Turning Jordan

During the latter part of 2008 I had the privilege to lead a small Sunday School class at Bay Leaf Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC.  One of my passions is for the church to engage with the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) in a way that a Jesus or a Paul would be proud.  I often have found that Christians have failed to understand, or even respect, the Hebrew Bible.  There are probably several reasons for this, but when push comes to shove, the Hebrew Bible seems to be this big block of Scripture that Christians struggle to relate to as Christian Scripture.  The are high notes in that part of the Bible that seem to clearly relate, such as Genesis 1-3, the Book of Psalms, and some parts of Isaiah, but by and large, the church has failed to incorporate much of the Old Testament into its daily relationship with the Risen Lord.

In response to this state of affairs, I decided to begin with the book of Genesis and follow in Paul’s footsteps by attempting to teach Messiah according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15).  Using a compositional-linguistic hermeneutic, I have found that the interpretations made by the New Testament authors are not far-fetched, but are easily understood.  Some think that their interpretations are often flawed (though they might not admit that in public), but I’ve found that such is the case only because we moved backwards through the Bible: we assume that the Old Testament is only understandable after we properly understand the New Testament.  The opposite is true: we can only understand the claims and propositions of the New Testament after a proper understanding of the Old Testament.  For instance, the thesis of John’s Gospel makes absolutely no sense unless one has already read and interpreted the Old Testament.  John assumes that we have read the Old Testament, and having done so, are wondering who the Messiah is going to be.  His whole point is to write a book trying to prove that Jesus of Nazareth is the Old Testament’s Messiah.

Below you will find the outcome of that class.  I recorded all of the class discussions, and worked hard to write up several of the lessons in PDF form.  I’ve also included important handouts/visual aids that I used in class as well.

Lesson	Audio	PDF	Visual
Lesson 1: Evangelical Legacies of the OT and NT			chart | diagram | diagram
Lesson 2: The Structure and Message of Genesis			chart | chart | chart
Lesson 3: In the beginning (1.1)			transparency
Lessons 4-5: The Preparation of the Land (1.2-2.3)			transparency | transparency
Lesson 6: Reflections on Creation (Gen 2.15)
Lesson 7: True Fellowship (2.4-24)			handout | chart
Lesson 8: Wisdom and the Fall (2.25ff)
Lesson 9: The Hope of the Seed (3.15)
Lesson 10: Living in Exile (4.1-6.4)			handout | genealogy
Lesson 11: Noah and the Flood (6.5-9.32)			chart | chart
Lesson 12: The Real Shem – Babel and Abraham			chart
Lesson 13-14: The Abrahamic Covenant and the Exodus			chart
Lesson 15: Joseph, Judah, and the Last Days

For a whole website dedicating to this study, go here.