All right, well let's jump back in. We're gonna be back in Ezra and Nehemiah today. So you can go ahead and turn there. Happy Easter. So last week we continued our Old Testament survey by introducing the book, and we've considered a book of Ezra and Nehemiah. And we're going to treat it as one book. So last week, we got through the first part of Ezra. And we'll finish Ezra and get all the way through Nehemiah today. Last week, we did a little historical geographical overview of the time period, the nations, the empires that were around. And we got through about chapter 6 of Ezra. And today, we'll finish and get through Nehemiah, which, crazily enough, leaves us with only one book in the whole Old Testament survey. So next week, Logan is going to go through 1st and 2nd Chronicles. Well, I guess he'll go through two weeks for 1st and 2nd Chronicles. And then he'll do kind of a summary couple weeks to wrap everything up. But crazily enough, we're pretty much done, which is wild. I did want to say thank you guys for letting me teach and hang out with me for a little bit. I know it was supposed to be Stephen joining Logan for all this. So I do appreciate you guys letting me jump in. And we'll continue to pray for him. In fact, let's pray now. Father, thank you so much. We are grateful for this Lord's Day morning. We're grateful, Lord, that you indeed rose from the dead. And the resurrection, Lord, that is our hope. And we place our hope in that. Today, Lord, yes, but every day. So help us to bask in that glory this morning and to see you rightly. It's in the name of Christ we pray, amen. Okay, so as we jump back in, let's look at Ezra and Nehemiah again from kind of a thousand-foot view. When the Israelites and second kings were exiled off to Babylon, as we've talked a bunch about, it was done so kind of in three separate deportations, if you will, and it climaxed with the destruction of the temple. The textbook summarizes it like this. Oh, sorry. And then the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are kind of almost a reverse. It's showing the return in three different waves. And the textbook words it like this. Historically, Ezra and Nehemiah is about the three Babylonian exiles put in reverse. For the book tells of three returns to Jerusalem, all focused on the reconstitution of worship and the restoration of life in the promised land. So this is how we're breaking up Ezra and Nehemiah. Last week, we're going to look at it in three phases of return from the foreign lands back to the promised land. Last week, we looked at phase one, where we saw the figure of Zerubbabel, notably a descendant of King David, leading a group of exiles back from Persia into Jerusalem, where they rebuilt the temple, as we saw. We saw that he faced some opposition from some unfriendly neighbors in the land, yet they did indeed finish the temple as the prophets instructed him to. How did that go? How did that temple look? Not quite as good. So as we will see, there's an interesting parallel between all three of the phases of return that I want to point out. So in all three phases, we have a Persian king sending, or at least allowing, a figurehead to lead the charge to restore at least some aspect of the previous Israelite worship and or infrastructure. There was always some opposition from the people who were already there. And then a kind of mild success story, an anticlimactic success. So again, remember the theme that we talked about last week as we continue through the book. God, and it's right there in your handout, but that's the theme I want us to focus on. God is renewing the covenant by restoring His people, the temple, true worship, and Jerusalem. But it's not the end, and it doesn't fulfill all of the great prophecies. Thus, His people still look to the future. So last week, like I said, we saw God's faithfulness to his promises. Zerubbabel, a descendant of King David, is leading the Israelites back home. He leads the charge in the rebuilding of the temple, and we see that God has not forgotten his promises to the everlasting throne of David. His promises of building a temple where he will dwell with his people was not forgotten. He's showing his faithfulness, and yet we see an anticlimactic nature to the temple. It just was not the same. So keep this tension in the back of your mind as we continue on. So now we will continue on in the story. We're now in Ezra chapter 7, the people sin and repent, kind of right there on your handout. So this is the second phase. Last week we did the first phase, this week now we're on to the second phase. At the beginning of chapter 7 in Ezra, the story takes a big leap forward in time. We're now in about 458 BC, about 60 years after the temple was completed. Here, Ezra the priest is leading a second wave of exiles back to Jerusalem. So again, Ezra was a priest. We talked a little bit about Joshua last week being a returning priest. Zerubbabel was a returning king, Ezra is a priest, so we have that return of kingship and now a return of priesthood. Of note, Ezra was sent by the Persian King Artaxerxes, and we talked about King Artaxerxes when Jacob went through the book of Esther. You can read the letter that Artaxerxes gave to Ezra in chapter seven, verses 12 through 26. The letter describes what Ezra is to do in his return to the land, bringing all of the goods and objects required for worship. Most notably, Artaxerxes says this. And you, Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God that is in your hand, appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people in the province beyond the river, all such who know the laws of your God. And those who do not know them you shall teach." So King Artaxerxes is instructing Ezra to teach, so that's one of the big themes of Ezra. He's wise in the Torah, in the law. He knows the book very well. While Zerubbabel went to rebuild the temple, we can think of Ezra coming to rebuild the law, the worship, the covenants. Remember this link as we continue on. Another interesting thing to note is that it's no small thing of God putting in the heart of King Artaxerxes to write this letter as such. God's providential hand is at work. King Artaxerxes, a pagan king, instructing Ezra to do something for his God and for the God. We learn about Ezra in chapter seven, verses nine and 10, that the good hand of his God was on him. For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel. There's also a little lesson you can see from that verse. Ezra studies and does the word of the Lord before he presumes to teach it. So that's an interesting order there for anybody who would teach the word of God, humbling and also helps us prevent or think about some false teachers that we might think of where you say one thing and something totally different is lived out. When Ezra arrives back in the land, he finds that many Jews have intermarried with the surrounding pagan nations, a grievous sin. We read in chapter 9, verses 1 through 3, the people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations. For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And in this faithlessness, the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost." So Ezra arrives to find that the exiles who previously returned have been intermarrying with non-Israelites. And Ezra is extremely dismayed. Why? And this is a question to you. Why is this such a big deal to Ezra? Why was it bad that the exiles from Zerubbabel's time came in and they were intermarrying with other nations? Why did Ezra coming back and finding that, why was that a big deal to him that he did not like? Right, so remember, Ezra is trying to reinstate Israel's true worship. He was an expert in the Torah. And he knew his Bible, he knew the Torah. Deuteronomy 7, one through four says this. When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. Sorry, I've got something on my tape. shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons. For they would turn away your sons from following Me to serve other gods." This is Deuteronomy. This was before the Israelites came into the Promised Land. Now we have The reverse, we're coming back to the promised land, but what is Ezra trying to accomplish? The same thing that was there before. He wants to reinstitute proper and true worship. Also, in the verse in Ezra, did you notice the reference to, quote unquote, the holy race? Right there in chapter nine of Ezra. Literally, that word for race is seed. And that harkens us back to God's promise in Genesis 3.15 that he would raise up a seed to crush the serpent's head. That's back from the very beginning of our Old Testament survey. Israel was the carrier of this seed promise. If they assimilated into pagan culture and abandoned their unique relationship with the true God, they risked losing that promise. If Satan can't kill off God's people through exile, he will try to corrupt them instead. So what happens? Ezra prays, chapter nine, verses six through 15, and acknowledges the people's sin and God's holiness. Notice the gravity of Ezra's confession and how well he understands the consequences of sin. Oh Lord, the God of Israel, you are just, for we are left a remnant that has escaped as it is today. Behold, we are before you in our guilt, for none can stand before you because of this. And then in chapter 10, the people repent. And it's more than a mere acknowledgement of sin or feeling bad. It's a genuine prayer of repentance there in chapter 10. And then they take action to undo their sin, to restore right behavior toward God, and they work to reseparate themselves from the surrounding nations. So commentators seem to disagree a little bit, and I honestly don't know what I would say, but some would say, when it says to reseparate themselves, a lot of these exiles that returned either divorced their wives that they had taken, and then some commentators would say, well, maybe they weren't actual true marriages in the first place, so they were more just separating themselves from, I think that's an attempt to not acknowledge that they didn't actually get married. And it's just an interesting interplay there where we know God does not like divorce, yet they did divorce, or they did leave, so commentators kind of go back and forth on that. The main lesson, though, is that while the exiles have returned and rebuilt the temple, God has not yet completed his plan of salvation. Look at Ezra's prayer in chapter nine, verse eight. But now, for a brief moment, favor has been shown by the Lord our God to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold within his holy place, that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our slavery. The remnant has indeed returned, but it is only a little reviving from slavery. It makes us say this can't be everything, there must be more to come. Now we will continue on in Nehemiah, sorry, Nehemiah chapter one, gonna go through one through seven here. And this brings us to the third phase of reestablishing the people back in the land. Nearly 100 years after the exiles first returned, Jerusalem's walls are still broken down. So that's the focus of this third phase, is Jerusalem's walls. The first one, we had the temple. The second phase, we had the Torah. And now we're focusing on the walls. This means that the people, if the walls are broken down, this means that the people and the Davidic line, the priest-led worship, they're all still vulnerable to Israel's enemies, both militarily and morally. So Nehemiah is a government official living in Persia, in a place called Susa, and he hears about this. He hears that the walls are still not built, not the way that they should be, and he weeps and sets himself to prayer. He's sad that this wall, why, so Ezra was sad that, or Nehemiah's sad that the walls are gone. Why is Nehemiah so concerned with the walls of Jerusalem? Why would it be important I think, considering what we've just talked about too, why would it be so important for Nehemiah to want the walls to be rebuilt? Yep, so. Yeah, security. Militarily, there's also another dimension I'm thinking of, but that's exactly right, but there's another thing as well. Think about it in a more spiritual sense, I guess. Not really spiritual, but. Yes, exactly. So we just talked about not intermarrying. This is God's people right here. He didn't want them in Deuteronomy. He didn't want them to intermarry. I don't know. Those are his people. He didn't want them to mix. Same thing here with the walls there, just maintains that separateness. These are God's chosen people, they are separate from the surrounding nations. So yes, militarily, that is a huge part of it, security. But it also highlights the separateness of, they're trying to return and be what they were supposed to be in the first place, God's chosen people group right here. So, Nehemiah prays. What's interesting about his prayer in chapter one is that like so many other prayers in the Bible, Nehemiah begins with a confession of sin in verses six and seven. He says, even I and my father's house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses. And verses 10 and 11, he premises his request upon God's glory. So most good prayers of the Bible are looking to God's glory for the ultimate foundation for why you pray. In chapter two, Nehemiah travels to Jerusalem about a decade after Ezra returned. And of note, again, looking at the parallel, he was sent after the same Persian king, Artaxerxes, he asked, in this case he asked Artaxerxes if he could go and return to Jerusalem, who did indeed send him. When he gets there, he's able to convince the people to rebuild the walls. A quick side note, look at what he says in chapter two, verse 20. The God of heaven will make us prosper, and we, his servants, will arise and build. An interesting verse, these are all over scripture, but an interesting verse that highlights both God's divine sovereignty and human responsibility in the same verse right next to each other. Neither is compromised nor ignored. Those who love the word of God exult in and tremble at his sovereignty, and yet also live lives of moral responsibility and accountability. Returning to our story, we see the Jews experience, again, the parallel, opposition from their neighbors. These enemies first mocked the Jews for undertaking such a difficult and expensive task of engineering as they tried to rebuild the walls. Look at chapter four, verses one through three. Now when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews. He said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and burned ones at that? Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, yes, what are they building? If a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall. So they're kind of mocking the Jews for even attempting to do this. But the people are faithful, and they steadily make progress, and the pagans' mockery turns to a plot to attack the builders. So instead of mocking them, now they're planning on actually attacking them. Look at Nehemiah 4, 15 through 16. When our enemies heard that it was known to us and that God had frustrated their plan, we all returned to the wall, each to his own. From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. So as they build the walls, they're having to take up arms and defend themselves while they try to finish God's work. So their enemies try and fail to undermine Nehemiah personally. by slandering his reputation. So it goes from mocking to action, and now they're turning to slandering Nehemiah himself. Here's Nehemiah 6, 5 through 9. In the same way, Sanballat for the fifth time sent his servant to me with an open letter in his hand, and it was written, it is reported among the nations, and Geshem also says it, that you and the Jews intend to rebel. That is why you are building the wall. And according to these reports, you wish to become their king. And you have also set up prophets to proclaim concerning you in Jerusalem, there is a king in Judah. And now the king will hear of these reports. So now come, let us take counsel together." So they're slandering Nehemiah, saying, you're just doing this because you want to take up the throne for yourself. You just want to be the king. So they're slandering him. This shows us Satan will sometimes try to attack God's people, especially their leaders, with a frontal assault. Sometimes it can be through more subtle means, but as we've seen time and time again, God is faithful to protect His people regardless. Interestingly, Nehemiah also experiences opposition from within Israel. Chapter five, some of the builders begin to complain that the work is too expensive to give in their modest means. So Nehemiah convinces the nobles and the officials to stop charging interest, which allows the work to continue. In the end, the people complete the wall around Jerusalem in less than a year. And this section of the text ends with these encouraging words in chapter seven, verses 73. So the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, some of the people, the temple servants, and all Israel lived in their towns. And that return to rest sounds similar to those key passages in Joshua when the Israelites first took the land. So looking at this, it is really interesting parallels between Joshua and Nehemiah. So what do we have in the book of Joshua? The conquest of Canaan. They're coming in for the first time. God has promised them this land. He's promised to drive out the nations before them, and they come in and they take conquest, or they take the land. Some theologians have even called Nehemiah the second Joshua, and some have called Ezra the second Moses, Nehemiah being more of the you know structural infrastructure thing and more of a conquest idea with Ezra being the leader of the Torah and the law. For instance, another parallel, Nehemiah went out by night by the valley gates to the dragon spring and to the dungate and inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire. This is kind of an interesting similar scene to Joshua sending secret spies to Jericho. And then what do we have in Jericho? Walls, except in Joshua walls are being torn down. for God to take, for them to take their place. In Nehemiah, walls are being put up. So in a way, Nehemiah could be seen as a reconquest of Canaan, which, once again, highlights the tension we've been speaking of. God has not forgotten his promises or his people. Any thoughts so far as we continue on? It is an interesting parallel, yeah. Right, yeah, we'll get into that at the very end, for sure. This is all pointing to something greater. Yeah, walls, I think, there's walls in both of these books, and I think they kind of hearken to something more than just a physical wall at some level. Yes, yeah, yeah. And there's an even more ultimate fulfillment that we can think of in Revelation. Yeah, it's interesting, the fulfillments of some of these prophecies are Not piecemeal, that's not the right way to think about it, but we have a big fulfillment in Jesus Christ that we'll talk about, and then a consummation, even, that we think about in the new heavens and the new earth. Okay, continuing on, Nehemiah chapter eight. So, we come to the part that everything else has been driving to, the reestablishment of the covenant. We read in chapter 8 of all the people gathering before Ezra as he reads the law. This is Nehemiah chapter 8 verses 1 through 3. And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the water gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the water gate from early morning until midday in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. Look at eight, verse eight. They, that is the Levites, read from the book, from the law of God clearly, and they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading. It's interesting to note the people's reaction. Upon hearing the law read and expounded, it says in verse six that they shouted, amen, amen. But also in verse nine, it says that they wept. Why do you think they were weeping at the reading of the law? And they also realized that they had not kept that law, and they have not been keeping that law. They have broken that law. The priest told the people there not to mourn, but to celebrate at the reading of God's words. But it does seem that the people were rightly mourning their sin, their breaking of God's law, and also rightly celebrating God's grace in their lives. It was both a beautiful and a sad thing all at the same time, which really is an interesting view of the law in itself. So the long rebuilding and renewal process is complete when the people bind themselves again into covenant with God. Chapter 10, verse 29. All the people now join with their brothers, their nobles, and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God's law that was given by Moses, the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord, our Lord, and His rules and His statutes. So in chapters 8 through 12, we have this description of the reestablishment of the Old Covenant. They had been exiled off for their disobedience, and now we're having it reestablished. The Old Covenant is being restored. The people are in the land. The line of David lives on, and therefore so does the seed of the woman. Priests, they're making sacrifices again on the altar. The temple is rebuilt. The walls around Jerusalem have been rebuilt, and it's secure. The law is publicly read and explained, and the people formally renew their commitment to God's covenant. So, is this what we've been waiting for? Is this the end? Sadly, no, it's not. We've talked before about how it's just not quite the same. And really, it kind of has never been the ultimate goal. Are we right? No sooner do the people renew the covenant than they break it again. Here's our anticlimactic ending. Chapter 13 describes the temple that Zerubbabel rebuilt being neglected. It describes the Sabbath being violated and broken. breaking the Torah that Ezra the priest worked so hard to reconstitute. It even describes Nehemiah's walls and gates being disregarded of their proper Sabbath use. And once again, they are intermarrying with the surrounding nations. So everything that has been rebuilt is again being profaned. So throughout this whole entire Old Testament survey course, what have we seen? God having unconditional promises and also promises of curses for disobedience. And what do we have in Ezra and Nehemiah? God proving that he's still faithful to his promises. And yet, despite God's kindness, the people are still rebelling. Even after the reestablishment of Israelite worship, disobedience remains. And so we see that same problem again and again, which is sin. The law is not yet written on their hearts. This is not the full arrival of the kingdom of God. This is not the new covenant. With new hearts and the new heaven and the new earth, sin and death is still reigning. And this is the key to understanding the tension. What has been reestablished? The old covenant, which is a good thing, but it is not the new. So this really gets us into discussing what is the purpose and point of the old covenant in the beginning, and I will say, There is different views on how you can view these covenants and the way that the Old Covenant relates to the New Covenant. And there's room for all kinds of different views. But we've been speaking of one that really leans on typology. And we'll talk about that in a little bit more. If you disagree with that, that's OK, too. There's plenty of room. But that's the method we've been looking at. But really, the ultimate problem is sin. In the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, did not provide a solution for the Israelites' ultimate problem, which is their sin against a holy God. So what Ezra and Nehemiah describes is the reestablishment of a good thing. The Old Covenant was a real and good covenant with God and his people, the nation and people of Israel. It was not a bad thing. I don't want to lower it in any means. But the Old Testament, with its various covenants and promises, always held within it types and shadows of a greater thing to come. And despite Ezra and Nehemiah's good work, their work also reestablished types and shadows of a greater reality, something greater to come. And I would like everybody to turn there to Hebrews chapter 10, verses 10. This kind of drives the point home. Hebrews 10. Sorry, Hebrews 10, verse one. Hebrews 10 verses 1, for since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. And this highlights why the end of Ezra and Nehemiah still has such an anticlimactic ending. Ezra and Nehemiah did indeed restore the covenant. The true Israelite worship has returned. God has been faithful to his promises. And this is a glorious thing that God has done. However, the author of Hebrews here is expounding the fact that the old covenant is not the end in the first place. So even though that that has been reestablished, it is still, it itself is still pointing to something more. and it doesn't deal with the ultimate problem of sin. We see an anti-climax. We still see sin and disobedience ruining things. This does not mean the Old Covenant was bad or disgraceful. On the contrary, it was good. And indeed, it was there for a purpose. It contained a shadow of the good things to come, but not necessarily the true form of these realities. It pointed to something much greater than itself. What did it do? It carried the seed of the Messiah to come. It revealed to the Israelites that they are sinners. Four, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. So God was gracious, even in the Old Covenant, to provide a sacrificial system that did indeed atone for the people's breaking of the Old Covenant. They could take the blood of bulls and goats because they had the Mosaic Covenant that they broke. If you did these things, you did not measure up. Well, you needed atonement for the breaking of that covenant. And what did you do? You sacrificed a bull, sacrificed a goat. You used God's gracious provision of the means he had to atone for the breaking of that covenant. But, then we read in Hebrews, the blood of bulls and goats does not take away sin. What do we do with that? Well, we recognize that while that sacrifice did indeed atone for the breaking of the old covenant, It didn't take away the sin. Hebrews chapter 10, they had to do it over and over and over. Why? Because they sinned over and over and over. But God didn't just provide the blood of bulls and goats. It was a real sacrifice. It really did something. It really atoned for the breaking of that old covenant. But it also pointed to, there was something deeper there that pointed to an ultimate sacrifice that we just looked at very deeply in Good Friday. And we'll look at today. the triumph and resurrection on Easter Sunday. So it pointed to the need for an ultimate sacrifice, one that could only be achieved by God himself. So a greater salvation, greater than the exodus, greater than the return from the exile, must yet be coming. A greater kingdom, greater than David's, greater than Solomon's, greater than Ezra's and Nehemiah's, still awaits. And this made me think of I'm going to read a little passage from this book here that's describing something similar. I'm going to read it to us as we close. For all the quantity of revelation given to Israel, it was given through the mode of mystery and the medium of typology. So typology meaning it's pointing to something greater than itself. The promises of the future kingdom and covenant of Messiah are all contained within the language of this typical realm. The revelation of the perfected future through the imperfect present, that is, the typological nature of the kingdom of Israel and its covenant, constituted the mystery of Christ. The messianic hopes of the people under the old covenant, therefore, were commonly restricted to an idealized version of their present existence. They saw the Messiah bringing them victory over foreign powers, or rebuilding the temple, or inviting the nations to become Jewish. But what God had in store for them and the world was far better than they could have imagined. They failed to realize just how much the new covenant would not be like the old covenant, and why that was such a blessed reality. So these Israelites, they're When they see these prophecies of the Messiah, they're kind of expecting it to just make it even a more beautiful Jewish nation, when really the new covenant and what God was showing and trying to reveal to them throughout time was that there's a much deeper and more beautiful and greater thing coming. Israel's hopes rose and, as we saw in chapter 13 of Nehemiah there, fell with restoration from exile and the rebuilding of the temple. But they never regained their former glory, nor did one of their kings sit on the throne." And soon after this, Nehemiah, I didn't mention this, this is the last book in the chronology of the history of the Old Testament. Soon after, the prophetic voice of the Spirit fell silent for centuries, until one day, Luke chapter 1, 26. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, greetings, O favored one. The Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying, trying to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and he will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there will be no end. What have we been talking about this whole Old Testament survey, the Davidic covenant? It's always been pointing to something more and more. And here we have Jesus Christ being born of a Virgin Mary coming to establish the kingdom that will never end. So that child is born, and shepherds and royal wise men were informed of the birth of the King of the Jews. Interesting. The King of the Jews. This Christ, the Old Testament is Really, the New Testament is nothing without the Old Testament. If you don't have this, you miss the glory of what Christ did and what he came to do. Then a man named John declared the arrival of the Lord, one vastly greater than he, and Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. So the kingdom of God being at hand with the arrival of Jesus Christ takes on even more meaning when we think about this whole Old Testament survey. Neighbors heard that a man named Jesus was healing diseases and casting out demons and preaching about the kingdom of God. And Andrew found his brother Simon Peter and said, we have found the Messiah, which means Christ. At last, this is it, he is here. Praise be to God. Thoughts, questions? He didn't come and fulfill the ultimate sacrifice only for the Jews. Kind of what Guy was getting at, bringing up Ephesians. There's an interesting thing with the walls, because as Christians, it's like the scope has just been broadened to every nation, tribe, and tongue, but there's still an interesting wall. The Christians are God's people. We are God's chosen people. We're not to intermarry. we are still to be a distinct people, a light on a hill. Yet, that wall is not just around Jerusalem anymore, it's around God's people all the way around. Right. Right. Yeah, now. Right. does show to the Jews, as well, that this sacrifice that just happened way out there, it does fulfill something here, as well. Right. That curve being torn. It was torn from the top to the bottom, and it wasn't a little piece of paper like a shirt. Right. It was like two inches. Sure, sure. It tore from the top. How does that happen? Yeah, that's an interesting point. Yeah, interesting. Right Right, yeah It's interesting. That's right. It's like the end of this is it seems like okay. Well everything Happened the way that it should we've kind of we're back here, but then it's like well, I There's more to come. And then on converse side, you just see all the glory of the New Testament because you have the Old Testament, because you have, I mean, God's people, Israelites, He did everything that He did for a very specific reason. He was preparing the way. It even says Christ came in the fullness of time. You can think about that in a lot of different ways, for the geopolitical reasons we talked about last time, or exactly what He was doing with His people throughout all of history. When Moses read them the law, he said, you're going to do this? Yeah, yeah, we're going to do this. He got this. And they couldn't. And it just keeps showing that without the Holy Spirit taking notice of our sin, even today, things that are happening now are probably more appalling to us old people than it is to the young people, because those things were not acceptable. Still pretty appalling as a young person. Right. Right, you're right, exactly. And it is important to remember, sin and disobedience is still there. The difference is, it's no longer reigning. We still sin, we are still disobedient, but the ultimate sacrifice has already been accomplished on our behalf, and Christ and us in Christ are now reigning over the sin and death. that couldn't have been done without Christ, yet we still, the disobedience hadn't gone away, and that points to what you're talking about in Revelation. There's still, even now, a more ultimate consummation. It's been fulfilled, but there's still more to look forward to, and we live in this kind of in-between time where we're still living with Christ, who has secured it for us, and yet we still have much to look forward to. Okay, let me pray, and we can go worship. Father, thank you so much. Thank you, Lord, that you have broken down the wall of hostility, and there is now one man instead of two, Lord. We are grateful that you have been so kind to us, Lord, and so merciful to us, Lord. It's easy to look at these old Israelites and kind of laugh at their sin, yet, Lord, we are just like them. If it wasn't for you and your Holy Spirit and what you did on the cross and your work in our lives, Lord, we would be just as dead in our trespasses of sin. So I thank you, Lord, that you have been kind and merciful to us. And we go, Lord, today, and we look at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are grateful, Lord, that you rose from the dead and defeated death and sin once and for all. So we're not like the old covenant where we must go and take the blood of bulls and goats and do it time after time after time because, Lord, you have done it once, and you proved that you did it once and for all on that third day when you rose again, Lord. Thank you, Lord. It's in the name of Christ that we pray. Amen. It is finished.