the fact that their gods are unable to help them in these situations, right? When you're being struck by plagues and you believe in any number of different deities and those deities don't show up or at the very least are objectively powerless to stop it, well, your deity has sort of been exposed as being weak. You see this sort of – I mean one of my favorite stories in the Old Testament is when they put the Ark in the same room with Dagon and he just keeps like falling over, like busting his hands off and stuff. It's just amazing.

Even the false gods have to bow down in front of the true god. He can't even stand upright. He just falls over. yeah yeah just showing like what what a what a weak god you have yeah yeah well it's how it's like that too with uh another story uh when elijah challenges the prophets of baal yeah the contest right so they both set up altars and the reason the reason that story is like this story is because baal was the god of the sky he was god of thunder and so if anybody should have been able to send down lightning and start the sacrifice well it should have been baal i mean what what else would

the lightning sky god do and yet of course he doesn't and then elijah's like yeah i think i'm gonna pour like a whole bunch of water on my sacrifice yeah like like hundreds of gallons yeah hundreds of gallons and then fire comes down and reduces it all to ashes so that i mean that if you ever wonder about humor in the bible just read that story because it's it's very it's hilarious especially when you listen to elijah call louder maybe cut yourself some more Or maybe, you know, maybe your God has gone to the restroom for a while. Or maybe he's asleep. Maybe you need to holler a little bit louder.

He's just mocking them mercilessly. Yeah. Yeah, God is in the business of exposing your ridiculous God. Yeah, yeah. That's what Psalm 2 says. I mean, in one of the few places in the Bible where it says the Lord laughs, Psalm 2 is where he laughs. He laughs at the falsities of the gods of the pagan peoples and the peoples themselves who have sworn allegiance to those false gods. So, yeah, I mean, idolatry angers God, but it also makes him laugh, laugh and derision at the falsity of it all.

OK, so back to Numbers 33, the Lord executed these judgments against their gods. Then, verse 5, we start the travel itinerary. It's basically broken up into three different sections, verses 5 through 15, document the journey through all the various campsites from when they left Egypt until they reached the wilderness of Sinai. And then verses 16 and 17 are when they're actually at Sinai and then they leave going to Kadesh. and then from there from verses 18 through 49 basically cover almost 38 years this is this is where they were during their years of uh of traveling around through through the wilderness so uh those are those are the that's a travel itinerary so we were here for a while and then we went somewhere else and i think there's only one verse that says how long they stayed at a

place most of these don't don't say you know did they camp there overnight were they a week were they there for a year well we we really don't know all we know is that they went from one place one place to another now as to why this is recorded uh actually uh i was reading a commentary by the uh the medieval jewish uh scholar named maimonides and uh i thought i thought he had a great point here he he said basically this this travel itinerary is is one of the reasons it's here is you know in case later generations ever wondered well exactly where where were the Israelites I mean were they like close to some nice land were they uh a place where they could you know where there's a lot of pasture land or there's a lot of water no they were in the middle

of nowhere and because they were in the middle of nowhere the only way they could get food and water was through the manna and through the the the water rock from which god provided water for them so this was according to maimonides one of the reasons this was recorded these place names are recorded so as to make sure that later generations of israelites knew that the only way that the israelites going to make it from place to place in these debt in this desolate area is through the lord's provision and through his provision alone so which which i think uh which made made sense to me can't think of anything else that i wanted to comment on regarding the the travel itinerary so that ends at verse 49 now the last half of the chapter which is only uh about

six verses is a repetition of the command that we've we've encountered before that when the israelites get into the promised land they're not to cozy up with the pagan inhabitants it's funny it's it's funny that this has to be reiterated so many times it's just it's like moses is like i no i just got i have a bad feeling about what's coming so i'm gonna say this again this has been a this is an objective problem that uh but this is most certainly a problem that you will see over and over again in the old testament yeah and you know they this is also one of those things that that never was faithfully and completely followed never they were supposed to go in and eradicate all the nations and drive them out uh and establish the boundaries of israel not to

intermarry with these uh these pagan peoples uh not to be uh enticed to participate in their idolatrous worship and yet time and time and time again that's exactly what happened in fact uh where's it i think it was first kings chapter nine i was looking at this morning and it's it's when solomon is building the temple and it says that some of the people that he used to help build the temple were among the pagan nations that they had they basically turned him into slaves so those who were still in the land i mean this is like centuries later uh these these descendants of the original canaanites moses i mean not moses solomon turned into slaves to help build his mansion and and and the temple so in other words they were still there right nothing they never did

completely drive out all these nations yeah well solomon's a good example of this he is like the wisest man that ever lived and still can't obey this command because i mean he he intermarries and worships all these gods and has all this stuff going on he married foreign wives and he wanted to keep them happy so he bought he built temples to to their gods and lo and behold that look what happened you know that was the beginning of the end for for israel so uh back to numbers uh just to to reaffirm exactly what is said here uh lord is speaking through moses and says look when you when you cross the jordan into the land of canaan then i want you to do three things i want you to drive out the inhabitants of the land i want you to destroy all their figured stones and i want you

destroy and demolish their molten images and their high places. So there's a two-fold destruction that goes on. Not only do I want you to drive out the peoples, but everything that remains of their worship sites, of their

idolatrous worship sites, whether that is the altars or their images or their Asherah poles or whatever it might be, I want you to completely wipe it out. So I don't want these still remaining as temptations or pollutants upon the land i want you to destroy them utterly and then after you've done that you take possession of the land and uh this is the way i want you to

divide it out you know if you're the first of all the the land the borders of each tribe were determined by lot but then depending on how big or how small the clans were they were given either smaller or larger portions of of land within within that allotted uh tribal amount and then verse 55 he says it again if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you then it shall come about that those whom you let remain will become as as uh thorns as pricks in your eyes and as in your eyes and as thorns in your sides and they shall trouble you in the land in which you live and it shall come about that as I plan to do to them so I will do to you so I plan to destroy them and if you if you don't follow my commands and I will end up destroying you which

is in the long perspective exactly what happened to to Israel this language by the way of thorns in your eyes and in your sides uh comes up a couple other times it comes up in uh in joshua and i believe it comes up in ezekiel and and i wonder if this is not kind of the background of what paul is talking about in second corinthians 12 when he talks about a thorn in his side i know the the greek word for thorn that paul uses is i believe the same word that's uh that's used here as well in in verse 55 in the greek translation so that could be the image that uh that paul was drawing from when he was talking about this thorn in his side that the

Lord let remain to trouble him. Yeah, so I mean, I think that this might just be obvious, but you don't hear a thorn in your eye very often. And I think that if you just think about this for a second,

you get the idea of what God is saying. If you don't get rid of this stuff, you're not going to be able to see clearly. I don't know if you think about this, but But if you have a thorn in your eyeball, that's going to impair your sight. I would assume. You are not going to be able to see clearly.

And so this will impair your spiritual vision, as it were, if you have this stuff. And it's going to be a long-term nuisance to you. So a thorn in your side, think about having just a massive splinter or something. It's like having a rock in your shoe. it's going to be a nuisance so it's going to impair your of your ability to see uh see clearly spiritually speaking and it's going to be a physical nuisance to you thorn in your side is something is a term that has somehow stayed around we still we still use that today if someone is a thorn in your side it's that person that won't leave you alone you know that constant

irritant yeah yeah i saw a meme once where i had paul chained up and then chained up next to him with spongebob and he's saying the lord gave me a thorn in my side and spongebob's gonna hey paul hey hey paul hey paul like you know you guys know about this every time i see that meme i crack up because it's so true hey paul hey paul where do you ride hey hey paul yeah i mean that's one of those images that uh is uh is lifted from scripture and that people use all the time and i would get i would bet that probably 90 of people use that phrase have no idea that actually comes from the scriptures right but that just shows the way that the the uh the bible has has worked its way into everyday speech and become so much a part of our of our language that often we don't even realize

the original source of it okay so uh that's the end of chapter 33 uh this is this is the travel itinerary and hey once you're finished traveling and you cross the jordan then do what i say otherwise uh you're not gonna be able to see very well and you're gonna have this huge split in your side which won't be fun so listen to my word all right verse uh chapter 34 uh we're gonna go into a little bit different section now uh this is not uh the most stimulating of material but it is significant it's important in its own way basically it is drawing out the borders of of the land the lord is giving to them and it's we won't get into all these rather complicated issues of the various border lines that are that are actually drawn up here and in deuteronomy and elsewhere the borders

of the borders of israel were are constantly changing uh you kind of kind of have i guess what you might call it an ideal here but this ideal in numbers was actually at least according to the knowledge we have from from scripture was never actually fully implemented or realized by israel probably the i might get this wrong but i think that the greatest extent of land ever controlled by israel was during the reign of david uh seemed like there might have been another king that took it farther but anyway the the either the height or almost the height of israel occupation and control of land both of their own land and some of the surrounding areas was during was during uh the reign of david but earlier than that i mean you had all sorts of problems of course we

get into this with joshua and judges were they weren't able to conquer some cities they weren't able to conquer some territories other ones they just gave up and compromised with the original inhabitants of the land and ended up uh bringing trouble into into israel but this is in numbers anyway this is kind of the ideal this is this is god basically you know staking out for them their borders this is the extent of your of your land and then at the end of that chapter we have in verses 16 through 29 we have a a list of the various tribal leaders that are going to be involved in the process of dividing up the land and choosing by lot and making sure that everything goes according to the way that god wants it to go and and these names are listed in

approximately from south to north so the southernmost tribe is one of the first listed and the last in this list is one of the northernmost tribes so they kind of begin south and work their way up up to the north in the names of these leaders according to the visions of the land in the in the tribes of israel and it i mean the land division is important uh for practical reasons of course because the israelites need to know okay this is the land that god is giving to us so it goes from here and then it stretches over to the east there and then it follows along the jordan river all the way down here to the south and then back over to the mediterranean sea so there is a very specific land mass that the lord is giving to the israelites he's not

saying to them you know the world is yours he's saying this particular plot of land i am giving this to you but it's it's good when you when you read chapters like this to also keep in mind that this is all part this is a small part of a much larger story and that the story of land is something that we have encountered all already in the beginning uh we alluded to it earlier when we talked about eden so god makes the the whole earth but he gives adam and eve their own holy land their own special place where it's like the first temple. Eden is like the first temple. This is the place where God dwells with his people.

And then later, here in the book of Numbers, he's going to give them a much larger land, the land of Israel. But even that is not the ultimate goal that God has, because what's going to happen at the coming of the Messiah is he's going to say to his disciples, hey, I want you to go out into all nations, into all the world. And as he tells the woman of Samaria, you know, it's coming a time when my worshipers aren't going to worship me either on your mountain

or in Jerusalem, but they're going to worship me in spirit and truth. In other words, there's no longer going to be geographical boundaries as to where the Holy Land is. Instead, it's going to be all of the world, every place, wherever the Lord's gospel is preached, there he's establishing his temple, his Holy Land. So all of this is nothing but the preparation for what is to come. God is going to raise up the people of israel on this land but not as if that is the ultimate goal the ultimate goal is for them to spread out from there and to take that blessing to abraham to all nations so that all nations in his seed will be able to be part of the the people of god and that is it man that is 40 minutes right there perfect perfect timing guys if you want to come hang out with

me and chad in austin texas again you can do that march 9th me and him will both be there uh along with a bunch of other people it's free we'd like to see you and chad i will see you next week all right man we'll see you then thanks Bye.