Basics of the Bible - Lesson 3

In this lesson, we're going to be doing a survey of the Old Testament. A survey is simply an overview. We cover the basic structure, the basic players in the stories, and the basic themes that are being taught. So you'll get this overarching idea of what the Old Testament is all about.

Bert Downes, in another class on the website, has a structure of three boxes, and I'm going to be following his same structure. It'll make it easy for you to check out his class when you're done with this one. And I would say that the Old Testament is four-fifths of the Bible, so this overview is going to be a little bit longer than most of the other lessons.

The basic idea of the Old Testament is that we were created for a relationship with God. My most favorite expression in the Old Testament is when God says, “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” We were built for a relationship with God.

God is our faithful king, and the Old Testament is a story about the expansion of his kingdom. As we talk about the kingdom of God being the thematic framework, it’s one of those underlying themes that goes all the way through the Old Testament.

So we are created for a relationship with him, and then his good creation was damaged by sin, by what Adam and Eve did in the garden. And so what you have as you go through the Old Testament is a series of promises. He starts in Genesis 3 with a promise that a descendant of Eve will kill Satan, and it goes through Abraham, and then it goes through David, and ultimately finds its end goal in Jesus.

And again, we had talked about Jesus being the theological center of the whole Bible, certainly the Old Testament. But what we’re also going to see in the Old Testament is people’s faithfulness and unfaithfulness. The point is that people who are in a covenantal relationship with God, when they are obedient, when they follow the rules, they receive the blessings of the covenant.

When they don’t follow the guidelines of the covenant, they are punished, and this is going to reflect back to our talk on what conversion is back in lesson one and the necessity of not only entering into a relationship with God but living in a relationship with God. And what we’re going to find is that when people don’t follow the rules of the covenant, the guidelines of the covenant, they are punished and removed from the covenant.

Box 1 — Foundational: The Pentateuch

So let’s start with the first of the boxes, which is foundational. This refers to the first five books of the Old Testament, sometimes called the five books of Moses, other times called the Pentateuch, penta meaning five. These are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Genesis

Genesis starts with a story of creation. I have to tell you, the first three chapters of Genesis may be the most important chapters in the entire Bible, and it’s really worth your time. You could actually argue that all of the Bible is an expansion of what’s happening in these first three chapters, so they’re very, very important. But then we read about Adam and Eve, and there was an Adamic covenant, a covenant that God made with Adam and Eve. They broke it.

They sinned. They were punished. They were removed from the garden. But God is still faithful, and this is the theme that comes over and over again in the Old Testament — that despite our sin, God continues to be faithful. And so he promises in 3:15 that a descendant of Eve will crush the head of the serpent and will kill Satan.

Noah

The story then expands to the point where almost everyone on the earth is evil, and it happened very quickly. And then the story centers on the one righteous person, which is Noah, and God sends a flood to punish disobedience, but God is still faithful. And so he creates a covenant with Noah, the sign of the rainbow in the sky, that God will never again destroy the earth.

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph

The story continues. Again, it expands from Noah and his family out to a larger group until we get to Abraham, and we’re somewhere around 1800 BC. And Abraham was a character where God said, “I promise to create a nation of descendants, and through that nation of descendants, I,” meaning God, “will bless the world.” See, this is God being faithful to his Genesis 3 promise.

He’s going to punish sin, but he’s going to stay faithful and, through Abraham, create a nation, and through that nation, the blessings will come to the whole world. And the Bible says that Abraham simply believed, and that’s what cemented the covenantal relationship between Abraham and God. And it just shows what God requires of us. He requires faith. He requires that we believe him.

The story continued, and Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons, who eventually became the nation of Israel, the 12 tribes of Israel. One of those sons is Joseph. God knows that a famine is coming to the land, and through Joseph going down to Egypt where there was plenty of food, God again is faithful to his promise to Abraham to preserve his nation and keep them safe in the midst of this famine.

Exodus through Deuteronomy

And so about 400 people go to Egypt. This leads us to the Book of Exodus, and in the Book of Exodus, we’re introduced to Moses, who goes down to Egypt and leads Abraham’s descendants out of slavery, out of captivity in Egypt, brings them to Mount Sinai, and we have another covenant being established — the Mosaic Covenant.

That’s where we get the Ten Commandments, but actually, there were 613 total laws, commandments that God gave on Mount Sinai. Basically, how do you live in a covenantal relationship with God? I mean, this is God telling them, “This is what is expected of you. This is what will make your life flourish.” It’s not like Christianity is a bunch of do’s and don’ts. It never was that. It was always, how do you flourish?

And so at Mount Sinai, you get these 613 guidelines — rules for how to flourish within a covenantal relationship with God. The end of Exodus is about the building of the tabernacle, and it goes into great detail. But the tabernacle was a tent where the presence of God would come down and rest, God being faithful to his promise, “I will be their God and they will be my people.” You move into the Book of Leviticus, which is rules pertaining to the covenant, especially animal sacrifice.

How do you function with the sacrificial system in that world? We go to the Book of Numbers. In the Book of Numbers, there is a story of the Israelites traveling up to Canaan, to the promised land, because this is what God promised Abraham — and guess what? Once again, they were disobedient.

They broke the guidelines of the covenant, and there’s no blessing. And so God had them wander in the wilderness area for forty years until that generation had completely died out, and then their descendants were brought to the edge of the promised land and were able to go in.

That’s where the Book of Deuteronomy comes from. The children of Israel are standing ready to go into the land that God promised to Abraham and his descendants. And again, it’s this wonderful illustration of how God is faithful even despite people’s unfaithfulness. And in Deuteronomy, he said, “This is how you live in the promised land.” And we’re around 1400 BC at this point.

Box 2 — Historical Books

We go down to the second box now, and this is the historical box. These are the historical stories that bring us through the centuries in that area. And there are certain themes that are repeated there, but certainly one of them is the theme of judgment and redemption.

And everything seems to be determined by the leaders. When the leaders were unfaithful, they led the people astray, and they were punished. And when the leaders were faithful, the people were blessed, and they flourished. And in the midst of all that, you have God continuing to be faithful despite human sin. And we break this period down into three different categories.

Pre-Kings: Joshua and Judges

First of all, it’s pre-kings. What happened before there were kings in Israel? So we have the story of Joshua, which is a story of conquering the promised land. The Canaanites were horribly sinful people, and they had to be punished for their sin, and so they were. And in the process, the children of Israel inherited the land that God had promised Abraham.

Then you have this story of the Book of Judges, and the refrain in this book is that the people did whatever was right in their own eyes. And what would happen is that they would do what they wanted to do. They would be unfaithful to the covenant. A foreign nation would punish them. They would cry out to God, and God would raise up a judge who would lead them to fight their enemy.

Then the cycle would start all over again. But that’s the Book of Judges. God was supposed to be the king. This was supposed to be a theocracy at this point, but it clearly wasn’t.

The United Monarchy (~1000 BC)

We then move into the time of what is called the United Monarchy, and this is in the books of First Samuel and Second Samuel. It starts with the story of Saul, who started faithful, became unfaithful, and was punished for it. And then the kingship went to King David, the most famous of all the kings. We’re around 1000 BC.

And you have, during this time period, another iteration of the Genesis promise. It’s in Second Samuel 7, starting at verse 11. The prophecy is, “The Lord,” meaning God, “the Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you. When your days are over, and you rest with your ancestors” — when David dies — “I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom.” And this is where it gets interesting. “He is the one who will build a house for my name.” David wasn’t allowed to build the temple. Solomon did.

“And I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” This is God being faithful to the Abrahamic promise, but it’s interesting because David died. So how did God make this promise? David is the prototype of the fulfillment of God’s promise, which leads to the center of the entire biblical story, which is Jesus.

And Jesus was a physical descendant of the line of David who reigns on his throne forever and ever. So you have this wonderful promise to David that one of his descendants will sit on an eternal throne, which is then fulfilled by Jesus, the theological center of the Bible.

The Divided Monarchy

We then move into the period of the divided monarchy. The books where the stories are told are First and Second Kings. It starts with the story of Solomon. Guess what? Solomon started good. He started faithful, and then he became unfaithful, and he was punished, and what happened was the kingdom split.

The kingdom split into the ten tribes in the north, which became the northern kingdom, and then the two tribes in the south became the southern kingdom. And the northern kingdom was all bad. Every one of their leaders was bad, and about 20 of them came along, continuing to disobey the covenant.

The Assyrians came down — and, boy, when they conquered a people, they conquered a people — and what they did was they would deport some of the Jews and then bring in other nationalities, and they would all intermarry so that the people would not have a fixed identity, an ethnic identity.

This mixture of Jews and non-Jews became known in Jesus’ day as the Samaritans. The southern kingdom did a little bit better. They had about 20 kings. About eight of them were good, and so the kingdoms prospered under those. But eventually God’s patience ended.

They kept breaking the covenant overall, and Babylon came down and took the children of Israel from the southern kingdom into captivity. It was during this time that Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah, and Isaiah did their writing.

The Exile and Return (~600–530 BC)

From the divided monarchy, we go into the period of the exile — 600 to 530 BC, somewhere around there — and in this exile, what we see is punishment for faithlessness, as they were taken into captivity, but also God’s faithfulness, because they were told that after their time of punishment, God would bring them back to the promised land.

If they were faithless, they would be punished, but God remains faithful and will keep his promise. So they return from exile somewhere around 530 BC, and this is where you get the writings of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. So that’s the historical section.

Box 3 — Instructional

We then go into the third box, which is the instructional, and the instructional really breaks down into two parts. This is where we fit the poetry writings in the Old Testament. And again, most of these were written probably during the United Monarchy. We don’t know for sure.

The Poetic Books

But this is where the book of Job comes from, and we’re not sure of the date of Job. By calling it a story, I’m not saying that Job wasn’t a real person, but it’s the account of Job’s life. And the book is teaching us that suffering is not necessarily tied to sin. People who have not sinned will still suffer, and probably more than that, though, is this very clear affirmation that God is free to do whatever he wants to do, and if he wants to bring suffering, he’s God. That’s his decision. But God himself is free.

In the poetic section is the book of Psalms. If you just open the Bible in the middle part, you’ll probably be in the Psalms somewhere. Psalms tend to be everyone’s favorite book in the Old Testament, and it’s just full of all kinds of poetry. Hebraic poetry doesn’t rhyme the way that our poetry does.

It is a paralleling of ideas where the second line restates the first or says the opposite of the first. It’s a different kind of poetry. But you can find psalms on about almost everything — psalms that are about worshiping God.

There are psalms about crying out in your pain, and you’ll find that the psalmist — and many of the psalms are written by King David — where he was brutally honest with God. I mean, he really let God have it, but it always ends with a statement of faith.

“Why aren’t you listening to me? Why won’t you come when I call? But I know you’ve always taken care of me, so I believe you will take care of me.” There’s a lot of that kind of stuff in Psalms. There are the imprecatory psalms — the psalms where, “Kill them, God. Kill them. Kill them.” I mean, “They’re evil. They’ve hurt me. They’ve hurt you.” They’re another kind of psalm. But there are many different kinds of psalms, and they are wonderful affirmations of faith even in the light of really difficult situations.

You get the Book of Proverbs, which is mostly just short, pithy sayings of real practical wisdom, and then you have the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is about how vain life is if you don’t live it for God, how empty it is without God.

And then you have Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon — it’s called different things — which is talking about the beauty of the sexual relationship in marriage, and it is so specific that no translators are going to translate what the words actually say.

In fact, in Judaism, you weren’t allowed even to read the book till you were — I think it was 30. And some people are embarrassed by the sexual language, and so they say, “It’s really about God’s love for the church.” It’s not. It’s about the beauty of sexual intimacy within the context of a marriage. Those are the poetic books.

The Prophets

And then we get into the prophets. And remember, prophets don’t just talk about the future. In fact, the majority of prophets are people speaking the words of God, often words of judgment and sometimes words of rewards, of flourishing.

And these prophets are generally writing in response to historical crises. So we break this division down into three. You have the pre-exilic prophets — the prophets who lived before, especially, the Babylonian exile. And you have prophets who are warning the Northern Kingdom about their sin — Hosea and Amos.

Some of these prophets were addressing foreign nations, like Jonah, and calling down God’s punishment if they don’t repent. But again, these are messages of judgment. But at the same time, they always hold out this hope of redemption, of restoration, and that’s what’s so amazing.

Habakkuk: Living by Faith

One of my favorite Old Testament prophets is Habakkuk. In Habakkuk 2, verse 4, it says, “The righteous person will live by his faithfulness.” It’s a difficult verse to translate. You could also say, “Live by faith.”

So he’s talking about the way in which we live our lives as members of God’s covenant is important, and we have to continue to trust God. We have to continue to believe God. And Habakkuk is concerned that it looks like evil people are winning and righteous people are losing, and he can’t square that with the character of God.

So there are two laments, and then listen to his conclusion. This is why I like this book so much. This is his statement of faith: “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls.” In other words, I don’t care how bad it gets.

His statement of faith is, “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior.” I love that statement — that we often look around ourselves and it does look like the wicked are succeeding and the righteous are perishing. The wicked are persecuting the righteous. I mean, we see it everywhere we look.

And Habakkuk’s conclusion of faith is, I don’t care how bad it gets, I still will live trusting in the promises of God, which is a very, very powerful statement, I think.

Exilic Prophets: Ezekiel and Daniel

So we have the pre-exilic prophets, and then we have a couple of exilic prophets, and these are prophets that prophesied during the time of the exile or leading up to the time of the exile. And the prophecy was that you’re being punished because you’re sinful, but hang in there — God’s faithful.

God is faithful. This is the prophecy of Ezekiel, and then historically it’s the story of Daniel. I mean, Ezekiel is an interesting person. He’s sitting there declaring to everyone that Jerusalem is going to fall.

And they go, “No, no, Jerusalem can’t fall. It’s God’s city.” Ezekiel says, “You broke the covenant. What do you think’s going to happen?” And so he prophesies that Jerusalem would fall, but also the promise of redemption and that God would bring these people back.

Post-Exilic Prophets and Malachi

So that’s the exilic period. And then you have a few in the post-exilic period — the last three of the prophets — that God is faithful and is returning his covenantal people to their promised land. And it’s really interesting how the Old Testament ends. The last prophet is Malachi. We’re around 400 BC.

And listen to the promise that’s made. This is the last couple of verses in the Old Testament. God says, “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the hearts of the children to their parents.” And who’s Elijah?

Elijah is John the Baptist. And the Old Testament ends with another iteration of this hope that God will, in fact, redeem his people.

Conclusion

So what’s the point? The point of the Old Testament is that we were uniquely created for a relationship with God. “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” And God will always be faithful despite our sin. But our obedience or disobedience determines whether we receive the blessings or the curses of the covenant.

And understand that everything in the Old Testament is pointing to Jesus. God’s ultimate act of faithfulness to Adam and Eve, to Abraham, to David, and the prophecy through Malachi — the ultimate act is in the coming of Jesus Christ, who provides a way to gain access into this relationship with God.