What’s the Big Story?
It’s difficult picking up a thick work of fiction, opening to a middle page, and reading. There’s little hope to get into the story, not knowing the story arc, the characters, or where the story is going. Walking into church and listening to a sermon is like dropping into the middle of Lord of the Rings. There’s this big story going on, with conflict, villains, and heroes, but at the surface it all sounds like weird names and foreign languages. The Bible is no different.
Here’s a quick overview of the Big Story in the Bible:
How it started
God created a perfect world, filled with beauty and devoid of conflict and pain. He created this world and called it “good”. Into this world He placed the first man and woman. He called them “very good” and He had an deep relationship with them, walking with them and speaking to them face-to-face. The man and woman were in perfect relationship with each other, living without shame, celebrating one another and sharing a sweet life together, reflecting the glory of their Creator. God set some boundaries for the good of His people, and they were satisfied to work together in the beautiful place He created for them. Death wasn’t even a thing. This is very different from the world we see today. What happened?
What went wrong
The first man and woman did not stay within the boundaries that God had set. Listening to the lies of one bent on the destruction of this beautiful world, they crossed the simple line that was in place and with that broke their relationship with God, and in turn, their relationship with each other, the world, and themselves. Sin, or rebelling against God’s authority, entered the world, and with it all that’s wrong with the world today: pain, suffering, disease, shame, addiction, abuse, and death.
The effect was immediate: man and woman hid themselves from their loving Creator, realizing their nakedness and vulnerability. They tried to cobble together some type of covering for their shame. They blamed others for their wrongdoing. And, having turned their backs on God, they were sent out of His presence, their relationship marred with their rebellion against His rule. They were sentenced to living a life of strife and hardship and doomed to eventually die.
But there’s hope
Before exiling them out of the cultivated garden of God’s presence, their Creator left room for hope. He first replaced their shoddy attempt at covering themselves with leaves with one of animal skin, requiring an animal to die for them, blood being spilled to cover their shame. He also, in the midst of pronouncing their punishment for rebellion, pointed to the future when the Liar that provoked them to sin would be defeated by One to come, a Hero that would save the day and right what was set wrong.
This gets us through the first four chapters of the Bible. The rest of the Bible is the unpacking of where this Hero is to come from.
Where’s the Hero?
The world quickly devolves into chaos. People run from God and rebel against His right to rule as Creator. God calls people to Himself and repeatedly proves His love for humankind in making a way for them. He calls a man named Abram and promises that the Hero will come from his offspring, and that the Hero would bless the entire world. This man’s family grows into a nation of people that God redeems and establishes in a land, not because their especially obedient or good, but rather so His promise can play out. God gives His people instructions for sacrifices, shedding blood to cover sin, pointing back to the covering He made for the first man and woman. These sacrifices are endless and ongoing, never fixing the problem for good.
The leaders of this nation sin, the people rebel, and God responds by disciplining them and calling them back to Himself. He sends prophets to the people, calling them to obey and follow Him and reminding them about the Hero that will fix things. He describes this Hero in conflicting ways: sometimes describing a mighty king and military conqueror, other times the description is more of a lowly servant and one rejected and abused. After hundreds of years of this, the prophets go silent and there’s no new words from God.
This gets us through the Old Testament, the first, larger half of the Bible. The second half, the New Testament, tells the story of the Hero and what follows.
The Hero shows up
After occupation by a colonizing force, the people of God are ready for this conquering Hero to show up. They’re expecting a military leader to throw off the shackles of foreign rule and restore the countries prosperity and independence. What they got was a baby born in a feeding trough to an unmarried teenage girl and her poor fiancé. He grows up a blue-collar contractor, different in that He loves God and those around Him without the damage of sin.
At the right time, He begins sharing the message of what the Hero is really going to be. He speaks of sacrifice, love, rebuilding, resurrection. He makes unreasonable claims: He’s one with God, He’s going to tear down the Temple and rebuild it in three days, He’s been around since Creation. Religious leaders plot to kill him for His claims of equality with God, a no-go in a monotheistic religion. They trump up charges so the occupying military execute Him in a public and gruesome way alongside murderers, rapists, and thieves, naked for all to see.
But, as He had said, He didn’t stay dead. He was raised from the dead and He had promised and was seen and touched by His followers. He ate with them and taught them. He let them feel the scars and wounds from His execution. He spoke of the founding of a group of followers that would change the world.
The first four books of the New Testament, the Gospel (which mean good news), tell this same story through different lenses from eye-witness testimonies. One is full of facts and details, each statement carefully researched (Luke). One is more of a sermon outlining the claims and teaching of Jesus (John). One is more targeted at those from Jewish heritage, connecting the dots between the Old Testament and the life of Jesus (Matthew). Another is a quick account of Jesus’ life without all the dots connected, written before everything was really understood completely (Mark).
So what?
What does a man living a good life and dying in the Middle East two-thousand years ago, even if He was raised from the dead, have to do with me today?
Jesus lived a perfect life, not marred by sin of the first man and everyone that followed after. He was God, commanding the removal of demons, controlling the seas, and performing miracles, undoing some of the brokenness in the world one blind eye and one crippled leg at a time.
He died a sacrificial death, shedding His blood like all those sacrifices that never fixed the problem of sin. He accepted the punishment for all the sin and brokenness in the world, even though none of it was His.
He didn’t stay dead though. Proving His sinless life and wholeness of His sacrifice, He took the wrath that God has for those that rebel against His rightful rule and absorbed it.
In doing this, Jesus opens a way for us to return to a right relationship with God through His sacrifice. Instead of God seeing us in our brokenness and rebellion, we are seen wrapped in the righteousness of Jesus. He took the blame and we get the benefits. All this, not because we’re great or anything, but because God loves to give good gifts to those that don’t deserve them.
What’s to come
The rest of the Bible tells the story of the birth of the Church, the group of people following Jesus and telling others about Him. What started as a scared group of fishermen expands across the known world and continues to this day. The book of Acts tells this story as a narrative. The rest of the books in the New Testament are instructions as these churches get going, some giving insights into the deeper implications of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection, others addressing specific issues in the church.