The Covenant Completed

We have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the spirit and not the oldness of the letter, and there lies why the new covenant is so important.

Jesus is now taking all the truth of Israel, all of the reality of the feasts and the sacrifices, the laws, and in one man, Jesus. And us receiving Jesus, we are fulfilled and complete, and that's what the new covenant does for us.

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Welcome to the You Can Learn the Bible Podcast, where we summarize complete Bible books in single episodes. My name is Bodie Quirk, here with my co-host Joey Rozek. And oh goodness, we are doing something. I'm loving this. Joey, I don't know about you. I am having so much fun summarizing the Bible at this high level, and I hope that you are too.

What is something, where are we and what is something that you are personally excited about this episode? Cause this is gonna be a good one.

Yeah. Bodie, it's so good to be with you brother. This episode is our last of our overviews of the big picture of the Bible. Before we go deep in the books and what are we gonna focus on today? We're gonna focus on Jesus. Today's episode is a new covenant completed in Christ. And so I'm excited Bodie to be able to just help us see once

again how awesome it is that Jesus Christ has come into this world. Jesus Christ has made his home in people and he's continuing his ministry today through the Believing Church who was filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. So I'm excited to get into it, Bodie. And it's right into the purpose of why we do all of this, right? What we've been hitting an internal purpose of God every time we do these overviews, and what is that today, Bodie?

Yeah. Again, this is all about being able to take something that's very big and trying to, connect it so that it hits our heart so that it transforms our minds. So we've been sharing this purpose statement. We, our goal here is to understand God's eternal purpose revealed through the unfolding of God's story that we have been watching over these last previous episodes and oh man, so much is gonna happen in this episode too.

But we wanna connect the Bible's most significant turning points. And a lot of times people they know about different moments or maybe even different accounts in, the Bible, but maybe not those moments that really shift the story. So that's what we've been focusing on these last ones today

Is episode six that we are calling the Covenant Completed, and this is probably the most important one right, Joey, because this is the one that everything has been leading to. So introduce for us where we're going today, and then we'll just get right into it,

Yeah. It's important that we know that the, when we talked about the Bible, the volume of the book is written of him. It's written of Jesus. We know that Jesus is the fulfillment of all things. In fact, we could even just summarize Christianity with one simple statement. Christ is the sum total of all things

It's all about Jesus. And so today we're gonna look at four significant turning points as we've been showing. And we're gonna be looking at the Messiah, Jesus coming into the world. We're looking at the early church, what it means to be the followers of Christ in expanding his ministry and the New Testament witness that was left behind, both the epistles that were written and of course the transformative lives that continue to multiply throughout the earth.

And then the church, past, present, and future. And so that's what we're gonna be looking at today in this covenant completed. And what's I think really awesome Bodie is when we set the stage and think about where everything is leading us to, I think about how God has always left a voice, a witness in every generation of who he is.

Not just a singular voice, but multiple voices in, so many different ways. But John the Baptist, in Matthew chapter three we, learned how he called people to repent and said, the kingdom of God is at hand. And he was fulfilling the prophetic voice of Isaiah, who said the voice of one crying in the wilderness?

Make straight or prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight. And so John the Baptist is the last of the Old Testament prophets, the first or the forerunner of the ultimate prophet Jesus, who is going to set people's hearts in a readiness to receive the gospel of Christ.

Which is awesome. Yeah. We have a lot to cover and when we get to John the

Baptist, right here at the beginning, if you remember, we've done these four groups, right Joey? So we talked about the Covenant Conceived, the Covenant Confirmed, last episode was was a busy one. The Covenant Challenged we went all the way up to the end of what was called the Inter-Testamental period, and we arrived at the Roman Empire and that's where number 13 takes place.

So it's good to have a backdrop of what's happening in, the historical world. Cause of course that's the backdrop of the New Testament and Rome, the coming of Rome was a,

was big for a number of reasons we're gonna talk about in this episode. But just before we get to even John the Baptist and Jesus, if we look really quickly, Rome was in charge of everything. The Roman Empire, of course, dominated the whole world, but this little sliver, this tiny little area, is the area that the majority of the Bible focuses on. Now, many people know that the Bible is historical, but the

Bible is not a history book per se. The Bible has a goal, and Jesus is that goal,

but we want to understand where he falls in kind of the larger story. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that today, but ultimately, if we kind of scan down the time, . What's interesting about these final four turning points is the the short amount of time that they take place in, cuz if you've

been following with us we've, talked about Joey. There have been times in our journey that there have been hundreds of years, gaps between one turning point to another, but this particular episode is different because so much happens in such a short period of time, doesn't it?

So we have the coming of the Messiah, the early church, the new Testament, the Church now and in the future if we were to kind of stack everything up together. Some of these have been spread out. Look at this, Joey,

let me show you this really quick. This is the entire New Testament events and the books, if they were stacked on top of one another, they're not spread out at all. This is a short period of time, isn't it? When we look at the historical timeline.

Anything you wanna say and then just take us right into number 13 and the significance of the coming of Jesus within this Roman context.

Yeah, absolutely. Bodie, you're absolutely right. There's so much to talk about in this particular episode, but I think one of the important things that we want to draw attention to all of you is that there was a period of time where, as you mentioned, in that Inter-Testamental Period where there was a silence for 400 years, so to speak, without prophets speaking and as we come to the point of John the Baptist, he's this

new voice crying out in the wilderness. And when you showed that map Bodie of how small Israel is in the advanced empire of Rome and all that's going on in the world, I think of that prophecy in Zechariah, which says, do not despise the days of small beginnings.

You look at that little place of Israel, we call it the holy land. We call it the epicenter of where Jesus' ministry was. And so when we come to the place

where Jesus Christ is to be born, where the Word would become flesh and dwell among us, and we would be held His glory as the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth. The birth of the Messiah was highly anticipated. This was the hope of all the Jewish people who are longing for the day when they're Messiah, their anointed one, the savior of the world would come on the scene.

Now, there was expectations about Jesus that he would do away with the Roman empire, that he would immediately right then and there, conquer Rome and establish his

kingdom. But what we have to remember is that Jesus wanted to first change the hearts of men. God would create a new covenant with his people, where he would be so personal and so real. So Jesus comes on this scene at the appointed time. in the prophetic way that he needed to come born of a virgin, born in a little town of Bethlehem, in the nation of Israel, in an obscure part of the world.

And he would begin a kingdom that would start in the hearts of people would grow as the church and would eventually lead the way for his second coming. And so that's what's significant about the Messiah coming into the world. And of course, Let's talk about that a bit.

Mm-hmm.

took place when Jesus came into the world? Here's something to think about, Bodie, when he was born,

his name Jesus, Yeshua means, the Lord is salvation or God is salvation. God saves. And so he is the savior of the world. We know that he for 30 years was the son of a carpenter, Joseph. He worked with his hands. He went through all the temptations that everybody goes through, and yet he never sinned.

He was a obedient son, not just to his parents, Joseph and married to some extent, but more importantly to his father. At one point, at 12 years of age when Jesus was in the temple

and the family went on, he stayed in the temple and they finally realized a day later that they didn't have him. They went back to the temple and Jesus was confounding the religious leaders with his questions and with the things that he was teaching and explaining. And when they said, where are you, Jesus, why? Why weren't you with us? He said, did you not know I must be about my father's business? And you realize that's what Jesus' whole ministry was

about. He says, I've come to do my food is to do the will of my father and to finish his work, as John chapter four says. And so the ministry of Jesus is full of excitement and It centers around, if we could kind of look at maybe some of the, maps of just where Jesus' arrives from, go ahead Bodie. You, I'll turn it over to you.

So it's important because, well, I love what you said of the of the expectation of the Messiah. Jesus let a lot of people down because he wasn't the conquering king. Because we remember in the Old Testament, there were two streams of prophecy, we have the suffering servant and the conquering king.

The first coming was Jesus being the suffering servant, and the second coming is going to be the conquering king. They didn't want that. They were under persecution of Rome.

And so it's important to know that when we look at this map here, there's two important regions that we wanna make sure that we understand when it comes to number 13, the Messiah has come.

So Jesus has come, he's born in the world, but his public ministry only was a period of two and a half to three and a half years, depending on how you date it. But there's two regions you have to know about.

Okay. The north was called the Region of Galilee, and the southern area was called Judea, which was the Romanized version of the tribe of Judah. It's the same location the north was, where Jesus had many miracles happened during this time, didn't they, Joey? This was a really profound and important part of Jesus' ministry.

So there's a number of things that we read about in the Bible that if you keep in mind, they actually happen up in his home region of Galilee, for example. The Sea of Galilee is where Jesus walks on water. There, he did a number of healings during this time. So Galilee was a really, really important region of Jesus' ministry.

And that was up in the north. Now in the south, we're gonna get to in a second. That's where Jerusalem is, that's where the temple is, and that's ultimately where Jesus dies. But what do we need to know about, about his ministry in Galilee? Yeah. Jump in.

Yeah, and I, I really wanna emphasize that what's happening in Galilee before we go down to Jerusalem is you have this incredible ministry of reconciliation happening. Jesus is calling sinners back to God. And, in doing so, he's confirming who he is as Messiah by his miracles, he's teaching things that are explaining the Old Testament law in ways people had never heard with such clarity, and he's getting to the heart of the matter.

Of course, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus', most famous sermon given in Matthew chapters five, six and seven has Jesus there in the Galilee region right by the Sea of Galilee, and he's explaining to people that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, You'll by no means enter this kingdom.

Jesus begins to show that the standard of God is perfect and we must be perfect if we're to enter into this kingdom. That's impossible, but Jesus explains that He's going to make the impossible possible. He's going to die on the cross for our sins, be buried. On the third day rise again. He starts teaching this to his disciples.

He starts explaining how he's gonna build his church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. Peter is asked the question, who do you say that I am? Along with the other disciples? And of course Peter says, you are the Christ. The Son of the Living God. Jesus says, Simon Bar Jonah, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven.

And so the foundation of the church is the identity of Jesus Christ and the revelation of who he is and how the church is built on the foundation of Christ.

And I just wanna read from Matthew chapter. Verse 35, which summarizes his ministry of Galilee so well and the heart behind it in the next verse, because it says in Matthew 9:35, then Jesus went about all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every sickness.

And every disease among the people, even casting out demons which had never been seen before, that a man could have power to lose people from the grip of Satan. And then it goes on to say in verse 36, but when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, for he saw they were weary and scattered like.

Without a shepherd. And of course he goes on and say, the harvest is truly plentiful, but the laborers are few. And so the Ministry of Galilee was the beginning of all that Jesus was gonna do to usher in his kingdom, in his new covenant.

Oh, it's awesome. So good. And what's interesting too, if we go back here,

Jesus actually traveled from the Galilean region down to Judea a number of times because each year they would celebrate Passover in Jerusalem. And I showed this earlier, but

this is actually a virtual reconstruction of what Jerusalem would've looked like during Jesus' day. It was a walled city, but the temple there, you can see, is the biggest, most predominant structure of Jerusalem at this time,

and this is where Jesus would go, this is where he flipped tables over. This is where they would they would go and offer prayers to God. This was the important thing, and Jesus said this thing was gonna get destroyed. And they couldn't even grasp an idea like that. But he, of course, he was talking about his body. Now this is super important. This region here is because this is where Jesus, the final week, the passion week, this is where this happens in Jerusalem, but if You know that if we wanna summarize the significance of Jesus, we can't do it in one episode.

But if we just know that these two regions there were so important, Galilee and Judea, because they're part of Jesus fulfilling the covenants that we've been talking about. So I wanna talk about how Jesus fulfills each of the four covenants that we've introduced in previous episodes, Joe, but anything that you want to add about Jesus' ministry before we do that?

I think it just might be good to remind people he came to seek and save that which is lost. Luke 19 verse 10 tells us we learn in Mark 10 45, the son of man did not come. To be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And so from the temple in Jerusalem, which you just showed Bodie, how Jesus would be the fulfillment of the sacrifices of the priesthood

his blood would be better than that of Abel, that temple is a picture of us, of where the new covenant is going to transition from a physical location on earth to a spiritual reality. All over the world because our bodies would become the temple of the Holy Spirit and Jesus would dwell in man, and I think that is just awesome to remind all of you of

It's incredible. Yeah. That new covenant is where we're going. So let's review the major covenants that we've talked about and how Jesus fulfills them. We've read these in previous episodes, but let's just list them out. How does Jesus fulfill the Abrahamic covenant? Jesus is the true seed of Abraham.

We talked about the mosaic covenant, which was the contract with the nation, but Jesus fulfills the Mosaic Law, and it gets replaced, as Joey said previously with the New Covenant. I really wanna talk about both the new covenant and the role of the spirit, cuz that's gonna be huge in where we're going next, and we talk about the early church.

But we know that there was a promise from the line of David, that there'd be a king that would have an everlasting kingdom. Jesus fulfills that because he's from David's earthly line, but he's God. He has an everlasting dominion.

But ultimately, this new covenant is so important, Joey, because Jesus fulfills all of these his death and resurrection. It ushers in this new covenant, the restoration of Israel, forgiveness of sin, as you said, reconciliation and personal knowledge of God so much is different now when, talk about this new covenant, cause we're gonna go into the early church next, but why is it important for, people to understand these covenants?

Yeah, remember a covenant is an agreement that God makes with his creation, his people, and God is a keeper of his word. He fulfills his promises and all the promises of God are yes and amen in Jesus. As we read about in second Corinthians one, verse 20. So when we understand that Christ is the fulfillment of all we, really see the Old Testament was a shadow.

Of that, which was to come. And so we have the substance being Christ. And I think maybe a good verse to insert right here, Bodie, is Romans chapter seven, verse six, where Paul writing this amazing letter to the Romans. Remember, Roman government is ruling the world. Believers are now going to be converted everywhere.

We're, gonna get to that in just a moment as we talk about the, early church. But in Romans chapter seven, verse six, it says, but. We have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the spirit and not the oldness of the letter, and there lies why the new covenant is so important. Jesus is

now taking all the truth of Israel, all of the reality of the feasts and the sacrifices, the laws, and in one man, Jesus. And us receiving Jesus, we are fulfilled and complete, and that's what the new covenant does for us.

Oh, it's awesome. It's awesome. It's also interesting too, do you, I think that most people don't realize that the four gospels, so we have four covenants here. There were other ones too, more general covenants, but these are the ones, the four gospels

actually each give us uh, a component or a portrait of Jesus's ministry as well. So, Matthew really wants his readers to see that Jesus is the fulfillment of everything that we've been covering, the Old Testament hopes. Mark really shows Jesus as the suffering servant who gives himself as a sacrifice for sin. Luke really wants his audience to know that Jesus is a universal savior for all who put their faith in him.

And John's emphasis is, of course, Jesus being the divine son of God. We see the, so these are really important too, because sometimes people just think that the gospels are just random collections or they're just historical documents put together. There is some truth to that. They were assembled, but each one has a goal and what's so beautiful is how they work together.

The four gospels Bodie are four historical eyewitness accounts of Jesus. Of course, we know that Matthew and John were directly two of the 12 apostles, but Mark and Luke, Mark is known as John Mark, Luke, the beloved physician, they both worked directly with Paul and Peter, and were able to receive direct revelation from them.

But this is what's so beautiful. This is you wonderfully talked about the four different angles to look at the ministry of Jesus.

I always like to remind people too. Everything that's, that Jesus accomplishes on earth, and all throughout the Bible is something that's mirroring what's already in heaven.

And you know that in the Book of Revelation, we learn about four living creatures, and Bodie, each of them have a face of a different type of creation on the earth. We see that the four living creatures have the face of a lion, an ox, a man and of an eagle. And isn't that interesting? That the four gospels have also been depicted by those four emblems?

Matthew, as you rightly said, shows Jesus as the lion of the tribe of Judah. He's the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. So we see the lion connection. Mark shows that Jesus is a suffering servant and he is a servant of all, and Mark is the picture of the ox, which is a, an animal of servitude. Luke shows us the savior of the whole world, universally, as you said, and we see the humanity of Jesus in Luke.

He's the man, the true man. The man of, sorrows. He's the the son of man. And then we get to John and we see he's the son of God. He is divine. And so Luke shows us the man, John shows us the eagle, which has always been a picture of divinity flying, hide to the heavens. And so John's gospel's depicted by an eagle. He's the divine one. The bread of life, the resurrection and the life. So

That is crazy.

picture to, to connect together.

Joey I have, I have studied the Bible for, I don't know, 20, 25 years. I have literally never heard that. This is why I love hanging out with you for, moments like that. But this is the beauty of the full witness of scripture, right? The volume of the book, as you said, is written of him.

All right, so let's keep going. So we, now we've talked about number 13, Jesus the Messiah has come. The next two Turning Points overlap. These are the only ones that really do this, but we've separated out the early church from the New Testament itself because each is distinct.

The New Testament. We wanna talk about why the group of books, why it's so important that we have a New Testament. But before we get there, we have to talk about the early church and I think Acts 1:8, Joey summarizes the map or the journey of the early church. Would you read this for us and then introduce us to, to number 14, the early church.

Sure. Yeah. The Book of Acts, just like John the Baptist, prepared the way of the Lord in the ministry of Jesus. Now we see that Jesus is ascending into heaven, but before he ascends into heaven, he gives this final word to the disciples.

He says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem. in all Judea and Samaria, end to the end of the earth. And that was an answer to the question Bodie, when they said, at this time, are you gonna restore the kingdom?

They're always the Jewish people always have the expectation of the kingdom being fully now, but Jesus is saying, I need my gospel to go out and reach the world first. And so what we have here is a divine outline for the Book of Acts and how the gospel is going to move starting in Jerusalem.

The base where the temple was, and that's where the day of Pentecost would happen. The Holy Spirit would inaugurate the church, come upon the church just like the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus at his baptism, and then we would discover it's because of persecution where the church is having to scatter out of Jerusalem and goes into Judea. and Samaria,

and we see that Philip, for example, preaches in Samaria and many believe in the Lord Jesus, and great joy came to that city. And so Judea and Samaria has heard the gospel. And then when you hit Acts 13, we're gonna see the Holy Spirit calling a man by the name of Saul of Tarsis, who had converted to Jesus, who was a Pharisee that persecuted the Christians.

He became a believer himself after seeing resurrected Christ and that catapults the church into the missionary work

which is still going on today for the last 2000 years, but it's hitting the uttermost parts of the earth. And, Bodie, you and I are in evidence of this. You're in California. I'm in New Jersey. The gospel has reached both sides of America. It's reached. Every tribe, tongue, the nation still reaching the nations of the world. Of course, we know there are some groups that haven't heard the gospel yet, but Jesus is gonna make sure that there's a witness of the gospel and churches being planted everywhere.

Yep. Oh, I love it. I love it. Which is so cool because it, it is the o only God could do this. There is no way man could do what the early church, the reason why it's such a turning point is that it's still going. It is the miracle of miracles. Not to mention the survival of God's people up until this point. But we talk about these regions, right? We talk, so we have, New Testament, Palestine here, Jerusalem, Judea.

We have this area that was called Asia Minor, this modern day Turkey today. We also have another region of Macedonia and Greece, and these regions here are really important for Paul's missionary journeys,

cuz what he does is once Paul goes from a, persecutor of the church to its primary missionary leader, what happens is we see that Paul then from Antioch, goes and plants churches and his primary place that he starts every time he goes into a city, Joey doesn't he always start in the same place in that city? Why does he always start in this place, and where does he always start? Let's talk about Paul's approach and then we'll talk about each of his missionary journeys.

Yeah. Bodie, I'm so glad you brought this up because God has always started with the nation, Israel. He starts with his covenant people, the Jews, but of course, his covenant would extend beyond the Jews to every nation of the world. God's heart was always for the nations, but he sought to reach the nations through the Jews, which is why the apostles, particularly Paul and his missionary journeys, would go to a Jewish synagogue.

A synagogue was made up of at least 10 Jewish males, and the synagogues had their origins during the time of the captivity in Babylon. And, so as we talked about that in the last episode, we discovered that with the temple being destroyed in the need for the rebuilding of the temple, synagogues were small sort of communities of God's people that did some of the.

Needed to establish praise and prayers and the teaching of God's law. And so the synagogues were important to give a testimony of the gospel to because those are the people who should have first believed in Jesus. In fact, when Paul writes to the Roman believers in the book of Romans, In that letter, in Romans chapter one there in verse 16, he says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation.

And what does he say next to the Jew first? And also to the Greek. And so that was the manner in which Paul did his missionary journeys was he started in the Jewish synagogues to give the gospel to the Jew, and then if they rejected it, which they did, he went on to the villages and the marketplaces and to the people to give a testimony of the gospel to the Gentiles.

And that's why God saved Saul and called Saul was because he could not only. The gospel to the Jews, but because he was a Roman citizen, he had access to follow those Roman roads, to teach the gospel to the Greek speaking people. The Hellenistic culture and the gospel expanded to the nations.

Oh, it's amazing. I love it. Yeah, so he would always start with the Jew because Christianity was born out of Judaism and Paul always wanted to give God's covenant people first chance to receive the completion of the story. But like you said, many of them rejected, and so he would go to the streets, he'd go to the Gentiles.

And what's interesting, it's so sad and interesting, is that the very people, the covenant people become Paul's primary enemies. They constantly persecute him during these missionary journeys. So we see in the, the first missionary journey we see right here in the region of Turkey. Then there was, the region of Galatia was most of the cities that we see that Paul went to, but what he does in the second missionary journey

is he revisits these places where he starts churches. So Paul would go into a synagogue, he would preach, but he would always try and stay and build a church there. And then he would leave and go and do that somewhere else.

You can see here, he extends past Asia Minor or Turkey to go into, he crosses the Mediterranean Sea, it goes into some towns that actually might be familiar. The town of Philippi, which will later will receive the book of Philippians. He goes down into Greece into the city of Corinth, which will become the recipient of First and Second Corinthians.

So, we're gonna get to the New Testament books too, but these missionary journeys, they become church planning initiatives. But during the journeys, Paul begins to write, doesn't he? And that's why 14 and 15, the early church and the New Testament begin to overlap. And so this is where it's really helpful for people to understand the relationship here.

So anything up to this point before we show Paul's third journey and we talk about the, books themselves, Joe,

Yeah. Well, you know, I love that you brought up this point of the second missionary journey, how the heart of Paul wasn't just seeing converts made, but disciples made, and so they wanted to go back and make sure they were progressing, that they were maturing in their faith.

I love how in Acts chapter 16 and verse five, it says, so the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in number daily.

And so Paul was, had a burden for the churches to make sure that. Growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. They were learning how to make more disciples, and I think that's what's so vital for us to see is that when Christ comes into a person's life, he's meant to be multiplied.

And one of the things I love is how. Paul eventually he gets even to isn't this where he stands up to the men of Athens and he speaks to them about an unknown God.

He takes the idolatry of the times, sees that people were so fearful to offend the gods that Paul notices when he gets to the Aeropagus, to Mars Hill, this place where people would share their religious beliefs and their philosophies and the rest, and he would say, I wanna talk to you about this unknown God that you have erected an altar to.

And he begins to explain to them how Jesus came, calling us to repent but that he would bring salvation through his finished work and that we might grope for him. He's not far from any one of us and, so God determines the boundaries of our dwellings, and we come from one race all of the nations of the world come from one race, which is the human race. One blood, which starts with the very first parents that brought sin into into the world.

But

Mm-hmm.

came to put away this sin to

Yeah.

not only forgive us, but to free us so that we might live as people who are born again of the spirit.

which brings us into the third missionary journey

Oh, that's awesome. It's awesome.

Yeah. So from this third missionary journey, so every time Paul starts in Antioch, and he ends in Antioch, doesn't he, but not the third one, because he gets arrested at the end of this one, knowing he was going to get arrested but was willing to give his life in service of Christ anyways.

And then he basically gets taken to Rome. And now, what's so important about this trip? For one, this was a very perilous trip, but Paul makes it.

And then Paul is on house arrest in Rome, which means he can receive he can receive gifts, he can receive people, but he's still technically a prisoner. He has some rights as a Roman citizen, but because he's been preaching the gospel, he has been causing an uproar.

But what's amazing is that Paul can't leave. So what does he do? He writes some of the treasures of the New Testament. So the books that Paul writes during this time become some of the most prized parts of the New Testament. All scriptures inspired by God, of course, but had Paul not ever done this, we wouldn't have books like Colossians and Ephesians and Philippians.

And so this is, this kind of leads us into the, role of the books as well. So what do people need to know, Joey, about Paul's missionary journeys and then as we transfer into kind of into the New Testament itself, what is really important and vital for people to know?

in, In all the places where Paul went, churches were established. And since Paul wasn't gonna stay and pastor those churches and, be one of the leading elders in those churches, he appointed elders in all the churches. The elders were to serve. The body of Christ. They weren't to lord it over the people cuz Jesus modeled servant leadership, but they were to ensure that the new covenant practices would continue.

And so as we learned in Acts chapter two in verses 42 to 47, which are the blueprints of the church, that the disciples continued steadfastly in the Apostles doctrine, in fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers. And so when we say the Apostles' doctrine, we're saying the teachings that the apostles gave to those churches, and that's what we have in our New Testament.

We have what's called the epistles. The epistles are the letters that were given by the apostles to the churches many times correcting them when they got off track. Reestablishing the teachings of Jesus and expanding and elaborating on it in what it looks like in community. And so Paul gave us the majority of the epistles.

And you know what's an interesting fact, Bodie, as I see that you have the, the books listed there for us, Paul's epistles are given to us, not in chronological order, but in this case, it's actually in the size of the letter. Romans was the longest letter that Paul ever wrote, and then the Corinthians were the second longest letters.

And then Galatians, and then Ephesians, Philippians until you get to the small letters, the pastoral epistles, Titus and Philemon. So it's actually given to us by the length of the letter and a lot of people don't know that and so.

that's great.

Yeah, and then you have the general epistles. And the general epistles are called general because we're, they're not just written by Paul.

We have Peter, we have John, and then we have some that we're not sure of. Like Hebrews, it's a bit debated on who actually wrote that letter, but those general letters are for all the churches as well to learn the life and practice that they're to have in Christ.

It's so cool. I love that you mentioned that because what we can do is, if we go back to the timeline here,

this is actually somewhat the chronological order from the first column of Galatians, James, some of the gospels, and again, there is not a universal agreement on this, but it doesn't matter when they were written what matters is what they are. They are the inspired, authoritative, representative words of God, for life and godliness, we have all that we need.

Which is why this one really sets us up to talk about our last and final turning point, which is where we are now between Acts 28 and then what's still yet to come.

So we've come a long way, but we can't end without talking about The Church Past, Present and Future. So between Acts 28, you, you said previously we're in Acts 29, which I love. What is important for us to get as we wrap up this overview of the Bible and, but we specifically focus on the church because everything has been leading to this.

Yeah, well, when we come to the church age Bodie, we have to, first of all, remember the church is not a building. It's not a temple in Jerusalem. It's not a structure, it's the people of God. In a sense, as the apostles gave us the epistles, we are the living epistles, not written with pen and ink, but by the Holy Spirit as Paul once said to the Corinthians and so, the church is the people made up of Jews and Gentiles. God has broken down the middle wall of separation as Ephesians two teaches, and we are now filled with the Holy Spirit, and so the church age is growing.

Or I should say the church as a whole is growing because we who have the Holy Spirit in us are able to testify of the gospel, and we're called by Jesus to make disciples of the nations.

And so in the past we read about the church in the Book of Acts, and we see that we have church history. A lot of people don't know much about the time from the Book of Acts until our modern times today. But the church went through a lot of needing to expand throughout the world, and it had to survive the end of the Roman Empire.

And during the time of Constantine which of course in 312, 313 AD, he gave what was called the edict of Milan, which allowed Christianity to be tolerated and not just tolerated, but become even the official religion of Rome as Constantine or Constantine, someone would say, had a conversion. And his conversion allowed Christianity to expand throughout the empire.

But of course, that caused problems because there was a mixture of the world that got in and a mixture of the, Greco Roman culture that came in. And as a result, it was a need for councils. There was a need for there to be a consensus of, Hey, what are the things. We need to hold onto as the church because the church has always been attacked and the teachings have always been compromised in various places.

And so we have to always get back to the Bible, and that's what eventually led to the Protestant Reformation. Of course, before that, there was the great schism in 1054, when the Eastern Church broke away from the Western Church. And then in 1517, a man by the name of Martin Luther put up what was called the 95 thesis.

On the wall of the Wittenberg Chapel in Germany, and that catapulted a reformation to get people back to what we call the five solas. And the solo scriptura, which is the authority for the church saying we need, to follow what the scriptures teach.

right.

we are now. Fast forwarding to today, Bodie, we are the church today that is still expanding throughout the world, maintaining the gospel of Jesus. And seeking to teach people the ways of Christ so that we can grow in community and grow in conformity to Christ until Jesus Christ comes back.

But the story isn't done yet, is it, Joe? I love that we'll get to dive into church history probably in, in some coming episodes. That'll be really fun, but the Bible ends with Revelation. But we haven't gotten to some of the moments that the Bible says is still yet to come. How does the Bible end? And why should we care? How does it affect our lives? As we kind of wrap up this overview of the Bible, and then we'll talk about where we're gonna go in our next episode.

Yeah. All the apostles got persecuted to the point of death. Bodie, every one of them died a martyr's death. Many of them were crucified, some were beheaded like Paul. But John was the last voice. Not John the Baptist, who was the voice leading the way for Jesus. But John the Apostle was the last voice for the church.

So from one John to another John, and he gave us the final epistles of First John, second and third John, and then of course, the Book of Revelation. Of course, he also gave us the Gospel of John, but the Book of Revelation tells us about what is to come before the time of Jesus's return? It gives us a bit of history about how God dealt with the church.

It speaks about things prophetically and powerfully for our lives to examine ourselves by, because it's all about Christ. The book of Revelation is the revelation of Jesus Christ, and at the end we see. Jesus is gonna come back to this earth. He's gonna establish his kingdom permanently and completely.

And that's why Jesus is the covenant completed. And so when you I wanna just read to you from Revelation 21, Bodie, because it just summarizes what is coming and it's so beautiful. It says in Revelation 21 verse one.

Now, I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven, and the first earth had passed away. Also, there was no more sea. Then I, John saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And if you remember in past episodes we talked about in the completion of all things, Jesus Christ will marry his bride. The church, just like Adam had his bride Eve in the garden, there will be another marriage that's eternal forever.

And so it goes on to. Verse three, and I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is with men. And he will dwell with them and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death.

There shall be no, no sorrow or crying. There shall be no more pain. For the former, things have passed away and then he who sat on the throne said, behold, I make all things new. And he said to me, right for these words are true. And faithful. And, so that's what is our blessed hope, Bodie. That's what is gonna be fulfilled at the very end.

And even the very last part of the Bible, revelation chapter 22, ends with this reality of Jesus making the promise.

right?

coming quickly.

Mm-hmm. ..Yep.

am coming quickly.

Yep.

Even come Lord Jesus.

There it

is.

verse says the grace. Go ahead Bodie. You could say it,

Oh man, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. And grace is empower. God's empowering presence in our life. Joe, I love it. Thank you for reading that. Man, we have covered so much in the last four episodes,

and let me tell you, friends, we have barely scratched the surface, haven't we?

Oh, let's look at where we covered. So we talked about the Covenant Conceived, we talked about the Covenant Confirmed, the Covenant Challenged, and in this episode, the Covenant Completed. It is so hard to summarize this

incredible reality, friends, and that's why we want to continue this podcast going forward. We wanna give people a map so if they've never heard or don't know how some of these pieces of the Bible fit together. We hope that these last four episodes have helped you, but now we're gonna shift gears, aren't we? Tell us what we can expect going forward.

Well, Now that we've done summaries of the whole Bible, and, did a zoom in to some of these four covenants that we've just explained to you of, at least how the Covenant of God is explained through these four episodes that we've done, breaking down the covenant, conceived, confirmed, challenged, and completed.

We are gonna focus in on each book of the Bible, there are 66 books of the Bible, and we wanna give you an explanation, a summary of each book of the Bible, and that's what our future episodes are going to be about. So we're gonna start with the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis. And so our next episode will be Genesis explained, a seven part framework to maximize your Bible study.

And so you're not gonna wanna miss as we go through the books of the Bible. It's gonna be a great journey, Bodie. I'm

I can't wait, joe, I can't wait. I hope this has been helpful. Friends, again, if you have not subscribed to make sure you subscribe get new episodes right when they come out, we just pray that, you would love God's word. As much as, not as much as we do, we want to love more than we do, as much as God could ever give you to love, because there's nothing greater, there's nothing sweeter than knowing your creator and knowing what he has for you and that friends is why we believe that you can learn the Bible.

So we're excited to begin e our book by book Promise that we've started each episode with. Genesis explained a seven part framework to maximize your study. We will see you in episode seven. Until then, stay in the word, stay in prayer, and grace in peace. We'll talk to you later. Thanks.

Amen. God bless you.

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