Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas
Pastor Chuck Trusty — Sunday evening service, September 20, 2026 The Route 66 Journey · On-Ramp 2 · Psalm 147:19-20 · Romans 3:1-2 · Deuteronomy 5:3 · Romans 15:4 · 1 Corinthians 10:11
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A couple of Sundays ago I mentioned the Route 66 series - and what is behind that is my intention to preach at least one message on all sixty-six books of the Bible. We will get finished, assuming the Lord does not come back any time soon, because if you count up the Sundays it will take a year or two . . .
We said then that all sixty-six books of the Bible make one Book, one Author, one story - and the one story of the entire Bible is centered on JESUS CHRIST . . . well, this evening is like the second half of our introduction before we actually start the series, and I want to point out two things about the way the Bible is put together before we get started.
The first thing is the MAP we are going to follow - how all sixty-six books are organized, and why the way they are organized is not random at all . . . you can actually see a message in the way they are arranged. The second thing - and I started to say it is more important, but I do not guess it is . . . I think it is more MISUNDERSTOOD than anything else - is the ADDRESS. By that I mean who each half of the Bible, the Old Testament half and the New Testament half, has actually been written to - because we do not read a letter that was written to somebody else the same way we read a letter with our own name on the envelope.
If we understand, or begin to understand, just these two things this evening, then much of the confusion that many people have with the Bible is just going to evaporate.
So here is the thing I will say three times, and this is the first time - the Bible is one Book . . . it is built like a library, but it is addressed like a letter.
The Library Shelves - How the Bible Is Organized
A library has a bunch of shelves - and the Bible has sixty-six books in its library . . . now when they put the Bible together, they did not just randomly stick the books in there in the order we read them. They were put there for a PURPOSE.
The Old Testament is thirty-nine books, organized on four different shelves.
The first shelf holds THE LAW - the five books of Moses. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They are called the books of Moses because they cover the times of Moses, and it is believed that Moses was the human author who put pen to paper . . . and these first five books are really important, because they are the FOUNDATION everything else rests on. Genesis tells us that God was in the beginning and explains creation - and if we get creation wrong, then we are just WRONG. “In the beginning God” . . . nothing else works, and nothing else can take the place of that one fact.
The second shelf is HISTORY - twelve books, beginning with Joshua and ending with Esther. Joshua, Judges, Ruth, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, First and Second Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. These books tell us the story of the nation of Israel - the people God made all the promises to, from Genesis to Revelation . . . His chosen nation, the apple of His eye.
The third shelf is POETRY - five books. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. Where I was looking this up, it said these are often called the heart-books, and here is what is meant by that - in those five books we get an idea of how God’s people FEEL. We read where some of them are weeping. We read where some of them are rejoicing . . . and we read where they ask God some questions that are never really asked anywhere else in the scriptures.
Then we come to the fourth shelf, THE PROPHETS - seventeen books, from Isaiah all the way to Malachi. There are two sub-groups on this shelf, the major prophets and the minor prophets . . . now normally when we hear major and minor we think major is important and minor is not quite so important . . . but the major prophets are just LONGER, and the minor prophets are shorter. There is NO difference in importance. We will get there eventually, but Obadiah is one page - that is how long Obadiah is - and it is a minor prophet . . . then you look over at Isaiah . . . oh, mercy, it is sixty-six chapters, and some folks call Isaiah the little Bible for that reason - but major and minor have nothing to do with importance, because you cannot say that the one page of Obadiah is any less God’s Word than all the pages of Isaiah.
There is a lot of neat little trivia like that about the different books - not that there is anything trivial about the Bible - but for lack of a better word, a lot of interesting little things you can find out.
Now the other half of the Bible - the part we are most familiar with - is the New Testament. Twenty-seven books instead of thirty-nine . . . and again, four shelves, basically carbon copies of the four shelves in the Old Testament.
The first shelf is THE GOSPELS - four books. You have heard the expression “the harmony of the gospels.” The gospels are not word-for-word identical to each other, but the central figure in every one of them is JESUS CHRIST. Think of it this way - Jesus is standing in the middle of a room with four walls, and there is a window in each wall. If you look at Jesus through Matthew’s window, you see Him as the King. Through Mark’s window, you see Him as the Servant. Through Luke’s window, you see Him as the Son of man . . . and through John’s window, you see Him as the Son of God. Jesus is in all four of the gospels . . . we just see Him from a little different angle in each one.
The second shelf is HISTORY - and in the New Testament this shelf has only one book, the Acts of the Apostles. When you think of history you think of things that happened - acts, the behavior of the apostles. Acts contains what Jesus CONTINUED doing through His church after He was resurrected. The gospels tell us what Jesus did when He was here in person . . . and then Acts begins to tell us what Jesus did after He rose. We have been taught that the New Testament church is what? The body of Jesus Christ . . . so Acts explains what the body of Christ did, and is doing, after His physical body was resurrected.
The third shelf is THE LETTERS - twenty-one of them. Paul wrote quite a few letters to churches, and some to other preachers of the day . . . then there is another group, the general epistles - James through Jude - letters not written to one specific church . . . and these are just dictionary words you get out of the research books, none of this is original with me . . . I had to look all of it up.
And the last shelf is the PROPHECY shelf . . . now what book do you suppose is on the prophecy shelf? Revelation - the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the uncovering of Jesus Christ. Revelation is the unveiling that tells us where the road we are about to start traveling ends up . . . it is the final DESTINATION of the sixty-six books.
Now I want us to notice something, very briefly, about how these shelves are ARRANGED - because there is a lesson in it. Both Testaments, Old and New, run in basically the same order. First the foundation - the Law in the Old Testament, the Gospels in the New . . . then history - how God dealt with the nation of Israel, and how God deals with the church in the New Testament . . . then the poetry is sort of like the letters, because it is there we learn how God’s people FELT - their thinking, their emotions, the trials and tribulations that were facing them. You read Psalms and Proverbs and you learn the mind of David and the mind of Solomon . . . especially in Ecclesiastes - I have done everything under the sun, and guess what, it is all a bunch of nothing. The only thing that matters is fearing God, properly respecting Him, and making every effort we can to keep His commandments (Ecclesiastes 12:13) . . . and then the prophets and Revelation show the FUTURE - in the Old Testament the future of the nation of Israel, and in the New Testament the future of everything. There is a little bleed-over, too - some things prophesied in the Old Testament carry right on past it into the New Testament and connect up with Revelation, so it is not completely walled off.
And notice where the turning point is. When Malachi ended, there were four hundred and something years of what the research books call silence . . . no sound, no message, no prophecy, no word from God at ALL - until Matthew. Malachi closes with “the Sun of righteousness” who shall arise (Malachi 4:2) - that is Jesus Christ . . . and what is one of the first things we see in Matthew, besides the genealogy? The star that rose in the east (Matthew 2:2). What did that star represent? Jesus Christ . . . so if you read between the lines, you can see a message in the way these books are organized.
Now I am not real big on organization. If you came to our house and looked out in my shop you would think, oh my goodness, that poor thing, what is wrong with him - has he been sick? I cannot find anything out there. I have always thought it would be nice to be a mechanic, but the first thing that turned me off from it was the thought - I am going to have to keep track of Phillips screwdrivers, straight screwdrivers, metric wrenches . . . there is no way I am keeping up with all those tools . . . it is just not going to happen.
Well, the scriptures are organized the way they are so that when somebody says, “Preacher, what does the Bible say about Nebuchadnezzar?” - now Nebuchadnezzar was a real man, there are secular historical accounts of a king named Nebuchadnezzar - what shelf in the Old Testament would you guess we would find something about history? The history shelf . . . and you remember which books were on that shelf . . . so that narrows it down a little.
And I always get a feeling of comfort when I hear the words “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.” I do not want to sound Pentecostal-ish or anything, but it just makes me HAPPY - it gives me a comfortable feeling . . . well, what shelf did we describe as the one that explains the heart of God’s people? The poetry shelf in the Old Testament, and the letters in the New. They describe how God’s people feel - the relationship between their heart and God’s heart . . . so when I say the way the Bible is organized preaches a little lesson . . . that is what I am getting at.
And every one of the sixty-six books has a KEY VERSE - a verse that unlocks the purpose of that particular book. Let me see here - my keychain. This new one is for the truck, and I have one, two, three, four, five . . . five keys on my keychain . . . well, by the time we finish these lessons on the sixty-six books, our keychain would have sixty-six keys on it - one key to open every book in the Bible . . . that is our goal . . . and once we learn the key, we will be able to get into that book - get into the mind of the man who wrote it.
From memory now - take John’s first letter. John wrote, “These things have I written unto you . . . that ye may know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5:13), and “that your joy may be full” (1 John 1:4). Those are two key verses that tell us the reason John wrote First John . . . and once we know that, every verse we read in that little book has that purpose behind it. Why did John write these other verses? So that our joy would be full, and so that we could know that we have eternal life.
The Address on the Envelope
Now the second thing - and in my way of thinking this is responsible for most, if not all, of the errors people think they see in the scriptures. Every letter has an address on the front of it. Every time you write a letter, it is going to be to a person - or “to whom it may concern” - or it will be obvious in the text who it was written to.
We said the Bible is in two halves . . . well, each half has been written to a different person, or group of people. Both halves are NOT addressed to the same address.
“He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the LORD.” - Psalm 147:19-20 (KJV)
“He hath not dealt so with any nation” - just the nation of Israel. The Old Testament is God’s Word to ISRAEL . . . and Paul hits it directly - notice what he says in Romans three.
“What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.” - Romans 3:1-2 (KJV)
Committed - that is entrusted, handed over for safekeeping. The oracles of God, the spoken words of God, were given to the nation of Israel for them to safeguard . . . and we have another account in Deuteronomy - Moses says exactly the same thing to the people standing right in front of him.
“The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.” - Deuteronomy 5:3 (KJV)
He did not make it with our ancestors - He made it with US . . . so you look at the Old Testament - the law, the feasts, the promised land, the kings, the prophets . . . that is COVENANT mail. We have talked about what a covenant is - it is like a marriage contract . . . it is God’s relationship with His children - not just a father-and-child relationship, but a relationship that grows beyond that.
And then you get to the New Testament. The New Testament also has an address. The New Testament is not God’s Word to the nation of Israel . . . it is God’s Word to whom? The New Testament CHURCH. Remember we said the history shelf in the New Testament is the Acts of the Apostles - the gospels tell us what Jesus did in His person, and Acts tells us what Jesus does through the spiritual body of His church . . . then you get to the letters, and you read account after account - “unto the church of God which is at Corinth” . . . “unto the churches of Galatia” . . . and then the seven churches of Revelation, every one of them addressed to a CHURCH. The letters were written to local churches - and by extension, that is a big fancy word, but by extension, these letters are also written to churches just like the one sitting here this evening.
So do not say, “Well, preacher, that letter was written to a church two thousand years ago, so it really does not have anything to do with us today.” You are wrong. If it was written to the church at Corinth, you can scratch out “the church at Corinth” and write in “the church at Dardanelle,” and you have done no injustice to the scriptures at all . . . because if it applied to the churches in the days of Jesus and the apostle Paul, it applies just as much to our church today. The only difference is TIME.
Now I have heard this before - “Well, preacher, the Old Testament . . . we do not do that anymore.” I am not saying the Old Testament is not for us . . . and I am not saying at all that the Old Testament does not apply to us. I could chase a whole herd of rabbits right here, but I am going to resist the urge. The New Testament is our rule of faith and practice . . . and the Old Testament is full of pictures and patterns. We do not worship the same way they worshiped under the Old Testament - but we DO worship the same God they worshiped. We just do not follow the same worship rules . . . that is about the only difference.
“For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.” - Romans 15:4 (KJV)
Written aforetime - that is the Old Testament. Written for OUR learning - whose learning? Ours, in the New Testament . . . so it was written TO Israel in the Old Testament, but it is preserved FOR us in the New . . . and there is no wiggle room in First Corinthians ten.
“Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” - 1 Corinthians 10:11 (KJV)
Ensamples - that is examples, patterns . . . and there is not a period after “ensamples” - it does not stop there. They are written for whose admonition? Whose warning? OUR admonition - to warn those of us in the New Testament, upon whom the ends of the world are come . . . so all scripture is profitable. You cannot just take an axe and cut the Old Testament out and say it is no good . . . it is full of pictures . . . it is full of patterns. I believe the apostle Paul calls it a shadow (Hebrews 10:1). If you see the shadow of a tree, you cannot actually see the tree, but you have a pretty good idea what that tree looks like. When we look in the Old Testament we see shadows - and if we look close enough, we get a pretty good idea of what is CASTING that shadow.
And think about this - I thought this was interesting when I ran across it. The Old Testament was actually the New Testament church’s FIRST Bible. Somebody says the Old Testament is not important . . . well, it was the first Bible the first churches had, so do not tell me it serves NO purpose. Jesus preached of Himself from it - on the road to Emmaus He opened the scriptures, and the Old Testament was all they had, and for those seven miles He taught them of Himself out of it (Luke 24:27).
So the point is, we do not just skip over the first thirty-nine books. During our Route 66 series we are going to cover every single book in the Bible - but we will ALWAYS - and I am going to take great care to be precise about this - every time we open a book of the Bible, we are going to read the ADDRESS before we read the letter. We are going to find out who it was written to before we look at what was written.
When we open Leviticus, we are reading covenant mail - the mail that established the relationship between God and His people - and it is addressed to the nation of Israel . . . and it is FULL of pictures. Go to Leviticus and read - there are types, there are pictures, there are shadows of Jesus Christ . . . and a thought came to me here . . . all those paintings in the museums were made by people a long, long time ago, but they still bring us joy. They show us things we would not otherwise be able to see . . . it is no different when we look in the Old Testament and see word-pictures of Christ - just because they are OLD does not mean they are outdated. They show us things we could not see any other way.
Now think about letters written to somebody else, and letters written to us. We all have people in our family we love and respect - think about a grandmother or a great-grandmother, dead and gone a long time now . . . well, you find a letter written by your saintly grandmother - and one letter was written to one of your aunts. You read it . . . oh yeah, that is nice - but then you run across a letter with YOUR name on the envelope. It was written to you. You read those two letters DIFFERENTLY. From the letter to your aunt you can learn what your grandmother was like, what she cared about, her hobbies and so on - but when you get to the one with your name on it, you find out what she wants YOU to do . . . you find out her relationship with you.
And that is the habit we are going to develop - the habit of checking the address on the envelope FIRST - because we check the address before we read what is in the letter, that is exactly why we do not have a cow pen out back behind the church building holding lambs and goats and bulls and calves, so we can go make a sacrifice after church is over. Those letters were not written to US. They were written to the nation of Israel . . . and there are people who get all twisted around and claim that the promises God made to the nation of Israel have been made to the United States of America. No. No. Look at the address on the front of the letter before you read what is in it.
Now we need to be careful here - there is a ditch on both sides of the road. I am not advocating throwing the Old Testament away . . . that is the choice some have made . . . and also, do not read the mail that was addressed to Israel as though it had our name on the front. We have to learn to stay in the MIDDLE. This half is addressed to the nation of Israel. This half is addressed to the New Testament church.
And I am just going to throw this out here. There are other, smaller divisions we could point out. “Oh, preacher, since the New Testament is written to the church, does that mean it is written to all the saved?” That is close - but no cigar . . . that is not the way it works. The Bible can benefit everyone who is saved, if they will open their eyes and pay attention to it . . . but there is not a single book in the Bible addressed to the saved-but-unfaithful. The address on the front of the letter is to the Lord’s New Testament church.
One last example, and I have used it before. When I was a little one, I thought Daniel Boone was the cat’s meow and could whip anybody - but I also believed my dad could whip Daniel Boone . . . and when he walked out through the pasture, I tried my best to put my feet where he put his feet. That worked out really well as long as I stayed close to him . . . but if I got very far away, it got a whole lot harder to find his footprints.
That is the idea here . . . that is how we are going to walk this Book during these lessons - as CLOSE behind the Author as we possibly can.
One Book - built like a library, but addressed like a letter.
So when we read our Bible this week, do we ever stop and ask who the envelope is addressed to? Take ten or fifteen minutes and read in Leviticus, and ask, “Who was this written to?” Then switch gears completely - go over to Corinthians or Ephesians in the New Testament and ask the same question. You are going to see some CHANGES when you ask it.
Our first actual lesson on the sixty-six books is scheduled for October the fourth, and it is going to be in Proverbs . . . so between now and October the fourth, read the ninth chapter of Proverbs. You have two women there, if memory serves - each one builds a house, and each one cooks a supper . . . one of them is called simple, and the other is the one we want to avoid. We want to AVOID the mistakes that woman made - and hopefully that is what this series of lessons is going to help us do.
Scripture Used
Psalm 147:19-20 · Romans 3:1-2 · Deuteronomy 5:3 · Romans 15:4 · 1 Corinthians 10:11 · Ecclesiastes 12:13 · Malachi 4:2 · Matthew 2:2 · 1 John 5:13 · 1 John 1:4 · Hebrews 10:1 · Luke 24:27 (all KJV)
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