Bible Basics part 2

Tomorrow evening at Crossroads we'll continue our Bible Basics class.  So far, in the book of Genesis, we've learned about God's plan to bless the world through us--through all of humanity--by making us to be God's specially made partners--partners who are to live always in close relationship with God and therefore be God's representatives in the world, ruling creation on God's behalf.  We then learned how human beings reject the relationship God desires to have with us and turn over our God given authority to a false god--that is, the devil.  Because of this the world has suffered in ways that we can only begin to understand, and we human beings suffer tremendously as well.

Though we started our discussion of how God continues to bless and care for the world and for us in spite of our "ha-martia" ("hamartia" includes all ways that we do not measure up to God's plan for us, both intentional and unintentional sin, both of which bring condemnation on us and on the world) -- though we have started our discussion on how God continues to bless and care for us even though we are rebellious and disappointing sinners -- though we've started that discussion we'll get into it more tomorrow night.  God reestablishes both his COVENANT and his KINGDOM, first through the lives of Old Testament men and women, and then, finally, through the incarnation, birth, life, teachings, sufferings, death, resurrection and ascension of the ONE who is both Son of God and Son of Man--that is, Jesus Christ.

To understand this big story of the Bible, it's important to know the main Old Testament characters.  We'll look at four of them beginning tomorrow night--characters we find in either the first five books of the Bible (known as the Torah or Pentateuch) or in the books Christians know as as "History" (see Nev'im).  The four main Old Testament characters we'll look at are:

• Abraham (and Sarah), the one with whom God re-establishes his Covenant, that is, God's irrevocable promise to bless the world through human beings.
• Joseph, the one through whom God re-starts God's the Kingdom authority and power God intends for us as God's representatives on earth.
• Moses, the first clear example of Covenant relationship and Kingdom rule combined in one person.
• David, one in whom we see both a deep relationship with God (for example, in the Psalms) and his courageous rule as earthly king (in the books of Second Samuel and First Chronicles).

None of these, however, show the fullness of either Covenant or Kingdom.  We don't see that until Jesus comes on the scene in the New Testament.  We'll get to that soon.

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