WALKING CLASSROOM WITH JESUS'S CHRONOLOGY

Every lesson in this book began with a conviction I have carried across my fifty years in ministry: that the church does not merely need to know facts about Jesus — it needs to walk with Him, in order, from eternity to the empty tomb.

I have stood in pulpits and sat in classrooms across five decades in the Churches of Christ. I have taught the life of Christ to new converts and to seasoned elders, to Sunday morning assemblies and to Wednesday night classes, to university students and to men and women taking their first steps toward baptism. And in all of those rooms I kept noticing the same thing: our people know the stories of Jesus, but too often they know them as scattered fragments — a Christmas here, a miracle there, a crucifixion at Easter — rather than as one seamless, unfolding story with a beginning, a middle, and a glorious end.

The Chronology of Christ series was born from the conviction that the life of Jesus is best taught the way the Gospels themselves invite us to receive it: as a coherent journey. When you follow Him in order — from the eternal Word who was with God, to the manger, to the Jordan, to the mountainside, to the upper room, to the cross, and to the resurrection — the whole picture comes into focus. You begin to see that every scene points to the same Person and the same purpose, and that the answer to every question the Gospels raise is finally the answer Peter gave: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

This series is unapologetically conservative in its convictions and rooted in the heritage of the Churches of Christ. It confesses the full deity and full humanity of Jesus. It honors the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. It calls hearers not merely to admire Jesus but to obey Him — to confess Him, to repent, and to be buried with Him in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life.

Each lesson is built as two halves of a single conversation. The Sunday teaching manuscript proclaims the text; the Wednesday companion class deepens it through the original languages, cross-references, application, and honest discussion. The sermon delivers the Word through proclamation; the class drives it home through study, dialogue, and accountability. Together they form a complete twelve-week journey through the life of our Lord.

It is my prayer that these pages serve the preacher who wants to take his congregation through the whole life of Christ, the Bible class teacher who wants to go deeper than the quarterly allows, the elder who is discipling the next generation, and the believer who simply wants to walk with Jesus from the beginning.

In His Service,

Dr. John W. Edmerson, DMin

Church of Christ at Kennedy Heights

Cincinnati, Ohio