Lesson 1: Introduction
www.bible.com/bible/59/psa.119

The Bible is a treasure given to us by God, a gift so we can learn about Him. God wants us to know Him so we can accept His love and gift of salvation. He also wants us to know and realize who we are and what happens when we walk away from Him to follow our own path. He wants us to know where we came from and where we are going – both those who choose to follow Him and those who choose not to.

The Bible is divided into two sections – the Old Testament, which tells us how God prepared humanity to receive His gift of salvation, and the New Testament – the coming of Jesus and life for us as He described it. Everything in the Old Testament in some way points to the coming of Jesus, and everything after the Gospels teaches us the meaning of His coming and its effect on our life.

Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, and it tells us a great many things about this Old Testament book. This Psalm is divided into 22 sections, each with 8 verses. In the original Hebrew language each section is titled by a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and each verse begins with that letter. This made it easier for children to memorize these verses – and we will see references to this memorization in this chapter as well. Of course we cannot see this same pattern because other languages’ alphabets are different and words are spelled differently too.

One more thing to pay attention to in this study – each verse in the entire chapter calls the Bible by a descriptive name. If you mark or highlight in your Bible, please mark these words as you go through this study.