Here's Part One of a two week series we are doing on The Biggest Story on the Planet

2. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this

6. HOW DO YOU TELL
WHEN SOMETHING
IS BIBLICAL?

7. THE BIBLE
IS
A STORY

8. ADAM AND EVE
When God created the universe he created men and women as
his image bearers, presence carriers and purpose fulfillers in the
earth. Adam and Eve were singularly created in the image of
God and were the only creatures capable of enjoying close
spiritual relationship with him. They were given authority to
fulfill the purposes of God for the earth and their relationship of
oneness with each other was intended to model the unity of the
Godhead, Father, Son and Spirit. They were deceived through
an encounter with Satan and chose to act apart from their
relationship with God and contrary to his calling. By doing this
they devalued the image, lost intimacy and therefore the
authority to fulfill his purpose. Adam and Eve’s descendants
multiplied and extended this condition and became more and
more committed to thinking and acting corruptly until a point
where they were incapable of good.

9. NOAH AND HIS FAMILY
Unlike the others of his generation, Noah acknowledged God
and modeled his life on God’s character. When God spoke to
him, Noah heard, believed and embraced what was said.
Together with his family he fulfilled God’s redemptive purpose.
They built the ark, gathered animals and spent more than a
hundred years calling people back to the ways of the Creator.
After surviving the flood they began to re-established God’s
loving purpose in the earth.
As the generations passed, however, fewer people shared this
calling. Instead they began to build communities and cities
based on their own wisdom and their own purposes. Finally
they forged a powerful unity, independent of God and opposed
to him. The tower of Babel was the symbol of this climactic
failure and the dispersion of the nations was its consequence.

10. ABRAHAM AND THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL
When Abraham left his kinship group in Haran and moved his
family to Canaan, it was to embrace both the blessing and
responsibility of serving God. God’s purposes for the earth were
going to be represented by a nation/community that God would
build through Abraham’s descendants. After God liberated the
children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, the law of Moses gave
them the insights that would see God’s image restored and the
tabernacle, cloud and pillar of fire enabled them to honour and
follow his presence. The land of Canaan was to be an operations
base to take this same blessing to all the peoples of the earth.
Instead of becoming a community that looked and sounded like
God, they kept copying the ways of the nations around them.
Instead of offering God’s blessing to the nations, they became an
exclusive club for one nation. One of the saddest consequences of
this failure was when they rejected God as their king and asked
Samuel to appoint a human king.

11. DAVID AND THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL (1 OF 3)
When God agreed to appoint a human king for Israel it was a case
of redemptive love taking another risk. Even though many of the
kings dismally failed to honour and serve God, King David became
the prophetic foreshadowing of the promised Messiah/king.
David was selected by God because even though he was working
as a shepherd, he was doing it as “a man after God’s own heart.”
Despite his well known imperfections God promised that the real
king would be a ‘Son of David.’
In spite of this high and lofty calling, David, his son Solomon and
those who followed them, transgressed the principles God had
revealed about godly leadership. They began a process of
compromise that saw the kingdom of Israel being torn apart by
internal division and external oppression. The glimpses of glory
faded and the following three hundred years tell the horrible
story of corruption, betrayal and shame.

12. DAVID AND THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL (2 OF 3.)
During these days God raised up prophetic messengers who tirelessly
and graciously warned the people of the consequences of foresaking
God. Sadly they were consistently rejected and their warnings
unheeded. The honour and presence of God was shunned, the image of
God on earth was marred and his purposes resisted. Ten of the twelve
tribes were wiped out and the remaining two were exiled in Babylon.
Jerusalem and the temple were completely destroyed. Even though
God brought about a profound miraculous deliverance seventy years
later, only a small percentage were willing to return and rebuild the city
and temple. The systemic failures that had plagued them from the
beginning continued. No word was spoken from heaven and there was
no divine intervention for four hundred years. The powerful prophetic
images and promises of a new day and of restoration were tied to the
coming of the promised Messiah/king. The people waited in the long
night of divine silence as they struggled to hang on to their very
existence

13. DAVID AND THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL (3 OF 3)
During these days God raised up prophetic messengers who tirelessly
and graciously warned the people of the consequences of foresaking
God. Sadly they were consistently rejected and their warnings
unheeded. The honour and presence of God was shunned, the image of
God on earth was marred and his purposes resisted. Ten of the twelve
tribes were wiped out and the remaining two were exiled in Babylon.
Jerusalem and the temple were completely destroyed. Even though
God brought about a profound miraculous deliverance seventy years
later, only a small percentage were willing to return and rebuild the city
and temple. The systemic failures that had plagued them from the
beginning continued. No word was spoken from heaven and there was
no divine intervention for four hundred years. The powerful prophetic
images and promises of a new day and of restoration were tied to the
coming of the promised Messiah/king. The people waited in the long
night of divine silence as they struggled to hang on to their very
existence

14. JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD (1 of 3)
After four hundred years of silent suspense the promised Messiah was
born. Jesus of Nazareth was the faithful image bearer of God. From the
time of his birth in Bethlehem and while he was growing up in obscurity
in the home in Nazareth he represented the image, carried the
presence and embraced the purposes of his Father. From the beginning
of his public ministry he carried a single message: the kingdom of God
had arrived and the kingdom of darkness was going to lose its power.
Jesus of Nazareth was the ultimate exposition of the law of Moses and
the fulfillment of every prophetic testimony of the coming Messiah.
He challenged the religious structures that had buried the relational
nature of the covenant through its traditions. The message he
proclaimed was of a new kingdom, the kingdom of God. As he lived,
spoke and ministered to people, the kingdom of God advanced. As
foretold in Old Testament prophecy he embraced the purpose of his
Father as he faced unjust torture and death in Jerusalem.

15. JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD (2 of 3)
His death on the cross forever broke Satan’s power to lock people
in cycles of destruction and separate them from God. His
resurrection heralded the promise of God to make everything
new. When the Holy Spirit began to be poured out on “all
people” on the Day of Pentecost, Jews, Gentile, males or females,
young and old were supernaturally empowered. The image of
God could be restored, the presence of God could be known and
the purposes of God could be fulfilled. New Jesus-looking
communities could be formed that transcended all forms of
human distinction as testimony to Jesus and the kingdom of God
and therefore complete the task of carrying the message to every
part of the earth.

16. JESUS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD (3 of 3)
Adam, Noah, Abraham and the people of Israel had failed to fulfill
the commission they were given. Jesus succeeded. When his
followers obeyed his words and the church was created by the
power of the Holy Spirit it emerged as the corporate expression
of the new covenant. They began to carry the presence, declare
the image and fulfill the purposes of God in the earth. It was by
no means perfect, but because the new covenant was designed
to operate through grace and relationship, God was able to do
amazing works through committed, even though imperfect,
people.

17. THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH (1 OF 2)
The message and ministry of the kingdom of God has been
described as the future happening in the present. It is heaven
happening on earth. Every aspect of personal and collective
spirituality is designed to foreshadow the consummation of the
plan of God for the heavens and the earth. This consummation is
described in various places throughout the New Testament books
but portrayed most profoundly in the last chapters of the Book of
Revelation, the last book in the Bible. When this age is complete
Jesus the Messiah/King will come and establish an eternal heaven
and earth and the people who bear his image, carry his presence
and fulfill his purposes will see the consummation or final
expression of what began in Eden, was lost by Israel, restored in
Jesus and being completed by his followers.

18. THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH (2 OF 2)
It is the work of bringing everything back under the rule of his
Son, Jesus Christ. The rule of King Jesus will be the fulfillment or
completion of what every follower and every collection of
followers will experience and accomplish in some measure. The
kingdom comes where the will of God is done on earth as it is
being done in heaven. Revelation 21 begins to describe that
fulfillment in terms of God dwelling as God in the midst people
who had been fully made new in a world where everything has
been made new.

19. QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT THIS STORY
1. According to this story, what has been and remains the desire
of God for people?
2. If Jesus is the true and faithful Son of God, what does it mean
for us to be true and faithful?
3. What is it about the Person, the ministry, death and
resurrection of Jesus that resolved the unresolved issues for
the plan of God?
4. What was it that defined the people as the “people of God” in
former times and who are the “people of God” in any place at
any time?
5. What defines success and failure for the people of God
according to this story?

20. ARE YOU PREPARED TO:
1. HONOUR THE IMAGE OF GOD IN YOU
AND OTHERS?
2. CARRY THE PRESENCE OF GOD IN
YOUR OWN LIFE AND WITH OTHERS?
3. FULFILL THE PURPOSES OF GOD?