Biblical Overview: Wisdom and Prophets

Greetings and welcome to the Faith Chapel podcast. My name is Jason and I am

the pastor of Faith Chapel.

In the podcast right now, we are going through an overview of the Bible,

breaking the Bible down into six different sections and showing how these sections lead us to Jesus.

Today, we are going to cover the last part of the Old Testament,

which includes the wisdom literature, and the prophets. Thank you for joining us today.

Today, we're going to start our lesson on talking about why it is important

to engage with Scripture.

This is from Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 8.

Proverbs 3:5

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.

Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.

It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.

What we have here is a proclamation that we do not need to rely on ourselves.

We should not lean on our own understandings.

But what we should do is trust what God says. The reason this points us to studying

scripture is because God's word is revealed to us through scripture.

It is his revelation to us. And this is how we trust in God.

This is how we rely not on our own understandings.

Scripture shows us who God is and what our response to him should be like.

So we should study scripture because it teaches us how God designed us to live,

and it's not relying on our own definition of right and wrong,

much like Adam and Eve did when they took from the tree of the knowledge of

good and evil and ate its fruit.

They were trusting in themselves, and in order to follow after Jesus,

we must know who he is, what he said, and we must conform our lives to it.

This makes studying the Bible a lifelong pursuit.

So, as we understand the reasons why we should study scripture,

we also need to understand the whole flow of the Bible. Before we begin with.

Going down that road of discovering what the wisdom literature and the prophets

say, I wanted to give us a quick recap of where we are at in the biblical story.

We begin in Genesis with God creating everything out of nothing.

He set human beings up as his representative on this planet.

We rebelled and sin entered and broke God's very good creation.

God's rescue plan then involved a family of Abraham in which God would give

Abraham's descendants the promised land.

He would make Abraham's descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.

And there is a promise that a blessing will happen for the entire world through Abraham's family.

But the family did not obey the covenant that God handed down to them at Mount Sinai through Moses.

And even though they did take possession of the promised land,

even though they did become their own nation, even though their descendants

kept multiplying and growing.

They, because of their disobedience, were forced from the land and were taken into exile.

But the awesome thing is that God was not done with them yet.

He sent a Persian king by the name of Cyrus.

To order them to come home, to rebuild the temple.

And that's what the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and Esther show.

This post-exilic community, but they were still not truly following after God

in covenant faithfulness.

And so at the end of the historical books of the Bible, we are leaving with

the returned community still failing and falling short of God's standard.

And this leads us into our next section of the Bible, which is called the Wisdom Literature.

For my purposes and the way that I want to showcase this, I'm not going to go

in the order that we have in the table of contents.

So to start out, I'm going to go over Psalms.

The book of Psalms is a collection of poems,

writings, and of songs that the Israelites put together in order to be a virtual

temple in the time of the exile.

So they collected all of these writings, all of these songs from their previous

generations and even wrote new

ones and put them in this book so that they would have a virtual temple.

And the Psalms are basically boiling down into two categories.

One is that there are songs of lament, and these psalms of lament are prayers of pain,

prayers of confession when sin happens, and prayers of anger of the Israelite

people for what they see going on.

The goal of the laments is to draw attention to what is wrong in the world and

to bring these injustices to God.

The goal is to ask God to intervene and to rescue them from these injustices,

from this pain, from the sin that the Israelites are in.

I wanted to show a couple of different illustrations of what these Psalms of Lament might be like.

Psalm 51 is an example of a prayer of confession, and it begins in verses 1 and 2 by saying this,

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy,

blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin.

David here is being convicted of a sin.

The sin is adultery with Bathsheba. That's a story that's found in the historical books.

And David is asking God to blot out his transgressions, to make him white as

snow, to cleanse him from this.

And so this is a prayer of confession of David to God. And it's a model that

we can use to this day. Another kind of lament is found in Psalm 139, 19.

Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God. O men of blood, depart from me.

And so David here is asking God to get rid of the wicked people around him.

He laments that and asks God to intervene, eradicating the wicked people from his life.

And in the earlier stages of the book of Psalms, there are more laments than

praises that we find in the first part of the book of Psalms.

But when we get further and further along into the Psalms, the Psalms become

more about praising God.

And so it's about moving them from pain to hope. and the Psalms of Praise are

prayers of joy and celebration.

They are drawing attention to what is good in this world,

They also retell the story of the Israelite nation, and thank God.

An example of this is Psalm 8, verses 5 through 8.

Psalms 8:5–8

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands.

You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, also the beasts

of the field, the birds of heavens, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the pass of the sea.

This is a retelling of creation.

The psalmist is praising God for how he created these things and how he exalted

humanity over all of creation.

And so this is an example of a praise, drawing attention to what is good in

this world, retelling the story of what God has done.

Another illustration of this is Psalm 147, verses two through six,

where we read, the Lord builds up Jerusalem. He gathers the outcasts of Israel.

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the numbers of the stars.

He gives to all of them their names.

Great is the Lord and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure.

The Lord lifts up the humble.

He casts the wicked to the ground.

We have here again how the psalmist is calling attention to what is good in

this world. He builds up Jerusalem. He gathers the outcasts of Israel.

He heals the brokenhearted, binds up those who are wounded.

He does these things. And so we lift God up in exaltation.

We praise his name for these things.

And so these are how the Psalms are boiled down into.

Songs of lament, showing what's wrong in this world and asking God to intervene.

And then Psalms of praise, which is giving praise and thanksgiving to God,

acknowledging what he has done and what is good in this world.

And again, it's a virtual temple that they can take with them wherever they

go, even though there is still depravity in this world.

The Psalms point them as you go through them in order to a higher state of praise.

Focusing on what is good in this world and able to lament about the bad.

And so that is the book of Psalms. The next book we are going to look at is the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs is a wisdom literature, and it looks at this world through a black and white lens.

Proverbs show that God created this world in a just way.

And so if you do the right things, more than likely, good things are going to happen to you.

That's kind of the objective of what the Proverbs is trying to do in our lives,

to help us to see that God ordered this world good and that if we follow a set pattern,

the end outcome is more than likely going to be good.

Follow God in his created order, our outcomes are most likely going to be good.

And so this is how it breaks down.

God is wise and created the world in a just way. And if we acknowledge that,

and if we follow his ways, things are more than likely going to end up good for us.

And one of the most important passages in the book of Proverbs is found in chapter

one, verse seven, which says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

And so the idea here is this reverence for God, this fear of God,

this acknowledgement that God holds all things in his hand and that our eternal destiny is with him.

And when we respect him, when we fear him in that way, acknowledging that he

can take our life and send our soul to hell, which is something that Jesus says, then we surrender,

we submit to the fear of the Lord, and that's when our knowledge can begin.

But if that's not what we do, we will despise wisdom and instruction,

and we will just do things our own way.

And again, this is an acknowledgement that more than likely.

If these things happen, then a positive outcome will come out of it.

But if we choose to do the opposite of the fear of the Lord,

then we are headed for hard times. This is mainly about probabilities.

Proverbs is a probability-based model.

So if you follow after God, if you fear the Lord, then what we know is that

you are going to obey what he's saying.

And when you obey what he's saying, when you love your enemies and pray for

those who persecute you, more than likely things are going to go well for you.

So most of the time, if you do what is right, good things will happen to you.

But to stray from God's design leads to hardships and leads you to being a fool.

A couple of more examples of a few of the wisdom sayings that are found in the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs 10, 9 says, whoever walks in integrity walks securely,

but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.

If you walk in integrity, you will walk securely because you are walking in

paths that you are not doing anything wrong.

And when you're not doing anything wrong, the likelihood of you losing your

job for doing something wrong is really, really small.

But when we don't do that, when we make our ways crooked, when we do foolish

things, then we will be found out and we will lose that job.

Then we have Proverbs 22, 6, which says, train up a child in the way he or she

should go. even when he or she is old, he or she will not depart from it.

Again, the goal is when they're young, train them up in the righteousness of God.

Take them to church. Help them to understand what the scriptures are saying.

Point them to Jesus every step of the way. And when you do that,

more than likely that child will not depart from it.

These are probabilities. If you do this, this is more than likely going to happen.

But these are not guarantees, all right? These are not guarantees.

And reading the book of Proverbs in a way that it is a guarantee is not right.

And that's why I've coupled with Proverbs two other wisdom literature books.

Ecclesiastes and Job, that talk about when the probabilities don't work,

when you are doing everything right and bad things will happen to you.

And in order to get a full picture of what the Bible is saying in these wisdom

literatures, we have to understand every single message.

And so Proverbs is follow the probabilities, life is going to turn out well for you.

Do what is right, good things will happen to you. If you do what's wrong,

bad things will happen to you.

And more than likely, more than 50% of the time, this is probably the case.

But we all know from our own experiences that bad things happen when people

are doing the right thing.

And when people are doing the

right thing, that's where a book like Ecclesiastes is going to come in.

So Ecclesiastes really deals with the concept of looking at life as a skeptic,

someone who is harsh, someone who is critical of what is happening.

And in the book of Ecclesiastes, the author is taking this critical look at life.

It looks at the wisdom of Proverbs and it says, that's not always the case. The world isn't fair.

And he tries to look in different avenues for places that will lead him to the

good life, to a life where he is plentiful.

And so the book of Ecclesiastes takes its look at the world of self-indulgence.

It takes its look at living wisely in this world.

It takes a look at working hard and not working at all.

It takes a hard look at wealth and honor, pleasure, wisdom.

And what the critic here is going to say is that none of these things are going

to lead to long-term satisfaction.

Because if we are hardworking, if we do everything we can to work hard,

we're not going to take it with us.

And someone who is foolish after us is going to get what we worked so hard to attain.

If we live in self-indulgence and gorge ourselves on food or other pleasures,

that's going to lead to heartache and destruction as well for us.

And so he looks at life and he says a lot of times it is meaningless.

And what this meaningless word in Hebrew means is vapor or a smoke.

And so when we try to grasp it with going after wealth, when we try to grasp

it when we're going after pleasure or hard work or all these other things that he experienced with,

it's going to leave us empty because when you try to grab smoke or fog and you

open your hand, there's nothing there.

It's meaningless grasping these things. It's smoke. It's a vapor.

It's something that we cannot grasp.

And so while he looks at the probabilities of the book of Proverbs,

and he can see, all right, I agree that if you do those things,

it's probably likely good things are going to happen to you.

But look at the meaninglessness.

Look at the vapidness of this world.

And he leads this all the way up to the conclusion that's found in Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 12:13

chapter 12 verses 13 and 14.

The end of the matter, all has been heard.

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgment.

Every secret thing, whether good or evil.

And so he concludes, after looking at all of the possibilities as a critic on

this life, he looks at all of these things and he says what Proverbs says, fear God,

keep his commandments, for this is what we should do.

To live a good life, we should pursue the good things, the probabilities.

And this leads us to the last book that these three kind of work together to

help us to live a wise and good life is the book of Job.

Now, Job starts out with a very interesting introduction. The introduction showcases

Job's righteousness and righteousness does not mean sinlessness.

Job is a human being, just like you and I. He is sinful.

He is falling short of God's glorious standard, but his righteousness is unparalleled.

It is what God wants out of humanity. Someone who is focused on him and living for him.

And in the midst of a heavenly council, we have a character that approaches

God, someone who is called the accuser, and this accuser asks God to bring hardship upon Job.

In Job chapter 1, verses 9 through 11, we read, Then the accuser,

Job 1:9–11

Satan, answered the Lord and said, Does Job fear God for no reason?

Have you not put a hedge around him, and his house, and all that he has?

On every side you have blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land.

But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has and he will curse you to your face.

The accuser here says to God.

If you take away your blessings, Job is going to curse you.

God does give in to this experiment, and he takes the blessing away from Job,

and he tells the accuser to not kill Job. Everything else is fair game.

And so Job loses his property. He loses his herds of animals.

He loses his children in a storm.

He loses his servants. And then in chapter two, he loses his health by having

these really painful boils come upon his skin.

And Job is miserable.

And we have to understand from the introduction that Job has done nothing to deserve this.

This is just a happenstance of life. And that's what we need to comprehend about

life. There are bad things that happen to good people, people who do what is right.

And at the end of this testing, Job has friends that come and join him.

And in the dialogues that they have,

Job's friends are trying to get him to see that he must have done something

wrong to deserve what's going on because God is just and God created this world justly.

And so because these things happened to Job, he lost his children.

He lost his herds. He lost his wealth, his property, etc.

Because these things happened to him, Job's friends were saying,

Repent, figure out what you did, and confess it, because God is just.

And this is how they explain it in Job 4, verses 7-8.

Job 4:7–8

They say, Remember who that was innocent ever perished, or where were the upright

cut off? As I have seen those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.

And so what they're saying is, Job, you have done something deserving of this.

But all throughout the chapters that he and his friends go back and forth,

Job is proclaiming his innocence.

He is saying, I am justified. And if I got my day in God's court, I would be vindicated.

I have done nothing to deserve this.

And remember from chapters one and two, we have the inside look and know he

is right. He is accurate.

And so this goes on for 30 some chapters, Job and his friends going back and

forth and them accusing him and him defending himself. And Job finally gets

his chance to be in God's court.

And near the end of the book of Job, God comes to him in a whirlwind,

and he doesn't really answer his accusations, but he says fascinating things.

For instance, in Job 38, 31 to 33, God says to Job, Can you bind the chains

of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion?

Can you lead forth the Maseroth in their season? Or can you guide the bear with its children?

Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on earth?

And so God takes him through a kaleidoscope of his creation.

He talks about, in this instance, the constellations.

And he's like, all right, can you order them as I have ordered them?

Can you make them do what you want them to do as I have made them do what I want them to do?

And the obvious answer is no.

God then takes him through the animal kingdom, from land animals to sea creatures.

Do you think for one day you could control all of this world?

And again, the obvious answer is no.

Job is getting a lesson in humility.

And although God never answers the question of why this happened to Job,

Job is taken to a point of humility and he accepts whatever happens from God.

He accepts that God is the sovereign one who is working all things out for the

good of those who love him.

And Job comes in chapter 42 verses 2 and 3 and says, I know that you can do

all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?

Therefore, I have uttered what

I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

Job here acknowledges his brokenness. He acknowledges his sinfulness.

And he accepts whatever God decides.

He comes to a point where Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane,

where he says, your will be done, because I don't understand it.

And this is the object of what the wisdom literature is trying to get us to do.

It's trying to get us to see that God is sovereign and in control,

and he is someone that is trustworthy.

If we do the right things, if we walk the straight path, more than likely good

things are going to happen.

But inevitably in life, we will go through pain, we will go through suffering,

and some of it may not even be caused by us.

And what we need to do in those seasons is to trust the one who knows all things

and who is working all things out for the good of those who love him.

So the wisdom literature leads us to that.

There's one more book. It's called The Song of Songs or The Song of Solomon,

and it is ancient Israelite love poetry between a man and a woman.

It is the expression of romance, and it has a lot of images of a garden reflecting

the biblical reader to contemplate what God designed in marriage all the way

back in the Garden of Eden.

And so its goal and objective is to help us to see that marriage is a good gift

from God and helps us point back

to Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 to see what he ordained marriage to be like.

And so that's what the book of the Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon is about.

And that concludes the wisdom literature. We then move on to the stories and

the pronouncements of the prophets in the Old Testament.

So the book of the prophets, it's kind of unique because these people were living

during the historical period of Israel.

And knowing when these people lived helps us to understand the main ideas of what's going on.

Basically, in the historical section, it was a series of apostasies where Israel

walked away from what they believed in.

And in these books of the prophets, there's going to be a lot of overlap.

There's going to be a lot of times of conviction of sin, judgments that are

coming, warnings about consequences in the future, and then there are going

to be signs of hope for the future as well.

We're going to start with the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah does pronounce warnings and judgments upon the people of Israel.

For instance, we can read in Isaiah chapter 1 verses 18 to 20,

Isaiah 1:18–20

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord.

Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.

But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword.

For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

The warning here is covenant faithfulness is critical to your success.

If you obey the terms of the covenant that Moses handed down to us,

then blessings will come to you.

But if you do not, this is a warning for you.

Disobedience equals punishment.

And so God is calling them into repentance. He's calling them into obeying the

terms of the covenant that God handed down to Moses.

And then Moses gave to the Israelites, which they agreed to live by.

This is still when Israel was living in the land of the promise during the times

of the kings of Samaria and Jerusalem.

There are lots and lots of passages of warning, but there's also passages of hope.

For instance, Isaiah 9, 6 says, To us a child is born, a son is given,

and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

And so Isaiah is prophesying about a messianic figure who's going to be coming

and bringing back restoration to the nation of Israel.

Then we read in Isaiah 53, 5, But he was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed.

Again, this is a prophecy of the Messiah coming in the future who is going to

take the penalty for our sins upon himself and to make us white as snow.

There is this future hope that is coming and available to us.

But we should, according to Isaiah in his time, we should obey the covenant that God handed down.

We should do what we have agreed to do. But if we don't, there will be consequences.

But even when there are consequences, God still has a plan for the people of Israel.

The book of Isaiah goes through a lot of those themes of judgment and of hope.

And then we get to the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah lives during the time where

Babylon comes and takes Israel captive.

And so he's living at a very hard time. And he again warns the Israelites to

turn from their ways and to turn back to God.

In Jeremiah 13, 15 to 17, we read these words. Hear and give ear.

Be not proud, for the Lord has spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God before

he brings darkness before your feet.

Stumble on the twilight mountains. And while you look for light,

he turns it into gloom and makes it deep darkness.

But if you will not listen, my soul will weep in secret for your pride.

My eyes will weep bitterly and run down with tears because the Lord's flock has been taken captive.

And this is a pronouncement of exile that is going to be coming on if the Israelites

will not listen and obey the terms of the covenant.

Jeremiah is proclaiming these things near the end of the time of the southern

kingdom, of Judah, Benjamin, of the area of Jerusalem, and he is asking them to repent.

But again, as in Isaiah, he shows that he is not done yet.

Jeremiah 29, 10 to 14 says this, For thus says the Lord, when 70 years are completed

for Babylon, I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and

not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes

and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you,

declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

And so this is a pronouncement of exile is coming, but I'm still going to be your God.

You are still going to be my people and I have plans to bring you back here.

Then we have in Jeremiah 31, another proclamation of hope for the nation of

Israel because they had been constantly walking away from God.

And God says this, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,

when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,

not like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day when I took them

by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.

My covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord,

for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those

days, declares the Lord.

I will put my law within them. and I will write it on their hearts and I will

be their God and they shall be my God.

This is what God proclaims. I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel.

It won't be like the old one, but it will be written on their hearts.

It will be a place where they will keep it.

And that's the hope for the future.

God is going to punish them.

God is going to bring judgment on them. But God does have plans to bring them

back and to bring them hope.

After the book of Jeremiah, we have the book of Lamentations,

which is attributed to Jeremiah.

And this happens during the siege and the fall of Jerusalem.

And these are all poetic laments. These are like what we would see in the book

of Psalms, but it is very specific to the fall of Jerusalem and the exile into Babylon.

There's a lot of suffering that is portrayed in the small book.

And there's a lot of shame because this was God's promised land to them and

they disobeyed and they got removed from the land that God had promised them.

Laments here are a form of protest, a way to process emotion,

and a place to voice confusion. And so that's what we see in the book of Lamentations.

Then we get to the prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel is a fascinating book where God

asks him to do what we would probably classify as street theater,

where he is performing things out in public as a sign against the nation of Israel.

The time that God is using Ezekiel, Ezekiel is in exile in Babylon with other people from Judah.

And God is bringing them warnings about the fall of Jerusalem that is just on the horizon.

After he goes through those proclamations, that street theater,

he also proclaims things for Israel.

He proclaims things for other nations as well.

Warnings for these people to get right with God or something tragic is going

to happen. But we also get to the point in the book of Ezekiel where there is hope for the future.

In Ezekiel 36 verses 26 to 28, we have God promising a new heart,

Ezekiel 36:26–28

and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.

And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and

be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your

fathers, and you shall be my people.

And I will be your God. Again, it's like what God promises through Jeremiah,

that new covenant, a transformed heart, a heart that is no longer concrete.

Not hardened rock, but is soft and pliable.

And God will use it by putting his spirit in there and changing and transforming people through that.

There's also at the end of Ezekiel, a vision of a new temple that is going to come to fruition.

And again, it's a hope of restoration. Ezekiel is talking to people in exile

in Babylon, and he's giving them hope for the future.

Then we go to the book of Daniel, which is about sovereignty and God's complete control in this world.

Daniel finds himself in Babylon as well, like Ezekiel was.

And the first half of the book of Daniel is all about stories that happen in that time frame.

There's Daniel, there's Shadrach, Meshach,

and Abednego are four of the people who have been taken into exile by Babylon

and put in a royal court where they are trying to assimilate all nations so that there's no, hey,

this is my nationality, this is my people, so there's no division like that

among them, but that they are all cohesive and they are all working together for God.

But what we find in the book of Daniel is that the faithfulness of Daniel and

his friends is going to be honored by God.

So we have the story of the fiery furnace where the Israelites are told to bow

down to a statue of Nebuchadnezzar, but they do not do it.

And so Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are thrown into this fiery furnace,

but God miraculously saves them from that.

They come out and they are restored. Daniel, later on, is thrown into a lion's

den for praying to God and not just to the king as the edict proclaimed.

God miraculously saves him from the mouths of the lions.

Their faithfulness is shown by doing hard things and obeying God rather than human beings.

And God shows them that they are in his care by saving them from these adversaries.

And so those are stories of faith that we see in Daniel.

And we also have visions of the future.

That's the last half of the book of Daniel.

These visions are of kingdoms that are coming and the destruction that they will do.

These are also visions of what God is going to do.

One of the best examples of this is found in Daniel 7, verses 13 and 14, where Daniel writes.

Daniel 7:13

I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came

one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him.

And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdoms, that all peoples,

nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion,

which shall not pass away in his kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed.

And so Daniel here has a vision of someone coming as a human being,

but also has the divine characteristics of being everlasting.

Jesus uses this as an illustration in the Gospels that points to him.

This is what is going to happen, this vision of the future. a one of a son of man.

And so while there is destruction, while there is loss in the book of Daniel,

there is also hope for the future.

Next is the book of Hosea.

Hosea is asked to marry as a metaphor.

So God is telling Hosea to marry a woman by the name of Gomer,

who is a prostitute, marry this woman as an example of what Israel is doing to me.

The idea here is that God is a husband that is striving after Israel as his

people, and yet they are unfaithful to him.

They are worshiping other gods. They are not obeying the covenant that he set down for them.

And so he is using the illustration of a husband and an unfaithful wife to show

Israel what's happening between him and them. God is the faithful husband.

Always trying to woo them back into a right relationship with him,

but they are rejecting him.

It's a symbol of God's unfailing love for his unfaithful people.

The rest of the book of Hosea deals with accusations from the prophet.

And Israel's idolatry is just out of control. They are worshiping whatever they want to worship.

They are doing whatever they want to do.

Hosea is calling them to repent and to be restored to that faithful covenant

partner that God wants them to be.

This is very similar over and over and over again.

There are judgments, there are warnings, there are appeals for repentance in

all of these books of the prophet.

In the book of Joel, we learn about a plague of locusts as a national disaster

that is coming as a judgment of their unfaithfulness.

And so a plague of locusts is called upon by God to come and to destroy everything

to show Israel that they are not following the covenant.

This is a picture of what a lot of the prophets say as a day of the Lord,

a day of reckoning, a day of judgment.

This is a pronouncement of that day of the Lord where disaster is going to happen.

But we also have God's promise for hope in the future.

And specifically, the promise of the Holy Spirit.

In Joel chapter 2, verses 28 and 29, we read, And it shall come to pass afterward

Joel 2:28

that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophecy.

Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.

Even on male and female servants, in those days I will pour out my Spirit.

This is pointing towards the future hope of what is coming.

There is going to be a new heart. This spirit is going to live in that heart.

And we're getting glimpses of what these things will mean in the future as God

makes that new covenant.

The next book is the book of Amos.

Amos uses judgment on all of the nations, including Israel.

God's anger at the injustice that is happening there.

The wealthy are ignoring the poor, and there are other injustices going on.

There's idolatry with worshiping other gods, gods of the Canaanites,

the Perizzites, the Hittites, etc., the nations that are around the people of Israel.

They are luring them into worshiping other gods instead of obeying the first

commandment, that you shall have no other gods before me. And so lots of depravity

happening in the nation of Israel that Amos is dealing with.

But also there is hope. It is not all doom and gloom.

Amos 9.14 will say, I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,

and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them.

They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.

There is hope. There are judgments coming.

But there is a hope for the future.

There is a hope for posterity. Then we get to the book of Obadiah.

Obadiah is about the people of Edom and their pride and betrayal of Israel.

Edom is the nation of Esau, which is Jacob's brother, tracing it all the way

back to the grandsons of Abraham, they have not been nice to their relatives.

They have neglected them. They have beat them up. They have abused them.

And God is going to bring judgment on Edom for their pride and their betrayal of that family.

Then we have the book of Jonah.

Jonah is a fascinating read about a prophet who runs away from God,

gets swallowed by a fish, gets spat up on land, finally goes and obeys God.

And when he goes and preaches to a city that's outside of Israel,

the city of Nineveh of the Assyrian Empire, they repent.

It's a total backwards thing from what you would think would happen.

The prophet would obey God and go, but the prophet does the opposite.

Then the non-Israelite people would hear a message to repent or God will overthrow them.

And they actually turn from their wicked ways and turn to God.

And this shows that God is a God of all nations, that God wants all people to come to faith in him.

And he's trying to use the nation of Israel to reach out to these people.

Fascinating story. A quick read, just a really good book in the Bible.

Then we have the book of Micah.

Micah is writing to the people of Judah and Israel.

It's about corruption. It's about injustice in the nation of Israel.

The corrupt leaders are gaining wealth through theft and with greed.

The false prophets are just doing it all for money.

There are Torah violations in the sale of land.

And God is just saying, why are you not obeying this covenant?

This is what's best for you. This is what you agreed upon. And if you don't

follow these teachings, terrible things are going to happen.

And Micah 6, 8 is a very famous verse.

It says, He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require

of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.

And it is calling them into covenant faithfulness again.

Then we have the book of Nahum, which is an oracle of judgment against the city

of Nineveh, which again is in the empire of Assyria.

God's power and justice will be displayed by bringing all evil nations to justice.

And God also brings comfort to the oppressed, including Nahum 1.7,

which says, The Lord is good, a refuge in the day of distress.

He cares for those who take refuge in him.

And again, there is judgment and hope in this one as well.

Then we get to the book of Habakkuk and Habakkuk's questions.

Habakkuk is a man who is questioning the things that he is seeing.

He is seeing the Torah neglected. He is seeing violence and injustice all over the place.

He is seeing corrupt leadership in the nation of Israel. And he asks, how long will I cry out?

Why won't you listen to me?

And he's asking God to bring about a change in the nation of Israel.

And God's answer is something he doesn't want to hear.

God says, I'm coming and I'm bringing the Babylonians and they're going to be

my instrument of judgment here.

Then Habakkuk asks the question, what?

Babylon is even worse than Israel. They deify their power. They treat humans like animals.

They devour the nations. Like, they're way worse than the Israelites are right now.

Why are you using them as an instrument of justice?

And then God basically says, I'm going to do what I'm going to do.

Babylon will not last forever. They will have to pay for their crimes.

I may use corrupt kingdoms, but I'm not endorsing them. I'm not saying that

one is righteous and this one is not. So I'm going to use that nation to correct this nation.

All nations are accountable to God.

And then Habakkuk is one who then offers this prayer of trust to God.

And he says, though the fig tree should not bloom, nor the fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food.

The flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herds in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

Even though Habakkuk is hearing things that he doesn't want to hear from God,

that he's going to use the Babylonians to come and correct the Israelites, he puts his trust in God.

And that's something that we should do as well. The next book is the book of

Zephaniah, which again talks about the day of the Lord, a coming judgment within

the final decades of the Southern Kingdom.

The event of Jerusalem's fall is going to happen, and God shows in this judgment

a passion to rescue his world from human evil.

It's also a call to seek the Lord and to repent from their actions.

And there is a future restoration that is in store, a restoration where God

will create a world where everyone can flourish in safety and.

Peace. Then we have the book of Haggai. Haggai is written to post-exilic Jews

who are rebuilding the temple.

And when Haggai gets on the scene, they have neglected the temple.

They are focused more on their houses. And Haggai calls them into repenting

of that behavior, taking care of God's house as the priority,

and then do the other stuff that needs to be done.

Then we have encouragement in Haggai.

God promises his presence and future glory to be upon the people of Israel.

Another post-exilic prophet is Zechariah, and this prophet is using God's care

for Jerusalem as a hope for the future.

He also talks about how the Messiah is coming as they are faithful to the covenant.

And the verse that we use in our Easter celebration is the Palm Sunday celebration

passage where Zachariah is saying, your king is coming riding on a donkey,

on the foal, the offspring of a donkey.

And that's a passage that is a prophetic vision of what's going to.

And the last book of the Old Testament is the book of Malachi.

Malachi is one that, again, it's going to show God's complaints,

a call to repentance, and a promise of a messenger.

God's complaints are God saying to the Israelites, I still love you,

by him choosing Jacob's family to carry on his covenant promises.

He says to the Israelites, you despise me and defile my temple.

By not taking the best of the flocks for offerings.

He has the complaint that the Israelites has turned against him and have divorced

their wives and gone after idolatry and intimacy in cultic settings.

It's just a really bad place.

And it shows that even in post-exile Israel, that things have not become better.

But again, God promises that the day of the Lord is coming and that there will

be the prophet Elijah who will be there anointing the way of the Lord.

And so again, the books of the prophets can be kind of depressing and kind of repeating.

They are all about following the covenant process that God had laid down.

And when the Israelites don't, they are all about the punishments that are coming upon them.

God handed it down very clearly to Moses. There are blessings if you obey,

curses if you don't, and the Israelites have not been able to get it right yet.

And this is how the Old Testament ends. There has been no promise for the entire

world that has come to fruition.

The Israelites are back in their home area, but it is a far cry from what they were.

And so the promises that God has made to the Israelites have yet to come to fruition.

But this is where the Old Testament ends.

The wisdom in the prophetic books point to God's holiness. They point to his

justice, but also his mercy and unshakable covenant love.

And that's why he has not given up on the Israelites.

That's why they are still his chosen people, because of his unshakable covenant love.

These books offer warnings and hope, calling God's people back to him,

not just in their generation, but in our generation and every generation that will be.

And we also see that the most important thing is that the blessing for the whole

world, the Messiah, has not been fulfilled yet.

And so in the New Testament, we will see how these promises come to fruition and where they point to.

And that's how the book of the Old Testament ends.

It is a book that has the beginning of a story and a lot of meat and potatoes,

but it doesn't have an end. It's a book where we are waiting for the expected

Messiah, for the expected blessing of the whole world.

These promises are what propel us into the New Testament.

Thank you again for joining us in our discussion on the Old Testament wisdom literature and the,

We hope that you can see how these books now point to Jesus being the fulfillment of the entire Bible.

Next week, we're going to start with the New Testament and looking at the Gospels

and how they show who Jesus was and point to our need to surrender and submit

to him. Have a great week.