The Bible contains 66 books that all contribute toward a single story. Just as reading the parts of a story is essential for understanding the whole, knowing the whole is necessary for understanding the parts.
Vaughn Roberts, pastor of St. Ebbe’s in Oxford, England, helps readers understand the Bible’s story and theme: the promised and coming kingdom of God. Roberts shows how God’s kingdom is progressively revealed through the Bible. And he provides a helpful definition of the kingdom of God as “God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing.”
Genesis (the Bible’s first book) reveals major events: God’s creation of the universe, the fall of man, and God’s promise to Abraham of a kingdom to come. The rest of the Old Testament reveals a partial fulfillment, followed by a collapse. But the New Testament, in the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, reveals the coming of the King who proclaims his kingdom, dies, and rises again to save the world. Promising to return again, he will reign over a perfect kingdom.
Well, so what? Knowing the Bible’s overarching story helps us understand the Bible’s books, God’s good news, and our own stories. In its light, we can understand what God wants us to know about his universe, what he has done, is doing, and will do, and how we should live.
Roberts quotes Psalm 95:3-7, which reveals that the Ultimate Being is both creator and King, and that man finds purpose and peace in devotion to Him.
“For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.”
If you read the book, let me know what interested you the most and why.
