The Bible is one story.
Have you ever read The Lord of the Rings? The movies are great, but the books are a whole other experience. I've never read another novel that has several appendices. Or an index. It's a story with other stories and various supplementary material included.
We can think of the Bible that way, too. Genesis through Esther tells a story. In one sense, it's the story of Israel — how it began, what went well, what went wrong, how it ended, and how it returned. The rest of the OT is like an appendix. During Kings/Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, what was going on behind the scenes? The prophets tell us. How did they feel about it all? The Psalms tell us.
The story returns in the gospels followed by Acts. It climaxes in Revelation. The epistles are commentary on the story, so they go in the appendix, too.
When we read part of the Old Testament, we need to locate it in the story. We want to be aware of how it fits into the whole and interpret it from that perspective. The account of Joseph's life, for example, is a scene in the birth of the nation of Israel.
The main character of the story is God.
The story isn't just the history of Israel. That is a chapter in the bigger story of how God created man, man rebelled against God, and God set out to fix it. Israel was a step in the process.
Genesis tells us how God created everything, then man almost immediately rebelled. We quickly invented murder then rapidly got so horrible God rebooted humanity. God chose one man to create a family from which would come the Savior. He blessed Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob even when they were unfaithful. The family wickedly abused Joseph, but God watched over him and used him to rescue his family and relocate them to Egypt. The story follows how God rescued them from bondage and made them a nation, how he brought them through the wilderness and their rebellion to the promised land.
Joshua tells us how God fulfilled his promise to give them an inheritance in that land. Judges tells us how God remained faithful when Israel went totally off the rails. And so on.
Eventually it tells us how God became flesh and dwelt among us, how he gave himself as a ransom for us then rose from the grave, conquering death, and how he established his church. Finally it tells us how he will ultimately renew all things.
Yes, there are stories about Noah, Abraham, Joseph, and David. But if we don't look for God in those stories, we're missing the real message.
The story tells us about God.
We naturally and rightly try to draw moral lessons from the accounts of the successes and failures of the people we read about in the Bible. Ruth's example is wholly positive. David and Joseph's examples mix the positive and the negative. Sampson is pretty much a case-study in what not to do.
But if we only see what the stories tell us about them, if we don't also see what the story tells us about God, we've missed the entire point.
The story tells us of God's power and holiness, but it also tells us of his patience and kindness. It tells us God expects us to be humble before him, and it tells us he will judge us, in part, based on how we treat the weakest among us.
People get very upset about the events that befell Tamar, Dinah, and the other Tamar. They are offended that wives are told to submit to their husbands. They entirely miss how much the story tells us God cares how women are treated.
Modern readers decry that God used Israel to judge the nations around them. They do not see the limitations God put on their warfare.
Sometimes you have to read between the lines. More often, it's printed right on the page. Don't miss the forest for the trees. We were created to reflect the character of our God. We can see that character throughout the story if we will make the effort to look.
Part of Bible 101
Image via Pixabay
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