40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 163 (Deuteronomy 6:17-7:26)

Episode Date: May 2, 2019

How does the present way the Israelites speak of the exodus help us with how we understand our salvation? How do we deal with the judgment of God on entire nations of people? God tells the people not to fear but also not to get proud and something strange about a hornet. How is idolatry the cause of all kinds of misery? Chad and Daniel talk about all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network CHF Minneapolis Academy Class With Chad 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 over to 1517.org slash podcast check out all the podcasts that we got going on over there a lot of podcasts for you to listen to also while you're over there you might want to go and click on the academy yeah the 1517 academy this is where you can go get that free education you know you can go get your smart on you can go go get learned as they say here in the south you can do this particularly because chad's new course has dropped he's going to talk about the thing that we've been talking about this whole time but like in a more can he's not going to take a hundred

and you know 160 something episodes to do it it's going to be classes he's not going to have me distracting him he's not going to have me like taking him down weird places don't have anything to do with anything he's just going to go straight for it so chad's academy course where he talks about christ and the old testament you are able to uh enroll in that now and it costs you nothing So there's no reason not to do it. Go check out Chad teaching you about that Old Testament. Also, if you're listening to this, right when it comes out, you have like one day to register for the CHF Minneapolis City Event.

We're going to be in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's free. You can register even if it is just the day of. So we'd love to see you there. Go over to ChristvilleFast.org. Go to the City Events page. You can get all the information. Chad, how's it going, man?

It's going good. yeah i was i'm excited about the course dropping i think the first uh first videos are going to get sent out like uh may 7th something like that so may 5th may 7th anyway it's coming up so now i believe that you're going to be doing some um some live stuff too is this right yeah we're uh we're trying to work that out with with dates and times uh i know that dan van voris did some of his these webinars so i am actually in communication with uh the our our folks who are kind of behind the scenes in these videos trying to work something out where we can get a time and a date where we can make that happen yeah i i you know i i took dan's class on the on reformation history

uh which is great and if you haven't done that you could do that while you're waiting for jazz to come out because it's pretty it's pretty insightful um but yeah it was pretty cool i went to a couple of the webinar things too and it's pretty cool man you get a link and it's this kind of private chat thing and he's right there live and you can ask questions and stuff so all that stuff is pretty sweet so people should go do that yeah and you know it's pretty it's pretty costly zero dollars yeah it costs you no money which which by the way it if you wonder if you want if you look at it you'll be like this doesn't look like it costs zero dollars and the And the answer to that is it costs lots of dollars.

And the way that that happens is if you do take the course and then you say, man, that was really great. Well, you can give a little kickback. You can go over to DonateAge at 1517 and become a contributor. And that's how we're able to create all that content. So if you're not able, then just enjoy it. If you are able, we'd appreciate it. Absolutely. Well, where are we at in the Book of Deuteronomy?

We are going to just spend about two minutes on the end of chapter 6, and then we're going to jump into chapter 7. So we're wrapping up one chapter, starting another one. Deuteronomy 6, the first part of it, we spent quite a bit of time on because that is where we have the Shema, the hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and talked about some various details in there. The only thing I want to say about the end of the chapter is something I just want to I want to affirm this because I've said this before, but here we have it very explicitly. What I've said before is that when when the Israelites talked about the exodus out of Egypt, they didn't they never talked about that as simply kind of a past event which occurred a long time ago to their ancestors. Instead, they always understood that what took place in the exodus was an event in which they themselves participated. So it's not like, you know, people talk about, oh, my great, great, great, great grandparents immigrated to this country from Poland or from Germany or from Czechoslovakia, from England or whatever.

And, you know, we talk about that as well. It happened a long time ago. And and here we are now separated completely from that event chronologically. That's not the way the Israelites talked about the exodus out of Egypt. Instead, they understood, each generation understood that they themselves were part of that event. So it didn't matter if you were born 10 years after the Exodus or 1,000 years after the Exodus. You were in that Exodus. The reason I bring this up is because we have that kind of language at the very end of chapter 6.

So beginning at verse 20, it says, But when your son asks you in time to come, saying, What do the testimonies and the statutes and the judgment mean which the Lord our God commanded you? Then you shall say to your son, notice the language here, We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord brought us from Egypt with a mighty hand. Moreover, the Lord showed great and distressing signs and wonders before our eyes against Egypt, Pharaoh, and all his household, and he brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land which he had sworn to our fathers, etc.

So that first person, plural, we or us, is almost a kind of a worshipful, a liturgical way in which the atemporal reality of God's saving events, saving deeds for Israel is made explicit. it. So certainly there's a temporality to it. This happened in time and space, but there's an atemporality to it in the sense that it's above time. It's something in which every single generation has been a part of in the same way that we speak of the crucifixion of Christ. So we talk about how we have been crucified with Christ. We have been buried with Christ. We have been raised with Christ. In Ephesians, Paul even uses the language of us having been seated with Christ in the heavenly places. So the basic point is this, that what happened with Christ

happens also with all of those who are part of his flesh, part of his body, who are united to him. So yeah, it happened a long time ago, just like the Exodus happened a long time ago. But we, you know, it's like the old spiritual, were you there when they crucified? Well, actually I was. i was there i was i was crucified with christ and so were you and we were buried with him and resurrected with him and seated with him so there's an atemporality to that as well in the sense that god has a way of joining us to these saving events and to the saving body of his son and we don't have to actually be there for that to happen instead god makes it happen by means of his word yeah this is sort of how the the salvation of god which is of course what the

exodus the exodus uh foreshadows the salvation of god is always sort of this this present thing where it's always spoken in that way so we'll hear today is the day of salvation or today is the the day of the lord right and you're like oh well that was a long time ago i guess i missed it no it's it's a it's a way of saying right now whatever whatever whatever day it is that's the day every day is the day like this day this very day uh the god's arm is not shortened on this day. Yeah, we know that the crucifixion happened a long time ago, but today is the day that you can be exodused, as it were, right? That you can be delivered because of that. So I think of the way we talk about baptism too, which of course is the event that we would say connects us to that

crucifixion, to that burial, to that resurrection. And I know we do walk around saying this, but I don't think we should we reach out we go we say you know well i was baptized um which is not a good way to talk about it because what we should be walking around saying i am baptized as if it's something that that is currently happening to me like i am that right uh not just that it was something that happened but that is thing that is happening to me yeah this is the this whole discussion is is kind of summarized in those two ways of talking about time chronos and kairos right so chronos uh we get the word chronological from that of course the sequence of sequence of events sequence of time one second after another one minute after another so that that there's

certainly chronos time and that's the way that we usually think that's the way we usually uh speak and operate so we talk about past present future but there's also kairos time and that's what you're talking about when the scriptures use that language of today is a day of salvation that that's the kairos time and god's time in kairos time is always kind of a present reality so the exodus is today the cross of jesus is today the return of christ is today the enthronement of christ is today so in in kairos time it's always today and this present moment is then suffused with all of god's saving acts throughout history in which we participate by means of god making that happen through his through his words so we we're really awful

we're always operating in these two kinds of time kronos and in kairos so i guess that's it chapter six moving in chapter seven chapter seven is uh it's got some real real interesting stuff in here uh not that the rest of deuteronomy doesn't but we're going to encounter a couple things in here that we we haven't seen exactly in this way before so we're we're starting out the chapter with mention of these seven nations all the various ites that we that we hear all over the uh the torah as well as into joshua so god says you're he's about to bring them into the land to possess it and he says you shall clear away the many nations before you and he lists seven of them hittites girgashites amorites canaanites parasites hivites jebusites so in

in this list there's seven in some lists there's up to 12 in some lists there's six so it's not like this is some kind of exhaustive list of all the peoples who are who are living there and i think i think with most of these from my research most of these we actually have uh extra biblical evidence for their existence in this land whether it's from uh the annals of the the egyptians or from other archaeological finds that have text in them we have we have some some sources which talk at least a little bit about about some of these some more some more than others and of course the jebusites are the ones that are especially connected with jerusalem and we'll hear more about that as we progress through israel's history but anyway these all these people

are there, they've been there for a while, and Israel's about to, they're about to move in. So we know what's going to happen. We know that God is not going to say, hey, what I want you to do is just, you know, find some land that's not occupied by the Girgashites, the Jebusites, and live there, and all of you just coexist, and everything's going to be great. What he wants him to do instead is to go in and and to wipe him out he he wants him to to go in and dispossess the people and to and to take away their land which to us is not a very uh nice or politically correct thing thing to do in this you know this this bothers a lot of bothers a lot of people and that that's fine i mean uh it is kind of it's it's a very in your face kind of move that god is

making but he does give his reasons not that god needs to give us reasons but he does because later in deuteronomy especially deuteronomy he talks about how more or less what's happened in the in this land is that the people who are living there have so polluted it have so corrupted it that they have reached basically the height of of iniquity and so god is going to destroy them now of course we have lots of evidences throughout scripture where god destroys places or peoples like sodom and more and sometimes he just does that bam you know he just like sodoming more he sends fire and brimstone down from heaven sometimes though he uses people to do it and we have a lot of examples throughout the old testament where he uses even he used babylon he used assyria to

destroy his own people later here he's going to use israel to destroy these people so god is the one who's behind this it just so happens that the people holding the sword to do it to execute his his judgment in this case are going to be are going to be the israelites but the reason he's doing is because they've they're practicing child sacrifice uh they're practicing all sorts of of divination uh they're they're involved in basically every creative iniquity that you can come up with and god's given them plenty of chances to repent and yet they have not and so he's going to drive them out dispossess them and destroy them by means of the of the israelites yeah i mean it's sound comfortable but and sometimes we don't like to think about god this way but god's primary

attribute is love of course he says this about himself god's disposition is towards mercy and forgiveness and grace however wrath is not it's not an attribute in the sense that in the same way those are but it's an alien work but it's also a work that he's promised when he says that the day you eat of this fruit you shall surely die and paul interpreted interprets this as the wages of sin is death so you do have this sort of uh long-suffering nature of god but at the end of the day he did he does say that sin will be punished with death so when there when this goes on long enough it's not as though he hasn't said that this is how this works you know and we You can not like it, but if you're sacrificing a bunch of children or whatever it is that you're doing, the day may come where he just says, okay, enough of that.

I'm a god of my word. I said the wages of sin is death, and here it comes. He is God, after all. And so we can be uncomfortable with it, but it's not as though he hasn't stated that this is going to be the case. Yeah, and as uncomfortable as it is, at least when you try and step back from that and look at it as objective a way as we can, then thank God that he also is a God who actually cares about evil, right? I mean, what kind of God would not give a rip about justice or give a rip about evil or just simply kind of shrug his shoulders and walk away while all manner of horrible wickedness is accomplished in the world? well it wouldn't be much of a god so i mean there there is an aspect of god the god of justice and the god of of punishment and the god of death which is is is a necessary part of of life in

this world because otherwise then the world would have been destroyed by itself long long ago so this is even though yes god's primary attribute is justice and mercy i mean it's mercy and love and grace one of the ways in which he he uh keeps the world going and at least puts some parameters on evil is by acting in judgment uh such he's going to do through through the israelites yeah and it's important to remember what you said that this happens to the israelites as well uh he's an equal opportunity uh judger as it were and and some people be like well what the heck like why can't why surely there's some people there that aren't doing this stuff or or what about the other children and this sort of thing. What seems consistent about God in the scriptures

is that when God decides to deal with a sinful people, he deals with all of it. So when God deals with sin, he deals with it on every level. He doesn't just pick out a thing. He's like, well, I'm dealing with sin in this people. And now all of a sudden I'm dealing with every bit of sin in this people so i mean you see in the in the case of israel you see prophets get carted off to babylon along with everyone else you know it wasn't like as if god would say well i'm going to deal with the idolatry here but there's a couple of people who aren't really doing that idolatry so i'll i won't i'll have them escape or no like everyone everyone's going and because because he's dealing with sin and everybody's a sinner in that area so he doesn't he's not being

selective about like, well, I'm just going to deal with this particular narrow thing. He's like, no, when I deal with sin, I deal with it on the thinking level, on the action level, I deal with it all. And when God finally deals with sin at the cross, this is also the way he deals with it. He deals with it on every level in the person and work of Christ. I think part of the reason this rubs us the wrong way so much is because we are, at least in America, I know people listening to this who aren't in america but in america anyway we are arguably if not uh verifiably the most individualistic nation on earth i mean we are all about the individual and so any idea of there being some kind of corporate dealing with with sin is always going to rub us the wrong way because

we like to think of ourselves as little little individual islands but that is not the way certainly not the way that the scriptures picture god's dealings with sin there's always a corporate nature to it and when we again when we actually think about this there's a lot of there's a lot of things that happen to us in our in our social lives our family lives our work lives our church lives which are corporate in nature bad stuff happens and just you know we we ourselves might not actually be directly responsible for it but we are part of that group part of that nation part of that church part of that society and so we are adversely affected by this so there's all sorts of corporate things that happen to us yeah we might not like that we might not like the way

that god deals corporately in the scriptures but this is the way he is and uh so i guess get used to it this is this is a this is a foreign way of this is a foreign way of thinking but uh maybe we're the ones who have it backwards uh and so we should conform our own thinking to the scriptures instead of always being upset by the Scripture's way of thinking. Well, and the reverse side of it is nice, though, because His forgiveness actually works the same way. So God deals with sin. He deals with all of it.

And when God forgives sin, He forgives all of it. So He is sort of just an all or nothing, and this is the kind of guy He is. So He doesn't have Jesus die for the really bad stuff, but the stuff that He thinks that we could overcome, you know we'll leave that to us no that's not how that's just not how he deals with sin and i think that if you want to know how god deals with sin you can look here but the the best representation of it is the cross that's that's how he deals with sin yeah yeah i was looking for that verse

in in romans uh which kind of sums this up i guess it's in romans as in adam all die so in christ all will be made alive yeah Romans 5 yeah yes I mean that is the that is the summation of exactly what we're talking about everybody in Adam dies everybody in Christ is made alive so you talk about corporate well that's it that's that is all humanity in Adam dying all humanity in Christ being justified so this is the way it's the way that God the God works all these wiping of people out uh based on sin shows that we don't need a second chance we need a second adam and this is what christ is yeah perfect so uh yeah i mean that's all of that discussion was generated by by this this opening couple of verses where we have these people mentioned and what's and what's

going to happen to them now one of the things that that we hear more than once in this chapter is God talking about how Israel stacks up in comparison to these other people. And there's a couple of things that Moses really drives home here, and they're both important. The first is that Israel is basically nothing compared to these other nations. so they he they are they are less than they're less less in number they're less in power maybe they're less in military experience whatever it is they're less than all these these these other nations so for instance at the verse 17 it says if you should say in your heart so he's talking about how like when they're about to go invade if you should say in your heart these nations

these these parasites and hyvites and jebusites and all these other people are greater than i how can i dispossess them so if you're if you're doing this comparison between yourself and all these other nations that you're supposed to just completely drive out and you're scared you're you shall not be afraid of them moses goes on to say you shall remember that what the lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt, the great signs which your eyes saw, and the signs and the wonders in the mighty hand, the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out. So in other words, if you're standing there at the Jordan River and you're looking across and you're thinking, oh man, we are going to get stomped on by all these other nations because

they're so much more powerful than we are. Well, just stop for a minute and remember, you weren't even fighting when you were in Egypt. I mean, you weren't like an army with a little bit military experience behind you you were nothing but slaves you didn't even have weapons now you've got weapons you've got a little military experience uh and you you know you've got a track record because you've killed Og of Bashan and Sihon king of the Amorites you know you've done this but well think back in Egypt what did you have then well you'd have anything you were slaves you were you were oppressed you didn't have any weapons nothing and yet god fought for you there he brought you out of there and that same god is going to be the one who leads you into the promised

land so in other words israel even though israel seems insignificant and impotent god is the one who's actually going to accomplish the the victory for them so he says that that's the one thing that they want to say about israel but on the other hand he wants to say something else too lest israel after they've had a few you know after they've won a few battles kind of get full of themselves and think oh man look how look how great we we actually are you know we're we're really we're really kicking butt here in the land of canaan so unless you begin to think that and assume that it's because of your own power and intelligence and planning and and and strength that all of these great things are happening to you lest you begin to think that remember

that and this is verse uh verse seven remember that the lord did not set his love on you or choose you because you were more number than any of the other peoples because you were fewest of of all the peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which he swore to your fathers. It's because of that that the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery. In other words, Israel might be small, might be seemingly powerless, but God is going to accomplish the victory for them. And Israel won't be small, might be powerless, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the reason that God has chosen them. He chose them because he loves them. And he is true to his word because he swore an oath to the forefathers.

So he's got kind of both these messages going on. And on the one hand, don't be afraid. And on the other hand, don't get puffed up. Don't be afraid of all these peoples. And then once you begin to conquer them, don't get puffed up. And in the end, trust in yourself. And by so doing, actually become even more godless than those people that you are destroying. So you got both those things going on there. And now toward the end of the chapter, we have a kind of a, I think we even counted this in Exodus. It's kind of a strange reference to a hornet. So this is, I'm going to pick up here with about verse, yeah, in verse 19, verse 20. He's talking about what God did in egypt you know he he signs and wonders and had a mighty hand and outstretched arm and and because

of all that he brought you out and so shall the lord your god do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid verse 20 moreover the lord your god will send the hornet against them until those who are left and hide themselves from you perish just there's there's all if you look in the commentaries on this there's all sorts of speculation as to what what is actually meant here and i think that we talked about this yeah i was back at exodus chapter 23 because this same reference is made to god sending a hornet ahead of them so i from what i understand there's three different ways that you can interpret this one is that it's sort of a it's a metaphorical way of talking about how god is going to bring about panic and dread um in the in the land of the

canaanites ahead of the israelites to make it easier for the israelites to actually win the victories it's kind of like you know if you've ever if you've ever seen someone who who accidentally uh touched a wasp nest and and and tried to get away from tried to get away from the swarming wasp or the or or bees or or whatever it might be but just kind of picture that person in your head they are in absolutely no state to be able to have a really good uh fight because they're too busy worried about themselves and worried about the the hornets around them well that's one argument that this is actually like god's metaphorical way of saying he's really he's really going to mess these people up he's going to throw them into a state of of bewilderment and confusion

so that it's easier for you to conquer them so that's the one me and my brother did this once by the way when we were when we were younger we there was a huge hornet's nest actual hornets uh hanging from this gateway uh entering the place where we lived and we decided we were gonna take rocks and just like chuck them at it and we finally always a good always good and we finally hit it i i threw a rock right through it and uh it was not a good thing because you you wouldn't believe that many hornets could fit in that in that nest man i mean they came down and i mean we were running we had to run down to a creek and like yeah get in the water and stuff i mean it was it was yeah if someone if all of a sudden we had been attacked at the

same time it would have been it would have been a real bad deal yeah yeah yeah i've i think maybe every boy who's ever seen a hornet's nest it's kind of like you know it's like the parable of the law you just it's like you see it there and you just gotta throw a rock at it yeah you know just like asking because i've done the i've done the same thing uh so anyway that's yeah that's one way it's explained uh the other uh doesn't have much much credence as far as i'm concerned The hornet was a symbol of Lower Egypt, which if you remember, Lower Egypt is actually in the north. It's kind of backwards when it comes to Egypt. But anyway, the symbol of Lower Egypt was a hornet.

And we know the Egyptians were conducting periodic raids into Canaan. And so some people argue that the hornet here is supposed to symbolize Egyptians who are already weakening the Canaanites by these occasional raids. But I don't think that makes any sense. First of all, the hornet is never equated with Egypt in the scriptures. and this tends to be uh directly related to something connected with israel and not egypt now the third explanation is that it's actually meant quite literally that when god says that he shall send the hornet against the inhabitants of the land he means that quite literally just like he literally sent frogs and gnats and locusts into egypt actual animals and as part of the 10

plagues against Egypt. And by means of these insects, he was able to bring Israel out of slavery. So by means of the hornets that he's going to send into the land of Israel, he's going to be able to bring Israel into the promised land. And this would actually fit with what we know from some other examples in scripture. We do know that God used these animals in Egypt to free his people we know that he used lions on various occasions uh it was like in a story it's from first kings maybe first kings 17 or first kings 15 where there was a prophet who disobeyed the lord and the lord sent a literal lion to take down this prophet we also know from second king 17 that in the northern part of israel after the assyrians had had shipped off the 10 tribes

and then other people other peoples were brought in to settle there that there were a whole lot of lions that killed some some of the inhabitants of the land there that were sent by god as a punishment for the idolatry that was being committed there so in other words god is not averse to using animals as punishing agents or military uh weapons in order to either bring about punishment or to bring about victory for for his people so you know it could very well be that these are actual literal wasp or hornets that god was using to to accomplish this that's that's a anyway that's explanation that i i myself lean toward so anyway we have uh we have that at verse 20 and then continuing on with 21 it says you should not dread them for the lord your god is

in your midst a great and awesome god and the lord your god will clear away these nations from you little by little. You will not be able to put an end to them quickly, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. So this is the idea that there's going to be, it's not as if Israel is going to conquer all of the Holy Land in one week. It's going to be a gradual conquest. Now, the way this actually works out as we read, not only in Joshua, but in Judges, is that this really never happened fully there were there was never a time in israel's history when they completely drove out all the inhabitants of the land in fact what we see most of the time is quite the opposite that the the very peoples that god warned them against intermarrying with they

intermarry with the very people that god warned them against hanging out with in a in a worship sort of way well that's exactly what they did and and they ended up uh either going over completely to idolatry or trying to be you know half a yahweh worshiper half a bail worshiper half or half an asherah worshiper and half a yahweh worshiper whatever it is some kind of syncretism anyway which uh which never works you can't syncretism that is the attempt to meld together the worship of the true god with the false god is it's kind of like pouring uh acid in a glass of lemonade well eliminate isn't going to win out it's the acid acid that's going to win out so we have we have the whole history of israel which which demonstrates the toxic nature of

attempting to mix together truth with falsehood, true worship with idolatrous worship. Yeah, I think that throughout the course of Israel's history, you see this sort of breaking of the word of God that says, I am the Lord your God, right? You have no other gods, no other gods, just me. And this is the thing that I think he really is saying when he says, if this is the case, everything will go well. But when this is not the case

It does not go well And some of this isn't even just like the judgment of God It's just the natural Repercussions of Bringing in a bunch of other gods It's just confusing And it creates all kinds of Discord and things don't go well

It's not going well for you in the promised land You have all this stuff going There's no harmony here I think that's what you see throughout Israel's history It's just the inability from the jump like the first thing that God tells you, remember this, listen to this, hear this there. And they're like, that,

that's so much over and over and over again. Yeah. Yeah. And we, we, we still haven't learned the lesson. Um, a lot of our listeners are probably familiar with the, uh, with the ministry of mockingbird and, and the name Dave's all, uh, his, his latest book, secularity. Have you had a chance to, to read that yet? I have read it. Yeah. I'm right. I'm right in the middle of it now. Uh, If you haven't, if you're not familiar with Mockingbird and Dave Zoll, then check out his newest book, Seculosity. It was actually released on the exact same day as my book, Upside Down Spirituality.

So I'm in the middle of it right now. And if there's anything that rings true about what Dave has written, it's that it's not that we are less religious now, it's that we are way too religious. so the basic message of the book is that every aspect of our lives has been drenched in some sort of religiosity and the problem is and it's it's basically what deuteronomy when i'm reading the book i'm thinking deuteronomy deuteronomy over and over because exactly what is happening right now with this rampant religiosity that's disguised as secular kind of stuff is nothing more than idolatry right yeah the way the way that dave describes it is we're all looking for our enoughness we're all looking for salvation and enoughness whatever that might be

in relationships in in social engagements and work all over the place uh and so what do we do is we turn to we just end up making gods left and right yeah it's all the first commandment issue yeah yeah yeah the argument is that we're not uh because what you'll hear is we're less religious And the argument in the book, which is, I think, absolutely correct, is that we're not less religious. We're way too religious and about all the wrong things. Yes. Yeah, so First Commandment issues never get old. No.

Yeah. I mean, they just morph into different things. I mean, we think that we have somehow progressed. we have evolved to where we are not like these dumb people back in the old testament who would worship uh you know a piece of wood or or a stone or something like that you know we've we've progressed way beyond that we're much more philosophically and religiously and morally sophisticated than these people are the truth is we're just exactly the same as they are if not if not more so i mean at least they acknowledged that these things which they were worshiping

were their gods uh but if what happens to us is we're just tricked into believing things that we look look for for salvation and for enoughness are we're tricked into thinking they're not gods but actually they are because anything to which we look for for for our ultimate meaning and a purpose and dignity and salvation whatever that is well that ends up being the deity that we're worshiping so the first commandment we talk about it a lot on this podcast but the reason is because the first commandment is always the issue when it comes when it comes to sin it's the issue in the old testament it's the issue now because if you break the first commandment if there's if you sneak in another god or gods then all the other commandments are immediately broken that's just

that's the way that that's the way that sin operates yeah i mean so essentially i mean you're foolish if you think that we you are not able to substitute uh some animal carved out of wood that you believe can you know controls the rain uh you can sub that substitute that out for an app on your phone and become enslaved to likes and follows you're you're just mistaken yeah yeah history may have progressed humanity has not exactly we are we are exactly the same sinners as as the israelites were but the the great news is that the same god who was with them and the god of mercy and grace is the same god who continues to call us to repentance and to show mercy and and and grace to to us so it's to him that we constantly constantly flee for

true for true salvation and peace amen and that is all the time we have for this episode guys uh you know before you go read secularity if you know because it came out on the same day of course uh buy that book right after you buy chad's book upside down spirituality so you know maybe buy them together you know let's get that uh let's get that thing where amazon where they tell you these things are commonly bought together let's just have those two you know just buy the just package it up it'd be great and uh register for uh enroll for chad's uh course over at the academy get yourself uh some old testament knowledge obviously you're interested in that sort of thing you listen to this podcast chad i will see you next week all right see you then

We'll be right back.