Bible in an Hour - WordPress.com...At Bible in an Hour, we are convinced that millions of people earnestly desire to understand the Bible for themselves, but they are frustrated --not

© Wade E. Butler 2002 All rights reserved. No copies can be made without previous permission. ®™ Bible in an Hour, A California Partnership

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Bible in an Hour Introduction Welcome to Bible in an Hour. I’m Wade Butler. Imagine understanding the Bible! Imagine it! Soon, it will be a reality for you in about an hour! The Bible is the best-selling book in the world. Millions of copies are sold each year. Millions of copies are placed in hotel rooms, waiting rooms, and chapels. Zealous believers in the Bible literally give Bibles away to interested people. Bibles, Bibles everywhere. Yet, very few people understand the theme of the Bible. The Bible is one of the few books in the world that people read and cannot repeat the story line! Most people who actually read the Bible cannot repeat to someone else what the book is all about! Most people want to know what the Bible says. Many people have tried to read the Bible only to get bogged down in the begats and end their attempt in guilt-ridden frustration. If you have tried to read the Bible and have gotten mired down in genealogies, laws about foods, and Canaanites, Hittites, and Jebusites, then Bible in an Hour is for you. If you have seriously attempted to read the Bible again and again only to discover that the confusing array of names, places, and people chased you into skipping a day and another and another until you gave up altogether, then Bible in an Hour is for you. At Bible in an Hour, we are convinced that millions of people earnestly desire to understand the Bible for themselves, but they are frustrated--not by their own lack of ability or intelligence, but because they have lacked the bits of information that make the Bible make sense. Most people give up on the Bible because they discover that it is not in chronological order. It seems to skip here and there and leave the reader mystified. This is because in western society we expect a book to have a plain beginning and end with plenty of details in between. The Bible is not like this at all. The books of the Bible are gathered into types of literature, not timelined chronology. The Bible books are not grouped wrong, they are just grouped differently than most people expect. The Old Testament has the history first, followed by the literature, then the prophets generally arranged from longest to shortest. The New Testament also contains the history first, followed by the letters which are generally arranged from the longest to the shortest. Other people have been to church all their lives and have been brought up on Bible stories as part of their earliest memories of Vacation Bible School and Sunday School. They know all of the stories, but have no idea how they all fit together. It is like they have a sting of pearls all loose in a bag and have never seen the whole necklace. It is like they have all of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle but have never seen the top of the box. Bible in an Hour will show you the way the pearls are strung together and, finally, the top of the box.


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So, whether you are new to the Bible and just want to know what it is about, or if you have been around the Bible most of your life and just want to see the whole picture, or if you want to be well read and want to know about the book that is the heart of western culture, Bible in an Hour is for you. This presentation is for anyone who sincerely wants to understand what the Bible is all about. You have waited for this a long time. You have listened to preachers, sometimes for years, hoping to see the picture you are about to see. You have always known that the truth was in the Bible, but simply did not know how to get it for yourself. Again, this is not, nor has it ever been, your fault. The fact that you are listening to this presentation is proof that you are motivated and interested. You will not be disappointed. You should have four charts in front of you. Chart One is a depiction of the whole Bible from beginning to end. Charts Two and Three depict the sweeping themes of the Old Testament. Chart Four is the New Testament. The whole Bible is encapsulated in the understanding of three promises, three covenants, and one sentence. That’s all. When you learn these three promises, three covenants, and one sentence, you will know more about the Bible than most people ever will. And you will finally, finally, understand what the Bible is all about. We will spend more time on Chart One than on any of the other charts. Don’t worry; we will make it in an hour. Leave that up to us. Simply listen carefully and follow along on the charts making notes to yourself if you like. If you do not have an hour right now to pay attention to this presentation and the charts, you may want to consider listening when you have an undisturbed hour. If you are listening in your car or using headphones while doing something else, you may have to repeat the presentation to get the most benefit from it. Turn the hourglass over, the hour begins now! Chart One. Note that the chart starts with a lazy eight figure. This is the symbol for infinity. It stands at the beginning and the end of the picture line. This allows us to understand that the Bible depicts the world and everything we know and see from infinity when it did not exist into infinity where it will exist in a different form. In short, this framing with the symbol of infinity reminds us that God creates time and all who inhabit time out of infinity. Three interlocking circles form the ancient symbol for God: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. An arrow always means action upon something or movement towards something. Therefore, three circles with an arrow pointing to the earth mean God acted toward, or created, the earth and the heavens. In the middle of the chart you see three interlocking circles acting toward a man. This means that God spoke to and made promises to a man.


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Down a little further, you see a man with three circles as his head. This is Jesus, the one who is God and man at the same time. He is God become man. The lamb and the cross simply mean that a death of a lamb occurred in order to usher in a clean earth and heaven and send it in a new existence into infinity. This chart, then, is an overview of the whole universe and all things seen and unseen. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He spoke, “Let there be light.” When God said, “Let there be light,” the creator was simply getting his tools out and saying, “Let there be raw material.” From that moment, God made the universe in six days. Day by day he formed the seas and populated them, the earth and covered it with flora and fauna, the stars and the sun and the moon. All from the raw material of light. God defines himself as light in whom there is no darkness. Therefore, the universe as we know it, both the things we see and cannot see, are deeply connected to and dependent upon God himself. Far from being a cosmic watchmaker who made the universe and set it spinning until it runs out of juice, God deeply, essentially tied himself to the creation and liked what he did. He called each phase of what he created “good.” No flaws. No death. No pain. Essentially and totally good. On the sixth day, he made man: Adam. All of the other things that God made he did so with a word and the sheer power of his commands. God took a radical and personal interest in man. He announced that he was going to make a creature in his own image. A creature, a reflection of the essence of God in the mud. With his own hands, God fashioned the clay into a man. From the deepest muscle tissue to the fine hairs on the forearms, God formed a reflection of himself. And then, he kissed him alive. He blew life into the nose of the clay and the dirt, the clay came to life. Now God had a creature with whom he could converse and who had an independent mind and the ability to make choices. All of the animals and plants were brought to Adam and he named them all. He was a perfect body with a perfect mind. God--what a picture--placed each one of his creations in front of Adam and said, “Name it. What shall we call it?” That was the playful scene in paradise. After assigning names to the whole of creation, Adam was alone. God knew what that felt like. God is alone. There is no other God. Even in his perfect state, Adam was lonesome. There was no one like him. He was with God, but God was not enough. He was still lonely. God did surgery. He put the man into an anesthetic sleep and took genetic material from his side and fashioned a female human from the raw material of the man. She was called Eve, she was a wo-man. From his side he made a new creature, a bride for Adam. And God married them there. Adam was delighted! “This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” he said. God then told the two of them to have sex and create new humans so that loneliness would never again plague the Adam he had made. Adam and Eve were created to be eternal. They had no idea of nor knowledge of mortality, for nothing was mortal. The whole creation, including man, was essentially and intimately connected with God, the light and the creator who constantly infused the creation with his own immortal life force. Notice on your Chart One: God made the heavens and the earth and put man and woman on it. Notice the symbols for male and female.


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Also notice that the world was white and clean, perfect and good. At the beginning. But notice on the chart that the earth and all creation became black and corrupted. Disconnected from the life source of God, death and degeneration entered the universe. This is how it happened. When God finished the creation, there were two trees. One was the portal to eternal life and eternal connection with God. The other was the portal to death and disconnection from God. One, if eaten and opened, would cement forever the connection between God and the creation. The other would unplug the creation from God and it would degenerate and devolve into a lifeless, dead, dark mass. Then God told them plainly that if they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that they would die and death would permeate the whole of their kingdom. He left the choice up to them. The serpent, which was part of the creation that had somehow gotten at severe odds with God, was jealous of the man and the woman and wanted to ruin them and the creation that God loved. He laid wait and plotted to trick Adam and Eve into opening the portal of death and decay. The serpent needed their permission to dominate them. This was a difficult task, but the serpent was sneakier than any of the other creatures that God had made. Lucifer, the serpent, planned all of this out of sheer spite. He waited for a time, lurking in the shadows, until and Adam and Eve were standing together in front of the two portals. He came up to the pair and planted a seed in their minds that would bear a crop of misery. He told them that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was the portal to becoming a god. No longer would they be in the image of God. No, they would be gods themselves. The woman looked at the fruit of the tree and began to see it differently in light of the serpent’s words. It did look good, sweet, pretty. In fact, she came to the conclusion that it looked as if it really would make them wise. Maybe as wise as God himself. The man, Adam, looked on. He did nothing to stop the woman. He let her eat the fruit first. Eve picked and ate the fruit and opened the portal a crack. Then Adam seeing that she did not die took the fruit from her offering hand and ate it, fully expecting to suddenly arrive at being a god. Instead, they suddenly realized that they had been tricked. Shame, death, guilt, misery, and decay flooded into the earth like a black oil spill of death with the serpent riding the tide. They were so frightened and dismayed that they ran from the tree, perhaps to the beat of the hissing laugh of the serpent, attempting to cover themselves and their shame with whatever leaf and plant they could find. They hid from God. God came to the garden as he always did in the cool of the day. When he arrived, he realized that something was desperately wrong. When God saw that they were trying to cover themselves and were ashamed, he knew what had happened. They had opened the portal of death and disconnected the creation from the life flow of the creator. Lucifer was standing by the couple, quite pleased with himself. He had accomplished his goal.


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God asked Adam what had happened; Adam told him the truth and confessed that the woman had given him the fruit and he ate it. Eve confessed that the serpent tricked her into eating the fruit by telling her that it would make her a goddess. He then turned to the serpent and boomed a promise. “Because you have done this,” namely deceived the woman, “I will put hatred between you and those like you and the child that Eve will have in the future.” “A child of hers will crush your head, but he will be killed in the process, struck with fangs in both heels.” God understood and believed that the serpent had tricked Adam and Eve into giving up their role as caretakers. He made a commitment to trick the serpent into giving it back. Since he had tricked the woman, a woman would give birth to the one who would trick him. God then began to take care of Adam and Eve. He took away the leaves and grass that they had used to makeshift cover themselves and then he killed some animals and covered Adam and Eve with their skins. He covered their shame, their vulnerability, and their sadness. God caused an innocent to die so that those who deserved to die could live. The moment he did that, he set the precedent and the way out of the mess that Adam and Eve had created. The Innocent would always have to die to save the guilty. God placed the man and the woman outside the garden and put an angel outside the gate of the garden with a sword. Things had changed. No longer could they enter the garden and eat of the Tree of Life. That opportunity had passed. God then told Adam and Eve what the consequences of their actions would be. Adam would work on the soil now, but unlike before, the land would not render good fruit with little effort. Now, the ground would seem to grow nothing but thorns and thistles. And, unlike the relative ease of before, Adam would have to make his living, his life, by the sweat of his brow. Eve, God said, would have sorrow in having children. She would have them, but since death was now in the world, her children would cause her grief. Then God sent the pair into the world to live in the creation they had handed over to death. In the middle of that depression and sadness, Eve believed God’s promise that he would bring someone through her who would crush the head of the serpent. When she gave birth to Cain, she voiced her faith that God had kept his promise when she said, “Behold, I have gotten the man!” She was severely disappointed. God had evidently instructed Adam and Eve to offer the blood of the innocent for their guilty state periodically. They had passed this to their two boys, Cain and Abel. Abel accepted the facts. Cain did not. When God rejected the fruits of vegetables that Cain had grown and accepted the innocent blood that Abel brought, Cain got so incensed that he seduced his brother into the field and killed him.


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Cain refused to kill an animal, but he was willing to kill his brother. The first murder was over the way to worship God. One way, the wrong way, was to offer God things he never asked for or required. The other way, the one God had commanded, was to offer the blood of the innocent for the saving of the life of the one who truly deserved to die. As time went on, the violence continued. Violence was on their minds all of the time. They also began to worship the stars and turn to the constellations of the zodiac to tell them what to do and what the future would hold. Finally, God decided that his whole effort was unprofitable. He became sad that he had made man and woman in the first place. He decided to wash it off with a flood of water that would drown everyone on it. Before that holocaust could happen, Noah found favor with God. For an undisclosed reason, Noah was the exception in the whole earth. God decided to save him and his family and enough of the animals to reseed the earth after the flood was unleashed upon the creation. He told Noah to build a boat to withstand the coming judgment. This boat was like a casket, a huge casket with black pitch on the outside and on the inside. Noah and his three sons built it. The whole time Noah was warning all the people to flee from the flood. Not one person believed his preaching. Not one. When the ark was finished, Noah and his family entered. The preselected animals entered. Then God himself shut the door. The day of mercy was over and the water began to fall. Rain for the very first time. The whole earth, except for those in the casket of Noah, was drowned in the watery deluge and upheaval. Although the people in the ark were being saved, it was not a pleasant experience. Dark, terrified and tossed, the occupants suffered even in their salvation. The water saved Noah and his family from the disaster outside the casket and floated them to safety. For those outside the box, the water was the water of death; for those in the box, the water was the washing, dashing, lapping water of salvation from God’s unstoppable anger. After the waters abated, Noah made sure that it was safe. He sent a dove over the waters and it returned with an olive branch in its beak. Peace was in the dove’s mouth. Noah, his family, and the animals to reseed the earth stepped into the sunlight after God opened the door as the box tilted on Mount Ararat. God spread a rainbow in the sky and promised that he would never just wash the earth off again. Until that time, all of the people and animals on the earth were vegetarians. But now God allowed a secondary food source: the animals. During this period of time, as the earth began to recover, a man by the name of Job flourished and prospered. His trial by fire and the role of the serpent in his life can be read in the book, which bears his name: the book of Job. Years later, when the earth was fully recovered and the population of man and animals replaced the washed-away catastrophe, God remembered his promise to Satan, the serpent Lucifer and chose a man through whom the One would come who would destroy the serpent by tricking him into eating from the Tree of Life. God looked over the whole population and sought the man with the least going for him. God wanted to use a man who would never be able to take any of the credit for being chosen to bring the one seed into the world who would destroy the devil. God settled on Abram, a nomad with nothing. Notice on the chart: God, the Trinity, acted toward a man. That man was Abram.


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God came to Abram and made him three promises. They were outrageous, given the circumstances of Abram. God said, “I will make you a great nation; I will give you the land upon which you are standing, and I will bless the whole earth through one of your descendants.” Abram believed God. The moment he believed God’s promises and believed that the One would come through him, Abraham became a participant in the coming new creation. Let’s repeat these promises that God made to Abraham. He said, “I will make you a great nation; I will give you the land upon which you are standing, and I will bless the whole earth through one of your descendants.” All of this is contained in the Book of Genesis, the 15th chapter. What happened next was a mystery for centuries until archaeological research discovered its meaning. And it is the core of Bible in an Hour and the heartbeat of the Scriptures. Abraham, after hearing and believing the promises of God, went and acquired various kinds of animals from his flocks. He cut them into halves. He laid the halves so that a path existed between the pieces. Abraham stood off to the side and shooed the vultures away as if he was waiting for something. He was. He was waiting for God to come and sign a contract that would guarantee that God would keep the three promises that he had made to Abraham. In essence, the parties making a blood contract would meet in the middle of the pieces of the dead animals. They would reiterate the terms of their contract and trade some personal article as a sign of the contract. This meant that if either of the parties failed to keep the terms of the contract, the offended party had the right to come to the house of the contract breaker and slay him and his family, cut up and ruined in blood, just like the animals that they stood between when the contract was struck. It was the most solemn contract with the most severe consequences that existed in the old world. What happened next Abraham did not expect. Abraham, while he waited for God to arrive, was put into a deep sleep. He would not allow Abraham to enter the pieces with him. God was making a unique kind of blood contract with Abraham. He was making a contract that did not have two parties responsible for the keeping of the contract. God was making a contract that depended only on him: a patron covenant. As promised, I am going to explain to you three types of contracts in the old world. First, there was the parity contract. This was the most common of all of the contracts. In a parity contract, two equals met in the middle of the pieces. The contract depended on both of them doing what they promised to do. The second type of contract was the suzerainty contract. In the suzerainty contract, the more powerful party dictated terms to the less powerful party. If the weaker party broke the contract, they suffered the consequences. The whole contract was dependent on the lesser party. A modern example of this is the unconditional surrender. Then, the most unique and rare of all, is the patron contract. In the patron contract the more powerful party promised to give something to the lesser party for nothing! This is the opposite of the suzerainty contract. In this one, the patron, the greater party dictates nothing and promises to give everything.


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Therefore, this contract that God made with Abraham was a patron covenant. God promised to do everything he had promised with no expectation that Abraham would do anything or could do anything to gain the things that God had promised. He said, “I swear by myself that I will keep these promises to Abraham.” He gave him a new name: Abraham which means “father of many.” All alone. By himself. God then lifted his hand and swore. God alone determined to rescue his creation. I told you at the beginning of this presentation that I planned to expose you to three promises, three covenants, and one sentence. You have heard the three promises: “I will make you a great nation; I will give you the land upon which you are standing, and I will bless the whole earth through one of your descendants.” Then God sealed these promises by swearing to Abraham, standing alone in the pieces. It depended only on God for the keeping of it. The three promises were from God to Abraham for nothing. Expecting nothing. Demanding nothing. From Genesis 12-15 on, the rest of the Bible is the story of one man’s family and how God kept his three promises to that one man. That’s it. The rest of the Bible is about the family of Abraham and how God kept his three promises to Abraham and his family. They will be dominated by many nations. They will interact with ancient cultures. They will be slaves and establish their own nation. Here is the sentence that I promised you: The rest of the Bible is the story of one man’s family and how God kept his three promises to that one man. Here it is again. Say it with me. Now, you know more than most people ever will about the Bible. You know all you need to know to bring the Bible into focus. You are ready to take the next step into Bible in an Hour. Chart Two. This chart and Chart Three are pictorial representations of the Old Testament. As we go through the Old Testament following the family of Abraham, I will be putting all of the books in order for you as well as following the most important family who has ever been on this earth: the family of Abraham. Look at your chart. Since we are following a family, the most important word in the Bible is “begat.” All of God’s plans for the restoration of his creation and the reclamation of the universe depend on this family thriving and multiplying so that God, at his perfect time, could bring the One into the world through the family of his chosen man--Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac. Isaac was the miracle child. As soon as Isaac grew to be a teenager, God demanded that Abraham take his life! Abraham believed so strongly that God would keep the promises that he made in the middle of the bloody pieces that he did not flinch. Abraham took Isaac into the mountains where Abraham planned to cut his son’s throat on the altar as God had commanded. Abraham was so certain that God would make him a great nation with millions of descendants as he had promised in the pieces, that Abraham knew that even if he killed the boy, God would raise him from the dead in order to keep his promises.


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That is why he told the men left behind in the caravan, “We’ll be back shortly,” when he knew that he planned to sacrifice his son on the mountain. Isaac cooperated; such was the trust that he had in his father and in the promises of God. When Isaac was tied up on the wood, Abraham raised the knife to kill him on the wood. At the last second, God sent an angel to stay his swing with the dagger. In the bushes, off to the side, God provided a ram who had his horns, his head, tangled in a thorn bush. The innocent ram died on the wood, thorns and all, to save the life of the miracle child Isaac. Isaac begat Jacob and Jacob really begat. With two wives and two concubines Jacob was able to generate twelve sons. These twelve sons over time married and had children who had children so that each brother became a tribe all to itself. These are the first of the twelve tribes of Israel. Why Israel? Why not the twelve tribes of Jacob? Because Jacob physically wrestled with God. And for his trouble he got a new name: Israel. There was drama in the family of Israel way back then at the beginning. Jacob had two sons that were his favorites because they were the sons of the wife that he loved the best. One of these was Joseph, the other Benjamin. Joseph had the gift of interpreting dreams. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, had been troubled with terrifying dreams that none of his professional interpreters could make sense of or interpret. It came to his ear that there was a man named Joseph who was good at this dream business. Joseph not only interpreted the dreams, but also told Pharaoh what the dreams had been without having been previously told the content! Pharaoh was so impressed that he made Joseph his second in command and put him in charge of the preparations for the coming famine. Because of the wisdom of Joseph, when the famine did strike, Egypt was the only country in the area that had any food. The entire world started streaming to Egypt for something to eat. Jacob and his sons were not immune to the famine. They began to starve. Of all the people and families in the world, only one family could not be allowed to starve. The family of Abraham. Not because they were better, but because God was keeping his promise to Abraham to have the One who would conquer the serpent come through his family. If the family of Abraham starved and died, the promise would have died. Therefore, the family could not starve. The family heard the rumor that there was food in Egypt. When they came to buy food, Joseph recognized them immediately. But Joseph understood that God had sent him to Egypt, through their wicked intent, to save the family from starvation. He forgave them in tears and they went back to gather their father and the rest of the family and they all moved into Egypt as guests of Pharaoh. They had a family reunion like few others. They thrived in Egypt. Here ends the book of Genesis. The family prospered and flourished in the delightful conditions of Egypt--so much so that a Pharaoh came to power years later who had no alliance with Joseph and saw the numbers of the family of Abraham as a threat to the Egyptian state. The family had become a great nation. God had kept his first promise to Abraham.


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Pharaoh decided to enslave the family so that they would not be a threat to Egyptian security. He hoped that making slaves of the family would induce them to quit having so many children. So, Pharaoh decided to make the people work so hard and under unfair conditions that they would not have the time or the energy to beget and have more children. They kept on begetting and bearing children. Utterly frustrated, Pharaoh came up with what he thought was a brilliant idea. The Nile goddess needed sacrifices thrown into her so that the Nile would flood and recede on schedule. He needed to get rid of the babies of the slaves. So, he ordered that all of the male babies of the slaves be tossed into the Nile and he would be able to solve both problems at once. He thought he had dreamed up a win-win situation when in fact he would lose-lose. When the little boys of the family began to hit the water, God acted. If the trend continued over time the family would die out. This could not happen if God was going to keep his promise to Abraham. So, he decided to get the people out of Egypt and give them the land that he had promised to their father Abraham. One mother in the family was very clever. She took her son down to the Nile to toss him in as the law demanded. She put her son into the Nile. He was on a boat, admittedly, but in the Nile nonetheless. As the infant was floating down the Nile headed for the Mediterranean Sea, the daughter of Pharaoh saw the little basket like boat. When she saw the little boy, she was moved, and she ordered that he be rescued and brought into the house of Pharaoh to be raised as a brother under her father’s nose. She evidently disagreed with the policy of her father and showed her disapproval. Pharaoh kept his eye on the little boy who was named Moses. His name means “to draw out.” How could Pharaoh have known that this little baby would draw the family of Abraham out of Egypt? Moses received the finest education and learned to live in high society. After Moses was a grown man, he went to see his family in the slave area of Egypt. While he was visiting, he witnessed an Egyptian slave master beating a hapless member of the family of Abraham. Enraged, and used to being important in the house of Pharaoh, he killed the slave-driver outright. Moses tried to hide the deed by burying the dead man in the sand. Later when he was again in the slave area, he tried to pull apart two of his peers who were fighting. They distrusted Moses and asked, “Are you going to kill us like you did that Egyptian the other day?” Realizing that he was caught and would receive no help from his countrymen because they resented his rank and privilege, Moses ran into the desert to hide from the swift justice that Pharaoh would seek to dish out. While in the desert as a fugitive, Moses met the God of Abraham. Moses was walking through the desert when he saw an odd sight. He saw a bush on fire that wasn’t being consumed. When he went to investigate, God was in the bush. Moses was instructed to bring the family of Abraham out of the bondage in Egypt. After several protests and dodges, Moses agreed to go in the name of the Lord and demand that Pharaoh release the family of Abraham and let them go into the desert to meet with their God. Flanked by his brother Aaron, who agreed to be the speaker on his behalf, Moses approached Pharaoh in his court and demanded that the people who had been slaves of the state for 400 years be released.


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Since the departure of the slaves would mean economic ruin for Egypt, Pharaoh refused out of hand. That refusal began the process of the God of Abraham making sport of the gods of Egypt. Using ten disasters, God wore the Egyptians out and induced them to send the family of Abraham out of the country. Each of the plagues, the ten disasters, exaggerated and mocked one of the gods of the Egyptians. For instance, the Egyptians worshiped a god by the name of Hekt. This was the frog god. Therefore, God covered the land with frogs until they were in stinking piles. They worshiped the Nile. So God turned the Nile into blood which the fastidiously clean Egyptians detested. The last plague, the most hideous of all, attacked Pharaoh himself. He was considered a god and his children gods as well. After giving the Pharaoh one last chance to release the slaves, God sent the angel of death sweeping through Egypt door-to-door, snuffing out the life of every firstborn in Egypt including the firstborn of Pharaoh. Pharaoh himself was impotent to stop this God of the family of Abraham. The members of Abraham’s family were spared because they had ritually placed the blood of an innocent lamb on their doorposts and lentils as God had commanded through Moses. When the death angel swooped through the land, he saw the innocent blood on the door, which caused him to pass over the people inside. The Passover. When the Egyptians realized that they had been dished out more grief than they could bear, they drove the slaves out of Egypt, all the while throwing gold, silver, gems, and other wealth at them as they passed by. The Egyptians rejoiced to see them leave the country. After the initial shock and grief response, proud Pharaoh changed his mind, deciding to pursue the slaves and return them to their servitude. Moses was leading the people toward the Red Sea, which separated Egypt from the desert where God said that he wanted to meet with his people. When they arrived at the sea, it was obvious that they would not be able to get the millions of people across to the other side. When they heard that Pharaoh was coming to retrieve and punish them, they knew that this would mean certain death for most of them. They were between Pharaoh and the sea. Moses raised his staff and the sea parted so that a wall of water was on either side of the family as they walked on the ground in the middle which was stone dry. While God protected the vulnerable rear ranks of the people by manifesting himself as a pillar of smoke and fire, they passed through the water. Just as the people had gotten across the sea, the armies of Pharaoh arrived. They saw that the sea had opened to make safe passage. They charged in after the people. When they were in the middle of the sea, God closed the walls of water on the armies and they all went to watery graves while his people were safely watching from the other side. The water saved the people of God, but the same water destroyed all the others. The people then went down to Mt. Sinai to meet with the God who had delivered them from slavery. God arrived. His specter, voice, rumblings and flashes of lightning frightened the people. Moses went up to the mountaintop, entering the clouds of God that covered the top. While there for 40 days, God carved the Ten Commandments into the rock with his finger and gave them to Moses to give to the people.


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As Moses was bringing this contract to the people to affirm, he saw that they, led by Aaron, were worshiping a golden calf idol and giving it the credit for rescuing them. God was totally insulted! Moses was so furious that he broke the tablets God had given him as a sign that the people had already broken the laws which God had just recently given to his people. This covenant was a suzerainty contract in which the greater party makes demands on the lesser party. God wanted a unique people, a set-apart people to be an example to the nations by bringing the One into the world who would remove death from the creation. God did not pass between the pieces when he made this demanding contract with his people. This contract of the Ten Commandments was a contract of stone. Whether the family kept the Ten-Commandment covenant or not had no bearing on God’s commitment to give the three promises to Abraham. Once the people were punished for worshiping the golden calf, they received God’s instructions about how he wished to be worshiped. He told them to build him a tent to exact specifications with exact divisions and ornamentation. This tent was called a tabernacle. He ordered that a priesthood be established with Aaron as the first high priest. The function of this priesthood would be to ritually offer the blood of an innocent to forgive the guilty for their deeds and sins. It was a ritual exchange of life for life. Once they used the treasures that were tossed at them by the Egyptians to make the tabernacle of God and establishment of the priesthood, they headed for the land which had been promised to Abraham. We have concluded the books of Exodus (the exit of the people from slavery through the water) and Leviticus which established the tribe of Levi as the priestly tribe for the family of Abraham. As the people headed for the land of promise, they weakened in their faith in God and in the leadership of Moses. As a consequence, God led the people around in circles for 40 years. He waited until the faithless generation died before he would lead the family further. God lead the people at night with a pillar of fire and in the day with a giant pillar of smoke. This wandering in circles is recorded in the book of Numbers. During the period of time that the family walked in circles in the desert, the people complained all the time and nearly drove Moses out of his mind. In a fury over the complaints of the people, Moses disobeyed God in the way that he performed a miracle. Because of this, Moses was disqualified from entering the land of promise. He was allowed to lead the people to the banks of the river Jordan. There he climbed up on Mount Nebo and gave a farewell sermon to the people in which he reminded the people of their obligations under the Ten-Commandment contract. He urged them to follow the laws of God so that they could speed the coming of the One who would smash the head of the serpent. He then died and the devil and the archangel Mich ael fought over his body. This is all recorded in the book of Deuteronomy and the book of Jude in the New Testament. After Moses died, Joshua was the heir apparent to lead the people of Abraham in their conquest of the land after they passed through the waters of the Jordan. The Book of Joshua is the account of three military campaigns after to take the land away from those who had made the land their home. Through three military campaigns, a northern, a central, and a southern, the people of the land, the Canaanites, Jebusites, Moabites, and Amonites, and all those other odd names, were forced to surrender. In the 21st chapter of Joshua, God said that he kept all of his promises regarding the land. Not one was left unkept. The people were a great nation and they now controlled the land that was promised to their father Abraham. The one promise left to be kept was to bless the whole earth through one of the descendants of Abraham.


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When the family got ready to take over the land, God told them to kill all of the inhabitants, killing even the animals that belonged to the inhabitants. God said that the people were so foul that the land vomited them out. It is at this stage that the people failed. They did not rid the land of the inhabitants. Soon it was apparent that the family of Abraham would be tempted again and again to worship the false and detestable gods that were worshiped by the people there--worship that even included the sacrifice of children in the fires of the idols’ mouths. God detested the fiery deaths of the children of the family. Their children’s deaths could not shut the portal of death while screaming in the mouth of an idol. However, the chosen child of Eve would. Once the land was conquered, the family moved in, dividing the land and parceling it out to the twelve tribes. Each tribe got a piece of the land for their families--all except the Levites. They were the priests. Since the people supported them to do the work at the tent of God, they did not need land of their own. Once the land was divided, the tribes entered into a loose political confederation. They did not have a centralized federal government. They lived under what is called a theocracy: a “God government.” God ruled the tribes through his priests at the tent of God. When the people started to worship the false gods, the God of Abraham became furious. He used the power of other nations to discipline his people. He would allow a foreign people to conquer the family of Abraham. When the people would cry to God for deliverance and promise to change their ways, God would give them a temporary military ruler to deliver them from the hands of their oppressors. These temporary rulers were called Judges. Usually the people would follow God and steer clear of the false gods as long as the judge was alive. When the judge died, the people went right back to their old ways. They abandoned the tent of God and worshiped the false gods on the hilltops with sexual orgies, swaying to the music on harps and drums. Again and again God punished the people and again and again they repented and God gave them a judge. The book of Judges is the record of 13 repeating cycles. The book of Ruth is a snapshot of what life was like during the period of the judges. Samuel, the famous prophet, was the last judge of the people. When he was in power, the tribes got together and demanded that Samuel give them a king. They wanted a federal government like all of the nations around them. They wanted a human monarchy. Samuel warned the people that they did not really want a king. He told them the expense and sacrifice would annoy them sooner than later, but they would not listen. Finally, although he was angry about it, God gave the twelve tribes their first human king, Saul. The account of the life of Samuel and the establishment of the monarchy of the family can be found in 1 and 2 Samuel . Since all of the tribes supported the king and the centralized, federal monarchy, it is called the United Monarchy. The United Monarchy had three kings: Saul, David, and Solomon. Saul suffered from mental illness and bouts of depression. Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived or will ever live. But David was a man that God said was after his own heart. This was because David never worshiped any God but the God of Abraham. Saul did. He took worship into his own hands and offered God “strange fire.” Solomon did. He caved in to his political wives in his old age and looked the other way when they worshiped their non-gods.


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But David, the shepherd harpist and musician, worshiped the Lord and him alone. During this period of time, the people of the family became solidified and fortified, and they flourished. They came into their own as a political entity. Solomon replaced the tabernacle of God with a temple of unbelievable splendor and expense. Solomon also made political alliances with many nations and brought fame and respect to the nation that was the family of Abraham. This period of the United Monarchy, the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon, was also the time that the great poetry of the family was created. All of the arts flourished, but none of them flourished like the poetic and written arts. David wrote songs for use at the worship tent of God. They were later used in the temple of Solomon. These songs are collected in the book of Psalms. Solomon collected wise sayings in the book of Proverbs. He wrote a poem about the beauty of sexual love called the Song of Solomon. He should have known if any man ever did--Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines! Solomon also wrote a cynical poem on the hopelessness and ultimate meaninglessness of life. This poem about trying to make oneself happy with material goods and experiences is called Ecclesiastes and is also called the “Preacher.” But the glory days of Solomon were not to continue very long. When he died, his son Rehoboam was the heir apparent. But the tribes were tired of the weight of the monarchy. They met with Rehoboam and demanded that he lighten up on taxes and other demands upon the people. After he heard their complaints and pleas, he met with his advisors. He then appeared before the leaders of the tribes and told them the sentence that tore the kingdom into pieces: “My father whipped you with whips, but I will whip you with scorpions.” Upon that news, the ten tribes of the northern part of the nation seceded from the union and created their own kingdom and put into place their own king. Look at your chart. The United Monarchy, represented by the crown representing the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon, divided by two equals two new kingdoms: Israel on the north made up of ten tribes and the kingdom of Judah made up of two tribes. The family was divided now into two distinct political kingdoms: Israel and Judah. Israel had its capital in Samaria. Judah stayed true to the line of David and had their capital at historic Jerusalem. These events are recorded in 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. Then things began to go very wrong for the family. In a wholesale fashion, the two kingdoms began to worship in earnest and publicly the gods of the people who once occupied the land. The temple of the Lord fell into disrepair and disuse. In an attempt to call his people back to him so that the final promise could more easily be kept to Abraham, God sent two of the greatest prophets that ever lived: Elijah, who was carried into heaven on a chariot of fire and Elisha, who was his successor and who did twice as many miracles as his mentor for he had received a double dose of the Spirit of God. The deeds of these two prophets are recorded in 1 and 2 Kings. This whole period of time and the things that will be recounted next can also be read in the repeat volumes of 1 and 2 Chronicles. These books overlap each other and repeat many of the same accounts. No matter how the great prophets tried, the people refused to repent of their evil deeds and their abandonment of the God of Abraham.


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Notice on the right-hand corner of Chart Two that there is a dollar sign. That dollar sign represents “profits.” (I know, it’s an awful pun!) Of course it is meant to represent the prophets that God sent to his people calling them to come back to him and abandon the worthless idols that so enchanted them. Most of the prophets were sent to either Israel or Judah. Some like Micah, Hosea, Joel, and Amos went to both kingdoms at the same time. Usually in the first line of the prophecy, the prophet will announce that the burden of the Lord or the word of the Lord came to . . . and the prophet will mention the kingdom to which the Lord had sent him. The prophets mostly belong in the history of Kings and Chronicles. The way the writings and words of the prophets are arranged in the Bible are according to length, not according to chronology. The family, now a pitiful shadow of what it once was under the great David and Solomon, languished in idolatry and immorality. Finally, after many warnings in many ways, the Lord decided to destroy the kingdoms as he had promised through the prophets. Chart Two closes on a sad note of despair as God prepared to punish his people once again for their unfaithfulness although he remained faithful to the promises he made, moving through blood, to Abraham. Please turn to Chart Three. In the year 722 BC, the Lord used the Kingdom of Assyria and its ruler named Sennacharib to destroy the kingdom of Israel. The Assyrians were known for their savage cruelty. Before the Lord would use this barbaric and pagan nation to destroy Israel, he gave them a chance to repent and change their ways. So, he sent the prophet Jonah to the capital of Nineveh to see how they would respond. Jonah resisted going to that great city of Nineveh because he knew that if the city repented the Lord might spare the nation and still use it to destroy his own people. Jonah’s fears were realized. They did repent, and the Lord did use them to destroy the kingdom of Israel. They were merciless. The rest of the population they divided. They took the Israelite families and shipped them to Assyria and their conquered territories. Then they took families from Assyria and their conquered territories and placed them in Israel. The result was intermarriage and loyalty by blood established with the Assyrian empire. This policy helped to quell rebellion among the conquered peoples. It also resulted in the pure bloodline of Abraham being polluted and derailed. Ten of the tribes got lost in the genetics of intermarriage with those not of the family of Abraham. Effectively, this disqualified all of the descendants of the people of the kingdom of Israel from being part of the bloodline of the coming One. Since these half-breeds were from a country whose capital was Samaria, they became known as the Samaritans. The pure blood family members hated them, for they were a threat to the pure line of Abraham. The line had to be pure for the promise to Abraham to be kept. The One to smash the head of the serpent had to be a direct descendent of the man, Abraham. When Jesus spoke of a “good Samaritan” the people were shocked at the thought. After destroying Israel, Sennacharib came to Judah and threatened to capture and destroy Jerusalem. But God had not decided to hand over the rest of the family to the Assyrians. Isaiah was sent to encourage Hezekiah the king of Judah who was in the middle of getting the people to change and was tossing out the idols and punishing those who worshiped them.


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So, when the Assyrians came to destroy Judah as well, God sent the destroying angel into the Assyrian camp and killed, silently, in one night, 186,000 soldiers of the Assyrian army. They had to retreat under those losses. They were so damaged by the angelic onslaught that Assyria never completely recovered and soon would be taken over by the up-and-coming Babylonians. Nahum and Habakkuk prophesied that Assyria’s day in the sun was almost over. In the meantime, God was still hoping that Judah would learn from her sister Israel and return to the worship of the God of their fathers. He sent the great prophet Jeremiah to warn what was left of the family, two small tribes, that if they did not learn from the ruin of their sister, that they too would fall under the lash of God’s jealous rage. But the kingdom of Judah would not listen even to the pleadings of Jeremiah. So, God called on the new power in the world, Babylon, to destroy Judah, destroy the temple of the great Solomon, and ransack the city of Jerusalem and carry off her treasures. Zephaniah tried to get their attention and warn them of the coming destruction after the very wicked king Manasseh did all he could to drag the people from God. God abandoned the temple and named it “Ichabod” which means “for the glory of the Lord has departed.” What was once the dwelling of the Lord became a pile of rubble and a den of jackals. In 586 BC, God induced Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to assault and destroy the kingdom of Judah along with the great city of Jerusalem, “the city of peace.” When the king of Judah resisted Babylon, that nation utterly destroyed the last political memory of the family of Abraham. What followed was a cruel selection process. Unlike the Assyrians, the Babylonians did not mix genetically with the people they conquered. They simply killed all those who did not appear to be of any use to their kingdom and saved the rest in a ghetto in Babylon to be used for their talents. This selection process is recorded in the book of Daniel . Only the brightest and best would be saved. Only the talented and the beautiful. The rest were murdered or left to tend the ground under a harsh Babylonian governor. Daniel was one of he lucky ones. He and three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were taken away into what is known as the Babylonian captivity. The Book of Daniel is the record of the time the people of Abraham stayed in the ghetto of Babylon. He also saw visions about the future and how God would keep his final promise after all. Jeremiah walked through the streets of the shattered Jerusalem and openly mourned. The Lamentations is a record of a broken-hearted prophet looking at the sad results of a people who would not listen. When Jerusalem was being ruined, the Edomites, the long-lost descendants of Esau, the brother of Jacob, helped the conquerors because they despised their cousins. God sent Obadiah to them to remind them that, although they lived in the mountains in stone fortresses like Petra, they would be throne down to the ground for refusing to help their sister in her time of need. They had egged the Babylonians on screaming, “Tear it down to the foundations! Tear the temple down to the foundations!” The family was taken to Babylon and placed in a ghetto there. They were a defeated and depressed people. One songwriter put it this way: “We hung our harps by the rivers of Babylon and could sing no more.” God gave the people prophets to encourage them. One was Ezekiel and the other, Daniel. Ezekiel was given visions of wheels within wheels and valleys of dry bones that were resurrected. These visions helped the people to see that, although they were dead and dry, the Lord intended to restore them by the One who would usher in a new creation filled with the Spirit of God. Daniel repented for the people and begged God to repeal his sentence of judgment. God answered his prayer through his angelic messenger who was opposed for days by a demonic force.


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Daniel’s intercessory repentance had been heard and the Lord planned to release his people from their punishment of 70 years in Babylon. Babylon, like all of the other kingdoms that had gone before, fell to a conqueror. The night that the rulers of Babylon decided to use the cups taken from the temple of Solomon for their drunken spree, God’s hand appeared and wrote their destiny on the wall. That very night, the Babylonians fell to the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians. One of the Persian princes married a woman from the family of Abraham. She singlehandedly foiled a plot to have all of the family destroyed in captivity. Her name was Esther. Through her, God saved his people when the promise made to Abraham was hanging by a hair. Instead of the family being killed by hanging, those who had planned the massacre were hanged on the gallows they had built for the children of Abraham. One ruler of the Persians, Cyrus, came to power and decided to let the people return to Jerusalem and rebuild the city and begin paying taxes instead of being the captives in the kingdom. While there in the ghetto, the people had repented. They decided as a people to follow the rules of the Ten-Commandment covenant. They dedicated themselves to be like David, one of their former kings. They decided to worship God and him alone. In order to do this, they began meeting in house churches to study the laws of God and worship him. Wherever ten men of the family could be found a house church could be started. These were called synagogues. They needed copies of the laws of Moses and of the prophets and poets, so they established schools to train those who would meticulously copy the scrolls. These were called scribes. Each house church needed a rabbi, or a teacher, these were called Pharisees. They were also called the Holy Ones. So, with full intent to do right, many of the family left for the land of their fathers from which they had been exiled. When they arrived, led by Zerubbabel, whose name means “one born in Babylon,” they were greeted by the half-cousins that were the descendants of those who had been forced to marry and have children with the Assyrians. The family rebuffed them, refusing to embrace them because they had been disqualified from keeping the promise because they were not full-blooded children of Abraham. Ezra the priest volunteered to help reestablish the worship of God in the temple like God had instructed Moses to institute. He repented for the people in a most demonstrative way. He pulled his hair and beard out while throwing himself before the temple calling on God to forgive the wicked ways of the family. Nehemiah heard that things were not going well with the family. He asked permission to quit being the cupbearer of the Persian king and go to help them rebuild he walls of Jerusalem that the Babylonians had torn down years before. When Nehemiah arrived, he was opposed by the squatters who had taken over when the family was taken to Babylon. When he realized that the children were marrying outside the family, he dragged one man out and tore his hair out. Ezra and Nehemiah worked together to make the family safe from those who hated them and to get the worship of God going in the rebuilt temple. They aided and supported Zerubbabel, who was in charge of altar and temple reconstruction. This temple builder/restorer was also encouraged in his work by Haggai and Zechariah. But then the energy of the people began to flag. They began to lose their enthusiasm for the temple project. They began to give up.


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God sent the people one more prophet to encourage them. The people had stopped giving to the temple project. Through Malachi , God promised to reward the people financially if they would stick with the temple work and remain loyal. But they had already begun their old habits. They had failed. They were repeating the old behaviors that had gotten them tossed into Babylon in the first place. So, God fell silent for 400 years. Not one prophet did he send. Not one vision did he give. The heavens were silent during some of the toughest oppression the family had ever faced. The Medes and Persians fell prey to the Greeks under Alexander the Great. After Alexander’s young and untimely death, his kingdom, including the part which included the family of Abraham, was divided among his generals. The Greek rulers were horribly cruel to the family. They attempted to stamp out the family and crush the worship of the God of Abraham. Still no word from God no matter how they cried out. The Greeks were toppled by the Romans. The Romans ruled the family through governors and local kings. It was during this time that God kept his last promise to Abraham. Chart Four. It was in the time of the Roman Caesar Augustus that God chose a woman to bear the seed into the world that would bless the whole creation and rid it of death. The record of the coming of Jesus, the One, the seed of Abraham, is contained in the four Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In those four books is the record of God coming in person to his people. No longer through prophets, but personally, in flesh. He was born of a virgin so he could be death-free, a second Adam. The family did not accept him. They thought the One would be more interested in politics. So, the family, as they had always done, rejected the God who had chosen them and arranged the death of Jesus by crucifixion. When Jesus was approaching his death in another garden, he began to take on himself the curses of Adam. He earned the freedom of his creation by the sweat of his brow--great drops of blood falling onto the ground. He inherited the thorns that death caused the earth to deliver to man by wearing a crown of thorns. God who could not die, took on flesh that could die, so that he could give life to all men who were condemned to die. Like John the Baptist had said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” The innocent God died for the guilty creation so that the creation might be set free from death. He carried wood on his back going up the same hill that Isaac once climbed. This time, Jesus was to be the sacrifice with his head caught in the thorns. Since Jesus was God, he was pure life. When he was pinned to the cross, that wood became the Tree of Life. When the Devil Lucifer, the author of death and hate, opened his mouth to swallow Jesus, he unwittingly swallowed the fruit of the Tree of Life. Being upraised he became the doorway that the death angel passed over. When he did, he was defanged. The keys of the creation were handed to Jesus, the second Adam. The first Adam had been deceived into handing the creation over the Lucifer. The second Adam handed himself over to Lucifer to regain the keys of the creation.


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Jesus hooked Leviathan, the great monster of the deep of death. He pinned the great Behemoth to the ground with the thud of his cross pounding into the hole. He tricked the serpent fair and square. The Devil deceived Adam and Eve into eating the fruit of the portal that killed them. Jesus deceived the Devil into eating the fruit that drove death back into the abyss and shut the portal of the creation forever. The seed of the woman had crushed the head of the serpent once and for all. His blood–better than the blood of Abel--cried out from the ground for the whole creation. When Jesus was dying, he cried out, “It is finished!” The debt was paid. The promises to Abraham were finished. Having done what he came to do, he died in front of his mother who had suffered great sorrow in her childbearing as God had promised Eve. To make sure that Jesus was dead, one of the soldiers nearby in the darkness stabbed Jesus in the side. Water and blood poured out down his side and onto the ground. Saving water and saving blood. These two things were the raw material from which God fashioned the second Eve: the church which is made up of all of those who believe in the promises of Jesus like Abraham believed the promises of God. The third day he rose again from the dead. He went into hell and announced the doom of all who dwelt there and snatched the keys of hell from the Devil rendering him utterly powerless. Before he went to heaven to prepare a place for all believers, Jesus gave his closest students the right to guard the gate to the new creation, the new Garden of Eden. He gave them his power of attorney to include all believers and exclude all non-believers from the coming new age. He ascended into the heavens and took his seat in the middle of the Power of God. From there he shall return to judge all who have ever lived and drive death out completely. After Jesus returned to heaven, the Book of Acts records how the men (whom he empowered with the keys to the new creation) spread the news of the finished promises to Abraham and the new promises Jesus made to the whole creation. The Book of Acts is the historical record of the deeds of Peter and Paul announcing the good news of the new contract established by Jesus. The rest of the New Testament is composed of letters. Other people’s mail. Letters to churches that were built and founded by Peter and Paul. Letters to pastors and letters for general circulation. These letters, from Romans to Revelation, reveal who Jesus is, what Jesus has done and how his new covenant will bring life to all those who believe his promises Let’s now go back to Chart One to see about this new contract which Jesus made with the creation and all people. Please follow along on Chart One as we conclude Bible in an Hour. Please do not imagine that this will be plain review. The contents of this pass over Chart One will make the Bible crystal clear and put the last of the puzzle pieces in place. You are, right now, wherever you are, on the very edge of understanding the Bible. You have waited a long time to see the whole picture. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He put man and woman on it and in charge of it. At first it was free of death. But, being deceived by the serpent, they opened the portal of death into the creation. God promised the serpent that he would get his creation back. He would send one through a woman who would smash the head of the serpent although the serpent would strike his heel. The serpent went right to work ruining everything. Violence was everywhere.


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After God flooded the earth, it was repopulated. For some reason, God chose Abraham to be the one through whose family he would bring the One to smash the head of the devil and regain his creation. He made three promises to Abraham. He said, I am going to make you a great nation, I am going to give you the land upon which you are walking and I am going to bless the whole creation through one of your descendants. That descendant would be Jesus. Then Abraham set the stage for God to sign the contract of blood. God passed between the pieces of the animals that Abraham had slain and swore an oath, all alone, to keep the three promises to Abraham. Remember the sentence? The rest of the Bible is the story of one man’s family and how God kept his three promises to that one man. Because of the obstinacy and resistance of the family of Abraham it took almost 2,000 years to fulfill the last promise. This he did by coming in person. This he did by taking on flesh and, being pure life, entered his creation, which had been ruined by death. Jesus said, “The thief, the devil, comes not but to kill and steal and destroy. But I have come to destroy the works of the devil.” This God did by deceiving the serpent into eating of the Tree of Life, the cross of Jesus, his own son. But, as God had promised, the serpent would strike the heel of the seed of the woman. He struck him with spikes through both heels of both feet. Jesus died as the Lamb of God, the innocent for the guilty, and reclaimed the creation of God so that, as you see on the chart, there will one day be a death-free heaven and earth that shall exist through all eternity’s infinity. Things will be, one day, like God made them in the first place. On the night that Jesus was betrayed into the hands of those who would place the fruit of his body on the Tree of Life, Jesus made a new contract, a new covenant with the people of the earth and the creation itself. He was at the table with his students who had followed him for the three years of his teaching and death-reversing ministry. They were eating the Passover. The meal that remembered the night that God sent the death angel into Egypt to kill all of the firstborn so that the family of Abraham could be released from their slavery. Here, at the table, Jesus did something that changed the world. He took bread and blessed it and said, “Take, eat, this is my body.” He took the loaf, the round bread used at this meal for centuries, and tore it in half and passed some to his right and some to his left. Then, he took the cup ceremonially reserved for Elijah whose spirit would herald and precede the One from God, and said, “Take drink, this is my blood of new covenant (the new contract).” Jesus was passing between the pieces again. This time, not through the pieces of cut-up animals. This time, through the pieces of his own body soaked in his own blood. His feet in the pool of his own blood, body cut and broken, with both hands upraised, soon to be spiked in position on the tree. Now, in the middle of his own body and blood, Jesus passed between the pieces of his own body making a new contract with the whole creation. And he swears it alone, all alone, in the middle of the pieces of himself. “Take and eat,” he said, for the forgiveness of sins. “Take and drink, this blood is shed for you.”


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Just like the contract with Abraham, this one includes promises. “He who believes in me shall never die.” “He who the father places in my hand shall never be snatched out.” “Even if someone who believes in me should die, yet shall they live!” “I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again to receive you unto myself that where I am you may be also!” “I lay down my life a ransom for many.” All who hear this contractual promise can do nothing to earn it--nothing to deserve it. This is another patron contract: All because he wants to. He demands nothing; those who hear it can do nothing except do what Abraham did: believe the promises of God. And even that ability to believe the impossible comes from God as well. God, in person, passing between the pieces of his own body makes this ultra personal contract with the whole creation. Abraham was not disappointed and none who believe the promises of Jesus will ever be put to shame. Jesus swore on his own blood. With both hands upraised. These things shall happen. Oh, yes. These things shall come to pass. Paul wrote to the church in Galatia that those who believe the promises of Jesus are children of Abraham, the believer. Jesus was the end of the contract with Abraham and the beginning of the new contract with the creation and all humans who are a part of that creation. Those who believe Jesus are now, right now, part of the new creation because of believing God’s promises just as Abraham did. This is the new covenant that Jeremiah spoke about when he said that the day was coming when God would cut a new covenant with the creation. One which would remove the hard, dead, stony heart out of a person and replace it with a heart of flesh, alive and tender toward God. And all who hear and believe are heirs to that new contract sealed with the blood and body of Jesus, God himself. All who believe shall not be disappointed, just as Abraham was not disappointed. Just as Adam and Eve were not. Just as the serpent was not cheated when his head was crushed and God reclaimed his creation from death and decay. Those who fail to enter into the new creation will be the ones who refuse to enter. They will experience eternal death in the very face of their own invitation to salvation. When Jesus died, the giant veil in the temple, which kept all of the people except the high priest away from the Holy of Holies and personal contact with God, was torn from the top to the bottom. When Jesus’ body was torn so that he could pass between the pieces and make a new contract with his creation, the barrier to God was torn in two so that all humans may now approach God with boldness through the pieces of the bloody veil. And all believers can take great hope in this. If God went to so much trouble to keep his promise to the one, namely Abraham, what shall he do to keep his promises to the many? When God ran through the Garden when death was first invited, he cried out “Adam, Adam, where are you?” He found out. Because death entered the universe, man died on the inside. For centuries men and women have turned over every rock crying out, “God, God, where are you?” The answer comes from Jesus, the One, the child of Abraham. “Don’t be afraid. Look, I am with you even to the very end of this time. You are in this world and will have troubles. But cheer up! I have overcome the world!” With Jesus, in the new death-free creation, all believers will once again walk with God in the cool of the day. The hands which will one day embrace and wipe the tears from the eyes of all believers and the feet which shall be heard approaching the garden to greet his beloved people will bear the nail prints of the fangs of the serpent.


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This has been Bible in an Hour. I am Wade Butler. Now, go read it for yourself!

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