A Synopsis of the Bible in 1200 Words

Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? How should we live?  These are some of the most fundamental philosophical questions of humankind.  We can find the answers in the Bible.  The Bible is God’s story, the God of all Creation, the one and only living God, Yahweh.  God chooses to tell His story, and the story of us as His Creation, through humans inspired by His Holy Spirit, the authors of the Bible. 

God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them including humans, which He made in His image.  After He created, He gave order and functions to all of it.  God created humans to be in intimate relationship with Him while they live on the earth, the functional habitat God created for humans, and cultivate it, and be creative and fruitful.  In Genesis 1 and 2, Adam and Eve only had knowledge of good, not evil.  God allowed them a choice to know evil though, but told them that out of obedience to Him and for their own good they should not choose it because to do so would mean spiritual separation from God and lead to spiritual death.  But our great adversary, Satan, tempted Eve with disobedience by causing doubt and distorting God’s Words. So she made the choice to know evil and shared that with Adam who also chose to know evil.  Through their actions, all of humankind is now born knowing evil.  Knowing evil causes humans to sin and corrupts their hearts, and causes a deep separation between them and God, who cannot be in intimate relationship with anyone whose heart chooses evil and sin.  To be cut off from God, our source of love, good, and life, is to wither away into hate, evil and death (first spiritual then physical).

God knew that the evil and sin in our hearts would cause us to drift farther away from Him, not ever closer, so we are told that His great plan is to restore our intimate relationship with Him – all by His efforts alone (not ours which is broken) and with patient mercy to woo us back to choose Him. 

We see this plan begin with one ordinary man, Abraham, called out by God to become a model nation to the rest of the world with the beginnings of a restored relationship with Him. Through this story of Abraham’s line, and contrasted to those outside of it, God uses times of great suffering brought on by evil now rampant in the world, to draw this nation, His people, to choose Him, the only true source of Good (all other good found in Creation is only a dim reflection of its Creator). 

Through the covenant at Sinai, God tells His people how they should live – by loving and looking only to Him, by treating others as God’s image bearers with utmost respect, love and care (whether they are faithful to Him or not), and by living in the bountiful land He has provided for them. When they failed to do these things, or found themselves in circumstances that the decay of evil put their bodies in, God gave them rituals to atone for those sins so that they could still be in His Presence. These rituals called for proper worship, obedience to Him, and the shedding of an animal’s lifeblood in place of our own.  If His people kept this covenant, God would give them great blessings, His Presence would remain with them, and they would continue to live in the land.  If they did not keep it, God would discipline them like any good parent. God knew however that the pull of evil and selfishness would forever be too great, and the leadership would not lead His people to stay faithful to Him alone, so the next part of His plan He reveals is that He will raise up for us a perfect and everlasting king, to come through Abraham’s line which so far had brought us only one faithful human king in David.

As His people spiral down and away from God in spite of His abundant grace and prolonged discipline, God sends many prophets to the kings of Israel and Judah to remind them of the covenant, urge them to repent and turn back to God, and give them hope for a restored future under this perfect and everlasting king.  Though His people completely fail, and the Sinai Covenant is broken and the people are exiled from the land, God still preserves a faithful remnant of His people while in exile as they wait expectantly and hopefully for over 400 years for this coming perfect and everlasting king.  This is where the current day Jews remain, forever attempting to faithfully follow God’s Law on their own power, waiting for God’s Presence to return when they do whatever that elusive “right” thing is left to do, and waiting for this promised king (socio-economic of the land) to come. 

This is also where we Christians dwell every Advent season, however we now have the joyful knowledge from the New Testament of the Bible that this perfect and everlasting king - who will faithfully lead the believing portion of the remnant in His now landless and borderless kingdom through a new and everlasting covenant - has already arrived! 

This kingdom of God, as lead by King Jesus, God’s own Son from heaven, will show the rest of the hurting world who God is and how to be His people by living out the principles given to His people in the Sinai Covenant, but now also given God’s power and presence in their hearts through the Holy Spirit to keep it.  This king didn’t just come to rule His people (and fulfilling the covenant made with David), He came to atone for our sins by shedding His own lifeblood on our behalf.  He took all of the Father's discipline we deserved on His own shoulders.  In these things God has fulfilled both sides the Sinai Covenant for us!

His kingdom will reign while His people mature in their faith while still struggling with corrupting evil and sin in their hearts and the great Adversary still prowls the earth distorting these truths and our understanding of them and tempting all people away from God.  This kingdom ruled by King Jesus is meant to show the rest of the world who God is and who we were made to be through not yet perfect humans and not yet perfect leaders, and gives the whole world their chance to acknowledge Him, repent and turn their hearts back to God and enter the kingdom as well. 

But God didn’t stop there with our life on earth, as the Jews understood it.  With the New Covenant, Jesus also brought the news of His resurrection from His atoning death.  A resurrection to eternal life with God in His kingdom, for all those in the kingdom!  As foretold by the inspired prophets and apostles, eventually Jesus will return to earth to complete the restoration– of the corrupted earth, of our corrupted hearts by casting out evil and sin, of our heavenly purpose of eternally living in intimacy with God and others and cultivating the new earth and being creative and fruitful, as we were always created to be – but even more so now that we all have chosen to be there! Come Lord Jesus! Amen!  Do you believe?