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Well, hello world, how we doing?

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I hope you're doing really well.

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I hope that you are having some really cool encounters with the Lord and with the truth

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and with joy and with peace.

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I just wanted to say hey and share a few thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head

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today.

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Hey there, how you doing?

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It's a beautiful day here in New Zealand.

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This morning I took my kids to a beautiful cafe in the countryside, enjoyed some quality

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time together.

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Also this morning I spent a bit of time in the Word.

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I've been reading through a couple of books in the Old Testament and recently I read a

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passage in Nehemiah.

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I want to share it with you and just share some thoughts that have been bouncing around

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in my head.

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All right, so here we go.

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The passage is from Nehemiah 13 and verse 23 it says,

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Now I realized, this is Nehemiah speaking here, he says,

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I realized that some of the men of Judah had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.

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Furthermore, their children spoke other languages from other nations.

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And so I confronted them and I called down curses on them and I beat them and I pulled

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out their hair.

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Now that's pretty intense from Nehemiah, right?

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I just want to pose a question.

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I'm pretty sure that most of us here watching this video right now would probably agree

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that that behavior from Nehemiah where he basically calls down curses on these men and

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physically beats them and pulls their hair out because they had married women from other

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lands probably wouldn't match up and check out with the New Testament example of Jesus.

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Like if your pastor jumped up on stage and started beating somebody and pulling their

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hair out because they married someone from another country and their kids spoke another

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language that probably wouldn't be viewed as okay, right?

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Or Christ-like.

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Now I'm not saying that Nehemiah was necessarily in the wrong in context of the Old Testament,

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right?

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So just to clarify that.

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But what I'm saying is, could it be, right, that not everything in the New Testament is

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now appropriate, sorry, not everything in the Old Testament that happened is now appropriate

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in the New Testament?

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And I think we would all agree, I think we would all agree that not everything in the

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Old Testament is appropriate, right, now in the context of the New Testament.

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And there's a lot of dodgy stuff that happened in the Old Testament, like this passage is

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a good example, as well as potentially that verse from Proverbs that seems to suggest

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that we are meant to physically beat our children with a literal rod.

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Now rod would be, you know, a massive stick.

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And there seems to be quite a lot of people who have latched onto this that think this

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is actually a good thing, that we should physically, that we should take that verse literally and

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physically beat our children with a rod.

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Now am I saying that we shouldn't, am I saying that we shouldn't correct our children when

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there is error?

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And not at all.

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No, I think we, I think there's absolutely a place of correction in discipleship, right?

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Now the question that I'm asking, I'm not saying that I'm right, that I have all the

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answers, I'm just posing a question.

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Could it be that this passage from Nehemiah, as well as a lot of other passages from the

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Old Testament, including the one from Solomon, who by the way also believed that it was okay

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to have 700 wives and slaves, could it be that maybe not everything they said and did

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lined up with the New Testament example of Jesus?

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Because you'll notice, you know, in Nehemiah, there isn't a disclaimer, there isn't a verse

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after that that says, oh by the way, there will come...

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a time where this behavior is not appropriate. It doesn't say that. But I'm pretty sure most

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of us would agree that that behavior is no longer appropriate, right? I don't think that

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we would probably think that's okay in our churches today, beating people, pulling their

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hair out, right? Because they married someone from another country. That was the Old Testament

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context. And even then, I question whether that was the heart of Jesus, right? But could

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it be that the disclaimer, that the clarification in the Bible that God did offer was sending

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Jesus and that Jesus is now the lens that we need to actually line everything else up

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through, right, in the Bible? And I think most of us would agree that it is, right?

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So could it be that Jesus was actually God's disclaimer, saying this is actually that stuff?

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That stuff that some of these people who genuinely loved me and genuinely followed me, but a

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lot of that stuff that happened wasn't actually my heart, right? Could Jesus actually be God's

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disclaimer saying that stuff wasn't actually my heart? This is my heart, right? Jesus is

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my heart. So it's just a question that I wanted to pose and just some thoughts that I wanted

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to put out there just to challenge the way that we think. Because I think there's some

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stuff from the Old Testament that has crept into a lot of our modern day beliefs and philosophies

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around parenting that I wonder if maybe we actually need to view it through the lens

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of Jesus and through the New Testament. Could it be, right?

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So those are my thoughts for today. I go a lot deeper into some of these thoughts in

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this particular topic as well as a lot of other topics in the Parenting Challenge that

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we've done. You can find it on the Raising Royalty platform under Parenting. I'll put

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a link to it in the comments of this video. I highly encourage you to check it out if

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you haven't already. About nine months of hundreds of hours of study in not only scripture

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but courses and books went into putting this course together. It basically summed up the

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best of the best from a lot of different people into a nine-part series. I give some really

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good biblical foundation for what I believe New Testament discipline and correction looks

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like now. I'll put a link to that in the comments of this video. At the very least

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I hope some of these thoughts get some of us thinking in a new way. I realize this could

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be some offensive content but I also realize that Jesus broke every single one of the Old

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Testament laws pretty much. He was hated by a lot of people for challenging the status

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quo around what was acceptable and what was not acceptable. He was killed for it. Sometimes

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when I bring some of these thoughts to the table people get offended. A lot of people

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were offended at Jesus too. That's okay. Hopefully this gets some people thinking. If you want

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to go deeper feel free to check out the course that's linked in the comments. I hope you

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guys are doing really well. We love you. We're so excited about what the Lord's doing

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in this community and this movement of love and acceptance and royalty. You guys are great.

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Bless you and we will catch you later. Cheers guys.