sort of chapter by chapter text by text. A lot of lessons to learn here. The Lord is very gracious to us in giving us these very good admonitions from the Old Testament. And tonight we find ourselves in Judges chapter 11 and we're continuing our study through the Judgeship, if you will, of Jephthah. And so we come tonight to Judges chapter 11 verses 29 through 40, hear the word of the Lord. Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh and passed through Mizpah of Gilead and from Mizpah of Gilead, he advanced toward the people of Ammon. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, if you will indeed deliver the people of Ammon into my hands, then it will be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the people of Ammon shall surely be the Lord's and I will offer it up as a burnt offering. So Jephthah advanced toward the people of Ammon to fight against them and the Lord delivered them into his hands. And he defeated them from Aurora as far as Minoth 20 cities and to Avel Karameem with a very great slaughter. And the people of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel. When Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and dancing and she was his only child. Besides her, he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass when he saw her that he tore his clothes and said, alas, my daughter, you have brought me very low. You are among those who trouble me for I have given my word to the Lord and I cannot go back on it. So she said to him, my father, if you have given your word to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth because the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the people of Ammon. Then she said to her father, let this thing be done for me. Let me alone for two months that I may go and wander on the mountains and bewail my virginity, my friends and I. So he said, go. And he sent her away for two months and she went with her friends and bewailed her virginity on the mountains. And it was so at the end of two months that she returned to her father and he carried out his vow with her, which he had vowed. She knew no man. And it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went four days each year to lament the daughter of Jephthah, the Gileadite. This is the word of God, amen, amen. Let's take a few moments now and let's pray and ask for the Lord's blessing on our time together. Pray with me. Father in heaven, Lord, we rejoice, Lord, to be together on a Sunday evening and a Sunday evening worship service like this. Lord, thank you for this blessing. Thank you for your word. Thank you for the joy, the blessing, the privilege of studying your word together. There's so much, Lord, you've been so gracious in your revelation to us. There's so much to learn and so much to know of you. And we praise you and thank you, Lord, for how graciously you have revealed yourself, your faithfulness, your steadfastness, your patience, long suffering, kindness, compassion, mercy, grace, justice. And we praise you for how you've revealed yourself and your word. And Lord, I praise you and thank you for the instruction that we have from these texts. All scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable to us and we're grateful, Lord, for the way by your spirit that you profit your people through the preaching and teaching, study, memorization, the meditation of your word. Thank you, Lord, help us to commit your word to our hearts that we might not sin against you, that we might know you, that we might grow in our faith and serve you more fervently, more devotedly, more affectionately, Lord, for all that you've done for us in Christ. We thank you for this time together tonight. Work through your word, Lord, as you are always just so gracious and steadfast and faithful to do. And we thank you for this great blessing, this grace that you've given us in Jesus' name, amen. The title of our sermon tonight is A Bitter Barter. A bitter barter couldn't resist the alliteration from Judges chapter 11 verses 29 to 40. And our text tonight in the book of Judges, Judges chapter 11, is an account of tragedy in the midst of triumph, tragedy in the midst of triumph. There's a sense in which Jepta himself at this point in the book of Judges has been somewhat of a tragic figure. Jepta is a tale, if you will, of tragedy and sorrow. Jepta was cast out of his father's house as a son of a harlot. He was estranged from his family, cut off from his father's house by his vindictive and greedy brothers. Jepta then is forced to flee to the region of Tav where he falls in with worthless men, morally reprehensible men, and he rises to the point of leadership among them, becomes their leader, and essentially in the region of Tav lives as a mercenary, raiding towns and villages around Gilead. But Jepta himself now hardened through hardship, through adversity as he has been, Jepta earns the reputation then of a gibore, as the Bible says, a mighty man of valor. And so then when circumstances in Israel turn desperate, as we've seen them turn desperate time and time again because of Israel's idolatry, Israel's sin, when these circumstances turn desperate, his brothers, now elders in Gilead, believe themselves to have nowhere else to turn. They don't seek the face of God in repentance and faith, rather than doing that.  The account, as we've seen, is a shameful parallel to how they've spitefully treated the Lord himself over this time period. They're so quick to forget him. They're so quick to cast him off when they're prospering, but then they shamelessly go back and beg him for help when they're in need. They only seek him when they're in need. Well, Jepta, we see from the text, not quite cut out at this point, not quite prepared for the task that lies ahead. It's fine to run raids in Gilead, but that's a far cry from taking on the amassed armies now of Amon. Jepta has attempted diplomacy with the king of the people of Amon and that diplomacy attempt has failed. And it's now, now that Jepta will face off against the enemies of God's people. Jepta's gonna do that ill-prepared himself and he's about to do that with an army that's frankly unfamiliar with warfare. They've not had to fight a battle like this. So this is a very critical moment. It's a critical moment for Jepta. If Jepta isn't successful here, then the power of the authority that he's garnered is going to slip right through his fingers. Israel will go back into oppression. This is a very critical emergency, if you will. And it's at this time that not merely the Gabor enters the battlefield, but El Gabor walks onto the battlefield, God Almighty. Silent, sort of sitting on the sidelines, so to speak to this point, now walks onto the scene. We've all read stories, haven't we seen movies where the circumstances look bleak, right? The darkness sets in, the storm gathers, sad music begins to play a single flute or a single violin. It looks like there's no hope. Looks like there's no hope, and then the hero shows up. The sun breaks through the clouds, the trumpets blast, and the victory is won. Well, the hero is showing up now on the scene. The Lord, seemingly on the sidelines and all that's been going on since he told them in chapter 10, verse 13, that he wasn't going to deliver them. He says to them, you've forsaken me, you've served other gods. Therefore I will deliver you no more. Go cry out to those gods that you've raised up for yourselves, right? Go cry out to those gods which you've chosen. Let them deliver you in your time of distress. But the Lord, rich in mercy, abounding in grace, loving kindness, compassionate, merciful, loving, having set his love upon the apple of his eye, could no longer endure the misery of his covenant people. And so God then, faithful to his promises, faithful to his word, seemingly absent, but not absent, all along he's been working through sovereignly decreed circumstances to now deliver his people. And so he shows up again just at the right time in chapter 11, verse 29. Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh and he passed through Mizpah of Gilead and from Mizpah of Gilead he advanced toward the people of Ammon. And here's our lesson, verse 29. Those whom God has called, God faithfully supplies for the work. You see that? If the work is the Lord's work, then God will see to it that you have the Lord's provision and we can count on that just as Jephthah can. Moses said, didn't he? We learn from Moses' example. Moses said, I'm slow of speech, I'm slow of tongue, Lord. And so the Lord said to him in Exodus chapter 4, verse 11, who is it, Moses, that made men's mouths? Or who makes the mute, the death, the seeing or the blind? Have not I, the Lord, done these things? And he says to Moses, go, you go and I'll be with your mouth. I'll teach you what you should say. Well, what was Moses expected to do in Exodus chapter 4? Moses was expected to go and to go in faith. The Lord would supply, the Lord is the one who makes us sufficient for the work that he's given us to do, amen? The Lord has given us a task. Our responsibility in the task is simply to go. Jephthah, the spirit of the Lord comes upon Jephthah. What is Jephthah to do? Jephthah is to go and trust the Lord. He will have the Lord's provision. Paul knew this well, didn't he? In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 4, thinking of Paul's ministry for the Lord and all the work that Paul did. And Paul says this, and we have such trust through Christ toward God, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of ourselves as being anything, but our sufficiency is from God who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant. I thought about that many times in Paul's ministry and Paul, faithful to the work that the Lord had given him to do, but Paul continuously going out in faith. This is a difficult ministry, persecution, resistance, right? But Paul continues to go out in faith and why did he go out in faith? Because he trusts the Lord Jesus Christ to make him sufficient to the work, to give him the grace to enable him to do the work that he'd been called to do, just trust of the Lord. And the same is true for you and I, right? The same is true for you and I. What are we expected to do? We're expected to go. And we're expected to go in faith trusting that the Lord will supply, trusting the Lord for his provision. The Lord promises to be with us, doesn't he? He promises to be with us as we go out in his name to make disciples. He says, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. We have his promised word to us. What's our responsibility? Go in faith, go in faith.  Whatever it is, we are earthen vessels. The Lord knows it. He knows our frame. He knows we are but dust. We are clay pots, but deposited with that, those earthen vessels, those chosen vessels of his is a great treasure, a great treasure. And God will honor his word. He will make us sufficient. He will supply what we need. We just need to trust him in it. I can honestly say, as I think about the Lord and the Lord's faithfulness and the Lord's compassion, the Lord's goodness, his steadfastness. And I think any of the brothers would probably attest to the same thing. I can honestly say before God, clear conscience before God, that as I stand here, I've never felt abandoned here. Never, right? The Lord is always faithful. The Lord is always caring for us. The Lord always supplies what we need. He's very gracious. Paul, in magnifying the Lord's name for that and in glorifying God for that, says don't lose heart. The Lord Jesus Christ to his disciples on the Eve before he was crucified, don't lose heart. Literally means don't shrink back. Don't shrink back. Press on, preaching the gospel. Press on in the work. The Puritan, Richard Rogers said, therefore let the discouragements be never so great. This work shall prosper. It will accomplish exactly what God intends to accomplish through it. Even out of the mouths of blockish, brutish, savage, ignorant, and yay, even profane ones, the Lord shall procure credit to his ministry when he has changed them thereby. It's a blessing. So the Lord, the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah. Came upon Jephthah to supply him with the grace and power necessary to carry out the work the Lord had for him to do. In verse 29, notice that with me. In verse 29, the same verb is used three times in verse 29 and again in verse 32. Though it's translated differently, it means he moved. Not just passed or advanced, but he moved through Gilead. He moved through Mispah. He moved through toward the people of Ammon. He moved toward them to fight. In other words, the fourfold repetition emphasizing that his movement was under the power of the spirit. The spirit comes upon Jephthah, what does he do? He moves, he moves, he moves, he moves, right? That movement under the power of the spirit continues in verse 32, look there. Verse 32, so Jephthah moved. He advanced toward the people of Ammon to fight against them and the Lord delivered them into his hands. No details are given. Isn't that interesting? No details given here. Simply that the Lord delivered them into his hands. That's good. Praise the Lord for victory, but no account of the battle. No record of the event. Look at verse 33, simply that he defeated them from Aurora as far as Minoth 20 cities. So the pursuit lasted a good while. To Avel Karameem with a very great slaughter. That's about all that we know. The people of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel. Well, that's basically it. No song of celebration like Deborah and Barak had after their victory. Dale Ralph Davis said, short literary work made here of the Ammonites. The Lord easily puts down his enemies, doesn't he? The Lord easily with effortless motion, a swipe of his pen, and thus the Lord subdued the people of Ammon. Awesome. The account, though not preoccupied, if you will, with the battle or with the victory over the Ammonites, the account is preoccupied with another aspect of the historical record. And that's the main issue that we're obviously meant to consider here based on the amount of ink given to it. And that is the very rash and tragically foolish vow that Jephthah makes to God. And because of this foolish vow, whatever victory is enjoyed by Israel, enjoyed by Jephthah at the moment, is swallowed up now in Jephthah's sorrow. We see the vow in verse 30. Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, if you will indeed deliver the people of Ammon into my hands, then it will be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the people of Ammon shall surely be the Lord's and I will offer it up as a burnt offering. Wow. Jephthah basically bargains here, barters, for two commitments from God. One, that God would deliver the people of Ammon into his hand and two, more implicitly, that he would return in peace or return safe and sound from the battle to his house. Do you see that? Well, God intended to deliver the people of Ammon into his hands. Jephthah could have simply asked him. We see that all over the place in scripture, don't we? David did that many times. Lord, if I go down against them, will you deliver them into my hands? Lord says, yes, I will deliver them. Go down, right? And Jephthah goes down or David goes down. What happens frequently? Jephthah obviously doesn't do that. Jephthah wants assurances. He makes the vow to the Lord to bring about the divine response and assure victory. Jephthah is looking for guarantees, okay? Now, there's nothing wrong in the Bible, nothing wrong with making a vow to the Lord. There are places in the Bible where vows are commendable. Vows are common in the Old Testament. Often vows express gratitude. They express love, devotion, zeal, godly zeal for the Lord. Now think about a couple of them with me. In Genesis chapter 28, Jacob makes a vow to God. We even find some of the very same language in Jacob's vow. Jacob says in Genesis 28, if God will be with me and keep me in the way that I'm going and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on so that I come back to my father's house in peace. Do you see the similarity in the language? So that I come back to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God. And of all that he gives me, I will surely give a 10th to him. Jacob's vow, just even at a surface level look at Jacob's vow, it's thoughtful, isn't it? It's deliberate, it's more biblical. He's pledging to tie the 10th of all that God gives to him. Think about Hannah's vow. In first Samuel chapter one, Hannah makes a vow to the Lord.  Notice Hannah never uses the word for burnt offering. Again, Hannah thoughtful, Hannah considering the Lord, fearing the Lord in her vow. Nothing wrong in the Bible with making vows to the Lord, but the Bible is very, very clear with respect to vows. Vows before the Lord are binding. Deuteronomy chapter 23, beginning in verse 21. When you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay to pay it, for the Lord your God will surely require it of you and it would be sin to you, do you see? But if you abstain from vowing, it shall not be sin to you. That which has gone from your lips, you shall keep and perform for you voluntarily vow to the Lord your God, what you have promised with your mouth. We pay vows to God or we make vows to God, we pay them. Very, very serious matter, vows are binding. It's okay not to vow, it wouldn't be sin to you if you didn't vow, but if you make a vow to the Lord your God, it would be sin to you not to pay it, make sense? And because of that, because of that, vows to the Lord must not be made hastily or rashly or ignorantly, Proverbs chapter 20, verse 25. It is a snare for a man to devote rashly something as holy and afterward to reconsider his vows. Proverbs 20, 25 is written for Jephthah, isn't it? But it's also written for all of us who may be so tempted to do the same. Be careful with the vows that you make. Jephthah's vow is rash, it's hasty, it's thoughtless, it's careless, it's reckless. And that which he hoped would secure assurances from God proved to be, as Proverbs 20, 25 warns, proved to be a trap and a snare to Jephthah. Verse 30, God, if you will deliver the people of Ammon into my hands, verse 31, then whatever, whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me shall surely be the Lord's. I will offer it up as a burnt offering.  There simply is no other understanding of the word. There's no mistaking the meaning of that term. Burnt offering is the sacrifice, take the life, you shed the blood of the sacrifice. And the sacrifice then is consumed by fire entirely burnt up on the altar. It's the very same word that the Lord uses in Genesis chapter 22, verse two, where he commands Abraham to take his only son, Isaac, and offer Isaac as a burnt offering to the Lord. What does Abraham do? Abraham understands what the Lord is asking of him. And so Abraham fully understanding what God meant takes the knife with which he will slay his son. He takes the wood, which he intends to use for the burnt offering, the wood that he'll use to make the fire. And he sets out with Isaac for the mountain that God had appointed. Abraham knew what God meant. The word there for burnt offering can't be mistaken with simply dedicating something or giving something to temple service or setting something apart. That has a distinct meaning and that is burnt offering, a bloody sacrifice. Now, anyone reading through Judges for the first time, I don't know if you remember when you first read the book of Judges, anyone reading through Judges for the first time could likely be heard gasping when they read this section of text. Oh no, just a little bit of forethought and you realize the foolishness, the recklessness of this vow before you even know what comes next, don't we? It's reckless. It obviously, it calls into question, doesn't it? The heart motives, the mindset of Jephthah in making the vow. Additionally here, the word whatever and references to it in this text are all masculine. I think with me for a moment, whatever comes out of the doors of my house, that word whatever, masculine, it means that at worst, Jephthah actually intended to offer up a person. To offer up a human being. At best in Jephthah's mind, it was literally whatever, literally whatever, and that whatever was inclusive of a person. Now, how do we know that? Well, the fact that Jephthah didn't restrict the sense of whatever in the vow to an animal is seen in his reaction when his daughter is the one who comes out of the house. Jephthah didn't have in his mind that he would restrict the whatever to an animal, or that that's what he meant because when his daughter comes out of the house to meet him, he is heartbroken, isn't he? Whatever, whatever in Jephthah's mind, obviously included his daughter. So worst case scenario, Jephthah intended to offer a person, all those words are masculine. Best case scenario, Jephthah so careless, so rash, so reckless, so thoughtless that the whatever meant literally whatever that was inclusive of a person, which not much better, is it? Not much better. So then, after a great victory over the Ammonites, look at verse 34, Jephthah is returning home. And when Jephthah came to his house in verse 34 at Mizpa, there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and dancing. She came celebrating Jephthah's victory over the Lord's enemies. And she was his only child. Besides her, he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass when he saw her that he tore his clothes. Jephthah, you can imagine coming back to his house, waiting to see what or who might approach him, might come to greet him. It's interesting there to think about it, isn't it, that it wouldn't ordinarily be at this point in Israel's history that an animal would have been coming out of the house or that an animal would have greeted him. Ha. Just lends more evidence to the fact that Jephthah was thinking horribly, horribly wrong here. When he saw her, his daughter in verse 35, he tore his clothes, he's distraught, heartbroken. And he said, Alas, my daughter, you've brought me very low. Victory is swallowed up in sorrow. You are among those who trouble me for I've given my word to the Lord and I cannot go back on it. And what Jephthah experiences in that moment when his daughter comes out of the house to meet him is a deeper loss than any loss he might have experienced on the battlefield, the bitter fruit of a rash barter with Almighty God. Although he hadn't restricted the sense of the word whatever, it was obvious that Jephthah didn't want or didn't intend the sacrifice to be his only child, his only child. In Jephthah's heart and mind, maybe he thought he could pay God off with a sacrifice. You know, that was very common to pagan theology at the time, very common to Canaanite pagan religion that had taken a foothold in Israel at this time, very common to paganism. However, in thinking that way, Jephthah had dramatically underestimated the unspeakably high cost of their deliverance, hasn't he? Now think with me for a moment, Jephthah and what may have been in Jephthah's heart and mind is he considered this vow. He's thinking to himself, I want assurances, I want guarantees that God is going to give me the victory. So God, I pledge to you, whatever comes out of my house and maybe Jephthah was thinking, whoever. And so Jephthah makes this rash, reckless, sinful vow to God, whatever comes out of the doors of my house, I will pledge to you God as a burnt offering, trying to manipulate God, assurances for the victory. And Jephthah dramatically underestimates. He doesn't think to himself. He didn't intend that to be his daughter. He didn't imagine that would be his daughter. Otherwise, Jephthah might've thought twice about the vow. He's heartbroken when his daughter comes out of the house. He wasn't thinking that way. But maybe what Jephthah was thinking was that I'm gonna pay God off here with his vow and what Jephthah inadvertently does then is dramatically, dramatically, dramatically underestimate the unspeakably high cost of their deliverance from the judgment of God that was justly due their sin against him in their idolatry and in their rebellion. Do you see? Jephthah doesn't realize. Doesn't realize. It would cost the sacrifice of God's own son, his only begotten son to redeem wicked, rotten, deplorable, disgusting sinners like you and I. The unspeakably high cost of our redemption. The unspeakably high cost. And Jephthah, in this rash, thoughtless, reckless vow to God, whatever, whatever comes out of my house. Whatever, and his daughter, his only child, his only child, the ultimate in infinitely high cost of our redemption, pictured, foreshadowed, illustrated here in Jephthah giving up his only daughter, his only child. Jephthah really hadn't even considered that this vow would have cost him his daughter's life. Seems obvious from the text. He wasn't prepared. He wasn't prepared to give up that much. He might have thought twice, right? If he thought that victory, if he thought that deliverance, if he thought that salvation would cost him that, he wasn't prepared to give up that, which was most precious to him. God is prepared. Amazing thought, right? God was prepared. God, the Bible says, was pleased to crush him, pleased to deliver him up for us all, pleased to give up his only begotten son, that we sinners might be reconciled to him. Well, Jephthah's daughter's response is remarkable. Verse 36, his daughter said to him, my father, if you have given your word to the Lord, due to me, according to what has gone out of your mouth, because the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the people of Ammon. You know, in this, she's not unlike Isaac, is she? We see Isaac's submission to what is about to happen with Abraham on the mountain. Here, she demonstrates great submission, and that is an understatement, great submission, great courage, extraordinary faith in the Lord, right? You've given your word to the Lord, due to me, according to what has gone out of your mouth, the Lord has avenged you on your enemies. And all of this, despite this foolish vow, but it wasn't easy on Jephthah's daughter. She became a victim, if you will, of her father's rash vow. All her hopes, imagine with me, all of her hopes as a young woman, his only child, all of her hopes as a young woman at that time of becoming a wife, of becoming a mother, which by the way, was the pinnacle of that which should have been hoped for among the young women in Israel. It was a glorious calling, a glorious blessing, right? To be a wife and a mother, to raise the next generation, to honor the Lord in both childbearing and in raising kids, a glorious blessing, a glorious privilege, a glorious honor that is entirely shoved off and put aside today as something shameful in the eyes of this wicked world. All of her hopes as a young woman at that time of becoming a wife and a mother were shattered. They're gone. All of her desires, they were wrapped up into that blessing, now gone, as a result of her father's rash, reckless vow. She bewailed as what would be a great loss in her untimely death, the loss of these hopes, dreams of becoming a wife and a mother, verse 37. So she said to her father, let this thing be done for me, let me alone for two months that I may go and wander on the mountains and bewail my virginity, my friends and I. Virginity is a term that would encompass becoming a wife and a mother. And it's not that she was bewailing the fact that she would never simply be with a man. She was bewailing the fact that she would never be a wife, would never be a mother, would never reach her calling in that way. So Jephtha grants her request, verse 38. He said to her, go. And he sent her away for two months and she went with her friends and bewailed her virginity on the mountains. And it was so that at the end of two months that she returned to her father and he carried out his vow with her, which he had vowed that she knew no man. And it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went four days each year to lament the daughter of Jephtha, the Gileadite. You know, in light of verse 40, what was the cause of their lamentation, right? What was the cause of their lamentation? What exactly did Jephtha do? Well, there are arguments that are made against what is, frankly, the plain reading of the text. They would say, well, for Jephtha to have sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering was obviously against the law of God. It couldn't have been that. Certainly that burnt offering would have been unacceptable to God, very true. They say, well, because of that, it couldn't have been that Jephtha would have gone through with the sacrifice. Some believe that his daughter, Jephtha dedicated her to temple service that she was given in her virginity to temple service for the rest of her life, dedicated to perpetual virginity. Many would say that Jephtha knew the law. We know that Jephtha knew the law because in his argumentation or in his negotiation with the king of the people of Ammon, Jephtha knew Israel's history really well, right? He understood Israel's history. He seems to be a man of faith. He seems to be a man of the knowledge of the Old Testament. Jephtha makes the hall of faith. In Hebrews chapter 11, would Jephtha actually carry out a vow that he made to sacrifice his own daughter as a burnt offering? Later King Ahaz, later King Manasseh, both actually do sacrifice children and the Bible condemned them as grotesquely evil for that act and here we have Jephtha in the hall of faith, Hebrews chapter 11. Some say, some would say that his daughter doesn't mourn her impending death. His daughter is mourning her virginity. Women did serve at the doorway of the tent of meeting. All of these are valid arguments, all valid arguments. However, none of them simply consistent with the language and with the grammar of the text. There's simply no other way to understand the plain meaning of the text than to believe that Jephtha carried out the awful vow that he had made and he actually offered his daughter as a burnt offering. Luther said, one would like to think that he did not sacrifice her but the text clearly says that he did. God did not stay his hand. God provided no ram caught by the horns in a thicket. Jephtha must face the awful consequences of his sin. Well, how do we explain Jephtha's actions? What explanation is there for this? Not only had his rash vow become a snare to Jephtha now and entrapment to him but it appears as though that this is yet another example of where the Canaanite worldview had once again become a snare, not only to Jephtha but to Israel as a whole. The Israelites had failed to drive the Canaanites out of the land and just as God had said the Canaanites became a snare to the people of Israel. Jephtha actually believed because of that Canaanite influence on his thinking, on his mind, on his heart, Jephtha actually believed that this was somehow acceptable and necessary. He had been living in exile, right? Cast out of his father's house. Israel had forgotten the Lord their God. They've plunged themselves back into pagan idolatry. The influence of the Canaanites cannot be underestimated. That pagan influence was deadly, deadly. And his actions weren't uncommon, weren't inconsistent with paganism. Ungodly, worldly Canaanite influence. And Jephtha believes that he is serving the Lord and doing good in making this vow, this bitter barter. Jephtha very well may have meant well. And yet Jephtha has found doing evil. How many today, right? How many? Think that you are doing God's service and yet they are found doing evil.  The Lord warns us of such. Jephtha had negotiated with the elders of Gilead for power. Jephtha had attempted a negotiation with the King of Ammon and now Jephtha presumes the thing that he can negotiate with God, manipulate God. Jephtha believed that he could get God to make concessions. You do this for me, I'll do this for you. Jephtha, you see, is trying to set the terms. It's different, isn't it, from Jacob? Different, isn't it, from Hannah? Essentially, he attempted to barter with God in exactly the same way that he bartered with the Gileadites and attempted to barter with the King of Ammon. This is not ultimately faith in the Lord, is it? Going to the Lord to seek his face for what the Lord will do in the battle with Ammon. He relies on worldly thought, influenced by a Canaanite worldview and he doesn't know what he's doing. There's no fear ultimately of the Lord, of what the Lord will do in that circumstance. It's wrong, wrong headed on so many levels. And even though he may have meant well, this was all done in amazing ignorance. It was rash, brazen, foolish, ultimately tragic. How many examples? Do we see in scripture where fallen men believe that they could have some say in setting the terms of their relationship to God? Not always fallen men, sometimes believers too, right? Nadab and Abihu thinking that they can set the terms of the worship of God under the law in Israel. We saw how that worked out. Saul offering the sacrifice in the place of Samuel when he should have just waited. Saul thinking, well, I can do this myself. What's the big deal? What's the big deal? I can do this. Uzzah reaching out with his hand to steady the ark. Jeroboam building another altar to God in Bethel. What's the big deal? No fear of God before his eyes. Peter taking aside Jesus to rebuke him about the crucifixion, far be it from you, Lord. This shall not happen to you. What does the Lord say to Peter? Get behind me, Satan. And here's Jeff, another tragic example, a very tragic example. Brothers and sisters, vows. Vows must be carefully considered. Vows must be carefully considered. You're not required to make vows, but vows that you do make, you are required to pay. Psalm 76, verse 11, make vows to the Lord your God and pay them. Making commitments to the Lord, making commitments before the Lord is a serious, serious matter. Ananias and Sapphira, they make a promise, don't they? They're found lying to the Holy Spirit and God takes their life from them. They didn't have to commit the money, but they did having committed the money they should have paid it. We see examples of these commitments on a regular basis. Now, some of you may think to yourselves, well, I've never made a vow that way. I don't anticipate myself fearing the Lord that I'm going to make a vow like that. I wanna be careful in the vows that I make, but you make a vow when you get married. When you take a husband, when you take a wife, married couple stands before God, before God and makes a vow, one another, to one another, makes a vow to God to love their spouse, to cling to them, husbands, to sacrificially love her, wives, to submit to him and to respect him. That is a serious, serious vow that you make before God when you take a spouse. Your commitment to the church. When you join this church, you make a vow before God to serve him as a member of this church, committed to following, obeying and applying his word, endeavoring heart, soul, mind, and strength, to love him and to serve him as a member of this church. That's a vow, a covenant commitment that you make before the Lord your God. Vows are a very, very serious matter. How often, how often do we see those vows? Just shove to side, set aside as a meaningless, worthless, negligible, common, thoughtless thing. How carelessly, rashly, recklessly, thoughtlessly those vows are just set aside. And set aside for the purposes of convenience, set aside for the purposes of personal desire, set aside for the purposes of sin, whatever it is. And vows are a serious, serious matter. You see how the world has just abandoned the covenant commitment of marriage, how people left and right just abandoned their covenant commitments to God in the church. Decisions must be thought through carefully with wisdom. Don't be foolish. And when you make a vow, pay it. God himself, God himself would meet every need associated with our deliverance by offering up his very own son. Praise be to him for paying such a price. He does all of that through a promise that he makes in the new covenant, where God will save his people. I will be their God and they will be my people. And we serve a God who never goes back on his word. Steadfast and faithful into the ages. And we are by faith in Christ, beneficiaries of that steadfast love. It's a beautiful, amazing gift. No one stayed his hand and the son willing to lay down his life for his own. Praise God, amen. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you or that you have in covenant love decreed and have carried out your word, your promise, to send your only begotten son into the world to save sinners.  We're grateful to you Lord that through faith, the spirit of God, you apply those benefits of the person and work of the son to us, to save us, to forgive us of our sins, to justify us, to sanctify us and to one day glorify us. And we Lord, trophies of your grace will praise and worship you into the ages. Grateful to you Lord for all that you've done. May your steadfast grace and love be praised for all eternity in Jesus' name, amen.


So I initially shot this video on manifesting, which was really my BS life experiment to see if there was actually something to it, or if it was a bunch of hippie, new age, crunchy granola garbage. And since then I learned that, you know, like most things, there's some merit and there's a lot of BS. But in this video, I thought I would share this new quest I'm embarking on really for an entire year where I'm going to flip my life upside down and I'm going to document everything.  Alex Hein. Now I've actually included a journaling worksheet below this video that can help you if you're trying to redesign your life and reinvent yourself in a specific direction. That's more of what you want. Get your life together. All right, you can check it out. The first link right below this video. So I was having this conversation that really inspired this video and this year long quest that I'm going on. It was a live hangout with the students in my reinvent your life program and where each month we go through this varying phase of life.  And I took an entire day off and I actually wanted to figure out for me what really did make the difference. And so I wrote down on this piece of paper, I wrote down what were the goals that I had achieved. And I focused on my career because that was the hardest part of my life to do well in. So I wrote down what about my career goals, my work goals was the most unusual. All right, so I wrote down like, did a doctorate. I worked 20 hours a week, the whole doctorate, built a six figure business. I wrote two books, you know, before the age of whatever 30, 32, made six figures over 100,000 us in royalties from those books self published, built this audience to 350,000 subscribers. And a few other things, a few other experiences, but things that are not, you know, necessarily that ordinary. And I sat down and I wanted to figure out what practices did I do that actually worked. Now I had about seven to 10 practices I did daily. I did goal setting. I did action taking, i.e. actual habits. I did manifesting affirmations, visualizations. I did hiring coaches, going to seminars, workshops. So of the seven or 10 things I did the most frequently to reach my goals. What was the only thing I was willing to bet my life at gunpoint actually worked. And there was actually only one thing amazingly. And it was the projects that I worked on that I was strongly intuitively drawn to via a gut excitement or drive or love to do it. Those were the ones that worked out. So let's talk about what I'm actually planning to do. I started using these little journals, these little moleskins so that I could actually track my hunches, my gut instincts about a certain goal or about a certain thing. And then I could test, well, if I do that thing, is it really more likely to work out than something that I'm just forcing and pushing? But the problem is, you know, let's say your gut says, you should write this book about your experience being whatever, having cancer at a young age, losing your parents, whatever it is. And then your mind comes in. And your mind says, who are you to write this book?  Your friends are like, who are you going to be a writer? You got like a B minus in English class.  And so how do you disable the fears? Well, also try to reach your full potential. The question for me was what would happen if as close to 100% of my day, I get exactly what I wanted to do. All the time, seven days a week, if I don't want to work that day, I'm not going to work. And because I'm self employed, I can choose to do that.  If that's what really pulls me. So what if I just did exactly what I want to do for a year every minute? If I don't want to work at all, I won't work at all. And as you can see, a lot of these fears come up as my business going to fail is nobody going to keep watching my videos because they all suck and I haven't done any in the last six months. Like what will really happen to my life? And I'm willing to see what happens because so far that's been the best compass for awesome things happening in my life. So I'm embarking on this yearly quest or one year quest to see what happens if I go all in 100% on making every decision for my gut every single day, which means fearless faith in finances that things are going to work out financially. My whole everything I've worked for won't come crumbling down and really fearless faith and love that I don't have to go chasing or running after friends or trying to find my next relationship, but that if I'm doing the things that excite me, those things will happen. So I'm going to document it and hopefully at least monthly share with you guys what's been unfolding and how things are working out. All right. And of course, documenting it all daily here and I'll share this with you after. So if you guys want a good way to get started doing this practice is definitely that free journaling worksheet below the video. I use that exact kind of strategy exercise for really designing the exact life that I've wanted. So you can check it out right below this video. And then before you go, I have two related videos there.


Welcome to nursing school explained in this video on atrial fibrillation, which is one of the most common dysrhythmias that we see in our patients. So what causes atrial fibrillation or what are risk factors? Generally the risk for atrial fibrillation increases as we age, but also all those things that are generally bad for our health and generally bad for the heart can lead to atrial fibrillation, which are hypertension, diabetes, obesity, chronic kidney disease that many times originates from uncontrolled hypertension and diabetes, and then a cardiac condition such as coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, cardiomyopathy, any kind of valve disorders, pericarditis, as well as hyperthyroidism. So there's a long list right here. And then in terms of electrophysiology, generally the heart radiant rhythm is very organized where the atria are on the top and the ventricles are on the bottom and usually the atria contract and then the ventricles contract and it's this very organized rhythm that we can discern by listening to the heart and listening to the closure of the valves with the love dub. And the ventricles are really what produces the cardiac output, the blood pressure because they squeeze and the blood ejects to the body. What happens in atrial fibrillation, there is not this organized rhythm. These atria they just fibrillate, so they kind of quiver and then the ventricles still contract. And the way that this happens is that typically the impulse, the electrical impulse originates in the assay, the sinoatrial node, but in atrial fibrillation there are multiple irritable cells in the atria that now kind of want to take over as the pacemaker of the heart. And recall that any cell, any cardiac cell can be the pacemaker of the heart. So when they're irritable for whatever reason or due to any of these risk factors they can take over. So now we have multiple cells here. Everybody wants to be the boss and the atria and they just kind of quiver. And so usually the impulse originates from the assay node and then comes to the AV, the atrial ventricular node, which regulates the rate down to the ventricles. But when we have all these irritable cells in the atria, the rate in the atria itself, so just the top chambers of the heart with this fibrillating can be 300 to 600 beats per minute. And that is a lot. But remember, I just said that the ventricles are what controls the actual heart rate and the cardiac output. So it depends on the ability of this AV node here to tell the atria, whoa, slow down. I'm gonna slow down this heart rate and only let certain impulses go through this AV node so that will determine the ventricular rate as the electricity continues to travel down through the AV branches and then also up the purkinje fibers. And if the heart rate that we can measure always by the ventricular rate is less than 100, it's considered controlled atrial fibrillation. But if it's greater than 100, typically we refer to it as uncontrolled. And the higher the rate, the more symptomatic the patient will be. On an EKG, and I have a separate video about atrial fibrillation in the EKG interpretation playlist that you can refer to, I just wanted to quickly mention this here. So there's always a term on an EKG interpretation that we refer to as irregularly irregular. Because now all these excitable cells here want to be the boss and initiate this impulse and fibrillate. And so the impulse might come from many different locations in the atria. And that leads to this irregularity. And there is no discernible P wave on the atria on the EKG because the P wave represents the atrial contraction. If there's no real contraction, we're not going to have a P wave. And so that an EKG will look like this, usually we have a P, Q, R, S and T wave. But here there are so many squiggly lines, so many of these cells in the atria are irritated. Like I said, they all want to be the boss that we can't really see. Is there a P wave? It's hard to say. And then the rate can be very irregular looking at the ventricular rate here with the QRS complexes. Typically it should look like this where the P wave is very easily determined. And then we have our QRS complex following the in the ventricular rate here. And if you are not really clear about this, please go back to my basic electrophysiology videos where I go into detail of what all this means, all the waves and how you can know if it's normal or abnormal. Now for atrial fibrillation, if the onset has been in less than 48 hours, it's considered acute. Patients can also be in what's called paroxysmal or intermittent atrial fibrillation. And then chronic atrial fibrillation occurs generally when it lasts more than a month. So patients can sometimes go back and forth between normal sinus rhythm and atrial fibrillation or really any other rhythm. But generally sinus rhythm and atrial fibrillation, which would be this paroxysmal and then they might have intermittent symptoms. So let's look at what those symptoms might look like. And most of them depend on the rate of the ventricles and of the atria and of those beats that go through through the AV node and on the duration. So the longer the patient is in atrial fibrillation, maybe the less symptoms they have because they've kind of just got used to it. Generally, though, they might complain of lightheaded nets or dizziness and generally all the symptoms will increase the higher the ventricular rate is. So if it's more than 100, it's this uncontrolled atrial fibrillation. But the rate can sometimes get up to 160, 180 beats per minute. And the more the higher the rate, the more symptomatic the patient won't be. The patient might also complain of shortness of breath. They might be anxious, they might pass out, have a syncopal event. They might say that they're feeling palpitations as the heart is beating fast and irregularly and they might also have some chest pain associated with that. And really, the reason is that the atria generally when they're in an organ and the heart is in an organized rhythm and the atria kick the blood volume down into the ventricles, it's referred to as the atrial kick. And that produces about 30% of the cardiac output. So most of it is produced by the ventricles, but some of it by the by the atria. But if they're just fibrillating, we're losing that 30%. So then as we are, as the ventricles are pumping, we have 30% less cardiac output. Hence the blood pressure might be lower and the more symptomatic the patient will be. And they become anxious and short of breath and syncopal because the heart rate gets, if the heart rate gets higher, generated blood pressure will be lower because we just cannot fill the ventricles with as much blood and they ejected, first of all, because we're losing that atrial kick. But also because the cardiac output decreases as the rate increases, because the heart, whenever it beats really fast, it can only feel so much before it is ejected to the body. And then complications, number one risk of atrial fibrillation is stroke because when the atria quiver, the blood gets swooshed around in this atrium, in both atria and what happens, it goes straight through the heart and then it goes, branches off and the first place it goes through is through the carotid arteries into the brain. So that causes an embolic stroke. And then it also leads to a loss of that cardiac output due to that atrial kick I just described and with that cardiac output, we might lose our blood pressure. And then again, the patient might have all these symptoms. And then for treatment and nursing care, it depends if the patient is stable and asymptomatic, if this is a new onset, sometimes a vagal maneuver can happen. And the vagus nerve is the most important nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system. And hopefully you remember that the parasympathetic nervous system is the rest and digest. So if we stimulate that vagus nerve, we will cause the heart rate to go down. And the way we do that, we can either have the patient blow into a straw, blow against their finger or maybe stick an ice stick their face in a water in a bucket of ice water. So anything that's kind of shocking to the system or increases that intrathoracic pressure can reset that vagus nerve and that SAO to hopefully get back into a normal sinus rhythm. But the longer the patient has been in atrial fibrillation, the less likely that this vagus maneuver will work. Now, if the patient is still stable and asymptomatic and the vagal maneuvers don't work, then we have several options here with medications, generally calcium channel blockers, beta blockers, de joxin and anti-irrhythmics. Any other anti-irrhythmics can be pretty successful in converting this or at least bringing the rate down to below 100 where it can now be controlled, where hopefully the symptoms will be less. And then most importantly, the patient will need to be on anticoagulants because we want to prevent this major risk factor of a stroke here. Again, it will depend on the discussion that they have with their provider, given the patient's risk factors and their lifestyle and whatever works for them. But generally that is the recommendation because there's this major complication of a stroke that can occur. Now, if the patient is unstable or symptomatic, that usually means these two words are defined by a change in level of consciousness and or systolic blood pressure less than 90. So again, the heart rate is so fast that we cannot produce the cardiac output.  Then we need to treat the underlying cause. So whatever might be the cause here of the things that can be fixed, then we need to fix that in order to fix the atrial fibrillation. And sometimes that means that we have to revert to advanced cardiac life support measures. And maybe the patient will need to have a synchronized cardioversion where we actually shock the heart back into hopefully a normal rhythm. And I have a separate video on cardioversion and the fibrillation if you're interested in that. And for nursing care, clearly it depends if the patient is stable or unstable. The more unstable they are, the more measures, the more ER, ICU care they will need. But generally, we want to check the vital signs because we know the heart rate and the blood pressure will clearly be affected. We want to have them on a heart monitor so we know what their rate is like. And remember that whenever the heart rate is irregular, you want to make sure you listen to the apical pulse for a full minute so that you know the exact heart rate. Clearly, if they are on a heart monitor, you can see it right there. But that might fluctuate. This is when you look at the monitor and you see it jumping around from one twenty, one thirty eight, one forty five, one twenty eight. It just depends in a few seconds because the monitor is picking up as this rate is over here irregularly irregular. And that way it's best if you listen, put your status coupon, they'll listen for a full minute.  We will also need to educate the patients about the medications more, more so on the anticoagulants, but as well as all the medications that might might control their their heart rate. And then also educate patients about risk factors. So if we have patients with any of these more chronic conditions so that we can educate them to decrease these risk factors so that hopefully they won't have atrial fibrillation to start with and therefore be at higher risk for a stroke. So I have several other videos that pertain to atrial fibrillation in one way or another. I mentioned them throughout the video. I'll make sure to put those in the description of the video below so that you have easy access. Please also watch those if you're interested. Thanks for watching Nursing School Explained. See you soon.


The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jim Cadwell Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or to tract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. End of the Gettysburg address.


President of the United States. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Please. I have to catch the shuttle. May it please your Excellency Archbishop O'Connor, members of the Reverend clergy, Governor Cuomo, Senators Monaghan and Monaghan and D'Amato, Mayor Koch, Mr. Toastmaster, Sonny Werblin, and distinguished friends. I thank you for that welcome. I must say, I have traveled the Banquet Circuit for many years. I've never quite understood the logistics of dinners like this and how the absence of one individual could cause three of us to not have seats. That's enough of that. I'm... I'm grateful for your invitation and honor to be here. And I can't help but feel that four great Americans are with us here in spirit tonight. Al Smith, of course, the happy warrior, whom time and respect... time and respect and affectionate memory have elevated beyond partisanship. The beloved Francis Cardinal Spellman, whose remarkable... whose remarkable works of charity so notably include his establishment of this Al Smith dinner 38 years ago. The great Jewish philanthropist, Charles Silver. He was enlisted by Cardinal Spellman as chairman of these dinners and raised millions for hospitals serving all faiths. And finally, Terence Cardinal Cook, that gentle soul whom I, for one, shall never forget. All of them are gone now, gone to God. Cardinal Cook and Charles Silver within a year's passing, as you've been told. And all of them personify the great commandment to love our fellow man. Here we are, then, at the height of a season marked by differences of opinion. And yet all this striving and all these contesting issues fade to insignificance in the clear light of example that these four men set for us, each one in his own unique way. Al Smith and his lifelong struggles for the working man and woman. Cardinal Spellman is a prince and builder of the church. Charles Silver is a friend and colleague in ecumenical service to humanity. And Cardinal Cook, whom I knew best in circumstances of dire spiritual need. Nothing could have meant more to me and to Nancy than Cardinal Cook's visit with us at the White House while I was recovering from young Mr. Hinckley's unwelcome attentions. His eminence offered prayers and encouragement that maintained us in a time of genuine personal need. A need far more serious, I know now than we almost anyone at the time realized. And so it was only natural that Nancy and I should have been so profoundly grief-stricken upon learning in August of last year that the Cardinal was dying. Together we telephoned our dear friend in New York to tell him of our heartfelt prayers for him and to thank him once again for all he had done to comfort and reassure us in our hour of need.  His letter of September 15 which followed our call said our prayers, good wishes, and loving concern quote, are a source of great comfort to me, but then he wrote I want you to know that I'm offering my prayers and my suffering for the gift of God's peace among all the members of our family. Nancy and I will always be grateful that we were able to visit him in New York and as it turned out only days before his death. We were told when we arrived that he had been in great pain for the previous 48 hours so much so that they feared he wouldn't be able to receive us. But when we arrived he was so much like his old self it was hard to believe that he was desperately ill. He was doing a little lobbying on behalf of a cause that concerned him. As a nation known for its compassion he said, the United States has accomplished so much through the years in advancing the cause of international justice and peace through its programs of economic assistance to the less fortunate peoples of the world. And then he acknowledged the appropriation that I had approved for help to sub-Saharan African nations. He also talked of my problems and he said when I join the Lord I'll continue to pray for you. He paused and then with something of a an abashed or self-deprecatory smile very simply he added maybe I'm being a little presumptuous in assuming I'll be with the Lord. Well 11 days later he left us and none of us have any doubt that he joined the Lord. I've presumed to share this personal experience with you tonight because it says so much about our gentle friend Terence Cook. It says much also about Al Smith and Cardinal Spellman and Charlie Silver for linked in charity, linked in service linked in humanity. They are linked by this occasion. I think it should make us proud to have known these great Americans and their works of love for their fellow man. I think it should make us just a little bit prouder than ever to be Americans. Archbishop O'Connor I know that you're profoundly aware of the great tradition in which you now pursue God's work and in this you have my every good wish and I know those also of a grateful nation and if you wouldn't think that I was invading your field could I just say in addition to a heartfelt thank you to all of you God bless you. We are very grateful to you Mr. President I hate to disillusion you or disenchant this warm reception you receive but the story that Cardinal Cook told me was a little bit different from the way you presented it. He had no doubt that he would be with the Lord it was you that he was worried about. I'm not sure that all of you are aware and I say this very seriously that I'm told at least by the management of the Waldorf that this is not simply the largest crowd this and the two overflowed crowds in the other two rooms that the eminence visited that this is not only the largest crowd in the history of the Al Smith dinner it is the largest crowd for a private party in the history of the Waldorf Astoria. There are of course obvious reasons for that that we had certainly the distinguished guests that we had invited attracted the overwhelming number of you here but the work of the board of the Al Smith Foundation which was prodigious indeed the efforts of men like Mr. Sonny Werblin to whom we're so grateful all of the members of the board but most particularly an individual who could easily get lost in the shuffle tonight because his work was done so to speak as the dinner began but the hours that he has put in have been absolutely prodigious and that's our own Father Bob Robbins you would never guess this is my first dinner and you would never guess it was his next year we'll have seats up at this head table again I hate to disillusion you Mr. President you were talking earlier about how warmed your heart was by the great number of people who lined the streets as you drove in I was one of those people I waited two hours to cross the street the cops wouldn't the cops wouldn't let us and if you think you're going to get any votes that way in New York this is a funny feeling for me tonight you know there are undoubtedly people here who remember when when it was in some way beneficial for a president to sit beside the Archbishop of New York but it was also beneficial for in days past for an Archbishop to sit beside the president it has been a delight for me to be up here I will never fill Cardinal Cook's shoes or Cardinal Spelman's but even to be given the opportunity to follow in their path is a rare privilege indeed and to be seated up here at this table with all of you magnificent people and the president and the president and Mrs. Reagan is indeed a joy just a word not to take away the levity or the good humor of the evening but we are here for a particular purpose the president came for this purpose you sacrificed and contributed most generously for this purpose so I think that it should at least be noted the Al Smith dinner is very understandably talked about now and I think has been talked about in recent years as a significant or indeed even a major political event despite all appearances perhaps to the contrary that is certainly not the purpose of the dinner you know Cardinal Cushing of Boston used to say something tremendously meaningful and very poignant if you'll forgive me for but a moment for the seriousness of what I have about to say I think it's worth it he used to say the greatest tragedy in the world is the tragedy of wasted pain and there were two meanings in that simple little phrase one he meant of course that we all suffer we suffer illnesses emotional disorders debilitating pains, diseases cancer some are bit ridden some suffer poverty some have a great deal of loneliness, rejection in their lives, some have tremendous disappointment, political and otherwise we wanted to make the point that since we must suffer pain anyway through some mysterious fashion that we don't begin to understand if we offer that pain to Almighty God he could use it in marvelous ways far beyond our understanding and also it makes us so much more compassionate to others if we don't waste the pain if we use it to become what we could become but there was a second meaning a tremendous amount of pain is wasted because it's needless there are people in hospitals there are people debilitated there are deformed children there are the retarded who don't learn there are those who never grow there is pain in other word that is not eased for individuals and families because the needs are so great and the help comparatively is so little and that kind of wasted pain is a tragedy indeed the kind of pain that need not be this is why I feel so tremendously grateful to you and to all who support this Al Smith dinner as you know these funds go not to specific activities of the Archdiocese of New York but rather ecumenically and on an interfaith basis to the charities supported by the Archdiocese of New York and those of other religious persuasions and most particularly to our hospitals and a tremendous number of people therefore because of the funds that are generated by your being here tonight a tremendous number of people will have deep deep pain at least modestly alleviated so that you've contributed not merely to the joy of a pleasant evening and certainly not to the advancement of a political cause but to the alleviation of the tragedy of wasted pain I'm sure that this is what Charlie Silver and Cardinal Cook had in mind when they initiated the Al Smith dinner as one feebly, humbly attempting to follow in their footsteps I am deeply grateful to you for making their dream come possible you are so good you are so generous God loves you so very very much thank you and God bless you thank you your excellency thank you Mr. President, Mrs. Reagan this very nice dinner meeting is now concluded I should ask you all please to stand in your places while the President and Mrs. Reagan depart thank you very much


Live from New York, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering Spark Summit East. Brought to you by Spark Summit. Now your hosts, Dave Vellante and George Gilbert. Hi everybody, welcome back to Spark Summit East. This is Dave Vellante here at the Hilton Hotel and here with George Gilbert. We're very excited. We've been working on big data forecast for a number of years now. I want to take you through sort of what we're doing, but we're going to release today our first ever Spark forecast. We're in the process of updating our big data analytics report in the market study. We first released a big data study in 2011 and we're the first sort of analyst firm to do that. Developed by a colleague, Jeff Kelly, did a great job sort of putting sort of big data quantification on the map, showing market shares, market sizing. A couple of things that we noticed right off the bat. First of all, the market was small. We saw it growing very steeply in an old guy curve, hitting that sort of peak area sometime in the middle part of this decade and then sort of flattening out in the latter part. And one of the things we noticed was that software as a contributor to the revenues of big data was actually quite a bit smaller than you would have expected in normal markets. The reason was the preponderance of open source software. The second thing we noted is that services dominated the spend and the reason why that was is that big data was hard. The dupe was complicated, so people had to spend a lot of money on implementing. And that's one of the reasons why we saw the ROI to be somewhat limited and the return on investment tended to be focused on reduction of spend, reduction of cost against relative to traditional enterprise data warehouses. So we're here today. George Gilbert to George, first of all, welcome. Thanks very much for all the hard work that you've been doing in the last several months. You've been out talking to doers, what we call practitioners. These are guys that are applying big data to solve business problems. You've been talking to technologists, I think you told me off camera, you've talked to what, roughly 40 companies in the last couple of months? Yep, and through them all their customers, what they're hearing. Okay, so in addition, we've done a number of surveys in the big data space over the last couple of years. We're gathering from that data. We've had a big team doing this. David Floyer has put together some of the forecasts. We're going to show you today the first look at some of the forecasts, the sausages being made as they say. So this is early, we're still shaping some of that, but you'll be able to take away some of the initial conclusions. So George, let's go get into it. I want you to start by talking about some of the tentpole takeaways that you've learned, not only in the last couple of months, but in the last year. Okay, so what we call systems of intelligence, that's a journey. It's not a destination. It's about applications that make ever more intelligent decisions on behalf of organizations or people. And the key takeaway is that this journey can be grouped into three stages. The first being where you have rather loose integration between the analytics and decision making, and then the applications that actually do things. And so the journey is to get ever greater speed and tighter integration with those core systems of record. That's takeaway number one. Takeaway number two is that large scale applications built around machine learning, those are years away. In other words, we came to know ERP and CRM and these large horizontal applications that sort of defined a multi-decade era. We're not at the cusp of those. Number three, Spark is sweeping big data by storm now, but for it to remain real-time, it has to push its boundaries out. Many believe that real-time processing is a critical boundary that it must cross. And we got feedback from, we got feedback from Matei Zaharia himself today on just that issue when he was a guest on theCUBE. So let's jump into, yeah. So what I want to talk now, you're going to take us through the journey, but one of the things I said at the top was that initially, Hadoop was really focused on targeting the traditional data warehouse. I often quote Jeff Hammabacher saying when he was at Facebook, he was trying to attack the overly expensive storage container. So it was a way to sort of collect data, amass data, less expensively, that was sort of one piece. The other was with all this volume of data that was increasing, it was a way to bring code to data and not have to move data to some kind of God box through a pipe and some UNIX box with Oracle running it. If you had any money left over, you'd try to do something with it. So Hadoop really brought down the cost of storing data and analyzing data, but it was still batch. So but that's really that data lake has emerged out of that. We talked today about how Spark is really sort of simplifying that data lake and then the journey is extending into personalized services and then IoT. So take us back to the beginning, take us to that sort of data lake and the extension of the EDW, start there. Okay, and I'm going to do this at a high level right now because the key thing is after this, I'm going to drill down into each scenario. So this journey that you described, Dave, has three stages. The first being the Hadoop data lake, which is the better, faster, cheaper enterprise data warehouse. Stage number one, and we'll talk about the attributes of it in a second. The second stage, scenario number two in the journey, personalized real-time services. This actually builds on the data lake in the sense that you know a lot about your customers. You know a 360 view of your products and you know, essentially, you have a 360-degree view of the capabilities of your organization so you can serve goods and services in an individualized way. That's step two. So sorry to interrupt, but that was the promise of the decision support world. Now, in your opinion, has Hadoop and Big Data lived up to that promise? Great question. The way I look at it is a bit cynically, which is we never fulfilled 100% of the promise at any one stage, but we get closer. And I think that's... All right, great, carry on. Okay, if you would. So the third scenario, which our Eminence CTO and Chief Research Officer David Floyer has described where the real hard work happens is when we integrate these autonomous applications with our core systems of record so that, for instance, when you're taking a customer order, you can, in real time, do fraud prevention, fraud detection. And then, at the same time, autonomous internet of things applications as well. Those are the hardest to do. Those will be the last to be done. Now, let's drill down into each one of these. So, taking the data lake. This is the better, faster, cheaper data warehouse plus, plus, minus, minus. So it's better in some degrees, it's less good in other degrees. On the left side, you'll see we take traditional back office system of record applications and the data from them in batch mode, the operational data, we combine it with the new systems of engagement, the customer breadcrumbs, the digital experiences. We send it over a batch link, meaning periodically, into this better, faster, cheaper data warehouse. What it does better than traditional data warehouses is you deposit the data and then you figure out what structure you need in it and the point of that is, the benefit is you get to decide over time what questions you want to ask. When you do a real data warehouse, you have to determine upfront before you put any data in what sort of questions you're going to ask. That's a big difference. So let's leave it at that. Let me just ask you something about that because we talked to Anjul Bambri at IBM about this and she was talking about ETL, sort of moving to ELT. Extract load transform, so you're doing no schema on write or a schema on read, if you will. Is the elapsed time though, George, of getting to the answers actually decreasing? And if so, why? Or are we just spending more time building schema after we dump all the data into the data lake? And amazingly, and I'm not pandering, but that is the question. Okay, so what's the answer? So I believe the answer is, as our tools get better, we are shortening the amount of time to get to insight and partly because we're having a series of roles where the data scientists will apply some structure, the data engineers a little bit more, and then the business analysts still more and then they can iterate.  All that's gone. Okay, so it is compressing and the tools are getting better, combination things. All right, take us to scenario two. Okay, scenario two, personalized real-time services. Before in scenario one, I had that bridge with the stopwatch, that was the batch timeline. You had a big elapsed amount of time to get the data into the decision system. Now there's a tighter coupling. I wouldn't call it deep integration, but you've got information from your back office systems and your systems of engagement, your digital experience systems. They come into the data warehouse fast enough, you can create machine learning models that understand and anticipate and influence your customer in their journey. And that's where you can serve up personalized experience in the digital experience part of the application. You can engage the customer in a back and forth conversation. It's not deep, deep integration, but it's a better experience. What role does Spark play in this scenario? Spark's role is that it is a more unified analytic application platform so that you don't have to go from silo to silo to silo to get an answer. You can extract the data from your data lake with SQL, you can filter it, you can feed it through a machine learning pipeline to get the predictive model. In fact, you could even stream data in before you filter it with SQL. The point is, you're not going from tool to tool to tool. So it simplifies the technology component. And it speeds it up because you're not in different engines. It accelerates it, it presumably has an impact on data quality, is that right? Yes, data quality. Doesn't it give me more time to worry or at least affect data quality in a positive way? That's a tough question, I'm not tracking it to that one. Okay, so maybe. So what's the bottom line business impact? The bottom line is that you have one engine with multiple capabilities. So you don't have to do that batch handoff between section, between app to app. Okay, but I'm a business person. What does that mean for me? That means shorter time to insight and higher quality in the sense that you're not, there's less chance of errors in handoffs between the engines. Okay, great. So IOT's all the rage. Everybody's talking about real time. Take us through the third scenario. Okay, that's third scenario. So here we have, this is the hardest one. Deep integration between your systems of record and these new front ends.  You still got the customer breadcrumbs. You've got now, say fraud detection. Fraud detection's really difficult because you've got someone coming into a retail store, swiping his card or calling in the call center or on their mobile phone and you have less than 100 milliseconds to approve or decline that credit card. You can't say, oh, we'll get to back to you in an hour after we've checked our historical database because you've already absconded with the money.  So, well, no, this isn't Armani, but. In any case, in any case, that deep integration and that short latency is where all the money's made because that's the hard problem to solve and because that's where when you tie those systems together, that's where you unlock the value. You're making a sales order entry decision much more high value because you're saying, hey, don't take this order. And I'm telling you this at the moment you're trying to take that order. Well, so, and we've been talking about this all day here at Spark Summit East. The fundamental problem that people are trying to solve is one of demand and what we mean by that, we've been talking to our colleague, Peter Verst, about this is information has become so widespread that the power has shifted from the brands to the consumers. The consumers now have great information on pricing. They have information on product quality, reviews on Amazon, we all look at them, we look at the lousy reviews before we buy to see if it fits my particular use case, et cetera. The premise that we've been putting forth is that big data analytics is largely about brands trying to regain some of that proprietary information and value that they have so they know what's going to happen maybe before the consumer. So granted it's not the only use case but certainly dealing with the problems of demand are a major factor. Do you buy that premise? What do you make of that? I think you're spot on in terms of getting better context and understanding of the customer. But here's the thing, you never are done adding to your understanding of the customer. You're always adding more feeds and that is something we'll touch on but it's partly why it's very, very difficult to build packaged applications for these types of predictive systems, at least right now. If you're always adding new sources of information and richer analytics, it's not like I can ship stack of CDs to you and you can install them or it's not even like I can hook you up to your SaaS application because your sources, your new information feeds are going to be different from your neighbor's information needs. So that's one of the big problems and where you plug those into the apps, that's another big problem. But let's get to that when we do the forecast. Okay, well let's get into it. If we go to the next slide. So I want to just set this up. So when we started Wikibon, the whole idea was open source research. Use the power of community. Don't necessarily be the smartest person in the room but let's leverage the community and the knowledge in the community and publish fast. And so what you see us producing is really three types of research, sort of what it is, how it works, and what's the business impact. And what it is and how it works, we make open source to everybody. Over the years we've had demand for greater quantification of markets, of business impact, the real value of applying technology to create a business capability. That's what we put behind our paywall. The other thing that we do within SiliconANGLE Wikibon is we leverage the power of community. We're tracking many, many millions of people online. We narrow those down and build our own communities from which we extract knowledge. So and our job is to really present that information in context. So what you're really trying to do is help people understand the shifts that are going on the market, in the market as they move toward so-called systems of intelligence. So what this chart shows is our big data forecast broken down by hardware and software and services from 2014 all the way to 2026. So we like to do these long-term forecasts and as you can see the market in total for 2015, we projected about 22 billion. And you can see the appropriate or corresponding compound annual growth rates. No, for everything. Sorry, 22 billion for everything. Oh, I'm sorry, 2015, I was thinking. So services, still the largest part of that at 9 billion. So 22 billion growing at about 13% on a compound annual growth rate basis. A couple of points that I want to share with you here. Number one is you could see software is growing faster than anything else. And our premise here is really, think about three things with big data. Is all this volume of data coming in? Either humans can get smarter or you can throw data sciences and services at the problem or you can develop software that scales. Number one, ain't happening. Data is growing faster than we can absorb it. Number two, we can't train people fast enough. You heard today, Databricks trained 20,000 people last year. It's barely scratching the surface. Services are not the answer, they don't scale well. Software is the answer. So our premise is that software ultimately codifying these processes around that data transport is ultimately going to drive the market forward. And that's really the message behind this chart, isn't it? Anything you want to add? Yes, I would add one thing, which is I'm used to seeing, I grew up on the vendor side at a company called Lotus, which has been forgotten in the ash heap of history, but once upon a time, we did cool stuff. And all the forecasts I saw from market research firms were straight lines up and to the right. And we do things differently here. What we do differently is we identify the things that cause a knee in the curve, something that says the market is going to shift now in this direction because of this set of reasons. That's what we're going to drill into. And that's why on this slide, you don't see straight lines up and to the right. And then I had these, so these I should caution. These are preliminary numbers, first look. All right, so let's go on to the next one. I love this chart. This shows big data apps, analytics and tools in context. So the purple is big data apps, the blue is analytics and tools. And what this talks to is the market today is highly, highly customized. We sort of debate a little bit with Sean Conley about this and he actually brought up a good point. Things like Spotify are new big data apps that we may or may not be counting in here. So they're coming from places. One of the things that Peter Burris predicted years ago was that there'll be more SaaS companies coming out of non-technology companies than technology companies. So maybe that's a good point that we have to consider. But what this chart really shows is today in the enterprise a lot of the development is customized but over time we expect packaged apps to emerge. Talk about that. Okay, and in fact, it's probably fair to say that we have a good number of B2C consumer SaaS apps like Spotify, like Uber, but we're focusing here on enterprise apps. And frankly, we were conditioned over a period of several decades to say, okay, we have these known processes like placing an order, like onboarding an employee, sending an invoice. Those were well known. The transactions were well known. The workflows were well known. We built very big application companies based on that knowledge. Today our applications are oriented around mostly interactions between people or where a person is interacting, let's say in some non-determinant way with say a piece of equipment. The point here is we don't know these processes. And so that means it makes it hard for them to be packaged in a repeatable way, at least today. And in fact, from all the research we've done over the last year, we don't see that changing in a major way anytime soon. There are functions.  But seeing broad horizontal applications, big data applications, they're not there yet. So let me just make the last point, which is that's why the purple, which is the applications that are going to emerge, we see that emerging in the 2020 and beyond timeframe. All right, so now go on to the next one and we have to set up for the panel. One of the things that John Furrier talks about is Spark is sort of like the NIC card was in the early days, it extended the connectivity of the devices. It didn't subsume those devices. So what this chart shows is really, it's just a software component of our big data forecast and it breaks it down, sort of big data 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, according to that journey that you talked about. And then it shows the proportion that involves some type of the spending that involves some type of Spark and or streaming, not just Spark streaming. And you can see it's small today and then growing. There's some debate internally as to what it will do in the out year. Some of this stuff is hard to forecast because it's sort of embedded. It's an extension of the existing environment. But increasingly, Spark is propelling big data and Hadoop into that 2.0 realm. And as you point out, to get to 3.0, it's really got to get to real time. And that's a major challenge. We're hearing a lot of talk today about how it's going to get there. But give us your final thoughts on this slide and then we'll wrap. I guess the key takeaway is if you look at this slide, you might look at the very last data point on the green line and say 31 billion for Spark slash streaming and Chuckle. The answer is we're imputing a value for Spark and real time or near real time technologies by saying how many cycles is it consuming on the clusters that are supporting these apps? And yes, this is our first pass and we're going to refine it. But the main point is you can see it slowly picking up in the journey scenario one, which is the dark blue. You can see it accelerating as we get to scenario number two. And then beginning to tail off as it reaches the upper limits of scenario three, which were the real time apps. So conceptually it makes sense. But I think degree, we're going to refine it a little more. Okay, George, we got a wrap. I'll give you the last word. Summarize in 30 seconds what you learned in the last month, two months. Okay, big takeaways, tent pole. We're going to still be driven for the most part by mostly custom apps. That's going to put a bit of a lid on the growth rate. We were seeing triple digit growth rates in enterprise apps for almost the entire decade of the 90s, because you could just sell and ship a bunch of CDs to companies and they could install it. We're not going to see that right now. Then there's the issue of we're going to have to see, we're going to have to see, let me flip back to my, we're going to have to see that this journey to systems of intelligence, it's not like you can skip a step. This is, there are skills you build, processes you learn, and technologies that have to mature. This is nothing new. People process technology has always been the foundation of how we evolve in technology. And so that journey is something that we all, all companies will grow through. Some are farther along than others. Typically those who live in the tech bubble here in the Bay Area or who are principally tech companies. And the last one is that Spark really is taking the industry by storm. There are areas that Spark is staying away from, which is the database layer and the management layer, and different companies are taking different approaches to fill that gap. But Spark, Spark is here to stay for many years to come. All right George, we got a wrap, so please everybody check out wikibon.com, we'll be releasing this data this month. In a couple of forms, one is in the open form and the other piece behind the paywall is going to be some of the detailed forecast and market shares. So if you want more information on that, hit us up. You can tweet us, I'm at D-Valante at G-Gilbert41. You can call us on the phone, use old school. Generally people know how to get in touch, but definitely also check out siliconangle.com, we'll be releasing some of this information on there and always check out siliconangle.tv on theCUBE to see the replays of this event and other events. All right, so George, thank you very much for setting that up and all the hard work that you've been doing. Thanks to Ralph Finos and David Floyer for your participation and contribution, and thanks to the wikibon community for helping us get this done in such a fast timeframe. All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our panel from Spark Summit East in Midtown Manhattan. This is theCUBE, we're live.