From the very beginning, the God of heaven had a plan. He is the One who tells the future from the past. He comes to us, equips us with the knowledge of what He has done, and reveals what He is doing still. And the person the world knows as Jesus Christ did not simply appear one day, die, and rise again as an unexpected event.

Life can present unexpected challenges — twists and turns and unforeseen storms. And when those come, that is when life becomes difficult, when we become weak, when we feel vulnerable, when havoc breaks into our carefully arranged plans. One moment all is going well — and the next, life falls apart. Tragedy strikes.

To feel the weight of Chronicles, you have to understand what had just happened. The Babylonian invasion had crushed the nation of Israel. Jerusalem, the holy city, was besieged and destroyed. The temple — the very dwelling place of God among His people — was burned to the ground. The king was dethroned and dragged away in chains. The people themselves were taken captive to Babylon.

You could read 1 and 2 Kings as pure history — a long, sometimes painful record of Israel's united kingdom splitting in two and, eventually, both halves collapsing into exile. But these books are not merely a chronicle. They are a mirror held up to you.

We are continuing our journey of finding Christ in all the Scriptures — and we come to two remarkable books, 1 and 2 Samuel. These books cover the transition of Israel from the era of judges into the era of kings — first Saul, and then the great king who would come to define what a godly king should look like: David.

The book of Ruth reads, at first, like a beautiful and quiet family drama. There are no plagues, no parted seas, no walls falling down. There is only an old woman, her young daughter-in-law, a barley field, and a kind man at harvest time. And yet beneath the gentle surface of this story is something that leads us straight to the heart of the gospel — straight to Jesus Himself.

This lesson is built on Luke 24 — that quiet, world-changing seven-mile walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, on the very day Christ rose from the dead. Two disciples, heads down, hearts heavy, did not yet recognize the risen Lord walking beside them.

The book of Joshua is a remarkable book in the Old Testament. At first glance it reads like history — the conquest of Canaan under Joshua's leadership, with all its battles and boundaries and tribal inheritances. But when we look closer, we discover something far greater. There is a profound revelation of Jesus Christ within these pages.

The whole letter to the Colossians grew out of a problem that troubled many first‑century Christians: the temptation to receive the gospel only in part, while quietly holding on to the old life they had always known.

Although Jesus Christ is not mentioned by name in Deuteronomy, the New Testament repeatedly shows that Deuteronomy points to Him. Deuteronomy shows humanity’s need for a faithful Saviour — and Jesus Christ is the perfect fulfilment of that need.

This is the key to reading the Old Testament rightly. The books of Moses are not merely ancient history, national records, laws, journeys, and rituals. They contain patterns, pictures, and shadows that point forward to Christ. The book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Old Testament, records Israel’s wilderness journey, their failures, their complaints, their unbelief, and also God’s continued mercy and provision. Yet within these events, Christ is seen.

The book of Leviticus contains 27 chapters and follows the events of Exodus, when the children of Israel were in the wilderness at the foot of Mount Sinai. At first glance, Leviticus may appear to be mainly about laws, priests, sacrifices, cleanliness, and ceremonies. Yet at its heart, the book is about something far deeper: how sinful people may approach a holy God.

How do you read the Old Testament? Do you read it as a collection of ancient stories — interesting, perhaps even inspiring, but distant from the Gospel? Or do you read it with the New Testament as your spectacles — putting them on first, and then looking at every story, every character, every law, every symbol, asking: what does this have to do with Jesus Christ?

Through repeated trials, Solomon figured out that the true meaning of life was not living “under the sun,” but living according to God's will or in the purpose of God. He knew that humanity's best choice was to enjoy life as much as possible and trust in God's goodness and ultimate plan.

This is the second lesson in our series on Christ in All the Scriptures — a journey through every book of the Bible to show that from the very first book to the very last, it is telling one story, building one portrait, pointing to one Person.  

The Old Testament and the New Testament must be read together — all 66 books, as a single, unified, God-breathed whole.  To read the 39 books of the Old Testament without the 27 books of the New is to look at half a jigsaw puzzle and conclude that the picture makes no sense.  Of course it is incomplete.  The pieces that bring it together are waiting in the New Testament — and once they are placed, the image that emerges is unmistakable.

In the closing verses of Matthew 23 — the final words of Jesus' great Sermon of Woes.  And these verses do not end quietly.  They end with a cry of grief from the heart of the Son of God.  To understand them well, we need to approach them honestly and carefully, because these words have been tragically misread and misused across the centuries in ways that have caused immense suffering. 

It is one of the oldest and most contested questions in human history.  Pilate asked it of Jesus standing before him, and walked away without waiting for the answer.  Philosophers have argued over it for millennia.  In our own age, people speak freely of "my truth" and "your truth", as though truth itself were a personal preference — something each individual gets to define for themselves.  

This final woe touches something that is deeply familiar — not just to the Pharisees of the first century, but to us today.  We all know what it is to look at the failures of others — past or present — and say, quietly or loudly: I would never have done that.  I would have known better.  And yet, the very sins we most confidently condemn in others are so often the ones silently at work in our own hearts.

This lesson continues the series through Matthew 23 — the Sermon of Woes — where Jesus confronts the Scribes and Pharisees with a directness that leaves no room for misunderstanding.  Jesus is calling out specific behaviours that His audience — the Jewish people and the religious leaders alike — would have recognised immediately.  They knew exactly what He was describing.