The Bible in 90 Days: Recapping the events of the Old Testament

Ted Cooper, Jr., who created the Bible in 90 Days program (which this Blogging Through the Bible in 90 Days program is based on) wrote this overview of the Old Testament for Bible in 90 Days participants. It covers the reading of the Old Testament up to Week 6. (Where we are now.)

I hope this helps put a few things into perspective:

• God created everything, including a people with a perfect relationship with God
• He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, made them responsible for overseeing the animals and working the land, and told them not to do one thing… eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
• They were enticed — tempted by the serpent — fell to tempation (ate the fruit).
• God responds by punishing them… he makes them mortal (which they weren’t before)… and he banishes them from the Garden of Eden.
• But things didn’t go so well outside the garden, either. A lot of begatting went on, but very little righteousness. So God chose a righteous man, had him build an ark and load his family, his inlaws and a sampling of animals into the ark, then flooded the world, killing all other living beings.
• Noah’s family exited the ark, begat some more, we end up with a bunch of people building a tower toward the sky, because they want to become like God. Next thing they know, they don’t understand what they are saying, and because they can’t communicate effectively with each other, they are thwarted in their attempts to become God-like.
• It is at this point that we start to get the idea that there might be a plan for rescuing at least some humans from the mess that was started in the Garden.
• God chooses Abraham as the leader of a chosen people, makes certain promises to them, and keeps those promises. God starts doing some things to show His power, and to give the people some confidence in His ability to do things.
• For instance, he leads them out of slavery in Egypt. He gives them 10 laws to live by. He promises them a fertile land, and promises that he will overthrow the big hulking inhabitants of that land.
• But the people didn’t have enough faith. They may have wanted to believe, but they didn’t quite believe that He was going to take down those big ugly warriors for them.
• So God punishes them… He has them wander around the desert for 38 years, until all but two of the original group that He had rescued from Egypt are dead.
• Then he let’s them enter the Promised Land, but only after giving explicit instructions on what they are to do and how they are to do it. He also warns them, through Moses, what will happen if they don’t follow through.
• Well, as we know, they enter the Promised Land, led by Joshua, and God helps them defeat the inhabitants. But they don’t wipe these enemies out completely, as God had ordered. This leads to trouble pretty quickly. Because RELIGION isn’t always people’s number ONE criteria when choosing a mate.
• You know, we can understand it, these people have been out in the desert for 38 years, same people, grew up together, all of a sudden they are thrown in with a bunch of new people they’ve never seen before, and some of them are kind of cute. One thing leads to another, and they start intermarrying. And, again, we can understand it. If you love your spouse and respect them, over time you are going to find out more and more about the gods they worship, and probably you might start accommodating these other gods in your own worldview.
• What they lost sight of, however, is that this directly conflicts with the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods besides me.”
• At this point we’re arriving at the age of the Judges. The further the people turn from God, the worse their circumstances become. He let’s their enemies overrun them. Then they plead with God, and He delivers a strong, God-fearing leader, and things go well for 40 or 80 years. But the people turn away when they don’t have that strong, God-fearing leader. And their circumstances deteriorate again.
• Finally the people plead for a King, so they can be like all other nations. Now God has already warned them — way back in Deuteronomy — that a human king is not a good idea. But he tells Samuel, if that’s what they want, then let’s give it to them.
• And you know what? David and Solomon are actually pretty good kings. But in their humanness, they demonstrate some real faults. In the end, they lay the groundwork for a political kingdom that was short-lived. The kingdom split. None of the 20 kings of Israel did what was right in the eyes of God. He responds by letting Assyria defeat Israel  in 722 BC, scattering the survivors, who disappear from recorded history.
• Of the 19 kings and 1 Queen of Judah, maybe 6 or 7 did mostly what was right in the eyes of God. But, for the most part, Judah’s kings, which God had warned the people about, had not kept them pointing toward Him. So we find that God allows the Babylonians to destroy Judah and exile its people to Babylon.
• Just as we ended the last class with the destruction of Jerusalem, I wanted us to spend a few minutes here focusing on that again, because, in the plot of the OT (in the chronology of the OT), the destruction of Jerusalem is the climax. Just like any good Bruce Willis or Jerry Bruckheimer film. What we read this past week (1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah), was really kind of an epilogue. We think that these books are written after the exiles return to Jerusalem. 1 & 2 Chronicles were written in a way to encourage people about their past leaders. And Ezra and Nehemiah focus on the rebuilding, both physically and spiritually. And the period they cover is the end of OT history in the Bible.
• But it is NOT the end of the OT.
• For instance, this week, we read Esther, Job, and Psalms.
  • Esther is set in Persia, and it predates the events in Nehemiah by about 30 years.
  • Job, actually may have been the first book ever written in the Bible, and it is roughly set in the time of the Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There is some speculation that Job was the King of Edom.
  • Psalms – many of these were penned by David and/or his musicians, though some as recently as after the fall of Jerusalem.
• The point I want everyone to be clear on is that by the end of Nehemiah we have covered latest point in HISTORY which is covered in the OT.
• Everything beyond Nehemiah will either fill in some information along the timeline that we didn’t have before (Esther), or it will elaborate on events, or provide an artistic, philosophical or prophetic view of what, for the most part, we’ve already read about.

Copyright © 2006 Ted Cooper Jr
.

www.biblein90days.org

Used with permission.