On Wednesday nights throughout the 2017-2018 academic year (roughly September to May), we gradually walked our way through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, learning the story of salvation, especially how everything points to and is fulfilled by Jesus.

Below is the entire series in full; click the "LESSON PAGE" links next to each heading to go to the page where the overview, readings, and media for each lesson can be found.

Lesson 1: Why Bother with the Bible?  - LESSON PAGE
Introductory lesson: the basics of biblical interpretation in light of the story

Lesson 2: Creation as Kingdom Making - LESSON PAGE
The six days of creation, how their structure reveals the creation of a kingdom

Lesson 3: The Installation of Kings - LESSON PAGE
​The creation of mankind in Genesis 2 reveals our original purpose

Lesson 4: Abdication - LESSON PAGE
The narrative of the Fall in Genesis 3, and the nature of the curse

Lesson 5: Destruction of the Kingdom - LESSON PAGE
The Flood (Genesis 6-9) as the curse in microcosm, the uncreating of creation

Lesson 6: Planting Seeds - LESSON PAGE
The call of Abraham (Genesis 12) and God's Covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15)

Lesson 7: The Creation of a New Kingdom - LESSON PAGE
The creation of Israel, the Passover and Exodus (Exodus 11-14)

Lesson 8: Abdication, Redux - LESSON PAGE
Israel repeats mankind's fall, the Golden Calf at Sinai (Exodus 32-34)

Lesson 9: Dwelling of God is with Man - LESSON PAGE
The grace and paradox of the Tabernacle/Temple in Exodus 35-40

Lesson 10: Dealing with Sin - LESSON PAGE
How the sacrifices of the Old Covenant deal with sin (Leviticus 1-7 and 16)

Lesson 11: The Law a Blessing and a Curse - LESSON PAGE
The promise and failure of the Law according to Deuteronomy 4-9, 28, and 30

Lesson 12: God's Holy D-Day - LESSON PAGE
Israel's conquest of Canaan and the Holiness of God (Deuteronomy 7 and Joshua 6)

Lesson 13: Reclaiming the Throne - LESSON PAGE
Israel's folly and the call of King David (1 Samuel 8 and 15-17)

Lesson 14: God's Anointed Man - LESSON PAGE
God's covenant with King David for an eternal heir in 2 Samuel 7

Lesson 15: Bad Kings and Better Prophets - LESSON PAGE
Overview of Judah's/Israel's kings and God's prophets (2 Kings 17, 2 Chronicles 36)

Lesson 16: Prophets and Promise - LESSON PAGE
God's promise to David and the ministry of the Prophets (Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 37)

Lesson 17: God's Anointed Man, Redux - LESSON PAGE
The prophet Isaiah and his Four Servant Songs (Isaiah chapters 42, 49, 50, and 53)

Lessons 18 and 19, two lessons in one! - LESSON PAGE
Lesson 18: Advent of the Kingdom - introduction to the age of Jesus (Nehemiah 9)
Lesson 19: The Second Adam - the birth of Jesus and the new humanity (Luke 4)

Lesson 20: The Second Exodus - LESSON PAGE
How Mark 6 connects Jesus feeding 5,000 people to the Exodus of Israel

Lesson 21:  The Second Moses - LESSON PAGE
Case Study of the Sermon on the Mount: Jesus the definitive interpreter of the Law

Lesson 22: The Second Temple - LESSON PAGE
Jesus describes in John 14-17 how he fulfills the dwelling place of God with man

Lesson 23: The Second David - LESSON PAGE
God makes good on his promise to David: the authority of Jesus (Matthew 21-23)

Lesson 24: Full, Perfect, and Sufficient - LESSON PAGE
Jesus both priest and offering of a New Covenant according to Hebrews 7-10

Lesson 25: Firstborn of All Creation - LESSON PAGE
The Resurrection and the creation of a new humanity (John 20, Pascha Nostrum)

Lesson 26: Rereading the Story - LESSON PAGE
Paul looks at the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus in Galatians 3-5

Lesson 27: He Became Nothing... - LESSON PAGE
God Becomes Man, Part 1 - God empties himself unto death (Philippians 2)

Lesson 28: ...That We Might Have Everything... - LESSON PAGE
God Becomes Man, Part 2 - God gives us the fullness of his riches (Colossians 1:9-3:17)

Lesson 29: ...In Him - LESSON PAGE
God Becomes Man, Part 3 - God unites us to himself in Jesus (Ephesians 2-5)

Lesson 30: The Dwelling Place of God, Redux (Finale) - LESSON PAGE
The end of the story and the Christian hope according to Revelation 4-5 and 21-22

​On Wednesday nights throughout the next nine months, we will be walking our way through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, learning the story of salvation, especially how everything points to and is fulfilled by Jesus.

We now come to the end of the story. All of the recent focus on the victory and supremacy of Christ brings out all the more the sharp contrast between God’s desire for his creation and the reality of life in a still-fallen world. How does the story move from its climax, the exaltation of Jesus, and with him those who trust in him, to its denouement, the fulfillment of God’s plan to fill the earth with a city dedicated to his glorious sovereignty? This will only come about after the Final Judgment, when Christ as king of all the earth judges the living and the dead, vindicates his now immortal people, and finally unites the global church to himself as his spotless bride, consummating at last God’s desire to dwell with his people on earth. In the meantime, the church continues in its mandate to bring people from all nations to faith in Jesus as their only guarantee of this glorious inheritance.
 
Key Text(s): Revelation 4-5 and 21-22
Office Texts: Psalm 45; Isaiah 66:7-24; Revelation 21 and 22

The ramifications of the ultimate work and exaltation of Christ brings us finally to the crux of the divine solution to the human drama: he will unite us to himself. Having become man for our sake's, to deal with the curse, purify human nature, and exalt humanity to his throne in heaven, so he will now unite all who believe in his work in Jesus to himself in that exaltation. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians represents the summit of Paul’s theological vision, the grand and universal scope of Christ’s reconciling work. By uniting all people to himself in Jesus, God secures their reconciliation both with himself, and with one another, by making them to be his one created body in the world.
 
Key Text(s): Ephesians 2-4, 5:22-33
Office Texts: Psalms 68; Isaiah 56:1-8; Ephesians 2

Today we continue to unpack further the dawning realization about who Jesus is as revealed in the New Testament letters. Having seen how far he was willing to empty himself (and how this self-emptying forms the basis of all Christian ethics), we now probe to what end he did this thing. Looking at Paul’s letter to the Colossian church, we discover a strong emphasis on the preeminence of Christ, both in God’s work in creation, and in God’s work in redemption, and how this preeminence serves the generosity of God in glorifying the human race. Jesus gives up everything and takes what is proper to us, our mortal corruptible natures, so that he can give us what is proper to him, eternal glory.

Key Text(s): Colossians 1:15-3:17; John 1:1-14
Office Texts: Psalms 29, 93; Daniel 7; Colossians 1:9-3:17

In this lesson we will begin to explore the epistles of the New Testament more closely, specifically in light of their place in the unfolding story. The letters of the Apostles, and of Paul in particular, represent the church’s earliest reflections on the ministry and person of Jesus, and what that means for the church. In light of his exaltation and eventual return, how are God’s people, now called Christians, to live out their commitment to Jesus in his absence? This first of three lessons in a series will look at what Jesus means for Christian ethics.

Key Text(s): Philippians 2:1-18
Office Texts: Psalm 118; Isaiah 45:14-25; Philippians 2:1-18

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The resurrection of Jesus Christ changed everything. Inspired by Jesus own teaching, the first generation of believers grew to see Israel’s national history and purpose very differently than they had before Christ’s death and resurrection. They saw it all as preparing the human race as a whole for his redeeming work, by revealing our origins and our story from God’s perspective, and above all by preparing us to receive God himself. No single pastoral problem accelerated this national resourcement more than the Gospel mandate to convert all nations, Jews and Gentiles alike, to Christ.

Key Text(s): Galatians 3-5, Romans 6-8
Office Texts: Psalms 67, 87, 98; Numbers 11:24-30; Romans 7

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The resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day brings the story to a climax in a number of interconnected ways. The most significant for our study in this series is that his resurrection brings about the beginning of a new created order which supersedes the first, fallen order. We will look at how the New Testament writers express this new reality. 
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Key Text(s): John 20, Pascha Nostrum (1 Cor 5:7-8, Rom 6:9-11, 1 Cor 15:20-22)
 
Office Texts: Psalms 30, 47; Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 20

We move now from Jesus’ teaching and healing ministry to the final week of his life, his passion and death. Because of general familiarity with the actual narratives of Christ’s passion, we will explore the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice through the lens of the Letter to the Hebrews. This early Christian sermon roots Jesus’ death within the context of Israel’s history in general, and the sacrificial system of the Tabernacle in particular. We will see how the author of this sermon endeavors to answer the question: how does Jesus fulfill Israel’s hope, and by extension, the hope of all mankind.

Additional explanatory gloss: When looking at the passion and death of Jesus at this point in our series, you may expect that we would take the actual passion narratives in the Gospels as our launching point. As will become quickly apparent, we do not look at those texts at all. Why? The choice was a strategic one:

1. the passion narratives themselves are descriptive and offer little in the way of theological interpretation of the events described (though they hint at it frequently); they largely just describe what happened.
2. because of the passion narratives' popularity, and the fact that we just made our way through Holy Week where they are prominently featured in the public liturgy of the church, it is fairly safe to assume broad familiarity with the story itself of Christ's crucifixion.
   
3. it is theological interpretation that is our primary focus here, looking at the passion in light of the larger biblical story, and especially the story of Israel, and for that we must look to the Epistles of the New Testament, whose role in the biblical story we will return to in two weeks' time.
   

For these reasons, we will turn to the theological meaning of Christ's passion and death rather than the narrative descriptions of it, a broad working knowledge of which may be safely assumed, for our purposes in this lesson at any rate. And there is no better theological interpretation of the Cross of Jesus in light of the story of Israel anywhere in the New Testament than that in the Letter to the Hebrews.

Key Text(s): Hebrews 7-10
Office Texts: Psalm 110; Genesis 22; Hebrews 10:1-25

Technical difficulties again this week prevented the recording of a video. Click the link below for a complete audio recording of the lecture.

Having seen how Jesus fulfills in his whole life various key elements of Israel’s own national story, we finally arrive at the biggest key element of all: Jesus as the heir of David. All of the Messianic expectations revolve around this crucial identity, God’s own promised heir for King David who will rule over Israel and the nations forever. In Jesus’ day, Messianic hopes took many shapes, but the most dominant highlighted David’s exploits as a military commander. Jesus upsets these expectations, giving the people not a war hero who smites Israel’s earthly enemies, but a man anointed by God to exact final judgment on all sin, bringing about a new age of restored fellowship with God which consequentially marginalizes all elements of the current age, no matter how hallowed or significant.

Key text(s): Matthew 21-23, 26:1-5
Office Texts: ​Psalm 132; 1 Kings 1; Matthew 22

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When Israel was first given the Tabernacle, it was designed to reinforce the inherent paradox of the fallen human condition: God wants to dwell with his people on earth, but we cannot abide his holy presence without being consumed by it. The coming of God in the man Jesus is the resolution of this paradox, the glory of God dwelling fully in a human body. As the Tabernacle is the locus of God’s personal presence on earth, the sign and means of Israel’s purification by the proximity of God’s Spirit, and the seat of his just rule though his covenant people. So Jesus, fulfilling all these things in his own person, is said to be the restored Temple of God on earth. But now, by the power of Christ’s divinity, that Temple can extend over the whole earth, and the Spirit can dwell in all God’s people.

Key Text(s): John 2:13-22, John 14-17
Office Texts: Psalm 48 and 84; 1 Kings 8:1-21; John 15

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