The Bible – Is it Divinely Inspired?
Part 3 – Christ is the focus of the Bible
Dr. John Hoole - June 17, 2018
We are in a study of the importance and reliability of the Bible. Is the Bible the word of God? If so, can it be demonstrated it is inspired by God.
Last week, we began looking at the Unity of the Bible. The fact that some 40 writers over about 1,600 years, living hundreds of miles apart, not knowing most of the other writers of Scripture, but, in it all, showing a common theme, without contradicting others, that is certainly an indicator to the Bible being inspired by God. The Bible maintains a perfect consistency of message. The Bible is indeed a unique book.
No series of books in human history has maintained the supernatural internal consistency that is present within the pages of the Bible. From the first book of Genesis to the last book of Revelation, we find writings that combine to form the best-selling, most widely distributed, perfectly unified, flawlessly written book ever produced. Mere human genius could never have accomplished such an extraordinary feat. As the psalmist aptly spoke of God’s Word 3,000 years ago:
Psalms 119:160 NKJV
160 The entirety of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever.
At the end of our last lesson, I gave a lengthy comparison between the books of Genesis and Revelation. The book of Genesis and the book of Revelation are like two bookends that hold the entire Bible together. The parallels between these two books are many and amazing.
What I want to address in this lesson is how it is possible to have such a book as the Bible. I actually alluded to it in our previous lesson. I said, “from the opening to the closing, the theme is Redemption;” And from beginning to end the subject is Christ.
Jesus, Himself affirmed this.
John 5:39 NKJV
39 You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.
Seven verses later, He says:
John 5:46 NKJV
46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.
And in Luke 24:44 (NKJV), He says:
44 Then He said to them, "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me."
Christ understood that all of Scripture points to Him.
If the Bible has this one focus or theme, although the books were written at different times, by an array of people, who did not know each other for the most part, certainly, it must be considered that there is but one Mind behind it all.
Today, I want to add some details to those two thoughts of Redemption and Christ, which actually are one – they go together. I want to show how Jesus Christ is pictured in each of the books of the Bible. But before we can do that, we need to go back to the beginning – Genesis 1.
GENESIS
In chapter 1, verse 17, we find God creating man and woman on the sixth day of the creation week. In chapter two, more detail is given, telling us He created Adam first, then Eve. He placed them in a garden, called Eden, a paradise.
In Genesis 2:16-17, a warning is given to them by God.
Genesis 2:16-17 NKJV
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat;
17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
If the warning is not heeded, it would result in death. Ezekiel 18:20 reiterates this warning, when it says, “The soul that sins, it will die.”
In chapter 3, we read about the serpent and the temptation. The result is that Adam and Eve do what God had forbidden – they sin. This is referred to as the FALL of mankind. It causes a disruption of communion with God.
But God does not leave it there. He knows mankind will never be able to save themselves from their sins. Something is required to restore the broken fellowship with God.
The Curse
God lines up Satan, Eve and Adam, and God speaks forth what is called the Curse. Part of the curse was that Women will now labor in pain when giving birth to a child. He also stated that man would labor with difficulty – in the sweat of their brow. What He would try to grow would now find the impediment of thistles and thorns, and at death, they would return to the ground from which they were made.
The promise of redemption is pictured in what He said to the serpent, Satan.
Genesis 3:15 NKJV
15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel."
The future seed of the woman would defeat the serpent’s seed. Some would take these two seeds as the Christ and the Antichrist. This is the first promise of a coming Redeemer.
After meting out the curse to the three, God does something very gracious. He makes for them clothing out of animal skins. Although we are not given the details of where the clothing comes from, many believe it implies that God performed the first sacrifice to cover Adam and Eve.
Notice what it says in Genesis 3:21 (NKJV).
21 Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.
The promised redemption required the shedding of blood. And with it, God covered our sins.
Psalms 32:1 NKJV
32 Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
While Genesis 3:15 is the promise of a coming Messiah Redeemer, Genesis 3:21 is a picture of that redemption. It is here that the bloodline for the coming Messiah begins.
Adam and Eve were ushered out of the Garden of Eden, and we are told of two sons born to them Cain and Abel sacrifice to the Lord, and God accepts that of Abel, but not Cain’s sacrifice. In his raging anger, Cain kills his brother.
In the last two verses of Genesis 4, we read of another son being born.
Genesis 4:25-26 NKJV
25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, "For God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed."
26 And as for Seth, to him also a son was born; and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call on the name of the Lord.
Seth replaces Abel and the lineage of the Messiah is renewed through him. From Seth’s family, we have Enos, Canaan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech.. Lamech has a son named Noah.
At this time, the Bible says “the earth was corrupt and filled with violence” (6:11). God commands Noah to build an ark, along with instructions as to how to build it. We are not told in Genesis what the apostle Peter writes in 2 Peter 2:5.
2 Peter 2:5 NKJV
5 (God) did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly;
God instructs Noah that at least two of each animal type will be with the family in the ark. That does not, of course, include sea animals.
God judges the earth with a flood, but saves Noah and his three sons and their wives. We ae told that it rained and the fountains of the deep were opened (Genesis 7:11). Although it rained forty days and nights, they are in the ark for over one year. Of the sons of Noah – Ham, Shem, and Jepheth – it is through Shem the messianic lineage continues. Shem had five sons, one of which was Arphaxad, through whom the line continues.
We continue through the time of the Tower of Babel and the separation of languages. The people begin to disburse rather than stay in one location. The descendants of Shem settle in Persia, Assyria, Chaldea, Armenia and Syria. And for the next several hundred years, the lineage unfolds. From Arphaxad, we have Sala, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, and Terah. It is thought by many that the name Eber is where the word “Hebrew” comes from.
God turns from identifying the line through a family to focusing on one man – a son of Terah. Abram’s name is later changed by God to be Abraham. That man was Abram, the son of Terah, who lived in the Chaldean city of Ur. It will be this man and his lineage through whom the coming Messiah will continue. God establishes a covenant with Abram, a covenant that will be everlasting. It is in his family that all the world would be blessed (Genesis 12:1-3).
God reiterates this covenant with Isaac and then again with Jacob, whose name is changed to Israel. Jacob has twelve sons. We will see that God chooses the tribe of Judah to be where the Messiah’s lineage will continue. Judah was the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob by his first wife, Leah (Genesis 29:35). He grew up with his brothers, working in the family business tending cattle and sheep. We will look at the tribe of Judah further at a later point.
We read the story of how the eleven brothers hated Joseph, and sold him to the Midianites. We read also in Genesis 37, that the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar.
Let me mention something about Egypt. Egypt and the Egyptians are mention 614 times in the Old Testament, and each time, the original language uses some form of the word, “Mizraim” Mizraim was the name of the second son of Noah’s son, Ham.
Through a series of event, the Pharaoh of Egypt has a dream which Joseph interprets, about a seven-year famine that follows seven years of plenty. Joseph is put in charge of gathering during the time of plenty, as well as distributing grain from the storehouses during times of famine.
Genesis 41:56-57 NKJV
56 The famine was over all the face of the earth, and Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians. And the famine became severe in the land of Egypt.
57 So all countries came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain, because the famine was severe in all lands.
The famine affects the family of Jacob severely in Canaan. He sends many of his sons to Egypt to buy grain. Situations occur between Joseph and his brothers, although his brothers did not yet recognize him. Eventually, they are reunited with their brother, and Jacob moves his family into Egypt.
Genesis 46:27 NKJV
27 And the sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt were two persons. All the persons of the house of Jacob who went to Egypt were seventy.
We come to the end of the book of Genesis. The first verses of Exodus again tells us who made up the 70 people moving to Egypt. It did not include Joseph and his family, who were already there.
After a few hundred years, God calls on a man by the name of Moses, of the tribe of Levi, to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. He was living in the land of the Midians in exile from Egypt. He marries Zipporah, the daughter of a Midianite priest.
Before leaving Midian, let me make a couple of comments. Zipporah’s priest father was Jethro. He is also called Reuel (Ex. 2:18), Hobab (Judges 4:11) and Raguel (Num. 20:39), There is something else about Jethro. You have heard me at times refer to a group of people in Israel, Syria and Lebanon, called Druze. The Druze hold that they are the descendants of Jethro. Jethro is their prophet.
Now, back to Moses. After God convinces Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, He returns to Egypt and is reunited with his bother, Aaron God tells Moses that his older brother, Aaron, is also called to help.
Moses also had a sister named Miriam, who was older than both Aaron and Moses. She is called a Prophetess in Exodus 15:20. Miriam dies in Kadesh, the second time the Israelites were in that city (Num. 20:1). Aaron dies a short distance before Moses in Mount Hor, at the age of 123 which is just a day’s journey from Kadesh (Numbers 20:28).
At the time of the exodus, in 1492 B.C., Moses is 80 years old. The journey to the border of the promised land takes 40 years, and Moses dies on Mount Nebo, at the age of 120 years.
Joshua takes over leadership of Israel, and lead them in their conquest of the Promised Land. 31 kings west of the Jordan are defeated by the Israelites. There were also two kings east of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, who were defeated.
Once the conquering is done, the land is divided between the 12 tribe. Two tribes were closely connected to the city of Jerusalem. The tribe of Benjamin was given a small parcel of land immediately north of Jerusalem. Judah’s distribution of land included at its northern border the city of Jerusalem was considerably greater in size.
And, for the next 410 years, Israel is led by twelve Judges. But the people began to desire a king like other nations had. It was never God’s plan to move from a Theocracy to a Monarchy. But God allowed them their desire and chose Saul from the tribe of Benjamin to be their first king. Saul reigned as king for 40 years.
The next king of Israel is David, from the tribe of Judah. All the kings from that point on are in the lineage of David, of the tribe of Judah. As I mentioned earlier, Judah is the tribe from which the Messiah would come. It is from the name, Judah, that we have the word “Jew.” David reigns for 40 years, and is followed by his son, Solomon, who also reigns 40 years.
After Solomon, there is an uprising where 10 tribes break away from Judah and Benjamin, to form their own nation, called Israel, or the Northern Kingdom. Judah and Benjamin then become the kingdom of Judah, or the Southern Kingdom.
For the next almost 250 years, the northern kingdom of 10 tribes chooses their own kings. Not one of their 19 kings is godly. They did have some godly prophets that tried to bring them back to Jehovah. Prophets: Ahijah, Elijah, Micaiah, Elisha, Jonah, Hosea, Amos, Oded. The northern kingdom is eventually conquered by Assyria in 721 B.C.
The Southern Kingdom of Judah continues to have kings that are the descendants of David. Thus, the lineage of the Messiah continues. They actually are ruled by 19 kings and one queen (Athaliah). Although some of these rulers were godly, not all were. God calls them to repent, and to stop serving other gods. They don’t, and God calls on an ungodly king, King Nebuchadnezzar, to punish them.
King Nebuchadnezzar conquers the Southern Kingdom for the first time in 606 B.C. He leaves the Israeli king in place as his subject, but they rebel against paying tribute, and in 586 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar retunes and destroys Jerusalem and the Temple.
While Judah no longer has a king, the tribes of the Israelites continues. The tribe of Judah will continue to be the line of the Messiah.
Following the 70-year captivity in Babylon, a remnant returns to Jerusalem. Nehemiah, Ezra and Zerubbabel, over the next hundred years, tries to restore Jerusalem and the Temple. The prophets of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi are also instrumental in this work. Over the next 400-500 years, families return from Babylon or Persia to their homeland.
In about 430 B.C., Malachi, the last of the Old Testament prophets, writes his book. From his prophecy until the New Testament events, we know little. But the people still could identify which tribe they were part of.
In Matthew 1 & 2, we have a description of the birth of Jesus, born in the city of David, from the tribe of Judah. Matthew strongly ties his life to that of David, saying Jesus is the rightful heir to the throne of David. Not only is he a descendant of David, He is the Son of God. His ministry will lead to the Cross, where he takes the sins of the world upon himself.
Jesus is truly the Messiah spoken of over and over again in the Old Testament.
We can read from Genesis to Revelation and find no disjointed scenario, put together by happenstance. We can pass from one style of literature to another as easily as though we were reading a story written by one hand and produced by one life. And, INDEED, we do have a story produces by one MIND, though not written by one hand.
Christ in Each Book of the Bible
(Transcribed from a taped message of J. Phillip Jackson in Eugene Oregon, March 1960.
Jackson was from Pentecostal Assemblies of New Zealand speaking at Eugene Bible College.)
In Exodus He was the Passover Lamb.
In Leviticus He was the Great High Priest.
In Numbers He was the pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
In Deuteronomy He was the prophet likened unto Moses.
In Joshua He was the Captain of my salvation.
In Judges He is my Judge and Lawgiver.
In Ruth He is my Kinsman Redeemer.
In 1st & 2nd Samuel He is my trusted Prophet
In Kings & Chronicles He is my reigning King
In Ezra He is my faithful Scribe
In Nehemiah He is the Rebuilder of the broken walls of my shattered life.
In Esther He is the Savior of my people.
In Job He is my Ever-living Redeemer
In Psalms He is the Lord my Shepherd
In Proverbs & Eccles. He is my Wisdom
In Song of Solomon He is my Lover and Bridegroom
In Isaiah He is the wonderful Prince of Peace
In Jeremiah & Lament. He is my weeping Prophet
In Ezekiel He is the wonderful four-faced man
In Daniel He is the fourth man in the midst of the fiery furnace
In Hosea He is the eternal Husband, waiting for the return of a wayward wife
In Joel He is the Baptizer in the Holy Ghost and power
In Amos He is my Burden-bearer
In Obadiah He is my Savior, who walks across my storm-tossed life.
In Jonah He is the Savior of the Gentiles, as well as the Jews.
In Micah He is the Messenger with beautiful feet
In Nahum He is my Avenger
In Habukkuk He is the Lord mighty to save
In Zephaniah He is our Savior
In Haggai He is the restorer of the lost heritage
In Zechariah He is Jehovah who is jealous and concerned with uncleanness in the house of David, and is Jehovah who blesses when they repent.
In Malachi He is the Sun of Righteousness rising out of the waves with healing In His wings.
WHO WAS IT WALKING ACROSS THE STORM-TOSSED SEA?
In Matthew He is the Messiah the King
In Mark He is the wonder-working Servant
In Luke He is the Son of Man
In John He is the Son of God
In Acts He is the giver of the Holy Spirit, working and moving among men.
In Romans He is my Justifier
In 1st & 2nd Corinthians He is my Sanctifier
In Galatians He is the Redeemer from the curse of the law.
In Ephesians He is the Christ of unsearchable riches
In Philippians He is the God that supplies all of my needs
In Colossians He is the fullness of the Godhead bodily
1st & 2nd Thessalonians He is the soon coming King
1st & 2nd Timothy He is the one Mediator between God and man
In Titus He is my faithful Shepherd
In Philemon He is a friend of the oppressed
In Hebrews He is the executor of the everlasting covenant
In James He is the Lord who heals the sick with the prayer of faith and anointing of oil
In 1st & 2nd Peter He is our Chief Shepherd Who soon shall appear
In 1st, 2nd & 3rd John He is Love
In Jude He is the coming Lord with ten-thousands of His saints
In Revelation He is the King of Kings and glorious Lord of Lord
Yes, Just as Jesus said, the entirety of the Old Testament speaks of Him. If, in our reading of the Old Testament, we do not recognize the reflection is it about Christ, we need to read it again. He is its focus all through the Old Testament.
And with regards to the tribe of Judah, in Revelation 5:5, Christ is referred to as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. And I believe He coming back soon.