Handmade religion. Handmade religion. I'm going to show a few things to you that are handmade, really handmade. One thing here is something that was given to me close to 50 years ago. I'll put it up here where you can see it. That is a a watch fob for a pocket watch that was made by Hank Patterson's mother he was a chief of the Shoshone here and his mother made this for him and gave it to him in 1913 and he gave this to me because he just felt I ought to have it and I'm going to give it back to the family one of these days his house burned down and this would have been gone two times He died in the second fire, but this was, his mother made this for him. I'll put it back into the family and maybe do a little video of that, presenting that to them. I tried to give it back to his son, Alfred. He said, no, he said, dad wanted you to have that. Well, I'm getting old and some of the family, other part of the family need to, have that. He looked at me as his family. So this is all handmade. That's buckskin there from a deer that was killed here in Fish Lake Valley, a mule deer. And these beads are old trade beads and they were handmade and brought here from Europe. And she did this. It's a Shoshone rose. He was Shoshone Indian. That's all handmade. Here is something else that I made. so many years ago. This is a knife sheath. It's made out of Smokin' Braintown buckskin. It's very soft. You can still smell the smoke in it. On the inside is a, that's buckskin, or not buckskin, but rawhide. This knife that fits it in, this knife The bone handle on it is made from elk from the Owens Valley. This is tool steel that my friend Wayne Phillips made for me many, many years ago. All of it's handmade. The knife is probably worth $1,000 or more because his work was very, very wonderful. Thought I'd show you these few handmade articles here because handmade articles are very special. One of my friends, made these amokupins for me a long time ago. This is 50 years ago or so. If you look at them, they're made out of elk skin and the soles are made out of buffalo hide. They have lazy stitch. This is my family, what we might call crest, my Indian. And then here across the toe is a porcupine quill embroidery. And each quill has to be hand-selected, cleaned, and then dyed. And here are a pair of my moccasins from along. They're all handmade. I started bringing a rifle in that I have that was completely handmade. It's made by three different gunsmiths. The stock, a man made the stock, one of the gunsmiths. and woodworkers, and then the barrels made by another man, and then the action is made by another man, and then the furniture on the stock is made by another man. Several people made it. Now, Paul's going to talk about handmade religion here. Now, handmade religion, we saw these beautiful, beautiful artifacts here. I'm Native American, and this goes back to my Native American heritage. Those things are very beautiful. Handmade things like that are just astounding because somebody spent many hours doing that. Those moccasins may have had close to a hundred hours in them. The Shoshone rolls, watch fob, no telling how much, how many hours that Hank's mother, Margaret, spent making that for him. and presented it to him in 1913. I don't know if he ever used it on his watch, but I still have it today, over 100 years old, 112 years old. The knife that was made by Wayne Phillips lived down by Olancha. He was a gunsmith for a military base and He was a great machinist and everything. He worked on some of my guns for me. And he made that knife especially for me. And then, of course, the sheath I made myself. And I made it just like it would have been made 300 and 400 years ago. The beads on it are 300 years old. The beads on Hank Patterson's Shoshone Rose may have been 200 or 300 years old. Because those trade beads were made in France and Italy in the 14th and 15th, 1600s. Now let's go into the Word of God. We're going to read this. We're going to do, let's see here. We're going to do about three verses here from the Greek, of course, and I'll read them to you from the Book of Ephesians in the Amplified Bible, 2.11-13 or so. Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, who were called uncircumcision by those who called himself the circumcision, itself a mere mark, but which is made by the flesh by human hands, handmade religion. Remember that at one time you were separated from Christ, excluded from any fellowship with him. alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants and promise, with no share in sacred messianic promise without knowledge of God's agreement, that's his eternal purpose and has he dealt with mankind, having no hope in his promise, living in a world without God. But now, at this very moment, in Christ Jesus, You who were once so very far away from God have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace and our bond of unity. He who made both groups, Jews and Gentiles, into one body and broke down the barrier, the dividing wall, the spiritual antagonism between us. Let's go look at this from the original language. The Jews looked upon all Gentiles as dogs, as less than human. Less than human. If they would have been human they would say they would have a religion. They would have a religion that would draw them to God. They would come to us. And of course many Gentiles did come to Israel. Israel was the administrator of God's kingdom. Let me get this down here. Let's move that history chart down. God in eternity passed. wrote our names in the Lamb of Goliath. He already in his mind had called out Abraham and Jacob, et cetera. And he already had created man in his image here. And then he created man in a state of innocence. Man fell. The curse and the death came upon mankind. Mankind was given the responsibility to do good and offer a blood sacrifice. And they were wicked in the age of conscience. And then when God sent forth the flood to what we call, cleanse the earth again. And then he set up human government. After human government, his responsibility was scatter and multiply. Their failure, they didn't scatter, they built a tower of Babel. God divided the earth and confused the languages. And then he called out Abraham, the man of promise, the father of the faithful. He called him out and he had Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau. One was the man after God's heart, which was Jacob, and the other one was God hated him, basically. He said, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. He was a very ungodly man. They had an Egyptian bondage. Jacob was his 12 sons, became 12 tribes. They went down in the Egyptian bondage for over 400 years. God called them out there by Moshe, Moses. Moses means to rescue. And he called them out and he gave them the law at Mount Sinai. And that law was supposed to point them to Christ. Well, they made their own religion all hand-made in writings. The Mishnah, the Talmud, all in writings and in person. God told Abraham way back over here, He told him that your children you shall circumcise on the eighth day and all the sons that were circumcised. Now, you got your Muslims and you got your, well, basically the Muslims and some of the heathen tribes even circumcised their women. But God told them, the circumcised men, what they would do on the eighth day. They'd take, they'd pull the foreskin out and they'd cut it off. And that would be an external sign that they were sons of God and of Israel, because that was a sign of the covenant. The New Testament sign of the covenant is baptism, not circumcision. But in the early churches, Israel, many of them, and of course Acts the second chapter tells you how many of them that were saved and added to the church, but many of the Judaizers, the Jews wanted to bring Israel Judaism into the church. Judaism was supposed to lead them to Christ. They didn't want to lay it down. They didn't want to lay it down. And the first great persecutors in church history now, let the church history chart back up. The first heavy and great persecutors in church history were, and here it begins, it begins there at the seashores of Galilee, were the Jews. One very hateful, mean, vicious murderer that went after the Jews, or after the Christians and churches, was a man by the name of Saul. The first king of Israel was Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin. And then God picked out Saul, and named him Paul. And he stopped him on the road to Damascus. He struck him down. And he said, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? He said, who are you, Lord? And he said, Jesus whom you persecute. He said, Lord, what would you have me to do? And from that point in time on, Paul went toward God, away from handmade religion and toward God. Handmade items are very beautiful, but not handmade religion. not hand-made religion. Turn to verse 11 now. Dio me monuete hote pote himes ta ethne in sarce hoi legomenoi acrobicia hipotes legomenes peritomes in sarce carol poiesitou This is a long verse. ekon teis kai athe oi en to cosmo. Now we read this on the Amplified Bible a while ago and let's go look at it. Wherefore, you, wherefore, deo there, wherefore ye call back to mind, or ye remember. That comes from eno menu. It's second person plural present indicative or imperative active. It's imperative here. ye call back to your mind, God's given a man, because, hote, that little conjunction there, because, when, little adverb of time, when ye, you all, the nations, the Gentiles, I was talking, this is a, what we call the Ephesian letter, but it was a circuit letter to all the churches of Asia. The Gentile nations in flesh, you were Gentiles in flesh, the ones having been called, look at that, nomine plural masculine, present participle, passive voice, uncircumcision, the foreskins, the pointed ones. It's a dirty word. In the minds of the Jews, the Lord had called them to cut away the flesh, to cut away the flesh, The dirtiness of the flesh, that foreskin, looked upon as dirty. Now we know today that circumcision really is more healthy. A lot of people are calling it, they call it mutilators. Now Paul does that again here. Paul calls them the mutilators. In my own Lakota culture, they would really seek God. And when they did, they would fast, they would go and pray, they'd sit on mountaintops. And sometimes they would cut themselves to offer their flesh to God. They offered their flesh to God, which was kind of backward. They would go to the Sundance, what they call the Sundance people, the Cheyenne and Lakota, Dakota and Nakota. They would go to the Sundance and sometimes they would take and pierce their flesh and tie thongs to them and dance around the pole, praying that God would give them an answer. Boy, I'm glad today we've got this book. and they'd cut their flesh. Sitting Bull there at that sun dance they had, which was a great religious revival, when the yellow-haired devil came after him, Custer, when he came after them and he was disobeying all the orders that Crook had given to him. If he had lived, he would have been probably shot for treason. But anyway, he came upon them and attacked them during a revival meeting, is what it was, a religious revival meeting. Sitting Bull had cut himself 278 times, I think it was, and altered flesh to the sun poles, what they call it, that God would give him an answer. He said that he received a vision and that he saw all of these white people, these blue coats falling down, falling down, falling down, falling down, that they were going to have victory that day, and which they did. They were heathens. They had cut their flesh. And the people in Africa do the same thing. The people in South America do that. A lot of these native cultures cut their flesh. They do it in offering to their gods and for healing or answers to prayers. Now they're called uncircumcision by the ones being called circumcision. He polled by the agency TACE, that's Genitive, Singular, Feminine, the one being called circumcision. He talks about the nation of Israel. Circumcision, peritomase. Peritomase can also mean the mutilators. He called them the mutilators. He said you're like heathens, you're mutilating your flesh. Now that Jesus Christ has come, lay that stuff aside. You know, when Christians were, or heathens were becoming Christians, when the Gentiles were becoming Christians, one of the great stumbling blocks was circumcision. For a grown man, circumcision is extremely painful and sometimes deadly with infection. Circumcising a child on the eighth day, that was exactly the time that bleeding would clot and everything. God knew what he was doing when he did that. But to circumcise the men, sometimes it becomes very deadly. If you remember right back when Jacob and his sons went up there and camped up against or near Shechem, that the daughter Dinah went out there. Dinah is a feminine form of Dan, which means judge. She went into the city and Shechem basically fell in love with her when he saw her. And he took her to his house. He did not rape her or anything, but he wanted to marry her. He wanted to marry this woman, and he went to her father and her brothers and asked for her hand in marriage. He said, I'll give you ten times whatever you want for dowry. Whatever you want, I want her. I love her. Well, the boys said no, especially Simeon and Levi, which were her full brothers. And they said, no, not unless you're circumcised like we are. We, the circumcision, the peritomes, they cut their flesh. If you do that and become one with us religiously, okay. And so they did. They were converts. Converts enough to be circumcised. That's a painful thing. And so after three days after they'd been cut, some of them probably had infection, they were very sore and everything, those boys went in there and killed them all. Murdered him. And Jacob was so upset he called them sons of Hamas. Sons of Hamas. Hamas, just like those people over there in Gaza. Hamas. Sons of violence. Hamas. Because of what they had done. Now, Paul is taking it right back in history to the time where the Gentiles would cut their flesh, do all the kinds of things that they did to appease their God. Up there on Mount Carmel, when Elijah was having a contest with the prophets of Baal, they were cutting themselves and blood was rushing. Now, Paul calls them mutilators, like heathens. He said, you're a heathen. You're heathens. Heathens in the flesh. Handmade, kere poimeto. Handmade religion. Kera, hand, and poime, poio. Handmade religion. Because ye kept on being in the season that without Christ. Israel. was the administrator of God's Kingdom. And the administrator of God's Kingdom, when the King came, they should have accepted Him. Jesus proved to them through miracles and through His lineage, everything happened exactly right. He was born in the right place, in the right family, at the right time. The Magi even came to worship Him. Because of Daniel, the writings of Daniel. The Magi were from the East. How many of them? They could say there were three. There could have been 300 or 30 or 3,000. The Magi came. They brought three gifts. It says, and ye were, ye kept on being in that season without Christ. When Christ came to them, they were without Christ. And then many Gentiles began to believe. The Gentiles believed more than the Jews that were trying to kill the churches. You were without Christ. You condemned yourself. Having been alienated from the commandments, these Gentiles were without Christ. They didn't have any hope at all. Now Israel was without Christ, and without hope, without Him. Having been alienated, having been cut off from nomine plural masculine perfect participle passive of the commandments, the foleteos, That word is used two times in the New Testament. That little adverbial preposition there, that quarees, outside Christ. You're placed outside. Out of bounds, beyond reach and beyond touch of the commandments of Israel. And strangers is in Noah, strangers. The commandments and covenants. That's oblative, plural, decimal, article, and then the DFAK. That means covenants of the promise. And that goes all the way back over here to Abraham, remember. It goes all the way back to Genesis 3.15 when man was promised a Messiah through the seed of the woman. Strangers from the covenants of the promise, hope, the promise of hope, not having. And without God, they're godless, they're atheists. You know, the gods that they worshiped weren't gods at all. They were figments of their imagination. You're godless, you're atheists. That word is only used here, only in the New Testament, and not at all in the Septuagint. Romans 1, 18-32 talks about this also. Without gods, godless in the world. and then 2.13 it says, Nini, Dei in Christo, Esu, Himas, Hoi, Pote, Hontes, Macron, Ega, Neis, Tete, Inges, Ento, Haimati, Tu, Christo. Moreover now, we could verse in Conjunctive Particle, page 85 in that little adverb, Nini, comes from Nin, but now in Christ, Jesus, ye, the ones, when, are then, being, kept, you kept on being, ye, that nominative plural masculine, second person pronoun, the ones, nominative plural masculine, the ones being, that word toy there goes to the word entes, nominative plural masculine, present participle active, you kept on existing, when you kept on existing, far away from, far away from my crown. Ye became, ye were caused to become, again I say, drawn near. Angus, drawn near in the blood. Drawn near in the blood. On the Day of Atonement, once a year in Israel, on the Day of Atonement, they would bring blood in and they would take it by the altar, by the covenant Well, they take the altar there, they would take it into the tabernacle and into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, Yom Day Atonement. In the blood of the Christ. Far away he became drawn near in the blood of the Christ. You know, when we, when Israel brought this one final offering every year where everybody's sins were cleansed. And for a few minutes, for a few moments, they were sinless. But then it all started over again. But when you come to God, when you come to Christ through His blood, when that Atonement, that Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement was on the Cross of Calvary. When we have that Day of Atonement, we got forgiveness forevermore. Verse number 14 now, Outos gar esten he ereni hemon ho poiesos ta ama totera hen kai to miso toikeon ton phragmo phragmu lisos te ek thron Ente Sarce Alto. For he, Gar, little casual particle there, for he, himself, nominally singular masculine, third person pronoun, he himself, he continually is, he exists. In him exists the peace, He Irani. Shalom. That means without guilt, without problem. You can lay down in peace at night and sleep without any type of problem at all. No memories of anything. You're sinless. You're not guilty any longer. Page 75, 575 in Bollinger. The peace of us, the shalom, harini, through the kharis, the grace of God. The peace of us, the one having made Nominative Singular Masculine Definite Article and then Poiesas is the First Heiress Participle Active. Nominative Singular Masculine. The One Having Made. The Both. The Two Into One. Am Pho Thera. Jews and Gentiles. One. That word is used only there in the New Testament by the way. In or One. And the Middle Wall. The Middle Wall. Middle Wall, Meso To'akon. That's only used three times in history, the middle wall, the partition of the petition, the middle wall of the partition, the progmu, the fence, the wall, the barrier, having been loosed, the enmity and hatred in the flesh of him. No more Jew or Gentile only lost and saved in the world. You know, Paul was accused of taking Trophimus beyond this point. Beyond the point where only Jews could go. In the temple area there in Jerusalem, The Jews just held on to that thing. They held on to that area there like it was their marriage certificate with God. God was a national treasure to them. And then God said, I'm no longer a national treasure to you. You know, Ishmael was conceived from the bond woman. He was circumcised later, but he was conceived in Babylon. We're all without Christ when we're born into the world today. We're all without Christ. There was a barrier wall there, and then even in the temple area itself, when Jesus died on the cross, the wall, This curtain here that led into the Holy of Holies, that in the temple area, that curtain was there, but that's much larger, much larger than this. But that curtain was ripped from the top to the bottom and it fell down and you walked right in here and you walked right into the Holy of Holies. There's a holy place and the Holy of Holies, Kadesh HaKadoshim. The holy place was called the Kadesh. and the holy of holies of Kadesh HaKadoshim. When Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary, that curtain ripped from the top to the bottom. And you walked into the very presence of God. The holy place, Kadesh, the holy place, was like heaven. Or like holy. It was holy. But the holy of holies is like the very throne of God. When Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary, when He was buried, when He was raised again and finished our salvation, He died for our sins and raised for our justification. From that time on, we walk right into the very presence of the throne of God by His Word and by His grace. We pray in Jesus' name. Our Father, we send this message out for Your honor and glory. Please use it wherever it goes. Please forgive me where I failed you and help me to preach your word in a pure way. In Jesus' name I pray.