1. David Asscherick - Ablazing Grace: Introduction

this is the first of our new series titled a blazing grace and we had originally planned and prepared and hoped to have our new banners hanging up they are actually in the back but one of them had a small spelling error on it and which is funny because I actually consider myself a bit of an editor so we decided not to hang them up until next Sabbath so we'll get that sorted but we're launching a new series and the series is titled a blazing grace another look at the Old Testament another look at the one everyone the Old Testament and I've been really thrilled with the feedback that I've received so far the positive feedback that we've received so far on people sort of excitement and anticipation maybe even a little nervousness I mean can you really spend a whole year in the Old Testament in a Christian Church can we do that and it's going to be great and and as I was studying this week and been preparing talking to Pastor Daniel and Jared already I have been tempted to say let's make it a two year series now I don't think that's going to happen but here's what here's what we're faced with we are faced with a daunting task a Herculean task an enormous task of trying to traverse the entire Old Testament in a year when we just spent half of a year on a single book that only has 28 chapters so the kind of depth that we were able to go into in the book of Acts is going to elude us in our study of the Old Testament but what we're going to lack in depth I think we're going to make up for in other areas and one of those areas is going to be in learning how to see the Old Testament you'll notice that the series is titled the blazing grace another look at the Old Testament and the reason it's another look we almost put a fresh look but we opted with another look because the danger the difficulty perhaps the most daunting part facing myself pastor Jared and pastor Daniel and others as we prepare to present a year-long series on the Old Testament is that so many of us ourselves included already feel like we know what's in the Old Testament we already have a feel for the shape and the size of the Old Testament we sort of have a sense for what's there and you want to let that advance for me there it's giving me a beep I don't know what that is there we go great so let me go back one here so we're going to do an introduction today we're going to spend time today sort of asking ourselves the question how do you read the Old Testament we could just dive right into Genesis chapter one we'll be there next week and then Ty Gibson will be with us the following week he's taking our third sermon in the series so he's really excited about that we're excited to have him and we'll have a number of guests that will come James will give us a little presentation Geoffrey Rosario give us a presentation James Rafferty and so what we're going to do today is we're going to ask the question how do you read the Old Testament do you read it in the same way that you read The Sydney Morning Herald do you read it in the same way that you read The Wall Street Journal or the way you would read a novel or a book how do we come to this assortment this encyclopedia of books from Genesis to Malachi and I want to start with illustration several of them actually when you look at the screen there what do you see maybe the question we should say is what do you see first because if you look at it long enough you'll see that there are two things there there's a goblet or a vase in the middle and then there are faces on either side right this is a popular picture there's variations of it many of you have maybe seen it before and the remarkable thing is is that this is one of those images that after you've seen one you can then switch back and forth you can see the other you can choose to sort of see the goblet or you can choose to sort of look at the faces and because of the ease of the illustration and the simplicity of it you can you can sort of modulate back and forth I'm going to look at the faces now I'm going to look at the Goblet I'm going to look at the faces I'm going to look at the Goblet but there are other symbols and pictures and portraits that are not so easily switchable where you can just go from A to B and then back to a and then back to B so for example how about this one was anyone successful of course it's trick it's tricky right because in order to be successful you would have to first read the message in order to know that you're not supposed to read it but it gets it gets harder still I could have put any word up there any English word the word could have been you know minivan or offering or Jesus and you have become so accustomed to seeing those symbols that we refer to as the letters of the alphabet right the English alphabet you have become so accustomed to seeing them and then seeing them in certain orientations and arrangements that we call words that once you've learned to read you can't unlearn it it's not even possible for us to look at that and not read it if we know what it says once you've seen something in one way unlike this image where we can modulate back and forth from the Goblet to the faces back to the Goblet and then back to the faces here you see the word try even if you're not trying you see the word - even if you're not trying you see the word not and read and this and and what's more is you can't not see it now how about this one have you seen this one before anybody seeing this for the first time this image okay so those of you that are seeing it my son saw it this morning for the first time and I said to one of them this was actually Jessica I said what do you see and she said a monkey so maybe some of you see a monkey how about somebody that's seeing this for the first time this morning want to tell us just nice and loud what do you see okay you see a face okay you see two faces okay very good very good if you look here if you sort of look the original thing that I see when I see the image is an older woman right with a scarf does anybody else see the older woman right so here's the nose right and here's the mouth she has kind of a long chin she has a maybe sort of like a fur coat kind of tucked up around her head she has this this scarf right and I how many people see the older woman most easily that's what I see when I look up when I first glanced at it but do you also see the young woman there right you see the young woman she's sort of looking away from us this is her cheek here this is her nose this is her long eyelash and this is maybe like a feather coming out and this is kind of a big scarf perhaps this is her hair and she sort of turned away from us and if you look you can see both now this image is a little more difficult than this image where you can just easily modulate back and forth between the goblet and the faces the faces and the goblet and it's much more easy than this where you can't see anything other than the words try not to read this but here you can see the old woman's face but then if I try as I'm doing right now I can see the young woman but then I can with some effort modulate back to seeing the old woman but I did this experiment on myself several times this morning where if I took the image away and then I put it back up I would always immediately see the same thing and that was the older woman's face even if I would put it away and I would make a mental note to try and see the younger woman when I would flash it up the older woman would come first and then I would quickly modulate to the younger woman maybe you're the opposite maybe you see the younger woman and then have to modulate to the older well this is illustrative of the difficulty that we face when we look at the old testament some of us already have a picture of what the Old Testament is what's there what it says many of us have heard some of the highlight stories over and over again we've heard Daniel in the lion's den David and Goliath we know these stories inside and out we've heard the story of creation we've heard the story of David and Solomon many as many of us particularly those that were raised in a Christian home and had the bedtime stories Nabal even maybe even the uncle Arthur stories the Bible stories we have become saturated and we know these stories very well now not all of us some people might be sitting here today and don't know very little know very little to nothing about the Old Testament for some of us the tricky part is going to be to unsee what we are sure is there I want to say that again one of the most difficult things for us in our year-long study of the Old Testament is going to be to unsee what we're just sure is there now don't get me wrong there might be some things that you see there that are actually there some wonderful valuable amazing things but in as much as it's possible we're going to try and clear the table and start putting things on afresh putting them on brand-new and seeing them as if we had never seen them before and today I want to give you a little bit of structure a little bit of advice a little bit of textual reasoning on how to do that let's have a quick prayer father in heaven we open our hearts to you open yourself and your word to us is our prayer in Jesus name Amen well one of the reasons that studying through the Old Testament is going to be daunting is not only because many of us already think we know what's there but it's also because there's just such a volume of information right unlike the book of Acts which was 28 chapters we're going to study book after book after book and story after story that covers not just hundreds of years but more than a millennia in fact we go all the back all the way back to the book of Genesis right to Malachi we're dealing with the better part of sort of 4,000 years of human history and it is ambitious to say the least to think that we're going to cover that in anything like a comprehensive fashion in a year so when Daniel and Jared and myself sat down we said hey wait a minute in order to make this digestible and rememberable and accessible we need to break the old testament up into its major themes right and so when the banners are hung up next Sabbath you'll see that the left banner will say a blazing grace another look at the Old Testament but the banner on this side you're right we'll have these chapters on it so that we will be in continual remembrance throughout the year that this is the basic schematic the basic layout or the blueprint of the Old Testament and it kind of goes chronologically in thematically like this we're going to start in the beginning we'll have a number of sermons that deal with Genesis chapters in 211 right what's sometimes called prehistory then we're going to get to the family which is going to be basically a treatment of the rest of the book of Genesis the family of Abraham the family of Abraham of course then Isaac then Jacob become the Israelites that are the centerpiece of the entire Old Testament so we're going to have to spend some time understanding this family God's call of Abraham and his family and especially God's covenant with this family that family then as you may remember some of this some of you this will be a very familiar story to you eventually our lead into Egypt and they are then called out of Egypt and we'll spend a lot of time talking about God's redemptive power in what became the normative moment the the pinnacle moment in Israel's history and that was the Exodus experience when they were called out of Egyptian bondage out of slavery and out of a pagan power into this freedom but what were they called into and that will launch us into our fourth chapter which is the land the promise had always been going back even to Adam and also with Abraham Noah as well that God would give them land and descendants to fill it that'll come up again and again God gave the promise of land and the promise of descendents the promise of land and the promise of descendents and when we get into books like Joshua and judges and kings and chronicles in Samuel this is these are the stories of the family of Abraham the descendants of Abraham finally taking the land that had been given to them receiving as it were the gift from the hand of God we could wish that the story had a happy ending and all was well however what happens shortly thereafter is that the people clamor in similarity to the surrounding nations for a king for a monarch for someone to rule over them and then we enter the phase of the kings and we'll spend time on the kings we won't even have time to treat all of the kings in detail but we're going to look at some of the most important Kings and what we're going to ask the question what makes them the most important of course we'll spend a significant amount of time on David we'll spend time on him even a bit today then we go from the Kings to what is the saddest chapter in the whole old and that is exile now for those of you that are paying attention you'll notice that the third chapter and the sixth chapter are similar in that they both begin with the prefix X right X so dis and exile and both come from the Latin ech which means out Exodus is a moving out to exit is to go out and exile is to be put out so they are originally called out into something but we're going to see because of their unfaithfulness to God's covenant because of their consistent disobedience and rebellion they were eventually led not just out of Egypt but they were driven out of their own land into places like Babylon Assyria and beyond and here's the remarkable thing if we were able to pull this off by the by the power of God and by his Spirit we will be landing this plane this Old Testament plane just as we come to December and December of course is the month when Christian churches traditionally historically celebrate the birth of Jesus and the goal will be to land on Messiah in and around December then a really cool thing is going to happen we're going to spend the next year studying Jesus parables and Jesus announcement about the kingdom just a little preview for you there so this is going to take us a little while and we're going to begin our study of how to study the Old Testament by going to what might seem like a really strange place we're going to go to the very first verse of the New Testament open your Bibles to the book of Matthew what a strange place to begin a year-long study of the Old Testament in the first book of the New Testament but is it so strange after all well you will notice in Matthew chapter 1 I've put the first verse on the screen here for you it says this the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ that could that could read like this the Genesis of Jesus Christ the opening of the story of the lineage so in many ways we have the of Genesis which is the beginning right of creation in the beginning God created the heavens in the earth and here Matthew very similar to John by the way who begins this way in the beginning was the word which is clearly referring back to Genesis Matthew begins similarly the Genesis or the genealogy of the humanity of Jesus Christ and then he says something very interesting the son of David the son of Abraham now there are three big figures three looming gigantic figures in the Old Testament there are many other mountains very high mountains including people like Noah and Elijah and Solomon but the three looming figures of the Old Testament two of them are here on the screen for you that would be David and Abraham who do you think might be the 3rd Moses the three high peaks of the Old Testament the people around whom the Old Testament wraps our Moses and then Abraham and David and when Matthew introduces this genealogy or this seemingly really boring list of so and so had a son named so-and-so so-and-so so-and-so so-and-so all of these begets he begins it by letting you know that the beginning of Jesus Christ in his incarnation is that he is a son of Abraham he is a son of David he then goes through those genealogies I'm not going to make you read them but what I am going to show you is how he concludes those genealogies look at verse 17 Matthew chapter 1 verse 17 it says so all the generations from Abraham to David are how many generations fourteen generations and from David to the captivity in Babylon are how many generations fourteen generations and from the captivity in Babylon until the Christ are how many generations fourteen generations ok let's start by this here's Matthew's summary of the Old Testament this is why we're starting our study of the Old Testament in the book of Matthew because Matthew provides us with the template to do the very thing we want to do he was essentially saying to the Jews to whom he was riding hey go back and read your own books and this is what you'll find he gave us a template he gave us a study guide he gave us a way to know how to navigate the seeming infinite complexity of the Old Testament and their kings and their lands and their descendants and their sons and their conquests and their defeats ah he says this is it and it's right up here on the screen for you he says it really breaks up into three great chapters we gave seven chapters but Matthew says really there's three chapters now he begins as a faithful Jew with the father of the Jewish nation Abraham Luke the Gospel writer who's a Gentile he doesn't begin his genealogy with Abraham he's concerned that the genealogy goes all the way back to Adam right we could develop that but we're going to stay in Matthew here and he gives us from Abraham to David from David to the captivity and then from captivity to Messiah now you might remember that just last Sabbath Pastor Jared Daniel and myself preached the sermon it was a really long one wasn't it we were sorry for that the plan was to preach for 45 to 50 minutes which we did twice it's a little longer than we'd hoped but we were having so much fun you'll just have to forgive us on that one but you will remember that point seven out of the like 27 or 28 points that we made no it was 10 forgive me point number seven out of the ten points was this the book of Acts hinged on Acts chapter 7 where Stephen stood up and Luke records the longest this is review Luke records the longest sermon in all of the book of Acts and funnily enough it's not a sermon of Paul's and it's not a sermon of Peters it's a sermon of Stephens and Stephens sermon is this gigantic history of Israel because for Luke he knows that right on this point if Israel doesn't begin to understand the purpose and direction of their own history they will ultimately fail and fall not just corporately but individually and so we allocates a huge percentage of this book this gigantic sermon - this gigantic section to a single sermon and the sermon is a retracing of history and what we said was this the lesson that we can take away is that we don't want to forget right lest we forget or continually admonished as Americans and Australians and others to remember from whence cometh thou where are you from how did you get here because there is a dangerous has been quoted that if we if we forget the past if we forget our history we are doomed to repeat it lest we forget there in that sermon Steven had said I am the God of your fathers and our takeaway was this you might recall very simply Stephen said this hey guys this story this Jesus story has come from somewhere and it's going somewhere this thing just didn't happen in a vacuum d Jesus didn't just land from an alien ship a UFO just sort of lowered him out and there's no preamble there's no lead-up Jesus has not act one of the drama no no no no no he takes place well into the drama in fact I tweeted this just this morning you can't even understand the mission of Jesus apart from the Old Testament it's impossible because he shows up about 3/4 of the way through the movie right what happened up to that point and that was exactly Stephens point in his sermon there he's saying hey there's a story going on here and that's the point that Matthews making he's saying hey I'm going to tell you all about Jesus but I can't tell you about Jesus until you first know that there was a promise to Abraham that promise was provisionally preliminary fulfilled and David then from David the promise was eventually lost sight of the Covenant was broken which led to a captivity but the cavity the captivity itself will eventually be relinquished and we will end up at Messiah 1 2 3 so it's a template now it gets fascinating really fascinating because Matthew has purposefully and we know this because he has seemingly strategically left out we would even say conveniently a couple generations what he seems to be saying is this the history of Israel divides up into roughly equal parts 14 14 14 why the 14 thing why three 14s well here's at least part of the answer three 14s is 6 7 & 7 as you would be aware seventh-day Adventist is a hugely significant number in the cycles of Scripture right you get for example to a book like The Book of Revelation you have seven seals and seven churches and seven trumpets right these sevens are symbolizing hey something's coming to closure something's coming to finality something is about ready to end and another thing is about ready to begin and so this is a remarkable thing when Matthew structures the Old Testament he says there was a 14 there was a 14 there was a 14 and his Jewish audience would have immediately caught on to what I'm asking you to catch on do there was a seven to seven a seven to seven a seven and a seven and that six seven gets us right up to Messiah notice this this pattern of six 7s suggests that what's the next word what's that word suggests that Sabbath what's the next word rest and what's the third word closure are soon to follow all right something is coming he is announcing here with this very particular very mathematical very symmetrical telling of the Old Testament story from David to Abraham or from Abraham to David from David to the captivity from the captivity to the Messiah he is saying hey look there was a seven and a seven a seven and a seven a seven and a seven and you should now have as any Jew would have had a pregnant sense that well wait a minute so the end is coming the closure is coming the Sabbath is coming no wonder when we come to the new testament shortly after Jesus baptism he started saying really wild really audacious things like this the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is very near Jesus understood that he was living in that pregnant moment between what has been and what is becoming always announcing that they were on the verge of something the kingdom of God is near it's close its proximate because Jesus understood the thing that Matthew understood he didn't just drop out of an alien ship and land here and say okay what's going on what's my role in the story what's taking place before I got here oh no Jesus knew as Matthew knew and I'm inviting us all to know that there was a story there was a tale there was a narrative of which Jesus becomes the conclusion the capstone the finality even the Sabbath - one of the most remarkable things that Jesus said is this Matthew chapter 11 you've probably heard these verses before and you probably perhaps in a time of difficulty or strife or pain or difficulty applied them to your own personal situation and there's nothing wrong with that but there is a depth there is a bottomless plum 'less depth to what Jesus is saying here and hopefully it'll begin to jump out at you look at this Matthew chapter 11 come to me all you who are weary and burdened and what does he say I will give you rest that could easily say I will Sabbath you you come to me you're tired you're burdened I will Sabbath you I will give you rest take my yoke upon take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find out what does he say a second time you will find rest not for your bodies ah you will find a soul full rest Jesus here knows good and well that there is some specific lineage some specific demarcation some specific symmetry of time that he is arriving as the announcement of the final chapter in Israel's sometimes up sometime down topsy-turvy history this idea of finality and the Sabbath come together in passages like Genesis two that we'll look at in more detail next week thus the heavens and the earth and all the host of them were finished were finished notice what happens on Sabbath something's finished something's brought to the end something is brought to closure on the seventh day God ended his work which he had done he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it he rested from all his work which he had created in May you see it's against this backdrop of this seven-day cycle this seven cycle that that there's the time for the work there's the time for the struggle there's the time for the toil there's the time to be weary and then there's a time for Sabbath there's a time to rest and not just your bodies but to rest your souls when Jesus hung on Calvary's cross he knew that something significant was coming to an end when he said these three words it is what is it it's finished Jesus understood that something with his death something was drawing to a close it's more than coincidental that he brought this Sabbath rest to arrest he brought this six this this seven seven seven seven seven seven to arrest on the literal weekly Sabbath itself resting in the tomb on the Sabbath again the dev's here right we can see it on the surface and say oh that's fascinating and then we go down one level and it's more fascinating and we go down still further and the depths continue to unfold below us Matthew's point is unmissable isn't it Jesus life makes sense only as a continuation of a what is that word right there of a larger story you see God is doing something Matthew says it breaks down basically into into these three chapters it goes from Abraham down to David it goes from David down to the mist onto the Exile and it goes from the Exile finally to Messiah we're going to break it up into our seven chapters which more or less follow the same basic pattern what I'd like to do now is read you this great quotation from a book that I was just exposed to this week recommended to me by a good friend a young lady who's actually going to be our keynote speaker in the Connexions tent at big camp I'm really excited she's a theologian and I sent her an email I said cassia I need you to recommend a book I need a great introductory book to the Old Testament she said all you've got to read this book and I've not been able to put it down it's called knowing Jesus through the Old Testament highly recommended great book listen to this listen to what Chris Wright says here he says we need to respect those intentions and we need to ask why it is that Matthew will not allow us to join in the adoration of the Magi until we have plowed through his list of beginnings why can't we just get on with the story why don't we just get to worship bring our frankincense and bring our incense and bring our mirror and bring our gold why can't we just get into the story why all the bagette bagette bagette bagette bagette bagette bagette bagette which strikes us as decidedly antiquated and downright boring look at what he goes on to say because as Matthew you won't understand that story the one I'm about to tell you unless you see it in the light of a much larger story that goes back for many centuries but leads up to the Jesus that you want to know about that longer story is the history of the Hebrew Bible or what Christians came to call the Old Testament the Old Testament tells the story that Jesus completes Jesus is the last chapter in the story you just want to skip to the last chapter and in Matthew says oh no you got to read the book first when Matthew gives this brief summary from Abraham to David david to the exile and exile to Messiah he's assuming that you have a basic familiarity that you have a basic literacy of the Old Testament which many of you do but some of us don't and we're going to discover over this year that some of our literacy is actually miss reading the text or misunderstand what's going on I tell you for myself just so you don't think I'm pointing the finger at you I'm deadly nervous about a few passages in the Old Testament and I purposefully selected those passages to preach on because there are things in the Old Testament that scared the death out of me not literally not like I can't sleep at night but I have a difficult time shoehorning my picture of God in the New Testament a God of love a God of kindness I got a forgiveness a God of grace of God of mercy I've got a compassion with certain passages in the Old Testament does anybody else have that difficulty well in this series we're not going to avoid conveniently those old difficult passages Jared and I we made a decision on this we're not just going to go rushing to the stories that we all know and love we will talk about some of them we said hey we want to tackle the tough stuff and it's not going to be easy to open up the text and to see it with new eyes because we're going to be tempted to see that old woman or in your case to see the Goblet or to see but we're going to have to unsee so that we can learn to see that's what Matthew sang alright here's the sentence up here and we'll land this plane I'm not going to make you sit here for an hour and 20 minutes today that's for sure the Old Testament tells the story that Jesus completes that's our basic thesis this is Matthew's Old Testament summary let's just unpack it a little bit more detail why would Matthew feel at liberty to break the first major chapter of israel's history down from abraham to david in fact there's actually a really natural arc that flows from abraham to david for this reason i've written it for you here the covenant will promise of land and descendants that's what God said to Abraham we'll see that in a few weeks I'll spend a whole two whole weeks on Abraham but by way of preview the Covenant 'el promise of land and descendants to the securing of the land and the establishment of nationhood under a godly King David it's a logical place to sort of draw your first demarcation because God made the covenant promise I will give you land and give you descendants to Abraham Abraham was followed by Isaac Isaac by Jacob Jacob by Joseph Joseph by Jacob by the descendants of Israel the twelve tribes of Israel that eventually become the nation of Israel that in the time of David more than any other more than the judges and we'll spend a little bit of time in the judges it's the most difficult and frustrating but probably in the Old Testament but by the time we get to David there is some significant sense in which the promise to Abraham has been at least provisionally fulfilled they have well secure borders they have a well-defined land the tribes occupy that land and there is a godly king on the throne shortly after David though the wheels begin to come off and we go from David to Solomon and from Solomon rapidly downhill and we end up at captivity notice what the screen says the greatest king to the demise of the Kings from great hope in David to utter hopelessness from confidence and optimism to captivity and despair God had warned them against the idea of a king he had warned him against the idea of a monarchy they had pressed on in their importunity they had pressed on in their stubbornness they were just sure that they knew better than God so God is we're going to see over and over again in the Old Testament works with and sometimes around the maneuverings and machinations of his people and he does that here but eventually those seeds that are sown there's a great text in the New Testament that says God is not mocked whatever a man says he will eventually reap and as long as you had a good man a godly man and certainly he wasn't always so but as long as you had a man after God's own heart on the throne all would be well but the story of large sections of the Old Testament is that sometimes men with less than godly hearts ended up on that throne and set an example and a trajectory and a direction that brought the children of Israel further and further and further from God and his covenant a natural place to draw the demarcation when Assyria finally come and bring Israel into captivity and shortly thereafter Babylon comes and brings Judah into captivity and it's as if Satan could you know sort of say aha the people of God the promises of God erased from the earth but there was a little spur a little whisper from prophets like Daniel who began to say yes Israel has been unfaithful and yes the Covenant has been broken but a messiah will come a messiah will come and he will do what Israel failed to do Messiah will keep covenant with God look at this captivity - Messiah the abandonment of covenant the harsh realities of exile captivity release eventually the rebuilding of the temple that had been destroyed by Babylon lead to not a triumphant Israel but a triumphant Messiah a covenant-keeping exile ending Messiah Jesus Christ and Matthew says if you don't know the story how can I tell you about Jesus if you don't know where we've been how could you appreciate where we are I've got to tell you where we've been so you can know where we're going shortly after Jesus baptism Jesus himself made his way into his home church his hometown synagogue in Nazareth and word was on the street that this was a provocative young promising upstart of a rabbi and so Jesus was given the invitation to take the traditional the reading for the day comes in to Nazareth in Luke chapter 4 where he had been brought up and as his custom was like you and I he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath into church on the Sabbath and he stood up to read I love this part he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah get the picture in your mind jesus knows he's the seventh seventh jesus knows he's the son of Abraham Jesus knows he's the son of David Jesus knows he's the promised Messiah no one else in the room does and they put a book in his hand they say hey the reading today is from Isaiah knock yourself out so he would have us he would have established himself there and unlike us which can just quickly easily extra sleet earned Isiah I can be I'm there already just takes a moment in what's called a codex binding just that easy not in the days of Jesus in the days of Jesus before codex bindings before chapter ization and versification was added there would have been a table probably Oh 2 to 3 metres in front of him perhaps as big as 4 metres there would have been a big heavy scroll on there and you don't just quickly turn these scrolls were delicate they were handwritten you don't treat them you know it would have taken time this would have been and and this would have been a pregnant moment as Jesus pours over looking for a certain passage no easy chapters to just find chapter 60 oh no he's got to find it he's looking up and after what could have been minutes he finds this passage look at what it says it says he was handed the book of the prophet and when he had opened the book he found the place where it was written it wasn't just like the daily reading no no no he found the place what place did he find he found what we would call he can actually turn to this if you want to go to Luke chapter 4 if you want to it's going to be up on the screen but in Luke chapter 4 beginning in verse 18 he here finds a particular passage in Isaiah and he begins to read now this thing that he's about ready to read applies to Israel but Jesus is about ready to drop a bomb on his home synagogue the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor he has sent me to heal those who are broken in heart he has sent me to proclaim Liberty to captives the funny thing is is that by this time in Israel's history they are no longer in caps at least not to Persia they live in their own town Jerusalem they have their own temple that has been rebuilt much smaller than Solomon's original temple but at least they're in their own backyard so to speak some could have argued that in a sense they were in captivity to Rome but they didn't think of themselves as captive in the days of Jesus but Jesus said your captivity goes deeper than geography your captivity goes far deeper than your ability to walk to and fro Jesus says to preach Liberty to set it to proclaim Liberty to the captives recovery of sight to the blind to set at liberty those who are oppressed and then to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord to announce that a certain year has come in fact in the context it's the Jubilee year enough time allowed we could unpack how there's not only the seven the six sevens of Matthew chapter one but then you have the Jubilee on steroids from Daniel chapter 9 which was seventy times seven if seven is a Sabbath and seven sevens is a jubilee what's seventy sevens that's a jubilee on steroids and it all leads up to Messiah the Jubilee now watch this when Jesus gets done reading he finishes reading closes the book back up then he closed the book gave it back to the attendant sat down and there must have been a sense there must have been a pathos there must have been an energy with which he read the text that caused people to be riveted what he sure seemed to be reading that as if it was in the first person and when Jesus senses that the eyes of the perhaps hundreds of pairs of eyes are riveted to him that Sabbath morning he turns to them and he drops a bomb all of those eyes in the synagogue were fixed on him and he began to say to them what's that next word today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing Jesus just as it were tore a page out of their own history something which they were looking forward to happening looking forward to a messiah looking forward to a Joshua looking forward to a deliverer Jesus just tore that page out of history read it with a pathos and an energy and a conviction that clearly communicated that he meant more than a than a standard rabbi would have meant and reading it and then he had the audacity to say when the eyes were riveted upon him this is fulfilled today you see Jesus jesus knew where he was from he knew where he was from and he knew where he was going Jesus completes the story that is the Old Testament somebody says why are we going to spend a year studying the Old Testament I'll tell you what because when we're done if the Spirit comes down and the grace of God does what it's able to do we will be more in love with Jesus more in love with his story and more aware of his story and his love and his breadth and his depth and his compassion and his beauty and his glory than we ever were before we understood the story it's the very place we need to go if we're going to understand who this guy is so that's our that's our road map right there guys for the next year beginning family Exodus Land Kings exile and then we'll spend the whole next year talking about Messiah as we do this pastor Jared myself and Daniel will be keeping our eye on three very important foci is what they're called focus points we're not just going to go charging off into the Old Testament no we're going to have we're going to have three sort of fence posts as it were or three maybe lighthouses that we line up like a surfer will line up he has his point here and he has his point here or she has her point here in here and then she lines up she's called triangulation he line up by the third point we're going to have a triangle that will allow us to navigate the Old Testament in a way that will actually be meaningful it won't just be a series of stories hodgepodge together thrown together mix it up and then hope to come up with your own and rotation oh no we're going to have a triangle a GPS a triad that will guide us through and they are conflict we're going to see that the Old Testament is set against the backdrop of not just a fleshly conflict but a spiritual conflict between God and his enemy covenants we're going to see that covenant is the very center of the Old Testament God's covenant to Abraham his family and his descendants and how it all anticipates Christ and so there it is conflict covenant and Christ and it affects what we will do is get ourselves a pair of glasses I have glasses I can see reasonably well without them but I see better with them some people are blind without their glasses right all of us in this room need glasses not these kinds of glasses but glasses to know how to read the Old Testament the Apostle Paul said these are the glasses that you need this is our final text in 2nd Corinthians chapter 1 verse 20 Paul who knew the Old Testament better than anyone in this room probably does or ever will said these words for every promise that God ever made is yes in Jesus Christ Paul said men what happened on the road to Damascus in one of the deep ironies of Scripture when I lost my sight I gained my vision when I went blind I began to see and it took blindness to show Paul how to go back and read his own stories how to read his own history how to understand his own legacy the legacy of Abraham the story of Abraham his own narrative Isaac Jacob David Moses who are these people and how do they factor in and Jesus on the road to Damascus blinded Saul who became Paul but then he did something even more important he gave him a pair of glasses and he said all right now this is how you read your own story this is how you read your own narrative this is how you read your own history and Paul would write years later oh I see it every promise that God ever made from Genesis to Malachi every promise in Isaiah every promise in Psalms every promise in Nehemiah every promise in second chronicles every promise in Joshua every promise in Deuteronomy every promise in numbers every promise that God ever made he says is yes in Jesus he got glasses that helped him to see Jesus everywhere he saw the Covenant he saw the conflict but above it all he saw what we were going to see this year he saw a looming figure looming higher than David looming higher than Abraham looming higher than even Moses he saw Christ he looking forward to that journey man I tell you I'm fired up it's going to be a great one let's pray father in heaven we're looking forward to a year-long journey I know that Jared Daniel and myself and others are facing this year with no small trepidation can we do it can we go see what Matthew said is there can we go see what Jesus said is there can we go see what Paul insisted was there father can we see the first part of this story sometimes ugly sometimes difficult sometimes tragic sometimes hopeful can we go see that first 3/4 of the story that first 7/8 of the story that makes the last chapter so awesome so meaningful and so life-changing father I pray my pastoral heart I know this is Jared's prayer as well the prayer of my heart fathers that this would be far more than a theological journey for a group of people who already know the truth father may this be a deep soul-searching life-changing journey to your heart where Reformation revival repentance restoration transformation will take place in the lives of the people that occupy these seats father we want to look back when 2016 is upon us and we're looking back at this year we want to say that was a year that Jesus visited us in our lives in our homes in our families in our growth groups and in our church we're looking forward to it Father and we're trusting totally to your spirit do something awesome we expect it in Jesus name let all the saints of the Living God say amen

Channel: Kingscliff Church

Views: 36,698

Rating: 4.8857141 out of 5

Keywords: Kingscliff SDA Church

Id: u4rL0ocKI1s

Length: 49min 56sec (2996 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 14 2015