Tuesday, January 6th

What is the Bible? It’s God’s story. It’s not another story of humankind’s search for God; it is God’s story and his account of His search for us. The Bible is the word of God given to humans in history. Which means the Bible (God’s story) is our story, that we see throughout history to today and beyond.

This story is told in four chapters or four acts, like acts in a play. Creation, fall, redemption and consummation.

Creation- God is not hidden, story begins with “in the beginning God…. God created. He created and his crowning jewel is humanity, where we are created in his own likeness, to commune with him, to delight in him, to be known by him and experience his presence, love and favor.

Fall- Essentially the fall is humanity’s independence from the Creator, from God. We lost vision of who God is and what he was about, which distorted life in every possible facet, and we lost the divine presence, our relationship with God.

Redemption- Let me have Douglas Fee, in his book, How to Read the Bible, Book by Book, explain it. “(Redemption) is how God got through to us, to rescue us from ourselves with all our wrong views about God and the despair of our tragic fallenness; how to get us to see that God sis for us, not against us; how to get the rebel not just to run up the white flag of surrender but willingly to change sides and thereby once again discover joy and meaningfulness.”

He did that through the incarnation of Jesus, taking on flesh and blood, living, dying and rising again. Redeeming our vision of God, restoring our image, and enabling us to be in his presence again.

Consummation- is the fulfillment of it all on the other side. But here in lies the problem, for decades, Christians have stopped the biblical story with waiting for the consummation and not seeing that God’s story, of creation, fall, and redemption, aren’t just highlights to the end. Creation, fall, and redemption are occurrences within our story each and every day. We live in the micro story of God’s story and that’s the faith journey. As Christians, we SHOULD NOT simply be waiting to die, for the consummation of God’s story. We are on a loop of creation, fall, redemption in every area of our life and that’s why the Bible is critical. It gives us direction and intention to live that out.

- Where we stop to ask, “God, what are you creating in me? Or recreating in me?”
- In my flesh, in my humanness, I will fall, I live independent of God, lose vision of who he is and what he is doing, which distorts every facet of my life, and then struggle to live in divine presence with him.
- Which is why we need daily redemption. “God how do I need to surrender to your redemption?” How do you need to redeem my view of you, of life, of relationships? How do you need to redeem my presence with you?

That’s the journey of God’s story, our story, throughout the Bible; creation, fall, redemption. Creation, fall, redemption. Creation, fall, redemption.

Which means this passage is more and more powerful. 2 Timothy 3:16-17- 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

The Bible, God’s story is his breath in the form of Scripture. I love that picture because we see the word of God as the breath of God, but it is a combination of the Spirit’s work and the work of humanity in documenting it. Breathed out by God, written down by humanity. For what purpose, as we go through the creation, fall and redemption?

Go back and read the passage, sit with the power of those underlined words and what it means, for Scripture to do that work in your life.