How the story works
The astute reader of the Bible needs to understand that the story of the Bible is being told at three different levels simultaneously. We might envision a movie. First there is the basic plot line: boy meets girl, girl plays hard to get, boy makes a fool of himself to prove his love, and boy gets girl in the end. Micro-ing in we next get another layer to the story. Boy meets girl in college, girl is engaged to another guy, boy sings for girl outside her window in her dorm, girl breaks it off with her boyfriend and marries the foolish lover who has proved himself. The final layer has to do with the details of each scene in the movie that moves the story along.
Classic to the way narrative works then, the story of the story of the Bible is being told at three different levels.
The BIG PICTURE
The basic plot of the story might be called the big picture and has to do with God’s purpose in history through the creation of Humankind, the fall of Humankind, the promise of redemption, the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of the Savior to reestablish the rule of God on earth, the return of the Savior to earth to redeem those who love him from all the peoples of the earth, and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth.
This is the big picture referring to the WHAT of God’s plan. We will not be able to really understand the Bible apart from understanding God’s purpose in history as it is layered underneath each passage and functions as the controlling subtext that drives the story forward.
The STRATEGIC PICTURE
The second layer of understanding to the story might be called the strategic picture and refers to the HOW of God’s plan. God has a purpose – that’s level one. God also has a plan – that’s level two.
God’s strategy to accomplish his plan involves the creation of a nation called Israel, the summing up of that nation in their Messiah, the Savior of the world, and the grafting of all the nations into the people of God through that Messiah. Israel, then, ifunctions as the missionary nation calling each unique culture to take its place in God's global plan.
The DETAILED PICTURE
The last level might be called the detailed picture. This level refers to all the rest of the Bible’s stories that flesh out the big and strategic pictures of of the narrative. It is here one finds the flood of Noah, the felling of the walls of Jericho, Elijah calling down fire from heaven, the annunciation to Mary, the multiplication of the bread and fish, the cleansing of the temple, and angel appearing at the empty tomb, and so many more. Without a larger context to understand them, these remain as they have for so many generations of believers, just a great set of stories. Understood within a greater scheme, however, how rich they become! Indeed, I will go so far as to say that it is not really possible to interpret them without understanding how they fit into the larger story.
David and Goliath
Take for instance the story of David and Goliath. In the Detailed Picture one might think that this story is about doing impossible things through God’s power, and yes, this might be one of the applications of this story. But seen within the other contexts of Scripture, it means so much more!
When seen in light of the Strategic Picture, however, one can see that this is a story about the man God would use to finally establish Israel in the land of Canaan as the people of God for the sake of the world. David was the only Israelite that understood that Goliath's curses against Israel should be understood in light of the promise that God had made to Abram when He said, “I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse” (Gen. 12.3). As Goliath stood against Israel he was standing against God's plan to redeem the world.
When seen within the Big Picture, one might see here that David is a type of Christ fulfilling God’s plan for Israel to image him before the nations and to cut off the devil's head to bring redemption for the world.
The metanarrative
One of the current definitions of the new, emerging, postmodern worldview is that there is no one, overarching human story, often called a "metanarrative." It is believed that the accounts of every people group concerning their gods and their worldviews are equally valid. The Bible teaches, as we shall see, that there is ONE God who created the heavens and the earth and that this ONE God is guiding human history strategically toward its ultimate goal with ONE Plan and ONE Story.
The ultimate goal of NothinsGonnaStopIt! is to help people know what God is up to in history to help them better understand the Bible and know where they fit in what C.S. Lewis has called "the great dance" of human history.
The strategy is to tell the story in new and fresh way in one weekend. We can’t really understand the meaning of a scene in the movie until we’ve seen the movie all the way through at least once!
