Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of Trinity Talks.
My name is Kyla and I'm the Online Engagement Director here at Trinity.
I'm Jordana.
I attend Trinity.
And my name is Rob and I have the great pleasure of being the minister here at Trinity.
Yeah, so we have been over the last couple of months talking about heroes of faith, those
folks in scripture who give us an example to look up to.
And so this week we just want to sort of wrap up this series by looking at what are some
of the things that we've learned?
Who are some of the people that have stood out to us over these last couple of months?
And so yeah, thanks for joining me, folks.
Yeah, it's nice to be here.
So I want to start with a question for you, Rob.
As you think about all of these different heroes of faith, there's lots of them, are
there any common characteristics that stand out to you?
So let's just, because I'm not sure that people know, but we were looking at just, I guess,
the heroes that were listed in Hebrews chapter 11.
Right.
And it's entirely possible.
The Bible's full of other heroes, right?
So I mean, we're already kind of narrowing it down to a group, which actually, maybe
before I even answer that question, I'm just curious to know.
We went through those five or 10 names of heroes.
Were there any particular heroes that you thought, oh, that's my favorite or that's
the one that jumps out to me?
I'm just curious.
I think for me, I really enjoyed the sermon on Rahab and just thinking about Rahab as
a hero of faith because she is an outsider in a lot of ways, right?
She's a woman, she's a prostitute, she's not an Israelite, but she takes on this faith
for herself and yeah, has this sort of really significant role then in the story of Christ
even.
Yes.
Yeah.
So I think for me, just recognizing that even though sometimes we look at the Old Testament
and we think, okay, God's story is exclusive to the people of Israel and what God is doing
amongst them, but even at that point, it's not really, right?
There are these examples of people who are sort of outside of that norm who get to have
really important roles.
Yes.
I agree.
What about you, Jordana?
I'd say two resonated.
Okay.
One was Enoch.
Yeah.
I don't know, not too many details about him.
I love that it was just an everyday walk with God, you know, in the ordinary, the mundane,
that faithfulness in the small things, nothing grand defined his life.
So I loved that, that resonated.
And then Sarah.
Yeah.
You know, Sarah for her laughing at God, the sense that she was not included in the
promise and then the fact that even when the faith falters, God still has that plan that
he works through.
And so I think that frailty, as you said, the frailness, that resonated.
Yeah.
I also resonated with Sarah as well.
I think partly because as a preacher, there's some uncertainty, some controversy, maybe
even around her place in this list.
And so it kind of forced you to dig a little deeper and to kind of make a case for her.
I almost felt like I was a lawyer, you know, trying to make a case for Sarah being on the
great hall of fame.
But yeah.
I mean, on the subject of that controversy, her name is in there, even if it's...
I know you made the case for that verse being about her.
Yes.
But even if it were Abraham, it was talking about her name is very much coupled in there,
right?
Like it's not that she's not there at all.
That's true.
Yeah.
Her name is listed.
So she is very much part of that story.
Yes.
But again, in one version, it just says she's barren, right?
So that's hardly claimed to fame.
So it depends on how you read it.
Yes, she's named.
Yeah.
It's not clear whether she's being named as the subject.
The one who...
Yeah.
Okay.
But anyways, you asked the question, but what do all these people kind of have in common?
And I mean, I'd love to hear what you have to say, but I think that as I look through
them all, I would have to say that there is definitely a sense in which their faith led
to action.
And I can almost think of like verbs that go along with each of these heroes, right?
Like so Abel, he offered, right?
There was an action there, right?
Enoch walked, right?
Noah built this ark.
So there's always like, I think it just keeps on going.
So there always seems to be like, it's not just a professed faith.
It's a faith that actually has to do something.
And I think that's pretty important.
Abraham left.
You can just keep going through.
Abraham hid the spies.
You know, I don't know.
That to me is the one thing that I think is really important.
I think it's really important because the Bible tells us in the book of James that faith
without action, faith without works is a dead, dead faith.
And so here we see, yes, these heroes, it's true.
They had faith and that always led to action.
Yeah.
Agree?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
And Sarah?
Yeah, maybe she's...
She laughed.
Sarah laughed.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, are there other characteristics?
Yes, I suppose they all endured great hardship.
They all went through very, very challenging times, persevered.
So I think that's also a characteristic, a quality of their faith.
And I mean, the whole book of Hebrews chapter 11 begins by saying that faith is being sure
of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
This is what the ancients were commended for.
So I think it's saying that something they all have in common is that they believed in
something that they could not see.
So maybe the text itself tells us, hey, this is what all these people have in common, right?
They had this hope, but they couldn't see it.
So maybe that's the thing.
Yeah.
I mean, so often that verse is taken as a kind of sense of blind faith, right?
But when you came to Abraham, you spoke about how Abraham reasoned or logiced that God would
raise Isaac from the dead.
So could you say a bit more about that relation between faith and reason or logic?
So let me just acquaint.
So yes, Abraham is willing, according to Hebrews 11, which I thought this was actually kind
of mind blowing.
And I don't know why I had never actually noticed this before.
I had always wondered why on earth, how on earth would Abraham go and willingly sacrifice
his son?
Well, at least the way the author of the Hebrews says is, ah, actually Abraham reasoned that
God could raise the dead.
And so that was the reason why he was willing to offer his son up is because even if he
had to kill Isaac, he knew that God would raise him from the dead.
And yeah, reasoned was the word there.
So I think there's always this tension between faith, kind of like just complete trust, the
things we don't understand and using our brains, using our minds that I mean, Romans 12 to
says that, you know, be, it says, don't conform anymore to the pattern of this world, but
be transformed by the renewing of your minds.
And so there's something about our minds that's really, really important in the, in the journey
of faith.
We have to use our minds.
We have to engage our intellect in this.
But then on the other hand, you've got, you know, there's verses say we walk by faith,
right?
Not by sight, right?
Like lean not on your own understanding, right?
So that, so you have this tension.
So which is it?
Do we, do we, do we use our heads or do we, do we lean not on our understanding and we
have to walk completely by faith?
So I don't know.
All of those two in tension, I guess.
Yeah.
I mean, I feel like the thing that I've always sort of come back to is like, God gave me
a brain.
Therefore there has to be a God given purpose.
Right?
You know, like if faith was only about leaning on like a blind kind of faith, then yeah,
like what, why do I even have a mind now?
Does that mean that all of the ways that I use my mind are like good and godly?
No.
But I think, yeah, there is something about having a brain and having intellect that at
least like it has to have some part in our faith journey.
And in this verse too, it's nice that he reasoned, right?
There is that mental process there in terms of what you believe and assessing it and seeing
where to trust and whether he is, God is trustworthy and who he is.
And so you're very much reasoning out what you believe and how you believe it and how
you live into it.
And so I think, yeah, just sort of deepens our sense of what we base our life on and
helps us to think it through.
It's a very different way I think of understanding.
It's almost like maybe, so as much as Abraham reasoned it through, there still would have
had to come a step of faith.
So it's like, I was thinking of this a few years ago, our family went-
He's hoping for a miracle in the end, like a reason of, you know, it's a reason to a
point, but he's hoping for a miracle.
Yeah, that's right.
And still I would say you can reason, reason, reason, reason, you can, even if you've reasoned
something all the way you can, you're still going to be a part of it that's going to require
faith.
And I was, a couple of years ago, we went to British Columbia and we went to this place
called Golden, British Columbia, and there's this thing there called the Golden Sky Bridge.
It's this like, I think it is the longest suspension bridge in Canada over this huge
gorge.
It's pretty new.
You should Google it, look it up.
But I can remember like getting to this bridge.
Like we drove all the way there, we walked up to this bridge and I looked, I looked,
okay, there's the cable, the cables are going into the ground.
But you look at this thing, it is sagging and it is, it's freaky, right?
And you can reason it out.
You can say, look, people are ahead of me.
They're already going across.
It's totally fine.
It's going to be just fine.
Look, this looks sturdy.
This is brand new.
It's a calm day, right?
I'm sure they wouldn't, I'm sure it would, they wouldn't let people walk across this
if it wasn't safe.
But still you've got to at some point take a step, right?
You've got to step onto that bridge.
So it's almost like reason can take you right to the bridge.
But faith has got to, you got to have the faith to take the step.
Yeah.
So it's both.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And I think we often think of the other side of reason as being emotion.
And I think emotion plays a part in our faith as well.
So in the story of Sarah, Sarah laughs at God.
She has this sort of, yeah, just like gut response to God's promises.
And when you were speaking about Sarah, you talked about how laughing is sometimes part
of our journey of faith.
And I think that's true.
But I'm also wondering, are there ever moments where that's not a faithful response, right?
Where it's not appropriate to laugh at God?
Well, I think there are different types of laughter.
In fact, even Sarah herself has different types of laughter in the story of the Bible,
right?
In Genesis 18, 12, she laughs more like almost a scoff, like as if I'm going to have a baby
in my old age.
But then in Genesis 21, when she's actually got the child, she probably laughed again.
I can't remember.
Yeah, there was a laugh of joy.
Yeah, a laugh of joy.
And she ends up naming the child laughter.
So not all laughing is the same kind of laughing.
Even in Sarah's life, not all laughing is the same kind of laughing.
For example, Psalm 1 says, you know, blessed is the man who does not sit in the seat of
scoffers, right?
So there is a way to laugh at God, which is to scoff at God, which is to, I don't know,
and certainly that's not a kind of, you know, that's a mocking laugh.
We're mocking God with our laughter.
Yeah, I'm certainly, I'm not saying that's a good idea.
But on the other hand, I mean, sometimes those things God does, the things God promises are
so amazing and unbelievable that I think it would be very natural for one to say, there's
no way, right?
And I think that's probably the kind of laugh that Sarah had was like, yeah, yeah, right,
as if that's going to happen.
I don't know.
But I mean, you guys tell me.
What are you talking about?
I mean, I think I was thinking of someone when you talked about that, that sort of,
it's one thing to laugh because it's hard to believe something, you know, that that
radical or crazy applies to you, that kind of blessing.
It's another to, I think, you know, when you talk about the seats of scoffers and all,
there's a sort of dismissal of God and His holiness and His justice and His goodness
and this is presence sometimes or His existence.
And that's a different sort of laughter, right?
And so I could imagine, like you can imagine Noah going through that kind of scoffing laughter
that he has to put up with as he bells the horn, right?
And so that's a very different sort of laughter that we're talking about than perhaps what
Sarah's disbelief is.
A different kind of disbelief is hers.
So, yeah.
And probably God can handle both types.
Yes, He can.
I mean, there are all kinds of experiences of, you know, Paul and people who begin in
antagonism and don't stay there.
But yeah, it reminds me, one of the things that has often stood out to me in the Christmas
story is the difference between Zachariah and Mary.
So when the angel comes to Zachariah and says, your wife is going to have a baby, he says,
how is this possible?
Now, when the angel comes to Mary and says, hey, you're going to have a baby, Mary also
says, how is this possible?
But Zachariah is like judged for that, like constricted with silence and Mary is like
commended.
Yeah, yeah.
Right?
And so it just makes me think about, you know, we can be saying the same things.
The laughter can sound the same, but it's like where that's coming from in your heart
and like the intention and the thought behind it, right?
Of like, is this a statement of faith or is this a statement of like, nah, you're crazy?
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
There's, yeah, there is a place.
I mean, and of course there's the other kind of laughter, which would just, yeah, the laughter
of just joy, which should also characterize our lives as well.
So yeah, I totally agree.
That's a good one about Mary and Zachariah.
They both, they must've had just a different posture in their heart about how they said
the same thing, but it came across different.
Yeah.
And yet God fulfills his promises in both of them.
Well, yes.
Yeah, yeah.
There's that too.
So there's that grace that's always there.
Yeah, for sure.
So I'm going to ask a slightly different, I'll take a different Jack here.
Just during the sermon on Noah, you said that God's word doesn't just describe reality,
it creates reality.
And that feels a fairly complex sentence.
Could you reflect a little bit on that, Rob?
Justin should be here to help us with this one.
So I think there is God's informative word and God's performative word.
And I mean, again, from what I understand about it is that there's lots of scripture
where God is giving us information, where God's word is, you know, the 10 commandments
are just telling us things that we should know, that this is stuff that we should know.
History books are telling us, you know, things that have happened.
And so that, yeah, there's the Bible's full of God's word as information.
But there are these other moments when God's word actually is like the means by which he
is accomplishing something in the world and that his word is actually now performing something.
And I think in the context of this series, I said that when God said that the world was
going to be flooded, he wasn't just kind of describing the rain clouds on the horizon
like, oh, you better watch out.
He was, no, it's because God said, you know, I'm going to judge the earth and build it.
That actually was the causal effect that kind of was going to bring this about, right?
It's kind of like Genesis 1, 1, right?
It's a classic example, right?
God says, let there be light and there was light.
So boom, his word is the thing that is doing it, right?
So I don't know.
I mean, there's probably lots more to be said about that, but I mean, what do you guys think
about God's word as informing versus performing, accomplishing things?
Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's one of those things that I don't necessarily stop and make
that distinction often, but I think it is a really helpful distinction to make because
it reminds us of who we're actually talking about, right?
My word is not particularly performative most of the time, right?
I don't speak things into being, but God does, right?
And so it's just, yeah, one of those moments that makes us like, at least makes me like
take a breath and be like, okay, like this is a whole other order of magnitude, right?
Yeah.
So could you sort of reflect then on our faith in that, on reflecting on the fact that God's
the one creating this reality around us and how we can live into it or how that might
affect our perception of the world?
Yeah.
I mean, it, so, I mean, one question might be, does God's word continue to do this, right?
Like, so is God's word still creating and causing events to happen, transformation to happen,
healing to happen?
Like, is there still a sense in which God is continuing to speak, even these words,
like did they still have performative power?
Can these words come off a page?
Or, you know, in John 1, we hear about the word made flesh in Jesus.
So now Jesus is the word and Jesus goes about healing and Jesus goes about transforming
and Jesus goes about forgiving.
And so there's God's word in the flesh now performing and acting and calling into existence,
right, the kingdom of God.
So yeah, I don't know, I mean, is there a sense in which we still can somehow do that
as we speak God's words, are we creating?
If you're speaking or teaching or preaching and you're speaking God's words, you're not
just giving information necessarily, that they still could be, you know, by the Holy
Spirit grabbing a hold of those words, boom, doing things in people's life, like performing
things, and not just because, oh, that's information I didn't know, therefore I'm going to change,
but actually like the word itself is accomplishing something.
I don't know.
I mean, there is that, where is that verse where Isaiah, Isaiah 55, my word will not
return to me empty, but will accomplish the purpose for which I sent it.
So is, yeah, is that, is that still true?
I mean, I, I feel like it has to be.
It has to be.
For our lives to change, we have to at some sense receive, and the word does have some
power, I think, to change lives and to call us, you know.
Yeah, you just said the word has power, right?
Not just information that can give me some advice for living a better life.
It has power in itself.
Now that's a pretty big statement.
Yeah.
And like then changes our relationship to scripture, our relationship to preaching,
like, like, yeah, right?
Because it's now, I mean, I think we need to sort of caveat that to say like the word
God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit has power.
So like Rob standing up there on a Sunday morning saying Rob's words is not inherently
powerful.
It's the Holy Spirit using those words, speaking through those words.
Yes.
I have a book on preaching in my office, one of the first ones I got, and it's by a guy
named Peter Adams.
And the title is Speaking God's Words.
That's, yeah, that's like a, it's quite a thing to think about.
Yeah.
It's cool.
Cool.
I was also thinking of the ways in which, you know, it's creating also those relations
with God that allows us then to walk in faith.
Like it's doing that work in our lives consistently as we take those actions.
So anyway.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I just, like, as I'm sort of sitting here, like reveling in all of this, it's a bit like,
that's like mind blowing in some sense, right?
Like it's one of those things that I do, I just want to stop and be like, wow, that's
cool.
And like cool is not even a sufficient word for it, right?
Yeah.
I think when someone walks out of church on a Sunday morning and they're like maybe overwhelmed
with emotion.
Yeah.
It's probably not because they just learned something they didn't know, right?
It's because something has happened in them.
God's word has changed something in them.
They're not the same anymore.
It's dislodged something.
It's blown something up.
So yeah, it does happen.
It still does.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
So as we've been talking about faith, one of the things that you've also mentioned in
a couple of sermons is, you know, this relationship between our faith and grace and righteousness,
which are all sort of very Christiany words.
But the sort of gist of Christianity is that we don't earn this righteousness.
We are given it as a gift through grace.
Yes.
And so if that's the case, if we're not sort of acting out our faith in order to earn righteousness,
what is the relationship between our faith and our actions?
What are our actions doing if they're not trying to earn something?
That's a really good question.
Jordana?
Why are you looking at me?
Just want to hear what I would say.
I need more time.
I think I would deconstruct the distinction between the faith and the action.
I would say the action is what faith looks like in our everyday lives.
So yes, that grace is the place where God is saving us and doing so much in our lives
and giving us His righteousness.
And what that looks like when you wake up in the morning and when you go through your
day is the actions of living that relationship.
So that's where I see, and sometimes God would call us to something where it might be a challenge.
It's beyond what we imagine an everyday action is.
But I think most of our actions are everyday actions in work, in our families, in different
ways.
So what we see with many of these actions is what that relationship looks like.
If you look at someone, it's hard to know what's the motivation for any action.
So if someone is bringing flowers to their wife, let's say I bring a bouquet of flowers
to Sally, it's hard for you to know.
Is Rob bringing those to her because he owes her something or he really screwed up and
he's got to make it up to her?
And so this action that I'm viewing actually is rooted in some kind of guilt or expectation
or duty.
You look at it and you really can't tell.
Or are the flowers, am I giving the flowers because it's just an overflow of my love
and affection for Sally and I just can't help but constantly buying flowers this way and
that.
I just can't stop myself.
I can't stop myself.
Right?
So again, the outside observer, it's really hard to tell what the motivation is there.
And I think there's something about that, that what is the motivation for works?
What is the motivation for actually doing good deeds?
It should be an overflow, I would say.
It should be an overflow of us coming to grips with what God has done for us, an overflow
of, man, God loves me, God has provided for me, God has given.
I'm so in love with God.
I want to now serve God.
I want to do the things that God desires because that's what you do when you love someone.
Right?
Yeah.
But on the other hand, yes, people could be doing all these same actions.
They could be helping the old ladies across the street and they could be giving generously
and they could do all those things, but they could be motivated and say, oh, I hope this
is enough to kind of get God off my back or I hope this is enough to cover up for all
of my shortcomings or I hope that this can somehow earn myself a place in heaven or whatever
the case may be.
So yeah, I think the proper order of things is that our actions are overflows of this
kind of the wonder of grace in our lives overflowing into action, not an attempt to earn God's
grace by these actions.
Right.
Yeah.
And given that, there are times when actions are not faithful and you see this with Moses,
right?
In your sermon where you said Moses wasn't allowed to enter the promised land because
of that moment of disobedience.
How do you see that?
Like God's action there?
Yeah, this was a funny question.
By the way, a lot of these questions are submitted by the members of our congregation, right?
And we never actually even talked about this.
No.
Right?
It just never came up in the sermon.
No, sorry.
No, no, it's still a good question, but maybe this needs a bit of context because I think
what the person asking is that there is this moment in the book of Numbers, right?
Where God says to Moses, here Moses, this is what I want you to do.
The people of Israel are thirsty.
I want you to go over to that rock and I want you to speak to that rock and water is going
to come pouring out of that rock, right?
So what does Moses do?
Moses goes over to the rock.
He takes his staff out and he whacks the rock twice.
And water still gushes out and everybody in the community drinks, but the Lord said to
Moses, because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites,
you will not bring this community into the land that I give them.
So okay, so this is the situation, right?
God said, go talk to the rock and it will cause water to come out.
Moses goes over and whacks the rock.
So okay, now we've got our context.
So what was the question again?
It's just, you know, those moments, we've been talking so much about grace, about God
working through even the messy lives that we have seen.
And yet here we see like a consequence, like he's not allowed to go into the promised land
when he does something wrong.
And so I just want to get you to reflect on that.
So if you read, the Bible actually tries to answer the question that we're asking about
this event.
So if you actually look in Psalm, I was looking this up earlier, Psalm 106, it's in verse
32 and 33.
It says, by the waters of Meribah they angered the Lord and trouble came to Moses because
of them for they rebelled against the spirit of the Lord and rash words came from Moses'
lips.
So the Bible interpreting the Bible, the book of Psalms is basically saying that what happened
actually there in that moment was actually something of consequence, right?
It wasn't just like, oh, I tapped the rock instead of speaking to the rock.
There was some frustration, some anger, some rash words that God was, that Moses was speaking
out and presumably in full view of all the Israelites about God or whatever.
We may not understand the whole thing, but it appears that it wasn't just like I made
a boo-boo, right?
I'm, oh, I didn't hear you right.
It wasn't just a small mistake.
There was something kind of significant about it.
But I mean, again, it's not 100% evident that it's a bit of a mystery, but I think it just
shows that, yeah, there are some consequences for those kind of actions where we're rash
and where we're maybe hot-headed or angry or speak angry words toward God that somehow
there are some consequences with that.
I don't know.
Is it worth the consequence to let the guy not go into the promised land?
It seems a bit shocking, wouldn't you agree, Kyla?
A little bit, yeah, yeah.
I mean, and the question that comes to mind for me then is like, I would want to try and
make a distinction between the consequences and forgiveness, right?
Because I think we can look at that and say, okay, well, God was then upset with Moses
and he said, Moses, you'll never enter the promised land.
And there's a temptation to think that that means that God didn't forgive Moses if Moses
ever asked for forgiveness.
I don't know, right?
But I think I would have to believe that knowing the nature of God, Moses received forgiveness,
but there was still a consequence.
Yes.
In fact, in fact, if so, later on in Jesus' ministry, right, there's this moment, you
know, there's this moment when the transfiguration, right?
Yes, in Matthew 17, he goes up the mountain and we're told that he's transfigured, he
glows in front of his disciples and we're told that there appeared before him Moses
and Elijah that were talking with Jesus.
So it would seem that even though Moses was not allowed to go into the promised land,
he actually ultimately did end up in the real promised land, which is God's presence.
He doesn't appear to be in God's bad books, right?
He shows up with Elijah and speaks with Jesus in this very amazing moment on the Mount of
Transfiguration.
So I think, yes, he did find redemption.
The Bible seems to tell us, of course he found, you know, he's redeemed.
Right?
Here he is, you know?
So and it helps us to think about the natural consequences of our actions, which can still
play out, you know, and at the same time still be receiving God's grace and forgiveness,
know that that's not final.
Yes.
That all things will be restored and redeemed, even though we've messed up and set in motion
things that we might no longer control anymore.
But, you know, so we hold both intention when we're here.
Yeah.
There are consequences and there's forgiveness.
Yes.
Yeah.
And they're both true at the same time.
Yeah, I like it.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
So I want to switch gears a little bit.
And the stories of faith are really complex, right?
And I think the Old Testament, sometimes we don't really know how to approach it.
But one of the things that you said, both in the sermon about Noah, and I think you
mentioned it also in the sermon about Enoch, was, you know, we can ask questions about
did this literally happen?
Did people really live for hundreds of years?
Did the whole earth really flood?
And I think those are really valid questions to ask and like things that people are wondering
about.
And so, I guess if we're not taking those stories literally, then how do we read them?
Does it change how you preach about them?
Well, as the preacher, I think the trick is you don't really know where everybody's at
in front of you.
Yeah.
That's what I find the hardest thing because I think there are people in our congregation
who would say, yeah, I believe that it was a literal flood.
I believe it was a regional flood.
I believe it was a global flood.
I don't know.
There would be people who would say, yes, that's what I believe.
And then on the other hand, you can have others say, no, I believe this was just a symbol
or this was a metaphor or this isn't literal truth.
This is theological truth that we're reading here.
And so, you know, you've got those people in front of you.
So I think that is a bit tricky as a preacher.
And you know, how do you make sure what you say is going to somehow not alienate half
your audience?
I mean, you guys read your Bibles.
You read Genesis 1 through 12 as well.
How do you land when you read these texts?
I can remember very distinctly the first time that I had a conversation with someone where
they clearly believed that the Bible was, that those chapters were not literally true.
And that like shook me to the core because at that point, I don't think anybody had ever
told me that they were literally true or that they weren't.
But I think I just sort of believed that they were.
So when I had that first conversation and someone was like, yeah, this is all myth,
I was like, wait, what?
Yeah.
And so I think, I mean, my general approach to scripture is I try not to get caught up
in the details that I am much more concerned about how shall we therefore live, right?
Like what is this?
What are the values that I'm pulling from this?
What does this tell me about God?
What does this tell me about the world?
And so did it literally happen or not?
But also, it's not high on my priority list of things to figure out.
Is that because the message is still the same?
So let's take the flood story, for example.
So whether you believe it was a literal flood or whether you believe that the story is not
meant to be written or read literally, is the same story that God is a just God, human
sin has consequences and God provides salvation.
Here's the arc, right?
Does it matter, I guess is the question.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that there are ways in which it could matter, right?
If we're asking questions about, okay, like how much human influence is in this story
and how much of God's influence is in this story?
Like those are questions we could nuance out.
But I think in general, you're right, like the values, what this is teaching us can be
the same regardless of how literally we take it.
What do you think, Jordana?
No, I would agree.
At some point, I stopped trying to get at people who had 900 year old lives.
And it's not impossible, but it's not some, I just, as you said, some of the ways in which
that would speak to a different audience might be lost on us.
And the way I approach it is God's hands somehow is still in this.
We need to know these stories to reveal his character because then the idea is that it's
that character that we trust.
And so that's where I am at right now.
I don't know whether I'll...
I wonder if it's a preoccupation a bit with our particular culture and our particular
time to want to know the science of it and the geology of it.
Because Jesus spoke about Noah and the flood, right?
But it wasn't in a way that he was reflecting on the historicity of it in that way.
He was talking about it in the context of this is what judgment kind of looks like.
When the Son of Man comes, it will kind of be like in the days of Noah when everyone
was doing this and it just came...
So again, he's not getting into the minutia of, oh, let's talk about what kind of flood
it was.
One Peter talks about it and one Peter, he also uses it as like a...
He's talking about baptism and he uses it kind of as a symbol of baptism.
And so I don't know, there's a way of talking about this that is deeply true, but I don't
know if we have to get bogged down in the...
But what do you think?
The place where I get tripped up is the fact that taken too far, that argument can mythologize
the entire Bible, right?
But at some point, Jesus is historically in the world.
He historically rises from the dead.
It's not a myth.
And so that movement from myth into history, it's tricky.
It's tempting to read everything as history.
And so that's...
To what extent, if Jesus is not too worried about it, it's because it's taken for granted
that it's history rather than simply symbol.
Even if he's using the story as having resonances in a particular way, it's assumed that it
really happened.
So that's sort of where I get tripped up in that conversation.
It can go too far to the other side where I think certainly, no, Jesus, he's a historical
figure on earth.
Yes, you're right.
And I'm not willing to sort of...
The old slippery slope.
Yeah.
And I think there was a series where you were talking about what is the Bible and how do
we read it and talking about these different genres in scripture, right?
And some of these are clearly meant to be historical books and some are clearly meant
to be poetry or narrative or letters, right?
And I think that's one of the things that I come back to, right?
Is like, there are some things that, yeah, are very clearly trying to tell us exactly
what happened and there are some things that are not, right?
And so we can't judge the whole Bible as being either fully historical or either fully metaphorical
or mythical.
It is a mixture of all these different things.
Yeah.
And I think we used that Bible project definition, which was something like, the Bible is a library
of writings that was both human and divine in origin that tells a unified story that
leads to Jesus, right?
That is a great definition.
That is a great...
Because it's a library.
What is a library?
Library's got all sorts of different kinds of books in it.
Look on the shelf over there.
They're not all the same...
No, they're not all the same book.
These ones here look like they're all the same book.
But yeah, it's...
So even my daughters in a car ride recently, we were talking about this and it was actually,
they had never thought of it or maybe never heard it explained.
And maybe it's too simplistic to say this, but there is definitely something that happens
in Genesis chapter 12, right?
I think Genesis 1 to 11 reads one way, like some kind of theological mythic history story,
kind of primeval kind of...
And then in Genesis 12, we meet this guy named Abraham and now we start following this family
story and it reads different and it sounds different.
And so, yeah, so it's really important that we learn our way around our Bible and learn
what we're reading.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
So I mean, a final question I have was, just to bring it all together and reflecting on
some of the complex challenges that the heroes that we were chatting about have gone through.
So often they face challenging social and political circumstances.
And as we face our own challenges today, what might it look like for God to raise up modern
heroes of faith?
How do we know whether God is calling us to be heroic in our faith?
Well maybe the hero that I think best exemplified this was Rahab.
Just a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Rahab and I made the point that Rahab has
to make a choice to align her life with the God of Israel instead of aligning it with
the culture of which she was a part Canaanite culture there in Jericho.
And that is a...
Yeah, that's a risky thing to do.
It feels scary, I imagine, to do that.
I'm just trying to think, even today, do I have the courage, would I have the courage
to really be willing to stand out and stand up in the eyes of people around me for something
that I felt was right and important, even with all these eyes looking on me or all this
kind of culture pressing in on me?
Can I break out of that?
Or am I gonna constantly be pressed back into what culture says I should be?
So yeah, I don't know.
I think it requires great courage on our part and probably community too, right?
Because I think it's a lot easier.
Rahab, at least the way the story tells it, she was like a solo.
She didn't have a community saying, go for it, Rahab, you can do it, right?
You can make this change, you can make this difference.
We kind of had to do that on our own, but we're fortunate is that we've got this great
community, this church where we support each other, we cheer each other on, we pray for
each other, and we try to challenge one another to kind of live faithfully to take those risks.
So I mean, community is, I think, huge in that.
I think another really key ingredient is discernment, that there are so many challenges out there
in the world.
You listen to the news, you look around, you're like, okay, there's this thing and this thing
and this thing.
And like, if I were to try and stand up to all of them, I would fail and would be so
burnt out and it just wouldn't work, right?
So there needs to be that element of what do I feel that God is calling me specifically
to do in this moment, right?
And then recognizing that there are still all of these other challenges and God is calling
other people to raise up and sort of take on those things.
But we can't do it all.
We can just do whatever is in our sort of sphere of influence to do, but also then be
courageous and bold and faithful in that.
Yeah, and I was going to say that sort of, it pays to remind yourself who your God is,
right?
And the hope, like constantly talking about the hope we have that the future is set for,
that's it.
It's taken care of, like God holds it.
And so that can ground you in sort of trusting when the hard times come.
Yeah.
In fact, how does Hebrews chapter 11 end?
I mean, it talks about people.
Some people were jeered and were flogged.
Others were chained and put in prison, right?
They were stoned, sawed in two, put to death by the sword, mutilated, mistreated, persecuted.
All of these things, they wandered, they lived in caves, right?
But to your point, for their faith, none of them had received what they had been promised,
right?
God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made
perfect.
So yeah, I think that, I mean, Kyla, you just said, you know, I can only take on so much
before it's just, it's too much for me.
But I mean, getting sawed in half is also too much, you know?
And having to wander and live in caves is too much.
So there is this part of me that like, is that, I'm not speaking of you, but are we
just chickening out in some ways by saying, ah, I can only do so much, right?
Like, is the call actually like a very sharp call to say, like, listen, look how people
suffered and why did they do it?
They did it because, like Jordana said, they knew there was this better resurrection, as
the book of Hebrews says.
There was this better thing still to come and that's kind of what enabled them to suffer
for the cause of Christ, to stick their neck out, to be a Rahab.
Yeah, I struggle with it, right?
We live very comfortable lives.
And I mean, I'm not in a rush to kind of be sawed in two, but I don't know.
I like Daniel on this score.
Just because he does live a faithful life in the middle of a very pagan culture.
But the moment, you know, when he is, when his allegiance to God is tested, he is faithful
in that moment.
Like, he's not seeking.
He's not inviting himself to solve all the problems of his culture around him.
He's living an ordinary, like a faithful life in the way he can.
But when the testing comes, he'll meet it.
He's faithful to it.
And so I think that's the thing.
I find like, I don't necessarily feel like I need to go seeking to solve all the issues
around in the culture.
So you're saying he had to decide that, no, this is a ditch to die in, right?
Like he had to make it to your point.
He had to discern that.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Fair.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much.
This has felt like a really rich conversation.
A lot of, a lot to think about for sure.
Yeah.
And hopefully for those who are listening, this has also felt like something that is both
encouraging and challenging for you.
Yeah.
I would encourage you, send us more questions.
Let us know what you think, what faith looks like in your life.
Yeah.
And we will see you again next week.