More Than Stories

New Series Starting on June 8, 2014

Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, Joseph and the coat of many colors, and David and Goliath. For many of us these are stories that we grew up with. We heard these stories from our parents and we learned them in Sunday school. Even if you didn’t grow up in a Christian home you can probably describe with some accuracy the Garden of Eden or identify Noah as the man in the picture who is loading animals onto a giant boat.These stories, and many others, have been passed down for thousands of years, they have stood the test of time. Generation after generation of parents have told their children the stories of Moses parting the Red Sea and of Daniel spending a night with a Den of Lions.

But why? Why, thousands of years later are we still telling the stories of the Battle of Jericho and Jonah and the big fish? Why have these stories remained? Because they are more than stories.

Adam, Eve, Noah, Joseph, David, Goliath, Moses, Daniel, and Jonah (and others) are real people who lived who really lived and God, in His good plan allowed their experiences to be recorded and shared for our benefit. Many of these stories help us understand who God is, who we are and why our world is the way it is. These stories serve as explanations and examples and are preserved for our benefit.

“For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”
Romans 15:4

But unfortunately we often take these stories for granted. We think are just that: stories. We use them as a bedtime routine or to decorate our kid’s rooms, but how often do we consider the reason for the stories?

Over the next several months we are going to do just that, to consider some of the stories that God had given us in the Old Testament. We hope that this series will accomplish a few things:

First, we hope this series will be a chance for you to learn or re-learn some of the great stories of the Old Testament. For some of you it may have been years since you took time to consider these stories and for some of you they may be brand new. We hope that you will enjoy getting to know the people in the stories and the events of their lives. We hope that God will allow us to enjoy these amazing stories.

Second, we hope to go beyond the people and events and consider why God gave us these stories. We want to learn what God wants us to know as a result of these stories. In some cases we will learn more about God. In some cases we will learn more about ourselves. In some cases we will learn more about why our world is the way it is. Through it all we hope that God will grow our love for Him and our desire to serve and worship Him.

Third, we hope that learning these stories in the Old Testament will help us to more fully understand the story and the significance of the New Testament. So much of what we have in the New Testament is reliant upon the Old Testament so it is important for us to carefully consider that which came first.

We are excited for this series and what God is going to teach us through it. We are thankful for God’s Word and we are thankful that is it so much more than stories.