Darren Tappouras - The Man Who Changed the World - Study 2 - In The Fullness of Time

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   To introduce this morning, the reading is Luke 24, verses 13 to 27. So I ask Ryan Townsend now to read for us Luke 24, verse 13 to 27. Thanks for that, Ryan. That's a pretty amazing story. Now I ask Brother Darren to general theme, The Man Who Changed the World. Thanks, Darren. Good morning, Bible School.

2. 0:21

   Good morning. Yesterday we focused on the concept of knowing Jesus, that I might know him, as Paul says in Philippians. And in order to get to know our Lord, we're going to take a step back and look at his role and his destiny as ordained by God in the history of the world.

3. 0:47

   And that's going to be a sort of a big picture view of our Lord Jesus Christ this morning. Because, of course, we want to know everything about him. We want to know the reason he came into existence, what his role was, his specific role in the plan and purpose and the outworking of that plan and purpose of our Heavenly Father.

4. 1:08

   When biographers document the life of a significant person in history, there might be a great leader in world history like Winston Churchill, or it could be someone who's had an impact on the world in some way. They do spend the early part of the biography looking at the background and the family of the person in question.

5. 1:35

   And you might think, well, why would they bother with that? We're interested in, you know, Winston Churchill when he saved the Allies during World War II. Why are they, why have they gone back and why are they looking at things that happened early in his life and where his family came from and the origin of his family, etc.

6. 1:54

   The reason is those things are formative. They are part of the story of that person. They are built into the story. They're part of the fabric of the story. And they give significant direction and background to the story of that person. So the same applies to our Lord Jesus Christ. And we'll spend some time this morning looking at the big picture in the background to our Lord.

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   This morning's theme is taken from Galatians 4. And there's this really pivotal verse that is found here in this chapter. And it's going to sort of be our springboard verse for our session this morning. And it says, when the fullness of time, the fullness of time, the pleora of the chronos, it's a fullness of time had come.

8. 2:44

   So it's a specific point in time and space. God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. So at this time in the history of the universe, God intervenes at this point. And as I said, it's not just a point of time. It's a point in the location of his birth on this planet is significant.

9. 3:12

   He's born under the law. He's born as a Jew. He's born at a time in the history of Israel that is significant. All these things culminate and come together and align in this very incredible event, the most significant event, of course, in the history of our planet. And as we're talking about time this morning and how time works, I just want to make this observation.

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    Some of you will already be aware of this. Some of you may not be as aware or may have forgotten it. But every time in this planet, everywhere from China to Russia, throughout the United States, throughout every little island in this world, we write the date. And the date pops up on your mobile phone, on your computer screen, on newspapers, on official documents and business transactions.

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    The date appears. And, of course, the date at the moment would be a certain date in December. I can't even think of what it is at the moment. What is it? 23rd. Okay, there you go. 23rd of December 2025. Why is it 2025? Everyone just takes this for granted. It's anchored to something in history, to this incredible event in history, the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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    So every time your mobile phone comes up with the date, every time you see the date on your desk at work, it's a testimony to the significance of Jesus Christ in history. He is the centre and the focus of history. Everything before him is called BC. Everything after him is referenced as AD.

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    He is the centre of history, whether you like it or not. And even though our secular world sometimes tries to mask that by using CE as the common era to replace AD, and BCE is before the common era, it's just a mask because it's still anchored to the same time in history. It's anchored to the birth of Jesus, whether you accept it or not.

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    And it is an incredible fact to keep in mind. And it's very significant in our session this morning. And that division of history from BC and AD reflects the division of scripture as well. So you can see scriptural history is really a microcosm of history generally. Everything in the Bible is leading up to Christ.

15. 5:43

    And from his birth onwards, it is telling his story and his destiny, etc. So even the Bible itself is divided, of course, into the Old Testament. We could equate that to the BC era, everything before Christ. And you think about that. Everything that's happened on this planet is referenced as BC, before Christ.

16. 6:07

    Everything that's happened in any continent of the world, in the history of any ethnic group or any nation, it's referenced as before Christ. I mean, that is a phenomenon, at least. And of course, the New Testament then, following from the sacrifice of Christ, is referenced as AD. Anno Domini, the year of our Lord.

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    The year of our Lord, 2025. And it starts in eternity, as we're going to see in a moment. And it ends in eternity. It doesn't really end in eternity. It morphs into eternity at the other end of that scale. And so we've got this 6,000 years of documented history in which God's purpose is outworked.

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    And it's really 6,000 years is just a blip, isn't it? It's just a little blip in eternity. And we're privileged to be able to observe that blip, if you like, or to see God's hand in that narrative as that purpose unfolds before us. But even more incredible is to know we are part of that.

19. 7:05

    We're part of that. We're involved in that destiny that marks out our planet. And of course, at the centre of all that is Jesus Christ. The purpose for it, the reason for it, and the result of it is all related to our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, as I said, it goes this blip, if you like, this little 6,000 year segment of history that we're going to think about this morning.

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    Of course, he's part of eternity and goes back to eternity. And he's linked to eternity. And here's this really wonderful prophecy found in Micah, in Micah 5. It's a messianic prophecy. It's a prediction that, of course, has some application in its original setting. But, of course, it's predicting and pointing forward to Jesus Christ.

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    And it says in Micah 5, verse 2, talking about the town of Bethlehem. It says, Bethlehem, you're just a little insignificant town. Out of all the thousands of villages that are dotting the location in the region of Judah. Yet, out of you, this little village called Bethlehem. Out of you shall come forth to me the one.

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    And this morning we're going to focus on the one. The one, or sometimes he's referred to as he or him. And this person, this mysterious person, as it was written, while the prophets by the Spirit were writing these things, as 1 Peter says, this figure dots and punctuates the entire Old Testament narrative.

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    And here we see in Micah 5, this one who's going to be the ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from old. From everlasting. Now, I'm only going to say this once. I don't want to have to qualify this every time I refer to this subject. Of course, Jesus didn't pre-exist. The idea that someone who's existed for millions of years can divest themselves of all their memory and become a baby and grow again and learn is nuts at one level.

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    But it's not biblical, which is more important. So, I'm not going to say that again. Everyone's on board with that. If anyone comes up to me afterwards and says, Jesus, it doesn't pre-exist. You should have said something. You have to donate $100 to Agapain Action. That's the deal, right? So, it's on record.

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    I'm not going to say it every time I refer to one of these verses. The goings forth here. Strongs defines that phrase that's rendered goings forth as the family descent. So, here's one who's going to be born in Bethlehem. Remember, this is hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. The prediction is one who's going to be born in Bethlehem.

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    But his family descent, his genealogy, his family tree. I'm going to talk a little bit about family trees this morning. His family tree goes back into eternity. Why do you think that's the case? Because his father is who? God. His father is eternal. His father is divine. In that sense, on the father's side of the family, he goes back into eternity, for everlasting.

27. 10:28

    And so, if we were to draw a family tree for Jesus, in a sense, we'd have his father being God, Yahweh. His origins, he is no beginning and no end. He's uncreate. So, his mother is Mary, of course. She's human. And she then comes from Adam. And she can trace her origins all the way back to Adam, as we'll see in Luke 3 a bit later on.

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    So, that's the family tree of Jesus. And so, he is, in a sense, on one side of his family, he can say, I go all the way back to eternity. On the other side of his family, he goes, I go all the way back, literally, to Adam. I can trace that back to Adam.

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    It's a bit like me. You know, Dad tells me I can go all the way back to Alexander the Great. I've never put that to the test, but you can tell by the body and everything. It's probably true. At least to Sparta. I think at least to Sparta. So, that's the hereditary one.

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    Jesus is son of God in that sense. And we're going to see in a minute, as we have a look at these genealogies that exist in Scripture, given to us strategically in Scripture, that we can link Mary back, of course, to Adam. And that's the point of our Lord's mission. And we'll get to that in due course.

31. 11:41

    So, hopefully, that big picture sets the scene. So, we're ready to sort of get into this subject. Now, I'm just going to give you some verses that link Jesus back to eternity. Sometimes in our explanation of, say, the atonement or God's method of salvation, we position Jesus as a solution to a problem.

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    There's nothing wrong with that, if it's understood correctly. And Jesus, his role in God's purpose is much broader and grander than that. It's more cosmic, if you want to use a fancy term. It's an eternal, cosmic plan that God had before he even created the world. It wasn't just he plugged Jesus in as a solution stopper, in a sense.

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    It's much grander than that. And so, there are these verses, Colossians 1, for example, all things were created through him, on account of him, and for him. And he is before all things. Now, I've already explained how that works, because he is the son of God. His family line go back to before all things, before the world was even created.

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    Hebrews 1, verse 2, similar concept here. Through or on account of Jesus, on account of him. So, he wasn't plugged in because of something else. Everything came into existence because of him. He was preordained before the problems of the fall, etc. So, on account of Jesus, God made the ages. And we've seen the literal outworking of that in the date system, haven't we?

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    The BC, AD. The ages are framed, in a sense, according to Jesus. Because even in this secular world in which we live, that is an undeniable fact. 1 Peter 1, he indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, before the world was even started. Before the physical structures of our planet came into existence.

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    Jesus was there. Here's another profound one. I've got to discipline myself not to go into it in any detail. But John 1, in the beginning was the word. It was this logos or the logic of God. God's wisdom was there in the beginning. It was, you know, Proverbs talks about it. Existing in the beginning, God's wisdom and his logic and his thinking.

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    And that mind of God becomes flesh, as verse 14 says of John 1. And God's wisdom is lived out in human experience. And it's self-existence in the experience of Jesus Christ himself. Ephesians 3 is another one. The eternal purpose. This was an eternal plan of God. Jesus Christ is the center of this eternal plan that was accomplished in Christ.

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    And then there are these other enigmatic sayings, if you like. Here's one from John 17, where Jesus says, You love me. And another place, Jesus says, Give me the glory I had with you before the foundation of the world. God's plan and his purpose goes back into eternity. And so we start our consideration of Jesus in this macro way.

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    As we zoom right out and we say, Jesus was there in the plan and purpose of God in eternity. And then, as Galatians 4 says, In the fullness of time, God acts at a particular time in history, which we're going to think about in a second. So let's just focus on that first half of the Bible, if you like.

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    The BC, before Christ. From eternity, we've got creation, Adam, etc. And we've got this period of time, about 4,000 years, leading up to the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, the first half of the Bible. And riddled throughout the narrative of Scripture. And we might be focused on a psalm. We might be focused on a Bible character, one of the patriarchs, like we're studying here at Bible school.

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    We might be looking at the conquest of Israel as they entered the land. We might be looking at the events in Egypt and around Exodus. We might be looking at any part of the Bible. But within the narrative itself, we find these messianic references just riddled there, just Micah 5, that we can track all the way through the Old Testament or the Old Covenant, if you like.

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    And I've just picked out some obvious ones. This study would go on all week, just of its own steam, if we were to try and identify all of them. But we've got the seed of the woman, right back there in the opening pages of Scripture. He shall bruise your head. He's a he.

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    There's this person that is sort of poking through the narrative, if you like. It's sort of not defined, not explained in any great way, but it starts to come through and punctuate the storyline. So we've got this he, this person that now finds his way in the story. We get to the promises to Abraham.

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    And in that seminal chapter in Genesis 22, where the promises are given in this sort of unconditional way to Abraham, there's a reference in Genesis 22 to this he, this one who is the object of these promises. And he's the offspring or the seed of Abraham. And he would possess the gates of his enemies.

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    You can see this he that's popping up everywhere and starting to come through. You go a bit further into history and you've got the blessings to Jacob's sons, if you like. And there's references given to Judah that one of his descendants would be a king. The scepter would come from that tribe and the lawgiver would come from that tribe.

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    And he's given this enigmatic name of Shiloh, this personage that's going to come and is woven into the story. Later on, Moses would make reference to a prophet that would come, a prophet taken from among the people of Israel. Remember Galatians 4? He came to this nation. He came under the law. And he's going to be taken from among his brethren.

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    Him you should really listen to. A hymn. This hymn, this he, this one. It's going to come from David's own body. And we're told that God will establish his kingdom and of his throne. And he'll be given rulership over his kingdom. So there's this hymn that continues to come through the storyline. We get to the prophecies of Isaiah and there's this another enigmatic character, if you like, that is caught up in these servant songs.

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    He's called the servant. This servant that makes his way through the narrative. And of course, these servant prophecies are messianic to the core. And they are all picked up and reflected in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. But just the sample there from Isaiah 53 verse 3. He, he's our he again.

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    He is despised and rejected of men. And again, that will be picked up in the New Testament and applied, of course, to Jesus. And then another enigmatic one. We might talk about this on our final exhortation. But in Daniel 7, we've got one who's called the son of man. And that's a title that then Jesus applies to himself later on, of course, in history.

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    But when Daniel's written, this character is called the son of man. And to him is given this kingdom, dominion, etc. So this character that just is woven into the narrative line of scripture. And, of course, comes out the other side of that Old Testament context into the life of Jesus Christ himself. And it's done in such a way.

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    I've been using terms like, you know, sort of enigmatic. And you think, oh, is that? That's maybe a bit disrespectful. And we know it's talking about Jesus. But it was enigmatic. The New Testament calls it the mystery. It was a mystery that was hidden. It was literally hidden. Even the prophets in 1 Peter 1 were told, if you read that carefully, those prophets didn't quite know exactly what they were writing.

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    And it says in the context, it wasn't for them that these prophecies were given, but for us unto whom the grace of God has come. So character really was and how it would outplay. And we know when Jesus does come, even his own disciples struggled to identify the reality of what this suffering servant was all about.

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    And it's not just this enigmatic character that, in the genius of God, is woven into the story and then converges into the life of Jesus. Every single inch of the Old Testament, in some way, is pointing forward to Jesus in using different literary mechanisms of one or another. And this is just a survey.

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    Of course, you know, you can drill down into this forever, I imagine. I always think the same God who created quantum physics also wrote the Bible. So there's no end to it. You can just keep going down and down. I've sometimes heard studies where someone has done, like, for example, Esther, and instead of looking at the narrative movements and the characterisation, they've just simply focused on the types of Christ and just spent the whole study just looking at every little phrase.

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    And it's amazing. It's not my cup of tea, to be honest. It's not the sort of thing I normally do, but it is a witness to the micro level of detail that's in these Bible stories. Every little phrase can be linked back to Jesus and God's purpose in him. Even in the Pentateuch, if you like, the first five books of the Bible where the law is given to Israel with all the institutions of the law, the tabernacle, which would subsequently become the temple, all the apparatus within the tabernacle, the altar, the table of showbread, the altar of incense, all of these things, all of them are pointing forward to Jesus.

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    The lamb itself, the sacrifices, the feasts, all the institutions under the law, all of them, literally all of them are identifiable in the outworking of Jesus. But then you've got events that occur during that period of time too. Independent events, in Numbers 21, for example, again, an event in the historical narrative becomes a pointer to salvation in Christ, just as the serpent was lifted up, so the Son of Man will be lifted up as well in crucifixion.

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    The Exodus event becomes an anchor to the whole salvation language that we pick up in the New Testament. Things like salvation and redemption and save from slavery and the slavery of sin and all the vocabulary of salvation all finds its initial seeds sown in the Exodus story, which is just quite phenomenal. Things like baptism, which would become an institution under the new covenant, all prefigured in crossing, you know, the parting of the Red Sea, crossing Jordan, the flood event, and all these other things that were prefiguring salvation in Christ that would come later on.

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    There are direct messianic prophecies where there are literal word-for-word comparisons with the prophecy to their outworking in the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We haven't got time to dwell on those. There are characters identified in Scripture that are, we're told, in black and white, we're told these characters are types of Jesus Christ.

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    We've got Adam, for example, and the exposition is given in Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15. There's a first Adam and there's a second Adam. It's Jesus. So it's an undeniable type or comparison between these characters. Melchizedek, who pops up in, out of the blue, out of nowhere, and that's the point of him in a way, isn't it?

60. 24:17

    Genesis 14, and then, you know, Hebrews 7, it's connected, Psalm 110's part of that chain, but connected to our Lord Jesus Christ. It's just a character with a few verses hidden in the back of a narrative, you could say, inspired narrative, inspired commentary that comes up later on in the New Testament. And we've got the covenants.

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    These covenants that sort of have this progressive nature to them that move the narrative story through Scripture. These covenants that start in Eden, move through into Noah, and then Abraham, and they've progressed, even the mechanism of giving them is progressed from a promise then confirmed by an oath and then confirmed in a covenant ritual.

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    So these things work their way through the Old Testament and they are all converging on the new covenant in Christ, which is a phenomenal thing as well. I haven't got time to really flesh that out. And then, as I said, there are these not specified types, but obvious types that pop up in the narratives of the lives of the Old Testament Bible characters.

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    They're undeniable, even if we don't have a divine-inspired warrant for them. They're just obvious and they're quite amazing. And they pick up the rhythm and the pattern of their lives are reflected in the actual life of Jesus Christ himself. So just to illustrate a couple of these very, very quickly, I've got a Who Am I?

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    You ready for the Who Am I? He was loved by his father, rejected by his family, overcome temptation, fed the people with bread, foretells the future, someone sells him for pieces of silver, stripped of his robe, delivered up to the Gentiles, falsely accused. His own people didn't recognise him when he came. Who am I?

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    Who am I? Joseph, okay. But you could literally read that. As you're reading that, you could go, that's Jesus, of course, isn't it? It's so obvious. The patterns built into this narrative would all outplay and be actualised in the story of Joseph. One more. He's named God. He's accompanied by disciples. He does signs and wonders.

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    He raised a son from the grave, fed people with a few loaves, had food left over, heals the leper, gave sight to the blind, betrayed for money. Who am I? Elisha. Okay, so it's almost an identical name of Jesus. So, all these things and these different literary mechanisms that are built in by the genius of God in the Old Testament saturate the pages of Scripture that they are all pointing forward to this person that would come, the Lord Jesus Christ.

67. 27:17

    And it's Christ himself who really makes this known. He's the one who unlocks this mystery that has been hidden there for all of the ages. And he unlocks it initially, of course, to his disciples. And we had read for us this morning Luke 24. I haven't got time to go through that, of course, but just to highlight two events in that chapter where Jesus unlocks, unlocks these things from the Old Covenant and applies them to himself.

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    And the first one is the very famous story of Emmaus, on the way to Emmaus. And without going into too much detail, eventually in the story, he expounds Scripture to them and it says, beginning at Moses and all the prophets. So wouldn't you have loved to have been a fly on the wall and heard that exposition as Jesus himself goes through Moses, goes through the law, goes through the narrative?

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    I wonder how deep it went and how many features that he unlocked that we are not aware of today. But he goes through it and he expounds all the Scriptures. And he says, they're all concerning me. They're all talking about me. And it's good to keep that in mind even as, even as, you know, when brethren are preparing studies on different, but yet they're faithful examples in their own right.

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    But of course, the whole Old Testament is moving towards, there's this divine movement towards Jesus Christ and he is the objective of all these things. It's good to keep that in mind. So this word expounded, that Jesus expounds these things, it's made up of two Greek words, dia and homuno, where we get the word hominutics from, which is like the study of texts and analysis and interpretation of texts.

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    Jesus is going through a text and he's, in a way, opening them up and explaining what they mean. And look at the response that these disciples have, these two that are travelling with Jesus to Emmaus. It says, they said to one another, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us on the road and he opened?

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    It's another word. Because you can see, this was all hid. The Jews knew their Bibles really well. They knew them extremely well but you need the key to unlock what they're really talking about. And once that key is turned in your mind and the scales drop from your eyes and it's so obvious and we look back, maybe some of you older ones are finding this whole session a little bit boring because you go, well, tell me something I don't know.

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    And to us it's like, of course, of course we know that. But you think of the genius of what God has done, how he's locked this mystery, this message into these scriptures, his own people who know these scriptures extremely well are still unaware of the reality and the outworking of what these things are talking about.

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    I mean, that's incredible. And so, our minds have been opened and we should not take that for granted that we can look back at the BC history and look back at the first half of the Bible, if you like, and see the genius of God built into all those different mechanisms and devices that God has used to point to his son.

75. 30:43

    And then the second event in Luke 24 is the ascension where Jesus leaves in Luke 24. And he, it seems even more comprehensive, the words that he used to describe the source material that Jesus draws on. And he says to them just before he ascends, these are the words which I spoke to while I was still with you, but you didn't really get it then, that these things must be fulfilled which were written in the law, the prophets and the Psalms.

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    And this is how the, how the Jews literally break up their Bible in those three categories or they call it the writings, the law, the prophets and the writings. And Jesus says those three categories that make up your whole Old Testament canon, they are all speaking about me. and he opens, the same word again, he opens, turns the key, opens their eyes.

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    It's like all of a sudden, wow, they see reality and their understanding is enlightened and it says they comprehend. They now have this, a sense of putting everything together, everything's making sense and they comprehend the scriptures probably for the first time in their lives. They really comprehended because they just looked at the Bible as all these discrete stories, you know, David and Goliath and Jehu killing the king and whatever the story might be, they're all wonderful and they're all faith-anchored narratives that have lessons but they're more than that.

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    They're much, much more than that. They are all pointing forward to Jesus and that's the magic of these things. Okay, one way that the story of Jesus moves through the Old Testament and is also linked in the Old Testament is the use of genealogies. Now, we've already touched on one of those genealogies early on and I made one up that linked Jesus to eternity through his father, of course, but there are strategic genealogies that appear.

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    Sometimes you think this, they seem to be, you know, they pop up when you had to do the readings and there was little kids at home and it was like, oh no, we're going to have to struggle through the genealogies and when you're reading them as a kid, they're sort of rather boring and insignificant but these genealogies really bind the story together and they link Old and New Testament together and they give the narrative movement.

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    They move the narrative, move the story through and we've got to keep that in mind. This is a moving feast. The narrative is moving and we're part of that movement. So, just a little bit of interesting background here, you might find interesting. The first book of the Old Testament, the first book of the Bible is what?

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    Genesis, okay. If I was to ask you what the second book of the, sorry, what the last book of the Old Testament is, you may not identify it initially but the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew canon as the Jews have it and had it and the Bible that Jesus would have used, the last book of the Hebrew Bible is, we would say 2 Chronicles but the Jews don't have a 1st and 2nd Chronicles, it's just Chronicles.

82. 34:06

    So Chronicles is the last book because it's the end of the narrative and the other writings are inserted throughout the narrative. So you start with Genesis and you end in, I'll say 2nd Chronicles but you know what I mean, the end of the Chronicles itself. So the narrative storyline of the Old Testament falls between these two books.

83. 34:27

    Now let's just make some observations about these two books. What makes them unique? Genealogies. So Genesis is loaded with these genealogies at the start and when we get to Chronicles we're going to see the first, I think it's 9 chapters, are just genealogies. It seems like this is rather boring, just genealogies but when you put them in position as the bookends of the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, they make a lot of sense and they link the whole story together.

84. 34:56

    So just go to Genesis with me, I haven't made... Here right at the very start of the Bible, very start of the narrative, we get the linkage, the genealogical linkage starting with Adam. So chapter 5 verse 1, let's just anchor this because this is important. It starts off in, if you've got the King James it says this is the book of generations but the New King James says this is the book of the genealogy.

85. 35:27

    So this is the genealogy of who? Of Adam. So we've got Adam and his original creation with Eve of course and when we get to Matthew, to Luke 3 in a minute, Luke 3 ends, it goes backwards, it ends with Adam and calls him the son of God. So Adam is a son of God, he has no parents in that sense, that makes sense.

86. 35:51

    So here we're starting with Adam, the first son of God if you like. Then just run your eyes through really quickly, he has a son in his image and likeness called Seth in verse 3, Seth has Enos in verse 6, Enos has Canaan, blah, blah, blah, run your eyes down, get to verse 31 towards the end, all the days of Lamech, we get to Lamech, Lamech lives for 777 years, he dies and boom, we've got another character, significant character, called Noah and Noah has three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth.

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    Now we all probably know all that from Sunday school but just see how it's documented, okay, there's a flow of history being documented here, starting with Adam, the son of God, created by God, down to someone called Seth, one of Noah's sons, so keep that in mind. Then jump across to chapter 11 and we get the next instalment of the genealogies.

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    And this one, let's just pick it up, won't go through it all but we've got, verse 10, we've got the genealogy of Shem, okay, so you can follow from Shem through those verses, we get to verse 27, these are the generations or the genealogies of Terah and he has a son called Abram and then verse 29 refers to Abram and his wife and then get to verse 31, Terah took Abram, his son, so it gets you to Abram.

89. 37:34

    So we've now got the first leg of the journey, of the human journey, the human descent through time and now we've found ourselves at Abraham, a very significant person in, of course, the Bible story and then quickly just jump to Genesis 25 and the story continues in these, in this incredibly structured way.

90. 37:57

    You get to chapter 25 and let's just jump to verse 19. these are the generations or the genealogy of Isaac, Abraham, Abraham, who's now called Abraham's son and then if you run your eyes down to verse 28, we get to Isaac loved Esau, so from Isaac you've got Jacob and Esau, Isaac loved Esau because he ate his venison but Rebecca loved Jacob, so it takes us the next leg of the journey and now we've got Jacob and what's Jacob's other name?

91. 38:31

    Israel. So now we're anchored, we've anchored ourselves from Adam right through to Noah, now right through to Abraham and right through to Israel and now we then start the narrative story through the children of Israel and their experiences. So you can see how Genesis anchors us to that real history as it follows through.

92. 38:54

    Then let's just turn to the end of the Hebrew Bible so if you go to you know Zechariah Malachi you haven't listened properly, let's go to 2 Chronicles. Oh sorry, just 1 Chronicles there's no such thing. Chronicles is linked via genealogies from the start of the Hebrew Bible to the end of the Hebrew Bible we move through this narrative storyline.

93. 39:19

    So Chronicles 1 verse 1 starts with what? Who's there? Adam. Okay, so we've now done this in a sense a quantum leap from Genesis now we're at the end of the Hebrew Bible we've got Adam and then if you follow chapter 1 down to say verse 27 we get to where? Abraham. And then we get in verse 28 the sons of Abraham we get to Isaac and Ishmael.

94. 39:51

    So again you've got this same history recapitulate if you like that links Genesis the start of the Hebrew Bible to the end of the Hebrew Bible. Then if you jump to chapter 2 you've got the sons of Israel. So this is Jacob's family line and then we haven't got time but this now links Jacob all the way to David.

95. 40:15

    If you run your eyes down to verse 15 we get from Jesse in verse 14 and David. Now I'm sorry that's a whirlwind trip. I'm sorry to rush through that so quickly but I really want you to feel the power of that. You've got these genealogies they look like boring things that don't really have a lot of significance but they are linking the story of Jesus.

96. 40:34

    At the end of the day they're linking us to Jesus. The whole of the Old Testament is moving us in that direction. And then this is beautiful and the older ones will be more probably aware of this before I even go to it. Within the narrative you've got this little interlude in the book of Ruth that just interestingly is just inserted in there that just brings these sort of bookends together where the hero of the story if you like is Boaz and we're told at the end of the book of Ruth this is the genealogy of Perez Salmon begat Boaz and Boaz begat Obed Obed begat being inserted into this messianic line if you like from that started with Adam took us to Noah took us to Abraham took us through to Israel and their story and within that story now we are recalibrated if you like and inserted into that line which is now recorded in the book of Ruth I just find I don't know maybe I'm a nerd or something but I just find stuff like that he's like this is God's word isn't it this is quite amazing now just to finish up oh yeah okay we're going to finish up really quickly we just want to now link the old covenant now the old testament into the new we're not going to look at this in any detail more of an introduction but we have this incredible prophecy in Daniel chapter nine and it's called the 70 week prophecy and it's really an amazing prophecy because it's actually got specific time periods but in a nutshell this prophecy says and

97. 42:14

    the background God had said they were going to go into captivity for 70 years the 70 years are now basically up Daniel sort of excited because he goes well that's the end of the captivity we're going to go back to our land and God's going to reestablish our nation again God says yep but no yeah nah if that makes sense so you are going to go back but it's not the real deal you're going to have no king you know no shekinah glory in the tabernacle in the temple rather it's not a real reestablishment of the kingdom and he says there's going to be this gap and this is what this prophecy is all about a gap and he uses he said the gap he gives us a starting point and the ending point he says it's going to start with the decree to go back home and rebuild your temple okay so the persians as we know over through the babylonian empire and part of the persian political philosophy was that they would let subjugated people worship their own gods and they didn't the persian empire is going to give a decree this special decree to let you go back and the captivity will come to an end inverted commas but he says that's not the real return that's a return an aliyah as it's called in scripture one aliyah back going up to your you're going to go back but he said there's a gap made up of 70 weeks now in hebrew the word weeks just means sevens it's 77 what's 77 any mathematicians here 490 exactly and it's a biblically established

98. 43:51

    principle of a day for a year period he said this gap is going to be 490 years that's pretty much half a century there's a half a century gap between the old testament and the new testament this big gap of time and it starts with the decree to rebuild and it ends with messiah the prince there we've got a direct reference the messiah the christ this is christ that's what the word christ means or is messiah it's the anointed one from the going of that decree from cyrus or the king of persia to messiah the prince being cut off and introducing righteousness into the world is going to be 490 years a half century gap so keep that big picture because i've run out of time to go through any detail he's a bit of a timeline timeline is showing from the decree to rebuild to a messiah is cut off or crucified if you like and a new covenant is introduced we've got a 490 year gap everyone happy with that reasonably happy just nod and go yeah sort of got it okay let's move on okay now we're going to see this beautiful leap a divinely inspired um narrated leap if you like from the end of the old testament from the book of chronicles that's going to link us to the opening of the new testament the book of matthew it's beautiful little leap let's go to the last verse in chronicles all the very very end of second chronicles this is the end of the jewish bible the end of the jewish bible how does it end okay so this the big

99. 45:36

    picture is there's this massive gap 500 year gap between the old and the new testament how does the old testament end the first year of cyrus king of persia the word of the lord by the mouth of jeremiah will be fulfilled the lord set up the spirit of cyrus king of persia so that he made a proclamation we've got the decree they're given okay the decrees given at the end of the old testament there'd be 490 years and that brings us to the new testament this is leaping the gap if you like leaping leaping this this this gap and so these chronologies have linked us all the way through the first book of the bible has now been linked to the last book of the of the old testament but now the first book of the new testament also is a strategic place for chronologies and so we have this these these two chronologies of jesus given in both matthew the first literally the first verse of the new testament is a beginning of a chronology the generations of jesus christ tracing him back to david and abraham and then in luke 3 there's another one that traces mary's lineage all the way back to adam who was called the son of god so they're all linked together in this this quite amazing way i'm sorry to rush this but we're running a little bit out of time so we've got genesis with the with the chronologies linked to the end of the old testament the decree to rebuild then linked into the new testament era to the book of matthew but we could even take a step

100. 47:10

     back and get a bigger picture if you want to link our whole session together it really started in eternity his goings forth micah five says his family genealogy actually is eternal his goings forth from everlasting genealogies of adam onwards which links us to the end of the old testament bringing us to chronicles as we trace the he and the him of the promised messiah through that narrative ends with this decree to rebuild jerusalem and takes us to the chronological descriptions that we have that open up the new testament in the book of matthew so all the way through from eternity to the introduction of jesus we've had god moving forward inevitably maybe slowly from a human perspective but we know in god's time that's not so slow moving forward little by little inexorably leading to the introduction of jesus into the world okay we've got a couple of minutes okay i'm just going to talk really fast for a second real quick brief we now have this pinpointed time in history when all of god's plans from eternity have all converged they've made their way to what we call year zero we call the intersection of of bc and ad the time when history intersects in that incredible unique way that the world just takes for granted fullness of time has come i just want to give you some practical reasons why this was the fullness of time this was the time god in his infinite wisdom and foresight places jesus at this time and this could be an inexhaustible study but just to give you some practical little points here there was no other time in

101. 49:06

     history where the known world could actually communicate like they could during this particular time in history it was a very unique period of history where following on from alexander the great i think i i missed the session i would have loved to have heard the session alexander the great because any greeks worth talking about really um but it's the macedonians today are yugoslavian they're not they're not greece not yugoslavian nothing against yugoslavians love yous all you're not greeks okay so um it was alexander's father philip who'd really created the first sort of homogenous world perspective where the whole world before that you had little towns and and they had their own kings and you had little cities and empires even even the greek empire was made up of city states like sparta and athens etc now philip had made this this sort of homogenous way where people could communicate and move and travel now we have a period in time when the roman alphabet was not too dissimilar from the greek and as the romans superseded and took over the greek empire and expanded it it okay we're going to finish there but just take away from this session this is the perfect time in history where the gospel could be taught to the whole world no other time in history the pax romana lasted for about 126 years it enabled the apostle paul and others to spread the gospel throughout the world no other time in history could this have happened the fullness of time had come god's purpose had converged on this time in history and we love it thank you