SUNDAY SERMON - The Destructive Power Of Soft Men
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 14 minutes
Harmful content
Misogyny
10
sentences flagged
Toxicity
16
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Hate speech
109
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Summary
In this episode, we continue our series through the book of Joshua and look at the final words of Joshua's final address to the Israelites before his death. We see the progression of Israel's fall from grace, and how they fell from the grace God had given them. How could it be possible for God to be so good, and so faithful, and yet for them to fall away?
Transcript
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Amen. This morning we continue with our series through the book of Joshua. If you were with us last week, I gave a little bit of the 30,000 foot view and some of the broader context.
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The plan was to deal with the first 11 chapters of the book that all have to do with the conquest of Canaan.
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And so we see Joshua at the helm of Israel being used of the Lord to conquer all the pagan, wicked Canaanite tribes,
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to put them to the edge of the sword to death, and in the case of some, to drive them out.
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And so we've finished Joshua chapter 1 through 11.
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That's the conquest, all the different battles that occur with Israel in Canaan.
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And then the next few chapters, several chapters, in fact, deal with the allotments of land
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as specific apportioned inherences for each of the tribes of Israel.
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And so all scripture is God breathed and inspired and useful.
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And so I believe that these chapters are important so you can read them and should read them.
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But I'm not going to be skipping these chapters to give you, you know, something that's extra biblical.
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We're skipping a few chapters of scripture so that we can teach other scripture.
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So we're not going to be spending months through the apportioning of land inherences for each of the tribes of Israel.
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But it is valuable, and I encourage you to study it on your own time.
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Today, we're actually going to conclude our series through the book of Joshua by looking at chapter 23.
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Some of Joshua's final words, his farewell address to Israel right before his death.
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and I'm going to be taking a sneak peek at Judges,
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so that we can see the result of this is what God brought about.
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God gave strength to Israel to conquer her adversaries.
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Everything that God said through Moses and through Joshua
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Israel is the premier case study in the Old Testament.
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Old covenant Israel, according to the flesh,
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is the premier case study of not the faithfulness of men,
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That is what Israel is used to do again and again,
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is to display God's grace in the midst of man's faithlessness,
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but I also want us to see a little bit of the progression
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How could it be possible to have Yahweh as your God
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to be the Lord of battle, to fight all your adversaries on your behalf, to deliver to you
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a good land flowing with milk and honey, to sustain you in the wilderness with manna from
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heaven, to part the Red Sea, and then to part the Jordan, and to do all these great and glorious
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things, to be exceedingly kind and gracious, and yet for that people to fall away. How is that even
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possible. And so I want us to look at the progression of sin. I believe that there is
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practical application as it pertains to individuals, as it pertains to you and I,
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as New Testament Christians. How is it that we could fall away, right, to not just pick on Israel?
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The reality is that you and I, God has been good and kind and faithful and strong for us,
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and we still sin. We still rebel against him. At least I'll speak for myself. I do. I know you
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guys probably don't, but I do. I still rebel against the Lord despite all of his kindness.
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So I want us to look at the personal individual application of the goodness and faithfulness of
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God and yet the ways that we squander his grace. But then I also want to draw out, I believe,
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a corporate application for nations. We see that Israel, not just as individual people,
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but individual people, if there's enough of them, that makes up a society. It makes up
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a body politic. And that Israel as a whole, as a nation, fell from grace. They fell from what God
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had given to them as his good gift. They squandered that and forfeited God's goodness, God's kindness.
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but it didn't happen in a moment. It didn't happen overnight. There is a progression,
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is what I'm saying, both at the individual level, for you and I, even as New Testament
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individual Christians, and at a societal level, corporately, there is a progression of sin.
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And so that's where we'll probably spend the most of our time today, recognizing the progression
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of sin, the steps that come along the way so that we can be alert, that we can be watchful,
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that we can look for these things and say, wait a second, I know this path and I know where it
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leads so that we don't get halfway down the path of sin that leads to death and then determine,
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oh, maybe I should turn around or maybe I should pick another course, but that we would be able to
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recognize the progression of sin at the start so that we can make no provisions for the flesh,
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as John Owen would say. Starting to see and recognize the correlation between sins of omission
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that always lend towards sins of commission, meaning there are certain things that are sinful,
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not because we do something that God has forbidden, that we actually commit a sin, we do something
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wicked. But often what first starts out before doing something wicked, it often begins as us
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neglecting to do something that is righteous. That would be a sin of omission. You're omitting
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something. So there's the good that you should do, that you ought to do, that you neglect,
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that lends towards the evil that you should not do, that's forbidden, that now you're engaged in.
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And these are the things that we see in this case study of Israel. Israel is a wonderful example
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for us to recognize no don't do that no don't do that yes engage in this righteousness yes be very
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active you see in Israel there are good kings they're few and far between but there are good
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kings and some of them are good kings in the sense that they they restore the temple or they
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restore certain altars to to worship good altars to worship Yahweh or they they call the people to
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repentance. They call the people to righteousness. And that's one degree of a righteous king. And
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there are some of those in Israel throughout the Old Testament. They are the minority report,
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these good kings. But then there are great kings in Israel that are exceedingly rare.
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There's only a couple. You can count them on one hand. David would be an example of this,
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but also would be Josiah. And the difference from good to great, in this instance, the good
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kings that would call the people to righteousness and to worship of Yahweh versus great kings like
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Josiah is that Josiah would say let's worship the Lord and reinstate right worship in Israel
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and principled pluralism is demonic and he would tear down all the altars that were raised to
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false gods he didn't just build the right altars and call the people to right worship but he would
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take out his hammer, in the proverbial sense, and smash the bales, smash the asherah poles,
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smash idolatry, and all that which would be present only to lure the hearts of Israel away
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from the true God. So I want us to look at Israel. I want us to look at the fulfillment of God's
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promise, which is explicitly in our text today, Joshua 23, his farewell address, and how the Lord
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fulfilled and made good on everything that he promised to Israel. But I also want us to look
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beyond the text into Judges, namely chapter 2, and see after God fulfilled all these good things,
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how does Israel respond? How does Israel steward the grace of God? Or more specifically, how do
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they fail to steward the grace of God? And then how does that apply to us and the ways that we
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fail to properly respond to God's kindness and goodness, this great salvation? How do we, as the
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author to the Hebrews say, neglect such a great salvation that's been given to us as individual
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New Testament Christians, but then also applying it in a political, social, cultural context? How
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do nations or in our case a republic or what was supposed to be a republic how do we collectively
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at a corporate level how do we also squander the grace of God through sins of omission that lend
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towards sins of commission and how do we see that culturally in a relevant and applicable sense
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today so with all that being said let's go ahead and stand for the reading of God's word again our
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text is going to be Joshua 23. And again, this is going to be the final sermon in this series
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through the book of Joshua. Our next book of the Bible, Lord willing, is the book of Ezra. And I've
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told you a few times, but some of you I recognize are new faces today. And so that you might be
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aware of the plan. The book of Joshua is going into the land initially to conquer it, to inhabit
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it. But then Ezra is going back into the land. After God has brought about his promises, Israel
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is then faithless to steward God's kindness. Israel is then taken into exile, removed from the land
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under judgment by God because of their sin, but then they're sent back to re-inhabit the land,
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to rebuild the ruins. And so I think all this is applicable for us at this time. You see that,
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that, you know, in the case of America, that we've gone into the land, inhabited the land,
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and set up a Christian nation for all intents and purposes, the covenanters, the founders,
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the pilgrims, that it was a Christian nation. It is, I would argue, a Christian nation currently
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under God's judgment because of our apostasy. And the judgment, I believe, will be more severe,
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not less, because of our founding, because of that Christian origin. But now, if we have any
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hope at all in many ways Joshua kind of sets for us the framework but Ezra will be even more
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applicable more relevant for us because it has to do with rebuilding the ruins after faithlessness
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has torn apart the foundations and so that's the the plan and the reason for Joshua and Ezra all
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that being said the final thing and then I'll read the text is it because a lot of this is political
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and it's cultural and deals with societies and deals with history and all these things I think
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it's incredibly important because within evangelicalism as a whole, I think that this
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has been neglected in preaching. There's very little political application, very little even
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cultural application. That said, I struggle with this. And so you can always pray for me and I
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welcome your prayers, but I want to do a good job balancing between, okay, evangelicalism as a whole
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is weak in this regard. And so I want to bolster up where evangelicalism is weak, things that have
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been neglected, like political application, political theology. Protestants don't have it.
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We had it. We don't anymore. You talk about it and immediately you're going to be criticized by
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evangelicals. They're going to say, just preach the gospel. And that's it. So I want to bolster
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where on the whole, Protestants have been weak,
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that I've been charged to shepherd as a local pastor,
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you guys are like, that was great political theology,
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Gospel Bangers, you know, or something like that,
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just good for us locally, our soul. And then sure, we'll go back into Ezra. So all that being
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said, again, our text is Joshua 23. The Bible says this, a long time afterward, when the Lord had
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given rest to Israel from all their surrounding enemies and Joshua was old and well advanced in
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years, Joshua summoned all Israel, its elders and heads, its judges and officers and said to them,
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I am now old and well advanced in years and you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to
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all these nations for your sake for it is the Lord your God who has fought for you behold I have
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allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain along with all the
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nations that I have already cut off from the Jordan to the great sea in the west the Lord your
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God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight, and you shall possess their
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land just as the Lord your God promised you. Therefore be very strong to keep and to do all
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that is written in the book of the law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand
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nor to the left, that you may not mix with these nations remaining among you, or make mention of
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the names of their gods or swear by them or serve them or bow down to them but you shall cling to
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the Lord your God just as you have done to this day for the Lord has driven out before you great
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and strong nations and as for you no man has been able to stand before you to this day one man of
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you puts to flight a thousand since it is the Lord your God who fights for you just as he promised
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you. Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God. For if you turn back and cling to the
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remnant of these nations remaining among you and make marriages with them so that you associate
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with them and they with you, know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out
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these nations before you, but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a whip on your sides
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and thorns in your eyes until you perish from off this good ground that the Lord your God has given
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you. And now I am about to go the way of all the earth and know in your hearts and souls, all of
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you, that not one word has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning
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you. All have come to pass for you. Not one of them has failed. But just as all the good things
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so the Lord will bring upon you all the evil things
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until he has destroyed you from off this good land
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if you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God,
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and go and serve other gods and bow down to them.
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Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you
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and you shall perish quickly from off the good land that he has given you. This is the word of
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the Lord. All right, please be seated. Let's go ahead and dive in. The first thing that I've
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written in your notes is this. We're going to deal with the results of Israel's victory. The results
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of Israel's victory. God was with them in battle. The Lord fought for them. The first 11 chapters
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that we spent months going through in the book of Joshua details all the individual battles
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in this conquest of Canaan, God was faithful. The Lord fought for Israel. He fulfilled all that he
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promised through Moses and through Joshua. Israel indeed inhabited the promised land. They took
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the land. They took every square inch of the land. But one of the things that we immediately see from
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the text is that they did not, at least at this point, drive out every single one of their adversaries
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from the land. Many of their adversaries were put to death. And what's significant for us to
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recognize is that the kings of these pagan Canaanite tribes, they were destroyed. They were
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put to death. And there are some cases where individual tribes, every single person, man,
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woman, and child, was put to death. Jericho would be an example of this, spare Rahab and her
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household because of a gospel covenant made with Israel. But every single inhabitant other than
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Rahab and her household in Jericho was put to death. But this is not the case with each of the
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cities, each of the tribes in Canaan. Some of them are wiped out entirely. Others are driven out of
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the land entirely. But then others, you have the soldiers and the chief men of war, and you have
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the king in particular, that they are put to death. But certain citizens of this particular
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Canaanite tribe, this particular Canaanite kingdom, the citizens are allowed to continue
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living and living in the land, inhabitants in the land. So when Joshua deals out allotments of land
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in Canaan to each of the tribes of Israel, respectively, one of the assignments to each
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individual tribe of Israel is that they need to finish the job. That the job is not completely
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done. That there's still work to be finished. Now, the death blow to the pagan Canaanite tribes has
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already been delivered by the Lord through Joshua. And so if you were with us last Lord's Day, I
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liken this to Jesus. That Jesus is the better Joshua, right? Yeshua, deliverer. That Jesus is
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the ultimate Joshua. That Joshua is one of many Old Testament types that is a symbol of the
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antitype, that is the actual substance, who is Christ. So Joshua is a type, an example, a symbol
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of Jesus. Jesus is the better, ultimate Joshua. And Jesus does for us what we see Joshua do for
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Israel. Jesus does for the church. And Jesus does it in the final, spiritual, eternal sense. What
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Joshua does in the physical sense for Israel. Joshua for Israel, he goes into the land empowered
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by God and he cuts off the head of the snake. When it comes to the wicked pagan Canaanite tribes,
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he crushes their kings. In fact, there's one instance that we saw where Joshua faces five
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Canaanite kingdoms all at once. They unite against Gibeon. Gibeon has a covenant with Israel.
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Joshua comes to their defense and Joshua seals up these kings.
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They're taken captured and they're sealed up in a tomb, alive.
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They roll big stones in front of the mouth of the cave while the rest of Israel is running
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down all of their fighting men, all the soldiers, and putting them to the edge of the sword,
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When they finish all of that in the battle, they then circle back to the cave, remove
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Joshua has his men take these five kings out, lay them on their backs, and then he has his chief men
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of war come and take turns putting their feet on the necks of these kings. And so my point is,
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Joshua, like Christ, as a type of Christ, he cuts off the head of the snake. He allows for Israel
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to step on the neck of the kings. What Joshua does not do, and it's not necessarily a failure
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on Joshua's part, but what Joshua does not do is he doesn't wipe out each and every single
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individual of the pagan Canaanite tribes in the land of promise. He gives the land, he conquers
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the kings, he chops off the head of the snake, and then he gives the land to each of the various
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tribes, and each of these tribes have a responsibility, a duty before God to finish
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the war, to finish the battle, right? That the sting of death has been removed, but there's still
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work to be done. The head of the snake has been severed, but there are still people that need to
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be conquered. And that's where Joshua leaves it in chapter 23. That's the result of this victory,
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is that there are still wicked inhabitants in the land, but the full force of their strength
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against Israel has been neutralized. So there's still work to be done. There still may be
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casualties and sacrifices that Israel has to make. Israel may still have some of their own men die in
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battle, but the victory is secure. And this is what Christ has done in the ultimate sense through
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his life, death, resurrection, and glorious ascension. Jesus is the better Joshua. He's cut
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the head off of the snake, that Jesus has bound the strong man. It's one of the parables that he
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He tells he's bound the strong man so that we, his people, the church, can go as true Israel.
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We can go and plunder the house, the house being this world that we see in the scripture,
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this great cosmic battle between the archangel Michael and Lucifer, the devil, and those angels,
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fallen angels who chose to rebel with him against God.
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And the Bible says, but woe to you, O earth, for the devil has come down to you.
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And so the devil was, in a sense, he was steward of this physical cosmos, of the world.
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The devil is still a created being underneath the autonomous sovereignty and liberty of God
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as the only autonomously free being in all the universe.
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So the devil is still on a leash, as I preached last week.
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But he did have stewardship, dominion over the world.
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Why? Because God set up Adam as his viceroy, as his steward, his manager over the earth.
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And Adam forfeited that to Satan through his sin.
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And so Lucifer became a steward, having a certain degree of dominion over the world.
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This is why when Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness,
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and he offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, this was not an empty offer.
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When Jesus says, or Satan rather, says to Jesus,
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well, I don't care for the kingdoms of this world
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Not because I'm not interested in earthly kingdoms, but because I don't want them given to me.
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I'm not going to have you give them to me by idolatry and sin, but rather I worship God alone.
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And by my sinless life, my substitutionary death and my victorious resurrection, I will take the kingdoms of this earth.
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I don't need you to give them to me. So you have God. God gives stewardship to Adam of the world,
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the house being the world, the earth. And then Adam forfeits his dominion, his stewardship to
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Satan. Satan then has dominion over the earth. He is the strong man. But Jesus comes and he binds
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the strong man by his life, death and resurrection. We now as the New Testament church as spiritual
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Israel, our job is not to take out Satan. Our job is to plunder the house because Satan has
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already been tied up in the basement. Jesus did that. And that's the same situation that we see
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in the book of Joshua. Joshua, as a type of Christ, Jesus, Joshua goes and he cuts the head
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off the snake. He takes all the strong men, all the kings of these pagan tribes and many of their
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fighting men and he puts them to death. But Israel still has work to do to finish the job. Each of
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the various tribes in their land that's allotted to them. So too Jesus has bound the strong man
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in his earthly ministry 2,000 years ago. But the church still has work to do. We're now going and
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following up. Jesus has given to us, rendered the great significant victory. The pivotal battle
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in the war has already been won, but that doesn't mean the war is over. It's a guarantee at this
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point. It's a foregone conclusion, but we're not called to simply sit on our hands. There's work
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to be done. And by God's grace, the church, because of Christ, the church will succeed
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where Israel failed. Joshua took out the kings of Canaan. Israel was called to finish the job.
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they did not. Jesus has taken out the strong man. Satan bound him. He's not cast in the lake of fire
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yet, but he is significantly bound. Jesus has bound the strong man, and the church is called
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to plunder the house, and the church will. That doesn't mean we're doing a perfect job in each
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moment, each century throughout history, but by God's grace, the church will succeed in the way
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And that's the correlation between the two.
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and allows it to cause them to become licentious
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Maybe you've heard, I think it was Cotton Mather
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or maybe it was his son or father increased mother.
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But he said that it was that faithfulness produced blessing or prosperity,
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That faithfulness produced, it gave birth to prosperity and blessing,
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is don't allow grace to become a license for sin.
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And so I have no motivation for obedience, which is terrible, terrible.
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The motivation for obedience is that Christ died for us.
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It's supposed to be for the Christian, the chief motive to launch us and fuel us and
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push us into further obedience because God is gracious.
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And so this is the big theme from the book of Joshua.
00:29:27.520
their compromise, and taking the goodness of God for granted.
00:29:32.020
Israel had just finished a long and tiring conquest of the land of Canaan.
00:29:36.060
They appear to have silently determined that they were now done with war.
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They had witnessed the barbarism of the authoritarian leaders of Canaan. And now their
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own leader, Joshua, was dead, going the way of all the earth. That is, he was going to die.
00:29:54.780
In Joshua's absence, a poisonous potion of fatigue, right? There's a sense in which Israel
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is tired. That's understandable. Apathy. That's less understandable. And a misguided pity. And
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We think of I'm tired and also maybe a bit lazy.
00:30:15.360
But I also think there's an element of pity,
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misguided, unbiblical, sinful pity for Israel's enemies.
00:30:24.820
So a potion, poisonous potion of fatigue, apathy,
00:30:28.240
and misguided pity for Israel's enemies was brewed, set in.
00:30:36.700
Israel just got done with this long war that was arguably a year long, maybe longer, but at least
00:30:42.860
multiple months, several months. For several months, they have been at war, going up against
00:30:49.940
many of these adversaries that were superior to them. The tribe of Ai would probably be the only
00:30:57.000
exception. Ai had a total population of 12,000, about 3,000, you know, fighting men. And so Israel
00:31:03.860
was larger and stronger than they were. But in all the other cases, it seems as though Israel
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is outnumbered. Or they're at least inferior in regards to their weaponry, their tech, right?
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Other guys have chariots. They have horses. And Israel, you know, doesn't. They have more primitive
00:31:23.780
weapons of war. They don't have the resources that some of their opponents have. And so in all
00:31:29.160
these cases israel is outmanned outnumbered the lord again supernaturally fights for them and so
00:31:34.780
they're granted victory but still it's understandable that israel is tired that after months and months
00:31:41.820
of war israel says we kind of like to be done with war for a while we would like to rest and
00:31:49.120
so that's easy i think for us to see okay there's apathy okay there's fatigue but there's also pity
00:32:00.080
Israel just got done fighting all these battles.
00:32:05.020
And they were fighting against barbaric people.
00:32:08.540
They're not just fighting against kingdoms that, you know, well, you know, there's some
00:32:12.000
good things about the Canaanites and some good things about Israel.
00:32:17.080
No, the Canaanites that Israel is going up and facing are horrible, horrible people.
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Some of them are filleting their enemies alive and hanging skins on the walls.
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They are a barbaric, vicious, vicious people practicing necromancy, practicing divination.
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They're a pagan, wicked, heinous, sinister, barbaric people.
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And so Israel had seen certain atrocities.
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I don't know. Maybe some of them got PTSD. They're like, we're done. We got the land.
00:33:00.280
The immediate threat has been neutralized. The kings have been taken out. Most of the men of
00:33:05.180
war have been taken out. And yeah, there's still some inhabitants here, but we're done.
00:33:10.520
We're done. We're taking a break. The post-war sentiment took root in Israel. It has been said,
00:33:17.180
and I want to deal with this saying for a little bit. You've probably heard it,
00:33:50.740
You're defeated. You're eradicated. In difficult times, hard men are created to rise to the various
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challenges. So hard times create hard men. But here's the problem. Hard men, ultimately,
00:34:05.280
they face the challenges. They overcome those challenges and create good times, soft times,
00:34:19.700
And ending wars creates peace, and peace creates Americans.
00:34:43.460
right the faithfulness produces it gives birth to blessing to prosperity but the daughter
00:34:52.100
devoured the mother and that's what we see in Israel and I mean it's it's uncanny
00:34:59.500
the correlation that's what we see today it's incredibly applicable and relevant so hard times
00:35:07.220
create hard men hard men create soft times because they vanquish the difficulties and challenges
00:35:41.260
right it's like well he's mean his twitter account and so a whole bunch of women voted for biden
00:35:51.320
and what we're discovering over these past three years is it turns out that nice men
00:35:57.240
can actually rack up a higher death toll than mean men
00:36:01.780
that soft men can actually do more devastation than hard men.
00:36:19.880
There are different kinds of tyrants, is what I'm saying.
00:36:26.260
And think about this as it pertains to tyrants,
00:36:29.020
particularly political civil tyrants that would be civil leaders in positions of civil authority
00:36:35.420
it's not a coincidence that jesus says in the case of john the baptist right he was a voice
00:36:40.720
crying out in the wilderness he was a hard man right that guy with his diet was not soy it was
00:36:46.980
locusts right you want to toughen up men right that guy he's he's eating locusts in the desert
00:36:53.040
and wearing camel skin and jesus literally says that he says what did you go out into the desert
00:36:57.540
to see a man dressed in soft clothes. Now notice the next thing that Jesus says, and I don't think
00:37:03.560
this is a coincidence. He says, if you want to find a malikos, an effeminate man, and just for
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00:37:10.280
the record, effeminate, real quick, let me clarify this, because people, Christians don't get this.
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00:37:15.400
Effeminate is an insult, but feminine is not. So the difference between feminine, just this
00:37:25.280
disclaimer matters. There's a dynamic difference between feminine and effeminate. Feminine is when
00:37:32.980
a woman who's actually feminine embodies who God's called her to be. That's great. Femininity
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00:37:40.320
is wonderful. We celebrate that. Effeminacy is when a man is doing woman face.
00:37:48.180
a feminacy is dylan mulvaney but but femininity is my wife back there holding our son
00:37:57.620
listening to the preached word as a domestic woman who loves her vocation there are a lot
00:38:04.360
of people that are really concerned about my wife but by god's grace she's not concerned
00:38:07.820
she actually likes it she actually likes being a mom believe it or not crazy i know
00:38:13.300
so do you see the difference femininity good that's a woman being a woman if feminacy
00:38:21.640
bad that's a man larping as a woman that's the difference and jesus addresses this and he uses
00:38:30.140
that that greek word that lends or that's where we get this word a feminacy let's not there's
00:38:34.860
other texts as well but he says what did you go into the desert to see right john the baptist
00:38:40.520
the prophet you went to go and see a man a man's man a hard man right you went to go and hear his
00:38:49.920
sermons okay these are not Andy Stanley sermons this is not Joel Osteen you went to hear John
00:38:57.800
the Baptist sermons you were you're gonna get some good old-time religion you were gonna get
00:39:01.360
some fire some brimstone right like Jonathan Edwards his famous sermon sinners in the hands
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00:39:21.760
you're like a spider hanging from a single thread,
00:39:46.520
and he'd be like, wait, you're not supposed to be here.
00:40:08.240
But preaching like that, that kind of preaching,
00:40:13.740
So Jesus said, would you go into the wilderness, the desert, to see?
00:40:24.980
He says, if you wanted to see that, where do you go?
00:40:29.020
No, Jesus specifically says, if you wanted to find a soft man
00:40:32.420
wearing soft clothes. Where would you go? A palace. Where would you go? Washington, D.C.
00:40:42.000
The White House. Congress. The courthouse. You want to find a soft man? Where do you look?
00:40:52.560
Politics. Civil leaders. Softest men you could ever find. Most of them aren't even men at this
00:40:59.780
point. I mean, we've replaced half of them with women. And then the other half are also women,
1.00
00:41:04.920
but of a different kind. And that's Jesus. For the record, Jesus says, soft men gravitate towards
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palaces. They gravitate toward, if you want to find a soft man, don't look to the preacher.
00:41:24.200
Now, we've got plenty of soft men in pulpits today too, sadly. But in the words of Jesus,
00:41:43.920
Hard men create soft times, better times, times of peace.
00:41:50.880
And then soft men, due to their softness, their effeminacy, their weakness,
00:41:59.220
Israel is struggling with what I would consider
00:42:23.580
What we saw is some of them were cannibalistic.
00:42:32.960
And sure, some of their children are still alive and can grow up.
00:43:07.900
I mean, we want to, you know, you're a God of mercy
00:43:21.000
And we're going to have a neutral public square.
00:43:45.900
And at the end of the day, you know, it's the thought that counts.
00:44:05.060
And in biblical terms, that word pity can go either way.
00:44:09.780
There are times when the Bible says that God pitied Israel and is righteous.
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There's a righteous kind of pity, a compassion, a compassion that is genuinely compassionate.
00:44:28.220
But there is also a type of pity that is wicked, that is misguided, that's perverted.
00:44:45.260
It talks about when it comes to dealing out justice, your eyes shall not pity.
00:44:56.300
And this is rehashed out by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, also by the book of James.
00:45:02.960
Somebody comes in with fine clothing, not necessarily soft.
00:45:07.780
You can discern this is a person of status, a person of, I don't know, prestige.
00:45:15.440
And you say, hey, come and sit in this nice seat.
00:45:17.220
And then somebody dressed in shabby clothing comes in.
00:45:21.800
So you are not to show partiality in regards to favoring the rich.
00:45:25.880
But that's not the only way the principle applies.
00:45:28.800
The principle applies across the board in both directions.
00:45:32.500
The Old Testament says you shall not pity, show favoritism to the rich, but also not pity the poor.
00:45:37.780
So there is pity that comes from God that we might call mercy.
00:45:47.320
But there's also pity that is sinful and twisted and tweaked, perverse,
00:45:53.080
that is not compassion, but rather it's tolerance of wickedness.
00:46:05.500
It's like the difference between sympathy and empathy.
00:46:12.580
Compassion lending towards love, a pure, genuine, authentic love.
00:46:20.260
And compassion, that's where we get sympathy from.
00:46:30.320
because it depends how you use the word empathy and blah, blah, blah.
00:46:32.520
But a lot of the ways, I'll at least say this, a lot of the ways that the word empathy has been
00:46:38.280
used by our culture in the West today is what the Bible would describe as a sinful pity.
00:46:46.960
It's not sympathy, compassion, genuine love, but rather it's favoritism. It's discrimination.
00:46:55.640
it's i'm going to elevate this person not not because of anything uh that's objective or just
00:47:03.820
or fair but simply because i'm going to arbitrate between you know this person and that because i i
00:47:12.360
like this person they're poor or they're a minority and you know this person over there
00:47:18.280
they may be doing the right thing but it doesn't matter this is a woman this is a man this this
00:47:24.720
person's a minority ethnicity this person's white
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this person's lgbt lmnop you know and this person's just traditional family makes me sick
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that's that's not righteous pity that's wicked pity and israel had some of that
00:47:46.280
for their adversaries so there's apathy there's fatigue and there's a misguided sense of pity
00:47:57.640
The head of the snake has been thoroughly removed.
00:48:00.500
The kings have been cut off, many of the fighting men,
00:48:05.340
There's still work for each individual tribe of Israel
00:48:13.860
There are still inhabitants, wicked inhabitants,
00:48:16.300
that are not to be tolerated under the law of God.
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Now, as this further applies, I think, to our time and our culture today,
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00:48:28.940
We are entering a time where there will soon be, I believe,
00:48:36.400
I'm just giving you my assessment that could be wrong,
00:48:39.000
but obviously I think it's right because it's my assessment.
00:48:41.560
So we are entering a time where it's funny when people say,
00:48:48.260
you're just giving your opinion, but you're acting like it's right.
00:48:58.760
I mean, who says, all right, this is one of my views
00:49:06.380
Like all of your opinion, everything you believe,
00:49:14.720
which could also not be right, but I think it's right.
00:49:17.100
We are entering a time where there will soon be
00:49:33.280
I believe that they will care very little for credentials and letters after names.
00:49:46.780
in their zeal, they pose a threat of destroying all that is good in the world along with the evil.
00:49:55.380
In their quest to vanquish the evil of the land, they pose the threat of being overly zealous and
00:50:01.440
destroying the good along with it. So the key, I believe, the key is for the strength of these
00:50:10.000
young hard men to be harnessed by even harder men, but who possess softer hearts.
00:50:19.240
The solution, right, the solution to there are hard men tyrants, totalitarian, authoritarian
00:50:28.180
tyrants. You study history, you've got that type. They're bad. And then you've got weak tyrants,
00:50:37.120
soft tyrants they're also really bad right a hard authoritarian type of totalitarian
00:50:45.080
tyrant that guy could rack up millions of deaths
00:50:49.360
and then you've got soft totalitarian men who can hit a hundred million
00:50:55.660
the solution what i'm saying is the solution to an authoritarian spirit
00:51:11.600
The solution to bad hard men is not bad soft men.
00:51:19.640
The solution to evil hard men is good hard men.
00:51:25.660
We want men who are even stronger, even harder.
00:51:32.480
the solution to both kinds of tyrants, both kinds of evil men, evil hard men, evil soft men. The
00:51:39.340
solution for an evil hard man or an evil soft man is a good man. A good man. That's the solution.
00:51:47.820
Good men. And good men are not weak. And part of the problem is that, again, within evangelicalism,
00:51:54.340
as we talk about things like gender, we talk about biblical manhood and biblical womanhood,
00:51:58.900
we have completely severed biblical masculinity
00:52:10.560
How many books have been written over the past few decades
00:52:19.360
and you're in every way fulfilling God's commands for men
00:52:28.900
as though these things are completely separate they're not they're not
00:52:33.980
i have come to learn as a 37 year old man who where a lot of my professional career has been
00:52:42.520
inside work labor intellectual labor reading books and i've come to realize that there's a
00:52:50.220
deficiency there and it does correlate to my the goodness and the well-being the health of my soul
00:53:00.140
The physical is completely separate from the soul.
00:53:05.880
There's a correlation with men who work in the dirt being good men.
00:53:13.520
There is something to be said for hard physical labor that shapes character,
00:53:25.880
and there's a sense in which virtue can be lost and squandered and underdeveloped with weak,
00:53:33.180
and I mean physically weak, soft men. What we've done over the past few decades is completely
00:53:38.260
sever biblical masculinity from anything that any of our predecessors would have thought of
00:53:44.860
when they thought of masculinity. We've said that masculinity has nothing to do,
00:53:49.560
nothing to do with working with your hands. It has nothing to do with hunting.
00:53:54.760
It has nothing to do with being able to change a tire.
00:53:59.100
And these are things that I've been, as I'm getting older,
00:54:05.980
I'm thinking, and there's certain ways I may be able to include him
00:54:10.000
in my work as a pastor, but a lot of ways that he won't be able to.
00:54:13.660
I've been thinking, well, I might need to carve out a little bit of time
00:54:16.700
to start a business, not even to be that profitable
00:54:19.960
or to be a millionaire, but just to do something with my hands
00:54:23.140
a few hours a week that I can include my son in when he gets older. So it's not just dad's going
00:54:28.840
to go to work and read books, you know, and my hand cramps as I turn one of the pages because
00:54:34.040
I've become, you know, like, no, like, I mean, it's good for dad and it's good for him to get
00:54:39.120
outside and do something. The solution for evil hard men is good men. The solution for evil soft
00:54:47.340
men is good men. But what we've done as a society is we've said, hey, we had some hard men,
00:54:52.660
totalitarian authoritarian terrible men and so we'll solve it by being soft and when i say soft
00:55:00.180
think inclusion and one of the things that we've done in the spirit of inclusion is we've said we
00:55:06.200
will not tolerate dogmatism anybody who says some kind of dogmatic statement that this is true
00:55:14.400
it's it's undeniably true it's true whether i was ever born or not mark that man he's a dangerous
00:55:21.120
man. Anybody who believes in universal truth, transcendent truth, immutable standards, and
00:55:29.240
they would say it publicly and say it with conviction, mark that man. He's a dangerous man.
00:55:35.940
We've seen men like that before. No, you haven't. Now, the men that you saw like that before,
00:55:43.740
they were hard men, sure, but they weren't good men. They were hard men on the outside,
00:56:22.900
We've seen it over the last 2,000 years of church history.
00:56:48.820
I think that there's going to be a lot of young men
00:57:03.520
but was destroyed by a weak, soft Joe Biden type.
00:57:15.740
it's like oh well we have tough times too no no it's not the same statistically it is not the
00:57:24.880
same you did have tough times uh-huh the 70s were rough inflation was bad i'm aware i've done the
00:57:30.660
homework it's not the same when it comes to wages and cost of living it's like well we had 18 percent
00:57:45.440
The American dream is virtually impossible today.
00:57:54.120
Our children, our young boys are going to grow up into a world
00:57:57.300
unless God does a miracle where they cannot do what you did.
00:58:01.260
And I mean in brass tacks, practical, financial ways.
00:58:04.140
They cannot do what was normative for Americans to be able to do.
00:58:15.940
And if all the older men they have to look to are soft men,
00:58:22.680
They're not going to take counsel or direction from soft men
00:58:27.100
who created the hard times they're now living in.
00:58:31.260
The only people these young, hard, angry men will listen to
00:58:38.660
men. There's an illustration. I heard this story once where there were some young bull elephants
00:58:45.620
and they relocated the elephants to some kind of, I don't know, some different habitat where,
00:58:55.060
you know, there was fence standing, you know, where people could come and visit and see the
00:58:57.840
elephants. And the elephants were just, they were young male elephants, young bull elephants, and
00:59:02.940
they were just destroying everything. They were just going crazy, knocking over trees, hurting
00:59:08.080
and gouging the other animals with their tusks.
00:59:14.780
And then eventually they came up with a solution.
00:59:23.320
And the younger, you know, elephants were doing their stuff
00:59:25.720
and the older bull elephants were like, uh-uh, pipsqueak, cut it out.
00:59:30.340
And they put those young bull elephants in line.
00:59:43.120
It would not work by taking female elephants.
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01:00:09.480
But the problem is they're not listening to older men who even have some wise counsel.
01:00:13.900
But those older men, they're being tuned out because although they have wisdom, in some sense, they don't have strength.
01:00:20.880
And in fact, some of these older men are the very reason why we're living in the hard times that we live today, because they tolerated wickedness.
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01:00:28.180
Like Israel, they tolerated the Asherah poles.
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01:00:33.100
They tolerated all the wicked inhabitants.
1.00
01:00:35.700
They're the ones who allowed evil to flourish and grow on their watch.
01:00:40.640
So young men aren't interested in what they have to say.
01:00:50.580
And we need some righteously indignant angry men.
01:00:59.280
And we need those older men to be good men, to be wise men.
01:01:38.860
And he was like, and I took it as a compliment.
01:01:50.740
And people, you know, they can't tell if we're,
01:01:52.680
you know, if we stand up against abortion or not.
01:01:57.020
Jesus wasn't left wing or right wing, you know,
01:02:01.760
And he's like, I'm now ashamed when I think of that.
01:02:08.740
Essentially what I said is that all of God's truth,
01:02:25.560
vote for Democrats or Republicans or independents.
01:02:30.360
you won't have a clue. That's not a compliment. That's an indictment. But that represents, I
01:02:39.020
believe, the majority of churches today, not the minority. That kind of Christianity is on its way
01:02:46.820
out, and to which I think we should say good riddance. Praise God. But the new type that
1.00
01:02:53.780
comes in its place, here's the question. Can we, by the grace of God, break the cycle? Because I
01:02:58.680
don't want to just play ping pong every 50 to 80 years between weak guys and then hard
01:03:06.500
totalitarian guys. What you need to break the cycle is good guys, strong, but righteous.
01:03:16.180
Otherwise, we're just going to get another, a new set of problems. And we'll just go back and forth,
01:03:21.200
back and forth, back and forth. So Israel had hard men, it had Joshua, it had Moses.
01:03:35.580
And the good times produced weak men in Israel.
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01:03:39.420
And those weak men tolerated evil in Israel.
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01:03:55.740
whether it be corporately, for society as a whole, or individually, for you as an individual
0.91
01:04:00.760
Christian, the pattern remains the same. Pity is first on the list. Pity leads to compromise.
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01:04:09.040
Compromise leads to idolatry, and idolatry leads to slavery and suicide. Pity, Matthew Henry, he says,
01:04:19.780
when Israel had got the good land God had promised them, they had no zeal against the wicked
01:04:25.220
inhabitants whom the Lord commanded them to extirpate. Pretending pity, not a real compassion,
0.85
01:04:31.840
but pretending pity. But so merciful is God that no man needs to be in any case more compassionate
01:04:39.460
than him. There's your problem, brothers and sisters. Our problem is that for decades in the
01:04:45.980
West within Christianity, we have pretended pity and we have humored ourself. We may not have ever
01:04:52.480
verbalize it or set it out loud, but in our hearts of hearts, we thought that we were more
01:04:56.660
merciful than God. We thought we were kinder than him, more loving than him.
01:05:03.100
God says, no tolerance for this. And we say, no, some tolerance.
01:05:08.240
Because God, you're kind of mean. But we're just trying to be, you know, Christ's light.
01:05:15.520
How arrogant is that? Think about that. Think about Jesus, for instance.
01:05:27.740
If nothing else has marked American evangelicalism
01:05:31.740
over the past 50 years, I think it would be this.
01:05:43.660
without compromise on the truth of the message,
01:05:56.480
that without any ounce of compromise on the message
01:06:17.100
and draw out the unavoidable, inevitable, logical conclusion,
01:06:25.560
That is what pastors in America have thought for 50 years.
01:06:28.740
They thought they could do a better job than Jesus.
01:06:32.560
That's the quickest way to say it, and it is fair.
01:06:36.880
And what I mean by that is Jesus preached the truth.
01:07:04.220
Jesus preached the truth and he was put to death.
01:07:13.240
Jesus preached the truth and he died but that's because and again no one would verbalize this
01:07:19.760
but think about the logical implication what we're saying is this Jesus preached the truth
01:07:23.900
and he was crucified for it but that's because Jesus just wasn't really strategic
01:07:29.700
but I am no no if you're not getting some of the treatment from the world that Jesus got
01:07:37.120
it's not because you're more strategic than Jesus it's because you're more compromised than Jesus
01:07:42.840
period jesus preached the truth and he was hated i preached the truth and i'm applauded
01:07:51.100
that's because you look nothing like him and the truth that you preach is not the truth
01:07:56.220
period you're not better than jesus you're not you pity but it's not a true pity not pity
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according to the word of god not the true compassion the true mercy that god pitied
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Israel. No, your pity is pitying where God says, don't. Your pity is a tolerance of what God hates.
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You tolerate evil. You tolerate that wicked woman, Jezebel. The one who puts to death my prophets.
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By Jezebel, the spirit of Jezebel is still alive and well today. And she still kills the prophets,
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faithful preachers. And one of the reasons why she's allowed to do what she does is because
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the evangelical church protects her. You tolerate that woman, Jezebel, who puts to death the prophets.
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Any preacher that has a little bit of audacity, a little bit of courage, just a little bit of
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gall, who would stand up and preach what the Bible says about men and women, Jezebel's gonna hate
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him. And if he even begins to offer a defense, you know who will be the first people to protect her?
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Russell Moore, David French, the Gospel Coalition, the Evangelicals will protect Jezebel
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and they'll stand along with her condemning John the Baptist. Pity. Where your eyes should not pity,
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you pity. And out of pity comes compromise. Compromise, idolatry. And idolatry lends to
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slavery. And slavery is always accompanied by suicide. Israel eventually joined even with the
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pagan tribes in human sacrifice of their own children. That detestable practice that they
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swore to themselves that they would never do. Yeah, we'll pity them. We're not going to put
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them all to death. We're going to be compassionate. We'll never join them. Or at least we'll maybe
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join them in marriage, some of their cousins, but not their worship, not their idolatry. Okay,
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some of their idolatry. We'll allow them to have a high place here, high place there. You know,
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I'm married to a pagan, so I'll go with her occasionally to worship, just to be kind,
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just to keep the marriage, you know, on good terms. But I'm never going to, you know, engage
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in that barbaric act of human sacrifice. And there goes your son into the fire.
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In the final analysis, Israel went all that way. But it all started with multiple pluralism.
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it all started with principled pluralism it all started with pity and the name of pity in the
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name of compassion tolerating what god hates and eventually everything is twisted and perverted
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and tweaked eventually you have an entire society that calls good evil and evil good
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and that's where we are today and the result is going to be angry hard strong young men and they
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need desperately need that strength to be harnessed but the only ones who will be able to harness that
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strength will be older men who are better men wiser men good men but they won't be listened to
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unless they're also hard men because soft men created the mess we're in today and soft men
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we're done with that but all we'll do at the end of the day is ping pong back and forth unless there
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is righteous men, unless there is revival, reformation, turning back to God, calling
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upon him by name. That's what we need. And this is the same thing that we need in our individual
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lives as it deals with sin. We're not called to quarantine sin, bind up sin, manage sin.
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to be like Josiah, not just calling people to right worship, but tearing down the items.
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So let's do it by God's grace. Let's do it. Let's call upon God now to strengthen us toward that
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end. Lord, we ask for your help. We ask for your mercy. We ask for a righteous pity. We don't
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deserve it. Israel did not deserve your pity. They chose to compromise. They did not obey what you
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said to do it was their fault that the nations were permitted to rise back up and enslave them
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and yet you still had pity on israel not because of their faithfulness but because of your kindness
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and lord we pray that you would do likewise with us you are sovereign whatever you do we know it
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will be just but we are appealing not to your justice but to your kindness and mercy we pray
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lord that in the case of western civilization in the case of our republic these united states of
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america that rather making a case study out of us like you did israel which you would be perfectly
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just to do we cry out for your mercy instead we ask lord that you would actually change the hearts
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of the people, that you would cause us to repent of our sins, that you would cause us to grow in
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love for righteousness so that we likewise would grow in a righteous hatred of that which is evil,
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that we would not tolerate it, that we would carve out no provisions for the flesh. But Lord,
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we know if you are to do this at a societal level, it must first start with the house of God in our
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individual hearts and lives, in our homes, with our wives, with our marriages, with our children,