Week 15: Teaching Tough Texts with Melissa Kruger | Word First

welcome to 52 weeks in the word I'm your host trillia nubo and I'm grateful to have my good friend Melissa Kruger on the podcast Melissa is an author and serves as the director of women's content for the Gospel Coalition Melissa I'd love your help with something um we have been reading through Kings First Kings and I know that you teach and you love the Bible and and teaching through and thinking through hard text sometimes we don't really talk about it we we kind of just read or skip but I'm I want the person to keep reading let's look at any text your your choice or chapter in First Kings and help us consider how to read it and if we have time maybe even think about it how to teach it no that's great that's great um it is interesting right when we're reading the Bible it can feel like um one sometimes it can feel like well haven't I heard it all before I mean you know I covered the children's Bible in preschool or something so like all these stories are very familiar in some sense but then at the same time you get really in the weeds and you're like huh this is a lot different than I thought it was you know from just the children's bible stories that I kind of have in my mind and so one passage um that I love from First Kings is actually First Kings three um and it's Solomon's Prayer for Wisdom um and that's the heading that someone along the way gave it um but it it's it's Solomon as he is first coming into his kingship and I love what's happening in Kings we're starting to understand okay you know thankfully if you've been reading the Bible new year you've seen all the history of you know God creating the world in Genesis you've seen all of these other macro things happening and then he keeps on narrowing he Narrows to the person of Abraham and then he's going to be narrowing down to the king the David Kingdom and now we're seeing the first son of David come into His kingship and um so yeah I think the book of Kings I think one thing I would always say with anyone who's reading the Bible is to be comfortable with not knowing everything and it's okay to do that you know I think sometimes we get stuck on one part and we think oh I don't understand what that means and we quit um and you know this about me I was a math major actually and I had to get really comfortable with not knowing what I was doing a lot of the time and jumping into a problem not knowing the end and not knowing the answer and thinking well that's the whole thing we've got to figure it out and so one thing I always encourage people as they're reading the Bible through in a year is to remain curious don't think you you have to have all the answers but be curious about the text and so in this chapter three when we open it up and it's interesting how it begins because it says Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt um and here we have Solomon and you know if you know about Solomon's um lineage he is actually the son of Bathsheba and so we have um not David's most Stellar moment um in his life and here we see his son already following um in problematic situations and what I would say it's interesting that this is um a chapter where Solomon's going to ask God for wisdom because I think what we see as this chapter opens up is huh well he sure needs wisdom because he's not starting off well and actually this is the very thing he he's going to have the wisdom but the very thing that's going to get him in trouble later and that's what this passage is setting up here at the beginning are them his many wives and how they're going to actually keep him from being the wise King he should be they're going to keep pip from Full Devotion to God and so we have this at the beginning you know he's made this alliance with pharah king of Egypt now if we've been reading the Bible in the year that should give us big ding ding ding ding red flags my first question is why is he going back to Egypt you know we if we've just finished you know Genesis Exodus where are they exiting from in Exodus Egypt and now here he's going back and making this marriage Alliance and I think I mean you know I'm looking at it through the lens of the New Testament and foreshadowing what we often want to do and we want to follow God and make an alliance with sin you know it's kind of this is what Egypt kind of represents metaphorically in the Old Testament is going back to our unredeemed life you know God says no I saved you out of Egypt why do you keep going back to slavery why do you keep why do you keep going back but I actually want to pause there before you continue because you did something that I don't know if everyone would be able to you connected it to the New Testament and to um our battle with sin and and our own Temptations and are going back to our old way into the flesh Etc what what led you to do that what was I know that you've been in the word for a long time so that's probably what led and maybe that's what you need to say maybe that's it you've just been reading the Bible for so long um but but what is what are some hints that that helped you to connect those dots yeah that's a great question truly and you know you're right it is year after year after year of reading that you start to make different connections and that is actually not to discourage I hope that encourages us the the Bible is living and active it doesn't get old it doesn't mean I read it through once and now I'm done you know I'm gonna have to reread it every year of my life because there's still all these new connections to be made and I think that's what's so exciting about scripture it's not a dead book I mean it's alive and it's powerful and effective as it's working it's not just um like reading Jane Austen or something like that where we can be like okay yeah pretty much memorized it at this point I know Mr Darcy and all this stuff you know it's not it's much richer than that and so so absolutely when you look at the themes of scripture what you see is Egypt being this place that represents slavery to sin in the New Testament and so these conclusions you know come from a lot of different places but you even see it even if someone's just reading straight through they would have seen it I mean as soon as the Israelites cross over the Red Sea and there's no food yeah they're sitting around there and they're saying we had pots to eat in Egypt you know and they're just bemoaning and grumbling and complaining and you know it's like they've totally forgotten that Pharaoh was killing their children and all they can remember is the pots of meat and so this is this is I think a lot of our temptation to look back at our life of sin our life of being dead and saying huh that was a good life you know the non-Christian life was great right and um yeah there's just this real temptation and I think what we're going to see is we look at Solomon's life the promises of Egypt meaning the promises of the world the promises of sin never actually fulfill us but Walking with God living in obedience to his commands that's actually what's going to give life and we're going to see in his story um how much basically marrying foreign wives which was forbidden because they would turn his heart away from the Lord and so we're going to see that in his story as the story goes on yeah and with that I'm actually going to pray I'm going to pray for um because we we talked a lot about how sin is deceitful it promises something that never delivers and so I just want to pray for the person who maybe they're um they're hearing this and they've been clinging to the world or they haven't put off sin and they need to confess we have a hope and so with that I'm just going to pray for us Lord ah you are an awesome and holy and just and good God Jesus you are the bread of life you are the light of the world and God I just prayed Lord that as you reveal in your kindness um sin that just clings so closely to us God that that you would help us to put it off Lord God to repent you say in your word if we confess our sin you are faithful and just to forgive us and to purify us God there is light and abundance life and walking in obedience to you God what looks so attractive is not Lord it never produces good fruit it never satisfies us only you do Lord help us to taste the bitterness of it so that we can put it off Lord and turn to you God I pray for anyone who is struggling to to confess Lord that you would give them abundant amount of Grace Lord to Humble themselves before you and to confess their sin and Lord you promise to pour out mercy and Grace and help and God I pray that you would God in your faithfulness I pray that you would pour out your grace so that they receive nothing but that Grace no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus so I pray that in your name and we love you we worship you it's in your name we pray amen thank you Melissa [Music]