40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 64 (Exodus 2:15-3:6)

Episode Date: November 22, 2016

Moses is on the run, he meets some women at a well (and of course marries one), God hears the cries of His people and a bush is burning but not consumed. Chad and Daniel talk about all of this and more. Check it out!

welcome to another episode of 40 minutes in the old testament i am daniel rey price i'm joined by chad bird chad what's going on man hey everybody oh man i'm just uh i'm ready to go i've been uh been up for a while getting ready for today's podcast and uh i cannot wait to get into chapter three there's so much good stuff coming up i learned a few things this morning and i can't wait to pass those on oh all right well we left uh we left moses in a in a little bit of a weird spot yeah yeah two weeks in a row we've kind of we've uh abandoned moses in a in a precarious situation a couple weeks ago he was floating down the nile river and last week middle of chapter two of exodus we left him uh after after he uh he killed the egyptian and uh found out that pharaoh

discovered the murder and so we got to figure out what what happens in moses us next so that's where we're at all right let's do it let's figure it out so uh we uh we heard in the beginning of the chapter about his infancy and then a few verses later we heard of what happened when he was 40 years old when he he killed the egyptian who was beating one of his hebrew brothers and then the next day he tries to intervene in a fight between two to israelites And he discovers in his heated conversation with these guys that his murder of the Egyptian was public knowledge. They said, are you intending to kill us, kill me, as you kill the Egyptian? So Moses is scared.

He realizes that his secret is no longer a secret. And then we have here in verse 15 that Pharaoh heard about it, and he tried to kill Moses. So, the secret act on the part of Moses was publicly known, went all the way up to Pharaoh, and now Pharaoh is seeking the life of Moses. So, things have not gone well with Moses at this point in his life. He's 40 years old, and now, as we're about to hear, he's going to have to leave behind everything that he's known. So, he was born of an Israelite family. He was raised in Pharaoh's household, learned all the arts and the knowledge of the Egyptians. He was basically royalty.

But after he commits this crime, then he has to leave all of that behind. So his first 40 years were spent in relative ease. And now the next 40 years of his life are going to be the exact opposite of that. So here's what he does. It says that he fled from Pharaoh, he went out into the desert, and he settled in a place that's called Midian. And there, he sat down by a well. Now, we've encountered these wells several times when we were going through Genesis. And almost every time that we had something happening near a well, we had some kind of romantic beginning, right?

So Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac, and he finds Rebekah at the well. And later on, Jacob discovers that there is a beautiful girl around the well and falls in love with her and makes her his wife. Listen, man, we have established that the well is the Christian mingle of the Old Testament. That is the place you go to meet your future spouse. I mean, there's something about a well that just bespeaks romance. I mean, that's the place to be. That's where all the eligible bachelors and bachelorettes hang out. I like how, like, for some reason, like, every girl at a well in the Old Testament is apparently, like, gorgeous.

Oh, yeah. That's where all the pretty girls grew up. That's so weird. But it is cool, man. Like, the well thing is interesting. Like, the women and wells. And, like, that's where they're going and meeting for whatever reason. Like, they're always finding women in there and marrying them.

Now, Jesus also just – Jesus does this. he doesn't find a wife there but uh he he also uh does has a has a woman at the well thing uh which is which is interesting yeah john chapter four right yeah he has this this conversation apparently that woman had found a lot of husbands at the well as well yeah that's what i was gonna say and of all the things that he could have talked about with a woman at the well they end up talking about all her relationships right that's right she was that she was a well frequenter which means that you are going to meet a lot of dudes that are looking for a spouse, I guess. Yeah, she had met a whole string of men at the well, evidently.

Yeah, so this whole kind of men and women meeting, relationships, all of that kind of stuff that you find in the Old Testament around water continues in the New Testament too. So something about water that brings people together. I mean, I guess we could take it all the way to Christ. I mean, Christ did find his wife at water. He made the church his bride in the water of baptism, so we could take it all the way there.

Relationships all the way from Genesis to New Testament. That was sneaky, Chad. That's a sneaky move right there. That was nice. Like a little allegory sneak eye. That was pretty good. Jesus did find his bride at the well. That's pretty good.

See, that's the final romantic encounter gathered around water. Well, so what happens here, back to the romance of Exodus chapter 2? Well, it's kind of a strange situation here because, yes, we're going to have a romantic encounter at the well. There happen to be seven girls, seven daughters, seven sisters who go to this well to draw water and to take care of their flock. And they are the daughters, not just of a regular guy, but he's a priest, the priest of Midian. We know elsewhere that his name is Jethro. He goes by two names, Jethro and Reuel. But he's a priest.

I want to go back to that in just a minute. But let's figure out what happens first. So this priest, this Midianite priest, has these seven daughters. They come to draw water, but there's some bad guys there. You've got these shepherds who I guess they wanted to get in line first, so they drive the girls away. And then all of a sudden, Moses stands up to defend them. So he defends them and helps them draw water out and water their flock.

So he takes care of all of this for the girls. Moses was out to impress, and evidently he did. Because when they go back to their father, he's like, what are you doing back so soon? And they say, well, this Egyptian, they don't know who Moses is. They think he's an Egyptian, probably dressed like an Egyptian. They said, this Egyptian, he was at the well, and he delivered us from the hands of the shepherds. He drew the water for us, and he watered the flock. He took care of all of this.

He's an oppressive guy. And their dad is like, well, why didn't you bring him home with you then? Where is he? Why did you leave him behind? Invite him over for dinner. So I guess one of them, or maybe they all went back, and they found Moses, and they brought him home for dinner. And not only that, but as it turns out,

Moses actually started to live with this family. It says Moses was willing to dwell with the man. And since he was living there already, he needed a wife. And so one of these seven sisters was named Zipporah. We'll hear more about her in a couple of chapters. And she becomes Mrs. Moses. He gives his daughter Zipporah to Moses as a wife. And then after a while, they even begin a family.

She has a son, and Moses names his son Gershom, Which is from the Hebrew word Ger Which means to be a sojourner A resident alien And he gives him that name Moses gives him that name Because he says I have been a sojourner

In a foreign land I get the distinct impression That this guy Was really ready to unload Some daughters Yeah seven daughters That's a lot of mouths to feed Met this dude at the well where is he

sounds like husband material to me let's go get him like he can come out for dinner we'll let him live here you know what you if you're gonna live here you should really be married i just happen to have uh i just haven't had some daughters that i could take care of that yeah over over breakfast the next morning he's like hey so since you're single and i have seven daughters i have a i have a proposition to make yeah it does it definitely reads uh that way to me for whatever maybe i'm off but it reads that way to me like where it's like man this guy seems like he's ready to like there might be like a shortage of men i guess maybe the only other men around were these shepherds who don't seem like real great dudes so uh he's like oh this guy

seems like uh like a decent fella like it's time to kind of time to capitalize yeah let's get him hitched makes sense now i he's described as a priest of midian which i i find uh uh pretty fascinating. We're not told a whole lot about what Jethro believed. We learn later on that he joins up with the Israelites after they've come out of Egypt. In fact, he gets some pretty good advice to Moses later on about, you know, delegating some of his authority to other people to help him judge all the cases that the Israelites are bringing before him. But There's no indication here that Jethro was a priest of Yahweh, that he was of the Israelite religion. In fact, probably he wasn't, at least not at the time.

Now, what's fascinating about that to me is that you contrast what just happened to Moses back in Egypt with what happens to him when he leaves Egypt. So when he's among his own people, he's rejected by the Egyptians because he killed one of them. He's rejected by the Israelites because they say, you know, who made you a prince or a judge over us? So everybody back in Egypt, the Egyptians as well as the Israelites, have turned Moses away so that he has to flee for his life out into the middle of nowhere. And when he's out in the middle of nowhere, he meets a guy that's not even an Israelite who is a priest of a non-Israelite religion. And this guy ends up inviting Moses into his house, not only into his house, but into his family. He gives him one of his daughters as a bride. So you have this great contrast of the people that should have been embracing Moses, shunning him,

and then the person who really should have been suspicious about him because he is a stranger, he's an outsider, welcoming him in. I think that's a great example of the theme that we see frequently through the scriptures, and we certainly see it in the New Testament as well, where the people that you would expect to receive God's messenger don't, and the people that you wouldn't expect to receive God's messenger do. I mean, you take Jonah, just for instance. Of all the people on the face of the planet who should have rejected Jonah, it was the Assyrians. And yet, they're the very people who received the message of Jonah. But then you've got the Israelites, God's people, that reject prophet after prophet after prophet. And then you jump to the New Testament. And, of course, Jesus says it's the prostitutes and the tax collectors who are entering the kingdom of God ahead of the scribes and the Pharisees.

So the people that knew the most about the Bible, the scribes, the Pharisees, the religious elite, the ones who should have recognized in Jesus of Nazareth all the marks of the Messiah, they reject him. But then you have these outsiders who are shunned by the religious elite, the quote-unquote sinners. They're the ones who are flocking to Jesus. So you have this irony that's in the Old Testament and the New Testament where the people that you would anticipate, that you would expect, would actually receive God's word, don't. And those that you think will reject it actually do.

It's a case here in Exodus 2 that is going to reverberate through the rest of the biblical story. That's most of the chapter, and the chapter sums up this way. So we've got the Israelites enslaved in Egypt. We've got Moses now, a sojourner in a foreign land. And then we have this summary statement. And this is sort of a bridge between everything that's happened and then what we're about to hear happen in chapter 3. So here's how the last three verses of the chapter go.

It says, now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. this king that had enslaved them and put them in subjection to taskmasters and all that kind of stuff. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage. And they cried out. And their cry for

help because of the bondage rose up to God. So God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And God saw the sons of Israel and took notice of them.

So these verses kind of pull together a couple of different things. It pulls together, really, I guess you could say, heaven and earth. So you have what's going on on earth in Egypt, accented. But you have these Israelites oppressed, so they sigh because of their slavery. They cry out. And this cry for help is rising up from the pits that they're in all the way to God. And then, so you jump from earth, and then you end up in heaven, because in heaven, God hears their groaning, and God remembers his covenant. He sees the sons of Israel, and he takes notice of them.

We've talked many times, so I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I think it's worth mentioning here. We've talked many times about how remembering in the scriptures is not simply an activity of the mind, but it's an actual activity. is something that is done. So when God remembers, God acts. It's not like he has forgotten and then all of a sudden he remembers again. For him to remember his people or to remember his covenant is to act favorably toward his people. It is to put the promises of that covenant into action. So he remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and because of that, he acts to save them. He looks down.

He sees their suffering. And now that everything has kind of come together, everything is socially, politically, historically, all of these events have finally come to that climactic moment when God is ready to act to save his people. so that's uh that's how the chapter ends up i like how remembering is um i mean yeah and we've talked about this a lot but um yeah there's some there's some verbiage there like it's a verb man like when god remembers something happens like an action takes place as opposed to like when i

remember something i'm usually like oh dang god remembers it means that he's about to do something And usually when he remembers, he's about to intervene in a delivering type way. Right. Yeah, his remembering, I guess you could think of it this way. If the remembering originates in the mind of God, it flows from that mind to his hands or to his lips. So it doesn't just stay stuck inside his head like it does with us. I mean, most of the time, if I remember something, then the next minute I've forgotten it. It's just kind of this back and forth, remembering, forgetting inside my mind.

But when God remembers, then it goes from his mind into his hands or out of his lips so that something is accomplished. Some kind of saving work is accomplished for his people, which is, of course, what is just about to happen in this situation. so that's where we ended up with chapter 2, now chapter 3 is probably one of the most well known chapters actually in the Old Testament

because it's the call of Moses, you have the burning bush you have here the revelation of the divine name Yahweh and the explanation of that so there's a lot of stuff that's happening here in chapter 3 so we'll probably

We'll take our time with it because I want to get as much out of this as we can and hopefully along the way explain a few things that maybe people haven't thought about before. So the story, the chapter begins with probably after almost 40 years have passed, believe it or not. That is one tendency of the scriptures. It doesn't, as I believe we discussed this last time, it doesn't give us the full story. It only tells us what we need to know. So we jump from Moses' infancy until he's 40 years old, and then he has to flee because of the murder.

He gets married and has a kid. And now we're going to jump forward about another 40 years, because if Moses was 40 when he fled Egypt, we know that he was 80 when he went back to Egypt. So a lot of time has passed. uh we'll we'll uh we'll kind of uh draw out some implications of that as we go through the chapter so i mean we're keep this in mind we're not looking at a 25 year old moses we're not even looking at a 50 year old moses we're looking at an 80 year old moses i mean this guy is uh

is ready for retirement and he's out uh he's still out taking care taking care of his of his sheep when everything begins. It says he was pastoring the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law. So he's out doing what he does. He's taking care of the sheep out in the wilderness. And he goes as far as a certain mountain. This mountain is called here Horeb, and it's described as the mountain of God.

Now, this Horeb is an alternate name for Sinai. It's a big thing to keep in mind here. So this is the very mountain that Moses will later bring the Israelites back to. So it's called the mountain of God probably because of its future implications. I mean, it could have already been held sacred by the peoples around there. Maybe that's why it was called the mountain of God. But it certainly becomes the mountain of God from this point onward. Sinai becomes this, and still, even in the New Testament, they use Sinai as a representation of the law.

So God's word of law is represented. So Zion is represented as sort of this word of promise, and Sinai represents this word of law. But either way, both of God. Yeah, it really becomes shorthand for so much more than simply a mountain in the desert. It becomes emblematic of the law. It becomes emblematic of where God reveals himself. It becomes emblematic of this covenant that God makes with his people there. There's so much that Sinai indicates, and it all begins here with Moses' encounter

that he's about to experience. So when you see Horeb, just think Sinai because it's the same place. Different name, same place. So he comes to the mountain, and it says that the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of the bush. Chad, would that be the definite article angel of the Lord? That would be the definite article angel of the Lord. Yeah, the Hebrew has a definite article there.

So, who is this? Well, I do think we've talked about him before. A couple things to keep in mind. Anytime that you see the word angel, it doesn't matter if it's Old Testament or New Testament. I wish that people could simply kind of make an immediate transition in their mind. When they hear angel, think messenger, because that's what the word means. So in Hebrew, the word that we usually translate as angel, malach, means messenger. And in the New Testament, in Greek, the word that's usually translated as angel also means messenger.

Because as it turns out, many times throughout the Old and New Testament, these messengers that are sent by God are not what we think of as angels. They are sometimes men, sometimes they are these spiritual beings we call angels, and sometimes, as is the case here, this is a messenger that's a capital M messenger. Well, you know, it's interesting. Even in the New Testament, Paul refers to himself as an angel at one point. Now, he doesn't refer to himself as the messenger. Not as the angel, no. But he does refer to himself as an angel. And some translations don't translate it that way,

and they just translate it messenger because that sounds weird to say angel. But that just lets you know that that is what this word means. So when Paul says, you know, this gospel of which I became a messenger, or God has sent you a messenger, yeah, that's that word. And you can just as easily translate it angel. In other places in the New Testament, it is translated angel. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, a great case in point,

letters of the seven churches in Revelation. Most commentators that I've looked at understand that when it says to the angel of the church of Laodicea or to the angel of the church of Thyatira or wherever it is, that it's a letter that is addressed to the messenger of the church there, that is to say, the shepherd that God has appointed over them. So that's another case where angel doesn't necessarily convey what the Greek is communicating. Now let's get back to this angel.

So this is the messenger of Yahweh. Well, this messenger of Yahweh not only is sent by Yahweh, but he actually is described as God himself, speaks as God himself, and as the story goes on, is identified as none other than Yahweh himself. So we have a messenger described here in the blazing fire. But then in verse 4 it says, When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush. And then a little bit later on, he says, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hides his face because he's afraid to look at God.

So this messenger is not simply an angel as we think of angels. He is a messenger that speaks as Yahweh, that identifies himself as Yahweh, that has all the authority to commission Moses for what he's about to do. And from, my goodness, from even before the days of the early church fathers, there's evidence of this even in pre-Christian times, that this messenger of the Lord was understood to be God himself. And as we see in the New Testament, the word of the Father, the one who speaks for the Father, the one in whom we see the Father, the one who has made the Father known, the messenger of Yahweh, is Christ himself. So when you're reading Exodus 3, you are reading about the appearance of the Son of God to Moses. So this is, to use New Testament language, Jesus is in the burning bush. He's the one who is here speaking with Moses. Now what's phenomenal about that is that because of that, because the angel of the Lord is the Son of God,

because the angel of the Lord is the messenger of the Father, is Christ himself, then Christ is Yahweh. so when we say jesus is lord what we're really saying is jesus is yahweh we're affirming that this divine appearance in the midst of the burning bush is the son of god is christ is him appearing in the old testament to to moses i mean jesus is gonna like totally emphasize this point when he drops the uh the i am right oh yeah yeah you look at john's john's gospel i am all over the place there that's jesus saying to the people that the i am of the old testament is who you're looking at so i am yahweh in the flesh i am yahweh become incarnate so that when you see me you see you see the father and the worship that you give me you are giving to god because i am god and i'm

god in the flesh so he is yahweh incarnate which is pretty awesome that you have that you have here in the book of Exodus, Jesus appearing to deliver his people. I mean, that's just what the Son of God has always done. I mean, I think sometimes, and maybe they wouldn't say it this way, but I think sometimes people kind of have this assumption that Jesus is waiting around throughout the Old Testament in heaven, just counting the days until finally he can come to earth to deliver his people. But that's not the case at all.

Already from the third chapter of Genesis, we have God coming down to dwell among his people, to speak to his people, to deliver his people, sometimes to correct his people. But any time that God appears in the Old Testament, it's Jesus. Any time that God speaks in the Old Testament, that voice is the voice of the Son of God. Any time that we see God acting to deliver his people in the Old Testament, that deliverance is affected by Christ himself. So Christ doesn't become our Savior at his incarnation, suffering death and resurrection. Jesus has always been our Savior. That has been his defining characteristic from Genesis onward. And as he acts throughout the Old Testament to save his people.

So all of that was sort of preparatory work, if you will, for his final act of salvation that we have in the cross and the resurrection. So Christ is coming here to save his people, just like he always comes to save his people. But before he does that, he has to have a long conversation with a very reluctant prophet. So he's in the bush, and Moses looks and sees that the bush was burning with fire and yet was not consumed. And so he says to himself, I've got to turn aside and look at this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up. So he walks over. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, then God speaks. And he says, Moses, Moses.

And Moses responds, here I am. I love how one commentator put it. And he says that here I am means at your service, at your service, Lord. So he's called his name and he now he now says to take your shoes off, remove your sandals for your feet, because the place that you are standing is holy ground. And then he identifies himself as the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. But Moses hides his face because he's afraid to look at God. So a couple things here that I think are worthy of pointing out. First of all, why did he have to take his shoes off?

That's a question that I think is worthy of asking. He says, well, he says take your shoes off because the place you're standing is holy ground. This is not the only time that something like this happens. The same thing happens to Joshua around the plains of Jericho. He takes off his shoes as well. There's all sorts of theories behind this, but basically the one that I find the most credible is that shoes, because they walk in all sorts of unclean places,

when you think about all the places you walk with your shoes on, and it could be because most of them were made from leather, which may or may not have come from clean animals. Because of that, the shoes need to be taken off. In fact, a little historical tidbit that people might not be aware of is that the priest in the Old Testament ministered barefoot. So there is never any indication that the priest who ministered at the tabernacle of the temple actually wore shoes.

in fact we know from ancient uh jewish sources that uh that was that that was the case so anytime a priest was ministering he he took his shoes off so come sunday dan you know i i expect you to when you're when you're leading worship to take your shoes and your socks off you know you know what's funny is uh we had a um uh i'm giving myself away here about some worship practices here but whatever we had a pianist that um preferred to play barefoot yeah and uh at the church that uh she was at prior like it was a huge deal like like a like a bad deal or what yeah and they said they were like and and they argued that it was dishonoring it was disrespectful for her to uh to play barefoot in the church service so she asked when they when they end

up coming to our church and we ended up having her play piano she asked for us because she had been told it was disrespectful but she preferred to do it and i said knock yourself out in fact there's like i think there's biblical precedence that you could totally do this yeah it's quite the opposite of disrespectful i mean that was in the case of moses and joshua the old testament a priest that was the sign of respect right right that's what i told that's what that's what i said i said yeah you want to take your shoes off no go right ahead yeah go right ahead yeah you know i was thinking about this this morning isn't it amazing that uh you take this story and then you place it beside what happened the upper room on the night christ was betrayed

and just kind of contrast those two. So here you have Moses approaching the presence of the holy God, and he has to take his shoes off because he's on holy ground, and he hides his face because he's in the presence of divinity. And then place that alongside what happens in the upper room. You have God himself coming to the feet, to the dirty feet of sinners, and identifying himself by means of washing their feet. So it's a beautiful contrast here.

They're not like they contradict each other, but they complement each other. Moses takes his shoes off because he's on holy ground in front of God, in front of the Son of God. And then the Son of God in the upper room, He goes to the feet of those that he's come to save and to serve, and he washes their feet as a demonstration of his love and his service and his humility for them. So a great, great complementary contrast between those two scenes. Now, when Jesus identifies himself, he says, I'm the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. There's really, in that identification of who he is, to some extent, the promise of what he's about to do also, if you think about it.

So he says, I'm the God of your father. That is the God of Moses' father. Moses' father is still back in Egypt, if he's alive. So he's still in Egypt. He says, I'm also the God of Abraham. So he is the God of the one that he brought up out of Egypt generations before. He's also the God of Isaac, the God who rescued Isaac from the sacrifice on the mountaintop and gave him, as it were, a resurrection. and he's also the God of Jacob, the God of the one who went into exile and then God brought back

out of exile as well. So as Jesus is describing who he is, he's really describing that he's the God of the people that he has saved, and therefore he is the one who can continue to save. He's the one who brought these fathers out of exile, and he's also the one who will bring Israel out of exile again i think it's interesting that you know god shows up to moses and there's nothing that would that would lead you to believe that moses was some like devout practicing jew or someone that even really identified himself much with you know abraham isaac and jacob i mean you're talking about a guy who was raised in pharaoh's house who like bailed out married some pagan priest's daughter he's tending sheep for 40 years or whatever in the wilderness

and uh i don't i don't think that that moses is a guy at this point whose identity is wrapped up in his lineage and connection to abraham isaac and jacob and and that god you know um i he probably for all you know he probably very much feels like um someone who will never be connected to that again i mean he i don't think he has any uh aspirations of going back and being among his his quote people uh i don't think he thinks that's going to happen i think this is sort of where he's settled in and i think it's interesting that god's like yeah that's the guy like sort of the the not the the non-practicing one right like the the the guy that probably a lot of other jews would be like yeah he's like sort of uh abandoned uh he's you know he's he's

ran out you know he's not uh in the community he's not in the jewish community there i mean uh and i don't think he has any plans to go be part of it again no i think at this point in his life Moses. We talked last time about how in Stephen's sermon in Acts chapter 7 that Moses thought that God was using him to redeem Israel. Well, that was 40 years earlier. At this point, Moses has no doubt resolved himself to the fact that that was all just a mistake on his part. I mean, here he is, as you say, this is 40 years later. He's cut off from that community. He's really, he's probably by now much more identified with the Midianite people. He spent four decades with them, after all. And he's just been a shepherd. I mean, he's away from all of that. It's almost

like he's gotten past it, okay? He was raised there. Those were his people. But he's moved on, and he's established himself elsewhere. He's old. He's probably just content to be where he's at and to do where he's at and then in this shocking moment he is sent back to the very place he doesn't want to go back to yeah it's like it's like god looks at that situation and says perfect perfect yeah yeah which is the way that god works right he he leads people he leads people into situations in which it seems like they will be the least likely candidate for God to use, and then he shows up and says, I choose, I choose you. Or he leads us into situations in which it seems as if there's no going back, and then he shows up and says, I'm here to take

you back. So he's always the God of surprises, always the God who works contrary to what we expect, chooses people that are the opposite of what we would expect. And he does all this in order to drive home the point time and time and time again that when it comes to saving, when it comes to acting, it's his doing alone that gets it done. It's not like he looks for the best candidate for the job because he has the right skill set and God can work with him. No, it's quite the opposite.

Usually God chooses someone that doesn't have that in order that it might be abundantly clear that he is the one who is at work here to act and to save he's not simply using human strength or or wisdom to to bring that about he's more frequently using human weakness and foolishness to bring about his acts of deliverance that's it and we're done man we're gonna have to leave it right there there's there's there's more to this story but uh we're gonna have to tackle it next week all right sounds good stay tuned all right well guys uh head over to christophast.org check out the articles hey uh all the all the conference stuff that we did in Dallas, that's all up at this point. And you can check out all

those videos if you haven't done that. Some great talks about the parables there. Also, if you'd like to help us out, we got a bunch of stuff we'd like to do. We have a ton of people that have donated a ton of time and talent to making all this stuff possible and making everything look the way it looks. And there's more stuff to do, but it all costs a little bit of old-fashioned money. So if you are interested in helping us continue on, we could most definitely use your support. Really could. And so if you want to go over to ChristFullFast.org, you can go over to the support page and you can help us out in that way. Thank you so much to those of you who have decided to support everything that we're trying to do. So, all right, God bless. We'll see you next week.

© transcript Emily Beynon