Interlocked Overview Lesson(s)

Overview Lesson Week 1

ILLUSTRATION:

Cain’s Jawbone.

World’s most difficult puzzle.

Only 4 people have ever solved the puzzle in the world.

My understanding is a museum holds the answer and if you solve it, you send it to them for assessment.

The problem isn’t finding the answer, but also showing your work for how you got to the answer.

It’s quite overwhelming, but fun at the same time.

The hardest part is it’s a book, but none of the pages are in the correct order.

There are 100 pages and none of them are in order.

You have to cut pages out and figure out the order while also figuring out who is the murderer.

It’s complicated.

But how many of us read a book that way?

How many of us open a book and don’t expect page 1 to be the beginning?

What if that happened in school?

On the first day of class this semester, what chapter did your teacher tell you to begin reading for homework in any of your textbooks?

Did anyone have a teacher tell you to open to the middle of the book and begin reading?

What would go through your head if your book had 30 chapters in it and the teacher began the semester having you start in chapter 18?

It wouldn’t make sense.

And yet, it seems more often than not, that’s how we treat the Bible.

We skip all over the place.

We don’t sit down and read it from the beginning to the end.

Why is that?

Well, I do think for one reason, it’s because the different books of the Bible tell unique stories.

Where do you go to read about King David?

1 & 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles.

Where do you read about Moses?

Exodus through Deuteronomy.

Where do you read about Paul and the Early Church?

Acts.

Which book of the Bible gives us the clearest picture of core beliefs. The hills we should die on as believers?

Romans.

What book tells us about Jesus’ return?

Daniel and Revelation.

What book tells us about Creation?

Genesis

So when we break the Bible down like that, it’s understandable.

Certain books of the Bible communicate specific things.

BUT

And this is a big But...

Are those unique stories telling DIFFERENT stories?

NO

The Bible is unique in that it has unique books, but it’s divine because all of those stories tell one ultimate story about God, Jesus, and how all of it ties together from God’s perspective.

Why is that important?

For our faith to survive, and thrive in the different false worldviews around us that we are exposed to daily, we need to stay close to God and His perspective.

What are some false worldviews we experience daily?

“You have full control of your life...” - “You do you...” “You have everything inside you to be everything you want to be.”

“We are all victims in this evil world. Evil always be present. We just need to learn how to live with it.”

“You have your truth and I have mine. There are many ways to get to the same place, heaven.”

A Christian worldview is also under attack. For example:

“marriage and family are outdated ideas. They are random and made up, so people should be able to change them to suit their needs.”

“How can you worship such an evil God? Haven’t you read in the OT that your God ordered genocide and intolerance and rejected religious harmony?”

“If your God is a God of love, then how can he _____________” Fill in the blank.

Let me ask: Do you have reasonable answers to these questions?

Or do we find that our understanding of our faith fails us and we start to question our beliefs too?

Are you able to recognize a biblical worldview and see the lies in unbiblical worldviews when we are exposed to them every day?

Perhaps… Too often we find as believers that our understanding of the bible is shallow.

It lacks depth.

It lacks foundation.

The Bible is our foundation.

The your parents, me, and many others in the church challenge one another to read it is because it is God’s word, to us, to give us a solid foundation to build our lives upon.

Through the next 2 years on Sunday mornings, we are going to be learning how the Bible is connected.

How all the unique stories, tell one ultimate story of God’s love, grace, sovereignty and power over all creation.

So let’s give an example of how important it is to build our knowledge of God on a complete, Biblical foundation from all of Scripture and not just one piece.

A STORY OF MIKE:

Mike learned at church that God is love. This is the one piece of truth he believes in.

2. Unbelief comes against Mike’s one piece of Truth.

Now, what happens when Mike can’t explain why he believes God is love? It’s just what he’s always been told.

On TikTok and YouTube, Mike begins hearing other beliefs like:

“If your God is a loving God, why is there such pain, suffering, and evil in the world?”

“If your God is love, why did he allow my mother to die of cancer?”

“If you say your God is in control of the universe, then he must be evil.”

“Earthquakes, tornadoes, natural disasters, how do you explain the lives lost in those instances?”

“How can you say your God is a God of love when Christians are full of hate for people who are not like them?”

Mike’s Friends’ , the social media he interacts with, and a plethora of other examples are giving examples of unbelief that are coming against his one piece of truth.

Notice the size difference here.

There is an infinite of lies that will come against God’s truth.

3. Mike’s confusion leads to Doubt.

Here we see the truth he believes about God is being swallowed up by the infinite lies that Satan throws at us.

4. Mike begins to believe his friends and other sources.

As you can see, Mike’s small piece of truth is swallowed up in a wave of unbelief.

Not only is he unable to answer the questions that attack Him, but now he has stopped believing that one piece of truth.

5. This is the first step in Mike questioning the Bible, the God revealing Himself in Scripture.

He tried to answer God from the world’s perspective rather than answering the world’s perspective from God’s perspective.

Mike got it backwards.

As a result, Mike left church.

NOAH...

I’ve experienced this reality unfortunately.

I’ve seen teenagers come through youth group and I’ve seen it all.

I’ve seen teenagers passionate about Jesus and I’ve seen teenagers completely apathetic to God.

They just don’t care.

One such teenager is now in his late 25, 26, something like that.

He had a good, bible believing family.

As a Senior in high school, His girlfriend’s father died.

He moved to NC and had to start a new high school.

He lost his chair as first chair violinist at Dorman which could cost him scholarship opportunities.

He didn’t understand why God would allow his family to move and rip him away from everything and all his opportunities for a future right before he graduated.

Looking back. I think Noah’s one truth he held on to was that God won’t give us more than we can handle in this life.

But that in itself is a lie! It’s not true of God.

2 Corinthians 1:3-5 “3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”

In all of the hardships of life, we can remember God also has experienced that hardship and we can be a comfort to others who go through similar difficulties.

EMPATHY: We not only comfort others, but we comfort them because WE HAVE BEEN THERE TOO!

What a gift this is.

We can know that God will give us more than we can handle and he can empathize with us.

He has been through everything we have, yet He did not sin.

As we look at Scripture as a whole.

We will find that The Bible is a network of truth.

It doesn’t just share one truth, but a network of Truth.

Using Mike as an example again, How might he respond if he has this network of truth as his foundation?

Mike learns about God and the Bible at Church. He anchors the truth, “God is love” not just on the statement, but on the Scriptures.

Mike begins to see how God’s truth works together. When God’s perspective is attacked by the World’s perspective, Mike has a network of Biblical truth to pull from and not just one biblical truth.

Mike’s Biblical understanding of God helps him understand why God is love, not just that He is love.

Mike has learned that throughout the scriptures, not just the statement.

As Mike experiences the God of the Bible by being in God’s word, he untangles the world’s deceptions.

Mike’s biblical worldview begins to gain ground on all the lies that face him from the world’s perspective.

Mike is able to take ground back and solidify his own trust that God’s worldview, God’s perspective is true.

This hope gives Mike stability and assurance.

This is one way we also have hope, stability, and Assurance.

As we see How the Bible connects, we will have a greater appreciation for God.

appreciation for his sovereignty and His glory.

Our foundation of faith will be stronger.

The book of Hebrews is one book in the Bible that is so helpful in understanding the Bible as a whole.

Listen to these words from Hebrews 6 as we close today.

Hebrews 6:13-20 “13 For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, 14 saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” 15 And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. 16 For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. 17 So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. 19 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

Abraham shows up in Genesis 12.

God makes Abraham several promises that show up through the Old Testament and into the new covenant.

God fulfilled His promise to Abraham and from that we can know and believe Hebrews 6:18 “18 so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.”

We can trust God won’t lie.

We can be encouraged to hold fast to the hope set before us.

That today is the challenge for all of us.

If you don’t trust God, I pray that through this study you will.

And as you begin to trust God more and more, I pray you are encouraged to hold fast to the hope set before us.