We’re starting a series on some of the most difficult and thorny and strange passages in the New Testament. How should we approach these passages and how should we maybe not approach them? >> Sean, I love you’re doing this series because at Talbot, we never want to avoid difficult questions or challenging things. We don’t want to give a simplistic understanding of the Christian faith to anyone. But at the same time in academic environments I’ve become aware that we tend to focus on the challenging areas >> the the areas of difficulty and controversy. And you can give the impression that the Bible’s not basically clear that the Bible isn’t actually written mostly by normal people for normal people >> who aren’t experts and aren’t PhDs. And so the clarity of the Bible can be lost. And as one of my mentors said, you can get exogenetaphobia going to seminary thinking you can’t be getting any passage right unless you have a PhD in Greor Roman backgrounds. And that’s just not true. >> So exoggetic phobia, exesus is interpreting, breaking down the passages. Phobia is fear, right? >> So given that we come across these difficult passages, we start to think I can’t understand anything about it. Is that what you mean? >> Right. And and there are some very challenging passages to understand. And I think there are reasons for that. I think God wants us to depend on the spirit. He wants us to to work hard to understand what the Bible says. But the Bible’s mostly clear. That was a basic presupposition of the whole reformation that farmers should have their own Bibles and not just church hierarchy >> because it’s readable. It’s understandable. And so >> in the midst of focusing on difficult passages, I think it’s important to realize that they’re actually the exception. And most of the Bible isn’t hard to understand. It’s very clear and it says what it intends to say. >> Is it okay to come to a passage and say, “I’ve studied this. I’ve thought about this and I really don’t know what it means.” >> I think it’s a really important thing to be able to say. I remember Ray Ortland senior preached at our church one time >> and he got to the passage where the graves opened up when Jesus >> was crucified and bodies came out of the ground >> and Ray Orortland senior said >> and this >> I don’t know what’s going on here and he just kept going and it was really refreshing to people that this wise godly older man with all this experience he just hadn’t figured this one out yet and so I think it’s okay to say, you know what, I’m not sure what that means. And be okay with that. >> So, basically, the tension we want to live in is just getting exaggered phobia and being afraid because there’s certain passages we don’t understand, saying we can’t understand the Bible at all. Yeah. >> And on the other hand, being afraid to say, you know what, I really don’t know what to do with that passage. And being okay with it, >> right? Or have a relative amount of conviction about it, too. I think difficult passages require backing off a bit and saying, “Yeah, this one is really hard to really know what exactly was intended.” So, I’m not going to have the same level of conviction I do on a passage that isn’t hard to understand. >> I love that. And that’s important because some of the difficult passages we’re looking at are isolated passages. It’s not like the death of Jesus or God’s character where there’s one controversial passage. These are strange outliers. And so we have to be willing to say, “I’m not quite certain what to do with that, >> but also match our confidence in an interpretation based on the research we’ve done behind it.” That seems like an authentic way to approach a text. Anything else before we dive into this series? We’re just starting on difficult passages. Are you ready? And like, let’s go. >> Let’s go.