Welcome to the Love and Context podcast of Unscripted Conversation with Ben and Spencer.
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All right.
Welcome once again to the Love and Context podcast with Ben and Spencer.
I'm Ben and that's Spencer.
Are you all excited for this?
I mean, I'm excited.
I think it's kind of weird.
Like we're on a podcast and I pointed at you like they can actually see me point.
I know, right?
Um, so just so you know, this episode, probably the next episode, we're going to have some
more weird audio stuff.
We have better equipment, better days are coming.
But we also live on a rock in the middle of Alaska.
So everything takes forever to get here.
So this, this week we're going to be in Genesis chapter six and most of the way through chapter
nine.
So if you haven't had a chance to read that, like the probably check it out because we're
going to, we're going to assume that you've read it and you're familiar with what's going
on in here.
Yeah.
So it, again, we are huge components, like huge fans of the Bible itself.
So if anything you hear us say, uh, we are looking at scripture and we are trying to
make sure we are staying true to that.
So yeah, please, please take time to read these passages for yourself.
Yeah.
So, um, Genesis to me, I love this book by the way.
Um, so of all of Torah and by the way, Torah is first five books of the Bible also called
books of Moses, books of the law.
Uh, the, the Jews call it Torah.
And so I'm going to call it Torah.
So, and if you come and you say the first five books of the Bible are nasty, Mark, Luke,
John and Acts, I'm going to be like, no.
Yeah.
I, if it's, if it's the bigger portion for it.
Uh, all right.
So we are in chapter six and we're going to be talking about the flood.
Uh, we are not going to talk about the Nephilim.
Um, there's some really like cool, uh, conversations about that, whether or not they were, uh, just
elite warriors, whether they were actually angels that came down and became mad.
We don't know.
You don't know.
There's a lot of conversation about that.
I don't think it's pertinent to our conversation.
Yeah.
So let's get into it.
The flood, the flood, the flood.
Yeah.
Man, people love to talk about this story.
Uh, I think it's first of all weird that we, uh, focus on the story for kids.
Oh yeah.
It's completely weird.
Yeah.
We're like, yeah.
And I think it's like, Ooh, the animals, woo animals.
But at the same time, like this is a story about the entire world getting a story.
It is right.
Um, I love this.
Okay.
So starting in verse five, he says this.
The world saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth and
that every inclination of the thoughts of human heart was only evil all the time.
That's how I started every kid's story.
I'll tell about you.
Yeah.
It's so good.
A long time ago, every evil thought that could happen did happen.
Um, so there's actually a, uh, I think we talked about, we talked about this before.
Uh, there's an actually really interesting thing in, um, the Midrash about how, uh, so
Noah, they say that Noah invented the, um, plow.
You mean?
Yeah.
And you're like, okay, well, why do you say that?
Right.
And, uh, as like, what, why is that?
And then that's what actually causes the destruction of their, like the evil.
And I said, well, what causes that?
So you remember like in the Canadian Naval story, we talked about working the earth,
going to the field, being a restless wanderer.
And then he did like, they basically don't do anything that tries to do to get, bring
them back to the garden.
Yeah.
Um, so something about work is supposed to bring you back to the garden.
Yeah.
Right.
It's supposed to connect you back to nature of God, just like we talked about, like childbirth
connects you to who God is, right?
Your job.
Um, and please, let's stop, pause here.
I am not saying the only woman's job is to have kids.
That is not what I'm saying.
I'm using examples.
Um, God has a call on all of our lives and we're responsible to those calls.
Right?
Yeah.
Um, but there's something inherent in like childbirth connects you to God.
There's something inherent or working the ground connects you to God.
Yeah.
And so the Midrash teaches about Noah building a plow because now farming becomes easy and
you don't actually have the toil, which actually connects you to the nature of God.
And if you are following along in scripture and you're like, I am not seeing that anywhere
in the Bible.
That's, you are correct.
Yeah.
So the Midrash, which is, um, how would you best say it's Jewish commentary?
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
So I mean, like you have your NIV study Bible and you got guys talking in there and I was
like, that's all good.
I was like, this is kind of the exact same thing.
Yeah.
You even learn some really interesting things in the Midrash.
They will frequently tell stories meant to bring you to another reality of what somebody
found in the text.
Yeah.
Right.
So right now we're providing some context from outside sources and we're going to have
more of the text here in just a minute.
So the heart, the start of this story, every inclination of the thoughts of man.
Well, actually, you know, you were talking about, um, uh, the way to start off a story,
right?
And I was like, it actually starts with the Nephilim right before that.
So I was like, that's, that's definitely a way to start the kids story.
Right.
And, uh, so he looks at it.
Yeah.
The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth and his heart was deeply
troubled.
So the Lord said, I will wipe from the face of the earth, the human race I've created
and with them, the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground.
For I regret that I have made them, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
We need to, like, we need to stop and pause on that for a second.
Cause so when I was growing up, I was often taught this from two perspectives.
Like one God recognized that everything he did was horrible and bad.
And so that's kind of like one interpretation was like, Oh, it was just, it all turned to
crap.
And we're going to get rid of it.
Right.
Uh, but God doesn't do that right away.
He doesn't throw in the towel right away on creation.
You get to verse eight and it says, but Noah found favor in the Lord.
Another way to look at that is that God waited until there was someone to take the reins
once everything else was wiped out.
Right.
Well, and, and not to get ahead of ourselves, but there's going to be a story about Abraham.
Yeah, I acknowledge you my rain pun.
I did not.
I thought that's it.
That is so good.
And I did went right over my head.
Like that's how good it was.
Like I didn't even catch it.
Uh, but that, so let, I mean, so the idea of like he's, God is looking right.
Yeah.
Cause he founded Noah.
Right.
Yeah.
And you can't find something out looking for.
Yeah.
He didn't, he didn't just say, all right, blank slate.
We're wiping this all out and I'm going to create a new garden of Eden and put new people
in it.
He said, no, my creation is still, I mean, he still has this.
My creation is still worth redeeming.
Um, and another thing to know on this is that he didn't just like as soon as they turn for
him and wipe them out.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm a generations.
Yeah.
He, we're talking generations, hundreds, potentially thousands of years.
Yeah.
Oh, and so like I was saying, uh, before I missed your amazing pond, um, it later in
the story, there's going to be a guy named by the name of Abraham, right?
Who is talking to God before he goes to a place called Sodom and Gomorrah.
Okay.
A couple, 400 years later than that, there's going to be a guy called Moses who was on
top of the mountain receiving the law.
Yeah.
And God's going to be like, Hey, these people down, down, down below are doing some sketchy
stuff.
Okay.
And he's going to beyond asking God to spare based on the numbers, he's actually going
to offer to step in.
Yeah.
And I would position it this, or maybe just postulate this that perhaps one of the times
what God is looking is he's looking for people who are willing to go and be self-sacrificial
on behalf of others who are willing to bear up the name correctly.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
All right.
So, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
Now, why did Noah find favor in the eyes of the Lord?
Be actionable.
No, it's on the text.
I think it is perfectly reasonable from a historical perspective to think that the flood
is a real thing.
Yeah.
Because it's not just a Christian account.
Like there's the, there, I think of Gilgamesh, there is, there's a Babylonian accounts.
There's the, all over the world, all these different religions have an account of some
sort of cataclysmic flood.
Apparently Alaskan natives have an account of that too.
Yeah.
I'm not familiar with it, but I know that they have it.
Yeah.
That's the extent of what I know too.
Yeah.
I, I, you know, if somebody who's listening is Alaskan native, I can link us a link to
that story.
We love it.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
It's very reasonable to think that this is a real event, right?
Yeah.
Historical event.
But frequently we want to, like when the story of creation, we want to make this story a
story of how something happened rather than what is God doing in the middle of it.
And can we, can we pause and just address one quick thing?
Sure.
This, this passage doesn't say if it was the whole world, if it was just a known world,
if it was what, right?
It doesn't say that.
Correct.
So if you, if you, there are, I know there are people who make the argument of, well,
it was just like where Israel was, greater Mediterranean area, because that was the known
world at the time.
And then there's people who make the argument of like, oh no, it was the whole world.
It doesn't specify.
Also, I wasn't there, so I don't know.
Yeah.
And so what we're actually trying to figure out when we read the text is what is God trying
to talk to us about?
He's not actually trying to tell us about how he fled the world.
He's about, he's trying to tell us why and who God is in the middle of this.
And if you start in with the wrong question, you're always going to get the wrong answer.
Yeah.
And sometimes, and a lot of times those details are irrelevant to the story.
Just to put it bluntly, I mean, there's so many times in scripture where we look at something
or like, okay, we need to figure out this minute detail.
And then when you actually back up and view the whole picture of what's going on, like
that was actually irrelevant.
Yeah.
And had nothing to do with what God was actually trying to say to us.
So we're not gonna, we're not gonna dive too deep into the, the story itself, but I actually
want to, I want to point out once again, we're going to link in Baymaw's, Baymaw decided
to show up from Mars Solomon.
We're going to link in his episode where he talks about the flood because he's got some
great work on that.
Yeah.
But I'm going to assume that you are familiar with the story and I'm going to tell you that
once again, like Genesis one, this story is chiastic.
Yeah.
It is mirrored text and the point of the story is in the middle of the story.
Yeah.
Or the point of the story is in the middle of the story.
So because you're going to go through and you're going to notice numbers and these numbers
are going to repeat and they're going to, they're a show up on the front end and on
the backend, you're going to look at them and you're going to be like, okay, well why?
And if you go into the center of the story, you're going to come up with this one spot
with the rains falling and all of these different things that are happening.
And it says that God remembered Noah.
Right?
This is, this is going to be the center of the chaos.
This is going to be the God remembered Noah.
Now if I am Israel, right?
Coming out of Egypt, 400 years of captivity, if once again, if we're assuming Moses' scholarship,
yeah, regardless Genesis was supposed to be heard in the voice of Moses, yeah, whether
or not it was actually written by Moses or his tales that he eventually penned, we're
not going to get into that conversation, but it's supposed to be heard in the voice of
Moses.
And so where are they hearing this coming out of 400 years of captivity in Egypt?
Yeah.
So theoretically at the base of Sinai, they're hearing the story of their creation.
Like what is this story actually telling me about my God?
Yeah.
Right?
Well, who, who is this God that we're encountering?
Because we've already seen him as creator.
He graces us for a purpose.
He is gracious to us even when we make mistakes.
He's always trying to give us ways to work our way back.
And then we see that we're progressively more and more evil and to the point where he's
got to eventually act.
He has to eventually act.
He at some point has to know when to say enough.
Yeah.
He knew when to say enough when he was creating.
And as Marty Solomon is going to say, and I'm just stealing his quote here, God also
knows when to say no enough to destroy it.
Well, and relate that to the good parent.
Right?
Like, so for me, I love my daughter dearly.
That's always a good way to start this.
I love my daughter dearly.
I love her dearly.
Right.
But there's moments where it's like, okay, enough is enough.
Yeah.
Right.
You were over at our house a couple days ago.
I knew you were going to say this.
And you're trying to get her ready to go.
And you're like, all right, I'm going to count to five.
And I was like, dude, if he gets to five, it's all over.
It is all over.
And she's just like, and I was like, she has no idea.
Like he is holding all the Gracie Cameron.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I mean, but it's like, we know this as parents, right?
Like we always want to have grace with our kids, but we can only let things go so far.
Yeah.
Right?
And I was like, we tend to look at the world differently than I think God does.
Right.
Because I've said once again, we look at it as God's building a fence.
Yeah.
He's raising sons and daughters.
Yeah.
Right.
And we miss the point of what what earth is about.
Yeah.
So the the interesting thing about this, we have talked about, we actually haven't talked
about it yet on the podcast, but you and I have talked about this whole Caesarian Basel
covenant.
Yeah.
Right.
So that's a fancy way of saying like old time covenant, where one person is has more authority
and one person is less.
And in this story, if I'm looking at Noah and God, who is the creator birdie?
God.
Definitely God in this story.
If you're saying Noah, then then give us a call and we'll set you straight a little
bit lovingly, of course.
Yeah.
So whose responsibility would it be to remind the greater party that, hey, I'm still here,
please don't destroy me?
It'd be Noah's.
Right.
Except God remembers Noah.
God remembers.
One of the things you have to understand about like Egyptian gods, like they didn't care
about the lives of morals.
They don't care.
Yeah.
So your job is to appease God.
I think sometimes in the church, we still live with this mentality.
Yeah.
I was talking today.
I got to, I got to preach with a friend of mine.
Was a great, great time.
But I said today, I said, maybe sometimes we run to anger because we don't really know
what it means to love.
It's like something we understand.
We understand anger.
We don't understand love.
And God is just like inviting us into this position.
He says, no, no, no, I'm the God who remembers.
And you're like, well, Ben, but this is in a story of mass destruction.
Okay.
I hear you.
And we can debate that till the cows come home.
I think that's a farming sag, right?
Sure.
I mean, it is now.
There's probably somebody in the Midwest who's like, yeah, go Alaska.
And I was like, yeah, cows come home.
Well, they're either like, yeah, go Alaska or like, don't ever say that.
And I don't ever say that again.
But so, but God is giving us this invitation, right?
To know him in a different way.
Because the Israelites are hearing this story and they're like, hey, you are not, or God
is not who you think he is.
He is not some God who's sitting off like just upset with you.
He's a God of relationship.
And he's a God that remembers.
He's a God who actually gives up his right to not have to remember and chooses to remember.
And so I can hear the keyboards clicking away, right?
And being like, well, what about, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Okay.
Well, let's go to the end of the story, right?
God makes this covenant with Noah and he says, come out of the ark, you and your wife and
your sons and your wives, right?
Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you, the birds, the animals, all the
creatures that move along the ground so they can multiply on the earth and be free, full
increase on in number on it.
By the way, same mandate he was given originally, right?
Now the animals are going to do the same thing.
Noah comes out, all of them come out, they all build an altar to the Lord and sacrifices.
The Lord smells the pleasing aroma and said in his heart, never again will I curse the
ground because of humans.
Okay.
By the way, you should hear earlier in Genesis, cursed to the ground because of you.
Never again will I curse the ground because of humans.
Even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood and never again
will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.
As long as the earth endures, see time and harvest cold and heat, summer and winter,
day and night will never cease.
Then God bless them and said, be fruitful and increase the numbers and fill the earth.
Um, there's actually, there's actually an interesting tie in there.
Yeah.
If you jump back to chapter six, uh, and this is where God's actually, we're picking up,
picking up kind of around verse 11 where God's actually talking to Noah a little bit where
he's like, where he's like, uh, I've decided to destroy all living creatures for they have
filled the earth with violence.
Yes, I will wipe them all out from the earth, build a boat from Cypress wood.
And then he goes into the definition of what the boat should look like.
Um, jump ahead to verse 17 now says, look, I'm about to cover the earth with a flood,
destroy all living things that breeze everything on it will die, but I will confirm my covenant
with you.
What covenant are we talking about?
Like, cause we often, we take this passage right here and we jump over to the rainbow
in the sky.
Right?
So what covenant is he actually talking about?
I'm going to confirm my covenant with you.
What covenant is he actually talking about?
I'm going to confirm my covenant with you.
So the only real time we have at this point in the story, looking back would be the covenant
he has with mankind with Adam and the loving gracious father that he is.
So then this, this next covenant, this is what we were going to call the Noahic covenant.
Yeah.
Cause the first one would be the Adamic covenant and or Eveic.
I'm just going to give it to Eve.
So that's probably not right.
Um, so this is the Noahic covenant.
And so God actually steps it up a little bit more because he says, uh, I'm not going to
flood the earth again because of, uh, man.
Yeah.
Or we're not going to show the earth again with water and I'm going to put my covenant
and my sign of the covenant in the sky.
Yeah.
It's going to re rainbow, but specifically he says, I'm going to put my bow in the sky.
Yeah.
And the interesting thing about the bow is, um, the, the side that is arched, it is actually,
it actually points at the thing that it would attack.
Yeah.
And so a rainbow, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, points out points at the sky, which
is essentially where, uh, what people from this era would have thought where that got
where God is, you know, that's God's wrong above the sky.
And so God says, I'm going to put the bow in the sky is going to point at me.
And when I see it, I will remember.
Now this is crazy because God's not supposed to have to remember any of this.
He doesn't keep the sign of the covenant.
The vassal does that.
Right.
He doesn't remember the vassal does that.
He doesn't have to be responsible for keeping the covenant and at least unless it's brought
up.
And yet God says that this is who our God is.
He's the guy that says, I'm going to remember, I'm going to keep the covenant.
You're really bad at losing things.
And then so I put it in the sky as you can't lose it.
Uh, incidentally, there's a covenant that he makes with, uh, Abram.
That's also very hard to lose.
Yeah.
That's so, uh, but like this is who God is.
Right.
Yeah.
Like this is who God is.
And there's a story where we talked about like mass destruction.
We're like, Oh, God's destroying the heavens and the earth and, and all these things.
I was like, when you actually read the story and you're like, what is the story actually
trying to talk to me about?
Isn't actually trying to talk to me about the heavens and the earth being destroyed.
No, man, that's not what it's even trying to talk to me about.
It's trying to tell me who my God is and how God is always going to redeem the remnant.
Yeah.
And let's pause for a second.
Take that, take that covenant, that bow pointing in the sky.
God put it there as a reminder to himself.
Right?
So here you have God saying, I, here's a reminder to myself that I'm not going to do this again.
Right?
How many parents do that?
How many good parents do that?
Three, three, three, three grass.
How many good parents do that?
Like they were, they're like, okay, what I did, like, I'm going to set this reminder
for myself that this is how I treat my kid.
Right?
Because, I mean, you're a dad, I'm a dad.
There are days where I just want to, where like, I have to exercise a lot of patience.
Right?
There are days where I have to exercise a lot of self-control.
Whenever we go somewhere, it could be five minutes out the door or 45 minutes to get
out the door.
Right?
So then you plan and you're like, okay, well, I'm going to like plan for the 45 minutes.
And when it takes five minutes, you're like, I have a lot of time to kill.
Right?
Or, or I'm just going to show up really early to something because that's what it is.
I also do feel like my kids have the ability to take more time, like inversely proportionate
to how badly I have to pee.
Oh yeah.
100%.
Like if I have to pee a ton, they take forever.
I don't have to go at all.
They're like, boom, let's go.
Yeah.
Right?
So it's God who he's reminding himself that he's not going to do this again.
And he's putting that reminder out there for us that he's not going to do this again.
It's a two-way reminder, but he's taking full responsibility.
Right?
The flood was not your fault.
Yeah.
It had nothing, like in one sense, it had nothing to do with you.
Right?
It was God, it was God acting how God said he was going to act and hanging reminding
himself now that we're not going to do that again.
Right?
Yeah, I think sometimes you have to step out.
So I literally believe that the Bible is true.
I also don't believe everything that talks about is literal.
Just read Revelation sometime and you'll probably agree with me.
I believe that in a literary sense, that's not what the Bible is trying to tell me.
Like the book is written in such a way that there's an invitation.
And once again, it's not written by Western writers.
It's not trying to tell us a story of how.
The Jews are trying to help us in their story, who and why.
Who are these people?
Why?
Why did God do this?
Who is this God?
Because they don't know him.
And I would argue that in a lot of ways we don't either, because I don't know how many
Christians I've run into that just think God is one wrong move away from getting like,
like just like pulling out the paddleboard.
Right?
Like we exist in this capacity where we, God's not mad at you.
He's not mad at you.
Like okay, we talked about, I talked about this today.
Right?
And I said, uh, Jesus is God.
Jesus drinks the cup of God's holy wrath.
So God made flesh drinks God's cup of holy wrath.
It's his wrath.
And he drank it.
Sounds very much like a covenant he's making with himself.
Right?
God is not mad at you.
And I get this thing where people are like, oh, the God of the Old Testament, he's firing,
he's brimstone.
Jesus told us, I represent the father perfectly.
And I was like, so one of the two things is wrong.
Either you misunderstand the Old Testament or you don't understand Jesus.
So either one of those things need to be fixed.
Oh yes, completely.
And, and I've heard people say that when you're referring to a non-Arab god in Genesis, where
they jump ahead to first, second Kings, first, second Samuel, Chronicles, those books.
And they're like, what about when God wiped these people out or wiped these people out?
Or like all those things.
I was like, okay, well, if we want to talk about that, we can, but you have to understand
that in most cases that pretty much in every case that that happened, one of the two things
was going on.
One, there's punishment for his kids.
Okay.
Or he was freeing those kids.
Right.
One of those two things was happening.
Also when, can we also say when God's anger is burning against the Israelites, like we're
dealing with like 80 years of them engaging in the worship of Melek.
And guys, I'm not going to talk about it on the podcast.
Go look up the worship of Melek.
It is horrid.
I talked to my wife about it once and like she had nightmares because it's, it's that
horrific of the kind of things that were happening.
And God in the middle of that is like patiently waiting, patiently waiting and trying to bring
his kids back around.
Yeah.
And I was like, but sometimes God has to say enough.
And I think the tendency in Christianity is we're like, oh, enough.
And I was like, dude, you don't even have patience at all.
Like you're upset because somebody questioned your theology and you're like, they are done
with me or I'm done with them.
Right.
And the guy that that's not patience.
No, that that's not even the right time to like rise up.
No.
And, and here's another interesting tidbit about this before we jump back to Genesis,
but every time the Israelites scattered, they were non-Israelite people who came to know
God.
Book of Daniel, right?
Book of Daniel chapter four at the end of it, Nebuchadnezzar, right?
Conquest guy, conquest guy.
He built a statue to himself.
A big one said, worship me.
He threw people on a fiery furnace for not worshiping.
Right.
He had multiple encounters with God, right?
You want to end.
He had time where he drew close to God, walked away from God, drew close to God, walked away
from God.
He had all the sounds.
Okay.
End of chapter four.
Nebuchadnezzar says, I Nebuchadnezzar, praise and worship the one and true God.
So a king of a hostile, brutal, violent nation was drawn to God because Israelites were scattered.
Yeah.
But four of them were faithful to the call of God.
Four.
They were faithful and the most powerful man in the world came to know God.
Let's raise the ante a little more.
Esther in Babylonian captivity, becoming Persia, right?
She is faithful to where God puts her in the situation and saved the whole remnant because
she's faithful in some very questionable circumstances.
She's faithful and God uses a little bit of faithfulness in questionable circumstances
to help heal an entire nation.
God is about restoration.
Yeah.
God is about redemption.
And if you read the Old Testament and all you can see is conquest, you are reading it
with fainted glasses.
Now I want to be fully aware.
I want to acknowledge that conquest is there.
Right?
It's there.
God speaks into their circumstances and does things in order to put his will on display.
Yeah.
Just because there was conquest in the Old Testament does not mean that's what God wanted.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now don't mishear me.
I'm not saying it didn't accomplish God's will.
I'm saying it's not necessarily what he wanted.
He puts Israel at the smack dab of the middle of the nations so that everybody would have
to go through them.
Okay.
Now let's go back to Noah because we're all over the place.
But the good thing is, is like both Daniel, both Esther, there's actually good tight ends
to Noah, but God is doing the same thing.
Technically he's doing the same thing with Daniel and Esther that he did with Noah.
Yeah.
Right?
Or he's saying there's so much evil, but I'm going to wait till I find someone who is faithful.
Right.
And I'm going to use them.
To reoccur in the name of the Bible.
It comes over and over and over again.
Yeah.
Which also brings up for us living today, are you going to be a person when God's looking
at you and you'll be found?
Yeah.
And like, please don't hear me say, I'm not saying that you can save yourself.
I'm not saying any of this.
It's like you're always saved by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ in your life and the
empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
Yeah.
But God's also looking for people who are like, Hey, maybe you're looking for someone.
I'm right here.
You can't see me.
I raise my hand, which is pointless on podcasts because you can't see it.
It's a vision.
Yeah.
He's looking for people who are like, I'm right here and I'm ready to go.
If you are looking for somebody to stand in the gap, if you're looking for someone who
takes the hit for the other person, I am right here.
I'm ready to go on.
God goes, that's someone I can use.
That's somebody who actually takes the mission of losing Ford.
Taking a posture by Isaiah and saying, hearing God said me.
You know, if my hope is a little off here, but let's just talk about Isaiah for a minute.
One of my favorite things about Isaiah, because in Christian numb today, we are like, you
are a worthless sinner and you need to repent or else God's judgment is going to come on
here.
I was like, well, first of all, Bible says God's judgment is already on you.
So it's not coming on to it's already on you.
I was like, second of all, when I read the Bible, like stories about when people encounter
God, they very rarely had to be convinced of their sin.
Yeah.
So you look at Isaiah, he says, in the year the king is, I died.
I saw the Lord, uh, high and exalted seat on a throne, the train of rope filled the
temple with glory.
And he sees God and he goes, whoops, I shouldn't be here.
Right?
I mean, essentially that's what he said.
Uh huh.
He's like, I should not be here.
I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among the people of unclean lips.
Now listen to what God does.
I say, yeah, you're right.
Repet.
He takes the call.
He comes over with the, the angel.
He touches him.
He's like, all right, now you're clean.
Isaiah was fully aware of how sinful he is.
Yeah.
So me and so, and in response to that, Isaiah, now they're like, who are we going to set?
He's like, I'll go send me.
And then God gives him his mission.
Right?
It's interesting that God doesn't require him as an addition of finding forgiveness
that he obeys.
Yeah.
Very interesting.
Yeah.
So today, when we, when we interact with people, cause we're talking about wickedness of the
world, it's getting destroyed and all of these different things that are going on here.
Right?
And we're going to talk about a story next about Noah that is really sketchy.
Our job is to present God, to present Jesus, because when people encounter the authentic
Jesus, we don't need to tell them about their sin.
They're fully aware.
Yeah.
The problem is most people aren't fully aware because they never encounter authentic Jesus.
They never encounter the holiness, the goodness, the redemptive power, the restorative power
of who Jesus is.
Because the one that we give him, give them is inadequate.
We give them a God who's like, I'll forgive you if, no, no, I'll forgive you when you
come to me.
So here's a question.
Do we interpret Jesus through the lens of an angry God and think Jesus is fulfilling
an angry God?
Or do we interpret Jesus through the lens of a loving God?
Just on that for a second.
We're going to ask it again.
Do we interpret Jesus through the lens of our perception of an angry God?
Or do we interpret Jesus through the lens of our perception of a loving God?
Because it is key that you understand which lens you are interpreting Jesus through, because
it is going to change how you view it.
If you are interpreting Jesus through the lens of fulfillment of angry God judgment
in the Old Testament, you vastly missed the point.
Jesus came and he said, the kingdom of heaven is near.
Repent.
Which can I rephrase that a little bit differently?
Like when you actually take the Greek, the kingdom of heaven is here and ready for you
to interact with it.
Come back to who you're supposed to be.
It is not far away.
It is right here.
Come back to who you're supposed to be.
The word repent is Shuvah.
Right?
It means come back.
Return.
Return to the path.
Right?
Because here's the thing.
If you are saying Jesus is fulfillment of who God is and you're viewing God as an angry
God in the Old Testament, how you're going to live life is you're going to be an angry
Christian woman throughout your life.
Right?
Versus if you're viewing Jesus as the fulfillment of a loving God in the Old Testament, you're
going to love your neighbor.
Yeah.
No, I'm with you 100%.
And I think your question, the rhetorical one, I was like, go visit some churches in
America and the answer is pretty clear.
Right?
One of the reoccurring themes in worship music right now is dead coming back to life.
And one of the things that God is speaking to me about is he's not just talking about
the literal dead, but also the spiritually dead.
Because a lot of the church in America specifically is walking around like a zombie.
And it is time to come alive.
I listened to a guy the other day and he made a claim.
He said, young people are not walking away from God in the US.
They're walking away from the church.
And we're interpreting that as them walking away from God.
When I heard that, I stopped and I thought, and the point that he was making was that
people want to know God.
They want to know who God is.
They want to know what God has from them.
They want to know the redemption of Jesus Christ in our life, the work of Christ in
our life.
They're just not seeing it in a church and the vast majority of churches that is.
Yeah.
And that, and just so you know, we're not actually talking down about churches.
We love the church.
Absolutely.
We love the church.
We are very actively involved in our church every Sunday.
We also have the capacity to look at what we're doing and be like, it's not right.
And at times Spencer and I have heard of the problem.
Like we've got to get better.
Like there are certain times like the stuff comes out and I exchange words and it's not
Jesus words.
So, but okay.
So all these things being said, we, I love this.
I've been loving all this.
So, so when I look at the story of the flood, right, I want to look at this story as like,
what do I actually learn about who God is?
Because that's what's going to help me understand about who that is all throughout the old Testament
and who Jesus is and what I'm supposed to be following after as I listen to the Holy
Spirit.
Right.
And what I hear in here is a God who takes both sides of the covenant who is looking
for redemptive purposes.
He might say that he's looking for the gold in the mud.
Yeah.
Right.
I see a God who is just really passionate about finding a way to make, bring his kids
home.
Right.
Yeah.
To really like save the remnant, use the remnant to save the world.
Yeah.
I also just, I just see this God who is just overexuberant and he doesn't change because
like after they come out of the flood, their mandate is exactly.
If you haven't picked up anything in this podcast, where we're coming through Torah
and we're talking about the ways of God, we're trying to understand who is God in context,
in love, so that when we go and walk this out, we put him on display and not ourselves.
And if you're wondering, okay, where are we getting this idea of that God is love?
Okay.
Let's, let's jump over first John.
Like first John talks about Jesus being loved.
Jesus talks about himself being gotten.
Right.
So if Jesus is, if first John's calling Jesus love and Jesus calls himself God, God is love.
That is the connection right there.
He is a loving God.
He is the embodiment of a loving God.
He loves you.
I'm going to say it again.
He loves you.
The love does not mean that he's going to let you get away with whatever you want.
Right?
That's not what love means.
He loves you.
He cares for you.
He wants the best for you, but you're not, he's not going to give you everything you
want.
What he is going to give you is what you need, which is himself.
So and not just the new Testament either because in Exodus 34, there is this passage where
Moses asked for God to pass in front of him.
Right.
And, and there's a statement, this phrase that comes out and it's actually one of the
most repeated phrases in the Bible about the nature of God.
And so it starts in verse six, it says, he passed in front of Moses proclaiming the Lord,
the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,
maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.
Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.
He punishes the children and their children for the sin of their parents to the third
and fourth generation.
We read that and we hear third and fourth generation and we missed the thousands, thousands
on thousands of bounding and love, but he will administer justice because he can't leave
things unsettled.
But God's main goal is going to be to bring me home.
And so we're sitting around as a church and we're like, man, God is just mad at us and
God is not mad.
God loves you and he wants you in relationship with him and he's going to do everything this
side of eternity to make that happen.
All right, guys, we enjoy this one.
If you have any thoughts, send us an email at loveincontext.gmail.com.
Also you can catch us on Instagram at loveincontext.
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So that'll be fun too.
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All right.
Thank you so much for listening today.
We hope you enjoyed this podcast and we hope that you got something out of it.
If you have any questions, please contact us at loveincontext.gmail.com.
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Again, loveincontext.gmail.com or Instagram are the two ways to get ahold of us if you
would like.
Thank you once again.
We really appreciate you being here.
God bless.