Let me say this just by way of introduction. I am not giving you an exposition of the book of Judges. That would be impossible. There's 21 chapters. There's a whole lot in it. I have no intention to give you an exposition of the book of Judges. I intend to give you a bird's eye view of where the theology of Judges falls in redemptive history. So where the history that we're going to read about falls in redemptive history, how it's related to the work of Jesus, how the different parts of it are related, and so that we can come to a book like Judges and we can say, oh, this is more than just this guy wasn't afraid and he went to battle and won and I don't have to be afraid and I can face my enemies. That's not the point of the book of Judges first and foremost. It sits in redemptive history. It is related to the work of Jesus. And so I wanted to say that just by way of introduction. Let's read Judges chapter 2. It's really a pivotal, pivotal chapter. And I'm going to read Judges 2 verse 1. down to the end of chapter 2, all of chapter 2, Judges 2. Now the angel of the Lord, and clearly I think that's Christ, the Melech Yahweh, he is the messenger of the covenant, went up from Gilgal to Bakim and he said, I brought you up from Egypt. I brought you into the land that I swore to give your fathers. I said I will never break my covenant with you. You shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land. You shall break down their altars, but you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides and their God shall be a snare to you." As soon as the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the people of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept. They called the name of that place Bakim, or weeping, and they sacrificed there to the Lord. When Joshua dismissed the people, the people of Israel went each to his inheritance to take possession of the land. And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred and ten years, and they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-Heraz, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountains of Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. By the way, that's the male and the female false god, which is what you would do if you made up your own god. You'd have a male and a female and lots of sex at the temple, which is what they did. The Baals and the Ashtaroth. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them, and he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned and as the Lord had sworn to them, and they were in terrible distress. Then the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges. They whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so. Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge. And he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them, and bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And he said, because this people have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their fathers and have not obeyed my voice, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died in order to test Israel by them, whether they will take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers did or not. So the Lord left those nations, not driving them out quickly, and he did not give them into the hand of Joshua. If we look in our Bibles, it's not always helpful for us to know that books of the Bible come one after another because we sometimes think that must be the chronological order in which they come, and that's not always true. And actually, it's not always helpful to adopt that mentality. But in the case of Judges, it is helpful. That it's linked to Joshua, it's sort of the sequel to Joshua, which is the sequel to Deuteronomy and the rest of the Pentateuch. And it comes right before Ruth, and Ruth is sort of related and interconnected to the judges. Ruth will open by saying, now in the days of the judges, there was a man of Bethlehem named Elimelech. And he had sons and wives and one of those was Ruth. And so they're all interconnected and Judges is right in between Joshua and Ruth and that's the chronological order. It's the history in which this is occurring. It's probably about 1400 BC. 400 some years before David is king and the kingdom is established under David. Not that long before. We sometimes think it's way back here and David's here and it's actually not that far off. Samson actually was probably only 50 or 60 years from David. Something a lot of people don't know. Samson destroys a bunch of Philistines and sort of prepares David to come in and do what he does. So there's a lot of interconnectedness. But what's helpful is for us to understand just an overarching view of why we have the Book of Judges. Here's where Israel is. They're in the land. They've actually taken possession of all the land. At the end of Joshua, it actually says, the Lord gave them all the land that he had promised Abraham. I think it's Judges 21 or 24. It says, the Lord gave Israel all the land as he had promised. They had taken possession of all the land, but they had not cleared the land of all the inhabitants of the land. Now, last Emmaus session, we talked about the cleansing of the land as temple cleansing. It was the holy land. God was going to dwell there. The temple had to be clean. The inhabitants were filthy and polluted, abominable, worshiping other gods, sacrificing their children. They were not good people. We said that last time. There are no innocent people. If somebody says, what about the guy on the desert island that's never heard the gospel? He's probably a cannibal. There are no innocent people. Trust me there's not and they were not and this was God's land and he was given it to Israel and Israel was gonna go in and Israel starts and and when we come through Joshua, they're clean. They're cleansing the land. They're cleansing the temple They're a priesthood and they're they're doing what the Lord told them and they're obeying and systematically they're taking their enemies and God's with them and they're learning to trust him and believe him as they take the land and then you come to judges and in chapter 1 they're still doing that and And by the end of chapter one, they're not anymore. Chapter one opens, they're still going to battle, they're still pressing on, they're still cleansing the land, the temple, and then they stop. And you'll notice there, There's a shift between verse 26 and 27. Everything before 27, Judah's going to battle. Everybody's going to battle with Judah. We'll talk about that in a second. They're cleansing the land. They're taking possession of the land. And then in verse 27, Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants. Bethshean and its villages. Look in 29, Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer. Verse 30, Zebulun did not drive out the inhabitants of Kitron. Verse 31, Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Akko. Verse 33, Naphtali did not drive out the inhabitants of Bethshemesh. And so what you see is that every tribe left some of the people that God told them not to leave in the land. Now that's a picture of us not dealing with our sin very clearly. In New Testament spiritual application, that's a picture of people not putting their sin to death when God's told them to put it to death by his spirit. What's interesting, however, is when Judges opens, They're still going to battle, and you have to have a theology of the tribes of Israel to really get this. You have to understand the tribes, the 12 tribes, and those representatives. And we've not talked about this yet, but the most important of the 12 tribes is who? Judah because Jesus comes from Judah. But Judah is not the oldest. He's not the firstborn. I think Reuben's the firstborn, I think. Reuben. And notice in Judges chapter 1, look how the book opens. After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? The Lord said, Judah shall go up. I have given the land into his hand. Now, if you're an Israelite at this time, you should be asking, why does Judah go up first? Why not Reuben? Why not Simeon? Why not Levi? Why not Issachar? Why not naftali? Why Judah? Well, very clearly, God is symbolizing He's already told Israel in Genesis 49 that the king was going to come from Judah, Genesis 49, 6. The scepter is not going to depart from Judah until Shiloh comes, that's Jesus. And the kingdom is going to be established under him. And God's rule is going to be established through Jesus, the line of the tribe of Judah. And here, as in other places in the Old Testament, you see that Judah is leading the way in the battle because Jesus is the captain of our salvation. because Jesus Christ, the line of the tribe of Judah, goes before his people. And so at the beginning of the book, before we get anything else, we get that Jesus goes out first, that Jesus is at the head, that the tribe from whom the Messiah should come is the tribe that goes out to battle, leading his people victoriously. And you'll see that whoever goes with him gets the victory with him. Whoever's with him, union with him, whatever tribe goes up, gets the victory with him. Whoever's with Jesus gets the victory in him. Now, I'm not going to do a whole biblical theology of Judah, even though I wish I could. I've done that in the past. But in Revelation chapter 7, notice when you get into that whole 144,000, interesting, one of y'all were saying you were a Jehovah's Witness. And that's a big thing. That's a big hang up for a lot of people. Obviously, I believe everything in the book of Revelation has a symbolic significance. And when you look at the tribes listed in verses 5 through 8 of Revelation 7, there are several things that should jump out at us. One, they're not in the order in which they were born. That's the big one. That's the point I'm making back with judges right now, is that Judah's at the head because Jesus is the head of the church. And so there's no reason Judah should be number one when Reuben was the firstborn and Judah's the fourthborn, except that this is spiritual Israel being led by the head, the line of the tribe of Judah, the king and the head of the church. He's called King of Kings. He's called the line of the tribe of Judah in the book of Revelation. And so the fact that he's explicitly called that in this book, the fact that Judah's at the head of this redeemed multitude, which I think is just fullness and perfection, 12 tribes, 12 apostles, 144, 144,000, 12,000 times 12, it's completion and wholeness. Also, just out of interest, Manasseh's here. who is a half-tribe. Ephraim's not. He was the other half-tribe. And which tribe is missing? Dan. Dan is missing. And what does Dan mean in Hebrew? Judge. Judge. Dan means judge. And Samson, as you'll know, was the judge of the tribe of Dan. And God's people have been judged in the death of Jesus. There is no tribe from whom the judge is represented. They've been judged. I think that's the spiritual meaning. I think it's the only explanation why Dan's not there. And I think when we go back to the book of Judges, what we start to see is that even as Jesus leads his people in victorious battle, And then typologically, again, all of this is typology. All of this is pointing forward this. And again, I would challenge if you're skeptical of this, you have to make better sense than what I'm doing. It's incumbent on you to make better sense. And you can. Maybe you can. But I think with the biblical meta-narrative and everything moving toward Jesus, you almost have to say this. And then you have this period in which God raises up first people judges, and the judges are really deliverers. They're really little redeemers. And so the book starts off with this prediction of redemption coming through Judah, the line of the tribe of Judah. And then notice this really dismal picture in chapter 2. The angel of the Lord comes and remember when the commander of the Lord's army came to Joshua right when they were at the brink of the promised land and he's like, I am the commander of the Lord's army and basically this is my battle and we're going to go in here and we're going to take the enemy and the battle is the Lord's. And he comes with sort of a victorious message that the land is going to be yours because this is my battle. It's not your battle. I'm not for your enemies, I'm not for you, I'm for the Lord, it's my battle." Here, the angel of the Lord comes, and he doesn't come with a victorious message. He comes saying, you have not obeyed me, you have not driven out the inhabitants, you've disobeyed me, you've disbelieved my word, and now all of those inhabitants are going to be thorns in your side. All those inhabitants are going to be plagues to you, just like your sin is a plague to you when you don't put it to death. Same way. God's going to use them now for chastening and even judgment and that they are going to be a burden and a plague to Israel because they did not obey the Lord and they left all of the pollution in the temple, in the Holy Land. What's interesting is that you see this phrase in verse 11 of chapter 2, and it shows up seven times in the book of Judges. And it's kind of the recurring theme throughout the book of Judges. If you're reading through Judges, if you just sat and read through it, you would say, wait a minute, I saw that back in chapter 3, and I saw that back in chapter 2, and it just keeps recurring. And the phrase is, and the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord seven times in the book of Judges. And every time the Lord responds with a chastisement, with some kind of temporal judgment in which a nation comes in and oppresses Israel. And then the people groan, they're burdened under it, and God is so merciful that every time he hears their groaning under the oppression when these nations obliterate them, every time, he raises up a savior. He raises up a judge. And the judge, by some either unexpected or unlikely way, brings victory. delivers the people, and then there's peace in the land. And then the people do evil in the sight of the Lord, and then the Lord afflicts them. And then they cry out to the Lord, and then God raises up a Savior, and then there's peace in the land. And then the people of Israel do evil in the sight of the Lord, and then He afflicts them. Every time the judge dies, When he's alive, there's peace. When he's dead, there's no peace. Now, it would not be a fair assessment for me to tell you that that's just a cycle that goes like this. It would not be fair for me to say that it's just this cycle on a flat plane that just goes like this, because actually, when we read the book of Judges, it goes like this. Down, down, down, until at the end of the book, the worst thing that Israel ever does is one of the tribes becomes so full of sexual perversion that they rape this concubine and kill her in the act of raping her. So the other tribes, she gets cut up into pieces. She gets sent to the other tribes. It's the darkest moment in Israel's history, the absolute worst thing that happens in Israel's history. The language is reminiscent to Sodom and Gomorrah. It's the same language. of what the people are like in the tribe of Benjamin. And they are so ruthless and wicked and dark that they do this thing and kill this woman by raping her all night. And then it's so dark that for the first time in a long time, Israel unites. They unite the other tribes, but they unite against not the Canaanites, but against Israel, against one of their own tribes. And that what happens is that cycle of sin and rebellion and depravity just goes down and down. And it's a bleak picture, and it's a picture of the church. This is the church, left to itself, given over to its own desires. And so Judges gives you this really severe and stark picture of depravity. There's no nice, happy, joyful, moralistic picture here. There's depravity and darkness and death. And yet, every time Israel goes down, God is raising up these redeemers to restore them. And yet, none of those judges, those deliverers, can change their hearts. Now, what's even more interesting is that that phrase that shows up seven times in this book shows up 23 times in the books of 1st and 2nd Kings. And that's important because in Judges there's another phrase that shows up about four or five times and that is because there was no king in Israel. The people did what was right in their sight because there was no king in Israel. And so none of the judges could change the hearts of Israel, and it was only a temporary restraint. And you may think, well, once the kingdom comes, then it's going to be solved. Once God brings the kingdom and David reigns as the king, and then Solomon reigns, and there's a kingdom, and there's a king in Israel, the people won't do what's right in their own eyes and do wickedly. And 23 times then the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and they worshiped other gods. And they bowed down to false gods and they gave themselves over to the ways of the nations. And what we're seeing in all that obviously is none of those men, mere men, could change the hearts of the people. And if you're reading this, you should have gotten that. You may say, well, they didn't have the New Testament. They didn't know about the King of Kings. Well, they should have been looking for him. And they should have known that Gideon, who is like the best of all the judges, doesn't get better than Gideon. Maybe Samuel, he's a judge. But Gideon is great. And what does Gideon do at the end of his life? He plays the harlot with the ephod and he practices idolatry. He becomes a spiritual adulterer with the people just like Aaron at the foot of the mountain with the golden calf. The best judge falls at the end of his life. And so if you're an Israelite, you should read that and say, well, it's obviously not this man and it's obviously not this one. When is God going to bring an ultimate redeemer? When is he ultimately going to bring a redeemer who will change the hearts of the people so that Israel doesn't look like this, so that the church of God doesn't look like worse than the nations? And obviously we get the answer at the cross. when the King of Kings comes, who can change the hearts of people through his death and resurrection. By the outpouring of his spirit, he changes his people, he writes his law on their hearts, he forgives their sins, he builds them up, he makes them a holy people. And so all of this is telling us there has to be a better judge. There has to be a greater judge. And it's interesting to me, when do the people fall? When do they go back to rebellion in each case in the book of Judges? Whenever what? Whenever the judge dies, and Jesus never dies, which is the point of Hebrews. He lives forever. He has the power of an endless life. The king of kings dies, but then he lives, Revelation. He was alive, and he died, and he lives forevermore. Because he lives forevermore, he has a eternal source of grace and power working in the hearts of his people to keep them and sustain them. Even when they fall to bring them back up and to purify their hearts through his blood And so he ever lives to make intercession for us. That's the point of hebrews. He has the power of an endless life So we have a judge. We have a deliverer who can never die again. He's died once he's been raised He lives forever and that means that the church should thrive now In union with jesus the lion of the tribe of judah the victorious conquering one now I think also when we read the book of judges we have to look at the different deliverances, how they happen. This is a huge thing that a lot of people have overlooked. If you want to understand how Christ is related to the stories and the judges, and you understand that those judges were all supposed to be little pictures of the coming Redeemer. God didn't just raise them up because he wanted to give them temporary deliverance for 40 years. He raised them up to be little living pictures of the coming Redeemer who would give eternal life and who would establish God's kingdom and rule. God isn't so weak He has to be like, well, I'll give him a deliverer for 40 years. But all of them were to be seen as inadequate because they weren't the Redeemer. But all of them were to be seen to have something in what they did that typified him. So for instance, there is Ehud the left-handed judge and he goes against the big fat king Eglon and how does he get the victory? He's left-handed and so nobody's left-handed and he acts as if he's reaching in to get a His message because you would keep your sword on the on the left side if you're right-handed and they would have been suspicious But because he reached in here and said I have a message for you The king didn't expect it and he defeated the enemy of Israel in an unexpected way and Jesus defeats Satan in an unexpected way Satan thought he won by putting Christ on the cross and Jesus is essentially the left-handed Savior that conquers his and our enemies in an unlikely way I think also there's a sense in which Gideon, in his defeat with the 300 men, when God says it's too big, it's too much, too many people, narrow them down. Then he narrows it down to 5,000, too many, or 10,000, whoever laps like a dog and drinks with his hands. And then he takes them down to 300, and they get the victory with 300 people, which they never, ever, ever should have gotten. That was the whole thing with the jugs and the lights and they encircled the camp and they deceived them into thinking There's a ton of people in the army, but there's only 300 in this masses of army and then they kill themselves And that also pointing to the gospel the foolishness of the cross paul says he says that christ crucified is foolishness I mean, how can a naked bleeding beaten? Mocked nailed to the cross man save anybody He can't even get himself down and yet he saves all of his people through his death It's unexpected. It's unlikely. I think there's lots of those. I think Samson is the big one. Samson, by the way, fell to wine and women his entire life. There's nothing he does that's admirable. And even at the end of his life, Samson doesn't pray that God would give him the victory over the Philistines because of God's glory and because they've defiled your Temple the way David would have prayed. That's how David prays Lord You're the God of the army of Israel's and Samson's like Oh God, let me just pull this temple down because they took my eyes He just wants revenge and yet God's like, okay Samson. You're my man. You have faith We'll hear about that in a second. And what is Samson do he defeats more enemies in his death? By his death than he does in his life Jesus defeats all of his enemies in his death and In his death, he destroys his enemies. Samson pulls down the temple on himself, on the captains, the heads, the lords of the Philistines. He takes out the chief enemies. Jesus takes out the devil. He disarms principalities and powers in his death. Through death, the writer of Hebrews says, through death he destroyed the one who had the power of death. He is the greater Samson, he's the greater Gideon, he's the greater Ehud. I don't think that's spiritualizing. I think that's legitimate biblical typology. That all that is preparing us. Now, let me say two more things. Judges sets out those really dark times in Israel. The concubine is the worst. Related to the concubine, whose concubine was it? Does anybody remember? It was a guy named Micah. who got the Levitical priest, who had the personal priest and then I think it was, did the Benjamites come in and they take him or the Danites? They came and they take the priest from him. So two great acts of wickedness because no individuals to have their own priest. The priest was for the people. And here this guy hoarding a priest for himself with his false gods, a priest of God to administer rituals with false gods in his house. And all of that leads to what happens to the concubine when she gets raped and murdered. Where does that act begin? Where does the darkest moment of Israel's history begin? Where is Micah from? He's from Bethlehem. He's from Bethlehem. And the incident with the concubine, she moves from Bethlehem to the city where she is then raped and murdered. And the two darkest moments in Israel's history happen in Bethlehem. Now I think that's important that Bethlehem gets highlighted in this book, as you read the latter chapters, you'll see that. Chapter 18 to 21. Because when you come to Ruth, you have that phrase again. Now in the days of the judges, It was a man of Bethlehem named Alemalek. I can never say that, Alemalek. And remember he dies and his sons die and then Naomi takes Ruth back and she goes to who? Boaz of Bethlehem. And the Bible says the Redeemer shall come out of Bethlehem. And if you're a good Hebrew reading the Hebrew scriptures, not interested in a sermon to give me 10 ways to change my marriage expositionally, but reading the Bible as God has ordained it, you would say, you would have to say, and there's everything right about good marriages, but if you're reading the Bible, You would have to say why is Bethlehem mentioned as the darkest place? And why is the next book say now God's gonna bring a Redeemer out of Bethlehem? but God is gonna redeem the deepest and the darkest rebellion in his people and he's gonna do it through Jesus the son of Boaz the son of Jesse the son of David the king and So all of it is moving in redemptive history. God is continuing his covenant promises everything he began in Genesis 315 he's carrying along and that's the biggest and most important thing to you and me because our response ought to be faith in Jesus now what's Fascinating to me and I'll close with this when you come to Hebrews 11 Come to Hebrews 11, the great faith chapter. Some of the judges are there, but three of the four are not ones you would expect to be there. Because if you read through the book of Judges, almost all the judges do some really great acts of deliverance. And it's easy to say they're a type of Christ, the deliverer. It's easy to say that, because it's like, yeah, they go in there, they wipe out the enemy in an unexpected way, boom, Israel's safe. And then there's three, actually all four, whose sin and failure is set out. Gideon, who plays the harlot with the ephod in idolatry at the end of his life. Samson, who falls to wanton women. Jephthah, who even though God says, I'm going to give you the victory, doesn't believe God and says, Lord, I will vow to sacrifice whatever passes in front of my door because he didn't believe the Lord. And then he had to sacrifice his daughter, probably perpetual virginity. And then Barak. who wouldn't go to battle against Sisera because he was afraid, even though God said, I'm going to give you the battle. He didn't believe. He was afraid. Deborah, he says, you got to go with me. Deborah's like, OK, I will. But a woman's going to win the victory. And Jael puts the nail through the enemy's head. And he doesn't get the victory. Jephthah, Barak, Samson, Gideon all fail. And yet they're all in the great faith chapter. What's the point? You have faith in Christ. The point is that it is not the amount of faith you have. The point is not that you have a better track record in your life of good, victorious things than failures. The point is that Jesus is the Redeemer. Chapter 12 says we're to fix our eyes on Him who endured the cross. And even if you have a mustard seed of faith, there's not one thing that Samson did that you could say evidences his salvation. Same with Lot. Lot's called Righteous Lot. Has that ever struck you as strange that Lot is called Righteous Lot? He takes his family into like the worst place because he's worldly, takes his family into like the worldliest place, knows it's bad because the Bible says his soul was tormented day and night by seeing and hearing what was going on, let his wife and her materialism live the life she wants there, then flees at God's command But obviously his wife is an unbeliever, and we see what happens to her. Then his daughters get him drunk, sleep with him, and two of Israel's worst enemies come out of that, Moab and Ammonites, I believe. Ammon and Moab, I think. And Lot's called Righteous Lot. There's nothing on the pages of scripture that would ever lead you to think Lot was righteous. There's nothing that would lead you to think Samson. I mean, Samson tells his parents, go get me these Moabite hookers. That's what he says. He's like, there's a girl down at the strip club. I really like her. Go get her, Dad. That's what he says. And does it twice. and falls to wine and women, gives up his power, and yet the Bible says he had faith in the promise, he had faith in the Redeemer to come. And that it's not ultimately these men, but it's him. And all the focus gets put on Jesus Christ. And he was perfect, and he was holy, and he obeyed perfectly, and he went to battle for us, and he leads us out, just like the beginning of the book. Judah goes to battle first and he goes out and he conquers and we are guaranteed the victory in him because he has conquered and now he has the power of an endless life so we have victory over sin so that the enemies we've left within we now systematically have time to go in and destroy and we have power through the risen Jesus by his spirit to do that. One more thing I'll say, there's a clause that surfaces in Judges a couple times with the Judges that I think also prepares us for Jesus, and that is, and it happens with actually Samson on three occasions, which is very strange, and then with two other Judges. It says, then the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, and he went out and defeated his enemies. And Jesus' first sermon, recorded sermon in Luke 4, he opens to Isaiah, I think 61 or 42, and he says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. to do the work of redemption. And it's the same phrase, the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, the Spirit of the Lord was upon him and he defeated his enemies. And I think, I think those those links, those verbal links, all of that. Just like Abraham, I'll close with this, because somebody here could say, well, but they didn't know about Jesus, but they had the promise of Jesus. They had the promise that he would come and redeem from Genesis 3.15. Just like Abraham, remember he goes to offer up Isaac He gets Isaac back, he sees the ram in the bush, stuck in the thickets, and he says to his son, the Lord will provide the lamb. When Isaac says, where is the lamb? He says, the Lord will provide the lamb. And then after the whole event, Moses says, and this is 400 years after Abraham, Moses says, as that place is called to this day, the Lord will provide, the mount of the Lord who will provide. And what Moses is saying is that Israel at that point, 400 years after Abraham offered up Isaac, they were to be hoping and saying, the Lord will provide the lamb. The Lord will provide the redeemer.