Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Theology Thursday. I’m Nicole McBurney. Every weekday we bring you the news of the day, the culture, and science from a Christian worldview. But today, join me and Pastor Bob Enyart as we explore the source of our Christian worldview, the Bible.
SPEAKER 02 :
In Deuteronomy chapter 8, we join Moses in his second farewell address. Already in progress, it began three chapters ago. Chapter 8, verse 1. Every commandment which I command you today, you must be careful to observe that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers. Now this next verse touches on the question of the future and free will and whether the future actions of free moral agents are knowable. Now think about that. The future… And you have people, human beings or angels, and we are free moral agents. We’re responsible for the things we do. We make choices. And are those future actions, are they knowable? Can it be known whether someone will choose chocolate or vanilla tomorrow? Someone who’s never had ice cream before. Let’s say they’re from Afghanistan. And they got here on Afghan Airlines. Well, that wouldn’t work somehow. And they go to an ice cream shop. And people say, well, pick a flavor. They don’t know what they’re going to pick. Or even a moral question. Or when someone is growing up and they have the opportunity for the first time they’re on their own and they give in to a temptation or not. What are they going to do? Is something like that absolutely knowable in advance? Well, if the person truly is free… and can make a free will decision, then that’s not absolutely knowable. You have to wait until the person decides to obey or reject God or to choose chocolate or vanilla. Well, this next verse touches on that question. And logically, the future actions of free will agents are not knowable. Logically, you couldn’t know that. But we are told that God’s ways are above our ways. His ways are higher than our ways. And that therefore, God can know the future actions of free will agents. But this verse too suggests otherwise. And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these 40 years in the wilderness to humble you and to test you to know what was in your heart whether you would keep his commandments or not. So Moses writes that God tested Israel for 40 years to see what was in their heart and to learn whether or not they would keep his commandments. Now that’s consistent with what Moses showed us about God from the beginning on. Now we’re in Deuteronomy. Moses is writing this late in his 40 year career as the deliverer of israel but earlier he had written the book of genesis and in genesis that’s where we get our first impression of god and first impressions are important that’s where god is introduced to men and in that book of genesis we read things like in chapter two god brought all the animals to adam does anybody remember why god did that to see what he would name them Now that’s pretty interesting. Didn’t God know? Well, God created Adam and he didn’t program into Adam’s brain. Adam, when I bring all the animals to you, here’s what you got to call them. Call that one a giraffe because he has a long neck. That one an elephant because he has a long trunk. No, God created Adam. He made him in his own image and likeness creative. So since Adam was creative, it would give God pleasure to watch him be creative. And when all the animals came by, Adam named them in their kinds. Not every individual animal, probably not even every species, but every kind of animal, he named them. After that, Adam sinned. And then in chapter 3, God said, Now, lest he take of the tree of life, send him out of the garden. And so God said, lest he take from the tree of life. In other words, because he might take of the tree of life, we better get him out of the garden. Now, that means he might take of the tree and he might not. But to make sure, lest he does, I’m going to send him out. And then mankind became so evil that in Genesis 6, we read that the Lord repented that he made man and God was grieved. So the Lord said, I will destroy man For I repent that I have made him. Now, fools do things that they know they will regret. Right? A fool does that. He says, I’m upset. My boss is mad at me. So I’m going to get drunk. But if I get drunk, I can’t go into work. And then he’s going to be more mad at me. But I’m going to get drunk anyway. So he gets drunk. And two days later, he goes into work. And then he gets fired. And he regrets getting drunk. Well, he was a fool and he knew in advance he’d regret it, but he did it anyway. God is not a fool. No one should insult God by supposing that he’s a fool and he does something in advance he knows he’ll regret doing. If you know you’ll regret it, then you don’t do it if you’re wise or if you have self-control. But God made mankind hoping for the best, but giving us the ability to either love or hate, and we chose to hate. And we hate it in a very aggressive way. And we became so evil that God was grieved and he repented. He wished he hadn’t made us. Wow. Then in Genesis 22, God said to Abraham, he stopped him before he offered up Isaac. And he said, do not lay your hand on Isaac. For now I know that you fear God since you did not withhold your son from me. Genesis 22, verse 12, now I know. And that’s what we just read here in Deuteronomy. Now I know. That’s pretty neat. Now all that was just in Genesis, those examples. And we could go through the Bible and see things like that. The Lord tests us. This life that all the world is in is a test. to find out whether people will turn to God or not. Now, if God knows who’s going to turn to him and who isn’t, why not avoid all the pain and suffering? He already knows. So just skip to that part. What’s the sense? Of course, that whole view is not the view of the Bible, that God has prescripted it all. He’s decided who will love him or hate him. He’s programmed it into us and we have No other choice. That’s tragic. On the other hand, verse 2, God led you to test you to know what was in your heart and whether you would keep his commandments or not. Now this next verse contains that wonderful saying that the Lord quoted to the devil in the wilderness. Remember that Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights and then he was hungry. And the devil came and tempted him. In Matthew 4 we read, saying, If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. But Jesus answered, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So Jesus there was quoting this passage in Deuteronomy chapter 8. And amen to this passage. This idea that even if we die from starvation, if we trust God, we’ll live forever. So physical death is not nearly as important as eternal death, spiritual death. And our daily food, our bread, that’s important to us. But how does it compare to the bread of life, Jesus Christ, and what he has for us? Verse 3. So God humbled you, allowed you to hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know that he might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. Now there’s a figure of speech here. We live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Well, every word God has private conversations with. between the father and the son. The father gave the son a name that no one knows. Only the son knows. So that’s a figure of speech. We live here on earth, not by bread alone, but by the word of God. That is by what God has for us and what he has communicated to us. Now, before we read the next verse, how about this? Don’t look at the verse. Just think about it for a moment. I’ll read the first part of the verse to you and see if you know what it means. It says this, Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee. Now what does that mean? Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee. Now I switched all of a sudden to the King James. And you have to be at least 80 years old or older to understand that. Does anybody know what that means?
SPEAKER 01 :
They went 40 years in the wilderness and they closed it.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, Don’s got it. Don’s got it. Their clothes did not wear out. Now, the King James says, Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee. Our new King James says, Your garments did not wear out. Your clothing didn’t wear out. Well, I want to talk just for a moment about the King James only crowd. Who here has come into contact, has heard from a King James only person? Give me an idea. Okay, about 80% of us. Now, the King James only people say you cannot use any version of the Bible. The New King James is of the devil, just like the HIV and the NASB and all those, or the NIV, that they’re all of the devil, and only the King James is acceptable. Now, we use the New King James, our church, so obviously we don’t agree with that. But think about this right here. if you’re going to teach a young person about God, you have to teach him a new language. He has to become bilingual, if he’s an American, before he can read the Word of God. If a teenager opens up a New King James and reads, Thy raiment wax not old upon thee. What does that mean? He won’t know what that means. And he’ll read a significant percentage of the text. He will be confused. because that’s a language that’s 400 years old. We speak a new language now. It’s related. Ours has descended from that language, but it’s very different. What we have going on, the tragic consequence of this, is that camp is fighting a holy war. They’re fighting their own jihad against the rest of Christianity, saying that our Bibles are of the devil. This is not the word of God. Only the King James is the word of God. So people who live in the Philippines or people who live in Kenya and speak Swahili, I don’t know what they’re supposed to do because they don’t know English, those who don’t. And if they learned English, then they’d have to learn the 1600s English. They’d have to become trilingual just to start reading. So it’s a real tragedy. And we hope to put a debate together on this issue on our website soon. We’ll work on that. Okay, now, verse 4. Let’s talk about it. Your garments did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these 40 years. So God supernaturally kept their clothing intact. They were out in the wilderness. They didn’t have normal commerce going on. And God was supernaturally caring for them with the manna and the water out of the rock, for example, and the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day. And so one of the things he did in this intense supernatural time was he made sure that their clothes did not wear out. He counteracted the effects of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, that everything wears out eventually. Well, God could counteract that. So when He makes a new heaven and a new earth. That new earth will last forever. We could say, well, wouldn’t it wear out? Well, it would wear out eventually, but there’ll be the tree of life in the new Jerusalem. So the human bodies will not wear out and there will be God, Jesus Christ, sustaining the new Jerusalem and the new heavens and the new earth for all eternity. So since the creator, wants to perpetuate it, he can do that, of course. Okay, and God even kept their feet from swelling. So the Israelites, their feet were in working order. So he could keep them marching around that Mount Seir all those years. He didn’t want them to stop, keep going. You know, the manna kept them in good health and probably God put the right nutrients in it to keep their feet healthy. Now he could have supercharged the manna so that they would never die from disease or old age, but that would defeat his purpose because he wanted the whole entire generation to die out in 40 years. Verse five, you should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you. So God punished them for disobedience. Now the next verse, along with how many like it, thousands like it, is not a prophecy, but a command. It says, therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God to walk in His ways and to fear Him. So that’s not a prophecy where God’s saying, you will do this. Sometimes He says that, like in… Oh, the passage escapes me. I’ll say it. Maybe somebody knows the verse where the Lord says, I said… she will repent. But she did not repent. What is that? Jeremiah, yeah. No, Jeremiah 2.7 something. Oh, I forget. Well, anyway, we’ll figure that out. But sometimes God makes prophecies and he says this will happen and then it doesn’t happen. But other times, it’s just a command. You will do this. And then they don’t do it. It’s because they have free will and decided to disobey God. Verse 7. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs that flow out of valleys and hills. Okay. So God is saying that Israel is a land that’s sufficiently watered. And when you go to Israel today, much of it is desolate, but we know that it was much more fertile thousands of years ago. Three thousand and more years ago, it was fertile, but all the invading armies, they would destroy the cities by burning the fields and the forest around them. And so Israel was turned into a desert by the wickedness of man. And because of Israel’s sin, God took his hand of protection off of her and allowed her enemies to destroy her. Now, you know who was just making that point on his website and on one of the cable news channels? A country western singer. Who’s the guy who did that, The Devil Goes Down to Georgia? Charlie Daniels. And he was saying that about America. And he was challenged… on the air. He was on Hannity and Combs, I believe it was. And he was challenged because he said God took his hand of protection off of us and that’s why the terrorism struck. And the challenge was, wait a minute, Jerry Falwell said the same thing and he had to apologize because it was stupid. And Charlie Daniels says, no, no, no, Jerry Falwell said God punished us doing this. I didn’t say that. He said, I said that because of our wickedness, because we promote abortion and homosexuality and evolution and godlessness in our public schools, he said, because of all that, we’ve lost God’s hand of protection. And that is a very good distinction. Not even that it’s a spiritual hand of protection, but we don’t have wisdom and the strength that comes with righteousness. And so we become vulnerable. And that’s what happened to Israel. It was destroyed, but initially… It was a good land, a land of brooks, of water, of fountains and springs that flow out of valleys and hills. Now, I’d like to take a rabbit trail off this verse for a moment to talk about a land that has rivers and streams running through it. If you look at a hydrologist’s map of the world, it shows… springs and fountains, streams and rivers. And if you look at just that stuff, it looks a lot like veins and arteries that are running through our bodies. I don’t know if you’ve taken a map and looked at that particularly, but it really does. It looks like that. And that’s pretty neat because the God who made our bodies also made the earth. And he knew that he had to sustain our bodies and provide water, hydrate, and nourish the organs in our bodies. So he built a distribution system to get the blood and the oxygen and water and nutrients throughout our body. And the way he made the earth is the same way. Where we have blood in us that flows, the life is in the blood, so too there’s the water of life. And the water of life keeps the… ecosystems of the world functioning, just like our blood keeps our body and its organs functioning. All right. And I said I wanted to, if you’ll allow me to take a couple rabbit trails here, that circulation system that’s in our bodies, you know that a Christian discovered that. He was the first one to describe the circulatory system. His name is William Harvey And he did this in the 1600s, the circulation of blood. And I wanted to quote to you from Encyclopedia Britannica that Harvey wrote this, not an evolutionist. He rejected that concept and believed in a God who made us. Harvey wrote, the omnipotent creator is nowhere more conspicuous in his works. Nowhere is his divinity more loudly proclaimed than in the structure of animals. Because of how awesome God made us. And how our bodies, he talked about the egg and what comes from an egg. You look at an egg, you open it up and there’s not much there. There’s some yolk and some white and that’s it. But it develops into a chick, into a chicken. It’s wildly complex. And he talked about that and said how wonderful that is. So I like to think about the veins in our bodies and how the rivers from the Garden of Eden, God watered the entire earth with four rivers. Remember, the water came up in the midst of the garden and it went out and watered the entire earth, those four original rivers. Now, can I take one more rabbit trail from there? I hate to do it, but it’s just too interesting. Speaking of veins, right? There was a story out today in the news about that mentioned veins. And so when I’m getting ready, I just couldn’t help but remember it. And it was from the United Press out today. Has anybody heard about the 300 million year old cockroach? Anybody hear about that? They found it in a certain coal mine in Ohio is producing hundreds of dramatic fossils. Normally, you only get fossils of bone structures. That’s normally it. Sometimes you get a little more detail than the skeleton. Well, what they’re getting there is wonderfully detailed fossils of plants and animals and insects. Forget the bones, the whole thing. And so they unearthed the cockroach that they said is 300 plus million years old. Now the problem, of course it’s not, but the problem with that for them is That’s 55 million years before the dinosaurs showed up. And you know what Christians say about fossils? One, we say they were formed mostly in the flood. And two, we say that fossils are… If you find ancient, supposedly super ancient fossils of species alive today, they’re the same. They’re not any different. If you find a fruit fly… from 100 million years ago looks just like a fruit fly today. And you find a little bit of pollen from a tree from 500 million years ago looks just like pollen today. No difference. Well, that’s what we find in this story from UPI. I’ll quote to you a little bit. Scientists today said they had discovered a fossil cockroach that lived 300 million years ago, 55 million years before the first dinosaurs. Now, we say fossils formed during the flood, right? For the most part? Well, describing the conditions that formed the fossil, the geologist in the article said that there was all this water and sediment and it caused these fossils. And they always say that. It’s always that way. Not only fossils, but all the surface features of the earth are from water and sediment, a flood. And we also say that ancient fossils… of modern creatures show no change. Same. Well, the article says, let’s see, the fossil helps demonstrate the incredible success of the cockroach as its body has remained mostly the same for hundreds of millions of years. No kidding. We know that. Here’s a quote from the scientist. They haven’t changed much in 300 million years. It’s just funny. And they say that this Ohio coal mine has preserved organisms with incredible detail. Normally, we can only hope to find fossils of shells and bones. But here, the cockroach was very delicately preserved. The roach’s legs and antennae folded around its body are evident, as are its mouthparts. Not its mouth, but the mouth parts. Among the fine features visible in the fossil are veins in the insect’s wings. That’s really cool. Now, what do you think? They said there’s hundreds of fossils of over a hundred different organisms being excavated from this coal mine. Do you think the creationists are afraid And they’re thinking, oh no, what will they find? More evidence against us. They’re not afraid. It’s the evolutionists who are afraid. They’re like, oh no, what are they going to find in there? They’re going to find stuff that we said didn’t evolve until 50 million years ago. It’s before the dinosaurs. They’re afraid, not us, because we love evidence. We love it. I’ve never in my life met a creationist who is hesitant about new scientific discoveries. Never. And if we were standing against science as we’re accused, we would hate scientific discoveries. But we love them. We can’t get enough of science. And that’s my experience with Christians all over this country. Okay. At any rate, verse 7 led me down those rabbit trails. which shows you how easily distracted I am. Well, I was pointing out that when God described Israel as a land flowing with rivers and streams, that reminded me of the similarity between the earth and the creatures that God put on the earth. So verse 8, this irrigated land was therefore also a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. So that’s what God said to Moses before they entered the promised land. And God was God and he knew what was in the hills in Israel. Now, is there actually copper to be found in Israel? Is that true? This is in ancient texts. And so that’s another item we can attempt to corroborate. 1 Kings 7 says the pots and the shovels were objects that were made for King Solomon for the temple.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hey, this is Nicole McBurney jumping into the broadcast. We are out of time for today, so be sure to come back next Thursday to hear the rest of this study. To find other resources and Bible studies, be sure to go to kgov.com slash store. That’s kgov.com slash store.
