Message: The Thirty-Minute Bible

Transcription

1 Message: The Thirty-Minute Bible The Bible is not a quick read. The Bible I use most often has about 1438 Pages and the font size is about a 10, single spaced. In reality, it is a collection of 66 different books or letters, each of which has its own name. I have put these 66 books on the banner here, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation. Most of you have not read the Bible from beginning to end. Frankly, it was not so much intended to be read that way. Most of you have jumped in at different places in the Bible and began reading. This is not a bad thing. It is exactly what I would recommend quite honestly. However, you are at a bit of a disadvantage if you don t know the general flow of the Bible story. Parts of the Bible are difficult to understand anyway, and even more so if you don t understand the basic story. So, what I would like to do today it to give you a sense of the flow of the Bible s story in 30 minutes. 1,439 pages in 30 minutes. I understand that there are bets on as to whether I can do this, and some of you are really hoping to cash in. Good luck. Just before I start, here are a couple of quick clarifying words. The books of the Bible are not in complete chronological order. I will try to clarify which books chronicle which parts of the story. For clarity, I have broken the Bible s story out into 10 movements, each of which has a word that begins with a ka sound. This is one of a couple of ideas I got from Brian McLaren and his book, The Story We Find Ourselves In. Now, he didn t have 10, and he wouldn t put things just as I have, but he was very helpful to me. For each movement, I will try and highlight a key person, a key name identified with that movement. And I decided to attach a simple hand gesture to each of the 10 movements for you hands people. The first movement is Creation. The key person connected with this movement is God. Honestly, He s the only person in this movement! The Bible begins with these five words, In the beginning, God created God was uncreated. God was simply there. And God creates. Light and Sun and stars and galaxies and planets and earth. And on earth, God creates plants, animals, fish, birds, mountains and seas. God then creates man and woman, made in the image of God, and he places them in specially-prepared land. God looks at all of His creation and says: This is good. It appears that God placed Adam and Eve in what is modern-day Iraq. This is probably a good time to mention that virtually all the movements of the Bible occur in three geographical regions. Take a look at the map on the screen. (Show map photo.) Note these three areas: Iraq, Palestine, and Egypt. They are almost on a kind of line. Near the end of the Bible, you have this rest of the world geographical piece, but most of the story of the Bible is in three regions.

2 The telling of any great story always involves some kind of conflict, trouble, or crisis. I expect that is true because that is the world s core story. Adam looks at Eve and says, It s all good. And it was, until the Crisis. All of the sudden, we run into someone trying to sabotage the good. There s a con artist. He raises questions about the goodness of God, creating a spirit of mistrust that ultimately births a decision to ignore God s instruction. The created turn against the Creator. The key name, then, I ll attach to this crisis movement is Adam. Eve joins him in mistrusting and ignoring God. Suddenly, the good earth is turned on end. Good is now tainted by not good. Adam and Eve begin to mistrust and attach each other. The creation takes a turn as well. Wood rots. Metal rusts. Food spoils. Plants become diseased. Animals die. The way of death and the sword emerges. Civilization takes a huge step backwards. But God has a plan to restore the good of His creation. If you are wondering, we are still early in the book of Genesis here. These first three movements are detailed in Genesis, but then we start moving a bit more quickly. The third movement, then, is Calling. So, God picks out a guy living in a corner of Iraq in a place called Ur. The guy s name is Abrahams God: Abraham, I want you to pick up your family and move. Abraham: Are you kidding, God? Move where? God: I m working on that. Trust me and start packing. Abraham: But why? God: Abraham, I m going to turn your family into a great nation. My reason for doing this is to bless the world. Ultimately, I am going to bring salvation and hope to the whole world through your family. All people on the earth will be blessed through you. So Abraham trusts God, takes this huge step of faith and moves to Palestine. The rest of the Old Testament part of the Bible (39 books) is built around the history of the Jewish nation. The Jewish nation is inextricably tied to the core story of the Bible. If you ve thought the Bible had a certain Jewish flavor, you are exactly right. God s plan to restore the world centers around Israel. As you read through the Old Testament, you need to know that there are certain commands and promises that are given specifically to the Jewish nation in a particular time and place. Be attuned to this. There is much to learn in the O.T., but, so you need to be aware of this as you read the Bible. O.K., so now the Bible story has shifted to Palestine. Abraham s family begins to grow. Eventually, he has a couple of sons, one of whom births the Jewish nation

3 and one of whom births the Arab nation. Ultimately, Abraham is the father of both. So Abraham s family begins to grow rapidly. In a time of catastrophic famine, Abraham moves his family from Palestine to Egypt, where the family multiplies more quickly. Which brings us to the fourth movement. Captivity. For many years, Abraham s extended family has great favor from the Egyptian leadership. But those leaders die and new leaders see in the Jewish people help for their economy, and they essentially become slave labor for the Egyptians. They are allowed to have homes and earn meager incomes, but their freedom is greatly restricted, and they are increasingly taken advantage of. God ends up calling a man to lead them out of this Egyptian captivity. His name is Charlton Heston. O.K., his real name is Moses. Under his leadership, the people of Israel, perhaps a million or more strong at this point, are allowed to leave Egypt and begin the trek back to their homeland. So, now the movement is from Egypt back to Palestine. On the way, God issues the 10 Commandments. We are now five books into the Bible. When they get back, their homeland has been taken over, so they fight to get it back. This taking of the land is recorded in the Bible book of Joshua. When they resettle in the land, they begin to be ruled by Judges, whose stories are recorded in the book of Judges. These judges are people like Gideon, Sampson, and Deborah, to name a few. This brings us to movement five. Kingdom. The people aren t thrilled with the Judge plan. They want a king. The first king chosen is a guy named Saul; that story doesn t go real well. The second king ended up being the most famous king in Israel s kingdom history. His name was David, and so we ll attach his name to this movement. He was a courageous soldier, a wise leader, and a gifted poet/musician. The stories of the first kings, Saul and David, are recorded in 1 & 2 Samuel. David s son, Solomon, succeeds him as king, and Solomon s son succeeds him. That is when a kind of civil war occurs dividing the kingdom of Israel into two kingdoms, a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. The story of Solomon and the kings over the divided kingdom are primarily recorded in 1 & 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles. In this kingdom movement, it may be helpful to talk about four kinds of influencers: the Priests, Poets, Philosophers, and Prophets (again, thanks to Brian McLaren for this breakout). The priests were spiritual teachers, counselors, and caregivers. They helped people connect with God. There were philosophers who wrestled with weighty questions. The Bible book of Job wrestles with why people suffer. The writer of Ecclesiastes tackles the meaning of life. Proverbs lists a variety of wise counsel on everything from money to sex to power. Then there were the poets the artists who expressed the emotions of life and crafted words that helped people respond to God. There is one whole book of song/poetry called the Psalms,

4 but poetry and song are found all throughout the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. Finally, there were the prophets. Priests came through one particular family line, but prophets showed up at random points in time with a specific word of warning or instruction from God. Many times, they had insight into a coming event, like an act of judgment from God or an act of deliverance from God. One particular theme of the prophets was the coming of a deliverer for the Jewish people, someone who would restore things, the chosen one. The messages of the prophets are recorded in this long string of Bible books from Isaiah to Malachi. The words of the priests and the prophets and the philosophers and the poets were critical in this kingdom movement of the Bible. Now, the Bible story returns to a familiar movement: Captivity. As I had mentioned, a kind of Civil War had divided Israel into two kingdoms. When you track the kings who led each kingdom, most of the stories are not encouraging. Most kings did not lead people to follow God. As a result, there were long stretches in Israel s kingdom history when they did not live out the heart of God, much less seek to bless others. So, God would send messages through the prophets with warnings that the people should turn to God or judgment would be coming. One such prophet was Jeremiah, whom I have designated a key figure in the Captivity movement. Unfortunately, these prophetic words were largely ignored. In 722 B.C., the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered, and in 586 B.C., near the end of Jeremiah s life, the southern kingdom was conquered. Many of the Jews were exiled from Palestine back to you guessed it the region of Iraq. A few decades later, a new ruler allowed the Jews to begin returning to their homeland to rebuild Jerusalem, the temple, and their homes. This part of the story is recorded in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The last prophetic word of Malachi is written, and then comes a 400 year gap in the Bible message. Just know that in this gap, Israel was repeatedly overrun by conquerors, the last being the Roman Empire. Enter movement seven. Christ. The word Christ meant anointed or chosen one. After repeated cycles of captivity, Israel waited for the coming of the chosen one, who would make everything right. And they waited and waited and waited until one night when a young engaged woman gets a most unique word from God through an angel: You are going to give birth to a child. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High and God will give him the throne of his father David and his kingdom will never end. And so Mary gives birth to Jesus, the chosen one. However, Jesus blew away almost all the conceptions people had about the Christ. They saw him as a deliverer of the captive Jews; He came as a deliverer of the deep captivity of the

5 entire world. They expected a charismatic human leader; Instead, God Himself became a man. They saw him as the king of the Jews; He presented Himself as the king of all people. They expected a human kingdom built on force; Jesus led a kingdom of the heart built on the choice to sacrifice and love. They imagined a king who would defeat evil by force; He came to defeat evil by giving up his life. Going all the way back to the first pages of Genesis, no one had any clue just how devastating and far-reaching the crisis the decision to walk away from God was. No one knew how deeply the world was broken nor what it would take to restore it. God Himself would come to earth as the one perfect human who would take on himself the world s deep brokenness. And so the Christ came, and He died, and He came back to life. And he launched a new kingdom, a new community of people who would follow God out of love and take His love to the rest of the world. And then Jesus returns to the heavens, and lets this new community do its thing. The story of the Christ is recorded in four books of the Bible: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John So, the next movement is the Church. I really wish I had used the word community here. For one, it has the ka sound. More importantly, there is so much baggage and misunderstanding attached to the word, church. People so often think of a building or a service than a community. The church is simply the community of people who have decided to trust, love, and follow the ways of Jesus, the Christ. The next book of the Bible, Acts, describes the remarkably explosive growth of this community. I ve identified Peter as a key character in this movement. Jesus had told Peter he would have an instrumental role in launching the church and he did. The church begins to explode in the region of Jerusalem, but Jesus had, just before he returned to the heavens, instructed his followers to take the message of this new community, of reconciliation with God, to the entire world. This brings us to the ninth movement of the Bible. Calling. Up to this point, the story of the Bible is limited to three primary geographic regions. What are they? Iraq, Palestine, and Egypt. Enter the fourth. In light of Jesus call to take this message to the entire world, his followers begin to do just that. The key person heading this calling movement is a guy named Paul. At one point, Paul, was so opposed to this new community that he actually had some of them killed. But God miraculously changes his thinking and calls him to lead the charge in taking this message to the non-jewish world. So, he heads off to Rome and Galatia and Corinth and Ephesus and Colosse, and Philippi. In city after city, he launches these communities of faith, these churches, and then he moves on to the next city. In many cases, he writes words of instruction back to the churches. These letters of instruction are recorded in books of the Bible: Galatians, Corinthians, Colossians, Romans. Other words of instruction are written to the church by James and Peter and John.

6 The final book of the Bible, Revelation, gives some very broad shape to the final movement of the Bible s story, a movement I ve called Coming. I think McLaren uses the term consummation. The final movement is Jesus, the Christ, coming back to the earth to complete the restoration. Jesus is the key character here. He comes to pronounce final judgment against evil, and He comes to launch a season of peace like the world has not seen since the first pages of the Bible. Let me give you a quick caution about the book of Revelation. It is what is known as apocalyptic literature. It is full of images that speak to future events, so you will read wild stories about creatures with multiple eyes and wings and such. There is a danger to trying to playing detective and trying to figure out all of the images and guess about future events. The clear message is that Jesus is going to initiate a new heaven and earth, a time of peace unlike anything our world has seen before. And that s the Bible in 30 minutes! Now, then, let me close with a final word of danger about the thirty-minute Bible. The purpose of the thirty-minute Bible is to give you a grid through which to read and understand the story of the Bible. Here is the danger of the thirty-minute Bible, however. It could give the impression that the Bible is very simple, with no difficulties. It may suggest that you can figure out the Bible in a few minutes. Not so fast. This is not going to iron out all of the difficulties of the Bible. My hope is that it spurs an even greater interest in reading the story, because the truth is, the Bible s story is our story.