July Reflections & Corrections - Year 4
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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Welcome to our July Reflections and Corrections episode. Let's start with the reflections. Tomorrow we will finish our 22nd book of the Bible and we're currently working our way through three others. So let's get the 30,000 foot view on where we are in the chronological timeline of the Bible's overall meta-narrative.

The Bible is one unified story. Way back in Genesis, God set 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 a man named Abraham to be the patriarch of the family God calls the Israelites.

They're a bunch of busted people who lie, cheat, and steal. God blesses them despite their sin, but sin still has its consequences. One of the long storylines of consequence is of the 400 years they spent enslaved in Egypt.

God sends a man named Moses to demonstrate his power to the Egyptian ruler, who reluctantly agrees to let the Israelite slaves go. They flee to the desert, led by God and his servant Moses, and then little by little, God gives these people the basic rules of how to have a stable society. They're a bunch of uncivilized, ungrateful people who have only just met God and Moses, and they're not keen on obeying either of them.

But in the midst of their sin and stubbornness and foolishness, 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, God raises up a new leader, Joshua, to lead them into the promised land and commands them to eradicate the enemies who live there, the Canaanites. But this new life of luxury and ease makes them forget God, so they never fully conquer the land completely. There are still pockets of Canaanites all around.

God has warned them repeatedly about the consequences of that, which are their enemies, the Canaanites, will become a snare and lead them away into apostasy. And that's exactly what happens. After Joshua dies, God raises up military leaders or judges to drive out the enemies who are leading them astray. But this doesn't deal with the problem of their hearts leading them astray. The Israelites do whatever they want, which results in near anarchy at times. And things grow continually worse in the Promised Land.

Despite this, there are pockets of faithfulness among the Israelites and even among foreigners whose hearts have turned toward Yahweh. People like Rahab and Ruth, pagans who turn to follow God and his people and abandon their lifestyles that may fit with the cultural norms, but that are actually unrighteous. God has been telling us all along that he's going to build his people from among every nation. And we're starting to see more and more evidence of that coming to pass.

Next, God raises up a prophet named Samuel to lead the people. But what they really want is a king. So God tells Samuel to give the people what they want, but that it's not going to go well for them. Their first king is Saul, a fearful man who makes rash decisions without consulting God. After Saul dies in battle, a shepherd named David is positioned as Israel's second king. He is a man after God's own heart. But he's still deeply flawed.

He makes a few wicked 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. He's known as the wisest man who ever lived. But he has a little bit of 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 will come to dwell among the people in the midst of the promised land. Despite having such a weighty role, he still also builds worship sites to pagan gods and has a divided heart.

And God says there will be consequences for this sin. After Solomon dies, his son Rehoboam, we call him Reh, takes over his throne. But King Reh is harsh toward the people and lots of them don't want to follow him. And that's how this nation state of Israel is divided into two separate kingdoms, which is the consequence God promised to Solomon for his sins.

Since Solomon's heart was divided, his kingdom would be divided as well into the southern kingdom of Judah ruled by King Ray and the northern kingdom of Israel ruled by Jeroboam. We call him Jerry, who had been one of Solomon's servants before all this happened.

Because God had promised to continue the line of kings through the tribe of Judah, he always seems to be on their side especially. But he takes good care of the northern kingdom of Israel as well. The northern kingdom has a string of exclusively bad kings, but God still sends the prophet Elijah to help set things straight. Elijah has a pretty lonely life of speaking hard truths to the kings and the people, but he has a rich intimacy with God that sustains him nonetheless.

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. Both of them will be overcome by other nations. Assyria will defeat northern Israel, and Babylon will defeat southern Judah and take them into captivity. This is called the Babylonian captivity. But God also promises them that there's a timeline on all of this. He's not casting them off, he's refining them.

and he will bring them back into the land in 70 years. God's prophets keep reminding his people that his character has remained the same through all the generations, through all their sins, through all their wonderings, and he's always aiming to bring his people back to himself. Not only that, but he keeps giving us glimpses of the coming Messiah, the servant king who will first come and die, and then return to establish an eternal kingdom of peace on earth.

Okay, that's all for the reflections part of this episode. And thank God, so grateful that there are no corrections so far to report in July. So that's all for this episode. From day one until now, I hope you're seeing more and more that He's where the joy is.

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