North American Bible Study Meeting, 2006The Work of Salvation Revealed through the History of Israel December 27th, 2006 Afternoon LectureDwell in this land, and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and your descendants I give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father. And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; because Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.  Genesis 26:3-5God Spoke through IsraelGod, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.  Hebrews 1:1-3 Previously, we examined the Bible to see what God’s plan was before He carried out the work of creation—indeed before eternity began—and what His purpose was in carrying out this work. We also took a look at how and in which direction the history of mankind unfolded once Adam had disobeyed God and eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As a result of Adam’s action, the nation by the name of Israel which was planned out after the creation and unfolded within the course of history, and the words of the Bible were recorded through the people of this nation. Also, as I said before, they had the role of presenting to the world the creator God, “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” I also pointed out that the epistles in the Bible all appear to have a different starting point, but regardless of where they began, they all arrive at the same place. They all meet at the eternal blood of the covenant, the blood that Jesus shed on the cross.The writer of the letter to the Hebrews was well-familiar with the Old Testament, acknowledged the Old Testament and the history of the law, and wrote this letter to those who had preserved this history to explain to them what Jesus Christ, who had been crucified, had risen from the dead, and had ascended into heaven, was to them. The letter to the Ephesians presents the history of the church through which the abundance of God is proclaimed to the Gentiles, and in which the Gentiles are key. The letter to the Hebrews, however, is written with the assumption that the recipients were well-familiar with the Scriptures. It is written as though addressed those who take it for granted that the history recorded in the Scriptures is their own history and that of their ancestors. This is why it begins with the words, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets.” This letter was written for the Jewish people through whom the Scriptures were recorded and those who were members of the church having accepted and agreed with these words and believed in Jesus Christ. That is definitely not to say that we can ignore these words since we are Gentiles.In the letter to the Colossians it says, “this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (1:27). Here, after “Christ” there is the condition, “in you.” Also, in Ephesians chapter 3 it says, “to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (verse 10). Yet, without reading the Old Testament, they could not possibly know, how “the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man” (Titus 3:4) appeared in their lives. It is as it says in Hebrews chapter 1, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets.”When it comes to seeking out and coming to realize the truth in the words of the gospel, the words of the Bible that give us assurance of salvation, it is definitely not a matter of applying some formula as you might when solving a math problem. Just as a child will be born naturally within the relationship between a man and a woman, God’s law of life brings a person’s heart to turn back and stand before God without his even realizing, it as he listens to the word of God and the events that occurred in the course of the history that God caused to unfold. Such is the power of God’s word and the power of the history of Israel.Yet sadly, many biblical scholars in this world and many churches that teach the Bible do not consider the history of Israel to be of particular importance. They do not take much interest in this matter except for the fact that Jesus was born in Israel. In this way, they think of the accounts in the Bible as “the story of Joseph” or “the story of Moses” as though they are fairy tales or stories of once upon a time.The Bible says, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets.” In other words, God spoke to the forefathers of Israel, so we need to take a close look at the Old Testament to see precisely how God spoke. After all, Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me” (John 5:39). Before the New Testament was recorded, Jesus came to this earth and said that all the Scriptures were recorded to testify of Him. This is why we need to know the long account that is recorded through the Old Testament in order to know more deeply about Jesus Christ and God’s love and compassion for man. We must not just go in search of an answer without first knowing anything at all about this.As you study the Bible, there will be times when you think, “This content seems to come up very often,” or, “I’ve heard this somewhere before.” Yet, God has said of the Bible, “And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God” (Deuteronomy 17:19), so we need to read again and again these words that we have beside us and read every day. In the law that God gave to the Israelites, He told them they were to eat animals with cloven hooves and that chew the cud (see Leviticus 11:3). He established laws such as this to tell us that we need to distinguish His word clearly and think about it constantly. If you chew over and examine carefully even the passages you think you have heard before and read many times, you will find that little by little you are able to delved deeper into their meaning.There is a great difference between the Bible and the superficial books that people write. There are limits to the spheres of human thought, but the word of God exceeds all those spheres. This is because these are the words of the One who dwells in eternity. As a result, the more time passes, the more we become aware of the depths of His words.God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.  Hebrews 1:1-2When it says “these last days” here, it is referring to the end of the Old Testament in which the law was completed, and the point at which the New Testament times began. This passage is talking the Creator who was with God the Father, and then appeared to man as God the Son.Who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person.  Hebrews 1:3The invisible God, the God who is invisible to our eyes, appeared in the flesh. God the Son, who was in the very form of God was born through the body of a woman in the land of Bethlehem.Upholding all things by the word of His power.  Hebrews 1:3We live our lives not giving a thought to the kind of power that keeps our feet on the ground. Yet the Bible says that God upholds all things by the word of His power. People use scientific terms like “gravity” to explain this fact, and do not think of it as being anything particularly precious. Yet, even before scientists gave gravity this name and presented it to the world, the Bible said that it is by the power of God the Creator of the heavens and the earth and God the Son who once walked this earth that all things in this world are upheld.When He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.  Hebrews 1:3 Then it says that He provided purification for our sins. It says, “He had by Himself purged our sins.” He took away sin by Himself. This emphasizes the suffering of dealing with sin. Then it says here that once Jesus had completed this work, He rose from the dead, and now He is seated at the right hand of God.Within these words that God spoke through the prophets in time past at various times and in various ways, there lies hidden what was originally in God’s heart: the predestination of the church which was originally in God’s heart, the aim that God had in mind as He carried out the creation of the heavens and the earth, what Jesus was referring to when He said, “from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8). There are times when we see with new eyes things that are hidden away in the accounts we think we know and have heard many times before. This is because the New Testament is opened to us, and God grants to the church the eyes to be able to see these things. Yet, without the history of the Jews, the plan for the church set out in the Old Testament could not be revealed to us. Such is the way in which the Bible is written. This is because man sinned.Bearing in mind that it says here in the letter to the Hebrews that God upholds all things by the word of His power, let’s turn back to Genesis where it says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (1:1). The first thing God created was the heavens. This is not the heavens that we look up to and say, “It’s cloudy today,” or “The sky’s clear today.” Through the Bible, we can see clearly that the things pertaining to God were created first.You will be able to understand this if you read Ezekiel chapter 28 and Isaiah chapter 14. Also, in the book of Psalms we come across verses that say, “the city of the great King” (48:2), “the Lord is over many waters” (29:3), and, “Praise Him, you heavens of heavens” (148:4). Through passages such as these, we need to see that the creation related to the earth on which we walk begins with the words, “The earth was without form, and void” (Genesis 1:2). Otherwise we cannot understand the content of passages that follow after this, such as that about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is because we always begin by asking why God created the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.Before God created this heaven and earth, He went about the task of dividing the light and the darkness. This came about when an angel who was up there on high rebelled against God. This is the secret of the first day of the creation in Genesis chapter 1. When the creation of this earth was completed in this way, God set the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil on this earth. Through the Bible, we can see that we cannot help but justify God making the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There is no way that we can deny this.God said to Adam, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Even though God had given this command, Eve picked some fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and ate it, and then she gave some to her husband, Adam, as well, and he also ate it. The problem was that Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.By what process did Eve come to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? The devil took on the image of a serpent and approached Eve and said, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” At that time, all Eve needed to say was, “I don’t know,” since God had not spoken to Eve about the tree of knowledg

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