Old Testament Overview: Part 2

A great old story, an overview of the Old Testament in just two weeks. We had week one last week, and we conclude today with our overview of the Old Testament. I told you that all you have to remember is one simple sentence. Blessed people do kind feats regularly. Can you say that with me?

Blessed people do kind feats regularly. Those first letters help us remember the major sections of the entire Old Testament. And here they are.

Beginnings, creation, corruption, calamity, and confusion. The first major section of the Old Testament. Then the era of the patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. God calls a guy named Abraham a guy named Jacob has 12 sons and we end this era with Jacob's family in Egypt then the era of deliverance the Passover and the Exodus the giving of the law the wilderness wanderings the conquest of Canaan the era of the judges then we get into the era of kings and the era of foreign rulers That's the whole Old Testament, folks, in a nutshell.

You never had it so simple, did you? We were in the era of kings when we ended last week. And if you remember in this section 4 of the Old Testament, there are three eras. The kingdom was initially united in one kingdom. Then the kingdom would be divided into two kingdoms.

And then the kingdoms would be defeated. And so last week we reviewed the United Kingdom under Saul, David, and Solomon, and now we are up to the handout for today, The Kingdom Divided. Is everybody with me? Anybody need a handout? You should have two handouts today.

One should be the white paper, and then the other is a listing of kings and prophets. Does anybody need the handouts? Okay. Here we go. Hang on to your seats.

The kingdom divided.

We in the south, and those in the north too, are very familiar with what it means to live in a divided kingdom. And that's what happened to Israel. Because of Solomon's sinfulness, he married foreign wives, he worshipped foreign gods. God said, Solomon, your kingdom is going to be divided. But because I loved your father so much, David, I'm not going to divide it until the lifetime of your son, Rehoboam.

So when Rehoboam becomes king, there's a civil war, and the nation of Israel is divided into two nations, a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom.

You can see a picture here. The northern kingdom, this sort of purpley area, this became the kingdom of Israel. Most of the tribes of Israel were part of this northern kingdom. was a southern kingdom called Judah that consisted primarily of the tribe of Judah part of the tribe this tribe of Simeon was part of it and there was were portions of the tribe of Benjamin that were also part of this southern kingdom but you got a northern kingdom and you got a southern kingdom and each kingdom will have its own kings now this is where most people get lost in the old Testament. You know, most of us up to the point where you get to Saul and David and Solomon, if you've been in Sunday school and church most of your life, you probably had at least a feel for that. But man, then you get to this divided kingdom. And look at your list of kings. And what I've done for you here is just given you a long listing of the kings of Judah and the kings of Israel with their approximate dates. And let me just say a word about these kings. The kings of northern kings all of them are evil there is not a single king in the northern kingdom throughout his lifetime that will be anything other than evil so you can in your hand out there note that from jeroboam the first all the way through the last northern king hoshea they are all evil it's a little different in the southern kingdom a lot of them are evil but the southern have some relatively good kings in the kingdom.

And if you want to circle the relatively good kings, let me tell you who they are in the list. The relatively good kings are Asa,

Jehoshaphat,

somebody ought to name a child Jehoshaphat, that's just a great name. Joash,

Amaziah, Azariah who is also called Uzziah Jotham Hezekiah and Josiah so these kings are the relatively good kings but still in the southern kingdom there are a lot of evil kings as well so God finally

sends foreign armies to defeat first the nation of Israel and then the nation of Judah. In 722 B.C., as punishment, Israel, the northern kingdom, is defeated by the nation of Assyria. The southern kingdom lasts a little longer because they are, at least at points, more loyal to God. But finally in 586 B.C., the nation of Judah also is defeated by the Babylonians. This happens when you get divided, right?

You usually end up getting defeated. It happens in churches, doesn't it?

You get divided, then you get defeated. You get divided, then you get defeated.

you get defeated. Don't let Satan divide.

Because when he does you get defeated. God did something for these nations of Israel and Judah. He sent prophets. Prophets were

people who came to warn to tell people that God's judgment was coming and also to prophesy about things that would happen in the future. And I've given you in your handout a list of the prophets. Let me say a word about the prophets. You see I've divided them into three categories, the exilic, the pre-exilic, exilic, and post-exilic. Let me tell you what I mean by those terms.

Both Assyria, the country that defeated Israel, and Babylonia, the country that defeated Judah, of what they did when they defeated a country. Their policy was this. They took many of the people, particularly the best and brightest people in the defeated countries, and they deported them. They took them out of the country and sent them back to the homeland. And there were two purposes in that.

One was, you take the best and brightest out of the country, it's much less likely that that country's going to be able to rebel against you because you took the best and brightest. and if you take the best and brightest and put them in the homeland and you take them there and teach them your customs and your ways and your philosophies then maybe you'll have some people that become loyal to you and you can send them back to sort of lead the defeated people to be more loyal to the conquering country. so the pre-exilic prophets are the prophets that prophesied before the deportations by Assyria and Babylon of the people of Israel and Judah they came before the defeats the exilic prophets are the ones who prophesied during the time of the exile when during this captivity period when people were in exile in these conquering nations and the post-exilic prophets are those that come after a period of time when the Israelites, the Jews, are able to return to their homeland. So in the commentaries you'll hear pre-exilic, exilic, and post-exilic, and that's what that means. These are the writing prophets.

These are the ones that wrote books. And you can see that there were some prophets to the nation of Israel. Most of them were to the nation of Judah. And then there were a few that prophesied to foreign nations. You can see where Habakkuk is.

We're going to study Habakkuk. he's about 607 and he was a prophet to the tribe of judah before judah was defeated he was pre-exilic and then you look at haggai he's post-exilic he's a prophet to judah after the exile after the jews returned to their homeland so that's the era of kings a united kingdom then a divided kingdom but then a defeated kingdom, and the nations are taken into exile. Everybody with me so far? Questions? The last era is foreign rulers.

What you have is a series of empires in this era. The Babylonians defeated the southern kingdom, but then the Babylonians will be defeated by the Persians, then the Persians will be defeated by the Greeks, then for a period of time the Jews will rise up in what is called the Maccabean revolt and be free from foreign rule for a brief period of time and then finally Rome comes to power and we're up to the New Testament. And let me just say a word about each of these periods of time. King Nebuchadnezzar under Babylonian rule will finally defeat the southern kingdom will send the southern kingdom into exile people like Daniel Shadrach Meshach Abednego are deported from the homeland of Judah and are sent to Babylon and Babylon will be a great power for a period of time but then finally the Persians will rise up under Cyrus the first and will defeat the Babylonians. In fact, Isaiah had prophesied in Isaiah 45, 13 that a king named Cyrus would come and defeat Babylon. And that prophecy came true. It was the policy of Cyrus the first to do differently than the Babylonians. The Babylonians deported people, took them out of their homeland.

The Persians had a different philosophy. Their philosophy was conquered people will be less of if you let them stay at home. Let them continue to have their own customs, follow their own ways. In a sense, let them have a little bit of autonomy and don't impose yourself so much on them. And Cyrus I finally decides the Jews can go home.

And he gives permission for these Jews who are in captivity to return back to the homeland. And you have these migrations of Jews returning back to the homeland, first under Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel, another great name for a son. Zerubbabel in 538 B.C. will lead the first wave of Jews back to the homeland of Judah.

Then a guy named Ezra in about 458 B.C. will lead the next group back. And then finally a guy named Nehemiah will go back to the leader group, back to the homeland. What did the people do when they returned to the homeland? Under Zerubbabel, they rebuilt the temple that was destroyed.

It's a great story at the end of the book of Kings, reading about the destruction of the temple, 2 Kings 25. The temple was destroyed by the Babylonians when they conquered Judah. The king Zedekiah, the king of Judah, had to watch his sons be murdered before his eyes. 2 Kings 25 tells us that. And then the Babylonians put out the eyes of Zedekiah.

A horrible thing. But one thing the Babylonians did is they went to the temple and they burned it. Knocked it down. So when the Jews come home, one of the first things they do unto Zerubbabel, they rebuild the temple. Under Ezra, they go back to reading the law.

They've been away from the law while they've been in exile, and Ezra brings the people back to the reading of the law. And then under Nehemiah, they rebuild the wall around Jerusalem to help protect the city. So these major migrations help reestablish the nation of Judah. But then come the Greeks who defeat the Persians. Alexander the Great will be a great young military leader and will conquer most of the known world.

He was a student of Aristotle. He loved all things Greek. And he will conquer a wide territory of land. This is going to be important. And we're now in the era between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The Old Testament ends about 431 B.C. Alexander the Great will rule. starting around 331 B.C. So we're now between the Old Testament and the New Testament. But Alexander the Great will conquer most of the known world, and he will spread the Greek language throughout the world.

This will be significant because when the first century comes and the apostles begin to write the New Testament, they write it in a language that basically everyone in the known world can understand. They write it in the language of Greek. And that Greek language initially got spread primarily through the work of Alexander the Great. When he dies, he leaves his kingdom to four of his generals, two of whom are important for our purposes. One of them is Ptolemy I, and his successors will be called the Ptolemies.

and then he leaves part of his kingdom to a guy named Seleucus I and his successors will be called the Seleucids. These two will be important for the area of the world around Jerusalem for this reason, and I'm giving you a map here. The Ptolemies will rule the kingdom of Egypt. The Seleucids will rule the kingdom of Syria and the northern part up above Jerusalem. And these two kingdoms, the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, over this ground here for a period of time the Ptolemies will control Jerusalem but then it will change and the Seleucids will gain control of Jerusalem and I want to talk about one of the Seleucid rulers a guy named Antiochus Epiphanes IV and just tell you a story about him so is everybody with me Alexander the Great conquers most of the known world including the area of

when he dies he divides his kingdom among his four generals including Ptolemy I and Seleucus I and they fight over this territory that's between them where Jerusalem is and then while the Seleucids are in control a guy named Antiochus Epiphanes IV comes to power if the Jews could name people that in the history of the world they would find particularly abominable you could probably name several on your hand Haman in the time of Esther who wanted to kill the Jews would be one. Adolf Hitler would be one. But Antiochus Epiphanes IV would rank pretty high on the scale of people that the Jews would find, abominable people. And this is why. Antiochus Epiphanes IV was a great admirer of all things Greek.

He wanted to spread Greek culture, Greek religious life. and when he gets to be in power and rule over Jerusalem he imposes some laws over the area of Palestine that the Jews find particularly offensive. Antiochus says the Jews can no longer follow their religious customs. They can no longer circumcise their children. They can no longer read the law. They are not to follow their dietary laws. He even goes into the temple that has been rebuilt into the holy place and he erects an altar to the god Zeus and there on the altar in the holy place of the temple he slaughters a pig on the altar as a sacrifice to the greek god Zeus now why did he slaughter a pig on the altar unclean can you imagine anything more offensive to the Jews in the holy place of their temple, an altar to a god named Zeus, and a sacrifice of a pig on the altar. Antiochus will do things like have festivals that are Greek festivals, and he will have sort of like Olympic Games in Jerusalem, where he has all of the athletes participate in the athletic contest in Greek fashion. How do Greek athletes participate in sporting events.

Unclothed. Can you imagine in Jerusalem athletic contests and the athletes are participating unclothed? I always like to use Jeff Neely as an example. It would be like Jeff Neely having his basketball team show up one night at the Greer State, Greer Gym. Unclothed.

Caused a lot of problems in Jerusalem.

The Jews hate this. And a guy named Mattathias and Judas Maccabeus are going to be very important in defeating Antiochus. Mattathias is an elderly Jewish priest. the agents of Antiochus go to Mattathias in front of a town meeting and try to convince Mattathias to become a friend of King Antiochus they try to bribe him Mattathias refuses to bribe but another Jewish man in the crowd steps forward and says I'll be glad to be a friend of King Antiochus for those riches that are being offered and the hope is that the king was trying to get influential Jewish people to persuade the Jewish people to follow his plans, Antiochus' plans. But when this Jewish gentleman steps from the crowd, the priest Mattathias, according to writings from that day, is said to have burned with the zeal of the Lord.

He pulls out his sword. He kills the Jewish man who's about to betray the Jewish people. And then he kills the representatives of King Antiochus. and he leads his sons into the mountains to start what is called the Maccabean Revolt. His son, Judas Maccabeus, will become the leader of this revolt.

And he's called Judas Maccabeus for a reason. Maccabeus means the hammer. This guy was a fighter. And he will lead the people to defeat Antiochus in a war that lasts about three years. and the Jews will become free for a brief period of time in human history, at this point in human history.

You remember that pig that was slaughtered on the altar? Well, after the Jews defeat King Antiochus and his armies, they re-dedicate the Jewish temple in 164 B.C. They tear down that altar on which the Jewish pig had been slaughtered. They rebuild the altar, and they have a big celebration. And that celebration is still remembered by the Jews today.

Every year, the Jews celebrate Hanukkah. And Hanukkah is a celebration that remembers the rededication of the temple in 164 B.C. It's an eight-day celebration. So now you know what Hanukkah is about. It's about the rededication of the temple.

well the Maccabeans will stay in power well there's a picture of the temple as it would have been this is really probably Herod's temple here but just gives you a picture of what the temple looked like this would have been the holy place here

the Maccabeans will stay in power until about 63 B.C. and then here comes Rome

Pompeii in 63 B.C.

he will crucify about 30,000 Jews in the process of conquering that country. A horrible, horrible slaughter. The greatest of the Roman emperors will be a guy named Caesar Augustus who you see pictured there on the wall. He will be the reigning emperor when Jesus Christ is born. And Herod the Great will be a vassal ruler who is also ruling in that territory.

so with this Roman reign we we are now to the period of the New Testament so this period of foreign rulers we go from the Babylonians who are defeated by the Persians who are defeated by the Greeks and then the Maccabeans defeat Antiochus but then the Romans come to power and we're now to the New Testament

pretty quick review of the Old Testament right here are your lessons for life from the Old Lesson one, though it may not always appear so, I think one clear lesson from the great old story is God is in control. There will be times when things look extremely dark, but behind the scenes he is working his plan. He is in control. He's in control today, folks. Even though things may appear dark, at times God is in control.

We know that. We can read the history of the Old Testament and see that. That's one reason we have this story. Never take sin lightly, for God hates sin. We wink at sin in our culture.

God hates sin. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah. Remember the flood. Remember the punishment of Saul and King David when they sinned. God hates sin.

We should too. thirdly while God is a patient God his patience is not limitless

with his own people while he was patient with their rebellion for years and years and years and years and sent prophets to try to call them back he finally says I'm going to discipline even my own people and I'm going to discipline in the form of in a war that they will lose. War with the Assyrians, war with the Babylonians. Be careful, folks. Let's not presume on God's patience.

It's a dangerous thing to do. Fourthly, never forget Passover. If I had to pick a central event of the Old Testament, it's Passover. The blood of the Lamb saves. and what was true at the Passover in the days of the book of Exodus is true today the blood of the lamb saves it is faith in Jesus Christ and Christ alone that will save fifth lesson God sometimes chooses to bless certain people in order to accomplish his purposes and it's his choice why did he choose Abraham out of all people on earth to call and make a covenant with because he's God and that's who he chose why is between Esau and Jacob did he choose Jacob he's God as between Isaac and Ishmael why did he choose Isaac he's God sometimes God chooses to bless certain people to accomplish his purposes and we don't know why necessarily he chose them but that seems to be a pattern of his he will find particular people that he will call and choose to accomplish his purposes and bless them. God always keeps his promises. He always keeps his promises. He never, never fails to keep his promises. You can trust that he said he's coming again. He's coming again. You can trust that if you put your faith and trust in Christ, he will forgive you of your sins. He always keeps his promises. And lastly, always, always, always trust God no matter how dark the darkness may seem one of my favorite stories from the Old Testament is right at the end of book of Genesis when Joseph dies do you remember what Joseph what instructions Joseph gave just before he died exactly Joseph remembered that God had made a promise to Abraham that one day the descendants of Abraham would inherit the land of Canaan now remember Joseph in Egypt, not in the land of Canaan. He's in Egypt. But he knew that one day God's people would inherit the land of Canaan. So what did Joseph say? He said to his brothers before he died and his family members, keep my bones. And when you go to the promised land, you take my bones with you. That's a man of faith who knew God would do what he promised. And led the children of Israel out of Egypt, whose bones did they carry with them?

The bones of Joseph. God always keeps his promises. And never doubt in the dark what he's told you in the light. It's easy to do. Don't do it.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the great old story. and I just pray that we will be people who trust you, understand that you are sovereignly in control of events. And I pray that as we see how you've dealt with us in the past and how gracious you've been to us and what you've done for us through your son Jesus Christ, that we will be motivated to give you all we have and everything we have so that we can serve you more diligently. For as in Christ's name we pray, amen.