How high can you count? My three year old surprised me by counting to 5 all by himself. His older brother was not able to count that quickly. For some reason he had trouble figuring out the difference between 3 and 4. He would count one two four and then get stuck, even though he knew six, seven, eight. Finally I came up with a rhyme so that he could remember three. I told him to say, “three is like me.”
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Soon he was counting by saying, “one, two, four is like- three is like me, four, five…” Before long he no longer had to use the rhyme because he had learned the number 3.
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It can be frustrating trying to learn something and getting confused. To those of us who have been counting for a long time, three and four do not sound all that much alike, but to my little boy they were very confusing.
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The same sort of confusion can come when people first start to study the Bible. Theologians are able to quickly distinguish between Noah and Moses, yet some of them have still fallen for the trick question about how many animals Moses brought on the ark (Noah built the ark, not Moses).
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For those reading through the Bible for the first time, all those names and events can look like advanced algebra to someone who has just learned how to count. Once you figure out the difference between Noah and Moses, you then have to figure out the difference between Elijah and Elisha.
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It is kind of like watching a TV series for the first time. When you tune in during the middle of the second season, you do not know all the characters. You do not even know right away who the good guys are and who the villain is, but as you watch you begin to sort things out. Imagine thought that the TV series took place over hundreds and even thousands of years of history and the characters were constantly changing. If the series were really exciting, you would want to go back and watch the first season to find out what led up to the events in the second season. That is what the Bible is like.
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The Bible is not just a bunch of random stories that are not connected. It is a history of a people and of a particular family group and it traces that family group all the way to Jesus Christ.
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Once you realize that the events of the Bible are connected, you can then start to see how exciting the scriptures really are. That is part of the reason why I like to preach through a whole book of the Bible and explain who the people are, the significance of the events, and how we can relate those events to our lives.
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Often when people go to church, they only get a small sample of Bible verses and then the next week they get another random sample from another place in scripture so they do not get to see how the events are connected. It is almost like seeing a bunch of random movie clips without sitting down and ever watching the movie. My goal is to plant a church where God’s word is preached verse by verse so that people can see who the Bible characters are. Then they can also learn about who God is, how He interacts with man, and how He is relevant to our lives today.
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