September Reflections & Corrections - Year 8

Tara-Leigh Cobble (0:01)

Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara-Leigh Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap.

Welcome to our September Reflections and Corrections episode. Let's start with the reflections. We just finished our 39th book of the Bible and have made our way through the whole Old Testament. So let's get the 30,000 foot view on where we are in the chronological timeline of the Bible's overall meta-narrative. The Bible is one unified story. In Genesis, God sets out to build a relationship with one particular family, but things go terribly wrong when they fracture the relationship through sin. But their sin doesn't surprise God. He already had a plan in place to restore this relationship even before it was broken, and he continues working out that plan immediately, undeterred and unhindered by their rebellion. He sets apart Abraham to be the patriarch of the family he calls the Israelites. They're a bunch of sinners just like all of us. God blesses them despite their sin, but sin still has its consequences. One of the long storylines of consequence is of the 400 years they spend enslaved in Egypt. God sends Moses to set the Israelites free from slavery. They flee to the desert where little by little, God gives these people the basic rules of how to have a stable society. They're uncivilized people who have only just met God and Moses, and they're not keen on obeying either of them. In the midst of their sin and stubbornness, God knows that what their hearts need is him. So he sets up camp among them in the desert. More than anything, he wants them to remember who he is to them, the God who rescued them out of slavery. But they keep forgetting, and every time they forget, they either get fearful and disobey, or they get prideful and disobey.

Forty years after he rescues them from Egypt, their new leader Joshua leads them into the Promised Land and commands them to eradicate their enemies who live there, the Canaanites. God has warned them repeatedly that if they don't drive out the Canaanites, they'll become a snare and lead them away into apostasy. And that's exactly what happens.

So God raises up military leaders or judges to drive out the enemies who are leading his people astray. But this doesn't deal with the problem of their hearts leading them astray. The Israelites do whatever they want, leading to near-anarchy. Despite this, there are pockets of faithfulness among the Israelites, and even among the foreigners whose hearts have turned toward Yahweh. Pagans like Rahab and Ruth who turn to follow God and his people. God has been telling us all along that He's going to build His people from among every nation, and this is evidence of that. Next, God raises up Samuel the prophet to lead the people. But what they really want is a king. God tells Samuel to give the people what they want, but that it's not going to go well for them. Their first king is Saul, a fearful man who makes rash decisions without consulting God. Then a shepherd named David is positioned as Israel's second king. He is a man after God's own heart, but he's still deeply flawed. He makes a few wicked decisions that mark him for life, but they don't mark him for eternity. God shows him astonishing amounts of mercy and grace. David is succeeded on the throne by his son Solomon. Despite being the wisest man who ever lived, he has a problem with womanizing and worshiping other gods. Yahweh is generous to him nonetheless and gives him the distinguished assignment of building Israel's first temple, the place where God came to dwell among the people in the midst of the promised land.

After Solomon dies, his son, Rehoboam, we call him Ray, takes over the throne. But King Ray is harsh toward the people, and lots of them don't want to follow him. And that's how the nation state of Israel is divided into two separate kingdoms, the southern kingdom of Judah, ruled by King Ray, and the northern kingdom of Israel, ruled by King Jeroboam, we call him Jerry. God had specifically promised to continue the Davidic line of kings through the tribe of Judah, so he always seems to be on their side. But he takes good care of the northern kingdom of Israel too. For instance, northern Israel has a string of exclusively bad kings, but God sends the prophet Elijah to warn them nonetheless. Over the 350-ish years of the divided kingdom, God sends several prophets to warn both northern Israel and southern Judah about what's going to happen. They'll be overcome by other nations. First, the Assyrians defeat northern Israel and take them into captivity. Southern Judah still survives under mostly bad kings, but they eventually fall under siege by the Babylonians, just like God's prophets have been saying all along. When Jerusalem eventually falls to Babylon, many of God's people are carried off into exile. But God promises them that there's a timeline on this exile. He'll bring them back to the land in 70 years. Not only that, but he'll punish the enemies who are oppressing them. He doesn't leave them alone during their exile in Babylon. He sends prophets to remind his people of his promises to them and to remind them that his character has remained the same through all the generations, through all their sins. He's always been working out his plan for restoration. When the 70 years of exile are up, he brings in Persia to defeat Babylon, and God causes the Persian kings to show favor to the exiles, not only letting them return to Jerusalem, but paying the bill for them to rebuild the city the Babylonians destroyed. So they go back home and rebuild the temple and begin to offer sacrifices and celebrate feasts again. But they quickly fall back into their own sin patterns, oppressing the poor, marrying people who don't love Yahweh, dishonoring God and His Sabbath and His laws. God sends more prophets to rebuke them. The people are turning away because God's promises don't seem to be coming true for them. He reminds them that He has been fulfilling the promises. He brought them back to the land on His exact timeline and rebuilt their city.