Once you understand that the Bible is one grand story that runs from start to finish, individual passages settle into place. The storyline runs from creation to new creation…it is the chronicle of God’s astonishing plan to save the world from its rebellion against Him.

The One Epic Story of the Bible

Have you ever put your music on “shuffle”? Shuffle mode is great for music because most of the time, unless you’re listening to a Broadway musical or something, songs are self-contained. That means you can jump from track 3 to track 17 to a whole different album and not miss anything. But imagine taking your favorite movie, breaking it into minute-long sections, and then playing the movie on shuffle—sixty seconds from the middle, then sixty from the end, then sixty from the opening credits. That leads to nothing but chaos! But why? Well, it’s because a movie isn’t just a collection of unrelated bits. It is a story. It begins, develops, and finally resolves. Themes are developed, characters are introduced, and their lives are traced, and the result is that one minute follows after another until you have a fully developed story.

The Bible is like that. It’s not a random anthology of inspiring bits that you can read in any order. It’s a single, sweeping narrative about how the living God makes and keeps his promises to save sinners. And yet the irony is that, for most Christians, the only way they have been taught to read the Bible is by putting it on shuffle. They read a little bit today from the Old Testament, and then a little bit tomorrow from the New Testament, and always tack on a bit from the Psalms or Proverbs at the end of each day. I am convinced that is part of the reason why so many Christians think the Bible is opaque, or too difficult, or have a difficult time grasping its beauty. It’s because we read it on shuffle rather than as an epic story.

Once you understand, though, that the Bible is one grand story that runs from start to finish, individual passages settle into place. The storyline runs from creation to new creation: God creates the world and puts humanity over it, as his image-bearers, to rule under him (Gen. 1:26–28). Humans rebel against God’s authority (Gen. 3). God promises a deliverer, a coming King who will one day crush the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). And then, through the rest of the Bible, God works out that plan, choosing Abraham and promising blessing to all nations through his offspring (Gen. 12:1–3; 22:18), choosing Israel to be his people and promising that a great King and Savior would rise up out of them. Then, in “the fullness of time,” that promised King arrives—Jesus the Messiah—who dies for his people’s sins, rises from the dead, and promises to return to reign forever (Gal. 4:4; 1 Cor. 15:3–4; Rev. 11:15).

Once you grasp that storyline, the Bible comes alive. It is no longer just a collection of fables and wisdom sayings that can help you have a better week. All of a sudden, it is the chronicle of God’s astonishing plan to save the world from its rebellion against him. Even more, within that story, you can trace dozens of themes that develop as the story unfolds. I want to introduce you to two of them, two themes that run like golden threads from the very beginning to the very end of the biblical storyline: Kingship and Substitutionary Sacrifice.

Kingship—Who Will Rule God’s World?

The Bible opens with God giving his newly created humans a royal assignment. He tells them, “Let us make man in our image . . . and let them have dominion” (Gen. 1:26). In other words, humanity is commissioned to rule under God, to reflect his character and extend his wise order through the created world. Therefore, when Adam and Eve sin against God by breaking his law, that is not just breaking a rule; it’s an attempted coup against the kingship and rule of God (Gen. 3). And so for the rest of the Bible, the great question becomes, Who will rightly bear the crown?

God answers that question, though somewhat mysteriously, in Genesis 3:15. Speaking to the serpent, he promises, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” That’s a promise that reverberates with royal meaning. In time, God would send a new king, one who would do what Adam should have done in the first place–destroy the serpent forever.

From that point, the promise of a saving king drives the story of the Bible. The promises narrow first to a great family and then to a single tribe. So Jacob prophesies, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah . . . and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples” (Gen. 49:10). Centuries later, the promises come to rest in a covenant that God makes with King David: “I will raise up your offspring after you . . . and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Sam. 7:12–13). For the next centuries, through heartbreak, rebellion, and exile, the psalms and prophets keep that hope alive: “I have set my King on Zion” (Ps. 2:6); “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end . . . on the throne of David” (Isa. 9:7). Even when Israel’s monarchy collapses and the people are carried away into slavery, the promise doesn’t fail. The King is still coming—righteous, humble, and saving: “Behold, your king is coming to you” (Zech. 9:9).

Finally, in a backwater town in the north of Israel, an angel announces that the time has come. Speaking to a young virgin named Mary, he says, “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

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