Following Jesus: The Big Picture

Last Updated on April 17, 2024 by Rocklyn Clarke

Contents

1 Following Jesus
- 1.1 Lesson 1: Background & Overview
- 1.2 Lesson 2: Big Picture
2 Resource Lists (for your convenience)
3 Acknowledgements
4

Following Jesus

This material is part of our Life Church “Following Jesus” discipleship curriculum. Here are some quick links to the main material:

Lesson 1: Background & Overview

In order to have the right perspective as we read the Bible, we need to see the big picture behind it. The following links will be helpful as we explore the Big Picture behind the Bible:

Let’s take a look at what we mean by this:

Here is an overview of the milestones in God’s plan that we will examine:

Creation
Humans Rebel
“Trial” Solutions
Noah’s Flood
Abram / Abraham
Israel Before Canaan
Blessings, Curses, Exile, and Rescue
Israel In Canaan
Jesus

The Big Picture Diagram

Lesson 2: Big Picture

Here are the details:

Creation

God created the world and, on several occasions during the days of creation, he commented that “it was good”. On the sixth and final day of creation, God created humans, male and female, in his image and declared that all that he had made was very good. The significance of human beings being created in God’s image is that we are his representatives in this world. God places Adam and Eve in a garden in Eden (Genesis 2) where they have access to the Tree of Life, but are warned not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Humans Rebel

Adam and Eve succumb to the serpent’s temptation and eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 3) thus choosing to know right and wrong independently from God. This will prove to be a “drug” that the human race can’t handle! As a result, God exiles them, but does not destroy them. This is our first hint that God’s creation project is not hopelessly ruined.

“Trial” Solutions

When we take lab courses in school, or even in college, the experiments we conduct aren’t designed to break new ground and add to the body of human knowledge. Instead, the experiments in the course duplicate classic experiments from the past so that the students can understand how and why our understanding of science developed. In a similar way, the rest of the Old Testament comprises a series of “trial” solutions to the problem of our broken world. These “trial” solutions are intended to teach human beings, God’s image-bearers, why the “solutions” we might come up with won’t work and what God actually had to do to permanently solve the problem.

God’s purpose in presenting these “trial” solutions is for us to:

understand the depth of the problem we caused,
understand God’s ultimate solution,
understand the lifestyle that aligns with God’s solution,
understand how that lifestyle solves the problem of our rebellion.

These “trial” solutions are as follows:

Noah
Abraham
Israel

Noah’s Flood (Genesis 6-9)

Noah represents the first “trial” solution to the problem of human rebellion and our resulting broken world. We learn from Genesis 6 that the entire world has descended into depravity, but Noah finds favor with God. Essentially, God chooses the best man he can find and uses him and his family (three sons and their wives) to “reboot” humanity. He wipes out everyone else. After the earth recovers from the flood, Noah plants a vineyard, gets drunk, and lies naked in his tent where his son Ham sees him and reports it to his other sons. Noah pronounces a curse on Canaan, one of Ham’s sons. The fact that the curse is pronounced on Canaan, rather than on Ham, may be a hint that something worse than exposure happened and that it may have been done by Canaan rather than by Ham. Whether this is the case or not, Noah’s offspring demonstrate that the problem of human perversity has not been solved.

Humanity continues its descent into rebellion – culminating in the Tower of Babel.

Abram / Abraham (Genesis 12-26)

With Abram, God rolls out his next “trial” solution. Abram and his wife Sarai initially don’t have any problematic children – they are unable to have children together at all. They have to walk by faith with God for 25 years in order to have the child that God promised them. Abraham stumbles along the way by trying to pass off Sarai as his sister on two occasions. Abram and Sarai also try to “help God out” by making Hagar, Sarai’s servant, a secondary wife for Abram. This results in the birth of Ishmael, a potential threat to God’s plan. The Ishmael problem is ultimately resolved by sending him away. Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac from back home so that he won’t have to marry a local girl. As a result, Isaac is positioned for success!

Shortly after Abraham’s death however, we see Isaac trying to pass his wife Rebekah as his sister – just as his father Abram had done with Sarai many years before. We then see several more examples of humanity’s predicament illustrated in the people God has chosen:

Jacob manipulates his brother Esau out of his birthright.
Rebekah and Jacob deceive Isaac into pronouncing the first-born blessing on Jacob.
Jacob’s sons sell their youngest (at the time) brother Joseph into slavery in Egypt.

Israel Before Canaan

God allows Israel to experience 400 years of slavery in Egypt. When the 400 years are over, God sends Moses to rescue them and leads them out of Egyptian slavery and enters into covenant with them (Exodus 20). Israel responds gratefully and becomes God’s covenant people. Unfortunately, despite the occasional triumphs, Israel moves progressively downhill:

Immediately after receiving the Ten Commandments, Israel makes the golden calf.
Israel rebels against God’s instruction several times in the wilderness.
Israel initially refuses to enter the promised land.

Blessing, Curses, Exile, and Rescue

Just before they enter Canaan, God explains to Israel the blessings they will experience for obeying his commands, and the curses they will experience for disobeying (Deuteronomy 28). He then goes on to reaffirm the seriousness of them embracing the covenant that he originally made with their parents (Deuteronomy 29). Finally, Israel is told that after they experience the blessings and curses and have been scattered in exile, God will bring them back if they return to him with their whole heart (Deuteronomy 30:1-10). Thus God makes it clear that Israel will indeed fail to live up to the covenant and that he will make a way to restore them. This would become a promise that the Jews of Jesus’ day would long to see fulfilled! It envisions Israel repenting and submitting to God’s authority or, in other words, to God reigning over them once again.

Israel In Canaan

As predicted (Deuteronomy 30:1-10), once in the promised land, Israel fails to live up to the covenant:

After entering the promised land, Israel goes through some ups and many downs during the period of the Judges.
During the period of the Kings, Israel continues to experience failure.
King Saul is a disappointment.
Despite being a man after God’s own heart, King David commits murder and adultery.
Despite asking for and receiving divine wisdom, Solomon is led astray by his many wives.
Rehoboam foolishly triggers the splitting of the northern and southern kingdoms.
The subsequent kings of the northern and southern kingdoms ultimately fail to restrain idolatry.
The northern and southern kingdoms ultimately experience exile.

The Old Testament ends with Israel having returned from exile, but not having regained the sovereignty promised in Deuteronomy 30:1-10. Their failure is apparent. None of the “trial” solutions have worked. Even a covenant people in possession of God’s commands and with God’s presence in their midst (first in the tabernacle and then in the temple), are not able to reverse the impact of our foreparents’ decision to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We can’t fix this, even with God’s help. A lasting solution will require a much deeper sacrifice – one that only God can make!

Jesus

The New Testament begins with Israel back in Canaan, the promised land, but occupied by Rome. Their longing for the fulfillment of God’s promise to completely restore them (Deuteronomy 30:1-10) is expressed in calls by various groups for repentance and for God to reign over them. Another way of expressing this is calling for God’s Kingdom. Various groups (e.g. Pharisees, Zealots, etc.) have different views of what the coming of God’s Kingdom will look like, but they all see the Kingdom of God as the answer to Israel’s troubling political and spiritual condition.

John the Baptist launches his ministry announcing a distinct vision of the Kingdom of God and pointing people to the coming king – Jesus. When Jesus embraces John’s message he presents himself as Israel’s Messiah/Christ or King! Through his life Jesus demonstrates what the Kingdom of God looks like and through his death, burial, and resurrection, he establishes the Kingdom. The long series of failures documented in the Old Testament has finally been solved by Jesus’ sacrifice and the solution can now be exported beyond Israel to the entire world!