Episode Transcript
Let's take our Bibles and open to 2 Kings chapter 17.
2 Kings chapter 17 and we left off in verse 36 last week.
I always look at my title check before I put it in there because one year, one time,
I wrote the check to USAA credit card company and I put it in here and then I sent them my tithe.
And guess what? Both places cashed it without ever looking to see that it was the wrong address C.
But that's okay. So that's why if you'll ever see me look at that before I put it in there, that's the only reason.
2 Kings chapter 17. Miss Becky will be back Wednesday night, Lord willing. She is on the tail end of that covid, does not want to take any chances.
So she is said she was going to do the full 10 day quarantine.
That's fine with me.
So that means I had to spend quite a few nights up in the second floor of our house.
But you know that scriptural. Well, somewhat better to dwell in the corner of a house than with a congested woman.
Is that that's not what it says. So with a brawling and a contentious woman.
And she was not brawling and contentious, but she certainly was congested.
So I got some of that right.
All right. We left off in the middle of the verse last week.
And you know, when we go to be with the Lord one day, we're not going to have to leave off in the middle of a verse anymore
and return to the secular world like we do. We leave here and then we go back home and
shine our boots and layer clothes out for the next day and go to work at our secular jobs.
And that's just the way it is because we'll be perfectly conform to the image of Christ.
And we'll understand everything about his word as he understands them.
And you won't need to teach me anything. I won't need to teach you anything.
In fact, first John three two says, beloved, now are we the sons of God?
And it does not yet appear what we shall be.
But we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him or we shall see him as he is.
We shall be like him. So we're going to understand his word like he does.
But until then, by God's grace, we'll keep teaching and learning verse by verse
until Jesus gathers us together to be with him.
Now in verse 36 last week we read that God charged the children of Israel to do three things.
And this was the positive part of that charge.
Remember the charge or the command has a negative part or can and it can have a positive part.
And we read about the negative parts in verse 35.
So verse 36 gave us three positive commands that God commanded the children of Israel to do.
And we were on the second one where it said him shall you worship.
So the children of Israel were instructed to worship God.
That's who the him is in that phrase.
And the word worship was our primary focus last week at the end of our lesson.
And the reason it was is that a misunderstanding of the word worship leads to all kinds of foolishness in the church.
And I talked about some of it last week.
There's all kinds of extracurricular activity that is called worship.
And I left off by reading from a passage in Luke 4 where Jesus was speaking with a woman at the well.
And he was among the many things he taught her toward the end of their conversation.
He taught her about worship.
And since he taught her about worship he taught us about worship too.
He taught her what worship was and what it wasn't.
She had tied worship to a geographical place, to a mountain.
And I commented about those who claim that in their church being slain in the spirit is part of their worship.
Now I don't know if you've ever seen that sort of thing before.
How many of you have ever seen someone quote slain in the spirit or say they were slain in the spirit?
What did they do? They fell down didn't they?
Sometimes they appear to have fainted in someone else's arms.
Now I think if you were truly slain in the spirit you wouldn't need anybody to catch you.
You'd just float down to the ground so gracefully, no injuries.
Some people roll around on the ground. Sometimes they shake.
Or they start laughing, yes. It's called laughing in the Holy Ghost.
It was a charismatic thing back in the early 2000s. Perhaps they're still doing it now.
Now I want to tell you, if any of you ever fall out like that in this church,
I am going to go get the AED and we're going to make sure that you're not having a heart attack.
I promise you'll never do that again.
We're going to err on the side of caution and Sister Leah just taught us how to do that so we'll be good at it.
We'll do it right.
But you know the Bible teaches that people were slain by the sword.
In fact, most of the time that word slain is used in the Old Testament, it has to do with being slain by the sword.
Enmity or hostility was slain by the Lord Jesus Christ.
And Jesus himself was slain in the flesh.
But the Bible never teaches that we're slain in the spirit.
Yes, we are dead in the flesh and we rise again with Christ.
All of those examples are given to us.
But the Bible does teach that we're made alive by the Spirit of God.
And in fact, John chapter 3 verse 5, Jesus answered that question, if any had it.
He was talking to Nicodemus and said, "Jesus answered, 'Verily, verily, I say unto thee,
except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.'"
So you see, you have to be born of the Spirit, not slain in the Spirit.
You're born of the Spirit, not slain in the Spirit.
The Bible never teaches us to laugh in the Holy Ghost.
Now you may say, "Where'd you get that from?"
Well, let me tell you, when my kids, my oldest and my middle one were little,
I sent them to a Christian school across the street from us over in Rowlett.
And in the early grades, they had some really good teachers, but they had to go to chapel.
And I found out that they had a so-called faith healer coming there, and he, you know,
he'd pushed people down.
So I told the principal, sent him a note.
I said, "Don't, I don't want my daughter participating.
I know she has to go to chapel, but I don't want any of that being done.
Let her worship the Lord and bypass her."
Well, I found out through the course of having my children in that school
that there was a particular teacher who, she was a fifth grade teacher,
and she'd go out in the hallway, and she would lay on the ground and roll around and laugh.
Now, she had little students in her class, and she'd roll around in that hallway and laugh.
And she said she was laughing in the Holy Ghost.
So that is a real thing.
People really do that sort of thing.
But that is not worship.
Yes, the Bible says that they that weep shall laugh.
But this mess is not laughing in the Holy Ghost.
The Bible never teaches us to laugh in the Holy Ghost.
It teaches us to build ourselves up in the most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost.
Jude says that.
It teaches us that they that weep shall laugh.
And some of the people who do that, slain in the spirit stuff, speak in tongues.
They say they're speaking in tongues,
but even their own practice of speaking in tongues
would not pass the test of 1 Corinthians 13 and 14 if they even cared to apply it.
And do you know what all...and I haven't named nearly all of the attempts at false worship.
We saw it in Elijah's day, didn't we, when the prophets and priests of Baal
were cutting themselves and jumping up and down on the altar
and calling out for Baal to bring fire down from heaven.
Those were all false attempts at worship.
And those and the ones I named and perhaps many others,
do you know what they all have in common?
They're driven by the desire of the flesh to do something, to feel something.
After all, to obey God in the Garden of Eden was a spiritual command.
Of course, it had a physical result if they did not obey his one command
to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
But there was a spiritual reason for that.
You go back and think about that.
Had Eve, had Adam said, "No, we will not eat of that tree.
We are actually going to go eat of the tree of life."
They would have lived forever.
That would have been a turn in history.
But not only did they not eat from the tree of life,
they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And what was one of the reasons God shut them out of the Garden?
He said, "Lest they take and eat of the tree of life and live forever
and no evil and good."
Boy, I wouldn't want to live like that, live forever as a sinner.
And so even they fell for this same desire to worship
by doing something that felt good to the flesh.
And that's exactly how the serpent appealed to them.
Looks good, tastes good, make you wise, all of that.
They're driven by the flesh.
And may I say to anybody who's listening,
if the Word of God taught by the Spirit of God
doesn't do anything for you,
then you've got a serious spiritual problem.
And it can't be fixed with any of this silliness
that passes for worship nowadays.
It can't.
And when God's Word, which is truth, directs our worship,
then we're worshiping in spirit and in truth.
We can't help but do it.
If your worship is according to what the Bible tells you worship is
and what did Jesus say?
He said, "They that worship me must worship in spirit and truth."
If it's that way, then it won't need to have all of these other
extracurricular things to go along with it.
It'll be satisfying to the one who is spiritually minded.
I've enjoyed listening to the 2019 Genesis to Jesus broadcast.
I found it on Facebook.
And it was wonderful to hear some of the voices in there
that are in here now.
In fact, one of them was 12 and a half.
She said so. She said, "I'm 12 and a half."
That was Abigail.
Brother Neal's voice, when I said that enmity a while ago was hostility,
I remember him saying that in one of those lessons when Brother Fulton says,
"Anybody know what enmity is?"
And he said, "Hastility is precious."
But it was also sad because there were a lot of voices on those lessons
that I don't see here and I haven't seen here for a long time.
That was sad.
But it's refreshing to me to go back and listen to the Genesis,
to the teachings of the Genesis to Jesus class.
It helps me.
So if you ever think, "Well, I wonder if old Brother Andy ever goes back
to being a white belt in Christianity?"
Yes, often.
I go back to Genesis almost every time we teach in here.
And I think that's good for us to do.
But you know when God's...
And we're talking about the word worship
because it was used in our text and the Samaritans,
but especially the children of Israel in this particular context
were told to worship God alone.
And when we worship, we're presenting ourselves as God's subject.
And if you remember, the worship is sinking down,
placing yourself lower, showing yourself that you're a wee little man in God's sight.
We're presenting ourselves in God's presence as His subjects.
He's high above us. He's the most high.
And we are His lowly servants who are saved and kept by grace.
That's the proper attitude to have for worship.
So "Him shall you worship" is a positive command.
It follows "Him shall you fear."
Now let's look at the last part of verse 36.
If you've just tuned in, we are in 2 Kings 17 verse 36.
And the last part of the verse says,
"And to Him shall ye do sacrifice."
So to the same one whom ye shall fear,
to the same one whom ye shall worship, you shall do sacrifice.
Now this being given in the Old Testament to those who were living in those days
would have fallen under the law.
However, every sacrifice, everything under the law
has a spiritual teaching to it as well, both then and now.
About a third of the time in the Old Testament,
this Hebrew word translated "sacrifice"
is actually translated as the word "offer" like an offering.
It's also translated as the word "kill" and "slay."
So a sacrifice, according to this word,
involves something living that is slain.
And as we've learned in the study of the Old Testament,
the blood of that slain animal is very important.
In fact, without it, everything else doesn't matter.
But it's especially important when teaching about salvation.
So when you think of a sacrifice as mentioned in our text,
remember that the blood of an innocent animal was slain.
Now you might ask, "Well, what about those meat offerings or meal offerings?"
It's what they were.
The word "meat," the King James translation used the word "meat,"
but it was "meal," like the fine flour and corn and all of that.
What about meal offerings? How were they slain?
Well, while I was researching the Hebrew word for "sacrifice,"
which was translated as "kill" and "slain" and "offer,"
I also looked at the word "offer" as it applied to the meal offerings,
and it's a different Hebrew word.
So the Hebrew word, as far as I could tell,
that is used in our text for sacrifice,
referred, was applied only to living creatures that were slain as offerings.
Whereas the word "offer" or "offering,"
a different Hebrew word used to describe these meal offerings,
was not about killing.
It was about offering something that really didn't have life.
Now you can make the argument, "Yes, a stock of wheat has life."
It does. It gets nutrients from the ground and sun and photosynthesis
and phototropism and all of those things you learn about
when you're learning about plants.
But for the sake of our text here and keeping with what the word means in Hebrew,
it appears to refer exclusively to animal sacrifices.
Listen to Leviticus 17 and verse 11.
Leviticus 17 and verse 11, it says,
"For the life of the flesh is in the blood,
and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls.
For it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul."
The word "attonement," if you remember,
means to purge or to forgive, to reconcile.
That's what happens with sin is it's purged. It's forgiven.
"We're reconciled to God by the death of His Son," Romans says.
And although the blood of bulls and goats here in the Old Testament,
although the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin,
it was to be shed and placed on that altar over and over and over again,
so the people would learn that by those sacrifices,
there would be one come one day who would do that same thing
and he would end the need for all sacrifices.
He would sacrifice one time, himself, and that would be the end of the need.
So none of these sacrifices could take away sin
because as the author of Hebrews says,
then why would you do them over and over, year after year, if they could take away sin?
So it was never that they could literally take away sin,
but this was the lesson God was teaching them about atonement.
And He taught that the sacrifice had to have blood.
Now you think of all the ways you could kill an animal.
You could put poison in their water or food and they just fall over and die
and they don't necessarily bleed at all.
Well, that wouldn't work, would it?
You could burn an animal completely up in a fire
and never go over there and drain his blood.
Well, that wouldn't work.
So there had to be a manner of death that involved the shedding of blood,
whether it was cutting the throat or piercing the side
or the hands with the nails as they did with Jesus.
It had to involve the shedding of blood.
So from that truth, we may learn that all of these sacrifices,
including the ones that are commanded in our text,
would point to the Lord, to the fulfillment of those same sacrifices.
The Old Testament blood, or the Old Testament believers
would shed the blood of those clean animals.
Couldn't be a dirty animal.
Couldn't be one with blemish.
Those would be lambs and goats and bulls and so forth.
And they look forward to the one who fulfilled all of that.
Now, here's one of the places we learn that truth about Old Testament believers
and you need to know it because you may be asked by somebody,
"Well, I understand how people are saved now since Jesus died,
but what about back then before Jesus died?"
And you need to be able to tell them.
And if you've been through the Genesis to Jesus or creation of Christ class
or been in here very long, you know what to say.
You might need to brush up on it a little bit,
but that ought to be just as easy as telling them how a New Testament saint
or sinner is saved.
The Old Testament saints did what?
They look forward to the same thing that we look back to,
to the same thing that the people who were there when it happened looked up to.
I know I ended every one of those with a preposition,
but we'll just have to live with that.
"By faith Noah being warned of God," this is Hebrews 11.7.
Hebrews 11.7.
I want to help you with this a little bit.
How are these Old Testament people saved?
"By faith Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet,
moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house,
by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith."
He became heir of the righteousness which is by faith,
that same righteousness to which we are heirs by faith.
Now you may make a note for yourself that Romans 8 verses 16 through 17
will help you if you need to use that later also.
But a few verses later in Hebrews 11 from which this verse I just read you came,
listen to what verse 13 says.
This verse includes Noah and everybody else who was mentioned in that part of the Bible.
It said, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises.
Christ had not yet come and been born as a man and lived his life and died and resurrected.
Not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off."
In other words, they looked forward to them and were persuaded of them.
They believed them and embraced them.
They put their trust in those promises and confessed that there were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
So the sacrifices these Israelites were commanded to make here
weren't just so that they would put the right animal on the altar
and take the right parts of his body and put the blood in the correct place
although it had to be on the altar.
It was teaching them, "Don't take your eyes off the prize."
Don't take your eyes off the prize.
The one about whom all these sacrifices are teaching.
And as we learned before, the sacrifices made by Israelite or Samaritan to any God other than the Lord
were sinful for many reasons.
One, and the main thing, is that they don't point to the Lord Jesus.
That was the defect in all of them.
In fact, those sacrifices, the people who were in those religions and their false priests
would try to make all of this that they did mirror what we do.
Satan is the great counter-finner, isn't he?
He likes to think he can Xerox copy with a little addition or correction the true religion of God
and give that to the people and say, "Hey, look, it's very similar, but you don't have to do this and this here.
You don't have to put your trust in someone.
You're good enough to go to heaven just like you are. Just don't mess up too bad."
And that's what these sacrifices were that were made to anyone other than the Lord God.
And none of those Old Testament people who made sacrifices outside of the will of God
could say, "Hey, these sacrifices are pointing toward that perfect one who will come one day
and take away our sins."
They wouldn't be able to say that they saw these promises afar off
or that they were persuaded of them or embraced them because they did not,
as Noah and the other Old Testament saints did.
Worshipping the Lord, sacrificing the Lord, follow fearing the Lord.
Remember, this is not the kind of fear the Samaritans had. They didn't do it right.
I wish that priest would have said, "You're not doing it right like people do today."
And he probably did in a very eloquent way.
But the kind he taught them was how they should have feared the Lord.
And had they feared the Lord the way the priest taught them,
then they would have worshipped the Lord and done sacrifice to him.
He wouldn't have had to tell them all of the rest of that.
Proper fear of the Lord would have led the children of Israel
and the Samaritans and people today to the proper worship of the Lord,
to the proper sacrifice of the Lord.
Now, verse 37, let's look at that.
"And the statutes and the ordinances and the law and the commandment,
which he wrote for you, you shall observe to do forevermore,
and you shall not fear other gods."
You have the words statute and ordinance and law and commandment.
And although each of those English words proceeds from a different Hebrew word,
they're very close in meaning.
And if you want to do a word study and try to figure out the subtle differences
in each word, help yourself.
But don't run yourself into the ground trying to figure it out.
And I'm going to tell you why.
I'm not trying to keep you from educating yourself.
Like I said, if you want to do that, you help yourself.
But I'd like to remind you that all four of those words proceed from one word,
and that's God's word.
So whether it's a commandment, a statute, an ordinance, or a law,
it's all God's word.
And they're all things God has spoken.
Even things He has written, both on the tables of the law,
as well as through the pens of those 40 men He used to write the books of the Bible.
And if you reduce all those words to one phrase,
statutes, ordinances, commandments, and law,
if you reduce them all to one phrase, that being the word of God,
then you'll be just fine.
God's word says to do it.
It doesn't matter whether it's a statute or a commandment or an ordinance or a law.
You do it.
If He says not to do it, don't say, "Well, now, is that a statute
or is that a commandment?"
It doesn't matter.
If He says don't do it, then you don't do it.
That should take care of that.
Rather than trying to figure out which Hebrew word it is,
just obey the word.
Now look at this, and we're going to spend some time here on this phrase.
In verse 37, they're in the middle.
After those four words, it said, "Which He wrote for you."
We're not going to overlook that one.
This, in fact, is, in my opinion, is the key phrase in this verse right here,
"Which He wrote for you."
Whether it be a statute or a law or a commandment,
an ordinance, a precept, whatever it may be,
they're all very close.
It says, "Which He wrote for you."
So let's take that phrase in two parts.
Let's look at which He wrote, and then we'll look at "for you."
First, which He wrote.
When we try to explain to new students the concept of God's word,
we not only have to teach them about God and who He is,
and that He has always been, that He had no beginning,
but we have to make a connection between that God we teach them about in the Bible.
Now, of course, what we teach them about God comes from the Bible,
and it also comes from pointing them to their own observations of the world around them,
taking a flower and showing them what radial symmetry is,
and asking them if they've ever seen anything explode into radial symmetry.
That means it's circular and things are alike.
There are all sorts of things in nature that we can use to teach about an intelligent designer,
but we have to, at some point, make a connection between God and His word,
because that uneducated student is going to either say it or think it,
"Well, how do I know that's God's word?"
You keep saying that's God's word. How do we know that?
And now believers know the connection between God and the Bible,
because we know it's God's word, but how did we find that out?
How do we come up with that?
Well, one thing we teach new students is the doctrine of inspiration.
The doctrine of inspiration.
And that means breathe into.
Go back to your Genesis to Jesus class if you need refreshing on that.
I think we talk about it from time to time as well.
2 Timothy 3 verse 16 says, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."
So one thing that makes the Bible God's word is that He gave it by inspiration.
He breathed it into those men who wrote it, just like He breathed the breath of life into Adam.
Another passage we use in teaching this inspiration is 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 21.
2 Peter 1 verse 21.
It says, "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man,
but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."
One of the problems that the secular world has, and the religious world too,
is that they change their definitions of words throughout the ages.
So the word prophecy, for example.
If you ask the average person, "What do you think prophecy is?"
Well, they immediately say, "That's the end times. That's what's going to happen in the end times."
Okay, well, that's part of it.
But reduce it down. What do you think would be the root word for the word prophecy?
How about profit? Well, that would be the noun, right?
Profit. Or prophesy would be the verb.
But let's look at it from the point of view of a prophet.
What is a prophecy? It's something the prophet said.
It's something the prophet wrote. That's it.
I mean, that's the naked definition of it.
Because of what it was about, a prophecy is something that a prophet wrote or a prophet said.
So in 2 Peter 1, 21, when it says, "For the prophecy,"
that is simply what the prophet or the prophet said and wrote.
So it's the word of God is what it is.
So you could say, "For the word of God came not an old time,"
or the speaking or writing of the word of God,
"came not an old time by the will of man,
men of God's spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."
Now, there are false prophets. They have prophecies.
They speak, but they're false. They're false prophecies.
But the prophecy spoken of in our text is the words
and the writings that came from the prophets who were moved by the Holy Ghost.
A false prophet is not moved by the Holy Ghost.
That's a huge difference. They may say they are.
I remember when Benny Hinn said, "Oh, the Holy Ghost just told me something."
He's a liar, just like all the rest of them who say,
"The Holy Ghost just told me something."
Now, I understand the Spirit of God may move upon our hearts
in directing us to a certain truth, a certain scripture,
and I'm so glad he does. He teaches us.
But to hold him in such low esteem as to suggest he's over here behind the scenes
and he just whispered something in my ear real quick
so I could tell you all some new revelation, that's arrogant.
And it was when he did it too. "The Holy Ghost just told me something."
But I want you to look at the phrase which he wrote for you
because it provides a different image to us than the scriptures about inspiration.
This was neat when I was looking at it.
We know that God breathed his word into men.
We know these prophets were moved by the Holy Ghost.
But in this passage, it doesn't say the phrase which he breathed in the man for you.
It says which he wrote for you.
It's going to be the same thing, but it's a different image, isn't it?
Breathe. We think of inspiration, expiration.
Wrote for you. I don't have a pen pocket, so I don't have a pen.
I just messed it up, didn't I? I was going to reach out and pull out a pen.
Let's just pretend I have one.
He wrote for you. We think of a pen, don't we? Or a pencil.
When Moses was in Mount Sinai to meet with God,
listen to what happened in Exodus 31, Exodus 31, verse 18,
where it says, "And he," that's God, "gave unto Moses when he had made an end of communing with him upon Mount Sinai,
two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God."
Written with the finger of God. Now we're reading about what he wrote for us.
And assuredly there are those who've read this passage before who are dying to know what does the finger of God look like?
And perhaps they might reason, well, if we could just know what it looked like
or know the dimensions of it or the image of it, then we would be enlightened.
Save your breath and save your strength.
Moses came down from the mountain. Do you remember the detail that he gave concerning the building of the temple?
I'm talking about measurements, how many of what went where, thread color, all kinds of things from top to bottom, front to back.
He described what God told him about the pattern.
The Bible says it was the pattern shown to Moses in the mountain, the pattern.
And she knows that when you have a pattern, if you want whatever you're making to look like that pattern, you've got to do it right.
You can't say, "Well, I'll do the bottom part like the pattern. The top part, I'm just going to think of something else."
It won't look like the pattern.
So as detailed as Moses was when he came down from the mountain with those instructions,
do you know there's one thing he never described what the finger of God looked like?
Okay, so with that being said, the finger of God, as we're going to learn, is a metaphor, not necessarily a physical reality.
What was it that God told Moses before he hid him in the cleft of the rock and passed by?
He said, "No man can behold my face and live."
So he would let Moses see his inward parts.
Now we don't read yes or no about whether that included a finger, but you're not going to see the finger of God.
God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
The only way I could see you'd see an actual finger is if there was an appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And again, there's a reason that we're not given a description of the finger because man would make an idol of it.
I guarantee you, if man made an idol of the shroud of Turin and all of these other things of the cross and turning those into idols
and the images of Jesus they come up with and turning those into idols and bowing them to them,
if they had the ark of the covenant, they would bow down to it and make an idol out of it.
And they'd do it with a finger of God too if they knew God.
I don't believe you ever would have seen the finger of God anyway.
And I think what the Bible teaches us is more that the finger of God is a figurative expression here rather than a literal one.
And so we're not just going to go with my view on this though.
I want to look at a couple passages here, see where else we find the finger of God in the Bible.
And maybe that'll help us learn that it's not necessarily a literal thing here as much as it is a metaphor.
And after all, our text does tell us God wrote laws, ordinances, statutes, and commandments for His people.
It said He wrote them. So let's make sense of it.
In Exodus chapter 8, in obedience to what God told Moses to tell Aaron,
Aaron stretched out his arm and his rod and he smote the dust to the earth.
You remember during the plagues, he smote the dust to the earth and that dust became lice throughout all the land of Egypt.
Now up to that point, every time Aaron did something with his rod, cast it down, it became a serpent.
Those magicians of the Egyptian Pharaoh's court did the same thing.
They cast theirs down and they became serpents while Aaron's rod swallowed theirs up.
But every each plague before that, when Aaron did something, the Bible says,
and the magicians did so with their enchantments and they brought forth frogs.
Well, on this one, they were not able to replicate this plague with their enchantments.
Listen to what those magicians said about this plague of lice and their own inability to replicate this plague.
It's found in chapter 8 verse 19, Exodus 8 verse 19.
"Then the magicians said unto the Pharaoh, This is the finger of God."
Now, while it may be mysterious to you and you may be uncertain as to whether Moses saw the finger of God or not in the mountain,
there's not much doubt here that there was no visible finger of God.
They said, "This is the finger of God."
At no time did it say God wrote anything or did anything with his finger in a literal sense in this passage.
But the fact that Aaron's rod produced this lice and these magicians couldn't do it, they said,
"Well, we can't do this. This must be the finger of God."
They used it as a metaphor to describe God's power in that plague.
He did something they could not. That was the finger of God.
Luke chapter 11, "Jesus cast a devil out of a dumb man."
Couldn't speak.
"And the Pharisees, rather than marveling at this, accused him of casting out devils by the prince of devils, or the chief of devils, Beelzebub."
Now, listen to what Jesus told them in verses 19 and 20.
Luke 11, 19 and 20. "And if I, by Beelzebub, cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out?
Therefore they shall be your judges.
But if I, with the finger of God, cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God has come upon you."
So in this case, the finger of God represented not just an appendage, but it represented authority.
It represented agency.
Hat tip, Brother Fulton on that.
I went back and looked at my notes from seven and a half years ago where he taught on the passage in Exodus, and the finger of God was in there.
So thank you.
The agency of God.
And then also to the action of God.
That's what the finger of God represents.
Not just an appendage, but the authority of God, the agency of God, and then the action of God.
Jesus was God and man, so he actually had a finger to point, but his fleshly finger is not the main point here, is it?
It's what the finger of God represents.
And this is so good for us to hear.
Let's look at one more thing, and we're going to wait until next week to do it because we are out of time.
We'll finish up with the finger of God in this wonderful study.
All right, let's pray.
Father, thank you so much for the time that you've given us, for the people and their attention, both those here and who've tuned in and those who will watch later on.
And Lord, in spite of the weakness of a man's voice and his mind, you've deigned to use me as an instrument.
So I pray that only your truth would resonate with these who hear it and that all the other would be burned off like drawers and that we would come away from here edified,
built up in the most holy faith.
And Father, that we would put on the whole armor of God and be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, especially in this evil day.
In Jesus' name, amen.
