5: Our small group is just about, um,
how do we help each other just to be better every day?
How do we be be more like Jesus? Uh, whether that's, you know,
being his hands in his feet or, or portraying, uh, being a light in the world.
One of the things I really appreciate about our group specifically is, um,
you can be completely authentic. You know, if someone's got a crisis going on,
we will rally around that person and, uh, and you know,
kind of put some other stuff aside. And I,
I appreciate that about our group specifically.
6: I find that for many men that, uh,
are in a spot where they're, they're leading well, but they've got dad issues.
They need other men to come alongside of them to be an encouragement maybe where
they've had issues with their fathers in the past, past, um,
to encourage them along the journey.
And the challenges that come with being dads, being husbands, uh,
growing in their work life. We study God's word together.
We'll do some different book studies together.
We typically focus on things like how are we doing in our internal
lives? Uh,
how are we orienting ourselves spiritually toward how God's leading us? Um,
we do, we talk about fatherhood, we talk about manhood.
We talk about how to be the best possible husbands that we can be.
About six of us out of the eight have been together for consistently now for
about seven years. We can trust each other with anything. Three.
5: Or four people are really into cars.
Two or three people are really into finances. So we almost have these kind of,
these common connections where we're just kind of doing life together.
I don't think I could be the best father, husband, business person,
um, just all around person without having a group of guys that understands, uh,
my deepest fears, uh, my greatest hopes and joys. I think men specifically,
I think we need, um, kind of that network to be able to,
to pour into each other. Um, when, when we need to.
What I think makes up a good small group is, is three things.
I think the first is, um, authenticity and vulnerability.
It's really hard to kind of go deep with folks if no one's willing to actually,
you know, put their cards on the table. The second thing is, uh,
obviously consistently meeting.
The last thing I think is really important is just flexibility. Um, is,
you know, if, if something's going on in someone's life,
it's being able to kind of put aside whatever study or video study you guys are
working on and really just kind of rallying around that person and, um,
being able to lift them up and, you know, pour into them and,
and deal with whatever it's they've got going on.
Whether it's a marriage issue or something going on with kids or, or, you know,
ailing parents. Uh, I think it's just important to be able to, to rally around,
uh, that person. So being, being, being consistent but also flexible.
6: You can't shortcut your way to relationship with people that are going to be
there to encourage you on your own walk.
And who then God uses you to be an encouragement to them and their walk with
him.
So you gotta spend the time together and you can find creative ways to do it.
Find.
5: A group, go online. Just there's so many resources.
The more you come to the table, um, with the same set of ideals as other folks,
uh, I think ultimately it leads to a really, really good place.
7: I mean, a great story. I'm telling you, listen,
if you're not connected to a small group or if you don't have people in your
life that it can encourage you along the way, uh, you're missing out.
If there's anything that we can do to help you,
we would love to do that whole family love y'all. Hope you were doing well.
Uh, we're gonna start right out of the gate with a question. Uh,
has anyone ever thought,
have you ever thought the Bible is intimidating?
I mean, like, I really wanna read it. I know I probably should read it more,
but isn't it like old, like old, old?
Like, is it really going to apply to my life?
Like I want to apply it to my life,
but but isn't there more that I need to know so that I'll know what I need to
know when I actually look at it?
We're in week two of a series that we're calling the Word of the Lord.
And this whole series is really about looking at the Bible. We're calling it,
uh, the word of the Lord. Because I, we think sometimes,
like if we just say the Bible, like it can get lost in white noise.
And the reality is this is God's word to us in our lives.
And so our desire is to help you be able to engage God's word.
But we want to help you be able to do that like confidently on your own so that
you can apply it to your life so that you can actually get to know the God who
created you and actually figure out the, the sense of belonging and purpose, uh,
that you were created for. Um, I want you to hear me say this. I,
I know in my role as a pastor here at Hope, um,
I get up on a stage somewhere to this across any one of our campuses and,
and I say, Hey, listen, as a part of hope and as a part of the family of hope,
you should jump on a ministry team so that you can serve and actually jump in
around here to and what it is that God's doing. Or, hey, listen,
if you're a part of the family at hope, we need you to jump in financially to,
to be a part of the mission and the vision that God's calling us into as a
church. And I say that like as a,
as a shepherd of any church would say, like as a dad would say, for any family,
like he wants his family to function together as healthy as,
as healthy as it possibly can.
But what I want you to hear me say is, as a friend, uh, as a brother,
as a pastor,
is that I don't know that there's anything more important for you in your life
than to actually understand the importance of being able to open up God's word
and to read it for yourself and to see how it applies to your life. Uh,
Psalm chapter one, verse one through three, it says this,
blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers,
but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law,
he meditates day and night.
He's like a tree planted by the streams of water that yield its fruit in its
season.
And its leaf does not wither in all that he does.
He prospers. I mean, all of us, all of us wanna prosper. Like,
like my heart for you is that you would prosper in this life regardless of the
craziness that you find yourselves in.
And Jesus himself said in Matthew chapter four, verse four, he said,
man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
Our goal in this series is simply just to give you handles on what the Bible is
and how we can engage with it for the life that God has for us.
This week specifically, my goal is two part, uh,
number one is I want to actually clearly lay out how the Bible fits together.
Like we know it's a big book, but it's got like a lot of books,
a lot of chapters, a lot of verses like how does it all fit together?
And then secondly, uh,
I want paint a clear picture of the overarching narrative of scripture, uh,
cover to cover. So we got a lot to do and so I'm gonna jump, jump right in. Uh,
we're gonna jump in with the layout of the Bible. So if you have your Bibles,
I want you to go ahead and open them up.
And most bibles have a table of content.
And so I want you to open up there and you were just gonna walk through a few
things, uh, to, to help us understand what's going on. So for starters,
the word Bible, it actually just means book.
And so we need to think about the Bible as one story,
but it is one large book. It's made up of 66 books.
And while it's true that it's 66 books,
it's written by around 40 different writers over a period of about 1600 years,
it's critical for us to understand, like it is one large story. Uh,
there's a protagonist that's consistent throughout. Um,
for those that fell asleep in English class, that means that there's a good guy,
um, that's God cover to cover. Uh, there's an antagonist, there's a bad guy,
that's the devil. There's key characters,
there's key events that there's foreshadowing, uh, there's a hero,
like one person that the entire book revolves around even until he actually
physically shows up on the scene. There's signs that point to him. Uh,
spoiler alert, the hero of the story is not you or me,
but while there's one story, like all the books in the Bible,
they're not the same. You've got history, uh, you've got poetry,
you've got prophecy. Um,
I was talking to Aaron Nelson this past week and we're like,
kind of a less than comparison, please hear me say less than, uh,
is like the MCU,
like the Marvel Comics universe because you've got like the old school comic
books and then you've got like the most recent movies and the chronological
timeline, and then you've got like the, the miniseries, it's on Disney.
And then, um,
now you've got like the multiverse that I'm convinced is just a ploy for them to
make as much money on the whole thing as they possibly can.
But like it all ties together and you see things here that make things make
sense that you saw earlier. And so we gotta understand really what's going on.
So here's the breakdown, here's the layout of the Bible. Um,
ultimately you have two testaments. Uh, the word testament, uh,
is another word for covenant or agreement.
So you have a New Testament and an Old Testament, uh,
an old covenant and a new covenant.
Each one of those testaments are made up of four sections.
So we jump into the Old Testament and the first section is called
the Law. Uh, it's the first five books of the Old Testament.
I think we got some slides here to show you.
So it's Genesis through Deuteronomy. Uh,
the Jews refer to this as the Torah. And uh, these are the writings of Moses.
And it covers from creation right up through the first few centuries of the
nations, uh, of the Jews, right up until the death of the Mo of Moses.
Second section, uh, we have the historical section, uh, the next 12 books. Uh,
and here you go from Joshua all the way to Esther.
And this is essentially like the history of the Israelites. Um,
I had someone ask me this week,
why are the Israelites so important in the Bible? It's a great question. Uh,
we're gonna talk a little bit about it in a moment.
But I think we're gonna,
what we're gonna find is we can see ourselves in their story as well.
Third section, uh, we call the poetry section.
Some actually refer to it as well as the wisdom literature. Uh, you've got Job,
Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, song of Solomon.
It's worth noting that these five books don't actually fit chronologically
into the entire story. Like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, song of Solomon.
They were actually written during One Kings and then the book of job actually
takes place all the way back, uh, in Genesis.
So just kind of giving you some timelines of how this fits together.
And then the fourth section is the prophecy section. Uh,
you've got the book of Isaiah all the way to Malachi as,
as you close out the Old Testament, uh, what you see is prophets, um,
really speaking on behalf of God to all of Israel.
There's a number of predictions that relate to what's gonna happen in Israel.
There's actually predictions that there's going to be a messiah that's gonna
actually come and provide redemption and reconciliation for the world.
The prophets are broken down into two sections,
major prophets and minor prophets. And uh,
the difference between the two uh, is extremely compelling.
The major prophets are just longer books. That's really all there is to it.
So Isaiah, Jeremiah, for example, uh, longer books than Hosea de Malachi.
So if you wanna be a big deal, just write longer or talk longer. But that's the,
that's the first four sections of the Old Testament. You've got the law,
history, poetry and prophecy.
From there you go into about 400 history,
400 years of history where there's no written record of God revealing himself.
Um, that leads to what a lot of people refer to as the inter testament.
And you might open your Bible and say, I don't, I don't see an inter testament.
That's because God didn't say anything.
And so we don't have any recording of it.
And so a lot of people refer to it as 400 years of silence.
But it's important to recognize that even though God wasn't speaking,
God was still moving. Uh, what happened during this time, uh, Greece,
Rosen power, the Hebrew Bible was translated to Greek. Uh,
the Jews were scattered. And then around one BC uh, Rome became a world power.
And you've heard this saying like all roads lead to Rome during this
time.
They were like building a network of roads and these roads were going to be what
was later used for the spread of the gospel.
And so we don't want you to hear there just in that 400 years of silence is just
because we don't see God moving,
it doesn't mean that God's not moving from there. We jump to the New Testament.
Uh, we've got four sections there as well. The first is the gospels.
The word gospel literally translates good news. You've got four books, Matthew,
mark, Luke, and John. Each one of these books, um,
is written by a different man but really gives a different account of Jesus'
life. So they don't tell us everything about Jesus' life,
but they give us different viewpoints from some of the same scenes,
some from different scenes, uh, but just from a different perspective,
different angle, um, but all in harmony with one another. Uh,
so this is really Jesus' birth, uh, his ministry, his life,
death and his resurrection. Second section, another history section.
So you've got the book of Acts. Uh, this is really the history, uh,
of the start of the church after Jesus raises from the dead and the sins to
heaven and the church gets set in motion.
From there you've got the third section of the New Testament.
You guys still with me? I know this is a lot. This is riveting stuff.
So important though really to see how all this stuff fits together.
The third section, 21 books in total, uh, we call these the epistles,
largely written, uh, to churches, uh, to pastors, to the elders.
14 letters written by Paul, two by Peter, one by James, three by John,
one by Jude.
And then the fourth section of the New Testament as we wrap this up, uh,
it's the book of Revelation, another book of prophecy.
And what you see there is is Jesus' final act in fulfilling what God said would
be done back in Genesis chapter three.
So if you didn't know how the Bible fits together, like that's it,
it's that simple. Like there really is some intentional effort.
It actually makes sense if you follow it cover to cover,
not always in chronological order, but that's the word of the Lord.
But what's going on throughout those stories?
Like what's the overarching narrative?
What's the common thread that pulls us all the way through, uh, cover to cover?
So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna break this down into five scenes.
Alright? So the first scene, uh,
we're gonna start on the book of Genesis and we're gonna call it the Story of
the garden. Genesis starts with four words
in the beginning, God.
And so before time as we know it started,
there was God all powerful, holy,
perfect, blameless. There was God.
The fifth word is created in the beginning,
God created. And those are five words by the way,
that if we actually believe those and internalize those,
it will change our lives. But we read that the earth was formless and void,
but God had a plan,
like his desire was to create a family that he could love and they could love
him and they could trust him and that that would care for his creation.
So here's what happened. God spoke and as he did,
the light separated from the darkness.
God spoke in the ocean, separated from the skies,
and then God spoke in the waters, gathered together, and then dry land appeared.
He grew plants and flowers and trees, vegetation,
he created the sun, the moon, the stars which set day and night and seasons,
seasons changing into motion. You filled the sea with fish, the sky with birds,
land with animals.
And so I want you to envision this wildly creative and infinite God creating
a world of beauty out of nothing.
And then he looked at everything and he said, this is good,
like we're on the right track. But he wasn't finished.
And then God said,
let us make humans in our image to be like us.
And you catch that, let us, right?
This is like the first picture of the trinity that we see in scripture.
What that tells us is not only was God here,
but also his son Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And they say, they say,
let's make mankind in our image and then we'll let them be in charge of the
earth and the plants and the animals that live on it.
So what happened is God created man and woman and he created man from
dust and he created woman from man's rib right next to his heart.
And then as he breathed life into Adam,
and as they opened their eyes,
the first thing that they ever saw was their loving father.
And then God looks down at them the way that a father would look at a son or a
daughter for the first time. And he says, This is beautiful.
This is very good. Like this is the pinnacle of my creation.
And that God places them in a garden, which is the Garden of Eden,
where they have everything that they need to live life to the fullest.
He told them to be fruitful and multiply, uh, in that garden,
in the center of the garden are two trees. Okay?
You've got the tree of life and then the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And God tells him, he says, listen,
you can eat from any tree that's in the garden except for this one tree,
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And if you eat from this tree,
you will surely die. And I want,
I want you to see like can you see that God has a desire to create a family that
he can love, that he can protect, that he can provide, that he can care for.
I mean, like a loving father tells his children like, Hey,
you need to be careful if there's something to be careful of.
And every day Adam and Eve, they meet with God. They,
they walk with him in the garden. It says in the cool of the day, um,
they live life with this perfect relationship with one another perfect harmony,
this perfect relationship with God.
But that was life as God intended in scene one.
And I want to ask you a question.
If you had everything that you needed,
would you be tempted to want what you didn't need?
And so that's act one in scene one. From there we move to scene two,
still inside the garden. And uh, we call this the fall.
And right now we're essentially gonna be in Genesis chapter three.
But before we get there, there is something that I,
i want you to see that you only get if you put different sections of scripture
together. And that's actually how an enemy shows up on the scene.
Because at this moment, like everything is perfect,
we read the story and we're like, man, this is great. Something goes wrong.
So what we need to know is before God created the earth,
he actually created angels.
And we don't know everything that the angels did or everything angels do,
but we do know that worshiping God was a large part of it.
Well one angel named Lucifer, um,
he was the most beautiful of all angels in heaven. He became jealous of God.
He wanted to be like God. He wanted to be God himself.
And so that led Lucifer who we also know as Satan to actually lead a rebellion
against God.
And so he called other angels into following him into that rebellion.
Well, any rebellion against God is called sin.
And because God is perfect and blameless and holy,
he can't have sin in his presence.
And so what happens is God cast out the rebellious angels down to earth with a
plan, uh, for their punishment later.
So we don't know exactly when this happened.
We do know that it happened after God created the earth because it was an earth
for him to send them to.
But it definitely happened before Genesis chapter three.
And so somewhere between Genesis chapter one, Genesis chapter three,
why is this important? It's important because in Genesis chapter three,
Adam and ever joy in the garden, the way that God intended
And the one that we just discussed in all of his anger and all of his jealousy
and all of his hatred,
he sees this beautiful creation that's been set in motion.
And the Bible tells us that he disguises himself as a serpent.
And he finds eve in an opportune moment. And he comes up to the woman,
he comes up to Eve and he says,
did God really say you mustn't eat from any tree in the garden,
from any fruit in the garden? And she told him, she said, no, no, no.
We can eat from any fruit in the garden.
We just can't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or even touch
it or we'll die. So the serpent looks at Eve and he says, Hey listen,
you won't die.
God knows that your eyes will be open when you eat it.
And then you'll become like God knowing everything good and evil.
And I want you to realize like he tempts her with the same thing that he was
tempted by himself being like, God,
please realize ,
we are all tempted by the same thing to want to be like God.
And we find ourselves in the situations where we believe in God must be holding
out on us, there's gotta be something better.
And it says, when he saw what it looked to be beautiful and delicious.
And when she believed God was withholding something from her with his rule,
she took some and she ate it. She also gave some to Adam.
So they choose not to believe God and instead believe in the lie.
And in that moment, innocence lost.
And for those of us that that that are, are raising children,
like you go through seasons and you're like, man, ,
they're just not as innocent as they used to be.
And they got to this place where they felt shame and fear. Uh,
they realized they were naked.
The Bible says they sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness.
I don't know why I did this. That was weird. Sorry, .
Later in the evening, uh, God's walking through the garden as he often does.
And uh, they had hid from him because they had realized that they were naked.
And so God says, Adam, where are you? And Adam replies,
we heard you coming. And I was afraid because I was naked.
And so I hid. And God says to him, who told you that you were naked?
Why are you ashamed of being naked?
Did you eat from the tree that I told you not to eat from?
And Adam sells out in a minute. He says, the woman that you gave me,
she made me do it.
And then eve like immediately turns the attention, no, no, no, no, someone else.
The serpent, the serpent tricked me into eating the fruit.
And so God looks at the serpent and you pay attention to this. He says, listen,
you will be the enemy of this woman and her children.
You'll bite his heel, but he will crush your head.
And I want you to hold onto that. God says, listen,
there is clearly now a tension between you and my creation,
what I created to be beautiful.
You have now injected yourself into this and you have caused a grave problem.
But I want you to understand something through their offspring.
This will be made right again.
And we gotta see here, um,
an order of things that are very consistent throughout the narrative of
scripture. And it's this God loves
man rebels, but God is faithful.
And so God loves like he creates. He wants us to have this perfect relationship.
He gives us everything that we need. And he even gives us some rules like, Hey,
you need to follow these.
If you wanna experience life the way that I created inevitably man rebels.
But God continues to be faithful even in this moment. He says,
you'll by this heel, but he will crush your head.
And that points to something in the future where we're gonna see God's
faithfulness. We see a promise from God while there's a problem,
I'm gonna make it right now, remember I told you earlier, um,
any rebellion against God is called sin.
And so sin can't be in the presence of God. And so there had to be consequences.
So this decision that that Adam and Eve made led to God
punishing Adam and Eve by sending them out of the garden and ultimately sending
them out of God's presence and out from underneath his protection.
And so God told them like a curse is gonna fall on the earth and now you're
gonna be subject to sickness and pain and heartache and even death.
And so this once beautiful and perfect garden and perfect harmony between God
and man has now been broken.
I do want you to know it. It's obvious,
it's important to know God still loved Adam and Eve, okay?
He clothed them with the skin of animals before he sent them outta the garden so
they wouldn't be ashamed. But understand for God to do that,
like something did have to die,
They experienced death as a result for the first time they had ever seen death
as a result of their rebellion. And so at the end of scene one,
what you've got the scenario is what was once perfect is now broken,
but God has made a promise to restore it. That's the garden. Um,
admittedly, just to give you a heads up,
I'm spending a lot more time in scene one and in scene two because I think we
miss a lot of stuff and it sets a lot of context and a lot of tension for, um,
what happens in the New Testament. Scene two,
we're gonna call the story of Israel. This is largely like Genesis chapter 12,
up through Malachi. Uh,
I want you to hear me say we're gonna go through about 1500 years of history
very, very quickly. Um, but what happens after Adam and Eve leave the garden?
Uh, we see just how quickly and just how far sin and rebellion can take us off
course. Uh, Adam and Eve's child, Cain ends up murdering their other son Abel.
I mean things escalate incredibly quickly. Uh,
just a few generations after that. You see in Genesis chapter six verse five,
it says,
the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every
intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually.
And so in a few generations we've gone from perfection to
destruction.
So I'm gonna jump ahead another few generations.
But suffice to say we see over and over again despite God's attempt to start
over to build a family that he can love and they can love him back and they can
trust him. And what we continually see is man continuing to rebel against God.
But remember, God loves man rebels. God is faithful.
God loves man rebels. God is faithful.
A few generations later through God's relentless pursuit for this family that
you see him chasing after and creating on day one,
he builds a brand new nation called Israel.
He does this by establish a special relationship with a man by the name of
Abraham. Later his name is changed to Abraham,
but he makes a promise to him that we call a covenant. And he says to Abraham,
he says, I'm going to make out of you a great nation. He says,
the entire earth is going to be blessed through your descendants.
You are going to be blessed Abraham to be a blessing.
And so Abraham leads his home and begins journeying with his wife.
Sarai later changed to Sarah to begin a new life.
And then throughout the rest of the Old Testament,
you see God building this new nation, revealing his presence, his power,
and his plan for these people, for his family,
for God's people to be blessed so that they can in turn bless the world.
But you also see guess what,
as people continuing to rebel, um, throughout this scene,
you see a number of things that are super important not to miss if we're really
trying to dig into what's going on here in scripture. Um,
you see God rescuing and leading Israel, um, out of slavery,
out of Egypt,
which by the way is like a foreshadowing and a picture of us needing to be
rescued out of our sin.
He reveals the law to a man by the name of Moses reveals the 12 commandment, uh,
12, 12 Commandments.
You didn't know it was 12 did you reveals the 10 Commandments. Two more.
We'll talk to you about those later. Uh,
but we've gotta realize like even in that like revealing the law is God's
faithfulness to us as his people. Um, like he,
he shows us through the 10 commandment. This is how you were created to live.
Like if there are things that actually put safety around us in my children's
lives, but I actually don't tell them what they are,
that is not me being a loving father. So he gives them,
but it's also like so we understand why is it that we see brokenness around us
in our lives and it's because we see this is the law that God's given to us,
but we've stepped outside of that. Um,
he also institutes a sacrificial system for when the law is broken.
And this is incredibly important.
It makes everything makes sense once we get to the New Testament. Remember,
God cannot be in the presence of sin and remember how Lucifer was kicked out of
heaven and how Adam and Eve were actually kicked, uh,
out of the garden and he asked them to leave the garden. Well,
for the forgiveness of sin, there has to be shedding of blood.
And so God institutes a sacrificial system of animals to actually pay for the
price of the sins of man.
But because God man continues to sin,
sacrifices continually have to be made in order for God to be with his people.
Um, beyond that, through the rest of the Old Testament, you,
you see some of the greatest history ever shared. I'm telling you,
if you've not read your Old Testament, there's some incredible stories there.
You've got kings coming in, power wars being fought,
you've got giants being slain, poetry being written,
prophecies are being made for the one who is going to come and fulfill God's
promise that he made back in Genesis chapter three.
But really what you see over and over and over again is how God loves
man rebels. But God is faithful over and over and over again.
God tries man cries out God rescues.
But what you also see is that God is willing to allow us to be kind of handed
over to ourselves. Like if we're crying out to God, God rescues,
but if we wanna run in a different direction,
he allows us to run in a different direction.
And so what happens at the end of the Old Testament is you have God's chosen
people. You have the Israelites that have continually rebelled,
continually rebelled, knowing that they can't fix the problem themselves.
And they know there's been a promise of someone who's going to come and who's
gonna put it all back together.
But there's 400 years of silence and just to kinda help
us all get in that moment together, um,
we don't have the time for me to give you 400 years of silence. Um,
but I am gonna give you about 40.
And so what I want us all to do for a moment is just recognize, um,
man, life's not the way it was supposed to be.
And I know for some of us this probably hits closer to home right now, um,
than maybe for others. But there's hurt, there's pain,
there's confusion, there's depression.
And so I just, for a moment, I just want to sit in the space of recognizing man,
there's some things in our world that are broken knowing that God
promised that he was send a savior
and then a baby was born.
He wasn't born in a palace
but in a small town in a stable. And it was Jesus.
He was born to a virgin
by the name of Mary who is married to a carpenter.
And from humble beginnings, he grew was wise beyond his years.
And at the age of 30 started his own ministry
and um, he called other men and women into following him.
He announced that there's a new kingdom at hand.
He actually declared that he was the answer to the prophecies in the Old
Testament, that he was the coming Messiah
and hope starts to build
and people start to believe may maybe this is the one who God promised to send
and he lives his life. He heals the sick.
He teaches people what it really means to follow after the ways of God.
But as he declares that he is the Messiah, um,
the religious leaders of the day say, hang on,
this doesn't fit what we were expecting. This doesn't fit our paradigm.
And he ends up that we lived a perfect life going to a death on a cross.
And after they take him down off the cross,
he gets put into a tomb and three days later he wr he rises
from the grave overcoming sin and death.
And what we now know as the gospel is that when Jesus
went to the cross, he paid the ultimate sacrifice.
We know for the forgiveness of sin there has to be shedding of blood because of
our sin. We have to be separated from God.
But he went to the cross and paid the penalty that we deserve to pay the hero
that we've been waiting for, the savior that we've been waiting for came.
1: And.
7: Then he gets together with his, his disciples after he raises from the dead
and he says, listen, here's what I want you to do.
I want you to go into the world and I want you to make disciples of all nations,
which would've been a little strange for them because at this point,
like God's people were the Israelites, they said,
we want you to go into all the nations, make disciples,
baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
And then he leaves, but giving them this mission.
And that's the end of scene three. We get to scene four, which is the church.
And what you see is like this new church that's filled with hope busting at the
seams and they're living life together. They're loving one another that they,
they're sitting under the apostles teaching, they're praying together.
They're meeting one another's needs.
They're understanding their call to actually go out into the world and share the
hope of the gospel with other people.
And I want you to realize like it's kind of weird.
I mean it's easy to think like we close the Bible
and then that's the end of this scene is the church. The truth is like
We all as a part of the family of God are still in scene four.
Like we're an extension of that hope that the world has
in Jesus.
And so we're actually called as the family of God,
to love God as he originally created us to live,
to actually follow into the ways of Jesus and to go out and to share that hope
with the world around us.
And we move to scene five,
which we'll call the New Guarded. And this is the Book of Revelation.
And in the book of Revelation, you have the Apostle John who has a vision.
And the easiest way that I can explain this
is that he sees that
Jesus just as he came to earth one time some 2000 years ago,
he's coming back and this time when he does,
he's gonna put a final end to the brokenness that all of us experience in our
lives. It says all of this brokenness is gonna be put back together again.
It says that every tear will be wiped away from our eyes
and is gonna establish a new heaven and a new earth.
That's the overarching narrative of scripture. One hero from the moment,
from the very beginning when creation is happening, Jesus is there.
God loves Man rebels, God is faithful.
So I hope you see like the Bible is 66 books written by over 40 authors over a
period of 1600 years. But there really is only one narrative.
And that is the story of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
fulfilling the greatest rescue mission that the world has ever known like that
is the story of God. That is our story.
And while the Bible itself, it is not something that we worship, okay, it's not,
but it does point us to the one that we do worship.
God loves man rebels. God is faithful
and his faithfulness,
it culminates with the Son of God rescuing all of humanity.
John three 16 says, for God's whole of the world,
least in his only begotten son,
that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life.
The reality is when Jesus comes back, there will be a day of judgment.
But we're called into this story. And my prayer for us,
which I'm gonna pray in just a moment,
is that we would be men and women and students who don't just go through this
life thinking, man, the Bible's like this book.
It's old and I don't know if it's gonna apply to my life.
And we would understand like the Bible has the word of the Lord in it.
The Bible helps us find our place throughout the course of human history.
The Bible points us to the one who has come to save us.
And so would we be a church who understands?
Would we be a church who, who wants to be like we read about in Psalms,
would we be a church that prospers because we understand that we need to live
life, engage in God through his scripture? Did you pray with me? Father? Um,
Lord, we thank you for the gift of your word and it's so easy in this life to
and to be distracted by all the things that get thrown at us and to think, yeah,
maybe I just get in this rhythm and I show up and I go to church once a week and
lose sight of the fact that you have actually given us a way to come to know who
you are in your heart for us on a personal and intimate basis.
Lord, you've given us away
to see the depths and the lengths that you have gone to,
to rescue us out of what we deserve, which is separation from you.
And you provided us away through your son Jesus to have a restored relationship
with you and to be welcomed back into the family of God. Lord,
I pray that we would be men and women and students
who understand That the word of the Lord is a gift. Lord,
would it be like honey on our lips? Would he, would we chase after it?
Would you put a passion on our heart
to engage you through the word of the Lord?
We love you when we pray and ask all these things in the name of Jesus.
And everyone said, amen. Love y'all.