I'm a real believer that God doesn't like to be taken for granted.

And therefore I'm always on people's case to talk about him with words and not just imply

that he's there.

And they threw that back at me.

Esther didn't mention him. The book of Esther doesn't

mention God. But we do that. Is that okay to be in the Bible? Can I be like Esther? The book of

Esther, never mentioned God at work? So how do we know which books belong in the Old Testament?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper examines the scriptures to explore the boundaries of the Old Testament canon

and explain why Jesus affirmed the Hebrew scriptures that we recognize today.

The seminar was originally delivered at Bethlehem Baptist

Church in September 2001.

Which books make up the Bible and why? We talk about the Old Testament canon and the New

Testament canon and what we mean by canon, which means rule,

measuring stick, is that the canon is the limit of the books that function as the measuring rod

of your life and your philosophy and your

worldview and your principles and standards. So the Bible is spoken of as canon. So the question is

which books belong to the canon? Or if you teach literature, you talk about the Western canon, meaning what books

form the great books of the Western culture? That's the canon. And every liberal arts student

ought to be exposed to the canon of Western literature, that sort of thing. And it means just the standard, stock, reliable, great literature.

But in the Bible, it means which books are authoritative.

So that's what we're trying to answer.

And we'll start with the Old Testament, and then I've got one on the New Testament.

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