A Christian Voice Nanosermon
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Nanosermon Script:
Turn with me to the book of Proverbs, chapter thirty and verse five. We read:
Prov 30:5 Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.
But I said ‘turn with me to the book of Proverbs’ and you may not even know where that is. If every word of God is pure, you need to know where to find each one.
In church, you don’t want to be floundering as the preacher jumps from John to Deuteronomy, through Psalms and Daniel to Revelation, so again, you need to know where things are.
Not a random collection
And if you rely on your phone to find a text, well, just where is ‘Ezra’ in the Bible? Who was he? An apostle? A Gospel writer? A prophet? An historian? You need to know. So here’s a quick overview.
Firstly, the Bible is not some random collection. Nor is it ‘a book’ except in the physical sense. It’s a collection of some sixty-six separate books written by around forty human authors over fifteen centuries under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
It is God-breathed, effectively written by God. It has a logical order and it’s ‘intellectually coherent’. The whole Bible agrees with itself from beginning to end and contains thousands of cross references.
The History books
The Bible begins with the Old Testament which we can divide into History, Wisdom and Prophets. The first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, were written down by Moses. They contain early human history and the laws of God. They are important. Jesus quoted Deuteronomy more than any other Old Testament book.
The book of Joshua, Moses successor, comes next, followed by Judges, recalling events before Israel had a king. The book of Ruth is a short love-story with a big impact on events. Samuel wrote most of first and second Samuel, and his books are followed by first and second Kings, which are history books of Israel’s kings, from a theological perspective.
Even more theological are the two books of Chronicles, which focus more on the southern kingdom of Judah after the Northern kingdom of Israel broke away. Chronicles interweave with Samuel and Kings. So you may read the same thing twice or see the same events covered from a different slant.
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah recount the return of Judah from captivity in Babylon to rebuild Jerusalem. The final history book is Esther, a dramatic account of the Jews in Persia.
The Wisdom books and Prophets
Then begin the Wisdom books, starting with Job, a story Moses probably collected.
The Psalms come next and are found in the middle of most Bibles. Don’t refer to ‘Psalms twenty’, though. Each of the psalms is a psalm. These are songs of praise, encouragement, wisdom and prophecy.
Next comes the book of Proverbs, which does what it says on the tin, and two beautiful wisdom books written by Solomon, Ecclesiastes and the Song of songs.
The Prophets start with Isaiah. They call the people to repentance and prophecy the future, refering to events in the history books. If you hear them separated into ‘major’ and ‘minor’ prophets, ‘minor’ just means he wrote a shorter book.
The New Testament
Then comes a silent gap of four hundred years before the New Testament begins with the four Gospels. ‘Gospel’ means ‘good news’ and Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are eye-witness accounts of the ministry of the Lord Jesus. John was written later, so we see more theological development in his Gospel over the other three.
Doctor Luke was also a historian and went on to write an account of the Acts of the Apostles, the fifth New Testament book.
Then come the letters the Apostles Paul, James, Peter, John and Jude wrote to the early churches. The Bible ends with the Revelation given to the Apostle John with its numerous references to the Old Testament. And don’t ever call it ‘Revelations’.
So now start navigating the Bible on your own. Get into it with knowledge of how it’s put together, because every word of God is pure.
SCRIPT ENDS
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