Well, this is part one of the Old Testament overview, part one. I guess I could pull out my notes so I know what's coming up next. I do kind of know, but it's helpful to have it in front of me there just in case my brain freezes up. And we are going to be doing introductions. This is a night where introductions are certainly in order. We want to be introduced to Bible study, for instance. How do we study the word as God would have us to study it? And that is important for us to see there. We also want to see what the Bible is. We'll get a very brief overview of the entire Bible. And then we will zero in on the Torah this evening, which are the first five books of the Bible. But for right now, let's let's first consider Bible study. How do we engage in Bible study? And there are a lot of ideas out there. Some of you have been studying the Bible well for many years, and you may not know that there are some different theories out there as to how we should study the Bible. But the best way to engage in studying the Bible is, get this, to read it. To read it. It does start with reading it. And when I say read it, I mean read it from left to right. You say that doesn't seem right. That's like we're reading it like it's a book. Well, God has revealed it in this way. There is a progress of revelation wherein God revealed to Moses and to the prophets and to all the rest what he wanted communicated to his people. And we are his people. And so we want to read it as he delivered it to us. And as we read it from left to right, we are doing just that. And so it doesn't require a lot of thinking with that, although it might strike you as strange. You might think that there's something more to it than just reading it from left to right. Of course, there is. We want to study it, but that it does start there. You might say, well, isn't the Old Testament written in Hebrew and isn't Hebrew written from right to left? OK, well, if you want to throw that out there, if we all read Hebrew this evening. We would read the Bible from right to left, but that's the same concept, isn't it? They start with the right side of the book and move left if they read from right to left. They're still doing it in the same way. They're starting at the beginning and moving on. And because we read from left to right, we are beginning with the left side of the book and we're moving to the right side of the book. And that is the way that we should do it. We should not. engage in this process of trying to find random verses. And this is one of those theories that that's out there when we engage in Bible study. Maybe we just want God to tell us a message. And so you may have heard the story of the man who prays, Lord, give me a message. And he just takes his Bible and he opens it randomly and he puts his finger on the page and he reads the words. Judas hung himself. And he says, no, that doesn't sound right. Lord, give me a word that I can use. And so he opens the Bible back up, puts his finger down, looks, go thou and do likewise. Oh, oh, no. OK, Lord, third time. Give me a message. He opens up the Bible, puts his finger on the page, randomly looks down what thou doest do quickly. That message is not from God. That message is not from God. And God did give us a message. God did give us a message. And he gave us this message in a book that is meant to be read in a certain way, like it's been prepared for us. It's not a random assortment of assorted aphorisms and maxims and different things that we could apply to certain situations, but they're not really connected to one another. No, this is a story that's unfolding. It's not something where we read here a little, there a little. I remember encouraging men in the jail ministry to read in this way. Many of them had never been in church and they had never been taught to read the Bible. And some of them would do the exact thing that I just mentioned. They would open up randomly to spots in the Bible and they would just read a few words and then they would close their Bibles. And they would say, well, yeah, you know, sometimes God gives you a message that way. And perhaps there is something that you can get sometimes out of that method. But there are some who think, Well, we need to go here and get just a little bit here and go here and get a little bit here. There's even that verse in Isaiah, right, where it's precept upon precept, line upon line. Actually, that place in Isaiah is condemning that very method. You don't go just here a little, there a little. You get the whole message. That's how God would have us to read it. Well, how do we get the whole message? Well, studying the Bible includes three principles. Observation, interpretation, and application. Observation, interpretation, and application. The OIA method, and I even have a good book back there by, I think his name is Peter Kroll. Knowable Word is the title of the book, Knowable Word. It's a little thin book. We used to give that to men in the in the jail ministry. And I would commend that to everyone because it's a very simple read. It's a quick read, but it does help you to understand just how to take the Bible and understand its parts to to read it and know what it says in context. This is observation. And of course, we need to understand the context. I used to listen to a to to a podcast by a man by the name of Chris Roseborough is very wise in the word. For the most part, he was Lutheran, but nobody's perfect. Right. And we or I would I say we because I actually listened to it with a couple extra guys. We would know just how often he would say this little phrase, the three rules of sound biblical exegesis. of understanding the Word of God, three rules of sound biblical exegesis are context, context, and context. Understanding what it says in context, and that's what observation comes down to. You read it and you know what's there, what's there in context. The next thing that we do is to identify what it means, and that's the interpretive method there. We'll talk about that in just a second here. And then we move on to application. Don't jump to application right away. We read this verse, Judas hung himself. The application isn't to go and do likewise, right? That's not the application. We have to read it in context, see what it means, identify that. and then we can apply it to our own lives. Well, we start with observation. And what does that mean? We observe what's there. We could do this with just the Bible books, for instance. If we're looking at each book of the Bible, for instance, the book of Genesis, which is the very first book right there. We understand that book as a whole. What are the themes? What's the purpose of Genesis? What are they telling us in this book? What are what is the word here in Genesis? We understand the book as a whole, and then we begin to look for divisions within the book. And in that particular book, for instance, we note genealogies. And those genealogies usually serve as large section divisions within the book, where the book then transitions from one person of focus to the next person of focus. Then we can talk about sections where we have several chapters maybe that focus on certain events, certain aspects of a person's life. And then, of course, we do look at the chapters. Chapters, by the way, the chapter numbers are not inspired by God. Neither are the verse numbers. They've been added there by us, by man. for our comfort so that we when we say turn to Genesis one one, we know exactly where to turn. Of course, that's the easiest one, right? Because that's the right at the beginning. And so that we could just say turn right to the beginning of the Bible. But if we're saying something in the middle of Isaiah, for instance, like we just read from Isaiah chapter 40, verses one and two, I could say, turn in the book of Isaiah to where it says, and that's actually how they did it in Jesus's day, but it's a lot easier now to say Isaiah 40. Well, those are chapter divisions, and those chapter divisions, for the most part, are pretty good about identifying segments within the text. They're not perfect all the time. But they are generally a good guide for us to see where those segment markers are in the book. Take the book as a whole, move to divisions, to sections, to segments, which are chapters. What am I doing, by the way? What's happening? I'm getting smaller, right? In my focus, I'm getting narrower in my focus. As we go down, we can then consider paragraphs. Each chapter might have three or four, five paragraphs, depending on how big the chapter is. Some even have very few. Some have a lot more. But we start to look at the paragraphs, what are these sections of thought you learn that in school right a paragraph is a is a section of thought when what is being said in this section, then we move even smaller to the to the clauses. or to the sentences, excuse me, to the sentences. A sentence is a complete thought, usually starts with a capital letter, right? And ends with some kind of punctuation at the end, a period, an exclamation mark, a question mark. That's important. Are we reading a question? Are we reading a statement? Are we reading a command? We have to understand that. And then we move to clauses, which are parts of sentences. And you have those things in school that you hated so much where you learned about dependent clauses and independent clauses and everything else. But what are we doing? We're continuing to get smaller and smaller. We focus on the phrases and then finally the words themselves. What words are being used? And so do you see what we did? We went from the whole book all the way down to each word on the page to figure out what is actually being said. What are we doing? We're observing. We're just observing. We're not interpreting yet. When you're involved in Bible study, you start with the observation, what is being said? That's what you start with. You begin with these thoughts. And even within the sentence, for instance, if you don't understand how the words function in the sentence, Are you looking at a noun? Are you looking at a verb, an adverb, an adjective? What part of speech are you looking at? If you don't understand that, you might not understand the sentence. And if you don't understand the sentence, you might not understand the paragraph. And if you don't understand the paragraph, you might not understand the chapter. And if you don't understand the chapter, you might not understand the whole division within the book or the book as a whole. We have to start with what's there and we have to then build from there. Now, you don't have to have perfect knowledge of all of this, but you do begin by observing what's there and seeing what is in the text. And that's very important for us as we are beginning our study of any kind of book. And by the way, as we are studying this, we're going to be sticking to the larger sections. We might get into some discussions about words and phrases and clauses through the study. But for us to get through this in 12 weeks, we're going to have to keep it a little bit more general. And we'll dig in later on as we get into the books, like we're trying to do in the book of John, for instance. And so we're observing what's there and we can even go broader than Bible books. We can talk about whole sections, like for instance the Torah, which we're going to talk about in a few minutes here, which not only includes Genesis, but also Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. That's a whole section within the whole of the Bible. What does that say? section teach us? What do each of these sections teach us? We have to see how all the parts fit in with the whole. And again, this is just observation. Observation. We had an exercise that was very annoying in school, where we had to sit down with a paragraph of scripture. And the teacher would say, OK, what's there? And he would say, write down five observations from this paragraph. So we'd say, OK, well, there's maybe two questions in the paragraph. There are various statements. We would write down five observations. And the teacher would say, very good. Now write down five more observations. Okay, well, that's all right. Well, this verse is actually referenced, I remember, in the New Testament, maybe it's an Old Testament text referenced in the New Testament over here. So I'd write that down, I'd write down this, I'd write down that, you know, just everything else I could see in the text. And then he'd say, very good, now write down five more observations from the text. Like, wait a minute, there just aren't this many observations. Oh, yes. Yes, there are. And he continued to say, right. Observe more, observe more, observe more. And as you're doing that, you start to get the picture of what the text is actually saying. You get more of of the data. that you need to properly interpret. And that's what comes next. Interpretation that comes after observation, not before. I can't tell you how many times I've sat down with the text of scripture that I that I haven't studied before, but maybe I'm doing using that text for a devotion or something. And I'm saying, OK, I know what this means. This is obvious. I read it once, and it's obvious what this means. And then I start observing. Like, wait a minute, that doesn't really fit with what I thought the text meant. And then maybe I even pick up a few commentaries that help me with the words, you know, and help me with the clauses and help me with the history of the text and different things. And I'm reading that and I'm going through that. And at some point in that study, I come to the conclusion I had no idea what this text meant. It actually meant something other than what I thought, because I just did a lazy, cursory, surface-level reading, and I just jumped straight to interpretation without observing what's actually in the text. Interpretation comes after observation. as Sherlock Holmes was often fond of saying to people, to Watson and to others, it's elementary, right? You have to observe the data, you have to get all of the facts before you, and then you can deduce or induce, depending on how you want to debate what was actually happening there. you can derive from that data a conclusion, an interpretation of what's actually there. It happens after observation and good interpretation is based on the historical grammatical method. Historical grammatical method, you say, wow, that sounds like a mouthful. What in the world is that? Well, basically it's just considering the history and the grammar of the text. The history and the grammar of the text. And I'll give you an example of that. There is a great interpretation I came across for John 9 this morning. Jesus takes his spittle and the mud or the clay there, and he makes that clay, and we read that he applies it to the man's eyes. And one of the commentaries, based on some early church fathers and how they interpreted it, said this, Jesus is actually crafting new eyes for the man. And I'm thinking, wow, that's fascinating, because just as God breathed new life, or breathed into Adam life when he formed man from the dust of the ground, Genesis 2.7, here Jesus is taking a spit and he's forming new eyes for this man. That's neat. But does the grammar of the text support that? No. Because what does the text actually say? He applied it to the man's eyes. In other words, the man's eyes were there. It's not like he is plugging mud balls into empty sockets, not to be too gross, but that's kind of what would be required if he's crafting eyes for the man. No, he just applies it to his eyes. His eyes are already there, and the grammar doesn't really support that interpretation. I'll give you another example, again, from John 9 this morning. The disciples asked, if this man sinned so that he would be born blind from the womb from birth. Some people have read that and they said, ah, that sounds like reincarnation. This man did something wrong in his past life and he experienced karma. And because he experienced karma, he is now living a new life of blindness as punishment for what he did in a previous life. Is that correct? Well, no. First of all, the history of karma of that idea of reincarnation comes from a completely different religion. And that idea would have been foreign to the Jews at that time. They didn't believe in reincarnation. They believed in resurrection. And so that was a concept that didn't fit with the history of the text. And so when we're doing our interpretation, if we understand the history and the grammar of the text, we can throw out a lot of ideas that are not necessarily correct. Sometimes they're good and interesting ideas, they're just not correct. And sometimes they're really oddball ideas and should be rejected right out of hand, but we want to make sure that the text is directing us with that. And so there's understanding the history and the grammar of the texts. We also want to consider what the holy inspired text actually says and in what context he delivered it. There is ultimately one author of scripture, and that's God. What did he intend for us to read? Well, one of the ways we can understand that is by seeing how he inspired the authors of scripture in their individual context. and see what words he gave to them, what they were dealing with, so that we can then understand the text, so that we can then interpret it correctly. We don't want to be allegorizing everything. We don't want to look to Genesis 1, for instance, and see God created the heavens and the earth in six days, in Genesis 2. And then on the seventh day, he rested. But we read the word stays there, and we say, the word day there, and we say, well, the word day can mean different things. And really, I think what's happening here is that God is actually going through an evolutionary process. And God is crafting the universe in a manner, in a way that takes hundreds of millions of years, perhaps billions of years. But he's describing it in a way that these dumb Jewish people could understand way back then, because they didn't have technology like we have. They didn't have the Hubble telescope. They didn't have the James Webb telescope. They didn't have all of these things. They didn't even have smartphones. Can you believe it? They didn't understand, so he gave it to them in a way that they could understand. That's allegorizing the text. We don't want to engage in that. We want to read the text as it is. And if God inspired it in a certain way, then we need to read it in that way. How would you like your words to be interpreted? Every time you say something, it's interpreted as the opposite by the person you're talking to. Well, when you say that, what you really mean is this. No, what I really mean is what I said. There's no extra layers here. There are no extra layers here. There's no subtext here. I said it the way I meant to say it to you. Well, no, I think what you really mean is this. Are we going to do that with God's word? No, we want to interpret it as God has intended for us to interpret. And so this is how we interpret. We observe the text, we see what's there, then we interpret the text, and then we apply the text. We relate the meaning of the biblical text to present life. We often jump to this way too quickly. You know, we read something and we say, ah, see what God is saying is that we need to do this. Maybe, maybe not. Because we can't correctly apply a text if we misinterpreted it. And we can't correctly interpret a text if we fail to observe its parts. For instance, When the Lord is chastising sinners in a text, you might say, well, see, I'm with the Lord in this text and say, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm usually a sinner. I usually engage in sin. I don't want to, but you know, and I want to be I am called a saint by the Lord. But but the truth is, I engage in sin. So if I'm with anyone in the text, I'm probably with the sinners in the text. Right. And I need to hear what the sinners are hearing in the text. And so there's an application that I can bring forward. Because their heart isn't really so different than mine. They may have spoke a different language than me, but we're all people, right? And so we're seeing the same thing here. And so we can't interpret the text or we can't apply the text if we haven't interpreted the text. And when we read it, we can apply it. And when we understand it correctly, we can apply it. And we can apply it in two ways. First of all, the personal way. Is there a command for me to follow? Is there a truth for me to believe? Is there a promise here? Is there something for me to take away in this text? That's the first level of application there. What's the second level? The second level is the public, the public. And this is something that I engage in, obviously, with expository preaching. I want to, I read the text and I then give an application for you. But the truth is, if I've done my work, I've applied it to myself first. Right? And then it moves on to application to everyone else. This is why it's better to be in a church with expository preaching than in a church without, because if the pastor is taking his time through the week studying a passage of Scripture, then at least in theory, he's applying the Scripture to himself. If he's going online and he's buying the sermon and downloading it, There's not really any guarantee that he is living out what he's preaching, right? So there is a big difference there, but understand that this applies to everyone, not just to preachers. If you're leading a study of devotion, maybe you're doing a Sunday school class or something, start with how the text applies to you. If you're teaching kids through our Generations of Grace curriculum or something like that, they want a curriculum, start with how it might apply to you. You say, well, this is written for kids. Yeah, kids are sinners who need the Lord Jesus Christ. You're a sinner who needs the Lord Jesus Christ. You can apply it to yourself first. Right. How does it apply to you? Start with them. Or start there and then move to the public, providing counsel. Someone says, hey, I'm struggling in my marriage. Can you help me out? You say, yeah, what you what you're describing, I actually have struggled with myself. And here's a passage of scripture that really helped me. And you turn in that passage of scripture. to a text that you've studied, a text that you have observed, a text that you have interpreted, a text that you have applied, and you can then share it with someone else. You've done the personal application, now you're giving some public application as well, as it were, sharing the gospel. Hopefully you've all made personal application of the gospel message. And then you also then make that public proclamation. And so with that said, we now have a basis for wrapping our hands around or wrapping our arms around the text of scripture. How do we read it? How do we understand it? And with that said now, let's now consider what the Bible is. Now, we've already said that the Bible is the Word of God. It is inspired by God. It is the very Word of God. And what is the Bible about? Well, it is about Jesus Christ. It is about Jesus Christ. the Old Testament, which is about 78% of the text. And just pause there for a minute. 78% of the text? Really? Well, yeah. I mean, if you look at it right here, just to use a visual aid, this is the Old Testament, and this is the New Testament. And really not all that's the New Testament, because I've got maps and helps and different things in the back. So it's actually a little shorter than that. That's the New Testament, right? The New Testament is only 22 percent. It's funny, we spend so much time in the New Testament, we don't really spend a lot of time in the Old Testament, but that's over three quarters of the Bible. And what is the Old Testament about? Well, it is pointing people ultimately. If we're looking at the largest, biggest sweeping claims and themes, it is ultimately pointing people forward to a messianic anticipation. It is looking forward to Jesus, in other words. It's making predictions. It's qualifying who the Messiah would be and it is preparing people for the coming Messiah. 78% of the Bible is looking forward to Jesus. The rest of the Bible is looking back to when he came. The rest of the Bible explains the teachings of Christ. You say, well, wait a minute, the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, those focus on the life of Christ. Yes, but they were written after Christ. They were written after he ascended into heaven. And so all of that is giving us the teachings of Christ. And then we have the explanations of Christ. And so who's the focal point of the Bible? Jesus. It's not ultimately about me. There is that song that came out in the 60s. You're so vain. You probably think the Bible's about you. That might not be exactly how it went, but we don't want to be vain and think that the Bible is all about us. It's ultimately about Jesus. It does challenge us, and it is a love story about us. It does involve us, but it's ultimately focused on Christ. He is the central figure of the text. And so this is the Bible that exists. And we can then break it up into blocks or two big blocks. The first block, obviously, is the Old Testament, the Old Testament. And we're starting here. This is where our study is going to be. Remember, this is all introduction, right? By way of introduction. And then we'll get into the meat of the study a little bit later. But 78 percent of the Bible is The Old Testament. And how do the Hebrews break that down? Well, the Hebrews break down the Bible in this way. First, they have the law. That's the Torah. Sometimes you'll even hear it called the Pentateuch. We'll explain those words in just a minute. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Those are the five books of the law. And then the Hebrews would have a second category, the prophets. The prophets, they would have the former prophets, which would be Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings. You don't normally think of these as prophetic books, but there are prophets there. Then we have the latter prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the 12, what we would know as the minor prophets. And then you have the writings, the writings, which include some of what we would expect, but a lot more. Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, which would have been one book at one time, and Chronicles. And so that's how they would break it up. And if you really want some terminology to chew on, they would have, they would say the first section is the Torah, and they say the next section is the Nevi'im and the third section. is a Ketuvim and you would take the first letter of each of those in English it would be T and N and K and you supply some vowels in there you have the word Tanakh and that's what they would call the Bible the Tanakh so if you ever hear a Jewish person referred to the Tanakh he's referring to the law the prophets and the writings that's how that breaks down Now, you say, that doesn't quite sound like how we have our Bibles organized today. And that's right. We have them organized slightly differently. Here's a chart that shows how they're organized today. And we have the law, of course, first five books. And then we have the historical books. That's what we typically think of, the historical books. That includes the pre-monarchy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth. Pre-monarchy because there was not yet a king in Israel. Who's the first king of Israel? Saul. And so we read about him in 1 Samuel. And then of course we have David, and then we have Solomon. And we read about them in 1 and 2 Samuel, and then we have 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles. After Solomon, sadly, the people divided. We could create a further division here in the monarchy. We could talk about the united monarchy and the divided monarchy. Why? Because Solomon's heart was divided, the people's hearts became divided. And after Solomon passed, his son arose to the throne, there was civil unrest and the people divided into the godly peoples in the south, the Judaites, and then you had the ungodly Yankees to the north. And that's usually how it breaks down in history, right? Some things don't change, but there we have the monarchy. And then we have the post-monarchy, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther. Then we have the poetic books, of course, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon or Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes. And then you have the prophets, the major prophets, major only because of the amount of material that they write. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Daniel, Ezekiel. And then we have the minor prophets, minor only because of the amount of material that they produce. It's not that they're less important. They're still prophets, but they produce a lot less, what we could call the 12 there. And it's interesting, once we get there and start talking about the minor prophets, there are themes, even though from Hosea to Malachi, there is a huge time span. There are themes that you can see throughout the minor prophets. It is almost as though this was meant to be read as one book. even though they are separate writings and they do address separate things. We'll talk about that once we get there. But if you want to see the breakdown, there are five books of the law and then 12 historical books. And then there are five poetic books. And then there are five major prophets and 12 minor prophets. And there's some symmetry there. We heard some some. That's a nice numbering system. In other words, let's say that way, 5-12-5-5-12. If you want to memorize the books of the Bible, that might help you to memorize them, to see how it's broken down there. And we might even have a contest here, where we have the Awana kids come up here, and we have some of you guys come up here. And we'll just see who can name all of the books of the Bible. And we'll just have a little contest to see who can name more books of the Bible. I'm not saying we have to do that, but that would be a fun idea, wouldn't it? So that's the Old Testament there. The second Bible block, of course, is the New Testament, which was written within one generation. Everything was written within the first century for the New Testament. That's one reason why it's a lot shorter. We have the historical books, of course, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts, because Acts is also historical, right? Then we have the epistles. What is an epistle? It's the letter, yeah. Someone asked once if the Bible advocates people having guns, and someone said, well, yes, of course, Paul had a pistol. Yeah, okay, it might be a stretch, but there you go. The letters to the churches, and Paul did write most of them, of course, but then you have the non-Pauline ones. Hebrews, oh, there's a debate there. James, Peter, two of those Peters, John and Jude. And then we have the apocalypse, the apocalyptic scripture. Some people refer to Daniel, for instance, as the apocalypse of the Old Testament. And then you have revelation here, the apocalypse of the New Testament. We'll talk about that much later down the line. But let's consider now the Torah. Now that we've considered the Bible as a whole, let's consider the third section here. We've considered Bible study tonight. Ooh, and I do feel like there's been a little bit of a firehose action going on here. Hopefully we can take a moment to pause and catch our breath. We talked about Bible study, and we've talked about the general Bible itself. We want to understand how God would have us to understand the Bible. And with that said, now we can get into smaller sections and we can consider now the Torah. Next week, we'll talk a little bit about Genesis. So we are kind of moving downward. If you're wondering what the what the idea here is, we are moving into zero in and then and then we'll start moving across the pages here. But we do now get to the Torah, which, as I said, are the first five books of the Bible. And the Torah, of course, is a Hebrew word that means direction or instruction or law. This is what we see throughout the Bible. The law of the Lord is a delight, right? It delights the eyes. We should see it as a delight. The Greek word is Pentateuch. Sometimes you'll hear people refer to it as the Pentateuch. And that's from Penta, five, and then Teukos, meaning volume, a five-volume book. And this is the biblical terminology, of course, is Torah, is law. And it's referred to in that way many times. It's referred to as just simply the law in several places. It's referred to as the book of the law. There are lots of these. This is referred to as the book of the law of Moses. And yes, we do believe Moses wrote all of this. Jesus believed that Moses wrote all of this. I don't think that he was just ignorant, you know, like or that he was talking down to the people like he knew who really wrote it. But you guys think Moses wrote it. So I'll just keep saying that. No, he believed Moses wrote it and he calls the others to believe in that. And of course, we do also hear it referred to as the Book of Moses, the Book of Moses or the Law of Moses. You say, I thought this is God's law. Yes, but Moses delivered it. And it is referred to in God inspired scripture as the Law of Moses as well. And as well, it is referred to as the Law of the Lord, the Law of the Lord. And it's also referred to as the Law of God. And it's referred to the book or referred to as the book of the law of God. And it's referred to as the book of the law of the Lord. Now, this is a pretty important section for it to have so many different designations means that it's an important section and we should understand it. In fact, it is the most quoted section of scripture in the New Testament. And it is important for us to understand why, because it is the foundation of spiritual truth is the foundation of spiritual truth. And finally, let's open our Bibles. So I have been talking for a long time without us actually getting into the text of Scripture, although I've alluded to some texts this evening. Let's open to Deuteronomy chapter 31, verse 12. Deuteronomy 31, 12. In Deuteronomy, you have Deutero, that's second, and then namas, which is a reference to the law. Deuteronomy is the second telling of the law. And you'll see a second telling of the Ten Commandments here, and other repetitions. Deuteronomy 31, 12, We read there, assemble the people, Moses commands, assemble the people, the men and the women and the children. By the way, that's why I say it's good for the children to be with us because this is often what you see in scripture, assemble the men and the women and the children and the alien who is in your town so that they may hear and learn and fear the Lord your God, and be careful to observe all the words of this law. Assemble the people, let them all hear the words of the law. Why? Because it's important. It's the foundation for spiritual truth. It's the foundation for what we believe. Let's turn to Joshua 1.8. Joshua 1.8. Is the book of Joshua part of the Torah? No, no, it is not. It's the first book after the Torah. But Joshua was with Moses. And so as after Moses dies, he's leading the people, the people of Israel into the land. We're seeing the first generation after the giving of the law. What does he say? Joshua one eight. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth. But you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have success. This is exactly what God had intended for his people. And I don't think just because we live in a New Testament era, we are given freedom to ignore the book of the law today. We should continue to read it. It's still part of our Bibles. Unless you get one of those Gideon New Testaments that kind of cut off 78% of the Bible. But I don't recommend you use that as your primary Bible. Start with Genesis. Start with Genesis. Because this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth. I think that's something for all of God's people throughout time. The Torah is a foundation of spiritual truth, and it also points us to Christ. It also points us to Christ. Why do I say that? Turn now to Luke, to the book of Luke. Is the book of Luke part of the Torah? No. Is it even part of the Old Testament? No, it is part of the New Testament. But here we see the resurrected Christ, And he gives a message that was important for the disciples. Who were. Mourning his loss, and he's he's causing them to think more deeply about what the Bible actually says, including the Torah, Luke 24 versus 27. We'll start there, verse 27. He meets the people, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and we read there, then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures. Wait a minute, there's things about Jesus in the Torah? Yes, yes. Look down to verse 47, or excuse me, 44. This is one of his other appearances. Now he said to them, these are my words, which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which were written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. There you can kind of see, in reference to what I said earlier, that Hebrew understanding, the law, the prophets and the writings. Here he just describes it as the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms. But you still see that division. That's how they would have divided the book up. In other words, the whole Tanakh, the whole Old Testament is about Jesus. And he says that he was here to fulfill it all. He was here to fulfill it all. And so the Torah, yes, it points us to Christ, just like the rest of the Old Testament, which is what we already noted, which is what we already noted. And so, yes, it's important for us to know the Torah. Well, what is the Torah about as we are thinking about getting into Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy? What is it about? Well, Its purpose is to show us that God chose Israel to be his priestly nation over his created earth. I tried to boil that down to be the most basic definition possible. I based it on a couple of other definitions, but I think this is the most basic we can get it here. God chose Israel to be his priestly nation over his created earth. What are we basing that on? Exodus 19, let's take a look there. Exodus 19. Exodus 19 verses 4 through 6. Of course, this is as the people have gathered. They have been delivered from bondage in Egypt. You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles wings and brought you to myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel. And so, yes, God has chose Israel to be a priestly nation over his created earth. And so if we were if we take this understanding and we break it down, what do we have as far as a breakdown for the Torah? Well, the first 11 chapters of Genesis are focused on primeval. history, primeval history. I don't know what I was about to say, primeval energy, I guess. I don't know. That would be the power of God. A primeval history, Genesis one through 11. And then we have the patriarchal history, Genesis 12 through 50. And we do have our resident expert on Genesis. What is the last chapter of Genesis, brother? is chapter 15. So here we have history through Genesis versus 1 through 50 the rest of the Torah. From Exodus chapter 1 through Deuteronomy 34 is the beginning of the history of the nation of Israel. And so most of the Torah is focused on the history of the beginning in the history of Israel there. And Genesis is just the lead up to that. In fact, as we break it down, and this is the last thing I want to point out tonight, as we break it down, we see that the that the book, a book of Genesis devotes certain sections to certain men. As I mentioned earlier, we have a focus on Adam in the first four chapters. The colors I chose, I can't really read. Here we go. The first four chapters are devoted to Adam. And then we have a genealogy. As I said, there are genealogies that break up the book. Then we have a focus on Noah, six through nine, six through nine. Then we have a genealogy. And then you have Abraham. Now, what do we see? Much more Genesis is devoted to Abraham. And then we have much more of Genesis devoted to Jacob, who's renamed Israel. And we have another genealogy. And then we have the rest of the Torah devoted to Moses. And so what do we have? We have the book slowing down the five volume to books slowing down as we focus on the most important figure for us to see. And that's Moses. Moses. In fact, as we look at that from Exodus 19 through Numbers 10, that is all taking place at Sinai, a one-year span. one year span, and then we have Deuteronomy or excuse me, from Deuteronomy one through thirty four. Deuteronomy, the last book of the Torah that is focused on the last month of Moses's life. And so what do we have? We have the book slowing down. We have the Torah slowing down as we are focusing in on what we need to see. And I hope as as we wrap this up tonight, I hope that you will see that we should be reading this text as God has called us to read it.