Three Important Bible Periods

  1. The Promises (Christ)
  2. The Law
  3. The Gospel (Christ)

LESSONS

  1. God does not lie!
  2. Rejoice in the Lord always!
  3. Today we live by the gospel / the law of Christ and not by the law of Moses!
  4. Do the deeds of Abraham today!

In the days of those kings, God will set up a kingdom

In the days of those kings, God will set up a kingdom. Daniel chapter 2 verse 44

Daniel was carried into exile to Babylon about 605 BC (Dan. 1:1-7; 2:25b).

  • Shortly after (cf. Dan. 2:1), Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had a troubling dream about the future.
  • Daniel explained the dream with God’s help (Daniel 2)!

Many prophecies of Jesus

Why should we follow Jesus?

Why not follow Confucius, or Buddha, or Muhammad?

  • After all, millions of others in the world do so today, and have done so down through the centuries!

One of the reasons why we should follow Jesus, rather than Confucius or Buddha or Muhammad, is our lesson for today:

Some of the many prophecies concerning Jesus in contrast to no prophecies concerning others.

  • Jesus Himself taught … 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
  • And the apostles taught the same … Acts 4:11-12 “He is the STONE WHICH WAS REJECTED by you, THE BUILDERS, but WHICH BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone. 12And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”
    • e., Salvation is only in Jesus – and not in Confucius, or Buddha, or Muhammad, or anyone else!

The Four Most Important Verses in the Book of Jeremiah

The prophet Jeremiah lived before and through the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586 B.C.

One of Jeremiah’s many prophecies before that disaster is as follows:

  • 31:31-34 Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. 33But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 “They will not teach again, each man his neighbour and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

1.  The promise of the new covenant (vv. 31, 32)

2.  Some of the provisions of the new covenant (vv. 33, 34)

Ezekiel 37

In the midst of their despair, the two halves of Ezekiel 37 contain:

  • A vision of the restoration of the nation (37:1-14), and
  • An enacted prophecy about the Messiah’s nation (37:15-28)!
  • In the explanation of these things (Ezk.37:11-14), who were represented by the bones?
  • Two sticks of Judah and Joseph demonstrating when all God’s people would be united in the Messiah’s nation!
  • David, the second king of Israel (Acts 13:21,22), had died about 400 years before the time of Ezekiel (cf. Matt.1:17). So who then is the “one shepherd” described as “My servant David”(Ezk.37:24)?
  • the “one shepherd” described as “My servant David” is David’s descendant, the Messiah(Acts 2:29-32)

What kind of covenant would be made?

  • Ezek 37:26 And I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply them, and will set My sanctuary in their midst forever.
    • Col 1:20 and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.

David’s Psalm of Deliverance

 

David’s Song (also recorded as Psalm 18) is first and foremost a prophesy of the coming Messiah, as it says things which cannot be said of any ordinary man.

However, it is also a summary and reflection of the life of David, who sang this song “in the day that the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.” And thus we consider the great drama of the life of David with it’s many ups and downs, and see how through it all, David was faithful to the LORD (despite his many sins and shortcomings), and the LORD rewarded David and delivered him from his enemies.

All of this serves to place David as a witness for us to the faithfulness of God. Why should we believe this prophesy of a faithful Messiah who is delivered from His enemies…? Because David was a faithful man whom God delivered from his enemies.

David’s life is the perfect testament to the faithfulness of God towards those who serve Him

Hannah’s Song of Thanksgiving

 

Hannah was married to Elkanah, but had been barren her whole life. But through much prayer, she was granted a child by the LORD, and so she became the mother of the child who was to become the prophet Samuel.

She had promised the LORD that once weaned, the child would be given over to the temple in Jerusalem to be raised there: surely a sad day for Hannah. But Hannah, inspired by the Holy Spirit, sings a song of thanksgiving to the LORD, which sets out her gratitude and exaltation in the LORD for this great blessings, and sets the scene for the coming events in the books of Samuel: evil men brought to destruction, the humble and good raised to glory, sin punished and wisdom rewarded.

Zechariah chapter 14 is NOT a second coming of Christ chapter

An exposition of Zechariah 14

  • Zechariah 14 is almost universally used as a “second coming of Christ chapter” but it is a “destruction of Jerusalem (AD 70) and the nations” chapter instead.
  • In other words, rather than a “second coming of Christ chapter”, Zechariah 14 is a “first coming of Christ chapter”.  The context is decisive in proving this.