222 lines
9.1 KiB
Markdown
222 lines
9.1 KiB
Markdown
# Bible Basics
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## Purpose
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The purpose of this resource is for people know and know how to read the Bible.
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If you are learning about ideas that are (supposedly) from the Bible, but you
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are not learning the Bible, your discipleship is deficient.
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We need to be able to go directly to the foundation that is God's Word.
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Famously, our Lord, in Matthew 4:4, quotes Deuteronomy 8:3, in saying, "Man
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shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of
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God."
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There is value in studying a wide array of resources, but no resource will feed
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your soul like the Word of Yahweh.
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No other resource is as essential and powerful as God's Word.
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God can use anything in our lives, but there is no other resource that we can
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have the same expectation that He will show up for us as when we honor Him by
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going to Him in His Word.
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The original context in Deuteronomy 8 involves a lengthy, decades long,
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teaching of our need for God's Word.
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For some, this need is more readily apparent.
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For me, like the Israelites of Moses' day, it was taught in time.
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But these words now ring true to me, and so I set forth on this worthy mission
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to help people know the Word of God.
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When I was a young believer, I remember getting great benefit from my early
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readings of New Testament books.
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Matthew and Mark really fleshed out my understanding of who the Lord Jesus is.
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Matthew 5 and 6 taught me about the nature of sin.
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Acts gave me a glimpse at life in the early years after our Lord's ascension.
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But then I decided to go to Jeremiah.
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I had heard a bad sermon at a youth camp that talked about how Jeremiah was
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young like us, and so I decided that would be my next book of the Bible to
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read.
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That was a big mistake.
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Jeremiah can be a confusing book even for veteran readers of the Bible, as
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someone barely versed in the New Testament, I got precious little out of it.
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I soon stalled out and my Bible reading remained in a pretty discouraging state
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for a long time.
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I came back to the Bible at times.
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I was greatly blessed in my reading of John, as it fleshed out my understanding
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the Holy Spirit.
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But the Bible still seemed like too daunting of a thing ever be truly familiar
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with.
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There were certainly other problems in the mix for me, but those might have
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been greatly mitigated with a better understanding of God's Word.
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Thinking back to my fist experience with Jeremiah, let us have a look at the
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first paragraph and list all of the things I probably did not understand at the
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time, but really should have before diving into this book.
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Jeremiah 1:1-3 (ESV):
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> The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in
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> Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the LORD came in the
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> days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of
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> his reign. It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of
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> Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of
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> Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.
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1. "the land of Benjamin" - I probably did not know anything about the tribes
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of Israel, so the land of Benjamin would have been meaningless to me.
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2. Josiah, king of Judah - Again, I knew nothing of the tribes. I also knew
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nothing of the split of Israel. So likely no idea why we were talking about
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the king of a place called Judah!
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If I had read 2 Kings, I would know about Josiah, and I would know that he
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was a very good king who live at a very unfortunate time. I would also have
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learned about Josiah's successors, who are listed here and were not so good.
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3. "the captivity of Jerusalem" - I knew some about Jerusalem, as it features
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heavily in the Gospels, but I had no real understanding of why it was
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significant to this generation. Also, it speaks of the captivity of
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Jerusalem as something I should already know about. I knew nothing of why
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such a thing would be happening or why it might be significant.
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Perhaps we can infer some of what we need to know, but that is still a lot of
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haphazard guess work to make it through one paragraph.
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It is much better if we simply say that books like Jeremiah have prerequisites.
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That is the purpose of this resource.
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I want to provide a tour through a series of books in the Bible that provide an
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understanding of the overall narrative of Scripture so that we can then
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understand the rest.
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Understanding the narrative gives us a skeletal structure that gives form to
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Scripture.
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It takes us from a place of seeing the Bible as a messy blob to knowing it as a
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masterfully crafted view of our holy God and his manifold wisdom in the Gospel.
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## The Gospel
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Speaking of which...
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Before we dive into this resource, we really do need to discuss why any of
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this matters.
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Hopefully, you are already familiar with the Gospel and have experienced the new
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birth.
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Regardless, please do read this section before you go any further.
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Some might think of this as a spoilers section.
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But while this resource does focus on a narrative, it is not about suspenseful
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story telling.
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We are where we are in history.
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We want to know how we got here, but we already know, at least up til this
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point in history, where this story goes anyway.
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And our time has certain pressing realities that we can know without knowing
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how we got here.
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We *should* know the pressing realities of our time.
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And there is no more pressing of a reality than our sin and God's righteous
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judgment against it.
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## Know Your Translations
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## Know Your Bible
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Below is a list of books of the Bible that should give a basic understanding of
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the general thrust of the Bible.
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This plan will lead us through 18 out of the 66 books of the Bible.
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Some are only partial.
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My trusty little *ESV Personal Reference Bible* has 1439 pages in it (not
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counting legal notices, concordance, and the like).
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Below, I have counted out the number of pages in each of the books listed in
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this plan.
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You almost certainly have a different print and likely have a different
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translation, and so the numbers will not match up, but this should give you
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some idea of the proportions of what this skeleton looks like compared to the
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whole Bible.
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| Book | Pages |
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| ------------------ | ----------:|
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| Genesis | 56 |
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| Exodus | 46 |
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| Numbers | 47 |
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| Deuteronomy | 42 |
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| Joshua | 27 |
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| Judges | 28 |
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| 1 Samuel | 35 |
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| 2 Samuel | 30 |
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| 1 Kings | 33 |
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| 2 Kings | 34 |
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| Daniel 1-6 | 9 |
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| Ezra | 10 |
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| Nehemiah | 15 |
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| Matthew | 40 |
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| John 14-17 | 4 |
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| Acts | 38 |
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| Galatians | 5 |
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| 1 Corinthians 1-15 | 14 |
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| | Total: 513 |
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That is roughly 35.65% of the Bible.
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We certainly do not want to stop at 35% of Bible.
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Shoot for 100%. Many times over.
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Shoot for 5000%!
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But if you get through this 35%, the other 65% should be much easier to
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approach than if you had not read this basic outline.
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## What To Expect
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### How To Read The Bible
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The Bible is not a novel, genres, etc.
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### Tripping Hazards
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Christianity has boundaries to what it considers orthodox.
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While it is a bit less formal, cultures also have boundaries of orthodoxy.
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There are certain beliefs that will put one outside the bounds of
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respectability.
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Sometimes Christ and culture agree.
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Whether someone boasts of being an Arian or an Aryan, they are Biblically
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heterodox.
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The Bible was not written in our time.
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The Bible was not written in our grandparent's time, nor was it written their
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grandparent's time.
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The Bible was *finished* around 2000 years ago.
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The Bible is not of our time, but it was written for our time, because it was
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written for all times.
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The Bible offends different times in different ways.
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For many people in the 1800s, the Bible would be too anti-slavery.
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For us today, it is often seen as too pro-slavery.
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Though it is decidedly against our modern conceptions of slavery with Paul's
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excoriating treatment of *enslavers*, so I do not think that is really the
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biggest hurdle in the contemporary western world.
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Before we continue, consider again the enormous breadth of human experiences
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across the vastness of years and continents that the Bible has addressed.
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Do you expect that the eternal God, the Ancient of Days, who's Word this is
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really shares all of your culture's values?
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Is God basically a 21st century American?
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Or should we expect that we, like all cultures of all times and all places,
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need correction in some areas?
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God is holy.
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He is otherly.
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Calling God great is an appropriate, but somewhat strange adulation.
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God is not simply great, He is greatness.
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It is like calling Christ Christian.
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Is Christ his own disciple?
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<Consider pulling from God's rebuke of Job here.>
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This is the God whose Word we are approaching.
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You are a sinner who has distorted God's design for creation, He is holy.
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He is not like you, and his ways are above yours.
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Be ready to change.
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For us today, the biggest hurdles undoubtedly center around the sexual
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revolution.
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Namely feminism and homosexuality.
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