CORINTH

Sermon Notes

May 18, 2025

“Scripture Sinkholes and Doctrine Dilemmas”

 

Topic 1: Does God condone violence in scripture?

Psalm 148, John 13:31-35

 

     Today’s scripture readings celebrate familiar topics: God’s faithfulness and love, and how we are to love one another, which makes other passages from scripture, particularly from the Old Testament about God invoking violence on people (note Joshua’s entrance into the Promised land) troubling.  What are we to make of these difficult passages.  Although there are no perfect answers, there are ways we can approach this topic that may be helpful

1.  First, God could be understood as being protective of His creation and people.  Some suggest that for centuries, God had provided opportunity for evil societies to turn back to him, but they refused.  God created humankind with free will, when we don’t follow God’s call on our lives, evil exists.  To allow this evil to continue would harm creation and humankind, so God used Israelite armies to eliminate non-repentant people in order to remove a threat (same could be said for Noah and the flood.)

2. Another approach to this topic: to recognize the tension between how scripture is interpreted.  Some view the Bible as inerrant, without error. Therefore, it must be taken literally.  Others recognize that the message/teachings of the Bible is without error but also recognize the human influence in the writing.  As an example, when reflecting back on the events portrayed in scripture, leaders such as David, Moses and Joshua were not just faith leaders, they were military leaders.  There was a connection between military success and God’s faithfulness.  The bigger the conquest, the more successful God had been.  This view describes humanity’s understanding of God’s purposes, rather than God’s actual character and intention.

Whichever view a person holds, it’s important to acknowledge this: You don’t know the whole story unless you read the entire book.When reading a difficult passage in the Old Testament, it may be easy to think “That’s it, I’m done with this!”Problem is, we haven’t reached the end of the story!The New Testament reveals God’s ultimate act of becoming flesh and walking among us, revealing God’s definitive nature as revealed in the words, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus.When considering the entirety and end of the story, we find God’s authentic nature and purpose in Jesus, who revealed a God of love, who teaches us to love one another.This doesn’t “fix” our questions necessarily, but does give us a different place to focus our attention.