Take Two

As I mentioned in my previous post, Charity and I are starting a Bible study with our new friends from church tomorrow night.  Growing up in church and attending Sunday School every week, it is easy to assume that everyone knows the characters of the Bible: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, etc.  This is not the case.  We preach from the lives of these characters but there are folks on our pews who don’t get the illustrations because they don’t know the characters.  That’s why every (good) novel starts with character development.  You need to know who the story is about to appreciate the story.  So, we’re going to attempt to shed some light on the characters of the Bible.  I am very excited about this.

Appropriately enough, I’m going to start with the historical Jesus.  It is interesting to read the Gospels and know from what perspective they were written (ie, Matthew is written to the Jews which is why he includes the geneology of Jesus in his first chapter).  Most seasoned church folks know that this is important but to the average person, it means nothing.  It just delays the Christmas story.  Also, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba are included in the lineage of Jesus.  There are wonderful redeptive stories there if you take time to read them and dig them out.  We plan on doing that over the next few weeks.

I can’t wait.