Episode 37
The Bible is A Love Story: From The Garden to the Wedding
Have you ever wondered if the Bible is more than just a collection of ancient stories and moral lessons? What if it's actually the greatest love story ever told, with a sweeping narrative that stretches from a garden to a wedding? In this episode of Seek Go Create, Tim Winders challenges conventional approaches to Scripture, tracing the Bible’s epic journey of betrothal, heartbreak, patient pursuit, and ultimate restoration. Join us as we rethink everything you thought you knew about the Bible—and discover how seeing the big picture might change your perspective forever.
"When you see the whole story, the individual pieces start making sense in ways they never did before." - Tim Winders
Access all show and episode resources HERE
Episode Resources:
- NT90 Hub – This is the central website for the 90-day New Testament reading plan, with downloadable, printable plans, background information, and links to all episodes and resources.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Garden To City Arc
00:59 Series Setup And Challenge
02:41 Big Picture Bible Walkthrough
06:55 Bible As Love Story
07:36 Breaking Verse Hunting Habits
15:30 Marriage Theme Prooftexts
15:58 Sinai Betrothal Contract
19:19 Tabernacle Temple Home
21:47 Unfaithfulness And Patience
24:03 Hosea Living Parable
28:09 Jeremiah Divorce Certificate
31:18 New Covenant Remarriage Promise
32:11 Remarriage Tension
33:32 Gospels Bridegroom Reveal
35:40 Romans Seven Legal Key
37:25 Cross Ends Covenant
39:25 Divorce Finalized 70AD
43:24 Revelation Courtroom Wedding
45:47 From Tips to Story
49:38 Individualism Lens Shift
56:59 Rethinking Sin Death Salvation
58:36 Kingdom Living Now
01:01:16 Read Bible Forward
01:04:13 Wrap Up Next Steps
Transcript
God planted a garden and walked in it with the people he created.
Speaker:That is how the story starts.
Speaker:It ends in a city with a garden in the middle, and no walls
Speaker:between God and his people.
Speaker:Everything in between is how he lost them and got them back.
Speaker:There is a betrothal and a mountain, a home built in the wilderness.
Speaker:Centuries of unfaithfulness met with centuries of patience, a
Speaker:divorce that God signed and Jeremiah recorded and almost nobody preaches.
Speaker:The repentance never came, and then against the Torah's own
Speaker:rule, a remarriage, the ending is not what most of us were told.
Speaker:It is better.
Speaker:Welcome to Seek, go Create.
Speaker:I'm Tim Winders.
Speaker:Recently I read the entire New Testament in 90 days in the order
Speaker:it was written, not in the order.
Speaker:You see in your Bible the order, the letters actually went out,
Speaker:and what I found surprised me.
Speaker:It challenged me.
Speaker:Made me rethink things, changed the way I understand scripture in many ways.
Speaker:And this series is kind of the follow up to that.
Speaker:It's where I share many of those discoveries with you.
Speaker:I'm just kinda like building this out on my own.
Speaker:I'm kind of in discovery mode and working on it, and I'm just sharing that
Speaker:with you, the listener along the way.
Speaker:If you wanna do what I did, I highly encourage you.
Speaker:This is not me getting all this wisdom and then sharing it and
Speaker:people going, oh, look at Tim.
Speaker:He's got it figured out.
Speaker:Nope, that's not what this is about.
Speaker:It really is encouraging you to dig in and to get what the scripture says on
Speaker:your own, possibly get some different things, possibly confirm some things.
Speaker:I might be going through myself, argue.
Speaker:That's all.
Speaker:All that's good.
Speaker:So anyway, the reading plan that I created, it is free.
Speaker:It's at K two M. Do foundation.
Speaker:NT 90, that's K two M Foundation slash NT 90.
Speaker:Download it.
Speaker:You know, read it for yourself, see what you find.
Speaker:The link is down in the show notes.
Speaker:I somewhat challenge you to do it.
Speaker:I don't wanna say, I'll guarantee it'll change your perspective,
Speaker:but I'll almost guarantee it'll change your perspective reading it
Speaker:in the order that it was written.
Speaker:alright, let's dive in here.
Speaker:Before we start, I wanna be upfront this episode.
Speaker:Is big.
Speaker:It covers the whole Bible genesis to Revelation.
Speaker:If I was a preacher, teacher, pastor, this would be a six part series that I was
Speaker:promoting and telling everybody to show up for every, every sermon and all of that.
Speaker:I really wanted this to fit in one episode, so I'm going to do
Speaker:my best to move along quickly.
Speaker:This really is the full story of the Bible and this is what
Speaker:reading it in context did for me.
Speaker:It helped me see the plot, not pieces, not chapters, not verses plucked out
Speaker:the actual big picture story of this book, the Bible from beginning to end.
Speaker:And so I'm going to be, I don't really know the timing on this, but it's probably
Speaker:not gonna be a super short episode.
Speaker:I hope it's not super long, but I'm gonna try to get everything in here.
Speaker:And, we are gonna cover a lot of ground.
Speaker:I've included scripture references along the way, but my goal is not
Speaker:to stop and teach every verse.
Speaker:That's not what I wanna do here.
Speaker:My goal is to walk through the big picture story.
Speaker:So you can see the arc, the references are there.
Speaker:I'm gonna be mentioning scriptures in places where you could go to
Speaker:follow up, but again, I'm trying to cover the big picture here.
Speaker:So you can go back, look things up, argue with me, say, are you sure about that?
Speaker:Study it on your own.
Speaker:Then you can come back and listen again.
Speaker:And I'll tell you, you might have to do that.
Speaker:I've been going over the notes for this over and over and adjusting and
Speaker:tweaking, trying to weed things out so that it doesn't get super big.
Speaker:But I want to include things so that we can really understand the story.
Speaker:And again, what I'm really doing is trying to get it for me, and then I'm sharing it.
Speaker:With you.
Speaker:So that's what we're doing here.
Speaker:So you may have to, hear this more than once, and that's not a weakness.
Speaker:Don't worry about that.
Speaker:This is really not meant to be a simple, easy one, two, or three point episode or
Speaker:teaching that you go, oh yeah, thanks Tim.
Speaker:I feel better now I can move on.
Speaker:No, this is like foundational stuff.
Speaker:I really believe that when we, when I, and we or you get this foundation,
Speaker:everything else sort of falls into place.
Speaker:When you see the whole story, the individual pieces, they just start making
Speaker:sense in ways that they never did before.
Speaker:That's what's happened for me.
Speaker:If you've ever tried to force a plot point from a mystery novel into a love
Speaker:story, you know, it just doesn't fit.
Speaker:That is what many of us have done with the Bible.
Speaker:It's what happens when we pull verses out of the Bible and try
Speaker:to make them work inside a story that they were never part of.
Speaker:Once you see the actual story, which is what we're gonna go through here,
Speaker:the pieces just fall into place.
Speaker:They find their own place, it makes more sense.
Speaker:Are there still mysteries and things we don't understand?
Speaker:Of course there are.
Speaker:However, this book, this beautiful book, this Bible, it just makes more
Speaker:sense and it becomes the story that we can fit into instead of trying to mold
Speaker:it into something that it may not be.
Speaker:I have been guilty of that.
Speaker:Many of you have been too, and I can guarantee you've sat under
Speaker:teachers, preachers, pastors, et cetera, that have done the same thing.
Speaker:We are going to attempt to clear that up.
Speaker:So just be patient.
Speaker:Take notes if you want.
Speaker:Pause when you need to back up, write down the scriptures, go back
Speaker:and study them, and then when you're ready, come back and listen again.
Speaker:The story, the arc, the whole story.
Speaker:It's really, really worth it.
Speaker:So, anyway, let's, let's dive into what this is all about.
Speaker:What we were taught and, and really the, the whole essence
Speaker:here, the story, the title of this is The Bible is a Love Story.
Speaker:It's kind of a different love story.
Speaker:It's kinda unique and we'll get into that in just a moment, but it really does go.
Speaker:From a garden to a wedding, and that's the arc of the story,
Speaker:and we're going to get into it.
Speaker:Let's, first of all talk about what we were taught.
Speaker:Maybe the, the reading of what I went through, maybe some of you, so that
Speaker:we can understand the paradigm that we might need to change to get in the
Speaker:proper, I guess proper perspective.
Speaker:Most of us, myself included, we come to the Bible looking for something.
Speaker:Personal instructions, you know, healing, maybe justification, confirmation, a
Speaker:verse that backs up our belief system.
Speaker:I read the Bible for so long that way I had a belief, I thought it was right.
Speaker:In some ways maybe it was sort of right just a little bit right.
Speaker:And I would go to the Bible looking for scriptures to back up what I
Speaker:believed and maybe our politics.
Speaker:I've done that and I know people are doing it now.
Speaker:They try to back up their politic.
Speaker:Beliefs, their political dogmas with a scripture or our position on
Speaker:whatever issue is in front of us today.
Speaker:I did that.
Speaker:Like I said, I did it for 20 years.
Speaker:I read the Bible in bits and pieces, and I had its meaning
Speaker:spoonfed to me by preachers and teachers that I was drawn to.
Speaker:I would like their personalities, their Polish one.
Speaker:I can even recall saying I love the way they dress.
Speaker:Back in the nineties, they wore double breasted suits, which were cool and
Speaker:hip for me, so I was drawn to that.
Speaker:Celebrity.
Speaker:don't judge me.
Speaker:I know some of you have done the same thing.
Speaker:I'm just admitting what we all know.
Speaker:We're drawn to celebrity.
Speaker:Personality, things like that, and that celebrity culture, we know it's,
Speaker:a big deal in our current church world.
Speaker:They spoke well, they looked good, they were slick.
Speaker:They told me what I wanted to hear, and it's easy to do in a
Speaker:book that doesn't seem connected, and it may be a little confusing.
Speaker:You know, 66 books that we have here, two big sections.
Speaker:There's a 400 year gap in between.
Speaker:With silence, we're told it reads like a library, not a story.
Speaker:So we treat it like one, a collection of lessons, prediction chart, maybe future
Speaker:predictions, spiritual self-help book.
Speaker:We open it, we find a verse, we apply it, we move on, maybe even misuse it,
Speaker:maybe beat someone over the head with it.
Speaker:A lot of different things there.
Speaker:Some people get closer to what it probably is, and they mention that
Speaker:this is God's love letter to you.
Speaker:That sounds pretty good.
Speaker:That's getting warmer.
Speaker:That's getting close based on the perspective that I've
Speaker:seen in my readings recently.
Speaker:But a love letter is one direction and it makes it individual.
Speaker:This Bible is not a letter, it's a relationship story.
Speaker:It is a combination of letters, if you wanna break it down that
Speaker:way, at least, especially when we get into the New Testament.
Speaker:But it's really a relationship story between a creator and a people group.
Speaker:This is gonna.
Speaker:Be a little bit different for some people, but it's not between
Speaker:a creator and an individual.
Speaker:It is very clear.
Speaker:It's between a creator and a group of people.
Speaker:It's got a beginning, a long and painful middle over thousands of years, and
Speaker:then a restoration near the end that cost the groom Christ, everything.
Speaker:And so that's really the arc. A few years ago, this is kind of my progression.
Speaker:I actually read the Old Testament in chronological order.
Speaker:I thought I knew what went on in the Old Testament, but when I went through
Speaker:it in chronological order, I finally understood what was going on there better.
Speaker:When I read the New Testament in chronological order, it
Speaker:didn't mean as much to me because it bounces around still.
Speaker:But, uh, but I did, I just understood the flow of events better
Speaker:leading up to the New Testament.
Speaker:And then what I've done recently, as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode
Speaker:and what this whole season has been about, is that I read the New Testament
Speaker:in the order that it was written.
Speaker:That's not really chronological.
Speaker:Some of the stories are told going back to the gospels and things like that,
Speaker:but I actually created a reading plan to read it in the order that it was
Speaker:written and released to the audiences in the first century and so that's
Speaker:the context of the first century.
Speaker:Something clicked for me when I did that.
Speaker:It was not just a big book full of verses and some stories and
Speaker:some chapters and instructions.
Speaker:It was an actual story that fit together when I understood the plot
Speaker:and the characters from the old Covenant to the new Covenant, from
Speaker:Genesis to Revelation, from the garden.
Speaker:To the wedding, everything seemed to fit together.
Speaker:Now, I am not sitting here and pretending that I understand it all.
Speaker:I do not wanna present myself as that.
Speaker:But I will tell you this, when you understand the beginning and the end
Speaker:and a lot of what's going on in the middle, more things make sense than not.
Speaker:And that's what's been really cool for me.
Speaker:And I'm hopeful that just me sharing some of this is helpful for you.
Speaker:So after 35 years of being a Christian, what I would call a follower of
Speaker:Christ, I finally grasped what it means to be a follower in his kingdom.
Speaker:Like I said earlier, I don't have it all figured out, but
Speaker:it does make much more sense.
Speaker:The Bible is the greatest love story.
Speaker:Ever told the reason.
Speaker:It's so great.
Speaker:It's not a love story between just two people.
Speaker:It's actually not even between God and one person.
Speaker:It's between the creator and the creation.
Speaker:The creator and what God created a nation, a group, a community that he
Speaker:called into existence, and then he pursued them across the centuries.
Speaker:You and I are part of that story, but that story is not about us individually.
Speaker:It's more collective.
Speaker:Every covenant, every promise, every judgment, every rescue
Speaker:is aimed at that group.
Speaker:Once we see that and understand that, then we can understand how we fit
Speaker:into that, and the plot makes sense.
Speaker:The whole arc. After the beginning is really about restoration.
Speaker:To get back to that beginning relationship, God walking with
Speaker:his creation in a garden at the beginning, losing that
Speaker:closeness through the long middle.
Speaker:Of the Bible and the story, and then doing whatever it takes to get it back.
Speaker:There's a petal.
Speaker:There's a home that long unfaithfulness with extraordinary patience.
Speaker:Goodness, when I read through the Old Testament and the length of time that God
Speaker:is patient, much more than individuals would be where I'm thankful for that.
Speaker:And then there's a divorce.
Speaker:This is what's surprising to many, and they don't like to hear it.
Speaker:There's a divorce near the end, and then against every reasonable
Speaker:expectation, there's a remarriage that restores the original relationship.
Speaker:That's the plot, that's the Bible.
Speaker:Everything else lives inside that.
Speaker:Once you see it, every piece you already know.
Speaker:Just shows up somewhat differently.
Speaker:Alright, now let's go ahead and kind of bust up some things and
Speaker:talk about why this arc or this story, it's really not weird.
Speaker:It really is the way it has laid out.
Speaker:Many of us may not have understood that, but, let's talk about it.
Speaker:We wanna look at the way it all fits together.
Speaker:The marriage language, and we're gonna be talking about that a good bit.
Speaker:That's why it's the love story.
Speaker:The marriage language is not a reach.
Speaker:Many people understand and hear this throughout the text, but I'm not sure, at
Speaker:least I didn't put it all together to how it fits from the beginning to the end.
Speaker:So, so it's in there.
Speaker:We see it, we hear it.
Speaker:We even spout things like you, you know, we're the bride of Christ.
Speaker:It is in the text, and it's repeated often by the prophets, by Jesus,
Speaker:by Paul, by John in Revelation.
Speaker:We hear it.
Speaker:God calls himself.
Speaker:Israel's husband.
Speaker:I'm gonna try to throw scriptures in here, so if you want to go study it later,
Speaker:but I'm gonna hit 'em quick and move on.
Speaker:God calls himself Israel's husband in Isaiah 54, 5, and in Hosea two 16.
Speaker:Also in other places.
Speaker:Those are two references.
Speaker:Hosea marries a prostitute as a living parable of the story.
Speaker:That's Hosea one through three.
Speaker:Jeremiah Hess Israel, a Certificate of divorce in Jeremiah three eight,
Speaker:Jesus calls himself the bridegroom.
Speaker:In Mark two 19, John the Baptist, calls himself the best man.
Speaker:In John 3 29, Paul explains the cross using marriage law.
Speaker:Romans seven, one through four, and then Revelation ends with a wedding.
Speaker:Revelation 19 seven.
Speaker:This is not a handful of verses pulled out of context.
Speaker:It is the connective tissue of the whole Bible.
Speaker:When you read it as the love story, it says it is the pieces
Speaker:we were taught to read separately.
Speaker:Start acting like one story with the beginning, a middle, and an end.
Speaker:Okay, now let's look at the Birole and the home.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:First of all.
Speaker:The love story.
Speaker:It doesn't really start at Sinai, it actually starts earlier than that.
Speaker:If we go back to the Old Testament with a call to Abraham and a promise
Speaker:to build a people, we're gonna kind of go backwards here and build up
Speaker:to kind make sure the story flows.
Speaker:But the wedding contract does show up at Sinai.
Speaker:In Exodus 19 eight.
Speaker:God brings the people to the mountain and lays out the terms, the covenant,
Speaker:the contract, the people answer together, all that the Lord has spoken.
Speaker:We will do.
Speaker:That is the, I do.
Speaker:That is the vow and and it's important.
Speaker:Ancient Jewish marriage.
Speaker:The groom brought what's called a kuba.
Speaker:That's, I'm gonna spell it out for you.
Speaker:It's K-E-T-U-B-A-H.
Speaker:Hope I'm pronouncing that right, Kuba.
Speaker:It'll come up a few more times.
Speaker:It's a written contract.
Speaker:It goes to the bride.
Speaker:Sinai is that scene.
Speaker:The Torah is the Katuba.
Speaker:The covenant is the marriage contract.
Speaker:That is the betrothal binding legal public, not the wedding
Speaker:night yet, but a vow that was as serious as the wedding itself.
Speaker:Now, let's look at the home for this marriage, the tabernacle and the temple.
Speaker:Every marriage needs a home.
Speaker:There needs to be some place that the, that the married couple, the
Speaker:bride and the bridegroom can be.
Speaker:In the ancient world, the groom prepared a place and brought the bride to it.
Speaker:That's exactly what happens next in the story in Exodus, we look at Exodus
Speaker:40, the tabernacle is built the glory.
Speaker:Fills it and God moves in with his people.
Speaker:The shared home is assembled in the wilderness generations Later,
Speaker:Solomon's Temple becomes the permanent home that's in One Kings eight.
Speaker:Same presence, same pattern, just more permanent and larger walls.
Speaker:The tabernacle and the temple are not just worship buildings.
Speaker:They are the marriage home, the place where the husband
Speaker:and the bride live together.
Speaker:Before the tabernacle, there was the garden.
Speaker:In Genesis two and three, Eden was the first shared space, open and unmediated.
Speaker:God walked with his people in it.
Speaker:In Genesis three, eight, the Tabernacle restores that when there was a break
Speaker:in the relationship in the garden, the tabernacle restores what the garden lost.
Speaker:But now it's got walls and curtains and a veil.
Speaker:It is the only home the husband and the bride had after Sinai.
Speaker:That connection was real, but it was not what it was meant to be.
Speaker:And the story ends when all of that is removed.
Speaker:That's in Revelation 21, 22.
Speaker:We're jumping a little bit, but we're connecting some things.
Speaker:In Revelation 2122, we see that he, John says, I saw no temple in the city.
Speaker:The access, the wide open access of the garden opens up again, garden to
Speaker:tabernacle, to temple, to no temple.
Speaker:That is the arc of the home that we see in the biblical story.
Speaker:That is why the destruction of the temple is never a small event in
Speaker:the story, in the biblical story, when the home burns something in
Speaker:the marriage is being announced.
Speaker:Alright, now let's talk about something that really becomes the
Speaker:massive middle part of the story.
Speaker:The unfaithfulness of the bride and the patience of the groom, okay.
Speaker:Of God.
Speaker:And this is really a big, big story of the biblical narrative.
Speaker:and let's just kind of walk through, the failure.
Speaker:It's centuries.
Speaker:Turning away met with centuries of patience.
Speaker:The patience is aimed at repentance.
Speaker:The repentance never comes.
Speaker:Alright, let's go back in time again.
Speaker:We're moving back and forth between kind of the beginning and the ending.
Speaker:Let's go back to the betrothal at Sinai.
Speaker:It was not even really complete before the first affair occurred.
Speaker:The first unfaithfulness, remember the golden calf at the foot of the mountain?
Speaker:Moses was still up on the mountain getting the terms of the, of the covenant,
Speaker:and down at the face of the mountain.
Speaker:In Exodus 32, they were building a golden calf while the ink
Speaker:of the katuba was still wet.
Speaker:And this scene is not just about idolatry, it's about a bride
Speaker:cheating during the engagement.
Speaker:Bad stuff, no doubt about it, but God is patient.
Speaker:God stays.
Speaker:That is the part we rush past.
Speaker:He does not hand the certificate at the golden calf.
Speaker:He sends Moses back up the mountain and renews the covenant.
Speaker:In Exodus 34, the patient starts here and it runs for centuries.
Speaker:The prophets are not just marriage counselors.
Speaker:They are the husband's repeated attempts to bring the bride home.
Speaker:Isaiah.
Speaker:Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea.
Speaker:Different voices, prophecies, warnings, come back, return.
Speaker:Remember who your husband is.
Speaker:The door is still open.
Speaker:Hosea is this fascinating story.
Speaker:It's really the most direct, and if you want the entire Bible
Speaker:almost in one book, Hosea is it.
Speaker:God tells Hosea to Mary Gomer, the covenant is real, the love is real.
Speaker:That is Eden.
Speaker:That is Sinai.
Speaker:Then almost immediately, Gomer leaves Not once.
Speaker:Not a mistake, a pattern that is the golden calf through the exile,
Speaker:centuries of turning away, compressed into one woman's choices in Hosea.
Speaker:But Hosea representing God does not walk away.
Speaker:God does not walk away.
Speaker:I will allure her, bring her into the wilderness, and speak
Speaker:tenderly to her from Hosea two 14.
Speaker:The patience is not passive.
Speaker:And I, I wanna say this, it's not cynical, it's not sarcastic
Speaker:as it probably would be with me.
Speaker:No, it is extremely.
Speaker:It is extremely active.
Speaker:Patience, active pursuit, aimed at repentance, and then.
Speaker:Hosea buys Gomer back.
Speaker:If you recall the story that's in Hosea three, one to two out of
Speaker:his own pocket, he pays that is the cross, the groom paying the
Speaker:price to bring his bride back home.
Speaker:Hosea is not a parable, it is actually a living enactment.
Speaker:God did not tell Hosea to write about the marriage.
Speaker:He told him to live it.
Speaker:The prophet's pain becomes the sermon.
Speaker:That is why Hosea hits differently than Jeremiah or Ezekiel.
Speaker:Those prophets describe the marriage from the outside.
Speaker:Hosea is inside it, and his 14 chapters contain every beat of the
Speaker:ark that we are walking through today.
Speaker:The marriage, the unfaithfulness, the patience, the cost of restoration,
Speaker:the promise of reunion or restoration.
Speaker:If someone said they did not have time to read the whole Bible as a love story, you
Speaker:could hand them Jose and say, start here.
Speaker:This is the plot.
Speaker:This is really the plot now in Ezekiel 16 and 23.
Speaker:It's pretty graphic on purpose.
Speaker:The prophet is refusing to let the people pretend the unfaithfulness is small, the
Speaker:relationship is in crisis, but even here, the tone, it's grief, not really rage.
Speaker:A husband cataloging what he has lost.
Speaker:This is not a minor theme in a few books.
Speaker:It is the heartbeat of the prophets and the heartbeat is patience.
Speaker:Century after century, prophet after prophet, the door is left open
Speaker:for a repentance that never comes.
Speaker:That's one of the most amazing things to me.
Speaker:When I actually read the chronological order of the Old Testament, I
Speaker:would probably even say it to glory as I was reading through it.
Speaker:I'm going, I said, you do know this prophecy that's being spoken to
Speaker:this group of people right here.
Speaker:This prophecy will not be fulfilled for another 400, 600, 300, 200
Speaker:years, so it wouldn't be fulfilled for the people in front of them.
Speaker:It would be fulfilled generations later.
Speaker:That's really important.
Speaker:As we see and hear what Jesus said in the first century when he said
Speaker:this generation, it wouldn't be immediately that the prophecies that
Speaker:he spoke would be fulfilled, but it would be within that generation.
Speaker:Alright, so now let's look at what is a little uncomfortable
Speaker:for some people to hear about.
Speaker:And that is the divorce certificate that occurs.
Speaker:It's the piece that most people have never heard and I'm pretty confident that
Speaker:I didn't have an understanding of it.
Speaker:Alright, let's go to Jeremiah three, eight.
Speaker:The exact scripture says, I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce.
Speaker:Go check that out yourself and read it, get it in context.
Speaker:This is not a threat.
Speaker:It is a finished action.
Speaker:It is passed.
Speaker:Tense.
Speaker:That verse is extraordinary and barely preached.
Speaker:I can say that I have never heard that in a sermon, and I've heard lots of sermons,
Speaker:lots of preaching, lots of teaching.
Speaker:It is just something that doesn't come up.
Speaker:God uses the legal language of ancient divorce to describe what has
Speaker:happened between him and the northern kingdom at that time of Israel.
Speaker:Judah is the southern kingdom, and it is warned in the next verses, but not
Speaker:necessarily divorced at that time.
Speaker:Judah remains the covenant line.
Speaker:The tribe of David goes through Judah, the Messianic line.
Speaker:The door closes on one side with the northern tribe, Israel.
Speaker:There's a divorce there and the path to the solution that we will see in the
Speaker:new covenant stays open on the other.
Speaker:That's not an accident.
Speaker:It is part of the plot.
Speaker:There's a divorce in there.
Speaker:Why do we skip it?
Speaker:Probably because we do not like what it says.
Speaker:We don't like the thought of a God who divorces.
Speaker:We're gonna see another divorce when we get to Revelation.
Speaker:So if you're uncomfortable with this one, you're probably gonna
Speaker:be uncomfortable with that one.
Speaker:Um, it's a covenant that actually ends.
Speaker:There's an ending to that marriage that challenges the way most of our
Speaker:modern belief systems are built.
Speaker:We want a God whose patience has no limit and no destination, but the
Speaker:text says the patience was real.
Speaker:It lasted centuries.
Speaker:And it was aimed at repentance or restoration.
Speaker:When the repentance never came, the covenant reached its end.
Speaker:That's not cruelty.
Speaker:That is what faithfulness looks like when the other party will not come home.
Speaker:If you grew up.
Speaker:Probably like me being told the Bible is a love story.
Speaker:You likely never heard the divorce part, especially if you thought it was
Speaker:a personal love story because people don't like to talk about or think about
Speaker:that disconnection, but you cannot get to the ring marriage without it.
Speaker:The divorce is not the end of the story, but it is the hinge of the story.
Speaker:Alright, now let's talk about the promise of remarriage that is in the
Speaker:story arc. It's the most important line in the Old Testament for this
Speaker:episode, for what we're looking at here.
Speaker:Jeremiah 31.
Speaker:31 through 32.
Speaker:Behold the days are coming, declares the Lord.
Speaker:When I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel
Speaker:and with the house of Judah.
Speaker:Not like the covenant I made with their fathers, which they
Speaker:broke though I was their husband.
Speaker:Read the last line again, though I was past tense.
Speaker:Their husband, the old marriage is described as.
Speaker:Over.
Speaker:And in the same breath, a new covenant is promised, a new
Speaker:arrangement, a remarriage restoration.
Speaker:Now this is something that's fascinating.
Speaker:This is one thing that I picked up on as I was reading through the New Testament
Speaker:in order that I had never seen before.
Speaker:Under the law, a divorced woman could not return to her first husband
Speaker:once she had been with another.
Speaker:That's in Deuteronomy 24.
Speaker:So how does this work?
Speaker:The law makes remarriage impossible unless something changes.
Speaker:All right, hold onto that, that, that tension there, if you will,
Speaker:because Paul is going to address it and solve it later in Romans.
Speaker:That's what.
Speaker:Boom.
Speaker:I kinda saw when I was reading it through in context, I kinda linked it back to
Speaker:that and it was very helpful me and under helpful for me in understanding the story.
Speaker:Alright, the prophets are all pointing to the same horizon, a new
Speaker:covenant, a new heart, A husband who will not let his bride go even
Speaker:though the first contract has ended.
Speaker:Now let's jump a little bit and let's go to the bridegroom, the cross,
Speaker:and then what happens at the end of the age, the end of times as we hear
Speaker:about in the New Testament, the event that occur that occurs in 70 a D.
Speaker:Alright, here we have the bridegroom arrives, and so let's look at the gospels.
Speaker:All of a sudden, here we are.
Speaker:Jesus shows up The first words, one of the first words out of his mouth about
Speaker:himself is in the context of marriage and they are direct in Mark two 19.
Speaker:Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom.
Speaker:Is with them.
Speaker:Jesus calls himself the bridegroom on purpose early in front of
Speaker:the religious leaders who should have understood the story.
Speaker:John 3 29.
Speaker:John the Baptist, calls himself the friend of the bride groom,
Speaker:the best man, not the groom.
Speaker:The one who prepares the bride, introduces her and then steps aside.
Speaker:Every Jewish listener in that crowd in context, they knew the prophets.
Speaker:They knew Hosea, they knew Jeremiah.
Speaker:When Jesus called himself the bride groom, he was stepping
Speaker:into the shoes of the husband of.
Speaker:The story, son of man, son of God.
Speaker:The remarriage was being announced by the groom himself.
Speaker:Alright, now here's something that's very fascinating that I missed for the first 35
Speaker:years of reading, listening to preachers, teachers studying the Bible on my own.
Speaker:So listen to this next section very carefully.
Speaker:Here is the legal problem.
Speaker:That the law created, and some of us don't understand this in our modern day
Speaker:culture, we do have to kind of get the context of the covenant timeframe and the
Speaker:covenant that was going on in the Jewish culture in the first century and the
Speaker:centuries leading up to the first century.
Speaker:A marriage covenant within the law is binding until death.
Speaker:The first husband cannot simply take the bride back.
Speaker:Or take another bride, something has to break the contract.
Speaker:Now let's jump to Romans seven, one through four.
Speaker:Paul actually spells it out.
Speaker:A married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives.
Speaker:But if her husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband.
Speaker:Likewise, my brothers.
Speaker:You also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so
Speaker:that you may be long to another.
Speaker:I read that over and over for years and years because I didn't understand
Speaker:the full story and how it connected.
Speaker:I didn't really understand what it meant.
Speaker:This is not a metaphor that Paul invented.
Speaker:That is him using Torah marriage law to explain what happened at the cross.
Speaker:Galatians three 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law.
Speaker:By becoming a curse for us, Jesus absorbed the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28.
Speaker:The penalty for the unfaithful bride fell on the groom in John 1930.
Speaker:He said it is finished.
Speaker:The Greek word is te
Speaker:whatever.
Speaker:I can't pronounce that exactly right.
Speaker:I'm not Greek and I'm not Hebrew.
Speaker:it is a legal and financial term.
Speaker:It means paid in full contract.
Speaker:Complete in Luke 2220.
Speaker:The cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Speaker:The cross is not just a payment for personal sin.
Speaker:This is so important and understand we have made the biblical story.
Speaker:We're gonna talk about this in just a moment before we wrap up.
Speaker:We've made the biblical story all about individual relationship, and as I said
Speaker:at the beginning, it is a love story and it is about relationship, but it's
Speaker:between a God and creator and a group of people, not just an individual.
Speaker:And we've shrunk it down to that.
Speaker:It's bigger than that.
Speaker:It's not just payment for personal sin, it is the death that ends the first marriage.
Speaker:So the remarriage can happen to a new group of people.
Speaker:The old covenant ends at the cross, the bride is released,
Speaker:the groom has died and is risen.
Speaker:The path to the new wedding is now open and available.
Speaker:What a powerful story.
Speaker:That is what leads us to where things finish up and go into the new covenant.
Speaker:Okay, so now that we've gotten that context, we have
Speaker:to look at one other thing.
Speaker:We still have this divorce or this judgment that's out there, and that
Speaker:needs to be finalized, and that is an important to contextual item when
Speaker:we read through the New Covenant, especially in that first century context.
Speaker:This is the piece that really ties this episode back to a previous episode
Speaker:where Jesus talks about this generation.
Speaker:So, so you may need to go back and listen to that to tie it
Speaker:into what we're looking at here.
Speaker:The cross ended, the old covenant, and of course, not just the
Speaker:cross, but the resurrection.
Speaker:so it ended the old covenant legally, one generation later, just as Jesus said,
Speaker:this generation in 70 a d. Ended it.
Speaker:Historically, it was the final ending in 70 ad. The Roman Army destroyed Jerusalem.
Speaker:The temple burned the sacrificial system, stopped the priesthood, scattered the
Speaker:marriage home was burned to the ground.
Speaker:Literally, figuratively and also spiritually For a first century Jewish
Speaker:reader, this was not just a political loss or the loss of a building.
Speaker:It was the public signature on the divorce papers.
Speaker:The home of the old marriage was gone.
Speaker:The system that maintained the old covenant was over.
Speaker:Jesus warned about this directly in his lifetime to the people that
Speaker:were standing in front of him.
Speaker:We covered that back in episode two, that this generation episode, Matthew
Speaker:24 34, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.
Speaker:They did inside a generation.
Speaker:Exactly as he said.
Speaker:The divorce was announced by Jeremiah.
Speaker:It was made legal at the cross and it was finalized in 70 a D three
Speaker:situations all within one story.
Speaker:And the dating of the New Testament doesn't break this.
Speaker:I actually have done the research and I believe that the early
Speaker:dates of the New Testament have it written between the forties, late
Speaker:forties, let's say 48 AD 2 68 ad.
Speaker:Some people will argue that some of the letters go to a later timeframe after that
Speaker:event that occurred in 70 ad. That's fine.
Speaker:If it's early, then these events were prophetic.
Speaker:Pointing to the event of 70 ad. If someone really believes that there's a late
Speaker:date reading of things like Revelation and second Peter, then you know what?
Speaker:It's not prophetic.
Speaker:It's a recap of what happened in 70 ad. Either way, same
Speaker:story arc. It's recording.
Speaker:What happened within that generation that Jesus spoke about not projecting
Speaker:something 2000 years in the future.
Speaker:It is looking at all of those events and how they fit together.
Speaker:The only reading that does not fit is the one that I grew up with, which pushes
Speaker:everything 2000 years into the future.
Speaker:We've talked about in the previous that in previous episodes
Speaker:not gonna go into it here.
Speaker:That is why understanding the story.
Speaker:It's so important so we don't get confused and possibly deceived
Speaker:thinking that the story is 2000 years beyond when it really is.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Now let's look at.
Speaker:The ending or the new wedding that occurs and how it fits into
Speaker:this story, this love story.
Speaker:All right, revelation, we've talked about this before.
Speaker:We're gonna just briefly mention it here.
Speaker:It really is more of a courtroom setting and then a wedding.
Speaker:Okay?
Speaker:we've already spent some time in the past few episodes.
Speaker:You can kind of go back and look at those.
Speaker:We may look at some in the future again because it seems
Speaker:to confuse a lot of people.
Speaker:But for now, let's set the love story in place by looking at
Speaker:what Revelation does, it's the revealing of the Christ or really.
Speaker:The bridegroom.
Speaker:If Revelation is the ending of the love story, it should end like
Speaker:a love story ends, and it does.
Speaker:You can read it very easily as a courtroom where the old
Speaker:marriage is formally dissolved.
Speaker:The unfaithful bride is judged for her adultery.
Speaker:Revelation 17 and 18, and then the next scene opens with a wedding.
Speaker:The courtroom clears before the new bride walks in.
Speaker:We've walked through parts of Revelation before and we may come
Speaker:back again, like I said, but for now, just notice that sequence.
Speaker:That's what occurs in Revelation 19 seven.
Speaker:The marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready.
Speaker:In Revelation 21, 2 to three, the new Jerusalem comes down.
Speaker:New Jerusalem, new Eden, new garden.
Speaker:Prepared as a bride, not souls, going up somewhere.
Speaker:It's actually a, a meeting that's here almost as if it's a new Eden.
Speaker:It's God coming down.
Speaker:The home is restored.
Speaker:The story that started in a garden ends in more of a garden city.
Speaker:No veil, no mediator, no temple, no building.
Speaker:The divorce decree is executed and the bride walks in the bookends, but
Speaker:the wedding is not really an ending.
Speaker:It really is our beginning.
Speaker:It's the story that sets us up for where we are and then we step into
Speaker:what was the ending to that story?
Speaker:Powerful.
Speaker:Powerful, powerful, powerful.
Speaker:Really, really cool.
Speaker:Alright, let's talk about what.
Speaker:Changes.
Speaker:I'll just mention what changed for me and what can change for others.
Speaker:When we really understand this whole story and this arc, it
Speaker:really does change so much.
Speaker:Alright, so let's look at this.
Speaker:When the Bible is just a collection of lessons, you sort of read it for
Speaker:tips, you know, things that you can learn and then go apply in your life.
Speaker:When I started reading the Bible, I would find something, I go, oh,
Speaker:I could use that here in my life.
Speaker:Not a horrible way to read the Bible, but it's not really
Speaker:understanding the full story.
Speaker:When the Bible is a prediction chart, you read it to time, the future, you're
Speaker:looking at headlines and trying to figure out how it fits with what's going on
Speaker:here or what just happened, and maybe looking at the future and trying to
Speaker:figure that out, and we could look back over the last 10 years, 20 years, 3,000
Speaker:years, the last 200 plus years, and see that that just doesn't hold up when
Speaker:you think it's also a personal letter to you, not an altogether bad thing.
Speaker:All or most of your focus will be on what's in it for me, not entirely.
Speaker:Bad, but it can cause some things to be a little twisted when the Bible
Speaker:is a love story to a people group like we've been talking about here.
Speaker:You read it to know the God who kept pursuing even after the divorce.
Speaker:So let's look at it as a story about.
Speaker:People, not just a person.
Speaker:And this is a big paradigm shift from where myself and I know possibly you,
Speaker:and I would say most Christians read the context of this biblical narrative in
Speaker:today's world recording this in 2026.
Speaker:So, and I can tell you it's a tough reframe, but the more you look at it, the
Speaker:more helpful it is to help us understand what was written to a group of people
Speaker:that we are now stepping into that group.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:The love story that we've been talking about is not about God and one person.
Speaker:This is tough.
Speaker:It's not about God and you.
Speaker:It never was.
Speaker:It's about God.
Speaker:And a people, a covenant community, citizens of a kingdom.
Speaker:The petal at Sinai was with a nation.
Speaker:The prophets pleaded with a people.
Speaker:The divorce was handed to a collective, not an individual.
Speaker:The remarriage is with a new covenant.
Speaker:People every.
Speaker:Seen in the story is aimed at the group that does not erase the individual.
Speaker:It doesn't make it even, it doesn't make it less than, it
Speaker:actually makes it more powerful.
Speaker:Our place, our individual place in the story is real.
Speaker:But you matter the way a player matters on a team, not the way a solo
Speaker:athlete matters in an individual sport.
Speaker:The invitation is personal.
Speaker:The story is collective.
Speaker:It's bigger, it's group, not individual.
Speaker:Okay, so here's the analogy I just mentioned a sports analogy.
Speaker:So let's look at this for a second.
Speaker:When we make the biblical story only about personal salvation, and many of
Speaker:us have, I have many of us still do.
Speaker:We've turned what really is a team sport into an individual sport.
Speaker:There's nothing wrong with individual sports.
Speaker:I'm not making fun of those or anything like that, but that is
Speaker:not what the Bible is describing.
Speaker:Every covenant, every promise, every judgment, every restoration is aimed at
Speaker:groups, people's nations, a kingdom, not one person's personal highlight reel.
Speaker:And there's a reason we read it that way.
Speaker:Let's look at why we have become so self-focused and really in many ways
Speaker:why we have twisted the biblical story that was written to groups
Speaker:of people 2000 years ago plus.
Speaker:And we've tried to take it and make it a personal thing, a personal letter.
Speaker:It really goes back two or 300 years to the age of Enlightenment, not an
Speaker:altogether bad thing that occurred.
Speaker:people became more enlightened.
Speaker:They had more wisdom.
Speaker:It really moved the western world from groups to the individual.
Speaker:Individual reasoning, individual rights, individual consciousness.
Speaker:That was a gift in many ways.
Speaker:I'm not saying it's totally bad, but when that lens got applied to scripture,
Speaker:the Bible got reinterpreted through it.
Speaker:A lot of it started happening if you study it in the late 17 hundreds,
Speaker:and then things started occurring.
Speaker:the Rapture theory, dispensationalism that shows up in the 1830s after the
Speaker:age of enlightenment had kind of been going on for about 30 to 50 years.
Speaker:Things like Mormonism started in 1830.
Speaker:Denominations began multiplying because each group was building doctrine
Speaker:around their personal interpretation, and then they were dividing up
Speaker:with individuals that believed certain ways instead of looking at.
Speaker:The group narrative.
Speaker:Darwin, of course, really took it to another level by reframing
Speaker:creation around individual survival.
Speaker:Many people made that a religion.
Speaker:All of this is post enlightenment, and I won't go into it all here, but that
Speaker:is the best explanation we have of why we think and believe in that paradigm
Speaker:of individualism when we read the Bible, and it makes it difficult for us to
Speaker:understand the story that was written as a collective to a group of people,
Speaker:to an Ecclesia, to a called out people.
Speaker:All of that centers on the individual and all of it reshapes how people read a book.
Speaker:That was written to and about people, groups, and kingdoms.
Speaker:It also is one of the reasons why we don't really even understand
Speaker:what a kingdom is all about.
Speaker:So that's really the challenge that we're dealing with, that
Speaker:we have to kind of understand.
Speaker:We inherited a 300 year old lens, and then we try to push that
Speaker:back into a 2000 year old story.
Speaker:The Bible was not written to the individual, the Bible.
Speaker:Was not written to you.
Speaker:It was written for you, but it was written to a group 2000 years ago.
Speaker:that's why reading it in context and in order is so powerful.
Speaker:It was written to communities, groups, nations.
Speaker:As we've been talking about, the individual matters inside
Speaker:that story, but the story is a collective, and the cool part is this.
Speaker:You really do understand how you fit together in that better.
Speaker:When you understand it was to a group, not to you as an individual.
Speaker:As you start getting that, it just makes more sense once the
Speaker:focus shifts to the individual.
Speaker:So do the doctrines.
Speaker:Things that are confusing, like healing.
Speaker:you know, it becomes personal healing, prosperity, personal
Speaker:prosperity, all of these things.
Speaker:We become really personable.
Speaker:Sanctification becomes a private self-improvement project.
Speaker:These are the real things, but they're not the main story.
Speaker:The main story is a creator restoring his relationship with the people.
Speaker:When we make the doctrines individual, we lose the plot.
Speaker:Starts getting confusing.
Speaker:We start making stuff up.
Speaker:We start inventing denominations and systems and things that just
Speaker:help us explain things that can be explained so much better.
Speaker:When we understand what the real plot and story is.
Speaker:The individual gains value from being part of the team, you're
Speaker:invited, you're part of that.
Speaker:You have a place, your role matters, but the team existed before you joined, and it
Speaker:continues with or without any one player.
Speaker:The invitation is open to everyone, but not everyone wants to play that sport.
Speaker:That's fine.
Speaker:If you don't wanna be in this kingdom or on this team, you can choose that.
Speaker:But if you are.
Speaker:The covenant is with the team and, the group, the people,
Speaker:a look at the individuals.
Speaker:The Bible does highlight as kind of interesting.
Speaker:If we try to make it about individuals, what we find are all the individuals
Speaker:sort of failed along the way.
Speaker:I'm not pointing to things, but let's look in Genesis 12 and 20.
Speaker:Abraham lied.
Speaker:The father of many nations lied.
Speaker:David committed adultery and murder in second Samuel 11.
Speaker:Peter denied Jesus three times.
Speaker:Luke 22, 54 through 62.
Speaker:If the Bible were about individual heroes, it really did pick some flawed people.
Speaker:The story keeps moving through them and pass them because it is
Speaker:bigger than any single player.
Speaker:The only character who's not flawed.
Speaker:Is one and that is Jesus.
Speaker:And even he came as the bridegroom for a people, not as the hero
Speaker:of a solo performance I want to make sure I'm clear on this.
Speaker:Personal salvation is real.
Speaker:It is part of that story.
Speaker:It matters, but is not the main story.
Speaker:And when we make it the main story, other parts of it get confusing.
Speaker:It lives inside the main story.
Speaker:but when you shrink the love story down to God and me, a
Speaker:betrothal does not need a Sinai.
Speaker:A divorce does not require Jeremiah.
Speaker:The scale only makes sense when the bride is a people.
Speaker:You make the individual the whole story, and you have changed the whole
Speaker:sport, the whole team, everything that is going on, and it gets confusing.
Speaker:It doesn't make sense.
Speaker:And what's interesting, we've talked about this previously, sin reads differently.
Speaker:We covered that in episode four of this series.
Speaker:sin is really a trust problem, not a scorecard In the love story,
Speaker:sin is the bride looking away or leaving the groom being disconnected.
Speaker:It's missing the mark.
Speaker:Turning from the one you were made to walk with.
Speaker:Death reads differently.
Speaker:We covered that in episode five.
Speaker:Death was separation from God, the divorce inside the love story.
Speaker:The death that mattered was covenant death, not just stopping
Speaker:breathing and Jesus absorbed it so the remarriage could happen.
Speaker:Salvation, we've covered that in episode six.
Speaker:It just reads differently too.
Speaker:Salvation is being brought home, reunion with the husband, not
Speaker:a transaction, a restoration, and then of course, revelation.
Speaker:The revealing that book, it reads differently.
Speaker:We've covered that.
Speaker:It's not a horror show, it's not a future prediction chart.
Speaker:It's a courtroom with judgment followed by a wedding.
Speaker:The kingdom reads differently.
Speaker:It's not a future rescue plan or going away somewhere.
Speaker:It's the home.
Speaker:The bride now lives in Every piece that we've been looking
Speaker:at fits inside this one story.
Speaker:The word shifts in the trilogy, the this generation unlock that.
Speaker:We talked about the not in the Bible clutter that we've talked
Speaker:about, the church reframe, they all live inside this love story.
Speaker:What does this mean for us?
Speaker:What does all this mean?
Speaker:All this, this is such a big story and you may or may not understand
Speaker:this, and it's taken me a while to even get to where I'm at, and I'm
Speaker:still working through a lot of this.
Speaker:But what does it mean for us?
Speaker:If this is the love story, then you and I are part of the
Speaker:bride, not just individually.
Speaker:Collectively, we belong to a people that the bride groom, the
Speaker:father, the creator, pursued.
Speaker:They lost, divorced.
Speaker:And then remarried.
Speaker:That is our identity.
Speaker:Individually, yes, but collectively even better.
Speaker:And if the wedding is done and the home is restored, which we read about in
Speaker:Revelation and know that historically it occurred in 70 ad, then we are already
Speaker:in the kingdom, not waiting for it.
Speaker:It, living in it.
Speaker:We stepped into that collective, that group, when we said I'm on that
Speaker:team, I believe in the resurrection.
Speaker:I believe in those things that happen and we step into that kingdom.
Speaker:We become citizens.
Speaker:We become the bride within that group.
Speaker:And here's what changes when the kingdom is the context instead of the individual.
Speaker:If someone in the kingdom is not healthy.
Speaker:The group can surround them and provide support.
Speaker:Can they be healed?
Speaker:Absolutely, but also they can get support while they're going
Speaker:through or getting that healing.
Speaker:If someone is challenged financially, the kingdom can carry them for a season.
Speaker:If someone is grieving, they should not and do not grieve alone.
Speaker:The things we turned into individual doctrines, healing, prosperity
Speaker:provision actually work when they move through a people group.
Speaker:Instead of resting on one person's faith alone.
Speaker:Acts 2 44 through 45, acts 4 32 through 35.
Speaker:What does kingdom living look like day to day?
Speaker:That is the question we'll take on in the next episodes.
Speaker:For now, the foundation and the story is enough.
Speaker:You're already in the house.
Speaker:The kingdom, you are there.
Speaker:Alright, now let's talk about.
Speaker:Kind of the three things that come up, the patterns that we see, so
Speaker:that we can learn, um, I guess what we're looking at with this context.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Uh, most people, this is kinda what we've done.
Speaker:We read the Bible backwards.
Speaker:We start with today, and then we drag the text back to try to make it fit.
Speaker:That's how Jeremiah 29 11, a letter to the exiles in Babylon ends up on graduation
Speaker:cards, you know, or motivational statements, things like that better.
Speaker:Let's look at three steps, kinda what I've attempted to do in all this process.
Speaker:What did it mean then?
Speaker:What breaks when we force it into today, what does it still mean for
Speaker:us when we let the context do the work, the application is stronger.
Speaker:Not weaker when we respect the story.
Speaker:Alright, and let's look at what the love story meant then.
Speaker:So let's summarize.
Speaker:First century Jews heard marriage language as covenant language.
Speaker:When Jesus called himself the bride groom, they knew the story he was stepping into.
Speaker:They understood it.
Speaker:The cross was the death that ends.
Speaker:The old contract revelation was a wedding, not a horror film, not a horror story.
Speaker:None of this was new to them.
Speaker:It was their story told in their language about their God.
Speaker:Here's where our modern misread breaks.
Speaker:We read the Bible as a self-help book.
Speaker:And Jeremiah 31, 31 stops being remarriage.
Speaker:The divorce vanishes, the arc collapses.
Speaker:When we read Revelation as a disaster forecast and we lose the courtroom
Speaker:and the wedding aspect of it.
Speaker:We spend our energy reading newspapers for signs.
Speaker:Instead of reading the text for the bride groom, we read the cross as only a private
Speaker:transaction and we lose the covenant.
Speaker:The big covenant meaning It was personal and covenantal context restores the
Speaker:second half without touching the first.
Speaker:Love story, not just a nice metaphor.
Speaker:Keep this in mind.
Speaker:It is the foundation.
Speaker:And when we dig into kingdom living in the episodes ahead, this story, this
Speaker:foundation is going to be very important because if we go into Kingdom living and
Speaker:still try to apply it to an individual aspect, we don't quite understand how
Speaker:the individual fits into that kingdom.
Speaker:That is that bigger love story between God and the people.
Speaker:The the people group that we've talked about, the Ecclesia, the called out one.
Speaker:So anyway, this has been a little bit long and uh, I appreciate you hanging out here.
Speaker:I just wanted to kinda get this across.
Speaker:That came to me.
Speaker:The Bible is a love story.
Speaker:That is correct.
Speaker:There's a long patience in the middle aimed at repentance or
Speaker:restoration that never seemed to come.
Speaker:There's a divorce near the end.
Speaker:There's actually a couple of many divorces, a divorce near the end
Speaker:crossed that made the remarriage legal, and then that day in 70 ad when
Speaker:the old home burned down, and then a courtroom that clears the record and
Speaker:wedding, that starts the next chapter.
Speaker:If that is a story, then the way we've been taught to read, almost
Speaker:every piece of it needs a second look.
Speaker:In the next episode, we're gonna start asking some harder questions that falls
Speaker:out of this, that the old marriage is over and the new one is already underway.
Speaker:Then what is God actually doing right now?
Speaker:That is where we're heading next.
Speaker:Here is what I wanna leave you with.
Speaker:First of all, thanks for listening along.
Speaker:This has been a lot, but it's been important foundational.
Speaker:Here's what I wanna leave you with.
Speaker:Don't take my word for it.
Speaker:I say this over and over.
Speaker:Read it for yourself.
Speaker:The actual text in the order it was written.
Speaker:When you do that, stops reading like a collection of lessons and starts reading
Speaker:like one story told from beginning to end.
Speaker:And again, you can do that with the New Testament with the
Speaker:reading plan I've developed.
Speaker:go get it at K two M Foundation slash NT 90.
Speaker:If you haven't done that already, go get it.
Speaker:It's free.
Speaker:Just download it and you can start reading at whatever pace you want to.
Speaker:I designed it to be done in 90 days, but you could do it at whatever pace.
Speaker:Just start wherever you are at and if what you find doesn't match
Speaker:up with what you were taught.
Speaker:Pay attention to that.
Speaker:Thanks for following along here, Tim Winders, this is Seat Go create.
Speaker:Keep digging.
Speaker:See you on the next episode.
