The Story of the Bible in an Hour

What is Redeemer Community Church?

Redeemer Community Church is located in the historic Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, AL. Our church family exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.

For more information on who we are, what we believe, or how to join us, please visit our website at rccbirmingham.org.

Joel Brooks: 00:00

Morning, we're gonna do something a little different or actually a lot different than we typically do on a Sunday morning. We're gonna take the next hour and we're just gonna walk through the Bible. It's kinda like the Olympics. This is something we do every four years. And the reason we do it is...

Joel Brooks: 00:21

Well, let's face it. The Bible can be a pretty daunting and at times confusing book. And so, we we need to have these times where we remember the the flow of the Bible, the content of the Bible, and and how it all fits together. I mean, how many of you have ever started and yet abandoned a Bible reading plan? Okay.

Joel Brooks: 00:41

There you go. You didn't have to raise your hand, but I I appreciate those of you who just did that. You know, or anyone here just read... When you're reading through scripture, just walk away just really confused, not knowing how all of the pieces fit together? It's because, yeah, the the Bible can at times be hard to understand.

Joel Brooks: 01:03

My Bible is over 1,300 pages long, which makes it really hard for me to read and get a handle on. On top of that, it's... It wasn't even written in English. It was written in Hebrew and Greek with a little bit of Aramaic sprinkled in. The book of Daniel, actually, that we're looking at, first chapter is in Hebrew, and then the other chapters are in Aramaic because those were chapters written in Babylon, and that's what they spoke in Babylon.

Joel Brooks: 01:35

've got a bunch of different authors. Some of these authors lived thirty five hundred years ago, on the other side of the world in a culture that's completely alien to ours. I mean, they might as well have lived on the moon. It is just such a different different culture. And, they wrote in all different types of styles.

Joel Brooks: 01:58

Sometimes, they wrote history or narratives, sometimes poetry or teachings or genealogies. And so, it's understanding if when you're trying to read through this, you might just get a little bit confused as to as to how it all fits together. I've also found that the way we read the Bible leads to confusion. Because most of the time, for most of us, we might read a little ten to fifteen minute segments, and we pick random sections from the Bible to read from, and that's how we kind of do our devotional life. Could you imagine if you did that with any other book?

Joel Brooks: 02:36

How confusing it would be if you did that with other books. I mean, if you got Harry Potter and you just randomly picked different chapters in Harry Potter to read from each day, you would have no idea what was going on. Or even if you took the whole series of Harry Potter and you just picked different books to read in all different orders, you'd walk away confused. And so, even the very way we read the Bible often leads to confusion. And so what I want us to do this morning is I want us to just look at the structure and the content and the flow of the Bible.

Joel Brooks: 03:10

We can't do everything, but I don't wanna look at those things, and then maybe the the fog will lift a little, and we can see the Bible more clearly. Perhaps the best way for us to start in doing this is to just look at the beginning and look at the end of scripture. The Bible begins with the words, in the beginning. And then, you go to the last chapter in the Bible, and we read the words, and they shall reign forever and ever. In the beginning, and then, and they shall reign forever and ever.

Joel Brooks: 03:48

What type of book does that remind you of? It's a narrative. It's a story. So the first thing you need to know about the Bible is there's actually a story that's being told here. We would actually call the Bible an epic narrative.

Joel Brooks: 04:10

An epic narrative is... It's a narrative that spans a long period of time, has many different characters, has many different subplots there. Sometimes, there there are even songs or poems or genealogies or things like that throughout. But in the midst of all of those subplots and characters and genealogies and all of that, there's actually one overarching story, one grand unified story. We'll go ahead and get this out of the way, but think Lord of the Rings, people.

Joel Brooks: 04:49

Lord of the Rings is an epic narrative and it's one that Tolkien wrote to kind of resemble the Bible. There's it's really long, spans a whole lot of time, there's many different characters, subplots, genealogies, songs, prophecies, nations warring against one another, but throughout it all, there's one overarching story. It's the same with scripture. Tolkien, of course, was was writing fiction, sort of, just, you know, he was... He got close, but it was fiction inspired by true stories of the Bible.

Joel Brooks: 05:29

So what is the what is the story? What's the arc there? Well, if I had to just put it in a sentence, I would say that the Bible is the story about Jesus and his kingdom. Of course, there's a whole lot more going on there, but if you had to fit it on a fortune cookie, the Bible is the story about Jesus and his kingdom. Jesus, he tells us about this on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24.

Joel Brooks: 06:01

We read that he started with Moses and he went all the way through the prophets and he explained that all scripture was about him. Or in John chapter five, he's talking to the religious leaders and he says, you search the scriptures because you think in them you have life, but these are the scriptures that testify about me. Come to me that you might have life. And Jesus said, all of scriptures, the goal was to point to him. It's all about him from the first to the last page.

Joel Brooks: 06:35

So let's jump in and let's kind of look through your Bible. So let's go to the beginning. And by beginning, I don't mean Genesis. I want you to go even further into the beginning than that. I want you to look at your table of contents.

Joel Brooks: 06:47

And so, back to one of those first pages of scripture. The Bible is the inerrant word of God. The structure of the Bible is not. The Bible did not just fall from the sky in its present format. Remember, there was many books or scrolls of the Bible.

Joel Brooks: 07:09

It wasn't even put into a book form until about the fourth century, and figuring out the structure of the Bible is kinda hard. It's not intuitive. So looking at your table of contents, the first thing you are going to notice is that there are two major divisions. You have the Old Testament and you have the New Testament. Testament is just the Latin word for covenant.

Joel Brooks: 07:34

Theologians like to use Latin, sound fancy, but if you just say it's the old covenant and the new covenant, you can. In the old testament, there are 39 books written by 28 different authors, and if you start with Abraham, it's... It covers a two thousand year time span. The New Testament is 27 books written by nine different authors, and it covers a little less than a hundred year span. The books are organized this way.

Joel Brooks: 08:12

In the Old Testament, your first 17 books, so from Genesis to Esther there, they're historical. You want to read history, you read one of those first 17 books. The next five books are poetical. That's Job through the Song of Songs. And then, the last 17 books are prophetical.

Joel Brooks: 08:40

And, you actually have the first five being major prophets, and the next 12 being the minor prophets, and that is not ascribing importance to them, just length. The major prophets are longer, and the minor prophets are shorter. If you want to read the New Testament and understand its structure, it's structured kind of similarly, and that it starts with history. The first five books of the New Testament are historical. Matthew through Acts, you'll find the history of of Jesus and the church.

Joel Brooks: 09:18

Then after that, you find 13 Pauline epistles, Romans through Philemon. The first nine were written to churches, and they are placed not in chronological order, they're placed by length. You have Romans being the longest, and then you have Philemon being the shortest. So from longest to shortest, those are the first nine of the Pauline epistles. And then, you have four letters to individuals, and those are placed, once again, not in chronological order, but from the longest to the shortest.

Joel Brooks: 09:56

Then, you've got the book of Hebrews. It's there because nobody knew where to put it. They weren't sure where where that goes, so it's just put right there. And then, finally, you have the nine non Pauline epistles that ends with. And so, that's that's James, it's John, and it's Peter.

Joel Brooks: 10:15

So, that's the structure of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Once again, it's not intuitive, but once you kinda see that, you know, oh, if I want to read history in the Old Testament, I know where to go, first 17 books. If I want to read one of the poems, oh, it's after that in one of the five. And so, you can begin to navigate around. So let's look at the content of the Bible.

Joel Brooks: 10:37

And just a warning, we're going to spend almost our entire time in the Old Testament. We're going to spend a whole lot of time in Genesis. And the reason we're going do so is once again, the Old Testament covers a two thousand year span there, and it's also much longer. The New Testament's only about a hundred year span. So let's...

Joel Brooks: 10:58

So what I've what I've done up here in order to help us get through this is I've given five headings up here will help us walk through scripture, and then I'm gonna give us all of these little subheadings underneath it. So hopefully, you guys can follow and you can see the content of your Bible there. And so, to begin, we're gonna begin with creation. And I wanna warn you guys, I'm dyslexic, as you know, and I will absolutely misspell a lot of things up here. You guys would never be able to make sense of my notes.

Joel Brooks: 11:31

Sometimes, I can't. But the Bible begins by answering the big questions in life. Who are we? How did we get here? What are we supposed to be doing?

Joel Brooks: 11:49

All of those big questions that you've had, the Bible right at the start gives us the answers for. And let me just say that you will never exhaust the first three chapters of Genesis. These need to be on your rotation over and over and over. We're continually reading these because from Genesis one through three, all the rest of the Bible flows out of. Every Bible has its...

Joel Brooks: 12:17

Or every story in the Bible has its roots in those first few chapters. A number of years ago, I went out in my front porch and there's all of these books there. I was like, these boxes there. I was like, what in the world? I opened them up, and they were all books on Genesis one through three.

Joel Brooks: 12:34

Sanford had gotten some grant, and they decided they would use that to give me all of these books. They thought, yes, let's give the dyslexic pastor who doesn't like to read a bunch of books to try to work through. But, I've been working through them and you cannot exhaust the depths of these three chapters. But, everything springs out of them. And, what you find when you look at Genesis, right at the start is that God created everything.

Joel Brooks: 13:02

The Bible begins with the words, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And he created it simply by speaking it into existence and let there be light and there was light. He just let there be. This was radically different than all of the the little creation stories that were circulating around at the time, all the different mythologies that were circulating around. People at that time, they believed that maybe the the world or the universe came into existence because gods were battling it out with one another, and and maybe the universe actually sprung out of a giant carcass, you know, of somebody who was slain, or humans were created to be slaves of all the gods, and then the Bible just cuts through all of that.

Joel Brooks: 13:51

It says, no. It wasn't... Weren't created out of an act of violence, but out of an act of love. And God just spoke us into existence. And and we were not created to be slaves.

Joel Brooks: 14:07

We were created to have dominion and to rule and reign over this world. And we see that from the very beginning. God wants us to rule and to reign in this world in a way that reflects His love. Look at Genesis one verses 26 through 28. Should be a slide of that.

Joel Brooks: 14:30

Then God said, let us make man in our 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, in the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them.

Joel Brooks: 14:55

And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, 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 here, we see that we were created in God's image. Now now, there's a number of little different nuances as to what that can mean. And and people... We we love talking about those nuances, you know.

Joel Brooks: 15:25

Maybe it's being created in God's image means we're creative, we're artistic just like our creator, or maybe it means we're relational, just like the triune God. And those are those are good and probably true, but when you read through Genesis one, by far, the main thing that we see, what it means to be created in God's image, was that we were created to have dominion in a way that reflected his character. We are created in his image in order to reflect who he is as we rule and reign in this world. Because God, when he created this world, he didn't make it finished. He packed it full of potential, and then He put us there to rule and reign over in such a way that it would bring out its potential and it would flourish.

Joel Brooks: 16:21

God didn't only just create us in his image, he also gave us the gift of himself, his very presence. We read in Genesis that God would walk with Adam in the cool of the evening. So man and his creator had a intimate relationship with one another. That brings us to the next part of scripture. This is also Genesis one through three, and we call this the fall.

Joel Brooks: 16:52

But if I can add something, I'd like to call it the fallout. If if I could go back and change the way church fathers and stuff have talked about this, I actually prefer, instead of the words for the fall, the loss. Because when humans sinned, we lost so much. There was so much potential there, and it was all stripped away. But we read about this in Genesis three.

Joel Brooks: 17:25

God put Adam and Eve in a garden, and he gave them one instruction, don't eat from that tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. One rule. In other words, they're given a choice here. They can either trust God that He defines what's right or wrong, or they can go and define what is right or wrong. But we all know what happens.

Joel Brooks: 17:53

They go and they take from the fruit of the tree, and they eat. If they had just obeyed God, the entire world would have flourished. But instead, they became lawbreakers. Or really, I guess you could say, they became lawmakers. They decided in that moment, we decide what's right or wrong, not you, God.

Joel Brooks: 18:19

And as a result, all of creation just falls apart. There's disastrous consequences both to Adam and Eve and to all of creation. Creation falls under a curse. And you see how that would happen because if creation needed a righteous human race to rule and reign and to bring out its potential, when that was removed, well, creation itself will begin to fall apart. Adam and Eve were removed from the garden, and creation was cursed.

Joel Brooks: 18:59

In other words, when they fell, creation fell with it. So what does God do? I mean, what does he do in this moment? Lorne and I, I think when we first moved here to Birmingham, we just got married and moved here, one of the very first dates we ever went on is we went to a Renaissance Festival. Nothing says Renaissance like Alabama.

Joel Brooks: 19:27

And so, we went out to Horse Pins 40. Tickets were 20 something dollars, I think, and and we went there, and within a minute, I knew we had made a disastrous decision. Actually, within ten seconds, I knew it. We went there, we were expecting, you know, jousting, expecting people wearing suits of armor and having sword fights. And no lie, it was a bunch of rednecks wearing football helmets, hitting one another with bats or broomsticks.

Joel Brooks: 19:59

And so I was like, we're out. Lauren, we're leaving. You know, you count your losses, you leave. And she's like, oh no, we're staying. We paid, so we stay.

Joel Brooks: 20:08

And there there's two different types of people in the world, right there. God, thankfully, did neither one of those. He didn't just say, count my losses, I'm done. Nor did he say, you know, I'm just going to stay and watch this disaster unfold. Instead, what God does is, I'm going to invest even more of myself in this and turn this mess into something beautiful.

Joel Brooks: 20:36

He doesn't give up on us. Instead, he decides he will rescue us. And that brings us to the next section here, Genesis three fifteen. Genesis three fifteen is where God gives his first hint of how he will rescue this world. Up there on the screen.

Joel Brooks: 20:58

And, this is God talking to that mysterious serpent who caused Adam and Eve to sin. He says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. This is called the proto evangel, because once again, theologians like to sound fancy. It's just the first gospel.

Joel Brooks: 21:26

That's what it means. And it's just a hint of it. The the idea is this, the serpent is going to come, Eve's going to have a child, and the serpent is going to come and once again attack, and it's going to bite the heel. But then, this man is going to turn around and crush its head. And it's the first hint of the gospel.

Joel Brooks: 21:53

Cain was the first child. Eve thought for a moment when she had a baby, she's like, oh, this is going be the one, serpent crusher, but it was Cain. And that Cain would actually just be like a little forecast, if you will, of what humanity will become, which is more like the serpent than than the serpent crusher. Genesis three fifteen is... It's not the gospel in full.

Joel Brooks: 22:23

It's just a hint of the gospel, but it's a really important hint. If I could draw a little illustration for you of of what it is. Let's see. Strawberry. That is, no, that would have over the whole thing.

Joel Brooks: 22:44

That is a Acorn. Acorn. There you

Collin Hansen: 22:47

go. No. It's a strawberry. Yeah. So

Joel Brooks: 22:55

Genesis three fifteen is the seed of the gospel. And what you're going see is over the pages of the Old Testament, a growing and growing and growing and growing to where you finally get here, the oak tree at the cross. And it's important to see this in the Old Testament. When we see this, we really have no idea what in the world is it talking about. But then, when we see what it grew to, and we see Jesus hanging on the cross, like, ah, that's where that happened.

Joel Brooks: 23:30

That's the seed. That's where it's leading to. And then the same way here, like, we have no idea what the cross is accomplishing unless we understand the seed, and that it's it's this prophecy that this is where the serpent who brings in all this evil, that's where he's going to be crushed, at the cross. But all of scripture, you see that seed growing and growing, and you and you get, you know, Mount Sinai, then you get like the tabernacle, you get the temple, the sacrificial system, you get all these things until finally it grows into the oak tree of the cross. After Adam and Eve sinned, they're exiled.

Joel Brooks: 24:12

Exile will be a theme of the Bible. It's what sin does. They get kicked out of the garden, and the world just gets worse and worse. But once again, God does not give up on this world. He chooses a remnant of mankind, Abraham.

Joel Brooks: 24:31

Abraham and his family, and says, you will now become an instrument for how I rescue this world. That brings us to this right here. I'm just gonna put Abe. It's easier. It's also what his friends called him.

Joel Brooks: 24:47

It's around 2000 BC there. This is Genesis 12 through 50, you know, is pretty much the patriarchs here, and this is how God called Abraham. Genesis 12. It's up there on the screen. There we go.

Joel Brooks: 25:03

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. 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. Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand what is the main theme of these verses. Blessing.

Joel Brooks: 25:39

That's what it's about. God is going to bless Abraham in order for Abraham to go forward and bless the world, to begin removing the curse and instead leave a blessing in its place. And I call that that... Those three verses in scripture, they're like the Atlanta Airport of scripture. If you ever fly anywhere, you always have to go through Atlanta, and and all the prophecies about the Messiah that will come up later, know that they all have to first fly through Genesis 12.

Joel Brooks: 26:11

They'll all be attached to God's calling on Abraham and then they will go back out. So this is where God's rescue plan now is. How did that work out? Horribly. As a matter of fact, the the very first thing that Abraham does after getting this call was he lies to someone and he brings a curse upon them.

Joel Brooks: 26:36

So instead of being a blessing to the world, Abraham actually spreads the curse. I mean, he's going to do some good things later that... I mean, there will be some real good that he does, but he does also repeatedly disobey the Lord. So much so that by the time we get to the end of Genesis, we know things are about to get really bad because the last words in Genesis are a coffin in Egypt. And you could kinda hear the creepy organ music starting to play, the sense of foreboding.

Joel Brooks: 27:13

And that does lead us to the next section here, book of Exodus. Really, Exodus through Deuteronomy here. But over the next four hundred years, Abraham's family does grow really large. His many children, I am one of them, and so are you. We just need to praise the Lord together, people.

Joel Brooks: 27:48

His family does grow really large. He has he has Isaac, who then has Jacob. Jacob has 12 sons who become become the 12 tribes of Israel. And, they were supposed to become a great nation, but instead, because of sin, they are enslaved by Egypt. So, once again, it looks like God's rescue plan is failing, but God doesn't give up.

Joel Brooks: 28:13

He raises up another person. He raises up Moses. And Moses, the Lord's gonna use him to bring a bunch of plagues on Egypt, to to part the Red Sea, and then, all of Abraham's descendants are going to be set free from slavery, and they're going to go straight to Mount Sinai. And, it's there at Mount Sinai that God tells all the people gathered there that it's not just going to be Abraham who's part of the rescue plan, it's not going to be Moses who's part of the rescue plan, it's gonna be all of them. All the people gathered there were to be part of God's plans to rescue this world.

Joel Brooks: 28:55

Mount Sinai, we read these words. God says, you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Therefore, I will... If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine. And, you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

Joel Brooks: 29:23

It's not just Moses or Aaron or Abraham, like this... They're not just priests, it's an entire kingdom of priests. And, the role of a priest is to reflect or to reveal who God is. So these people were now collectively supposed to be a nation representing God or imaging God. They were supposed collectively do what Adam and Eve had been called to do.

Joel Brooks: 29:56

And just like Adam and Eve, they were also given a command to obey. Actually, were given 10. We know it as the 10 Commandments, which is actually, there's 613 laws, if you're counting. But the point's the same, God says, okay, here's here's some laws, here's my rules, and if you do them, the whole world flourishes. If you don't, you just keep spreading the curse.

Joel Brooks: 30:26

To help them out, God actually gives them a little mini Garden of Eden that they could take around with them. We call it the Tabernacle. That's all the Tabernacle was. It was like this miniature Garden of Eden. If you look at all the the the fabrics that the...

Joel Brooks: 30:41

That tent or Tabernacle was made of, it had Garden of Eden imagery embroidered in all of it. The furniture resembled the Garden of Eden. And God even came, and he was present there, just like he was with Adam, in which the high priest can meet with God once a year. So, how does this rescue plan work? Horribly.

Joel Brooks: 31:12

I mean, it goes it goes off the rails before it even gets started. As as Moses is up on the mountain getting the 10 commandments, the people are already worshiping a golden calf. He doesn't get to come down before they have sinned. And so, god has them, doesn't lead them into the promised land. Instead, he has them wander around in the desert for forty years, which leads us to the next section, judges.

Joel Brooks: 31:47

So you know this period of Abraham and his family growing the patriarchs is four hundred years. And then you have like... You have this exodus. It's it's four hundred years. Judges is going to be four hundred years.

Joel Brooks: 32:02

If if in doubt of how long a period is in the Bible, four hundred years is the answer. We'll see that in a bit. Judges is the part of the Bible that... Let's just say children's bibles have to be very selective. I mean, you have the stories you know and love.

Joel Brooks: 32:23

You you have Gideon, you have Samson, but then you also have stories of, you know, tent pegs being driven through people's skulls. You have the story of a woman being raped all night long, and then when she crawls back to her master, he cuts her up into 12 pieces and FedExes the parts of her body to the different tribes of Israel. Like, it's as dark as you could possibly get. And this is Israel. This is the nation that was supposed to spread the blessing of God and lift the curse.

Joel Brooks: 33:03

And instead, they have plunged to the depths of depravity. Here's the theme of judges. After the people, you know, they they've they've wandered here, they're in the they're in the promised land, and they're a loose confederation of tribes at this point, and they would completely sin. And God would judge them by sending in some neighboring tribes to pester them, to to kill off some of them, to judge them. And in their misery, they would call out to the Lord for help.

Joel Brooks: 33:39

He'd raise up them judge, temporary deliverer, leader. And that judge would lead them into repentance, to where they would follow the Lord again, and as a result, they'd all be delivered. Everything would be great until the judge died. Then, the people would fall back into sin. God would send in a neighboring tribe to come and to and to defeat them.

Joel Brooks: 34:02

They would call out to help, and God would raise up another judge, lead them to repentance, God would deliver them, then the judge would die. It happens over and over, that cycle. You see that... If I could put here... I wanna do another little circle.

Joel Brooks: 34:22

Seven times that happens, but but it's not just repeating. It's actually a spiral. They begin spiraling down and down into the absolute lowest depths of depravity you could get. Judges is just hard to read. The only exception to all of that happening there is Ruth.

Joel Brooks: 34:40

She lived during that time. Well, the the people, they thought, well, the the solution to all of this is not another judge. We need a king. And so here, we move to the next major section of the Bible, the kingdom. Class, how long do you think this lasts?

Joel Brooks: 35:01

Four hundred years. Bingo. Good. You're getting it. Four hundred years.

Joel Brooks: 35:09

After this period of judges in the year nine sixty BC, the people want the change, to go from that loose confederation of tribes into an actual kingdom. Saul's their first king, then David, and then Solomon, and then it's just this endless number of kings and situations there. But by far, the most important king in Israel's history is David. King David just dominates the pages of scripture. In my Bible, actually, all of the gospels, which tell about Jesus, they're a 120 pages in all the gospels.

Joel Brooks: 35:52

The life of David takes up a 153, more than all the gospels combined. It's... This makes the life of David the largest biography we have of any ancient figure. We know so much about him. We know about his childhood.

Joel Brooks: 36:11

We know how he came to be king, we know about his success and his faith in God, and we know about his failures when he committed murder or adultery. We know his inner thoughts because he would write out his prayers or write songs about these things. But by far, the most significant event to happen in David's life was not him killing Goliath. The most significant event was something God said over him. Second Samuel seven.

Joel Brooks: 36:44

It's one of the most important chapters in the Bible. Up there. There we go. The Lord says this, 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.

Joel Brooks: 37:04

God was going to raise up a descendant of David to to become a king, but not a king who would just reign for ten years or for forty years, but a king who would actually reign forever. That means this isn't going to be an ordinary king. I mean, he's going to be a human king because he's going to be a descendant of David, but he's also going to have dominion over death itself, so he's more than just a human. And so now, this is where we are in the story. We're looking for a son of Eve and also a son of Abraham and also a son of David now to be the serpent crusher.

Joel Brooks: 37:52

One who will actually now not just crush the serpent's head, but will establish a kingdom that will never ever end. So we're looking for a king. Now, after David dies, his son Solomon takes over. And, for a brief moment, we think, maybe he is the serpent crusher, kinda like when Eve first had her child that ended up to be Cain. Like, maybe maybe he's the one because Solomon started off so great.

Joel Brooks: 38:29

And then, he did the whole marry 700 women thing. I mean, we've all failed it. We've all been there, haven't we guys? You know? 700 women he marries, and then he has 300 concubines.

Joel Brooks: 38:42

So he's a he's a sex addict. And then, he begins hoarding up wealth, and then, on top of all of that, he begins enslaving people. He actually becomes like the new pharaoh. And so, instead of Israel moving forward and being a light into the nations, they move backwards, and they start to become like Egypt. And things get even worse after he dies.

Joel Brooks: 39:10

After he dies, there's a civil war, and the kingdom is split in two, and this is what first and second kings are about. And it's there that Israel's history just gets about impossible to follow. I mean, there's 40 different kings. When I was in seminary, I had to I had to memorize all 40 of them. I knew all of them for five minutes, the five minutes before the test, and that was it.

Joel Brooks: 39:40

I've never known the order of those kings again. If you want a list, here they are. Yeah. I'll quiz you on it later. I can give you the 10,000 foot view of of this...

Joel Brooks: 39:56

Of the kingdom here. After Solomon dies, there's the civil war and the nation is divided. You have 10 tribes unite together in what's called the Northern Kingdom, and these 10 tribes, they go by the name Israel or Ephraim. And then, you have over here, the Southern Kingdom. Two tribes unite together, Judah and Benjamin, and they go by the name Judah.

Joel Brooks: 40:27

I don't know why they don't go by Benjamin, you know, he got the raw end of the deal, but they're called Judah. So you have Israel or Ephraim over here, the 10 tribes, and then you have Judah here, made up of the two. And, they're often like, you know, fighting one another, fighting other people, all of this. There's 40 kings among them, among both of those tribes or both of those kingdoms, and 32 of them are absolutely terrible, horrible kings, evil people. Eight of them were okay.

Joel Brooks: 41:01

They're b minuses. Josiah, maybe a b plus. But outside of that, these kings and the people who lived within them, they were not a blessing to the world by any means. And so, God would do is he would send his prophets to them to tell them to repent and turn to God, so that they could be a blessing to the whole world. So almost all of the prophets that we have in the Old Testament, almost all of them are during this period of the kings.

Joel Brooks: 41:34

And their role role was to go before the kings and tell them to repent, tell the people to repent. They'd say it in beautiful, poetical ways. I mean, some of the scriptures are just gorgeous. Even when they told people to repent or God would destroy them, it's beautiful. I love Hosea saying, you know, repent or you will reap a whirlwind.

Joel Brooks: 41:53

I would say that to my girls all the time before they were gonna get punished. Is this what you want? Reap a whirlwind. Sprinkle through all of those warnings about upcoming judgment, there were actually these very hopeful things in which these prophets, they would tell about the serpent crusher. He is gonna come.

Joel Brooks: 42:17

God hasn't given up. There is gonna be a son of Eve. There's gonna be a son of Abraham. There's gonna be a son of David who is going to be a Messiah who will rescue them. And more details are given about this Messiah.

Joel Brooks: 42:30

He's gonna be born of a virgin. He's going to be born in Bethlehem. His name is going be called Emmanuel. He's going to suffer for His people. I mean, all these things begin to like...

Joel Brooks: 42:42

We start really getting a good picture of who this Messiah will be. But first, they get destroyed. Judgment comes. The Northern kingdom was destroyed by Assyria in seven twenty two BC. The Southern kingdom, Judah, was destroyed by Babylon in 586.

Joel Brooks: 43:04

And that's where we are in the book of Daniel, by the way, right there after Babylon has come in and destroyed and then taken the people exile. Once again, they sin, and then they're exiled away. That leads us to this next period here, exile. We got four hundred years, four hundred years, four hundred years. This one isn't.

Joel Brooks: 43:37

Seventy years. They must spend seventy years in exile. Just as Adam and Eve were exiled out of the garden for their sin, Israel was exiled out of the promised land for its sin. This is where we have those stories of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego. We have the story of Daniel.

Joel Brooks: 43:56

Now, if you're an Israelite and you're living in this period though, you've got to be wondering. And, there's promises made to Abraham, promises to Eve, those were a long time ago. And then, it seems like everything has failed. And you're... For the first time, you're beginning to look yourself in the mirror because you had been thinking the problem was with the rest of the world, with the rest of the world, and now you're beginning to realize, actually, we're the problem.

Joel Brooks: 44:25

Like, how can I be a blessing to the world when my heart is wretched? And so, God sends his prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, to these people. And he says, that's okay because when the Messiah comes, he's gonna change your hearts. So we read this in Jeremiah 31. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant.

Joel Brooks: 44:54

That's the word New Testament. It's where we get it from. I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their 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.

Joel Brooks: 45:30

And Ezekiel says it this way, and I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put in them. I will remove that heart of stone from their flesh, and I will give them a heart of flesh. So now, we know that the son of Eve, the son of Abraham, the son of David, the Messiah who comes, he's gonna change hearts. This leads us to the next section, the return. After seventy years of exile, a small portion remnant of the people returned back to walls of Jerusalem, they rebuild the temple.

Joel Brooks: 46:23

This is where you have Nehemiah and Ezra and Esther. You do have a few prophets. You have three. You have Zephaniah, Zechariah, and Malachi during this time as well. So they return, and they they establish those things.

Joel Brooks: 46:44

And then after that, there's silence. How long do you think the silence lasts, people? Four hundred years. So good. And now, when we say silence, we're not saying that God's not doing anything.

Joel Brooks: 47:05

We just don't have this record of this in the Bible. He's working behind the scenes. The book of Esther prepares us for this. Remember, Esther is the last of the historical books, and Esther is known as the one book in the Bible that never mentions God. Never mentions God, yet we know when you read the book of Esther, He is so at work behind the scenes.

Joel Brooks: 47:32

That's what this period is. Like, He's moving, He's still working, He's preparing all for when Jesus comes. This is the deep breath before God comes and does the most miraculous, amazing thing of all. And this is when Christ comes. And I'm gonna put the gospels here.

Joel Brooks: 47:55

This is where we get into the gospels, you know, say through through Acts. God puts his rescue plan in motion by sending his son Jesus into the world, and he does what Adam failed to do. He obeys God. He's the perfect human. And Jesus, he's he's not only a son of Abraham, who's a son of David, he's also the son of God.

Joel Brooks: 48:32

He's going to be the king prophesied about that's going to reign forever and ever. He's the one who's going to crush the serpent's head. You see that he's a king who's establishing his kingdom because the very first thing Jesus says when he begins preaching, we read about Mark one when he says, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God or the good news of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand or the kingdom of God is happening right now in me. And he says, so repent and believe the gospel, believe this good news. And after Jesus went around proclaiming how he is the king bringing the kingdom, he does exactly what God did in Exodus.

Joel Brooks: 49:21

He gathers some of Abraham's children together, and he takes them to a mountain, and he gives them the law. And, God... Or Jesus, he gathers 12 men who represent the 12 tribes of Israel. He gathers them, and then he takes them to a mountain, and he gives them his law and what we know is the Sermon on the Mount. And even there, he blesses them.

Joel Brooks: 49:49

Blessed are. Blessed are. Blessed are. And it's up there on that mountain, he teaches us the rules of the kingdom. He teaches us how humans were always supposed to live, how we can be a kingdom of priest in this world, and how we can rule in a way that actually reflects God's love.

Joel Brooks: 50:09

And we could do that if we love one another, if we serve one another, if we do unto others as you would... We would have them do you would have them do unto you. So those are the new laws of the kingdom. Now, the first four books in the New Testament called the gospels, they're the ones who tell us about the life of Jesus, the ministry of Jesus. And you're...

Joel Brooks: 50:35

They're kinda like biographies, but not quite. They... Like a biography, they do tell us about his life, but they're more than a biography because they're also kinda like a sermon in that they wanna persuade you about something. When thinking about the gospels, I like to put them in the category of they're a biographical sermon. We are told about the life of Jesus, but we're told in such a way to convince us, to persuade us to fall on our knees before him, and that he is the king of kings and lord of lords, and he is the one who removes the curse from this world.

Joel Brooks: 51:12

Jesus was the new Adam, but he didn't sin. He represents the new humanity. He shows us what it means to truly be a human and how we are to exercise dominion in a way that reflects God's love perfectly. And we responded by killing him. That's how bad humanity had gotten.

Joel Brooks: 51:40

Gotten. We responded by killing him. And once again, you begin to wonder, is God's rescue plan coming to an absolute halt? But this was always part of the plan. Remember, the acorn is growing to this.

Joel Brooks: 52:02

Jesus on the cross is the oak tree because it's there at the cross, that's where he was bit. That's where that venom entered and and he actually died, but then he rose again and stomped. And so there we we see the the serpent's head being crushed through the resurrection of Jesus. That's that's how Jesus gets rid of evil forever in this world. That's how the curse is lifted and he blesses this world.

Joel Brooks: 52:35

You ever wondered why in the New Testament, the cross is often referred to as a tree? Notice that when you're reading through the epistles, over and over again, the cross is referred to as a tree. When ChatGPT first came out, I decided I would experiment, and I asked ChatGPT, why? Why is the cross often referred to as a tree? I just wanted to see what it would come up with.

Joel Brooks: 53:03

Horrible answers. Don't ever go to chat GBT for anything theological. It made up some garbage about, you know, oh, it's called a tree because it makes things beautiful. It's a it's a living organism. It's like whatever.

Joel Brooks: 53:17

I don't know. I I kinda checked out after a bit. Here is why the cross is called a tree. First off, Deuteronomy tells us that cursed is the one who hangs on a tree. Jesus was being cursed.

Joel Brooks: 53:32

He actually wore that curse with the crown of thorns pressed on his head, so he was taking the curse. But the tree is there for a number of reasons called the tree. Adam and Eve, they could choose either life or death by how they responded according to the tree in the garden. Life and death was being offered to them, by how they responded to that tree. And in the same way, that's the cross.

Joel Brooks: 54:06

Life and death are being offered to us by how we view and respond to this tree. If we look at the cross, and we see there that, yes, this is where the king of kings, this is where Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth, where he came and he died, and then rose again that I might be forgiven and have life. We believe that, we choose life. We become a part of His kingdom that never ever ever ends. Or we can reject that, and we choose death.

Joel Brooks: 54:43

So how do you respond to the tree? The rest of the New Testament is about this kingdom of Jesus expanding. It begins spreading all around the world. So when you actually now... You see this in Acts here, and I'm gonna go ahead and put all the way to to Revelation here.

Joel Brooks: 55:12

In the book of Acts, this is where we see that that Jesus, he ascended into heaven, where he is seated on the throne, and then he remembers what was prophesied in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and he sends his spirit to change our hearts. But I want you to notice where the church is. The church is saddled here, in between Jesus' ministry here on earth and the new creation. We're in the middle. We're in a now and not yet period in which things are partially fulfilled, but not completely fulfilled.

Joel Brooks: 55:49

Yes, when the spirit came inside of us, we were given a new heart and for the first time, we could actually obey God, yet, we still sin. It's way better than we were, we have the potential of of following Him. We can do it genuinely sometimes, but we also still sin. New life has entered into us, yet we still die, but the sting is taken out of death. So we're kind of in this now and not yet period, and that's why we have all of the epistles, we have all of those letters in the New Testament because it's telling us in this in between period how we're supposed to live.

Joel Brooks: 56:29

It's reminding us that as we still have these sinful impulses in us, it reminds us, hey, love one another, serve one another, forgive one another. It reminds us to keep trusting the gospel. The last section here, the new creation, we see that in Revelation. If you wanna understand the Bible as a whole, just read the first three chapters. Read the last three chapters, and you'll see where we're going.

Joel Brooks: 57:03

It's all the same images. It's the same characters, the same themes. And if I could go full circle, it's like Frodo returning to the Shire at the end. He returns after after the evil's been dealt with. He he returns back, and you know what?

Joel Brooks: 57:22

The shower is turned into a more beautiful place. Its potential is truly unpacked. Here, we see there's, once again, a serpent, there's another tree of life, there's another river, and there's God, once again, with man. The Bible ends with creation being healed, the curse lifted, Jesus here reigning, and us reigning with him. We don't fly off into the sky as disembodied spirits playing harps.

Joel Brooks: 57:57

No. When we see the resurrected Jesus, we see our future, Real bodies resurrected that will never know death again and reigning with him. Somebody asked me after the last service, said, what what does that look like? What are we reigning over? Like like, who's our subjects?

Joel Brooks: 58:18

And I said, oh, yes. I I should have explained that, so I'm gonna do that to you. You gotta throw out reigning like the Gentiles reign. We've never seen a good king. Jesus reminded me of how we're supposed to reign.

Joel Brooks: 58:34

All of us, by serving one another, loving one another, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's what a king does. Could you imagine an entire world where people did that with one another? The whole place is transformed. The potential in this world is unlocked, and that's the future that awaits us.

Joel Brooks: 58:56

I'll end by reading the last part of the Bible in Revelation 22. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb through the middle of the street of the city, also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the lamb will be in it, and the servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads, and night will be no more.

Joel Brooks: 59:40

They will need no light or lamp of sun, for the Lord will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. Amen. Pray with me. Lord, thank you. Thank you for showing us who we are, how we came to be, and through Christ where you are leading us.

Joel Brooks: 01:00:05

And, Lord, I pray if there's anyone who has... Choosing death right now as they look at your work on the cross and they choose not to believe who you are, Lord, would you change their hearts? You can. May they choose life. Thank you, Jesus, that when we look at you, we see our future, a future that death can never destroy.

Joel Brooks: 01:00:29

Thank you for coming to rescue us, and we pray this in your name. Amen.