Part 3 wraps up the Bible time series entitled “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Continuing in the story form following the book of Genesis, it begins with recap and then Jacob’s dream, and ends when Jacob has met Esau again. There are 10 lessons in Part 3, including a brief overview of the life of Joseph.
The overview of Joseph was included in an attempt to help the students understand how God may use a situation for more than one reason. The situation? Rachel’s childlessness. Her childlessness was at least designed to help her realize that children come from the Lord, and not from the husband, or, worse yet, from mandrake roots. But, the fact of her long period of childlessness, the fact that this contributed to her son being the spoiled favorite of his father, hated by his brothers, was used by God to get Joseph to Egypt, where He used Joseph to grow His people group into a large, pure nation. (Egyptians detested Hebrews, so there was little chance of intermarrying; had they stayed in Canaan they could have intermarried freely with the people there.)
Core truths of this Bible time series:
1. God is a great Redeemer
2. God is a promise-keeper
3. God chose a people for Himself, so the world would clearly know who Jesus was.
God chose a people for Himself, the Jewish people, so that all the people in the world would clearly know who Jesus was. The Jewish people kept detailed geneologies, but after Jesus rose from the dead and returned to heaven, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the geneologies were lost. The world didn’t need the geneologies anymore, because Jesus had come!
The “Covenant” is called “God’s special, eternal promise.” We emphasized 2 points of the special, eternal promise:
1. many descendants
2. becoming a blessing to all nations = Jesus!
In hindsight, I wish we had emphasized the part of the covenant to Abraham, “becoming the father of many nations” which is fulfilled in the church. But we emphasized how the covenant was transferred from Abraham to Isaac (his only son by his wife) to Jacob (just one of the twins) but then to all the 12 sons, who each became the father of a tribe.
The “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” Bible time series was originally written and used in Japan in 1996. The story nature of the series really seemed to resonate with Japanese people, and for the first time we had students who missed their English lesson but showed up for Bible time so they “didn’t miss anything.”
01 – Story so far
02 – Jacob’s Dream
03 – Jacob Meets Rachel
04 – Jacob Marries
05 – Children
05 – Children chart
06 – More Children
07 – Joseph
08 – Jacob is afraid
09 – Jacob wrestles
10 – Jacob meets Esau
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