Wednesday, July 2, 2008, Part 2
"Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated – the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground" (Hebrews 11:36-38 NIV).
IDEA: The scenery and the characters changed during the 400 years between the Old and New Testaments.
PURPOSE: To help listeners have some background for reading the New Testament.
Have you ever gone to a play or an opera in which the first act ended in a kind of worrisome climax, then after the intermission, you come back for the second act and find that all of the scenery has changed and even the cast of characters is different? It's confusing, but you know that there is some relationship between the first and second acts.
I. When you leave the Old Testament and come to the New, the scenery has changed dramatically.
The Old Testament ends on a tragic note. The last part of the Old Testament, 70 years before it ends, the people are carried captive to Babylon. The Babylonians have destroyed the temple and taken away the sacred utensils. They have also destroyed the city of Jerusalem. They carried many of the people back to Babylon as captives.
This ends the act in which the people again and again had gone back to idolatry, took God and His promises for granted, and got what they deserved.
Some of the people are allowed to go back to their land by Cyrus, the Persian after the Persians had conquered the Babylonians. Under a layman named Nehemiah the people rebuilt the walls of the city of Jerusalem and under the priest Ezra they tried to rebuild their temple. It's a pathetic reproduction of the temple the Babylonians had destroyed.
The final voice we hear in the Old Testament is a prophet named Malachi. He is concerned about the spiritual life of the religious leaders and of the people. But he also anticipates that there would be a Messiah coming who would deliver his people from the enemy and bring them spiritual renewal.
II. In the New Testament, the second act opens with different scenery.
People are back in their country and a Roman official has rebuilt their temple, and it is glorious.
In Israel there are no idols. They're gone.
The religious leaders are passionate about their devotion to the religion.
In addition to the temple, there were synagogues where the Jews met to read the Law and to worship God. We did not see synagogues in the first act.
Halley describes the synagogues in these words:
“Synagogues arose in the days of the Captivity. The Temple destroyed and the nation scattered, there was need for places of instruction and worship wherever there were Jewish communities. After the return, synagogues were continued both in the homeland and in Jewish centers in other lands. All larger towns had one or more. In Jerusalem, even though the Temple was there, there were many synagogues. They were presided over by a board of elders or rulers. Each had copies of the books of Scripture, which were read regularly and publicly. Early Christian meetings and meeting places were modeled in part after the pattern of synagogues.”
III. We have to read the program closely to find out what happened, why this great change of scenery.
In the 400 years between the Old and New Testaments, the people lived under cruel domination.
The Greeks under Antiochus IV tried to annihilate them, to snuff out their religion. It was something like what Hitler tried to do to the Jews in the 20th century.
The Jews rebelled. It's a long and valued story, but under a young leader named Judas Maccabeus who led a rebellion against the Greeks, the people eventually won freedom to worship in their temple and to observe their religion.
This is an example of how people often value something only after it has been taken away from them.