Figuring Out God’s Story
Author: Stan Guthrie
June 01, 2023
Last year, Dr. Jerry Root preached a great sermon from the NCC pulpit entitled “All Scripture Is Inspired by God.” In it, Jerry challenged us to read the Bible daily if we weren’t already doing so, pointing out that this discipline is very doable, and very rewarding from a spiritual standpoint. I took Jerry up on his challenge and can affirm both points.
Using a YouVersion Bible reading plan available on our website (downloadable to your smartphone), over the last year I found that most days it only takes about 10 or 15 minutes to go through a designated reading. And while I can’t say I have seen dramatic spiritual changes because of this discipline alone, I do sense an accumulating grasp of God’s Word along with a slowly developing spiritual maturity on a number of fronts, especially with some personal challenges I have been facing. Truly, God’s Word is “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
Still, reading the Bible is a huge challenge in today’s incredibly busy and distracted post-COVID society—even for Christians. According to the American Bible Society’s annual State of the Bible report, in 2021, about 50 percent of Americans said they read the Bible on their own an underwhelming total of at least three or four times per year. By 2022, the share of Bible readers even at this modest level had dropped by a full 11 points—to 39 percent. The ABS reported that, to its shock, about 26 million people had mostly or completely stopped reading the Bible. Those who read the Bible daily plunged from 14 percent to a mere 10 percent of the population.
John Plake, lead researcher for the American Bible Society, wrote in the 2022 report, “What we discovered was startling, disheartening, and disruptive.” It’s tragic, especially when there are so many benefits to be gained from Bible reading.
One of the problems for this neglect of God’s Word, even among Christians, is that many of us believe that the Scriptures are hard to understand, and not without some biblical warrant. But the challenges of scriptural hermeneutics don’t cancel our calling to study the Bible and live it out. We have a wealth of scriptural resources to help us do just that.
Several years ago, I wrote one of them, a book called God’s Story in 66 Verses: Understand the Entire Bible by Focusing on Just One Verse in Each Book. If you’re struggling with understanding the message of God’s Word, perhaps my book will help you.
Here is the first chapter:
CHAPTER 1
Genesis 15:6
He believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
THE BIBLE STARTS NOT WITH ADAM AND EVE BUT WITH THE LORD, who creates the universe (Gen. 1:1), setting up the natural (1:3–31) and moral laws (2:16–17) to govern it. Our first parents, however, listen to the serpent and reject God’s law in favor of their own (3:1–6), plunging the world and the human race into a cycle of sin and death that continues to this day (3:7–19). But the Lord graciously provides an animal sacrifice to cover our sin (3:21). This comes in the context of God’s promise of an ultimate Savior who will fatally crush the serpent’s head while sustaining a painful wound to himself (3:15).
Pursuing this plan, the Lord saves a reprobate human race (“every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” [6:5]) from ultimate destruction in the Flood by providing an ark for Noah and his family (6:6–8). After scattering a dangerously proud humanity at the Tower of Babel (11:1–9), the Lord gets specific in how he will save us. He calls Abram from the pagan land of Babylonia into Canaan, the land bridge of the ancient world, to “bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing” (12:2). Part of God’s promise to Abram, who is an old man without an heir, is the provision of offspring as numerous as the stars in the night sky (15:3–5). Abram responds in faith: “He believed the Lord, and [the Lord] counted it to him as righteousness” (15:6).
It is a pivotal moment in the history of salvation, revealing how God graciously deals with his people. The verse and all subsequent salvation history make clear that people are counted righteous by a holy God not on the basis of their good works but on their trusting faith in him. The book of Hebrews says,
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. (11:8–10)
And God is faithful to his promise to Abraham, providing Isaac as his son (Gen. 21–22) and Jacob and Esau as his grandsons (25). Jacob is a scoundrel who, despite God’s promised blessing, cheats his older brother, Esau, out of his birthright (25) and is forced to flee from the promised land, acquiring wives, children, and wealth (28–31). Jacob returns to the land, wrestles with God, and is a changed man (32), finally making peace with Esau (33).
One of Jacob’s sons is the precocious and self-confident Joseph, who alienates his jealous, cutthroat brothers and is sold into slavery in Egypt (37). Joseph, with God’s hand of blessing, rises to political prominence in Egypt (39–41). Back in Canaan, his brothers are forced by a killer drought to head for Egypt (42:1–5), where Joseph welcomes them (42–50). God has placed Joseph as second in command in Egypt for their protection (50:20). Their descendants, as evidence of God’s promise to Abraham, grow into a mighty nation, presenting a strategic problem for Egypt, which eventually will send them back to the land promised to Abraham.
Abraham’s faith, credited to him and his descendants as righteousness, is amply rewarded in the history of God’s people, who grow into a dynamic kingdom that points the nations to God. When that kingdom falters through the people’s unbelief, God remains faithful to them, eventually sending Israel’s ultimate King, Jesus Christ. Abraham’s faith, credited to him as righteousness, is also a model for the faith in Christ that is required to be in a saving relationship with God:
No unbelief made [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. (Rom. 4:20–25)
As our key verse shows, salvation comes through faith—to Abraham and to us.
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If my book doesn’t stir your interest, find something that does. Choose a good evangelical book, commentary, devotional, or encyclopedia. Join a growth group. Try a new Bible translation. Go to your pastor or a wise Christian friend with your questions—chances are, they have been asked (and answered) before. And read, read, read.
But whatever you do, ask and you shall receive.
Stan Guthrie, NCC’s minister of communications, is author or coauthor of seven books, including God’s Story in 66 Verses.
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