The People of God: The Story of the ChurchSample

In order to really grasp the concept of ‘church,’ we are going to go through the biblical story, understanding the foundations that led to what we now know as the church. This is called a meta-narrative approach, an approach to reading the Bible that sees it as many different books that make up one over-arching story. Nowhere is more fundamental to this than the first chapters of Genesis. Much of the themes that will later be drawn out in the biblical narrative are present in these first chapters of the Bible.

Notice how there are two creation narratives in Genesis 1 & 2, one that highlights the fact that God created the world in a Sabbath cycle and rested, and the second that highlights the creation of humans. Both of these are important to note for future passages that we will look at.

These stories show the picture of how God wanted His world to be. He wanted relationship with humans, to work with us, and give us responsibility in his creation.