ReFrame Episode 4- Israel's Calling

[Music] The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ reframes everything, bringing hope, life, and meaning to every part of human culture. And yet many others can't see how our faith shapes much of everyday life and experience Sunday to Sunday, the in-between days. Where was Jesus? I didn't think about the whole of who I am, what was I passionate about, and how God uniquely made me. What are God's purposes for us? What does it mean to be made in the image of God? How do we live in the world but not of the world? God wants to make us more ourselves. He is holding all things together, and he is reconciling all things to himself. We're exploring how does the biblical story reframe our story. We live out of our stories, so be located in the story, the biblical story in which God reveals himself, his character, and his life. [Music] Throughout this course, we've been asking the question, how does the Bible reframe every aspect of our lives in the 21st century? How does our faith connect? We started in the first session at the beginning in Genesis, and we discovered that God has a big vision and purpose for humanity and creation. He made us in his image as kings and priests to care for creation and be culture makers. And even though sin entered into the world, it did not negate God's original purposes for creation. But sin is real and has had a catastrophic impact. Sometimes it seems that all of culture is broken and frustrated. We can feel very small in the midst of huge problems. How can we be faithful to God in such a messy world? I suppose my greatest fear starting out as a lawyer was that I would lose my faith. That I had this wonderful experience in college, in law school, a terrific training, been part of a great church, and then that somehow I would get out into the world and I would sort of leave, lose that enthusiasm for Christ. Rich Teem has been practicing law for over thirty years in Russia, Australia, and now Washington DC. When I was in law school, you know, there was a segment of my peer group that viewed going to work for major corporations or frankly going to work for major law firms like I was doing as sort of selling your soul. Kind of made you think, you know, am I really doing the right thing with my life? Is this a good thing or not? There would be then examples that would be highlighted in the corporate world that, you know, would be held up as reasons why all these people were without any moral fiber and would do anything for profit. My particular era, it was the Ford Pinto cases, which are now, you know, bygone part of history. But Ford had this Pinto, it's been long discontinued, but it was a very successful car. The only problem it had was a fundamental design flaw. They put the gas tank too near the rear bumper, so in rear-end collisions there were frequent explosions and fires. And, you know, faced with this at Ford, they made a judgment, at least initially, not to redesign the Pinto. And, you know, obviously this would bother anybody, right? I mean, I wasn't feeling like this is outrageous. Rich was meeting regularly with Tom Skinner, a well-known pastor in New York City. The problem is we take our hang-ups and we deliver them to other people. We can't do that. If God puts people in a particular thing, pray for those people and let them be sought there. Let people be in the world. And so I remember one night at one of these dinners with Skinner, you know, we were sitting around and somehow this case came up and I said, you know, I would never go to work for Ford Motor Company. I would not want to represent Ford Motor Company. And Skinner just, you know, he was a big man and I remember him just leaning back. There's Terry said, well, tell me, would it be any different if you were in the boardroom as a woman? He went up, he said, well, I want to know. I mean, what if you were in the boardroom? Would the decision be any different? And I thought, well, why are you asking me this question? I don't want to be in their boardroom. I don't, let me wait, you know. But it was so provocative and it caused me to, I think, sort of fundamentally adjust my thinking about this and then begin what for me was kind of a long path of what does it mean to be in the workplace trying to do the right thing. Was there a way to bring my faith into that that would, you know, what, could it make a difference? Many of us feel that the problems of the world are just too big and that it's impossible for people like us to make a difference. What does the Bible have to say about this? In this session, we're going to look at the next big chapter of the Bible, the story of Israel, to understand how God goes about redeeming a messy world. The Lord said to Abram, go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse. And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. [Music] Story is one of the ways we form identity, one of the ways we develop a self-understanding, and not just self-understanding but understanding of who God is and what God is doing, what his purposes are for creation and for its creatures, which is us. And yet for all the importance of story, we live in a day and age where the biblical story, and perhaps especially the Old Testament story or our vested interest, is largely forgotten. And it's not just the biblical story that's forgotten. As Elizabeth Acta Mayer has written, we are living in the midst of a society and a people who have lost the story of their lives altogether. And yet, as French philosopher and Christian mystic Simone Weil observes in one of several books she wrote in her 34 years of life, to be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. Now, against this backdrop, we are hoping today to convince you that there is some good news, some very good news indeed. In fact, we have a story. In fact, we have a family history. As the Apostle Paul stresses in a few places, we who are followers of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, are children of Abraham by faith. Whatever may be our biological family history, whether we remember much about it or not, we have a spiritual family history that involves God's mission to redeem and repair a broken world. God's story is our story because he's invited us to be a part of it. My task is pretty simple. All I have to do is cover 1,800 years of the Old Testament story from the call of Abraham to Jesus. So following the precedent and in pursuit of this key theme, how does God work to redeem a broken world? I want to follow Matthew's genealogy, which will give us a bit of structure, and I want us to look at this history from Abraham to David, from David to exile, and from exile to Jesus. So from each of these stages, I want to emphasize a key truth about how God pursues his redemptive mission in a messy, broken world, how he moves his story, which is also our story, along. And I hope we'll see these three key things. First of all, we're going to notice that God moves his story along by calling ordinary people to trust him. He keeps that story moving even when people fail him, and he brings the story to glorious fulfillment in Jesus. Indeed, he guarantees a happy ending. And my hope is that we will come away more convinced than ever that because God guarantees the forward movement of his story, which is our story, we can embrace life with joy and freedom. So let's begin our race through the Old Testament story. Genesis 1 to 11, in just 11 chapters, we read of God speaking the world into existence and ordered existence, of placing humanity at its center. We read of the first humans' catastrophic fall into sin and of paradise lost. Relationships become strained with God, with others, the natural world. By Genesis chapter 6, human wickedness has become so rampant that God expresses grief for having made humans at all, and only Noah with his family is spared in the flood of judgment.

in-between days where was Jesus I didn't think about the whole of who I am what was I passionate about and how God uniquely made me what a God's purposes for us what does it mean to be made in

the image of God how do we live in the world but not of the world God wants to make us more ourselves he is holding all things together and that he is reconciling all things to himself we're exploring how does the biblical story

reframe our story we live out of our stories so be located in the story the biblical story in which God reveals himself his character in his life [Music] throughout this course we've been asking the question how does the Bible reframe

every aspect of our lives in the 21st century how does our faith connect we started in the first session at the beginning in Genesis and we discovered that God has a big vision and purpose for Humanity and creation he made us in

His image as kings and priests to care for creation and be culture makers and even though sin entered into the world it did not negate God's original purposes for creation but sin is real and has had a catastrophic impact

sometimes it seems that all of culture is broken and frustrated we can fall very small in the midst of huge problems how can we be faithful to God in such a messy world I suppose my greatest fear starting out as a lawyer was that I

would lose my faith that I had this wonderful experience in college in law school at terrific training been part of a great church and then that somehow I would get out into the world and I would sort of leave use that enthusiasm for

Christ's rich team has been practicing law for over thirty years in Russia Australia and now Washington DC when I was in law school you know there was a segment of my peer group that viewed going to work for major corporations or

frankly going to work for major law firms like I was doing as sort of selling your soul kind of made you think you know am I you know am I really doing the right thing with my life is it

really is this a good thing or not there would be then examples that would be highlighted in the corporate world that you know would be held up as you know reasons why all these people were without any moral fiber and would do

anything for profit my particular era it was the Ford Pinto cases which are now you know bygone part of history but Ford had this Pinto it's been long discontinued but it was a very successful car the only promise it had a

fundamental design flaw they put the gas tank too near the rear bumper so it rear end collisions there were frequent explosions and fires and you know faced with this at Ford they made a judgment at least initially not to redesign the

Pinto and you know they and obviously this would bother anybody right I mean I wasn't feeling like this is outrageous rich was meeting regularly with Tom Skinner a well known pastor in New York City the problem is we take our hang-ups

and we deliver them to other people we can't do that if duck puts people in particular thing pray for those people and let them be sought there let people be in the world and so I remember one night at one of these dinners with

Skinner you know we were sitting around and somehow this case came up and I said you know I would never go to work for Ford Motor Company I would not want to represent Ford Motor Company and Skinner just you know he was a big man and I

remember him just leaning back there's Terry said well tell me this would it be any different if you were in the boardroom as a woman he went up he said well I want to know I mean what if you

were in the boardroom would the decision be any different and I thought well why do you asking me this question I don't want to be in their boardroom I don't let me wait you know but but it was so provocative and it caused me to I

think sort of fundamentally adjust my thinking about this and then begin what for me was kind of a long path of what does it mean to be in the workplace trying to do the right thing was there a

way to bring my faith into that that would you know what it could it make a difference many of us feel that the problems of the world is just too big and then it's impossible for people like us to make a difference what does

the Bible have to say about this in this session we're going to look at the next big chapter of the Bible the story of Israel to understand how God goes about redeeming a messy world the Lord have said to Abram go from your

country your people and your father's household to the land I will show you I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you I will make your name great and you will be a blessing I will

bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you [Music] story is one of the ways we form identity one of the ways we develop a self understanding and not just self

understanding but understanding of who God is and what God is doing what his purposes are for creation and for its creatures which is us and yet for all the importance of story we live in a day and age where the biblical story and

perhaps especially the Old Testament story or have a vested interest is largely forgotten and it's not just the biblical story that's forgotten as Elizabeth acta Mayer has written we are living in the midst of a society and a

people who have lost the story of their lives all together and yet as French philosopher and Christian mystic Simone vaio observes in one of several books she wrote in her 34 years of life to be rooted is perhaps the most important and

least recognized need of the human soul now against this backdrop we are hoping today to convince you that there is some good news some very good news indeed in fact we have a story in fact we have a

family history as the Apostle Paul stresses in a few places we who are followers of Jesus the Jewish Messiah are children of Abraham by faith whatever may be our biological family history whether we remember much about it or not

we have a spiritual family history that involves God's mission to redeem and repair a broken world God's story is our story because he's invited us to be a part of it my task is pretty simple all I have to do is cover

1,800 years of the Old Testament story from the call of Abraham to Jesus so following the precedent and in pursuit of this key theme how does God work to redeem a broken world I want to follow matthew's genealogy which will give us a

bit of structure and I want us to look at this the history from Abraham to David from David to exile and from exile to Jesus so from each of these stages I want to emphasize a key truth about how

God pursues his redemptive mission in a messy broken world how he moves his story which is also our story along and I hope we'll see these three key things first of all we're going to notice that God moves his story along by calling

ordinary people to trust him and he keeps that story moving even when people failed him and he brings the story to glorious fulfillment in Jesus indeed he guarantees a happy ending and my hope is that we will come away more convinced

than ever that because God guarantees the forward movement of his story which is our story we can embrace life with joy and freedom so let's begin our race through the Old Testament story Genesis 1 to 11 in just 11 chapters we read of

God speaking the world into existence and ordered existence of placing humanity at its center we read of the first humans catastrophic fall into sin and of Paradise Lost relationships become strained with God with others the natural world by Genesis chapter 6

human wickedness has become so rampant that God expresses grief for having made humans at all and only Noah with his family is spared in the flood of judgment which God by which God wipes the slate clean but God's judgment is not always see in

the story of Noah we also see his mercy immediately after the flood God makes a covenant promise it's one of them it's the first of many covenant promises that we will see to Noah he promises never again to destroy all living creatures by

flood this covenant promise affirms God's concern not simply for people but for the whole of creation God has a plan a plan to redeem of people for himself and to heal the world that has been in part at least spoiled so what's the plan

well to answer that question we need to move to the call of Abraham the Lord said to Abraham leave your country your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you Abraham a man of Mesopotamia the southern

Mesopotamian city of or a man of his own time a mere individual is called by God to trust him and obey Him God doesn't specify what he'll be showing Abraham he doesn't tell him when or where he'll show him a land he just asked him to

pull up stakes leave his family and his homeland and go wherever God directs so Abraham is told to go and he goes and we witnessed the first of these three great truths about how God moves his story along he moves it along by calling

individuals simply to trust him and trusting him to obey Him as with Noah so if Abram God again makes a covenant promise if you will but trust me God says I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you I will make your

name great and you will be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you and those who curse you I will curse and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you blessing upon blessing not just for

Abraham but for all of humanity God's full promise to Abraham is sometimes summarized in three words seed land and blessing before Abraham's descendants can grow into a great nation he'll need to have descendants seed and he'll need to have a place to put them if they're

to be a great nation land and for that to happen he needs God's blessing because here's the deal when Abram received this charge and this promise he was already 75 years old and Sarah was only 10 years younger God's promise

to Abraham seemed beyond belief it seemed laughable and the text tells us that both Sarah and Abraham did at some point laugh but you know nothing is impossible with God and so after further decades of waiting God fulfills his

promise of a seed by giving them a son and instructing them perhaps with a bit of laughter on his own part to name him Isaac which in Hebrew means laughter Isaac in due course becomes the father of Jacob and Esau and by the end of the

book of Genesis we find Jacob blessing twelve sons who in due course become the forefathers of the 12 tribes of Israel the promise of a great nation is beginning to take shape but here the plot thickens Jacobs favored son Joseph

is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers and he ends up in Egypt here he eventually arrived rises to a high position because God is with him God hasn't forgotten him even in his distress he hasn't forgotten the promise

he made to Abraham and his descendants God then uses Joseph to save many lives during a seven-year famine and ironically among those whose law he saved were those very brothers who had sold him into slavery josephs father and brothers eventually

settle in Egypt in the north and over a couple of centuries become a great multitude when an Egyptian king who doesn't remember Joseph comes to power he presses these descendants of Abraham into slavery but God doesn't forget them

nor his promise to Abram to promise that he would make them a great nation that they would be a blessing to all nations so God begins to call other individuals and the first is the famous Moses under Moses leadership God delivers the people

out of the land of Egypt and they begin a trek through the wilderness a long trek to the land the land of Canaan that God had promised along the way they come to Mount Sinai and their God makes yet

another promise this time this time his promise is not to an individual but to an entire people the family has grown and many people have actually joined the family and why does God make a covenant will promise well his goal remains the

same he wants to form a people who can live in right relationship with him a people to be a light to the nation's the people to be His redemptive agents seeking Shalom that is right relatedness in all aspects of their life together in

their agriculture in their architecture in their sexual ethics in their creation care in everything there to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation and not just in the religious sphere but in all of society you [Music]

how God calls Israel is just a fascinating reflection of how we really really get the fullness and understanding of who God is and what he does these are not unique people in certain ways they're not already a powerful nation they are in some sense

in this huge scope of humanity an insignificant group in an insignificant world and insignificant time period like all of us at some point in our lives were all insignificant people an insignificant world an insignificant time period and yet God chooses and yet

God calls and I do believe that that's a reflection of how God is found in the ordinary as well as in the extraordinary it's important to look at the Old Testament and not to take it as God's ideal blueprint for a society God is not

saying this is what I want done everywhere it every time God instead is working in history Israel is meant to be an example to the nations of what a society can look like if Yahweh is its Lord and in the Torah we have law that

looks like other ancient Near Eastern law but it's also different it's better it's better to be a woman there than there is anywhere else in each in Near East it's better to be poor in Israel than it is to be anywhere else it's

better to be somebody of another ethnicity in Israel than it is to be anywhere else and other nations can look at it and say you know that that's possible so Israel is living out the cultural mandate of a

kind of Shalom making in Shalom full way of life parallel to the way the church is supposed to love each other so following the Covenant promises of Sinai and giving and the giving of the law and in keeping with the pattern

we're beginning to expect the book of Joshua opens with God issuing yet another call to an individual the Book of Joshua however is not principally about Joshua it's about God and it's about God fulfilling all the promises that he had made to Abraham he finally

brings them in to a land the land of promise in a generation following Joshua however the people of Israel begin to lose their focus and they lose their way they begin to adopt pagan practices of the remaining inhabitants of the land

quite the opposite of the right relatedness that God had in mind the book of Judges which follows the book of Joshua recounts decades upon decades of depressing cycles of sin subjugation sadness and all the wild God continues to stick with his people his

plan is not going to be thwarted simply by human failure but still by the end of the book of Judges it the recurring refrain is everyone is doing what is right in his own eyes something has to change and that change comes in the book

of Samuel it's in the book of Samuel that we have the transition from judges to Kings it's in the book of Samuel that we meet that Shepherd King David but not at first because the book of Samuel doesn't begin with David or even with

Samuel from whom the book gets its name it begins with Hanna now find this remarkable Hannah is in so many ways an ordinary average woman who like many women then and now found herself in a world of hurt she was childless in a

culture where bearing children was regarded as the epitome of the essence of wifely fulfillment and to make matters worse she was not an alone in her marriage to Elkanah perhaps because hannah was childless Elkanah had taken a second wife pnina

and she also wasn't particularly happy perhaps she had been married to Elkanah simply as a baby maid not something that's going to make someone particularly happy pnina was resentful of Hannah and she took every opportunity to make Hannah as miserable

as she possibly could and Hannah was miserable she had some options Ocana had told her that he loved her is not my love for you greater than the love of great more important than 10 sons she had her husband's love she could have

used that as a weapon she could have fought back fighting fire with fire or she could have simply repressed the pain pretended it wasn't so and avoided pnina but hannah chose neither option neither the fight option or the flight option

instead she took her deep pain and her concern to God and she poured out her heart to him and here's the remarkable thing from this honest engagement of an everyday ordinary woman a woman in pain a woman of faith God changed history he

raised up a prophet Samuel and Prophet would become and and this prophet Samuel would be the one to anoint Israel's first two kings so again and again we see this pattern God moves his story along by calling people often very

ordinary people to trust him and obey Him Hanna was not a great leader like Abraham Moses or Joshua she was just a normal everyday person tempted to despair but she chose rather to trust and obey so with the ordinary

faithfulness of ordinary people God can do extraordinary things [Music] we're doing wonderful things to me about the Bible is that there there reader no heroes they were having Sarah faint three strangers who happen to be gone I had no idea probably never didn't

realize it and then these you know the stories of Isaac and Jacob Joseph's brothers home full of people like us they do stupid things and they're still in the story nobody gets ejected you realize it nobody gets thrown out I think in the

West we really have a way of looking at the world the type of individualistic and it's the individual accomplishment that moves Society and at least that's the narrative we often get and in the church we began to operate in the same

way so we look for the superstar Christian by which we can measure our success I talked quite a bit about my mom who was never a pastor who never got seminary education but the spiritual giant that she is mainly she prayed all

the time my mom's ad um a few years ago she showed me her knees and notice that the her kneecaps had split into multiple pieces because she had been so much on her knees hour to three hours a day that

the physical strain on her knees had essentially destroyed her kneecaps but there she is every day in her position of kneeling on the floor furthering that faithfulness and I think those are the stories that very rarely get told in

Christian circles [Music] hannah was not a great leader but she chose to trust and obey now the first king that Hannah's son Samuel anointed his Saul at all an impressive man the kind of King the people wanted but Saul ultimately fails

because with all his external qualities he lacks any real trust in God I believe from all that the texts tell us so Saul fails again and again despite his good intentions at times or at least at first again and again he fails to trust and

obey David on the other hand though handsome enough in his own right is not a big man like Saul David is easily overlooked he isn't even invited when the prophet Samuel is sent by God to David's father Jesse to anoint one of

his sons little Eve little David is left behind with the flocks as David's big brothers filed before Samuel Samuel is impressed but God has to remind Samuel not to judge by outward appearance humans look on outward appearance but

God looks at the heart so David is brought and anointed to be the next king God's choice and once eventually established as king and dwelling in his own house David wants to build a house for God he wants to build him a temple

but instead God makes another remarkable promise you'll not be building me a temple you'll not be building me a house but I will surely build you an enduring house what's more your house and your kingdom shall be made sure before me

forever your throne will be established forever even sin david's or his descendants will not ultimately derail god's gracious purpose to bless and to prosper this house of david and through this house of david the whole world the arresting magnificence of God's promise

to david has led many readers to consider this too the theological summit of the Old Testament well as we know David does sin rather royally you might say adultery and murder kind of hard to top how can we forget that sordid tale of David's

crimes against Bathsheba and Uriah and David's sons and his descendants also sinned repeatedly but God never gives up in David's case he sends a prophet Nathan to expose to David the depravity of his own heart and when David faces

his own sin he repents fully and genuinely and God spares his life and so here we see this second important truth not only does God call ordinary people to trust him but he keeps his story moving even when people fail him God's

onward march to redeem a broken humanity and to restore Shalom is not ultimately derailed by human failure by our failures so today vyd and Bathsheba is eventually born Solomon Solomon that great enigma why is this man who was ever born it

says in 1st Kings 3:12 a man richly blessed by God and yet Solomon incredibly ends up turning his back on God or at least he turns from following God with all his heart and how wise is that how that happened well the

narrative rather subtly communicates to us that it happened gradually incremental II a little at a time first we read that Solomon began to marry foreign women he married the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh even though God had said that Israel's king should not rely

on political marriages he begins to collect horses and chariots even though God had said that Israel's Kings were to trust in him not in military machinery he begins to levy heavy taxes on People of God even though God had

already richly supplied Solomon's every need and had explicitly said that Israel's kings were not to accumulate gold little by little Solomon is corrupting relationships he is destroying Shalom no big definitive leap of unfaithfulness at least until the end just repeated

small steps of disobedience small steps in the wrong direction after Solomon the kingdom is divided into two kingdoms the Northern Kingdom called Israel and the southern kingdom called Judah the northern kingdom lasted about 200 years before being taken into exile by the

Assyrians the southern kingdom survived for another hundred fifty years before being taken into exile by the Babylonians these exiles found them again found themselves again in a foreign land and in essence in slavery a tragic and terrible ending it seems to a

story that held such promise promise of Shalom of right relationships restored so is that it then is at the end of the story you can well imagine that those in exile who were steeped in the promises of God were asking themselves is that it

is that the end of our story well well God had an answer and the answer is no a resounding no God made a promise he'd made a promise to Noah and to Abraham and to Moses and to David and

God keeps his word he never forgets his covenant promises be they to a single person a family all of humanity all of creation so how does God keep that promise he keeps it by sending Jesus Jesus the Davidic King the true

Israelite the son of Abraham the Redeemer and reconciler of all our race and it has been a race through eighteen hundred years of history has revealed three key truths about who God is and about his program to redeem a

fallen world we have seen that God Word moves his redemptive story along by calling people ordinary people like you and me to simply trust him and obey Him and when he says go go and he keeps the story moving along even when these

ordinary people fail him as we often fail and he brings the story to glorious climax and fulfillment in Jesus we have a God worthy of all our trust we have a God who is bigger than all our failures

and we have a savior who guarantees the happy ending could there be a better story to be part of than that [Music] for Christians the story of Israel is part of our family history we learn about a people called to be God's people

to be a blessing and a light but as people living after the coming of Christ is the Old Testament really all that helpful to us today the Old Testament often seems very different to the New Testament confusing difficult I think

it's important to recognize that reading the Old Testament is dangerous it's dangerous because it is an adult book meant for adult readers it deals with sex and violence and power and loyalty and betrayal and marriage and adultery and life-giving and death-dealing but if

you do read it well it's just full of power it just turns lights on it does work it gives you the outlook that Jesus and the Apostles had and on which they built and it's just necessary how do you

make sense of the New Testament without the Old Testament the whole Canon of Scripture speaks to God's character and one of the key elements of God's character is that he is faithful I find it fascinating that Israel has so many

faults and one novel in the entire history that you see is this repeated rebellion against God and yet God remains among them because he makes a covenant with him and God has taken no ordinary people like Israel like the

church today and have done extraordinary things not because we're extraordinary but because he's an extraordinary God the people were read about in the Bible are ordinary regular people like you and me the story of Israel is a testament to

the narrative God in the ordinary spen complexity in daily life earlier we saw that rich teen was afraid he'd lose his faith working for a secular law firm but felt challenged to be God's representative in the midst of

our messy world it wasn't too long before he got his first chance to do this we were representing a company whose chief executive officer was going through a divorce this company asked rich to exclude a future bonus that the

CEO was going to receive I said well I mean why would I why would we do this what's going on and the guy were first said well our client told us that he's in the middle of the divorce and he does

not want his wife to find out he's making an extra three million dollars I said well it doesn't seem to me that that's the right thing I said moreover I think it makes the law firm look bad and

he said look we don't represent his wife okay we don't even represent him we represent the company our client they're telling us what to do go do it I went back to my desk I wrote this list I thought this is just not right so I

went back to him I said look I'm not can't do this and so he said I'll tell you what let's take it to the head of the department I was the second or third year lawyer I was laying what was I do I

made my case and he chased said thought about for a few minutes he said Ritchie said edge right about this we don't represent her it's not our responsibility but he said we're not going to do it because it's just not

right and I thought I felt that so I just felt sort of indicated that it was okay to talk about what was right and wrong in the in that context but it was just kind of a confirmation that what

Skinner had put me on to was just a an important way of thinking about what I was doing I think there are some kinds of opportunities for heroism where you do the right thing and it's great and you

write the wrong and put the vast majority of situations I mean are just everyday you're sort of struggling with something that's just far more grey studying the Old Testament just helped me appreciate that fallible people are still used by God in ways that what you

really can't figure out not in ways that I can necessarily see or I may never see but but you trust our part of what God's cosden [Music] we've learned that the story of Israel is to church his family history

it helps frame our understanding of who God is and how he calls ordinary people to trust him and be a blessing in the world today the Old Testament shows us God's covenant faithfulness working out through history even in the midst of a

broken world and this is a huge encouragement to us that got us with us wherever we go and in Jesus he guarantees the ending this is the climax of history and our next exciting episode [Music] you [Music]