Well, good morning and welcome to Christian Life Academy. This morning is the second Sunday of the month, so we are once again talking about how to study the Bible. How do we go about reading and understanding God's Word? We've spent, I don't know, at this point 14, 16 different sessions on this topic and we've talked about different interpretive methods that we would use as we read the Bible to help us understand it. Primarily, What we have determined over the course of this is that as we read our Bible, context is the important thing. The context of any passage that we're reading, but we need to be clear on what we mean when we talk about the context. We mean the literary context that we look immediately around the passage that we're reading. We also mean the historical context, so we need to take into consideration when was this written, by whom was it written. Ultimately, we recognize the Holy Spirit as the author of all of the scripture, but Moses wrote a long time before the Apostle Paul did, and so we have to take that into consideration. We're 2,000 years removed culturally from the Apostle Paul's time, and 4,000 years or more removed from Moses' time. So we need to take that historical distance and context into account. We also have to take into account the covenantal context. The Apostle Paul is writing in the context of the New Covenant. whereas Moses, David, and others are writing in the context of the Old Covenant. So we need to take that into consideration as we read a passage. And we also want to take into consideration the whole of Scripture. It's one unified whole, inspired by the Holy Spirit, who is the author of the whole thing, and so it all works together. And so two of the principles that we've particularly talked about The technical terms are the analogy of scripture and the analogy of faith. And what these simply mean is the analogy of scripture, use your cross-references. Look up other passages of scripture that speak to the same topic or the same historical event and let the clear passages help us understand the unclear passages. The analogy of faith means that whatever topic, doctrine, or subject that we're looking at, we have to set it in its broader context of what does all of Scripture teach and how does this fit in to the entire redemptive arc of Scripture. So those are sort of our two guiding principles as we read and try to understand the scripture. And of course we've stated our goal is to understand what God's intended meaning in the text is. Our goal is not, as you will often hear, we need to find out what the human author's intent was. What did Moses mean? That might be helpful to understand what Moses was thinking, but ultimately we want to know what God meant. Right? Because God is the ultimate author of the scripture. And sometimes, the Holy Spirit would inspire these men to write better than they actually knew. And so we need to be aware of that. Last month, as we began to look at the different genres in the scripture, the different types of literature that are there, we talked about this idea of asking the question, how does it mean? In other words, the all-wise, all-knowing God knows what he needs to communicate to his people for life and godliness, but he also knows how best to communicate it. Sometimes he communicates stuff to us in the form of historical narrative. Sometimes he communicates it in the form of poetry. of psalms, of wisdom literature, of letters to the churches, of prophetic visions, all these different genres that we find in scripture. And we need to understand how each of those genres works, right? Because poetry works much different than historical narrative. Poetry is full of symbolic language and metaphors and that sort of thing. And so last month we talked about how do we read the law, the five books of Moses, particularly not the narrative parts but the parts pertaining to the law of God and what do we need to know about how the law works in order to read those passages. This morning, we're going to turn our attention to the largest genre of literature in the Bible, which is narrative. Stories. We might think, even right at the beginning, in Genesis, we have the story of Adam and Eve. the story of creation, the story of Adam and Eve, the story of Cain and Abel, the story of Noah, the story of Abraham, ultimately the story of Joseph, which is the largest historical narrative focused on an individual in the scriptures apart from the story of Christ, which is the overall story of scriptures. So these historical narratives make up about 40% of the Bible. So it's an important genre that makes up a large portion of the scriptures as we read them. And ultimately, the Bible itself, even with the other types of genres that we have, is one overarching story. It's the story of God's glory in his redemption of sinners. That's what the scripture is. It's one big story. And of course, Christ, as we have said many, many times, is the central character in this story. But as we go to look at historical narratives, we need to understand how they work, particularly in Hebrew literature. There's some particular features of Hebrew narrative storytelling that we might want to pay attention to. One of the things that's important is to understand that this is history that's being communicated to us, but it's history with a purpose. It's not just simply here are the facts of history, but rather it's communicating something to us about God. So this is theological history. This is history that is intended to teach us theology. And so, because that's the case, it's not exactly the same as a simple historical narrative. For instance, there are many, many times in the scripture when we have a historical narrative that is not told in chronological order. You would think, oh, a historical narrative should be in chronological order, but that's simply not always the case. Take, for instance, Genesis 1 and 2. We have the history of creation, seven days of creation told in order from day one to day seven in chapter one. And then chapter two rewinds back to day six and gives us a whole lot more detail about day six. So the chronology is overlapping because there's a theological purpose to how the story is being told. Another great example of this is in Genesis 10 and 11. In Genesis 10, we have the table of nations descended from Abraham and all the different nations that come from him. And then in chapter 11, we have the story of the Tower of Babel and how God separated the people into nations. Chronologically, that should have come first before we had the genealogies of the nations, but in the story, it doesn't. Another good example is in 1 Samuel, the story of David. We read the story of David, and it's a well-loved story in the Old Testament. We get to chapter 16, and we find that David is known to King Saul and well-loved by him. And then we get to chapter 17, and all of a sudden it's acting like Saul doesn't know David. Because there's a chronological overlap in how the story is being told. It's not in chronological order, and so we need to be aware of that aspect of Hebrew storytelling. Another thing that we need to be aware of is repeated patterns and cycles that we see in the story. And we've said this before, we look at a passage of scripture, if we see a repeated word or repeated phrase, that's important. Well, there's repeated patterns, too. We have to kind of step back and look at the bigger picture to see them sometimes. But consider the story of Moses in Exodus chapter 2. In Exodus 2, Moses has been born and he has been raised in Pharaoh's household. And then In verse 11 it says, So he looked this way and that way, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. And when he went out the second day, behold, two Hebrew men were fighting. And he said to the one who did the wrong, why are you striking your companion? And he said, who made you a prince and judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? So Moses feared and said, surely this thing is known. When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses, but Moses fled. from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian. He sat down by a well, and then if you continue reading, you find out that he ends up meeting a girl, marrying her, and tending her father's sheep for 40 years in the wilderness. What's the point of this story? Why tell us this particular story in the life of Moses? Is this simply to show us that, well, Moses was a murderer, and if God can use a murderer, surely he can use me. Or is there a pattern here that's sort of setting up a bigger picture for us? Because think about the story of Moses. What happens? Moses is going to come back after his 40 years in the wilderness. and he's going to deliver all the Hebrews from the oppression of the Egyptians. And not one Egyptian is going to die, but thousands of them are going to die. And then Moses is going to flee into the wilderness for 40 years with the Hebrew people who are God's flock. He's now going to care for God's flock of people rather than his father-in-law's flock. And they're going to continue complaining about him just like they did there in Exodus chapter two. So Exodus chapter two is like this little microcosm that sets up this pattern for Moses' whole life. And so we could see these patterns if we pay attention to what we're reading. As we're reading this, though, we also need to recognize that what we're reading, as I said, is theological history. It's meant to teach us something. This is our family history. Right? Scriptures tell us that all those who are of faith are offspring of Abraham. And so this is our family history. This is not just some interesting history of some ancient people group, but this is the history of our spiritual family. And it is written with a purpose. And what is the purpose of all of this? It's the purpose of the entire scripture, is to direct us to Christ. Right? And so the purpose of the whole thing is to point us to Christ. How does the story of Moses point us to Christ? Well, Christ comes as a greater deliverer, a greater Moses who frees his people from the oppression of sin and bondage and puts to death our enemies, namely sin and death itself, and delivers us even though his own people complain and oppose him the same way that God's people complained and opposed Moses. So that pattern is repeated throughout scripture on grander and grander scales. as we get to Christ. As we read any sort of narrative, we understand that when we read a story, there are certain components or elements of a story. There are characters, there's a plot, which usually involves a conflict of some kind, and there's resolution to the plot. And the same is true in Hebrew narrative. The characters in a story, you may have heard some of these terms, we have a protagonist. The protagonist is the main character, right? We have an antagonist. He's anti, the protagonist. He's against him. This is usually the person who causes the conflict that needs to be resolved. And then we have what is known, a less common term, is the agonists. These are simply the other people in the story who are affected by the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. Who is the protagonist as we look at the story of Moses? It's not Moses, by the way. It's God. God is the main character from page one till the very end. Who's the antagonist? It's not Pharaoh. It's Satan. Satan is the antagonist, and he has set himself against God and causes all sorts of trouble, and we are the agonists. We're the ones who are affected by this conflict. What is the plot? We can look at the plot of Moses' life, but what's the overall plot of Scripture? You may have heard the terms creation, fall, redemption, consummation. That's an easy way of summarizing the overall plot of the Bible. God created everything, including a people, creatures, with reasonable souls, as our confession puts it, that we can think, we can reason, and we are made in his image so that we can enjoy him and enjoy his glory forever. But then the antagonist comes along and he persuades people to bear his image instead of God's image. And so Adam and Eve fall into sin and become marred by sin. They make themselves enemies of God in the same way that Satan is God's enemy. And instead of rejoicing and enjoying God's glory, they reject it and seek their own glory. So now we have the conflict. And all of us are the agonists because we're all affected by this. We're all descended from Adam. We inherit his sin nature, the guilt of his sin. And what is the resolution to this? The resolution is Christ, the atonement that God himself takes on human flesh, lives a perfect sinless life, offers himself as a sacrificial alternative for us so that our sins are forgiven. We're counted as righteous in God's sight because of His life. And then in the end, the consummation, the coming of the kingdom, the new creation, everything is restored so that God's people are renewed in His image of glory and enjoy Him forever. That's the overall story, the plot of the Bible. That's what we call the meta-narrative. The big story. Sometimes you'll hear it referred to as the redemptive history. And I want to call that level three of the narrative of the Bible. There are three levels to the narrative. And that's the big one. It's probably the most important. It is the most important level of the narrative. But that's the big one. We have to read the whole Bible to get that picture. Underneath that, though, we have level two, which is what I would call covenantal history. And so we have the history of the covenant with Adam in the garden, covenant of works. And then we have the history of the covenant with Abraham, the old covenant that extends through Moses and David and down through the kings and the prophets. And then in the New Testament, we have the New Covenant. And so we have a different covenantal context as we spoke about before. And so we have this covenantal history. And then inside each of those covenantal histories, we have individual narratives of particular people. Adam, Noah, Moses, Abraham, etc. The question then becomes, how do these individual narratives, because these are what we read, right? We sit down and we don't typically read an entire covenantal history in one setting. We don't sit down and read the entire Old Testament in one go, or the entire New Testament. If you do, please let me know about it. That'd be pretty incredible. like know how long it takes you. But normally we sit down and we read an individual narrative and we may not even read an entire individual narrative in one setting if we get the one like Joseph's that's pretty long. But how do those individual narratives that we actually read and interact with, how do they relate to the other two levels? And what are they there for? They're there to point us to Christ, we said, but are they there for any other reason? A lot of preaching and teaching that you'll hear about these individual narratives turns them into morality stories. David did this, don't do that. Elijah did this, be like Elijah. Those sort of morality stories. And you'll hear a reaction against that saying that's not how we ought to read them, right? They're merely there to point us to Jesus, not to teach us morality. Is that true? Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 10 with me for a moment. We're talking about narrative and we're going to go read an epistle, but the epistles are more direct instructions, so we're going to see what the Apostle Paul has to say about Old Testament narrative. 1 Corinthians chapter 10, he says this, beginning in verse 1. Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers, notice he says our fathers, and he's writing to the church in Corinth, which is comprised largely of non-Jews. He's saying this is our family history if you're a Christian. All of our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the seas, talking about the Red Sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food and all drank from the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ." Now, that's an interesting verse in and of itself. He's talking about when God caused water to come out of the rock for the Israelites in the wilderness, and he's drawing an analogy from that rock to Christ as the rock of our salvation and our fountain of living water. That's an interesting way to read an Old Testament narrative in and of itself. But then he continues in verse five, but with most of them God was not well pleased for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. So he's talking about the first generation of Israelites who were not allowed to enter the promised land and they died in the wilderness. Then verse six, now these things became our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. And do not become idolaters, as were some of them. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day 23,000 fell. Nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted and were destroyed by serpents. Nor complain, as some of them also complained and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them as examples and they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. The Apostle Paul just told us the Old Testament narratives are there to teach us morality. They are there as examples to teach us what not to do. Don't act like that. Don't complain, don't grumble, don't commit these sins. Learn those lessons from their example. So they are there to teach us morality. Now, we have to be careful about that. We don't want to read stuff into the stories that isn't there. We don't want to read the story, as we've said before, of David and Goliath and insert ourselves into the story as David, the hero of the story who defeats the giant. No, we're David's brothers who are cowering in fear and Christ is David who defeats the giant. So we have to read carefully and not stick ourselves into the story in the wrong place. But they are there to teach us some things. We're to learn from their example, Paul says. The word that he uses that's translated as example is a word that's used in other places of scripture and in at least one place. translated as type, right? When Paul says, again I believe it's in Romans 5 14 speaking of Adam, he says, nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses even though over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam who is a type of him who was to come. And so we've talked about typology before. Adam is a type, Christ is the anti-type. What that means is that Adam sets a pattern and Christ is an escalation of that pattern. Adam is the first man, the covenantal head of the covenant of works, the head of humanity representing all of us. Christ comes as the head of the new covenant, a new humanity recreated in him. There's an escalation from Adam to Christ, and we've talked about types before in the Old Testament and seen many of them. And so, how do these first-level individual narratives relate to the other levels? Well, in one way, they relate to the overall meta-narrative by, first of all, instructing us how we are to live as God's redeemed people. don't give in to these sins that they gave in to. Secondly, they serve as types to point us to Christ as our greater Moses, our greater David. He's the escalation and the culmination of everything that's happened in history. And so these levels are interacting with each other in various ways. Another way that we see them interacting is in level one, as we read individual narratives, in Hebrew narrative storytelling, it's very common to set up a contrast between two characters in the story. And we see this all the time. Right in the very first pages of scripture, we have a contrast between Cain and Abel. Cain's sacrifice is not accepted. Abel's is. Cain is the murderer. Abel's is the innocent blood that cries out from the ground. We have this contrast between the two brothers. We can see all sorts of contrasts in the Old Testament. Saul and David contrasted as different kinds of kings. Elijah versus the prophets of Baal, this contrast between true prophets and false prophets. We have all these contrasts that are set up in the individual narratives. But when we step back to level two, the covenantal history, we look at the Old Covenant in relation to the New Covenant, what we find here is most of the time the characters are set in parallel to one another. And so we have Elijah in the Old Covenant set in parallel to John the Baptist in the New Covenant. Or we can see one that maybe is not as explicit for us, but Hannah, Samuel's mother in the Old Testament, in 1 Samuel 1 and 2. and then Mary in the New Testament, particularly in Luke 1 and 2. And there's a parallel between these two women, the vision that they have from an angel telling them about the birth of a son that is to come. There's a parallel between those characters. And so often we see characters from level one narratives in the Old Covenant set in parallel to characters in level one narratives in the New Covenant. And then, of course, they interact with level three through typology and example, that sort of thing. Another thing that we need to be aware of that we've spoken about before as we look at narratives is this idea of the chiastic arrangement. You've heard Paul and I both teach about this. Particularly, we see it a lot in the Psalms and Hebrew poetry, but we see it in Hebrew narratives as well. The prime example of this is the book of Esther. We go to Esther and we have the story of this Hebrew girl who becomes the queen of Persia and her people are endangered and then they're saved. But if we look at the story, what we see is the contrast again between Mordecai and Haman. And we see Haman's ascendancy as he goes after the Jews and wants to destroy them and builds a gallows. And he's going to hang Mordecai on it. And then the entire story reverses in one little episode when the king has a sleepless night. And then it just kind of goes backwards and everything is undone. Haman is hanged on his own gallows. The Jews are saved rather than destroyed. and Mordecai is elevated to the position that Haman used to have. And so it's like a pyramid that goes up, it reaches its pinnacle, and then it reverses, and these things are parallel. So there's a contrast between characters, but this parallel, contrasting parallel in elements of the story, we see that all through the Old Testament, in the Psalms and in the narratives. So those sort of things are important to pay attention to. Now I want to move from Old Testament narratives to New Testament narratives for a moment because I think this is important as well and it's an area that we run into problems with. What narrative portions do we have in the New Testament? We have the Gospels, the narratives of Jesus' life, and we have the Book of Acts. The Gospels we're going to save as a separate genre because they're a biography, sort of, of Christ, told again, theologically, for a reason. And even within them, they have other genres, and we're going to particularly look at the genre of parables one week. But we have the Book of Acts. as a historical narrative in the New Testament. And I think we run into a lot of trouble trying to understand the book of Acts as Christians. And one of the reasons we run into trouble is because its covenantal context is the same as ours. It's New Covenant historical narrative. So we look at Old Covenant historical narrative and most of the time, now sometimes we do, but most of the time we don't look at Old Testament historical narrative and think, That is prescriptive for how we are to live our lives. Now sometimes we do that and you'll see, oh well we need Gideon put a fleece out and so we need to put our fleece out before the Lord. And we use it as a sort of prescript for how we're supposed to behave. Now we don't do it exactly the same, right? We're not taking a sheepskin and putting it out and asking the Lord to put dew on it. So we're not doing it in that way. But when we come to the Book of Acts, we have a tendency to do that. We look at the Book of Acts as this historical narrative, and we say it's the same covenantal history that we're a part of, and so it ought to be normative for us. What we see recorded historically in the Book of Acts, therefore, is a prescription for how we live our lives in the church today. And to some extent, that's true. But we have to ask the question, just because something is narrated to us in the book of Acts, just because something is recorded in the book of Acts, does that mean that it is therefore normative? for how we ought to think about the Christian life or the life of the church. Now, there are groups that say yes. Primarily, if you do any reading on the subject, you'll hear the phrase, the Restoration Movement. It was a movement that happened in the early 19th century in UK and then primarily here in the United States and there are a lot of groups now that are the descendants of the Restoration Movement. Sometimes it's called the Stone-Campbell Movement after two of the founders of the movement. But these groups are groups that want to restore church life to try and make it look like what it looked like in the Book of Acts. And so a lot of them end up being house church, which there's nothing wrong with the church meeting in the house, but if we look at the Book of Acts and we go, they met in houses and so we have to meet in houses. Well, now we're taking something that's historically recorded and turning it into a pre-script for how the church ought to function. And the question is, should we do that or not? And I think in order to answer that question, we need to ask some questions, which is what we do as we read the Bible. We ask questions. We investigate. And so we ought to ask, what is the purpose What is Luke's purpose in writing the book of Acts? What is the Holy Spirit inspiring him to do? What's the purpose of the book of Acts? The overall purpose. And then how are these individual narratives of different churches in Acts related to that overall purpose of the book? Are they there to tell us exactly what the church is supposed to look like or are they serving some other function? Just because something is recorded for us doesn't necessarily mean that it's normative. that we're supposed to do it exactly that way. What is the plot of the Book of Acts? As we think about the elements of a story, we have characters and we have plot. What's the plot of the Book of Acts? missionary journeys. The book of Acts is all about the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem outward. And we might think about it as Jerusalem, Judea, the ends of the earth, right? Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth, that sort of progression. But I think it's more specific than that even because there are all sorts of ends of the earth Places that the gospel went during the time period recorded in the book of Acts that never mentioned in the book of Acts. There's no mention of what the rest of the apostles did after Paul kind of becomes the primary character. There's no mention of the spread of the gospel into Macedonia or not into Mesopotamia or into Egypt. It's not told in the book of Acts. It focuses almost entirely on the Apostle Paul once he becomes the leading character. I want to suggest that the plot of the book of Acts has to do with the expansion of the church from Jerusalem to Rome specifically because the purpose is not simply that the gospel is going to the ends of the earth. The purpose of the book of Acts is to show us that the church It's to show us how and why the church became something other than a sect of Judaism, but actually became something that was primarily non-Jewish, primarily Gentile in nature. Acts is showing us how that happened. It's showing us how the gospel went from a small group of Jewish believers to the capital of the Roman Empire. and a major movement in non-Jewish ethnicities. That's really the main thrust of the Book of Acts. It has very little to say about other areas of the world. It has very little to say about church polity and organization. There's some there. In fact, the next two weeks we're going to look in the sermons at Acts chapter 6. because there is some information there about church organization and polity, but it's not really Luke's primary purpose in the book of Acts. Think about the examples that we have in the book of Acts of conversions to Christianity. Are they uniform? Is Luke trying to tell us in the book of Acts, this is how a person becomes a Christian? After Peter's sermon at Pentecost, It's astonishing how little mention there is in the rest of the book of Acts on the topic of repentance. There's not a whole lot there after Peter's Pentecost sermon. And every story that Luke tells about people coming to Christ is different. Sometimes they come to faith in Christ and immediately experience supernatural gifts of the Spirit. Other times they come to faith in Christ, they seem to have the Spirit because they believe, and yet they don't experience the gifts of the Spirit until the apostles come and lay hands on them. Sometimes they experience the gifts of the Spirit almost, it seems, before they hear the Gospel message. It's different every time. If Luke was trying to give us a pattern and say, this is how a person comes to faith, He would have told those stories in a more uniform way. The stories of the churches throughout the Book of Acts are also very, very different. Paul spends a different amount of time in each location. Sometimes they're meeting in a home, sometimes he's renting a lecture hall as he did in Ephesus. The stories are all different. If Luke was trying to say this is what the church is supposed to look like, then it would have been more uniform. It's very unique from Corinth to Ephesus to Rome. It all looks very different. So I don't think that Luke is primarily concerned with telling us this is what church life is supposed to look like. We get a little bit of that in the book of Acts, but that's not his purpose. So we have to be careful as we read historical narratives, particularly Acts, that we don't think that something is normative just because it's recorded for us. Just because this church met in a house doesn't mean all churches have to meet in a house. The church in Ephesus met in a rented lecture hall, a university room. Does that mean all churches should meet in rented university lecture halls? I don't think so. So it's all very different. Paul preached in one location in an upper room until a guy fell asleep and fell out the window. Does that mean that all churches should meet on the second or third story and preach until midnight? No, just because it was recorded doesn't mean that we're supposed to do it exactly that way. There are some principles there, there are some things we can learn, but It's not supposed to be a blueprint for what the church looks like. So we just need to be careful as we read historical narratives, particularly the narrative in the book of Acts, that we don't jump to assumptions about what the purpose of this is or why it's recorded for us. But as we read these narratives, one of the things I want to encourage you to do is to enjoy them. It's a blessing to us that God spoke to us in so many different ways. He didn't just give us law. He didn't just give us letters with instructions, do this, don't do that. He gave us poetry. He gave us stories, and they're engaging stories. I mean, go read the story of Joseph. It's interesting. It's exciting to read, or the story of David. So God gave us these stories. We ought to enjoy reading them. And so I want to encourage you, as you read historical narratives, yes, you can sit and study them and try and figure out, you know, what is this particular episode in the life of David supposed to be teaching me? But sometimes it's helpful just to sit down and read the story of David and to get that bigger picture. If you read the whole story of Moses, you can start to see those cycles and patterns that are repeated, whereas if you just focus on each little episode individually, you might miss some of that and some of the beauty of how God recorded the story of redemption for us. So, I want to encourage you to read the historical narratives, to enjoy them, and you don't always have to be sitting there and reading them and trying to figure out exactly what it's teaching you. Sometimes you can just read it and enjoy the fact that God has given us an engaging story to read, and that's enough. And then sometimes we can, the Holy Spirit will enlighten our eyes to see things. Lauren and I found something, I've shared this with a few of you, I'll close with this. I have read the Old Testament stories multiple times over my life, many, many times. And I've often wondered, as you read the life of David, and he has this guy in charge of his army who is a troublemaker, right? He is constantly causing trouble for David. He's killing people David doesn't want killed. He's opposing David in certain ways. And I've often thought, why? Why is David, is the king of this nation? And we're seeing, you know, We're seeing him expand the empire, expand the nation, and he's doing all these things. Why does he continue to put up with Joab? Why? It doesn't make sense to me. And then Lauren and I were slogging our way through a genealogy a month or two ago. And all of a sudden, I realized why David put up with Joab, through all of Joab's nonsense. Joab is David's nephew. Once I put that piece together, the story took on a whole new light for me. Oh, now I know why David's putting up with Joab being so rebellious and not doing what he's telling him to. It's his sister's kid. Okay, so sometimes reading that bigger, even the difficult parts like the genealogies can help make the stories make sense for us. So just read them in their entirety, enjoy them as stories, but also be aware that they are written by the Holy Spirit for our instruction. Ultimately, they're pointing us towards Christ as the one who resolves the conflict. We see conflict through so many of these stories. Christ is the one in whom all that conflict is resolved as he atones for our sins and the sins of David and the others whose stories we are reading on the cross. Let's close in a word of prayer.