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Andy Stanley - The Bible For GrownUps Part 3 The Old Testament · Andy Stanley Sermons

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To be Idyll. Yes, that's the book for me. I stand Alone
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on the World of God to b I b l E to b ib l
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E. Yes, that's the book for me. What are you doing?
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Nothing? So we're in part three of this series, the Bible for Grown
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Ups, And the reason I wanted to do this is most of us know
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some Bible stories, and if you grew up in church, you probably know
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a lot of Bible stories. If you didn't grow up in church, you
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know just enough Bible stories to know that you don't believe the Bible stories.
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Possibly, or maybe you grew up in church with the Bible stories and then
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as you became an adult, you thought, wait a minute, that stuff
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couldn't have happened. And part of the problem is while many of us know
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some Bible stories, very few of us know the story of the Bible.
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And I'm convinced that knowing the story of the Bible, or knowing how we
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got the Bible, is almost as important as knowing what is in the Bible,
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because if you don't know, if you don't know the story of the
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Bible, it's easy to discount or dismiss the stories that are actually in the
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Bible. And one of the things that makes this so challenging for us is
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the way that we got our Bibles is not the way the world got the
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Bible. By the time you got a Bible, if you got a Bible
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as a child or as an adult, it was all chaptered and versed and
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mapped and rapped. But that's not how the world got the Bible. Jesus
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didn't write the Bible. But if it weren't for Jesus, there would not
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be a b ib l e. Because the story of the Bible does not
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begin with Genesis. The story of the Bible actually begins with Jesus. And
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here's why I say that the story of the Bible actually begins in the first
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century when Jesus' tomb was found empty, and then Jesus was seen and his
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cowardly followers who ran when he was arrested showed up in the streets of Jerusalem
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and said he's back, He's alive from the dead, and thousands of Jewish
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people in the very area where Jesus was arrested and crucified, in the area
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of Judaea, specifically the city of Jerusalem, embraced Jesus as their savior.
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And the church launched. The church began, and suddenly, and suddenly something
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was true that wasn't true before. Suddenly there was interest in documenting the life,
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the words, and the works of Jesus, because if Jesus had stayed
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dead, we probably would have never heard of Jesus, because there would have
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been no church and no Christianity, and consequently there would have been no Bible.
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And that's why I say the story of the Bible actually begins with the
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resurrection of Jesus. Well, eventually, the apostle Paul, who will talk
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about next time, and some other people left Jerusalem and left Judea, and
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left that region of the world and went to major port cities around the Mediterranean
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basin, and they began to share the story of Jesus and the fact that
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God had done something in the world through his son and had raised him from
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the dead to punctuate what he claimed about himself and what he said about the
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world, and so the document During that time, men specifically began to document
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the life of Jesus, and if there had been no resurrection, there would
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have been no need to document. In fact, Luke, a doctor in
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the first century, tells us that many many people. Doctor Luke got together
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said that many people tried the document or sat down or attempted to document the
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life of Jesus. And so we said, in the first week, this
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is where we get Matthew, Martin, Luke, and John four accounts of
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the life of Jesus, two Greeks and two Jews who sat down to document
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the life of Jesus. Then, eventually, as I said before, the
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Apostle Paul left that region of Judea and Galilee and began to spread the word
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about Jesus and his teaching to gentiles around the Mediterranean realm. Now this is
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where the story he picks up from last time. When gentiles, non Jewish
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people became enamored with a particular Jew, Jesus, they immediately became enamored with
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the sacred text of the Jews, the Hebrew, what we'll call the Hebrew
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Bible. This is the Hebrew Bible. This is the Hebrew Bible that I
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used in graduate school. When I say used, barely used. My only
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see in graduate school was in one of my four semesters or my two years
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of Hebrew. It's an extraordinarily difficult language. I decided you need five years
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of Hebrew to actually be able to read and use the Hebrew text. But
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this is the Hebrew Bible or the Jewish scripture, or what Jesus in first
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century people referred to as the Law and the prophets. Now, Gentile Christians,
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early on, Gentile Christians in the late first century, especially in the
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second century, embraced these texts as scripture. But here's where the storyline gets
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complicated. They did not embrace the Hebrew Bible or the Jewish Bible as Jewish
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scripture. They embraced this scripture as Christian scripture. Because while Gentiles were certainly
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interested in the Jewish scripture, they were not in the least bit interested in
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the Jewish religion. Their interest in the Jewish text was not historical or cultural.
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And I'll explain why because during this period in history, there were two
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or three different things going on. First of all, the temple had been
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destroyed, The Jewish temple had been destroyed, and the Jewish people, the
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Jewish leaders specifically, and the priest and the rabbis and those that the scholars,
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they were all trying to figure out, how do we practice our religion
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with no temple. So Judaism took on a distinctly different flavor at the end
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of the first century, and rabbinic Judaism was born. The second thing going
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on was that the Jews, periodically between the end of the first century all
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the way through the third century would side with Rome, would side with the
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Empire against Christians. So there was a built in conflict between Christians who were
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using Jewish scripture and the Jews, who said, hey, that's not your
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scripture, it's our scripture, and you're some sort of knockoff Jewish cult and
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you're giving us a bad name, and you have the potential to ruin our
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relationship with the Empire. So the Judaism and the Jewish leaders sometimes sided with
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Rome. And then the third thing that made this relationship so difficult was that
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Gentiles didn't really want to be Jewish, I mean, because from their perspective,
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the Jews were a little bit odd. I mean, they wouldn't work
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one day of the week, they wouldn't eat certain things. Ever, they
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wouldn't come over, they wouldn't invite you over, they wouldn't let you marry
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their daughter, they wouldn't let their daughters marry your sons. And so the
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Jewish communities, even outside of Judea and Galilee, were very exclusive communities because
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they wanted to be we would say, kosher, and they wanted to obey
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the laws given to them in the Hebrew Bible. And it was very difficult
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to be a good Jew and mix too much with Gentiles. So there was
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a lot going on again into the first century into the second century. So
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consequently, the Church Christians, they took the book. They didn't take the
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religion. They took the book, they didn't take the culture. Their interest
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was not historical or cultural. Gentiles interest in this book was chrystological, a
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brand new word for some of you. They went into the Hebrew Bible not
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looking for the Hebrews. They went into the Jewish scripture not looking for Jews.
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They went into the Hebrew Bible looking for Christ, looking for Jesus then,
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and they found him everywhere. They found him in places he was not.
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They found all kinds of texts that they decided were about Jesus. And
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the course, the Jewish scholars and leaders were just appalled that these non Jewish
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people who couldn't even read Hebrew would do such damage to their text in the
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way that they interpreted text. But the Gentiles actually reject Jewish interpretation of the
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Jewish text. And here's why their thought went like this. The church father
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said, look, you Jewish people, you missed your own Messiah. You
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didn't understand your own prophets. We want your text, but we're not interested
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in your interpretation of your own text because you missed your Messiah. So at
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the end of the first century, this is after the apostle Paul and Peter
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and all of Jesus apostles are gone. Because it's interesting to know. In
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the Book of Romans, the apostle Paul was very specific. He addressed gentiles
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and he said to us gentiles, he said, hey, you gentiles,
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don't get all up aity, don't think you're something that you're not, and
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don't you have a bad attitude toward us Jewish people. If it wasn't for
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us Jewish people, there would be no Messiah for you to embrace. And
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so he warned the gentile world not to disenfranchise themselves and not to be critical
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of the Jewish people, but instead But in spite of that, I should
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say, there was conflict early on, as soon again into the late first
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century, into the second century. So what happened is essentially the Christian Church,
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the early Christian Church church took the Hebrew text and they essentially baptized it,
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christianized it, and allegorized it. And unfortunately, for the most part,
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they downplayed or completely ignored, but certainly didn't teach sequentially the fabulous,
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gritty, epic history of the Hebrew people. Because the Old Testament. They
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called it the Law and the Prophets, but we call it the Old Testament.
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The Old Testament chronicles God's redemptive, sequential activity in history in the world.
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I mean in Genesis. As we saw last week. In Genesis,
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God shows up at the beginning as creator, but very quickly in the book
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of Genesis, he takes off his creator hat and he puts on his founder
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hat. And God begins founding a nation in order to bring redemption to the
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world. And he begins with a that has no family and who has no
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children, named Abraham. And through Abraham, he births a nation with an
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international, multi generational purpose, a nation that would eventually be enslaved in Egypt,
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a nation that would eventually be enslaved by a superpower, by a pharaoh
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who considered himself related to the gods, close to the gods. And then
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at the right time, God sent his servant, Moses, the savior.
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Moses so to speak into that environment, and he goes to Pharaoh and he
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says, you are to let my people go. You're to let God's people
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go, and he spoke on behalf of God in Yahweh. The Jewish God
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spoke to Pharaoh in the only terms a pharaoh could understand, violence and power.
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And at the end of this epic story, he frees his people and
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they leave Egypt, and they leave Egypt wealthy. The text says that they
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plundered the nation. The people were so happy for the Hebrews to leave.
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Moses leads them to Mount Sinai. God establishes a covenant with his people and
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he says to the Hebrews, the ancient Hebrews, he says, I'm going
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to be your God, and you're going to be my people, and you're
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going to be separate from all the surrounding nations because I have a very very
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very specific plan for you, because through you, my people, we you
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are going to bless the entire world. And he said to them, here
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are the rules. Here are the stipulations, here are the laws. Here's
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a covenant, basically a contract. And he said to them, I'm going
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to give you your own land, and when you get to this land,
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if you obey me, I'm going to prosper you. But if you disobey
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me, for the sake of the world who's watching, I'm going to have
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to punish you. And if you take on the customs and the religious traditions
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of the surrounding nations, if you embrace the morality of the surrounding nations,
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if you embrace the polytheism of the surrounding nations, I'm going to give you
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to the surrounding nations so that you get a real good dose of that.
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When you repent, I can bring you back to the land. It was
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conditional in the sense that God would bless them if they obeyed. It was
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unconditional in the sense that they would all ways be His chosen people with a
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specific agenda in mind. And all this was outlined at Mount Sinai when Moses
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came down not with ten commandments, with six hundred and thirteen commandments. Now,
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I want to talk about those commandments for just a minute, because critics
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and skeptics for generations, in fact, from the very beginning, have had
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an unrelenting criticism of the terms and conditions, the laws, and the restrictions
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that are connected with the Sinai Covenant. In fact, Richard Dawkins in his
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book The God Delusion, which I read the whole book a couple of years
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ago, he says this, and this is just a snapshot of what perhaps
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you heard in college or in university, or maybe the reason that you lost
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faith is because you had a version of Christianity that said the bibl e that's
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the book for me, in all sixty six books, I gotta believe,
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even do everything in all sixty six books. And somebody came along and they
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showed you some of the verses in the Old Testament, specifically as it related
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to the Jewish law, and you said, wait a minute, what kind
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of God would say those kinds of things or ask those kind of things?
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And maybe it was the Sinai Covenant, God's arrangement with Israel that caused you
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to lose faith. And the reason perhaps you lost faith is because you embraced
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Richard Dawkins are other people's view of this extraordinary, extraordinary Covenant that God created
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with his people. But here's what Richard writes. He says Judaism originally a
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tribal cult of a single, fiercely unpleasant God, morbidly obsessed with sexual restrictions,
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with the smell of charred flesh. And he goes on and on and
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on criticizing God. And if this is all you read, and then somebody
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pointed out a verse here in verse there, of course you would walk away
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thinking, Wow, why would anyone take this seriously? And why would anyone
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take anything that came from this seriously? And that's why I wanted to stop
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talk about this for just a minute, because Richard Dawkins and those like him
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are absolutely wrong when it comes to understanding the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish Scripture,
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what we would call the Old Testament. I don't want to give you
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two examples. The first one is found in Levitigus chapter eighteen and Levitigus eighteen.
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In the book of Levitigus, there's Genesis, Exodus, Levitigus. This
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is where the majority of the detailed law is found. This is why if
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you ever start reading the Bible from the beginning, you think I'm gonna read
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the whole thing. Anybody ever try this. And you get through Genesis and
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there's Creation and it's kind of odd, but it's amazing. And then there's
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Abraham and there's Isaac and there you know, you get the thing. And
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then there's Joseph and you know, Pharaoh. It's amazing. And then you
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get to Exodus and it's epic and it's you know, God doing all this
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stuff. Then you get to Levitigas and it's like, what you know?
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You go to numbers, It's like, what what you know? In Deuteronomy?
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I think we just read this in Levitgus, Like where's you know,
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where does this storyline pick up? But this is this is this detailed covenant
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that go I'd established with ancient Israel. So anyway, when you get to
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Levitigus eighteen, you find nineteen plus or minus depending on how you count them,
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nineteen sexual prohibitions, nineteen laws dealing with sexuality. And if that's all
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you heard, you would say, see, that's why I'm not a religious
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person. It's certainly why I'm not a Christian, because there goes God messing
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with our personal life and getting in the bedroom and it's none of his business.
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And it's none of your business, and I don't want to have anything
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to do with that. That's why I wanted to talk about this one.
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Plus, people are always interested when the preacher talks about sex. There's that
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too. But anyway, so all of this is interesting. All nineteen of
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these prohibitions that we find in Levitigus, all nineteen we're practiced in Egypt,
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and all nineteen we're practiced in Canaan. So God has said to the nation.
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Look, I'm asking you to be different. I want you to look
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different, act different, I want you to live different. I want every
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area of your life to be different, because you are my people. But
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here's the fascinating thing that people overlook, and it's why I wanted to spend
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just a minute focusing on this today and right now. Today, in every
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single developed nation in the world, and in most what we would consider undeveloped
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or developing nations in the world, but today, in every single developed nation
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in the world, seventeen of the nineteen behaviors prohibited in Levitigus are either illegal
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or frowned upon today seventeen out of nineteen. The point being the Hebrew people
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the law that God gave the nation the law that God gave Moses to give
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to the nation. The Hebrew people were way, way, way, way,
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way, way way way ahead of their time. It would take centuries
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for surrounding civilizations to finally mature to the point that they realized that the sexual
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prohibitions that God gave the nation of Israel where the way to go. And
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the reason that's the case is because the theme of these sexual prohibitions has to
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do well. Let me just show you kind of the theme for this whole
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section. It says this, no one is to approach any close relative to
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have sexual relations, which seems very reasonable to me, and it seems very
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reasonable to you. It did not seem reasonable to ancient Egyptians, Canaanites,
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or surround of the surrounding nations. In fact, let me just tell you
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how way ahead of their time the Hebrew people were. In the Law of
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Moses was the Sinai covenant that they believe came from God. They were so
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far ahead of their time that if you fast forward in fifteen hundred years,
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or about fifteen hundred years so time of Moses, God gives them the law,
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you go fast forward fifteen hundred years now, you're at the time of
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Jesus. There's about fifteen hundred years separating the giving of the Law and Jesus
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showing up on planet Earth. So fifteen hundred years later, Roman civilization has
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slowly begun to embrace much of these sexual ethics that God gave the Hebrews fifteen
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hundred years before. But over in Egypt, fifteen hundred years after the Hebrews
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realized incest is a bad idea for lots of reasons. Over in Egypt,
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fifteen hundred years later, the monarchs are still marrying their siblings. It would
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take another several generations for that, definally, that behavior to be weeded out
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of or walked away from, from even Egyptian civilization. The point being this,
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you can't just fly over the Sinai Covenant and go, oh, so
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antiquated all these people. How in the world could God be so old fashioned
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and narrow minded. It's not that way. I don't want to say the
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devil that is in the details because that sounds kind of weird, But the
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devil's kind of in the details. When you get down into the details,
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it's like, oh, it's not as simple. It's just casting Yahweh,
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the God of the Jews. Aside in fact, the Sinai Covenant, the
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Mount Sinai Covenant, the God established with the ancient Israel, is a moral
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and civil code that, when understood in its ancient context. I'm telling you,
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it was brilliant. And every scholar knows, and every historian knows that
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you never ever, ever pull something out of its ancient context and compare it
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to things going on in the modern world. Nobody does that. God is
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like a good father. God always accommodates to our capacity. As a parent,
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you did this or your parents did this. If a five year old
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says where do babies come from? They get a different answer than when a
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fifteen year old says where do babies come from? It's a different answer when
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a medical student says, where do babies come from? And nobody lies.
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But everybody accommodates to the capacity of their audience. They accommodate to the capacity
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of their children. And in the Mountain and in the Sinai Covenant, we
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see God who has developed a nation, created a nation for a very specific
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purpose, accommodating to the maturity the ancient times. What they knew and what
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they don't know. And even with his accommodating ability and his willingness to accommodate,
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the Sinai co it is absolutely brilliant. It strikes us as unsophisticated in
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barbaric, but it wasn't. In fact, it was superior. It was
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superior in every way to the civil and religious codes and moral codes of the
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surrounding nations. In fact, specifically, the protections afforded the most vulnerable were
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nothing short of revolutionary. Women were better protected and had more rights, servants,
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foreigners, children, They all fared better under the Sini Covenant than their
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counterparts did in the surrounding nations. And why because of what we said last
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week. Because the Hebrews from the very beginning. The Hebrews from the very
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beginning, believe that there was a single God, not a multitude of gods,
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a single God who created mankind and womankind in his image, that everyone
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was born with dignity. That the hebrew people did not worship creation, they
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were the call of creation, and this set them apart from the very beginning,
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and it would take centuries centuries for the rest of the world to finally
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catch up. And in fact, there are parts of the world today that
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still haven't caught up to what God said thirty five hundred years ago to the
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nation. Okay, so back to the storyline. Then, after the Sinai
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Covenant against God's better wishes, Israel, now that they were a sort of
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a nation state, they decided they wanted to have a king. And so
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eventually Israel God herself a whole bunch of kings. God didn't want Israel to
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have a king because God wanted to rule and treat him. God wanted them
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to view him as their king and rule through judges. But they got themselves
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a king. And most of Israel's kings were disasters, because such is the
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nature of a king, such is the nature of someone who holds all the
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cards and has all the power. They raise taxes. People don't like taxes.
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They raise armies. Armies are expensive. And they had multiple wives.
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And anytime someone has multiple wives, things are complicated. If you, in
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fact, maybe this is your big takeaway today, if you have a favorite
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wife, things won't go well in your life. Okay, if you have
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a favorite wife, things don't go well in your life. And so all
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of a sudden there was you know, there were harems because that's just what
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kings did. And then as time went by, with their third king,
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Israel got something else that all the surrounding nations have, because over and over
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and over we find in this epic story of the development of the Hebrew people
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that Israel would look around instead of looking up, they would look around and
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they'd say, we want one of those, and we want to be like
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them, and they've got it easier, and why can't we have. So
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they got some kings, and then with their third king they got what every
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other nation had. They got themselves a temple. But their temple was different
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than all the surrounding nations temp It wasn't different in the way it looked necessarily
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necessary. In fact, it was kind of organized and built like this a
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traditional pagan ancient temple. But the Jewish temple, this temple had one thing
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that did not have one thing I should say that all great temples have.
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There was no image of the God for whom the temple was built. You
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built a temple for a specific God, and as part of the temple you
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would have a god vault, and in the god vault would be the statue
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of the of the a statue or the image of the God for whom the
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temple was built. Well, the Jewish temple had everything any temple would have,
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and they had a god vault that we call it the Holy of Holies.
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And in the Holy of Holies there was no image because one of the
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big ten commandments was you don't create any image of me, because I am
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Yahweh. I'm the one and only God, and I cannot be contained in,
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or described by, or narrowed down to or reduced to an image.
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And by the way, I don't live in this house. I'm the mobile
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God. If you don't think I am, just ask Pharaoh, because I
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visited him a few hundred years ago and they still haven't gotten over it.
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But anyway, because they wanted a temple, they built a temple. They
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had the God vault, but in the God vault there was no image of
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Yahweh because Yahweh said, you will have no image of me. Interesting little
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piece of history. In sixty three BC, POMPEII came basically with had a
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few short skirmishes, and they annexed all of Judea and Galilee into the Roman
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Empire. And when Pompey got there, he was so fascinated to see this
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God that was such a trouble maker, this god who would not join the
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pantheon of gods, that this god who said I'm the only God and there
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are no other gods, This God who basically despised and looked down on even
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the Roman gods. So Pompey makes his way into the temple, brushes aside
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the priest, brushes aside that huge curtain dividing the Holy of Holies from the
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rest of the temple, and he goes right into the Holy of Holies looking
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for the Jewish God. I mean, what does this god even look like?
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And there was just dishes and a table and some gold and no God,
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and he was disgusted and he just left it all there. And he
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left why because I mean, you know, whoever heard was what he was
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probably thinking. Whoever heard of a god who doesn't have an image? To
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which God was thinking, you will hear from him shortly. But anyway,
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we'll keep going. So back to our story line, Abraham Moses Sinai covenant
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King's temple. And then because the kings were constantly misbehaving, every once in
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a while, God would send prophets to warn and correct the kings, to
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warn and correct the kings. Now, when you read the Old Testament or
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the Hebrew Bible, a great deal of the text are the rants and the
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ravings, and the writings and the warnings and the illustrations of these prophets.
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And as you may know, or you should know, every single one of
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the prophets is addressing a specific historical context. Every single one of the prophets
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is addressing something going on primarily with one of the kings of the Kings of
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Israel, or the Northern Kingdom or the Southern Kingdom. But every once in
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a while, every once in a while, the prophets would look beyond their
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immediate historical context to a future day when God would do something through the nation
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of Israel for the nations of the world. One of the most fascinating illustrations
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of this is found in the Book of Isaiah. Isaiah was a prophet who
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wrote about six hundred years before the time of Christ, about six hundred years
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before the time of Christ, and much of his prophecy makes sense within its
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original context the issues that he was addressing during that period of time, But
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there is one portion of what he wrote that was mysterious to the original audience.
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They read what he wrote, and he talked about this mysterious suffering servant
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who suffering would somehow benefit the nation, which kind of made sense, but
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somehow his suffering was going to benefit the entire world. And the details about
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this suffering servant kind of conflicted with temple worship and with the whole temple structure.
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So I'm gonna read you just a few verses from Isaiah fifty three.
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As Isaiah looks beyond his immediate context to this ultimate fulfillment of what God had
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in mind for the nation of Israel, he writes he he was despised and
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rejected by mankind, and the original audience would go, who's he a man
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of suffering and familiar with pain? But he was pierced for our transgressions.
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So wait a minute, A person was pierced. Yes, he was crushed
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for our iniquities. A person paid the price or the penalty for someone else's
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sin or iniquities. I mean, that's what we did with lambs and sheep
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and ghosts. That's what the whole sacrificial system was all about. He continues.
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The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds
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we are healed, or we are made right with God. The Lord has
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laid on him who is this him? The Lord is laid on him the
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iniquity. Now the Lord doesn't lay on people, the iniquity of all of
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us. The Lord lays on animals as the temporary covering the iniquity. The
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Lord is laid on him a person, a man, the iniquity, the
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sin of all of us. For he was cut off from the land of
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the living. He died for the transgression of my people. He died for
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the transgression of other people. He was punished, he was assigned a grave.
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Not only was he killed, he was buried with the wicked and with
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the rich in his death. And then he says this, and after he
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suffered, he will see the light of life. Wait, this sounds like
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he comes back to life and be satisfied by his knowledge. My righteous servant
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will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. When I was in
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Grindraduate school the same time I was trying to make my way through Hebrew,
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I had a professor who was Jewish. Both of experients were Jewish. He
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brought up in a Jewish home, and when he went to college, he
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had a Christian friend who kept inviting him the church, and he said,
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I'm not going to your church. And he kept wanted to talk to him
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about Jesus, and he just said, you know, it's just kind of
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irritating. And then one day this Christian friend walks up with a piece of
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notebook paper, all folded up, you know, small, and said,
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just read this. He said. I went to my dorm and I opened
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it up, and it was written front and back, and he had written
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out Isaiah fifty three, the entire chapter, and then it said at the
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bottom of Isaiah fifty three. He said, I read it, and I
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had never read this before, and I thought to myself, wait a minute,
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this isn't in the Hebrew Bible. He said. I wasn't really attending
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synagogue at the time. He said, zo I went and found my my
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Hebrew Bible, and I looked up and sure enough, there it was.
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And he said, I was so confused. He said, so I actually
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called a rabbi in my community I had never met, made an appointment and
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went to see him and unfolded this piece of paper, said, look,
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is this really in the Hebrew Bible and the rabbi said, well, actually
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it is. And he said to him, he told us in front of
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the whole class. He said, who is this talking about? Who is
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him? And the rabbi said, well, it sounds a lot like Jesus,
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doesn't it. And he said, yeah, that's what my Christian friend
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keeps telling me. And the rabbi said, well, as you know,
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we're Jewish, so we don't accept that. So he went back to his
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dorm and he just could not get over this and eventually became a Jesus follower
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and became a seminary professor to teach Christian theology. Three weeks ago, I
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was having lunch with a couple. He is Greek and she's Jewish, and
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so he's in a Jewish home. And we started talking about Isaiah fifty three
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and she said, Andy, in the synagogue I was raised in, did
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you know we skipped Isaiah fifty three? We went from fifty two to fifty
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four? She said. For years growing up, I didn't know we were
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skipping anything. I said, wait, she said, no, we just
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skipped over it. Now the reason I pause and spend so much time on
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that, I know we have Jewish people who attend, or who watch,
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or family members, and I just want you to hear from me the story
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of your people. And you know this better than I do. It's fabulous,
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it's epic, and your profit predicted in extraordinary detail what would eventually be
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fulfilled about six hundred years later, with extraordinary precise detail. It's just something
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to consider because over and over in the Hebrew Bible, over and over in
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the Sacred Text, the Jewish people were reminded that they were a divine means
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to a divine end. And being a means to an end is what makes
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something meaningful. If you want to live a meaningful life, you have to
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become a means to an end that is not yourself. That's the meaning of
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meaningful. And they were a divine means to a divine end. The story
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of the ancient Hebrews is just absolutely, absolutely magnificent. I mean to summarize
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it this way. It's like God wades into the fray and plays by the
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rules of the kingdoms of this world in order to usher in a kingdom not
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of this world, and to stand off the rough edges of God's Old Testament
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behavior is to miss the mess that he waded into in order to see the
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story of redemption played out to its bloody Crucify him, Crucify him. End
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our Old Testament the Jewish or the Hebrew Bible is a saga of an ancient
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people struggling to survive in a world where food was scarce, enemies were real,
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and death was just a minor infection away. But in spite of that,
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they clung to Yahweh. They clung to their God, and he in
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turn clung to his nation, careful not to override their freedom with his presence.
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I mean, the entire story. It's gritty, it's powerful. It's
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history with a divine purpose. It's history with you and mind. It's history
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with us in mind, its history with the world in mind. It was
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purposeful, a purpose announced by God to Abraham and fulfilled twenty two hundred years
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later when a Jewish carpenter discovers that his fiancee was pregnant, and suddenly the
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next part of the story, the fulfillment of Isaiah and other prophets, would
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begin. The apostle Paul, who was a pharisee. A pharisee, the
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apostle Paul, who knew this book inside and out summarized it best when he
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wrote this, writing a letter to some Christians living in the Roman province of
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Galatia. Here's what he said. He said, But when the set time
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had fully come, I love that, when the set time had fully come,
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When when God finally got everything and every body in place, when the
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set time had fully come, when that man Abraham had become a family,
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that became a nation, that became a kingdom, when the set time had
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fully come, Then and only then God sent his son, born of a
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woman, born under the law, the law, the law that God gave
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to the nation of Israel, the law that played the role of tutor until
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the new lawmaker stepped into the pages of history to redeem those under the law.
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So that we we so that you, so that you it's that you,
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so that we so that we might receive adoption to sonship. The story
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of the Old Testament, the story of the Jewish people. Honestly, it
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should cause all of us to drop to our knees in gratitude. There is
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no need to tidy it up. It is not a spiritual guide book.
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It is the story of God preparing the world for his Messiah, for your
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Savior, and so by the second century, the Gentile Church, who still
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did not have a Bible of their own. The Gospels were probably had been
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written and were in circulation, but they had no Bible of their own.
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The Gentile Church quickly adopted the Jewish Scripture as Christian scripture and began using it
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in Christian worship, and eventually they gave it a new name. They began
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calling it the Old Covenant. The entire volume, everything involved they would call
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it the Old Covenant, and then later the Latin term would be used Testament.
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It became the Old Testament. And why old because Gentile Christians recognized that
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God through Christ had done something new, and that God had fulfilled his old
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covenant promises to his nation and to his people and had established there's a brand
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new covenant with the nation and with all the nations of the world, a
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covenant that Jesus would say would be instituted and inaugurated in his blood. But
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still to this point in history, there's still no Bible, just Hebrew text,
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some stories of the accounts of the life of Jesus and some correspondents by
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a very famous church planter to his Gentile congregations around the Mediterranean Rim, and
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we will pick the story up there next week in the concluding episode of The
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Bible for grown Ups s