Intro to Covenant
Transcript
The old testament can be intimidating ground for Christians it's a bit of a haze of stories and histories and it isn't always chronological you've probably heard of David slain Goliath joseph being sold by his brothers because of his awesome cool jacket daniel getting thrown into the lion's den noah building an ark and jonah getting swallowed by a giant fish but do you know in which order they happened if our old testament history is rusty we have a problem because in order to truly understand everything that.
Jesus does we have to understand what his people have been through and the history of the culture that he stepped into it's also essential for our understanding of the context of many old testament stories in this video we're going to walk through a zoomed out overview of the entire old testament so that when we pick up the Bible and turn to isaiah or Exodus or nehemiah you'll at least have a big picture understanding of where the story fits into the grand scheme of things we're going to tag all the major players along the road.
But we're going to be moving pretty fast it all begins with creation in the garden of eden with adam God creates adam and eve and places them into authority over all creation deceived by Satan adam and eve sin and they're kicked out of the garden they have a few sons most famously cain and abel over the next few generations great corruption fills the earth and we meet noah noah and his family build an ark and they along with the animals on board survive the great flood which destroys pretty much everything else somewhere during this time is.
When scholars believe that the story of job takes place now we aren't exactly sure about the timing but we do know that the lessons are universal and so the timing isn't really that important ten generations after noah Abraham turns up Abraham and his wife sarah promise they will have a great nation as descendants uh that they will receive land and that they will receive God's blessing Abraham and sarah have Isaac even though they're ridiculously old and then Isaac marries rebecca and they have Jacob and esau Jacob.
Well he has a crush on rachel but he gets tricked into marrying her sister leah he ends up marrying both of them anyway and then having a whole bunch of kids and somewhere in the midst of all this God renames him Israel and then in a simplified way his kids become what we know of as the 12 tribes of Israel joseph is the favorite of these children the other kids they weren't so fond of this favoritism and they sell joseph to slave traders in egypt.
Well eventually the whole family migrates to egypt to survive the great famine that's happening in palestine the Israelites begin to grow in number in egypt and becoming a threat to the Pharaoh he enslaves all of them that's when Moses turns up the ten plagues happen and the Israelites escape across the red sea now they head to mount sinai which is where they receive the law including the ten commandments but they sin against God and they end up wandering the desert for 40 years during this time comes the books of leviticus numbers and deuteronomy Moses dies and joshua picks up the reins and he leads the Israelites back into the promised land the land is divided.
Up according to the 12 tribes next comes the period known as the judges God appoints a series of leaders to help guide his people and lead them against the enemies that oppose them the most well-known judges are deborah gideon and samson but there were actually many others ruth also appears during this time but she wasn't a judge or even jewish the people of Israel see that all the other nations have a king and they plead with God to give them a king.
So that they can be like everyone else well God allows it and Saul becomes the first king of Israel Israel is pleased and seoul leads them reasonably well at least until they come up against the philistines and of course Goliath in comes David who slays Goliath and wins the war on Israel's behalf David ends up becoming the next king and he wrote many of the psalms David was followed by his son Solomon who wrote proverbs ecclesiastes and probably also the song of Solomon.
When Solomon dies things get complicated the kingdom splits in two and for the next few centuries there's two kingdoms that play a part of the story there's the northern kingdom known as Israel comprised of 10 of the original tribes which is led by jeroboam who was one of Solomon's commanders in the army then there's the southern kingdom known as judah comprised of two of the original tribes which is led by rehoboam who was Solomon's son i told you it was complicated this is the period of time.
When the books that we know of as the prophets begin during the divided kingdom era we have isaiah micah habakkuk zephaniah and nahim who prophesy to the southern kingdom of judah and then we have jonah hosea and amos who prophesied of the northern kingdom Israel the prophets are sent to guide God's people and deliver his messages to the people they give a whole lot of warnings promising imminent destruction unless the people repent and follow God well the people don't repent in 722 bc assyria conquered the northern kingdom of Israel all the way around the surrounding areas down to egypt leaving only judah they exiled all of the people of Israel and scattered them throughout the.
Entire kingdom replacing them with exiles from other areas of their expanding kingdom the ten northern tribes while they were completely wiped from history the southern kingdom of judah will they put up a good fight and they survived the assyrians but they failed to serve God fully the babylonians under king nebuchadnezzar rose up and wiped out the assyrian empire and over the course of about 20 years conquered and deported all of the jews from the southern kingdom of judah back to babylon the prophets daniel ezekiel jeremiah who also wrote the book of lamentations and probably also over daya they all prophesied around this time.
For about 50 years the jews stayed in babylon under babylonian exile then in came persia the persians conquered the babylonians and all of their land and in 538 bc king cyrus made a decree that all of the jews could go back home in three waves led by zerubbabel ezra and nehemiah respectively the jews went back into Israel and rebuilt Jerusalem and the temple haggai zechariah and probably joel prophesied during this time now we know that some of the jews didn't return home.
Because the story of esther takes place in persia after the three waves of returning exiles the last we hear about Israel in the old testament is from Malachi probably 450 years bc Malachi calls God's people to return to covenantal faithfulness and await for his present coming during the 450-ish years between the old and new testament power changes hands a number of times persia remains in power up until 3 30 bc when alexander the great also known as the greek empire takes over the whole known world in seven years.
Well he dies young and the empire crumbles in certain areas and while the greek influence remains strong the area of palestine is ruled intermittently by syria and egypt under the maccabees the jews established a wobbly independence in the land for about a century and in 63 bc Jerusalem fell to the roman empire which pretty much conquered everything Jesus was born during the rule of the roman empire and in comes the new testament so there you have it an overview of the entire old testament.
Now hopefully when you read through the old testament you'll have at least a decent handle on where you find yourself in the grand scheme of God's narrative.
This week we referred to a video and a white board on stage. See below attachments for reference.
