The Bible's Big Picture

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Good morning, gentlemen.
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I want to give you a little change of program for what we're doing today.
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Now, as I've said, we go 12 weeks through systematic theology.
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We start at part 1, go all the way to part 12, and last week we finished part 12, which would ordinarily mean we're going to start over at part 1.
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However, because of several factors, not the least of which is my own proclivity towards wanting to shake things up from time to time, I'm going to take and do a couple of weeks on a different subject before we go back to the 12 weeks.
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So I don't know how long it'll last.
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I know it'll at least last today.
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It may last two weeks, may last three weeks, but let me give you what I'm going to do.
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This is the reasoning and the concept for what I'm going to do.
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Over the last 12 weeks we have done basically a systematic approach to theology, looking at the major headings of theological thought, theology proper, Christology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, soteriology, all of these different heads of doctrine.
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But what I want to do now is I want to go back and I want to do more of what we would call a biblical theology versus a systematic theology.
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The distinction is a systematic theology takes the headings of thought, theology proper, Christology, pneumatology, and focuses on basically a subject-based approach to the Bible.
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Biblical theology comes at it from a different perspective.
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We start looking at the Bible as a whole and seeking to answer the question, what is the whole Bible's story from beginning to end, but using the Bible's narrative as our God.
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Rather than looking at the subheadings of different subjects, we look at the whole Bible.
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And this is actually going to maybe feel a little bit like Sunday school.
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I don't know how many of you guys grew up in church and you went to Sunday school when you were a kid, but that's sort of the approach I'm going to take.
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And don't for a second think that by that I mean that I'm going to dumb it down.
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I'm not dumbing it down, but what I am going to try to do is I'm going to try to make sure that all of you who are here have a good understanding of what we would call the meta-narrative or the overall story of the Bible from beginning to end.
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And we're going to do that by first looking at just what makes up our Bible.
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What are the parts of the Bible and how do we subdivide the text and understand it? So does that make sense? What we're going to do? We're basically looking at the Bible as a whole.
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Normally, we spend a lot of time with the parts of the Bible.
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By the way, we make a lot of use of the board today.
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Normally, we make a lot about the parts.
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In fact, when you come on Sunday morning and Pastor Mark preaches, he usually is preaching verse by verse through a book of the Bible, right? Like I think right now he was in Hebrews.
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Where is he at now? He's still in Hebrews.
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And how long has he been in Hebrews? Okay, so it's been a long, several months, right? And that's my point.
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He's taking small bits of Scripture and he's giving you a microscopic view of that.
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And so we would say that's the process of exegesis.
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Going in and taking the text apart, understanding what it says, making sense of it.
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But there's also what we would call a macroscopic view.
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And that is where we step back and we look at the whole thing.
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Sort of like the difference between being on a tower and being down on the ground.
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If I'm up on a tower, I can see the whole vista.
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I can see the whole landscape.
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I can see the horizon from the top of the tower.
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Or I can come down off the tower and I can get down with my microscope and I can look at an ant or a centipede or something like that.
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And so that's the the approach is two different approaches.
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And what Brother Mark is doing is what I do on Sunday morning.
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I've been in Genesis for over two years and I'm still in chapter 11.
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So just to give you an idea, that takes time, right? That's a microscopic view.
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Looking at each part, understanding how it fits into the whole.
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But if you're going to do that and we are, we also need to understand the whole.
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You understand the parts and then you understand the whole.
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And so the first thing we're going to do, I want to ask you a question.
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Do not be embarrassed if the answer is no.
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But I want to ask you to raise your hand.
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And again, if the answer is no, don't raise your hand.
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Don't just tell me what you think I want to hear.
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Raise your hand if you know all of the books of the Bible by name and by heart.
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Okay, that's fine.
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Thank you for your honesty.
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Because I ask that question to people who have been in church 10, 15, 20 years and the answer is often no.
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And I say, why is it that, you know, we don't know that? And I think sometimes it's because we have had a, I think there's been a generation that didn't go to Sunday school.
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Because when I was a kid and we went to Sunday school, that was one of the things that we learned, right? Like one of the things that we learned was how many books are in the Bible.
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Well, there's 66 books in the Bible.
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And in the Old Testament, there's 39.
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And if you times three times nine, that equals 27.
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That's how many are in the New.
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That's a neat little way to remember.
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I don't know if you guys have ever seen that.
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But that's just a way to to put it in your mind, right? So there's 39 books in the Old Testament, three times nine is 27.
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That's how many books are in the New Testament.
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You add 39 to 27, you get 66.
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And that's how many books are in your Bible.
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Now, that's just the first, that, again, that may seem kind of childish, but I think that's helpful.
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You know, you know who taught me that? Patsy Hoffman, my 12-year-old Sunday school teacher.
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When I was 12 years old, my Sunday school teacher.
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She was Bobby's Sunday school teacher, too.
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In fact, if you see Bobby, ask him to tell you the story about Miss Hoffman.
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Miss Hoffman.
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She was the, I did her funeral a few years ago.
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Most beautiful saint.
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She loved the Lord, and she loved the Lord her whole life.
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And she was, she was my Sunday school teacher.
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And then she was a member of the church that I was a pastor of.
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So I had this long sort of relationship with this lady over all these years.
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And we used to talk theology.
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When I would go on car trips, I would, I would, because she loved talking on the phone.
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And I knew I had to drive for an hour or so.
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And I just didn't, just wanted to keep my mind going.
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I'd call Patsy and put her on speakerphone.
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And we'd talk the Bible for an hour or two hours while I was driving to Orlando or driving out to Tallahassee or something.
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So I just had a really great experience with this lady.
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And so that was one thing she always taught us.
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You know, there's 66 books of the Bible.
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There's 39 in the Old Testament.
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Three times nine is 27.
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There's 27 in the New Testament.
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So let's, very quickly, let's talk about the groups of books that are in both.
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First of all, the Bible is subdivided into two major groups.
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What are the two major groups? Okay, so we got the Old Testament and the New Testament.
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Okay, so we're going to subdivide the Bible right there.
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Old Testament is 39.
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New Testament is 27.
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All right, now in this group, we have five subcategories.
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So we're going to say five categories.
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In the New Testament, we also have five categories.
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So, but you, there's a little bit of debate on how to, how to, you can break the New Testament down a little differently than that.
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But just to keep it, to keep some unification, we'll say five in both.
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Okay, so five categories in both.
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All right, what are the five categories? And if you don't know, it's fine.
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But if you do know, let me know.
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What are the five categories of the Old Testament? The law.
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Okay, so we have the books of the law.
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And we're going to go over what the books are, but we're going to look at the categories first.
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So we have the books of the law.
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And then what would be the second category? That's, that's, that's the last two.
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We'll say major and minor prophets.
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That's, that's the last two.
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Yeah, I guess so.
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Yeah, yeah.
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All right, so we have law, and then what? Now, where'd you learn that 512, 5-5-12 thing? The other church up there taught that? Bill? Bill.
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That's neat.
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I guess I knew it, but I never thought of it, how to do that.
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All right, so law, history, we have prophecy, which is major and minor.
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What comes in between? We would say either poetry or wisdom, depending on, I think wisdom literature is the best way to think of it.
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So we say wisdom literature falls right in the middle.
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Yeah, yeah, we're going to go over what each, what's in each category, but first we're just, we're looking at, we're looking at the groups.
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All right, so the groups are the law.
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This is also known as the Pentateuch.
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The Pentateuch.
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And that is, that simply means the five scrolls, five scrolls, and that, and that would be the books of Moses.
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All right, the law or the Pentateuch.
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Also called something else.
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Anybody else know another word for it? No, not the Septuagint.
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The Torah.
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Torah.
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That's the Hebrew word for law.
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So you'll hear it called the Torah.
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You hear it called the Pentateuch.
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You'll hear it called the law.
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All of that is synonymous for the first five books of the Bible.
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Then you have the history books, and there are twelve.
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Then you have the wisdom books, there are five.
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The major prophets, there are five.
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And then the minor prophets, and there are twelve.
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So in a minute we're going to, we're going to look at the, all these on a timeline, but for now we're just going to talk about categories.
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What are the five categories in the New Testament? What would be the five categories in the New Testament? All right, so the first is the Gospels.
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Well, but this is where we, the categories kind of get confused.
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The second, the second category is actually only one book.
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It's history.
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It's the book of Acts.
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So, so it's history.
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All right.
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However, we could group all of these in as history.
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You could say the Gospels and Acts make up the history of what we would call first century, first century church history, because it starts with the birth of Jesus, which was about 5 BC, somewhere around in there.
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And then the birth of Jesus to the death of Jesus when He died on the cross, probably 33 years old.
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So He probably died somewhere around the year 28 to 30, would probably be around the death of Christ.
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And then we have after that, the next 40 years, going to 70, AD 70, was the time of the writing of the New Testament.
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We're going to look at this on a timeline in a little while, but yes.
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Pentateuch means five scrolls, five scrolls.
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Penta, think of like five, like a pentagon.
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Yeah, and then so you have the Gospels and Acts, which is history.
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The Gospels are more biographical than they are historical, because it's, they're all for about the life of Christ, but they still would, would be historical.
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All right, so what will be the next category? The epistles, right? And you know what the epistles are? They're the wife of the Apostles.
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No, I'm kidding, that's a joke.
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No, no, no, epistles are not the wife of the Apostles.
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Epistles are letters.
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They simply mean, it's just another word for a letter.
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And so under epistles, they're subdivided into two categories.
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That, well, that's a subdivision of a subdivision.
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The first division of the letters are what we call the Pauline epistles.
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So the letters of Paul, and then we have what are known as the general epistles, the general epistles.
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Yeah, and so you have the Gospels and Acts, and then the epistles, and the epistles can be broken down into general and Pauline epistles.
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And then the last category, again, it's one book, so to say it's a category is sort of a little difficult, is what we would call the apocalyptic literature or a revelation.
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So the apocalyptic.
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What's that? Well, that's why I said if you categorize the book of Acts as one category, it's one, two, three, and this is actually three and four because it's Pauline and general.
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That's why I said this one, to put this into five categories, it's Gospel, History, Pauline epistles, general epistles, and Apocalypse or Revelation.
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But with that, two of those categories are only one book.
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Acts is the history book and Revelation is the Apocalypse book.
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But still, categorically, they are different, right? All right, so now let's for a moment talk about what we would call type of literature.
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So now we've categorized the books.
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We've said, okay, these are the categories they're in.
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And by the way, our Bible is slightly different than the Hebrew order.
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So when we say the books are Law, History, Wisdom, Major and Minor Prophets, and the Old Testament, if you read a Hebrew Old Testament, it's ordered differently.
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It's the same books.
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We have the same books as the Jews do, but they order them differently.
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And the reason for that is because they put it more in chronological order, where we put it in categorical order.
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So where you...
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ours begin chronologically because, of course, you got In the Beginning, right? That's chronological.
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And then you get to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.
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And then you get to the history books.
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And you get to Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1st Acts, Samuel, 1st Acts, 2nd Kings, 1st Chronicles.
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That's all history.
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But then you go to Job, right? After Nehemiah, Esther, then you get to Job.
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Job is, if you put him in categorical chronological order, he's way back with Abraham, right? The time of Job is the time of Abraham.
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So chronologically it doesn't fit.
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And then Psalms is actually written during the life of David.
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And so you have these different books that seem to be out of place.
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The reason why they're grouped the way that they are in our Bible is because the Bible that we use is translated, or rather, grouped together by category, right? So the major and minor prophets, when we look at the timeline in a minute, I'm going to talk about where these prophets fall.
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Because out of the 17 prophets, when did Hosea prophesy? It's okay if you don't know.
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Most people don't know.
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Okay, but that's the thing, right? If you talk about when these, that helps you to know what they're talking about, right? If you know when Jonah is prophesying, it helps you understand who Nineveh is, who Assyria is, why he's upset with them, why he doesn't want to go, why he's running away, right? And then you understand that Nahum, which is two books after Jonah, actually is related to the same issue but a hundred years later.
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So there's a hundred year gap between Jonah and Nahum.
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And so there's all these different things that if you understand it sort of timeline wise, you understand why the categories, or why the writings are what they are.
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You guys understand why this is important, right? You good? All good so far? Okay, so this is when we look at our categories of Scripture.
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Now, there are different types of writings within these categories.
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The first is what we would call narrative.
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Narrative.
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What is a narrative? Tells a story, that's right.
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So if I asked you, when you're reading Genesis, is that a narrative? Yeah, tells a story, right? In the beginning, that's how stories often begin, right? In the beginning, this is what happened.
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God created the heavens and the earth.
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The earth was formless and void, you know, and it goes through the story.
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So we have a narrative form of literature in the Bible.
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The books of Moses are narrative in nature.
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They tell the story of the beginning of the world, the beginning of the Hebrew people, and the things that happened to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then to the twelve sons of Jacob, and they went to Egypt, and came back, and through the Exodus, and all those things, right? So those are narrative books, right? In fact, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth are also narrative books, right? And Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther are narrative.
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Now, within those books, there's other types of literature in them, but the primary form of literature is narrative.
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Same way with the Gospels and Acts, right? It's narrative.
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Jesus was born, he lived, he died, was buried, resurrected.
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That's a narrative, right? That's a story.
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It's a true story, but it's still a story of his life, and then how the church was founded through the book of Acts, and all that.
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That's all narrative.
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So narratives is one form of literature that we find in the Bible.
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Another form that we find is what is called didactic.
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Didactic literature.
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Didactic.
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I don't know if you guys need me to move the thing.
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D-I-D-A-C-T-I-C.
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Didactic.
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Now, narrative tells a story.
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What does didactic do? Didactic teaches a lesson.
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What I'm doing right now is I'm exercising a didactic, or I'm practicing didactic by coming and teaching you, right? So this is a lesson.
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So when we get to the epistles of the New Testament, the epistles teach a lesson, right? Paul says, you know, when you gather on the first day of the week, you know, take a collection and use that money for the church, right? So that's a lesson, right? There are things that are in the Bible that are lessons, and I would say the epistles are primarily didactic.
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They're primarily meant to teach lessons, whether it's theology or whether it's practical, and oftentimes they go together.
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That's still the form of the letter.
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So here's why that matters, because we're going to talk about some more in a minute, but before we can get there, a lot of people read the narratives of the Bible, the stories, and they try to draw out of them lessons, which is, you should do that.
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You should draw lessons from them, but the lessons of the Bible that are meant to be applied directly to us specifically are in the didactic portions of the writings, because that's the lessons.
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And so when Jesus is in the Gospels, there were time where he taught lessons, and those were didactic portions of the narrative.
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So you see how a narrative can include a didactic portion, and so when Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, you know, do not look at a woman to lust after her.
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If you do, you've committed adultery in your heart.
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That's a lesson, right? That's a didactic teaching in the narrative, right? He's telling the lesson.
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He's giving the sermon, and so a narrative can include didactic portions.
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But here's the danger.
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What oftentimes people do is they take the narrative portion of the Bible, and they use it like they'll use it as an excuse to do something.
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You know, well, Noah got drunk.
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I guess it's okay.
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Now that sounds stupid, but that's really the argument, right? Well, because it happened to Noah, it must not be that bad, or I can do that and it'll be fine, or whatever.
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They use the narrative to try to twist for their own use, and that's not always the best thing.
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In fact, it's often very dangerous.
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So we have narrative, and we have didactic.
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Another form of literature is called poetic.
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Poetic.
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Now, I want to ask the question, when we think about poetic literature, what's distinct about poetry? Imagery.
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That right away, poetry is filled with images, right? And so, when you read the book of Psalms, and it talks about the trees clapping their hands, right? Obviously, trees don't have hands.
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Obviously, trees don't clap.
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But there's an image there, right, that's intended to invoke the idea that the earth itself is celebrating God's power and His majesty, right? So even the trees will clap their hands.
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Even the streams will sing His praises.
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Jesus said, these rocks will cry out, you know.
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So these are images that are being used in a poetic way, and interpreting poetry is different than interpreting narrative, and interpreting narrative is different than interpreting didactic literature.
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And so, understanding where these different things fall into, like for instance, the book of Job.
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This is going to be, I'm going to ask a question, and I don't want to start an argument, but I want to ask, and you guys feel free to share.
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If you disagree with me, this is not going to be a big problem.
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The book of Job, is it narrative or poetic? I would say it is both, but I would say it is in the form of poetry, but it is poetry that tells a story.
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And the question we have to ask is do we believe that story is true or not? I believe it is.
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I believe the story of Job is a true story.
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However, it does come to us in the form of poetry, so there have been some who have interpreted it more as a parable than as a true story.
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And even though I would disagree with them, I don't think that that's necessarily damnable to believe that.
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I just think it's wrong.
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You know, if somebody said, well, I think Job is meant to tell us how to deal with suffering, and that suffering is ultimately under the sovereignty of God, and Job is more of a parable than it is a true story.
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If somebody said that, you know, I'm not going to elbow them and drop them down and hold them down until they, you know, not that I would do that anyway, but I'm not going to be mad if somebody disagrees about Job, because Job does come to us in the form of poetry.
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In fact, when you look at your English Bible, you ever notice that certain texts are moved over a little bit from the line? You know, you'll be reading the text, it'll be on the line, then some is moved over, and it's like indented.
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That indent is usually meant to show you poetry.
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It's meant to show you that this is verse.
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This is like a song, right? So when you see that, the whole book of Job is that way.
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It's written in that sort of verse.
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Even his interaction with his three friends, you know, is still written in somewhat of a verse, and so that's why we would say the wisdom literature is written in a very particular way.
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Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Psalm of Solomon is all written in a poetic form.
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The book of Proverbs, for instance.
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The book of Proverbs comes to us in what is called the, oh goodness, it's a parallelism.
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Thank you.
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In my mind, I had to think of it.
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A parallelism, where it says something and then it says something else that goes along with what was before it, and there's what's called synonymous parallelism.
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That's when it says the same thing twice.
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There's contrasting parallelism, when it says something and then it says the opposite, like a good man's going to heaven, a bad man's going to hell.
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That would be contrasting.
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It doesn't say that, but I'm just saying that's a contrasting parallel, right? Then there's a parallelism that works sort of like in music, a crescendo, where it builds on itself and it builds up to a point, right? That's like a ascending parallel.
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So there's all kinds of different parallels.
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Understanding that helps you to understand how to interpret Proverbs and how to read it, you know, understanding these different forms and how they're used.
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Am I boring you guys? Putting you to sleep? Okay, all right.
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So this is just, again, this is all basic Sunday School stuff, but this is stuff that's helpful.
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All right.
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Huh? Yeah, I think it's very important.
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Yes.
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Well, praise the Lord.
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You do.
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I'm here now.
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So we have narrative, we have didactic, we have poetic, and then we have what we would call prophetic.
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Prophetic language.
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Prophetic language.
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Some would say this is a form of poetry, but it's actually its own thing.
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You can also call it apocalyptic, we talked about that, but it really is prophetic.
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Prophetic literature is really is, it also uses images like we talked about with poetry, but the the images are usually very drastic.
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The moon shall turn to blood.
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Right? That's something that's talked about in the Old Testament and the New Testament, right? And you say, well, does that mean the moon is going to have hemoglobin? You know, does that mean the moon's really going to be blood? Or does that simply mean it's going to be red? You know? And so that's, that becomes, like, you have to interpret it, but you interpret it by the rules of prophetic literature.
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Yes.
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Is that a good word for it? I think animated works.
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Yeah, just very expressive, I think.
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Yeah, very expressive.
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Like drama? Very dramatic.
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Think about Revelation.
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Revelation is the New Testament equivalent to the Old Testament prophets.
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Yeah, it's, yeah, there's a, there's a hyper exaggeration.
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I like that.
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Hyperbole is used a lot.
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So if you look at the major and minor prophets, if you read Isaiah, Jeremiah, you know, Ezekiel, Daniel, and then you go over and read Revelation, you can see where John gets his use of language.
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You can see that the same God who inspired this is the same God who inspired this, because it's almost the same.
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And, and that's why there's a, there's a, there's a way to interpret, if you're going to interpret Isaiah, you don't interpret Isaiah differently than you interpret John, because they're both the same type of literature, right? In fact, there, there's a, there's a passage in Revelation about the, the sky being rolled back like a scroll.
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If you go back to Isaiah, it says the same thing, the exact same statement, that the sky will be rolled back like a scroll, right? Talking about the end of days and when everything happens and the sky being rolled back, but it's a, it's a, it's a picture of judgment, right? The earth is falling apart, the earth, the sky is rolling back, everything's, everything's shutting down, right? And so this is the, if you will, equivalent of the Old Testament prophet is the New Testament Book of Revelation.
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And so that is the, basically, the four different types of literature.
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Are there more? Yes, we can get a little bit more pedantic, but overall, when you're reading the Bible, you're either reading a story, a narrative, you're reading a lesson, didactic, you're reading a poet, poetic work, which is still meant to teach you something, so poetry is not, not teaching, but it, but it teaches in a certain way.
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Poetry also is used to praise God and to exalt His name.
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Sometimes it's just, praise the Lord, praise Him in His heavens, praise Him in the highest, praise Him with all your words, praise Him with all your, you know, it's like, why does he keep saying this? Because praising God is important, and we're going to do it, and we're going to do it, and do it, and do it, and some, some psalms are just that, over and over and over.
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And then the prophetic literature, of course, is the apocalyptic literature.
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Alright, so this is, this is the whole Bible in its parts, in its subsequent parts.
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Now, let's just for, just think, just to ensure that we do know what makes up each category, I'm going to get you to go with me.
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What are the five books of the Pentateuch? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
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That's the first five books.
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Alright, what are the twelve books of history? Joshua, Judges, Ruth, first and second Samuel, first and second Kings, first and second Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.
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Alright, so that's the twelve history books.
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What are the five prophetic books? I'm sorry, wisdom books.
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Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Psalm.
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Lamentations will come in the prophets.
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And so, real quick though, if you, just look at what we've already looked at.
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We've looked at the five, first five books of the Bible.
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Who wrote those? Moses, right? So these are Moses's books.
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Who wrote the books of history? We don't know.
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They just, we don't know.
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And you might say, oh, I can't believe we don't know.
30:57
We don't know for sure.
30:59
Now, we assume Joshua wrote Joshua, but who wrote Judges? A lot of people believe Samuel wrote Judges.
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I think that's, I think that's a likely scenario, but it's not certain.
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It doesn't, it doesn't, none of them came with a first page that said, this is by Samuel.
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Yeah, so there's historical references as to why we think Samuel wrote Judges, right? And then you've got Ruth, which a lot of people think Samuel may have wrote Ruth as well.
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Why is Ruth important? Yeah, but in the Old Testament, prior to Christ, still important because of David.
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It's David's grandmother, right? She's in the line of David, right? Huh? Great-grandmother.
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Well, Ruth, then you have Jesse, and then David.
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David's the son of Jesse.
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So we have Ruth and Boaz are in the story, in the narrative, because of David, right? And this is an important character study.
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Who is Ruth? Huh? Jesus is the son of David, yeah.
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And so it becomes even more important when we get to the New Covenant and we understand that Jesus is the point of everything, right? So, so Joshua judges Ruth.
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Joshua, probably written by Joshua.
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Judges and Ruth, most likely written by Samuel.
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We don't know for certain, but, you know, we can take a stab and say Samuel.
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First and second Samuel.
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Samuel had influence in writing that, we're pretty certain.
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Not the whole thing, though, because a portion of it deals with his death.
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So, and then we have first and second Kings, first and second Chronicles.
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These would have been written by chroniclers, which are people that are purposed to keep history and records and things.
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This is why you go to Chronicles and it's like, this one, we get this one, and this one, we get this one, and this one, we get this one.
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Because it's a chronicle.
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It's a history book, right? And so there's, there are people that are used, but we don't know who they are.
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And you can't get offended by that, again, because we don't know who wrote Hebrews, either.
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So it's like, these are things that, you know, you ask the question, well, why do we trust something if we don't know who wrote it? The Old Testament, in its fullness, was confirmed and affirmed by Jesus Christ.
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So whoever wrote it, he believed it was right.
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So I think I can trust that.
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And in the New Testament, the whole New Testament is confirmed and affirmed through the Apostles, you know.
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So at least we can say that they probably know who wrote it and they trusted it.
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So there's a certain amount of, we're having to trust them, and we do, right? We trust the Apostles.
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We trust Jesus.
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So as far as who wrote it, it's not that huge of a deal.
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But it is nice when we do know, right? Like Ezra and Nehemiah are actually one book in the Hebrew Bible.
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We break it into two, but it's one story written by Ezra the scribe, right? So you have that story of Ezra and Nehemiah.
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And now Esther, I don't remember, I have to look it up who wrote Esther, but Esther's whole narrative is odd.
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Did you know Esther is one of the only books of the Bible that doesn't mention God? Doesn't mention God.
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But the story is obviously the providence of God.
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You know, last night I taught on providence at our church, and what is God's providence? It's His working in our lives, right? And you don't see Him all the time, but He is working in your life.
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Everything you're doing, He's working in, whether it's to bring you somewhere or do something with you or whatever, God's working.
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That's what we call providence.
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And what is the story of Esther? It's God's providence, right? Saving His people, using Esther the queen, and raising her up to a position where she can be the mouthpiece to save her people.
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Yes? And that was the book too where the king asked him to bring him the book, and that's right? Isn't that that one? Where he owes the book to Caesar, he owes the God? No, or am I thinking of something else? Is that Ezra? I think that, yeah.
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Yeah, I think that's Ezra.
35:04
Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to think.
35:06
I remember that's the first time I remember them actually asking for a book.
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Nehemiah 8, maybe what you're talking about.
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But yeah, where he stands up and preaches.
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That's where we get the idea of the pulpit.
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It's built.
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Nehemiah 8, they build a platform, and he opens the book.
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Andrew, he says, bring me the book of this, and then they bring it.
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He says, oh, I do owe that guy something.
35:25
Oh, that's a different narrative.
35:26
I know what you're talking about.
35:27
But all of that is just a reminder that they had the word there too.
35:32
You know, obviously not the whole thing, because it's still being written, but that's powerful.
35:37
So you're saying history was written by Chronicles? Yeah, people we don't know for sure.
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We don't know who the Chronicle was.
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In the whole, it's Chronicles? Yeah, I would say because it takes such a vast portion of history.
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When we do the timeline in a minute, you're going to see how long the history was.
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It couldn't have been one individual, most likely, because it goes through several generations of kings, and so, yes.
36:00
So couldn't the whole Bible be history? Well, the whole Bible is God's story.
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You've heard the phrase, His story, so history.
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Yeah, it's His story, His message, for sure.
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And when we're all done with this, I'm going to show you that the whole Bible can be broken down into four words.
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But we're going to see that.
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His story can be broken down into four words.
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But we're going to look at that when we're, hopefully we'll get done with this.
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Next week, if we finish what I want to do today, next week we're going to look at the covenants of Scripture.
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That's a way to break the Scripture down into, another way to break it down and understand it from the view of covenantal perspective.
36:39
You know, how did God interact with different people, and how does that fit into the whole story? So, okay, so we've got the Old Testament, New Testament, we know the books of the Old Testament, we got to the wisdom books, right? But what about the prophets? Did we go through the prophets? No.
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Alright, there's five major prophets.
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Prophets.
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Lamentations, is he killed Daniel? But Lamentations is actually, Lamentations is written by, do you have a question? I'm sorry.
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Oh, okay, we didn't go through that, thank you.
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Alright, going back to the wisdom books.
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Job, we don't know who wrote Job.
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Again, it's the oldest book, it was written probably during the time of Abraham.
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It may have been written by Abraham, we don't know.
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But we know that that's about the time it was written.
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Psalms is actually written by various, and it usually says in the psalm who wrote it.
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Psalm of David, Psalm of Asaph.
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There's one psalm that was written by Moses, right? So the psalms will tell you who wrote them in the introduction to each psalm, generally.
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Then you have Proverbs, which again, is a collection of wisdom literature we believe was probably collected and put together by Solomon, wisest man ever.
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And Ecclesiastes, certainly written by Solomon, and then Psalm of Solomon written by Solomon.
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So we have three of the wisdom books who was written by the most wise man.
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I point at me like it's me.
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No, it's Solomon, the wisest man ever.
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So we have Psalms as a compilation, and then Proverbs, Psalm of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes for those three.
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So then we get to the prophets, and we have Isaiah the prophet who wrote his book, we believe.
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Now some people argue that what's interesting about Isaiah is it's 66 chapters, the way the Bible's 66 books, and the first 39 chapters read differently than the last 27 chapters.
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Just like the Bible has 39 and then 27.
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It's so cool when you look at it like that.
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And Isaiah, some people argue there was two Isaiahs.
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There was the first 39 chapters and then somebody else came along and finished the other.
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I don't believe that.
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I think there's one.
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I think the New Testament affirms that there was only one because there's a certain point in the New Testament where Isaiah is quoted and it quotes from the first 39 and the last 27 and it applies both of them to the prophet Isaiah.
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So my opinion is, based on internal evidence, Isaiah wrote the whole thing.
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So, with that being said, we have Isaiah wrote Isaiah, Jeremiah wrote Jeremiah, and Lamentations.
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Lamentations is, what is a lament? Sorrowful.
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He's sorrowful over the destruction of Jerusalem.
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And then you have Ezekiel written by Ezekiel and Daniel obviously written by Daniel.
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Now some people argue Daniel was written much later than the life of Daniel because it has specific prophecies that people don't believe Daniel could have known about.
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But again, that's a presupposition, right? You're saying God doesn't know.
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Daniel is a prophet speaking for God and he speaks prophecy.
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Obviously it could be beforehand.
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That's the very idea of being God.
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So, Daniel is by Daniel.
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Now, the 12 minor prophets they're kind of hard to remember always.
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This is usually where people get a little messed up in their memory banks.
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I put it in three groups of four.
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That's how my brain works.
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I work in threes and fours.
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So, three groups of fours.
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The first four is Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah.
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Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah.
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That's the first four.
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Then you got the second four.
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Jonah, which we all know who Jonah is.
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Jonah took the first submarine ride.
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Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah.
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That's the first four of the 12.
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And why are they called minor prophets? Just because there's less writing.
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It's not because they're less important.
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It's just their books are quite smaller.
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In fact, in the Hebrew Bible, remember how I said it's collected different? They're all one book.
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They're all so small, they just put them all together.
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They're called the prophets.
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So, Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah.
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Then you got Jonah, our first submariner.
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He took the first submarine ride.
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That's the next group.
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Jonah, Micah, Nahum, and Habakkuk.
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Some people say Habakuk.
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But I like Habakkuk.
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How do you spell it? Habakkuk is H-A-B-B U-K U-K No, wait.
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I'm sorry.
41:24
H-A-B-B No, I was wrong.
41:27
Let me look it up.
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I don't know why.
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H-A-B A-K-K U-K H-A-B-K I'm sorry.
41:39
H-A-B-A-K K-U-K Habakkuk Habakkuk This is in order.
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And the last group, the last four The last group of four is Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.
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The great Italian prophet Malachi Zephaniah, Haggai H-A-G-G-A-I I think I did that one right.
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Zechariah and Malachi Malachi The great Italian prophet Malachi M-A-L-A-C-H-I Malachi Now, we would we would argue that the names of the books that's the authors of these because it's prophetic writing by these prophets so there are some who would argue that it's not but the traditional approach is that Malachi wrote Malachi Zephaniah wrote Zephaniah These are their prophetic utterances.
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This is what God gave to them to give to the people of Israel.
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Now to the New Testament The four gospels are Almost every time I ask somebody can you tell me who the twelve apostles are They always start Matthew, Mark, Luke and John I say nope, that's not right.
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Luke wasn't an apostle and neither was Mark Matthew was, he was the tax collector and John was the beloved disciple so you got you got two apostles and two who were disciples of Jesus but not apostles Apostles was a specific category Matthew, Judas Matthias No, Matthias came later and Matthias took the place of Judas You're doing good, you got three more Hang on, hang on Wait a minute, was there two James? Yeah, there were two James James the Less He was called Boanerges The Sons of Thunder and then Micros, which is James the Less Hang on I said Andrew, right? That's the first four I try to remind people What about Paul? Paul was later He wasn't one of the original twelve Stephen wasn't either Well, no, that's the argument Matthias, I don't believe Paul took his place Some people do, that's a theological argument Yeah, that's what I'm saying I don't want to go too far into that My opinion is the lot fell to Matthias The Bible says the lot falls in the lap but every decision is from the Lord So God chose Matthias in that regard Thaddeus Yeah, Thaddeus though has two names I have to go back and look I get a little confused because one guy can have two names and it gets a little confusing There was Simon the Zealot was the other Simon There was Simon Peter and there was Simon the Zealot Alright, so getting back to this That was good though You nailed it, you guys did good So we've got the New Testament Matthew, Mark, Luke and John Acts, Romans 1st and 2nd Thessalonians Galatians Yep, General Electric Power Company Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians General Electric Power Company I always heard Donny's PowerPoint Okay And then you got 1st and 2nd Thessalonians 1st and 2nd Timothy Titus, Philemon That's the end of Paul's writings You have the 12 writings of Paul Some people believe Paul wrote Hebrews I don't But that's a Huh? Oh, no, no, no I think, I personally hold to a potentially Lucan authorship for Hebrews Meaning Luke wrote Hebrews But that's not It's not something I'm, I don't die on that hill I think it's just because there's a couple of chapters I think Luke or Luke came in Well, I think I heard this and it makes sense to me That Hebrews is a sermon that was preached by Paul but written by Luke Meaning Paul, it's Paul's theology but it's in Luke's words Because it certainly doesn't read like Paul, but the theology is Pauline So, you know I think that fits It could have been Apollos Could have been Barnabas, could have been an unknown name, you know But Apollos was a man who was great with words We know that And Barnabas was certainly an associate of Paul for a long time It was accepted by the early church But the authorship has always been a dispute Alright, so But that takes us to the general epistles Why are they called general epistles? Because they're not all Close But typically because they're written to a general audience Paul's letters are always Always applied to either a church or to an individual It's either Rome, the church at Rome Corinth, the church at Corinth Galatia, the churches of Galatia Paul's letters are always specific to a group But you get to Hebrews and the rest and it's to the church, it's to the whole church And so they're general in nature rather than being specific Paul's letters are not only Pauline but they're also pointed They're pointed at specific You foolish Galatians That's right And so Paul's letters are personal and individual or two individual groups So going through Paul's letters again Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians Galatians, Ephesians Philippians, Colossians All the T's 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, 1st and 2nd Timothy Titus, that's five T's And then Philemon Philemon That's what I'm saying I'm just saying it differently Tomato Tomato I've been saying On Sunday morning, I'm in Genesis 11 and I'm throwing people off because I say Tower of Babel rather than Tower of Babel But Babel is more in line with actually how it's pronounced, I think And so I say Babel and they're like, what? It's Babel So you consider Hebrews a general audience? I think so I think so Hebrews is a universal epistle or a general epistle And they're also called Catholic epistles because Catholic simply means universal or general It doesn't mean what we think of as Catholic Church So they're Pauline epistles and then the Catholic or universal or general epistles And then you have the last one, which is the Book of Revelation Oh, I'm sorry, we didn't go through the general Let's do the general Hebrews James 1st, 2nd Peter 1st, 2nd, 3rd John Jude and Revelation Now let's talk for a quick second about authorship We know who wrote the Pauline epistles We don't know who wrote Hebrews 1st, 2nd Peter is written by Peter, even though there are some people who dispute that I have the traditional understanding that Peter wrote it I have no reason not to believe it Huh? James Yeah, but it's James the brother of Jesus who was the pastor of the Church of Jerusalem It's not James the disciple because James the disciple died His death is recorded in the Book of Acts too early to have been the writer of the epistle No It would have been James the one who didn't believe in Jesus while he was alive What did Paul see get stolen? Stephen? That's Stephen But no, James was killed later I think under I have to go back and look James is the brother of John is martyred too early to have been the writer and we know specifically the James of Galatians that when Paul says this is the brother of Jesus he tells us it's the brother of Jesus in Galatians and indicates to us that he's the pastor of the Church of Jerusalem In Acts 15, that same James is the one who gets up and speaks at the Jerusalem council and makes the final proclamation, this is what we're going to do So we know he had authority and leadership in the Church of Jerusalem It makes a lot of sense that he would have written that letter In fact, I believe James is actually the first letter written in the New Testament Some people argue that Galatians came before the Book of James.
51:00
I think the Book of James is possibly written as early as the late 40s probably 47-48 Galatians is written around 49 and then we start Matthew and Mark The Gospels aren't written until the 50s so the epistles come first In fact, the first group of books that are actually collected and sent out to the churches as a whole, were the writings of Paul It's called the Pauline Corpus I have a Bible back there that shows the chronological list It says James, Galatians, Matthew, Mark first, second, tenth Oh, okay, Matthew, Mark is after that in that group Yeah, like I said, but that's still in the 50s though That's still in the 50s though, right? Yeah, because James would have been around 47-48 Galatians around 49 and then Matthew, Mark early 50s Second Timothy is actually the last Yeah, yeah But that is, right? Because Paul talks about So we have the epistles of the general epistles that go all the way to Jude Who is Jude? Also the brother of Jesus Alright, finally we have Revelation which we believe is written by who? John Which would have been the same John who wrote the Gospel The same John who wrote the three letters So outside of Paul he would have written the most letters Because he wrote five Luke wrote the most verses Oh yeah, Luke wrote the most content You put Acts and Luke together And if he wrote Hebrews, then there's no contest But yeah, Luke and Acts together make up the lion's share of the information that we have Alright, so Is that helpful? Let's now do, for our last couple minutes I'm going to do a timeline for you This is going to go super, super broad So don't feel like I'm making it too simple But I want to make it somewhat simple Because my point in this is to show you something Alright, so If you look at the Bible Old Testament and New Testament Let's see if I can do this in five minutes Alright, so we got Old Testament We got New Testament We have this covers a period of many thousands of years.
53:12
We don't know when creation happened specifically I believe it was probably around 7,000 years ago So we'll put it about This would be a period of about 5,000 years Yeah And then the New Testament is written over a period of 70 years So this is one century of less than one century So much different time frame You got one lifetime versus many, many, many lifetimes And we begin with creation here which goes into what we would call the time of the You have the time of innocence.
53:57
So we have the garden the fall the flood the patriarchs Alright, so you have garden, fall, flood then the time of the patriarchs which are who? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob Abraham, Isaac, Jacob So that's the first set And then you get down here and then you go to the Exodus Which was We're not dealing with individuals We're dealing with what happened Because we can say Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob Moses But really we're saying garden, fall, flood patriarchs Exodus And then we have after the Exodus what we would call the conquest Conquest of Canaan Right? After the conquest of Canaan we have the the period which is simply known as the period of the Judges So we'll just call it the Judges Right? After the period of the Judges we have what would be called the Monarchy The Monarchy Exodus, Conquest, Judges, Monarchy Exodus, Conquest, Judges, Monarchy So we have the garden, the fall, the flood the patriarchs All that's Genesis Exodus is the book of Exodus The conquest is Well the Exodus would include Exodus Numbers, Deuteronomy All that And then you have the conquest which is Joshua What does Exodus mean? To go out They're going out of Egypt They're exiting going out of Egypt You have the conquest under Joshua You have the Judges which again is its own category Then you have the Monarchy which includes everything else Right? Because the Monarchy is the story going forward.
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It starts with Saul and then David and then Solomon and then Solomon's two sons Rehoboam and Jeroboam which divided the kingdom There was a divided kingdom The northern kingdom and the southern kingdom The northern kingdom of Israel, the southern kingdom of Judah Yes? I was going to ask, do you remember God, we added it up one time Israel had how many kings Judah had because it always seemed to be like 11 or 1 or something like that Neither king seemed to be there for long periods of time at least a giant handful I haven't seen that.
56:30
I'd have to look at it with the charts you're talking about.
56:32
I'm sure it's correct I just haven't looked at it that way What are you going to put? Oh, that says creation Oh, it just says creation It just says creation, sorry That was create slash shun Alright, so we've got creation garden, fall, flood, patriarchs exodus, conquest, judges monarchy, then you have a divided kingdom The divided kingdom leads to an exile So it was divided and exiled Yep, divided kingdom and then the exile right and then you have the return the return you can say the return to Jerusalem and that is here under the return you would have your Ezra, Nehemiah going back and rebuilding Now the exile becomes its own category because when we talk about the prophets we have the pre-exile prophets the exile prophets and the post-exile prophets So that means what? Did I say something wrong? No, no, no I'm sorry But this will help you with the minor prophets Right, because like I said it's hard to know when the minor prophets and all this stuff will happen Isaiah and Jeremiah are pre and then of course lamentations right, because that's pre The exile prophets are Daniel and Ezekiel Isaiah and Jeremiah I'm going to come back because there's more to start out with the first five the major prophets two of them are pre two of them are during the exile Now after the exile there are three prophets Zephaniah Haggai, Malachi So you've got Zephaniah Haggai Malachi make up the post-exilic it's called the pre-exilic, exilic and post-exilic prophets so all of the other prophets Zephaniah, Haggai Malachi are the post all of the other prophets all others are pre so that would include Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk and those would all be pre-exilic I'm not going to write all that down Only Daniel and Ezra that we know of prophesied during the exile so most of the prophets prophesied before the exile that the exile is coming some of them prophesied to the northern kingdom some of them prophesied to the southern kingdom but that's the majority Ezekiel is pre-exilic No, Ezekiel is in the exile I said exile I'm sorry Ezekiel Ezra is not a prophet Ezra is a scribe Okay Alright Now the New Testament it's all one lifetime so you don't have to do that The New Testament we could do a timeline for but the bigger one is understanding this.