🕊️ The Notes I Leave: How is the Bible Comprised

Total Time: ~30 minutes

Format: ~1/2 public + ~1/2 members-only

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🕊️ INTRODUCTION

Shalom, and grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome to The Notes I Leave podcast.

The Hebrew word “shalom” signifies more than mere peace; it signifies wholeness, completeness, well-being, harmony with God and others. All of which, I wish for you.

The purpose of this podcast is to share the diverse experiences I encounter as a professor, teacher, entrepreneur, student, father, son, brother, and follower of Christ Jesus. These notes are intended for you, now and in the future.

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📖 MAIN MESSAGE

📜 This week’s theme:

In this episode, I discuss how the Lord has lead me to understand the composition of His word.

📜 Anchor verse(s):

16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16-17, New American Standard Bible, 1995

📜 Application or takeaway:

The Lord has placed on my heart that in order to understand what is ungodly, we must understand what is godly.

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🙏 TRANSITION TO MEMBERS

That is the heart of what the Lord laid on me this week—but for those of you walking this journey further with me, there is a deeper side I want to share; in the members-only section, I’ll be opening up about how this career change challenged me as a father and a disciple.

But first, I would like to leave you with a quote and question.

📚 Quote:

“The Word of God is the anvil upon which the opinions of men are smashed.”

—Charles Spurgeon

☕️ Question:

If only 19% of Christians read the Bible daily and only 32% of Christians read the Bible weekly, what percent are you?

📞 Call to action:

If you are not yet a member and want to support this work while gaining full access to deeper reflections like these, head to https://www.biblicalanatomyacademy.com click on ‘Podcasts,’ and then click on ’Support the Podcast’ or simply access the direct link via https://podcast.biblicalanatomy.com/support

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🕯️ PRAYER AND BLESSING

Father, thank You for guiding us—even when the path is not clear to us. Teach us to walk in humility, trust, and obedience.

Until next time, may the peace of Christ dwell richly in you and may I express ‘maranatha,’ which is an Aramaic word translating to “Come, Lord Jesus.”

Dear Father God, we love you.

We pray to you today to better understand your word, how it's comprised, how you've divided

it, how it is inerrant, and it is the authority in our lives.

We have some beautiful things to share regarding your word and its composition, and we hope

that we would get out of the way and your word would come through to those who need to hear it.

In your Son, Jesus' name, through the Holy Spirit who indwells within us. Amen.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

This is the Notes I Leave podcast, and today's episode is titled How the Bible is Comprised.

What I'd like to do today is talk about just that.

And in the theme of the Notes I Leave podcast, the whole idea is that I can leave notes of the

things that I've learned for whoever they may be applicable to.

Over my time as a Christian.

Since truly giving my life to Christ in 2019, which is not all that long ago, I feel like quite

literally a lifetime has passed in this short period of a time.

It's one of the ways that I'm secure in my salvation, that there is a night and day change between

that summer of 2019 and really the fall of 2019, but certainly my life today.

So as we dive into to this week's topic and the things that I've learned.

The division of the Bible is very strategic, and it is something that I was not even close to aware of in 2019.

In fact, I didn't know the difference between different translations of the Bible.

I wasn't exactly sure how the Bible made it to English, and I certainly wasn't aware of different

versions in English and those translations.

Now, I've talked about translations before, so I won't dedicate time to it here today.

But what I do want to dedicate time to is the division of the Bible in terms of the components.

If you look at the number of books, we have 66 books total.

That is the accepted Canon, if you will, the accepted authoritative books included in scripture.

I believe that God's word is inerrant and it is inspired.

I believe that if God has the capacity to create the world we live in, which he does, and the

capacity to create everything we know of the world, both organic and unorganic, everything in the world.

Why do we use translations of the Bible as a stumbling block for our brothers and sisters?

I think it's pretty strange to say that he created everything, but then he couldn't foresee

or he couldn't inspire the word in different translations.

And this is a very deep rabbit hole that causes division amongst brothers and sisters in Christ,

where we think that one translation is superior to another translation.

I believe that all translations are God inspired, they are inerrant, and that doesn't make sense. And that's okay.

The reason it doesn't make sense is because if we have one word here and another word here,

which of the two is right?

Well, as I often say, I believe and is the answer.

If if you were to ask me about predestination versus free will, I would say that they're both true.

And I would take time to explain that to you, at least as the way my heart has peace with it.

I'm not claiming that I'm the authority by any means, and I'm not claiming that I have all the answers.

But I believe very smart individuals have come to the conclusion of free will.

Some very smart individuals have come to the conclusion of predestination.

And I think both are supported in scripture.

And I think it's not an either or it's an and.

And in the same way, We're okay with looking at our favorite translation of the Bible and saying,

this is the best or whatever, and then saying, okay, well, if we look at it in Hebrew or Greek,

look at this underlying message that exists and how cool is that? We're comfortable with that.

But then as soon as we go to another translation, well, that's not inspired by God.

It has a different translation.

It has a different set of words used.

They're incorrect for X, Y, and Z reasons.

I think it's a very fixed mindset.

I think that God's Word is inspired through and through.

And speaking from my experience, the first Bible I had access to after I came to Christ was

an NLT, which stands for New Living Translation.

And that was the copy of God's Word that I needed at that time.

As I've discussed prior, as I've grown in maturity as a Christian, I've changed my translation

for a more word-for-word translation.

And I'm sorry to hop on a soapbox here for a minute, but I think we're selling ourselves short

short, and more importantly, our brothers and sisters short, if we claim one is the true authority

of God's word and none of the others are that or have value.

I think that we're not being accurate when we say that.

When we look at the division, almost all of these translations, apart from a few of the Catholic

translations and some others, consist of 66 books.

And you You may have learned in school, whether you went to a Christian school or Sunday school,

or perhaps even you went to seminary, you may have learned sort of a numbering system specifically for the Old Testament.

You can remember the 39 books of the Old Testament pretty easily. It's 512-5512.

And then the New Testament, which has, what would that be, 27 books? 27 books. We have 4-1-1381.

So not as catchy as a 512-5512, but Nonetheless, that is how we generally break these books

up into categories or sections.

The first five would be known as the Torah or the Pentateuch.

This would be the Law, essentially.

This would be your Genesis, your Exodus, your Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Genesis through Deuteronomy.

Five books, a lot of material in those books, but that's generally considered Jewish law its own category.

We then go to the historical which is the next 12 books beginning at Joshua and ending at Esther.

It's got 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, Judges, those are all in there.

Nehemiah, Ezra are in there as well.

And these 12 books are going to tell the history of the Jewish culture, the Jewish people, from essentially start to beginning.

Now, you certainly have some history that is within Genesis and all the way through the Torah,

but this kind of details almost exclusively that history.

Then we get to another section, which is a section of five.

This is the Wisdom or Poetry books.

When you're going from Esther to Job, the first couple chapters of Job kind of seem to fit that

history theme, but it goes way back.

In fact, Job is often credited as the oldest book of the Bible, even written before Genesis.

Genesis writes of the beginning times of a time earlier than Job, but when Moses wrote Genesis,

it is believed that the author of Job wrote that before Moses wrote Genesis, which is an interesting fact.

So you feel like it's kind of tied in with the history, but then you realize that it's actually

referring to things that happened before events in the Torah or events in the historical books,

specifically Joshua and prior to that.

But then after that, about, I'd say, chapter three, maybe you start to get into more of a wisdom feel to it.

And rather than label just the first two chapters as history and the rest of the book, the wisdom

books, most people, most scholars will include Job as one of the five wisdom books.

You also have Psalms, You have Proverbs, you have Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.

Sometimes some translations will call that, by the way, Song of Songs instead of Song of Solomon,

but it's the same book.

And so those five, a lot of information in there, a lot of verses, especially through Psalms,

but it's more of a poetic.

For me personally, I'm a pretty black and white thinker.

This section of the Bible is and has been and probably always will be the most difficult to discern for me.

We then get into the major prophets.

So we have five books here.

We'd have books like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel.

Lamentations is included in this.

And then we also have Jeremiah.

Lamentations is kind of in the middle of all this, so it's kind of strange that it's included

as the major prophets, but it is nonetheless.

And then after the major prophets, we go to minor prophets.

Now, before we talk about those 12 books should noted that the reason they're called major and

minor is just the thickness of the book, not due to contributions or anything like that.

If you get into the study of eschatology in times, you're going to find yourself in the minor prophets a lot.

There's a lot of information in there on end times, and there's a lot of phenomenal contributions

to God's word through the minor prophets.

So it's not a major contribution versus a minor contribution, it's just literally the thickness of the book.

Some people say that they're ordered in terms of thickness of the book, but just open your Bible

and read through, you'll find that that's not true.

For instance, Obadiah is in there.

It's a believe a one chapter book, and then you have books after that that are longer than that,

both in verse count and in chapter count.

So I'm not sure why they ordered them that way.

It might be the estimated writing date, I'm not completely sure, but they're classified together as 12 minor prophets.

Again, not because of their contribution, but because of the size overall of their book.

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and even Daniel are far bigger books than any of the minor prophet books.

You're going to start with Hosea, and you're going to end with Malachi, which will mark the

39th book and the end of the Old Testament as you turn the page into the New Testament. Again, I mentioned Obadiah.

You're also going to have Habakkuk in there.

You're going to have Jonah in there and a number of others.

As you turn the page to the New Testament, we have four books that are distinct from the rest. They are gospel books.

Sometimes Acts is included as kind of a variant or another gospel book.

I prefer to keep it separate in Acts, but I think the reason why people do that is because the

author of the Book of Luke is Luke and the author of Acts is also Luke.

And if you read through Luke, then you skip over John, and you go to Acts, you'll see the continuity between those two books.

And in the very first verse or two, it details that it's pretty obvious that it's Luke writing

and continuing his first book, his Book of Luke.

So in the Gospels, of course, you have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And these are direct details of Christ's life on earth as human.

As equally human and God.

And this is probably where most people have their biblical education is in these four books, which is fantastic.

If I'm telling somebody to start a new Bible study and where do they start, what book do they

start, I'm probably recommending John or Matthew or somewhere in the Gospels.

I think there's a lot of wisdom with that.

Doesn't mean you can't open up and start at Genesis 1 and go all the way through.

I did it my first time through.

I'm just kind of wired that way.

But after having done that numerous times, I definitely see the value in starting in the Gospels.

As I already alluded to, the next section would be a section of 1.

There are two sections of 1 here and at the end of the Bible, and that would just be Acts.

This is the history of the church, essentially.

You're going to see a lot of connections between Acts and the following 21 books that connect,

specifically the following 13 books and how they kind of expand upon different accounts within Acts.

Those 13 books, the next section would begin at Romans, end at Philemon.

They would be classified as the Pauline Epistles.

These are Paul's letters to the church into the different areas like Ephesus, Corinth, Rome,

all those sorts of cities.

In here we also have 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, other books like that.

There's 13 in total, and these are very theological books.

They give church instruction as Paul is the apostle or direct disciple for the Gentiles.

So this is written to the Gentiles more so than it is written to the Jewish community.

However, that doesn't mean that's exclusive.

It is also written to the Jewish community, and obviously you've seen that or you will see that

as you go through, and you see how much of an uproar there is from the Jewish community and

Paul speaking to his Jewish brothers on how they are to treat the Gentiles and how there is

no distinction between Jew or Gentile at that point in time.

So probably a little misleading of a statement to say that it's directly written to the Gentiles,

which it is, but it's also written to the Jewish community as you already know and/or will find out.

Then we have a section of books that are eight books.

This begins at Hebrews and ends at Jude.

These are the general epistles.

Hebrews isn't often credited unanimously to one author.

Most of the time the author kind of goes unknown.

It could be Paul, but the writing style is different.

And so there's disagreement between scholars on who the author is. An incredible book.

Of course, all the books in the Bible are incredible, but I find myself really navigating or

finding myself in Hebrews often. Incredible book.

It's got some Old Testament connections, some New Testament connection. It's fantastic.

In this section, we are going to have the three books of John, which can be confusing because

we have John as a gospel book, and then we have first John, second John, and third John, which

are letters rather than book that are included in these general epistles.

We also have 1 Peter and 2 Peter in this section, and then we conclude with Jude. Fantastic section of Scripture.

I believe James is the last book.

James is also in here.

And just great, great stuff.

It talks more specifically about Christian conduct.

So I think a lot of us as Christians, specifically in the United States, are pretty familiar

with these books because there are so many questions that we have on a daily basis.

That are answered in these books.

Then we get to the apocalyptic book, which is the second category we have of one book.

This totals us at 66 books, 27 for the New Testament on top of 39 for the Old Testament. Total of 66 books.

This is Revelation, this is detailing Christ's victory and the future hope.

There's a lot of prophecy in here and a lot of detail of the end times and what that's going to look like.

If you take the entire 66 books, you essentially have two chapters in Genesis that are before

sin, two chapters in Revelation that are after sin, and then you have, what is it, 1,189 chapters

total, so minus four chapters, 1,185 chapters that detail sin.

So there's a number of different ways we can look at God's word and how it's divided.

But it is interesting how these numbers come up and do come up repetitively and do mean things,

and this division is a great way to divide up your Bible study.

I'm going to have another podcast that I talk about different types of Bible studies that I've

done myself or found that I think would be quite helpful for any Christian to go through.

And a lot of times they are looking at these divisions of God's Word and going like one chapter

from each of these divisions or categories as you work through it.

I think that can be very helpful.

You're not just exclusively in one book or one testament, but you're kind of all over the place

and you're seeing connections that you maybe would not otherwise see.

We've probably set a record here today with the most amount of time spent before we actually

get to a scripture verse.

And so I'd like to do that now.

And I think it's a fitting verse to kind of encapsulate the authority of God's word in these 66 books.

It is from second Timothy, verses 16 and 17 from the third chapter.

So second book of Timothy, third chapter, verses 16 and 17 reads, all scripture is inspired

by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness,

so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

I think that sums it up really well.

Sums up why we need God's word and how it can be of value to us and also to the body of Christ, the church.

In that, I think a great takeaway to conclude this public episode, this before we transition

to the members only section, this public episode is to think about what is godly versus what is ungodly.

I was just reading a verse the other day and it talks about differentiating between what is

ungodly and what is godly.

And as I pose the question, well, how do we know what is ungodly?

We could simply say the world, but how does the world differ from God and what he asks of us,

what he requires of us?

Well, in order to know that, we have to know God's word, because God's word shows us what is godly.

It also shows us what examples of ungodliness is.

If we look at Galatians, we see the fruits of the Spirit.

It also shows us the things that we should avoid.

So all over God's word, from start to finish, is application that we can apply to our life.

If we're not in God's word daily, we are missing.

We are missing a tremendous amount.

And in this members only section that will follow this, I'm going to talk more about some of

the statistics about how many Christians are actually in God's word on a daily basis or a weekly basis.

And what do we do with that?

And why do we do that as humans?

What's distracting us from being in God's word more frequently?

But before we transition to that, I'd like to share with you a quote.

Charles Spurgeon is someone that I often quote, and today is no different.

So his quote that applies to God's word in its totality is the word of God is an anvil upon

which the opinions of men are smashed.

Fine to have opinions, but if they're not rooted in God's word, God's word squashes the opinion of man.

It is all authoritative and it is what we need.

It is the bread of our lives.

We cannot survive on bread alone. We need God's word.

I'll pose a question with you that's going to hint at the statistics that I'm going to share

in the members only section.

Something for you to think of for those of you that are logging off at this point in time.

The question is, if only 19% of Christians read the Bible daily and only 32% of the Christians

read the Bible weekly, as reported by a number of studies that I've researched, what percent are you? What percent am I?

And I include I as well because I certainly have not read God's Word every day of my life.

I haven't even read God's word every day this last seven days.

I understand the struggle, brother and sister, but these statistics are pitiful and we must

do something about these statistics on a personal level.

And if we each do that, then as a body, as a Christian body, we can really truly be one body under Christ.

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So with that, we will go ahead and segue to the members only section.

Thank you so much for your time and God bless.

Until next time, may the peace of Christ dwell richly in you.

And may I also express Maranatha, which is an Aramaic word translating to Come, Lord Jesus.