My dear friends in Christ, the Bible is a love story about our God who acts, who listens, whose love for his people culminated in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Abba’s only Son, whose death atoned for the sins of the world. Yes, the Bible is a love story. Not just any simple love story. It is the powerful love story about God’s faithfulness to His children. Here are the big ideas we find in God’s book. We call them the 6C’s:

Our first C, Creation, teaches us that God is love. God is love and He created and loves the world. Human beings were created to enjoy the deepest intimacies of God’s tender, fatherly love. Being secure in the deepest experience of being loved by God, Adam and Eve were equipped and destined to enjoy sharing God’s love, goodness, and kindness with all creation.

However, our 2nd C teaches us that Catastrophe was brought into God’s creation when sadly; the first human beings rejected God’s love and rebelled against God’s plans. Their experience of rebelling against God’s tender, fatherly love became our experience and just like them we continue to hide from God.

Through our study of the Bible we learn about our 3rd C, Covenant, which teaches us that although humanity continues to misunderstand God’s intentions and love, our loving Abba Father pursues us, and He woos us, and He tutors us about the real meaning of His love.

The Bible teaches us about our 4th C, Christ Jesus – our Immanuel – God with us. This C helps us learn and understand that at the perfect moment in time, God demonstrated the depths of His love by sending His Son for us. God’s Son Jesus our God who became fully human so that He could show us what a truly human life looks like. Our Savior Jesus who fully accepted His Father’s love and plan is our Immanuel Jesus who showed us what His Father is like. Our Jesus showed us what love really is when He gave His life for us to fully reconcile us with his Father and with one another.

The Bible tells us in our 5th C, Community that all those who recognize and accept God’s Son find themselves sharing His mission of reconciliation in a community shaped by His love. In this community God has gathered us to be a part of, we come together each week to read and teach and preach the Bible so we can all learn to trust that God’s love will accomplish its purpose.

The Bible also teaches us about our 6th C, Consummation, to help us trust our Abba Father who keeps all His promises. We read, teach and preach the Bible because it tells us that in the end, in God’s perfect timing, through God’s tender and creative love, our Abba Father, will send His Son Jesus back to His creation and when He does all of God’s children, and all of God’s creation will celebrate God’s love when Jesus Christ comes again.

My dear friends in Christ, it is imperative that you and I read, teach and preach these great truths of the Bible so that we too can understand how we are part of this great story of God’s love. We need to read and preach and teach the Bible so we can become intimately familiar with our Abba Father whose story is contained there in. We need to read and preach and teach the Bible so we can become understand that “…what is written in the bible teaches us: ‘The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. (Luke 24:46-47)

We need to read and preach and teach the Bible so we can understand that just Jesus’ disciples were 48 …witnesses of these things and as such Jesus sent them and He sends us… 49 …what His Father had promised…” (Luke 24:48-49) and we know that what was promised was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit that comes to us in our private moments when we study the Bible on our own, and in the corporate gatherings when we come together to read, preach, and teach the Bible, opens our minds so each of us can know and understand all that was written about Jesus.