#6 Teaching from the Old Testament

Dr. Smith:
Thank you for joining us on Peculiar People, podcast that helps us think about what is it like to be a follower of Jesus Christ and a fallen world? 1st Peter, Peter says that we are peculiar people, a holy nation, a chosen generation. So how does that affect our thinking and our engagement with the world as followers of Jesus Christ? And we think about these things through a variety of topics. Today we wanted to talk about the preaching and teaching and local Christian congregations and we’re blessed to have brother Dominic Hernandez with us. I should say, Dr. Dominic Hernandez with us, who was a professor of Old Testament interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And as you hear me talking to him, let me just go ahead and put it on the table that I have taught for over a decade at Southern on full-time faculty and then now in adjunct capacity so I certainly feel like I’ll be interviewing a colleague and a brother who has some of the same burdens of ministry.

Dr. Smith:
And so we want to talk about the Bible, the word of God, engagement with men and women, both believers and unbelievers as we think about how to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ, how to obey the great commandment, how do obey the great commission. But brother, thank you so much, Dr. Hernandez, for being with us. We value your time and I appreciate you sharing on our podcast and I’m a people person and I really do believe that before we can totally benefit from the knowledge and experience of someone it is kind of helpful to see, understand who they are. So if you would, would you open and give us maybe a little bit about who you are for someone whose never met you and maybe just a brief element of how you became a follower of Jesus Christ.

Dr. Hernández:
Sure. Dr. Smith, thank you very much for having me. It really is a privilege to be on your show, to be chatting with you in person virtually, I guess we could say at this point, but it is quite a blessing to be here, so thank you. I’ll be happy to share a little bit about myself. So I was born in New York City. I’m one of the millions of Puerto Ricans and exile Puerto Rican, born in New York City. And when I was young, my family moved to the Philadelphia area and settled in a housing sector called Lacey Park, or it was renamed Warminster Heights. And there I lived until I was an early teenager.

Dr. Hernández:
When we moved to that area around that time, early in my life when I was five years old, my father passed away and my mother was left with four children to raise on her own. My mother didn’t have a high school degree, didn’t have a driver’s license so she struggled. And some of those struggles were evidence as we were growing up, but my mother made it through and she had eventually got her GED. She eventually went to college and tried to provide the best for her children and did the best for her children. As I was working toward teenage years, we had an aunt, my mother’s sister, that had become one of these crazy born agains. She had accepted Jesus and started talking like a crazy person and we were from a different religious background. I mean, we sort of understood what she was saying, but we thought we were fine and she was a little pushy so we didn’t know how to take it, but she finally invited me to a Christian concert.

Dr. Hernández:
And at that Christian concert, someone got up and started sharing the gospel. And I remember sharing the same exact rhetoric that she was using but at that point I understood. Now we can put theological terms on that now if we want. But my reality was, I didn’t understand. And then I understood. And that’s what ended up happening. And then from there on I finished middle school, went to high school, I struggled with a lot of the same struggles that normal teenagers would struggle with until halfway through my undergraduate degree. That’s when the Lord really got hold on my life. I was studying kinesiology at a state school in Pennsylvania and was going through a real tough time.

Dr. Hernández:
I was convicted of my sin. I moved to Puerto Rico to get away from my sin and met my wife in Puerto Rico. And so we can talk more about where things went from there but that’s a little bit about my background.

Dr. Smith:
Amen. My family and I, we had the privilege of… towards the end of last year checking in with some of our sin Puerto Rico partners. And so I actually spent all by the week in December in Puerto Rico and was able to go some different parts of the Island and see some of the ministry there and mainly think about some of the church planning efforts. And so we are very excited and thankful to the Lord for some of the things that are happening. Sadly maybe a week and a half after we left, then they began to have a series of earthquakes and so there’s some other things going on.

Dr. Smith:
Oh, one more thing I’ll tell you. In February, our state convention one of our initiatives that we do is a special needs ministry, helping congregations and ministries think about their facilities and ministering to people with special needs. And we did A Night To Shine, which is like a special needs prom sponsored in partnership with the Tim Tebow Foundation and we did one in Cayo Morrillo, right kind of in the middle of the Island and so we were excited. Some of the things that Merlin Delaware Baptist been doing with Puerto Rico lately.

Dr. Hernández:
Well, the next time, please take me.

Dr. Smith:
I would definitely do that brother. So let me ask you something as a follower of Jesus Christ I mentioned earthquakes. Right now we’re in the midst of locking down for the coronavirus as a follower of Jesus Christ as a student of the scripture, kind of over the last three to four weeks how have you been processing me this and have you been thinking about everything that’s been going on?

Dr. Hernández:
This is a question that I… it depends on what minutes of the day you’re asking me. One minute the Lord has got ahold of my heart and I’m thinking about this globally and I’m thinking about what we can learn about the sovereignty and the goodness of God and how he’s provided at this stage, this juncture for me and my family as we sit down to eat meal after meal. And then the next minute I’m thinking about how much I hate staying inside and I turn my attention toward myself. If you want to have real talk, and that was going on with me personally. I wrote a little bit about this on a personal blog. Overall, there have been little things that have been happening that have just reminded me of God’s goodness throughout this very difficult situation.

Dr. Smith:
Amen.

Dr. Hernández:
And I’ll just share briefly. I was walking the other day with my children, a real tough day where there was some explosions in the household and we just needed to get out. So I left the house, I wanted to get my wife some time alone. I’m walking through a neighborhood real close to the seminary and as you know the neighborhoods around here are very, very nice. As I’m walking through this neighborhood out of this very nice neighborhood came this little girl, maybe about six or seven years old and she was looking at my family and she was talking to her mom and she looked back at my family and her mother approached us in a very hesitant way and said, “We made some cards for people and she wants to know if she can give you one.”

Dr. Hernández:
And she gave us this little piece of paper, maybe like four inches or something with something scribbled inside. And I’m just telling you what that did. It reminded me of who I am in this world and this little girl in a time in which everybody’s thinking about protecting themselves. She sat down with her crayons and scissors and she cut paper and then she went out to bless people. I just was taken back by that, so that’s how we’re working through it. Depends on the minute.

Dr. Smith:
Yes. So, and stretching out a little bit from your family as a professor at the seminary, pastors that you’ve interacted with how have they been processing and going back through these things and what kind of questions have your students or former students being asking you?

Dr. Hernández:
It’s really interesting. This varies dependent upon how closely the situation has struck individuals. Dr. Timothy Paul Jones, who was one of my supervisors here at the seminary, has been sharing openly. His daughter Hannah. We’ve been praying for his daughter Hannah was on a respirator for 10 days or approximately 10 days in the hospital for two weeks. The questions that someone like Dr. Jones might be asking or what he might be going through a significantly different than the sort of things that I ask and I go through when I think about this. And same with my students. A lot of it depends on how closely they’ve been hit by this pandemic. And so I think I’ve heard questions from what is the Lord trying to do in this? What’s the Lord’s purpose in this which, that’s one that I’ve heard frequently, to how can we serve others best in this situation as well? Again, it’s a spectrum and it depends on who’s being touched by this issue and at what period of life they are? Depends on so many different factors.

Dr. Smith:
Yes, so I’m going to work through my questions, but just so I don’t forget to say this later, I think a Christian has a harder time thinking through issues of suffering and tragedy without deep treading in the old Testament. Seeing the sovereign actions of God and certain elements of the history of Israel then in subsequently later, the history of the Gentiles as well coming into the church. For example, if one has never wrestled with Isaiah 45:7, “I am the Lord. I’m Lord God, I send the light, I send calamity, I the Lord God, do all these things.” If you haven’t wrestled with that in advance because of your belief in the sufficiency of scripture and the breadth of the Old Testament and all that I think it’s a little bit different wrestling. I know it’s a little bit different wrestling with it existentially when you haven’t already wrestled with it exegetically as part of your preaching or part of your seminary preparation or part of your sermon preparation.

Dr. Smith:
And so later on I’m really hauling in on how I think the old Testament provides existential insights into the character of God that sometimes you don’t get in the truthful epistle declarations about certain things about the nature God and certainly about the son of the Lord Jesus Christ. But before we want to do that, I want to ask one more kind of just going into the COVID type question. You teach at Southern, I saw you tweeting earlier how you love the classroom. So describe to me how you flip from real life to virtual and it seems like you had to do it in about 72 hours. It seemed like the middle of the week. Dr Marla was like, “We’re not having classes on campus anymore.” And it seemed like the next week they were like, “We having classes online.” So tell me about you flipping the script in 72 hours.

Dr. Hernández:
Yeah, I remember we were in chapel on a Tuesday morning. Dr Marla got up after the worship and he said we have to talk about this as a community. And began talking about the COVID-19 issue. At that point, that was the first time he had addressed it as a community. And then by the end of the next day-

Dr. Smith:
Wow!

Dr. Hernández:
… a tweet with a message. It was the very next day saying that that all on-campus classes needed to be pushed online. So really the transition for us happened quite quickly as it did with other institutions. We are not unusual in that. Now, as far as the transition is concerned, I mean, if I could use some new Testament rhetoric, always be prepared to give an answer for the reason of the hope that you have. We are not guaranteed that we’re going to be able to share what we do in any particular setting.

Dr. Hernández:
We have to be ready to do it wherever and whenever we share the good news. My field is biblical studies and I’ll do that, whether it’s through the internet, which we’re doing now, or virtually, or in the classroom or on a bus or in the train or wherever it is. Right? That’s my mentality. These students that we have, they not only sacrifice financially, but they’re also sacrificing their time. Many of them moved, maybe thousands of them moved from other places in the country to come to Louisville, Kentucky, and to receive biblical and theological education at the highest level. And so is our responsibility to provide them with that as best as we possibly can.

Dr. Hernández:
And if the best that we possibly can is through Zoom meetings and letting them know that we care about them and their family, whether it be through emails or handwritten, whatever it is, they deserve that because they are indeed sacrificing a lot to be with us at the seminary. And so I want to do my best to provide that service for my students because that’s what I do for a living.

Dr. Smith:
Yes. Well that is wonderful. I’m very thankful certainly for the ministry of Southern seminary. Probably as of late, maybe within the last five years, it might be older than that, seven years. I’m very excited that a student can basically do the entire MDiv in Spanish and a student can basically do the entire MDiv, I believe in Korean. And so even as we linguistically stretch out our offerings at Southern I’m just tremendously thankful for that. And so now I want to kind of dig into your area of academic training, which is biblical studies. And I want to ask you some questions.

Dr. Smith:
I’m generally going to ask you kind of what you’re seeing and thinking about in the church world. But then I’m also sometimes ask you about specifically Spanish speaking pastors, Spanish speaking congregations the Baptist convention of Maryland and Delaware. I was very happy to come serve here because it’s one of our more ethno-linguistically diverse state conventions in Southern Baptist life model 40 something state conventions, probably only different than California and Texas and maybe Florida. And even there the diversity is maybe black, white and Hispanic or California, Asian, Hispanic or whatever, but in Merlin, Delaware being near Washington DC and embassy life and all that, Montgomery County, Maryland is one of the more ethno-linguistically diverse counties in the country. And so we are constantly thinking about challenges.

Dr. Smith:
For example, I’m always talking with Spanish speaking pastors about just kind of a first, second, third generation type issues as regards to church planning as it regards church revitalization. And sometimes the first generation leader that Paul wants his Timothy and Titus to be a certain kind of person. And that Timothy and Titus has been here and they were raised here. They want to be a different kind of person. And so there’s some tremendous challenges. And I think one of the foundational ways I try to encourage people to work through those, it’s to think very deeply about the efficiency of scripture. And let’s have our discussions rooted from scripture and then let’s put the socio cultural, linguistic things around there.

Dr. Smith:
But let’s start with a discussion of scripture. And so I guess my first question to you is, as you’ve been hearing things and looking around, and I’m hoping you’ll be more optimistic than I am, but, and the pulpits that you observe in the preaching ministries that you observe, do you see biblical sufficiency, not just being kind of verbally recognized, but really shaping the approach to ministry? Adding in these times, what’d you see… what you observe just as a scholar in your area over the last several years?

Dr. Hernández:
Well, let’s talk about the optimistic thing first. I am optimistic and here’s why. Because if everyone was a perfect exigent, including myself, and if everyone always depended upon scripture, then you and I would probably be out of jobs. So I’m optimistic actually. I’m optimistic in the sense that there’s a lot of work to do, but we see progress.

Dr. Hernández:
We are getting better at these things. Now, speaking of the sufficiency of scripture, there is to a certain extent because we are New Testament people because we believe that Jesus is indeed the Messiah and he is ultimately the culmination for in him we have all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Because we believe these things, there’s a natural tendency for us as New Testament people to emphasize certain books that explain some of our truth claims very clearly. And as we read particularly the Pauline epistles and in our circles, maybe Romans and Galatians in particular, we can put ourselves in the position of the interlocutor so we can sort of pretend as we read that Paul is speaking to us. We can’t do that so much when we read Ecclesiastics. We can’t do that so much. When we read Song of Solomon, we can’t do this so much.

Dr. Hernández:
When we read even some of the narratives, there is a longer line that needs to be drawn from the text and what that text mentioned in his original context to personal application. So whereas I think theologically many of the congregations that I have been a part of, or those congregations that I have… most conferences I’ve spoken at or where I’ve spoken those theologically, yes, our brothers and sisters believed that the Bible is sufficient. Believe in the sufficiency of scripture. Pragmatically is what we have some work to do. Pragmatically is where we have to help people preach and teach and apply all the scriptures. Like they say that they actually believe in their sufficiency, if that makes sense. But I am optimistic. I am optimistic because we as evangelicals, believing that God has inspired the very words of the scripture. I think a lot of us actually really want to read and apply it well. You and when I’m in these congregate, we want to do this, we strive to do it but one of the things that I do is I help people through those many difficult passages. That’s what I try to do in my profession.

Dr. Smith:
Amen, you said evangelicals, Let me just on a side note, ask you have Puerto Rico question, so obviously I think in the 48 States that’s a contended terms sometimes just because of the politicization, but I’m wondering, I noticed when I travel certainly throughout the Caribbean and parts of Africa, it’s kind of a theological term, doesn’t have the political baggage. What is that term when someone in Puerto Rico says evangelical, was that term mean?

Dr. Hernández:
That’s interesting that you asked that. The short answer is I think that you’ve made a very good observation concerning that the baggage that the term has in the United States and I actually have seen that develop over my adult life. I’m 40 so things have changed from the time that I started, I guess using that term when I was in my early twenties to now, particularly through the last few presidential election cycles. But my short answer is that I’m not sure of those implications in Puerto Rico and other areas.

Dr. Hernández:
And the reason is because of the Spanish speaking world is diverse in and of itself. And so this type of question is not really answerable for all Spanish speakers, if that makes sense. I’m not sure to be honest with you, if there would be in the minds of Puerto Ricans, if there would be sort of that same type of baggage associated with that term as there is in the United States. I can almost guarantee it’s not the same, but I’m not really sure. That’s my short answer.

Dr. Smith:
Yeah. Well let me put up a statement I use in my preaching classes at Southern and I would love for you as a Old Testament scholar and as the church men too, feel free to shoot at it and engage it and see what you think. And then I’ll also painful because we’ve both interacted kind of in what you might describe as broader evangelicalism. But I have history and heritage and upbringing. One of the historic black denominations national Baptist convention. And then also you have different backgrounds as well. So we have a few lenses we can bring to this discussion. But when I’m in my classes at Southern, I generally say that I think even Bible-believing Christianity in the United States, that pulpit is very epistolary focused on the epistles and then tighter down, as you mentioned there earlier focused on Paul’s epistles. Not even like Peter and John and those types of things.

Dr. Hernández:
Peter or John.

Dr. Smith:
Yeah. So obviously I think that has discipleship implications, but before even discipleship implications, I think it has implications on theology proper. Theology proper meaning the person in the character of God. And so there’s a scholar, Anthony Bradley, at King’s College in New York City and sometimes helping in discussions of race or interactionally in black and white sometimes. I heard him say one time, he says, “How you think about the gospel and discipleship matters depending upon whether you learn the gospel historically in your kind of ecclesiological community, whether you learn the gospel enrollments or whether you learned it in Exodus.”

Dr. Hernández:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Smith:
He would say those kinds of things have severe implications. So I think in a lot of circles I’ve been in and the environment I grew up in, a lot of historic black preaching tradition is anchored and narrative preaching and homes in on the old Testament. Sometimes to the neglect of very helpful doctrinal clarity and expansion that is in the epistles and in the New Testament. Whereas on the other hand, I think much of, if I can say white evangelicalism, those Bible-believing pulpits, many are very focused on the New Testament and even in a more tight way, some that would say heart… describe themselves very clearly being reformed, even focused on Pauline epistles. I mean, I can have students graduate and if I talk to them over the next year or two and they’re in the new pastorate, I say, “What’s you been knowing in your new church?”

Dr. Smith:
They’ll say Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and I’m just like pulling my hair out. Like, yes, all of the scripture is sufficient, like A-L-L give me that word all. One, I’d like to know kind of what have been your observations and two, is there anything distinct maybe from a Hispanic background? Like again, I think the black church is very rooted in old Testament narrative with the exodus being a particular paradigm, whereas I think Paul is a certain kind of paradigm in a lot of American evangelicalism as far as the pulpit. I’d be loved to hear for you to shoot that down or do anything with that.

Dr. Hernández:
So let’s talk about the Hispanic thing briefly as the answer. This is a great question, I appreciate it. My wife is a Mexican immigrant. She moved to United States when she was 22 years old and we married. We met in Puerto Rico. She’s from Mexico. She moved back to Mexico. And then when we got engaged, she moved to the United States or just before we got engaged, she moved to the United States. And people hear us speaking Spanish with each other, particularly people that don’t know Spanish, they hear her speaking Spanish to each other and they might think, Oh, they’re Latinos or they’re Hispanic. Well, guess what? This is actually an international marriage here.

Dr. Hernández:
We speak the same language and those people that speak Spanish within three seconds know that we are vastly different in our backgrounds just because of our accents. Even some of our mannerisms. And my wife will still say things maybe once a month, and I’m like, “What are you talking about? What does that practically mean? Why didn’t you just say it that way?” So let’s start talking about theology. It’s sort of like that. I have students from all over the world and the Spanish language. So I direct the Spanish language program here at Southern.

Dr. Hernández:
We have 547 students. The last number that came out was 547 you made a comment about how students can study a diploma degree, an MA degree and an MDiv degree, completely online, completely in Spanish. Now what does that mean? That means we get students from all over, even from different denominations as well, right? Because the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary primarily serves Southern Baptist, but it doesn’t exclusively serve Southern Baptist. And so in the Spanish language program, because it’s unique, what we’re doing is unique. We have a broad group of people that want the solid, biblical and theological education that you can get at a place like Southern. And so, in that Spanish language program we have different denominations and different people from literally all over the world.

Dr. Hernández:
So we have Spanish speakers from Spain, we have Spanish speakers from Argentina, Spanish speakers from Columbia and then now you… Spaniards for example and Puerto Ricans are very different in many different ways. And Puerto Ricans and Mexicans are very different. We hold a lot in common. There’s a lot of overlap. So when we start talking about theological issues, a lot of this is really contingent upon where we’re talking about. For example, since Puerto Rico is technically part of the United States, some of the theological issues that you see in a place like Puerto Rico are going to be very influenced and tied to a lot of the issues in mainland United States of America. Whereas I was in Argentina last year and that is not necessarily the case. And where I was at in Argentina, literally in a small city in the middle of the mountains and they speak Spanish.

Dr. Smith:
Yes.

Dr. Hernández:
So I know I’ve spent some time talking about that, but it’s really important to say that because not all Spanish speakers are really from the same culture, not all Latinos. In fact, some of it’s quite foreign to us, even as we interact with one another. So I just wanted to mention that. Now, speaking about those people or the different traditions that you mentioned with regard to emphases and different areas of the Bible, I think this is a great illustration of not only why we need one another and we need everybody to tell their stories and be honest about their backgrounds, but we also need to treasure the entirety of the Bible. Now, of course, all of us would sort of say we believe that the Bible is the inherent inspired word of God but in practice, here’s what I’ve noticed. The first nine chapters of Chronicles, which are genealogies can afford to be skipped.

Dr. Hernández:
You can’t skip the first nine chapters of Romans. That’s almost heresy in many of our churches, right? Or even the first nine chapters of Exodus, which is in many of the other traditions that you mentioned that would be considered heresy. That’s a big deal in those books but our view of scripture, so speaking specifically of verbal plenary inspiration, that view of scripture, if we hold that, we actually believe that the words at the beginning of Chronicles are just as important as Jesus’s words.

Dr. Hernández:
We actually believe that Jesus’ words as they are recorded in the scriptures. It’s all part of the bigger narrative of the history of salvation, of what God has done in and with and through humankind, culminating in the person in the work of Jesus, the Messiah and his resurrection from the dead. This is in his return. He will return. All of this is part of that big story. And so we need to do our best to recognize who we are and maybe the traditions in which we’ve grown up. And then I’ve put certain emphasis on different areas of the scriptures and be honest about that and intentionally reach others, maybe different cultural or ethnic backgrounds to help to facilitate us teaching the entirety of the counsel of God and emphasizing it all equally if we can do so.

Dr. Smith:
Amen. So you made a point about people making theological choices or having theological emphases. Let me ask you a communication question. I also challenge our students that some people aside from theological considerations live in the epistles because they think it’s easier to preach. And if you look at the Book of Acts, if you look at the four gospels, if you look at the wisdom literature, I mean other than the wisdom literature, much of the old Testament and the gospel in the Book of Acts is narrative.

Dr. Hernández:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Smith:
And I think a lot of preachers are just not trained and have not given themselves to that type of communication. And then the Psalms and other wisdom literature is a different kind of genre as well other than epistle literature where you’re teaching a didactic truth claim. So communication-wise, does that ring Valid would you that many people struggle with the communication methodology of teaching a narrative text?

Dr. Hernández:
Yes sir. So here’s how I put it. Sometimes to my students, I think we all would much rather be told exactly what to do and have that be clear than have to discern it for ourselves if it’s difficult. So for example, when I wake up in the morning, because I work at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, I put on a suit every single day. So when I wake up in the morning and that suit is… I wish I could wear these way I’m at as every day. These [inaudible 00:29:46] my latino people. But when I wake up in the morning and all of my clothes are laid out, blue suit, blue tie, light blue shirt, my blue shoes, all of that’s laid out and it matches for me. I look at it and I respond to it. I put it on and I know how to put it on because it’s there and it’s shouting at me If we could personify it.

Dr. Hernández:
Now, if I open up my closet on a Monday morning and I look at all the colors there, you know they’re there for me, but I have to discern what to actually put on what goes together here. What can I observe from those colors? That what are they trying to tell me together and which one should I pull out and put together? Now I think that is an adequate illustration to talk about how we learn from epistles and we learn from narrative was one of the major genres that you just mentioned. In epistles can put ourselves in the place of the listener and in most cases these truth claims that the Apostle Paul makes are immediately applicable to our lives and they call us to action. But when we read narrative, for example, the narrator rarely says, reader do this reader do this.

Dr. Hernández:
What the narrator will do is tell you a story from his biased inspired perspective and give you the details so that you as the reader can observe and put the suit or the dress and the stockings or whatever it is together for yourself. And so it is much easier to have that suit laid out for you and just react to it. And that’s what we see to a certain extent in Pauline literature. But on the other side, narrative doesn’t communicate that way. And so we, it’s our responsibility to observe what the text is calling us to do and not necessarily bring to the text how we wanted to communicate with us.

Dr. Smith:
Well, one thing I do is I challenge students to… hopefully they will have a Bible that would either indent or put in italics Old Testament references in the New Testament. And I just challenged them to see how much of the New Testament is teaching and quoting from the old Testament. Obviously you certainly in the gospels, even with the declarations and the teachings of our Lord, the great commandment is not New Testament truth. The great commandment is the Lord Jesus Christ, restating Deuteronomy and Leviticus. And so just being mindful of how many times you… exposing them to, how many times you think you’re listening to the voice of a New Testament writer and you’re listening to him, quote Isaiah, [crosstalk 00:32:24] the beautiful Christological language is Isaiah and it’s just, it’s in the New Testament. So they’re quoting the Old Testament, right? And then I, I don’t know if you can see my screen, but I give them this illustration.

Dr. Smith:
I say “If you talk about the sufficiency of the scripture and you just preach the epistles, that’s how much of the Bible you’re preaching.”

Dr. Hernández:
Yes.

Dr. Smith:
And we really try to press into that. Let me ask you a question here. What tools or tips do you give students to think about communication? I try to give him a trigger, a biography like go back and Matthew and figure out who all those people are, especially the women in Jesus’ chronology and think about why those things would be significant. Think about the tribes the people are from. Why is that stuff mentioned in the new Testament if it’s irrelevant information? And so what kind of tips do you give students to try to help them even think about communicating old Testament truth?

Dr. Hernández:
Yes. Dr. Smith, I will tell you what I tell my students is not dissimilar to what you just said. I actually tell them to read those passages they think they could skip. For example, those, those genealogies, those things that you think you can skip, or some of the sections of the law that they think are just not pertinent anymore like leaving two different fabrics together. One of my goals is to have my students pick up the Bible that they will actually read and read in its entirety. So it’s not really dissimilar to what you just said. I encourage my students to read those difficult parts of the scriptures. Read it all.

Dr. Smith:
Yeah. Sometimes I can tell when people aren’t steeped necessarily in the old Testament. If a pastor who spends his life preaching the word is just tremendously provoked at the sexualization of our culture in the sexual sin and our culture, then I’m like, “Well, I know in his devotions in the last however long he hadn’t read Leviticus 21 – 22,” because there’s nothing sexually sinful that goes on in our society that didn’t go on in Canaan as God was warning his people not to go into that sin. But if you don’t have that background, and when I say background, I mean it’s just like, in your whale. It’s not like something you studying up for a sermon this week. It’s just part of having the old Testament like in your whale. And so you draw from those things. And then secondly, when you spoke of people seeing themselves and they can understand that Paul is teaching this truth claim or whatever.

Dr. Smith:
I do think many believers would struggle to see themselves as the constantly, potentially idolatrous Israelites. And so to put yourself in the story in the Old Testament you putting yourself in the story as one who is highly temptable. Like to him, we sing, prone to wander Lord, I feel it prone to leave the God I love. I mean, that’s kind of the character and the frame. And so to put yourself in that narrative, you have to have a certain realistic biblical anthropology about yourself as a fallen man or woman by the grace of God, but yet still subject to the fall. What do you think about that?

Dr. Hernández:
I think it’s dangerous to be honest about yourself and try to put yourself into that narrative. But our reality is that if we were in ancient Israel, without God’s grace, we would have done the things that the ancient Israelites did. And not all of us would have been Moses and Joshua or Joseph and others. And in fact, what’s really interesting is that you mentioned the women in the genealogy of Jesus. We actually see these women, maybe not as many, but several women coming out of or actually merging into, we could say the people of Israel as well. It’s dangerous I guess to try to incorporate ourselves into that narrative unless we’re willing to actually admit that we would have been part of what was taking place just as much as any other person during that time. I agree, that’s an interesting observation that you made.

Dr. Smith:
We generally… if we want to insert ourselves in a story, we want to kind of assert ourselves in the favor of proposition.

Dr. Hernández:
We’re the ones that are writing it.

Dr. Smith:
Yes. Oh, I definitely would have been Joshua, Caleb. I wouldn’t have been one of the other 10 spies.

Dr. Hernández:
That’s it right there, but all of the texts that we read during that time, all of those narratives make up a much bigger story that Paul is really depending upon when he writes Galatians and Romans. That background, that foundation is what gives Jesus in a very real… well as we read the Bible as a whole, that’s where a lot of what we are seeing Jesus build upon those things that sometimes we as Christians tend to or can skip.

Dr. Smith:
Yes, or overlook…

Dr. Hernández:
Or overlook maybe.

Dr. Smith:
Obviously, in Acts 17 Paul engages the idols on Mars Hill. At the end of John’s epistle, it says “Little children keep yourself from idols.” In the gospel, Jesus says, “No man can serve two masters,” but you can know the discussions of idolatry in the New Testament, whereas it is an underlying theme. The potential of it is an underlying theme in the old Testament. And so without being steeped in the Old Testament, it seems like a believer could have a certain lack of guardedness about their spiritual life because it’s just not a part of a constant story if you’re not in the old Testament constant reality.

Dr. Hernández:
Absolutely. The reality of potentially being able to turn to some other God in a world in which everybody believed in a God, it doesn’t feel real to us. In our day and age, we sort of have these, I think they’re made up options that we don’t necessarily have to believe in a God whereas in the ancient near East, everyone did believe in a God, some believed in many gods and the idea of there being one true God and all others were essentially false or just sort of imagery or miss of other cultures that is unique to ancient Israel.

Dr. Smith:
Good. I certainly appreciate your time and I want to wind down. I’m going to ask you a big question, but I’ll let you just… well, you could just kind of give a summary of your thoughts on it. Preaching the whole discussion and John are around preaching Christ. In the Old Testament there’s guys that do a whole lot of a typology. There’s guys that sometimes use the old Testament just kind of as a springboard to kind of get to very helpful, I mean gospel Christological proclamations, but I think I’m a little bit in the Walter Kaiser kind of approach of actually preaching that old Testament texts expositionally in the canonical context. And yet people say, “Well, won’t your sermon be just like a Jewish sermon?” Like, no, because I’ll be preaching it in the context of the meta-narrative of scripture but Graham’s goals were… I mean there’s a whole genre of literature around preaching Christ in the Old Testament or preaching Christ in all of scripture. I just kind of wonder how you think about those matters when you’re in the pulpit and then maybe even just how you encouraged students?

Dr. Hernández:
Right. So it sounds like we’re in agreement. So I have recognized that there’s some disagreement on this. And as a result of that, if I hear an Old Testament sermon of an Old Testament passage that’s handled well, preached well, but at the same time, maybe there’s a jump or a leap to the cross at the end, Oh, I want to be a person filled with charity. I’m not gonna jump on that person or that preacher, or even I don’t even want to critique in my mind or my heart. That’s not where I think we need to be as believers in Jesus and we need to strive to maintain unity. At the same time when I preach through the Old Testament I think it is very important to try to handle the text in its historical context. What does this mean? What was it, for example, the nation of Israel going through, or even as we go toward wisdom literature, what were the claims of wisdom literature in its historical back?

Dr. Hernández:
What makes this maybe different than other ancient areas of literature? And as we go through that, I think that we can see the characteristics of our great God ultimately embodied in the person and the work of Jesus Christ. We are talking about the same God, but if we don’t study how God is manifest in the Old Testament as we work toward the new Testament, then really we could fall into the fallacy of thinking that there are sort of two gods. There’s a nice one in the new Testament that sent Jesus and then there’s a really mean one that made people follow rules and the old Testament. All of these passages need to be taken in their context, their literary context and their historical context as we work toward culmination of God’s work in Jesus.

Dr. Hernández:
So I think we have a lot in common here when it comes to that and I again, reiterate that I don’t want to be judgmental or even to a certain extent, dogmatic about this. Well, you asked how I encourage my students, I do want to make sure that my students know that they can read texts of the Old Testament and not spiritualize or allegorize or necessarily just use them as a springboard to get to Jesus because the God that we see manifest in Jesus who is God, is the God that we see manifest throughout the pages of the Old Testament as well and we need to be consistent in that. And the way to do that is to handle these texts well in their context.

Dr. Smith:
Well brother, thank you so much for your time and I liked it.

Dr. Hernández:
It was too short.

Dr. Smith:
I like to end with something fun.

Dr. Hernández:
All right.

Dr. Smith:
So this is a two-part fun question. What is the most memorable preaching experience you’ve had in the old Testament? And what’s the most memorable sermon you perhaps maybe remember hearing from the old Testament?

Dr. Hernández:
This is good. This is a fun question, but it’s making me go back, back, back, back, back. Right? Because I’ve heard a lot of sermons, heard a lot of good…

Dr. Smith:
If you think about that and I’m going to tell you that when I was pastoring at Highview in Louisville, Kentucky, I don’t think anything has ever been as transformative in ministry as preaching in Hosea.

Dr. Hernández:
Hmm.

Dr. Smith:
And for people to see the pleading love of God with the Mercian distinction between the old and new Testament and so many mischaracterizations of God, the father. Well, and the people understand love when they see the passion of the Christ on Calvary. But the pleading in Hosea, which is also there, and for example, Jeremiah 2, that was very moving for a lot of people. And then the best sermon I ever heard was my late pastor. He preached in Judges 4, don’t die in jails house.

Dr. Hernández:
Oh, that sounds interesting. You got a link to that one?

Dr. Smith:
No, man, this was probably the early 90s man. Don’t die in jails house.

Dr. Hernández:
We have a daughter named Yan, so I would love to listen to that.

Dr. Smith:
Yes.

Dr. Hernández:
Now that you brought that up, I’m thinking I have tried to do my best, as I mentioned a couple of times already, to help people through some difficult passages. And I think Leviticus is very difficult for Christians.

Dr. Smith:
Hmm.

Dr. Hernández:
It’s summarized to a certain extent in Hebrews. And so we get our theology obviously from the New Testament, but when we go back to Leviticus 16, 17 when we talk about the day of atonement. I do a teaching on the day of atonement, Yom Kippur, based upon some of my experiences in Israel. I do a teaching on this in which I try to do my best to help us understand how terrible, how horrible that day must’ve been in the history of ancient Israel. We have once a week, all of this blood being shed and community looking upon the precess. He did these things, and this is the only day in which all of the nation was told that they had to intentionally afflict themselves. All of these things sound very weird to us as Christians. What do you mean afflict yourself?

Dr. Hernández:
Why would God ever say to human beings, afflict yourself? So these are the types of things that they’re not easy. Throughout this whole conversation, my goal wasn’t to say reading those first nine chapters of Chronicles was easy. What we do, however, as we work through them together as a community, we hold each other accountable. We try to figure this out, we try to apply this together. And that’s one of the goals. Right? And I think that this is a teaching that I do that helps people work through a very difficult passage that is indeed applicable to Christians.

Dr. Smith:
Oh, wonderful. Yes, we are excited and looking forward to you teaching on those Jewish holidays and how those things have gospel import and discipleship significance for Christians on our teaching round tables. And I forgot one thing and I just cannot get off without asking you about this.

Dr. Hernández:
Sure.

Dr. Smith:
And I want to ask you about emotions. There are traditions and I’m not going to tie them to language or ethnicity but I’m just tie them to church traditions. They are traditions that seem uncomfortable with the wholeness of a person in the sense of they kind of de-emphasize the emotional part of a person or they don’t want to stoke the emotional part of a person. And I think as an Old Testament scholar, I was like as a preaching professor, I was like biblical studies scholars to examine what I’m thinking about in my preaching classes. I try to encourage students that preaching narrative texts, you’re seeking to bring your listeners into a story.

Dr. Smith:
And I try to challenge them that in the Psalms and the wisdom literature, poetic literature, you’re trying to bring your listeners in to a particular feeling. I mean the hooks in the Psalms are never the hooks unless homiletically and communication wise, you can take people down to the bottom where that hook means something. And I was in total despair and I just totally had lost myself. And then the Lord came to me and so in the things that you observed, some of the places you have been, are preachers comfortable with emotion?

Dr. Smith:
Is emotion part of the church dynamic or a discipleship there? Just kind of what you thought about emotions, particularly as it relates to preaching the Psalms and other kinds of poetic literature.

Dr. Hernández:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, the short answer to your question is no. The short answer to your question is that in reformed circles, there’s a heavy emphasis on cognition and understanding the gospel. And by the way, I’m a seminary professor, I have a PhD. This is a big deal. We need to understand things but one thing that we also need to understand is that we’re holistic beings and the diversity that we have in the scriptures, that diversity of genre that we have in the scriptures, it demonstrates that we have a God that is concerned about the whole being. A God that is concerned about for those that, but occasionally there will be people that might be more oriented toward well, reading narratives and maybe some of the people that might be more oriented towards singing songs.

Dr. Hernández:
You mentioned the Psalms and at different times the same person is oriented toward different types of emotion or literature, whatever we might call it. So that diversity demonstrates to us that God is concerned about the whole being, all of the different domains that we have. Unfortunately, I do think that as much as I am into doctrine and teaching the truth that sometimes that clashes, unfortunately I don’t think it has to, but sometimes it clashes with treating the whole human being, not just the mind, but also what might be going on in the heart. And so I’ll say this, I liked the examples that you just gave with regard to narrative and when preaching narrative and when preaching wisdom literature.

Dr. Hernández:
I appreciate that very much and I’ll simply add to that and say that when we teach through these texts, we have to remember… and I think we can do this through illustrations, modern illustrations concerning or relating to situations that modern situations that people can relate to, you have to remember that are not just teaching so that our congregants can get smarter. Now we do want to provide information and we want it to be the right information, but we actually believe that through the explication of the word of God, that God, the Holy spirit transcends cognition and maybe more importantly hits the heart.

Dr. Hernández:
And that is where change happens, right? My mind is different because God changed my heart, like moved me, changed me, brought me into the kingdom of the son of his love and changed me. And so now I’m actually able to think through things in a biblical way with accountability. So I think it’s really important for us to recognize that. I want to make sure I add this in there. Maybe a couple of months ago I was telling a friend about some problems I was having and he said to me, “I’m surprised you’re having all these problems because you seem so stoic.”

Dr. Hernández:
Now you just talk to me sir, for about an hour? Do I look like a stoic person to you? Well, my friend-

Dr. Smith:
I would have never said that about a Puerto Rican from New York city.

Dr. Hernández:
I don’t know exactly why I said that, but there might be some cultural things you know that would expect me to react to some of the things I was going through a little bit different. A couple of days ago I was chatting with some other people and you know a brother came in and he said, “We recognize that you’re an emotional person and that may or may not be conducive to strong communication.” And to both of those people I’m like, “What are you guys talking about? I’m like right in the middle, I’m not stoic and I’m not crazy.” There is a spectrum here now we have to recognize. So as we teach through I’m thinking a lot about the Song of Songs because I’m writing them commentary in the Song of Songs.

Dr. Hernández:
So I teach through the Song of Songs, some of our more cognitively oriented people. I guess that might be looking for just good doctrinal. Give me good doctrine, might have a difficult time with you talking about utilizing this love language all the time. And then some people as we preach through Romans and Galatians might be like, “Can you give me some Jesus, can you give me somebody that’s going to look me in the eyes and tell me I feel what you feel and I feel empathy for you. But all of us actually are called to embrace all of that because it’s all there. This is why teaching the whole counsel of God is so important.

Dr. Smith:
Amen. As a pastor, not planted, I’ve been in a medium size church, I’ve been at a large church, mega church. I’ve been a church that was largely black. I’ve been in a church that is largely white and I have found across the board that when I’m in death situations and when I’m in hospital rooms and when I’m in crises with families, we quote and they quote the Psalms.

Dr. Hernández:
Hmm.

Dr. Smith:
When people are squeezed existentially, I see the Psalms coming out of them so much. And I just find that interesting in all of the layout of scripture, the way that happens. Brother, I appreciate you so much. Earlier when you were doing your bio, I didn’t ask you which borough you lived in.

Dr. Hernández:
I was born in Manhattan in what eventually became known as St Luke’s hospital. I believe it was called The women’s Hospital before that. And now I think it has another hospital. It’s right on the Westside, right by Columbia University. But then my family moved to the South Bronx right after that. And then even still I was very young. We moved to the Philadelphia area.

Dr. Smith:
Wow.

Dr. Hernández:
Later I moved back to New York and lived in Morningside Heights, right by where I was born.

Dr. Smith:
Wow. Well, I used to spend my teenage summers in Fordham towers on Fordham road, right off the Major Deegan with one of my older cousins.

Dr. Hernández:
All right.

Dr. Smith:
So I love the city and brother, I am so, so grateful for your time. We’re going to have to do this again.

Dr. Hernández:
I’d love to.

Dr. Smith:
I agree with you. It was not enough time, but I need to let my young staff members go home to their families. We are so grateful and I thank the Lord for you and your ministry. Dr. Dominic Hernandez, Associate Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Thank you so much for your time.

Dr. Hernández:
Thank you for having me.

Dr. Smith:
God bless you, brother.