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Historical Books Introduction (Part 2)

Joshua
JoshuaSteve Gregg

The historical books of the Old Testament cover the rise and fall of great empires in the region, from ancient Babylonia to Chaldean Babylonians. Throughout the course of history, Israel is often a small side issue, with few rare occasions where the narrative leans towards them. Interestingly, in the ancient world, nations would often view two nations at war as a battle between two deities, making religion and worship integral to their conflicts.

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Introduction to the Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Historical Books of the Old Testament Nebuchadnezzar Babylon Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar Cyrus the Great Cyrus the Great Cyrus the Great Cyrus the Great Nehemiah and Ezra Esther Esther Esther Esther Esther Esther Esther Esther's Husband Esther's Husband Now, that's pretty much the whole international scene around Israel during the whole period of the thousand years we're going to be looking at in historical books. There's also the religious environment and it's certainly equally important because Israel was not just a nation of a political sort with a political history but it's a nation whose whole origins and significance rested on its relationship with Yahweh who was a jealous God and he had a covenant with Israel like a husband has with a wife. That's how he viewed it at Mount Sinai.
When Yahweh brought them out of Egypt, he made a covenant with them that he would be faithful to them if they be faithful to him. This was in perpetuity. So this is like a wedding covenant and God afterward, the prophets would look back at that as the time when God married Israel.
She was seen as his wife and just like a husband wants his wife to be sexually faithful to him, God wanted Israel to be faithful in terms of worshipping him alone. And when they didn't worship him alone, when they worshipped other gods, he described that as his wife committing adultery. Like a man would view a woman who he's married to committing adultery with other men, God viewed Israel's worshipping of idols to be like adultery.
So we enter the story in the book of Joshua shortly after God has made this covenant with Israel, this exclusive covenant like marriage. He made it 40 years before the beginning of Joshua and Israel is at this time willing to obey, willing to be faithful. They've seen their parents die in the wilderness because they weren't faithful and so they did follow Joshua faithfully enough in his lifetime.
But after his death, many in Israel began to drift away from their faithfulness to God and to become curious and attracted to some of the pagan religions around them. Most of which are mentioned from time to time in the Bible because Israel spent more of their history disobedient than obedient, I think we could say. We don't know exactly how much time in the book of Judges they were disobedient.
We know how long they were obedient because they were obedient during the tenure of a judge. They served God while the judge lived until he died. That was usually 40 years or 80 years.
But then they would go into disobedience and we're never told how long that was. We're never told how long they were disobedient before the next judge came along. But we do know that once the monarchy began, they were disobedient almost all the time.
There are very few revivals of their faithfulness to Yahweh. Only a very few kings. When the kingdom split into two, the northern kingdom had 19 kings in a row.
None of them were good.
Every one of Israel, the northern kingdom's kings, worshipped idols and sponsored idolatry. So the northern kingdom was continuously adulterous for hundreds of years.
And then the southern kingdom had 20 kings. But almost all of them were bad. Judah's history was punctuated by an occasional good king.
Uzziah was a good king. Hezekiah was a good king. Josiah was a good king.
There were very few others.
But apart from maybe a handful of Judah's kings, the other ones were all just as bad as the ones up north. So we find most of Israel's time is spent in rebellion against God.
And eventually they come under judgment from God. But it's because of these religions around them. Now see, if America collapses, most historians will say it's because our economy made bad economic decisions.
Or our military became too weak from being spread out with too many military police forces in other countries where we shouldn't have been. Or spread our resources too thin. This is how historians will probably look back on the fall of America.
Bad policies economically, bad military policies, immigration policies. I'm sure that when America goes down, there will be a lot of talk about what made it happen. And it won't probably be the right answers.
The right answer will of course be that America has turned from God. Now, if we didn't have the Bible, that might also be the way Israel's history would be remembered. It's just another country that went down.
Part of it went down to Assyria, part of it went down to Babylon.
So did a lot of other countries. They were militarily weak or they were economically divided or whatever.
If we didn't have the Bible's interpretation of things, Israel's history and its demise would be interpreted the same as any secular countries would. But that's the difference. Israel was not a secular country.
They were a country whose whole history existed because of God.
And their relationship with God was absolutely defining of their existence. And it was because they turned from God, that judgment came upon them and they were destroyed.
So that's why we need to not only look at the political history around them, but the religious influences that eventually they succumbed to and brought an end to their existence. So let's talk a little bit about the religious scene at the time. Basically, you probably know what monotheism is and what polytheism is.
Monotheism is belief in one God. Israel was pretty much the only country in the world that we know of that was monotheistic. They had one God named Yahweh.
We usually think of the option of that being polytheism. We think of maybe the Greek gods on Mount Olympus and the Roman gods, Zeus and Hermes and all those different gods. We think of that as polytheism.
There's something else that's between monotheism and polytheism. It's called henotheism. H-E-N-O-theism.
H-E-N-O-T-H-E-I-S-M Henotheism is sort of a mix of monotheism and polytheism. How can you mix those two? There's either one or there's not one. In the ancient world, at least in Israel's time, the view of most cultures was that there are many gods, but each nation has only one.
There were national gods. So, practically speaking, they were like monotheists. The Philistines worshipped Dagon.
The Moabites worshipped Chimash and so forth.
So, they each had their national god, but they acknowledged that the other gods of the other nations were real gods too. So, they were really polytheistic in their theology, but kind of monotheistic in their practice.
That's how all nations pretty much were. Now, Israel was different from that in that they were monotheistic in theology. Polytheistic in practice, because they really worshipped other gods that they didn't really believe in, I think.
But the point is, each nation around Israel had its national deity. And Israel did. It had Yahweh.
Now, most of the nations around Israel believed in Yahweh. They just didn't worship Yahweh, because they had their own national deity to worship. They believed that Yahweh was Israel's national deity and that he was a real god.
But so was Chimash, and so was Baal, and so was Molech, and so was Dagon. They considered that all these were real gods. It's just that they believed that the Jews were supposed to worship Yahweh, and other nations were supposed to worship other nations.
I think Jeremiah is the one who at some point is puzzled over Israel worshipping other gods, and says, search and inquire. It might have been Isaiah. I forget the passage exactly.
But he says, has there ever been another nation that forsook its gods and adopted the gods of another nation, like Israel has done? And the answer is apparently no. None of the nations around them ever worshipped Yahweh or the other gods of the nations around them. They just worshipped their own god.
Israel, the only nation that had the real god, couldn't stay with him. They wanted to borrow religions from other nations around them. And the irony is that they're the only ones whose god was actually real.
And he proved it by judging them for that. But it was often the case, in fact almost always the case, that in a war between two nations, the people saw it really as a war between two deities. If Israel was at war against the Moabites, it was Yahweh against Chemosh.
Or if it was against Babylon, it was Bel, the god of Babylon. That was defeating Yahweh. And this was problematic, of course, because there were times when God actually wanted Israel to lose because he was judging them.
And yet he knew that the nations around would interpret it like he was weak because everyone knew Yahweh was Israel's god. And if he allowed an outside nation to defeat Israel, he knew it would be interpreted by everyone, oh, their god was stronger than Yahweh. But he took his chances anyway.
In the book of Isaiah, he says to Israel, my name is blasphemy among the heathen because of you. And what he means is, because you're forcing me to judge you, people are going to misunderstand and think I'm weaker than their gods. I'm going to do it anyway.
I'm going to just take the hit. I'm going to take the hit on my reputation because I have to judge you. And so this is how things were understood in those days.
Now, Israel may have been attracted to the gods of the pagans partly because there were times when the pagans seemed to be prospering or powerful. And they felt like, oh, this means their god is better than our god. And it seems strange to us.
As you read through the book of Judges or the book of Kings, you think, how can they keep making these same mistakes? I mean, it almost seems unreal. How can it be that their ancestors made this mistake every generation and they make the same mistake? Don't they learn anything from history? And apparently they don't. But before we're too hard on them, realize how hard it is for you to pass your faith on to your children and for them to really own it.
It's easy to teach your children what you believe. It's not easy to impart it to them. You have an experience with God.
You've been born again. There's a reality of God that's convincing to you. You can tell your children about it.
But if they don't have that experience too, it's just unreal to them. And the next generation is even more unreal to them unless God sends a revival in their time. So, I mean, it's often the case that God moves in a mighty way in a certain generation, and there's a large number of people who really say, wow, God is real, and they get excited about God.
We had a revival like that back in the 60s and 70s, the Jesus movement, and a whole bunch of people got harvested into the kingdom of God and had dynamic experiences with Christ, and they'll never have any doubts that God is real. The baby boomers, of which many of us are them, most of us are them, and many of us have children who we thought, we thought they'd believe like we did. We taught them how.
We taught them the truth. We even modeled it for them as best we could. But then we look and say, how come this isn't real to them? Every generation has to have their own connection with God, and a generation whose parents were Christian has an advantage in that they know from an early age who they have to connect with.
I always told my children, you know, I can and I must, I'm responsible to make you know what the truth is, but I can't make you care about it. I can only make you know about it. I can't make you care.
I wish I could. I wish I could just get inside your heart and engineer something there so that you care about it like I do. But that's just, we know from experience that's not always the case.
Some of you have children who are serving God. God bless you. More power to you.
But I think a lot of us, I see the heads nod like there's a lot of people who understand what I'm talking about. So we shouldn't be too surprised when the Israelites, you know, one generation sees a great deliverance from God through one of the judges or something like that, or through Josiah's revival or reforms or whatever. And then the next generation, they don't care anything about it.
To them, God's just something they've heard about. And they're not so sure they like. To him, I mean, they're like kids who say, well, why is Jesus so special? I mean, there's a bunch of Hindus over there.
They seem to be good people too. What about these Buddhists? They're good folks. Don't they say a lot of the same things we Christians say? And the kids, they think, well, why do we have to be Christians when there's these other religions out here and these people are good people too? How do we know we're right? I'm sure the Israelites had that same problem with their kids, the generation that didn't see the deliverance from God.
They just heard about it. And when you got even another generation beyond that, it's just getting to be a faint, you know, story they've heard from their grandparents. But they're seeing other guys say, well, maybe.
And you know what? There's a lot easier for the flesh to accept the religions of the pagans around than to accept the religion of Yahweh. Because Yahweh demanded holiness of life, and it kind of goes against human nature to live a holy life. It's really hard to live a holy life.
But the nations around them, their worship services were orgies, drunken orgies. They didn't have any morality. They were bloodthirsty, warlike nations that were driven by sex and by cravings of the flesh.
I mean, their deities were custom made to approve and to endorse the kind of behavior that the most carnal side of man wants to live. So, you know, these kids who, to them, Yahweh was just a rumor to them, and not a very fun one either, you know. But the nations around them, the people they're seeing around them, they're having orgies.
They're gods like that. That sounds like an attractive thing. Probably more to men than to women.
But there were other aspects, the drunkenness and the other stuff that really drew people off. And then they also had beliefs. See, most of the gods of the heathen were fertility deities.
And it was an agrarian society. It was really important to have a lot of kids to help you on the farm, and it was really important to have crops grow because your whole prosperity was attached to the land and its productivity. And almost all of the gods of the heathen were fertility gods.
And so doing these rites, sacrificing a baby to Moloch, that was like to enhance your fertility. It seems like it's going the opposite direction in that case, but that's what they thought. And they thought that would give you good crops and things like that.
So if Israel was having a bad year agriculturally, and the Ammonites had good crops, that made the average Israelite look and say, maybe their god is, maybe it's working out for them better to worship that god than us worshiping Yahweh. And there are expressions of that sentiment in places like Psalm 73, or Malachi chapter 3, or a few other places in the scripture, in some of the prophets and the Psalms, where the expression is given to like, what profit is it to us to worship Yahweh? Things are going badly for us. We don't have much money, our crops are failing, and here we're being faithful to Yahweh, maybe we should worship other gods.
Maybe it's not profitable to worship Yahweh. This is not something the prophets advocated, or the Psalms, but it's things they were hearing. Malachi rebuked that very attitude.
In Psalm 73, the Psalmist said, I almost succumbed to that idea. That's that Psalm where it says, truly God is good to Israel. It says, as for my feet were almost gone, my steps had almost slipped.
If you read on further in that Psalm, it says, because I beheld that the wicked were prospering, and I'm a good guy, and I'm not prospering. I think, you know, what good is it to serve God? And so, sometimes other religions, you know, if people were worshiping Yahweh faithfully, and things weren't going well for them, they thought, well, maybe one of these other gods will do better for me. And so people were drawn after the wrong gods.
And here's the gods that were around them, Dagon. Now the Philistines were never, in the early days, driven out of the land. In the days of Joshua, Joshua and the Israelites conquered, essentially, all the land of Canaan.
They didn't wipe out all the individual cities. Some cities still remained to defy them. Even Jerusalem, for a while, did, until David's time.
But they none the less secured the borders. But they never secured the coastal strip on the Mediterranean, which was controlled by five Philistine cities. The Philistines were very warlike, strong people.
They had a number of giants among them, like Samson. The Anakim, who were also giants, also were living in one of the Philistine cities. They were trouble.
And their religion was the worship of Dagon. Now, Dagon, scholars once thought the name meant fish god. When I was growing up, the commentaries were saying that Dagon was a god who had a body like a man and a head of a fish.
Because the word Dagon in Hebrew, it looked like it was connected to the word for fish. Scholars are not so sure that that's its meaning now. And I don't think they've found any statues of a fish god.
So, there are some doubts as to whether Dagon was really a fish god or not. In any case, he was the god of the Philistines. They think now he might have been a grain god, like most of the gods around.
He was worshipped throughout the Fertile Crescent, not just by the Philistines, but throughout the Middle East there. And in the period of the historical books, Dagon was the god of the Philistines primarily. Samson destroyed the temple of Dagon when he died.
When he pulled down the pillars of that temple, it was the temple of Dagon. And there were like 3,000 of the worshippers of Dagon there that died with Samson on that occasion. But Samson did not rid Israel of the Philistines.
The Philistines were oppressive people, gave Israel a lot of trouble until, really, David defeated them. David's the one who got rid of them, for the most part, brought them into subjection to Israel. At one point, before David's time, the Ark of the Covenant was captured by the Philistines and put in the temple of Dagon.
It's kind of a funny story, in a way, in 1 Samuel, that they put the Ark, it was like a trophy of battle against Israel. The Philistines captured the Ark, they put it in the temple of Dagon, and the next day, the statue of Dagon had fallen down on its face prostrate... prostate...prostrate! At my age, prostrate's more on my mind. But the statue had fallen prostrate on its face before the Ark of the Covenant.
And so they set it back up again. And it went away again. And the next day, it came back, it was fallen down again, and its head and its hands were cut off.
Who did that is never explained. But they decided that the Ark was not... that was not a good place for the Ark. Not good for Dagon to have Yahweh in his presence.
So eventually, they took the Ark from city to city, and every place it went, the bubonic plague and rats infested the place, so they finally sent it back to the Israelites. And so, we're going to see some Dagon stories in the Bible. Baal, of course, is a very common term in the Old Testament.
Worshiping Baal... Actually, the term Baal sometimes is in the plural, Baals. Baal could have been a more or less generic term for any number of pagan gods, though there seems to be one specific deity called Baal. The word Baal means master or lord or husband.
And so obviously, any nation might refer to their god as their Baal. But there is a specific Baal that seems to be the god of the Canaanites. He's depicted as the son of El, who is the nebulous supreme deity.
So, there's kind of a supreme deity in their thinking named El, but no one has any contact with him or worships him, but Baal is the one god that relates with the Canaanite people as their deity. Baal is a generic identification of various regional nature deities responsible for agriculture and the fertility of livestock. In some contexts, he is said to be the son of Dagon.
Worship of Baal involved immoral sexual rights. As has been documented by archaeological discoveries quite a bit, they have found much evidence of the orgies and so forth that were part of Baal worship as well as the worship of most of these other gods. Then you have a feminine named Asherah or Ashtoreth.
Now, scholars are not in agreement as to whether Asherah and Ashtoreth are the same or two different goddesses. Both of them in some archaeological finds are associated with Baal as his consort. So, a lot of the pagans saw Baal as a god who had a female consort who is a goddess.
Asherah and Ashtoreth are both depicted this way. It seems like most scholars think that they're not the same goddess, but some still think they are. Ashtoreth is called the goddess of the Sidonians.
Sidon was up north of Israel in what we call Phoenicia. Isn't that Lebanon today, I think? They worshipped Ashtoreth. It says in 1 Kings 11.5, It is not clear whether Asherah and Ashtoreth are identified or regarded as two separate goddesses, though scholars incline toward the latter view.
Both are regarded as the consorts of Baal. While Asherah poles were erected next to the altars of Baal in Judges 6.25, these poles were carved of wood and described as obscene in 1 Kings 15.13. Not to be too graphic, but Asherah poles were, at least from what I've read, actual carved images of male sex organs. These pagan gods were all very sexually oriented.
Of course, they're fertility deities. Obviously, sex is associated with fertility. Confused pagans mix these things up a lot.
But a lot of the statues and so forth have been found are very sexually graphic. They're frequently mentioned in the same context with prostitution and sodomy in the Bible. The name Ashtoreth is derived from Astarte, the Phoenician goddess of love and of fertility and war.
She is also identified with Venus, Aphrodite, and Diana in the classical world. Usually, this goddess is depicted by statuettes as a nude woman. Her worship involved lewd sexual cult rituals.
Now, Molech, who's also in the Bible called Milcom, is the abomination of the Ammonites, according to 1 Kings 11.5. The Ammonites were cousins to Israelites of sorts. Ammon and Moab were the two sons of Lot. And Lot was, of course, the nephew of Abraham.
So there's some family connection if you go back far enough, all the way back to Terah, really, is where you find the connection. But in general, the Ammonites and the Moabites were considered to be brother nations to Israel of sorts. God wouldn't let Israel invade them and conquer them when they came out of Egypt because of the relationship they had.
But they were worshippers of Ammon, the Ammonites were. He was a fire god commonly worshipped throughout the ancient Near East and North Africa by Canaanites and Philistines, Arameans, and Semitic peoples, and later Phoenicians. Represented as a human figure with the head of a bull.
It is thought that a bronze statue had a fire built within it, a statue of Molech, to turn it red hot. The practice of sacrificing children in the arms of the statue, it was called in scripture, causing one's son or daughter to pass through the fire. You'll find that expression a lot in the historical books, because some Israelites worshipped Molech and they passed their children through the fire, which means they burned them alive to this demon god.
Even Manasseh, the king of Jerusalem, did the same thing. He burned his son to Molech. Then Chemosh, I mentioned earlier, he's the abomination of the Moabites in 1 Kings 11.
Chemosh was a god associated with the Semitic mother goddess Ashtar. Like Molech, the worship of Chemosh involved the sacrifice of children, based upon Judges 11, 12, and 24. Some scholars believe Chemosh is the same god as Molech.
Obviously, the chief god of the Moabites and the chief god of the Ammonites might be confused since those two nations were very closely associated and related to each other. Though it is argued contrary by some. So, these are the main gods and goddesses that you're going to hear about as we read through these books.
Almost done. This last part, I want to say, is just my own observation. I've never heard anyone make these observations, but I've been unable to avoid making them myself as I've studied the Bible.
It does seem that as you read through the history of Israel, there is some measure of correspondence with the history of the Church. In certain ways. For example, Israel was founded by Moses.
Moses is a type of Christ. Of course, there are other types of Christ. Joshua himself is a type of Christ, too.
Nonetheless, Moses is the most important founding figure in Israel's history, just as Christ is in ours. Moses gave the law. Jesus laid down the kingdom of God and its principles.
All Israel, forever after Moses, was to follow Moses' lead in this, following the law of Moses. All Christians were to follow Christ's authority and his teaching. The people speaking to the man who was born blind, the chief priest said, you are his disciples, meaning Jesus.
We are Moses' disciples. Moses was to the Jews what Christ is to the Christians, really. The books of Moses, the Pentateuch, correspond in principle to the time when Jesus was here.
When Moses was here governing Israel directly, it's like when Jesus was here founding and governing the early Church. But then Joshua, the book of Joshua, is about the time of his leadership. After Moses was no longer there, Joshua took over the lead.
He was directly appointed by Moses, by the laying on of hands, to be his successor. Jesus directly appointed the apostles. Joshua sort of corresponds with the time of the apostles.
Basically, Moses had the commission and Joshua fulfilled the commission of taking the armies of Israel to conquer the land. The Israelites had the commission to go take the gospel of the world and the apostles did it. Jesus founded things and the apostles took his message out and made the conquests of the whole Mediterranean world to become a place where Christianity had a presence and eventually dominated.
The period of Moses is like the period of Christ himself on earth. The period of Joshua is a lot like the period of the apostles because Joshua is directly appointed to be the successor to Moses, but not with all the authority Moses had. In Numbers, it says that God told Moses to lay his hands on Joshua and put some of the authority that Moses had on him.
The apostles don't really take the place of lordship that Jesus had, but they certainly had more authority than anyone since then has had in the church. They set norms for the church too and they distributed, as it were, the inheritance to the church that Christ had left for us. Joshua actually had some of the same kind of miracles happen through him that Moses did.
The apostles also had the miracles of Jesus continue. Now, I realize there's been miracles since then, but there have been no one since the apostles who've done really quite as many miracles as they did, it would appear. A few people, maybe.
There might be a few people out there in Africa and China and stuff who've seen as many miracles, but in general you don't find the leadership of the church worldwide doing as many miracles as the leadership of the church did during the time of the apostles. Joshua's miracles were like those of Moses. The apostles' miracles were like those of Christ and they were the successors to Christ.
But then you have the period of the judges, which is rather an interesting time. I've been fascinated with the period of the judges because it represents the way God left things when Joshua was no longer there. It's interesting that Moses appointed Joshua to be his successor, but Joshua appointed no one to be his.
When Joshua is gone, there's a vacuum. There's no leadership, no official leadership. How were the people supposed to be governed? It says in Joshua, there was no king in Israel in those days and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
That sounds like a bad thing. Unless, of course, they're governed by the law of God, then it's not a bad thing. In other words, Israel was left with God's law to follow and each person was independent.
There was no central government. There was no institutionalization. God would raise up leaders periodically, just charismatic guys who would lead Israel to a revival and to a victory and then serve them in his life.
Then he'd die and there'd be no successor to the guy. It's like they didn't have any succession. It was just when God needed a man, he raised up somebody.
He gifted somebody. There was this charismatic leader who'd come up. He'd do great things for the church and then he'd die and there was no one there to replace him until he was needed again.
What's interesting is almost all people think that the period of judges was really a bad deal. But actually, the period of judges is what God set up. It's the people that changed it.
The people didn't want to have that arrangement. They said, give us a king like all the nations have and the thing displeased Samuel and it displeased God that they wanted a king. God seemed to like it the way it was.
Why? Because he was their king. Everyone entered to God directly. Some didn't do so very well, as the book of Judges shows.
But God still wanted people not to be governed by a human figure. After Joshua was gone, there was no human figures that God appointed to rule the nation. They were supposed to obey God.
There was a large degree of personal independence under God and personal accountability to God. But no institutionalization. But then the monarchy comes, which God didn't like, and that's kind of what happened to the church in the 4th century.
The church got institutionalized. Even before that, it started to go that way, where they started having church officers that were appointed for political reasons and they were succeeded by some kind of... Each church constitution would have some manner of succession. When these elders died, then these ones take their place and so forth.
That's how denominations do it. That's how the Roman Catholic Church did it. Basically, what I call an institutional church is one that's organized in such a way that its leadership is succeeded automatically.
What happened, of course, when you have the monarchy is it was no longer that Israel was led by people gifted by God, but people who were just the successors of the previous guy. They might be good people or bad people, and they were usually bad people. Same thing with the church in the institutional period.
The splitting of the nation in Rehoboam sort of reminds me of the Reformation, although it didn't bring about really a solution to the problem either because both were institutionalized. Protestant churches and Catholic churches are institutionalized. It's like the monarchy.
Up through the monarchy, we see some parallels to what's happened in the church. Then you've got the Babylonian captivity. I don't know what that corresponds to, or the return.
Maybe that's something that's yet future. Maybe there's a great falling away coming and a restoration. I'm not sure.
I couldn't help but notice those similarities as we go through the Old Testament history, how there are parallels to the way the church history has gone. It's surprising to me that I've never noticed that in any books on the subject. As I reflect on it, I thought, everyone seems to think the monarchy was a good thing because then people weren't just doing what was right in their own eyes.
The problem is when you've got a monarch, people have to do what's right in a king's eyes, and he might be bad. It's much better to have God as your king, and then you're accountable. You do what's right in your own eyes, and you may please God or not, but at least you're answerable to God.
When you've got a king who's a tyrant, like Ahab and his wife Jezebel, you can't serve Yahweh because they'll kill you. There's no freedom to serve God once it's institutionalized. We're going to see some lessons as we go through the historical books in these different periods that will, I think, have quite natural parallels to things that apply to the church, of which we're a part, of course.
We'll see that as we go through these books. Tomorrow we're going to have an introduction to Joshua, then we'll actually get into Joshua eventually here. But in the meantime, we're going to have to stop there.

Series by Steve Gregg

Esther
Esther
In this two-part series, Steve Gregg teaches through the book of Esther, discussing its historical significance and the story of Queen Esther's braver
Creation and Evolution
Creation and Evolution
In the series "Creation and Evolution" by Steve Gregg, the evidence against the theory of evolution is examined, questioning the scientific foundation
1 Samuel
1 Samuel
In this 15-part series, Steve Gregg teaches verse by verse through the biblical book of 1 Samuel, examining the story of David's journey to becoming k
Gospel of Mark
Gospel of Mark
Steve Gregg teaches verse by verse through the Gospel of Mark. The Narrow Path is the radio and internet ministry of Steve Gregg, a servant Bible tea
Philemon
Philemon
Steve Gregg teaches a verse-by-verse study of the book of Philemon, examining the historical context and themes, and drawing insights from Paul's pray
Individual Topics
Individual Topics
This is a series of over 100 lectures by Steve Gregg on various topics, including idolatry, friendships, truth, persecution, astrology, Bible study,
God's Sovereignty and Man's Salvation
God's Sovereignty and Man's Salvation
Steve Gregg explores the theological concepts of God's sovereignty and man's salvation, discussing topics such as unconditional election, limited aton
Amos
Amos
In this two-part series, Steve Gregg provides verse-by-verse teachings on the book of Amos, discussing themes such as impending punishment for Israel'
Cultivating Christian Character
Cultivating Christian Character
Steve Gregg's lecture series focuses on cultivating holiness and Christian character, emphasizing the need to have God's character and to walk in the
The Jewish Roots Movement
The Jewish Roots Movement
"The Jewish Roots Movement" by Steve Gregg is a six-part series that explores Paul's perspective on Torah observance, the distinction between Jewish a
More Series by Steve Gregg

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