With this post, we come to the end of the Old Testament in the Bible Reading Guide. I suspect that only a portion of the regular blog readers here have been following along. Some of you may find this more handy to read in the future, and I do plan to post the whole as a Word document when we finish the New Testament.
Malachi tells us that the people who came back from exile and were living in and near Jerusalem quickly fell into some bad sins, including marrying foreign women (like in the book of Ezra), giving God crummy sacrifices, and cheating him by not paying the tithes. God is coming, he says, so watch out. If you ‘re a cheater, you ‘ll be consumed by the fire of his judgment. But if you trust him and live in obedience, he will reward you.
Pay special attention to two verses. 3:1 predicts the coming of a messenger before God. This turns out to be John the Baptist who came before Jesus. [Ok, it’s more complicated than that, but I’m not going to get into here.] Then notice the phrase in 4:2 about the “sun of righteousness” who has “healing in his wings.” The Bible has already described Jesus as a great light (Num 24; Isa 9), and the chief characteristic of the future David king is righteousness. Thus this is talking about Jesus, and of course when he came he healed many people. But the best is yet to come!
Thanks for posting these. I’ve thought it would be a good exercise to go through and write my own Cliff notes version. Your summaries remind me of the book Stranger on the Road to Emmaus (by John Cross) which takes a similar approach to the bible by helping readers see the overall themes and threads. (If you aren ‘t familiar, Stranger can be a fabulous book to use in sharing with non-believers or a new believer with little bible knowledge).
I’m looking forward to the Word document ;). Thank you so much for posting Todd.