Understanding The Bible as a Unified Story - Tim Mackie

you're like that's supposed to be there they're supposed to be there for camera it's not supposed to be here okay all right that's supposed to do good yeah I I have an awkward relationship to being in front of people because I don't actually like the attention but I really like helping people understand the Bible because I think it changes people it changes me and so I accept have accepted my fate one of those things that comes along with wearing microphones on your body is you start to have nightmares about things that could go wrong like what if one day I forgot to turn it off and then immediately went to the bathroom afterwards and about 30 minutes ago that nightmare became reality to the dismay of 100-200 people in this room so anyhow I'm alive and I'm actually not even embarrassed is that weird I don't know because you pee too you have to pee too okay all right here's here's what we're gonna do so John Collins described so well this experience of growing up and what I call churchianity being raised with a domesticated Bible and it's the Bible that he you know it was the funniest part of where he gave his like walk through the Bible you know which is not of course it's what everybody is already thinking but no one has brave enough to say it but that's actually how they relate to the Bible is what John put up there and so so he used this phrase that he said the other day and then he said it when he was sharing that story that he was effectively on his way to becoming a post Bible Christian and by post Bible it doesn't mean that you don't want to follow Jesus and doesn't mean you you're not down for the Jesus thing we want to follow God but what it does mean is that you just kind of give up on the Bible thing and you kind of you find some way to relate to it maybe it's the way you relate to your weird uncle at Thanksgiving and you're just we're gonna be in the same room together but I'll find a way to make this thing not drive me crazy and so that my experience was the bewildering Bible of the Bible that just shocked me because I didn't understand how it related to the Jesus that I'd fallen in love with and wanted to follow and so a big part of what we're doing with the Bible project resources and just the passion right the project and what we're doing is is to help people see how the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus that's the product of human and divine partnership and that the humans that God used and worked through so that what they wrote is what he wants people to hear these these individuals most of whom we don't even know their names were absolute geniuses absolute literary geniuses and so the resource of resources we're creating are trying to invite people into that new paradigm but you can only do so much with short videos and the purpose actually of them isn't its ever say everything that could be said there to invite people into a new angle of seeing so that a whole new world opens up and that you want to go explore things for yourself so the paradigm I call it the new old paradigm for engaging the Bible it's new old because it sounds new to most Western Christians this this way of seeing the Bible but in reality it's ancient it's extremely ancient it's it's ancient Jewish ancient because it goes back to the very composition and design of the biblical books themselves and so really what I would like to do is just kind of take another deep dive into some of the actual design features of the unified story and to show you how this thing works and and just lay out some contours it's mostly gonna be me drawing and getting too excited because that's just what happens let me put up some words of Jesus they were read earlier today but their words that really showed that Jesus viewed his Bible as a unified story leading to him there from the Gospel of Luke they're from a resurrection story where the Risen Jesus appears to his disciples and their categories are all on pieces on the floor and being rebuilt as he's talking to them this is also surprising and Jesus this whole point here is you guys shouldn't be so surprised at everything that just happened over the Passover weekend jesus said to his disciples you guys I've actually been trying to tell you about all this for a while I've been speaking to you about all this all the things that are written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms had to come to their fulfillment then he opened their mind to understand the Scriptures lissa pause right there the untold story underneath that sentence how long was it like a power lecture was it a short video like what did he show them we don't know but it was an incredible Bible study to have been a part of he do you see this here Jesus has a way of engaging the scriptures and he says if you see the scriptures the way I've been trying to unpack them for you you would understand the getting executed by the Romans and me coming back to life again like you would have categories for all of this and where would you have gotten those category is to understand what happened with the story of Jesus and he says you would find it in the Torah the prophets and the Psalms the open open their mind the scriptures and he said to them here it is and if you wanted to ever get a summary of what Jesus thinks the story of the Bible and he's referring here specifically to the first three quarters of your Bible which you call the Old Testament here's Jesus a summary of what the Old Testament is about in a few sentences he says this is what it's written that the Messiah would suffer the deed rise again from the dead on the third day and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning right here in the city of Jerusalem oh it's so simple oh okay that's what it's about well that's great isn't that odd that that's not what John Collins said after growing up are you with me like that's weird that should be weird to us that people who grow up in merce it write in Christian tradition when they talk about the Bible it's it's silly because of its ridiculousness right these categories how we we domesticate the Bible and find ways to cope with it and they have nothing to do with what Jesus is summary of the first are you with me it's fundamental disconnect happening here so that's interesting and just stop and ponder this fact if you wanted to ask Jesus what the Old Testament Scriptures are about he would say it's about that and he actually says like I was trying to tell you this all along the way in the story right before this it was two of his disciples that he was walking along a road with and actually didn't know it was him and he asked them what they were so sad about they were visibly sad and they said well you know Jesus we thought he was going to redeem Israel but he got executed by the Romans so it's definitely no Redemption happening there and then he what he called he's actually not very nice to because you fools don't you believe all that the prophets had spoken that the Messiah Jesus says this he's just says it in one sentence that the Messiah would suffer and then be raised into glory and they walk them through right here the law the prophets and the Psalms okay so Jesus views the first recorders of the Bible as a unified story that leads to him how did he get there because here's my hunch if you've tried a year through reading through the Bible my hunch is you didn't get that all right I've just a strong hunch right so what's up with that apparently we have a set of Bible reading glasses that are not the same as Jesus why would I commit myself to reading an ancient huge complicated text written from another culture on the other side of the planet and you can't just say well because it's the Bible that's not normal behavior you know I'm saying like ask your co-workers who don't follow Jesus like do they sit around reading ancient texts you know every day and the quiet like nobody does this you guys except the super nerds right so so why do you why do you foster this habit in this practice it's not normal and it will never become easy for you until something happens conversion of our imaginations just to see these scriptures in this story is delivering life to me and delivering a word to me that I will never hear anyone else say to me and this is where I find it so how does Jesus get that well let's just let's observe something how does Jesus refer to his Bible to his scriptures how does he refer to them do you see it right there so it calls it the law of Moses if you know a bit of Hebrew or we really hammer this one in and Bible project resources what's the Hebrew word for law Torah so that's referring to the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures so the Torah of Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms then just stop and ponder that that's Jesus's way of referring to his scriptures right the scriptures of Israel now if you turn to the table of contents in your Bible you well and did you know that there is one they're really handy they're really handy for finding the small books so if you turn to the table of contents you'll notice something that the table of contents is not arranged in any way by this kind of logic here so that's interesting what could it be that he's just naming his like top 10 list you know like the first five in the prophets and psalms ya chronicles yeah lamentations and you know Ruth is kind of cool but so is he just naming his top what that what he's not well here's what he's doing he's using perfectly normal Jewish turns a phrase to refer to the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures and that's because the the oldest original shape of those Hebrew Scriptures Jesus never encountered like a by a Bible all in one volume nobody did before the first couple centuries after Jesus this was a collection of Scrolls where all these works run they were Scrolls in the temple & local synagogues would have different collections of Scrolls but so there's a whole bunch of Scrolls with all these different books but but Jesus and Jews in Jesus's time referred to them as a unified collection of Scrolls that's interesting and he refers to it as a three in a three-part shape and that's because Jews across all different groups in this period conceived of their collection of scriptures is having a three-part shape and that three-part shape has survived in Jewish tradition it's still the the structuring of the Jewish Bible today and it's called to knock you guys heard about Tanakh did okay so Tanakh t t a n k it's an acronym for the each of the names of those three sections right there it's Torah is the T the N is the Hebrew word for prophets the never or the profits and then the K is the Hebrew word for writings or the KATU theme I'm just gonna call it writings writings so here's something that's interesting Jesus conceives of a collection of Scrolls that his people treasure as the divine human word given to them in the Covenant and he conceives of it as having this three-part shape that three-part shape is not incidental it's actually a design feature of the Hebrew Scriptures and it's actually a really important feature that forces you to read the story a particular way and when you read the story this way certain things will leap out to you the leap out in a different way when you read it in a different order so um let's just let's just quick walk through this story actually I wasn't supposed to do that I was supposed to do this yeah okay what's just I'm just gonna go over the story real quick here just a couple minutes go over the story with me okay deal alright so we got the Torah the first five books of your Bible Genesis Exodus Leviticus numbers Deuteronomy so how does the story who have green perfect alright how does this story start well it starts with chapters 1 through 11 the first large narrative movement begins with God creating a incredible piece of real estate and he Commission's these these figures read he calls human is the name of the first one and then life is the name of the female one human and life or Adam and cava and what God says about these unique creatures is that they are His image they are the reflection and the the bearers of God's purpose and will and presence into the world and he he makes this incredible world and he asks them to rule it in partnership with kings and queens of creation good story so far it's great story so far the fundamental tension in the narrative is about good and evil God provides what is good good good good good good actually seven times over on page one and then what he asked the humans to do is are they going to rule the world in such a way that they rely on God to be the provider and knower of good or are they going to seize an opportunity to know good and evil on their own terms this is about moral discernment and about who's going to define what's good as we go about making the world and so um you know how the story goes humans are stupid and we make suisse we willfully embrace our own destruction by the stupid choices sometimes knowingly and sometimes totally unwittingly and that's part of what makes it such a complex mess that we're in and so what the what the narrative does from here is it just focuses once the humans rebel and declare independence they don't just want to be images of God they want to be God who defines good and evil for themselves and so the story just you know maybe you've seen me make this drawing it just spins out of control and you get these portraits of all of a sudden once human has rebelled every human you've just given portrait after portrait of humans screwing it up and each narrative ups that up the stakes and ups the scope of the relational destruction and the physical destruction and the destruction of life that goes in its wake and all culminates in this huge story of humanity come together to elevate itself up to the place of God in the building of the city of Babylon yeah Babylon Babel is English translation it's the word Babylon this is about the building of the city of Babylon so what's gots purpose God's purpose is to select a family he selects a family out of the scattered people of Babylon it's a guy named Abraham boy he's named Abram at first which means exalted father but then his name gets changed to father of ammo dude Abraham that's father of a multitude you get it it's clever it's a good one okay what he says about Abraham and his family he's gonna have a big family and remember what God did when he set up the humans to rule over the world is he said he he blessed them to be fruitful and multiply and go be kings and queens of creation let's take this place somewhere they take it downhill and so the calling of this guy who God says I'm going to bless you and you're going to become a blessing it's as if this family this one human family becomes the carrier of the future hope of blessing being restored to all of humanity what God does in response is fundamental response to a world of humans and rebellion is to bless them to bless his enemies and so he calls Abram to follow him and to leave his land to go to a new land and so on now Abraham good guy bad guy he's a guy so so good guys in the Bible take advantage of Egyptian slaves and having sex with them savage Ameen and good guys in the Bible when things get hard and I'm not sure if God's gonna provide for me they run out of the place God promised to them to go to Egypt so they can provide and then they lie about their wives to save their own lives that's so that's the good guy in the Bible do you see what I'm getting at here what is Abraham - in what categories of species does he fall in the narrative he's human what do you know about humans from this story stupid why are we looking to the Bible for moral examples no not just stop and ask yourself the question look at the first story of humans in the Bible why would i look to humans in this book to be examples for how i ought to behave are you with me what does it makes no sense whatsoever but what it doesn't mean is that these characters have nothing to do it then I'm not supposed to see myself in them they're not models for behavior that they're mirrors they're mirrors to see ourselves truly in these characters all of the humans in the Bible fail except one and there's there must be some point to that it's a very profound point every single one of these characters is going to have moments of success and getting it right and mostly moments of failure and that ought to be telling us something about ourselves they're telling the truth about us and so Abram does all this stupid stuff but there are actually two moments in his story where he gets it right in the first one do you know the first one it's where God leads him outside at night to look up at the stars and in in Abraham's like you know a while ago you said my wife and I would have some kids I'm like 90 it's not really working out God says yeah look up in the Stars and count them if you can of course you can't I figured even see them he's 19 and where is this it's one sentence one sentence we're told it's one of the few things that Abram ever does right what does he do in response to God's promise he trusts he has faith so it's one of the it's one of the first positive things a human does in the narrative and what is the thing that he does nothing that's the point right it's it's actually when humans stop trying to do their own vision of what's good and just trust in radical faith against all of the odds that there's some purpose here there's some plan there's there's some beautiful mind at work here even though I can't see very much evidence of it there's a being that wants to bless this world even though it's full of his enemies he wants to bless it and it's going to happen somehow through me and my family and Abraham just says alright I'm on board and God declares that Abram is in right relationship with me it's the first person of that first person that that's set up in the story okay so the story goes on and he makes a lot of more dumb decisions and so do his kids holy cow so we have we have Abraham Isaac Jacob there's three three generations here and then they have how many kids twelve just tuck that away so the family grows big and they go down into Egypt this whole bunch of stuff we have to skip protectively crucial for the plot but we can't so they end up enslaved to a nation that just like Babylon but even worse what's that big bag nation Egypt and so they come in slave so God raises up a deliverer what's this guy's name his name's Moses yeah Moses and so Moses good guy bad guy he's human he's human one of the first things we learn about him is that he murders a man in hot anger to defend to defend the slave does the story tell you what you're supposed to think about that no just moves on and but just stop and ponder that all of a sudden and this is how most of the story the Bible works they just put the decisions of these characters in front of you and you watch the consequences of their decisions what the last thing these authors do is sermonize and give moral commentary they do sometimes it was very rare most often they want you to watch these humans define good and evil for themselves act on it and watch what happens they don't need to tell you about how these how screwed up these people are they told you that on page three and then right and then there you go okay but he gets it right a lot he gets it right a lot and his most important moments are actually where he has faith - it says it twice in the narrative about Moses and so the people are rescued out of Egypt and then God takes them to the foot of this mountain and he shows up in cloud and fire and thunder and lightning and so on and all the people are there and he says I want to marry you guys God says I want to marry you and here's what I'd like you to do they're gonna be some terms of our marriage I want you to honor me I rescued you out of slavery in Egypt I want you to honor me and if you live by the terms of our marriage agreement you're going to become new and different kinds of humans kinds of humans that trust my definitions of good and evil and you will look like a different kind of society to all of the nations are you guys with me so that's accounts for 613 laws in the Torah but that's essentially the main point okay from here you get to the conclusion of the Torah and which is then the book of Deuteronomy sin chapters 30 to 34 and here Moses gains the reputation as the worst coach in human history because this is going to tell them they're gonna bow to cross the river to go into the Promised Land build the kingdom and live by the terms of this marriage agreement and Moe this is like the locker room moment before the game we're about to go out onto the field and Moses says so here's the thing here's the thing that I know about you you're human you're going to fail you're gonna go out onto the field and you were gonna crash and burn it's four chapters four chapters I know but he says I know that one day God's not going to bail on this promise he's going to do something to your hearts he's going to circumcise your hearts it's the metaphor that he uses quite vivid he's going to cut away the stubbornness and the evil in the self obsession that humans have that keep the make us so stupid and so short-sighted so that you can truly love God and love your neighbor that's his hope at the end and then he dies and then here's how the story goes here's how the the story the prophets works the section of the prophets with an Ed Nevin team it goes into two parts the narrative just continues on a pace doesn't even stop the first half consists of four books in roughly the order that you have them in your English Bible it's Joshua judges Samuel and kings now in Christian tradition and even your if you know anything about those books of the Bible what what word would you use to categorize those books history why it's about things that took place in the past what's fascinating is the the way Jesus conceives of these texts when he goat moose from the law of Moses what did he call this section he called this prophetic literature so in other words he viewed this as a telling of Israel's story with an eye towards the future this was an interpretation of Israel's story this family's story in the land from God's point of view and what is that story well it's actually very very easy to tell do the people agree to the terms of the marriage covenant and is this really a surprise to you what do you know about these people they're human are you with me think how the logic of the story works the story told you on pages 1 through 3 what humans do and it's just there's nobody's broken the record it's just all ok so Joshua judges Samuels King it's about generation after generation of Israel and it's here's what it is it's a longer more dramatic retelling of this story right here and it's actually dude we could do a whole whole class on this this all of a sudden you back up and you start noticing echoes of keywords and themes and scenes much like the way in the Star Wars universe there are scenes that get repeated and that echo other scenes and earlier scenes like how many lightsaber discovery scenes are there in the Star Wars University with me how many times does like the you know the dark Sith Lord walk out of a smoking door you know hey it's like and that it's the it's the brilliance of people who are able to weave epic narratives together but make them cohere and unified by these repeated themes and motifs there's a guy here I was just thinking about this the other day there's a guy here I'm the first murderer in the Bible his name's Cain and then he goes and builds a city and then we're told only about one inhabitant of that city and he's even more arrogant and violent than Cain what's his name he named lemak lemak the word for king in Hebrew is Melek lemak Melek and what does he say well let cain be avenged 7 God protected Cain 7 times over let him protect me seventy times 10 more times I say says our perverted King and then watch all of a sudden he declares as if he's God what the terms of and wrong will be here in this city of man and then the next narrative where any Kings appear is the narrative about Genesis 14 it's a bunch of Kings going to battle how many there's ten okay you don't see it well that's okay that's okay I'm still thinking about that one some okay um as a friend suggested that to me so all right here's what's gonna happen here and I'm sorry but he's the first he's the perverted King because his name itself is a perversion of the word King and every King and leader figure that you're gonna meet here is simply replaying stories from this story right here Genesis 1 through 11 is remarkable so you're gonna meet all kinds of leader figures like Kings right give me some Kings Saul good guy bad guy human David good guy bad guy human you get it you're you're getting it the Bible's not hard to understand you guys scowler net ask the right questions there's gonna be all kinds of stories about prophets right and some of them are true prophets but some of them are false prophets that lead the people astray think about give me some prophets Samuel Elijah yeah Ezekiel yeah well actually that comes in this part um the good guys bad guys all right there's gonna be all of these stories about priests this is the lily Fahd wearing that we're in the turban they were turbans on their heads so these are all about priests priests and and dude let's just go through it so I can name me some priests you i Zod oak right I've been to dab and and what are they they're human okay so you just let me ask you why is somebody telling me the story are you with me is this a story just being told because well here's some interesting things that happened in the past and why does the dark Sith Lord keep walking out of the smoky door like why yeah why am i why are these literary it's a gideon a samson ass all right all these guys put in front of us and they sometimes have moments of success what are their moments of success their moments of success are precisely the moments where like abraham against all odds they walk into the situation there is no reason they should trust god we're gonna we're gonna conquer an invading army with with blowing trumpets and smashing jars on the ground that's a great way to get rid of yes yeah well you know how i'm gonna kill like the most formidable warrior in the ancient world is with some river rocks right are you with me it's rich story after story the characters who get it right are the characters who come to the end of themselves and all they can do is surrender and trust that god will bring life out of this horrific situation but inevitably even the ones and a lot of people don't even don't even get that far but the ones who do they leave behind a narrative of both success and failure and it's always related to some act of radical faith but then once david fails and once Gideon fails that because remember the thing about afterwards with Gideon after his radical moment of faith some Israelites don't help him win the battle and so he says I'm going to thrash your skin with thorns and you rakes the skin off of them you remember that part of the story okay that's fail human so what's happening here and oh of course where do i where do they end up in exile and in slavery again Babylon so Israel story becomes a more detailed retelling of a story you already knew about humans are you with me what's happening here it's as if every single one of these stories is being offered as another portrait of the human condition but then every once in a while we get these bright spots of a human who comes to the end of themselves and they get it right and and what are these figures will other kings and their prophets and the priests and then you go back and you reread the story of the Torah and you'll notice something especially about Moses the two characters who get the most air time in the Torah is the story of Abram and the story of Moses in terms of just sure page numbers and you'll notice something about Moses in particular there's a one place where he's called Israel's King Deuteronomy 33 there's places all over where he acts like Israel's priests especially before they commissioned the high priests and of course Moses is the quintessential prophet so what all of these stories do is they create they create a need what's the basic problem in our world humans but but what's the whole premise of the story that God wants to rule this world and take it somewhere in partnership with humans and he's committed to doing that he's actually promised that he was going to do that that's what the story's about and so all of a sudden these stories about these humans at their best when Moses is at his best the prophet priest king or the David Wright or the Eli or the Samuel or the Jeremiah or the Isaiah these their literary portraits stay here in the Tanakh creating just a huge huge you know if this plans ever gonna work you know what kind of human we need around here we need a human who does this but all of the time and we need a human who's going to lead and bring leadership and help us know where to go but he needs to be one who was like David was on that one occasion and he's gonna need to be a prophet who can bring the Word of God to critique us to help guide us who we can turn the right direction but he needs to be not like most of the prophets that we ever had you to get it all these narratives create big like what I just call big help wanted signs just think about the logic of the story you guys the story is about God wants to partner with humans humans are the problem but what if what if there was a who could get it right he would what would he look like well he would look like Moses and he would look like David and he would look like Jeremiah he would look like Eli or Samuel at his best right and then these stories of the past all of a sudden become portraits that generate hope for the future of a human who could come one day and fulfill the role that we all seemed unable to fulfill then you turn to hey guys doing good is this a good story unbelievable okay so then you turn to the next section of the prophets which is the classical prophets as we know them - a couple things that is the three Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and then the book of the twelve the three and the twelve the three in the twelve the hope of the heat the hope of the human story depends on the blessing that God is going to bring to all humanity through the family of Abraham you just watch the family of Abraham act like what you already knew humans were like is there any hope and then a new three in the twelve come into the storyline and these figures tell you this there are all these prophetic figures are hyperlinked back into the narrative that you just read this tragic portrait here and all that the prophets tell you stories and write poems about this they all live in and talk about Jerusalem as they know it the OJ the old Jerusalem and they talk about their wicked kings and their hypocritical prophets and their terrible priests bad news bad news is coming guru salaam is under gonna go going to undergo the day of the Lord which is going to be a refining fire where God is going to melt down his the family that he married not to destroy them but to remove those who don't want to be a part of the new thing that he's going to do and out the other side is going to emerge a new Jerusalem engine and who's gonna rule over this New Jerusalem now we're getting into the Christmas parts yeah who is well what's what's this figure called in the profits he's called branch he's called stick he's called Yahweh is our righteousness he's called the Promised One he's called the man he's called he's only ever called by a personal name one time give me two times once in Jeremiah wasn't he he's called David David no just stop chronologically this makes no sense David died centuries ago but we're fostering hope in the figure in the future called David do you get do you see how they're thinking for these authors these stories aren't about the past they're stories about the past to generate hope for the future and when they read the stories of David what they read is you know what we need we need somebody around here we don't know what's his name's gonna be but he's gonna be like David was at its best okay so then the conclusion and you go back and you go like oh you know what I remember something from the last sentences of the Torah and they definitely weren't written by Moses cuz they said yeah Moses died and nobody knows where he's buried to this day and then the lessons of the Torah say you know what we've never had another prophet like Moses around here the last sentence of the Torah you know we've never had never since his days have we ever had a prophet like him do you get it do you get you know what would what would really get things going around here prophet like Moses David these past narratives are pointers to future hope okay I really got to pick up speed here um so the last section is on the writings um remember in the three sections Jesus referred to what he called the third section with all the prophets and the Psalms in the original design shape of the scriptures Psalms is the opener of this collection and the Book of Psalms opens with its own little introduction Psalms 1 and 2 aslam 1 is that is caught as like a meta Psalm it's a poem that tells you what to do with this whole thing and what does it tell you to do with the whole thing to become such a nerd and to to read it quietly out loud to yourself day and night and ponder it and if you ponder this story and allow it to work if you look in the mirrors of these humans and see yourself day after day after day it will start to mess with you it will start to change how you see yourself if you stare at the portrait of God who keeps handing people over to their stupid decisions but never giving up on his promise to bless them that will start to do stuff to you don't mess with you and what it will do will foster hope in the future human who could come and get it right and lo behold what saw him to about Psalm 2 is a poem about a king from the line of David who's going to come and set up God's kingdom over the nation's and bring an end to evil once and for all are you with me and what is the whole rest of the Book of Psalms about it's a poetic narrative telling you stories about David and about how David is going has been through horrific suffering and pain but he humbles himself before God and cries out for God to deliver him it's it's the David who trusted God and it's the Abraham who trusted God and the Moses who trusted God all brought together into one figure the David the David the human that we need around here who will trust God even against all radical odds and then the whole rest of dude we don't have any time but dude all of the books in here they're so incredible each one of the books that's in here say like the Book of Ruth is in here and it's hyperlinked to earlier parts of the story it begins in the days when the judges ruled so it's hyperlinked to back here but the last word of the book is David it's pretty telling you about how a pagan Moabite woman becomes the savior of the of the line of David is the savior of this promise right here which is a huge riff off of a story back here in numbers chapter 25 you remember that one when Moabite women were responsible for the destruction of Israel so all of a sudden God's weaving in the redemptive stories of non Israelites into the very family of David okay here we go hi guys doing okay you guys what else is a story about their what's funny is there's this long debate in biblical scholarship about about how we can know what actually happened in the history of ancient Israel and it's actually because the Old Testament provides us with so little useful information it provides us with dates it provides us with some hard things but most of what these stories about are actually focusing on isn't the stuff for the historians like workshop stories about King stealing vineyards right and these stories about prophets going to mountaintops and it's like if someone was going to write a history of Israel this is a poor one this story is must be about something else because there's all these look at this this is not a history this is a retelling of the human story from a prophetic point of view to generate hope that somehow God's blessing and his promise would actually become a person and be the human being that you and I are all made to be but that we perpetually failed to be and so you finished this story and the only thing you're helping for is that God's promise and blessing will become a person are you with me like this how is it so obvious what else is the story about and so you walk into the New Testament you guys and let's just take for example the book of Matthew what's the first thing Matthew wants to tell you about Jesus well he puts a long genealogy in front of you a long one but if you start to notice something you'll notice it has these beautiful design features because it has three main parts to it the three main parts tell you that the story of Israel as far as he's concerned is divided up into three sets of 14 and he wants to divide the history of Israel into three parts he talks about Abraham can you guess the next one David and the Exile to Babylon you know what we need around here is somebody who trusts God you know we need around here is a king who will trust God like Abraham and actually lead our people through the valley of the shadow of death and Matthew comes onto the scene with the genealogy of three sets of 14 generations oh and this is a good one did you know about this the value of the number 14 in Hebrew it's the name David did you know this genius when I say literary genius this is what I'm talking about it's so unbelievable and then what they tell you is a story about this guy Jesus and you know what actually he never calls himself King other people call him King and what is this normal response Shh be quiet okay don't say that don't say that what's the number one way he refers to himself there's two terms Jesus refers to himself most regulated by son of man and the servant servant and here he's hyperlinking oh I mean dude it's just all inter unified interconnection servants linking back to something from the prophet Isaiah the Son of Man is linking back here excuse me in this collection - something about Daniel and so what does this servant this human what is the Son of Man mean it's a Hebrew way of saying human Jesus refers to himself as the human you guys and so what does the human do the heat and he makes these crazy claims he walks around like he owns the place he walks around acting as if he is the God of Israel he walks around proclaiming forgiveness on people's sins you can't do that you have to go to the temple and slaughter an animal so that God's forgiveness can be passed on to you through the priests and Jesus just walks up to this guy just like you your sins are forgiven who is this guy he's human he escapes calling himself the human but he's acting like way more than a human are you okay so you try and make sense of that and then here's what he does he says I'm gonna go to Jerusalem for Passover and he's going to confront all of the corrupt kings and priests and prophets of Israel and say listen you guys look at this look at this mess look at what you've done and and what's what's his mindset he goes in and he it he performs his meal the ancient Passover meal it was the meal by which the symbolism spoke to the blood of a lamb their blood has just been shed by the king of Egypt and so afar a lamb is slain and it's symbolic blood covers and by the covering of the blood of the lamb they're rescued out of slavery into freedom that's what this ancient meal did and who was the one who gave him directions to do it this and so Jesus comes and he does this he he culminates and he explains the meaning of this whole story in his whole story by saying you guys I didn't come to be served like how you guys usually act when you become Kings I came to become the servant and to give my life as a ransom for many for the many humans who are lost in stupid self-destruction and so the climactic moment of this whole story is the moment where Jesus overcomes human stupidity and evil and violence and death by letting our stupidity and evil and violence and death destroy him and his resurrection the portrait of this God's level of commitment and love and promise for our world is so enduring the God could have bailed at many times right in this long complicated story I've been completely justified but he would but he it would have been wrong because it made a promise made a promise that he was going to bless his enemies and restore them in some way and the story of Jesus is the it's the only way the story could have been fulfilled in a character who is God become him as the human that were made to be but failed to be and so in the resurrection of the Dead it's God's love all of the Apostles when they look at the death and the resurrection of Jesus they see they use one key word these many words but the one that's repeated the most and across all of the Apostles is the word love this was an act of God's love for us to live for us to die for us and to be raised for us and then the dude the Bible ends with the story of heaven on earth maybe you've seen a video about that of heaven and on earth being reunited in the love and power of God in in the new creation word where you could God finally has bound himself so closely to humanity in and through the person of Jesus humans are healed and are able to take the world where they were supposed to have been able to pin take it all the way back here did hey guys done so I mean I like just stop even if even if there are days you wake up and you're not sure that sure that any of this is true would you like this to be true you say what can you give me a more beautiful story of hope for our world and give me a story that so exposes the truth about humans that were made for such glory but yet we're just so perpetually not glorious and and that the story would culminate in the Beautiful Mind that originated this whole thing actually becoming one of us in our place and on our behalf to take the story where we seem simply unable to take it ourselves and so you guys when we're talking about reading the Bible as a unified story when we're talking about the literary genius to get what's happening here you have to follow the verbal cues and the repeated words and all the literary and theological artistic motifs and the dark sis Lord keeps walking out of the Smokey door right and once you track with how they're telling the story it will take it'll trust me that will consume the rest of your life and you'll think about it all the time and it will mess with you and it will it will change you and so that that's my greatest hope for this gathering today and for the resources that we're making in the Bible project is what would what would happen if this we actually believed this was the story that we're living in like you would want to talk about it with people because there's beautiful it is actually beautiful it wouldn't be hard to and it wouldn't be hard to read the Bible because like oh my gosh what's gonna happen today and it's a book designed for a lifetime of reading and discovery as we go and so there you go you guys that's what I have to say

you&#39;re like that&#39;s supposed to be there they&#39;re supposed to be there for camera it&#39;s not supposed to be here okay all right that&#39;s supposed to do good yeah I I have an awkward relationship to being in front of people because I don&#39;t actually like the attention but I really like helping people understand the Bible because I think it changes people it changes me and so I accept have accepted my fate one of those things that comes along with wearing microphones on your body is you start to have nightmares about things that could go wrong like what if one day I forgot to turn it off and then immediately went to the bathroom afterwards and about 30 minutes ago that nightmare became reality to the dismay of 100-200 people in this room so anyhow I&#39;m alive and I&#39;m actually not even embarrassed is that weird I don&#39;t know because you pee too you have to pee too okay all right here&#39;s here&#39;s what we&#39;re gonna do so John Collins described so well this experience of growing up and what I call churchianity being raised with a domesticated Bible and it&#39;s the Bible that he you know it was the funniest part of where he gave his like walk through the Bible you know which is not of course it&#39;s what everybody is already thinking but no one has brave enough to say it but that&#39;s actually how they relate to the Bible is what John put up there and so so he used this phrase that he said the other day and then he said it when he was sharing that story that he was effectively on his way to becoming a post Bible Christian and by post Bible it doesn&#39;t mean that you don&#39;t want to follow Jesus and doesn&#39;t mean you you&#39;re not down for the Jesus thing we want to follow God but what it does mean is that you just kind of give up on the Bible thing and you kind of you find some way to relate to it maybe it&#39;s the way you relate to your weird uncle at Thanksgiving and you&#39;re just we&#39;re gonna be in the same room together but I&#39;ll find a way to make this thing not drive me crazy and so that my experience was the bewildering Bible of the Bible that just shocked me because I didn&#39;t understand how it related to the Jesus that I&#39;d fallen in love with and wanted to follow and so a big part of what we&#39;re doing with the Bible project resources and just the passion right the project and what we&#39;re doing is is to help people see how the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus that&#39;s the product of human and divine partnership and that the humans that God used and worked through so that what they wrote is what he wants people to hear these these individuals most of whom we don&#39;t even know their names were absolute geniuses absolute literary geniuses and so the resource of resources we&#39;re creating are trying to invite people into that new paradigm but you can only do so much with short videos and the purpose actually of them isn&#39;t its ever say everything that could be said there to invite people into a new angle of seeing so that a whole new world opens up and that you want to go explore things for yourself so the paradigm I call it the new old paradigm for engaging the Bible it&#39;s new old because it sounds new to most Western Christians this this way of seeing the Bible but in reality it&#39;s ancient it&#39;s extremely ancient it&#39;s it&#39;s ancient Jewish ancient because it goes back to the very composition and design of the biblical books themselves and so really what I would like to do is just kind of take another deep dive into some of the actual design features of the unified story and to show you how this thing works and and just lay out some contours it&#39;s mostly gonna be me drawing and getting too excited because that&#39;s just what happens let me put up some words of Jesus they were read earlier today but their words that really showed that Jesus viewed his Bible as a unified story leading to him there from the Gospel of Luke they&#39;re from a resurrection story where the Risen Jesus appears to his disciples and their categories are all on pieces on the floor and being rebuilt as he&#39;s talking to them this is also surprising and Jesus this whole point here is you guys shouldn&#39;t be so surprised at everything that just happened over the Passover weekend jesus said to his disciples you guys I&#39;ve actually been trying to tell you about all this for a while I&#39;ve been speaking to you about all this all the things that are written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms had to come to their fulfillment then he opened their mind to understand the Scriptures lissa pause right there the untold story underneath that sentence how long was it like a power lecture was it a short video like what did he show them we don&#39;t know but it was an incredible Bible study to have been a part of he do you see this here Jesus has a way of engaging the scriptures and he says if you see the scriptures the way I&#39;ve been trying to unpack them for you you would understand the getting executed by the Romans and me coming back to life again like you would have categories for all of this and where would you have gotten those category is to understand what happened with the story of Jesus and he says you would find it in the Torah the prophets and the Psalms the open open their mind the scriptures and he said to them here it is and if you wanted to ever get a summary of what Jesus thinks the story of the Bible and he&#39;s referring here specifically to the first three quarters of your Bible which you call the Old Testament here&#39;s Jesus a summary of what the Old Testament is about in a few sentences he says this is what it&#39;s written that the Messiah would suffer the deed rise again from the dead on the third day and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning right here in the city of Jerusalem oh it&#39;s so simple oh okay that&#39;s what it&#39;s about well that&#39;s great isn&#39;t that odd that that&#39;s not what John Collins said after growing up are you with me like that&#39;s weird that should be weird to us that people who grow up in merce it write in Christian tradition when they talk about the Bible it&#39;s it&#39;s silly because of its ridiculousness right these categories how we we domesticate the Bible and find ways to cope with it and they have nothing to do with what Jesus is summary of the first are you with me it&#39;s fundamental disconnect happening here so that&#39;s interesting and just stop and ponder this fact if you wanted to ask Jesus what the Old Testament Scriptures are about he would say it&#39;s about that and he actually says like I was trying to tell you this all along the way in the story right before this it was two of his disciples that he was walking along a road with and actually didn&#39;t know it was him and he asked them what they were so sad about they were visibly sad and they said well you know Jesus we thought he was going to redeem Israel but he got executed by the Romans so it&#39;s definitely no Redemption happening there and then he what he called he&#39;s actually not very nice to because you fools don&#39;t you believe all that the prophets had spoken that the Messiah Jesus says this he&#39;s just says it in one sentence that the Messiah would suffer and then be raised into glory and they walk them through right here the law the prophets and the Psalms okay so Jesus views the first recorders of the Bible as a unified story that leads to him how did he get there because here&#39;s my hunch if you&#39;ve tried a year through reading through the Bible my hunch is you didn&#39;t get that all right I&#39;ve just a strong hunch right so what&#39;s up with that apparently we have a set of Bible reading glasses that are not the same as Jesus why would I commit myself to reading an ancient huge complicated text written from another culture on the other side of the planet and you can&#39;t just say well because it&#39;s the Bible that&#39;s not normal behavior you know I&#39;m saying like ask your co-workers who don&#39;t follow Jesus like do they sit around reading ancient texts you know every day and the quiet like nobody does this you guys except the super nerds right so so why do you why do you foster this habit in this practice it&#39;s not normal and it will never become easy for you until something happens conversion of our imaginations just to see these scriptures in this story is delivering life to me and delivering a word to me that I will never hear anyone else say to me and this is where I find it so how does Jesus get that well let&#39;s just let&#39;s observe something how does Jesus refer to his Bible to his scriptures how does he refer to them do you see it right there so it calls it the law of Moses if you know a bit of Hebrew or we really hammer this one in and Bible project resources what&#39;s the Hebrew word for law Torah so that&#39;s referring to the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures so the Torah of Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms then just stop and ponder that that&#39;s Jesus&#39;s way of referring to his scriptures right the scriptures of Israel now if you turn to the table of contents in your Bible you well and did you know that there is one they&#39;re really handy they&#39;re really handy for finding the small books so if you turn to the table of contents you&#39;ll notice something that the table of contents is not arranged in any way by this kind of logic here so that&#39;s interesting what could it be that he&#39;s just naming his like top 10 list you know like the first five in the prophets and psalms ya chronicles yeah lamentations and you know Ruth is kind of cool but so is he just naming his top what that what he&#39;s not well here&#39;s what he&#39;s doing he&#39;s using perfectly normal Jewish turns a phrase to refer to the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures and that&#39;s because the the oldest original shape of those Hebrew Scriptures Jesus never encountered like a by a Bible all in one volume nobody did before the first couple centuries after Jesus this was a collection of Scrolls where all these works run they were Scrolls in the temple &amp; local synagogues would have different collections of Scrolls but so there&#39;s a whole bunch of Scrolls with all these different books but but Jesus and Jews in Jesus&#39;s time referred to them as a unified collection of Scrolls that&#39;s interesting and he refers to it as a three in a three-part shape and that&#39;s because Jews across all different groups in this period conceived of their collection of scriptures is having a three-part shape and that three-part shape has survived in Jewish tradition it&#39;s still the the structuring of the Jewish Bible today and it&#39;s called to knock you guys heard about Tanakh did okay so Tanakh t t a n k it&#39;s an acronym for the each of the names of those three sections right there it&#39;s Torah is the T the N is the Hebrew word for prophets the never or the profits and then the K is the Hebrew word for writings or the KATU theme I&#39;m just gonna call it writings writings so here&#39;s something that&#39;s interesting Jesus conceives of a collection of Scrolls that his people treasure as the divine human word given to them in the Covenant and he conceives of it as having this three-part shape that three-part shape is not incidental it&#39;s actually a design feature of the Hebrew Scriptures and it&#39;s actually a really important feature that forces you to read the story a particular way and when you read the story this way certain things will leap out to you the leap out in a different way when you read it in a different order so um let&#39;s just let&#39;s just quick walk through this story actually I wasn&#39;t supposed to do that I was supposed to do this yeah okay what&#39;s just I&#39;m just gonna go over the story real quick here just a couple minutes go over the story with me okay deal alright so we got the Torah the first five books of your Bible Genesis Exodus Leviticus numbers Deuteronomy so how does the story who have green perfect alright how does this story start well it starts with chapters 1 through 11 the first large narrative movement begins with God creating a incredible piece of real estate and he Commission&#39;s these these figures read he calls human is the name of the first one and then life is the name of the female one human and life or Adam and cava and what God says about these unique creatures is that they are His image they are the reflection and the the bearers of God&#39;s purpose and will and presence into the world and he he makes this incredible world and he asks them to rule it in partnership with kings and queens of creation good story so far it&#39;s great story so far the fundamental tension in the narrative is about good and evil God provides what is good good good good good good actually seven times over on page one and then what he asked the humans to do is are they going to rule the world in such a way that they rely on God to be the provider and knower of good or are they going to seize an opportunity to know good and evil on their own terms this is about moral discernment and about who&#39;s going to define what&#39;s good as we go about making the world and so um you know how the story goes humans are stupid and we make suisse we willfully embrace our own destruction by the stupid choices sometimes knowingly and sometimes totally unwittingly and that&#39;s part of what makes it such a complex mess that we&#39;re in and so what the what the narrative does from here is it just focuses once the humans rebel and declare independence they don&#39;t just want to be images of God they want to be God who defines good and evil for themselves and so the story just you know maybe you&#39;ve seen me make this drawing it just spins out of control and you get these portraits of all of a sudden once human has rebelled every human you&#39;ve just given portrait after portrait of humans screwing it up and each narrative ups that up the stakes and ups the scope of the relational destruction and the physical destruction and the destruction of life that goes in its wake and all culminates in this huge story of humanity come together to elevate itself up to the place of God in the building of the city of Babylon yeah Babylon Babel is English translation it&#39;s the word Babylon this is about the building of the city of Babylon so what&#39;s gots purpose God&#39;s purpose is to select a family he selects a family out of the scattered people of Babylon it&#39;s a guy named Abraham boy he&#39;s named Abram at first which means exalted father but then his name gets changed to father of ammo dude Abraham that&#39;s father of a multitude you get it it&#39;s clever it&#39;s a good one okay what he says about Abraham and his family he&#39;s gonna have a big family and remember what God did when he set up the humans to rule over the world is he said he he blessed them to be fruitful and multiply and go be kings and queens of creation let&#39;s take this place somewhere they take it downhill and so the calling of this guy who God says I&#39;m going to bless you and you&#39;re going to become a blessing it&#39;s as if this family this one human family becomes the carrier of the future hope of blessing being restored to all of humanity what God does in response is fundamental response to a world of humans and rebellion is to bless them to bless his enemies and so he calls Abram to follow him and to leave his land to go to a new land and so on now Abraham good guy bad guy he&#39;s a guy so so good guys in the Bible take advantage of Egyptian slaves and having sex with them savage Ameen and good guys in the Bible when things get hard and I&#39;m not sure if God&#39;s gonna provide for me they run out of the place God promised to them to go to Egypt so they can provide and then they lie about their wives to save their own lives that&#39;s so that&#39;s the good guy in the Bible do you see what I&#39;m getting at here what is Abraham - in what categories of species does he fall in the narrative he&#39;s human what do you know about humans from this story stupid why are we looking to the Bible for moral examples no not just stop and ask yourself the question look at the first story of humans in the Bible why would i look to humans in this book to be examples for how i ought to behave are you with me what does it makes no sense whatsoever but what it doesn&#39;t mean is that these characters have nothing to do it then I&#39;m not supposed to see myself in them they&#39;re not models for behavior that they&#39;re mirrors they&#39;re mirrors to see ourselves truly in these characters all of the humans in the Bible fail except one and there&#39;s there must be some point to that it&#39;s a very profound point every single one of these characters is going to have moments of success and getting it right and mostly moments of failure and that ought to be telling us something about ourselves they&#39;re telling the truth about us and so Abram does all this stupid stuff but there are actually two moments in his story where he gets it right in the first one do you know the first one it&#39;s where God leads him outside at night to look up at the stars and in in Abraham&#39;s like you know a while ago you said my wife and I would have some kids I&#39;m like 90 it&#39;s not really working out God says yeah look up in the Stars and count them if you can of course you can&#39;t I figured even see them he&#39;s 19 and where is this it&#39;s one sentence one sentence we&#39;re told it&#39;s one of the few things that Abram ever does right what does he do in response to God&#39;s promise he trusts he has faith so it&#39;s one of the it&#39;s one of the first positive things a human does in the narrative and what is the thing that he does nothing that&#39;s the point right it&#39;s it&#39;s actually when humans stop trying to do their own vision of what&#39;s good and just trust in radical faith against all of the odds that there&#39;s some purpose here there&#39;s some plan there&#39;s there&#39;s some beautiful mind at work here even though I can&#39;t see very much evidence of it there&#39;s a being that wants to bless this world even though it&#39;s full of his enemies he wants to bless it and it&#39;s going to happen somehow through me and my family and Abraham just says alright I&#39;m on board and God declares that Abram is in right relationship with me it&#39;s the first person of that first person that that&#39;s set up in the story okay so the story goes on and he makes a lot of more dumb decisions and so do his kids holy cow so we have we have Abraham Isaac Jacob there&#39;s three three generations here and then they have how many kids twelve just tuck that away so the family grows big and they go down into Egypt this whole bunch of stuff we have to skip protectively crucial for the plot but we can&#39;t so they end up enslaved to a nation that just like Babylon but even worse what&#39;s that big bag nation Egypt and so they come in slave so God raises up a deliverer what&#39;s this guy&#39;s name his name&#39;s Moses yeah Moses and so Moses good guy bad guy he&#39;s human he&#39;s human one of the first things we learn about him is that he murders a man in hot anger to defend to defend the slave does the story tell you what you&#39;re supposed to think about that no just moves on and but just stop and ponder that all of a sudden and this is how most of the story the Bible works they just put the decisions of these characters in front of you and you watch the consequences of their decisions what the last thing these authors do is sermonize and give moral commentary they do sometimes it was very rare most often they want you to watch these humans define good and evil for themselves act on it and watch what happens they don&#39;t need to tell you about how these how screwed up these people are they told you that on page three and then right and then there you go okay but he gets it right a lot he gets it right a lot and his most important moments are actually where he has faith - it says it twice in the narrative about Moses and so the people are rescued out of Egypt and then God takes them to the foot of this mountain and he shows up in cloud and fire and thunder and lightning and so on and all the people are there and he says I want to marry you guys God says I want to marry you and here&#39;s what I&#39;d like you to do they&#39;re gonna be some terms of our marriage I want you to honor me I rescued you out of slavery in Egypt I want you to honor me and if you live by the terms of our marriage agreement you&#39;re going to become new and different kinds of humans kinds of humans that trust my definitions of good and evil and you will look like a different kind of society to all of the nations are you guys with me so that&#39;s accounts for 613 laws in the Torah but that&#39;s essentially the main point okay from here you get to the conclusion of the Torah and which is then the book of Deuteronomy sin chapters 30 to 34 and here Moses gains the reputation as the worst coach in human history because this is going to tell them they&#39;re gonna bow to cross the river to go into the Promised Land build the kingdom and live by the terms of this marriage agreement and Moe this is like the locker room moment before the game we&#39;re about to go out onto the field and Moses says so here&#39;s the thing here&#39;s the thing that I know about you you&#39;re human you&#39;re going to fail you&#39;re gonna go out onto the field and you were gonna crash and burn it&#39;s four chapters four chapters I know but he says I know that one day God&#39;s not going to bail on this promise he&#39;s going to do something to your hearts he&#39;s going to circumcise your hearts it&#39;s the metaphor that he uses quite vivid he&#39;s going to cut away the stubbornness and the evil in the self obsession that humans have that keep the make us so stupid and so short-sighted so that you can truly love God and love your neighbor that&#39;s his hope at the end and then he dies and then here&#39;s how the story goes here&#39;s how the the story the prophets works the section of the prophets with an Ed Nevin team it goes into two parts the narrative just continues on a pace doesn&#39;t even stop the first half consists of four books in roughly the order that you have them in your English Bible it&#39;s Joshua judges Samuel and kings now in Christian tradition and even your if you know anything about those books of the Bible what what word would you use to categorize those books history why it&#39;s about things that took place in the past what&#39;s fascinating is the the way Jesus conceives of these texts when he goat moose from the law of Moses what did he call this section he called this prophetic literature so in other words he viewed this as a telling of Israel&#39;s story with an eye towards the future this was an interpretation of Israel&#39;s story this family&#39;s story in the land from God&#39;s point of view and what is that story well it&#39;s actually very very easy to tell do the people agree to the terms of the marriage covenant and is this really a surprise to you what do you know about these people they&#39;re human are you with me think how the logic of the story works the story told you on pages 1 through 3 what humans do and it&#39;s just there&#39;s nobody&#39;s broken the record it&#39;s just all ok so Joshua judges Samuels King it&#39;s about generation after generation of Israel and it&#39;s here&#39;s what it is it&#39;s a longer more dramatic retelling of this story right here and it&#39;s actually dude we could do a whole whole class on this this all of a sudden you back up and you start noticing echoes of keywords and themes and scenes much like the way in the Star Wars universe there are scenes that get repeated and that echo other scenes and earlier scenes like how many lightsaber discovery scenes are there in the Star Wars University with me how many times does like the you know the dark Sith Lord walk out of a smoking door you know hey it&#39;s like and that it&#39;s the it&#39;s the brilliance of people who are able to weave epic narratives together but make them cohere and unified by these repeated themes and motifs there&#39;s a guy here I was just thinking about this the other day there&#39;s a guy here I&#39;m the first murderer in the Bible his name&#39;s Cain and then he goes and builds a city and then we&#39;re told only about one inhabitant of that city and he&#39;s even more arrogant and violent than Cain what&#39;s his name he named lemak lemak the word for king in Hebrew is Melek lemak Melek and what does he say well let cain be avenged 7 God protected Cain 7 times over let him protect me seventy times 10 more times I say says our perverted King and then watch all of a sudden he declares as if he&#39;s God what the terms of and wrong will be here in this city of man and then the next narrative where any Kings appear is the narrative about Genesis 14 it&#39;s a bunch of Kings going to battle how many there&#39;s ten okay you don&#39;t see it well that&#39;s okay that&#39;s okay I&#39;m still thinking about that one some okay um as a friend suggested that to me so all right here&#39;s what&#39;s gonna happen here and I&#39;m sorry but he&#39;s the first he&#39;s the perverted King because his name itself is a perversion of the word King and every King and leader figure that you&#39;re gonna meet here is simply replaying stories from this story right here Genesis 1 through 11 is remarkable so you&#39;re gonna meet all kinds of leader figures like Kings right give me some Kings Saul good guy bad guy human David good guy bad guy human you get it you&#39;re you&#39;re getting it the Bible&#39;s not hard to understand you guys scowler net ask the right questions there&#39;s gonna be all kinds of stories about prophets right and some of them are true prophets but some of them are false prophets that lead the people astray think about give me some prophets Samuel Elijah yeah Ezekiel yeah well actually that comes in this part um the good guys bad guys all right there&#39;s gonna be all of these stories about priests this is the lily Fahd wearing that we&#39;re in the turban they were turbans on their heads so these are all about priests priests and and dude let&#39;s just go through it so I can name me some priests you i Zod oak right I&#39;ve been to dab and and what are they they&#39;re human okay so you just let me ask you why is somebody telling me the story are you with me is this a story just being told because well here&#39;s some interesting things that happened in the past and why does the dark Sith Lord keep walking out of the smoky door like why yeah why am i why are these literary it&#39;s a gideon a samson ass all right all these guys put in front of us and they sometimes have moments of success what are their moments of success their moments of success are precisely the moments where like abraham against all odds they walk into the situation there is no reason they should trust god we&#39;re gonna we&#39;re gonna conquer an invading army with with blowing trumpets and smashing jars on the ground that&#39;s a great way to get rid of yes yeah well you know how i&#39;m gonna kill like the most formidable warrior in the ancient world is with some river rocks right are you with me it&#39;s rich story after story the characters who get it right are the characters who come to the end of themselves and all they can do is surrender and trust that god will bring life out of this horrific situation but inevitably even the ones and a lot of people don&#39;t even don&#39;t even get that far but the ones who do they leave behind a narrative of both success and failure and it&#39;s always related to some act of radical faith but then once david fails and once Gideon fails that because remember the thing about afterwards with Gideon after his radical moment of faith some Israelites don&#39;t help him win the battle and so he says I&#39;m going to thrash your skin with thorns and you rakes the skin off of them you remember that part of the story okay that&#39;s fail human so what&#39;s happening here and oh of course where do i where do they end up in exile and in slavery again Babylon so Israel story becomes a more detailed retelling of a story you already knew about humans are you with me what&#39;s happening here it&#39;s as if every single one of these stories is being offered as another portrait of the human condition but then every once in a while we get these bright spots of a human who comes to the end of themselves and they get it right and and what are these figures will other kings and their prophets and the priests and then you go back and you reread the story of the Torah and you&#39;ll notice something especially about Moses the two characters who get the most air time in the Torah is the story of Abram and the story of Moses in terms of just sure page numbers and you&#39;ll notice something about Moses in particular there&#39;s a one place where he&#39;s called Israel&#39;s King Deuteronomy 33 there&#39;s places all over where he acts like Israel&#39;s priests especially before they commissioned the high priests and of course Moses is the quintessential prophet so what all of these stories do is they create they create a need what&#39;s the basic problem in our world humans but but what&#39;s the whole premise of the story that God wants to rule this world and take it somewhere in partnership with humans and he&#39;s committed to doing that he&#39;s actually promised that he was going to do that that&#39;s what the story&#39;s about and so all of a sudden these stories about these humans at their best when Moses is at his best the prophet priest king or the David Wright or the Eli or the Samuel or the Jeremiah or the Isaiah these their literary portraits stay here in the Tanakh creating just a huge huge you know if this plans ever gonna work you know what kind of human we need around here we need a human who does this but all of the time and we need a human who&#39;s going to lead and bring leadership and help us know where to go but he needs to be one who was like David was on that one occasion and he&#39;s gonna need to be a prophet who can bring the Word of God to critique us to help guide us who we can turn the right direction but he needs to be not like most of the prophets that we ever had you to get it all these narratives create big like what I just call big help wanted signs just think about the logic of the story you guys the story is about God wants to partner with humans humans are the problem but what if what if there was a who could get it right he would what would he look like well he would look like Moses and he would look like David and he would look like Jeremiah he would look like Eli or Samuel at his best right and then these stories of the past all of a sudden become portraits that generate hope for the future of a human who could come one day and fulfill the role that we all seemed unable to fulfill then you turn to hey guys doing good is this a good story unbelievable okay so then you turn to the next section of the prophets which is the classical prophets as we know them - a couple things that is the three Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and then the book of the twelve the three and the twelve the three in the twelve the hope of the heat the hope of the human story depends on the blessing that God is going to bring to all humanity through the family of Abraham you just watch the family of Abraham act like what you already knew humans were like is there any hope and then a new three in the twelve come into the storyline and these figures tell you this there are all these prophetic figures are hyperlinked back into the narrative that you just read this tragic portrait here and all that the prophets tell you stories and write poems about this they all live in and talk about Jerusalem as they know it the OJ the old Jerusalem and they talk about their wicked kings and their hypocritical prophets and their terrible priests bad news bad news is coming guru salaam is under gonna go going to undergo the day of the Lord which is going to be a refining fire where God is going to melt down his the family that he married not to destroy them but to remove those who don&#39;t want to be a part of the new thing that he&#39;s going to do and out the other side is going to emerge a new Jerusalem engine and who&#39;s gonna rule over this New Jerusalem now we&#39;re getting into the Christmas parts yeah who is well what&#39;s what&#39;s this figure called in the profits he&#39;s called branch he&#39;s called stick he&#39;s called Yahweh is our righteousness he&#39;s called the Promised One he&#39;s called the man he&#39;s called he&#39;s only ever called by a personal name one time give me two times once in Jeremiah wasn&#39;t he he&#39;s called David David no just stop chronologically this makes no sense David died centuries ago but we&#39;re fostering hope in the figure in the future called David do you get do you see how they&#39;re thinking for these authors these stories aren&#39;t about the past they&#39;re stories about the past to generate hope for the future and when they read the stories of David what they read is you know what we need we need somebody around here we don&#39;t know what&#39;s his name&#39;s gonna be but he&#39;s gonna be like David was at its best okay so then the conclusion and you go back and you go like oh you know what I remember something from the last sentences of the Torah and they definitely weren&#39;t written by Moses cuz they said yeah Moses died and nobody knows where he&#39;s buried to this day and then the lessons of the Torah say you know what we&#39;ve never had another prophet like Moses around here the last sentence of the Torah you know we&#39;ve never had never since his days have we ever had a prophet like him do you get it do you get you know what would what would really get things going around here prophet like Moses David these past narratives are pointers to future hope okay I really got to pick up speed here um so the last section is on the writings um remember in the three sections Jesus referred to what he called the third section with all the prophets and the Psalms in the original design shape of the scriptures Psalms is the opener of this collection and the Book of Psalms opens with its own little introduction Psalms 1 and 2 aslam 1 is that is caught as like a meta Psalm it&#39;s a poem that tells you what to do with this whole thing and what does it tell you to do with the whole thing to become such a nerd and to to read it quietly out loud to yourself day and night and ponder it and if you ponder this story and allow it to work if you look in the mirrors of these humans and see yourself day after day after day it will start to mess with you it will start to change how you see yourself if you stare at the portrait of God who keeps handing people over to their stupid decisions but never giving up on his promise to bless them that will start to do stuff to you don&#39;t mess with you and what it will do will foster hope in the future human who could come and get it right and lo behold what saw him to about Psalm 2 is a poem about a king from the line of David who&#39;s going to come and set up God&#39;s kingdom over the nation&#39;s and bring an end to evil once and for all are you with me and what is the whole rest of the Book of Psalms about it&#39;s a poetic narrative telling you stories about David and about how David is going has been through horrific suffering and pain but he humbles himself before God and cries out for God to deliver him it&#39;s it&#39;s the David who trusted God and it&#39;s the Abraham who trusted God and the Moses who trusted God all brought together into one figure the David the David the human that we need around here who will trust God even against all radical odds and then the whole rest of dude we don&#39;t have any time but dude all of the books in here they&#39;re so incredible each one of the books that&#39;s in here say like the Book of Ruth is in here and it&#39;s hyperlinked to earlier parts of the story it begins in the days when the judges ruled so it&#39;s hyperlinked to back here but the last word of the book is David it&#39;s pretty telling you about how a pagan Moabite woman becomes the savior of the of the line of David is the savior of this promise right here which is a huge riff off of a story back here in numbers chapter 25 you remember that one when Moabite women were responsible for the destruction of Israel so all of a sudden God&#39;s weaving in the redemptive stories of non Israelites into the very family of David okay here we go hi guys doing okay you guys what else is a story about their what&#39;s funny is there&#39;s this long debate in biblical scholarship about about how we can know what actually happened in the history of ancient Israel and it&#39;s actually because the Old Testament provides us with so little useful information it provides us with dates it provides us with some hard things but most of what these stories about are actually focusing on isn&#39;t the stuff for the historians like workshop stories about King stealing vineyards right and these stories about prophets going to mountaintops and it&#39;s like if someone was going to write a history of Israel this is a poor one this story is must be about something else because there&#39;s all these look at this this is not a history this is a retelling of the human story from a prophetic point of view to generate hope that somehow God&#39;s blessing and his promise would actually become a person and be the human being that you and I are all made to be but that we perpetually failed to be and so you finished this story and the only thing you&#39;re helping for is that God&#39;s promise and blessing will become a person are you with me like this how is it so obvious what else is the story about and so you walk into the New Testament you guys and let&#39;s just take for example the book of Matthew what&#39;s the first thing Matthew wants to tell you about Jesus well he puts a long genealogy in front of you a long one but if you start to notice something you&#39;ll notice it has these beautiful design features because it has three main parts to it the three main parts tell you that the story of Israel as far as he&#39;s concerned is divided up into three sets of 14 and he wants to divide the history of Israel into three parts he talks about Abraham can you guess the next one David and the Exile to Babylon you know what we need around here is somebody who trusts God you know we need around here is a king who will trust God like Abraham and actually lead our people through the valley of the shadow of death and Matthew comes onto the scene with the genealogy of three sets of 14 generations oh and this is a good one did you know about this the value of the number 14 in Hebrew it&#39;s the name David did you know this genius when I say literary genius this is what I&#39;m talking about it&#39;s so unbelievable and then what they tell you is a story about this guy Jesus and you know what actually he never calls himself King other people call him King and what is this normal response Shh be quiet okay don&#39;t say that don&#39;t say that what&#39;s the number one way he refers to himself there&#39;s two terms Jesus refers to himself most regulated by son of man and the servant servant and here he&#39;s hyperlinking oh I mean dude it&#39;s just all inter unified interconnection servants linking back to something from the prophet Isaiah the Son of Man is linking back here excuse me in this collection - something about Daniel and so what does this servant this human what is the Son of Man mean it&#39;s a Hebrew way of saying human Jesus refers to himself as the human you guys and so what does the human do the heat and he makes these crazy claims he walks around like he owns the place he walks around acting as if he is the God of Israel he walks around proclaiming forgiveness on people&#39;s sins you can&#39;t do that you have to go to the temple and slaughter an animal so that God&#39;s forgiveness can be passed on to you through the priests and Jesus just walks up to this guy just like you your sins are forgiven who is this guy he&#39;s human he escapes calling himself the human but he&#39;s acting like way more than a human are you okay so you try and make sense of that and then here&#39;s what he does he says I&#39;m gonna go to Jerusalem for Passover and he&#39;s going to confront all of the corrupt kings and priests and prophets of Israel and say listen you guys look at this look at this mess look at what you&#39;ve done and and what&#39;s what&#39;s his mindset he goes in and he it he performs his meal the ancient Passover meal it was the meal by which the symbolism spoke to the blood of a lamb their blood has just been shed by the king of Egypt and so afar a lamb is slain and it&#39;s symbolic blood covers and by the covering of the blood of the lamb they&#39;re rescued out of slavery into freedom that&#39;s what this ancient meal did and who was the one who gave him directions to do it this and so Jesus comes and he does this he he culminates and he explains the meaning of this whole story in his whole story by saying you guys I didn&#39;t come to be served like how you guys usually act when you become Kings I came to become the servant and to give my life as a ransom for many for the many humans who are lost in stupid self-destruction and so the climactic moment of this whole story is the moment where Jesus overcomes human stupidity and evil and violence and death by letting our stupidity and evil and violence and death destroy him and his resurrection the portrait of this God&#39;s level of commitment and love and promise for our world is so enduring the God could have bailed at many times right in this long complicated story I&#39;ve been completely justified but he would but he it would have been wrong because it made a promise made a promise that he was going to bless his enemies and restore them in some way and the story of Jesus is the it&#39;s the only way the story could have been fulfilled in a character who is God become him as the human that were made to be but failed to be and so in the resurrection of the Dead it&#39;s God&#39;s love all of the Apostles when they look at the death and the resurrection of Jesus they see they use one key word these many words but the one that&#39;s repeated the most and across all of the Apostles is the word love this was an act of God&#39;s love for us to live for us to die for us and to be raised for us and then the dude the Bible ends with the story of heaven on earth maybe you&#39;ve seen a video about that of heaven and on earth being reunited in the love and power of God in in the new creation word where you could God finally has bound himself so closely to humanity in and through the person of Jesus humans are healed and are able to take the world where they were supposed to have been able to pin take it all the way back here did hey guys done so I mean I like just stop even if even if there are days you wake up and you&#39;re not sure that sure that any of this is true would you like this to be true you say what can you give me a more beautiful story of hope for our world and give me a story that so exposes the truth about humans that were made for such glory but yet we&#39;re just so perpetually not glorious and and that the story would culminate in the Beautiful Mind that originated this whole thing actually becoming one of us in our place and on our behalf to take the story where we seem simply unable to take it ourselves and so you guys when we&#39;re talking about reading the Bible as a unified story when we&#39;re talking about the literary genius to get what&#39;s happening here you have to follow the verbal cues and the repeated words and all the literary and theological artistic motifs and the dark sis Lord keeps walking out of the Smokey door right and once you track with how they&#39;re telling the story it will take it&#39;ll trust me that will consume the rest of your life and you&#39;ll think about it all the time and it will mess with you and it will it will change you and so that that&#39;s my greatest hope for this gathering today and for the resources that we&#39;re making in the Bible project is what would what would happen if this we actually believed this was the story that we&#39;re living in like you would want to talk about it with people because there&#39;s beautiful it is actually beautiful it wouldn&#39;t be hard to and it wouldn&#39;t be hard to read the Bible because like oh my gosh what&#39;s gonna happen today and it&#39;s a book designed for a lifetime of reading and discovery as we go and so there you go you guys that&#39;s what I have to say

Transcript for:Understanding The Bible as a Unified Story - Tim Mackie

Transcript for:
Understanding The Bible as a Unified Story - Tim Mackie