Bible Story From Beginning To End

Introduction

Well, good morning to everyone. It is really wonderful to see you. I’m going to jump right into the lesson because we’ve got quite a lesson to cover today. I want to talk to you today about the story of the entire Bible from beginning to end in one lesson. You might say, well, why would you want to preach on the message of the whole Bible in one lesson? Well, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I want us to see that it is a flowing story. That the stories contained within the Bible are not just random stories, but that they all are connected together into this one overall story. And so it’s a one-story flowing narrative. That I think is pretty amazing. Another reason why I want to preach this is to help to increase our faith, to help us to see that the Bible was written by 40 men over a period of 1,500 years, and yet those men put together with these 66 books, not only a united message, but a united flowing story.

And so what I want you to do is simply to be in awe of the glory in the mind of God in coming up with this plan of redemption that I’m about to make an effort to lay before you.

1. The Seed of Woman Will Crush Satan’s Head

And you know, they had everything they needed. This was paradise. There was no sin, there was no harm. There was nothing to be sad about. And there weren’t any rules except for one. And that was God said, Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Well, they abided by that for however long until one day Satan appeared in the form of the serpent and said to the woman, indeed, as God said, you cannot eat from any of the trees in the garden. She said, Oh, we can eat from the trees in the garden, but from the tree that is in the midst of the garden, in the middle of the garden, God said, Don’t eat from it, don’t even touch it, or you will surely die.

Satan said, You will not die. God knows that in the day you eat of it, you’ll be like him, knowing good and evil. So she thought about it. Boy, this fruit. She thought it would taste good. It looked appealing to her eye, and she wanted to be wise like God, so she took of it, and she ate and committed the first sin of any human being. And she gave to her husband. And he did the very same thing. And then God was walking in the garden in the cool of the day. But Adam and Eve were hiding because they knew they were naked now and had made loin coverings for themselves. God said to the man, Where were you? And I just kind of picture Adam coming out from behind the bushes and saying, I was afraid because I was naked.

And so I hid myself. Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of that tree, which I commanded you not to eat? And he blamed it on the woman. And the woman blamed it on the serpent. And that’s a lesson that we need to accept responsibility for what we’ve done and not pass the buck to someone else, which is exactly what they did. So God had some, he had some curses to give to Adam and Eve, and he had some things to say to Satan before that. One of the things that God said to Satan is actually a wonderful prophecy in Genesis chapter 3 and in verse 15. When he said, And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.

He, that is the seed of woman, shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel. Now the word translated bruise in a lot of our versions is a word that actually means in the Hebrew crush. And so we’re talking here about a crushing blow. That one day there would be a human being, there would be someone that would descend from Eve that would deal a crushing blow to the head of Satan. And in a way, this is a thesis statement for all the rest of the Bible. So we come back to our narrative. We have Cain and Abel, two children of Adam and Eve. Cain slew his righteous brother, Abel. And so what the Bible’s going to do is follow the lineage from Eve all the way till we get to that one who will crush Satan’s head.

But it’s not going to be through Cain. It’s not going to be through Abel now. It’s going to be through another son of Adam and Eve, and that is Seth. So Adam, Seth, Enosh, Canaan, Mahalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah. We get all the way to Noah. And you all know what the world was like in the days of Noah. In the days of Noah, every thought of man’s heart was only evil continually. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And so God told him, What I’m going to do is I’m going to destroy everything that breeze. I’m angry about all of this sin. I’m sorry that I made man. And so he told him to build an ark. This ark was huge.

A football field and a half long. Can you picture that? Imagine sitting in a football field, and it won’t even contain the length of this ark. A football field and a half long. Three decks high, plenty large enough to contain two of every kind of animal, and seven of every kind of clean animal. So Noah and his wife, his three sons, and their three wives, eight people in all, and the animals were to be in this ark, and God closed the door of the ark. And then you cannot even imagine how violent what happened came. The fountains of the great of the deep, they burst forth. Rain poured from the skies relentlessly for 40 days straight. Hard to really imagine that. And water covered the surface of the entire planet.

Well, after the rain stopped, they couldn’t get out of the ark. They were in the ark for a year and ten days in total. After the ark had rested on Mount Ararat, Noah and his family came out of the ark. Now I’m going to fast forward the narrative a little bit. Noah’s descendants gradually migrate down into this plain, and they build a city. And they are building there this tower of Babel. This is in the plain of Shinar between the Tigris and Euphrates River in Mesopotamia. And they’re building this tower to make a name for themselves, to build it high up into the heavens. That is high up into the skies. It was a skyscraper. And the point of this is, you know, nothing could stop us now.

2. Three Promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

They had one language, they were one nation, and God didn’t want that. And so God had told Adam and told Noah to multiply and fill the earth. And so now God scatters these people by dividing their languages. And so they multiply, and they spread from there and they multiply and eventually fill the earth. Well, we we go all the way from Noah through his son Shem, Shem, Arphakhshad, Shela, Eber, Peleg, Ryu, Se Rug, Nahor, Tirah, Abram. Now, Abram, we know as Abraham, because that’s what he was called toward the end of his life. And so Abraham and his son Isaac and his son Jacob are what you might call the three patriarchs, these father rulers. And God made three promises to all three of these men.

The land promise that one day their descendants would inherit this land flowing with milk and honey. The nation promise that one day their descendants would actually become a great nation. And the seed promise, or the Savior promise, or the spiritual promise, however you want to say it. And this was that as God said to Abraham in Genesis 12 and in verse 3 in you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. And as the Lord said through the angel of the Lord in Genesis 22 and in verse 18, in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. And Paul tells us in Galatians 3 and verse 16 that the seed here is not speaking of many, but as of one. So we’re talking here about a promise of one man that’s going to come from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

3. Joseph, the Exodus, and the Law

And who is going to bless the whole world? Again, we could take that passage, and the rest of the Bible is telling us how that comes true, basically. This is going to be the same man that’s going to crush Satan’s head. Now, so we talked about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Now Jacob had twelve sons. His favorite son was Joseph. Now, Joseph was special. His father gave him a coat of many colors, this very colored tunic. And his brothers were jealous of Joseph, and long story short, they decided to sell him to Ishmaelite traders that were going down in Egypt. Well, these slave traders took him down into Egypt, and to make another long story short, eventually Joseph was made second in power in all of Egypt. Now, sometimes in the moment of life’s struggles and the darkest hours we might endure, we might not see the light of the end of the tunnel.

We might not see the picture that God has in mind. We only see the moment. But you look at Joseph and you see that God had a plan. And sometimes when things look bad, they can end up end up being a very grand and great thing, all for the purpose and the glory of God. And so that’s what happened to Joseph. Now eventually, he receives his brothers. He forgives his brothers. How could he forgive such a horrific thing that they did? And this is really a foreshadowing of the gospel. That it is, it is a it is a gospel of forgiveness. And so he moves his brothers and his whole family, even his father, down to Egypt. And so this in the wisdom of God was a way to grow this nation so that it might not get diluted into the surrounding nations.

The Egyptians wouldn’t even eat with them, much less intermarry with them. And so several hundred years later, we have a time where now the Israelites are made slaves. There are many Israelites, and the Pharaoh at that time was afraid of them and decided to make them slaves. And so it was at such a time as this that Moses was born. When Moses was eighty years old, I’m skipping a lot, but remember I’m doing the whole Bible in one lesson. Usually I do it in a 45 minute segment, but I’m trying to limit that a little bit more even today. So when Moses was 80 years old on Mount Horeb, God appears to him in the form of a burning bush, or speaks to him from that burning bush, I should say.

And tells him to go to Pharaoh and to tell him to let my people go. So Moses and his brother Aaron, they confront Pharaoh. God has said, Let my people go. And Pharaoh must be the most stubborn man that you could ever think of. And he would not let the people go, even after each plague, and so water to blood, frogs, lice, flies, pestilence, boils, hell, locusts, darkness, and finally death of the firstborn. And even Pharaoh’s own firstborn dies. And so he finally says, get out. And so Moses gets out. He exits. And we have the exodus. And the problem is there’s a sea that separates them from Egypt and where they’re planning on going. So that’s no problem for God. He just makes the sea part.

And they cross over on dry ground. And now they are in the wilderness. And instead of going straight to the land flowing with milk and honey, they go down first to Mount Horeb, to Mount Sinai. And it is there where the Lord appeared to Moses. And it is there where they are now going to receive the law. And so they receive the law of Moses and they become the people of God. And they leave Sinai and they head up toward the edge of the promised land, Canaan. They get to a city called Kadesh Barnea, and they send in the spies. Remember the twelve spies? What’s the land like? The land is beautiful. What are the people like? They’re big and scary. We can’t take them. But they’ve got God on their side.

That’s what Joshua and Caleb said. We can do this. There were two of the two of the ten, I mean, two of the twelve. But the fear of the other ten spread like a cancer throughout the whole congregation of the Israelites. Well, we can’t do it. Let’s appoint a leader and go back to Egypt. Oh, oh, I just wish we had died in the wilderness. God says, You want to die in the wilderness? I can make arrangements for that. And so 40 years they’re going to live until they die in the wilderness. What about our children? Well, don’t worry about your children. They’ll be just fine. They’ll be the ones that enter the land. So 40 years we have the wandering in the wilderness. This is really a dark time in the history of God’s people.

And so when we get to the end of that 40 years, toward the end, we have the speeches that are in the book of Deuteronomy, where Moses is reminding the people of the law of God and telling them not to fall away from the living God. And then he dies on the top of Mount Nebo, being allowed to view the land, but not being able to go into the land because he had committed a grievous sin in the wilderness. And so after Moses dies, then we have a new leader, one of those original twelve spies. You know who it was. It was Joshua. And so Joshua takes over leadership and they enter the land and they take the enemies. And this is one of the most exciting parts of the whole Bible.

4. Judges, Kings, and the Promise to David

We have such stories as the defeat of Jericho with these impenetrable walls. Well, that’s no problem for God. God makes the walls just crumble. And the people go in and take the enemy. We have Joshua commanding the son to stand still for about a day. We have multiple kings coming out to battle in the northern portion of the land. But the victory is the Lord’s. Because if the Lord’s on your side, there’s no challenge too great to overcome. So it’s an exciting part of the Bible, but it leads to another dark period. Because Judges 2 and verse 10 tells us that after Joshua died, and after that generation that outlived him died, there arose another generation after them which did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which he had done for Israel.

And you know why? It’s because the parents were not teaching their children. We need to be teaching our children. So this generation that did not know the Lord, they uh they were sinful, and the enemies that were still left in the land, because they weren’t all weeded out yet, would persecute them. And then the people of God would repent and they would cry out for help, and God would deliver them by giving them the judges. And the idea of the judges, these were deliverers. That’s the idea. And in a way, this is an exciting part of the Bible because we have a lot of battling and carnage. And some of you might think that’s kind of exciting. You know, you had Gideon and his army of uh eventually only 300 that went and defeated an innumerable host of Midianites.

You had Samson with his long hair, who in his tremendous strength was able to do things that are unimaginable, like with the jawbone of a donkey kill a thousand Philistines, and uh he was able to uproot the gates of Gaza and set them up on a high hill and so forth. Exciting stories, but really a dark time because the people of God weren’t very faithful in this time at all. In the days of Samuel, who was the last judge, the people come to him and they say, We don’t want judges anymore. We want a king. And so God gave them what they wanted. And we have the beginning of the kingdom of Israel. And the first king was King Saul. King Saul was foolish. King Saul would serve the Lord only as long as it was on the way.

You know, some people are that way. They’ll serve the Lord as long as it’s on the way, as long as it’s convenient, as long as it’s not against the stream. But if it ever went against the stream, he wasn’t going to serve the Lord. Well, after Saul, David was king. Now, David was a man after God’s own heart. We all know that. He was a good man, but he was also a man of great sin. You know, sinners. God has called. You might say, I’ve done too many bad things, I can’t do this. But you know what? God forgave David because he always repented. And he used David, and he can use you. No matter what bad things you might have done. We’ve all done bad things.

And so, because David was a good man, God promised to him through Nathan the prophet in 2 Samuel chapter 7. Now, when your days are complete, and when you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. Now, on the surface, that applies to Solomon, because Solomon was David’s son, who would build a house, a temple. But this forever kingdom part. I mean, that didn’t happen on earth. It couldn’t happen unless you had a forever king. And so this is a prophecy that would apply to the same man that was going to crush Satan’s head and the same seed of Abraham, through whom all the world was going to be blessed.

5. Divided Kingdom, Captivity, and 400 Years of Silence

So this is another key prophecy to keep in mind. After David, his son Solomon becomes king, and uh he has a lot of wisdom, tremendous wisdom, but he doesn’t really use it for the glory of God. He turns to idolatry. And as a result of his idolatry, after he dies, the kingdom is torn into two parts. And the kingdom was torn away from Solomon’s son. And so we have Israel in the north that departed, and then we have Judah in the south. Now these two kingdoms coexisted for about 200 years. The northern kingdom clung to idolatry from the very beginning and never turned away from that idolatry. In fact, you know, they didn’t have a single good king in the north. You think of, for example, Ahab.

Who, as I tell the kids, Ahab was a really bad wife picker. He picked Jezebel as a wife. Notice that nobody ever names their child Jezebel. Or Ahab, for that matter. Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbel, king of the Sidonians. They even had Baal in their names. And so Baal worship, through her influence, became the state religion. And how did you carry out Baal worship? Fornication. Imagine that. This is how far the people of God had come. It’s terrible. And so God was fed up. And he took the northern kingdom out of the land by the nation of Assyria. And this leaves Judah alone in the land for about 135 years more. And so here’s Judah. Judah has been more faithful. Judah had some good kings.

But ultimately, there’s enough wickedness that God has had it. And he decides to also take Judah out of the land. And this is the period that we call the Babylonian captivity. This was a time where none of God’s people essentially were in the land. Both kingdoms now were out of the land. But this wouldn’t last forever because Jeremiah had prophesied that it would last for 70 years. And so after 70 years of Babylonian captivity, a remnant returned to the land. Through the issue of Cyrus, the king of Persia. And only 50,000 returned in that first return. You might think it should have been more. More had the opportunity, but they were comfortable. They didn’t want to do the things of God. Has that become our life?

We become comfortable where we are. We don’t want to go back to the ways of God. But you had some, you had this remnant that returned. The first order of business was to rebuild the temple. And so eventually that was done. And then what about the walls? So Nehemiah comes to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. And, you know, you might say, well, that’s a good good time there in the period of God’s people. But in a way, you know, they rebuilt the temple and rebuilt the walls, but they really didn’t ultimately rebuild their hearts. They returned to the land, but ultimately did not really return to the Lord. Because it was through Malachi, the last prophet in the Old Testament, that God basically said, especially to the leadership, you have failed to reverence me.

And essentially, I have nothing more to say until the messenger of the covenant comes in whom is all my delight. That same one we’ve been talking about all along. And so we have 400 years of silence, where you had the rise and fall of nations. Medo-Persia falls to Greece, Greece falls to Rome. It would be in the days of Rome that that one who was prophesied would come. Because in Daniel 2 and verse 44, it says, in the days of those kings, the kings of Rome, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom, which will not be left for another people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever. And so Galatians 4 and verse 4 tells us that this was the fullness of the times that God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

6. Jesus Christ Comes: The Climax

And so this is the climax. Jesus Christ comes into the world. John 1 1 says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And verse 14 says the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. Glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. What would a human be like if, or rather put it this way, what would God be like if he got to come down and be a human? Well, we already know. Because that was Jesus. God in the flesh, the Son of God. And he lived a perfect life. And when he began his ministry at about age 30, it was a beautiful thing. He proved that he was the Son of God.

He didn’t just tell people he was a son of God. He did miracles. He healed people, he cast out demons. He did things that could not be denied. That he was indeed who he said he was. Jesus reached out to people that nobody else would reach out to. Do you imitate that? Jesus forgave people that nobody else would forgive. Do you imitate that? Jesus patiently and lovingly guided his apostles as their faith slowly but surely grew and he would send them out into the whole world. Jesus disproved the arguments of his enemies with wisdom that was irrefutable. And he showed us the glory of the Father as a human being. He came to his own, but his own received him not. And they put him, the Lord of heaven, on a tree, on a cross.

When you think about the fact that, yes, God created the world, but he created the world through Jesus. Hebrews 1 and verse 2 at the end of that verse makes that point. And you think about the point that Jesus is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature and upholds all things by the word of his power. This is the one through whom God created the world. He upholds all things by the word of his power.

You think about the fact that he made that wood, he made those nails, he made these people that were spitting on him. What humility.

He came and became a bond servant. And he gave himself to the point of death, even the death of the cross, which is not only the most painful way to die, but the most humiliating way to die. Here was the Son of God that died between two thieves and was perceived as being a sinner and died on a cross. Well, he was buried like a king in a tomb that no one had ever been buried in. And on the third day, on a Sunday, he raised from the dead. And this is the miracle that proves that the message of God is true. The other ones are important too, but this is the key miracle. And he appeared to many witnesses. And after 40 days on the earth, he ascends to the right hand of God.

Therefore, God has also highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Has it ever hit you? Have you ever realized that everyone who has ever lived is going to be a believer eventually. They’re all going to bow the knee. It’s just a matter of when are they going to do it. Will you do it now? Or are you going to only do it when you have no choice? Make the choice to do it now. Jesus is the hope of the world.

His death, burial, and resurrection is the climax of the whole Bible. It is the centerpiece of all human and divine history. And it is the centerpiece of our life. Jesus is our life, as Greg was making the point earlier. We see three key prophecies fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus is that seed of woman that crushed Satan’s head. As it was prophesied in Genesis 3 and verse 15. Hebrews 2 and verse 14 tells us that by death he might destroy him who had the power of death. That is the devil. And that crushing blow was dealt on the cross. This is the seed of Abraham, through whom all the world is blessed. Because now the whole world, every nation has the offer of eternal salvation through the grace of our Lord and Savior.

This is the descendant of David who is sitting at the right hand. And that happened after he was raised from the dead, as Peter makes the point in Acts chapter 2 and verses 30 and 31. All of these passages were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Well, Jesus died not only to free us from sin, and not only to save our souls, and as a substitute for our suffering, which we deserved, and he died the death for us. But he also died to nail to the cross the law of commandments contained in ordinances. And to establish a new covenant, and to establish his church. And so Acts chapter 2 records for us that Peter preached and told the people repent and be baptized, and you will be saved.

And so that day 3,000 souls were baptized. Have you ever thought about the fact that this is the only time in history when the local church and the universal church were the same? And so the church continued to grow and spread. And we have the journeys of Paul who took the gospel into places it had never been before. Even under severe persecution, the church continued to grow. And we’re a part of this whole plan today. This story is the plan of redemption. This is the plan of salvation, brethren. You know, really, the plan of salvation isn’t hear, believe, repent, confess, be baptized. Those are the conditions of salvation, and in a way, that is the plan of salvation. But the plan of redemption is the story of God reaching out to man throughout the history of the world.

Conclusion

And which we can read about in the pages of the Bible. The story of the Bible is essentially the story of Jesus. Tell me the story of Jesus, as we sang earlier. And ultimately, this is all to the glory of God. And I want us to be in awe of that great story. You know, as I said, this story is not over. We do not yet see all things subjected unto Christ. The last enemy that will be defeated and put under Christ’s feet is death. So he is still subjecting all things unto himself. That process is still ongoing and will go until he returns, and then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom over to the Father, 1 Corinthians 15, 23 and 24. I hope that you’re a Christian.

Some of you aren’t, who are old enough and should be.

It’s yours to participate in. In this great plan that God went through a lot of trouble to unfold for all of us. So I’d encourage you, if you’re not a Christian, to become one. You are a Christian. And you would like our prayers because you haven’t been living right. We would be honored and humbled if you would come. If we can assist you now, we’d ask that you come as we stand and sing the song of invitation.