Please turn to 2 Timothy chapter 3, beginning the new year with a new series. And as we go through the whole Bible over the next couple of years, with the breaks it'll probably take about that long, I want to today show the importance of understanding that one scripture, Matthew 4, 4 says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And 2 Timothy 3, beginning at verse 14 says, but you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. And that from childhood you have known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. Amen. Father, we come to you this morning continuing to worship you, praising you that your grace is sufficient. The strength that your Holy Spirit gives to us is sufficient. Your Scriptures are sufficient for our life and practice. And so we pray that as we dig into your Word this morning, that your Holy Spirit would guide us illuminate our minds, quicken in our hearts those scriptures that You would have us be sanctified by. We love Your Word, and we love You, and we continue to commit this time of worship to You. In Jesus' name, amen. Robert Sumner tells the story of a man who had been horribly disfigured and completely blinded by an explosion. He had actually, prior to the explosion, just become a new believer. And after he had recovered, he desperately wanted to read the Scriptures, obviously could not because he was blinded. But he heard that you can learn to read through Braille. And in your outlines, I've given you a Braille alphabet and a picture of a person who's using his fingers to read the text. I don't know what text was on that picture, but you can read just with your fingers. It's just a marvelous system. And so he thought, well, I will learn to read, but he didn't have any hands. He had hoped with the stumps of his arm to be able to read the dots, but the scar tissue did not give him enough feeling to be able to discern the differences in the dots. So that was his biggest disappointment, that he could not read for himself. He had other people reading for him. But one day he discovered that there was a woman in England who had learned to read using her lips. So he tried to do the same thing, but he found that the explosion had damaged the nerve endings on his lips. And he did not have enough feeling in his lips to be able to discern the bumps with his lips either. But when he brought the brailled page to his lips on another try, his tongue accidentally touched some of the raised bumps, and he could feel them. And just like a flash, he realized, I can read with my tongue. And by the time that Robert Sumner wrote his book, which was in 1969, this man had already read through the Bible four times using his tongue. Can you imagine reading the entire Bible through four times with your tongue? What is it that would give a man such a hunger for the Word that he would go through that kind of inconvenience? Well I believe it was because he was a brand new Christian and he had not yet learned how to stifle that inward impulse that is natural to a Christian. 1 Peter 2 verse 2 says, as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby. Now that verse implies every spiritually new Christian hungers for the Word of God, but it also implies you can lose that hunger over time, and so he reminds these people they need to be renewed in their hunger for the Word of God. Now simple logic would indicate that if you currently do not have a hunger for the Word of God, you're either not born again or you are spiritually sick. There is something that's come around that's not natural in your spiritual life. And Hebrews 5 verse 12 says that as you mature, God will increase your appetite not only for the easy things of the Word, what He calls the milk of the Word, but also for the difficult things that are in the Bible, what He likens to the meat of the Word. Now meat takes some chewing to get through, but it is nourishing, it is tasty, it is wonderful once you develop an appetite for meat. And over the next year and a half, I'm going to be taking you on a fast tour through the entire Bible, giving you only one sermon on every book, but giving it in a way where it captures the essence of that book. You're going to be seeing, for example, which is the first book that you ought to give to a seeking unbeliever to bring them to the Lord and introduce them to God. It's not a book from the New Testament. And I'll tell you why when we get there. I will be showing you which book should you go to for leadership, for marriage, for church discipline, philosophy, administration, redemption, politics, many other areas of life. This Bible is a complete library of everything that you need in your lives. And as we go through these sermons, my goal is to have these sermons range from about 30 to 45 minutes. Don't hold me to that, but that's my goal. Today's sermon's gonna be a little bit more difficult because what I wanna do is give you a sermon on the Bible as a whole, an overarching view. What is the Bible? Understanding how we should approach this book. And I'll try to summarize in the future, I'm gonna be summarizing every book of the Bible with one word. So just as I'm gonna summarize every book of the Bible with one word, I'm gonna give a key verse and I'm gonna show you the structure of that book and why that book is important and some other features, I'm gonna try to do the same with the Bible as a whole this morning. So let's try to capture the entire Bible in one word. Now, I've deliberately not put that word into your outlines, because I'm gonna test you this morning, see if you can get this. The Bible frequently uses the word is as an equal sign. This is this. These two concepts equal each other. And if we can summarize the entire Bible in a word, you would expect that the Bible would describe itself with an is, or that Jesus would describe the Bible with an is. And he does so, and the Bible does so. I'm going to quote Jesus. And I want you out loud to finish the sentence for me. Jesus was praying to the Father, your word is. That wasn't very loud. Your word is? Truth. Yes, that's exactly what Jesus did in the high priestly prayer in John 17, verse 17. He condensed down the entire Bible into one word. 1717, that's a very easy reference to remember. It says, sanctify them by your word. Your word is truth." Now, that's not the only time in the Bible that the Bible is described with an is, is truth. It's many times, Psalm 119.43 that says that it is the word of truth. Psalm 119.160 says, the entirety of your word is truth. So there's not a single verse in the Bible that cannot be summarized with that word, truth. entirety of your Word is truth. Ephesians 1.13 calls the Bible the Word of truth. Daniel 10.21 calls the Bible the Scriptures of truth. This is the starting point for Christianity, true Christianity. You do not start with philosophy, as I've seen some systematic theologies do. You do not start with the assertions or the opinions of man. You do not start with your own feelings or desires or overcoming your pain and misery. That might seem very, very important to you. You do not even start with your own salvation, as important as that is. The first presupposition for true Christianity is that God's word is truth. Now that's quite different from saying that the Bible is true. If Jesus has said, instead, your word is true, That would have implied that the Bible has been judged by some objective standard and now determined to be true, but there's a higher standard than the Bible, but that's not what it says. When he says, your word is truth, it is asserting that the Bible is the standard by which all claims to something being true can be measured, okay? It is not anything in man. whether it be emotions, experience, tradition, science, human authority, or anything else. John Frame summarizes biblical epistemology, which is just a $10 word for, how do we know that we know anything? And the Bible tells us how we can know, but here's how John Frame summarizes it. He said, the only way to find truth is to bow before God's authoritative scripture. Scripture is just another name for the Bible. He goes on, the very essence of knowledge is to bring our thoughts into agreement with God's revealed Word. Thinking God's thoughts after him is to be the rule, not only in narrowly religious matters, but in every sphere of human life—history, science, psychology, sociology, literary criticism, business, sports, family life, worship, politics. God calls us to presuppose Him in all our thinking. This means that we must regard His revealed truth as more important and more certain than any other and find in it the norms or criteria that all other knowledge must meet. This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4, verse 6, that the church may not think beyond what is written. This is not just an optional presupposition that you can say, well, that would be cool to have that as a presupposition. No, this is the foundational presupposition for all true Christianity. In Matthew 15, verse two, Jesus categorically condemned the tradition of the elders. And you might ask, why would he do so? Because these are the experts of the day. These are the ones that the ordinary citizens would always go to for wisdom. So why would he condemn them? Well, the text says he condemned them because their truth claims, quote, went beyond the commandment of God, verse three. And because it was, quote, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men, verse nine. Anything that goes beyond the Bible is merely opinion. Now, it may be true, it may not be true, but it is only opinion that has varying degrees of probability and certainty. There may be some things outside the Bible you're pretty certain of, but can you prove them? That's a totally different thing. The certainty comes from the Bible, and that's why the Bible speaks of the certainty of the words of truth, Proverbs 22, verse 21. The certainty of scriptural history, Luke 1, verse 4. So John 17, 17, that's an important verse to remember. It encapsulates the essence of what the Bible is in one word, truth. And any Christianity which disparages truth in favor of love And you're gonna find a lot of churches that do that. I've had pastors tell me, oh, I reject doctrine. God calls us to love. And I said, your doctrine of love, it is a doctrine, but it's a false doctrine. The Bible has to describe love. So any Christianity which disparages truth in favor of love, action, change, relationship, unity, experience, or anything else, is a false view of Christianity. The Bible does discuss those things, but all of those things need to be defined and measured by something much more foundational. It's our first axiom, the determiner of truth. It's the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. Now, if I were pushed to give you one summary verse that expands a little bit on that one word, it would be 2 Timothy 3, verse 16. Everybody knows John 3, 16, because it's the heart of the gospel, but this 3, 16 is the heart of the whole Bible, okay? So you gotta understand 2 Timothy 3, verse 16. Go ahead and turn there. We read from that earlier. I'm actually gonna cheat and give you more than one sentence. I'm gonna give you two sentences, but they're found in three verses. 2 Timothy 3, 14 through 17. But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. Let me give you seven axioms, they're not in your outlines, but seven axioms that are derived from this passage that you will find all through the Bible. First, the Bible affirms that God exists. God doesn't prove He exists. In Genesis 1, you can go anywhere else in the Bible, he just says, hey, I exist, I'm your creator, I'm your sustainer, you could not have one moment of breath without my power coming into you. And we come to find out that if we reject this presupposition or any of these other presuppositions, we actually cannot know anything. If you've studied much in philosophy, you will discover this is absolutely true. The second axiom is that this God reveals Himself to man in the Bible. And actually, I should have started with this axiom. This is the, what I said earlier was the fundamental axiom of Christianity. You might think Van Til, Cornelius Van Til was correct when he said, no, my starting point is the ontological trinity, triune God. And I say, no, it wasn't. You would not have even known about the triune God if you hadn't first read the Bible. If you didn't have a Bible, you know, the most that people who are pagans can come up with is some finite kind of a God. So he got his idea of the triune God and all of the characteristics of this God from the most fundamental axiom, which is, this is God's word. And then God tells us about Himself, and He tells us about all the rest of life. Now, if you want it in terms of philosophy, those of you who are philosophers, it's just saying that epistemology trumps ontology. Epistemology has to come first, and then you're going to figure out true ontology. And Gordon Clark, he's the one who deals with that. He was correct, though I value both Cornelius Vantill and Gordon Clark. They're both great presuppositionalists, okay? So the Bible is God's word, and here's the verse that's on there. All scripture is given by inspiration. Third, this Bible is the foundation for knowledge. Verse 15 says, and from childhood you have known the scriptures. And verse 14 shows what the scriptural knowledge produced. But you must continue with the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. Okay, since God created all things and sustains all things and governs all things, God's interpretation of all things in the Bible is what gives us certainty of knowledge. Okay, God, the Bible is the foundation. In fact, Jesus said in Luke 11, 52, that the Bible is the key to knowledge. If you wanna open the door to knowledge, you gotta start with the Bible. Fourth, God draws people to himself and sovereignly divides humanity into two classes. Those who are men and women of God who submit to the scriptures, and those who are enemies of God and reject the Scriptures. And if you take a look up a little bit further at verse 7, it describes unbelievers who, quote, are always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. On your own, you cannot come to the knowledge of the truth. Now, in contrast, verse 17 speaks of the man of God who was thoroughly equipped through the truth of the Bible. Fifth, verse 15 shows covenant succession of the faith from one generation to another. And from Genesis 1 through to the end of the Bible, the covenant is such a critically important topic. Sixth, verse 15 shows the Bible is sufficient for salvation. Now, the reason this is so important is that it's contradicted all of the time by people from evangelical circles when it comes to counseling and administration and things like that. But certainly in the Roman Catholic Church, they say you have to add principles from church tradition in order to be saved. The Bible alone is not sufficient. And there's any number of official Catholic documents or Romanist documents that say that. Well, in contrast, verse 15 shows the simplicity of the gospel which even a child can understand. It says, and from childhood you have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. I love this presupposition, it's so freeing. And then seventh, verses 16 through 17 show that the Bible is sufficient to provide everything we need for life and faith. It speaks of its doctrine, which provides the standards for appropriate thought and behavior. It speaks of reproof, which challenges inappropriate patterns of thought and behavior. It speaks of correction, which tells us the patterns of thought and behavior we need to put off. And it speaks of instruction and righteousness, which tells us the patterns of thought and behavior we need to put on. These are the blueprints of the Bible that we need to put on. And verse 17 says, it is more than sufficient to make the man of God complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. So if you want one passage of Scripture, it would be 2 Timothy 3, 14 through 17, that summarizes the Bible. If you want one verse, it's verse 16. Now, I have run across Christians who only read or only take seriously the red letters in their red-letter Bibles because those are the words of Jesus while He was here on this earth. And in this series, we're going to be seeing that the whole Bible was given by God the Son and points us to Jesus, who in turn points us to the Father. The person and the work of Christ are seen everywhere in the Bible. And let me tell you something, if you do not see Jesus in the black letter pages of the Bible, you're missing out the main message of the Bible. You really are. And even those passages that do not have Jesus as the subject matter of that text certainly have Jesus as the one who gave that scripture to his people. He is the Word of God who communicates the Father's mind by the power of the Spirit. But back to my thesis here, Jesus told the Pharisees, That's John 5, verse 39. The Scriptures testify of Jesus. And so it's natural that Luke 24, 27 says of Jesus, and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. There is something in every book of the Bible that points to Jesus. And as we go through the series, we're going to be seeing what that is. Now let me give you a few other details about this marvelous book called the Bible. Even though the Bible is a library of 66 books, those 66 books are so united by the purpose of the one divine author that over and over again in the Bible it is called a book, a single book. There's books in the Bible, but it is the book of books. Though God used over 40 prophets to record the message of its pages, and though they wrote the various parts of the Bible over a period of about 1,500 years, 2 Peter 1 verse 21 tells us that those prophets did not originate the Scriptures, but rather they were supernaturally moved by the Holy Spirit, that's the divine author, to communicate God's mind to the church. And I want you to get a little bit of a feel of, because as we go through different books, you're gonna notice there's a different feel to different books, and why is that the case? And I want to describe for you the background to this. You can think of the Bible similar to the incarnation of Jesus. God the Son came to the earth, became, took to himself human nature, grew in the womb of Mary, And he became fully man, but he was already fully God before he was incarnate. He continued to be fully God while he was incarnate. And Jesus had all the attributes of divinity, but he also had the attributes of humanity. He hungered, he thirsted, he grew tired, he slept. Well, in a similar way, the Bible is God's word. And so, as God's Word, it existed in the mind of God long before the prophets were even born, the prophets who would give that Word to His people. 2 Peter 1, verses 19-21. Well, let me go back and just remind you that in our Revelation series, we saw how this worked out with that image of the little scroll, the little book. In Ezekiel, God hands to Ezekiel a little book that's written on both sides. And this is going to have the contents of the book that Ezekiel's going to write out and give to the church. And so Ezekiel infallibly eats the word by inspiration, so he receives the revelation infallibly. Then he communicates and writes out that on literal pages of Scripture. what God had given to him. And we saw the same imagery in John eating the little book. So the Word is eternal. It existed before it was even given to the prophets. And God's eternal Word was incarnated, so to speak, through the language, vocabulary, experiences, emotions, and different personalities of the prophets. 2 Peter 1, 19-21 says that no prophecy of Scripture ever originated in man's will. Moses didn't wake up one day and say, you know, I think it'd be cool if I wrote and became famous and wrote the Pentateuch. No, God says it does not originate in man's will. God supernaturally moved Moses. There was no way he could not write those five books because God moved Moses and had him write God's inspired word, but God did not bypass his mind by dictating to him words that didn't come from his mouth or from his vocabulary. He didn't bypass his mind or vocabulary. In order to connect with God's people in a very personal way, God communicated every word through the vocabulary of human prophets with all of their feelings. so that we could relate to the scriptures. So it was divine in its origin, but it was communicated through human vocabulary and personalities. And we're gonna be noticing quite different human features to the different books. Now think of the human element this way. If you had a musical piece that you wanted to play, and just by analogy you can think of all of the musical notes as God's divine word, You could play those notes, theoretically, with many different instruments. You could play them with an oboe, a flute, a violin. You could play it with another instrument. And each instrument will give a different feel and flavor and sound to the notes, even though exactly the same notes are being played. And in the same way, God prepared special human instruments, you can think of them as instruments, known as prophets. For example, God said that, you know, Apostle Paul, he was a pagan for a while, right? Not a pagan, but he was a Jewish unbeliever. Long before he was born, he was set aside by God in the womb, as was Jeremiah in the womb. And God formed him from the time of conception to be exactly the kind of instrument to communicate the way God wanted him to communicate his words. So in 1 Thessalonians 2.13, Paul said, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us. So there is the human element. They heard it from Paul's mouth. or from his pen, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe." So every word of the Bible is God's Word, but it's communicated using the vocabulary, experiences, emotions, et cetera, that would give the exact feel for that particular book that God wanted that book to have. And this explains why each of you, since you have different personalities, are going to connect, you know, some of you are mathematicians, you're gonna connect with books that other people think, what? That's your favorite book? You gotta be kidding. I mean, Rodney's favorite book is Ecclesiastes. What does that say about his personality? I don't know. But all of us have different personalities, but God made these books in a way where everybody connects with certain books in a far richer way, even though we all appreciate the whole Bible of God. And I'm looking forward to showing you, book by book, how God, why God used some of these differences that were there. So every book of the Bible has a different human element to it, even though the notes are precisely the notes and only the notes that God played through them. One hundred percent, every syllable of the Bible is God's Word, even though it came through humans. Clear on that? Okay. Though it was written by some 40 prophets over 1,500 years or so, it speaks of the same covenant and showcases Jesus in a remarkably unified way. In Luke 24, Jesus explained to his disciples his nature, his office, his work through, he says, all the books of the Bible. We describe, for example, the theme of redemption that you see flowing through the various books of the Bible as the scarlet cord of redemption. The scarlet picturing the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see the weaving of other doctrines going through the Bible as well. And on every doctrine, you're gonna see every book of the Bible gives a united story. It's a remarkable story. And I'm looking forward to showing you book by book God's progressive revelation. And that's the next point. This is a book of divine revelation that was progressively unveiled from Genesis to Revelation. And reading the Bible in the order in which it was given, I think really opens up the Bible in a remarkable way. I'm gonna recommend a book to you that I think you ought to read at least once in your lifetime. Once you've read it once, you're probably gonna wanna read it several times. But it's F. Lagarde Smith's the narrated Bible in chronological order. Unfortunately, it's based on the NIV, but I've not seen anything better than this book in integrating, for example, the Psalms into the historical context in which they occur, and topically arranging all of the laws of God. It's one of the most marvelous books that I have read. Do not buy the New King James a chronological Bible. They did a lousy job. Good text, lousy job of ordering it. But F. Lagarde Smith, I think you at least once in your life need to read through that. Reading through the whole Bible, at least occasionally, I think gives you the larger context of the covenant. And let me just illustrate why this is important. If you took your favorite novel and you told me that The only chapters that you have read in that novel are chapters 15 and 25 and chapter 60, because those are your favorite chapters. And you read those three chapters over and over again, you probably think, this guy's a nut. You've never read the whole novel, but those are your favorite. Oh yeah, I love those chapters. I wouldn't go outside of those chapters. Okay, I know none of you would do that, but just imagine that you did. That would be akin to reading only the New Testament, or only reading three or four of your favorite books. It doesn't make any sense. You don't get the full story, and you certainly are not captured by the drama of that developing story. Well, speaking of drama, there are four central themes that you will find in the various books of the Bible. Those four central themes are creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Now, some books, some people speak of those four great, as being the four great acts of God's great drama. Okay, so creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Now, the creation, obviously, is given in Genesis 1 through 2, but that's not the only place that this part of the drama is unfolded and developed. It keeps appearing all the way through the Scripture. For example, in Romans 1, verse 25, Paul says, hey, if God is the creator of all things, it is blasphemy to worship the creation rather than the creator. That completely turns upside down reality. That is a logical implication of the doctrine of creation. And if you look at many other passages, you will see the Bible saying, hey, if God is the creator of all things, he is your Lord. It is a logical necessity. If he is the creator of all things, then he is the governor of all things. He is the lawgiver. He is the source of meaningful life. So the creation story of Genesis is presupposed and referred to throughout the Bible. For example, Paul he bases his discussion of marriage on the creation account. Now, of course, the fall of man into sin messed up everything. You've always got to have some mess up, you know, in some story. And the fall messed up everything. Not only did it instantly alienate man from God, it alienated man from his fellow man, and it alienated man from his environment, and it messed up His relationship to authority, to purpose, and I've listed 15 different things that the Bible says instantly were negatively affected by the fall of man. And as we go through the books of the Bible, we're going to see how God deals with man's fallen nature. It shows us part of God's unbelievably beautiful character. Not only do we see that God is a God of love and patience, but wrath and justice and judgment, but his love and his patience, I think, shine the brighter because we're seeing the fall. The theme of the fall is central to the storyline. But Genesis 3 verse 15 begins a long story of God's redemption planned, And then God's redemption accomplished. God saved not just Adam and Eve out of their sins, but He will save a vast multitude of men and women, and He's going to save the creation as well. Redemption is a constant theme you're gonna see in the Bible, and it is redemption of every kind of thing. You read some books by evangelicals, and they've got their favorite scriptures that they throw out there. You get the strong impression that they believe, because they've cherry-picked these verses, that God's redemption only relates to saving our souls, and nothing could be further from the truth. His redemption is comprehensive. His redemption redeems marriages, God redeems work. The very universe enters into His redemption according to Romans 8. And the last theme that is prophesied throughout the Bible is the success of redemption and restoring people and actually restoring the entire cosmos to God. Satan will be the ultimate loser. not the winner. Restoration of all things goes far as the curse is found. So if you want to understand the unfolding drama of this Bible, you need to keep in mind constantly those four themes, creation, fall, redemption, and a restoration. You'll get a lot more out of the Bible if you do so. Now, of course, there are many other dimensions to the Bible. It speaks to all of life. And I've listed a few metaphors in your outline there that will give you a feel for what the Bible does. Jeremiah 23, verse 29 likens the Bible to a hammer. Unfortunately, I misspelled it in your outline, but ignore that. It says, is not my word like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? Now you read in the context of that chapter, there were false prophets out there who were telling people what they wanted to hear. They were wanting to get paid, and so they didn't dare rock the boat. They got paid to tell people what felt good. But God says that's not a faithful handling of the Word of God. The Word of God breaks rocks to splinters. It breaks down fortresses and strongholds. God's Word sometimes acts in our lives like a hammer because of our rebellion, especially if we're stubborn. If you are stubborn, you're gonna get very little of the comfort of the Scripture. You're gonna mostly get the back end of the paddle. You will find passages of the Bible, sometimes entire books of the Bible, that bring discomfort. Presuppositions that you would thought were utterly unassailable are left in splinters in a moment of time because you happen to read one verse and all of a sudden you realize, I was wrong. How did God do that? Well, God was using his hammer to dismantle that which was false so he could replace it. And this has happened to me many, many times. Usually, I've been very open to God's correction, but there have been a few times, shamefully, that I have not been open. I've shared with you in the past how, in my early 20s, I've told friends, I don't think postmillennialism is even worth studying. I'm not going to look into it. It's so ridiculous. It's patently ridiculous. My presuppositions dictated that it would be ridiculous. But I was reading a book that had nothing to do with eschatology. It was a theonomy and Christian ethics, and he had a footnote that just had a list of scriptures that said that all nations are eventually going to follow God's law. And in the three minutes that it took me to look up all of those verses, my eschatology was completely trashed. and a new eschatology resurrected in its place. God was basically using His Word of those Scriptures as a hammer to pound to smithereens some presuppositions that I had that kept me from rightly interpreting the Word of God. It's really cool how God's Word does that. God has to bring destruction before he rebuilds, just like in some of those rebuilding shows on TV. You see these people with the sledgehammers, and then they come out a couple minutes later with a beautiful, gorgeous apartment. Wow, how did they do that? No, you see more than that. But don't neglect the uncomfortable portions of the Bible. If you openly embrace them, the change will be much less painful. The Bible is also likened to seed that grows, grows slowly. You know, we can't expect overnight change. It is something that gets planted into our lives, and sometimes it is immediate. But it is a seed as well, many times. Matthew 13, 18-23 interprets the parable of the sower, and it says the Bible is like seed planted into people's lives. Now, if it's planted on a rock, it's not gonna grow. God has to prepare our soil of our heart. If it's planted among thorns, it's going to get choked out. In 1 Peter 1 verse 23 it says, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible through the word of God which lives and abides forever. And so God plants the Bible into our lives, boom, we do get converted rather suddenly. And then he continues to plant and bring new life in our lives. Why? Because it's seed that grows into new life. James 1 says that the Bible is like a mirror that shows us what we look like. And frequently it ain't pretty. And you realize it is not pretty. We can ignore what the mirror says to us, and many people do that according to James. You've probably seen people who go through an entire day apparently never having looked in the mirror because of their tousled hair. They look like Einstein. At least the only picture I've ever seen of Einstein. And the Bible says we should not be like that. We should look in the mirror. And what are mirrors for anyway? You know, you look in a mirror to make sure there are no boogers hanging out of your nose, you know, and you've combed your hair properly. You're presentable to society. And the Scripture helps us to do that. Now, yes, it is embarrassing sometimes when the Bible points out we've got a spiritual booger that needs to be removed. But I say, don't throw, break the mirror because it does that, right? We should be thankful and remove it. Don't ignore the mirror when it's pointing out defects in you. That's a gift. It's a blessing. Jeremiah twice likens the Bible to a fire. God says, is not my word like a fire? Matthew Henry comments, fire has different effects according as the matter is on which it works. It hardens clay, but softens wax. It consumes the dross, but purifies the gold. So the word of God is to some a savor of life unto life, to others of death unto death. It is a lamp to our feet, according to Psalm 119, showing where we should walk, keeping us from stumbling. It is food, according to a number of scriptures. And I won't go into those scriptures, but I mean, just think of it. You wouldn't just eat food once a week, you know, for week after week. You shouldn't eat the Bible just once a week. You need to daily be in the Word of God. And those metaphors highlight the next point, that we must have certain attitudes if we are to benefit from Bible study. If we're not being transformed by the Bible, we are being hardened by the Bible. Matthew Henry talked about the sun having that different effect depending on how we're approaching it. There is no in-between. And by the way, you can read the Bible without faith and without the enlivening work of the Holy Spirit. I have witnessed many unbelievers who can quote quite a bit of Scripture to you. In fact, I studied modern Hebrew right here in Omaha under a professor who loved the Bible. He was just fascinated with it, his literature, his history, his ancient law, and all kinds of things. He was an archaeologist as well. He loved the Bible, but he was an unbeliever. It had zero effect upon his life. Jack Kochaczek, a professor, said that he met a man who had memorized the entire Old Testament in Hebrew word for word. Initially he was skeptical. He said, oh, that can't be true. And the guy says, Well, test me." And he said, well, where would you like to begin? He said, why don't we begin with Psalm 1. So he starts quoting Psalm after Psalm, absolutely word perfect, and he says, well, Psalm's okay. Let's try some harder passages. For the next two hours, this man recited from the Hebrew the most obscure passages that this professor could find and did so absolutely word perfect. After two hours, the professor just stared at him, wondering, what motivated you to even study all of this stuff? And to his astonishment, this man said, hey, I'm not a Christian, I'm an atheist. He was an atheist. Here he had read and memorized more of the scripture than most Christians did, but it had zero impact upon his life. In fact, probably, it had hardened him. So if we only read the Bible with intellectual fascination, we will have missed out on the fact that God intends this book, the Bible, to change us. And every portion of this book has the power to change us for the better. So I don't want you going through the Bible in the next year and a half to two years simply getting an academic appreciation for the beauty of the Bible. It is beautiful. It is absolutely gorgeous, and I appreciate its beauty, but I want the Bible to grab you. I want it to conform you more and more to the image of Jesus. And one way that that can happen is if when you're reading through the Bible, You, first of all, ask God, Lord, I don't want to just read the Bible through carnal eyes. Would you please open my eyes, my spiritual eyes? Give me discernment. David prayed, open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from your law. Psalm 119, verse 18. Second, ask God to give you a humble heart that is receptive to the word, that is soft to conviction, quick to change, that is passionate for God. Did you know that the Pharisees, many of the Pharisees had memorized the entire Old Testament as well? Some of these guys had memorized vast, what now today is volumes of the Talmud. They had memorized a lot of stuff. But here's what Jesus said about them. For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn so that I should heal them. Instead, If Paul's prayer for the Ephesians, in Ephesians 1, 17 through 21, is answered for you, you'll not only constantly grow in knowledge, you're going to grow in grace, you're going to grow in love and joy and all of the fruits of the Spirit. Here's Paul's prayer. at the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance of the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead. I would encourage you to pray that prayer, word for word. Say, Father, Paul's prayer is my prayer. Would you do that with me? That I may have this kind of depth of understanding. And the Lord will not only open up the Scriptures to you and make them real to you, He will fill you. He will make you equipped. Now it is helpful to know the basic structure of the Bible when you're reading it. with only one exception, Jesus referred to the whole Old Testament as the law of Moses and the prophets. And actually most of the times he spoke of it in the abbreviation, the law and the prophets. This twofold division was the most common way that the Jews structured the Old Testament. And it flowed from the fact that the first five books of the Bible are the foundation and everything else is built upon it. Or another way of saying it, and the Jews all said this, is that the first five books of the Bible contain all of the laws of God. and they contain the entire gospel of God, and the rest of the prophets are simply applying the Pentateuch into people's lives, or rebuking people, bringing covenant lawsuits if they are rebelling against it. So this emphasizes the fact that the first five books of the Bible have in at least seed form everything that is later amplified in the rest of the Bible, including the New Testament, by the way, everything. And I wish I could amplify on that, but trying to keep this timing of all these sermons down, we've cut that out. I'll put it in my notes. But there's one passage where Jesus appears to give a threefold structure. In Luke 24, verse 44, Jesus says, all things must be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me. Now this division is not a contradiction of the previous one, but what it's saying is that the prophets were divided up into two parts. There were prophets who wrote without poetry, And then the same prophets gave psalms. They put the same teaching, but did it in a way that we could worship with it, we could sing with it. In fact, this same chapter illustrates both. Just a couple of verses earlier, Jesus had divided the content of the Old Testament into the law and the prophets. Now, He is dividing it up into different genres. And so I think this threefold division actually gives a justification for outlining some of the genres. And there's other Scriptures that do the same. Now, in your outline, I've listed for you a few of the basic genres of biblical literature. Now they aren't necessarily divisions by which the Bible is structured, they're just different ways of, styles of writing. Genesis is largely written in the historical genre. Exodus numbers in Deuteronomy have a mix of history, teaching, and law. The Psalms are poetry. Ecclesiastes and Job are often classified as wisdom literature. Many portions of the Major and the Minor Prophets have a particular, it's a very interesting genre called the prophetic covenant lawsuit. Some of them have other pieces, like for example, Habakkuk has not only covenant lawsuit, but it ends with a poem. So there's a mix. The Gospels and Acts are back to the historical genre again. Romans through Jude are all epistles, so you will see people refer to them as epistolary genre. And then Revelation picks up on the Old Testament pattern of prophetic covenant lawsuit genre once again. Now, the reason I'm going through this, I know some of it seems a little bit academic, but it really is important for understanding different genres if you are to properly interpret the scriptures. Modern evangelical compromisers, and they are compromisers, who are trying to insert billions of years into the six days of creation in Genesis 1, These compromisers tried to do so by saying, oh, it's not history, you can take it out of order, it's just poetry. Well, Sarfati and many other commentators have shown this has all the elements of history about it. And if we don't distinguish properly the genres, we're going to misinterpret them. And I think you would understand that. If you did not distinguish between modern poetry and a modern court document, a legal document, you would probably not get everything out of the poetry that you should, and you probably won't get everything out of the legal document that you should. We understand those are different kinds of literature. Well, in the same way, we need to be sensitive to the fact that this book The Bible, which is a library of books, also has a wide variety of genres. They actually go beyond the seven that I've listed for you there. In Fee and Stewart's book, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, which, by the way, I highly recommend, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, they say this. One of the most important aspects of the human side of the Bible is that to communicate his word to all human conditions, God chose to use almost every available kind of communication—narrative history, genealogies, chronologies, laws of all kinds, poetry of all kinds, proverbs, prophetic oracles, riddles, drama, biographical sketches, parables, letters, sermons, and apocalypses. To interpret properly the then and there of the biblical texts, one must not only know some general rules that apply to all the words of the Bible, but one needs to learn the special rules that apply to each one of these literary forms or genres. And I won't say more about that. But in your outline and the next point, I've given a broad brush way that you can see Jesus as being the central theme of the Bible. The Old Testament portrays the anticipation of Jesus. The Messiah is coming. He hasn't come yet. This is the anticipation. The Gospels portray the manifestation of Jesus on earth. Acts contains the proclamation of Jesus in history, preaching Jesus. They're saying, hey, he's already come. Here's the implications of that. The epistles are the explanation of Jesus in doctrinal form, and revelation is the conquest by Jesus of all that was promised. And while I find that division very, very helpful, I don't want you to think, based upon it, that Jesus was not active in the Old Testament. He's being anticipated, but He's not active. Now long before he was incarnated, he was very active in the Old Testament, even manifesting himself in human form or angelic form to people. And we'll maybe look at some examples. And so 1 Corinthians 10 verse 9 does not just say that the wilderness generation tempted God in the wilderness. Now obviously they did tempt God in the wilderness, but it says this in the majority text, nor let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted him and were destroyed by serpents. Though His human nature was not present yet, His divine person was. And there are many other passages that speak of the pre-incarnate Christ at work in the Old Testament. Now, why is that even important? Well, it means that the Pentateuch is not irrelevant to Christ's kingdom. Jesus gave it. He gave it for a purpose. So here's how you can think of it. The Pentateuch gives the laws of King Jesus. The prophets give the covenant lawsuits of King Jesus. The Psalms give the prayers of Jesus and so forth. You could go through all of the Old Testament and see, this is Jesus. This is Jesus at work. So Jesus was in existence as God the Son long before he took a human nature to himself in the incarnation. He was constantly at work. John 1 says there is absolutely nothing that has existed in this world, come into existence, that did not get created by the Word, which He identifies as God the Son, which He identifies as Jesus. And though there are other ways that people have sought to structure the Bible, I'm just gonna mention one more, and it is the double helix of covenant and kingdom intertwining at every point of the Bible like two strands of the DNA molecule. And I've given a picture of that double helix in your outline at the bottom. Covenant and kingdom. Those are the two strands. There's no time in history or in eternity when there was no covenant at play. There was the eternal covenant of redemption even before the world was made. And then God made what the Confession calls the covenant of life and another place calls the covenant of works in Genesis 1 through 2. And then there is the covenant of redemption. When man messes everything up, then God brings redemption. He restores it. We call it the covenant of grace in Genesis 3.15. And that covenant of grace keeps getting fuller and fuller, more fully revealed to Adam, to Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and in Jesus Christ's ministry on the earth. Now, where covenant looks to God's relationship with man, The kingdom strand of the double helix looks to man's responsibility to represent God's kingdom. You cannot separate covenant and kingdom, or even separate the numerous DNA connecting ladder steps that are spiraling from Genesis to Revelation. Grace and law are not opposites, but are two interlocking strands on the DNA of God's purposes in history. Covenant has at least three parts to it. At least three parts, our relationship to God, our identity, and our obedience to His commands. Now there are some passages in the Old Testament that have five parts, and you will see Sutton emphasizing those, but there's places, only three, there's places that are five, there's some places that are actually seven parts of the covenant, but there's always at least three, okay? So relationship, identity, and obedience. And as we go through each book of the Bible, we're going to be showing the many different facets of the covenant relationship that we have with God and with each other. Kingdom is our responsibility to represent God to the world in all of its dimensions. And God's kingdom encompasses every atom of the universe. God's kingdom is over sex in the bedroom in the Song of Solomon, or what Michael Pearl calls holy sex, okay? It is also over politics in 1 and 2 Samuel. It encompasses things as diverse as administration in the book of Numbers. and how you train your children in the book of Proverbs. But kingdom and covenant always require each other and interplay with each other in various books of the Bible. I'll just use Song of Solomon as an example, since Rodney preached on that recently. Beautiful, beautiful book on marital relationships. And it shows an interweaving of covenant and kingdom. Or you can refer to the same words as relationship and responsibility. Our covenant relationship with God will reflect on how we represent God within our marriage and how we represent God in absolutely everything that we do in life. President Ronald Reagan once said, within the covers of one single book, the Bible, are all the answers to all the problems that face us today if only we would read and believe. Of course, Reagan didn't fully understand the full implications of that statement, but I hope over the next two years to give easy-to-understand overviews of every book. Do you want a book that shows the comprehensive implications of Christ's redemption? Then go to Exodus. Now you might have expected me to say go to John or go to Ephesians, and those are marvelous books on redemption, but there is nothing that beats the book of Exodus in understanding God's redemption. It's a hugely neglected book. Do you want a book that highlights the holiness of God as no other book does? Then go to the book of Leviticus. Do you want to understand the causes and the cures of backsliding? There's a whole book devoted to that. It's the book of Judges. Do you want to understand fantastic principles for leadership? Go to Nehemiah. Now, these are not simply books of interest to antiquarians. These are books God designed to inform our situation and to change us. And no, they are not all fun. I will admit that. Not all of them are fun. If you want to weep your heart out for those who are hurting because God is afflicting a nation, then go to the book of Lamentations. That's the book of Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, who was weeping his heart out because this nation had apostatized, had turned away from God. If you want a realistic look at the emptiness of postmodern man, and he's right now experiencing that, go to the book of Ecclesiastes. It's an incredibly relevant book for our age. If you feel overwhelmed at your inadequacies, you can express your heart to God through the Psalms, or you can get some step-by-step advice from 2 Corinthians. Okay, if you're feeling sorry for yourself, read Ephesians and Philippians, where Christ takes us above our circumstances and shows us the incredible privileges that we have in Christ Jesus. Do you have lazy kids? Well, you can go to the book of Proverbs, there's plenty of instruction there, but you can go to 1 and 2 Thessalonians, it has some very practical advice as well. If you are influenced by cults, then you absolutely need to read 2 Peter and Jude. Let me end with a quote from an unknown writer. I've tried to track him down, and I don't know who it was, but I think he summarized in a nutshell what the Bible is all about. He said, this book is the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding, its histories are true, and its decisions are immutable. read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, practice it to be holy. It contains light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you. It is the traveler's map, the pilgrim's staff, the pilot's compass, the soldier's sword, and the Christian's character. Here, paradise is restored, heaven opened, and the gates of hell disclosed. Christ is its grand subject, our good its design, and the glory of God its end. It should fill the memory, rule the heart, and guide the feet. Read it slowly, frequently, prayerfully. It is a mine of wealth, a paradise of glory, and a river of pleasure. Follow its precepts and it will lead you to Calvary, to the empty tomb, to a resurrected life in Christ. Yes, to glory itself for eternity. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. And I ask you to forgive us for those times that we have neglected it and treated it as less than the infinitely valuable gift that it really is. And I pray that you would guide me in these next months and years as I go through the various books of the Bible and help me, Father, to encapsulate these books in a way that will help people to see how to approach them, how to find those books accessible. I pray that you would guide us and give to us a joy in not only our favorite portions of Scripture, but also a joy that every portion of Scripture is for our good and is sufficient to make us thoroughly equipped for every good work. Help us to obey Christ's Word who told us that we should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from your mouth. We love Your Word, we value it, and as we close out this service by singing about the glories of Your Word, I pray that even this expression in song would capture our hearts' response to this, Your Word, and this message, and we pray it in Christ's name, amen.