Disciple Bible Study, 10-16-19, Jeremiah Part I

Um, I'm gonna tell start out by telling you a couple of things that um the book doesn't tell you that I think is really important.

Um almost any biblical scholar you read is going to tell you the book is rather scattered.

It's as if there were pages of a manuscript and someone was walking down the stairs and they dropped them and then they just shuffled them up together because the sequence of events is not linear.

There's times the prophet talks about Assyria and then Babylon and then exile, and those are and then back to Assyria again.

So just as a reminder, the Neo-Assyrian Empire was the first Mesopotamian sort of empire superpower, but then they were replaced by the Babylonian the Neo-Babylonian Empire under King Nebuchadnezzar.

Then there was one, two, three exiles, and then later a return into the Persians.

So in Jeremiah, you can read Assyria, Babylon, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and it's sort of all over the place.

So we're a little bit not sure how it is that the order didn't get quite figured out, if that makes sense.

So if you if you found it going back and forth, it does, and most biblical scholars are scratching their heads on that.

There's another thing that's important to hear, and and I don't usually disagree point blank with the scholarship that they present to you, but I'm going to.

If Jeremiah is a priest, if he's a priest, at best he's a Levite at a at a very local level, like he operates at a shrine, not at a temple, because Jeremiah is illiterate.

If Jeremiah were literate, if he were of the higher caste, he would have been taken into exile.

And Jeremiah himself tells us he doesn't write the word down.

His scribe Baruch does.

Now, how it is that Baruch is not taken by the Babylonians who do the brain drain, uh, we don't know.

He might have kept his own literacy a secret, but it is important that you know that Jeremiah uh is not considered among the best and the brightest, which means he's not in the highest caste like Isaiah would have been.

So the the scholarship in the book tells you he's a priest.

Idk about that.

I mean, he's clearly got some religious inclinations.

He could have been a Levite, but remember, Levites are mostly butchers, not scribes or or jurists, if that makes sense.

Um I'm gonna tell you one other thing that I think is really, really helpful to hear, and then let's let's start to come into our own reflections, if that's okay.

But I wanted us to start out um with a couple of thoughts here.

Um if you have encountered the Hebrew Bible before and you read from Genesis on as we're presented, the first five books are called the Pentateuch or the Torah, and if you're Jewish, they're they have more authority than any other book.

So Christian folk like to say all books are created equal, we don't practice that way, because we privilege certain books above others, usually depending on what it is they say that we like.

So, in general, a Christian person would tell you the Gospel of Matthew is more important than the book of Leviticus.

If you're Jewish, on the other hand, the book of Leviticus is more important than all the Psalms put together.

Um just told you is that if you read the Torah, God is very clear to Moses on top of either Mount Sinai if you're reading Exodus or Mount Horeb if you're reading Deuteronomy, presumably they're the same mountain, but they have different names.

God's very clear that there is not to be a house for God to live in.

There is not to be one of those.

So much so that God travels in a tent to remind people that God is everywhere all the time and not in one centralized location.

And if you build an altar, you can't use mortar and you can't chisel any bricks because it'll last.

Altars are supposed to fall down so that nobody returns to the same place over and over and over again.

Now, this isn't the most authoritative part of the Bible.

In the second most authoritative part, Solomon gets permission from God, although if you read it carefully, he doesn't, to build a temple.

And this is what happens, they build this temple.

And we have in our minds that it's like this glorious building, although I'll tell you again, it's smaller than the sanctuary.

And if you read carefully, you don't even have to read very carefully, the palace in which Solomon lives is at least twice as big as the house in which God lives, and they're connected.

So who's more important?

Solomon.

Clearly, and the monarch is the one who has a handle on religion.

When we read the prophets, like Jeremiah, there's a lot of criticism about the temple and temple practices and how it is that there's fundamental unjustice, injustice being performed in the existence of the temple itself.

And I want you to consider this very carefully.

It's sort of like the head of the state being the head of the church.

That could go really well, and it could go very poorly.

And apparently it's not going so well.

So consider when we've read Kings and Chronicles why it's so important to can to hear about the piety of the king, because the the king lives in the temple.

In twice the size house.

And so there's there's all of this has been dead.

Now, sometimes we've heard the story, well, sure, God lives in the temple and God wanted the temple, but but I caution you against that conclusion.

That's what I wanted to say up front.

Now I have one housekeeping announcement, which is that next Wednesday, I will have to be at clergy conference at Camp Allen.

The bishop has invited me.

Which is sort of like when a federal marshal invites you to court, you do want to accept that invitation.

Um I'm very happy to go.

So we'll meet next Thursday, not Wednesday.

I don't want to take a week off because I want us to keep going.

If you can't make it Thursday, that's okay.

I will be happy to record it so that you can put yourself to sleep.

Um next Thursday we'll be reading the the rest of Jeremiah, but reminder to you, it's not a linear book.

So we'll be doing some reduplication.

Is that okay?

I know that's controversial, but I don't want us to miss a week yet.

There's a couple weeks we'll have to miss, but this one will not.

So next Thursday, and I'll put that in the e-news as well.

Okay, now you'd like to hear me just give a monologue, but we're here to have dialogue.

So maybe there were particular themes or verses that struck you.

I will tell you, Jeremiah presents to us some words that we get to hear over and over in the gospel or in hymns.

Is there no bomb in Gilead?

The answer in the hymn is there is a bomb in Gilead, right?

Okay, anyway.

Um did you have reactions to Jeremiah either in general or specific or questions or comments for us?

Yes, sir.

I had a philosophical question.

Please.

Um in the beginning, the first two verses and the first four lines.

Yes.

In the rest of Jeremiah.

It sounds like it's the opposite.

Uh existence and then essence.

Am I correct in that?

Yeah, there seems to be uh this is an interesting thing, right?

Um it seems to be ambiguity because maybe it doesn't have to be either or.

It it can be both and.

This is not helpful in our linear minds, right?

But um since God must be greater than linearity, then perhaps it can be both.

Now I will tell you though, this is a really interesting thing that you've mentioned, and I'm sure nobody wants to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway.

This is a uh this first verse, I knew you before you were born, is arguably one of the um strongest arrows in the quiver of pro-life folk.

So if God knows babies before they're born, how is it then that we can quote unquote arbitrarily make decisions about that?

You may not be interested in having this discussion, so I'm not gonna force it on you, but I will raise to you that that particular verse, along with Psalm 139, which says, Before I was formed you knew me just as well, um these are sort of the mega arrows in the quiver of the of the religious fundamentalist pro life.

That while there is this thought from Jeremiah that that God knows him before he was born, Jeremiah says himself, I wish I were never born.

I mean, this is really important.

So it's not a unilateral how beautiful and wonderful.

And we find this also in Job.

Job says, Why do you care about human beings?

Give us a break.

So it's it it's interesting that the book itself has tension between being known by God and, as we heard, being seduced by God in a way that is not life-giving for Jeremiah.

But again, the the I I hope you don't hear me saying this with any kind of conclusion.

If we just take, oh, how what a beautiful idea.

Jeremiah must be so happy that God knew him before he was born, we have failed to read the rest of the book.

In which Jeremiah basically says, I wish you knew me differently.

Oh, I wish you'd thought about somebody else other than me, because I'm not real happy with with what you've asked me to do here.

Yeah, and there seemed to be a whole lot of other people that weren't happy listening to me all the time.

So so I know this is not popular, but I want to do this anyway, and I'm going to I'm going to do it, and uh I'm open to correction.

Um but I will tell you uh that one of the things that bothers me about life for its own sake is always good, which is a conclusion of the pro-life movement, is in general the people I know who take that position do nothing, nothing.

I want to make that clear, nothing to help children who are raised in structures of poverty and despair.

Yes.

Their insistence is life for its own sake is always good when they have never themselves had to live under those circumstances.

Never themselves.

And so, in general, I think there has to be some problem, and I think Jeremiah actually preaches this himself.

It's great God knows you before you're born, but what kind of life and knowledge do you get to live into yourself?

And I think any responsible person, I'm not saying the conclusion about abortion, I'm not making that conclusion for you, but I am saying the book itself says the way life is happens after birth is surely important to God as well, and to have life for its own sake may not be uh in God's mind.

Aside from the poverty issue, there's the psychological issue of a child that is not one aid.

Yes.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And and this I think, I didn't mean this to again um to paralyze us or say, well, whatever happens, happens, and you know, abortion on demand is convenient, it's fine.

I'm not making any of those conclusions.

I'm saying I think one of the things we don't do well in the churches I grew up in is recognize that this isn't an either or flat yes or no.

This really is very, very complicated.

Very complicated, and uh often we flatten something basically out of convenience.

And um, you know, having been involved in foster care, I'm not quite sure that foster children are all profits, except I'm pretty sure they are, because they they represent to us how we treat the least of these in our own community.

Having worked in the inner cities, I I saw that as the principle and it was it was a conflict.

You know, the kids are living in and and families who would have said that it's wrong for them to have abortions would have never nobody would have come from the suburbs to work into the inner cities and really walk the streets and be with the kids and counsel and provide food and shelter.

I I'm positive we're all welcome to our own opinions, but having stood outside an abortion clinic and protested people having abortions when I was about nine, I have now decided that until you adopt a child under foster care, you have no right to do that.

If you do, then I think you have every right to do it.

Until you do, I'm not sure you do.

And um, lest it sound like this is just my opinion, this is exactly the gateway that Bible study leads us into, right?

Because again, for Jeremiah, there's foreknowledge, but then there's also his experience of adolescence and adulthood, and basically his whole relationship with God is sort of being thrown out in front of us.

We probably don't want to talk about that anymore.

So thanks for indulging me.

No, it's good.

What is God trying to do my people confusing to what he said?

Well, what do you think?

I got a little frustrated and we figured out he was out there and out there and out there and keeps prophesying, and all these things keep happening, and they they still don't come back.

Can I read something?

Because this is this confused me.

Well, I mean, it it's kind of the way I read the whole all of the readings.

It's it's 16, 14 through 21.

Therefore the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, as the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt.

But as the Lord lives, who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of the lands where he had driven them, for I will bring them back to their land that I gave to their ancestors.

I am now sending for fishermen.

So that's important, 15.

I will bring them back to their land.

I am now sending fishermen, uh, sending four fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them.

And afterward I will send many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks.

For my eyes are on their ways, they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their inequity concealed from my sight.

I will doubly repay for inequity their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their despicable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations and ornaments.

But it was this, it was sixteen.

I am now or fifteen, but the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel up from the land of the north and out of the lands uh uh that he lands where he had driven them, for I will bring them back to their land that I gave to their ancestors.

And then he goes on to say how awful they are.

Yeah.

I'm gonna bring them back, but they're awful.

The whole book was like that to me for me.

It was a promise if they will turn, then you will bring them back.

That's what I got.

I I think there's a lot going on.

So on the on the first point, right, it's the people that are coming together and they're having Passover every year, and they're saying, we were slaves in Egypt and God delivered us.

And Jeremiah is saying, listen, the northern ten tribes were wiped down and dispersed.

So we won't just talk about what happened a long, long time ago in Egypt.

God's gonna bring those people back.

So there's gonna be a new exodus, as it were, where these ten tribes who have been scattered will come back to their inheritance.

So one of the biggest themes in the Bible, we often think is sin and redemption, but really it's about exile and return.

If that makes sense.

So exile and return is being played out here.

And then there's the second theme, I think, about what it means to be elect or chosen by God, which is this sort of idea, not that, hey, God does us favors and loves us more, but in some ways we have this relationship with God, and therefore we have additional accountability.

And so the injustice that we do is not gonna be ignored.

God's going to restore us, and part of restoration means that we have to make right what we've done wrong.

And so there becomes this image, it sort of goes back and forth.

There's this restoration, and then there's hunters and fishermen who are gonna go out looking for people who perpetrate systems of injustice.

Don't just think idolatry is about playing with a Ouija board.

God's got much bigger fish to fry than that.

Idolatry is about trampling poor people, widows and orphans, etc.

Right?

God's going to deal with those folk, and they will have to make right what they did wrong.

It says in the readings that God said, if you repent, there will be no punishment.

You know, I mean, repent.

Give up your idols, give up your uh things.

And that's the only positive thing.

I mean, you need a mood elevator when you read Jeremiah.

I mean, by the time you're done, but it uh it does say that God will reward the repentant.

You know, change, give up that, and you will be rewarded, but you keep up what you're doing, yeah, and you're gonna be destroyed.

Well, I if it's okay on this question, I can I return to Isaiah very briefly because we didn't talk about this passage, and this is a really tough one.

We read last week where Isaiah is called, and remember God's hymn, the hem of God's robe fills the temple.

So God doesn't live in that house like it's much too small.

And then God says, say to this people, and here's the quote keep listening but don't comprehend.

Keep looking but don't understand.

Make the mind of this people dull and stop their ears and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes and listen with their ears and comprehend with their minds.

Otherwise, they would turn and be healed.

It's a really confusing call, isn't it?

Isaiah's called to go and confuse them so that they don't repent.

Otherwise, they would turn and be saved.

This makes no sense.

Because it seems ostensibly like the goal of the prophet is to make it so that people do hear and understand and then turn and get saved.

Uh Isaiah 6.

And actually, uh, what's really really interesting is.

The first time Jesus tells a parable in Mark.

The disciples say, Why do you tell parables?

And Jesus says this to fulfill the words.

Ever seeing they don't see, and ever hearing they don't hear, otherwise, they turn and be saved.

So Jesus tells parables about the kingdom of God to prevent people from understanding it.

That would be a literal read.

Yeah, I know.

It's a literal read and it's confusing.

I had a professor who did this for me, and this is my best understanding of it.

Um you ever had somebody tell you a joke and you didn't get it?

So they explained the joke.

Was it funny after they'd explained it?

No, you just you now understood the joke, but it wasn't funny.

What he said was, and and I think there's some wisdom to this, um, first of all, somebody can tell you a joke, and if you're not willing to laugh, you won't.

It's very difficult for someone to convince you to laugh if you're not willing, even if you get the joke.

Second of all, if you don't understand, it won't be funny.

And parables and insight into God essentially work that way.

We have to be willing to laugh, willing to get it, and we have to have our mind opened, and if we don't, it's not just our mind, I would say it's essentially our heart in the center of our being.

If we don't, no explanation is going to get us there.

Part of it means I think there's preconditions on whether or not we'll actually hear.

No, we talk with our day school, um, I talk to them about there's a difference between hearing and listening.

And the way I tell it to them is listening means I hear, I perceive what you're saying, but hearing means I perceive what you're saying and I choose to engage it.

And isn't this part of the thinking election?

Those who are chosen will hear and understand, those who are not chosen are not.

I think that's right.

So I think one way to understand that Israel is God's chosen people.

Now, my Jewish brothers and sisters probably wouldn't like that I'm undo this, is that initially they opened themselves to God, and so our what that means is do we remain open or closed?

And and Jeremiah is kind of full of this because you know there's this oracle where he says, Don't say this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.

Um, if you ever played a sport and people come to your home field and you say, like, whose house, our house, whose house, our house?

This is what people are saying, like, we can't lose our own house.

This is God's temple, so Jerusalem will never fall because God lives here and God won't let the temple fall.

And Jeremiah is saying, Don't listen to that, hear what I'm saying.

God has left the temple.

So maybe God did live there, but here God is not living there.

And God is not going to win your battles for you.

So there's a difference between listening and hearing.

Absolutely.

You learn it on two sides.

You have to deal with them, and then you have to deal with yourself.

Right?

Um, so can could you talk a little bit uh about uh a history, okay, of this time?

So at the in uh at the end of uh well Hosea's uh uh reign, uh the Assyrians came in and they they destroyed the ten, uh they destroyed Israel, which is the ten tribes.

Yes.

And they sp they scattered them.

Okay.

Then like 200 years later approximately, the Babylonians came in and they somewhat they basically did the same thing with Judea, with Judah.

Um slightly different policy.

So what the Assyrians did to the northern ten tribes was created like a melting pot, but it was a forced melting pot, not a voluntary one.

So we may say, oh, this is the American dream.

This was imperialism.

Um what they did was they took, they purposefully uh mixed people together of different languages, customs, ethnicities so that there could be really not enough common culture to rebel.

Now, there wasn't essentially a benefit to them.

It's not like they took the best and brightest people and put them to work in the Assyrian think tank.

What they did was try to destroy any sense of nationalism or religious identity so there could be no rebellion.

Along the way, they just took the gold.

The Babylonians had a different policy.

Those are the ones who come to Judah.

Um, they did do mild dispersion, but essentially what the Babylonians did was they took the best and brightest people, the literate ones, the scribes, and they put them to work in the Babylonian think tank.

So they created these exiles.

Now you hear about exile.

It's not like they took everybody away because good help's hard to find.

They took the good help away and they left all the hoi poloi in the land, and they may have settled a few other people in.

So they didn't just kill them.

They didn't just kill them.

Look, if you kill all the people, you won't get any crops from them.

Okay, so they were also they were they were being controlled by the Babylonians, but they were essentially the bread basket, if you will, for the Bab partially for the Babylonians.

I mean, you should you need to know that um Mesopotamia was the breadbasket.

The Levant really fickle.

It never grew bread for the world.

Well, but what I meant was the only thing that they could deliver to the Babylonians was something off the land.

They couldn't, they weren't delivering um to intellectual anymore, intellectual people were Because they'd already taken those people.

Yeah.

That's right.

Well, this is the what this is why I asked the question, because some is it like 50 years later?

They come back from Babylonia.

Yeah, it's about right, 50 years later.

So the people who came back were from basically Judah.

That's right.

Yes, that's right.

The the the Israelites, this northern ten tribes, no one knows what happened to them because they sort of lost their identity in the Assyrian gumba.

Now, if you read the Book of Mormon, uh the Native Americans are the lost tribes of Israel.

Which is really interesting because the Native Americans are much older than that.

But but um this is the vision um in the in the Book of Mormon.

So if you ever wonder where the Native Americans come from, they're the lost ten tribes.

The radio Church of God seemed to teach, you probably don't know who that was, called A.

They said they went to England.

Uh you're right.

Oh, and you gave me an article about that too.

You know, um well, that that wasn't connected to England.

Yeah.

They went to Britain?

England.

England.

England.

I guess my crew.

Oh, Garner Ted Armstrong.

Oh, Garner.

Ted Armstrong, yeah.

His son was very piece of work.

Yeah.

His father.

But Garner Ted was pretty pretty corrupt.

Yes.

You gotta be old to know this stuff.

Yeah, yeah, I yeah, I remember him.

Yeah, they used to have a church in uh Big Sandy, Texas.

Collaborated.

I I will tell you too, since we're talking about fun religious rumors, there is a fun religious rumor that Jeremiah takes the Ark of the Covenant with him.

Because he knows that it's going to be, Jerusalem's going to be taken by the Babylonians and the temple destroyed.

And the the legend is, and this one's maybe fair, there ends up being a Jewish community that goes back to Egypt.

Uh, in fact, we found some very old ruins in Elephantine Isle, which is down by Aswam in the Nile.

And there's a so there's a rumor that uh the ark does in fact go to Egypt.

Unlikely.

But it there's a rumor.

But we didn't get to your question.

No, no, no.

That that basically um you've answered the question.

I mean, that is I guess when I think of Israel and I think of the people there, we call them Jews, but that was, I think you said before, that was because they were primarily from Judea.

Judah.

Judah or Judeans doesn't mean a religious term, it means a geographic term.

So when we say the Jews, the reason we can we can say the Jews is because they came from ultimately.

That's where the word came from.

Now we use it as a religious word, although to be honest with you, it's probably much more of an ethnic word because a fair estimate is at least 95% of Jewish people are atheist.

Yes, exactly.

95%.

Easily so, yeah.

It's such a you know, when we think about it being very religious country.

I guess I'm not shocked.

I'm horrified.

Uh I would tell you I think uh a similar percentage I would apply to Christian people, to be honest with you.

Um, because essentially uh most of Christianity is idolatry.

I find myself practicing idolatry quite a bit.

I know I'm doing it when God hates the same people I do.

And how do you know that?

You're not joking.

Well, I mean, I think this is really interesting.

You'll probably hear me say this in the sermon on Sunday.

I'm actually very wrestling with this.

Um, this past week I did a I did a wedding for Courtney, and right before that I had gone on this run, and I noticed there were these people in the neighborhood, I don't know what they were doing.

I get back from my run and there's a knock at my door, and there's this man, and it looks like his own two teenagers, and they're collecting food for some reason.

And I said, No, you know, I've already given my canned food to the church.

And they said, Well, while while we're doing this, and I noticed they're wearing this shirt that says, like, dare to share, they asked me these questions about Jesus, and I was like, Oh my god.

Because I knew what they wanted to hear, but I didn't want to tell them what they wanted to hear.

I also wanted to go and get ready for this wedding that I had to do, and so I'm stuck in this position, like, what did I say to these people where I can keep my own integrity?

What I really wish I'd said was, listen, I'm getting ready for a wedding.

Glad that you're feel comfortable doing this.

See you later.

They told me they wanted to hear what I thought about Jesus and God.

And I said things like love winds, and uh, well, the but the Bible says that that hell's a real place.

And they said, No, it doesn't.

It says it's a valley outside of Jerusalem.

Well, what do you think about it?

I think, well, nobody's there, is what I think.

Well, they weren't really happy with that, and they said, Well, I see you've got this Greek and Hebrew on you.

Like, yes, I've been to seminary and I'm an Episcopal priest.

And the guy said, Well, you know, not all Episcopalians, blank.

And I thought, you know, like I just I felt really terrible because I felt like I was representing the Episcopal Church in a bad way.

Like I really needed to be convincing.

And and I I I don't know, I sort of had this response.

What I wish I'd said later, which still wouldn't have worked, is listen, you asked me what I thought, and you said you wanted to listen, and of course, you really just wanted to judge what I thought, and that's not listening, my friend.

So I hope you don't continue to represent God in this way.

Um, I didn't say that.

I didn't say that at all.

I did lots of other things.

But I but what I realized was, you know, and I still realize this today, there's nothing I could have said to these people because they didn't want to hear.

What they wanted to do was listen and judge.

That's what they wanted to do.

Um, and and I've done it before, plenty.

And again, I'm a liberal Christian.

I'm sure I don't know anything about the Bible, is what they came away at thinking because they'd already decided on their own version.

And uh, you know, like there's this really, really tough thing.

And I think I said to them, you know, I am glad you feel comfortable doing what you're doing, but I but I don't.

And and this is caught up in some of my own bit.

I didn't think God hates these people, but I'm not actually sure God's really happy with us representing God that way either.

And so they do this one thing, right?

Which is they're willing, they're daring to share.

But what they're sharing and with I mean they're they're not sharing, they're telling.

Well, you know, and this is this thing for us, they're telling, well, they're not even just telling, they're eliciting a response from you so that they can tell you that you're wrong.

And what's interesting is they don't know my name, they have no idea like how hard it is for me to be a parent, or how hard it is for me to take care of my father who has Alzheimer's.

They didn't care to ask those things.

Instead, what they did is reduced me to one opinion.

And um so it's really easy for me to say God doesn't appreciate them doing that.

And I think that's right.

Um I don't hate those people.

I I don't.

So so no issue, but this is where it starts to get real crummy and real messy.

I mean, at the end of the day, do I think I'm okay and you're okay?

Like, you know, this is where it gets, it's where it's really hard, you know.

Well, I have a friend, I have a friend, she's dead now, but when people would come to her house, she would smile.

She was such a wonderful woman, and say to them, I'll be willing to listen to whatever you have to say.

You would come into my house and be willing to put your hand on my Bible and put it on my black, and they would turn around.

Because she was very religious in a second way, but she wasn't willing to put down if you come in and you lay your hand on my Bible and listen to what I have to say, and they wouldn't do it.

That's essentially what he was saying.

We went down in the alley and kneeled, and and I went through the ritual that he wanted me to go through, and after that nobody ever asked me again.

Well, don't worry, a different group will come around and ask you again.

And if you don't say it just right, then they'll want you to do it again and say it in their words, not your own, because there's magic words.

I used to just cut my mouth.

Now, I want you to hear though, what's really interesting is and and I think this is uh important for us to consider that there's not just fundamentalist Christians that do this, but Mormons do this, right?

And and Jehovah Witnesses do this.

They do this.

And I'm sure that the evangelical Christians believe those other people are nuts.

But they're all doing the same thing.

And and there's this interesting, I mean again, this is I think becomes really, really difficult for us to sort of think through.

And and again, uh part of it is to say I do have very strong PTSD from those people visiting my house.

I I I I do.

And um I what what I try to be really careful about is like categorically condemning them or saying that they're ignorant.

You know, I mean there's because they're wrong and I know more and w whatever.

And it's I just I'm not telling a story well, but it's very, very, it's very, very messy.

And I think I think what I felt like is they were trying to wrangle some response from me so that I could be a blessing to them.

And um and I I think idolatry is when we try to do that, wrangle something out of somebody else so they can be a blessing to us instead of being willing um to be a blessing to them.

I mean, these people were I guess they thought ultimately they were helping my afterlife, but I would tell you from my point of view, they have no interest in being a blessing to me.

What they wanted to do was go around and validate themselves.

And get a number.

And get a number.

Now, at the same time, I mean, good for them that they're putting their fundamental trust out there.

And they're sort of saying, you know, I just there was just again no context for the relationship at all.

So this is a really interesting thing that I always think about.

When I do have a context for a relationship, do I put myself out there for people and say, you know, I don't know what you think about this, but I sure have found religious life to be helpful.

Well, I gotta really think about that.

Has religious life been helpful for me?

When I take some of this book really seriously, uh my evangelical religion, I feel like, did seduce me.

I mean, I like forced itself upon me in some ways, and I'm now I'm trying to deal with the aftermath of that.

I don't want anybody else, and I'm in a different position from all y'all, because people ask me what I do, and I'm a priest.

Well, I almost hate to tell them that.

Because I'm going to have to deal with whatever they think about that.

You only work for internal revenue.

That'd be great.

I'd say a friend of mine would be great, but they wouldn't even talk to me after that.

So I I just I I think coming back, and I did a terrible job, I think it becomes really, really messy.

Again, like this whole idolatry business is really, really messy.

And I just was gonna kind of ask a question a little bit about idolatry, okay?

Or if you will, I was thinking uh all the way through this, of course, the bad guy is Baal.

Um and he has and he and people are worshiping Baal.

And I was thinking, well, well what if Baal what if the people followed the covenant to the letter but still worship Baal?

What's gonna happen?

I mean, is is can God beat Baal at the same time?

Yeah, it's actually a really great question that you ask, and I'm gonna I'm gonna answer that in a parable if you don't mind.

Um you know, in in the um the Torah, not only are you not to build a home or God, you not to do that, but you can't have any graven images.

I hope you're familiar with this.

When Solomon builds the temple, there's a whole bunch of bulls in the temple.

The bull is assigned to Baal.

And it may interest you to know the temple that Solomon built Solomon builds is a replica of the temple then built to Baal in Tyre.

Like it's cut and pasted.

So when the northern tribes leave the southern and they don't have a temple anymore, it's not on their land.

They can't go to the temple, so they're religiously excluded from the temple.

They make shrines.

At Tyre or the temple in Jerusalem.

They can't go to Jerusalem, which they have to do.

And they can't go there because they've they've left.

They could either invade and take it back.

Essentially, what they do is they make their own shrines at Dan and Bethel, which are old which are old shrines.

Places where they can worship God.

And they make altars on the backs of bulls, just like the one at Jerusalem.

And what we read is that was idolatrous of them.

The bulls in Jerusalem okay, but you can't have them at Dan and Bethel.

And there's the parabolic answer to your question.

And I would tell you when we read when you read the historical books, those northern Yankees are wrong having that stuff, but we can have them.

Ours are right and theirs are wrong.

When you read the prophets, they're all right.

And this I think becomes really, really important for us to consider.

So we're reading the Bible, right?

But if you didn't mind me interjecting, it's always important to consider who wrote it to whom and why.

And sure enough, you can come out with a good report on Solomon, then you can keep reading, and Solomon comes out real bad.

Like he married 900 people and did all their stuff.

So is he good or bad?

Well, he's probably normal, right?

He's actually pretty calculating and cruel if you read it.

I mean, I I wouldn't tell you the man's virtuous at all.

He doesn't do anything really good.

He he he's a re real politique leader, uh, during a time of peace and he prospers, but I wouldn't want my children to be like Solomon.

You you know.

I mean, um, he's that guy, uh Before Kaiser Wilhelm.

Otta von Bismarck.

Boy, he was a strong leader, but I wouldn't want my daughter to be like that.

I mean, it worked, great, but at everybody else's expense.

I'd love it if she could work stuff out politically that didn't cost other people stuff.

I don't know if that makes sense what I'm saying.

Well, I mean, coming, I mean, if you fast forward to the time of Jesus, remember that book that we we read about the seven days of uh Jesus is.

The last week.

The last week, yeah.

Yeah, and the fact that that you have the priests and the Pharisees who were kind of between a rock and hard place.

And so, I mean, in a way, the circumstances sometimes dictate how you operate if you want to survive.

And I think this becomes really hopefully helpful.

Can't can't I think I've done this a little bit, but he talked a lot about repentance in the video.

I don't want to belabor this, but we we usually think that means one thing in this this four.

Have we done this already?

There's four words for repentance in the Bible.

If not, I don't remember.

Yeah, the one he uses is the Hebrew word shoove, which means to turn.

And really, when you think turn, it means to alter your current course.

But but it but it it it's it's not like a religiously laden word.

I mean, you shooved into the parking lot today.

You have to turn, or you won't ever get into the parking lot, right?

So I mean, really at its basis level, it means that you alter your direction.

Hopefully towards something more favorable, but you know, sometimes we shoove for the worst.

And somebody's health takes a shoove for the worst, right?

That's one word, and that's the Hebrew word.

When the Bible gets translated into Greek, um it this is the Greek word metanoia, and it means something really, really different.

You know, we talked about metaphysics, which is really like a reality beyond physics, right?

So this is sort of that beyond greater than.

And um this word means like your mind.

So it's I mean, like Piaget would say, if you're an educator, this is like your schema.

So it's it's a it's a way of thinking that is completely over and above and beyond your previous way of thinking.

I mean, it's related really to like an epiphany.

So this in some ways is a is like a like a um what's what's that word?

A paradigm shift would be a really helpful word to use Thomas Kuhn.

That's a metanoia.

Usually, if you do this, you shouldn't be able to go back to the way things were.

Right?

This should be like a like a rite of passage in your head.

Used to be you thought women couldn't do this or that, and then you had this experience, and now your mind's eye has changed.

I guess I'm thinking it's not a slope, it's a step change.

I think it's a step change.

Now, it could be that um sometimes we have this moment where we got this moment of clarity, but there actually there actually were many, many steps along the way.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So I want to say that the Greek word is really about cognition.

Um the Latin word, I only mention this because this is the stem of the word we use for repentance, poena.

It means correcting the scales.

So, for example, if I steal money from you, if I want to repent, I have to give it back with interest.

When I do penance, don't you see?

I'm writing what I did wrong.

This is where purgatory comes from.

And this is also where it's really helpful to remember that saying I'm sorry is the first step, and then how can I help?

We all know when people just apologize to us and don't make it right, we consider that a flat apology.

There's one more word for repent in the Bible, and this is the kind God does.

It's funny because Hebrew has the fewest words in the language, but it has two words for repent.

And this is the one, again, that um sort of represents like grief and complicity.

I and I think I've talked about this one before, and just as a great example, when when my kids do something that's wrong, um I had my kid do something really wrong one time, and and somebody, the person who was the aggrieved person, said to me something like, Aren't you embarrassed about your kid?

And you know, some I have these moments of clarity very rarely, but I said, No, I'll never be embarrassed about my kid.

I'm just disappointed.

And the thing is, uh, it hurts me to see that he has made these choices.

They weren't my choices.

But because I raised him and I'm in a relationship with him, I'm affected and I've got grief about that.

Another way to think of this is uh again, it has to do with sin.

And this one I've said before, I I mean, I'm a well-educated white man, and uh that's about as good as it gets.

I happen to also be Protestant, which is pretty helpful right now.

Um I could say, hey, every every opportunity I get I earn completely on my own, but I got a whole lot of privilege in my backpack starting out.

Now, um, boy, I don't know how to take that backpack off.

You you know, uh, but I grieve that we've all got different backpacks from the day we're born.

So I know it's a problem, I know I have some benefits or some challenges, uh, and and then I have to live within how to how do we move towards a solution.

So this one is the one in Genesis 6.

God looks down at the world and sees that human beings, every inclination is toward violence and God repents from making human beings.

It doesn't mean God wishes God never did it.

It means God is full of grief because having made human beings and seen what we've lived into, God is like, uh, you've drawn me into this.

What is the root of that word?

Is that Hebrew word?

It's Hebrew, yeah.

It's the only kind of repentance God has.

That he hurts because he loves you.

I think that's very fair.

Sorry, I didn't mean correctly.

No, no, that's okay.

What you what you're saying when you say that's the only kind of repentance that God had, God is repenting.

Uh biblically, that verb is appended to God.

I think God is the subject of that verb a few times.

So therefore, if he is repenting, he has done something that at least he considers wrong.

No, that's where I think it's different from this one.

This one is about changing looks.

This one's about I'm involved in something yucky, even if just through you.

So continue the analogy.

I can do this with my kid.

My kid can make a choice, my kid can steal a car.

I could have taught my kid my whole life.

You don't steal from other people, you respect other people's property.

My kid did that, I didn't do it.

I didn't do anything wrong.

I trained him, not steal, but he did it.

But because of our relationship, I'm now in relationship caught up in his consequences, if that makes sense.

I don't even mean legally, I don't mean it that way.

I mean, you know, my relationship has brought me into this place of grief with him, for him, etc.

Almost universal repentance.

I mean, everybody's repenting.

Yeah, well, I mean the thing is, right, if if I didn't have that kid, that thing would have never been done.

If God didn't create people, we've never been violent.

Because there'd been nothing.

And then you wouldn't know how God feels.

I'm not sure we still know how God feels, but but we we do our best.

When your people are being bad, it hurts.

It hurts.

And this I think is what I want to say about Jeremiah, too.

Um just a thought for you, um, and consider, I think men and women do this differently.

Uh, men in our country, I don't think, know how to grieve things.

So I want you to consider if something bad happens to a member of your family as a man, you're supposed to be mad as hell and kill that person.

Right?

Your job as a man, if your wife is sexually assaulted, is kill the offender.

The alternative is that we have to be sad.

And we don't know what to do with sadness.

Because it's not productive.

Anger gets stuff done.

Well, what's interesting about that is my thought was when when a man does that, the violation is not the woman.

The man was violated.

You violated me.

This is my woman, and you violated me.

Well, that's right.

That's right.

And I by the way, I think women are much more allowed to carry sadness culturally.

And the consequence, right, is that A, I don't think men are in general allowed to do it.

We don't know how to do it.

And anger releases adrenaline and cortisol, and I think this is part of why men live shorter lives than women, quite honestly, right?

So look, all the prophets are men, and they get caught up in this experience of God, and God comes off real angry.

Because anger can be productive.

But I think we've got to think about whether or not God is this way.

I mean, I think what Jeremiah is trying to do is say, you know, God is at God's own wit's end because people aren't listening.

Or they're listening, but they're not hearing, right?

Um so what's God gonna do?

And you know, this is one of those things as a parent that's really hard.

My teenager's not listening, what am I gonna do?

Because we always have to do something.

And I'm not sure we always have to do something.

I don't know if that makes sense.

These are, I think, some of the things that's really, really helpful for us to think about.

First of all, do we have to do something?

Does God have to do something?

Well, God has to do something because you know, if your teenager is not going to school and making good grades, you gotta do something.

Well, it's their problem, not yours.

Why do you gotta do something?

I mean, I I hope I hope I'm being clear that there's this opportunity to reflect on this.

And part of what I think you see is we often fixate on the anger response, but if you keep reading, there's more than that.

Well, I'm really mad, but if you come back, listen, I'll take you with open I mean again, you're you're getting more than just one thing here.

And we think about that, anger is a secondary emotion.

It's not something underneath the anger.

Yeah.

And and to heal, you have to get underneath the anger.

And that's very difficult with men because there's so much resistance.

And I think part of it is um I had a I had a good family therapist one time who said, you know, and actually I had a class on this too, that sort of said, you know, anger is not even a not only it's not even a real emotion, it's a dumping ground.

And instead what we it's a word we use instead of disappointment, betrayal, confusion, hurt.

So you think about kids, what are they?

They're happy or they're sad or they're angry.

And that's about all we give them.

You know, even though we've gotten about 200 other words for feeling.

So we really flatten on the feeling level when anger, uh at least according to ethic theory, is just it's an auxiliary.

It's it's not its own thing, it's a multiplier.

I don't know, I don't know if that makes sense.

Well, my along those lines, my youngest son made the comment when he grew up and came home from the service with dad.

How come dad is so much easier to get along with now?

Because he's no longer in charge of you.

When he was responsible for you, he had things he felt he had to do, and you didn't want to do it.

Now it's you're a grown-up.

You're responsible for your own life, and a lot more relaxed.

Um and it was really too.

My husband was definitely not wanting to be able to show his emotions.

But when the kid would do something that you would beat your head on the wall, you know.

I have this brown target in my closet that says beat your head here.

You know.

Um the greatest kid you'd ever want to meet, but he made some decisions that it would not make me happy.

But he saw when he came back that there was his father really did love him.

It just he couldn't handle the grief, the disappointment.

And this becomes really, really hard because the way we understand God has to be the way we understand relationships.

And sometimes we can project relationships on God that help us understand that have unanticipated consequences, right?

We're rebellious teenagers, and God is gonna course correct.

Man, I've got to tell you that only works if your teenager allows it to work.

Because if they don't, it's not going anywhere.

You you you you you know.

So then I'm not quite sure that God relates to us like our culture tells us we ought to relate.

Again, I'm not sure God feels like God has to do something.

Now I get confused.

Don't you often feel confused?

Why doesn't God do something?

And that's because we've decided we're supposed to do something.

But I'm not quite sure that even we need to do something all the time.

The worst thing that happens in my marriage is my wife says something that's not good in her life, and I've got to fix it.

Because if I can just fix it, then we can move on.

And that is not what she wants.

But that's hard to that's hard to do.

It's really hard, and again, it has consequences for how we understand God.

Aha, God's the doer.

God's the one who fixes things.

Why is God taking so much time?

Why isn't God doing it on my schedule?

Maybe it's because it's not even about schedule.

Maybe we fundamentally have the wrong paradigm for God's sense of being.

It takes a paradigm shift to give the other person what they need rather than what you need in the relationship.

Which is metanoia.

It's repentance.

It takes repentance.

Now, I do want to say this is really important.

Um, turn and be saved does not mean you go to heaven when you die.

Salvation is not about something that happens after this life because Jeremiah didn't believe anything happened after this life.

Salvation is about larger life in the present.

It's really important.

I want to make sure we get some of these fun things in here.

You know, when Jesus drives out the money changers in the temple and says, it is written, My house shall be a house of prayer for people of all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves, comes right out of Jeremiah.

Jesus is quoting Jeremiah, it's a den of thieves.

So the place that is supposed to be dedicated to worshiping God and God's house is in fact where the thieves live.

It's not where you go for refuge, it's where the robbers live.

And that's because the priests are essentially aristocrats.

And they get the huge benefit from their aristocratic priestly life.

And when the temple is tied to the palace, then don't you see church and state are one thing?

It may be interesting for you to know that when Jesus did that business, the tax records were being stored in the temple precincts.

Not only for the temple, but for what you wrote the Roman government.

So it became a catalog for repression, a den of robbers, instead of a place of refuge.

And then you've got to figure out does that mean you just have to get rid of the catalog and it'll be okay?

Do you have to burn it down and start over?

It's not always like there's one clear response.

You know, I mean, I'll tell you, and I'm very sure that God is everywhere all the time.

A sanctuary, a holy place, is a place we go to have a little more clarity about God's presence.

Hopefully, it informs us.

We're more aware of that in that place, and then we can carry that awareness out instead of, oh, I have to come back to that place.

We come back to that place like we come back to a dojo or to a training place because it's easier to train there.

I mean, the point is it's meant to train us to do it everywhere.

If we function that way, then it works great.

If God's more present in there all the time than God is anywhere else, then it starts to become shackling.

So it can do both things.

Well, I think it can.

That's in here, though, right?

There's this discomfort with the temple and what it does to inform the way we treat other people.

God says to Jeremiah, look, there's three things you've got to do.

There's um the Hebrew word is not agape, it's Hesed.

There's um unconditional love.

There's Mishpat, there's justice, and there's righteousness, Zedekiah.

Righteousness really means restorative justice.

So if you'll do unconditional love and practice justice of the restorative kind, then you've turned everybody turning implies that.

When you are born, okay, and you start moving through life.

Um turning implies that you were doing something wrong to begin with.

Yeah, so I think this is a great question.

And you know, we we when we did the um essentially the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, we had a couple of choices, right?

There was um Thomas Hobbes, who said people are basically bad.

Basically bad.

That's become our religious heritage, by the way, right?

His opposite was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who said people are basically good.

And in fact, if you took people and raised them away from the corruption of society, they grew up to be virtuous folk, right?

And in the middle of there is John Locke, right, who says we're born a blank slate.

What?

A blank slate, a tabula rasette.

Actually, to be honest with you, I think John Locke and uh Jean-Jacques Rousseau were pretty much close, right?

We're born a what Jean Jacques Rousseau says is sure, we're born a blank slate, and we grow up to stay a blank slate if we didn't ruin us with the influence of society, but really what he's saying with sin with a capital S.

People are basically born good.

That's the message of Genesis.

God looks at everything God made and says it's good, it's very good.

So what's the deal?

Well, we're kind of born into sin with a capital S.

Not because there's a sin gene in the sperm, that was Augustine's idea, but because boy, like I can see it when my my daughter was four, she described people based on the color clothes they wore.

But then there becomes a point where they start to describe people based on.

On the color of skin they have.

Now they learned that.

Who did they learn it from?

Other folk.

Lift to their own.

Have you ever seen children do this?

Like she would have called you the blue man, and you'd be the blue lady, and you'd be the black lady.

And I remember my daughter saying, look at the black boy over there.

Well, he was as white as I was.

He just had a black t-shirt on.

And I had the good sense not to correct her.

Because it was sensible.

Right?

It was sensible.

So I don't think that and to be honest, you know, it can become very helpful to identify people based on their skin or their hair or their color or their ethnicity.

But it also starts to carry baggage to it.

My daughter had a white baby doll, a red baby doll, and a black baby doll.

We never talked about skin coloring.

When she went to kindergarten, she came home and said, Mama, they're calling me names.

She had no concept of that until we decided to.

And I I'm sure you've heard this before.

I've been around I was at a party for somebody, and there was a middle school boy.

He was probably in seventh grade, and he was really waxing eloquent about how the Democrats are stealing all of our money.

And uh boy.

It was just really clear what what what it is we uh we inherit.

I don't know if that's a good answer to you.

I'm just wondering if it knowledge is it knowledge we need to do.

Is it the influence of people around us who uh are doing things that require a turn?

Um Is free will be a a license to do things that require a turn?

Um that I'm gonna cute necessarily, but I'm just wondering, you know, it seems to me like everybody, everybody, has to do that at some point.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

I think um I think if we were really philosophical, at a certain point knowledge is amoral.

It's the the practice of knowledge that becomes either wise or shrewd.

So I'm gonna say shrewdness and wisdom are opposites.

So nuclear technology is completely amoral.

I mean it it just it's a science.

The practice of of nuclear physics can be extremely shrewd, beneficial for some, at a huge expense to others.

Uh we're still the jury's now whether it can be wise.

Right?

Especially regarding things like nuclear energy, right?

Because the byproduct of that we haven't figured out how to deal with.

Now, maybe we'll figure out how to deal with that in such a way that we can have uh energy without uh corrupting the planet.

We might figure that out when we get more knowledge.

Somebody's invented a portable fission machine there that they're working on.

So I I I I think this is part of, you know, the the jet engine does a lot of good for human beings.

Of course, it was invented by the Nazis to uh help in the Second World War.

It was very shrewd of them to invent that.

We can deploy it.

Most of our technology was.

So I think this is part of it.

Yeah, this is part of it.

I'll tell you, my investment portfolio is doing great.

Like I think my 403B turned more than 10% in the last couple of months.

Um it's coming at somebody's expense.

Somebody else's money.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's usury and interest.

That's how it's making money.

Hand over fist.

Uh boy, um, I'm not gonna stop investing, but I do have some sense of grief.

That it's coming at somebody's expense that I don't know.

I don't know if that makes sense.

I mean, I think this is part of the deal.

If I ever let go of that, shame on me, I think.

Just to be aware that it's coming at somebody else's expense, really.

Um is it okay to say we hear all this anger about God's mad at the people's idolatry, but you know, just to give you a different perspective, we read this in Jeremiah 7, 19.

God says, Is it I whom they provoke, says the Lord?

Is it not themselves to their own hurt?

So we could say, God's mad, you're not obeying.

And here is Jeremiah saying, God's mad because you're ruining yourselves.

Not because you're embarrassing God, your parent, you're not making God look bad.

You're you're hurting God because God cares so much for you, and you're choosing to live a way of life that is not good for you.

Hopefully, when we're good parents, that's our line.

You will never embarrass me, but you can disappoint me.

Mainly because I know you can do better and I want that for you.

Part of me is confused a little bit because when you think of the people at that time doing the things that they were doing that were um that were that were opposed to the teachings, God's teachings and God's desire, um I wonder why God created those desires to begin with.

It's really a great question, isn't it?

Um and is there any answer I could give you that would satisfy your question?

Could you use the question why, right?

I mean, what's really interesting is uh again to think about if we if we if we buy this and I and and I buy it, macroevolution, right?

I mean, a lot of our desires really to have to do with survival, and sometimes we misplace that.

And it was really, really helpful for me to hear as a parent to a foster child that um when my older child was stealing from other people, it wasn't because they were morally based, it was because he had to do that in order to survive in a home in which he wasn't fed regularly.

So we can say it's wrong, but he didn't have the luxury of it being wrong.

It was survival.

And how do you take a survival mechanism and teach somebody that it's actually not in their best interest to do that survival mechanism?

You'd have to make it clear that it's not in their best interest.

And you'd have to do it over and over and over again because in their core, I don't just mean in their experience, I mean in their core brain, that's survival.

Because if I cry, newbody's feeding me.

Human beings are fundamentally not trustworthy when you've been neglected.

So you've got the rest of your life to try to reprogram all of that business.

Now, kids that get neglected, they weren't born bad, but they sure grew up in a world of sin.

By the way, parents who neglect kids, it's not because they're morally base, they got their own stuff going on.

Very few people say, I'm gonna be wicked and destroy some other person today.

Usually their best thinking got them there.

They neglected a kid because they were working two jobs and they had to pay rent.

They neglected a kid because they were high, and boy, they could not come down off that high.

Neglect is better than abuse, after all.

And usually they abuse because they were abused.

Absolutely.

So this becomes all they know.

It's all they know.

And so what we rarely do is make room for that sort of bigger understanding, and and this is really tough.

And I would even say, I'm trying to make idolatry bigger and bigger.

Idolatry is saying other people should make decisions the way I do.

So you've neglected your kid, you are the worst person possible instead of trying to understand the systems in place that would make neglecting your kid a reasonable choice for you.

I don't mean it's okay.

What I mean is, I mean, there's there's accountability, but there's also things like empathy and compassion.

So the way I grew up is if we broke one of the Ten Commandments, it was absolutely wrong, you're going straight to hell.

And then I wonder, though, if God doesn't actually have some room to say, ah, when you did that, I understand what you were thinking.

We didn't have any room for God doing that in the church I grew up in, which meant we couldn't and shouldn't do that either.

Because we're supposed to act like God.

God's mad as hell all the time, really.

But but Jeremiah says, God's not mad at you because you've hurt God's feelings.

We learned it's because we'd hurt God's feelings.

God's mad because God knows you can enjoy life a whole lot more if you'd live it differently.

And maybe mad isn't the right word.

See, I think mad is the emotion we have to give to a masculine God because masculinity can't be sad.

It has to be mad.

This is the way we're raised.

So what if instead of this God grieves?

Well, that would be a little bit prophetic, right?

I mean, it would ask us to really reconsider how God feels, if God feels, about what we do and about humanity and about all of it.

Wouldn't you think God feels if we were made in his image?

I mean that's been the argument for a long time, or it could be cognition or it could be self-awareness, but the scriptures aren't clear at all about what that means.

And again, Tim gave me this book, I Am God, in which um the sort of the opening line is I'm God and I don't think.

People think, but I don't need to.

Because I know everything.

So why do you need to think when you know everything?

That would be boring.

Well, it would be boring for us based on everything else that is part of our own experience.

But those things aren't part of God's limitations, or maybe they are.

I don't even know.

I think what the book says is we don't exactly know.

And I would tell you, I don't know if Jeremiah is 100% right.

I think what Jeremiah is trying to do is give us some insight.

A little bit more, right?

Does the do the the um uh theologians or the um experts say that that was written by a single person?

Well again, it may have all been written by Baruch, the scribe, not by Jeremiah himself.

I mean, uh what we don't know is if an editor touched it up.

You you you you know, in fact, we know several people edited it while they copied it.

So the oldest one we've got, it seems to be coherent, although the order is strange.

Okay.

The order is suspicious.

So it doesn't look like there's not two Jeremiahs like there are three Isaiahs.

Gotcha.

You won't you won't read that.

Um I'm trying I'm being the good steward of your time.

I'm afraid I'm being really, really pushy.

Maybe we should spend more time in the text itself.

Okay.

All right.

Don't change anything.

Yeah, yeah.

We have plenty of time.

Right.

We'd like to kind of have a question.

That's may not this version I have here, the message that I'm looking at in um here.

He refers to the God of the angel armies.

The Lord of that's the Lord of the hosts, yeah.

And the God of the angel armies, Israel's God.

That's that's well we made all that stuff up.

Um can I answer that next week?

Actually, I want to answer it when we talk about Ezekiel.

I'm gonna talk about angels and what is in the Bible and what's in our heads about that.

Yeah.

Well, because I mean that you were talking about here.