What’s in the Old Testament?

We commonly refer to the Bible as a “book” – in fact, it is the best-selling book of all-time.  However, the Bible itself is a collection of 66 individual books.  These books were written over approximately 1500 years, by 40 different authors, and in 3 different languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek).

Through the Holy Spirit, God inspired the authors to write His words and His message to humanity.  Each author brought their own experiences, concerns, and writing style…and as such, we have a variety of literature types within the Scriptures.  The major division of the Bible’s books is between the Old Testament and the New Testament.  For this blog post, we’ll look at what God has said in the Old Testament:

Old Testament – This is a collection of 39 books of ancient Hebrew literature, which begins with the story of Creation and the fall of humanity into sin, which separates all of us from God.  These texts continue through the establishment and history of the nation of Israel, which are broken down into 4 major categories:

Torah/Pentateuch – These are the 5 books of Moses.  Torah is Hebrew for “teaching” and Pentateuch simply means “five books”.  These books detail out how God created everything, but quickly focus in on the establishment of the nation of Israel.  The books include: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

History – These 12 books travel through Israel’s many ups and downs as they struggle between keeping in step with God and doing everything on their own.  Many of the familiar Old Testament stories are found in these books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

Poetry/Wisdom – This is a collection of some of the most interesting and beautiful poetry you’ve ever read.  Many common sayings we still use today trace their origins back to this section of the Bible.  These books include: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.

Prophecy – God sent many prophets to Israel throughout the centuries.  Their writings are divided into what is call the “Major Prophets” and the “Minor Prophets”.  However, that distinction has nothing to do with the importance of their individual message, rather the prophets’ writings are divided up by size, with the Major Prophets having significantly bigger texts than the Minor Prophets:

Major Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel
Minor Prophets: Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi

After Malachi’s teaching, God did not send a prophet to speak to Israel for approximately 400 years.  Then everything changed with the arrival of Jesus. 

Some modern-day Christians have wondered if it’s worth our time to read and study the Old Testament.  After all, since Jesus came and saved us, wouldn’t His teachings be enough for us to focus on?

The Apostle Paul had to say this to the church he planted in Corinth, in reference to the events of the Old Testament:

1 Corinthians 10:11
These things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our instruction

There are three ways to learn – by instruction, by example, or the hard way.  God has given us instruction and examples in the Old Testament so we don’t have to learn the hard way.  As such, it’s definitely worth our time to see what God has to say in those books.

Keep Pressing,
Ken

It's not your job

After directing John to make sure all his worship and adoration is properly directed toward God, the angel continues:

Revelation 22:10-11
Then he said to me, “Don’t seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, because the time is near.  Let the unrighteous go on in unrighteousness; let the filthy still be filthy; let the righteous go on in righteousness; let the holy still be holy.”

This is John’s next step – to make the prophecy given to him available to others.  Verse 11 deals with the response of the people who hear the prophecy – what they do, which pours out of who they are. 

Notice, too, that the angel doesn’t put the responsibility of the people’s response on John’s shoulders. 

This is similar to what God said to Ezekiel about his preaching to the nation of Israel:

Ezekiel 3:27
But when I speak with you, I will open your mouth, and you will say to them, ‘This is what the Lord God says.’ Let the one who listens, listen, and let the one who refuses, refuse – for they are a rebellious house.

Jesus also gave a similar statement in many of his parables and to the churches at the beginning of Revelation – let anyone who has ears to hear, listen…

As much as we may want to, we can’t make the Salvation choice for others.  Each person is responsible before God for what they decide to do with the gospel message.  Whether they are our child, our spouse, our leaders, our co-workers…it’s not our responsibility to choose for them.

Truthfully, that’s freeing thought.  I can’t shoulder the load to make sure everyone chooses to believe in Christ for eternal life, that burden is too much for me.  Thankfully, God never puts that burden on us.

The best thing we can do for them is to share the message we’ve been given, just like John was instructed to do with his message.

And what is our message?  Here’s what Paul had to say about that:

2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!

Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.  That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making His appeal through us.  We plead on Christ’s behalf: “Be reconciled to God.”  He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

They need us to be ambassadors, but they don’t need us to choose for them.

Keep Pressing,
Ken