Welcome back to equipping hour. We're resuming our study through the Bible storyline, Chronicles of Redemption. Has everyone gotten one of the handouts that's provided in the back? Does anyone need one? Greg will, yeah, we can get one up here. Thank you, Greg. I have a question for you. Wait, first let's pray and I'll ask my question. Let's seek God's blessing. All right. Father, we thank you for gathering us this morning. Thank you for your word where you've, you've declared to us. where we came from, who you are, your purposes in history, where everything is going, things that we would never have been able to figure out on our own, even in our sin and blindness, we wouldn't have even wanted to figure these things out. But you have revealed yourself to us and you've shown us, especially Christ is the centerpiece of all of this plan. And we thank you that we who are in Him have, everything that you have to give. We have glory, we have heaven, we have a living hope. We pray that as we study the storyline really that preceded us and the story that we exist in, that we would be encouraged, that we would know you better, that we'd have a better sense of where we are in Christ and where things are going, that we'd be encouraged to live in faith in Him. And we pray all this for glory in Jesus' name, amen. I have a question for you. Does anyone know, can anyone tell us what a watershed is? Because you heard the term a watershed. A watershed moment? I'm thinking more physically, geographically. Because you're right, there's a figurative sense of the term a watershed moment. Yeah, David. I could. That may be why I asked the question. No, David, you may know. I'm going to put you on the spot. I know you've read books about it. Yes, yes. So it's like part of a river system, right? A watershed is all the area that captures runoff that goes to a given stream. So if you're going to have a big rainstorm, a watershed is all the area that water would flow from into a given river. So you can actually map it out. Say here's the Sacramento River Watershed. You could draw on a map. You can go look it up. Look, look, Google, not now. After Sacramento River Watershed, and you'll see a map of this outline. Those are all the areas that if it rains, that water will end up going into the Sacramento River. Does anyone know what watershed we're in right here? Yeah, okay, you may know the tributary at your house. Right, dry creek. We are in the American River Watershed here, just so you know. I'm pretty sure. Anyway, you can go look that up too, just so you know or don't know. I think we're in the American River Watershed. What does this have to do with what we're doing, the biblical storyline? Well, the Bible is, we could view it like a big watershed. And a watershed can be, especially for a big, a big river, not like a little creek. It can be a very big and diverse place. You can have all kinds of landscapes. You can have urban area. You can have grasslands. You can have forests. You can have all kinds of different elevations, flatlands that are low elevation. You can have high, jagged mountains. And they can all be part of the same watershed, meaning these are all the areas that contribute runoff to a river. In fact, a lot of, in California, our watersheds are very diverse. They start in the mountains, and then they end up getting down to the lowlands in the valley. But they have this one thing in common, right? The one thing they have in common, all these different areas, is that they contribute water to the one main stream. And in a sense, we could view the Bible that way, that even though it's a very diverse book, and there are a lot of different kinds of literary genres, meaning there's poetry, there's narrative, there's law, there's all kinds of different moments in history and different situations that are going on, and there's a lot of different stories, And yet there is one mainstream that it's all pointing to. There's one mainstream that it all gets to in some degree of directness or another. So not everything is as directly connected to the mainstream, but some parts are like right on the mainstream. So we could view the whole Bible like a watershed and the mainstream that it all leads to is the work of God in Christ to redeem fallen humanity from sin and to reestablish God's kingdom on earth. And we've talked about this as a story of redemption and a story of the kingdom of God, really God redeeming sinful fallen man. into a restored kingdom of God on earth under his son, Jesus. And that's a story we've been telling as we've gone through this series, we've gone through the Bible. Now, in nine lessons that were not the introduction, we've covered 117 chapters of the Bible, which may sound like a lot, but it's only 13% of the Old Testament and 10% of the Bible. That's half of the series. But these are really foundational That's why we spent more time on Genesis, the earlier chapters. But in the next two lessons, we're going to finish the whole of Testament. which means we have to cover a lot of diverse ground very quickly. It will be painfully quickly at times. And actually the way this course is laid out, it is supposed to be one lesson, but that was just too painful. So we decided to break it into two, because there's just so much going on in between where we, does anyone remember, now it wasn't last week, it was Easter or Resurrection Sunday, we didn't have equipping hour. Two weeks ago, can anyone remind us where we left off in the Bible storyline? Yes, so we had where Israel is in the wilderness. They've been redeemed from bondage in Egypt. And God has begun to give him his law. And the week before that we started seeing the Ten Commandments. and the beginning of the law, really the whole law extends from the Ten Commandments. And then two weeks ago, our last lesson, we saw the part of the law that deals in particular in Leviticus with the worship system in the tabernacle. And the tabernacle was the place God established where his glory would particularly dwell among the people. And because God's presence and his glory particularly dwelled among the people in the tabernacle, there was a very special set of worship procedures, that they were to do sacrifices to atone for sin, And really all of Leviticus is that effect propagating out into the whole life of the people. The fact that the Holy God lives among them. What were they to do about that? So that was where we left off. And we're going to cover really the high points today, from really the next two weeks we're covering the high points from there until the end of the Old Testament, like I said. Today we're going from there, from the wilderness, Egypt, I mean, Israel in the wilderness, to Solomon's kingdom, which is really the high point of Israel in the story of the Old Testament. So we're, we're going to do that point by point here, cover some major high points. So you see in your outline, the first major point we have here is, is really, we're going to talk about the book of numbers, wandering hearts, wandering feet. So when Israel left Egypt, where were they headed? What was, what was the goal? The promised land, which was where? Canaan, right? Which is where Israel now is. It was up, up north and east of Egypt, they were to go. And they were on their way. They had stopped at Sinai, but they were continuing. And that's where Numbers picks up. As they're headed to Canaan, the land that God, and we call it the promised land, but it's promised, to whom was it promised? Israel, and in particular starting with Abraham, right? It was promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs we call them, that their descendants would inherit this land. And now they've been delivered from Egypt and when God, remember in Egypt, approached Israel and started this deliverance. He said, now I'm going to fulfill my promise to bring them into the land that I promised your fathers. So we see that's happening. That's why it's the promised land. And the goal, remember, is the establishment of God's kingdom. That was what he had promised to Abraham, that he would give them a place where he would rule over them with blessing and they would be his people and he would be their God. Essentially, that was what was lost in Eden. God's people and God's place under God's rule. And because of sin, we were expelled from there. And then the promise to Abraham was really the reestablishment of those, of that kingdom, those things. God's people and God's place under God's rule. And that would happen. Look, we have rule, we have the law. We have people, we have the nation of Israel. They're now very numerous. And all we need now is land, right? So here they go into Canaan. But after this dramatic deliverance from Egypt that we saw, sadly, the picture we get in numbers is really bleak, morally. we get a really sad picture of grumbling and rebellion against God. So that's what your sub point A is, rebellion. And I have all throughout this lesson, I have a number of references. We're not going to look at very many of them, but just so you can see the main themes. And if you want to look and trace these through yourself, I gave you a bunch of references. So there's a lot of rebellion. It really, really numbers is a lot more kind of law giving that's sprinkled throughout. There's all these incidents of rebellion. physical conditions like food. Rebellion over authority like Korah's rebellion in chapter 16 where they rebel against Moses and Aaron. And rebellion really the, the pinnacle or I guess you could say the low point of their rebellion is rebellion over entering the land. And that's what we're going to look at in chapters 13 and 14, the incident at Kadesh Barnea. So, if you turn to Numbers 13, we're going to look there for a, for a few moments. Now, You may recall that I'm gonna set up the story for you. They're getting near the promised land and 12 spies, one man from each tribe of Israel is sent to scope out the land and see what it's like. They're about to enter this land that God promised. And they say, go look and see what you see. What are the crops like? What are the people like? What are the conditions like? And let's look at starting at verse 25 of Numbers 13. Would someone be willing to read Numbers 13, 25 through the end of the chapter? Verse 33. Yeah, great, thanks. Yeah. At the end of 40 days, they returned from spying out the land, and they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the people of Israel in the wilderness of Paran. and showed them the fruit of the land. And they told him, we came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negev. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the Jordan. But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it. Then the men who had gone up with him said, we are not able to go up against the people. They are stronger than we. So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, the land through which we have gone to spy, spy it out. is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim. And we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them. Okay, so the report on the land is, on the one hand, it's really good in terms of bounty. It's milk and honey as promised. And just before our passage, they had, you may remember there's this cluster of grapes so big that two men had to carry it on a pole. So they're like, man, this place is amazing in terms of bounty. And yet the report is overall, what's the report they bring back? Yeah, it's no good. There's too many people, and they're big, and they're too powerful for us. We can't do it. So this is an example of faithlessness. God had promised this land to them, and they said, well, yeah, but... Yeah, but what about these people? What about, we can't take them. So why, what about the history of these people that we've seen should, because first of all, we need to relate to them. If we were told to enter a land with people who are much more visibly powerful than us, we would at least be concerned or frightened. Let's not kid ourselves. And yet, what about their history should compel them to trust God that he will overcome for them? Things, okay, what have they seen him do, exactly? They just saw him part the Red Sea and get them through, yeah. What else? He's been raining down food daily for them in the wilderness. What else? Even reaching back into their history farther, they would know the stories. Water from the rock. The 10 plagues on Egypt. Now all those things are things these people had seen with their very eyes. And if you go back into their history, the stories and this, the Pentateuch was written by Moses. So they may have even had Genesis or they at least have the stories. They know that God had promised a son to Baron Abraham and Sarah and given them one. They know that he had provided a ram so that Isaac, the son of promise could live. That he had sent Joseph ahead of the nation into Egypt to save them from the famine. So, and then all those things they'd seen in Exodus and in the wilderness, even their own generation. So they've seen God appear in terrible glory at Mount Sinai to give them the law. They'd seen the pillar of cloud and fire guiding them every day. So they have a lot of data. They have a lot of God showing himself to them as powerful and trustworthy. And yet they, and we ought to relate. They saw, yeah, but what's in front of our eyes is very frightening and maybe we ought to not go ahead. This is a faithless, tragic display. I'm sorry, all the display of God's glory, sadly, was not enough to overcome their faithlessness in not entering. So, can someone read chapter 14, verses 1 to 4? Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation Thank you. So the faithlessness is reaching fever pitch now. It's not just let's not go forward. It's let's go back. Let's ditch these leaders. Let's go back to the safety of Egypt. which is tragic that they're abandoning all that God's done for them. So in the verses that we're not going to read that ensue, God appears and shows his glory and kind of stops this rebellion from actually happening. getting to Moses and evicting him. And actually God threatens to wipe them out. And it's a great prayer Moses gives. He intercedes for the people on the basis of God's promises to the patriarchs. It's really wonderful. And God relents. But there is a consequence. There's an outcome of this rebellion, which we see in verses 26 to 35 of Numbers 14. So would someone be willing to read that? Numbers 14. 26 to 35. And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. Say to them, As I live, declare it to the Lord. What do you say when you hear it? I will do it to you. Your dead bodies should fall in this wilderness, and if all your number are listed in the census from twenty years old and upwards, you have grumbled against me, not for one I swore that I would make thee dwell, except Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, the son of Nun. But your little ones, whom you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall show the land that you have. They shall know the land that you have rejected. But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years, and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. according to the number of days in which you spy the land, 40 days a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity 40 years, and you shall know my pleasure. I, the Lord, have spoken. Surely this will I do to all who sit in congregation, who are gathered together against me. In this wilderness, they shall come to a cruel end, and there they shall die. Thank you. So the consequence is what? Not that he's abandoning them or wiping them out, but what is it? Now this generation does not get to go and they have to spin their wheels for 40 years. And wait until they all die so their kids can go in. So that is the consequence of their faithlessness. So it is a bleak and sad picture in numbers. Especially such a drop off from what God had done for these people already. Oddly, ironically, another theme that kind of emerges, especially later on in the book of Numbers, is nevertheless, amidst all this repeated rebellion, especially Kadesh Barnea, this one we just read about, There's these examples of victory and blessing from God for Israel. So that we have several different victories over kings. So they're in the area across, it's called the Transjordan. If you think of Israel, Israel's in the west, and then just east of the land of Israel, there's Jordan River. And Israel is to the east of that, which is the area called the Transjordan. They're across the Jordan. And there are some kings there who oppose them, who actually attack them, and God gives victory to Israel. So, you have in chapters, chapter 21, some of those examples. There's Og, the king of Bashan, and others like that. So, there is victory God gives, and there's especially this really interesting which we will just touch on, not really get to look into, but Balak and Balaam in chapters 22 to 25. So the Moabite king, Balak, sees Israel. He sees how powerful they are. They're getting victory over other kings. He's like, what do we do? We got to stem this threat. So he goes and he tries to hire out a prophet named Balaam from an old faraway land to come in and curse Israel. And essentially Balaam is prohibited from doing that by God. He tries, he tries repeatedly to curse Israel. And but he says, I just got to say what God gives me. And God gives him nothing but blessing for Israel. And he tries three different times to curse Israel and God keeps giving him instead blessings and they escalate. So this picture, like he promised Abraham that he will bless, I will bless you and make your name great. And we see that happening that even the nations that try to curse them can't. The nations that try to defeat them can't. So God is turning a curse into blessing. He's turning threats into victory, even while in this very same book, juxtaposed right next to their rebellion. They look really bad in this book, but God is doing great things for them. So why would it, why would that, be shown to us. Why would Moses, in writing Numbers, put those things next to each other? The theme of Israel's rebellion, continued rebellion, and God's continued victory and blessing for them. Yeah, Sam. I think, Ben, if we go back to chapter 14, God says, I will pardon them not ever again as they continue on God's blessing, though the consequences Because of that pardon, because of that forgiveness, there will be victory. And even here, when the king of the Negev was going to come out and fight with them, they vowed before the Lord that if you give us victory, we will destroy all of their cities. And they were obedient in those instances. So the consequences of sin still stand. Right, so there are some examples where after the rebellion of Kadesh-Bernadette, they did obey God. They did destroy the peoples. Yes, so there was some faithfulness, that's true. And God, you're right, in his, in Numbers 14, when he declares the consequences of the rebellion, he says, I'm pardoning them. So, all the blessing that he had laid upon Abraham, and that he had renewed upon Israel in Egypt, in his deliverance of them, he's not removed that. He's saying, I'm still with them, I'm still blessing them, even though there are consequences to their rebellion. So we see this weird pattern, and this is going to continue throughout their history. That God is being faithful, God is being gracious, God is giving victory and blessing, and meanwhile they are largely, not entirely, but largely squandering it with sin and rebellion. So there's that interesting mix. It's very, the Old Testament absolutely does not whitewash Israel's sin. If it were written in the interest of propping up Israel's interest, it would be a poorly written document. It really does not make Israel look good at all. It makes God look very good. in light of their, their sin. And so, that brings us to the second main point, covenant blessing, covenant curse. So, as we see kind of the, the foreshadowing, if you'll turn to Deuteronomy 28, the foreshadowing of this faithlessness butting up against God's faithfulness In Deuteronomy, 40 years later, as God had said, the generation that rebelled has died off. The kids are ready to go into the promised land. And Moses, through Moses, God gives the law again. Kind of renews the law to them. Renews the covenant to them as they enter the land. That's what Deuteronomy is. And at the end of Deuteronomy, he kind of He kind of levels with them and says, look, here's, I've given you the law. What are you going to do with it? And here are the consequences. Chapter 28 is the consequences of obedience or disobedience. And the results are a stark contrast. Can someone read? So the first, the first, I don't want to say half, as you'll see, the first portion of chapter 28, is verses 1 to 14. It's a blessings of obedience. Can someone read that? It's a little bit long, but can someone read Deuteronomy 28? Yeah, Joe. 14. God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your cattle. The increase of your herds, and the young of And he has sworn to you, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, and all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. And the Lord will make you abound in prosperity in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground within the land that the Lord swore to your father. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I am commanding you today, be careful to do them. And if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them. Thank you. So what are some of the areas of life that God will bless if they keep his law? Safety, physical safety. What was that? Abundance. So, your cattle, your sheep, your fields, everything will abound. Your womb, yeah, you'll have many children. Be abundant there. What else? Yeah, enemies will be defeated. They'll go out, does it say seven ways? They come in one way, go out seven ways against you. That means they're scattering before them. They'll fear them before they even fight. What was that? They'll reign, which is a source of a lot of that abundance of livestock. Yeah. Yes, so they will be the city on a hill that He promised them. Remember in Exodus 19, He said that He's making them a kingdom of priests with this covenant. So you will be this standout example of holiness, a holy nation. So there's all these realms of life. It will just be overall, spiritually, and materially, and socially, it will be great if you obey. But then, the rest of the chapter, now if you just scan and look in your Bible, any math majors in, I know there's some math majors in here, but you don't probably have to be a math major. Which is longer, or estimator, any construction estimator, anybody, which is longer, verses 15 to 68, or verses one to 14? verses 15 to 68 is the curses if you disobey. And it's way longer. And he gets, so if you just, just glancing at the beginning, it's kind of parallel, right? Cursed in verse 16. Cursed in the city. Cursed in the field. Cursed your basket and eating bowl. Fruit of your womb. Fruit of the ground. So, it's all the same categories he's going through that he blessed. Now, he's cursing. But it's so long. He goes into a lot more detail actually. So, if you look at verse you look at verse 36, the Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone. What is that predicting? It's captivity, exile, if they disobey, if they reject His covenant. What about verse 52? They shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout all your land. So, siege, conquest, which happened before exile. If you read chapter 28, honestly, if you know the story of the Old Testament, it's very prophetic. And you start seeing things going, wow, he's being very specific. And it gets ugly if you read on. He predicts cannibalism during that siege. It's very, very ugly. if they disobey. So, he's setting before them, it ends at the very end of the chapter, they're being scattered and they end up returning to Egypt. It's just so depressing if they disobey. So, based on the level of detail and attention that God gives to these two, I don't want to call them halves, these two sides of the ledger, which do you think seems more likely? Which seems more prophetic? Maybe he's kind of implying that you're gonna choose door two. And in fact, what that's implied here, but if you look at chapter 30, this is sub point C, after disobedience, after disobedience, there's restoration and heart circumcision. That doesn't even end the story. That in fact, if I'll read chapter 30, verses one to 10. And when all these things have come upon you, Door number two, the blessing and the curse, which I said before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where your God has driven you. So after the exile that I said would happen if you disobey. verse two, and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey His voice in all that I command you today with all your heart and with all your soul, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, and He will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will take you. And the Lord your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it, and He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. And the Lord your God will put all these curses on your foes and enemies who persecuted you. And you shall again obey the voice of the Lord and keep all his commandments that I command you today. And then he goes on and describes the blessings that will come upon them. So amazingly, after all that bleak picture, all the way through 28 of if you disobey, if you disobey, and then in 30, he comes back to that and says, and then after all that's happened, If you turn to me, I'll restore even more than you lost. I'll bring you back. And what's the key thing that he adds to their situation in this, in chapter 30? Not just blessing in the cattle and the womb and the fields, but what else? What blessing that really gets to the heart of what went wrong? Yes. So there's a repentance that would happen. A heart turning. What else? The Lord will delight in them. What about verse six? That's a strange phrase. He will circumcise your heart. Now remember circumcision is the covenant marker that he gave to Abraham that was to mark them as distinct under God's covenant. And what he's saying is the problem that will lead to all this disobedience and all this cursing is that your heart is not distinct. The inner, remember we saw in Pharaoh that the heart, his heart was hardened against God and all the plagues and all the outpouring and the display of God's glory. He didn't receive it rightly. He hardened himself in rebellion. So we saw this idea that one's heart condition is actually a very important issue with regard to how one responds to God. And Pharaoh is an example of a hard heart that responds very badly to God. And what God's saying is, if all this happens, Israel, to you, the problem will be your heart is essentially no different than Pharaoh's. But what I'm gonna do is deal with that problem. I'm gonna give you a circumcise. I'm gonna mark your heart. as distinct. The inner working of your soul, your values, your desires, your thinking will be marked as different. And the interesting thing about the law and all that he's promised, all that he's given in his commandments, in his worship Levitical tabernacle system is it's all external. He gives them these great conditions. He's saying, I'm going to send you into this abundant, bountiful land. I'm going to conquer your enemies and give you this great set of commandments that will cause you to be a city on a hill and a holy nation. but their hearts are what they are. And their hearts will be the source of all the problems that ensue throughout the storyline of the Old Testament. So what he's predicting, even before the law, before the ink is dry on the law, he's predicting, A, you will break this law, you will fail this law. B, I will make provision after that to deal with the heart issue that leads to that failure. This is the very first, appearance of what later is more fully developed in the New Covenant promise, right, in the prophets of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, that there will actually be a change of heart, a new heart, a heart with God's law written on it, or Ezekiel calls it a stony heart taken away and a heart of flesh that responds to God put in, in its place. What is here kind of in seed form is called a circumcised heart that will love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul that you may live. So this is an amazing panorama, even from before they get into the land, this panorama of the history of the rest of the Old Testament, and even beyond, even to the new covenant that Christ would bring for his people Israel. So gloriously, even though it's dire, that is not the end of the story with God and his people Israel. Any questions at this point? Or comments about what we've covered? All right. Well, let's look at conquest and chaos. And this will be very brief as we look at Joshua and Judges. Moses dies at the end of Deuteronomy. He, because he actually disobeyed God, it got so bad in numbers, it's a low point. Moses himself disobeys God. And as a result, right, he hits a rock for water instead of speaking to it, as God told him. God says, as a result of that, you're not going to enter the land either. but you'll die before entering. So Moses sets them up to go in with Deuteronomy, and then he dies, and Joshua rises to take his place. And he leads them in the book of Joshua, the first 12 chapters are the story of the conquest of the land. What are some of the, we don't have time to look, what are some of the highlights of this section of the first 12 chapters of Joshua, the conquest of the land? Crossing the Jordan, which is kind of like another Red Sea, right? That God actually dries up the river so they can cross through. It's kind of a renewal of the same God is with them. The same God is going to work wonders as he did for their parents. Jericho, right? So this great city that God conquers through Israel, encircling it, God will do all the work. God will get the victory for them. They just have to obey. Do something that seems kind of arbitrary, walk around it, but that's what God has chosen to use. And he defeats him. What else? Right. And that's the second half, which we'll talk in just a second. You're right. That's a major part of Joshua is the tribes receiving their territory. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so it's the spies part two, and they do a lot better this time, right? Yeah, maybe it's because there are fewer of them, the handpicked spies that, yeah, that don't come back saying, let's not. They've learned their lesson, thankfully. Right? That the people are trembling in fear. They've heard what God did to Egypt. Right? And then Ann says, so that brings us to the second half of Joshua, which is the allotment of the land, where the conquest narrative kind of transitions into allotting the land to the tribes. Now, the conquest isn't completely done. If you read chapter 13, the message is, well, you've broken the back of the people here and now it's time to give the tribes their land and God will just continue to clear them out for you if you are faithful to take your allotment. So the rest of Joshua is the allotment being given out. But let's look at Judges. If you look at Judges chapter one, so Joshua dies out at the beginning of Judges. Judges kind of bridges the gap from this distribution of the land into the time approaching David, which is about 400 years later. So Judges actually covers a lot of time. And the story here is that there's still pockets of rebellion, or still pockets of Canaanites in the land. Where is it? It says that, well, it's the beginning of chapter one, that after the death of Joshua, the people inquired of the Lord, who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? So there's still Canaanites to fight. And there's still more of that going on. Oh, and at the end of chapter one, starting in verse 27, Manasseh didn't drive out the inhabitants of Bethshean and its villages, or Tanakh and its villages, or the inhabitants of Dor and its villages, or the inhabitants of Iblium and its villages. There's still Canaanites that they were told you have to destroy these people completely and they don't. And these people will for centuries continue drawing Israel toward idolatry. They will be a thorn in their side spiritually. And they will really be the bait that hooks their heart and hearts toward idolatry and rebellion. There is this, there is this, in Judges chapter two, this moral decline. I'm gonna read verses 11 to 15. And the people of Israel did what was evil on the side of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them and bowed down to them, and they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Asheroth. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned and as the Lord had sworn to them, and they were in terrible distress." So where are we at in Deuteronomy 28? On the Deuteronomy 28 map, where are we here? This is starting to look like the long side of Deuteronomy 28, right? The cursing side, that when they march out against enemies, they're defeated and they scatter. That's not the good first 14 verses of Deuteronomy 28. This is the bad side of Deuteronomy, the disobedient side of Deuteronomy 28. They've abandoned the Lord for idols. look at verse 16, the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them. Now this sounds weird for us because judges are people who sit in black robes and they adjudicate trials, civil and criminal trials. In our, in our civic life, government has been much more divided up than it was in in this tribal situation. So we ought not to think of judges as technical and narrow as they are in our society. Really, the idea here is a leader, a chieftain. So we've divided executive, legislative, and judicial responsibilities among different people, but that kind of division was not known to these kinds of people. So don't think of it as narrow and technical as a judge just deciding cases in our society. Think of a chief. So God raised up chiefs and leaders. to save them out of the hand of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so. Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the Lord was moved with pity pity by their groaning of those who afflicted, because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. But, verse 19, whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways. So, there is this rebellion, Punishment, oppression, and they've got to raise up a judge to save. And it seems like he has some kind of a restraining influence. Although it's certainly not complete. Something of a restraining influence on their idolatry. But when he dies, they just swing even farther into rebellion and idolatry in verse 19. And so it goes. That's a pattern that goes throughout Judges. And there are many individual stories. What are some of the Judges that you've heard of? Some of the stories in this book? Gideon is one of the classics. Deborah, Barack, Samson, Jephthah, there are many. This is What was that? Othniel. Judges is a great book for junior high boys, because there's some really crazy stories. You all remember Ehud's sword in chapter three. Go and read that on your own. What becomes of Ehud's sword? It's a wild book. There's a lot of really interesting and crazy stories, but the main theme is this pattern of rebellion, deliverance, rebellion, deliverance. It's not so much, some people have said rebellion, deliverance, repentance. There's not a lot of repentance. It's just rebellion and deliverance. God is being, God is being kind and saving even amid their sin. And the diagnosis that in part D that the book gives us toward the end that kind of comes up a few times is, can someone read chapter 17 verse 6? Yes, and that comes up two or three different times. There's one that's kind of half of that refrain. In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. These come in the midst of some of the darkest, saddest tales of, I shouldn't say tales, they're accounts, they're historical, of sin, of civil war, idolatry, sexual abuse. If you read chapter 19, Israel, there are shades of Sodom, honestly, going on in Israel, where there are visitors staying at a house in a city, and there's a mob of people approaching to sexually abuse. It's like Sodom, intentionally, showing like, wow, Israel got that bad. Sodom was a paradigm of evil based on Genesis 19, the story in Abraham's era, and now Israel has become that bad. It's a dark book and the refrain that starts emerging in the midst of that darkness says, there was no king. What does that imply? There was no king and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. What does that imply about what a king would add to the equation? Right, so a king, so there's two things. A king would give leadership. So there seems to be a lot of chaos and anarchy, honestly. So there would be leadership. There would be a king leading them. And then you said another thing, which is, what was that? You said something about the Lord leading them? Yeah, the Lord is their leader. And so there's some sense in which a king ought to lead them. So the question when we go, everyone did what was right in their own eyes, the question you ought to ask is, they should be doing what's right in whose eyes? the Lord's eyes, not necessarily the king's eyes, but the king, hopefully, it seems the implication is, a king would lead them to do what's right in the Lord's eyes. That's what's missing, a king to lead them to do what's right in the Lord's eyes. I mean, you can have a king who's wicked who just leads them even more efficiently and centrally into idolatry, and that's actually what will happen later on in their story. But yeah, the assumption is that a good king would unite them under the rule of God, under the law of God to do what's right in God's eyes. Sadly, that's what is missing. And in fact, if you on your own time look at Deuteronomy 17 verses 18 to 20, giving the law and applying it to the land, their situation is before they're about to go into the land, he talks about when you have a king, what the king should be like. And there he says that basically that Israel, if they have a king, he should lead them to do what's right in the Lord's eyes. essentially. He should be a man who's devoted to the law. He should have a copy for himself. He should write out a whole copy of the law for himself. Should be very near on his mind and heart. And that's how he ought to lead his people. So, that's what a king would, a good king, a king doing his job, that's what he would add to the equation. Now, that leads us into our point number four, which is the rise of a monarchy in 1 Samuel, 1 and 2 Samuel. Any questions or thoughts at this point? We're not planning to, I said painfully fast, I'm sorry. No, Ruth. Yeah. Were they capable of it? Yeah, it's a great question. There is a sense in which they are. There's a sense in which they're not. Because he says, and this is getting into kind of, this is a really actually good theological question. What is ability, inability in terms of obedience to God? But he says in those later chapters of Deuteronomy, I'm not putting the law far away from you. I'm not putting it in the heavens so you have to reach up to it or down under the earth so you have to dig to it. It's right here. There's a sense in which I'm making it very accessible objectively to you. But then that promise of a circumcised heart, what it implies is that there is an inability due to how your heart functions. And that's what the Bible teaches about inability. It's not that God is calling for something that is objectively unreasonable or impossible. The inability is not that our hands are bound to keep them from moving in obedience to God. It's the binding is our will. The binding is our nature that actually our hearts are unable to want to obey God. And so, and I'm importing things that are taught later more specifically in the Bible, but were they able to in a sense, yes, but we're gonna find in a sense, no. As Romans 8 tells us that the one who is in the flesh is unable to please God, is unable to keep the law of God. But that inability is of a kind that they're solely responsible for. So they can't say, God, you made the law too hard. You made it impossible. If they didn't have a sin nature, they could have done it. Adam could have, Adam was totally capable of keeping God's commandments. So, does that, yeah, it's a great question. And those are the kinds of questions, honestly, that the Bible is raising at this point. And it's not answering them super directly yet, but that's the law is kind of bringing up these issues of, Why do we keep disobeying? And that's the things that really the gospel comes in when Christ comes and actually will very directly provide those answers in later parts of the Bible. It's a very good question. So there is a demand for a king. We'll have to go quickly in 1 Samuel 8. Samuel was the last of the judges, and during his tenure, Israel bucks against this arrangement where God has them. And the nature of their demand in chapter eight is, we wanna be, in verse five, behold, your sons are old. You are old, your sons don't walk in your ways. So they see a succession crisis. We don't want your sons to be the next judges. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations. So judges, the book of Judges implied that a king would be a force of good. But this is not a good look. This is not a good moment for Israel, because their request is not, wow, it's chaos and sin. What about a king who could lead us to obey God? That would be one thing. They're saying, we just want to be like everyone else. It's an efficient form of government, or whatever appeals to them about the other nations. They're very far from what God had called them to be, a holy nation, right, in Exodus 19. You're supposed to be different. You're my people. And here he even says, to Samuel that they haven't rejected you, they've rejected me in verse seven from being king over them. So really the issue, it's not necessarily wrong that they wanted a human king, but the issue is the heart here is they don't want God ruling them. They want a king like the other nations. There's that uncircumcised heart. We want to be like everyone else. And you would think, it's kind of ironic, based on this request, you'd think that they're doing their job and God is failing his job to keep them safe. Whereas we know from judges, it's like, no, it's exact opposite. They're falling down on their job, their idolatrous, their sinful, and God's still keeping them and defending them. And yet they're discontent with his leadership. So this is, again, this is Deuteronomy 28, the bad half, the if you disobey half happening. And then sub point B is Saul versus David. And God, in response to this request, he appoints, he tells Samuel to appoint Saul as king. And if you look at, we won't look there together, but if you look at chapter 10, verses 23 and 24, we learn about Saul. He is tall. He looks like a leader. Saul says, look, isn't he, is there any man like him in Israel? You know, this is an obvious choice for king. But how does it go with Saul? Yeah, he may look the part, but he's not a good king. There's a couple of big moments where he disobeys God. And in chapter 15, verse 23, Samuel says, because you've rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king. So there's that rejection. The contrasting figure then is David, whom God anoints in chapter 16 for Samuel to be the next king. He's not like Saul. He's not a likely candidate. Eight sons of Jesse. And David was the one that Jesse didn't even think of would be a candidate for king as Samuel comes to look for a son to anoint. Yet the Lord chose him. Samuel anoints him and the spirit comes upon him and empowers him. So we have this picture of an anointed one And the rest of 1 Samuel documents the drama between Saul, who had been passed over by God, had been abandoned by God, and David, who has been chosen to be the leader of his people. The point of this whole drama is that God will raise up his own man to lead his people. His qualification is not based on human merits, the things that we think are impressive, human metrics of greatness, but really it's a heart that seeks the Lord preeminently. He says, I'll find a man after my own heart. When he rejects Saul, he said, I'm going to appoint a man after my own heart. and you see that demonstrated in David's faithfulness, his patience even as he's being persecuted, his refusal to kill Saul when he has opportunities twice, waiting for the Lord to exalt him instead of exalting himself. That's the kind of man God is going to use to lead his people. That's what we're seeing. That's what the anointed, the anointed one is. And then in part C is David's reign in covenant, which is really the theme of 2 Samuel. And finally, at the end of 1 Samuel, Saul dies. David becomes king at the beginning of 2 Samuel, and he's elevated to the throne. His reign is characterized overall by righteousness, victory over his enemies, although there is a tragic case of sin. Toward the end of his life, there's a lot of dealing with the consequences of his sin, his adultery with Bathsheba and murder to cover it up. but the high point comes after in 2 Samuel 7, after David offers to build God a temple. I'll build you a temple. And God's answer, he says, I'll build you a house God. And, and what's God's answer? I'm going to build you a house. You're not going to build me a house. I'll build you a house. What does that mean? David means I'll build you a physical house, a temple. And God says, no, I'm going to build you a house, a dynasty. Actually, I'm going to do you one better. And so the promise is a very important chapter in the whole Bible. 2 Samuel 7. So in verse four, the word of the Lord came to Nathan, when he's responding to that offer to build a house, to build a temple. Let's start actually. Verse eight, now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David, thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep that you should be prince over my people Israel. And I've been with you wherever you went and have cut off all your enemies from before you and I will make for you a great name like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and I will plant them so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more as formerly. Now, hold on, right, is that new? Are those promises new? A place, I'll plant them in a place, they won't be afflicted? These are familiar promises, but he's renewing them to David. Now, verse 11, from that time, so the affliction from that time when I appointed judges over my people Israel, and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rods of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever." So, he's promising a son, and he's promising through that son an eternal dynasty. That this, your descendants, David, will have rule forever. There will be, now, the son that he promises is a son who will sin, verse 14. Who will sin and be disciplined, but his throne, his kingdom will be forever. So, there's a son who will sin and yet be disciplined and not abandoned by the Lord, and will build a house. Who is that son? Solomon, the next, the next king. But we see even beyond Solomon, Solomon will be kind of a foreshadowing. There's a pattern that will be fulfilled that Solomon is the first of what will be a pattern of eventually an eternal kingdom. So David, in his response, if you won't read, David sees that this is really big. Even though there are some familiar promises reiterated, like the promise of rest from enemies, a promise of land and peace, yet he sees that all the promises to Israel are being channeled through his promise to him of a king from his line. That all these promises he's given Israel will actually be secured by means of his descendants who will have an eternal throne. And he sees that this is a major promise as he responds to the rest of chapter seven. So this isn't God doing something entirely new, but he's focusing more tightly as kingdom promises that he gave Abraham and then renewed to Moses, God's people in God's place under God's rule. He's bringing more specificity, saying all under God's king who will be David's descendant, who will be a part of David's line. That's what he's adding here. Now, from here on, the son of David becomes one of the major identifiers of Christ in prophecy. This link to the Davidic throne, the Davidic line. Christ, do you want to know what the word Christ means? It means anointed one. So as David, this is interesting, as David was anointed to be king and actually Saul first and then David and first Samuel, that what the title that the Bible picks up for Christ is the capital A Anointed One. That's what Messiah means, the Hebrew version of the Greek is Christ. But it means anointed. It's an acknowledgement that David's anointing in 1 Samuel 16 is a pattern for how God would choose his own man to rule his people forever actually, ultimately in Christ. That's what is being communicated by the name, by the title Christ for Jesus. And that's one of the explicit identifiers that's used. For instance, in the Gospels, Mark 10, 48, the blind man says, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. So there's this, and that comes up a lot, actually, in the Gospels, that there's this understanding. This is the son of David. This is a capital S, son of David. Solomon was the lowercase s, son of David. But this is the one from Solomon who would be the fulfillment of that eternal kingdom. So we have a king coming. Any questions or thoughts about that point four? I know we went really fast. Yeah, John. That's probably because I'm blazing too fast. Where we are is we just finished point four. We're at the point where we're at the end of David's reign. We're about to talk about Solomon. Oh, in the Bible, 2 Samuel 7 is the last place we've looked. So in terms of the storyline, we're just kind of getting to the end of, we're skipping a lot. We're getting to the end of Second Samuel here. So, point five, and this is where we'll leave off today, is the kingdom high point in Solomon. Now, in light of David's, in light of the promise of a son with an eternal throne, we see again Solomon, he is that son, the son who, in verse 14, would sin and be disciplined, but not abandoned, from whose line would be an eternal king. He's a sinner, but he has an eternal throne. And so we need to see him as a stepping stone toward fulfillment. He kind of shows us some outlines of what the fulfillment will look like, even though his, and that's the way the Bible treats Solomon's kingdom, even though it's not the capital K kingdom that is to come. So as we look at Solomon's kingdom, we need to note some attributes of it that point us forward toward what's coming ultimately in Christ. What are some things that are foreshadowed about the kingdom in Solomon's life? The first one is wisdom. In chapter three, God offers Solomon whatever he wants. What does Solomon ask for? Wisdom, a heart of wisdom to lead this people, which is a very wise request that God acknowledges and commends as very wise. And so I'm gonna read 1 Kings 4, 29 to 34. Here's a summary statement on Solomon's legendary wisdom. First Kings 4.29-34. Good, thank you. So we see a kingdom marked by this explosion of godly wisdom that all the nations note. And they're like, whoa. We see, actually, nations coming to hear the wisdom of Solomon, kings of the earth. And the idea of a king in the ancient Near East was he was supposed to be known for his wisdom. He was a philosopher king. We think of a king as maybe more of a bureaucrat or a military power. And there were aspects of that in kings. But in the Middle East, they expected kings to be the wisest men. kingdom. So, they have kings coming to sit at the feet of Solomon to hear his wisdom. As we look at the wisdom literature in the Old Testament, sometimes we can, we can view it as this totally totally devoid of context. It's just floating principles of life. And they are, I'm not saying we should draw, we should go deep into Proverbs and the wisdom literature. There's profound understanding for navigating God's world skillfully. But the broader point we did not miss is where the wisdom literature fits in the Bible storyline is that God is establishing David's throne. He establishes a king in Jerusalem. And from that throne flows out This blessed King by God, there's this flowing out of wisdom that is profound that all the nations can't even believe. And you get a sample of that, not even nearly the 3,000 Proverbs, but you get a sample of that in the book of Proverbs. So we're supposed to see, this is the wisdom, the otherworldly wisdom that comes from the throne in Jerusalem and wows the nations as a pattern of the eternal reign to come. So enjoy the Proverbs, dig deep into them, memorize them, study them, but don't just, it's not just little nuggets of truth, it's nuggets of truth that we need to understand that are even pointing forward to the wisest king yet to come, yet to sit on the throne, Jesus. And Christ would come later exhibiting profound wisdom in his own teaching and he's called in 1 Corinthians 1.30, Christ the wisdom of God. That he is the embodiment, he himself is the embodiment of God's wisdom. The next feature of Solomon's reign is peace and prosperity and you have some references there. He had peace from enemies on every side. and nations brought tribute to enrich the kingdom and the kingdom became very wealthy. So silver, it got to the point where silver was basically worthless. There was so much of it, so much gold and silver. So we have a kingdom marked by abundance and peace, which again points forward to the coming reign of Christ, which will be marked by abundance and peace when he comes and reigns. And finally we have in chapters 5 through the beginning of chapter 9, the temple. This is a major feature of Solomon's reign, the building of the temple. Now, let's recall what function did the tabernacle serve in Leviticus? What was the tabernacle for? exactly, a place for God to dwell with his people. And the general term for that is sanctuary, which means a holy place. And what happens in, in first Kings is the sanctuary moves from being the tabernacle to the temple. Basically a new permanent building is built to function in the same way. To be where God dwells, the glory of God, the presence of God dwells among his people. So, So again, there's this meeting place of God and man through the priesthood. There's a manifestation of God's glory. And so in Solomon's reign, this is what, we have this magnificent place where God dwells among his people. And if you remember the kingdom elements of God restoring what was lost in Eden, right? God's presence among his people, ruling his people in his place. You have that symbolized so powerfully in the temple as such a major feature of the kingdom that Solomon establishes. So the things are coming together. We have God's people here. By this point in Solomon's reign, 1 Kings 10, we have who's God's people? Israel. Where's God's place? We have Canaan and especially Jerusalem and especially, especially the temple, right? There's the kind of epicenter is the temple, but it's really Canaan, Jerusalem. And we have God's rule. How's God ruling? Well, there's kings. There's a law, first of all, but then there's a king to administer that law. There's a man. Kind of like Adam was a man to rule under God. We have a man, a king, to administer the law of God over his people and the land. So, remember the promise of blessing to all the nations through Abraham? I'll bless all the nations through you. Look, there's wisdom going to all the nations through Solomon. We have all these pieces coming together. We might think this is it. We've made it. We've made it. The kingdom is here and Eden has been restored. But as we know, tragically, We've already seen the seeds of Israel's downfall. We've already seen, this is actually, sadly, this is the high point. It will get no better than Solomon's kingdom. It will quickly and dramatically go the other direction. We've already seen serial ongoing rebellion in numbers. We've seen covenant curses in Deuteronomy that sounded very predictive. And we've seen a pattern of idolatry in judges. So next week, Lord willing, we're gonna complete the Old Testament story by seeing what grows out of these troubling seeds that we've already noted. Even though God has raised up and has established such a beautiful kingdom, such a wonderful situation of ruling over his people. Yet, even that downfall, even this kingdom was not the point to which the whole Bible was leading. It was merely a shadow pointing to the substance yet to come. So God's purpose would not be thwarted. Any questions before we close in prayer? Or any questions or additional thoughts about what we've covered? Okay, let's pray. Father, we thank you that you are realistic about sin, you've made provision for sin, that in your word we see ourselves in Israel, even with glorious provision and glorious salvation, we see the tendency to sin in ourselves, and we see the ruin of sin, you've been very clear about in your word, and yet we thank you that the last word in your Bible is not disobedience and ruin, but it's faithfulness, it's steadfast love, it's redemption. And it's ultimately the kingdom that cannot be shaken, the kingdom that cannot be threatened by sin. That's what Christ has won for us. That's what Christ is coming to establish. We thank you for all of us who know him by faith, who are who are recipients of his salvation, who await his kingdom, we pray that we would long for that day, even as we struggle against the remaining pockets of rebellion, even in our own lives. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.