Latest / Reformed Thinking / From Babylon to Bethlehem: God’s Saving Purpose | Jonathan Edwards

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From Babylon to Bethlehem: God’s Saving Purpose | Jonathan Edwards · Reformed Thinking

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Reformed Thinking welcome you to this deep dive.
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Our sources today are taking on a really ambitious piece of
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historical theology. We're looking at that huge
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nearly 600 year span from the Babylonian captivity right up to
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the birth of Christ. It's an era that can feel a bit
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quiet in the biblical narrative. Exactly.
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It often feels like a gap, but when you look at it through the
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framework someone like Jonathan Edwards provides, you see it's
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anything but quiet. So our mission is to look for
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the intentional preparations God was making during this very
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chaotic age for the King's arrival.
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We're looking for the hand of Providence in politics and
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religion, and even in human philosophy.
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And it really is a phenomenal stretch of time to study, mostly
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because of how the divine record itself changes.
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Edwards calls it the last subordinate period of the Old
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Testament. And what makes it so distinct is
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this shift in communication. A shift from what to what?
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Well, for over 400 of those 600 years, the stream of inspired
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scripture history, you know, the books of kings, Samuel
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Chronicles, it just dries up. It stops completely.
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But the work of redemption doesn't.
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The way we track God's plan just shifts from historical narrative
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to incredibly dense and detailed prophecy, and that structure
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alone tells you just how sovereignly guided this whole
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period was. OK, let's unpack that, because
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it really addresses a big question about that gap in the
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record. If these 600 years were so
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vital, why the silence? Why would God stop providing A
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continuous inspired history? That seems a bit
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counterintuitive, doesn't? It it does, you'd think that's
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exactly when Israel would need an inspired history to keep them
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anchored, right? But the answer shows God's
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incredible consistency, the chain of events, the plan of
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redemption. It continues unbroken even when
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the historian's pen is put down. South something takes its place.
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Prophecy takes its place. In fact, if you look at the
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whole Canon, this specific period is the subject of more
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detailed scripture prophecy that all the previous periods
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combined. From prophets like Daniel and
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Ezekiel. Daniel, Ezekiel, the post exilic
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prophets. Yeah.
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And their predictions focus so heavily on the sequence of these
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huge global empires, the fate of God's people inside them, and
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the the precise timing of the Messiah.
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So instead of a history book, God provided an inspired road
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map of the future. But you mentioned there's a
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deeper reason for the shift. Why halt the writing of history
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at all? Well, the sources point to two
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connected reasons. The 1st is simply divine will.
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God willed that the Spirit of prophecy in that specific form
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would cease for a time, so no inspired history could be
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written. OK.
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And that leads to the second and I think more surprising reason.
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It has to do with timing, with synchronization.
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The synchronization with human history.
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This is where God's sovereignty and human cultural development
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intersect, and it's fascinating. It really is.
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The sources point out that the end of inspired history lines up
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perfectly with the start of what we could call authentic profane
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history, secular history, secular history exactly before
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the Babylonian captivity. What we have from secular
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sources is, well, it's mostly fabulous and uncertain.
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It's myth mixed with fact. There's no real chronology.
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History as a rigorous discipline just hadn't been developed by
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man yet. So when human history was
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unreliable, God provided the reliable record in Scripture.
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Genesis, Exodus. Kings.
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Precisely. But then, around 100 years
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before Nebuchadnezzar, you see the rise of the Greek historical
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age. Men like Herodotus, Thucydides.
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They start standardizing how records are kept.
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They use chronology. They try to verify their
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sources. So this is the beginning of what
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the Greeks and Romans would consider real, verifiable
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history. Yes, and just as that's
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happening, God steps back from writing history and provides
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prophecy instead. So how does that work in
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practice? How do the prophecies and these
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new secular records interact? Well, by switching to prophecy,
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God set up this undeniable proof for later generations.
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He lets events unfold and they get recorded by two sources at
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once, the prophets in advance and the newly reliable human
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historians in real time. So when people later read
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Daniel's prophecies about the four empires, right, and then
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they compare them to the detailed accounts from Greek and
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Roman historians, the agreement is just breathtaking.
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It's. Perfect.
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That comparison would show that God isn't just speaking.
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He's ruling. He's orchestrating every detail
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of these huge geopolitical shifts.
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It's not just random chance. Not at all.
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And it also prepared the world intellectually.
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Think of the early Christian apologists.
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They could go to the most educated Romans and Greeks and
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say, look, you trust your historians, right?
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You trust Livy? Narrate our prophet Daniel.
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He predicted the entire sequence of Persia, Greece and Rome
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centuries before they happened. The Perfect match proves there's
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a divine author behind it all. So this wasn't a narrative
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silence, it was a really sophisticated method of
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verification for a world that was starting to value written
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records. That level of orchestration is
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just incredible and it brings us right to the actual content of
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that era. This wasn't a peaceful time.
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It was an age of what our sources called great
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revolutions, continual convulsion.
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The world was constantly being shaken, just like Isaiah chapter
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24 said it would be turned upside down.
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The sheer instability is a major theme.
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I mean, we're talking about the greatest series of revolutions
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since the flood. And it starts, interestingly,
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with God's own visible church, Babylonian captivity.
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But then, as Jeremiah prophesied, the cup went round
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to all the other nations. The shaking starts with Israel
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and then it expands. And what was the purpose of all
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this chaos? To prepare the world for the
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only stable Kingdom, the Kingdom of Christ.
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And these convulsions are marked out by those 4 great global
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overturnings, the ones Daniel saw in his visions,
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Nebuchadnezzar statue, the gold, silver, brass, iron, and the
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four beasts. Right.
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So after Babylon, the golden head falls, you get the first
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great overturning the Persian Empire under Cyrus.
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The silver. The Silver a much bigger empire
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ruling over God's captive people.
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Then comes the second, overturning the explosive rise
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of the Grecian Empire. The brass and Daniel's prophecy
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of the swift he goat that doesn't touch the ground.
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That's a perfect picture of Alexander the Great's conquest.
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It is. His speed was legendary and he
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overthrew the Persians, expanded even further, and just
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fundamentally changed the. World.
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And then the third and final one, the mightiest of all.
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The Roman Empire, the iron it crushes and breaks in pieces,
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the Greek kingdoms that came after Alexander.
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Rome was stronger, bigger and more powerful than anything that
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had come before this sequence. One conquering the next.
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It just showed instability at the highest level of human
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power. They were world rulers, but they
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just fell like dominoes. They did, and that set the stage
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for a spiritual Kingdom that would never fall.
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So what's the theological meaning in that specific
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pattern? Three big overthrows after the
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Jewish monarchy was removed. Why that number?
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The key is in Ezekiel chapter 21.
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I will overturn, overturn, overturn it until he come whose
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right it is. Overturned 3 times.
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Three times it refers to the removal of the diet of the Crown
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from the House of David. The supreme temporal power was
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taken away, and that repetition seems to correspond exactly to
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the three great empires, Coursia, Greece and Rome, that
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would hold that symbolic crown until the true king arrived.
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So those centuries of war weren't just random.
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The world was sort of passing the crown from one Kingdom to
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the next, waiting for the Son of David, for Christ to come and
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claim it. It's like the world was in
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labor. That's the metaphor the sources
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used from Haggai. The shaking of the nations was
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the world in travail, Birth pangs leading to the delivery of
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the Son of God. The suffering were showing the
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world its own misery and its absolute need for a Prince of
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Peace. And in the middle of this, it's
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mentioned that God allowed Satan's visible Kingdom, these
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huge heathen monarchies, to rise to their absolute peak strength.
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Why let the enemy become so powerful right before Christ
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comes? That seems risky.
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It was all about the contrast. It was designed to make Christ's
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spiritual victory that much more glorious by letting earthly
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power reach its greatest height, its greatest splendor.
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The overthrow by a purely spiritual Kingdom seems that
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much more amazing. It's the strategy of conquering
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strength with what looks like weakness.
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The David and Goliath analogy. Goliath comes out in all his
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armor, all his earthly might. David comes with a sling and a
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stone. And the victory has to be seen
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as total. Right when Christ comes and
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establishes his Kingdom, he's symbolically destroying that
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whole statue, the gold, the silver, the brass, the iron, so
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we can like, chaff, just blown away.
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These huge empires, for all their strength, were
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fundamentally unstable, and that instability served as a foil to
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Christ's Kingdom, which, as Daniel said, she'll never be
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destroyed. And through all this
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geopolitical chaos, we have to mention the preservation of the
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Jewish people. They are right at the center of
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this storm, constantly being overrun and threatened, and yet
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they survive. Their survival is a continuous
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miracle of Providence for 500 years.
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They are politically weak. Navigating these global
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convulsions and their preservation, especially through
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that vicious persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes, was a real
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time proof that God keeps His covenant.
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They lost their earthly crown, but their existence was
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sustained by a greater hand. That distinction between the
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external political shaking and the internal covenant
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preservation is a great transition to our next point.
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While the world was being turned upside down, God was also
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systematically removing the external glory of the Jewish
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system itself. Yes, clearing the way internally
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for the arrival of the antitype for Christ.
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And the first step was the Babylonian captivity.
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It finally cured the nation of its addiction to idolatry.
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It's amazing. After centuries of warnings, 70
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years in Babylon finally did it. That deep humiliation of being
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subject to the heathen, of seeing their own temple
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destroyed by the servants of Pagan gods, seems to have
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created a lasting disgust for idol worship.
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So this was a kind of foreshadowing.
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It was as the time approach for the gospel to abolish idolatry
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across the whole world, God first abolished it among His own
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covenant people, a purification to make them ready for a
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spiritual king. But the captivity also stripped
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away the physical grandeur, the temporal glory of the Old
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Testament. It did.
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The first thing to go was the Supreme dominion of the House of
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David. Ezekiel confirmed it.
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The crown and diadem were removed.
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The typical kings had to step aside because the everlasting
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king was about to reign. And then there's the temple
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itself. The Second Temple built by the
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Exiles was visibly inferior to Solomon's.
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And that was on purpose. Since the glorious anti type of
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the temple, Christ's own body, was about to appear, it was
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fitting that the physical typical temple should have its
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visible glory diminished. It was functional, but it lacked
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the specific signs of God's physical presence from the Old
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Covenant. Let's talk about those missing
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elements. What happened to the Ark of the
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Covenant? The centerpiece.
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Well, the sources focus on what was lost from it.
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The two tables of the testimony, the 10 commandments written by
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God's own finger. They were lost during the
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captivity and never replaced. The law was preserved in the
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scrolls, but the divinely written tablets were gone.
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What about the Urim and Thummim? It's something we hear about,
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but what was it exactly? It was a device, likely stones,
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on the high priest breastplate, used to get a direct immediate
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answer from God on national matters, a kind of divine
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Oracle. And Ezra confirms he was absent
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in the Second Temple. So the Direct Line of
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communication in that form was cut.
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It was in anticipation of Christ, who is himself the great
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Word, the ultimate Oracle of God.
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And most striking of all, the visible presence of God was
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gone, the Shekinah. The Shekinah, that glorious
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cloud that rested over the mercy seat in Solomon's temple, wasn't
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there in the Second Temple. The physical manifestation was
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removed, but this absence was tied directly to a greater
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promise. The one in Highgate.
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Exactly. God promised to fill that second
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house with a glory that surpassed the first, but in a
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new way by the desire of all nations coming to it.
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Christ himself. His physical Incarnate presence,
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teaching and working miracles in that temple was the fulfillment
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of that promise. The symbol the cloud was no
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longer needed because the substance had arrived.
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And finally, the holy fire, the fire from heaven.
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The fire that consumed the first sacrifices and was never
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supposed to go out. It was extinguished when the
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first temple was destroyed. The priest had to use common
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fire. After that he added all up, the
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crown, the tablets, the Oracle, the glory cloud, the sacred
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fire. It was a systematic dimming of
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the Old Testament lights. The symbols were setting because
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the Sun of Righteousness was about to rise.
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So all the old system's internal anchors were being removed.
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God was simultaneously setting up the external logistical
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preparations for the gospel, and the first one was the dispersion
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of the Jews. This is not an accident.
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When Cyrus allowed the Exiles to return, most of them didn't.
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They had built lives in Babylon and the surrounding regions, so
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only a small number went back to Jerusalem, leaving this huge
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Jewish diaspora scattered all over the Persian Empire.
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A footprint that just kept expanding.
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By Esther's time, they're from India to Ethiopia.
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Then Antiochus the Great moves thousands of families to Asia
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Minor places like Pontus, Galatia, Rome.
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Places that become focal points for the apostle Paul and this
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dispersion prepared the way for the gospel in at least four key
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ways. First, the expectation of the
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Messiah became global news. The dispersed Jews were carrying
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the Scriptures and the prophecies with them.
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Right. They were living and working
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among the Gentiles, talking about their law and raising this
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general expectation of a great Prince to be born in Judea.
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You even see a popping up in Roman writers like Virgil who
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wrote about a world changing Prince coming from the East.
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The second point is that the dispersion proved the ceremonial
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law was unsustainable. How did geography do that?
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Just simple logistics. If you're a faithful Jew living
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1000 miles away, it's impossible to get to Jerusalem for the
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three mandatory feasts every year.
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It's impracticable. So distance itself show that
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this landlocked system had to be replaced by a new dispensation
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that would work for all nations everywhere.
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It was obsolete in practice before it was formally ended.
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Exactly. Third, the dispersion meant that
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the key facts about Christ's life and death became public
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knowledge almost instantly across the world.
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Because foreign Jews were still traveling to Jerusalem for the
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big feasts. They were they were there to see
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his miracles. They heard about Lazarus.
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They were certainly in the city for the crucifixion in
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Pentecost. And when they went back home to
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Parthia or Egypt or Rome, they carried that news with them.
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And that leads to the fourth point.
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The synagogues. They became launch pads for the
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apostles. The synagogues were everywhere
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and they were a perfect starting point.
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The apostles could walk in and immediately have an audience
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that already knew about the one true God, the moral law and the
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messianic promises. And they also attracted curious
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Gentiles, the God fearers, which gave the early church a ready
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made bridge into the Gentile world.
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The second huge preparation was linguistic, a common language
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across the known world, thanks to Alexander the Great.
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Alexander, the He goat from Daniel's vision, created this
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massive empire and his lasting legacy was making coin Greek,
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the common language of commerce, government and intellectual life
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from Egypt all the way to India. So it was the ancient world's
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equivalent of an Internet cable. It really was.
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It created a communication highway.
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Churches in Jerusalem and Corinth could write to each
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other easily. But the most crucial part is
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that the New Testament itself was written in this common
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Greek. As soon as it was written, it
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was immediately accessible to most of the educated world.
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No waiting for translations. And tied to that, common
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language was the first major translation of the Old
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Testament, the Septuagint. Right about 50 years or so after
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Alexander, the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into
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Greek. This was a monumental event.
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It unlocked the Scriptures from a language only a minority
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understood into a world language.
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And the early church used it constantly.
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Oh absolutely. When you look at the Old
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Testament quotes in the New Testament, they're almost all
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taken directly from the Septuagint's wording, not a new
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translation from the Hebrew. For centuries, the Septuagint
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was the Bible for most Christians.
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It gave the early church a unified Old Testament to argue
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from. Finally, there's the
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multiplication of the law itself.
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Before the captivity, copies were rare.
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Very rare, but after the exile, largely because of Ezra's work,
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there was a revolution in distributing the word.
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Synagogues were established everywhere, and the law and the
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prophets were read constantly every Sabbath.
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This was huge for preserving the people from idolatry and for
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creating a world that was familiar with the language and
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concepts of the covenant when the Gospel finally arrived.
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OK, that brings us to the final century and a half before
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Christ, focusing on God's direct, sometimes violent
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intervention to preserve his people and set the final stage.
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Yes, and the examples are just amazing.
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They define natural explanation. You have Alexander the Great
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marching on Jerusalem, furious with the Jews, ready to destroy
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them. But he doesn't.
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No, he meets the high priests and God miraculously turns his
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heart. Instead of destroying the city,
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he shows a great favor. It's like Esau and Jacob all
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over again. The survival of the covenant
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people hung on the whim of a tyrant, and God changed his
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whim. Then there's the even more
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dramatic story of Ptolemy Filipater in Egypt A.
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State sponsored attempted genocide.
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He gathered thousands of Jews into the Hippodrome in
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Alexandria to have them trampled by 500 elephants.
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It's a terrifying image. It is, but the record says that
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by a wonderful Providence the elephants turned not on the
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Jews, but on the spectators and the soldiers.
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The tyrant saw this divine intervention and was forced to
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stop. But the worst persecution of the
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whole period came under Antiochus Epiphanes, the small
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horn from Daniel. This was a unique kind of evil.
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Antiochus wasn't just yet to conquer the Jews, he was trying
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to eradicate their religion. He desecrated the temple, banned
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circumcision and the Sabbath, and burned copies of the law.
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It was a Total War on their identity as God's people.
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So how did they survive that? God raised up the Maccabees,
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Judas Maccabees and his brothers.
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They were a tiny rebel force against a massive empire, but
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they performed the exploits Daniel foretold.
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They fought, they won impossible victories and they cleanse the
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Temple A. Clear sign of God's protection.
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Absolutely. And Antiochus himself died a
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miserable death from a horrible disease, just as Daniel
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predicted. None shall help him.
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God preserved the seed line through its most vulnerable
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moments. And as Greek power faded, the
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final player took the stage. Rome.
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The Roman Empire, the 4th great revolution.
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It established its power over Judea about 60 or 70 years
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before Christ, and it became the largest, most unified monarchy
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in history. Luke just calls it all the
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world. And this unified government was
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a practical preparation for the gospel.
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A perfect one, the famous Pax Romana, the Roman peace, but
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also the infrastructure. The apostles could travel on
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Roman roads under Roman law with the level of safety and ease
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that would have been impossible if they had to cross dozens of
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little warring kingdoms. And at the same time Rome was
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rising in military power, Greek and Roman philosophy were
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reaching their peak. Yes, the Stoics, the Epicureans,
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all the major schools of thought were flourishing, and they were
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all focused on one question, how to find true human happiness
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through reason alone. And they failed.
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Hopelessly, they were divided into hundreds of different
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opinions. So God let human reason run its
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course for 600 years, push itself to his absolute limit to
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prove its own vanity. The result wasn't happiness.
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The world just grew more wicked and miserable.
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It demonstrated the need for a divine teacher.
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It did. It made foolish the wisdom of
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this world, just as Paul later argued, it created an
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intellectual vacuum. But God didn't discard that
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learning. He prepared it to be a handmade.
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How so? Well, you take someone like the
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Apostle Paul, who was trained in both Jewish law and Gentile
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philosophy. He could go to Athens and debate
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the philosophers on their own terms, even quoting their own
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poets. Once human reason was shown its
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limits is tools could be used to articulate and defend the
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gospel. So we come to the final moments.
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The Roman Empire is at its absolute height of power under
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Augustus Caesar. Which fits God's strategy of
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contrast perfectly. He brings his own people, the
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Jews, very low, and He exalts the heathen world system to its
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greatest height, the crushing iron of the statue, so that
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Christ, coming not as a Caesar, but in weakness and humility,
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could win a more glorious spiritual victory over the
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greatest earthly power imaginable.
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And the final prelude to that birth was peace.
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Universal Peace. Augustus finally settled his
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empire, and in the very year Christ was born, the Romans
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performed the ceremony of shutting the Temple of Janus,
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which was their symbol for a world at peace.
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And that peace lasted for 12 years.
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After centuries of constant war and overturning, the whole world
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was finally quiet. A divinely orchestrated prelude
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for the Prince of Peace. A perfect one.
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So when you put it all together for us, what does this mean?
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We've seen the shift from history to prophecy, the four
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great overturnings, the stripping away of the old
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glories, the genius of the dispersion in the common
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language, and the peak of Roman power and Greek philosophy.
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It reveals A meticulous sovereignty.
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Every major world event, from Cyrus to Augustus, from the
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Greek language to the Roman roads, was orchestrated for one
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moment. It shows you that the seeming
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chaos of world history isn't random.
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It serves A precise sovereign purpose in God's plan of
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redemption. It's all guided.
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God deliberately brought his own people low and exalted his
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enemies to their greatest height right before the incarnation.
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So consider what that approach, conquering the strongest earthly
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forces with the apparent weakness of a humble birth,
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tells us about the nature of Christ's Kingdom and how it
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works today. It's a Kingdom that shows its
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glory not by meeting earthly strength with greater earthly
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strength, but by overcoming and dissolving it when it's at its
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most magnificent. That approach, using weakness to
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conquer might, is the core truth you should think about long
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after this deep dive ends.