Basics of the Old Testament - Lesson 3

We're now continuing our journey through the Old Testament, kind of section by section, book by book, just to give a major summary of who are the major players, what are the major events, and what is kind of giving structure and meaning to those events and players, kind of theologically and historically. It's just the first pass that we'll do. After we complete this pass through kind of just an introduction to the books and who are working in the books and what's happening in the books, we'll return and talk about the history of Israel and kind of tell the story a second time.

And then I'll show you how the Old Testament is structured in such a way to give us sort of an important kind of sense of context and meaning, and that will be a third time that we'll make a pass to the Old Testament. So if you stick with me through this course, we'll kind of pass through the Old Testament three times, and that will give you kind of a good sense of what you might encounter or experience in the Old Testament and provide you with kind of a launching pad maybe for taking the 10-hour course or the 20-hour course that Biblical training has done with me on the Old Testament. So think of this as a great launch pad.

We're continuing now, and we're in the third section of the English canon of Scripture, and these are the so-called poetical books, and there are five poetical books. They're grouped together because they all share the genre of poetry. Some of them are songs, some of them are proverbs, some of them have narrative accounts in them, some of them are dialogues, and so let's begin.

They run Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs, and these books are in some sense more of the theological books. There's not so much there's not so much history and narrative in them, but rather there is theology, right? These books appear in a part of the canon of the Hebrew Bible that teaches how to think and live in light of God's covenant. So they're practical books.

How do you think and live as a person in covenant with God in the Old Testament and then, of course, in the New Testament? And the book, and this section begins with the book of Job, the book of Job, and it's a lengthy book, and it's about a man named Job who lived sometime around the patriarchal era. So we don't know exactly when he lived, but it would have been close to like Abraham, okay, and sometime before Moses, and we know that because of how his wealth was measured, like in terms of camels and livestock, and he wasn't an Israelite, but he was a man of God, and the book of Job is about suffering. It's about suffering.

Let me tell you kind of the story of the book of Job. In the beginning of the book of Job, the Lord identifies Job as a righteous man, someone who pleases God, and he's a wealthy man, one of the wealthiest men of the East, and he's got seven children, flocks and herds, and his wealth is famous, and his integrity before the Lord is famous, and then we get this picture in the introduction to the book of Job where God is in his heavenly court, and he summons all of kind of the Elohim or all of the angels that live in his court, and he asked one angel whose name is the Satan, have you considered my servant Job? And Satan says, yes, I've considered Job, and he's not such a big deal. The only reason he serves you is because you've made him so prosperous, and so God says, hey, if you'd like to test that theory, give it a shot.

You can take away all that he has, and then guess what? Satan goes and, under God's authority, takes away all that Job has, all of his possessions, all of his livestock, everything of value to him, even his seven children. The only thing that's left to Job is his wife, who encourages him to curse God and die, all right? So, it's a sting for sure, okay? Then, following that test, God says, Satan, you lose, and Satan says, hey, no, I don't lose, because he's still healthy, and a guy can lose all this stuff, and if he's still healthy, he's still going to worship you because he's got his health, and God said, well, you can strike his health too. So, Satan goes out and strikes Job a second time, this time with not his possessions, but with his body, and he afflicts Job with all kinds of boils and afflictions and makes his life really a living hell, and Job simply must go out to the dump, sit in the middle of the ash heap, and lament his condition.

He's got nothing left, not even his health, and that begins a series of discussions between Job and three of his friends who come to comfort him in the midst of his affliction, and so, for the first part of the book of Job, you're going to have three characters named Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. So, sound like hobbit names to me, okay? So, you've got Job and his three hobbit friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and so, they cycle through discussions three different times, like Eliphaz will have a speech about Job, and then Job will respond, then Bildad, and then Zophar, and Job will respond, Job will respond, and the basic argument goes something like this. Job, the reason that you're suffering is because you've sinned, and if you simply repent from your sin, God will restore and bless you, and Job says, I have not sinned.

I don't know why I'm suffering, but if I could just go and talk to God, I could find out why. Does that make sense? And that's basically the summary of all of these lengthy discussions that go with Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and Job over and over and over again, and they're really trying to figure out, like, if God is just, if God is wise, and if God is good, why does his good person suffer? And the answer to that in the book of Job is silence. Silence.

The book of Job never answers the question of why Job must suffer, except to vindicate God's worthiness of worship regardless. God's worthiness of worship regardless. After the three friends come and comfort Job by kind of poking and prodding at him, let's say this, preaching the right doctrine for the wrong situation, which kind of inflames the negativity, another man shows up on the scene, Elihu.

He's younger than the rest, and this guy is an Israelite. Elihu means my God is Yahweh, and he begins to push Job in the right way and say, God is sovereign, and we've got to trust him. He's the creator of heaven and earth, and we don't know why he does what he does.

There's a great hymn of wisdom in there that God is a wise and just God, and that God created the universe, and that God created with wisdom, and so that whatever he's doing accords with that wisdom. Then at the end of the book of Job, Yahweh himself shows up and speaks to Job out of the whirlwind, and Job's response is this, I put my hand over my mouth, I shut up, and I am amazed by the wonders of God. It said, I have heard about God with my ears, but now I have seen him with my eyes, and I repent in sackcloth and ashes.

Then Job is restored at the end twofold. He intercedes for his friends, and the story ends, never answering the question of why God's people suffer, but only letting us know that God is sovereign in our suffering, and he's just, and that one day we will be restored. Now I want you to understand this, that Job's restoration in the end does not mean, which is twofold, he gets twice the camels, he gets twice the sheep, and twice the goats, that kind of thing, and then he gets seven more children, and then his daughters are the kind of the most beautiful women in the land kind of thing, doesn't mean that every Christian, I want to point this out, every Christian who experiences suffering in this world will be restored double at some point in their life, right? Job's restoration is a picture of what will happen to us in the new heavens and new earth.

It's an eschatological restoration, and so Job just gives us a glimpse of what we'll experience in new heavens and new earth. Let me tell you this, gang, our restoration in the new heavens and new earth will be more than double, right? It'll be tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold of whatever you can imagine, but it does give us hope. Now what's interesting is that the first book in the poetical section about how to think and live in light of God's covenant is a book of suffering, because guess what? Life in this world for the believer is a life between God's promise to make everything right and God's fulfillment of making everything right, and we live between the two times, just like you might understand we live between Jesus' first coming and second coming.

We live between the first creation and the second creation, and so we live in a world where we expect something better, but we're still experiencing the first and the suffering thing, and so it's a life of suffering. It's a life between promise and fulfillment. That's the Christian life.

That's been the life for every believer since Adam and Eve. It's a life between God's promise to crush the head of the serpent and to deliver us from evil and the fulfillment of that in the book of Revelation, the book of Job. The book of Psalms is next, and perhaps that's the most popular or famous book in the Old Testament.

The book of Psalms consists of 150 songs or 150 chapters, and there are five divisions of those 150. There's book one, book two, book three, book four, book five. They're grouped into five, and those five books are meant to, in some sense, correspond to the five books of the Pentateuch.

So it's kind of this, these are the books that reflect on the covenant God in all of his glory. I'm going to tell you two things about the book of Psalms. Well, I'm gonna tell you three things.

One, just in terms of mechanics, there are a lot of different types of psalms in the book of Psalms. Think about our culture. There's country music, rock music, classical music, hip-hop, R&B, Christmas music, that kind of stuff.

So some is informed by genre, some is informed by content. And the book of Psalms is exactly the same way. There are lament psalms, thanksgiving psalms, hymns of praise, wisdom psalms, Torah psalms about God's word.

There are what we call maybe messianic psalms or Zion psalms, psalms about God's city. There are all kinds of psalms. There are at least 10 types of psalms.

I think if you'll take Dr. Stewart's survey class for biblical training, he might mention the 10 types of psalms that exist in the book of Psalms. Okay, that's the first thing. What's interesting about those 10 types is the number one most common type of psalm in the book of Psalms is lament, which connects itself right to Job because life in this world is a life of suffering between promise and fulfillment.

God has promised to make things better, but they're not better yet. And we're living by faith in accordance with that. And so we will live a life of suffering.

So that's the first thing. There are 10 different types of psalms in the book of Psalms and lament is the number one type of psalm. And you can actually identify a lament by its form.

And I'll just give you this for free and move on. The structure of the lament is act sad. Don't you like that? If you're going to lament, you're sad about something, so you act sad.

And so if you ever want to know what a lament is, you address God, A, right? Address, then you complain about your situation. It's okay to complain about your situation. Address and complain.

Then you express your trust in God, even though you're complaining, right? Then you profess that God has the power to save you. So address, complaint, trust, salvation. And then you have assurance that God will do it.

And then you praise him, declarative praise at the end. So you address God, you complain to God, you expect salvation. So address, complaint, trust.

Then you account for that salvation. Then you have assurance in that salvation. And then you declare your praise to him.

So act sad, just if you want a way to pray. Then the second thing I want to say about the book of Psalms is that the five books have like an underlying current or river that runs through them. And that's the river that runs through the book of Psalms is the river of Davidic kingship, the river of Davidic kingship.

In fact, 72 of the Psalms in the book of Psalms are attributed to David. So almost half of them. And in the first two books, you really have, they begin with a wisdom Psalm.

And then they, in the first two books of the Psalter, you have the rise of Davidic kingship, and then it's failure in book three, and then in books four and five, the expectation for Yahweh to come and be the king. So when you're reading the book of Psalms, one of the most important things you can do is track the notion of kingship and who is king. First, David is king, and then Yahweh is king.

And at the very end, Jesus, who is from the tribe of Judah or David, is Yahweh himself, is the second person of the Trinity, and he brings all of those things together. And so the book of Psalms has the current of Davidic kingship that runs through it. Okay? The current of Davidic kingship that runs through it.

That's the second thing I want to tell you. There are 10 types. The most common type is lament.

That's the first thing. The second thing you need to know about the book of Psalms is that they have the current of Davidic kingship that runs through them. And then the third thing is that they're originally songs but no longer sung, but they have a wisdom frame to them.

They have a wisdom frame to them, meaning it starts with the blessed man. And the blessed man is the king that will come because he delights in the law of the Lord. And what the king is supposed to do, according to Deuteronomy 17, the king laws, is he's to make himself a copy of the law, read the law, obey the law, and lead Israel in light of the law.

That's the king. The coming king is the blessed or happy man. And then it says in chapter 2 of the book of Psalms that blessed are all who take refuge in him, that king.

And so there's this wisdom frame about the lover of the Torah is the great king, and happy are all of us who take refuge in that king. Then the very last psalm is one of the doxological hymns of praise to God. And all of the lines in that psalm are praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, except the second to the last psalm in Psalm 150, where it says every living thing that has breath will praise the Lord, which means it's kind of this eschatological or end times declaration that one day everything in the entire world that has breath will praise the Lord.

Have you ever heard this line from the New Testament, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord? Psalm 150 has that as its main point. So it's pointing us forward into the New Testament. And one of the things that you can see is if you read it in Hebrew, which you probably can't, but I'm just going to tell you how it works, is every line in that psalm begins hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, except that second to the last line, which begins with everything that has breath will praise the Lord.

It's a backwards line. And that's the zone of turbulence in the psalm that says this is the main point, that one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess this coming Davidic Yahweh king. And that's the book of psalms.

I encourage you to read it always and often and thoroughly. In fact, I used to have this idea trying to read through the psalms every year, and that's been good. But over the last two summers, I've picked one psalm and read that psalm every day over the course of the summer.

And it's been a life giving to my heart and soul. And it's a great practice in terms of like we were talking about reading earlier. Sometimes you can try to read a lot in order to get a sense of the whole, but it's also great just to pick something and just to focus and meditate on it over and over and over again.

And the last two summers I've done Psalm 51 and Psalm 103, but there are 150 to choose from. And so I encourage you to do the same. The book of psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs are next.

And these are three books attributed to Solomon. Now, what do you need to know about Solomon and why he would write these books? Because of this, God appeared to Solomon in 1 Kings 1-11 two times. God appeared to Solomon two times.

The first time that God appeared to Solomon, he asked Solomon this question, hey, what can I give you? Ask of me anything that you want and I'll give it to you. And Solomon asked for wisdom. And God grants Solomon wisdom greater than any person who's ever become before him and greater than any person who'll come after him.

Solomon is not only the wisest man of his day, but he remains the wisest man of all time. And God in his wisdom allowed Solomon to write or compose parts of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. The book of Proverbs is divided into two parts.

Proverbs 1-9 is a series of so-called my son poems where a father and mother are training a son in the way of wisdom. And they do that by saying, hey, son, there are these two women, Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly. They're both attractive.

They both are enticing. But Lady Wisdom leads to life and Lady Folly leads to death. So choose Lady Wisdom.

So they're the my son poems. And so you can read them and say, my son, do this, do that, do this, do that. For if you do this or don't do that, there'll be this blessing or this curse.

And that's basically the structure of them. The whole idea is to persuade the young wisdom seeker to choose wisdom and not folly. Then in Proverbs 10-31, you get all of the short little proverbial aphorisms like a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, or answer a fool, don't answer a fool, those kinds of things.

And it concludes with the book of Proverbs concludes with the account of the virtuous wife in Proverbs 31, 10-31. And it's an acrostic poem, which means that it begins with each line begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So in English, it'd be, you know, the first line would be A, then B, then C, then D, all the way through Z. In Hebrew, it begins with Aleph, then Beth, then Gimel, expressing kind of the totality of the poem.

But it's looking for the wife of strength. The very first line says, a woman or wife of strength, who can find, and then it details what that woman looks like, right? And then it says at the very end, and this kind of woman, all of her works will praise her in the gates. Okay.

And so that the climax of the height of Hebrew wisdom is for the Israelite Jewish boy to get a good wife. All right. Just like the climax of creation in Genesis chapter two on day six is the creation of the woman and the marriage covenant.

So the climax of wisdom in the book of Proverbs is the finding of the wife of strength. That's the book of Proverbs. These are the books for covenant life.

They help you how to think and live in light of the covenant. Then you get to Ecclesiastes, and the book of Ecclesiastes, I like to say is anti-wisdom, is anti-wisdom. Okay.

This is, if you had to pick one book in the old Testament to do apologetics with, with kind of an unbelieving skeptical friend, this is the book in the old Testament I would pick. Because what it does is it says this, hey, I'm going to talk about everything in life. I'm going to talk about being young and old.

I'm going to talk about being rich and poor. I'm going to talk about being wise and a fool. I'm going to talk about work.

I'm going to talk about relationships. I'm going to talk about money. I'm going to talk about projects.

And, and, uh, uh, I'm going to talk about every, everything you can imagine. And the conclusion is going to be that under the sun, everything is entirely meaningless in vain. So there are two main, um, there are two main expressions that are key to reading the book of Ecclesiastes.

If you just want to hear this thing and then go read the book of Ecclesiastes, you'll be set up for relative success. The first is this vanity of vanities, all is vanity or meaningless of meaninglessness, all is meaninglessness, something like that. It's easier in Hebrew, hevel, hevelim, kol hevelim.

It's alliterative. And so vanity of vanities, everything is vain or meaningless. That's the first phrase.

And then the second phrase is under the sun. In fact, the expression under the sun in the book of Ecclesiastes is the most common expression in that book. And the expression under the sun means this life without God life only in the visible world, not in the invisible world.

It's an account of life without taking into account God, who is the creator and the redeemer of all things. Does that make sense? And if you account for life without God in every aspect, it's meaningless. Therefore, they say at the end, the whole duty of man is this to fear God then and keep his commands.

And they subvert the entire argument at the first 11 chapters of the book. Does that make sense? So again, wisdom literature usually has its answer at the end. So you read through the first 11 chapters and you end up in complete despair.

Then you get into chapter 12, you say, oh, whew, I'm delivered from that. And you go back and say, now I get it. And so think about this.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, there's this statement, there's nothing new under the sun. And in the book of Ecclesiastes, there's this statement, that which is crooked cannot be made straight. And perhaps you've heard that expression, there's nothing new under the sun, but that's a godless expression.

That is a godless expression. Because if you like hyperlink that over to the book of Isaiah, Isaiah says, the Lord says to say this, behold, I'm doing something new. And I'm going to make all things new.

And then he says, make straight the highway for our God, raise up the valleys and smoosh down the mountains and make it straight. So that which is crooked is made straight. And there's something new under the sun in Isaiah, because he's caught up in the throne room of God.

And he sees the glory of God and what's happening. But in Ecclesiastes, the author there, Solomon, is saying, hey, let's consider life without God and see what that's like. And guess what gang, it's meaningless.

And so the Old Testament, what I love about the Old Testament is it's fine to be honest with you, right? If you want to consider life without God, let's consider life without God and stare straight in the face. And so I really appreciate that and like that about the Old Testament. And so that's the book of Ecclesiastes.

The Song of Songs is one of my favorite books in the Old Testament. It's one that I have devoted a large part of my career to. In fact, I've just finished a course for biblical training on the Song of Songs.

And so if you want a little bit of that, you can have it. Let me just lay down the teaching there. The Song of Songs teaches this, and it's fresh in my mind, that God created marriage in Genesis chapter two, right? Marriage is a pre-fall institution.

It's not created after the fall to help us cope with our brokenness. It's created before the fall, like the animals or like the mountains or like the sun and the moon. And it's all created very good, right? And God created marriage, according to the Song of Songs chapter eight, to be rock solid in terms of commitment.

That means an exclusive, permanent, lifelong relationship and white hot in terms of intimacy, right? We all like that one. Rock solid in terms of commitment and white hot in terms of intimacy. And that marriages that can maintain the rock solid commitment and the white hot intimacy will better be able to, in this fallen and broken world, resist temptation, endure hardship, and promote wholeness.

That's the great message of the Song of Songs. So if you're interested in the topic of marriage and you're interested in a rock solid commitment and the life of white hot intimacy in the context of marriage, so that you can better in this world resist temptation, endure hardship, and promote wholeness, that's the message of the Song of Songs. And that's a book for you.

Now, the key to that book is to understand that there are two male figures present and one female figure present in the context of Solomon's harem, okay? And it's the correlate, it's the correlate, Song of Songs is the correlate to Proverbs one to nine that I just talked about. Do you remember in Proverbs one to nine, a young man is being asked to make a decision between two women, Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly. Gang, in the Song of Songs, a young woman is being asked to make a decision between two men, Mr. Wisdom, the beloved shepherd boy, and then Mr. Folly, Solomon, okay? He's kind of the royal rascal of the song.

And so it maps 100% that way. And there are four parts to the song. And in part one, there's no male figure present.

The woman is in the harem, talking to the daughters of Jerusalem, who are the virgins in training to become a part of Solomon's harem. In part two, the beloved shepherd comes to the harem, leaping over the mountains and bounding over the hills, but he's not able to get in. And so the woman sends him away until she can get out.

In part three, Solomon comes and tries to woo the woman and Solomon is unsuccessful. And she rejects Solomon in part four, embraces the beloved shepherd, and teaches us that the covenant of marriage, gang, should be rock solid and white hot, and that this kind of marriage can endure hardship, resist temptation, and promote wholeness. So what a great way to end the poetical books of the Old Testament, which lead us into the prophets.

Now, gang, I'm not going to say much about the prophets here, because I can say more about it in our next pass when we're talking about the covenantal arrangement of the Old Testament. But what I'll say this, just a couple of things. Number one, the prophets in the Old Testament, the writing prophets, we call these the writing prophets, because there are other prophets, Nathan was a prophet, Samuel was a prophet, there are other prophets.

But these writing prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12, are this, they are Yahweh's prosecuting attorneys. That's this way. I'm going to kind of reduce my slide here.

And I'm going to just say this. I'm going to point out here, just look at your screen with me. In the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy, God lays down his covenant with Israel, right? This is who I am.

This is who you are. This is what I expect from you. Joshua through Esther records the history of that relationship.

And the history of that relationship is this, Yahweh is faithful, Israel is unfaithful, okay? Therefore, exile is coming. These prophets right here are the covenant lawyers that are suing Israel for infidelity on behalf of Yahweh. That's exactly what they do.

In Deuteronomy 32, there's the Song of Yahweh, which is a covenant lawsuit song. These prophets right here are all preaching a sermon on that Deuteronomy 32 text in light of the history of Israel. So here's how it works.

Here's how it works. There is the law books, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And there are the history books that serve as the evidence in the case.

And the evidence displays that Yahweh is faithful, Israel is unfaithful, and therefore exile and judgment are coming. If you think about it in today's world, there's this whole sentiment, no one really likes a lawyer, right? Well, no one liked a prophet back then. They saw these guys in two, they persecuted them, they sent them into exile, et cetera, et cetera.

So these people, their job is to do this. It's very easy. They're going to declare that because of their unfaithfulness, Yahweh is coming to judge.

And when he judges, he's going to send his people into exile. But don't worry, Yahweh is not unfaithful to his promises. He will eventually return and restore his people.

And so it's a fitting way to end the English canon of scripture by God giving his prophet the saying, everything that's going to happen to Israel is according to plan, right? God was not caught off guard by Adam and Eve's fall. God was not caught off guard by Solomon's fall. God was not caught off guard by Israel's fall and their exile from Israel, because Jesus is going to become the true and better Adam.

And Jesus is going to become the true and better Solomon. And Jesus is going to become the true and better Israel. Does that make sense? So all of these failures are pointing us forward to a coming person who will not fail, right? And that's what these prophets do.

They say, Yahweh is faithful. Israel is unfaithful. You're going into exile and going to experience judgment, but Yahweh will return and restore.

That's the message of the Old Testament. So that's the way we conclude. There are four divisions in the English Bible, the law books, the historical books, the poetical books, and the prophetical books.

The people playing in there are a part of the history of Israel. They are Yahweh's covenant mediators and Yahweh's covenant officials. And by them, we learn of Yahweh's faithfulness and his promise to keep his people in all days and ages.