Threads through the whole Bible
The images and patterns that start in the Old Testament and are picked up and completed in the New.
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Card 1 of 8
How does the theme of God dwelling with his people run through the Bible?
From the garden of Eden, to the tabernacle, to the temple, to Jesus "tabernacling" among us, to the church as God's temple, to the new creation where God lives with his people forever.
Eden is described like a sanctuary where God walked with people. The tabernacle and temple were decorated with gardens and guarded by cherubim, like Eden. John says the Word became flesh and "dwelt", literally "pitched his tent", among us. Revelation's new Jerusalem has no temple, because God himself is there.
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Card 2 of 8
How does the exodus become a pattern for later rescue in the Bible?
Later writers describe God's future salvation as a new exodus: freedom from slavery, a journey through the wilderness, and arrival home.
Isaiah pictures the return from Babylon as a new exodus. The Gospels echo it deliberately: Jesus goes down into Egypt as a child, passes through water at his baptism, and spends forty days in the wilderness, as Israel spent forty years. His death happens at Passover, the festival of the exodus.
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Card 3 of 8
What is the connection between the Passover lamb and Jesus?
At the first Passover the blood of a lamb protected Israel's firstborn from death. The New Testament presents Jesus, crucified at Passover, as the true Passover lamb.
John the Baptist calls Jesus "the Lamb of God". Jesus turns the Passover meal into the Last Supper, and Paul writes that "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed". In Revelation the risen Jesus is repeatedly called the Lamb. The thread runs from the ram given in Isaac's place, through the Passover, to the cross.
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Card 4 of 8
How does the theme of exile and return shape the Bible?
The Bible repeatedly tells the story of people driven out from God's presence and longing to be brought home, from Adam leaving Eden to Israel's exile in Babylon.
Adam and Eve are driven east of Eden, Cain wanders, Israel is enslaved in Egypt, and later exiled to Babylon. Even after the return, many Jews felt the exile had not truly ended, since they still lived under foreign rule. The New Testament presents Jesus as the one who brings people home at last, and Peter calls believers "exiles" who are on their way.
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Card 5 of 8
Why does the New Testament compare Jesus with Adam?
Because Paul presents Jesus as a new head of humanity who succeeds where Adam failed, undoing the death Adam brought.
Adam disobeyed in a garden and brought death; Jesus obeyed, including in the garden of Gethsemane, and brings life. Paul calls him the "last Adam". The Gospels echo the contrast when Jesus is tempted in the wilderness and does not give in, as Adam did in paradise.
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Card 6 of 8
How does the image of God as shepherd run through the Bible?
God is pictured as the shepherd of his people, Israel's kings are meant to be shepherds under him, and Jesus calls himself the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.
Shepherding was ordinary work in Israel, and Abraham, Moses, and David were all shepherds. Psalm 23 begins "The LORD is my shepherd". Ezekiel condemns Israel's leaders as bad shepherds who fed themselves instead of the flock, and promises that God himself will shepherd his people through a new David. Jesus claims that promise.
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Card 7 of 8
Why does the Bible so often describe God's relationship with his people as a marriage?
Because the covenant is an exclusive, loving commitment, so the prophets describe idolatry as adultery, and the New Testament describes the church as the bride of Christ.
Hosea acts it out in his own marriage. Jeremiah and Ezekiel both describe Israel as an unfaithful wife. Jesus calls himself the bridegroom, and his first sign in John's Gospel is at a wedding. The Bible ends with a wedding feast and the new Jerusalem "prepared as a bride adorned for her husband".
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Card 8 of 8
How does the Bible move from a garden to a city?
It begins in the garden of Eden and ends in the new Jerusalem, a city that contains the river and the tree of life from the garden.
The ending is not a return to the beginning but its fulfilment: the garden has been developed into a city full of people from every nation. The tree of life, barred after the fall, is now open to all, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations. The first and last pages of the Bible are meant to be read together.