The past is not just the record of dead people. It's important. Let's talk about it on KeeLite. That's Steve Brown and this is KeeLite. It doesn't think of himself as super spiritual but he is honest. He loves the Bible and he loves to teach you. To apply todayly living. Steve? Thanks Mike. If you have your Bible, we're going to start a brand new book if you're Jewish. Two brand new books, if you're goyem. We're going to look at first and second Samuel. As we continue with our Old Testament survey, we finished up with Ruth yesterday and we're doing this pretty good. We're going in a fairly good clip and we're spending time in each of the books of the Older Testament, trying to get for both of us some handles that only enable us to go to those books and to read them and understand them. Today I'm going to start and all next week and probably the week after we're going to be looking at first and second Samuel. Now in the original Hebrew text, these two books were a single book. Step two agent took Samuel and the book of Kings by the way divided each into two books and then they were called the Books of the Kings. In the 16th century, the Hebrew Bible divided Samuel into two books. Now listen, be careful, this is very important information. You'll really make a difference in your life. If you're using the authorized version, you will notice that in first and second Samuel, first and second Kings, they have subtitles. The first and second and third and fourth books of Kings. In the Hebrew Bible, the books of Samuel constitute the third and fourth of the former prophets. In the English Bible, the books of Samuel constitute the ninth and tenth of the 17th, 17 historical books. Now some basic questions that we're dealing with with each of these books who wrote first and second Samuel. We're not sure about this either. But we're sure that Samuel did not write them. The events that are recorded in these books span a period beyond the life of Samuel. He perhaps wrote one of the source documents used by the editor, a redactor, in compiling first and saying Samuel. But he was not the author. His death, by the way, is recorded as early as for Samuel 25. One. Well, what's the date of the books? Well, the earliest date that you could put on this book would be the end of the 10th century BC. Some have said that it was written even as late as the 6th century BC, which by the way, I consider on accept the early date for a number of reasons. They're not going to change your life, so I'm not going to go into them. What's the purpose of first and second Samuel? Well, it's to give us an accurate, sometimes unpleasant, and written history of the beginnings of the kingdom period of Israel. Now, there are three characters that are the main characters in these books, Samuel, who was from 1075 to 1035 BC. And he was, you will remember, because you've been listening very carefully. It was the last of the judges. And then Saul from 1045 to 1010, he was, right, the first king. And then David, 1010 to 970 BC, he was the greatest of all kings, the paradigm king, the one to whom all other kings were referred. Now, let me give you some, and this is a very inadequate outline, and you'll see why once we get into some of the teaching of this.
In chapters 1 through 7, you read about Samuel. You might want to take notes on this. Chapter 7 through 15, you read about Samuel and Saul. Chapter 16 through 31, you read about Saul and David. And then chapters 1 through 8 of 2nd Samuel is David's early reign. And then 9 through 20 is what went on in the court of David. And then 21 to the end of 2nd Samuel are problems and prospects in David's reign. Now, as I said, that's an adequate outline. Some very big handles when you read this book. Now, as always, what I really do is I wish I could spend a long time in 1st and 2nd Samuel. Maybe when we finish this Old Testament survey, I'll come back and we'll come to 1st and 2nd Samuel. They are absolutely fascinating books. But I got to keep in mind this is an Old Testament survey, which means it's not an exposition of the entire Old Testament. So, this is what I propose to do. I will take two incidents from the lives of each of the three main characters in 1st and 2nd Samuel. Who were they? Won't you listen? Samuel and Saul and David. And it's my hope that by studying these incidents and the lives of these three great men, you can be inspired to read the entire story of each of them. You know, you know, I believe that church history ought to be taught that way. ought to be taught biographically. If you go to most seminaries or graduate schools of theology, or you study church history in college someplace, you and I both know that what you do is you memorize a bunch of dates and a number of people that you put with the dates and you try to get those things straight because you know they're going to be asked you on the exam. And what that does is it ruins history for the student. What happens is that the students learn all the dates and as soon as the exam is over, they don't remember anything. They don't know when the Renaissance took place or the Reformation took place and were they the same thing with a different spelling. They don't know about the dark ages and they don't know about Luther and when he lived. Was it 1942 that Luther lived? And that's why you read some of these surveys of church history where people just don't have it together. You know what I think and I know you don't care. But what I think about this and this isn't Bible teaching. I'm just talking. But I think it'd be important if we taught church history biographically that we saw the great men and women who affected it. We got to know them as friends and then hung the dates on them. So that's kind of what I'm going to do as we go through these two books of the Bible. Let me give you a preliminary observation and we'll get into some of the details I talked about next week. Tomorrow my pastor will be here and we'll answer some questions and we'll continue with this study in these two books on Monday of next week. Lord Willie, let me give you a preliminary observation. The past is the creative data from which our present is made and that's a trueism of course. Let me do whatever the people of God were in danger of turning from God. The prophet or priest or king reminded them of their past. The history recorded in the first and second Samuel is the past to which the people of God were always called. Let me show you Jeremiah 51. Then the Lord said to me, through Moses and Samuel, stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward these people. And I'm just curious. Psalm 996, as Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called on his name. They cried to the Lord and he answered them. Or in the New Testament, Acts 3.24, Peter sermon and all the prophets who were spoken from Samuel and those who came afterwards also proclaimed these days or in Acts 13.30 in Paul's sermon. And after that God gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. He brews 11.32 and what more shall I say for time would not permit me to tell you of David and Samuel and the prophets? We have a tendency to say that history is just the record of dead people. No, not. God would have our history be something that we remember and praise God for and learn from or from which we learn from your English teachers. One of the reasons for our meaninglessness and instability in our modern day cultures that we don't know about our past. That's why history is so very important. John Heyman, who was an acquaintance of mine during the filming of the Jesus film, John was a tremendous director and that's the Jesus film that has been used to lead millions of people. I mean it's been seen all over the world and God has used them in such a magnificent way. But when John first started filming the Jesus film, he took it directly from scripture. He didn't change anything and he was working with Warner Brothers at that time and some of their executives came to John and his apartment in Manhattan and said, John, you know this is good thing you're doing but this script's pretty dead. It's pretty dull. You think you could maybe put a little bit of sizzle in it. I mean how about expanding it and John put his hand on the Bible and he says, gentlemen, this is the story that really happened of our past. It's been around for a couple of thousand years and I'm not going to change one word. You know what my brother and I did when our father died? We never cared. I mean we just didn't, we didn't care where he had lived. We didn't know anything about any relatives. We didn't know anything about anything. We took a whole day and we drove over to the mountains to hot springs near Asheville and we began to talk to people who knew our relatives, who knew about our grandmother, who knew things that we didn't know and when we were driving back, you know what we said to each other? That's good. That was good stuff and we feel a little bit better about who we are. It's the same way with the people of God. We're called by the God of the universe to be his people and the church didn't start with Billy Graham. The church has been going for very long people. The call time, the cold out people of God have been around for a long time. Jeremiah 1311 says this, whereas the waste cloth clings to the loins of a man. So I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me says the Lord that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise and a glory. I love to read church history because I'm looking at my past. That's the past of my people. That's the stuff out of which God brings the present. That's important, important things. And these two books as we study them as we look at the history of Samuel and Saul and David, will I hope give us great cause to celebrate and rejoice and to praise God? When you read the Bible, don't read it as a book about dead people. Read it as your family history is who you are. Let it define God's faithfulness for you in the present. You think about that?
Well, we'll get to the a biographical study of the history of God's people next week. Listen, you're part of our key life, take family. If you're not, I'd love for you to be a part of it. Let me tell you how it works. And once you write key life post office bucks, 5,000, Madeleine Florida, 32794, or you write key life Canada, post office bucks, 32150, Cambridge, Ontario, in 385, M3. Are you email us at steveadkeylife.org with your regular mailing address or call us at 1-800-key life 24 hours a day and say I'd like to be a part of key life tapes. Then you start getting tapes automatically every few weeks of places where I teach the Bible, a reformed theological seminarian or landau at the Billy Graham Training Center, a missions conference, a Bible conference. And we send those tapes out and every few weeks you'll get a tape and they keep coming as long as you want them and they're absolutely free. And I really mean that. Hey, listen, that does not mean that this is not an expensive ministry. Only a very small percentage of people who receive hundreds of thousands of tapes and pieces of literature that we send out are able to help us financially so pray about it. If God calls you to be a champion in that way, be as generous as you can. You can charge it on your master card, be said discover card, put it in your envelope and for any contribution of any size when you request it, I'll send along the cassette teaching as my thank you dealing with Hey, I got to go key life as a production of key life network