Interlocked Week 3 (The Overview)

The Law -> to Final Judgement

Get in groups of 3-4 and here’s what I want you to do this morning.

I want you to write come up with a story.

This story must have a story arc. And here is the arc you must follow.

Something wonderful happens.

Something terrible happens.

Something helpful helps relieve the terrible things that happened.

More terrible happens.

A hero comes to save the day.

The hero wins.

The hero leaves but promises he will return.

That’s the story arc, now come up with a story that include those 7 things.

Debrief and listen to stories.

POINT: Now, how many of you told the same story?

Isn’t it interesting that even with the same story arc, you all still told a completely different story that didn’t have anything to do with one another?

Now, consider how much more incredible it is that the Bible was written over 1500 years by 40 different authors.

And yet, the whole Bible points forward to Jesus, points to Jesus in the present, and points to Jesus’ final judgement.

*SHOW TIMELINE AGAIN*

The Bible should blow our minds.

Not just for how it came to be, but for what it is AND how it came to be.

God’s word, revealed over time, for all people in all cultures.

The fact God’s word even makes sense, doesn’t make sense, unless it really is from God.

I hope you believe that today.

When you go about your days this week, every other message you hear is trying to convince you God isn’t who He says he is, so we need to stay connected to His word to have that reminder of who he is.

With that said, let’s dig in today.

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God began the promise of nation building.

1. THE LAW:

Question: What were the 3 promises God gave to Abraham?

People - Gen. 12:2.

Land - Gen. 12:1.

Blessing. - Gen 12:3.

Has God fulfilled the promise of people to Abraham’s family?

Yes! Pharaoh said in Exodus 1:9 “9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us.”

What about blessing? - Yes, Joseph was certainly a blessing to everyone he came around.

Abraham also, was a blessing to others, but this is key too it was GOD blessing others through him.

Abraham himself, and Joseph himself, weren’t gods themselves.

They were vessels God was using to show His grace.

So How would God fulfill this “land” blessing.

Well, he needed to build a nation.

This is also part of the promise to Abraham in Gen. 12:2 “2 “I will make you into a great nation...

So what are some of the things you need for a group of people to live among one another?

You need lots of things, but one of those things for sure is LAWS!

Through the law, God also echoes the covenant to Abraham.

Following God leads to blessing

Rejecting God leads to condemnation.

This simple formula is seen over and over again in the OT.

Whether it was through sickness, military loss, famine, population decrease, exile, or one of the many other things that occured, we see that there are consequences in this life for following God or for rejecting God.

But perhaps the most important part of this in looking at Israel’s history is that God is active.

Even when other nations conqueror Israel, we see God’s hand at work time and time again.

These things that happen aren’t random. They are God, at work, working things together for His purpose and His glory.

So God gave the law, 10 commandments and others.

These were to obeyed and followed, but as we will see later, there was another purpose to them as well.

So what happened when Israel broke laws?

Typically, that’s when you see prophets show up in Scripture.

Elijah, Elisha, the judges,e tc..

There are more than 133 named prophets in the Bible including 16 women btw.

The primary role of the prophets was to call God’s people to repent and let them know what would happen in the future if they chose not to repent.

SO how did life play out for Israel under the law?

2. CONQUEST: much conflict.

So after receiving the law, the Israelites were headed to the promised land.

What was the promised land?

Gen. 12:12-13 “12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.””

Gen. 13:15-17 “15 All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. 16 I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. 17 Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.””

So this land, the land of Canaan was given to Abram.

It was where God had led him too.

But wait, if they were going back to the land, why did they leave in the first place?

Because of famine. The entire story of Joseph at the end of Genesis answers this question.

However, instead of the Israelites simply traveling to the land of Canaan from Egypt, the people complain, have doubts, and even regret leaving Egypt.

So as a consequence, God makes them lost in the wilderness for 40 years.

God still led them via pillar of smoke during the day and fire at night, but God did not lead them to the promised land.

The call was to follow God, but knowing God was not taking them home yet.

So what about this conquest?

Imagine you own a house, but you’ve allowed renters to live there for a time. Well now you’ve sold your other properties and you need to come home but the renters won’t let you in…

That’s underplaying it, but similar to what goes on in Deuteronomy and Joshua.

Critics of the Bible often point to this as God supporting racism, genocide, and intolerance.

But this is simply an uneducated criticism.

It assumes The Israelites were conquering innocent nations.

It also assumes God didn’t offer peace.

But here are 4 things The Conquest teaches us.

God always offers grace before judgement.

Remember the flood?

Remember the Plagues on Egypt?

The same thing occurs here.

The canaanites were idol worshiping, child-sacrificing, and engaged in all sorts of evil that we don’t need to talk about this morning.

God gave them hundreds of years on earth to repent.

Many of these people living in the land came from Esau or other family members who had become distant of their covenant with God.

God saved many people from judgement.

Ruth - Gentile who became part of Jesus’ family tree.

Rahab.

Through these individual stories it is clear that there was grace shown to anyone who turned to God.

Remember the call to Abraham (I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.)

to those who worshiped the true God, there was grace and grace abounding.

4. God would finally judge. Evil would not be permitted to rule.

So from Deuteronomy through Ruth we see Israel’s conquest to regain the promised land.

Then we come to the Kingdom of Israel and Judah.

3.KINGDOM:

The people wanted a king.

1 Samuel 8:5 “5 They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.””

Now we will see this much later in this study, but it was God’s will for Israel to have a king.

However, the motive for Israel’s request is the problem here.

“Such as all the other nations have...”

Israel wanted to be like other nations…

How quick we are to forget God’s gracious hand on our lives.

So over the next several books (1 Samuel through 2 Chronicles), we see many bad, evil kings and a few righteous kings.

One of the lessons we will learn here is that mans law is often corrupt.

Only submission to God’s will, His laws, his grace, his judgement leads to righteousness.

So through the nation dividing and becoming 2 kingdoms (israel and Judah) both nations are eventually judged and experience a time of Exile.

4. EXILE:

So from Isaiah to Malachi (the rest of the old testament) we read about the minor and major prophets who sought Israel and Judah to repent during the time of Exile.

But even in exile, God was working.

God did not leave his people without hope.

Daniel teaches about God’s work in the Babylonian empire. It shows us how to live as a believer in a wicked culture.

We see God revealing a future hope through some of the prophets now too. There would be a new kingdom a new covenant coming.

5. PARTIAL RETURN:

In Esther, we read about God still being merciful and not destroying the Israelites, but keeping his covenant to Abraham.

But there still wasn’t a full return of the blessings.

All of Israel was looking forward to a future hope. A return to the land.

They were expecting this Savior to come and return everything their family once had.

They were expecting a return to the time of the Kings. That a new King would rise up and unify and rescue all of Israel.

But it’s easy to see how the Jews were looking forward to a political war hero and not who they god.

6. JESUS:

Jesus comes in the most unlikely way.

Born exactly as prophesied, but not as expected.

Both his mother and father had family genealogies that tie back to David.

Jesus, as we talked about at the end Wednesday, came into a family full of sin, yet he was not sin himself.

2 Corinthians 5:21 “21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Jesus was fully God, but fully man.

Born of a virgin (human birth) without an earthly father, but rather, an adopted father.

And yet, the Jews expected a Messiah to restore the Kingdom, not to be killed.

But Jesus made it clear he was doing something new.

7. CROSS:

And at the cross, we see again how God works.

There was a time of grace before judgment.

It is clear who is saved and who will be judged.

There is only one way to be saved.

All of creation (both natural and spiritual) changed

A person could only be saved by faith in Christ.

Jesus’ death was the final payment for sins for mankind.

His death satisfied God’s wrath against sin.

His resurrection proved his claims and solidified his offer of forgiveness.

And the Resurrection is the most crucial part of the entire BIble.

1 Corinthians 15:17 “17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.”

8. Church

And that brings us now to present day.

We now live in the time of the church.

We live under the New Covenant.

This new world where Both Jews and Gentiles are both equally welcomed into the family of God through His body, the church.

That salvation wasn’t just a Jewish restoration of a kingdom.

Salvation was a restoration of the brokenness of sin in the garden!

and one day, Jesus will return.

9. Final Judgement.

We live in this world of the already and the not yet.

We see what Jesus has already done, but we know there is more to be done.

Just like people didn’t know or expect the way Jesus came the first time, I suspect even though it will be clear when Jesus comes back the second time, we still won’t have a clue when that will happen.

But here is what believers should do in light of the final judgement:

Let people know.

We are to share the gospel and make disciples (Matthew 28)

We are to be free from fear.

Jesus return is not scary for those in Christ and we should reject anyone who claims so.

Revelation 22:20-21 “20 He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. 21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.”

That should be our posture.

Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.

Next week, we will begin to dive deep into Genesis now that we’ve looked at the whole overview of Scripture.