Are Old Testament heroes really heroes?

Watch the complete sermon here: https://www.bridges.church/messages/courage-from-caleb-num-13-14-joshua-14/

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. This entire series of hearing the stories of all of our elders, some of our staff, we’ve zeroed in on some specific biblical figures, most recently just the figure of Caleb. But we’ve also talked about David, Jonah, others. The question is, are these figures, especially from the Old Testament, are they actually heroes? Are they people that we should look up to and admire?

You know, you think about David. Yes. He slayed Goliath and took many steps of faith. It was courageous in many occasions. He was also, of course, a murderer and an adulterer.

You look at the figure of Moses, right? He led the people across the Red Sea, into the desert, into the promise, to the edge of the promised land, right? And yet he was also a murderer. He was a bit of a coward. Not wanting to speak in front of the congregation, assembly of the people wanted his brother to do it for him.

Right? Do we look up to these people? Do we admire them? Is it okay to admire them? Are they actually heroes?

And the answer is, they’re humans. So they’re a mix. There is, of course, only one true, flawless hero in scripture, which is Jesus, and everyone else is a mix. Right? Martin Luther used the phrase simultaneously saint and sinner.

If we are regenerating in Christ, there’s aspects of us that are saint, but there are aspects of us that are sinner, right. God is redeeming us, and yet we are worthy of hell forever. And that is we are both of those, right? And we get in trouble if we kind of let go of one or let go of the other. And so in terms of admiring these Old Testament heroes, it’s, you know, chew the meat and spit out the bone.

It’s celebrate what is good, what God is doing in their life, what is faithful and true, and it is not celebrating, and it’s being honest about what is broken. It’s really no different. The people in the Bible are really no different than the people in our lives who we would admire. Whoever your favorite person is, whoever you look up to the most, if you got close enough to that person, if you learned enough about that person, if you really dug deep enough into that person’s life, you would find some really dark and ugly, broken parts of them.

And that’s all of us.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t admire the admirable parts, and it doesn’t mean that we can’t be honest about what is broken. So the Old Testament saints, who are in some ways heroes and in some ways terribly flawed. They’re just like the rest of us, in need of a savior, looking to the final redemption that only comes in Christ. So, thanks for the question, and we’ll see you next time.