CHAPTER 4 ISRAEL’S HISTORY

Outline of Israel’s History
The forgiveness of sins
God’s promise to Abraham
The Priest Melchizedek
Israel, God’s People
The Old and the New Agreement
The New Covenant explained
Object Lessons

Outline of Israel’s History
ACTS 7:1-56
(Stephen was arrested and brought before the High Priest and the Council)
Then the High Priest asked him, “Are these accusations true?”
This was Stephen’s reply:
“The glorious God appeared to our ancestor Abraham in Iraq before he moved to Syria, and told him to leave his native land, to say good-bye to his relatives and to start out for a country that God would direct him to. So he left the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran, in Syria, until his father died. Then God brought him here to the land of Israel, but gave him no property of his own, not one little tract of land.
“However, God promised that eventually the whole country would belong to him and his descendants – though as yet he had no children! But God also told him that these descendants of his would leave the land and live in a foreign country and there become slaves for four hundred years. ‘But I will punish the nation that enslaves them,’ God told him, ‘and afterwards my people will return to this land of Israel and worship me here.’
“God also gave Abraham the ceremony of circumcision at that time, as evidence of the covenant between God and the people of Abraham. And so Isaac, Abraham’s son, was circumcised when he was eight days old. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob was the father of the twelve patriarchs of the Jewish nation. These men were very jealous of Joseph and sold him to be a slave in Egypt. But God was with him, and delivered him out of all of his anguish, and gave him favor before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. God also gave Joseph unusual wisdom, so that Pharaoh appointed him governor over all Egypt, as well as putting him in charge of all the affairs of the palace.
“But a famine developed in Egypt and Canaan and there was great misery for our ancestors. When their food was gone, Jacob heard that there was still grain in Egypt, so he sent his sons to buy some. The second time they went, Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers, and they were introduced to Pharaoh. Then Joseph sent for his father Jacob and all his brothers’ families to come to Egypt, seventy-five persons in all. So Jacob came to Egypt, where he died, and all his sons. All of them were taken to Shechem and buried in the tomb Abraham bought from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father.
“As the time drew near when God would fulfill his promise to Abraham to free his descendants from slavery, the Jewish people greatly multiplied in Egypt; but then a king was crowned who had no respect for Joseph’s memory. This king plotted against our race, forcing parents to abandon their children in the fields.
“About that time Moses was born – a child of divine beauty. His parents hid him at home for three months, and when at last they could no longer keep him hidden, and had to abandon him, Pharaoh’s daughter found him and adopted him as her own son, and taught him all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he became a mighty prince and orator.
“One day as he was nearing his fortieth birthday, it came into his mind to visit his brothers, the people of Israel. During this visit he saw an Egyptian ill-treating a man of Israel. So Moses killed the Egyptian. Moses supposed his brothers would realize that God had sent him to help them, but they didn’t.
“The next day he visited them again and saw two men of Israel fighting. He tried to be a peacemaker. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you are brothers and shouldn’t be fighting like this! It is wrong!’
“But the man in the wrong told Moses to mind his own business. ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?’ he asked. ‘Are you going to kill me as you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’
“At this, Moses fled the country, and lived in the land of Midian, where his two sons were born.
“Forty years later, in the desert near Mount Sinai, an Angel appeared to him in a flame of fire in a bush. Moses saw it and wondered what it was, and as he ran to see, the voice of the Lord called out to him, ‘I am the God of your ancestors – of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses shook with terror and dared not look.
“And the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground. I have seen the anguish of my people in Egypt and have heard their cries. I have come down to deliver them. Come, I will send you to Egypt.’ And so God sent back the same man his people had previously rejected by demanding, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ Moses was sent to be their ruler and Savior. And by means of many remarkable miracles he led them out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, and back and forth through the wilderness for forty years.
“Moses himself told the people of Israel, God will raise up a Prophet much like me from among your brothers. How true this proved to be, for in the wilderness Moses was the go-between - the mediator between the people of Israel and the Angel who gave them the Law of God – The Living Word on Mount Sinai.
“But our fathers rejected Moses and wanted to return to Egypt. They told Aaron, ‘Make idols for us, so that we will have gods to lead us back; for we don’t know what has become of this Moses, who brought us out of Egypt. So they made a calf-idol and sacrificed to it, and rejoiced in this thing they had made
“Then God turned away from them and gave them up, and let them serve the sun, moon and stars as their gods! In the book of Amos’ prophecies the Lord God asks, ‘Was it to me you were sacrificing during those forty years in the desert, Israel? No your real interest was in your heathen gods – Sakkuth, and the star god Kaiway, and in all the images you made. So I will send you into captivity far away beyond Babylon,’
“Our ancestors carried along with them a portable Temple, or Tabernacle, through the wilderness. In it they kept the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments written on them. This building was constructed in exact accordance with the plan shown to Moses by the Angel. Years later, when Joshua led the battle against the Gentile nations, this Tabernacle was taken with them into their new territory, and used until the time of King David.
“God blessed David greatly, and David asked for the privilege of building a permanent Temple for the God of Jacob. But it was Solomon who actually built it. However, God doesn’t live in temples made by human hands. ‘The heaven is my throne,’ says the Lord through his prophets, ‘and earth is my footstool. What kind of home could you build?’ asks the Lord. ‘Would I stay in it? Didn’t I make both heaven and earth?’
“You stiffed-necked heathen! Must you forever resist the Holy Spirit? But your fathers did and so do you! Name one prophet your ancestors didn’t persecute! They even killed the ones who predicted the coming of the righteous one – the Messiah whom you betrayed and murdered. Yes, and you deliberately destroyed God’s Laws, though you received them from the hands of angels.”
“The Jewish leaders were stung to fury by Stephen’s accusation, and ground their teeth in rage. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily upward into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at God’s right hand. And he told them, “Look, I see the heavens opened and Jesus the Messiah standing beside God, at his right hand!”

The forgiveness of sins
ACTS 13:16-41
So Paul stood, waved a greeting to them, and began, “Men of Israel,” he said, “and all others here who reverence God, [let me begin my remarks with a bit of history].
“The God of this nation Israel chose our ancestors and honored them in Egypt by leading them gloriously out of their slavery. And he nursed them through forty years of wandering around in the wilderness. Then he destroyed seven nations in Canaan, and gave Israel their land as an inheritance. Judges ruled for about 450 years, and were followed by Samuel the prophet.
“Then the people begged for a king, and God gave them Saul (son of Kish), a man of the tribe of Benjamin, who reigned for forty years. But God removed him and replaced him with David as king, a man about whom God said, ‘David (son of Jesse) is a man after my own heart, for he will obey me.’ And it is one of King David’s descendants, Jesus, who is God’s promised Savior of Israel!
“But before he came, John the Baptist preached the need for everyone in Israel to turn from sin (from breaking God’s Laws) to God. As John was finishing his work he asked, ‘Do you think I am the Messiah? No! But he is coming soon – and in comparison with him, I am utterly worthless.’
“Brothers – you sons of Abraham, and also all of you Gentiles here who reverence God – this salvation is for all of us! The Jews in Jerusalem and their leaders fulfilled prophecy by killing Jesus; for they didn’t recognize him, or realize that he is the one the prophets had written about, words read every Sabbath. They found no just cause to execute him, but asked Pilate to have him killed anyway. When they had fulfilled all the prophecies concerning his death, he was taken from the cross and placed in a tomb.
“But God brought him back to life again! And he was seen many times during the next few days by the men who had accompanied him to Jerusalem from Galilee – these men have constantly testified to this in public witness.
“And now Barnabas and I are here to bring you this Good News – that God’s promise to our ancestors has come true in our own time, in that God brought Jesus back to life again. This is what the second Psalm is talking about when it says concerning Jesus, ‘Today I have honored you as my son.’
“For God had promised to bring him back to life again, no more to die. This is stated in the Scripture that says, ‘I will do for you the wonderful thing I promised David.’ In another Psalm he explained more fully, saying, ‘God will not let his holy one decay.’ This was not a reference to David, for after David had served his generation according to the will of God, he died and was buried, and his body decayed. [No, it was a reference to another] – Someone God brought back to life, whose body was not touched at all by the ravages (the destructive effects) of death.
“Brothers, listen! In this man Jesus, there is forgiveness for your sins (for thoughts, speech and actions against the Laws of God). Everyone who trusts in him is freed from all guilt and declared righteous – something the Jewish law could never do. Oh, be careful! Don’t let the prophets’ words apply to you. For they said, ‘Look and perish, you despisers [of truth], for I am doing something in your day – something that you won’t believe when you hear it announced.’”

God’s promise to Abraham
HEBREWS 6:13-20
There was God’s promise to Abraham: God took an oath in his own name, since there was no one greater to swear by, that he would bless Abraham again and again, and give him a son and make him the father of a great nation of people. Then Abraham waited patiently until finally God gave him a son, Isaac, just as he had promised.
When a man takes an oath, he is calling upon someone greater than himself to force him to do what he has promised, or to punish him if he later refuses to do it; the oath ends all argument about it. God also bound himself with an oath, so that those he promised to help would be perfectly sure and never need to wonder whether he might change his plans.

He (God) has given us both his promise and his oath, two things we can completely count on, for it is impossible for God to tell a lie. Now all those who flee to him to save them can take new courage when they hear such assurances from God; now they can know without doubt that he will give them the salvation he has promised them.
This certain hope of being saved is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls, connecting us with God himself behind the sacred curtains of heaven, where Christ has gone ahead to plead for us from his position as our high priest, with the honor and rank of Melchizedek.

The priest Melchizedek
HEBREWS 7:1-16
This Melchizedek was king of the city of Salem, and also a priest of the most high God. When Abraham was returning home after winning a great battle against many kings, Melchizedek met him and blessed him. Then Abraham took a tenth of all he had won in the battle and gave it to Melchizedek.
Melchizedek’s name means “Justice,” so he is the King of Justice; and he is also the King of Peace because of the name of his city, Salem, which means “Peace.”
Melchizedek had no father or mother and there is no record of any of his ancestors. He was never born and he never died but his life is like that of the Son of God – a priest for ever.
See then how great this Melchizedek is:
(a) Even Abraham, the first and most honored of all God’s chosen people, gave Melchizedek a tenth of the spoils he took from the kings he had been fighting. One could understand why Abraham would do this if Melchizedek had been a Jewish priest, for later on God’s people were required by law to give gifts to help their priests because the priests were their relatives. But Melchizedek was not a relative, and yet Abraham paid him.
(b) Melchizedek placed a blessing (God’s favor and protection) upon mighty Abraham – and, as everyone knows, a person who has the power to bless (to invoke divine favor upon someone) is always greater than the person he blesses.
(c) The Jewish priests, though mortal, received tithes (one tenth of annual produce or earnings as a religious tax) but we are told that Melchizedek lives on.
(d) One might even say that Levi himself (the ancestor of all Jewish priests, of all who receive tithes), paid tithes to Melchizedek through Abraham. For although Levi wasn’t born yet, the seed from which he came was in Abraham when Abraham paid the tithes to Melchizedek.

(e) If the Jewish priests and their laws had been able to save us, why then did God need to send Christ as a priest with the rank of Melchizedek, instead of sending someone with the rank of Aaron – the same rank all other priests had?

When God sends a new kind of priest, his law must be changed to permit it. As we all know, Christ did not belong to the priest-tribe of Levi, but came from the tribe of Judah, which had not been chosen for priesthood; Moses had never given them that work. So we can plainly see that God’s method changed, for Christ, the new high priest who came with the rank of Melchizedek, did not become a priest by meeting the old requirement of belonging to the tribe of Levi, but on the basis of power flowing from a life that cannot end.

Israel, God’s People
(Paul)
ROMANS 9:1-29
Oh, Israel, my people! Oh, my Jewish brothers! How I long for you to come to Christ. My heart is heavy within me and I grieve bitterly day and night because of you. Christ knows and the Holy Spirit knows that it is no mere pretence when I say that I would be willing to be damned for ever if that would save you. God has given you so much, but still you will not listen to him. He took you as his own special, chosen people and led you along with a bright cloud of glory and told you how very much he wanted to bless you. He gave you his rules for daily life so you would know what he wanted you to do. He let you worship him, and gave you mighty promises. Great men of God were your fathers, and Christ himself was one of you, a Jew as far as his human nature is concerned, he who now rules over all things. Praise God for ever!
Well then, has God failed to fulfill his promises to the Jews? No. (For these promises are only to those who are truly Jews.) And not everyone born into a Jewish family is truly a Jew. Just the fact that they come from Abraham doesn’t make them truly Abraham’s children. For the Scriptures say that the promises apply only to Abraham’s son Isaac and Isaac’s descendants, though Abraham had other children too. This means that not all of Abraham’s children are children of God, but only those who believe the promise of salvation which he made to Abraham.
For God had promised, “Next year I will give you and Sarah a son.” And years later, when this son, Isaac, was grown up and married, and Rebecca his wife was about to bear him twin children, God told her that Esau, the child born first, would be a servant to Jacob, his twin brother. In the words of the Scripture, “I chose to bless Jacob, but not
Esau.” And God said this before the children were even born, before they had done anything, either good or bad. This proves that God was doing what he had decided from the beginning; it was not because of what the children did but because of what God wanted and chose.
Was God being unfair? Of course not. For God had said to Moses, “If I want to be kind to someone, I will: and I will take pity on anyone I want to.” And so God’s blessings are not given just because someone decides to have them or works hard to get them. They are given because God takes pity on those he wants to.
Pharaoh, king of Egypt, was an example of this fact. For God told him he had given him the kingdom of Egypt for the very purpose of displaying the awesome power of God against him: so that all the entire world would hear about God’s glorious name. So you see, God is kind to some just because he wants to be, and he makes some refuse to listen. Well then, why does God blame them for not listening? Haven’t they done what he made them do?
No, don’t say that. Who are you to criticize God? Should the thing made say to the one who made it, “Why have you made me like this?”
When a man makes a jar out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump clay to make one jar beautiful, to be used for holding flowers, and another to throw rubbish into? Does not God have a perfect right to show his fury and power against those who are fit only for destruction, those he has been patient with for all this time? And he has a right to take others, such as ourselves, who have been made containers for the riches of his glory, whether we are Jews or Gentiles, and to be kind to us so that everyone can see how very great his glory is.
Remember what the prophecy of Hosea says? There God says that he will find other children for himself (who are not from his Jewish family) and will love them, though no one had ever loved them before. And the heathen, of whom it was once said, “You are not my people,” shall be called “sons of the Living God.”
Isaiah the prophet cried out concerning the Jews that though there would be millions of them, only a small number would ever be saved. “For the Lord will execute his sentence upon the earth, quickly, ending his dealings, justly cutting them short.”
And Isaiah says in another place that except for God’s mercy all the Jews would be destroyed – all of them – just as everyone in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah perished.

The Old and the New Agreement
HEBREWS 8:7-13
The old agreement didn’t even work. If it had, there would have been no need for another to replace it. But God himself found fault with the old one, for he said, “The day will come when I will make a new agreement with the people of Israel and the people of Judah.
This new agreement will not be like the old one I gave to their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; they did not keep their part in that agreement, so I had to cancel it. But this is the new agreement I will make with the people of Israel, says the Lord: I will write my laws in their minds so that they will know what I want them to do without my even telling them, and these laws will be in their hearts so that they will want to obey them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And no one then will need to speak to his friend or neighbor or brother, saying, ‘You, too, should know the Lord,’ because everyone, great and small, will know me already. And I will be merciful to them in their wrongdoings, and I will remember their sins no more.”
God speaks of these new promises, of this new agreement, as taking the place of the old one; for the old one is out of date now and has been put aside for ever.

The New Covenant explained
(Paul)
2 CORINTHIANS 3:5-18
Our only power and success comes from God. He is the one who has helped us tell others about this new agreement to save them. We do not tell them that they must obey every law of God or die; but we tell them there is life for them from the Holy Spirit. The old way, trying to be saved by keeping the Ten Commandments, ends in death; in the new way, the Holy Spirit gives them life.
Yet that old system of law that led to death began with such glory that people could not bear to look at Moses’ face. For as he gave them God’s law to obey, his face shone out with the very glory of God – though the brightness was already fading away. Shall we not expect far greater glory in these days when the Holy Spirit is giving life? If the plan that leads to doom was glorious, much more glorious is the plan that makes men (and women) right with God. In fact, that first glory as it shone from Moses’ face is worth nothing at all in comparison with the overwhelming glory of the new agreement. So if the old system that faded into nothing was full of heavenly glory, the glory of God’s new plan for our salvation is certainly far greater, for it is eternal.
Since we know that this new glory will never go away, we can preach with great boldness, and not as Moses did, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelis could not see the glory fade away.
Not only Moses face was veiled, but his people’s minds and understanding were veiled and blinded too. Even now when the Scripture is read it seems as though Jewish hearts and minds are covered by a thick veil, because they cannot see and understand the real meaning of the Scriptures. For this veil of misunderstanding can be removed only by believing in Christ. Yes, even today when they read Moses’ writings their hearts are blind and they think that obeying the Ten Commandments is the way to be saved.
But whenever anyone turns to the Lord from his sins, then the veil is taken away. The Lord is the Spirit who gives them life, and where he is there is freedom [from trying to be saved by keeping the laws of God]. We Christians have no veil over our faces; we can be mirrors that brightly reflect the glory of the Lord. And as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like him.

Object Lessons
(Paul)
1 CORINTHIANS 10:1-14
For we must never forget, dear brothers, what happened to our people in the wilderness long ago. God guided them by sending a cloud that moved along ahead of them; and he brought them all safely through the waters of the Red Sea. This might be called their “baptism” – baptized both in sea and cloud! – as followers of Moses: their commitment to him as their leader. And by a miracle God sent them food to eat and water to drink there in the desert; they drank the water that Christ gave them. He was there with them as a mighty Rock of spiritual refreshment. Yet after all this most of them did not obey God and he destroyed them in the wilderness.
From this lesson we are warned that we must not desire evil (ungodly) things as they did, nor worship (nor adore) idols as they did. (The Scriptures tell us, “The people sat down to eat and drink and then got up to dance” in worship (adoration) of the golden calf.)
Another lesson for us is what happened when some of them sinned (acted against God’s Laws) with other men’s wives and 23,000 fell dead in one day. And don’t try the Lord’s patience – they did, and died from snake bites. And don’t murmur against God and his dealings with you, as some of them did, for that is why God sent his angel to destroy them.
All these things happened to them as examples –as object lessons to us – to warn us against doing the same things; they were written down so that we could read about them and learn from them in these last days as the world nears its end.
So be careful. If you are thinking, “Oh, I would never behave like that” – let this be a warning to you. For you too may fall into sin (into acting against God’s Laws). But remember this – the wrong desires that come into your life aren’t anything new and different. Many others have faced exactly the same problems before you. And no temptation is irresistible (too powerful to be resisted). You can trust God to keep the temptation from becoming so strong that you can’t stand up against it, for he has promised this and will do what he says. He will show you how to escape temptation’s power so that you can bear up patiently against it. So, dear friends, carefully avoid idol-worship of every kind. (An idol is an image or representation of a god used as an object of worship.)