Resources on the Story in the Bible
- Bedford Baptist
- Jan 9
- 3 min read
A Few Resources
This past Sunday I preached a sermon that gave an overview of “the story the Bible hangs on.” Here at the beginning of the year, I was hoping to bring us back to a consideration of what Scripture is and how it orients us to all of life. I also hoped to encourage all of us to dive deeper into the Bible in 2025.
One of the reasons I wanted to preach this sermon was that there are whole sections of the Bible (namely, most of the Old Testament after Genesis 3 or 11) that many believers don’t know what to do with. Sometimes we even summarize the Bible story as Creation—Sin—Jesus. But the story is more detailed and complex than that, and if we cut it down to that simple formulation we lose any sense of what to do with the history and life of Israel that the Bible spends so much time detailing. We must include the story of the Elect people, the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: God’s care for them, their life of worship, their persistent challenges, the history of the kings and the role of the prophets. Understanding the Old Testament is essential if we are going to understand Jesus, the Church, and the New Testament writings in a meaningful way.
A half hour can hardly clear up all the questions, but I hope it whetted your appetite. Here I want to share a few resources that you might consider using in your own ongoing engagement with the Bible.
First, there are several books that have made attempts at exploring the story that the Bible contains at more length than I did this week. These treatments come in various lengths. Here are a few places you might go to familiarize yourself with this story:
A Few Books
Lesslie Newbigin, A Walk Through the Bible: This is a short book (well under a hundred pages of text, and the pages aren’t very big!) that contains eight brief radio addresses given by one of the 20th century’s most significant Christian thinkers. Newbigin spent much of his life working with the church in South India, and he thought a lot about how to communicate the heart of our faith. These eight talks cover in a little more detail the things I talked about on Sunday. You may have to look for a used copy on Amazon (A Walk Through The Bible: Newbigin: 9781573833578: Books - Amazon.ca). It doesn’t seem to be in print anymore.
N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, chapters 5-10: Simply Christian is, in my view, a great and enduring work laying out the basics of Christian faith, including the features of our world that might draw us to the gospel and the various aspects of Christian life. But its middle section is a masterful summary of the Biblical story. It’s about 90 pages (normal sized, so it’s double the length of Newbigin’s summary), and will really set you up to get a grasp on how the Bible holds together.
Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew, The True Story of the Whole World or The Drama of Scripture: Jumping up one level further, Goheen and Bartholomew build on some of N.T. Wright’s work and outline the narrative of Scripture as a “Six Act Drama”—Creation (God Establishes His Kingdom), Fall (Rebellion in the Kingdom), Israel (The King Chooses Israel: Redemption Initiated), Jesus (The Coming of the King: Redemption Accomplished), the Church (Spreading the News of the King: The Mission of the Church), and the Second Coming (The Return of the King: Redemption Completed). The True Story of the Whole World is a shorter, slightly less academic, and more application-oriented version of The Drama of Scripture.
The True Story of the Whole World: Finding Your Place in the Biblical Drama: Goheen, Michael, Bartholomew, Craig: 9781587434761: Books - Amazon.ca
If You’re Not a Book Person
There are lots of good resources out there if you know where to look. As many others have suggested, the YouTube channel The Bible Project is one of the best available resources for Bible readers in our time. I have particularly appreciated the following video of a talk by the guy behind the Bible Project’s teachings, Tim Mackie.
He is a great and conversational communicator, and here he tells his own story of coming to faith in Jesus, his own relationship with the Bible and how it has differed from some others who have been less engaged by the Bible. For about fifteen minutes or so in the middle, he summarizes the Bible. And then at the end he makes some helpful suggestions about the ways we read the Bible.
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