Lesson 71 - God’s “Lawsuit” - Sentence and the Surprise Ending

Deuteronomy Lesson 71

God’s “Lawsuit” – Sentence and the Surprise Ending

Deuteronomy 32:19–43
Fellowship Chapel
24 January 2012
Charles Clough
© Charles A. Clough 2012
www.BibleFrameworkApplied.org

Tonight we’re going to finish hopefully chapter 32 which will put us within striking distance of the end of the book. I want to proceed carefully through this chapter 32 because this is the chapter that gives the way God works later in the centuries of the Old Testament. If you master the logic of chapter 32, you will have prepared yourself to read any of the prophets of the Bible because the theology of the prophets is a mirror of chapter 32 of Deuteronomy. So that’s why this chapter is so important - to see the way it’s structured.

For years and years of course, the liberals have argued based on evolution that the higher social justice and social reformation of themes in the prophets came later. “Surely not in Moses’ day!” No one would have dreamed of social justice, no one would have dreamed of social reform and so on and so forth. So taking the evolutionary idea that history is improving morally (of course you have evidences all over- don’t believe that) that taking the evolutionary idea of progress in society, justice, law, and ethics and imposing that upon the Bible forced them to take passages like 32 of Deuteronomy and late date it because a passage that thinks this way couldn’t possibly have been extant in the second millennium. This had to be a later development.

Then what they do is they make the prophets of the Bible the innovators. It was Isaiah; it was Jeremiah; it was Zechariah – those later prophets they were the ones who were the social reformers. Historically the Christian socialist movement captures that idea. So we’re really talking about something that’s very contemporary here.

The whole idea of Christian socialism or what I call the sentimentalism - that idea comes out of the higher criticism of the Scriptures. It was built on that. Your liberal denominations all bought into that kind of thinking. So what we’re studying here now is a sharp contrast to that whole genre of thought.

Let’s ask the Lord to help us as we work through this today.

Okay, we’ve looked at this riv format. It’s this format that underlies this whole chapter 32. This particular slide shows you the generalized riv format. This was compiled from other extra biblical documents involving litigation - and involving not litigation in the civil sense but litigation internationally between nations, between city-states. This was the procedure and how it was understood.

So we mentioned that by comparing the Bible to this kind of format what we want to do as believers is to say, “Okay, there are similarities; but there are also differences, sharp differences.” It’s those differences that alert us to the different kind of thinking that the Bible has versus the pagans that lived all around Israel.

What we noticed, and this is the section tonight; there is a fourth section in Deuteronomy and in the prophets that is missing completely from the pagan analogue literature. Therefore we ought to pay attention to this fourth section because obviously something is going on in the fourth section that was not going on in the pagan mentality all around Israel. This is a unique thing. We need to say, “Ooo, why is this here?” 

As we proceeded, Roman I, the court procedures. We’ve had the call for witnesses in verses 1, 2 and 3. That call for the witnesses as you look at the Deuteronomic text is very parallel to passages in Isaiah, Micah, Hosea and so forth. There is a call for witnesses. The same kind of thing is in Revelation 2-3. The angels of the churches are the witnesses. So it’s always the witnesses. These witnesses appear to be angelic beings who are not involved in redemption. Angels aren’t redeemed. They are involved in doxological matters, not redemptive matters. They’re concerned not with redemption per se for themselves; they’re concerned with the glory of God. What are they learning about God and His nature from this? So that’s the call to witnesses.

Then verses 4 to 6 we said is the introduction of the case. It’s defined in terms of God’s character. So that’s why: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:4, “He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He.” So surely the emphasis here is quite clear that the standard, the moral ethical standard, is God’s character. It’s God’s nature. That’s fundamental.

That’s why human beings who claim to make moral judgments are blowing smoke. Neither you nor I have any moral authority. No critic has moral authority. No leader of a nation, no courtroom has any moral authority. They have power. They have political power. They have physical power. They have the power to compel; that’s correct, but they do not have original moral authority. Original moral authority can only come from God because God alone is omniscient and holy. There is no source for moral authority outside of God.

You can strike up a conversation some time when you hear some unbeliever who maybe is criticizing you as a believer and demeaning the Bible. You can turn around and put the ball in his court and say, “What is your moral authority for trying to tell me how to live my life? I’d like to know. What is you moral authority? Where are you getting your moral judgments from? What standard are you using and why are you doing that?” You’ll quickly find when you start asking questions like that, the whole discussion gets very greasy. All of a sudden everybody is slipping and sliding around on an ice pond here. That’s why the introduction of the case is so crucial. It’s rooted against a standard; and the standard is not subjective. That is it doesn’t originate from men because what we mankind what we have is we are finite in our thinking. We’re fallen so we can’t be moral authorities. We have to have a derivative authority from something else, some other standard external to ourselves.

Then we have in verses 7 to 14 - we have the judicial proof of the faithfulness of Yahweh. This is the judicial proof. It goes on for many verses. The issue here is Yahweh. The critical thing about verses 7 to 14 is they’re written from the future looking backwards. That’s what throws the liberals. When they see a text like verses 7 to 14, they really have a problem because verses 7 to 14 look in the future to history and is written as though the future has already happened – like the future is the past.

You can understand. If you were a liberal, if you were a critic of the Scriptures and you’re thinking to yourself that all ideas originate in men’s minds then you’d have to say this must have been written after the fact. That begs the question. The Scriptures are saying they weren’t written in man’s mind. Moses isn’t getting this information from his own mind. He’s getting this information from God the Holy Spirit who’s inspiring him. That’s why he can go project into the future and look back in the present. So the whole liberal attack against the Scripture is rooted in a question-begging thing. They haven’t come to grips with revelation so because they haven’t come to grips with revelation they have to interpret the Scriptures the way they do. That is man’s mind is all human speculation. It’s Jewish autobiography. So verses 7 to 14 are the judicial proof.

Of course by this time Roman I the court procedure becomes a joke if you interpret the Scripture the way the liberals teach you to interpret the Scripture. There’s no court procedure going on. There can’t be any court procedure if it’s all a figment of Moses’ literary imagination in the later prophets. The whole idea of this being a legal procedure is a joke at that point.

Then we come in verses 15-18 to the accusation. The accusation is stated very clearly. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:15, “But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; You grew fat, you grew thick, You are obese! Then he forsook God who made him, And scornfully esteemed the Rock of his salvation. ¹⁶ They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods; With abominations they provoked Him to anger. ¹⁷ They sacrificed to demons…” So clearly there’s a spiritual battle that’s going on. It’s not just sociological. This can’t be studied and analyzed from a sociological point of view. It has to be analyzed from a theological point of view because there are demonic powers involved. There are unseen agencies involved.

We have to at this point remember that ideas originate in minds. Now we have to expand on that statement. There are different kinds of minds. There are God’s minds; there are angelic and demonic minds and there are human minds. So you have three classes of minds, not just one.

The metaphysics of reality here is a lot more complicated than most people think. It’s clear that Moses thinks this way. We’re not reading anything into the text in verse 17. That’s what verse 17 is asserting. So there’s a spiritual battle that’s going on here. There’s been a violation of their loyalty to God in this contract.

Now verses 19 to 26 - we dealt with the sentence. That goes down to verse 25. God saw them and spurned them. It goes on. There is a certain kind of idiomatic structure here. We’re going to look at that now in the handout under point A under Roman II – Yahweh’s sentence against Israel. It begins in verse 19.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:19, “And when the LORD saw it, He spurned them, Because of the provocation of His sons and His daughters. ²⁰ And He said: ‘I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end will be, For they are a perverse generation, Children in whom is no faith. ²¹ They have provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God; They have moved Me to anger by their foolish idols. But I will provoke them to jealousy by those who are not a nation; I will move them to anger by a foolish nation. ²² For a fire is kindled by my anger, And shall burn to the lowest hell; It shall consume the earth with her increase, And set on fire the foundations of the mountains. ²³ ‘I will heap disasters on them; I will spend My arrows on them. ²⁴ They shall be wasted with hunger, Devoured by pestilence and bitter destruction; I will also send against them the teeth of beasts, With the poison of serpents of the dust. ²⁵ The sword shall destroy outside; There shall be terror within For the young man and virgin, The nursing child with the man of gray hairs.”

That’s a pretty serious sentence. The next time you hear somebody say about the Bible and about Israel that these people are self righteous; you’re listening to someone who is ignorant because anyone who reads the Scripture realizes that the literature of the Bible is not arrogant literature. It is self-judgment. What nation has ever treated itself with language like this? This is condemning language. It’s not condemning - all this sentence here from verses 19 to 26, they’re not talking about the Assyrians. It is not talking about Egypt. It is not talking about Babylon. It’s talking about Jews. It’s talking about Israel. Here is the self-judgment that the Bible engenders. This is a mark of its genuineness. It’ is not accusing someone else. It’s doing what you see rarely you see done in culture. It’s accepting personal responsibility.

The theology of this accusation is important for us in this age because it shows how God wants us to think about our relationship with Him—that when we sin, we anger Him. He will discipline because that’s the nature of God. ^NKJ Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” This is God’s self-revealing of how He thinks about people who break allegiance with Him.

In verses 19 and 20 one of the key phrases there is: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:20, “And He said: ‘I will hide My face from them …” Now “hiding My face” is a rupture. In your outline you’ve got a blank there. This prophetically anticipates conditions centuries in the future; and it’s an idiom for a rupture in a personal relationship. It’s not just a legal impersonal product.

We’re not reading the Code of Hammurabi. This is not some pagan literature here. That by the way is also something else that critics don’t really grasp. That is the so-called legal literature of the Old Testament is legal literature that deals with a personal relationship with God. The Code of Hammurabi doesn’t do that. All you have to do is go to the library and get some pagan legal literature. You’ll see the difference. There is no personal relationship. Here there is a personal relationship. Why is that? What have we said are the two key characteristics of the nation Israel in world history that sets Israel apart from every other nation? They alone, as Dr. Albright has said, they alone have a contract with God. The other nations don’t. So their legal literature is different than the legal literature of the Bible. The second thing is that this has been a consistent line of prophets that is based on this legal relationship between God and Israel.

Now here in verse 21 – this is one reason I think why chapter 32 is poetic and why Isaiah is poetic; why Jeremiah is poetic. It’s very frustrating to the exegete because I prefer narrative. But when you get into the poetic things here, there’s emotion that can’t be conveyed with narrative. Everybody knows that. That’s when you have a poem. That’s why music is often written in a poetic way. It’s because poetry is more emotive than narrative. Here in verse 21 observe things. What you’re going to observe as you look carefully at verse 21 is this is God expressing in emotional terms His senses and interactions. Look at what it says.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:21, “They have provoked Me to jealousy …” Now look at the third clause. There are four clauses in verse 21.

Clause 1: “They have provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God”; Clause 3: “I will provoke them to jealousy by those who are not a nation …” Do you see the irony there? If you were in music, somehow in music you would want to mesh those two together so it would be a contrast. “You provoke Me? I provoke you!” This is God talking. This is the way He talks. This is the way He senses. “They have provoked Me; I will provoke them.” The object of clause 1 and clause 3 – in clause 1, “They provoked Me to jealousy by a no god. I’m provoke them through jealousy by a no people.” See the contrast that is going on there?

What it’s saying is, “They provoked Me by a no god (by a foolish god) so I’m going to provoke them by a no people.” There’s a correspondence between the offense to God and the discipline toward the people. The discipline fits the provocation. Then it goes on. It says that - the second clause and the fourth one. “They have moved Me to anger by their foolish idols… I will move them to anger by a foolish nation.” Catch it? There’s the poetic structure. It’s poetically written to make us feel it, not just read it. If you could - you would need somebody that’s a very good vocal person to read this with sense. I’m not that kind of a person; but if you have an artist that could narrate this; you would really sense the emotive lobe on these words.

Well it says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:21, “… They have moved Me to anger by their foolish idols. … I will move them to anger by a foolish nation”. In your notes you’ll see where I point out that it’s the Hebrew hevel (h-e-v-e-l). That’s the word translated vanity in Ecclesiastes. “Hevel, all is hevel.” What Solomon in Ecclesiastes is arguing is that outside of the meaning given to life externally to man in Scripture; apart from that, all is hevel. All is hevel.

Man originating stuff from his life is looked upon in the Scripture as just vapor. It’s unsubstantiated stuff. It doesn’t give meaning. It doesn’t give purpose and so forth.

So in your handout it says either it’s the objective authority of the Word of God (or the Creator God); or it’s the subjective authority of the individual finite fallen mind. Here’s where the two collide. It’s either objective authority; or it’s subjective authority. That’s why earlier we had this slide and here maybe we can understand a little bit more about why we’ve done that. On this slide we talked about the political. We’ve talked about the ethical. But underlying that is the epistemology and the metaphysics.

Remember, metaphysics deals with “what is reality?” There are two views. There’s one view that says that reality has two levels - the level of the Creator and the level of the creature. All other thought, all pagan thought, holds that continuity of being there is one kind of reality. God, man, nature, rocks, toads, plants are all part of the same spectrum. People have to choose. Which metaphysic are you going to buy? There’s a choice there. Nobody can be neutral here. There’s no neutrality. You are either one metaphysic or the other. But you can’t be both.

That’s a critical question; and that’s why this and this are interwoven. Clearly if there’s a creator and creature type of bi-level reality then your epistemology (that is how you know the truth) is going to be different depending on which metaphysic you have. That’s why we hold to biblical authority. That’s why we start - we end with the authority of Scripture. We do that because of our metaphysic because the universe has one level; then there is the creator of the universe on another level. The Creator who is on the upper level; He’s the one with the authority. That’s why our epistemology is Scripture-centered. But on the other hand if we think like a pagan and God if He exists is somehow trapped in the same system of logic and the same kind of existence that we’re in; then He is one authority among many - even if He speaks - and maybe He doesn’t speak. So that sets up this thing.

Now all this in this diagram is talking about things as though we were Greeks on. In other words this kind of a chart would be something that man could understand say from 300 or 400 BC unto the present day. The problem is people before 400 or 500 BC didn’t think this way. They thought in more concrete ways. So when you read in a verse like verse 21 – they provoke Me with no gods – what that is, is an equivalent to this chart. He is arguing that they provoked Him with a false metaphysic. They provoked Him with a false epistemology.

“You’re worshipping gods that aren’t God. You’re talking about gods and goddesses. I’m the one that alone is God. You’ve forgotten the creator-creature distinction.” That’s what it means when it says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:21, “They have provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God;” So now what God is going to do - He is going to provoke them with a no nation. We’ll have to get into that in a moment.

But if you follow now on your handout there are some points I want to cover in this thing so we walk away from chapter 32 understanding the force of what is said here. This is a forceful passage. It has tremendous implications and it underlies the whole idea of the conviction of sin in the rest of the Old Testament.

So point 1 and point 2—so what I’m saying here is the foolishness. God says, “You have moved Me to anger by your hevel idols, your useless vain idols. I am going to provoke you with a useless vain nation.”

Now what does He mean by hevel? We could go into the book of Ecclesiastes and develop this but under point one and two, what we’re doing there is spelling out in the way we think (post Greek) analytically in language we can think about rather than the idol language of Deuteronomy 32. There is no basis for belief in the uniformity of nature outside of the Scriptures. They’re not so available to mankind until after the Diaspora. It’s significant. Uniformity of nature simply was never believed thoroughly anywhere in human history until after the Greeks.

The question obviously is where did the Greeks get the uniformity of nature idea? I say the got it from the Diaspora. It suddenly blossomed around 586 BC. What else happened in 586 BC? The Jews were ejected out into the Levant and elsewhere in history.

So A under 1, if nature has no creator who has comprehensively designed, given meaning to and providentially administers every fact; then the world is ultimately mysterious and irrational - mysterious and irrational. Truly that’s the pagan mind. It’s still that way in many places in the third world. Natives afraid to go into the forest because there are tree spirits. They don’t want to chop the trees down because that would kill the spirit of the tree. Nature is irrational and mysterious. If you believe that about nature you would never be a scientist who would take leaves off a tree to put under a microscope to study it. If nature has no creator there are things follow from that. This is not a little religious game that we’re playing here. There are profound implications. Deny the Creator and you wind up with a world that’s mysterious and irrational.

Point B, then all reputed knowledge of nature is then a mirage, the projection of man’s thoughts. Think about this. If nature really has no rhyme and no reason and no purpose and you say there and you develop say a book on trees. You know a maple tree, oak tree. You go ahead and you classify and you talk about how trees grow up and so forth and you think you understand that. If the tree structures aren’t really structures; if nature doesn’t have a rhyme and reason; what you have written is autobiography. What you’re saying is what you thought about as you looked at nature; but you haven’t said anything about nature itself because you are simultaneously by denying God you’re confessing nature is irrational. So all of human knowledge becomes a mirage and a projection of man’s thoughts – brilliant, but a projection of mans thoughts.

Point C, the naturalist is thus suspended between claiming that nature is irrational yet also claiming that nature is rational and understandable. See the dilemma of the unbeliever? His metaphysic drives him to argue that nature is ultimately mysterious. Again, why does he say that? Because - there’s no sovereign omnipotent creator God who has designed every fact and controls every fact in a rational manner. If there is no god that does that, there’s no meaning and rationality in nature. So we have then the naturalist saying that on one hand that everything is irrational; but then when he goes to understand things has to believe it’s rational or he couldn’t understand it.

Point D, apart from God’s revelation belief in uniformity of nature cannot be justified. Now I’ve had some of the best science training at any university in America and I can guarantee you that in no science course either in undergraduate or graduate school has any professor ever defended the uniformity of nature. Never! Never done!

It’s fascinating. We write equations; we talk about this; we talk about that, all presuming that nature has uniformity. Nobody talks about the uniformity. Where’s the uniformity coming from? We know this a real thing because before the Greeks everybody believed it was irrational. They confessed it. So no basis for belief in the uniformity of nature. That’s why you have the orgies; that’s why you have all the pagan ceremonies; that’s why you have the high place in the Old Testament. That’s why God and the prophets always are against the high places and why they’re against Baalism, and why they’re against all those deities because they believe in an irrational and knowable nature.

Point 2, there is no basis for confidence in the law of non-contradiction. The idea of tightly logical thinking is a late development in human history. Again in comes from the Greeks after the Jewish Diaspora of 586 BC. Now that doesn’t mean that people didn’t think logically before; but the idea of thinking about thinking logically was new. The idea that you could have confidence that all I have to do be rational and consistent and I can attain truth.

Point A, where does logic come from? If logic is derived from experience, then it’s contingent upon the next experience and not universal in space and time. People will say, “We infer the rules of logic from experience.” Well if that’s the case then the next experience you have may invalidate the rules of logic you previously inferred. You admit then that the rules of logic are not uniform and are not consistent with time.

Point B, if logic is merely conventional social agreement; then it is arbitrary and not universal in space and time. What we’re saying here is this is the guts of Old Testament theology. Unbelievers, pagans have no basis for the uniformity of nature. They have no basis for logical reasoning.

Point C - logic requires ultimate metaphysical unity because the rules should never change. To coexist with ultimate metaphysical diversity - that is discrete materials remain discrete. Example, two plus two is four. The plus sign and the equal sign can’t change with time. Therefore, you have to have a unity, an unbroken unity of rules. But then the objects that you’re dealing with the two apples or two oranges versus the two oranges have to remain separate oranges. They can’t transform themselves into one orange. So you have to have ultimate diversity.

Here’s the underlying fact of math. Nobody ever deals with it in the classroom. I’ve had lots of math courses. No one ever even talks about the question. Yet it’s the eloquent solution in the Trinity where we see this. At the level of the Creator Himself you have unity and diversity – You have unity the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are God. But you have diversity. The Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Father; the Son is not the Holy Spirit. So now you have what sounds like a paradox that you have ultimate diversity, but you have ultimate unity at the high level of the Creator.

This is one of the glories of God. This is why we Christians relish the Doctrine of the Trinity. We laugh at those who seem to see it as a contradiction because everyone else has to accept the fact that every time they use a math equation that there’s ultimate unity and ultimate diversity; but they’re laughing at us about the trinity. We laugh back at them. “You are using mathematics you haven’t got a rhyme or reason why you’re using it.” So all this has to do with these idols – the no gods. That’s the force of verse 21. “They provoke Me to jealousy with no gods, with vanity hevel idols. Idols that mean nothing.”

Now God says, “Now I am going to do something. I am going to move them to anger with a foolish hevel nation.” What does he mean by a hevel nation? Well let’s go over the handout further. Gentile conquerors are involved. In other words the Jews are going to be conquered and disciplined; but they will be conquered by “no” peoples. What are “no” peoples? Well, the other nations have no contracts with God. They don’t have any special place in history. This is sort of an insult to remind Israel.

“You people, you’re chosen. You have a name, people. You are a people because you’re related to Me. Now look what’s going to happen. Your lands are going to be invaded. Your cities will be destroyed and burned by people who aren’t really a nation compared to you. These are no peoples. Israel goes after hevel with no basis for faith or life so become overwhelmed by a nation built on hevel.” There’s poetic irony to this judgment.

Now in verses 22, 23, 24, and 25: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:22 “For a fire is kindled by my anger, And shall burn to the lowest hell …” 

Commentators are arguing, “This has to be a very late concept of an underworld.” I don’t think it’s a late concept at all. Look at what He says. It’s a metaphor. Hell by the way here is not hell New Testament. It’s Sheol. It’s the word all the way down to the underworld. But it’s a metaphor. It says: “It shall consume the earth with her increase, And set on fire the foundations of the mountains”. It’s a metaphor of volcanic activity. People knew there were volcanoes then. They saw fire coming up out of the earth. So this is easy metaphor. It didn’t require an evolved level of literature to figure out something like this.

Now we come to the last section. Here we’re back to … let’s go back to Deuteronomy 32.

Point 4, the gracious ultimate assurance. This is the section that does not correspond to any pagan literature. Now let’s think about what’s happening here. If we were considering a treaty between pharaoh and say some city-state in Palestine, the pharaoh would say, “You cross me; I’m going to cross you. You’re dead meat pal.” That’s it – end of story. It doesn’t go any further. “I’ll destroy you. Got it?” But that’s not the way God works. He says, “I am going to destroy you; but eventually you will be restored.” So that’s the fourth section and that’s what sets this whole thing theologically in a distinct fashion from the pagan world around.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:26 “I would have said …” Now here is God explaining His thinking. “I will dash them in pieces, I will make the memory of them to cease from among men,” ²⁷ Had I not feared the wrath of the enemy, Lest their adversaries should misunderstand, Lest they should say, “Our hand is high; And it is not the LORD who has done all this.” ²⁸ ‘For they are a nation void of counsel, Nor is there any understanding in them. ²⁹ Oh, that they were wise, that they understood this, That they would consider their latter end! ³⁰ How could one chase a thousand, And two put ten thousand to flight, Unless their Rock had sold them, And the LORD had surrendered them? ³¹ For their rock is not like our Rock, Even our enemies themselves being judges. ³² For their vine is of the vine of Sodom And of the fields of Gomorrah; Their grapes are grapes of gall, Their clusters are bitter. ³³ Their wine is the poison of serpents, And the cruel venom of cobras.”

So in this section now, God is saying why He is going to ultimately destroy Israel. It has nothing to do ultimately with Israel. What does it have to do with? God’s glory. This is the argument you see again and again. In your notes I point out that this is the same kind of reasoning that occurs in Exodus 32. Remember? I think we’ve done that before as we’ve gone through Deuteronomy series. Remember that? That was the point when Moses is up on Sinai. The people are down basically raising hell with their idolatry. Moses comes down. God says, “Go down there and look at what’s going on Moses.” So he goes down there, and he sees what’s happening. Then God says, “Let me tell you something Moses. I’ve got a proposition for you. Let’s blow them away. Get rid of them in history. I’ll make a nation from you. “

If you think about that accusation, we’ve got a problem theologically. Moses is a Levite. Now the nation was supposed to come through Judah, through Abraham. If that threat by God was ever actually carried out it would undercut the Abrahamic Covenant. So you have to ask – why did God talk to Moses that way? Why did He come up to Moses and say, “We’re going to take care of this nation – erase them from history.”

Now this involves something. This is the problem with those who have gotten so deep into fatalistic theology they can’t handle passages like this. Back ten to fifteen years ago it led to a phenomenon in theology called open theology where they said we have to basically say that God is not omniscient. You know, passages like He comes down to see what’s at Sodom. Why did He come down to see what’s in Sodom in that passage when He’s omniscient? So you have all these people talking about God doesn’t really know the future and so on. It’s called the open theology movement. Open theology as a movement got started because people would come to the Scriptures with such a strong sense of sovereignty and fatalism that when they get into a text like Exodus 32 it blows their mind because Moses is being challenged by God.

Now in your outline (point B) there’s a blank there. The major difference here with similar pagan lawsuit proceedings - the story doesn’t end in Israel’s total destruction. There’s an interplay, key word – there is an interplay between God’s holiness and His grace that in the end compromises neither. How can this be with sinful Israel? Somehow there must be atonement for sin plus righteous in Israel that satisfies God’s holiness.

Now the illustration of Exodus 32:1-14 – I’ve told you what God said to Moses. Now when you talk to people – you and I talk to people in normal conversation; and we’re bargaining with them. Haven’t you in your own experience said things to people that aren’t absolutely - that you intend to absolutely mean that but you do it to prod them to respond to you? So in this passage in God Exodus 32 God says, “I’m going to blow them away Moses.”

Now who is Moses? What tribe of Israel is Moses? Levite Which is the priestly tribe? Levi. What do priests do? Make intercession. So when God comes to Moses with a proposition to destroy Israel, what God is doing He’s giving a challenge to a Levite to intercede. And Moses does intercede. The story goes on in Exodus 32. His intersession generates the second set of tablets. So there you have the second set of tablets generated because God interacts with Moses. In this case we’re having same thing.

In Deuteronomy 32:26, “I’m going to destroy this nation.” ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:27, “Had I not feared the wrath of the enemy, Lest their adversaries should misunderstand, Lest they should say, “Our hand is high; And it is not the LORD who has done all this.” So God doesn’t want His glory to be smirched by this situation.

We don’t have time tonight; but we could go through some of the key prayers in the Bible. You would see that when people are in deep, deep intercession and prayer—you will see particularly in the prophets when they’re pleading with God; they plead this logic. They plead the logic not that we haven’t sinned. We know that. “We’ve sinned Lord. We don’t deserve it. Lord you’ve got to answer this to protect Your name.” They make the glory of God the final bargaining chip in prayer. Here is the center of this passage at the tail end this whole fourth section deals with the fact that God must preserve His glory.

That’s why if you look at verses 26 and 27 He says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:27, “Had I not feared the wrath of the enemy, Lest their adversaries should misunderstand, Lest they should say, ‘Our hand is high; And it is not the LORD who has done all this.’ ” … total pagan misunderstanding. “Oh well, we did it,” the Assyrians would say. Or Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, “That wasn’t their God. I did it. I conquered the Jews.” God wants it clear. “You conquered the Jews, mister, only because I let you do it.”

Now think about Jesus before Pilate. Pilate in all his Roman arrogance, “Don’t you know I have authority to take your life?” And what did Jesus say back to Pilate? ^NKJ John 19:11, “Jesus answered, ‘You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above’ ”. See, again and again and again in Scripture it’s always the glory of God that’s at stake here. The guys who really know their stuff always go to that line of reasoning.

Now in verses 28 and 29: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:28, “For they are a nation void of counsel, Nor is there any understanding in them. ²⁹ Oh, that they were wise, that they understood this, That they would consider their latter end!”

This is more directed toward Israel, the pagans here, down to verse 33. They were wise and they understood and they considered the latter end. How could one chase a thousand? In other words how could they get this military defeat as the theocratic nation on earth if it wasn’t because God turned His back on them? “Don’t you get it?” - in other words.

Then in verse 31 it looks out on Assyria and Babylon and the Gentile powers. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:31, “For their rock is not like our Rock …”

Then in the last part of verse 31 it’s sort of an ironic thing - kind of hard to translate here. I am looking at the New King James which says:

 “Even our enemies themselves being judges”. The force of that clause is – the pagans see that, even the pagans know this. “They know that their rock isn’t like our rock. How come Israel you don’t get it?”

Then down in verses 32 and 33 that’s a depiction of Assyria and Babylon and the pagan nations why God back in verse 21 says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:21, “They have provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God”. This is why they’re a no people. A no people means they don’t even rate historically. They don’t rate ethically. They don’t rate spiritually. This is discrimination by the way, which is central to Scripture. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:32, “For their vine is of the vine of Sodom And of the fields of Gomorrah”. That’s God’s ethical characterization of the conquerors of Israel. In other words, and this is Habakkuk and when you study Habakkuk and those other prophets that’s it. “Lord you’re letting these pagans beat us to death. They don’t honor God. They don’t honor You.” God says, “That’s right because I’m provoking you to jealousy with people that don’t rate. I want you to see what’s going on.” Ultimately He wants Israel to understand.

Then in verse 34 is another thing where from verse 34 down toward the end now this looks forward to the final judgment of history. What God is getting at is that He holds all mankind responsible because this is going to culminate in a worldwide global invitation in verse 43. So in order to build a case for that final verse of this passage, you have this development happening.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:34, “Is this not laid up in store with Me, Sealed up among My treasures? Vengeance is mine and recompense; Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand, And the things to come hasten upon them.” So verse 34 is a declaration of God’s absolute control of history. In other words, “I have a plan for history. It’s all laid up in My treasuries. I am controlling here. It’s not the Assyrians. It’s not the Babylonians. They do My bidding.” ³⁵ Vengeance is Mine.

… by the way is quoted in Romans, chapter 12. Hold the place there. I want to show you something about that particular section. Turn quickly to Romans 13. Notice something that transitions. We miss it sometimes when we read Romans because a chapter break occurs; and we don’t catch it. In Romans 12:19 - got the idea really taken from Deuteronomy 32 - where Paul says:

^NKJ Romans 12:19, “Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. ²⁰ Therefore If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head. ²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

People stop right there, not realizing the chapter-break kind of covers and obscures the logical flow. It’s precisely the next chapter, chapter 13, where he begins government, the role of the sword.

^NKJ Romans 13:1, “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God”. So the whole basis of the lethal force of the state is there as part of God exercising vengeance. That’s why He says, “Vengeance is Mine. I work through the state. That’s why I designed the sword for the state.” That’s part of vengeance. All these people who fuss about capital punishment don’t understand that that’s the sword. What is the symbol of the civil power throughout Scripture? The sword What is a sword? A lethal weapon – talk about killing people. That’s God’s justice.

So back to Deuteronomy 32. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:35, “Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; Their foot shall slip in due time; …” These are the Assyrians. They’re going to go down finally.

“… For the day of their calamity is at hand, And the things to come hasten upon them. [36] For …” Explanation - this connects it. “For the LORD will judge His people And have compassion on His servants, When He sees that their power is gone, And there is no one remaining, bond or free”. So that shows you why the judgment will come upon the Gentiles. The tables are going to be ultimately turned. ³⁷ “He will say: ‘Where are their gods, The rock in which they sought refuge? ³⁸ Who ate the fat of their sacrifices, And drank the wine of their drink offering? Let them rise and help you, And be your refuge”. See there’s the point in future history where God is going to ridicule Israel. He’s not going to help Israel until they repent.

Now to get them to repent He’s going to use sarcasm here. The sarcasm is, “You trusted hevel. Go ahead. Hevel has really helped you hasn’t it?” This is a refutation of a whole metaphysic and epistemology. Finally, what I’m convinced God is going to do at the Second Advent of Christ, He’s going to sit there and laugh at all the genius unbelievers and their silly metaphysics and epistemologies. “I’m sure it really helped you, didn’t it? Really gave you some absolute moral ethics, didn’t it? Really gave you a basis for your knowledge didn’t it? Fools!”

So now we come down to verse 39. Again, what’s the emphasis in this passage? It’s the glory of God. Those of you who have already read Isaiah and those passages, do you recognize that kind of prophetic speech? You’ve read about it in Jeremiah and Isaiah.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:39, “Now see that I, even I, am He, And there is no God besides Me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; Nor is there any who can deliver from My hand. [40] For I raise My hand to heaven, And say, “As I live forever …” So this is a powerful statement of God contrasting Himself with all the pagan deities. He clearly says that He controls evil. “I kill and I make alive.”

There are no apologies here. This is total sovereign control. Basically what it says and this is what’s so offensive to us before we became Christians and still offends non-Christians today because they don’t want a world, they don’t want a metaphysic in which they have to be answerable to the Creator. It’s that simple. There is an agenda of avoidance - attempted avoidance of this whole confrontation before Him, our Maker. But He says at the end of verse 39, “There’s no one that is going to deliver from My hand.”

Now in verse 40 he raises his hand to Heaven. If you look at Genesis 14:22, that is a symbol of an oath. What He’s arguing there and this would go back to the Abrahamic Covenant: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:40, “For I raise My hand to heaven, And say, “As I live forever, ⁴¹ If I whet My glittering sword, And My hand takes hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to My enemies, And repay those who hate Me. ⁴² I will make My arrows drunk with blood, And My sword shall devour flesh, With the blood of the slain and the captives, From the heads of the leaders of the enemy.” People say, “Ooo! That’s gross Old Testament literature.” Try reading the Book of Revelation. The same thing!

And now this comes down to this climatic verse, 43. Verse 43 is the ultimate appeal outside of Israel. This is the same kind of appeal that’s the basis for Psalm 2. You know Psalm 2 - the nations rage. Handel in his music used Psalm 2 a lot, in Handel’s Messiah. It’s the same kind of thing. He’s addressing all the world. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 32:43, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people; For He will avenge the blood of His servants, And render vengeance to His adversaries; He will provide atonement for His land and His people.” So it’s an appeal to the Gentile nations to get straight because He will redeem Israel. Gentiles cannot shove Israel around and erase it from history. God will bring Israel back to the Land.

This is the whole song. This is the prophetic utterance. I think you’ve seen hopefully as we’ve gone through this chapter some pretty intense verses poetically expressed with all the attended emotion for that kind of an expression.

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Okay, questions?

Question

That’s a good point he’s bringing up. The dynamic of the Gentile Jewish division in history is still going on. Ultimately of course the Tribulation will be a physical manifestation in dramatic form of this whole dynamic. But surely as he pointed out during the Church Age in fact Paul mentions that in Romans where it’s the foolishness.

“Why is it that these Gentiles are coming to know the Lord? He’s our God. We missed it.”

In fact, a Hebrew Christian friend of mind who has been front line of mission work with Jewish people has made the interesting point that in his experience in Jewish missions most Jewish Christians have been led to the Lord by Gentiles. Apparently there’s some sort of dynamic that a Jewish Messianic Jew doesn’t sit well with non-Messianic Jews. But on the other hand it seems like non-Messianic Jews have an entrée that Jews don’t. I would have thought the reverse. I would have argued that surely a Messianic Jew being a Jew knows his Judaism and knows what Jewish culture is like. You’d think they would have an in. Apparently the Holy Spirit has that same dynamic of winning Jews through Gentiles. From Israel’s point of view it’s backwards. Good point.

Any other questions?

The flow of the logic in Deuteronomy 32 we’ve covered it obviously hastily in two weeks; but when you think about reading any of the Old Testament prophets, try this. Try to read Deuteronomy 32 before you read them and get set in your mind this kind of thinking. Notice that it’s poetic.

So when you go into Isaiah and Jeremiah and you see the poetic flow; you say, “That’s the same way a riv treaty goes.”

The way it’s usually explained is that the Holy Spirit chose poetic expression to convey the emotional power of this dynamic that’s going on. It’s not just simple narrative. Narrative is tame compared to good poetic expression.

Question

The idea of uniformity of nature is that the sun is going to come up tomorrow. That has no justification if I’m a non-Christian.

Question

Because you’re affirming that the future is like the past. You have no basis for that.

Question

It’s nothing but a psychological habit. David Hume argued that all you have as a non-Christian is a series of sensations to which you’re attaching causation. You don’t observe causation. Causation is manufactured in your head after you’ve seen repetition. That’s coming out of your mind. Ultimately nature is not totally uniform. View for example the miracles.

The problem is that when you start with a finite mind; you can’t attain a universal. There’s no way you can because you don’t have omniscience. The only way you can construct a universal with authenticity and justification is to have omniscience. And that’s the dilemma that every non-Christian that starts with the accusation that God the Omniscient One doesn’t exist or if He exists He hasn’t spoken so we can’t understand Him; then there’s no other option than starting from myself. Starting from myself I don’t have omniscience. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. There’s no predictability that I have total confidence in. It’s just that it’s a psychological habit. We’re not denying it’s a psychological habit to do that. But you have … uniformity of nature as every science course does.

If I knew when I was going through school what I know as an older Christian adult, I’d have given the teachers a rough time because I don’t think any of them could handle the question.

Question

He has asked a very important question. That is when the Jewish Diaspora occurred and probably even before the Diaspora - think of the commerce that was going down through the Levant and Jerusalem with Solomon and his trading. The ideas must have permeated. Why is it though when the Gentiles got hold of the idea of the uniformity of nature they dropped other corollaries (truths) that go along with it – namely the sovereignty of God? Nature is uniform not because nature has some sort of natural law. Nature is uniform only because God is immutable and He’s loyal to His covenants. Uniformity of nature is embedded in the Noahic Covenant. They never viewed it as a covenant-caused uniformity. They just postulated it that nature is uniform and they just ...

You can read it in histories of philosophy. Just go to a history of philosophy book and it always starts out with the Greeks suddenly from nowhere getting the idea of uniformity of nature.

Today as I was answering before, it’s become a psychological habit to think that way. But go back in ancient history. The pagans didn’t think that way. Even today you can go into some of the third world areas and these tribes that are deep into the jungle. They are very much thinking like the pre-Greek pagans. They do not believe in the uniformity of nature.

Uniformity of nature was necessary for science to get started. We’re so enmeshed in it we forget where it came from. Science started only after biblical truth permeated the culture. Science could not exist without these fundamental ideas of laws of logic and uniformity of nature. But that’s not the world of paganism.

Those are premises borrowed from the Scripture. As he points out it is sort of a form of thievery where the gentile culture ripped off pieces of the Jewish concept. But they selected. It’s almost like they filtered it. Why did they filter it? Because of Romans 1 - what does Romans 1 say is true of every human heart? We know God exists; but we don’t want to admit it so we suppress it. So if I’m faced with revelation of say ten propositions; I’m going to look through each of those ten propositions and I’ll pick 3 and 7, but we’re going to rid of all the other ones because they remind me too much of God. This is the process that happened with the Greeks, I’m sure.

It’s selectiveness. Now here we deal not with just a non-omniscient finite mind but a non-omniscient finite mind that is fallen. Keep in mind this is terribly offensive to the modern person and terribly offensive to unbelievers. It can be offensive to us as Christians. 

God has the right to tell you and me how to think. That’s an ethical question. Use of your intellect is an ethical question or an ethical issue. God has the right to tell you, me and every person to how to think. For us to think that we can think independently of God itself is sin.

Now that is tremendously offensive to the educational establishment, to the culture at large - the idea that the God of the Scriptures has the ethical right to tell me how to think. Absolutely He does.

Normally people would argue that attaining truth is not an ethical matter. That’s secular education. We don’t have ethics in math class. We don’t have ethics in English literature. We don’t have ethics in history. But that’s not biblical. God has the right to tell us how to deal with math, history and literature.

Question

He is asking the question when I said God has the right to tell us how to think, does it mean that He is showing us if you think this way you’ll get the truth; if you don’t think this way you won’t. Yes, but I think it’s more powerful even than that. God is telling us that we should think the way – that we should think the way He wants us to think. And the way He wants us to think is to understand that every fact…We don’t know what truth is until we understand facts the way He understands them as far as a finite analogue. Every fact….see here’s the problem that we’re grappling with here. If there’s no Creator God, facts have no inherent meaning other than what we give those facts. So what we’re left with is our external environment in which we all live and breath is meaningless. We project meaning onto these experiences out of our minds. But there is no inherent meaning in anything because there is no Creator God that gives meaning to those things. It all comes out of here.

Question

What he’s getting at here the movie you’ve seen, a Beautiful Mind. I forgot the man’s name, the mathematician up here at Princeton. He was in cyber warfare – Nash.

The problem is we think what we’re doing is discovering meaning in things. We are, but only because God before we engaged in our discovery mission had put the meaning there. If there is no God to put the meaning there, then when we work outward from ourselves to make discoveries they’re not discoveries. They are interpretations that we are originating as we come to this material.

If you think this through it’s profoundly disturbing to realize that when the Bible talks about death and darkness and darkened minds; the Bible is very, very serious. This is not just poetry people. This is the very nature of truth itself. Either truth is a mirage of the human mind; or it’s the nature of God Himself. There ain’t no in between.

That’s why when I was in college that’s what drove me to Christ because I knew as a non-Christian that my life had no meaning. I had sinful things in my life, yes. Ethical things, yes. But the thing that drove me was what Augustine and Pascal have said.

“A God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man that can only filled with Jesus Christ.”

It was the lack of purpose and meaning that made me and because I’m made in God’s image I knew it had to be out there somewhere. But it took me until 18 or 19 before it clicked and the Lord led me to Himself.

Question

She asked a good very question because this happens right after Deuteronomy and Joshua. You have the partial conquest and then it’s like the whole thing goes to pot – the period of the judges. If you read the book of Judges and you have those cycles of judgment and so on. Observe what happens in those cycles. And what you will observe is they are seduced by idolatry. They can’t seem to maintain what we in our post Greek analysis that we talk about – that there is a metaphysic epistemology just goes to pot. They’re up in high places doing this and doing that. Once you do that, once you get involved in idolatrous non-creator creature distinction, your ethics go down the tubes. So this is why you have this horrendous stuff –murders, fratricide, all the stuff that goes on in Judges.

She asked, “Why does God allow that to happen?”

I think the reason He allows it to happen is why He allows us to struggle with our sin patterns in our life before we get frustrated enough to deal with it is because He wants us to realize when you chose this fashion of life you’ve got to experience the consequences a little bit to appreciate why I told you not to do it.

It’s sort of like a parent-child relationship. Parents who overly protect their children wind up with insecure children - unable to cope. And it’s hard as a parent because you do want to protect. You love your children. You want to protect them. But the problem is if you overprotect them, they never learn. They’ve got to go out there and fall flat on their face. They’ve got to struggle with the consequences – some of the consequences of their bad choices or they’re never going to understand it’s not you that’s doing it. It’s not daddy and mama rules. It’s the way the world is.

“We’re not being arbitrary parents telling you to do this. You’ve got to understand we’re telling you to do this because we banged our heads against the same wall, you’re banging your head against. We just want to help you not to do that.”

So then after the judges, how does Judges end?

The last verse in the book of Judges: ^NKJ Judges 21:25, “… everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

Do you know who most scholars think wrote Judges? Samuel. Remember the Book of Judges was written after it happened. The Book of Judges is an analysis of what screwed up over 300 years or so.

Lo and behold, what happens in the next book of the Bible? The book that follows Judges is 1 Samuel. What’s the struggle in 1 Samuel? They want a king. Why do they want a king? Because they want to bring order out of the chaos. So what you have then the rest of Samuel and Kings is the destruction of the kings. So if you put Judges together, Judges is the refutation of anarchy. This is libertarianism gone nuts.

And then you come over to the Kings and you have socialism and totalitarianism that fail. So after you hook the two chapters together in Old Testament history, what do you walk away with? You can’t have a society that works because the people are sinful. You can’t have a society that works because leaders are sinful. Then in history in the Bible that’s when there’s a clear picture of the Messiah. The clear picture of the Messiah doesn’t come until after the rise of the monarchy. Think about why.

Because by that time people have realized that, “We’ve got to have a super leader here. We can’t look to a human sinful person to lead us. We’ve experienced failure, after failure, after failure. Certainly, without a leader we screwed up, so we need a Messiah.”

That’s ultimately why He lets those things … it’s all a grooming of understanding so that when Christ comes He’s understood.

Question

That’s why the anchor chapter is 1 Samuel 8. That’s the pivot. Before 1 Samuel 8 it’s not understood that it’s going to be totalitarianism. That’s the prophetic word God gives to Samuel. “You want a king. Let me tell you what it’s going to be like.” That’s why 1 Samuel 8 is one of the leading political passages of the Word of God.

There is a lot of stuff in the Scriptures. It’s amazing that we have all of this great, grand truth set of truths; and it’s so sad that people can go through school all the way up to college and never dip into these great ideas of the Scriptures. It would make their studies so much more interesting.

Gosh, I wish I had the background of the Bible when I was going to school. Man. it would have made such a difference in how I handled my math, how I handled my literature, how I handled history.

Question

Our time is going, but he has raised a question. As we see our contemporary culture sort of disintegrating as far as conventional structures goes - no question about that. It’s tempting and it’s true that we believe this is the stage setting for the return of Christ. But we don’t want that to be the last chapter. I think the proper way biblically to view what we are now experiencing particularly in the West, is we’re…it’s not progressivism. It’s regressivism back to a Romanesque neo-paganism.

One of the signs is homosexuality. Every pagan society has been deeply and profoundly homosexual. So what was that Jewish commentator. I can’t think of his name that wrote this wonderful essay on homosexuality and points out homosexuality was always the case – always the case in history until Judeo-Christianity.

It was the Book of Leviticus, the first piece of literature in history that ever discriminated homosexuality, bestiality. The sexual practices of paganism were treated like it was just a matter of your diet whether you like bestiality or child abuse or whatever - abortions. It was whatever turns you on. That’s all.

Then it was the restrictions of Judeo-Christianity that came in. It can be argued that the stability of civilization actually was rooted in the Judeo Christian tradition because the pagan societies never could sustain themselves. So we’re not going to sustain ourselves as we tear away from that root.

I think what’s happening here go back to her question – why did God allow the Book of Judges to take place? I think what He’s doing now is He’s grooming the entire world to think globally. Now why do you think He’s grooming us to think globally? Because there’s a global Messiah coming.

If Jesus Christ had come in AD 1000 He would not be appreciated in the sense we would appreciate. The whole world is going through an economic mess. We are at the point where it’s not just one economy here, people. We are talking about a global wreckage economically throughout the whole Western world. It’s going to effect all areas. If we go into a recession, depression in the West, China is going to collapse economically because they depend on exports. If there’s nobody to buy their exports, they are hosed. They have overspent. The Marxist people that have managed China, the fools that originated the silly policy of get rid of your girls and keep the boys.

Then they wonder, “Gee, there are no girls around.”

This is what happens when you have idiots running the government. So the point is that all this chaos I think is a prelude to the fact that first you’re going to have such chaos that people are going to flock to the first person that promises or shows he can control things which is a set up for the antichrist.

Then you have to have him fail just like the kings fail in the Old Testament before people throw up their hands. Then they’ll be ready for the return of our Lord.

But He’s not going to come when He’s not wanted. So there has to be a global appreciation for a global Millennial Kingdom. That’s my take on the whole thing.

I’m not a pessimist. I think up until the Rapture there are going to be enclaves where Christianity can survive and flourish. This is not the Tribulation. After the Rapture occurs then you’re going to have things rapidly take place and rapidly disintegrate. Thank God it’s only seven years that the people have to survive. Then you have the return of the Lord.

When He comes, remember He comes with His people, the holy ones with Him, which includes the Church. That’s why the Millennial Kingdom, even though it’s a mortal civilization, men and women in their natural bodies; it’s going to be governed by incorruptible people in resurrection bodies.

Those little features aren’t just arbitrary prophecies. It’s structured. We know what happens is that governance like fallen beings falls apart. It’s corrupt. It naturally gets corrupted. So you need incorruptible governance. You only get that with resurrected people. So you are going to have peculiar situation in the Millennial Kingdom where people in their resurrected bodies are going to go walking around and people with their natural bodies. We’ve never seen that before other than when Jesus went around with His disciples.

So interesting things are going to happen in history. I think it’s fascinating to be part of the show. The fact that we can sit here tonight and talk about it because we know there is meaning. There’s purpose. You can be depressed and frustrated by the problems of life; but if your heart is rooted in the Scriptures and you know deep down you have that confidence that yes, He’s in charge. Finally, He is in charge. It’s so restful and so peaceful to be able to do that and maintain your wits in the midst of all this stuff.