Series Information

Fall (Sept 12-Nov 21) The Beginning: The Story of the Old Testament

The title of the Fall season of our Annual Focus is “The Beginning.” As you might guess, we will begin this season at the beginning of the Bible…the very beginning. In fact, we begin our season in Genesis 1. In week two we only get to Genesis 3. These first three chapters communicate much of what we know about the Garden of Eden. The rest of the Old Testament will spend a lot of time explaining how God is looking to regain for us what we lost when Adam and Even were exiled from the Garden of Eden. In week three we will be reading Genesis 12 and discussing the promise that God made to Abraham. The promise of God will be a pillar for the rest of the book of Genesis and the entire Old Testament. The remainder of the Fall season will be spent examining how God progressively reestablishes His Kingdom out of chaos through promise, covenant and redemption. The general application for the faithful will also become evident as we study.

At this point in this summary, I have to acknowledge how much I am leaning on the scholarship of G. K. Beale for this Annual Focus. He is a brilliant Bible professor who has taught at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Wheaton College, IL. I highly recommend his book entitled, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New. This book is a heavy book (both figuratively and literally in that it is over 1000 pages in length). I will be referencing it throughout the whole year. The last sentence of the previous paragraph is a paraphrase of what he says frequently in his book.