OT History - Egyptian Slavery to David
Vern Peterman · Jul 25, 2004
Bible Backgrounds, No. 04
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826231014275

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right, what we want to do here is we're going to go ahead and step into Old Testament history, Egyptian slavery to David. One of the things I found out in your printout, I'm going to have to figure out some way to proof check these handouts. The footer at the bottom again is another typo. We've got this transpositional typing here. So it's not salvery, it's slavery.

So with that, I think everything else is pretty well caught. So now, got her in there? Okay, yeah. And with that, we'll need to make sure that Debbie gets stuff here. Got extra? Debbie just came in, so make sure she gets that. And we'll get her caught up on some of the rest of it as well. So we're going to look this morning at Egyptian slavery to David. We're going to start off with, however, I just handed out and Deb will have to catch up with you in a little bit here.

This is one to poke in your appendix. It's a chronology of Old Testament books. I don't intend to go over the detail on this, but just to let you know that it's there. I think it's really cool. With the caveat that some of the Old Testament dates where it's got a specific date, the point we made earlier is the chronology is more important than the specific date. The sequence is going to be more important than is it 1446 or 1445 or 1440, something like that. And so with that, though, it gives you every Old Testament book and a date that it was written in a sequence and gives you a place where here's where it fits. So, for example, if you look at Haggai on the lower there, the second from the right end, Haggai is the middle book says written in 520.

You see that that is during the time when the temple had been begun to be rebuilt. And Haggai is writing. He writes just a four chapter book. exhorting them to get the thing finished. And so then you can put it in place. Here's why he's writing that. They'd started rebuilding the temple. It wasn't done. They sort of let it slide. So it was a call to get it finished.

So anyway, you can begin to look at things and see where does it fit in the sequence. Anytime you're doing a Bible study, you can fit it in historically. The New Testament book series, a lot of the same kind of information, you have sequence. A specific date is given. What counts more than a specific date is the sequence, the chronology. Although it may matter, for example, if you look at this, it'll say Galatians is written about, let's see, it's up at the top on the right,

49. That was only about a year after Paul had already been there.

So he's writing to a church that's really young. Really young. And so that's an important thing to remember as you're reading the book. These people are all young believers. And it hasn't been perhaps as little as a few months since he was last there. So when he's writing to them, this is all very fresh, very new. And that's helpful, as opposed to some other churches he's writing after the church having been established for years. So anyway, you have that available as a study tool, and I refer to it often myself, so it is real helpful.

Okay, this is a historical timeline that we've been using. We'll stay with, stick with here. And then, of course, kind of returning to this idea that we want to peg things, Abraham about 2000, Moses just after 1500 BC, David about 1000 BC with Saul, David and Solomon each reigning about 40 years in sequence. And then the Jews exiled to Babylon in 586 and the New Testament being written in the first century.

Those are kind of the big points that we want to keep fixing in our mind in order to be able to put everything else in place. Okay. How are we doing so far? Doing all right. I haven't lost anybody. Okay. No time warps. Okay. We also have this chart here which allows you to look at the genealogy. That's in the handout material from last week. You should have that. If you don't, let me know. And some of you who weren't here previously may not have it. So we'll catch up on that.

And what that allows you to do is everywhere from Adam all the way down to Jacob, also known as Israel, and his sons and their sons. all in this chart, so lots of detail if you can get your magnifying glass out. One of the reasons we bring up this genealogy is real interesting. Understanding the people and events of Genesis is basic to understanding the rest of Scripture.

Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Ah, yeah, the fall. If you don't understand that, doesn't it seem kind of weird? Why did Jesus have to die at a cross? I mean, maybe it was sort of a heroic sounding thing to do, or maybe it's just gruesome. But it seems kind of strange unless you understood that there's a sin problem. Why did something so radical have to be done, except that something so radically awful happened that needed to be corrected? Yeah, that's exactly the point.

Without Genesis, the rest of Scripture will make no sense. What's all this going on? Unless we understand Genesis. Let me further add to that. Even in the last several years, the things that have gone on that have made the headlines have not been understood by most of the Western world because we don't understand Genesis as a culture. The Twin Towers fell because of what happened in Genesis. We invaded Iraq because of what happened in Genesis. And most of Western culture doesn't understand that. So it's not only the key to understanding the scriptures, it's the key to understanding what's going on in the world. And most, even of our own government, does not understand that.

So by looking at scripture and understanding where things are rooted, you know, Jordan, right across from Israel, And the Palestinians, their origin is described in Genesis. Lot's two sons by Lot's daughters are Jordan. And the southern part of that is also Jordan. That's Esau. The origin of the Egyptians, the origin of the people in Iraq and Iran, the people up in Turkey and Greece, it's all Genesis. All there. And so we can have an insight that people who specialize in intelligence and everything else don't have.

And by the way, that's one reason why we have such a struggle. We want the war to get done in weeks. This whole thing started 4,000 years ago. Huge perspective. We were talking about that just this last Sunday. Massive difference if we understand Genesis. We understand why the Arabs are the problem that they are and how that came about. Okay, now enough said. Last time we talked, we left off with Jacob and his sons in Egypt. Here's the Nile Delta from a satellite photo. And they were in that area that's kind of the end of the blue line there. That's where the Jews had their encampment.

And they were made into brick making slaves. Can you imagine This is over 400 years. The entire population, which ended up amassing to about 3 million people, is all focused on making bricks. That's a lot of bricks. That is a whole bunch of bricks for talking, you know, four centuries plus. All those people making bricks and bricks and more bricks every day, you know.

Here's this Egyptian tomb painting that shows people of that cultural background. Notice there's a couple of different skin colors. Some of them appear to fit the Jewish description and some of them fit the black description, more from Africa. Nubian is the name of the people there.

So here's a case of what are they doing? They're making bricks. Now, the Jews made lots of bricks. And the bricks were typically like this. They had mud. They'd pound straw. They'd have a wooden brick mold. By the way, we have wooden brick molds from that era.

That's what they did. And then they would stamp every brick. And by the way, that for centuries was the pattern. When you'd make a brick, you'd stamp it with the mark of the pharaoh or the emperor or the king or whoever was in charge. So they'd make these bricks with straw and they just made a gazillion of them.

Lots of them. Here are palaces that where it appears up in the upper right you see the river and that you see there's two palaces one the top part and the other in the bottom part. It appears that the one the bottom part is where Moses and Aaron went repeatedly to Pharaoh and the one in the top part is where the daughter of Moses went and you know, pick Moses up from the reeds and would go back and forth the river there. So anyway, this has been excavated in part, it's been surveyed in part, and that's the latest work that's done, so there's more to be done on it, but from the information we have, it seems to fit.

This is the listing of the planks, ten planks, And all those plagues, and by the way, this is kind of simplified, there's at least one Egyptian god defeated in these plagues, but the truth is there's more than one that's kind of confronted by each of the plagues. So the plagues weren't just a, hey, let's give them a tough time. The plagues were directed, and the Bible says so, directed explicitly at their gods. We are going to insult their gods. That's God's intent.

And the last one, The death of the firstborn. All gods were supposed to protect your firstborn. All the Egyptian gods. And what was the only protection for the firstborn? The blood of the lamb on the doorpost. That's key. The only protection for the firstborn. None of the Egyptian gods were any good, but the blood of the lamb on the doorpost was indeed the only protection that would preserve the firstborn. the Egyptian gods were confronted and affronted by this visit of the angel of death and the Exodus. All right, then the Jews went out of Goshen, that's that area that we saw. This is a satellite photo taken more of an angle and you see they crossed the top of the Red Sea there and then down Sinai up there and into Moab.

If that had happened Expeditiously, it would have taken about two weeks, three maybe if you took your time. How long did it take? And that's a lot longer, isn't it? Yeah, this is a lot of meandering. And that's one reason you'll, one of the things we distributed was a map that shows the path. I don't think you should have that, a map that shows the path of the exodus. And that map, did you get that or do I need to catch up with that still? The map that shows the path of the exodus?

I may need to catch up with you on that one. Nobody's finding it? Okay, I got to catch up on it then. Alright, but anyway, one of the things, I've got some lines sort of generally drawn there. The truth is that some of these places, there is some discussion about where exactly is this. Because a lot of these places are sort of remote out in the desert kind of locations. But nonetheless, this generally fits the path that they went.

It took them 40 years to go up in there. Why did it take 40 years? Why didn't they just get it all done in two weeks and say, all right, we'll give it a little bit of time to make a vacation out of it and take four weeks. Why didn't they get it done faster?

Yeah, they're unbelieved. The Lord said, this whole generation is going to die off. Except for who? Joshua and Caleb. They were one of the twelve spies sent in that came back and said, the Lord says we can do it, let's do it. And all the rest died. So average, 80 funerals a day. Imagine that. We're going to have 80 funerals a day until these people are all gone.

Now the time that the sons of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of 430 years, to the very day, it says, so that's pretty precise, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. So here's this time of Israel's presence in Egypt, 430 years. All of them departed when Moses was about 80 years old. Isn't that amazing that the Lord had to prepare Moses to the point where he was 80 years old? He says, ah, now that you're 80, you're ready.

Isn't that something? Basically, here's this number 40 again, crops up 40 years in Egypt, 40 years out in the desert, then you go back and liberate Israel. Okay. Okay, here's the map that if you don't have it, I'll need to catch up with you on it. But there's enough paper in this thing that I, by the way, a little tough time keeping up with it all, but we will get it to you. Anyway, here's the map and it shows a route similar to what we have on the picture. And you notice some of the kind of going around in circles that fits into the overall path there. Now, this area of Sinai here is one we want to focus on.

Here was the law. And of course, why do we bring up the law? Why is that all so important to bring up at this point? How come? Yes. Okay. What's happening is now we get the law. The law is pivotal in beginning to reveal this to the Jews. It was something that they zeroed in on for up till this day, over 3,000 years later, any Orthodox Jew is going to really zero in on the law. They're going to study it. They're going to carry that scroll around. and the really, really sharp ones will go around and memorize it.

Okay? 613 laws total. Okay? 613 laws. Remember? Ready to memorize those? Okay? 365 negative laws. That is, don't do this, don't do that, don't do this other thing, don't do this other one, and some of them with a, yeah, don't do this or you get killed. Okay? So, hundreds of laws you've got to memorize. 365, and if it helps you remember this, just the same number as the number of days in a year. That's the number of negative laws.

Don't do this. Do that. It's the ceremonial law that is, here's what you're supposed to do in the temple, and they don't have one, right? Haven't had for almost 2,000 years. And then the civil law. When you get married, it's like this and like this. Even if you've got a disease, it's like this and like this. When you pay this off and don't pay that off, here's what you do if somebody gets injured, you handle it this way. All those things were addressed in these laws.

Why is it important to bring this up here? I mean, we're Christians, what's the deal with this law? Huh? The law shows sin. Okay. Is that something that we really should be concerned about? So as a Christian, you're, you got to make sure that you sacrifice the lamb on the right day. Oh, okay. All right. Ah, okay. Yeah. One of the things that comes out here is, is the law was explicitly given to the Jews. Okay.

But there are five applications of the law in the New Testament, all to unbelievers. All to unbelievers. For believers, what is our relationship to the law? We've died to it. That's the message in Romans. That's the message in Galatians. It's the message given not as directly, but explicitly stated in Ephesians and Colossians as well, as we'll see as we continue to study. Psalm 147, 19 and 20 says he declares his words to Jacob, his statutes and his ordinance to who?

Israel. Okay, not everybody. Guess what? You don't have to take a paddle outside the city and dig a hole when it's time to relieve yourself. That's what the law required. That's what the law said you must do. Have to. If you look at the law, and the law has all kinds of things, boy, if you start looking at how I'm supposed to apply it, boy, it's tough stuff. Real tough. There were ordinances. His ordinance, they gave, you know, they have not known them, that is, any other nation has not known them.

It wasn't intended to be given to everybody, but only to Israel. Ah, key. Now, after 40 years in the desert east of Canaan, They're out in Jordan, what's now Jordan, east of the Jordan River. Israel invaded Canaan and Joshua led the invasion. Where'd they start? Remember where they started? Where's the first city that they went to? Joshua fit the battle of Jericho. There we go. All right. We knew you had it. The Jericho invasion. Here's Jericho.

You see where that road is heading up on the left side there? It's that little mound area that you see just to the right of that roadway. I put the website there in case you want to go look it up yourself on the web. That's the area. Dr. Wood that I quoted earlier has done some studies in here. And this is something that's been excavated off and on for decades, and it's still ongoing. But Dr. Wood is quite convinced that the archaeological evidence points to exactly as the Bible describes. Here's the site map. This is kind of turning the picture on that road, because the picture was taken the other direction. Here's excavation showing the portion of the city destroyed by Israel's invasion.

So they came in and... What happened at Jericho? Remember the description? What was the description of what took place? The Jews came in, they just beat the wall down until it all fell apart, right? No? How did it happen? How did it come about? Okay. Yeah, God made the walls fall down, okay. And then they went in and just gave everybody a big hug, right? No. They took them out. Okay? They took them out.

And that's what the evidence in the city is as well. Except for who? Except for Rahab. And why is it important that Rahab was preserved? Pardon? She helped them. Point one, she helped them and that's why she was preserved. And she's in the line of David who is in the line of Christ. So it's interesting as you read through it, if you didn't see the rest of the Bible you would say, well that's kind of an interesting, odd thing. But what you see is that we're standing here this morning meeting because of That little incidental thing that this one woman who helped them was preserved and is in the line of our Savior.

Amazing. Small detail that's huge. The territories assigned to the tribes, and by the way, I don't expect your drawing to show all the details here. It's just way too small by the time you shrink it down. But my point is this, they each had assigned areas that they were to go into. They were each going to go into areas that they were supposed to take over. Now, I originally had this labeled, signed to the 12 tribes. I took the 12 off. Why? Why did I take the 12 off? Okay.

What tribe did not have land? The Levites did not have land, and because they did not have land assigned to them from which they could generate crops and income, all the rest of the tribes were to give how much to support the Levites? A tenth. That was the tithe that people talk about and Christians try to borrow from. mistakenly. That was the tie that was to support the Levites because they didn't have any land inheritance. And so the Jews were to contribute to the storehouses so the Levites had food and supplies and things of that sort that they could draw from because they didn't have land from which to produce. The Levites were occupied with serving at the temple.

So that's what the provision was for. And while you don't see Levi on the chart, But guess what happened if you lived too far away from one of the cities that had the storehouse? Because they had storehouses. But if you lived farther away, too far away, guess what the Old Testament says you're supposed to do?

Throw a party. Yeah. Yeah. It says, you know, prepare animals, whichever ones you want, you know, and take that. You still have to put the tent aside, but you have to throw a party with it. and have everybody in your little village and whatnot join your party. How about that? And it's interesting, people today try to bring that over and beat people over the head with make sure you give a tenth or something like that.

It's between you and the Lord what you give. There isn't some magic percentage and God didn't say make sure you bring the whole tithe into the church's storehouse. We don't store any grain here. Please don't bring any pigs or sheep or anything else either.

Here's after conquering the land which the Lord had told them to conquer, but not driving out all the people they were supposed to, then they enter the period we call the time of the judges. Israel didn't have a king, right? They didn't have kings, yet they had judges.

And one of the things we notice during this time of the judges is there are, from Genesis to Revelation, in Genesis you see the names of the tribes at the end of Genesis, and then when we go to Revelation chapter 7, We see the listing of the tribes among the 144,000, and the list of the tribes changes. And people are going, huh?

Here's why. Those two names, Dan and Ephraim, are not on the list, and here's the reasons why. You get into the period of the judges, and it becomes apparent that while they were listed in Genesis, they basically left their inheritance by idolatry, even leaving the land, in the case of Dan, that they were given. in joining the Gentiles. So that's why the name's not listed in Revelation.

So, I'll leave it to you to dig that up. Here's the big pattern in Judges. Here's what you see. Israel turns to other gods. We'll start there on the right side because this thing goes around in circles. Israel turns to other gods. Israel is then made subject to other nations. Israel turns to God for help, and then God raises up a judge to deliver Israel, and that works until they turn to other gods. See the cycle? That cycle just goes around in circles.

Now, if you want to think of, in Judges, we've got a map here, and you have a colored map, I'm pretty sure, in your package that we just handed out this morning. And those of you who came in just a little bit ago will make sure afterwards you get one. And so it shows you who the judges were and where they were distributed, so you can study that on your own. Again, it's another study help for you.

Here are the judges. How many judges do we got? How many judges do we have on the list there? We've got 12 judges. Ah, okay, guess what? Here's an easy way to remember. How many judges do you got? How many tribes do you have? Twelve. How many judges? Twelve, okay?

So that way you can keep the number in your head a little bit. One of the things you'll see is that some judges occupy several chapters and others only one verse. So the distribution of biblical record on each of them is not equal by any means. Shamgar is only one verse. And the other thing that you'll notice is that the total data on time in terms of how long the oppression lasted and the judgeship is blank in some areas, isn't it?

It's one of the reasons why the historians have a tough time getting nailed down precise. They know the sequence, but the exact times, when they give precise years and whatnot, tough to nail down exactly. And this is one reason why. You just don't have the total set of data for all those things.

But you see there's 12 judges. The judges, as you see on the map, come from different places. Now, why are these judges and not kings? What's the difference between a judge and a king? Let's ask the question, did the people give these people some special prestige? Did they sort of honor them in some particular way? They were honored in some degree, but not like a king, right? A king would typically look for a successor, right?

What do you see here? No successors. And one of the things you'll notice on your map is that where they came from was kind of scattered all over the place. The kings, once a king was in place, would look for a successor, typically a son, to follow on and you would look for a line of royalty. There's no line here.

These are judges. It's just somebody who kind of comes up out of the masses and leads the people to drive out the ones that are driving them nuts. So that's different from a king. There's no linearity, there's no lineage, and so once you had a judge and the judge kind of passed out of the scene, back into the mire and the muck they went. So differences between the judge and the king. There wasn't really any way to draw together any taxes to get any real regular army set up either.

Then we get into the period of Saul, David, and Solomon. Each of these, as we mentioned, reigned about 40 years, and then the kingdom divided. Under Saul, Israel had its first king, who was Saul. He's of the tribe of Benjamin. Do we know another Saul in the Bible is of the tribe of Benjamin? Is there another one? Who's that? I see a head shaking. Yes, Paul. Paul, who was Saul, was also of the tribe of Benjamin. Centuries later, almost over a thousand years later. So here's Saul. He's of the tribe of Benjamin.

Saul, an interesting fellow, he was at times, it's hard to tell, you know, is he really the king? One time they were looking for him and they found him among a bunch of luggage. He's hiding in the luggage, you know, it's like, what's this guy up to? He also was very fleshly, very much looking to himself and either his own sufficiencies or deficiencies.

But this is their first king. He was the last of his line by God's choice. Now I say the last of his line was actually Ish-bosheth succeeded him, but never really held the country. So technically, yes, he had one more in line, but he never really held any leadership position and was even done in by people of his own tribe. Okay. I showed this picture of the En Gedi area because here, if you recall stories of, here's David and Saul, and you know, Saul's chasing David, and they find each other out in the caves. Here is the En Gedi area. Isn't that pretty?

This waterfall, some of the creeks dropping down into the big valley there that's the Dead Sea. The upper area there, there's one of these little creeks and there's the Dead Sea in the background in the upper picture to the upper right. And so this was a, it was a desert area with, you know, waterfalls and creeks and things that drop down into it. They had a kind of a lush habitat in that area. Lots of wildlife in that area that varies because you'll have things that are real rocky, craggy, and then right along the creeks, you'll see areas like this where it's It's very lush, a lot of birds. What do you see in the lower right?

Caves. So when it talks about hiding in the caves, I mean there was plenty of places to hide. Look how frequent those caves are. And it was here along the Dead Sea where the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden in caves. Just lots of caves in this area. So trying to find somebody, good luck. real tough time trying to find something. Which of hundreds of caves are these people hiding in?

And you can imagine David goes back into one of those caves and at one point the Bible accounts that he went and cut off a part of Saul's clothing. He was that close and is able to later on say, see I could have done the end. And so anyway this is the area and it's really an amazing area. This is also the area by the way where Abraham defeated several, you know, the five kings in Genesis. So it's the same general area. And you also find later accounts of this area. The Song of Solomon writes about the beauty, you know, he compares the beauty of his bride to the beauty of this little area here. And let me step back and you can kind of see sort of these desert palms and things of that sort. So interesting.

Okay, under David, here's Israel's second king, and I say I'm putting aside Ish-bosheth. David was the first of his line, but a line that would never end. The Lord made a promise to him that Saul never got. And that was the one you see in 2 Samuel 7. I will raise up your descendant after you who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom.

So this is why we see all these genealogies, even in the New Testament. these genealogies that show the connection to David and why it was absolutely essential. And they were written at a time, because up until 70 AD when all the genealogical records were destroyed in the temple, anybody could go to the temple and check it out. So if you dispute it, you say, no, Jesus isn't descended from David. No, no. You go to the temple and say, see here? So that's why the genealogies, one of the reasons why the genealogies are included here.

But he says, and I will establish his kingdom, and he shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. So here's the angel a thousand years later talking to Mary, and what did she say? You shall bear a son, you shall call his name Jesus, and then he says to the angel, he's going to have a house, a throne, and a kingdom. Same words. Draws on the same words. Telling Mary directly, This one that you are about to bear is the one that was promised to your ancestor, David, a thousand years ago.

Cool, huh? Major cool. All right. Here's an inscription about David. This is the one we showed here. It was tell Dan Stella. Excuse me. Though broken, and apparently appears to be purposely broken. It's like somebody really didn't like this. But the ninth line there actually records the record of the House of David, and you can see the Hebrew that's inscribed into the stone there. It's the earliest written record of the House of David that we have. And that's the end of the series here. We'll go next week from Solomon into the end of the Old Testament. Thinking through this stuff, one of the reasons we're laying this out, some of this you may look at and say, well, boy, I've had that in Sunday school.

And if you had, that's great. But we just want to make sure we're all on the same page, because later on, we're going to be talking about what was the culture during the time of Abraham? What was the culture during the time of David? And it makes a difference. It makes a difference. Example. Here's a cultural thing.

At one point in time, David appears to be a danger from Saul, and he pretends to be insane. Any of you recall that? The thing was, drooling on the beard and everything else. So here's David pretending to be insane. Saul backs off. I'm not going to touch this guy.

Why? Culturally, in the time, not now and not in New Testament times, but culturally in the time, it was considered that a person who behaved like that had a spirit in them, and that if you attack them, that a spirit would attack you, and might even come upon you and cause the same problem. So here's Saul, he sees this behavior in David, and he says, whoa, I'm not touching this.

So to us in our culture, we say, well, what's the matter with him? Give him some Prozac or something, right? But instead, what you see in the culture of the time, it made perfect sense. And that explains why Saul would behave the way he did and why David would behave the way he did.

Again, what we want to do, the same principle we talked about earlier, we want to match the time and the culture to the passage and understand it in context for what it means. Not our own culture, not our own understanding. We want to place our minds, our understanding, in the understanding of the people who were first writing and reading this that was revealed by God.

Okay? Make sense? Okay. Any questions? Statements? Puzzlements? Yeah, Dave. On that slide that you had of the tribes, the writing? Yes. It's interesting, it doesn't really explain why. It just says this is what you do and it's real interesting. Again, you have to look at what's the context and the reason we're having this is because people frequently miss looking at the context.

What was happening at the time? And what would take place is that people were to distribute themselves according to the assigned areas for each tribe. And each of those areas, they had a storehouse. Well, if you live too far away, that was what you were supposed to do.

And it really didn't explain, you know, what's the motivation or something. But still, I think it's real interesting that that aspect of it isn't carried over when people in the church area here try to beat people over the head about tithing. It isn't applicable for the one one thing we don't have Levites. We don't have a temple You know it's just it's not the same Thing at all the law was not given to the church We're dead to the law and so they still try to bring it in but they don't bring that up if you live too far away from a party with the money you know and so I throw that in just look largely because it shows the absurdity of of trying to take the law and apply it directly to people here in the church age. It makes no sense.

Yeah. Right. And that's one reason why we're going through this. I'm handing out some resources. And at this stage, we're going through history. But the thing we'll be going through next after this, probably you will see it's going to be another month here going through history. But after that, we're going to be going through the section on the culture of these different times and places, and why they acted differently. I may have brought up before, so excuse me if I'm repeating myself, but several weeks ago, I think I brought up, notice here's Daniel in Babylon. The Babylonians had no regard for fire, but they worshiped lions.

And so what you'll find is, To punish Daniel's friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, what do they do? They say, if you don't worship this idol, we're going to throw you into the fire. But we're not going to throw you to lions because we worship the lions. We don't want to do that. Then, when the Persians take over and kick out the Babylonians, and Daniel's still in that scene, where do they throw Daniel? To the lions. It's because the Persians worshipped fire and didn't give a hoot about lions. So it's the cultural differences that explain what's going on. And it fits the, yeah.

It's available in different sources. And again, what I'm telling you is we'll be passing out the background in the class. I'll also give you a list of three things. One is websites. And that's a resource that a lot of people make use of and have available.

Books and also magazine publications. There's one I've subscribed to since the middle 70s called Bible and Spade. And for example, the excavations of the palaces where Moses and Pharaoh were located, that was from Bible and Spade. I think it was like the most recent issue of Bible and Spade. So that just got published. Yeah, yeah, a lot of those things, a lot of those things where we find, you know, writings of the time and you pick that up and see how that's the way they do it. Okay, you know, let me go to the New Testament.

Colossians chapter 2 verses 13 where he says you've been forgiven and then in 14 he talks about the decrees against you have been nailed to the cross, and so they're wiped out? Well, that particular word that he uses, chirographon, handwriting, handwritten note, that word that he uses, hundreds of those have been found, of different notes, and all they are is, here's what I owe you, signed.

And so if you've got that, so what he's saying is that what you owe has been blotted out, and we take it and nail it. What they would do is they would take it up to a public posting place and nail it. And he's saying the public posting place is the cross. So not only have your sins been blotted out, but they've been nailed to the cross, publicly declared as paid. That's what it meant. Publicly declared as paid.

Now one other thing. The inks that we use in our culture soak into the paper, and we use acid in the ink to bite into the paper. The inks that they had were made of typically olive oil or gum mixed with soot, and they had no acid, and so they would sit on top of the paper and just kind of stick there. And if you wanted to reuse the paper, you could just wash it off. What he says is that your sins have been washed off the paper, and we posted them publicly as paid. So it's like, your sins, they're gone. Not only that, you can't even read them anymore. That's how gone they are. Double gone. That's neat.

So that's an example of where understanding what was happening in the culture, it gives you a sense of, is the Lord going to bring up, hey, you did this, and sit there and haunt you with it? No, he's trying to tell them. They're not only posted as gone, they're blotted off the page they were written on. Isn't that a wonderful thing? So this stuff about history and culture isn't just dry, dusty intellectual stuff.

This is stuff that impacts me right here. Because it says that that thing that I did that haunts me when I wake up in the morning or try to go to bed at night, he says that's gone, because I've dealt with it. It's not in front of me at all. I don't even see it.

And that's wonderful news. That's wonderful news. So, anyway, this stuff is really rich. Not just because it's fascinating, although I think it is, but because, boy, what a message. What a message. Even the laws that were declared against me are blotted out. That's cool. That's really cool. Let's pray.

Lord, thank you that as we look at these passages, as we begin to explore the riches that are in your word, that you have placed such immense depth there, depth that is not just intellectually fascinating. Some of us may find that true and some not. But Lord, it indeed speaks a wealth of truth to our hearts. Lord, we so much need the depth of your word and what you've revealed there, where it tells of your marvelous infinite grace. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.