Reflex Christians, they hurt themselves and others, and I'll explain on this edition of Key Life. That's Steve Brown, he's no guru, but he loves Jesus Christ. He loves the Bible, and he loves the teacher. The program is Key Life, and here's Steve with a teaching for today. Steve? Thanks Mike. Hope you had a great weekend. I hope you had an enjoyable time with your family, and I hope you did go to church. And I hope your pastor sermon was as beneficial to you as my pastor sermon was to me. And I hope your worship time was as celebratory as the worship time at our church. If you have your Bible, turn it to the book of Joel. We just introduced that last week. And for those of you who are just joining us, we're in the middle. Well, we're actually not in the middle. We're hitting toward the end in terms of volume of this multi-month Old Testament survey. And by the way, we do have the first two of the three booklets that are coming from this material that you can kind of put in your Old Testament when you study it, that will help you in understanding the book that you're reading at that time. And the second one is out, and I'll be talking about it later this week. But I just wanted you know, that's available, and it is free. Before we get into our study of Joel, it's our practice on Mondays to go before the throne, before we study the book. So let's do that. Father, we sometimes stand in your presence and are overwhelmed and puzzled and surprised that we're even here. Father, that an infinite God would truck with a finite human being. That the God, you who are eternal and awesome, which spend time with us, is unbelievable. But Father, it's believable because you have granted us this grace. Remind us of what a glorious and wonderful privilege it is to be in your presence. Father, when we're here, our first thought is one of praise and worship, because you're great and you're awesome. And you are sovereign and you are God, and you have allowed us to come into the control room of the universe. And then Father, our next feeling in your presence is a sense of our own darkness because of your light. Father, we think about the things that we've said, the things that we've done, the bad stuff we wanted to do but didn't get around to, or were afraid that we would get caught or others would see us. Father, we think about our darkness, and we recognize that we're not here because we're good. And then Father, looking at your perfection, we look at our imperfection, the dysfunctional family situation, the abuse, the background, the multi-generational issues, the stuff that keeps us awake at night makes us afraid. And we recognize that we're certainly not here because we're together. Father, we're here for one reason, and it's because you love us enough to send your son to die on a cross in our place. And we thank you so much for that. Father, you know everybody who's listening to this broadcast, you know the stuff that hurts. Father, if the hurt keeps them close to you, may it continue to hurt. If the hurt would glorify your name, if it were healed, may it be healed. Father, remind us of home and give us joy and give us yourself. And now Father, we pray for the one who teaches on this broadcast that you would forgive him his sins while they are many. We would see Jesus and Him only and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, we introduced this subject as we began our study of Joel. We introduced this subject last week, let me remind you what it was. There is a division between some conservatives and some liberals about the dating of the book of Joel. The truth is nobody knows for sure. Nobody knows for sure, and we're probably going to put that in the booklet that describes this book. There are those who say that it was written in 830 BC, and there are others, mostly liberals, who say it was written in 400 BC, post-exilic. Now, there's nothing in the book that would give a definite date. Now, I'm going to get letters from saying this, but I want you to not agree with the liberals. Oh, I don't believe I'd accept that. I don't believe... I don't think I would ever say that. I mean, I'm not liberal about anything, but I want you to know the liberals are right. This was probably written in 400 BC, why is that? Well, because the Northern Kingdom of Israel is never mentioned in the book, and I can't imagine that there would be a prophetical book written by a prophet and never even mentioned Samaria, the capital, and that had fallen in 722 BC. Secondly, Joel uses the word Israel, and he uses it to refer to all Jews. Now, you need to know that if you lived in a pre-exilic time, if you lived in a time before the fall of the Northern Kingdom, when you referred to God's people, you would say, Judah and Israel, but never in this book does Joel do that. He refers to Israel as a reference to God's covenant people. Then the priests were the leaders after the exile in society, Joel never mentions a king. He never mentions a noble, and it's beyond my imagination that you could write a book and never even mention the leaders of the people. And then, fourthly, the third chapter seems to indicate that the Babylonian captivity had already occurred. Now, that evidence would seem to point, and I'm not going to chisel in concrete, but it would seem to point to a year 400 BC. Well, why doesn't everybody accept 400 BC? Now, listen, I'm going to tell you a, because we've just never thought of 400 BC. 830 was what they said at the beginning. That's what everybody's always said. If you're a Bible believer, if you believe the Bible is true every bit of it, you will say it the way everybody's always said it. So, it's 830 BC, so deal with it. Let me take some. That kind of attitude will drive you nuts, and it'll hurt you, and it will hurt others. It's the kind of thing that gives Christians the reputation as being people who are unthinking, who just accepts stuff because people say it. Who are our leaders? We get into trouble. That's how we get manipulated. That's how the bad stuff happened with the television evangelist, and that could happen here. I mean, if I say it, it's so facto, it's got to be wrong, or at least you ought to check it out. But let me take something. Don't just accept stuff because everybody's always accepted stuff. You just can't do that. You're supposed to search the scriptures as the Bereans did to see if these things are true. God gave you a mind to use it. Listen, if God is true, if Jesus said, I am the truth, that means no other truth will contradict his truth. And so, you are free to ask questions. You're free to even doubt. You're free to be normal. You're free to not accept things from Sinai that didn't come from Sinai. I was reading the other day that I think I told you that the only city in Europe that wouldn't accept the Beatles had to cancel their concert. Listen, I don't believe that something that's new or different is thereby good, but I'll tell you something. I don't believe that because it's new and different that it is thereby bad either. But with all of that being said, let me say something else. There's a dangerous proclivity for those who are conservative to do what I was just describing. And that is to say, well, it's always been this way. Everybody's always believed this. It must be true because my father believed it and my grandfather believed it and I'm not going to check it out. In 1870, a bishop was speaking of the church gathering and he said, the millennium is a hand. Man has invented everything that can be invented. He has done all he can do. And a man at the conference challenged the good bishop on what he just said, commented that there were many things that were coming down the pipe that would be new inventions. The bishop, and he used the word God, God, the bishop challenged him on that point. And the man said to the bishop, well, for one thing, I think in the next 50 years, human beings are going to fly. Bishop Lyaffton said, don't you know that flight is reserved for angels? If God had meant for you to fly, he would have given you wings. By the way, I'm going to do a Paul RV here. Do you know the rest of that story? And the bishop's name, by the way, was Milton Wright. Yeah, that one. The father of two young men by the name of Orville and Wilbur, who were the first to fly. Why am I doing? And I don't want to beat this thing to death. I just want to say, if you're a Christian, you can think. If you're a Christian, you can question. If you're a Christian, you can even doubt. Get Oz Guinness of two minds. His wonderful book. Now, you can't doubt the way pagans do. Say, I don't believe it. I won't believe it. And if I did believe it, I'd have to change and I don't want to change. But you can come as a believer saying, I believe in you. Help my unbelief. I trust you. Help my lack of trust. I have faith. Give me more faith that I don't doubt so much. All right, back to the stuff we were saying before I so rudely interrupted myself and the interruption took more time that I meant for it to. And the answer to the question is, what do we know about Joel? We don't know anything about Joel. We know that he was concerned with institutional religion in the temple, and I'll tell you more about that tomorrow. We know that he was a prophet, and that's just about it. That's kind of the way God worked, isn't it? He doesn't lift up a person. He lifts up a message. And then he says, this is my truth. Hear it. You think about that? I mean. Hey, listen, if you haven't gotten the full magazine, I'd love for you to have it. Tenors around some things about Christmas, and I wrote an article, how to be Christmas for the world. That's what Christmas for. Not just us, but for them. P. Dalmanson has a wonderful article, you're either going to hate or love, as the men of the church go, so goge the church. The magazine includes a question and an answer column, mytenerary, some information on the January Puke Pastors Conference, some really good stuff to get you and those you'll have home with. Freedom and joy, and faithfulness to Christ is your counting achievement. I'll send it to you free. Give us a call, 1-800-keylife, or write-keylife. Post office box 5,000, Mateland, Florida, 32794, or key life Canada, post office box 32150, Cambridge, Ontario, in 3H5, in 3. 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