Can a Good God Command Conquest? | Episode 13

Check out this week's Year Through the Bible podcast episode.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I want to encourage our people to learn and love the Old Testament. Because the psalmists, they love the law. And this is God's word to us. So a Christian needs to know them and study them and learn them. But follow them is not the right question. We follow Jesus and then look how he sees them.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Year Through the Bible podcast. My name is Rodney Adams. I'm the executive director at Asbury Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

I'm Andrew Forrest. I'm the senior pastor here, and it's the Year Through the Bible, and we're into uh Deuteronomy. It's hard to believe.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

It is hard to believe. Um we're almost into the month of April, but we're still in the very beginning, sort of part of the Bible. But we've been we've been at this a while. A lot has happened. Um, we're gonna work through some stuff that's in Deuteronomy today, but I want to take this opportunity before we get started to remind everybody that if you go to year thudheble.com, you can find resources and just different ways to kind of help you keep going. But also, you can ask questions. There's a place on there where you can submit your questions to us. We may get to it on this uh show or on this platform. Um, because of the volume of questions that we receive, we probably won't get to all of them, but we'll get to one or two. And there's usually themes. So there's usually a lot of you are usually asking similar questions because when we're all reading the same thing, a lot of the same sort of uh issues pop up. Um so I want to start this week with a question that I think will help us get into some things that you have been wanting to talk about in Deuteronomy. So here's a question that a fair number of you, dear listener, uh have asked. This one is from Cheryl. Should we be concerned at the brutality God instructs his people to render against the peoples, tribes, and kings that seem to stand in the way of the Israelites entering the promised land in the early chapters of Deuteronomy? And she goes on just to say that there just seems to be a lot of collateral damage. It just seems very um, and maybe I'll put words into Cheryl's mouth because a lot of our folks have asked in this way, that just doesn't seem like something that a loving God would do.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

The God that we tell everybody in church on Sunday morning is one way, doesn't seem to jive with what we know about God or read about God in the Old Testament. But I know you have some thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Yeah, I do. And um so I don't like it when I read biblical interpreters or see videos in which people explain away the text according to their prior commitments. I think that just lacks in the front thing, it's just uninteresting to me. So I don't want to do that. So so going back to the Genesis one, I don't think that Genesis one necessarily or even wants you to think it's talking about 24-hour periods over a six-day period. I don't think Genesis one, the text is saying that. And I don't bring, I don't bring, well, this is what I read in my science book to that text. I'm saying reading the text, all kinds of other stuff, including the fit. Yeah, we don't need to go into that now. Okay. So it re I want to reject any kind of like like like framework we're applying to the scripture. Well, from this perspective, this or that. I don't want to do that. So I don't want to do that with this issue of like the conquest of Canaan. But I've been reading some and learning from some interesting people about it. And we're gonna just give you a little sample of some of this stuff. So the basically the idea is, well, how is it right for them to come in and kill all these people? It seems seems wrong. Now, one thing that's really important to think about is who the Bible was originally for and who's it's used for now or has been. So the Bible is originally for a cultural minority oppressed by foreign oppressors, trying to keep their faith alive. So we think the Old Testament comes from the period of the exile or after the exile. In other words, the Old Testament is put together when they find themselves taken out of the land, which makes complete sense. We talked about this, I think, last week. Was it last week?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Yeah. And then they come back to the.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Yeah, and then maybe when they come back to the land, finally, you know, Ezra and Nehemiah stuff, it's kind of it all comes together. Okay. So this is a culture, this is a small, beleaguered people who, aside from a really brief period when the Maccabees free them from some Greek uh uh overlords, they're always oppressed. And at the time of Jesus, they're under the threat of Rome or Herod. So that's also very different from Nazis roll rolling into Poland. It's just not the same cultural context. That's kind of a buzzword, but it actually does matter. Where you're reading these things from really affects it. So I just so we gotta let that go, first of all. It's not from my triumphant people, it's from a believered cultural minority, number one. Number two, let's look.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Um actually, let's start at numbers 13. Well, is it also helpful? Can I add a number two to what the Bible actually is? If you if you think that it is a compilation of moral teachings, which we've talked about on here. Right, right. Then you're gonna have a hard time dealing with the vast majority of the Bible. Yeah. You go, how is that good? Well, the answer is it isn't. It's not.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

David was actually wrong.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

And it wasn't trying to tell you that it was good.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit more complicated at the conquest because it seemed like God's telling him to go on in and take this stuff. Okay. So let's go back to Numbers 13. Okay. Uh this is the spy part, Numbers 13, 25. They returned from spying out the land, and everybody gathers. And they said the spies say, verse 27, Numbers 13, 27, it's the land that flows with milk and honey. It's awesome. However, the people there are really strong, and their cities are strong and large. And then the Anakim are there. Ooh. And the Amalekites dwell there, and then all these peoples. And then Caleb says, verse 30, we can do it. And then the other guys go, We can't do it. Verse 32, they bring a bad report. Here's what they say The land through which we have gone to spy it out is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. They're giants. And there we saw the Nephilim. That's the sons of Anak. Remember the Anakim? That's who they are. And they come from the Nephilim. And we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers. Okay. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna look at the logic of the text itself. So we're gonna have to go back to Genesis 6, which we didn't really talk that much about. Here's what happens in Genesis 6. Very, very bizarre passage, but actually really important. The Nephilim. Weird, weird, weird, weird. Genesis 6, 6.1. When man began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God, the sons of Elohim, which means spiritual beings. It means every time it's used in the Old Testament means spiritual beings. So that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives, and they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide forever. For man is flesh, he sh his day should be 120 years. There's a couple of ways to interpret that, but the way that makes the most sense is this will only be allowed to go on for 120 years, and the flood's gonna come. It doesn't mean their age, it means 120 years clock is ticking. That makes way more sense with the whole logic of the text. Okay, and then here we go, verse 4. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days. All right. And also afterwards, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them, they were they these were the mighty men who are of old, the men of renown. Okay, there's a million things happening there, but the main point is that there seems to be a breaking of the boundary between heaven and earth. And just as the people, remember in Genesis 3, the snake says you'll become like spiritual beings, they try to go up. Here you have this, these rebellious spiritual beings coming down. And there's a weird thing happens. And the descendants of this mixture of this demonic evil is like evil people, evil men who found these other um kingdoms. Why does this matter? Because the Israelites saw the rival kingdoms being in league with demonic evil. They see demonic evil being a being a have a role in the affairs of men. Okay, let's just pause there. We're all uncomfortable with that. That's really strange. Except when you look at actual reality, how can you describe national socialism without thinking, what were they doing? I understand anti-Semitism. I that you pick a scapegoat, you want to hate the Jews. And I understand wanting to steal other people's land. Uh, in the sense of like, I get makes logical sense or something. But why like why the death camps? Yeah. Why? Why is that necessary? Why do you like why why the extermination? Why the fixation on the Jewish people and all that? It's crazy, right? Well, it seems like it's demonic. The the the Rwandan genocide, what's going on there? It seems like we can give ourselves in league to evil, which goes back to Cain. God says, let's turn it to Genesis 4. Actually, let's go back again. Genesis 3. Sorry, we're going further and further back. Here we go. Remember, after the serpent, the Lord says, this is Genesis 3.14, because you have done this, you're cursed above all livestock, and over the beasts, you're going to be on your belly, you're going to eat dust. Here's the famous passage. 3.15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. So there will be like descendants of the woman, and then there'll be dis like evil descendants of the snake, snake creature. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. That's the messianic prophecy. But God is saying you're going to have offspring, so to speak. And then the very first thing that happens in verse chapter 4 with Cain and Abel, God warns Cain and he says this won't you be accepted? This is 4-7. If you don't do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, must master it. So it's like the first descendant of the snake is Cain. And he's like giving it, and in other words, it's not a biological descent for Cain, but Cain is acting like an animal, not like a man. He's allowing sin to and then you see it gets worse. His his grandson Lamech and kills people and all this bad stuff happens.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Man, I never really thought about. I've just never actually thought about how God delineates offspring from humanity, or the woman, and offspring from evil, basically. Or or these demonic forces or this, whatever this is. I've never oh my gosh. Like I've never actually paid attention to the fact that there's two offspring here. I just you are you kind of you kind of leap to you leap way past to the practical nature of that. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

So there'll be snake-like people and for lack of a better term, godlike people from now on. And we're gonna get there, and the truth is in the same heart, often of the same person, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:13

So Jacob. One they calls the devil the father of lies. Right. Which probably isn't. I don't know if it's directly related to this, but now I'm just like, my mind's going crazy of all the ways that I've seen this and never really.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

So Jacob, what's Jacob mean? The grasper, the one who grabs by the heel. He's the snake. Jacob is a snake. We talked about this. He's a he's a conniver. He's a so you have the grandson of Abraham is already a snake, snake guy, he's a snake guy, and and God has to beat it out of him at the river Jabbek. Okay. So from the very beginning, you have this tension. And so with Cain and his descendants, and by the way, the evil gets worse and worse and worse and worse. Now, what the ancient Jews would have understood in Genesis 6 is that part of the reason the world is the way it is is because there's been spiritual rebellion among spiritual beings, as there have been around the human beings, and they mirror each other. If the human creatures want to become like God, and that requires them to, and that leads them to mistrust God, what we call the fall, the spiritual beings that somehow also want to undermine God's plan and they want to kind of mix with humans in a weird way, right? I'm not asking people to like uh accept it all. I'm just trying to get them to understand the logic of it.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Yeah. Right? Which is really interesting too. And I I don't think we wanted to camp out in Genesis today, but um again, I've read this a bunch, you have talked about this, we've talked about it publicly. But the fact that these spiritual beings found human women attractive is really interesting because we don't think about um, I think of Psalm 8. So, like you have um you have made us a little bit lower than the than the spiritual beings or the heavenly beings, but but um given us all glory and honor. Like, like somehow we're lower in maybe like capability in a way, but but have the glory and honor of being made in the image of God, and these spiritual beings found these women attractive. You just don't think of things like that. It's really interesting.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Okay. All right, let's let's go on a big time tangent. That's the point of a podcast so you can go everywhere. Here is my theory, okay? This is totally my theory. From the very beginning, humanity is created in the image of God, and the incarnation was always the plan. The the word is always going to become flesh, even without the fall. It's God's glory. And you get glimpses of this in the Old Testament, and you get glimpses of this in Daniel 7, where this the ancient of days has a chair next to him and one like the Son of Man comes up, okay? All that. I think, and humans are made of dirt, we're dirt people. That's what Adam means are made out of the dirt and the clay, right? And we know that the our bodies are mainly these basic elements, but we have life given to us. This is a deep mystery of like the heavenly thing and the earthly thing fused together. I wonder if one of them what spurred on some of these spiritual beings to rebel is they thought it was distasteful for God to take spiritual reality and encase it in an incarnational flesh. And that and you can almost I'm I'm guys, I'm playing this out so far here. Please, I'm just being creative. I'm thinking. You can see, so Judas betrays Jesus ultimately, it says, because he's mad because Judas he doesn't like how Jesus is using the money, right? It's like you're wasting money. That's it, that's the last straw. You won't do this, you won't do that. It's almost like Judas wants Jesus to be more of a Messiah than Jesus is, right? And that provokes Judas to betrayal. I wonder if the spiritual beings do the same thing. God, how can you allow the human creature to be filled with your glory? How could you have the incarnation? And they're angry about it, which would make sense of the rebellion in Genesis 6. Well, we're gonna now try to participate in it or whatever. Yeah. And all along, that's what's happening, all the way leading up to the incarnation in Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Yeah. Well, and also you could see how um, let's just say the spiritual beings were there first. They seem to have been the sons of man, uh-huh. Um, or the sons of God. And then God creates a thing that is made a little lower than them, but crowned with all glory and honor. How how how let's just say frustrating or how how incensed you would be. You're doing what? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

With these people, they have to cut their fingernails, they have to sleep every night, they got to eat food? You're using them. And you can see how the the loyal spiritual beings would be in awe of it and want to be a part of it and thank you. They want to teach and protect and guide. And you can see the rebellious ones get angry and want to corrupt and destroy. So from the very beginning, God says there's gonna be basically two lines of people, the snake ones and the ones that actually step into the image, who actually fulfill the purpose.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

And as we shall see, it uh the lines actually get messed up and they get all mixed up together.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

So I want to say so, you just said something that I think I want to touch on real quick, but then I think it will get us back to where we where we need to go. I can't remember what you just said, but you were talking about you almost like alluded to this common thought or underlying pattern of thinking where where God made everything perfect and then we messed it up. You thought it was always gonna like the plan was always to fill out. Yeah, the incarnation.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

And I think that comes back to I think there has been a lot of um earnest, um, earnest, good teaching and earnest, but maybe wrong or partially wrong teaching. It kind of comes back to what good means. When God when God starts making things in creation and calls them good, um there tends to be this tendency in evangelical teaching that it was perfect and then we messed it up. But that immediately causes an apologetic nightmare because because well then how what it couldn't have been perfect if if but but I think got what God is saying is like it's it's good in the way that a ship is good and ready to set sail. Now the crew is gonna get better along the way, and they're gonna continue to to to mend things and repair things, and to, and when the crew gets back from their journey, the ship and its crew is gonna be more seasoned and better, but and it and will have evolved beyond where they were when they started. But the captain is looking at the ship when they get ready to set sail and they said, We're good. Yeah, we're ready, like we're ready to set sail. I wonder if it's more like that in the beginning, like where God says it's good, meaning like we're ready to go. It's the way I wanted it, but the way he wanted it is the is where we're going. Not like everything's perfect, I'm gonna go over here. And somehow God actually something happened that God wasn't expecting. Right. And I think that's wrong.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Well, yeah, I mean, I think, right, we don't want to go too far down this, but there seems to be the idea from the beginning is God wants people to do things and he wants to do things with people, and creation is meant to go somewhere. It's not, that's the whole point of the creation mandate. Be fruitful and multiply. That implies that it's not um its future has not been realized yet, but all the elements are there for it. And then unfortunately, what happens, the people mistrust the plan. Because that that'd be the whole thing, going back to the tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil seems to be there so that they will actually learn from it, but at God's instruction. And if someone who takes it into his own hands to learn it at his own time is already undermining the plan because they will they know better than God, which is exactly what the snake promises them they'll do. Exactly. Right? And by the way, this Genesis 6 thing explains a little bit more where the snake comes from. It's like there's already a rebellious spiritual creature who's trying to undermine God's plan for his human re realities. Okay, so all this to say, there seems to be, according to the Bible, this thing where people can give themselves over to spiritual evil and participate in it. So let's go back. Uh oh boy, there's so many interesting things we can go here, but uh when they go into the land, they go, it's like those spiritual descendants, like the bad people are there in the land. What are we gonna do? Numbers 13. The Nephilim were there. And you want to go, weren't the Nephilim all erased with the flood, which is another issue we don't have time to go into. That's what I'm that I guess what I'm trying to raise here. One thing is these questions that the Bible wants you to be asking these questions because it's it's kind of setting you up for it. Okay. So what we have in the land are these people that are devoted over to evil and doing evil things. We know they do um forms of bestiality and human sacrifice in the land.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

All right. Now, here's Deuteronomy 7. Here's their weird verse. This is so strange. And I I I I have to admit, I've read this a million times, and I totally missed my brain skipped right over it. Here we go, Deuteronomy 7.1. Here we go. When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you. Here are the nations. There's seven of them Hittites, Gergesites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hevites, and Jebusites. They're all bigger than you. When the Lord God gives them over to you, you shall defeat them. And then you must devote them to complete destruction. It's the Hebrew word harem. They have to be devoted to destruction. Look at the next verse. Next line. Oh, and don't make any covenant with them. Oh, and don't intermarry with them. Why we can't intermarry well will lead you astray. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You see the problem? That begs the question. Right. Right. And I never I never noticed that before. Me either. I never noticed that before. In other words, just for a minute.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Can I try to get the question? Can I try to get the right question? Yeah, yeah, go for it. Why would God need to tell you not to intermarry with them if you've already destroyed them all and none of them exist anymore? Correct.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

It doesn't make any sense. Okay, now we are not going to do this on this podcast. But uh the Bible project has some stuff on this. Um, and Michael Heiser has some good stuff on this, but there's a guy named Gavin Ortland who's only on YouTube. He has an entire video, it's like over an hour long, about the issue of the conquest of Canaan, and he goes through it extensively. It's really, really good. So basically, this idea of devotees them to complete destruction is rhetorical. It is rhetorical language. And we're not undermining the text of scripture where we say that because later, here's the example. There's millions of examples that he gives. It's really great. But one of them is when they're taken over by Babylon, it says that Israel was haremed by Babylon, devoted to destruction. But that obviously can't be true because they're carried off into exile. And Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Daniel, and these guys are all there. Um, uh the the point being that it's a rhetorical thing. Show no mercy, have no quarter, take care of the whole thing. By the way, the other thing that's happening here, remember in the Genesis 6, the spiritual evil causes a flood that cleans the land. We have the same language about the land being polluted by blood. The pe The Israelites are now a tool of like God's cosmic flood coming in and cleaning things out. Right? Tim Mackie helpfully pointed out that, and modern people may not like this, the Bible has no problem whatsoever with the idea that God is the author of life and he can give and take away. Period. We don't like that for reasons which we'll come to, but the Bible has no problem with that. You, you uh, you you do evil, and that's what happens. So here's my little tiny example. God forbid. God forbid a bad guy comes into a uh a school or a church wanting to do harm. None of us today have any problem if the police officers kill that man. We don't have any problem with that. We might mourn the loss of a life, but we think, well, you lived that way, and God is taking care of it. We would we would say that, you know, at elementary school. Forgive me for giving such an awful example. That's kind of what's going on here. It's like the people are the judges justice of God. Now, uh uh this same thing happens in Joshua, which we're gonna see about what they have to do with them all. Now, why the language? Remember, because the language teaches you can't um have uh relationship with evil. It's Jesus cut off your hand, thus it causes you to sin. I think that's what's going on. When you go into the land, you gotta do it. So, and what ends up happening in Joshua is a couple of times they actually kind of hold back booty for themselves, and that gets them in trouble. Because why? Because they actually kind of wanna, they actually kind of want to have some commerce with the people there.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

And I think the Moses is saying, You none, none. You know what's really interesting? I've I've actually I'm literally just thinking of this for the first time as you're talking about it. For quite a while, I have known kind of your basic Bible fact that God told them not to intermarry with the Canaanite women or whatever, because and the general thinking is that um, because it's it's in here, that um that's because they will be more susceptible to kind of um um well ha you having their gods or something like that, right? Um but but what's really making me think now is because if these other peoples are intermingled with evil in the way that you just described, then they are surely um like smarter than the Israelite people in the sense that like like you're no match for them. Right? Yeah. It's not just that because one question you might have is well, why wouldn't it why how come why can't it be that the Israelites were so faithful that the Canaanites then wouldn't just become, you know, devoted to the one true God? Isn't that what they were supposed to be doing anyway? Is to to but but if all these other people groups that God is saying do not intermarry with are actually intermingled with evil with evil, with um with these Nephilim type evil, the the the mind of evil that was there before we were, so to speak, in creation. It's cunning, then the same mind of the serpent. Right, God knows then this is not going, you can't, you can't even go there. Right. You're not, you're you are no match for this. Yeah, it doesn't say that, but I just exactly this it's just what's making me think this time around, even more so than just um a male-female relationship. It's just more likely that the male is gonna want to fool around with her and so therefore follow her gods or whatever. It's way bigger than that.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Way bigger than that. No question. I think that's exactly what's happening. And the people, God is bringing justice in for whatever reason, the Canaanite people, so we have a lot of there's archaeological evidence about this human sacrifice, infant sacrifice, nasty stuff. Um, so I'm not saying that answers everybody's question, but it's very different. Now let's come to Jesus and our modern perspective. Okay, why should this bother you? This should bother you because it seems like people are just going to claim I'm just doing I'm God's messenger of justice and I'm gonna kill you because I don't like you. And can't we pervert that and twist that? And the answer is both yes and no. Yes, people have done that for time immemorial, and unfortunately, people claiming to be followers of Christ have done that. Secondly, you can't actually read the Bible and get there because Jesus clearly says the problem is within the human heart, which we see with Israel. They're not pure. That's the irony of the whole thing, that they themselves are often becoming like the snake. And Jesus himself uh makes that very clear. And so I'm not saying that people haven't twisted these Canaanite conquest passages to justify their own uh war and violence, but I am saying they are wrong when they do that. And Jesus, you know, dies and saves us from ourselves is kind of the idea. So there's a lot more. I would look those names I mentioned, particularly Gavin Ortland, has some really good stuff on this, really exhaustive. I mean, he goes by he goes, uh extra-biblical literature, biblical literature, showing how this is rhetorical language and this is why, and this is this and this is that. Like archaeological stuff is really good. I'd recommend that. Do you know his background? Do you know? Uh no, he's a Baptist guy. Yeah. And he does, he's a real sweet spirit online and he wants to kind of take hard questions. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen some of his videos. I like to get it here. I think he's awesome. So for me, that was really helpful. And it all comes from this verse, kill them all. Or it doesn't say kill them all, devote them to destruction. So when a thing is harem, it's given over to God, with the implication is given over to God by like not keeping it, therefore killing it. Well, how's that fair? Well, then it says, but don't, don't, don't, don't intermarry. Well, what? And I think that tension's there.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yeah, and I think just it's also helpful to just step back a little bit as we're reading this stuff and just examine the very practical nature of what God has been asking his people to do. He said to Abraham, Go to a land that I will show you. Well, did we really think there weren't going to be any people there? Right. Did we like, and did you really think in the ancient world that a people group is just going to show up to this land where there's already people living in it and say, hey, well, our God says we have to have this now, and everybody was just going to pack up and leave? Like, obviously, and they're also in concert with evil, but but God is God's movement works with the world we have, not the not the world we wish it were all along. And he says, Go to a land that I will show you. Well, yeah, there's gonna be people in it.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

Yes, you I like your phrase about the world as it is. Okay, let's play this thought experiment. So, what should God do? So everybody wants so the number one complaint is how can a good God permit this? Okay, all right. So, what's the alternative? What do you do? Uh it's like the old joke, the guy creates the time uh time machine and you and you're like, Yeah, I made a time machine. Okay, when are you gonna go back and kill Hitler? It's like, it's like as soon as you have the ability to fix something, we want them to fix it. So people are evil and they do evil to each other. So what do we do with that? What do we do to prevent the Rwandan genocide? We we put a sign up that says don't do it, or do we do something about that? How do we prevent that? What do we do next? And so we comp hold God accountable for not being a God of justice, but then when he actually visits justice, we think that that's also unfair, right? And so, but it shows the problem that God has, which is how does God work with human partners who are sinful? Yeah. What do you do?

SPEAKER_00 29:27

And the answer is the incarnation and the cross is ultimately the answer. And it's why God's narrative is still playing out. Right. It's why, it's why we um pray for the Lord Jesus to return again quickly, and also why He the fact that he hasn't yet returned is a mercy and an opportunity for us to repent. Um one thing that I was thinking about, this might help be helpful too for that. We're kind of talking to this fictitious but not fictitious Bible reader who is challenging some of the assumptions in the Bible. But almost certainly that that that the person that thinks like that either hasn't read the whole thing or hasn't read the whole thing enough. Because you just you you're you're you're making you're bringing assumptions that are not in the Bible to the to the conversation. So you gotta read the Bible and you gotta read the whole thing and you gotta read the whole thing as often as you can. Um and try to not bring your assumptions to the thing. And that kind of reminds me of so in Deuteronomy when Moses Moses spends a lot of time talking to um the next generation of Israelites, right? Presumably, um, not presumably, people who were not at the base of Mount Sinai all the time, right? Doesn't he doesn't he talk to a lot of folks or um who they weren't adults at the Mount Sinai for sure. Yeah, they weren't adults. Yeah, a lot of them were born, but some might have been little kids there. But they're kids. Yeah, and I'm gonna try to connect all this stuff here. You know how, like as an adult, you it's like you learn things about your own family that you would not have had the perspective of when you were growing up. So when you were five or seven, you thought that you moved from this town to that town for one reason, but then when you're 35, you realize it was for a different reason. You realize it wasn't because you just your parents wanted you to have new friends or because your dad wanted to get a new job or whatever it was. There's you you just you learn things about even your own life. And it's the way that Moses is talking to a lot of these um, we'll just call them younger Israelites, reminds me of that a little bit. It's almost like he does a lot of recounting of the story. Yeah. And almost as if, like, it's almost like a grandfather or an uncle sitting you down and retelling the story so that you see it in its full perspective. Because you may only have what if you were an Israelite and you only had your parents' perspective or your grandparents' perspective, and their perspective was that they were the ones who were mad all the time because why how come we had to come out here and we didn't have any water and all this stuff? It's almost like Moses is like, okay, let me tell you the story again. Let me tell you actually why we're here. Um I think that's been a really fascinating part of Deuteronomy because it just I see Moses as this like almost pastoral grandfather figure that is also helping, he's he's reframing the narrative for all these people who may have forgotten or were never told the right narrative. Um, that's how I feel when we talk about some of this Old Testament stuff with even modern Bible readers. Like there may be narratives about the Bible that we've gotten from somewhere else or even didn't have in the first place. And you have to, you, you need to go through it over and over again so that you're approaching it with the right frame of mind. And if you approach it from a Western murder is bad frame of mind, the question, well, how could God let these bad things happen? You're it's the wrong you're coming at it from the wrong angle. But anyways, I hope all that connects. I've just been really struck by Moses retelling the story of a lot of the stuff we've already read about to a generation who may or may not have been there, and if they were, they were children before they head into the promised land. He's kind of re-giving them the full narrative.

SPEAKER_02 33:10

Well, and okay, let's talk to this this Bible reader who reads some of this stuff and is really troubled by it. And let's let's give a let's let's think pastorally here. Um it's it's good, it's okay, maybe even good, to be troubled by these things because it shows you care and you're interested and you're paying attention. Um, but what you gotta do is you've got to keep reading and you've got to hold on to Jesus and the cross. At the cross, God Himself takes the pain of the world. You gotta do that. So I don't want to tell people what they need to think. I don't care if you're outraged at this and it bothers you. Uh, we've talked about a way that helps to me make sense of it. But if that doesn't work for you, I'm not trying to whitewash anything. I don't believe in that. I don't think it works. But you've got to hold on to the Lord as well. You've got to hold on to the Lord and see the whole story leading to Jesus and keep and then keep asking the questions. Honestly, this goes back a little bit to the question last week about praying nasty things through the Psalms. It's the same thing. Don't don't get don't give up on your deep emotions, but give your emotions over to God and see where you end up.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Well, and you've said before on this podcast a few times that you've you've what we're assuming is that we are talking to church people, like our church people particularly, and and these are um the approach we take on this podcast is that our listener has already decided that God is good. Right, right. And so um, if you've already decided that God is good and you keep that in mind, then these tensions can trouble you, but they don't, but they don't have to like shake your faith. You just you you you hold on tightly to the fact that that the God of the Bible is a good God, he gives good gifts and he wants good things for his creation and for me. And you hold on to that as you're reading all this stuff and wrestling with it, and you can wrestle with this stuff for the rest of your life. If you're if you are among our our listeners, and for you, the jury is still out on whether God is good or not, the God of creation, Jesus Christ, like if the jury is still out for you, like you, you've not given your life to Christ, and you're you're still trying to decide whether you're thumbs up or thumbs down on this this the God of the Christian people. Um I don't think you should stop listening or stop reading the Bible, but I think it if you're trying to decide in 2026 whether you think God is good or not by reading Deuteronomy, there are going to be some tensions that you're gonna have to work through. And it's gonna be hard for you. You're working backwards.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

So here let's let's I know we have a question, but I I want to maybe wrap up most of it on this. Turn to Luke 24, 44. This is after the resurrection. Luke 24, 44. This is the resurrected Jesus speaking to the disciples. Actually, let's go back, let's go back to 36. The whole the whole thing. This is this is absolutely remarkable. Luke 24, 36. As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, Peace be to you. They were startled and frightened, they thought he was a spirit, and he said, Why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet. It's me. Touch me, see. A spirit doesn't have flesh and bones. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet, and they were still disbelieved for joy and marveling. He said to them, Got anything to eat? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it before them. So Jesus is not a spirit, this is the resurrected body of the Lord. Now here's the key part. Look at this, verse 44. And he said to them, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. And he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and said to them, Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. Okay. So when Jesus sees them, he tells them, The Old Testament was always about me. So here's the challenge for these these readers is to say, this tension is to say, God, how does this how is this about Jesus? What is what is the can't conquest of Canaan telling us? Jesus says the right way to interpret the Bible is through the cross and resurrection. And that's the key where people have got to start there, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

Yeah. Okay. So speaking of Jesus and speaking of him saying, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me and the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. So so in light of that, um, the question that I think we've answered it on this podcast, but let's answer it again because it got asked again. Are we to follow the law of Moses today?

SPEAKER_02 38:03

Yeah, and the the short answer is uh it depends. And what I mean by that is Jesus fulfills and is the ultimate sacrifice. So not only do we not need to do the sacrificial system anymore to make atonement for sins, it would be wrong to do so because it's downplaying the sacrifice of Christ. That's what the New Testament, that's what the apostles come to believe. So anything related to the sacrificial system no longer applies to the people of God. We are made right by faith in Jesus, and he atones for us. Okay, period. But even the sacrificial laws have expressed wisdom of the heart of God. So I wouldn't say following them is the right word, but studying them and learning and mowing them over is exactly what we need to be doing. Why? What's the logic of Leviticus? Why is that necessary? That teaches us something about modern life. And then there are other things expressed in the in the Torah that don't apply to the sacrificial system, but they're applied again how God set up the world. And so you're trying to learn about them. So Paul, famously, when he's Paul says, uh, should a guy who's ministering through the gospel get paid? So we have pastors who get paid, but they don't have that in the first century. And Paul says, Well, it's like it says in the law, don't muzzle an ox while it's treading grain. So Paul quotes from the Torah, which is don't allow the ox as he's going along, carrying pulling the plow, to also eat some of the grain, or he's not plowing, whatever. Whatever oxen do. Whatever oxen do. Allow them to eat the grain. And Paul says, so it's okay for an apostle to get paid for ministry. So Paul is taking an Old Testament law and saying, what's the idea behind it? And so um, we need to be doing that with the Old Testament law constantly. And some things obviously apply whether Jesus has fulfilled the sacrificial system or not, like the Ten Commandments, and there's other laws there. So a Christian needs to know them and study them and learn them, but follow them is not the right question. We follow Jesus and then look how he sees things.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

So good question. Yeah, this is a good question. And I like that um I like that our listeners and particularly our church folks, um are so engaged with the Old Testament that they start to feel a little bit of a burden for the things I'm reading. And then I look at maybe if I look at the modern world through that biblical framework from the Old Testament, maybe there's some tension, like, okay, what I do about this. So my son is in a personal finance class in school, which he's loving.

SPEAKER_02 40:33

And he's like, Dad, you know, this or that. He's like real earnest about it. And they they had a long discussion about usury laws, lending it interest. And he was at, well, what do you think? And the Old Testament, all this. And it was a really great, all right, what's God's heart behind it? Oh, here's another one. Um, when you glean your fields, don't glean all the way to the edge so that the refugee and the sojourner among you, the poor, have a place to go. Well, I don't run any fields, but there's a thing there, like basically set up a system so that the poor can have a way to fend for themselves somehow. That would be another example. Like, most of us don't run agricultural operations, but the principle behind it can be really helpful.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:11

This is a dumb example. If you run a bakery, don't throw your bread out into the trash, give it to somebody or something. I don't know. But yeah. So I think I want to encourage our people to learn and love the Old Testament because the psalmists, they love the law and it's God's God's word to us. There's something in it that's good for us.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

Yeah. Amen to that. Um, okay. I think that's good for today. Do you agree? Yeah. Yeah. So this has been, again, the Year Through the Bible podcast. Um, once again, go to year through the Bible.com. You can ask questions. Um, what I really like too is when people ask follow-up questions. So when they say, hey, well, on that episode, you said this thing, um, what does that mean? Or did you actually mean this other thing? Or now that we're reading in Deuteronomy, what you said in Genesis is troubling to me, whatever. It just it helps, it helps us give our listeners what is helpful to them.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Or to you. So uh go to year throthebible.com, ask questions. We'd love to hear what's on your mind, and then uh catch us on the next episode. My name is Rodney Adams. I'm Andrew Forrest. We'll see you again.