Hello, students. Welcome to Spring Branch Academy, where we are seeking to instill wisdom and inspire worship to the glory of God in every student, and that includes you. In theology, we're taking a new turn this week. Look at the doctrine of work. God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it, meaning to guard it. Work was there before man even sinned. Work is a privilege, it is not a punishment. It's part of being made in the image of God, to bring out the potential of all that God has made, to order it and then to fill it, as he did when he made the world. He formed it and then he filled the world that he made. As we look at work, we think about occupations and vocations. Your culture likes to talk about occupations. have a job. But there are many, many, many occupations. Vocations are less, there are less of them. A vocation is who you are. Some of the vocations are what you are on the outside. You are a boy or you are a girl and you are young. You're not old, so you should honor your elders and obey your parents. It doesn't matter who you are, what personality you are, or what gifts you have. These are callings God has given you because you're young, or a boy or a girl, or a citizen of a country. But inner callings are gifts that God has given to you that you will use in this world to bring out the potential he put there. Just like there was no Doberman Pinscher until there was Mr. Doberman, so there's something out there that does not exist because you haven't touched it yet and brought out its potential. Work is a privilege. Maybe you're a grower or a builder or a caregiver, an artist, a rescuer, a teacher, a trainer. May God bless you to seek your vocation. Many occupations can satisfy one vocation. and you'll typically bend your occupation towards your vocation. So I hope you learned the difference between an occupation, a job, and a vocation, which is a God-given calling. Remember the parts of speech? Nouns and pronouns, verbs and adverbs, adjectives and interjections, prepositions and conjunctions. We're at the end of that list. An interjection is an unconnected emotional word. Oh, alas, ouch, yikes. A conjunction is a word that connects words and clauses or clauses. So it's a connecting word. That's what conjunction means. So an interjection is an unconnected emotional word and a conjunction is a word that connects. And then a preposition is what a squirrel does to a tree. A squirrel can go up the tree, down the tree, around the tree, through the tree, over the tree, beside the tree, from the tree, under the tree. I think you get the point. All those little words like around, up, over, by, near are prepositions and they take a noun or a pronoun as their object. The goal of life is whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10 31. The prophets talk about the goal of life as well. One of those is from Micah 6 8. He has told you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. I learned a song years ago. He has told you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you. But to do justice, and to love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God. In Jeremiah, he says, let not a wise man boast in his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might. Let not a rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises loving kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth, for I delight in these things. you will notice that the prophet contrasts what people normally boast in, their wisdom, their might or power, and their riches or wealth, versus what we should boast in, and that's the Lord. That's why the Apostle Paul summarizes this as saying, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. He's our wisdom, he's our might, he's our riches. You remember Psalm 23, right? Good, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down beside green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me on right paths for his namesake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Children, Listen to your dad and mom forever. Buy the truth and sell it never. Become wise. Do what's right. Give your dad and mom delight. My son, give your heart to me. A tempting girl is a bottomless pit, a bandit hard to see. Now this would apply for girls too. There are bad boys out there that in teen years would like to tempt you to do bad things. And so we need to stay away from those that want to do kissing when they're not married. We need to give our heart first of all to God. In a sense, he's the father in this proverb. And he says to us, he says, my son, give your heart to me. And so we trust him. And we want to keep our body and keep ourselves pure for the day that if he chooses, he gives us a wife or a husband, he gives us marriage. And so beware of those tempting girls and tempting boys. They're a bottomless pit. I pray that you avoid that pit. In math, we've learned the prime numbers, the composite numbers. Those are opposite numbers. Primes can't be divided by anything other than itself and one. And then the composites are the positive numbers more than one that are not prime. Let's go back to the groupings of tens. Do you remember those? Ones and tens? Hundreds and thousands? Millions, billions, and trillions? We can represent them now by exponents, because we've learned exponents. And so those groupings of tens are actually powers of tens, say powers of tens. And so 100 is 10 times 10, or 10 tens. That's 10 to the power of 2, or 10 squared, where 1,000 is 10 hundreds. 10 times 10 times 10. So that's three multiplications, so it's 10 to the third power. And then 10,000 is 10 to the fourth power. 100,000 is 10 to the fifth power. And a million is 10 to the sixth power. A billion is 10 to the ninth power. And a trillion is 10 to the twelfth power. Whew, that's like the national debt. I think it's 34 trillion right now, children, which is a lot of money. In science, we're going to shift to chemistry. The definition of chemistry is the study of matter. Now, we learned a specific one because it's a crossover between biology and chemistry, and that's organic chemistry, chemistry that has carbon, which is what is in the biology of life. And a carbohydrate adds oxygen and hydrogen. But now broadly, if we look at it, chemistry is the study of matter. And matter is anything that has mass and takes up space. Our textbook in high school from Apologia talks about these things. And so chemistry and matter, you need to know those definitions. The three phases of matter are solid, liquid, and gas. Think of water. Solid water is ice. You raise the temperature, it becomes liquid water. And you raise the temperature again, and it becomes water vapor. It evaporates. And so solid, liquid, and gas are the three phases of matter. In general, most matter has these three phases. Let's think of it this way. In a solid, the little pieces of matter touch each other and they don't move. It can wiggle, that's what heat is, but they don't move. In liquid, the little pieces touch each other and then can move in that they slide over each other and can move into different places. They can slosh around. And gas, oh, the pieces don't even touch each other because they move so much and they bounce off walls and hit each other, which we call pressure, the pressure of a gas. That's what blows up a balloon. And so again, the three phases of matter are solid, liquid, and gas. Say them, solid, liquid, and gas. Last time, in Geography and Chronology, we learned about the Jordan River. Oh, it starts so high at Mount Hermon, and then goes to the Sea of Galilee, and descends to the depths of the Dead Sea. And from around there, you got a steep climb to get up to Jerusalem, don't you? Well, if you look at the land then, the Jordan River goes from north to south, as I described, and the tribes can be described in a similar way. Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali are in the north, what's called Galilee. That's where Jesus grew up. Issachar is in a flat area called the Plain of Jezreel between the north and the central region. Now Manasseh, Gad, and Reuben are to the east of the Jordan River called the Transjordan. Manasseh has some land also on the other side of the Jordan, but those three tribes in the days of Moses requested to live over there. least some of Manasseh, all of Gad and all of Reuben. In the middle and the heart of the country is Ephraim, which is where the tabernacle originally rested at Shiloh. And then below Ephraim was Benjamin. And below Benjamin is Judah, where the capital Jerusalem is, where the temple was finally built in the days of Solomon, son of David. Dan received land to the southwest, Simeon among the tribe of Judah, more to the south and west again, though Dan rebelled and sought land to the far north in the days of the judges. And then way in the south is the Negev and the Arabah, which are desert regions. And so that's the holy land. That's the land of promise that God gave to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and where the people of God settled. So let's go through the Bible timeline up to the end of the Judges. This is our review. Adam and Eve and the two Cain and Abel, Noah the flood and the Tower of Babel, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, our fathers, Sarah, Rebecca, and rivaling mothers, Reuben and Simeon, Levi and Judah, Joseph and Benjamin, 12 sons in all, an unlikely way to answer the fall. Moses and Aaron and 10 plagues in Egypt, forcing the Pharaoh to free the Jews he whipped. Passover, Red Sea and wilderness grumblings, manna, the law and mountainous rumblings, covenant promises, golden calf altar, God's name explained, I am who I am. How can God dwell with a people of sin? Joshua, Caleb, a new generation. Jericho, Rahab, and Ai, and Achan. Canaan defeated, then Canaan divided. No king in Israel to keep them united. Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, and Barak. Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson so low. The judges go bad, and the people more so. That's why they need a king. And next time, Lord willing, we will hear about the king that God provided, even though the way they wanted a king did not honor God. So Lord bless you, children. Until next time, grace be with you. Amen.