The Scarlet Thread

This presentation was designed for a PowerPoint format and originally presented to a high-school audience. If you have questions or would like the original PowerPoint itself, drop me an email at Robert.fox@alltel.com

[The Scarlet Thread]

Slide graphic: scarlet thread running from Eden, through Noah’s ark, through Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, through the Passover, through Jericho, to the cross.

Some people have a difficult time thinking of the Old Testament and the New testament as parts of the same, cohesive book. They seem like two unrelated books. At best, many people see the Old Testament as the story of a dead system that has been totally replaced and marginalized by the New Testament.

This is just not true. The Bible is one cohesive story, spanning both the Old and New Testaments. The same message is told from beginning to end.

Today we’re going to take a quick walk through the Old Testament, touching on just the most popular Bible stories – the ones you may well have heard all your life. IF you don’t already, I’m hoping that by the end of the Quest, you’ll see the thread that connects them all and weaves them into a single message.

This thread that connects them all has been called many things. One popular description today names it the "scarlet thread of redemption”.

[The Garden of Eden]

Slide graphic: Adam and Eve banished from garden. Scarlet thread begins

Slide text:

The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. (Genesis 3:21)

Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness (Hebrews 9:22)

This “blood-red” thread begins in Genesis, in the Garden of Eden. God put two special trees in the Garden: The Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

• The Tree of Life was God’s gift to mankind – his plan for man to life forever in this beautiful place, surrounded by all the perfect things God had created, waling and talking with the physical presence of God.

• On the other hand, God told Adam that he could not eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or he would die.

Adam and Eve had a choice between two trees – the one God gave them, or the one he told them was forbidden. If Adam and Eve chose to eat from the Tree of Life, they would be trusting that God’s way was best – they would chose to submit to His will and obey. When they chose to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were choosing a different way than the one God prepared for them. They chose to make their own choice about what they would do, to follow their own hearts, instead of God’s.

This choice to follow their own path is the original sin of mankind. That is the meaning of the name of the tree. Adam and Eve both decided that they could be the ones to determine what was right and wrong instead of trusting God – they decided they had enough knowledge to decide what was good and what was evil – the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

When they chose to disobey God, they were actually making the same choice that Satan made. Satan knew who God was, but instead of following God’s plan, Satan wanted to create a plan of his own. When he offered Eve the apple, he was inviting her to join him in his “independence” from God.

Both Adam and Eve knew that the penalty for eating from this tree was death. They knew they deserved to die. God had promised this would be the punishment, and his promise must be kept. The Garden was a place of God’s perfection. Now that Adam and Even had become evil, they could not be there. The cherubim that guarded the garden with flaming swords were powerful creatures that enforce Gods will. Picture the cherubim charging through the garden to destroy Adam and Eve – the sword of judgment swinging high. Then, at the last moment in one instant God prepared a substitute so that the sword would switch off course and fall upon it. That substitute bears every drop of justice completely and Adam and Eve could go free. Imagine their horror, though – remember they had never seen death – in fact there had never been a death in the world before. He fashioned the skin of this sacrifice into a covering for Adam and Eve, so that they could enter his presence again.

Yet though this sacrifice covered their immediate guilt of disobedience and allowed them to leave the bushes where they had been hiding, it was not enough to change the fact that they had chosen a path other than God’s. Now they must walk that path. God did not so much kick Adam and Even out of the Garden as they chose to go. Yet as God prepared them for their journey, he prophesied that there would one day come a descendant of Eve’s who would crush Satan and totally wipe away the guilt of mankind’s choice – the choice to go their own way instead of God’s way.