Harvest Pointe Christian Church, Milford Ohio is a non-denominational Christian Church (Church of Christ) on the Eastside of Cincinnati OH

The Books of Law | Series: Bible 101 | 01-31-10

The Books of Law
Series: Bible 101

Basic Facts about the Bible

The Bible is unique because:
    It claims to be the Word of God.
    It is a library of 66 Books by 40 Authors over 1500 Years.
    It is divided into two main sections:  The Old Testament and The New Testament.

The Old Testament has 39 books          The New Testament has 27 books

Its transforming power.  Hebrews 4:12

Main Character # 1: Adam.  Theme:  Curse
Genesis 1:1, Genesis 2:7, Genesis 1:28, Genesis 3:1, 4-5

Main Character # 2: Noah.  Theme:  Catastrophe
Genesis 6:5-7, 13-15, II Peter 3:3-7, 9

Main Character # 3: Abraham.  Theme:  Covenant
Genesis 12:1-3, Genesis 15:6

Main character # 4:  Moses.  Theme:  Deliverance
Exodus 3:6-8, I Corinthians 15:22

Full Text 

True story.  There was a brilliant man who got a 4 year degree in 3 and was valedictorian of his class.  About the time of his graduation, we were having gas wars.  In fact, I have paid 19 cents a gallon for gas.  In order to cut costs, gas stations were changing from full service to self-serve.  So this brilliant man got a friend to teach him how to put gas in his car.  It took 45 minutes for him to get it. 

Will Rogers once said, "We're all ignorant.  We're just ignorant in different fields."  And that is so true.  I am convinced almost all of us are very good in some areas.  But there are areas we are not so good in.  It has to do with the way God wired us, our interests and what we have studied.

Most of us here have not gone to Bible College and studied the Bible.  So today we're beginning a series on four elementary lessons about the Bible.  This will be a series to help you get started understanding the Bible.  If you are familiar with the Bible, this will be a review, but I hope it will also be a tool that you can use in communicating the basics to others.

Let's begin by looking at some Basic Facts about the Bible. 

The Bible is unique because it claims to be the Word of God.

All through the Bible we read:
"The word of the Lord came to me";
"This is what the Lord says";
"All Scripture is God breathed";
"No prophecy had its origin in the will of man but holy men of God spoke as
they were guided by the Holy Spirit";
"You accepted the Word as it really is-the word of God."
This unique book claims to be the Word of God.

The Bible is also unique in that it is a library of 66 books written by 40 different authors over a period of 1500 years.

Can you imagine a medical journal written by 40 different doctors dating from 500 AD to present? It would be filled with contradictions.  If someone has a high fever you give them hot baths or you pack them in ice.  If someone is sick you cut their wrists and let them bleed the poisons out or you give them some medicine.  If someone has an infection, you put maggots in the wound to eat out the dead flesh or you give antibiotics.  But the Bible was written over a period of 1500 years by 40 different authors and there is a consistency to its message and its content. 

The Bible is actually 66 individual books.  Originally it was written on scrolls.  When the Church was being persecuted, there was an effort to destroy the Bible as well.  So Christians invented book binding to make the Bible easier to hide.  You can imagine how hard it would be to hide 66 scrolls.

The Bible is also unique because it is divided into two main sections:
The Old and the New Testaments.

That big word, "testament" means a covenant.  It is simply a legal agreement.  Have you heard of a marriage covenant?  Marriage is a legal agreement.  Have you heard of someone writing their last will and testament?  It is a legal arrangement.  The Bible tells about 2 different wills that God has made with humans.

Let's say you have a rich uncle who writes out a will in 1990 and you are not in it.  But through the years you got to know him so in 2009 he writes out a second will and he leaves you a million dollars.  In January of 2010 he dies.  Now, which of those 2 wills is going to be in effect?  The second one.  (And you would be glad, right!?)

Now, God had two wills.  The first was with the Jewish people.  It is called the Old Testament.  If you wanted to worship God, you became a Jew.  The Jewish law was filled with rules and regulations and a lot of ceremony.  It was all a shadow of the reality of God's second will, the New Testament.  Included in the rules was the 10 Commandments.  The problem was that no one kept them all.  All of mankind has broken at least one of them.  Most of us have broken all but a few.  That means no one is good enough to be in a sinless Heaven.

So God established a new will, a New Testament.  This one is with all mankind.  Colossians 2:13-14 tells us that "13When you were dead in your sins … God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14having canceled the written code [the Old Testament], with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross."  When Jesus died on the cross, the old will, the Old Testament died with Him.  With His resurrection we have a New Testament, a new agreement between God and man in which I John 1:7 tells us the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin.

Now, there are 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament for a total of 66 books.

The Bible is also unique because of its transforming power.

Hebrews 4:12 says "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."  All other books are dead books but there's something about this book that comes alive.

Ravi Zaccharias is a great philosopher.  He tells of how he was actually considering suicide at one point in his life.  But the Word of God has changed him completely.  God's Word changes lives and it's worth your time to learn about this fascinating book.

According to the International Bible Society, between 1860 and 1975, two billion…billion copies of the Bible were sold.  The next bestseller was 250 times less than the Bible.

Now, if there was a letter that promised you that if you would follow its instructions, you'd get 1 million dollars, you'd read every line carefully.  The Bible promises you the forgiveness of sin and life for eternity.  Shouldn't we study it carefully?

Let's see the divisions of the Old Testament.  This is a simple break down.

The 1st group, beginning with Genesis, is the books of Law.  Even though there is history and prophecy in them, here you can find the 10 Commandments and all the laws the Jews lived under.

The next group, beginning with Joshua is History.  They contain the history of the Jews from the time they entered Israel, through a time of captivity, and their return to Israel.

Then, beginning with Job, comes Poetry.  Again you can find history and prophecy in them, but they are poetic in style.  Instead of rhyming the last words, Jewish poetry repeated a thought in different words.  The most famous is the 23rd Psalm.

The last 2 groups are both prophets.  They are the Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets.  The reason for the terms Major and Minor is just that the Major Prophets are longer. 

Now, the 66 books of the Bible are not in chronological order.  You cannot sit down and read the Bible from beginning to end like you would a novel.  Except for Job, the books of Poetry and the Major and Minor Prophets all occur chronologically within the books of history.  So what were going to do for the next two weeks is focus on some of the main characters and give you an overview of the history.  That way, as you read the Old Testament, you can hang some events and other people on these characters and hopefully it will make more sense to you.

Today we are going to cover the first 5 books of the Bible.  They were written by Moses and we call them the books of Law.  Let's look at four major characters that the story develops around.

Main Character # 1: Adam.

As the scientific evidence against evolution continues to mount, the heat of the debate over evolution and creationism spirals.  But the very first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, simply states, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."  It just assumes that when you look at this complex creation you have to believe that there is a Creator. 

Genesis 2:7.  "The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."  God saw that it was not good for the man to be alone, so He took a rib from Adam's side and created Eve to be his companion.

Now, there is a radical environmentalism that wants the earth back in its natural state; wild and untouched.  They believe all the climate change and everything is because of humans and that the world would be better off without humans. 

But after creating Adam and Eve, We read in Genesis 1:28, "God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'"  You will find that word, "subdue" 33 times in the NIV.  Every other time it used of a nation or a person being subdued.  Strong's says the word means, "to … overcome, enslave: .. be brought under control."  In other words, God intended for us humans to conquer and use the earth.  God never intended for the earth to be wild and untouched.

Also, there is a move today to give animals the same rights as humans.  Lawyers are even trying to sue on behalf of animals.  They are against zoos and aquariums.  But, did you catch the words, "Rule over"?  We are to rule over the animal kingdom.  We are superior to all of creation.  We alone are spiritual beings.

(Now this is not a logical argument, but it's cute, OK?)  Someone said, "You never see a chicken coming back across the road and saying, "I saw a KFC. I found out why we're here."  But man asks those spiritual questions.

God also created us with a freedom of will.  He created man with the capacity to obey him or disobey him, to accept or to reject his love.  To prove man has the freedom of choice there had to be at least one opportunity to disobey.  So God placed 2 special trees in the center of the Garden of Eden.  One was the Tree of Life and the other was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  And God said, "You can eat of every tree in the Garden of Eden EXCEPT the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, because when you do you will die."

Now, as long as they obeyed, Adam and Eve had perfect fellowship with God and they could have chosen to eat of the Tree of Life and we all would have lived forever.  How cool would that have been!

But one day Satan, a fallen angel, the archenemy of God, came to Eve to tempt her.  Satan said to Eve in Genesis 3:1, "…Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"  When Eve told him of the one restriction, Satan lied. Genesis 3:4-5, "'4You will not surely die,' the serpent said to the woman. 5 'For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'"  So Eve ate some and gave some to Adam.  Immediately they both realized they were naked.  So they made clothes from fig leaves.

God would walk through the garden in the cool of the day and talk with Adam and Eve.  But on this day, Adam and Eve hid from God.  When God asked them where they were, Adam said, "We're hiding because we're naked!"  God asked, "Who told you you were naked?  Have you eaten from the tree I told you not to eat from?  And Adam did the manly thing and said, "That woman gave it to me!  It's your fault, God.  You made her!"  And Eve was no better.  She said, "The snake tricked me!"

So the theme of Adam and Eve is Curse.

God cursed the snake because Satan used it.  It lost its legs.

And God cursed Satan as He gave the first prediction of Jesus.  God said a descendant of Eve was coming.  Satan would wound His heel, but He would give Satan a death-blow.  Satan wounded Jesus with the cross.  But Jesus rose from the grave and dealt Satan the death blow!

And Eve and all mothers were cursed in that pain in childbirth was greatly increased.  When Marsha was in labor one time she said, "I hate Eve!"

And Adam's curse was thorns and thistles and the ground had to be worked to produce. 

But worst of all, death entered the world.  The next time a loved one dies, Don't blame God.  Get mad at Satan.  All of us are cursed because of sin.

Main Character # 2: Noah

The world became increasingly sinful.  Adam and Eve's son, Cain, murdered his brother, Abel, because he was jealous.  From there evil multiplied and spread throughout the whole world:  Polygamy, intermarriage with evil people, violence, murder.

Genesis 6:5-9 says, "5 The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the LORD said, 'I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth-men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air-for I am grieved that I have made them.'" 

It all seems so hopeless.  God is going to destroy the earth.  And then we find in Verse 8, "8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. 9 This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God."  Noah was living a righteous life in the middle of a moral cesspool, and God is always full of grace.

So in verse 13 we read, "13 So God said to Noah, 'I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.'"

This was no cute little house boat with a giraffe sticking its head out the top.  The next time you look at a football field, picture in your mind that football field's length, and add to that length another half of a field.  That was the minimum length of the ark.  Then look at the width of the football field and half of that distance is the width of the ark.  Then take the height of this ceiling and double it for the ark's height.

Dr. Henry Morris in his book, The Genesis Record, said the ark had a capacity of 1,400,000 square feet because it had three levels, or 522 standard livestock cars of which 72,000 animals could be housed using only 60% capacity.  Estimates are as low as only 2,000 animals being needed to produce the types of animals we know today.

Now, the theme of Noah is Catastrophe.

Noah built the ark, and the animals came to him.  God shut the door and about 2300 B.C., for the first time it rained and water from under-ground came up.  It rained for 40 days and nights.  The whole earth was covered.  Even the mountain tops were more than 20 feet under water.  For a year and 10 days Noah, his family, and the animals were in the ark.

Don't you wish that along the way Noah would have accidentally stepped on a couple of mice and roaches?  Maybe slapped a couple of mosquitoes?

This terrible catastrophe was God's judgment on this earth.  But afterwards, God made a beautiful promise.  He put the rainbow in the sky and promised that He would never destroy the earth with a flood again.

II Peter 3:3-7.  "3…In the last days scoffers will come, … following their own evil desires. 4They will say, 'Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.' 5But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.  And the reason God would wait so long is found in Verse 9.  "… He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

So the story of Noah is a story of catastrophe because of sin.  And a reminder that God will one day judge the earth with fire.

Main Character # 3: Abraham.

Now, Abraham is the father of the Jewish race.  After the Flood, you would think people would never sin again.  But just months later Noah got drunk and things went downhill from there. 

God had told Noah and his sons to have children and spread out over the earth, filling it with people again.  But Noah's descendants decided to stick together and stay in one place.  They even built the huge Tower of Babel as a rallying point to keep everyone in one place.  Everyone spoke the same language at this point.  so God gave each family a different language and they spread out across the world.

Then, about 1900 B.C. along comes Abraham.  This time, instead of destroying the earth, God made a covenant, a legal agreement.  The theme of Abraham is Covenant.

Look at Genesis 12:1-3.  "1 The LORD had said to Abram, 'Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. 2 'I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.'"

God promised Abraham that his descendants would become a great, special nation.  Abraham was the Father of the Jewish nation.  And the whole world was to be blessed through them-not because they were so good, but because our Savior was going to come through that race to redeem the world.

Abraham was a great man of faith.  Abraham left his friends and family and traveled as God led to the land of Israel.  Abraham didn't know where he was going, but he went any way because he believed God.

And Abraham believed God's promise of his descendants becoming a great nation, even though that child of promise wasn't born until Abraham was 100 and his wife, Sarah, was 90 years old.  Can you imagine filling out the Medicare forms and writing down "Pregnancy"?

Then God tests Abraham's faith.  He tells Abraham to sacrifice his only child, Isaac, on an altar on Mount Moriah.  But Abraham believed so strongly God's promise of his descendants being a great nation, that he believed God would raise Isaac from the dead.  But God stopped Abraham before he did it.  Abraham obeyed even tough commandments because of his strong faith in God.

Genesis 15:6 is repeated 4 times in the Bible.  It says, "Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness."  God considered Abraham righteous because of his faith.  And God considers you and me righteous, not because we're so good but because we trust God's Word is true that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.

Well, Abraham's son Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau.  Jacob had twelve sons who became the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

And along with twelve sons, you have sibling rivalry.  Ten of the brothers hated their brother Joseph and sold him to slave traders.  Joseph wound up in Egypt and was faithful to God.  God blessed him and he became the number two man in Egypt.  Only Pharaoh was greater.

There was a great famine and only Egypt had food.  So Jacob and his family, 75 in all, left the land of Canaan and moved to Egypt.  Joseph welcomed them there and they stayed in Egypt. 

Eventually, however, there arose a Pharaoh who didn't know Joseph.  There are so many of these descendents of Abraham now that Pharaoh began to feel threatened by them, so he turned them into slaves.  That's how the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob became slaves in Egypt.

Main character # 4:  Moses.
Theme:  Deliverance

For 400 years the Israelites were in bondage in Egypt.  The more the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham were oppressed, the more God blessed and multiplied them.

Moses lived in Egypt as the son of a princess until he was 40 years old.  He was so upset over the mistreatment of his people, that he killed an Egyptian who was especially bad.  So he fled Egypt and spent the next 40 years as a shepherd in Midian.  Then God spoke to him through a burning bush that was not being consumed.

In Exodus 3:6-8 God said, "'6 … I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.' At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. 7 The LORD said, 'I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey…'"

So Moses reluctantly returned to Egypt to free the Israelites.  It took ten terrible plagues. Finally, the Egyptians freed the Israelites and gave them great treasures to leave.  But Pharaoh changed his mind and pursued them.  God divided the waters of the Red Sea and the Israelites went to the other side.  Pharaoh's army tried to follow and God let the waters go back and they drowned.  Moses led the Israelites back to the land of Israel, but did not enter himself.

Now, each of these four people are symbols of Jesus Christ who came to be our Savior.  I Corinthians 15:22. "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive."  Through Noah, God spared humankind.  Through Jesus, God spares us from the penalty of sin.  Abraham sacrificing is son, Isaac, on the altar is a symbol that God would send his Son into the world to be a sacrifice for our sins.  Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt is a symbol of Jesus leading us out of the slavery of sin into the freedom of the Father.

If you are still enslaved to sin, come forward as we sing and we'll help you confess your faith in Jesus and be buried with Him in baptism.  Or if you've already done that and would like to place your membership with our loving congregation, come as we stand and sing.

Based on a 09/01/1999 sermon by Bob Russell of South East Christian Church, Louisville, Kentucky