Old Testament Studies I Lecture 01

as we come to to this course this class Old Testament studies one and then following up with Old Testament studies - and New Testament studies has a role to play within the the greater direction as far as the curriculum is concerned we are not going to do everything as far as study of the Bible is concerned because you have many other courses that you'll be taking all that's come together in the end for the ultimate purpose of the master seminary and that is to prepare you to be expositors of Scripture and dr. MacArthur made that very eloquent statement yesterday as far as this total message was concerned and then at the very end he read that that illustration of what a pastor should be a student of the scripture and and this is the reason for our existence as a seminary to prepare men to preach and teach the Word of God believing that all of the rest of the pastoral responsibilities that you will entail as you get in to ministry will flow from and be directed by your understanding and your communication of the scripture that truly the Bible is at the center and the foundation of what we do as men of God and you reminded of that yesterday in Chapel and there realize you are dedicating yourself to a life long study of the scripture and I share with classes that the last thing on my radar as God directed me in the ministry was teaching in a seminary it was not my desire it was not my goal my desire and goal and going to seminary was to prepare to be a pastor who would expose it God's Word and and that's what I tell students I am a pass-through who happens now to teach in a seminary and I'm sure as you get into the class you'll probably realize that I am more pastor than seminary professor I have been known at times to go off and preach a sermon at you I will try to refrain myself as much as possible although students sometimes say that is the best part of the class in fact I I had a graduate who actually was it was a student who was sent by a graduate and the student came in and said your members own so-and-so the guilty will not be further stated I won't give you the name I said I remember very very well you know from class in fact he he was in this classroom he sat you know right about there most of most of the time and he said well you know he told me that when I took your class to make sure to get you off on tangents of make you preach and I said one of the alumni is telling students to get me off of the notes and get me preaching he said yeah he said that was the best part of the class so I sent that student I've mean the alumni email and said what are you telling the students to do I'm trying to get more disciplined than stay to the notes and make sure we communicate what is supposed to be communicated and hear your selling students as they're coming to get me off of the notes and get me preaching because that's the best part of the class so that is the reputation that it all comes from the fact that you know I am at heart a pastor and believe that this season my life God has me here for no other reason than to train men who are going to be fasters and preachers and there's a certain sense in which every year or graduation I I feel a sense of spiritual Envy for those of you who are graduating and going to be expositing the scripture within the context of a local church each week I do that at a certain level in my life of ministry today but not in the same way and with the same amount of joy that I had when it was being a pastor shepherding a flock within a local congregation and and so as we come to to this course a lot of of what and how it is has been formed flows from pastoral ministry even when we get into some of the issues within the individual books of scripture sometimes I will say now this is an academic issue all right and since we're an academic institution and you're going to face this in other classes here at the seminary and certainly as you get into into ministry because it'll always be those accommodations that God will even put within a local church then you should be aware of this discussion other times I will say now this is something that usually the commentators don't get into as much but this is a live issue within the church here's a place where you're going to have to come to a conclusion at least by the time you reach this passage or preach this book because people are going to be anticipating that you have an answer to to the questions that they will have so I try to blend together the academic and the the practical and lay a foundation both for your seminary studies yet also we will talk at the very end of this lecture time that we will start talking even in this course about how what we are discussing certainly will have an impact upon your preaching both as you preached here in seminary and then as you go out into full-time ministry I want to keep before us what is our ultimate goal what is our ultimate focus and that is we are learning ultimately to be able to communicate this and preach it to others and even in the seminary curriculum for those you on the three-year plan once you once you complete these three courses you will be going into the the expository preaching class even those you are on the four-year program same thing you complete these three classes in the order listed within the catalog and the next step you take is getting into expository preaching well actually go over and build upon a number of the things that we talk about as far as this class is concerned now as you come to this course I'm well aware of the fact that you come from a a multitude of backgrounds in fact there is really no one of you whose in exactly the same place as the other students within this class if you are like previous classes and this is the thirteenth year that I have taught this course there are a number of you that have been Christians maybe no more than five years as you are sitting here there are some that will confess that even though you have begun seminary you have never begun in Genesis and read through the Bible to Revelation hopefully you've read some things here there in the Bible but you have never sat down in a discipline consistent way and started with Genesis and move progressively through the scripture until you came to Revelation I didn't do that until I've been a Christian than nine years before I did that I became a Christian at 10 and it wasn't until my my sophomore year of college that I got challenged to read through the Bible in a year and by that point I realized God was calling me to seminary I thought it might be a good idea before I got the seminary to read all the way through the Bible to make sure that no verse a gun unread at least that might not be mastered by the time I got the seminary on the meaning of every verse of scripture but at least that I would have read through the totality of the Bible book by book chapter by chapter verse by verse and I did that in my sophomore junior year of college and realized at the end of that year what a tremendous impact that it had upon my thinking and upon my life to read through the Bible and I use one of those checkoff charts went down the Bible bookstore get one of those charts about three chapters a day and I was stunned probably like you are when you read through the Bible in a year it's the middle of Locke told me before you get to the New Testament and I had done 95% of my reading as a Christian where same place all Christians do their reading in the New Testament and they're going to read through the Bible is going to be October 15th before I get to the New Testament and fortunately I had a little bit of familiarity with the Old Testament not enough but but I ice logged through and actually it was in the middle of Kings that I bought my first Christian book that I first went to the Christian bookstore and said I need a book and I was lost in the Kings some of you will have that same experience around the first week of November if you've never read Kings before you're going to get lost in the Kings but we're going to we're going to help you find your way through the Kings but I was lost and that this day I look out my light I look on my library shelf and remember the very first book that I bought as a sophomore in college it was half half Bruce's Israel and the nation's it was the only book they had at that time in in the 60s I said I need a book on a whole Testament history they only have one they had a lot of pens and a lot of other trinkets in the Bible bookstore but they only had one book on the history of Israel it was Bruce's book Israel and the nation's and I bought it and I read through it and started to get an understanding of at least the the flaw of the Old Testament now you should know I've moved beyond Bruce Bruce was a late dater you'll find out what that is when we talk about the dating of the Exodus and the period of the judges he didn't he started with is really started with them coming out of Egypt into a whole lot with with the patriarchs I've since learned a lot more about the Bible than was in Bruce's book and know the things that are valuable in Bruce's work and the things that are no longer by the way you notice that Bruce is not a requirement for this class so I have moved and so will you move beyond FF Bruce's Israel the nation that was a very first book that I got in the very first book in my in my Christian life that I read outside of the Bible and my wife says you haven't stopped buying books since and she is right it was the first but I can certainly say it wasn't the last but we want to come and think in terms all right many other things that you will do in seminary where do these classes fit in and you are now in or already taken hermeneutics and in hermeneutics you're introduced to Bible study and the three steps of Bible study that will follow you in this course will follow you and your exegesis classes will follow you as you get in to the preparation that you do for preaching and that is the steps of observation interpretation and application and there is a sense in which we will do all three in this class in 502 and 601 observation is simply becoming saturated with the particulars of the biblical text observing is seeing what is in the text and and that's your first goal your first goal in this course is to become acquainted with the Bible now as I said you all start at different places as far as your knowledge of the Bible already some of you have never taken a Bible classes I said some of you have never read all the way through the Bible in a in a consistent fashion some of you are Bible majors at the undergraduate level you you start at different places there is a goal for all of us and that is to become better acquainted with the content of the Bible then we were before this course began you are not in competition with any other student in this class you are to be a faithful steward of where you are as you begin the class before God and you are to on the foundation of where you are read the scripture so that you might become more knowledgeable as far as the content of the Word of God is concerned all of us will be reading the biblical text and yet as I said we'll all be starting in different places one of the things you want to do is is you want to encourage one another those of you who know the Bible better encourage students who might be going through it for the first time in fact if you are a Bible major don't spend all of your time with other Bible majors at the undergraduate level get to know some of the students who didn't have Bible and encourage them and help them as they start to move through the Word of God and by the same token when I found this in seminary that it was real easy because I came from a secular college background and they came from a college in California to realize within a month the guys that I were hanging around at all graduated from either the University of California system or Cal State System here in California and we all spoke the same language and it's real easy to to be around students either even in seminary who speak the same language well get to know some of the students who don't speak the same language and that was exciting for me to start to to get to know some men who who didn't come from California and had had a Christian college background instead of a secular college background some of them we were younger some of the students who were older some of the students who'd actually been involved in ministry in fact they uh we had assigned seating in Chapel and God and the sovereign plan put me next to a man who graduated from Bible College had been a pastor for 10 years before he came to seminary and he became one of my best friends and and I was always talking to him about what's it like to be a passive what's it like to preach this material so so broaden your horizons help each other out but we begin by observing the text and in in this course it basically means reading the biblical text and reading the biblical text in huge chunks I can tell you right now one of the tensions you will have in this class is the fact that I'm making you read a lot and students will always say I want to slow down and interact with you know just one verse and get a devotional thought and think through it the veldt you know determine the meaning and application for my life and my answer is that's why we have Greek and Hebrew exegesis that's when you'll slow down and really concentrate upon a verse our goal is to get the big picture that meaning really is top down and even in the elective exegesis classes you will find out that sometimes a professor will tell you now before we start the exegesis of the class what I want you to do over the summer or over Christmas before it before the exegesis class begins is read through the book and one for faster in one class asked his students to have the book read 50 times once a day fifty days before they came to the exegesis class and it was Professor mcdougal on the Colossians and you can read Colossians in about 20 minutes he says okay take twenty minutes every day and read Colossians that's getting saturated with particulars I itself here the we're going to be reading huge chunks of the Bible now a very simple observation as we begin as far as the content of the Bible is concerned and that is as we think in terms of Bible blocks that is blocks of material within the Bible is that there is a basic twofold division of the Bible now I know you didn't come to seminary to have this observation thrown at you that the Bible has two parts the Old Testaments and the New Testaments but we do need to make that observation because for many people their Bible is what the New Testaments they forget that the Bible has two divisions the Old Testament which is 78% of the Bible and the New Testaments which is the final 22 percent that's why when you read through it you don't get to the New Testament until October you're into the last quarter of the year before you get to the New Testament and so there is the the Old Testaments and then there is the New Testaments and there certainly are some some similarities and yet some differences between these two parts of the Bible and in one of the first of the charts that I gave you for this course you will you will note that the centerpiece of Scripture is the life of Jesus it is the link between the old and the New Testaments and all of the Old Testament was written before Christ in fact it begins right around 1400 BC and the writing of the Old Testament concludes at approximately 400 BC the Old Testament is written over a period of a thousand years begins with the the inaugural scripture which is the writing of Moses that will begin as we look at the Old Testament on Friday the the Torah or the Pentateuch depending on whether you use the the Hebrew or the Greek designation and goes all the way through to the to the final writings which would include Chronicles as far as the writings is concerned that would include some of the post-exilic Psalms and obviously the post-exilic prophets the final prophet probably being Malachi but it's over a thousand years that the Old Testament comes to us now when the problems is the Bible in its order both in the the Jewish order that developed as the Canon was completed and even as that was changed around somewhat within the Greek and through the the Latin Vulgate comes into our English traditions today the problem is is that the Bible is not in a strict chronological sequence the Old Testament is not in a strict chronological sequence and either one of those traditions and so obviously to deal with the the the history that is revealed within the Old Testament you know we've got to we've got to do some cutting and pasting to use a contemporary term to be able to to see the chronological sequence of the Bible and there are some places where there is interpretive decisions that have to be made even as far as a chronological structure of the Bible is concerned I know out on the market there is a current chronological Bible don't buy it if God wanted to read it chronologically he would have put it chronologically he didn't put it in the order that we have it within the within the texts that have come to us and either tradition you will you will understand the historical grid but you will realize that the Bible has a come to us in a more thematic fashion rather than a strict chronological fashion then we have what is known as the 400 silent years this is the time when there was no scripture written in fact it's referred to that way because within Judaism it was a recognition there was no prophetic voice there was no prophet from Moses to Malachi until you come to John and then to Jesus but certainly there is no scripture that is written during this time and then the bed then there is debate again upon the chronology of Jesus but somewhere between 6 to 4 BC to his death in AD 30 or 33 we have the life of Jesus upon the earth but we need to realize that no scripture was written while Christ himself was upon the earth rather the New Testament that looks back at what God had done through the coming of Jesus is written from approximately ad 40 to 95 a period of no more than 60 years one generation the New Testament is written and it's so much easier to learn the history of the New Testament and the chronology of the New Testament because it's one generation as opposed to the Old Testament which is a thousand years the Old Testament we will see was written to the nation of Israel the New Testament was written to the Church of Jesus Christ now the Old Testament was written to Israel but Paul makes it very clear in 1st Corinthians 10 it is for the Church of Jesus Christ as well of course that is going to get us into a lot of discussions in how that which was written to Israel in the past has application to believers in the church in the presence and the the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament is the greatest hermeneutical question and since the writing of the New Testament in the last nineteen hundred years of church history that's the major hermeneutical issue and the great application issue the Bible is how does the Old Testament apply to the New Testament Christian you know how come you got up this morning and how come you had a ham and cheese omelet Leviticus makes it clear in Chapter 11 you shouldn't eat the ham and if you follow a kosher practice today you shouldn't have ham and cheese together because you're mixing foods I hadn't based upon what is in the Old Testament a Jewish person looks at you and says go aim of Gentile of Gentile you know for for eating these kinds of Bominable foods and and yet I lived the side of Acts 10 I you know you read about Peter and for you to go on the house of Cornelius preaching the gospel now that's amazing that he would go to the house of Cornelius because of his Jewish background but the amazing thing is after corniness became a Christian Peter and the Jewish belief was with him spent a few days with Cornelius in his home eating his food and you know Peter had his first ham sandwich and said wow this is pretty good thanks for the sheet from heaven Lord this is I never realized that ham tasted quite so good and here's the thing is is that when he get back to Jerusalem the question wasn't why did you preach the gospel to the Gentiles but why did you go and stay and fellowship with those Gentiles how could you do such a thing and so obviously the New Testament self gives us some understanding of the Old Testament and how it relates to the New Testament believer its uses the Old Testament gives us some direction upon that great our medical issue but also deals with some of those practical application areas as well but it flows from right here is the Bible and as we have said to the vast majority of Christians throughout church history the Old Testament has basically been a part of the Bible that they do not know so that is going to be the focus of our first two courses to take a look at the Old Testaments and we are going to see that not only was the Old Testament before Christ but the Old Testament was pointing very definitely to Jesus the Messiah that it anticipated you you finish the Old Testament and realize the story has not come to an end the Old Testament is all anticipating what God is going to do in the future yes it's a revelation of what he did in the past and what he's doing in the present but all of that is a prelude to what God is going to do in the future and of course the New Testaments as we've already seen looks back to what God has accomplished through the coming of Jesus to the earth but but the Old Testaments certainly as is anticipating this coming one and one of the things that we will be dealing with in this course very definitely as far as theology is concerned is the Messianic nature of the Old Testament as it anticipates this this one whom God is going to send in the future and how how are we to determine that and how far can we go as far as seeing Jesus within the Old Testament that is very interesting in our inaugural demon courses this last summer one of the great issues that we dealt with even as we began reading some of the classic books on preaching was how do you preach the Old Testaments and does every every sermon you preach in the Old Testaments have to ultimately speak about Christ a number of authors made the point is it a valid Christian sermon if you could take that sermon and preach it in the Jewish temple down the street what makes it a Christian sermon when you preach the Old Testament well you know quite the preaching yet so you don't have to think about that but realizing how important the Old Testament is very very practically and these issues that we face interpretive ly applicational E and even as we get into preaching the Old Testament texts now when we think in terms of the Old Testaments the Old Testament comes to us in blocks so I refer to these as Bible blocks and again you've got to start to appreciate the forest before you look at the trees the Bible has these two major divisions Old Testament and New Testament and the Old Testaments based upon statements made in the New Testament is referred to as having a basic three fold division so that there are three sections that make up the Old Testament now very definitely as we will see the first of these referred to as the law is a literary units one author one text that because of its length has involved Jewish and then Greek Latin and into the English tradition had a five-fold division but but really the text is one literary hole as we will see and that is the law of Moses the instruction the direction which came through the first writer of Scripture Moses and this encompasses what has now been divided into a five-fold division from Genesis through Deuteronomy but but this one is in no doubt Old Testament and New Testament that this is one literary hole therefore your first assignment is going to be to read Genesis to Deuteronomy together I know it's close to 300 over 300 pages I think about Moses writing that much and we'll talk about how you're going to begin by reading the whole and then after the after the law the second great division of the Old Testament is the prophets the prophetic writings which follow the Torah men prophets like Moses that God raised up to rights like Moses interesting thing is is that as you read the Torah you you realize that that there is a narrative framework there is a historical story that Moses is telling and within that narrative he gives his legal material the the law that was given at Sinai and he also gives his prophetic Oracle's based upon what God had said within the the law talking about the reality of its meaning for the generation which he was speaking and anticipating what God was going to do in the future the former and latter prophets are mosaic in that way the former prophets continue the story basically our narrative and then the latter prophets like Moses did particularly as the Torah culminates what we call Deuteronomy in a very Deuteronomic fashion speak about the meaning of the law for the generation which they were speaking and then like Moses right continuing Scripture which points beyond their own generation of what God was going to do in fulfillment of his covenant promises in the future and the the the Jewish tradition divided the profits into the former prophets Joshua judges Samuel and kings here's the here's the basic narrative of what took place while Israel was in the land for approximately eight hundred years and then the latter prophets now we see the voices that prophetic voices that emerged while Israel was in the land and particularly concentrating upon the time period just before and just after the Exile that Israel endured because of their breaking of the Mosaic Covenant these are the latter prophets and the latter prophets wrote with an awareness of what they were writing as they collected spoke of their the events the guy had led them through in their lives and the messages that God had given to them as they collected them realizing these books we're going to to be for future generations and really the heart of the Old Testaments are these prophetic books now it's very interesting that Christians don't know the Old Testament and if they know anything about the Old Testaments they tend to know the Torah and they tend to know more of the books that are in the writings particularly Psalms and proverbs and some of the books like that Daniel the the part of the Old Testament least known among believers are the prophets that the least known part of 5:01 is going to be Joshua through Kings and when we get to 502 the least known part the believers is Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel in the twelve or the twelve as we refer to them as the minor prophets because that is where the least amount of reading and therefore the least amount of teaching and preaching in our churches takes place is the prophets if we get in the Old Testament all we get in the beginning we get in the end but we we don't get into the prophets and can we say this great prophet and getting to know the prophets and so we will look at the former prophets in this course and the latter prophets in 502 and then the third section of the Old Testament and I've got a but this final sheet here is the the The Book of Chronicles here are the writings the third part the third division which interestingly begins with three lengthy books Psalms job and proverbs ends with three together lengthy works that are our exilic and post-exilic daniel ezra nehemiah and chronicles that is they are written during and daniel as far as as completion is concerned is written after the exile of Israel comes to an end and in within the the Jewish tradition there's a fairly substantial recognition that these are the first three and these are the last three books of the writings but you get to these five middle books what is known as the the megalith of the five roles because each one of these books in the in the post biblical period came to be read at one of the great feasts of Judaism the Song of Solomon the Song of Songs at the Passover Ruth at the week's what we now know as Pentecost lamentations in the beginning of our calendar August when they grieved over the destruction of Jerusalem Ecclesiastes at the Feast of Tabernacles and Esther at the feast of Purim and and these books within Orthodox circles to this day within Judaism are read at these at these feasts and thus all they're there is within Jewish tradition the fact that these five central books are in this audible when you come to the Masoretic text the Masoretic text moves ruth before Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes before lamentation so as you get your master attic text you would read these five central books as roof Song of Solomon Ecclesiastes lamentations and Esther so these are the the blocks and though these blocks are not inspired and therefore and Arents when we get to the New Testaments this is the way and this is the order in which the early Jewish Christian believers read their Old Testaments in fact we'll talk about it on Friday from Luke 24 that Jesus as he spoke to his disciples said that all that is written about me in the law the prophets and the Psalms sounds being the first book of the writings and being used as a shorthand for the the writings must be fulfilled because that's the way the disciples under good the Old Testament in this in this threefold division so what I have done is on that second chart that you have I have charted out for you and within this chart I have followed the they have the Masoretic order so you've got one tradition and one knows which reflects what is in the notes I gave you from the MacArthur Study Bible dr. MacArthur gives the the feast Lee tradition as far as the the five books in the center of the writings our concern here I give you the Masoretic order so you can kind of put Mt by this chart this is this is the way the master etic text is is ordered with the with the Torah and then the nevian the prophets with the former prophets and the latter prophets and the Ketuvim the writings beginning with the Psalms and going through chronicles it is through these Hebrew terms Torah Nevi'im get it get a heat ketamine that we get what the Jews referred to they don't refer to the Old Testament they refer to this as the panic sometimes you'll see it with an H in Jewish writings that Tanakh so don't go to an Old Town Delta go to a Jewish person's that have you read the Old Testament the Old Testament assumes the New Testament for they do not accept the scripture to them it is the Tanakh that is the the scriptures that we refer to as the Old Testaments and you can see how it develops from the from the three terms that are used for the three sections of the Old Testament so to this day you go again a block down Rosco to to the temple this is the order which they read the Old Testaments following the Masoretic text now the time of Jesus and continue on to today over a three-year period within Jewish synagogues the Torah is completely red beginning with Genesis 1:1 and going through Deuteronomy 34 so over 156 Sabbath's the Torah is completely red so do you live 60 years you would have heard the Torah 20 times read to you if you went to the synagogue every sabbath then they have readings which also come from the prophets obviously they don't read all of the prophetic material and then as we said of the great feasts they read the roof through Esther so that even if you went to the most liberal of Jewish synagogues temples if you were to go every Friday night every Saturday you would hear over half or approximately half of the Old Testament the Tanakh read over a well over a three-year period now what kind of Bible reading do we do in our Christian churches when we think about that so the reading of description as we get in the Old Testament you'll see why even in in a Judaism that has their their eyes at this point covered to the meaning of the Old Testament text why they put such an emphasis upon reading and rereading the Old Testament text by the way I think what's going to happen when God unveil the eyes of of men and women who have heard the scripture read to them throughout their lives find the light goes on and how it all points to Jesus as the Messiah it's gonna be like the Apostle Paul you know a Jewish person comes becomes a believer and it's like they're already five years ahead in their Christian life because they know so much more than a Gentile when they become a believer already from this this hearing of the word of God so there's the Old Testament that's the way we're going to approach it and then you come to the New Testament the New Testament also has a three fold structure that we begin in the first 60% of the New Testament is that which we read again leaves within the New Testament it's amazing how we just don't have the same priorities as the Bible self seems to hear 78% of the Bible that we basically ignore because we're New Testament believers and then we tend to concentrate upon the 40 percents the the lesser amount of what is in the New Testament and miss out on the Gospels and acts the historical books and we'll talk about the fact that each one of these broadly is related to to history they're historical books or a particular time of a type of history book that obviously gives a biography gives a an introduction to the life and the meaning of the life of Jesus then obviously what we concentrate on the epistles and even there we concentrate upon the Pauline epistles and God brings another genre another form at this point we have the 13 Paul line letters and they all begin the same way Paul and then he will speak to whomever he is writing and gives his greetings and we then have the non Paul line letters now I include Hebrews at this point we will talk about Hebrews and we get there within the New Testament but certainly it is NaN Paul line in the sense that the first word of Hebrews is not Paul so even if Paul wrote it he didn't follow his usual pattern of saying pole to the or to whomever greetings he gets right into preaching his message if it was Paul or or someone else well but certainly therefore it doesn't follow the exact pattern of what we see in the previous thirteen letters and those that follow most closely the pattern of Paul's structure is first Peter and second and third John and in Jude Hebrews James and the second Peter and first John this debate upon whether we should think of those as letters or not we'll talk about why they are when we get to 2 601 but here are the epistles and much like the second section of the Old Testament has these two divisions the same thing within the New Testament the second section the epistles we have the Paul line and the non Paul line and then we have the apocalypse they are the book of Revelation the the taking of the prophetic truth that is seen within the Old Testaments and relating it to the church now with this chart to show you how important the Old Testament is every one of the Gospels in the book of Acts to a greater or lesser degree obviously is anchored within the Old Testament but the but the book of these five which most directly speaks about this was in the Old Testaments that has now been fulfilled in Jesus the book that most explicitly anchors itself with in the Old Testament is which one of these five Matthew of the Paul line letters where does Paul most quote and refer back to the Old Testaments Romans of the non Paul line letters which letter most explicitly refers back to the Old Testaments and what book there's only one to choose from what book is also anchored with not only direct statements but multitudes of allusions from the Old Testaments think the Old Town the New Testament is trying to give us an ID even as we read it but maybe it is good to know the Old Testament Matthews you begin to read the historical books Romans is beginning to read the Paul line letters Hebrews and on Paul line letters and revelation these are the four books of the New Testament that begin these are these sections and each one that begins is most explicitly anchored in what is in the Old Testament and so we're going to take a look at these blocks of material as we go through 5:01 5:02 and 601 but the focus of our course is going to be on the the the books themselves well had charted that out for you too on the New Testament forget the Bible books there there you go on this is charted out for you and it's again threefold division and the letters being divided in the Paul line enough alone letters but we're not just going to continue to all right read the Torah read the prophets read the writings read the Gospels and anq set cetera we will come in focus particularly within this course upon the Bible books these blocks as we can see even the literary unit of the Torah has been broken down in our traditions in to Bible books although we'll be a little more hesitant on this on the Torah and then other parts of the scripture because what we see is within these blocks we have the books and we assume that each book is a literary units a literary whole what this means as far as a Bible book is concerned is that God by means of the Holy Spirit directed a human author to write the book in the way we have it today within the Canon that behind every book of the Bible stands a human author who had a plan in mind who had a reason for writing what is within that book and through the author that that came to the original hearers as the book was was read now in the in the New Testament the church okay the church at Colossae did not come together one Sunday and say oh by the way tiny Kazan Onesimus showed up this weekend they have a letter from Paul for us yeah and they didn't read the first couple of verses Paul apostle of Jesus Christ so church it is Colossae greetings I come back next week we'll take a look at the next paragraph in other words in that 20 minutes to 30 minutes someone got up and did one he read the whole letter and it didn't break it up so one of the things you'll be doing of course what we'll be doing is looking at the book as a whole realizing that in every book all right as the as the author develops the book he has certain divisions in mind we start to get into the structure made up of sections and longer books segments by way a segment has between three to seven paragraphs within our English tradition of course the segments were broken up into chapters because people couldn't not just keep reading the blocks as blocks but even books as books and so the chapters were added to say okay now here's a a more workable system where you can read a book in chapters but remember the chapters and verses today are man-made they're not a part of the original text that came from the original authors the segments that are made up of three to seven paragraphs paragraphs are made up of sentences a sentence if it was grammatically accurate which again our modern texts are not always should be a verse each each verse should be a sentence or that means it Ephesians 1:3 through 14 would be one verse because it's one sentence in the original Greek that's why obviously we don't follow the exact sentence structure of the Old and New Testament writers because sometimes they roll pretty long sentences but but basically most verses are sentences and then the sentences which is the basic unit of thought dividing the clauses phrases and down to the words now within this course not only we take a look at the blocks but we will particularly seek to concentrate upon these first four aspects of the books preparing you again for Greek and exegesis a Greek and Hebrew exegesis which will move you more into the paragraphs and sentences as you move down within the biblical material so that our observation is going to be the big picture and then start dealing with the books and get familiar with the content and the structure of the books which which which means that as we get into your assignments you're going to be taking a look at the purposes and themes and literary structure of the book so that as you read the individual books one of the questions that you want to answer is why was this book written why is this book in the Canon what is its purpose and of course you want to try to summarize in a sentence what is the reason now this will bridge from observation into interpretation because except for a number of books like proverbs chapter 1 verses 2 through 6 or our Luke 1 1 to 4 John chapter 20 verses or 30 31 they will have explicit statements of what the purpose of the book is most of the books of the Bible don't have an explicit statement and so from what you read you will see through what is in the text say right this is the reason for which the book was written and within the book will be certain themes that is terms or a narratives persons places events and non narrative ideas that are repeated again and again within the book alright so you want to you want to look for those as you are reading and say alright what are some of the terms what are some of the persons places events ideas are seen again and again within the book and then assuming a course that we have and off be on every book which biblically is true what is the structure or compositional shape literary structure or compositional shape of the text that is what shows is cohesion and direction because as a north of strategy the author in the direction of the Holy Spirit is chosen what to write to fulfill his purpose and so you want to look at both the organizational framework and the embedded patterns through the themes that display the relationship between the whole and its parts that are fashioned into a grand design for the desired effect sometimes when you read the books and I know I see this but to read through a book and just then write down what impressed you because the because this is the desired effect what impressed you is what the author was seeking to impress you and then from those impressions you can start to go back so how did he impress me in this way and then you can start to take a look at the at the literary contours and imp at embedded patterns which leads you to those impressions to the desired effect that the biblical author wanted you to see then we get into interpret Asian which is determining the meaning of the biblical text using the historical grammatical method I've added some some works here the historical part is more than just plain history it's dealing with historical events the what's particularly whether the reading that you will do for the the courses you will have that emphasis in both the old and new Testament you also deal with chronological just when did these things take place Finnegan's book is a good introduction to to a biblical chronology the handbook of biblical chronology historical geography a Square to this take place and either the old Macmillan Bible Atlas which is now called the Carter Bible Atlas or beat CIL's moody atlas of Bible lands the Carter Bible Atlas is a has a good emphasis upon the individual events and where they took place Beatle is a good introduction to the physical land of Israel as a backdrop to where the events took place or culture why they do these things why they live this way and Glaus book on the new manners and customs of bible times or Matthew's work on manners and customs in the Bible is valuable to use so we will concentrate more upon the history and chronology and geography and culture which is helping us to interpret passages of Scripture although in dealing with certain interpretive issues we will get into issues of broad grammar that is how words relate to one another morphology which emphasizes the study of the words themselves syntax how the words are put together in the grammatical sequence and genre why this kind of grammatical sequence and this type of literature and that will be taking takea look at genre in 502 and then we said we have the application which all right after getting saturated with the particulars gluing more of the content of the scripture and coming to start to understand the meaning the interpretation of the scripture so what how do we relate that meaning what's its significance to present life that is on a personal level to your own personal life and then on a public application that is through expository preaching how do you show people what is in the Bible what is meant within the Bible and start to principle eyes what this means for a New Testament Christian this is part and parcel of what takes place in the expository preaching process and as I said we're going to we're really going to go through and hit some high points on observation interpretation and even take a few minutes on each book and even talk about application as far as preaching is concerned you

Channel: The Master's Seminary

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Keywords: Dr., Keith, Essex, BI, 501, The, Master's, Seminary, Old, Testament, Studies, Lecture, 01, Bible, Truth, Masters, of, Divinity, Grace, Community, Church, Sun, Valley, CA, California

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Length: 69min 42sec (4182 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 17 2011