Lesson # 1 Introduction to the Bible (Fundamentals of the Faith by John MacArthur)

All right, lesson number one introduction to the Bible we're gonna look at 2nd Peter chapter 1 in a moment 2nd 2nd

Peter 2nd Peter chapter 1 as you're turning there when thinking about the scripture

There's three words. This isn't included in the the booklet, but there's three words that I want you to know.

The first word is revelation the second word is inspiration and the third word is illumination so revelation inspiration and illumination so revelation and has been said that Revelation is from God to man

Inspiration is from man to paper and then illumination is from paper to the heart

Paul prays for the believers in Ephesus that God would give to them the spirit of wisdom and Revelation in the knowledge of him and he says that the eyes of your understanding

Being enlightened that you may know. What is the hope of his calling and the idea of being enlightened is that God opens your

Understanding to the scriptures. So the Bible is a spiritually discerned book I think some of you who read the column in the

Greenfield Recorder were different ministers from these Liberal denominations they write in and it's amazing how someone who went to seminary can get it so wrong and they just they really

They know what the Bible says, but they don't really know what the

Bible says so you have to have the Holy Spirit within for God to Illuminate his word to our understanding and to receive it in our heart

All right, let's look at 2nd Peter 1 20 and 21 and this class is going to depend on your questions and Interactions we're gonna go over the lesson, but the the purpose is not to just go over what we

Did this past week? The purpose is for you to study it read a study come in with your questions and and we'll discuss what we're looking at All right 2nd

Peter chapter 1 verses 20 and 21 Peter writes knowing this first that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation for prophecy never came by the will of man

But holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the

Holy Spirit So what is that verse saying? I think a lot of folks I I thought this way

At first when I first started reading the Bible when you hear private interpretation

The Bible is not of any private interpretation All that means it can't mean one thing to you you have your private

Interpretation and then it means something totally different to me that we all have our own private interpretations.

I mean, that's true That's not that's not good. That's not really what Peter is trying to communicate.

What he's saying is that the source of Scripture is not man in his own private

Interpretation the source of Scripture is who? God, this is the

Word of God. Every word in the Bible is the Word of God and Jesus affirmed that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word

Okay, so the Bible is God's Word It doesn't contain God's Word as some people would say that well

God's Word is in there somewhere You just have to sift through it. No, the whole thing is the

Word of God Any questions or comments so far? All right, so obviously men wrote

The Scriptures you'll hear people say this. Well, the Bible was written by man.

Sometimes they'll tell us Evangelicals that well the Bible is a book written by man Well, yeah, we understand that men wrote the

Bible, but what are they saying? That it's just a book right what and holy man it says yeah, holy men of God But when you hear that usually what they're saying is it's just the

Word of man Typically when people say that that yeah Peter is writing or you know

Moses was writing and they claim that it's the Word of God But really it's just the words of Peter and really it's just the words of Moses and then of course these days you have people

Debating whether or not Moses was a real historical figure So I just tune all of those people out and you have to understand the they're living in darkness

They don't have the Holy Spirit. They don't have faith. So you have to you know, don't get upset with them

Just understand they were brought up Maybe they even attend a church where they're taught this and that that's what they believe

So it's our job to believe the scripture and then tell people the truth And it's really

God's job God the Holy Spirit to convince them because we in and of ourselves Are really not going to be able to convince anyone without God's help right, so It's the very words of God As Peter said that men were moved to write by God the

Holy Spirit So while Moses wrote Genesis He was inspired by God How did

God inspire his word we'll get into the book in just a second, but how did

God do that Did God tell Moses hey Moses, here's what to write

I Actually think he did do that with Moses to a degree But when John wrote his gospel was

God just speaking from heaven and John was writing it down like a secretary would just repeat word for word

No, that's not how the scripture was inspired God used their own thoughts their own emotions their own

Experiences to where yeah, it is John writing but it's also

The source is God the Holy Spirit so it's it's miraculous and it's mysterious at the same time

Larry Right, right

Yeah every word So if somebody believes the

Bible Love your neighbor as yourself. Yeah, I believe that or God so loved the world.

Yeah, I believe that But when it comes to God telling Joshua to enter into the land of Canaan and take the land

Oh, I don't know. That's that seems very mean God would what is that?

What's what's the word for that? Or there's certain parts of the Bible. I can't accept that Okay, selectively why yeah,

I think of words like doubt And really it's unbelief The scripture is either all true

There's there's a famous pastor named Andy Stanley and he's really trying to convince people that you don't have to believe the

Bible Just believe in Jesus and the resurrection. We don't have to believe the whole Bible and he really

Discourages people from making statements like this, but I'm gonna make it anyways either the whole scripture is true all of it

Or if parts of it are not true that kind of clouds the whole thing Like how do you really know if parts of this book are false and unreliable?

If you know somebody and they Consistently tell you things that are not true. It kind of clouds their whole testimony

So it's the scripture is a package deal and that's my story and I'm sticking to it because that's what the

Word of God teaches Despite what Andy Stanley says? Yes Marcus Matthew 1019

Jesus is saying to his disciples But when they deliver you up do not worry about how or what you should speak

For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak. Mm -hmm

Thank you, and we do believe that The Holy Spirit brought things to the

Apostles remembrance So there's that supernatural aspect, okay, let's go through the book

So if you have if you have the book and you filled it out We're just going to go through this and and ask questions as we go along because that's what we want to do

We want to generate some discussion and give you an opportunity to ask ask questions

So the Bible is the Word of God this is lesson number one the very beginning the Bible is the

Word of God It claims to be the truth The message from God to man and then it references 2nd

Peter 1 21 So the scriptures were written by about 40 different men.

These men lived in several different countries and cultures They lived in different eras about 1400

BC through 90 AD So it's a generally 40 different authors 1 ,500 years and they wrote in three languages who knows what the languages are

Okay, so Hebrew Aramaic and Greek we all agree with that all right

Coin a Greek. Yeah, it's not the same as modern Greek. Although I don't know if it's radically

Different or not, but there is Yeah, well Hebrew from what

I understand was a dead language for a long long time This came up last time

Where somebody had commented that because we just said the scripture is inspired by God.

Amen Is this book inspired by God? Is it? inerrant and infallible

Yeah, well if you look at our church doctrinal statement, it says that it is both inerrant which means it's not wrong and Infallible, which means it cannot be wrong both inerrant and infallible in the original autographs

That's in the church doctrinal statement That's basically accepted by you know

Every pastor that I know unless they're King James only where they believe maybe There's some people who believe the

King James Version was sort of re -inspired and we do not hold to that view, of course

But this is troubling to some people they say well So the original autographs what you're saying is that when when

Moses wrote when Isaiah wrote when Peter wrote when John wrote? The scroll that they were writing that was inerrant infallible and inspired

But not your modern translation. That's kind of troubling to people Okay, how do we know that our modern translations are?

Accurate and reliable How do we know that Marcus because God is is going to preserve it and has preserved it against all foes

Yeah, it would have been pointless for God to inspire his word if he did not preserve

His word if you don't preserve it there and it's almost Yeah, it was it was lost to history some people would say we don't believe that's true

There are parts like if you have a King James Version and someone else has an NIV or an NASB I don't want to pick on any one translations because I know this is a touchy subject with some people you start talking about Bible Translations, I don't know what it is, but that topic more than just about anything

Can make some people upset But we know there are some slight differences a word here a word there

But we know all about that. And yeah, okay There are maybe a few verses and a few different things, but they don't affect any doctrine and We know that it's not some secret the point is you can depend on the modern translations

So if no matter what it is Well, there are some exceptions, of course But you know

King James New King James New American Standard and I be English Standard the major translations are reliable and dependable okay, so Yes, Dwight just Within the the autographs and the manuscripts we don't have any original

Right, but we have close manuscripts copies of the autographs of the original

And we have more copies of those close manuscripts than any other historical writing, right?

That's out there, right and The the reality is is that the

Bible is the most accurate writing historically literature that that's out there in any sense right just from Context of thinking about it.

Yes. Yeah And isn't it amazing that historians and the fake scholars right

Marcus you're listening fake scholars He said it, okay

But they'll find some ancient document like one Copy and all we know this happened because we found this ancient document yet You can have 5 ,000 copies of this, you know

Old Testament book and all we don't believe that So, I mean there's an agenda going on there.

We know that one last statement about this. It's better It's actually a good thing that we don't have the original autographs not only would people venerate them and worship them and you'd have cathedrals with a

Little copy of a scroll and people would bow down to it and all that would happen But it's not just that if you had the original copy someone could tamper with it

But since they made copies thousands of copies and they went in every direction

Critical scholars They can take all the different copies compare them and there's a whole process

We can tell what's true what is it and the thing again the things that are debated are very small very small number of things

Okay, let's continue number one the Old Testament books 39 books and all starts out section one part a the penitent five books

So pent you're right. It means five like Pentecost is 50 days from Passover The first five books of the

Old Testament were written by who? Around 1400

BC and they are often Referred to as the five books of Moses or the penitent or sometimes also another term is the

Torah All right. The first book is what? This is really basic Genesis The book of beginnings where it talks about the creation man sin redemption second book

Exodus the third book Leviticus, this is the book that where people start their

Bible reading and they get to Leviticus and then they quit, right? Numbers and Deuteronomy All right

So those are the first five books of the Bible And then you go to the next section the historical books how many historical books are there

Twelve okay now who filled them in that would like to read the historical books.

Yeah in order Jim Okay, you're going from memory.

Yeah Well, not no Genesis through Genesis is could be considered historical.

I mean I so but we're starting with Joshua. These are classified as the historical books

And I don't blame you if you want to bail So Joshua judges

First and second Yeah, Ruth first and second Samuel first and second Kings first and second

Chronicles Ezra Nehemiah and Esther So those are the twelve Historical books it says the historical books were written between 1400 and 450

BC and described God's dealing with his chosen people Israel that is the

Hebrew nation right so we have the Pentateuch the first five books of Moses then the historical books and Then the next category is the poetic books.

How many poetic books are there five? Five Says the following five books are poetic describing in poetry and song

God's greatness in his dealings with Men and somebody had asked last week about the

Song of Solomon. They said did they really talk like that back then? and Probably well, it's poetry

It's like if you read a poem, no people generally don't talk like that, but it you know, it sounds really nice Doesn't it and some of it is a little confusing at times, but the poetic books are

Job Psalms Proverbs Ecclesiastes and the

Song of Solomon a lot of people wouldn't think that Job Would be in there because it does seem more historical and obviously these are classifications that theologians and teachers came up with after the fact

But Job is actually considered one of the most the greatest work I don't want the greatest but one of the greatest works of poetry in the ancient world

All right. Next. What's the next section? major profits major profits

So these are five Major profits and why are they called major profits?

Five books Five books Yes Good point

So a prophet was a person commissioned by God to deliver his message to men

So if you want to think about it this way God is up here men are down here the prophet is in between and God speaks to the prophet who then delivers

God's message to the people so it goes down he's a Intercessor or a intermediary

With the priest same thing God's up here. The priest is in the middle God's people are down here that line goes up the people bring their requests and petitions to the priest and then

To God that this is Old Testament in the New Testament. We have it even better Because we have the great high priest

Jesus Christ as the one mediator, right? Now there's one mediator between men and God the man of Christ Jesus so now we can just go directly to God through the

Lord Jesus, but I'm getting off topic. So the major prophets were who?

Isaiah Jeremiah Lamentations is a book written by Jeremiah Ezekiel and Daniel and from what

I understand They're called major prophets because of the size of the books and how long they prophesied for So the next section you think of major prophets, what's the next section?

And that means that these guys just weren't important that what they wrote didn't really matter Who reads the minor prophets there?

You just ignore this section, right? Yeah, that would be a

Blasphemous statement, I think if that if if I were serious, which I am NOT So these are the minor prophets next.

Yes A good way to remember is five twelve five five twelve adds up to thirty nine five twelve five five twelve

Is that helpful for people? Yeah, sometimes, you know your mind works in such a way to help you remember.

Okay. Hey if that works great I was a parts man All right, the minor prophets so obviously their writings are

Just as much the Word of God as the writings of Moses just as much the Word of God as the major prophets their prophecies are just as important So the minor prophets everyone there's one minor prophet that everybody knows who is that Because they learned about him in Sunday school

They got swallowed by a great fish Yeah, Jonah, everyone knows Jonah, but the minor prophets are

Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah and Malachi and of course

Malachi is the final Old Testament book Any questions about so it says the minor prophets these were written these books between 840

BC and 400 BC any comments on the minor prophets You know and I was joking around earlier, but that is kind of the attitude that some people have you know

No Christian would put it that way, but these books do often get neglected

But there's some great content What's what's your favorite?

Minor -prophet who wants to raise their hand and tell us who your favorite minor prophet is

Daniel Daniel is considered major Okay, he's your favorite prophet, okay?

Minor who's your favorite minor prophet Marcus Habakkuk Habakkuk yeah, don't mess with Israel hmm

Yeah, I preached through Habakkuk Jonah and Joel I think if I had to pick one book.

That's my favorite it might be Joel, but Zechariah has Zechariah has great prophecy regarding the second coming of Christ so Very important book okay

Okay all right good Ezekiel most people agree

Ezekiel is the most difficult book to understand of the prophets I'm sure

I'm well yeah Yeah, it's it's a it's a difficult read But we should do it you know any sometimes people

I want to read the Bible every Christian feels like well I should read the Bible, but when you start you get to books like Leviticus or Ezekiel, and it is difficult.

I mean let's Let's admit to that, but you know life in life sometimes you have to do difficult things

Sometimes you got to take on a challenge So if there's anyone sitting here this morning who has never read the

Bible cover -to -cover Let me challenge you and plead with you read it cover -to -cover.

I Promise it will change Change your life change your outlook

It'll change something because it's it's the Word of God I believe

God will see that and he will bless that when he sees your commitment to read all of that is that The more often you read it the more familiar you become of it and you come with it and also it also gives you a proper perspective of who

God is what he's done, what he wants to do and of course Jesus Christ Yep So if you repeatedly read it year to year you say oh yeah

I remember this from the last time I read it and then sometimes you can go back to it and repeat it again

I'm going through Job again and I've already read it um back in the day Yeah good you had your hand up Yeah when you said challenge and so forth

I was thinking there's another good challenge and that is memorize the books in order

Right so we had a memory verse and we have a memory verse so what was the memory verse 2nd

Timothy 3 .16 2nd Timothy 3 .16 and I botched it last week Yeah and it's

NAS Yeah so KJV and not KJV I was talking to Tanya I'm like okay make sure

I'm getting it all right and she's no no that's wrong wrong word and I'm like what Yeah it's the different translation

All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine reproof correction and instruction and righteousness that the man of God may be perfect thoroughly equipped for every good work throw in 17 for good measure who memorized

I shouldn't call on I shouldn't call on people does anyone else want to give it a try it's one thing to memorize it but to do it in front of a group of people is a whole different ballgame

All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction and righteousness

KJV 1611 Woo Alright Are you sure that was 1611

I can't remember my own birthday Yeah and if you do memorize scripture just a word of advice stick with one translation

I read the KJV up until whatever I was 25 so the verses

I had memorized were all in the KJV then I first time I read through the Bible it was the

NIV and then memorizing some from the NIV then I permanently switched to the new

KJV which I've been on ever since so now yeah it kind of messes you up it does

I would stick with one translation that's my advice yes

Jim When I was going to Coal Falls College I had a class and part of the class was that we were supposed to memorize an uncertain number of verses and of course like you

I learned all my verses in King James but when it came time to do the paper

I did it from memory but I used the NAACP for every verse

I had the professor made a comment Now there are 16 verses in the NIV that you won't be able to memorize because they're not there and there are some other translations that have verses removed but yeah sticking with one translation is helpful and then one other thing because let's say you can quote scripture like that but you never really spend the time to think about it meditate about what it means so we would kind of look foolish if we just rattled off quoting scripture and then said yeah but what does that mean and you're like a deer in the headlights so also if you're going to memorize a passage know the context know what it means that's really helpful as well yes

Marcus You're very fortunate if you can find someone else who wants to memorize scripture and you're going to have to go along with their version if you are that lucky

I do have that person Giles is that person for me but he's a

King James only and I have to translate everything Good to have that accountability with somebody else.

Okay now let's move to the New Testament books. How many New Testament books are there? 27 so 39 and 27 equals 66 books says the

New Testament or New Covenant and really the terms are interchangeable although when someone says

New Testament they're often talking about the scriptures rarely would anyone use

New Covenant to talk about the scriptures but really it means the same thing

New Testament or New Covenant reveals Jesus Christ the Redeemer of men in it we find in the

New Testament we find the life of Christ the way of salvation the beginning of Christianity which would be what book?

Acts Acts of the Apostles instruction for Christian living which would be the epistles and then

God's plan for the future and you know what that book is Revelation although there are people that would say

Revelation is not a book of future prophecy we are futurists here at Morris Corner Church there's more and more churches abandoning that viewpoint or they look at the book of Revelation they interpret it differently we believe that is future prophecy the first three chapters yeah are in the past John writes to the seven churches but starting in chapter 4 and onward chapter 6 through 19 speak of the

Great Tribulation which we believe is future so I think as time goes on we find ourselves in the minority of the two billion people or so on earth who profess to be

Christians those who believe that Revelation is future prophecy we are the minority still the majority within evangelicalism perhaps but so that kind of grieves me a little bit because I you know again it's sort of like the scripture being inspired well what good would it be to inspire it if you didn't preserve it well well anyway

I'm gonna I'm not gonna go off on that history let's let's move on five books of history the

Gospels the first four books everyone knows the Gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John two of these men were not apostles which meant men were not apostles okay right

Luke and Mark so Matthew talks about the life of Christ written especially for the

Jews revealing Jesus Christ as their long -awaited Messiah Mark reveals the life of Christ his his this is how it's broken down Matthew writes to the

Jews portrays Jesus as King Mark writes to the

Romans portraying Jesus as a servant Luke writes to the Greeks portraying the humanity of Christ John writes to the whole world portraying the deity of Christ that's usually how it's broken down all right here here's a question what two reasons are given for the writing of John's Gospel so I don't want someone who filled that in to raise their hand and give me what you wrote two reasons are given for the writing of John's Gospel what are they hold on hand we gotta have hand

Brad that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and that believing in him you might have life through his name okay good and that's that's based on John 20 verse 31 did anyone else have anything different all right next history of the early church so there's only one there's 12 historical books in the

Old Testament only one historical book in the New Testament and what is it the

Acts of the Apostles some would argue it could be or should be called the

Acts of the Holy Spirit but traditionally it's been called the Acts of the Apostles this is the one historical book it says the beginning and spread of the

Christian church it could be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit and was written as an evangelistic tool an evangelistic tool why why would that be it was because it's actually a bridge book it takes us from the life of Christ in the gospels to the practice and how to live yeah this is something that people often point out

I would consider the book of Acts a transitional book there's the transition from the gospels to the epistles but it's also a transition from old covenant to new covenant a transition from Israel to the church from Jew to Gentile so we would consider it a transitional book if you don't remember anything else about the book of Acts remember that write it down who takes notes it is a transitional book is that a hand or you just take notes okay all right now we move on to the letters or the epistles how many epistles are there says these books were written to individuals to churches or to believers in general the letters deal with every aspect of Christian faith and responsibility list them in order somebody could do this from memory

I mean that would be impressive and here's another thing not only read the

Bible cover to cover be challenged to memorize the books of the

Bible in order Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy Joshua, Judges, Ruth I could never do that yes you can you absolutely could do it you can if you tell yourself you can we used to do that in Sunday school here right a lot of kids learn that in Sunday school and it's like a lot of things if you don't refresh your memory every once in a while you'll start to lose it but yeah hey that's why we're here and that's why we're here well

I think I know everything that we're talking about this is all pretty basic well yeah in some ways this is basic information but if you're not in church and you're not going back to the basics every once in a while then it gets a little rusty because it's our job to be able to communicate all of the basics to to other people yeah

Larry just as you have just read that these letters deal with every aspect of Christian faith and responsibility each one of us are responsible for our lives and how we use

God's word to reach out to others and if you have not taken the time to listen to John MacArthur's teaching here for the first for this lesson, do it it brings out some things that I've never really considered the sermon you're talking about about the

Bible and on Sunday evenings when we go to the

Moldovan church every time they read scripture they stand you know and that's hard to get used to but what a reverence because this is

God's word it's not man's word there is a sermon, it's about 54 minutes long

I think download it from gty .org forward slash fof so that's part of it listen to that, there's a new one every week, memorize the verse fill it out, come in with your questions

I saw, yeah Stacy well I just wanted to expound a little bit on what you said before Larry spoke as far as yes this is basic and yes we need refreshers we always need to remind ourselves that it's the foundation of what we learn but I think it's also dangerous to assume that everybody knows what you know right so everybody's at a different place and so to go through this you're either going to get refreshed or somebody's going to learn something that they hadn't known absolutely very good point yes and as we age and we do forget where we put things it really is good to like you say to use your brain just like using your biceps strengthening your biceps using your brain to memorize is going to help your brain and it's called renewing your mind in Romans 12 renewing your mind that's what we're doing we've got about 3 or 4 minutes left so only questions from this point forward

Paul's letters the 13 books are Romans 1st and 2nd

Corinthians Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians 1st and 2nd Thessalonians 1st and 2nd

Timothy Titus and Philemon there's different ways you can categorize these there's the prison epistles which are

Ephesians Philippians Colossians and Philemon there's the pastoral epistles 1st and 2nd

Timothy and Titus then there are the general letters Hebrews James 1st and 2nd

Peter 1st 2nd 3rd John and Jude the last book of the New Testament tells of future events the return of Christ the reign of Jesus Christ the glory of Jesus Christ and the future state of believers and unbelievers this book is called

Revelation alright going over to the next page why is the

Bible important is there a hand no hand why is the

Bible important says when tempted by Satan Jesus alluded to Deuteronomy 8 verse 3 which says man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and he asked the question what does 2nd

Timothy 316 say about the Bible here's the four options some of the

Bible is inspired by God there are a few parts that are not inspired option 3 the entire

Bible is inspired by God or number 4 only those parts that speak to us in a personal way are inspired by God which is correct right all scripture the entire