All right, we'll begin this morning in prayer and then we'll continue forward with this Bible study on God's Word. Heavenly Father, we praise you. You've given us another day to glory and worship in you alone through your son, the Lord Jesus. We're so thankful for the time we have together, and we ask that your spirit would work according to your will and purpose in our minds and our hearts. Lord, we just ask that you would continue to strengthen us through the truth of your word, that we would See our need to draw near to your word for it draws us near to your son and the spirit uses your word to deal with our souls. So we want to give you thanks and honor and glory for giving us your holy word. Lord, we're weak minded and we are in need of your help this morning. We also have many different difficulties and trials and concerns that may weigh heavy on our minds and our hearts. And Lord, we ask for you to be merciful to us. Lord, there are some who have been sick among us and we ask for your mercy upon them that you would bring us back together soon with all of those who have been ill, Lord, we do pray for Scott Autry's grandfather, who's in the hospital this morning. Ask your mercies upon his body. Lord, he's lived a long life, and you've been merciful to him in many ways. And we are so thankful that on the two distant paths, you brought him to a place to publicly profess his faith in you. What a glorious thing. Just be merciful to his mind and his body as he's in the hospital. Give the doctors wisdom. Lord we continue to pray for Bethany Muscle and the doctors are still seeking some clarity on what may be ailing her. We're so thankful that she does feel better and we ask that you be merciful to the doctors in coming weeks. Pray for her as she's still on some medications and Lord we ask your mercy upon her body And Lord, we're so thankful for the time we have this morning. We ask that you would give us pause for all the things around us in the world that we could listen and think about the truth of your word. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. We'll probably turn to some different scriptures this morning. You can go ahead and open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 3. We'll be there momentarily. We'll kind of move along in some places this morning. This section is coming under a heading that I briefly ended with last week. God used man to write his word. For a few weeks, we've been looking at the internal evidence that God gives us of him using men to write his word, calling it his word, the perspective of that. And this morning, we're gonna look at that from a more historical unfolding perspective from the context of the word of God itself. So God gives internal evidence that this word is from him, that he used men to write it, but he also gives historical evidence in the progressive sense of how the word of God has unfolded for us in its context. And we'll look at a little bit of that this morning. So this will all kind of come under this main heading, God used man to write his word. But we'll see some of that unfolding there. In Exodus chapter 24, it says Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. Then he arose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with 12 pillars for the 12 tribes of Israel." We see even in the giving of the law to Moses, there's a progressive sense to it. Moses is being brought along to this place where God would unfold these truths for him. And so recognize the unfolding and progressive nature of his will. Now we want to look at that from kind of an overarching sense. Firstly, notice the Bible begins with God's will to save mankind. Even in the creation history, we know it begins with the creation of the world. Genesis 1 is clear that God created the heavens and the earth, and yet at the same time, even as He created those things and He created mankind and He gave mankind those things to do which He had ordained for Him, yet at the same time we saw in the Genesis history that sin entered the world. And it was the context of this sin entering the world that God brings about the knowledge of a promise to save many. In this context, when I speak of saving mankind, I'm using it in the whole biblical sense of men from different tribes, tongues, and nations. It's not going to be just particular to Adam and Eve themselves. This salvation is going to go out to the whole of their posterity, and God's going to save many from the tribes and tongues and the nations that will come out of that. And yet we see in Genesis 3, 14 and 15, you'll note there in the text, it says, the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you will go and dust you will eat all the days of your life. So there's a curse put on Satan in that context, and then in that curse is that he will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. This is a sense of not just a physical fear of serpents or snakes, but there's a context here that all of that that comes from the seed of Satan himself, the work of his fallen angels and his demons, all of these things, there will be this enmity between you and the woman. Then he says, he shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. It's in Galatians 4 that Paul brings us forward to understand the context of the seed, the seed of the woman, not plural but singular. And Paul says this seed is Christ. The promise here is in Christ. The hope is in Christ. So we can see from the very beginning, not just the creation of mankind, but we see here that God in his word is bringing about from the very beginning a sense and an understanding of salvation that's going to be thread through the whole of the scripture. There are lots of things that we want to talk about in the scripture, but there's one main theme we have to get in the scripture and have to see it and get it rightly, and it's the person and the work of Christ. Who he is and what he came to do and what he continues to do. And first and foremost, that theme is in saving a people from their sins. Now, we can see from the very beginning of the Bible, this is going to be an unworking context, or an unworking of, an unpacking, excuse me, of these things in the whole of the Bible. So, even we get to things like number two, well, if I can put my slide there. Notice the importance of the biblical genealogies and history. Notice the importance of the biblical genealogies and history. For Adam and Eve's posterity to continue, now think about this, man is going to procreate, that's out of creation ordinance itself, but If Adam and Eve's posterity, for it to continue even after sin entered the world, God preserved Noah through the flood to preserve his promise of salvation. If you only look at the actual physical evidence of Noah and the flood, which is a true actual historical event, it did happen. You can, you know, read other materials about that. Some of you may remember some years ago we watched that documentary on Is Genesis History? You can find that online now. A lot of places have it for free. It's a very good documentary looking at archaeological evidence of the flood. And you can see that evidence all over the world. Archaeologists are finding that. But it's not just about the actual history and archaeology of the flood. There's a context to the flood that is about salvation. God was showing condemnation, was showing this condemning sense of what sin would bring on the world. And yet, when he brought about the flood and he judged the people of the earth for their sin, what did he do? He preserved Noah and Noah's posterity. If you don't have Noah and his family preserved physically through the flood, then you cannot have the seed. preserved, that promised seed, because that promised seed comes through the line of Abraham. If Noah is not preserved, you don't have the calling of Abraham. When you read these early chapters of the book of Genesis, you'll see a recognition that this, hey, can you turn me down just a tad? I feel like all of a sudden it just got loud. If you have a sense here of the nature of what's taking place, you're not just seeing a physical line, you're seeing also the line of salvation, the context of it. in its whole. So the preservation of Noah led to the calling of Abraham and through Abraham the promise continued for the blessing to come to all the families of the earth. If you look at Genesis chapter 12, verse 1, Now the Lord said to Abram, go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you and I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great and so you shall be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Now, sometimes when you read some theologians on the idea of covenant, they start the covenant idea later in later chapters of Genesis, chapter 15, chapter 17. But I think historically, and there's pastor's theologians that agree with me on this, The covenant starts right here in Genesis chapter 12, because he's giving him the promise of a blessing, and the blessing, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. Well, how is that accomplished in Abraham? Well, when you go to Romans chapter four and five, you see that Paul is saying to Gentile believers, you can call Abraham your father, through Christ, through Christ. So this blessing is brought through the seed of Abraham and the historic nature of it is that through the seed of Abraham is going to later come the Christ, the Messiah. We have to see that even in these biblical genealogies, you know, Genesis chapters 5 and 6 and so on, and you see these genealogies being worked out and you read all those genealogies and then in some of the later genealogies and you go, who cares? It's just a bunch of names. I can't even pronounce half of them. No, what the Bible's doing is giving you this historical recording for you to see the context of the seed and that being worked out in a salvific sense. So the Bible not only gives internal evidence of it being the very word of God, it gives internal evidence to the context of the history of mankind so that we can see the understanding of the Christ is not something that just is this kind of happenstance. Now what I mean by that, you may have noticed in the last year or so in the news, there's been this big emphasis on pilots have seen things they've never seen before. There's these aircraft or something that they do things in physics, it's impossible. There's these aliens out there. Okay, whatever. This is to get you to understand in the scripture though that Christ is not some just alien in the sense of we just have the world going along. at whatever the world wants to do, all the rulers, all the governments, the militaries, all the nations and the peoples and the individuals all over these thousands of years, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, boom, Jesus! Now in a way, true enough, the conception of Christ by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary is amazing. But that didn't come about as though it was somehow completely separated from the context of all of history. The Bible is saying, no, I'm giving you the information, the evidence, so that you can see there was an eternal decree and a purpose by God himself to save a people for himself and to do it in time and space. And the Bible's giving you the evidence of that seed being moved along. The Bible's giving you evidence of these promises. It's not just that Jesus came and boom, there he is. No, this is based on God making a promise. He made a promise in Genesis 3, 15. Serpent, somebody's going to come along and crush your head. The seed of the woman. Well, who's the seed of the woman? Paul says, well, it's Christ. Christ even reveals it of himself in the gospels in the context of what he's promising that he will do. He will save his people from their sin. The Bible walks this promise along through the historical recording of the life of Abraham. and says this is of special importance. Note it. God reveals the promise and blessing to Abraham throughout history and humanity. When you consider even the opening of some of these gospels and the genealogies there, what purpose do those genealogies hold? Trace that line. from Christ back to the context of the promise, the promise seed. Matthew, how does he do his genealogy? He goes back to Abraham and works it forward to Christ. What does Luke do with his genealogy? He goes backwards. God said, I'm going to cover all the angles here so you can see This is all historically connected through the context of mankind. I did this. God, the one true living God, I did this. I worked it out through all of the different millions and millions and millions and billions of people that will come on this earth. I worked this out through these different lineages and lines and I brought about the seed. I worked it out just perfectly. even in the sense of the New Testament revelation of the person and work of Christ when we were in Hebrews. What does it say in Hebrews 1, 1 through 3? Turn there and just look at it, just to be reminded. It's been a while since we were in Hebrews 1. God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, In these last days has spoken to us, what? In his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the world. And he is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature and upholds all things by the word of his power. He says, in these last days has spoken to us in his Son. This is all about fulfillment. When you see these genealogies in the scripture in different places and these names, and you begin to recognize the connections between some of these families, always look at what God is doing. He's building a case for you as a believer to see that this was not some happenstance. This was not just some alien thing that just out of nowhere. In a way, from our human perspective, it can seem like that. But God's saying, no, no, there's a bigger plan here. There's bigger purpose here. So notice the importance of the people and promises of God. Notice the importance of the people and the promises of God. We have these genealogies that give us a broad historical context and a building of the context of the seed. Then in the scripture we see some main historical figures. Now I'm not gonna go through every single one of them this morning because there's quite a few. But I want you to see just in the context of the person of Christ, just to think a minute about some main historical figures. Moses, was the prophet of the people of Abraham. If you go through and you read about the life of Moses and the context of Moses, we see the sense of God giving him the law, the Decalogue, the Ten Words, but he also gave a specific law to the nation of Israel through Moses, right? There's a setting up of the whole of that theocracy of the nation of Israel and the law given to them. Well, he was this prophet to the whole of the people of the nation of Israel. I mean, there was a lot placed on to Moses, so much so that in certain places, what happened to Moses? Did he have so much work on him that sometimes he got worn out? And what, what? He had to delegate some things. He just got, everything was put on top of him. Now, what do you see there? You see God using this one man. You see his life being worked out. He's the one used to bring the people out of bondage to Egypt. I mean, he has to go before Pharaoh. He's the one that God uses to deal with the plagues. He's the one that God uses to bring the people across the waters. I mean, you know, think of all the context of that. And yet he gets to a place where he's having to judge everything for the people of Israel and he gets worn out. He opens up the door for all the other prophets. Think about how Moses is kind of a prototype in the sense of what will be for the nation of Israel with all the other prophets. But all of that is pointing to one true prophet, right? So you see these main figures in the scripture and how God is using them to point to Christ. The same with David. David was the king of the people of Abraham. I mean, he certainly revealed the kingship of Christ, right? but primarily what was his work? Primarily among the nation of Israel, he was to be this first king whose heart was after God. We know Saul didn't prove to be that man, right? And so David was this evidence of what it means to have a king who followed God and wanted to do God's work and will. And all of David's work is pointing to who? All of it. When you see the unfolding of these things, you have to see the context of it. God promising these blessings. He promised the king, right? Could David fulfill all the work of the king? Not the eternal king. Did David actually literally follow, even though he was called a man after God's own heart, did he literally follow every one of God's laws perfectly? Did he always lead the people perfectly? Even his immediate family had some serious struggles, right? He had this primary work that he was doing in history to kind of be this type and this foreshadowing, but he was always pointing to Christ. Christ will be the king who leads the people perfectly, righteously in all things and in all ways. That's why when we think about this time of year, the birth of Christ, it becomes so important that he came to this very earth. But that's all in a big biblical context. It's all about promise and purpose. Aaron was the priest of the people of Abraham. He primarily proffered peace through the sacrificial system. Now, he was to take that law and the sacrificial system that was given to Moses Moses as a type, he was to take that law, Aaron was, and take that sacrificial law and he was to put it into practice and to take all of it perfectly from the priest and his dressing all the way to the work of the sacrifice itself, and he was to do that perfectly before God, and to teach the other priests to do so, so that in subsequent generations all the priests would do what they're supposed to do in the context of the sacrificial system. Did all of the priests down through the history of Israel, did they do all of that perfectly? No. But Aaron as a type was pointing to Christ as the one true high priest. We need to look at our Old Testament especially and see there's big pictures to it. It helps us sometimes deal with the difficulty of some of the details that we may not quite grab hold of. There's always a big picture there. God is trying to give us a sense and an understanding that even in the genealogies and the people of the scripture, he's working these things out. And there's always purpose behind it. Don't view Moses as an end unto himself. Don't view David as an end unto himself. Now you can take, or Aaron as well, but you can take some other Old Testament figures and say that about them too. Who, who are some of those Old Testament figures? Elijah and Elisha, the major and minor prophets. They're not there to just be an end to themselves. We don't just want to study their word in a sense of just plain literature. You know, there are groups of theologians that get together and just study just the literature of the Old Testament. Now, that can be very helpful. But if they study just the literature of the Old Testament and they don't see it in a context of what God is doing in bringing forth his promise of a seed, they'll miss the point of that, right? We need to know the genre and the literature of the Old Testament to properly interpret it and to think through it rightly, but it's always pointing to something that's about the promise of God being worked out through the promised seed. All right, this is another heading here. Recognize the unfolding and progressive nature of his word. We talked about his will. His will is being worked out through mankind. He has a promised seed. This is God's will being done. When you see Abraham was promised that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. God promised that. I want you to think about that. That's a pretty big promise now. If I came before you this morning and said, I want to promise you that through this one individual, all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed. I can't make that. Trump can't make that promise. He probably would, but he can't make that promise and fulfill it. It's huge, huge. We're, you know, we can be thankful. Hopefully he's going to do some really good things for our nation. Hopefully it's going to positively impact our relations with other countries and nations and all this kind of thing. Great, wonderful, amen, hallelujah. But he cannot accomplish what God has accomplished and God accomplished it through a promise to Abraham and that came down through history. This is God's will being worked out. Well, then recognize the unfolding and progressive nature of his word. So God specifically and progressively gave His law to Moses. The law given to Moses was not just something arbitrary. God didn't just say, Well, let me think of some things that I can put out there and demand on these people and see if I can really crush their spirits and get them really subjected to me. And let me see if I can make them feel as bad as I can make them feel because I just really want to squeeze them and squish them. No, God had a purpose in all of that. Through the whole of the scripture, you see the unfolding and progressive nature of his word. we see there's a context to the Ten Commandments. Even those specific laws that were given to the nation of Israel, they had a context and a use and a purpose. And although we would not use them in their exact way now, speaking of the civil laws and the sacrificial laws and the food laws, we can still garner from them the importance of when God says something in his word, we need to take it seriously. So it helps us even read our New Testament, not to look at New Testament context given to us and to say, ah, well, we can take it or leave it. No, not if we're calling ourselves the people of God. Really what you want to notice is that God, even through Moses, is giving something to the people in an immediate sense that sets up that theocracy, but he's also giving something to his people for all of the rest of space, time, and history to base the context of their living off of. When you read the Ten Commandments, there's a basis for living there in a pleasing way unto God. I think one of the worst things that can happen when you're teaching a young person something is as you teach them you leave out major parts of information and then sometime later have to go back and fill it in. If you were to work for someone and they gave you a task to do and they said well here's five things in that task you've got to do. And then after you started doing the task, three weeks later they come back to you and go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot about this and this and this and this and this. What would you do? Now, we know that sometimes happens because we live in a fallen world. But God is showing us that in the giving of the law, The law, the Ten Commandments, weren't just given to Moses and they never were known before. They were a part of the context of the whole of God's creation. This is why Adam and Eve's sin was so awful. They knew they were breaking God's law. It's the idea of Cain and Abel. Cain knew he was breaking God's law. He just didn't want to be held accountable for it. Even when we get to the Old Testament context of the prophets, God specifically and specially used his subsequent prophets to reveal his promise and word. Now, think about that for a minute. The prophets are a continuation of the work of Moses. I think sometimes we look at the chronology of the Old Testament, we try to figure that chronology out, we're not quite sure about it, but really what you need to do is to start and recognize that your Bible is given to you in the context of a chronology that gives you the history and the law, and then it gives you the history of the people of God, and then it gives you the context of the wisdom literature and the prophets of God to those people. So he gives you the history of these people of God and then he opens up to you not just the history of their context and who they are and what they were about and how God set them up and what happened to them over a period of time, then he gives you the wisdom literature and the prophets or the prophecies that were given to those people. Here's what they heard, here's what happened to them, here's how God was dealing with them through his wisdom literature, through his prophets. So they are woven into the context of what God did preserving Noah through the flood, the calling of Abraham, Moses coming about, the 12 tribes of Israel being established, the law given to them, the people flourishing all over the Middle East, and yet God is still speaking to them through his prophets, he's giving them his wisdom literature, and he's setting all of that up for them, Not so that can be an end to itself, but it's all still based on the seed, the promise of the seed. They're awaiting the Messiah, they know they are awaiting the Messiah, and that's the point of the context of the Gospels. Yes, Scott. Yeah. Yes, yes, I agree with that. Yes. Yeah. And you even using the illustration of the rose, you know, a lot of times we think about the idea of, of building blocks and, and houses, you know, um, you don't build a house and, and just stick a big ladder in the middle of a piece of ground and get up there and with some shingles and you say, I'm going to set these shingles first. That seems, now some of you, you understood what I just said and you just went, that's dumb. I mean, if I said, hey, y'all come, I got this piece of property over here, I've got about a 30 foot ladder, I just need people to hold the ladder, I'm gonna start building my house. And you come out there, and I got a few shingles, I put them on my shoulder and I start climbing that ladder into the middle of the air, nothing else around, and I say, okay, I'm gonna start my house. What would y'all say? See, you're grinning, some of you now. Jackie said, get me a straight jacket. You'd probably do that anyway. You see, that makes no sense. You start from the ground up and you progressively build foundation to block, to wood, to so on. It's an organic sense of moving that along. You have these steps. Yes, Ed? Yeah. That's a good point, Ed. It does take time. But that's another reason we do Bible studies like this is to help you think in these big picture perspectives so that when you are reading your Bibles at home, I don't want this lost on you. I don't want you getting into just reading Habakkuk and going, what's Habakkuk saying? Just Habakkuk. That's fine to read it. Read it as it is. And yet remember, it's a part, it's a piece of the puzzle. Yes. Yep. Yep. And that's another reason, Ed, why it's always good to be reading a gospel or a place in the New Testament. Because the more you read the New Testament, the more you'll realize, especially those of you who have Bibles where the Old Testament passages are put in all caps, you'll see where pieces of the Old Testament are brought forward. And then you can go back to that Old Testament book and read through it and see it in its context in that sense and yet realize it was a part of something bigger. You need to have that in your mind when you're reading your Bibles. The Old Testament is a part of a big, big picture. Don't just get stuck in this little bitty moment in time. It doesn't seem like a moment in time, but a prophet for 30 years, 30 years seems like that can be a long time, but that's really just a small moment in time we're talking about the big picture. Yes, Scott. If I go into this next section, I'll go way over time. We're at 9.57 or 8. So are there any other comments or questions? But do you see the importance, though, of starting to look at your Bible as though there's something big that's being given to you? It's not just the little things and the details. The details are important. I don't want to take away from that. Because that's where people can get into trouble is they don't see the details rightly and they have all kinds of crazy ideas. Yet at the same time, there's a big picture being given to you. And if you get lost in the details and never see the big picture, the Bible almost can become drudgery. You have to remember the big picture and it points you to something greater. There's this promise context given to us. Any other comments or thoughts there? Oh, Ryan. Yeah, because this is the reason we can trust the inerrancy of Scripture and the sufficiency of Scripture, is that we can see that in these big pictures God has been building something all the way along, and through the Scripture it's revealed to us that He did what He said He was going to do. I mean, you know, I'm going to be preaching in Luke 2 this morning. There it is, the promise. Here it comes. Jesus is born. And there's even history to that. It's amazing to think about God orchestrating all those things. The Bible is giving us all this information to be able to say God did what he said he was going to do. He made a promise long ago to your first parents, Adam and Eve, you weren't there, you didn't know anything about it at the time, but they were there, and God's now telling you what transpired in that time and in that moment, and here's how it unfolded. and the world got so terrible and so awful that God had to bring about a destructive flood of the whole of the earth, and yet he preserved Noah and his family so that the seed and the line would continue, and out of that comes Abraham and all the sons of Abraham, and comes Moses, and then you know what? They were all promising this seed. This seed was gonna come through them, and then boom, here he is, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. and then the apostles continue forward. Just don't forget these big picture things as you read your Bibles. I hope that's helpful. Okay. Let's try it. Yep. It is written. Have you not heard? Have you not read? Yeah. Look at those statements. Good. Okay. Well, let's close in prayer and then we'll let you fellowship just a little while. Heavenly Father, we praise you for this day. Thank you for your word and your kindness to us to give us your word. Lord, help us to remember when we read our Bibles, that there is a huge big picture that you are connecting all those dots for us in exactly the way you want us to see it and know it and understand it so that we know we can trust you in all of your promises. You will never fail. And we praise you that the greatest revelation of you never failing to fulfill a promise is in your son, the Lord Jesus. All glory and honor be unto you through him alone. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.