JOURNEY OUTSIDE THE CAMP

Ee-Taow!

Over the Hari Raya Haji weekend, my wife and I conducted a two-day seminar. We taught the Bible chronologically. Based on the book, Stranger on the Road to Emmaus, we brought 30 participants through the gospel message, beginning with Genesis all the way through to Jesus' resurrection. The participants were all youth leaders (or youth leaders to be) as well as several Sunday School teachers from other churches.

As always, teaching for my wife and me, has been a time of worship. Though we were familiar with the material, we were both moved in our spirits as we taught God's truth. And the Holy Spirit really moved—not only our hearts—but the hearts of the participants too. We saw their eyes light up with fresh understanding; we saw the participants coming to a deeper understanding of how amazing God is and how the familiar Bible narratives actually add up to one single gospel message. We saw people weep.

New editions of Firm Foundations and The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus

I was recommending to a friend some books that were useful as Sunday School curriculum. I was telling her about The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus and Firm Foundations: Creation to Christ. Both these books teach the Gospel message chronologically, starting from Genesis and working sequentially and building the story all the way up to the Resurrection. It was the way Jesus taught the two disciples about himself as they walked along the road to Emmaus in Acts 24. Over the years, my wife and I have seen so many people come to a full understanding of the Gospel and put their trust in Jesus because of going through these books.

I was most pleasantly surprised to find that both these books have new editions. Firm Foundations has been around for more than 20 years so it was really good to see this new edition. It has revised text, updates maps and charts and all the resources are also included in a CD-ROM. That's handy.

The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus is into its fourth edition. It has a nice new cover but I couldn't get a sense of what else was updated on the inside.

The Big Picture Story Bible

A few weeks ago, my wife stumbled upon this book when we were browsing at SKS Books. It's entitled, The Big Picture Story Bible. We were immediately taken with it because it takes a child through the Bible in a chronological manner. I'm a big fan of teaching the Bible chronologically because it explains the Gospel message fully, starting with the Old Testament. The Bible's big theme is how God created the world for his glory and when it fell in sinned, how he restored the world through the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ. A lot of times, kids are taught the saving work of Jesus but they don't understand why it has to be this way. They don't understand the idea of substitution, they don't understand what sin really is, how righteous God is and so on. Only by having a good understanding of the whole story, starting from Genesis, does God's story and plan become clear. Then children can readily understand, believe and trust in what God has done. We've seen this happen many times in the classes that we teach chronologically.

The Big Picture Story Bible does an excellent job of making the Gospel clear. We grabbed the last two copies that were on the shelf. One copy was a for a birthday gift and the other copy my kids have been devouring. The illustrations are very good and the story is written clearly and simply. A very very good resource for teaching kids the Bible's main message and taking children right through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

What is baptism?

My wife and I were teaching our Sunday School class today and we talked about Jesus asking John to baptize him. We discussed the meaning of baptism. We told the class that the root word was baptizo and that since there wasn't really an English equivalent of the word, translators simple used baptize.

Baptizo implies identification. When a piece of cloth was dipped into a vat of dye, the cloth took on the colour of the dye. This was process was called baptizo. The cloth became identified with the colour of the dye. In other words, the cloth took on the dye's colour.

Similarly, baptism was a symbolic ritual of identification. When folks came to John the Baptist to be baptized, it wasn't that the act did anything to clear their sin. They were just identifying or agreeing with John's message that they needed to repent in order to be accepted into the Kingdom of God. When Jesus asked to be baptised by John, it wasn't as if he had any sins that needed repentance. He was simply identifying or agreeing with John's message that repentance was needed in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He was validating what John was teaching.

When the Holy Spirit leads

When the Holy Spirit fires up the classroom, things can get pretty interesting. We were doing a review today about God and how much he hates sin, how all of us are born with a sin nature and are therefore cut off from God and are considered God's enemies. This doctrinal teaching brought forth many questions from the kids. Questions that even many adults don't think about. Questions like:

• Will babies who die go to heaven?
• Will God accept a homosexual who says he believes but continues to be a homosexual?
• Why don't we need to bring God a blood sacrifice?
• How can we gain a righteousness that is equal to God's righteousness and therefore be acceptable to him?

Deep, deep questions that when you get the answer and understand the truth, you will have a rock solid foundation on which to build your faith in God. As part of the review, we taught the class about God sending the fiery serpents to bite the people and kill them for their unbelief and lack of trust for God's provision (Numbers 21:4-9). Then when the people changed their minds, they pleaded with God to save them. That act of changing their minds was repentance. We told the class that simply changing your mind and turning to God was repentance. God told them that if they trusted him, if they believed what he said, all they had to do was turn and look at the bronze snake that Moses had put up on a pole and they would be healed. There was nothing they needed to do: no potions to take, no prayers to utter, no special actions at all. Just believe and turn to look at the brazen snake. If someone refused to believe and thus refused to look, not only would the venom kill them, their unbelief killed them.

You could see the children's eyes light up when we explained this. They were getting it. There was nothing they could do to make themselves right with God. But God was providing a way for them. All they have to do was believe. It was as simple as that. We tackled all the kids questions except for the one about why we don't need a blood sacrifice anymore when God demanded it from people in the past. We told them to stay tuned, we would talk about how God would send a final lamb, the Deliverer, and he would be the last blood sacrifice needed for all mankind. That would be an even more intense and exciting lesson.

Teaching about the Tabernacle

As a Sunday School teacher, my wife and I are always on the lookout for ways to make the Bible come alive for the class and to have experience as keenly as possible the historical events in the pages of the Bible. Two years ago when we were teaching our 11-year-olds about the Tabernacle, we had bought a cardboard scale model printed by Rose Publishing and had assembled it for our lesson. It worked pretty well but we thought we could do better. Well, the folks at GoodSeed pointed us to a company called The Tabernacle Place and they made really good scale models of the Tabernacle.

We got our hands on one and assembled it. The details are amazing. The tent posts are held up by actual string, the material that simulates the sea cow skin covering actually feels furry and ark is in gold colour. When we unveiled it in class, it was as if a rock star had appeared in the midst of the children. They whipped out their mobile phones and started to snap photos of the articles in the Holy Place, the sheep, the priests, the tablet on which the Ten Commandments were written, the golden jar of manna, everything. It was a surreal experience for me.

I had to remind the class to show a little reverence for the Tabernacle, even though it was merely a scale model. Then I went through the lesson, explaining the meaning of each piece of furniture and explaining the whole point of God asking for animal sacrifice. It was an elaborate visual aid to let his people know that the only way for them to approach him was to come in his way: to come with an acceptable sin covering, a blood atonement for their sins.

Leviticus 17:11
For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life.

Teaching chronologically

My wife and I were guest presenters at a workshop ogranised by NTM Asia. The topic was teaching the Bible chronologically to children--what that means, how to teach, what kind of activities teachers could use to make the lessons more interesting. There were close to 40 teachers packed into the small NTM office and boy, it turned out to be quite an exciting session.

The teachers were full of great questions on how to engage the kids to get them interested and on how to teach some of the 'harder' truths of the Bible in a manner that young children could understand. Many of them told us they were inspired and set on fire by the passion and enthusiasm we showed.

We felt very blessed that they responded so positively. We could see God lighting the fire in them when we shared from our own experiences. Some of the teachers were so excited, they wanted us to go over to their churches to give the same presentation, in order for the rest of their teachers to catch the fire too. That really moved us because it was confirmation from God that we were doing what he wanted us to do: teach and disciple children and new believers. And it was exciting to think we could now help others be as passionate in reaching out to children and getting them to get a clear understanding of the Gospel message via 'chron teaching'.

Chronological teaching by the way, is simply telling God's story the way he revealed himself: through the course of history, incident by incident, slowly building on man's understanding. It was what Jesus did as he walked with Cleopas and the other disciple on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-27). For us, we have seen such great understanding from the children whom we have taught this way. We are grateful God has given us a simple way to teach his story.