Preaching Difficult Texts of the Old Testament

As the apostle Paul wrote to his young apprentice pastor, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching" (2 Timothy 3:16). Really? Every book, every chapter, every verse? Even in the Old Testament? There are a number of reasons why a biblical text is difficult to preach. Sometimes the genre itself proves challenging-such as the law ("Don't cook a young goat in its mother's milk"), genealogy ("The sons of Izhar Korah and Nepheg and Zichri"), or imprecatory psalms ("O God,...