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- Herausgeber: Crossway
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Serie: Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament
- Sprache: Englisch
This first volume in the Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament Bible study series guides women through a Christ-centered study of Genesis. The Promised One provides a fresh look at the book of Genesis, leading women in discovering how its stories, symbols, people, and promises point to Christ. Over ten weeks of study, participants will see Christ as the agent of creation, the offspring who will crush the head of the serpent, the ark of salvation, the source of the righteousness credited to Abraham, the substitutionary sacrifice provided by God, the Savior to whom the whole world must come for life, and much more. Each weekly lesson includes questions for personal study, a contemporary teaching chapter that emphasizes how the passage fits into the bigger story of redemptive history, a brief section on how the passage uniquely points to what is yet to come at the consummation of Christ's kingdom, and a leader's guide for group discussion. A ten-session DVD companion set is also available.
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“The Bible is a book about Jesus. The disciples walking to Emmaus after the resurrection discovered this as Christ himself walked along with them and explained how the Old Testament pointed to the Savior. This book is the first in an important series by Nancy Guthrie, and it spotlights how Jesus can be seen in the book of Genesis. I recommend this—and the entire series—to you.”
Alistair Begg, Senior Pastor, Parkside Church, Chagrin Falls, Ohio
“The perfect blend of biblical scholarship and heartfelt passion, Guthrie guides us through Genesis, helping us discover for ourselves God’s magnificent plan of redemption. Her steps are sure, and her grasp of the Scriptures is breathtaking. Above all, God’s unfailing love, grace, and sovereignty shine forth from every page. A brilliant start to a very promising series.”
Liz Curtis Higgs, New York Timesbest-selling author, Mine Is the Night and Bad Girls of the Bible
“It’s not hyperbole to say, ‘It’s about time.’ While there are good books out there telling pastors how to preach Christ from all the Scriptures, there have been very few Bible studies for laypeople—especially for women—along these lines. Nancy Guthrie does an amazing job of helping us to fit the pieces of the biblical puzzle together, with Christ at the center.”
Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminster Seminary California
“Nancy takes us by the hand and the heart on an exegetical excursion to see Christ in the Old Testament . . . the beauty of Guthrie’s writing is that you are certain she has met him there first.”
Jean F. Larroux III, Former Senior Pastor, Southwood Presbyterian Church, PCA, Huntsville, Alabama
“Every leader of small-group ministries knows the difficult task of finding good material—material that causes participants to think carefully while striking a chord in the heart; material that challenges the mature Christian, while gently leading those younger in the faith into deeper truths; material that digs into the Bible and applies its treasures to our everyday lives. The Promised One manages to do it all! A meaningful, 10-week Bible study with thought-provoking questions and solid teaching, and a peek at what is still to come. I am delighted to offer this to the women in my church and look forward to the remaining books in this series.”
Jean Bronson, Director of Women’s Ministry, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Bethesda, Maryland
“An excellent resource for the church. Nancy explains biblical connections in a way that will be helpful to new believers as well as those steeped in the faith. I wish I had these resources years ago.”
Wendy Alsup, author, Practical Theologyfor Women and By His Wounds You Are Healed
“There are many great Christian books, but not many great Bible studies. Nancy is a master of getting the Word of God into the mouths, hearts, and lives of her students. I cannot wait to share this study with my people.”
Donna Dobbs, Women and Children’s Director, First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi
“Many of us have grown up in the church learning and reciting one Bible story after the other, but how many of us can clearly connect those stories with clarity and understanding of the grand drama? The Promised One will lead this generation to clearly recognize that the Bible is God’s purposeful story—an amazing unfolding of his promised provision through Jesus. I pray your eyes and mind will joyfully recognize him as the Promised One, making your heart burn with a deeper and more passionate love for the Savior!”
Jennifer Adamson, Former Director of Women’s Ministries, First Baptist Orlando, Orlando, Florida
“Do you ever wish you could have listened to the conversation Jesus had with his friends on the road to Emmaus? Luke tells us that Jesus started with Moses and walked his way through the Bible and explained to them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures. Nancy has done us all a great service by carefully and precisely unpacking the teachings regarding our Savior in the Old Testament. My experience with this book has been rich and has deepened my love for the Word and for Jesus. I am in debt to my sister for this treasure of a study!”
David Arthur, CEO, Precept Ministries International; coauthor, Desiring God’s Own Heart: A Study on Samuel
“Because the stories of Genesis are so familiar to many, it can be easy to think we don’t need to study it again. But The Promised One enables us to read all of the familiar stories with fresh eyes so that God’s redemptive purposes through Christ from the very beginning become clear. I look forward to putting this study in the hands of the women at my church!”
Julie Wesselman, Former Women’s Ministry Director, Desert Springs Church, Albuquerque, New Mexico
“After nearly a decade of serving women in the church, I have to say that finding Bible study curriculum that compels women to fall in love with God’s Word is perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of this job. Promotions for women’s materials fill my mailbox and my inbox daily, yet rarely have I found a curriculum so well written. The Promised One is full of truth, humility, and grace. Nancy leads us to the Scriptures where we find there to be one story, that of our Lord Jesus. I am so grateful for this series, and I am certain it will help women come to know Christ better.”
Kari Stainback, Director of Women’s Ministries, Park Cities Presbyterian Church, Dallas, Texas
“Is there a need for another study guide on Genesis? In a word, yes. And this is the book. Nancy Guthrie sets a new standard by being truly Christ-centered, starting with Jesus’s fulfillment of the entire Old Testament and maintaining that focus throughout the guide. Having read three of her previous books, and the Christ-centered nature of them, I expected the same top-notch quality. I was not disappointed. The proven format of personal study, teaching chapter, and group discussion highlights Christ as the center of Genesis. Do you want to study or teach Genesis? Then this book is for you. Guthrie has provided a valuable resource for the church.”
Rev. Richard P. Shields, Professor, American Lutheran Theological Seminary
“At last! Real living water from Scripture that enables us, together, to behold the Lord Jesus in his glory—this is what nourishes and matures the soul! The expositions in Genesis, the development in Scripture, the fulfillment in our Lord Jesus Christ, and then the bridge to application to now and to the blessings yet to come when all meets the final consummation in glory. So well done. I pray that Nancy’s book, as well as the series, ignites a fire that blazes from here to the Third World and strengthens all Christians everywhere to come alive in our testimony of Jesus.”
Thaddeus Barnum, Assisting Bishop, Diocese of the Carolinas; author, Never Silent
The Promised One: Seeing Jesus in Genesis (A 10-Week Bible Study)
Copyright © 2011 by Nancy Guthrie
Published by Crossway 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.
Cover design: Amy Bristow
Cover photo: Bridgeman Art Library
First printing 2011
Printed in the United States of America
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture references marked NLT are from TheHoly Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Ill., 60189. All rights reserved.
All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.
Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-2625-1 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-2628-2 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-2627-5 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2628-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataGuthrie, Nancy. The promised one : seeing Jesus in Genesis : a 10-week Bible study / Nancy Guthrie. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-4335-2625-1 (tp) 1 . Bible O.T. Genesis—Textbooks. 2. Typology (Theology)—Textbooks. 3. Bible. N.T.—Relation to the Old Testament—Textbooks. 4. Bible. O.T. Genesis—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—Textbooks. 5. Christian women—Religious life—Textbooks. I. Title. BS1239.G88 2011 222'.11064—dc22 2011001937
Contents
Before We Get Started: A Note from Nancy
9
Week 1: The Road to Emmaus (Luke 24)
13
Teaching Chapter:
The Beginning in Light of the Ending
15
How Genesis Points to What Is Yet to Come
25
Discussion Guide
27
Week 2: Creation (Genesis 1:1–2:3)
29
Personal Bible Study
31
Teaching Chapter:
All Things New
38
How Genesis Points to What Is Yet to Come
52
Discussion Guide
55
Week 3: The Fall (Genesis 2:4–3:24)
59
Personal Bible Study
61
Teaching Chapter:
You Don’t Have to Hide
68
How Genesis Points to What Is Yet to Come
83
Discussion Guide
86
Week 4: Noah and the Flood (Genesis 6—9)
89
Personal Bible Study
91
Teaching Chapter:
What Will Have the Last Word in Your Life?
97
How Genesis Points to What Is Yet to Come
111
Discussion Guide
114
Week 5: The Tower of Babel (Genesis 10:1—12:3)
117
Personal Bible Study
119
Teaching Chapter:
A Name for Myself
123
How Genesis Points to What Is Yet to Come
138
Discussion Guide
141
Week 6: Abraham (Genesis 12—15)
143
Personal Bible Study
145
Teaching Chapter:
The Day You’ve Waited For
153
How Genesis Points to What Is Yet to Come
168
Discussion Guide
171
Week 7: Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 16—24)
175
Personal Bible Study
177
Teaching Chapter:
How Will I Know I Am Loved?
183
How Genesis Points to What Is Yet to Come
199
Discussion Guide
201
Week 8: Jacob (Genesis 25:19—35:21)
203
Personal Bible Study
205
Teaching Chapter:
“Unless You Bless Me”
210
How Genesis Points to What Is Yet to Come
226
Discussion Guide
229
Week 9: Joseph (Genesis 37—50)
231
Personal Bible Study
233
Teaching Chapter:
Can Anything Good Come out of This?
237
How Genesis Points to What Is Yet to Come
251
Discussion Guide
254
Week 10: The Sons of Jacob (Genesis 29—30; 34—35; 38—39; 48—49)
257
Personal Bible Study
259
Teaching Chapter:
They Say You Can’t Choose Your Family
263
How Genesis Points to What Is Yet to Come
276
Discussion Guide
279
Bibliography
281
Before We Get Started
A Note from Nancy
Welcome to The Promised One: Seeing Jesus in Genesis. I’m so glad you have committed to set time aside to look into God’s Word along with me through this book. I’m praying that you will make fresh discoveries about God and what he is doing in the world and in your life as you work your way through this study over the weeks to come.
As we open up Genesis, we’re not simply looking to increase our Bible knowledge; we want to see Jesus. We want this study to enlarge our understanding and correct our misunderstandings about who he is and what his gospel is all about. Usually we don’t turn to the Old Testament to see Jesus. Instead, we turn to the Gospels in the New Testament. Yet Jesus said to the Jewish religious leaders at one point: “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!” (John 5:39). And, of course, the Scriptures he was talking about are the books of the Old Testament. Jesus himself made it clear that we can search the Old Testament Scriptures and find him there. This study is uniquely designed to help you to look into the wonder of the first book of the Old Testament—Genesis—and see how it prepares for and points to Christ.
There are three essentials parts to this study. The first is the personal time you will spend reading your Bible, seeking to strengthen your grip on its truths as you work your way through the questions provided in the Personal Bible Study section of each week’s lesson. This will be the easiest part to skip. But nothing is more important than reading and studying God’s Word, expecting that he will meet you as you do.
As you work on the Personal Bible Study, don’t become frustrated if you can’t come up with an answer to every question, or if you’re not sure what the question is getting at. I am hoping that the questions will get you into the passage and get you thinking it through in a fresh way. The goal is not necessarily to record all of the “right” answers but to interact with the passage and grow in your understanding. Certainly some answers to your lingering questions will become clearer as you read the Teaching Chapter and as you discuss the passage with your group.
You will notice that several of the questions have a beside them. If there are weeks when you feel you just cannot give enough time to the study to complete all the questions, completing the questions will give you a foundation for understanding the Teaching Chapter and equip you to take part in the group discussion.
The second part of each lesson is the Teaching Chapter, in which I seek to explain and apply the passage we are studying. At the end of each chapter is a short piece that will turn your attention to how what we’ve just studied in Genesis gives us insight into what is still to come when Christ returns. One woman who worked through the study called this part “dessert,” and I do hope it will be a sweet reminder to you of our future hope. If you would like to listen to an audio version of the Teaching Chapters, go to http://www.SeeingJesusInTheOldTestament.com.
The third part of each week’s lesson is the time you spend with your group sharing your lives together and discussing what you’ve learned and what you’re still trying to understand and apply. A discussion guide is included at the end of each week’s lesson. You may want to follow it exactly, working through each question as written. Or you may just want to use the guide as an idea-starter for your discussion.
Each aspect is important—laying the foundation, building on it, and sealing it in. We all have different learning styles, so one aspect of the study will likely have more impact on you than another, but all three together will help you to truly “own” the truths in this study so that they can become a part of you as you seek to know your covenant God in deeper ways.
I’ve put the sections of this study together in a way that offers flexibility for how you can use it and flexibility in how you can schedule your time working through it. If you are going to use it for a ten-week group study, you will want to read the Teaching Chapter in week 1, “The Road to Emmaus,” before the first meeting. (There is no Personal Bible Study section for the first week.) From then on, each week, participants will want to come to the group time having completed the Personal Bible Study section of the next week’s lesson as well as having read the Teaching Chapter. You may want to put a star beside questions in the Personal Bible Study that you want to be sure to bring up in the discussion and underline key passages in the chapter that are meaningful to you. During your time together each week, you will use the Discussion Guide to discuss the big ideas of the week’s lesson.
There is a great deal of material here, and you may want to take your time with it, giving more time to discuss its foundational truths, allowing it to sink in. To expand the study over twenty weeks, you would break each week into two parts, spending one week on the Personal Bible Study section, either doing it on your own and discussing your answers when you meet or actually working through the questions together when you meet. Then group members will read the chapter on their own over the next week and use the discussion guide to discuss the big ideas of the lesson the following week.
If you are leading a group study, we would like to provide you with some resources that have been developed specifically for this study. We hope that these resources will increase your confidence in leading the group. To request those helps, go to http://www.SeeingJesusInTheOldTestament.com
I would love to hear how your study is going, so please go to http://www.nancyguthrie.com sometime and send me a message. I am praying, as you see Jesus in a fresh way over the coming weeks through the book of Genesis, that your love for him will go deeper and that your longing for him to come again will grow stronger.
—Nancy Guthrie
Teaching Chapter
The Beginning in Light of the Ending
Have you ever seen the movie The Sixth Sense? It’s the one with Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment, who whispers through trembling little lips, “I see dead people.” I know; it’s a strange movie. Honestly, it is not my kind of movie. When I first saw the previews for it, I wrote it off as out of my preferred realm of reality. But my husband, David, said it was one of his favorite movies of all time, and so when it was finally free on TV, for the sake of marital harmony and togetherness, I watched it with him. And I have to say, I came to understand his appreciation for it. If you haven’t seen it, go rent it this weekend and see for yourself what I mean. No spoiler alert needed here; I won’t tell you how it turns out.
Suffice it to say that The Sixth Sense is one of those movies that, when you come to the end, you immediately think, Okay, I need to watch that again. That’s because something so significant is revealed at the end of the movie that you realize this knowledge will change everything you thought you were seeing and understanding throughout the entire movie as you watched it the first time. You want to watch it a second time with the knowledge of what was hinted at but not revealed until the end. It’s like when you get to the end of a whodunit, and you are so surprised by who did it that you want to watch it again to look for the clues you missed.
So why am I starting a book about Genesis talking about the movie The Sixth Sense? Because it illustrates why we want to start our study of Genesis at the end of Jesus’s earthly ministry. Something is revealed in a final scene of Jesus’s life that makes us want to go back to the very beginning of God’s story and read it again in light of what we know now. Now that we’ve seen clearly what was hinted at but hidden, we want to start at the beginning and trace the story, looking for what we missed the first time because we didn’t even know to look for it.
So today we begin at the end, and next week we’ll continue at the beginning! We start at the end because it was at the end of his earthly ministry that Jesus himself made clear to his disciples that the whole story of the Old Testament, beginning in Genesis, had always been all about him.
Seeing Jesus
Let’s look at the final chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Luke 24. The chapter begins with several women going to Jesus’s tomb. Even though Jesus had repeatedly told his disciples that he was going to “suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22), when the women saw that his body was gone and reported it to the apostles, reminding them that he had said he would rise, the apostles didn’t believe them.
Right after Luke records this finding at the tomb, he tells us about two of Jesus’s followers who were walking to the village of Emmaus. Likely they were walking home after traveling to Jerusalem for Passover. After witnessing what happened to Jesus in Jerusalem, they were confused and sad and disappointed that the one they thought had come to save them had been humiliated and crucified, and, in their estimation, soundly defeated by the political and religious establishment.
As they walked and talked, Jesus came alongside and walked with them. I don’t know why they didn’t recognize him except that Luke tells us “their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Luke 24:16). Evidently God purposefully wanted to keep them from recognizing Jesus, perhaps so that they would not become so caught up in him actually being alive that they would not be able to think through what he had to teach them. Jesus asked them what they were talking about, and they explained that they were talking about Jesus of Nazareth,
a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see. (Luke 24:19–24)
“We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” they said, with obvious disappointment. They thought they had understood who Jesus was and what he came to do. But because they actually misunderstood who he was and what he came to do, they completely missed him!
Do you think you have Jesus figured out? Have you, at times, found yourself profoundly disappointed because Jesus has not done what you expected him to do?
Sometimes, when we think we’ve got Jesus all figured out, we simply can’t hear or can’t see that our understanding is distorted or diminished. And sometimes we think we have Jesus figured out when really all we’ve done is create in our own minds the Jesus we want, the Jesus we can be comfortable with. We read the Bible and take what we want, shaping for ourselves a Jesus who is passionate about what we are passionate about, and skeptical about we are skeptical about, condemning what we want to condemn.
Some who would say they have Jesus figured out have settled on a Jesus who was primarily an agent of change in the social and religious system he entered into, while others have settled on Jesus primarily as one who taught people to be loving and accepting and tolerant or simply good citizens of the world.
As I see Jesus more clearly, he shows me my false assumptions.
Isn’t it interesting that we feel free to take so much liberty with defining who Jesus is and what he came to accomplish?
Have you ever had someone sum you up? You know what I mean—they took a little bit of what they know about you and made some leaps and assumptions and proceeded to declare something like, “You are one of those creative types who can never be anywhere on time or do things the same old way,” or, “I can tell that you are the kind of person who would never try something so adventuresome.” And have you sometimes thought to yourself, “What are you talking about? That’s not who I am! That is not what is important to me! Who do you think you are to define me?”
Where We Must Look to See Jesus
Jesus is about to tell these two followers where to look if they want to truly see and understand who Jesus is. But he seems a little frustrated—the kind of frustration a parent has with a child who has been told something a thousand times, and yet it seems the child has never truly listened:
He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:25–26)
These followers had heard Jesus teach and witnessed him perform healings and challenge the Pharisees, and ultimately they had seen him carry his cross to Calvary. But more than that, they had spent years as children studying the Torah under the Rabbi and years in the temple listening as the scrolls were opened and read from. Jesus was saying that if they had really listened to what the prophets wrote, and if they had gone beyond listening to examining it, processing it, and truly believing it, they could have understood that the one God had promised to send to them would save them through suffering, because that truth is interwoven into the entirety of the Old Testament.
Jesus was saying that they should have understood that his crucifixion didn’t negate his identity as the Messiah but confirmed it, because the death of the Messiah was predicted in the Old Testament. In fact, each portion of the Old Testament anticipates Christ’s suffering and glory in its own way. In our study of Genesis we will see that the very first promise in the Old Testament of an “offspring,” or descendant of Eve, points directly to his suffering. God said that the Serpent will “bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). So, from the first time a Savior was promised in the Old Testament, it was clear that this Savior would suffer.
But it is not just specific promises or prophecies that point to Jesus’s suffering. More profoundly, the whole of the Old Testament was designed by God to provide a context within which we can understand the necessity of the suffering and the certainty of the glorification of Christ. In fact, without the Old Testament foundation of fall, curse, law, sacrifice, temple, priesthood, and salvation, then the cross, resurrection, and glorification of Christ would make little sense.
So Jesus said that if they had really taken in and believed what the Old Testament prophets said, they would have seen and understood that indeed he was the one they had hoped for who would redeem Israel—they would have understood that this redemption would be accomplished not through strength but through weakness, not by a conquering king but by a suffering servant.
Jesus was not content, however, to leave these followers with just this generalized pointer to what all the prophets had said. Luke writes:
And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:27)
Take this in and think it through. To explain to these followers who he was and why he had to die, Jesus did not start with his birth, or his sermon on the mountain, or his wrangling with the Pharisees, or the plot against him facilitated by Judas. Jesus opened up Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus and Psalms and Hosea and Isaiah and all the way to Malachi, showing them, “This is who I am . . . this is why I came . . . this is the curse I came to bear . . . this is the mercy I came to show . . . I am the blessing God promised . . . I am the sacrifice God provided.”
As Jesus worked his way through the writings of Moses and the prophets, he didn’t merely point out specific prophecies that he fulfilled, which is what my understanding of how the Old Testament points to Christ has been limited to for most of my life (i.e., that he would be born in Bethlehem and that he would enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey). And he didn’t use Old Testament characters or situations as examples to instruct the two disciples on how to live the life of faith, which is how many of us have always heard the Old Testament taught.
It is doubtful that he turned to the story of Noah and began teaching them that they needed to obey God even when it meant going against the crowd. More likely he turned to the story of Noah, the one whose name means rest, and said, “Hide yourself in me like Noah and his family hid themselves inside the ark and were saved from the judgment.” He didn’t turn to the story of Abraham offering Isaac and tell these disciples that they needed to be willing to give up what is most precious to them for their God. Instead, perhaps he said something like, “See how this father was willing to offer up his only son as a sacrifice? Can you see that this is what my Father did when I was lifted up on the cross?” He didn’t turn to the story of Joseph to teach them that they should flee temptation. More likely he said something like, “Remember how Joseph became the one person that everyone in the world came to for food in the famine? That’s me. I am the bread of life, the one to whom all men and women must come to find life.”
Jesus didn’t work his way through Genesis to point out what we must do for God, but to help us to see clearly what God has done for us through Christ.
As we read the Old Testament, we don’t want to merely make observations about the behavior of the godly and godless and then try harder to be like the godly and less like the godless. Instead, we must realize that there are no true heroes in the Old Testament. No one is perfectly and persistently pleasing to God—the judges aren’t strong enough, the kings aren’t good enough, the prophets aren’t clear enough, and the priests aren’t pure enough.
The Old Testament serves to point out our cavernous need for a better law keeper, a better judge, a better prophet, a better priest, a better king. Jesus must have looked Cleopus and his companion in the eyes that day, and said, “That’s me. I’m the one the whole of the Old Testament points to. I’m the one God intended to send all along.”
The Old Testament is an uncompleted story, a promise waiting for its fulfillment. And Jesus is that fulfillment. It must have been amazing to sit with Jesus himself, like those two disciples did, and hear him clearly make the connections. I wish Luke had written a run-down of exactly what Jesus said, because I would like to know! But the fact that this conversation was not recorded for us does not mean we cannot discover these connections ourselves. They are there to be found in the pages of the Old Testament for all who will invest in looking for them. That’s what we will do in this study of Genesis.
What It Will Take to See Jesus
As Jesus walked and talked with these followers, they must have been amazed at how he had so much of the Torah committed to memory and such a thorough grasp on its meaning—especially in the ways it pointed to the Christ. It served to make them hungry for more, so when they got to Emmaus, they asked him to stay with them. Then Luke records:
As I see Jesus more clearly, he answers my stubborn questions.
When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them.And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. (Luke 24:30–31)
As Jesus took the bread, blessed it and broke it, perhaps they recognized him because they had been there on the hillside when Jesus did the same thing and fed five thousand people (Luke 9:16), or perhaps they had been there a few nights before when he did the same thing in the upper room with his disciples (Luke 22:19). But it seems to be more than that. This seems to be a work of God done in their hearts and minds. Their eyes could see him. Their hearts burned as they listened to him work his way through the Old Testament.
Isn’t this what we want? We don’t want to read little bits of Scripture and take away an inspirational thought. We don’t want to pluck out Scriptures that make us feel good regardless of whether we’re reading them in context. We want to understand the big picture of what God has done and is doing in the world. But more than that, we want our hearts to burn in recognition that this is not just a story outside of us, but a story God is accomplishing in us through Christ!
God, open our eyes to see Jesus!
Make our hearts burn in your presence!
We do not want to settle for dry doctrine or factual knowledge about the Bible. We want the Word of God to do its work in us, burning away the impurities in our hearts; we want sparks of new insights to fly; we want the flames of our passion for God to be fanned into a raging fire. We want our hearts to melt at the beauty of Christ.
How will this happen? We will go to the Old Testament and read it through gospel eyes. We will ask God to open our eyes to see Jesus, to give us the ability to recognize him in the people, the promises, the stories, the symbols, and the shadows of the Old Testament.
Evidently this is exactly what happened to the disciples. A few days after his conversation with the two followers on their way to Emmaus, Jesus appeared to the rest of the disciples and said to them:
These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. (Luke 24:44)
Then, once again, he did what he had done a few days before:
Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:45)
First he opened their eyes to see him and made their hearts burn as they listened to him, and then he opened their minds to understand the Old Testament. That’s what we want. We want our eyes to be opened to see Jesus in the Old Testament. We want our hearts to burn as this revelation kindles in us a fresh passion for Jesus. And we want our minds to be opened so that we understand the Scriptures. We want to see God’s plan to save sinners through Jesus Christ in all of its vast wonder. We don’t want to settle for our disjointed collection of Old Testament Bible story knowledge and all the tips on trusting God that came with it. We want to see the big picture of God’s salvation and truly understand this glorious mystery now revealed.
How We Will Come to Understand Jesus
It becomes evident in the book of Acts that after Jesus opened the minds of the disciples to understand the Old Testament Scriptures, they did indeed grasp the big picture of why Jesus came, died, and rose from the dead. They finally saw his coming in context of God’s unfolding plan of redemption. And throughout the apostles’ sermons recorded in Acts, we discover that they presented the gospel of Jesus—not beginning with his birth or with his teachings or with his death but beginning in the Old Testament.
As I see Jesus more clearly, he melts my hardened heart.
In Acts 2 Peter said that King David wrote about Jesus in the Psalms. In Acts 3 he said to the Jews in the temple, “I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But . . . God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets . . . that his Christ would suffer. . . . And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days” (vv. 17–18, 24). In Acts 4:11, before the council Peter said, quoting Psalm 118, “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.” This continues through Acts and the rest of the New Testament, which teach us how to read and understand the entire Old Testament with gospel eyes.
As we study Genesis through the lens of the revelation of Jesus Christ, it will do two things. First, we’ll understand the significance of aspects of the salvation story in the Old Testament that made little sense to us before. Looking through the lens of how the promises of God were fulfilled in Christ will add meaning and fullness to our understanding of the story and setting in which the promises were made.
Second, not only will studying Genesis in light of Christ help us to understand Genesis more clearly, but it will also enable us to see Christ more clearly. It will reshape our perspective about his person and purpose as we explore the need he came to address and the promises he came to fulfill.
We will not study simply to accumulate knowledge. That’s what the Pharisees did. Jesus said to them:
You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. (John 5:39–40)
We will study so that we will not refuse to come, so that we will see that we must come to him to have life.
When we hear Jesus say that the Scriptures “bear witness of me,” we realize that the Bible is not primarily about what God wants us to do—even though that is what most people think the Bible is about. If you have ever heard any of those man-on-the-street kinds of interviews with people asking what the Bible is about, you will hear over and over that the Bible tells people how to live. Most people see the Bible as a “guidebook for life.” But Jesus is saying here that the Bible is not primarily about what God wants us to do but about who God wants us to see. And it is Jesus we are going to see as we study Genesis together.
As we gaze into the wonder of creation, we will see Jesus as the light that was in the world before there was a sun or moon.
As we agonize with Adam and Eve over the curse that came after the fall, we’ll see Jesus as the promised offspring who will crush the head of the serpent.
In the terror of the flood, we’ll see Jesus as the ark of safety in whom we are saved in the storm of God’s judgment.
In the story of the tower of Babel, we will see that we do not need to build a tower to get to God, because Jesus is God come down to us.
When we walk alongside Abraham, we’ll see that it is Jesus’s righteousness that was credited to him because he believed God.
When we walk up the mountain with Abraham and Isaac, we’ll see that they point us toward the Father’s provision of a once-for-all sacrifice—his own beloved Son.
As we feel the intensity of Jacob’s wrestling in the dark to gain a blessing for himself, we’ll see One who wrestled with God in the dark of the garden of Gethsemane so that he might gain a blessing for us.
As we look with Joseph into the faces of the brothers who sought to kill him, we’ll see the One who also could have said to those who nailed him to the cross: “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive” (Gen. 50:20).
And as we see Jacob’s sons become the leaders of the twelve tribes through whom God intends to bless the whole world, we will see the One through whom that blessing will come, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, before whom people from all tribes and people and languages will one day bow.
It is going to be wonderful to discover together where to look for Jesus, how to see Jesus and understand Jesus. But I have to tell you that all of that is worthless, and ultimately harmful, if it does not ultimately lead you to embrace Jesus. That was the problem with the Pharisees. They studied the Old Testament, but they refused to come to the one the Old Testament pointed to. Their grip on religious tradition and their own righteousness was too tight to take hold of Christ.
I am praying for you, that you will not be like the Pharisees who refused to come to Jesus but like these disciples whose eyes were opened to a clearer view of Jesus, whose hearts burned with a more passionate love for Jesus, and whose minds were opened to a deeper understanding of Jesus.
How Genesis Points to What Is Yet to Come: “Your Kingdom Come”
When the two followers on the road to Emmaus said, “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21), they reveal that they had placed their hope in God’s promises of a great redeemer, a great deliverer who would come. And they were exactly right about what God had promised and what this redeemer would do. But they were confused about the timing and means by which the Messiah would redeem his own.
The kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven is the goal of God’s work in history. What Old Testament saints and those who were closest to Jesus expected was that his kingdom would come in a singular event—that Messiah would come to save and judge all at the same time. But the restoration of God’s kingdom is a progressive event. While it has been established and inaugurated, it has not yet been consummated. The day is yet to come when Jesus will come again, and the new heaven and the new earth will become the place where God’s redeemed people will live under God’s perfect rule.
As we begin our study of Genesis, we discover that the first book in the Bible is not only the source for understanding how history began; it provides picture after picture about what we can expect in the future, when God’s unfolding story of redemption culminates in the new heaven and the new earth described in the last book of the Bible, Revelation. So as we study Genesis each week, we will look not only for what it has to tell us about Christ’s ministry in his first coming but also about Christ’s victory that is still ahead in his second coming.
Genesis begins with the creation of the kingdom of God in the garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve lived in willing obedience to God’s word and rule. But a rival regime established a beachhead in God’s kingdom. The rest of the Bible is the story of God’s restoration of a people to be the willing subjects of his perfect rule living in a perfect environment.
When God promised Abraham that his descendants would possess the Promised Land and be the people of God under his authority, he was describing his kingdom. When he rescued Israel out of captivity in Egypt, it was so he could bring them into the place where the kingdom would be established. But while Israel’s kings revealed many aspects of the nature of the kingdom of God, these human kings inevitably failed to measure up. The prophets continued to direct the eyes of Israel to a great future day when the perfect and everlasting kingdom of God would be revealed.
This is what all the Jewish disciples had grown up focused on and longing for. And when they began to follow Jesus they heard him say, “The time promised by God has come at last! . . . The Kingdom of God is near! Repent of your sins and believe the Good News!” (Mark 1:15 NLT). They anticipated that all the prophecies about the restored kingdom would become reality then and there at the first coming of Jesus. But it will be in his second coming when the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven will be consummated. The consummation of the kingdom—when we will know God fully and by sight, whom we now know only by faith—is still to come. “When Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory” (Col. 3:4 NLT).
Discussion Guide
The Road to Emmaus
LUKE 24
Getting the Discussion Going
1. Some of us grew up going to Sunday school and getting the Old Testament in bits and pieces by learning stories, while perhaps understanding very little about how they fit into the big-picture story of the Bible. Others of us grew up without the benefit of being taught the Bible. Would each of you tell some of what you remember thinking about the Bible from your childhood?
Getting to the Heart of It
2. Try to take yourself back to the days following the death and resurrection of Christ. Imagine that you were one of those disciples whom we read about walking on the road to Emmaus. What have you just seen and heard and experienced in Jerusalem? What questions are in your mind and what concerns are in your heart?
3. Likely these disciples had grown up being taught the Torah and were well-versed in the stories of Genesis. What do you think it must have been like to realize that there was something they had missed and to have Jesus take them through the Old Testament revealing how it pointed to him?
4. On the last page of the chapter you read (pages 24–25), there was a list of snapshots of how we are going to see Jesus in this study of Genesis. Turn to that page and look at that list. Which one is most intriguing to you and why?
5. Jesus said that the Pharisees studied the Scriptures intently, thinking that their knowledge of the Scriptures and tedious law keeping would put them in good stead with God. But there was Jesus standing in front of them, and they rejected him. He infuriated, offended, and threatened their power, so they had him killed. How do we keep from being like those Pharisees as we study the Scriptures?
Getting Personal
6. In Luke 24 we read that Jesus “opened their minds” to understand the Scripture (v. 45). As we begin the study of Genesis, would you share with the group why you are here? What do you hope to gain from the investment you will make in this study over the coming weeks? How do you want to be different after you complete it?
