The Old Testament Part 2

Many TV viewers are fascinated by what they see on the History Channel. Here, they can get a big-picture view of past events, events like those that shaped the nation of Israel. The Old Testament is many things – prophecy, history, law, and wisdom literature such as Psalms and Proverbs. Today, we'll continue our jet plane flyover of the Old Testament, and we'll focus on the time when Israel was born.

Israel was taken into captivity, its temple destroyed. From Chicago, this is The Moody Church Hour, a weekly service of worship and teaching with Pastor Erwin Lutzer. On this broadcast, we continue a four-part overview of the entire Bible in a series that traces the drama of redemption.

Later, Erwin Lutzer will resume his look at the Old Testament. Pastor Lutzer comes now to open today's service. And we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen. And we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen. And we pray in the name of Jesus.

Amen. Christ my great, my great, Father is good and kind, Thy guilty counsel seems to sacrifice His life. Please come, O God, in one such hope and help with which we hold the throne. My Savior and my Lord, my comfort and my peace, My strength and my strength, my gaining grace, My strength and my strength, my healing grace, My strength and my healing grace, All the books in the canon of Scripture are really only one story, one epic drama of redemption planned before the foundations of the earth by Almighty God. And the chief character, the leading role of all the acts in this drama of the ages, is Jesus. In Genesis, Jesus is the seed that will bruise the serpent's head, and He's the ram at Abraham's altar. In Exodus, He is the Passover lamb. In Leviticus, He's our great high priest.

In Numbers, He's the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. In Deuteronomy, He is the prophet like Moses who is to come. In Joshua, He's the captain of the armies of the Lord. In Judges, He is the angel of the Lord who raises up the judges.

In Ruth, He is our kinsman redeemer. In 1 and 2 Samuel, He's our trusted prophet. And in Kings and Chronicles, He's our reigning king. In Ezra, He is our faithful scribe.

In Nehemiah, He's the rebuilder of everything that is broken. And in Esther, He is the Mordecai sitting faithful at the gate. In Job, He is my redeemer whoever liveth. In Psalms, He is my shepherd and I shall not want. In Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, He is our wisdom. And in the Song of Solomon, He is our beautiful bridegroom. In Isaiah, He's the suffering servant.

In Jeremiah and Lamentations, it is Jesus that is the weeping prophet. In Ezekiel, He is the wonderful four-faced man. And in Daniel, He is the fourth man in the midst of a fiery furnace. In Hosea, He is my love that is forever faithful.

In Joel, He baptizes us with the Holy Spirit. In Amos, He's our burden bearer. In Obadiah, He is mighty to save. And in Jonah, He is the God of patience and compassion. In Micah, He is the messenger with beautiful feet.

In Nahum, He is the avenger. In Habakkuk, He is the watchman that is ever praying for revival. In Zephaniah, He is the Lord mighty to save.

In Haggai, He is the restorer of our lost heritage. In Zechariah, He is the fountain open in the house of David. And in Malachi, He is the son of righteousness with healing in His wings. In Matthew, He is the Messiah, the King of the Jews. In Mark, He is the servant king. In Luke, He is the Son of Man.

And in John, you are the Christ, the Son of God who is coming into the world. In Acts, He is the shining light that appears to Saul on the road to Damascus. In Romans, He is our justifier. In 1 Corinthians, our resurrection. In 2 Corinthians, our sin-bearer.

In Galatians, He redeems us from the law. In Ephesians, He is our unsearchable riches. In Philippians, He supplies our every need. And in Colossians, He is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. In 1 and 2 Thessalonians, He is our soon coming King. In 1 and 2 Timothy, He is the mediator between God and man. In Titus, He is our blessed hope.

In Philemon, He is a friend that sticks closer than a brother. And in Hebrews, He is the blood of the everlasting covenant. In James, it is the Lord that heals the sick. In 1 and 2 Peter, He is the chief shepherd. In 1, 2, and 3 John, it is Jesus who has the tenderness of love. In Jude, He is the Lord coming with 10,000 saints.

And in Revelation, lift up your eyes, church, for your redemption draweth nigh. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. The Father gave the name of Jesus. The Father gave the name of God. The Father gave the name of Jesus.

He is worthy of glory and worthy of honor and worthy of power and of praise. The Father gave the name of Jesus. The Father gave the name of the Lord. The Lord gave the name of Jesus. He is worthy of glory and worthy of honor and worthy of power and of praise. With the power of Jesus' name, the angels prostrate the Lord. Bring forth the royal violin and come here, Lord of lords.

We chose this seed of Israel's grace. We have sung of the Lord. Tell Him who saith to God, His grace, and come in, Lord of lords.

Tell Him who saith to God, His grace, and come in, Lord of lords. Everything can reach from the least to best of all, to give all praise and sing your song, and come in, Lord of lords. To give all praise, to sing your song, and come in, Lord of lords. And when others sing, come from the heavens, we may call. We'll join the everlasting song, and come in, Lord of lords. We'll join the everlasting song, and come in, Lord of lords. Our scripture reading this morning can be found in your bulletin, taken from the book of Hebrews.

Please join me on the bold print. Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these days, He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature.

And He upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name He has inherited is more excellent than theirs. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

Amen. Oh, where the blood flows with its grace, we bind our hearts to know your grace, and from our strong word make us proud, that we may know the risen Christ. Oh, word of God, so clear and true, we will abide to trust in you, and give to us the prayer of life that we may know the risen Christ. Through the past, who are restrained, refresh us, Lord, we ask of Him, revise us of the separate parts, that we may know the risen Christ. We are the Father, God the Son, where all the spirit make us one, with holy hands let us unite, that we may know the risen Christ.

With holy hands let us unite, that we may know the risen Christ. The Bible is a very remarkable book, simple because we believe its promises, and there are those favorite passages that we love to read, but it's also very complex. If you have a Bible before you, notice the table of contents, you can turn to that table of contents right now. The first five books of the Old Testament are the books of law, then you have historical books, you have wisdom literature, such as Psalms and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and then as you continue you have all of the prophets, and you must keep in mind that these prophets and these books are not all chronological, they are not in chronological order.

Now the Bible has a remarkable unity, in fact I'm going to be stressing that in the next message on this series to show you that these 66 books written by 40 different authors provide a unity that in many respects is breathtaking. But at the same time, if we don't understand its chronology, we don't know where all the books fit. And that's why we've prepared a chart for you, and I want you to take the chart right now and open it, because this gives you the historical timeline of the Bible. It is indeed the drama of redemption.

And if you're watching this today online, I need to tell you that I've been told that there is an online version, an electronic version of this chart on our website. As you look at this chart, you can see that there are some books that move history forward. They are by and large the red books, and then there are those that support the story, or those who go on at the very same time concurrently.

For example, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles cover essentially the same history, but from a different point of view. What I've encouraged you to do is to read the Bible through five chapters a day, so that if you miss a day or two, you'll be caught up, because actually four chapters a day you could read the Bible through. And some of you might like to, first of all, just read the historical narrative as you trace its journey, and then later on come and read its supporting material. But it is so important for you to read it. Last time I spoke to you about the fact that I believe that there are parts of the Bible that you should skim. And I suggested that unless you want to camp on the book of Leviticus and understand it well, skim the book of Leviticus. This past week I read the first ten chapters of Numbers with all of those lists of people who are going back and all of the things that they took, and I have to confess I scanned most of it. Always looking for things that the Holy Spirit might reveal to me, you say, well, isn't all the Bible so rich?

Of course it's rich. If you stop to study the book of Leviticus, you could be there all year and be blessed. But you're not going to read the whole Bible through if you stop and you think about or you analyze every single chapter.

Remember the difference between seeing Washington, D.C. by car and seeing it by plane. Now the Word of God is going to change you. That's why we're all reading it together. It's going to change you because the Word of God converts us. It says in the book of James, by his own will he begat us by the word of truth. The Word of God and the Spirit of God combine together to give us the life of God. The Word of God cleanses us. Now you're clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. The Word of God grows us as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that ye might grow thereby.

Now this has been my experience and it's the experience of others. If you neglect the Bible, you will not miss it in your life. You'll be able to go on without reading it day after day, come to church on Sunday, learn something about it. It will be there on the shelf and you will not miss it. If you begin to read it, if you begin to meditate on it and study it and think about it, you will discover soon that you can't live without it. If you miss it, something will be missing.

You see, the more we read it, the more we love it and we must love God's Word. Well, today it's going to continue the same series. We began last time and if you didn't get, if you weren't here last time, I suggest you get the CD, listen to it with a chart that you have before you and then you'll be able to see these books in context because today we are going to jump basically almost to two-thirds of the chart and I'm going to tell you about the nation Israel which was in captivity.

But I do need to just recap briefly. Remember the story of redemption is that God said to the serpent that there will be the seed of the woman that will crush the serpent's head. The whole story of the Old Testament is the outworking of that promise. We know that it comes through Abraham. After Abraham, there comes of course Joseph who goes into the land of Egypt.

Israel is in the land of Egypt. And then they come out and then they come back into the land under Joshua and they want a king and the first king that they want is Saul and he turns out to be a disappointment. David is especially loved by God and because of that love, God says, David, the seed is going to come through you.

I'm going to give you a son who is going to reign over your throne forever and that's fulfilled in Jesus. After David comes Solomon and Solomon is noted for his great temple. This is the first temple period in Israel's history. Marvelous structure, lots of gold because Solomon loved grandeur and greatness. And Solomon dies and he gives the kingdom to one of his sons by the name of Rehoboam.

Rehoboam increases taxes rather than decreases them. So ten of the tribes revolt. So you have the kingdom split and you have the northern kingdom with its capital in Samaria and you have the southern kingdom with its capital in Jerusalem. Now this gets very confusing folks because the northern kingdom is referred to now as Israel. You say, well, isn't Israel the entire land? Don't we speak of Israel today?

Yes, that's true. But in those days it was Israel and then you have Judah because it's the larger tribe in the south and it is through Judah you see that Jesus Christ is going to come. So that's why the prophets will prophesy either to Israel or to Judah. Most of them were to Judah. The only prophets that prophesied up north were actually Hosea and Amos.

All the others prophesied to the southern kingdom. But there is so much idolatry because they don't want to go to Jerusalem to worship and so God sends the Assyrians in 722. And the Assyrians take all the northern ten tribes captive and we never hear from them again. They are interspersed among the nations.

They are known as the ten lost tribes. The southern kingdom continues for another 132 years and they fall into idolatry too. Jeremiah spends 40 years saying judgment is coming, judgment is coming. There are false prophets that say, oh, it's wonderful. God is going to bless you.

He's going to make you healthy. You don't have to deal with your sin. And suddenly you have the destruction of the temple. 350 years after it was built, Solomon's temple is destroyed because the Babylonians come to Jerusalem and the southern kingdom, Judah, is taken into captivity into Babylon. What an experience they have there. That's where the book of Daniel takes place. Daniel is a marvelous example of how we have to live in a culture that is hostile to us.

Because the Jews now find themselves living in a culture that is not disposed to their own viewpoint and their own religious rituals. And so that's where they are in captivity. And then after they are there, God decides, of course, to bring them back.

He brings them back. By the way, when Solomon's temple was destroyed, Josiah took the ark and he hid it in Solomon's house. The ark was never seen again. That is the Ark of the Covenant, that box where God said he would dwell upon it. Where did the ark go? Two rabbis said that they saw it, and this is, I believe, a credible story, in one of the caverns under the temple area in Jerusalem.

It is almost certainly not in Ethiopia like all of the television specials seem to imply and want to believe. Solomon's temple is destroyed. That's the first temple period. The Jews are in Babylon 70 years. God brings them back because he predicted that it would be 70 years. Babylon is off the map because Persia conquers Babylon. Cyrus, a king, raises up and he allows the Jews to go back to their land and they return in three different waves, coming now back to their homeland 70 years later.

First of all, you have Zerubbabel. He comes and he builds his temple. Now, this is the only passage I would like you to turn to, and that is to the book of Ezra, to the book of Ezra, because Ezra is on hand when the second return takes place, but he writes the book that has his own name, and he tells us about the earlier experience of Zerubbabel and the temple.

It says in chapter 3, verse 10 of the book of Ezra. And when the builders laid the foundations of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with symbols to praise the Lord according to the directions of David, king of Israel. And they sang responsibly, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, for he is good as steadfast love endures forever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord because the foundation of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites, heads of fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first house wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid.

Though many shouted aloud for joy so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away. Why are the old people weeping? Well, they're remembering that Solomon's temple was so much greater. And Zerubbabel's temple, the foundation, was so small in comparison to Solomon that well might they weep. Interestingly, the three prophets, and this is shown on your chart, it's all here on your chart, the three prophets who are prophesying during this time are Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. If you read Zechariah chapter 3, he recounts this incident because he is there and he's thinking about the disappointment of the people and he says, not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.

And then it says, do not despise the day of small things. And so the prophet Zechariah encourages Zerubbabel and those who are weeping because they remember Solomon's great temple. So we have then the first return, which is the rebuilding of the temple. The second return are some laws that were instituted by Ezekiel, some reforms.

I keep saying Ezekiel, of course I mean Ezra. Ezra brings on some reforms and then the third wave is when the temple is finished, but the wall has not been built and Nehemiah comes back and he builds the wall. And Nehemiah is famous for crying up to the Lord of Heaven.

He brings a third group of people back from Babylon, which is now Persia, and he allows them to come back to the city and they, against much opposition, they build the wall around the temple that Zerubbabel had built. And in the book of Nehemiah, Ezra continues to do his teaching. He was a scribe. He was a priest before God. And interestingly, it says that as he taught them, there was an interpreter present. Why did they need an interpreter? Well, you see, after 70 years in Babylon, they lost all the Hebrew they knew. At least the children didn't know how to speak Hebrew. They learned Aramaic, which is a related language.

And so now they needed interpretation so that they would understand what was being said. And so the Old Testament closes. It closes with a little temple in Jerusalem with a wall built around it. And with Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi being the last prophets. And the Jews now, a remnant, are back. A few of them are back in the land, living in Jerusalem, fighting off their enemies.

And you can see, according to the chart, now we have the intertestamental period. The intertestamental period is, of course, the period between the testaments and is known as the 400 silent years. Because during those years, God didn't speak. There were no prophets. The Jews simply existed decade after decade. On and on they went. Now, those of you who were raised with a Catholic background, you know that the Catholic Bible has more books than the Protestant Bible.

And you may have wondered why that is. Many of the books, which we as Protestants call the apocryphal, arose during this period of the 400 silent years. For example, 1 and 2 Maccabees, the time of the Maccabees, the time when Antiochus Epiphanes also marches into Jerusalem and antagonizes the Jews and has a sow put on the altar.

All of that took place during this period of time. Now, we think that the Apocrypha might have some good historical value, but we do not accept it as scripture. Because the Apocrypha was never part of the Old Testament. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, apart from a few chapters in Daniel, which are in Aramaic. And the Apocrypha is in Greek. And there are other reasons as well as to why we don't accept it, but keep in mind that the Bible that Jesus quoted when he was here on earth, as he quoted the Old Testament, that Bible had the very same content as our Old Testament today. The books were in a different order, but the content was the same.

So the Apocrypha was never accepted by Jesus or the apostles, or quoted from as scripture. But now the 400 years are over. Do you remember Esau? Remember Jacob and Esau, they were twins, and when they were in the womb of their mother, God says, two nations are in your womb, and the older is going to serve the younger. And then you think of Esau growing up, of course, and having antagonism with his twin brother Jacob. And later on Esau goes in one direction and Jacob goes in another. Esau and his descendants become known as Edomites, and they live in what today is called Petra, that some of us have had the opportunity of visiting. And what you have in history all throughout the Old Testament is antagonism toward the Jews and especially toward the seed of the woman. I have no doubt that Satan often thought to himself, I wonder who is going to bear the Messiah.

And so he would try to work his wonders so that he would prevent the purpose of God from being accomplished. As a matter of fact, there were times in the Old Testament when it seemed as if the line that God had chosen was almost wiped out, but God always kept a remnant, and that line kept progressing throughout history until we get to Jesus, but it was always attacked. And the Edomites, of course, were part of that who antagonized Israel. Israel wanted to go past them.

The Edomites didn't let them. The Amalekites are descendants of the Edomites, and these Amalekites attacked Israel, and God says, I will have war with Amalek from one generation to another generation. Well, one day in the land that we today call Israel, there was a king who was an Edomite, and he was a descendant of Edom, and his name was Herod the Great. And Herod the Great was a madman, but one of the things that he did is to continue to attack the seed of the woman, didn't he?

Jesus is born in Bethlehem. He says to the wise men, come and tell me about it because I want to worship him too, and they're on to him, and they don't do that, and he becomes angry, and he kills all of the boys in Bethlehem who are two years of age and under hoping to kill Jesus. As a matter of fact, Herod the Great even killed his own family members.

He was a very evil king. But one of the things about Herod is that he really loved to build, and he wanted to build the Jews a temple. The Jews said, no, we have a temple in Zerubbabel. We have Zerubbabel's temple. He said, okay, I won't build you a temple. I'll simply renovate Zerubbabel's temple.

Actually, he rebuilt it all. As a matter of fact, the tearing down of the old one and the building of the new one happened simultaneously, and it was a huge, glorious temple. In fact, he trained a thousand priests as masons to work on it to make sure that the Jews were satisfied.

He himself indicated that he was converting to Judaism, so he's doing them a huge favor and also to try to give himself a great position in history. And so Herod's temple was built. Today when you go to Israel, they'll talk about the first temple period. They mean Solomon, and then they'll talk about the second temple period and the second temple period is basically Herod's temple. You say, well, what about Zerubbabel's temple?

By and large in history, it didn't play a big part. And because it was absorbed into the great Herod's temple, Zerubbabel's temple is not spoken about, but Herod's temple is. All right, now let's do the math. He begins at about 20 years before Jesus is born building this massive structure. Jesus comes on the scene, the building is not yet finished.

Now mind you, the inner part was, but the outer part was still being built on. And Jesus is sitting on the opposite side of the Mount of Olives and he's looking at Jerusalem and he says to the disciples, look at the stones that are here. And in Herod's glorious temple, they were everywhere. He says, not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be hewn down.

Wow. Jesus said that this temple will be destroyed because the Jews did not know the day of their visitation. It's finally finished in about 64 AD and a few years later in 70 AD. This glorious temple that was built by Herod, which supposedly housed worship, the temple into which Jesus was brought as a child when his parents took him to Jerusalem. This glorious temple was taken down stone by stone. It is said that when the Romans came and Titus came and conquered the city, that they believed that there was gold in the stones and so it was totally and completely dismantled in accordance with the words and the prophecy of Jesus. The temple was gone.

Today you can go to Jerusalem and there are no artifacts of Herod's temple except for a retaining wall that was left. And that retaining wall is known as the wailing wall. It was an outer wall to hold in the temple area and the mounds of dirt that were taken into the area to build the temple.

And that's all that was left. Whenever you go to Rome, please, please go to the Roman forum because there in the forum you can see the arch of Titus which commemorates the victory of the Romans over Israel and on the arch there is a candelabra made, a replica of a candelabra that was taken from the temple area of Jerusalem and brought to Rome. Now if you were to go to the temple area today, what would you see? Today you would see what is known as the dome of the rock.

The dome of the rock which was built in the latter part of the 600s, so we could say the 7th century. This is a Muslim shrine. And when you're at the Mount of Olives and you're looking toward the temple area, you can see the wall. Of course on the other side of the wall is the dome of the rock and before you is the Kidron Valley and the best place to see it really is from the Garden of Gethsemane which is then your opportunity to see Jerusalem. But today there's this Muslim shrine. And when you're at the shrine, you notice many different, what shall we say, inscriptions from the Quran and one of those inscriptions says and heaps basically a curse on Christians who believe the Trinity saying that there could not possibly be the Son of God.

God could not have a son. What happens when you go inside the dome of the rock? Inside the dome of the rock, as you might expect, you find a rock. This rock is the top of a mountain. I've been in the dome of the rock many times and what you can see is people who had come and they chiseled pieces from the rock.

But it's the top of a mountain. And years ago, when I was studying in Israel more than 40 years ago, I wrote a paper on Herod's temple and also on the dome of the rock and according to my studies, this rock is probably the place where you had the burnt offering altar. So you can understand that this is a very historical site. It is a site that is very holy to the Jews because it is here that the temple stood. It is a shrine built by the Muslims condemning Christianity and it is a holy place to them and no wonder so much of the history of the world has taken place and still will take place on this particular piece of real estate.

But let's look at that rock again and let's think now. The Bible says in 2 Chronicles 3 verse 1 that Solomon built his temple on Mount Moriah on the very hill where David had purchased from Arona the Jebusite where he might worship the Lord. So Solomon builds his temple on Mount Moriah.

That's interesting. Where do we find Mount Moriah again in the scripture? Well, we actually find it earlier. You remember way back in Genesis chapter 22. God says, Abraham, I want you to take your son and I want you to offer Isaac on Mount Moriah. So as far as we know, it was on top of this mountain, this hill. This is where Abraham came.

You say, well, I don't see the mountain. Well, you have to remember that we're talking about many years before Christ, 1,800 years before Christ. This area was filled in so that the temple could be built. So when you look at that rock, you realize it has a tremendous, unbelievable history. Perhaps right there is where Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac. So let me say again, it's holy to the Jews their temple was here. It's holy to the Muslims because they built this shrine here. It is not a mosque. It is a shrine, the Dome of the Rock. What about the Christians? Well, Christianity is spoken against in the Dome of the Rock. And if you go less than a half a mile, maybe a third of a mile, you get to the very spot in Jerusalem where Jesus Christ was himself crucified. So the spot also is holy to Christians.

Is it any wonder that peace is very elusive in the Middle East? Well, I brought you right up to the time of Jesus, because this next message in the series is going to pick up with the New Testament. But where does this leave us?

What's the take home? Why should our lives be changed forever? Because we know this history.

Couple of reasons. First of all, number one, notice that God disciplines his people. God disciplines his people.

You know, I read the story of the Old Testament and I just can't get over it. As I explained last time, the Israelites were always falling into sin. They had this love of idolatry.

And God was constantly warning them and constantly punishing them. I think of those two beautiful temples. I think of the Temple of Solomon.

Yes, it did exist for 350 years. A glorious temple. God comes along and says, you know, because of your rebellion and your sin, the Babylonians are going to destroy it. I think of Herod's temple. What a wonderful tourist attraction it would have been today. And there's no doubt it could easily have stood the test of time 2,000 years.

Other buildings have come close to that. But Jesus is saying, because of your disobedience and because you didn't accept me as Messiah, you're going to be destroyed. And so the Romans come and Titus comes and he says, surely God was on our side or we could not have done this, said Titus, as he destroys the city and the temple. Isn't it amazing how God apparently is willing to do anything when people continue to sin? Our nation of the United States is under judgment. No question about it.

Longer story. But judgment has come to us. And so we have to ask ourselves, how do we live in a society that clearly is abandoning God and facing the consequences? But, you know, he disciplines individual believers, too. The Bible says in the book of Hebrews that those whom the Lord loves, he chastens and he scourges every son that he receives. As a matter of fact, it says that if you are not disciplined, you are not a child of God.

No Christian can leave God and live in sin without God's discipline and chastisement. Maybe it'll be mental torment. Maybe it'll be guilt.

Maybe it'll be consequences. But in some way or another, God disciplines his people. If there's a lesson to be learned from all of this is God really genuinely hates sin.

That's the first lesson. God disciplines us. Secondly, God restores us. God restores us.

Isn't it interesting? The 10 tribes go off into Assyria. They're never heard from again. They're obliterated to history.

They intermarry and they're gone. But God made a promise. God promised Abraham that he, through his seed, through his seed, he would find that the promise of Jesus, the promise of Redeemer would come about.

And then that promise can be traced through the pages of the Bible. It comes through Judah and God fulfills his promise, but he fulfills it only to a remnant. The Old Testament is filled with uses of that word remnant. What does the word remnant mean? Well, if you look it up in the dictionary, it says a small part or a fragment. It also says that it is a piece of cloth frequently that is left over, an unused piece of cloth. Maybe you've gone into a store intending to purchase some cloth and they say, well, you know, we don't really have that, but we have this remnant over here. You know, God often works just through a remnant.

He works through a few. There are some religions in the world that say that the truth of our religion is proved by our military conquests. Jesus says something very different from that. He says to his people, fear not, little flock.

It is God's intention to give you the kingdom. God often works through small churches, sometimes small ways, always a remnant, never, never an entire nation, always the righteous within that nation, and God restores us. Could I say that God also redeems us? God also redeems us. In the end, as we shall learn next time, Jesus comes and fulfills all the prophecies of the Old Testament. He turns out to be the seed of the woman and he does indeed crush the head of the serpent. The serpent's head is there in the dust and Jesus comes and proves who he really is and he comes and he does die on the cross and he does die for sinners such as you and me to reconcile us to God and to bridge the gap between our sin and God's holiness so that we can belong to God forever. You say, oh, Pastor Lutzer, how can I belong to the remnant?

I'll tell you how. What you do is admit to your sinfulness, admit to your need, trust Christ as your savior, recognize that it is your sin that has separated you from God and come in humility and repentance. And even in the Old Testament, God's grace and mercy was clearly seen for those who came with repentance and faith and he is there for us as well.

Thank you so much for being with me in this very, very quick survey of hundreds of years of history. But at the end of the day, remember, it is the drama of God's redemption that is always triumphant. God will always win, always. Would you join me as we pray? Father, we ask that you will help us as we contemplate studying your word and reading your word.

Help us to put it together. Help us, Lord, to understand its context. But most of all, give us hearts that are willing to receive it, willing to listen, willing to respond. And for those who may be here today who need to be restored, those who need to be redeemed, we ask that you will do that. Thank you so much for the coming of Jesus and the fulfillment of your purpose and promise. And now before I close this prayer, if you need to pray, if you need to talk to God, you do right now. Hear our prayer, O Lord God, we pray, in Jesus' name.

Amen. On today's Moody Church Hour, Pastor Lutzer spoke on the Old Testament, Part 2, the second of four messages in a series on the drama of redemption. Next week, our trip through the entire Bible continues as we begin our look at the New Testament. The Drama of Redemption series helps us make sense of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. We'd like to put this four-part series in your hands on either CD or DVD as our way of saying thanks for your gift of any amount to The Moody Church Hour. Just call us at 1-800-215-5001. Ask about the drama of redemption when you call 1-800-215-5001. Or you can write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Also, you can go online at moodyoffer.com. That's moodyoffer, all one word, dot com. Join us next week for another Moody Church Hour with Pastor Erwin Lutzer and the Congregation of Historic Moody Church in Chicago. This broadcast is a ministry of The Moody Church.