(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Man, tonight I'm going to be preaching the most boring sermon of all time, and it is called Lists of Names, Lists of Names. Now I've had a lot of people come up to me over the years and ask me this question, is it okay when you're reading the Bible to just skip those lists of names? You know, when you're reading along and you come to one of these lists, is it okay to just skip it? The answer, of course, is no, it's not okay to just skip the names when you're reading. But why are they there in the first place? And so tonight I want to give you some reasons why they're there and why it's worth it to take the time to actually read them in your Bible reading. Obviously they're there to teach us something, to tell us something. They mean something or they wouldn't be there. The Bible says all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine. So all scripture, including chapters that are just filled with names, those scriptures are also given by inspiration of God and they're also profitable for doctrine. They're useful for teaching, for learning, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. Number one, why are these lists of names in the Bible? One of the big reasons is to show that the stories in the Bible are real events that actually took place and not just folk tales. Because a lot of people, they might look at a book like the Bible and think, well, I see stories and they might be tempted to compare it to some other book of stories or legends or myths or folk tales and try to put it in that same category. But the Bible is not a folk tale, right? The Bible is actually a true story about things that literally took place. Someone else might want to take a view that says, well, it's truth in the sense that, you know, it's religious truth or moral truth or it's truth about the human condition. But what I'm going to show you here is that part of the reason for the list of names is to let you know, no, this is actual historical document. It's not long, long ago, far, far away or something. It actually tells you this is the time, this is the place, these are the people, and actually giving you this kind of geographical, historical, and otherwise type of information really nails down the fact that, yeah, this is real. This actually took place. This is a history of things that took place. You know, if you just flip over one page to 1 Chronicles chapter 1, you know, you start out with this list of names. First Chronicles 1 starts out with a bang. Adam, Seth, Enoch, Kenan, Mahaleel, Jared, Henoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now, of course, these names are mirrored in the book of Genesis and the book of Genesis gives a little bit of more information about who begat who and how old they were when they were born, or excuse me, they were all the same age when they were born, but how old the parents were when the children were born, how old they were when they died, and things of that nature. So 1 Chronicles is kind of assuming that you already understand that and so it's just straight hitting you with the names, just names, okay, at this point. But by giving this list of names, we can see and get the context of where human beings came from, where various nations came from. Now it starts to get more specific as you go deeper in 1 Chronicles chapter 1, but before we look at verse 43, that's where we're going next, let me just mention to you that the book of Genesis contains a chapter all about the descendants of Edom. It's a full chapter, Genesis 36, and it just explains all of the different lineages of Edom in great detail. Why? Because the Edomites were a real nation, they're a real group of people that actually existed. And then here in verse 43, it says, Now these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before any king reigned over the children of Israel. Bela, the son of Beor, the name of his city was Dinhabah. And when Bela was dead, Jobab, the son of Zerah of Bozrah, reigned in his stead. And when Jobab was dead, Husham of the land of the Temanites reigned in his stead. And when Husham was dead, Hadad, the son of Bedad, which smote Midian in the field of Moab, reigned in his stead, and the name of his city was Avith. You know, these cities are real places, the people are real people, a lot of this stuff can be verified historically, some of it can't because of the fact that most things have crumbled to dust thousands and thousands of years later, but all the time archaeologists are finding things that corroborate with the people and places of the Bible. But at the end of the day, by having these type of lists and this kind of information in the Bible, you know, it just lets us know this is historical information here. These are real people. It's not just there once was a man and his name was John, and you know, it's actually no there was a man sent from God whose name was John, but if you would flip over to Luke keep your, you don't have to keep your finger anywhere actually, go to Luke chapter 3, you know, if you read John chapter 1 it just says, you know, there was a man sent from God whose name was John, and people could be tempted to just say, maybe it's just an allegory, it's just symbolic, it's just figurative. Now of course, the stories in the Bible are allegorical, yes they are. They are symbolic, they are figurative, but guess what, they all really happened too. Tell me if this sounds like a folk tale. Look at Luke chapter number 3 verse number 1. Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip, Tetrarch of Iturea, and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the Tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priest, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. I've never heard a folk tale begin that way, okay? That's a lot of information. And you could be tempted when you get to something like that to say, come on, get to the point, you know, it's boring. But hold on a second, that information lets us know we're talking about a real place in history, real events, real people, real geography. Not like the Book of Mormon was nothing to corroborate all of the supposed events that took place in North America with the Lamanites and the Nephites and all these people that there's no evidence ever existed in the made-up false fiction known as the Book of Mormon. You know, the people and places in the Bible actually existed. And so this kind of information is helpful to understand that and see that and understand the genre of what we're reading, right? Okay, but then why read them, though? You could say, okay, Pastor Anderson, I get it. They need to be included so that we take the story seriously and understand that it's not just symbolic truth, which it is, but that it's also literal truth, like these people really lived and so forth. Why read them, though? Well, let me just give you three quick reasons to read them. Number one, if God put them there, he must want us to read them, not just for informational purpose, but even for devotional purposes. Now, how do I know that? Well, back in Joshua chapter 1 verse 8, God told Joshua, this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein, for then shalt thou make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. And if you think about it, the part of the Bible that was given to Joshua at that time, the part that he's being told, this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, is not necessarily the most exciting part of the Bible all the time, is it? Because what's he being given? He's virtually being given probably Exodus, Numbers, and Leviticus, okay? So if he's getting like Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, okay, that's probably what he's being given, well then, is that real? I mean, some of it's real exciting, but some of it's a little dry, isn't it? But why does he need to meditate on it? Why does he need to study it? Well, because God's going to bless him for doing that. If he meditates on it, thinks about it, and to make sure that he does all the things that are written in it, he needs to go over it and over it and over it, make sure everything's clear, make sure he gets it. But he didn't tell Joshua, focus on the stories, you know, read the stories. If something gets boring, skip it. If it's a list of names, skip it. It's just, no, this book of the law is not going to depart out of your mouth. You need to meditate in it day and night. And not only that, the Bible tells us man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. So if every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God is our daily spiritual food, wouldn't that include a list of names? Wouldn't that include a long, drawn out, dry description of the tabernacle? Because Joshua was supposed to be meditating on that, right? Because that's a lot of what he has there in the book of Exodus. All kinds of animal sacrifices, rules, regulations. God wants us to read every word of God, right? Every word of God. So number one, if God put it there, he wants us to read it because he wants us to read every word. We live by every word. It's our daily food. But number two, reading the list of names will actually teach you how to read phonetically so that you don't become a victim of see and say method reading, okay? Because some people were taught to read using a misguided methodology that did not teach them to read phonetically, but just to recognize words. Now obviously our brains end up recognizing a lot of words anyway. But when you teach someone to read, you know, the right way to learn is you learn the sounds that the letters make and then you learn the blends and you put it all together. And people who are good readers, that's how they learned how to read. People that struggle to read, you talk to them and a lot of times they're like, yeah, I didn't learn phonetically, I learned kind of a see and say style reading. And here's the thing about that, if you're reading these names, see and say is not going to work because you ain't never seen this name before to say it. This is not a name that you're familiar with at all. I mean, 1 Chronicles chapter 3 there, you know, Brother Dan's not up here seeing and saying. He's up here looking at series of letters and just making sounds that match those letters. And the more you read names and things that you don't recognize, it forces you to sound it out. Have you ever seen those experiments online where they'll give you a whole paragraph and all the letters in every word are jumbled up except the first word, the first letter and the last letter are in the right spot. Who knows what I'm talking about? Virtually everyone. All right. The first letter and the last letter are in the right spot. Everything else is jumping up and I can read it almost as fast as I would read a paragraph that's normal. Why? Because our brain's got a see and say thing that automatically kicks in. You don't have to be taught that. What you do need to be taught is the phonetic side of things. And then when you go on these lists, your brain has to turn off the autopilot and you start actually sounding things out. In fact, people who are poor readers, I would recommend that when they get to this in their Bible reading, read it out loud. Read it out loud just to really drive it in because you need it more than anybody just to become a better reader because being able to read out loud publicly is a great skill to have. Being able to read for yourself personally is an essential skill to have for your Christian life to be able to read the Bible and you don't want to be skimming over things or misreading things. You want to make sure you're getting what's actually in the text. Number three, how about just to build character? Put being such a baby and read the names. And don't fear, oh it's too hard, oh it's boring, shut up and read it. Just be someone who has the character to read it. And by the way, let me just explain something to you. All great literature on this planet has parts in it that immature people say are boring. Name for me a piece of great literature that has no dry part, nothing that the immature would call boring. Now I'm not saying everybody would consider boring, some people would be excited by every sentence on that page, but the immature are going to be like, give me a comic book, right? And so all great literature has stuff in it that's a little drier than other parts. And you know, sometimes another reason why the Bible will include genealogies, lists of names, dry material, is that it sort of breaks up episodes and allows time to pass. You know, one thing happens, and you know this isn't a list of names, but a lot of people are perplexed by why Genesis 38 interrupts the story of Joseph, right? Because you're reading the Joseph story in 37 and then in 38 it's just a totally unrelated story about Judah, seemingly unrelated. Then we go back to Joseph. Well here's the thing about that, it allows a little time to go by. It allows Joseph to just sort of cook down in Egypt for a little bit so that you're kind of wondering what happened to him, you know, so that there's a little bit of a build up there of hey, time is going by. And so these lists of names can also just kind of break up the Bible into episodes and provide like punctuation from a literary standpoint. But see, Generation TikTok and Generation YouTube Shorts can't spend three to five minutes reading a list of names. Their attention span is what, 60 seconds, 90 seconds max? That's pushing it for them, right? Because they're just like, argh, argh, argh, swiping TikTok every five to six, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh. Argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh. Argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh. Argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh, argh. This is actually real stuff, real people, real places, real stuff. That's pretty important. But number two, another reason why names would be listed in the Bible is sometimes listing names is a way to honor great men and women of God that have lived, kind of give them a place of honor by listing their names. You think about great monuments that list names. Think about the Vietnam Memorial or something, right? You just got these lists of names. Like, I hate the Vietnam Memorial, it's a list of names. But the thing is, it's there to honor these guys and sometimes lists of names in the Bible are giving honor to certain people. And here's the thing about that, it's kind of a foreshadowing of the glory that we may one day obtain when Christ will confess our name before his Father and before his angel. It's funny how people criticize the Bible for having lists of names, then they go to a graduation. You want to talk about a boring list of names. And they always read it, this is the voice they read at the graduation. It's like, Daniel Reiter. Yay! Varun Sharma. Yay! I mean, that's a list of names. And if you go to a big school, it could be hundreds of names. That's why I didn't even go to my high school graduation. I just checked, mail me the diploma. And my mom was not happy, but that's what I did. Sorry, mom. But it's a foreshadowing of the glory because, you know, when we're in heaven, hey, I'll go to that. That's a graduation I'll go to. I'm not just going to be like, mail me my reward. Just send it to my mansion, you know. No, man, I'll show up for that graduation. That's a big deal. And so the list of names are honoring people and it's a foreshadowing of the glory that we might also obtain one day. Look at Romans chapter 16 verse 3, it says, Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my helpers in Christ Jesus, who have for my life laid down their own necks unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Look, if you lay down your necks for the Apostle Paul, you get your name in the Bible. And then somebody whines about it, you know, centuries later. Oh, too many names. Likewise, greet the church that is in their house. Salute my well beloved Epinatus, who is the first fruits of Achaia unto Christ. Hey, when you're the first Greek person from Achaia to get saved, you get your name in the Bible. Greet Mary, who bestowed much labor on us. You know, if you bestow a bunch of labor on the Apostle Paul, you get your name in the Bible. Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners who are of note among the Apostles who also were in Christ before me. Greet Amplius, my beloved in the Lord. Salute Urbane, our helper in Christ. And Stachys, my beloved. Salute Apelles, approved in Christ. Salute them which are of Aristobulus' household. Salute Herodian, my kinsmen. Hey, you don't just zone out and skip this. You read these names and understand these are people. This is what contributed and supported Paul's ministry, right? Contributed to and supported Paul's ministry. These people were important. And we should be like these people. We can someday be honored by the Lord as well. If we do our work, if we serve God. Salute Herodian, my kinsmen. Greet them that be of the household of Narcissus, which are in the Lord. Salute Tryphina and Tryphosa, who labor in the Lord. Salute the beloved Persis, which labored much in the Lord. Salute Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine. Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobus, Hermes, and the brethren which are with them. Salute Philologus and Julia, Nereus, and his sister, and Olympus, and all the saints which are with them. And you know, another thing you can learn from this is that Paul didn't do his work alone, but he had a lot of people helping him, right? He had a lot of people that were important to his ministry, and they were just important to him personally, to where he wanted to take the time and call out those people's names. And you know, not just Paul, but also the Apostle John, because here's what John said in 3 John, verse 14, Peace be to thee, our friends salute thee, greet the friends by name. He said, greet the friends by name, right? So he cared about people that were his friends. He wanted to say hi, and so the Apostle Paul gives all these shout-outs in Romans 16. And all throughout the New Testament we have these different shout-outs for people who did great work for the Lord. And so those list of names are edifying. They mean something. They challenge us. They motivate us. They inspire us. But not only that, go if you would to Ezra chapter 10, lists of names could also serve as a hall of shame in the Bible, because not only do they provide historical, genealogical context, showing us, hey, this stuff really happened, not only do they give honor unto certain people and list people and say, hey, this guy did some great work for the Lord. This guy helped me out. This guy risked his neck for me. This person bestowed much labor on us in the Lord. Not only could they be praising and honoring people, they could also be sort of a hall of shame. All throughout the New Testament we have the names of false teachers and false prophets and different people that the Apostle Paul calls out for teaching lies, for being wicked, for doing things that are not right. Also in the Old Testament you have some lists like that, like here in Ezra chapter 10 verse 18 the Bible reads, and among the sons of the priests there were found that had taken strange wives. Now what does strange mean? Does it mean their wife was kind of weird? No. Strange wives means foreign wives, right? These are wives that are not Israelites. And it says, namely, of the sons of Jeshua, the son of Josadak and his brethren, Maasiah and Eleazar and Jerub and Gedaliah, and they gave their hands that they would put away their wives, and being guilty they offered a ram of the flock for their trespass, and of the sons of Immer, Hanani, and Zebediah, and of the sons of Harim, Maasiah, and Elijah, and Shemaiah, and Jehiel, and Uzziah, and the sons of Pashur, Elioenai, Maasiah, Ishmael, Nethaniel, Jazabad, and Elisa. So these guys screwed up, okay? And then they screwed up more by divorcing their wives, okay? And so these guys are listed here. It's not exactly a cool list. It's not exactly Romans chapter 16, okay? And then the last verse of the book, chapter 10 verse 44, all these had taken strange wives, because I'm going to spare you the list of names, but I do expect you to read it on your own at home. All these had taken strange wives, and some of them had wives by whom they had children. Now, why is this significant? This matters because of the fact that it shows how Ezra is struggling and trying to preserve the integrity of the nation of Israel. He doesn't want them intermarrying with the heathen. And look, God was never against them marrying someone of another ethnicity who had joined the nation of Israel and had become a part of the spiritual nation, had become a part of the people of God. You know, there were other surrounding nations where people would get circumcised, join the nation of Israel, and they were treated just like him that was born in the land, right? The stranger and him that's born in the land, they could become a part of the nation, they could join the tribe wherever they sojourned, okay? The Bible is clear on that. But the idea is that God did not want them intermarrying with the heathen, and so the Christian analog of this would be a Christian young person marrying an unsaved person, right? If you marry an unsaved person, that's a strange wife right there. That's the strange husband that God doesn't want you to take. And so we see in this list that Ezra is trying to preserve the integrity of the nation of Israel. He goes about it the wrong way by prescribing all these divorces and everything. That's not what God intended. But it's a historical book, and it doesn't end on a positive note. It's not ending with success. It's not ending with God's blessing and God's pleasure on them. It's just ending on this negative note. This huge number of people took strange wives. They have kids with these wives. And then we fast forward to the book of Nehemiah, and we find out that Ezra's solution didn't really fix anything, because decades later, the same thing's happening in the book of Nehemiah, and we have, again, lists of lists of lists of guys who married strange wives. These are some of the most boring parts of Ezra and Nehemiah, the lists of names of the good guys who, hey, these people really pitched in and came to Jerusalem, and then bad guys of, hey, these guys screwed up and married strange wives, et cetera. But they need to be there to understand what's going on, to really drive the point home. That repetition of names here really drives the point home. I mean, as you're reading this list in Ezra 10, it kind of sinks in like, wow, this is actually a lot of people, so that you don't just accidentally just kind of read over, oh, yeah, some people that are married over here. And you can just hear your Zionists and Judaizers and pro-Israel type preachers, if you didn't have the list of names, kind of trying to sweep it under the rug. You know, well, a few of them married strange wives, but, you know, for the most part, they really kept that integrity of, you know, of the Israelites. And, you know, the Jews today, man, those are the blood descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And you know what preachers will tell us today? And even what just other pro-Juda type groups out there would try to tell us is, oh, you know, the Jews have just remarkably, over the last 2,000 years, man, they've just retained their integrity and their identity as a nation, and they've really intermarried. I mean, look at these genetic diseases they have. That proves how much they intermarried. I mean, if you're not satisfied by Tay-Sachs disease, I give up. Look how many of them have bad eyesight. Case closed. They intermarried big time. Now, here's, I'm kidding, of course. Although they did intermarry, and they do have high incidences of Tay-Sachs disease and bad eyesight as a result of intermarry. That part wasn't the joke. The joke was that any preacher would acknowledge that who's a Judaizer, because he wouldn't. You've got to come to people like yours truly for those kind of facts, okay? Here's the thing about that, is that the Jews have intermarried big time for the last 2,000 years, and by the way, they don't even trace their descent from father to son, from father to son like the Bible does. So you've got the Bible, the whole Bible, every genealogy in the Bible. You know those lists of names that you skip? You know what you'll notice is that it's father to son, father to son, father to son, father to son. Now go ask Jews if it's father to son. No, no, no. Jews trace their lineage matrilineally, mother to son, right? It's all about who's your mom. If your mom is Jewish, you're Jewish. You're not half Jewish, you're Jewish. If your father is Jewish and your mom's not, you're not Jewish. It's all about your mother. Word to your mother, all right? And so here's the thing about that, is that they're not even following the Bible's reckoning, because it's matrilineal, and let's just talk about the elephant in the room. They're white people! They have blonde hair and blue eyes, red hair and freckles, right? Mostly they're of European stock. In general, they're of European stock and not so much of Middle Eastern stock, okay? If we got in a time machine and we went back to the time of Christ, if we got in a time machine and went back and hung around with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they're not going to look like they're from Ireland, okay? But yet if we go to Israel today, you might as well be in Ireland, with all the red hair and freckles that you see over there. Seriously. I mean, look, just get on a plane from LA to New York, and look around the plane at the Jews and tell me what color they are, okay? They're pretty white. Funny how nobody else in that part of the world is that white. So what's going on? They left brown, they came back white. Because of beaucoup intermarriage with Europeans. They lived in Europe. I mean, look, if you live in Europe for centuries, you're going to marry Europeans. It's just going to happen. And you say, well, the Jews aren't like that. Well, Ezra 10 says they're like that. I mean, in Ezra 10 they're already intermarrying out the wazoo. Now here's the thing. God doesn't care how white they are. They can be an albino and God will love them just as much. Because God doesn't care about skin color. Red and yellow, black and white, they're precious in His sight. I don't care about skin color. God doesn't care about skin color. The New Testament doesn't care about skin color or ethnicity or race or geniality. But you know who does care, though? Independent Baptists who promote this pro-Israel, pro-Jews. Because what's the justification for the Jews being the chosen? Is it because they're in Christ? Is that why they're elect? No, no, no. Oh, no, it's because they're descended from. Let me just say it again. Descended from. What does that tell you right there? That's ethnicity. So even though they're spiritually apostate, even though they're spiritually not worshipping God, even though they don't have the Father because they denied the Son, yeah, yeah, but they're ethnically, you know, they're descended from. Okay, you know what you'd have to use to prove that? A genealogy. Guess what the New Testament says twice? Avoid genealogies. The New Testament doesn't care about your genealogy, doesn't care about your race, doesn't care about your skin color, doesn't care about your ethnicity, it's just a binary, it's just Christian, not Christian. Saved, unsaved. You're in Christ, you're not in Christ. That's it. Okay? But they want you to believe, well, there's spiritual Israel and then there's physical Israel. But in order to have a physical Israel, you know what you'd need? A genealogy that goes back 2,000 years. You know what you'd need. Or at least we'd be able to look at them and say, yeah, they kind of seem like they stayed, you know, they kept it within the Jews. First of all, we know that they don't because they weren't even doing that in Ezra's time. And secondly, obviously, anybody can see that they did not intermarry that much. Now, they did intermarry too much. Okay? But if they would have just exclusively intermarried, they wouldn't even be able to talk. They'd be so deformed, you know what I mean, from that much inbreeding. I mean, look, there are some places in this world where people have inbred and they're pretty messed up. You know? And you know what? Here's the thing. We were talking about this the other day. You know, the Jews, they should have done more genealogies. But you know why they don't, though, is because then it would show that they're white people that aren't actually even Israelites by birth, that they're pretty much 90% proselytes to Judaism. Okay? Wouldn't it have made more sense if, let me ask you this, is the Old Testament filled with genealogies? Yeah. So wouldn't it make sense if they would have kept up with like, hey, we care about this, let's keep genealogies. They don't. They don't have the genealogies. They don't even know what tribe they are. The average Jew has no clue what tribe they are. They don't follow genealogies. Now, what's a religion that's really into genealogies? Mormons. So somebody asked me the other day, hey, do you think the Mormons are kind of inbred? You know, because they kind of look the same. And here's what I said. I said, absolutely not. They're absolutely not inbred. I said, the Mormons are not inbred. And here's why the Mormons are not inbred. Because they're into genealogy. They're not going to accidentally marry their second cousin. They're not going to accidentally marry their third cousin. Why? Because they know who their third cousin is. And they've got all the genealogies and everything like that. So the Mormons, yeah, they look similar because they're white people. And they're all kind of related loosely, but they didn't inbreed to the point of racking up a bunch of genetic disorders because of the fact that they're into genealogies to make sure that that doesn't happen. Okay. Now the rest of the population, we're not into genealogies. We don't know who our second cousins are. I mean, most of us could not name any second cousins or third cousins or fourth cousins. We don't know. But we're not really worried about inbreeding because we live in a city with five million people and so the chances of us accidentally, and we live in a nation of 340 million people, and we're not like restricted to this tiny subculture to where we would be so worried about accidentally marrying a relative because the chances of us accidentally marrying a relative are super low. Am I right? Chances of accidentally marrying a relative are just really low, so it's not even really worth thinking about. You know, just find a girl that you like and get married and don't worry too much about it. Okay. Whereas if you're a Mormon, you know, it's kind of a small world. You got to worry about it as a Mormon, don't you? You know who else has to worry about it is the Navajos. Because the Navajo nation is a pretty small world. And so that's why whenever the Navajos meet each other before they even tell each other their name, what do they do? They give their four clans before they even say their name. Their introduction gives their grandmother's clan, their grandfather's clan, their other grandmother's clan, their other grandfather's clan, and part of the reason is because there's a taboo on them marrying someone who's too closely related to them because every culture in this world virtually has taboos about inbreeding because of the fact that you don't – because, you know, it doesn't take long to see the effects. One or two generations and it's bad. It could even be bad the first time you do it. Okay. So it's – if you understand how genetics work and recessive genes and how it works getting genes from both your parents, you know, what it is is, you know, you get a set from your mom and a set from your dad and the one of them's a backup for the other so that if you have a gene that's damaged you grab the good one. The good one takes over. So it's like if I – let's say I were filming an event, right, and I got two camera angles, okay, and two cameras are running at that event and let's say you have to change the tape every ten minutes or something, right? Every ten minutes you got to pull out the tape and put in another one. Well here's the thing. The chances are pretty slim that both of them are going to need to change the tape at the same time. If changing the tape takes five seconds and it's ten minutes, every once in a while you might have a dead second because they just happened to accidentally change the tape at the same time. But most of the time, hey, this guy's changing the tape, we'll cut to this angle. Oh, this one's got – we'll cut to this angle, right? And so you have two – now what if you just have one camera angle? Every time you change the tape, you have a problem. You have missing footage, missing information, right? So it's the same thing with your DNA. Everybody's DNA has a lot of mistakes, okay? There are lots of things that can happen, but because you have two sets, you're good to go. Does that make sense? Every once in a while, the two bad things are on the same gene and then, ah, I have a genetic disease, I have a genetic disorder, but a lot of the time, the one's covering for the other. Well, here's the thing. You marry somebody who's closely related to you, now there are lots and lots of genes where you only have one camera angle to even work with because you're getting the identical gene from both sides and if it's got a problem, they both got a problem and then you got a problem. And so that's why people that live in small communities that inbreed a lot, I mean, they're like, big time, deformed, mentally disabled, physically disabled, and this is not some theory like, well, if you do a ton of inbreeding, you know, it gets a little sketch. No, it happens fast. That's why everybody in this world virtually, every culture, not even virtually, just every culture in this world has a taboo against inbreeding, okay? And so the Mormons are careful about it, the Navajos are careful about it. You know, the Jews, yeah, they've done a bunch of inbreeding and they've racked up some genetic disorders because they neglected their genealogies. If you're gonna live in that tight-knit of a subculture community and you don't be careful about it, you're gonna inbreed and so they do have certain recessive genetic disorders that they suffer from. I told you this was gonna be a boring sermon, so don't look at me like that. And so therefore, you know, the Jews, yeah, have they inbred? Yeah, they have, but they have also brought in fresh DNA for the last 2,000 years as well. Now was God setting them up for failure in the Old Testament by having them only marry within their nation? No, because the nation had millions of people in it, number one, and the whole point was that it was only supposed to last for a certain amount of time. God never intended to just be this eternal, the Old Covenant was never gonna be an eternal covenant, right? The New Covenant's the eternal covenant. The Old Covenant was always, it was always temporary. It wasn't supposed to last for thousands and thousands of years, right? It was only supposed to be there for the 1,500 years that it was there, okay, approximately. And not only that, they were supposed to be a light to the Gentiles. They're supposed to be reaching people, they're supposed to be bringing people in, and they should be bringing in more DNA, and there should be millions and millions of them coming in, and it's only gonna be temporary. They weren't supposed to just go be disobedient to God for thousands of years in tiny communities all over the world for 2,000 years and just, you know, whatever. That was never God's plan, so if they racked up some genetic disorders, you know, that's what you get for rejecting the Son of God. Alright, let's move on. The point is that this chapter here really gives us insight to this issue showing that the Jews have never maintained any kind of ethnic purity, nor does that matter because in the New Testament it says to avoid genealogies. And so this fiction told by the old IFB, this fiction told by the Zionists and others that, oh, they're the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you know, is really handily debunked by chapters like this that show that they've never, they've never done, because guess what, humans have never done that, because you know what humans do? They marry who they want. You could tell your kids till they're blue in the face, don't marry this person, marry that person, and you know what a lot of kids are gonna do? They're gonna grow up and they're gonna disobey their parents and they're gonna marry people that their parents told them not to marry. You believe that? Or do you think kids always just marry people that their parents approve of all the time? Absolutely not. Guess what? You think that, you know, people marrying people of other races is new or something? There's nothing new when it's done. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with marrying someone of another race. The only thing that matters is that you marry a Bible-believing Christian. Doesn't matter what color they are. Do you think that that's some new phenomenon or something that, oh, look at all the interracial marriage in the United States. It's not new, okay? All throughout history, people fell in love with someone that culture or society told them, hey, this person's off limits because of their religion or because of what color they are or because our family hates their family and whatever. I think there's even a famous story about that. I'm not sure what it is. But the point is that there's no new thing under the sun. And obviously what we teach our kids is that they need to marry a Bible-believing Christian. But guess what? We're out there actually producing new Bible-believing Christians every day. Because we're winning people to Christ every day. So that's not a stagnant gene pool of like saved people. Because people are getting saved by the hundreds at our church all the time. So there you go. You know, I married my wife. I'm equally yoked because I married a saved woman. But guess what? I got her saved. It's not like, well, let me just check real quick and make sure we're not second cousins because it's such a small world among the independent fundamental Baptists. No, because independent fundamental Baptists are constantly reaching people and bringing in new people so it's not even an issue that we would even think about. And so the point is that these lists of names mean something. They matter. And maybe if they're long, it's to be dramatic. It's kind of dramatic in Ezra 10 when the list just goes on and on and on and on. That's dramatic. Then to just say, what if it just said, 45 guys did it, 60 guys did it. You're just kind of like, okay, whatever, 60 people, no big deal. But when you're sitting here and you're like, Benaiah, Bedaiah, Kelu, Benaiah, Maramath, Eliashib, Madaniah, not just Madaniah, Madaniah, Jasu, Benaiah, Benuiah, Shemiiah, Shalomiah, Nathan, Adiah, Mack, Nadabiah. It's sort of like in the OJ Simpson trial when he's like, hey, let's just show the jury real quick what 10 minutes, how long that is. Who knows what I'm talking about? One person watched the OJ trial. Was it, how long was it? 10 minutes or five minutes? Remember the exact number? You're going to double your prize money if you know the exact number of minutes. But anyway, two people know what I'm talking about. Wonderful. Well, in my generation, the OJ trial was a big deal. And in the OJ trial, there was a famous moment when the lawyer just wanted to show the jury because the one lawyer is saying, hey, it's not enough time for him to do all this stuff that you're saying. And he's like, okay, let me just show you how long this is because five minutes sounds short until you just actually experience five minutes. In fact, let's experience it now. No, I'm just kidding. Just kidding. And it was just like they just sat there and did nothing for five minutes just to kind of show. Now, why is the lawyer doing that? He's just being dramatic. He's putting on a show because it's on TV and he's trying to impress the jury. He wants to drill something into their mind instead of just saying, hey, you can do a lot in five minutes. He's like, hey, let me show you how long five minutes is. And then the jury remembers that. I still remember it. And I didn't even watch the stupid trial. I didn't even watch that trial for one hour. I got all secondhand every time you walked into any elderly person's house. It was just playing. Every senior citizen in America was watching. And so I got little snippets of it and I'm still talking about it 20 years later. Why? Because it's dramatic. So do you see how a list of names could be a little more dramatic to really drive in a point that, hey, these Jews are not staying within the nation. They're marrying the heathen. Big time. Okay. So that's the sermon, folks. Lists of names. Why are they there? Number one, to show the historical integrity of the text, just to let you know what genre you're reading. This stuff really happened. Number two, to maybe honor certain groups of people and give shout-outs to people who earned some recognition. And it kind of lets us know that we can someday earn some accolades in heaven as well. And then number three, they could be there for a hall of shame. Even listing negative examples. And number four, the names are there to be dramatic sometimes. Just to kind of make a point by just showing you in a dramatic fashion how many people there were in a given situation. And so I encourage you to read your Bible every single day. If you've never read the Bible cover to cover, start on that immediately. You know, if you're sitting here and you're a saved Christian and you have not read the Bible cover to cover, here's what I would do if I were you. I would sit down and first check off every book that you know for sure beyond any shadow of a doubt that you've already read. Now if you're like, I don't know, you didn't. Because a lot of people are like, oh yeah, I think I probably read the whole, no. Nobody accidentally reads the whole Bible. Nobody accidentally reads whole books of the Bible. Well, but I, you know, I turned here, turned there, flipped here, flipped there. You're in the single digits of percent of how much Bible you've read if that's what you're saying to me right now. I don't care if you've been in church for 50 years, okay, unless it was this church you'd get a little more. Your percentage would be in the double digits, but you still wouldn't have read the whole Bible. But here's the thing about that is that, you know, you don't want to just be like, all right, Genesis 1, here we go for the seventh time. If you already know for a fact you made it to Genesis 36 and then bailed it with the Edomites, these are the generations of Edom, if you know that's where you bailed, start there. And don't just keep rereading Genesis 1 through 35 over and over again. So you know, this is what I did, look, when I was 17 years old, I'd never read the Bible cover to cover. And I was like, all right, I'm going to fix this. I want to read this cover to cover. And so the first thing I did is I sat down and I knew for a fact, back when I was nine years old, I tried to read the Bible cover to cover. And I bailed out, I think in like Numbers chapter two or something, you know, so I made it through. So I knew like Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus are done. I need to read Numbers. I need to read Deuteronomy, right? Just that I knew for sure I'd read Matthew, right? Check it off. So check off the ones you know for any, you say, well, Pastor Anderson, I don't know for sure if I've read any book. That's okay. That's fine. Then you just start at the beginning and you can get all kinds of Bible reading charts online and I recommend the charts where they give you like a little bit from the Old Testament, a little bit from the New Testament each day, kind of breaks things up a little bit. So day one, you're reading like Genesis one through three and you're reading Matthew chapter one. Day two, you're reading Genesis four through six, Matthew chapter two, kind of gives you a little bit of variety in there. And you know, don't say, well, I'm going to start that on January first. Just start now, okay? And what you can do is you can just ignore the dates and just read one every day or what you could do if you just really want to follow the date, why not just get one of those charts and just jump in on June 18th and just read the old and new for June 18th and just always check it off and then why don't you read the second half before you read the first half? It doesn't really matter. It doesn't have to be read in a certain order, okay? In fact, I've never to this day read the entire Bible cover to cover in order. I always jump around because I've discovered a long time ago that if I read what I feel like reading, I read more. So therefore what I do is just check it off and then that way I know I get to all of it eventually but not necessarily in order. And look, obviously eventually you're going to have to bite the bullet and read Leviticus and bite the bullet and read the tough parts. But you know, I was on a Bible reading schedule for many, many years where I would read it four times a year, but it was always out of order. I was always jumping around, but I just made sure I got through each thing four times. Now obviously for a lot of people that's going to be more than, you know, you're not at that point because obviously I'm a pastor, I was going to be a pastor, I was really serious about it. And hey, I'm all for you reading the Bible two, three, four times a year. But you know, for most people what I would recommend as a starting point is one time per year because that's reasonable. It's like 15 minutes a day. There's really no excuse to not read your Bible for 15 minutes a day. Like really, you're that busy? I doubt it. Okay. 15, 20 minutes a day. That's what it takes to get through, you know, Genesis one through three, Matthew one. Check it off. Use it as a checklist. If you like to follow the date, start on June 18th, do it that way or make your own chart. If you're, if you're all geeked out on Excel spreadsheets like I am, make your own Bible reading chart and do it that way. Download a chart. But for crying out loud, read the Bible. And when you get to those lists of names, maybe this sermon will jog your memory and you can say, hey, this is important. This matters. I'm going to read it. Hey, if nothing else, I'm learning phonics. I'm building character. I'm not one of these TikTokers. You know, that's what you can tell yourself. All right. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for the Bible and Lord, thank you that so much of the Bible is fun to read. Thank you that so much of it is easy to read. But Lord God, thank you also for the boring parts, quote unquote Lord, thank you for those dry parts of the Bible because I know that they're there for our benefit, for our profit. Help us to learn from them. Help us to just by faith, trust that they're there for a reason and just read them whether we think we need them or not. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.