Institutes of Theology | Session 1 - The Pentateuch (Introduction–10 Plagues)
Tom Pennington
Institutes of Theology | Session 1 - The Pentateuch (Introduction–10 Plagues)
Tom Pennington
It's pretty amazing that this many guys would show up for theology. That's exciting to me and let me just say as I have even gone back through the material, I'm going to be sharing with you over this semester, my own heart has been moved, challenged, confronted, convicted and thrilled with the truths we're going to look at together. So I'm confident the same will be true for you.
What are we going to do this semester? Well, let me put it to you this way. If you go to any bookstore, you'll usually find an entire series of books that consist of aerial views of various famous places or cities. You know, the flyover sort of pictures and an overview of important sites. They're intended to give you a kind of bird's eye view of these destinations. You don't get to see all the detail; you're not touring the cathedrals. You're getting a huge overview of what that city is about. That's what I want us to do together this semester. Over the rest of this Fall we're going to look at the entire Scripture; we're going to take an aerial tour from Genesis to Revelation. I know you don't think I can do that I'm going to do it; I promise you. By the time we're finished, it's my hope that you will have your arms around two things related to the entire Scripture. Number one, that you'll have an overview of its history; you'll understand how everything fits and how it all connects and intersects so the Bible will not be a stranger to you but a friend. And then secondly, I want you to get the essence of its message. Again, we're not going to be looking at a lot of individual texts (as I would like to do, as we do every Sunday morning), we are going to be looking at text but we're going to be looking at sort of high points as we work our way through. But my goal is that in doing that you will understand its message in its entirety. So let's begin then with the unifying message of the Old Testament.
The unifying message of the Old Testament—obviously we're starting with the Old Testament—when it comes to the Old Testament there are essentially four views. One says that the Old Testament is sub-Christian. This is primarily liberals who reject things like the anger and wrath of God, the God of Israel, and so they say we don't want any more of that God, the God of wrath. We want the Jesus—you know the God of patience and love. They forget to read the New Testament where Jesus is that, and He’s also a God who will bring wrath to bear on those who reject our God. The second view is the Old Testament is non-Christian. Leonard Thompson writes the Hebrew Scriptures are a complete work and do not need the New Testament to complete them; so it really is separate from a Christian book. The third view is that the Old Testament is pre-Christian. John Bright says the Old Testament is not of and by itself a Christian message. The Old Testament stands in discontinuity with the new because it speaks a BC word not an AD word (before Christ not after Christ). To those who hold this view it's a book directed to Israel. Some old-line classic dispensationalists took a view very similar if not identical to that one. The fourth view, and clearly where we're headed here, is that the Old Testament is in fact a Christian book. Sidney Greidanus says the dilemma of how to get a Christian message out of a non-Christian or pre-Christian book is a predicament of our own making.
The Old Testament and the New are both parts of the Christian Bible. In fact turn with me to 2 Corinthians 3:14. I want you to hear what Paul says about the Old Testament. Second Corinthians 3:14, talking about the Jewish people who have the Hebrew Scriptures, it says in verse 14, “Their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because [that veil] is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” For us who know Jesus Christ, for those of us who have come to understand that He is the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises, suddenly the Old Testament lights up and comes alive. It is a Christian book. Gleason Archer puts it this way. He says, “The Old Testament presented the preparation of which the New Testament was the fulfillment; the Old Testament was the seed of which the achievement of Christ and the apostles was the glorious fruit.” That's how you need to think about your Old Testament.
And by the way, church history supports this view. Harrison in Introduction to the Old Testament says, “It was the common belief of the fathers (and in context he means Origen, Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine) that the Old Testament was in principle a Christian book. When you look at how the New Testament writers use the Old Testament, you come to the same conclusion. There are 250 direct quotations from the Old Testament in the New. (By the way let me just pause and say I encourage you to take notes. You're not going to be able to write down everything I throw up on a slide. They will be available after the lessons wherever Lance chooses to post them. He's in charge but they'll be available, all right? So just don't be frustrated if you don't get everything down again. And I encourage you to take notes but don't be frustrated if you don't get it all.) So the Old and the New, 250 direct quotations 1,600 references in the New Testament to the Old Testament. The New Testament refers, for example, to the book of Isaiah 308 times, Psalms 303 times. Only four New Testament books have no direct reference to the Old Testament and those would be Philemon and first, second and third John. So the reality is, it is in fact a book that relates to and connects with our New Testament.
The New Testament's use of the Old Testament—here are just references to the Old Testament in several representative books. Look at Matthew, 135 references to the Old Testament; Luke 140; Acts 170; Romans 100; Hebrews 100; and Revelation almost 600 references to the Old Testament. So the book you hold in your hand is a cohesive book. It fits together hand and glove. I love that illustration: the Old Testament is the seed; the New Testament is the glorious fruit.
So with that in mind then, let's talk about the Bible as a whole, what is the message of our entire Bible? The package that is our Scripture. I believe John 17—and I wish I had time to take you there (this is one of the frustrations of survey), but go back and listen—I did a message called The Bible Has One Message and I go through John 17 and show the fact that there at the at the crux moment of Jesus life He’s preparing for the crucifixion He prays to the Father the longest prayer of our Lord recorded. And in that prayer, you'll discover this theme unfolds: that God is redeeming a people by His Son for His Son to His own Glory. That's the theme of the Bible you hold in your hand. In the Old Testament the message is “He's coming!”—and, oh, by the way, there are a lot of passages that show why He needs to come, how bad humans can be. The gospels, “He came!” And this is what He did when He was here: Acts and the Epistles. This is why He came, and this is what He’s doing now, the book of Acts as it illustrates it beautifully. And then Revelation, “He's coming again.” That's your Bible in a nutshell.
So the focus of God's Eternal plan centered in Christ is the redemption of fallen humanity of people for Himself. Merrill Unger speaking of the Old Testament in his introductory guide of the Old Testament says, “Its Central unifying theme [now this will shock you; this is the Old Testament he's talking about.] Its Central unifying theme is the person and work of Jesus Christ the Redeemer. I think he's absolutely right and we'll see that unfold in a moment. In Unger's Guide to the Bible he writes, “The theme of Scripture is human redemption.” The principal character is the world's redeemer Jesus Christ, God incarnate. Everything in the Old Testament that precedes His incarnation points to this grand event and it's outworking in human redemption. John MacArthur in the MacArthur Study Bible puts it beautifully when he says, “There is one God, the Bible has one Creator, it is one book, it has one plan of Grace recorded from initiation through execution to consummation from predestination to glorification.
The Bible is the story of God redeeming His chosen people for the praise of His glory.” That's what this book is about and that's what excites me, and I hope it's what excites you. We're going to see that Christ and the redemption that He brings permeates this book including even the Old Testament. Now although Christ and His redemption are the core of the message of the Bible, there are several sub themes sort of that support that throughout. I don't think there's a better summary of that than John MacArthur's summary of these key supporting themes in the MacArthur Study Bible. This is what's written there: “Scripture is always teaching or illustrating these five realities.” So these are kind of the sub-themes that support Christ and His Redemption.
First of all, the character and attributes of God. Everywhere you turn you learn about our God. I challenge you men, when you read the Psalms, I was told this years ago and it'll revolutionize your reading of the Psalms— frankly, all of Scripture—but when you read the Psalms look for two things. Look for every time it says “God is” make a note of that, write it down, meditate on it. And then look at every time it says God does something, God plus a verb. It's amazing what the Scriptures tell us about our God. Secondly, the tragedy of sin and disobedience to God's holy standard. You see that in the Old Testament, there's some places that seems to be almost all you see, the blessedness of faith and obedience to God's standard. The need for a savior by whose righteousness and substitution sinners can be forgiven, declared just, and transformed to obey God's standard. And then, finally, number five, the coming glorious end of redemptive history in the Lord Savior's earthly kingdom and the subsequent eternal reign and glory of God in Christ. That's the Bible.
So the question regarding the Old Testament that often comes to bear is, “Okay, so it connects, but what does the Old Testament really have to teach us as New Testament believers. Well, consider the appropriate way, the right way, to use the Old Testament to instruct New Testament believers. Now some conservative scholars teach that for us to deduce spiritual lessons from the Old Testament text is inappropriate. In fact, they call it spiritualizing or moralizing. No, let me just say that is a common problem. It's true that Christians often abuse the original authors intent in how they handle the Old Testament text, so I'm not justifying what's really spiritualizing or moralizing. Where there's no effort to capture the original intent of the author. However, done with respect to context, it is not wrong to draw spiritual lessons from Old Testament history and the Old Testament law. In fact, the New Testament encourages and models that approach. For example, Romans 15:4 Paul says, “Whatever was written in earlier times [he is talking about the Hebrew Scriptures] was written for our instruction.” He's writing to the Romans in the first century so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
Or consider 1 Corinthians 9:9 and10, “For it is written in the law of Moses you shall not muzzle the ox while he's threshing.” You go, “Well that text has nothing to say to us.” Paul didn't think so. “God is not concerned about oxen, is He? Or is He speaking altogether for our sake? Yes, for our sake it was written because the plowman ought to plow in hope, and the thresher to thresh in hope of sharing the crops.” And he goes on to say and the person who ministers the gospel should live with the gospel. Or take 1 Corinthians 10:6 about the episode that unfolds around the golden calf incident. “Now these things happened as examples for us so that that we would not crave evil things as they also craved.” or 1 Corinthians 10:11, “Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction upon the whom the ends of the ages have come.” So it is not only possible but appropriate to use the Old Testament to teach New Testament believers how to live in a way that honors God. Again, has to be done carefully, has to be done in context. We'll talk about that as we work our way through, but it is more than legitimate. So the major unifying theme or message of the Old Testament is the message of the Bible: “God is redeeming a people for His Son by His Son to His own Glory.”
What's interesting is we looked at this text a couple weeks ago. I won't take you there tonight but 2 Timothy 3:15 to17 it's interesting that in that text all three parts of the unifying theme of Scripture appear and Paul says they appear in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. What are those unifying part or parts of the unifying theme? Number one, the atonement. The sacred writings are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith. The Old Testament pictures the atonement in the first book in your Bible when the Eternal Son of God kills an animal to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve. Then you have all of those sacrifices that unfold. And by the time you get to Isaiah, 700 years before Christ, we're told that the Messiah will be that offering. He will render Himself, Isaiah 53 says, a guilt offering. So it's clear the person of Christ is there because he says the sacred writings talking about the Hebrew Scriptures (that's a technical term for the Hebrew Scriptures) they are able to give you the wisdom that leads to Salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus, Messiah Jesus. And they're also able to give instruction for believers. So it's all there, the whole package.
Now with that basic framework, let me just give you some important conclusions that sort of grow out of that. These overlap some, so don't look for neat and tidy categories but just think about some important conclusions from what I've just shared with you. First of all, the fact that Christ is the central figure of both the Old and the New Testaments immediately raises the value of the entire Old Testament for the New Testament Christian. When you understand that He is at the center of both, suddenly the Old Testament isn't an outdated book; it isn't something that was for another group of God's people and we don't share anything in that. I mean, what does Jesus say in John 5:39? “The Old Testament Scriptures speak of me.” Another conclusion is that as Christians understanding the central theme of the Old Testament validates our use of and the benefit we receive from the Old Testament. Understanding that this is one book draws us in for the benefit that's there.
Number three, Christ's important place in the Old Testament underscores the consistency and continuity between the Testaments. We're not talking about two totally different ways of Salvation, two totally different roles of the Spirit and there is a different role of the spirit but not totally different. The Spirit was regenerating in the Old Testament just as He regenerates in the New Testament, and so forth. So there is more continuity than discontinuity. Another conclusion is that Christ has been and will always be the mediator between God and man. Jesus said, “No man comes to the Father but by me.” (John 14:6). First Timothy 2:5, “There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
Listen, don't you dare believe for a moment that Old Testament believers had no idea that the Messiah was coming and they had no reference point to say he would deal with sin they do from Genesis 3:15. We'll talk more about that in a moment, but there's always been one mediator there's not been two mediators, not one in the Old Testament and another one in the New. Only one, and His name as we know Him is the Messiah Jesus. And then final conclusion is this: when we understand the relationship, it demands that you and I be students of the Old Testament. I mean, that's really what Paul said to Timothy right in that passage “all Scripture.” And half of the Bible he was talking about was the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. So we have to be students of the Old Testament. So I hope you're convinced so let's be students. All right? With that background, let's become students.
First of all, when you look at your English Bible and you look at the Hebrew Bible it's important for you to understand that the content of the Hebrew Scripture is identical to the modern English Old Testament. There's no Apocrypha in the Hebrew Scripture just as there's not in the Bible you hold in your hand, it's identical. The primary, the only difference is the arrangement of that content. In the English there are 39 books, in Hebrew there are 22 books. Why? Well the primary reasons for that is this. First of all, in the Hebrew Bible the Minor Prophets are grouped together as one book called “The Twelve.” They understand they're separate books, but they're grouped together and counted as one. There are six groups of books that are counted as one book, not like in English. Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles in your Bible you have two books 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel; 1 Kings, 2 Kings, etc. In Hebrew there are only three. There's Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. Same content different structure. Ezra, Nehemiah in Hebrew is one book, Joshua and Ruth in Hebrew one book. And then Jeremiah and Lamentations in Hebrew one book.
When you do the math, you see it's the same content just ordered and structured differently. And so while there are 22 books in the Hebrew Bible, there are 39 in the English Bible. Now they're also arranged differently. I don't know if you can see that in the back. Can you guys see that back there? Hopefully. Good Okay, you see the Hebrew arrangement on the left and the English Arrangement on the right. This is one of two slides you'll see in Hebrew. You have the Torah—or the law—the first five books and that's absolutely identical to the English, the Pentateuch, the first five books written by Moses. And just after the Exodus in 1445 BC. Then in Hebrew it changes. You have the prophets, and they group them into what they called the former prophets and the latter prophets, and you can look at the list there. And let me go on and show you the rest of the Hebrew one and I'll come back look again at the left column then you have the poetical books Psalms, Proverbs and Job. Then what they call the Megillot, which is the Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. And then it finishes with some historical books, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. Both of those books at the end of the Hebrew Bible. By the way, it's interesting when Jesus refers to those who've been martyred and He refers from the blood of righteous Abel, and then He mentions a character slain at the in the middle of Chronicles. Why? It's because of the Hebrew arrangement. He was saying you guys are responsible for the Martyr of all of God's people down through history from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible.
Let's go back to the other column on the right side, the English arrangement. After the Pentateuch in your Bible, you have the books of history, Joshua through Esther. All those books are history. Then we have poetry: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes. Then we have the Major Prophets and then the Minor Prophets. You say what's the difference between a Major Prophet and a Minor Prophet? It's not importance, it's length. The Major Prophets are large books written needed a single scroll because they're so long. And the Minor Prophets could be written together and that's why they're even combined. So that's the way it's structured differently between English and Hebrew. Now the Hebrew division that was used in the days of Christ—you remember He says this a lot—he talks about the Law and the Prophets. That was a common way to break down the Old Testament in the first century. The Law, the first five books, the Law of Moses: Genesis through Deuteronomy, and the prophets, everything else. So that's an overview then of the structure of the Old Testament.
Now let's look at an overview or structure of Old Testament history. I'm going to try to simplify Old Testament history so that you can see its flow. Let me give you the Nine Movements of Old Testament history. If you can understand these nine movements then you'll understand everything that happens in the Old Testament. This is the first group. There'll be one more slide. So you'll notice on this slide—just to give you the structure—you have years on the left, the actual date in BC, of course, Before Christ. Then you have the identification label of the period. Then the biblical book that describes those events, and then you have the total number of years encompassed in that movement. One of the nine movements.
So let me just walk through this. First of all, until 2166—what is that date? I'll tell you in a moment but that's Abraham—until 2166 is when this first movement happens, we call it the period of Universal Dealings, when God is dealing with Humanity as a whole. And that's Genesis 1-11. And depending on when creation happened—we'll talk about that in a moment—somewhere between 2 and 8,000 years of time is encompassed in that period of time. So Genesis 1-11 covers somewhere between 2 and 8,000 years.
The second period is the Patriarchal Period; comes from the time of Abraham, 2166 BC, to the death of Joseph in 1805 BC. And that is covered in Genesis 12-50. It's a period of about 360 years. Then from 1805 through 1445 you have Slavery in Egypt. That is all described in one chapter, Exodus chapter 1. A period of about 360 years. The fourth period or fourth movement in Old Testament history is The Exodus and the Wilderness Wanderings. The Exodus happens in 1445. And when we get there, I will prove that to you, but for now take my word for it. 1445 to 1406, about 40 years, The Exodus and Wilderness Wanderings, and it's described in the rest of Exodus; Exodus 2 to 40, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
The fifth movement is the Conquest and Division of Canaan. It begins after the death of Moses. You remember Moses couldn't go over into the promised land; Joshua leads the people over. So beginning in 1406 running to about 1350 and the death of the Joshua generation. And this is described in the Book of Joshua; it's a period of about 60 years. So you can see we're already through five of the Old Testament periods and we're to the end of Joshua. There are four more on this list.
Number six in our nine movements is the period of the Judges. The period of the judges begins in 1350 and runs to 1051, and I'll tell you why that date's important in just a second. The biblical books involved are Judges, Ruth, and 1 Samuel 1 to 8, which is the period of transition from the judges to the monarchy—about 300 years.
Then comes where much of our Old Testament books appear and it's in the seventh movement and that is the monarchy, when there is a king in Israel. But the monarchy is divided into two parts. There was, first of all, a period when it was united, when all of Israel was under one king, and then there was a period when it was divided in two, and there was Israel in the North, the northern 10 tribes, and Judah in the South, Judah and Benjamin in the South, and they were called Judah. So Judah and Israel, Kingdom divided. Now you'll see here that the United monarchy only lasted 120 years, and for your wonderful benefit, God arranged so that those three kings each rule for 40 years. So it's easy once you know that Saul came to power in 1051, you know it lasted 120 years, so do the math then you can tell when Saul was no longer King when David became king and then when Solomon became king. And then you have the Divided monarchy from 931, the death of Solomon. And you remember his son Rehoboam splits the kingdom and it's divided until the end. So you can see the United Monarchy lasts 120 years. The Divided Monarchy about 350 years. The United described in 1st Samuel 9 to 1 Kings 11 and then in 1 Chronicles and then the Divided in 1Kings 12 through 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles.
Number eight the Babylonian Exile. Because of their sin God allows His people to be carried off captive. That cycle, that movement of Old Testament history lasts from 605 to 538. And you can see there that there are three different dates for the Babylonian exile and that's because there were three different times that Nebuchadnezzar sent his troops against Jerusalem. In 605 Daniel was taken to Babylon; in 597 Ezekiel was taken to Babylon along with others, of course, and then in 586 he came back—Nebuchadnezzar—did and destroyed the city, and then Jeremiah fled initially to Egypt, and then many believe he ended up eventually in Babylon as well. This period lasted for 70 years which is what the prophet Jeremiah had predicted. And how it's calculated, you can see two ways there. It's potentially calculated as 70 years from either when the to the time the temple was begun in 536, or to the time the temple was completed in 516.
And then the final movement in Old Testament history is the Return from Exile, and there were just like there were three sort of points of Exile, there were three returns from Exile. One under Zerubbabel who came back to rebuild the Temple; then under Ezra who came to rebuild the people; and then Nehemiah who came to rebuild the walls of the city of Jerusalem. And this is all described in Ezra. The first two of those are described in Ezra. It splits in the middle, and then Esther is written in this general time period, and then Nehemiah of course finishes the Old Testament. That's 120 years. So you don't need to memorize all of that, but if you can get your arms around those nine movements, you will understand the Old Testament because that's how it unfolds.
You say, “Wait a minute, Tom. None of the prophets are there.” Let me give you a big picture about the prophets. The prophets wrote in the times leading up to the times God's people were carried off into captivity. Why? As a justification for God. You see, in the ancient world if my king and my Army conquered your king and your army it was because my God was stronger than your God. That's how people thought, so when Israel gets carried off it would be easy for people to conclude Yahweh is not big, He can't defend His people. And so God sends prophets before it happens to say this is going to happen, and it's going to happen because I said it's going to happen, and it's going to happen because of the sin of my people. It was a justification for God so that no one would think that God was weaker and not as strong as the gods of the nations that captured them. So the prophets are gathered, clustered around those Exile points. So if you can keep that in mind. Israel was carried off.
If you want to really understand Old Testament history, memorize these eight dates—I'm not going to give you a whole bunch of dates to memorize—if you memorize these eight dates you'll know where everything falls.
First date is Abraham, 2166 BC; the Exodus in 1446 BC; the monarchy begins in 1051; the kingdom is divided with the death of Solomon in 931; and then Israel, those Northern 10 tribes, they fall to the Assyrians in 722; Judah falls to Babylon in 586, the southern two tribes; and then in 538 Cyrus, at God's direction, decrees for God's people to be returned to their land; and then 420 is when Old Testament events end. Those dates, if you know those dates and you take the movements, I just showed you, you can overlap everything. For example, when did the prophets write? Well the prophets wrote primarily clustered around the time that Israel, the northern ten tribes, fall before and just after, and before and just after the southern kingdom falls, Judah falls. So you know where the prophets fit, by and large, if you know these dates. So that's an overview of Old Testament history.
So with that said, let's start by looking then at the Pentateuch. It simply means it comes from Penta “5,” it's the five books that Moses wrote. I'm not going to go through this, but this slide will be available for you. There are some who question Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Bible, although it's clear when you read them. And so what I've clustered here for you or assembled here for you is the arguments for mosaic authorship in the Pentateuch itself clearly claiming to be written by Moses; in the rest of the Old Testament where it affirms that it was written by Moses; and then in the New Testament where Jesus and the apostles affirm it was written by Moses. For any of us who are believers we just don't need more evidence than that. I'm not going to go through all of those, but that'll give you the defense for why we know these books were written by Moses.
Now how did Moses write, for example, Genesis 1-11? Where did that come from, or for that matter, the Patriarchs? Remember Abraham starts in Genesis 12, 2166. When was Moses? 1445-46-45. So how did he know? Well there was some debate about the methods of transmission of Genesis. Obviously, there's always the option of direct revelation, God could have told him directly and that may very well be what God did. Others say no, it was oral tradition that under the Holy Spirit Moses was able to sort through and write the inspired text that was absolutely true the words of God. Others say no, it's based on written records that were at Moses’ disposal.
The evidence is not conclusive, but it leans honestly toward this third explanation. Let me show you. There is the structure of Genesis. There is a word in Hebrew, toledoth, which means “the generations of” and it occurs throughout the Book of Genesis apparently introducing the next section and I've given you the examples here. You have in bold or in that different color, I've shown you how that Hebrew word toledoth is translated in that text. But the “Account of the heavens and the Earth. This is the book of the generations of Adam.” Then you have Noah the sons of Noah, Shem, Terah, Ishmael, Isaac, Esau, Esau and Jacob. And so you have these books that are apparently referred to these records that are referred to, it may very well be that there were written records that Moses was able under the inspiration of the Spirit to use in his writing of Genesis. That's one very real possibility.
So now let's look at what he writes in the book of Genesis. He begins, as I mentioned, with universal dealings in Genesis 1-11. In this passage. God deals with the human race as a whole. And this period covers the events from creation to the call of Abram from Ur of the Chaldees in about 2091 BC. So even if we use the most conservative date for the creation of the world—let me talk about that for just a moment. If you take the genealogies that appear in Genesis 5 and Genesis 10, and you assume there are no gaps, there's nobody left out, and you lay out what's said about the people in those two chapters, you are left with a creation date of 4004 BC. That's what Bishop Usher calculated, and maybe you've heard that date. And that is possible if there no gaps in those genealogies; that's how it lays out. However it is likely that there are gaps in that genealogy. Many genealogies in the Scripture have gaps. We're going to soon be in Matthew. There are generations left out of the genealogy of Our Lord in Matthew chapter 1. Intentionally, not as a mistake, but summarizing and skipping over generations that had no substantive influence on the course of the of the history. And so probably there are gaps. However, if there are so many gaps that you're talking about millions of years, there's no way to justify a genealogy. So conservative scholars and I would be in full agreement would say that the creation was somewhere between 4,000 BC and 10,000 BC, somewhere in that general range. That's what the Bible allows for. And we'll talk about the creation account in a moment. But we're talking about, this period then covers a minimum of 2,000 years up to 8,000 years. If you have a 10,000 BC creation, it's a huge volume of years—at least 2,000 years. The rest of the Old Testament is less than that. From Abraham to Malachi is about 1700 years. And so these 11 chapters are a mammoth amount of history contained and condensed in a very small number of verses.
This section of Old Testament history—that is, The Universal Dealings—is marked by four great events. This is primeval history is what we begin with. Look at Genesis chapter 1. Genesis 1 verse one, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.” In the beginning. God's first act of creation was to call forth time from eternity. And in the beginning of time, that's what He’s saying, God created. Now the Hebrew word “create” here is always, without exception in the Old Testament, an activity of God. It is never used in the Old Testament of anyone but God. Men make things, but only God creates in this sense and clearly God creates ex nihilo. That is, out of nothing, out of nothing. John 1:3 “All things came into being through Christ and apart from Him nothing came into being.” Notice that expression “came into being that has come into being.” He's not creating from materials that exist He’s calling things into being that are not. Romans 4:17, “God calls into being that which does not exist. Hebrews 11:3 “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. We're talking atomic and subatomic and wherever we are now; you know, down further the list; particles. Second Peter 3:5, “By the word of God the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and by water.” By the word of God not out of other materials. God created simply by speaking what now exists into being.
Back at verse one, there he says God created ex nihilo, out of nothing, the heavens. Probably corresponds best to our English word “space.” Moses adds, “and the Earth.” That obviously specifically refers to this planet, but probably also refers to matter. So on the first day of creation then, God created time, space and matter. Henry Morris writes, “Genesis 1:1 can legitimately and incisively be paraphrased as follows, ‘The transcendent, omnipotent Godhead called into existence the space-mass-time universe. That's what that verse teaches us. The Christian Church, by the way, from the beginning has unanimously taught the doctrine of creation ex nihilo; that God spoke everything into being out of nothing. That occurs in in the writings of Justin Martyr Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, etc. Theophilus was the first to stress that the days of creation were literal days, but that also seems to be the view of Irenaeus and Tertullian as well. Probably the view of the rest of the church. Clement, Origen, and Augustine—with some variation—thought the creation may have happened in a moment and the description of several days was merely a literary device. The reformers held to firmly to creation ex nihilo by a free Act of God in or with time and the days of creation were six literal days. You say, well where did something else come from? It came from the 18th century; it came from the attack of naturalism. Soon, theologians were seeking to harmonize Scripture with the discoveries of science. But men, listen carefully there is great evidence from within the Scripture that the days of creation were literal days. Creation ex nihilo in literal days.
Let me just give you seven arguments. Number one, a literal day is the most common meaning of the Hebrew word yom. Yom occurs 2,225 times in the Old Testament, overwhelmingly for ordinary days. Number two, Exodus 20:11 says that God created in six days. Now 608 times in the Old Testament that Hebrew word yom occurs in the plural “days” as it does in Exodus 20:11. 608 times always it refers to ordinary days. Number three, morning and evening indicates a literal day-night cycle. The expression occurs outside of Genesis in 37 verses. Every time when they appear together in that way, they are used to describe an ordinary day. Number four, hundreds of times in the Old Testament yom occurs with a cardinal number: the first day, the second day, the third day. Those are cardinal numbers and always refers to a literal day. It never refers to anything but a literal day when you have first day, second day, third day, fourth day and so forth. Number five, the same language is used for days 1 to three and days 4 to 6. The sun was created on day 4. Since days 4 to 7 were literal days governed by our sun, there's no reason to assume that one to three weren't.
Number six, Hebrew has a word for age or indeterminate period of time, “`olam,” which Moses chose not to use instead he used the word which means day. Number seven, God uses the creation week as a pattern for man's cycle of work and rest. Just like, “I created in six days and rested on the 7th. I want you to work on six days and rest on the seventh” in the Old Testament Law. Now let me ask you in a question if God wanted to tell us that it happened in six literal days what else could he say? I mean seriously.
Now, the question comes “why six days?” I mean, did God need 6 24-hour days? No, the early church fathers were saying He just needed a moment, He's God. So why six days? And the answer biblically in the text I just pointed out to you is the cycle of man's life. God created the way He did to lay out the cycle of our lives. You realize that everywhere on this planet people live by 7-day weeks? Have you ever wondered why? Do you know the math doesn't work out? Why? The answer is because that's how God created time. The only reason for the other views of creation is an accommodation to scientific theory. I like what Ken Hamm says you know when people start talking about what happened millions of years ago, he asked the right question, “Were you there? Do you have evidence? Look at the evidence. There are a lot of resources by the way. ICR here in Dallas, The Institute for Creation Research, has a ton of material that will help you if you struggle with this. The science actually supports creation and creation ex nihilo in six literal days. So if again if you struggle with that you can read more than your heart's content at their site.
So the first section of Old Testament history is marked by four events: Primeval History: creation and then the fall, chapters 3-5 of Genesis. And you begin to see these two streams of humanity. You begin to see fallen humanity in rebellion against God, exemplified in Cain's line and all who come from him. And you see civilization—secular civilization—form at odds from God in chapter 4 after the fall. And then you see the Godly line where God is at work redeeming a people for His son starting with Abel and his descendants and then of course at the end of chapter four you meet Seth (not our Seth the other one) and you see how God is doing exactly what we're talking about. He's calling out a people for His name.
There's this Godly line and there's this the rest of humanity the wicked line. Then you have the flood, the destruction of the world. And again, I told you I would be frustrated, and you'd be frustrated—there's so much to say about the universal flood but I'm just going to note it in passing. And out of the flood comes the Covenant, the Noahic Covenant in Genesis chapter 9, where mankind is charged again to multiply and replenish the Earth. And he's charged to govern the Earth and oversee it. And it's added that because of the value of human life made in the image of God that all who take human life are to be put to death by man. And that's the birth of what we would call capital punishment, man didn't create that God did. The Nations come in chapters 10 and 11. That includes the judgment at Babel and the spreading of Noah's descendants over all the Earth. And as a result God forces what man was challenged to do after the flood but didn't do. Man spreads and repopulates the entire Earth.
Here is the map of how Noah's sons settled. You can see that in the Fertile Crescent (as it's been called in school), there on the other side of the Sahara you have Shem, then you have Ham—North Africa—and you have Japheth over toward Europe. That's the distribution that you'll read about in the table of Nations there in chapters 10 and 11. Now the period of Universal Dealings ends with our meeting a man named Abram.
Now before we end this section, I just want to make this clear to you I started by telling you that Christ is in the Old Testament that it's about Christ the Redeemer. So the question is, “Where?” The answer is Christ permeates Old Testament history. He's not only the focus of Old Testament prophecy, Christ is the primary character of Old Testament history. What was unique about Bethlehem wasn't that He came to the planet. It was that He came to the planet as one of us. And so you have to understand that Christ actually appears in the very first verse of your Old Testament. Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.” John 1:3 says, “All things came into being [by Christ] and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” We understand that the Triune God created, but the Son was instrumental in that process. 1 Corinthians 8:6: “Jesus Christ by Whom are all things, and we exist through Him.” Colossians 1:15-16: “for by Him all things were created both in the heavens and on Earth, visible and invisible all things have been created [through] Him and for him.” And of course Hebrews 1:2: “He has spoken to us in these last days by His Son through whom He made the world.” So understand this: you don't have to look very far in your Old Testament to find Jesus Christ. The Eternal Son of God shows up in the first verse of the Old Testament.
The earth and the universe as we know it was spoken into existence out of nothing but by the Eternal Son of God. The Old Testament and the world itself begins with the Sovereign creative act of Jesus Christ. But when you think about the rest of Old Testament history, what is the most frequent form in which Jesus appears? And the answer is a mysterious person called The Angel of the Lord. It's always with the definite article never the indefinite, always. The Angel of Yahweh, never an angel. Now many who read these passages when where this person appears assume that He’s one of the created beings that we call angels. But the Hebrew word that's translated angel can also refer to a messenger. In fact, almost half of the times it occurs in the Old Testament it's translated as messenger.
So let me give you the arguments for The Angel of Yahweh being Christ. First of all He is called Jehovah—that's the old angelized version—or Yahweh in several passages. One example, Genesis 16:13. In this passage you have The Angel of the Lord appears to her and Hagar says this she called the name of Yahweh who spoke to her, “You are a God who sees; for she said, “Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?” Who did she see? The Angel of the Lord, and she says she “called the name of Yahweh who spoke to her.” Other times it's clear that this person is not Yahweh. He's distinct from Yahweh in that he refers to Yahweh in the third person. Here's Zachariah 1:12-13: “The angel of Yahweh answered and said, “Oh Yahweh, how long will you have no compassion for Jerusalem?” So here you have the angel of Yahweh, this divine person, talking to Yahweh as a separate person. That means we're talking about the fact that He must be the second person of the Trinity, the Eternal Son. He's the only member of the Trinity revealed bodily in the New Testament as He appears in the Old Testament. He no longer appears after the Incarnation. The Angel of Yahweh disappears; and both He, The Angel of Yahweh, and the Messiah are sent by the Father. And when you do all the process of elimination, you're left with the fact that this is Christ. He appears on a number of occasions. You'll find this as you read through the book that you're reading through. In a number of places in the Old Testament He punctuates Old Testament history.
So throughout the history of the church, theologians and Bible scholars have identified The Angel of the Lord, The Angel of Yahweh, as none other than Jesus Christ the Eternal Son. I would personally go even a step further. I think possibly every visible manifestation of God in the Old Testament was Christ. Irenaeus, for example, or let's start with Justin Martyr. “Permit me further to show you from the book of Exodus how this same One who is both Angel, and God [messenger and God] and Lord and man, and who had appeared in human form to Abraham and Isaac, appeared in a flame of fire from the bush and conversed with Moses.” In other words, our Lord Jesus Christ in pre-incarnate form was permeating the history of the Old Testament. Here's Irenaeus writing about the books of Moses: “The Son of God is implanted everywhere throughout his writings: at one time, indeed, speaking with Abraham when about to eat with him; at another time with Noah giving to him the dimensions of the Ark; at another, inquiring after Adam; at another bringing down judgment upon the Sodomites; and again, when He becomes visible and directs Jacob on his journey and speaks with Moses from the bush. Irenaeus is saying all of those are pre-incarnate appearances of Jesus Christ. Tertullian, again one of the early church fathers, says, “It is the Son, therefore, who has been from the beginning administering judgment throwing down the haughty Tower (Babel), and dividing the tongues, punishing the whole world by the violence of the flood waters, reigning upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone, as the Lord from the Lord. For He is Who at all times came down to hold converse with men from Adam on to the patriarchs and the prophets, in vision, and dream in mirror, and dark saying; ever from the beginning laying the foundation of the course of His dispensations which He meant to follow out to the very last. Thus was he ever learning even as God to converse with men upon Earth being no other than the Word which was to be made flesh.”
So when you read your Old Testament, men, understand that it doesn't just predict that Jesus is coming, He’s everywhere in the Old Testament record. While that has been clear in the past, many Christians today believe that Christ, that to see Christ in the Old Testament, is reading the New Testament back into the old text. But the truth is the testimony of Scripture about this is absolutely clear. Let me just show you several passages. Turn with me, first of all, to John 5 and look at verse 39. Jesus says to the Jewish leaders, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about Me.” Go down to verse 46. “If you believed Moses, you would believe me for He wrote about me.” Christ rebukes the Jews for their rejection of Him based on the Old Testament's testimony. You think you understand the Old Testament, but if you really understood the Old Testament, you would see that it speaks of Me. Turn over to Luke, back a few pages to Luke 24. Look at verse 25. After the resurrection, Jesus said to His disciples, “’Oh foolish men and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary for the Messiah to suffer these things and enter into His glory?’ Then beginning with Moses [the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures] and with all the Prophets [that's the rest of the Hebrew Scripture] He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.” Look down in verse 44. “Now He said to them, ‘These are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you that all things which are written about me in the law Moses and the prophets and the Psalms [that's another way the Jewish people in the first century describe the entire Old Testament. Sometimes they just said the Law and the Prophets, sometimes they said the Law and the Prophets and Psalms] must be fulfilled. The things written about Me.’” Verse 45, “Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures [the Hebrew Scriptures] and He said to them, ‘Thus it is written [in the Hebrew Scriptures] that the Messiah would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem.” He said this is all what's in the Old Testament, this is what's in the Scripture.
But nowhere is the focus of this reality the Old Testament's focus on Christ clearer than in the sermons in the book of Acts, the apostles in their sermons. Let me just give you one example. Turn to Acts 26. I love this line. Acts 26 and look at verse 22. Paul is here before Agrippa, King Agrippa, and he says in verse 22, “So having obtained help from God I stand to this day testifying to small and great [now watch this] stating nothing but what the prophets and Moses said was going to take place; that the Christ was to suffer and that by reason of His resurrection from the dead He would be the first to proclaim light both to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles.” There it is. He says all I have to say is in the Old Testament and my message, my ministry is consistent with that. But the Son of God appears many other times in the Old Testament. My favorite (and I'll just mention this. I have a page of notes, but I don't have time to go there). I love the fact that He appears at The Fall. Now think about this: Here is the Eternal Son of God knowing one day He would become one of us to redeem us from our sins and He, from His own lips, gives the first promise of the Gospel. Genesis 3:15. The seed of the woman is going to come; a special unique human male who will deal with sin once and for all. And then what does He do? The Eternal Son of God takes an animal, and He kills it with His own hands, takes the skin and clothes Adam and Eve in this one wonderful picture of what He would one day accomplish.
He is everywhere in the Old Testament Scripture. Let me just give you this quote Michael Barrett writes, “Too many Christians approach the Old Testament as if they were fishing in the bathtub expecting nothing, but at least fulfilling devotion time. We can open the Old Testament with the certain knowledge that it is filled with Christ. I'm not saying that we will find Him in every verse in the Old Testament or even on every page any more than we would catch a fish in a stocked pond every time we cast the line. But I am saying that He is there, everywhere.” You have to come to the Old Testament Scriptures with that confidence.
So that brings us then from the time of the time of the Primeval history to the time of the Patriarchs. The second movement in Old Testament history is the Patriarchal Period. It runs from Genesis 12 to Genesis 50. This period is often known as the Patriarchal Age. It consists of four successive generations of a small clan. Each generation is governed by the ruling patriarch. The Patriarchal Period, this last part of Genesis, really consists of the stories of four people. Runs from 2166 and Abraham down to Joseph's death in 1804. Four people: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Why is this significant? Well, Genesis 1-11 dealt or showed God's dealings with the human race as a whole. And the testimony of those chapters Genesis 1 through11 is what? Man is desperately wicked, desperately in need of a savior. The testimony of those chapters is: man's moral condition is that he is committed to rebellion against God. God even has to wipe out all the population except for eight at one point. But guess what? The same thing happens again. So in Genesis 12-50 God takes a gracious step to provide men both individually and corporately with a powerful testimony to His saving character and His saving purposes. He is going to raise up one family through which He will, in a unique way, put Himself on display. And it is through this man's descendants that His promised seed will come. The one predicted in Genesis 3:15.
So think about this, the reason we now come in chapter 12 to Abraham is that Abraham and his descendants become God's great object lesson and His witness nation. Just to give you a sense of the importance of this period—the Patriarchal Period—to the Lord, chapters 1 through 11 cover somewhere between 2 and 8,000 years. Chapters 12 to 50 cover 360 years. God chooses one man and one family to whom He will bear a special relationship and that is Abram. Now here's what's interesting about Abram. We know almost nothing about his first 75 years, and we know very little about his last 75 years. The greatest detail that we have about this man's life is from his 75th birthday to his 100th birthday, 25 years of his life. That's the major slice of revelation in the Scripture about him. From his conversion until the birth of Isaac the son of Promise was born.
So let's track this man. First of all, you have the calling of Abram in Genesis 12 called the Abrahamic Covenant. The first iteration of that Covenant. It will be repeated several times in the Book of Genesis but here it is in Genesis 12 1:3, “Now Yahweh said to Abram ‘Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse.’” And here is an amazing statement: “’In you [that is in your descendants and specifically in one descendant] all the families of the earth will be blessed.’” The Abrahamic Covenant concludes with the gospel message and the promise of Christ. According to Galatians chapter 3, here's Christ in the Abrahamic Covenant. In fact, turn there. Turn to Galatians 3, let me just show you this because here's Paul's exegesis of what we just saw in Genesis 12. In verses 6-16 of this chapter, he tells us that that Abrahamic Covenant, the promise made to Abraham, included the gospel message and the promise of Christ.
Look at what he says, verse 8 “The Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, “all the nations will be blessed in you.” So in other words that is a gospel promise. God doesn't bless people who are His enemies; it's a promise that He’s going to redeem a people, and that redemption will somehow be connected to Abraham and specifically to his seed. Verses 17 through 22 of this chapter, he tells us that the law was a temporary provision until that promised seed had come, and so he explains that reality. And then in verse 23 and 24 he says the law was a tutor to lead us to Christ. The Law was a temporary provision until the one promised had come, and then it became a tutor to lead us to Christ. And verses 25- 29 to belong to Christ is to inherit the spiritual promise of the Abrahamic Covenant. In fact, look at what he says in verse 29, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs, according to the [spiritual] promise,” made to him.
Now don't get me wrong, there is a physical aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant to the ethnic descendants of Abraham, and that's still to be fulfilled. Romans 11 talks about that; many other passages, of course, in terms of what will happen during the Millennium. But the gospel was there as well. The spiritual aspect of the Abrahamic Covenant is about Christ and the gospel message that He would save a people.
So think about Abraham's faith. God chose him and called him while he was an idolator in Ur according to Genesis 13:1 and Acts 7. God entered into a covenant with him and called him friend. This was a covenant that God initiated, a unilateral Covenant whereby God made promises to him irrespective of what Abraham did or didn't do. And then Abraham believed that God justifies the ungodly. According to Romans 5, Paul uses Abraham as an example that people in the Old Testament were saved the same way we are. They're justified by faith. In their case, in the Redeemer that was promised. In our case the Redeemer who has come. And the gospel was preached to Abraham, the same in substance that is preached to us that through his seed—singular—that is, Christ, comes the only source of the spiritual blessing for all the families of the earth. Galatians 3:8, Abram was justified before God solely by his faith in God who justifies the ungodly through his seed, that is through the Messiah.
What I want you to see in that—and I hurried through that you can go back and review those verses—but I want you to see that there's a reason Paul uses Abraham as an example of saving faith in Romans 4, and that's because his faith was just like ours. He believed in the one who would come; he saw his day. Jesus said. Remember? “Abraham saw my day,” he saw it and was glad.” He looked forward with faith that the promise would be fulfilled—the Genesis 3:15 promise—would be fulfilled in the Messiah who would come.
Now where did Abraham come from? Well, he came from Ur of the Chaldees. If you remember your world history, Ur was located in Sumer in Mesopotamia. If you remember your history, you know Mesopotamia means the land between the rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. And Sumer consisted of 12 city states. Ur was the main city there. It was this culture that gave the world Cuneiform (the earliest known form of writing), was highly cultured, highly Cosmopolitan. So don't think of him as somebody who is backwoods, he was not. But why did he leave Ur? Well, Deuteronomy tells us he left Ur because of all the false gods, once he came to know the true and living God, once God called him to Himself. He left Ur and came to—at God's direction—to Canaan. Now why Canaan? Have you ever wondered about that? Why did God choose that land? Well, you need to understand that it sits at the crossroads of three great continents. You can see on this map, you have Asia, Europe, and Africa. All of them a part of the ancient world. And you can already begin to think about where Israel—the little land of Israel—is located. You see God placed Israel at the most strategic spot on the most important international highway in the ancient world, because Israel actually forms a land bridge between the three continents of the ancient world. Rather than sending Israel to the nations, God planted Israel in a place where the nations would come through it. That's why that tiny little piece of land. Here's another way to look at it. There is the land of Israel, and you can see, again if you think of those three great continents Asia, Europe and Africa, you can see on one side of the land of Israel is the Mediterranean. Well it was a dangerous place. I mean think about how many times Paul was in a shipwreck on the Mediterranean. That was not a safe way to travel. What was on the other side of that land bridge? The desert, which you didn't travel at all. And so if you wanted in the ancient world to travel safely from one of those continents to another, guess where you went. You went through that tiny little strip of land that we call Israel. If you've been to Israel you go, “Well, it's nice but.” The reason is where it was located, how strategically it was located.
You see, Israel would become God's witness nation. But instead of going to witness (for the most part all of that happened occasionally), God brought the nations through it. Now the other thing that's very interesting about the structure of the land of Israel is that the tiny land of Israel that little land bridge between the three ancient continents is actually composed of five distinct geographical regions. You have there, in the red circle, you have the Jordan Rift. It's a very low area along the Jordan River starting below sea level of the Sea of Galilee, flowing down to the Dead Sea even further, and you have one of the ancient roads of the ancient world ran through there that tied the continents together. Then you had in the blue circle and in the purple circle, you have two other regions. In the blue circle you have the Hill Country, and it's named that because it was the hill country. Wasn't easy to travel through but it was a nice land. And that's where Israel lived for the most part. The purple circle is the Judean Wilderness, the yellow the Shephelah, and then the coastal plane in the green circle. The coastal plain was another area where there was a very popular ancient international highway. So you have international highways on both sides of the Hill Country where most of the Jewish people lived. It was perfect because what it meant is you have Israel remarkably secluded in the central Hill Country, which is where most of the nation lived, but then you had Military and Commercial traffic constantly marching through the two sides of her land going from one continent to another in the ancient world. So Abram traveled to Canaan and there waited for the promised son.
Eventually of course the promise was fulfilled in Isaac, the Covenant, and then Isaac has twins Esau and Jacob. You know the story. Jacob struggles with Esau, gains the birthright, but he was already the one God had chosen. And so Jacob becomes the center of this promise. And Jacob, of course you can see is one wanderings there. You remember he, after tricking his father, he fled to Haran to flee from Esau to get a wife. That's when he had the vision on the stairway to heaven. Years later, he returned along the same route. Later he was renamed Israel from Jacob—the supplanter, the heel Grabber—to Israel, which means “he strives with God.” And Jacob had 12 sons. His dozen sons. It's recorded in Genesis 29 and 30. And you can see there how they break down to the different wives and what their names mean. You're familiar with those. I'm not going to go through them in detail, but I do want you to notice Jacob's 11th son is Joseph. And, of course, you know the story. Joseph is hated by his brothers he ends up being sold to Egypt. Later because of a drought, the family of Joseph and—or the family of Jacob rather—in Israel goes to Egypt under Jacob and Joseph and he's well received by the Egyptians. Jacob's descendants then end up in Egypt for 430 years. But how many of those years were hard? Or many of those years were hard I should say.
Why did God do that? I want to show you something. Turn back to Genesis, Genesis chapter 15. This is long before that, but I want you to notice what God said to Abram. Genesis 15 verse 16. This is one of those other places where He reaffirms the Abrahamic Covenant. He tells him in verse 15, “Abram you're going to go to your fathers in peace you'll be buried at a good old age.” Verse 16, “Then in the fourth generation.” Well, let's go back, I want to go back a little further. Let's go back to verse 13, “God said to Abram ‘know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs where they will be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years.’” Verse 16, “Then in the fourth generation they will return here to Canaan for the [and here's why] for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.” I think that's one of the most significant verses in the Old Testament because God told Abraham a couple of hundred years before it happened, that his descendants would go to Egypt for 400 years and the reason God gives is the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full. In other words, the people who live in that land of Canaan “my patience hasn't yet quite run out.” Their worship was polytheistic, it included child sacrifice, religious prostitution, divination. And eventually Joshua's invasion would be an act of God's justice It's like a scalpel cutting out a malignant tumor from the Earth. But not yet. Kidner writes, “Until it was right to invade God's people must wait even if it cost them four centuries of hardship.
You see God is always doing a lot of things and let me just stop here, men and make an application. Think about what I just read and think about how God is planning ahead for hundreds of years. He told Abraham this a couple hundred years before it happened, before they went there. And then it unfolded for 430 years. So God is planning for something that's more than 600 years in the future when He is structuring and ordering the life of Abraham and the life of his descendants. Guys, I just want you to know, you know when things happen in our lives it's easy for us to go, “Why?” What you know, “What's the one thing God's doing in my life?” God is never just doing one thing. God's more complicated than that. He's doing a lot of things. And He’s not just doing things with every life you touch now. He may be doing what He’s doing in your life to reach three, four, five generations from now. It comes down to: can you trust Him? Is He Sovereign, and is He good, and is He wise? If He’s Sovereign, He's in charge of everything. And if He's not only Sovereign, but He's good; He's doing what's for your good and the good of others and His own glory. And if He's Sovereign and good and He's also wise—never makes a mistake—then guys, you can trust Him. And you see that unfolding everywhere on the pages of Scripture.
As Genesis closes, Jacob and his son Joseph have both died but their clan remains in Egypt. However their clan is multiplying. Think about this: 70 people from Jacob 's clan went down to Egypt. 400 years later, 2 million people would leave.
So if the Old Testament is about the coming Redeemer in the story of redemption, what does Genesis reveal about the coming Messiah? I just want to point this out to you before we leave Genesis. Here's Christ in Genesis. In addition to being the Creator, as far as His being a redeemer, Genesis 3:15, the Messiah would come from a woman and would be a unique human being: “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed; and He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise Him on the heel,” speaking to Satan. This is a prophecy of the Gospel. A unique human being would come and deal permanently with sin and Satan. And that Messiah would come from one man and one nation, Abraham. That's the promise in Genesis 12. The seed who would bring blessing would come through Abram, and the nation that came from him. Also, we learn in Genesis that the Messiah would come from Isaac not Ishmael, Genesis 17:21. The Messiah would come from Jacob and not Esau, Genesis 25:23. He would come from one tribe in Israel. Think about the prophecy Jacob makes in Genesis 49:10. He says, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah nor the ruler staff from between his feet until Shiloh comes. [The word means until the one to whom whose right it is comes.] and to Him will be the obedience of the peoples.” The Redeemer would not only come from the descendants of Abraham, but from Jacob and from one of his sons, Judah. And, of course, later we learn that He would come from one family in Judah, the family of David. So the Redeemer then would come from one family in the tribe of Judah and would be a descendant of Abraham. You can see how the gospel is unfolding in the very first book of the Bible. He’s coming. He’s coming, and he'll deal with sin. That brings us to the Book of Exodus.
The book of Exodus. Here's an outline of Exodus. You have the Exodus, deliverance from Egypt in the 18 chapters. You have the Law, the Covenant, at Sinai in chapters 19-34. And then the Tabernacle, both construction and inhabited in chapters 35-40. What's the theme of Exodus? The central theme is this: God's redeeming Israel for Himself and entering a covenant relationship with them. He sent them to Egypt, there they grew to 2 million people, and He is now going to redeem them for Himself and enter a covenant relationship with them. Yahweh would use this nation to put Himself on display to serve as a channel of divine revelation and to be the people through whom the Savior would come. That's the heart of what He’s accomplishing. What's the spiritual message of Exodus? It's that Yahweh is a redeeming God, and that Yahweh keeps His covenant. He always keeps His word, the promises He made back in Genesis 15. He’s going to keep them. He’s going to bring them out just as He promised He would.
So that brings us to the third great act then in Old Testament history and that is the Bondage in Egypt. There's very little revealed about the 400 years of bondage. The general conditions of the time are revealed in Exodus 1. From 1876, when Jacob took his family to Egypt, until about 1730, the Hebrews lived prosperous lives. Things were good, things were great in Egypt. But in 1730 a new Dynasty began, the Hyksos dynasty, if you're familiar with Egyptian history. And with that dynasty, a life of unbearable affliction and suffering came for the people of God under a Pharaoh who in Exodus is called a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. Years have passed from 1876 to 1730, 136 years, and here comes a new ruler and they become the enslaved workforce of the Egyptians. Here is a picture of how bricks were made in ancient Egypt you can see the forms that were used; they combined mud with straw to make them; and then they were baked in the sun till they hardened and dried; and then they were used for construction. That's how the Israelites were to live for a long period of time. From 1730—think about this—from 1730 to 1445 they would live as an enslaved people among the Egyptians.
That brings us then to the Fourth Movement in Old Testament history Deliverance under Moses. Runs from Exodus 2 all the way through Deuteronomy. Now to fully understand this man Moses, you have to understand something about the Egyptian woman who adopted him. Her name was likely Hatshepsut. She lived and ruled under the 18th dynasty of Egypt. And here you see a list of those in the 18th dynasty of Egypt. Hatshepsut. Her only child was a daughter who died before she reached 10 years of age. So Hatshepsut adopted Moses. As you can see here in the lineage, she was the daughter of Thutmose I. And she married her half-brother, Thutmose II, and thus ascended to the throne as Queen when her husband (or half-brother) died, her 10-year-old stepson, Thutmose III, temporarily took the throne about the year 1504 BC. But after the very short period of time, Hatshepsut unbelievably proclaimed herself the supreme ruler of Egypt for 22 years, from 1504 to 1482. Only two prior Queens in Egypt's history had risen to supreme ruler, but Hatshepsut was unique. To sort of present herself as deserving of that role, she dressed and posed like a man. She ruled with severe cruelty and oppression. And after her 22 years, she was succeeded by her stepson Thutmose III who was now in his early 30s. We don't know for sure why, but he tried to obliterate her memory from the annals of Egypt. He didn't succeed that's why we know she lived and existed and what her roles were. But he did much to accomplish that. Defaced statues of her, etc. Some suggest he hated her, that's possible, but it may have been a political move to sort of remove any attachment to her and her descendants and to center them in him. But regardless, this is where Moses comes from.
Now we have almost no information about Moses’ life from the age of about 5 to 40. Let me show you what we do know. Turn to the book of Acts. Acts chapter 7:21-22. This is in Stephen’s sermon in the book of Acts. Acts 7:21, “And after he had been set outside, Pharaoh's daughter took him away and nurtured him as her own son.” That's Hatshepsut. “Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was a man of power in words and deeds.” Remember, Hatshepsut’s child, her only child, a daughter, had died and so Moses was adopted by her. He was raised at the Palace in Thebes; he received the best education possible in the world at that time; and he became a powerful man in both words and deeds. But in spite of all of those opportunities, Stephen goes on to tell us that Moses clearly made a choice to associate with his people. Verse 23, “When he was approaching the age of 40 it entered his mind to visit his brethren.” And you know the story. You see someone being struck, being treated unjustly, and he struck him and killed him. But verse 25, “He supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him, but they did not understand.” He knew in some sense that God was going to use him, and he was clinging to the promise of Genesis 15 that God would take his people out of Egypt, give them the promised land. Passed down orally through his mom almost certainly. So that's one glimpse we have.
But let's go to Hebrews because I love this. Here the writer of Hebrews tells us why Moses did what he did. Hebrews 11:24, “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to endure ill treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin.” He chose to identify himself with his people, the enslaved Hebrews, been enslaved for couple hundred years, forfeiting all the advantages that he had spent 40 years gaining. Hatshepsut undoubtedly warned him of the result of his choice, but he simply would not be deterred. I want you to think for a moment about what Moses gave up, now that you know something of how he connects into Egyptian history. He definitely gave up a life of wealth, luxury, power, and fame, and any government position he wanted. He possibly gave up the opportunity to become Pharaoh of Egypt. When you look at the flow of Egyptian history, there were three points while he was intersecting with the history of Egypt when he could have easily been put on the throne by Hatshepsut. So what was the driving motive behind Moses’ decision? Look at verse 26. “He considered,” I love this, “He considered the reproach of Messiah greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking for the reward. Moses made his decision to associate with the Hebrew people and not with Hatshepsut and his Egyptian fame and fortune, based on his personal commitment to Christ.
So he fled Egypt. He ended up spending the next 40 years of his life as a shepherd in Midian. just in case you think that that was really nice, here's where he left. You can see the topography map shows kind of the portion of Egypt where he was and the arrow points to where he went. The peninsula there, the Sinai Wilderness. And here's where he ended up. Mount Horeb/Mount Sinai. And the burning bush was somewhere there on the side of this mountain. this is where he's keeping sheep. This is where the burning bush incident occurs.
And that brings us to the call of Moses. I love the call of Moses because Moses is a lot like us. Moses makes four objections to why he shouldn't be the one God sent, and to each one of those objections, Yahweh gives a reply. And guys, frankly, they're the same replies that in many cases—not every case this we see in a moment—but many cases he'd give to us. Look at Moses' objection. First of all, he says, ‘Who am I?’ He says, ‘I have no authority to do this that you're calling me to do.’ Yahweh's reply is, ‘I will be with you. I'm the authority.’ Then he says, ‘What shall I say? I have no message!’ To which Yahweh reveals His name, ‘Say I am that I am. I am has sent you. I am the self-existent God. The God Who depends on nothing and no one; whose existence is totally within myself. I need nothing.’ Moses says, ‘I have no credibility, they will not believe me.’ To which Yahweh gives His power. That's when He gives him the power to work miracles as we talked about Sunday night. And then he says, ‘I have no eloquence; I'm slow of speech; I'm slow of tongue.’ Yahweh's provision is, ‘I will be with your mouth and Aaron will be your spokesman’. Again I'm not saying God's made these promises to you in the same way made them to Moses, but I will tell you this. Whatever excuse you have for not serving the Lord with the gifts He’s given you and the place that He’s put you, God's response would be similar. “I'm enough and I can use you, a weak and frail vessel, to accomplish my purpose. So get busy go and do fulfill the role I've assigned you.” So Moses responds—by the way, again I believe that was Christ in the burning bush talking to Moses as I shared with you earlier. Moses returns then to Egypt and that sets up a real conflict. Yahweh versus the gods of Egypt.
The Pharaoh that Moses and Aaron encountered in Exodus 5:1 through chapter 14:31 is Amenhotep II. Just to remind you, here's that same 18th Dynasty again. So you can see the bottom there is Amenhotep II. He is almost certainly the Pharaoh of the Exodus. You say, “How do we know the Exodus happened in 1445?” The answer is one verse in your Bible that makes it crystal clear. First Kings 6:1. First Kings 6:1 tells us from the fourth year of Solomon's reign back to the time of the Exodus, do the math and it lands at this very year, so the Scripture is very clear. First Kings 6:1 tells us exactly when the Exodus was. We know when Solomon ruled and what his fourth year was. We can do the math, and we end up with 1445. And almost all conservative scholarship would embrace this date for the Exodus. there are some who try to put it in different dates for different reasons but they're not working on biblical data when they do that. So Amenhotep II was the son of Thutmose III, Moses’ nemesis. He was in his fourth year and here's something to keep in mind. Amenhotep II at the time of the Exodus was about 22 years old. He reigned from Memphis and not Thebes which is close to Goshen and that's important because the children of Israel were based—you can see there the land of Goshen and you can see the arrow pointing to Memphis which is where he reigns. So all of it was very close for this interchange to take place.
Now the timeline of the plagues in Egypt is about 6 months when you look at the different timelines that are laid out there, it's about 6 months from late September or early October through the latter part of March. It coincides—God intervenes miraculously—but it coincides with some things going on in the land as well. Now views of the plagues, essentially when we look at the 10 plagues of Egypt, the views are that some say that's just myth, others would say no, it's just exaggerated accounts of unusual natural phenomenon, and then biblically we have to say it's a unique historical outpouring of the wrath of a sovereign God. It's miracles whether he interposed some natural cycle in Egypt with that event or not. We can't be guaranteed one way or the other, but we know that He intervened directly and miraculously because that's exactly what he claims throughout this text.
Now the purpose of the plagues. Why did God bring the plagues? To provide a knowledge of the true God to Israel, chapter 10:1-2, to Pharaoh, to all Egypt, and even to the world. But a big point was to destroy the credibility of Egypt's false gods. Turn to Exodus. Exodus 12:12. “For I will,” this is the 10th and final plague, “I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast [and notice this] and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments—I am Yahweh.” What you have in the plagues is God demonstrating to his people, to Pharaoh, to all Egypt, and to all the world that the gods of Egypt are not gods and that He is. Every one of the plagues is aimed at one of the Gods of Egypt. And next time, Lord willing, we'll look through it in specific and see it unfold.
Let me just leave you with this. turn to Exodus chapter 9 and look at verse 13. “Yahweh said to Moses, ‘Rise up early in the morning and stand before Pharaoh and say to him, “Thus says Yahweh the God of the Hebrews, let my people go that they may serve me. For this time I will send all my plagues on you and your servants and your people so that you may know [watch this] that there is no one like Me in all the Earth.”’” First of all, He’s unique, there's no one like Him, and He’s not Egypt's God, He’s the God of all the Earth. Verse 15, “For if by now [I just love this] for if by now I had put forth my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence you would have then be cut off from the earth.” You know what God is saying, What I've sent so far is not ultimately judgment because guess what? You're still living. “But indeed [verse 16] for this reason I have allowed you to remain in order to show you my power and in order to proclaim my name through all the Earth. You know what God is doing in the Exodus? He’s saying I am a redeemer. Physically, I will redeem my people from the slavery of Egypt, and the Passover Lamb marks that, and spiritually, I will one day redeem my people through the Passover Lamb Who would come.
Let's pray together.
Father, we are amazed at You. You are such a great God, and as we just fly across the mountain peaks of Old Testament history, Lord, we are reminded that you have a plan and that you're working out that plan in human history. We thank you that just as surely you are working out your plan sovereignly in all of our lives. Lord, don't let us read the Scriptures and miss the point of application for us. Lord, you are working out your plans in our lives and you are putting yourself on display as the Creator and as the Redeemer through your Son Jesus Christ. May we be as committed to Him as Moses was. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.