https://vimeo.com/407789434

Hi Austin. Hi Amy. Hi Lindsay on the far right. It's good to have you back number five of the Jesus story And I'm really glad we changed the name of this We start out with the scripture story and that's that'd be okay name because we're talking about the scriptures But I like to aim in the whole story to Jesus. That's where we started last time We started with Jesus, right? And then we moved on talked about how people were learning to live in Jesus Now we want to go back to the very beginning where the story starts because that that's what we know as The Old Testament that's what we call this is called the New Testament This is the Old Testament starts with Adam works through a whole bunch of guys. Do you remember any Old Testament stories? Have you heard some? Do you know about Abraham? What do you know about Abraham? Wow, God, God, yeah, it's tough tough story what who else do you know her to Noah? David No, Lindsay you haven't heard any of these critters Daniel I'm sure these are all guys that live through the story and we're gonna we're gonna talk about that story And we're gonna talk about how it all happened So because the the story is all leading up to Jesus because he's the most important one. He's there at the beginning He's there and when the world is created We'll see that next week a little bit when we talk about that and now we're gonna go on to this whole story Why do we have this story? Why is this story important and I told you early on if you just read the Gospels for a while and get to know Jesus That'll be great stuff You don't have to even worry about the Old Testament and then as you get on later You might want to see what's back here Let's see what some of these stories are because these stories Paul said that they're given to us as an example To keep us from doing things that are hurtful and to remind us to do the things that help us follow God So we have all these great stories and they're gonna help us explore that now. Where does this all happen? That's where I want to take you first I want you got maps in front of you and again if you don't you're joining us Then you can print those out and come back pause the tape enough to go back and get it But I want to talk about this map. We saw it before we talked about Paul Remember we saw a map similar This is Israel right here and then we talked about Paul and how the gospel spread that way and Philip and others The gospel spread that way So let me go back to if you want to get a pin with me. Let's just mark out where Israel is okay Israel is right here Okay, that's where Israel is And then I want you to get a blue pin get a nice blue pin because what is this right here? Do you guys know what that is? Mediterranean yep, that's it now get a red pin And I want you to draw a circle around this right here. What is this? That's Saudi Arabia. It's the Arabian Desert see that That's a desert. So our many people going across the desert if they're going to go visit other people They're not are they are they going to be able to go in the ocean and swim around? It's going to be tough They're making boats. This is a this is way back in the old times where the seas were tough to travel on and people died Now notice Israel this little yellow bit that we have Right here in this little tiny slip of land. That's where they are You know who else is around? There's some big people around here here is the kingdom of Babylon the kingdom of Persia the kingdom of Assyria We're gonna talk about all those as we go forward over here is Is we're gonna we're Greece modern-day Greece is gonna be eventually over there and down here Well, I don't draw very good with this thing. That's Egypt Notice there are three really big kingdoms right here three really big groups of people a desert here So this is all you can't travel across that got all water over there. So that's going to be tough to travel there and so Notice where Israel is though. It's not called Israel right now. It's called I mean back then it was called the land of Canaan right in this area right here, but notice if this kingdom Persia wants to trade with Egypt. How do they have to do it? Where do they have to go? Right through Israel or Canaan they go right through here, don't they? They go right through that very narrow little space of land that what a pivotal place for God to put his people Right, mom. Oh my so he put him. Oh, it's wrong thing. Let me get that again Okay, he put them all right here In the land of Israel and everybody who wants to trade with them everybody who wants to have anything to do with each other They go from here down there from here up there from here From here, they've got to go through it to get over there because there's mountains up here. See that Notice where Israel is Israel's right in the middle. It's like living on a highway It'd be Amy like if your bedroom was on the landing on the staircase. That's your bedroom okay, Austin and Austin and Lindsay live upstairs and mom and dad live in the in the bedroom, but they need to go down to the kitchen where they're gonna go Right through your room right so you're sitting there and everybody who wants to do anything He's got to go right through your land all the time and that's why this land It'd be like living in a hallway Because you've got people coming through and you know what they've got more stuff than Israel does They've got lots of stuff that they need to trade the Egyptians with the Persians the Persians with the Greeks And so there's all this trading going on and Israel's in the spot that has the most Traffic in it. It's and if if you're a powerful country and live there oops, here we go If you're a powerful country and live there It works out really well because if you've got all this traffic flowing through here, you can charge taxes You can charge taxes for these people transporting goods down here or these people bringing goods through here So not only was Israel in like living on the staircase It was also like that if you were powerful enough you could make money doing that But if you weren't powerful enough Everybody wants to conquer you the Egyptians want to conquer you the Persians want to conquer you and we're gonna see that throughout The Old Testament story we're gonna see Israel right in the middle of all these other kingdoms and Babylon comes in and Egypt comes in the Assyrian's come in the Greeks finally conquer Israel And then finally Rome does before Jesus comes. It's a little slip of land. It's not more than about 60 miles across That's about all it is from about where you lived just past Los Angeles somewhere Okay, it's about that that's short of space and people want to use it for all kinds of stuff But if you can't hold on to it Then you're gonna get beat over and over again. You're gonna get conquered by other countries who want to have your space So why does God put Israel right there? And I think there are two really good reasons one is That's the center of the world at that time everything goes through there Jesus comes to Jerusalem and from there the gospel spreads to the whole world When Jesus calls Israel to be his people he says I want to bless you See I want to put you right there in that really narrow spot and I want to bless you there and That will make you a blessing to all the other nations. So that was God's idea But we'll also take an awful lot of trust to live there Which is what God has got to teach Israel if we trust God to take care of us will be fine If we don't trust God to take care of us then all these other nations Egypt Babylon Greek Rome They're gonna come and beat us up. I want to tell you a story that Hard for me to tell I gotta say it's a little embarrassing When dad was when grandpa was young We used to have a cat. I know it's hard to believe it. Don't even like cats, but Dad my dad had cats because we had to keep mice out of the barn and cats eat mice So we had a cat our cat didn't even have a name We called it mama cat because it was a mama cat and every spring and Often times in the fall she would get pregnant and you could see her She'd get really big and you could tell my gosh She's got more cats in there But because she didn't want to have cats near the house where the dogs are because the dogs they would harass the cats Right mama cat would have these cats way somewhere else clear off in a barn somewhere in a trees Just somewhere she could find a place to have cats She would have them and we'd know she had the cats because she was skinny again And we oh my gosh There's more little cats somewhere and eventually as they grew up a little bit and mama cat was tired of feeding them She wanted us to feed them She would bring them up by the house and they would hide in the bushes by these dogs to hide in the bushes to get away from The dogs right and so here they've got these new kittens. They're there, but they don't like us We go out to see the kittens and you know what they're terrified of us. They think we're gonna hurt them We're big people. They're little kittens and I know you think of little kittens like they're little cute kittens And you get to pet the little these were nasty kittens. They were like And if you tried to grab one they'd scratch you that's trying to scratch your and they would spit at you that And they would do just terrifying cats and the problem with these cats is if we didn't want my dad to kill those cats because of Mama cat keeps having cats and there's kittens and they go in to beat cats and they have kittens And we're gonna have like 2,000 cats on the ranch And my dad said if you guys want to save those cats You've got to make them friendly cats so that we can give them to other people So they'll take the kittens and so you go out there and these cats are really mad They're angry. They're scared. They just think is a big person's gonna hurt me But we go out and give them a little bowl of milk and then we'd run inside and the little kiddies Hide the dogs little kiddies would come out of the bushes and they would drink the milk and they would run and we do that long enough Tell mama cat didn't feed them anymore Now they had to have the milk so we put the milk out and then we would sit out there with them Sit a long ways away and they would creep out of the bushes looking at us and if we made a move They would jump back in the bushes and we use that milk to help them trust us to begin to go We're not here to hurt you. We're actually trying to save your lives So that you can be adopted by a family so you can have a happy life because if we don't get you to be and eventually over time We bring a milk we'd sit out there with them We get closer and closer and finally the little kittens would trust us and they would come crawl in our lap And we could pet them and then we could find people who wanted our kittens so they could go out and live So we're trying to save that's a great picture of the whole Old Testament right there Humanity is afraid of God God's scary not sure we can trust him and yet God is saying I want you to know you can trust me I love you. You're my people but God is so big and so scary that when he does even things to protect us even things to rescue Israel from Evil and things that we're gonna hurt them Israel would blame God and run into the bushes and be afraid and that's the whole story of the Old Testament God finding his way into our hearts and us being afraid of him and like we already know the end of that story God wins that when he sends Jesus to be like to be like if I could have become a kitten and Crawled into the bushes with the little kitties and said hey those people are safe They're just trying to feed you and save you That's what Jesus could finally do up until then though God's trying to visit Israel Israel's afraid of him They're always afraid because when God shows up he does big things he does he moves the We're gonna talk about all the miracles he did and some of them were pretty hurtful I mean, you know the story of Noah right he puts all the animals in a big boat and he saves all the animals But in that story, there's a lot of people that get killed right because this flood comes And kills everybody in the world except Noah's family and all the animals he has in the boat So it's a sad story If you're not Noah and you're not the animals that got saved It's a it's a story of God having to cleanse from the earth Evil that's come on and it's taking over his world and he's got to cleanse it And he loves all the people that are dying But it'd be like the kittens we couldn't save that they wouldn't be our friend They wouldn't come to us Then eventually dad had to deal with those cats and it wasn't pleasant. Okay So God's trying to rescue us just like we're trying to rescue those cats And if you don't want to read the whole Old Testament and parents is maybe more for you than the kids Here's a way to cheat a little bit on the Old Testament There's some there's some passages in the New Testament Where the whole testament is summarized where somebody tells an Old Testament history Stephen does it next chapter seven Paul does it and Acts chapter 13 They're telling the story of Israel and here's that story of Israel Here's that story that we've been talking through today because I want you to really understand the story Here's Israel living right here in this little corner of the world And when they can trust God, they're absolutely safe protected cared for And when they begin to betray God and go to other things Then these nations come and take them over And they conquer Israel and they work against it and the story of Israel is this God comes to Israel Rescues them invites them to love him And they do that for a while and then they kind of get comfortable And then they kind of forget about God and they kind of just want to do things that make themselves happy And then the more they do the things that make themselves happy the darker their world becomes they wander away from God Have you ever noticed like when were you growing up? It's easier to do bad things sometimes than to do good things Right It's easier to get angry at mom and dad and frustrated because they want you to do something you don't want to do And it's easier to get mad and frustrated and throw a pitch of fit Austin i've seen you pitch a pretty good fit now and then you throw a pretty good tantrum when you were a kid Yeah, and it's easier to do that. It's hard to be loving and say okay mom. Thank you. I appreciate sometimes that's really hard, right? When we're not loving mom and dad It's easy to just want what we want and be angry when we don't get it. That's israel That's the story of israel right there If they can't have what they want from god They just get mad and they go do their own thing and god's got a kind then then when they do their own thing Bad things happen and they get hurt And they finally say oh my gosh, we forgot about god. Let's turn back to god And god's always there saying oh i'm ready come back. Yes. I love you just like mom and dad right you get mad at him sometimes Yeah, they're always there to love you right Always there to give you what you want. That's not part of being mom and dad mom and dad sometimes helping you learn what you need to learn But even when you get mad at him, have you ever come back to mom and dad and found that they didn't love you? I didn't care about you That's god He's always going to love us and he's always going to take us back But that's the story we're going to get down to this story because I want you to see it's just like us We grow up we grow up in In the brokenness of the creation we're in and we want our own way We want it really bad and god wants to love us into his way and sometimes we let him And then we get distracted again It just seems like things in the world are more fun And I'd rather play fortnite shoot people then I'd rather do all that kind of stuff Then really just do up do the chores mom dad give me to do and learn to be part of the family Well god's inviting us and the main thing we have to learn Is how do we trust him? How can we trust this god that's so big and before jesus comes? So scary and what we have in the old testament is this we have some of those kiddies Writing the story about god from the bushes They look at god and say you know he brings milk every day and he's not trying to hurt us. Maybe we can trust him And then they get scared again and they run away saying oh god's that mean guy. He can't trust him We've got to save ourselves That's the story of the whole new testament god comes We love him We lose him We get off into our own weeds We get off in the sticks we get off in our own brokenness and then god comes to rescue us again And we get to be rescued by him and then we get to follow him for a while and then we forget It's not only the story of the old testament It's actually been the story since jesus was here a lot of jesus people do the same thing They start following jesus for a little while and then well, it's not as fun to follow jesus is do what i want So i'm going to do what i want instead And then they miss out on jesus then they get troubled then they want help and they come back to jesus i'm going to tell you that story That's the jesus story that starts from the creation of the world And continues down to you today and me And whether or not god is someone we can trust and love Or whether he's just scary and we don't want to have any part of it. How's that sound? So you got your maps there you remember all those other kingdoms? Aren't you thankful you have a bedroom and don't live in the hallway where everybody walks over yet? They get what they want they come down they come through your room amy on the landing I'll just get a little bit of the landing they walk through there They go down and get by anna they come back and they walk by you go. Hey, what about me? I want a banana forget you and then they come downstairs and they get coffee or they get hot chocolate or they get cookies And they got to walk through every time and you god That's where Israel was and we'll talk about how they're there. We'll talk about this whole story as it unfolds Okay, make sense Alrighty You guys take care. We'll see you next week