One Big Story — Donna Evans

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained
to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”
Luke 24:27 (NIV)

Flannel graphs were a mainstay in Mrs. Maynard’s 4-year-old Sunday School classroom at Hunter Street Baptist Church in the early 1960s. Bible stories suddenly came alive as she placed the colorful cut-out figures on and off her flannel board while she told the stories of David and Goliath; Daniel in the lion’s den; and Shadrach, Mishael, and Abednego in the fiery furnace.

I will always be grateful for the rich spiritual foundation that my parents and godly teachers like Mrs. Maynard laid early in my childhood. But it wasn’t until 2014 when I attended a Bible Toolkit breakout session with Carrie Sandom at The Gospel Coalition Women’s conference that the bits and pieces of many Bible stories finally fit together to form the metanarrative of God’s pursuing love for me. The Bible is certainly a book, but it is also a library of sixty-six books that all tell One Big Story: God’s story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration.

Sally Lloyd Jones, author of The Jesus Storybook Bible, writes, “There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them. It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby. Every Story whispers his name. Jesus is like the missing piece in a puzzle- the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together.”

Author Paul David Tripp agrees with Lloyd Jones writing, “Train yourself to read the Bible as a story. This story has one central character: God himself, specifically in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. From cover to cover, the Bible is a narrative of God’s wondrous works and the blessings that are yours by grace. This old, old story imparts identity, understanding, comfort, salvation, and hope. Has it become your favorite story to read every day?"

My women’s Bible study group recently began our study of the book of Daniel. Our first lesson was an overview to the book asking the basic Bible study questions that should be asked when studying any book of the Bible:

Who was the author?
When was it written?
To whom was it written?
What is its theme?
What is its genre?

To those questions we also asked three important application questions that we’ll be asking each week during our time together:

What is this book about?
How does it point us to Jesus?
What does it teach us about the Church?

Daniel 1 opens with four young Jewish noblemen being captured in Jerusalem and relocated 900 miles away to the city of Babylon. Here they are isolated from their families and Jewish communities; re-identified and given new Babylonian names; re-educated in Chaldean literature; and immersed into Chaldean culture. These teenagers are God’s chosen people, exiles living in a foreign land. How are they to live and serve God even as they are being educated and trained to serve foreign pagan kings? The answer to that question is found in Daniel 1:8 “But Daniel resolved…”

Throughout the book of Daniel during his seventy -year exile in captivity, Daniel served God while also serving at least four pagan kings. Kings and kingdoms came and went, but Daniel consistently demonstrated boldness, courage, and dependence on God in prayer. Daniel is certainly a good example, but he is also not the point. Much like John the Baptist, Daniel is the Pointer who points us to our God who resolved to send the Lord Jesus. 600 years later Jesus came in the flesh and became the Ultimate Exile; the Ultimate foreigner; the Ultimate outsider; the One who wasn’t spared from God’s wrath and judgment so that we might be rescued from the captivity of sin and death.

Author Paige Brown summarizes the book of Daniel by saying, “Daniel’s story is only ever the story of God’s commitment to us. There are no committed Christians, only a committed God.”
Read the Bible as One Big Story of God’s amazing love!