In a couple of weeks, we’ll have a brief overview of the Old Testament. We have to have that to set the scene for the New Testament. Then we’ll cover the period in between the testaments. It’s very important during that time for me to get to you on who certain people are. When you start reading the New Testament, you read about the Pharisees, the Saducees, the Herodians, the scribes, etc. Who are they and where did they come from? That’s what I’ll cover ‘between the testaments.’

Understand that it takes about two months before you get into the flow of things. What we try to do is cover all the books in the New Testament. Of course it’s to give you the history of them, when they were written, why they were included in the Bible, etc. We’ll also get into the spiritual truths. What does the Spirit say about the things that we’re reading in the Bible? You’ll see this over and over:

This represents living & thinking in the Spirit (above the line) and living & thinking in the World (below the line). We’ll be looking at things from a spiritual point of view. That’s going to be a tough, tough hill to climb for a lot of people. This is what takes a couple of months. All of us walk in here or walk around with a worldly perspective because that’s all we get. It’s when we start talking about the Spirit that we get into how we are to really look at things. We will be discussing "things" in the "World" but we’ll be looking at them from God’s spiritual perspective. I will challenge you (and this will happen during the class) the Holy Spirit will convict you of something you need to address in your life. That’s the "spiritual" happening. I pray that happens in here. I hope you just become miserable at some point about your actions, attitudes, thoughts, etc. That is God, through the Holy Spirit, telling you something. It’s not me, but God, through the Holy Spirit.

I want to look at two passages from the New Testament to illustrate this. One is in First Corinthians, chapter 2. If you have your Bible, turn to 1^st Corinthians 2. We’ll be getting into more detail on 1^st Corinthians later on, but I wanted you to see these two verses because they have a lot to do with how I approach the New Testament. There’s a lot of good stuff here, but take a look at verse 9. One of these days, we’re going to spend a full hour on this.

Now, I do this at the beginning of every class to help everyone. I told you to turn to a book and then to a particular chapter. I know that a lot of you know this and you say, "Wait a minute. You don’t need to go through this," but I do. If you’re not used to turning to "books" in the Bible, you can use your Table of Contents. I will give everybody enough time to turn there because I want you to read it. In the Table of Contents, it lists all the books of the Bible. In the "New Testament" section, you’ll see 1^st Corinthians and it will tell what page to turn to in your Bible. Turn to that page. When you get there, you’ll see "Chapter 1." I said to go to Chapter 2, so you’d turn a page or two and find "Chapter 2." Each chapter is broken out into not quite sentences, but numbered verses. If I say, "1^st Corinthians 2:9," that’s the book of "First Corinthians," the second chapter, and the ninth verse. Usually the verses are little, bitty, superscript numbers. In my Bible, they are hard to see.

When we read the New Testament, all of you (myself included) are going to read some scripture and try to figure it out with our own, little, finite, pea-brained minds. We are. We’re going to be right down here (in the "World"), saying, "Well I want to figure this out. When he says, ‘the blind shall see,’ wait a minute. What does that mean?" And we try to figure out how the blind shall see from the worldly perspective. We think only about physical sight and physical blindness. What these verses say, "God has revealed it to us by his Spirit," meaning that the Holy Spirit within you is going to show you some things. He’s going to show you things spiritually, not worldly. That’s the challenge that I will keep before you every Sunday. We will contrast worldly thinking with spiritual thinking. That’s the challenge you have to grow as a Christian: "Do I continue thinking ‘worldly’ or do I want to grow and become more Christlike?"

Let’s continue on. This is so good.

The only teacher we’re going to have in this class and the only teacher that’s going to make any sense and difference in your life is the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit knows the mind of God and is going to reveal that mind to you as we discuss things. The other thing that’s more than implied here is that if you’re not a Christian (haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior), you don’t have the Holy Spirit within you. So guess what you’re going to be doing? This is not a threat, just a fact. If you don’t have the Spirit of God in you and we start talking about spiritual things, what are you going to be doing? Trying to see things rationally and reasonably from a worldly perspective. They won’t make sense without the Spirit of God.

One of the things that I’ll assume is that all of you are Christians. Some of you may need to make a decision for Christ so that you can go through this class and through life and understand the spiritual things. If you want to, I’ll be happy to talk to you. You need to be a Christian.

Another passage I want to read is John, chapter 8, verse 32. Who knows what John 8:32 says? You’ll know it when you get there. John is in the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). What chapter? Eight. What verse? 32. You get the idea. This is pretty easy. This is fun. I like this. By the way, did you know that they did not have these "verses" and "chapters" until the 1500’s. They didn’t have "chapters" or "verses." Could you imagine trying to look things up in the Bible? Realize also that everybody didn’t have Bibles then, so it didn’t really matter. Let’s start in verse 31.

Here’s what we’re going to find out about freedom: wherever Christ is, there is freedom. It’s going to be all the freedoms you can think of—not just like the freedom we experience in the United States (press, speech, worship, etc), but true and complete freedom. When you learn the truth about God’s acceptance of you, then you’ll understand how sin cannot be a part of your life. You’ll be free from the burden, trap, weight, or prison of whatever you’re going through—anger, financial difficulties, children, etc. What happens is that Jesus said, "I’ve come that you might have life and have it more abundantly." How you have "life more abundantly" is that you’re set free from all the "worldly" things. That’s hard to do. That’s pretty difficult to do. A lot of us want to hold on to some of our burdens because people will feel sorry for us or something.

This is where the Holy Spirit will convict you of something that has you imprisoned. It could be anything. Somebody might be hung up on day-trading on the stock market. The truth will set you free from anger, jealousy, envy—anything that you could name in the world that could imprison you. This is the perspective the New Testament will give you.

The Old Testament was a lot of people (Joseph, Abraham, Jacob, etc.), history of the Nation of Israel, Jews, etc. The New Testament is going to be about you. You are the "church." That’s what we’ll see when we get to the book of Acts. You are the church. Right now, you are God’s way of telling people about Him on this earth. The Old Testament was about a lot of other people. We could apply those examples to our lives today. The New Testament is going to be about you and your relationship to God. That’s why God gave us the Bible to begin with.

That’s what’s in store for our study of the New Testament.

We’re going to go through the books pretty quickly, but I want you to be familiar with all of them. We’ll spend the last three months on the book of Revelation. We’ll spend nine months on the first 26 books of the New Testament and then we’ll go through Revelation chapter by chapter. It’ll be a much more in-depth study for Revelation. I do that, not just because a lot of people like to hear about Revelation, but I think Revelation has a lot of references to all of the rest of the Bible—everything in the Old and New Testaments. It’s a great way to summarize everything we’ve been through.

I will be prepared every Sunday. I’ll be ready to go. We’ll go as fast and hard as we can for 45 to 50 minutes each Sunday. I will try to cover as much as I can. I will be prepared. That’s my commitment to you.