October Reflections and 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 October Reflections and Corrections episode. Let's start with the reflections. We recently started in the New Testament and are currently working our way through four books, so let's get the 30,000-foot view on where we are in the chronological timeline of the Bible's overall metanarrative.

The Bible is one unified story. 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 God calls the Israelites. They're a bunch of sinners, just like all of us. 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 spend enslaved in Egypt.

God sends Moses to set the Israelites free from slavery. They flee to the desert, where, little by little, God gives these people 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 were 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 turn 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, even his enemies. 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 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. 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: northern Israel and southern Judah. Over the 350-ish years of the divided kingdom, God sends several prophets to warn both kingdoms about what's going to happen. They'll be overcome by other nations. First, the Assyrians defeat northern Israel and take them into captivity. Then southern Judah eventually falls under siege by the Babylonians.

When southern Judah falls, many of God's people in Israel 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 throughout 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 for them. 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 his engagement with mankind, but we know he's there, working out his plan in the meantime, in and through his people. The Jews are living under the rule of Persia until another empire, Rome, 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 slaves, had to rebuild their cities, and now they're 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 their enemies and bring peace on earth, but they have no idea yet what that means or how and 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, to be 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 a human. He's fully God and fully man and he serves as another manifestation of the temple of God where

where God comes to dwell in the midst of his people. Even before his birth, we see signs that he is the fulfillment of 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.

Jesus is generous and loving, but he also has harsh words. He speaks with passion against people who oppress the poor, who are self-righteous, like the Pharisees and Sadducees. They've added to God's basic laws with their own 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 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 to everyone who hasn't heard. They will carry the message and the miracles of the unstoppable kingdom, one that will push back the darkness with the light of the gospel of Jesus.

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 October. 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. The Bible Recap is brought to you by DGroup, discipleship and Bible study groups that meet in homes and churches around the world each week.