Season two of Love in Context podcast welcomes you.
Get ready for engaging unscripted conversations with your hosts, Ben and Spencer.
Our mission remains unchanged to explore the Bible through the powerful lens of love.
In this new season, we'll embark on a journey together, unearthing fresh insights and gaining
deeper understanding of how we can love God and live out our faith in practical ways.
So let's dive into this season of Love in Context, where love and the context of the
Bible intersect to transform our lives.
Welcome back.
It's us again.
You thought we were gone, but we're back again.
I am leaving that in there, by the way.
Welcome back to Love in Context podcast.
This is Ben.
I'm Spencer.
And we are joined once again by Captain Shelby outrinks her husband and the salvation array
for now.
I mean, technically, you're always be a little bit ahead of him.
So I just like to remind you of that.
Just years of years of service.
That's all it is.
This is the first time you went on a podcast, correct?
Correct.
Yeah.
So we always tell people because they're always really nervous.
We're like, listen, if this is like the least nerve wracking place to actually have to
talk, we have we have like allies, we have like stuff we're talking about.
I was like, well, I shouldn't say the least nerve wracking, like at home in the way or
to yourself is probably less nerve wracking.
But fair, fair.
Laura, Laura Krug was on here a few weeks ago and she's like, you didn't warn me about
the video.
I was like, I definitely did.
But I'm just not looking in that general.
Well, OK, so just so you know, I mean, I wore a sweatpants sweatshirt hat today.
Yeah.
So no matter what, you're always going to look good sitting next to us.
Fair enough.
We've actually this is our third camera.
The other two broke.
Where we started trying to do video.
Right.
Second one broke when I had Bells Falsie.
That was not one broke, you know, Charles.
I tried to smile at it and they're like, no.
Yeah, just in case anybody doesn't know what Bells Falsie is, it's really super weird thing
that they don't know why it happens.
But like the right side of your face just crazed stops.
Well, it's right or left.
It could be.
Yeah.
Like just stuff's working.
Crazy.
It was fun.
Yeah.
So we are continuing on our mini series on women in the Bible and women in ministry.
Captain Shelby came back because we once again figured that this probably not a great idea
for a couple of middle aged guys to try to give you the female perspective.
Just doesn't work as well.
At least my wife tells me when I try to give her the female perspective that I'm wrong.
So so so today we're jumping into the lineage of Jesus.
But just a reminder where we started in episode one of the series about what is the foundation
in the Book of Genesis and what did we talk about over the last year through Torah?
And then we talked about, OK, well, who are these women of promise?
You know, Sarah, Rebecca Hagar and and Rachel and Leah, like, right.
Yeah.
Working through problems.
Last week, we talked about like women in leadership roles.
We talked about Miriam.
We talked about Deborah.
We talked about Esther.
We talked about a hold of which I love that name.
Hold on.
I use it every day.
Hadassah and hold up.
But we what we mostly have seen is that throughout the Bible, God is using women to move forward
his kingdom on a regular basis.
So today we're going to be exploring the lineage of Jesus.
And hugely important because typically women are not mentioned in lineages.
Right.
That's not a thing you would see in their cultures.
That's the thing you see in surrounding cultures of the day either.
Always be a male names son of a male name, son of a male name, so on and so forth.
Right.
So to have women mentioned in the lineage of Jesus is saying that God actually puts
God is actually putting immense value on women and who they are.
Right.
And in the book of Luke, it doesn't mention any women.
It just goes sons are sons on the way down.
Right.
It actually doesn't even mention Mary.
It goes through Joseph and in the book of Luke.
One of the things about the gospel of Matthew that we've talked about in the past is that
Matthew is written specifically to the Jewish people.
There's conversation about whether or not the book of Matthew was originally written
in Hebrew because Eusebius, who is one of the early church historians, notes that he
talks about the gospel of Matthew being originally written in Hebrew.
He was writing that around 303 B.C.
A.D., which had been considered closer to the time.
Now there's a lot of scholarly conversation about that.
It would have made sense for Matthew to write it in Hebrew.
If you want to believe that he was originally in Greek, I'm completely fine with that too.
But it's specifically written to the Jewish people.
It's from the outsider's perspective because who is Matthew?
Tax collector.
Tax collector, not a well thought of dude.
Right.
And it's those that are considered to be out are being brought in.
Hence why you also have servants like the servant of the mount.
Right.
There.
Lest are all these people who you think are on the outside of the kingdom.
God's working through them.
There's things that might happen.
Because it's written to Jews specifically, it would have made these names really, really
pop out.
Right.
Because this isn't the way that you do genealogies.
Why would you be listening to women in the genealogies?
That's a very abnormal thing.
Right.
You know, it is.
I mean, go look in Chronicles.
You're not going to see it happen very often.
And when it does, it's something very specific, like we talked about Miriam being a big deal.
Right.
Let's go ahead and just jump into the first one here.
I'm going to say it in the way that it actually says in the Bible.
It says, whose mother was Tamar?
Yes.
That's how it says.
OK.
They're talking about Perez, whose mother was Tamar.
So who is Tamar?
Right.
Yeah.
Like, who is Tamar?
So Tamar shows up in Genesis 38.
So Tamar has this relationship that goes on with the tribe of Judah and specifically Judah's
sons.
Yep.
All right.
And basically, Judah's sons are like, we don't care about this woman.
There's some pretty, there's some pretty, they're basically like, hey, we're just not
going to give you a kid, but we're going to watch, you're going to just sit here and watch
us extreet ourselves.
Right.
And just to show you how much we care about you having a child.
Right.
And to have a kid back in that day was huge.
Right.
To be able to bear offspring.
Yeah.
Well, man, like land, property, all these things are going to go through the mill lineage.
Yep.
So a woman left without a child, a male child, is going to basically be left without somebody
to take care of them.
Exactly.
So in this story, Judah has separated from his brothers.
Joseph is in Egypt, but he's separated from his brothers.
And he goes and he marries a Canaanite woman, which always ends well.
Right.
A Canaanite woman named Shuwa, and they have three children.
The oldest, it says that he gets a wife.
So it's likely that Tamar is also not Jewish.
Right.
So not only is a woman listed in the genealogy of Jesus, she's also probably not a Jew.
An Israelite.
Right.
So she's a foreigner.
Tamar's name actually means palm tree.
Last week we noted we were talking about the myrtle tree.
Yeah, the myrtle tree for Hadassah, what her name means and how often women are named after
trees.
And legally speaking back in this day, you were legally entitled to have kids.
Yeah.
So the text doesn't really explain it.
It says the first kid does evil.
And dies.
And God eliminates him.
Yep.
Right?
We don't really understand what the evil is.
But the way that it would work, because you have to have a child, is that then the next
brother would come in and step in.
Right.
And he would lay with his brother's wife so that she could produce an heir.
Right.
And the first child would belong to his brother, not to him, even though he was the one who
actually sired the child.
Right.
That's how you make sure that you are able to keep these generations and then these tribes
going in this situation.
But second brother's like, nah, I'm not going to do that.
It's a very awkward internal phrase.
So just go to Genesis 38 and you can look it up yourself.
You can look it up for yourself.
Yeah.
And so then he's eliminated and the younger one is young, too young to actually take a
wife.
Right.
So Judas says, you know what, let's just punt this down the road for a little bit.
Right.
Except when the kid does become a mage, he still doesn't come and lay with Tamar to produce
a child.
Right.
So then there's this really weird story.
So like, by the way, this is in the lineage of Jesus and people are related to the story.
So Judah is off on a trip and Tamar realizes that he's never going to give her the third
son to produce an heir.
Right.
So she decides to take matters into her old hands.
Yeah.
And she goes and she dresses like a prostitute.
And so Judah is at the city gates and he goes, oh, look, a prostitute.
And then he wants to take her and bet her that she requires him to give her certain
things as a down payment of signs, things that are definitely his.
And so then he lays with her and he gets her pregnant and then she she bells and when he
comes back to pay her, she's not there.
But then later, this says that Tamar has been with a she's committed herself for prostitution
and that she needs to be eliminated and that she should be she should be put to death.
Right.
Which, by the way, I really think that's interesting for Judah to be like, how dare my daughter
in law right after he just went and saw the prostitute that like double standards here
a little bit.
Just a little bit.
But then she says, she says, well, that's fine.
You can cast me to death, but also you should know that I have these.
And she shows him the things that she'd given as a down payment.
And Judah makes a really interesting comedy says, surely Tamar was more righteous than
I.
Which is a massive statement in that culture.
Right.
The patriarch is like.
So we read that story where like, man, this is this is this is a really sketchy story.
Tamar is actually legally getting what she's entitled to.
Right.
She is legally now through some through some shyness, of course.
But she ends up having a kid by the name of Perez from this union with Judah.
And it's interesting that, you know, in some way, we're going to talk about a little bit.
We're going to talk about Ruth.
Ruth is actually given a blessing.
It says through the offspring Lord gives you by the this young woman.
May your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.
The same Perez who is in the line that followed down to Jesus.
Now, I think that's really interesting because we would look at this story and be like, man,
this is a mess up situation.
And yet even in the time of Ruth, they look at this as a blessing.
God fulfilling his promise.
Right.
So this is to caution people that when we talk about love and context, we actually do
have to look at the context of the culture we're looking into and their culture isn't
wrong.
It's just different.
Yeah.
With that said, we do not endorse prostitution.
Correct.
We do not endorse prostitution, nor do we we do the practice where if somebody dies,
their brother should go.
And yeah, because it's a different culture.
Like women still have are able to buy and sell property like a tons of things.
So it doesn't necessarily apply to us.
But understanding their perspective is really important.
And we're also like and you have to take into consideration too that the size of this culture
right now, specifically the total tribes of Israel is not very big.
Right.
Right now.
So it's not like if you're living in a big inner city type thing and there's lots of
people around, right?
Like your way to produce your family and move your line forward is limited.
So that's why some of these things were put in place.
It's where if your husband dies and the brother steps in right and carry helps care helps
you carry the line on.
Yeah.
Right.
It's just because they're actually it was a small culture at this time.
Right.
And we got to keep that in mind.
Yeah.
I remember last week you were talking about Vashti.
Yeah.
And her.
No, I'm not going to show up.
Yeah.
I see a lot of Vashti and Tamar.
Yes.
Which is like, listen, if you're not going to do this, I'm going to take I'm going to
take care of myself.
Yeah.
And she not only gets a child, but she also plans ahead so that Judas kind of caught between
a rock and a hard place.
Yeah.
In the situation is like, oh, yeah, I can't weasel my way out of this one.
I just don't know what happened.
Exactly.
We see right away in the line of Jesus is, is that these people who stick out like sore
thumbs, they're not necessarily I don't want to say unrighteous people because I don't
I don't think in this case, Tamar is more righteous than Judah, the lion of Judah.
Right.
Yeah.
And it's a it's a awkward, weird story.
Yeah.
That is probably one of those ones you don't want to bring up at Thanksgiving dinner.
Right.
Hey, remember when Tamar trick you like this isn't something that comes out, you know,
and remember when great grandma, you know, and yet this is in the in the lineage of Jesus
Christ.
Yeah.
Right.
And she's a she's a woman.
She's a foreigner.
But yet she is more righteous than the tribe of Judah.
Let that sink in.
Yeah.
Which brings us to our next contender.
Yeah.
Who is a Rahab?
Rahab.
Whose mother was Rahab.
Now, Rahab was a prostitute like Tamar pretended to be a prostitute, but Rahab actually was
a prostitute.
Absolutely.
Shelby, how much do you know about Rahab?
I don't know too much.
She she was a prostitute.
She was a foreigner.
She was a Canaanite.
She's in the land that Joshua was going into conquer.
He's land Joshua.
And she helps.
She helps save them in and holds them in her in her household.
So her name means wide.
I don't really know what to do with that.
Honestly, it may come up at a at a at another juncture.
And if someone is listening notes.
Yeah.
Send it send it send it in.
Well, sometimes these things show up later and you're like, you're like, oh, oh, we
could talk about Rahab and then you're talking about wide and you know, like that makes a
lot of sense because where you have means why.
You know, but I don't really have anything with that.
Yeah.
It's more of like just a little tidbit for our listeners.
So it's interesting, though, that she's not an Israelite and she is actually what Tamar
was accused of being.
Right.
But she lies.
So the two spies go in and she lies about where they are in order to get freedom, get
them to freedom, which reminds me a lot of the Hebrew midwives.
Right.
They lied to Pharaoh about we were running down there.
Those babies just popping out before we can get there.
Right.
Yeah.
Like those those Hebrew women, they're you are sturdy.
She asked them to have kindness on her and her family because she sees what God is doing.
Now, she partners with God.
She partners with God's people because she sees that God is working through these people
and you're not going to be able to stop them.
And she's like, I'm going to work with you, but please have grace on us.
And they see and respond.
They see and respond to her seeing what God is doing.
Right.
And that's why she's in the very line of Jesus.
Right.
A foreigner once again in the line of Jesus.
Right.
She's referenced multiple times in the New Testament, once in the book of Hebrews, where
it talks about her faith.
Right.
She has to be like basically turn her back on everything that she's familiar with because
she sees God working.
Yes.
Well, and so can I culture to if you were harboring spies and you're caught lying about
it, you'd most likely be put to death.
Like that was the typical punishment for it at the time.
The other interesting thing about this is she asked for protection and it says that
they were lowered out of a window on the wall.
Right.
So it actually implies that her house was on the wall.
Right.
And so then when they actually, when Israel came in and through the power of God brought
down the walls of Jericho, her house was unharmed.
Like there's actually like a miracle component that goes into this of Rahab concerning Rahab's
faithfulness.
And it wasn't actually just Rahab, it's all of her family.
Yeah.
All of her family is blessed because of her faithfulness.
Now it is interesting, like we don't see how everybody else felt about the Israelites coming
through, but we know that they're spared.
Right.
Because of Rahab's faithfulness.
Right.
And so she has to go and she has to turn from everything in order to trust.
She says, I see what God is doing and it's too powerful for us to oppose.
I have to join in.
But she has to turn away from everything.
Right.
Switch everything.
If you're a person who follows Jesus and your entire family does something else, that's
you.
Right.
But your ability to turn might just save your entire family.
Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, she's also referenced by the way in the book of James, which we will talk about
her a little bit there, but how about how she doesn't just have faith.
She actually puts her faith in action.
Yeah.
More like faith that doesn't prompt you to do something isn't faith.
I'm going to say that again, because we got Captain Shelby from the Salvation Army doing
good things in the world.
Right.
Faith that doesn't prompt you to actually do something isn't really faith.
Right.
It's only when faith is exercised that you actually see intellectually what you believe
coming out experientially.
Right.
We have talked about it in the podcast before.
Orthodoxy is really important.
But if it doesn't affect your orthopraxy, what you do, then it's kind of pointless.
Yeah.
What's the point?
Yeah.
If you don't believe that, go read the book of James.
We'll talk about that.
Yeah, we'll get there.
We'll get there.
By the way, I was actually looking through these and I'm like, man, a lot of our stuff
is connecting with itself without us even reading it too.
We just had a bunch of series that we thought would be good for us to do.
God does cool things.
You know?
Are you in James right now for your sermon?
No, no, we're going to have a mini series on the podcast coming up later in the book
of James.
We're going to do like six weeks to the book of James.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Rahab shows them in Hebrews.
In the hall of faith.
Up there with Abraham and all of them.
Yeah.
He's like, oh, I got to tell stories about people who had extraordinary faith.
So I have Abraham, Rahab.
Somebody's probably reading that and they're like, Rahab.
Like the other.
Yeah.
Well, if you were, because if you were a Jewish reader at the time reading that letter, you'd
have been like, oh yeah, Abraham, Moses.
Yeah, Rahab.
Oh, Rahab?
Okay.
Like.
Is that like a chapter and a half?
Yeah.
Like they would be like, oh, okay.
Like it could have been like interesting choice.
Yeah.
But she is someone who turned her back on everything.
Yeah.
To serve the Lord.
Right.
And another thing that I, there's a real practical implication here too with Rahab.
She didn't immediately quit her lifestyle when she said yes to God.
I think what happens a lot of times is we get people who say yes to Jesus and then we're
like, all right, boom, here's all the things you need to quit right now.
Right.
When it's, when in reality, when we do that, what we're doing is we're taking it into our
own hands to say, this is, I'm going to control the situation.
And we're like, okay, do you think God's not capable of doing the transformational work
in their lives?
If someone encounters Jesus and doesn't know that their lifestyle is sinful, right.
But they're like, I need Jesus.
Right.
And we need to work those things out.
We're called to walk alongside them.
Yeah.
Jackie Hill Perry, I'm going to throw a book recommendation out there, has a book called
Gay Girl Good God about her, about God working through her life to bring her to faith.
And one of the things she says in that book, which I think is, it should give people pause
is she said, there are a lot of people who I believe in the church, had I not been homosexual,
they would have been okay with me.
And she's like, but I would have still just been as just as lost straight as I was gay.
And so the issue was I was not encountering Jesus.
And when I encountered Jesus, he taught me how to leave things behind.
Right.
Yeah.
So you were a lot of times we're like, hey, we need to treat the symptom.
The symptom is not the problem.
Right.
The cause is they don't know Jesus.
Yeah.
So our job is to represent Jesus, right, to people.
Yeah.
And connect them with with the living water.
And as First John says, if we walk in the light, as he's in the light, we have fellowship
with one another and the blood of Christ purifies us from all night wretchedness.
So what's the reality is when we walk in the light, we're not always purified.
No, we're purified during our walk.
Right.
Was that John or DC talk?
Yes.
Thank you.
Sorry.
So there if there's any, that's my favorite one.
So good.
We also just showed our age right there, everyone.
Yeah.
You're welcome.
Or like DC talk.
What is that?
Oh, can we sing it?
Or do we have to like, I'll cut.
I'll cut it.
But it's my favorite DC talk.
I thought an acquitant mind.
It's okay, Meg.
We'll actually get him on the podcast.
But the purpose in First John is that it's actually the walk with Jesus that purifies
us.
Right.
Yeah.
And so please don't miss who we're saying.
We're not saying continuing sinning is fine.
We're saying that we trust God to work out these things in your life.
It's a daily surrender.
And also as we're speaking into people, we're doing it through the through the connection
of relationship, not through the justification of speaking truth and love.
Woof.
Boy, is that a grating phrase on my ears.
Did you say love in quotation marks?
Love.
Yeah.
We've talked about speaking truth and love in Ephesians, how like Paul himself says you're
in regular relationship and then in that relationship you speak truth and love.
That's the context of that verse.
So if you're going to speak into somebody's life, make sure you got the relationship to
do it.
Right.
And you're better met not because you're annoyed with something.
So I do love that though, because like we don't know when we have stopping a prostitute.
It doesn't actually specify.
We do know at some point she has a kid who ends up in the light of Jesus.
So like there's actually nothing in scripture that states that she stopped.
Correct.
And that's not saying she didn't.
I'm just saying that there's actually nothing in scripture that actually states she stopped
that lifestyle.
But my whole point with it was that like she didn't see like, oh, God's moving in a powerful
way and then like stopped everything in her life.
She noticed that God was moving, that he was greater than the life that she had.
Right.
And she stepped out in faith to live her life with it.
Exactly.
And God honored that.
It brought it in.
Yeah.
Right.
I think that's all good.
Yeah.
Whose mother was Ruth?
The Book of Ruth, by the way, is a great, great book.
Yes.
I would recommend a short miniseries on this.
It's done by walking the text, bread gray.
They go through Ruth chapter by chapter and they have some really good conversation.
You may not love everything they have to say, but I think that they do a really good job
of capturing the heart of Ruth.
But once again, who is Ruth?
So Ruth is a Moabite.
So first off, you have a foreigner, right?
And here, again, this actually ties back into that God is for all nations.
Right.
The fact that we're having foreigners mentioned in a lineage.
Yeah.
But Moabites are tricky even beyond that because they drew the runaway 23.
They are.
Right.
So into the LA, if you're not like, well, what's due road?
It says that Moabites aren't allowed into the assembly of the people, even to the 10th
generation.
Wow.
So they go back to Lot with the tribes that come out and the ancestral relationship with
Lot and his daughters, you end up with some really messed up tribes and they're cut off.
Right.
So yeah, so you have Moabites not allowed into assembly, right?
But yet Ruth makes it into the lineage of Jesus.
So, like that is again, just echoing that God is for all people.
For all peoples, all people groups, even the ones that are initially in Deuteronomy are
like, hey, you're not allowed in.
Right.
Well, and last week we talked about Josiah and how his faithfulness turns like an entire
generation for four years.
Right.
Once again, here we have Ruth, a Moabites being welcomed into the assembly because she's
somebody of noble character.
Yes.
Yeah.
Ruth is the daughter-in-law of Naomi.
Right.
So now, yeah, we have to emphasize daughter-in-law because she had two sons and a couple of daughter-in-laws.
And then when her sons died, here is Naomi left all by herself, no inheritance, no one
to take care of her, any of that.
Her daughter-in-laws had no obligation to stay with her whatsoever.
Right.
Like they actually had 100% obligation to actually go back to their hometowns.
Right.
And their home communities and try to get married again, start a family, that little
type thing.
Right.
And Ruth is like, no, I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to stay with you.
Yeah.
Right.
Where you go, I'll go.
I love that verse.
Please stay or stay.
Who you like, the God that you follow will be my God and your people will be my people.
Right.
And that part is actually a really interesting thing is because that line in the Bible right
there that says, the God that you follow, I will follow, implies that Ruth wasn't following
God.
Right.
And she was a noble character who was recognized that her mother-in-law had no means of taking
care of herself and that she was going to help with that.
Right.
Another one who, like Raham, gives up her way of life to follow after God and sees him
moving.
Right.
And it's not exactly like it just gets easy either.
No.
Because she goes and she's like, so if you're familiar with Levitical law, you know that
they don't cut the ends of their field.
Right.
And that they don't come back and they don't do a second pass through their field because
what they do is they let the poor, the widow, the orphan come through and pick what's left
over for the food.
Yeah.
Like this is making sure that the people who don't have are always able to be able to be
taken care of.
Right.
And so Ruth is doing that and she catches the eyes of a guy named Boaz.
Hey, Boaz.
And he's like, we'll tell you what, don't go to somebody else's field.
I want you to stay with me.
Right.
And then Boaz starts doing things like, he's like, listen, if you drop a, you know, drops
and stuff once in a while, it's okay.
Like, don't cut, don't cut this.
Like, let's just let Ruth go in there and pick up.
And then of course they always like, why do you have so much wheat?
Like what, when the world is happening?
Like, like I understand.
Like, she's like, something's going on here.
And so then she hatches this thing where she's like, you know, he is actually your kinsman
redeemer, which briefly we need to talk about kinsman redeemer.
Right.
And so if somebody is, is orphaned out there or widowed, the closest relative can come
and marry the person and bring them into their household so that they're not being left alone
and that so that their tribe can continue to go.
Right.
That's what a kinsman redeemer is very similar to what we talked about with like Tamar in
a very similar situation, but it actually has a name at this point.
Right.
When she's having this conversation with Boaz and we're not going to get into that.
I think that you should check out that mini series if you really want to get into the
story.
There are some remarks that she is known, known as a woman of noble character.
So not only does he call her a woman of noble character, she's known throughout the area
as a woman of noble character.
This widow, this Moabite, this woman is known for her noble character.
Like of everything she could be known for, she's known for her noble character.
And there's a lot that she could be known of, known for.
And there's a lot of implications on what, there's a lot of assumptions on what she would
be like simply by the fact of her being a Moabite.
And so you have Boaz who's looking beyond that.
Right.
So Boaz steps in and he becomes the kinsman redeemer.
Then he brings her into his household and the story is so good.
And we talked about earlier with Tamar, she receives a blessing of Tamar and not unlike
Tamar is actually included in the lineage of Jesus.
Now as opposed to Rahab and Tamar, like this story is really beautiful, except you're like,
so why would this be similar?
Well, because she is a Moabitess.
Like I guarantee you them reading in the story and they were like, Ruth, the Moabite.
Moabite in the lineage of Messiah.
And for those who are listening, watching, they're like, okay, I need to learn more about
what it meant to be a Moabite in that day and age.
There's lots of research on it.
Go do some reading.
And I think Iforamon's got some good stuff on that too.
Yeah, alephbeta.org.
He tends to focus more on Torah specifically, but he's going to have some really good stuff
as well.
But Ruth is a big deal.
Absolutely.
Ruth is a very big deal.
One more piece I'm going to give you guys that I think is really a good thing to do
in the book of Ruth.
I've kind of talked about names a little bit, but actually go through the names of the places
and the people in the book of Ruth.
The book starts out with there's famine in Bethlehem.
Do you know what Bethlehem means?
House of bread.
There's famine in the house of bread.
How ironic.
Hmm.
I wonder if that's setting a precedent for what's about to happen in the story.
You know, it's really bad when there's famine in the house of bread.
True.
Of all the carbs, bread is my favorite.
So the next person on the list here, as the text says, whose mother was Uriah's wife.
Now we all know this as Bathsheba.
And so this goes back to the story of King David where he sees Bathsheba taking a bath.
And then he's like, all right.
He's like, I know what I'm going to do now.
Yeah.
And so then when he's supposed to be at war in the times when King goes to war, David
was hanging out on his patio.
Right.
Patio staring at the neighbor who was being paid.
His priorities are the El Mith guys.
So he then takes Bathsheba.
Right.
And like what first he gets pregnant.
Yeah.
And then he tries to get Uriah to lay with her.
So you know, and there's some conversation about does Uriah actually know that David
has committed this?
Is he calling out the injustice or not?
Yeah.
There's some conversation about that.
Yeah.
Essentially after he doesn't lay with her, he's like, OK, I got to get rid of them.
There's some trickery.
And so essentially commits murder on him through military positioning.
Right.
Yeah.
Political positioning.
And so one of the things about Bathsheba is all of this is going on and you can't say
that she doesn't have a level of complacency in this.
Sure.
Right.
I'm not saying like, I'm not saying.
We are not going to put the onus on her.
No.
We're going to put complicitness in here.
Yeah.
All right.
There's got to be some there's a level of complicitness and that was that was really
hard to say.
I know.
Well, the onus is definitely on David.
Yes.
Like David is the instigator.
He's the one in the authority.
He's the one abusing relationships.
Right.
The one committing murder.
Right.
Like so the onus is definitely on David.
But there's also no record of Bathsheba speaking up.
Correct.
No.
She didn't.
She didn't Vashti it.
She didn't.
She didn't tamar it.
Yeah.
There's no record of her actually speaking up.
Yeah.
And so with this said, this is just kind of one of those stories again that you're like,
man, this seems like a very messed up situation.
Yeah.
But we also know we also have to consider too and we spoke about this earlier off off
camera.
We don't speak off camera.
What are you talking about?
I'm sorry.
You're ruining the illusion.
Sorry.
Assuming that we exist only here.
Anyway, King David is propositioning Bathsheba, a woman, a married woman.
So while she does have a level of complicitness, as you said, we also have to consider her
position in society.
And if she had refused King David's propositions, what would have been the outcome?
And maybe she felt her hand was forced at some point that she couldn't say no to him.
Right.
Typically, I'm going to always fall on the side of whoever has the authority in the situation
shouldn't amuse it.
Absolutely.
And they're going to be the one who receives the brunt of the-
And he does.
Yeah.
And now it's unfortunate, of course, like the child that they actually conceive ends
up dying.
Right.
It does show the heart of David that he laments and he repents and all these different things.
Right.
And when the child dies, he actually gets up and washes his face and they're like, oh,
what's going on?
He's like, well, while the child was still living, there was a chance that God would
relent.
It shows his faithfulness in God's promise even in this to that.
Right.
It is really interesting that if you read the first and second Kings and you read first
and second Chronicles.
Now, first and second Kings and first and second Samuel written almost like they're
being written as the things are happening.
Right.
Chronicles is at the end of the Bible, the Hebrew Bible.
We put Malachi there now, but in the Hebrew Bible, the Chronicles are at the end.
It's written from a later perspective looking back.
Chronicles doesn't even mention Bathsheba.
Not this thing like it.
It's a pivotal point in the Book of Kings of what happens in David's reign.
But it's interesting that Chronicles actually points it to the point where David starts
trusting in his might and not in God's.
Right.
Bathsheba, though, is in the middle of the situation and she's caught up in a situation,
which is basically a lose-lose.
Because you have to say no to a king who is in charge, who is literally known for killing
tens of thousands of Philistines.
Right.
Giants.
He's a giant slayer.
Like this is the guy who, when he was getting married to Saul's daughter, was like, oh,
you need to bring me 100 Philistine foreskins.
He's like, how about 200?
Right.
Which is a weird story in and of itself.
But this is who David is.
He's known for his mighty men.
Like they were giant slayers.
They lay waste to armies.
How do you say no to someone like that?
And it's clear that God is blessing him because God has walked with him through all these
different things.
Right.
But there's also a prescription in Torah for her to do that.
We don't want to ignore that, but I would really caution my listeners to take Grace
with Bathsheba during this whole situation because I think that's the way we're meant
to read it.
Is that fair?
I think so.
Yeah.
Like I definitely think so.
I still think like there is still a level of buying that Bathsheba hat.
Absolutely.
But I'm not.
But like with that said, most of it's on David.
Yeah.
Right.
I mean, I'm going to have Grace with Bathsheba 100% in this situation because like it is
100% a lose-lose for her.
Yes.
Yeah.
100%.
Yeah.
I don't know if I disagree with you.
My concern is to take what we said and carry it too far with Bathsheba and being like,
well, it's her fault.
Yeah.
No.
Well, no.
Being complicit with something and it being your fault are different things.
Right.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
The story ends up being a pretty big red mark on the life of David, who is considered the
gold standard of kings, and we're going to be talking about in our covenant series about
the Davidic covenant, right?
Which is a really important covenant when it comes to Messiah.
Yeah.
But this is one of those ones where it's a really big deal.
Now Bathsheba is also the mother of another child who's really important in the Bible
by the name of Solomon.
Right?
Who is also a pretty interesting person and does some questionable things.
It does some really good things.
True.
Right?
Yeah.
That kind of tends to be, I guess he's not dissimilar from his father in that way.
No.
Right?
No, no, it's a learned thing.
But so Bathsheba does show up one other time in the story where David is old and he's getting
ready to die.
And she comes to him and she's like, hey, you need to let people know that Solomon is
going to be king.
Yeah.
And so like kind of like forces his hand.
Suddenly she speaks up.
Right.
You know, and she's like, hey, you need to make sure that people know that Solomon is
going to be king because technically he's not your firstborn.
Right.
You know, but that is your intention.
And so David then says that Solomon is actually who God is going to use to be king next.
Right.
For all of Solomon's issues.
And there's a lot, there's a lot of good in his life too.
Absolutely.
I think one of the things with this story is, you know, Uriah and Bathsheba seem to be Israelites.
Yes.
And so this is actually now instead of being marked for like what you are, you're actually
being marked for what you did.
Right?
And you're seeing this situation and you're seeing it's not just not where you come from.
It's also what you did.
Like God is able to redeem all of these and put you into the line of Jesus.
Yeah.
I actually love that these four stories come up as part of the line of Jesus.
Amen.
Yeah.
Because the last one that comes up is this lady by the name of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
You might have heard of her.
Also by the name, by the way, Mary is a Greek translation, but her Hebrew name would have
actually been Miriam.
Right.
We're going to be talking about her more next week.
We're going to be talking about like Jesus and women in his life.
I do think it's really important to actually note that her name is Miriam because Jesus
is often positioned as the second Moses and Jesus's mother was Mary or Miriam.
Right.
Moses's sister was Miriam who also was responsible for him getting connected with his mother
and like all these different things.
Right.
And not unlike Miriam in the Old Testament, Jesus is sometimes going to have to tell his
mother like, no, that's not what we're doing.
Right.
Where you're missing the point.
She's going to be a really pivotal figure in Jesus's life.
Right.
I find Mary to be one of the most interesting parts of this genealogy because one of the
things we forget about Mary in honor shame culture is that regardless of the fact that
an angel told her that it was from the Holy Spirit, nobody else would have believed her.
No.
Joseph did.
Yeah.
But nobody else believed her her entire life.
Well, Joseph did after intervention from God.
Yeah.
True.
He didn't believe initially.
Yeah.
But their entire life, they are going to walk with the shame of having a child out of wedlock.
Right.
And you know, there's going to be conversation about like, well, Joseph didn't even know
about the kids.
So is it his?
Did she get pregnant with it?
Like, does that kid even belong to Joseph?
You know, this is going to be a conversation all their life and in an honor shame culture,
she carried that her entire life.
Right.
And we we look now and we're like, oh man, she's such a courageous figure.
She walked 30 plus years with that shame with no redemption.
Right.
Now her redemption came in heaven.
Right.
It comes in like generations of people understanding Messiah.
But like she walked with that shame.
Right.
She did what was right.
She obeyed God and she had to walk with shame.
And by the way, I want to pause there and talk about women in ministry today.
Okay.
Because there are a lot of women who are serving God today and are being attacked because of
what they do.
And you may have to walk with your shame a long time, but God is bringing vindication.
Amen.
And he will continue to bring vindication.
Just be faithful with what God has put in front of you and he'll take care of the rest.
Right.
Like her willingness to play lay down her own life for the sake of God's commands, you
know, and she not only that, like even when she just disagreeing with Jesus, she still
shows up in his ministry all the time.
Yeah.
She's at the wedding in Cana.
She's messaging him when things get kind of weird.
Yeah.
She's like, Hey, what's going on?
You know, she's there at his crucifixion.
Yeah.
Oh my goodness.
Like she does not leave him.
She is with him the entire time.
Right.
And from every indication of church history, she's still serving after Jesus's resurrection.
Right.
Continuing to continue on and help the church understand like who Jesus was.
Right.
That's faithfulness.
Yeah.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
And if you are someone who's listening and you're married to a woman in ministry, look
at the life of Joseph.
Yep.
Like how he is like, I know this is going to be a shameful thing or you might be experiencing
shame, but I'm going to walk with you.
Right.
Like Joseph, there's actually surprisingly little like said on Joseph, not in the Bible.
But one thing that has always stood out to me about his life is that he was always by
Mary's side.
Right.
Like he was, he was always by Mary's side, always by Jesus's side.
At least the times I was mentioned.
He was in support of Mary and the call that the Lord put on Mary's life.
Right.
Yeah.
He could have ran away.
He could have said no.
Joseph opted out of that shame.
Mm hmm.
But he didn't because the Lord called him to it and he was faithful and obedient.
Right.
Being the support can be tough too.
Be their advocate.
Be there for them.
Yeah.
And so for those who are listening and who are like, okay, can women serve ministry leadership
roles?
Right.
The answer is yes.
Right.
There's far more in scripture that talks about that in a positive way than a negative way.
Right.
In a society where they wouldn't have talked about women serving.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Oftentimes what we get is we get that 1 Timothy 2 kind of thrown out there.
Which we will talk about.
It's coming up in a future episode.
We will talk about that.
We'll dive more in depth on that.
The one thing I'll say right now is the verses prior to Paul saying women need to be silent
is him saying men you need to speak up.
So we're going to dive more into that.
We're just going to let that sit as a teaser for now.
But just if you are thinking like, man, should women be fast?
The answer is absolutely yes.
God's given women voices.
He's given them callings.
It's all throughout scripture, Old Testament all the way through new.
Jesus had women disciples.
Which we'll talk about next week.
A little teaser.
So the answer is yes.
And we're going to keep diving into that.
Yeah.
What you're actually going to find is that as we've come through the Old Testament, like
we have these stories, we obviously didn't get into all the stories.
We talk about women and problems.
We talk about women leading the Old Testament.
Now we talked about these women in the life of Jesus who are part of his story.
It's actually only going to get quicker as we get into the New Testament because Jesus
taking on disciples and then like the people who are going and spreading the word, Paul's
disciples, his people who went out.
When we started talking about all the people in the New Testament and then you start getting
into church history, your mind is about to get blown on how much God is doing through
women throughout history.
Now once again, I want to say every woman shouldn't be a pastor just like every man
shouldn't be.
Right.
You are qualified not on your gender, but on the calling from God.
Right.
That's the one we want to come back to over and over again.
You are qualified by your call, not by your gender.
Right.
And you are called, maybe you're not called to be a pastor, but you're called to be a
leader.
You're called to be an evangelist.
You're called to be a teacher.
Whatever God is calling and to serve the kingdom of God.
Be faithful.
Be faithful that and listen.
So Shelby, because we have you here, Captain Shelby, because we have you here, I love calling
you Captain.
Do you have anything that you would just say as an encouragement for women who are working
in ministry now?
I never imagined that this is where I would be in my life.
When I grew up, when I went to college, I was going to be a music teacher and work in
the schools and do this.
I never thought that I was going to be in ministry in the way that I'm in ministry.
Now I had youth group, I participated in music groups, I grew up in the church, but I never
saw myself as a pastor or never really thought about being a pastor.
And it wasn't until I came to the Salvation Army when I was in college that I saw these
prominent women speaking with authority, speaking with humbleness on the pulpit.
And I had people speak into my life who discipled me and who encouraged me along the way that
helped to cultivate this, that helped me understand how to listen to the voice of God.
And it wasn't until just my backstory, it wasn't until I was serving in the Eastern
Europe with the Salvation Army.
And there was one moment when I was praying with someone that I heard audibly the voice
of God telling me that this is what he wanted me to do with the rest of my life.
It doesn't happen often, but when it does, holy cow.
Yeah.
Oh my goodness.
I can't say that I've heard audibly the voice of God a lot of times in my life, but that
is the one time that I can be assured that he was speaking to me.
And when I eventually was obedient because I had my Jonah moment, I had my Moses moment
after that saying, no, no, no, God, you called the wrong person.
You've made a mistake.
Boy was I wrong.
But when I finally surrendered my plans and my control and my obedience to him, man, things
started fall into place.
And regardless if you feel God calling you to be a pastor or a leader or a teacher or
your gifting is hospitality or whatever, even regardless of ministry, whatever you feel
God is calling you to do in your life, be obedient and follow through.
There is no greater assurance knowing that you are doing what God has called for you
and the will of life.
And now I can tell you, it hasn't been easy, especially when we moved to Alaska.
It has been really, really hard for a number of reasons.
But I have sitting here, I have been, I even through the trials and the tribulations and
the hardships, I have never been more certain of God's calling in my life than I am right
now.
So excellent.
I appreciate that.
And yeah, that's it's one of those things where you're like, I want you to follow God,
whatever he's calling you to be.
If God is calling you to be a mother, go be a mother.
Amen.
God's calling you to be a housemaker, be a housemaker.
If God's calling you to be a CEO, be a CEO.
Right.
So know where God is calling, not where you think you should be.
Right.
You know, and that's the big thing is we want to teach people to listen to the voice of
God.
It actually plays really well into when we get into our next series about following the
spirit.
Yeah.
Like what is the, what is the evidence of actually the spirit is like learning to hear
and respond to the voice of God.
Right.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, we appreciate you being here.
Thank you for having me.
You dropped five minutes of knowledge right on us at the end and we love it.
I love it.
Well, thank you.
We had given you 15 after that.
We're like, no, that's it.
I was, I was doing a presentation for our rotary and then we had our district governor
here presenting and he was like, he's like, how much time did you give me?
I gave him 20 minutes knowing he would take 35.
Right.
And he's like, Oh, I think I took too much time.
I was like, you did, but I grew up in the, in the Southern Baptist church.
And I know that if you give a pastor five minutes, it takes 15.
So I already planned on that.
So, so true.
Yeah.
So we will be talking about Jesus's ministry and the women who are involved in his ministry.
Yeah.
You mean?
Until next time.
Thank you.
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in the context of today's world.
And then like James will crawl by my lap and he's like, I don't feel good.
You can actually see her name means wide, which I don't know what to do with.
Wide?
Wide, like wide.
So I don't know, maybe she had like a thick base.
I don't know.
Like, it's, it's, it's hard to know.
Oh dear.
Like a football player or something like that.
I don't know.
We're probably going to cut that just so you know.
That's a blooper right there.
Yeah, that's a blooper right there.
Sometimes, sometimes the words come out of my mouth and I'm like, yeah, I don't like
that.
Are we soapboxing on Women in Ministry yet or are we pausing on that?
Go ahead and say it and then if I don't like it, I'll cut it.