Welcome to Season 7 of the Excel Stillmore podcast.

I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I am here to encourage you in your faith and help you

strengthen your relationships.

Today's episode is sponsored by the Cunningham Financial Group.

John Cunningham can assist you in a wide variety of your

financial planning needs. You can call him today at 205-326-736-3-64. Thank you so much for listening in today. Let's get

started. Good morning and welcome to the ESM podcast. I'm so thankful that you've joined

today. I'm extra excited to talk to you about this concept of finding Jesus first every time you

open the scriptures, no matter where you are in the text. I have alluded to this, I think probably

a little handful of times over the last six

months, but going into the new year, I had to pick what would be like the basic gospel meeting

theme for the year. I travel around the country a handful of times each calendar year,

and coming out of the holidays, I try to pick that central concept that I try to take to every place

and then modify if needed and upon request. So this year, it's finding Jesus first.

And it really begins with this premise that the Word of God is a book about Christ. You can sum up the one story of all 66 letters in a short sentence,

God's plan to redeem man through Jesus. The Bible, as we know, is a very diverse book. We talk

all the time about the 66 letters, also 40 different authors, written over a

period of what, 1,500 plus years, three continents, three languages, different genres, and yet,

from beginning to end, they are designed to lead people to the Messiah who would be the answer. He would be the help. He is the

Savior. As we get started today, I just want to illustrate that by asking you a question. How far back

in Scripture can you go to find Jesus? We think about Old Testament prophecies and the way that the Psalms allude to him,

but how far back can you go? I'm guessing you can make your way back to the book of Genesis.

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