Isn't She Beautiful - Day 1 - Session 2

Narrative Theology and How We Read the Bible

The Bible as more than a self help book. It’s a living beautiful story. A story that continues in our midst. What is our role in this story. We need to know God’s story well if we are to be a part of it.

Dead Poet’s Society.

N.T. Wright – “The Last Word”, or a shorter “How Can the Bible be Authoritative?”
What if a new Shakespearean play was found but it was incomplete? Would we archive it or find the best scholars get together and finish it?

Scripture as a 5 Act play
I. Creation
II. The Fall
III. Israel
IV. Jesus
V. Church mission
a. At the end of the 5th Act is a New Creation (or a 6th Act)

What we need to do is immerse ourselves in the first 4 Acts and know it so well that we can continue and finish the 5th Act.

We unfortunately begin the story with the Fall. However there is a Creation before the Fall. When we root ourselves in Creation then we look forward to the new Creation started in Jesus.

Tacum Alam – the healing of God

Relationships –
At the core, to be in the image of God is to be in relationship. God has always been in relationship with himself, (Trinity)
We’re to be in relationship with:
1) God
2) Others
3) Ourselves
4) Creation

Genesis 1:26, 2:15;
Reflecting God, being in His image.
God gives us an identity (image) and a mission (cultivation; all those relationships).
God gave orders:
1) be fruitful and multiply
2) fill the earth (read the Tower of Babel; was the problem that they were building the tower? Or that they were gathering in one place and not filling the earth?) then in New Testament (go to all the world), but the disciples gather in Jerusalem but in Acts 8 there is persecution and the disciples are scattered.
3) Stewards of the earth (Hebrew for Adam/man is adama)
4) Sabbath
5) The Tree

The Fall – the serpent enters and Adam and Eve believe a lie. They didn’t believe that their role was good enough. They believed that there was something better. “That we may contribute a verse.” What is our verse?

Genesis 3:8 – 13, 15 (reference to Jesus, image of hope), 21 (their fig leaf coverings were not enough; so God made them garments of skin. The first death in history. A covering made by a sacrifice.)

Movement of sins destruction –
Individual – society – animal kingdom – earth
Abraham and his people are blessed to be a blessing in the same movement as sin.

God wants to dwell among his people.

Identity and mission –
At Sinai God calls his people a treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. Blessed to be a blessing.
Luke 4 – Jesus reads Isaiah. He knows his identity and out of that declared his mission. The cross was a symbol of terror and death and murder and Jesus changed it to a symbol of hope and redemption.

New Creation –
Colossians 1:19 – the fullness of him who is all things in all ways.

Find where God is at work in the word where we live and join in with Him, no matter who is leading that force. (my own thoughts)

be fruitful and multiply does not only refer to Christian marriage, but also for a single individual to go out into all the world and make disciples.

Resources –
“The Drama of Scripture”. Bartholomew and Goheen
“Engaging God’s World”. Cornelius Plantinga
“Simply Christian”. N.T. Wright
“Heaven is a Place on Earth”. Michael E. Wittmer
“For the Beauty of the Earth”. Steven Bouma-Prediger
“Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals”. William J. Webb
“Truth is Stranger Than It Used To Be”. Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat
“How Can the Bible be Authoritative?”. N.T. Wright, www.ntwrightpage.com