(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Then Deuteronomy chapter 33, we're getting down to the very end of the book of Deuteronomy. So you have some of these things tagged on at the end that are not part of the main body of the book of Deuteronomy where Moses is preaching to the children of Israel and giving them the second giving of the law, the statutes and judgments that they're going to live by. You have this passage here where there's a blessing for the 12 tribes of Israel. What's interesting about this is that you have something really similar at the end of the book of Genesis because if you think about this is the second to last chapter in Deuteronomy. Well what's the second to last chapter of Genesis is Genesis chapter 49 and in Genesis chapter 49 you have Jacob on his death bed giving the final blessings for the 12 tribes and then here you have Moses about to die second to last chapter giving a blessing on the 12 tribes. And one thing that's interesting about that is that on one end of this because these are kind of like book ending a story here about the Israelites and what's interesting is that Genesis 49 is when they're basically just leaving the promised land because Abraham, Isaac and Jacob dwelt in the promised land but then if you remember Jacob as an old man goes down to Egypt with Joseph and that's where the children of Israel end up becoming a great nation in Egypt and then they've been in Egypt for 400 years. They've wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Now they're coming back into the promised land. At the end of Deuteronomy they're right on the cusp of coming in so it's interesting how one of these blessing passages is when they're leaving the promised land. One of them is when they're coming back. The other thing that's really interesting is that these passages are very different from one another. Genesis 49 and Deuteronomy 33 are extremely different. In fact the list of the 12 tribes is not even the same and Jacob's blessing has a lot of negative you know his blessing. You know some people get kind of a rough blessing and he has some negative things to say whereas this is just all very positive. This is definitely the much more difficult passage. You know Genesis 49 is pretty easy to understand. The blessings make sense with later events and everything. Deuteronomy 33 has a lot more just kind of obscure things and things that are difficult to understand so it's definitely the more challenging passage. What's interesting about the list of the 12 tribes is that it's always changing and the reason why the list of 12 tribes is always changing throughout the Bible is because you have a couple of issues going on. For one you have the issue of Joseph receiving a double portion. So because Joseph receives a double portion it ends up being two tribes Ephraim and Manasseh. Joseph's two sons are each a tribe. The tribe of Ephraim and the tribe of Manasseh. Well then that would make 13 tribes right? So there's an issue there because it's always the 12 tribes of Israel. We hear that over and over again, 12 tribes, 12 tribes and in lists like Genesis 49 or in Deuteronomy 33 or in Revelation chapter 7 even if we want to go all the way to the end of the Bible. Revelation chapter 7. You have these lists of 12 but they're not the same list. The other issue is that Levi sort of counts as a tribe sometimes and sort of doesn't count as a tribe other times because they don't inherit any land. And so they're spread out throughout the 12 tribes of Israel. So there's always kind of an odd man out in these lists. Well the odd man out in this list is Simeon. Simeon is missing. If you go to Revelation chapter 7 the odd man out is Dan. You know but it's like you got Dan here. You don't have Simeon. Simeon's in Revelation. What's going on? What is the deal? Why is it like that? And obviously we could speculate about the different reasons why different tribes are left out. You know I've got my theories and it's hard to know for sure but when it comes to Revelation chapter 7 with Dan being left out that's a passage about the 144,000 and so you have 12,000 from each tribe that have to meet some really specific criteria of being these godly men who are virgins and all these different things. And so in my opinion probably the reason that that shakes down the way it does is that there just probably weren't 12,000 men of the tribe of Dan available that would even fit that bill simply because Dan was the tribe that became the most idolatrous and the most apostate the earliest in its history. And of course the 144,000 in the book of Revelation those are people who are resurrected from the Old Testament tribes and so you know the tribe of Dan probably just didn't have a long enough godly enough history. But again that's just me speculating because it's hard to know these things for sure. As far as why Simeon is left out in this passage well here's the interesting thing about Simeon is that Simeon inherited land within the tribe of Judah so they did not get their own tribal allotment so they don't have their own separate region. It's sort of like if you look at a map of South Africa there's this other country within South Africa called Lesotho and it is surrounded by South Africa on all sides and if you look at maps of the 12 tribes you'll see that Simeon has an inheritance surrounded on all sides by Judah. They sort of get absorbed into the tribe of Judah if you will and so therefore they end up not really being that significant historically. And some of these tribes also in Deuteronomy 33 get way more attention than others. You know some of them just get like one sentence one verse others get big long sections right? And if you look at who really gets the most air time in Deuteronomy 33 it's the tribe of Levi which makes perfect sense because of course Moses is of the tribe of Levi that's the priestly tribe and so it makes sense to give a lot of time to Levi and then also a lot of time is given to Ephraim and Manasseh the sons of Joseph because of course that's the biggest tribe numerically as far as the northern kingdom is dominated by the tribe of Ephraim that's the fruitful tribe and so that's a big one. You'd expect Judah to be a big one too and Judah is a big one in Genesis 49 whereas here Judah just gets a really brief mention doesn't really get a lot of time. So there are a lot of mysteries and a lot of things that we could spend years or even a lifetime trying to figure out about these biblical passages but I'm just kind of giving you a little bit of an overview and then we'll try to glean as many good spiritual truths from this as possible but we're not going to be able to figure it all out tonight in this one sermon because there's just a lot going on in this passage but anyway starting out in chapter 33 verse 1 the Bible reads and this is the blessing where with Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death and he said the Lord came from Sinai and rose up from Seir unto them. He shined forth from Mount Paran and he came with ten thousands of saints from his right hand went a fiery law for them. So first of all what are these places that are being mentioned? Mount Seir and Paran are places to the east because Mount Seir is of course the habitation of Esau or Edom. This would be the modern day country of Jordan east of the Jordan River and so the idea of God coming from Mount Seir is something that you see a lot simply because God is seen as coming from the east. God enters into the temple from the east and so forth because of the fact that the east is the direction of the rising sun and the sun pictures the Lord Jesus Christ. You know the Bible even calls him in Malachi chapter 4 the sun of righteousness. The sun of righteousness will arise with healing in his wings and so forth so God is often associated with the east so he's coming from the east and he's shining forth from Mount Paran like the sun and then the Bible says from his right hand went a fiery law for them. Now what does this mean a fiery law? Well you can think about the fact that the Ten Commandments are literally graven in stone and written with the finger of God so maybe they were burned into the stone or something you know you could speculate about that. It could be considered a fiery law because God is a consuming fire and when the Bible warns people about disregarding God's laws, disrespecting God's laws that's when they're warned that you know God is a consuming fire and when the law was given of course Mount Sinai was as if it were on fire while the law was being given because of the presence of God that was there. So the fiery law probably has to do with the fact that you should take these laws really seriously because God's a consuming fire and he burns people up who disregard his law. Of course people who break God's laws ultimately end up burning in hell which is a fiery place but of course if we have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior then we are saved from that punishment of hell and we have been passed from death unto life and we will not come into condemnation. The punishment for breaking God's laws is hell but we that have believed on Jesus Christ we have a free pass into heaven, it's an absolutely free gift, salvation by grace through faith. And so out of his hand from his right hand went a fiery law for them, yea he loved the people verse 3, all his saints are in thy hand and they sat down at thy feet everyone shall receive of thy word. So notice that in the same breath he has a fiery law for them but then it also says that he loved the people and a lot of people today think that love means anything goes, no rules. Parents who love their children I guess just let them do whatever they want right? Parents who love their children have a fiery law for their children and sometimes their backside feels a little bit fiery when they break those laws of their parents and it's not because their parents don't love them it's because their parents do love them. The Bible says whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. You know whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth it says in Proverbs even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. And so we should not faint when we're rebuked of him and we should not despise the chastening of the Lord. And by the way you shouldn't despise the chastening of your parents either because it's mandated and commanded by God. But today it's like oh I love my children too much to discipline them, I love them too much to spank them. No the Bible says he that spareth his rod hateth his son but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes. And so the fiery law that comes forth from God at Mount Sinai does not contradict the love of God. Yes God is love but God also is a consuming fire. God also has laws that must be obeyed. And so this idea of love being anything goes is wrong. It's false. Love can still exist with rules and guidelines and boundaries. In fact it has to. There have to be rules and boundaries and so forth. And so in the same breath as saying the fiery law went for them he loved, yay, he loved the people. Notice the word yay. That word yay is connecting what we just had a moment ago with what comes after. Because he could have just said from his right hand went a fiery law for them and he loved the people. Right? Or just period, he loved the people. But no no it's yay, yeah, yeah he loved the people. Basically saying that this is almost a repetition of what he just said like hey here's evidence that he loved the people. He gave them his law. God's laws are a blessing. Letting God give you rules and guidelines by which to live your life is a blessing because without those rules and guidelines you would be living a stupid life. So God's law is good for us. He has given us these commandments for our profit that we might be partakers of his holiness. And so God commanded a fiery law, he loved the people, all his saints are in thy hand and then look at this phrase. And they sat down at thy feet everyone shall receive of thy words. Now when I read this I thought of Mary in the New Testament sitting at the feet of Jesus and learning from Jesus. Of course I'm not talking about the Virgin Mary. I'm talking about a different Mary that sat at Jesus' feet and listened to his words. If you remember Mary and Martha were sisters and Martha was really busy in the kitchen and she was upset that Mary was not helping her in the kitchen. And she goes to Jesus and says would you tell my sister to help me out and command her to help me because I'm having to do all the work myself. And she's just sitting here listening to you talk and yet Jesus said no Martha you're busy, you're cumbered with all this serving. But he says one thing is needful, Mary has chosen the better part and I'm paraphrasing but that's the gist of what he said. Mary has chosen the better part. By sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening she is doing the most important thing that we could be doing. And look obviously we should be doing work for God. Obviously we need to be serving God. We need to be out there doing stuff. But at the same time we don't want to neglect that important activity of sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to the word of God. Part of that is of course sitting in church and listening to the word of God being preached. But most of that typically takes place by yourself reading the Bible, sitting at the feet of Jesus. Doing a bunch of work and being busy and having a lot of activity isn't a substitute for listening to Jesus talk. And that's what Martha was wrong about when she tried to pull Mary away from sitting at the feet of Christ. It's interesting how this wording is so similar talking about receiving God's word and then it says they sat down at thy feet. Just as Mary sat down at the feet of Jesus. Because all of God's word is what we're talking about whether it's the law of Moses, whether it's the words of Christ, the whole Bible in general. We need to sit down and listen to the Bible. And don't tell me that you're too busy to read the Bible because you're not. You're not just busy 24 hours a day. You're not just wall to wall just gathering straw by night and making breaks by day. I guarantee you that if you would make it a priority you'd have the time to read the Bible. And you know what? To read the Bible cover to cover in one year takes about 15 to 20 minutes a day. It's like three, four chapters a day, close to four chapters a day, takes like 15 minutes, 20 minutes. And you know what? You say no Pastor Anderson you don't understand I really am that busy. You know I got two full time jobs and I'm dealing with this, I'm dealing with that. You know I'm a stay at home wife, stay at home mother and I got a bunch of little kids running around and I got all kinds of chaos going on. Let me tell you something. You've got to find a way to read your Bible and you know what? If you can't read it thank God for technology. Play the audio right? I mean what about men on your commute to work? Instead of listening to a bunch of brain dead talk radio you could actually just turn on the Bible and unless you live super close to your job you're going to get some serious Bible reading in. You know who here has a commute that lasts for more than 15 minutes each way? Put up your hand right? Who has a commute that lasts less than 15 minutes? So there's more people with a commute that's more than 15 minutes. I mean just listening to it for even just one of the directions and then on the weekend you're going to have to carve out that 15 minutes yourself. But hey if you did it both ways, if you just listened to it for a half hour you're going to do more than the Bible in a year. So it's not that we don't have time, it's that we just don't delight in the Word of God. We just don't love the Bible. We just don't want it. We just don't hunger for it or thirst for it. So it's like hey you're just reaching for everything else to play. Now look I'm not saying you have to play it in the car because you can also just pick up the physical book and read it. You know you can read it, you can listen to it and the technology makes it so easy. You've got your phone, you can play the audio from your phone. It's a piece of cake. There's really no excuse in 2024 why you can't be in your Bible going through your Bible cover to cover sitting at the feet of Jesus proverbially speaking. And so it says they sat down at thy feet everyone shall receive of thy words and of course it's interesting the switch of pronouns because it's like he loved the people, all his saints are in thy hand and they sat down at thy feet everyone shall receive of thy words. You know is this God the Father and Jesus Christ? Very likely when you see those kind of changes in pronouns but who knows. It's interesting. Moses commanded us to law even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob and he was king in Jeshurim. We talked about this word last week, Jeshurim is just another word for Israel when the heads of the people and the tribes of Israel were gathered together. So referring to Moses as king in Jeshurim although we wouldn't necessarily always literally kind of classify him as king it's probably here just kind of referring to the fact that he's in charge, he was ruling and so forth. Verse number six is where we actually start getting into the specific blessings. Let Reuben live and not die. By the way you wonder too which of this is the author talking and which one is Moses talking because at the beginning it says this is the blessing where with Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death and he said so then that's the words of Moses but then when we get to verse four it says Moses commanded us to law. This almost seems like the author of Deuteronomy is putting in a sentence there but we don't care because it's inspired scripture, we don't care whether it's being written by Moses or the later author of Deuteronomy whatever obviously you know somebody's got to write about Moses dying in chapter thirty-four so it says in verse six let Reuben live and not die and let not his men be few. Okay so this is our first specific blessing for a tribe and it's pretty short and not only that but even though it's not explicitly negative like in Genesis forty-nine where it's really negative just talking about how you know wicked Reuben was with what he did with Bilhah and so forth but even though it's not explicitly negative it is kind of negative because it's a blessing, it's positive but the implication here is that you know Reuben's in danger of dying and Reuben's in danger of being very few in number which is why we have to give him this blessing of like don't you go dying on me now. I mean it's technically positive, it's technically a blessing but at the same time it's a little bit prophetic about the fact that yeah this tribe is going to die. I mean look when you study scripture you know that Reuben is not a big important tribe and it eventually dies out in two thousand twenty-four I can assure you there are no Reubenites. The Reuben tribe is totally gone at this point okay and why because of their sins, because of their wickedness and so this is a little bit foreboding of that you know let Reuben live and not die, let not his men be few. Okay verse seven we get into the tribe of Judah. This is the blessing of Judah and he said, Hear Lord the voice of Judah and bring him unto his people. Let his hands be sufficient for him and be thou a help to him from his enemies. Now when we look at these blessings we could stop and think about you know what does it mean to be blessed by God? You know this is the blessing of Moses on the Israelites. Well you know based on verse six blessing means that you live and you don't die. You know when I say I want God to bless me, I want God to bless you, if you obey God you're going to be blessed by God. You want to know what that looks like? It looks like you not dying in your twenties or thirties or forties or something. Now obviously there are extenuating circumstances, there are exceptions but in general if you follow Christ, if you obey the Lord you're going to live a lot longer than if you don't. Right I mean the Bible talks about God giving you length of days, blessing you, for example if you honor your father and mother, he says honor thy father and mother which is the first commandment with promise that it may be well with thee and that thou mayest live long on the earth whereas wicked people shall not live out half their days. And how many times do we hear about the wicked whores and whoremongers of Hollywood and the musical stars that everybody is so into and their lives just are cut so short, they just die so young, these kind of just really worldly sinful popular people, they just don't end up living long in many cases. In general there are exceptions of course, there could be some wicked you know Keith Richards or whatever that's like 150 years old or whatever but like there could be these exceptions of people that live to be really old and then there could be exceptions of good godly people who their life is cut short but in general you want to live a long time? You know hey I'm glad that you're doing cardio and eating vitamins and everything but the best thing that you could do to live a long time is to honor the Lord and honor your father and mother and of course those two things go hand in hand. And so what does the blessing of God look like? Living and not dying. Also it says let not his men be few, you know what does the blessing of God look like? It's about being fruitful and multiplying, you know God blessed Adam and Eve and said be fruitful and multiply, God blessed Noah and said be fruitful and multiply, you know God blessed Jacob and said be fruitful and multiply and so God blessed Abraham saying surely blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply you. And so having children is a blessing, even just literal multiplication, having children is a blessing from God, the church growing is a blessing from God right? Growth in the church, growth in your family, you know it's great to have a lot of people. You know having few people is not ideal, we want to have a lot of people, you know we don't want to have a tiny church, I don't want to have a tiny family, you know. Now look obviously there are small churches out there that are good churches, I get it, there are godly people who have few children but you know what we need to get a biblical viewpoint toward these things and look at having a large family as a blessing the way that the Bible looks at it. You know the world out there of course is going to promote for you to use birth control and to do all these things to prevent having children but you know we should have children because God has said happy is the man that have this quiver full of them. Children are inherited to the Lord, the fruit of the womb is his reward and so multiplying and even physically having children, reproducing is a blessing and you know what the thing that was a bummer about the old IFB is that there was almost like a missing generation in the old IFB because of people just not having kids, people just having so few children. So then it's just like there weren't really a lot of young people in many cases or because everybody's having 2.5 kids. I mean think about if the old IFB would have been having 8 children, 9 children, 10 children on average which is basically how many children people have in a society that doesn't practice birth control. They end up having like 8 or 9 children on average. You know think about how the youth group would have looked totally different. You know there would have been more kids, more teenagers, more young people growing up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. You know meanwhile the Muslims are reproducing, meanwhile the Mormons are reproducing and then we're over here fundamental Baptist right and we're having 2.5 children. When did that start? Who did that? Who is responsible? Who's responsible for this? Well having a lot of children is hard. Well I wouldn't want you to do anything hard. Of course it's hard. I'm glad that our church is having a lot of children as a church and that basically people all over America are listening to my sermons are having a lot of children. Our friends, our pastor friends and church friends that are waking up to this and having a lot of children. You know I thank God for that. Living and not dying. Not having your men be few. And then how about being helped against your enemies. Basically you know that's the blessing for Judah is that his hands would be sufficient for him and that God would be a help to him from his enemies. Of course we want God to avenge us of our adversaries. We want God to protect us from our enemies and all the people that want to harm us and do us ill. All right let's move on. So that's Reuben and Judah and again you know it's surprising how Judah gets so little mention here when he's such a star over in Genesis chapter 49. I mean there's a lot to unpack you know you could talk about this stuff for hours and you're not necessarily going to get to the bottom of it because there are some mysterious things about this chapter. But anyway speaking of mysterious things that we don't understand let's talk about the Urim and the Thummim now whatever that is. Verse 8 and of Levi he said let thy Thummim and thy Urim be with thy holy one whom thou didst prove at Massah and with whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah. So what is this? No one really knows and this is why these words are just transliterated from the Hebrew right? Because when you're translating from one language to another you know you basically bring it into the new language with a word that means the same thing. Like oh well this in Hebrew it means this in English. But sometimes you don't really know what that word means or there just isn't an English equivalent so what you end up doing is just transliterating which is where you just take the Hebrew word and you don't even translate it you just spell it out in English letters and that's what they've done here. Sort of like gopher wood maybe you're trying to figure out what gopher wood is. Well the answer is nobody knows what gopher wood is that's not really an English word what it is is that that's just the Hebrew word and they just spelled it with English letters. It's not the animal that's a gopher that's something different. So the idea here is that when we don't necessarily know what something is like you're reading Psalms and it's like Higeon, Selah and you're just like what? What is that? Sometimes it's because we just don't know what it is the KJV translators didn't know what it is nobody knows what it is nobody's quite sure so they just leave it in the original language. Other times things are transliterated in the Bible just because maybe we know what it is but there's just not a great equivalent in English so we'd rather just kind of teach people the new word and then they can kind of you know get the full force of the original you know something like anathema or something right? You know where yeah we know what anathema means but you know let them be anathema is just you know you're just choosing to keep it in the original language just to get the full force or the full implication of what that means. You know or things like you know cherubims and seraphims again directly you know just brought over from Hebrew because they're kind of a special thing and there's not really a separate English word for that. So what are these things? Nobody really knows for sure they're barely mentioned in the Bible but it's something that was embedded in the breastplate of Aaron's priestly garb. You know the high priest outfit had these embedded. It had something to do with God communicating with them you know through the Urim and the Thummim and again we don't know what it means. These are plural words because the I am ending is plural like when the Bible talks about the children of Israel worshipping Baalim. It's saying that they worshiped Baals, plural, different Baals. You know you got Baal Zebub and Baal Ekron and this Baal and that Baal. All these different Baals that they worshiped. So it's Baalim with the plural. And so here's the same thing. What are these things? They're plural. We don't know what they are. There's very little information to go on. But he said of Levi, let thy Thummim and thy Urim be with thy holy one whom thou didst prove at Massah. Of course thy holy one would be referring to God in heaven whom they proved in Massah because remember Hebrews chapter 3 says that they tempted God and proved him and saw his works forty years in the wilderness. So they tempted God. They proved God at Massah and they strove with him at the waters of Meribah. And here's a verse that wow what in the world does this mean? Who said unto his father and to his mother I have not seen him? Neither did he acknowledge his brethren nor knew his own children for they have observed thy word and kept thy covenant. That's a very difficult obscure verse. Now I'll tell you what it's probably referring to is somehow it's probably a reference to Exodus chapter 32 when Moses comes down from the mount and he's got the Ten Commandments and he's angry with them because they're partying and they're getting naked and Aaron has led them to make the golden calf and so forth and so when he comes down and he ends up breaking the tablets and everything he says who is on the Lord's side? The Levites come over to his side and he says that they basically need to be willing to slay every man his brother and whoever is guilty needs to get smoked and it doesn't matter how you're related to them. It doesn't matter who they are. They need to be destroyed and they end up killing people. That's probably what this is referring to because of the idea of he didn't acknowledge his brethren in order to observe God's word and keep God's covenant. That part makes sense. The part that's kind of enigmatic is that he said to his father and mother I've not seen him. I have no clue what that means so let's just move on to the next verse and here's the thing. I'm not afraid to get up here and say I don't know what that means and it shouldn't really bother you if you're reading your Bible and sometimes you come to something that's tricky or difficult and that you don't know what it means. You may never know what it means. Now there are lots of things that when I was reading my Bible as a kid I didn't understand and now they seem super simple to me and I was like oh of course I know what that means but there are other things that were really puzzling and I didn't understand them as a child and I still don't understand them and I would not be at all surprised if I go to my grave not understanding them because there are just some hard things in the Bible and there are some things that are extremely difficult to understand, maybe even impossible to understand. There may be some things that we will never understand until we get to heaven. So I don't even necessarily think it's possible to figure out the answer to every puzzle that we find in scripture. But here's why that doesn't bother me because I know that God is the one who wrote the Bible ultimately. Obviously it has human authors but it also has the divine author and so God is ultimately the author of the Bible and has shaped it and crafted it in the way that he wants it so that we would have what we need. And according to God the Bible that we have allows us to be thoroughly furnished unto all good works and that we have everything we need and so God obviously knows which parts are super hard or even impossible to understand and he knows which parts are easy to understand and he's given us the Bible that we need. And so therefore here's what our job is. The part that you understand, believe it, do it and then you'll be fine. The part that you don't understand, believe it anyway and move on. Because at the end of the day if I don't understand something that doesn't bother me because there's so much that I do understand. So if I have this whole book with just tons of stuff that I understand I have enough to say grace over, I have enough to put into practice, I have enough to guide my life that I'm willing to just blow past things that I don't understand. And by the way here's my advice to you when you're reading the Bible and you come to something that you don't understand, blow past it. Now at first you might think, Pastor Anderson that's horrible advice, you know, just telling people to just gloss things over and blow past stuff and now we need everything we've got to know. But here's the thing about that is that, you know what, you're too young in the faith. You're not there yet many times. And later it's all going to make sense. You know what it's like? It's like when you go to take a test. Everybody who's good at taking tests knows that when you take a test if you come to a problem that you don't understand you skip it. Oh I've got to get this. Otherwise you're going to burn up all your time on that problem and then you're not even getting to the easy stuff. And not only that, sometimes the answer to that problem is literally embedded in a later question. Or something later in the test will remind you of the answer to that earlier question. So the right way to take a test, okay, maybe this will help you that are going through school if you didn't already know this, the right way to take a test is first you do an initial pass and you do all the easy stuff. And everything that you know right off the top of your head, easy stuff, especially if you're taking like an open book test. Like I remember when I was running my fire alarm business, fire alarm business, a lot of people hear that as a firearm business, they thought I was like an arms dealer or something. No, no. Fire alarm business, I had to take a bunch of contractors license tests and they were often open book but open book sometimes was like 20 books. I literally took a test where I had like a stack of books this high on the desk with me. So, you know, it's kind of hard to look things up when there's that much material. And so it was for Georgia, the Georgia low voltage. If you want to do fire alarms you had to know about radio antennas, TVs, it was all this stuff that I didn't have anything to do with but I had to have books for all of it and take the test. And so that was the big stack, Georgia low voltage. But the point is that like, you know, first you just answer everything that you know off the top of your head, then you go back and start looking things up and doing the hard question. So you do easy first, then medium, the hard stuff, hey, you might not even get to it. But guess what? You can still pass the test. You don't need to get 100 to pass the test. You don't even need 100 to get an A. Well, you know what? You can get an A in the Christian life without understanding everything even if you skip a few questions. But here's what people do. They start reading the Bible and I can't even count how many times I've tried to admonish people read the Bible that had not read the Bible and that knew very little about the Bible. I'd get them started on the New Testament or maybe they'd be wanting to start in Genesis, okay? You know, start in Genesis. And it was like they just would make no progress because they would just get bogged down on something. So they just get a few pages in and they're like, well, I just had so many questions. And then what do they do? They go to Google and then they fall down some rabbit hole. Next thing they know, it's 3 in the morning. They're watching ancient aliens or something, you know, and they're watching, they're listening to some guy tell them about the Nephilim and whatever at 3 in the morning. It's like you're not going to make progress that way. You know, it's better to just read the Bible cover to cover before you get too, you know, before you start looking at it with a microscope, why don't you just kind of get the big picture? You know, so you can see the forest for the trees. I mean, you go to these liberal churches, when they have a Bible study, they'll spend two hours on one verse, literally. I've never been to a Bible study at a liberal church where they went through like a half a chapter or a whole chapter. No, no way. No, you're in, you're lucky to get through two verses because there's so much navel gazing and just so much just blah, blah, blah, and they get so bogged down and it's like, and then they're not getting any context. Read the whole Bible to get the context. And you know, there's so many doctrinal arguments out there, right? You know, this group says this, these people say this. You know what though? Reading the whole Bible tells you who's right because you know what, it's like we have our proof texts for salvation by faith and then somebody else will pull out some verse that makes it sound like it's by works, like they'll go to James 2 or something to pull that out. And here's the thing about that though, is that if you actually read the whole Bible though, you would see the overwhelming amount of proof that salvation is by faith alone. And then you'll take that into James 2 and you'll be able to interpret it properly. As opposed to just listening to a YouTube video that's going to selectively give you the evidence and then another video is going to selectively give you evidence. These people are going to selectively give you evidence. No, no, read the whole book and you will see that the New Testament is overwhelmingly teaching you that salvation is by faith and then you walk away saying, okay, yeah, that's what it is. Now I can approach these individual texts and yeah, maybe I can begin to start dissecting something or looking at it with a microscope. I love what my pastor in Sacramento used to say. He said, before you even think about studying the Bible, just read the Bible five times cover to cover before you study the Bible. Everybody wants to study the Bible. They haven't even read the thing but they want to study it. You know what, I like just reading the Bible. You know what, I've read it more than five times and I still just like just reading it. I remember when I first finished my fifth time and I was like, because I was thinking like I'm going to read five times and then according to the pastor, I'm ready to start studying the Bible. So I'm like, this is going to be great. I finished the fifth time and this is what I said the day that I finished my fifth reading. I said, five is not enough. I'm reading it five more times before I start studying the Bible and I'm still just reading it. Someday I'm going to start studying it. I have studied the Bible, I promise. But the point is that, you know, everybody's so into Bible study, we need more Bible reading. And by the way, I didn't say read about the Bible. I said read the Bible. A lot of people are reading a lot of books about the Bible, websites about the Bible, blogs about it. Read the Bible itself. And so when you come to something like this, you know, Deuteronomy 33, 9, tough verse. You know what, there's a lot in this chapter right on the surface that you will understand. Blow past it and catch it on the next pass, right? Are you only reading the Bible one time and it's going to self-destruct? No. Once you're done reading the Bible the first time, you're going to read it the second time. Catch it on the second time. Catch it on the third time. You need quantity of Bible reading, my friend. Okay. One verse a day is not going to cut it and then you're just going to meditate on that verse all day. You're not going to get through the whole thing. You're not going to get the context. Read the full Bible cover to cover. And when you come to things you don't understand, don't grab your computer and just fall down the rabbit hole. Just say, oh well, maybe I'll figure this out later, right? Come back to it. Put a star next to it for the next read through and just keep going. It's the best advice, I think, for reading your Bible is don't get bogged down. And so it says in verse number 10, they, speaking of the Levites, shall teach Jacob thy judgments and Israel thy law. They shall put incense before thee and whole burnt sacrifice upon thine altar. Anybody know the other word for a whole burnt sacrifice? The Holocaust. Yeah. That's what it means. A lot of people don't realize the word holo-cost, holo is whole. You can see how those are related. Cost is burnt. Think about someone who's very caustic. You know, the words that they're using are burning words, acidic words, right? And so Holocaust means the whole burnt offering. I learned that for the first time as a teenager when I was reading Genesis in Spanish for the first time. And Noah gets off the ark and just initiates a Holocaust. You know, an holo-costo happens right after he gets off the ark, but it's because he's offering up a burnt offering to God. You know, the Jews love to talk about the Holocaust, don't they? You want to know about a whole burnt offering of the Jews? Every single Jew who doesn't receive Christ as Savior is going to get burnt up in hell when they die. You know, it's so funny. People talk so much about the Holocaust. Never forget the Holocaust. Never forget that all Jews are going to burn in hell without the Lord Jesus Christ. Never forget the Holocaust that's coming in the future. That's what we ought to be thinking about. And this is why we need to give Jews the Gospel. And don't say that we hate Jews. We love Jews and want them to be saved. We want to give them the Gospel. But let me tell you something. No Jew is getting into heaven without Jesus Christ because no man, Jesus said, no man. He didn't say no Gentile man. He said no man cometh unto the Father but by me. And so that's a whole burnt offering for you. The Holocaust is real, amen? It's not the one you're thinking of. Okay, sorry. I didn't mean to say that. That was a terrible thing to say. Verse 11. Sorry not sorry. Bless Lord his substance and accept the work of his hands. Smite through the loins of them that rise against him and of them that hate him that they rise not against. So again the idea of defeating his enemies is a blessing from God. The Levites are going to be the ones who teach Israel the law. They're going to teach and preach God's Word in addition to actually carrying out the burnt sacrifices, burning of incense, etc. Verse number 12 it says, and of Benjamin he said, the beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him and the Lord shall cover him all the day long and he shall dwell between his shoulders. And you know safety is something that we take for granted in the United States of America just because we live in one of the safest places in the world. I mean I'm going to go to bed tonight and I'm not going to be worried about people breaking in. I'm not going to be on my knees tonight like oh God please protect me. Please keep us safe. You know because we just take it for granted. And what a blessing it is to be safe. You know to live in America, to live in a peaceful place, to not worry about getting bombed in the middle of the night and to not worry about just roving bands of marauders coming in and destroying. It's really a blessing. You know we have a lot to be thankful for. And while we're whining about our first world problems, you know we should just be thankful that we have a nice climate controlled comfortable safe place to sleep tonight. And food in the pantry, we have it pretty good. It's a blessing. You know and these blessings keep bringing up things like safety and security because to people in the ancient world I mean this is a big deal and even today in our world this is a big deal in other places than the United States. And so being safe is important. And it's something that we just take for granted because it's so safe. And obviously yeah you know you say well Pastor Anderson you don't know the neighborhood that I live in because I am going to be you know praying that prayer tonight on my knees you know begging God. But here's the thing like even a dangerous neighborhood in Phoenix there are just a lot worse places out there. Other parts of America and even the dangerous parts of America there are some much gnarlier places in this world trust me. The dark places of this world are full of the habitations of cruelty. So the Bible says in verse 13 we're not we're not going to get to the end of the chapter so don't don't do the math and panic that I'm taking too long. Don't extrapolate. I might build in the end of chapter 33 into chapter 34 because chapter 34 is kind of short. So it says verse 13 and of Joseph he said blessed of the Lord be his land for the precious things of heaven for the dew and for the deep that coucheth beneath and for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun and for the precious things put forth by the moon and for the chief things of the ancient mountains and for the precious things of the lasting hills and for the precious things of the earth and fullness thereof and for the goodwill of him that dwelt in the bush let the blessing come upon the head of Joseph and upon the top of the head of him that was separated from his brethren. His glory is like the first sling of his bullock and his horns are like the horns of unicorns. With them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth. They are the ten thousands of Ephraim and they are the thousands of Manasseh. And so here the blessing is characterized as good food right the produce of the land the fruits and vegetables being produced by the land those products of the farming and so forth and again that's a huge blessing that we take for granted in America just all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables that are available and you know they may be a little bit expensive sometimes but you know what there are always cheap options there are there are those bits of produce that are on sale you know you can always buy a head of cabbage for a reasonable price but again you know people throughout history by modern standards I would say most people throughout history have been malnourished by our standards you know because I mean we're just we're hitting all those RSDA allowances or whatever we're hitting that stuff all the time throughout the ancient world it's like if you think about it they can only eat fruits and vegetables that are in season and they're not flying them in from another country and if they have a bad crop well then they just don't have that food item and so we are very blessed again in America to have just all kinds of great produce and food. Verse 18 of Zebulun he said rejoice Zebulun in thy goings out and Izzakar in thy tents. Izzakar and Zebulun often get lumped together of course they're brothers but they're also next to each other geographically they shall call the people under the mountain there they shall offer sacrifices of righteousness for they shall suck of the abundance of the seas and of treasures hid in the sand because they are located by the seaside those two places ultimately that's where they're going to inherit and it says of Gad he said blessed is he that enlargeth Gad he dwelleth as a lion and tereth the arm with the crown of the head. Now this is kind of surprising because again Gad is not really a major tribe an important tribe a tribe that we think a lot about it's not that big of a deal in Genesis 49 but here he gets a pretty cool blessing because you know he's this lion tearing the arm with the crown of the head and he provided the first part for himself because there in a portion of the law giver was he seated why you know we don't really think of Gad as being the law giver you know when we're in Genesis 49 and Judah is the law giver that makes a lot of sense. Now if you look over here in Deuteronomy 33 Gad is the law giver this is a little bit more puzzling this is a little more enigmatic again you know it would take a lot longer than an hour to flesh out these kind of issues and we may never get a satisfactory answer because some things in the Bible are difficult to understand but this is part of why the Bible can actually stay with you for a lifetime no matter how smart you are so even if you're super smart and you're super studious and you just really delve into this stuff and dig into this stuff you're never going to run out of puzzles to solve you're never going to weep because there are no more worlds to conquer because there's just a lot to learn there's just a lot going on a lot to study and so this is kind of and I'm sure I'll get emails about all these things solving them in the next 24 hours you know which is great you know some of them will probably have more merit than others but you know I'm sure a lot of people understand things that I don't understand because these are just tough things and there's just a lot of difficult things in this passage he provided the first part for himself because there in a portion of the law giver was he seated and he came with the heads of the people and he executed the justice of the Lord and his judgments with Israel you know again a little bit puzzling why Gad gets so much air time there and of Dan he said Dan is a lion's whelp he shall leap from Bashan that's it for Dan folks of Naphtali he said oh Naphtali satisfied with favor and full with the blessing of the Lord possessed out the west and the south so it's just you know giving them some land and saying hey you're satisfied with favor you're full with the blessing of the Lord and by the way you know are we satisfied with God's favor are we full with the blessing of the Lord or do we feel like well what God gives us isn't enough we need to go out and see what this world's trash can has to offer we should be satisfied with what God provides for us and then we might as well finish the last tribe I'm not going to do the last several verses I told you I'm going to build those in with chapter 34 but just the last individual tribe blessing Asher and of Asher he said let Asher be blessed with children there we go again folks so it's kind of interesting again bookending this the first tribe that was blessed is Reuben let his men not be few and then we get to the final here and it's let Asher be blessed with children let him be acceptable to his brethren let him dip his foot in oil thy shoes shall be iron and brass and as thy days so shall thy strength be and so a lot of interesting things going on in this passage it's hard to obviously get through all of this and talk about all of it but honestly even if we had more time there are some of these things we would not be able to solve or at least I wouldn't be able to solve because there are some difficult things in this passage but what we can take away from this is that God blesses those who follow him that love him that serve him God gave us a fiery law and God does chasten and chastise us when we get out of line and live a sinful life but God did that because he loves us and blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord you know when our God is the Lord and we've got his commandments and his laws guiding us through our life that is part of how he shows us that he loves us by giving us sensible rules and good laws to live by if we follow those things if we meditate on them day and night if we sit at Christ's feet and listen to his word we are going to be blessed and look frankly we're just going to live longer in general than the people who don't we're going to be more productive we're going to multiply spiritually we may even multiply physically God's going to cause us to be fruitful in soul winning and also just physically fruitful having children what is the blessing of God look like well it's living long it's it being well with us and our days being long on the earth it is us being multiplied it is us being safe from our enemies it's also God just you know punishing and wiping out our enemies that's nice sometimes too it's about us being safe secure having good food to eat right and you know ultimately being satisfied with the blessings of God and being happy because you know what a lot of stuff we complain about it's just because we're so spoiled rotten living in a Christian nation 2024 America and you know what arguably America is probably the greatest most prosperous nation that's ever existed in the history of mankind you know and I mean you know you could say that I'm wrong about that maybe I'm wrong about that but honestly it probably is the most successful nation in the history of mankind okay I think that it would be pretty easy to make that case you know and ultimately it's because historically we've been a Christian nation we have more evangelical Christian people in America and we've even evangelized the whole world you know with American missionaries over the last few hundred years and so we're super blessed we have so many things that we take for granted that other people wish they could have and it's the blessing of God and if we want to keep it if we want God to keep blessing America then we need to be righteous we need to ourselves in our personal lives be righteous we need to win people to Christ we need to preach righteousness and try to get our fellow Christians also to clean up their act and live a godly life because we want God to keep blessing America and at the end of the day we should just be thankful every day you know like I said I'm not going to be getting on my knees tonight begging for God to keep me safe or protect me but you know what I'm going to do I'm going to get on my knees and thank God for the safety and protection that I already have just by virtue of living in America and so we ought to be super thankful for that even if we're not running scared we should still keep that in our mind and think about how good we have it and be thankful every day and when you're tempted to complain and whine about your life just think about how the stuff in Deuteronomy 33 that's a big time blessing you've got it oh man it's such you know these kids I've got so many kids running around it's like well number one that's a blessing number two the cupboards are full of food number three you're not worried about roving bands and marauders coming in tonight number four you're a saved Christian you're going to heaven you have the entire bible in your language at your fingertips on your smartphone and on the shelf so cheer up let's borrow this enough word of prayer father we thank you so much for your word thank you for this chapter Lord and there are some difficult things that I don't understand that many people don't understand fully but Lord God thank you for the wonderful things in this chapter that we do understand help us as we read your word to focus on that which we do understand so that we can be doers of the word and not hearers only and in Jesus name we pray amen.