Taylor, Tom: How To Study The O.T.-05 ~ GWH Chapel Series

You're only wretched for a little season, not a great long one. And I enjoyed the Zane's discussion very much. I thought it was very clear. I think it takes a brave man to tackle those things with the general audience, especially with that chart. But I thought that was very well done, so I appreciated it very much. And I'm continuing then in my studies in the Old Testament, or how to study the Old Testament. I looked at all these notes yesterday, and I said, I'm not sure how much a how-to it is. That's what I want it to be, but sometimes we, uh, sometimes we get shifted around and get things in different order, and sometimes we're not sure how long this cord will reach, but it made it that far this time. And in connection with these things and how to study the Old Testament, I've previously talked with you about some of the things we need to know as basic introductory notes, and we looked a little bit at some of the things we have to bear in mind when we read and study there. We talked about what we might expect to see or what we will find, and yesterday I talked about the study of Old Testament passages, concentrating on background and context. There are a lot of ways to study and a lot of ways to outline a course, and I thought at one time that maybe I'd just, um, who cares what I thought, but I thought I would do something else, but I didn't do it, so it doesn't make any difference now. It doesn't make any difference. This is what I've done. And what I'm working with today, if you have a copy of my outlines, there's still some of those things floating around. There will probably be some there till they house clean the tabernacle the next time, then they can chuck them all out, uh, because they're of no use to me beyond here. The talks are prepared for here, and if somebody said next week, will you give some talks like that someplace else, I would prepare new talks because I've already thought of several things I should have done different, and too late to do them here. So I'm working then this morning with this concept of how to study in the light of theology, how to study in the light of theology, and by theology we mean the understanding of God and his will and the redemptive truths in scripture. Uh, don't be afraid of the word. It's not a tough one in particular. It's not a mystery one either. I've often had people say I'm not a theologian. The truth is that none of us are really theologians when you get right down to it. We're learners in the school of God, and if you know you're saved, that's a great thing. If you have some degree of understanding of what God wants you to do in life, that's a great thing. And theology is simply the truth about God, and in some degree we are all that, and in another way none of us are that. So if that isn't sufficiently confusing, then you'll wish you were back looking at that text chart in a minute, but if that isn't confusing, I'll just have to let it rest for the time. So I, that's where we are today, the study in the light of theology, uh, Old Testament passages in particular. And before I look at any passages, I'm going to look, I think, at two, if I, or at least one. I'll get to one. Now, here are some added guidelines that you necessarily have to add in the study of the Old Testament, although they are not irrelevant in the New Testament either, but they're just ideas you have to add. I've tried to add a few of these each day because if you start out the whole week with them, it kills everybody, and everybody remembers that they wanted to go to Chambersburg in the second hour. First thing you know, you've got nobody there, and that's, that's hard on the ego of teachers, believe it or not. I don't need a lot of people, but nobody is really tough. So, of course, we'd have the recreation director. He can't leave. We could just harass him, that sort of thing. So here are just some added guidelines you have to put with the thing. First of all, all scripture is relevant. When you're reading in Genesis and you come on the list of the dukes of the kings of Edom and all those guys, and you wonder about that, but all scripture is relevant. It's given to us by God letting know things. Sometimes it takes a while to determine the relevance, but I did a really heavy study once in First Chronicles one through ten, which is almost totally genealogical. I just promised myself that I needed to do it. I did a heavy study. That means I looked up every name. I looked up every- where some names you couldn't look up because nothing was said. But I looked it up, I followed it out, I drew out genealogies that kind of looked like that text chart. And, you know, I learned some things in working those ten chapters that I had never known before and had never seen, they're in somebody's book, but I hadn't seen the book. I just learned a number of interesting things. Many of them did not become sermonic, but a few of them did. Uh, it may be old news to you, but I was amazed when I learned that Joab, who was David's general, caused him so much trouble. I wondered many times why David put up with him. I was amazed when I discovered that he was David's first cousin. That's why he put up with him. And blood, blood is thicker than water, you know, blood is thicker than water. I discovered that Joab and his brothers carry the name of their mother, not their father in the scripture. They're the sons of Zeruiah, who is their mother, which is kind of an interesting sort of thing. That's very superficial, but I was really kind of struck by that, and suddenly I understood a lot of the things that happened in the life of David that I really hadn't understood very well before. So all of scripture is relevant, you better believe it. It's not all equal in application. You understand what I mean by that. Some things are told to David that aren't told to you. David said, should I stay in this city? The Lord says, stay there. Well, you can read that and enjoy God's dealings with David, but don't suddenly look up and say, that means I shouldn't move from Fayetteville. Don't suddenly say that. Maybe you shouldn't move from Fayetteville, but it ought to be on grounds other than that, don't you see? So that's, I mentioned that the other day when we discern the ages and things. And in the third place, you have to remember that all scripture is purposed that the man of God might be, and my King James says throughly, others say thoroughly. I don't know where you are, but that the man of God might be completely furnished in all good works, might be completely furnished in all good works. And incidentally, although there are many translations today, if you go to enough Bible conferences, you'll discover that even the fellows that read the NIV stop and say, now this really means, you'll discover they do that too, because you just can't produce a translation, I suppose, that is gonna, that's gonna please every preacher. And once in a while, that's the way you prove to the congregation that you are an academic gift to them. You, you demonstrate their ignorance that you're, by showing your, your super abilities, you know what the word should really be, and uh, I, I say that kind of humorously, but once in a while that shows up, and it shows up in me too, so I know what it's like. Now, the third concept, or the fourth concept, that all scripture agrees. That's what we call the analogy of scripture. You're not going to find Paul teaching something that disagrees with Peter or with David or with Moses. It's one of the prophetic tests that the scripture agrees. But in order to see that agreement, you have to make sure that you study the same topic to the same extent. If you read the resurrection passage in John five, you might get the idea that there was only one resurrection. You have to see what he's talking about in John five and in John 6 too, put it together with the resurrection passages in Revelation, and when you take them the same subject of resurrection, then you find there's a perfect harmony and agreement there. But you really have to do that, and that's where a lot of us fail. We aren't able to connect enough of the scripture. That's a lifelong study, incidentally, but it's a happy one, and if you don't jump to conclusions too quickly, you can make that trip fairly well. And the last thing I will mention is that we get theology from the Bible. The knowledge of God comes from the Bible, not through studying the daisies and the bugs that walk on the road at Greenwood Hills. It comes from the Bible, but then we take what comes from the Bible and use it to study the Bible, and that's not bad. Some people will say, again, they'll say that's circuitous reasoning, and in a way it is, but it's like taking a recipe out of a cookbook and it comes out good, and you say, well, it's good, I think I can use more recipes in this cookbook. Or you might say it's not so good, I'm going to cut down the amount of garlic from four tablespoons to, uh, to a, to a grain or something like that. So we take theology from it, what the study, and then we come back and apply it to it. And in connection with that, the study of the Old Testament in particular, since it's the older form, has to be kept in a good theological light, or you may come up deciding suddenly that, that you really ought to go and shoot your son. He blasphemed, it'd be better to shoot him. The Old Testament says stone him, but your aim isn't that good. So if it isn't kept in a theological light, all sorts of difficulties occur. So those things you kind of have to remember on the broad sphere of things. And having said that, then, the study of the Old Testament in the light of theology and that sort of thing, I thought I'd look at the Joseph story with you in Genesis thirty seven through fifty, the Joseph story. And you know, I'm really not worth a nickel at calligraphy. Not worth a nickel at calligraphy. I just went to one of these schools once on the overhead projector, and they smack your hands if you didn't draw. That isn't quite right, but they chastised you verbally in a way you can hardly believe. I remember the lady putting up one of my, she said, bring one of your own things from your classwork, and I remember bringing one of my own things from the classwork, and they chose it as the model of what was bad. I felt humiliated, but nobody there really knew who I was or that I was a famous person, but I felt humiliated when they pointed out that the people that ran the seminar knew who I was, and they picked on me on purpose, I suppose, because they'd let me come free. I don't know, but whatever the case was, calligraphy is not my thing, but I like to scribble and scrabble at it. And I like to change colors because, you know, you buy a package of these things, and if you only use the black one, you soon use it up, and you've got three other colors that nobody knows. So I like to swiggle them around and all that sort of stuff. The Joseph story. Remember what the word story is used as. It's not a bad word, it's a good word, and the biblical account is essentially in Genesis thirty seven through fifty. Theologically, studying the Joseph story, the theological lesson is, is that God is omnipotent. You can tie it together with Romans eight twenty eight and Philippians one twelve and a lot of other places, but theologically, the thrust is that God is omnipotent. What are we learning about God in the Joseph story? We're learning that God is all powerful and can execute his will in spite of the ideas that men have sometimes. We're learning that. Then when we learn that, we turn that around and bring it back to the Joseph story and say, well, let's see, let's see, look for particular details and observations of that omnipotence on the hand of God. The fact that God is omnipotent doesn't mean that he always does what you might expect him to do. It means that he has the power to do what he decrees and desires and wills to do, and he exercises that power often in ways that you have no knowledge of. So we learn to live with great confidence in God when we read something like the Joseph story and see it in the light of theology as we study the Old Testament. Have I lost you completely? We're studying this account in the light of theology, the theology being the truth of God that boils out that God is omnipotent. Now, you remember the account, maybe. These squiggles right here going down the page, these squiggles represent biblical chapters that I did not delineate till you get down there, but you remember the general account. The key thrust is in Genesis fifty and twenty when Joseph says to his brothers, all these mean things, he says, you thought to do evil, but God meant it for good. No one of those brothers said, oh, we're going to do something, we're going to throw Joseph in a pit so that God can use it someday to help our people. No one of those brothers thought that. No one of them thought we're going to throw Joseph in the pit so we'll be blessed for doing it. They were getting rid of Joseph. They planned to kill him. Reuben said, don't kill him. Reuben wanted to free him, but Reuben is a weak-minded man. Reuben is the elder brother, should have looked at him and said, send that kid home. But Reuben is a weak-minded person, indecisive all through the history of the Old Testament. It's characteristic of his people. You can read about it later in the book of Judges. It's characteristic that they can't make up their mind on things, but he really wanted to release Joseph, he said. So while he's trying to figure out how to release Joseph, the brothers throw him, they throw him in the pit already. Reuben agrees to that. The brothers see the merchantmen coming, and they say, here's a chance to pick up some money, and we can go to the candy store tonight, or that's a dumb thing to say, but they could make some money off of it, and so they sold him into Egypt. And he says, you, you thought it evil, God meant it for good. When the brothers are in Egypt, and they suddenly remember their circumstance and a series of things that God arranges through Joseph. The one says to the other, he says, don't you remember how he pleaded for his life? They said, these things have happened to us because of the evil things we've done. Don't you remember how he pleaded for his life? And they know very well how he pleaded for his life. We don't read much about that back in chapter thirty seven, but that's the Joseph account, and it's built on those things. You thought it for evil, God meant it for good. And Joseph says that a couple of times in a beautiful way, to reassure them and to comfort them. God is omnipotent. You were gonna, what you were gonna do is terrible, but God had a plan beyond yours that worked for his glory. Now, if you pick up the account, you can follow it easy from chapters thirty seven. You have to make a detour in thirty eight. Thirty eight goes back and talks about Judah. But in thirty seven, we learn what kind of a boy Joseph was. We learn how the brothers didn't like him. We understand why they didn't like him. If you don't understand that, then you never had a brother who went to your mother and said, Tommy got licked in school today. And my mother said, what? He got licked in school today? Where is he? Because if you got licked in school, you got licked at home. Not a cruel beating, don't misunderstand me, not a cruel beating. About four clumps with a sufficiently sustained paddle that you were sorry you got licked in school, but you're even sorry that you had a, in my case, it wasn't a brother, it was a sister. My brother needed somebody to snitch on him. But my, my sister could look at mother at the dinner table when all was well, my sister could say, I saw Tommy sitting in the hall today. I was a boy, I wasn't a bad boy, but I was awfully bored a good bit of time, so I talked and did things that annoyed others. And my sister would say, why were you sitting in the hall today? She was a little girl, and there were many times when I like to drop her in a, you know, somewhere in a lake with concrete shoes. But anyhow, we're buddies today, and she's a lovely Christian. We're buddies today. So he came back, the text tells us in Genesis thirty seven, he brought back the evil report. I can just see him now. I can see him sitting at the dinner table and saying, well, you ought to hear what Issachar said about you today, dad. That may not be right. That's, you have to be careful with your imagination, but I can easily see it. Anyhow, they hated him. They hated him, and his dreams didn't make him any better. And so they planned to get rid of him, and they put him in the pit, and they sold him to the merchant men who are Ishmaelite, Midianite merchant men out of that clan. They take him and sell him in Egypt. So in thirty eight, you have the account of Judah, just bypass that. In thirty nine you have Joseph in Egypt in the house of Potiphar. Joseph is a young man. He's seventeen when he's taken away. He's eighteen, pushing nineteen in Potiphar's house. Who knows exactly how old he is, but he's, he's a young man. But he's gifted and he's skillful, and Potiphar soon has him being steward of the house. You remember the difficulties he got into Potiphar's house. He got into those difficulties because he was living righteously before his God. And the result was, instead of being promoted again, he was thrown into prison. Thrown into prison, and in prison, the first thing you know, he's still a young man, twenty, nineteen, twenty, twenty one— In prison, the first thing you know, the man who's in charge of the prison is putting Joseph in charge of the workers because Joseph can do things and get things done. I've known a few people like that. He could, he just came to the surface, that's all. And say, well, you know, it's because he misbehaved in prison. No, he didn't misbehave in prison. We know better than that. He was living righteous before his God in the circumstance. First thing you know, he's head of the workers of the prison. And then there's the circumstance I haven't delineated chapter by chapter. It's easy to do in forty in prison and in forty one with the butler and the bake- uh, butler and the baker, the butler and the baker. Uh, they've got the dreams, and they tell him the dreams, and Joseph looks at the butler, and he says, well, the good news is that Pharaoh's going to take you out and restore you to your honor. And at that point, the baker comes in. He's got a dream too, and Joseph says, the bad news is Pharaoh's going to take you in three days and kill you, he said. So I'm sure he wasn't pleased, but, but the, but they came past, and the butler goes out, and the butler has said to Joseph, I'll remember you, I'll tell Pharaoh about you, but he doesn't. Do you remember that? He doesn't. He gets to Pharaoh's house, and he doesn't say a word until two years later, when Pharaoh has dreams that he can't understand. And I've said humorously, without trying to elaborate on it, if the butler had immediately come to Pharaoh and said, look what this man did, Pharaoh might have released him. Two years later, they wouldn't have known where he was. He'd have gone back home. He'd have been chasing sheep in the desert. Can't prove that, but that's the way it goes. But Joseph, see, doesn't sit in prison and sulk. He doesn't sit there and sulk for two years and say, I got my hands on the butler. It's gonna be a different story, because in Egypt you can stay in prison all your life. They had no system like we have today, and they didn't have TV and soda either. So, but Joseph had been promoted, and the butler remembers him. The butler calls him out, and he comes into the presence of Pharaoh. He's humble, he's washed and cleaned and looking good. He's humble, and he says, well, he said, God, he said, I'm not so good at this, but God can do it, and God will show Pharaoh. And then he tells Pharaoh that the two dreams he had are one, which is an interesting use of the Hebrew word one, incidentally, for those who like to argue over the Trinity and whatnot. He says, they're just, they're two dreams, but they're one, he said, they're just one. And he explains them to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh is so gripped by the fact that he puts Joseph in charge of things. And Joseph, by chapter forty two, has become the chief man in Egypt under Pharaoh. And then there's the great famine, and the brothers come down. And in chapter forty two and forty three and forty four, you have the sequence of Joseph with his brothers. Remember when he saw his brothers, he knew them, but they didn't know him. Lots of changes take place between the times when you're seventeen and thirty. That's how many years had gone by. Lots of changes take place, and a lot take place too when you're wearing Egyptian headdress and flowery clothes, and you've got a bunch of guards with big swords that are a lot of other things. They did not recognize him, but he recognized. And you know, he never thought a vengeful moment. Have you seen that? Never thought a vengeful moment. Never once did Joseph say, oh, well, now I've got him. Where's the pit? Never once. I don't know what he thought, but never once. He's married now, he has children, he's, and he's greatly blessed in Egypt, and so that's the circumstance the way it goes. But he does work out clever devices, gives them their money back, and works out clever devices eventually to get Benjamin down, and then to play a trick on them so that Benjamin is to be kept there as a host. And then in chapter forty five, I've, chapter forty five, where he makes himself known to his brothers, is a chapter that when I get into it, I break down in it. I, I'm almost, I'm close to it now, see, already. Joseph says to the Egyptians, he says, everybody get out of here. He falls weeping, and he knows his brothers, and his brothers are scared simple. But Joseph says, don't be afraid. He said, God sent me ahead of you to nourish you and to provide for you. He said, go and get our father and bring him too. Remember how it goes. And then Jacob comes down. Jacob can hardly believe it. He can hardly believe it, but Jacob comes down, and he's blessed in Egypt. And Pharaoh is amazed at Jacob. He's so old and so, so virile. He's amazed. Jacob says, few and evil are my years. It indicates that Jacob had a tough time reconciling all of God's dealings with him right to the very end. He's an interesting study. But Joseph putting his family down, his family's down, and because the Egyptians do not do much with cattle, they worship the ox and the calf, but they didn't do a lot with cattle. They were vegetable growers and eaters. They liked the leeks and the garlic, the onions and the wheat and that stuff. So they let them have the very best land in all of Egypt for themselves because the Egyptians didn't know what to do with it, and they let them have the land which was just right for what they want. Well, you can continue that sometime, and forgive me for getting carried away with it. You know the account too, but it's really gripping. Eventually, Jacob blesses Joseph's children, puts a great blessing on Ephraim rather than on Manasseh. He even crosses his hands. The church fathers thought that the cross that Jesus died on was probably shaped like that. Some of them thought that. Some of them thought that the stake went down there. Some of them thought that because they saw Jacob crossing his hands as a sign of blessing, and they thought that marked the kind of cross. Most of us don't agree with that, but it doesn't make a lot of difference today. He crossed his hands and blessed them intelligently. And then in Genesis forty nine, he gives pronouncements of prophecies in all the family. He dies, and they bury him in Canaan. And in chapter fifty, when his father's dead, the brothers worry again, and Joseph said, listen, you thought it for evil, God meant it for good. Don't be afraid, he said, I'll nourish you. And Joseph did that in a powerful way. Was Joseph acting on his own ability, his own skill, his own strength? No, he's acting on the concept of a God who's omnipotent. And if you'll forgive me for just jumping back and forth, that omnipotent God, the butler came out of prison. The butler should have been so glad. He should have, you know, because he's, he's got access to Pharaoh. He's open. He's the cup bearer. Yeah, he does a, he's got perfect access to Pharaoh better than anybody. He should have been so glad. He should have said to Pharaoh, you know, I'm glad to be here. I want to tell you about this fellow who brought us on this, but he didn't say it. I've said many times that God just slipped him a, a, in the old days we would have said a mickey, but that God, that he just forgot, providentially he forgot, providentially he forgot. And so when Joseph was needed two years later, the butler said he knew exactly where he was. Didn't have to send out the G-men over Egypt, he knew exactly where he was. Brought him to God. The omnipotence of God. You're reading through the Joseph story, and you say, well, how did this happen? How did this happen? How did this happen? How did this happen? And suddenly Joseph answers it. He says, God meant it for good. So when we read and study the Old Testament theologically, what we're doing is seeing what it teaches us about God and his ways, and then knowing what it's taught us, we come back and see how they're illustrated in God's dealings with his people. I emphasize these four points with regard to Joseph's story. God controls. Who cannot see that? Joseph not only says it, I mean, it's not just found in Genesis, it's found throughout the Bible. God controls, but at the same time, we're responsible. Now, that's where we get hung up sometimes. God controls, but Joseph had to be faithful in Potiphar's house. He had to be faithful in prison. He had to be faithful in serving Pharaoh. God controls, and somebody says, well, suppose Joseph hadn't been Pharaoh, hadn't been, hadn't been faithful. Well, I suppose God would have used somebody else, because God is not going to be frustrated like that. But the truth of the matter is, is that Joseph was a good and a, may we say, a just man, a man who was concerned for God and for God's truth. There's no question about that in my mind, and that in that way, God uniquely set him out. But right from the early years, God controls, we're responsible. Why would Jacob send out the youngest son, um, you know, when they didn't know for sure where the guys were? Well, you can't argue that. You could discuss it, but he did it. It's what we would call an irresponsible thing. And when I would send out to my... but every family is different, but I never sent out my children to find the other children. If I couldn't find them, they could stay lost. Not, not every family, not every family fluctuates on that kind of a circumstance, but to send out the baby to bring in the big boys is not normally the way to do it. Up at Guelph last Sunday, not two weeks ago, I guess, three weeks, ah, Guelph, anyhow, one Sunday recently, uh, my daughter had her three children with her, and she was with us and couldn't find the five-year-old girl, who's a fiery little redheaded girl who runs things. She doesn't come, she directs things. Fiery little redheaded girl. My daughter said, have you seen her? So I walked around back to the playground, and there was Sarah with another little girl. They were sitting there doing something, and I said to Sarah, I said, uh, your your mother wants you, Sarah. And she said, well, Grandpa, she said, please go back and ask my mother why she wants me. And tell my mother that I have to play with Allison because Allison is alone and has nobody to be with her, and I'm taking care of Allison. So just ask my mother why she wants me. You understand that that's not my own child. If I'd been my own child, I would have grabbed her by the back of the neck, picked her up, waggled her off, and hoped that nobody accused me of child abuse. As your grandchild, it's a little different, so I meekly went and I said to her mother, I said, Sarah's back there and wants to know why you want her. In a few minutes, I heard the mournful tune that Sarah had found out why her mother wanted her. Not very happy, so I let her take the child abuse rap instead of me. God controls, but gang, we're responsible. We're responsible. And if you sit back and say, well, God controls, so I'm, I'm not going to eat my lunch today. God will keep me healthy. If that's your attitude, you may starve to death, not on one meal. Sometimes we get so concerned with our part, we forget that God controls. I'm gratefully comforted in the Old Testament many times, because the Old Testament is the testament of narrative, see. The New Testament, you get a lot of straight didactic teaching. The Old Testament, you get tons of narrative that shows how life was lived, and I'm enormously encouraged as you move through it with God's control. Sometimes I see it where it isn't. I- I'm a little guilty of that, but I'm... but we're still responsible. And so Joseph is responsible to do that which God says. Faith keeps us moving. That's what keeps us moving. There may be a few other things that are in, but belief that God was working motivated Joseph and all those clever things he did with his brothers. Faith keeps us moving. Sight reaffirms where we are. Those are an oversimplification. But the Lord challenges you to do things, you do them by faith. We're told very emphatically that that's the important thing, but when we've gone away, we look back and we see what God has done, and we say, praise the Lord, we know where we are. So in God's control, and the fact that God is omnipotent, we're not cut out of it completely. We're the people and the instruments that God uses, and the thing that God desires of us, like with Joseph, is that of committed lives. If there's two T's in commit, I didn't do it right, but is that of committed lies along those particular lines. So what I'm saying this morning is, when you study the Old Testament, you study it in the light of theology. A lot of things to bear in mind. We still need the background, the context, the literature, and the language, all of those things we always require, you see, but you study largely in the light of theology to see what it teaches about God, and then what it teaches about God, how it applies to the scripture and applies to us. And you don't go out and lie down on thirty down here with the trucks thundering by and say, well, if it's God's will, they'll miss me. You don't do things like that because there might be some preacher here who needs a hot illustration of dumb Christians, and God might decide to use that to be the thing that gives it to him. But at the same time, at the same time, you know that God controls. Uh, who would believe, now I don't know what's going to happen in five years, but who would have believed the circumstances in Eastern Europe if we'd told them about them four years ago? Uh, I know lots of Bible prophecy teachers, I just know scads of those guys. I don't know any of them that four years ago was predicting what's happening in Europe. Four years ago, they were still predicting that the Russians were going to attack us and run the, and maybe they will. I'm, you know, I'm not saying that'll never happen, but the things that have happened in the last couple of years in Eastern Europe, from Berlin on out, are things that I didn't know any prophecy teacher in the world who predicted those things. In fact, I knew some prophecy teachers who said emphatically that Germany could never be reunited because of their understanding of the Roman Empire. I heard a couple men that are well known say that, and they said it with great forcefulness, as if no one should disagree. I don't know what they think today, but you know, Germany is reunited. Well, for better or for worse for all of us bridge lovers. Whatever the case is, it's that circumstance. So God controls, but that doesn't make us lazy. We're responsible. You're responsible to witness to people about the Lord Jesus. You're responsible to set your life for the word of God. That's what I mean by responsible. Uh, we're not responsible to save ourselves or to keep ourselves. God does that. But we're responsible to be faithful in what God gives us to do, and what's desired of God is what I refer to here as committed lives, lives like the life of Joseph. I hate to ask you any questions there because I know that the clarity of the material almost forbids them. But do you see what I'm trying to say? And I don't want anybody to get a mis- you know, we get people who get ideas, they say, well, you know, if it's already predetermined that I'm going to get indigestion, I might as well eat everything I want. But that's missing their responsibility, and you have to keep those things in keen sight. Is there any question or concept there that, uh, I'm not all that clear, but any question or concept there that you want to ask about? See how much chance I give you, but I, I mean it fervently. I'm always happy for questions. In the seminary, I ask them. I don't wait to be asked. I ask. That's known as taking the offensive. I did as a student too, incidentally. One of the best ways in the world to ward off being called on a lot in class is to ask the teacher questions. I mean, real questions, good questions, good questions. And to get your hand in the air early and say, well, doctor, bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. After a while, he won't call on you. He's already heard enough from you, and you can sit back and enjoy the hour. Well, any, any questions there? I will go to Lamentations. That's where I'll go on the second of these things in the study of the Bible, study of the Old Testament, particularly theologically. Lamentations is found after Jeremiah in the English Bible. It occurs back in the, in the five rules that Sir Hodges mentioned the other day. Uh, those books in the Old Testament, those books in the Old Testament are arranged in the order of their history. So Ruth is given first, Ruth is given first, and Esther is given last. And those five roles, they were read especially on Jewish festival days. Under a good Jewish system, the Song of Solomon was read twice on Passover, and they each took their place on particular days in Israel's history. Lamentations was read at the Feast of Av, which usually hits us in the month of January sometime over the collapse of the city of Jerusalem. Lamentations is one of those books, if you go to a conference and decide to preach out of it, the people are likely to think you're just a show off or something like that. I don't know. It's peculiar. It's 5 chapters, as Mr. Hodges mentioned earlier. The last chapter is a prayer. They are all arranged in a particular way in a style of Hebrew. Uh, the rhythm of them goes like this. The rhythm goes da da da da da, da da da da da, da da da da da, da da da da. And then every now and then it'll go ta ta ta ta ta, back around like that. It's what's known as a dirge rhythm. I don't know if that's right or not. I, I mean, that's what it's known as, but whether it should be known as that or not, I don't know. And the chapters that make use of the Hebrew alphabet in a cr- in a style so that they're alphabetically arranged. The third chapter is the longest, but the reason it's the longest is it breaks the verses into three sections rather than just making one. So it actually has sixty six verses, and the Hebrew letters in their proper order, since there are twenty two, start with three alephs and and three bates and all of that interesting sort of thing. So that the book not only had a powerful message, it was a learning tool too, and it's a very popular book in the older Hebrew communities. Newer Hebrew communities, not so much, but it was a very popular book in the older Hebrew communities because it showed the Jews in a state of ruin and difficulty where they were crying out to God. And if you've never read a full history of Israel, I don't mean the biblical Israel, but if you've never read a full history of Israel, then you ought to do it sometime to find out the hard lives that the Jewish people have had in this dispensation. And when those men said in the scripture, his blood be upon us and upon our children, they little understood what they were saying. And I'm not saying that the persecutions were right, I'm certainly not saying that, but the history of Israel will break your heart many times in this present age. A good book on that is Kayum Patok's book, uh, simply called Wandering. It's just a dandy book along those lines. Well, whatever the case is, Lamentations, uh, my analysis, my analysis. Not everybody agrees. I hate to admit that, but that's true. If you read eighteen books, you might get five or six other ideas. But in my analysis, the concept of Lamentations is the theological proposition that God is just. Our country is ruined, our city is ruined, we're ruined too, but God is just. The background is the fall of Jerusalem, probably in five eighty six. The city of Jerusalem fell in progressive stages. Nebuchadnezzar subjected them to himself in six oh five. They rebelled, and he came back and made a hash out of them in five ninety seven. They rebelled again, and he came back and made a hash in five eighty six. Now they rebelled again, and when he came back in five eighty two, they didn't leave a stone standing. It was absolute carnage. But Jeremiah, after five eighty six, was given the option by the Babylonian king. He could go to Babylon, he could stay in Jerusalem, and he chose to stay in Jerusalem, thinking as the messenger of God under, under the direction of the Babylonian king. And then they rebelled against Gedaliah, they murdered the man that Nebuchadnezzar made the, or made the ruler in, in Jerusalem, and they fled to Egypt. And Jeremiah was taken forcefully by them to Egypt, and so we kind of think that probably in five eighty six he sat outside and looked at the ruins of the city. The ruin was enormous, the temple had been crushed, the walls were down. There were still a few people living there, but the ruin was enormous. It'd be like coming to Greenwood Hills and finding that the tabernacle had fallen. Changes in heat and cold blew it up, but the tabernacle had fallen, and you looked down at the inn, and the inn had collapsed, and the retreat center had fallen into the basement, and the camp cabins had disappeared. That might not cause the sadness that you'd think, but whatever the case. We've seen nothing like it. I was in the army in nineteen fifty two, I guess it was, at some time like that, when the earthquake hit Bakersfield. It was nothing like the one that hit Oakland, but I wasn't in Oakland. I was in the army when the earthquake hit Bakersfield, and a lot of us were sent up, uh, to kind of watch and make sure that there wasn't a lot of looting. All I was sent up with was to send radio messages back if there was a lot of looting, that's all. But I remember looking at some of the buildings in Bakersfield. I remember looking at the monster high school building, which had been cracked from that corner to this corner, a huge building with a crack about that wide, just, and the, and just seeing the devastation of other buildings, just, I stood there and I felt awestruck. And Jeremiah, who loved Jerusalem so much and saw it be rebellious and be punished so bad, stood outside the city and cried. The name Lamentations is taken from the Greek old Testament, from the Septuagint. The Hebrew word is simply, you can't really say the Hebrew word. The Hebrew word is simply ek. That's about all it amounts to. Maybe you can say ek. The Hebrew word just said, when we translate the Hebrew word, it translates what or how, but it's not a question word. It's the cry of pain when you look and say, what? Or, or something like that. I'm not good at those words, but that's the Hebrew title for it. You can see why we've accepted the, uh, Septuagint and then the Vulgate and brought it over into English to give us the concept of tears. But the idea is that God is just. In the background and context, these awful things have happened, but they've happened to us because of our sins and our rebellion. God is just. God is just. In chapter one, he talks about the state. He talks, I mean, not the nation, but the condition in which they found themselves, the condition in which they found themselves, and the horrible nature of it. And he notes again that it's our sins that have produced this terrible state. In chapter two, he analyzes God's judgment on them. These are sad chapters. They're not easy reading in English or anything else I've ever read them in, but they're sad chapters, but the judgment of God in a very powerful way on them. In chapter three, which is a long chapter right in the middle, he has a section that starts at verse nineteen and runs on for about eighteen verses. I always put verse eighteen in it too, but, uh, this is not the point to argue for that. And in those, he says the Lord is our hope, and in the middle of those verses is found the concept of great is thy faithfulness, from which the hymn is written, you know, comes out of the middle of sadness. And in these verses, in Lamentations three and nineteen through thirty five, you get great truths of God's person. The Lord doesn't abuse people, the Lord doesn't take advantage of people. The Lord doesn't look with favor on people that knock others around, he says. Our hope is in him. Our life is in him. So that's right in the heart of the very middle of the book, our hope. Chapter three expands on that a little bit afterwards, but quickly back in verse four— sorry, chapter four— you're back into why we have fallen into this terrible situation, why God has done it. It's our sins, the rebellious message of our prophets and our priests and all of those things. What else could God do? And finally, there's quite a strong prayer in chapter five. Four chapters of sighing and a strong prayer in chapter five. And a strong prayer in chapter five casts them upon God and looks to God for whatever hope might come. It doesn't end like we would end a prayer today, I suppose, but it says, Lord, turn thou us unto thee, in verse twenty one, Turn thou thus unto thee, and we'll be turned. Renew our days as of old, for thou hast utterly rejected us, thou art very angry against us. That's not the way you normally end your prayers, but it's a statement of truth. Now, a statement of truth in that their sins have brought them on it, and the prophet, like many Old Testament prophets do, identified themselves with the nation, even though he's a righteous man. Daniel does that in Daniel nine. They're righteous men, but they identify themselves with the nation for the sake of petitioning God. They're not going to stand back and say, Lord, this nation is wicked. I'm a good guy, Father, but this nation is wicked. No, sir, they identify themselves nationally, and a prayer is made in that ground. The fact is that while the things that have happened in Jerusalem are terrible, unbelievably bad, it was our sin, our defiance of God, the perversion of the message that made God judge us. Jeremiah had predicted before it happened for almost thirty five years that it would happen, but that didn't make him happy when it did happen. We tell people that the soul that sins will die. We tell people that those who do not trust Jesus will be lost forever. We tell them that for a lifetime. If people die without him, I think they're lost forever, but I don't sit around and feel good about it. A fellow in Canada at the Guelph Conference told us his neighbor just died, and he said, I've often witnessed to him, but he said he's a hard-hearted sinner, he said. He said he would have nothing to do with the gospel, and so he said this morning he died. We didn't sit there and laugh. We didn't say, oh, good, he's gone, you know. We didn't, we felt sad about it. The man said, we are still praying for his wife, he said. She's not very competent. We're still praying for her. We don't rejoice, but, but we, but we know that's what's going to happen. And I've seen people set a pattern in life that I knew was headed for disaster. But when the disaster came, you didn't stand back and say, oh good, you know, I always knew it would hit you someday. That's not our attitude. Like Jeremiah, we come back in lamentation. But the thrust of it is, is that God is just. What God has done to us is what we deserve, and God has done it in fairness and truth, chapter three. And now we're going to look to him, chapter five, cast ourselves upon him, and say, Lord, turn us unto you. When you turn us unto you, we'll really be turned. There is no self-help in that situation. You have to understand that in a good way, I think. There's no such thing that you take your bootstraps and pull yourself up. You're caught in a pit of sin and rebellion. When the spirit moves the heart, the people turn to God, then the people are turned. So what we learn in the Joseph story is that God is omnipotent. We learn it theologically, we come back and see how it works. What we learn in Lamentations is that God is just. We learn it theologically, we come back and apply it in the scripture and to ourselves too. And we learn those in many other places too. I'd originally thought I would look at Esther, but I didn't do that, a couple Psalms, I didn't do that either, and I'm not planning to do that now. I just originally thought I might. What we learn is that God is omnipotent, God is just, and that God's people are right when they're yielded and living under his direction, and they're always blessed that way. Now, as we said several times, and I kind of think I need to say it too, that's not a condition for your salvation, but that's the way you ought to live and walk, and that's what you learn when you study the Old Testament in a theological setting. The study of it will cause us to see that God is just and ought to lead us to live lives in trust, because God is not going to lead us, not going to lose us, not going to mislead us. I've occasionally had somebody say, well, why has God done this to me? And I can't always explain those things. My knowledge is mighty limited, but you know, a lot of times, you know, the fellow, the fellow who broke his leg, and he says, why does God let this happen to me? He should have quit playing basketball ten years ago. Good judgment, good judgment. He should have quit ten years ago. He's continued, I'm just making this up, but he's continued on doing it, doing, doing, doing, doing. Now he's eighty three and he's out there trying to keep up with nineteen-year-olds. They collide under the basket, he breaks his leg. He says, why has God done this to me? God really didn't do it to him. The Lord says, you're responsible for how you live your life. I'll help you get over this too, but promise me you won't play basketball. And that's a childish illustration, but I'm famous for those. So that's where we are. Yeah, what I'm saying this morning is we need to study the Old Testament in the light of theology. See, it's a very interesting thing. First we read, and we read, and we read, and we read, and we read. And then we come back noting the types of literature and all those interesting things. We know what we could expect to see, so we read to see it and see it as we read it, and then we keep the background and context always before us, and then we keep the theological setting too. And the result is you come up with some really powerful teachings, which I suppose we ought to say reinforce the didactic truths that are given to us in the Pauline letters and other places like that. Any question in your mind along these lines? You'll be glad to see we didn't go into the Old Testament text, although that's an interesting study. But I was saying to Zane between meetings that the study of the Old Testament text is child's play compared to the study of the New Testament text. We don't have many manuscripts at all. We have lots of conjecturing fellows. We have lots of guys who will read through Samuel and say, well, I think it ought to be written like this, this, this, this, but there are no texts to argue for, just their ideas, that's all. So you can kind of look at them and say, you're nuts. Or, or that sort of thing. Any questions at all? The study of the Old Testament. Tomorrow I plan to take up a few of the questionable things, plan to, like the contradictions of science and scripture, a little bit, not, not in tons. Don't look scared, but a couple of things like that and various things. Any questions here? Remember, when I turn this off, we're done. Oh my, it's tough to do it too. Have to press the switch. Question? Here's one question in the second row. Maximum travel, Bill, maximum travel. Yeah, yeah, well, you better consider giving up volleyball. Tom, uh, is my thinking wrong when we speak about the Joseph story? Uh, you left out a whole lot. Of course, you don't have the time to go all through the whole book, but uh, I always uh, consider uh, Joseph as the father's son, you know, and then I consider that him being mistreated by his brethren. And then you remember Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver. You get the point, what I'm trying to get. And the Lord, our Lord was sold for thirty pieces of silver. I was, uh, just thinking of the comparisons, uh, that you didn't go into. That's right. Maybe I shouldn't go into them at this time. It might, uh, upset you, but, uh, the father loved the son, made him a coat of many colors, and our Lord had a coat too, you remember, that was woven from the bottom. And we can go through the book and find out all of these different things. Now, Joseph was, uh, he was sent down into Egypt, uh, and he was put in the second of the highest, you know, in the land. And, uh, another thing came to my mind while he was talking, you know, the, that the ruler says, whatever Joseph says unto you, do. And you remember when our Lord, uh, was at the marriage, uh, in Cana, John chapter two, Uh, the mother of our Lord says to them men that were filling the, uh, jars full of water, and she may also makes that statement, you know, whatever he s- he says to you, do, see. And I, I was just putting all these things together in my mind and, and thinking this, uh, chapter on Joseph through, and, uh, uh, you did leave out a lot of that. Was it purposely or? Yes. Yes, I didn't go into that. Okay. I mentioned the other day that the great work on that is by Arthur Pink in his commentary on Genesis. Pink has the great work on it. I don't subscribe to the typological things, but I think there are many things in Joseph's life that are illustrative. And here's a thing I'd say generally, anything that's true anywhere of any man is true also of Jesus, if it's true, because he's... But I've always thought that there were some illustrat- illus- illustrative points in Joseph's life, but there are also a lot of dissimilarity. And so I've said that you can take things that are really clear, you can be blessed in those things. I've never regarded him as a type. I've regarded him as a life that illustrates a lot of Christ's life, because the Heavenly Father had only one son, but Joseph's father had twelve sons, and Joseph is the eleventh of them. And so I've usually said that there are some similarities that are blessings and encouragement, but I don't press them beyond that. And today I wasn't working with them at all, because I'm working with the concept that God is omnipotent. Would it be wrong for me to get up in the morning meeting and to stress some of those points? I'm, I'm going to tell you, um, Mr. Baker asked if it'd be wrong for him to get up and stress some of those points, like in a morning meeting. I'm going to tell you that I'm not the man who has the authority to say right or wrong. I think if you got up and showed how Joseph was like Adolf Hitler, that would be wrong. Yeah. But in these other areas, those are areas that the spirit is the discerning power, and I'm not, so I wouldn't say that. Uh-huh. Yeah. Sorry, I put you on the spot. That's not the spot. I could tell you where the spot is. That's just a nice point. Thank you very much, Mr. Baker. And I'm glad at least I got one question, because now I don't feel totally defeated. If you have others and you want to ask them, I'm always free. I'm, I don't, I just hang around, you know. I work in the afternoon in my room, but I show up at the snack bar and other places, and if anyone shows up, then I'm willing to talk and do whatever the case is. But, uh, that's kind of the way it is. The study of the Old Testament is a great study. I was invited to be a graduate, I was invited to be a graduate assistant in Old Testament studies back in nineteen fifty seven, and, uh, and so I did that. I'm not an expert on it, but I was happy to do that. When Dr. McRae invited me to be a graduate assistant, he said, you can take a couple days to pray about it, but I have wanted to teach all my life. And I said, I said, I don't need a couple days to pray about it. Well, he said, an hour? I said, I don't need an hour. I said, I said, I'm, I'm ready now. I was afraid if I took a couple days to pray on it, he might pray too. Some other name might come to his mind. So I've been thankful to work in that, and there's a lot I don't know about it, uh, and I think this is the age of the New Testament. This is the age of grace, but I've really enjoyed the studies of it, and things like this concept of Joseph have always powerfully impacted my mind. I was going to tell a story one night at a Bible conference, I'll close with this, to illustrate a point in a sermon. I don't know, you know, you pre- you prepare the sermons, and I think in terms of the illustrations too, and I, but you know, in the midst of going through this thing, I just completely forgot that. I, and I've got a written, I always have notes, I don't read them all the time, but I've got them, and so I just completely forgot it. Just, I didn't, it was gone, that's all. And when the sermon was over, when the talk was over, I said to myself, that was the best, you know, that was the best illustration I had, and I had forgotten. I felt like maybe I should get up and start over again. But, but I learned about half an hour later that the object that was part of my illustration I was going to use had been a major dividing thing in this assembly in the past year. And to have talked about it would have profited nobody anything and discouraged a lot of people. So I went back and I just sat down and I said, thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord, for sometimes inducing, I'm not, you'll have to work it out for yourself, but thank you, Lord, for sometimes inducing memory lapses that work for the best, not for wrong. I've always been thankful. Uh, Bill do some announcements. Bill will come with announcements.