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Hitching a Ride Through the Foothills of Biblical Theology with Chad Bird · Ministry Minded

0:16
SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Ministry Minded Podcast,
0:20
SPEAKER_00: a show that seeks to marvel at the mercy of God that meets us in our messy ministries.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Pastor Brad Gray.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: I serve as the senior pastor of Stonington Baptist Church in Pax Sinus, Pennsylvania, and I'm so thrilled
0:33
SPEAKER_00: to share this conversation between my friend and I would say colleague at 1517,
0:39
SPEAKER_00: scholar in residence,
0:40
SPEAKER_00: Chad Bird.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: Chad is just a remarkable teacher and a great student of the word.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so thankful that I can call him a friend,
0:52
SPEAKER_00: but also I can call him up and we can just talk and riff about the gospel,
0:57
SPEAKER_00: about biblical theology,
0:59
SPEAKER_00: and about how the importance of understanding that the Bible is all about Jesus,
1:06
SPEAKER_00: how that influences the way in which we understand the Bible itself.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: So this is such a fun episode to record.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: and to such a fun conversation to have as Chad and I dive into his new book, Hitchhiking with Profits.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to dive into that,
1:21
SPEAKER_00: kind of explain the premise for that book and also its purpose,
1:27
SPEAKER_00: its motivation,
1:29
SPEAKER_00: and why basically you should pick yourself up a copy.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: But also we get into...
1:36
SPEAKER_00: the ways in which the Bible has often been misinterpreted and why more often than not,
1:42
SPEAKER_00: that is an error or a fallacy of bad biblical theology.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: When we use that term,
1:50
SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to know that a biblical theology is this understanding,
1:55
SPEAKER_00: a paradigm by which we understand that the Bible is telling one story.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: I've written a lot about that on the blog.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: I've talked about that in various settings.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: But seeing the scriptures as a story unfolding that culminates in Christ is amazing.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: indeed key.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: It's central to understanding what God is doing by preserving this word for us.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: So,
2:20
SPEAKER_00: we're going to talk about that,
2:21
SPEAKER_00: talk about the importance of faithful biblical theology,
2:26
SPEAKER_00: how it tends towards Jesus and why that is so pertinent for our own lives of faith,
2:31
SPEAKER_00: but also how the Old Testament is so relevant and just ripe with stories that help
2:38
SPEAKER_00: us understand our own journeys of discipleship and struggle
2:44
SPEAKER_00: and why those stories shouldn't be avoided.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: So sit back and relax.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy this episode between Chad Bird and myself.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: I know it'll bless you.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: So hopefully you can find a good spot to listen and enjoy this conversation.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: I kind of want to get into this right away,
3:02
SPEAKER_00: which is just your new book,
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Hitchhiking with Prophets,
3:06
SPEAKER_00: a ride through the salvation story of the Old Testament.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: And I was really excited for this because it was just another biblical theology book,
3:16
SPEAKER_00: which has just kind of been something that I've just found so...
3:21
SPEAKER_00: key and essential to anyone looking to engage with the Bible is understanding what
3:28
SPEAKER_00: it means to be a biblical theologian,
3:30
SPEAKER_00: if you will.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: So, just let's kind of start there.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: Like,
3:34
SPEAKER_00: what was the inspiration for that,
3:36
SPEAKER_00: and what kind of was something that kind of keyed you on to putting together a book
3:41
SPEAKER_00: like this?
3:41
SPEAKER_00: Because it is...
3:43
SPEAKER_00: Getting into it is rather daunting because you're trying to summarize 39 books into
3:49
SPEAKER_00: kind of somewhat bite-sized chunks,
3:52
SPEAKER_00: which I don't know how that was possible or how you pitched that,
3:55
SPEAKER_00: but good for you.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was certainly the challenge that I was facing.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: How do you take this massive collection of books that just also happens to be God's Word and say, okay...
4:08
SPEAKER_01: we're gonna talk about this we're not gonna talk about that uh that was a daunting
4:12
SPEAKER_01: challenge for sure but it was a good challenge because you know what you're what
4:15
SPEAKER_01: you're looking at is trying to take the the big story and to pull out from that
4:22
SPEAKER_01: story
4:23
SPEAKER_01: in my case, the key figures.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: You could talk about this in terms of key themes or key events.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: I chose key characters as a way of kind of formulating the argument of the book or the story of the book.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: And I'll get to that in just a second.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
4:42
SPEAKER_01: it was a challenge,
4:43
SPEAKER_01: but I think it's a necessary one because,
4:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
4:46
SPEAKER_01: if you're,
4:46
SPEAKER_01: for instance,
4:47
SPEAKER_01: if you're a cartographer,
4:48
SPEAKER_01: if you're a writer or drawer of maps,
4:52
SPEAKER_01: there's a choice somewhere along the way that you have to make.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: So what are you going to include and not include?
4:56
SPEAKER_01: Cause you can't include,
4:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
4:58
SPEAKER_01: every stone and every little spring and sometimes not every even little,
5:03
SPEAKER_01: little town in depending on its size on your map.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: So you're,
5:07
SPEAKER_01: you're trying to take this massive area and to present it such a way that you
5:13
SPEAKER_01: accurately portray what is there so that people can at a glance,
5:18
SPEAKER_01: see where they're going and,
5:21
SPEAKER_01: So you have to include enough to where people can see where they're going,
5:23
SPEAKER_01: but you can't include so much to where the map is too big or they get bogged down
5:29
SPEAKER_01: in the details.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: So what I chose to do was to structure the book according to main characters.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: And this kind of gets into the title, Hitchhiking with Prophets.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: So what happens with every chapter is that we ride shotgun with a character or characters,
5:46
SPEAKER_01: whether it's Adam and Eve or Noah or Moses or David or whoever it might be.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: and as we do we begin to learn about the unfolding salvation story so of course
5:58
SPEAKER_01: from adam and eve we learn about creation in the fall from noah we learn about the
6:02
SPEAKER_01: flood from david we learn about his rise to kingship so on and so forth now the
6:07
SPEAKER_01: idea for this actually is uh comes from multiple sources one so we were talking
6:13
SPEAKER_01: about my my speaking schedule one of the things that i've encountered countless
6:19
SPEAKER_01: times over the years
6:21
SPEAKER_01: is people will come and they will say,
6:24
SPEAKER_01: Chad,
6:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:25
SPEAKER_01: I tend to be more of a New Testament kind of person,
6:28
SPEAKER_01: but you have gotten me interested in the Old Testament,
6:31
SPEAKER_01: but it's still kind of daunting.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: It's very confusing.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: And so how do I kind of get a handle on this big story?
6:38
SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to give them a handle on that big story.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to give them this map so they could see the terrain that they were entering.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: So that was one motivation.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: I wanted people to not be afraid of the Old Testament,
6:50
SPEAKER_01: but to kind of know what they were getting into as they stepped into what can be a
6:55
SPEAKER_01: very confusing and sometimes just kind of scary place for people.
7:00
SPEAKER_01: Another motivation or another rule of kind of guiding principle that I used is I
7:04
SPEAKER_01: think this was back in 2020.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: Me and then two of my colleagues at 1517,
7:12
SPEAKER_01: Eric Sorenson and then Dan Price,
7:15
SPEAKER_01: we got together and we came up with a podcast.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: It was a kind of a one-time podcast.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: It's a Finnish podcast.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: It's called Field Guide to the Bible,
7:25
SPEAKER_01: in which we broke down the entire Old Testament and New Testament into about,
7:29
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
7:30
SPEAKER_01: around 25 episodes.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: And we structured it according to the same way my book is structured.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: We chose key figures in order to go through this story.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: And the purpose of that was really to introduce people who didn't know anything
7:44
SPEAKER_01: about the Bible to the Bible.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: So if they don't know, if Noah or David built the ark,
7:52
SPEAKER_01: If they don't know if it was Moses or Joshua or Hosea who led the children of
7:58
SPEAKER_01: Israel across the Red Sea,
8:00
SPEAKER_01: whatever it is,
8:01
SPEAKER_01: they don't know,
8:02
SPEAKER_01: just because maybe they didn't grow up in church,
8:04
SPEAKER_01: then this will be their entry point into getting a good handle on the biblical story.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: So we did that podcast back in 2020.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: and uh heard a lot of good good things from from listeners and so i thought you
8:17
SPEAKER_01: know what i can do is i can take at least the first half of that that podcast and i
8:23
SPEAKER_01: can write a book that can kind of serve as a as another resource for people maybe
8:29
SPEAKER_01: maybe you're a new christian and you really want to to get to know the bible but
8:34
SPEAKER_01: you don't know where to start maybe you're a pastor and you have people coming into
8:38
SPEAKER_01: your church all the time
8:39
SPEAKER_01: who have very little biblical literacy and you need a book that's relatively easy
8:45
SPEAKER_01: to read that's going to be an introductory level text that you can give to them
8:49
SPEAKER_01: that will help them to understand the old testament or maybe you know you're you
8:53
SPEAKER_01: just love the bible and you're always looking for more biblical theology resources
8:57
SPEAKER_01: or a refresher as to the big picture of the salvation story
9:02
SPEAKER_01: Wherever you're at,
9:03
SPEAKER_01: that's the reason that I wrote this book,
9:05
SPEAKER_01: so that it could be that guide,
9:07
SPEAKER_01: that refresher for you,
9:09
SPEAKER_01: so that you'll have a better handle on the salvation story.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: I think that's so key.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: And as you kind of hinted at,
9:17
SPEAKER_00: you've received questions about this conundrum more often than not,
9:21
SPEAKER_00: probably.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: This idea of what do you do with some of these interesting stories,
9:26
SPEAKER_00: interesting or perhaps even sordid stories that appear in the Old Testament.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: It leads people to want to stay away from it.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
9:33
SPEAKER_00: this particular week,
9:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm getting ready to...
9:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm studying and getting ready to preach on Genesis 34,
9:40
SPEAKER_00: which is one of the darkest chapters in the Old Testament.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: And it's those kind of stories that often lead people to want to stay away from the Old Testament.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: And so I think this,
9:51
SPEAKER_00: as a resource,
9:52
SPEAKER_00: Hitchhiking with Prophets,
9:53
SPEAKER_00: allows people to understand,
9:55
SPEAKER_00: maybe not all,
9:56
SPEAKER_00: like you said,
9:56
SPEAKER_00: those finer points,
9:58
SPEAKER_00: the little pebbles,
9:59
SPEAKER_00: but it allows us to see that...
10:02
SPEAKER_00: this whole testament is one giant story that's going to lead up to and culminate in Christ,
10:08
SPEAKER_00: which the whole,
10:10
SPEAKER_00: you and I have shared about this a lot,
10:11
SPEAKER_00: but it's so,
10:13
SPEAKER_00: I think,
10:15
SPEAKER_00: formative.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: The prism for understanding the scriptures has to be Jesus and his revelation.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: Luke 24, we've talked about that.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: The Emmaus Road and how to understand the Bible through that lens.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: This, I think, is such a helpful way in which to sort of get people onto that story, if you will.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because, I mean, that's one of the purposes of the book.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: I don't just kind of take the history and retell it.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: This happened, then that happened, then this happened.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: I certainly do relay the history in a creative sort of way.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: But my goal isn't just simply to tell the story.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: My goal is to tell the goal of the story.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: That is to say,
10:59
SPEAKER_01: right from the beginning,
11:00
SPEAKER_01: you come to grips with the fact that,
11:02
SPEAKER_01: yes,
11:03
SPEAKER_01: this is gonna be history,
11:04
SPEAKER_01: real history.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be a narrative, a real narrative.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: But it's more than that.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: It's the salvation story.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: And that salvation story is centered upon one person, one goal.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: And we meet him already in Genesis 315 as the seed of the woman who's going to
11:22
SPEAKER_01: crush the head of the serpent.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: And then as we go on through the rest of the story, more and more details emerge.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like if you're on a country road and you're walking along and you see
11:34
SPEAKER_01: some object in the distance,
11:35
SPEAKER_01: maybe a mile or two away,
11:36
SPEAKER_01: and you can tell it's something,
11:39
SPEAKER_01: but you can't tell quite what it is.
11:41
SPEAKER_01: Is that an animal?
11:42
SPEAKER_01: Is that a person?
11:43
SPEAKER_01: But you know something's coming.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: Now,
11:45
SPEAKER_01: you get a little bit closer and you're like,
11:47
SPEAKER_01: oh,
11:47
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
11:47
SPEAKER_01: it's definitely a person,
11:49
SPEAKER_01: but I can't tell if it's a man or a woman,
11:51
SPEAKER_01: old or young.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: You get a little bit closer, you can say, oh, definitely a man.
11:55
SPEAKER_01: I can't quite tell the age, though.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: And as you get closer and closer and closer, of course, clarity comes.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like that when you're walking through the Old Testament.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: When you begin the walk, you see something in the distance.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: You know it's going to be good.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: You know it's going to be the seed of the woman that crushes the head of the serpent,
12:12
SPEAKER_01: but you don't really know much about this seed.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: And then as you keep walking from Genesis to Exodus,
12:20
SPEAKER_01: Leviticus,
12:20
SPEAKER_01: all the way to Malachi,
12:22
SPEAKER_01: you have a much clearer perspective on what you're waiting for.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
12:28
SPEAKER_00: and as that clarity unfolds,
12:31
SPEAKER_00: it is so enthralling to kind of see how these pieces are being put together to where,
12:36
SPEAKER_00: oh yeah,
12:37
SPEAKER_00: of course it makes sense that this one from the tribe of Judah,
12:41
SPEAKER_00: the son of David,
12:42
SPEAKER_00: would be the one to come and fulfill all of these promises.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: these promises and these prophecies.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: One question that I've often gotten that is always one in which it's kind of hard
12:52
SPEAKER_00: to reconcile with sometimes,
12:54
SPEAKER_00: which is just the fact that,
12:55
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:57
SPEAKER_00: there's this,
12:58
SPEAKER_00: well,
12:58
SPEAKER_00: I'll say it this way.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: There's this sort of this amazing reality in which we can understand that when
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Paul's writing his formative letters that reveal the gospel,
13:08
SPEAKER_00: let's say Romans,
13:10
SPEAKER_00: He's doing so only with an Old Testament in hand,
13:13
SPEAKER_00: which is kind of just like this weird reality we don't often think about,
13:16
SPEAKER_00: but he's not pulling up Romans.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: He's pulling up Isaiah or other places in the Old Testament scriptures to write
13:24
SPEAKER_00: about justification by faith and all these Protestant doctrines that we love and we cherish.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Um...
13:30
SPEAKER_00: And then it's interesting to note that,
13:34
SPEAKER_00: but then it's also interesting to reconcile with the fact that all of these people
13:41
SPEAKER_00: up until then,
13:41
SPEAKER_00: quote unquote,
13:43
SPEAKER_00: didn't get it or they missed it.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes I think we have a little bit of like,
13:51
SPEAKER_00: historical sort of pretentiousness where it's like, how in the world could they not have gotten it?
13:56
SPEAKER_00: But how would you sort of explain or reconcile the Christological blindness,
14:02
SPEAKER_00: if you will,
14:03
SPEAKER_00: in first century Jewish scholars or first century people who quote unquote should
14:08
SPEAKER_00: have known better with what Paul eventually realizes,
14:12
SPEAKER_00: which is,
14:13
SPEAKER_00: of course,
14:14
SPEAKER_00: this is all what it was leading up to.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think you could probably draw an analogy to this with something we've all experienced.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the movie I always use is Sixth Sense, right?
14:29
SPEAKER_01: Now, you can watch that movie, and you can know basically all the facts.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: You can know who the characters are.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: You can talk about the plot line.
14:39
SPEAKER_01: You can talk about various things that happened along the way.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: You could...
14:44
SPEAKER_01: relay a lot of different things which are true about that movie.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: And yet, until you get to the end, you don't really know what the movie's about.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: And as soon as it's revealed that, you know, the guy was dead the entire movie, you have to go back.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: Spoiler alert.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: The facts don't change that much.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: You still have the same characters.
15:13
SPEAKER_01: You still have the same things happening,
15:15
SPEAKER_01: but your perspective now is completely different because now you have the key that
15:21
SPEAKER_01: unlocks the entire story.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: And you, and you say this to yourself, you're like, you feel dumb.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: Like how did I not see that?
15:29
SPEAKER_01: It was right in front of my face.
15:31
SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: It's like that with, you mentioned the Emmaus, Luke 24 story.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: It had to have been like that with those two disciples.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: At the end of that walk,
15:40
SPEAKER_01: after Jesus breaks bread with them and then disappears,
15:43
SPEAKER_01: they're like,
15:44
SPEAKER_01: we feel so stupid.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously, it's right there before our eyes.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: Jesus explained this all to us on the walk,
15:52
SPEAKER_01: because beginning with Moses,
15:53
SPEAKER_01: he walked them through the Old Testament.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: And it had to have been like that with Paul too.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: After his own Emmaus road experience kind of thing,
16:01
SPEAKER_01: or his Damascus road experience in his case,
16:04
SPEAKER_01: all of a sudden he who had been educated at the feet of Gamaliel,
16:07
SPEAKER_01: who was one of the most renowned rabbis of the first century,
16:11
SPEAKER_01: he knew these scriptures forward and backward.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: But after he realized who Jesus actually was,
16:17
SPEAKER_01: then he too would have gone back to the beginning of this biblical movie and
16:21
SPEAKER_01: rewatched it again.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: So there's that going on.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: You have to really, I mean, the disciples themselves, how many times did they just not get it?
16:31
SPEAKER_01: And they're actually, they believe Jesus is the Messiah.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: They're traveling with him.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: And yet when he's crucified, they think it's over.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: They had heard from his own lips,
16:45
SPEAKER_01: we're going to Jerusalem,
16:47
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be betrayed,
16:49
SPEAKER_01: crucified,
16:50
SPEAKER_01: and I will be raised again.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: And it just didn't click.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: It's not until the resurrection when all of these things begin to fall into place.
16:59
SPEAKER_01: So I think it was probably like that with basically everybody,
17:03
SPEAKER_01: all the Jewish believers who were anticipating the Messiah.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we know from Matthew's gospel that the Jews told Herod where the Messiah was to be born.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: They said, oh, yeah, it's going to be in Bethlehem.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: They all agreed that the Messiah was the son of David.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: They all agreed that Psalm 110,
17:22
SPEAKER_01: the Lord said to my Lord,
17:23
SPEAKER_01: sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: They all agreed that that was a Psalm about the Messiah.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: We know that Daniel 7, we have the vision of the son of man of the ancient of days.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: We know that that was interpreted messianically as well.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: They had all this stuff, all these facts, which are true in their heads.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: But until it actually happened,
17:44
SPEAKER_01: And until he was resurrected, none of this kind of clicked.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: And of course, a major barrier to them was the crucifixion.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: And that was the, you didn't even, if you were a Roman citizen, you didn't even talk about crucifixions.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: It was just, you don't, certain things you don't talk about in that kind of company.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: So you don't even bring up crucifixions.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: And yet crucifixion, the crucified Messiah, was heralded by Paul.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: But it took people a while to kind of accustom themselves to that because it was
18:19
SPEAKER_01: contrary to a lot of the kind of the popular conceptions about who the Messiah was
18:22
SPEAKER_01: going to be.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: They misunderstood the son of David to think that he was going to be some kind of
18:28
SPEAKER_01: military conqueror,
18:29
SPEAKER_01: drive out the Romans,
18:30
SPEAKER_01: so on and so forth.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: And so they had a lot of assumptions which were partially true about the Messiah,
18:37
SPEAKER_01: But were partially untrue,
18:40
SPEAKER_01: and that partially untrue clouded their thinking about exactly what he was going to accomplish.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: And that's why it just had to happen before all of these things finally clicked in people's minds.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: He had to die.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: He had to rise again.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: And then there was this light that was thrown upon these Old Testament texts they hadn't seen before.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: And then it all became clear.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: And that's when the scriptures come alive for you,
19:07
SPEAKER_01: is when you realized,
19:08
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
19:09
SPEAKER_01: from Genesis all the way through the end,
19:12
SPEAKER_01: in one way or another,
19:13
SPEAKER_01: in ways great and small,
19:14
SPEAKER_01: clear and a bit ambiguous,
19:16
SPEAKER_01: all of these stories are leading up to their telos,
19:20
SPEAKER_01: their divinely ordained finale in Christ.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
19:24
SPEAKER_00: I've heard it said before that there's kind of...
19:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to probably butcher this analogy or illustration,
19:32
SPEAKER_00: but it's almost like people in the first century,
19:35
SPEAKER_00: let's say,
19:36
SPEAKER_00: for instance,
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Peter,
19:37
SPEAKER_00: or others who got a little bit confused about what the Messiah was supposed to do.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: There's almost like this blending of mountain peaks where you see these two
19:46
SPEAKER_00: mountain peaks off in the horizon,
19:48
SPEAKER_00: and they look really close together,
19:50
SPEAKER_00: almost as if they're one summit,
19:52
SPEAKER_00: right?
19:53
SPEAKER_00: But the closer you get,
19:54
SPEAKER_00: you realize that there's miles and miles of distance in between them just because
19:59
SPEAKER_00: you're unable to distinguish that range from that far of a distance.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: And the same sort of thing happens, I think, with many in the first century or just many in general.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: in that day in Judea where the day of the Lord,
20:13
SPEAKER_00: the coming of the Messiah,
20:14
SPEAKER_00: was blended into this one sort of surreal but divine event in which,
20:20
SPEAKER_00: yes,
20:21
SPEAKER_00: it's the Messiah,
20:21
SPEAKER_00: but also it's this conquering king,
20:24
SPEAKER_00: which when you get to it,
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is like,
20:26
SPEAKER_00: actually,
20:27
SPEAKER_00: there's a lot of distance in between those two dates.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
20:31
SPEAKER_01: that analogy is very helpful because now you'll come across some descriptions of
20:36
SPEAKER_01: the Messianic age in the Old Testament.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: where you have just a lot kind of shoved together chronologically as you described
20:44
SPEAKER_01: it you think you're seeing a mountain you think you're seeing you know two mountain
20:48
SPEAKER_01: peaks that are just right together and then you get to one on me like wait that
20:52
SPEAKER_01: other mountain's like a hundred miles from here yeah so when you're when you're
20:56
SPEAKER_01: walking through the old testament and you see what appears to be two mountains
21:01
SPEAKER_01: really close to each other they're really not
21:04
SPEAKER_01: now you get so you get to the ministry of jesus and we know that when he comes he
21:09
SPEAKER_01: initiates the last days the writer of hebrews says that right and many various ways
21:13
SPEAKER_01: god spoke to his people a little by the prophets but now in these last days he has
21:19
SPEAKER_01: spoken to us by his son so by the coming of christ you enter the last days
21:24
SPEAKER_01: And the last days,
21:25
SPEAKER_01: as they're described by various prophets,
21:28
SPEAKER_01: describe not only the inauguration of the messianic age,
21:31
SPEAKER_01: but him reigning as king,
21:33
SPEAKER_01: all nations coming to him,
21:35
SPEAKER_01: a new creation,
21:36
SPEAKER_01: so on and so forth.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: So from the Old Testament prophetic perspective, it's kind of like incarnation.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: and the achievement of our salvation and the coming of the new heavens and the new
21:48
SPEAKER_01: earth happen just like that,
21:51
SPEAKER_01: all at the same time.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: So there's not really much of a now and not yet built into the Old Testament perspective.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: It's all now when the Messiah comes.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: So when he comes, we discover there is certainly a nowness to it.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: He has inaugurated the latter days.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: He has brought about the kingdom of God.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: He is, in fact, reigning at the right hand of his father, but there's a not yet built into it as well.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: We are awaiting his final return.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: We are awaiting the creation of the new heavens and the new earth.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: So that I think that is that's still a struggle for some people when they're
22:27
SPEAKER_01: reading the Old Testament to understand that the now and not yetness of the New
22:32
SPEAKER_01: Testament is not as obvious when you're reading through the Old Testament scriptures.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
22:37
SPEAKER_00: and I think that helps us be a little bit more sympathetic when Peter's like,
22:42
SPEAKER_00: hey,
22:43
SPEAKER_00: you don't need to die on the cross.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is like, get behind me, Satan.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: Well,
22:46
SPEAKER_00: we can kind of sympathize with Peter's confusion with a little bit of his denseness,
22:53
SPEAKER_00: just because there was not only that confusion of mountaintops,
22:57
SPEAKER_00: if you will,
22:57
SPEAKER_00: but there was all of these other notions,
22:59
SPEAKER_00: as you kind of alluded to,
23:00
SPEAKER_00: that have kind of been infused or maybe even had overrun
23:05
SPEAKER_00: people's understanding or conceptions of who the Messiah was going to be.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Because all of the things that Jesus did,
23:12
SPEAKER_00: as you mentioned,
23:13
SPEAKER_00: were there,
23:14
SPEAKER_00: like the riding of the donkey,
23:16
SPEAKER_00: being born in Bethlehem,
23:18
SPEAKER_00: and so on and so forth.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: But all of the other things that had kind of
23:22
SPEAKER_00: grown to become the messiah were had kind of overclouded all that other stuff which
23:28
SPEAKER_00: it again i think part of this is just helping us be sympathetic with these biblical
23:33
SPEAKER_00: characters as we're reading them and seeing their foibles we can kind of maybe
23:39
SPEAKER_00: understand where they're coming from but also remember the fact that that would
23:43
SPEAKER_00: more than likely be us right there
23:45
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there is a what's that phrase that C.S.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: Lewis sometimes uses about it's not modern chronological snobbery, chronological snobbery.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that applies not only to the Bible, but I mean, that applies across the board.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, people, all people, we all the time say to ourselves, you know, we'll look back.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we don't have to go back centuries.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: We certainly don't have to go back to millennia.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: We can just go back 50 years, certainly 150 years.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: And say to ourselves, how could those people do that?
24:20
SPEAKER_01: Or how could those people not realize that was wrong?
24:23
SPEAKER_01: Or how could those people do that to those kind of people?
24:27
SPEAKER_01: As if,
24:28
SPEAKER_01: of course,
24:29
SPEAKER_01: were we living then,
24:30
SPEAKER_01: we would have been so enlightened that there's no way that we would have engaged in
24:34
SPEAKER_01: that kind of ignorant and foolish and evil behavior.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: So that kind of chronological snobbery,
24:40
SPEAKER_01: it's kind of basically our way of patting ourselves on the righteous back and
24:45
SPEAKER_01: thinking that we're so much better than those people who lived before us.
24:49
SPEAKER_01: Now,
24:49
SPEAKER_01: if that applies to the case of 50 to 150 years ago,
24:55
SPEAKER_01: certainly it applies in the case of the New Testament.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: We're just, I mean, they're no different than we are.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: We are enmeshed in a culture.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: a culture that is pregnant with all kinds of assumptions about what is true,
25:07
SPEAKER_01: what is untrue,
25:08
SPEAKER_01: what is right,
25:09
SPEAKER_01: what is wrong.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: And this affects us often unconsciously as to what we think is true or think is right.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
25:17
SPEAKER_01: if you're,
25:19
SPEAKER_01: as that famous,
25:20
SPEAKER_01: I can't think of his name,
25:21
SPEAKER_01: but as that famous graduation speech goes about,
25:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:24
SPEAKER_01: we're all fish in the water.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: And if you're fish in the water, you don't think about
25:29
SPEAKER_01: you don't think about water.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: Someone asks you, you know, how's the water?
25:32
SPEAKER_01: You're like, what are you talking about?
25:35
SPEAKER_01: It's the water we swim in.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: It's the air we breathe.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: Well,
25:37
SPEAKER_01: the disciples of the first century,
25:40
SPEAKER_01: all the Jews were living in a Jewish culture,
25:42
SPEAKER_01: a first century Jewish culture.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: They were under the thumb of Rome.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: They had been off and on under the thumb of four powers for centuries by this time.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: They were yearning for freedom.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: And so,
25:53
SPEAKER_01: of course,
25:53
SPEAKER_01: they would gravitate toward the idea of a militaristic messiah who would come in
25:57
SPEAKER_01: and finally give them,
25:59
SPEAKER_01: what they had been waiting for.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: And thus,
26:03
SPEAKER_01: working with that desire and assumption,
26:05
SPEAKER_01: it makes sense that they would be blind to other aspects of the prophetic portrait
26:11
SPEAKER_01: of the Messiah,
26:11
SPEAKER_01: such as Isaiah 53 and him suffering.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: And I think this conversation is so pertinent,
26:19
SPEAKER_00: not only to understanding the New Testament,
26:23
SPEAKER_00: understanding this as you've laid out in this book and in other books,
26:27
SPEAKER_00: like the Christ Key,
26:28
SPEAKER_00: for example,
26:30
SPEAKER_00: how all of this is tending towards Christ.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: It's helpful to kind of level the playing field in terms of getting rid of chronological snobbery.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: But also, I think, too, it helps us understand so much of what was...
26:44
SPEAKER_00: in the rhetoric of the New Testament church.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: By which I mean,
26:48
SPEAKER_00: one of the things I've been reflecting on recently is just the fact that many of
26:51
SPEAKER_00: the New Testament letters,
26:53
SPEAKER_00: epistles,
26:54
SPEAKER_00: almost all of them touch on the ways in which the gospel,
27:00
SPEAKER_00: the kerygma,
27:01
SPEAKER_00: if you will,
27:02
SPEAKER_00: is
27:03
SPEAKER_00: is kind of sidelined by other people's, um, notions of what is, what the gospel should be.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: So like,
27:11
SPEAKER_00: like for example,
27:12
SPEAKER_00: when,
27:12
SPEAKER_00: when Paul's writing to Timothy,
27:13
SPEAKER_00: right,
27:14
SPEAKER_00: he,
27:14
SPEAKER_00: he often talks about these false teachers,
27:16
SPEAKER_00: these ones who are going to swindle people's hearts and veer them off and veer them astray.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: And more often than not,
27:24
SPEAKER_00: not to be too reductive,
27:26
SPEAKER_00: but you can kind of understand the veering off and the getting off into all of
27:32
SPEAKER_00: these other categories as just really,
27:35
SPEAKER_00: really bad biblical theology.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: Understanding, or I should say, a really...
27:40
SPEAKER_00: blatant misunderstanding of who christ was and what he came to fulfill so you know
27:46
SPEAKER_00: in um i think it's first empathy four where he's talking about these ones who are
27:50
SPEAKER_00: going to sear people's consciences by what they're talking about he's like yeah
27:54
SPEAKER_00: you're going to know them because they're going to they're going to start demanding
27:57
SPEAKER_00: that you you don't get married that you abstain from certain foods so it's a
28:01
SPEAKER_00: reversion back into sort of living by the law which again
28:08
SPEAKER_00: not to be reductive,
28:09
SPEAKER_00: but it's really bad biblical theology from understanding what Christ actually accomplished,
28:14
SPEAKER_00: which I think makes all of this so pertinent and so necessary and timely for our
28:22
SPEAKER_00: own present moment,
28:22
SPEAKER_00: because the same foibles that were afflicting New Testament churches are afflicting
28:28
SPEAKER_00: the church of today,
28:30
SPEAKER_00: in which we're still struggling with the same notions of
28:35
SPEAKER_00: of who christ is and what did he actually accomplish for our faith yeah we're still
28:40
SPEAKER_01: grappling too with just the uh the radical liberty that we have in christ yeah yeah
28:45
SPEAKER_01: liberty from from from the law either the capital l law in the sense of the divine
28:50
SPEAKER_01: law or you know all the shoulds and must and ought to be is that we tend to think
28:55
SPEAKER_01: that we have to live up to uh in our own culture
28:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
28:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
28:59
SPEAKER_01: that is such a great point about the tendency that we find in lots of the churches
29:05
SPEAKER_01: of the New Testament to kind of backstep into the law.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: So it's like when Paul gets there,
29:12
SPEAKER_01: he establishes the church,
29:14
SPEAKER_01: he preaches in the synagogue,
29:15
SPEAKER_01: or if they kick him out of there,
29:16
SPEAKER_01: he starts a church next door as he did in Corinth.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: you know and everything's going gangbusters you know everyone's excited about the
29:23
SPEAKER_01: gospel man this is amazing uh let's get this church started we're gonna live in the
29:28
SPEAKER_01: freedom that we have and it's like paul uh leaves to go where he's going next and
29:34
SPEAKER_01: over the next few weeks or months or years they start to backtrack from this gospel
29:41
SPEAKER_01: road they've been going down back into the law and
29:45
SPEAKER_01: You know,
29:45
SPEAKER_01: from a completely,
29:46
SPEAKER_01: even just kind of sociological perspective,
29:49
SPEAKER_01: you could understand why that would happen.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: Many of these people, of course, they were Jews, their parents were Jews, their grandparents were Jews.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
29:55
SPEAKER_01: they're looking at this long lineage connected with certain practices,
30:00
SPEAKER_01: certain traditions,
30:01
SPEAKER_01: as well as certain kinds of legally mandated practices,
30:06
SPEAKER_01: circumcision,
30:07
SPEAKER_01: kosher laws,
30:09
SPEAKER_01: sacrifices,
30:10
SPEAKER_01: all those sorts of things.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: And so you can see what happens is that they get a taste of the gospel,
30:15
SPEAKER_01: and that's great,
30:16
SPEAKER_01: but then they also begin to get a little bit uncomfortable with this freedom to
30:19
SPEAKER_01: have in the gospel.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: And so you have what happens in Galatians,
30:23
SPEAKER_01: where teachers come along after Paul's left,
30:26
SPEAKER_01: and I'm just kind of...
30:30
SPEAKER_01: summarizing here what i assume would have been said but something along the lines
30:34
SPEAKER_01: of yeah paul i mean great guy great preacher apostle we're very thankful for his
30:39
SPEAKER_01: work and and a lot of what paul said is good uh we do think however that there's
30:44
SPEAKER_01: some maybe some misunderstandings appalled or some some gaps in what paul says
30:49
SPEAKER_01: let's fill those in for you
30:51
SPEAKER_01: And then what they do is they basically begin to woo people back under the law and
30:57
SPEAKER_01: say to Gentile men,
30:59
SPEAKER_01: for instance,
31:00
SPEAKER_01: you believe that Jesus is the Messiah,
31:02
SPEAKER_01: that's good,
31:03
SPEAKER_01: but you also need to be circumcised.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: Or you believe Jesus is the Messiah,
31:08
SPEAKER_01: that's great,
31:09
SPEAKER_01: but you really need to watch what you eat because you're not eating kosher foods.
31:15
SPEAKER_01: And so little by little they begin to
31:18
SPEAKER_01: woo and then probably also to threaten or to entice people back under back under the law.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: And man, the details may be different, but the same thing happens today.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: You know,
31:29
SPEAKER_01: we have our own traditions,
31:31
SPEAKER_01: we have our own customs,
31:33
SPEAKER_01: we have our own practices,
31:34
SPEAKER_01: we have our own opinions,
31:37
SPEAKER_01: which very easily become nothing more than laws under which we are operating.
31:43
SPEAKER_01: Where it's,
31:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:44
SPEAKER_01: it's the old Jesus and Jesus and whatever you're you're putting in the blank there
31:49
SPEAKER_01: that ends up being what the center of your faith is all about.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: And I can guarantee you that whatever follows the Jesus and is going to end up taking primacy.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a strange thing.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: It's never I'm going to give Jesus 50 percent and this other thing 50 percent.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: It's never even I'm going to give Jesus 90 percent and this other thing 10 percent.
32:08
SPEAKER_01: It's always Jesus 10% and this other thing 90% because we tend to elevate our own
32:14
SPEAKER_01: opinions or philosophies or ideologies or practices over Christ.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: And in so doing,
32:22
SPEAKER_01: we basically take the good news out of the gospel and replace it with just our kind
32:28
SPEAKER_01: of self-manufactured salvation projects.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
32:33
SPEAKER_00: it is so fascinating how we have to come to this reckoning point where,
32:37
SPEAKER_00: like you mentioned,
32:38
SPEAKER_00: anything that we submit to or apply to that Jesus and statement is going to overrun
32:45
SPEAKER_00: the truth of Christ eventually.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: That's our human nature, I think.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: But I think what you're referring to and what we're talking about here with these
32:54
SPEAKER_00: New Testament believers,
32:54
SPEAKER_00: New Testament churches struggling with how to frame Christ and keep that central.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: Helps us, I would say, understand what happens in the book of Hebrews.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: I always have loved those passages in Hebrews, of course.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: You and I have talked about that before.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews is an amazing New Testament letter.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: but especially in chapter five,
33:17
SPEAKER_00: where we get to that really famous phrase,
33:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:22
SPEAKER_00: you should have been eating meat and I still have to keep feeding you milk,
33:25
SPEAKER_00: the milk and meat of the word and so on and so forth.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: And I know that that phrase has been
33:30
SPEAKER_00: you know, somewhat bastardized in some ways.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: And it's been used,
33:33
SPEAKER_00: I think,
33:34
SPEAKER_00: really incorrectly to say that there's something beyond the gospel that we need to
33:39
SPEAKER_00: get to.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: And here I am having to explain the gospel to you again,
33:41
SPEAKER_00: which in fact is kind of the opposite of what he's doing there.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: They were milk because they were still so infatuated,
33:50
SPEAKER_00: as you were saying,
33:50
SPEAKER_00: with the ordinances,
33:51
SPEAKER_00: with the codes and the regulations of Judaism.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: When
33:56
SPEAKER_00: which I would believe,
33:57
SPEAKER_00: I would say it's Apollos,
33:58
SPEAKER_00: is preaching to them and insisting that they see,
34:02
SPEAKER_00: hey,
34:03
SPEAKER_00: all of this has been fulfilled for you in Christ,
34:05
SPEAKER_00: and that's the meat that we need to be digesting.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's the recurring theme of Hebrews, right?
34:13
SPEAKER_00: Something better.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, the Old Testament priesthood, good, but there's something better.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: The Old Testament sacrifices, good.
34:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying they're bad.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: They're good.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: We have something better.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: Old Testament tabernacle, just fine, but incomplete, imperfect.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: We need something better.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, that's what you, I mean, that's certainly what happens in the book of Hebrews.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: Whoever he's writing that to,
34:39
SPEAKER_01: they were being wooed or compelled or enticed back under this old system with,
34:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
34:47
SPEAKER_01: going so far as offering abandonable sacrifices.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: And in so doing, of course, denigrating the sacrifice that Christ has offered once for all.
34:57
SPEAKER_01: So we see that not in every New Testament book,
35:02
SPEAKER_01: but in a lot of New Testament books,
35:03
SPEAKER_01: we see this gravitation toward the old ways.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: And in our own time, I mean, it's not only...
35:11
SPEAKER_01: It's not only that we're kind of drawn to customs or traditions or practices,
35:16
SPEAKER_01: but we're also drawn to this idea that if I can take Jesus and add to that even a
35:23
SPEAKER_01: good biblical practice,
35:25
SPEAKER_01: like being faithful in my marriage,
35:27
SPEAKER_01: or being a hard worker,
35:29
SPEAKER_01: or raising my children in a godly sort of way,
35:33
SPEAKER_01: If I can add to the work of Jesus by the doing of this good work on my own,
35:38
SPEAKER_01: then I have a greater insurance that I'm going to be right with God.
35:44
SPEAKER_01: So it's the old,
35:45
SPEAKER_01: old story of our propensity to find confidence in the doing of whatever it is that
35:55
SPEAKER_01: we ourselves have done,
35:57
SPEAKER_01: the skin that we have in the game of salvation.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: So that's what...
36:01
SPEAKER_01: Paul was dealing with that,
36:02
SPEAKER_01: the author of Hebrews was dealing with that,
36:03
SPEAKER_01: and we still deal with it today in churches and,
36:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
36:07
SPEAKER_01: in our own lives as well.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's such a great point, and it reminds me of a point I made recently.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: I've been preaching through the life of Jacob,
36:17
SPEAKER_00: which is such an enthralling series of chapters in the book of Genesis.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: But in many ways, he is somewhat of the patron saint, if you will, of...
36:28
SPEAKER_00: God helps those who helps themselves.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: That old notion that many people believe is in the Bible, but it's not, of course.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: But he's kind of the upstanding figure for that.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: He's like the poster boy for the idea.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay, God is going to help me.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: But I also have to do a little bit of my part too.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: And here's how I can get involved, which of course leads to all kinds of disasters.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: But I think that's a helpful paradigm to understand our own lives,
36:55
SPEAKER_00: which is just to say that as Jacob is being wrestled by God in Genesis 32 on the
37:02
SPEAKER_00: banks of the Jabbok,
37:05
SPEAKER_00: He is being wrestled to the point where he has to give up,
37:09
SPEAKER_00: where he has to realize that God doesn't help those who help themselves.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: He helps those who cannot help themselves.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: And that cry for mercy there is kind of,
37:19
SPEAKER_00: I think,
37:19
SPEAKER_00: what God is almost leading us through in all of our,
37:24
SPEAKER_00: you know,
37:25
SPEAKER_00: you can call it journeys of faith.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: That road of discipleship is almost a similar trajectory to Jacob's in many ways.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
37:35
SPEAKER_01: Is it John Zoll who has that saying, God's office is at the end of our rope?
37:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've used that frequently, and it's so very true.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
37:45
SPEAKER_01: you see that certainly in the biblical stories,
37:48
SPEAKER_01: like Jacob's,
37:49
SPEAKER_01: but you see it in our own personal stories also.
37:52
SPEAKER_01: You know,
37:52
SPEAKER_01: when we come to the end of ourselves,
37:56
SPEAKER_01: there's Christ saying,
37:57
SPEAKER_01: all right,
37:58
SPEAKER_01: now I have you where I want you.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: So as I like to say,
38:01
SPEAKER_01: when we have nothing to offer God,
38:04
SPEAKER_01: God says to us,
38:05
SPEAKER_01: ah,
38:06
SPEAKER_01: finally,
38:06
SPEAKER_01: something I can work with.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: Which, going back to Jacob, I always think it's rather striking that God appears to him when he's asleep.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: He can do nothing.
38:18
SPEAKER_01: Completely passive.
38:20
SPEAKER_01: He can't speak.
38:21
SPEAKER_01: He can't logger his way into something.
38:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's completely passive.
38:26
SPEAKER_01: And so God says, oh, finally.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: He can't talk.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: He can't do anything.
38:30
SPEAKER_01: Now I can actually appear to him and maybe get something through his head.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: How alike Jacob we are, right?
38:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: I think Jacob is such a formative character.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: And you talk about him a little bit in Hitchhiking with Prophets.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: And you also wrote the other book about him,
38:50
SPEAKER_00: Limping with God,
38:50
SPEAKER_00: which has been super formative for me and helpful.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's helpful to understand –
38:58
SPEAKER_00: Jacob's life as, again, a paradigm of our own.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: This seesaw back and forth between virtue and vice,
39:07
SPEAKER_00: between faith and unfaith,
39:09
SPEAKER_00: between trusting in what God has said and then completely going a different direction.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it's that notion that Paul...
39:20
SPEAKER_00: sort of formulates in the book of Romans this,
39:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
39:23
SPEAKER_00: the paradigm of sinner and saint,
39:25
SPEAKER_00: I think is so fleshed out in the person of Jacob,
39:30
SPEAKER_00: which helps us,
39:31
SPEAKER_00: I think,
39:31
SPEAKER_00: understand what it means to be a follower of God in the first place.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do think he's the model disciple in an ironic sort of way.
39:42
SPEAKER_01: A model in the sense that he models best who we are and the struggles we face
39:49
SPEAKER_01: personally with marriage,
39:52
SPEAKER_01: with family,
39:54
SPEAKER_01: with the confusion of being exiled.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: aging, you know, losing children, or in his case, at least assuming that he's lost children.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: All those aspects of the human condition are represented so well in Jacob's life.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: So that's why he's so much fun to study and to write about, to preach about, to reflect upon, because
40:17
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if he's up or down.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if he's fighting with God or losing.
40:22
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if he's awake or asleep.
40:23
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if he's fighting with his wife or fighting with his father-in-law
40:28
SPEAKER_01: or appearing before Pharaoh.
40:30
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter where he's at.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: God is right there with him.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: They can bend to the very end.
40:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
40:37
SPEAKER_01: tremendous encouragement for us who are in almost all of those kind of situations
40:42
SPEAKER_01: as well,
40:43
SPEAKER_01: except for appearing before Pharaoh.
40:45
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't happen yet.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: It's on my bucket list.
40:48
SPEAKER_01: Hasn't happened yet.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
40:50
SPEAKER_01: Jacob is such an encouragement to us that God is faithful to him,
40:56
SPEAKER_01: even when he is fickle at best.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, fickle is probably putting it nicely.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: But you're right, he is a model disciple.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: He...
41:08
SPEAKER_00: exemplifies our own foibles and failures.
41:13
SPEAKER_00: You know,
41:14
SPEAKER_00: as we've alluded to already,
41:16
SPEAKER_00: these followers of Jesus were up and down constantly with what they were
41:21
SPEAKER_00: understanding Jesus was accomplishing,
41:22
SPEAKER_00: which in a way is exactly what is kind of
41:26
SPEAKER_00: pictured for us in Jacob, where he's unsure of what the next road was going to hold.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: And,
41:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:34
SPEAKER_00: by hook or by crook,
41:35
SPEAKER_00: though,
41:35
SPEAKER_00: he was going to come out on top and he would,
41:37
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:37
SPEAKER_00: connive away to make sure that would happen.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: But always it's like what you alluded to,
41:44
SPEAKER_00: where God is leading him to that point where he's like,
41:46
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
41:47
SPEAKER_00: I can't do anything.
41:47
SPEAKER_00: And God would breathe that sigh of relief.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: Finally, you're where I want you to be.
41:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I, it, that's kind of helpful to understand, um, what it even means to follow the Lord at all.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: And that, that point of absolute trust.
42:06
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the, it's kind of, well, where is that in the gospels?
42:09
SPEAKER_00: The, the, the man who says, I believe help my unbelief.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: That's,
42:13
SPEAKER_00: that's the,
42:13
SPEAKER_00: that's a great paradigm for understanding,
42:15
SPEAKER_00: uh,
42:16
SPEAKER_00: Jacob,
42:16
SPEAKER_00: but also discipleship as well,
42:18
SPEAKER_00: I think.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's Mark's gospel right after the transfiguration.
42:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
42:23
SPEAKER_01: When he has his son who's struggling, has a demon.
42:29
SPEAKER_01: And that's also where Jesus has this great line.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: I always see it as like a facepalm moment where Jesus says something like,
42:37
SPEAKER_01: how long must I put up with this generation?
42:43
SPEAKER_01: It's a very pastoral moment.
42:45
SPEAKER_01: It's a...
42:46
SPEAKER_01: It's a very human moment where Jesus is like, oh, man, when is this going to be over?
42:54
SPEAKER_01: You see actually the very human side of Jesus,
42:57
SPEAKER_01: and you see certainly the human side of the Father where he says,
43:01
SPEAKER_01: Lord,
43:01
SPEAKER_01: I believe.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: Help my unbelief.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: I'm caught here between these twin warring realities within me.
43:12
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, Jacob's like that.
43:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean, David's like that.
43:15
SPEAKER_01: All the Old Testament characters that I grew up thinking are these heroes of the
43:20
SPEAKER_01: faith are also emblems of messing up on a big scale,
43:26
SPEAKER_01: struggling with doubt,
43:27
SPEAKER_01: with despair,
43:29
SPEAKER_01: battling against God.
43:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's one of the beauties of the Old Testament story is that
43:35
SPEAKER_01: The authors did not whitewash any of this.
43:38
SPEAKER_01: They left in all of the dirt and the grime.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: They didn't lock the skeletons in the closet.
43:44
SPEAKER_01: They hung them out there for everyone to see,
43:47
SPEAKER_01: which is just,
43:49
SPEAKER_01: first of all,
43:49
SPEAKER_01: it's so different than any other national history that you'll read of in ancient
43:54
SPEAKER_01: Near East.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you will never find in hieroglyphs chiseled onto a pyramid the fact that a pharaoh
44:04
SPEAKER_01: happened to be at home in his castle one day and he saw a woman bathing and lusted
44:11
SPEAKER_01: after her brought her into his house ended up having her husband murdered on the
44:15
SPEAKER_01: battlefield so that he could marry her you're not going to find anything like that
44:20
SPEAKER_01: on uh describing an egyptian pharaoh now you'll read all about his triumphs and how
44:25
SPEAKER_01: he was a godlike character and he massacred this people and
44:30
SPEAKER_01: He was this and he was that.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: All you're going to find is praise.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: You're never going to find any criticism.
44:35
SPEAKER_01: But you will find plenty of criticism in the scriptures because this is a true narrative.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: It's not politicized.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: Its goal is to present before us, yes, models of faith, to be sure.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: Many of these men and women are certainly models of faith, but they were also models of unfaith at times.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: And the very fact that the Bible does not cover that up not only lends it credency,
44:59
SPEAKER_01: but it also lends it a unique kind of comfort to us that we don't need to be some
45:04
SPEAKER_01: sort of God-like faithful people in order to qualify for heaven.
45:10
SPEAKER_01: All we have to be are sinners saved by the grace of God in order to be where God wants us to be.
45:17
SPEAKER_01: So the very fact that the Bible records all of the weaknesses and the failings and
45:22
SPEAKER_01: the sins and sometimes just the outright horrific things that characters do who are
45:27
SPEAKER_01: part of the people of God is a tremendous comfort to us because it means that we
45:32
SPEAKER_01: don't have to be these
45:34
SPEAKER_01: pillars of fidelity in order to qualify for the kingdom.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: All we have to be is covered by the blood of the Lamb.
45:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, amen to that.
45:44
SPEAKER_00: And I think this again is where biblical theology is so helpful,
45:49
SPEAKER_00: especially for understanding that these men and women that we're reading about
45:53
SPEAKER_00: through all these 39 books of the Old Testament are not archetypes of some sort of
45:59
SPEAKER_00: morality, of some sort of spiritual ethics that God is hoping to instill in us.
46:04
SPEAKER_00: Actually,
46:05
SPEAKER_00: there are a bunch of screwed up,
46:06
SPEAKER_00: messed up people that God somehow,
46:09
SPEAKER_00: in his grace that is beyond comprehension,
46:13
SPEAKER_00: used to further this story along in ways that still are beyond miraculous and
46:18
SPEAKER_00: beyond comprehension.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's what is, it's been so formative for me to
46:24
SPEAKER_00: come to that realization over the years.
46:26
SPEAKER_00: And it,
46:27
SPEAKER_00: again,
46:28
SPEAKER_00: it shouldn't be,
46:29
SPEAKER_00: you know,
46:30
SPEAKER_00: that groundbreaking,
46:31
SPEAKER_00: but it is just to realize,
46:32
SPEAKER_00: hey,
46:32
SPEAKER_00: these people,
46:33
SPEAKER_00: they were actually humans.
46:34
SPEAKER_00: They weren't just like moral archetypes of some sort of standard or some sort of quality.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: No, this is a real human who is struggling with
46:42
SPEAKER_00: with a lot of emotions, with a lot of thoughts that he couldn't beat down or couldn't overcome.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: And that reality,
46:52
SPEAKER_00: I think,
46:53
SPEAKER_00: is downstream of a biblical theology which says all of this culminates in Jesus who
46:58
SPEAKER_00: redeems all of our lives in his death and resurrection.
47:02
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of one of the realities that goes along with that assertion.
47:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's what draws us into the story, too.
47:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
47:15
SPEAKER_01: it's one of the reasons I keep coming back to the Old Testament is these are,
47:19
SPEAKER_01: as you said,
47:19
SPEAKER_01: these are real people.
47:21
SPEAKER_01: You know, I think when I grew up as a—I was in church, and we were in church all the time.
47:27
SPEAKER_01: I was in Sunday school all the time.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: But I think I had this—
47:30
SPEAKER_01: this childlike,
47:33
SPEAKER_01: childish view of the people in the Bible,
47:37
SPEAKER_01: that they were more like characters in a movie or characters in a novel.
47:42
SPEAKER_01: And I tended to idealize them, to glamorize them in my Christian sort of way.
47:49
SPEAKER_01: And I really wasn't grappling with the fact that every single one of them got up in
47:54
SPEAKER_01: the morning just like I do.
47:56
SPEAKER_01: They were hungry just like I get hungry.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: They had bad days and some terrible days just like I do.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: They had a sense of humor just like we all do.
48:06
SPEAKER_01: You know, they quibbled with their wives.
48:09
SPEAKER_01: They got irritated with their kids.
48:12
SPEAKER_01: They didn't get along with their boss all the time.
48:14
SPEAKER_01: They got mad at God, you know.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: Real people experiencing the full panoply of human emotions.
48:21
SPEAKER_01: It's what you see in these characters.
48:23
SPEAKER_01: Well,
48:23
SPEAKER_01: that in itself,
48:24
SPEAKER_01: apart from any religious dimension,
48:27
SPEAKER_01: just the human dimension,
48:29
SPEAKER_01: pulls us into the story.
48:31
SPEAKER_01: And then when you're in the story and you realize the full ramifications of who God
48:35
SPEAKER_01: is and what he's doing with these people...
48:38
SPEAKER_01: and then also by implication what he's doing in our own lives.
48:40
SPEAKER_01: It's like,
48:41
SPEAKER_01: wow,
48:42
SPEAKER_01: this story is,
48:44
SPEAKER_01: it's the reason it's the greatest story because this is all about not only
48:49
SPEAKER_01: truthfulness to humanity,
48:51
SPEAKER_01: who we really are,
48:53
SPEAKER_01: But the God who loves us, despite who we are.
48:59
SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the reasons I can't get enough of the Old Testament is because it
49:03
SPEAKER_01: continues to—it teaches me anthropology.
49:06
SPEAKER_01: That is, it teaches me about humanity.
49:07
SPEAKER_01: It teaches me about myself.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: It teaches me about cosmology, where the world comes from.
49:13
SPEAKER_01: It teaches me about sin, what's wrong with the world.
49:16
SPEAKER_01: It teaches me theology.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: It teaches me about the God who made the world and who continues to shepherd history toward its goal.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: And then it teaches me Christology.
49:23
SPEAKER_01: It teaches me who Jesus is and everything that he's done for me.
49:28
SPEAKER_01: It's the handbook of humanity.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: It teaches us everything there is to know,
49:34
SPEAKER_01: all these essentials that there is to know about who we are and the world in which
49:38
SPEAKER_01: we live and what's wrong with our world and who God is and what God has done to
49:42
SPEAKER_01: make things right.
49:45
SPEAKER_01: So the more that we spend time in the scriptures,
49:48
SPEAKER_01: the more we realize how much we don't know,
49:51
SPEAKER_01: how much there is to learn.
49:52
SPEAKER_01: And so it's like a feast to which the hungry can continually go,
49:57
SPEAKER_01: which continues to feed them every single time.
50:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
50:02
SPEAKER_00: and that's the surprising notion,
50:04
SPEAKER_00: is that all the things you just alluded to are just almost like bursting at the
50:10
SPEAKER_00: seams under the surface of the Old Testament.
50:13
SPEAKER_00: Which,
50:14
SPEAKER_00: the Old Testament is often caricatured as this ungracious,
50:18
SPEAKER_00: violent series of books that doesn't have a lot of relevance.
50:22
SPEAKER_00: And yet, when you realize the story that it tells, the stories that it includes...
50:28
SPEAKER_00: Actually,
50:28
SPEAKER_00: you could probably testify the same,
50:32
SPEAKER_00: which is I've learned more about grace from the Old Testament than probably any
50:37
SPEAKER_00: other place in Scripture.
50:39
SPEAKER_00: And of course,
50:41
SPEAKER_00: grace is talked about all over the place in the New Testament through Jesus himself
50:45
SPEAKER_00: and through his followers,
50:47
SPEAKER_00: Paul and whatever.
50:49
SPEAKER_00: But the way in which the...
50:52
SPEAKER_00: The way in which Jehovah deals with incredibly frustrating people is such a lesson
50:59
SPEAKER_00: in the grace and patience of God that it's still baffling to me.
51:04
SPEAKER_00: It's still very awe-inspiring.
51:08
SPEAKER_00: It should leave us kind of dumbstruck at the patience that God displays throughout us.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: swathes of history of people ignoring his petition,
51:20
SPEAKER_00: his longing for people to just stop their rebellious hitchhike and just turn around
51:28
SPEAKER_00: and realize,
51:29
SPEAKER_00: hey,
51:29
SPEAKER_00: this God of unmerited favor is just waiting to embrace them.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: What a reality,
51:35
SPEAKER_00: what a truth,
51:37
SPEAKER_00: which is just say the gospel,
51:38
SPEAKER_00: or I should say the Old Testament is full of the gospel.
51:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:44
SPEAKER_01: If the God of the Bible were actually like the detractors describe him,
51:50
SPEAKER_01: you know,
51:50
SPEAKER_01: bloodthirsty,
51:51
SPEAKER_01: hard-hearted,
51:52
SPEAKER_01: mean,
51:53
SPEAKER_01: always just kind of out to kill everybody.
51:56
SPEAKER_01: If the God of the Old Testament were like that, the Old Testament would be three chapters long.
52:01
SPEAKER_01: It would end at Genesis 3.
52:03
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
52:04
SPEAKER_01: At most, it would end at Genesis...
52:07
SPEAKER_01: And at the very most, it would end at Exodus 32 with a whole golden calf episode.
52:14
SPEAKER_01: So the very fact that you have more than that in the Bible is testimony to the fact
52:21
SPEAKER_01: that God is truly how he describes himself.
52:25
SPEAKER_01: good and gracious and long-suffering, patient.
52:30
SPEAKER_01: As the Hebrew quite graphically describes him, long of nose, which is the idiom for he's long-suffering.
52:38
SPEAKER_01: He's always looking for ways in which he can forgive, can be gracious, can put up with his people.
52:46
SPEAKER_01: Even through the prophets, one of the phrases that I love, this doesn't always come out in translation,
52:51
SPEAKER_01: but it will say something like, you know, God continually sent prophets to them.
52:56
SPEAKER_01: But the Hebrew idiom there is he arose early in the morning and sent a prophet to them.
53:03
SPEAKER_01: It's always pictured God,
53:05
SPEAKER_01: he rolls out of bed,
53:06
SPEAKER_01: has a cup of coffee,
53:07
SPEAKER_01: he's like,
53:08
SPEAKER_01: well,
53:08
SPEAKER_01: looks like it's about time to send another prophet to those people,
53:11
SPEAKER_01: see if they'll repent this time.
53:15
SPEAKER_01: So that's the picture of God
53:17
SPEAKER_01: Being long-suffering, he's patient.
53:20
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't want anyone to perish, but all to come to repentance, faith, knowledge of the truth.
53:29
SPEAKER_01: So the caricature of God as just a mean, smiting deity is just that.
53:37
SPEAKER_01: It's a caricature.
53:39
SPEAKER_01: It simply doesn't live up to the facts that we have from Genesis through Malachi.
53:43
SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't hold water.
53:45
SPEAKER_00: And it's helpful to remember that just in terms of when you're seeing all of these
53:50
SPEAKER_00: stories unfold,
53:51
SPEAKER_00: you're actually seeing the story of grace unfold,
53:54
SPEAKER_00: which of course culminates in Christ.
53:57
SPEAKER_00: So for someone who is...
54:01
SPEAKER_00: Looking to engage in this discipline of biblical theology,
54:05
SPEAKER_00: which is this notion I would describe as keeping this grand story of the Bible
54:12
SPEAKER_00: always in view.
54:12
SPEAKER_00: It's like these glasses of, hey, all of this points to Jesus.
54:16
SPEAKER_00: That's how we're kind of.
54:17
SPEAKER_00: reading the scriptures.
54:19
SPEAKER_00: I would say you and I have talked about before Luke 24,
54:22
SPEAKER_00: start there,
54:22
SPEAKER_00: start with Emmaus,
54:23
SPEAKER_00: uh,
54:24
SPEAKER_00: the Emmaus road event,
54:25
SPEAKER_00: if you will.
54:26
SPEAKER_00: Um,
54:26
SPEAKER_00: and I would say other than,
54:28
SPEAKER_00: other than buying your book,
54:29
SPEAKER_00: hitchhiking with prophets,
54:30
SPEAKER_00: where,
54:31
SPEAKER_00: where should someone go if they want to understand,
54:34
SPEAKER_00: Hey,
54:34
SPEAKER_00: what does it mean actually to,
54:36
SPEAKER_00: that all of these stories point to Jesus?
54:38
SPEAKER_00: Because that's something that we can say.
54:39
SPEAKER_00: That's something that kind of rolls off our tongue.
54:42
SPEAKER_00: Hey, all this points to Jesus.
54:44
SPEAKER_00: How would you help someone understand and to know what that actually means?
54:49
SPEAKER_00: Like if they're getting into the weeds of some pretty dark or strange biblical text in the Old Testament.
54:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
54:58
SPEAKER_01: I think it's important to kind of step back from the text,
55:02
SPEAKER_01: look at the text very closely in detail for sure,
55:04
SPEAKER_01: see what's there,
55:06
SPEAKER_01: but then step back from that individual story.
55:09
SPEAKER_01: And so look from the trees to the forest and say, okay, I'm looking at the flood account, let's say.
55:16
SPEAKER_01: So what is it about?
55:17
SPEAKER_01: Well, obviously it's about wickedness in the world.
55:19
SPEAKER_01: It's about God showing grace to Noah and his family.
55:23
SPEAKER_01: He builds the ark.
55:24
SPEAKER_01: The flood comes.
55:25
SPEAKER_01: Eight people are preserved.
55:27
SPEAKER_01: The waters recede.
55:28
SPEAKER_01: Noah and his family and the animals get off the ark.
55:30
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
55:31
SPEAKER_01: So if I step back from that,
55:33
SPEAKER_01: those trees to see the forest,
55:36
SPEAKER_01: how am I going to read this from a Christological perspective?
55:39
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: Well,
55:40
SPEAKER_01: one thing that you can always ask yourself is,
55:42
SPEAKER_01: okay,
55:44
SPEAKER_01: what themes do I see represented in this particular narrative?
55:48
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't have to be that narrative, but any narrative.
55:50
SPEAKER_01: Well, you certainly see what's wrong, right?
55:53
SPEAKER_01: What's wrong is people have rebelled against God.
55:56
SPEAKER_01: So that's a universal theme.
55:58
SPEAKER_01: And that universal theme continues to also document what's happening in the world
56:04
SPEAKER_01: today and in our individual lives.
56:05
SPEAKER_01: So there's sin in the world.
56:06
SPEAKER_01: There's rebellion in the world.
56:07
SPEAKER_01: Well, how does God deal with it?
56:09
SPEAKER_01: Well, he deals with it by means of judgment, but he also deals with it by means of gracious salvation.
56:16
SPEAKER_01: There's two more themes.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: There is a punishment.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: There is a just punishment that comes upon those who rebelled against him, and that is death.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: Paul, in fact, will summarize it quite adequately in Romans.
56:28
SPEAKER_01: The wages of sin, or Ephesians, the wages of sin is death.
56:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that's what happens.
56:34
SPEAKER_01: That's another theme.
56:35
SPEAKER_01: But corresponding to that is also this theme of God providing a means of rescue.
56:40
SPEAKER_01: God providing a means of gracious redemption to those who have faith in him.
56:45
SPEAKER_01: And that's what happens with Noah and his family.
56:47
SPEAKER_01: That's what happens still with us today.
56:49
SPEAKER_01: We're caught in this web of sin and evil and rebellion.
56:54
SPEAKER_01: And there is going to be a judgment,
56:56
SPEAKER_01: but God provides another way,
56:58
SPEAKER_01: and that is by faith in his gracious redemption of us in Christ.
57:03
SPEAKER_01: And the result of that is that we are preserved.
57:05
SPEAKER_01: The result of that is that God takes care of us and rescues us from this judgment,
57:11
SPEAKER_01: so we pass from death to life.
57:13
SPEAKER_01: So you're taking Genesis six through nine and you're you're studying it in its context,
57:18
SPEAKER_01: but you're also stepping back from that to say,
57:19
SPEAKER_01: OK,
57:20
SPEAKER_01: what are the big themes that emerge from this story and how do they relate to the
57:25
SPEAKER_01: work of Christ?
57:26
SPEAKER_01: And you could do that with story after story in the Old Testament.
57:30
SPEAKER_01: You know, it was Psalm after Psalm in the Old Testament as well.
57:33
SPEAKER_01: So you look at it in detail.
57:36
SPEAKER_01: So you see what's there and then step back and say, OK,
57:40
SPEAKER_01: What are the the big motifs, themes, lessons that we can draw from this?
57:47
SPEAKER_01: And how do those then connect with who I am, who God is, what Christ has accomplished for me?
57:55
SPEAKER_01: When you're doing that with every single thing you read in the Old Testament,
57:59
SPEAKER_01: then,
58:00
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
58:01
SPEAKER_01: it takes a while to kind of grow skilled at this and to see what's there.
58:07
SPEAKER_01: But that will come.
58:08
SPEAKER_01: If you're asking the right questions,
58:11
SPEAKER_01: that already puts you 10 steps ahead of people who are asking the wrong question.
58:15
SPEAKER_01: So if I read the story of the flood and say, what does this teach me about morality?
58:20
SPEAKER_01: And stop there.
58:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm way behind the person who says, what does this teach me about Christ?
58:26
SPEAKER_01: Because if you're looking for that kind of answer,
58:29
SPEAKER_01: then you're going to see it much sooner than someone who is just myopically looking
58:34
SPEAKER_01: at morality.
58:35
SPEAKER_01: And that's the end of the story.
58:38
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's one way that you can approach this.
58:39
SPEAKER_01: And of course, another way is you can simply say, okay, flood story.
58:44
SPEAKER_01: How does the New Testament talk about this?
58:46
SPEAKER_01: And you can look up New Testament passages where Jesus,
58:48
SPEAKER_01: for instance,
58:49
SPEAKER_01: compares the second coming to the flood.
58:52
SPEAKER_01: And you say,
58:52
SPEAKER_01: oh,
58:52
SPEAKER_01: well,
58:52
SPEAKER_01: this picture,
58:53
SPEAKER_01: this flood must be a picture in the past of the judgment that is to come in the future.
58:59
SPEAKER_01: Or you can talk about how Peter uses the flood story,
59:02
SPEAKER_01: talk about how God saved his people through water,
59:05
SPEAKER_01: talk about baptism.
59:07
SPEAKER_01: Uh,
59:07
SPEAKER_01: you can,
59:08
SPEAKER_01: you can look at even Isaiah uses Noah as an illustration of faith in Isaiah 54,
59:14
SPEAKER_01: I believe it is.
59:15
SPEAKER_01: So you can also kind of cross references other parts of the Bible so that each
59:21
SPEAKER_01: scripture informs the other scriptures and you kind of get a bigger view of what
59:25
SPEAKER_01: God is teaching us through,
59:27
SPEAKER_01: through these passages.
59:28
SPEAKER_01: So I mean,
59:28
SPEAKER_01: that's just a couple of examples of what you can do to,
59:31
SPEAKER_01: to put you on the road toward a Christological understanding of the old Testament.
59:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's so helpful.
59:36
SPEAKER_00: And the flood story is a great one to sort of use as an example.
59:40
SPEAKER_00: But as you mentioned,
59:42
SPEAKER_00: that sort of paradigm,
59:44
SPEAKER_00: you can just kind of overlay almost every Old Testament passage,
59:47
SPEAKER_00: I would say every Old Testament passage.
59:49
SPEAKER_00: And it's helpful to understand, as you mentioned, themes.
59:52
SPEAKER_00: I've often tried to describe it as if
59:54
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we're getting a positive representation of what Christ would come to be
1:00:00
SPEAKER_00: the true and better version of.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_00: So it's almost like this embossing of Christ where out of the text comes this
1:00:08
SPEAKER_00: really positive example of something that Christ would accomplish.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is going to do it even better, even more perfect.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_00: Other times,
1:00:17
SPEAKER_00: so a positive example I would say is Abigail from 1 Samuel chapter 25,
1:00:23
SPEAKER_00: who,
1:00:24
SPEAKER_00: when her husband is being so foolish to where David wants to kill him,
1:00:29
SPEAKER_00: she steps in and says,
1:00:30
SPEAKER_00: hey,
1:00:30
SPEAKER_00: let the guilt be on me.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_00: She quite literally takes all of the blame for her husband's foolishness, which you could apply.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_00: This is exactly what Christ does.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_00: The language is so beautiful there.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_00: That's a positive.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_00: A negative example is when someone does something really dumb and really foolish or
1:00:48
SPEAKER_00: really violent and really wicked.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_00: So a great example of that is Genesis 34.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_00: There's injustice all around.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_00: There's reprehensible actions.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_00: Everyone's to blame.
1:01:01
SPEAKER_00: There's sin just oozing out of that text.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_00: This is a negative example of human actions that makes us cry out for sin.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_00: a need for someone like Christ,
1:01:12
SPEAKER_00: one who would come and be the perfect example of grace and truth,
1:01:16
SPEAKER_00: of true mercy and true justice.
1:01:18
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a really helpful way,
1:01:21
SPEAKER_00: like this positive embossing or this negative engraving of looking for examples of
1:01:28
SPEAKER_00: how Christ is alluded to,
1:01:31
SPEAKER_00: because he appears in both ways,
1:01:33
SPEAKER_00: I would say.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a great way of looking at positive and negative narratives like that.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_01: And we could go on with this.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'll just point out one more thing.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_01: Look for patterns.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_01: So this quote is attributed to Mark Twain as we attribute all unknown quotes to Mark Twain.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_01: But the quote is, history doesn't rhyme.
1:01:59
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm going to mess it up.
1:02:02
SPEAKER_01: History doesn't rhyme, but it, oh my goodness.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_01: I've used this quote probably 15 times, and now I'm unable to remember the rest of it.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_01: But this idea that history doesn't necessarily, oh, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_01: That's what it is.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm getting it backwards.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_01: So history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
1:02:23
SPEAKER_01: What that means is that,
1:02:25
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
1:02:25
SPEAKER_01: you can have something happening in Exodus that's very similar to something that
1:02:29
SPEAKER_01: happened in Genesis.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_01: It's not the same thing, it's not a repeat of history, but it does rhyme.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_01: And this rhythm, this patterning of history,
1:02:39
SPEAKER_01: is something that really does start in Genesis.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_01: For instance, God choosing the younger over the older.
1:02:47
SPEAKER_01: Or God taking a woman whose womb is barren and making her wait until finally he
1:02:53
SPEAKER_01: fills that womb with usually a chosen child of some sort.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_01: or exile and return,
1:03:01
SPEAKER_01: you can look at these these patterned way in which God is shaping history and then
1:03:07
SPEAKER_01: say to yourself,
1:03:08
SPEAKER_01: OK,
1:03:08
SPEAKER_01: well,
1:03:09
SPEAKER_01: what's the culmination of these patterns?
1:03:11
SPEAKER_01: How do we see this leading to Christ?
1:03:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, you've got, first of all, him choosing not the first Adam, but the last Adam, right?
1:03:20
SPEAKER_01: If you think in terms of him choosing the younger of the older,
1:03:23
SPEAKER_01: he's the last Adam,
1:03:24
SPEAKER_01: not the first Adam that is chosen.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_01: and all of these barren wombs of old usually of older women is setting the pattern
1:03:32
SPEAKER_01: finally for the birth of john the baptist and then kind of the flip side of that
1:03:36
SPEAKER_01: where you have a womb that should certainly not have a child in it because she's a
1:03:40
SPEAKER_01: virgin
1:03:42
SPEAKER_01: And yet that womb is filled with a virgin.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, exile and return.
1:03:47
SPEAKER_01: What's the ultimate exile?
1:03:49
SPEAKER_01: The ultimate exile is into the faraway land of death itself,
1:03:53
SPEAKER_01: which is where Christ goes for us on the cross.
1:03:55
SPEAKER_01: And then when he returns from exile,
1:03:58
SPEAKER_01: he returns to bring all the lost children of the Father home to himself.
1:04:04
SPEAKER_01: So that's another way that you can approach the Old Testament.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_01: saying to yourself, okay, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_01: So what are the rhythmic patterns of history that I can begin to discern in these stories?
1:04:15
SPEAKER_01: And then what's finally the end, the goal of these stories?
1:04:20
SPEAKER_01: And you see that in the New Testament, especially the Gospels.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
1:04:24
SPEAKER_00: and that rhyming of the Old Testament with not only other places of the Old
1:04:31
SPEAKER_00: Testament itself,
1:04:31
SPEAKER_00: but with the New Testament,
1:04:33
SPEAKER_00: again,
1:04:33
SPEAKER_00: like you said,
1:04:33
SPEAKER_00: it just so amazingly and perfectly kind of just unfolds until we are left with
1:04:39
SPEAKER_00: nothing but Christ.
1:04:40
SPEAKER_00: But then also, too, I think it's kind of that reality where, you know, when you buy a new car,
1:04:48
SPEAKER_00: You always tend to see that car on the road for some reason.
1:04:52
SPEAKER_00: I know there's like a psychological phenomenon for that.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_00: But like you suddenly start noticing, hey, everyone has this car.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_00: And that's a silly way of just saying if you're looking for Christ,
1:05:01
SPEAKER_00: you're probably going to be shown Christ.
1:05:04
SPEAKER_00: Christ when you're reading an Old Testament passage.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_00: So that's just to say, start right there with what Jesus says in Luke 24.
1:05:13
SPEAKER_00: All of these things concern him.
1:05:15
SPEAKER_00: So let's just go into it with that frame of mind, right?
1:05:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's funny you mentioned that as an example.
1:05:23
SPEAKER_01: My wife and I were just talking about that the other day.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_01: You see,
1:05:28
SPEAKER_01: we bought a Honda CR-V a few years ago,
1:05:31
SPEAKER_01: and all of a sudden,
1:05:32
SPEAKER_01: everybody has Honda CR-Vs.
1:05:34
SPEAKER_01: Many of them are the same color as our Honda CR-V,
1:05:37
SPEAKER_00: too.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, you see kind of what you're looking for.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_01: And Christ has told us what to look for.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_01: Him.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_01: So if our eyes are open to that promise of Christ,
1:05:51
SPEAKER_01: then we're much more likely to be able to actually see what's there instead of
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: being blinded by other kinds of expectations or assumptions as to what's going to
1:06:01
SPEAKER_01: be in the text.
1:06:03
SPEAKER_00: Very good.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_00: Anything else you're working on right now, Chad?
1:06:05
SPEAKER_00: Anything that's coming down the pike for you?
1:06:09
SPEAKER_01: Oh, a couple things.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_01: So it won't be out until next fall, but I have finished a book on the Psalms.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be a daily devotional on the Psalms,
1:06:17
SPEAKER_01: but that won't come out,
1:06:19
SPEAKER_01: I think,
1:06:20
SPEAKER_01: probably October of next year,
1:06:22
SPEAKER_01: since it's a devotional.
1:06:23
SPEAKER_01: We'll push that to the end of the year.
1:06:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm getting ready to teach a class that actually corresponds with some of the
1:06:29
SPEAKER_01: things we're talking about today that's going to be...
1:06:31
SPEAKER_01: We don't have a title for it yet, but it's basically kind of Biblical Interpretation 101.
1:06:34
SPEAKER_01: So designed for people who are interested in being a bit more serious about their biblical study.
1:06:42
SPEAKER_01: And so if any listeners are familiar with the term hermeneutics,
1:06:46
SPEAKER_01: which is just the art of biblical interpretation,
1:06:49
SPEAKER_01: it's going to be designed for people to learn more about how to interpret the Bible.
1:06:53
SPEAKER_01: So I'll be recording that class for 1517 Academy tomorrow.
1:06:57
SPEAKER_01: probably in December.
1:06:58
SPEAKER_01: So hopefully that will be out this next year as well.
1:07:00
SPEAKER_01: So those are two of the projects that I've been working on.
1:07:03
SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
1:07:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks, Chad.
1:07:05
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate your time today.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_00: You bet.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_00: Enjoyed it.
1:07:07
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Brad.
1:07:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks so much for listening.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for Chad for joining me on this particular episode of the Ministry Minded Podcast.
1:07:14
SPEAKER_00: I hope you've been blessed.
1:07:16
SPEAKER_00: Please subscribe to the Ministry Minded Podcast on Apple,
1:07:19
SPEAKER_00: Spotify,
1:07:20
SPEAKER_00: or on Substack,
1:07:21
SPEAKER_00: wherever you get your podcasts.
1:07:23
SPEAKER_00: Make sure to check out the notes.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_00: There's lots of links to peruse,
1:07:27
SPEAKER_00: but also resources for you to perhaps begin or to further your journey to becoming
1:07:34
SPEAKER_00: a sound and faithful biblical theologian.
1:07:37
SPEAKER_00: And make sure to pick up Chad's book, Hitchhiking with Prophets.
1:07:41
SPEAKER_00: The link is in the notes below this episode, so make sure you do that.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_00: As always, I appreciate all of your encouragement, your support.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening and subscribing.
1:07:51
SPEAKER_00: I'll see you on the next episode, hopefully soon.
1:07:54
SPEAKER_00: Blessings.