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You’re tired.
Not just physically; though yeah, that too.
You’re tired in your bones. In your soul.
Trying to be a steady husband, an intentional dad, a man of God… but deep down, you feel like you’re falling short. Like you’re carrying more than you know how to hold.
Dad Tired is a podcast for men who are ready to stop pretending and start healing.
Not with self-help tips or religious platitudes, but by anchoring their lives in something (and Someone) stronger.
Hosted by Jerrad Lopes, a husband, dad of four, and fellow struggler, this show is a weekly invitation to find rest for your soul, clarity for your calling, and the courage to lead your family well.
Through honest stories, biblical truth, and deep conversations you’ll be reminded:
You’re not alone. You’re not too far gone. And the man you want to be is only found in Jesus.
This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about coming home.
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Let me read you this quote from Richard Dawkins about the God of the Bible. And this is just, it's too good if you don't, who Richard Dawkins is. He is one of the four horsemen of the atheist apocalypse. So just harshly critical of everything. God, everything Bible, particularly, he takes aim time and time again.
The God of the Old Testament, and this is perhaps one of the, uh. One of the most vitriolic, um, quotations about God. Here's what he writes in the book, the God Delusion, he writes this, the God of the Old Testament is ar and he's British. So you gotta think about this through a British accent. The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.
Jealous and proud of it. A petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak. A vindictive, blood thirsty ethnic cleanser. A misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, ocid, pecho, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously, malevolent bully. I mean, you know, like if you're gonna go after God, he might, as he might as well, go all the way, you know?
And, um, one of the things that I. That's been a wrestle for me in my life growing up as a Christian, but then this was one of my main things that hung me up and kinda like that late high school time was just. Opening up scripture. I remember, I remember where I was, um, specifically what class I was in in high school.
I went to a huge public high school in Bakersfield, California. And um, it's about five, four hours away from where I live now in San Diego. And I remember sitting in my biology class and, um, my. My teacher was just a very anti-religion, anti-God, everything. And, and so he said out loud in front of the whole class he was, him and I were going back and forth on some stuff, and all I knew was like, these sound bites and extremes, you know, like that my whole faith was based on hoping that no one asks me a difficult question at the time.
And, um, he said. Well, at least I don't follow a God who commands the slaughter of a whole people group. And without thinking, I just went that, that's not, God doesn't do that. And then, um, it was like he got this malicious, you know, like in the Grinch where he gets his awful idea, his wonderfully awful idea, and, and his like, smile just goes from like ear to ear.
That was this guy. He was so excited to put me in my place and he did in front of the whole class, he started to read about the slaughter of the Amalekites in the Old Testament. And I remember just sitting there going like, does he have a different version of the Bible than I do? Is he equipped with some level of.
Knowledge and the Jewish scriptures that I'm not. And then I just went and started reading and, and I have to admit now in retrospect over the years, that a lot of my, like late high school disbelief or atheism or, um, always recognizing the value of Christianity, but not its cogency in the mind that doesn't make sense or it wasn't supposed to be understood.
In any sort of literal sense was really based on, I, I think I, I, I put it back to moments like that where I just remember thinking, man, everything I've been told is a lie. And, and, and maybe this question in particular, why did no one teach me about this stuff? And so you, you, the common response then, which many of you guys who are listening here, um.
You'll, you found this with your brothers and sisters and moms and dads and cousins and uncles and coworkers, is they just, this is like their, their carte blanc rejection of the Bible is, well, have you read about what God did in the Old Testament and what I'm finding, I get to work with a lot of young adults every week, particularly the, the college age.
My church that I pastors right next to Sango State. So you get these criticisms all the time about God in the Bible. And what I've come to find out is with, with. With really a, a very basic understanding of the truth of scripture, old Testament, um, landscape and culture. Um, a, a base overview of Biblical ex of Jesus and study I.
Almost all these questions can be put to rest almost immediately, but maybe many of you find yourself in the same position as me that you're just terrified of the day that your daughter walks up to you and says, Hey, why was God so cool with people marrying 88? People in the Old Testament or, um, why does God tell Abraham to kill his son Isaac?
Or why are, why, why do, why does God command the slaughter of the Canaanites of the Amalekites or these other group people, groups and you're just hoping upon hope that the Holy Spirit, um, that Jesus comes back in that moment or that your daughter never thinks to ask it or whatever it is, and. In the, um, in just like chatting with the team dad tired this last week.
Uh, we we're in the middle of like, the fires in la so I'm in San Diego a few hours south of that. But it's just like, it's devastating man to be out here and to talk to people about what they're going through. And it's like people lost their homes and many people lost their lives. And, and the least of which is people are starting to think about, um, even before the fire's put out.
Right now that they're already thinking about the rebuilding effort and what does this mean for people in that area, people who are uninsured. And my daughter just sat next to me and she said, couldn't God just put out all the fire if you wanted to? Um, and so you're sitting there, right? And I'm like, I.
On my phone after a day finishing up my emails and she just goes, couldn't God just put all these fires out? Like can he just make it rain? He's really good at making it rain. Why couldn't he just rain? Wouldn't it stop all the fires? And these feel like small moments, maybe. You know, like where you wanna, I.
It makes some sort of offhanded joke, you know, like, well, he could put out the fires, uh, but then he'd have to empty his swimming pool in the heavens. You know, like ba, like some dumb junk like that. And so I felt the level of import in that moment going, I, I think I'm gonna, I wanna capitalize in this moment to have a conversation that's a little bit deeper, you know, that goes into the, the ramifications of believing and in all power for God who allows things to happen.
And, um, I. What I have noticed though, as even like going on the dad tired retreat this year and doing a really fun apologetic seminar and as we've been doing like those short question and answers. Is having a robust answer to the question of, um, defending the God of the Old Testament or understanding.
It's actually a really big concept. It's one that I think maybe even some of us struggle with ourselves, where we think like, oh yeah, I, I know that there's probably an answer out there somewhere. I'm just not aware of it. I'm not. Privy to it. I don't understand it. And so what I'd like to do, and it's been fun to talk with the dad, tired guys, and get permission to do this, is to do a bit of a, um, this is what I would do in like one of my biblical ex Jesus classes that I teach for the college that I teach at, but for you guys as dad, tired listeners that are my friends and my family, and, uh, just.
Guys that I respect and look up to as fellow dads to go from my little slice of the world, from um, biblical theology and from having questioned these things and answered those things, and having gone through doubt myself, if I could give you a base overview that would be able to equip you as dads, and I know there's some.
Mom, listeners who have snuck into the dad tired audience also, and we're glad to have you here, um, to say, are you, would you be prepared if your daughter came to you and opened up to the book of Exodus or to, uh, parts of numbers and said, excuse me, what am I supposed to do? So I'd love to walk through that with you.
And the first one that I want to talk about today is simply some of these guiding principles when it comes to how we're supposed to interpret the Old Testament. And sometimes, again, just some of the most basic biblical interpretation tools and rules can be used to answer a lot of the questions that we have.
So what I'd love to do in the first one is to give some of those guidelines and principles that if you're new to studying the Bible, or if you want to dive into this more on your own, or you're interested in apologetic. And answering these hard questions to give you a little bit of a base, a, a foundation, if you will.
And then over the next few weeks, what we want to do is we want to tackle some of the most difficult questions in, uh, in, in biblical theology. Um, what does it mean that. There were slaves in the Old Testament. Does God really condone slavery? Uh, what do we do with a God who's jealous and vindictive? Um, how are we supposed to understand the idea of, um, the relationship between men and women?
Is, is God a misogynist? Was Jesus a an elitist, chauvinistic guy? What, what, what do we do with people like. King Solomon, who had hundreds and hundreds of wives, and then concubines and then jumping into some of the more, the most difficult, including what do you do with the, um, patent slaughter of the Amalekites, of the Canaanites of God in the Old Testament permitting and actually commanding that whole people groups be taken out.
Is there an answer to these questions and I can just tell you. Uh, having studied all these things that these are really fun areas to, uh, watch people navigate. You know, if I'm doing like a debate or something, this is a very common, um, open mic question. I'm going up to Hume Lake this next weekend to teach at a youth camp, and I know at the q and a seminar that I do every year, someone always asks one of these questions, what do you do with.
Um, God and, and the, and homosexuality. What do you do with these things? So what I'd love to do, give a basic overview this week of some of those principles, and then dive in headlong into very specific answers to very specific questions on the character of the God of the Bible, from issues like slavery and polygamy and, and, um, chauvinism and homosexuality and slaughter, the Amalekites.
And so. We wanna look at those things. So let's start with some biblical interpretation principles. These are things that you would learn in a, a basic, uh, Bible study class. And these guiding principles have to be used whenever we open up scripture. So let me give you five of those things and then we'll talk about a few errors, uh, in interpreting scripture that we see all the time.
As theologians and then wrap up with 10 specific rules that you need to interpret the Old Testament in particular. So let's start with some of these guiding principles. If you're on your way to to work or wherever you're listening to this, this was obviously one of those that be easier if you're able to take notes.
But, um, I will, uh. I can, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna try to make these available, some of these notes available to you if you don't want to take notes. So copiously, if you just wanna listen and enjoy and then, uh, I can get these notes to you. Just if you wanna reach out to me. I have all these notes so you can email me Chris at dad tired dot.
Com. Uh, again, that is chris@dadtired.com, and I'll send these, um, notes over to you and I can also answer any specific questions you might have that I wasn't able to answer in this episode, but maybe I can in a future one. So feel free to reach out with those questions that I can send you some of these notes.
So these guiding principles, first and foremost, five guiding principles, a number of ways that we mess up when we're interpreting, and then how to specifically to deal with the Old Testament. So the first one, the first guiding principle. That all theologians, even, uh, just as his dads and talking to our kids, is whenever you come across a difficult passage of scripture, we call it the analogy of scripture.
It's, uh, the analogy of scripture or an logia s scriptura, which is a biblical interpretation principle. That means that it goes like this. You ought to always use clear. Scripture to interpret difficult scripture, always use clear scripture to interpret difficult scripture. So if you find a difficult passage in scripture, something that you come across that you go, man, I don't know what to do with that.
But there's a concept in it that's a little bit fuzzy and you don't know how to navigate it completely. The principle of an logia scriptura is. You find a passage that does speak very clearly and very simply to the topic, and you use that idea in order to interpret the concept. That's a little bit fuzzy.
Lemme give you an example In Psalm chapter 82. Uh, beginning verse two says, how long will you, oh God, defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked? Defend the weak and the fatherless. Uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy deliver them. Uh, sorry. The question is show partiality to the wicked.
How long will you show partiality to the wicked? Then? It's a call for God to defend the weak and fatherless. Uphold the cause of the poor rescue. The weak and needy deliver them from the hand of the wicked. The Gods know nothing. They understand nothing. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I say, you are gods, you are all sons of the most high, but you will die like mere mortals. You will fall like every other ruler. And so you find some groups like Mormon, Mormons or other people criticizing and saying, you see that the Bible teaches, um, a, a, a Council of Gods, that there's more than one God.
Or they'll just grab that one verse and say. Uh, Psalm 82, verse five, Psalm 82, verse five says, the Gods know nothing. They understand nothing. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken. You see, the Bible actually affirms that there are many, many, many gods. And so we have to deal with that as believers and recognize that our God actually promotes the idea that there are more than one.
There's more than one God. So, um, that is a, that's a truth of scripture, that there's many gods. Well, that's a fuzzy passage, isn't it? There's a lot of, you can tell. There's a lot of metaphor in there. There's a lot of analogy. So you ask yourself the question, does the Bible teach that there are many, many gods?
Well, you don't use the fuzzy passage. Then you go, okay, I gotta make sense of what that meant. When you go into the depths of it, you recognize that these are religious rulers. There's 58 different principles you can go into God quotes, Jesus quotes. Jesus quotes this passage in the New Testament when he is cri, criticizing the religious elite and saying that you are, you act like judges as if you were the gods, and yet you don't even know you're.
Mouth from a hole in the ground. And, um, he's ridiculing them for those things. So that's not the least of which. The point is most people don't get it. They just throw this one verse at you and they don't do the difficult work of biblical interpretation. So an logia scriptura says, well turn to Isaiah 44 verse six.
This is what the Lord our God says, Israel's king and redeemer. The Lord Almighty. I am the first and the last. Apart from me, there is no God. It's actually the, the call of the Old Testament, the Shema of Deuteronomy, chapter six, also states so clearly. Listen, Israel, there is only one God hero, Israel, the Lord our God.
The Lord is one. Every morning and every evening, every Jewish man and woman up all the way to and through Jesus' day would've got up in the morning and quoted this Shama, which is a Hebrew phrase, meaning. I've got a declaration to make to you here. Oh, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. So no one at the time that this was written would've thought in a biblical worldview that Psalm 82 is saying anything about God affirming multiple gods.
So use the clear passages. There is only one God. There is no other God beside me. Isaiah 44 verse six. Isaiah 45, verse five. Deuteronomy six, four through six to interpret the fuzzy one, which is Psalm 82, verse two through six. So that is the idea of clear inter using what's clear to interpret what's fuzzy.
I. Number two, the second guiding principle. We, when we're studying the Bible, we don't ask what, how does this passage make me feel? We ask, what did the original author intend his audience to understand? So if you've went into a Bible study and everyone sits in a circle and they read a passage and they read, um, uh, Ephesians 2, 8, 9, afforded by grace, you have been saved through faith.
None of yourselves not by works that no man can boast. And then if the person leading the Bible study says, what do you, what does that passage mean to you? That's actually not the work of interpretation of scripture. It's not to find out what a passage means to every individual. The hard work of a theologian is to say, when Paul wrote that, what would he have meant?
That is what we're asking. Um, expressive individualistic cultures like ours really care about what you think about a passage, but interpretation is a lot more like math. There's a correct answer. I. The application of the interpretation is a little bit more like English, right? Like in, in school math was not good for guys like me where I wanna be able to talk my way around the answer.
So, you know, when I didn't read the book that I was required to read and my teacher was like, what do you think is the. Moral of the story of, of mice and men, I'd be like, well, you know what, some people are mice, some people are men. And in life, uh, the funny thing is sometimes men are afraid of mice and sometimes men, mice are afraid of men.
And to this day, I have no idea what a mice and men is about, but you just talk and blabber long enough like Michael Scott. Eventually your teacher goes, wow, great insight. You know what I mean? So application is like English. There's a lot of helpful applications, but the interpretation is like math.
There's a correct answer. And now that I know what Paul meant by it is by grace you have been saved through faith. How do I apply that to my life? Sure. You could go around the circle and go, how are you gonna apply God's grace and that truth in your life this week? That's like English. There's many helpful applications.
There's only one correct interpretation. So that's the second one. What did the author originally mean? So use clear to interpret. To interpret difficult. The, the author, what they meant is what's most important. Three, the Bible can never mean now what it would've never meant then. Okay, so th this is also, um, like historical appropriation.
The Bible can never mean now what it would've never meant then. Um, so if you've ever heard a sermon that someone's done on what the Bible says about dating, could stop listening to it. If you've ever heard someone do a sermon on gun ownership, you should stop listening to it. If you've ever heard someone do a sermon on social media from the Bible, you should stop listening to it.
Why? 'cause it does not talk about it. Now, you can take some principles about. Uh, how to honor men and women, and you can apply those in a dating setting. But the Bible says nothing of dating. Dating is a new concept. If the entire human history, um, from the beginning of mankind until now was a, you know, a mile I.
On the 5,276 foot out of 5,280 would is when dating would've started on that timeline. It's a brand new concept, so the Bible didn't talk about it at all. It was a, uh, it was a dowry context and a context of people arranging marriage. So the idea that the Bible speaks about dating or that Paul had a great section on dating in Ephesians is completely false.
The Bible can never mean now what it would've never meant then. Number four is to exe. Before you interpret words, make up sentences, sentences, form paragraphs, which form thoughts, which instruct theology. So you need to know what an individual word means before you go and applying it across the board.
For instance, in the New Testament, just the Book of John, the word world means about nine different things. Uh, sometimes Jesus says, um, that Satan is the prince of this world. That means worldly system, um, the judgments that it makes, the morality of the world. But then it also says, for God so loved the world, that means.
Apostle. That means the people. That means for God's of mankind. Okay. The cosmos. Uh, but he's specifically talking about people that he died on the cross for their sins. Uh, but he also talks about, in the Bible, talks about the passing away of this world. Well, that's a. Physical entity, the actual, uh, land and water being renewed in the new kingdom.
So the wood world can mean a lot of different things. You need to know which one's which. When it says for God's soul of the world, he wasn't talking about dirt and water. He was talking about people, but sometimes he says The way of the world is wicked and dirt and water can't be wicked. So it's talking about the governmental systems and the the way that people think.
So ex G, before you interpret, know what words mean before you make them into theology. And lastly, number five, Jesus is the point and the hero of every story. Jesus is the point and the narrative of every story. So when you read an Old Testament story, don't put yourself as the hero, as if that's the real thing that God wants you to know.
Jesus is the hero of every story. He is the point. He is the meta narrative arc. He is the king. So if there's a hero in an Old Testament story where Moses was brave and he was sent as a deliverer and because of the blood of a lamb, the people were set free, he is the lamb that is shed, that is slain in order to set the people free.
He's the hero. Um, he is Moses. He is sent. From a foreign land as a shepherd. He goes back in. He challenges the world. Systems being Pharaoh. He delivers his people from the bondage of slavery through the waters of baptism or the Red Sea and into the promised Land. Jesus is Moses. I'm not Moses. You see, Moses is an, is a type of Jesus.
He's an archetype. He's a he's. He's foreshadowing Jesus. I'm not Moses. Here are some of the common errors we make in interpretation. Uh, the first one is to decontextualize. Let me give you this phrase, um, in, well, let me context is everything okay? Interpretations must be done in the context of the passage.
So if I said, uh, if you picked up a note and you wrote it, and you read it was a ball, um, watch this. Context allows it to be interpreted about five different ways, all of which are very different. Um, it was a ball. The umpire saw the pitch, drift to the outside and said to himself it was a ball. Or, how about this?
We went to the dance last night. It was very formal. In fact, it was so formal, you might say it was a ball or about this. As I was walking along the golf course, I spotted a small white sphere. I. It was a ball. I had so much fun, fun at the game tonight. It was a ball. So saying it was a ball can either mean that's a sphere.
It was too fancy. It wasn't a strike or I had fun. I. Context is king for all of those things. There is the immediate context of the passage, the author, the literary type, the book, the section, the paragraph. You have to know what you're reading. If you open up to the book of Revelation and you go, this Bible's talk, this book talks about seven headed monsters.
You're right, that's allegorical. That's not realistic. We're not actually expecting a seven headed monster. Okay? So we have to understand. Decontextualizing is one of the key ways we miss and understand scripture. The second is to allegorize things. Searching for prescription instead of description. So if you read through the, um, story of, uh, let's say your, your daughter tells you about her day at kindergarten and you listen to all of it, and at the end of her speaking, you say, do you know what the story of your day was?
Well, first of all, you went to school, it rained outside. You came in for lunch, you then got picked up. You wanna know what that is. Sometimes in life when it rains, we just need to get picked up. It's like, well, that's bad. You know? That's like, that's like a bad pastor trying to deliver a message that just isn't there.
So Allegorizing and moralizing is taking Old Testament narratives and specifically Old Testament narratives, and applying meaning to them beyond. This is a story that God's telling. This is a part of the redemptive story of mankind. Imagine someone taking your life and everything and, and trying to apply morality and a moral, a story to it.
You'd go, oh, no, I, I literally just, I just fell asleep in the afternoon. That wasn't, didn't mean anything by it, so that's moralizing or allegorizing. The third is personalizing, taking promises that apply to somebody else and using them for myself. So, uh, for, I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.
Plans to prosper you not to harm you. Plans to give you hope in a future that was written to Israel because God had plans to redeem Israel. And that is not meant for every single person. Um, uh, well, Moses walked around in the desert for 40 years, and so you and I need to make sure we're walking enough in our everyday life.
You're personalizing things and making it, um. Say what it doesn't say. Number four is false appropriation. Okay? So when ancient texts are modernized and molded to our modern day setting, then they become demoralized. For instance. Um, maybe you guys have ever done this before, but um, if you've had the benefit of growing up with a mom, maybe at one point you thought it'd be funny just to go woman.
What is your problem? And you go, well, Jesus is a misogynist because he only almost exclusively calls his mom, woman. Yep. But in Jesus day and age, that was a term of endearment. And today it's disrespectful, so you can't go, well, Jesus disrespected women because he called his mom woman. That is not okay.
Right. Or, um, if you walk up to someone today on the street and you pour oil on their head and you're like. You're anointed, they're gonna go, what is your problem? I've got oil all over myself, but in ancient times, that's obviously a sign of deep honor and of a promise to come. Um, or David was an exhibitionist because he tore his clothes and danced naked in the temple courts.
We would look at that and go, wow, he is an exhibitionist. What a weirdo. He would've been on a sexual registry list now and sex offenders list. And why are we reading about this guy? This guy's a, a total jerk, and he's, uh, he's, he's a moral reprobate. It's, it's a false appropriation that was not, that did not, that was not viewed like that then.
So he shouldn't be like that now through that lens. So David wasn't an exhibitionist, he was rejoicing in the courts. That would've been very appropriate in that day and age to worship. God, I. Um, so to prescribe from description or to describe from prescription. Okay. So this is a fancy one, but it basically means, um, sometimes when you read the story of Solomon having a bunch of wives, it isn't telling you to have a bunch of wives, wives.
It's telling you the story of a guy who had a bunch of wives, and guess what? His life was a disaster. Okay. Um, when a passage leaves some leaves, someone offended. They go back and say that it really means something else to make it palatable. This is often what is understood. So sometimes the Bible's describing a story.
Sometimes it's prescribing a life change. Sometimes the Bible is saying, honor your father and mother. That's a prescription almost like you would get from a doctor. You need to do this. But sometimes the Bible's going, uh, JL drove a tent peg through the man's head, so you should also make sure that you drive a tent peg through someone else's head too, or, um, uh, Noah was drunk and naked in his tent and his kids found him.
And you know what the Bible says that it's good to be drunk and naked because Noah was, and Noah was considered righteous in God's eyes. Nope. The Bible was describing a story of a messed up man that God still uses to help bring judgment on the earth. That is not saying, and you should be like that. And obviously the last one we talked about previously is the analogy of scripture.
Um, one of the last errors that we make, so we've got our errors are Decontextualizing Allegorizing. Personalizing false appropriation, uh, confusing description and prescription. The analogy of scripture. So taking complicated things, uh, and making them, uh, clear through clear passages, not more difficult ones.
So those are. The most common ways I see people misunderstanding scripture. So here's, uh, just a few rules to wrap up with for interpreting the Old Testament before we jump into a specific topic. Next time, next time, we're gonna talk about slavery in the Old Testament. Here's specific rules for interpreting the Old Testament.
Number one, an Old Testament narrative normally does not teach a doctrine, it just tells a story. Number two, an Old Testament narrative usually illustrates a doctrine. Doctrines that are taught propositionally elsewhere. So it doesn't teach a doctrine, but it often illustrates a doctrine. Like, um, Proverbs says, A fool gives full that to his anger.
And God tells Moses to talk to a rock and to draw water from the rock, and instead he beats the heck out of the rock. Well, guess what? He's illustrating a doctrine of what happens when a fool gives full vet to his anger. Number three, narratives record. What happened. Not what should have happened or what ought to happen every time.
So not every narrative has an individual identifiable moral of the story, narratives record what happened, not what should have happened. Okay, that's number three. Number four, what people do in narratives is not necessarily a good example for us. It's, it's often the opposite, right? So when Abraham lies and says that his Sarah is his sister, so that people don't beat him up, it's not going well.
If Abraham's righteous and he lies about his wife being his sister, then we should do the same thing. It's kinda what we talked about before with the, uh, personalizing and description and prescription. Five. Most of the Old Testament characters are far from perfect and so are their actions. Number six, we are not always told at the end of a narrative.
What happened was, good or bad, we should be able to judge this from what God has taught us elsewhere in the scriptures. So there's not always commentary on how bad it was, but the scriptures tell us if that was bad or not. So when the Book of Jonah ends and Jonah doesn't seem to be very repentant, you can know that God is angry with him.
His judgment is on him, not because it says, and therefore because Jonah did this God judgment. It just, we know because that's how God relates to people. Number seven, every narrative is incomplete. Only relevant details are given, so the authors just letting us know what was most important. So a, a lack of, of part of the story is not evidence that it's false or anything else like that, right?
Like Moses put a staff in the water and the Red Sea parted. Well, it didn't tell us how, so I don't believe that story. Well, it wasn't supposed to tell us how, first of all, it's supernatural. And secondly, it wasn't important in the narrative. The, their narratives important is the Israelites crossed the Red Sea on dry ground.
Not well. What happened to the crustaceans that were on the ground? Or what, what was there? Were there whales? What if someone jumped in the water? What would've happened to them? I don't know. It doesn't tell us. Uh, number eight, narratives are not written to answer every theological question. They have particular specif specific issues they deal with.
Number nine, what God commanded and permits are not the same thing Sometimes what God permits. What God commands are not the same thing. For instance, does God permit divorce in the Old Testament? Yes, Malachi two 16, but guess what? He hates it. He sometimes permits a broken and foolish people to do broken and foolish things because even though he's moving them closer to holiness, he recognizes that in their brokenness, he creates these permissions for them to.
Abide while still trying to grow them. And lastly, God is always the hero of all biblical narratives and all find their purpose and meaning in Jesus. God is always the hero. They find their ultimate meaning in Jesus. My hope is that this conversation, we're able to share it and use it, but also just to equip ourselves to know that as these questions come up, give us a foundation as we jump into these really difficult questions that the Bible brings up, that we maybe you've spent your whole life avoiding them or shying away from them, or just praying that no one ever.
Asks you, or maybe it's brought some questions for you yourself. So I, I'm, I'm excited to walk through this process with you guys. Again, if you guys need these notes, you can email me, chris@dadtire.com. I'll shoot those over to you and I'm, I'm excited just to kind of study God's word with you and to get some great answers to difficult questions and to be men who are able to live those things out and to, to have an answer, as Peter says, for the hope that lies within us.
Excited to do this journey with you guys.