Gooding, David: 8 - Leading God's Nation

The, uh, question that came up last week, or two weeks ago, regarding the cruelty and, uh, excessive marriages and what have you in the Old Testament that gives us problems as we read through it, and also skeptics and people who are honestly inquiring about the Bible, um, can quite often throw at us. So we wanted to kind of give this some time today. Uh, so I have written this question, uh, kind of as you look over the some of the difficulties, it seems to me that they they come in different, there's three different ways, I think anyway, and well, anyway, I'm going to read this and see what you think. Uh, the Bible at times is quite shocking. Sometimes the material is incredibly good, but many, many times we are bowled over by the acute cruelty and bar- barbarism in the text. We encounter words, customs, deeds, and prayers that do not fit well with our understanding of our Savior God. How can we face and answer these many difficult questions and issues to our own satisfaction, and also to the honest inquirer and to the outright skeptic? We realize that the favorite and commonly invoked response that different dispensation doesn't touch some of the hard questions in even in the New Testament and cannot undo the damage done in the mind of the average mind as to the character of God. So first of all, we can point out very often that the Bible simply records some of these horrible happenings and in no way, um, sorry, uh, proves of what has happened, uh, just simply records it. But this isn't not understood very often and frequently is deliberately ignored by hostile people such as Richard Dawkins, that Channel four series of the last couple of weeks. He uses Judges nineteen where the woman, the concubine, is, uh, raped and abused all night and then cut into twelve pieces and sent all, uh, all through the nation of Israel. He uses that as a passage, uh, as ammunition, saying that this shows the character of God, that somehow God approved of this. That's just bad hermeneutics. But anyway, the first point is that very often, uh, the Bible just records the event. God doesn't approve it, so it's easier to answer that particular way. The second, um, other passages, however, it seems that there's, uh, no condemnation when we feel there should be, or even sometimes God's approval upon some of God's saints, uh, who have behaved in a very questionable manner. We have a very noble idea of marriage, for instance, from the Bible. We can, uh, give sermons in marriage, but we very often ignore the, the lives of most of the Old Testament saints. King David, the man after God's own heart. Like, how many wives did he actually have? And concubines. Uh, we ignore that. I ignore that when I'm talking about marriage. I don't understand how David could have so many wives and concubines. Samson, the man of faith in Hebrews eleven, like, you're reading through Judges, you see nips in and out of, uh, the Philistine country, nipping in and out of different women's houses, like the harlots and everything. It's, it's hard to understand how he could be a man of faith and a judge. Um, and then also we can speak of careful and compassionate mercy in, uh, conflict, in, in, in war. Um, we have good ethics to do with, um, compassion. Somebody strikes us in the face, we want to turn the other cheek, but then you look at the old Testament, second Samuel twelve um, seems to say that David put his enemies under the sword, under the, and these are people who had surrendered, and they butchered them. Um, now that particular instance could be solved by translation, it seems. I don't really understand Hebrew, but different translations say that he, he let them use the axe or he let them use the saw. He didn't actually put them under, but there's lots of other instances, like where Samuel takes Agar, King Agar, um, and hacks him to pieces in First Samuel fifteen. That's Uh, that's a prisoner who was spared by Saul, but he's hacked to pieces by Samuel, and that's approved of. Um, or in uh, the imprecatory prayers where David is calling down uh, judgment on his enemies. Uh, Psalm one hundred and thirty seven verse nine talks about dashing the children against the rocks. Dashing children against rocks, and that seems to be a happy thing in Psalm one hundred and thirty seven. There's lots of imprecatory prayers, but I think the most concerning and and most difficult type of this is where God himself declares or does something that we today find rather distasteful or wish he hadn't have done. Um, in Deuteronomy seven, the start of that passage, he talks about slaughtering, killing, um, all the inhabitants of the land. And in Joshua and those passages where they go into Jericho and they do it, and they they they don't leave a live man, woman, or beast or child. They're simply obeying God's explicit command in Deuteronomy seven. So that's hard. Also in two Samuel twenty four, um, David sins by numbering the people, um, and in a way I f- I struggle with how that's such a serious sin, but seventy thousand sheep, as David calls them, were killed in that in that in that plague. Seventy thousand people. And David, actually, he's the one who committed the sin. He's the one in, in the wrong, but he stands and appeals to God's sense of justice, it seems, for the sake of the sheep, because they're innocent. But seventy thousand of them were killed, and David was spared. That seems to be a strange thing, hard to understand. And other people, like even recently when the, uh, civil partnerships were being arranged in Belfast there, and there's all those demonstrations outside the city hall, some of the gay activists were, um, quoting Leviticus and saying, you know, Leviticus is the book that in strongest terms condemns homosexuality, but it also condemns mission- mixing material in your dress. It also condemns shellfish, eating shellfish, and lots of outlandish things, and it's saying, is this not just another outlandish law? Because there are laws in there that seem so strange to us. Um, so point is, these problems come up in different guises, and there's different ways of looking at them. Uh, some of them aren't as hard to answer as others, but how do we do it? If we, if we're reading through the Old Testament, or somebody who is honestly looking through it and wants to know the truth asks us a question, or if somebody like Richard Dawkins or a street version of him throws it in our face, how do we begin to approach these problems, particularly in the Old Testament? Dr. Goon. Well, um, the first thing I say in answer is that, God willing, I'm being allowed to come back in a fortnight's time. Secondly, I want to say that we are not in the business of trying to excuse anything. We must face the difficulties honestly and understand the bases of, uh, those who bring up these difficulties to us, whether they're the Dawkins or the man in the street, as Matt says. These things, of course, are not new. There is a book published by IVP some many years ago, written by John Wenham. Now deceased, father of Gordon Wenham and David Wenham. It is entitled The Goodness of God, and he discusses throughout this paperback some of the problems that Matt has just raised. It is worth reading. Do be warned before you start that he is a universalist. A believer, yes, a s- a diligent believer who, uh, did a lot of work, uh, dealing with the apparent difficulties in the stories of the resurrection, for instance, and explaining them. A believer uh one hundred percent in the inspiration of scripture, but came to the conclusion that in the end all will be saved. A universalist. However, his discussion of some of the difficulties that Matt has raised is worth reading. The book is called The Goodness of God by Jay Wenham, published originally, I think, by IVP. There will be, I'm sure, many more likewise. For myself, do see, I agree with Matt that it, a response depends upon the person who's ask- asking the question. But where people, uh, doubt Christianity on the basis of questions like this, my, uh, response would first be, look, you don't really need to bother about these things. Your first question is to make, to understand and decide whether Jesus is the Son of God whom he claimed to be, and whether he rose from the dead. Eh, if you face that question first, and you come to believe that, yes, the evidence is there that he was the Son of God, he did rise from the, uh, uh, rise from the dead, then of course you will have a different slant on the Old Testament because of his authority. If he isn't the Son of God, didn't rise from the dead, you needn't bother your heads about it. You see? I mean that as a serious thing, it's not a get out, but a serious thing, particularly if we're wanting to bring faith to faith. You see? I would say, well, why do you bother? You don't need to solve the evolution problem or anything like that first, if you, unless you want to, uh, come to Christ first and see whether he is whom he claims to be. And if you decide he isn't the Son of God, well, you don't need to bother about these other things. But now to come to face these other things. If I were answering Dawkins as a thing from the man in the street, I would be tempted to point out, uh, the logical fallacy upon which his arguments depend. He can't believe the Old Testament because he says these things are morally evil. But if Dawkins is right, there is no such thing as evil. Why is that? Well, because if there's no creator, all you have is matter, full stop. If a stone falls on your head, breaks your nose or something, or your skull, no good accusing the stone of being evil. It just is. And according to Dawkins, the universe just is. There is no God. And if you start with the notion that the universe just is, then you are denying the basic principle of moral evil. If Hitler murders a million or more Jews in the gas chambers, there's no good accusing him of being morally evil, not on Dawkins basis. He just is. So in order to make his case against the Bible, that these things are morally evil, he's got to go against his own presuppositions that there is no God. It's useless, in fact, philosophically for Dawkins to say, but you see, we invent our own moral standards and values as human beings. By our life together as human beings, we evolve a moral standard, and we expect people to con- uh, to conform to those moral standards, and if they don't and harm each other, then we call that evil according to our standards. But you see, gentlemen, actually that is logical nonsense. The question, basic philo- philosophical question is, how do you get an ought, the ought of duty, out of the mere situation that something is. Now that may sound very complicated, but let's come back to the stone that fell off a rock and hit my head and and broke my skull. It's no good saying to the stone, you oughtn't to have done that. If the stone could speak, it would say, what do you mean by ought? Where does this duty come from? If Hitler is mere the byproduct of evolution, it's no good saying you ought to protect the Jews. He'd turn around and say, what do you mean by ought? Who imposes this duty on me? You say society does. No, they don't, says Hitler, because I've got the cannon and I've got the SS. You'll impose nothing on me. I make up my own laws. Who's to say he shouldn't? As Swinburne of Oxford, if you've read his books on theism, the philosopher Swinburne of Oxford points this out constantly. In order to maintain his case that something is morally evil, he's got to deny his own presupposition that this world is simply matter and mindless forces. And in consequence, it is impossible to build an ought of duty from the mere fact that the universe is there. It is summed up in a little piece of a verse by a certain writer. Mr. Jones says to the universe, I exist. And the universe replies, but I don't see how that I don't feel any obligation. I should, uh, uh, uh, uh, it was no good telling s- saying the sun, sun, you oughtn't to have burned my skin like you've done. You have a duty not to. What do you mean you have a duty? Now, that is a complicated philosophical argument. It is true in actual fact. And some atheists are honest enough to see it with a product of mindless forces that, uh, have not- did not have us in mind and care nothing for us. You see. It is because there is a God who has implanted a sense of right and wrong in the human heart, and the sense of duty, therefore, that comes with it. That people have a case to argue. When they say to certain things in the Old Testament, um, this seems to us to be morally evil. That's number one of reply. It's not a, not a question you would a- necessarily raise with, uh, Mr. Smith or Mrs. Brown. They might not be up to that. They may see the plain straightforward fact that, uh, uh, uh, God destroying, telling Joshua to destroy whole cities, everything that breathes, men, women, and little children, that that is morally evil, and uh, therefore they can't believe that this Bible is from God. So let's stop uh, there, for instance. In talking of Joshua, where you read of these Joshua fulfilling, as Matt has pointed out, the commands of God that certain cities, they were to destroy everything that breathes, including little children. And people find that this is, uh, impossible to think that God could ever have, if there is a God, could have commanded any such thing. If I were preaching to a general congregation, the first thing I would say there is... that this, uh, uh, is said to be the judgment of God, sounds very severe. But you should think about the far more severe thing. These were but temporal judgments. People were physically killed. The Bible doesn't tell us what that implied about the final judgment. That innocent babes were killed during those wars and during the last great war and in Iraq at the present moment. That innocent babes are killed says nothing about their eternal destiny and what happens to them at the final judgment. But the Bible does talk about a final judgment. And what it says is severe beyond anything you'll ever read about other judgments. That to get things in proportion. Secondly, the Bible tells us in places why God ordered the destruction of those civilizations, if civilization is the right word to be used about them, because Phoenicians and Canaanites engaged, some of them, in child sacrifice. The archaeologists have in places unearthed temples, and with them the bones, human remains as well as animal, and the human remains of bones from people that some were infants and some were teenagers. We know it of the Aztecs, for instance, in their part of the world. We have instances where the kings of Judah are denounced in the New- in the Old Testament for making their children pass through the fire, was the technical term of human sacrifice. What would you expect God to do with a civilization that ordered and allowed and encouraged the sacrifice of babes? What would you have God do? But that is a modern problem. Because in this last forty years, forty million babes in the wombs of their mother that could have survived to birth, have been murdered. And the world approves of it. For what is called woman's rights. That is hideous beyond anything that you read in Judges or Joshua. And if God objected to the killing of infants in the name of religion in the Old Testament, and destroyed civilizations that practiced it, what would you expect God to do with our modern society? Even if you take the definition of what human life is, that it could survive outside the womb, in the forty years since it was made legal in England, the time when it becomes illegal to abort a fetus has been put back from twenty six weeks, hasn't it? Which was then the date at which, after twenty six weeks, a child could have survived outside the womb. It's now been put back, and back, and back. Until last year, a certain professor demonstrated that after a few weeks... a child could survive. Which got the BBC interviewing him and saying, well, what then does this apply, how does this apply to, uh, abortions then? And he went round the North Pole and up by the South and round by America and through Russia, and almost over the world he went to try and avoid the question, with much embarrassment. So that is a tu quoque, if you will know the expression. No. No, oh, sorry, old boy. Uh, you as well, if you point your finger at me, I'm going to point my finger back at you. And if modern society is going to find fault with what God did in those ancient days, I want to turn the question round upon them. The value of human life is what is at stake, and they are saying that in the Old Testament there is shown such disregard of the value of human life that you can't think it is of God. Well, I'm saying, what about our modern world then? Now about such things as homosexuality, and more particularly promiscuity and bestiality, and so forth, sexual sins. The Old Testament complains, of course, against the pagans and their practices in these matters. The deification of sex, for instance. So that many temples in the ancient world had temple prostitutes, both male and female. Even in Greece, in the time of the Apostle Paul, when he came to Corinth, the temple that was on the top of Acrocorinth, the, the, the mountain just outside Corinth, there was a great temple to Aphrodite with a thousand priestesses that were open to any comer worshipper, so-called. This was the deification of sex. It was widespread throughout the, uh, Middle East. And God, of course, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, forbid it. Was it severe that God therefore ordered sometimes the destruction of whole cities? We know, gentlemen, by our cost in modern life, what promiscuity in general and homosexuality in particular have done through HIV, AIDS, millions dead through it. It is no real defense to say that people have contracted AIDS when it wasn't their fault. It's not anything bad they have done. I have a friend in Spain, or had a friend in Spain, and her son was a hemophiliac, that is, he bled easily and had to have transfusions of blood to keep him going. But that was in the days before they thought to test blood for whether it was HIV infected or not. So he, through those transfusions, contracted AIDS. Wasn't his fault. But the fault goes back to the promiscuity, doesn't it? And in addition, the homosexuality. If in the Old Testament days, promiscuity, sacred prostitution in the temples, and homosexuality caused those kind of diseases, then... what would you have God do? Perhaps in ordering whole civilizations to be destroyed, and we're talking now about cities, towns here, towns there, towns somewhere else, not whole nations. Perhaps God was acting like a divine surgeon, cutting out that, uh, lump of corruption before it affected the gene pool of the world. They hadn't the medical know-how to know how to treat it, had they? What would you do as God the Creator? When you see how these evils can be spread to innocent people through the ill behavior of those that have brought about the AIDS, and then infect other innocent people by one means and another, what would you have God to do to stop it? Perhaps, in regard to the human gene pool, to stop innocents being infected. In the way that we find now in some countries in Africa, whole generation of children, few million of them, up to the age of eight or ten and no parents. What would you do if babies are born already with the disease. What would you have God to do to stop it? Sir, I've only begun... talk too long. Do is there any at all soundness in what I have begun to say? Well, God was able to use Joshua in his day to be the surgeon's hand, as it were. Yes. Well then, is there anything wrong with pro-life people shooting abortionists and... Ah. Well, now we come to another question. To say, I make no protest, I make no apology for this being complicated, gentlemen. Moral questions can be very complicated. In Israel, as in modern Islam, religion and politics were one and the same thing. You couldn't be a member of Israel politically without being a member of Israel religiously. That was the Old Testament. And therefore, uh, we, for instance, would distinguish between, uh, what you might call sins and what you might call crimes. A sin is a sin against God. Crimes are c- offenses against the state and its laws. Now, the institution of human government, magistrates, according to the New Testament, are appointed by God in the sense it's an institution that God the Creator has instituted, not that he approves of every magistrate or agrees with their sentences, but as an institution. It is an institution set up by God, and he bears not the sword in vain. He's there to restrain evil and encourage good. A magistrate, therefore, there is no, uh, law on the statute book in England, for instance, that says thou shalt not be proud. Pride is a sin. Sin against God. And if we're proud, we have sinned against God, and we need God's forgiveness. That's one thing. But how would a magistrate on the bench ever decide on how to measure pride? He's not concerned with sins, he's concerned with crimes, the law of the state. Yes? So that's number one distinction. In Israel, sins against God were also crimes ag- crimes against the state were crimes and sins against God. And so the magistrates in Israel were appointed to deal with it. It's different now in Christianity, isn't it? We, as Christians, shall not take revenge. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. We are not to take the sword in order to put matters right and claim, in that sense, justice personally. I will repay, says God. It's not our job as individual Christians, therefore, to take the sword and deal with offenders. It is the job of a government to take the sword, metaphorical or literally, and punish offenders because they have sinned against the state and its laws. Yes? Is that a valid distinction, sir? That's, that's good, yeah. Does anybody else have any comments on the violence then, the, the sword in the Old Testament, the use of? There are two different kinds of peace, aren't there? There are the seven Canaanite nations for whom no mercy is to be shown, and the other thing is to have peace with them. Oh, yes. Yeah, Amalekites were aggressive against the people. Mm-hmm. Don't you think the peace of the world doesn't exist? Oh, well, that's a very valid point, sir, uh, uh, even within the context of the Old Testament. Uh, the Old Testament is not so bloodthirsty as some people make out, you see. So Deuteronomy chapter twenty that you are quoting, now lays down a general principle of warfare, and it's a very merciful thing. It says that when Israel got the army together to go against the enemy, then the heralds were to say in front of the Israelite army, anybody that's scared stiff, go home. Allowed to go home, lest his cowardice infect the rest of the troops. That was a merciful provision. The English didn't adhere to it in the First World War. When soldiers that had been nearly shot up and had shell shock and I do not know what, felt they couldn't face another battle, the English shot them. That wasn't very merciful, was it? There's an argument going on in the courts at the present moment, whether those people so shot by the army should be granted a posthumous pardon, and the authorities are resisting any such suggestion. Israelite behavior, according to Deuteronomy, was much more humane. And then it was said that if anybody has married recently within the last six months or year, uh, do you see, he can go home as well. Or if he's planted a vineyard and not yet eaten the fruit thereof, he can go home, lest he die in battle and never enjoy married life. Merciful. And then when you come to a city that is afar off, offer it peace. You offer it peace on certain conditions that they may come out and serve you, put them under tribute, but, um, you shall offer them peace. Only if they refuse it, then you shall attack them and destroy them. And even when you destroy them, don't you cut down the fruit trees? Because they are man's sustenance, you mustn't adopt a scorched earth policy. This is ancient Israel's rules of warfare. In that sense, they're marvelously humane. Why did did God then tell Joshua to attack the cities near at hand? The reason is given, of course. One, because of their corrupt society, and two, the danger of their infecting Israel, who had to live near them. Infecting them, particularly at the spiritual level, and drawing them away to idolatry. But they were, in that sense, special cases. Uh, today in America, for instance, where they still have executions, they do it very clinically, Mm. you know, usually injection or something like that. Mm-hmm. Whereas in Psalm one hundred and thirty seven, we mentioned earlier, they're told to dash the children against the rocks or hack egg egg into pieces. Uh, I know, I know they didn't have the same clinical execution chambers, but there seems to be a, an element of barbaric, uh, behavior. Ah. How do we explain that? Well, can we take the children first, whose heads were bashed in against the rocks? God didn't tell them to do that. We need to take the psalm in its context. It's talking about the ravages that foreign powers have executed, perpetrated on Israel. And the psalmist in his, hi- his, uh, uh, hurt and pain is saying, blessed is the man that takes their children and dashes their heads in pieces on the rocks. That's not God telling him to do it. God dil- did tell Samuel to hack Agag to pieces. That's another story. But to keep things square, this is not what Psalm one hundred and thirty, uh, whatever it is, says. It's the Israelite expressing his reaction. And I think there is a sense in which, before we judge it, by Christian standards, by a Lord who said, when their soldiers drove the nails through his hands, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Before we judge the ancient Israelite by that, we should perhaps station ourselves in the ranks of Jews in the gas chambers, where thousands, some million or more, were lined up. Sometimes the Nazis had dug a mighty great hole in the ground, and as the people were pushed forward, they came, they had to undress, and they were shot, and they were told to keep, uh, uh, get down into the pit, lie down, and they were shot. By the hundreds of thousands. Would you stand by the mothers and the fathers who saw their children thus and themselves and their relatives thus being massacred, and say to the people, you ought to have no hard thoughts, you ought to pray God forgive them on them, this forgiveness on them this moment? Would you? This is a somebody expressing his grief. What we do know is... that there's coming a day of judgment... when Eichmann and Hitler... will be arraigned before God. I wouldn't like to be them when the punishment is executed. And our blessed Lord, the world holds him up as an example. They're a bit cynical, aren't they? And he, he, uh, said, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. But pray notice who he was talking about. He was talking about the soldiers. And the reason? They didn't know what they did. They didn't know he was the Christ, the Son of God. They were just obeying orders. But when the women of Jerusalem came out, as he was carrying his cross to Calvary, and they wept buckets of tears, oh, poor man, poor young man going out to be crucified. As though it was some car accident or something. Our Lord turned round to them and said, don't you weep for me. It's not I who got the wrong end of the stick here, it's you. You weep for yourselves. For the time will come when you'll call upon the mountains to cover you, when you will say, blessed are women that never bore children or gave suck. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in a dry? Even the time when there is a more or less stable political government and a so-called God-given religion. Both the political leaders and the religious are prepared to perpetrate such an injustice as they have now perpetrated in these circumstances. If they do this in these conditions, what shall be done when sin brings its complete harvest? And Peter tells us that when our Lord went to the cross, he didn't retaliate, he didn't even threaten, but he committed himself to him that judges righteously. That is to say, our blessed Lord went to Calvary in the unshaken conviction that there is a God who judges and will bring to his judgment bar those that perpetrated this outrage. Unless they repent, of course. That is to be our Christian attitude. We are not to take vengeance ourselves personally, but our strength to find the grace not to take vengeance personally is to be found where Christ found it. That God has said, judgment is mine, vengeance is mine. I will put things right. Leave it, please leave it to me. It is that conviction that God will deal with it, both in this life or in the life to come especially, that gives us the, the, the strength and grace as Christians personally, not to attempt to avenge ourselves. Yeah? Does that make any sense at all? Yes. Yeah. Does anybody else have anything to add to that? What about in his wives? Oh, ah, yes. Now, Matthew was also concerned about his wives. To say, yeah. To say, yes. Um, the ideal of God was what our Lord referred to, the creator's ideal. Our Lord referred to it in Matthew nineteen, how that at the beginning God made them male and female. Do you see? That is God's ideal. But if you will not be shocked too badly and excommunicate me altogether, I want to make a distinction in your minds. We tend to think that either you have the ideal, anything short of the ideal is sinful, but that is not necessarily so. There is an ideal. There is such a thing as something that is less than ideal, but not positively sinful. And then there is something that is sinful. The ideal was one man, one woman, yes. But that some of these people had, uh, more than one wife, concubines and various other things, uh, is not necessarily sinful. Listen to God telling Nathan what to say to David. Tell David. This is when he had taken Uriah's wife and then murdered Uriah. Tell David, I raised him up, I made him king, I delivered his master's wives into his bosom, and if that hadn't been enough, I would have given him more, says God. Really? You mustn't accuse God of doing something that is positively sinful. God gave David, according to what he told Nathan, those many wives. Jacob took two wives, and along in the customs of the day, he took, uh, that each wife had a handmaid that became Da- uh, Jacob's concubines. They all bore children. The wives prayed about the birth of their children, or most times than not, and gave them names that recorded their answers to prayers. Those names, gentlemen, are to be written on the gates of the eternal city. Are they not? It is notorious, or notable, in the sense which you prefer, that in the epistles, Paul lays it down that if any man wants to be an elder, he must, uh, be the husband of one wife and only one wife. What about those who getting converted had more than one wife? Well, the next time we meet, you tell me what the Bible says about them. Our Lord holds us to his, the ideal, as far as I understand it. God's ideal. But on the evidence of the Old Testament, I would say that the plurality of wives was not necessarily regarded as sinful, as God could not have been in any way responsible for giving David more than one wife. It was less than ideal, but not positively st- sinful. But stealing somebody else's wife, Uriah's wife, for instance, was a capital offense. Yeah? What about Deuteronomy seventeen? And that says what? Where the king isn't allowed to multiply horses Mm. to himself or rely on Egypt, that sort of idea. Mm. Um, verse seventeen, he's not allowed to multiply wives to himself. Mm. Let his heart be turned away. Mm. Not allowed to multiply silver or gold. Mm-hmm. Um, laws for a future king. Mm, that's right. Seems David Solomon certainly... Didn't read it too well, did they? No. No, they didn't. Do you see, Solomon got into the horse trade. I mean that literally. He imported horses and sold horses. And being allied in marriage with an Egyptian girl, he got a lot of wealth. He was exceedingly wealthy. If you look at the Septuagint translation of these particular passages, you will find on times that the translators somehow try to, uh, to omit these things or put a different story on them. The kings didn't always live up to what Deuteronomy said. And you will remember, of course, that, uh, the re- revival that came about through Josiah was when, in those days, the king Hezekiah was told that they had been cleaning the temple and they'd found a book. Oh. So they got this book, didn't know what it was. They sent it to Huldah the prophetess, and she told them it was a part of Holy Scripture. Wow! They didn't know it existed. There are lots of English people today that if you said it's in Deuteronomy, they wouldn't know, or in Chronicles, they wouldn't know whether that was a newspaper or a racehorse. Do you see? Ha. And do you see, they found this book and they started to read it to their horror, and found out all sorts of things I- I'd forgotten were in the Bible to start with. And they tried now to keep at least the feast of the Passover according to what was written. Shows how far ignorance had gone. So the kings didn't always carry out what they should have done. And as for horses, it was part of the, uh, the, uh, station of kings that they should be, uh, lowly and meek and mild. So they rode upon mules or donkeys. Do they? In Old Testament times, you'll find reference to it in the book of Judges even. And when our Lord came as king into Jerusalem, he, he rode not a horse, but he rode on a donkey. This was the Jewish Hebrew Old Testament concept, showing that he was meek and lowly of heart. Zechariah nine chapter nine, thy king cometh to thee, meek and lowly, riding upon an ass and the foal of an ass. Yes? So there's a case, yes, they quick- the kings didn't behave as they should. Yes, that is often said. And in the records, you'll find that certain kings are commended because they put away this, that, and the other, and then is added, but they didn't complete this thoroughly, and they allowed this, and they allowed this that they shouldn't have allowed. Yeah. Mm-hmm. It s- just seems to me that David's called a man after God's own heart. Wow. He had many wives. If I had two girlfriends, never mind two wives, it'd be a serious issue, wouldn't it? It would for you, my boy. In in many senses, it would be. Yeah. Yes. But you see, uh, again, this is, and David's uh uh case is often quoted, uh, and uh, he's despised for it because one of his adultery with, um, uh, Uriah's wife, and then his murder, virtual murder of Uriah at the front. And people say they are man after God's own heart. Just look at that. S- whole thing stinks. Well, at least you should remember the history of the kings and queens of England, and I will say no more. Aha. Her Majesty, as far as I know, is faultless in this regard. But if you've never read it, read sometime the history of the kings and queens of England. The astonishing thing is, what you read in the book of Samuel, the book of Samuel, uh, uh, uh, according to m- some modern scholars, are written by somebody who had access to the royal chronicles, the royal records. The astonishing thing is that having di- done what he did, take another man's wife, one of his subjects, he took his wife and then got him dispatched. Is then plastered over the pages of uh, uh, Second Samuel for everybody to read, and God's condemnation of him for it. You try to do the same thing for Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and see how you got on. You published that? Wow, could have been for it. An extraordinary thing. That it should be published in Holy Scripture. In those far off days, written down. And the demand of God for David some repentance. And secondly, when God forgave his sin, he told him straight of now the discipline that would follow, for what a man sows, that shall he reap. And for years to come, David suffered at God's hand the discipline of things that God allowed to happen. Because you have killed him with the sword, then the sword shall not depart from your own household. Read the subsequent story about the disciplines of God. It's easy, therefore, to take that case out of its context and say, look, he's a rotten figure, uh, and how can we believe it's a, this is a Bible inspired, and forget the context. And easy to forget the difference between the standards of that Old Testament record, the royal records, with not only Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, but the kings and queens of England. Go no farther than Henry VIII onward. This is a sinful world, gentlemen. But I haven't come anywhere near answering your, your real problems, huh? Got lots of problems. Um, well, yes, we don't have a lot of time left, but it also shows God's grace, doesn't it, that he can use someone like that? Oh, surely, surely. Which is comforting because all of us have skeletons in the cupboard and all the rest of it. Yes, yes. That aren't published all over the Holy Writ. Um, the other question is about laws, liturgical laws. Mm-hmm. That that comes from God himself, obviously, and to our modern mind, some of them just seem so trivial, um, ridiculous, Ah. if I can say that. Um, certainly the people shouting about civil partnerships outside City Hall, they seem so trivial, so ridiculous, um, and they were quoting them. So how do we address that? Oh, well, that's a a a genuine and real question, and it's not, um, uh, trying to avoid the question, but to look at the facts. If you take the laws as given in, uh, uh, Exodus and then in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, you'll find yourself asking the question, these laws, did they first begin to exist then? Or had some of these laws existed for centuries? What about, for instance, the so-called Code of Hammurabi? I don't know what the exact date is, three thousand BC or whatever it was. Detailed system of law under Habu- Hammurabi, centuries before Israel. In other words, the laws that you will find in Exodus given at Sinai, are not all of them laws never heard of before. Some of them are modifications of the laws that were current in civilizations at the time. Number one point. It's interesting to watch how some of them are more merciful and compassionate than their equivalents in the code of Hammurabi, even to the treatment of slaves, you'll see. So that is to be thought about. Secondly, you are dealing, I won't say with a primitive society, they weren't primitive in the sense of being savages, eh, building temples like they built in Egypt and and tombs for the for the pharaohs and building the tabernacle or Solomon's temple. They weren't primitives, but they were children. To use the analogy of Paul in Galatians three and four, God in Old Testament times dealt with other people, even his own people, like children, as distinct from fully grown up adults. And there is a difference even to this day in the way parents will teach children, and the way they will teach grown up teenagers, and then full grown sons and daughters. Do you see? Certain things that a parent will forbid a, a child of four years old, five years old, eight years old. He will leave to that grown up, the son of Derta, to make up their minds for themselves. Eh? You can't argue the case for the four-year-old why he should be forbidden to play around with strychnine, or to play with the fire. Or himself to try and let off fireworks without his pa- parents being present and giving permission. But parents do commonly do that. Whereas when the children get older, well, that's another story. The very methods of God's salvation have shown progress over the centuries, haven't they? His redemption of Israel, real and genuine, but much of it concerned with, with, um, object lessons, symbols, laws, food laws, keeping Israel separate from the nations, lest Israel be corrupted. But with the coming of the gospel, and notably with the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, then lots of those world laws were cancelled as being inappropriate to the believer. And Peter, in order to facilitate his being willing to go to the Gentiles, if you please, and preach the gospel, Peter has to be shown that God has now finished with those food laws. They were a temporary arrangement until, uh, the coming of Christ, the Holy Spirit, God now treating people as his grown-up sons and daughters. And with the coming of the Holy Spirit, an inner defense against pollution that the average Israelite didn't have under the law. So there's a difference of treatment. There is such a thing as the progress of revelation and the progress in God's salvation, you will notice, as appropriate to the different times of human develop in the course, development in the course of the centuries. Yeah? It was only when the fullness of time was come that God sent forth his son. Why didn't God send him right the m- the moment Adam sinned, for instance? Why wait all those years? There is such a thing as the God's education of people down through the ages. As they learned about sin, you'll find that in, in, in the Old Testament, as people learned more about sin, then God gave them an example of salvation. As they learn more, the example of salvation had to get more complicated. No good providing a savior if man hasn't understood what sin is. No good sending the Son of God into the world until Israel have been taught by many a painful lesson that there is only one God. For Israel herself raised up by God to be a testimony among the nations that there is only one God, a protest against the idolatrous interpretation of the universe, deifying the forces of nature and everything else, do you see? Israel brought out, God reveals himself to her, and she's meant to stand for the truth of the one true God, and Israel foreverlastingly going back and compromising with idolatry. No good sending the Son of God into the world and saying, this is my son, if this is the Son of God, if people have no concept of who God is. Send the Son of God to the Greeks and tell them he's the Son of God. They say, oh, very nice. Which God do you like to be the son of? Oh, Zeus or Apollo? No, Yahweh. Oh, I see, yes, Yahweh. Well, you, we all have our gods, don't we? I know. He's nice. He's the Son of God, is he? Well, yes, Apollo was the son of Zeus, you know, and uh, oh. No good sending the Son of God into the world until at least one nation has been taught the truth of the one true God, so that when our Lord Jesus Christ arrived in Jerusalem, there were no idols in the temple in Jerusalem. At last, the lesson had been learned by Israel. And because it was, uh, among the Jews that our Lord came and was proclaimed a Son of God, that it was the Jewish New Testament, that is J- r- a New Testament written by Jews that records this, is a very important part of our faith and a part of our apologetics. If this had come out of the Greeks, you'd have said, well, this is a funny thing. What do they mean by Son of God, the Greeks? No, it comes from monotheistic Jews with a long tradition hammered out in the course of experience of centuries, and at last coming as a nation to acknowledge monotheism pure and simple. It was then the fullness of the time had come, and God sent forth his son. So this progress of God's education is a real thing and accounts for s- uh, many of the differences between Old and New Testament food laws and so on and so forth and so on. And when it comes to mixture of seeds and those kind of things, well, you'll have to tell me because I'm no scientist, but perhaps there was point in God arranging that people should not confuse the stock by mixing seeds. Should you allow, uh, what do they call it, GM foods or something? What's all the fuss about GM food, uh, uh, C, and so on? That it is a fuss, and some have genuine concerns. It's very interesting. Some of the Old Testament laws are given perhaps as principles to a people in living in a pre-scientific age. Those rough and ready rules and regulations, how to discern. Yes? They're not meant to be the last words on botany or zoology, but practical things for people living in those days who need to be told what food was healthy and what wasn't, and by what outward signs to discern it. Yeah. Mm. Sorry to give so much wordy answers, but... No, thank you. That's given us food, food for thought. Yeah. Quite a few different issues, so. Righto. Well, I say it sincerely, bring up the, the thing about it, gentlemen, and bring up the questions again, because it's important that as Christians we do think about these things and answer them as fairly as we can possibly, and not seek to run away from them.