Chapter 1: What are the December reflections on the Bible's metanarrative?
Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Welcome to our December Reflections and Corrections episode. Let's start with the Reflections. We just finished our 66th book of the Bible and the 27th book of the New Testament, which means you've either finished reading the whole Bible or the whole New Testament. Congratulations!
So here's a brief summary of what we've seen in the Bible's overall metanarrative. The Bible is one unified story. In Genesis, God sets out to build a relationship with one particular family, but things go terribly wrong when they fracture the relationship through sin. But their sin doesn't surprise God.
He already had a plan in place to restore this relationship even before it was broken, and He continues working out that plan immediately, undeterred and unhindered by their rebellion. He sets apart Abraham to be the patriarch of the family he calls the Israelites. They're a bunch of sinners, just like us. God blesses them despite their sin, but sin still has its consequences.
One of the long storylines of consequences of the 400 years they spent enslaved in Egypt. God sends Moses to set the Israelites free from slavery. They flee to the desert where, little by little, God gives them the basic rules of how to have a stable society. They're uncivilized people who have only just met God and Moses and they're not keen on obeying either of them.
In the midst of their sin and stubbornness, God knows that what their hearts need is Him. So He sets up camp among them in the desert. More than anything, He wants them to remember who He is to them. The God who rescued them out of slavery. But they keep forgetting. And every time they forget, they either get fearful and disobey, or they get prideful and disobey.
Forty years after he rescues them from Egypt, their new leader Joshua leads them into the Promised Land and commands them to eradicate their enemies who live there, the Canaanites. God has warned them repeatedly that if they don't drive out the Canaanites, they'll become a snare and lead them away into apostasy. And that's exactly what happens.
So God raises up military leaders or judges to drive out the enemies who are leading his people astray. But this doesn't deal with the problem of their hearts leading them astray.
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Chapter 2: How does God demonstrate His plan for restoration throughout the Bible?
The Israelites do whatever they want, leading to near anarchy. Despite this, there are pockets of faithfulness among the Israelites and even among the foreigners whose hearts have turned toward Yahweh. Pagans like Rahab and Ruth who turn to follow God and his people. God has been telling us all along that he's going to build his people from among every nation, and this is evidence of that.
Next, God raises up Samuel the prophet to lead the people, but what they really want is a king. God tells Samuel to give the people what they want, but it's not going to go well for them. Their first king is Saul, a fearful man who makes rash decisions without consulting God. Then a shepherd named David is positioned as Israel's second king.
He's a man after God's own heart, but he's still deeply flawed. He makes a few decisions that mark him for life, but they don't mark him for eternity. God shows him astonishing amounts of mercy and grace. David is succeeded on the throne by his son Solomon. Despite being the wisest man who ever lived, he has a problem with womanizing and worshiping other gods.
Yahweh is generous to him nonetheless and gives him the distinguished assignment of building Israel's first temple, the place where God came to dwell among the people in the midst of the promised land. After Solomon dies, the nation-state of Israel is divided into two separate kingdoms.
Over the 350-ish years of the divided kingdom, God sends several prophets to warn both northern Israel and southern Judah about what's going to happen. They'll be overcome by other nations. First, the Assyrians defeat northern Israel and take them into captivity. Southern Judah eventually falls under siege by the Babylonians.
When southern Judah falls, many of God's people in Jerusalem are carried off into exile. But God promises them that there's a timeline on this exile. He'll bring them back to the land in 70 years. Not only that, but he'll punish the enemies who are oppressing them. And he doesn't leave them alone during their exile in Babylon.
He sends prophets to remind them of his promises and the fact that his character has remained the same through all the generations, through all their sins. He's always been working out his plan for restoration.
When the 70 years are up, he brings in Persia to defeat Babylon, and God causes the Persian kings to show favor to the exiles, not only letting them return to Jerusalem, but paying the bill for them to rebuild the city the Babylonians destroyed.
They finish the temple and begin to offer sacrifices and celebrate feasts again, but they quickly fall back into their old sin patterns, oppressing the poor, marrying people who don't love Yahweh, dishonoring God and his Sabbath and his laws. God sends more prophets to rebuke them. The people are turning away because God's promises don't seem to be coming true.
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