The Poetical & Prophetic Books - Bible Survey Part 2

What we're going to do this week is we're going to go ahead and we're going to talk about the poetical books and the prophetic books of the Old Testament. So you ready to do that?

All right. Now, let's start with the poetical books. The poetical books of the Old Testament are the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes. And when we say poetry in English, we think of rhyming.

You know, Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. But that was not what Hebrew poetry was built around. Nor was Hebrew poetry built around cadence. You know, iambic pentameter.

You all remember that from high school? I have no idea what that means, but I think it sounds cool to say, iambic pentameter. Anyway, Hebrew poetry is not built around cadence.

Either. Hebrew poetry is built around something we call parallelism. That is, taking two parts of a verse and paralleling them, juxtaposing them to one another. And there were two ways the Hebrews did this. One way they did it was repetitively. In other words, both ends of the parallelism said the very same thing. And the other way they did it was in a contrary way, where the two ends of the parallelism said opposite things. So let's look at some examples, all right?

First, repetitively. Hey, Job 32, verse 7. Age should speak, and increased years should teach wisdom. Do you see what I'm talking about? Both halves of the verse say the very same thing. How about this one? Psalm 51, verse 17.

You will not despise. Both halves say the very same thing. So that's repetitive parallelism. The other kind of parallelism was contrary, or antithetical parallelism, meaning that the two ends of the verse say opposite things.

Couple of examples. Ecclesiastes 10, 12. The words of a wise man are gracious, but the words of a fool shall devour him.

Do you see how the two sides say the opposite thing? One more example. Proverbs 10, verse 19. Giving us great wisdom about those things, which is why sometimes you'll find these books referred to as the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. If you run into that term, it's the very same term as the poetical books.

Now, let's go through and talk about each one of these books individually. We'll start with the Psalms. The majority of the Psalms were written, of course, by King David around 1000 B.C. But other people wrote some of the Psalms as well. So you might say, well, Lon, how do I tell which ones King David wrote, and how do I tell the ones that other people wrote? Well, many of the Psalms have titles that go with them.

A title is information that's found between the Psalm number, Psalm whatever, and verse 1. And you say, I've never seen that in there. Oh, it's in there. Trust me if you look for it.

Let me give you an example. Psalm 51 says a Psalm of David when Nathan, the prophet, came to see David after he, David, had gone in to Bathsheba. And so this heading, this title tells us not just only who wrote the Psalm, but tells us the historical event that prompted the Psalm. And this is why Psalm 51 is all about confession of sin. And it's all about repentance of the sacrifices of God or a broken heart, because Nathan had come to rebuke David for his sin with Bathsheba. And that's why David wrote the Psalm.

One more. God, my soul thirsts for you as in a dry land where there is no water. Now, where was David when he wrote this?

He was in a dry land where there was no water. And so certainly he was out there and he said, ah, you know what? My soul thirsts for God the way my body is now thirsting for water. And that's what he wrote down. But knowing he was out there in the wilderness makes the song make more sense.

You got everybody tracking with me now? Not every song has a title, but if it does, it'll tell you who wrote the song and a lot about the historical setting. Now, the Psalms cover the full range of human emotions, the fear, grief, anger, joy, hope. Some Psalms talk about gratitude to God for something that he's done great for you. Some Psalms talk about confusion before God for something he's doing to you. That is the Psalmist. The Psalmist didn't understand and didn't like.

So essentially, there is no matter what you're going through in life, my friend, there is a song for you. And perhaps that's why the Book of Psalms is such a beloved book of the Bible, because no matter what you're facing in life, there's a song where you can go that God addresses that in your life and in my life. So that's the Book of Psalms. But just before we move on, I do want to mention one very special group of Psalms called the Messianic Psalms. These are Psalms that with impeccable accuracy predict many details regarding the Messiah, regarding his life, his ministry, his birth, his death, his resurrection, even though they were written a thousand years before he was born.

Let's take one example. Psalm 22 says in verse 18, they divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing. Now, does that sound familiar? Yeah. Isn't that what the Roman soldiers did when they crucified Jesus? Listen, Matthew 27, verse 35, then the soldiers crucified him and cast lots for his clothing that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken, spoken where? Psalm 22.

Yeah. They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing. And one more example out of that same Psalm. Verse 16 says they pierced my hands and my feet. What was that all about? Was about the crucifixion, of course.

Right. And there are about 20 of these Messianic Psalms in the Bible and their perfect predictions regarding the Messiah are one of the greatest proofs of the Bible's veracity and its trustworthiness and its supernatural character. And we know that these Psalms were not faked. We know that this is not a hoax that somebody wrote these things into the Psalms after Jesus had lived.

So they went, oh, OK, they cast lots for his clothing. Why don't we go back and write that into Psalm 22? We know that can't be true because we have a copy today of the entire book of Psalms from 50 to 100 B.C.

That's the date that's placed on it by even liberal scholars. That's part of the Dead Sea Scroll collection. And so we have Psalm 22 written 50 to 100 years before Christ was ever born. And guess what it says? It says they cast lots for my clothing and they pierced my hands and my feet.

There was no fraud here, my friends. This is genuine, supernatural prediction by God of what was going to happen to the Messiah. And as I said, one of the greatest proofs of the trustworthiness of the scripture. Now, let's move on to the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs is a pithy collection of statements that give practical wisdom, that are wise sayings about the affairs of everyday life. And there are 31 chapters to the book of Proverbs. So I don't know about you, but I read one a day.

I mean, it's easy for me. I say, all right, today is the 19th. So today's my day to read Proverbs chapter 19. You say, what happens on a 30 day month? Well, I skip 31 and come back to it the next month. What about February?

Well, I don't know. I just skip a couple of chapters and come back to them. But for the most part, you'll cover the whole book of Proverbs every month if you read whatever day it happens to be.

And I think it's fair to say that anybody who runs their life based on the wisdom in the book of Proverbs will avoid a bushel and a peck of trouble in their life just by obeying the practical life principles the book of Proverbs lays out. When my son, Justin, my middle son, I have three boys, in addition to my daughter, Jill, was a teenager. He had this terrible habit of entering the room mouth first. Have you ever met people like that? Yeah.

Okay. Well, that was Justin. And so one of my favorite Proverbs is Proverbs 10, 19, which we read just a little earlier, where there are many words. Sin is never far away, but he who restrains his lips is wise. And one day I got Justin, I said, I want you to sit out the table. I want to read a Bible verse to you.

I said, sit down, shut up. And so I sat him down and I read this verse to him and I said, Justin, you're going to memorize this verse, which I thought if he memorizes it, maybe God will help me, some of it will sink in. And I said, I want you to know I have declared this verse to be your special life verse, Justin, this is your life verse. He who restrains his lips is wise. Well, later on, I told my wife, Brenda, that I had done this and without even looking up from the sink, she simply said, physician, heal thyself. Yeah, I thought that was kind of funny because that's from the Bible too, you know, but it's true.

Justin and I both would get in a lot less trouble if we learned to restrain our lips and keep our big mouth shut. This is the book of Proverbs and what a great source of wisdom it is. Hey, the book of Job deals with the problem of human suffering.

The book of Ecclesiastes deals with the issue of living for the things of this world, and finally, the Song of Solomon deals with physical sexual love between a husband and a wife and makes it clear to us that God is pleased with this expression of love within the bounds of biblical marriage, which is why in the New Testament, the Bible says, Hebrews 13, 4, marriage is honorable in all ways and the marriage bed is holy. Now, that's the end of the poetical books of the Old Testament. So why don't we turn our attention now to the prophetic books of the Old Testament? And when we do this, the minute we say the word prophecy, most of us immediately think about foretelling the future. But in the Bible, prophecy means something much broader than just predicting the future, a prophet in the Bible was a person who received direct information from God himself, divine revelation from God that God wanted him to communicate to people. Now, sometimes this involved foretelling the future indeed, but most of the time it involved the prophet simply telling the people around him what God wanted them to hear. And so, what I really want you to understand is because of that, the Bible that we have today is merely prophecy written down.

Let me repeat that. It's prophecy written down because, think about it now, what we have here in the Bible is direct information from God that God gave to a prophet because he wanted you and me to have that information and then he instructed that prophet to write it down. Does everybody tracking with me understand? It's just prophecy written down. Now, we don't know much about the process of how prophecy got written down. We do know 2 Peter 1 says that sometimes the prophet himself didn't even understand what he was writing down, particularly when it dealt with the Messiah in the future. We only have one example anywhere in the Bible that actually describes the writing down of prophecy and that's in the book of Jeremiah. Let me read it to you. Jeremiah 36 verse 1 says, Now, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, take a scroll and what's the next three words? Write on it all the words I have spoken to you. And so, Jeremiah called his scribe whose name was Baruch and as Jeremiah dictated the words the Lord had spoken to him, Baruch wrote them down and the result is what we call today the book of Jeremiah.

Exactly. That's the only description we have of prophecy being written down. Now, not every prophet was instructed by God to write down their prophecies. Elisha was a great prophet but there's no book of Elisha in the Bible. Elijah was a great prophet but there's no book of Elijah in the Bible. Nathan, the prophet that rebuked David about his sin with Bathsheba was a great prophet. There's no book of Nathan in the Bible. How did God decide what prophets to have write their prophecy down and which ones not do? I have no idea, folks. We got what God wants us to have.

That's all I can tell you. Now, in that regard, I want you to understand that the Bible then divides the prophetical books into two broad categories, the minor prophets and the major prophets. The major prophets are four, Isaiah, Jeremiah, including Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel, and the minor prophets consist of the 12 books between Hosea and Malachi. And the difference between the major prophets and the minor prophets is not importance. In other words, the major prophets are not more important than the minor prophets. It's a difference of length. The major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are longer books and the minor prophets are shorter books. That's all. But they're all inspired Scripture and therefore they're all equally important.

And sometimes it helps if you can see these prophets, the books, broken up by the year they were written and the king who was ruling and who the prophet prophesied to. So we have a chart for you. Let's put that up. And you say, what are you, serious? Nobody can read that crazy thing.

I know. That's why we gave you an MP3. That's why we're going to give you an enhanced CD where you can blow it up and you can see it all. But that'll be on there, okay? And it'll tell you what empire was ruling during each prophet's profit. You got it, right?

Okay, so get the MP3 and that'll be on there. Now, as we said, most of the prophetic writings were not predicting the future. Most of them were messages addressed to the people that the prophet was talking to.

For example, in the book of Amos, Amos is rebuking the leaders of Israel for ignoring the poor, ignoring the orphan, ignoring the widow, and greedily keeping all the money for themselves and perverting justice. So that's what most of the books of the prophets are about. But there are some messianic prophecies in the Bible, just like there are messianic Psalms.

These are sections of the prophetic books that do speak in a future sense, in a foretelling sense, to the ministry of the Messiah that was coming centuries later. Now, the greatest single example of this is Isaiah 53, right? We all know Isaiah 53, okay.

But let me just give you a shorter example. Micah 5 verse 2 says, but you, Bethlehem, out of you shall come forth the one who shall be the ruler of Israel, whose going forth are from old, from everlasting. Now, who's Micah talking about? He's talking about the Lord Jesus Christ, who was born in Bethlehem, right. But this was written in 750 BC. And Zechariah 11, which was written in 500 BC, says, so I said to them, if it is agreeable to you, give me my wages. So they weighed out for my wages 30 pieces of silver. Uh-huh, that sounds familiar, doesn't it? Then I took the 30 pieces of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the Lord.

Who are we talking about here? Judas, yeah, look at Matthew 27, let's compare Matthew 27. The Bible says, then Judas was remorseful and brought back the 30 pieces of silver and threw them into the temple. Then the chief priest took the silver pieces and bought, what kind of a field?

A potter's field. So once again, as you can see, all these prophecies were made centuries before the Lord Jesus Christ was born, and they all came true exactly the way God said they were going to. Finally, the last prophet to write was a fellow named Malachi in 400 BC. And as I told you last week, after this, the Old Testament goes silent for 400 years. It's not that history didn't happen, it's just that the Bible has nothing more to say until the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. You say, well, why did the Bible go silent?

Friends, I have no idea. I guess God said everything he needed to say up to that point. And we pick up again with the Bible at the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ in the beginning of the New Testament. Okay, now, you guys, did you survive that? Okay, again, the fastest course in Bible survey known to man you just had.

But hopefully you kept up and get the enhanced CD or go online and you can get all those notes and all that information and all that that you can study at your leisure. But it brings us today now to our most important question. So all you guys at Bethesda and all you guys at Prince William and all you guys at Tysons and on the Internet and here, are we all ready?

You sure? All right, on the count of three, here we go, one, two, three. Oh, yeah, that's sweet.

You say, Lon, so what? Well, remember what we said last week, Romans 15, verse four says that what was written in earlier times, meaning the Old Testament, was written for our learning that through the encouragement of the Old Testament scriptures, we might have hope. And therefore, the prophetic books and the poetical books the Bible tells us are full of passages designed for our learning, designed for our encouragement, and designed to give us hope. So why don't we pick a passage somewhere in there and let's get some learning, some encouragement, and some hope from it today. How's that sound?

Sound good? All right, let's pick something out of the prophetic books. How about the book of Daniel, one of the major prophets, chapter one? And remember, let me just remind you what's happening in Daniel chapter one. Nebuchadnezzar, we talked about him last week, conquered Jerusalem in 586 BC.

We talked about that last week. He tore down the city, he tore down the temple, and he also left his chief officer, his vizier there in town, and said, I want you to find a bunch of young Jewish guys, sharp guys now, that you can train and we can turn them into my personal servants. Okay, so that's the background. And three of the people that the vizier picked were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And then he also picked their friend named Daniel. All right, that's where we pick up the story.

Here we go. Daniel chapter one, verse five. And the king appointed for these men a daily provision of the king's choice food and his wine.

And he also appointed that they be educated for three years, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that at the end of that time, they might serve before the king. But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the king's food. Now, folks, what was wrong with the king's food? Well, I'm sure it was good food. The king ate it.

So what was wrong with it? Well, actually, for a Jewish young man, there were three things wrong with it. Number one, many of the foods that the king ate were forbidden for a pious Jew to eat as part of the Old Testament law. You know, things like ham and bacon and red, hot, and blue.

You understand what I'm saying? Couldn't eat that stuff. Also, the second problem is that the animals that would have been slaughtered to be used for the king's food would have been slaughtered in a non-kosher way. Even if you have a clean animal that is acceptable to eat, you must slaughter it in a certain way, according to the Old Testament, for it to be kosher.

Meaning you have to drain all the blood out of the animal first before you actually cut it up, because Jews, check the book of Leviticus, are not allowed to eat blood. So the king wouldn't have done that. And third, most of these animals would have first been through a sacrifice in the temples of the gods of Babylon before they were used for food, which was defiling to the animal in the mind of Daniel. And so Daniel said, I don't care what it costs me, I am not going to defile myself and eat this food.

Now, I want to point out to you that it could cost Daniel severely to do this. King Nebuchadnezzar is not exactly what we would define as an enlightened ruler. Do you remember the story of throwing the three guys in the fiery furnace, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? When the furnace didn't burn them up, read the story, Nebuchadnezzar was so mad that he said, well, it's going to burn somebody up. And he took his own officers and threw them in the fire, and they got burned up. He's also the guy, Nebuchadnezzar, that when the last king of Judah made him mad, King Zedekiah, and revolted against him and didn't do what he said, he caught Zedekiah and his two sons, killed his sons in front of Zedekiah's eyes, gouged Zedekiah's eyes out right after that.

So the last thing he would ever see on earth was the death of his two sons, then took Zedekiah back to Babylon and burned him at the stake. This is not the guy you want to make angry at you. Is that clear?

Yeah, okay. So, but Daniel said, I don't care, I'm not eating his food. So he went to the vizier and asked for permission not to eat the king's food. Now watch, and the vizier said, I'm afraid of my lord, the king, Nebuchadnezzar, for he will see your face looking worse than the other young men, and this will endanger my head before him.

Notice his own prime minister is scared of this guy, Nebuchadnezzar. And Daniel said, well, look, I got an idea. Please test the four of us for 10 days.

Give us only vegetables to eat and water to drink, and then compare our appearance to that of the other young men. Now friends, this is the key to the whole chapter. Miss this point, and we miss the point of the whole chapter.

Here it is. The point is that Daniel believed that his God was big enough, and his God was powerful enough that if he put God first in his life, if he honored God above the king in his life, that God would honor him back and supernaturally nourish his body. You got that? Let me repeat it. This is the whole point. Daniel believed his God was big enough that if he honored God, God would honor him back and nourish his body, regardless of what he ate.

Everybody got that? Okay, now let's see what happened. Daniel 1, verse 15. At the end of the 10 days, the appearance of Daniel and his friends was better, and their bodies were fatter than all the others who'd been eating the king's food. You know, this sounds like the diets I go on. I eat nothing, and I get fatter. So I don't know. Maybe there's something about dieting as a Jewish person.

I don't know, but this is how my diet works. Anyway, and God, look at this, more. Gave these four young men wisdom and knowledge and insight into all things. And when the king interviewed them, watch, there was no one who matched up to them. And therefore, the king chose them, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to serve before him out of all the other candidates. Now, there's a wonderful verse in the Scripture that says this, 1 Samuel 2.30. It says, those who honor me, I will honor, saith the Lord. And what we see here in Daniel 1 is God keeping that promise to Daniel, right? Daniel honored God, said, I'm not eating that food.

I'll eat vegetables and water and trust God. And did God honor him back? He sure did, not just by making him fatter, but by making him the man that the king chose to be right in his court. You know, God honored this same promise for Joseph. Remember Joseph said to Potiphar's wife, no, no, no, no, I'm not committing adultery with you.

How can I sin and do this awful thing before God? She threw him in jail, but did God honor him in spite of that? Yeah, he came out of jail to be the prime minister of all of Egypt. And God honored this promise for Ruth. Ruth said, I'm not gonna abandon my mother-in-law, but her God will be my God, her people will be my people. Now for a while, she and her mother-in-law lived in abject poverty, poorer than church mice, but did God honor this promise to her?

Yeah, she's out there in the field and along comes Boaz, yeah. And they get married, and all of a sudden she's one of the wealthiest women in Israel, and also not only has a godly husband, but is the great-grandmother of King David, that God honored this principle for King David himself. You remember Saul's chasing him around in the wilderness. And David said, I will not raise my hand against the Lord's anointed, even though he had a chance to kill King Saul. Now, he spent seven years in caves, but did God honor this principle with David? He sure did, made him the greatest king in the ancient Near East during his reign. And in just a little while, God is gonna honor this promise for Daniel's three friends. When they refuse to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's statue and go into the fiery furnace, did God honor them back when they went in the furnace?

Yeah, they came out without a mark on them. Friends, God honored this promise for David, for Ruth, for Joseph, for Daniel, for Daniel's three friends. And I'm here to tell you that God, if you're a follower of Jesus, will honor this promise for you and me today. And this is the so what for today. This is it.

Ready? The so what is that in every situation in life, we need to try to figure out what course of action will bring the most honor to God. And then with the Lord's help, we need to do it. We need to figure out what course of action available to us brings God the most honor, and then with God's help, we need to do it.

Why? Because we have a promise that if we will do that, God will honor us back. This may mean forgiving someone that's hurt you even though you don't want to.

This may mean giving full disclosure, even though it may mean you can't get to do what you want to do. This may mean keeping your promise to somebody even though you're sorry ever made it in the first place and you wish you could go take all those words and go put them right back in your mouth. But you made the promise. What honors God?

Hey, David said, I keep my word even to my own hurt in the book of Psalms. Hey, I don't know what it may mean for you, but I can promise you three things about choosing whatever honors God. Number one, it'll always be the hardest choice of all the ones available. Number two, it'll always be the choice that your flesh least wants to do. I can promise you that. And third, it'll always be the most humbling of the choices available to you. It's all right, don't worry about it.

Do it anyway, because you've got a promise from God that you honor me and I will honor you back. And you know, when we live like this in the short term, it looks like we're losing. I mean, when Joseph lived like this in the short term, what happened to him? He went to jail. When David lived like this in the short term, what happened to him? He spent seven years hiding in caves. When Ruth did this in the short term, what happened to her? She ended up living in abject poverty for a while. When Daniel's three friends did this, what happened to them?

They went into the fiery furnace. Hey, but don't worry about the short term, because in the long term, didn't God keep His word to every one of these people? Say yes.

Yes, He did, and He'll keep it to you. Yeah, you may suffer some short-term loss. That's all right.

Short-term loss is great for long-term gain, right? Right? And that's what God says. Let me close by saying that when I first came to Christ at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, any Tar Heels here? Ha.

Okay. Well, I did come to Christ at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And one of the very first verses that I ever memorized was 1 Samuel 2.30. I'm not sure why I ran into that verse so early in my Christian life, but I did.

Those who honor me, I will honor, sayeth the Lord. And I decided to make that my life verse. I thought this would be a great verse to build my whole life around. And I have to tell you, folks, that verse has done me well.

You know, I haven't always gotten it right. I mean, there were times I made the wrong choice, but I've really tried my best to always get it right and choose what honored God, even though it was harder most of the time. And I got to tell you, God has honored my life and blessed my life beyond my wildest dreams, beyond my wildest comprehension over the last 44 years. It wasn't because I'm special. It wasn't because He loves me more than He loves you.

It's simply because He made a promise that when we try to honor Him from the heart and we mean it, He's going to honor us back. Friends, make this your life verse. Live your life this way.

Build your life around this principle. And I promise you, you will be so glad that you did. If we can believe what Daniel believed and we can live like Daniel lived and purpose to do that, God will do what He did for Daniel for us. May God help us do that.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank You so much for the Word of God today. And thank You, Lord, for writing these things down through Your prophets, that we might have them for encouragement and for learning and for hope. And from the book of Daniel today, You have given us all of those things.

We have learned how You want us to live life. And I'm encouraged and I have hope by remembering that when we honor You, You honor us. So God, use this verse in a mighty way in our heart and lives. Use the Word of God today in a mighty way in our lives. And thank You for writing it down and giving it to us. We pray these things in Jesus' name. And what did Loudon and everybody else say? Amen.