The big story

If you have ever joined a long-running conversation halfway through, you will know the feeling. Everyone else seems to understand the references while you are trying to work out who is who. Many people feel this way when they read a single passage of the Bible. The passage makes some sense on its own, but it clearly belongs to something larger. This lesson steps back to look at that larger story, so that individual passages have a place to sit.

Christians have described the shape of the Bible in different ways. No summary can hold all of it. Still, many readers across traditions recognise a broad movement through five turning points: creation, covenant, exile, Christ and new creation. Think of these as the main rooms of a house. Every book of the Bible opens onto at least one of them.

Creation, covenant and exile

The Bible opens with a simple, sweeping sentence: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, KJV). The early chapters of Genesis present a world made good, with human beings given dignity and responsibility within it. They also describe how that goodness is damaged. Trust is broken. People hide from God and from one another. The effects spread outward: rivalry between brothers, violence, confusion.

The story does not stay there. In Genesis 12 God calls Abraham and makes a promise to him that reaches far beyond one family: “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:3, KJV). This is the language of covenant, a committed relationship in which God binds himself to a people. Through Abraham’s descendants, through the rescue from slavery in Egypt told in Exodus and through the law given at Sinai, God forms Israel as a people meant to live differently and to show something of his character to the nations.

Much of the Old Testament follows what happens next. There are moments of faithfulness and long seasons of drift. There are judges, kings and prophets. The prophets in particular keep calling the people back to the covenant, often in the plainest terms, reminding them to care for the poor, the widow, the orphan and the stranger.

A major turning point comes when Jerusalem falls and many of its people are carried away to Babylon. We touched on this in the last lesson with Jeremiah’s letter. Exile is not only a historical event in the Bible. It becomes a way of describing what it feels like to be far from where you belong, with promises not yet fulfilled. Psalms of lament, the book of Lamentations and much of the prophets carry this ache.

Even after some of the exiles return and rebuild, the Old Testament ends with a sense of waiting. The prophets speak of a time when God will renew his people, write his ways on their hearts and set things right. The story is open-ended. It is leaning forward.

Christ and new creation

The New Testament presents Jesus of Nazareth as the one in whom these promises come to their fulfilment. John’s Gospel puts it memorably: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14, KJV). The Gospels tell of his teaching and healing, his welcome of outsiders, his death on a Roman cross and his resurrection. Christians across traditions confess these events as the centre of the whole story.

There is a striking scene in Luke’s Gospel, after the resurrection, when Jesus walks with two discouraged disciples on the road to Emmaus. Luke writes: “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27, KJV). That verse has shaped how Christians read the Old Testament ever since. The earlier books are not set aside. They are read as part of one story that finds its focus in Christ.

The book of Acts and the letters then follow the early communities who tried to live out this story in cities across the Roman world, often with great difficulty. And the Bible closes, in Revelation, with a vision of renewal rather than escape. A new heaven and a new earth, God dwelling with his people, tears wiped away. Near the end comes a short sentence that gathers up the whole hope of the book: “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5, KJV).

Finding your place in the story

Knowing the larger story changes how individual passages read. A law in Leviticus becomes part of God shaping a people. A lament in the Psalms becomes a cry from within a story that has not yet ended. A short letter to a struggling church becomes a word to people living between Christ’s resurrection and the renewal of all things.

It can also change how we see ourselves. Many readers find that the Bible’s story makes room for their own: for beginnings and failures, for seasons of exile and waiting, for hope that is real but not yet complete. You do not need to have every detail in place. It is enough, for now, to keep the five turning points in mind and to ask, whenever you read, which part of the story this passage belongs to.

Reflect

1. Which of the five turning points (creation, covenant, exile, Christ, new creation) do you know least about? How might you begin to explore it?
2. Read Luke 24:13-35. What do you notice about how the two disciples respond once the story is explained to them?
3. Is there a part of the Bible’s story that seems to speak to your own present season? What draws you to it?