If you want to pass out those notes, and maybe get a couple guys to help pass out, I've got some notes for everybody. That way you will go away with something, plus the food you ate tonight. First of all, I want to thank God for saving me, and I want to thank God for all the pastors and Bible professors that taught me, that gave me a love for God. Just lately my professor who taught me Old Testament Survey, just passed away, Dr. Ed Hindson. He was my Old Testament Survey teacher, so I still remember many of his sayings and just different parts of his class, plus I'm thankful for other teachers who gave me a love and desire to learn more of God's Word. We're going to try to go through the whole Old Testament in an hour, so is everybody ready? Well, maybe not, but maybe I'm not either, but let's go. So I'm gonna talk fast so you listen fast, okay? Well, why study the Old Testament? Well, we're New Testament believers, right? We got the New Testaments, Christ died for us. Well, if you picked up your Bible and put your finger in Genesis chapter one and Malachi chapter four, you would be holding 78% of our Bible. So just by sheer volume it's important to know the Old Testament. The Bible says in 2 Timothy 3.16 and 17 it says, So we as believers, you know Paul is telling us here that all scripture is given by inspiration of God. Now The first Baptist church at Antioch, do you know that they didn't have the Book of Romans when it first started? They used the whole Old Testament, right? If you don't know the Old Testament, you'll have an incomplete knowledge of God's Word. It was in Genesis that God first started revealing himself to man, and he continued through the Bible. Here's what some people said. Patrick Haney said, the Bible is worth more than all books which have ever been printed. Daniel Webster said, I make it a practice to read through the Bible once every year. And I always talk to a couple different people, you know if you just listen to the Bible, on Alexander Scorby for example, it's 73 hours. So if you listen to the Bible 17 minutes a day, you would go through the Bible once a year. If you have a half hour drive back and forth, you could probably go through the Bible four times in a year. just by listening to it. And what I like to do, I like to listen to it and read it at the same time, so I go through and then I do my study. But, and the more you read it, the more familiar it gets. Some of you say, the Old Testament, oh, that sounds foreign, that sounds, oh. Or else you get, the other reaction is, oh, I've heard all those stories before in Sunday school. Well, hopefully we're going to make the Bible come alive for you. Y'all know this story, Luke 24, it was after the resurrection, Christ had already been crucified walking along and he's walking on the road a little going southwest or northwest a little bit from Jerusalem and he sees these two disciples walking along and of course Christ bailed himself so they didn't know who he was at first and he comes along and says, what are you men talking about? I said, are you a stranger in Jerusalem? Haven't you heard? And of course, I could imagine Christ almost sort of snickering, saying, haven't you heard what's happening here this week? And Christ said, you know, what happened? And they said, well, this man, Christ, Jesus Christ, we thought he was the Messiah. And what did Christ say? Verse 25 said, Then he said unto them, O fools and slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets have spoken, ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter it into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them all the scriptures concerning the thing of himself. Down in verse 32, and he said, And they said one to another after Christ disappeared. He said, Did not our hearts burn within us when he opened to us the scriptures? And he was using the Old Testament. I mean, how would you like to have been in that Bible study? Christ himself is the teacher. They said, hey, our hearts burn. Then right after that, he appeared to the other disciples and he said unto them, these 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, in the prophets, and in the Psalms. And that is what the Hebrews, the Jews called the Tanakh. Torah, Nevim, and Ketuvim. It's the Jewish Bible. Now you could say Jewish Old Testament, but they don't have a New Testament. They just have the one Bible, and they call it the Tanakh. So when Christ said that, He's saying, hey, all the scripture from Genesis, in their case, 2 Chronicles, talks about me. C.S. Lewis, an Oxford scholar, he said, in one of his classes one day, he said Christ is either a liar, a lunatic, or a lord. He said if Christ isn't God like he said he is, he's not a good man. He said if he's not God, he's a liar out of the pit of hell, or he's a lunatic compared to a man that thinks he's a poached egg. He said you can hate him as a heretic, you could pity him as a lunatic, or you could worship him as lord and lord and king of kings. He said he has to be one or the other, and if Christ said he's God, he's not a good man if he isn't. So, I want you to learn it. Now, if I've showed you this before, don't answer the question. Can anybody tell what this is? Bryce, you know what that is, Bryce? See these little white lines underneath here? Those are the 1,189 chapters of the Bible. This long one right here is Psalms 119. Those lines are, and there's more than this, but those are the 63,700, and you can't see it on here, 79 cross-references in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, the cross-reference, from Genesis to Psalms. And it just shows you how the Bible's all tied together. There's a theologian, he's passed away now, but William Graham Scroggie, he pastored Spurgeon's Church in England, he pastored in America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia. But after he retired from the pastorate of Spurgeon's Church, he wrote this book, The Unfolding Drama of Redemption. And he talked about this scarlet thread that ran through the Bible from Genesis all the way through Revelations. Many of you might have seen on YouTube a pastor come up and said, in Genesis, he's the promised seed, in Leviticus, Exodus, he's a Passover lamb. Well, most of them probably got this from Graham's book. But he always preached about the scarlet thread that runs through the Bible. Another reason we should study the Bible is to protect us from error. The better you know the Bible, the less you're going to fall. I had a guy at work the other day who said, Barry, why did Satan say that he'd rather be a king in hell than a slave in heaven? I said, well, Christ never said that. He said, well, I thought he did. I said, no, that's coming from Milton's Paradise Lost book. So I said, it's not in the Bible. And I had another guy on a bumper sticker on his car. He said, if money's the root of all evil, why do preachers want it so much? I said, Tim, your sticker's wrong on your car. I said, it says the love of money. I said, you know, so many people misquote the Bible because they don't know it. They they think, you know, well, the Bible says he helps him, you know, he has helped himself, you know, however that saying go, you know, but, you know, you know, you know what I'm saying? So many people. think they know the Bible but they don't. So if we know the Bible it will protect us from error. Mark 1 and 2 it says as is written in the prophets behold I send my messenger before thy face which shall prepare the way before thee. Verse 3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare you the way of the Lord make his path straight. And if you looked at some of the newer versions I don't know if all of them has it but in some of the newer versions it has thus is written in the book of Isaiah. Well, the problem with that is verse 2 is a quote from Malachi, verse 3 is a quote from Isaiah. So if you know the Bible, it's going to help you from making errors. The same way with this one, Leviticus talked about when a woman has a baby, they were supposed to bring an offering for her purification. Well, you see in Luke 2 it says, and when the days of her purification, some of the newer versions has for their purifications. And somebody said, well, they're talking about Mary and Joseph. I said, well, you could take it. Might people think they're talking about the Lord. And that offering they were supposed to make was one for a burn offering and a sin offering. And we know Christ was without sin. The Bible also, the better we know the Bible, it tells us to warn us and give us hope. 1 Corinthians 10.6 says, now these things are example to the intent we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. And that's talking about in Numbers when they lusted for the meat and God said I'm going to give you quail, I'm going to give you that will come out of your noses. And he said, and that's what this quote reference is talking about, saying, hey, sometimes we have bad examples in the Bible to give us warning. You have good examples to help you, but sometimes you have bad examples that say, hey, don't do that. Don't lie to the Holy Spirit like Ananias and Sefiris did. Romans 15 said, first, whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning that we, through patience and comfort of Scripture, might have hope. So God wants to encourage us and give us hope. Our approach to the Old Testament and through the Bible college here is going to be a Christological view. In other words, we're going to focus on Christ. And I said, you know, Graham wrote that, hey, Christ goes through the whole Old Testament. Even that word, history, his story. And the first promise we have of Christ in the Bible is Genesis 315. In theology, they call that the Proto-Evangelion. It means the first gospel. And God, after Adam and Eve first sinned, he promised that one day, Eve, you're going to have a seed that's going to crush the serpent's head while it bruises his heel. And that came true on the cross as Christ lifted up and said, Father, it is finished. bruising his heel, but putting that death blow on Satan's head, that forever we have access to God. We're also going to learn a little bit about the authors, about the content, the history, the geography. Sometimes knowing history can answer questions for you. If you know the story of blind Barnabas in the Bible, well, in Mark it says as Jesus was leaving Jericho, but in Lucas it says as he was coming into Jericho. So, well, there's a contradiction in the Bible. Well, Herod the Great was a great builder. He built a winter palace in the Jordan Rift Valley, right a mile from Jericho, and that was his Jericho Administrative Center. So there was two Jerichos about a mile away from one another. You had the old city in the north, and a mile south, you had Herod's new city, the Administrate, both called Jericho. So when you know history, a little bit of history, well, that answers that question. So sometimes when we don't know the answer to certain things, It doesn't mean the Bible is wrong. It means we just don't understand it. We don't have full understanding. So never be afraid to say, I don't know, or I'll look it up. We're going to look at the order of the Bible, our English Bible, how it's broken down. We're going to look at a little bit of the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, and we're also going to look at the chronological order of the Bible. How does it all fit together? You see there, if I asked you, how many books in the Old Testament? Anybody know? Well you know an easy way to remember that? The letter old, three letters, Testament 9, 39. New Testament, same 3 and 9, so 3 times 9, 27. So 39 for the old, 27 for the new. So if you remember those two numbers, 3 and 9, put them together for the Old Testament, multiply them for the New Testament. And our English Bible is broken down into three main categories, history, poetry, and prophecy. And the two bigger ones can be broken down two ways, the five books of Moses, the 12 books of history, the five books of poetry, the five major prophets and the five minor prophets. So if you can remember two numbers, five and 12, 5-12, 5-5-12. Can everybody say it? 5-12, 5-5-12. So now you know the order of the Old Testament. So hopefully you'll know, and you can think of it, and I had a preacher said it this way, the histories, the stories, the poetries, the songs, and the prophecies, the sermons. So, and this is our breakdown, I put it down a little, I got these little blocks, I don't know if anybody ever see them, but I'll leave them up here when we're done with them. But the Hebrew order is eight, 11, or sorry, five, eight, and 11. So wait a minute, that's not as many books of the Bible. Well, you see right here, they combine 1 and 2 Samuel in one scroll, 1 and 2 Kings in one scroll, and there are 12 minor prophets, they got them all in one book and they call it the 12. So in the Chronicles it's combined, Ezra and Nehemiah is combined. So they have all the books we have, they just got them in a different combination and a different order. So it's not a Hebrew Bible that they have something different, they have the same things we have in their Bible, it's just arranged a little different. And if you look at this, I put them in basically chronological order and where they fit on this little blue line where Nahum is, I didn't have enough room to fit it all on the slide so I put it right below. But I gave you a handout, it has all the time frames of all the books of the Bible. You see this, this is the major routes in Israel. You have the way of the kings when Moses talked about it. You have the way of shore, and that was what they called the patriarchal road. That's the road that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob traveled. And then you had the way by the sea where they went along the coast. And the ones cutting east to west are mostly valleys and maybe some ridgelines. So imagine going on the parkway. And Mackie, if I said, hey, I want you to hike on the parkway from Bedford to Roanoke, and you're cutting through all the hills going up and down, and Carolyn just strolls along on the parkway itself. She may walk a little further, but I think she's probably going to have a much more enjoyable time than you probably are. So when you think about it, you see why all the major cities, because Mount Carmel is over 9,000 feet high. You go down to the Rift Valley, down where Jericho is, down to Dead Sea, that's 1,300 feet below sea level. So imagine the peaks of water down by the lake. From there to Sharp Top is about a little over 1,000 foot. So imagine Jesus going from Jericho up to Jerusalem, a 4,000 foot ascent. I imagine some of them are probably in a little better shape than we are today. So you'd imagine they did a lot of walking. So you got 150 miles this way and maybe 70, 80 miles that way. And Israel, in their topography, they have over 40 different climate zones. The Mount Carmel is called the Switzerland of the Middle East. And down in En-Gedi, down in the Rift Valley, you can pick oranges. A 10 minute flight from one to the other. Go ski in the morning and picking oranges at night. So yeah, so it was a land that, and so there's a more topographic view. You see this little section up there? That's the Jezreel Valley where the Battle of Armageddon, that was the main route between Israel. Think, Israel is the only land bridge that connects three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa. And, you know, if you were in a kingdom back then and you wanted to fight, you're going to meet on common ground, right? Well, guess where most of that common ground was? Right in that Jezreel Valley. Because the topography made it hard to go in and out, because if you ever hear the word wadi, that's a dried riverbed. Jerusalem has as much rain as England, but they get it within just two or three months. So a lot of those riverbeds are dry, and they call them wadis. The Jordan River is the only river that runs through Israel all the time. And there's another one up near where David fought Goliath, but that's dry most of the time. And so there's just another little topographic view. You can see what type of crane. You'd see why they'd want to go through those valleys or along the ridgeline where they would miss all these deep crevices. I watched some of the pictures on it. Some of these are 60, 70 feet deep and going down a hill and up like that. And if you ever want to have a better view of the land of Israel, on YouTube there's, I think it's 12 series, Satellite Bible Atlas. It breaks down each section of Israel, goes through them where you can learn more and more about it. So that just gives you a north and south view. You see where you got the plains where the Philistines settled and pushed the Jews back into the mountains. You got the hill country, you got foothills, and you got the hill country where Jerusalem is. You got all the way down the Rift Valley and then back on the Jordan plain. And that's a north-south view. It just shows you how steep it could be. And then we have Israel's neighbors. You have Edom, Moab, Ammon, Damascus, Syria, the Philistines. And God said, I gave, you know, He talked to the patriarchs, I'm going to give Canaan 400 years to repent. And they never did. Canaan was one of the worst idolaters in the ancient world. If you ever heard of Molech, it was a half-human, half-bull, and they would take their babies and heat up in the brass belly of the iron and lay their babies as a live sacrifice to Molech in cave mush. And they practiced temple prostitutes, male and female, and they also did incest, especially in Ammon and Moab. And think, well, where did Ammon and Moab come from? Remember Lot? Remember what happened with him, where they came from? And I was just thinking, God sent Abraham into Canaan. Canaan was the cursed son of Ham. where Abraham, God was sending somebody, said, I want you to bless the world. I want you to, and he sent him into a cursed people to bless them, and yet they wouldn't repent. The Bible is written over about 1,500 years by 40 authors in three languages and in three continents. But it's yet, I saw you in that reference thing, it's a book of unity. I'm gonna take you through, this is a, you have a map in a black and white form in the back of that handout, and I'm gonna take you just a few three minutes walk, a talk through the Bible, okay? Now, the one thing that bothers me sometimes on some preachers, teachers, pastors that I hit, they'll talk about the Euphrates River up there, okay? They say, well, the Garden of Eden was somewhere around there. Well, you know there was a little thing called the Worldwide Flood, and it wiped out the land. It just so happened after they got off the ark, hey, let's name that river the Euphrates River. You know, we got a Bedford, England. We got a Bedford, Pennsylvania. We got a Bedford, Virginia. You know, they named things after places they remembered. So starting down in the bottom, let's see if my mouse can go on it. I don't know if you can see that down there. Starting down here, God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees. Think of salt. Sarah, Abraham, Lot, and Terah. So he said, if you leave there, I'm going to take and show you the place. So they traveled up along the river to Herod. And he told him to take, he told him to leave his family, his country, and go, but what did he do? He took his father, his brothers, and his nephew, right? It was up there, Tara died, and he passed away, and then he traveled down into the Promised Land. Maybe, you know, I don't, he was 70 probably by, 70-something by the time he was in Heron. So then he came into the Promised Land, lived there, him and the patriarchs for a while, and eventually, Jacob and them, what did they do? They moved down into Egypt. And right there in Egypt, we had 400 years of silence. Genesis starts out, and I'm using Usher's chronology, which most conservatives use, or a form of it. Most people think the flood happened around 4,000 BC. So from 4,000 BC, you had the flood around 2,300. You had Noah's, you had, sorry, you had, yeah, Noah's Ark around, or Tower of Babel around 2200. Abraham was born around 2165 and in 2090 he called him out of Ur of the Chaldees. And then the patriarchs lived within there until about 1800. They go into Egypt, right? 400 years of silence. You know we have a 400 silent period at the end of Malachi 2. So when you're reading the Bible, don't just read Genesis and think you're going right into Exodus. You had 400 years that God didn't speak to man. Now what all they did in Egypt, some maybe continued to worship God and learn about him, but I'm sure many probably forgot about him. Then what happened? God said, Moses, I want you to bring them out. So about 1445, Moses leads them out of the Exodus. They go into the promised land, right up at Kadesh Barnea, right to the foothills of entering the kingdom. And remember what Moses said? The Jews came up and said, hey, we ought to send somebody in. And Moses said, hey, that's a good idea. Bad idea. I wonder if Moses ever regretted that. He said, it sounded good to me. Well, what happened? They went in. Only Joshua and Caleb believed God and trusted God. I was going to bring tonight the 10 other spies. And I was just going to read off names and say, can anybody name them? Can anybody name them? And then at the end, I was going to read Joshua and Caleb. And then you realize, oh, those are the 10 spies. I mean, if I ask anybody right now, who can name one of the 10 spies that didn't want to go into Israel? I can't, even after I looked at him, I don't really remember him either. So they're completely forgotten. Only Joshua and Caleb is remembered. So then we know the story. They wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, and that's where Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. At the end of Moses' life in about 1405, they come back to the Promised Land. Miriam's dead by now. Aaron died, and Moses is getting ready to die. So Joshua, he leads them into the Promised Land. from about 1405 to 1382. He leads them in there. They conquer. Well, what's the one problem when you conquer a territory? Holding on to it afterwards. Where Joshua is almost a complete book of victory. where judges is almost a complete book of defeat. They would forget about God and turn to God, forget about God and turn to God, and they call out and God would bring judgment on them. And I can't remember the guy's name, but there was a French philosopher who came to America and he was looking for America's greatness in the early days of America. And he said, I didn't find it in their politicians. I didn't find it in their industry. But he said, when he went into the churches, he said, I realized, America's great because America's good. If America stopped being great, it'll stop being, if America stopped being good, it'll stop being great. And you have that tragic, all these years of Judah, up and down, but the Book of Ruth, right after, within the judges, Book of Ruth is a book of hope. Even a Moabitess woman that was from a cursed nation, when you trust and believe in God, God will bless you. And she became the great grandmother of King David. And God wasn't just the God of the Jews. He was a God of all people. He wanted everybody to be saved. Like Brian was preaching the other night, he's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And this is a little, I sort of borrowed some of them from Ken Ham and made up my own, but, you know, about Genesis. But if you can look through creation, corruption, the fall, the catastrophe, the flood, the confusion of the Tower of Babel, the calling and covenant with Abraham, the captivity in Egypt, the community when they came out, Ten Commandments at Sinai, the conquest, the cycle of corruption, the up and down of judges, you have the confidence with Ruth You have the crown. You have the crown when God made the anointed kings, Saul, David, and Solomon. So the first king, one syllable Saul. Second king, two syllables David. Third king, three syllables Solomon. But then you had the chasm when the North and South broke. You had Rehoboam and Jeroboam. And you had 19 bad kings in the north, 20 kings in the south, some good and some bad. And that little handout I gave you, I highlighted the good kings of Judah in yellow. And I put a time frame down for them. And again, you see just how, and then, They didn't listen. About 721, the northern tribes of Israel was taken captive by the Assyrians. And then you'd think their little brother Judah would learn, but they didn't. And in 605, Nebuchadnezzar came and took Daniel. I mean, yeah, Nebuchadnezzar came and took Daniel, the first deportation. In 597, he took Ezekiel. And in 586, he destroyed the temple, broke down the wall, and took them all captive, just leaving some of the ones that couldn't do anything. So you had three captivities of Babylon. So now they live in Babylon for 70 years, and that's when Daniel and Ezekiel was written. And after Cyrus came in, after that, and he says, who will go back, who will build? He said, God commanded me to build a house. And he said, who will go back of his people? And that's the last, that's what it ends in Chronicles. I mean, 2 Chronicles. That's a Jewish, like, well, what is our life gonna be like when this Gen-Kal King says, hey, go build me a house for God. And they were probably excited. Now, a lot of the Jewish rabbis don't like our ending, the book of Malachi, because it says, Malachi is saying, prepare for a Messiah. And it said, if not, I'm going to smite you with a curse. And then 400 years, God doesn't speak to him. I mean, it would be kind of a bummer to me, too. And so you can see why maybe some of the Jewish rabbis said, we don't like the way your English Bible is put together. Because it makes it like there's something else still to come. Well, we know there is something else. We got the New Testament. We got Christ. And so let's look at, we're gonna go run through the little book of the Bible. We got Genesis, it's about the beginnings. You have the creation, the fall, the flood, and the Tower of Babel. You got four important persons, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And from Genesis, from beginning to the end, you have almost, a little over 3,000 years. Yeah, it's 2,000, yeah. Well, over 2,000 years, just in the book of Genesis. And you know, Ken Ham talks about that's the foundation. You know, God starts revealing himself first in the book of Genesis. So if we don't know the Old Testament, we're not gonna have so complete of understanding of the Bible. You have Exodus, which means exit. So you had an exit sign back here. God said, take them out about, sorry, 1445 to 1405. And he leads them out of Egypt. So they go, leave Egypt, the Passover, April 14th. And then I can't remember the date in June, but 50 days later, you know, you ever hear about Feast of Pentecost? That's when they received the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai. So if you want to connect the two, it's from the time when we have Passover to to the Pentecost. That's from when they left Egypt to when they got the Ten Commandments. And we know what they did there. And so Exodus is all about them coming out. So it's in just a not too long a time period. Leviticus. Leviticus is a book that When people say, hey, I'm going to make a determination to read through the Bible this year. So they read Genesis. Oh, that does great. They get Exodus. A little harder. And they go Leviticus. I mean, what's this sacrifice and cleansing and all this other stuff? And they just give up. Well, if you read the first word in Leviticus, it starts with N. And that takes us back to the book of Exodus where God set up the tabernacle. Leviticus was a book written for the priest and it was tell God's people how they can have a relationship with God. How are you gonna go and stand before a holy God? You can't just come the way you want. You have to come a certain way. And Leviticus is a book that say this is how you can come and have a relationship with the holy almighty God. And I had a professor, he wrote a book on Christ in the tabernacle. So it, I mean, in Leviticus, Christ is our great high priest. The Old Testament is always a forward-looking book. It's always looking forward to something more. You know, you hear, you know, blood of bulls and goats never could take it away. But we have a sacrifice. Remember, John, behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world. If you don't know what sacrifices are for and what the prices they paid, you're going to have an incomplete understanding of what Christ did for us. You got numbers, that's when they went to the, up in Caged Bardeen, they complained and they had to wander around in the wilderness for 40 years. And numbers comes from when they took the two sentences. They had over 600,000 men, so they probably have two and a half million. I don't know what city, anybody know how many people Roanoke has in it? Probably not two and a half million, right? Can you imagine taking Roanoke and Lynchburg and Bedford and trying to lead that crew through a wilderness? I mean. I imagine a lot of us might complain, of course, but when we read Genesis and Numbers, maybe I better not. I don't wanna be bitten by any fiery serpents, right? So God puts him in there for a reason. Hey, stop complaining. I tell people at work sometimes, Bible says, why should a living man complain? I had a manager one time, I said, why are you always so happy? I said, well, if I got what I deserve, I'd be in hell. He goes, uh, yeah. So I think I took him by surprise. Deuteronomy, Deuto, second, nomos, lol, the second lol. Remember, most of these, I wouldn't say kids, parents died in the wilderness, right? So you've got a new group that came out of Egypt, that they're getting ready to go in the promised land, and Moses reminded them one more time, this is what God requires of you. This is what you're supposed to do. And Deuteronomy ends with, Moses said, there's gonna be another prophet that comes. Guess who that is? We read about him in the New Testament. He was born in Bethlehem. Joshua, almost the total book of victory, right? Joshua comes in and leads him through the promised land and he comes in and conquers. He defeats 31 cities, city states. He defeats them, divides them up and Joshua also takes you back to the law. He said, this book of the law shall not depart from you. And so It's interesting how the Bible ties itself together to one another. And Joshua lived for God, and served God, and loved God. But then, I said, we have the book of Judges. Up and down, up and down. And God said, hey, when you get blessed, when you come in there, don't forget me. Remember the mountain of blessing, the mountain of cursing? They would yell back and forth, said, if you do this, if you obey me, I'm gonna bless you. And they'd yell, if you do this, I'm going to curse you. You'd think they'd learn their lesson, but how many times do we not learn our lessons? We go back the same thing, same thing. Ruth, I said, that's a little ray of sunshine. She's a Moabitess who said, your God will be my God. Your people will be my people. And God showed that he has a love for anyone. that wants to love and follow Him. We looked at Joshua a minute ago. I think of Rahab. They call her a harlot. Well, you know, many of these people, their dads would just rent them out when they came in, because that was part of their religion. So I don't think she's probably all excited about doing that as a living, or burning up a little kid on a false idol. You know, there was probably many Canaanites that didn't like that. And even in Egypt, you had a mixed multitude came out. Now, many of them died, but Ruth, we have that glimmer of hope where she became the great-grandmother of David. First Samuel, that's, oh, let me go through these quick. I'm sorry, I put the, and here's the order they go. Genesis X, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Joshua, Judges fits right over here, over, Oh, sorry, Joshua, Judges, Ruth. Ruth fits right here. You had 1 Samuel. 1 Samuel is mostly a story of Saul, King Saul, the first king of Israel, the first anointed king. You have some other kings that sort of took over and we don't know if they were the kings of the whole country or not, but Saul was the first anointed king of Israel. And then you had 2 Samuel, right? You know, Saul was the people's choice. You know, it's always best if you let God make the choice. Don't settle for second best. Wait for what God wants you to do. Make sure that it's God's choice. You know, you pray, you ask vice, wisdom, read your Bible. Second Samuel is the life of David. And he is at the apex of the Jewish kingdom. His was considered the golden age of Israel. Then you have First Kings, guess who that's about? Anybody know? King Solomon. And it goes through Solomon's life. He comes in there and he started out so good. I mean, he had everything going for him. God spoke to him and said, hey, I'm gonna bless you. You're gonna be so rich that nobody will ever be like you. I'm gonna give you wisdom. And he did have wisdom for a while. You know, I think probably some of his books he wrote later in life and think, oh, yeah, I really blew it there. Then you have Second Kings, right? And Second Kings is about the division of the kingdom, where you got Rehoboam and Jeroboam split, and it was just a mess. Over and over again, you heard him like, you know, in Israel, How many times did they compare the bad kings to? And they did like unto Jeroboam. They did like to Jeroboam. So they were taking a king and comparing him to a bad king. Said, hey, he's just like Jeroboam. He's just like Jeroboam. And only one out topped him, Ahab. And they said Ahab did more to bother God than any other kings before him. And 1 Chronicles, where does that fit? Anybody know? Actually, it fits right here. And 2 Chronicles fit right here. Now, actually, anybody know the first person's name mentioned in 1 Chronicles? Amy? Can anybody name me the first name found in the book of Chronicles? Well, it's Adam. You think, well, why do we need 1 and 2 Chronicles and 1 and 2 Kings? Aren't they the same? Well, actually, no. But Kings was written by the prophets, and they were interested in the political issues, where Chronicles is a bit written by Ezra the priest, and he was interested in the spiritual life and how the kings related, were the kings obeying God. And Chronicles is sort of a whole snap picture, you know, a panoramic picture from Genesis to the end of the Old Testament. So he covers the whole thing, but most of it fits right here. Ezra, anybody know where Ezra fit? Well, there's a little thing called the Exile, and Ezra comes all the way over here. Nehemiah comes over here, and Esther comes probably right in between them. And They're what they call post-exilic, after the exile, where all these other ones so far is pre-exilic. Now, if these are the books of history, that means all of these have to fit somewhere in there. So when you're reading the Bible, just don't read Malachi and think, well, that doesn't fit with anything else. Malachi, Isaiah, Ezekiel, all of them were preaching to somebody. So I gave you that little time chart in there so when you're reading your Bible think okay who was Jonah preaching to? Who was Naam preaching to? Who was Obadiah preaching to? Who was Hosea preaching to? And Nehemiah, you know, Nehemiah, now I mentioned these post-exilic. You had three captivities, right? Well, you had three returns, too. You had Joshua and Zerubbabel. They led the first return back to Jerusalem. did a return to build the temple, Nehemiah did a return to build the wall. So I said, you know, your construction, to build the temple and to build the wall. And what was Esther? She was a ceremony. She was having a wedding. Hers was about the people who never did come back, that stayed in the dispersion. Job fits right over here in Genesis. It was probably the first book written. Job probably lived around the time of the patriarchs, because he lived to be 120 some years. So he probably lived around the time of Abraham or Isaac or Jacob. We're not sure exactly. Now some of these dates are, some of the prophets we have very good information about. They preach doing this king or this king or this king. Other ones give us very little, information about when they were. So to be off a few days, but I'm going what most conservatives take. You have the Psalms. Well, when was the Psalms written? Who wrote the Psalms? David. So that comes on, that comes on 2 Samuel. And think of it, David and Solomon was the golden age of Israel. Well, when do you do arts and crafts and culture? Not when you're struggling for survival, it's when you're prospering. You say, okay, let's build arts. So think of it. Proverbs, who wrote Proverbs? Solomon, that goes in 1 Kings. Ecclesiastes, go in 1 Kings. Song of Solomon, goes in 1 Kings. So when you read the Bible, try to fit, okay, where does this fit in the timeline? Isaiah, I'm trying to go through quick, let's see what time we got. Isaiah, he is probably the the Shakespeare of the Old Testament. He was written, I mean, he wrote in more flowing Hebrew than any other prophet. He wrote, there's more prophecies in his book about the Messiah than any other prophet. Many people say that it's the gospel of the Old Testament. His name means God saved. Well, where does he fit in? Second Kings. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, right? He was right before the captivity. He cried, he was heartbroken that people weren't obeying him. Where does Jeremiah fit in? In 2 Kings. Lamentations, where does Lamentations fit in? That was written by Jeremiah after, remember Jeremiah preached about God was gonna destroy Jerusalem if he didn't repent? Well, Lamentations is, the book he wrote after they were taken into captivity. He preached right to the end and into the captivity. And he lamented, but he said, Jerusalem, who used to be a queen, sets in ashes. But yet, even in there, God gives hope that he was going to restore Israel, that he was going to restore Judah and bring them back. So even in captivity, Ezekiel, He was taken in the second captivity. So we're going to put him in with the captivity. Daniel was taken in the first captivity, 605. Imagine yourself being a young, rich kid with a lot of potential, wise and handsome. And then you get taken to Babylon on the first captivity. And it's very possible he's made a eunuch. Because you read about that prophecy earlier in the Bible that it says that they're going to take your house, and there'll be eunuchs in the king's palace. So that could have happened to Daniel. We don't know. And then we have the 12 minor prophets. Or Daniel means God is judged. Could you see why Nebuchadnezzar wanted to change Daniel's name? Because every time he said, Daniel, God's going to judge you. God's the judge. God's the judge. Daniel's a story about a young man that said, they said, hey, we're going to bring you to Babylon. We're going to teach you the Babylonian language. We're going to teach you the Babylonian language. You're going to read and think and breathe Babylonian. And Daniel said, I'm not either. He was a man that wasn't going to compromise, whether it cost him his life or not. And God protected him. Now, sometimes God doesn't. We read in Hebrews, sometimes they They were sold asunder. Isaiah, the tradition has it that he was sold in half by Manasseh, probably the worst king of Judah. And the thing is, at the end of Manasseh's life, he repented. I think Brian and I was talking about it. Could you imagine when Manasseh died and he goes up into heaven and said, Isaiah, what are you doing here? You know, I would have liked to have seen that meeting. Well, yeah, it would have been nice if you would have repented earlier. Then you have Hosea. Guess where Hosea preaches? In 2 Kings. And Hosea is a love story of a husband that loved his wayward life. He bought her out of the slave market. And it just shows you the love God has for us. I mean, when I was reading this and studying it, I mean, there was a couple times I just cried thinking how much God loves me. And no matter how wicked I am, and how much out of the way I go, He still loves me. And He's constantly gone trying to bring us back, bring us back. But sometimes we're hard-headed. Joel, guess where Joel fits? And he warns about the day of the Lord, when God's gonna bring judgment upon the world. I'm gonna try to go quick. Amos, Burden Bearer, guess where he fits? Second Kings. And you can read some of it. Obadiah, same name. Obadiah, the servant of the Lord. And he preached against Edom. And he said, that proud city, if any of you see the movie or watch video clips of Indiana Jones, he's gone into this city, they go through this valley, and you see this big rock city, that's Petra. That's Edom. And they thought, we can never lose. Nobody can get in here. We got these mountains to protect us. We got these valleys. If they'd have to come through, they'd be sitting ducks. And God said, you're going to be deserted. The goats and the owls are going to be there. Well, God never brought an enmity story. He just moved the trade route. And when the money dried up, the city dried up. You know, they went with the money, and God told them, and they thought, oh, and God warned them because they thought, they laughed when they found out Israel went into captivity, and they wanted Judah to go into captivity. And when they should have been praying and helping their cousins, they didn't care for them, they attacked them. Jonah, well, we talked about Jonah some, what's Jonah? He's the one God said, hey, I want you to go preach to the Syrians, the Ninevites. He said, if not, I'm going to destroy them. Well, go ahead and destroy them. I'm going on a Mediterranean cruise. Forget this. And he jumped on a boat, got a little flip into the ocean, got swallowed up by a whale, puked up on the shore, said, OK, God, OK, I got your attention. He goes to Ninevites and preaches. And pastor, how would you like to have a sermon like this? 40 days, God's gonna overthrow Nineveh. He doesn't tell him to repent, because he didn't want him to repent. He doesn't tell him to repent. He doesn't tell him anything other than the bare minimum. And then he goes out on the hillside, and 120,000 people repent and turn to God. Now, pastor, have you ever had a message like that? Preach those short little words, and 120,000 people get saved? And God said, hey, I care more about, and he was complaining about his gourd and his vine. He said, I care more about souls than your comfort. And I imagine Jonah got right since it's in the Bible now. But God sometimes has to deal with his servants, you know, sometimes with pastors, with, you know, just regular people. You know, sometimes God, you know, we don't always have the right attitude. Anybody else here like that, like me? We don't always have the right attitude. Micah fits right there. Micah was the preacher who prophesied that, remember when the wise men came looking for the king of the Jews? It's Micah they quoted, said, hey, he's gonna be born in a little village, Ephrata, Judea. Said, he just, you know. That's where that quote comes from, from Micah. And he didn't even mean, who is like Jehovah? And he warns them, he warns them. Of course, they're constantly warned. Naaman, comfort. And guess where that fits? I was gonna say, I hope it doesn't fall. And you say, boy, look at all those prophets. Do you think God was trying to get their attention? God didn't want to bring judgment on them. He wanted them to repent. But how often They, we, we don't always listen to God. We keep wanting to go our own way. Habakkuk means embrace. He complained about the wickedness of his country, right? And then when God said he was going to use Assyrian Nineveh, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, God, wait, I didn't mean to get that drastic, right? You know, Zephaniah, Jehovah hides, and he, you know, constantly he tells people to repent, and he was probably from, like I said, a royal family. We got Haggai, that's, at least I can put that one over here, that's in the post-exilic. He told him, hey, you need to go back and finish building the temple. Rebuild it, serve God, love God, right? Zechariah, Jehovah remembers, and he talks about the final coming battle. He says, repent, there's gonna be a great battle one day. And then, last but not least, Malachi. He tells the people, and warns them, hey, you said you love God, but you robbed me, you cheat me. And Malachi says, you need to repent and prepare for the coming Messiah. And what's the last verse? Or I'm gonna smite the land with a curse. And what happened? They rejected the Messiah. They didn't accept the Messiah. And what happened? 70 AD, the Romans came in and smited the country of Israel because God's people didn't accept God's word and God's judgment. Just to give a quick how the Bible is unified. In Genesis you have God created the heavens and the earth. In Revelation you have a new heaven and a new earth. And this comparing the first three chapters of Genesis to the last three chapters of Revelation. In Genesis it says God called the darkness night. In Revelation 21 it said there is no night. In Genesis 1, it says, he made two great lights. In Revelation 21, there's no need for the sun, for God himself is a light. Genesis 6, 3, 6, defilement entered. He said, man fell. In Revelation 21, 27, there shall no wise enter to anything that defiles. In Genesis 3, 8, man lost his fellowship with God. In Revelation, it says, we shall behold his face. In Genesis 3, Satan had an initial victory. Man fell. In Revelation, the devil's cast into the lake of fire. In Genesis 3, they said, I'll multiply your sorrow. In Revelation 21-4, it says, neither shall there be any more pain. The curse. In Genesis 3, God cursed the ground. In Revelation 23, and there shall be no more curse. In Genesis, man lost dominion. In Revelation, we shall reign with him forever and ever. In Genesis 3, he sent man from paradise and from the tree of life. In Revelation 21, we shall walk in the light. We shall walk with God. And again, the tree of life, he said, God put a cherubim there to keep man from the tree of life so they wouldn't live in a forever sinful state. In Revelation 22, so we have the right to eat from the tree of life. And in heaven, it's 12 fruits buried every month. In Genesis 3, he drove man out from his presence. In Revelation 22, they shall see his face. God did for, we'll stop right there. God did for us what we couldn't do for ourselves. And if you have a better understanding of the Old Testament, it's like the more I know my wife, the more I love my wife. The more we know about God, the more we should be able to love God and see what he did for me. I mean, Jonah, he didn't want to preach to the Assyrians. They didn't deserve a grace. Well, yeah, but neither did I. Ruth didn't deserve grace, right? She was a Moabitess. But neither did I. I deserved hell. But the God who started in Genesis 3, 6, 3, 15 said, one day I'm going to send a seed that will destroy this curse so that you can have fellowship with me, that you won't go through pain. And we as believers have something so great to look forward to that we can share and tell to others. So as you read through the Bible, read the Old Testament and just see the wonders of God, the blessings of God, how God went over and over again and gave himself, literally gave himself on the cross. He told Abraham, God, Abraham said, God shall provide himself a lamb. And in Christ Jesus, Christ was not only the lamb, he was the prophet. He was a priest. He was a king. He was a kingdom and redeemer. He was The lover in Song of Solomon, he was so much. And if you can just get a small taste of the wonders and glories of his word and what he did for us, I believe you'll be blessed. Let's pray. Dear God, again, we thank you for your blessings. I thank you just for this opportunity to teach your word. And Lord, I pray that we might just love it more and more and that we'll just share it with others. So Lord, thank you for your blessings. Thank you for each one here, and I pray that you might bless them. And Lord, make them a blessing to others. And we just thank you and praise you and ask this all in Jesus' precious name. Amen. Thank you all.