He's not staying in Israel. He's never going to read Torah.
He's never going to observe the Sabbath. He's not going to get circumcised.
Okay, but his theology consists of one point, that is the ultimate point;
who is the true God. So what is he asked the Prophet for? Dirt!
Can I take some dirt back? You know, load up my caravan with dirt.
This is why, in the Old Testament, we have the concept of Cosmic Geography
go to another level.
There's this sense; well, if this is the way it is,
then I can only be rightly related to the real God, the true God, Yahweh,
if I'm in his land
So when I'm outside the land, that's dangerous. It's dangerous territory,
because it's under dominion of some other god.
You know, they even have this sense of going out into the wilderness,
like when their journey after the Exodus, when they're journey to the promised land,
and the presence of God, like it was in Eden, now it's with the tabernacle.
With the Ark of the Covenant.
If you ventured outside the camp, "into the wilderness",
that was the place where demons were.
We have Leviticus 17, they were out there sacrificing the demons,
like to placate them and keep them at bay.
And God is like, “No, don't do this. You're not... No, you're missing the point, dude.”
They have to correct this, and part of the corrective is the Day of Atonement, Leviticus 16.
But you had this sense that to be outside of God's camp,
is to be in a place that is hostile to God's people.
It's the place where, Azazel, the Satan figure of the Old Testament, that's where he is.
It's why the desert places in the prophets are described with
weird, crazy animals that get identified with demons.
You know, again, it's why you get this sense that this place is under dominion.
And this worldview that emerges from Deuteronomy 32
is reflected in a number of passages.
You know, Naaman, when Naaman comes to Israel to speak with the Prophet,
to be cured of leprosy.
And he is cured. And he says, "Now I know that Yahweh is the God of all gods,
and I will never worship another."
What does he ask the Prophet for on his trip back home?
He's not staying in Israel. He's never going to read Torah.
He's never going to observe the Sabbath. He's not going to get circumcised.
Okay, but his theology consists of one point, that is the ultimate point;
who is the true God.
So what is he asked the Prophet for? Dirt!
Can I take some dirt back? You know, load up my caravan with dirt.
And you know, Elisha says, "Good. Fine, go ahead, take all you can carry."
And we're not told what he's gonna do with it. But he actually explains to Elisha,
"look, you know, part of my job is I got to take the king. You know, I'm a big captain
and the commander in chief in Syria.
And I got to take the king into the temple of Rimmon sometimes.
And the Kings kind of old. And when he bows, you know, I got to hold him up,
and I'm kind of bound with him.
But I want you to know that I'm not worshipping Rimmon."
So I don't know if he took dirt with him, like, as a protective thing,
like, I need the turf for the God of Israel with me.
Or if he just used it as his house, to build an altar on to worship Yahweh.
We don't know.
But the one thing we do know is that he ain't worshipping any other God.
And Elisha says, “good.” That's good theology. It also shows faith,
shows belief. It's believing loyalty.
You know, we know where Naaman is at now.
You know, you get it with David when he's kicked out of Judah.
And he's lamenting, "oh, you know, how am I going to pray to the Lord now?"
David's not denying God's omnipresence.
He has a sense that to relate to God, he has to be in Israel,
because the other nations are under dominion.
Okay, we've got the episode with the Ark of the Covenant, when the Philistines take it.
They take it to the temple of Dagon, which is comical. It's funny.
You know, the next day Dagon is just a stump; his head lopped off,
his arms, his limbs, and he's just laying there.
But we miss in 1 Samuel 5, this is 1 Samuel 4-5,
in 1 Samuel 5, we missed the part that says, "to this day, the priest of Dagon,
refuse to walk over the threshold, where they found Dagon."
Why? Because Yahweh has taken dominion of that turf.
This is where Dagon was defeated.
That little patch of ground, we're not taking any chances. We're walking around it,
because now it is under the dominion of Yahweh.
This is Cosmic Geography. It plays out in all sorts of passages.
When we get to the New Testament you're going to have the same ideas
play out there too. But it all extends from Deuteronomy 32.
Again, Deuteronomy 32 worldview,
like Pentecost, again, just a foreshadow in the last few minutes here,
you know, where we're going with this.
Again, if you've read Unseen Realm, you know exactly where this is going to go.
If you haven't, this is going to be news.
But there's a reason why the nations at Pentecost,
you know, you have Jews from all over the world,
they've been scattered all over the world in exile,
they come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost.
They witnessed people able to speak in their own languages
supernaturally because of the arrival of the Holy Spirit.
And the message is about this Jesus of Nazareth guy who was put on a cross,
and then he rose from the dead, and he's the Messiah.
And they believe, and then they take that message back home,
back to their countries. Well, we actually get a list of those countries,
and they proceed from east to west.
They cover the territory, from the Jews in exile in the East
all the way through, not just where the Jews are,
you know, where they're living because of the captivities and the exiles.
But it also picks off a number of the nations that are listed in the table of nations.
It actually covers all of the regions except for one, that's Tarshish.
And Paul covers that, in his pursuit to get to Spain,
because Spain was Tarshish. And we're gonna cover all this later.
But if you keep reading through the book of Acts, we have other places.
Why does the Spirit of God take Philip
and just supernaturally transport him from where he was to Azotus?
Azotus is Philistine territory.
Okay, why do we have the episode with the Ethiopian eunuch?
The guy from Ethiopia that Philip again, you know, in the chariot,
he witnesses to him and the guy becomes a believer.
Okay? Because that's territory that a Jewish settlement had been in the Old Testament.
And that's Acts chapter 8, you have all the Jewish territories covered first,
and then you start picking off Samaria, and Azotus, and these Gentile territories,
"to the Jew first and also to the Gentile." Okay, it this is a pattern.
It's a pattern that is... the purpose of it is to announce that
Jesus the Messiah was not just the Messiah of Israel and of the Jew,
he is the Messiah of the entire world.
He wants every nation to come back into the fold.
And the business of the gospel is to get believers in all the nations,
extract them into God's family.
And Paul eventually the last thing he wants to do before he dies is to get to Spain,
which is Tarshish, which is the last spot, the last region
in the table of nations that has not been covered by the Gospel.