Basics of the Old Testament - Lesson 5

In this next lecture for Basics of Old Testament with Biblical Training, I want to back up for a minute and return to one of our original slides or handouts that listed the books of the Bible in order. This is the Old Testament canon handout, you can take a look at it on your screen. And you can see here that in addition to the Old Testament books that we treated in the English Bible on the left, there's another list I have on the right.

And I want to take a minute in this lecture and I want to talk to you about the significance of the listing on the right and how that can shape how you think about, read, and interpret the Old Testament. It's an important thing to do for us because one of the things that we understand about the Bible is that oftentimes when we study the Bible we think of it this way, context is king. That is, you can't take a little verse, slice it out of its context, and apply it any way you want, right? You've got to think about what the author is saying in the larger context and interpret it in light of that context.

If context is king for an individual verse, context is king for an individual chapter. If context is king for an individual chapter, context is king for an individual book. If context is king for an individual verse, chapter, and book, context is king for the two Testaments.

And if context is king for the two Testaments context this came for the whole Bible. We're going to call this the macro canonical context that is what is the big picture of the Bible and What does that say about our Bible? And here's what it says the Bible has beauty Purpose and design the Bible has beauty purpose and design Think about this for a minute with me Everything that God creates he creates with structure and Beauty and purpose and divine design think about this for a minute Think about the way in which God creates the heavens and the earth in Genesis chapter 1 Everything is ordered everything is structured you begin with chaos in Genesis 1 1 2 2 and then you have Sabbath rest consummation in chapter 2 verses 1 2 3 Everything well ordered in seven days Everything matching right the light and darkness on day one matches the sun moon the stars on day four The sky and the seas on day to map on to the birds and the fish on day 5 etc. Etc.

Etc Think about God when he has Noah build the the ark The instructions are explicit three levels windows doors stalls The the instructional design is intense think about the tabernacle in the book of Exodus very clearly designed and specified in terms of How to build it and where everything goes even where the tribes have to camp around it Think about the building of the tabernacle all I mean think about the building of the temple in the book of Kings very specific designs by God himself For us to achieve what's even more amazing to me is when you get to the book of Revelation and the Apostle John is There with the angel and he sees the new heaven and the new earth and what's that angel say not let's go explore the city Let's go swim in that water. Let's go see what there is to eat. But let's measure this thing There's something about God that he wants us to see Structure beauty purpose and design and all that he has made think about the human body structure purpose beauty and design and gang The Old Testament and the Bible has an intentional structure that has purpose beauty and design in it Now we have already tackled the English order of the Bible for the Old Testament on the left here And you can see that those books are listed by genre.

That is the type of literature That the books are so in the Pentateuch you have the law books in the historical books You have history in the poetical books. You have yes poetry and then the prophets. Yes, you have prophetic literature So it's very easy to see in the right-hand column though You see the same exact books.

There's no difference in content, but they're arranged differently. They're arranged differently There are not four Categories Pentateuch historical books poetry and prophets there are three categories and these three categories Are the law the prophets and the writings? The law the prophets and the writings. Okay, we get this order one or at least one of the spots in which we get this order is Jesus in Luke 24 when he meets the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

He says hey, didn't you know? That everything in the Old Testament was about me And then he says and and Jesus opened their minds and he took them through the law the prophets and the Psalms Which is the first book in the writings and he explained to him the significance of the Old Testament in light of himself Okay, we know about this threefold division Before the time of Jesus in fact, there's there's a book called Ecclesiasticus Which sounds like Ecclesiastes but written by a guy named Ben Sera and his grandson translated it in 132 BC And he talks about the Old Testament as having three categories law prophets and the other books, right? Then you know even 400 years after Jesus We've got the Jewish rabbis talking about their Old Testament and they're talking about the Old Testament with the law the prophets and the writings In this order right here. All right So before Jesus with Jesus and after Jesus his Old Testament had three divisions like this Okay, the the the English Bible order that we get comes from the Latin edition of the Bible that a guy named Jerome translated in 400 BC and because he was more of a Western guy like us He liked genre and so he put you know, everything he said everything according to genre and by author Okay, so that's fine But the original order is this threefold order law prophets and writings and that's the one we're gonna take a look at That's what we're gonna take a look at if the English Bible on the left is arranged according to genre Then I'm gonna state that the Hebrew Bible on the right is Arranged by covenantal category. Okay, which makes sense because we've talked about God's Word is a covenantal word and the history of Israel unfolds according to the covenants that God made with Israel All right.

So let's take a look a little more specifically At the three divisions of the Old Testament in this next slide law prophets and writings now it what's interesting is Law prophets and writings if perhaps you have some Jewish friends Half of my family is Jewish and my grandpa Ben Had a Bible in his house an Old Testament, but he never called it his Bible He called it his Tanakh. Have you heard that word before Tanakh? Well Tanakh is a kind of an an acronym and a memory device for the three divisions of the Old Testament T N and K in Tanakh is As a reference to the Hebrew words Torah, which means law You've probably heard Torah which means law the word prophets in Hebrew begins with an N Neva'im and the word for writings in Hebrew begins with that K sound Katuvim Okay Katuvim so that Tanakh T N K is the Torah the Neva'im and the Katuvim So in fact, I'll just tell you this last night on the internet and on his Amazon I ordered a new Tanakh to have at my house an English Bible in this order. All right, so it still exists today It's the oldest arrangement of the Hebrew Bibles and it's one that still exists today But most Christians are simply not familiar with it.

Most Christians are simply not familiar with it And so let's take a look at at a few things about this particular order and how it works Okay, first you'll notice that in the law the prophets and the writings Each division has two subsections each division has two subsections in the in the law The book of Genesis is part one and then Exodus Leviticus numbers and Deuteronomy are part two Genesis is the covenant prologue So it's that a covenant prologue in the ancient world does two things it identifies the king and the king's subjects okay, and the book of Genesis identifies the king Yahweh God creator of heaven and earth and then the subjects Abraham and his offspring and So right when you get into Exodus, you know exactly who the players are Yahweh and the twelve tribes of Israel. Okay At the books of the Covenant are framed the books of the covenant are framed by the birth and the death of the covenant mediator Moses Moses is born in the first chapter of Exodus and Moses dies in the last chapter of Deuteronomy and in the midst of that in the middle of You think about Exodus 1 and Deuteronomy 34 is the life and teachings of the covenant mediator Moses and then the covenant that God makes with his people, okay So if you were to outline The Pentateuch you would do it this way Roman numeral one Pentateuch or Torah or books of Moses a Genesis B X's to Deuteronomy. That's the basic outline of the Pentateuch.

Okay, the next section the prophets The prophets come in two section sections and there we call them in the academic world that I live in live in the former prophets Joshua judges Samuel Kings and Then the latter prophets Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and the twelve and notice that they're very balanced for former prophets Joshua judges Samuel Kings and for latter prophets Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and yes the twelve the twelve minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible is considered a single book and With Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and the twelve each of those books are roughly the same size So it's a balanced corpus of literature. The other thing to observe here is that you're perhaps familiar if you've looked at the table of contents for an English Bible that Samuel was first and second Samuel Kings is first and second Kings and Chronicles is first and second Chronicles, right? That's a newer designation and what happened is when we translated the Bible from Hebrew into Greek not we but when it was translated That the scrolls got really long because it takes a lot more Greek words to to get all the Hebrew words And so the scrolls just got too long So I couldn't put on a single scroll and so they became first and second first and second first and second But conceptually, they're just a single book Samuel Kings and Chronicles. They're a unified book You can just think of having two big chapters or something like that.

Okay now Joshua to Kings is Characterized by this life in the land in the book of Joshua Israel Crosses over the Jordan River and begins to occupy the promised land Then the book of Kings in to in in second King 17 the north goes into exile and in second Kings 25 the south goes into exile and So really the the former prophets Joshua judges Samuel Kings are the history of God's people in the land And here's the here's the theme that runs through it In it said it states this in Joshua 24 and 22 and in first Kings 8 That Yahweh has been faithful to keep all of his promises to Israel. Not one of them has failed That's the motto The model for Israel is and they did evil in the eyes of the Lord all right, Yahweh's faithfulness Israel's infidelity and that's why they go into exile and Israel's exile is always plan a if you go back and read Deuteronomy 29 to 31 in the Pentateuch It tells you that the Mosaic Covenant and Israel's tenure in the land was always designed to be temporary Because it would give way to a better covenant, right? It was designed to kind of fall away and to the and then to become something greater And so we're thankful that it fell away so that it could become something greater Then you get Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and the twelve and These four prophetic books, right? they interpret the history of Israel Joshua judges Samuel Kings in light of Exodus Leviticus numbers in Deuteronomy the covenantal books So Deuteronomy is one big giant covenant renewal document and then Joshua judges Samuel Kings maps out That covenant history according to the book of Deuteronomy. So sometimes people will call Joshua judges Samuel Kings of that Deuteronomic history Because it's the history told and interpreted in light of Deuteronomy and the prophets Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and the twelve are taking the book of Deuteronomy and Viewing the history of Israel through that lens and saying Yahweh's been faithful Israel's been unfaithful And so of course exile is coming So here's here's a cool thing about thinking about it this way Most of the people that I know really struggle with understanding what's going on in Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel in the twelve there They can be hard to understand The reason for that is because they're not interpreting them in light of their context The context for the latter prophets Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel in the twelve is the history of Israel According to the book of Deuteronomy, does that make sense? So if you know the history of Israel, and you know the book of Deuteronomy Then you know, Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel in the twelve, they become much more intelligible intelligible.

So you can't really Jump into the so-called latter prophets without first having mastered Deuteronomy and the former prophets So it's kind of a reading strategy for you. All right, so that's what's happening there life in the land life in exile We call these books kind of the covenant history books because it's the history and the interpretation of that history in The third section we have something called the writings and these are the books what I like to call how to think and live in Light of the land that is the books of covenant life the books of covenant life And so we've talked about in some sense the nature of these books in our previous lectures Psalms, right the books that kind of the the the wisdom collection of songs Deposited in Israel that talk about the kingship of David its rise its fall the kingship of Yahweh And the fact that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Yahweh is indeed the king of the universe Okay, then we've covered Job and Proverbs and Ruth and song of songs in Ecclesiastes And what I call these books is life in the land an author and scholar named Graham Goldsworthy Characterizes these books as just life before God life before God And so as such I put them in that life in the land category because it maps on nicely you see how you've got life in the land in the writings and Life in the land in the prophets and you've got life in exile in the writings and life in exile in the prophets So there's an intentional Literary design going on here. Okay, so it kicks off life in the land with With worship that is the number one way in which you live before God is worship psalms But because we live between promise and fulfillment we need to tackle Job because there's going to be suffering in this life Therefore we need wise living Proverbs wise living Proverbs and Proverbs climaxes With an account of the so-called virtuous wife wife of strength wife of noble character however, you want to translate that at the beginning of Proverbs 31 10, right? It's the a shit Kyle in Hebrew the wife of strength who can find and so the whole problem The whole point is then who can find her? Where is she? Well, the book of Ruth follows and if you I don't know if you know this, but this is one of my favorite things Ruth is the only woman in the Bible ever called the woman of strength from Proverbs 31 In fact that designation only occurs three times in the Hebrew Bible Twice in Proverbs the woman of strength is a crown to her husband the woman of strength who can find who is the woman of strength? Ruth She is the woman of strength.

She is a Moabite widow who clings to the people of God and enters into covenant with God through that people and becomes The grandmother of David. All right in the line of David and so it's an amazing account there Okay, then song of songs is is is similar. It's dealing with the the wife of strength.

You can think of it this way if you're looking for the woman of strength in the book of Proverbs the first one is Ruth and the second one is the woman in the song of songs and she is the hero of the story and the wisdom teacher in the song and she's a second example of The Proverbs 31 woman if you want to know more about that You can see the biblical training lectures that I have done on the song of songs You can have hours and hours and hours of fun Looking at what it's like to have a white hot and rock-solid marriage in a broken and wrecked world. Okay? Then it concludes with Ecclesiastes it includes it concludes with Ecclesiastes, which is the book of anti-wisdom that we've talked about So before we go into exile folks Let's consider life without God under the Sun and life without God under the Sun is meaningless Vanity of vanities all is vanity and so it prepares us then for the life of exile Then we move into six more books So also I want to just say Notice how well balanced the prophets are the former prophets four books the latter prophets four books The writings have six books in the life in the land part and six more books in the life in exile part lovely balance lovely literary design No human over the course of a thousand years that it took to compose the Old Testament could have conceived of this structure and enabled it To happen. It's one of these it's one of the most remarkable evidences of divine authorship and design that I can think about Let's look at the life in exile books the life in exile books kick off with the book of lamentations now in the English Bible comes right after Jeremiah because Some folks think that Jeremiah wrote it because Jeremiah was a weeping prophet and he wrote funeral dirges Okay, well lamentations is a funeral dirge in fact lamentations is comprised of five funeral songs lamentations one two, three four and five and in those five Funeral songs the author is lamenting the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple All right.

It's taking the demise of the Kingdom of Israel Specifically the 586 event where Nebuchadnezzar from Babylon comes and destroys Jerusalem and the temple and takes the king and puts him in exile as the death of a human Right, and so the look at these five funeral songs about the lament over that and in the central Lament in lamentations three it tells us about the what life in exile should look like And are you ready for this? It's a why a life of waiting Hoping in the context of faithfulness. It's a light of waiting and hoping in the context of faithfulness Lamentations chapter 3 God calls us to wait God calls us to hope and God calls us to be faithful. Well, what comes next? two books First one named Esther the second one named Daniel about two individuals a woman Esther and a man Daniel who lived a life of faith in exile Waiting and hoping for God to restore his people and fulfill his promises So in some sense, you've got exposition like here's a theology of exile in the book of Lamentations And then here are two kind of like sermon illustrations for that life The first one Esther the second one Daniel both of whom were faithful unto death in the midst of extreme circumstances It's not like Esther and Daniel were quiet farmers in the distant country of Babylon Working with their hands and just waiting for the Lord to return.

No Esther was the queen of Persia Daniel was second-in-command of Babylon In fact when Nebuchadnezzar came to sack Jerusalem in 586 He left the keys to the kingdom in Daniel's hand to run it while he was gone If you can imagine that okay, and these are two people who in the midst of the pressures to assimilate to Persian and Babylonian life Maintained faithfulness to Yahweh even faithfulness unto death Think about Daniel in the lion's den Right or think about Esther when she says if I perish I perish but I'm going to do the right thing It's a wonderful account of what's happening there. And then you have the books Ezra Nehemiah and Chronicles We've talked about Ezra Nehemiah and Chronicles Ezra Nehemiah Recount Israel's return from exile the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem the rebuilding the dedication of the temple The renewal of the covenant and Ezra's collecting of all of the Old Testament books in the library that Nehemiah establishes Well, what Ezra begins with is this the decree of Cyrus that we talked about earlier in 538 BC that Israel can go home And then in Ezra and Nehemiah People go home in the first second and third wave under Zerubbabel Ezra and Nehemiah All right, then at the end of the book of Chronicles after it's all said and done You get this statement. It's back and it's 538 BC again and Cyrus says hey, you can all go home And the question what we already went home back in Ezra and Nehemiah.

Why do we need to go home again? and what's happening here is That by beginning with the decree of Cyrus in 538 BC and ending with that same decree Even though you recount another 130 or 40 years of history about down to a 400 BC What that is saying is that the return from exile? That was anticipated by the prophets Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel And the 12 is not the one that we had here that we need a different return from exile a greater return from exile with a greater King a greater Tabernacle or temple and a greater priest and So we wait you have to wait until you get to the New Testament and Bill mounts his survey on our basics of New Testament to discover that that King that Temple that priest is Jesus himself and what's cool about it is The book of Chronicles is the last book of the Hebrew Bible and it begins with nine chapters of genealogies nine chapters of genealogies The only other book in the Christian canon of Scripture to begin with genealogies is Matthew Right, and it's the very next book in my Bible. Does that make sense? It's the very next book and What the genealogies in Chronicles are looking for are The right King and the right priest so all of the genealogies of the twelve tribes of Israel Some of them just get a few verses, but the biggest ones are Judah the tribe of the King and Levi the tribe of the priests and so when Jesus shows up in Matthew and you get those genealogies He is the king from the tribe of Judah and he's also the priest that God's people have been looking for It's an amazing way to think about it. In fact Chronicles and Genesis both begin with Adam They're the only two books to begin with Adam and so Chronicles is the fitting conclusion To the Old Testament, but it also is the appropriate launchpad to the New Testament.

Does that make sense? It's like that hinge and so we see that there's an intentional literary design So what does that look like then when we have kind of the whole Bible, right? It looks like this This is one of my favorite handouts to give my students of all time because it provides you with an arrangement and structure of the entire Christian Bible that shows Its covenantal nature its structure its beauty its purpose and design I love it These are my favorite eight boxes of all time and I'll just I can tell you this in terms of significance The very first people to see this diagram right was about 30 years ago On a napkin before my mother and grandmother at their kitchen table All right, so this is not kind of like postgraduate PhD work This is like this is my Bible in eight boxes and I can understand it Categorically in the categories of law profits and writings. And so if you look at the if you look with me At the slide I can just show you a few things that might be helpful as you kind of begin your journey To think about what is the Old Testament? How does the Old Testament work? How can I approach it appropriately in its context? So the first thing we want to know is that we've talked about the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible the law The prophets and the writings right and I want to map onto those what they are Covenantally the books of the covenant the covenant history books and the covenant life books Right and we know that the book of Genesis right here is what we're going to call the covenant prologue the covenant prologue and if I can just write a few things here to show you it begins in Genesis 1 and 2 with creation and The climax of creation in Genesis 2 is marriage It's the creation of the woman in the marriage covenant that brings day 6 in Genesis chapter 2 from not good to very good and then in Genesis chapter 3 a guy named Satan shows up and Destroys the whole thing. All right, and so the history of Israel's God is basically the history of the Bible after that is basically God Restoring what Satan has done and then crushing that guy's head and bringing the end to his work But let's just go to the end then I just want to show you that if you're looking at the book of Revelation again This isn't a New Testament class, but I'm just going to show you How Genesis works and what it maps on to? the book of Revelation ends in Revelation 21 and 22 with a new creation and Revelation 21 that new creation is kicked off with the new Jerusalem coming down like a bride adorned for her husband And so there's a new marriage covenant and in Revelation chapter 20 the chapter right before that Satan is destroyed Okay now in in certain like literary studies This is called this arrangement right here has two functions first.

It's a key asm because you've got a B C and then C B a and that kind of literary kind of poetic design and ABC CBA patterns that crisscross or inverted parallelism and what that does is it shows us that there's a unified plan and When you get to the same end that you started with you're done so it's evidence for a closed canon and a Unified design with Scripture a unified design with Scripture and the other thing too is it's also functions as an inclusio We say I N C L U S I O Which is a literary device that shows wholeness and completeness That is if you think about some of the Psalms in the book of Psalms that are called Hallelujah Psalms they begin with hallelujah and the way, you know They're done is because they end with hallelujah and everything in the middle is hallelujah All right, and so you can think of it the same way that the the biblical Covenantal Word of God is about creation and new creation the covenant of marriage and the destruction of evil There's a unified plan and design you think about the book of Exodus through Deuteronomy You have a covenant mediator who's born or the born under the decree of death who flees into Egypt who comes out of Egypt to save his people who's transfigured on a mountain and delivers God's covenant in Matthew Mark and Luke and John you have Books framed by the birth and the death of a new covenant meteor Jesus. He's born under decree of death He comes out of Egypt to save his people and he he mediates the new covenant for God's people Okay in Joshua Judges Samuel Kings and the latter prophets you have the history of the covenant and the prophetic interpretation of that history in the Acts of the Apostles you have the history of the new covenant Church and the apostolic interpretation of that new covenant life think about think about Peter's speech on Pentecost at the beginning of Acts Interpreting the pouring out of the Spirit in light of the Old Testament and the arrival of the new covenant or the speech of the speech of Peter not sorry the speech of Stephen in Acts 7 who rehearses the entire history of Israel in the final covenant lawsuit and says God is vindicated and the Jews have rejected God's Messiah and we need to repent and They stone him and execute him but the heavens open up and you can see the throne room of God Vindicating Stephen's work and you can think of Paul in Acts chapter 13 who interprets what's happening In the new covenant when the gospel is going to all the Gentiles in light of the Old Testament So you've got these apostolic speeches Interpreting the history of the new covenant Church just like Joshua Judges Samuel Kings and the latter prophets They map on to each other one to one and Then you have the writings how to think and live in light of the covenant and the same things below You have the Pauling epistles the book of Hebrews James Peter John and Jude all of those books deal with how do you think? About the gospel night of Christ and then how do you live in light of that gospel? Does that make sense so you can see here what I've done. Let me clear this up in this chart I'm showing you the covenantal structure of the Christian Bible in a way that shows you These are the books of the covenant This is the history and the interpretation of that covenant and here's how to live in light of that covenant the the grayed or dark boxes at the top are the Old Testament and They function as the mirror image of the New Testament And so do you remember earlier when I said that the Abrahamic Covenant gets fulfilled in two stages? Yeah, so the Abrahamic Covenant occurs back here in Genesis, right? And then you have this remarkable thing here in this upper register You have it fulfilled in the Mosaic economy Stage one and in this lower register you have it fulfilled in the in the New Covenant economy under Jesus The upper economy is the shadow economy like the book of Hebrews calls the Old Testament the shadow of the things to come Right, and then you have below in the non shaded books.

You have the substance right the so you can put it this way But Jesus is the true and better Adam Jesus is the fulfillment of the offspring of Abraham Jesus is the true and better Israel. Jesus is the true and better Moses who mediates a better covenant Jesus even becomes a true and better temple, right? Jesus is the true and better Joshua who leads his people into the real promised land Jesus is the true and better judge who delivers God's people from their sin from their oppression and gives rest to their inheritance Jesus is the true and better King who's always faithful Jesus is the true and better prophet, right? Think about this. Jesus never says thus saith the Lord He says truly I say unto you He does not need to use the prophetic covenant mediator formula.

He is the voice of Yahweh himself Jesus is the true and better wisdom. He is the praise of God Jesus is the true and better spouse from the Song of Songs. He is the he is the faithful beloved Jesus is the true and better Esther and Daniel that kind of thing and so we have this wonderful way in which Jesus fulfills all of these different categories both people and Institutions.

He is the prophet the priest the king the judge. Does that make sense if you want it if you want like a Theological way to read the Old Testament Go to the book of Hebrews the book of Hebrews in the New Testament is Essentially what essentially has three parts of say that the book of Hebrews can be summarized this way Jesus is better So don't give up for the best is yet to come And so all of the chapters in the book of Hebrews deal with one of those three topics Jesus is better So don't give up persevere because there's warning passages because the best is yet to come and in the midst of that You can read the passages in what way is Jesus better than all the stuff in the Old Testament? And that helps you to map all the different things that Jesus is doing Okay. So in this lecture what I really wanted to do was I wanted to show you the significance of the Hebrew Bible order for helping you to interpret and understand the Bible All right, because what that does is it tells you things like hmm When I'm reading the Bible and I'm reading about David, right? I'm not reading about myself I'm reading about Jesus is going to come and be the true and better David Right, so I'm not going out there to slay my Goliath.

I'm looking for the guy who's gonna slay Goliath for me Does that make sense when I read the book of? Genesis or Exodus? I'm not thinking about in what ways can I be Moses? I'm looking for who's the true and better Moses who can keep this covenant on my behalf. Does that make sense? But When you get to the other side over here in the writings category, right? Where's Ruth is an example of the woman of strength. So we're to be like her, right? Esther is an example of faithfulness in exile and Christians are aliens and strangers on this earth So Esther and Daniel provide examples for us how to live So we can better appreciate how to interpret the Bible by knowing where we are in the Bible I like to think of these rooms as rooms in a house And so rooms in my house have different functions and different pieces of furniture for that room So I don't park my car in the living room and I don't make my toast in the bathroom I parked my car in the garage and I make my toast in the kitchen and one of the things that's good about a box Diagram like this is you know What to expect these are the covenant books or these are the covenant life books and so, you know How to better conduct yourselves in those books So again, this is just a beginning or an entry point to way to think about this and if you're interested in it more You can go to the the 10-hour or the 20-hour Old Testament introduction that biblical training has produced for you