Sitting in a rooftop café in Madrid today with some red tea and complementary cashews, I started to pore slowly through Bruce Milne's handbook to Christian belief, "Know the Truth". It is an excellent read, and I recommend it highly - I sat there for four hours reading.
This one passage struck me especially. It comes in the middle of an argument he makes about interpreting Scripture in the light of the entire biblical story. To explain, he gives the entire biblical story:
"Thus, the beginning of the bible's story, or meta-narrative, as recorded in Genesis, lies in God himself and his free decision to create a cosmos through the initial 'bringing forth' of the universe out of 'nothing', and his eventual creation of humanity, to share the supreme fulfillment of worshipful communion with God, and with one another in him, and to oversee his creation. Tragically, as the following chapter of Genesis make clear, humanity turned against its Lord and Creator, disobeyed his clear command, and experienced its supreme loss - the disruption of communion with God, interpersonal conflict and resultant expulsion form the garden of his presence. Despite this judgement God yearned for a restored communion, and so begins the great story of redemption. God called Abraham and entered into covenant with him and his successors, with its accompanying promise of blessings for the whole human family through his later descendants. When, centuries later, the chosen family found itself enslaved in Egypt, as recorded in later chapters of Genesis, God sent a deliverer, Moses, who led Israel into liberty, an 'exodus', vividly described in the book bearing that name, which also contains a selection of the laws revealed to Moses, complemented in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
After a forty-year period of desert wandering, which demonstrated God's constant care of his people, and a conquest of Canaan, as told in Deuteronomy, Numbers and Joshua, the people found themselves again in the land from which they had departed in the time of Jacob, Abraham's grandson. Following Joshua's leadership, the tribal federation was led periodically by judges, such as Gideon, Deborah, Samson and Samuel, as Israel oscillated between periods of seeking and submitting to God, resulting in deliverance from their surrounding enemies, and disobedience which brought judgment in the form of defeat and servitude. The story of these years is contained in Judges and the early part of 1 Samuel. In Samuel's time the people demanded that a king be appointed and so the monarchy was established under its first incumbent, Saul.
On the negative side, the monarchy weakened Israel's reliance upon God for leadership, bit it was to prove an important model for the long-promised deliverer, or 'Messiah'. The monarchy attained its highest point under David, and then his son Solomon, after which the kingdom divided into two parts, Israel in the north uniting ten of the twelve tribes, and Judah in the south combining Judah and Benjamin. 2 Samuel and the account in 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles cover the three and a half centuries of the monarchy, not forgetting the book of Ruth with its endearing story of love and loyalty. During this period wisdom writings were composed, as recorded in Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon; and worship was renewed and organised, and given profound expression, in the Psalms, many composed by David.
As the centuries passed, both the tribal confederacies of Israel in the north and Judah in the south proved deeply unfaithful to the Lord and his covenant law, turning aside with great regularity to the idolatrous worship of the surrounding nations, in spite of periodic renewals under leaders such as the prophets Elijah and Elisha, and good kings like Asa, Jehoshaphat, Uzziah, Hezekiah and Josiah. Despite the faithful ministry of the great Israelite prophets, men like Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah and Malachi, whose incomparable and courageous messages resonate still in the books that bear their names, the predicted divine judgment fell on the northern kingdom of Israel in the shape of the Assyrian invasion in 722 BC; and Judah, learning no lessons from their northern neighbours' plight, followed into defeat and exile at the hands of the Babylonian in 586 BC. These disasters are described in 2 Kings.
But God did not fully abandon his covenant people. The prophets also rekindled, and took to new levels of clarity, the promise of God's special deliverer, the Messiah, who would, through incredible suffering, bring God's salvation not just to Israel, but also to the Gentile nations of the world. They also spoke of a new day of God's relationship with his people, and a 'new covenant' whereby sin would be forgiven and forgotten, and all his people share a personal knowledge of him. God continued to care for his people during their period of exile, illustrated by the story of a brave woman, Esther, in the book bearing her name, and in Daniel's stirring account of God's dealing with his people in far-off Babylon.
Then, by a remarkable intervention, God enabled a remnant amount the Jews in Babylon to return to Jerusalem in a series of waves, beginning with a decree of King Cyrus of Persia in 539 BC. Under Zerubbabel the first exiles laid the foundation of the temple which was finished in 515 BC. Ezra the scribe led a further party back in 458 BC, as recounted in the books bearing his own name and that of Nehemiah; and under the latter's leadership the walls of the city were repaired and the people re-established their identity and renewed their covenant with the Lord.
There followed some four centuries of waiting, amid a deepening hope of God's renewed intervention, until that moment 'when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman' (Galatians 4:4). So Jesus was born in Bethlehem; the long-promised redeemer had at last appeared.
Thirty years later Jesus entered upon his ministry of some three years' duration, recorded incomparably by the evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Jesus' ministry reached its destined culmination in his final journey to Jerusalem here he was arrested, tried and crucified, with the cooperation of the Roman overlords, a climax clearly portrayed in the Gospels as, on his part, an act of conscious, loving, self-sacrifice on behalf of all the sinners of the world, and as the fulfillment of God's eternal purpose of salvation. On the third day following the crucifixion Jesus was raised from the dead, and appeared repeatedly over the next forty days among his disciples, and to some who did not previously believe in him. This is recorded in each of the Gospels, and also by Luke at the beginning of the book of Acts.
In the following chapter of Acts Luke tells the exciting and challenging story of the nascent church as it bore witness to the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ, first in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and then to the Gentile world, concluding appropriately at its centre in Rome. Paul, after his dramatic conversion, led the movement in to the Gentile provinces of the empire, and wrote letters of instruction and encouragement to many of his churches, in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse and Thessalonica, as well as to individuals like Philemon, Timothy and Titus. Other associates of the apostles contributed also through the books of James, Jude and the letter to the Hebrews. The New Testament was completed by Peter's and John's letters, and by John's Revelation.
So the Scriptures were composed and brought to their final form, the incomparable story of the sovereign, gracious God and his glorious and incomparable salvation, spread across the centuries and millenia - the revealed Word of God to all the passing ages, including our own.
Thus, in the infinite faithfulness of God, his promises were kept to the letter. The blessing of salvation spread beyond Israel to the whole world, and the new people of God emerged, across the centuries and finally all around the world. That people is expressed today in the great global family that names the name of Jesus Christ and anticipates the coming day of his reappearing and the gathering of all the children of God, from all the ages and nations, cultures, languages and people in the new Jerusalem, within a new heaven and earth of righteousness; the new order which will offer the restoration of the divine communion of the garden of Eden amid the revealed glory of the triune God of creation and redemption.
This great story, the meta-narrative of the Bible, is the implicit context for every verse of Scripture. It is accordingly the ultimately defining context for the meaning of every sentence and every word of God's revealed Word."
