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Welcome to The Overflow—the bonus round of faith and real-life conversation with Brandon and Susan Thomas. Every week, they unpack the powerful insights, behind-the-scenes experiences, and personal reflections that didn’t quite fit into Sunday’s sermon.
This is where the conversation gets practical, honest, and a little bit unscripted. Whether it's an encouraging word, a deeper dive into Scripture, or a hilarious moment from their week, Brandon and Susan bring fresh perspective and spiritual fuel to keep you going.
It’s real talk, fresh takes, and full hearts.
These are the conversations too good to cut and too real to miss.
Welcome to The Overflow with my brother from the same mother, Doctor. Heath Thomas. He is a scholar. He is a speaker. He is an author.
Speaker 1:He is a leader. He is the president of Oklahoma Baptist University. He presents papers all over the world, academic papers, but he has a fine tuned expertise in Old Testament. As a Christ follower, he's all over the Bible, of course, but he has particular expertise in the Old Testament. And so, to have a conversation.
Speaker 1:Heath, welcome to The Overflow, my man.
Speaker 2:It's great to be with you. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Oh, you bet, man. I thought we'd just jump right in and a little bit some of the harder stuff. Now let me go ahead and give an overview of what I hope to accomplish together. We may not get to all of this, but first I'd like to talk about some of the tough stuff in the Old Testament, like really hard scriptures
Speaker 2:that
Speaker 1:somebody may read them at surface value, or if they're new to the Bible, and it may really be a stumbling block for them on understanding the character of God, and just say, Man, how could God allow that, or how could God command that? What's going on? Particularly, I'm thinking Joshua. Then we could talk about the Old Testament, and just in general, just how to read, what in the Old Testament comes forward? There's a lot of talk about, Hey, that doesn't apply anymore.
Speaker 1:Right, sure. Then maybe if we have time, we could talk about, I don't know, a little topic like Israel. Yeah, I mean not All controversy the at stuff, yeah. And so we're throwing fastballs here today, and I'd love to start. Now you wrote a book, and maybe you've done a bunch of stuff, talk to us a little bit about holy war, concept of holy war in the Bible, which is in the Old Testament.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, I did a book a number of years ago on Old Testament holy war and Christian morality, and the idea of a holy war sounds a lot like Islamic Jihad, where fighters fight in the name of God against other peoples. A lot of times in the Old Testament, when you read the book of Joshua and you hear about Israel utterly destroying the Canaanites or something like that, the language for holy war is used. God's people, Israel, is enacting a holy war against the Canaanites. And where did we get this language of holy war and correlating it with these kinds of texts in Joshua or Deuteronomy or wherever?
Speaker 2:Actually, comes from a German scholar called Friedrich Schwalbe in the early twentieth century. And, he was looking at unsurprisingly Islamic Jihad, and then used that as a model to correlate what he was reading in the Old Testament and correlated that language to holy war. The biblical language does not use the language of holy war. In the Old Testament, the language is Yahweh war. That is not people fighting in the name of God, but God fighting on behalf of His people.
Speaker 2:And the distinction there is very important because a lot of times we might think that as followers of Jesus or as followers of God, we're supposed to pick up the sword and fight in the name of God. Well, I hate to say this, but the reality is God doesn't need our help to win battles. He's God. And so in the Old Testament, you find is God raises up his people to fight, but it's him who provides the victory. And early in Joshua, when you see God's people about to go to war against Canaan, you have this interesting encounter where Joshua encounters an angel of God, and the angel of God is like the champion of the army of God.
Speaker 2:And he says, Joshua says to this angel, Are you for us or against us? And the Hebrew is wonderful here. The angel looks at him and basically says, Neither. I'm here for the Lord. Right?
Speaker 1:I remember those.
Speaker 2:So whether Canaanites or the Israelites, look, I'm for the Lord. The question is, are you on the Lord's
Speaker 1:side Right. Or It's not your side I'm It's, trying to get are you on God's
Speaker 2:That's right. And so, that's the overwhelming emphasis in the Old Testament is, are the nations, or more to the point, is Israel on the Lord's side or not? And what we find is, if Israel or the nations follow the Lord, then what happens is God receives them. And you see this early in the book of Joshua, for instance. Rahab, who is one of the Canaanite inhabitants who embraces the people of God and says, essentially, I want to be on your team because everybody's heard about what God has done for the nations that are against him.
Speaker 2:We don't want to be one of those nations that are against you. So Rahab converts to follow the Lord, and what happens? She's one of those included in the roll call of faith. Yeah. So it's not a matter of God issuing the commands to utterly obliterate people.
Speaker 2:It's about true worship and false worship. The overriding emphasis on Yahweh war is to wipe out those who refuse to follow the one true God, the God of life, peace, love, justice, reconciliation, redemption, as opposed to false gods. False gods bring death and destruction. And so it's really a choice of life or death. And it's not just a choice if you don't follow God of life, you're gonna receive death.
Speaker 2:It's if you don't follow God, you are embracing death.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so that's, it's a bit of a distinction between what we think of when we think of holy war.
Speaker 1:You cannot superimpose today's understanding of culture onto that culture.
Speaker 2:That's
Speaker 1:right. You have to say, who were they? And when you begin to explore, we did a series on the life, on the book of Joshua. Some of the things that stood out to me as well, I think where you just went is the foundational interpretive anchor, right? And then once you've settled that, it's God, it's either God or death.
Speaker 1:And to add to that, before I go on, to add to that is even if you are reformed, maybe it would be really easy for you, when you take those words in the New Testament to the elect. Yes. If you are reformed, whether you are or not, but if you are reformed, then it becomes easier interpretively for you because truthfully, we don't deserve life, we start with death.
Speaker 2:Yeah,
Speaker 1:that's You know, we all start with death, and any that receive life is a gift from God. That's kind of the reformed anchor, so if you're in that camp, that's how you'd kind of get there. But some other stuff that I got to, if you weren't in that camp, that was really helpful, is to understand truly in the cultures of that day, to worship, to not worship Yahweh was truly a death cult.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:The Canaanites, they've unearthed some Canaanite altars.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1:They found bones in those altars. And then one scholar that I read, you may agree or disagree with this, and it'd be fun to see what you think about this, but one scholar that, and maybe it was a couple of scholars at the time, it's been a couple of years, but one of the things that they said was that the depravity of the Canaanites was so great that any innocent blood was crying out for justice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:And that truly they were not innocent.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And that Joshua was used, to your point, as an arm of justice for the Lord. It'd be almost like if there was just this maniacal, unrestrained Nazi Holocaust bloodthirsty regime, and finally there was justice coming for humanity. Right. That would be an example of how the Israelites were being used by God for justice. What do you think about that interpretation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what you find, and, this is where, when you're interpreting the Old Testament and, when you're interpreting things like these texts that we typically refer to as holy war, is we want to treat them in isolation. But if scripture is like a symphony, right, you have to place movements of the symphony in its proper order and arrangement within the symphony. And if you look at the Old Testament, it begins with the God of life and the God of creation, the God of creativity, and everything He does with His word is life giving and order making. This is the God of Israel. And then what happens is human beings break bad.
Speaker 2:They rebel against the God of life. And so what does God do? Well, He could just junk it all, but God doesn't junk His creation because He doesn't make junk. So what does He do? He goes on a rescue mission.
Speaker 2:Now He's still gonna fight depravity, evil, sin, and death. But how does He do that? He does that through the raising up of His people, Israel. You see this in Genesis 12. So everything that comes from His people, Israel, is part of God's redemptive act to bring a lost and broken world back to himself.
Speaker 2:When you look at the nations who are not following after God, they are antithetical forces rivaling the power of God, trying to be God in God's place. Well, God's not gonna, He's not gonna, you know, visage that well. And so He's gonna eradicate that. Why? Because anything other than the God of life is death.
Speaker 1:Like the prophets of Baal.
Speaker 2:Like the prophets of Baal. Or you think in Genesis, early in the book of Genesis, you think about the Tower Of Babel, where human beings say, we want to be like God. Yeah. Okay. Well, that is actually death in the biblical story.
Speaker 2:So, the time we get to, these texts in Deuteronomy and in Joshua, where, and you know, even in one Samuel, where God is saying utterly eradicate these people, what He's really after is not their human death. He wants to eradicate their false worship. This is a really important point. In these Yahweh war texts, it's not like in today's world when a military goes to war, we think of that as a nation state sending soldiers to war for some sort of political or economic ends. That's not the way it worked in the ancient world.
Speaker 2:There may have been political or economic ends, but there were always religious ends as, accompanying that. So, and the reason is in the ancient world, how you understood your national identity was something about the deity of your people, the people themselves, and the land, which is a gift from that deity, where that deity holds power. So Israel had Yahweh as their God, Israel was the people, and the land itself was that land angle of the triad. Moab had their god Chemosh. The Moabites were the people and the land of Moab, that's where they were.
Speaker 2:So if you keep going around the ancient world, that's how people understood themselves. You see this for instance, in the book of Isaiah, when, the emissaries from Assyria come down to Jerusalem, you read in Isaiah 36 to 38, the emissaries are speaking in the Hebrew tongue, and the Israelites don't like it, because what the emissary is saying is he's saying, don't think that your God will protect you from us. The gods of the nations haven't been able to protect us, or protect them from the Assyrian onslaught. Well, god of Assyria, right, was a different god than Israel's god. But the point is that invading army had it in their head, yes, we're invading this nation, Israel, but in fact, it's their God defeating Israel's God.
Speaker 1:That's right, and that's how they outside with Hezekiah whenever Sennacherib, whenever he's hurling insults against Hezekiah, they were going right at the God. Where's your God?
Speaker 2:Where's your God? And that's the point is when you hear these holy war texts or Yahweh war texts is what I prefer to call them, it's not really about eradicating the people, it's eradicating false worship and false gods. And how do you do that? Well, can't divorce the angle of God, people, or land. You have to de center all of it for it to be effective in showing that the false god is actually false.
Speaker 1:One of the interpretive points, and I'd love you to engage with this, interact with this thought, and it is that we try to impose today's cultural ethic and sentimentality and ethos on the text at that time. Now, are some things in the text that do not change through three thousand years of We written don't see that murder changes.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:We don't see that sexual ethic changes. That is a straight line. It's the same. Paul reaffirms it just like it was reaffirmed early on in the Torah. And so there's some things that are a straight line, but there are other things that have a progression to it, and God is engaging civilization at a point in their story, knowing I'm pulling you to a different place.
Speaker 1:An example of that would be slavery. Yes. And so for us to superimpose, you know, like even what you just said, a lot of people have never heard how they ward and how it was my God versus your God.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And they just didn't Our culture today can't understand that. It's kind of like, I like to say, it's really hard for people in my world here in the city and in the suburbs to really understand agrarian language in the Bible. I have to explain it to you. Yep. Me explaining it to you is comedic, because I'm no farmer, you know?
Speaker 1:But truly for them, it was fluid. Yes. And the analogies were effortless.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But for us, we don't even have a concept. We've not held a dying animal. Right. We've not given birth to a calf only to see the mother die. Right.
Speaker 1:That's a part of childhood in their world.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And we've lost that. Interact with that a little bit on just interpreting scripture.
Speaker 2:When we're talking about the story of the Old Testament into the New, the way as a Christian I understand the Old Testament is all the hopes and plans in God's economy with Israel are signs or frameworks that are fully disclosed in the ministry and the life of Jesus. The way I would say it is, this is kind of the broad scale vision, with the Old Testament, the Old Testament, all of the full color of God's revelation, who God is, and what He wants for humanity, what He wants for the world, it's already there in the Old Testament, but it's like white light. And what happens with Jesus is Jesus is like a prism that takes the white light of the Old Testament and explodes it into its fullest color. And so the reason that's important is because when you're looking at, for instance, Old Testament law, let's use land law, you know, land law or how you farm your field. Well, that's a lesson on generosity and taking care of those who are vulnerable and
Speaker 1:gleam in the corners
Speaker 2:of Yeah, leaving the corners of the field. Sojourners. Yeah, so that people can glean. Well, there's nothing economic in that that's valuable. What is valuable?
Speaker 2:What's valuable is caring for the vulnerable. And the rationale is always given. You were slaves in Egypt and God delivered you. So that's how you need to treat other people.
Speaker 1:Love others Exactly. As you have been
Speaker 2:So when Jesus comes on the scene and he says, what's the greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. It's that love God, love others. It's the white light of the Old Testament being blown open in a new color. And then what that forces us to do is read back into the Old Testament in light of Christ and say, oh, so I need to be generous because Jesus was generous towards me, just like God was generous towards Israel.
Speaker 2:Now, how do I need to change my life to be generous towards the people in my community? Or another one is the tithe law, right? The tithe law is really an interesting one because the law prescribes every tenth of your food, your food crop, or your livestock is given over to the Lord. Well, that's an economy of care actually, because that tenth provided for the priest. The priest didn't have land.
Speaker 2:Actually the obedience of God's people provided food for the priests. Okay? That's an economy of care. What's interesting about this is the tenth is the bare minimum because the law also prescribes more frequently laws that testify to God's people giving out of their free will or out of thanksgiving.
Speaker 1:Malachi three tithes
Speaker 2:and This is the above and beyond. An Israelite at any time could say, God has been so good to me, I just want to say thank you and I'm going to give. Now, does that tell us? We give to provide economy of care, but we also give out of thanksgiving and out of the generosity of God. So really the tithe is a baseline of sorts, but it's not the end point of our generosity.
Speaker 2:Bingo. And again, when we're giving to the church, a tithe is a great baseline, but that's not the end of the story because that wasn't the end of the story in the Old Testament. So you have some Christians say, well, that doesn't apply to me. I'm like, well, yeah, it actually does. Maybe not in exactly the same way.
Speaker 2:We're not giving an animal, but we are giving of our time, talents, treasures. We're giving not just the tithe, we're giving above and beyond.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:So it's broken open in full color in the light of Jesus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, know, and there's many, like on the tithe issue, I wouldn't even probably talk about this right now, except it has become such a point for some voices out there, and I just want those that are locking in here in the overflow to really hear our stance on that. That is, you know, when you read of the tithe, okay, whatever happens in the Old Testament, it is not, I mean, it's never wasted, okay? The tithe, particularly something like the tithe, or those land laws, that's not wasted. There is something there for us in the New Testament. Okay, so there's kind of two approaches that I've seen that get it right, and of course, my approach gets it right more than others, I'm getting.
Speaker 1:Right. But the way I view it is the tithe is alive and active, because Jesus, he said to the Pharisees, You tithe, that is good. He said, But you neglect the weightier matters, and he went on to some heavier stuff. Yes, In other words, he's saying, The tithe is like 101, and yeah, that's good that you do that, but you're neglecting these more important things. In other words, you should be tithing in your sleep, but you're so proud of first base, you've forgotten what it looks like to hit a home run.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, Paul, his instructions to the Corinthian church of how you should be giving, how you should be collecting, And every time you see giving in the New Testament, you see it done through the local church. It's not random individualistic Christians finding a charity, it is through the local church because God wants to do his mission through the church.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:I am actually in favor of nonprofits non church entities, Christian ones, that do great work, but to me, that is in that offering Yeah,
Speaker 2:that's right.
Speaker 1:Now, that's where I come from. First 10% goes to God, and then the second pocket of giving is the above and beyond. The 10% is an obedience challenge. The offering is a relationship challenge. The obedience challenge, God, do I have the courage to say yes or no to what you designed?
Speaker 1:But the offering challenge is, God, talk to
Speaker 2:me.
Speaker 1:That's I'm leaning what we teach. But I would also say, hey, if you're kind of not so sure that the tithe is New Testament, then I would say, but the principle remains the same. The 10% would be the bare minimum.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Because the New Testament model is no less generous. You see them rising to whatever occasion, and it's always given through the local church. So if you'd say, well, I'm not so sure about the tithe, most people who say that do not give.
Speaker 2:That's right. No, that's absolutely true. And you know, in the New Testament, what Jesus commends in terms of giving is not just the tenth. He commends a little widow who gave the mite. Bingo.
Speaker 2:And she gave everything that she had. And he turns to the disciples and lets them in. It's like he pulls them aside and says, That lady has given everything. Yes. And that is deep faith.
Speaker 2:Yes. And I mean, you can't give what you don't have. That's
Speaker 1:true. Right.
Speaker 2:But at the end of the day, when it comes to time, talents, treasures, the local church is God's plan A. And so when Jill and I give, we give every month to our church. And that is the first of everything that we give.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And we just recently had this impression that we need to give a little bit more. Why? Were we obligated to? No. But in our prayer time and in our conversation about God is continuing to bless us, what do we want to do?
Speaker 2:Well, we want to say thank you. And again, what that is, is that echo of that Old Testament Thanksgiving offering saying, God, you are so good. We can't help but give back. It's not like we're going to out give God. God is going to always go above and beyond in the way that he provides for us.
Speaker 2:We just want to be responsive and say in an act of worship, thank you.
Speaker 1:There's a culture of I'm not looking to see what the least amount I can do Yes. Is. And I get angry at churches that say the tenth. I've never understood that. They say that it's spiritual manipulation.
Speaker 1:I guess if you have the wrong heart when talking to people about the tithe, I'm sure any leader could have the wrong heart. I'm sure that there are leaders out there that have greed in their heart, and that spirit of greed is on them and it just translates. Again, I've known a lot of pastors in my life, and maybe it's just the friends I run with, but I've never encountered that spirit. Most of the pastors I know, they give first. I mean, they sacrifice, particularly church planters.
Speaker 1:It's in our DNA to empty out savings accounts and empty out retirement accounts, and do that kind of thing to save the mission, and we've done that. But I think it's just more about just that heart. And the thing about Keystone that has blown my mind,
Speaker 2:Heath, is
Speaker 1:when people pray, and again, no twisted arms, that's my commitment. Susan and I decided a long time ago, we're not twisting arms to get people to walk the walk. When people with a willing heart will follow God with the tithe, but it's so much more than that. Sure. With a biblical worldview, with biblical ethics.
Speaker 1:When you do that with your heart, and what we've seen is when we challenge people in a giving journey, it's just, hey, you pray, do what God tells you to do. The joy that's released in our church, the tears, I mean, you'd be shocked, the tears, the stories, the joy, the supernatural living. It is truly remarkable, and so I would never deny the church the gift of that, because maybe a handful, again, not at Keystone, we're pretty unified, but let's say there was a handful of cynics, you know, about that. I wouldn't live and lead at the level of the naysayers.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I would live and lead at the level of opportunity, spiritual opportunity. That's right. That's a shepherd's call.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think, you know, this is a conviction, right? We are, as ministers of the gospel, one of the things that we do is we teach the whole counsel of God. That's the goal, right? So if we are negligent in teaching on giving, I know some pastors don't wanna preach or teach on giving because exactly. The the the arm twisting.
Speaker 2:What we're actually doing is neglecting the gift that God has given us because there is a lot in there about giving. And it's not just money. That's in the New Testament and in today's world, we might think of coins. But if you live in an agrarian economy and you only have certain number of animals-
Speaker 1:I'm telling you.
Speaker 2:And you realize, okay, God has prescribed that I'm to give the first.
Speaker 1:That's hard, and the best.
Speaker 2:And the best. I mean, how does that hit you? Well, is God gonna provide? What if I don't have any good stock left? Then what?
Speaker 2:That's where the faith journey really begins. Do you really believe that God can provide greater than that animal can?
Speaker 1:Man, come on.
Speaker 2:That's where, again, the Old Testament comes alive, like what you're saying in an agrarian economy. Now that we translate that in today's world, again, in the light of Christ, because Christ has liberated us from sin and released us to a new life in him. Do we really believe that God is gonna provide for our family? Do we really believe that God is gonna provide financially, relationally, economically? Well, the Old Testament would say we should, right?
Speaker 2:But in our world, sometimes that's hard to hear because that world from the dusty past isn't as clearly with us. I would just say, we gotta reconnect with that ancient world and start getting in on the brass tacks. Do we really believe that God is gonna provide for that bank account for your family? And I'll just speak from my own life. There have been many days as a professor early on when we lived in The UK and we thought, I have no idea how I mean, we don't have the money in the bank account to pay the bills.
Speaker 2:And we're working, right? So it's like, God, what are you gonna do? We believe in you. We gave this money. We don't And God has never left us hanging.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He's always gone above and beyond. Again, because we know the stories of the Old Testament and we know the teaching of the Old Testament, it comes alive in a whole new way for us than we might've expected. And I would just say to anybody who's watching this, when the scripture teaches taste and see that the Lord is good, that's a faith commitment on our part.
Speaker 1:So good. Well, I would say, just to wrap up the thought on the giving part, but it's such a great illustration that others have made such a point to talk about, I'm glad we are, that when you, the church should have, the church, and not by extension those that are serving the church like you do with a Christian university with a great mission, the church and the arms of the church, whether that's Samaritan's Purse or whatever it is, the church and the arms of the church should have a vision so big that I've recently told Keystone, Man, honestly, you could win the 2,000,000,000 lottery, and it's not big enough. Right. Because until the last person has found Christ.
Speaker 2:That's
Speaker 1:right. Until the whole world has had the Bible translated in their language. Until every student is following and loving Jesus up and down the hallways of every school. That's right. We should have a vision worthy of sacrifice.
Speaker 1:That's right. Really, I would say to any pastor that's watching, be careful the voices that want to dumb down your vision to where their vision is. God will draw people to the vision he has given you. Yeah. And you're a living example of that.
Speaker 1:You've been absolutely incredible with your vision for Oklahoma Baptist University. It's drawn people to you. Yes. It's drawn staff to you. It's drawn professors to you.
Speaker 1:It's drawn students to you. And I know you would say, Not me, but yeah. As your brother, I'm going say, You've done a great job. I'd love to shift and talk a little bit Wait, anything else in the Old Testament that we need to take another look at before we move on? Just a quick Like a sacrificial system.
Speaker 1:What was happening? What do you think was happening when Jesus died on the cross? You're totally not ready for this question. Oh my goodness. When Jesus died on the cross, I'm throwing you a curveball, and the veil was torn in two.
Speaker 1:Have you given that any thought? Like, what was that? Sure. Yeah. What was going on there?
Speaker 2:So, and there's so much in the temple and the tabernacle that is just, it's pregnant with meaning. So when God's people looked at the temple or the tabernacle, it was like there were echoes of Eden all throughout it. And the reason I say that is because the materials that are used to make the temple and the tabernacle is the same material that was in Eden. Right? When God's people sinned, the angel with the flaming sword barred the way to Eden.
Speaker 2:Yes. Right? Protecting unfettered access to God. That was Eden. But at the temple, you had this veil with massive veil, but what was embroidered on the veil is so important.
Speaker 2:It was angels protecting the holiness of
Speaker 1:God. Unbelievable.
Speaker 2:So, I mean, this is the amazing stuff.
Speaker 1:By the way, you're hitting this flat footed. You had no idea what was going. I mean, this is unbelievable.
Speaker 2:Keep going. So, essentially, when you look at the tabernacle, it's like a microcosm of the world, okay? You have the holy of holies, which is Eden. You've got the angel, which is the veil protecting the holiness of God and unmediated access to God. You've got all the temple implements, the menorah, which represents the lights of Israel, right?
Speaker 2:And the prayers of the people, the altar of incense, the prayers of the people. You have the table of showbread, which has a representative, it's representing God's people before God. And then you have these mediations, right, with the priests. Everything is screaming, God is providing access to his people, to his presence.
Speaker 1:But
Speaker 2:it's like an echo of Eden. It's managed. You can't, just as a normal Israelite, go into the Holy of Holies. It has to be managed and mediated through representatives. So it's symbolic.
Speaker 2:It's a symbolic universe. Very careful. Very careful, but it's yet God's grace. It's grace. So it's almost like the throne room of heaven, there's this umbilical cord from the throne room of heaven that comes down and attaches itself to the holy of holies.
Speaker 1:Good
Speaker 2:night. And that's where the prayers of the people go up to the throne room of heaven and God in his transcendence comes down in this tabernacle or in the temple. So when Jesus I mean, the gospel writers are so careful when they present all of these realities that happened. Like when Jesus dies, there's an earthquake. Well, that's God on the move in the Old Testament prophets.
Speaker 2:Right? When Jesus dies, the veil is torn in two. Why is that significant? We might just think, oh, well, it was an earthquake and a big veil was torn. No.
Speaker 2:It means that access to God, that mediated access to God, that managed access to God where the angels are barring the way to God's presence has been torn in two by the sacrificial act of Christ on the cross. He became that sacrifice that atoned for sin and made unmediated presence to God possible. Not just for us, but for all people who will confess and believe in his name. And so, when you look at, and this is one of the reasons why the New Testament writers, particularly in Hebrews, Jesus is recognized. I'm not saying they argue that Jesus is.
Speaker 2:They recognize Jesus as the atoning sacrifice, the once for all sacrifice that doesn't just manage sin year to year. That was what was happening at the tabernacle, at the temple. Sin was managed for a year, but you had to have more and more sacrifices for that sin to be continually managed. The writer of Hebrews tells us in very clear terms, Jesus is the once for all sacrifice. There are no more sacrifices needed.
Speaker 2:So again, that tearing of the veil, Jesus becomes the mediating sacrifice that allows access to God. The presence of God is now here with humanity. Sacrifice, forgiveness is offered there. Not only that, he's the priest who mediates the sacrifice itself. He's the altar.
Speaker 2:He's the temple. Every hope of Israel is met in Christ. He's the prophet. Yes. He's the priest.
Speaker 2:He's the judge. He's the king. He's the king. He's the wisdom of God. He's the wise man.
Speaker 2:Gosh. So, he's the all in all?
Speaker 1:Golly, man, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Okay. That's just off the top of my head. Alright.
Speaker 1:Let's talk a little bit. How many times have you been
Speaker 2:to Israel? Oh, probably 20 or so.
Speaker 1:Goodness, I've been three times, once with you, back in the late '90s. Mid to late '90s, I can't remember what year it was, 'ninety six, 'ninety eight, something like that. I've been two times since. We're looking at another trip for Keystone. Israel is a hot topic right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hot
Speaker 1:And I have some really, I have some people that are very dear to me. Yes. Some young men that are very dear to me, who I love greatly, care for, and some of them I've shepherded as their pastor
Speaker 2:for a
Speaker 1:long, long time. They have a lot of questions about Israel. They're seeing things online, and they just have a lot of questions, particularly coming out of the Gaza war and all that, the October brutal attack from the Gaza terrorists, and just all that stuff, and they're doubting Israel. I've And had some really great conversations, the beginnings of some great conversations. I have some thoughts, and I've actually done a whole another podcast on some thoughts, and I can recap those in a sec.
Speaker 1:But I would just love just if you were speaking to, you know, you reach students, you reach the young generation. If you're talking to them about Israel, what do you say to them in this culture of a little bit of a rising anti Israel sentiment? How do you lead on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think if you talk to Israelis, you will, and those are, Jews who are Israeli. You also have Palestinians who are I mean, if you talk to Israelis, yeah, that's right. If you talk to Jewish Israeli, Israeli citizens, like I have friends who are, they're not gonna be uniform in how they perceive everything. But one of the things that they often say is, to argue that Israel has the right to defend itself is unquestioned.
Speaker 2:Right? That is to say, as a nation state, Israel, as a nation, has the right to defend itself because it is a nation. Mhmm. And it always has been. And most Israelis that I know would love to see some sort of a two state solution.
Speaker 2:It's a very difficult thing and it's very complicated because of, again, it's very hard for Americans sitting on the outside to really understand that
Speaker 1:they really see.
Speaker 2:But for my Jewish friends who often relay kind of the threat that they experience is they see nations around them that want
Speaker 1:the Jews gone. Yeah, not just one nation.
Speaker 2:No, nations all around who, in many cases, want these Jewish people gone. When they say, From the river to the sea. That's not about freeing Palestine.
Speaker 1:Some people think that what that means is, hey, yeah, Palestinians should be free.
Speaker 2:What it actually relates to is eradicating the Jews from Palestine from the river to the sea. Pushing them from the
Speaker 1:Jordan River into The Mediterranean. The Mediterranean.
Speaker 2:And that is, I don't know how else to say it, that's at the very least anti Semitic. More to the point, think that that's genocidal.
Speaker 1:It's genocidal, yeah. It is, and they're little Satan, and the West is big Satan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Two radical Islamic terrorists.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So I face the same thing, and that is just sometimes just haven't engaged with the other side another perspective of what is out there, you know, what what is what is the Israeli perspective? We're inundated with the Palestinian perspective, which which is interesting because there were no Palest everybody was Palestinian just a few short decades ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Jewish Palestinians. Yeah. And the hand, this particular piece of ground over the last two thousand years has switched hands so many times from the Ottoman Empire to the British to the United Nations, and then before that you have the Romans, and then you have the Babylonians, and then All know these nations. Israel, it's always been like this, and through all these years, it is a complicated area. It's a spirit.
Speaker 1:And it's easy, you know, somebody can say, Well, at this point, this is when it all changed. Well, there's always something before that point.
Speaker 2:Right, that's right.
Speaker 1:And there's just more to the story, it's very complicated. One of the things that I said to someone recently is, okay, let's just all just pause and understand. If you go to Israel, Israel is a nation. Yes. I mean, it is there.
Speaker 1:They have roads. They have buildings. Yes. They have representation. Yep.
Speaker 1:They have laws. They have a Supreme Court, which, by the way, there's an Arab on the Supreme Court. They have an integration of Arab, Muslim, Israelis in their system. If you go to the old city, there's an Arab quarter, there's a Jewish quarter, there's a Christian quarter, and they live together. All that to say is it's complicated, and you can't go back.
Speaker 1:You can't find a point in history and say, Okay, let's start right here. It's too late. It'd be like us trying to unwind centuries now of American history. Where do we all go if we give it back to the indigenous people who were here before? You just can't.
Speaker 2:It's very difficult to do that.
Speaker 1:So, have to start at a point, and we're at that point, so where do you go from now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, the West, from our perspective here in America, I think one of the things that's very helpful is to not be totalizing in our statements or in our claims. The reality is, number one, one can affirm the existence of Israel and one can affirm the existence of Palestine and say, hey, we need some sort of two state solution. We need something where people can live together in harmony. Right. If they will live together in harmony.
Speaker 1:If they will.
Speaker 2:And then secondly, I would say, so you avoid totalizing statements like it's either this or that. The second thing I would say that I think is really, really important is to recognize that you can be critical of the government without saying that you want Israel gone or Palestine gone. That's right. Because again, the Palestinians have their government. Israel has its government.
Speaker 2:You can be critical and say, just like we are in America. Right? I like this, don't like that. I agree with this, don't agree with that. That's okay.
Speaker 2:Where I think we gotta be careful is the kind of things that we're seeing in social media world today, which are downward spirals where it is totalizing claims. And it's false trails and false narratives one way or the other. And in my viewpoint, that kind of stuff is actually deadly. And it leads to antisemitism. And again, I'm sorry to say, it's very grievous to me that antisemitism is on the rise, and it's on the rise in America, and it's on the rise in the West, and it's on the rise in places where it should not be.
Speaker 2:And we've really got to guard against that. And And it's on it's the on right.
Speaker 1:Yes. And it's on the left.
Speaker 2:And it's on the left. That's right. We've got to guard against that because, again, we've, and I'm not just saying this because it's a novel thing to say. The reality is in our most recent history, we know that it is possible to create genocide of a people group called Israel or called the Jews. We've seen it in the Holocaust, And in the I'm telling you, we don't want to go down that road again, nor do we want to see that in Palestine.
Speaker 2:And I would just say, I was in Oxford recently, this last summer, it was a president's kind of conclave, we were meeting and I was talking with the provost of one of the universities in Palestine, particularly in Bethlehem. And he had toured the region in and around Gaza, and it is horrific because it's war. It's horrific. And of course, in Nazareth, or in Bethlehem, there are majority Muslim students. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And there's bitterness and anger and rage, and this is war, and it's very difficult. But you know, something that he said I thought was so interesting. The Jews have a hard time seeing the Palestinians. The Palestinians have a hard time seeing the Jews as a people anymore. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Because they're constantly Yeah. At He said, now's the time for Christians to step in, and it's never been more of a time for Christians to step in and be mediators of peace because Christians are that third voice, third way in Palestine, and that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:It is
Speaker 2:a beautiful- The mediating peace of Christ. Yeah. And I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1:Mean,
Speaker 2:exactly, but he's living it. I'm not. Right. But man, that was an encouraging sign amidst the animosity one towards the other. Man, we get to see the peace of Christ and allow the Prince of Peace to reign.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so good and so needed. And I would say also, just to recap something I've said previously, and that is, for those out there that are on the fence about Israel, one of the things I would say is, yeah, you can criticize the government. I criticize American government. I don't fully trust American government. Why would I fully trust Israeli government or any other government?
Speaker 1:I think it's right to have a caution toward government, but I think it's also very dangerous if you're so distrusting of any institution.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Then ultimately, culture is left to do what is right in its It's own own eyes. That's right. And so what I would say, I've really thought about this, and this is kind of new breaking thought on this. In a social media culture where you're gonna have extreme perspectives, like one extreme perspective will be morally equivocating what happened on October 7 with war in Gaza. Those are not morally equal.
Speaker 1:No. You have one group terrorizing, inflicting terror on people in an evil way for the intent of terror punishment. Yeah. On the other, whether you agree, you could still disagree with it. It is war.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1:And you could say, well, even though they're, I mean, they are telling them where they're going to attack, giving them some trying to get food in. And I know there's disputes on all that stuff, but it is not the same. There's at least moral attempt on the war side. But war is brutal, and war looks like this.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:If you were in Britain, when war was happening, it looked like that. Yeah. If you were in Berlin, it looked like that. Yeah. With that said, how do I, in my social media equation, how do I know what's true?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:And what I would say is, the first step is, Bible, Bible, Bible. Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible. The Bible is your number one authority. Anchoring the word of God, that's where you start. Read more of the word of God than you do that one influencer.
Speaker 1:The second is, I think, heroes. Start with the word of God, that's where you start. I think we need heroes in our life. In a day and age where pastors have disappointed us, where they have fallen, where politicians have stumbled, or even outright lied, I say do not give up on voices that you can trust. Actually, you need them more than ever.
Speaker 1:Voices you can trust begin local, people you can look in the eye. And I think that needs to be pastors in your life, spiritual authority in your life, it could be a parent in your life, it could be a Bible study leader that you've had, just some anchors, some real life people. I've seen people ditch family and ditch pastors and ditch their church for an influencer that doesn't know their name. Right. I would just caution with that.
Speaker 1:You don't know what that influencer's family life really is They may be a horrible father. They may not really have a vibrant relationship with Jesus. You're not living with them. You like what they say on a clip, but you're even just then getting the clip. So I'm not saying don't listen to influencers, but don't ditch your heroes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 1:Who are your heroes? What are they saying? And listen double as hard to the heroes as you do to the influencers. Measure it. Take what they say.
Speaker 1:Pause. If you find yourself amping up and losing your mind a little bit, you've got to pause, you've got to slow down, and then just take your time. Let time settle some of those. I've seen some influencers, it's like they've lost their minds. They've unraveled a little bit, And time has shown that you should have gone a little slower before you bought the t shirt.
Speaker 1:Right. You know? Right. Is there anything else you would add to that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, this is kind of unsurprising. I am an academic at heart, right? So, one of the great sacrifices in our world today is truth. And I mean that we've sacrificed the truth for a sound bite. And the truth is not easily digestible in a thirty second clip on TikTok.
Speaker 2:It's just not.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:And especially something as complex as what we're talking about, the Israeli Palestinian conflict and that war that's going on and the history of that. And so, you know, we serve the God of truth. And we do not need to shy away from the truth, but truth is often very hard won. And so we need to be more disciplined when it comes to things like research, thinking through our sources, listening slowly over time. And I love what you were saying there.
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes it just takes a little
Speaker 1:bit of time. And
Speaker 2:on something like as complex as you know, what we're talking about with the unraveling of, you know, relations, we gotta realize, I mean, this is not the only time this has happened in recent memory. Right. Right. I was supposed to be going to Israel in 2001, but what happened couldn't go into Fatah. Right.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of this conflict that's gone on over time. So we've gotta be able to listen carefully, slowly, fight for the truth, weigh your sources, Just because an Ivy League professor says something doesn't mean that it's gospel. So true. They may have an agenda, so you have to weigh that against something else.
Speaker 1:Like what else have they said?
Speaker 2:Yes, what else have they said? Or are there other perspectives out there? And that's just good scholarship. I was taught in The UK, you can't just look at one source and say, that's it. You've got to weigh your sources and fight for the truth.
Speaker 2:And, you know, as followers of Jesus, we should be really concerned with truth and falsehood. And a lot of what we see in our world today, because we're looking to get our information on TikTok or Instagram or whatever it is. We're not looking at facts or truth. We're looking at echo chambers function and created through algorithms that create echo chambers that we we can only hear one side of the story. We've got to remove ourselves from that echo chamber and actually get to facts and truth.
Speaker 2:That's a very hard one. That's not easy.
Speaker 1:Well, know, I look forward to the day when Jesus comes back where he sets up his holy temple.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And he rules from historic Jerusalem, where Jesus will put his foot on the Mount Of Olives, walk down that Kidron Valley and up to the East Gate, and we'll walk through into where he will govern the new world. Not just new Jerusalem, but new world. Right. Right?
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And we look forward to that day where truth wins. Yep. And let's fight for it today.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:So good. Thank you for bringing some incredible insights to the Old Testament. We barely scratched the surface on I some know there's more we wanted to say. But thank you for joining us at The Overflow. Heath, thanks for being with us.
Speaker 1:What a joy. And I pray this started a conversation that can deepen your faith, encourage you, and help us find a little more truth. We'll see you next time on The Overflow.