Domen with me at Matthew 22, Matthew's Gospel, and the chapter 22. Welcome you all to the Bible class this morning, and we trust the Lord will bless us together as we meet before Him. And all who are watching on in the webcast, we're glad to have you as well, give you a hearty welcome. So let's read from verse 23. 22 and the verse 23. The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and ask him, saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were with us seven brethren, And the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and having no issue, left his wife unto his brother. Likewise, the second also, and the third unto the seventh. And last of all, the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife shall she be of the seven? For they all had her. Jesus answered and said, Unto them ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which is spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at His doctrine. And we know that God will bless the reading of His truth to our hearts. Now, the theme that we're dealing with, that we have taken up in this Bible class just last Lord's Day, is that of Christ, the key to the Old Testament. the key to understanding the Old Testament Scriptures from Genesis to Malachi. As I noted with you last week, in two particular sections of Luke 24, the Lord conducts a Bible study, first of all, to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and then later on to the others who were gathered, we would believe, in the Upper Room. And as the Lord dealt with these disciples and spoke to them, He made it very known, He made it very clear that He is the subject of the Scriptures of the old era, the Old Testament. In both verse 27 and verse 24, He states that in a very clear and categorical fashion. He is the subject, therefore, of the Old Testament Scriptures. The Lord also indicates in Luke 24 that he is most familiar with the Old Testament Scriptures. Now, of course, being God, he knows the Word, he knows every part of it exactly and so on. But I speak of him here as the man Christ Jesus when he was on this earth and he ministered and he taught. And as he did so, he showed his great familiarity, his intimacy with the Scriptures of truth. If you turn with me to Luke 24, you'll notice in verse 44 the Lord's breakdown of the Old Testament Scriptures. Luke 24 and verse 44. These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me. It's a threefold breakdown. given by Christ in those words, the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms, referring to the old scriptures. Now remember that the word Psalms here means writings and it includes much more than the actual book of Psalms with which we are familiar. The word actually, as I say, means writings. But this threefold division that the Lord gives here is actually the original or the Jewish division of the Old Testament Scriptures. The one that is followed in our English Bible is that of the Septuagint. I don't know whether you've ever heard of that or not, that word or what that means, but the Septuagint was a Greek translation of the Old Testament Scriptures. It was compiled, it was made, in around the year 250 B.C. in the city of Alexandria, which was of course a famous city in those days with regard to philosophers and men of great wisdom and so on and so forth, and it was a center of learning. And there was this translation of the Old Testament into Greek by those who are given the name of the Seventy. Sometimes you'll find that Greek translation is referred to as LXX, that is the Roman numerals for 70. In actual fact, it seems that there were 72 men, but it's generally referred to as the Septuagint, referring to the number 70. And that is the name of that Greek translation of the Old Testament. It's very interesting to see how the Lord paved the way for the New Testament era by that Greek translation, because by the time Christ came into the world and the apostles and the whole era of the early church and the apostolic dispensation of things, we find that the Greek language was the spoken language of that time. You will know perhaps the story of Alexander the Great and the conquering of the world under his rulership. Then he was followed, of course, by the Roman Empire, and yet the Roman Empire adopted the language of the Greeks, and it was the spoken language of the day, so that that translation of the Old Testament was the one the Lord used. It was the one the apostles used and it was therefore in God's providence that which paved the way for the spread of the gospel in the known world of that particular time. But anyhow, the Septuagint divided the Old Testament into three groups. The historical books which ran from Genesis to Esther, the poetical books that went from Job to the Song of Solomon, and the prophetical books that went from Isaiah to Malachi. And that is the form or the layout that our own English Bible follows as regards the Old Testament. So, remember that. What you have in your Old Testament today as regards the order of the books follows a Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. But that's not the Jewish division of the Old Testament. as referred to here in Luke 24 and verse 44. It was also a threefold division but was not the same as the Septuagint and therefore our English translation does not follow the Jewish division of the Old Testament that Christ speaks of here in this verse. We find that the Jews ended up the Old Testament in a different way altogether. They also say that their count of Old Testament books is not the same as we would have in our English Bible. Not that there's any less scripture, but it's just the way they did things. And of course, their count and their division of the books would have been, you might say, more accurate than what we have in our Bible. They had either 24 or 22. I'm talking about the Old Testament, remember. They had either 24 or 22, depending on how you looked at things. You see, the Jews counted the 12 minor prophets as one book. They counted the books of Samuel and Kings and Chronicles each as one book. They counted Ezra and Nehemiah as one book. That gives you 24. And then there were some Jews who combined Jeremiah and Lamentations made that one book, and then as well, Judges and Ruth. So, those Jews, those Jewish scholars, and these were scholars of course, they arrived at 22 in total. As I say, it doesn't mean there was any less scripture than we have in our English translation, it's just the way in which they compiled the books and made up the Old Testament with regard to it being laid out. As a matter of interest, Just note what books there are in that 24 number breakdown of the Old Testament by the Jews. There is, of course, the law, and we follow the order here of Christ, the law, and that refers to Genesis, to Deuteronomy, and, of course, that's the same in our English Bible, the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses. That's what's meant here by the law in this verse, verse 44 of Luke 24. The prophets, they have the earlier prophets, that is the Jews, And that was Joshua, then Judges, Samuel and Kings. Then we have the later prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. The minor prophets, as I told you, they counted them as one book. And then the writings, because the word Psalms here, as I mentioned, means writings. And in their breakdown of the Old Testament, the writings included the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, Ruth, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, that's one book, remember, Chronicles and Lamentations. By the way, I forgot about Lamentations in there in my notes. If you want to write it in, that's up to you, but I noticed that this morning. So you might wonder, where's the other one? Well, that's where it is. It's not printed. But anyhow, that is a breakdown that the Jews followed. That is the Jewish division of the Old Testament. And that is how they arrived at their enumeration of the books and their breakdown of the books. So, when you read here of the Lord using this language, the Law of Moses, the Prophets, the Psalms or the Writings. You're shown that he was very familiar with the Old Testament, obviously. He used it, he preached from it, he followed the Jewish breakdown right here at this particular point as he spoke to the apostles about the Old Testament. Now, it's clear from the Gospels that the Lord also used the Scriptures of the Old Testament extensively in his own preaching ministry. We wouldn't expect anything else. And, of course, that's what we find when we study the New Testament. And we expect that because they point it to Him, as we saw last week, and as we even notice again today, the Old Testament Scriptures point it to Christ, spoke of Christ, as we saw in verse 26, sorry, verse 27 of Luke 24. He talks there about the things concerning himself, and then verse 44-45, the same kind of language, the things concerning me. So he's the subject of the Old Testament, therefore you'll find him using the Old Testament Scriptures, and he does so, as I say, extensively. When you study the Lord's ministry, you'll find a number of points that are very interesting in this regard. And what we're really doing today is to notice some thoughts about the Lord's use of the Old Testament before we actually go into the Old Testament itself and consider some material there. We're seeing how the Lord used the Old Testament. For example, in His teaching, He referred to twenty Old Testament characters. Therefore, he verified that they were authentic characters, that what they did, as is recorded of them in the Old Testament, was also true and was accurate. The very fact the Lord mentioned these people and referred to some of the events in their lives would prove that. Now, if you go back with me to Matthew 12 for a moment, just as an example of this, it's interesting just to To do this kind of Bible study, I would encourage you to do it for yourself, through the Old Testament, or through the Gospels, I mean. Notice how often the Lord used the Old Testament. Notice the people to whom He referred, and how He spoke of them naturally. and events concerning them naturally in his teaching. There was no doubt in the Lord's mind about these people, of course. There was no doubt in his mind that they existed and that they did what the Bible says they did, and so on. So, Matthew 12, verse 38. Then certain of the scribes and the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. And then he goes on to talk about them themselves, that they're an adulterous, even an adulterous generation. They seek after a sign. And there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it. because they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and behold a greater than Jonas is he." Now you may be aware that there is perhaps no book in the Old Testament, a new story in the Old Testament ridiculed more than the story of Jonah. That is by the liberals and the modernists. even to this very day, those who would classify themselves as, not modernist actually, but who would classify themselves as evangelicals even, are casting doubt on books like these and on events like these. But here's the Lord Jesus Christ, as I put it to you, very naturally in His teaching, as He deals with this question or this point that the Pharisees raise, we want to see a miracle from you. As the Lord dealt with that, He immediately took them to the Old Testament. And isn't that very interesting? The Lord's appeal was to the Scriptures. He didn't, and He could have, but He didn't say, I'm the Messiah and you need to listen to Me. If you want to put it that way, He didn't do that. He referred immediately to the Old Testament, to the Scriptures, and he appealed to it as the proof of what he is saying on this occasion and on many other occasions as he answers questions or delivers his teachings. And here you'll find that the Lord verifies that Jonah was an authentic person, the Lord verifies that he was a prophet, that he was swallowed by a whale, that he spent three days and three nights in the Wales deli. He also verifies that there was a city called Nineveh. You know, that was held up to ridicule for generations. No such place as Nineveh. And then, well, not only do you have it here from the words of Christ, but archaeologists have found Nineveh and have found all the proof of its authenticity, if that were needed, of course, for the Bible believer. Even Nineveh had never been found. We still believe there was a Nineveh. Just the same as Noah's Ark. There are those who think they have found Noah's Ark there in the mountains of Turkey and they have gone there and gone to great lengths to try to prove that the Ark existed and in fact they say they have seen it down and bet it in the ice. Now that may be, I don't know, but it doesn't matter. If they never find it, it still doesn't mean anything with regard to believing the Old Testament. But if they do find it, well that's fine, that's nice, if you want to put it that way. But the point is, the Lord verifies here in his teaching that Jonah lived, that Jonah preached and so on, that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and that he spent three days and three nights in the whale's belly. I smile because I'm sure many of you have heard the story of the old woman and the skeptic said to her, do you really believe that? that the whale swallowed Jonah, and she said, Sir, if it said Jonah swallowed the whale, I would believe that too. So, she had it right. Whatever the Word of God says, that's it. But the Lord verifies here these things in His teaching. He refers to 20 Old Testament characters, and this is just one of them. He quotes from 19 different books of the Old Testament. He refers to many Old Testament events, the creation, And he states categorically that there was a beginning and that God made all things. And then you have these foolish people who call themselves theistic evolutionists, who say they believe in God and also believe in evolution. And in making such a statement or saying that they believe these things, they are going against Christ, because Christ was not a theistic evolutionist. Christ believed. What Genesis 1 teaches, and of course Christ was the Creator, because all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made, but in His own teaching He refers to the creation. He refers to the flood. He refers to, and by the way, He shows in His writing or His teaching that it wasn't a local flood. He makes it absolutely clear that it was a universal flood. He refers to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the appearance of God in the bush to Moses, David eating the showbread in the temple. We could go on and on and on. I've given you many examples there of the Lord's reference to Old Testament events. And the very fact that he refers to them, and again I put it, In this way, naturally, in his teaching, he refers to this event and that event, and in doing so, he shows that he believed it. And, of course, he therefore verifies the reality of these events in the face of the skeptics' denial of them. He verifies a lot of Old Testament data. I refer to how the Bible records the institution of marriage and its sacredness, therefore, how often the Lord goes back to the beginning in his teaching, and he does right there in the area of marriage. He says, in the beginning it was not so, as he does with marriage and divorce and so on. He takes us back to the institution of marriage, the giving of manna from heaven, or say, for example, the law for the purification of the leper, and so on, the lifting up of the brazen serpent. All of these, as I call them Old Testament data, mentioned by Christ and spoken of by Christ, showing that he fully believed all that the Old Testament set forth, but he verifies its authenticity. And then he gives testimony to the divine authority of the Old Testament Scriptures by using different terms, such as, it is written, have ye not read? The Scriptures cannot be broken. They, that is the Scriptures, testify of me. The Scripture must be fulfilled. You'll find the Lord always using that language. It would be my intention, maybe next week I'll see how things go in the will of the Lord, to deal with how the Lord took Old Testament Scriptures and actually interpreted them. I'm going to do one of those today, maybe two, but maybe do more next week. But look with me here. In the passage that I read with you in Luke or in Matthew 22, notice one of the most striking examples of the Lord's appeal to the authority of Scripture. See all those terms, it is written, have ye not read, so on and so forth, the Scripture must be fulfilled. Those are all appeals to the authority of the Old Testament Scriptures. And here is an example of this in the passage I read with you in verses 29 to 32, where the Lord is defending the doctrine of the resurrection. And in His defense of it, again, He doesn't say, I'm telling you, as the Son of God, the dead are going to rise. No, He goes right back to the Old Testament. He takes the Scripture in a wonderful way, in a marvelous way, He uses it to prove the doctrine of the resurrection. Now, notice the words in verse 29, Ye do err not knowing the Scriptures. I'm in the wrong chapter. Matthew 22. Ye do err not knowing the Scriptures. There in verse 29. Now, the reference is to the Old Testament. As I told you last week, when you read that term, the Scriptures, it's always a reference back to the Old Testament. Moreover, notice how Christ shows that the particular scripture that he quotes from Exodus 3 verse 6 had lost none of its authority. Look at verse 31, and he says there, Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God? Have you not read that which is spoken unto you by God?" Then he goes on to quote from Isaiah 3 and verse 6, "...I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Now, notice what the Lord's doing here. For example, though written originally about 2,500 years before the Lord's day, the Scripture in view continued to speak because in address to Sadducees of Christ's day. Look at what he says here. Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you? Now, it was originally spoken to Moses and to Israel. But the Lord says it was spoken to you and He is talking right to the Pharisees or the Sadducees. And therefore, what He is saying is that though written originally all those hundreds of years before, it was continuing to speak. And that's the marvellous thing about the Word of God. Though written, when it was written, hundreds, thousands of years ago, it is fresh, it's up-to-date, it continues to speak, and here's a grand example of this, that which was spoken unto you. Notice as well, it had not lost any of its authority with the passing of time, because the Lord Jesus underlines that it is God's Word. For he says in those words in verse 31, Have ye not read that which is spoken unto you by God? It is God's Word. Time has passed, but that has not diminished from the fact that it's God's Word. Therefore, it remains God's Word. Even as Christ deals with the Pharisees right here, it is God's Word. It is that which continues to be authoritative even though time has passed by. And then, of course, the error of the Sadducees here was they failed to understand the Scriptures. in view in Exodus 3 verse 6. Again go back to verse 29 and notice what the Lord says, Ye do e'er not knowing the Scriptures. Now that doesn't mean that they were unfamiliar with the passage, because remember these Sadducees, even though they didn't believe in the resurrection, they had studied the Old Testament in the sense of reading it and poring over it, just like the Pharisees. All those groups In the hierarchy of the Jews, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Scribes and the Lawyers, they were all avid students of the Scriptures, reading them constantly and poring over them. And that's therefore a novice in view here where the Lord says, you don't know the Scriptures. What He means is this, you don't understand them. They were reading them with a blindness over their souls. And yet that did not mean that they were not the Word of God. Notice then how skillfully and how wonderfully the Lord proves the resurrection from the fact that in Exodus 3 verse 6, God employs a certain tense. What does it say in Exodus 3 verse 6? Well, you have it here in verse 32. I am the God of Abraham. Do you see that? When God spoke originally to Moses, those words, He did not say to Moses, I was the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and Jacob. But he says to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Now remember that those three men have been dead for a few hundred years, all three of them. Abraham, of course, first, then Isaac, then Jacob. Israel had been in Egypt now for 400 years at least. And all three men are dead long before that. Well, I shouldn't say long before that as far as Jacob's concerned, but anyhow, they're all dead for a few hundred years. But whenever God spoke to Moses, He says, I am the God of these men, which means that they were still very much alive. In other words, they were with the Lord, though they had died physically, they were with the Lord in full consciousness. And the Lord makes that clear when He says, I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. Now, when the Lord comes here to deal with the Sadducees, and we're moving on now in time, jumping forward a couple of thousand years or whatever it may be, and yet as the Lord quotes from Acts 3 verse 6, He doesn't change anything. He retains the present tense. And he says, God says this, God is speaking to you, Sadducees, and he is saying, I am the God of Abraham. Which means the same thing, that Abraham is still very much alive, he is fully conscious, he is with God, and so are Isaac and Jacob. And then the Lord's great application of that is found at the end of verse 32. is not the God of the dead, but of the living." Now, there's the Lord's application of the Scripture. He appeals to the Scripture. He points out it uses the present tense, what was originally written, but it's still been quoted, it hasn't changed, it's still the same. It proves that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are very much alive, fully conscious, they're with God. And on that basis, the Lord then makes this application, God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And what He's saying there, He's proving the doctrine of the resurrection. God is not the God of the dead. What that means is, His people who have died are going to rise again, because God is the God of the living, not the God of the dead, proved by That Scripture, what the Lord quotes here, that all hinges on not merely a word, but on a tense. I hope you all did your English at school, and you know what I mean by a tense. The past tense, the present tense, and the future tense, and so on. We're all aware of those terms. But notice what's going on here. What the Lord's teaching hinges not merely on a word, but on a tense. That's so interesting. It shows you the value the Lord placed on Scripture. It shows you how He makes it clear in His teaching that Scripture is authoritative and final. And if we go into this study a little further, we'll see how, again, just in one word, the Lord hinges so much. If you look down to the end of Matthew 22, And this just comes to our minds here because it's right in the passage, though we didn't read these verses. But in Matthew 22, you'll find that the Lord goes on in His contention with these Pharisees and religious leaders. And another group come along, or another individual comes along asking Him a question, verse 35, about the law, and tempting Him with that. And then you go down to verse 41, and it says, the Pharisees were gathered together. Throughout the whole chapter there has been a series of questions put to the Lord by different groups, the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the lawyers. But now the Lord asks a question. Look at verse 42, saying, this is the Lord asking the question, What think ye of Christ? Now remember that the name Christ is equivalent to the Old Testament name Messiah. This is the real meaning of the name Christ, it's Messiah. So just think about it that way. That is how the Pharisees would have understood it. What think ye of Messiah? And they were looking for the Messiah. They said they believed in the Messiah. They said that He was coming. Of course, they didn't believe Christ was the Messiah. But anyhow, they'll ask them a question about the Messiah. It says, what think ye of the Messiah? Whose son is he? They say unto him, the son of David. Now, of course, the Lord knew they would answer that way. He knew they would say that, the son of David. Which means this, the Pharisees believed, or said they believed in the Messiah, but they confined the Messiah's identity, purely, to his descent from David the king. In other words, they did not believe that the Messiah would be the Son of God. They did not believe that He would be divine, that He would be a deity. That's really what they're saying here. He's only the Son of David. And in their minds, the Messiah is going to come riding a big horse, delivering them from the Romans. That's all they could see about the Messiah. It shows you how blind they were to the Old Testament Scriptures. And the Lord brings that out, because he goes on to say in verse 43, putting another question to them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou in my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? And what is the Lord Jesus doing here? Well, as I say, the Pharisees will not allow that the Messiah is the Son of God. They confine him merely to being the son of David, a descendant of David. But the Lord, as you've just read with me here from Psalm 110, the Lord quotes Psalm 110 where David calls the Messiah, Lord. And that proves as Christ uses this scripture, that the Messiah, or the Christ, was much more than David's son. He was David's son according to the flesh, but he was David's Lord. And David knew that. And while he believed in the coming Messiah, David was not thinking of a mere man who would descend from his loins, but he was thinking of someone who, while he would come from his family and, yes, from his loins, would be much more than a man. He would be the Son of God. He would be Lord. The Lord said unto my Lord, verse 44, that is, Jehovah said unto Adonai. That's the meaning of the word Lord there, the second Lord. sit thou on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy foot." So then notice this, if David then, here's how it's put, call him Lord. It doesn't say, if David then called him, that is in the past, But he uses again the present tense. If David then called him Lord, and what the Lord here is doing is this, is saying what David said in Psalm 110 is still speaking. The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand. And Christ makes that clear by saying here, if David then call him, or calls him Lord, or is calling him Lord, How is He His Son that is merely His Son after the flesh? So, I show you these scriptures to bring home to you how the Lord Jesus Christ used the Old Testament. How the Lord Jesus Christ in using it verified places, people, events, no question about it, no doubt about it, places, people, events that modernists, as I say, and liberals, and then the new evangelical crowd are calling into question to this very day. The Lord didn't do that. And the Lord shows the authority of Scripture in this remarkable way, as we've seen in these two passages, by focusing on a word from the Old Testament and by showing how it remains, it stands, it is final. It is final. The Lord believed, the Lord showed that He believed in the final authority of the Scriptures of truth, that they are the court of appeal in all matters of faith and practice. And I trust the Lord will just use what we've looked at today to whet our appetites, to get us into looking at Christ and His teaching in these matters, and that we will indeed be blessed. as we see Christ in the Old Testament.