Amos 4:1-5

[0:00] It's been almost a month since we were in this study of the minor prophet Amos.! We've covered the first three chapters, and we saw that Amos dealt with this judgment,! these accusations that he gave to the six surrounding nations, and then including the kingdom of Judah to the south.

[0:18] And he did all that before he honed in his sights on the kingdom of Israel, the ten northern tribes. And in chapter 3, he lays into them, actually toward the end of chapter 2 and then chapter 3, he gets into them and threatens them and tells them that God's going to judge them.

[0:35] Now we're going to just pick it up right away in chapter 4 and hope that you kind of know where we're at and what's going on. If you don't, a few things will pop up here as reminders. And the first one being the first three words of chapter 4.

[0:48] And verse 1, where Amos says, hear this word. It's the way he speaks. It's a phrase he likes. He says it in chapter 3, verse 1. He says it in chapter 5, verse 1.

[0:58] He's starting these three chapters telling them to listen up. Hear what I have to say. And I want to just draw your attention back to that. We studied this out in chapter 3, showing you the Bible command to hear and to receive the words, to not just hear them with the ear, but it's ultimately the heart that is open to receive the word.

[1:20] And that judgment did not have to come to them if they would have received the word. God's word was coming as a deterrent. And you're going to see in this chapter, God used a lot of things as attempted deterrents, but they would not hear.

[1:35] Now he says, hear this word. Amos is a preacher. He wasn't raised to be a preacher. He wasn't trained by any other godly saints.

[1:47] He wasn't brought up in a seminary. He wasn't refined. He wasn't polished. But God called Amos to be a preacher, and God put his words in Amos' mouth.

[1:58] And that's all you need as a man in this world, is you need God to put his finger on you and to say, I want you to preach my word.

[2:09] And that's all you need to get started. You do not need, well, I don't really fit the bill. I don't have the criteria. I don't have all of that figured out already.

[2:20] That stuff can come. But if God puts a calling on your heart, the first thing you're going to want to do is make excuses of how you can't. And I've never done that before.

[2:30] And I'm not like these other preachers. I know what I'm talking about because that's exactly how I responded to it. Exactly. I didn't want to do this. I want to get in front of people.

[2:41] I get scared to death. I was so nervous. Like the other week when I got up and tried to sing, I was scared to death. I felt that all back again. But I'm just remembering that.

[2:52] But you get over that. God does something. You just have to trust him. If he wants you to do this, then do it and obey him. Amos was not refined, and he wasn't trained.

[3:04] But there's something that we learn from Amos and from his preaching. And I'd say we learn it from all the prophets most likely is that you learn how to be a preacher of the word of God.

[3:14] You learn how to declare what God said. The word of God. You learn how to boldly just put it out there as you're the mouthpiece for the Lord.

[3:26] This chapter hits pretty hard. What we're going to study in this chapter. It has a very sarcastic tone. Most people would never imagine that a wonderful God of love would ever talk the way he talks in this chapter.

[3:38] But when you read your Bible, you start to see the true side of God. And when you believe the words of your Bible instead of trying to change them and correct them and wash them away with something soft, you start to see God's a little bit different than most people portray him to be.

[3:55] He's a lot harder when he needs to be hard. He's nasty when he needs to be nasty. And we know him as full of mercy and compassion and love. And we desire that much.

[4:05] But when he needs to chastise or punish or threaten, he'll give it to you and he won't hold back. Now this man is called to preach. And he ends this chapter near the end with one of his most famous lines.

[4:18] Look at chapter 4, verse 12. The very last seven words. He says, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. He is not saying like Moses said, I'm going to take you out there by the mount and you're going to meet with the Lord.

[4:34] That's not meeting God like that. This is a threat. This is judgment. It's not deliverance. And so this is a hard chapter. But the point I want to get to about the preaching is that when the message is negative, in this case, very negative, uncomfortable, unpleasant, when that's the message, the preacher must preach the word of God with conviction, with belief, with boldness, and with the authority that it's coming from God himself.

[5:07] The preacher doesn't get up and say and preach with an attitude because it's a negative message. You don't get up and spit on people and get all nasty with them because it's negative. No, you just stand in the stead of God and be the voice for God and show them that God's not happy with you and you deliver the negative message, even if it's uncomfortable.

[5:28] You just give the truth. It's God's word. Notice that Amos, when he says, hear this word, and he says it in these couple chapters, that he has a negative, ugly thing to say to them. And he is not sharing God's word with the people.

[5:42] That's such a popular thing today of, I just want to share with you something that I feel the Holy Spirit laid on my heart. Like, that's not Amos. He is, in this case, he is preaching at the people.

[5:54] And remember this, look back at chapter 3 and verse 1. Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up.

[6:06] It's negative and it's cutting them. It's putting it on them. He's preaching at them because that's what he was told to do. Look at chapter 7 and verse 15.

[6:20] Chapter 7, verse 15. This is, again, where Amos has his, kind of his biography of this calling. He says, the Lord took me as I followed the flock. And the Lord said unto me, go, prophesy unto my people Israel.

[6:34] And then he follows it. Now, therefore, hear thou the word of the Lord. And he does exactly what he was told. He prophesies. He preaches the word of the Lord.

[6:46] There are times when preaching is to be with compassion. There are times when preaching is to be comforting to the heavy heart. And times when the preaching is to be uplifting to someone who's downtrodden.

[6:59] And you understand all of that. But that's not this. That is not what this is from Amos. God's people are guilty. And God has called this preacher to expose their sins to them and to declare their guilt.

[7:13] And to give God's voice against them and their deeds. I know Amos is not a perfect man. And there is not a perfect man. Not a just man upon the earth that sinneth not.

[7:23] Amos falls right into that category. He's not pretending to be better than them. He was not. But here's what I want to get across. He was not sent to connect with them. He was not sent there to go befriend them and try to win them.

[7:38] He was sent to declare a message from God. And that's preaching. That's what he's sent to do. I've heard this. I've heard this with my own ears.

[7:49] I've heard men in pulpits declare that preachers should always include themselves when they're putting any kind of pressure or any kind of preaching on the people before them.

[8:02] The idea that they come up with, and this is what's taught all over the place in Bible colleges, that this is the way you preach, is that you don't want it to feel like you're excluding yourself from the situation.

[8:14] You don't want to seem like you're exalting yourself above the people by coming down on them and pointing the finger at them and their sin and you, you, you. They'll say things like this.

[8:26] Instead of saying, when you sin, you say, when we sin, we should, and you include yourself. This is how men are taught to preach today. They say things like, instead of saying, God sees you, when you're, you say, God sees us.

[8:43] And you see how that brings the preacher down to the pew and we're all connected and we're all in this together. And so that, that makes sense in a human standpoint to say, yeah, you don't want the preacher to feel like he's some, but, but there's something wrong about that.

[9:01] When I was trained to preach and I'm not the example, I believe me, I'm not the star of preachers or the reformation or any of that kind of stuff. I know where I am. But when I was trained to preach, at least the training I received was not to be a we preacher.

[9:16] That's what they call them, we preachers. Instead, meaning that when you handle the word of God, when you're declaring the word of God, you don't say we this or we that. You say you and you preach the word of God to the people.

[9:29] Now, there's no, there's never, there shouldn't be. There's no elevating a man when you say you, that when you declare that humanistically, you could say, well, you're, you're separating yourself.

[9:42] But no, that's, that's really not ever what's happening. Look at what Amos does. Let me show you the first three verses here. Watch how he says you and ye, and he's not, never says we and our. Watch this.

[9:53] Verse, verse one. Hear this word, ye kind of Bashan that are in the mouth of Samaritan, Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their master, bring and let us drink. The Lord God has sworn by his holiness that, lo, the day shall come upon you that he will take you away with hooks and your posterity with fish hooks.

[10:11] And ye shall go out at the breeches, every cow at that which is before her. And ye shall cast them into the palace. It's always like he is pointing the finger and declaring it's you that God's talking to.

[10:24] And that's how Amos preaches. Jesus, when I was in Bible school, Dr. Ruckman would, he'd get up in the pulpit when he's preaching on Sunday. And he was never, I never felt like he was trying to elevate himself.

[10:35] But he was just declaring the word of God. He'd say, I'm not one of these wee preachers. I'm not one of these wee preachers. And you men that are being trained to preach here, you don't be one of those wee preachers.

[10:46] And what he'd say is, I'm talking to you. He'd say, you bud, I'm talking to you. And it's to put the word of God in your face. That's his duty and calling. That's the preacher's job is to preach.

[10:58] It's not to mend relationships and to, I can't even think of the terminology that gets used today. It's so soft and feminine.

[11:13] It really is. So Amos says, hear this word. He's not trying to have meaningful conversations. He's preaching. That's what he's called to do, is to declare the word of God.

[11:25] He is the voice for God. That's what prophesying is. Prophesying is not telling the future. Although that's what a lot of the prophets did. Prophesying is being a voice for someone else.

[11:38] That's why it says that Aaron was Moses' prophet. He was Moses' voice to Pharaoh. That's the word in the Bible. And so as a prophet, he's preaching from the voice of God.

[11:50] And I could take you over the Bible and show you that's really all over the place. But I don't want to get any further into that. I hope I made the point across here that when Amos is preaching, this is a negative message.

[12:01] It's from God. It's to the people. They're guilty. They need to hear it. He's not a we preacher. And there's times when you see Daniel praying. He says, like, it's our, because of our iniquities.

[12:13] He's acknowledging nationally that Israel's guilty. And, you know, I would say Daniel probably is not the one that committed all these sins. But he's including himself.

[12:24] That's a prayer. That's different than him preaching and saying to the people, thus saith the Lord. So, for what it's worth. There will be a time when I say, I just want to share this thought with you. Or there will be a time when I say, you know, we, or I might include myself.

[12:38] I'll do that because sometimes it's just the natural best way to say something. But overall, God help anybody in this pulpit with a King James Bible who's going to deliver the words of God to the people of God.

[12:50] You come to sit and hear the scriptures. Then God help us to declare the scriptures and not get too tied up with, oh, they're going to think something about me. I don't want to talk about me anymore, but I feel like I don't ever feel that in my bones one time.

[13:09] If I'm saying, if I'm trying to declare what the word of God is, I don't ever think in my mind like, yeah, I'm telling them. I'm letting them have it today. Like I'm excluded. You know, I put the robe on.

[13:20] Like that doesn't even enter my mind. You know why? Because I know what you don't know about me. And I know what God knows what you don't know about me.

[13:32] And so I'd feel like a filthy, rotten hypocrite if I stood up here and pretended to be elevated. I'm just a filthy man. The best, at my best state, I'm altogether vanity.

[13:44] That's what I am. But the word of God is holy and pure and powerful. And if I'm going to have to stand here by a call of God to declare it, then I can't be tiptoeing with it.

[13:57] And that's just, that's Bible preaching. I try to do it. And thank God for the Bible. Okay, moving on. Chapter 4, verse 1. Hear this word, ye kind of Bashan, which are in the mountain of Samaria.

[14:17] These are Jews. He's not talking about somebody in the town or in the region of Bashan. He's calling his people Jews kind. You know what kind are? They're cattle.

[14:27] They're female cows. You will not find the word cows plural in your Bible, in the King James Bible. It's always cow, singular, like verse 3. Ye shall go out at the breaches, every cow at that which is before her.

[14:42] The word cow is singular. The plural for cow is kind. In the King James Bible, it's in their good bit. Back there in Pharaoh's dream, there was seven fatted and seven ill-favored, I think they were called, kind.

[14:57] And so they're just cows, milk cows or dairy cows or whatever. I don't know what they were, but they were females. All right, that's what it is. So hear this word, ye kind of Bashan.

[15:09] What a derogatory name with quite a load of sarcasm and scorn that God, as he's speaking through the prophet to his people. Do you think the people of God, the Israelites, were like, oh, you called us kind.

[15:23] You're a funny guy, Amos. How do you think they responded to this guy from Judah coming up to their land and just ripping into them, calling them as just a lowly, filthy animal?

[15:37] That's what he's doing. And accusing them with it. How do you think they responded to that? Do you think they were excited to hear the word of the Lord? But this is the way he had to preach this to them and to get their attention.

[15:51] Now, when he says ye kind of Bashan, there's a reason I believe that he uses that. And we'll do just a quick little Bible study on this. Because Bashan is the land that it will turn to Numbers 32.

[16:03] I'll show you this. Just go there first. Numbers 32. When the Jews were coming out of the wilderness and before they ever crossed over Jordan. Remember, we've even seen this in Amos chapter 2.

[16:15] Where they fought against those two kings of the Amorites and destroyed them. And took their land over. And one of them was Og, king of Bashan.

[16:27] And it was the two tribes, Reuben and Gad, and then half the tribe of Manasseh that said, this is a great place. Well, that's verse 1. Right here we are, Numbers 32. 1. Now, the children of Reuben, the children of Gad, and a very great multitude of cattle.

[16:42] When they saw the land of Jazar, the land of Gilead, the hill that was a place for cattle. They come up with this idea. And now look over just chapter 1 still. Look at verse 33.

[16:55] Moses gave unto them, even to the children of Gad, and to the children of Reuben, and to the half-tribe of Manasseh, the son of Joseph, the kingdom of Sihon, king of Amorites, and the kingdom of Og, king of Bashan, the land with the cities thereof, the coast, even the cities around about.

[17:10] So this is the land Bashan, part of that whole Gilead, that whole region where it was good for cattle. Get that, okay? Because that's what we're talking about, ye kind of Bashan. All right, now get Deuteronomy 32.

[17:25] You're close there, so flip over to the next book, Deuteronomy 32. And then, I don't know if you can do this with all your fingers, but you're going to have to go to Ezekiel and find 39, Ezekiel 39.

[17:41] There's two places that there's something about Bashan and cattle mentioned that can give us some insight to what God's saying and what he's calling them.

[17:53] It's really a wild thing to say if you don't connect the dots and understand it, to call them kind of Bashan. So we'll start in Deuteronomy 32, since I reckon you're there first.

[18:05] And I'll start in verse 13 and 14 is what we want. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields. And he made him to suck honey out of the rock and oil out of the flinty rock, butter of kine and milk of sheep with fat of lambs and rams of the breed of Bashan and goats with the fat of kidneys of wheat and so forth.

[18:29] He's describing the best of the best, the greatest, the delicate things, the fine things that they could eat. And he references the rams of the breed of Bashan.

[18:43] There's something to note there. Now find Ezekiel 39. And here's another reference to it. Ezekiel 39. And we need verse 18.

[18:58] Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan.

[19:09] Ye shall eat fat till ye be full. And so this, I don't know that there's anything literal about that, but the point is, this is the best of the best.

[19:22] This is where the best, fattest cattle are raised. Over in that fertile, popular soil. Over there in Bashan. That's what's known for bringing out the best.

[19:33] So this is, pardon me for this, but if you want to fine dine on some kind, you want to get them from Bashan. Okay. They were considered the biggest, the fattest, because of how rich that region was for raising cattle.

[19:49] So what God calls his people then, in Amos chapter 4, is a bunch of fatted cows that think they're better than everybody else.

[20:00] In verse 1, it says, Hear this word, ye kind of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor. That's something he dealt with earlier in his previous chapters.

[20:13] They oppress the poor. They crush the needy, which say to their master, bring and let us drink. That's so backwards. The cattle are taken out to pasture or let out to water, but they're saying, no, master, you bring it to me.

[20:26] They, that's what they are, these fatted, think they're the best thing of the best ever, that the earth ever saw. And the Lord, they're lifted up in pride as kind of, God's calling them a filthy derogatory term, yet also relaying their wicked hearts within them.

[20:46] So, verse number 2, The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the day shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fish hooks.

[20:59] And ye shall go out at the breeches, every cow at that which is before her, and ye shall cast them into the palace, saith the Lord. The Lord hath sworn by his holiness.

[21:10] When God swears, this is God vowing a vow. He's determined to do something, and he will fulfill this. It's like he's promising and pledging, I'm going to do this.

[21:22] When he says he swears, it's actually more common than you may realize. That shows up in the Bible where the Lord is vowing a vow. Look at chapter 6 and verse 8.

[21:33] Here's another case of it. Amos chapter 6 and verse number 8. It says, The Lord God hath sworn by himself, saith the Lord, the God of hosts.

[21:45] The Lord God hath sworn by himself. In chapter 4, it says that he hath sworn by his holiness, swearing by his own nature and attributes, swearing by himself.

[21:58] Why would he do that? Well, it's obvious that there is none greater. There is nothing higher than, no higher authority for God to swear by, and it guarantees then the immutability of his word, that it will not change ever, because he's swearing, whether it's for blessing or for judgment, he's swearing by himself and his own nature.

[22:19] Some other phrases you'll see as you read your Bible. He says, By myself have I sworn. Another time he says, By his right hand, by the arm of his strength.

[22:31] And another one he says, I have sworn by my great name, saith the Lord. So that's God. Whenever he vows something, it's always by himself, because he can't vow by you or I.

[22:43] That'd be a joke. He can't vow by Jerusalem or vow by some earthly, you know, he's so high. So that's the way he does it. That's what he does. Verse number two says, He hath sworn by his holiness, that lo, the day shall come upon you, that he shall take you away with hooks.

[23:00] Your posterity, that means your offspring, your descendants, your children, future generation are going to be vanquished out of their own land, their own houses.

[23:12] They're going to be led astray or led out just like a bunch of cattle. And he says in verse three, you should go out at the breaches. A breach is a gap in the fence or a void in the wall.

[23:26] And when the city gets destroyed and burned with fire, there's going to be the wall broken down. They don't need to go out through the gates. They're going to go out at the breaches. And so that's the way it took place in Jerusalem.

[23:39] When the kings came and led them into captivity, they led them away just like a hook in their nose, just like a cow, just like leading them out, out, out, out, get out, get out.

[23:53] You violated the word of God. Out. This isn't your home anymore. This isn't your city anymore. You don't get to call this home. You forfeited that because you disobeyed his word.

[24:06] And the Lord follows through. He follows through with it. And so this is happening. The question is which generation exactly is going to experience this affliction?

[24:17] Which of the posterity is going to feel that defeat of captivity and that emptiness and that wandering? And that's got to be some pain with that getting pulled.

[24:28] I mean, L.A. understands when fires roll through, it displaces people from their homes for a night, for two nights, for a week, or even permanently. As you understand, that happens.

[24:40] But this isn't the same. I mean, that's devastating on its own, but this is a power, a heathen Gentile power now ruling over you, and you're going to be their servants.

[24:50] Likely for the rest of your life, you're going to be their servants. Very few of these Jews would ever have made it back. Very few. So, it's been settled.

[25:01] God is going to deal with it. He's sworn by his holiness. He's going to, just the way it's worded, even though it's in picture of cows and breaches in the fence, so to speak, it's literally being fulfilled when the city's walls are broken down, and their homes are destroyed, and they get led out to captivity.

[25:18] It says at the end of verse three, ye shall cast them into the palace, saith the Lord. That's a strange phrase to me, and I don't, I'm not sure I understand that fully, except, everything that makes sense to me is connecting it back to verse two, when he says, your posterity, meaning your children and your, the generations, it says, ye shall cast them into the palace.

[25:40] It seems like you're, they're getting led astray, and they're, they're going to try to, try to get their kids, uh, better off than themselves, and I'll show you a case of this.

[25:51] Look at, uh, look at Daniel chapter one, just a little bit to the, to the left. Find Daniel chapter one. This is looking at the kingdom of Judah when they were taken by Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar, but I think the idea is that when a mom, uh, uh, a cow, a, a wicked, fatted cow, is getting led astray, she's going to try to, try to say, you know, my, my kids will, you know, give them to the higher ups, to the authorities at all, they'll take care of you, they don't want them to be beaten as slaves, and treated like slums, and, and have that be their life, if they can get them into the palace, to be a servant to the princes, that's what they would want to do, and here's a case of that, uh, maybe just give you a little example of what this might look like, uh, Daniel one, let's just start at the first verse to get the context, the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, came Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, unto Jerusalem, and besieged it, and the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand, with part of the vessels of the house of God, which he carried into the land of Shinar, to the house of his God, and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his God, and the king spake unto Ashpenaz, the master of the eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel, and of the king's seed, and of the princes, children in whom was no blemish, but well favored, and skillful in wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them, to stand in the king's palace, that they might teach, so, you'd want your child to be like, hey, there's a good one, there's a smart one, take him, because he's going to have a better life, that's the thought anyway,

[27:30] I'll give you one more case of this, it's in Isaiah, I think it's 39, yeah, Isaiah 39, and this is King Hezekiah, and this is the prophecy, of Isaiah against this king, because of, what he did with Babylon coming, and showed him around, and so Isaiah 39, verse 5, then said Isaiah to Hezekiah, hear the word of the Lord of hosts, behold the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers, have laid up in store, until this day, shall be carried to Babylon, nothing shall be left, saith the Lord, and of thy sons, that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, future, shall they take away, and they shall be eunuchs, in the palace, of the king of Babylon, so that, I think that makes the most sense, to say that ye shall cast them, into the palace, saith the Lord, that that's what they're, they'll separate themselves, from their children, for the rest of their lives, in hopes that their kids, will be treated better, than they will, that's just a, that's my conjecture on it,

[28:32] I don't know, what else fits that, or makes sense to me, but feel free to, interpret that one, on your own, if you can come up, with something better, so we're gonna, man we don't have time, to get into this next part, we'll read it at least, and try to just, introduce it, the next couple verses, next two verses, there is some, there's more heavy, sarcasm, from the Lord, describing the nature, of his people, describing their zeal, for their idolatry, verses four and five, God says, come to Bethel, likely that's where, Amos is preaching at, he's saying, come on, to where the altar is, that the king set up, come to Bethel, and transgress, at Gilgal, multiply transgression, and bring your sacrifices, every morning, and your tithes, after three years, and offer a sacrifice, of thanksgiving, with leaven, and proclaim, and publish the free offerings, for this liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord God, this is exactly, what you're like, is what he's telling them, so come to Bethel, and transgress, that means, come and offer your offerings, upon this, this altar, that is set up, to this golden calf, just yeah, come and do that, and Gilgal, that's a place, go multiply transgressions there, you know what Gilgal is, it's, well, what it's probably, most famous for, it's the place, where King Saul, offered sacrifice, when he had the Philistines, coming against them, and he said,

[30:00] I can't wait any longer, for Samuel, and Saul, violated his, duty as king, he violated, the oath, or the law, in offering sacrifices, because it doesn't, pertain to him, to do that, and he pretended, that he was justified, in doing it, and that he was innocent, and so Bethel, a place where, a golden calf is set up, Gilgal, a place where, sacrifices were offered, illegally, he's saying, come on, just multiply, just keep doing it, keep doing this stuff, that's what you're like, this liketh you, is what he tells them, there's a few more things, we'll look at this quickly, here it says, in verse four, to bring your sacrifices, every morning, and your tithes, after three years, and I know that sounds, odd to you, to think of tithing, after three years, and everybody, every commentator, that there is, on the scripture, has a problem, with this text, and they say, the King James Bible, is wrong, it should say three days, the majority of them, all say, it really means, three days, not three years, and so,

[31:09] I'm not an authority, on Hebrew, and I don't really, care to be, but I think, I have my authority, right here in front of me, that says three years, so that's what it is, and that's what I stand on, and will believe, till the day I die, that it's three years, is what God meant, and that's what he said, your tithes, after three years, now why might he say that, flip over to Deuteronomy, let's look at this one, and we'll, probably wrap it up here, look at Deuteronomy 14, Deuteronomy chapter 14, Moses is teaching, the second generation, after the first generation, of Jews has died, in the wilderness, he's teaching them, the law, that they never got, and he goes through things, that they can, and cannot eat, and then, look at verse, 28, verse 28, at the end of three years, thou shalt bring forth, all the tithe, of thine increase, the same year, and shalt lay it up, within thy gates, at the end of three years, is what he said, there's another place of this, look at chapter 26, and verse 12, 26, and verse 12, when thou has made an end, of tithing, all the tithes, of thine increase, the third year, which is the year, of tithing, and has given it, unto the Levite, the stranger, farless, et cetera, so there it is, in the Bible, about bringing your tithes, after three years, now there's a lot, of speculation, from the guys, who don't like three years, they say it's three days, and they speculate, that's not at all, what he's referring to, but it seems, scripture was scripture, there is something there, that God's saying, and I'm not sure,

[33:18] I got it settled, exactly what he's inferring, but I think I, I have a thought, so we'll probably have to wait, till next week, to get to that, but there is a text, here about three years, I'm really unfamiliar, with this being, an ongoing thing, like every third year, every third year, the reason, one thing I have, and I need to study this out, a little bit harder, but I'll just give you, what I got so far, in Deuteronomy 26, the very first verse says, and it shall be, when thou art come, unto the land, like it hasn't happened yet, they had not yet, made it into the land, and then he goes on, to say in verse, eight, the Lord, that brought us forth, out of Egypt, mighty hand, verse nine, he has brought us, brought us, into this place, and given us this land, and so, the two times, and I have to, look a little closer again, but, I hate to speak, out of term here, but it looks like, that's just, just the first time, into the land, there's the first year, the second, and then the third year, because now they've, remember where he cuts off, like the things grew, by themselves, and then that's cut off, and then, and I think it's,

[34:26] I think it's associated with that, but I really haven't studied that out, to say that's what he's talking about, but what I'll liken this to, if I'm right about that, that that third year stuff, is only isolated, to that first, third year, of them entering the land, if I'm right about that, then what God may be saying, here then, is, go ahead, and you know what, it says in Deuteronomy, to do the third year, so do your thing the third year, like, like you can find a verse, in the Bible, to justify what you want to do, because you could find that verse, about the third year, and then just apply that to now, say yeah, every third year, it's what the Bible says, so it's right there, and that's what people do, I mean Christians do this, they abuse the word of God, to justify their own lust, or their own thinking, saying things like, well God looks on the heart, and he doesn't look on how I dress, he looks on my heart, really, is that, is that what God's saying, in the passage, about David, looking on the heart, not on the outward appearance, or the stature, is that what God's saying, it doesn't matter how you dress, ever, because he's looking at your heart, like that's abusing the scripture, to use that verse, and then use it to say,

[35:40] I can do whatever I want, it's just wrong, saying things like, I can do all things, it's what the Bible says, that's wrong, judge not, when you're guilty, you're the one that says, judge not, because you don't want anybody, to judge you, but they should be judging, you should be declaring the truth, but they'll find a verse, and then say, see that's what the Bible says, and I'm wondering, if that's not the way, God's handling that, thing about the three years, I may be dead wrong about that, but the application of the thought, is true nonetheless, so we'll stop here tonight, we're out of time, and Lord willing, we'll pick it right back up, and it's going to get through, where the Lord, he tries to deal with his people, he tries, and he tries, and tries, and he does it through the preacher, and then he's going to do it, through some punishment, and we'll get into that, Lord willing, next Wednesday, so let's be dismissed in prayer, and then God willing, I'll see you men Saturday, and the rest of you Sunday morning, Father, we love you, we're grateful for your word, we thank you Lord, that it's relevant for us, in our lives today, in 2026, Lord help us to be faithful, to the word of God, and to not back down, and shy away from it, help us to declare it, help us to receive it, and to believe it, and Lord help us to live lives, that wouldn't bring reproach, on our Savior,

[36:53] I know we're just flesh, and I know that, we haven't gotten out, of these bodies of clothes, away, and you're not interested, in doing that quite yet, and it's hard for us, to maintain a pure walk with you, and to be clean, and to be righteous, and Lord we need your help, we need your spirit, and beyond that, I pray Lord, that you'll help us, to take courage, to do things that are right, and to be a testimony, to those in our lives, so that Jesus Christ, could be glorified, please give us a good rest, of this week, keep us safe we pray, also be with those, that are not well today, or traveling, and bring them back, this weekend, and we anticipate, a good evening, Saturday night with the men, as well as a time, on Sunday, worshiping you together, we pray, that you'll bless it, and we pray this in Jesus name, Amen, Amen.

[37:40] Amen. Amen.