Biblical Overview: Historical Books

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

the pastor of Faith Chapel.

Today in the podcast, we will continue to look at the narrative of the Bible

by focusing in on how the historical books of the Old Testament push the story

of God that leads us to Jesus.

Thanks for joining us today.

As we continue in our study of the Bible and how each section pushes forward

the narrative of God that leads us to Jesus,

today we're going to be going over what are called the historical books of the

Bible, starting with Joshua in the Old Testament and going all the way through the book of Esther.

This section is called the historical section because it is the history of the Jewish people.

Before we begin, we will be, again, going over why it's important to read the Bible.

To discover that today, we're going to read a passage from the book of Joshua,

Joshua 1:7

chapter 1, verses 7 and 8, and focus in on how this shows us that reading the Bible is important.

So this is Joshua chapter 1 verses 7 through 8.

Joshua 1:7–8

These are God's words to Joshua. Only be strong and very courageous,

being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you.

Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good

success wherever you go.

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate

on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.

For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

We see in this passage that Joshua is supposed to take this word,

the word of Moses, the first five books that we went through last time.

He is to take these words and to meditate on them day and night.

The concept of meditation in Jewish literature is not just consistently just

having them in front of you, reading them over and over again,

but walking around muttering these things to yourself.

Really contemplating these things.

And when you do that, they're going to implant themselves in your heart and in your mind.

And this is hugely important, according to God here, to Joshua,

because if we do not turn from this law to the right or to the left,

we will have success wherever Joshua goes.

This leads to obedience and the obedience, as we talked about last time in regard

to the book of Deuteronomy, this obedience is equal to blessing.

In order to receive the blessing of God, we have to know what God wants us to do.

And to know what God wants us to do, we need to read and engage with Scripture.

And so this is why it's important. One of the reasons why it's critically important to do that.

God reveals himself to us. And by being obedient to him, we receive blessings.

So, as we continue to engage with Scripture, as we continue to read it,

and I hope that we meditate on it, I hope that we mutter it to ourselves,

we take a verse, we take a paragraph, whatever it may be.

Memorize it, and start going over it over and over and over again in our hearts and in our minds.

Because when we do that, God reveals himself to us.

And when God reveals himself to us and we're obedient to it,

blessings are what happen.

Getting into the meat of the text today, I want to first recap where we've been.

So in the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses,

we have been through the story of Adam and Eve, the fall.

We've gone all the way up to Abraham and his blessing. And Genesis chapter 12,

Genesis 12:1–3

verses 1 through 3 are really important verses to know throughout the remainder of the Bible.

They kind of form a framework.

These are the passages that kind of overview the whole concept of the Bible.

Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's

house to the land that I will show you.

And I will make of you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name

great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and to

him who dishonors you, I will curse.

And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

And so God's promises to Abraham include God saying, I am going to make you into a great nation.

Your descendants are going to be numerous, as numerous as the stars in the sky,

and a blessing for the whole world is going to come through you.

Now, remember, Abraham's 75 years old at this time.

He's not going to have the child of the promise for another 25 years.

And it relies upon Abraham's trust in God. But at the end of the Pentateuch,

at the end of the books of Moses, we have not fulfilled all of these promises.

They do have lots and lots of descendants. Abraham has more than a million people

wandering around in the desert, but they don't have a nation yet.

They have not inherited the promised land. Even though God is blessing them,

they are not as numerous as the stars in the sky.

And there's not been a blessing for the entire world yet.

That's where we're left. This is a huge promise. And how is God going to fulfill

these things through the historical books?

Let us jump into Joshua and figure that out.

Joshua begins with the Israelites on the precipice of the promised land.

Moses is dead and God, like the verses I shared earlier,

is teaching and is encouraging Joshua to be able to understand that this is

his task, that God is with him wherever he goes.

The key theme throughout the book of Joshua is that God is with the Israelites.

In the previous lesson, we talked about how the Levitical laws were designed

to let God be with the Israelites,

to live in the tent of meeting in his throne room where the Ark of the Covenant

was, and nobody would have to perish because they were in God's presence in that way.

That's what the Levitical laws were designed for, and that's what they accomplished.

That's still what God wants is God wants to be with the Israelites,

his chosen people to bless them.

So again, that the whole world, whether you're coming from Africa or Asia or

through from Europe, that they would see God's presence there.

They would see the blessings of God.

They would see how the Israelites were different and they would all come to

know him and trust in him as Lord and Savior.

And so we're going to see how God is with the Israelites, starting with how

God is speaking to Joshua.

In Joshua chapter 1, verses 1 through 6, we read these words.

Joshua 1:1–6

After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua,

the son of Nun, Moses's assistant, Moses, my servant is dead.

Now, therefore, arise, go over this Jordan,

you and all this people into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel,

every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given to you

just as I promised to Moses from the wilderness and this Lebanon,

as far as the great river, the river Euphrates,

all the land of the Hittites to the great sea toward the going down of the sun

shall be your territory.

No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life.

Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

I will not leave you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous,

for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give to them.

And so this is encouraging to Joshua. God is speaking to Joshua,

and he is giving him reassurances that you are the leader.

Wherever your foot goes, that land will be given to the Israelites.

I'm going to accomplish this.

In the book of Joshua, we see that the Levitical rules are still working,

that God's presence is with the Israelites, and they are to be obedient to God. That's the objective.

Another way that the people of God, that God is showing the Israelites that

he is with them is how other people are reacting to the Israelites.

In Joshua chapter two, there are spies that are sent into the city of Jericho.

A woman by the name of Rahab hides them while people come and look for them.

In the midst of this, as they are getting ready to sleep for the night,

she gives them this message.

In Joshua chapter 2, verses 8 through 11, before the men lay down,

Joshua 2:8–11

she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, I know that the Lord has

given you the land and that the fear of you has fallen upon us.

And all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you.

For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you

when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites

who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction.

As soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any

man because of you. for the Lord, your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.

And so the fear that was falling upon the people of Jericho and upon the land

of promise, the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, et cetera.

That fear that the people were experiencing was reassurance that they were going

to take this land, that God was with them and that God's reputation,

not their own, but God's reputation was preceding them.

Because of all this, this strengthened their resolve, this strengthened their purpose.

But like the Red Sea, there was also another water crossing that God orchestrated

showing the Israelites he was with them.

In Joshua 3.17, it says this,

Now the priest bearing the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firmly on dry

ground in the midst of the Jordan and all Israel was passing over on dry ground

until all the nation finished passing over the Jordan.

And it wasn't just like the Red Sea. There weren't walls of water on both sides,

but there seems to be like a mudslide that happened way up above them.

And this mudslide seemed to stop the water.

At the exact moment that the priest stepped into the River Jordan,

at this time, was generally overflowing its banks.

It was the rainy season, and it was a season where there was lots of water everywhere.

And so this is what they encountered.

And the last one we're going to go over in the book of Joshua is the taking of the city of Jericho.

It was absolutely of God. It was nothing the Israelites did.

This is how it went down in Joshua 6, 3-5.

You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once.

Thus you shall do for six days. Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of ram's horns before the ark.

On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times,

and the priests shall blow the trumpets.

And when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet,

then all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city

will fall down flat, and the people shall go up, everyone straight before him.

It wasn't something that the Israelites were doing.

They were just walking around the city. They were just being obedient to God.

And when they were obedient to God, God miraculously knocked down the walls,

and the Israelites took the city of Jericho.

And so in the midst of the book of Joshua, we see again that the Levitical rules,

the rules that God handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai, who then handed them down to the Israelites,

and they agreed to this covenant that these rules were allowing God to be in their presence.

This is what it was designed to do, and this is what was executing.

And a lot of the next several chapters of the book of Joshua is them taking

the promised land, lots of battles being described there until the point where

they get most of the land killed.

And at that point in time, they gather all the 12 tribes together.

They section off the land and they cast dice to see which tribe gets which land.

And so God, he uses his might to give them the land and then divide the land into the right tribes.

And then at the end of Joshua, there is a covenant renewal. In Joshua 24,

16, Joshua gathers all the people around and he says, this is what my family's going to do.

We're going to follow Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

We're going to pursue a relationship with him.

You have to choose for yourselves. And in Joshua 24, 16 to 18, this is what it records.

Then the people answered, far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods.

For it is the Lord, our God, who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt,

out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and

preserved us in all the way that we went and among all the people through whom we passed.

And the Lord drove out before us all the people.

The Amorites who live in the land. Therefore, we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.

As Joshua finishes conquering the land, as the land is divided among the people,

as people are settling into their promised land, they say, we will agree to the covenant terms.

We are going to follow these rules, these rituals.

We are going to do what God wants us to do. This is the covenant we're agreeing to.

We're following God.

Throughout the next several cycles, that's only happening when they have a strong, godly leader.

The next book is about how these get fewer and fewer because people walk further

and further away from God.

So the next book is the book of Judges. What I just described is a part of the

cycle of apostasy that happens in the Israelite society.

The cycle of apostasy is walking away from what you believe in.

And this is the general pattern that happens.

God has delivered. God has rescued. Just like in the book of Joshua,

God gives the Israelites the promised land.

And what happens at that time is people get laxed because they have the blessing

of God upon them. They have enough food.

The rains are coming when they're supposed to come. There's a lot of plenty that's happening here.

And when they do this, they get laxed in observing the teachings that God had handed down to Moses.

They stop following the covenant that they agreed to with God,

and they start sinning and rebelling against that covenant and ultimately against God.

And so this sin pattern then leads to oppression.

God will use some sort of thing to bring the Israelites to repentance again

and back into faithful covenant service.

Sometimes it's a drought and sometimes it's a famine and people are hungry and

they seek God and they start to pray to God and they start to follow him again.

And when that happens, blessings are coming to them because when they obey, God blesses.

So sin then leads to oppression.

And this elicits in them a response of repentance, turning back to what they believe in.

And when they turn back to what they believe in, blessings start happening,

the oppression goes away, they have plenty again, and then they start to rebel again.

They start to fall into the pattern of sin again. And this is what happens throughout

the book of Judges. This is a cycle of apostasy.

And when the Israelites repent, when they start to follow God again,

God raises up for them a deliverer, in this case, judge, who is going to lead

the Israelite people back into faithful covenant service to God,

or at least that's the goal.

And so there's a series of 12 judges that come on the scene in the book of Judges.

They lead people through this cycle and into obedience and blessing.

Some of them do it better than others. And it seems to be a pattern that.

That the further we get into this cycle, the further we get into the book of

Judges, the worse the sins are, the worse the rebellion against God is.

This is the pattern that happens in the book of Judges.

And so at the end of Judges, there's a very fascinating verse that kind of sums

up what the author sees happening here.

In Judges 21, 25, we read, In those days there was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

And this is a pattern that we see in humanity still to this day.

It is a sin nature that we have where we want to choose right and wrong for ourselves,

where we want to do what we think is best or what will get us ahead,

or we put something as more important than God.

These are not necessarily bad things, but when we put them above God,

it leads us to idolize them and to focus on them.

And that's what the book of Judges is trying to get us to see here.

We must put God first.

And that kind of leads us into the next book of the Bible, the book called Ruth.

There is a woman named Ruth who puts what God would want her to do,

even though she's not an Israelite, puts what God would want her to do first.

So Ruth starts out with a family.

This family is from Bethlehem in Judea, and it is a family that is leaving that

area because of a famine.

And so what this tells us is that they're in a cycle of Israel's history where

they're not following after God, where there are curses that are coming upon

them because of their disobedience to God.

And this family goes to a foreign country called Moab. The mom and the dad,

they find wives for their sons, but tragedy strikes, and the dad and the two sons perish.

And so it's just the mom and the two daughters-in-law that are there.

The mom, whose name is Naomi, she wants to go back to Israel now.

She wants to go back to Bethlehem because she has nothing left in Moab.

And so she tells her two daughters-in-law to go back to their father's household,

and they could go and they could find good suitable husbands for them from their own country.

One of them, by the name of Ruth, says no.

In Ruth chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, we read these words.

Ruth 1:16

But Ruth said, do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you.

For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people and your God, my God.

Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.

May the Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts me from you.

Ruth is pledging to take care of Naomi,

a widow, an older Widow than herself She's going to take care Of her And she's

able to at least Do some of the things that need to be done To help Naomi Survive.

And so seeing that she's not going to be able to convince Ruth to stay in Moab,

Naomi and Ruth go back to Bethlehem.

When they get there, the barley season is there.

Throughout this book, you're going to see God's hand upon it.

It just so happens to be barley harvest season.

When they get back there, Ruth goes out into the field to start gleaning.

If you remember the Levitical precepts about not harvesting to the edge of the field,

that's what happens so that people who were impoverished, people who were foreigners,

people who were widows like these two women would be able to go and they would

be able to get their sustenance.

The farmer that she finds has done this, and so the women are gleaning around the edge of the field.

They are leaving, the harvest workers are leaving that for these people,

just like God's words say.

And God is providing this for him through a man by the name of Boaz.

Boaz happens to be what is called a family redeemer.

And a family redeemer is someone who can lawfully take the property that is

yours and bring you into his household and then take care of his family through

those people that he's bringing into his household.

And so he's one who can lawfully, legally buy the land of Naomi's deceased family.

Boaz is the one who owns the field that Ruth is in, and Boaz sees Ruth's faithfulness,

and Boaz allows her leniency.

She collects way more than Naomi could even have imagined.

And through the grace of Boaz, through him being a redeemer for that family,

through God placing Ruth and Naomi in this place at the right time at barley harvest season,

in the right field, which is Boaz, and Boaz having the right mind to say,

yes, I see the faithfulness of Ruth. and now I want to take care of her.

I want to extend the grace that God has given me to her and Naomi.

These two get together and they form a family.

Naomi is now taken care of. Ruth and Boaz as husband and wife are taken care

of and they start to produce a family.

I want you to see that the basis of this family is godly attributes of loyalty.

Of justice, of caring for God's words.

Ruth said, your God will be my God. I'm surrendering all my rights and I'm following your ways.

And Ruth had these excellent characteristics.

Boaz had these excellent characteristics of grace and caring for those who needed cared for.

And what happens is when these two get together, it leads us to David,

who is the second king in Israel.

These exalted characteristics of loyalty and faithfulness, of provision and

kindness and grace are building a family legacy that leads to King David.

But before we get to King David and what he did, we have to first go through

the first king of Israel, a guy by the name of Saul.

So in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, we have the story of the rise and the fall

of Saul and of David and his kingship.

And what happens is that, again, the words that come from judges,

the words that say, in those days, there was no king.

Everyone did what was right in his or her own odds.

These are the words that are still going on in the Israelite nation.

There were people who would follow after God and lead other people to do so.

They would die and then people would just choose to do whatever they wanted to do.

And so Israel demands a king.

Israel says, all right, we're tired of not having a human king because it was

set up as God being their king.

And so God plainly says here that the Israelites are not rejecting the prophet

Samuel, who these books are named after.

They're rejecting God himself as their king.

And they're saying, we need a human king. God says, okay, I will give you what you want.

And when they see Saul, he's described as a head and shoulders above everyone else.

He's tall, he's handsome, he's regal looking. And they're like, that's a king.

That's somebody we can get behind.

But what Saul does is show his cowardice.

As they are trying to anoint him king, Saul is hiding from the crowd.

Like he is cowardly in this, even though he looks like a king,

even though people can say, man, that's a warrior.

Saul is showing himself to not have the right characteristics of a king.

And when he starts out, he does pretty good. The Philistines are subdued.

The invading hordes of other nations, they are defeated.

There seems to be peace and security in the land. But it takes a turn when Saul

is waiting for Samuel before a battle.

And Saul, not authorized to offer a sacrifice to God, he goes ahead and does

it because the people are wary.

They're like, all right, we're getting jittery before this battle.

We're nervous. And Saul sacrifices the offering to God when that was Samuel's job.

While the smoke was still going up from the sacrifice, Samuel shows up and says, what have you done?

You have disobeyed God for the final time, and God will take the kingship away

from you and your family. And

about that time, God tells Samuel to go and anoint one of Jesse's sons.

Samuel is looking at the tallest, the strongest, the most handsome ones,

but the youngest one who wasn't that tall, who was just average looking,

he was the one that God appointed because God does not look on outward appearances.

God looks at the heart.

And so when God chooses David to be the successor of Saul.

Saul's jealousy rages inside of him.

And so David has to go and live out in the wilderness for a pretty long stretch of time.

Saul gets close to him on a couple of locations. And at both times,

David proves himself loyal to the king, even though the king is trying to kill

him. And David shows himself.

To be after God's own heart.

So after Saul and his sons die in battle, David is anointed king of Israel,

and all of Israel and Jerusalem are unified under him.

Because David is a man after God's own heart, we have a passage that also sets the stage.

Just like God made a promise to Abraham, those three promises to Abraham,

God is also going to make David a promise.

This promise has ramifications for the rest of biblical history and for the rest of our history.

This is called the Davidic covenant. It says God will create a dynasty out of

David and that David will not cease to have one of his descendants as a king.

And this is why it's so important in the gospel of Matthew and Luke,

both of them share the genealogy of Jesus to be as a descendant of Abraham and a descendant of David.

Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise.

And so David rules and reigns. He does not do it without messing up.

There is one time where he sees a woman and decides right for himself that it

was right for him to take that woman to be his own, even though she was married.

When he finds out that this woman gets pregnant, he calls the husband back from

the battlefield, hoping to entice him to be intimate with his wife.

But he refuses to do so. And so what David does is he sets him,

Uriah, at the front of the line in the fiercest part of the battle and murders him. He sins.

He falls short of God's glorious standard.

To be a man after God's own heart does not mean that you have to be perfect.

It means that you are willing to accept from God the punishment that you deserve

because we all sin and fall short.

David's child from Bathsheba dies.

David repents. He says he's sorry and he doesn't commit that action again.

And that's what it takes to be a man after God's own heart, to be someone who

accepts the correction of God and wants to do what God wants you to do.

And so David proves himself to be that, even though he does mess up,

even though he does fail, he sets Israel up for success.

And one of the last things that he does in his kingship is that he makes all

the provisions necessary for the Israelites to build a temple to God.

Because up to this point, God has been dwelling in the tabernacle that Moses

had erected in the wilderness.

All throughout the book of Joshua, the book of Judges, Ruth,

and all the way through the lives of Saul and David, that's what the house of God looked like.

But when David's son Solomon starts reigning, it changes and it becomes a permanent physical structure.

And that's what the first part of Solomon's reign is about, making sure the

temple is built and secure.

He oversees every aspect of it. It is beautifully ornate. It is amazing.

And when Solomon dedicates this temple, the presence of God comes into it,

and it is full to the point where no human being could enter into this area.

And God's presence is there, and God is using this temple as a place to magnify his name.

People from all over the world come and marvel at it.

But what shows Solomon's true intention in his heart here is that it takes him

seven years of overseeing the construction of the temple of God,

but it takes him 14 years to build his own palace.

So he's putting twice as much time and twice as much effort into his own dwelling than he is into God's.

And it shows a small sliver of who Solomon is at the core.

And what happens in Solomon's life is that he makes political alliances.

David's reign was marred by violence. It was war after war after war.

But Solomon is marking his reign with alliances between himself and other kingdoms.

And that meant in that time that there would be wives, that daughters of the

king would come and be pledged and married to the king of Israel,

who was making this agreement with the king of the other countries around him.

Solomon started collecting these wives from all over, including Egypt,

These were people that Solomon were building these agreements with,

and he became consumed and possessed by them and was influenced by them,

especially the daughter from the king of Egypt to build her a temple to her

gods that she worshipped in Egypt instead of to the one true God.

And so they influenced him into apostasy and in walking away from the kingdom that God had set up.

His reign is marred by a slippery slope downward where he falls more and more

into apostasy, walking away from what he believed in.

And this leads to his son Rehoboam and a decision that Rehoboam makes that turns Israel into two.

Rehoboam, at the beginning of his reign, is given the choice by the people of Israel.

You can, if you lighten our load, your dad drove us very hard building the temple,

his palaces, and all that he wanted to construct.

He really pushed us hard. But if you lighten our load, we will be yours.

We will follow you. We will obey your decrees.

And so he said, give me a couple of days. Let me think about it.

And he consulted two sets of advisors, And he finally comes back with the word

to the people of Israel that you thought my father was severe or my pinky finger

is thicker than my father's waist,

meaning I'm going to increase your labor.

I'm going to increase your work.

And so they rebel against him.

And there are 10 tribes that join what is known as Samaria, because that's the

capital city that they choose.

And then two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, are combined into what is known as Judah.

And this encompasses Jerusalem.

And in this divided kingdom, kings rule and reign.

And there are some that get it right in the southern tribe in Judah and Benjamin

and there's virtually no one,

no good king found in the northern 10 tribes of Israel.

And the cycle continued of rejecting God.

But God is not done with his people yet and he continued to give them choices,

sending prophets to them in the time of the reigns of the kings of Israel,

sending prophets to them time and time again to show them who God was and to

call them into covenant faithfulness.

Elijah and Elisha are two of the big ones that are found in the books of 1 and

2 Kings, where they are obedient to God, where you can see their struggles and their victories.

But how they are trying to get people to listen to God and to reconfirm the

covenant and to get in the blessings of God instead of choosing right and wrong for themselves.

Over the course of time, the prophets run out, and God sends the ultimate plague

that he warned the Israelites in the book of Deuteronomy that he would send,

and that is the consequence of exile.

In 720 BC, the northern ten tribes were carried out of the promised land,

the land that was flowing with milk and honey, the land that God was giving

them to be a blessing to them so that the whole world would know who God was.

But because of their unfaithfulness to the covenant, because they refused to

bow their knee to God and to live for him, God took them out of the promised

land by the nation of Assyria. The southern tribe did a little bit better.

They lasted 140 years longer, but still they got to a point of no return.

They got to a point where their sin had built up so high that God could no longer keep them in the land.

And in 582 BC, God used the Babylonian army to ransack Jerusalem.

To destroy it, the temple, and almost

everything in it, take the people of Jerusalem into exile to Babylon.

God setting up a covenant and giving agreements to them at Mount Sinai.

Right before they entered into the promised land, after they entered into the

promised land, and calling his prophets to bring people back to repentance,

to bring people back to God.

He was constantly wooing them, constantly encouraging them to have this relationship,

and they constantly chose no.

And it led to the severest curse found in Deuteronomy, the curse of exile.

So that's 1st and 2nd Kings. The next books in our Bible are 1st and 2nd Chronicles.

These are two very similar books.

This 1st and 2nd Chronicles is a repeating of several of the stories in 1st

and 2nd Kings, but it starts out with genealogies.

And genealogies were super important to the Israelite nation.

If you look at when the book of 1st and 2nd Chronicles was written,

it's probably the last written book of the Old Testament.

And in the Jewish Bible, it is placed at the very end of what we would call

the Old Testament, but at the very end of their Bible.

And the reason for this is because it was a reminder to them of what had happened.

They had come back from exile at this point. They were living in the land.

There was a temple that was there, and this book was written to remind them

of what had occurred, to stop it from happening again.

And it starts with genealogies, and these genealogies are important for multiple reasons.

One is that the promised land was allotted by land, and so if you were able

to trace your lineage, if you were able to prove, hey, I am of the tribe of

Judah, I am of the tribe of Benjamin, et cetera,

you were going to have your ancestral land given to.

The land was also there to keep the Levites and the high priests pure according

to the standard of the Old Testament, according to the Levitical priesthood.

And so you have to prove yourself to be Aaron's descendant.

And that was the goal. That was the objective. And then Levites,

those who were working in the temple, the musicians and the people who were

washing dishes, making the the bread of presence, etc.

These people had to prove themselves to be from the tribe of Levi.

And lastly, because of the Davidic covenant, the genealogies were important

because you had to prove yourself to be a descendant of David if you wanted

to be considered under this covenant.

These are the ways that the books of Chronicles start.

It is with a list of genealogy after genealogy.

And they are all important for the land,

for the priestly and kingly and Levitical lines so that people could keep straight

and still be obedient to what God handed down to Moses.

And so this, along with the intermittent stories that most of which we had already

seen in 1 and 2 Kings, this is what the book of 1 and 2 Chronicles is about.

At the end of 2 Chronicles, we have a very important passage,

and it reflects other things God had said in and through the Old Testament through the prophets.

In 2 Chronicles 36, verses 22 to 23, we read these words.

2 Chronicles 36:22–23

Now, in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by

the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled.

The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation

throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing.

Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord, the God of heaven,

has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him

a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him. let him go up.

And so at the end of 2 Chronicles, the idea is that God is still with the Israelite people.

He is still moving them in a direction of covenant faithfulness.

And maybe the promises of Abraham aren't lost forever, that there would be a

nation for the Israelite people,

that they would be as numerous a people, as numerous as the stars of the sky,

and that there would be a blessing for the entire world to come upon them.

Because that God is working through a Persian king named Cyrus,

and he is going to let people go back and rebuild a temple that the Babylonians

had destroyed in exiling the Jewish people.

And so we have here this proclamation from Cyrus, but we also see a proclamation

in Isaiah chapter 44, 28, where God is saying.

Isaiah 44 · chapter mention

Who says of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and he shall fulfill all my purpose,

saying of Jerusalem, she shall be built, and of the temple, your foundation shall be laid.

And so in Isaiah 44, 28, God proclaims that Cyrus is going to be his chosen

instrument, and he is going to build the foundation of the temple and that Jerusalem shall be rebuilt.

And so this is what God had described through the prophets to the people of Israel.

But there's one more in Jeremiah 29 10, we have Jeremiah saying this,

for thus says the Lord, when 70 years are appointed for Babylon,

I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to the.

The Israelite people will be back in Jerusalem. There will be a temple,

and Cyrus the king is going to bring these things about.

And when we get to the next book of this historical section,

it is the book of Ezra. This is what we see.

Cyrus's proclamation and a guy by the name of Zerubbabel leading Israelites back to Jerusalem.

And their goal and their objective is to build the temple, and this is what they execute.

Then at the end of the book of Ezra, the priest Ezra comes on the scene,

and once the temple is done and constructed, this is like, I believe,

60 years after Zerubbabel and the first people go back,

Ezra brings back another group of people, and he is interested in spiritual renewal.

He goes back to Jerusalem to teach.

And this book is connected with the next book, Nehemiah, because it's again

when Jerusalem is shattered.

After Zerubbabel gets there, after Ezra the priest gets there,

a guy by the name of Nehemiah shows up on the scene and he wants to rebuild

the wall around the city.

This is the common practice. The wall meant safety and security.

So Nehemiah rebuilds the walls.

Zerubbabel rebuilds the temple and Ezra is interested in spiritual reform.

After the wall is built, Nehemiah joins with Ezra for the work on spiritual renewals.

And these books show that the Israelites don't need a new society.

They don't need a rebuilt wall.

They don't need a rebuilt temple.

What they need is spiritual renewal.

They need a new heart, as Jeremiah describes, the new covenant being.

And this is what, even coming back after the exile, there is brokenness,

there is hardship, there are difficulties abounding in the Israelite nation.

And this shows us that being in exile has not cleansed them,

but God needs to do something miraculous.

God needs to do something different to change the hearts of these people.

And as New Testament believers, this is what we would expect on in Acts chapter

two with the spirit of God coming and dwelling inside of us. That's the plan.

But at this point, the rebuilding of Jerusalem has not yielded the results of a changed heart.

There is still brokenness. There is still rebellion there.

But the key theme is that God is not done. And the book of Esther,

the last book we're going to cover, also shows that too.

So Esther takes place during the reign of the Persians, and it is about how

an Israelite woman by the name of Esther becomes queen and rescues her people from destruction.

When Esther becomes queen, she gets placed in a position where she hears that

a guy by the name of Haman has plotted the destruction of her Jewish people.

Esther's cousin Mordecai is someone who comes and tells her how Haman has convinced

the king to say that the Jewish people are no good and how it would be better

for the kingdom of Persia if these people were eradicated.

And Mordecai tells her point blankly, perhaps you were here,

sent here as queen for such a time as this.

And the fascinating thing about the book of Esther is that God is never mentioned

in it, but that you can see his work everywhere, his providence,

him putting people in positions where they can actually make a difference.

And this is one of those instances.

This is the big instance in this book where God is placing Esther in this position

so that God can use her to rescue her people.

But the fascinating thing is that Esther is putting her own life on the line

because to go before the king without being called,

you are leaving it up to the king for mercy because the king could have you

executed for just appearing out of nowhere, not being called.

And so Esther asks the Jewish people to fast. She and her handmaids fast,

and she approaches the king.

The king extends grace to her. Again, this is God working behind the scenes,

but God uses the king to extend grace to her and bring vindication to her and her people.

Esther saves the Jewish people. Again, this is what God does.

God is working in the background of Esther, just like he is working in our lives.

Sometimes we can see him plain as day and sometimes we can't,

but God is working in our lives, whether we perceive it or not.

God is working in the book of Esther and he's bringing about salvation for his people.

So the Jewish historical books here are showing us that God is faithful to his

promises, his promises to Abraham, his promises to David. Those are going to be fulfilled.

God is rescuing his people from Persian destruction.

God is rescuing his people from Babylon and bringing them back to Jerusalem

to rebuild the temple and the city.

And God will come through on his promises.

But when we end the historical books of the Old Testament, God is faithful still to his people.

The historical books show us that God is going to fulfill his words and he's

going to use human beings to be his hands and feet in this world in order to

bring about the change he knows needs to happen.

And when human beings mess up, It's not a question of if, but when human beings

mess up, God is not done with us.

And that is a story of grace, of mercy, of love, and a compassionate God that

wants us to be with him in eternity.

And this is the story of the historical books of the Old Testament.

Thank you again for joining us in the podcast today as we learned how the historical

books of the Old Testament fit into the larger story of the Bible that will always lead us to Jesus.

If you would like more information about Faith Chapel and its ministries,

please visit the website gofaithchapel.org.

Next time, we will finish the Old Testament by looking at the wisdom literature

and the books of the prophets. Have a great week.