The Way of the Chosen

By Amanda Jenkins, Dallas Jenkins and Douglas S. Huffman

Discover what it means to belong to and be blessed by God.
 
We all have to choose: the wide road that leads to destruction or the narrow path that leads to life. The third season of the groundbreaking television show, The Chosen, picks up with how Jesus’ followers apply His teaching to their lives.
 
The Way of the Chosen is an eight-lesson interactive Bible study for individuals or small groups that works in tandem with each episode of the show. In modeling “the narrow road that leads to life” it includes:

• Forgiving the way Jesus does
• Going when and where He says to go
• Grieving what He grieves
• Standing firm on His words and character
• Delighting in the things that please Him
• Asking because He says to
• Welcoming those He welcomes
• Trusting His will and way

Readers will be challenged to move from knowing who Jesus is to living out their faith by going the way of the Chosen.
 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: David C Cook
• Release date: Mar 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9780830784578

Amanda Jenkins

Amanda Jenkins is passionate about communicating biblical truths to kids in a way they can understand and connect with. Amanda lives just outside of Chicago with her husband, Dallas, and their four young children. She is also the daughter-in-law of Jerry B. Jenkins, author of the best-selling Left Behind series.

Book preview

Introduction

The Way of the Chosen

Destruction.

That’s a big and terrible word, not to mention an unconventional one to start a Bible study with. But let’s just get after it, because we’re living in a world of brokenness and woe. Matthew wasn’t being prophetic when he used the word; he wasn’t making a claim that remained to be seen.

We see it, Matthew.

Truth is, devastation and ruin are around us all the time—just turn on the news. Or any reality TV show. Take a drive and you’ll inevitably see bars on windows, trash in gutters, graffiti on walls, and people living in the midst of it on the street. Google the current numbers on divorce, single-parent births, high school dropouts, crime, mental illness, or suicide.

They’re all on the rise.

Scan the horizon of your neighborhood, or closer still, take an honest look inside your own life—your friends, your family, yourself—and you’ll see a thousand different ways the wide road has led to destruction.

And it started all the way back in the Garden of Eden.

Genesis 2:8–3:13

"The LORD God planted a garden in Eden,

in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

flowed out of Eden to water the garden,

and there it divided and became four rivers.… [And] the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’

Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to

and to every beast of the field.

But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.…

Now the

was more crafty

than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’ And the woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’

But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

And they sewed

together and made themselves loincloths.

And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the

and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’

He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you

not to eat?’ The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me

and I ate.’ Then the LORD God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’

The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me,

and I ate.’"

Tragically, Adam and Eve messed up God’s perfect creation. At the very first fork, they chose the wide road and destroyed what God had made, putting distance between them and the Lord and enmity between themselves and the world.

And we’re just like them.

We’re prone to wander away from God, but we don’t have to, and self-sabotage is not a foregone conclusion. There’s a different way to live for those who believe Jesus when He says, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6).

Jesus is the narrow gate that leads to life, but according to the Bible, those who find Him are few. How can that be? Why don’t all the ways we’ve messed up apart from Jesus cause us to run right to Him and to stay there?

The answer is obvious. His way is hard.

‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’

Isaiah 55:8–9 NIV

By its very nature, following requires submission—which is perhaps one of the most despised words of the twenty-first century. To submit means to yield our desires to someone else. To make personal sacrifices. To exercise self-control and self-denial. To be humble and, oftentimes, to repent. To change our hearts and our very lives when it’s required, because submitting means we obey the One who knows better than we do; the One whose ways are different from our own.

No wonder we so often refuse it and go our own way. But since the consequence of the wide road is our own demise, perhaps it’s time to embrace the hard stuff of following and storm the narrow gate.

Perhaps it’s time to go the way of the Chosen.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Matthew 6:14–15

Lesson 1

FORGIVE

as Jesus forgives

JOHN THE BAPTIST: What did you think of Him?

JOANNA: I don’t know how to describe it.

JOHN THE BAPTIST: Like you were grateful for food but didn’t realize you’d been starving.

JOANNA: That works.

JOHN THE BAPTIST (smiling at Andrew): Anything new?

ANDREW: So much.

JOHN THE BAPTIST: Tell me what He said.

JOANNA: Nothing that made sense. (John likes where this is going.)

JOANNA (CONT’D): Everything upside down—the poor, the grieving, the meek, all elevated.

JOHN THE BAPTIST: Blessed.

JOANNA: Yes. And other things reversed … love your enemies. Who can LOVE their enemy?

JOHN THE BAPTIST: He can. What else?

JOANNA: Bizarre imagery. Something about pearls before pigs, logs in eyes …

JOHN THE BAPTIST: Yes.

ANDREW: Salt, murder, rain, God feeding the birds, houses on sand.

JOANNA: He’s almost as strange as you.

JOHN THE BAPTIST: I wish I were so strange. (John paces now, excited.)