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The characters and stories of the Old Testament form a rich tapestry, revealing both the best and worst of the human condition—and, most importantly, how God relates to us.
Based on the Living Covenant book series, this podcast explores the sometimes messy lives of those who lived under God’s first covenant, asking what these blessedly unsanitised saints can teach us about living out our faith in relationship with a God who promises never to leave us or forsake us.
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Welcome to the Living Covenant Podcast, where we journey through the messy human stories of the Old Testament explore what it means to live in covenant with a promise keeping God. I'm your host, Zanita. Let's dive in.
Hello everybody. We are here the very first episode of the Living Covenant Podcast. You might have stumbled upon this through reading the record magazine or just by searching the name of a Bible character in your search bar. But either way, I am so thrilled that you are here. Today I have with me Jared Stackelroth, the man behind this mission. So Jared, welcome to the podcast.
Hey Zanita. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Oh, it was a must. Now to kick things off, Jared, can you tell us about the two books that have kind of preceded this Living Covenant book?
Hmm. Before Living Covenant there was living 28 living Kingdom. So those were the two book projects that we'd put together from Adventist Record. They're all a little bit similar. They share some similarities in the fact that we started with the idea of doing a series where we could get young writers, different writers, people that don't normally write for the Adventist Record magazine.
How could we involve them and what should we talk about? And it started with, well, let's start with our 28 fundamental beliefs as Seventh Day Adventists. We hold these, 28 guiding principles that most of us around the world can all share. It makes us Seventh Day Adventists. I asked the question practically applied to our lives? What does that look like? And that's the thing I challenged the authors with of these chapters. What. Does it look like when you take those fundamental beliefs and apply them to your life? And we enjoyed the series. It was fun to pull together. And we had that thought, Hey, what if we compiled these into a book to give them a different shelf life? The magazine has a short shelf life. You get in church, you might read it, spend time with it for a week or so, and then you're probably gonna hopefully recycle it.
But we took the chapters, turned them into a book added reflective questions on the end of each chapter. Ended up being able to do an audio book for that first project as well, and so it has different ways to access it through different platforms.
I've got the books here with me. Yeah, hold them up.
They're really beautiful.
Sorry. To our podcast listeners, you won't be able to see the covers that he is holding up, but if you are interested, you can go to adventist book center.com au and see them there or buy them there or whatever you want.
But yes, they are awesome. I have loved these covers.
yeah Living 28. It's colorful, it's contemporary looking. And as the subhead here says, fresh perspectives on practicing our faith. This is great for even a gift for youth group or for someone who's recently been baptized.
The things that they've studied, the things that they say they believe, how can they apply some of those to their lives? The second series, we went, oh, that went really well. What can we do next?
And so we did the Parables series, living Kingdom. So Living 28, followed by living Kingdom fresh perspectives on the parables of Jesus.
And so it's funny Zanita, there's about 28 main parables that we discovered, and so it was about the same length. It fit together nicely. It was about the same length, and we did the same thing. We tried to find contemporary fresh authors to give us their take on one of the parables that Jesus taught and what it means or how can it be practically applied in our lives today.
Mm-hmm. And so similar concept, similar principle. Just different subject matter and the final idea or concept was let's go into the Old Testament. Let's look at Old Testament characters, how they lived and how the lessons learned from them can be applied to our lives today.
Again, same theme, fresh perspectives on old stories that maybe we know well or maybe we don't know yet, but can be applied to our lives today.
I love your lens as to how you look at the Bible. You I constantly look at stories or verses and asking that question, what does this actually mean for me in my life?
Well, I think it's important, but at the same time, we can't get it out of context.
Like you can do that and apply versus very poorly to your life. You can just go, this first speaks to me, how can I apply it? And you only do that. And that can lead to somewhat a shallow faith because you're just applying things out of context, not understanding the full Bible.
And so obviously first you've gotta really do your best to understand it, but I think the scripture it's living, it's active, it's dynamic. It's a two-edged sword, so it cuts both the reader and the person applying it, so, mm-hmm. I truly believe there's power in the scripture, but we have to do our best to understand it.
We have to get the context before we practically look at ways to apply it. But I think that's a really important step because you can learn everything about the Bible. The minutia, the trivia of what's in what page and what's in what verse.
And you can memorize great chunks of it. But if it's not changing you, I don't think that's what it was designed for. It's God's revelation to his people. It's God's message. People sometimes say his love letter. You know, there's different ways that people frame that, but the Bible is something that God wants us to, I think, meditate on, to learn from and to get to know him better ultimately, but also to change our behavior, to become more like him. Not that we can ever become perfect, but that it pushes us in that direction, a positive more Christ-like behavior in our lives.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Something that has been coming out a lot in these podcast episodes. So if anyone who is new to this, we have the book that is being compiled and then we have a mini podcast series to go alongside that because it allows each author, to expand on the thought they have about this character and about what they learn and how applies to their life, because they only have about 1200 words, so it's hard to fit everything in.
But something we've been looking at more so in the podcast episodes is okay. It's awesome to explore these individuals in the Bible who we don't know that much about , but what does that actually tell us about God? Because you are right, we don't want our reading of the Bible to become like a self-help book where we look at people and we're like, okay, what did they do? We also wanna be like, what does this say about God? Because a lot of the times it's not about what we do, it's about what he's already done. It's about, the covenant he's made and that he's promised to keep with us.
So I think that's something to keep in mind as well that it's like, okay, yeah, these characters are super interesting, super fascinating to explore. But what is he trying to show us through this?
you've just reminded me of another sort of motivation for some of these series. To pull the curtain back a little bit. I had this idea for the 28 fundamentals, going through them and making them relevant, making us think about them as a people. And part of that came from my feeling that myself. Probably I didn't know them as well as I could, and that many young people, especially in our church, didn't know them.
And so part of the rationale for this series is to the authors and the readers to push them back to the Bible to go, ah, that's an interesting perspective. I need to go read that again for myself. And certainly that happened for me, I I did the character of Elijah and I had to go read Elijah's story, and it brought out new things that I hadn't noticed before or that were revealed in a different way, and the Bible always does that. You know, there's stats that have come out of the church, and less than half of members are reading the Bible, on a really regular basis. And we say where the people of the book we hold the Bible in high esteem. We want to know God through his word. And yet, bible reading is declining, people have less biblical literacy and are engaging less frequently. And so this is also a way to tease people back into some of the stories that perhaps they've forgotten or perhaps they're not engaging with as much. And I think that's a really important role of these three series to remind people. First of all, the writer has to do that work and research the story and grapple with the story and what it's telling them, what it means, what practical application they can have. But then the audience of that are then invited to reexamine those stories, to reexamine those beliefs and to go back with more depth and revisit those and maybe see someone else's perspective that they haven't seen before, that they haven't encountered.
I, I've been in a unique position, I suppose, where I've been interviewing everyone about their stories. And part of my routine has been to read the passages of the scripture where their character is mentioned. And sometimes I just have to skim 'cause it's like books and sometimes it's just a chapter.
But I've been reading the stories and then reading each individual's piece, and I've been immensely blessed by it because I'm probably someone who has often just been afraid of the Old Testament because it's a wacko thing. There's some confusing things about God and it, it just has overwhelmed me and I've kind of like skip to the New Testament, as I think a lot of people do. But yeah, I've learned so much and I am just loving exploring and about Evil Testament characters and their journey with God. And so if anyone is into this, is a bit afraid of that first chunk of the Bible, I hope that this can ease you in.
I hope that it can be an encouragement or excite your experience of the Old Testament.
It's why I went to the Old Testament next, Zanita. I will admit that the Living Covenant Series, the Old Testament lens is. Because I have a passion for it. I have always really enjoyed the stories in the Old Testament. Yes, they can be confusing. They can be intimidating and weird. But fascinating, like I have always been fascinated by the characters, the heroes of the story.
You know, the Bible, Joseph, Daniel, Jonathan, and David, Adam and Eve. All of those stories are so rich and so much of the New Testament is pulled from the Old Testament references and quotes and subtle nods back pointing back to the Old Testament. So you really need to understand the Old Testament to do justice to the New Testament, and that's what a lot of Christians maybe miss.
They skim over or they skip the Old Testament. They say we are under a new covenant and we don't need the old covenant. And they sort of disregard everything in the Old Testament, and I think that's a mistake. I think there's so much richness, and even in the characters themselves, though they're flawed and they have issues and they often mess up.
We have a lot we can learn from them even in their mistakes. Mm-hmm. So I think for me, this was kind of a passion project to see the Old Testament come to life a little bit, and for us to reengage with some of these amazing characters. And there are so many characters. We had trouble narrowing it down.
We've gone with about 29 30 odd characters, which is roughly the same as the other series, but there's so many more we could do. You know? Someone reading, someone listening, their favorite character might be missing from the series just because we couldn't cover everyone.
Mm. Yeah. It's interesting. I was talking to someone the other day and they were telling me the same thing kind of for so long they've just stuck to the New Testament, the gospels to the letters, and recently they decided to read through the whole of Isaiah and they were like, wow. I have such a deeper appreciation and amazement for the New Testament now that I've read Isaiah because of all the things that it points back to and all the links that there are. Can you tell us, uh, the title of this is living covenant unsanitized saints like us, which is great. Can you tell us what you mean by unsanitised like us.
We all recognize, I think that we come, we live in a broken world and we come from messy backgrounds. And yet the Bible calls us saints those who believe and keep the commandments are the Saints of Jesus, and we all hope to be in that space as Revelation says. So we, we have this relationship where we often put even the Old Testament characters up on pedestals. We think that they're heroes and we get the Sabbath school version of the story, which really highlights the good things they did and how to live for God well, and glosses over the bad things.
Take Noah for example. Noah is faithful. He builds the boat. He ignores the criticism from the society around him, and he saves all of humanity and the animals, and we finish the story there. We don't often go to the planting, the vineyard, getting drunk, and whatever it was that happened with his son, like some of the messy parts of the story. We often gloss over those.
We sanitize the Bible. And so the title of my intro to this series was Unsanitized Saints Like Us. First of all we need to recognize they are just like us. They're men and women who are broken and not perfect. They're unsanitized. The Bible does not sanitize them. And I praise God for that because if you look back at history, if you look back at common things from that era and that culture. They talk about the highlights of a king's life. They talk about the things he overcome, the enemies he killed in battle, the miraculous connections he has to the deities or the gods. He's half God, half man. He's amazing. You know, all of these things. And very often kings who came along later would erase the kings before them 'cause they didn't like them politically or religiously or some issue.
And they would try to build these legacies, which meant that they would sanitize their stories. They would take out what was seen as bad or failings of a moral or any other nature. They would really. Smooth off the edges of their stories. And yet the Bible is filled with people who are supposed to be heroes of the faith.
Abraham, Moses, David Samuel. We get their failings. We see where they mess up. We see where they're not perfect. And you've got priests who have kids who don't follow on in the faith. You've got kings who murder and commit adultery. Even the stories that we think are pretty squeaky clean, like we think Joseph is perfect and he's done all the right things.
I read that story carefully again recently and yes, he forgives his brothers in the end, but there is some unforgiveness, there is some trauma hiding in that story that he's wrestling with, he's dealing with. And so these people aren't perfect. And neither are we. That's very obvious.
And it gives us, I think, encouragement because if I read the Bible and everyone was the Sabbath school version of themselves, the perfect, proper behavior, it would be very discouraging. Zanita. Honestly, when I stuff up, when I go through dark and difficult seasons, I would be like, yeah, but all of God's people are perfect and I just can't achieve that level of perfection.
And so one of the things I think that's important as we're applying these lessons to our lives, how does this work practically for us? Well. Actually, they're as messed up as I am and they still trusted God. They still got through it. They still walked through the darkness, and I can do that too. God's promises hold true.
You know, he says he'll never leave us or forsake us, and that's despite what we do in spite of what we do, he'll never leave us or forsake us. So I think that's a really encouraging thought for me.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I know when I read the Moses story in this series. That's kind of what I realized is we often put some of the characters on a pedestal. Moses is the classic one. Like, wow, what a man of God, what a man of faith. And we just look at a snapshot of his life when there was like 80 years that preceded, him leading the Israelites. Um, what are some of the other themes that we see come out in this series of individuals in the Old Testament?
At least the brief that we gave the authors was to tie into the title Living Covenant. It was that God makes these promises, these covenants with his people. It's like a contract, but God is really the one who has to pay So often. You know, Israel is unfaithful. They walk away. In the judges we hear that everyone did what was right in their own eyes. In the time of the kings, we see the kingdom divided, we see king after king doing the wrong thing, turning the people back to Baal worship and things.
And yet God's promises remain. Most of the characters I would say every character is either promised something from God or has some kind of relationship with God, where they're expecting this covenant to hold true, or they're under the greater covenant that God made with Israel. They understand that they're part of the chosen people. Now, interestingly, Hagar was an exception, right? Hagar wasn't an Israelite, she was an Egyptian servant. And yet God speaks to her and he makes promises to her offspring. And talks about what they will become, what they will be.
So even Hagar though, she's foreign, she is in this relationship with God she has promised, even if she's not part of the Covenant as the New Testament, in fact talks about the difference between Hagar's and Ishmael's Covenant or Isaac and his covenant, child of the Promise or a Child of the Covenant.
So we see these characters, they are actually part of this journey and if God promised them such and such a thing, what does he promise to us? Are his promises still true today and I believe they are. I don't believe God changes. I believe the Old Testament transitions into the New Testament and shows us how the covenant is continued to us as his people.
And so when we read about the promises of God, not just the trials and tribulations they go through, not just the high points and the lessons we can learn, but also God and how he promises things to them and how those promises apply to us today. I think that's a very important theme also in this series that comes out and that we asked the writers to engage with, Hey, can you guys.
Think about how it applies to you and your life in the context of what God has promised you because it brings it back to that title. It's a living covenant. It's a covenant that still applies. It's a covenant that we still live with and God is still promising things to his people even today.
Hmm. I'd love to get really crystal clear on this covenant idea because I feel like this is a word that we don't really use anymore. It's a word that kind of brings up legal law and order kind of vibes. But it is all throughout the Bible, especially through the Old Testament.
You talk about this promise that God has made, this covenant that God has made. But what are we actually talking about when we say that? Can we boil it down
you used the word like a contract. It is like a contract. A promise should be binding, but often I think in our usage of it, in the English language, it's not so binding. It's like, you're talking to your kids, can you promise to put your dishes away when you're finished eating?
Yeah. Yeah, of course. I promise. But it doesn't happen, right? And so it can be a one-sided sort of thing, a promise. But a covenant, a covenant is like a contract. And I understand the root word in the Hebrew comes from the word cutting.
There's a scene with, I think Abraham and there's an animal cut as is like a sacrifice, but cut in half. And then the parties walk between the halves of the animal to symbolize their acceptance of this really serious covenant contract. It's binding, it's meant to be forever. There's consequences if it is or if it isn't honored if someone pulls out of that covenant.
And so, God, this is amazing zanita. God is Almighty. God created us and the world and everything, and even before he came in the form of Jesus and did what Jesus did for us. God was willing to enter into this binding legal covenant with his people that he had no need to do. Right. If you own something, why do you need to get an agreement or a contract for something that you made, that you own yourself. You don't. Why do you need to? If you are almighty, God, enter into an agreement with creation, broken, fallen humans. Why you don't. But God does because he chooses to. He steps down from his throne and he enters into that covenant relationship with his people and creation.
We see the story of the rainbow at the end of the flood, and God promises never to destroy the earth with a flood and that. It almost sort of includes all of creation, that covenant, that promise that he makes because it's not just people that were impacted, it was the created order. The animals, the trees, the birds, everything.
And so God has no need to step down to that level, but he does. And I think that is amazing.
It is amazing. I think this is something I really realized when I wrote my piece on the story of Hosea, and it just showed me even though we are so, so, so incredibly unfaithful, and we see that all throughout the series is that God uses people to do things and we just fail him time and time again. That even though we fail him, even though we prioritize things over him, even though we walk away or run away, he is so loyal. He never gives up because he loves us so much.
Now, there are many people who have written for this, from their own experiences and their own stories. So there's many other themes that we explore in here or that individuals touch on. There's things like regret, heartbreak, waiting on God, shame, trauma loss, and loneliness. I don't know if there's any that you can think of that come to mind as standout stories you've read.
Hmm. I thought yours was very brave Zanita. Hosea. You know, we talked about it and I encourage you to, yeah, go for it. And you said you shared things in that story that you'd not necessarily shared in any other place before or felt comfortable. And I think that's the beauty of it for me.
Some of our, friends from the Pacific, some of the young men that I met at Fulton College, when I did some writing workshops there, I've stayed in touch with them and a couple of those guys were able to write some stories about difficult financial things they've been through, or difficult times of temptation.
Um, we had Samson and, a couple of those characters. So yeah, I really do think that this was an important emphasis for me. I think that when we bring authenticity to Bible study, to conversations about the Bible, it really helps others open up. But we can't open up others if we don't model what that looks like.
So to write about some of these things, it was very important. And often we had to go back to authors and say, listen, you've done a great job looking at the character. You need to go a bit deeper. You need to think about how this relates to your experience 'cause I think their experience is what really brings it to life.
I think my favorite now that you've jogged my memory, it's taken a little while for my brain to catch up. Um, Rahab. Pastor Broden House wrote about Rahab and he was very raw and very vulnerable. Rahab's not a character that we like to relate to because she's a prostitute. She's not an Israelite, she's outside the people.
And yet he did a great job of really looking at her life and some of the shame and some of the difficulties he's experienced in his own life. I thought that was incredibly brave and I really liked his article for that reason, that he was able to go there.
There's some healing that comes with engaging with your own story at that level. And there's healing that you can offer to other people when they are able to see other people modeling how to work through and walk through their difficulties using the Bible as a balm, using the Bible as a healing good news to help them get through that.
So yeah, there are definitely some favorites that stood out. But everyone did a great job because we insisted on it. We sent them back and said, Hey, we need you to include this. If you have missed this angle, we need a bit more of it because we'd love you to really engage with these characters on a personal level.
Yep. And that's why they say, write the story that you need to hear. And many of our authors were very brave, very generous, which we are super thankful for, and yeah, has just made for some amazing insights and encouragement for people. Mm-hmm. Now I wonder if you can show up the two books that we have again.
Because it would also be cool to note all of these books have been illustrated.
So this one, this one was done by, linden our designer at the time. We came up with the logos and the concept. We came with a color theme and different things for each of the articles. By the time this book was being put together, Maryellen was was on staff, Mary Ellen Hacko. She did all the illustrations for this series and she has done all the illustrations for Living Covenant series.
So it's nice to have that continuity. It's a different style 'cause it's a different series and it's a different, creative artistic flair and she's experimental with those and we've really appreciated it. Like to work with someone's so talented and so amazing. It really brought the series to life and it's looked great. It feels great. Very modern, very contemporary. So we're very excited .
Yeah, we've been seeing the illustrations come through and they're beautiful, so it's a nice addition to all the stories. We'll leave it there. Anyone who is listening we would love it if you join us as we explore the lives of these blessedly unsanitized saints and apply various lessons to our lived experiences, all with a reminder that we are in a living relationship with a living God who loves us and wants to live in covenant with us. So thank you, Jarrod, for your initiative on this.
Like I've said a million times, I've been blessed. I know others have been blessed, and I hope that anyone listening is also blessed by these conversations, whether you're a reader or a listener. Yeah, we hope that you enjoy them and gain some insights. So thanks for joining us, Jarrod.
It's been great to have everyone.
Amen to everything you said, Zanita. And thank you for doing the hosting of this podcast. I think it's gonna be great to hear and to experience a little bit more behind the author's stories, you know, behind the scenes of some of these articles. So thank you for that.
It's a pleasure.