The vast majority of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is a series of stories centering on particular individuals such as Abraham, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Jesus and Paul. More than 40 percent of the Old Testament is story, and the Old Testament constitutes some three-quarters of the Bible. These stories are very down to earth. They tell the stories of these people “warts and all.” Through the stories, we hear God’s story; we see Him at work in His creation and among His people. They often help us understand and appreciate God’s providence, purposes and protection. The stories are designed to stimulate our imagination, to enable us to enter into the encounter that these people had with God and life. Our responsibility is not to see them as allegories or mysteries filled with hidden meanings — they do not always teach us truth or principles directly, but they often illustrate God’s workings. Through these personal stories, which never fade into the background, we see God’s wider purposes for the nation of Israel and the world.
Through these encounters, we begin to discover the plan of salvation: God’s desire that human beings live in relationship with Him, becoming “wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15). The human words and experience help us understand how we can come to know, love, follow and obey God. Sometimes we see the way in which God is working out His overall plan and purpose in the story of the Bible, in the big events of creation, the Exodus, the Incarnation and Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. This is sometimes called “redemption history.”
Clearly the Bible is a collection of books written at different times in different historical settings. Yet a basic unifying theme can be detected in the Bible, the separate books contributing to this theme and later books referring back to earlier ones to develop the theme. Later books build on traditions, sometimes emphasizing different aspects of their stories to stress particular issues but relating what they are saying to an earlier tradition.
When we speak about stories, some doubt their authenticity. We may say, “Let me tell you a story,” and the story may be make-believe or real. Sometimes, in the Bible, it is not clear what is an actual fact and what is a story through which the writer wants to tell us something about God and His ways. For example, in the New Testament, we have, within the parables of Jesus, the stories of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) and the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31). The first seems to be a simple story, while the second appears to be teaching something about the ultimate outcome of our lives. As we interpret the parables of Jesus, we must try to never read too much out of each and every detail. For example, in eternity, will we really see one another from heaven and hell? Or is the story more of a metaphor to teach the importance of living in the present, how the present affects our future and the significance of eternity?
The Bible contains stories that are retold in different contexts as the biblical writers reflect upon earlier stories and reinterpret their meanings for a later time in Israel’s history. Abraham Lincoln did this when he used the Declaration of Independence text “all men are created equal” within his Gettysburg Address. He used an earlier text, well known and respected in the country, in order to show that slavery was self-evidently wrong. In a similar way, the prophets of the sixth century B.C. drew on the Exodus story to encourage God’s people in exile in Babylon that He would once again bring His people “out” and back “home.” In the New Testament, Paul built on the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in Romans 8 to demonstrate the great love of God, who “did not spare His own Son but gave Him up freely for us all” (32). In a similar way, we are encouraged to reread the biblical text ourselves and apply its message to the life of discipleship in the 21st century.
The period of the Enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries had an enormous impact on the way the biblical stories were read. The rational thinking of writers who had little or no faith in God stressed the humanity of the biblical text, emphasizing that the books came about as a result of “human effort, human faith, human passion and human idiosyncrasy.” The text became subservient to the rational interpretation of the scholarly reader. Often the miraculous aspects of the Bible were dismissed as being absurd and anachronistic in a modern scientific environment. By the end of the 19th century, the impact of this rational thinking concerning Old Testament studies resulted in little attention being given to this part of Scripture as having any sort of authority for the life of faith.
Treating the text with integrity avoids the temptation of a hostile form of skepticism that is seen as being more intellectually respectable than faith. Yet we also avoid the tendency of closing our minds to fresh insights that come from modern research. We also are careful of the modern viewpoint that because there are different interpretations of the text, we cannot know the Bible’s exact message. If we are honest, then we have to admit that we all read the text from our own perspective, through interpretive spectacles. For example, as Baptists, we interpret passages that deal with baptism in such a way as to preclude any interpretation of baptism that might allow infant baptism to be acceptable. A particular faith perspective inevitably colors our interpretation of the passages that we are examining.
We can have confidence that the Bible shares a common narrative. It is the story of God’s love for humankind. However, that one story is made up of many individual and corporate stories. Some of these narratives are very positive in the way they speak of God. Other stories relate events that have a darker tone. The writers tell us about their experiences of fearful faith, of experiencing God as hidden, of suffering without seeing any purpose or meaning in the experience. Our interpretation of the Scriptures must listen to all these voices and allow them to counterbalance one another.
The primary subject of the Old and New Testaments is the God of creation and redemption. These are the twin themes that are woven into the tapestry of the whole of the Bible. In the Bible, there is much talk of God, and yet there is perhaps more talk about Him that arises out of the personal experiences of the subjects and writers. Even in those passages in which we hear God speaking, we are listening to the testimony of those who heard Him speak. So, at times, we are not asking the question “What happened?” but “What was said?” either through the event or what came out of the event related in Scripture.
At the center of the Bible’s testimony to God are various statements and stories concerning the activity of God, a focus on God who has acted in human history. They help us to know who God is and know Him personally.
Through the Old Testament, the creative activity of God is central to how Israel thought about Him. Various verbs are used to speak of this activity. The most basic and common is “bara,” a verb used of no one other than God. Isaiah 42:5 says, “Thus says God, the Lord, who created (bara) the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it.” The image is of a powerful, majestic God who is over all that He has made.
Another word used of creation reflects the image of the potter, working with the “stuff” of the created order in an artistic endeavor to create beauty and order in the world. The creative work of God in Deuteronomy 32:18 is described with two verbs. It says, “You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you,” which refers to the paternal role in begetting. It then goes on to say, “You forgot the God who gave you birth,” which refers to the maternal role of birthing. I find this interesting, not because these are commonly used verbs in the Old Testament but because they say something of the issue of gender when speaking of God. Although our normal way of speaking about and to Him is “Father,” our God manifests male and female qualities of creative, compassionate and tender love.
It is also interesting to note that within the expression of Israel’s faith in history, when the people were in exile and being tempted to abandon hope in God, the prophets gave particular emphasis to His creative work. The Babylonian “gods,” who also were seen as being creative, appeared to have conquered and been stronger than Yahweh. In the face of that challenge, we read in Isaiah 45, “I made the earth and created humankind upon it. It was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their hosts” (12). When the people of Judah complained to God and asked Him, “Have you forgotten us?,” His response was “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth” (Isa. 40:28). Creation faith is used to dismiss the claims of the other “gods” and encourage Israel to believe that its God had not abandoned it.
The God of creation is also the God who makes promises and enters into a covenant relationship with His people. God’s promises come from one who is trustworthy. Sometimes God is said to “swear” or, as Deuteronomy 6:23 expresses it, “[promise] on oath.” He is a God who takes seriously His commitment to His people. He is obligated to use His resources for their good: to “give” and to bless. The majority of these promises are located in the Old Testament’s exilic books.
God’s promises often relate to the way He will step into our situation and deliver us, provide us with His salvation. This is an early theme in Exodus: “I am the Lord; I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them” (6:6). These actions speak of the generosity of God’s love, which is given freely and without obligation. God alone can help and deliver. Humanity is weak and helpless. Often this theme, related to the Exodus story, is taken up by later writers, especially in the time of exile, to remind Israel that God generously and powerfully acted on its behalf. Their social, economic, political and spiritual needs may have been great, but God’s resources were more than adequate.
The story of Israel, along with the examples of people like Abraham and Joseph, teaches us that He is also the God who leads and provides, on a daily basis, for His people. Joseph was able to tell his brothers that although they plotted to kill him, God used the circumstances of his life for good. Deuteronomy 8:2 says, “Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart.” God is interested in and involved with His people. The leading may not be comfortable — He tests and humbles us as we follow His guidance. However, God can transform even the most discouraging circumstance of apparent abandonment and threat into a place of nourishment and new life.
The God of covenant who calls people into relationship with Himself is the God who expects that His people will live in faithful commitment to Him. Thus He issues commands. Indeed commandments governed Israel’s thinking — its God was sovereign over all of life. Yet its freedom was not burdensome and legalistic — it was a response of gratitude. “I am the Lord who brought you out of … slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:2–3). Israel’s response was immediate and complete: “Everything the Lord has commanded, we will do” (Ex. 19:8).
Torah piety, which is found in the Psalter (especially in Psalms 1, 19 and 119), are songs that celebrate and remind the people that the Law is crucial for Israel’s life. Yet a note of joy fills these Psalms, for the commandments are seen to be a way of finding fulfillment in life. So blessed is the one who walks in the counsel of the godly … whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on that law, he meditates day and night (Ps. 1:1–2). The life of faith is not a life of autonomous freedom because God’s way of life is relational — His commandments help us know how to live in right relationship to Him and others.
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