If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to Luke chapter 24. It's also there in your worship guide. Luke 24 verse 44. And these are the words that Jesus said to 2 of his disciples as they were walking on the road, going to Emmaus after Jesus had been resurrected. Then Jesus said to them, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you.
Jeffrey Heine:That everything written about me in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the Psalms, must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. If you would, pray with me. Our father, that's what we ask is that tonight, you would open up our minds that we might understand the scriptures, that we might see Jesus throughout it all. So Spirit, write these things on our hearts.
Jeffrey Heine:I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So about 3 years ago, we were not meeting in this place.
Jeffrey Heine:We were meeting in Woodlawn, at a school called Cornerstone, and it was our last Sunday there. We were in transition of moving all of our stuff here, and we'd already moved all of our sound equipment. We've moved a lot of our furniture, but we had this one remaining Sunday there, but we weren't sure exactly what to do, without any sound system or a lot of the things we had. So I thought, well I'll just teach the whole time, and I'm just gonna kinda walk through the entire Bible, in about an hour. And so that's what I did, and since then, I've steadily heard from people, can we do that again?
Jeffrey Heine:Can we do that again? That that was really helpful that we could get such a holistic understanding of of scripture, and so that's what we're going to do tonight. This is not a normal redeemer service. I normally don't preach for an hour, but I'm gonna do so, tonight, and just kinda walk through all of scripture, and hopefully we'll walk away with a great, better understanding of what's in the Bible. So open your Bible to the the, table of contents.
Jeffrey Heine:Let's start at the very very beginning. The table of contents. The Bible's a pretty intimidating book. It's a really big book. It's a confusing book.
Jeffrey Heine:My Bible's about 1300 pages long. You have over a 1000 different names, over a 1000 different places that are mentioned there, so the whole thing's confusing. Where do you go when you want to, read one of the stories? Where do you go for the prophecies? Where are those proverbs or wisdom literature?
Jeffrey Heine:And and understanding the structure of the Bible is one of the keys to really understanding the content of the Bible. So the first thing you'll notice as you look there, and it's also in your worship guide, that table of contents, is 2 major divisions. You have your Old Testament, and you have your New Testament. Testament is just the Latin word for covenant. So it's your old covenant, and it's your new covenant.
Jeffrey Heine:Your old covenant has 39 books. It was written by 28 different authors, and it spans about 2000 years. So a long long history that it spans during that time. The New Testament is 27 books, 9 authors, and it spans a little less than a 100 years. But the total history of the Bible is about 211 100 years.
Jeffrey Heine:So if you look at the Old Testament in particular right there, it breaks down into 3 major divisions. Your first 17 books are historical. So from Genesis all the way through Esther is historical. You might notice in your worship guide, that's only 16 books. We have one book that's missing.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't know why it didn't make it, but Judges is not in there for some reason. We'll probably discuss that later. But there should be 17 books there. Those are the historical books, that contain the entire history of Israel in that section. The first 5 books, we call them the Pentateuch, or the Law, or Torah.
Jeffrey Heine:But the first 17 books are historical. Your next 5 books are what we call the poetical books, and this is your wisdom literature. These are your songs and your prayers, that the Israelites had. After that, you have what we call the prophetical books. 17 prophetical books.
Jeffrey Heine:So all of the prophecies in the Old Testament are contained there. And there is a division among those. Your first five are what we call the major prophets, and then the next 12 are the minor prophets. These are not baseball terms. These aren't like, you know, the major league prophets who are really good, and then you have these somewhat good, triple a, you know, prophets that are the minors.
Jeffrey Heine:It's purely length. So you have the 5 longest prophets, they're the major prophets. And then you have the minor prophets who are much shorter in length. So there's our breakdown to the Old Testament. So if if you wanna read a story, you go to the first 17 books.
Jeffrey Heine:The entire story of Israel is outlined there. If you wanna read a proverb, or if you wanna read a psalm or a prayer, it's likely gonna be in that, those 5 books in that poetical section. And then if you wanna go to a prophecy, it's gonna be one of those 17 books there. So the New Testament also has 3 major divisions. The first is historical, in which you have the 4 gospels plus Acts, in which you're gonna get the entire history of Jesus and the church contained in those 5 books right there.
Jeffrey Heine:And next, you have 13 Pauline epistles. Epistles are just a fancy word for letters, but you have 13 Pauline letters. The first nine of these letters go to churches. The next 4 go to individuals. Now just because whoever compiled the Bible in this order really wanted to confuse people, the the letters are not put there in date of when they were written.
Jeffrey Heine:If so, 1st Thessalonians would be first, since it's the first letter that Paul wrote. Instead, it is put in there by order of length. So Romans, which is Paul's longest, is their first. First Corinthians, which is his second longest, is there second. And to where you go all the way down to Philemon, which is his shortest letter.
Jeffrey Heine:So that's the 13 Pauline epistles. Then after that, you have the general epistles, and there's 9 of them, and those are written by other authors, so you have James, and you have John, and you have Peter, who wrote those remaining letters there. So that's the structure of the entire Bible. It makes a lot of sense in some ways, and in other ways it can be confusing. But now you know if you if you're looking for the stories in the New Testament, well you gotta go to this first five books, or you gotta go to this first 17 in the Old Testament.
Jeffrey Heine:If you're looking for some teaching or some prophecy, well, you're gonna have to go towards the end. Alright, so let's look at the content of the Bible. Now that you have the key to kinda understanding structure of the Bible, let's look at the content. Is there an overarching story? Is there an overarching theme in which you could trace through all 66 books?
Jeffrey Heine:And the answer is yes. We just read about that in Luke 24. The theme is Jesus. Jesus said, you know, when he's talking to his disciples, you look at Moses, and the Psalms, and the prophets, and he says they all speak of him. In John chapter 5, he was talking to some religious leaders, and he says, you search the scriptures, and by scriptures, he's talking about the Old Testament.
Jeffrey Heine:You search the Old Testament because you think that in them, you'll find life. But these scriptures testify about me, about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you might have life. So Jesus saw himself as the central component to all of scripture. And so, if I were to put a a theme to the Bible, I would say this. The Bible is about the kingdom of God, and how Jesus is the king.
Jeffrey Heine:The Bible's about the kingdom of God and how Jesus is the king. Alright, so let's start looking at the actual content. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna break up the Bible in, I'm really not sure how many sections, probably 9 sections in the Old Testament and we'll see how far we get in the New Testament. And these, this breakdown is not original to me. A lot of you been going through the 30 days to understanding the Bible, you'll recognize some of those headings.
Jeffrey Heine:Some some divide the Bible into 10 headings, some 15. I've seen it go up to 20. We're gonna hit the 15 ish to 18 ish range. I'm really not sure, but we'll hit somewhere in there. And we're gonna spend most of our time in the Old Testament.
Jeffrey Heine:But the first major division that you have, or the section, is Genesis. And we're gonna go 1 through chapters 11. 1 through chapter 11 is Genesis. Actually, I'm already messing up here. We're gonna call this creation.
Jeffrey Heine:And then we'll use Genesis as a subheading there. Alright. Genesis. Genesis 1 through 11, under creation. So Genesis chapter 1, God speaks and the entire universe comes into being.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, let there be light, there's light. He says, let there be animals, there are animals. He just speaks everything into existence. In Genesis chapter 2, though, we learn that he creates man differently. He doesn't speak man into existence.
Jeffrey Heine:Instead, he gets his hands dirty. He he takes his time, and he fashions man out of clay. And man is really the pinnacle of his creation, and you could tell that by by him slowing down and and making man, fashioning man, and then breathing life into man. Now, the way that God creates humanity is different than any of the other, creation legends or anything like that that were going around at the time. Because they all thought that whoever the God or gods were, that the gods could have nothing to do with matter.
Jeffrey Heine:And so you had the spiritual was good, and you had material or physical things were bad, but here, we see that God holds both of them good. The material and the spiritual, and they're actually wed together in humanity. And and man is very good, and he breathes his life into into man. And so that's how we come into being. And we are special above all creation because we are created in his image.
Jeffrey Heine:And so Genesis 1. Is that up there? Genesis 1, we read, then God said, let us make man in our own image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image.
Jeffrey Heine:In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So this is why man is special.
Jeffrey Heine:Not only did God take his time to create us, but then he gave us his image. But what does that mean to be created in God's image? Why is that such a special thing? There's been a whole lot written about it, and I'm sure there's many different nuances to what it means to be created in His image. It certainly means that we're relational beings.
Jeffrey Heine:Actually, you find in Genesis 1, it says male and female, he created them in his image. And so, that 2 different types of persons can relate together and even become 1. Well, that reflects who God is. Who's 3 different persons, yet one God. And so we're made relational, and yet we can be unified.
Jeffrey Heine:But if you were to look closely at the immediate context of Genesis 1, what it mostly means is that we have dominion. So Genesis 126, we we read about how we are given dominion. Genesis 127, God creates us in his own image. Then we have verse 28, He gives us dominion. That's called an inclusio, when it's dominion created in His image, dominion.
Jeffrey Heine:So we look like God in this. God is the ruler of the universe. He has dominion over all the universe, but then he creates man, and he gives us dominion over the earth. We are to rule over this earth and help the earth flourish all to the glory of God. And so that is why we're the pinnacle of creation.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, the goal of creation is Sabbath rest, and we looked at that at the theological talk back a week ago. Sabbath rest is a goal. After God created man, He created everything. He rested on the 7th day. He declared it's finished.
Jeffrey Heine:And He didn't just kick back in the lawn chair, you know, and just like, relax. That's not the image. It's that He ceased from work to enjoy the work. To enjoy the finished work. This shalom, this peace and this prosperity, this flourishing of the creation that he made.
Jeffrey Heine:So everything's perfect, and that's what we were meant to enjoy. And that's that's why after it was destroyed, when Jesus comes, He says, come to me all who are weary, and I will give you rest. Jesus is restoring the rest that we break. Alright. So that's the world that we inherited, but we know that it all went south when Adam and Eve sinned.
Jeffrey Heine:And this is where we get to kind of a subheading here, Genesis 3, the fall. Genesis 3. God placed Adam and Eve in the garden, told them to work it. They had every freedom you could imagine, and he gave them just one instruction. Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Jeffrey Heine:And this isn't because God was being mean, or God was, somehow holding back on them. This was really a gift that God gave them. It's easy to worship God when when you have everything, but can you worship God when you when you could just make one small little sacrifice? Can you just trust Him in this one little thing, even though He won't tell you why? And Adam and Eve failed.
Jeffrey Heine:They they were deceived by the serpent. They ate of this fruit. And the sin really was that they wanted to become their own lawmakers. They wanted to become their own gods. Nobody would tell them what to do.
Jeffrey Heine:And you cannot overstate the disastrous consequences of what happened when they disobeyed God. Not only did sin and death enter into their body, but then the entire world fell under a curse, which is appropriate, because once again, man was meant to have dominion over the entire earth, was to rule the world in righteousness, but now that he has fallen, the world falls with him. It's one of the reasons we see Paul writing in Romans chapter 8. Says all of the earth groans under the curse, and it groans and it waits for the sons of God to be revealed. Basically, it waits for the Christians to get their resurrected bodies and to rule once again, and then the earth will be liberated when we rule the world once again with righteousness.
Jeffrey Heine:But we fell, And so what's the hope that we have after this? After we have sinned, after we have fallen, after we are kicked out of the garden, there is hope. And that's when we come to Genesis 3:15. Is there a slide there? Genesis 3:15.
Jeffrey Heine:This is called the protoevangel, known as the first gospel. Well, let's just read it. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. This is God talking to the serpent. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
Jeffrey Heine:So after Adam and Eve are they're kicked out of the garden, God has some very direct words towards the serpent. And he says, basically, there's gonna be a war. Your seed versus the woman's seed. And at one point, serpent, you're gonna bite her seed on the heel. You're gonna inject your venom, if you will.
Jeffrey Heine:You're gonna give what seems to be a death blow, but then this person's gonna turn around and stomp you on the head and crush you. It's not the full gospel. Alright. It's a hint. Some of you are like, It's it's it's the first hint of the gospel that we get.
Jeffrey Heine:And so, what I like to compare this to, is this right here. Let's see. Anybody know what that is? An acorn. That's right.
Jeffrey Heine:That's an acorn. So Genesis 315 is the acorn. Come on. It's just like, I think it's like a brown strawberry, alright. So Genesis 315, right there, 3 15.
Jeffrey Heine:Now throughout scripture, we're gonna see this growing and growing and growing. So finally, we get to this right here. It's a giant stalk of broccoli. Is that till we get to an oak tree. This oak tree is the cross.
Jeffrey Heine:Genesis 3:15, this acorn only makes sense in light of the cross. Otherwise, we would have no idea what God is saying to that serpent. But now we look back, we're like, oh. So Jesus was, in a sense, struck by the serpent, even died. But in his resurrection, he turned around and he gave a death blow to the serpent.
Jeffrey Heine:And so it makes sense. And actually, throughout all the old testament, you begin to see this revelation growing and growing. And so, you begin to understand, like, when we get to the tabernacle, and God coming and dwelling among us, well that speaks of when Jesus came and he tabernacled among us. Or when you get to Isaiah saying the virgin shall be with child, you're confused until you know it's Jesus. And so when we are given the cross and when we understand Jesus, we can look back at the entire Old Testament, and we can make sense of it.
Jeffrey Heine:But if we didn't have this, we would be so confused as we begin to see that revelation of God growing and growing and growing. Really, a great way to understand the Old Testament is to think of the Old Testament as a marriage proposal. It's it's the dinner, the dancing, the conversation, in which we're getting to know one another, the gradually, the unfolding of who we are, until finally when we get to the New Testament, there's the wedding. We see Jesus, and we see the one we're supposed to be united with, forever. Now can you understand who Jesus is apart from the Old Testament?
Jeffrey Heine:Yes. You can, but you miss out on so much. You really don't know the fullness of who He is until you go and you understand, all the Old Testament and you have that, dating period. Alright. So that's creation.
Jeffrey Heine:Next category, I'm gonna skip over a bunch. We have, if you wanted to fill it out, you have Cain and Abel here. Now that the vertical relationship is damaged, it works its way out horizontally. Now horizontally, we we can't relate to one another so Cain kills Abel, then you've got the flood, then you've got the Tower of Babel, and then you come to the patriarchs. The patriarchs.
Jeffrey Heine:And that is Genesis 12 through 50. The patriarchs are our fathers, so father Abraham, who had many, many sons. So you have father Abraham and then you have Isaac and then you have Jacob who actually had the many sons, who had the 12 that become the 12 tribes of Israel. And then the last one is Joseph. Genesis ends with Joseph.
Jeffrey Heine:Now the foundational verse that we have in Genesis, 12 is the call to Abraham in Genesis 1, or yeah, Genesis 12:1 through 3. And so here we read these words. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
Jeffrey Heine:I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. The rest of the Old Testament is going to unpack unpack those 3 verses. So after everything is messed up here, God, he identifies 1 person, Abram. And he says, I'm gonna make a covenant with you.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm gonna restore the world through you. And it's not because Abram's righteous. He's just as pagan as all the people around him. But God just chooses in his graciousness to make a covenant with him, and he says, I'm going to bless the entire world through you. And so now we're left waiting for this seed of Abram, of Abraham, to see how is the world gonna be blessed through him.
Jeffrey Heine:And so like I said, Abraham had Isaac, Isaac had Jacob, Jacob had the 12 sons, which become the 12 tribes of Israel. And then one of the most famous ones is Joseph. Joseph goes off to Egypt, sold the slavery to Egypt. He's the one who who pretty much saves not just all of the Israelites at this time, but he saves all of humanity, really, of that part of the world. And so all of Abraham's descendants wind up in Egypt at the end of Genesis.
Jeffrey Heine:And then as you read Genesis 50, you could kind of hear this creepy organ music playing. The very last word in Genesis 50 is the word bones, or coffin. It's the word coffin. Joseph is dead in Egypt in a coffin. And that's kinda this foreboding of what's to come next.
Jeffrey Heine:So what comes next is Exodus. And this is gonna be Exodus through Deuteronomy. Exodus through Deuteronomy. So here, Abram's descendants, they they grow to where they're about a 100 or so by time they enter into Egypt, but then over 400 years, they grow huge. They become a mighty people, so mighty that the Egyptians are scared of them, enslave them.
Jeffrey Heine:And so the people began crying out to God, and God sends a deliverer. That deliverer is Moses, and he picks Moses to deliver his people, and Exodus 3 is one of the foundational passages in scripture. It's in Exodus 3 that God reveals his name to us. Moses says, alright, I really don't wanna deliver the people, but if you're gonna force me to deliver the people, okay. But the problem is I don't even know who you are.
Jeffrey Heine:What's your name? And so God reveals himself as Yahweh. Yahweh, which means I am. It's an astonishing name. When when Moses heard this, I'm sure he was waiting for God to finish the statement.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, I am what? But God didn't say, I am the creator of the universe, or I'm the most powerful person in the universe, because because then, Moses would have thought he had he understood the category. You know, if God had said, I am king, he would have said, oh. So you're like the most you're like pharaoh, but even more powerful. God would say, my kingship is nothing like the way you view kingship.
Jeffrey Heine:It's not in the same category. Or if Moses or if God had said, I am powerful, he Moses would've thought about the most powerful thing he could imagine, said, oh, you're just kinda like that, and God has said, I'm nothing like that. My power is nothing like any power you can imagine. You cannot place me in any category. I simply am.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm my own category. The name I am is closely associated with the word holy. The word holy simply means other or different or not at all like us. And so God is the I am is in His own category, and He's altogether different. He is nothing like us.
Jeffrey Heine:And so we have God's name revealed to us there. We know the story, how God delivers the Israelites. We have the plagues in Exodus 6 through 11. The last plague is the death of the firstborn. We have the Passover there where God's people are spared, their children are not killed, the destroyer passes over them.
Jeffrey Heine:Pharaoh sends, the Israelites out. We have Exodus 14, which is where they part the Red Sea. The Red Sea is parted and they go on dry ground. And all of that is to bring us to chapter 20, another foundational passage. Exodus 20, which is the Red Sea.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, sorry, which is Sinai. Mount Sinai. So after God delivers all the Israelites, he takes them to the foot of Sinai, and it's here he gives them his law. The 10 Commandments. Really gives them all.
Jeffrey Heine:There's a lot more than that, but the Ten Commandments. And don't think of the Ten Commandments as, okay, now that I've got you out here into the desert, I'm gonna ruin your lives by telling you all the things you have to do, and if you don't do them, you're going to hell. I mean, that's that's that's not the law. They've been saved by grace. They've done nothing to earn their salvation up to this point.
Jeffrey Heine:God has just, by a strong-arm, just pulled them out of Egypt, and He doesn't take them out in the desert to then to then burden them with the law. The law is God revealing His heart to them. He says, now that I have you out into the desert, let me speak love. These are the things I cherish. And so, he reveals his heart to his people.
Jeffrey Heine:I like to think of the law as a flashlight. Basically, he gives his people a flashlight to where they could turn it on, and they could see him. They could see what he's like. And then we can actually get this flashlight, and they they could point it forward to Jesus, so that when Jesus comes, we see that he's actually the one who perfectly reflects the law, who perfectly keeps the law. So he reflects God's heart.
Jeffrey Heine:And then we could take the flashlight and we could shine it at us. And when the law shines on us, we see that we do not keep the law, and it exposes our evilness, our, and our darkness in us. So we shine the flashlight at God, and we see all of his beauty. We shine the flashlight of the law at Jesus, and we see how he perfectly reflects God's beauty in his heart. And then we shine the law at us, and it reveals our depravity.
Jeffrey Heine:But the law is is basically seen as that flashlight. So that's what happens during the Exodus. We are given the law of God. So then we go to the next stage, which is conquest. So this is where the Israelites, they finally settle in that land that was promised to Abram, a promise to Moses and the people there.
Jeffrey Heine:And Moses doesn't lead them though, Joshua does, and that's the book here, it's Joshua. And that's where you get the great song, Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. As they go in and they conquer the land there. And then we have next stage, after the conquest, we're gonna call this the Judges. So when they they go into the land of Canaan, they begin dividing up the property there among the 12 tribes of Israel.
Jeffrey Heine:They're not a nation really at this point. Think of them as a loose confederacy of states. And, and so they have this loose relationship with one another, but from time to time, they need a leader, and that leader is going to be called a judge. So what would typically happen is now that they've settled in the land of Canaan, they would forget all about the Lord, they would fall into sin, and God would send in a neighboring country to come and to fight against them, to persecute them. They would call out for help.
Jeffrey Heine:God would send a judge. This judge is kinda part prophet, part king, part warrior. This is where you have your your Deborah, you have your Gideon, you have your Samson, that they would come in and they would deliver the people. And and the people would rejoice in this, and they would repent, and they would follow the Lord for about 40 years, or for about the life of that judge, and then the judge would die. And then the people would fall again into sin.
Jeffrey Heine:God would bring in a neighboring country to persecute them. Then they would call out for help, God would send a judge in. The people would repent, they would be delivered, and they would be absolutely fine with the Lord, following the Lord. For the entire life of that judge, usually about 40 years, then the judge would die. And the cycle goes on and on.
Jeffrey Heine:That cycle happens 7 times in judges. But really think of it, not just as a cycle, it's more like this death spiral. Alright? Judges is, like children's books love judges. You get Gideon, you get Samson, I mean, you absolutely love it.
Jeffrey Heine:But then there's the sections that children's books go out of their way to avoid. You have rape. You have tent pegs being driven through people's heads. You have women being hacked up into 12 pieces and mailed to the 12 tribes of Israel. Judges is one of the reasons that the Bible was nearly banned in public schools.
Jeffrey Heine:It's probably why we didn't put it into our worship guide. I'm not sure how it didn't get in there. But this is depraved, as depraved as you could possibly get is the end of Judges. And you were just wondering, what in the world is going on here? And then, God gives us this little light.
Jeffrey Heine:There's one righteous person that we see during this time, Ruth. Ruth lived during the time of the judges, and she is a model of faithfulness. But the main point that Ruth, the main reason she is in the Bible is because of the very last word that's in, her her book, which is David. She is the great grandmother of King David, which leads us to the next section. Kingdom.
Jeffrey Heine:If you wanna put some years on this, you have this, this takes about 400 years of Exodus. There's about 400 years of judges. There's gonna be about 400 years of kingdom, roughly. So the people are sick of the judges at this point, and they're like, this system isn't working, they are essentially blaming the judges on their death spirals. And they're like, we need a king.
Jeffrey Heine:We need to all unite together under 1 kingdom. We need a king. We need to be like all the other nations, and then we will be protected. And God says, you want a king? Okay, I'll give you a king.
Jeffrey Heine:And so he gives them King Saul. So you have Saul, and then you have David, and then you have Solomon, each reigning for 40 years. If you wanna put a time around that, King David's reign was around 1000 b c. This kingdom section goes from first Samuel all the way to second Chronicles. And so God gives him Samuel, and then there's David, and then there is, Solomon, and that is it for United Kingdom.
Jeffrey Heine:After that, there was civil war and there was total chaos. So this United Kingdom lasted for 3 kings. Now by far, the most important king during this time is King David. David absolutely dominates scripture. We went through the life of David a few years ago, and I mentioned that, we have more biographical material on David than any other ancient historical figure.
Jeffrey Heine:It's astounding what we know about David. We know all about his childhood. We know all about his ascension to becoming king. We know about his friendships. We know about his sins, his repentance.
Jeffrey Heine:We know the songs that he wrote. We know all of this material about David. And one of the astonishing things though is, until 1993, many people didn't think David existed. There was not a single shred of archeological evidence that supported King David. And so we, it was only the Bible, and then there was nothing else.
Jeffrey Heine:And so, there was actually a book that, or an article ran in the New York Times during that time that said King David never existed, or, he was just a legend built on maybe a small chieftain. And then they discovered in 1993 David's Palace. And so things have changed since then, and now they have unearthed, a lot of things about the historical David and realized that the Bible is actually incredibly accurate. But he dominates scripture. So, I mentioned that my Bible's about 1300 pages long.
Jeffrey Heine:David is a 150 pages of that. To put that in perspective, the gospels, all 4 gospels combined are a 120 pages. More is written about the life of David than all the gospels combined. So he is the dominant figure in the Old Testament. But the most important thing about David is not him fighting Goliath.
Jeffrey Heine:It's it's really this covenant that God makes with him. At one point, David, he looks at how they've got, they've had this tabernacle, God's been dwelling in this tabernacle for so long, and he says, it's time to build a house. And so he has this idea, he's gonna build a temple. He's gonna build God a house. And then in 2nd Samuel chapter 7, we have these words.
Jeffrey Heine:Samuel says, the Lord will make you a house, and your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. So David tells the Lord, I wanna make you a house, and God says, nobody gives me anything. You don't make me a house, I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna make you a house.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm gonna establish your house, your throne forever. That is an astonishing promise, that David's throne will go forever, but it's not gonna be through David. We're looking for a son of David, which is one of Jesus's favorite terms for himself, both son of man and the son of David. So we're waiting for Jesus at the end of this kingdom. Now as I mentioned before, you had Saul, you had David, and then you had Solomon with the United Kingdom, and then you have civil war.
Jeffrey Heine:The kingdom divides, and you It divides into 2. You have a northern kingdom that's called Ephraim. Let me write that up there. Ephraim is the Northern Kingdom, and then the southern kingdom is Judah, which is where Jerusalem is. Now, this part of Israel's history is impossible to follow.
Jeffrey Heine:It's where you get 2nd Kings. It's impossible to follow because there are so many kings at this time. So the northern king, kingdom has 20 kings. Some reign for just a few days, some reign for a few more years, but there's 20 of them. For about 5 minutes, I knew all of them.
Jeffrey Heine:When I had to study for it at Beeson Divinity School, I knew all of the kings for about 5 minutes, and then I have discarded, that knowledge. 20 kings, not one of them is good. All of them are evil. Judah had 20 kings during this time, in which you had 6 that were decent and about 2 that were good. So in this period of Israel's history, 40 kings and 8 that were pretty decent.
Jeffrey Heine:So things didn't improve that much from the judges now that they get to the kingship. Now during this time of 2nd kings, when there's this civil war that's that's happening there, this is when most of the prophets are now writing. So you have them speaking to these different kings, and basically, they're saying if Israel doesn't repent, or if Ephraim doesn't repent, or if Judah doesn't repent, God's gonna send in, gonna send in a country to destroy you. That happens to Ephraim 722, the northern kingdoms falls. 586, Jerusalem falls.
Jeffrey Heine:And the prophets are just warning them all of this time. This might be a good time to talk about prophecy, actually. The greatest of the prophets during this time is Isaiah. He's writing right around the fall of the southern kingdom. I'm gonna have to erase this a little bit.
Jeffrey Heine:Prophecy is extremely difficult in scripture to understand. If anybody tells you that they're absolutely certain of a certain prophecy, and they're dogmatic about it, treat it with a lot of skepticism, because it's an extraordinary difficult thing to understand. We'll look at one of the most famous prophecies we have in Scripture as a way of illustrating that in Isaiah. Every Christmas, Isaiah 7, The virgin shall be with child. I think we have that up here.
Jeffrey Heine:So Isaiah 7, there's a prophecy. The virgin shall be with child. Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. And so what we have when you have a prophecy is this.
Jeffrey Heine:You don't have to excuse my drawing. You have a mountain, and what God does is he elevates a prophet up on top of the mountain. Alright? That's Isaiah. And, and so he's lifted up high, and now he can see way into the future, and he can also look down and see things from God's perspective.
Jeffrey Heine:He he can see what's really going on and interpret for the people, this is what God, how he sees things here. And then he can also look way into the future. And one of the things that he sees here is, hey. There's going to be a child. Oh gosh.
Jeffrey Heine:This is gonna be bad. This is a crib, and this is a child. That's not that bad. It kinda looks like somebody laying down in a canoe. So he he looks there, and and so we're all thinking, oh, it's Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:This is what Christmas is all about. But then we have these next verses. And so then we read this. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.
Jeffrey Heine:Have you ever heard that in the Christmas story? Like that we we always stop at, they shall call His name Emmanuel. And we and we jump straight to Jesus, but we shouldn't jump straight to Jesus. Isaiah's looking in the 1st mountaintop he sees is is not Jesus. He's speaking to King Ahaz, who was worried about these 2 kings who were gonna destroy him, and he says, no.
Jeffrey Heine:You're There's gonna be a child, a virgin or a young woman, that's a Hebrew word, it's the same, shall have a child. And before this child is age 2 or 3, the kings who you're dreading are gonna be gone. And so then we read this next in Isaiah 8. And I went to the prophetess, this is Isaiah, and she conceived and bore a son. Then the Lord said to me, call his name Mahershala Hasbaz.
Jeffrey Heine:I highly recommend that name. It's the longest name in the Bible. It means swift as the booty, speedy as the prey in Hebrew. It's a strong name you should consider. But you shall call his name Mahershala Hashbaz, for before the boy knows how to cry, my father or my mother, or before the child is ages 2 or 3, the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria.
Jeffrey Heine:These kings will be gone. So Maher Shalosh Bas. But Maher Shalosh Bas wasn't called Immanuel. I mean, that's not who he was, and then we get to Isaiah 9. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and he shall, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, and Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Jeffrey Heine:Okay, well, that's definitely Jesus, you know, he's the Emmanuel. This is Jesus right here. But then we have, and on the throne of David and over his kingdom, or of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end. On the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness. From this time forth and forevermore, The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Jeffrey Heine:Well, Jesus hasn't done that yet. That's all about when Jesus comes again. I'm gonna draw a crown here. Alright. That's that's a crown.
Jeffrey Heine:Oh, come on, you try to do better. Alright. So you're having these Christmas prophecies, this well, what really is happening? And this is what's happening. God lists up Isaiah.
Jeffrey Heine:He looks forward, and He sees Mahershal Hashbaas. He sees Jesus being born, the Emmanuel. He sees the kingdom going on and on forever. But he looks at it and he sees it as one event. He records it all as one event.
Jeffrey Heine:That's how prophecy works. It's one of the reasons it's so confusing. That prophet is lifted up, and then all of those images blur together as he writes about it. And so the best way to view prophecy is not as one event that's to be fulfilled. That's when you get into Hal Lindsey or Tim LaHaye trouble.
Jeffrey Heine:Is instead, think of it as a cup, in which you have a cup being filled, and here you have it being filled with the woman has the child, Mahershala Hashpah's. Then you have you have Jesus coming, the 1st advent. And then you have the 2nd advent, Jesus coming forever. And it's prophecy being fulfilled. It's it's the filling of the cup of prophecy.
Jeffrey Heine:That's a much healthier way, of of reading the prophets, as you go through the Old Testament. Don't try to peg it all down to just one event, but realize that this is a prophet being lifted up, and he's seeing peaks, and they're being blurred together. So hopefully that didn't confuse you too much. Hopefully that made a little bit of sense. All right, so that is our kingdom.
Jeffrey Heine:I'll just erase as we go. So the next section after, after the northern kingdom, the southern kingdom are destroyed. You know, we said in 586, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians. But Babylon, when it came in, didn't just level everything to the ground. It deported, Israel's best, Jerusalem's best.
Jeffrey Heine:And they went into exile. They were sent off to Babylon. That's your Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. That's your Daniel. During this time, Jeremiah's writing.
Jeffrey Heine:Ezekiel is writing. They were writing kinda at the end of 1st Kings and at the beginning of this exile period. This exile period lasts for 70 years. Now, the Israelites have just gotta be wondering, what in the world's happened at this point? I mean, really, what happened?
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, we're a long way from here. God meeting Abram, and saying, the entire world's gonna be blessed through you, And now the people living in Babylon here, they've seen their parents slaughtered. And they're now living in a pagan city. And you're thinking, what in the world happened? And so they're beginning to give up hope, and that's where you do have Jeremiah and Ezekiel speaking to them.
Jeffrey Heine:And it says, you know, that famous passage, Jeremiah 29. Hey, God's got good plans for you, plans for you to prosper. Or we have Jeremiah 31, which I think I have up here. This is when Jeremiah says, you know what? You know how you got here?
Jeffrey Heine:You got here because you have bad hearts, but a day's coming when you won't. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with the fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Jeffrey Heine:And Ezekiel writes something similar in Ezekiel chapter 11. And I will give them one heart and a new spirit, and I will put in them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh. And I love that language there. I will remove their heart of stone, because that even harks back to Exodus 20.
Jeffrey Heine:The law written on stone, which did them no good. And now, that's being replaced by what? A law written on their heart. And that's gonna be the new covenant that God makes them in. And so he says, yes, there's a reason you failed all this now.
Jeffrey Heine:You couldn't keep the law, but a day is gonna come when I will write that law on your heart. And so that is the exile. They were gone for 70 years. And then we have the return. After 70 years, many of the Israelites returned.
Jeffrey Heine:Most of the people stayed in Babylon, but many returned back to Jerusalem. This is where you get your Nehemiah, who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. You get your Ezra, who really rebuilt the spiritual condition of the people. And this is where you get Esther, who helped save the people again. But they were living during this return time.
Jeffrey Heine:And that's where you get prophets like Malachi and Zechariah, Zephaniah, all during this time as well. And then you come to this final stage. Let me erase this. Final stages, silence. This lasts for 400 years, in which God doesn't speak.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, Esther has who's the last of the historical books, prepares us for this. You know, here you have God just, he's speaking, he's doing incredible works. You see that in the patriarchs, you see it in extraordinary ways through Exodus, and then you start seeing God distancing Himself a little bit. Now He doesn't speak directly to the people, He uses a mediator in Moses. And then it begins moving here, he uses the judges, and now he's speaking through the prophets, but then you even have like 1st Samuel describing that during a time when visions were rare, visions were becoming increasingly uncommon.
Jeffrey Heine:And so finally, you get to Esther, and what do we know about the book of Esther? The one unique thing about it. It's the one book in the Bible where God's not mentioned. There's no prayer. There's God doesn't speak.
Jeffrey Heine:There's no visions. You don't anywhere see God actively moving, but that's been the progression of this all along, but then God is silent by the time you get to Esther. The silence continues for 400 years. Now, we know this doesn't mean God's not moving, because when we study the book of Esther, we saw God's moving behind the scenes. He's orchestrating all these things, but He's no longer speaking.
Jeffrey Heine:And really, what that is, it's the pregnant pause before we get to Jesus. 400 years of anticipation to where finally, the word comes, and comes in flesh. So that's the Old Testament. I got about 5 minutes. I mean, new testament.
Jeffrey Heine:You guys all know the new testament, don't you? Let's call this gospels. Gospels. So that is where Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The gospels are a biographical sermon.
Jeffrey Heine:They're part biography, they're part sermon. Each one of those authors are recording the life of Jesus. They're telling you about the life of Jesus, but in a way to persuade you about something. So Matthew is telling you about, you know, how Jesus is the king. You have Mark, who who really wants you to understand Jesus is that suffering servant that Isaiah talks about.
Jeffrey Heine:Luke, how he's the perfect man who comes to seek and to save the lost. John, it's how Jesus is the son of God. Now, every one of these gospels tell of the entire 3 year ministry of Jesus. All of them tell, you know, talk of His teachings, the perfect life that He lived. All of them tell of his death and resurrection.
Jeffrey Heine:They all slow down tremendously in the last week of Jesus' life, to tell of his death and of his resurrection. All of them teach that Jesus is the Son of God. That's in all the gospels, but each one has their own unique slant. They're biographical sermons. Then you get to, we'll call this the church.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm gonna call it life of the church. I'll say the New Testament church. Alright. Life of the New Testament church. That's gonna be Acts 1 through, we'll say 12, really kinda mid Acts.
Jeffrey Heine:And this is describing, what today, actually, is about, Day of Pentecost, in which the Holy Spirit came down, and gave those apostles and all those disciples a new heart. And really, you have the birth of the New Testament church at this time. And you have Christianity just exploding at this time. Then you have the mission of the church, or I would just say missions. And that is Acts 13 through 28, and that is Paul.
Jeffrey Heine:Paul dominates the second half of, Acts. And this is where you see that the gospel is going to the ends of the earth through Paul. Then what you have is the letters. The letters are being written to really describe the further teachings of Jesus, and to describe what's happening here in these early stages of the church. Really, these letters are being written to flesh out the gospel, and how do we live out the gospel.
Jeffrey Heine:And they're being written to all these different churches, or to the pastors of these churches. But really, it's explaining what's happening here. The final letter is Revelation. We'll give it its own little category. How about?
Jeffrey Heine:Because nobody knows what to do in Revelation. Someday, I'm going to get our elders to teach through Revelation. I'm I only half joke. Actually, in a couple of weeks, we begin a, 8 week series on Revelation taught by our elders. And, yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:I know. You like how I threw them under the bus? Revelation is the one book that John Calvin never taught from. Alright? He didn't know what to do with it.
Jeffrey Heine:But here, you do have where you see the the end of everything in Revelation, but but most of Revelation is historical, not prophetical. Now, we'll look at this in the weeks ahead. We're not gonna look at all Revelation. We'll look at the first three chapters and the last three chapters of Revelation. But most of the book is actually historical.
Jeffrey Heine:It's what we would call apocalyptic literature. I took a class on apocalyptic literature. I read just, I cannot tell you how many letters that were very similar to Revelation. All apocalyptic literature rises up from a persecuted culture. And what you do is you can't, if let's say it's Rome who's persecuting you, you can't point your finger at the emperor and say, this emperor is persecuting us, because you do that, and then your head's gonna get chopped off.
Jeffrey Heine:So you have to use this highly symbolic metaphorical language. There's a beast who's coming to the 7 hills, and and it's a way of you describing the events that are happening. A lot of Revelation is that, not all of it. There is definitely some prophetical moments in Revelation. But you're gonna get in trouble when you're, like, in the middle of Revelation, and you're looking at beast and horns and trying to see how that relates to your Visa bill, you know, and just like, it's just, you're trying to work it all out.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, remember visas, the 666 sign of the devil? I don't know. I was taught that when I was a youth. So, everybody, every generation looks for the new sign of the beast. Revelation 20 through 22, the last three chapters of the Bible, are the bookends to the first three chapters of the Bible.
Jeffrey Heine:You're gonna find the exact same things. The serpent reappears, but this time, he is judged forever. You have the tree of life coming back. This time, you can freely eat of this tree of life. Its leaves are gonna be for the healings of of the nations.
Jeffrey Heine:You, once again, you have God living with man, but now it's a city, not a garden. And, and Jesus is at the center of it. And so these are the bookends of the Bible. Really, what you see is what we started off in Genesis and then was destroyed, then has been rebuilt all this way to where you see it in its fulfillment in the end of Revelation. And that is what is to come.
Jeffrey Heine:We go from a garden to a glorious city with God living in the middle of it. And that's our destiny. So there is this prophetic moment. There are these prophecies are definitely towards the end of Revelation. Now, why is all of this important, actually?
Jeffrey Heine:Why do we take so much time to go through kinda this whole history of the Bible? It's not just so you would fill your minds with a lot of knowledge. I wanna remind you of why Jesus said this was important. To some people who knew this really well, the religious leaders of His day, in John 5, once again, He says, you search the scriptures because you think in them you have life. But these are the scriptures that testify about me.
Jeffrey Heine:Come to me that you may have life. So as you go through all of this, you see Jesus. I mean, you see Him there in that protoevangel at the very beginning. He's the one who the serpent strikes, and he'll turn around and crush his head. You see it in the promise to Abraham.
Jeffrey Heine:He's the seed of Abraham to come in which all the families of the earth will be blessed. You see him all throughout Exodus. He's the Passover lamb. When John the Baptist saw him, he said behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. You see him as he's the one who's gonna lead us into the promised land.
Jeffrey Heine:He's the one who's just gonna judge us in righteousness. He is the son of David. He is the king in which his throne will be established forever. And he is the one who will return. We're gonna return.
Jeffrey Heine:And so you see, as you go through all scripture, you see this speaks to Jesus. But the point isn't just knowledge, it's that you would actually go to Him. That you would go to Him and that you would know Him, because He's the one who gives us life. Let me pray for us. Father, I pray during this moment that if anybody here has not gone to you, that they might have life, they would go to you in this moment.
Jeffrey Heine:We thank you for your beautiful story woven throughout scripture that speaks to Jesus. And I pray that those things would not be written on tablets of stone, but they would be written on our hearts, that that we might know and adore you more, Jesus. We pray this in your strong name. Amen.