0:00:00 - 0:00:33 Pull a video to a video I made uh yesterday May 4th 2023 uh about repentance. I'm trying to remember what it was called, but in my mind, it was a repentance. Doesn't give you a do over. I can actually look it up here and tell you what it was called. Uh So um this morning, the thought came to me that 0:00:32 - 0:01:00 I needed to uh share with you Isaiah 56 on this topic. The, the title of the video yesterday was your temporal life is limited by your past choices. Your joy in God is not. And I'll cross link that on this one. But here's the short passage from Isaiah 56. And I wanted to highlight this because it's talking 0:00:59 - 0:01:22 about in part people who have lived their lives a certain way before they come to submit to God. And uh there are a few characterizations in this passage, but I wanted to pull out some key points and this is great because it's, it's nice and compact, but it's dense. There's a lot there. So let's read 0:01:22 - 0:01:41 through this verse one. Thus saith the Lord, keep ye judgment and do justice for my salvation is near to come and my righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man that doeth this and the son of man that layth hold on it, that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it and keepeth his hand from doing any 0:01:41 - 0:02:01 evil. Neither let the son of the stranger that hath joined himself to the Lord speak, saying the Lord hath utterly separated me from his people. Neither let the eunuch say behold, I am a dry tree for thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my Sabbaths and choose the things that please me and take 0:02:01 - 0:02:23 hold of my covenant. Even unto them. Will I give in mine house and within my walls, a place in a name better than of sons and of daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Also the sons of the stranger that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him and to love the name 0:02:22 - 0:02:41 of the Lord, to be his servants. Every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it and taketh hold of my covenant. Even them. Will I bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer, their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar for mine house shall 0:02:41 - 0:03:04 be called in house of prayer for all people, the Lord God, which gareth, the outcasts of Israel saith. Yet will I gather others to him beside those that are gathered unto him. Now, there's a lot here um to really understand everything that this is talking about. You have to understand everything that's 0:03:04 - 0:03:24 going to happen between now and when the Lord comes again and also after he comes again, but we obviously are not gonna go into all of that. So we'll try to keep this at a high level and I think it's still very valuable at that level. Um So there are a few people here that are characterized these sons 0:03:24 - 0:03:51 of the stranger, meaning uh people who are not connected through family to the Lord's people. So you could say gentiles here if you wanted to. Uh Although that, that label is really bad for a lot of reasons. Um namely because the people who are of the House of Israel uh numerically, they are not known 0:03:51 - 0:04:11 . Um What I mean by this is, it's funny if you look through all these groups of people, uh there is a pattern that plays out again and again, let me give you an example that's not directly connected to what we're talking about. If you look at the number of people who have Native American ancestry, I'm 0:04:11 - 0:04:35 not talking about uh the Senator Warren types, people who really have Native American ancestry. You'll find that the number of those who do not live on reservations and in fact, don't even know that they are Native American. Um It far outnumbers those who do and, and that's, so that's a three part chain 0:04:34 - 0:04:53 . The number of people who have no idea that they're Native American far outnumbers, the ones who know, but don't live on a reservation. And that number far outnumbers those who live on reservations. And so it, this is astonishing to most people, but these are numbers, they're out there. You can look 0:04:53 - 0:05:15 them up. Um, the last time this was investigated that I know of was, I think back in 2016 when 23 and me or one of these genealogy companies, they commissioned this enormous study and, uh, found a lot of surprising results in terms of ancestry and presumed race of people in the United States. Another 0:05:14 - 0:05:38 thing they found was that, uh, most African Americans have much more European ancestry than they thought. Um, and there's also a lot of native American ancestry among African Americans, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone that knows history. But, uh, a few people do anyway. You, uh, it's also known 0:05:38 - 0:06:01 , here's another example that most Irish people don't live in Ireland. There are many more people of Irish descent in the United States than there are people in Ireland. Isn't that amazing? There are also more Jews in America than there are in Israel. Um, and these, these are obviously known ancestry 0:06:01 - 0:06:24 lines. Um, if you go into the unknown ones, I'm not sure about the Irish. But, um, yeah, that was kind of obvious, I guess. Um, but if you look at, uh, Jewish ancestry. The fact is that there are 10 tribes that no one knows where they went. Right. And so that ancestry is dispersed throughout most of 0:06:24 - 0:06:45 the world. And there are some interesting analyses have been done by random people online, uh mathematical analysis of probabilities. And you can actually calculate the probability that some random person on the planet uh is related to Abraham somehow. And it turns out it is really, really high. So that's 0:06:45 - 0:07:14 interesting. But, but anyway, so that's why gentile is not really a good descriptor. Um It's also the case that a whole bunch of people who think they are in these groups uh are not what percentage? Oh I have no idea. But uh there's some interesting things I do know about that anyway. Um So there are 0:07:14 - 0:07:34 the now with that lengthy reason of, of why we shouldn't use the label gentiles or why it's not the most descriptive label we can use. I'm gonna go ahead and use it. So you've got the gentiles and then you've got these UNIX. Um And that's an interesting one because I I'm pretty sure you know what that 0:07:34 - 0:08:00 means. Um So literally, so symbolically what would it mean to be a eunuch? So it's, it's someone who um eunuchs are servants, first of all, beyond the physical part of all of that. Um But they obviously they can't have posterity. So that's interesting um in our modern world that the value of having Children 0:07:59 - 0:08:22 is, uh it's not even zero, I'd say it's, it's uh perceived as negative if you average out perceptions. But in the ancient world it wasn't, those people lived much closer to reality. Uh Their lives were structured in a way that promoted good to a far greater extent than ours. So, um that would have been 0:08:22 - 0:08:44 seen as a negative thing by almost anyone. But what God says here is he, he goes through these groups of people who might think that they have a bad situation or I wasn't raised in the right circumstance or I have these opportunities permanently cut off for me. Sorry, I couldn't, couldn't resist. Um 0:08:44 - 0:09:07 In the case of the eunuchs and God says, yeah, OK, fine. But think about all the wonderful things that I could still do for you. And the funny thing is there's nothing about this description that's a consolation prize, nothing, nothing about it. And what you'll find is that in the Gospel, in the Lord's 0:09:06 - 0:09:33 ways, there is no loss. Everything is always improvement. And one thing you have to understand to see that accurately is that much of what you think you have. You do not actually have, it's just the illusion of having it. Um This is, this is by design, God doesn't design to trick us, but he does do this 0:09:32 - 0:10:01 um that he extensively distributes invitations for improvement through giving us samples of what the real thing is like. And those the samples are sprinkled across things that sometimes have very little to do with the real thing, but it's all designed to lead us in a ladder that goes rung by rung closer 0:10:01 - 0:10:22 to the real thing. It's, it's, it's not different than free samples at Costco or the food court at the mall where there's someone out there handing these things out actively in it. It's not just, uh it's not just the, the situations that explicitly involve people in the sense of people who know what 0:10:22 - 0:10:50 is better and are trying to entice you towards that. It's also the case that it's deeply ingrained in everything about creation. Everything, every, every single aspect of how your body works, for example, is tuned to do everything that can be done given how things are to direct you towards God. So all 0:10:50 - 0:11:19 those invitations though they're invitations, they're not compulsion. And so it requires you to recognize and act according to or react in this case, according to the way things work. But um he can use the circumstances you've been through in and of themselves to direct you towards him anyway. But what 0:11:18 - 0:11:44 you can take out of this, uh I think are three things. One thing that I didn't write up here is you can go through this and pull all of the descriptions of blessings. So if we just cruise through this salvation, his righteousness to be revealed, but this, I mean, you know what his righteousness is uh 0:11:44 - 0:12:09 but to be revealed, that's very important because what it means is you don't have it now. You don't even know what it is has to be revealed. So these two are actually tied together. Salvation has two meanings. One is to be saved or to be redeemed out of something that overcomes you. The other definition 0:12:08 - 0:12:31 is to be made victorious over what overcomes you. And those are two very different things. They're called the same thing. But um and they come from, they both come from God, but they look and feel very different. Both of them rely on his righteousness to be revealed, although they work in different ways 0:12:30 - 0:13:04 . OK? So um this term blessed that actually means a lot. We're gonna skip over it and just, we'll use the word and not explain it. But that's part of what is available and just scanning through here. OK? And then we get two more blessings you are given in his house and within his walls, a place and a 0:13:04 - 0:13:34 name. And to help you understand how valuable that is. It's better than what sons and daughters receive. Um How's that true? Well, what you receive through inheritance in life is limited to your life. It's limited to temporal things and the duration of your life. But what God gives is everlasting and 0:13:34 - 0:14:07 it can't be cut off. So Jesus has overcome all things and when you receive blessings from God and you remain in unity with him as he reveals more of his righteousness to you. Then, even though you're not at the point where you have overcome all things, you inherit this promise that in Him, you will overcome 0:14:06 - 0:14:34 all things. And so you can't be cut off. That's not to say that in your mortal perception of things, it won't look like the state of your life uh isn't fluctuating because our eyes are mortal eyes don't see things as they really are. The question is whether you're cut off from God or not, because I'd 0:14:34 - 0:15:00 rather be connected to God sitting in a pit half full of raw sewage while people are throwing things at me and be connected to God than I would to be disconnected from God and sit on the highest throne of men in the world or, you know, whatever your description of paradise is from any of the world's 0:15:00 - 0:15:26 religions. I'd rather be connected to God in the midst of the greatest possible suffering than I would to have the joy of men on earth and be disconnected from God. One of the reasons for that, the real reason for that is because I trust him. But it's another reason for that is that anything that's limited 0:15:25 - 0:15:55 in time can't be worth something that's not limited in time. So what endures forever is worth more than what does not. But it turns out that also what God gives to his connections, if far exceeds anything that's available here. Uh outside of that. OK. Uh What's his house? And what are his walls? What 0:15:55 - 0:16:23 is a place and a name? Um essentially just to keep it kind of shallow here. What this means is he will bring you into his kingdom. He will connect you to the flow of everything that means and it is a flow and uh you will have the covenant of peace and the covenant of growth and those are the two that 0:16:22 - 0:16:56 , that are available, they're called different things. But um part of that will be that scanning here. Where is it here? Sorry, part of that will be your opportunity to flow to others, everything that you've received to him from him. And so you become a link in the chain to connect other people to the 0:16:55 - 0:17:18 fullness of what, at least up to what you've received from him, whether that's everything or part of everything. And then we're just continuing to list off these blessings. He'll bring you to his holy mountain. And that is, I've spoken about that before. I'll talk about a lot more later. You're connecting 0:17:17 - 0:17:55 into the flow of everything that he has to give uh which is a flow through time and also a flow in terms of um volume. So it's, it's a, it continues to flow. It's not a fixed, it's not a box full of stuff. It's a river that just keeps flowing. It's a connection, a living connection. Uh OK. Make them 0:17:55 - 0:18:21 joyful. In my house of prayer. You know, that's interesting because uh simplistically, I think people reduce house of prayer to various forms of church. And uh the number of people that actually enjoy going to church is very small if they're honest. Um And those of us who do don't last long. Uh I've 0:18:20 - 0:18:43 , I've made multiple references to the girl in pink on my, the little girl in pink on my blog. And I posted this random video I found when I was looking for this thing. Um Yeah, anyway, so um but he will change you so that you actually perceive being in his house of prayer, which isn't a building, it's 0:18:43 - 0:00:00 not a church in the world, in the world's use of the word. Um But he will change you. So that service to him is something you actually enjoy. Imagine that and, and you find that in his holy mountain or this process of him drawing you to him by constantly making available to you changes that you can, 0:00:00 - 0:19:42 that will bring improvement. Part of it is also that the sacrifices that you make will actually be connected to what he wants and how he wants it. Those things align. Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't it be nice to know that everything you sacrifice pleases God and that everything that would please God 0:19:41 - 0:20:13 you're doing? So I think that we've gone over the blessings shallowly, but we've touched on these. Ok. So now let's get to changes. So what's the point of all of this? We're going to start with some do nots and then we're gonna go over some do s they're all here. One don't do any evil. None. Zero, Zilch 0:20:13 - 0:20:43 Nada. Here it is. Keep your hand from doing any evil. So good means what benefits evil is anything less than the best, you know, evil. So, so good is evil when it's less than best, good is evil when it's less than best. So when it says any evil, it's not just saying, don't pick up a meat cleaver and 0:20:42 - 0:21:05 go chase your neighbor. It's saying if you see your neighbor struggling with something and the greatest benefit you could provide in that moment is to drop what you're doing and go help that neighbor. That's what you need to do. So that, that could be a long discussion. You could read the book I wrote 0:21:05 - 0:21:27 called Repentance. If you want to learn more about that repentance by Robert Smith. Um Next, don't pollute his Sabbath. I made a video about Sabbaths. But essentially, so what this brings to mind is actually an analogous idea, which is this idea of Zion. People uh are familiar with the phrase fighting 0:21:27 - 0:21:56 against Zion and they throw it around, but they don't really know what it means. Zion is just quote unquote, just the Lord's way. It's a place, it's a place, it's a state of mind, it's the Lord's way. So to fight against Zion doesn't mean to get a rifle and to march on a place that has this big placard 0:21:55 - 0:22:28 outside. Welcome to Zion population, 100 and 44,000. Um Well, first off because the real Zion will not be approachable by the wicket. So the wiki can't fight it, the city because they can't even get close to it. Um Anyway, so to fight against Zionist, to fight against the Lord's will and all of those 0:22:28 - 0:22:55 who live according to the Lord's will to the extent that they do. So what about polluting his Sabbaths? There's two pieces of this one is pollute the others Sabbath and I'm talking about Sabbath right now. Um The Sabbath, that's, that's the, let's see, how, how can we think of this? It's so the Sabbath 0:22:54 - 0:23:19 Day is a day that the Lord had set aside for us to preview what it would be like to live without toil and he would like us to pursue his will as we would if we were free from toil with toil in the mix, I was just actually looking at Genesis 316 this morning for an unrelated reason. Fascinating verse 0:23:18 - 0:23:42 with toil in the mix. The will of the Lord. It manifests differently. It's like looking at a white light when you have a green filter or uh sometimes if you're, if you're wearing polarized sunglasses or certain sunglasses have a tint, I have safety glasses that are yellow, right? So when you, when you 0:23:42 - 0:24:10 put those on. Everything looks different in the will of the Lord is different when we have things like uh Children in the dangerous world or um and, and needing to be nursed and things like that. Uh It's different when we have to go to work each day to uh earn our daily bread. So you can't just pretend 0:24:10 - 0:24:37 like that stuff doesn't exist while it does and still be living according to the will of God. He put that in here for a reason and he will take it out one day and until he does, we need to use it for the purposes. He intends. So um to that end, the Sabbath is a preview where for one day, we can pause 0:24:36 - 0:25:03 all that and then do what we would do if it were like that all the time. And he's, he's very kind to give us a, a sample of that to entice us to desire and prepare for the day when it's available in its fullness, which not surprisingly is in the 7th 1000 years. So there are seven days, quote unquote 0:25:03 - 0:25:31 of creation and within that seventh day is 7000 years, within that 7000 years is the last 1000 years, which is very different from the six that came before. Um If you want to understand more about this, you can reread the story of how Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding in Ka and count how 0:25:31 - 0:26:03 many pots there were and think about the difference between having six giant jars of water, probably rainwater, which isn't exactly something you're gonna bottle and sell to the elite. Um, or sorry, and the difference between six giant jars of rainwater or, and again, sorry. Uh, six giant jars of not 0:26:03 - 0:00:00 just wine but the best wine wine that's clearly better than any other wine. So, wouldn't that be something? Hm. Ok. So what does it mean to not pollute His Sabbath? To pollute? This is a very important word. You could search it out through the scriptures uh to pollute something or to file something, 0:00:00 - 0:26:53 adulterate something. You can think of it as mixing it with something less, it could be mixing it with something poisonous, but in some way, something degrading to the, the the previous quality. And so uh this passage, it's using a lot of language that is connected to the idea of Kingdoms. What is a 0:26:53 - 0:27:32 Kingdom of God, not of the world? A kingdom, a Godly Kingdom consists of a place and the law and a person, those three things, that's what a kingdom consists of and to that are connected others. So God's kingdom, he is the king of kings. The person is a king in, in the place person, law. God is the king 0:27:32 - 0:28:10 of his kingdom. He is the king of kings. So the people gathered to him are also kings. And sure enough, if you look at the description of the 24 elders who are around his throne, they are kings. So God is the king of kings, Jesus is the Lord of Lords. So um to pollute a kingdom is to defile the law of 0:28:10 - 0:28:41 that kingdom. If you pollute the law of the kingdom, you are in, you cannot abide in that kingdom. You have the right to stand. That's another important scriptural word. But to abide in a kingdom. If you are living the law of that kingdom, and if you're not, you have to go, have to go away. So to pollute 0:28:40 - 0:29:10 , the Sabbath is to live in a lower state than what is described by the Sabbath. To pollute. An inheritance is to live in a form that's less than what you need to keep that inheritance or receive it in the first place or derive the joy that should be available through it. So for example, the son, the 0:29:10 - 0:29:35 two sons of the, the wealthy man and uh the prodigal son, he says, can I have my inheritance? And he goes and he wastes it. He pollutes his inheritance because it wasn't meant to just pick up ladies and uh have a nonstop party until the money runs out. It's not what it's for. So here's my blunt advice 0:29:35 - 0:30:06 with this, don't pee in the pool. So use everything that God has given you to the full extent that it was designed and don't degrade it by using it for less than what is best? Don't pee in the pool. It's not a good thing. Finally, uh The other don't do item is in verse three. This one is very important 0:30:05 - 0:30:37 for this topic. So I'll reread it. Neither let the son of the stranger that hath joined himself to the Lord speak, saying the Lord hath utterly separated me from his people. Either let the eunuch say behold, I am a dry tree. Part of repentance is honestly condemning your past mistakes. But an equally 0:30:36 - 0:31:15 important part is fully accepting God's ability to make something out of what's left of your life. Don't complain about the past or the present or the future if you have given your whole self to God, because to do so is to complain against him. The Lord said to Peter when he showed him this vision of 0:31:15 - 0:31:53 the gospel going to the gentiles, he said, don't call unclean that which I have made holy, you cannot make of your life. Everything that God has the power to make of it. If you are holding to the belief that somehow it's tainted, don't call what God has made. Holy Unclean, you have to find and receive 0:31:53 - 0:00:00 his holiness. So that's a great transition to what we need to do. Um I'm having some text issues. So let's flip this around. All right. What do we need to do? It's a longer list, but it, I think it's simpler. Maybe here's verse two. It's simpler. So let me just start out revealing a massive mystery. 0:00:00 - 0:33:07 Um Verse two blessed is the man that doeth this and the son of man that layth. Hold on it. Um So I lost my reference. Um Let me just look something up. It is. Ok. I'm gonna skip that mystery for today. We'll just even go ahead and delete it. It's great advice to adopt the Lord's purpose, but I'm not 0:33:07 - 0:33:37 gonna talk about that. Ok. Let's uh keep it a little more elementary verse one says, keep ye judgment. Jesus taught the righteous judgment is things as they really are to God, not as they seem to you when he says, uh judge righteously. He's not saying be really careful in judging in applying to the world 0:33:36 - 0:34:02 , how you truly see things. That's not what that means. He's saying righteousness is from God. He's saying, figure out what God thinks about it when Samuel came to evaluate the sons of David's father, whose name I don't remember right now. He Jesse duh, ok. Sons of Jesse. He said, um you know, Jesse 0:34:01 - 0:34:26 had all of his sons on display there in their Sunday best. And Samuel said, no, it's none of these. Who else do you have? And Jesse is like, uh we've got David, he's out with the sheep. Now, what did he think of him that he didn't even bring him? So Jesse was not very impressed with David and for whatever 0:34:25 - 0:34:52 reason, I'm not sure that the story tells us why. But Samuel said, the Lord looks on the heart and our desires are very important to God, namely not just what we desire but how well we desire and how much. So it's what you desire is important to Him because he wants to give you what you want. But what 0:34:52 - 0:35:27 you desire in terms of how good are the things onto which you affix your desire. That's even more important to Him because you can only have joy up to the level of the goodness of the thing that you desire. So it's very important for us to learn what the, what God sees as right as good is valuable and 0:35:27 - 0:35:57 how valuable it is. And then for us to turn our own desire to match His. What does it mean to do justice? That's in verse one as well. This is all over the scriptures. It's super duper important. No one's really talked about it enough. Um to do justice. What is just is what is merited? So imagine a person 0:35:57 - 0:36:27 whose whole life was lived perfectly towing the line to what is merited again. Uh According to God's view of things, that person would be living their lives exactly like Jesus would in their place. Now you might say, but what about mercy? Mercy is not the suspension of justice. The abrogation. Let's 0:36:26 - 0:36:59 be very precise in our language. Mercy is not the abrogation of justice. Mercy can't rob justice. What mercy is is when someone pays the price through unmerited suffering so that another can be excused from a penalty that they deserve or so that another can have an opportunity that they do not deserve 0:36:59 - 0:37:35 . But in no case, does anything ever come to anyone such that the price has not been paid? It's always paid much more could be said about that. But the point of the connection here is that we always act according to justice. That does not mean that we ought to go around as, as the destroying angel or 0:37:34 - 0:37:58 something to say, oh, you're guilty. I'm judge Dredd. I am the law. Um That's not what that means. It means when you, when someone says, can you pray for me? You need to figure out what the heck is going on. We're not uh putting a coin in a wishing well, when we pray to God, if you do, uh nothing's going 0:37:58 - 0:38:18 to happen, not predictably anyway. You have the same results with the wishing well and it's less offensive to God. So maybe you should just go find a wishing well and toss a coin in there, find out what's actually going on. And when you pray for someone, you need to understand that part of that prayer 0:38:17 - 0:38:42 is Lord. What unmerited suffering can I go through to affect the outcome that I'm asking for? That whoever this person is has not paid the price for, obviously, because they're in this situation. No, it's not exactly that cut and dry because if that person themselves are going through unmerited suffering 0:38:41 - 0:39:02 , then it's not the case that they have not paid the price for what they're asking for. Job, paid the price for what he was asking for. He lived as a, as a very righteous man. The things that were taken away from him and the bad things that were given to him were blessings from God to increase his unmerited 0:39:01 - 0:39:29 suffering so that he could ascend to greater state of grace. But so you wouldn't want to pray for job saying, take all this away from Him because it's a blessing. So it's not so simple. But doing justice is very important in a much more applied way, a simpler application uh don't desire things that you 0:39:29 - 0:39:59 do not deserve. Find out what you have to do to deserve it and then go and do that. That's how you do justice and don't harm people who are good. Don't help persecute the righteous. The flip side of that is support those who are following God even when they're persecuted. This is a lesson that is going 0:39:58 - 0:40:24 to become very important very soon. Uh a a more detailed way of saying that is righteous. People have always been persecuted, they're certainly persecuted today. The frequency and the intensity of that will increase as the world becomes more wicked and as the people who are righteous, become more righteous 0:40:24 - 0:41:00 because of this and this, you can go and learn what it means when people in scripture say the Kingdom of God is nigh, but that's for a different day. OK. Verse four, this is another Sabbath one. Keep the Sabbath holy. So the do not is don't pollute the Sabbath but keep the Sabbath holy. That's not a 0:41:00 - 0:41:27 do not. That's a do. OK? So that means fill it with the most virtuous, beneficial, service oriented things that you can imagine. And then when you've got your list, pray to God and he'll give you something even better. Often, you should be more tired at the end of a Sunday than you are any other day 0:41:27 - 0:41:59 of the week. Don't take that too far. But it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. It's not a day to just catch up on lost sleep or something. It's a day to do the Lord's work also in verse four is doing what pleases God. That's a wonderful idea. This is adopting his purpose. That's a point that 0:41:58 - 0:42:21 should be made explicit what pleases God is not some arbitrary thing. Uh It's a false idea to think that his commandments are divorced from his character at the end of the day. What God wants you to do is what he would do in your place. If you have a set of rules that someone who knows Him better than 0:42:20 - 0:42:44 you gave you like Moses, then that is a wonderful set of steps to come up to something approaching a more direct connection with God and whatever He tells you directly, that is going to take precedence over whatever anyone else says, be careful because you're going to have a tendency to make stuff up 0:42:44 - 0:43:11 to fit what you want. But in as much as your life is full of evidence of you sacrificing what you want, your comfort, your standing with other people, your pleasure here and now your wealth, whatever your cheeseburgers, whatever your passion is, um If your life is full of evidences of you laying that 0:43:11 - 0:43:38 aside, uh, in preference for what God told you to do or to want or to not do or not want, then you can begin to trust your ability to hear his voice above one who has clear evidence of a closer relationship to Him than you. But um until you start doing that, be very careful before you throw away what 0:43:38 - 0:44:02 Moses tells you because uh this is, I it cracks me up when, for example, I, I remember, I don't know, there was this cluster of people years ago who were on this mission to disparage Abraham for the whole Isaac affair. And they said, well, if Abraham was really close to God, then he never would have 0:44:02 - 0:44:25 killed his son. And that was a test where God wanted him to show that he was willing to disobey God because he knew better. And I mean, not surprisingly, these people's lives are totally devoid from the hand of God in every way because they've got it all backwards and it just shocks me. Uh There are 0:44:25 - 0:44:48 , I came across a, a cluster of academic type script orions um who have this, this theory and they've sold many books. They, it's their living to go around saying Paul didn't know what he was talking about and Paul subverted the church out of the hands of those who were the real quote unquote disciples 0:44:47 - 0:45:19 . And um it's just amazing to me that someone that cannot do any of the good things of the person they are criticizing, feels so free to disparage them anyway. So be cautious in saying, well, I'm going to disobey this explicit rule that came from God. Uh because his voice to me overrides that it's true 0:45:19 - 0:45:45 . His voice to you overrides anything but you better be dang sure about it. And I don't say that to inject doubt into your hearing God's voice. I say that merely to call attention to help you call attention to honest evaluation of how thoroughly you have oriented your life to Him in your own perspective 0:45:44 - 0:46:07 , not mine, not anybody else's, but don't pretend that you're the master of revelation all of a sudden because God's telling you to eat a chocolate bar even though you're £300 overweight. There he goes again bashing fat people. Um When your life is a dumpster fire of disobedience to God because you're 0:46:07 - 0:46:34 addicted to porn and you hate poor people and orphans and whatever, right? So, so anyway, by all means, go get the voice of God to you please. That's obviously a lot of what I've taught is all about that wrote a book called Seek You, this Jesus. Uh but don't fool yourself, come in through the gate, which 0:46:34 - 0:46:59 is obedience to what you know, and uh and then you can move on from there to better things, namely what you don't know yet that he will reveal to you and take hold of his covenant. This is not a good snippet to just say, there we go, we're done. But that's exactly what I'm going to do. Um Because this 0:46:59 - 0:47:30 is a big deal, but maybe the easiest way I can uh weasel out of talking about it is by pointing to uh where was it pointing back to this idea of a flow. Um And that's kind of where this is nested anyway, but just realize that there is something available at all times to all people in terms of a living 0:47:29 - 0:47:56 connection to God. I, I'm using the word living in the sense of the ancient sense of flowing water. So um it's, it's not just about some box full of stuff and that's all there is. It's a, it's his words never cease and his flow of love and mercy and blessings and knowledge and glory and wisdom and all 0:47:56 - 0:48:21 these other things. Um It, it, it's not meant to be static it's not meant to have an end, it's meant to go on forever. And that's all part of this much more to be said about that at some other point. But you don't take hold of his covenant in any other way except through looking at your life and looking 0:48:21 - 0:48:43 at all the things that he's blessed you with and taught you and living up to it. This is sort of the opposite of this one. Don't pollute your inheritance, make use of it for what it's for. Be like the son that stayed at home and served his father instead of the one that said, hey, how can I cash out 0:48:42 - 0:49:07 of this? I wanna go to the uh the houses of ill repute, take hold of his covenant. All right. Hopefully, that's an, that's a helpful addendum to the other video. I think this one's way more important. Um A lot of times I wish that we could just sit here and walk through, through the scriptures all day 0:49:06 - 0:49:34 long. And as I've asked the Lord, why? That's not the case? Why uh the content I produce in videos is mostly pretty stream of conscience and not produced well. And uh and then on the flip side, it's these deep, deep, deep books that take forever to uh write and read and understand and apply. And I say 0:49:33 - 0:49:57 , why can't we just sit here and read through the scriptures with people? And he says, because they won't believe my words, they already have them, they take them for granted. So why would reading them change anyone? And that's really sad. But as far as my value goes or my valuation, my appraisal of 0:49:57 - 0:50:21 value goes, I would much rather just sit here reading the scriptures and sharing with you what the Lord has made so plain in them. But unfortunately, he, he's very persuasive and unfortunately, he's got me on this one just like everything else. Um If you could get it through reading the scriptures, you 0:50:21 - 0:50:27 already would have gotten it. So, anyway, have a good one.