For the next week, I’ll be posting the audio and my notes from a Sunday School series I recently taught at Crossroads. It’s a review of the basic beliefs of Christianity, but I tried to make it useful to longtime believers and noobs alike.

If you find these lessons useful, pass them on! And I’m always down to talk about this stuff in the comments or any of the social media links to the right.

Here’s the first lesson.

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Christianity 101: The Bible (MP3)

We’ll start with the Bible because we’ll be referring to in continually throughout the rest of the series.

The Bible is as good as God talking to us. It is perhaps the primary way God talks to us. It records His words to us to people in days past. It gives us example after example of how God works, and shows us who He is.

The Bible is the standard for our faith. If we’re going to teach anything in the church, it needs to be compared to what is in the Bible. If we’re not sure which way God is leading us, we compare our desires to the Bible. It’s our source for our worldview and the answers to the major questions of life: where do I come from? How do I tell right from wrong? Why am I here? And what’s going to happen to me when I die?

That’s a lot of trust to put in one book. But we do trust the Bible because we believe that it was inspired by the Holy Spirit. We believe that God guided the people who wrote down the words of the Bible so that it was trustworthy. In the Wesleyan church especially, we believe that the Bible is inerrant: that, when it was originally written down, there were no mistakes in it at all.

The Bible is our standard, and it’s the inerrant word of God. Paul certainly believed that when he wrote these words:

All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.

-2 Timothy 3:16

God speaks to us through the Bible, and He uses it to teach us who He is and how He wants us to live. And he conveyed His message through human authors.

Now, let’s talk about the different books of the Bible and who wrote them. We can think of the Bible as one big book, but really, it’s a collection of 66 different books with about 40 different authors, written over a period of about 1,500 years. We’re not sure who wrote some of the books – for example, the book of Hebrews.

Think about that for a second. The Bible itself is a miracle. God told His story to us through so many different people, over such a long period of time, and it comes together so beautifully.

God inspired the different authors of the Bible for different reasons. Let’s take Paul as an example. He initially tried to stop the Church from growing when it was first getting started. Jesus then dramatically converted Him to Christianity, and he dedicated the rest of his life to helping the Church grow. And one of the ways he did that was to write letters to the churches that were springing up throughout the Roman Empire, teaching them about the core beliefs of Christianity. His letters were so inspired and so helpful that they became part of the Bible.

Paul wrote these books, which are called Epistles (which is just a fancy word for letters).

Let’s look at the rest of the New Testament. These are the Gospels. They were written by people who were personally very close to Jesus, or people who were very close to them. Matthew was written by the Apostle Matthew, who was one of Jesus’ closest followers. Mark was written by a guy named John Mark, who spent a lot of time with Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers. Luke, as you might imagine, was written by a man named Luke who traveled around a lot with Paul, and had access to many of Jesus’ closest followers. John was written by the Apostle John, who was one of three people Jesus chose to be part of His closest inner circle.

“Gospel” means “good news.” The four Gospels are accounts of Jesus’ ministry on Earth. They focus mostly on the three years that Jesus traveled through Palestine, preaching and performing miracles. They contain stories of what Jesus did and collections of His teachings (like the Sermon on the Mount). Some of their contents might not be in chronological order, necessarily.

Then we have the Book of Acts, which was written by Luke. This is more strictly historical. It’s the story of the early church. It has a lot of information about Paul’s conversion and his travels.

Paul’s letters make up a large chunk of the New Testament. There are also several epistles written by other authors. We’re not sure who wrote Hebrews. James was written not by the Apostle James, but James the brother of Jesus, who helped run the church in Jerusalem. Peter’s letters were written by him, though 1 Peter was written down by Silas, which you can see at the end of chapter 5. 1-3 John were written by the Apostle John, who also wrote Relevation.

About Revelation. Weird book. It helps to know that it belongs to a genre of ancient writings called apocalyptic literature. It helps to know that because the genre has certain conventions that help you understand what you’re reading. They’re part of the context of the book.

That’s the New Testament. So, why is it called the New Testament? Yup, there was an Old one. As Ashley discussed, there’s a 400-year gap between the writing of the last book of the Old Testament and the events of the New. And before that, there’s a whole lot of material.

For the most part, books with a person’s name in the title were written by that person. The first five books of the Bible were written by Moses. The Psalms were written largely by King David and the people he appointed to his music ministry. The Proverbs were written and collected by King Solomon. The prophet Jeremiah wrote the Book of Lamentations and may have written 1 and 2 Kings. It’s not certain who wrote many of the books.

Here’s a breakdown of the Old Testament by genre:

  • Historical narrative/epic: Genesis and the first half of Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Jonah
  • Law: the last half of Exodus; Leviticus, Deuteronomy
  • Wisdom: Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes
  • Psalms: Psalms, Song of Solomon, Lamentations
  • Prophecy: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi
  • Apocalyptic: Daniel
So, why is all this talk of genre important? Simply, different genres are best read differently. Psalms and proverbs use exaggerated language, while the histories describe what literally happened. Prophets often used imagery and symbols in their books; sometimes, that's what God revealed to them through dreams and visions. And the Books of the Law were given to the Jewish people at a specific point in history, for a specific time.

Context is very important when reading the Bible. It says some things that are very confusing to us. Recognizing the original intent of the author as best we can will help us avoid misinterpretation. It also helps to learn about the culture of the time, the setting into which the words of the Bible were originally spoken. A lot of which can be gained by reading the whole Bible, but there’s plenty more, too.

That’s a lot of information to study. I can recommend some great books and study aids that will help you get more out of the Bible. I’m a big fan of How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth – so much so that I taught a Sunday School class on it once. I’d also recommend The Old Testament Speaks, which made ancient Jewish history much easier to understand.

If all this seems a little overwhelming, let me encourage you. I can’t tell You how much Bible study has changed my life. I can’t tell you all the things I’ve learned about God from this book. And the crazy thing is, there’s aways more. Ive read the Bible through several times now, and each time, God shows me something I never knew was there. He clarifies passages I didn’t understand. He shows me how passages fit together. He gives me insight into who He is and how He works and what I should do with the life he’s given me. It’s precious. It’s incredibly important.

Next lesson, we’ll talk about the character of God as revealed in scripture.