Making Sense of "Scary" Bible Verses

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

It's Halloween.

And so when Ryan was asking me to speak, and then I'm like, was like, how about it's Halloween scary?

Let's do scary Bible verses.

So we're going to be going into uh scary Bible verses and how to make sense of them.

Um I'm going, it's this isn't gonna be like take a passage and kind of dig deep into it.

We're gonna like surface skim a bunch of them.

I did put verses in your notes so you can look them up uh in the ones that I really want to kind of stick on, but we're gonna like kind of it's almost like a little seminar in a way I'm gonna do here this morning, but it's really, really important.

It's more than just scary Bible verses.

What's going on out there is that, as many of you probably are aware of, is that there's all of these kind of like uh criticisms of the Bible.

I'm gonna show you some.

And the criticisms are saying, like, this is not a good book.

It's actually a bad book.

There's violence, and your God is scary, and there's you shouldn't eat shrimp, or he's gonna punish you.

And there's lots of stuff that's actually coming to the surface.

And because it's on like TikTok and social media, as some of you are, like, I've I gotta stop looking at TikTok.

It's just like I keep looking and looking and looking, and it's just like, you know, you you stupid Christians, like you don't eat shrimp and and you're hypocritical and all of the violence in the scriptures, and and I just want to like be uh you know, shouting out, kind of like, please, that's not, you're not understanding the whole of the Bible.

And that's what I'm gonna look at this morning, because the Bible, you know, when when I got this thing, I was in uh what's junior high school, someone gave me a Bible, my aunt or something.

I didn't know what to do with it because I never read it, and then I'm looking at it, and it's got like you know, in the back, it's got a red dragon, it's got you know, a talking snake, uh, lots of battles.

And I remember I put it on my shelf between Lord of the Rings and Dracula, because it kind of felt good there, you know, because I didn't know what it was.

And then when I got to college, and this was uh, I only can say it was God, because I had no, my parents weren't saying like you should be a Christian or go to a church or something.

I had no friends at all that were saying, like, you should follow Jesus, or and it was during my college years, it was just like, is this true what Christians believe?

You know, and I read a little pamphlet that someone gave out, and I'm like, is this real?

And I know it was just kind of like a little prayer, almost like, God, is there a God if you're there?

You know, is this true?

And I just figured, if I'm gonna look into something, I want to look into where they get their info from, and it was here, so I bought a Bible.

And I was in a uh uh a punk band and in in college, and someone asked me earlier, are you wearing a costume today?

I'm like, no, this is what I look like all the time.

It's really true.

And this is what I look like every day.

So it's kind of funny.

She's like, uh-oh, I'm I'm feeling a little awkward now.

So if you're in here, it's okay.

Um but what um uh what I started doing was I started I got a Bible, and then I can remember it's actually a really important moment where I started buying like some books to try to understand the Bible.

And I come home one day and I get back into our house, and like, do you ever walk into a room and they're all talking about you?

You know, and they stopped, and I'm like, what?

And you talk, and they're like, we're concerned.

And I'm like, why?

And they said, because you're reading a Bible, and uh we're afraid you're like gonna join a cult.

And I'm like, oh, a cult?

And at the time, all of the end times was big, like Christians were all waiting for the end times to happen and looking for any.

I mean, uh, that's gonna happen, but there was kind of an obsession with it, and they started saying they were concerned for me that I was gonna lose my creativity, and all and I remember like, wait a minute, um, is it a cult?

You know, is it a cult?

Because when you're in a cult, you don't know you're in a cult, right?

So, in fact, how do you know you're not in one?

And Ryan is going to have a spaceship soon, and he's talking about that.

Like, I don't know, I don't know what what, you know, it's uh well anyway, back to the but here's what happened.

I got really, really, really uh um, they were talking to me about this, not because they were mad at me, they were concerned about me.

They were wondering, like, you know, they don't want me to start, and so believing in something that could not be true.

I mean, you believe in a man that died and rose again from the grave, like uh, and that got me on to like an intensity of saying, how do I know this is true?

How do I know they're not right?

Uh, how do I know it's not just a suburban religion that many people grew up in in America and et cetera?

And so it got me like on a compelling sort of like, I gotta make sure there's confidence to believe in this.

And at some point down the road, I didn't have like a conversion experience.

I can just remember I was in the this band in England, and this little old lady in a she's in a wheelchair in this place, and she's preaching, and she looks at me and she goes, like, are you safe, Sonny?

And I'm just like, and I'm like, I think I am.

I can remember that, like, I think I am.

Like, I just remember like, I'm a Christian.

I can't, like, and so it's like this weird, uh, this very strange experience.

So, but I didn't have that growing up.

And but I understand, so if you're here and you're like maybe checking out face, or maybe you're, you know, and you're in high school, like in youth, and all of a sudden you're on TikTok and you start hearing these things, and don't go on TikTok.

If your parents, if your parents are saying don't go on it, they love you, that's why.

So, like today, but it is uh uh, but you're hearing these messages and it can be confusing because you're hearing a lot of Bible being used to disprove the Bible.

You're seeing scriptures being put up on clever memes.

I'm gonna show you a couple that are just then saying, you know, Christianity is uh, you know, the Bible is kind of wicked.

There's so much wicked stuff in there, and if you follow Jesus, you're gonna be a hateful person in all of this.

And what I can tell you, I'd be the first person that if I ever didn't trust in the scriptures or think there's that, I'd be like, don't believe in this stuff, or this isn't true.

But I can tell you, the more I've devoted my life to almost like wanting to, you know, to make sure it is true and the scriptures have changed my life.

Now, I'm gonna put up a verse because never, this is like a classic Christian verse that if you've been around church or thing that you always hear this, and it's John 3.16.

But never let scripture lose its impact.

John 3.16, you might have heard it 500 times, 5,000 times.

But I remember reading this from a little pamphlet and like, is this true?

Like, what an amazing truth if it is.

And it's for God so loved, right?

Loved not just the world, you sitting in these seats, whatever your name is, he loved you.

He loved Dan when I was first reading this.

For God so loved Dan that he gave his one and only son, that's Jesus, and that whoever believes in him, it doesn't say you have to go do things or attend meetings or give money.

It's like whoever by faith you believe in him, you shall not perish, but have eternal life.

And I can tell you, please, please, don't ever lose the freshness of experiencing these truths.

Because as a young guy back then, when I was first checking out this Bible, and my friends were worried I was joining a cult, and I'm like, boy, this sounds so good.

God really forgives me and he believes me and he loves me and eternal life, and and uh, and all I can tell you is like this is a wonderful, it's the inspired words of God that it's not we don't worship the Bible, it's God's you know text to us, you could say, of what we he wants us to know about him.

Yet what's going on is because it's kind of our fault in a way, we focused a lot of energy in churches over the years on all of the nice verses in the Bible.

You know, all the verses just like that one which we would need to focus on.

But there's an intentionality, and that's what I'm gonna be addressing here this morning, is that there's an intentionality now of pulling out the uh scary sounding Bible verses and communicating them again and again and again, and it's catching Christians off guard, and then it's also causing confusion to people that aren't Christians, to then think this is what Christians believe.

This is the scary God that Christians believe in.

So let's take a look at a few, and I only can do a few at the time, but you may see things like this.

So I'm just putting up some memes that are easy to find.

Uh, like here's a guy with a chalkboard, and it says, various things the Bible bans, you know, shaving, cussing, gossip, football, because it says do not touch the skin of a dead pig, which is kind of crazy because footballs are not made of actual pig skin, but that's that's another point.

Uh, you know, don't eat pork, don't eat lobster or shrimp, and there's a mockery.

Look at all these silly things the Bible bans, and you Christians are picking and choosing and cherry-picking stuff and ignoring these, but then saying you should do these.

But all of a sudden you're having people, and I've seen this stuff by celebrities on TV and newscasters that are saying, Oh, I know the Bible, it says that you shouldn't do this, this, this, this, talking about a lot of these strange things, and then it makes Christians feel embarrassed, awkward, don't know how to respond, and that's a major criticism that comes up a lot.

There's even a shirt, God Hates Shrimp.

And there was a website, I haven't looked lately, there was a website, Godhates shrimp.com, and it was trying to show look at you silly Christians, what you believe.

Uh, you can't eat shrimp.

This God will punish you, the scary God, if you eat shrimp.

Now, these verses do come from somewhere.

Leviticus chapter 11, verse 10.

Leviticus 11:10

But all the creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales, whether among the swarming things or among all the other living creatures in the water, you are to regard as unclean.

You must not eat their meat.

Right?

So, what a strange thing that that's in the Bible.

Why would God care if we should we don't eat shrimp?

I'm gonna get to that in a couple minutes.

But again, you'll see things like this all the time.

If you start paying attention, uh they take serious things.

These are serious things, though.

So, Noah's Ark.

We see, you know, the as a kid growing up, if you grow up in a church, it might even be painted, you know, in various church children's ministries, they paint this on the wall, the ark, uh, happy animals on a boat.

But what's happening now is you're then seeing people notice these stories, and they've always been there, but then highlight them and start questioning Christians to say, how can you believe in a God that in Genesis 6 that it says this, I'm going to bring the flood waters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens.

Every creature in it, uh, every creature that has the breath of life in it, everyone, everything on earth will perish.

So that's not quite the happy animal story.

And then Christians are like, I never thought about that.

And there's more.

And I mean you'll see things like the images of like painting of people drowning, which would have happened.

Or then there's a whole series of these.

They're called evil Bible stories.

And here's what they say: like, God drowns the whole earth.

And it's criticism against Christians, like, I don't want to, is that what God did?

How about Joshua and Jericho?

We this is from a uh kind of a Sunday school curriculum book.

This was to hang on the wall in a kid's room, and it's Joshua blowing the trumpet, marching around Jericho, and they say, look, and they teach, this is what you teach your kids, it's part of the story, but then they say they're not teaching you what happens next.

Joshua chapter 6, verse 20 and 21.

Joshua 6:20

They devoted the city to the Lord and they destroyed with the sword every living thing in it, men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep, and donkeys.

And so then you'll see the mockery, genocide after genocide after genocide.

Memes and all of this being put up, Christians being like, I don't know how to answer that.

Is God really this angry, vicious God that kills people?

There's other things.

I'm just gonna highlight a few, and I'll come back and respond to a couple, so I'm gonna just leave you hanging, but I can't get to them all.

But there's things like this.

Again, once you start hearing them, you start seeing them and noticing.

And I'm in enough non-Christian uh lives of people that I hear these things of what they're picking up.

And it's like God has 42 children mauled by bears, and there's a graphic, and they talk about the story from 2 Kings, and they say, like, look, God uh basically it's like it says, Some boys came out of the town and jeered Elisha, get out of here, Baldy.

And then he turned around, looked at them, called a curse on them, two bears came out of the woods and mauled 42 of the boys.

So you'll then see things like uh children are being killed by God on memes, again, over and over.

Uh all right, just two more, because kind of depressing, but I'm that's that's sort of the point of what I'm trying to do.

Is that then there's things like a guy named Uzzah, who was uh if you've ever seen the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, there's something called the Ark, and it's where they put the Ten Commandments in and carried the ark as they traveled around and then put it in the temple in Jerusalem eventually, but the ark was seen as a sacred and holy thing, and then someone named Uzzah, it was gonna fall off a cart.

He grabbed it and then he died.

God killed him for trying to balance the ark so it wouldn't fall.

Like, what kind of God would just kill a guy like that?

Straight from scripture.

One more.

This one I see so many times.

Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

And you can see Psalm 137.9, there's a nice little heart that someone's kind of mocking, and that is what the scriptures say, and then you can see an atheist group.

There's only a small percentage of militant atheists, both atheists who are just kind and leave people alone, but there's some that don't.

And they have like, I hate babies, like a billboard, with verses saying, This is the God you worship.

Is this true then?

There are verses and there are stories that this happened.

There's a website called evilbible.com.

Um, it's a real website, and I've talked to so many people that look up verses and they find this website, and then they end up saying, I didn't know this stuff was in the Bible.

And this is where it's really sad.

Uh, this is a true story.

There's someone on who tweeted, I read the Bible cover to cover twice in my youth.

I remember encounting verses that made me uncomfortable, but I dismissed them.

I started reading it again last year, but I got to the sixth chapter of Genesis, and then I started crying because the God I believed in was a monster.

And I'm so sad because I wish someone could be talking to her.

Maybe she just didn't want to have anyone talk to her, but you're seeing this.

So let's now turn the corner and say, what do we do?

Because there's verses like this, and they're there.

How do we respond?

So, how do we explain these type of things?

Um, what I'm gonna do quickly is just say, here's two ways not to do.

One is there's an approach that someone may ask you about this or here, and it's like, well, God can do whatever he wants, he's God's God.

If he kills people, that's his business.

Like, no, that's true, but it doesn't have empathy and sympathy, and it actually can repel people if there's not a thoughtful response.

So it is true, God can do whatever he wants, but we should engage thinking and heart because from a surface glance I understand why they're thinking that.

A second one, and I want to warn about this one, because it's becoming more and more common for Ish for Christians to then say, All right, I believe in the Bible, but I don't like this part, or I don't like this part.

And it's happening like a lot, that's why they pay attention.

It's all said, well, God didn't really say that.

Or this part the Israelites wrote so they can feel like they're conqueror, conquering warriors, or you know, the New Testament, there were there were, you know, Paul was really uh an obsessed, you know, crazy person, so he didn't mean this stuff and to restrict it.

And so people are saying, well, it's not all inspired.

And once you do that, and this is actually really common today, once you do that, it's a different story, it's a different God, it's a different Jesus, and the worst of all, it becomes a different gospel about how we're saved and what Jesus did on the cross.

So be careful with that part.

And what I want to then show is this third approach, which is the understand the whole Bible storyline to know God's character approach.

What I mean by that is you can like, you know, pick and choose certain things and create anything.

And I want to give an illustration.

Mary Poppins, the movie.

You know Mary Poppins, most of you probably have seen the movie.

When you think of Mary Poppins, because you know the whole movie and you've seen it, you know she's a good nanny, a magical nanny that comes in and helps the family.

And the family is there and uh and she does, you know, certain things with the family, and eventually she flies away and kind of saves the family at the end.

So we know Mary.

But what if you never ever knew the story of Mary Poppins?

What if you never heard about Mary Poppins, and then you saw, I'm gonna we're gonna show a 60-second video.

Let's watch this video.

And imagine if you've never seen Mary Poppins before, you don't know the story, and this is all you see.

Let's watch this video.

Like, yes.

Uh, is Mary now if you only saw that part of it, you would conclude it's a horror film, keep your kids away from Mary.

Right?

However, like what's going on today is because so many people don't know the whole story of God, don't know his character, don't know the Bible, you know, story itself.

So if you only extract certain things, put them on memes, uh, you know, make little fancy graphics and different things with them, people are then concluding that's scary God.

I don't want to have anything to do with that.

I'm gonna hide my children from this Christian God and this whole Christianity thing because it's whacked and wicked.

That's what's going on.

So let's look at then how do you then talk to somebody and say, like, well, that's not actually how you should look at the scriptures, and it's different.

So that's what I'm gonna do.

And again, I only can do a few, and um, but I hope just looking at a few will give you an understanding of how to then look at more later on.

Now, whenever you open the Bible, because it's like, what is this thing?

Whenever you open the Bible, you're opening up, it's like saying I open this up and I'm looking down at Second Chronicles, right there.

I'm looking at a story, right?

And it's a true story, but it's like a spot in a big story, starting in Genesis, ends in Revelation.

It's a beautiful, amazing story that all points to Jesus.

But when I'm looking here, there's like a story going on.

There's people, and there's this time and a city and and and some drama happening.

And so I might be looking at something, and if I am extract it out, I then have to put the time into saying, what's going on here?

So I don't misunderstand looking at something that happened without seeing the fall.

Now, in your notes, I've put a little chart.

It's actually in the book that Ryan uh mentioned earlier, and I go through it in depth there.

But when you open the Bible, I've just trained myself like I'm opening it up, and it's like a timeline.

It starts back here, revelation's there, Jesus happens, and where you look in the timeline will matter how you're then understanding what's going on and who's it written to.

And that's really important because people might just randomly pick something out and assume jump to application for what it means to my life, and it may not mean something to our life.

It may mean something that we learn from, but it applies to a specific situation and people group at a certain time.

It may not mean something today, or it may.

That's why you have to look into it.

So, all through the Bible, like when you read through the whole thing, I've read it through.

Dozens of times, you know, I've devoted my life to trying to understand God through scripture.

And uh what I've learned is that when I think of God, this is the passage that I think of so often from the Old Testament.

So this is the Old Testament God speaking, it's the same God New Testament as well, but this is interestingly said 27 times, and it's what God says about Himself that's repeated the most.

And it's in Exodus chapter 34, verse 6 and 7.

Exodus 34:6

And it's an important verse because it's said so many times.

God then wants this to be known about who he is to people.

And I have it underlined in blue, I have my Bible color-coded with pencils, but blue means happy verse, red means warning verse, yellow is a theological one, uh, um, green is prophecy, and purple is strange or bizarre.

And my Bible's filled with purple.

I'll just say that because there's a lot of strange things in it, but then you can look it up.

So let's just read this through.

The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate, look at these words, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.

Now, again, for God to repeat something so many times about himself, 27 different times, this is spoken about in the Old Testament, it must mean like this is what he wants us to know about him.

And when I think of God, I think of this.

Compassionate, slow to anger, like I keep thinking, like, when I think of God, that's what I'm thinking of.

And this is then also carried through in the New Testament.

In Second Peter, now Peter was a guy that knew Jesus very well, right?

Lived with him for the three and a half years or so that he was before the resurrection.

Now, if Peter thought, you know, there's people that claimed that they were religious leaders or messiahs, or they could say, we're gonna start a cult.

But see, the difference with Peter is he saw Jesus after he was resurrected.

And if it was a cult, like you know, your cult leader dies, Jesus came back to life.

And that's why Peter was so passionate to keep telling others about this Jesus.

And in one of his letters, this is what he says He says, The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.

Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Repentance means just kind of like changing your direction, understanding God's direction is the right way, not yours.

I read this and I'm like, oh Lord, thank you for this is true.

Thank you for forgiving me.

Thank you for, I mean, think yourself, right?

No, thank you for having patience in your life.

Thank you that he's having compassion for when you rebel and you do things that you might be ashamed of, or you know, and you're responding in anger or whatever it might be, and he's patient with you and loving and kind, like that's the God of Scripture.

Look at the very end, like look at the very end of the book in Revelation.

This is God.

And says, He's gonna be with his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

No more pain, death, a mourning, a crying.

The old order of things have passed away.

So, all right, that's the God of the Scriptures, and then again, Jesus died for us, he loved the world.

So then what do we do with these verses?

All right, quickly.

I'm just gonna go through some examples.

So let's go back to, it doesn't seem to match up.

Let's go to those strange ones about shrimp, and you know, you're not supposed to touch the skin of a dead pig.

And if you do, God's gonna get you, right?

So, and these verses come up.

And you silly Christians for believing in the stuff.

So, who is it written to?

Remember, I said like you gotta look at who is it written to?

It wasn't written for us, but to us, I'm sorry, not to us directly here, but for us to understand God, and we look into what's going back then.

This was these verses, all the strange ones about eating shrimp and don't get tattoos and those things, they were written to the people of Israel as they were God was moving them into what was called the promised land because Jesus was going to be born through their lineage, and so then it was a very important thing.

He wasn't, and he wanted to have people not start worshiping the practices uh with the practices of the surrounding people groups, because they're moving into a land, and all the people around them were practicing all kinds of like witchcraft, sorcery, bizarro worship rites, and there was things that they're mixing and doing, and so God was laying down some strange-sounding things to us, but if you were an Israelite, you'd have been like, oh, that makes sense.

Um, because on the timeline, like you know, the arrow goes down to that's a different time than we are in.

But what sounded like strange laws to us today would have made sense to them because God was communicating to them about certain things at that time.

So this is true.

This is in Arizona, these are laws that are still in our law books, allegedly, and I found this on an attorney website, so I'm assuming he checked to see whether this is true.

But in Arizona, there is a law that says it is illegal for a donkey to sleep in a bathtub.

And you read that law and it's still in the law books, and you go, like, that sounds so bizarre.

Why would that be, you know, what kind of a law is that?

But then you go back to 1924, there was some farmer that had a donkey and it would sleep in a bathtub, and the river overflowed or something, and moved the bathtub into a mud basin, and all the people in the town had all the struggle to get the thing out, and they said, like, farmer Joe, like, no more donkey in the bathtub.

And uh, we're gonna now make a law, and they made a law.

So, like, today it sounds bizarre, but if you were living back then and someone said, Hey, no donkeys in the bathtub, you're like, Yep, farmer Joe.

You just be like you'd know what was going on.

Um, there's another strange one.

Uh in Kentucky, it's actually Lexington, Kentucky, where this happened.

It is illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your back pocket.

Again, bizarro sounding, you go back, what was it?

They used to steal horses by putting ice cream cones in back pockets so the horses would see the ice cream, they'd lead the horse astray and steal the horse.

So they put a law down.

Like to us, like, what is that?

You know, back then you would have been on the road and you would have seen, like, hey, there's a guy with an ice cream cone, and then get help, he's under suspicion.

You know, because it'd be like, this is how they'd steal things.

We don't understand that world, but they did at that time, and that's like the scriptures are with some of these weird-sounding laws.

But you can say, okay, so that means we can do anything today.

So those laws are all gone.

What about the ones today?

No, you have to be good students of scripture.

So, like on the timeline, like that's why that knowing the timeline is important, you'll then see that when Jesus came, he put an end to laws, but then he renewed some and he had teaching.

So, like, when you look to the New Testament, you then see what stopped with the people of Israel before Jesus and what are the things that continued on.

So, like, you'll see that most of the laws to Israel, the strange ones, ended with Jesus, but this is important.

Most of the moral laws that are dealing with sexual ethics, marriage, uh, murder, you know, all of these things, they kept going.

And in fact, they intensified.

So you can't just say, look, those things are out of date, we don't need to follow them anymore.

Some of them you don't, and some of them you do.

That's why you have to pay attention to the storyline and what did Jesus in the New Testament reaffirm and keep going with.

So that's what you know, you can see with the say with the shrimp.

Jesus himself declared all foods clean in Mark chapter 7, verse 19.

Mark 7:19

Jesus later confirmed this in a vision to Peter.

So if anyone's here, you're eating shrimp, it's okay.

It's okay.

Uh you can play football.

Uh, it's still such a strange thing that there's memes about playing football because of the pig skin and stuff.

So, but but people, but you don't think.

And so, but it certainly makes a good meme.

It certainly makes a good challenge.

And if you're getting beat up over and over by a lot of these challenges, what the Bible says, you may say, like, well, maybe it's not true.

But it is true if you go and study things further.

All right, I got, I don't have much time, so I can just here's quick other responses.

Say that guy with the ark that I mentioned, he was, you know, remember, he got killed for the ark falling and tried to support it.

You think it'd have been a good thing.

However, you gotta stop, look at the story, what was going on behind it, and what was happening with the ark.

God instructed them, you just read the chapters before, don't touch it.

It is a holy, it represents God's holiness.

Um, don't touch it.

They had poles, they were supposed to keep it on.

They were supposed to only transport it in a certain way at a certain time.

And what occurred was, and I read it, a scholar, uh, Old Testament scholar said they basically were treating the ark like they were throwing it in the back of a car trunk, and they weren't respecting and honoring, and they broke that.

So when God then intervened and a guy was struck dead, it wasn't just you know random.

And we still talk about it today.

So it's like these acts, they weren't, there's so much more than just the simplicity of a quick meme, or the one that God has 42 children mauled by bears.

Um, again, this makes a great little graphic.

And you see this there's a book cover, something like Scary Bible, bedtime stories for your kids, and it's all Bible stories, and this is on the cover.

And they're saying, look, you got his children killed by bears.

You gotta stop.

Wait a minute.

What's going on there in the whole story?

One, the world, the word children is not the correct word.

It's actually, it's mainly a word for young adults, probably in their 20s, in their early 20s, is the best we're knowing.

And here's more to the story.

Um, it was probably a demonstration with a prophet of God coming into an area that at that time was known to be worshiping all kinds of wicked practices of worshiping other gods.

That's what the town he was coming into was known for, like a conglomeration of wickedness.

Then Elisha is coming in here and they're mocking him, but mocking a prophet in the way they did it is actually mocking God.

So it was not, and it could have actually possibly been moved to them trying to attack him.

So it wasn't just, it wasn't children.

How it's portrayed is nothing like the actual story.

But it certainly makes a good meme, right?

It certainly makes a good mocking of the scripture until you look at it.

Um, the last one is like the happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks, right?

Again, I see this all the time because it's so look at your God.

He wants to uh dash, throw infants against rocks.

What a great God you have, a scary God.

Once again, you stop, and this is where you have to understand the Bible is a library, not a single book.

You know, when I open this, I've trained myself, I basically opened up what section is it going to the poetry section, the history section, the law section, letters to churches like you always have to pay attention, and this is from the Psalms.

It is songs and poetry that was written, inspired by God, but still human beings writing things out.

When you look at the story of this specific Psalm, it's talking about after the Babylonians came in and took over Jerusalem and they slaughtered people, and the soldiers would actually take children, throw them to the ground to kill them when they were capturing a city.

This is then written from someone who is then writing out an angst of wouldn't there be justice?

And he's crying out poetically about the horror and the pain that he's had, like wanting to see revenge.

And in a poetry form, he's writing this out.

One, this isn't God saying these words, it's a human being, a God's spirit used to write out things, but you take it in the wrong way, and all of a sudden you look, this is God saying this, he's not saying this.

It's the horrific emotions of someone who experienced horror and death and seen that, and he's writing an expression back about that.

Again, but it certainly makes a good meme, certainly is a joke.

But please know when you start hearing these, they're generally like almost all the time not accurate whatsoever.

Now, what I want to do is just close with the toughest one.

And I gave a whole 45-minute message just on this at Westgate Church about three or four months ago.

If you want to go there and watch the whole message, it's uh up there on violence, the whole this particular uh next thing.

It's also uh it's in the book that um Ryan mentioned earlier.

I spent three chapters on this because it's a tough subject.

Because what about the times when God did use violence?

What about when he did order cities to be killed and battles?

You can't like wash those away or say they didn't happen.

God did command violence at times.

But see, it's a big difference when all of a sudden I'm thinking of God like Scary Mary, and I'm just seeing those, versus I know the whole story of God and who he is.

And remember that verse I mentioned earlier: compassionate, slow to anger, uh, you know, just like forgiving, wanting people to turn to him.

That's the God of the scriptures.

So when you see, at times when God does order battles, there's reasons for it.

It's not just random, he's a genocidal maniac.

Kill, kill, kill.

That's that's not the story.

Again, it keeps making nice little memes to put them up and and show, but when you look at the whole story, then you say, well, what happened here?

And just very, just very, very quickly, all I can just say is that when you look at the storyline, when these battles mainly happened, it was God moving the people of Israel into a new land, and he wanted to not have them, which they did when what happened, so God was always right, compromise and end up worshiping really wicked stuff.

A lot of the people groups around them would sacrifice babies by burning them in fire, just horrible stuff.

And God was not wiping people out, he was driving people out and saying, like, you know, God is and his people are coming in, and you can turn to that God.

He gave warning after warning after warning.

And also, it was really important because Jesus was going to be born through these people as they end up settling into Jerusalem, that's where Jesus would be born.

So a lot was at stake.

But God would always give warnings, and people had the opportunity to change.

You see that in Jericho, and I mentioned earlier.

Rahab was a woman who was a prostitute.

She heard of this God and what he was doing, and she said, I want to follow this God, and she was then spared.

When people, you know, Nineveh was a city, and it was such a wicked city that they would cut off heads, stick them on poles, skin human beings alive, put their skins on the walls of the city.

It was like a wicked city.

And then when they heard that God was going to bring judgment, Nineveh turned to God.

See, God's character is, I'm going to give warnings, but eventually his holiness and who he is, if there's wickedness, there has to be consequences.

But we can turn to that.

So it wasn't this like wiping out in genocide as it's always predicted, you know, all of these stories.

Let me just uh read something, because God gave warnings, warnings.

Here's his heart.

I'm jumping over to Ezekiel.

Here's just a little glimpse of who God is.

Here he is, and he says, As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, um, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.

Listen to here he is, it aligns with his character.

And he's pleading, he's like, Turn, turn from your evil ways.

Like, why will you die?

If someone who is wicked repents, that means turn around towards him, and it says, that person's former wickedness will not bring condemnation, right?

That's that God of the Bible I keep telling you about.

He's always saying, please turn, please turn, like I don't want, I'd get no pleasure in doing this.

But if people keep continuing in wickedness, if people keep rebelling and saying, I don't care, and worshipping false gods, eventually, when God was moving those people, the people of Israel in, he then ordered some battles to happen.

And there were deaths.

It wasn't mass genocide, there's all ways of looking at this further.

Um, but what happened was like, say, you could say, what about children and if they died in battle?

Everything that I understand from scripture, and also in alignment with God's character, if the kid dies, a baby dies, or anyone before that age of their rejecting God, my trust is in the God of love and compassion, that Jesus' future, what I what he did on the cross, would cover their sin and all of the ones that perished, kids uh and and babies before they had the time to reject God, they still then they're they were covered by what Jesus eventually did, and they'd be with Jesus right now.

That's my best understanding of what I would see that aligns with God's character.

But he's patient with all of us.

Um, and what I would say is like you can trust when you start seeing this, especially thinking of the youth, boy, you have challenges today.

I was a youth pastor for what eight years or something.

You have immense challenges, people telling you that you're hateful for believing in certain things, or it's just like, boy, that's it's not true, right?

Um it's God is love, and it's and they have to define love.

And all I want to say, like, so please hang in there, like always be talking, asking good questions.

He's always faithful.

And these criticisms that are coming up about Christianity and faith from the Bible, it's just like, man, you gotta, there's a lot of cheap shots that are not accurate being done.

And I could not have the confidence to be up here and say something if it wasn't true.

And let's close with this: like, this the scriptures, uh, I've been reading them all these years, they're so alive all the time, all the time.

Like they never once you start reading through, like how you understand it, and um in the scriptures, I don't, you know, God is God, but the scriptures are really how we know mainly about Him and about Jesus.

And so I want to pour my life into looking at the scriptures.

I think it's like madness that Christians just don't read scriptures if they don't too much, and now they're getting caught off guard by all of these things.

I don't know that was in the Bible.

If you would have read the Bible, like you would have seen it, not just the Mary Poppins uh scary God way that you're hearing about him now.

But just like the way I don't get my hair cut by a non-Christian.

Um I'm sorry, by a Christian.

I I get my I will not have a Christian cut my hair because, not that Christians can't cut hair, but it's because I have the opportunity to talk to somebody.

And I had a barber that I've been talking to for a long time, a Bible and stuff, and he couldn't meet me from one time, so I went to this other barber uh three three haircuts ago, and I go in, and this guy is just we ended up talking because it's natural.

What do you do for a living?

I could try to talk and feel him out a little bit, and then it's like, okay, yeah, I'm part of a church and see how he responds.

And in this case, he ended up sharing about struggles he was going through.

And then um I said, you know, would it be right?

You want to uh we talked about he had nothing about faith at all, and I said, Would you like to get a Bible?

And I'll show you how to read it.

He's like, Yeah.

And so just Friday this week, I went in to get my haircut and I bought him a Bible, study Bible, and I can tell you, like, I went in and I'm just picturing him.

He's he's like, never read this before, right?

Never, nothing, never have zero, and he's all his life's in kind of turmoil that something, and then I'm like, look, and I opened up to the book of Luke, and I was just showing him a few things I want to show him how to read it, and I'm like, you know, it's because like when you know, it's not about religious stuff that you might have heard or these things, and I'm walking through, and I could just see him, like he was looking at it and reading it, and he's like, This is really something, and I he doesn't know, like I took a little snapshot of him because he was reading it, so it's a cool little shop.

I'm gonna keep it to be praying for him.

Because this guy, Kyle, now, is reading this for the first time, and uh and it's life-changing.

And if you're a Christian and you're not reading it, please do.

And if you're younger and you're hearing the criticisms about the scriptures, know that there's answers.

Don't be embarrassed.

I mean, I understand why you're embarrassed, but it's but when you just look at it, then it's not embarrassing when you see what's really there.

All right.

Uh I talked a little bit longer than I'm supposed to, so if the band can come on back up and do uh um come on back up.

Um I'm gonna pray to give them time to get set up, so let's pray.

And I'm gonna pray for my friend Kyle the barber, too.

Lord, I just thank you for the scriptures that they're living and active, and you are not scary God.

You are a God of love and compassion and forgiveness, and through Jesus, we are forgiven when we put our faith in him and what he did and know the whole story.

Thank you that you're a God of love, compassion, and forgiveness, forgiving all of us when we rebel against.

Thank you that that's who you are.

I pray for Kyle right now.

As he has a Bible for the first time in his life, please use your word to help him understand who you are.

Amen.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

Please subscribe to our podcast for access to every episode as they're uploaded.

And hey, we'd love to connect with you.

Take a next step by filling out our virtual connection card at awakeningchurch.comslash card.