A Family Guide to the Bible (eBook)

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THE MESSAGE OF THE BIBLE

What Is It All About?

Written over 1,500 years, by as many as forty different authors, all of the sixty-six individual books of the Bible combine to tell a single story, the story of God’s love for humankind. It’s the story of God’s desire to enter into a “love relationship” with us-one in which He loves us and we love Him-with a passion to outrival the greatest human love stories of all time.

The first words of the Bible are, “In the beginning, God. . . .”

God is eternal and everlasting. He has always been. He will always be. At some point in time, many thousands and thousands of years ago, He decided to create the heavens and the earth-the universe as we know it, with all the galaxies and all the stars and planets hurtling through time and space. He created supernatural beings called “angels” to fill the heavens. God wanted to show His glory and majesty and wisdom and power. He wanted to share His boundless love. So He made Adam and Eve-the first man and first woman-and gave them a beautiful home in the garden of Eden, a lush paradise of perfection. God gave Adam and Eve authority over all the “beasts of the field and the birds of the air”-the animals with whom they shared the earth. He gave them the responsibility to care for their garden. He also gave them free will-the ability to think and choose for themselves what they would do, the ability to give and receive love freely. There was only one rule-one fruit of one tree that they weren’t supposed to touch. But even one rule was too much for Adam and Eve to follow. They were easily tempted and led astray. For they were not alone in the garden.

Earlier there had been a rebellion in heaven. One of the archangels, Lucifer, had sought God’s power and glory for himself. When God cast him out of heaven, Lucifer took a third of the angels with him. From then on, they were known as demons. And God made it clear that their ultimate judgment, their final punishment, was still to come. But until such time as He saw fit to end it, they would be engaged in a mighty battle of epic proportions.

For though he was powerless to take on God himself in all his glory, Lucifer saw an opportunity to hurt God-to wound His heart-by destroying the beauty of His creation and turning His precious children against Him. Lucifer found that he could fill them with greed and pride and rebellion and spur them on to defiance and disobedience. He appeared as a serpent in the garden of Eden and tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. Eve gave it to Adam, and their innocence was lost. So was the sweet fellowship-the precious relationship-they had enjoyed with God. They were cast out of Eden. Adam and Eve and all of their descendants were sentenced to struggle and labor and pain-and eventually to face old age and death, instead of eternal life.

God was not caught off guard by this turn of events. He knew all along that given a choice, this is what the human heart would choose. But so great was His mercy and love that from the beginning He made a way to set things right. He put a plan in motion to rescue the human race-to save people from their sins and from themselves. As He sent them out of Eden, God told Adam and Eve that He would undo the damage they had done. One of their “seed”-their descendants-would do what they had not been able to do: obey. Through His obedience, He would save humankind. And He would crush the serpent forever.

Lucifer-also known as Satan or “the devil”-was free for the time being. Through the ages, he would continue to wreak havoc on creation, filling men’s hearts and minds with evil, luring them away from the God who loved them and longed to hold them close to His heart. And God would allow it to happen, because it ultimately served His purposes-to test human beings and reveal what was in their hearts, to give them a legitimate choice as to who or what they would serve, and to help His children learn and grow in their relationship with Him. (An example of this is found in the story of Job.)

Adam and Eve felt the consequences of their sin right away. They had been created to populate the earth, and they had many, many children of their own. But sadly, few of their children learned from their parents’ mistakes. Few of their children and their children’s children chose to walk with God. Too many of them fell for the devil’s lies, over and over again. Only a few generations later, the earth was full of wickedness-so much so that for a moment, God regretted ever having created human beings in the first place. He decided to wipe them all from the face of the earth-all except one righteous family. With Noah, God would start all over again. By faith, Noah built the ark just as God directed him to, and Noah and his whole family were saved. God was moved by Noah’s courage and obedience. He hung a rainbow in the sky as a symbol of His promise never to destroy the earth with a flood again.

Hundreds of years later, the evil in the world had again become overwhelming. But this time God did something different. Instead of wiping all the wicked people from the face of the earth, He chose a righteous man to start a family-a family that would become a tribe, a people, and eventually a nation-that would be set apart for God himself. Out of all the people in the world, they would be God’s people. He would teach them to know Him and to walk in His ways. He would nurture them and protect them and provide for them. He would bless those who blessed them and curse those who cursed them. God would hold them up as a shining example of what He wanted all humankind to be-an example of the kind of relationship He longed to have with all the peoples of the earth.

God chose Abraham, a man of exceptional faith and courage and conviction. He asked Abraham to leave his home and his country and everything he knew to go to a new land that God would show him, a land Abraham had never seen or heard of before. In this land, God would bless him and make him a great nation. His descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. All that Abraham had to do was trust God—receive all the blessings God wanted to give him—and walk in His ways. To seal the deal, God made a “covenant” with Abraham, a legally binding contract. And then when Abraham was 100 years old and his wife, Sarah, was 90, God gave them the first of their descendants. He gave them a child in their old age—a miracle baby, Isaac. When Isaac was a teenager, God tested Abraham’s faith in and obedience to Him. God asked him to sacrifice Isaac, to give up his only son—the child through whom God’s promises were supposed to be kept. Though he was heartbroken at the request, Abraham determined to do as God asked—only to find at the last minute that God had provided a substitute sacrifice to take Isaac’s place. This was only a hint of things to come.

God gave Isaac twin sons, Jacob and Esau. The brothers fought each other for their father’s blessing—the spiritual “birthright” belonged to Esau, but Jacob wanted it more. So the promise God made to Abraham would be fulfilled through the younger brother, not the older. God changed Jacob’s name to Israel and gave him twelve sons: Reuben, Sim-eon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph, and Benjamin. Their descendants were so numerous, they became “tribes”—the twelve tribes—all of them the “children (and grandchildren and great-grandchildren) of Israel.”

Jacob (Israel) made it all too obvious that Joseph was his favorite son—and Joseph’s brothers hated him for it. They sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt and told his father he was dead. But God was with Joseph. In a series of miraculous events, Joseph went from prison inmate to prime minister, second only to the king of Egypt in wealth and power and authority. In time, Joseph forgave his brothers for what they had done to him. He brought the whole family to Egypt, where he could provide for them during a great famine. (These are the stories of the book of Genesis.)

Four hundred years later, there were over a million descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob living in Egypt. The Egyptians were afraid that these “Hebrew” people would take over their country, so they forced them into slavery. But God had not forgotten His promise to Abraham. God sent Moses to deliver the people and bring them out of slavery in Egypt, back to the land He had promised their ancestors. It took ten miraculous and horrific plagues to humble Pharaoh’s heart and convince him to let the people go. The last of these plagues was particularly poignant. God struck down the firstborn son of every living creature in the land of Egypt, saving only those of the Hebrews who marked their doorposts with the blood of a sacrificial lamb. When God saw the blood, He “passed over” their houses. To this day, the Jewish people commemorate this miracle with the feast of “the Passover.” And when all was said and done, another miracle took place: the Red Sea parted, and Moses led the people across on dry land.

The children of Israel had all but forgotten their culture, their heritage, and their faith. The former slaves were not yet strong enough to stand on their own as a nation. So God led them into the desert, to test them and teach them and train them. There, He renewed with them the covenant or contract He had made with Abraham. He gave them the Ten Commandments and the “Law of Moses”—a system of justice and rituals...