Israelites

The first reading is from the first book of Kings, beginning at chapter 11, verse 1.

King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the Israelites, You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for they will surely incline your heart to follow their gods.

Solomon clung to these in love.

Among his wives were seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned away his heart.

With this God-given peace of mind and Sam's practical tip, she went to work and completed the task in time.

As she did so, Elise recalled the Israelites' mammoth task of rebuilding their city wall.

As if it wasn't difficult enough, enemies mocked them and conspired to sabotage their work.

But Nehemiah encouraged them to keep looking to God.

And therefore, we need the Mishnah to come teach us that that's not so.

From the moment that the Israelite separates the Seh, and says this Seh will be a redemption for the firstborn donkey, it already is in the possession of the Kohen, even if it's not in the physical possession of the Kohen, the Kohen already has has ownership over it, and therefore if it dies, the Kohen can benefit from it.

Baruch atonai le'olam.

Amen ve'amen.

That when they came to Ireland, when they came to Scotland, there were already lots of Christians there.

There were people, and they had the actual Israelite Hebrew calendar that they were following.

The Celts were following the Hebrew lunar calendar when they...

when these missionaries arrived like St. Patrick and like St. Columba.

And, you know, they had Druids and they had pigs and they had a pagan priestly class.

But even much of that religion, there was a lot of continuity between the ancient Hebrew Israelite faith.

So this is very, very interesting.

So genetically, European people or Aryan people are the descendants of Jacob.

Azazel is not receiving a sacrifice.

This is not to say that the ancient Israelites were sacrificing intentionally in a form of kind of worship to this demonic spiritual being named Azazel.

It's not.

That's important.

Yeah.

And it was just fascinating.

And all the way throughout it, secular historian, you find this little civilization, little group of people called the Israelites that keep popping up.

But it begs the question, how do you have this kind of competition, this war between Persia and Rome for this long, you know? And Daniel 8 in Cosmic Geography lets us know that there are dark powers behind geopolitical entities, and they are also narcissistic in nature.

So, in chapters three and four, there's a theme that privilege brings responsibility and sin brings consequences.

Amos starts chapter three with an emphasis on the special privilege the Israelites had by being the only people chosen by God to walk with him, and the extra accountability that comes with that, much like the privilege that we all have by being called into God's kingdom, and the extra responsibility we have in being good witnesses and good examples to others.

We may not be prophets, but we do have His Spirit in us, and we have many insights and experiences with Him, and understanding of His Word that we can share with others.

That's our responsibility.

And I think the corresponding verses there would be 16 through 39.

And there's also another parallel in 1 Kings 8, verses 33 and 39.

It seems that the Israelites kept ignoring many repeated warnings time and time again.

So let's look at

It's the ministry of death.

came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at the face of Moses because of its fleeting glory, will not the ministry of the Spirit or the new covenant, the ministry of life that Christ is inaugurating at the time, be even more glorious? For if the ministry of condemnation, again, the old covenant with all of the law in place, was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry of righteousness?" Indeed, what was once glorious has no glory now in comparison to the glory that surpasses it.

For if what was fading away came with glory, and he's talking like the writer of Hebrews is, that old covenant's fading away.

It's fixing to be gone.

How much greater is the glory of that which endures? And he goes on and he says, and I think this is key, and maybe this can be part of the conversation this morning.

Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.

We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at the end of what was fading away.

But their minds were closed, for to this day, the same veil remains at the reading of the Old Covenant." It has not been lifted because only in Christ can it be removed.

They're just kind of on these concentric circles and they just come up time and time again.

And it's good for us to be able to navigate these ancient heresies so that when they show up now we can know how to address them but i think the way that it has expressed itself presently is as many of us probably have seen the trend towards anti-semitism that is popping up all over the board whether on the right or the left or whoever there's this kind of aversion to jewish things and therefore this inherent sometimes aversion to the jewishness of the scriptures and most fully the jewishness of jesus but when you can kind of revive this marcionism and detach the New Testament scriptures from the Old Testament scriptures with the God of Israel and the Israelites, it's not only an issue of your misunderstanding God, which is absolutely true, of course, but it also becomes, practically speaking, pretty dangerous because it makes it easier to dismiss the people that God had revealed himself to, which is Israel and the Jewish people.

I was listening to an interview recently and it reminded me actually of a conversation I had the first time I kind of recognized this thought process was from an individual that had recently come out of prison.

And he had embraced ancient, ancient Scandinavian