Checkpoint #3 (Final Checkpoint)

Week 7
Written By 3Crosses Church

Kingdom Project - CheckPoint #3

At this point, you should have been able to read one Old Testament book in its entirety. Take this time to schedule your presentations for NEXT WEEK (perhaps based on which book everyone has chosen and their order in the Hebrew Bible).

Next week, we officially arrive at the New Testament, each person in your group will be encouraged to briefly share their findings based on the following 5 questions. 

  1. How did the book contribute to the Kingdom of God story (People, Place, Rule)?

  2. What excited/challenged you the most as you were reading the book?

  3. In what ways did you feel like the book was pointing to Jesus?

  4. What are some of the ways the book might speak into the members of your group? 

  5. What questions do you still have about the book?

Intertestamental Period (Optional)

This was the dream. Now we will tell the king its interpretation. You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory,  and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all—you are the head of gold.  Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. - Daniel 2:36–40

At the conclusion of the Hebrew Bible, Israel has been swept into exile by the hand of king Nebuchadnezzer and the Babylonian empire (head of gold). 70 years later, n Ezra and Nehemiah tell us that Israel was set free by king Darius and the Medo-Persian empire who took over the Babylonians (chest and arms of silver). It is at this point in history that the Bible goes silent about any the 3rd kingdom of bronze and 4th kingdom of iron and clay that would overtake them all. All of a sudden, without any background information, we open the New Testament and are told that the Roman Empire is in charge and the community of God’s people have been severely divided into different sects (i.e. Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes). In the blink of an eye a totally different culture has emerged.

If you are interested, let’s take a moment to explore what happened in the 400 years of silence between the Chronicler (or his contemporary the prophet Malachi) and the gospel of Matthew. In order to do this, we will look at some extra-biblical resources that were not included in the inspired canon of the Hebrew Bible, but are still considered to be reliable sources of history (the anonymous book of the Maccabees and the writings of the historian Josephus). When we look at this 400 year gap, we see that even in these silent years, God was orchestrating events in a way that prepared for the spread of the gospel of the kingdom!

400 YEARS OF SILENCE - THE PRIESTHOOD

Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord. - Haggai 2:4.

The temple is the kingdom location where all 3 of our themes merge. It is the place where God dwells, the throne over which God rules, and God’s people surround it, starting with the high priest. That is why one of the best ways to trace the 400 years of silence is by following the history of the temple and its leadership. The 400 years start with Joshua, the high priest who served in Israel after the exile. 

And the angel of the Lord solemnly assured Joshua, “Thus says the Lord of hosts: If you will walk in my ways and keep my charge, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men who are a sign: behold, I will bring my servant the Branch. For behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven eyes, I will engrave its inscription, declares the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. In that day, declares the Lord of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree.” - Zechariah 3:6–10.

This statement made to Joshua sounds a lot like the covenant stipulations given to Moses and David after him. Would the priesthood follow through? If you have been following the predictable pattern of humanity, you already know the answer.  The priesthood was still marked by sin and we still long for the serpent crusher.

Joshua was the father of Joiakim, Joiakim the father of Eliashib, Eliashib the father of Joiada, Joiada the father of Jonathan, and Jonathan the father of Jaddua. -  Ne 12:10–11.

 

400 YEARS OF SILENCE - THE RISE OF THE GREEK EMPIRE

As I was considering, behold, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth, without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. He came to the ram with the two horns, which I had seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath.  I saw him come close to the ram, and he was enraged against him and struck the ram and broke his two horns. And the ram had no power to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and trampled on him. And there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power. Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven. Daniel 8:5–8

And the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king. As for the horn that was broken, in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power. - Daniel 8:21–22

In 330 B.C. A young man by the name of Alexander rose to power and would become one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever known. Interestingly, legend says that as Alexander approached Jerusalem, the high priest Jaddua came out in white priestly garments and shared this vision in Daniel. Alexander was humbled and showed tremendous favor toward Israel after seeing himself as the 3rd kingdom of bronze that would take over the Persian empire and become great.

Unfortunately, this peace did not last long as Alexander died at the age of 33 with no successor except his unborn baby. Initially, Alexander's commanders decided to wait for the newborn son to rise up and take his place, but the power hungry officials put to death the son along with his wife. Thus, the kingdom was divided into 5 which would turn into 4 after a pact was made to take down one of the existing generals.

 

The unity that Alexander was able to bring to the world under his reign would pave the way for the gospel of the kingdom to be spread and understood across the nations! However, from this moment forward, the promised place of Israel became a pawn in a much larger battle between the Kings of the North (Seleucus dynasty Syria) and the Kings of the South (Ptolemy dynasty in Egypt) precisely according to Daniel’s prophecy

400 YEARS OF SILENCE - CULTURAL ADVANCEMENTS

The new Greek empire brought significant changes to everyday life as it united the known world. These changes brought about important elements that made up the setting for the gospel of the kingdom! First, there was a new wave of energy to learn and engage with philosophy much like the 16th century renaissance that sparked the reformation. This season of Greek influence is best exemplified in our next priest named Simon the Just.

Simon the Just was inspired by the culture to return back to the traditional ways of the Hebrews. He  brought many changes that took the Jews away from the false temple worship of Mt. Gerizim in favor of returning back to their holy status as God’s set apart people in God’s promised place under God’s rule. Unfortunately, not everyone was on board with the sweeping reforms Simon the Just was making, setting the table for the New Testament cultural divisions.

 

As the Jews struggled to figure out their new identity in this time of transition, culture continued to develop in favor of learning, hellenization, and organization. It has been rumored that Simon the Just was the first president of the newly formed Sanhedrin, was the final editor who cemented the order of the Old Testament, and became the first Rabbi mentioned in the Mishna teachings which explain the Rabbi’s interpretation of the scriptures.

At the same time, the Israelites were split on how to treat their foreign overlords. Some would be sympathetic to the Syrian rule while others would be drawn to the advancements made by the Ptolemy regime in Egypt. In fact, many of the Jews who had been taken to Egypt over the course of time helped Ptolemy Philadelphus translate the Old Testament from a dying Hebrew language to a more centralized and national Greek language. The bright side is that in 284 B.C., 70 translators (or LXX in Roman Numerals) came together at the library of Alexandria in Egypt to translate the Hebrew Bible into the Greek Septuagint. The dark side is that the translation was more focused on using the scriptures as a tool to learn about the Hebrew culture as opposed to passing down orthodox doctrine. This desire to retain historical data was why the apocrypha was added to the Septuagint and the books were rearranged into what we see in our Old Testaments today. This is how the Septuagint would be the same Bible that was circulated across the known Greek-speaking world during the New Testament!

400 YEARS OF SILENCE - THE SERPENT EMERGES

At the same time, some of the advancements were not so helpful. Under the priesthood rule of Onias II, the young son of Simon the Just, Israel had fallen into tremendous debt. In response, Onias II sent a man named Joseph son of Tobias to pay back Ptolemy Eurgetes (Egypt in the South). On the way to Egypt, Joseph overhears the brilliant plot of a few merchants to scheme their way into riches and convinces king Ptolemy to allow him to farm taxes for the king over the people of Israel. This is the origin of the 1st army of despised tax collectors in Israel. 

As we have seen in the scriptures, the serpent only needs one small opening to create chaos. Over the course of a significant amount of time and regime changes, the kingdom of Israel continued to drift further away from YHWH in favor of loyalties to either the northern or the southern kingdoms of Syria and Egypt. Regardless, Israel was on its way to becoming more hellenized under these two nations within the Greek empire. Then, Joseph’s son named Hyrcanus schemed his own father out of his tax-collector position creating two distinct loyalties within the priesthood. This small window of friction boiled over when governor Appollonius (Northern Kingdom) requested the ill-gotten money from the temple treasury and was denied. Before Onias could meet the king to defend his case, the previous ruling king died giving way to Antiochus Epiphanes (Northern King of Syria).

Antiochus Epiphanes used the division in the temple to garner loyalty from the Jews. After the party he sided with was attacked upon the rumor Epiphanes had died, Antiochus Epiphanes marched into the holy land, killed 40,000 people, carried off the important vessels of the temple, built an abominable idol on the altar of burnt-offerings, sacrificed an unclean pig in the temple, spread its broth across the temple space, profaned the sabbath, and filled the temple with the worship of Olympus. The serpent was very much alive and well during these 400 years!

Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. -  Hebrews 11:35–38.

400 YEARS OF SILENCE - GOD’S RESPONSE

Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the one who spoke, “For how long is the vision concerning the regular burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and host to be trampled underfoot?”  And he said to me, “For 2,300 evenings and mornings. Then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state.” -  Daniel 8:13–14

These abominable acts of Antiochus Epiphanes took place in 171 B.C.. Approximately 2,300 days later in  164 B.C. the commissioner of Antiochus Epiphanes tried to make the Jews worship other gods but instead sparked a revolt led by a man named Mattathias! Mattathias inspired the Jews to take a stand until he passed the torch of rebellion to his son  Judas Maccabeus. Judas Maccabeus led Israel to some major defeats against the governor of Samaria and the armies of the north who outnumbered the Israelites by a ratio of about 7:1.

At the death of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Maccabeans worked to cleanse the temple place, rebuild the wall that protected God’s people, and fought their way to many victories under the protection of God’s rule. Judas Macabbeus seemed to be a potential serpent-crushing savior in every way, that is until his next move: an attempt to make a peace treaty with the growing empire of Rome.

400 YEARS OF SILENCE - THE RISE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The final stages of the 400 years of silence were inspired by the descending chaos caused by the serpent. Over the course of time, Israel’s new leaders from the Maccabean line would place their allegiance in the kingdom around them that had the most power. First, Johnathan Maccabeus threw his loyalties to the southern kingdom of Egypt when they rose to power. This eventually failed when they were captured by the northern Syrians. One generation later, Simon Maccabeus threw his hat into the ring with Demetrius Nicator of Egypt in hope of defeating the northern Syrian kingdom that had taken out his brother. Unfortunately, that did not work either as they were imprisoned by the Syrians and were killed

Under the Syrian rule, the priesthood was temporarily handed over back to the Jews. Unfortunately, the priesthood had also become divided between the Pharisee separatists and the Sadducee hellenizers. Moreover, violence increased as Aristobulus murdered his brothers to consolidate power over the priestly throne of Israel as proverbial “king of the Jews”. Similarly, Aristobulus’ son named Alexander Janneus followed suit by slaying his brothers and crucifying a vast number of men, women and children in order to force the Pharisees to make a treaty with Syrians. Although it was a hostile time, this also was the setting in which Phanuel lived, the father of the prophetess Anna!

And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin,  and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. - Luke 2:36–37

At the end of Alexander Janneus' life, more splits occurred over disagreements of who should take the throne of Israel; Aristobulus II or Hyrcanus. In order to settle the dispute, the Israelites turned to general Pompey in Rome (the coming kingdom of iron). Pompey originally sided with Aristobulus II, but changed his mind after an Edomite man named Antipater teamed up with Hyrcanus and pleaded on his behalf. This forced Aristobulus to flee and surrender to the Romans to receive a prison sentence. However, the Jews who had followed Aristobulus fought against his enemies but failed to secure the throne. This final act of division ended Jewish independence and officially made the region of Judea a Roman province! Pompey, the Caesar of Rome, would eventually plunder the temple place of its treasure, a puppet governor would rule over Judea, and the priest over the people of Israel would be a Roman puppet named Hyrcanus, the good friend of Antipater. 

The politics of Rome would shift when Julius Caesar rose to power and freed Aristobulus, hoping to spark disruption, division, and chaos to fight against Pompey in the region of Israel. This time, Antipater aligned himself with Julius Caesar! For his actions, Antipater would be assigned the role of procurator over Judea. Antipater had two sons, Phasael would be appointed the governor of Galilee and Herod who was appointed the governor of Jerusalem! Herod violently stifled any rebellions that were made against his rule and put to death all but two members of the Sanhedrin. However, Herod would simultaneously play the hero after receiving orders from Julius Caesar to rebuild Jerusalem and her temple right before Caesar was assassinated. Now, in the latest vacuum of power, one last attempt to overthrow Herod was squashed thanks to the military prowess of Marc Antony who had now appointed Herod to act as King over the land of Judea. Herod made sure that no one would rise up by killing his wife and killing the last surviving daughter of the Maccabean line. All the while, Herod and the Romans contributed to society by building the world’s most complex system of roads and restoring the temple to beauty. Herod then set Antipater to succeed him in the Iduminean tradition as Rome would become the 4th empire of iron under their new Caesar Augustus….

However, little did Herod know that everything that had happened up to this point paved the way for one starry night that would change the rest of history: the beginning of  the gospel of the kingdom!

3Crosses Church
Previous

1. The King is Here!
Next

5. Share the Gospel + Life Group Discussion Questions