{"id":2585,"date":"2018-01-03T10:43:54","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T16:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nltblog.com\/?p=2585"},"modified":"2021-12-08T09:22:49","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T09:22:49","slug":"from-no-bible-to-know-bible-part-5-the-story-of-god-and-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/nlt\/2018\/01\/03\/from-no-bible-to-know-bible-part-5-the-story-of-god-and-us\/","title":{"rendered":"From \u201cNo Bible\u201d to \u201cKnow Bible\u201d Part 5: The Story of God and Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Find out what our partners at the <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/instituteforbiblereading.org\/\"><em>Institute for Bible Reading <\/em><\/a><em>are talking about and visit <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/immersebible.com\/\"><em>ImmerseBible.com <\/em><\/a><em>to learn more about the Immerse Bible Reading Experience. Read Part\u00a05 of the 6 part series by Bible Scholar Glenn Paauw.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/immersebible.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2524\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nltblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/978-1-4964-2413-6-185x300.jpg\" alt=\"978-1-4964-2413-6\" width=\"185\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\"><em>Editors Note: From \u201cNo Bible\u201d to \u201cKnow Bible\u201d is a 6-part series on the path toward great Bible engagement.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">What does it mean to receive the Bible on its own terms? Dynamic, living Bible engagement happens when a community:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin: 0px 0px 20px 7px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">\n<li>has good access to a well-translated text presented in its natural literary forms,<\/li>\n<li>regularly feasts together on whole literary units understood in context,<\/li>\n<li>understands the overall story of the Bible as centered in Jesus, and<\/li>\n<li>accepts the invitation to take up its own role in God\u2019s ongoing drama of restoration through<br \/>\nthe power of the Spirit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">When the Scriptures are received on their own terms like this they can once again become God\u2019s speech act\u2014instructing, revealing, convicting, judging, comforting, healing, and saving with all their intended power<\/p>\n<hr style=\"border-width: 1px 0px 0px;border-style: solid;border-color: #dddddd;margin: 10px 0px 30px;height: 0px;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;clear: both;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;background-color: #ffffff\" \/>\n<h2 style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: 1.1em;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lato, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 28px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 600;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">Part 5: The Heart of the Matter\u2014The Story of God and Us<\/h2>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">We\u2019ve been proposing that there are several steps to reaching the goal of great Bible engagement. Everything from the physical presentation to the reading of whole books, and from experiencing the Bible in community to taking note of the Bible\u2019s various contexts. But here\u2019s the single biggest factor: reading the Bible as the grand adventure God made it to be.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">All those books in the Bible come together to narrate the world. In concert, they take us through all those ups and downs\u2014big moves forward and devastating setbacks and losses\u2014to disclose the big shape of the story. We learn the beauty and glory of God\u2019s intention in creation, the failure and darkness of human rebellion, and then the long, slow road back to the redemption and flourishing of God\u2019s entire creation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">There are of course lots and lots of messages, big and small, throughout the Bible. We can learn particular truths about all kinds of things\u2014from the proper worship of God to getting along with our neighbors. But overall, the Bible has one exceedingly great goal: to tell us how things are with God and his world.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\"><strong>More than anything else, the Bible is a story.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">This has all kinds of implications.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">Jesus was once questioned by an expert in the law about what must be done to gain a share in the world to come. Jesus answered the question with one of his own: \u201cWhat does the Law of Moses say? How do you read it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">That indeed is the question for us too: How do you read it?<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">Jesus is teaching us something crucial about the Scriptures right here. The Bible is not some collection of words that simply jump off the page and communicate by themselves. We have to read and interpret them. And we have to read and interpret them well for them to do their proper work in us. Jesus\u2019 question implies there are options.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">Unfortunately, many of our current options for reading and interpreting fail to provide the full and compelling meaning the Bible is offering. Too often the Bible is treated in a piecemeal fashion, as if it were a handy reference book for looking up short, infallible answers to all our questions.<\/p>\n<div class=\"perfect-pullquote vcard pullquote-align-right pullquote-border-placement-right\" style=\"border-width: 0px 5px 0px 0px;border-color: #00aced !important;margin: 0.5em 0px 1em 1.5em;padding: 0.5em 1em;width: 238.37px;text-align: left;color: #363636;line-height: 1.5;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 20px !important;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;border-right-style: solid;float: right;background-color: #ffffff\">\n<blockquote><p>&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">But there\u2019s a better way: big reading leads to big meaning. Because God created our world and always intended to interact with us as significant actors within it, the revelation in the Bible moves along with God\u2019s people. If the Bible wants to enter human history as part of God\u2019s mission to transform that history, then it has no choice but to be story. Because story is where we live. We don\u2019t live in information \u2014 even good, inspiring, encouraging, or wise information. We always and invariably think of our lives as individual stories within some bigger, overall story.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">So the Bible enters the fray of all the competing narratives that are trying to tell us they are the true story of the world. These narratives are actively trying to recruit us every day. Nationalist. Consumerist. Narcissist. Pantheist. There are would-be Master Narratives everywhere. If we don\u2019t read and know the Bible\u2019s story of the world, then we will end up reading the Bible for little snippets of information and bits of spiritual wisdom that we then fit into another controlling narrative that we get from somewhere else.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">This is why the centerpiece of our recovery of the Bible is the recovery of the Bible as story. The piecemeal Bible fails to capture imaginations because it is simply too small. This is certainly part of the reason why fewer people, especially fewer younger people, are engaging with the Bible.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">The upward journey from a minimalist Bible to being immersed in God\u2019s full revelation takes us from bits to full books then all the way to God\u2019s beautiful saga of world transformation. It is precisely as this surprising and redemptive story that the Bible comes into its own to confront, judge, forgive, save, and restore.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">This is the Bible God intends for us. A Bible we know deeply. A Bible filled with people and covenants, with dramatic scenes, rising and falling action, and major movements that all fit into a plot that is taking us somewhere. To know the Bible is to know all these smaller stories that fit into the Story.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">This, then, is our itinerary: as we continually feast on whole books, the Story will emerge with greater and greater clarity. And with clarity comes both understanding and invitation. We will begin to understand what God is doing, and then the Bible\u2019s endgame for us will emerge. We will be invited to join him.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0.85em 0px;padding: 0px;border: 0px #ebebeb;text-align: justify;color: #2c353d;line-height: inherit;text-indent: 0px;letter-spacing: normal;font-family: Lora, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size: 17.25px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 400;vertical-align: baseline;background-color: #ffffff\">Learn more about the <a href=\"https:\/\/instituteforbiblereading.org\/\">Institute for Bible Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Find out what our partners at the Institute for Bible Reading are talking about and visit ImmerseBible.com to learn more about the Immerse Bible Reading Experience. Read Part\u00a05 of the 6 part series by Bible Scholar Glenn Paauw. Editors Note: From \u201cNo Bible\u201d to \u201cKnow Bible\u201d is a 6-part series on the path toward great [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,15,33,44,45],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5908,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2585\/revisions\/5908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}