 Friday to you. It is so hoped today. I'm Anna Fry and I'm here with Angela. And I just want to say I feel like personally it has been a long time since I've been able to be with you. And Angela, it's so good to be back here with you and excited for our guests that we have today. Yes, I love that I get to be with you today, Anna. It's wonderful. So today, coming up in just a moment, we're gonna learn how to experience the living God and His word as never before. Our very own Amy Schaefer has a conversation with professor and author, Christine McClellan. And she shares how we can not just read God's word, but actually interact with His word. Plus, Chrissy shares about Israel and her experiences there. Anna, I am looking forward to hearing this conversation that can actually transform how we study the scripture. Yeah, absolutely. So Chrissy McClellan is actually somebody I have done one of her Bible studies. It was called Jesus and Women. And I really, the one thing that I appreciate about Chrissy is that she does take us into the context of what it was like in Israel when the scriptures were written and how the people heard it, how they perceived it. And it gives, you know, when we're here in America, our Western culture can sometimes skew the perspective and the cultural tone that it was written in. Yeah, I love that. I'm excited to hear exactly what she brings to light with the context and the culture because I do feel like we lose so much of the meaning and these moments that we see with Jesus that we're gleaning, right? Cause the word is alive and living. And so we're gleaning from, but it had even a richer context within that time period, within that culture. And I'm excited to glean some of that from her today. Yeah, absolutely. And since we are in the Christmas season, we're like in the home stretch now, counting down the days. This is such a good time to really, to dig into scripture, to understand the context. And after the interview, Angela and I will even get to spend a little bit more time unpacking what we're learning and bring some of that Christmas spirit and understanding into your home. Yeah, there truly is so much more. And it is, would benefit our life if we explore it. So let's now go to Amy's conversation with professor and author, Christine McClellan. When it comes to reading God's word, we tend to view it as an instruction manual, a set of guidelines for how to live our lives. But how differently would we study the Bible if we approached it, not to learn something, but to encounter someone instead? Professor and bestselling author, Christine McClellan is our next guest. And in her new book, Rediscovering Israel, she offers up a new way for how we can interpret God's word. Christine, welcome to Hope Today. Thank you so much for having me, Amy. I'm excited for our conversation. Tell us a little bit about your passion for Israel and even rediscovering Israel. That's such a great question. I feel like I came out of my mother's womb, a Bible nerd. I have always loved the scriptures. And in 2007, the Lord opened up the door for me to go study the Bible in Egypt and Israel. And I tell people all the time, I went to Israel and learned that the living God is better than I ever knew. And I thought he was amazing when I went. And part of the gift of being able to study the scriptures in their native habitat, in their historical cultural geographic linguistic world is I felt like I was going home with the living God. I felt like I was going home with Jesus. I'm eating foods that he would have eaten. I'm looking up and seeing stars that he knew during his earthly life in ministry. And there was just something about the intimacy of it. I'm always telling my students at the college, all language makes sense in context. Both spoken words, written words. And so I came home in 2007 with a passion to help the Western church better understand the Bible in its historical cultural context. And I've been taking teams to Israel on biblical study trips ever since 2008. And people call me a professor, a Bible teacher, an author, but Amy, I really feel like my gift to the church and to the world is to be a bridge, to be that bridge between the Western church and the world's and land's Bible. And you talk a lot about that in your book. What lens are we reading the Bible through? And I love the graph that you have in your book, just talking about, you know, in the Western lens, we're looking for acquiring knowledge. But if we look in the Middle Eastern lens, we're going to look to receive revelation. I love that. Can you unpack the different lenses we are viewing and reading the scripture from? And I'm always quick to begin with it's not a right or wrong, it's not that the Western way is wrong and the Middle Eastern way is right. But I will say this, as a Western culture, we are much more Greco-Roman than we are Hebraic. We are much more Athens and Rome than we are Jerusalem. And when we're approaching the scriptures, I always tell my students, we never simply read the Bible, we interact with it. It's living and active and so are we. And every time we open up the scriptures, we're actually asking questions of the text and the passages and we ask different questions of it than the people in the Near East or the Middle East, the Jewish people. I'll give you one example, Amy, that has transformed my faith and made me fall in love with the living God just over and over and over again. I was raised to teach the Bible and to begin with the question, what does this teach me about me? To go straight to application. And I often joke with people, don't you know if you stare at yourself for too long, you'll get depressed. And in the Middle East, they ask a much better question and everything they read, the question is what does this teach me about who God is, what He's like, what it's gonna mean to walk with Him and follow Him in this world. And when we begin with that question, it causes us to look up, to look out, to have this expansive openness and buoyancy, flourishing, wholeness and delight because the living God is the point of every single story in the Bible, this deep and profound salvation, redemption, renewal and restoration that He's working in the earth, even right now while we're talking. Wow, that is so powerful. You answer two questions in your book. Why that land and why that name? Can you give us some quick answers to those very big questions? Oh, I will do my best because I love talking about things. The question becomes, why does the living God send Avram, or we call him Abram, to what we now call the Holy Land? And to understand in Abram's day, there was a major international geopolitical trade route that went right through the heart of the land. So the living God is being missional with Abraham here. And rather than sending Abraham to the nations to be a missionary, he plants Abraham and his descendants in the land that's called Canaan at that time. Later it will come to be called Israel and he's bringing the nations to Abraham. They are traveling that ancient trade route. They're hearing about the one true God and going home with a lot more than they bargained for. And so I love to think about the fact that from the very genesis of the Bible, the living God has been coming for the nations. I often tell my students, the living God is coming for air body, air wear. And so he goes about it in this way of planting Abraham along the trade route. And then we come to why that name. Israel was Jacob's new name, the third patriarch of Israel Yaakov in Hebrew. And we know that great story in the book of Genesis, Jacob wrestles with the living God all through the night. He says, I will not let you go until you bless me. The living God touches his help and then he changes his name. He says, you shall no longer be called Jacob. You will be called Israel. So when we talk about the 12 tribes of Israel, we're talking about the sons of Jacob who got a new name and I would say a much better name. That is so powerful and so exciting. What about when God says, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. I love how you unpack that in this book. Oh, I love the heart of the living God there. The story, a lot of us know it, it's Moses and his encounter with the living God through the burning bush. And what I love about that moment is Moses doesn't yet know the Lord. The living God is introducing himself to Moses. And just like you and I, when we introduce ourselves to people, what are some of the first things we say about ourselves? Think about how the living God could have introduced himself. He has so many names throughout the Bible and yet he chose when introducing himself to Moshe. We call him Moses. He said, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And I just love the fact that the living God is affiliating with his chosen people here that he's affiliating his own name with the patriarchs of Israel. There's an intimacy and a closeness and I believe an invitation for Moses because we know that from this moment of interaction Moses' life is gonna dramatically change. His life will never be the same after this but I love that that's how the living God chose to introduce himself to Moses. You are such a teacher. Can you just come every week and just unpack? Give us the Israel times and, you know, five minutes. What is the spiritual significance of the land of Israel? Oh, the spiritual significance. You know, I love in the book of Acts when it talks about that the living God has determined the exact times and places that we would inhabit the earth. I don't know where you live, Amy. I live here in Middle Tennessee. And I think about that so often that the Lord has planted you wherever you live. He's planted me right here and that passage goes on to say so that by it, men might reach for Helm and seek Helm. And so there's intentionality. Our geography and this world is spiritual. And so the living God is planting his people in the land in the New Testament. We see Paul and missionaries now taking the gospel. What did Jesus say in Acts 1-8? You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and unto the ends of the earth. And we are now part of that New Testament church unto the ends of the earth. And so yes, we go on mission, but we also live every day of our lives on mission right where we are in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our communities, in our vocation, in our churches, right where God has planted us. If you are a follower of Jesus every single day you are living out, the missional calling, agreeing with Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and wanting to see heaven come to earth. Wow. You know, I often say about Pittsburgh, it is my promised land and God sent me here, you know, in pasturing here for 27 years and on Cornerstone television here for over 10 years. Like you have to own the place that God has called you to live and make impact for the kingdom of God. That's right. Ghost dealers, the terrible towel, I'm with you. Yes. You're kidding. I mean, now you just became our favorite person. When I was in Israel last December and I was actually supposed to be there right now while we're having this interview, they asked me on TBN there, on a broadcast, what have you found out about being in the land of Israel? You know, how has it impacted you? And I said, it's like I've been talking about this treasure box, I've been looking at it, I've been reading about it, I've been thinking about it, I've been longing to touch the treasure box but being in the land of Israel, I felt like I opened the treasure box and got to see and walk and touch the great treasures of the Bible. So now when I read that Jesus went from Galilee to Capernaum, there's a context, there's a visual, I was there. What insights and textual insights have you had and great treasures that you found just seeing it through the lens of Israel? It's such a great question. The way I often talk about it, Amy, is that we shift from being reading saints to beholding saints. You will never be able to unsee what you're gonna see when you go there and you will never experience the Bible the same way because you will have had the chance to have an embodied experience rather than just a reading and learning experience. I'll give you one example of why I love taking teams to Israel and I love being in the land so much. So often when we're reading the Bible, the metaphors and the imagery that's being used to communicate profoundly important and hopeful concepts around who God is and what he's like, the kingdom of God, those images and metaphors are grounded in the geography of the Holy land. And I'll give you one example because you mentioned you were supposed to be in Israel right now. On October 7th, I was at the Newark, New Jersey airport waiting to board my flight to go to Israel when I got a notification that my flight was canceled due to unrest in the region. And now we all know much more what had happened on that horrific day for the Jewish people in Israel. But Micah and Isaiah, two prophets in the Old Testament, when they are giving their vision of heaven, sometimes the Jews refer to it as the world to come that forever Sabbath, the kingdom of God fully realized Jesus sitting on the throne of David, ruling forever and ever at the right hand of the Father. And both of them, both Micah and Isaiah, they describe heaven this way. Each one will sit under his own vine and fig tree and no one will make them afraid. And you've been to the land, what do you see everywhere? Vineyards, fig trees. And so you see that these prophets anchored in the land are giving us theological imagery and metaphor based on something that they're seeing. And Amy, when we read in Revelation 21 and 22 when the new Jerusalem, the new heaven and the new earth come down, that new Jerusalem, I love how Revelation says her gates will never be shut, not even at night because there will be no one to make her afraid. And man, don't we long for that, for there to be sufficiency, for there to be enough that we can be in a forever rest where we are never afraid. I think about that so often, but it's part of why I love being in the land of Israel, taking teams to Israel so that people can see for themselves with their own five senses and their own eyes so much of the goodness of what we're finding in the Word of God. Christi, you know, there is great unrest in Israel right now. How do we pray as the body of Christ for Israel? You know what, I have been travailing in prayer since October 7th. I'm so grateful that in Romans it talks about sometimes we're praying with such passion it comes out like groans that we don't even have words for. And something that came to me early on as I was praying for just everyone involved, Israelis, Palestinians, everyone there, that beatitude and the Sermon on the Mount came up in my spirit where Jesus said, blessed are the peace makers for they will be called sons of God. And I have just been praying for peace and in hebraic culture, sons grew up to be like their fathers. And so what Jesus is saying is when you and I are peacemakers in this world, we are acting like our father. We are being like him. So I have just been praying comfort, comfort, comfort. I've been praying for the peacemakers. I've been praying that we as followers of Jesus in this world, wherever we live that we would be those who are known as people who are not only seeking peace but making peace in this world. Amen. That is a great word that we are to be peacemakers. Thank you so much, Christy. I literally could talk to you for another hour about rediscovering Israel, your new book, A Fresh Look at God's Story in its historical and cultural context. If you are watching and you have a desire or a passion at all to learn about Israel, I would highly recommend this book as it is now going to sit very close on my desk within my reach. So thank you so much, Christy, for being with us today. Merry Christmas and happy advent, Amy. Thank you. Hope happens here at Cornerstone Television. All this month, we're offering a joy-filled DVD, Christmas with the Chosen, The Messengers for your best gift to the ministry. Gather around the manger with loved ones and experience the first Christmas through the eyes of Mary and Joseph. Follow the young couple as they take the long road to Bethlehem and prepare for Jesus' birth. Plus, enjoy an extraordinary lineup of musicians performing both new and classic Christmas songs from the set of The Chosen, such as Phil Wickham, Brandon Lake, Maverick City Music, Kane, and many others. Thank you for your generosity that makes the ministry of Cornerstone Television possible. Request your Christmas with the Chosen DVD when you give this month. Call 888-665-4483 or give online at ctvn.org slash donate. From all of us here, we wish you a very Merry Christmas. We are so thankful for each one of you who give to this ministry. You enable us to continue spreading the good news of the gospel, Jesus Christ, the good news of great joy for all the people. And we also wanna remind our CTVN family of our Hope Today newsletter. Comes out free every single month and this month in particular. You know, I'm looking at the cover article written by our own Tom Hollis. And the focus scripture is from Luke 219. It says, but Mary treasured all these things pondering them in her heart. And if you caught the conversation that we just had with Christy, she was talking about that when we read the Bible, we have been taught to read it and then ask how does this apply to me? But what if we shift that and we turn it into what does this teach us about God? And the scripture in the newsletter that just thinking how Mary pondered the things that she heard about Jesus in her heart. And she took them in so that she could behold this promise of God that was to come for all the people. We wanna bring you a scripture from God's word. And before I do that, I should say if you don't get our newsletter, there is so much good stuff. You can read the article, you can get our whole program guide and you can call us here at the station. We'll send it to you right into us. Our phone number here is 888-665-4483. I'm just so excited about bringing you some scripture today. And so today's verse is from Deuteronomy 6, four through five, and it says this, here, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Angela, how does that speak to your heart? Well, I love this scripture and I think it's exactly what Chrissy was talking about in her interview in which you just mentioned here, Anna, is that in order for us to truly love the Lord with all of our heart, with all of our strength, with all of us, we must examine scriptures and the Father from the perspective of revelation. Like God, what is it you wanna show me about who you are? What is it you wanna tell me about how you function and how you show up in my world? I think as we, even as Chrissy said, as we begin to shift our focus from, okay, straight to application, how it applies to me, to who are you God? And how does that transform how I see? I think that makes the difference for everything. And so today I would challenge you, even as we're in this Advent season and this Christmas season, as you're rereading the same Bible story that we hear over and over and can probably recite most of us, is like, what is it about Jesus? What is it about the Father's character that he's teaching us? You know, Anna, one of the things that I've been looking at and been talking with my daughters about is I love that this announcement of the Savior, of this soon coming King being born as a baby comes to shepherds in a field. You know, he didn't come to the celebrities. He didn't come to the kings and make the announcement that this is the king right here. He went to the shepherds and I think many times in our own lives we feel like we're minimalized or we don't have value or people don't see us or we're not important enough. But Jesus' very birth is a declaration to every one of us who feels no value or unseen that the king of the universe came for you and he wants you to know that news. Yes, yeah, absolutely. You know, this past week, one of the reasons that you haven't seen me so much here on air is because I've been home recovering from a sickness and I'm sure you can relate to a physical sickness where just kind of like that brain fog comes over you and you can't like see clearly and it's hard to get words out and you know, thinking about this time where the Jesus came into the people, they were in like an emotional spiritual fog in this darkness where they wondered who is God? Like where is he? I know he has spoken promises to my heart. I know this savior, this Messiah has been promised to me but where is he? I can't see him. I can't hear him. I can't feel him. Is he still who he says he is? And today I just want to speak this encouragement into your heart that if you feel like you're walking through a thick fog, through a darkness where you can't see God, you can't feel him, you wonder if his promises are still true for you. That the whole message of Christmas is to come near to the manger where your Messiah, your savior has come. He has been born to you where you can behold him fresh and anew, where you can encounter him, the living God. And you know, one of my very favorite chapters in the Bible that I go to, especially when I'm in that fog and that darkness is Isaiah 61. And it tells us who Jesus is, what he came to do for us. That he was sent to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, release from darkness for the prisoners, to comfort all who mourn, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. That is the savior who you have opportunity to behold and to encounter today. It is the joy of the Christmas message, Angela. Yeah, just come to him. He's not looking for some massive act, you know? He's not looking for a heroic moment. He's just looking for you. He promises and reminds us when you draw near to him, he will draw near to you. So today, make a fresh commitment. Just ask him, say, Jesus, I see the gift that you are and I wanna know you more. I wanna experience you in the depths of my being. I want exactly as Anna declared, I want gladness, I want joy, I want dancing, I want peace and he'll give it to you. He is a faithful God who answers the cries of our heart, he says, call and I'll answer, cry and I'll say, here I am. Today is your day and we ask you to make that choice for Jesus one more step towards him and you will truly find that for you, there is hope today.