The Land Before Jesus

The Life of Christ - Part 2

Sermon Image
Preacher

BK Smith

Date
Oct. 3, 2021
Time
10:00
00:00
00:00

Transcription

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions. Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.

[0:00] All right, please take out your Bibles too. I want you to put your fingers in a couple of places. First one is going to be Daniel. So take out the book of Daniel, Old Testament.

[0:11] It'll give you some time. And also mark the book of Ezra, because we're going to be reading out of the book of Ezra. Now, as you may or may not know, if you were here last week or you didn't get an opportunity to listen online, we are entering into a new series called The Life of Christ.

[0:32] The Life of Christ. And it's a study that I want to primarily focus on the humanity of Jesus Christ.

[0:43] Now, what do I mean by this? And I want you to hear very clearly when I say this. I believe, and the Bible teaches quite clearly, that Jesus Christ was both 100% man and 100% God.

[0:59] He wasn't 50% and 50%. He wasn't 100% God mind, 100% human body. I believe in his totality of his person.

[1:10] He was always 100% man and 100% God as he walked in this earth. But my contention, which I shared with you last week, is through a variety of reasons.

[1:22] The church has moved in its teachings where we excel at teaching what Jesus taught. We excel at teaching the power of the cross.

[1:35] But we don't always preach about the humanity of Jesus Christ. And what I mean is not the type of humanity of Jesus without God, but what was it like for Jesus Christ to walk on this earth over 2,000 years ago?

[1:54] And what was it like to have always been God and now to walk, for lack of a better term, in our footsteps? To be born of a woman.

[2:06] To be a child. To grow up. To learn. To mature. To learn how to speak, think, rationalize. To hunger. All these type of things.

[2:17] It was quite interesting. I was just reading an article a couple of weeks ago. And the author of the article kind of had the same opinion that I did, but he had these readings that you want to do.

[2:31] And there really wasn't all that many. And what had happened is, for the last 50, 60 years, this has become a more quieter topic in the church. But if he had gone back 60 or 70 years, he would have found out that a lot of people had actually written on what it was like for Jesus to be in the flesh.

[2:51] So there's these timeless truths that I want to be able to pull out. So I don't want to call it the lost teaching, but I want to say it's kind of not the most popular teaching.

[3:03] But I want to do this for two reasons. The first reason is I really believe it's important for us to understand the humanity of Jesus Christ as you and I live out our lives today in the here and the now.

[3:19] The fact of the matter is, Jesus Christ could not have been the Savior unless he was human. Unless he lived as a human being.

[3:29] He was our kinsman redeemer. He had to be a part of us. He's one who knows our sorrows. He knows what it was like to be betrayed by a loved one.

[3:43] He knew what it meant to suffer persecution. And I was listening to one man speak on this, this professor speak on this week. And he brought this amazing story to bear that I hadn't really thought of.

[3:58] And if you remember in John 19, Jesus Christ is on the cross. And he's about to pass. And he's basically asking John, his apostle, to take care of his mother.

[4:12] Do you guys remember that story? Okay. Think about this for a second. Jesus Christ at that time, and this displays many aspects of his humanity.

[4:24] One, he worried about his parents. Who at this age or at any age worries about parents? Some of us were there, right? We're concerned for them as they age and they grow mature.

[4:34] But the dynamic that he brought is, he would have had his brothers there. And in case you didn't know, there's a book of James in our Bible, in the book of Jude, which were written by Jesus' half-brothers.

[4:47] They would have been there. But if you remember, they weren't saved at the time. They did not believe Jesus Christ as Savior. And it shows this remarkable part of his humanity that Jesus did not know the future about their salvation.

[5:04] That he had that limited knowledge. Because of course, unless of course maybe Jude and James were horrible carpenters and never would have been able to make a living to sustain their mother.

[5:14] But he looked to John, the beloved, who would become his spiritual leader, to take care of his mother. Nothing says what it is to be human more than that, right?

[5:28] Like there's just something there that's powerful that we can all understand. And if you're young and you don't understand it, you will, trust me. But it just in that little story, and it had me thinking, I had never thought about that passage in that way.

[5:42] About how incredible the humanity of Jesus Christ is displayed just by asking John to take care of his mother when he passes.

[5:54] And the second reason why I want to teach on this subject is I want to give you guys complete confidence in the testimony of the Gospels, not only as sources, but incredibly reliable, I'm going to repeat myself, but reliable, incredibly reliable, credible sources that the witnesses that we have in the Gospels surpass anything that's outside the Bible.

[6:25] You know that? Why is that important? Because you guys, who are still maybe on the younger side, who still have younger children living at the home, at one point, you are going to be sending them out into the world.

[6:40] And there is a whole world out there wanting to undermine the truth and the veracity of the Bible. If you guys don't know that, you need to wake up to this very soon.

[6:55] All right? It's not a rose-colored, wonderful place. And oftentimes, just coming to church isn't going to keep them safe.

[7:06] I believe the three biggest defenses you have is one, the Holy Spirit, two, the power of the Word of God, but how well you teach them the truth, that these truths in Scripture are indeed reliable.

[7:23] Because there is a whole industry that's based on undermining and getting to your children or youth or teens or whatever you want to call them at that age.

[7:35] How many of you guys have heard of Bart Ehrman? Anybody at all? Dave, thank you for supporting me on this. All right, you guys need to start reading.

[7:45] No, just okay. Maybe we've got a nice protection cocoon in Squamish. But Bart Ehrman is a young man at the time. He grew up in a Christian evangelical church. He went to Moody Bible Institute.

[7:58] And he really sells himself as, and I think he professors at Duke University. But every single one of his writings is meant to undermine the faith of Christianity.

[8:11] And young Christians, oh, you know, he went to a Bible school and all this kind of stuff. And they think they know what he was talking about. But he isn't. And when you start to read him and understand him, there's a lot of sleight of hand.

[8:24] He uses logic that sometimes when you're younger, you don't have the defense against. So there's a whole world out there. So one of the truths or the confidence that I want to give you is we get into both the historical record, but to help you teach your younger ones to have confidence in the historical record that we have in the Gospels.

[8:47] And just to let you guys know, I've actually ordered, for some of you parents who might be a little bit overwhelmed by what's going on out there, I've actually ordered a whole stack of books.

[8:59] So if you have a teen, the books are yours for free. And we're going to have them outside. It's called Surviving Religion 101. And it's actually written by a well-known evangelical Christian who was a student of Bart Ehrman at one time.

[9:14] So he's kind of dedicated his life. So it's kind of an apologetics written to help you understand what your kids are going to be confronting. Now, if your kids are out of the house and you're saying it's too late for me, it's not.

[9:28] There's still great reading to be had to understand and encourage your faith. So those are the two main reasons. One, understand the humanity of Jesus Christ. And I want you to see the historical reliability of the Gospels.

[9:44] Are you guys all right with that? You guys all right with that? You can speak. Yeah, yeah, all right. Good, good. Let me just start with the word of prayer. This is kind of a tough because we're talking about history and how it is.

[9:56] And it's a little bit weird for me. I'm used to doing sermons and there's a little bit of a different vibe to the next couple of sermons, talks, teachings that I'm giving.

[10:07] But I believe it's going to give us the foundation of where we're going from here. And I pray that it'll prove helpful. Dear Lord, Holy and Heavenly Father, we're going to be touching into this history, this history that was designed by you.

[10:20] We're going to look at these prophecies that your prophets prophesied. And it was amazing. And I really want us to catch the understanding of these prophecies.

[10:32] That one, they weren't just meant to give us information about what was happening in the future. But they were meant to give us hope that you, the Redeemer, are going to come and make things right.

[10:48] That even though I might be living in the time of Daniel and I've seen my temple destroyed, my city destroyed, that the knowledge that the prophet Jeremiah had prophesied that this would happen, but it would only go on for 70 years and my people would be able to come back to their land.

[11:11] Father, these are the same prophecies that we rely on today out at Daniel. We just finished a whole teaching on Revelation. That you are indeed coming back and you give us a hope.

[11:22] Father, I'm just asking that. You would just give us a sense of what it would have been like to believe in you, God the Father, thousands of years ago.

[11:41] To what it meant to have hope in the midst of suffering, in the midst of conflict, in the midst of so much confusion. But at the same time, be able to rejoice that we saw your victorious hand move through history, creating the perfect time for the arrival of your son, Jesus Christ.

[12:08] So Father, just give my mouth clarity, just of thoughts as I articulate some of the events that happened. May I pray that we would see the significance and we would just grow more and more in love with you in the deeper appreciation of who you are, of God of all things.

[12:29] In your name we pray. Amen. So if you have your Bibles, you're going to turn to Daniel chapter 2.

[12:40] So the point that I want to make for us to understand today is that Jesus Christ was a real man. He walked with sandals. He lived in a time of real earth, real people, real languages, real culture.

[12:55] There was a whole life around him. And it's interesting, I really believe it's important for us to understand when we move into the Gospels, what created that life?

[13:08] Why was there Samaritans? Why were there synagogues? Why do we learn about Pharisees and Sadducees?

[13:18] Because if you go back into your Old Testament outside of Samaritans, none of those words appear in there. So if you were somehow a first century Jew and you happen to come across a time machine and you said, you know, I'm going to go back to Israel's glory days and you take this time machine, you're going to go back to King David and he ruled and he's successful, you'd come out, you'd be talking language, they wouldn't know what you were saying.

[13:44] You'd just say, hey, I want to go to my favorite synagogue. What? What's that? You know, you would have no idea of how these things, well, who are the teachers of the law? Where's the Sanhedrin?

[13:57] All those things, they never existed. So what I want to do is today I want to touch on the significant events in history and it's going to go on this week and next week.

[14:08] And I want to see, I want to examine how they changed the land, changed the religion and changed the people. And although the Bible doesn't always give us the answers to these questions, history actually teaches a lot about this time.

[14:26] So if you turn, if you look at the last book of your Old Testament, it's the book of Malachi, right? The time between Malachi and Matthew is 400 years. And if you've been before, you've heard that's the silent years where no prophet, no one spoke the word of the Lord.

[14:43] But that doesn't mean that it was, the times were uninformed or that the people of God had no information.

[14:54] So before I go any further, I'm going to show a little quick little map of the timeline. So this is the entire timeline. Sadly, it's not to scale. But I want you to pay attention to a few of the dates.

[15:06] 670 BC is when we believe that Abraham called out of the land of Ur to be God's peoples. And this happens in the book of Genesis. And this occurs in Genesis chapter 12.

[15:20] And then of course, we have Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And they all lived in what we know today as modern day Israel. There was a famine. Then, thankfully, Joseph was thrown out of his family and caught on as a slave.

[15:36] And God used him in Egypt and where he found favor. And he found refuge for his people for 400 years. And the Egyptians loved having the Israelites so much that they decided to make them slaves.

[15:49] All right? So they worked and trudged and had a very hard time. And then in around 1440 BC, God raises up Moses. And we know his story in Exodus.

[16:02] God, we see, saves his people. He gives people the law. And he divides them into the 12 tribes. And he's preparing them to be his people. All right?

[16:12] Then all of a sudden, 1405 happens, and that's Joshua. So that's God's people going over into the promised land. Now, one of the things that I want you to pay attention is when Joshua goes in and we experience the period of judges, there's essentially 600 years that Israel was in the land for that time without any leadership.

[16:37] That's a long piece of time. That's longer than Canada or the U.S. has been even around. I believe we go back, what, 600 years ago? Who was the world power back then? Portugal?

[16:48] You know? Like, it was just a vastly different time. But the people of God shouted they want a king. So at around 1000 B.C., they anoint Saul, which leads to David, and Solomon as kings who reign.

[17:07] Israel experiences its glory years. And we're going to see a map later on of just how big the land that they had at that time. And then around 930, the kingdom divides.

[17:20] All right, you can, we can take the timeline down for now. Now, it's important to understand we have these two kingdoms, the north and south. In 723, the northern kingdom gets wiped out by Assyria.

[17:35] Now, why is that important? Well, first of all, and if you remember Assyria, who, what was the capital of Assyria? Nineveh?

[17:46] Nineveh, yeah, that's right. We just learned about that. In fact, 80 years before that time, there was a prophet, Jonah, who went in, preached. They become a world power.

[17:57] They come in, and because of their inability or the desire not to repent, God uses Assyria to bring judgment on Israel.

[18:09] So the whole northern part of Israel is gone. In fact, the 10 tribes at that time are lost to history. There's no more record.

[18:20] We don't know where they went. There's a lot of subjection. And then about 120 years later, God raises up Babylon. The people have the same problem.

[18:31] They refuse to repent for their sins against God, and they are brought in to defeat Israel. So now the Babylonians are in, if you guys remember, Nebuchadnezzar. You guys all remember Nebuchadnezzar?

[18:42] So he's there. He's got control. And what's really interesting is that Nebuchadnezzar had this policy. When he went in, he would remove all the riches, all the smart people, the cultured people, and take them back to his country.

[18:59] So in fact, at that time, when you read in your Bibles, Nebuchadnezzar actually came three times against Israel. The first time, he robs the temple, but he lets it stand. Now they're supposed to be working for him, and at that time, Egypt was still a power, and Israel would join Egypt's side, and then they would sell out and join Babylonian side, and finally they went to Egypt's side, one too many, and Nebuchadnezzar said, that's it, I'm done with you.

[19:28] He swoops in, destroys the city, destroys the temple. Now, what is the significance of that?

[19:40] One, the Jews have a religion that is based on the temple. Remember that?

[19:52] Like, everything about the Jewish faith surrounds going, the worship, the sacrifices, mean you always have to go back to Jerusalem. they're not a well-traveled people at the time, because to go too far away, it'd be too far to come back.

[20:12] So all of a sudden, in one night, their whole form of religion is utterly taken away from them. And the way Babylonians work, they take their smartest, brightest, richest people, and they want to make them Babylonians.

[20:33] So this is what's called the diaspora. This is when the Jews, remember God made a promise to Abraham? Like, your seeds will scatter the world, right? This is part of that process.

[20:44] So it's important to realize how significant it is. Your identity is done, it's over. Without the temple, without the sacrificial systems, what are you going to do?

[20:58] So this is where I'm going to have you turn to Daniel 2. We're going to read in verse 31 to 45. And this is one of the first prophecies.

[21:10] If you remember, Nebuchadnezzar has this dream, and he's bothered by this dream. So he asks all his wise men to come. I need you guys to tell me what the dream is about.

[21:22] So the wise men go, well, why don't you tell us the dream, and we'll tell you what it's about. He says, no, no, no, no. If you guys are really as wise and good as you say, you'll know what my dream is, and you'll tell me what it means.

[21:37] And if you can't do it, you're all going to die. All right? That's it. That's how brilliant, yet scheming, Nebuchadnezzar was. He was a brilliant man, probably one of the greatest rulers of all time.

[21:50] And I do believe we will see him in glory, by the way. So he's making this promise. So finally, Daniel is going to save all the wise men and all the people. And he comes in, and he interprets the dream.

[22:01] So not only interpret the dreams, but he tells them the dream that he has. So this is the dream, and we're going to read this. And he said, you saw, O king, and I'm in verse 31, and behold a great image.

[22:15] This image, mighty and of exceedingly brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. So think of a massive statue. And he says, the head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron, and partly of clay.

[22:41] As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces.

[22:55] Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors.

[23:06] And the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

[23:20] So that's the dream. He's describing the dream. Now he's going to interpret this dream. Verse 36. This was the dream. Now we will tell the kings its interpretation.

[23:35] You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory. Isn't that awesome? He's letting Nebuchadnezzar know you're the king of kings, but the only reason you are the king of kings is because the God on high has made it so.

[23:54] And into whose hand he is given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all.

[24:05] You are the head of gold. So he's letting Nebuchadnezzar know that statue, that head, is him. Now in Daniel chapter 7, there's another prophecy, because of time, we're not going to go into it, but he describes Nebuchadnezzar as having the body of a lion with the wings of eagles.

[24:25] All right? So there's also imageries of animals coming into play here. So then the next sentence says, another kingdom inferior to you shall rise over you.

[24:38] And what is that? That is represented by the chest and arms of silver. Daniel describes this in Daniel 7, this kingdom as a bear, and later in Daniel chapter 8 as a kingdom with two horns.

[24:57] As we're going to see, it will be the Medo-Persian, which has two kings ruling over it, will overthrow Babylonians. So this is when we're going to have the Medo-Persian empire.

[25:11] And they will defeat Babylon in 538 BC. And we read about this in Daniel 5. Now, well, I'm actually going to tell you what it is.

[25:23] Switch to Daniel 5. This is Belshazzar. He is the, I think he's the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar. He's ruling. He takes in the items of the temple.

[25:35] He wants to display them to his people. And you remember the big hand that appears on the wall and writes? And of course, Belshazzar is thrown off. They kind of forgot, pushed Daniel to the side.

[25:48] Daniela, Daniela, sorry, not my wife, but the prophet Daniel shows up and he's been given. And he promises Daniel a whole bunch of glory.

[26:00] But you're going to see right now, he says, verse 26, verse chapter 5. This is the interpretation of the matter. Many, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end.

[26:12] Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Perez, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. Then Belshazzar gave the command and Daniel was clothed with purple, chain of gold was put around his neck and a proclamation was made about him that he should be the third ruler of the kingdom.

[26:33] That very night, Belshazzar, the Chaldean king, which is a member of the Babylonian empire, was killed. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom being about 62 years old.

[26:47] So that's the Persians now seeing the prophecy come true. And then we read that yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all of the earth.

[27:02] Well, if you're not familiar with your history in 332, do you guys remember? Alexander the Great comes to power and he steamrolls everybody. He's represented as the belly and thighs of bronze who pretty much conquered the whole world in a very short time.

[27:22] Now, Daniel 7, 6 calls him a leopard with four leaders. Leaders, yes. Chapter 8 of Daniel calls him a goat.

[27:35] This is prophecy. This is amazing. He said, then the goat, and I'm reading Daniel 8 and 5. You don't have to go there, but I'll just read it. It says, then the goat became exceedingly great.

[27:46] This is Alexander. He's all over the world. But when he was strong, the great horn was broken. Some people believe he was poisoned by a rival.

[27:57] Others believe he acquired malaria when he went into India. But anyway, the point of the matter is his rule was short-lived. And he didn't leave an heir.

[28:08] He had no son. So what the Greeks decided to do is they divided the kingdom into four of his generals. And that is going to be very important for us to understand when we move into the time of Jesus.

[28:23] But one of the things that Alexander worshipped more than anything else was the Greek culture. And he believed the Greek culture was so great the Greek language should be understood.

[28:39] What language is the New Testament written in? Greek. Koine Greek. That's how much it had influenced.

[28:49] 300 years later, that is one of the dominant languages in Israel. And this is all God having a hand in history creating this situation.

[29:02] And we're going to learn more about that next week. So what we read here, Alexander will rise, he will conquer, and then his land will be divided up.

[29:14] And now look at verse 40 of Daniel chapter 2. And there shall be a fourth kingdom strong as iron because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things.

[29:28] And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all of these. There's Rome. Rome comes in in 31 and they overthrow Greek and they become the dominant power.

[29:44] Now we can talk about what came out not by man and what crushed Rome? Jesus Christ. Right? Overturns the empire. So anyway, so what is the significance here that I want you to take away?

[30:02] When Daniel gives this prophecy, he's offering his people hope. Right? They're now serving a foreign king in a foreign land.

[30:15] we believe at that time that Hebrew language died out and Aramaic became one of the dominant languages of the Jewish people.

[30:26] That's how influential this time was. We believe that was the time with the creation of the synagogues. There was no temple to go to so they started to create houses where if there was ten men they could bring people and they would teach the Talmud.

[30:46] Now the Talmud was the codified history of the Jewish people. So those people met desiring to keep their faith.

[30:57] You get that? And they wanted to create these little enclaves of their faith so that they would not be lost and continue on to the next kingdom.

[31:08] Now why is this so important about hope? And what does this have to do with Jesus Christ? Because as we read in the prophecy there was one not born of Rome that would come and destroy Rome and that being Jesus Christ.

[31:27] So what Daniel is telling them is there's going to be four kingdoms but then the Messiah is coming. The Messiah is coming and what that does when we get to the time of the gospel explains that there was a fervency for a Messiah figure.

[31:50] They wanted Jesus to be the one and if you guys have been in the gospel you know they all want them to overthrow Rome right? And they're tagging it to these type of prophecies.

[32:04] And as we get into the birth of Jesus remember the guy who was in the temple and he knew John the Baptist father. It's amazing how this all shapes in.

[32:16] So why do I think this is important for us to know? When Daniel goes into exile why would he serve a foreign king so faithfully that he does?

[32:29] He's amazing right? What an example. It's because he had the scroll from Jeremiah. And in the prophecy that Jeremiah gave Daniel it said that this is only going to last 70 years.

[32:43] You are going to return to your home. You're going to get an opportunity to rebuild your land, your city, your temple. If you didn't hear that how would you feel?

[32:57] Hopeless. Right? Everything. Your whole life, your history, everything. But God continues. And I believe he does the same throughout this time. The Messiah, he's going to come.

[33:09] Yes, Greek, Rome, all those countries were there. But the Son of Man will return. And even for us today, it's the same thing. It's why we have the book of Revelation.

[33:21] Who's not discouraged in these times, right? You guys overwhelmed a little bit with what's going on? Can I go to my favorite restaurant? Can I even go on a vacation? Do I have to ID myself?

[33:32] Is this going to be forever? Like, I think we've all had our breaking points at somewhere along the line, right? There's a sense of hopelessness that creeps in.

[33:45] See, but that's the message of the gospel and what we learn in the New Testament. God is telling us a time is coming where he will make things right, and that's why we cling to. And if you were here last week, you heard Kyle talk about what our role is.

[33:59] Our role is to continue sharing the gospel to bring people to the knowledge of Jesus Christ because he is the hope of salvation. Amen? So, a couple things that I want to conclude with.

[34:15] One, the significance of this prophecy. One, Babylon. As I said, they take and overrun Israel. They take everything from the temple.

[34:28] God, being God who he is, replaces the Babylonians with the Persians. And it turns out the Persians have an entirely different foreign policy. They send their captured people back to their country and they strengthen them.

[34:45] And what does God do? He uses them to go back. So, let's take a look at Ezra chapter 1 for a second here, guys. Ezra chapter 1.

[34:56] King Cyrus now rules. Babylon is gone. And it's amazing what he does here.

[35:08] Thus says King Cyrus, or Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. Notice that?

[35:19] He's repeating what Daniel had told Nebuchadnezzar. He's recognizing that everything that he has is because of this God. and has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

[35:34] Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel.

[35:46] He is the God who is in Jerusalem. Let each survivor in whatever place he sojourns be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold with goods and with beasts besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.

[36:04] Then rose up the heads of the fathers houses of Judah and Benjamin and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit God has stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem.

[36:21] And all who were about them aided them with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, with beasts, and with costly wares. Besides all that was freely offered, Cyrus, the king, who brought out the vessels of the house of the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods.

[36:46] It's amazing. One takes, the other one gives back. And I want you to pay attention. Three tribes are left, right? Benjamin, Levite, or Levites and Judah.

[36:58] Benjamins are a tricky one. Or I'm sorry, the Levites are the tricky one. They were the priests and they weren't actually given a land. They were based in a lot of the different cities. So it is believed that some of the Levites would have been taken by the Assyrians and some by the Babylonians.

[37:16] Now, what's interesting to note is that history tells us the majority of the Jews didn't go back. They decided to stay where it was comfortable.

[37:29] Where it stayed where they had had kids now. They raised kids. Their brothers and sisters had grown up. They had kids. So they had a whole family unit and they stayed. And there is still to this day in Persia a very strong Jewish population until about 1980 when the Shah came in and a lot of them took off.

[37:50] But if you've ever in your travels met a Persian Jew, they would be one of the lineage of these people. So when it came back, and the Syrians, or I'm sorry, the Persians make another key thing that I want to prepare you for.

[38:10] They choose a leader among Israel to lead them. And that person is a priest. Okay? This is significant.

[38:22] In the Old Testament, when God gave a king, they had no priestly duties and they were never to have anything to do with the temple. Do you remember that?

[38:33] Remember, I can't even think of the king who went in and he offered sacrifices and God removed him, judged him right away. You weren't supposed to do that. And then the priest existed solely for the religion.

[38:47] what the Persians are doing are marrying the two offices. So when we get to the New Testament, we're going to learn there's Sadducees and Pharisees and they're actually political parties vying for power in the day of Jesus.

[39:10] And what's significant when we get into the life of Christ, we're going to see how Jesus plays each of those groups off of one another in almost perfection to get what Jesus Christ wants.

[39:26] But this is the beginning of that change. So we see the office of religion being crossed over with politics.

[39:38] So can I see map number two? So this is how big Israel was when King David ruled. And now map number three.

[39:49] All right. See where it says the province of Yehud, Judea? That's all they were left with. The old kingdom of Judah and Israel are no longer theirs.

[40:02] So they've come a long way and lost a lot. What's interesting is the Assyrians way back in 722 when they pull people out, which they did, they send other people in from a whole bunch.

[40:19] 2 Kings 17 tells us the type of people they send back and they want to repopulate land. So when we get to the whole point of Samaritans, this is why.

[40:31] What it was is it was these Jews that were still left there in the land intermarried with people of other faiths and you had this mish mash of this religion which leads them to believe that Jesus is going to or the Messiah is going to come back not in Jerusalem but somewhere else.

[40:51] So when we get to Jesus Christ and how he deals with the Samaritans, it's all tied in to this. So we see a new political system that's going to arise because of these decisions.

[41:10] We're seeing the creation of the Samaritans. We're seeing the creation of the synagogues because of these people. And next week what I want to do is I want to start covering the Greeks and the Romans and how they influence the custom and languages and why Jesus, I believe, living in the north of Galilee would have spoken Greek quite fluently with everyone else and been so.

[41:44] Remember, nothing good can come out of Galilee that we hear. We're going to understand why. Any questions? I'm going to throw this open to a Q&A time before we get to.

[41:57] I'm trying to be as clear as I can. Do you guys want more maps? Would that help? More charts? All right, yes. All right, thanks for creating another 20 hours of work for me.

[42:09] Yeah, save. Yeah, right, yeah. So anyhow, next week we're going to look at Greek and Roman, how they come in.

[42:21] If you have any questions, fire them off to me. I don't know how you were involved in this. I know, I felt really blessed growing up at a church which taught these things to me.

[42:32] Because when I grew up and I started going through university and a young man and I didn't know a lot of these, I got challenged. I was able to rely on my knowledge of history and I was very grateful.

[42:45] So I'm trying to pass that on to you, which I'm hoping at some point some of the other pastors did as well in this church family. But for this one that's here, I want you guys to have a significant understanding of the history as we go into the New Testament.

[43:02] All right, I don't know how to end this except to pray. So dear Lord, Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this time we come together. I hope it's been more interesting than confusing.

[43:15] but we give you thanks for the hope that you give to us even as you use these political powers and we see these prophecies coming true before our very eyes.

[43:28] How encouraging it would have been for Daniel and to those saints at the time who are living under oppressive conditions. They've lost their country.

[43:39] They're a vassal slave state to foreign powers. as we learn they get bullied by the Greeks and the Greeks will try to ban the Jewish faith and Israel will fight back and then we're going to understand why there's both Roman rulers and governors in Israel all at the same time.

[44:03] And it's all this incredible design by you. So just pray for patience in the listeners as we go forward and come to know and understand the truths that are before us.

[44:16] We ask these things in the most holy and wonderful name. Amen. Amen.