Bonus: Survey of the Bible

Welcome to The Rapid Bull, Daily Edition, where we provide a quick biblical interpretations and applications. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

Overview of the Bible in a Bonus Episode

So have you ever wanted to know what the Bible is about really quickly maybe? What we're going to do here is take what we did on our daily episodes and go through every book of the Bible in two minutes for each book or less and give you an overview of every book of the Bible.

This is a bonus episode so that you have all of the books of the Bible in one place. This is kind of an overview or summary of the Bible and it can be helpful in knowing what the purpose of the Bible is, who wrote certain of the books, why they were written.

So may this help you in your study as you look to the scriptures. Now if there's one that you want to go back and study individually, you can go back to our Rapid Report Daily, check those out each individually, but here they all are together in one spot for you to go through the Bible and cover all of it in a short period of time.

So enjoy this study on a survey of the Bible. We want to do a survey and we're going to start with the book of Genesis. The book of Genesis was written by Moses and this is the first book in both the Jewish and Christian Bibles.

Genesis Through Deuteronomy: The Books of Moses

When we look at the book of Genesis, it is a book of beginnings. We start with the beginning of the world, of all of the universe. It starts with the creation and starting with creation we end up seeing that we have the beginning of creation, the beginning of plant life.

We see the beginning of animal life. We see the beginning of man, Adam and Eve, as they are created. It then goes into seeing the beginning of sin, when man and woman violate God's law. But then from there we end up going to the beginning of the spreading and dispersing of languages after this great worldwide flood.

And now we have the beginning of languages and the spreading of mankind across the globe. But the central part of much of the book of Genesis is the beginning of the nation of Israel. Remembering that Genesis would have been written after Israel comes out of Egypt by Moses, when before they go into the promised land and this is a record that he gives to the people of Israel.

So it is a record of the beginnings of the children of Abraham. And you end up having Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, who is called Israel, and his 12 sons. And it ends up being the beginning of the nation of Israel.

So Genesis would be best known as the book of beginnings. The book of Exodus, as we look into this book, this is after Genesis, also written by Moses before the nation of Israel enters into the promised land.

And what you end up seeing here is that this is Moses writing the accounts of what happened as they left Egypt. So you have it, you have a beginning where Moses ended Genesis, that Israel is in Egypt, they're now enslaved.

This is the account of Israel coming out of Egypt. As they've been enslaved, they're giving the testimony, and by the way, the message of the Passover is repeated in more books and more of the Old Testament than almost any other event.

This is a crucial event in Israel's history. So there is a whole book devoted to their exodus from Egypt and then coming into the promised land. So this is an essential book. It is talking about how God, that's the main character, how God is the one who works through Moses to bring about Israel leaving Egypt.

Why would Egypt give up their slaves? Because God does supernatural works by bringing 10 plagues. The focus of this is on God saving his people. The book of Leviticus, that is usually the book many people avoid.

They get to Genesis, Exodus, and jump right over Leviticus because many people don't take the time to read Leviticus. It is one of the more difficult books for many to read because it is filled with laws for the nation of Israel for them to follow when they would enter into the promised land.

This was written by Moses while they were in the wilderness. But there's an important thing that many people misunderstand and don't see in the book of Leviticus. I would argue that the book of Leviticus is the clearest Old Testament book to the gospel.

If you read through the book of Leviticus, you read in the beginning, you're going to see many words speaking about how to enter into God's presence, that we are unclean, the importance of cleanliness, being unblemished.

You're going to see that throughout the first half of the book, two-thirds of the book actually. Last third of the book, chapter 18, you're going to start seeing a phrase over and over again. I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord your God, I am the Lord.

You're going to see that over and over again. The book of Leviticus is there to show that we cannot come to God in and of ourselves because we are blemished, we are unclean. But God is the one who's going to redeem us throughout the book of Leviticus.

It talks about the fact that God is the one who redeems. And so what you end up seeing in the book of Leviticus is you see God is the redeemer, us being cleansed. We come to God His way. That's the book of Leviticus.

The book of Numbers. This is the fourth book in the Bible. It is also written by Moses. It's one of the five books written by Moses. And this book was written during the 40 years that Israel was in the wilderness.

They're traveling in the wilderness. They are really going through this book as almost an instruction book for them, a manual while they're in the wilderness on how to organize themselves, how to set up camp, how to organize the priests and the Levites and what their job function should be while they're traveling.

It will talk in detail about not only the ordering of the tribes, but also about their journeys through the different plains in Moab. They'll talk about the neighbors around them as they're entering into Canaan.

And so what you end up having is this is laws, for the most part, concerning their time in that 40 year wilderness. Keep in mind, if you remember, they're in this wilderness because they didn't have enough faith to go into the promised land.

And so God had told them that they would be in the wilderness until he was ready. And that time was 40 years later. So this book is a book that goes through the wanderings of Israel in the wilderness and is giving them the instructions on how to live their life because God is concerned with how we live our life.

The last of the five books of Moses is the book of Deuteronomy. Now, many people will look at Deuteronomy and they will see that this closely matches what's called a vassal treaty form. And that is very similar.

But many also see that this is more sermonic. This is Moses giving a sermon preaching to Israel. This is basically a reiteration of the law before the nation of Israel enters into the promised land. So the idea of this book is they're about to go into this historical event where they're going to go into the promised land.

And what Moses wants to do is give them a reiteration of the law, a covenant, shall we say, between God and his people. This is the book where we're going to see where God is going to give his commands to the nation of Israel.

You're then going to have toward the end, the last several chapters is going to be the transition from the leadership of Moses, which Israel knew for the 40 years they were in the wilderness, to Joshua.

And he is going to be the new leader of Israel. And then it will end in chapter 34 with the death of Moses. So what we end up seeing in the book of Deuteronomy is God reiterates the law for the nation of Israel to follow as they enter in to the promised land.

And it's good for us to understand the law of God. The book of Joshua, most likely written by Joshua. Who was Joshua? Joshua was someone handpicked by Moses. He was one of the two spies that did not believe that the folks in the land of promise would overtake them.

Both of those two were rewarded. But Joshua was the only one to go with Moses on the mountain when he was receiving the Ten Commandments. And so he was handpicked by Moses. And now at the end of Moses's life, they enter into the promised land.

And the book of Joshua has the purpose of being the official account of the historical events that occur as they enter into the promised land. It will have accounts and details of their holy wars. This is actually the book where we're going to learn about holy war theory, the conflicts that they have, the fact that they come into the land and they are rooting out the evil of other nations.

That becomes important because many people will be critical of what happens in the life of Israel at this time because they do not understand what God is looking to do in using Israel as a arm of justice.

And so as we see, this is really one of the high points in the nation of Israel. As they've wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, they come into the promised land. They're excited. And this is the accounts of them conquering, really God conquering through them and puring the land that will be the promised land for the nation of Israel.

That's Joshua. The book of Judges. Now we don't know exactly who the author of this book was, but Jewish tradition believes that this was Samuel who was the author. Now, this is one of the first books that we come to where you may not realize that the way we're going through this is in the Protestant tradition, but there is differences with the way the Jewish Bible is laid out.

And this book is actually not the sixth book of the Bible following Joshua. It is actually in with the prophets, probably more so because of Samuel the prophet and him being the supposed author. Now, what is this book about?

Well, this actually is a unfortunate sequel to the book of Joshua, where Joshua shows the triumphs. This is the tragic follow-up to Joshua. And this is now they've entered into the land. Israel has in the land.

And there's seven distinct cycles that we see of Israel drifting away from the Lord. You see this and you'll see a four part sequence throughout the book. You'll see Israel departing from God, their disobedience.

The second step will be their God's chastisement, sometimes printing other nations to rule over them. Third, you'll see the the Israel pleading to God. And then the fourth, you see God providing a judge or a savior, someone that will turn them back to God.

And that's the cycles that you see. What is the most common phrase you see in this book is that men did what was right in their own eyes. The book of Ruth. This is the first of two books that are named after a woman.

And this is important because we will see that Ruth is the great grandmother of King David. And that is probably why this book, also assumed to have been written by Samuel, makes interesting content because Samuel is trying to argue for the line of David and his kingdom.

And this book is very important because what you have historically is Naomi, Ruth's mother-in-law, and her husband go into Moab because of famine in Israel. The husband dies, both of the sons die, and Ruth returns with her mother-in-law to Israel.

Being in Israel, she finds a young man, well, not actually an older man, but he is a kinsman redeemer. And that becomes the important thing that we see in this book. This book is going to be talking about Ruth, who is a Moabite, as she becomes the object of Boaz.

Boaz is going to want to marry her. Now, with a kinsman redeemer, the way this would work is that if a brother dies, then his next of kin, or I should say, if a man dies, his next of kin would inherit everything if there's no one to pass it on.

Well, Boaz is not the next of kin, but he was close, and he ends up redeeming all the lands and in turn also having Ruth as a wife. So he is the kinsman redeemer. The books of 1st and 2nd Samuel. Now, when we look in the Old Testament, we see that this was actually only one book called Samuel.

The author is assumed to be, well, Samuel himself. And this book is going to provide the historical account of Israel between the 12th to the 10th centuries BC. Now, this is something that we end up seeing is going to give the account of Samuel the prophet as we transition from the time of the judges into the kings.

And so Samuel really is the last kind of of the judges as Israel calls for a king like the other nations. And in so they get Saul. And so the first half of the book of 1st Samuel is going to deal with the life of Samuel.

Then you're going to have the dealings of the life of Saul that will be in the second half of the book. And then if you take a look at 2nd Samuel, you have pretty much the entire book is going to be devoted to King David.

And you will see King David in the 1st Samuel as well. But you're going to notice that this is primarily going to focus on the emphasis being on the king, the one that would have an eternal king to follow, King David.

And that's the importance of this book of 1st and 2nd Samuel is that it points to King David with the kingship that would last for eternity for the king of David to follow being Jesus Christ. The books of 1st and 2nd Kings, what we end up seeing about these two books is in Hebrew Bible.

There's only one book called the Book of Kings. This is a historical account of the kings of Israel. Tradition has it that this was written by the prophet Jeremiah, which would mean this was before the 70 year captivity.

So this is primarily looking at the life of the kings, the history of the kings, specifically starting with Solomon, going into great detail. Actually, most of 1st Kings is all about Solomon. And then it's going to get into the start of the division.

You're going to look at the decline of the divisions of the northern and southern tribes. And we're going to look at these kingdoms as they fall because they've walked away from God. There's going to be many lessons to learn in the books of 1st and 2nd Kings, lessons that apply for us today, because there's still the fact that we should be faithful to God.

What we end up seeing over and over and over again with these kings is that as they walked away from God and worshiped idols and didn't put their trust in God, that they ended up having problems. Those problems arised and those problems drew them away from God.

There were some kings who were faithful to God, but these are learning lessons for us. What we end up seeing here is this is Jeremiah probably writing before Israel goes into a 40 year captivity to encourage them and teach them lessons that they need to learn.

And we can learn them today. The books of 1st and 2nd Chronicles. Now, this again is one of the books that as we look in the Old Testament, this is known as just Chronicles. There is no 1st and 2nd Chronicles.

Now, this traditionally has been assumed to have been written by Ezra. Why is that important? Well, this puts it after the captivity of 70 years. So where you have 1st and 2nd Kings being the history of the kings before they go into the captivity, this is the account after they come out of that captivity.

So we end up seeing here is we're going to see here a accounting that is going to provide for us a lessons learned of how not to repeat. This is going through the life of the kings, trying to teach a historical lesson to the nation of Israel about what brought them in their disobedience to be brought into the captivity that they just got out of.

And so this is something that when we look at this, this is something as a somewhat of a warning to the nation of Israel to not be disobedient to God. You're going through all the lives of the kings, most of which were disobedient to God, worshiping idols and wanting to be like the world.

That lesson still applies to you and I today. There is a temptation to be like the world, but we must be obedient to God. The book of Ezra, it is about 450 BC and King Cyrus, whether he realized it or not, is fulfilling scripture.

He was prophesied by name that he would send people back to the nation of Israel after 70 years of captivity in Babylon. Now, Cyrus sends back the first wave of people back to the land of Israel. Ezra is part of that.

Ezra is rebuilding the nation of Israel. He's rebuilding the area of Jerusalem. He is a priest and as a priest, he is coming about and he's looking to give the people a historical account, not just some miscellaneous historical account, but here they finally returned to the land, something that a whole generation has gone by and a whole generation has looked forward to a time they could return to the promised land.

They finally get back into that promised land. Here is the accounting as they're rebuilding the temple, as they're going through the difficulties of trying to rebuild Jerusalem. That is the account that we end up seeing in Ezra.

And as he's going through, he's giving this account. He's going through and providing for people the accounting after the return. This is a major event. This is kind of the second exodus. It's kind of like God gives second chances.

The book of Nehemiah. This was written, well, by Nehemiah. This is about the time that we have of the book of Ezra. This is Nehemiah after that 70 year Babylonian captivity that we mentioned earlier. Nehemiah was someone who is the cupbearer of the king in Medo-Persian.

And he basically had wanted to rebuild the temple and Jerusalem. Ezra had gone back in a first attempt to do that, but didn't fulfill it. And so Nehemiah, who had the ear of King Cyrus, was able to put together a plan.

And this book accounts for the plan that he laid out to rebuild the city of Israel. It's a very important work because what we see in this book, we see how God ends up fulfilling scripture, not only through Cyrus, who is named by name, to be able to give the proclamation that would be the rebuilding of the city.

But we end up seeing that here, God puts Nehemiah in a specific place at a specific time to have Cyrus's ear so that he might be the one to rebuild the temple. Now, here's where it gets interesting is because not all of Israel agreed with him.

And you see in the book where he had to struggle not only with enemies from outside of the camp of Israel, but even those within. And he had to deal with it and he dealt with it for God's glory. And that's what really we see is that God is glorified in the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

The book of Esther, this is one of the second books named after a woman. We saw Ruth and now we see Esther. And Esther is a book that is written at the time of the Persians. She is a Jewish person who ends up after the king gets rid of his wife and she's disposed, he looks for a new queen.

And it turns out as God's providence that Esther would be that woman. Now, some criticize this book because this is one of the few books that do not mention God throughout the book. And it should be noted that this is really the account of God's miraculous care for his people, Israel, as they were in a foreign land and being threatened with annihilationism, though God was providentially and fully sovereign and in control.

And that's what you see in the book of Esther. As you go through this book, you see the account of God working through Esther and her uncle Mordecai in such a way that even when there is a threat on the whole nation of Israel by Haman and he's boasting about how he's going to do all these things to the nation of Israel, the tables get turned on him in a miraculous way so that God gets all of the credit.

And this is actually the Feast of Purim that gets celebrated every year by Jews celebrating what Esther had done. The book of Job is one of those books most people, they just don't want to study because the book of Job is quite depressing.

Job is actually giving an account of God working in miraculous ways through an individual's life. Job is someone who served God, loved God, and Satan is challenging God with Job saying that, well, he really doesn't worship you.

It's just because you give him everything. And so God allows Satan to take everything from Job. Notice that what you end up seeing is that Satan is God's devil. He cannot do anything without permission from God.

And he takes everything from Job, comes back to God. God allows him to inflict him with physical ailments and he's afflicted. And you have the first part of the book is all about Job professing his innocence and his friends who are really not that friendly are trying to say, no, you must have done something really bad to have this happen to you.

We want to know what that sin is. Just confess it. And Job is saying, when I see God, he has to answer to me. And he says that, oh, basically up until God decides to speak. And when God shows up on the scene, you end up seeing God asking Job a whole bunch of questions.

Where were you when I did this? Where were you when I did this and this and this? And you see Job realizing he is in no place to question God, even when all this suffering happens. Job did not know what was going on, why he was suffering.

God did. And God said, even if you don't know, you don't question. The book of Psalms. Now, this is the largest book in the Bible. And yet it actually is one that's not really a book. It's actually five books.

Did you know that? The book of Psalms has five divisions to it. And it is really the, say, the hymnal of the Old Testament. The majority of these were written by David, followed up by someone named Anonymous.

Yes. Well, we don't know who wrote many of the Psalms, but others did write. We know that David wrote many of them, but some of them were written by Moses. He's got some, Solomon, others, Asaph. And what you end up seeing is that much of our theology that we get is written in the Psalms.

Why? Well, if you think about it, if you're in a culture where people don't read and write, the best way to teach theology is by song, because that's something that people are going to remember. They're going to end up repeating it over and over again.

And in doing so, they will end up having their theology known. There's 150 Psalms. They're all separate from one another. They're independent Psalms and they were sung by themselves. This is something that you end up seeing in the book of Psalms that they were designed for the purpose of helping people know God through song.

Now there are some churches that only sing Psalms today. You could decide whether that's right or wrong, but we should be looking at the Psalms to learn our theology. The book of Proverbs is mostly written by King Solomon, though not all of it.

Chapter 30 and 31 is written by others. And so you end up seeing that it's not all of Solomon, but it is the wisdom of Solomon. Now, one of the things when going through the book of Proverbs that many people make a mistake is that they interpret the book of Proverbs as if it is promises, and it is not.

It's general principles. These are not promises. These are not things that should be taken as pure instructional things in that way, but more it is generalizations of things. And so the Bible knowledge commentary provides for us five different purposes for the book of Proverbs.

One, for obtaining wisdom and discipline. Two, for understanding words of insight. Three, for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life. Four, for giving prudence to the simple. And five, for understanding Proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise.

And that's what you end up seeing. There are things there that are general principles. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart. That's actually saying that if you train a child in his selfishness, he will never depart from that.

Now, are there cases where a child does depart from his selfishness if you spoil them? There are times. But generally, if you teach them to be selfish, they're going to remain selfish. The book of Ecclesiastes.

Now, the word Ecclesiastes means preacher. This is the idea of the preacher or teacher. This is written by Solomon. And what is very interesting about this book is it seems almost like an autobiographical type of work, where Solomon, who was at the time the wisest man who had ever lived, he was known for his great wisdom, but he was also known for giving over to his flesh with his many wives, his much money, and he had everything that anyone could ever ask for.

And yet he writes a book that as you read through the book, everything is vanity, everything's meaningless, whether it be wisdom or work or righteousness or wealth, prestige, pleasure, youth or vigor, whether it be even your future after death, he argues that everything is meaningless.

Well, except for the wisdom of God. And so what you end up seeing though throughout this book is this is saying that there is everything, everything is a meaningless thing compared to God. And what we see here is a book that is extremely valuable for us today, though many don't study it, because this is a book where so many in America especially are trying to live, to have all these great pleasures and comfort, have all this money and everything else so that they can live the comfortable Christian life, and what do we see in Ecclesiastes?

That without God, it's all meaningless. The book of the Song of Solomon, or sometimes in the Hebrew book, Hebrew Bible, it is called the Song of Songs. What you see in this is, this was written by King Solomon, and this is one that many people have differing views on.

Now, some people don't like to read this book because it's, well, probably one of the more graphic books in the Bible, at least sexually. Song of Solomon is about King Solomon and his bride, and there are many who view that we have to find Christ in every book of the Bible explicitly, and in doing so, what they make this book about is about Christ and the relationship with his church as the bride.

Well, I would have issue with that because that would then argue that this book was kind of meaningless until the church. That doesn't make much sense. But there is, if you take a view that every book of the Bible needs to be glorifying God, well, then this book has a lot of meaning because it provides the love that should be within a marriage, in a godly marriage, and a godly marriage is going to glorify God.

So as we go through the book of the Songs of Solomon, you end up seeing that this is a book that is actually a marriage feast. This is a marriage. This is the king and his bride and the love they have for one another.

It is the love that we should have on earth for our spouses as well. There's much we can learn from this. The book of Isaiah is one written by Isaiah, the son of Amos, and this is one that is really going to help Israel in looking at the judgments of God, but more so looking at the future Messiah.

This book is one of the books that have the most descriptions of the future coming of the Messiah from Isaiah's time. This is also one of the books that was most attacked by the liberal scholars. In fact, some say there was two Isaiahs, three Isaiahs, even as many as four Isaiahs who wrote the book of Isaiah.

They argue that there were different people who wrote it over time and then brought them together and it became the book of Isaiah. The reason for this is because there's so much prophecy in the book of Isaiah that's so detailed that the liberal scholars who do not believe in fulfilled prophecy because they don't believe in God, they don't believe in the supernatural, so they had to explain it away.

Their way of doing it is that some of the stuff was written by one Isaiah, then as some things were fulfilled, someone would write it after the fact, but make it seem like it was a prophecy before the fact.

And they would argue this up until, well, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because when we found the Dead Sea Scrolls, we found what's called the Isaiah Scroll, and we have the same book of Isaiah word for word that predates Jesus Christ.

Why is that important? Because the biggest argument was that there's so much detailed prophecy of the Messiah that it couldn't have been written before Christ. And then we find the Dead Sea Scrolls and find out it was.

The book of Jeremiah written by, well, Jeremiah, this is a book that gives judgments on the nation of Israel. And Jeremiah started his ministry in 640 BC under the reign of King Josiah. Now, King Josiah was the last of the good kings.

And Jeremiah served five decades under five kings. He paints a picture of Israel as they fall into demise under people's sin, the sin of the people that led to the ultimate destruction of the nation. And they gave themselves over to idolatry.

And what you end up seeing is that he preached over those 40, 50 year period and tried to bring them back to God's word. The spiritual condition for Israel was one where they worshiped idols, putting them up on high places, and they refused to obey God.

In fact, what they refused to do was to have that sabbatical year. And for 70 of those Sabbath years of where they were supposed to let the land rest, they refused. And God used Jeremiah to prophesy that there would be a country, a nation, the Babylonians that would come in and take over Israel and that they would hold them in captivity for 70 years as a punishment.

And that through that period, they would be eradicated of their idolatry. That's exactly what happened in history. The book of Lamentations, this is written by Jeremiah. This is dealing with a time where Jeremiah had been saying that there was a judgment that was going to be coming on Israel.

And that judgment has now occurred. What we see in that judgment is that Babylon is coming in. Nebuchadnezzar is going to take over Israel. And this is the lamentation, the crying out against this. The main purpose of this book is about God's judgment because of Judah's sin.

However, there's always that silver lining because we also see God's faithfulness. We see a hope, we see that there's still hope that if Israel would turn from their sin, they could be saved. And we see that this Jeremiah is working through showing God's sovereignty, even through the judgment on the nation of Israel.

Think about this. This would be a very discouraging time for the nation as they are being taken over as they're going to be enslaved to another nation. And here is the lamentation from Jeremiah as he predicted it would happen.

It happens. And there is great distress. But Jeremiah is also, even as he is weeping, he is known as the weeping prophet. He is giving through his tears, hope for a future that as Israel repents, maybe they could come back to God.

The book of Ezekiel. Now, this book was written around, well, in the time of 570 roughly BC, written by Ezekiel. And Ezekiel was taken into captivity, the Babylonian captivity that we saw Jeremiah warn about and give judgment about.

And what we see in this is a lot of, well, some people say confusion. It seems like it's all over the place. And the reason that it seems so perplexing is because there's a lot of future prophecy in here.

There is a lot of things that is picturesque judgments that God gives for Ezekiel. He has to do many things like eating a scroll and he talks about these four faced angels. So there's a lot of things in here that people seem to have difficulty with interpretation, which is always going to be the case with future prophecy.

When we look at those type of literature, there are things that we're not going to see as clearly. Now, Ezekiel is in the captivity during a time when he is writing about the judgment that was prophesied would come now has come.

And this book, though, it talks a lot about judgment. Really, it is offering a future hope. But that hope was not today for Israel. No, they were going to go through the 70 year captivity. But a lot of it is a future hope of what we will see.