way. Instead of taking a book of the Bible, I want first of all to give you an overview

of the whole Old Testament. Here we have a collection of books covering about 1000 years

written by many different authors and many different types of books. There are history

books, law books, song books. How do they all relate together, all 39 of them? I think

it's so important to have an overall picture of how these books fit together. God has not

given us a topical Bible. Wouldn't it be nice if he had? You know, if the book of Genesis

was all about God, and the book of Exodus all about Jesus, and the book of Leviticus

all about the Holy Spirit, and if he'd put all the text together under one topic it would

save us buying concordances and looking things up from all over. He deliberately didn't give

us a Bible like that. He didn't want us to have a Bible like that and so the teaching

on any one topic is scattered over the whole Bible. And he didn't want to give us a box

full of texts though since chapter and verse numbers have been added to the Bible that's

how we treat it, and we pick a text out from here and a text out from there, and just ignore

the context so often. Well now, God has given us actually a library

of books. The word Bible is a plural word; it comes from the Latin biblia and it means

books, not book, so the Bible is not a book it's a library of books and each book is a

separate entity. And God wants you to learn his word book by book because that's how he

chose to give it to us. If he just wanted to give us a lot of texts, he'd have done

that; if he wanted to give us a lot of topics, he'd have done that, but what he did do was

give us these books and every text - as we call each verse - is in a context of that

book and that book is in a context of history. God gave us his Word in time and space and

it's very important to get both dimensions, so that we understand at what time he said

this, and in what place he said this, and the time and place give it its meaning because

his word was given in life situations. He was always saying something to a particular

situation in time and space and those are the two contexts we need. So I thought in

this talk I'd give you something of that context. Let's begin with space, and to do that of

course we need maps. There is a geography of the Bible as well as a history of the Bible

that we need to hold in our minds when we're reading it. And there are really only two

maps that we need, a map of the whole Middle East and a map of the Promised Land in the

Middle East, and we need to hold these if we can as a picture in our minds. Now the

familiar name that is given to the overall map of the Middle East is The Fertile Crescent

and that's a phrase you'll read in many books on Bible background. If you can see I've drawn

the Crescent, a sort of new moon shape - I've drawn it on this map and what it does is it

links two very large rivers at each end - the River Nile and the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates,

and those two major river basins produce fertility. So these are very fertile valleys, the Nile

Delta and the Nile Valley and then the Tigris and the Euphrates, what used to be called

Mesopotamia which means the middle of the rivers: 'Meso' - middle and 'Potamia'

- rivers, so between the two rivers - a very fertile plain, very flat. Now then these two

fertile areas were the centres of power in the ancient world; these were the east and

west world powers. So the whole Old Testament is a struggle between these two world powers

- between Egypt and the different empires that arose here notably Assyria and Babylon.

That's where Saddam Hussein is now, that's where Iraq and Iran are now. Iran is here,

Iraq is over here but they are divided by this river.

So we have two world powers in the ancient Middle East and in between, the Promised Land.

Now you notice that the Arabian Desert covers all of this and the Sahara there, so when

these two big powers attacked each other or tried to overcome each other they had to travel

through this narrow bit of land here. I don't know if you can see a rather purply patch

here, that is actually black basalt rock which is very sharp and very hard, even camels can't

cross it. Which means that all the traffic was directed down this narrow coastal strip.

If you didn't want to cross the desert which most didn't, but if you wanted to keep feeding

your troops you had to go through the Fertile Crescent, you had to go round that Crescent

to the other end to attack your enemy. Which means that this was the crossroads of the

world actually. And somebody has said about Israel if you will live in the middle of a

crossroads you're bound to get run over - which is exactly what happened. They were constantly

being run over. In Jesus' day they were run over by the Romans but before that they'd

been run over by the Greeks and the Syrians and the Egyptians and so it goes on. And so

here we have two world powers at either end of this Crescent with a narrow corridor down

the coast in between and that is the narrow corridor. And God gave them a land at the

crossroads of the world. Actually, the road from Europe to Arabia comes down through that

corridor and the road from Africa to Asia goes through that corridor. On this map the

road from Europe comes down the coast, it crosses the Plain of Esdraelon, goes down

into the Jordan Valley and up on to the other side and down to Arabia. The road from Africa

comes up the coastal plain and it crosses over the same Vale of Esdraelon or the Valley

of Jezreel and goes up through Capernaum and up through Damascus and on to India and China.

So that the actual crossroads of the world is precisely there at a little hill called

Megiddo and the Hill of Megiddo in Hebrew is Hamageddon; and that's why most of the

big battles in history took place there at the crossroads of the world. Overlooking that

crossroads is a little village called Nazareth and a boy of Nazareth could watch the world

go by. Literally he could lie on the hill as a boy could Jesus and it was like being

in an airport lounge where you see all the nationalities coming and going. That's why

they call this northern part Galilee of the Nations because it was an international crossroads.

Whereas further south up in the hills it was very isolated and very Jewish, and Jerusalem

is right up in 'them there hills' just about here. So you had two parts of the Promised

Land, the international part where all the nations came and went, and this very Jewish

isolated part up in the hills with Jerusalem. So you can see the importance of this land.

God was going to plant his people at the crossroads of the world where everybody could see them,

where they could be a model of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. So the whole world could

see what blessing comes to people living under God's rule, but they would also see what curse

comes of disobeying God's rule. So you can see why God chose this land. Now

it's a very fertile strip. Here's that black basalt. If you've ever been to Capernaum you've

seen the black basalt rock, they used it to build the houses of Capernaum, terribly hard,

sharp stuff. And so it was impassable so there was this barrier of sand and basalt rock on

the east and the barrier of the sea on the west. All the traffic went down the coast

here and through this little break in the hills which we call the Vale of Esdraelon

or Hamageddon. Then we have this huge crack right down the earth's surface, right through

to Africa, and here is its deepest point. The white bit is below sea level and the Dead

Sea is way below. You have the Jordan coming in to this valley and going nowhere, just

evaporating from the intense heat. So in this little area the size of Wales you

have the entire world in miniature. You've got every kind of climate and every kind of

scenery. You will find somewhere in Israel a place like home. In fact the place most

like England is just south of Tel Aviv down here, it's just like England. But they call

Carmel Little Switzerland and you can always go skiing at any time of year on the snow-capped

Mount Hermon up here, and yet 10 minutes later you can be down among palm trees here. All

the fauna and flora of Europe is to be found here, all the fauna and flora of Africa is

to be found here, all the fauna and flora of Asia is to be found here. So you can have

Scottish pine trees growing next to palm trees from the Sahara and in the Bible days all

the wild animals were here - lions, bears, crocodiles, camels - you've got the whole

world squeezed in to this little point where they all join. Fascinating! I could go on

for hours but I must stop. Once you've got a feel of the geography

and especially a feel for the shape of the land… Now, this is a relief map of the Promised

Land. Can you see that deep valley running north-south with a little bit of green on

that side and a little bit of green on that side and then the desert? If you master that

map and hold it in your mind, you will be able to read every Bible story that takes

place in the Promised Land very easily, and you'll know why things happened as they

did. And why Samaria was in the middle and why Jesus' main ministry was up in Galilee.

Why he was put to death by the Jews - that doesn't mean by all Israelis, it means the

people of Judah. And when you read in the Gospel of John that the Jews killed Jesus

that doesn't mean all Israel it means the Southerners up in the hills. The Galileans

were all for Jesus. It was the Jews, the Judeans, who were against him in the south. So that's

the geographical background for the Bible. In the Old Testament we're moving around that

Fertile Crescent from one end to the other. Sometimes the people of God are slaves in

Egypt, other times they're taken away into Assyria or Babylon at this end, but there

they were right in the middle of it all, at the crossroads of the world.

Now the other dimension that you need to master is the dimension of time and I've tried to

reduce this dimension of time to a very simple pattern that's easily held in your mind. And

at first sight that chart must look horrific to you, but as we go through it I think you'll

find it's actually very simple. Basically, the Old Testament covers 2000 years of history

- BC Before Christ, but there is in Genesis 1 to 11 what we might call the pre-historic

part, that means pre-historic to Israel and so in Genesis 1 to 11 we have the creation

of the universe, the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, the flood and the tower of Babel.

It's all about man generally. It's not about God's chosen people yet; it's about man - the

human race - and that's the pre-historic history of Israel - before their history really began.

But their history begins around the year 2000 BC, so just as far as we are after Christ,

the history of Israel starts before Christ - 2000 years either side, alright?

That's our opening date for the history of Israel and I divide it into four equal parts

of 500 years each, and we take those four quarters as distinct periods. We mark each

of the four dates - 2000, 1500, 1000 and 500 BC with events and people, and I like to give

names of people and events to these dates so I fix them in my mind. And so the first

four words I've written down are events - Election, Exodus, Empire, Exile - and you've got the

four events that mark the four quarters of their history. That's when God chose Abraham

and Elected Abraham and his descendants to be his people; that's when Moses led them

out of Egypt; that's when they had all the land God promised to them and had a time of

unparalleled prosperity and peace, and I've called it the Empire because they not only

had their own land but many other nations were now under their control. And then the

lowest point of their history – Exile. And roughly speaking those four events fit those

four dates. Then I attach a prominent person to each of those dates. Abraham is the man

to attach to 2000, Moses to 1500 or thereabouts, David to 1000 - he was reigning in the year

1000 BC - and Isaiah is the most prominent man associated with the exile. So, you've

got four events and four people. But also, the leadership of Israel changed and the leadership

in each of these four periods was different. In the first period they were led by Patriarchs,

that's a word for forefathers really - patriarchs from Abraham to Joseph. In the second period

they were led by Prophets from Moses to Samuel; in the third 500 years they were led by Princes

from Saul to Zedekiah, and in the fourth period they were led by Priests from Joshua who came

with Zerubbabel back from the exile right through to Caiaphas in our Lord's day.

So you can see that the leadership changed from Patriarchs to Prophets to Princes and

then to Priests. Now it doesn't mean there weren't prophets at other times or priests

at other times, but the leadership of the nation passed from one group to the other

- until Jesus came who was prophet, priest and king all rolled into one. So they tried

three different kinds of leadership in their history but they were really looking for someone

who could combine all these things in one, and all the leadership failed in the Old Testament.

So have you got those four basic periods in your mind? Now once you've got that, the next

thing is to put in two gaps - each of them 400 years. The first gap is here, the second

gap is here, and during those 400 years, on both occasions God said nothing and he did

nothing so there is nothing in your Bible from those two periods. Now of course there

are books written in those two periods but they're not in our Bible because they do not

cover the time when God was saying and doing things. You see when we read this phrase in

the Bible the living God, do you realise what that means? Well did you realise a few years

ago what it meant when some theologians started saying God is dead - you heard that phrase?