How to Show Your Kids Jesus in Every Old Testament Story

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Hello, friends. Today's podcast question says, "How do we help our kids see that each Old Testament story points to Jesus as they learn to see the Bible as a consecutive whole?"

What a great question. I love the heart behind this question. I love anytime I hear that someone is trying to equip the kids in their care to dive into Scripture, to understand it, and to see how all of Scripture points to Jesus. So this is the question we're going to dive deep into today on the Foundation Worldview Podcast, where we seek to answer your questions so that you can equip the children God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the Christian worldview. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I'm thrilled that you've joined me for another episode today.

As we think through this question, there are really two different parts to it. First, how do we help our children see the Bible as one cohesive whole? And second, how do we help our kids see that the entire Old Testament is pointing to Jesus?

The Short Answer (and Why It's Worth a Longer Episode)

I have a very simple answer for you, and I could actually turn this into a 60- to 90-second podcast. The answer is: use our Studying the Bible curriculum here at Foundation Worldview. Obviously, I'm going to give you more information than that, because that would be a really boring podcast. And I do say that a little bit in jest, but it really is true that what we're seeking to do in our Studying the Bible curriculum is exactly what this questioner has written in about — understanding the Bible as a cohesive whole and seeing all of the Old Testament point to Jesus.

Just recently, in a team meeting at Foundation Worldview, one of my teammates was explaining how he was helping his son prepare for a presentation at their homeschool co-op. His son decided to present on what the Bible is, and this teammate started asking his son a bunch of questions he assumed the boy didn't know the answers to. He was asking these questions to give his son different research points — things to look up. But his son knew the answers to all of them. He said, "How do you know all this information?" And then he realized: it's because his wife is taking their son through our Studying the Bible curriculum.

If you do take your children through that curriculum, they will be trained to see the Bible as a cohesive whole. They'll learn to recognize clues throughout the entire Old Testament that point to Jesus. They'll be equipped with basic skills they need to soundly read, interpret, and apply Scripture. They'll understand the different genres present in Scripture and how to correctly read them. And who knows — you might even be surprised by learning a little something yourself along the way. I'm the one who primarily wrote this curriculum, and I learned things along the way as I was writing it.

Part 1: Telling the Bible as One Story

So how are we going to do this? How are we going to help our kids understand the Bible as one cohesive whole?

Something I think is so important to do is actually to tell our children the story of the Bible as one story. Now, this is not a replacement for actually having our kids dive into Scripture. We need to be diving into Scripture daily with our children. But it's important for us to tell the story of the Bible in a really short manner as one cohesive whole. And again, this is exactly what we do in the first 10 lessons of our Studying the Bible curriculum. By the time your kids are done with those first 10 lessons, they will know the story of the Bible backwards and forwards and inside out and upside down. Okay, maybe not all those directions — but they'll at least know it forward and backward.

So I'm going to model for you how you could help your kids understand the Bible as a cohesive whole. What I like to do is just break the story of the Bible up into different time periods and then talk through each of those time periods. The time periods I like to break it up into are: creation, fall, early history, the patriarchs, slavery and Exodus, wilderness and conquest, judges, united kingdom, divided kingdom, exile, return, silence, the life of Jesus, the early church, the church age, and the return of Jesus.

Here's how I would tell the story of the Bible to kids:

The story of the Bible starts off with creation. God created the heavens and the earth, and it was very good. However, things did not stay that way for long, because God gave Adam and Eve, his image bearers, a choice. They could choose to love and trust and obey him, or they could choose to love and trust and obey themselves. And this is when the fall happened. Adam and Eve rebelled against God, and sin and death entered the world, and God cursed the ground. But God didn't just leave Adam and Eve stuck there. Even in their sin, God promised that one day he would send a rescuer to rescue them from their sin.

Next we come to the time period of early history. Adam and Eve had more children, and their children had children, and with each generation we see more and more sin — the world continues to spiral into sin.

The next time period is the time of the patriarchs. This is the time in the Bible when the Bible stops focusing on the entire world and zooms in on one family — Abraham's family. The word patriarch simply means "father." So the Bible focuses next on Abraham's family — God chose Abraham's family to be the family through which the rescuer would come. Abraham's family makes a lot of mistakes, but God is faithful to the promise he has made to them.

Eventually Abraham's family ends up in slavery in Egypt, and for 400 years they're enslaved there. However, God does not forget about his people. He sends them someone to rescue them, and then there is an Exodus. They exit from Egypt. They're no longer slaves. God has freed them.

Then God brings them into the wilderness and makes a covenant with them. He gives them his law and promises that if they choose to obey, he will bless them, and if they choose to rebel, he will punish them. It doesn't take long, while the people are in the wilderness, for them to rebel against God's law. In fact, they rebelled so much that God had them wander in the wilderness for 40 years. But after 40 years, God was faithful to his promise, and his people then conquered the promised land.

After the people are in the promised land, next comes the time period of the judges. Even though God had graciously given his people the land, everybody did what was right in their own eyes — and there was sin and more sin and more sin, and things continued to spiral out of control.

Next, God brought in the time period of the united kingdom. God raised up kings to rule over Israel. Saul was a king who only followed God with half his heart. David was a king who followed God with his whole heart — but even in following God with his whole heart, he still sinned against God. David's son Solomon was again a king who started out good, but he did not follow God with his whole heart. And by the time we get to Solomon's son, Rehoboam, there was so much sin that the nation divided.

This brings in the time of the divided kingdom. Some of the tribes of Israel followed David's grandson Rehoboam in the southern kingdom, and some followed another king, Jeroboam, in the northern kingdom. Most of the kings in the southern kingdom rebelled against God, though some followed him, while all of the kings in the northern kingdom rebelled. During this time the prophets were calling out, reminding God's people to come back to him — that God had promised that if they rebelled against him, he was going to kick them out of the land just as he did the people before them.

Eventually there was so much rebellion in the northern kingdom that God sent the nation of Assyria to take his people captive. And several years later, the people in the southern kingdom of Judah were taken captive by the nation of Babylon. While the people were in exile, they were so sad and scared, but God did not leave them. God promised them they were only going to be there for 70 years, and then he would send them back to the land. Eventually God was true to his promise. The exile was over, and the people returned to the land.

But it didn't take long, once they were in the land, for them to start sinning again. And this ushered in a 400-year period of silence, where there was no new word from God. And just when everyone was beginning to wonder if God had forgotten about his people — enter the Son of God.

Jesus was born, and he lived the perfect life we could never live. He died in our place on the cross, and he rose again to new life. And now the story of the Bible is no longer just focused on the nation of Israel, but is once again focused on the entire world — that anyone who chooses to turn from their sin and trust in Jesus is brought to new life in him and is brought into God's family.

Next, we see the time of the early church. This is when Jesus's followers were spreading the good news about new life in Jesus and were teaching Jesus's followers how to trust him. The next period in Bible history is the period we find ourselves in: the church age, where those of us who have trusted Jesus are learning more and more how to follow him, are being conformed more into the image of his Son. And we are eagerly awaiting the final time period in Bible history, the return of Jesus, when Jesus will return and make all things new.

I hope you saw in that — it wasn't the perfect retelling of the story of the Bible — but you can break the Bible timeline up into different time periods and tell the story of the Bible as one cohesive whole.

Anchor Every Passage in the Timeline

Now, I recommend that in your family devotion times you read through the Bible together, and whenever you're reading different portions of Scripture, you ask your kids: "Where in the Bible timeline does this fall?"

For example, if you're reading the accounts in 1 and 2 Samuel, you can say, "When in Bible history does this take place?" — Oh, this takes place during the time of the united kingdom. This is describing the kingships of Saul and David and Solomon.

Or if you're reading through the book of Ephesians, you can say, "Where in the Bible timeline does this take place?" — Oh, this takes place during the time of the early church. Paul was writing to the church in Ephesus, teaching them more about who Jesus is and how to live for him.

Or if you're reading the story of Joseph being sold into slavery and then taken down to Egypt, "Okay, when does this take place?" — Oh, this takes place during the time of the patriarchs, and then this ushers in the time of slavery.

Again, if you choose to take your kids through our Studying the Bible curriculum, all of this will be done for you, and we even have great Bible timeline illustrations that accompany each of these time periods. So this is really important: just break the Bible into those different chunks, and then as you're reading through the Bible, always ask your kids, "Where in Bible history does this take place?" I find this so helpful whenever I'm reading through a different portion of Scripture, just to know where in the overarching timeline it takes place.

Part 2: Spotting the Clues That Point to Jesus

Okay, so that's the first part of this question — helping our kids see the Bible as one cohesive whole. The next part of this question is: how do we help our kids see that the Old Testament is continually pointing toward Jesus?

This is where, as you're reading through the Bible together and find different clues that are pointing to the Messiah, you're going to want to stop and talk with your kids about how these clues point to the Messiah. Again, this is something we do in our Studying the Bible curriculum. As we take the kids through the entire Old Testament, we pause along the way to talk through the different clues. Here are some of the clues we cover that you can take your kids through.

Genesis 3:15. In the opening chapters of Genesis — right after Adam and Eve have rebelled against God — this is where God promises that he is going to send someone to crush the serpent's head. We can ask, "Okay, right here, what is God promising?" God's promising that he's going to send someone descended from Eve who is going to crush the serpent's head. And then as we read through the gospel narratives, we can talk about how Jesus defeated the power and the punishment that was brought on by sin. He has crushed Satan's head as he died on the cross in our place and rose again to new life.

Genesis 12:3. As you're reading through the rest of Genesis, in Genesis 12, verse 3, this is where God is making his covenant with Abraham. He says,

"Through you, all peoples on earth will be blessed."

That word peoples sounds kind of strange, and we can talk with our kids about how peoples means groups of people — all the different tribes, nations, and tongues. We can ask, "Well, how is it that all people groups are blessed through Abraham? That's kind of strange. Abraham was thousands and thousands of years ago." And then you can talk about how Jesus, who is Abraham's descendant, has provided a way of salvation for all people. Jesus didn't just rescue biological descendants of Abraham — yes, he did rescue biological descendants of Abraham, but he made possible the rescue of all humanity, that we can all be grafted into God's family.

Exodus 12:13. As you're reading through the story of the Exodus, in Exodus 12, verse 13, that's where God is describing that the blood of the Passover lamb is to be put on the doorposts of the house, and that when God sees that, the angel of death would pass over. We can say, "Okay, so in this, God is using the blood of a perfect lamb to save his people from death." And then you can take your kids to John, where Jesus is described as the Lamb of God who washes away the sins of the world. And we can say, "Oh, God is giving his people a picture in Exodus 12 that the blood of a spotless lamb rescues from death. Jesus is the spotless Lamb of God, and through the shedding of his blood, we can be saved from eternal death."

Deuteronomy 18. As you're reading through Deuteronomy 18, when Moses is giving his farewell address, he says,

"The Lord shall raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. It is him whom you shall listen to."

You can talk about how, for the rest of the Old Testament, the people were waiting for God to raise up this prophet exactly like Moses — that there was no one exactly like Moses. But it is Jesus. Just as Moses led the people of God out of slavery in Egypt, Jesus leads the people of God out of slavery to sin and death.

So every time you come to one of these passages, you can help your kids see the connection between that passage and the life of Jesus. When we do this, our kids are saying, "Oh — everything in the Old Testament is pointing directly to the Messiah."

Where to Go from Here

Again, if you choose to go through our Studying the Bible curriculum, we do this in the first 10 lessons. Your kids will be taken through a whole plethora of examples of Old Testament passages and how they point directly to Jesus. I'm not trying to make this podcast into an infomercial — I'm just trying to reiterate that this Studying the Bible curriculum is a resource that will transform your children and the way they interact with Scripture. This is a resource that can have a lifelong impact on your children. As we think about what we desire for our kids — what more can we want than to set our kids up on a trajectory of understanding how to seek God through his word all the days of their lives?

So highly recommend: check out the Studying the Bible curriculum. Start telling the story of the Bible as one cohesive whole, just as I modeled for you in this podcast. Start reading through the Bible together with your family. Every time you're reading through a passage, ask your kids, "Where in the Bible timeline does this narrative take place?" — so that your kids are always understanding where this passage of Scripture fits into the Bible as an entire whole. And then as you're reading through the Old Testament and you come to these passages that are so clearly pointing to Jesus, help walk your kids through how this is another clue God has given his people to point to Jesus as the Messiah.

As we leave our time together, my prayer for you is that no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care find yourselves, you would trust that God is working all things together for your good by using all things to conform you more into the image of his Son.

I'll see you next time.

A Resource to Keep Building On

If this episode resonated, our Studying the Bible curriculum walks families through everything Elizabeth modeled here — the full Bible timeline, the Old Testament clues that point to Jesus, and the basic skills kids need to read, interpret, and apply Scripture for themselves. The first 10 lessons alone will give your kids the cohesive story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. You can find it in our shop.