December Reflections and Corrections - Year 6
10:49 Share

Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Welcome to our December Reflections and Corrections episode. Let's start with the Reflections. We just finished our 66th book of the Bible and the 27th book of the New Testament, which means you've either finished reading the whole Bible or the whole New Testament. Congratulations! So here's a brief summary of what we've seen in the Bible's overall meta-narrative. The Bible is one unified story. In

In Genesis, God sets out to build a relationship with one particular family, but things go terribly wrong when they fracture the relationship through sin. But their sin doesn't surprise God. He already had a plan in place to restore this relationship even before it was broken, and he continues working out that plan immediately, undeterred and unhindered by their rebellion.

He sets apart Abraham to be the patriarch of the family he calls the Israelites. They're a bunch of sinners, just like us. God blesses them despite their sin, but sin still has its consequences. One of the long storylines of consequences of the 400 years they spent enslaved in Egypt

God sends Moses to set the Israelites free from slavery. They flee to the desert where, little by little, God gives them the basic rules of how to have a stable society. They're uncivilized people who have only just met God and Moses, and they're not keen on obeying either of them. In the midst of their sin and stubbornness, God knows that what their hearts need is Him.

So he sets up camp among them in the desert. More than anything, he wants them to remember who he is to them. The God who rescued them out of slavery. But they keep forgetting. And every time they forget, they either get fearful and disobey, or they get prideful and disobey. Forty years after he rescues them from Egypt, their new leader Joshua leads them into the Promised Land and commands them to eradicate their enemies who live there, the Canaanites.

God has warned them repeatedly that if they don't drive out the Canaanites, they'll become a snare and lead them away into apostasy. And that's exactly what happens. So God raises up military leaders, or judges, to drive out the enemies who are leading his people astray. But this doesn't deal with the problem of their hearts leading them astray. The Israelites do whatever they want, leading to near-anarchy.

Despite this, there are pockets of faithfulness among the Israelites and even among the foreigners whose hearts have turned toward Yahweh. Pagans like Rahab and Ruth who turned to follow God and his people. God has been telling us all along that he's going to build his people from among every nation and this is evidence of that.

Next, God raises up Samuel the prophet to lead the people, but what they really want is a king. God tells Samuel to give the people what they want, but it's not going to go well for them. Their first king is Saul, a fearful man who makes rash decisions without consulting God.

Then a shepherd named David is positioned as Israel's second king. He's a man after God's own heart, but he's still deeply flawed. He makes a few decisions that mark him for life, but they don't mark him for eternity. God shows him astonishing amounts of mercy and grace.

David is succeeded on the throne by his son Solomon. Despite being the wisest man who ever lived, he has a problem with womanizing and worshiping other gods. Yahweh is generous to him nonetheless and gives him the distinguished assignment of building Israel's first temple, the place where God came to dwell among the people in the midst of the promised land.

After Solomon dies, the nation-state of Israel is divided into two separate kingdoms. Over the 350-ish years of the divided kingdom, God sends several prophets to warn both northern Israel and southern Judah about what's going to happen. They'll be overcome by other nations.

First, the Assyrians defeat northern Israel and take them into captivity. Southern Judah eventually falls under siege by the Babylonians. When southern Judah falls, many of God's people in Jerusalem are carried off into exile. But God promises them that there's a timeline on this exile. He'll bring them back to the land in 70 years. Not only that, but he'll punish the enemies who are oppressing them.

And he doesn't leave them alone during their exile in Babylon. He sends prophets to remind them of his promises and the fact that his character has remained the same through all the generations, through all their sins. He's always been working out his plan for restoration.

When the 70 years are up, he brings in Persia to defeat Babylon, and God causes the Persian kings to show favor to the exiles, not only letting them return to Jerusalem, but paying the bill for them to rebuild the city the Babylonians destroyed. They finish the temple and begin to offer sacrifices and celebrate feasts again, but they quickly fall back into their old sin patterns— oppressing the poor, marrying people who don't love Yahweh, dishonoring God and His Sabbath and His laws—

God sends more prophets to rebuke them. The people are turning away because God's promises don't seem to be coming true. But he reminds them that he has been fulfilling the promises. He brought them back to the land on his exact timeline and rebuilt their city. The end of the Old Testament marks the beginning of a period known as the 400 years of silence. During that time period, we have no written records of God's engagement with mankind. But we know he's there, working out his plan in the meantime, in and through his people.

During this time, the Roman Empire starts to rise up and takes control of Israel in 63 BC. The Jews are tired and they're ready for rescue. They've been driven from their land, had their cities destroyed, have lived as exiles and as slaves, had to rebuild their cities, and are now living back in their homeland under the oppression of one of the cruelest empires in the history of mankind.

They remember God's promise to send them a new king who would conquer all their enemies and bring peace on earth, but they have no idea yet what that means or how or when that promise will be fulfilled.

Around 7 BC, the New Testament picks up, and once again we see God actively working out his plan for redemption. He sets apart a man named John the Baptist, we call him JTB, as the forerunner who will prepare the way for the Messiah. JTB's cousin is a man named Jesus, and scripture tells us repeatedly that Jesus is God the Son who has come to earth to live as human. He's fully God and fully man, and he serves as another manifestation of the temple of God, where God comes to dwell in the midst of his people.

Even before his birth, it's evident that he is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah. Jesus begins his ministry around the age of 30, after JTB baptizes him. Then he calls some disciples to follow him. They're from all walks of life, from the lowly fisherman to the wealthy tax collector. They travel all around the Galilee region as Jesus preaches the message of repentance and the hope of the kingdom of God.

The disciples see him perform all kinds of miracles, from simple things like making lunch for thousands at the drop of a hat, to casting out demons, to healing the sick and raising the dead.

Jesus seems to show special attention to those who are the outcasts and the overlooked. And he even ventures out into the non-Jewish areas to spread the gospel to the Gentiles, which is all non-Jews. While Jesus is generous and loving, he also has harsh words. He speaks with passion against people who oppress the poor or who are self-righteous, like the Pharisees and Sadducees. They've added to God's basic laws with their burdensome rules, and they look down on others who don't live up to their standards.

Jesus calls them whitewashed tombs. The outside is shiny, but they're dead inside. Jesus takes the good news of God's rescue everywhere he goes and promises his disciples that even though he will go away from them someday, they will continue to carry that good news with them and preach it everywhere to everyone who hasn't heard. They're part of an unstoppable kingdom, one that will push back the darkness with the light of the gospel of Jesus.

He begins to speak more frequently and clearly about his death and even tells his followers that one of them will have a role in making that happen, Judas Iscariot. When the week of his death comes, he's in Jerusalem, preaching in the temple, prophesying, having dinner with his apostles, and then, just like he said, Judas hands him over to the religious leaders.

He's tried by both the Jewish religious leaders and the Romans too, and even though Rome declares him innocent, the people want him killed anyway. They crucify him and bury him, but even death is not the end for him because he's been telling them all along that he will raise from the dead and that his kingdom is eternal and unstoppable. He lives on earth in his resurrection body for 40 days before ascending to heaven, leaving them with a promise to return and to send his spirit to be with them in the meantime.

About a week later, his spirit comes to dwell in believers. Through his spirit and his followers, the message of the gospel is spread to the Gentiles. Churches spring up in other countries, and the apostles go as missionaries to help support and train those churches, even in the face of oppression, imprisonment, and beatings. Through all of this, they seek the spirit for guidance as they encourage the churches, direct them, and even rebuke them.

The main problems the churches are having relate to two different types of cultural issues and questions. A. Does a Gentile have to convert to Judaism before converting to Christianity? Do they have to follow Jewish laws? And B. Do Christ followers have to follow any laws, or are they free to do whatever they want? Just like the problem Jesus encountered with the Pharisees and Sadducees, the law is still the big problem, especially as it relates to different cultures and nationalities.

The early church fathers respond to both questions with reminders that they're bound only to love, not to Jewish laws and traditions, and not to selfish actions either. They must love God and love others, which is exactly what Jesus told them was the summary of the law.

As the church continues to grow in number and spread in nations, false teachers start to emerge. They lie about who Jesus is, about the resurrection, and about the apostles and the early church leaders. So the apostles have a lot to manage. On one hand, they have to work toward being united across different cultures and nationalities in the church. And on the other hand, they also have to work toward separating themselves from false teachers. The ultimate goal is truth and love.

Love without truth is foolish. Truth without love is arrogant. But truth and love strikes the balance Christ aimed for, to love God and love others. Even as persecution and oppression are on the rise, Jesus calls his followers to imitate him and display his character to the world around them. He promises to return, to recreate heaven and earth, and to live with us forever as we reign and rule with him in his eternal kingdom.

Okay, that's all for the reflections part of this episode. And by God's grace, we don't have any corrections to report for December. I hope we'll see you back here again tomorrow to start it all over again. Because if you're still here, it's clear that you know and believe deep in your bones that He's where the joy is.

The Bible Recap offers tools that equip millions around the world to read, understand, and love the Bible. We want to help people encounter God in a way that transforms their entire lives. To find out more, visit thebiblerecap.com.