ANNOUNCER: What would you say are your favorite five books of the Old Testament and why? Our discussion leaders today will begin to tell you theirs and we’ll continue this throughout the week. So we’re glad you’re with us today, friend, here on Grace in Focus. This is a radio broadcast and podcast ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org. Our office is in North Texas and we have a magazine that’s a free magazine. It is also called Grace in Focus. It is an actual physical magazine, full-length, full-color, great articles, and it is free. Only one exception: if you live outside of the 48 contiguous United States, you do have to pay the postage, but otherwise it is free and we want you to have it. Get signed up today at faithalone.org. Oh, and Kamaiah, Idaho is coming up for those of you who are joining us at this regional retreat, July 19th through the 23rd, this year. Get the information you need. Join us, faithalone.org/events. 

And now with today’s discussion here are Bob Wilkin and David Renfro. 

BOB: Remember we ended the last show with me saying that we’re going to talk on this one about what your favorite five Old Testament books are and why. In the Old Testament, the 39 books of the Old Testament in the Hebrew way of looking at it’s called the Tanakh. Well, they call it the Hebrew Scriptures. They don’t call it the Old Testament. 

DAVID: Right, they call it Hebrew Scriptures. 

BOB: So what are the three sections in the Tanakh? [Ed. note: The Hebrew letters, TNK, pronounced “Tanakh,” make up an acronym derived from the three divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures: the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings), all of which we call the Old Testament.] 

DAVID: Well, there’s the Torah. 

BOB: T for Torah. 

DAVID: T for Torah, which is the first five books. The books of Moses, whatever. 

BOB: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. And then the N is what, Nevi’im? 

DAVID: Which is prophets. 

BOB: Prophets, which doesn’t include like Daniel for some reason. 

DAVID: No, I don’t get that. 

BOB: I don’t get that. But and it does include some books like First and Second Kings and the 1 and 2 Samuel that we don’t normally think of as prophets. 

DAVID: But prophets do show up. 

BOB: Yes, they do. 

DAVID: They’re more historically based, but you do have prophets that show up. 

BOB: I believe there are 21 books in that section, five books in the Torah and then 21 because we’re working on that right now, doing our second volume of the Grace Old Testament commentary. And then the K in Tanakh stands for Ketuvim, which means what?

DAVID: Ketuvim, which means writings. 

BOB: Writings, and writings is kind of a catch-all because it includes history books, but it also includes wisdom literature. 

DAVID: The wisdom literature for sure, yeah, but also you’re right, so there’s some historical stuff is in there too. 

BOB: Yeah, so that’ll be our third volume. The second volume we plan and hope to release at the May 2027 conference and the third volume we plan and hope to release at the May 2028 conference. All of the books are done except Isaiah and Ezekiel are in the final stages of editing, but every other book in volume two and volume three have already gone through like four stages of editing. Ken Yates, Philippe Sterling and I are doing a kind of a final edit on all of them. 

But now let’s talk about our favorite five books. Why don’t you start out and give us one and why? What would be one of your favorite five books and why? 

DAVID: The book of Deuteronomy, I think, is important. I taught it or have gone through a lot of it and it’s extremely well written. 

BOB: Of course, all Scripture is, but some are more artistic and some is more beautiful than others. 

DAVID: Yeah, the Hebrew sometimes flows, it’s just easier for people like me, I like easy, but there are other reasons is that Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy so many times, you know, and so that kind of to me puts a big star on the book of Deuteronomy that you know, our Lord used it so much in His teachings. But it is a beautiful book and it has some incredible stuff. Some of it is poetry, Hebrew poetry and that’s a whole different topic, but it’s a beautiful book. 

BOB: Yeah, Hebrew poetry isn’t like rhyming like we do, but it’s more like parallelism with synthetic or, you know, antithetical parallelism. 

DAVID: The Hebrews rhyme, but they don’t rhyme sounds like we do. 

BOB: They rhyme concepts? 

DAVID: You know, we do “Mary had a little lamb, it’s fleece was white as snow,” you know, that thing. What they do is… 

BOB: I don’t think lamb and snow rhyme, but maybe I don’t remember. 

DAVID: No, but and everywhere that, you know, 

BOB: Mary went, we’re sure to go and go rhymes with snow. Yeah, all right. 

DAVID: And the idea is we rhyme sounds, the Hebrew writers rhymed ideas. And you know, like, you use the word parallelism, if you read the book of Psalms, you’ll see a lot of verses in the book in lots of Psalms that we would call synonymous parallelisms. Now, let me translate that into English. That means essentially what the psalmist is doing is saying the same thing twice in one verse, using different words. And that’s actually genius because sometimes the second time that he uses that in the verse helps me understand the first line, stuff like that. And then in Proverbs, it uses antithetical parallelism. In other words, it uses opposites. In other words, it’ll say on the first line of a verse, the wise do this and on the second line, but the fool does this. That’s called antithetical parallelism, but it’s still considered poetry. 

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BOB: Here’s one from Proverbs, “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but happy is he who keeps the law.” Verse 18 of Proverbs 29, those are antithetically parallel. The first half, if you don’t have revelation, you have people casting off restraint and they’re experiencing judgment, and so they’re not happy. But happy is the person who keeps the law, the revelation. And you find that all through there. Okay, so that’s your first. 

My first is Genesis, and the reason I pick Genesis is because Genesis is really, I mean, the word itself is beginnings. It’s the book of beginnings, and it tells us so much about the creation, it tells us about the flood, it tells us in Genesis 6 about the intermarrying of the sons of God and the daughters of men, which was a major, horrible event in the history of mankind. The fall in Genesis 3 led to physical death, the Genesis 6, intermarriage of the sons of God and the daughters of men led to life spans dropping from around, say, 950 down to about 95. But there was a 10-fold drop in lifespan as a result. Genesis tells us what God’s original intent was, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, have dominion. That’s ultimately what’s going to be fulfilled, so I love Genesis. Okay, what’s your second book? 

DAVID: Well, I’m a big fan of the wisdom literature, the Old Testament, especially Proverbs, but I love of all things, the Ecclesiastes. 

BOB: Proverbs and a lot of people don’t like Ecclesiastes because it’s vanity, vanity’s right and all that. 

DAVID: Yeah, in fact, when I got ordained, one of the guys on the board asked me what my favorite book was, and I said Ecclesiastes, and he goes, what? No, the reason why I like Ecclesiastes is because I think it’s a book of, some people, like the Scofield reference Bible, would take it as, this is the best that unsaved man can get, and I don’t believe that. I think Solomon wrote it, and I think what he was trying to do was show that in light of the things that don’t make sense, the Lord is still in control, and that we can still hope, and there is a reason for things that happen, and I love that because that’s what happens in life, almost every day, as things happen, and we go, you know, what is going on, and we don’t have all the facts, and we may never on a lot of stuff, but we do, we are able to exercise our faith that the Lord is in control, and I don’t have to be, which is kind of comforting. 

BOB: That is, and by the way, the ending of Ecclesiastes is beautiful. I got it right here in front of me. It says, in Ecclesiastes 12:13, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter,” and listen to this, David, isn’t this beautiful? “Fear God, and keep His commandments for this is man’s all, for God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.” This sounds a lot like 2 Corinthians 5:10, “For we must all prepare for the Judgment Seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what is done whether good or bad.” Well, I think Paul is probably riffing off of this verse. 

DAVID: He probably is. 

BOB: He’s probably influenced by this verse, and this isn’t talking about that we’re going to have eternal condemnation based on works. What it’s saying is, we’re all going to be judged according to our work, and believers will be rewarded depending on our fidelity and our faithfulness, and unbelievers are going to have degrees of torment based on their work, but everybody, and notice it also says, including every secret thing, which you find that in the writings of Paul and the teachings of Jesus. 

DAVID: Yeah, another reason why I like Ecclesiastes is the word, that’s translated vanity, literally means breath or vapor. And the whole point of that is, it’s like, on a cold day, you see your breath, but only for a second. 

BOB: And James says that in James 4, life is like a vapor. And so that’s the same basic word? 

DAVID: Exactly. And therefore, the whole point is, why commit your life to things on the earth that we know is not going to be there. 1 John 2 says the same thing. Why would you commit your life and sacrifice yourself for something that you know is going to go away? 

BOB: Yeah, I remember I came to faith, I think you did too, during the Jesus movement.

DAVID: It was far out. 

BOB: Oh, wasn’t it? 

DAVID: Groovy. 

BOB: Hey, we used to say “one way” all the time. So anyway, I remember one of the things was it’s all going to burn. And so somebody wants to borrow your car. And I’m like, hey, man, I can’t loan you my car. I mean, this is my car. And he’s like, man, it’s going to burn, it’s all going to burn, Jesus is coming soon. We all had this fervor that the Rapture was going to occur sometime soon. And the thing is, the Rapture is going to be sometime soon, but that doesn’t mean that we just allow some reckless college student to destroy our car. Because Christ might not return until we’re in our 70s, right? 

DAVID: We don’t know. 

BOB: We don’t know. Well, look, we haven’t even scratched the surface on the number of books we like. So we’re going to continue. 

DAVID: To be continued. 

BOB: To be continued is exactly right. And I hope you all have you jotted down your five favorites. And you can discuss this as a family or discuss this in your Sunday school class. Don’t you think this would make a great Sunday school class? 

DAVID: It’d be great. 

BOB: All right. Well, thanks everybody. And in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: continuing favorite five Old Testament books. Please join us. And in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.