We'll be right back.
Yeah, that's the end of the program.
Thank you.
You know what?
I can hear it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Good evening everyone.
Welcome to our service this night here at Faith Forward Baptist Church.
It's really good to see you all here on this Wednesday night.
If you would please take your seats and take your hymnals.
should find one close by please turn him to him number 349 the comforter has
come number 349 349 let's sing it on that first verse Oh spread the tidings
round wherever man is found let's sing it out nice alone on that first verse
together number 349
Oh
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today I play the abreast everyone that's
here and bless everyone that's watching from home and please bless our song
worship it's in Christ name I pray amen amen him number 220 Jesus is all the
world to me number 220 number 220 Jesus is all the world to me my life my joy my
all number 220 singing out on this first verse all together number 220
no other one can cheer me so when I am sad he makes me glad
my friend
Jesus is all the world to me my friend and try to
Oh
he's my friend
Jesus is all the world to me and true to him of me
Oh how could I this friend deny when he's so true to me
following him I know I'm right he watches over me day and night
following him by day and night he's my friend
Jesus is all the world to me I want no better friend
I trust him now I'll trust him when life's leading we shall end
beautiful life with such a friend beautiful life that has no end
eternal life eternal joy he's my friend
all right this time we'll go through our announcements if you don't bulletin put
up your hand nice and high we'll get to you with one
on the inside we have our service time sunday mornings at 10 30 is our
preaching service sunday nights at six wednesday nights
at seven is our bible study you know we were going to be in judges
chapter 12 tonight but actually we're going to skip judges
chapter 12 because of the fact that i i realized
it's such a short chapter and i just preached an entire sermon
on judges 12 like three months ago so i kind of stole my own thunder
so i if the series feels incomplete to you you can go home and listen to that
sermon that i did back in october it was called i think
shibboleth and so it's such a short chapter and
since i just preached on it uh we're just going to move on to judges
chapter 13 tonight so hopefully you didn't have your
heart set on anything so anyway uh cross the page or below
that we've got the soul winning times salvations baptisms
across the page we've got the coffee and donuts coming this sunday morning at 10
am and if your birthday or anniversary has
not already been included in the bulletin
and you'd like it to be please email the church so that we can have that on file
and then thank you to those who participated in the small town soul
winning trip to globe 11 soul winners five salvations
there's a trip to safford coming up actually this friday morning they're
leaving on friday morning coming back saturday evening anybody's
welcome to come even if you just want to come as a silent partner if you're new
or something because we have plenty of talkers
but just make sure that you sign up over here uh oh did we move it
okay so this is the new hub it looks like for those
small town trips so you can sign up over here
and if you have any questions talk to brother raymond up here tall blonde guy
in the front row and then uh below that i'm sorry is
that racist to say that because you you can't
describe people anymore right dr seuss has been cancelled now
apparently because this is what i kid you not i read this article dr seuss
was cancelled because it showed asians wearing a
conical hat eating with chopsticks out of a bowl
now last time i checked that's what asians do
they wear cone-shaped hats and they eat with chopsticks out of a bowl
and last i checked there's nothing wrong with a conical hat
or chopsticks or eating out of a bowl so what's the issue but we're living in
an insane society and if you think that that's
normal you need to get your head examined if
you think it's normal for people to be offended by that that's
stupid and ridiculous okay asians wear pointy hats okay
mexicans wear sombreros you know what do white people wear
cowboy hats berets baseball caps you know fanny yeah
yeah we wear fanny packs okay it's like so what what's the big deal
get over yourself it's so dumb anyway i just had to get that off my
chest that has nothing to do with the sermon so i had to put it in the
announcements but it's just so ridiculous just the
thin skinned and and it's like it almost seems
racist to be offended by it like you're saying there's something wrong with that
pointy hat or something it's like how dare you insult asians by
showing them in a pointy hat those pointy hats are kind of cool you
know so what it's the big deal you can't appropriate
any other cultures yeah so it's like how am i if i can't
appropriate these other cultures how am i going to be less white because
coca-cola had a training for their people on like being less white
but then it's like i'm gonna be like this void because if i
because if i if i lose my whiteness but then i can't put on the pointy hat or
do these other things then it's like i'm gonna be just like
left without a culture you know i'm gonna be like the man without a country
anyway i i gotta move on from that but i went on i went on amazon those
those dr seuss books were like fifteen hundred dollars now
the ones that were banned they were selling them some were like two grand
for these but i downloaded pdfs of all of them so
my kids can know the truth
all right so on the back don't be so sensitive man
okay on the back the weekly singing classes have resumed every sunday at 5
p.m keep praying for our ladies that are
expecting and uh other upcoming events there that
are listed that's about it for announcements let's go and count up the
soul winning from the last few days going back to
monday anything from monday got it got it
okay anything else from monday what about tuesday anything from tuesday
all right okay and then anything else from tuesday what about wednesday
you got one for the corbin anything else from today
all right keep up the great work on soul winning and with that let's sing our
next song come lead us all right we're gonna sing psalm 150
you should find an insert of that psalm in your hymnals if you don't have
one please raise your hand and we'll get to you with one
and we'll sing it out psalm 150
praise be the lord
praise him
praise him with
him
everything
and then
please turn to him number 338 338 holy ghost with light divine
if you know it please sing it out if you don't let's learn it together number
338 holy ghost with light divine shine upon
this heart of mine number 338
is
long
my soul
oh
my
oh
cast down every
is
all right this time we'll pass our offering plates around as the plates go
around let's turn our bible to judges chapter 13
judges chapter 13 as we always do we'll read the entire chapter beginning in
verse number one follow along silently with brother
hessar as he reads judges chapter 13 starting in verse number one
judges 13 and the bible reads and the children of israel did evil again in
the sight of the lord and the lord delivered them into the hands of the
philistines 40 years and there was a certain man
of zorah of the family of the danites whose name was manoah
and his wife was barren and bear not and the angel of the lord appeared unto the
woman and said unto her behold now thou art barren
and bear us not but thou shalt conceive and bear a son
now therefore beware i pray thee and drink not wine nor strong drink and eat
not any unclean thing for lo thou shalt
conceive and bear a son and no razor shall come
on his head for the child shall be a nazirite unto god from the womb
and he shall begin to deliver israel out of the hand of the philistines
then the woman came and told her husband saying a man of god came unto me
and his countenance was like the countenance of an angel of god very
terrible but i asked him not whence he was neither
told me his name but he said unto me behold thou shalt conceive and bear a son
and now drink no wine nor strong drink
neither eat any unclean thing for the child shall be a nazirite to god from
the womb to the day of his death then manoah
and treated the lord and said oh my lord let the man of god which thou
did sin come again unto us and teach us what we
shall do unto the child that shall be born and
god harken to the voice of manoah and the angel
of god came again unto the woman as she sat in the field but manoah her
husband was not with her and the woman made haste and
ran and showed her husband and said unto him behold
the man hath appeared unto me that came unto me the other day and manoah arose
and went after his wife and came to the man and said unto him
art thou the man that speaks to the woman
and he said i am and manoah said now let thy words come to pass how shall
we order the child and how shall we do unto him
and the angel of the lord said unto manoah of all that i said unto the woman
let her beware she may not eat of anything that cometh
of the vine neither let her drink wine or strong
drink nor eat any unclean thing all that i
commanded her let her observe and manoah said unto the angel of the
lord i pray thee let us detain thee until we shall have made
ready a kid for thee and the angel of the lord said unto
manoah though thou detain me i will not eat
of thy bread and if thou wilt offer a burn offering
thou must offer it unto the lord for manoah knew not that he was
an angel of the lord and manoah said unto the angel of the lord what is thy
name that when thy sayings come to pass we
may do thee honor and the angel of the lord said unto him
why askest thou thus after my name seeing it is secret
so manoah took a kid with a meat offering and offered it
upon a rock unto the lord and the angel did
wondrously and manoah and his wife looked on
for it came to pass when the flame went up
toward heaven from off the altar that the angel of the lord
ascended in the flame of the altar and manoah and his wife looked on it and
fell on their faces to the ground but the angel of the lord
did no more appear unto manoah and to his wife
then manoah knew that he was an angel of the lord
and manoah said unto his wife we shall surely die
because we have seen god but his wife said unto him
if the lord were pleased to kill us he would not have received a burnt offering
and a meat offering at our hands neither would he have showed us all these things
nor would as at this time have told us such things
as these and the woman bare a son and called his
name samson and the child grew and the lord blessed
him and the spirit of the lord began to move
him at times in the camp of dan between zora
and eshtol
dear lord thank you for bringing us to church tonight i pray father that you
teach us lessons from the the origin story of
samson and his parents interaction i pray
father phyllis phil pastor answering with your holy spirit and phyllis with
understanding from the scriptures in jesus name we pray amen
we are starting out a new section here in the book of judges
we're kind of getting back to the pattern a little bit of
children of israel did evil on the side of the lord and god's going to raise up
a judge but this is actually going to be the
last judge that we hear about in the book of judges
and this is the one that really has the longest story because it's going to
cover chapters 13 14 15 16 so we have four chapters
if you include this one although of course this one is mainly about
samson's parents but samson is sort of the quintessential judge you know when
you think of the judges in the book of judges
samson is the big one you know he's the most famous
and he's the most representative of the of the time period and so it's a
very important bible story also there are a lot of connections
between samson and the lord jesus christ even though
obviously samson's a very flawed character
he still represents and pictures jesus in a lot of ways
and if you think about it every single person in the old testament who pictures
jesus is a sinful flawed person because every
person on this planet is a sinful flawed person except jesus
himself and so obviously anybody who represents jesus
is never going to be a perfect representation of jesus but samson is a
powerful representation of jesus and we're going to see that
in the coming chapters so it's it's a very deep story there's a lot going on
there's a lot of really interesting things
it's it's a lot of people's one of their favorite bible stories because it's such
a cool story as we go through this so
chapter 13 just sort of introduces the samson saga talking about his parents
here and it starts out in verse number one it
says and the children of israel did evil again in the sight of the lord
and the lord delivered them into the hand of the philistines
40 years and there was a certain man of zorah
of the family of the danites whose name was
manoa and his wife was barren and bear not and and what i mentioned a moment
ago about samson sort of being the the
quintessential judge or the kind of the culmination of
the book of judges if you remember the word dan literally
means judge and when joe when uh excuse me jacob is
blessing his children on his deathbed you know he blesses dan as the one
who's going to judge because that's what his name means judge
and then the main judge comes from where you know he comes from
dan he's of the tribe of dan and the bible says that this woman is
barren and bear not at the end of verse two
obviously that seems a little redundant but the bible is really driving in the
point hey this woman's really barren all right
it's it's it's to a point where they're pretty sure
you know she's not going to have a baby and then it says in verse three and the
angel of the lord appeared under the woman
and senator behold now thou art barren and bear us not but thou
shalt conceive and bear a son now therefore beware i pray thee
and drink not wine nor strong drink and eat not any unclean thing for lo thou
shall conceive and bear a son and no razor shall come on his head for
the child shall be a nazirite unto god from the womb
and he shall begin to deliver israel out of the hand
of the philistines now one of the things that i want to point out right
away here is just the the radical difference
in god's expectation versus what samson actually lives up to
you know god really wants him to be very holy
i mean he's got a very holy start you know this is pretty rare this isn't the
norm of just oh every woman who's pregnant
well you know make sure that you know you don't mess any of this
up he's going to be a nazirite from his mother's womb this is actually
extraordinary in fact this is the only person in the
entire bible who is like this where he's a nazirite
from his mother's womb okay so this is very extraordinary and what
is the nazirite it's a picture of being separated
consecrated and holy before god so god is prescribing for this child
a lot of holiness you know he's saying he wants the mother to be totally holy
and not to touch any wine or strong drink not to eat any unclean thing
he's going to be a nazirite from his mother's womb but then when you think
about the life of samson holiness is not really the word that
would pop into your mind about samson because he's such a flawed
character who sins so much so one of the things we see here is just
the colossal difference between god's expectation and the
reality of human beings but you know what that's
that's life you know god demands holiness from us
but yet we've all sinned and come short of the glory of god
but thankfully god can still use us anyway
now that doesn't mean we want to live our lives like samson though because
samson ends up suffering a lot and ending his
life terribly because of his sins so we don't want to
end up like samson but we see here a picture of the fact
that god's expectation is way higher than the reality
of man and and our sinful nature now let's learn more about what it means to
be a nazirite okay because like i said this is unique
to samson that he's going to be this lifelong nazirite go back to numbers
chapter six typically being a nazirite is something
that is temporary okay this is not something that you
would be born to do it's not something that you would do
for a very long period of time it's something that you would do
just temporarily and this is described in
numbers chapter six and we want to make sure that we don't confuse the word
nazirite with the word nazarene all right these are two totally different
words now jesus christ was raised in the city
of nazareth we know he was born in bethlehem
then he lived in egypt for a few years and then he came back and was brought up
in galilee in the city of nazareth and that fulfilled a prophecy that
jesus would be called the nazarene okay the nazarene and this is where you'll
see in scripture where you'll see the word
branch in all capitals you know behold my servant
the branch right so that's what nazarene means that's kind of the nazarene
prophecy is my servant the branch but we don't
want to mix this up with nazirite a lot of people get this wrong they say
well jesus was a nazirite wrong jesus was a nazarene which
simply means that he's fulfilling that branch
prophecy number one and number two that he is
raised in a city called nazareth okay it'd be like if if someone said that
they were a phoenician right because they live in phoenix it
doesn't mean the same thing as like an ancient
phoenician or something you know that's something completely different
it'd actually be more like mixing up phoenician with phoenician
with a v or something you know these are two different words they might sound the
same but they're not the same thing they're
totally different okay now you say well i think jesus was a
nazirite here's the thing about the nazirite
the nazirite is not allowed to drink wine but not only that he's not
even allowed to eat a grape he's not even allowed to eat a raisin
he's not even allowed to eat anything off the grape plant
he can't even eat grape nut cereal okay he can't nothing to do with the grape
he can't even do a grape jolly rancher okay nothing
so and now with that he's not allowed to approach any dead body
now what did jesus do did jesus drink wine
yes did jesus approach a dead body multiple times jesus approached a dead
body there were times when he laid hands on
a dead body and raised it back to life how could he do that if he were a
nazirite he can't he wouldn't be drinking wine he
wouldn't be laying hands on a dead body that is just plain wrong and people will
try to use this to say that jesus had long hair because of
course there's no scripture about jesus having long hair
the bible teaches that it's a shame for a man to have long hair
but that if a woman have long hair it's a glory unto her
but then they say well of course he had long hair because he's a nazirite
but that is not scriptural because then why is he
drinking wine and why is he touching a dead body
he's not a nazirite it's just a mix up of those two words nazirite
nazarene two totally different words now let's look at numbers chapter 6 here
it says in verse 1 and the lord spake unto moses saying
speak unto the children of israel and and say unto them when either man or
woman now the first thing i want to point out
is that being a nazirite could be for a man or a woman even a woman
could go through this process even a woman could do this now for the whole
rest of the chapter it's just going to say he his him
and so that's why we kind of get this in our minds of only being men
but in reality according to the first verse here it could be a man or a woman
god just doesn't feel the need to keep saying like he or she because he's not
this overly politically correct weirdo from 2021 that's really worried about
pronouns okay so basically he just uses the he
as a universal he here you know just like just like the bible says
you know as many as received him to them gave you power to become the sons of god
even in the belief on his name that applies to women too
right obviously when you have a mixed group
you use the masculine gender it's sort of like when you're speaking spanish
right and if it's a group let's say you have
all men you say nosotros and then if it's if it's all women they'd say nosotras
but if it's a mixture it's nosotros right and even if it's like 20
women and one man it's nosotros okay so god uses a masculine pronoun a
lot of times but he's just referring to mankind in
general and he's referring to either or that's the pronoun that he uses so it
starts out by saying that this could be a man
or a woman that could separate themselves
to vow a vow of an azerite and notice the key here about being an azerite
to separate themselves unto the lord and again
the word holy literally means sanctified set apart and so separating yourself
is a type of holiness it says in verse three he shall separate himself from
wine and strong drink and shall drink no vinegar of wine or vinegar of strong
drink neither shall you drink any liquor of
grapes and liquor there just means liquid it's saying any liquid that comes
from grapes whatsoever it's not necessarily referring to booze
nor eat moist grapes or dried so like i said
he can't even eat raisins okay so this is not an alcohol thing
it's not just saying no alcohol that's not what's going on here
it's no grape no raisin no juice no fruit juice no
no apple cider vinegar you know it's just saying you know
nothing from a grape and i know apple cider vinegar doesn't come from grapes
but whatever the grape equivalent of that would be is what it's saying
don't do it the vinegar of the wine okay
and so it says here that all the days of his separation he shall eat
nothing that is made of the vine tree from the kernels
even to the husk all the days of the vow of his separation
there shall no razor come upon his head until the days be fulfilled
in the which he separated himself unto the lord he shall be holy
and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow notice it doesn't even
say years it doesn't say the years of his
separation it says the days of his separation
and if we're measuring things in days that kind of gives us an idea of the
length of time right because you can measure in decades years
months weeks days or hours right these are all
time measurements and you would choose the one that's appropriate
well apparently here the appropriate measurement
is in days so this is probably less than a year or else you'd probably
switch to months at that point or or even years if it were to go way longer
than that the fact that we're using days as a measure tells us this is probably a
pretty short time and and the time can vary there's not a
set time this is something someone could do
for a few weeks or this is something that someone could do for a few months
six months eight months obviously it's it's it's some
considerable amount of time because it talks about at the end of verse five
shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow so if you think about any kind
of considerable growth on your hair it's going to take about you know two
months probably so between the days and the the
considerable growth i would venture to guess that this is
something that you would do for a matter of months but probably less than a year
so it's probably just a few months is what you would expect here
but it could be different lengths i'm sure some of them went longer than that
some of them went shorter than that because it's an open-ended deal
it's a set time that you vow to do this thing okay
and then it says all the days that he separated himself on the lord he shall
come out no dead body so this is what i mean about samson being an
extraordinary case because he's a nazirite from his mother's
womb he's going to do this lifelong now think about this let's say that
and obviously this is not a new testament thing this is not something
that we would ever do it's wrong to do it because it's part of
the rituals of the old covenant that are done away in christ
but in the old testament let's say i were back at that time and i'm in the
old testament and i say okay i am going to do this
nazirite vow and i'm doing it for the whole year of
2020 because it's such a messed up year anyway
i might as well be i'm going to be pretty separated anyway because of the
virus so let's say i wanted to do this well
here's the thing if i just if i just let my hair grow
if i started out with like a normal man's length hair
and then i just let that hair grow it's not
really going to get super duper long in a year you know because it kind of
takes years to really grow really long hair i mean it's you know and
i realize different people's hair grows different amounts
but you know sometimes i get busy and forget about it and i'll go six weeks
without getting a haircut and it it doesn't it's still pretty darn short
okay so you know these nazarites are not
a bunch of long hairs walking around because their hair is going to get
longer they're letting the locks of the hair
grow but it's not really going to get super long
whereas samsung's hair did get super long
because samsung is doing this for life okay
so that's the difference i mean samsung's growing his hair
and growing his hair and growing his hair and obviously different people's
hair gets different lengths it does max out at a certain length
depending on who you are but i mean his hair
was definitely long i i've had some people
you know come up with a theory that said they don't believe samsung had long hair
because it just bothers them so much for a man to have long hair which
i'm bothered by men having long hair too amen because the bible says it's a shame
for a man to have long hair so i'm totally against men having long
hair if you have long hair get a haircut
and if you're a woman with short hair grow it out because god want and by the
way this is more important in 2021 than it's ever been
this is not the time to back off on that doctrine
when we're in this crazy gender bending weirdo society
if there was ever a time when we need men to get a haircut
and women to grow out their hair it's now please
save our nation see i don't understand what's the big deal
there's a bunch of transvestites running around
be feminine ladies be masculine men let's be
distinct in our gender more than ever we need that
okay so look i get it but but here's what you have to understand
there are things in the bible that are exceptions
and that's what this is this is a rare exception is what this is
where god specifically tells someone to do something
that is far out of the ordinary like i said
nazarite lifelong that's a an extraordinary thing that's unique to
samson this is a one-time deal these other guys
yeah they're letting their hair grow out a bit but it's not going to get super
long they're going to get a haircut when it's all said and done
whereas samson's hair did get long and and here's how they try to kind of
change this because they they just they have such an issue with a man of god
whose hair grew long but here's the thing about that
is that they they're claiming well no razor shall come upon his head but he
can still get a haircut just no razor to come upon his head
but what does the bible say at the end of verse five about the nazarite
it says he shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow does that sound
like he's going to keep getting a haircut
and just not shave it no i mean it just says
he's not going to let the locks of his head
i mean he's going to let the locks of his head grow you know locks
are basically like when you when you take hair and and
take it in and divide it into like a clump right
and later on if you remember samson's hair is going to be divided into seven
locks and it's going to be long enough for
delilah to weave it into a loom so you're not going to be able to do that
with short hair it would have to be very long in order
for her to weave it into this loom and he's got seven locks suffering the
locks of the hair of his head to grow long
so you know just accept it just deal with it okay samson
is told and his parents are told not to get a haircut
it's out of the ordinary it's strange but here's the thing god told a lot of
other people to do a lot of other strange things
that we shouldn't go out and do sometimes there's an extraordinary
command that's given but you don't want to say oh well i'm
going to do that too like for example hosea is told to marry
a prostitute do you think that that's god's will for
your life young people like well i just i'm just like hosea you
know so i'm going to go out and find a
prostitute and marry her you're an idiot okay that's not god's
not telling you to do that or like for example what about when god
specifically tells them to make a brazen serpent
and put it on a pole and then they have to look at that in order to be healed of
their snake bites when god clearly said not to make
a a graven image or a molten image but yet they're told
make a graven image because it was an exception it was for a specific purpose
and then here's the thing after that purpose is over then they keep it around
and start worshiping it and then the king of israel has to go
no you know king of judah and he trashes it because he's like this is ridiculous
you guys are worshiping this thing that's not what it was for it wasn't
meant to be worshipped and so there are exceptions there are
people who are asked to do extraordinary things
you know normally the bible says that the servants of the lord should be clean
and it says touch not the unclean thing and in the old testament they have all
these really strict laws about sanitation
and cleanliness but then you've got ezekiel
being told to eat bread with dung on it that's not clean
now look should we eat feces no that was something that was unique
that was and you say well why though why would they have to do these things
because everything that they have to do ends up being symbolic you know isaiah
is told to strip down naked and there are all
these strange things that people do they're
kind of a one-time thing you don't just be like hey i just want
to have like an isaiah kind of ministry or something
no you don't understand that there are certain specific situations where people
are asked to do things that are out of the ordinary like
isaac's going to go naked and barefoot because it was symbolic and
and you know ezekiel has to eat excrement and you know hosiah
is told to marry a prostitute there's just strange wild things that these
people do they're all symbolic and and this
nazarite vow has a lot of symbolism about being
separated and being holy but then samson being the lifelong
nazarite he has his own set of symbolism why is it that samson's hair
you know needed to grow long or why did he need to grow his hair long like that
like what what could that possibly symbolize
well you know everything in the old testament is virtually all pointing us
toward christ in some way it's some kind of a different angle of
the gospel or some kind of a an allegory the bible is very deep
okay and so if we think about samson as a picture of christ
and you know at the end of his life when he dies he's got his arms stretched out
between the pillars which pictures the cross
he's sacrificing his life to save israel and so forth so he's basically dying for
them and and there's all kinds of symbol
we'll get to that when the time comes but here's the thing about it though if
you think about it one of the aspects of the crucifixion of
christ or one of the aspects of uh you know christ suffering is the
shame that he endured you know the bible says that jesus
endured the cross despising the shame so he
had to go through shame he had to endure shame
and suffer that and here's the thing having long hair
is a picture of what shame because the bible says it is a shame
for a man to have long hair you know jesus christ is pictured by that serpent
on the pole because the bible says as moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the son of man be lifted up
and just as they looked at that serpent and were healed you know if you look to
jesus you'll be healed and and if you look to jesus you'll be
saved like the hymn goes in the hymnal look and live
and so you know all of these things are symbolic
and they might seem strange or unusual on their face
but as you study the bible as a whole it all fits together and it all makes sense
and it creates all these beautiful pictures and symbols
that you really have to just keep reading and learning the bible for it
all to click and for it to all make sense to you
and for you to understand it and you also have to be saved you know to
understand scripture but there are a lot of things in the
bible that even after you're saved it's going to take you a really long time to
understand and you're never going to understand everything i don't understand
everything because the bible is just so deep that
no human could know all of it because it'll take a whole lifetime just
to scratch the surface so as we study the story of samson you
know we don't need to change the story because something about it bothers us
you know we need to just go with the story as is and just understand that
god does not want us to have long hair that is not god's will for us to have
long hair but it was god's will for this one
particular individual this extraordinary case to have long
hair because he's trying to picture something
very specific through samson and so it's just part of the program that god
has for samson but the big thing that we want to
understand is that with the nazarite vow is that it's a
separation thing it's a holiness thing now you say why
would anyone do this because this is a volunteer thing
people are volunteering to do this and and
i've scratched my head about this many times you know what's the point
why volunteer to do this well you know the bible says that if you do this
basically you get a special blessing from god
you'll be blessed if you do this you know this is just
this is a ritual that you go through it's optional only certain people are
going to do it and you go through this song and dance
and then at the end of it you shave off your hair you watch
you get washed and you do an animal sacrifice
and you go through everything and then it's over and then you and then you can
eat all the grapes and raisins that you want when it's over
but you say what's the point you know god has
all of these rituals going on in the old testament you could really ask the same
question about any of them what's the point in sacrificing a lamb
what's the point in sacrificing a ram what's the point in pouring out a drink
offering to the lord just seems like you're just dumping out your drink
right what's the point in the whole burnt offering
what's the point in you know the high priest
wearing all this strange clothing and going through all this
what's the point of baptism in the new testament
i mean what what is the point of getting dunked underwater
in the new testament i mean it's not like you're taking a bath or getting
clean there's no soap sometimes the water is
not even warm and you know at our church it is you
know we take care of you all right now no we've done a few ice water baptisms
but we mainly do it we usually have it nice and warm for you but the point is
it's not it's not like well you got to take a bath you know what
we take a lot of showers and baths in our lives
we don't need baptism is a one-time thing it's not about getting your body
clean is it so what's the point why are we even
doing it what is the and of course most of us already know
the answer to why we're doing it it's symbolic
it's a picture it's an outward profession of faith it's a picture of
the death burial and resurrection of christ well
guess what all this old testament stuff is the same way
so whether it's a nazirite vow whether it's an animal sacrifice
whether it's the tabernacle the incense you name it
all of this stuff is picturing heavenly things now we don't have a lot of this
in the new testament we have very little of this in the new testament
we only have a few things that are like this in the new testament
but back then they had a lot more things like this so i wouldn't worry too much
about the why because the why is simply just to go through the motions of this
in order for all of these pictures to be painted
you know in leviticus numbers euteronomy and it's all very deep and it all points
us to the gospel it all points us to jesus
and different aspects of christ this represents
separation and holiness and and like i said when it's over
they they cut off their hair they give an animal sacrifice
and so forth so let's go back if you would
to judges chapter 13 with that in mind now that we have a little bit of that
background on what it means to be a nazirite so
again this is god prescribing holiness for samson don't
touch a dead body you're gonna be like a nazirite where
you're super separated your your light years from from uh
drinking or getting drunk because you're you're not even drinking grape juice
you're not even drinking uh you're not even eating a raisin
you're not even eating grapes you know you're very separate from wine which
wine can picture a few different things number one it can it can obviously be a
reference to alcohol but it can also just be a reference to
uh wealth and luxury the whining and dining
because wine is so expensive back then and it's it's considered
a luxury item even grapes are kind of expensive you know so it's just kind of
a luxury thing so there's a lot of uh things being
pictured there so it says in verse five of judges 13
for lo thou shalt conceive and bear a son and no
razor shall come up on his head for the child shall be a nazirite unto
god from the womb and he shall begin to
deliver israel out of the hands of the felicity
so samson is supposed to be this really ultra holy guy more holy than anything
we've seen in the book of judges and he turns out to be probably the most
unholy of the judges he does not live up to
this and of course that's because humans are
sinners he particular in particular is a worse
sinner than most people and uh not to say he doesn't do a lot of
great things for god and and god uses him but he's got some
serious flaws and again this is what we like about the bible
is that has complex characters it's a very
interesting book that that you can read it over and over again and it's always
interesting now the bible says in verse six
then the woman came and told her husband saying a man of god came unto me
and his countenance was like the countenance
countenance means face of an angel of god very terrible
but i asked him not whence he was neither told he me his name
so this guy shows up and he's he's this kind of mysterious
individual because we don't know his name
and we don't know where he's from which typically if you meet someone for the
first time you're going to find out those pieces of information right away
so this mysterious individual shows up he's the angel of the lord
he appears in the woman now we have to understand the word angel in the bible
is not necessarily some kind of a supernatural being or a non-human being
many humans in the bible are referred to as angels
when they're acting in capacity as an angel and in fact
jesus is also called the messenger of the covenant
and messenger and angel mean the exact same thing
that's why in revelation chapter two and three when he's giving the seven
letters to the churches he says to the angel of the church of
Ephesus the angel of the church of Smyrna those are not you know some kind of
winged uh creature the aim that's a human being
and in fact that's that's mortal man who's just a human being who's just the
one who brings the message at that church
the messenger of the church that's why it's not as being rebuked somewhat
in those letters to the seven churches and so
human beings can act as messengers for god and and it can be
first of all a living human being like a mortal man like myself i'm up here
preaching the word of god i'm preaching the bible so
i'm an angel of god in that sense or a messenger of god but i'm not an
angel as in what you would think of as a cherub
or a seraph or something like that that's something completely different
but then also human beings after they die
they could also act in this capacity as an angel and in that case there's a
supernatural element there because of the fact that obviously like
we see in the story here when all said and done this guy is going
to like ascend up in the fire of the altar now there are
two options here either this is an old testament appearance
of jesus because we do have for sure old testament appearances of jesus in other
places like we know for a fact in the book of
joshua and you know i'm not going to go through all those
old testament appearances but we have several that we know for sure
where the angel of the lord is for sure an old testament appearance of jesus
but then this is one of the ones where it's somewhat ambiguous
you know the guy says oh i've seen the face of god i've seen the face of the
lord but that's not the narrator talking that's
that's this guy talking and this guy's got some
some funny ideas anyway a little bit so the point is this passage is
either an old testament appearance of jesus
or this is another man that is somebody who's already died
they've already gone to heaven basically and they're basically being sent back by
god to deliver this message as an angel of
the lord because obviously this guy's supernatural
and he's ascending up to heaven so he's not just a guy now sometimes
when the bible says an angel of the lord came
it could just be mortal man like earlier in the book of judges but notice
when the angel in judges chapter 2 showed up
to rebuke the israelites it explains like oh he he lived in this town
and then that angel of the lord came up from that city and he came up
so he has a human origin on this earth he's a guy who lives in a town who shows
up to preach this on the other hand is something
different he doesn't tell his name and i would lean toward this being an
old testament appearance of christ because the fact that he says his name
is a secret you know other angels reveal their name
you know gabriel reveals his name michael's name is revealed and so you
know why hide it but again there's no way to know for
sure so you can have an opinion about it but none of us
could know that for sure and so it says here that you know this
man of god came unto me his countenance was like the countenance
of an angel so she's thinking you know this could be an angel i don't know is
he human is he mortal is he an angel i don't know
but i didn't ask you know and then it says in verse 7
but he said to me behold thou shall conceive and bear a son and now drink no
wine nor strong drink neither eat any unclean thing for the
child shall be a nazirite to god from the womb to the day of his death
then manoah entreated the lord and said oh my lord
let the man of god which thou didst send come again unto us and teach us
what we shall do unto the child that shall be born now
this is a little bit silly because he already has all the information he needs
because his wife has already been instructed on what to do with child but
he he wants more he's like i need more instructions you know how to
raise this child this sounds really important
and you know especially because he he's he's older
he's never had a kid and so you know he's stressed out about it
so then it says in uh verse number nine and god hearkened to the voice of manoa
and the angel of god came again unto the woman as she sat in the field
but manoa her husband was not with her and he's coming back the second time
specifically for him and he's not there so anyway the woman made haste and ran
and showed her husband and said in him behold the man that appeared unto me
they came unto me the other day and manoa arose and went after his wife and
came to the man and said unto him art thou the man that
spake us unto the woman and he said i am and manoa and you could
also say hey that's a subtle you know i am you know could be
and manoa said now let thy words come to pass
he's like man i hope this is for real because
i would love to have a kid and manoa said now
let thy words come to pass how shall we order the child and how shall we do unto
him and the angel of the lord said unto
manoa of all that i said unto the woman let her beware basically everything i
already told you she may not eat of anything that cometh
of the vine neither let her drink wine or strong drink
nor eat any unclean thing all that i commanded her let her observe
and manoa said unto the angel of the lord i pray thee let us detain thee
until we shall have made ready a kid for thee now a kid
is of course a young goat a young goat is called a kid and often in the bible
this is something that would be served to guests or served at a party remember
the elder brother and the prodigal son story
laments that he didn't get to have a kid with his friends
and have a party and it says in verse 16 and the angel of the lord said unto
manoa though thou detain me i will not eat of
thy bread and if thou wilt offer a burnt offering
thou must offer it unto the lord for manoa knew not that he was an angel of
the lord so because remember the wife didn't know
for sure he still doesn't know for sure for all
they know this is just a prophet or whatever that's coming to talk to them
and so the angel of the lord tells him i'm not
going to eat any food he's like i have time i don't
mind hanging around a little bit i can wait
but i'm not going to eat anything and if you want to make a sacrifice go ahead
and make a sacrifice but make it under the lord
of course this is one of the many examples of sacrifices
that are allowed by god prescribed by god or even commanded by god
that do not take place at the tabernacle because
they were allowed to sacrifice outside the tabernacle there were situations
where that was appropriate but the jews today don't get it and it
says in um because they are they reject the lord
they reject christ and if they believed in
uh the father they believe in the son you know
jesus said if you believe moses you'd also believe me
and so they don't believe moses they don't believe him so here
it says that manoa said unto the angel of the lord in verse
17 what is thy name that when thy sayings come to pass we may do the
honor you know we can tell people hey this
guy's a real prophet let me tell you because my wife was barren and bare not
and he showed up and said she was going to have a kid and guess what
she had one so we know this guy's legit so that's you know that's what he has in
mind you know hey we want to honor you when when you're saying comes to pass we
want to be able to tell people that you're the real deal
and the angel of the lord said unto him why askest thou after my name
seeing it is secret you know see you know he doesn't need these kind of
accolades or glory so manoa took a kid with a meat offering and offered it
upon a rock unto the lord and the angel did wondrously and when we see the word
wondrous or wonder in the bible it's it's often what we would say as
miraculous you know he did something miraculous here he did
wondrously and manoa and his wife looked on
for it came to pass when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar so
you know they're offering this offering unto the lord
by fire and the angel lord ascended in the flame of the altar
and manoa and his wife looked on it and fell on their faces to the ground because
they're just terrified so they just kind of drop on
their faces to worship the lord and just kind of beg for mercy because this is so
intense of a situation but the angel of the lord
did no more appear to manoa and to his wife
then manoa knew that he was an angel of the lord
when he saw that whole shenanigans he knew it was an angel lord and manoa
said unto his wife we shall surely die because we've seen
god but his wife said in him if the lord were pleased to kill us
he would not have received a burnt offering and a meat offering at our
hands neither would he have showed us all
these things nor would us at this time have told us such things as these how
can i have a kid if i die you know
now these people are scared to death because the lord said no man shall see
my face and live but you can see an angel of the lord and
not die so you can see how people often take a
true biblical doctrine and they go overboard on it
this happens all the time my friend and you know it's it's something that i
constantly have to preach it's something that i constantly have to harp on
because it's just it's just how we are as human beings we like to take things
overboard you know you can't see god the father's
face and live you can see jesus face and live and you
can see any angel of the lord in the face and live but you just can't
see god the father's face and live that's what the bible teaches
now if this guy knew his bible a little better he would know that but we as
human beings we have a tendency to take rules and
take them overboard take doctrines and go overboard and
just kind of go crazy with them okay and this is an example of that and
where where somebody realized okay we can't look in
the face of god the father himself so even if i see an angel of the lord
because he's the lord's messenger that's kind of like seeing god so i
might die too that's a faulty logic that's that's
taking a good thing from the bible and turning it into like superstition
and an overboard doctrine what is the what is the first part of that word
superstition super okay now super means over
it means too much overboard it comes from the same indo-european
roots as our word hyper notice the per ending there
the sue and the high there that's just changed over time that's the same
indo-european word there super and hyper so you can think of it a
super saturated solution is something that's over saturated
it's over the limit saturated and so what we see well with the word
superstition and and that's why the apostle paul you're
too superstitious it's too much people take fear of god
and they go overboard with it they take doctrine they go overboard with it
their beliefs and they go crazy with it you know let me give you some examples
you know for example the bible says blot out the names of other false gods
you know when you enter canan land blot out the names of the false gods you
know they're gonna have their name of a false god engraved in stone in some
monument or something you know when you take over that region
you don't want to say bail everywhere and and marduk and kimosh and you know
all these names of false gods he said blot out those names wipe you
know destroy that erase that paint over that or if it's
engraved you know grind it sand it get rid of it and then it says but thou
not do so to the lord thy god you know reverence god's name publish
god's name proclaim the name of the lord but don't
you know but blot out the names of these false gods
okay here's what the jews have have gone overboard with this and they they went
overboard with this a long time ago they basically said you can never erase
like if you're let's say you're writing something
and you wrote the name of god and and you decide like i'm going to erase that
sentence and do a better job but you just blotted out the name of the
lord god so they could like never erase god's name
or blot out god's name for any reason that's that's not what the bible's
saying there friend like if you're writing it's like oh
whoops i spelled it wrong gotta erase it you know
and then that's why they would um uh when they make a mistake in in
scripture like you know you know the maserites are copying the old testament
for example you know in the in the in the year of our lord you know
but even before that they were doing it but we know they're doing it like in the
middle ages and stuff you know they're copying
every time they would make a mistake you know they would they would they would
throw the whole page in the trash they would they would get rid of the
whole thing but here's the problem they didn't throw
it in the trash because they're scared to throw it in the trash
they're like i can't erase it i can't i can't blot anything out or
you know but i can't throw it in the trash either because i wrote some of
god's word on here i can't throw god's word in the trash
and and you run into superstitious people like this today where they're
like when their bible wears out they're
afraid to throw it in the trash and they're like well you need to donate
it it's falling apart why don't i donate a broken falling
apart here goodwill do something with this they're just
gonna throw it what in the world people say well yeah it's sacrilegious
it's wrong to ever throw away your bible
hey you know what that's easy for you to say because you don't read the bible
much but for those of us who read it a lot we
burn through a lot of bibles in our lifetime
you know what i'm saying like we use bibles we use them
and we take them soul waiting and we're folding them back and showing people
and we're standing in the rain we're standing in acid rain
and showing people like look what the bible says we get it wet
hey i don't know about you i get food on it
and you say oh how can you put food on it because i'm eating
because i can't get enough of this book so even when i'm eating i read it
sometimes so here's the thing if you use the
bible you wear it out i've heard somebody say hey if your
bible is falling apart your life isn't right people's bibles falling apart
their life's not falling apart and so when your bible wears out you
throw it away you throw it in the garbage but here's
the thing the jews they're scared about this
so here's the thing they they they write a whole page of scripture
and then they look at it and say whoops i messed up
you know because they go back and check over it oh i screwed it up
so here's what they do instead of throwing it away they bury it like you'd
bury a person
they bury it and then and then fast forward a thousand years people dig
it up and say this is the real stuff
i'm serious they dig up the trash manuscripts they dig up and i realize
that not all of it is because that some of it
is corrupted for other reasons or other mistakes and so forth
but i i'm convinced that some of these bad manuscripts could just be
trash manuscripts that people were afraid to throw away
of that when it comes to the old testament stuff you know it could be
something that somebody's just afraid to throw in the trash
so they put it in a vase and they bury it underground and then somebody digs up
a vase and they find it it's like whoa this is the real version
it's missing all this stuff it's like well it was the guy messed up
so you see what i mean about being superstitious
okay so we talked about they're afraid to ever erase his name
they're afraid to throw a bible in the trash and then they took oh thou shalt
make not uh thou shalt not take the name of
the lord thy god in vain and then they're like hey just to make
sure we don't use his name in vain let's just never say it
then we know we'll never take it in vain let's just never even say it
and then they they didn't say it for so long they forgot how to pronounce it
because if you don't say something for hundreds of years and you don't have a
tape recording you don't have a video recording
you're gonna forget how to pronounce it because vowels shift and vowels change
and the language change and and today nobody knows for sure how that
tetragrammatons even pronounced nobody even knows
they don't know and even by the time of jesus day
they were already just uh calling him the lord
because they wouldn't pronounce that name they didn't say that name
and so they had forgotten the pronunciation of it
and uh you know there you go so so we could go on and on i mean those are some
some examples but you know we've got some some people that are superstitious
even amongst fundamental baptists people get really superstitious
about the bible like they get superstitious about the actual physical
book itself when in reality it's the words that are
holy it's the words that are sacred but they get superstitious about the book
itself and they they freak out if you if you don't treat the book
properly or you know folks that's pagan i'm sorry i don't
believe in that for one second because there's nothing like that in the
bible that's just that's just a made up thing
of like that we have to keep a physical book
somehow sacred that i you know i can't spill food on it
or throw it in my backpack and go hiking or shove it in my pocket or whatever
you know that's what pagans do that's like what the six do with their holy
book the guru grunt sahib they buy it its own seat on the
airplane literally if they travel with it it gets
its own seat and in their house it gets its own room
at the dinner table they they set up a chair for it at table that's nonsense
okay so don't get superstitious and make an idol out of a physical book
like oh you know now here's the thing you know
worship worshiping i i would never say hey you're wrong you're worshiping god's
word because i don't think you could ever give too much
honor to god's word because the bible says that god has magnified his word
above all his name so if you can worship the name of the
lord that you could you know you could give reverence
and venerate and worship the word of lord but not a physical book that could
become an idolatry if you're actually like
treating the physical book as if the physical piece of paper is
divine okay but then you also have people that
get superstitious about the king james version
now look i'm king james only i and here's here's what i believe about
the king james bible i believe the king james bible is the
word of god without error that's the statement right there the
king james bible is the word of god without error
okay but the funny thing is even though that is a
that is a very extreme statement i mean that's all the way on an extreme
of saying that it's the word of god without error but you know what's funny
that's not enough for some people some people would say pastor is not king
james enough it's like this is the only version i use
and i believe it's without error and i'll even go a step further i believe
that you have everything you need as either a pastor or a layman just from
this english translation right here and i do not believe it is necessary to
learn greek and hebrew in order to get a deeper meaning or
deeper understanding i believe that all the teachings and
everything is is in this book right here you know i believe we have it in english
this is what we need
and i've you know i could explain all the reasons why i believe that but but
here's the thing that's not enough for some people because they want to just go
overboard into superstition and la la land
okay into crazy town okay now look the reason why i believe in the king james
bible is because i believe that it is an accurate translation of the
original greek and hebrew now is the english bible inspired
it's inspired but it derives its inspiration from the original it did not
get inspired in the 1600s
you know holy men of god didn't translate as they were moved by the holy
ghost that is a false doctrine okay
this is not the product of divine inspiration
in the 17th century ad that is garbage that is
wrong sometimes that doctrine you know is is referred to as ruckmanism because
the most popular or famous proponent of that was named
peter ruckman but that is a nonsensical teaching that
this just fell out of the sky in the 1600s
to where basically here's what people will say
if this conflicts with the greek and hebrew
the greek and hebrew are wrong throw out the greek and hebrew
and this corrects the greek this corrects but that's what they say
it's crazy that is not biblical how could this correct the book that it was
literally translated from and and here's the thing when the king
james translators translated the original greek and hebrew
it didn't self-destruct when they were done
it did it wasn't like joseph smith where the tablets got repo'd
you know what i mean they they had like these golden tablets and they translate
and they got repossessed this thing did not fall out of the sky
it was translated and look i don't know about you but i don't believe god just
preserved his word in 2021 or in 1611 or in the 1700s
i believe that god preserved his word onto all generations
so if god's word has been preserved under all generations
wouldn't that include the 1400s and the 1500s
the 1300 that'd be before the king james god's word was already out there
and he said where was it it was in the traditional hebrew text
and it was in the greek the traditional greek text
and it had been translated into a whole bunch of other languages and there were
a lot of great translations out there many of which haven't survived most
books from the ancient world have not survived by the way most books from the
middle ages haven't survived it's just stuff doesn't survive that's life
and so we need to understand that yes we're king james only yes we believe
that our english bible is accurate that it's pure
and that through god's providence he knew english was going to be the biggest
language in the world he knew it was going to be the most
significant language especially from an evangelism point of view
and so he made sure that we got a top-notch translation
where 54 of the best scholars got together for six years
and obviously god providentially guided and worked
but look god providentially guides my life too
god providentially guides your life you know sometimes i preach a sermon
and somebody walks up to me and just says wow we were just talking about
this this is exactly what i needed to hear
i can't i brought a visitor and the sermon was perfect for them it was like
wow we were talking about this in the car on the way over
and then boom you preach it okay does that mean that i'm divinely inspired
like the biblical authors no but but could god lead me to preach
something that people need hey somebody's struggling out there
with suicidal thoughts and then i preach a sermon about suicide
and then they come up to me and say hey i've been struggling with this thank you
for helping me thank you for telling me what i need to
hear oh obviously i was led by god but that doesn't mean my sermons are
divinely inspired on par with scripture it's nonsense
so yeah did god have a hand in the translation of the king james of course
did god have a hand in other translations throughout history
yeah because god is the one who preserved his word he promised that he
would preserve his word does everybody see what i'm saying but
then you have people that just they take it overboard
and they basically think that basically the english
bible was inspired again in 1611 so that basically anything that says it
differently than the way the english bible says it is wrong to them
even if it agrees with the greek and hebrew so then they demand that the
spanish bible sound like this they demand that a
chinese bible sound like this have fun with that
they want to be word for word like they say you know you can't change everlasting
to eternal or you've corrupted god's word even though they both mean the
exact same thing and what are we going to do when we go
into spanish and there is no ever it's just aterna
be the aterna that's what it's going to be
every time and then what are we going to do when we look in the greek new
testament and it's just one word for both eternal and everlasting
what are we going to do when we go to spanish and it's just a spirito santo
holy spirit there's no holy ghost english we have holy ghost holy spirit
but in the original greek it's just one word
english is just spicing it up by using more variety
oh so now now we got to have the holy ghost in spanish phantasma santo
which means like the holy ghoul or something
like the other meaning of ghost like a scary ghost
which is not a correct translation into spanish at all
it's wrong it's not like well you're just not used to it no it's wrong
it's nonsensical and by the word i mean i have like a thousand things to
say right now i'm not going to because the time is
ending let me just say a couple quick things
you know do not become superstitious about the english bible okay
some people have even said hey when words are in italics
if you if you print out a copy of the bible you have to print that in italics
the way the king james prints it in italics
like now we have to match the font or the spelling or the punctuation or
it's nonsense go look at that replica back there of
the 1611 things are spelled totally different
punctuation is totally different font is totally different but it's the
same words it's we still have what they translated
in 1611 but it's just the the font the punctuation the
spellings have been updated so that it's easier to read but here's
what and look if you're one that is
superstitious about the italics look up first john 223
in your bible and you know what you're going to see in first john 223 half the
verse is in italics
half of the verse fully half of the verse in first john 223 is in italics
so don't tell me the italics are inspired by god
the italicized words are inspired by god every word in the king james bible
is god's word but but certain things are italicized certain things aren't
you know what whoever you know what let me just tell you right now
and you know if you don't like this maybe you're one of these superstitious
types but let me tell you something the the italicization in the king james
bible is not consistent with reality it's poorly italicized and if i printed
a bible i wouldn't italicize anything okay and you say how could you say that
it's a god of italics okay well then explain to me why first john 223 is half
in italics can you explain that because i can explain it i'll tell you
right now it's because the bozo who was putting things in italics thought
that that half of the verse might not be authentic now look
does anybody think he's right no he's wrong
the verse is authentic everything in the bible is authentic and guess what
putting it in italics makes no sense
i mean look it up in your bible feel free to look it up while i've talked to
you look up first john two three is anybody looking at it and seeing that
i'm telling the truth oh thou of little faith
blessed are they that have not seen and yet i believe no i'm just kidding but
anyway you look it up and you got the but in brackets what is that
what is that and then you've got it in italics and it's just
look folks if you're going to start worrying about the font
and the the capitalization and the punctuation and the spelling you're
going to have a real hard time translating the bible into japanese
how are you going to make things upper and lower case
oh i forgot greek and hebrew don't have upper and lower case letters
now obviously i know the modern language does but at that time
the lower case had not been invented yet when the new testament was written it
was all in it was written in all caps caps lock was
just left on the whole thing so the the point is
you don't want to get these crazy views and look there was a whole conference
like this what a year or two ago over in crazy town florida where they
had this big conference about how like they did look you want to talk about
going overboard they said if you change the th to an s
you've corrupted god's word like like cometh to comes
they said that's a corruption of god's word wow have fun translating the bible
into swahili with that it you know it's it well
other languages you can do whatever you want with it
but in in english it's got to be exactly like that makes no sense
it's absurd it's ludicrous okay and not only that but they want to
impose this on other languages and when you try to prove to them that
not everything in the king james is literal
word for word from the greek because that's not how translations work
they just they just go like buh and they just they just
they're just like a reality denier like like flat earth
level mentality i told one of these guys i said right here here's an example i
pulled out a greek new testament i showed him i said this is not
literal i broke it down to him and showed him and he's just like well that
greek's wrong and i said yeah except this is what
every greek new testament on the planet says
well then they're all wrong and i said so what was the king james translated
from well it's probably just something we
don't have anymore
that makes no sense and then other people say oh they translate from other
languages and the king james is 100 from the hebrew
in the old testament 100 from the greek in the new testament
they were not allowed to translate from latin or anything else
they looked at latin for ideas but it's none of it there's not one verse in this
book translated that's not translated from the original
languages period okay and by the way this this ruckmanite
view that that exalts the translation over the original
there's nothing new under the sun in fact i can name a gigantic religion of
ruckmanites to you it's called the roman catholic church
because did you know that the official bible of the roman catholic church is
not the original greek and hebrew what's the official bible of the roman
catholic church nope the latin vulgate that is their
final authority in all matters of faith and practice
the latin vulgate and to them that is above
the greek and hebrew that is their final authority
period and by the way in the early days of the roman catholic
church they had the old testament in the greek
septuagint translation and their favorite saint saint augustine
believed that the greek septuagint was superior
to the original hebrew
and jerome got in a fight with him about it and jerome said no we got to
translate the vulgate from the original hebrew
and augustin's like no let's translate it from the greek
because it's the translation they're putting the translation above the
original and you have today people saying don't translate the original
greek and hebrew only translate the king james
it's the same mentality it makes no sense
now look i'm glad that we have this awesome
perfect translation in english but don't talk trash about the original languages
because we need to use those to translate into other languages
and cut out the middleman and we go straight over
it's going to make more sense you know i i mean i was just i was just reading in
the greek new testament a couple days ago and i was reading
second john and he says you know uh i i trust to come
unto you i'm mixing it up i'm sorry but he says
you know i trust uh to come and see you that we may speak
face to face that our joy may be full right
so when when john says that we may speak face to face in the original greek it
says that we may speak mouth to mouth now look
obviously that means the exact same thing you're not missing anything it's
like well we gotta go back to the greek it's
actually mouth to mouth
is there any difference between saying we're going to speak face to face and
we're going to speak mouth to mouth i'll tell you the difference one of them
sounds way better than the other and it's the one that the king james
went with but you don't sit there and tell me that
that's a literal word for word translation because a literal word for
word translation would be i'm going to speak to you mouth to mouth buddy
but it sounds weird so they change you know and there are lots i could go on
with example after example or like when jesus is on the cross and the thieves
that are crucified with him cast the same in his teeth there's no
teeth in the original greek but you get the exact same meaning when
you translate you translate the meaning you don't just go literal word for word
and if you did that into asian languages it would be wild
it would be bizarre anyway i'm totally out of time
but we what we learn from this is that some people
they get superstitious they take a good doctrine overboard
we don't want to be like that you know we do we want to be separated
amen we want to be separated you know god wants holiness
god wants separation that's what the chapter is about that's what being an
azerite's about being different than the world separated
holy set apart god has a strict standard even when he knows you're not going to
live up to it he still lays down a strict standard he
wants us to try to hit that standard amen we don't hit it necessarily
but it is the standard but can holiness and separation be taken overboard
all good doctrines and good teachings can be taken overboard
to where you get so holy and so separated what about you say well i'm
for modest clothing on women okay but do the muslims take it a little
too far do you think you take modesty overboard
yeah you could take modest clothing overboard
i i'm for modesty but it can go anything can go overboard
so be holy be separated be king james but don't just go into the realm of
craziness or absurdity where you're just taking
good things overboard and ruining them because you're being superstitious let's
bow our heads up word of prayer father we thank you so much for your word
lord and we thank you so much for uh our church and we thank you for the
opportunity to read this book of uh judges specifically lord and
help us to learn from these characters and and lord when we read the book of
judges we really have to think because uh people are making a lot of mistakes
in these books they they do some good things they do some bad things lord give
us wisdom in the coming weeks help us to properly interpret these
stories and compare scripture with scripture to know exactly what
uh you have for us in these chapters in jesus name we pray amen
men take your hymnals please will be dismissed and singing 297
297 close to the number 297
let's sing it on that first verse now my everlasting portion more than friend or
life to me number 297 sing it on this first
version
all along
walk with me close to me close to me close to me
come for me
walk with me close to me close to me close to me close to me
only let me walk with me
lead me through the veil of shadows bear me your last dimple sea
then the gate of life eternal may i enter lord with thee
close to me close to me close to me
and the gate of life eternal may i answer lord with
you