Dear friend, welcome back, it’s so good to be studying with you today. I do hope you’re praying before each lesson, as I am. We need Christ to open His Word to us.
I’m very excited to share with you today. This lesson and the next lesson will be an illustration of how Jesus Christ takes us from darkness to light, from depression to joy so that we might “see” the truth in story form.
Before I share with you the story, it’s really important that we understand that the entire Bible was written to reveal the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we see Jesus in the stories of the Bible we are not reading into the text, we are drawing Christ out. I want to show you a few passages that tell us to see the Scriptures in exactly this way:
Please carefully read through the passages below, and see if you can pick out the common theme in all of them:
Romans 16:25 NIV Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past,
Colossians 1:25-26 NIV I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— (26) the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord's people.
1 Peter 1:10-11 NIV Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, (11) trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow.
John 5:39 NIV You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me.
John 5:46 NIV If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.
Luke 24:26-27 NIV Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" (27) And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
Question 1. Did you see a common theme in all these passages? Please share your thoughts here:
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The common theme in all the above passages is that the entire Bible is about Jesus Christ, specifically His death and resurrection (“suffering and glory”). This gospel was the “mystery hidden” in the Old Testament stories and prophecies (Romans 16:25; Colossians 1:25-26), it was predicted by all true prophets of the Old Testament (1 Peter 1:10-11), specifically by “Moses” who wrote the first five books of the Bible (John 5:46) and the gospel is to be found in “Moses and all the prophets” (Luke 24:26-27 and John 5:39), meaning the entire Old Testament.
Dear friend, in this understanding we have received a key, the “key to the kingdom” if you will; this key will literally unlock every passage of the Bible that you will read from this point forward. If you don’t understand a passage, use the key of the gospel to unlock it for you. Look for Jesus, see Him being uplifted on the cross and rising from the dead, and once you use that “key” the story will unfold naturally to you.
So we have one such story today, it’s the first historical event ever recorded in the Bible. Let’s look at it together:
Genesis 1:1-2 NIV In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (2) Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Question 2. From Genesis 1:1-2, please name everything that you can see about the earth in its initial stage of creation:
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