Storyline | Pastor Chip Parker | Week 1

Well, it is almost summertime, and one of the things that my family finds itself doing every summer, probably because it's one of my wife's favorite things to do, is put together puzzles.

When we go visit family at the beach or even when we're just hanging out of the house, she loves to put together puzzles during the summer.

And I'll be honest, she's better at it than I am.

I am not great putting together a puzzle.

What I have to do if I'm putting together this puzzle is like grab the box and like just look at the picture, figure out, okay, this is what that piece is gonna look like in my head, and then I can start sorting through it.

Now she can do all the shapes, but but I've got to have the picture.

Have you ever tried to put together a puzzle without being able to see the picture on the front of the box?

It's almost impossible.

When she's looking at it when we've lost it or whatever, you just almost can't do it.

Now, here's the thing: what if I told you that one of the reasons it may be hard for you to understand some of the stuff in the Bible is because you're missing the big picture that goes on the front of the box.

When you're trying to fit all these different pieces of scripture together, these things that you've heard pastors say that you learned in vacation Bible school or Sunday school, and you're just having a hard time understanding how this all works, it might be because you've never been able to step back and see the big completed picture.

Because the truth is the Bible has one overarching story.

There is one plot line, or maybe we'd say for this series, one storyline that runs from Genesis all the way to Revelation.

That one story is the story of redemption.

God who is redeeming a lost and broken world back into relationship with himself.

And that story has one hero, and his name is Jesus.

And when you look at all of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, it fits within that storyline.

And so as we understand that story, it helps us as we grow in our faith.

Like we already said, understanding that storyline really helps our understanding of the Bible because we're able to see connections that we might have missed.

We're able to put things together in a way that helps it all point in the same direction and all fit.

But I think also understanding the big picture of Scripture helps us grow in our confidence as we try to help others understand faith and what it means to trust and follow Jesus for themselves.

Professor Stephen Wellham says it like this: He says, thinking through the Bible's plot movements helps us answer the questions that every person asks and must answer.

Where did we come from?

What went wrong?

What is the solution to our problem?

And where is history going?

Now, I know there's a lot of other questions that we could ask, and maybe a lot of other questions that you know uh unsaved family and friends are asking, but those are big ones that we have all asked at some point.

Where did we come from?

What is our origin?

Why are we here?

What purpose do we have in this life?

What went wrong?

How do we explain evil and suffering in the world?

How can we fix it?

Is there hope for this broken world?

Where is this all going?

What is our ultimate destiny?

And then maybe even most important, how do we live?

What defines our morality?

What I would say is that when we understand the storyline of Scripture, we begin to better understand how we answer all of those questions and answer them in a cohesive way.

So, enough saying that there is a storyline to the Bible, a story of redemption with its hero Jesus.

What does that storyline look like?

Well, I think we can break down the general storyline of scripture into five big parts.

Maybe we would say five pieces of the story.

The first would be beginning and breaking.

That is our understanding of creation, sin entering the world, the fall of mankind, and how we got to where we are today.

The second piece of that would be shadows and sacrifice.

That would be most of the Old Testament, where we begin to see an anticipation of Christ who is coming, this promised Messiah sent from God to make everything right again.

Then the heart of the story, the third piece, is hero and rescue.

And this is Jesus coming on the scene to fulfill God's plan of redemption.

After that, we move into the fourth piece, what I call already and not yet.

And that is the kingdom of God that has come after the resurrection in the church.

It is a kingdom that is already being established, and yet it is not quite completed.

That brings us to the fifth part, recreation and eternity.

And that is where the kingdom is culminated, completed, and redemption finally happens in full.

So those five parts, beginning and breaking, shadows and sacrifice, hero and rescue, already and not yet, recreation and eternity, they help us understand this storyline that moves throughout Scripture in these big, if you will, plot movements.

In fact, in Paul's letter to the Roman Church, he pretty much follows these five pieces of the storyline in one short summary of the gospel.

And so we're going to look at that today and keep coming back to it in the next few weeks as we walk through this series.

But let's read it in its entirety today.

That's Romans chapter 5, starting in verse 12.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

So if you have your Bible, you can go ahead and turn there and we'll read this together.

It's a lengthy paragraph, but I want you to see how Paul summarizes the storyline of Scripture.

This is what he says starting in verse 12.

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people because all sinned.

In fact, sin was in the world before the law, but sin is not charged to a person's account when there is no law.

Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam's transgression.

He is a type of the coming one.

But the gift is not like the trespass.

For if by one man's trespass the many died, how much more have the grace of God and the gift which comes through the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflowed to the many?

And the gift is not like the one man's sin, because from one sin came the judgment resulting in condemnation, but from many trespasses came the gift, resulting in justification.

If by the one man's trespass death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive the overflow of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ?

So then, as through one trespass there is justification or condemnation for everyone, so also through one righteous act there is justification, leading to life for everyone.

For just as through one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

The law came along to multiply the trespass, but where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now, I know that's a big paragraph, and it's frankly a little bit confusing.

If you read it a few more times, you'll really understand what he's saying.

But what Paul is doing is focusing on Jesus as the center of this story and spends a vast majority of those verses talking about through his obedience, through his righteousness, through his grace, we are made right with God.

But when we look closer, we can see those other four pieces on either end of the story as well.

As a matter of fact, for today, let's look just at Romans 5.12, when Paul says this.

So let's, in our time left today, dig into that a little bit more.

Dig into the beginning and the breaking.

See, first we have to understand our beginning, and that is creation.

Now, if you're watching this, you probably already believe that God created the heavens and the earth.

Maybe you don't.

I'm not gonna spend a lot of time today trying to convince you of it.

There's other messages we've done that talk about that, but for right now, I want to look at what God's completed creation looks like.

If you were to read in Genesis chapter 1, specifically in verse 31, what you would see is that God sees his completed creation and he calls it this.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

He says it's good.

When God created the world, he created it good.

He created it complete.

It existed in what the Hebrew culture would call shalom.

And shalom is just a Hebrew word that's often translated peace, but it means something deeper.

It means more an idea of completeness, of wholeness, of health.

It's rooted in the word shalom that represents a state of total harmony with God.

That was the world that God created, a world of shalom, completeness, wholeness existing in harmony with Him.

And yet, that's not the world that we see and experience today.

That's because the world as God created it has been marred and broken.

And it's been marred and broken by sin.

When Adam and Eve, the first created, man and woman, disobeyed God and rebelled against him, recorded for us in Genesis chapter 3, by seeking to become equal with God and to rule over their own world and themselves in his place, sin there entered creation and broke Adam and Eve's relationship with God.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

They were cast from God's presence and would now live a life that would be marked by toil and pain.

Again, we read that in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

But what I want you to get today is that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, when they rebelled against God, their sin did not just break their relationship with their creator, it broke creation itself.

This is what Paul would say in Romans chapter 8, verses 19 and 22.

Romans 8:19

He says, For the creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God's sons to be revealed.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him, that's Adam, who subjected it, in the hope that creation itself would also be set free from the bondage to decay and to the glorious freedom of God's children.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.

So, what we read is again, not just that Adam and Eve sinned broke their relationship with their creator, it broke creation itself.

And so now, instead of the perfect shalom that God intended in this earth, we experience pain, we experience suffering, we experience separation and death.

And what Paul tells us in Romans 5.12 is that that same curse that broke Adam and Eve's relationship, that broke creation itself, that same curse of sin has now been passed down to all humanity.

That's what he says there in 5.12, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people because all sinned.

So what does that mean?

Why should understanding that reality of beginning and breaking matter to us?

Well, first, I think it helps us to see that the world we see today, yes, it was created by God, but it's also been broken by sin.

And what that means is that the way things are now are not the way they were created to be.

Let me say that one more time.

The way things are now are not the way they were created to be.

And that is so important because when we see things like cancer, diseases, drought, hurricanes, earthquakes, death, none of that was a part of God's original design.

It all came into the world as a result of the curse of sin.

And so when we look at the world as it is, we make a mistake if we think that's the way it should be.

The world is not what God created it to be, what he intended it to be, and what ultimately it's gonna be again one day.

What we need to understand is that we, humanity, you and I, were created for life, but sin through Adam has brought us death.

We were created for a relationship with God, and yet sin brought us separation, alienation, and exile, so that now we experience a broken relationship with our Creator as well.

We were created innocent, but through the sin of Adam and Eve passed down to us, that sin has brought us guilt, so now we all stand guilty before God.

You see, sin has broken and distorted God's good creation.

This world today, as it is now, is not the way it was created to be.

And we have to understand that because what we're gonna see moving forward is that this didn't take God by surprise.

That God had a plan.

He has always had a plan to redeem not just humanity, but to redeem all of creation from the curse of sin.

And spoiler that plan has always been Jesus.

So I hope you'll come back next week as we dive into the next part of the story and we start to look at shadows and sacrifice, getting hints of what God was up to.