153: Bible Questions: Why is there so much BLOODSHED in the Bible (of both people and animals)?

Bible Questions:  Why is there so much BLOODSHED in the Bible (for both people and animals)?

My students ask, “Why is there so much violence and death in the Bible? I mean, if God is all powerful, why doesn't he step in and stop the violence between people? And if God is all loving and gracious, why

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Does he himself kill

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Or command others to do it? Both people and animals. That is a great question. You could summarize the old Testament with the word bloody. If the old Testament were made into a movie, my middle school students couldn't attend it. At least not. Unless they were accompanied by a parent, the blood flows from the earliest chapters. We saw an episode 22 murders committed between the first pair of brothers Cain. And Abel, we meet lemek a man who murders a younger man and then brags with swagger over it. By the time we get to Genesis six, God describes mankind in the following way.

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Every thought of their heart was only evil all the time. That folks is how on earth before the planet was even dry. After God's start over flood, the blood began to stay in it. Once again, Levi and Simeon murder, a whole village of males, Pharaoh throws babies into the Nile. The Assyrians run plows over the Northern 10 tribes. We also find God shedding blood in the old Testament in Genesis 19, God nukes, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He causes the death of the firstborn in Egypt, then sweep some of Pharaoh's elite army away in the red sea.

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He brings plagues on his children while they wander in the wilderness. And then there's the animals. Millions of them commanded by God to be sacrificed over a millennium and a half heaven knows how many goats, sheep, bulls, and birds had their throats slit and their blood drained. According to the old Testament, a bandaid to temporarily fix a problem between man and God. And this, as we learned in episode 1 52, after God had commanded man to be caretakers of animals and had railed against cruelty, it gets stranger, still folks throughout the old Testament.

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And the new were told God is the God of living. The death has no part in his character. In the old Testament, God created a Nazarite vow for people, especially dedicated to his service. One of the rules of the Nazarite vow was you never could touch the dead. That was God communicating. He's the God of the living. No one associated in service with me is to associate with death. In episode 1 0 7, we find Jesus standing in front of a tomb. The tomb of his friend, Lazarus scripture claims that Jesus was God's son there in front of the tomb.

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After saying he's about to raise Lazarus from the dead something he'd done to people at least twice before in the gospels Jesus bursts into heaving sobs. He's a few minutes from raising his friend from the dead what's he sobbing for many say for what death has done to God's people. We also find that the back of the new Testament, the book of revelation death will have no part of God's Aternity in the future. It will be erased because he's the God of the living. So what's up with all the death and bloodshed. If God is all powerful, why didn't he stop the violence between men?

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00:03:46

And if he's all gracious and loving, why would he shed blood or command the shedding of blood by his people to get the answer to that? We need to go back to the first death in episodes, 18 through 20, we get the story from Genesis chapter three. I suggest that God shed the first blood. He killed one or more animals to provide the pelt to cover Adam and Eve's nakedness backing the tape up further, Adam and Eve were trying to cover up. They felt guilty and shame back the tape up further. They had disobeyed God, God had placed the test in the garden. A test of their obedience.

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00:04:25

God had said to them, enjoy everything, but stay away from this one tree for on the day you eat of it, you will surely die back the tape up further. Still Satan had come to them and suggested God was not good. He was keeping something from them. So they ate in doing so. They threw a switch on the tracks of a perfect creation. They took a side rail, a sin rail, a death rail. It moved them away from their relationship with God and their relationship with each other, creepiness and selfishness crept in. As you read through the old Testament and watch the spilling of blood, there are really two reasons behind it.

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00:05:09

First now sinful man made in the image of God to plan and work together are capable of extraordinary selfishness and cruelty. The Bible is not condoning the violence in the old Testament. It's simply reporting what happens on that rail of sin and death. A real, the new Testament says is hardwired into all of us sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. Thus the first half of my old Testament theme guys and gals are gross. The second reason for death in the old Testament is God stepping in God does indeed directly cause or command the shedding of blood of individuals, cities, or even people groups.

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00:05:56

I explained this way to my students. I draw a dot on the whiteboard. Then an arrow coming out of the right side of it all the way across the entire front of the class. I explained to them from the perspective of scripture, the dot represents their physical life on this planet. The line coming out to the right is their eternal destiny. That part of them made in the image of God goes on eternally. I explained to them what happens on our dot our physical lives on this planet impact the line, our eternal destiny. And not only that, it impacts the dot and the line of those around us.

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00:06:37

I suggested them from scriptures perspective, God reducing the size of our.in order to improve the trajectory of our line or the dots of others or their eternal trajectories is a wise and merciful act of God. Maybe this word picture will help. Imagine your God. You see a young man, get up in the morning and head toward a school bus at the corner full of children. You're God. And you realize in that backpack are explosives as this man walks toward the bus intending to get on and blow it up. You decide to give him a heart attack and he collapses and dies in the middle of the street.

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00:07:18

You reduce his dot. Is that a mean act or is that an act of mercy? And grace has got not prevented him from the guilt of blowing up all those little people on the bus of changing the size of their dots and for many of them, perhaps their eternal trajectory. And what about the eternal trajectory of the parents, of those children on that bus? Do you think God has changed that as well to those who believe all we have is this dot this short time on this planet. It's understandable why the bloodshed in the old Testament, either committed by God or commanded is upsetting.

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00:07:59

But if you believe we're eternal creatures, I think the more you think about it, the more likely you are to conclude like me, God's shortening our dots to enhance the trajectory of our attorneys or the attorneys of others is a wise loving and gracious action. And finally, there's the animals in scripture. Those that God commands to be offered as sacrifices, innocent animals by the millions what's going on here. God is substituting an innocent creature that he values and loves for a guilty creature. He values and loves more. And in doing so over centuries, God is setting us up.

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00:08:41

He's communicating the depths of the problem, us running our lives on a sin rail, in a broken relationship from God and each other. He's setting us up for the future when God who committed the first bloodshed commits the most shocking bloodshed in all of scripture, God, the father sacrifices, Jesus, his son, Isaiah 53 tells us it was God's pleasure to crush his son for our iniquities. There it is the blood of an innocent one being shed for guilty ones whom God deeply loves and values. The new Testament writer says Jesus died once for all the, just for the unjust that he might bring us back to God or in John, the baptizer, his words about his cousin, Jesus.

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00:09:33

There he is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.