The heavens and the earth

This one was called a case study, and I said, the heavens and the earth, and that's more example than the topic. There are a lot of biblical phrases and words, and in the past, boy, there are lots of resources that have been available in print to do studies of different kinds. Starting around the late 1800s, some of the guys started coming up with some really good concordances and things like that. And a lot of word study resources began to be available, where people would do intensive studies in words, not just lexicons, but multi-page descriptions of all the cultural background of a word. But with the advent of computers, it gives us a capability that was there before, but far more easily now, and that is to put phrases in, and search for phrases, or words that are associated in the same verse for example Real interesting and and I've been through doing so I've been able to find some things.

I haven't found in any commentaries because it's it's Patterns that previously would have taken a lot of time to look up Let's give me an example Genesis 1 1 begins the Bible and in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth was one of the phrase there that starts off and That is an example of a Jewish language pattern and the term there, excuse me, the term there is Hebraism, and the idea is it's a Hebrewism, so it's pronounced Hebraism, and so it's a Jewish language pattern. Since all of the authors of the Old and New Testaments, with the exception of Luke, by any evidence we have were Jewish, what you're going to find is lots of Hebraism.

Lots of Hebrew expressions. And one of the things that the Jews did is they would name the whole of something by naming two halves, or the first and the last. And we'll catch on to that here in a minute. Let me make sure you got the handout from last week, and we've also got a missing handout materials, a CD, so make sure you grab those. Anyway, so these Jewish language patterns, they would very often state two halves of something to make sure you understood the whole, or they would list the first and the last in a series to indicate the whole. Those were two patterns in Jewish writing of things.

Here, for example, Genesis 2.1 repeats the heavens and the earth. 2.4 repeats the heavens and the earth. Exodus 20, when it talks about creation, what does it say?

The heavens and the earth. These are just some examples, there are others. As a matter of fact, let's see. There are the others. Other places throughout the Old Testament where the phrase, the heavens and the earth, keeps being repeated verbatim. Now, there are also other places where those words get used a little bit more artistically. Same theme.

Let me show you what I mean. Here's Habakkuk. 3.3 says, his splendor covers the heavens and the earth is full of his praise. See that? It's got the words in it. but a little variation on it. Let's look at the next one. First Chronicles 1631, let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice.

Or, Job 38.33, do you know the ordinances of the heavens or fix the rule over the earth? See that?

Or, the last one, Psalm 89.11, the heavens are yours and the earth also is yours. See that?

Different ways of taking the Genesis 1.1, the heavens and the earth pattern, and arranging it almost poetically. Now, we're not done. Here's another variation on the same theme, which occurs more than two dozen times in scripture, and the specific phrase, heaven and earth. Not the heavens and the earth, but just heaven and earth.

That phrase communicates a lot the same thing, 2 Kings 19.15. Here's a creation context again, right?

You made heaven and earth, 2 Chronicles 2.12. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who has made heaven and earth. Creation context. See that? It's interesting. It tends to, not exclusively, but it tends to be used, whether it's the heavens and the earth, or just heaven and earth, tends to be a creation phrase, doesn't it?

Psalm 115.15, May you be blessed of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Again, a creation phrase. Now, you've also got this, and I've got a larger chart in the next slide there that you can follow with.

Another Jewish language pattern is to express the whole of something by the first and the last of the whole or the entire series. And we see this in Revelation and in Isaiah 41 through 48, where God is telling the Jews, I am the first and the last. And where do we see it again?

Revelation, where Christ says, I am the first and the last. multiple times, and the beginning and the end, and the Alpha and the Omega. We've mentioned before that the Jewish rabbis used to say, not the Alpha and the Omega, but they'd give the first and the last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the Aleph and the Tav, would be the Jewish pattern. And so what did John do when he wrote Revelation? He took the Greek first and last letter and did the same thing, the Alpha and the Omega. So that's where we get it. It was from a Hebrewism.

Jewish language pattern Okay, so we see this larger chart here, which is on page two Hebrew poetry rhymes not sounds but meanings We we if we were singing songs and the words didn't rhyme It would kind of grind on our ears and great and it would kind of hit us rather abruptly for the Hebrews They didn't care whether the sounds rhymed. They wanted the meaning to rhyme. Isn't that interesting? The meaning had to rhyme.

So here's an example. Psalm 6 is full of those. Oh Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor chasten me in your wrath. See the rhyme in there? Next example is in verse 5, and that's actually not a parallel rhyme. It's a mirror image reflective rhyme. There is no mention of you in death, in Sheol, which is the place of the dead, who will give you thanks. See that? Instead of being directly parallel, it's actually mirror image, isn't it? And then in verse 6, every night I make my bed swim, I dissolve my couch with my tears. See that?

Poetic language, rhyming meanings. They didn't give a hoot if it rhymed a sound, but they want the meaning to rhyme. Isn't it interesting? Okay. Here's another one we pointed out in Ephesians 2, 21 and 22, where Paul is writing and he explicitly mentions the Gentiles in the prior verse, but he writes in Hebrew poetry pattern when he writes those last two verses. Okay.

So here's, you know, per the example we saw in Psalm 6, here's in whom and the whole building and you also. And then the next part here, being fitted together, is in parallel. And the Holy Temple, a dwelling of God. And then finally, the last one, in the Lord and in the Spirit.

See the rhyming there? A rhyming pattern. Now that's in parallel, right? In parallel. The last part corresponds with the last. The first part corresponds with the first. That's in parallel. A reflective or mirror image pattern would be opposite corresponding.

Okay? All right. So here, what you have here as you go through this, each verse has bookends starting with in whom and ending with in the Lord or in the Spirit. Now, here's another one. We pointed this out, Colossians 128. Now this is a reflective or mirror image pattern. We proclaim Him and complete in Christ and then in the middle you've got admonishing every man, teaching every man, and present every man. The turning point comes in the middle there with all wisdom added.

See that? It's a reflective pattern, poetry pattern, in the Greek. So here he is writing to people who are largely of a Greek background, some Jews. He writes in a pattern that is more typically Jewish. Interesting. After these things, here's one that we pointed out when we were going through Revelation. Apostle John frequently scatters throughout the book of Revelation after these things, that phrase. The Greek is Metatauta. Six times he sprinkles it throughout the book of Revelation.

When you look at the pattern of, throughout earlier parts of scripture, the phrase metatauta was used in the Old Testament, in the Greek Old Testament, and the Hebrew equivalent was used to mark out something that was historical reality and historical sequence.

That's communicating something to us about what John, how John thinks of what he's seeing. You have this list, I think, in your handout, full page listing. And you notice right there in Genesis, it starts four examples of historical statement. After these things, this happened. So historical reality, historical sequence.

What John does differently that doesn't occur anywhere else with a possible minor exception in Leviticus 26, 18, where it's conditional prophetic, that is, if you do this, then this will happen. All the rest of these statements that you see outside of Revelation are all basic historical statements, historical reality, historical sequence. What John does differently is that he puts it in the prophetic realm to indicate historical sequence and so certain to be true that it's historical reality.

See the point that he's making? In using that phrase, he's using a phrase that the Hebrews would understand as, this is real, this is going to happen, it's in sequence. All right. Here's another phrase that John uses, those who dwell on the earth. It's a phrase that shows up in Revelation 6 through Revelation 17 in the middle of the tribulation period only.

One exception, and that is in the messages to the churches in Revelation 3.10, it's used as a promise to the church that they won't be a part of those who dwell on the earth. So it's a If you will, a pre-tribulation rapture promise, because chapter 6, where the tribulation starts, it's right there. Those who dwell on the earth is those who live as earthlings and unsaved during the tribulation period.

How are we doing so far? Lost anybody? Okay, alright. Another phrase we looked at recently, Colossians 2.11, made without hands, is one that has a pattern throughout the Old and New Testaments. We pointed that out.

It's used in the sense of things that are made with hands or without hands. There's variation in the pattern, but the pattern itself within those variations is entirely consistent. Let's see what I mean. The work of God in the physical realm, such as when God creates, is spoken of as being done by God's hands, or is called the work of His hands. And so these patterns in creation we see in these verses, Old Testament and New. The works of man are being spoken of as done by man's hand.

They can be positive or negative. Positive are the things that human beings are supposed to do. Negative, for example, is used in the making of idols. So the work of man's hands can be positive or negative, depending on that. Making idols, like Artemis here, is the work of man's hands. Negative.

Or making the temple is also described as the work of man's hands, but that's a good thing. And here's some examples of it in both the Old and the New Testaments. And then, when we go to physical circumcision. Paul makes reference to that as work of man's hands.

Now, when God does something in the spiritual realm, this is where you get a different thing. This is without hands. Here's the examples in Daniel, 2 Corinthians, Colossians, and Hebrews 9. So when God does something in the spiritual realm, even though it says God created things with his hands, He does something in the spiritual realm that is done without hands.

See the pattern? Real interesting. Okay, now it's your turn. Alright, let's look at this. What do you see of the things we've just talked about in this verse here, this passage? Genesis 24, 2-4. See anything? Ah, it's the heaven and earth phrase with a variation. Do they mean there's two different gods? No. It's THE god, specifically, and it's both halves. It's to communicate he created the whole thing.

But again, you have a pattern, but a variation in the pattern that's within the bounds of Hebrew expression. Good point. Glad you saw that. Let's take a look. There's something else in there, too. Heaven and earth. There's also three parts of a covenant that we looked at many weeks ago. A promise, a swearing by something or someone greater, and a physical gesture, which is putting the hand under the thigh. That's just a little bonus there. Let's take a look at another one.

2 Samuel 22.8, what do you see? Pardon? It's a parallelism. You've got that right. Okay, good. What else do you see? Pardon?

Earth and Heaven. So you have both the Heaven and Earth pattern and a parallelism. See that? The Earth heaven and shook and shook and quake for the earth and trembling again a restatement so you have both of those patterns heaven and earth and the parallelism making sense this is making sense all right good because we've got another got more to go here okay here's Isaiah 48 what do you see in that Isaiah 48, 12, and 13.

You see the first and the last, okay? This is the pattern that is repeated in Revelation. When he says, I'm the first and the last, he doesn't mean he's excluded from everything in between. He means including everything in between. A Hebrew pattern. Okay, what else do you see? There's the heaven and earth again. Alright, good. See anything else? Pardon? Ah, look at that. Interesting.

First and last, surely my hand founded the earth, my right hand spread out the heavens. This is an instance where it's actually he did make it with his hands, but it's part of that family of expressions, isn't it? Where he made the physical earth, he did make it with his hands. Where he does something spiritually, he says he makes it without hands.

So yeah, you've seen three patterns there. You also see some rhyming. Listen to me, O Jacob, even Israel whom I called. Now, is that parallel or reflective? Mirror image. Is it parallel or mirror image? Mirror image, because Jacob and Israel are restatements and they're next to each other.

It's at the end of the first line and the beginning of the second one. and listen and called are corresponding to each other and those are the ends of the expression, right? So it's mirror image. It's rhyming, but mirror image because listening to me and whom I called are opposite ends, the corresponding idea. And Jacob and Israel, instead of both being at the end, are close to each other, okay? Now how about the one right below that in verse 13? Is that parallel or reflective? Parallel or mirror image reflective? That one's parallel, the first one's mirror image. So isn't that interesting? They don't always stay with the pattern, but you see the pattern.

Let me ask a question before we move on. What do you think would be some advantages of being able to speak this way, even speaking to non-Jews in this way? It's a restatement. In other words, if I didn't understand the first thing you said, the repetition of it is going to clarify it. So the idea of getting more certain about what is being said is great. It's fantastic. So even if I'm a Greek mind and not a Hebrew mind, I'm going to gain an advantage from this because I've just gotten a restatement of the same thing.

I've got something that corresponds. It's cool. It's really cool. It's neat that the Lord designed that into the Jewish culture so that when we look at the Word of God, Old and New Testaments, we have better understanding whether we're Jewish or not. Really neat. Okay. Good point. So you see all the things that are in that one little passage there. Alright. Let's look at another one. Here's ones we looked at before, but what we didn't ask at the time I'd like you to look at.

Habakkuk 3.3 is that parallel or is it reflective mirror image? His splendor covers and then you have the heavens and the earth is full of his praise. I would call that mirror image. And the main reason being that you got the heavens and the earth close to each other and His splendor covers and is full of His praise are at the opposite ends.

Does that make sense? Okay, now let's take a look. How about the next one? 1 Chronicles 16 31. Is that parallel or is it reflective mirror image? Huh? Parallel, yes. Okay, you got to let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice. Yet, let let is the beginning. You have glad and rejoice is the end. And the corresponding physical part is the heavens and the earth.

How about this next one over here, Job 38.33. What do you see with that? Is it parallel or reflective mirror image?

Okay, I think you're right. What you see is knowing the ordinances and fixing the rule would be the first part and those would correspond and the heavens and the earth would be the ending of each of those phrases, right? And then OR would be just a connector between the two parallel ideas. Good. About 8911, what do we see there? The heavens are yours and the earth also is yours. Thoughts? Or is this a real baffler? Yes, it's parallel. And the heavens and the earth started off and are yours and is yours and each of them.

One of the things you'll notice, not always, but frequently, these rhyming, whether parallel or reflective, mirror image passages will often use or, and, and also to connect up. Why would it say that? It's because it's giving both halves. Now, it doesn't always do that, but it often will do that in this instance.

You see it in Job 33, and you see it in 1 Chronicles 16.31, and you see it in Habakkuk 3.3. See that? It's a clue that, hey, I'm wondering if I'm getting something that's a parallel or mirror image here, whether it's one pattern or the other, frequently connected with ands, ors, and alsos. All right. This is from Giving the Sense. I don't expect you to read the fine print.

What this is, and it's something to watch out for that's fascinating, Someone has gone through the book of Esther and noticed that from the first passage to the last passage there is a correspondence. The second passage to the second to the last passage is a correspondence. And the book centers, see where the dot is? The book centers around a place there in chapter six. Isn't that interesting? The entire book is a reflective mirror image. The whole book. Book of Esther, yes. The same is also true of the Book of Mark.

Now, again, building on what Craig pointed out, how does this help you? If I see a correspondence, it helps me interpret because I can get the full sense of what it means. I have a cross-check on the meaning, and it gives me a better sense of, do I understand this passage? It's beautiful because it gives you another confirmation of the meaning of scripture.

Whether it's just a couple little lines in one verse, or even a whole book like this. Really neat stuff. There are significant portions of scripture that follow this pattern in some order of magnitude. Some have even taken portions within a book, where the entire book is reflective, and found portions within it that are also reflective, or parallel. So you will find the pattern at different scales. Look for it. It is a tremendous help in understanding the book, whatever book it is.

Here's Revelation 13 and 16. He causes all. small and the great, the rich and the poor, the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on the right hand or on their forehead. What do you see there? Now, let's ask the question. The small and the great, is that all or is it the ends? Are there people in between? Yes. So this is a Hebrew expression. Notice what it says. He causes all. And what does it do? It breaks out into three expressions.

The first one is the small and the great. That is the ends. There's people in the middle, aren't there? So the small and the great is intended to include not just the small and the great, but everything in between. And the rich and the poor, are there people in between rich and poor? Yes. So there again is an example of the ends, like the first and the last, the beginning and the end. And it means everything in between. And how about this third one, the free men and the slaves? Are there people who are outside of that? Free men and slaves? Isn't that a description of everything?

So it's interesting. Two examples of the first and the last, the extremes, including everything in between. The third one is an example of the two halves. See that? The point being that he has told us all and then three times given us by extremes or the two halves a restatement of all. In case you had any doubt about what all means. It's everything and everybody, okay? No exceptions. You've got two kinds of extremes and one example of both halves. So he's underscoring all. Underscoring all. He causes all to be given a mark on the right hand on the forehead. And now you know exactly what he means by all. He's explained it three different ways.

Verse 14 has the phrase, those who dwell on the earth. Ah, it's a tribulation specific phrase, right? These are those who dwell on the earth and are not saved. Here is 2 Corinthians 4. The folks in the 2 Corinthians class went through this not too long ago.

What do you see there? They are indeed rhyming, aren't they? Is it reflective or is it parallel? Let's take a look. Look at the middle part. He didn't just restate it, he exactly reproduced it. Now, in verse 10, what's the last part that's after that restated or reproduced portion? Body, right? And then what do you have at the end after that in verse 11? Mortal flesh. Then in the beginning part, always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus in verse 10 and verse 11, for we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake.

See that? So you've got Hebrew parallelism In that verse now you've ever heard. I'm sure multiple times. Don't try this at home This is one you would definitely want to try at home and here and everywhere else What what you saw here this morning is something you notice that there's from books all over the Bible And you're going to see it lots of places So you're going to be able to use it in in passages and you don't necessarily need a knowledge of Greek although it might be helpful in some cases and You don't necessarily need to know Hebrew, but here's a powerful tool. If you can recognize these word patterns of different kinds, you will gain an understanding from it and have a means of confirming. What does this say? Confirming the message. You can use this all over the place. I've seen it. It shows up in the book of Acts. It shows up in the Gospels. It shows up in what Paul writes, what John writes. It shows up throughout the Old Testament.

From Genesis to Revelation, you can use these principles again and again and again. Very helpful. Very powerful. Very simple. She's squinting when I said simple. Frowning. But yes, do try this at home. Do make use of this. This is a potent tool. It's only taken us less than a half hour to go over it. But you can use it all over the place. Every place you recognize it. And several different tools. And what you saw is sometimes you'll have three or four patterns even in one passage. Major cool. So you can see those patterns and see why they've developed those.

Real helpful in knowing what it means. All right, next time we'll go into the seven churches of Revelation looking at the history of each of the cities that are addressed there in the seven churches, especially Revelation chapters one through three, especially two and three. Now, a couple things to make note of tonight between seven and eight, there's a Fox News program. Debbie brought it to my attention.

And he said that there was, for example, this picture was using a bow drill. You know, so I haven't seen it. I don't know too much about it, but it might be worth taking a look at if you've got some time to take a look. I think that's a cable channel only thing. So you'll need cable or get in front of a machine with cable to do that.

And then the other is I got some heavy hitter books. I gave you a resource list and you should have that. I tried to, if you have email, I tried to get it to you via email so you can click on the links. because that's a whole lot easier than punching that stuff in, especially if they're a whole page width long. But there's some books that I listed in there, and some of these are some pretty hefty books.

Here's one of them, Archaeology in the Old Testament, a fairly recent book, and yet still available. And by the way, I've found a lot of these things can get really good prices through Amazon Used. And here's a brand new book. barely been used, hasn't even got a guy's name in it, and it's like $20 off. So you can get some really good prices. There's a corresponding book to that about the New Testament.

So feel free to take a look at that one. We went through, for example, the culture of Persia. Persia was about the last century of the Old Testament. So that's a major impact. There is some rollover impact into the New Testament as well. Here's a guy named Edwin Yamachi who has written a book about the correspondence between the Bible and the Persian Empire.

So real interesting. He's gone into quite a bit of detail. It's obviously fairly substantial and that's got to be what you're looking for. But the point is there's lots of good information out there. These are all fairly recent books so it's not dated. Some of them even have some pretty decent pictures and things of that sort. So there's that one. This same author has also produced others.

Here's Archaeology of New Testament Cities in Western Asia Minor. We mentioned we're going into Acts starting next quarter here, two Sundays from now. And we'll be drawing upon some of the information he's got here about New Testament cities. He's also done one on Africa in the Bible. That's available as well. Alright, we've blown through a lot of things, but we've done it pretty quickly. Questions? Yes, Laura. Yeah. Yes, that's another Hebrew language pattern.

Yeah, and even Paul, who is certainly looking at the church, will look at this age as still looked upon as all the time up to the time of Christ starting the millennium. And then the age to come being the millennium time. By the way, the Orthodox Jews, they look for a seven-year tribulation followed by a long period of time, not specifically a thousand years because that's just in Revelation, but a long period of time in which the Messiah will reign on the earth. So they have a very similar understanding of things in terms of, you know, there's this present age up to the time of the tribulation a time of great turmoil on the earth for seven years, and then the Messiah comes. That's their view of it. So that phrase, this age and the age to come, is another Hebrew phrase.

And Paul, even though he was communicating something different than the Orthodox rabbis, continues to use the phrase. Yes, and Jesus used it as well. You think about that the Jews would have understood it. I mean, that's what that's the way they talked And so what did Jesus and Paul do they just continued to use pretty much the same phrase and you'll see that Carried on because you could say the phrases and they everybody knew exactly what it meant So it indicates that they did not disagree with what the orthodox position was It's interesting Jesus Certainly criticized the scribes and the pharisees and Paul railed against them and yet what you see some areas where?

They don't disagree Paul towards the end of Acts he gets into a meeting with Sanhedrin, and what does he say he says I'm here today Because I believe in the resurrection the room bursts into violence Because of the Sadducees don't and the Pharisees do believe in the resurrection So Paul did not disagree with the Pharisees position there, and neither did Jesus. Jesus did, however, speak against Sadducees. That's where he says, here I am, present tense, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

That's probably way too much answer to your question. Other questions? Comments? Thoughts? Enough said. Yeah, feel free to catch up on things here and any more questions, give a holler. We're done early, which kind of surprised me, but it's okay. And anyway, make sure we don't disrupt the other folks here. Okay, let's pray.

Lord, thank you that as we look at your word, you have established valuable and insightful patterns there. And we thank you that we can look at those and have greater understanding of your word. You indeed have gone at great lengths and make certain that we were sure of what you intended to be conveyed, the truth that you've laid out in your word. We just thank you for those. Thank you for the time we can share together in your word. In Jesus' name, amen.