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[0:00] I'm a bit brave this morning, we're going to try and do Judges 7 and 8 and I decided, because! when you read Judges 7 and 8 it's very difficult to know where to break off because the account! goes right through the chapter break and so what I decided we'd do is we'd go on for 45 minutes and if we haven't got to the end we'll just stop and do the rest next week because otherwise I get stressed trying to make it all work in. One thing that I wanted to draw our attention to before we start this morning is this whole sin cycle because I think even more than the other chapters this this chapter or these two chapters kind of nailed down the fact that there is a cyclical thing going on and they also give you a type and a shadow of Jesus because what what happens is that the people depart from the Lord they depart from the Lord to the extent where God takes his protective hand away from them they come under judgment they come under captivity when they get to the point where they sincerely cry out for deliverance he delivers them which is a real picture of what Jesus does for us and we're dealing with the Midianites and the Amalekites and both of those groups of people in Scripture became a sort of personification of sin a personification of godlessness and so the fact that in this particular chapter it's the Midianites and the Amalekites that are getting the wrath of God poured out upon them but also the way Gideon then continues to pursue them until the very last man is dead it speaks to me and it spoke to me as

[1:47] I was preparing it of the way in which we should make war on our sins until the very last one is nailed in other words it's a never-ending battle and you know at the end of what we're going to read these guys were exhausted they were asking for sustenance bread from the surrounding people and they were carrying on to exhaustion until they had carried out the word of God to the very last man and that it just spoke to me of that is a metaphor for our sin and the way we should be ruthless in dealing with our sin and I am not attaching to that because of a conversation we've already had this morning I'm not saying that you become unsaved if you sin or if you fail to nail the very last sin before you die but it should be a preoccupation of ours to um I mean I can't speak for you but I'm sure I'm sure you're in a similar boat where when I know I've blown it I don't only need to apologize for blowing it but inwardly I go Ray what are you doing why have you done that yet again um and I take myself to task uh probably not as much as I should but I do and I think that's what this is about it's ruthlessly pursuing your own sin until it's nailed so last week we got as far as Gideon being ready for battle um against the foe um he he'd been through the testing of God he'd received three or arguably four signs from God he'd done the thing with the fleeces twice and he'd also had God set fire to the offering but he'd also had a Christophany which I can't ignore as a further sign I mean if Jesus shows up in the room you'd count that as a sign wouldn't you so arguably four signs confirming that the Lord was with him and the Lord had actually said it and then confirmed it um he he called fire from the rock um now when when we consider the magnitude of what he's now going to undertake you realize that he really did need to have confidence that the Lord was with him um and I've certainly been in that situation once or twice in my life where I've embarked not not trying to rout 135 000 troops with a mere 300 men nothing of that magnitude but I have faced situations where uh my courage has been waning until such time as I knew the Lord was with me um and given the abject fear that Gideon has shown so far when we first found him he's hiding in the wine press um and he's kind of what me Lord well I'm only the weak one and I'm a weak man in a weak family in a weak tribe um and I'm not really a good choice for this job um and he's gone from that to taking on this amazing military defeat that he's going to force upon me the enemy armies and he's called these tribes together he sent for Asher Zebulun and Naphtali um and we need to keep in mind that this may have taken days um and they're all gathering above the valley of Jezreel which is the same valley as half Megiddo which is the valley of Armageddon which is where the final battles will take place but he's gathering at the spring of Harod which is above this valley um and at the time that we join the uh account here there are 32 000 of them lining up to fight 135 000 Midianites outnumbered by more than four to one but hey God is with us so um let's do some reading and then what I'm I'm not going to try and read straight through two chapters and get and go back

[5:49] over it we'll deal with it as we go so Judges chapter seven so then Jerubal that is Gideon remember they called him Jerubal because he kind of uh he he was the one that expressed where if if I've upset Baal by destroying the altar and putting down the asher pole then let Baal deal with it and so he got this name one who contends with Baal or it could be one with whom Baal contends it could be either way so Jerubal that is Gideon and all the people who were with him rose early and camped beside the spring of Harod and and the camp of Midian was on the north side of them by the hill of Moray in the valley um could I have the telly on oh yeah please oh just give me a sec oh that was already it wasn't it i think it was yeah there we are so I don't know if you can you probably can't see that this is the spring of Moray and water flows from this cave and runs down into the valley of Jezreel and you've got this this is probably one of the only places in the area where it's actually big enough and spread enough for 30 odd thousand people to gather um and the reason I put the photo up is because I find that as

[7:28] I do things like this it confirms our faith we see the scripture and then we see exactly where it happened and it kind of tallied um one of the one of the points that I quite regularly make and I'm making this morning is that when you when you read of places and names and you check them out and they do check out it means the bible is true it adds ingredients to the evidence for the truth of the scripture um when you get names of people and we we've read that Gideon was um was was the son of Joash the Abiezrite which is a family of the tribe of Manasseh once you start drawing these long strings of connection it it means that there is less and less possibility of casting down on a scriptural account because these are real bits of history that you can find and that archaeology supports so I just wanted to show you those photos I can't remember what the next photo was oh this is uh we'll we'll refer to that in a moment so the lord said to Gideon uh the people who are with you are too many for me so we're outnumbered four to one and the lord says that's too many you've got too many on your side because you're only outnumbered four to one now keeping in mind Gideon's former fears i don't know whether he was chewing his nails at this point or excited because it could be oh god you're going to do this with even fewer people wow or it could be oh no i was worried about trying to achieve this with 32 000. anyway um the people who are with you are too many for me to give Midian into their hands you have a parcel for Israel would become boastful saying my own power has delivered me now when we get to the end of these two chapters you'll find that that's the position Gideon finished up in so despite god reducing the number down to 300 at the end of it all Gideon begins to behave as if he really is something you know look what i've done um we'll return to that but there is something in the human heart and i think having talked about pursuing our sins this is one of the biggest traps for mankind the biggest traps that any minister is they get put on a pedestal and they really think they're something and yet if anything's going to happen in any meeting or in the life of any one to whom we minister or in our own lives it's not because we're really something it's it's in spite of the fact that we're really awful um so the lord says i know israel they will get boastful if they win with 32 000 people verse three now therefore come proclaim in the hearing of the people saying whoever is afraid and trembling let him return and depart from mount gilead so 22 000 people returned but 10 000 remain so you know this tells you where their heart was and also shows you how much then the lord knew them is um you know well if you're scared go home and so 22 000 people go that's me i'm scared i'm off um so they've got 10 000 left uh verse four then the lord said to gideon the people are still too many bring them down to the water and i will test them for you there therefore it shall be that he of whom i say to you this one shall go with you he shall go with you but every one of whom i say to you this one shall not go with you he shall not go so he brought the people down to the water and the lord

[11:28] said to gideon you shall separate everyone who laps the water with his tongue as a dog laps as well as everyone who kneels to drink now the number of those who lapped putting their hand into their mouth was 300 men but all the rest of the people kneeled to drink water so this draws a distinction with people who stick their face in the you know they they just put their head down and suck out of the stream like a horse would out of a trough or people who drink like this and there are lots of people who have lots of ideas that you know well this is obviously god kept the ones who were really alert and we're still watching what was going on while they were drinking and all of this now that may be true but i think the important point here is if you're taking 300 guys against 135 000 guys it doesn't matter it's it this is not down to the type of man that does it the the battle is not won by the type of man that was chosen it's done because god is going to fight this battle supernaturally um we should always keep in mind when we read about these battles particularly when they're in in this valley is that this is very much a type of the end time battle where jesus will go into the valley of jezreel and he will slay the enemy with the sword that proceeds from his mouth and there will be others with him but they won't actually do an awful lot of good they won't i mean this it's not it's not a direct parallel but there's a there's a type and a shadow in this that massive victories with insuperable odds in this valley is a type and shadow of what is to come in the end times and it's also in those end times that the sin which is represented here by amalek and by the midianites will be totally overcome once and for all of them that it's immediate to before the final judgment where all of that will be cast into the lake of fire and the rest of us will inhabit the earth with our new resurrection bodies and we'll be inhabiting a place where there is no sin so we won't we will make that wonderful transition from being forgiven sinners to being sinless so it kind of whets your appetite for that i feel um the the number of those were lapped putting this is verse six putting their hand to their mouth was 300 but all the rest of the people kneeled to drink water the lord said to gideon i will deliver you with the 300 men who lapped and will give the midianites into your hands so let all the other people go and each man to his home so the 300 men took the people's provisions and their trumpets into their hands and gideon set sent all the other men of israel each to his tent but retained the 300 men and the camp of midian was below him in the valley so this is where we start to look at the map here um if you can you can see it the midianite camp was over over here now it's what i couldn't get i couldn't get a decent relief map with these things on but gideon spring is here and it's above the jezreel valley the battle area is down in the jezreel valley the midianite camp was up here so you've got the midianites coming down and gideon also dropping down but coming up this way to meet them but it's the manner of that meeting that wins the victory um the very fact that people can draw maps of this and the very fact that there is archaeological evidence from digs in these areas again leads us to believe that this is real history

[15:32] um not that anybody in this room really doubted it but it's nice to have it shown sometimes um verse 9 now the same night it came about that the lord said to him arise go down against the camp for i have given it into your hands but if you are afraid what me gideon but if you are afraid to go down go with pure your servant the word pura means fruitful interestingly um go down with your fruitful servant down to the camp and you will hear what they say and afterwards your hands will be strengthened that you may go down against the camp so he went with pura his servant down to the outpost of the army that was in the camp now the midianites and the amalekites and all the sons of the east which we presume were arabs were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts and their camels were without number as numerous as the sand on the seashore when gideon came behold a man was relating a dream to his friend and he said behold i had a dream a loaf of barley bread was tumbling into the camp of midian and it and it came to the tent and struck it so that it fell and turned it upside down so that the tent lay flat his friend replied this is nothing less than the sword of gideon the son of joash a man of israel god has given midian and all the camp into his hand now when i got to this i thought why would a loaf of bread rolling down a hill knocking a tent over make you think that that uh that you've you've already lost whatever battle comes you've already lost it that we're given into the hand of the israelites because i dreamt about a roll of bread rolling down the hill it's a bit odd but the thing about these things is it's uh first of all you've got to allow for the fact that god is influencing the minds of these people uh and we're going to see them running scared in a moment and getting into chaos and panic um so they've already got minds that are uncertain and troubled they're in the dark this is night time in the dark in the middle east no street lights uh the only thing they've got for torches if they happen to be lit are handheld burning torches they don't give a vast amount of light um but the chances are soon after this and when the battle takes place they'll have all gone to bed so they won't even be those torches it is as black as your hat it's really really dark and there is panic in their hearts before they started and um the loaf of barley is quite interesting because barley was um it was the worst of the grains for making bread uh it was the sort of stuff you'd only eat if you were in famine and it's known that these midianites they had what's called a scorched earth policy in other words they took what they wanted and then they burnt everything else so the israelites were not only impoverished but they were suffering famine um and the tentacle represents the camp so you have a representation of those who are starving rolling down the hill and knocking over the tents of the camp the camp of the camp of the ones who were supposed to be strong um now lots of people have written on that subject but um it is uh nevertheless it's a strange thing when you read that with western

[19:33] eyes and try and think how on earth does the rolling loaf of bread hitting the tent over how do you interpret that into well we've already lost this is this is talking about the sword of gideon uh no it's talking about a loaf of bread so you you have to allow for god's influence on the minds of the recipient of this dream um and of course they've placed a lot of store by dreams and they also look for interpretations of dreams so having said i've had this dream whoever said this is this is gideon you know this is about gideon so when gideon's going to beat us as an interpretation of the dream they would take that very much to heart which would enhance their fear um um 15 when gideon heard the account of the dream and its interpretation see we we have here that he treated it as an interpretation he bowed in worship and returned to the camp of israel and said arise for the lord has given the camp of the midianites into your hands so the dream was enough it was certainly meaningful enough to convince gideon he divided the 300 men into three companies and put trumpets and empty pitches into the hands of all the men with torches inside the pitches and he said to them look at me and do likewise and behold when i come to the outskirts of the camp do as i do and when i and all who are with me blow the trumpet then you also blow the trumpet all around the camp and say for the lord and for gideon so gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch and that is from what i recall that's about kind of two o'clock in the morning the middle watch of the night so as i said they've probably gone to bed and they're certainly uh pitch blackness when they had just posted the watch and they blew the trumpet and smashed the pitches that were in their hands and then three companies blew the trumpets and broke the pitches they held the torches in their left hand and the trumpets in their right hand for blowing and cried a sword of the lord and for gideon now just imagine pitch black you've already been scared you know i i don't know if you've ever experienced it but when i was younger and we used to go to scout camps and things like that we'd occasionally get someone who would tell a scary story just before you went to bed and it was dark and you're out there in the middle of nowhere and somebody tells a scary story and it's difficult to get it out of your head and to relax and go to sleep but these guys have gone to bed the last thing they remember before they went to bed was this means we're going to lose to the israelites and then suddenly there is this mad cacophony of trumpet blasts and crashing breaking stuff and uh lots of people shouting the gideon soldiers arrived and it's pitch black and they're getting up and people what's going on and they haven't got time to get on their camels um they've got enough camels to sink a battleship or two uh but they haven't got time to mount them or put saddles on them or anything like that they just begin to flee and in the dark they come across people and they don't actually know who they've come across and so rather than be killed they kill them and they've got them all killing each other as we read on we see this is what happens so gideon and the hundred uh where did i get to verse 21 each stood in his place around the camp and all the army ran crying out as they fled when they blew 300 trumpets

[23:34] and the lord set the sword of one against another even throughout the whole army and the army fled as far as as bethshita uh towards zera ra ra uh as the far edge of aboy meola and by tabath the men of israel was summoned from naphtali and asher and all manasseh and they pursued midian so he's he's now sent messengers out saying we've got them on the run intercept them gideon sent messages throughout the hill country of ephraim saying come down against the midianites and take the waters before them as far as beth barra and the jordan so all the men of ephraim were summoned and they took the waters as far as beth barra and jordan now i think i've got another right another map um so what you what you've got there is beth barra which is where they're headed he's down here he's called for reinforcement from naphtali zebulun asher and manasseh to come and join in because they're on the run and so you've now got not just gideon and 300 men but you've got more than that pursuing these guys who are on the run separated from their arms separated from their camels so you begin to you begin to see how they can actually beat 135 000 what would have been well-armed men on camels are now unarmed men on foot haven't even had a chance to put any armor on or anything and they're running towards beth barra on foot and he says to gideon it says to ephraim come and cut them off at the waters of beth barra so when they get down here and they've been cut off at the pass here they're forced to turn up the jabok river towards penuel and eventually to uh carcour and what we will read is that gideon takes his army and doesn't try and chase them down there but comes around this way and meets them head on so this is an amazing military strategy really that we've probably never taken any time to study before but it all starts with the supernatural implantation of fear into the hearts of the midianites and then the inducing of panic so you don't have to kill them all because they're killing each other and then they're taking a run for it and as they're taking a run for it what we what we will read is the number is much reduced by the time we get to carcour um where were we 25 they captured the two leaders of midian oreb and zeb and they killed oreb at the rock of oreb and they killed zeb at the wine press of zeb while they pursued midian and they brought the heads of oreb and zeb to gideon from across the jordan there's a present for you yeah okay um these this is my my inference from this it's not expressly stated here so you make what you will of it but they took these two leaders oreb and zeb and they killed oreb at the rock of oreb i am uh inferring that the rock of oreb must be a place where this prince this is a midianite prince had somehow taken a victory or a battle or claimed this territory in the past and named this place after himself this is the rock of oreb so they took him to the rock of oreb and chopped his head off as a kind of a a bit a bit of overdue humility i would guess and then with zeb i'm i would infer that zeb also did

[27:36] the same with this wine press and therefore they took him to the wine press that he put his name on and chopped his head off there but they were both beheaded at places where they had elevated themselves and they were brought down chapter eight then the men of ephraim said to him what is this thing you have done to us not calling us when you weren't to fight against midian and they contended with him vigorously but he said to them what have i done now in comparison with you is it not is not the gleaning of grapes of ephraim better than the vintages of abeaza um they basically said what are you doing going to war without us we want we wanted to be in on the fight and gideon is basically saying look count your blessings mate you didn't need to get involved go back and go back and enjoy your grapes and your wine uh verse three god has given the leaders of midian oreb and zeb into your hands and what was i able to do in comparison with you when the anger towards him subsided uh sorry then their anger towards him subsided when he said that gideon and the 300 men who were with him came to the jordan and crossed over weary yet pursuing yet pursuing for some reason i'm not seeing too well sorry then gideon and the 300 men who were with him came to the jordan and crossed over weary yet pursuing so they've they've had a hard day they've been going and going and going and they're getting fatigued but they're still pursuing verse five he said to the men of sukkoth please give loads of bread to the people who are following me for they are weary and i am pursuing zeba and zamuna the kings of midian the leader of sukkoth said are the hands of zeba and zamuna already in your hands that we should give bread to your army in other words they're saying no you can't have bread you haven't finished yet and come back when you've caught them um so denying provision to exhausted troops who are fighting for you gideon wasn't impressed gideon in verse seven says all right when the lord has given zeba and zamuna into my hands then i will thrash your bodies with the thorns of the wilderness and with briars um um what i what i was impressed by here and something i thought we should take note of in our own lives is gideon's certainty that once he knew the lord was with him he was going to come back safe he was going to catch these kings and he was going to come back safe there appears to be no doubt in his mind that you know when i've done this i'll come back and i'll thrash you with the briars it was not just a a threat but it was also an expression of faith he went up from there to penuel and spoke similarly to them and the men of penuel answered him just as the men of sokov had answered him so he spoke also to the men of penuel saying when i return safely i will tear down this tower now the tower at penuel was a fortification it was a it was it provided a lookout tower though the lookout towers were also called citadels so uh they would they would keep a watch from the tower which made a surprise attack almost impossible but they would also retire into the tower so that they would be very difficult to attack they would be protected and they'd be able to shoot down on people below and throw things at them and whatever but it's very difficult to attack someone when they're up on a high tower so taking down this tower would have made them pretty much defenseless where they had been well defended in the past um now ziba and zelmuna were in karkor and their armies with them about 15 000 men

[31:46] so they've gone from 135 000 to 15 000 um all who were left of the entire army of the sons of the east for the fallen were 120 000 swordsmen gideon went up by the way of those who lived in tents on the east of noba and jugbeha and attacked the camp camp when the camp was unsuspecting so that's this little detour here that we talked of where he went around this way to karkor when ziba and zelmuna fled he pursued them and captured the two kings of midian ziba and zelmuna and routed the whole army then gideon of the son of joash returned from the battle by the ascent of heros and he captured a youth from sock of and questioned him then the youth wrote down for him the princes of sock of and its elders 77 men he came to the men of sock of and said behold ziba and zelmuna in other words i told you i'd come back i've got them here they are at this point they're still alive concerning whom you taunted me saying are the hands of ziba and zelmuna in already in your hand that we should give bread to your men who are weary and he took the elders of the city and the thorns of the wilderness and briars and he disciplined the men of sukkof with them he tore down the tower of penuel and killed the men of that city now i'm not quite sure why the men of sukkof got a thrashing and the men of penuel got executed um it's perhaps they fought back i don't know in any event that was the outcome he then said to ziba and zelmuna what kind of men are they whom you killed at table and they said no he's talking into these midianite kings tell me about these men you killed when you were at mount table or table and they said they were like you each one resembling the son of a king now i think it's really interesting each one resembling the son of a king um i think joash was the king of the abiezrites at the time but i wonder if it wasn't a little bit of sucking up you know they were just like you like sons of a king i don't know i'm maybe interpreting too much nevertheless what gideon said in verse 19 he said they were my brothers the sons of my mother as the lord lives if only you had let them live i would not kill you so he said to jether his firstborn and i don't know what to make of this he said to jether his firstborn rise and kill them but the youth did not draw his sword for he was afraid because he was still a youth so why you get your young son to execute people uh unless it was just a bit of one-upmanship you know i don't need to do it my little boy can deal with you kind of thing i just don't know it's a numbers is full of things not full of things got quite a few things in it and we'll come across more as we progress that are really you think why is this in here um but the youth did not draw his sword for he was afraid because he was still a youth verse 21 then ziba and zalmuna said rise up yourself and fall on us for as the man so his strength so gideon arose and killed ziba and zalmuna and took the crescent ornaments which were on their camels necks a lot of the a lot of the arab people it's interesting because the the crescent ornaments

[35:49] that were on the camels necks to this day the crescent is still the main um symbol for the muslims um and so actually it's more pertinent to the sons of esau um now if you remember if i remember uh midianites were descendants of abraham but the amalekites were descendants of esau and still today the symbol they use to depict their presence is the sickle um 22 then the men of israel said to gideon rule over us both you and your son also your sons too for you have delivered us from the hand of midian but gideon said to them i will not rule over you nor shall my son rule over you the lord shall rule over you now i think that's the last thing that gideon actually got right because he he did get that right he said i'm not the one to rule over you let the lord do it let the lord rule over you um yet gideon said to them i would request that you each of you give me an earring from his spoil for they had got earrings because they were ishmaelites so ishmael was another descendant of abraham wasn't he and they were traders um and quite wealthy it was the ishmaelites if you recall that traded joseph after they got him out of the pit and sold him as a slave so they would sell slaves but they'd also sell trinkets of gold and so on what i found interesting in reading about this is the jews themselves were not allowed piercings a lot of this jewelry but not stuff they could wear but they were made of gold so they were valuable so um there were ishmaelites amongst this group what i don't know because writers are divided on it is to whether this was earrings from spoil taken from people or earrings that the ishmaelites gave and that they were part of the group that was delivered it's not clear in any event they said we will surely give them so they spread out a garment and every one of them threw an earring there from his spoil the weight of the gold earrings that he requested was 1 700 shekels of gold which in today's money would be over a million pounds besides the crescent ornaments and the pendants and the purple rose rose which were on the kings of midia and besides the neck bands that were on their camel's necks the gold rings so there's a lot of metal here over a million pounds worth of metal gideon made it into an ephod a picture of an ephod somewhere a little picture in the corner so this was part of the the normal ephod that you find in scripture was something that hung around the neck or it hung off the shoulders actually of um the high priest and it had gold thread through it and it had precious stones on it now this is not the kind that it's not the kind of ephod that gideon has made because gideon was all gold um so what does he do with it when he's made it he's made a gold breastplate i suppose you'd call it um yeah gideon made it into an ephod and placed it in his city

[39:50] or ofrah and all israel played the harlot with it there so that it became a snare to gideon and his household when idiom when israel plays the harlot with something it means they're worshipping it so this was straight back to idolatry even while gideon's still alive they've gone back to idolatry instead of instead of worshipping god for the deliverance they're worshipping this ephod as a significance of the victory that gideon has brought them which kind of puffs gideon up and gideon becomes quite strange after this so verse 28 so midian was subdued before the sons of israel and they did not lift up their heads anymore and the land was undisturbed for 40 years in the days of gideon now i just thought there what an amazing show of the grace of god that despite the fact that gideon's gone into idolatry here and he's gone back into sin god grants the land 40 years of peace and honors what gideon has done so far um and you almost think he was ignoring gideon's sin because gideon's sin gets worse um jerubal notice they're not be he's not being called gideon if you pick out when he's being called gideon and when he's become called jerubal gideon's when he's being godly and quite often jerubal is when he's not then jerubal the son of joash went and lived in his own house now gideon had 70 sons who were direct descendants for he had many wives so one of the consequences of his sudden finding of fame and fortune was that he took lots of wives which is not the sort of thing that the word of god would have encouraged him to do the guy has become inflated in his opinion of himself i think his concubine so he had concubine as well as many wives uh who was in shechem also bore him a son and he named him abimelech uh abimelech abby being father melech being king so the name means my father is king now you've got to be a pretty um egotistical sort of guy when you name your son my father is king every every time people say your son's name they're referencing you my father is king um and gideon the son of joash died at the right at a ripe old age and he was buried in the tomb of his father joash in orpherah of the abby ezrites then it came about as soon as gideon was dead that the sons of israel again played the harlot with the baals and made bar berith their god bar berith means god of covenant and yet this was a false god not the true god thus the sons of israel did not remember the lord their god who had delivered them from the hands of all their enemies on every side nor did they show kindness to the household of jerubba that is gideon in accordance with all the good that he had done to israel and next week we will see that unkindness played out in the most violent way that um i think i think if i was to look around the nation right now one of the things that is plain is that we've forgotten all the amazing stuff that god has done in our nation we we've forgotten things like the welsh revivals and the the revivals up in the mill towns in the north and so on and um we've forgotten the fantastic missionary work that came from this country and took the gospel abroad and we've forgotten our god um and for me we need god to we need to get to the point where we are so

[43:54]  we are so sick of where we are that we cry out to god that's me done i'm amazed i got through that how long have we got there one minute and one second can i just ask a question of course yeah you know the crescent that's mentioned here somebody told me that above the main doors of kcc there's a sign up there of the crescent and something else yeah i think i think that's inadvertent i did it does look like a crescent i don't think they ever intended it to be a christian but it's uh oh it must have been people one or two people from the church pointed it out to us yeah it's probably the sea isn't it there's something yeah there's one or two signs there that you know then we would be walking in sin wouldn't we we would and particularly those who teach yeah that's why i have a very healthy fear of the fact that god requires a a double account yeah from people who teach um makes me very quick to collect correct my mistakes yeah because it's you know i don't want to fall out with god at all um but when we bring in that no no not at all not at all and i'm doing it because adrian's not here to sort of cut it so i've got a bit more freedom to say what i want to say but but i i think uh when we started to church down at highcliffe we had a lot of interest from all around yeah and that interest very quickly well not very quickly very slowly fizzled yeah when we were uncompromising about the application of god's word uh and also some people came and then didn't join us because they had positions of importance in their own church now they they freely said oh we just don't get the teaching but they wouldn't come and get the teaching because they were on a pedestal in their home church yeah and and so i i think when you become enlightened god does expect you to respond to that enlightenment do something about it because something has come to something has come to me god's shown me this week that there is something that i'm not walking right in and it's just really um it's really brought home how important it is that we've got to really when god shows us something we've actually got to do something about it um um because i won't be blessed and others won't be blessed and um i want to see good come out of of what i'm feeling what i'm thinking etc yeah yeah it plays on your conscience were you able to hear any of that someone where you could hear or were you upstairs upstairs we'll send you the recording that's okay yeah i will uh in fact i'll give you my phone and you can send it to yourself do you think if that like if a christian goes