DO YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND THE BIBLE? Here's a quick 30-Minute Overview & Summary

well this evening uh we're in the fourth installment of this study we're going through i call it how to interpret the bible correctly now remember interpretation is vital uh i've been studying the bible for over 40 years and there's one simple question that fills my heart and mind every time i read the bible and i've i've read it repeatedly and that is what does this passage mean not to what i think it means not do what could it pop but what does it mean and you apply a series of systematic steps to understand to interpret the bible bible teachers are called to explain the bible to help people understand what the bible means how it fits together into one powerful message from god the only way to apply god's word correctly is to understand first and that's the critical step what has god said you start with exactly what the text says and then what he meant and then we go to what response he desires from us many people's do it backward you know it it's so what does this mean to me it doesn't matter what it means to me what did god say what did god mean then what should my response be someone long ago told me that my job as a bible expositor was to build a bridge that transported people from where they live in the present back to what god said and to what he did in the historic context of his word and then to bring them back into their daily lives understanding what god expected from them so with that idea of building bridge uh back we have to realize that that there's a gap between where we are and so that's that's where uh we started in december looking at the remnants you know the stones that last the archaeology then the big sweeping scope of biblical history uh basically i operate just on the basis of what the bible says and i always tell people that you can choose after everybody needs to have in their mind the grid of what god says you can then say what you think it means but you should know what he said and and that is what biblical history is in other words god says that everything began in the physical universe from nothing and god brought it into existence so every angel every later demon and every thing we see god spoke into being and he did that relatively recently god says he did it now we can we can have all the debates you want with the secular um interpretation of the facts but the facts are that the only eyewitness observer says that then we saw last time that everything not only happens sometime that's history it all happens somewhere that was geography that was last time tonight we're zeroing in on the old testament and what does the first 39 books of the bible what framework can we have in our minds so that we understand what's going on so i call this a brief history of time in the bible and i i just have such a fun time doing this that um remember i started out with as a youth pastor and uh let me get this out of the way i want my last year here we go um so as i was snowblowing i thought of this okay because i've been thinking about this a long time and i was i was driving irving not driving it's not quite that big i was pushing or running behind and there was a a little rabbit at the top of my snowblower gear shift and a little turtle down here and i figured out instantly even if i you know lived in mongolia or if i'd ever seen a turtle in a rabbit i would have figured out slow fast and then there was this neutral thing and all of a sudden as i was you know you know backing up and and going forward faster i thought you know bible history is very similar because for 30 years i've taken 2500 people to the holy land and people's eyes glaze over when you say they look at something i say oh that's from the time of abraham that's four thousand years ago that oh that's byzantine that's only five or 1500 years ago and all of a sudden they go because history is kind of like algebra or calculus or pathology you know it just and and but bible history if if you just think of a gear shift here's neutral uh this is uh going forward this is going back the neutral is christ the center of history so the time of christ a thousand years two thousand years three thousand years after christ a thousand years before christ two thousand three thousand four thousand that is a brief way to comprehend biblical history now you can't fit 14 you know or 16.3 billion years into this but i don't think god can either so you know what i mean he this is the way this simple 4 000 years before christ and 3 000 years after him is the way god represents all of history and time in the bible now you can say god you misrepresented it or you can say i don't agree with you or you can say it's not fair but the bible was written primarily to poor people and slaves and it was written in such a way that a child can understand it and if you read it with childlike simplicity you see that christ is the center of history david abraham noah adam those are the four ships back a thousand years before christ was david two thousand years before christ was abraham three thousand years before christ was noah four thousand years before christ was adam that's what god says even gives you the numbers down to the 969 years now you can say that means something of the 969 that's fine but that is what he said then since christ we have a thousand years and there we are today here we are this is all that there's ever been according to god because he said jesus christ was crucified one time for all time so there are parallel universes there aren't other worlds there are no other humanoids living out there somewhere according to the only person who knows everything and that's god so what i call a brief history of time in the bible now just to show you what i mean here four thousand years ago on our gear shift is 4000 bc 3000 years ago 3000 bc you see if you're thinking if you think when you're reading your bible i i just think of every time i change a passage just in my mind i'm i in my mind think about where we are it's the only way to make sense of it because otherwise you just it just is kind of like a blur it's kind of like have you ever seen people they blend everything together or they take everything on their plate and they mash it all up and they stir it all up and you go you know it just doesn't look good that way did you know that's the way the bible looks to a lot of people it's just all blended together it's been very clearly laid out with the the center of history being the cross of christ god said that in galatians 4 verses 4 and 5 it says but in the fullness of time god sent forth his son made of a woman made unto the law to redeem those that are under the law that's why jesus came in the fullness of time he is the center of history so all history uh you know until you know communism one to re-vamp history because they didn't like christ and of course the jews have the common era because they don't want christ and secularists i mean once people realize that that the latin anno domini in the year of our lord and bc just before christ christ is banned in fact if you read the news you know more and more town councils we're not talking about san francisco and you know the gay district of uh boston we're talking about normal farming communities have decided to not be controversial we won't mention christ's name and there that that's because the heart of history is the cross of jesus christ but just think in your minds the cross of christ is zero we are past it and all history that you read about in the bible is either around the time of christ and his apostles who lived within a generation after him or it's before that and and with that simple way of thinking you can locate just like that any event that's in the bible so let me show you what i mean just as an example down you know the furthest down that my snowblower goes the lowest gear down here on god's chart is adam and creation noah abraham david now in your mind there's a thousand years of real history of 12 months years of four seasons that stretch back to adam that's how the bible presents it so if you think of christ from christ to david is how long how long thousand years did you know it's better if you see in here and think all the together remember i'm a youth pastor i'm used to people uh responding before david it's a thousand years to abraham so when jesus christ looked at the religious leaders of his day and said abraham rejoiced to see me they did the math they knew exactly it was 2 000 years and they said you're crazy you aren't alive and they threw rocks at it see it i mean to someone that doesn't have any experience in the bible it has the blender view what's the big thing about abraham probably he lived in nazareth you know right see if you if you don't in your mind put it's it's almost like you know having everything in your house in a big you know pile in the living room floor and then looking for something if there's not a place for it that's how we have to start thinking as we're reading the bible and from abraham back to noah is a thousand years and from noah back to adam is a thousand years so it's a very simple simple structure the chronology of the bible uh what was you know i was trying to think of what would relate to you that was a thousand years after christ uh we could say the crusades uh the vikings uh gunpowder was invented but none of those things really are positive the crusades were not christian the vikings you know gunpowder that's but you know what there's something in your hymn book there's a hymn in there it's written by bernard of clairvaux and actually a thousand years ago was a time that would be characterized by monasteries and monks and mystics and and the middle ages and the dark ages and all that and out of the dark ages there's at least one bright light a man who wrote jesus the very thought of thee with sweetness fills my breast but greater fart thy face to see and in thy presence rest that's an example of a thousand years ago here we are today and if the lord comes back uh soon there's still a thousand years of history even if it comes back in a long time there's still a thousand years of history because he said it god said that i'm going to fulfill all my promises to israel that they've never experienced because of their unbelief and they will never let me fulfill it until i actually come physically back to this earth and make those things happen for my chosen people to promise that's what the millennium is all about it's about 20 of the old testament that has never been fulfilled that will be god promised that he would fulfill he made an unbreakable promise and he's going to come back and do that so with just kind of this this gear shift with neutral being the cross of christ the time after christ and looking back you can just simply in your mind every time you read any part of the bible you can fit it together now let me just apply this i'll show you a few things let's look at the old testament the old testament and by the way biblical history is all drawn from the bible and so the bible in the old testament has 39 books now the the way that we have them were primarily arranged by ezra and i'll show you when ezra did that basically ezra was operating right here this is christ this is halfway back to a thousand so how long before christ would that be 500 years so actually it was 400 and some but ezra was right here but just i'm rounding off for you so this is when ezra lived ezra was taking the parts of the bible david wrote right here and he's taking the parts of the bible moses wrote moses wrote in 1446. now don't don't worry about the date but that's halfway to abraham so abraham lived and 500 years later moses lived and 500 years later david lived and 500 years later ezra divided the old testament into these divisions why did he do that because the parts that moses wrote here moses wrote those after going to school where did he go to school yeah egypt and what did they write in back then hieroglyphics and so he had a form of hebrew that was very much influenced kind of like if you read beowulf or uh read read even even look at the original king james and the b's are s's and there's all kinds of stuff that language written language changes but he was writing in this time period 1500 or 14 something bc and then when david wrote and all the prophets that there was a cluster of prophets from the time of david through the the decline and fall of israel all of those were influenced by the the current society of that day which was the phoenicians remember hiram uh tyre the one that helped solomon get all the you know the wood to build and also help david collect for solomon so there was egyptian influenced hebrew there was phoenician influenced hebrew well ezra came out of captivity in babylon and so the hebrew that was from egypt's time was was different than the phoenician david's time because look at the hundreds of years that were it was over uh 1500 years of time that was going from after abraham and a thousand years between moses and ezra and so the language had morphed and so by the time the people came out of babylon back to jerusalem after the captivity nobody could read the bible they couldn't read it nobody and so ezra hand copied the pentateuch the prophets all the wisdom literature all the books of history he finished them off he compiled them and he wrote them in what is called modern or biblical hebrew and he actually is the one that formed the block letter system that's in hebrew today ezra next to moses here moses ezra is the second most revered of all the ancients to the jews why because he's the one that preserved modern biblical hebrew and he's the one that copied these manuscripts and he became the father of the scribes you bump into them in the new testament the scribes and the pharisees and the sadducees ezra started the scribes they were the copyists they were the xerox machines they were the ones that that carefully penned the old testament 39 books but that's not all he did he put those into these structural uh divisions that that we see which is what i want you to kind of get a handle on tonight if you step back and think about it the bible has according to ezra's laying it out has three beautiful parts there are 17 books that are about history there are five books that are wisdom literature and the last 17 and this is in the order that they're in there there's a reason for the order that's in there and so this process took place right there in about the 5th century bc now real quickly this is the whole bible first are the 17 books of history what's fascinating is the way that ezra put them in order after as he was copying them he was thinking about this he was thinking about the synagogues where they were going to read and he set out this in fact ezra invented the synagogues you wonder where synagogues came from ezra invented them he invented biblical hebrew he copied the bible and he started the synagogues he also ordered basically the books in this order and what he did in each of these sections he has five major books of history we call those the what what are the first five books called pentateuch yeah five pentateuch there are also five major books that are at the head of the line then it's followed by nine books that were written before israel was exiled into babylon fascinating so are there nine prophets that wrote before the exile then there are three history books about after israel came back from babylon and while those three were were writing the history there are three prophets that speak to the people after they get back from babylon in the midst of all that he put right in the heart right in the center of the old testament are these wisdom books they're different than the other books if you've ever noticed they're just different job is a theology of suffering the whole in fact most people believe that moses most jews believe moses wrote job now job was a real person living in a real time right after noah living perhaps as much as 3 000 years ago right after the flood i mean 3 000 years before christ you can pull the shifter back david abraham and before abraham probably job somewhere between noah and abraham was where job was but job didn't write down all of his travails most likely the same author the pentateuch wrote those down to give to israel while they were suffering under pharaoh and so it's a theology of of the the purposes see god never tells us why he allows us to suffer he just tells us what he expects from us when we're suffering he doesn't tell us why he allows us to have what bill showed us you know or to have a job interruption or to have a health interruption or to have a relational interruption he just tells us what he expects from us through that then uh the psalms the songs psalm the song it's a theology of praise which is an element of worship and it's it's an entire study of how we offer our worship to the lord then proverbs interesting is about practical living it's kind of the individual you know how to make friends and how to be careful financially and how to be careful sexually and how to have the proper parenting how to have the proper marriage and how to be a good businessman how to be disciplined in your life is just all those little practical truths proverbs ecclesiastes is amazing ecclesiastes is a vital book for thinking people it's a theology of the big picture it's not how to get a good deal and plow your field it's why you're even here ecclesiastes is not uh what did one commentator say the vain babbling of a uh you know a wicked old man it's not it's a divinely inspired theology of life the ending the last two verses say it all in fact the last chapter is incredible i'm experiencing the last chapter it says you're going to come to a time where everything hurts and where you you know you can't sleep at night nothing tastes good it's coming you young people but do you know what the ecclesiastes ends with let us hear the conclusion the whole matter fear god and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man for god will bring every work into judgment according to that we have done whether it's good or bad wow the chapter starts with remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth it's an incredible book it talks about how to get a good night's sleep why we should have things it was written by a man who had everything the smartest and the richest man that ever lived wrote this book in fact i thought a great title for it would be rich jew uh talks about money and marriage you know or though you could change the wording a little bit it would really be a bestseller this is the book that my parents always told me you can't read that one so i couldn't wait to read it uh it is one of the most fascinating books because number one it's a literal story about solomon you read chapter eight of tongues album you know what's going on solomon was rich had all these vineyards and all the women wanted for his money or his good looks or whatever but he wanted a woman who picked him not because he was david's son or the richest or wisest man in the world so if you read song of solomon 8 it says that he went into the vineyards one he owned but he went in like a picker you know we have the apple pickers and the whatever you know the the grape trimmers the the migrant workers he went in like a migrant worker in his own vineyard and he picked opposite this young lady and she fell in love with him and just when she thought she was going to get to marry him he leaves and all there's all those pages about having those verses about oh you know and then in chapter eight she's out picking still sorrowing over her boyfriend that she thought she was going to marry that disappeared and it says and there comes solomon at the head of a hundred soldiers in their polished armor and he's in this magnificent chariot and he is the owner of the vineyard and she comes out she's feeling bad because she has sun tan and women back then weren't supposed to have suntans because you know they weren't supposed to work but she worked and she thought and she's just standing there and here comes solomon and he turns and probably is wearing his helmet and takes it off and he looks at her and she looks at him and she says that was you and he says that was me and it has a happy ending but that would make a great movie that's the song of solomon do you know what it's about it's a much bigger picture about the one who came became a human and came alongside of us and loves us and we love him but he left but he's coming back as the owner of all things it's a beautiful parallel of christ's love for us and solomon's love and so it's a theology of love and the theology of life and practical living so that's that's how the the bible is designed but just a little bit more before we go here's the five major we all know that the the writers before the exile remember the exile was in 586 bc and it lasted for seven years to 516 bc they returned to the land with zerubbabel and company there were three successive waves of return from babylon until ezra was the pastor of the church in jerusalem although it wasn't a church and he wasn't a pastor but he had a congregation of 50 000 people that came back to jerusalem from babylon and and if you know anything about babylon in the bible it's kind of quintessential worldliness and so he had a congregation of 50 000 worldly jews that god directed them to come back to jerusalem and ezra is the one who was the scribe that wants to teach them the bible and so after he got done copying all the books of the bible and getting them all codified and everything not americans but jewish scholars say when ezra got done doing all that copying of all the the phoenician and hieroglyphic egyptian stuff and all of the the scriptures into block letters he wrote a conclusion to all that that's the longest single chapter in the bible now the jewish encyclopedia judaica says ezra wrote the 119th psalm as a book within a book about the book of books it's as long as one of the books of the bible but it's captured within the book of psalms but it actually it actually extols the whole old testament it's amazing but that's the post-exilic so ezra nehemiah the the governor uh that watched you know ezra went back and was there in the time just when they were finishing zerubbabel was getting the temple up after they got the temple up nehemiah comes to build the walls and then the whole story of esther is sandwiched in there and those three happen after the exile these nine are before the exile joshua's right after moses the judges is the period of time between the conquests with joshua going right up to the first judge or the last judge samuel and so we go there and in the midst of that is the story of ruth and the whole lineage of david then we have all of these books that chronicle what's going on and the book of chronicles is focusing primarily on judah and so they don't they don't have a lot of the details that kings has about those israelite kings and of course first samuel is all about david and second samuel is all about david so first second samuel is david first second kings are from solomon on and the chronicles covers the whole period but they're all written before the exile to explain what god's doing so that's the 17 books of history if you then then sandwiched are these that i've already talked about but then when you look at the prophecy books again you have five major prophets and this is the laments that jeremiah wrote as he looked over the destruction of the city of jerusalem i mean it's a literal eyewitness report of the destruction of jerusalem 586 and the death he talks about all the bodies laying there that bill would have had to do pathology on but they were dead you know so he would just said they're dead you know but lamentations which at the next q a i'm going to explain the unique way it's written is tied to jeremiah but jeremiah is the longest book in the bible as far as number of words major 66 chapters and 52 chapters you know and 48 chapters now the reason that i put daniel in with the major prophets is because he gives the greatest prophetic scope of all of them and he's kind of like plays the foundation for us but then there are the classic ones you had to learn when you memorized the books of the bible hosea joel amos obadiah jonah mike and the name of zephaniah those little groupings all of them wrote before the exile then in 516 when they're returning after the exile haggai writes and you know what he writes about it doesn't make any sense if you're reading them all together haggai is saying why are you putting cedar paneling in your houses when the temple's not built i thought the temple was built yeah it got knocked down and they had to rebuild it see as soon as in your mind you can understand the context of these things zechariah is looking over the blackened stones of nehemiah's wall that was rebuilt and he's seeing jerusalem as the center of the world and it's because it's after they returned and he sing all the way to the second coming and that's what zechariah 12 to 14 are all about the national repentance of israel and then malachi we're blending into what is called the inter testamental period he probably is writing about 430 years before christ or so and until the time of christ there's silence and he's the last prophetic voice till john the baptist speaks and so again the old testament is very simple 17 prophetic books and uh 17 prophetic 17 historic and five wisdom books sandwiched in between and if you think about it that way you know that ezra nehemiah and esther are from a different time period than these all these chronicles and kings there after the 70 years these are before both have these major huge books again these prophets are paralleling these these historic books in fact there's a wonderful uh bible that's called the narrated bible written by eth legard smith who actually and there are many of these but that's my favorite one that interleaves job into genesis the psalms into first samuel where they belong proverbs into first and second kings where they belong uh ecclesiastes where that belongs and song sama etc and and it it interleaves the historic with the prophets that are going there but if you don't have you know a bible like that it just doesn't make any sense so there's a quick structure of the old testament now we have five minutes to apply this in the old testament one of the great movers and shakers was alexander the great you notice he only lived for 33 years same time as christ one conquered the whole world and died drunk and the other conquered the whole universe and died as a substitute very great parallels between those two but what alexander did was he hellenized the ancient world what does that mean he spread greek culture all the way from greece to india and what that means is and by the way alexander lived right here 300 years before christ so neutral just shift back so he's after ezra and the old testament and he's after malachi the last so he's during that silent period before christ but he came to the holy land after the jews return and conquered it in 332 and what he did is he started the league of ten cities that in christ's time were called have you ever read that word when you read in the new testament the decapolis what's the decopolis their old testament period city started in that inner testamental period by alexander the great after he conquered the holy land back before christ and before the birth of christ not before christ but before his birth so that was a major thing now what what did that do well for example one of the decapolis cities jesus actually walked around all the time another one he healed someone from the city of jerash became known as the region of garrison and the extended area is known in the bible as the gaddarins now it doesn't mean that the demoniac of mark 5 lived in jerish what it means is that in the outlying area 20 some miles away from this major decapolis city jesus bumps into this demonized man let me show you what cities look like at the end of the old testament look at that forest of columns this is in jordan today this is the city of kerash that's the agora right there that's the marketplace in fact i'm supposed to use the white people can't see red i hear there how do you like that that's the marketplace that great big circle of columns this road that is right in the middle that's called the cardo that's the heart of the city there's another view since i i wrecked the other one this is the main street of the city it always goes north and south this is the forum or the agura or the marketplace in the gospels when it says jesus went into the marketplaces when it says that that they came and brought all the sick people and laid them in front of them do you think they're laying them in the dirt there were cities like this jesus father earthly father joseph helped build a city like this they had a theater and baths and an odeon and libraries and everything i mean some of these jesus videos really distort people's understanding of how civilized it was back then how immense the buildings were let me show you how immense i mean this is standing in the plaza of columns this is this was started in the time of alexander in the old testament this is the the cardo the main street you can't see it because it's washed out but the street is pitched like a pitched roof it had a sewer running down the middle i mean they had they had toilets with running water and sewers and running water and sewers back then and it's all fallen down but it's astounding now look at this i circled them for you there are two people standing and there are two people standing look at those columns every one of these column sections those are sections that are visible if you're up close every one of those that i've been to the little ones here are six feet eight feet six feet six feet eight feet eight feet look at those massive columns again this has a about a six foot down here base 60 60 60 6 feet 6 feet 6 feet 6 feet there was a roof above it 42 feet minimum some of these were 60 feet high this is just the entryway see these steps this is going up to a part that's not even there yet it's the temple of artemis this is you know artemis is the greek name diana is the roman name does that ring a bell see it's the whole idea of this culture that surrounded them these are the baths these people went to public baths unbelievable well another one that is in the bible that we'll pick up at some other time of the decapolis a second city by the way this is the one that jesus walked around all the time this one is 12 miles south of the sea of galilee it's directly on the route from nazareth capernaum to jerusalem it first shows up in the bible right here one shift below christ a thousand years before christ in first samuel 13 10 that city is mentioned as the place where saul's body was nailed but a thousand years later in the time of christ it's still there and i'll just show you a picture of it but we have to go this this is the bet chan of saul's time it's this brown mound this is the betsyann of christ time it was a huge city uh unbelievable the excavations and they've only excavated that part of it i wonder what's all here and here and everything else but that's just a little snapshot of old testament history let me get back to my little chart but simply think david a thousand years before christ abraham two thousand years before christ noah three thousand years before christ adam 4 000 years before christ every time you read the bible you can just in your mind figure out right where you are and and see the progression and don't let it all go in the blender okay you've been sitting so long let's all stand and what we're going to do is i'm going to close in prayer and for any of you that fell asleep during that it's time to wake up right now and after i pray i'm going to just briefly tell you about what's to follow it's an investment meeting it's a way to hear about something that could stir your hearts to make you want to throw something down from the balcony of life into the people that live in the unfortunate flatlands the 80 they have those tumors they have no one and we can be a part of helping them let's vow together father i thank you for the history of your word is so fascinating that everything happens somewhere and sometime and the only absolutely reliable source of the somewhere in some time is the guidebook to life in eternity and to how to live pleasing you and it's your word the bible and i pray that we would hunger just like a baby desires milk that we would hunger for the pure milk and the strong meat of your word in the name of jesus we pray amen [Music] you

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Keywords: Bible, God, Jesus, Christian, teaching, biblical, teach, sermon, trinity, church, lesson, traditional, truth, true, divine, theology, freedom, guilt, testament, pure, interpret, spirit, holy, John, Barnett, christ, father, heaven, hell, doctrine, doctrinal, sinful, forgive, forgiveness, history, teachings, chapters, verses, discover, the book, ministries, dtbm, Dr. Barnett, controversial, repent, helpful, sin, the, book, dr, john, doctor, barnett, training, videos, series, resources, savior, god, jesus, holy land, pilgrimage, spiritual renewal

Id: 7ncoyRjQnOU

Length: 41min 10sec (2470 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021