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    Tell Us the Big Story: A Seven Lesson Group Study of the Bible’S Storyline
    Tell Us the Big Story: A Seven Lesson Group Study of the Bible’S Storyline
    Tell Us the Big Story: A Seven Lesson Group Study of the Bible’S Storyline
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    Tell Us the Big Story: A Seven Lesson Group Study of the Bible’S Storyline

    By Eric Mounts

    ()

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWestBow Press
    Release dateApr 20, 2017
    ISBN9781512780260
    Tell Us the Big Story: A Seven Lesson Group Study of the Bible’S Storyline
    Author

    Eric Mounts

    Eric Mounts graduated from Cedarville College (BA) and Dallas Theological Seminary with a ThM. In the midst of thirty years of pastoral ministry in the Midwest, he finished his DMin degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He and his wife Andi have three grown and married children with one granddaughter. Eric’s life was indelibly marked by a remarkable relationship he shared with his father. Eric is pictured with his father in the Wallace-Mounts Cemetery in Majestic, Kentucky. They stand next to Jack’s great grandparents’ gravestones, Andrew Jackson I and Lou Vicy Mounts.

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      Book preview

      Tell Us the Big Story - Eric Mounts

      Copyright © 2017 Eric Mounts.

      Cover Design by Morgan Green, Blackwell & Co.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

      Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Thanks to Mike Farrell for his generous editing work.

      WestBow Press

      A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.westbowpress.com

      1 (866) 928-1240

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      ISBN: 978-1-5127-8025-3 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-5127-8027-7 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-5127-8026-0 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2017904306

      WestBow Press rev. date: 4/18/2017

      To Andi

      My dear wife whom I love, whose hosting skills made each study better as we watched together while God used his big story to open hearts to Jesus Christ

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Introduction

      Study #1: Genesis 1:1–2:4

      How Did God Introduce Himself in the Beginning?

      Study #2: Genesis 2:1-25

      Why Didn’t We Ever Make it into the Zoo?

      Study #3: Genesis 3:1-24

      What Ever Happened to the Human Race?

      Deposition Page for the dialogue for Study #3

      Study #4: Numbers 20:1-21:9

      What is the Cure for Snakebites?

      Study #5: John 1

      Who in the World is Jesus Christ?

      Study #6: John 3:1-21

      Don’t Religious People have an Advantage with God?

      Study #7: Revelation 21:1-22:7

      What will be the Newswire’s Last Headline?

      Concluding the Study

      A Chart of the Bible’s Storyline

      INTRODUCTION

      "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."

      Romans 10:17

      Many children in previous generations learned Bible stories, the Christian gospel and even memory verses at Sunday school, or Vacation Bible School or occasional trips to church with Grandma. It was part of the experience of growing up in America. But we have now stumbled into a time when a whole generation knows not the Bible (cf. Exodus 1:8). To characterize our age as a post-Christian age is no longer a stretch; biblical illiteracy is common.

      This reality has reshaped evangelism. In addition to the need to connect relationally in order to be heard, believers now are confronted with the problem of helping biblically illiterate people consider the claims of the gospel. The issue is still, How shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? (Romans 10:14-15). But the issue now is also, How shall they interact with the concepts of the Christian gospel without even the most basic biblical knowledge to make sense of the realities presented in the gospel? We must assume the role of Philip the evangelist (Acts 8:5, 8:26-40, 21:8-9), who thoughtfully answered the honest questions of the Ethiopian Eunuch who was coming to understand the good news about Jesus Christ in his conversation with Philip. We guide them into an understanding and response to God’s story ("How can I understand unless someone guides me?" Acts 8:30).

      This leader’s guide for a seven-week, small group Bible study is an attempt to lead you to enter into the minds and hearts of your unbelieving friends. With the scaffolding of this Bible study, you will construct a framework of God’s truth as we call others to rely upon Jesus Christ as our hope for eternal salvation. Concepts like Creator, creation, sin, God’s judgment, faith, incarnation, new birth, and heaven have no currency in the common thought of post-modern man. These concepts have to be reintroduced and reconstructed in the minds of those we seek to reach. The thought that the simple gospel presented in the Romans Road is sufficient today is off target. We do not need an updated, more comprehensive Romans Super Highway, as much as we need the reconstruction of a biblical vision of reality and life. That reconstruction is the aim of this study.

      The idea for this study was born as I listened in 1997 to Dr. D. A. Carson of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He delivered a Staley Lecture series at Cedarville University. He was presenting the material he published in his book The Gagging of God. In his book, he argues, In short, the good news of Jesus Christ is virtually incoherent unless it is securely set into a biblical worldview (Carson 1997, p. 502). He argues for setting the gospel within a particular worldview that is shaped by biblical categories. He worries, and I concur, that the absence of this world and life vision renders a person incapable of exercising saving belief in a cohesive manner. He bluntly asserts, What I am arguing is that without this kind of structure the gospel will not be rightly heard (Carson 1997, p. 502). He urges the development of a biblical and theological storyline of the Bible. This storyline would include God’s creation, man’s fall into our present dilemma, and God’s pursuit of us through Christ to redeem us. He calls for the presentation of all the major turning points of redemptive history to establish the framework which alone makes the good news of Jesus Christ coherent (Carson 1997, p. 504).

      Carson argues that we ought to connect the biblical dots with a single narrative that forms the foundation for the Bible’s story. This study is less of a synthetic biblical theology and more of a building into the mind a conceptual framework for the gospel that will allow the hearer to be brought to a response. In this study, we do follow the grand storyline (creation, fall, redemption, consummation) but pass over many passages in the Bible.

      LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF GOD’S STORY

      This study was developed with the aim of providing a framework so that your friends and family can grapple with the gospel statements made by Jesus Christ. The study’s seven lessons take friends through God’s book. It starts in Genesis 1 with creation and the Creator who speaks. We move to the uniqueness of man in Genesis 2 and see the glory and purpose of creation and of our being made in the image

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