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. 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. 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 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 are 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 follow as they enter into 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' 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 an 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 account 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 6th 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 an 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 is 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

God's chastisement, sometimes permitting other nations to rule over them, third you'll see

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 is 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 the 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,

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 what we end up seeing here is we're going to see here an accounting that is going to provide for us 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 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's 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 return 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 was 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. 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' 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.

He 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.

Job is saying, when I see God, he has to answer to me, and he says that basically up until God decides to speak.

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, and 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, 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.

Proverbs is a promise 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 is 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 throughout this book is this is saying that 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 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 were 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 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 are 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 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 those 70 year captivity, but a lot of it is a future hope of what we will see.

And we call that the second coming of Jesus Christ. And that is what Ezekiel talks about.

The book of Daniel written by the prophet Daniel. This is written during that Babylonian captivity.

He was alive for the full 70 year captivity. And the book of Daniel actually spans that entire time.

He was taken captive as a young teenager. And what we end up seeing is that the first half of the book, the first six chapters are really a historical accounts that deal with what was going on in different periods of his life.

I know it only takes a few minutes to read the first six chapters. And yet that's those six chapters spanned 70 years.

So he's a young teenager in chapter one. And when he's in that lion's den, he would have to have been in his well close to nineties, late eighties to 90.

Why? Well, 70 years past. So if he was taken as a 15 year old plus 70 years, he's 85.

So he's going to be that old by then. Now, the second half of the book is a lot of prophecy, first half historical, second half, a lot of future prophecy of what is going to happen.

There is much that ends up happening where Daniel ends up realizing from the reading of Jeremiah, he realizes,

Hey, we're getting close to the 70 years and he ends up talking, getting prophecies of the future.

Now keep in mind that Daniel spread through not only the Babylonian captivity, but into Medo -Persian captivity.

And we most known is the prophecy of the great tower, which gives a layout of the four major empires.

So Daniel provides a lot of future prophecy. The book of Hosea, this is written by Hosea the prophet and most notably known for those opening few chapters where God has

Hosea do something that is a picture of Israel. And so Hosea ends up having to marry a woman named

Mary, someone who is going to be unfaithful. In fact, she's so unfaithful. She becomes a harlot.

She becomes a prostitute. She ends up being destitute. And yet throughout that Hosea is still caring for her and taking care of her.

He's buying food for her and putting it out for her when she's on a slave block and being sold as a slave because she's no value to anyone other than as a slave now.

And Hosea is commanded by God to buy her back and take her in.

The whole imagery is there because God wants to show Israel that through their idolatry they have been unfaithful.

They have sold themselves to another, to a Gentile God, to a false

God. And Gomer is there to represent the nation of Israel. Hosea represents

God. And what you end up seeing is that here God is doing everything for Israel.

As they are giving themselves over to idolatry, here is God taking care of them, providing for them.

And then when there's nothing left and they've given themselves over to idols, here is God taking them back in.

So what you end up seeing is that this book deals with three main topics and those are sin, judgment, and salvation.

The book of Joel. Now what's going on at this time? Well there's three countries, Tyrus, Sidon, and Philistia. And they have made some military incursions into Israel.

Now not only that, but there is some massive things going on like a drought that was huge.

But then they had this big invasion of locusts that basically just tore up anything that was green.

That obviously had an effect on their economy. So just think about this. You have the military coming in.

You have a drought. You have no food. You have a devastation of your economy. Not exactly what you want.

And all of this throughout the book of Joel you see one overarching theme and that is the day of the

Lord. When is the day of the Lord? Well it's not so much a specific day as a time period.

But there is this prophecies where you end up seeing in the book of Joel all of this stuff of an outpouring of the flesh.

It's referenced in Acts chapter 2 because it talks about the dreams that people will have, this outpouring of the spirit with utterances of dreams and all the visions and things like that.

And this book is one where we end up seeing that at a time of complete devastation that there is still

God having his covenant relationship with his people. He is going to have this day of the

Lord. It's a warning to us as well. The day of the Lord is coming. We should be challenging people to repent.

The book of Amos. It's written roughly in 760 B .C. and Amos was a prophet to the northern tribes.

The overarching theme is one of judgment and it is one that shows that God is the sovereign ruler of the universe.

He is in charge of everything even though all the nations rebel against him and his authority, yet he is still in sovereign control.

There is nothing that he is not in control of. And so even though it was a time of prosperity politically under the secure reign of Jeroboam II, we end up seeing that Amos has two primary focuses.

One is because of the sin of Israel in their lack of worship to the true

God. And the second sin that it addresses is the lack of justice with their people.

So you end up seeing both vertically and horizontally. They lack the worship of God and the justice with one another.

And this is the themes that we end up seeing throughout this book. Now as we look at the book of Amos, we realize that God's promise is a divine justice.

That there is divine justice coming. But God still has a covenant people that he will restore fully one day.

The book of Obadiah, it is one of the shortest, in fact it is the shortest

Old Testament book with just 21 verses. The theme of Obadiah is the fact that what ended up happening in the time was about 586

B .C. We end up seeing that this is after Babylon destroys

Jerusalem, that during the conquest, the Edomites are actually helping to capture fleeing

Israelites and turn them over to the Babylonians. What they end up doing is the

Edomites, and the Edomites if you remember are the descendants of Esau, and they end up taking up residence in the

Judean villages. That got the Lord pretty upset. And so this is where God is going to prophesy against the

Edomites and this is what Obadiah's prophecy is. He is a prophet to the

Edomites that God would repay them for mistreating his children.

And so Obadiah is really going to insert and explain that God is sovereign even over the nation of Edom.

That he was going to restore what they took and that they would end up being judged for what they did against God's people.

And this is something we can look to that God cares for his children and will restore them.

The book of Jonah. Now Jonah was a prophet that many people are aware of because though he was a prophet to a

Gentile nation, the nation of Nineveh, he was well known for a fish story.

Jonah is the prophet who fled God and chose to try to disobey God and wanted to run from telling the

Ninevites about the message that God had. Why? Because well, Jonah did not like the

Ninevites. They were the enemies and he ends up saying at the end of chapter 4 that the reason he did not want to go to Nineveh is because he knew

God was a God of mercy. In other words, Jonah knew that when he delivered the message to the

Ninevites, they would repent and God would show mercy. He did not want them to have mercy.

So you end up seeing in chapter 1, he's running from the will of God. He ends up being thrown into the sea, being swallowed by a fish.

God redirects him and that fish stays there for three days. He's praying.

He realizes what he did wrong. God has the fish spit him out. He goes to Nineveh.

He preaches the message. The king and all the Ninevites, well, not all every single individual, but enough of them that it says all of Nineveh repents.

They repent and God shows mercy and you end up seeing Jonah up on a mountain waiting for the destruction and it doesn't happen.

He gets upset. Why? Because he wanted God's judgment on them, but God is a God of mercy.

The book of Micah. Micah was written somewhere around 720

B .C. and when you look at Micah, there's actually three messages, three different distinct messages that we see and each one of them, the exhortations for each one start with the word to hear or to listen.

The first message starts in chapter one and two and it is the judgment will come.

That's right. There's no way to avoid it. There is a prophecy, a prediction of a coming judgment and we end up seeing the second message and the second message is in chapters three through five and the second message is blessings that are going to follow the judgment.

So, we're going to move from the judgment to hope. So, there's going to be blessings that will follow.

That is encouraging to know there's going to be hope. And then there is a third message in chapters six and seven and that third message is an indictment of sin.

It's a promise of blessing. So, you end up seeing that sin is indicted and there will be a future blessing.

So, we see that one way of looking at it is we have the judgment to doom to hope and that is the theme of the book of Micah.

So, we can enjoy the fact that we know that there will be a future blessing for God's people.

Nahum. This is a book that actually some think is a sequel to Jonah because it proclaimed a judgment on the same nation as Jonah did on the nation of Nineveh.

Now, we look at this and it's kind of interesting because where Jonah, the result of Nineveh, is that they repented and turned from their wicked ways.

That's not the case with Nahum. Now, Nineveh was one of the cruelest cities.

In this book, we actually will see that it is described as a city of blood,

Nahum 3 .1. A city noted for its cruelty in 3 .19. This was not a very nice place.

In fact, they were going to be judged for what they had done to many nations including the northern tribes of Israel.

What we end up seeing is that the southern tribes of Judah, they were feeling the pressure of the Assyrians weighing down on them.

And here comes God through His prophet Nahum prophesying of a judgment that was going to come on the great city of Nineveh.

Why were they so great? Well, they felt comfortable in their sovereignty that they had 100 foot high walls and 150 foot moats that were sometimes 60 feet deep.

So, they thought they were secure. The thing is, they are not secure from a sovereign God. And what they realized is that a sovereign

God who calls judgment upon them, they should have done like Nineveh did 100 years prior at the preaching of Jonah and repented.

But instead, they suffered the judgment of God and His sovereignty. The book of Habakkuk, very little is known about Habakkuk much like many of the other prophets that we see of the minor prophets.

But we do know that he was contemporary of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and Zephaniah.

Now, this is unique. This is different than the other prophets. Where the other prophets declare a message from God against the people of judgment, this is actually the prophet having a dialogue with God asking for judgment.

In other words, the culture has gotten so bad, he actually wants judgment to come upon them.

And God says He's going to send that judgment by means of Nebuchadnezzar. And what we end up seeing here is, then this is different from the way people think.

This is God actually going to bring judgment on the people that claim to be His own people. And the prophet is wanting the judgment to come.

That tells you something about how wicked he sees the people, that they actually want

God's judgment. I like the way that J. Ronald Blue says it. Habakkuk's book begins with interrogation of God but ends in intercession to God.

Worry is transformed to worship. Fear turns to faith. Terror becomes trust.

Hang ups are resolved with hope. Anguish melts into adoration. This actually is a book of hope and encouragement to those of us who live in a country like America where we go, where is

God in the midst of wickedness? Well, God will come and judge one day, but it may not be today. The book of Zephaniah.

Not much is known about this prophet other than the fact that his ancestry traces back several generations back to a king,

King Hezekiah. Now this may have been an advantage for him as a prophet because he was one who was prophesying in the time of Josiah and he may have been able to have the ear of the king because, well, he was the descendant of a king.

And what you see in this prophecy is that there is a judgment first on Judah, and that is the longest, and then on the surrounding nations like Moab and Ethiopia and Assyria, but then it returns back to judgments on Jerusalem and all the other nations.

This is a prophecy where what we end up seeing is that God is going to bring the judgment on Jerusalem at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar from Babylonian.

And what you end up seeing here in this prophecy is that Zephaniah is warning of a divine judgment that is going to come.

We see this in many references to the Day of the Lord. This is looking beyond the fulfillment of what we would say is

Daniel's 70th week. This is looking at the end times. So though we might see it as a short -term fulfillment, we see a long -term fulfillment of God's judgment.

The Book of Haggai. Not much is known about the prophet

Haggai, but what we do know is that he was the first of the prophets who would prophesy after the exile.

So in other words, there was 70 years of captivity where Israel was taken into Babylon and then they returned.

So much of this is about the return afterwards. So there's four messages that we end up seeing in Haggai.

The first is a judgment call to rebuild the temple. After that we see the second message is the promise of a future glory of the temple.

The third message that we end up seeing is a priestly decision to illustrate the present blessings of obedience.

Then it leads to a fourth message which is a Masonic prophecy concerning Zerubbabel.

What you end up seeing throughout this book is that this is a book that is giving hope to Israel, a nation that is returning to the promised land after 70 years of captivity.

They are obviously concerned about where they're going to have as a nation and Cyrus the

Persian King had prophesied that as prophesied in the Old Testament would give them back their land and this is the fulfillment of that promise.

The Book of Zechariah. Well, Zechariah was a prophet. He was a Levite born in Babylon.

He was much younger than his contemporary Haggai but they both were part of those that came back into Israel.

They were part of the 50 ,000 Jewish exiles that returned and the goal that they had was to try to get the temple rebuilt.

They wanted to get Israel back in where they would be able to have the worship of God. However, Israel got a little bit lackadaisical.

They became indifferent about rebuilding the temple and really through Haggai's preaching they were looking to rebuild the temple.

Zechariah as well who was much younger and followed after. Now when you look at this book,

Zechariah gives a series of eight prophetic dreams in a single night and these are very much like the

Book of Revelation. Very futuristic. Much about the end times but it is eschatological meaning end times with encouragement.

Here you have people that are lackadaisical. They don't really want to rebuild the temple but he is encouraging them to go back and continue the rebuilding of the temple because there is a future hope for Israel.

God was not going to be done with the nation of Israel. The Book of Malachi, this is the last of the

Old Testament books. Malachi was about 450 B .C. so he is the last prophet after a period of silence and then we would see

John the Baptist. So this makes sense that this book is one of talking about hope.

This is again at the time where Israel has entered into the land again. They've rebuilt the temple.

They've reinstituted the sacrifices. Everything seems to be going well, kind of well in a sense as far as that's concerned but what

Malachi focuses on is the covenant blessings to Israel.

In other words, he reinforces the faithfulness and disobedience to those covenants that were given back generations ago in the

Abrahamic covenant. So what you see is he talks about obedience, he talks about disobedience and the results of them.

Malachi uses a form of rhetoric to do basically a question and answer type of method.

We would call it the Socratic model. He is teaching through that and Malachi points to God's past, his present, his future, everything he does in his dealings with Israel in order to renew the perspective for them to reestablish their hope, their motivation for the covenant faithfulness that they would have because this will be the last prophet until the

Messiah comes onto the scene. The Gospel of Mark.

Now this is the first of the four gospels. This one is written more to a

Jewish audience and the view of this gospel is that Jesus is the King.

Makes sense, a Jewish audience, they're looking for that King of David and here he is,

Jesus Christ. Now I happen to believe that the Gospel of Matthew was the first of the four gospels written.

Many people think it's Mark, we'll get to that later when we talk about the book Mark, but I believe it was Matthew. Why? Well it would make sense because in the early years first Christianity was really a religion of the

Jews and so it would make sense that the gospel to the Jews would be the one first written.

Now Matthew is very interesting because who was Matthew? He was a tax collector.

This is some of the irony of God, that God uses a man like Paul, a Pharisee, to write so much to the

Gentiles. Here he uses a tax collector to write to the Jews.

Why is that irony? Because a tax collector would be one person that in Judaism you would not see as someone high.

It would actually be a traitor to the people. A tax collector is someone who collected money for Rome, for the enemy, and collected it from their own people.

The Jews saw a tax collector as a traitor and so that is why I find that so interesting.

But it is the first of the four gospels and it focuses on Jesus Christ as the

King. The Gospel of Mark. Now Mark is the shortest of the gospels.

It is the one that has the least references to Jesus Christ being God. It is for that reason that many people try to say that Mark was the first gospel.

Many of the liberal scholars try to say that Mark wrote first, being shorter, then

Matthew and Luke came along and embellished more and some of that embellishment also includes claiming that Jesus was

God and they embellished that in. Now when you look at the Gospel of Mark you end up seeing that almost half of it refers to Jesus Christ as God directly or indirectly so it is not like he skipped it.

But here is the thing. Just like we saw that Matthew focused on Jesus as King, Mark focuses on Jesus as a servant.

That he came to be a servant so that might explain why he does not have as many passages referring to him as God. His focus is on the servanthood of Christ.

So you see that Matthew and Mark are put together because they make good bookends.

The King and the Servant, both are true. So you end up seeing a lot of things that you are going to see in all three of those accounts,

Matthew, Mark and Luke. Even in John there are lots of similarities in accounts, mostly with the first three, but Matthew focuses on one aspect,

King, where here in Mark we are looking at Jesus as a servant.

That is going to be his emphasis. Each one of these gospels focuses on a different aspect of Jesus Christ and this one is one of a servant.

The Gospel of Luke, this is the third of the gospels.

Luke being a medical doctor focuses a lot on the humanity of Jesus Christ. Maybe why we get some of the more graphic pictures from the crucifixion account because Luke is a historian, he is a doctor, he is giving an accurate accounting from what he has received.

And Luke, just like the other gospels, are going to give an account of the life of Christ and while he walked the earth.

Now, as we said with the Matthew and Mark, we see that each of these four gospels focus on a different aspect.

So we saw that Matthew focused on the kingship of Jesus, where Mark focused on the servanthood of Jesus.

Now we get to Luke, and Luke is going to focus on the humanity of Jesus. And so this is going to be the focus of this book.

Now, many of the accounts are going to be very similar that we have in Matthew and in Mark, and yet some things are going to be different.

Many people think that those differences are a problem. In fact, when we look at eyewitness testimony, that is exactly what we do see.

We see things where some might focus on one aspect of an event, where others focus on a different aspect of an event.

That is what we end up seeing when we have these four gospels. We have all of them together to see a complete picture of who

Jesus is, and Luke focuses on Jesus as a man. The Gospel of John.

Now, we have been mentioning that there are four gospels. This is the fourth and the last one to have been written.

This was written by John, the apostle. Now, as we looked at the other gospels, we saw that Matthew focused on Jesus Christ as the

King, where Mark focused on Jesus Christ as the Servant. Luke focused on Jesus Christ as a man, and now we see the book end to that being

John, which focuses on Jesus Christ being divine. 76 % of the book of John refers to Jesus Christ as God, either directly or indirectly.

So this has the overwhelming emphasis on his deity. But another characteristic that makes the

Gospel of John different than the other three gospels, the other three are called Synoptic Gospels, because they really talk about the life and ministry of Christ, the period of those three years of his ministry, where the

Gospel of John doesn't spend as much time on those three years of ministry, but really hones in on that last week of his life, and gives the most details of what happened during what's called the

Passion Week. We get most of that detail in the book of John, dealing with that week and the resurrection and things like this.

John is going to focus the most there because his emphasis is to show that Jesus Christ is

God. This is why most people try to say, if you're going to read one of the gospels, start with John, because it shows that Jesus Christ is

God. The book of Acts. This was written by Luke, and you will see that this is often referred to as the

Acts of the Apostles. This book starts at the ascension of Jesus Christ, and in Acts 1 .8,

Jesus says, But you will receive power when my Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all

Judea, and in Samaria, and to the end of the earth. This really is an outline for this book.

They're going to start in Jerusalem, and the apostles are going to move from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

This really is focusing primarily on two apostles. The first, say, half of the book, the first about 10 to 14 chapters, is going to focus on Peter.

You're going to see the life and ministry of Peter in those early years.

But then, after chapter 14 to the end, you're going to see it focus on the apostle Paul. So really, we would be saying that this is more than not just the

Acts of the Apostles, but the Acts of the Holy Spirit, because it is the Holy Spirit who is working through all this.

This is a transitionary time between an Old Testament mindset to the New Testament mindset, and there's much that this is going to teach for the church.

So what we see here is the Acts are going to be Acts that the apostles did by the power of the

Holy Spirit as they went throughout the world with the Gospel. The book of Romans was written by Paul, and this is probably the most detailed account of any book that we have that addresses the doctrine of salvation.

This is why so many people love this book. This is a book that goes into great detail.

First, it's going to address the issues of condemnation and the need to be in a right state with God.

Paul is going to address in those early few chapters the moralists, the unrighteous

Gentiles, the unrighteous Jews, basically anyone who's unrighteous. He's going to get into giving a detailed explanation of the doctrine of justification, how we get right with God, that God is the source, man cannot be the source.

He's going to go through in detail in chapter 5 the doctrine of the imputation of righteousness, basically the whole issue of Jesus Christ coming as the second

Adam. And then we get into discussing sanctification, restoration, he's going to talk about the relationship with Israel in chapters 9 -11, and the promises made there.

And all of this because he's going to give the most detailed account of the doctrine of salvation.

Now you can look at the book of Galatians and see a condensed version of this, but really what we end up seeing here is a very detailed account on how to get right with God because this is an important doctrine.

If you do not have this book right, you do not have eternal life.

If you get the doctrine of salvation wrong, you are not going to have eternal life with Christ.

The book of 1 Corinthians. This is a letter from Paul, one of two letters to the

Corinthian church that are scripture. Now we see that Paul wrote at least three, maybe even four letters to this church.

This letter that we have is Paul is responding to some issues that the Corinthian church raised in a letter they wrote to him, and this is him responding.

This letter, where it is going to be more of a correctional letter, less doctrinal letter, where much of his other letters are doctrinal in nature and practical, this is much more corrective.

Almost every chapter has some other issue that needs to be addressed. And so what we end up seeing is he starts off by having to address the issue of unity.

He's going to deal with their division and divisiveness that they had within this church, but then after he gets done with that, he then is going to start moving into different topics like some immorality that they had within the church.

He's going to deal with issues of marriage, issues of Christian liberty. He's going to deal with worship.

Under there you're going to see he's going to deal with things like men and women's roles, head coverings for women.

He's going to deal with the Lord's Supper and how to do that properly. He's going to address the issue of spiritual gifts.

Three whole chapters dealing with the proper use of spiritual gifts and the purpose of them. Then he's going to wrap it up with chapter 15 with a doctrinal chapter that's going to cover the doctrine of the resurrection.

Now Paul is corrective here because false teaching needs to be corrected. 2

Corinthians. Now this is one of two letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthian church that was scripture.

We know he's written at least one other, maybe even two, so possibly a total of four letters to the

Corinthian church that only two of which were scripture. Now this is going to be probably the most personal book that you have from Paul.

He is having to address concerns about his own apostleship and he will in this letter get more personal and speak more of himself than in any other book that we have from Paul.

This is one that we end up seeing is that Paul here is going to have to deal with people that are attacking his credibility.

These are false prophets that are coming in, false apostles claiming that they have the right to speak and Paul doesn't.

They're going to make claims about Paul and he has to correct these things. He's going to deal with the nature of his ministry, the nature of basically the things that God had for him as a purpose.

In this we're going to see different things that he will address as teaching such as how to give and dealing with apostleship and authority.

He's going to deal with all these things but he's also encouraged because they took the first letter that they had received from Paul and they corrected some of the bad behaviors so they learned from their mistakes from Paul's first letter.

The book of Galatians, now this is often thought of as Paul's cliff notes version of the book of Romans.

Paul wrote this book, it is shorter, it's six chapters but it is packed with information that is doctrinal on the issue of salvation.

Now the background to this book is that there were these Judaizers. The Judaizers were these Jewish people that were saying that as people became

Christian they had to come back under the Jewish law, they had to keep kosher, they had to be circumcised, things like this, and that they had to go through this process of really going back under the law.

Now that was getting questions about salvation. Are we saved by grace or by the law?

Do we have to live a life of law abiding? And he is going to deal with these issues.

So the first really half or four chapters is going to be very doctrinal in nature.

He's going to give a strong defense of justification by faith. He's going to use different illustrations for that.

Then the last two chapters is going to be very practical. It is going to be a strong defense now for Christian liberty.

He's going to talk about how the law didn't get us saved. We were saved by grace through faith.

Now that we are, he's going to talk about what role does the law have and that we're free.

He's going to talk about the freedom that we have because the law didn't save us, it was Christ who saved us, but there still is a benefit or purpose for the law.

The book of Ephesians is what's known as a circular letter. This is a letter that we have found in some old manuscripts.

It had different church names other than the Church of Ephesia. The thought is that Paul wrote a letter and they would actually take the letter and write this to different churches.

So this was a very general letter that was true for all the churches with helpful information that would be good for all of them.

Therefore there's nothing specific to a specific local church that Paul deals with in this. But it's going to be very practical teaching.

Again, almost half the book will be doctrinal, then practical. He's going to work through, really chapter 1 is a very long run -on sentence, but he is going to deal very strongly with God's purpose and provision in salvation.

He's going to go through the entire Trinity and show each person in the Trinity and the role they had in our salvation.

He's going to lay out the position of being dead in the old condition, alive in the new condition.

He's going to talk about how we are to be unified as a body of Christ. He's going to talk much about the conduct that we should have within the church, the way we walk, the way that we live in holiness, loving one another.

All of this is going to be a practical nature. Ephesians is a book that is good for every church everywhere because it was meant to be a letter for every church.

Philippians is a letter written by Paul where his original intention for writing the letter changed.

Now he is in prison at this time. The Philippian church had sent Epaphroditus to him with some money to care for him.

Epaphroditus had gotten so sick he almost died. And so Paul's original reason for writing this letter is to send back

Epaphroditus, basically saying to the church that Paul was doing well because they'd be upset with Epaphroditus coming home and not being able to stay and care for Paul.

So Paul wanted to reassure him that he was fine, that he was more concerned about Epaphroditus being back with the

Philippian church. Now there also was some division that was going on in the church so he had to address that as well.

So where he starts off with the hopes of sending Epaphroditus back, he also had to deal with division, deal with the issues of legalism and lawlessness that was going on in this church.

And the interesting thing about this letter is this is a letter of unity. It is strongly trying to promote unity within the body of Christ, specifically within the church.

And that is the goal. He wants to see there be unity in this body of believers that cared so much for him.

And he's going to give lots of different examples of that unity, using himself, using

Christ as an example, many things. It is a very easy to read book, very enjoyable, but it is one that is written for unity in the church.

The Book of Colossians. Now this is a letter written by Paul and he's really going to have a couple of purposes in this letter.

The issue with the church at Colossians was that they had a mixed community,

Jewish -Gentile community, and that gave a kind of a good mixture of the way the church would end up being, but it also brought in different heresies that they had to deal with.

The legalism from Judaism, the mysticism from the Gentiles, and they had to address these things.

Now Paul in this letter is going to deal with many doctrinal issues. He is going to lift up on high the supremacy and deity of Jesus Christ.

It's going to be laid out very clearly in this letter. He's going to deal with issues of reconciliation, redemption, the doctrine of election.

He's going to deal with forgiveness. He's going to explain the nature of the church and all these things to deal with this heresy that he's trying to address.

And his goal in doing all this is not only to lift Christ up on high, but it is also to lead the believers into spiritual maturity.

That is the hope. Again, like his other letters, the first half is going to be more doctrinal in nature.

Basically the chapters 1 and 2, the last chapter is going to be more practical in nature, dealing with Christian conduct, how to live within the houses, deal with our speech, things like this.

And the goal again is for spiritual maturity. First Thessalonians.

This is a book that was written by Paul. Now Paul entered this town as we can read in Acts 17, but he wasn't there for very long.

He comes into the synagogues, he's preaching, but the Jews basically evicted him from the city. They chased him out in less than two weeks.

He left and went to Berea. But this church started. Even though he was there for such a short time, the church grew, and now

Paul is writing a letter to them back as they are now growing and he has not been back.

But this letter is going to be one that deals with a lot of different issues, and he's writing this letter from Corinth while he's at the church in Corinth.

And he is going to give some thanksgivings for the church and he wants to bring the church to remember.

He has a lot of things for the church to remember, how the gospel was delivered and received, because people were arguing that Paul was really looking to just fatten his wallet and not really caring for the people and he left because maybe he was a coward, things like this.

But he's going to instruct them in Christian living, having good Christian conduct, sexual purity, brotherly love, and then he's going to deal with things that this book is most known for, and that is chapter 4 dealing with the issue of the rapture and what is that.

And then he'll go on to talk about church life and holy living. But this book is most known for its chapter dealing with the doctrine, and the only place we really see it, of the rapture.

2 Thessalonians is a letter that Paul writes again to the same church, but in this time he was encouraged.

He got reports back about this church and had good reports. They were growing, they were maturing, that gave him great encouragement.

However, there was also some problems. It seems that some people had come into the church and were teaching that the

Lord's return already happened. And there's much confusion here on the expectation of the

Lord's coming, or did it already happen? The issue that we end up seeing is that there were people that were actually not working because they were anticipating the

Lord's return and so they were basically mooching off of others in the church. So others were working and they weren't because they were being spiritual and waiting for the

Lord's return. This confusion caused some problems that Paul had to address. He had to address the issue that if a man doesn't work, he should not eat.

So not only does he have to address the issues of the Lord's return and some doctrinal things here, so we're going to see some of the end times explained in this book, but he also is going to teach us that we should be living every day as if the

Lord is going to return, and therefore we should be having a mindset of doing everything we can, but not just sitting back and waiting, because we don't know when that would be.

Now he gives some thanksgivings for a church, but also some exhortations for them, because they needed to be obedient every day.

First Timothy is a book that was written by Paul, the apostle, and basically he writes it to Timothy, his son in the faith, who he left behind to pastor a church.

And this really is a book where what you see is Paul basically telling

Timothy the blueprints for how to run a church. It's the reason why most churches, when they church plants, new churches, ones that want to start looking at how

God wants to organize the church, they go to this book, First Timothy, because it's one of the clearest, this and Titus, these are the books that people look at for how to run the church, because that's the purpose of this book.

Now mind you Paul is writing this while in prison, so he is in prison at the time he's concerned with Timothy and the things that he's got to deal with.

So the very first thing he wants to address is he gives some instruction and warning about dealing with false teachers, because they were in Timothy's time in that church in Ephesus, well they continue today in our time.

So there needs to be a warning against false teachers, he gives basically instructions on how to conduct themselves in the church, how to keep the true doctrine faithful in the church.

He's going to give instructions for things like widows and pastors and deacons and different roles, and he's going to give them instructions because we need to know how

God wants us to run the church, because we must remember it's his body, his church, not ours.

The book of Second Timothy, well like the first one, this is also written by Paul the

Apostle, and this was his second imprisonment. Now he wrote First Timothy and Titus under the first imprisonment where he had a little bit more freedom.

This is the second imprisonment where he had less. In fact it is likely that he may have known this could be, and we believe it was, the last letter he ever wrote.

You can look in Second Timothy 4, 6 -8, and you see that he'll say he's being poured out.

It seems that he knows he is not going to be released from this imprisonment, and therefore this is his last letter to his son in the faith,

Timothy, trying to encourage him as he shepherds the flock in Ephesus.

And he is giving Timothy his final words, and that makes it important if he does know what his final words are, that these could be his last words, and he's writing to encourage

Timothy, and he's going to talk to him about the marks of being a good workman.

He's going to talk about the faithfulness of ministry, and making sure that he's faithful to the preaching of the message, to be sound in his theology, in his doctrine.

And so this is Paul's final letter, his last words to his son in the faith, and his biggest concern is that Timothy would be sound in his theology and faithful in all things.

The book of Titus is another book written by Paul. One of the pastoral epistles, this along with First and Second Timothy, are known for being the pastoral epistles because they are written to Timothy and Titus, both of which are pastors.

Now Timothy we already looked at, that he was left behind in Ephesus to shepherd the church there for Paul as he continued to travel on.

He went to Crete, and that's where he left Titus. Now in his first imprisonment he had written both

Timothy and also Titus to give them instructions on the functioning within the body of Christ.

So this book becomes very helpful for the church because it is going to be another source of explaining how the church should function.

Timothy had some things that we'll see in Titus such as the qualifications of pastors.

We're going to talk about that. There's going to be discussion of false teachers. Again, true doctrine is going to be important throughout this.

Paul is also going to encourage Titus when it comes to the functioning of different groups.

Older men, older women, younger women, younger men. He's going to talk about promoting godly behavior in the church and basically going to say that we should be living in such a way and teaching in such a way that we shut the mouths of the ignorant.

There's a lot of instructional things that we could see in the book of Titus that's helpful for the church.

The book of Philemon is a book that deals with a personal matter between Paul and Philemon.

Now what we see in this most personal letter is that he had a slave,

Onesimus, who ran away from Philemon and we even think he may have stolen some money. He comes to Paul and in meeting with Paul, Paul leads him to Christ as he did

Philemon, leading him to Christ as well. This book is very interesting on many fronts.

One, it deals with the issue of slavery at the time, saying that basically

Onesimus should return to Philemon and he tells Philemon to treat him well as a brother in Christ.

So Paul doesn't say slavery is wrong, he doesn't condemn it, but there were clear principles that should happen even though they're both

Christian brothers and we actually end up seeing in history that Onesimus may have been a leader in the church, so he could have been a leader over Philemon.

But the thing that's interesting here is that Paul challenges Philemon in the fact that Philemon kind of owes

Paul his spiritual well -being because Paul led him to Christ and he basically will appeal to that.

It teaches us a lot about intercommunication skills, it teaches us what slavery was like back then, but the ultimate purpose of it is to show the forgiveness that we can have in Christ.

The book of Hebrews is a book that many people find a little bit difficult to understand because many people don't understand the book of Leviticus.

Now when we look at the book of Hebrews, this is written to a Jewish population.

There is a lot here that you have to understand, some Judaism, some of the Old Testament, but the short of it is this.

What the author of the book of Hebrews wants you to know is one clear thing, that Jesus Christ is preeminent.

He is preeminent above the angels. He is preeminent above the sacrificial systems.

He is preeminent above the priests. He basically is superior to everything that the

Jews would look at as being valuable or something to be superior. Whether it be the law, whether it be angels, whether it be the priesthood, no matter how you look at it,

Christ is superior to everything. Now most people know of Hebrews because of the one chapter called the

Hall of Faith or chapter 11 where it talks about all the people that lived by faith. And though we have that, the real thing is this, that you and I can live by faith because of what

Jesus Christ did. And that sacrificial system of the Old Testament is no comparison to what

Jesus Christ did for the New Covenant. That is what the book of Hebrews wants to focus on.

It wants to focus that Jesus is supreme. He is the superior one.

James is written by the half brother of Jesus, obviously, because they share the same mother,

Mary, but Jesus didn't have a human father. So James became the pastor in the church in Jerusalem, and as persecution came, the

Jerusalem believers spread throughout and scattered around. And as James says, he's writing to the 12 tribes scattered abroad.

And as he's writing, he has a pastor's heart. He's concerned for them. And because of that, he's writing several things to encourage them, to help them.

And so this book is really a test of genuine faith. There's many tests that you're going to see of how to evaluate whether you have genuine faith.

The test of perseverance in suffering. The test of temptation.

The test of responding to the Word of God. The test of impartiality.

The test of having the works that a believer would have. The test of the use of your tongue.

The test of humility. Worldly indulgences. Dependence upon God.

Patient endurance. Truthfulness. Prayerfulness. And faith.

Basically what you see in the book of James is a series of tests that you can evaluate yourself.

There's actually 13 of them that you can look at to say, is the faith that I have genuine?

Which is very important if you want to know the difference between a true and false convert. First Peter is a book written by Peter the

Apostle. And this is a book that's seen to be written as kind of an ambassador's guide in a foreign land.

Peter is trying to address the fact that persecution will arise. We have to be careful in how we live.

He's going to talk a lot about the conduct of the believer. And he is going to be focused on the fact that this is not our home.

We're passing through. We're to submit to the governing authorities around us. But his focus is that our heavenly citizenship should be our focus.

We're sojourners in this life. This letter gives a theology of practical exhortation and comfort to the believers in their daily living.

Peter wants to link the doctrine with practice. How we believe will affect how we think.

And much of this is going to talk about the idea of the new birth that we have and all that's involved in that.

It's going to talk about the idea that it affects the way we behave and is preparing for the caution for the persecution that will occur.

There will be suffering. He warns them of that. He's preparing the readers for that.

And there is a charge that he gives to the shepherds, to the young men to stand firm.

Because this is not our home. We are just passing through. We should be looking forward to life with Christ.

The books of 2 Peter and Jude, I'm putting these two together because they are so similar in their content.

2 Peter is written by the apostle Peter and Jude is written by Jesus' half -brother.

And what we see in both of these is an impassionate plea for the truth against false teachers.

They're dealing with an onslaught of false teachers. Now Jude is going to deal with the

Gnostics, those who think they have an enlightened thinking. And so much of what we see in Jude we also see in 2

Peter. Peter goes into more detail though. We're going to see Peter talking about some specific things that they are struggling with.

He's going to talk about the works of God. He's going to end up talking about God's divine nature,

His power, His promise, proclamation. We're going to see that in Peter, just as in Jude, both are trying to warn the church against teachings that are not orthodox.

They are going to be champions of truth, pleading for people to contend for the faith.

Now we shouldn't be surprised when we see false teaching coming up in our day and age because if it came up in their day and age, it's going to come up with us.

There are certain characteristics that we see in both 2 Peter and in Jude that describe the false teacher.

A love for money, the love for position, things like this. These books will help us to identify false teachers that walk amongst our midst.

1, 2, and 3 John are all written by the apostle

John. Now 1 John is one of the best books if you want to deal with the fact of assurance of salvation.

It is a book that is very helpful in knowing what genuine salvation is, that you have salvation.

It is a book where John, though a shorter book, he's going to deal with issues of life and love.

It's more of a circular way of his style of writing. He's going to revolve around these topics over and over again.

Now as we go on and look at from 1 John go to 2 John, and as we look at 2

John, 2 John is going to deal with issues of Christian hospitality.

It's going to cover issues of hospitality. This is actually the shortest book in the

New Testament. This book is going to cover, well he's going to address things of false teachers as well because there is some of that that he deals with.

He has to deal with the Gnostics and the errors of Gnosticism, but he also wants to teach about hospitality, which is similar to what we see in 3

John. In 3 John we are also going to see the basic issue of hospitality being addressed, and you will see warnings as well in this book against false teachers.

This is common because the false teachers would live among people, and so there's a warning not to embrace and support false teachers, and that's true even for us today.

The book of Revelation was written by John on the island of Patmos, where he was basically exiled, and this is the last book of the

Bible. This is also one of the books that is more difficult to understand. It is dealing with the end times.

It will start with present times. It's going to contain seven letters to seven churches.

We're going to see that in chapters 2 and 3. Then starting in chapter 4 all the way to the end, there will be the revelation of the future.

This is apocalyptic literature, so it is more difficult to understand, and there is much here that is not as clear as we might want to think, but keep in mind that in chapter 1, this is the only book that promises a blessing to those who read it, which some go, blessing?

Yikes! There's so much confusion it seems in this book! Yet it will be a blessing to those who know what the theme of the book is.

It's very simple. You can sum up the theme as simple as this, God wins.

That's right. As we go through all of these judgments, the sealed judgments, the trumpled judgments, the bold judgments, you see all this judgment on the earth.

Is there really a millennium or is there not? Is there a tribulation? All this stuff that people get into questioning.

You can study this out and have many questions and not be really sure about the many things.

We do know there is a final judgment, there is an eternal heaven and hell, new earth and new heavens, and a lake of fire, but here's the thing,

God wins. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org