"Finding the Love of Jesus: from Genesis to Revelation" by Elyse Fitzpatrick (book review)

 The past three years, my Sunday school class has been going over The Gospel Project. This is a curriculum that goes through the whole Bible showing how the gospel of Jesus Christ is intertwined within the whole story!

My Bible study did the Angie Smith study "Seamless" last year. That study shows how the people, places, and promises of the Bible are sewn together into one overarching story (held together by Christ). 

Needless to say, I was thrilled to read another book about Christ through the Bible: Elyse Fitzpatrick's "Finding the Love of Jesus from Genesis to Revelation." 

image via Amazon

Fitzpatrick took each section of the Bible - the Pentateuch, history, the Law, poetry and songs, Prophets, and the Gospel - to show how Christ's love (and Christ Himself) is found in each!! She takes readers through the story or book(s), then points out Christ. She explains where He is seen physically, in prophesy, and where the gospel story is shadowed. These were some of the most eye-opening areas of this book. I'd never given much thought to Jesus physically being in the Old Testament but Fitzpatrick pointed out how He was the angel of the Lord who appeared to Hagar, He was sovereign in the sleeplessness of King Xerxes that lead to his remembering Mordecai's deeds, He was the pillar and cloud leading the nation of Israel in the desert. I'd never given thought to "is this God the Father or the Son?" in specific stories. I'm not sure that is extremely important except in acknowledging that Christ is throughout the Bible. However, I love seeing Christ more and in ways that I hadn't thought because I am obviously not an expert. 

There were a few things that I had never heard before in this book. This was written for women and Fitzpatrick is passionate about women seeing that Christ loves them. She spoke about Hagar, Ruth, Esther, the woman at the well, showing the love of Christ for them. She post that one of the disciples on the road to Emmaus could have been the wife of the other disciple, Jesus's uncle. I had never heard this theory but it makes sense, I suppose. 

This also is not just a book, but a Bible study. I did not realize that when I got it and I read the majority of it just after having a baby, so I did not get into the Bible study portion. Sometime after this newborn stage, I would like to go back and re-read the book and do the study. 

Disclaimer: I received this book in order to write an honest review. All opinions are my own.