164 - Les Feldick Bible Study - Lesson 2 Part 4 Book 14 - Intro to the New Testament

THROUGH THE BIBLE WITH LES FELDICK LESSON 2 * PART 4 * BOOK 14 INTRO TO THE NEW TESTAMENT We finished the Book of Revelation in our last lesson so now back to the Book of Matthew to continue our Through the Bible journey. We never take every Book and every verse. Instead, I try to take the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation as it unfolds. I try to keep it simple and hit the highlights without just picking out singular verses. I don’t believe in that. The cults do that, they can pick out a verse and build their whole doctrine on it. But I hope I’m never guilty of lifting a verse out of context to make it say something that it doesn’t say. Let’s start in Matthew Chapter l and verse 1. We won’t stay there very long, because contrary to about 90% of Bible readers and church members, the New Testament doesn’t suddenly start something totally different as most people think. They think there is a great big wall between the New and Old Testament, and some feel you can cut the Old Testament out because it has nothing to do with us. Nothing is further from the truth. And Matthew 1:1 immediately tells us that you can’t do that. Matthew 1:1 “THE book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” It doesn’t go back to the beginning with Adam. Now the other genealogy in Luke Chapter 3, does go all the way back to Adam. Matthew depicts Christ as the King. And that is why the terminology “The Kingdom of Heaven” so often occurs in Matthew. It is unique to the Book of Matthew. Although the Kingdom goes all the way through the four Gospels, it is uniquely referred to as the Kingdom of Heaven here in this Book of Matthew. Since Christ is presented in the Book of Matthew as the King, the opening verse of this Book will take us back to where that whole Kingship idea began. It all began with Abraham, and the Abrahamic Covenant. Verse one drives us back to Genesis Chapter 12. It will all tie in beautifully. Before we go very far in Matthew you will see how it will all dovetail together. We’ve covered all of this in Genesis 12 before. However, as we have many new viewers each week, We need to build some basics again before we take that run through the four Gospels, the Book of Acts, and Paul’s writings. Genesis Chapter 12, verses 1, 2, and 3 reveals the Abrahamic Covenant. You might want to mark your Bible. A covenant, by definition, is an agreement that originates and ends in God. Even though it’s made with man, and in this case with the man Abraham, and later with the Nation of Israel. Even though it’s made with man, since it originates and ends with God, regardless of what man does, a covenant never becomes invalid. It is never broken nor rescinded. These covenants stand forever and ever, as we have seen in our study of Revelation. They go on into eternity. Before we look at this Covenant let me review for a moment to bring us to the place of this Covenant. Beginning with the creation of Adam, we had one race of people. Everyone will come from Adam and Eve, and their offspring. We often get the question, “Where did Cain get his wife?” Well, there certainly were not other people, because only Adam and Eve were created. So it follows that brothers married sisters for the first generation or two. That was no problem because the human race was so pure genetically. In fact as far along as Abraham, which is 2000 years after Adam, we find Abraham, with God’s blessings, married his half sister. God did not limit marrying close relatives until sometime after Abraham. Out of that one race of people of Adam, we have a great multitude of people who totally turned their backs on God. Then we had Noah’s flood which destroyed all except the eight people that were in the Ark. Noah and his wife, and their three sons, and their wives. Then out of those 3 sons and their wives we had the onset again of the whole human race out of the sons of Ham, Shem, and Japheth. Then out of the line of Shem comes this man Abraham. In the approximate 400-year interval between Noah and Abraham, about midway we have the Tower of Babel. The race by now hadn’t multiplied into millions upon millions, but there were already, in this approximate 200 years, a large number. The whole human race was still one race with one language and one blood, basically. They all met down in the Plains of Shinar in Mesopotamia in the Euphrates River Valley. And there they built the tower. It was at the Tower of Babel, under the leadership of Nimrod, that Satan, the god of this world, instituted all pagan and mythological religions. Always remember that. I’ve stressed that all these years of teaching. By the time you get to Abraham, a couple of hundred of years after the Tower of Babel, at 2000 B.C., the whole then-known world was already steeped in pagan idolatry and mythological worship. #LesFeldick #BibleStudy #Bible