Unashamed with the Robertson Family - Ep 1184 | Why John Luke Quit Duck Commander Before His Parents Could Fire Him

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

John Luke explains his exit as Duck Commander Store manager, saying he resigned after finding his own replacement, while Korie insists she had to fire him. He also calls out the Robertson clan for “merchandise shrinkage,” which segues into the crew’s dive into Exodus. Christian highlights the meaning of Moses’ name, “drawn out,” and Zach riffs a T-shirt idea on the spot. Al shows how the Robertson story echoes key elements of Exodus. In this episode: Genesis 1, verse 26; Exodus 1, verses 1–7; Exodus 25; John 4; John 6; Hebrews 8–10; 1 Peter 3, verses 20–21; James 1, verses 2–4 Today's conversation is about lesson 1 of The Exodus Story taught by Hillsdale Professor Justin Jackson. Take the course with us at no cost to you! Sign up at ⁠http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/⁠ More about The Exodus Story: Explore God’s mercy as he leads Israel out of slavery in Egypt. Exodus is a central narrative of the Bible. It recounts the moment that God reclaims Israel as his people, rescues them from slavery in Egypt, and establishes the Ten Commandments to guide their moral and religious freedom as an independent society. In “The Exodus Story,” Professor of English Justin Jackson picks up the biblical narrative where his course on Genesis ended. Join Professor Jackson in learning about the nature of God’s mercy, human freedom, and the relationship between the divine and man. Enroll today to discover the beauty of God reclaiming the Israelites through his mercy and love in “The Exodus Story.” Sign up at ⁠http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/ Check out At Home with Phil Robertson, nearly 800 episodes of Phil's unfiltered wisdom, humor, and biblical truth, available for free for the first time! Get it on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and anywhere you listen to podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/at-home-with-phil-robertson/id1835224621 Listen to Not Yet Now with Zach Dasher on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or anywhere you get podcasts. Chapters: 00:00-06:53 Why Exodus Frames the Whole Bible 06:54-15:25 Pharaoh’s Policy of Death vs. God’s Mandate to Multiply15:26-23:40 Egyptian Midwives Stand Up for Hebrew Babies 23:41-33:35 Moses Undergoes Humility Training 33:36-41:18 Wandering the Desert for 40 Years 41:19-49:24 Jesus as a Better Moses  — Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am unashamed. What about you? I was briefly manager of the Duck Commander store for about two months until I got fired. Actually, I didn't get fired. You did get fired. Your mom told me this week that she said no one is in the business. Wasn't that the premise of the whole first show is that you can't fire family? Yeah, no. Until you get fired. You got moved? What would you say you got transitioned?

I would say I quit. I would say I found my first replace. I did it and then whenever mom was like, Bella's trying to find a job, I was like, oh, God, I got the job for her, mine. One, I hated it, two, I was terrible at it. So, but people would steal stuff. Family members would, I mean, you talk about just make stuff disappear. Like, every podcast. I'm getting a little nervous all the sudden. People would roll in.

It's actually, hmm. Oh, every, people would roll in and just clear out stuff. So you're saying you weren't bad at your job, it was just people stealing the merch? I'm saying I figured that out and saw how much merch was disappearing from family members in my two months. But did that have anything to do with your firing? Do they blame it on you? Yeah. Did they blame the losses on you?

No, that was the one good thing I did was figure that out and attempt to stop it. You've got to take the wins where you can get us. And then after that, I didn't fix the problem. I just identified that particular problem. So if you're tuning in, this is Unashamed for Hill cell. at Hillsdale Friday. This was nothing to do with it. But we just kind of sometimes just turn the camera on.

We're in the good conversation. And I had mentioned that I had gone in there on occasion and grabbed merch. And apparently I may have been contributing to this problem. But I felt like it was very... Well, I always felt like that I was deserving of two-thirds of the inheritance of Duck Commander, being the oldest son, that I never got. So a shirt or two here and there was like, way, short of two-thirds of everything.

So you always felt like a... Well, I just felt like I was going back to my Jewish roots, you know? So John Lloyd, you just going to what I was owed. I never say, you know. No, of course not. And the next week you see John Luke and he tells you got fired and you're like... No. That's why I'm telling you're my favorite nephew.

Here's my real confession. I came in yesterday, Sunday, and snagged some hats with my friend. We raided and I didn't put it in the system. You didn't put it in the system. Well, if you're listening to this... Next week when Bella gets fired. The last time I was here, I was here filming this,

the Genesis episode and episodes and I walked in there and they have a guy in their work, like there's a, he's in the center of the room with a computer and it's like an all-watching eye and everybody that comes in, he's in, and he's, hey, what, what?

Hey, what are you getting? What's this for? Do you talk about Luis? Yeah. I don't want to give, I didn't know if it was like, if he was like undercover or what, so, yeah, you've, yeah. Same family members.

I don't think he's undercover. I think he's above the covers. Well, we're in. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, Luis, and I have an understanding because he was in an orphanage that I helped, you know, create years ago. And so that's just carried over to the current. Oh, he turns out.

When I walk by, he just gives me a thumbs up. I don't see anything. Nobody's in here. See, Zach, I could teach you some things. So today we're starting our Exodus series. So this is exciting because we just finished up. with Genesis. Yeah, so you guys can sign up and take the class with us. If you haven't signed up to take the class, it's free. And we would advise you to take it with us because it makes it a whole

lot more sticky and fun. You'll know what we're talking about because we'll reference stories that, you know, you've got to, if you're not taking it with us, or maybe something Dr. Jackson says, because he's actually... Well, we're so excited. We just, we finally got to meet him in person. Got to meet him. You know, when he came in and did the wrap up for Genesis with us. And so that's fun for me because, like, you know, you meet somebody that you... I respect him because he's really good at what he does. Yeah. And we're hoping you're taking the courses with us because that's the way to do it.

I've learned a lot. Yeah. And now in Exodus I've learned a lot more, so I'm excited. Well, we've been preaching on Exodus at our church. So this was, like, right at my wheelhouse for kind of where we're at in the season of our church. And, yeah, what did you guys think about the whole Exodus story? Oh, yeah, it was awesome. I mean, I like this video series more than the Genesis one because he did go.

deeper, especially some of the wording, the names of God. And I thought that was just really interesting to me. The names of the Hebrews, the difference in Egypt and Israel, I thought that was really cool. Yeah, more so from talking to them in person, I didn't really just, like I said, when we had breakfast, I didn't fully understand the idea of how much Exodus truly, like, how much of the New Testament revolves around the story of Exodus. I thought Exodus was just about plagues and stuff like that. Oh, I didn't think it was any like significant stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The New Testament stuff and things like that. And it's like the most significant. And he was like it's the, yeah, it's the like pinnacle story of scripture, which was, which is pretty

interesting. And yeah, something he talked about a lot that really I kind of found interesting was this idea of like, you know, talks a lot about the hand of God throughout Exodus and about how, you know, for Pharaoh being, Pharaoh viewed himself as a God. And here's this, this man, Moses. who's kind of one-upping him in all these things and just from just like how inferior he would have felt to to this man who is doing all these things that none of his people can do. So that was one of the coolest things for me was kind of learning more about that. I used to view it more as like Pharaoh versus God, but it's really more so Pharaoh versus Moses. And Moses is just a mere man and he's defeating Pharaoh, which is cool.

And it harkened back to me. You remember whenever he, Dr. Jackson, we were talking about the suffering, you know, when he heard, was it Hagar? He said, I hear your suffering. Now go and suffer some more. And how he had mentioned then that this was going to be a narrative that's going to go all the way through the Hebrew history. And he's right. And it really, you start to see the, you know, beginning of that standpoint here when they're literally enslaved and then they're suffering, you know, under this like harsh place. this is going to be the way it's going to be all the way through.

And even when you get to the Promise Land and later in Joshua, and it seems like now there's finally victory. It just starts a whole new process for them. They get led away. Then we get to judges. So it's just this repetitive cycle that happens over and over and over. But just like us, right? I mean, that's the idea.

Sometimes even released, you tend to want to go back under something you know is not healthy. You know it's not good. And yet that's what we see. That's what they wanted. Yeah. Exactly. I thought it was interesting how Exodus starts. You know, when we were, we started our Exodus series at church, my initial text, I actually kicked off the series.

And it was, my text was Exodus 1, verse 1, 37. And at first when I read it, I was like, man, how do I, there's just not, it seemingly doesn't, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of meat there. I mean, man, that's, but the more I got into it, I was like, man, so interesting coming out of Genesis, which we just finished. and there's this kind of narrative in Genesis that is seen right here in how Exodus is set up. And I think it sets up the battle really between good and evil, Satan versus God. What is God's ultimate agenda? What is Satan's ultimate agenda? Spoiler, God's agenda is life.

Satan's is always death. It's always a death work versus a life work. But if you look at the beginning of the Bible, when God creates humanity, which we talked about in the Genesis study, Genesis 1-26, he created them in his image, male and female, and his instruction to them was to be fruitful and to multiply and then to subdue the earth and have dominion over it. And so the way that I've always read that

and viewed that is, like, God creates humans and then he gives them a vocation. And their vocation is, I want you to go make babies. I want you to go multiply and then three. Apparently y'all got that. You guys are doing that well. Yeah, you too, Zach. I mean, you know, the three of y'all have been very.

How many do you have now? Three. Three. Yep. And another on the way. Another on the way. Yeah. Wow.

And then you got three. Definitely not one on the way. Yeah. And y'all just had one. Y'all just had one. No time soon. And your daughter, by the way, your oldest daughter got the, we were here for the conference, Sadie's conference, live original conference with 3,500 young women.

And the, the benediction at the end of the whole. entire experience was your four-year-old daughter. It was her saying it very swiftly, good night. Yeah, they set her up for more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's the sweetest. Yeah, she was singing. There was a, they did have her singing in bed last night when she was supposed to be

sleep, and she was sitting, Jesus from the mountains. Oh. Jesus in the streets. So she took a lot from conference, which was really sweet. But that's like what God's called us to do is to create these families and cultures and societies and it's like be fruitful multiplied, and then basically to take the guard. of Eden and then go expand the borders of the garden to encompass the entire globe, which is the idea of there, the garden is a temple. So it's almost like, I want God's like,

I want my temple to be, to spread over the entire earth. And you're the agents that are going to do that. And then things got really wonky, get really disturbing, sin entered the world. And then Noah happened, the flood happened. The war got so violent that God's like, I just got to wipe everybody out, except for eight people. But when those eight people were saying, to the ark, God comes back and he gets in the same exact instruction that he gave Adam and Eve, which is to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And then you have the Tower of Babel story where things get wonky again, and God comes in and he pulls Israel out or Abraham out. He says, I'm going to make your nation. And kind of the idea there is the same thing. You're going to be

fruitful. You're going to multiply and you're going to fill the land. And so when you get, and then Joseph happens, Joseph comes on the scene. I'm just doing like a quick recap of the book of Genesis. is then Joseph comes on the scene, and you have the whole story that how Israel actually ends up in Egypt. Right. The reason why the Israelites are in Egypt was because Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery,

and he rises to prominent position, and then the whole family comes eventually. Which you think about, Zach, the interesting part of that is that Abraham, Abraham at that time in Genesis 12 is called out of where he was to go someplace different to the place I'll show you, God said. And then now we're coming along, and then a promise was made that his lineage would go back and have this land. And yet we see this process working out that it took a trusting of God through

the whole process. Now we're talking about generational faith to believe they were part of that process. So every generation that goes along, they're waiting for this promise of God. And now we get to Exodus, and they find themselves literally enslaved and surrounded and seemingly no way out. And so you're talking about the ultimate trust that guys going to do this. You know what I'm saying? I mean, like... But it's interesting because when you read these stories about Joseph in the past, or at least me, like, taught them, a lot of times I've taught them almost like isolated stories.

Right. Right. But then when you get to Exodus, you're like, well, this is just a continuation of what's already been happening. Right. And so when he gives the story here, he's saying, like, before he even sets up that they were in a conundrum, he basically says that Joseph ends up there, but then the current leader, Pharaoh, just forgot about it. He didn't know Joseph. And so if you think about, well, who does this Pharaoh figure represent, which Dr. Jackson talks about, who does he represent? Satan? Satan? Yeah, evil. And so whatever his agenda is, it's similar to Satan's agenda.

And so it's interesting to me that when you read what Israel did, it says in verse 7, the people of Israel, I just think it's so interesting, were fruitful and increased greatly. They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them. So you read this, and you're like, well, they did the thing that, like, they were supposed to do. Right. And it was that very thing. They were actually doing the cultural mandate. They were multiplying, filling the earth, doing all the things.

And they're doing that inside of Israel. And then Satan, Pharaoh, looks at that, says, I got to, I have to stop the fruitful multiplication of life. Right. That sets up kind of the whole story. Yeah. And he thought he had thwarted it. Because remember, it started with just 70 people. That's the group that, that arisen little group that kicked off.

And then now we're becoming this, what did, uh, what did, uh, Dr. Jackson say probably two to three million because you know we have the number of men and once you multiply it out to women and kids you're talking about millions of people yeah so you this thing has flourished you know inside of Egypt yeah so just to your point these now they're ready to rock but it's like will it will they yeah yeah which is really interesting yeah what do you think well so when you when you read that you think about like our current cultural moment I think that's why a lot of the attack from the evil one is always on, like, it ends up with like a destruction of life and procreation and like the multiplication of life. You kind of see that strategy

still employed today. Oh, no doubt. Yeah. I mean, if you were going to attack a culture or people, that's the way you'd have to do it. You'd have to somehow keep that from happening, the multiplication process. And that's exactly what he does. I mean, how else do you explain, was it now, we're up to 60 million aborted children. And in some areas, there's more children aborted than born. I mean, that has to be of the evil one to Mike. Or how would it even be possible, you know, for this to happen? So you see the mindset.

Yeah, they say that there's no, like, distinguishing numbers between outside the church and outside the church. Right. Which is a crazy statistic. The thing I was thinking about when thinking about, like, how the Israelites in Egypt were persecuted, but then they continue to multiply. And then the more persecution, the more they increased.

Thinking about how, like, that's how God works a lot of the time. And we see that in Christianity, too, where whenever it's easy, after we multiply and people forget God, you start to see the downfall, but in places where it's persecuted, you see it flourishing and growing. And it's persecuted, so it's, you know, kind of underground, you know, Asia or the Middle East or place like that, but you see it growing. The heart of the persecution, you still see it growing because people are still, God is working in them. He's hearing their cries

and you see them doing, you know, trying to follow him even in terrible situations and you see him blessing that. Yeah. And by the way, if you're, if you're just tuning in, you can sign up and take this course with us for free at undershamphreyhillsdell.com. It's free and you can get into the discussion with us. But that's a great point. I mean, you know, why do you think? that it multiplies when they're suffering like this? What do you think that is? I mean, I think that talking about what Christian just said about how you look at statistics for divorce, abortion, for whatever drug use, and it's like, oh, there's no difference in Christian communities versus non. But my question is, like, who are the Christians that they're interviewing? Like,

is it, like, you've got to separate your cultural Christian or whatever versus, you're a person who's actually following the way, following God. Like, of those people, are you, what are you calling it? Are you calling a Christian someone who says, like, oh, I'm a Christian? Or are you talking about someone who's in church, in their community, worshiping, praying, reading scripture every day, trying to follow the things? Are they the ones following in the statistics? I doubt it.

There's a book by Nancy Piercy where she cites a study that essentially looks at, men, who are the most violent men in America? And so they poll three different types of men. One group are atheists or non-believers, non-Christians. One group is nominal Christians, meaning that they profess the name of Christ. If you ask them on a survey, you're a Christian. Yes, I'm a Christian.

And then the other group are people who attend church at least once a month, or some statistic that ties it to church attendance. And maybe reading the Bible. It's some just basic, like, liturgical stuff that the church people would do. Yeah. And guess which group was the most violent of all the three groups? Nominal Christians. Nominal Christian men were actually the most violent group,

but the least violent group and the most faithful group was actually those who were in regular church attendance, because that was the marker of someone who was actually walking with Christ. So I'd be interesting to see those numbers, you know, if you correlate them. But I just found... It was a toxic war on masculinity. What was it? The toxic war on masculinity. How Christianity reconciled it.

I just thought it. It just came to me. It just came to him. The way my mind works. Be a teleprompter on the back here. Thank you, Maddie, for breaking the fourth wall again. Yeah, I actually think that was part of the study. I didn't read the book, but I think that might have been where the study came from, from what I just said.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, it may have been. Yeah. Yeah. She mentioned the study. I forgot the guy who did it. She just references it in the book. I found it interesting thing because it did.

that's kind of, but, but, well, okay. And it takes you back to this, the narrative that we've been talking about all through Genesis, and now we're going to see it again, all through Exodus, about the idea of obedience, you know, and somehow that got a bad rap because it's like, because law is going to come out, obviously, in this book. And so it's like, well, you know, we can't keep the law. We can't really be obedient. We're humans.

We're flawed. We're falling. And so then we just somehow just excused ourselves from being obedient. to God. And if there's one thing you see from throughout this whole process, the best way to be is obedient to God. Because what Pharaoh does is consistently not be obedient, even though consistently he has the opportunity to do the right thing. And he continues to choose to not do the right thing, which it makes him ultimately suffer and his people suffer, you know, as a leader. And which is really sad, you know, when you see it. And did anything stick out to y'all that was interesting about Moses'

Moses's name. Because every time growing up I've heard Moses means to draw one out. But he made the point of Moses' name can mean one who is drawn out, but one who also draws out. Yeah, that cool.

I thought that was so cool because Moses is drawn out of the river, but then God also calls him to draw his people out of slavery. Yeah. So I thought that was so interesting of like Moses is drawn out of the river, of the Nile. then God also calls him to be the one to draw his people out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've never, like, heard the two, like, the two use like that. That's interesting because if you think about, we talk about this on a podcast a lot that Christ, he saved us from sin and death, right? He saved us from, so he pulled us out of. But we would argue that a lot of times, for a lot of people, the gospel ends there,

when probably biblically it doesn't. Biblically, it starts there. And then he calls us out, and he calls us two. So I think it's that same thing in Moses' name that you kind of see that even when you're moving into the New Testament story when Jesus comes, that he saves us from our sin.

But John 6 says he also saved, he has his flesh for the life of the world. So to something, what you also see in the cultural mandate, too, that go, go, go. Like, you're my vice regents to go, expand and have dominion and expand this over the earth. So I view that, Christian, as Moses exercising a form of dominion and acting as God's agent.

Yeah. That's cool. And look, this is the first place. We talked about abortion earlier. This is the first place out of many places now going forward in culture where infanticide and abortion are brought in. That was how, you know, Farah decided to deal with what he called the Israelite or the Hebrew problem was, we'll just kill all the males. Why do you think you chose males?

I'm just curious. You know any thoughts on that? Yeah, I don't know. That's a good question. I mean, I'm assuming just so he would stop the procreation of him. But I don't know. He could have. That's right.

Either way. Unless he wanted to insolation. If he was thinking of it from like a military standpoint. I think it probably was very strategic on the part of Pharaoh. I mean, you think about if you're going to subjugate a culture, or then when you have to first like, feminize the culture, so you kill the males off. That's a good point. So they couldn't form an interior military or like a revolutionary type idea.

Is there a foreshadowing of that to Herod? Is there a correlation? Absolutely. Yeah, I think they are. We were talking about topology in the last, and looking at how these overlays into the New Testament. That's a great point. Then you have this same exact picture happen when Jesus, the Messiah shows up, go kill all the babies. They go kill, go exterminate the threat. So then Herri's, then Herod becomes like a pharaoh, which ultimately they're both like Satan. Right. So, yeah, I think absolutely that there's a correlation here.

And then Moses is a Christ figure, at least in that sense. So that's a really good point. But I think that that's the thing about, I just thought it was interesting when God, like, when God is the dealer of whatever the thing is, it's always that life is multiplied. So you mentioned earlier that how in persecuted cultures, the kingdom doesn't like, like you would think that that's when the kingdom gets like stomped out. You know, in China, for example,

underground churches, you're like, Iran. I mean, there's what's going on to Iran? There's been more Muslims brought to Christ in the last like 10 years in the previous 1600 combined. You think, well, how is it happening in these persecuted areas? I think it's because where God is active, there's always life and life expansion. So then you've got these midwives that come along.

But they, they, even in the face of the, like, he's like, go exterminate the threat. And they just multiply even more because God's favor was resting on the right people. And it's like, you can't stamp this out. Right. And I loved the point he made about the midwives being sort of the first ones that stand in the gap. You know what I'm saying? It was like these women. And they even played the game because they were like, they knew he considered them these slaves to be nothing more than animals.

He was like, well, you know how the animals are. You know, they're so strong. They just have these kids before we can even get there to exterminate him. And so they played into his narrative to thwart him, which was brilliant. But I love that idea that God puts people in places to be able to accomplish what he wants done. And I was then when I was watching the thing I thought about, it's not really relative, but it is something interesting. Had you picked up, he kind of talked about it, the, like throughout Exodus where, like, the difference between when they were called Israelites and then the Egyptians were to call them Hebrews. Yeah.

I never heard that, and I thought that was so interesting. Yeah, talk about that a little bit. So he said the, so when, in that first part of the Uri-Ronomy, whenever, Pharaoh is referring to the Israelites, he calls them the Hebrews. Yeah. And then throughout the time that they're in Israel, the Egyptians called them. them the Hebrews, but the Israelites call themselves the Israelites. Yeah. Yeah.

Which that kind of going on to like thinking about the name and the name of like L being like God and like Israel being the people of God or the people who struggle with God. But specifically like Israel is the name that God gave them and then they made the switch of like going from, we're the Hebrews that these other people are calling us to like, no, we are Israel the people of God. we're using the name that God gave us, and that's how they kind of, like, came together. Yeah. Yeah, because it all goes back to, they were descendants of Jacob. Again, go back to the very first part of this,

Jacob had 12 sons, and so Israel's coming out of Jacob. Jacob was going back to Genesis, the son of Isaac, who was the son of Abraham, and so Jacob is Israel. Jacob is referencing Israel. So when you read the New Testament, it'll talk about Jacob and Esau, for example,

it's actually talking about Israel. I'm not talking about the individual person of Jacob. It's the nation of Israel. And then when they use Edom, it's talking about the nation of the Edomites. But yeah, I just love it again that when it says here that God dealt with the midwives because they were the ones that were in there making the excuses and really for Israel

and taking up for Israel against Pharaoh. And God rewards that. And he said, God dealt well with the midwives. and the people multiplied and they grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. And so even like they were blessed and their blessing was what, fruitful multiplication. And these were people that were the midwives that were supposed to kill the babies. And they said, we're not going to do it.

Do you think that meant that the, I never thought about it before, but that the midwives couldn't bear children? And that's why they were midwives? And because it said he blessed them with family of their order. Just had they not, I mean, I wonder there seems to be something in that blessing that they were lacking. And I've never really thought about it before because it says that, I mean, gave them families of their own, like as if they couldn't maybe have children on their own. Maybe they had been barren. And maybe that's why they took that job.

I don't know. And I guess I need to do it a little deeper. That's a good point. I don't know. Either way that they were, they were blessed with family. And so I think that's the thing that we, in our culture, We tend to think that children are a liability, and they are if you've got kids like mine. But I joke around a lot about it because they tear up stuff.

But I'm like, you know, you tell, oh, kids, man. But like, man, I think about like, so we adopted Ruth, about the same time y'all had honey. And we were out of the game. Like I was like, I was out of the parent game. I'm like, man, we've done that. Like, we were enjoying not empty nesting, but we could like go down and have a day. Jill and I. Because your kids were big enough to...

Yeah, the oldest ones could watch the youngs. Yeah, they could watch themselves. And so we would just go down town, our little town we live in, and we'd go have a date, night, whenever we wanted. Now, like, we got to think about

babysitters and all that, and then you get diapers and all, stuff that we were just out of that world. Yeah. When you're in it, it's like, you just buckle down and it's like, this is what we're doing. We're in it.

You don't think about it. It's a season. But then once you get out of that season, you're kind of like, man, this is awesome. You know? So we were in it. that place. And I remember like whenever we got the call about Ruth that, like that popped in my

mind a little bit, like, oh, there's going to, there's a lot of freedom that's going to evaporate it. This like happens if we actually adopt this child. And the truth is, is that, yeah, a lot of freedom was evaporated. But what we have obtained in exchange is, as God's expanded our capacity for love, which I didn't know I had. And so I understand that what a blessed children are blessing from the Lord. And so now we have this new child that is our family that I can't imagine my life without this child. You guys can probably say the same thing about all your kids, right?

It does rob you of your freedom, but what you get in some type of freedom, but what you get in return is such a blessing. And so I just, I think that that narrative is like, is so key throughout all of the Exodus story and really our story, if you think about what is actually at stake here, it's Satan wants to kill, still kill and destroy, and God wants to give life.

And that's what... Which is why he attacks family. I mean, it's always, it's always at the root of, it happened in the garden. It was that, you know, because that, let's face it, the first sin we saw there,

it didn't just, you know, destroy them in the sense of, you know, being kicked out of the garden, but it also put this impasse in their family. And then the first thing you see as a result is two of their sons, one of them kills the other one. You know, and that's the progressive idea that goes forward. You started attacking family. Then you're going to start getting into problems.

You miss the blessings. Don't forget to sign up to take these classes for free on unashamed for Hillsdale.com. But I thought his point was so interesting that he talked about before Moses kills the Egyptian, like kind of the dude, like two different school of thought of one, which is I think what probably most people think of, he looks around to see if anybody's watching him, or the one he talks about is him looking around to see if anyone's going to do something about it before he chooses to,

kind of a more passive approach to it. But I never, I've never, I've never read that passage and thought of it in the latter sense. I don't know what y'all thought about that point. Yeah, about his sort of indecisiveness. I had always taught it differently. It made me rethink it because... Yeah, it made me rethink it too.

Because I always kind of imagined, you know, Moses growing up, which we'll talk more as we go through about how his childhood was because of, you know, being in the House of Pharaoh is being brimming with confidence and like seeing that moment and thinking it's time for him to see his leadership. But he presented a different picture, and he could be right, that he always had a kind of an indecisive nature, especially about himself. And so he kind of creates that picture. He says, there's two ways to look at that. One is, you know, is there anybody watching? Because I'm feeling kill this guy versus is anybody else going to step up yeah and do something and uh which fits what he

says later when he he won't he doesn't really ensure she he should answer the call of god and so he's like well somebody's going to have to speak because i can't speak and it's really interesting i mean it could be i mean it could be a flaw that you see all the way through moses life because i i'm not sure uh i'm not sure that that 40 years out there with the sheep just totally waylaid his confidence is you know, still a lot, it could be that as well, I'm not sure. Yeah,

because, yeah, I thought the same thing. You could take it both ways. You could take it like, he has the confidence, he's seen if anyone sees him, he kills a guy,

and then that fits with what he does next, was when he runs out to the wilderness, and he saves his wife from the bandits. Right. Oh, like, he's a, he's a confident guy.

He's got all together, like he knows what he's doing. Or the other way is you see that in decisive, and if later, especially in the Burring Bush, when God calls Moses, which is one of my favorite exchanges of the Bible, I'm just going to paraphrase it. God's like, Moses, you're going to go back to

Egypt, and he's like, ah, I'm too old. And he's like, no, I'll give you the staff. He's like, oh, they're not going to believe me. And God, like, says, you know, put your hand in your coat, and he heals the sickness. And Moses is like, ah, I still think it's going to be enough. And he turns the staff to a snake. And Moses is like, no, that's still

not good enough. And he's like, oh, well, you know, no, you. you got it, and Moses is like, well, okay, fine, you can do all this power, but I can't speak well. And he's like, no, I'll give you Aaron, like, go. Every excuse Moses can do. And he kind of does that all up until they're out in the wilderness way later after the whole exchange, Moses finally, like, goes and speaks to God and kind of recovers from that. But he's, he doesn't get over that for a while.

Yeah. Because think about it, I mean, 40 years. have gone by. You know, this is Moses was around 40 when this happens and he goes down there. And then he's in that desert for 40 years. Yeah. And, you know, there's like just a handful of verses covering 40 years of his life. But whatever it was, he certainly, whatever confidence he had in some of those early

exploits, it's gone. He does not have that anymore. And I've always taken that as a symbol for any of us that we always have to have humility training in our lives at some point, which is why we go through difficult times. I mean, the New Testament, you see the idea about James says that perseverance has to do its work. So you become mature and complete. And so the idea is, is without humility training at some point in our lives, we're going to think it's us. In those moments, you have to rely on God to do what he does. And so I look at our own family. And, you know, dad turned his life around and so did mom. And then they

move out on the river and they started a business and it's like, well, you'd expect instant success, but it wasn't. It was almost 40 years for us, about 35-year humility training program where we literally were mana, except our mana was fish, and we had just enough to make it all those years. Well, that's why I think, I think that's why the expansion happens inside of the struggle, because this is the story of those people, those who struggle with God. Israel is like those who wrestle or struggle with God. That's right. So it's like, you know, the struggle is.

And remember the change was from deceiver to struggle. And that's a thing, right? But that he was a deceiver, but he became a struggler. Exactly. Because you read that text and you're like, man, how is this guy the guy if he's wrestling with God? Isn't that kind of disrespectful? Isn't that kind of like, like, shouldn't it just be full submission, right?

But no, we're struggling with this. And I think it's like, you know, they say the struggle is real. That's like a phrase that you hear people say, but it is real. Israel. Israel. It is real. It is real. The struggle is real. The struggle is real. It's pretty good. Well, I like it when a guy has a moment when the cameras are going on. Yeah. I was like, that's a good. I'm actually pretty smart. The struggle is real. That's pretty good. You can get our t-shirts. The struggle is. Real.

The struggle is. Yeah. The jays will be a t-shirt moment. It would be a t-shirt moment. But I think the reason why the multiplication comes What you think of multiplication, you should think fruit. The fruit, fruitful multiplication, the fruit comes, the harvest comes through the struggle because the struggle actually puts us in the posture that we probably should be in all the time, which is, wait a second, I'm not sovereign. Yeah.

Like, he's sovereign. And so when you think about your own lives, I don't know, that's your young guys, probably you have had experiences where you've like, I know I have. I've had several like existential crisis moments where I've thought man I'd like what it's all coming down around me yeah and what's weird is is I think you can go two different directions there one you can you can deny that or you can lean into that and I've chose to lean into that and if you go back and I go back and examine my life I think men those are actually the moments when I really felt the presence of the nearness of God more than any other time even

But it was in that, because it would all of my, all the, I guess the facade of my own self-preservation was like stripped away. And you're like, I have nowhere else to go. Have you all experienced that in your own life? Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. And just thinking of like, especially as I've learned,

like, I think this happens. When you learn more about anything, I think especially the Bible in life, at some point you get to the point that you're, like, oh, everything I believe is like wrong. And that's not really true, but you feel like that because you're like, oh, I didn't realize how little I knew about anything. I mean, I kind of feel like taking these courses honestly. I'm like, wow, I didn't realize how little I actually knew until I've started researching. I'm like, wow, there's way more of this whole thing. You know,

and you feel like, I'm not enough, or I don't know enough, or how can I speak about this? But I think that's where God comes in. Like, you've leaned into that. You say, okay, I can be humble. I can step outside of myself and say, yeah, my power is weak, but God is strong. Yeah, and it's just a willingness to learn, you know, too. Like there always has to be a willingness to put in the work, to study things, to learn things, to have conversations, and to also, you know, disagree with some things, and then you get to a better place versus, you know, I think sometimes disagreements can be super helpful to end up, you know, landing the plane somewhere.

But, yeah, I think, like you said, just humility. and just a willingness to, because even, you know, languages, like, yeah, you think you know a bunch of stuff. And then you realize that the original context that's written in this word actually means this. And then somehow it got translated to mean this. And it's like, yeah, it's like maybe the thing I've been learning is not actually what the original context was supposed to mean. And the core has to be how can I then relay what God has taught me through whatever process. I went through. You know, Lisa and I, we do a lot of marriage stuff.

It's not because we're marriage experts because we got a PhD and whatever. It's because we live through some really hard stuff. And through those really tough times, God taught us some things that we now want to help teach other people. And so when we go in and do what we do, it may be different from Mr. and Mrs. Jones over here that are counselors and have more of an intellectual approach. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, that's great because you learn stuff either way.

Ours, though, is going to be much more you've suffered, now go suffer some more, because you're helping someone in that situation. So this past weekend, we were at a place and we got up and we shared what we always share and some of the things that God taught us through the process through several presentations. And one of the ladies who was there who had helped organize the event was our kind of contact person. You know, at some point she kind of pulls us aside and she's like, like, yeah, you know, my husband and I, we went through the same thing, and we've just never really been able to talk about it yet, and, you know,

and she's telling me the story. And so she goes through the whole thing, and she tears up as she's telling us. And then I looked at it and I said, well, you know, you just told it for the first time. And it hit her that she had. She felt safe enough to tell us this because we had just shared it. And I said, you realize God's going to now open some doors. You're going to tell some other people, some people you work with, somebody run across that's really hurting.

And now of a sudden you've gotten the confidence because God's helping you deal with that. I said, so that's the way it is for all of us. We're enslaved to something. And when we're freed by Christ, then we have an opportunity to help other people find freedom. And unless you tell what God's victories are, you're never going to get to something better.

And it's always a process to you. It's a long obedience in the same direction to quote Nietzsche or Eugene Peterson, and wherever you read that at. but I think it is long. And so for them, it was 40 years. That's right. I mean, think about it like that.

Think about how that would sell today. We're going to start a discipleship ministry. And hey, you get to experience the whole thing. It's a 40-year run. In 40 years, you get a free t-shirt. 40 years you get the thing. Everybody's like, I'm out. Right, right?

But it is a process of becoming. And I think that's the story of Exodus, as we see here, it's like a drip. And we're just at the very first two chapters here. but it's, you know, how basically Moses arrives on the, well, one, it's how Israelites are being persecuted and Pharaoh is like, I got to kill him. And then Moses, it kind of gets spared through this whole process. And he's born in a really weird circumstance to where his mother is able to ship him off in this little mini arc, so to speak.

I love how he kind of made that correlation to, and the correlation. Oh, yeah, that was really cool. It's like an arc, because you think about, like, no way. They think the ark got, he saved humanity through the ark, and that was like a little mini-arc. Yeah, that was a really cool point. You get the Red Sea here. Sea of the Reed.

Sea of the Reed. So you have all the repetition here. Moses gets pulled out and saved, and he's now going to save others. He's going to be the deliverer of Israel. And that's just the first part of this. But once he leads him into the wilderness, I mean, you would think, we got these crazy plagues about to happen, which anybody's going to be like, wow, who is this Yahweh?

By the way, hadn't told him anybody's name yet, but I'm eventually going to tell him their name. Then he does the whole Red Sea, which I thought, you know, I was, if I was a member of the people that were exiting Egypt, I think at the Red Sea moment, I would have been like, he's got us. I'm in. I'm in. And they're not like that. They're like, we want to go back and be slaves.

And I think I would be like that, but I wouldn't be like that, right? because that's the condition of humanity. Then you say, well, okay, now that we've gone through the Red Sea, I would think, then I would be good. Well, no. Then they had bread literally raining out of the sky. Like, literally his provision. Yeah.

God's providing, and they're like, God says, just make sure you only take what you need. And they're so scared that God won't provide. It's insane, but this is who we are. They're so afraid that they start gathering up and hoarding up, more than what they need. And God's, I'm like giving you. Kind of like Moses, though.

How many signs do you need? I think that's the point. It's not about the signs. In fact, when you get to the New Testament, Paul says that the Jews demand signs and the Gentiles demand intellect or intellectual reasoning. And he's like, I didn't come with either one of those.

I came with Christ and him crucified. And he just narrowed it right down to the sacrificial nature of who this God is. That's good. By the way, if you want to sign up and take this class with us, you can go to,

it's free at unashamed for hellstale. com. story of Exodus. This is the first two chapters is the first lecture that we're talking about today. But yeah, I think that's just interesting how that, how that narrative is here. But the big, I think what God, I think the story of Exodus is what is ultimately pointing us to is, will you have reliance on me? I am the one who provides. God is the one that provides. Ultimately, he provides even even the atonement to allow us back into presence. Yeah, and I think that all the different pictures you see, like we've talked about, you also see the idea of the, you mentioned Herod.

So you got that whole thing in the Jesus narrative, the water that keeps coming up. He mentioned that, how the water is big part of the narrative in the Book of Exodus, because you got the Nile River, which is here, which is the Sea of Reeds and this whole idea. But then you got later on, that's a big part of the plagues, it starts with the river and turns to blood. And then later on, it's the Red Sea. It's just this continual thing. And then when you get to the New Testament, Paul even looks back and says, oh, yeah, you know, this was almost like a mass baptism when they were all walking through because it had water on all sides.

It's a baptism moment. It is, it is. Which is huge, right? Because we understand that from our perspective. But here you're seeing where God's doing it with a whole, you know, millions of people. Well, Noah was a Baptist, because what is the, Peter? First Peter, yeah. Noah's flood as another kind of like early.

baptism. He says that the waters of baptism symbolize, how does he say it? It symbolizes the waters of Noah. The waters that flooded the earth symbolize the water of baptism that now saves you also not the removal of dirt for the flesh, but a pleasure of a good conscience.

Because he made the interesting point that the boat floated on the water. We've always seen it the other way around. The water was drowning people, but he used the other side of that. The boat couldn't have floated without the water. Interesting, quick side, because you know people call Jesus,

well obviously he's the second Adam, but don't, people call Jesus like the second Moses and does the whole thing, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I just had this thought, because he was talking about the betrothal scene at the well, it kind of correlated that with Isaac and Rebecca and, you know, throughout history.

But I was thinking about it from the standpoint of John 4 with Jesus and the woman at the well and kind of how that is, it's a betrothal scene in a sense of, you know, Jesus revealing himself to this woman at the well. but I was thinking too so Moses so Moses is the first one

that God reveals his name to right and then in the New Testament Jesus the woman at the well is the first person that Jesus reveals himself as the Messiah to which is so I thought that was kind of interesting and it was Jacobs well I mean it was actually one of the

it was one of these original wells from you know which is interesting the location I think it has to do with Exodus because he doesn't really get into this part of Exodus, but Exodus 25, God gives Moses the instructions to build the tabernacle.

And so there hasn't really been a temple structure yet that was more official like this. That just hasn't been instituted yet. So when you think about the tabernacle, which is a big chunk of the book of Exodus is the building of the tabernacle, the tabernacle is like a mobile temple.

So it's not quite the temple because the temple that Solomon built was like a permanent structure, but this is like, they're in the wilderness, so there has to be like a temple. He said, why do you need a temple? Well, God tells us, and he tells Moses in Exodus 25, 8, build me a tabernacle so that I may dwell with my people. So you had the reason why God wants a temple or a tabernacle.

He wants to dwell with his people, and he did dwell with his people in the Garden of Eden. But you know what else? Is a temple structure? Is Jacob's ladder? and that whole area that Jacob was in, which, so I think you see, I think that matters because if you think about

the beginning God saw man alone, and he says, it's not good for man to be alone. So he says, I'll create a suitable helper for him. So he creates Eve, and then they consummate their union, the sexual union, which results in the procreation of life itself. Yep.

You know, it actually turns into more life. Right. And so the picture is a God or man and woman procreating, having children, relationship, kind of mirroring the Trinity, mirroring who God is. And then they had that relationship horizontally with each other, but then they have that vertically with God and its presence. And you see all of that in the book of Exodus, fruitful multiplication, the presence of God. And so that's ultimately what the enemy is trying to destroy. So when you get the New Testament, to your point on Moses being second Christ, or Christ being the second Moses, that's kind of the whole point of the book of Hebrews.

Yes, as a Hebrews makes that point clear. I mean, just like Christ, not necessarily a second Moses, like a better Moses. That's why you see that were better you so much in Hebrews. Yeah. Because what are the other things that he's better in? Oh, and then you got the covenant, the high priest, you know, all the different examples. So Aaron was a high priest. So he becomes a better high priest than Aaron ever thought about it.

And we know that Aaron was called. Better than Mount Cazadegh. He's a priest in the order of Malkazadegh. He's a better sacrifice. He's a better temple. And so the whole book of Hebrews is like looking at the Exodus story and the giving of the law and the book of the covenant. And he's like, yeah, all that, Christ superior, all of it. He's a fulfillment of all of it.

Christ is the point of the whole thing. Christ is the point of the book of Exodus. Yeah. We're out of time, Zach. Are we really? Yeah. Oh, wow. That was awesome.

Yeah. So again, yeah, if you guys want to take this course with us, it's Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. We're in the story of Exodus, the most important story in the whole Bible because we repeat it over and over again. And we are in the new Exodus. Join us every Friday for Unashamed Academy Powered by Hillsdale College. Make sure to go to Unashamed for Hillsdale.com and sign up. It's no calls to you. That's Unashamed for Hillsdale.com.

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