Were the Old Testament Saints Wicked? — Stephen Russell — Ep. 221.

Because that's what Christianity is. It's relationship. And, uh, mankind messed that up at the very beginning and went a very bad, uh, direction. And now God is saying, "I'm going to start over. I'm going to—I'm going to do something with this special family, and it's to show the whole world what I really want."

Well, Mr. Russell, it's fantastic to have you back on the Anabaptist Perspectives podcast. It's been a minute since I've interviewed you, and I'm here at Faith Builders, and we figured we'd sit down and record a few episodes with you. So thanks again for—for coming on the podcast. You want to spend just a very brief, you know, 30 seconds, you know, who you are and what is it that you do here? Okay. Uh, I work at Faith Builders as an instructor. I've been here 24 years, and the main subjects that I teach would be Bible, Orthology, and history. Those are the main things. Mm-hmm. And so this is—this is particularly exciting for me because, um, so you wrote a book called Overcoming Evil God's Way.

I think it was like 2008, something like that. Uh, 2006. 2006. It came out in 2007. Okay. So 2000—yeah, 2000. So it's been a minute. And, uh, you just finished updating and revising. Second edition is now out. It just—just released. And of course, I was—I was very excited to get a copy. So you—you—it's a book on non-resistance, uh, which is something we've talked a lot about on this podcast. But you have a really interesting concept in here in—in this book, um, called Uplift Through Covenant is—well, that's the name of one of the titles, but I'm going to just hit a few points and then we can go from there. But, um, so in chapter four, you make—you make this point, and I'd love to hear you—you flesh this out a bit.

Um, it is—it is possible to see that the Old Testament, rightly understood, shows God leading His people towards a higher calling, a life of love, peace, and non-resistance. Now, when I read the Old Testament, and I think when most people read the Old Testament, um, I look at that and be like, "Hmm, non-resistance, peace, love. Okay, maybe." But like, there's—there's people in the Old Testament that do some really evil things. There are. So how do we reconcile all this? And I'm sure you probably go into it more in the book, but I'd love to hear you respond. You know, okay. Well, um, you know, God started, uh, His creation by making Adam and Eve in His image.

And, um, as I understand it, He was going to mature them. Well, they fell. And so, um, that brought sin into their lives. It brought disruption into their lives. And that continues on with their descendants. And so God's original intention was a beautiful, uh, maturing to—to, uh, wonderful relationship both with God and everyone else. That gets messed up. Well, um, God shows His will in the Old Testament, even right at the very beginning. He, um, promises a Savior as soon as the fall happens. Uh, but then what's interesting is when the first really bad sin happens, as far as it's irrevocable, you can't—you can't do anything about the murder of, um, Abel. When that happens, um, it's—it's so interesting to read carefully, slowly, what the interaction between God and Cain.

God intervenes before Cain does anything and says, "Sin is at your door, but you don't have to let it, uh, take you away from me." So, uh, God already is talking to, uh, Cain about seeking His help. Well, He doesn't. He kills his brother. And then, um, when—when God confronts him, God takes him away from the thing that he loves. He's a farmer. And God says, "Now you're going to be a—a nomad. You're going to travel over the earth. You're not going to be settled." And—and Cain cries out, "This is too much for me." And He also says, "Anyone who finds me will kill me." And then God puts a mark on him. And this is important.

God tried to keep him from sinning. And then once he sinned, God said, "No, no one's going to kill you." Now, remember, this is the first murder. And if God's heart was to, uh, execute the murderer, then He would have said that then. Now, later on in the law, it says that a murderer should be executed. But here's the first time this has happened, and God preserves his life. Why? So that he can repent. That's how I would understand it. So right at the very beginning, when this horrendous murder happens, we see God's heart. Now, now, uh, God gives mankind years to experience what they have done to themselves by sinning. And there's just this downward spiral in, uh, in the Old Testament before chapter 12 of Genesis.

He lets us real feel and experience what happens when you go the route we've gone. But then, so he—he, uh, he takes care of that by, uh, um, the flood. And he saves, uh, Noah's family. But they—they could—they could go the same route. And that's why God then, uh, keeps that from happening by, uh, confusing their languages.

But then the—so—so those first 11 chapters are showing us what man on his own does. And it's not a pretty picture. Then in—in, uh, chapter 12, God starts a different route. He takes one person, and he begins developing a relationship with that person because that's what Christianity is. It's relationship. And, uh, mankind messed that up at the very beginning and went a very bad, uh, direction. And now God is saying, "I'm going to start over. I'm going to—I'm going to do something with this special family. And it's to show the whole world what I really want." But we are broken. We—we have sinned. And it—it takes a long time for God to move those people to where they can actually start to hear His heart through the law and through other things, through His actions with them.

And we, uh, Christians, we have 2000 years of Christianity behind us and 2000 years of Judaism behind that. And we come from families that are Christian families. I don't think we realize how bad we are. And—and so that's why it's—we struggle a little bit with the Old Testament. Those people were very, very broken. And God, through His covenant, through the law, starts to reshape them. And it's a huge battle. The Old Testament is—is God's people continually turning away from Him. And then, uh, in Isaiah, about three times it says, "I struck them so that I could heal them." And so God strikes His people, and then He calls them back, and He heals them. But I don't think we can easily understand in our own heart.

Maybe we can, but I think we have such a good background, a good, um, heritage that we often don't realize the profound brokenness that humans have and that—that God had to work with back there, starting with Abraham. So that's one reason that He does things like He gives a law that this is called the Lex Talionis. He gives a law, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. So that is a restraint. You know, if you hit me, my natural impulse is to hit you back so that you don't do it again. So hit back harder. Hit back harder. And that way you learn. Well, God says, "No." Um, where—where mankind was at that point, He says, uh, "Go ahead."

And you can exact the same thing, but no more. But that's—that's only temporary. That's only to get, um, to try to bring them along in the right direction so He can eventually tell them, "Love your—love your enemy." Mm-hmm. You can't do—you can't start there. So it's like this incremental process that we're seeing building through the Old Testament. Is that a proper way of saying it? That is what I see anyway. And, uh, just about anything that's in the New Testament, maybe not everything, but just about anything, you can see either a hint or an actual, um, passage that's like, like, um, "Vengeance is mine. I will repay." That is in Romans, and it's a quote from, uh, from the Old Testament.

Mm-hmm. So I was going to say, I think there's a—there's a fair amount of those, right? That we often miss, right? That we often miss. Do you have any other examples just off the top of your head? Well, I mean, Jesus is asked, "What is the, uh, what's the—what's the main law?" And He says, "It's to love God with your whole being." And then the second one is like, "It's to love your neighbor as yourself." And that is in the script. That's in the Old Testament. Now, in the Old Testament, the context is, "Love your Jewish neighbor." And Jesus expands that by the, the, uh, story about the Samaritan. Yeah. Who's my neighbor? Yeah. Yeah.

Who's my neighbor? Yeah. And, uh, so, um, my neighbor is whoever I happen to rub up against, you know, and, and whether it's, uh, a person who's, um, of a different race or a different religion or whatever the thing is, um, I'm supposed to love him the way I love myself. Mm-hmm. That's—that was, you know, if—if we hadn't fallen, that's—that's what we would be. We'd be people who love other humans. But, um, we've—we've strayed really far from that. And then, uh, the—the Old Testament was to bring us to the place where the Messiah could come and tell us what He really wants, you know, fully makes—makes it fully clear. Mm-hmm. So, um, yeah, I think the Old Testament has some pretty startling things, but I think when you read it all as a connected story, that it's God, our Father, patiently working with us, just like you work with your children.

You don't expect your little boy who's six months old to start walking, and you can't command him to walk. But you work with him, and eventually he starts to walk. And once he starts to walk, then you want to see him run and maybe run in a race and maybe win a race. Well, I think that that's the story of God with His people. He's working with us patiently like a father works with his son. Uh, and then as—as the son, uh, advances, you know, God cheers him on and—and—and shows him more, uh, more of the way He wants him to advance. Mm-hmm. It's—it's, um, I think there's this tendency to look at something like non-resistance, be like, "Well, this is just this really new thing.

Jesus gives us, you know, a sermon on the mountain." Boom. Mm-hmm. Um, you're—you're saying, "Well, no, it's a thread all through scripture." Exactly. All the way through. Mm-hmm. But it's also a thread that, um, God—God doesn't give us the whole thing at once. Mm-hmm. And so He's—He's building up to where finally He can say, "You should even be willing to lose your life rather than take somebody else's to defend yourself." Yeah. He doesn't start there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes—yeah. That—that seems to make a lot of sense. And—and again, it's kind of a struggle when you're reading the Old Testament. It's like, "Wow, these are some hard, hard stories," you know? And—and I think maybe perhaps that scares some people away.

Perhaps, uh, like, uh, there's something about, uh, just how raw it is. And—and I don't know. Do you—do you want to comment on that? Is that God wanting to show us how bad humans can be or—or how far—how much redemption we need? That's what I think better. The better way to say it, how much redemption we actually need. So we actually benefit from—from history, from our tradition, from our families in ways we don't recognize. Uh, so we have built into us already some things that God was working at building into the Jewish people in the Old Testament. Um, so yeah, uh, we—we just hardly even know how, uh, how bad we could be. Hmm. But—but yeah, I guess I'll—I'll leave it at that for right now.

Yeah. That's—that's excellent, though, because I do. Maybe that's one of the—there's something profound about that, getting a window into that, that we receive that through—through the Old Testament, though it's hard. Like some of those stories are just like, "Wow, that's—that's—that's really bad stuff," you know? It's really evil. Well, you know, one of the really interesting things is, uh, that—that concept of, "I strike you so that I can heal you," is really important. And, um, the whole time from the—from the time the Jewish people get into the promised land, and then soon at—soon after that, they have a king. And all the way through those kings, some of them lead the country well, and the people seem to turn to God during those times.

And then other kings, um, they hedge their bets. And instead of just worshiping Yahweh, they'll worship Yahweh and Baal. If you read carefully, there's—it's not too often that the Jewish or the Israelite kings, the ones in the north or the ones in the south, abandon Yahweh. It doesn't happen a whole lot.

Usually, they're—they're worshiping Yahweh. And then to hedge their bet, they'll worship Chemosh or—or Baal. And so—so there's this. But right at the beginning, when they came into the promised land and were given the law, it said, "Don't worship other gods and don't worship me the way the Canaanites worship their gods." And we—and the Israelites did that. So, for instance, the golden calves in the northern kingdom, when the two kingdoms split, the, um, Jeroboam built a temple in the north and a temple in the south. That's already going against the word. Uh, Deuteronomy said, "I'm—there's—you're going to—I'm going to show you a place to build the central place of worship," which is fascinating. He didn't tell them what it was going to be.

So he said, "He said, I'm going to give you one central place of worship." And I think that's to indicate God is one. That's a—it's a huge thing for the ancient world to learn. They looked at—they looked at nature and they said, "There's a God of—of, uh, the—the sky or the guy of—of a God, I'm sorry, a God of thunder, a God of the sea, a God of fertility."

Uh, it makes sense. They look at all the powers in nature and they thought they—they thought they were divine. Well, that's what God was working against, that there is but one God. And there's one place you worship Him, Jerusalem, at the temple. Well, instead of doing that, they continued to worship Yahweh, but they would, um, you know, they'd also worship the fertility god or the god of the storm or the god of the sea.

And finally, God said, "You have to go into exile." That was the—the supreme punishment in a way, because the Israelites at that point had four things. They had—they had—they were people, and they had a land that had been promised to them. They had the law through, uh, through Moses. They had a king through David, and they had a temple, this special place to worship Yahweh. They lost three of those, and they were thrown into exile. They lost a king, they lost the land, and they lost, um, the temple. And then they were thrown into Babylonian exile. And you know what?

Those that weren't really serious, I think, became Babylonian pagans. Mm-hmm. But those that were serious, they got together and they started a new institution. They started the synagogue. What do you do at a synagogue? Hmm. You read the law.

The priests were scattered throughout Israel before the exile. And the reason was so they would teach the people the law. Apparently, they did not do a good job. I think it was Jehoshaphat that, uh, told the priests, "Now you're supposed to teach the people." They didn't really do it. Oh, this is fascinating. I've never—I've never thought of that before. Well, now they go into exile. Okay. They've—and they've got one thing. I call them the mainstays of the—of the Israelite people. They've got the law. They start the temple.

Every Sabbath, you read a part of the law, and you talk about it, and you pray. And those that stayed faithful became more faithful, became more knowledgeable, and understood Yahweh better than their—than their forefathers had. And when they come back, there's very little, um, of the kind of idolatry or mixing of religion that happened all the time before the exile. So God had to, just like He had to do the flood, God is—God doesn't want to punish us, but He did the flood, uh, because it was necessary. It was—it was necessary to do the exile, to get these people to the place where the Messiah finally could come. It's like, again, that incremental thing. It's like, "Okay, the next—the next piece."

And the next is like, "We're slowly building up." And then Messiah. And so for even—even before the exile, they had all—they had the law, but then they got all these prophets telling them Isaiah is beautiful. Uh, it's—it's 150 years before the exile, and at least the first part of it is. And he, uh, he tells them, "Uh, you're—you're sinning against me. Um, I have a—I have an accusation against you. And so please straighten up, but you're not going to. You are—you are going into exile. I am going to strike you." But then he also tells them what's going to happen later. So there's this—there is this picture in Isaiah of, um, our—our wandering away from God is going to bring, uh, repercussions, but God is not going to give up on us, and He's going to give us this glorious future.

Mm-hmm. So they had something—they—they had something to look back at and say, "You know what? We earned this." And they also had something to look forward to, and they started trying to understand who this guy—who this God is, who Yahweh is.

Okay, so this is—this is one I'm really curious about. What do you—how would you respond to those people who would say that this non-resistant ethic, this, you know, uplift through covenant, all of that is already present there in the Mosaic law? What would you say? It is or isn't present? It is. It is present. Yeah. Well, I think it is. Okay. It's—and like, how so? Like, can you explain that? It's sometimes—it's sometimes—well, first of all, um, well, I would—I guess I would say, first of all, it's in the Torah, which is, uh, maybe—maybe you're thinking of the law that Moses was given on the mount. I'm thinking like, yeah, no, the Torah. But—but like the story that I told about Cain and Abel.

That's so clear what God wants. This is God's heart. He doesn't want the death of a murderer. He wants conversion. He wants the murderer to repent for what he did. So I think that right there at the very beginning, you get this beautiful story that God is, is, uh, doing what it takes to bring us back to Him. And the law itself is—is actually, uh, that as well. Um, Jesus—Him—now, it sometimes it's not clear in the law itself, but then Jesus says in—in Matthew, um, you've—you've heard it said, and then he will quote something from the law, although at least one time he just says a—a standard, uh, conception that the Jewish people had, but it wasn't really from the law.

But usually it's from the law, but I say unto you. And so he talks about this eye for an eye. And that is not really God's heart. It's a restraining thing. Also, the divorce and remarriage, that's not God's heart. It's a restraining thing. Oh, okay. So God is—so—so he's got these people that need to see, first of all, you don't do just whatever you feel like. And so a lot of the law is about restraining, pulling back, keeping the people from doing things they shouldn't do, or at least some of the things they shouldn't do. But eventually in the law, somewhere in the prophets, somewhere it comes out very clearly that, um, God hates violence and God hates divorce.

That's in, um, Malachi. Hmm. So it—it's—you—you find God working with the people where they are, restraining them, but He also points them to what He really—what He really wants. Mm-hmm. Um. Yeah. So another—another piece, um, from—from your book here. So chapter five is called Uplift Through Covenant. Um, one key principle of the Old Testament is that God works with man according to the condition in which He finds him. And that's really like—that's basically what you've been outlining through this whole—through this whole thing, you know? One—one thing I extra I would say, maybe I mentioned, uh, I did mention relationship, but you see what God did was He created beings that were like Him. And that's relational.

God is love. God is Father, Son, and Spirit. So He is inherently love. He is inherently relational. And He wanted—He didn't need—He already had relationships. So He was not like He's lonely and needs somebody. But in His overflowing love, He wanted to create other beings like Himself to share His love with. And that's what He did. That's what we are. Yeah. And, um, and so Christianity is about relationship. And that's why I say that—that, um, that, uh, God works with us where we are. Just like a father is going to work with his child where he's at with the goal of getting him to some other place. He doesn't want him to stay there. Um, just so the Old Testament is about God working with these people, having great patience with them.

I know sometimes it doesn't look like that. We don't have the whole story, probably. But so sometimes we—we read a story and it sounds like God—God's wrath just flared up. Mm-hmm. Um, I—I don't know. I—I feel like probably we don't understand the whole story there. But when you look at the—when you do look at the whole Old Testament and what God eventually does with His people, um, it's about relationship. It's not about follow this law, etc. I mean, you know, relationships require boundaries and restrictions. And so that's true. But the main thing, whether it's the—in the Old Testament or just when we think about relationship with each other, I mean, or how we—um, how we are with other people, it's—it's about relationship.

So God has to, um, that may sound wrong. God chooses to, um, work with these people where they are. And the amazing thing is, um, read the story of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and often the Gentiles are better at their relationships than Abraham or Isaac or Jacob. Think about what Abraham does with his wife. He gives her away twice.

And both of those kings that he gave his wife away to, they were the—they were the righteous person in both cases. Oh, that's such a—yeah. That—that's such a good point. So these—these—these, uh, Abraham and his family, God is patiently working with them. Abraham did not do what God asked.

It says in in Acts 7, this is Stephen preaching. He says that Abraham was, uh, told to leave his family and go someplace God's going to show while he was in Ur of the Chaldees. When chapter 12 of Genesis starts, he's already in Haran, and he leaves from there. And he went there with his father, and he was told not to go with your family. You know, he went with his father and other relatives. Then he goes with Lot. Okay. So the first time that God talks and works with Abraham, he—he doesn't respond completely in obedience. And there's this—God keeps working with him. And then finally, the fourth time God meets him, Abraham talks back to him.

This doesn't make sense. You say, "I'm going to have a child." It doesn't look like it's happening. Um, and then God, I think like that, that he's—that Abraham doesn't just partially obey God, but starts to say, "God, I don't understand this." And—and then from then on, the relationship really grows. Abraham is called, um, or the, um, interaction between the two shows that he is God's friend. And then the last time God meets him, God says, "Take your son, your only son, and go where I'm going to show you, and—and you're going to sacrifice him."

Abraham gets up the next morning right away, gets everything together, and heads out in the direction God tells him to go. That's a big difference from the first time. He doesn't leave right away. It sounds like, well, he does—he don't—he—if he does leave Ur of the Chaldees right away, he goes and stops in Haran, but he also goes with his family. And then he takes part of his family, uh, to the promised land. So he's not really fully obeying God. The last time that God talks to him, he fully obeys God. And he even is willing to lose the thing that, humanly speaking, looks like, "If I—if I kill my son, I won't get the promise that God gave me."

So, um, I—what I think is happening is—is Abraham is learning how to have a real relationship with God and with other people. And then in Hebrews, it tells us that Abraham realized that God could give back his son through resurrection. It doesn't say that in Genesis, but that's what it says. And so somehow Abraham has grown immensely. And that's really the journey all of us are on. I would just argue that it's hard for us to read the Old Testament sometimes and—and with—with all these really bad things happening, when we seem to be further away from that, you know, we—we don't seem to be in danger of doing those things. But I think that, um, I think we actually do have that potential.

It's just nothing in our experience has stirred that—that inner bad guy up like it it was stirred up in the Old Testament. You know, um, in the Roman imperial days, Christians did not go to the amphitheater. But, um, there's a story about, um, Augustine's best friend. So this would be right around the year 400. And some of his friends took him, kind of forced him to go with them to the amphitheater where they're going to kill people. And he said, "I'll go with you because you're forcing me, but I'll—I'll close my eyes. I'm not going to pay any attention." As soon as the crowd roared, he says his eyes popped, or Augustine says his eyes popped open, and he couldn't stop watching.

Now, you know, he saw human blood being shed by another human. He knew that it's wrong. But there's something in us that maybe is immediately repulsed, but there's also something in us that—that's not good. And that kind of gets fascinated by that. I think we're kind of far away from that. And yet, I don't—I wonder what would happen if we were in the same—yeah—situation. So that, um, story about Olympias, uh, I think indicates how Olympias thought, you know, I—I wouldn't enjoy, and I don't want to enjoy the amphitheater. But when he was there, that poison just immediately responded to his broken, his spiritual brokenness. Mm-hmm. And it's just showing how—how much redemption back to that whole thread, right?

How much redemption we need. Mm-hmm. That—that—that is really, really interesting. The part you were saying about, um, Abraham and him learning to come to obedience and faith, really, like believing that, you know, God could raise his son from the dead, uh, you know, if in this. And—and then even this point about how, yeah, humans are very broken. Like there is something about this evilness that is kind of—it can—it can pull us in a way that's, yeah, I—I can't—I don't understand that because it doesn't—it doesn't seem to make sense, but it's true. It's—it's a thing. Um, yeah, I've often wondered that too, like the gladiator—gladiator games, um, you know, that happened back then and were so popular.

And it's like, well, have humans changed that much? Like how would it be today? Like there's still a fascination with such things. Yeah, I think it could happen again. It probably could. Yeah, it probably could. Um, wow, this is—yeah, this is fascinating. Um, so that—that was the last question I had on my list. But is there anything else you want to add or, um, anything else you want to share on—on the episode? Um, I—I'll say one—yeah, I'll say one more thing. Um, we have a really good heritage. I've already mentioned how it actually can sort of insulate us from the pull of some of the evil out there. But that can still grab us if we're not careful.

But I would just like to encourage, um, our young people and even our older people, uh, get to understand our, uh, what—what God has given to us in our heritage. We have a good heritage, and it points us in the right direction. But sometimes we have, um, simply accepted it and not actually exercised either our heart or our mind in really understanding it. And then when trouble comes, uh, or when somebody makes a good argument, um, sometimes we're swept away. And I—I think that, uh, I come from a different tradition, and I've accepted, um, the Anabaptist tradition because I really think, uh, at the—at the basis of it is God's heart. Mm-hmm. Living, living, uh, committing to God through Jesus, living the kind of life that, um, Jesus has shown us, um, not being, uh, tempted and conformed to the world, um, learning to, uh, trust God even in hard times, maybe hard financial times.

And also, uh, the book that I wrote is about non-resistance. And non-resistance isn't that I don't go to war. It's that I love everyone. It's actually about loving like God wants us to love. So that I wouldn't even defend myself. And I hope this is true. You know, you don't know until you get into that pinch. But you should be thinking about it ahead of time. So we need to love everyone, even our enemy, so that we will not harm any other person. And, um, that is a—that's a beautiful thing that won people to Christ in the early church. The early church was clearly non-resistant. And that's at least one of the things that drew people, uh, when they saw these are people that there are a lot of them around, but they don't gang up together and fight us.

They—they—they let us take them to the amphitheater and kill them. Um, we haven't gotten to that place, but, uh, I think we have in some ways let parts of our, uh, understanding what God's word said slip away. And I really would just like to encourage people, look at—look at, um, what the early Anabaptists taught. Look at what the early church taught. And, um, it's really what Anabaptists today are talking about. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Wow. I think that's an excellent note to—to end on with that encouragement. And, um, I just want to thank you for what the—the part you've played in—in that of, you know, writing the book, coming on a podcast like this, explaining it to people.

You know, you do a lot of teaching on it. Um, and I think it's, you know, this is stuff that we need to be engaging with. We need to be talking about. So, yeah, I thank you for that. Appreciate it. You're welcome. Thanks for listening to this episode of Anabaptist Perspectives with Mr. Russell. We've interviewed him a number of times on this podcast, and you can find some of those other episodes linked down below. And of course, you can pick up a copy of his book in the link in the description. Thanks again for watching, and we'll catch you in the next episode.