Survey of the Old Testament History Books

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Well, tonight is one of those times where there's a good chance we will not get through everything, but we are going to do our best to get through as much as we possibly can.
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So without any further delay, let us move right into lecture three, survey of the history books.
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And the survey of the history books takes us past the book of Deuteronomy, which of course is the last book in the book, the books known as the Pentateuch, and takes us to the book of Joshua, which as the Western Bible or the Protestant Bible delineates the books by category.
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The first category is the Torah or the law.
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The second category is the history books.
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This takes us from Joshua to the book of Esther.
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And we are going to look at three specific periods of history.
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First is the theocratic period, which takes us from 1405 to 1043.
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We're going to look at the monarchial period, which takes us from 1043 to 586 BC.
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And then the restoration period, which takes us from 536 to 420 BC.
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So that is the three parts of Old Testament history that we come across in the books of Joshua to Esther.
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So for a more full look at these, this is another way of breaking them down.
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When we think about the different historical periods, the theocratic period, and by the way, what does the word theocratic mean? It means God ruled, right? So we think of democracy means ruled by the people.
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Monarchy ruled by a single leader, like a king or a sultan or a pharaoh, that's a monarchy.
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But a theocracy is a government that is ruled by God.
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And so the theocratic period is Joshua, judges, and Ruth.
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Then we move to the monarchial period with the introduction of Israel's first king.
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Does anyone know the name of Israel's first king? Saul.
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All right, so we have Saul who introduces the monarchial period in the book of 1 Samuel.
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And remember in the Hebrew Bible, there is only one book of Samuel, but in the English Bible, we have 1 and 2 Samuel.
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We have 1 and 2 Kings.
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We have 1 and 2 Chronicles.
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And that outlies for us the monarchial period.
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Now, what happens between the monarchial period and the period of restoration? What happens to the nation? Well, they divide, that's true.
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There's a division after the death of Solomon.
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There's division between Rehoboam and Jeroboam, and that creates two kingdoms, the northern kingdom known as Israel, the southern kingdom known as Judah.
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But then something else happens, and that's actually what I was pointing to.
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Yeah, exile.
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So between the monarchial period and the restoration period, if you go back to the last screen, you'll notice the dating.
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There's 1043 to 586, and then it's 536.
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Well, there's a period in between, and the period in between is the exile.
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So that's the reason why there's a gap between the monarchial period and the restoration period, because we could say there's the period of the exile, but for this particular outline, we didn't include that.
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But going back to here.
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So after the exile, we have three books, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.
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All right, so this is the overarching look of what we're gonna learn about tonight, and that's a lot.
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I mean, we're looking at quite a few Old Testament books, and we're looking at a lot of history.
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So we're going to be obviously doing a very surface look at all of these books, but hopefully you'll learn some things you didn't know.
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Hopefully there'll be some tying up of some knots, maybe that will help you connect some of these things.
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These books altogether do not present an exhaustive history.
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Instead, they present the history which God wants remembered and recorded, or I said that backwards.
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So he wants recorded and remembered.
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In fact, I'll give you two passages to consider on that.
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In Romans chapter 15, verse four, it says this.
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For whatsoever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.
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So that tells us right there that the writing of the Old Testament scriptures was not simply an exhaustive history, but it was a history that was intended to give us instruction and hope.
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It was written for our instruction, it was written for our hope.
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So it doesn't tell us every time a king tied his shoes.
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You know, it doesn't tell us everything that happened.
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In fact, there are sometimes gaps of history, and there are times when things don't always go in order.
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I'm currently right now in my personal devotional time reading through the history books again, just to sort of refresh myself, and I just happened to be in the story of today in 1 Samuel, where David was brought into the household of Saul to play the harp for him, because Saul was tortured by a spirit.
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And so I was just thinking about how the whole narrative works out, because the story of David and Goliath is in there, but it seems like it's not like it's directly in order.
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If you read the narrative, it seems like the David and Goliath thing may have happened earlier than this, but it actually, in the story, it comes in later, and that's actually not uncommon that the Bible would tell a story later and it not be in chronological order.
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When I've been teaching through Genesis, I've showed this a few times, how the chronology is not always as specific as we might want it to be, because we're used to English, or American rather, we're used to textbooks that sort of try to keep everything in a certain way.
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But in Hebrew history, it's not always about necessarily keeping up with the strict chronology, but rather it's telling the stories for a reason.
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It's telling these stories to give us instruction and hope, and it has a purpose for why it tells us certain things in certain ways.
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And so that's just an important thing to keep in mind.
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Another passage from the New Testament tells us this, in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 11, speaking of the wilderness wanderings, it says, now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come.
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And there's a lot in that verse, 1 Corinthians 10, 11 says a lot.
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Number one, it says these things happened to them, but they happened to them as an example to us, they were written down for us, and the us in that context are the people who live within the eschaton, it says the people upon whom the end of the ages come.
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And you said, oh, wait a minute, why does it say the people upon whom the end of the ages come? After Christ, everything is the end of the age, because the beginning of the end was when Christ went to the cross.
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We are in the eschaton, people ask me all the time, are we in the end days? Yes, we've been in the end days ever since Christ ascended, because he said in the ascension, I will return.
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And what do we have? What's the next thing on God's prophetic timetable? Christ's return, that's right.
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So that's what we look forward to, is the return of Christ.
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And so we are in the last days.
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It may be a long last days, I mean, it's been 2000 years so far, but the point is we are the ones upon whom the end of the ages come.
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This is talking about us.
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And so the Old Testament scriptures, the stories are written down for our instruction.
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This is why I enjoy teaching the stories of the Old Testament, I've been preaching through Genesis, and I love to tell stories, it's one of my favorite things to do.
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And so when I get to preach a narrative, and tell the story that happened in the narrative, it's an enjoyable time, it's an enjoyable opportunity to preach.
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But also within those stories is instruction.
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It's not just a good story, it's not just a campfire time.
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There's something to learn.
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Like today we talked about the concept of reconciliation when Jacob and his brother Esau were reconciled, because Esau offered forgiveness to his brother.
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We talked about that concept, and what do we learn from that? And so these stories are not just stories, they have purpose, they have intention.
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God did not put anything in his word that doesn't have value.
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Now, not everything has the same value.
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And I don't mean to in any way diminish any part of the word of God.
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But certainly, people have probably found more theological instruction in Romans than they have maybe in Song of Solomon or something like that.
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But that is not to say Song of Solomon doesn't have purpose and instruction, it's just they have different weights and different things that they're trying to tell us.
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And so what we find in the history books are the things which God wants recorded and remembered.
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So let's look now at the theocratic period.
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We're gonna look at three books.
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If you came in tonight and you didn't receive it, I wanna mention I have a handout.
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Actually, no, I'm sorry, that's not true.
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I have a package of handouts.
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There's about seven pages here for each of you to take.
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If you didn't get your copy at the break, come and get your copy.
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These are all taken from our books of charts that I mentioned.
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And if you bought the book of charts, then you don't need this, but you may wanna mark down what pages that I am referencing.
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But these are helpful in learning some more information about the books.
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And since I'm on the subject, we have a church library here that is basically unused right now because the building itself is having some trouble.
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But in that library, there's a ton of books.
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And I happened to go out this week and I actually pulled out some books that I had donated to the library.
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So these were mine and now they're the church's.
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But these books are all good books.
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If you are really wanting to dive in to Bible history and learn.
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I mean, of course, the first thing to do is read the Bible.
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But if you're wanting to see how the stories tie together or some of the information, this is just a small commentary.
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This is a smaller, more concise commentary than the one that I assigned for the reading of the class, but it's a good one.
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This is one complete guide to the Bible.
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This talks about customs and how things function and things like that.
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This is a, if you're a teacher or if you ever teach the Bible, this is a fantastic book of outlines, outlining each of the chapters of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
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This is very helpful for that.
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I'll kind of bypass this.
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Chuck Missler's kind of, I got a few.
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He's not bad, he's not great.
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But there's another one, Chuck Missler's book.
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But this is called Maps.
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This is Making the Bible Meaningful, Accessible, and Practical.
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So books like this are useful to help you to connect the dots if you're having difficulty, especially in some of the history books.
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It's hard to realize.
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It's hard, you know, when you get into the Chronicles and you're trying to fit together who everybody is, books like this can be really, really useful.
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And so just, as I found those, I thought it'd be good to mention them.
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All right, so let's look at the theocratic period.
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Beginning, of course, first with the book of Joshua.
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The bridge between the books of Moses and the history of Israel in the land of Canaan is the book of Joshua.
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Now, the author is not stated in the text.
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However, tradition tells us that it was written by Joshua.
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And we have somewhat of a reason for that.
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It's not just that Joshua wrote Joshua, but we also believe he wrote something else.
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Anybody want to tell me what you think it is? The end of Deuteronomy, why? Yeah, because it's hard to write a book when you're dead.
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And so Deuteronomy, the end of Deuteronomy had to have been written by someone.
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And we know that Joshua steps into the shoes of Moses after Moses has passed.
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And so Joshua is likely the author of the end of Deuteronomy.
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He is also likely the best fit to be the author of his own, the book that bears his name.
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The theme of Joshua is conquest and the claiming of the promises.
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And I'll tell you something.
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I told you I've been reading the history books.
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Well, I like to listen.
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Like when I'm driving, I like to listen to audio books.
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I don't know if that's something you guys do, but I like to listen to books on audio.
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And I have a dramatized version of the Bible.
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And I know Mike and I were talking one time.
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He said, you don't like that.
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You don't like the noises and the sounds and the music.
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I do, you know, and every teacher's own kind of thing, but I have a dramatized version of the Bible.
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And so I was listening to Joshua and judges and Jennifer.
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I don't remember what we were doing, but she had gotten out of the car, went to do something.
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And I had it playing on my phone.
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And when she got back into the car, we were right at the portion in judges where JL had nailed the head of the tyrant king into the floor of her tent with a tent peg.
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Remember that story? And it had sort of in the background, this sort of dramatic ching ching, the swords clanging, this sort of music in the background.
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And you hear the boom, boom with the hammer.
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And Jennifer's like, are you listening? What are you listening to, Game of Thrones? What are you listening to? It sounded very, you know, it was like a medieval film.
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But if you read the stories of Joshua and you read the stories of judges, these conquesting stories of the claiming of the promise of the land, they are blood soaked stories.
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Go into this place, kill every man, woman, and child.
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You realize that's why Achan was killed, because they were told to destroy everything, to not take anything.
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And yet Achan took some spoils of war and he hid them in his tent.
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And then the people of Israel went out and they lost.
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And they said, why, oh God, have we lost? And they said, well, there's sin in the camp.
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And they brought all the men forward.
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And they said, well, it's from this camp.
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And they brought all those men forward and then it's from, and it fell to the house of Achan.
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And Achan was destroyed along with his family for the sin of stealing what he was not allowed to take.
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I remember one time I heard a sermon on Achan.
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I'll never forget the outline.
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The pastor thought he was very creative and it was not me.
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I did not do this.
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But he said, you can always remember the story of Achan because you've got taken Achan, shaken Achan, and bacon Achan.
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And I'll never forget.
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And you won't either.
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You'll remember that outline forever now.
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But that's the, this is some of the stories that we find in Joshua.
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These conquests of going into the land of promise, taking what God had promised them.
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And there was gallons of blood spilled.
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The key events, Joshua succeeded Moses.
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Rahab and the spies, the fall of Jericho and the distribution of the land are all found in the book of Joshua.
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You can also add to that Achan, Achan's in that, but he's in the next part, key people.
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The key people are Joshua, Rahab, of course, who was the one who hid the spies.
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Achan, Eleazar, who's the son of Aaron.
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Phinehas, who is the son of Eleazar.
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All right.
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So this is basically what we're gonna do for each book.
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We're gonna walk our way through, look at each book.
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And is there any questions about Joshua? And I will say this, I don't mind entertaining questions as always, but if you do have a specific exegetical question about a book, I may not have time to answer it tonight.
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But I'm willing to listen to your question, but I may have to get back to you.
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If you say in verse 20 of this chapter, what does this mean? I may have to get back to you.
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I may not be able to give you that level of specificity tonight.
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But I'm curious if you have questions about any of these books, because I know every time I read them, I come away with something that I just, like the last part of Judges where the concubine is chopped up and sent to the 12 cities.
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I haven't got that off my mind in three days because I read that back, I think, Friday.
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I was going back through Judges again and I get to chapter 20 and it's very similar to what happened in Sodom where the men of the city wanted to take the man out and have sex with the man.
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And so the man said, no, take the concubine.
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And they took her and raped her to death.
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And then the next day, he took her body, chopped them in 12 pieces, sent those 12 pieces out to the 12 tribes of Israel as a symbol, a sign of what had happened.
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I just, I tell you, I mean, of course, I've known this story forever, having read the Bible many times, but just when you read something again, it just sticks.
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This time it just stuck with me.
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I was like, what a horrible picture.
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What a horrible thing.
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And I mean, the Bible's filled with real life things like this.
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Just this next week, I was talking to brother Mike about it this afternoon.
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We were on the phone together and I said, I've got to preach Genesis 34 next week.
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I did ask him, I said, Mike, you want to preach? I'd be happy to take the week off because Genesis 34 is about the rape of the daughter of Jacob.
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When Dinah, it goes into Succoth and is taken by the king's son and raped.
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And then he wants to marry her.
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And of course the story becomes a bloodbath and it's not easy to preach.
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There's not a lot of virtue in that story, not a lot of positive that you can draw from that, but God has it there for our instruction.
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Play the salvation.
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That's a very good question, Jacob.
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And we would say this, everyone who's ever been saved, whether it's in the Old Testament or the New Testament are all saved by the blood of Christ.
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But in the Old Testament, the blood of Christ was symbolized by the sacrifices that were made.
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And those sacrifices go all the way back to the time of Adam and Eve.
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So when they would sacrifice an animal, say a goat or anything else, that sacrifice, according to the book of Hebrews, points forward to the sacrifice of Christ.
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So when they saw that sacrifice, what they were seeing was a picture of a sacrifice that would come, a greater sacrifice, who was Jesus.
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Now, how much of that they understood, we don't know, but we do know they were saved by faith in the same way we are.
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And the blood of Christ is ultimately what paid the price for their sin.
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That make sense? Good, and that is a good question.
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A lot of people have that question.
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All right, so getting back to Joshua, we're now gonna move to the next book, which is Judges.
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I've already been talking about Judges.
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The book of Judges is the struggle of sin and grace.
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And the word judge means deliverer.
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In your notes, this page gives you all of the judges, their description, and how long they judged.
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So it starts off with Othniel.
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After eight years of oppression from King Cushon of Aram, Othniel went to war and delivered Israel, and he judged Israel for 40 years.
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And you have the whole list going all the way down of every judge and what they did.
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This is a fantastic aid if you are reading through the book of Judges to just have next to your Bible or to have in your notes so that if you find yourself having a little bit of difficulty understanding where you are, this will help you.
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And by the way, I find this to be one of the great pictures when you're trying to think of what is Judges about, this picture right here of this cyclical problem within Israel, because this is what it says.
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Israel disobeys, Israel is oppressed, Israel cries out.
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God raises up a deliverer, Israel is delivered, Israel is at peace, and then Israel disobeys again, and the cycle continues.
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And honestly, beloved, this is almost a picture of every generation.
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I heard it recently said, it said that weak men create hard times, hard times create hard men, hard men create good times, and good times create weak men, and we start back over in the same cycle.
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And that seems almost the same cycle as Israel.
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There would be a deliverer who delivers the people, the people are at peace, and as soon as they get to a time of peace, what do they do? They fall right back into idolatry and disobedience, and the cycle begins again.
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And it's just a constant, and that is literally the book of Judges is over and over and over cycle through the sin and grace, failure and deliverance.
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All right, the author of Judges is not stated, some say that it's Samuel who wrote the book of Judges, but it's not stated, so we don't have to be dogmatic about it.
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The theme, of course, is the cycle of sin, which I mentioned, oppression, repentance, deliverance, and peace.
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That's the cycle that's in your notes.
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And again, see the handout for more information.
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Any questions about Judges? All right, I'm a great teacher.
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There's no questions, that means I'm doing fine.
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All right, moving on.
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The book of Ruth, the small four-chapter book of Ruth.
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Many people have been very encouraged by this very powerful book.
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Though it's only a few chapters, it certainly gives a wonderful story of a woman of faith who was also a woman of loyalty and tenacity, and God blessed her.
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Ruth is the theme, I would say, or the little short line I have there is about the remnant of grace.
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The author is not stated against tradition, says it's Samuel, but we don't know for certain.
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And by the way, that shouldn't bother us, even though sometimes it does when we don't know who wrote a book.
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There are several books of the Bible which we don't know who the authors are, probably one of the most famous being Hebrews, because people debate all the time whether it was Paul or whether it was Luke or whether it was Barnabas.
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There's a lot of arguments for different people writing the book of Hebrews, but we don't know.
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And that's okay because these books were received within the Jewish community as being from God, and therefore, wherever, whomever wrote them, we have to assume were under the inspiration of God.
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And there is a good chance, like for instance, we're gonna see in the book of Chronicles, there's a good chance that it may have been more than one writer.
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We don't know who the chronicler was, and it could have been more than one.
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And that's not a, that certainly doesn't deny any of the doctrines of inspiration or infallibility or anything like that.
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Okay, under theme, God's providential care and his redemption through the kinsmen.
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You'll remember there's a term in the book of Ruth for Boaz.
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Who is Boaz? He is, but who is he? He's the one who marries Ruth.
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That's what, yeah, Boaz is the one who marries Ruth.
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And the reason why he's able to marry her is because he is related.
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Well, he's related to her through her mother-in-law.
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He's related, he's the kinsman.
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He's able to make that, he's able to redeem her because he is her kinsman.
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And remember toward the end of the book, there's another man who's a closer kin.
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And he says, I have to give him the chance first because he's closer kin.
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But if he doesn't do it, then I can take you and make you my wife.
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Now, the key events in the book of Ruth, the famine, Naomi and Ruth coming together, that's what that should say.
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Naomi and Ruth coming together and then Ruth and Boaz coming together.
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And the key people, of course, are Naomi, Ruth, Boaz, and then in the last chapter, verse 22, we have the mention of two very important later figures, which are Jesse and David.
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Why is Ruth important? Because Ruth is the ancestress of David.
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Of course, David would be the great King of Israel from whom the Messiah would come.
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And so Ruth is the ancestor not only of David, but of Christ.
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Yes.
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Right off the top of my head, I don't either.
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I'd have to look that up.
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Well, yeah, names normally did, but for right now, I don't have that on.
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Anybody know? Yes.
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Oh, okay, that's all right, that's all right.
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Go ahead.
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No, no.
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What's interesting, if you read the, if you read the narrative of Christ, if you read the, I'm sorry, if you read the genealogy of Christ, it mentions a few women in there, and they're not Jews.
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Rahab is mentioned as well as Ruth.
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Yeah, she's a Moabitess.
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Means compassionate one.
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There you go.
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Now we know.
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Thank you.
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Oh, well, praise the Lord.
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Okay.
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All right, and her first name's Deborah.
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I'm gonna be talking about, Deborah was the name of, well, she was the name of Judge, but she was also the name of the nurse of Rebecca, Rebecca's nurse.
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Yeah, her death is mentioned, I think, in Genesis 35 or 36, which is interesting, because Rebecca's death is not mentioned, but her nurse's death is mentioned, which is just an interesting side note.
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All right, so we have, that takes us through the theocratic period.
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Now, again, God rules all at all time.
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So we could say all time is theocratic in that nature.
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But when we talk about theocracy, what we are saying is that God has ruled the people of Israel since the time of Moses without an intermediate king.
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Now, he has raised up judges, but those judges functioned as protectors, but not as rulers, like kings would rule.
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But now we will move to the book of 1 Samuel, and the people will cry out for a king.
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So part two, the monarchical period.
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This takes us to 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles.
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So let's look first at 1 and 2 Samuel.
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1 and 2 Samuel gives us the beginning of the monarchy.
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The author is unknown.
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By the way, you're gonna hear that a lot tonight.
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Don't let it bother you.
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But the author is unknown, but portions may be written by Samuel himself, by Nathan, by Gad, these are prophets, and 1 Chronicles 29, 29 to 30 mentions that.
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The theme of 1 and 2 Samuel is the right of kingship.
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Who has the right of kingship, God or man? And the Davidic covenant.
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The key events are the transition from judges to kings, again, deliverers to rulers is the transition there.
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The transition from Saul's reign and failures to David's reign and failures, we see both of those in 1 and 2 Samuel.
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And in particular, we see David's great failure with Bathsheba.
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And then under key people, we have Eli, we have Hannah, Hannah was Samuel's mother who prayed for him to be born.
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We have Samuel himself, Saul, Jonathan, who is the son of Saul and friend of David.
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We have David, we have Goliath.
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Of course, the most people, even people who don't know anything about the Bible have heard of David and Goliath.
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We have Nathan, who is the prophet.
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What's one of the things for which Nathan is most well-known? Yes.
32:17
He rebuked David.
32:18
He rebuked David, that's right.
32:21
In fact, Psalm 51 is prefaced with the words that the Psalm was written when the prophet Nathan rebuked David over the wife of Uriah.
32:32
You know, Bathsheba is never ever referred to as the wife of David.
32:37
She is always referred to as the wife of Uriah.
32:41
Even in the genealogy of Christ, where it talks about Solomon being the son of David through the wife of Uriah, doesn't say through Bathsheba or it always, it's like this is the weight that was carried, the sinful weight that was carried by King David was killing Uriah to have his wife.
33:15
And then of course, Absalom, who was who? Absalom was the son of David and Absalom was the one who...
33:27
Hmm? Did Solomon kill him? Is that what I'm wondering? Mm-mm.
33:30
No, he wanted to be king, he wanted to be king.
33:34
Absalom wanted to be king, but he also, Absalom's...
33:38
Did he take his wife? Absalom's situation began when his sister was raped by his brother.
33:45
Now that sounds weird, but it's half sister, half brother situation because of the multiple wives that David had.
33:52
Absalom's sister was raped by, I can't think of his name.
33:58
Mike, do you remember the name of the brother who...
34:01
Stupid.
34:02
He was stupid, yeah.
34:04
I can't think of his name right off, but he raped Absalom's sister and Absalom was angry with David for not enacting vengeance.
34:14
And so Absalom ends up enacting his own vengeance.
34:18
He was Tamar.
34:19
Tamar, yes.
34:20
That's her name, but I can't think of his name, the one who raped her.
34:24
But no, I'll look it up during the break.
34:28
But what we find is Absalom's rebellion against David was tied to that story because Absalom felt like David did not enact justice as he should.
34:40
And so, and in a sense it's true.
34:43
And so later Absalom would be caught by his hair.
34:49
Remember, he's running away.
34:52
He gets caught up by his hair and he's killed by David's soldiers.
34:58
And when David's leader comes back to tell David, well, when the leader of David's army comes back to say, your son Absalom is dead, David cries over his son.
35:09
Oh, Absalom, my son, Absalom, my son.
35:13
And the commander of the army is angry.
35:16
How can you be angry? This was your enemy.
35:19
This was the man who was trying to overthrow your kingdom.
35:21
Yes, but it's still my son.
35:24
I didn't want him to die.
35:29
And a lot of emotion in these stories when you read them, sort of read them as R.C.
35:34
Sproul said, reading the stories existentially.
35:37
Amnon.
35:37
Amnon, thank you, thank you.
35:40
And Amnon was killed by Absalom.
35:42
Absalom was killed by the soldiers of David and David lost two sons.
35:51
So just a terrible story.
35:54
But as I said, that's where the name Absalom comes in as important.
35:57
Of course, Solomon is the son of David and Bathsheba who would rule after David.
36:03
And Solomon would, of course, rule in great power and wisdom because God would grant him a supernatural wisdom, which is demonstrated in the story of the two women who were arguing over the baby.
36:18
And they came and said, this baby is mine.
36:22
He said, bring me a sword.
36:23
We'll divide the baby in half.
36:24
And of course, the one who was the true mother said, no, don't do that.
36:28
And the other one said, go ahead and kill him.
36:31
And he said, well, I know now who the mother is.
36:33
And we know how that story turned out.
36:36
So we see more of Samuel's story though.
36:41
I'm sorry, more of Solomon's story is found in 1 and 2 Kings because this is the continuation of the narrative.
36:48
So we have 1 and 2 Samuel, which tells us about Saul and David.
36:51
And then we have 1 and 2 Kings, which tells us more about Solomon's reign and how the kingdom divides after the death of Solomon.
36:58
So we have the 1st and 2nd Kings is from the United Kingdom to the exile, takes us to the exile.
37:11
Now, tradition says that Jeremiah was the author of 1 and 2 Kings.
37:17
However, the books do not say that.
37:20
They don't ascribe an author.
37:22
So that is only tradition.
37:24
We can't make that a dogmatic claim.
37:27
The theme of 1 and 2 Kings is kingship and covenant.
37:33
And the key events, Solomon's reign, the divided kingdom and the exile of Israel, and then of Judah.
37:44
The key people, of course, David and Solomon.
37:49
And then we have Rehoboam and Jeroboam, which are the two sons of Solomon, one who becomes the king of the north, the other king in the south, dividing the kingdom.
38:04
And then we have the prophets, Elijah and Elisha.
38:12
We have Ahab and Naaman, Jezebel, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Josiah, Sennacherib, and Nebuchadnezzar.
38:31
Now, these are all different people.
38:35
Some of them kings, some of them, well, in the case of Jezebel, evil queen.
38:43
But all of these folks, if you were doing a study of 1 and 2 Kings, perhaps looking up these names and learning a little bit about their history would help you be able to follow the narrative and know more about who they are.
38:57
So I'm giving these names as a springboard for your study if you're gonna study these books.
39:02
Yes, sir.
39:03
Is it like not that long of a list the name of all the evil queens, such as Jezebel, and then there's some other ones, is it just a giant list, or are there only some of her power? Actually, well, as far as evil queens, as far as biblically, we'd say Jezebel.
39:21
I can't think of any other evil queens right off, but all of the kings of Israel were evil in the sense that they were not ever given any points of reference of any righteousness.
39:33
And many of the kings of Judah, which was the Southern Kingdom, were also evil, but a few of them were righteous.
39:39
And I do believe that's why they lasted an additional, well, about 150 years longer, because the Northern Kingdom fell in 722 to Assyria, but the Southern Kingdom lasted until 586.
39:54
So.
39:54
That's the one I'm trying to remember, Lilith, was she an evil queen? Lilith is actually a figure that's popular in mythical Judaism, which refers to the second wife of Adam.
40:07
So that's actually, that's a different narrative from a different book.
40:11
Yep, yep, yep.
40:12
Lilith is considered to be the second wife of Adam after Eve.
40:16
And that's not biblical, but that's a mythical Jewish belief.
40:22
I actually think it's in Kabbalah, but I'm not certain about that, but Kabbalah is a mystical Jewish offshoot, which actually rose during the, what we would call the intertestamental period.
40:36
Yeah.
40:36
I remember that it was decided that it's perfect time to practice man.
40:46
Yeah, but that would have been after the intertestamental period, so that would have been the Herodian dynasty.
40:55
Yeah, yeah.
40:55
Yeah, so evil queen, though, no doubt.
40:59
I mean, when you ask for the head of John the Baptist, you're not getting a trophy.
41:02
You're evil.
41:04
But yeah, but that would have been part of the Herodian dynasty past the intertestamental period.
41:11
Okay, on your handouts that you're gonna get, I'm giving you a list of all the kings and the united and divided kingdom.
41:21
So it starts with Saul, David, Solomon, and then you have Jeroboam, Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri.
41:28
I'm not gonna name them all, but you have the list here.
41:31
And these are the northern kingdom kings.
41:34
These are the southern kingdom kings.
41:36
And you'll notice it says right here, evaluations, bad.
41:42
Evaluation, bad, bad, good, good.
41:44
Bad, bad, bad, good, good, good.
41:45
So there were some good in the southern kingdom.
41:50
There were no good in the northern kingdom, at least from the evaluation of the handout.
41:54
There were no good kings in the northern kingdom.
41:57
Also, another part of the handout that you're gonna receive is almost the same list, but in more of a picture chart.
42:04
I like this one because it divides them out and sort of shows who was king of each during which time period.
42:10
So you get these for your handouts as well.
42:12
And all for a perfect price of zero.
42:16
Because this is all printed by the church for you.
42:20
All right, and so those are, so that will help you.
42:25
These handouts will help you if you're making your way through first second kings.
42:31
Those will help you get through there.
42:32
Now, let's look very quickly at first second chronicles.
42:35
First and second chronicles is connecting the Jewish people to their history.
42:43
The Septuagint title for these books was the Paralipomena.
42:49
I knew I was gonna say it wrong.
42:51
I've been practicing this all week.
42:54
Paralipomena, Paralipomena, there I got it.
42:56
Paralipomena, and it is the things that are omitted or the supplemental things.
43:01
So when you read first and second chronicles and first and second kings, some of the stories are the same stories, but it's telling you additional information about those books.
43:14
And even though the author is not stated as to who the chronicler was, there's a good chance that it was at least compiled by Ezra, the scribe.
43:27
And we'll talk about Ezra a little bit more in a moment.
43:31
The theme of first and second chronicles is God's faithfulness to Israel in the past and the promise of a future.
43:41
The key events in first and second chronicles are genealogies.
43:45
We have genealogies from Adam to Saul.
43:51
Isn't that awesome? There's genealogies, which takes you all the way from creation to Saul, the king.
44:00
And then David and Solomon's reign is in the books of first and second chronicles, the division of the kingdom, the exile, and then the decree of Cyrus to go back to Jerusalem.
44:12
And the key people are Nathan.
44:15
I'm sorry, David, Nathan, Solomon, Rehoboam, and Hezekiah, Josiah, and Cyrus.
44:28
Okay, so that ends the monarchical period.
44:32
And now we're gonna look quickly at the restoration period.
44:39
We got about 10 minutes before we take our break.
44:42
All right, so the restoration period.
44:47
Ezra and Nehemiah, remember, in the Jewish Bible, in the Hebrew Tanakh, Ezra and Nehemiah are one book.
44:57
So if you think of Ezra and Nehemiah being one book, even though they're not in our Bible, they are both dealing with the same thing, and that is the rebuilding of the temple and the walls of Jerusalem and restoring the community.
45:15
And as I said right here in the pink, it's faith under siege, one, and this is Ezra and Nehemiah are one work in the Hebrew Bible.
45:22
The writer of Ezra and Nehemiah is attributed to Ezra.
45:26
I do believe that is probably accurate there.
45:29
I would teach that very likely that Ezra wrote these two books.
45:37
And the key events are Cyrus's decree to rebuild the temple, the opposition of the enemies of God and the enemies of the Jewish people, and Nehemiah's reforms.
45:49
And the key people are Ezra, Nehemiah, Cyrus, Zerubbabel, Darius I, Artaxerxes I, Sanbelet, and Tobiah, who were those who were making things difficult for Nehemiah.
46:09
One of the great things that we see in these books is when the people of God who had been in exile and had not heard the word of God were brought back out.
46:21
I believe it's Nehemiah 8, but correct me if anybody knows if I'm off on that, but there's a passage where the books are brought out and a platform is built, and Ezra gets up and reads the word of God, reads the scriptures to the people, and it says the people stood and listened all day.
46:45
And I think about the fact that we can't get people to sit for 30 minutes to listen to a good sermon, but the people of God were so hungry for the word of God that they stood and they listened to the word of God as it was just read to them.
46:59
They were so hungry for the word of God just to be heard and to be read to them.
47:07
And so we see that in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
47:13
All right, lastly, in the historical books is the book of Esther.
47:21
Esther is about conflict, I'm sorry, courage in difficult circumstances, courage in difficult circumstances.
47:40
The author is not stated, and in this case, it's possibly an exile, a Jewish exile during the time of those events.
47:50
The theme is trusting in God's providence and protection even when he appears absent.
47:55
Now, the reason why I say it that way, even though he appears absent is because Esther is one of the only books of the Bible that does not mention God.
48:06
The name of God or even allusions to God are not mentioned in the book of Esther.
48:14
That does not mean he was absent, but certainly it's conspicuous that his name or the reference to God is not there.
48:22
And that actually did call into question for some regarding the canonicity of Esther.
48:35
Now, you remember what I talked about in the first class, what is canonicity? Whether a book is truly God-breathed, right? Whether it's truly part of scripture.
48:44
And there are some who questioned the canonicity of Esther because of the absence of any reference to God.
48:56
And there's another book, I can't think right off which one it is.
48:59
There's another book that was heavily questioned, but I can't think of it right now, so I have to come back to that later.
49:08
But the key events in Esther, Esther becomes a queen, Haman's plot to kill the Jews, and the Feast of Purim is established in the book of Esther.
49:21
In fact, if you remember, I don't know if you remember this, but in the first night, I showed you the different books of the Old Testament.
49:26
And I said in the Tanakh, they're ordered a different way.
49:29
And I said there were a few books that were used specifically for feasts.
49:33
And one of the books that was used for specific feasts was Esther because Esther is associated with the Feast of Purim.
49:41
And the key people in the book of Esther are Esther, King Xerxes, Queen Vashti, Mordecai, who was the relative of Esther, and Haman, who was the one who wanted the Jews killed.
49:57
Any questions about Esther? If you have any questions, just go take and watch the VeggieTales movie.
50:08
That is a joke, but VeggieTales did do the book of Esther, interestingly enough.
50:16
All right, so any, well, I do have one other, nope, that's for the next part.
50:22
That's for the next part.
50:23
So we're gonna, if there are no questions, we're gonna take our break.
50:28
All right, go ahead.
50:30
We'll come back and talk about theological insights.
50:42
All right, well, we are back.
50:46
And we are going to now go into theological insights.
50:50
Now, again, just like with the Pentateuch last week, there's no way we could put all of the theological insights on the board.
50:57
So I've only listed a few that I think are highly significant, but I also want to give you the opportunity, if you wanna add anything, any thoughts, I'm happy to write them up on the board.
51:10
First is God's providential care for Israel is demonstrated in these historical books.
51:18
You know, beginning with the conquests of Joshua, taking the land and then moving into the time of the kings.
51:27
And even during the time of the kings, there was still battles that were happening.
51:31
And a lot of it had to do with land and who was gonna rule over whom and who was gonna serve who and those different questions.
51:37
And so we see God providentially caring for Israel.
51:44
The second thing, we see God's willingness to bring judgment on those in rebellion.
51:50
And that is demonstrated in several places.
51:52
I'll give you a few thoughts on that.
51:54
First would be Achan, who we already mentioned.
51:57
But another one would be Saul, King Saul.
52:02
You'll remember King Saul was told to go and he was told to lay to waste everyone, every man, woman, child.
52:13
And what does he do? He brings back spoils of war.
52:18
And I love this passage.
52:20
Samuel says, is that the bleeding of, or what is that bleeding of sheep in my ears? Meaning, why am I hearing animals? Because you didn't destroy everything.
52:31
You're bringing back things that you weren't supposed to keep.
52:36
And what does Saul say? Well, I brought them back to sacrifice to God.
52:42
And Samuel says, obedience is greater than sacrifice.
52:49
Obedience is better than sacrifice.
52:51
What a powerful thought.
52:53
You know, people say that kind of stuff all the time.
52:55
And people try to make excuses for their disobedience.
52:59
Don't they? And that was the moment.
53:02
And then what does he do? He takes Agag.
53:05
By the way, they didn't even kill the king.
53:06
They're supposed to kill everybody.
53:08
They didn't kill the king.
53:09
Agag is still alive.
53:11
So Samuel brings Agag out and the Bible says, hacks Agag to pieces.
53:18
By the way, Dr.
53:19
John MacArthur does have a very powerful message on that passage where he talks, I think the title of it is, Hacking Agag to Pieces.
53:29
You can probably find it if you look it up online.
53:32
And he talks about our disobedience and what in our life needs to be hacked to pieces.
53:40
What Agags are we holding onto? What disobedient things are we holding onto and truly need to be hacked to pieces? Just a thought.
53:52
So we see God's willingness to bring judgment on those in rebellion.
53:56
Even David, who is a man after God's own heart.
54:00
What a wonderful thought to say David is a man after God's own heart.
54:04
But David takes a man's wife, has that man who is so loyal.
54:12
Oh, Uriah.
54:14
Who won't go home, won't lay with his wife, doesn't leave the king's steps.
54:21
So he writes a letter and Uriah delivers his own death notice ignorant of what he was holding to the commander in charge that they are to go out to battle.
54:35
And when the battle is raging, that all the men were to pull away from Uriah and allow him to be killed.
54:43
And then of course, David suffers the death of his child.
54:51
So we have God's willingness to bring judgment even on the one that he loves.
54:57
He loves David.
55:01
Thirdly, we have the kingdom promised to David.
55:05
Now, I want to mention just briefly, we talk in the Bible about the overarching theme of covenant.
55:18
And within the Bible, there are specific covenants that are mentioned.
55:22
Now, an argument can be made that there was a covenant with Adam in the garden, but the language of covenant is not used specifically.
55:29
So I'm going to bypass that one just for a moment.
55:31
The first named covenant in scripture is the covenant with Noah.
55:36
And actually it is the covenant with creation because Noah is the mediator of the covenant with God, but it's actually for all of creation that God would no longer destroy the world through water.
55:47
And so we call that the Noahic covenant.
55:51
And then we have the Abrahamic covenant.
55:57
And that is the covenant through Abraham that God promises that he is going to give Abraham a seed or a family, and he's going to give him a land.
56:08
He is going to give him property.
56:10
And that is the land of what should become known as the land of Israel or the promised land.
56:15
And the Abrahamic covenant includes the phrase, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through you.
56:21
All the nations of the earth will be blessed through you.
56:23
According to the apostle Paul, that was the gospel.
56:28
Abraham received a promise of the gospel when God said to Abraham, through you all the nations will be blessed.
56:34
So that's the Abrahamic covenant.
56:36
After the Abrahamic covenant, we have the Mosaic covenant.
56:41
The Mosaic covenant is the covenant God makes with Moses at Mount Sinai.
56:50
Well, he makes it with the nation of Israel, but Moses, of course, the mediator of the covenant in that sense.
56:55
And it is the Mosaic covenant, which includes the 10 commandments.
57:00
It includes the laws and all of those things.
57:03
And that's the covenant that God makes with Moses.
57:07
Now, the next named covenant in scripture from God to man is actually not the Davidic covenant because the term covenant is not used, but we could say it's the Davidic covenant because David is given a promise from God and a covenant is a promise.
57:24
So we would say the next one is the Davidic covenant.
57:30
But again, some people balk at the word covenant.
57:33
So you could say the Davidic covenant slash Davidic promise, if that is an issue.
57:41
And then after this, we would say it is the new covenant, which comes in who? Christ.
57:49
Christ is mediator of a better covenant, right? And it's the new covenant, it's the greater covenant.
57:54
But the reason why I point this out is because if you look at all of these covenants, every one of them is pointing forward to Christ.
58:06
We are pointing forward to the work of Christ.
58:08
We already talked about how Abraham, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed to you.
58:12
The Noahic covenant, I would say the Ark and everything points forward to Jesus, but specifically it is that promise of restoration.
58:20
And then we have the Mosaic covenant.
58:22
What does the Bible say the law does? The law worked as a schoolmaster to point them to Christ.
58:29
Remember it says that in the book of Galatians.
58:31
And the Davidic covenant establishes the throne and the throne becomes the promise of Christ's royal authority, that he will sit upon the throne of David.
58:53
So the promise of David is that he is going to be, he is going to have a throne that lasts forever.
59:01
How can David have a throne that lasts forever? Because it is the throne of Christ.
59:07
Christ becomes the perpetual King.
59:12
And this is why he's referred to as the son of David.
59:17
Blessed is he who comes the son of David, right? Because he is the one who's going to carry this throne on forever.
59:26
So these are, again, theological insights into the history books.
59:30
It's all pointing to Christ.
59:34
Okay, so what are some other, anybody have any other ideas for theological insights from the history books? Yes.
59:41
Okay.
59:43
Do all these covenants come together to establish the covenant of grace? Trying to decide how much I want to answer.
01:00:01
I honestly, I spent, no, no, no, no.
01:00:05
I spent an hour and a half today with three guys after church, we literally talked for an hour and a half.
01:00:10
And we were talking about the covenants and how they function.
01:00:14
The covenant of grace is referred to differently by different theological systems.
01:00:21
So within the Presbyterian system, the covenant of grace is everything that happens after the fall.
01:00:29
They would say everything that happens after the fall is part of the covenant of grace.
01:00:33
Within Baptist covenant theology, we would say that the covenant of grace specifically refers to the new covenant and all of the preceding covenants are promises of and pictures of and pointing to the new covenant, but that the new covenant is specifically the covenant of grace.
01:00:52
So that's where Presbyterian covenant theology and Baptist covenant theology would diverge.
01:00:57
Presbyterians would say everything that happens after the fall is the covenant of grace.
01:01:01
We would say everything that happens after the fall is grace, but it's not the covenant of grace.
01:01:06
The covenant of grace specifically is what comes through Christ.
01:01:09
So we would say all those things point to it.
01:01:11
So you would say the new covenant is the culmination of all of these.
01:01:14
Yeah, and the new covenant is the promise that was given to Israel in the Old Testament.
01:01:18
What we have in the new covenant is the fulfillment of the promises given to Israel.
01:01:24
And by the way, I just want one thought on that, Jason.
01:01:27
All of the promises find their yes and amen in Christ.
01:01:32
That's the passage to bring that together.
01:01:42
Yeah.
01:01:45
No, and that's a good question.
01:01:47
When you talk about the covenant of grace, in covenant theology, there's three covenants that they look at specifically.
01:01:53
The covenant of redemption, which was the covenant that God made within himself prior to creation to create the world and redeem the elect.
01:01:59
And then you have the covenant of works according to covenant theology, which is Adam having the opportunity to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
01:02:07
And he broke that covenant by eating.
01:02:09
And then of course, the covenant of grace is what Christ brings in the new covenant.
01:02:14
And again, where does that begin and end is the question.
01:02:18
And within Presbyterian theology, even the law would be considered part of the covenant of grace.
01:02:25
And so that's where there would be some distinction.
01:02:29
And I know for some of y'all, that might be a little, you're not used to the language and that's fine, but that is a big deal.
01:02:37
So it's because we're looking now at theological frameworks more so than just, what does the Bible say? We're saying, what's the meta narrative? What's happening? Yes, sir.
01:02:49
I mean, I was just gonna say, wouldn't that be the whole promise of mercy? Yes.
01:02:54
I mean, that's part of the covenant there too, kind of.
01:02:56
We would say that is a promise of the new covenant.
01:03:01
Yeah, that God promises that he is going to send one who would crush the head of the serpent.
01:03:08
And that's the- When he died on the cross, it reached all the way back.
01:03:12
Oh yeah.
01:03:12
Now I would agree with that.
01:03:15
I just, the difference really is how we define like things like the Mosaic covenant.
01:03:23
Well, we say the Mosaic covenant is part of the covenant of grace.
01:03:26
Presbyterians would say yes, Baptists would say no.
01:03:29
We wouldn't say there's, we're not saying there's no grace in the law, but we're saying that that's not the same.
01:03:38
It's all, yeah.
01:03:39
I mean, how people define that might determine what church you go to, but it's not gonna determine whether or not you're Christian.
01:03:45
I think you just changed Bob to not be a Christian.
01:03:47
Huh? What'd you say? You just changed me, because I mean, I've seen grace from the beginning.
01:03:54
Okay, but I'm not saying there wasn't grace in the beginning.
01:03:56
I'm talking about the covenant of grace.
01:03:58
And that's a distinction that that's where this comes back down to in Presbyterian theology, all of the covenants are essentially flattened out.
01:04:07
And what you end up with a new covenant that's not really new, because it's just a re-administration of the same covenant of grace it's always been.
01:04:14
But the book of Hebrews doesn't allow that for me, because the book of Hebrews tells me that it's not just new, but that it's better.
01:04:20
That's a greater covenant.
01:04:22
And so that's why I'm a Baptist.
01:04:25
And so I do see a distinction between the new covenant and the old covenant, because the writer of Hebrews tells me I should.
01:04:33
So moving along.
01:04:35
So we've got theological insights.
01:04:37
Any others, any questions? All right, we got about 10 minutes left.
01:04:40
Let's look at interpretive challenges.
01:04:45
Interpretive challenges.
01:04:46
Much of what we have written is by unknown or uncertain authors.
01:04:52
And there are references to unknown books.
01:04:58
By the way, because I love to just give you handouts, I gave you a whole list of the books that are mentioned that are not in the Bible.
01:05:08
So you've got the book of the Wars of the Lord mentioned in Numbers 21, the book of Yasher in Joshua 10, the records of the Chronicles of King David, which is referenced in 1 Chronicles 27, the books of the Kings of Israel and Judah, 2 Chronicles, the books of the Kings of Judah and Israel, 2 Chronicles, the books of the Kings of Israel.
01:05:25
Now, some of these may be referencing, 1 and 2 Kings may just be referencing them by a different name or slightly different name, but you'll notice, such as the words of Samuel the seer, or the words of Gad the seer, or the visions of Edo the seer.
01:05:42
These are all things that are mentioned in the Bible, but they are not books of the Bible.
01:05:48
Now, currently I'm teaching through the book of Jude on Wednesday nights, and I talked about the fact that Jude references books that aren't in the Bible.
01:05:57
Jude references Enoch, which is not in the Bible, and he references a book called the Testament of Moses, which is not in the Bible.
01:06:06
Just because a book is referenced in the Bible does not make that book a work of God.
01:06:13
It's, and we can prove this because Paul references pagan literature in some of his writing.
01:06:20
He quotes from some pagan works.
01:06:22
That doesn't mean they're scripture, he's simply using them as an example.
01:06:27
And so this is in your handout for tonight, all of the books that are mentioned, and this is from the Zondervan charts.
01:06:35
So this is not from, if you have the books, this is not from Rose books, this is from the Zondervan charts.
01:06:43
All right, okay.
01:06:49
Second thing on theological, or excuse me, interpretive challenges is how we understand certain behaviors and their implications.
01:07:02
Now, what do I mean by that? Well, Rahab lied, did she not? Yep, yep.
01:07:11
But she's later commended for what she did in hiding the spies.
01:07:15
And there's different ways that people understand that, there are different ways that people understand things like the situation with the birth of Moses, how the Hebrew midwives were lying about the, you know, so the Hebrew women had their baby so fast, we can't get there quick enough to kill them.
01:07:32
You know, they have this story concocted.
01:07:35
And so this does lead to some theological, or rather interpretive challenges.
01:07:44
Because we would in one sense say that all lying is a breach of the Eighth Commandment, because the Eighth Commandment tells us to not bear false witness or not to lie.
01:07:54
But at the same time too, we would say that there are times in scripture where people are doing things that we would say are in attempt to save life or something like that.
01:08:06
And so we have to interpret the situation.
01:08:08
And sometimes people use that in a wrong way.
01:08:12
Well, Rahab lied, so therefore I can lie.
01:08:14
And they use that as an excuse.
01:08:16
That's not how that passage is intended to be taken.
01:08:19
And so things like that have to be, when we interpret narrative, and we interpret behaviors that people are exhibiting, not all of those behaviors are intended to necessarily be modeled after.
01:08:35
Just because it's in the Bible doesn't mean it's something we should do.
01:08:38
You understand what I mean by that? You know, the Bible talks all the time about people who do things that are, like I said earlier, the guy who chopped up the concubine.
01:08:48
Don't do that.
01:08:50
I mean, when these narratives are telling us a story and there's an overarching lesson to be learned, but it's not always do this.
01:09:00
That's not always the lesson.
01:09:01
And defining that is sometimes difficult.
01:09:05
Yes, sir, Jacob.
01:09:06
What about the following all the ordinances of man, which I think was in Matthew.
01:09:12
I think I was reading it last night and I read it down here.
01:09:14
And it was where Jesus said to follow every ordinance of man.
01:09:19
And that's mentioned a couple of times I think.
01:09:22
Yeah, I'll have to look at the passage specifically.
01:09:25
I'm trying to remember exactly which one that you're referring to.
01:09:28
And I don't wanna misinterpret, especially the words of Christ in any way.
01:09:33
But there were times where Jesus commanded his followers to be obedient to what the religious leaders were saying, because he was saying, they're telling you what the Bible says, so be obedient, but don't follow their actions.
01:09:47
Like there's one times when he says, listen to the Pharisees where they sit in Moses' seat.
01:09:51
They're preaching, they're teaching the word, but they're hypocrites.
01:09:54
So don't do what they're doing because their hypocrisy is wrong.
01:09:57
The words they're saying are correct, but their hypocrisy is incorrect.
01:10:02
And then he did also tell them to, he condemned the Pharisees for teaching the traditions of men as doctrines of God.
01:10:12
And that was another issue too, because the Pharisees were adding to the commands.
01:10:18
And that was a problem as well.
01:10:19
Make sense? Okay, all right.
01:10:22
So other things like David stole a man's wife, but through that union, a king came.
01:10:31
So somebody may use that as an excuse for their sinful behavior.
01:10:36
And you might say, nobody would be so brash.
01:10:39
Yes, they are.
01:10:40
Trust me.
01:10:41
I've heard people use all kinds of biblical examples, especially from historical narratives to try to make excuses for sinful behavior.
01:10:49
Well, David did it.
01:10:50
Yeah, well, David was wrong.
01:10:53
You know, just because David did that thing doesn't mean it's right.
01:10:58
Ultimately, what we see is God's perfect will being worked out in imperfect people.
01:11:06
But just because God can take a crooked stick and draw a straight line, doesn't mean that we ought to try to model ourselves after the crooked stick.
01:11:15
I hope that makes sense.
01:11:17
But ultimately that is often the case.
01:11:21
Certain behaviors are not intended to be models.
01:11:24
They're telling us the story, not giving us a lesson in how to live.
01:11:32
And probably the most difficult interpretive challenge to the history books is number three on the list.
01:11:39
And that is the command of God to kill entire people groups.
01:11:44
And again, as I said, I have just been reading through Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.
01:11:51
I'm in 1 Samuel now.
01:11:53
And as I'm reading through them again, I just am overwhelmed at times with the amount of bloodshed that is throughout these texts.
01:12:03
I mean, just 1 Samuel 15, verse three, we were just talking about this.
01:12:08
It says, now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have.
01:12:13
Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.
01:12:22
And that's the word of God.
01:12:25
That is the command of the Almighty.
01:12:30
And a lot of people take issue with that.
01:12:34
There's a book.
01:12:38
It came out several years ago.
01:12:41
You guys know what a four views book is? A four views book is a debate book.
01:12:49
So they have like four different authors that will write on a position and then they will respond to each other's position.
01:12:59
And then all of that will be put together in a book.
01:13:02
So you can read four different views on baptism or four different views on end times.
01:13:10
You get dispensationalism, all that.
01:13:12
And there's a bunch of those out there.
01:13:14
And I think they're wonderful in one sense.
01:13:16
If you wanna really get a picture, in our apologetics class, I actually recommended a four views book on different apologetic methodologies, which we talk about, which are presuppositional, evidential, those different schools of thought on apologetics.
01:13:31
I recommend because I think that there's value in all of them.
01:13:34
Even though I'm a presuppositionalist, I think there's value in all of the different schools of thought when it comes to apologetics.
01:13:40
But in regard to the conquest of Canaan, there is a four views book.
01:13:48
And the four views book takes four different perspectives on God's call and what they it's, some people would call this genocide.
01:13:59
You know, I'm not sure if you're familiar with that term.
01:14:01
The word genocide means to destroy an entire people, leave none alive, right? And the four views book gives the different perspectives that some people have held.
01:14:15
One of the more popular perspectives is that these people were tremendously evil.
01:14:25
And therefore God sent the Israelites in to judge them because of their evil.
01:14:34
And therefore they, in that sense, deserved it.
01:14:39
And there is some validity to that when we begin to consider such as the, the ones who worshiped Molech.
01:14:53
Molech was a God who required child sacrifice so the children, there was a, it was like a statue that had a furnace within it.
01:15:07
And the people would take their children and the furnace would have a place to lay the child.
01:15:13
And it was like laying them on a frying pan that was red hot.
01:15:17
And they would lay the child on the pan and it would scorch the child to death.
01:15:23
And in the screams of the child, there would be praise to Molech.
01:15:30
Oftentimes, modern abolitionists, and by that I mean those who are opposed to abortion.
01:15:39
I am opposed to abortion and I would consider myself an abolitionist, which means I believe abortion should be abolished.
01:15:45
I don't think it needs to be legally modulated.
01:15:49
I think it needs to be destroyed.
01:15:51
Well, a lot of people who take the position that I do would compare the modern practice of abortion to the Molechian practice of destroying your children in the fire.
01:16:03
And so there are those who would say, that's the reason for God sending Israel to destroy.
01:16:10
And while I would tend toward that, I would always raise this as somewhat of an objection to that.
01:16:19
And that is that we are all worthy of God's punishment.
01:16:25
We are all worthy of God's destruction.
01:16:29
So I think the better way to see all of this is that no one has ever received an unjust penalty from God.
01:16:44
You will either receive justice or mercy, but you will never receive injustice from God.
01:16:55
Not one person who was ever destroyed by the Israelites received injustice from God, not one.
01:17:05
Because no one deserves anything except for God's wrath.
01:17:11
So if God chooses to bring his wrath upon an entire people, he is not unjust in doing so.
01:17:19
But remember this, and it's one of my favorite things Jesus ever said.
01:17:22
One time Jesus had a group of people come to him, I think it's Luke 13.
01:17:27
Group of people came to Jesus and they said, Jesus, there was a tower in Siloam that fell and killed some people.
01:17:34
Was that because they were worse sinners? And Jesus said, unless you repent, you will likewise perish.
01:17:45
So Jesus's response was, no, it's not that they were worse sinners than you, because unless you repent, you will likewise perish.
01:17:53
See, whatever terrible thing befell the enemies of Israel in the books of the history of Israel is nothing compared to the eternal destruction that will befall those who refuse to repent and believe.
01:18:08
It's nothing compared to hell.
01:18:12
So is it difficult? Yeah, it's a difficult portion of scripture.
01:18:16
It's certainly not the one thing that I would take to the atheist to try to talk to him about, because he's not gonna understand because he's not gonna respect or appreciate the authority of God in any of that.
01:18:27
But as Christians, we have to take a step back and say we're dealing with a God who's sovereign, with a God who's just, with a God who's holy.
01:18:35
And he has the authority to do with his creation what he chooses.
01:18:41
All right.
01:18:42
In conclusion, the primary story of the whole Bible really centers around five people.
01:18:51
And since we have gone through the Pentateuch and now through the history books, which really take, the history books takes us all the way up to the intertestamental periods.
01:18:59
It really takes us up right to Christ.
01:19:01
Now we're gonna go back next week to the wisdom books and the poetic books.
01:19:04
But for now, we've gone through all of the history of the Old Testament.
01:19:07
And these are the five names that should keep, we should keep in our mind.
01:19:12
Because the whole story wraps around these five people.
01:19:15
Adam, the first man, represented mankind as our federal head.
01:19:20
Abraham, the man whose covenant established a nation and included blessings for all.
01:19:27
Moses, the man whose covenant included the law of God for Israel.
01:19:32
David, the man whose covenant included an everlasting kingdom.
01:19:36
And all of these would be significant in the new covenant in Christ.
01:19:41
Christ is the new Adam.
01:19:44
Christ is the son of Abraham through whom we become children of Abraham.
01:19:50
Christ is the better Moses.
01:19:52
The law came through Moses, but grace and truth come through Jesus Christ.
01:19:56
And Christ is the one who sits on the throne of David.
01:20:01
So the whole story of the Bible can be summarized in these five names.
01:20:08
Okay? All right, that takes us through the history.
01:20:14
And we're going to end with a word of prayer.
01:20:19
What's that? Oh, praise the Lord.
01:20:21
Let's end with a word of prayer.
01:20:22
Father, I thank you for this class and for all these folks who want to come and study and learn.
01:20:27
I pray that this has been fruitful for them and encouraging.
01:20:31
And I pray, Lord, that we would just better understand how you have worked throughout all of human history, particularly the history of your people, your elect.
01:20:40
In Jesus' name, amen.
01:20:43
All right, guys, I'll send out the screens.