The Divine Council

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Our call to worship is from Psalm 82 verses 1 through 8. God has taken his place in the divine council. In the midst of the gods he holds judgment. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah. Give justice to the weak and the fatherless, maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy, deliver them from the hand of the wicked. They have neither knowledge nor understanding. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said you are God’s sons of the most high, all of you. Nevertheless, like men you shall die and fall like any prince.

Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations. Let’s pray together. Father, you are God of gods, you sit in the heavens and you do as you please. You judge the works of men and those who are able to stand before you righteous because of the work of your son, stand there blameless. We do know that there is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and we have much cause to celebrate and to sing even this morning. We ask that as we do so. Your spirit would be at work within us, may even the songs that we sing be formational as they reflect the content of our hearts and conform us more and more to the image of the one whom we behold, and we pray these things in his name.

Amen. I do have written down that we were supposed to, from Psalm 124.8, our help is in the name of the Lord. Now we can start rewinding. This is an adventure for me. Okay. And I did have a little bit of a zinger I was going to put in there. The reading, the scripture reading this morning is on purpose, that whole Psalm 82. And if you’ll notice by the title of what I’m going to talk about, there’s some interesting phrases in there about little G gods and things like that. So you’re off on that kind of adventure today. So now we’re to the point where we need to confess our sins so that the rest of our worship can be true and we can have a clean heart in accepting what God has to teach us today and to be able to come in with Him at the end of our service.

So this is the section now that we have for confessing our sin because we’re here to worship the one true God. Okay, and this is the whole purpose of what we do here, is we’re here to worship. We’re not here to entertain. We are here to have a good time. I think the greatest time in my life has been the times where the worship is the best.

And I think that we keep practicing at it, and I think we’re getting better at it, and I think a lot of us are learning to really understand God in a better way, in a deeper way, together. And that’s really, I think, one of the exciting parts of being part of the leadership of this church is to see the people altogether worshiping God in a way that I don’t see in a lot of other places. And obviously we sing well, and singing is kind of an outpouring of that, but the way that we worship all together is I think special here. The one thing is that we’re, you know, I’m not here to jump all over you about some sin I might know about you, but you may have private sins or have sins that you need to confess, and this is the time that we do that, and we also have put in our liturgy that if you’re able to, we invite you to kneel, We realize that it’s really tricky with little skinny pews and we don’t have a kneeling rail and all that stuff.

But that idea, so when I start this off, we’ll kneel and then I will start praying and then I’ll let it be silent for a while so that you can take care of the business that you need to. And then after a little bit of time, I’ll get back up and I’ll close this. But right now, this is the time where you want to make it right with God. So if you’re able to, Father, we thank you for the privilege that you’ve given us and the relationship with your son that allows us to talk to you straight up and face to face confess our sins to you and have them being heard and have your son, our representative for you and how you speak those things with each other and you forgive us our sins because of what your son has done for us.

Help us to understand this every day of the week, not just on Sunday, but every day, and when we do something wrong, to be quick to forgive and make that deal so that we can move on in good fellowship. And the promise that you give us in Colossians, that He, He, Jesus Christ, has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. So we thank you for that. I just want to thank you for the mercy that you showed in my life to let me come to know I know you where I almost lived half my life before, or at this point, before I even recognize what you have done.

So I thank you for that personally, and I just thank you for the way that you forgive our congregation and us. So in these things, in Jesus Christ’s name we pray, amen. Okay, so please stand, And I’d like to read this passage just so you think about more about what we talked about with God being in charge and the little Gs and all that kind of stuff and the forgiveness of sins. This is Colossians 1, 11 through 20. May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the first born from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile himself to all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Our scripture reading for this morning comes from Deuteronomy chapter 32, verses one through nine, and I’ll be reading from the English Standard Version. Deuteronomy 32, one through nine. Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. May my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distill as the dew, like gentle rain upon the tender grass and like showers upon the herb. For I will proclaim the name of the Lord, ascribe greatness to our God. The rock, his work is perfect. For all his ways are justice, a God of faithfulness and without iniquity. Just and upright is he. They have dealt corruptly with him.

They are no longer his children because they are blemished. They are a crooked and twisted generation. Do you thus repay the Lord?

foolish and senseless people? Is he not your father who created you, who made you and established you? Remember the days of old. Consider the years of many generations. Ask your father and he will show you, your elders and they will tell you. When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob, his allotted heritage. Let’s pray together. Father, your word is full of promises for us and lessons for us and it’s harrowing to think that the things that happened in the wilderness occurred for our instruction and yet that is in fact the case. We do delight in being part of your gift to your son as the bride is is the church and he will be presented to Christ pure and spotless. She will be presented and we comprise her individually and we thank you for that. We thank you that he is invested and is working to purify and sanctify us for that purpose.

We do know that your ways are above our ways and we pray that you would cause us to submit to them. We please forgive us for our tendency to impose on you a standard that you have created and that we are so arrogant as to suppose that things need to make sense for us in order for them to be true. That is not the case and even as we examine this study this morning our minds are going to be bent and we pray that you would help us to understand. We do thank you for the work of your son in many ways and we thank you that we are able to come before you not just as an act of faithfulness, but with a certainty that you will hear and use our prayers to bring about your will.

We are grateful for the principle decision making of our forebears in this nation. This week as we celebrate our independence from the British crown, we cannot, but remember that things were very different then than they are now. And so many of the things that those men worked for and died for are being trampled upon even now. And may the way that we make merry and celebrate this week help us to look different from the world. We do think of many in our church family who are traveling this week, bringing back the Higgins safely tomorrow, and many others going out of town, or already out of town, including as we heard the Mandarecans already.

And this is going to be a heavy travel week for so many. And also with the record-breaking heat, There are even more reasons than normal to depend upon you. And so please, we ask that you protect in these times. We lift our supplications to you, thinking of those in our church family who have special needs. We continue to pray for Debbie Wold and that her body would respond well to this new chemotherapy treatment for Rachel Rothenberger and Suzanne Marlatte, who continue to recover from recent surgeries. We ask you to grant them full and speedy healings for Jack Frazier and Ralph Durden who have ongoing cancer treatments of their own.

We ask that you would please allow their bodies to respond well and to, and that you would heal them, allow them to function at a high level. We pray for Ruth’s mom who has ALS, and we do ask, as we have asked, that you would help the calendars to be a blessing to her as she anticipates her home going soon. For Doug Ewan’s recovery from kidney surgery, we pray that the one kidney he has would operate well, he’d be able to enjoy normal function. For Stephanie Herr, who continues to have complications from her recent surgery, but is doing better and even here this morning, we ask that as she sees the next doctor very soon, they will be wise as to what the next steps will be in helping her.

For Carol Slice, who stepped in a hole yesterday and tore two ligaments in her ankle, we ask that you would grant her comfort and a speedy recovery as she tries to lie low today. We ask that you would comfort the Bowers family as they mourn the passing of Andy’s grandpa Jim. And we do ask that you would use his passing to draw many to yourself as you normally do. For folks with chronic illnesses in our congregation and discomfort of various sorts, including Jeff Hathaway, Marja Majorian, Don Van Der Becken, Nadine Rothenberger, Morgan Higgins, and others I failed to mention, we ask that you please just give the long view to these individuals as they are better equipped to minister to others who have gone through similar things and as they anticipate the day that they will be without pain.

In the meantime, we ask that you would be kind to grant healing and relief and peace to them. We also pray for comfort and safe deliveries for the pregnant ladies in our congregation. We are so grateful for the little, the numerous little ones who are scampering about. It’s fun to see them. For the details regarding the upcoming wedding of Taylor and Maggie, we ask you to allow those to come together as our congregation is working feverishly to make that happen. We thank you that James Barnes continues to make good progress at Damascus House. We’re delighted to see his family here today. We look forward to the day a few months from now that James will be able to rejoin us for corporate worship.

We pray for those in our congregation, the elders to serve our body with sacrifice and wisdom. For the deacons, may their ministry of mercy be fruitful and delightful. We pray for the husbands of our congregation. May we love our wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her and loved her unto loveliness. For the fathers in our congregation, we ask that we may image you well before our children, giving our children the right conception as to what you are like simply by looking at us, and that’s a high calling. For the wives, may they cheerfully submit to their husbands as they submit to the Lord. And may this cause us men to step up in initiative and leadership.

For the mothers in the congregation, may they shape the arrows that are in their charge with faithfulness and joy and consistency. And for the children, we pray that they may delight in obeying their parents in the Lord and enjoy the blessing that accompanies obedience. For those with gray hair in our congregation, may we look to them with respect and as the counselors that they are who have gained that crown of glory and faithfulness. We thank you for continuing to bless Evangel classical school numerically. We ask that you meet our needs in terms of personnel and importantly in terms of facility. We ask that you provide for us space to be able to operate well.

We ask you to bless the work of project 92 as their ministers are bringing the gospel to the unreached and the dark parts of the world. We ask you to bless the work of I squared ministries as they fulfill, they labor to fulfill the great commission among the Muslims. Bless the work of Antioch Adoptions as they work with Christian families to place the foster children of Western Washington and forever homes. Thank you for their commitment to submit to and to honor your word when so many other adoption agencies have bowed the knee to the secular culture. Bless the work of Sajja and Yancy Thomas as they serve and love the young ladies of the Good Shepherd Children’s Home in India.

Keep them healthy as COVID has run rampant in the last few months there. may their home be a spiritual greenhouse and a haven in that very Hindu part of the world. Please grow our area churches in terms of unflinching courage and devotion to your word. May your gospel go forth with clarity today at Mercy Fellowship, Grove Church, Grace Bible Church, Cornerstone, Allen Creek Community, Marysville Foursquare, First Baptist of Arlington, Jake’s House, and others who are working to do this work.

And here we are, Father, once again on a Sunday morning. And as we lift high your name, as we behold the Son, conform us more and more to His image and likeness. May we hear your word with receptive hearts by your spirit and come away changed. Thank you for the privilege of doing so. And we ask this all in the name of your Son, amen. Father, I pray the same way that you said in Ephesians, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you and what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.

According to the work of his great might And he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And now help us to understand some of these passages that are difficult, but I pray that you would open our if you would will it so that we would see maybe a new slant on some things. So we thank you and in your son’s name Jesus Christ we pray amen. Alright before I start today I want to say that I’m one of the pastors here and what I’m saying today not necessarily do all of us subscribe to this okay I’m the little I’m the guy kind of out on the far edge.

I don’t believe it’s heresy, but I believe that there is a lot to be learned from this big point of view and not necessarily down into a lot of details that some people have taken it. I’ll explain that a little more as we get into this. But I want you to remember that our statement of belief, we have a short one and a very long one that’s pretty well described first in the Bible, that none of these things is against anything in that. This is a viewpoint on a term and a few things that have been said, but if you take that viewpoint, other things open up to you. And the one thing that you’ve got to remember that we are Trinitarian Christians, all of us, okay, that’s what we believe in this church.

God is one in three persons and they are eternal and still going on, all right. They were before the world began and they’re still there. And they are what we study and what we look at. And it’s through Christ’s death that we even have the privilege to be able to talk to God the Father and it’s through His Spirit who lives in each one of us. If you’re a Christian, God lives inside of you. That’s pretty supernatural right there, right? And the other thing to remember is that our religion does teach that God incarnated his son, his son became human flesh and then was crucified, killed, God killed himself for us and then was raised from the dead eternally and that gives us that access to God, okay?

And the more you study all those things, I mean we’ve had several sermons on all those things, you know, who killed Jesus, all those kind of questions come up And as you realize, the one in three God did all those things, okay? Not one of them did it, they all three did it. And how do you worship and how do you not fall on your knees that the God that made everything out of nothing decided the only way for us to have a pathway to him was literally to kill himself and raise himself back up from the dead. That’s out there. And a lot of churches talk around that stuff, but that is what we believe when you boil it all down.

And that’s, talk about supernatural and nutso, that’s it. And we are part of that family. Then God gave us a book to interpret and an instruction book, how to act. And when you read some of those passages in there, sometimes it gets confusing. And so he gave some as teachers and all the rest of that. And we have, we stand on the shoulders now, 2,000 years in Christianity, and before that, in Judaism, which had the Old Testament, with a lot of people that have studied the Bible, written about it, and we have a lot of resources to look at it. And we have to understand that we also hold to the historical grammatical method of interpretation, and that that is a Christian hermeneutical method.

So in other words, how you interpret the scripture is what we’re talking about. And that method strives to discover the biblical author’s original intended meaning in the text. What does the text say and what does that mean by that author? Okay? So when the Bible says the grass, you know, for the cows or whatever, did that author intend grass to mean marijuana?

knew. He meant grass, okay, because grass didn’t even become a topic for marijuana till later on. So that’s the kind of things that historical grammatical approach can help you with. What did that word mean when Paul wrote it? Another famous example of that is the houpe retais, the under rower for Christ. That word is not in the Greek anywhere. There is no under rower on a trimerene that is being subjected to a lot of stuff. I heard a great sermon on that, taught it for years, and then found out it was bogus. So I quit teaching that. So anyway, what houpe irites really meant, and they discovered that when they dug up the papyrus in Egypt on the language of Koine Greek of the first century, that a houpe irites is nothing more than a bureaucrat.

So when Paul was saying he’s an under-rower for Jesus in some translations or some commentaries, he was saying I’m just a bureaucrat in God’s big government giving you the message. Which still is demeaning of Paul and showing somebody like Paul can be just a little cog in the wheel and look what he has given us through all his gifts. So anyway, that’s the kind of thing that happens to you when you don’t do that. So according to the historical grammatical method, if based on analysis of the grammatical style of the passage, which considers its cultural, historical, and literary context, it appears that the author intended to convey an account of events that actually happened, then the text should be taken as representing history.

Passages should be interpreted symbolically, poetically, or allegorically, if best suited to that understanding. That is what the writer intended to convey to the original audience. So that doesn’t mean everything is woodenly literal. It can be storied or an example of or that kind of thing. So that’s the general way that we look at the Bible. The other interesting thing is that a lot of these verses have been commented on in Judiastic scholars of the, before the Christian era and right the first century of the Christian era. Because remember that the people in the New Testament had one Bible, the Old Testament.

They didn’t have the New Testament, it wasn’t written yet. So when Jesus is talking to them, he’s talking from the Hebrew Bible, all right? And if you check it out, you’ll see that most of the time He’s quoting the Septuagint, which is a 200 year, when Christ was quoting from it, a 200 year old translation of the Bible in Greek. Most of the people in the common world at that time were reading Koine Greek and conversing in that. That was the, you know, lingua of the day, like English is in the world at the moment. So that’s the book they were reading. And you’ll notice in the Bible, it’s the one being quoted most of the time, not the Hebrew Bible.

So it’s very interesting that that’s why when you read the quotation in the New Testament and you go back in your Old Testament and you see, oh, those aren’t the right phrases, what’s going on there? You’re reading a translation of the Septuagint that’s being quoted, not the Masoretic text, okay? So that’s another interesting thing. Now somebody’s gonna say, wait a minute, I thought the Hebrew Bible was the Old Testament. It is. But if the writers that are inspired by the Holy Spirit and by God to write the text, when they’re quoting the Septuagint, that part of the Septuagint becomes inerrant. Everybody tracking with me?

So by them quoting that part of the Old Testament, even though it’s a different translation than the original Hebrew, they’re now elevating that section into inerrant words, okay? A great study for you to do is the whole discussion of Alma or Virgin in Isaiah nine. And just get a commentary or Bible and Irish thing, go down that rabbit trail, it’s really interesting. Without the Koine Greek translation, you could argue that Christ was born by a young woman. But because they quoted the Septuagint, it’s virgin, and there’s no doubt about the word, and that’s what was quoted. All right, so just, that’s kind of the background you have to look at this material that I’m gonna be talking about.

So then, the first century Judaism believed in at least two gods and two academics accurate gods, the real God, God the Father and the Angel of the Lord or whatever we’re going to talk about in here. And when you go back to those Hebrew writers, that was the common belief at the turn, you know, the year zero and before of Hebrew scholars because they read the text we’re going to look at and go, oh my goodness, God is talking to himself. Who’s that other person?

other person is the one that became incarnate or the Holy Spirit. Some of them actually dribbled off into three because they said there’s a speaker, there’s the Sun, because sometimes it’s done that way. So you’ll see some of that. The texts I’m going to give you are, they’re difficult, and some of these interpretations are not in your favorite commentator. And a little story on that is that when I first started going to Grace Community Church, we came there in 1989, and Morgan and LD, we would take them out on Wednesday. We lived 50 miles away from the church, so we’d drive in early in the afternoon. I was able to leave work and do that. I’d go into the library at that point. The seminary library was the basement of of the church and I really, at that time, I had gone, taken some seminary classes myself and I got down in the library and got down the rabbit trailer, who are the Nephilim?

Because I read that and I wanted an answer about that. What happened here? And I would ask different professors and they had different opinions and I’m going nuts. So how can you have an opinion of that and be different than this guy when it’s the same words, what’s the matter with you people? Well, don’t study that stuff, it’s too complicated. Well, the people that didn’t tell me that and told me, no, look into it. And they had differing opinions. Some of them thought they were Seth, the sons of, the righteous line and all of that. Other ones definitely believed that it was some strange creature from heaven. So I was exposed to that and then I was exposed to, Oh, there’s lots of people that are believers, they’re Christians, they’re all gonna go to heaven.

But in that class, they don’t know exactly what to do with that. The first century people that knew the Old Testament, the Hebrew scholars, they had no trouble with it. They totally thought they were heavenly creatures and all that kind of stuff. So there’s this book that got written, I think it’s 2008, let me check the, No, 2015, so a while back. This is the book that the elders have read, and Jim used it in our college as one of the books in the Old Testament survey. No way do I agree with everything this guy says in here, okay, but the big picture he’s talking about, I absolutely think needs to be looked at. And that’s what I’m going to try to do here.

I’m not here to defend this book. Certain chapters, if I was the old Dave Light, I have a stamp at home actually that says straight from the pit and about things like that. And it’s a red stamp. And I would go through this book in certain pages, I would stamp that on there. Other pages I like.

But the general theme here, I agree with. And that’s kind of what I want to introduce to you guys to make you think. And as you think about this, if nothing else, you will not read your Bible the same way. You’ll read passages and go, huh, wonder what that means. I wonder what’s going on here. It could be this, it could be that. That’s where I want you to go. God is not a trickster. He’s put it all out here for us to see and we should take advantage of those kind of things. So for instance, if you’re a Jewish scholar and you read Genesis 1 verse 26, it said, then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

making man to have dominion over all the earth, important point, and let us make man. Us, what? God, God is the Shema, the one true God, blah, blah, blah. What’s us? Well, Hebrew scholars knew, that was no mistake, it says us. What do I do with that? So, up until the second century, and what happened by the second century of the Hebrew religion, you either had to be a Jew or you became a Christian. So now I gotta offend Judaism, so I say, well there’s only one God and these clowns are a cult and they believe in three gods. But the people that really knew their Bibles, those Hebrew scholars back then, realized there’s a problem there.

There’s at least two let us, right off the tracks. And whenever you’re debating people that are converted Jews, people like, oh, what’s his name? The guy that wrote the, yeah, I know, Israelology. Who? No, he would go into this thing. He would believe the thing. But they, oh, Fruchtenberg, that’s it. And he’s the one that totally buys this stuff. But they realize modern day that they’ve got to say, ah, it’s back in here. The modern day, rabbi has to argue against it or then he’s giving ground to the Christian God, okay? And then in Genesis 3.5, for God knows that when you eat, your eyes will be opened and it will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So man don’t eat that fruit or you’re gonna start to think like God, all right? Then in Genesis 3.22, the Lord said, behold, a man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Whoa, he’s become like one of us. Not like God, like one of us. Who’s the us? What’s going on here? Who are these people? And now, lest he reach out in his hand and also take the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Then in Genesis 6.7, we have the problem of the Nephilim coming along. So in Genesis 6, one through seven, man began to multiply on the face of the land and the daughters were born to them. The sons of God, the sons of God, saw that the daughters of man were attractive. So this is where the big argument comes, like I explained to you first, that these could be the sons of God being set the line that followed God. could be, saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose. And then the Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh in his days shall be a hundred and 20 years.

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days. And also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man, and they bore children to them, these were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. So when the sons of God down here in the other one says, came into the daughters of man, well how about the daughters of Seth? Just the sons of Seth were the good ones? See, there becomes a question there. And so then saw that the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention and thoughts in his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he’d made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart.

So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I created from the face of the land, man in the animals and creeping things and birds in the heavens, for I am sorry I’ve made them. So he realizes this is a problem, we gotta get rid of it. The flood comes and then in Genesis 9.1, God says, bless no one his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So now man’s, he’s been given the command to make dominion, he’s also been given the command to fill the earth. And then Genesis 11 comes along and man builds the Tower of Babel. And they said, come let us build ourselves a city, a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves.

God did not command them to build a tower to get close to the heavens. He commanded them to take dominion of the earth, be fruitful and multiply and spread out and make earth what it should be, okay? So they didn’t do that. They start to build this tower to get to the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we disperse over the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, behold, there are one people, they have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. The only the beginning of building their little tower and you know, communing with God.

And nothing that they perose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us, uh oh, let us go down and therefore confuse their speech and their language so that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of the earth and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, and because the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of the earth. So God made them spread out at that point. But you’ll notice God again, us, the Hebrew scholars have no problem with that. This is God and his special friend who they, most of them would say it’s the Son of God, okay?

Or the angel of the Lord, which you see all over the place, which is the next thing that starts to happen. Now keep in mind, we’re talking about these little phrases, us and them, and we’re looking in the Old Testament, where modern day Judaism says, oh, there’s one true God and all of that, and the Christians have this heresy of multiple gods. We don’t have multiple gods, we got one God. And remember that the Hebrew scholars in the year zero, they were all saying, oh yeah, there’s more than one, you know, he’s a combination of things. They didn’t have a problem with that. It only became heresy for them after Christianity arose.

And remember that when you read in the Bible that the sect of Christianity in the book of Acts is actually a split from the Hebrew religion. And in that verse that talks about that, and many came to believe. And you see also in the book of Acts, You know, because you got the Pharisees and the Sadducees and all these guys as the bad guys through the Gospels. But in the book of Acts it said, and many of them came to believe. Because if you know your Bible and you start seeing all this stuff put together and then you get further teaching from the apostles and you start seeing 30, 40 years of this, you start going, oh wait a minute, that fits with this.

You become a good Berean and you become a believer. So historically, the stuff can go along like that. Then in Genesis 48, 15 through 16, and he blessed Joseph and said, the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys, and in them let my name be carried on, and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. So here we have God standing aside, and then the angel, so the angel of the Lord, you know, I would put this in that category, and Shawn has talked about this before, and some of you may already know these things, but the angel of the Lord is a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ, all right?

That’s what most conservative Bible scholars in our camp believe. So the angel of the Lord is a special angel, not just a common messenger, but it’s a certain one, the angel of the Lord. So then in Exodus 23, 20, Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice. Now they’re getting instructions how to get through the desert. Do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him. This is God the Father saying, this angel, my name is in him. In Hebrew, thinking, the name is what you are.

So God is saying this angel is the same as me, basically. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Parazites, and the Canaanites, and the Hivites, the Jebusites, and I blot them out. You shall not bow down to their gods, or nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces. I always thought even before I learned some stuff, when you read bow down to their gods nor serve them, those people were worshiping whatever it was as if it were God.

But if you start to put these verses together, you realize maybe these little G’s are actually something, whether demonic or however you wanna put it. They are worshiping something better than a stick. Most people realize if I just worship this stick, the stick is nothing. But what the stick symbolizes, or what they’re putting their fruit up there to their ancestors or whatever, they believe they’re transcending the normal course of events by doing that kind of stuff. So they are worshiping something as a God, little G, and the Bible sees that clearly. Then in Numbers 13, 32 and 33, so they brought the people of Israel a bad report of the land they had spied out saying.

The land through which we have gone to spy it out is a land that devours its inhabitants and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who came from the Nephilim. And we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers. So we seem to them. So here these guys are popping up again. Notice it’s after the flood. Well God killed all the humans in the flood. Okay, no problem. If these are God-like things, He didn’t kill all of them, did He? Interesting thought, okay. So keep that out there in this case over here. So when you study these things, there are those categories where you have to answer those things.

How did they get there? If everything was killed in the flood, did all the angels get killed in the flood? No. So maybe these godlike creatures are in a special category of angels somehow. So that could get you out of that box. So see all the little trick deals here, But the Bible’s clearly saying this is happening. Then in Deuteronomy 32, one through nine, which was what Jonathan wrote before he prayed, and this goes with Psalm 82, and I’m doing these in order of the Bible, you’ll notice. But in Deuteronomy 32, one through nine, notice what God does with all the nations at this point. Give an ear, O heavens, and I will speak and let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

Jonathan read this whole thing, we’re doing fine in our time. May my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distilled as the dew, like gentle rain upon the tender grass and the showers upon the herb. For I will proclaim the name of the Lord and ascribe greatness to our God. The rock is work. The rock, his work is perfect. For all the ways are justice. The rock, who’s the rock? And all his work is justice. a God of faithfulness without iniquity, just and upright as He. They have dwelt corruptly with Him. They are no longer His children because they are blemished. They are a crooked and twisted generation. Do you thus repay the Lord, you foolish and senseless people?

It is not He, your Father, who created you, who made you, is it not He, I’m sorry, is it not He, your Father who created you, who made you and established you. Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generation. Ask your father and he will show you, your elders, and they will teach you when the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance. When he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the numbers of the sons of God.” Whoa, who are those people? He divided mankind and all the tribes according to the number of the sons of God. But the Lord’s portion is his people. Jacob’s is allotted heritage.

Now, most commentators will tell you the sons of God are these righteous people that follow them around and they can do this kind of stuff. But all of a sudden, that doesn’t kind of make sense when you dig down deep. This book is excellent in talking about all these problem passages that I’m talking about here going way down. I mean, he’ll give you all kinds of sites to papers that you can access on the internet. I read probably 300 pages of papers that totally seem to make sense to me that it is what I’m leading up to here.

But again, this is not something that your eternal destiny hangs on, but I do believe that honest Bible study, you wanna know and grow and your promise to be conformed to the image of God’s son. That’s one of the great promises we have and that we pray for a lot here. And we’re promised that, that he will conformist in the image of his son in the end. So even if you get some of this stuff wrong, he’s gonna fix you, okay? So don’t worry about that too much. So then the next thing that happens is Psalm 82 and this is the killer one describing what went on in heaven, I believe before a lot of these things happen. God has taken his place in the divine council.

What, what? Just right off the bat, the first phrase, God has taken his place in the divine council. Okay, divine council could just be some people God say hey come on over here and listen to what I’m going to tell you. Well in case you thought that then the next phrase says in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. Whoa what the heck’s going on here? Now most conservative commentators and like the MacArthur Study Bible will tell you that this is just a bunch of human rulers. Well I don’t know a bunch of human rulers that meet up in the divine council in the midst of everybody, heals judgment in heaven where this looks like it’s going down, okay.

And then it goes on, how long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? He’s talking about the people. Remember he gave the inheritance and Deuteronomy to the people that fix the borders according to the numbers of sons of God. So this gives an indication that possibly there are some of these people over these nations, all right. How long will you unjustly rule and show partiality of the wicked? Give justice to the weak and the fatholous. Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them from the hand of the wicked. They have neither knowledge nor understanding.

They walk about in darkness. All the foundation of the earth are shaken. I said, you are God’s sons of the Most High. All of you, nevertheless, like men, you shall die and fall like any prince. Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all nations. What happens in the end of Revelation when God fights all the demons and the demonic powers? He throws them in the pit, locks them up forever. They die, he goes after them. So that can get explained that way. So that’s like Psalm 82. Then you have in Genesis, or John 10, this is where a lot of commentators will go to prove to you that it’s just people that God is talking about there, the rulers.

So the Jews gathered around Jesus and they said to him, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, you do not believe the works that I do in my Father’s name, and bear witness about me. But you do not believe me because you are not part of my flock. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the father are one.

At the point Jesus says, I and the father are one, the Jews pick up the stones to stone him. That’s not good, because Jesus at that point is claiming to be God. And the very people, listen to what he’s gonna say next, stone him. Jesus answered them, have I shown you many good works from the father? For which of them are you going to stone me? The Jews answered him, it is not for good work that we’re going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself to be God. I and the Father are one. Jesus said that, that’s why they wanted to throw the rocks at him. Then Jesus answered them and said, is it not written in your law?

I said, you are God’s. If he called them God’s to whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken, Do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent to the world, you are blaspheming because I said I am the Son of God. He’s showing them that God said the Son of Gods are in there and he says because I am the Son of God, I’m not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand the Father is in me and I am in the Father. And at that point when he says, I’m the same as the Father, they want to go after him.

But they allow him to get that divine kind of section of being one of the gods, but not the God. So if you read it with that back in your mind, you realize they didn’t get mad enough to want to kill Jesus. They let him say all those things until he said, I and the Father are one. That’s the line that when he crosses that, they want to kill him. That’s where he’s blaspheming. Okay? So then in Romans 18 through 24, I consider the sufferings of this present time not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed. For creation waits eager for the longing, for the revealing of the sons of God. Whoa. Is that just us or we?

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For creation was subjected to futility, not willing. So think about this, if creation is waiting long to be reinstated in what it was back in the time when God had it all out, and then people started to rebel, then he fixes it again, and now it’s gonna be put back together. So who are these sons of God? It may not be just you and I. It may be a whole bunch of created people in the heavenlies, all right? Then other problem passages are 1 Peter 3 18 through 22. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison because they formally did not obey.

Who are those spirits in prison that Christ went to speak to? People say demons, a lot of things like that are just unbelievers before the flood or whatever. Some people even write the radical thing that he’s gonna go down there and give him a second chance to make it right.

You can throw those away. But there are differing opinions of that. But it is interesting that these spirits put in prison may be the people we’re talking about here. And now saves you not, so formally proclaimed to their spirits in prison because they formally did not obey when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared in which few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through the water. Baptism which now corresponds to this now saves you not as removal dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

Who are the angels, authorities, and powers? Who are these people? They are, Paul mentions them all over the place. You can find them in, like I prayed in Ephesians there, in one of the things. I chose all the things that I put in the prayers. Those are places where the Bible speaks about all these kingdoms, powers, authorities, things that are not of this world that are governing kind of things. And we don’t know about them, but they’re being spoken of and Paul tells us that they are all subjected to Jesus Christ, okay? And then Jude, of course the famous part in Jude 1 through 7, Judas, servant of Jesus Christ, the brother of James, to those who were called, beloved in God, the father, and kept for Jesus Christ.

May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you, beloved. Although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in, unnoticed, who long ago were designated for this. condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and denying our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. Now I want to remind you, though you once fully knew it, now he’s talking to a Jewish audience, now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus who saved a people out of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

So here Judah’s telling him Jesus is the one who brought them out of the land of Egypt. Jewish people being told Jesus is the one, okay? Jesus is the rock and all of that, all right? And the angels who did not stay within their position of authority but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloopy darkness until the judgment of the great day, which we read about in Revelation. So you have these rebelling angels that somehow did all this stuff, and Jude is describing it again, okay? Just as, uh-oh, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality, preserved on natural desire, served as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

Now I think that’s a direct reference back to the Nephilim in Genesis 6.1. So what do we have with all those verses and what am I trying to say? I’m trying to say if you look at these verses or if you’re interested in this subject to read this book and to go ahead and look the things up yourself. Now, if you don’t want to read it, this guy has, I don’t know, hours on YouTube and on the Internet and lots of papers published and everything. Again, I’m not saying this is a new religion that we have to go follow or anything. I think it’s an interesting tack and solves a lot of what does that passage do. And when you go into most commentaries, they sidestep this stuff.

You won’t get yes or no answers. And this guy is, you know, manned up and he’s giving you yes or no answers whether you agree with him or not. I tend to like them because they solve a lot of the problems in these passages. And it does show that we live in a much more supernatural world than maybe we’re aware of. And I’m not saying that we’re going to be, God is gonna rip the veil from our eyes and we’re gonna see all these angels flying around in here, whatever. I don’t think it’s gonna happen like that. But he does say that these authorities and things are going on and we have to guard against them. And through prayer and supplication, we have to guard ourselves, putting on the full armor of God, like the little kids had the thing, to battle those things, okay, because those things are not easily gotten rid of.

You have to battle them. Hence the prayer there about the Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 6. If you look at it, what is the armor of God for? To battle all those authorities and principalities that are trying to take you over. So there’s a huge amount of wisdom and I can’t battle that. That’s something God and these other people are battling over. But I think that it may be an explanation to why certain nations are what seem to be just plain demonic. And note that when the gospel comes to a nation, that the difference of a nation that has Protestant gospel message in it for a long period of time changes that from a bad place to a better place.

Not a perfect place, but a better place. We’ve talked about that through Kuyperian Calvinism, not one thumbs with that Jesus isn’t Lord over. And once you realize that, Well, of course this should be taken over. Of course we shouldn’t have that. We shouldn’t give room for this. So I think it fits nicely into all of those categories. Not is it answer every question, obviously not. And I don’t want to stay six hours trying to explain some minuscule little tab you got. This book does a good job though of answering a lot of those questions. And he refers you to papers that don’t agree with him that you can read. And you can listen to him say it.

Now, I do not buy everything this guy says, but on the big subject, I think he is really pointing out some really interesting stuff. And the whole subject that I’d never heard argued before, what did the Jew of the first century believe about these things? Not what the Jew believes today, because he’s got 2,000 years of Christianity he’s trying to run apologetics against, But the Jew that was reading the Bible of their time, which was the Old Testament, and reading the Septuagint, what did he think about multiple gods and all these verses, let us do this, and that kind of thing. You get a modern day rabbi, and I have Jewish friends, if they, when they ask those things, they won’t answer it.

They just say, don’t study that, move on. Let us make man in our own image. I mean, you don’t have to read the Bible the whole way through, you just got to get to verse 26 before you go, wait a minute, what’s that? So anyway, whatever it is, it’s something different than just one guy.

So that’s what I wanted to lay out in front of you. And I think that our congregation, we are mature enough to look at these things and I don’t think you need to be confused by them. I think you can just say, hmm, that’s interesting. And as you read through the word and you have this now, you’re gonna read those phrases and you’re probably gonna think something different than you thought before. At least I know I do when I look at them. And the other thing that I love about this, and this has got nothing to do with the Bible, but the men of renown, you know, that’s mentioned that that’s what came out of the Nephilim coming down and cohabitating with women, the men who ran out.

If that’s true, boy, think about the Odyssey and all the things in Herodotus that don’t quite fit. They could easily be those things, you know, told through a couple of guys embellishing their story and writing it down. You easily could have those situations going on and have a more biblical explanation for why those people wrote all that stuff down and why those things happened. I think I’m done with this part.

I wanna close with this because again, all of that talk is not your usual Sunday sermon and we are here to worship God and to understanding better And I think that this can help you understand God better or take certain bad things out of your interpretations of things. But I think reading the part that’s written to us out of Jesus’ high priestly prayer, John 17, I wanna close with the last part of that prayer where Jesus is praying for us.

Now, there’s no part in here that, you know, you’re gonna go, oh wow, Jesus is saying angels need to take care of you. It’s not like that. These are just straight-up promises that Jesus is making about us and praying for us to be wise in our circumstance. So I’d like to close this part of the sermon and this part of our liturgy with this. This is John 17, 20 through 26. I do not ask for these only, for these people, us believers, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. That was the disciples, we believe through the disciples words. So now he’s transitioned to us. Those who will believe in me through their word. That they may all be one, just as you Father are in me and I in you that they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. We are that Christ ambassador to all those people that don’t know him. Remember that. And you are giving godly power to be that way and God himself is praying for you to be that way. So you can’t beat that. The glory that is in the glory that you have given me, I have given to them

that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and you in me that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you love me. Father I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you love me before the foundation of the world. O righteous father, even though the world does not know you, I know you and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name and I will continue to make it known that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.” That’s an amazing bit of scripture. My first year Greek teacher who was a translator for the NIV and the NASB and everything, he took a piece of shelf paper and diagrammed out in Greek, John 17, on a piece of shelf paper and it rolled out to like 30 feet and it was really cool how it all goes together and ends up that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them pointing to us. It’s a real you know trip to see that. So the end of that story so

So let’s pray. Father, I pray that you would block out stupid stuff I’ve said or bring out the good things. Help people to look at the word of God that they have in front of them in new ways, open their eyes to things you would have them see. And help everybody remember that the main things of being a Christian are not what are being discussed here. This is a fine point on things, but it does seem to bring a lot of questionable things together. So I thank you for that, and I thank you that you watch over us, and we thank you, of course, most of all, for your son, Jesus Christ, amen. Now comes the time that has become my favorite, and we elders have to, what do we do it, every three months now, or every six months?

Tell each other that we should still be elders or Quarterly yeah, we know literally people laugh, but we really do quiz each other are you are you? Behaving as you should do you still want to be an elder? So report quarterly right Yeah, well no and I’m talking about the quarterly the My favorite thing about this church, and a real testimony to me that we’re doing it right, is communion. I really believe doing it every week changes our body. I think that all together, us doing it is like really affirming and good. And just the singing during communion is enough to, you know, melt you, especially people like me that cry at everything.

So that part’s easy. But the feeling and the oneness and the, I think that the love for each other that gets put out as we just go through communion is really a big deal here. And for those of you that maybe this is your first time here, can you believe that you came to a church that sings like what we just sang like without a choir and all the rest of it? And we have intentionally done that. Jonathan takes us as a congregation some evenings and teaches us the music, you know, and when to sing this and that. I don’t know that stuff. And it just blows me away when we sing like that.

I just, it’s really good. So that we come here now, we are celebrating what God did for us. That’s another distinctive that we have here that you’ll notice if you are new to us or never thought about it this way. We are not all gloomy just trying to crawl to the very edge of the wall and get our nose up high enough to be able to get the little stale cracker and a little you know cup of juice and and go to our seat and that it’s not where it is. If we have confessed our sin and we have fellowship with each other and we’re learning about God and and we are worshipping Him, at the end of this, we should celebrate what we’re doing, and we should enjoy it, and it’s for believers.

That’s another distinction, we don’t say this all the time, but we have an open communion, and it’s for believing Christian people. If you’re not a Christian and you came here and observed this, and you wanna know what the heck’s going on here, Any of us will be happy to talk to you or tell you what we think and why this is different and give you the gospel. But we are open to anybody that comes from a church that believes that or if you believe that or you believe that 20 minutes ago, you’re welcome to have communion with us. But if you’re not, it is supposed to be for believing people, all right? or the text actually says you can drink judgment on yourself if you take it unwordily, which I don’t think anybody wants that, so don’t do that.

Now it’s time for you people to be commissioned to go out into the world. This is, I think, another important time to think about what’s happening. And Shon is instituted kind of a Presbyterian thing thing where we put our hands out to bless the whole congregation, make some of our Baptist friends nervous, but that’s all right. And I don’t, I’m not going to turn my collar around before I do it. But I think it just, again, it’s the whole of us going out and being instructed to go and be in the world. So our benediction today and our commissioning is this. This is Ephesians 6, 10 through 13. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, the cosmic powers over this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand the evil day in having done all to stand firm. Have a wonderful week and go out and declare the Lord. Amen.