Hard Stories in the Old Testament

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the Saints.

I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me is Michael Durham, David Kassin, and Andrew.

Hudson. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask for you to rate, review, and share the podcast. Thank you. Today, our first question for today comes from our list that we received through our website.

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Why Hard Old Testament Stories Still Matter

So our question for today is, I struggle with reading the Bible completely through because of stories like that of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38. The main focus seems to be on their immorality. I understand and believe that Christ died for their immorality, for all sin.

I also believe that all of Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. Please help me understand why and how I should spend my time reading the stories of immorality and the depravity of man in the Bible, specifically in the Old Testament.

Michael,.

You want to start us off? Sure. There are a lot of challenging passages to be read in the Old Testament. It often seems more distant to us as followers of Christ, as New Covenant saints. So I really relate with this question as we look at passages such as Genesis 38.

Having taught through Genesis before, some of these passages, some of these stories, are difficult in and of themselves just to read aloud. And of course it's important to remember that the Bible was written to be read aloud.

It's a book originally to be read aloud by the servants of the Lord to the people of God, to be heard by men, women, and children, as we see in the time of Nehemiah, where the people stood for hours and had the Word of God, the Law of God, the Torah, read to them.

And so stories like this would be read publicly to the people, and all kinds of folks would be there, old, young, men, women, children. So what good is Genesis 38 for the edification of the saints? How does it help believers?

How does it help us to follow Christ? We know by faith that it is profitable, but in what way? That's a great question, a really good question. When we think about the story that occurs in Genesis 38, we should read in light of the larger story, first of all.

And who's the main character here? Judah, right? Judah. And we're going to hear later on in Genesis, the father of Judah, Israel, also known as Jacob, prophesy over Judah that the Messiah would come from his lineage.

And Genesis 38 is about the lineage of Judah being in danger. Will Judah have an heir? Now, sometimes we may not relate as strongly to these issues as we should, but for a man or a woman to fail to have an heir was a great loss.

And in this case, since the Messiah is to come through Judah, it means everything. So that's one thing to keep in mind in reading Genesis 38, as we go through the sordid details of what occurs, that this is ultimately about how the lineage of Messiah was in danger.

And although man is incredibly wicked, God in his sovereignty triumphs and does all that he desires and brings about good even when evil is done. Which, of course, is also part of the theme in this section of Genesis, where Joseph's brothers have sold him into slavery, and although they meant it for evil, God meant it for good.

So this is a smaller story with that larger concept. It's echoing and affirming that concept already when we think about it in those terms. So when we think about the story, we've got Judah who tries to secure for himself a continuing lineage through his sons.

He's hoping for a grandson. We've got to ensure this family line continues, and so he secures a bride for his eldest son. But then we discover that Judah's firstborn is wicked, and the Lord kills him.

Doesn't God know that Judah's the ancestor of Messiah? What are you doing, God? And then Judah says, okay, Ur didn't have an heir through this wife that I gave to my eldest, Tamar. So Onan, he gives Tamar to Onan.

Okay, Onan, you provide my grandson to continue on my lineage. And Onan is wicked as well, and jealous, and does not want to raise up an heir that will be named after his older dead brother. So he purposefully does not copulate with Tamar.

And so God kills him too. Now we're down to the third son of Judah, and you may relate to Judah's concern about having his next son die. And so he does not give his third son, Shelah, to Tamar, although he promised he would.

And so the time comes for Judah to keep his promise. Tamar is still barren. She still has not had a child, not because she herself is barren, but because the husbands that she's been given did not please the Lord.

And now the husband she was promised is not being given to her. And for any woman to be barren, to not have a child, is of great distress. And Judah is acting wickedly here, having promised to give his son to Tamar.

He did not. His sons were wicked, and they were killed. Then Tamar devises a wicked plan in which she seeks to secure an heir for herself through Judah. She knows Judah's ways. She knows how he operates.

And so she dresses up as a harlot and goes to an area she knows he's going to be. And obviously she knows him to be somebody who is just fine consorting with harlots. And so she sets it all up, and she conceives by Judah.

Harlots in this day, for their own protection lest they be killed, veiled themselves. And so there was no there was no knowledge of who this person was. In order to secure payment, she takes special items from Judah to secure that payment later.

When he does go back to try to make that payment to the harlot, he asks about the cult prostitute or the the cult harlot. All these prostitution rings were made sacred and holy and acceptable by various worship practices.

And then he finds out there was no cult prostitute. He looks like an idiot. So he just decides not to even pursue this situation. He's even involved one of his friends to try to help him out with this situation.

So he's trying to maintain his dignity even while he has done wickedness. Tamar herself has tried to maintain her dignity even though she's done wickedness. But your sin will find you out. I mean it's going to come out into the open.

And lo and behold it does. It becomes obvious that Tamar is with child. And the only reason that she's with child is that she has committed fornication. She is a child by harlotry. And so immediately Judah is all aflame about this.

And he is ready to burn her and kill her for her wickedness. And so we see here the common temptation among men to to flare up and lash out at those who have committed the same sins that they have. They find the very same wickedness in others to be doubly reprehensible.

And she outmaneuvers Judah by presenting the signet and the cord and the staff, the special items from Judah that she had taken from him those months before and says these belong to the father. And he is fully exposed in front of everyone that he was the one who also committed fornication.

And at this point he says she has been more righteous than I because I did not give to her she than my son. He says in verse 26 and he never knew her again. So she does conceive and she has twins and the giving of birth was brutal and costly.

It's likely that she did not survive. That doesn't say that one way or the other but the nature of the description of what happened is fairly gruesome. So there was indeed heirs born to Judah but what a tangled mess this is.

Aren't we supposed to read stories and find little lessons in there and and apply them? A little daily helps to get through the stress of a workday and difficult relationships with our co-workers and so on.

I mean what in the world does this awful story about sexual wickedness, how does this help us? Do you think it pops up in a lot of devotionals?

What does this mean to you? March 3rd. Do you think it's read before the.

Congregation in most churches? Is that part of the liturgy cycle?

I mean the only time it'd be read aloud before the congregations if the congregation has been reading through books of the Bible but they would just not because it was focused on that day. You know the fifth Sunday of May is always set apart for cult prostitute day.

I mean it's it's not it's obviously not. That's the month of June. Not that way. Wow. Wow. That was quick. Just so you know for.

Pride Month. We've got all sorts of passages in the Bible we could read.

Very relevant. When I was in Kuwait I went to a study on Genesis with a rabbi. He was a great guy. I mean he was he was really funny. I mean if you want to have a quintessential Jewish rabbi he was about 5 '5", balding, and hilarious.

I mean just we loved it when he when he would come. He was just a nice guy to kind of have around. But I remember vividly he loved having the Christian officers in there and talk through Genesis and his hermeneutic.

I didn't know this at the time because I can't spell hermeneutic at the time. It was he basically he said that alright guys what we're reading is a collection of stories that kind of teach us how to live.

Hmm. And if that's your hermeneutic because we were going through Cain and Abel and going through other things. That's not a good example. This is not a collection of stories to teach you how to live.

This is a narrative of real people who did real things and not everything is an example to follow. This is just what happened. So people will go through says well you know I read in the Bible that you know if I make a pledge and even if it means you know killing your daughter you know I read that in the Bible that we should you know do that.

That was one that one of the kings is like no not everything in the Bible is an example for you to follow. What would Jephthah do? Yeah. So it was interesting your hermeneutic of how you view a story like this will dictate how you apply it.

So the way Michael how you just read it was this is a story. This is what happened. God was still in control but it was they meant it for evil. These were evil acts but the plans of God are not.

Thwarted. Right. So it's a complete mess. You can't read through here and say very immature hermeneutic where if it's in the Bible it's there as a model for us to follow. And so some of those first questions come.

Why is this in here if.

It's not a model for me to follow. Tamar was called righteous so you should be.

More like Tamar. Yeah deal deal shrewdly with the Judas in your life. Yeah. There'd.

Be all sorts of horrible things here and then so obviously this is not a story of moralism. You could just run it simply it's like look how look how to avoid why you should avoid sexual immorality. If you don't then it'll come out and you'll be embarrassed and shamed.

Bad things will happen. Well that's true. It's very true. It's proverbial. You read about that and all sorts of proverbs but the the story here is so intricate and it is detailed about the disaster that unfolds.

But you could take a moralism approach to it but you're gonna be you're gonna be left lacking because what parts of it do you not follow and what parts do you follow and then that becomes subjective. So that's not going to work well.

You could take the allegorical approach. You know do you have any Tamars in your life? You know do you have any Judas in your life? And those kinds of things. You could allegorize that. A wonderful brother in Christ down at the the abolition day rally got up and told the story of Uzzah and the ark and how he put his hand out to stop the ark from falling.

Why the ark was on the cart in the first place. The background of the Philistines and so on. And he was he was moving through that explanation and then he completely made it an allegory about the abolition movement today.

And he to be fair he'd probably say well I was just using it as an analogy. Cool. Okay. It's fine. But very sincerely he's trying to find a way to make use of this story. And his conclusion about why we should abolish abortion I'm total agreement with.

But that's that's not ultimately the right way to use that story. So you could allegorize this but that's not really what it's about. So I think that you have to you have to read this in the context of course is what they meant for wicked evil.

God means for good. And and understanding this story mandates that you know how the story turns out later. The echoes here of the man of the of the brother who didn't want to father a child not in his name.

You find that later in Ruth when the line of lineage of Christ is in peril again. And there was a man an unnamed man who wasn't willing to to father a child for somebody else but Boaz was. You know there's an echo of that story and there's how many times do we see in the history of Christ and the genealogy of Christ names that bring to mind great horrific acts of wickedness and evil horrible things that happened.

And yet ultimately we see the triumph of what God brings about. You know even this sad thing where Judah says she's been more righteous than I. What a horrible... this is the moralism argument. This is the moralism argument.

A relativistic moralism. And it's sad that this is this is all that Judah has left to say about the matter. It's a mess. That's that's the conclusion. What a mess. Yeah I don't.

Think he was saying that she was righteous but he's saying that what I was doing is really bad and he was indicting himself. Oh sure. And at least saying look she had a point and I should have fulfilled my vow to her and I should have done what was right and I did not.

He was he was not calling her.

Righteous. Right but he was more righteous than I. So all you're left with is just subjective relativism. Yeah. You also have the theme in the text about twins and then the older and then the younger reversing all of a sudden.

All of these all of these are clues in this story. A genuine story that connect with other passages in the scripture and honestly making a sense of this story you need to know the other stories. Now this of course is not the only passage in the Bible that is full of really uncomfortable subject matter.

So and each one has its own context. Each one has its own real... this is a real historical story but there is a purpose that God has for it in the scriptures. How do we handle maybe as parents with children or how do we handle like in the context of a Sunday school class or discipleship or reading things aloud in the church service.

How do we handle passages like this? What are we to think of it? How do.

We proceed? You haven't lived until you've had family devotions through 1st and 2nd Samuel and you've had your 13 year old read about a dowry of a hundred foreskins. It's uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable but she read it.

Was there a Q &A? I got quizzical looks. Yeah. You know I did start off you know with the not everything is an example to follow. I'm not gonna ask the the man that you marry to you know bring me that.

And then secretly expect 200 because that's what David did. What about you gentlemen? I mean these uncomfortable uncomfortable passages but we read them because God has written them down for us. Is their age appropriate?

Because I would not have been able to really answer that my four-year-old had read that but my teenager yeah. I think you could probably.

Start with a cornerstone of not being apologetic for what is written there. Sure that's good. At the very basis engaging with it for frank honest. Let's.

Talk about it. Yeah I completely agree with that. The way I would probably posit that is it's time to import your hermeneutic. Like your children are there for you to disciple and this is what the Bible says and this is what we're taking from it in this house.

This is how we're this is how we view this and we're not going to I would say we're not going to shy away with it shy away from it at all like you said unapologetic because it's actually as much of a challenge for you as a parent as it is for them to read it and it's even more of a challenge for them if they're not given the answer from you and they have to go get it somewhere else and you don't want them getting it from somewhere else.

I think this type of thinking needs to be applied consistently though too because and I'm guilty of this myself where I apply this to the Bible but other stories that they may be consuming elsewhere I should have the same type of consistency and how I apply them letting them first consume age-appropriate things outside of the Bible.

I think the Bible it's all for them outside of the Bible needs to be age-appropriate but as well I better not be letting them see things that are not their age-appropriate outside of the Bible but guarding them from stuff within the Bible.

That'd be the worst way to approach that. Yeah yeah that's the exact worst way to approach that but that happens all the time you know like we're going to shield little Johnny and his siblings from Judah and Tamar but we're gonna give him all the Disney that they want.

No like no there's there are things that are far worse in Disney than what you get in Judah and Tamar and the context from which Judah and Tamar come from like what is the end of the story what is this the locus of the story and the greater context for Judah and Tamar and it's Christ.

Outside of the Bible what's this what's the center and the locus for the the mythos of the world or the mythos of Disney and it's it's all death. It's self it's like the self the.

Exaltation and the gratification of the self. So like Proverbs 5 7 9 Genesis 38 Genesis 19 all kinds of parts of Ezekiel. When you're reading these things the sexual wickedness is not glorified. Glamorized sugar-coated showing you a high without the crash.

That's what you get when in the paganized culture around us they they glamorize sin. The devil is the father of lies and they keep on they keep on broadcasting all of these lies about sin and it's everywhere you can't you cannot keep your your children from it.

Eventually it's gonna come through and it's gonna be glamorized in a pagan way. But when you read about those very same things in the scripture it is shown for the shameful.

Wicked devastating thing that it is. It's leaning into that uncomfortability right. Like yeah instead of leaning into the comfortability that the world gives you you should be leaning into how uncomfortable this actually does make.

You developing in the fear of God a healthy sense of shame which is something that others are trying to completely remove from sexual immorality is a sense of shame. It's called pride month not shame month right.

And why. Why would they feel the need to call it pride or pride month. Because they're trying to sear the conscience that God has placed within them that naturally exudes shame because of the wickedness that goes on.

But when we read passages like this shame is evident and it's hard for us to read it even to read it aloud even to read it to our family members even to stand together and read the Word of God together in church when these things come up.

But that is actually a healthy thing that in the fear of the Lord we would sense the shame of it all. And this is a I wouldn't call it safe right. Because it has an impact on us. Right. It it does burst some bubbles.

It does it does hit us. So I don't think it's safe to read these passages. But it is good that we read these passages. We.

Don't want to be risk-averse Christians. Exactly you know is that was Aslan. You know. Yeah he's not a tame line you know he's. He's not saying he's not safe but.

He's good but he's good. And. And of course C .S. Lewis is referencing the character the nature of God in in that description. And so God has given us his word. And in his word he has these kinds of stories recorded in the details that he has chosen and therefore we must bring them to bear to our own hearts recognizing the mess of these stories and then realizing the shame of these events.

Talk about a Jewish rabbi. It was customary at a certain point in Judaism to not allow young men to read the Song of Solomon until they were 30. Right. Because obviously parts of God's Word. Think about what happens with this hermeneutic.

By the way parts of God's Word aren't for everybody. Okay. What. What happens. Who determines what parts of the Word of God are for all the saints. And who determines what parts of the Word of God are not for all the saints but only for those who have the either experience or credentials to.

Properly handle them. You see the danger in that those people who get to dispense that grace are in a very powerful position that's a very enviable position.

Right. So we're back to a magisterium at that point and and this is exactly what we you know part of a 500 year protest movement you know. And we've we've been bottling up the works and honking our horns pretty loudly for a long time.

And it isn't necessarily all that popular however all the scripture for all the.

People of God you mentioned details earlier that God chooses his details and I would say he loads all those details with meaning as well. One of the things that we can take from these scriptures is to be as uncomfortable as we should be with the situation but also plumb the depths of the meaning of the details as well.

I'm thinking of all kinds of the of the analogies of husband and wife that are used in the New Testament and how wrongly this is practiced here as well and the example of what a husband should be to a wife in the New Testament and how we if we are going to learn something from it we are keeping it within the context of the whole of scripture as well and the meaning that is imported to imported through the this word to us.

So that's a good point.

Christ, the Seed, and the Biblical-Theological Arc

Because if you if you go to the New Testament you see this is a great mystery but but I speak of Christ in the church is what you know Paul Paul says. So we go back and we see the whole biblical theological arc.

How many times was there an illegitimate attempt to produce the seed. Where you go back you have Abraham and Sarah conniving to bring Hagar into the picture. This is an illegitimate attempt to bring about a seed.

However you interpret Genesis 6 with an with the Nephilim and so on and so forth which I'm sure will be a future question on this podcast. Whichever way you read it it's still an illegitimate attempt to produce a seed.

Right. You have the same thing here with Judah and Tamar an illegitimate attempt to try to produce a seed. And as you move forward what about the the law forbidding them to intermarry with the Canaanites.

But then Israel becomes so canonized that you can't hardly tell Israel from the Canaanites anymore in the book of Judges and so on. And what about David's illegitimate attempt to produce a seed by stealing another man's wife and then having her husband murdered.

How often does this this theme pop up throughout the Old Testament. And when it's all said and done God brings about the seed in his way in a righteous way and in a way that is even rejected by so many.

But his way is the right way. And he brings about Jesus Christ born of a virgin. And it I don't want to say that there is a lot of humor here but I I gotta think that God laughs after all of the futile efforts of man to continually it's like how do we get the seed.

How do we get the seed. How do we get the seed. And it's always about trying to get this man with this woman and getting this to work until God brings about his seed through a virgin. So I you know I don't know I think at least there was one divine chuckle somewhere.

Yeah is there an element of the man of the earth or man of the dust and the labor of his hands producing thorns that you're talking about futility. Right. Yeah yeah then this is a.

Passage that if you sit with it long enough it's typologically very rich and deep and you can it is. Yeah you could use you and I think all of Genesis is.

That way. But but see the light. But see that again. The light is Christ. Christ is the light of the world and he's the light of the word. So you sit there and you meditate. But what does this have to do with Christ.

What does it have to do with Christ. And then that's where we eventually over time will come to.

Appreciate what goes on here. Yeah amen to that. You guys have anything else to add. All right. Well we're gonna move right into. What are we thankful for.

Long-Suffering, Discomfort, and Gratitude

We'll start with you Michael. I'm I'm thankful for the long-suffering and patience of others I have been. I've received more than my fair bucketfuls of that in my life. People long suffer having long-suffering and patience with me.

It's I don't know why but I often have different episodes in my mind. Flash you know I flash back and think about different interactions that I've had with people and they're all cringe. Moments like I can't believe I said that I can't believe I did that so on and so forth.

And then I think about the gracious way that the Saints of God have responded to me now. They didn't shut me down cut me off cast me away but were patient with me kind. They were quick to they were quick to hear but they were slow to speak and they were slow to anger with me.

And what a grace that is to live in a community where because of.

Christ we can love each other and bear with one another. I'm thankful to the older men in this church who have come alongside me and talked with me about different issues. One in particular met me about a month ago at a coffee shop just to talk through a hard decision that I was I was faced with who just popped up as having to do with with work and he dropped what he was doing and made an appointment for later on that at that afternoon and we just had coffee and talked it through.

Last night as well a another one of our elders I was talking talking me through with also another difficult topic and it's it's nice to be able to have those older men older in the faith and older in life who've been there done that and can help show you the way I am coming up on a.

Milestone in my career and also in my marriage and I'm very thankful that my wife that we have been one flesh for what I would consider quite a long time now approaching at least half of my life so I'm very thankful for her and God's blessing upon us through the children that have come about and producing a continuing harvest of the fruit of the Spirit by the working of the Holy Spirit.

Amen to that. Well this is gonna be a weird one out of the lot but I guess I'm I need I need to be used to that because I kind of am the weird one out a lot but I'm thankful for discomfort. And when we come to passages that make us uncomfortable for me a lot of times discomfort it breeds action it breeds study.

And it also will breed a little bit of refinement that I don't always like to seek but I know I have to and I know it's the Lord's work to do so and I really actually appreciate this question today because it brought that up to me how I need to be thankful for the discomfort that comes my way.

Whenever you wake up in the morning and the propane heater is shut off because you ran out of propane and you've got to plug in all the heaters and all of a pipe burst. You know you know like one of those days like that's discomfort and in our world in our first world that's discomfort and learning how to fix those things having never done that before is refinement.

And whenever God throws all those things our way it's good. But it's all always so much better when the refinement comes right out of the word. And whenever we get these discomforts with a word and we have to dig deep when we have to do the work and not just kind of pass over these scriptures as we are so we tend to do.

I'm just really thankful for that discomfort that comes our way and makes us study makes us learn and produces many glorious things by the fruit of the Spirit as you said. We are also very thankful for all you listeners out there who bear with us week in and week out.

We ask you to please rate review and share and we hope you'll join us again when we meet to answer common questions and objections with have you not read.