A Unified Story That Leads to Jesus: ReGeneration 2016 - Tim Mackie (The Bible Project)

it's really good really good to be with you guys like Francis he and I were talking at the beginning of the day I've had a really actually challenging time discerning what I should share as a part of this day because so much of what this topic and what we're talking about today and I think even the reason why Dan asked me to be a part of this is because the whole set of questions every lab every all the topics they're really important to me personally I mean that and that's because of my story and so I think I just need to kind of set that to frame what it is I'm gonna share because what I'm gonna share I don't know you might be happy about it and some of you might think I'm a heretic I don't know I can't but I'll let you be the judge of that but in in my mind something fundamental needs to shift in how Western American European Christianity how it relates to the Bible I think the Bible has essentially been hijacked by a whole series of Western traditions and ways of reading the Bible that don't honor it they're not faithful to it and I think they actually are crippling the church's witness in our culture and so let me share a bit of my own story and why I care about all this so much so I grew up in God's country which is the Great Northwest and the wonderful city of Portland Oregon Portland Oregon I I was exiled in the Upper Midwest for a while I was doing my graduate studies and Hebrew Bible and stuff but I made it back and it truly is the most wonderful city in the world in my humble opinion but I grew up my both my parents are followers of Jesus they're Christians they're really remarkable people they they were both artists musicians really bohemian type and they both grew up in super strict religious homes like crazy legalistic religious homes and so they'd rebelled and it was actually through the Jesus Movement that they came back to Jesus and and what for a while it was smoke pot and follow Jesus and then they lost the smoke pot part and it swallowed Jesus but my earliest memories of what churches was just their friends gathering in our home like as I was a tiny little guy and I was interesting to me and I don't know how I don't know how to explain it and my parents and I have talked about this for some reason I just I expressed a hostility and a skepticism towards towards Christianity or what I've come to call churchianity it's it's a form and an expression of the Christian tradition here in the Western culture and I don't know why they were sharing with me if yesterday they remember this I remember it too when I was like 11 or 12 and it was not long after getting my first skateboard which was a game changer for me that I sat them down with a list of reasons of why I didn't want to be associated with Christianity or the church and why I didn't want them to make me go to church anymore and so so they honored that decision actually it was really brave they asked me to go on like holidays and stuff like that but they could they could making me go because they wanted to maintain the relationship over the long haul as a means of helping influence me and so that was really important I'm it that was a marked moment and getting my first skateboard was a really important moment to and skateboarding culture important was very different I'm down here in California you can be outside more of the year that's whywe more Californians or extroverts and so on but Portland you know we have to live inside half the year not because it's cold it's just mild it's just mild alright because you go move to Canada or live in the Upper Midwest that's cold Portland's just wet wet and mild but but that affected the way Portland skateboard culture took shape too because you have to be very creative you can't be outside a lot of the year and so you have to go underground and you have to find indoor places to skateboard and somehow Portland skateboard culture was way more kind of nerdy artsy bookish music it was just different it's different than the land of performance high driven action sports or whatever like with you guys down here so Portland is different so for me skateboard culture and my liberty from churchianity is in my teenage years I was just identity shaping for me I had a story I had a tribe I had all my clothes ready picked out for me by Thrasher Magazine I just had to go get them at the store and it was my life I had this illusion that I could maybe take it somewhere you know as a courier of course that was the most ridiculous thing somebody should have told me the truth about that one but whatever but that continued to shape because that's a very anti institutional anti-establishment type of culture and I loved that there was a church in Northeast Portland that in the late 1980s there was a guy who moved up from San Luis Obispo to go to Multnomah which is a Christian college there and he just he was a skateboarder and he saw a lot going on and in skateboard culture in Portland but he saw like there's nobody effectively being a witness to skateboarders in Portland so he built an indoor skate park in the basement of a church building and he opened it up weeknights in 1987 and either weren't that many places it was one of two dry places to skateboard at that point the other place was underneath the Burnside Bridge downtown which was dangerous like we would go there but don't be go there at night you'll get stabbed so we did so we would go to go to skate church is what it was called skate Church and it was a really great park and you could go pay a couple bucks it's dry everybody would go there it was packed scene and all you had to do you had to you could skate for an hour and then they would have a break they would turn off the lights and some one of the staff people would get up and give a Jesus talk and if you sat through the Jesus talk you could skateboard for the second half of the night and that was skate church and everybody wins and so I started going when I was 16 and I thought these people are stupid or whatever but it's a dry place to skate so they're nice that's cool they let us come get here and so so I went from I went for years and you know unbeknownst to me that Jesus was messing with me and over the years of me going and sitting in the back and thinking this was dumb and then starting to pay attention and I'll never forget because my parents weren't pushing it on me and so that's I'm hearing the stories about Jesus and how he would treat people and the encounters people would have with him and I'm hearing his teachings and his sayings and messing with me you know it's sticking with me and I remember thinking about it throughout the week and so on and so a lot very long story condensed I came to a point my life I was almost 20 years old and I just surrendered everything to Jesus and I committed my life to following him and that was the the most this the most life shaping decision that I've made and I'm so grateful for that but here's something that was interesting and my hunch is that if you've grown up in church he entity skatechurch was my introduction into churchianity is it twenty something but my hunch is that you're gonna resonate with this so I remember there was a there was a big skateboard ramp in the guy who started at Paul one night for the Jesus talk he was building a big halfpipe one of those big tall ones you know that goes like this and he had us all get up on one edge of the ramp and he this was brilliant on his part but he hadn't finished building it and so a whole lot of the bottom wasn't completed yet and so you know it's like vert ramp goes down to here nothing just frames and you know death if you were to drop into it you know and then I've the other side and so he used this as an illustration the fact that I remember it so much later means it's stuck with me but he was essentially saying you know like my God's the Creator he wants to share life in the world with us he's the maker of all good things and that's a lot like this ramp but humans suck and we do stupid stuff and we're lamed whatever and so we destroy each other and destroy God's good world to our sin it's like we just ruined it's like we just ruined the ramp took it out and so now we've got a problem is that we live in a world that doesn't work right anymore because if you drop in on the ramp death you know just careen into the abyss yeah rap or whatever and then he just said here's what's so awesome about Jesus he loves the world and he dropped in for you and he fell into the abyss and it destroyed him but because he's God he conquered death through his love and then he's drawing this at the same time this ramp and so it was like the two halves of the ramp and then the cross formed the bottom of the ramp the horizontal beam of the cross and so it's like Jesus completes the gap and now all it takes is faith to drop in oh and then you can come be here with God again and no longer step that's very clever isn't it that's very clever you know and some of it I think it's called the bridge illustration right but whatever like you know this is the form and so it stuck with me and it spoke to me like that's what I needed to hear it was very clear because I knew that I was not succeeding at being a human being come my late teens that things were just not working out for me and so like that resonated and it made sense to me so here's what happened I for years I heard stories about Jesus or this kind of way of thinking about Christianity and shaped how I thought about things and so when I decided to follow Jesus one thing I remember it stuck out to me is how much he quoted from and talked about his Bible what we call the Old Testament and so I may be okay so you have a relationship with Jesus means having a relationship with this book with God's Word and so I you know I'm in my early 20s and I'm reading I'm reading the Bible for the first time and it makes no sense to me whatsoever I'm so bothered and I'm confused and I'm scandalized you know like the stuff that Dave was talking about earlier you know how many different verses about the sword are there in the Bible and you just walk away okay and like the talking snake on page three sure didn't help anything you know and you know what I'm talking about it's the Bible and it's very strange and if it's not strange to you anymore just ask your co-workers or neighbors and they'll remind you how crazy it is that you'd you know what's like I think this is really important this is very odd it's very odd but I knew I knew that it was important and so when I tried to understand the Bible through the storyline of this ramp illustration or the bridge illustration this was essentially you know the way the story was presented to me you know there's creation you're gonna know this right creation fall Redemption restoration Tim if you want to read and understand the Bible here's the basic storyline here here's how Jesus fits into it and creation it's you know it was about God made up the world perfect and good and then humans suck and so we're not perfect and good and so God's has to punish us yes to kill us banish us from his presence but instead Jesus came and God punished Jesus instead of punishing us and so we gots gonna rescue the world and we go to heaven forever amen and amen yeah yeah this creation fall Redemption restoration and that was the framework I was given to start reading the Bible and then I and then I ran into a problem and that problem was the Bible so let's just just work with me here we've got a storyline here so creation the first half of that covers pages 1 2 3 like right there all right and then you move from fall to Redemption that's about Jesus coming right so just work with me here we go okay Jesus all right redemption and restoration but you guys see where I'm going here so what's left unaccounted for are you with me I was just I don't know if you've ever done this illustration but it's very physical and tactile and you just the problem is very obvious it's very obvious all right I was mentored and shaped in an environment where the foundation story didn't account for the mid vast majority of the Bible but I was told to read the Bible right I'm told to engage this thing and and every day I'm told to but I wasn't given a framework for like what doesn't the majority of the Bible have to do with what you say is the story of the universe it doesn't make any sense to me and so then it just became even more confusing and so on and so thus began my very early journey as a new Christian I started signing up for Bible classes I was I was starting to teach the Bible to junior high skateboarders not was hard audience to sell right but it was great for me because as I cut my teeth on teaching and trying to communicate what Christianity and Jesus is to people and my first audience was junior high skateboarders and and so it's just this long journey and I went to school for far too long and I I mean I I I just nerd it out like the ultimate nerd out Ness like I just um Greek and Hebrew and the whole thing language history culture I just became obsessed with everything to do with how how this how the Scriptures came into existence historically but then to how how to think about what the Bible is and what's for exactly what Dave was saying in a way that honors it because this is actually what God has given to his people like this not this at the beginning and just like all of it and so how does it hang how does it hang together and so whatever just Bible teaching and everything that I've been doing with this thing called the Bible project is an attempt to try and bring a whole bunch of people with me on the journey that I had over the 15 years that I got to be in school for way too long I'm here's an interesting I've already decided I'm going to interesting but I'm not going to show it to you now here's a interesting clue where where I would start is if I want to immerse myself in the real story of the scriptures not the shrunken down version the real story let's let's take a cue from the first and last pages first sentence of the Bible what kind of literature begins with the phrase in the beginning narrative narratives stories not what some fairy tales do but I don't think this is a fairy tale right so here's one you know so somebody might debate that but that's the whole point of the discussion so it's a narrative it's a narrative it's a story if you turn to the last page of the Bible the second to last paragraph where John the visionary is concluding the epic visionary tale that he's been exploring in chapters 1 through 22 and the very last scene of the story world of the revelation before the conclusion to the book and so on is this line and they it's the servants of God in the new creation and they will reign come on it's too good it's like in the beginning plot conflict long long plot conflict resolution more attention and they reign forever and ever whatever the Bible is and they've already kind of you know problematized for us our conceptions of the Bible is a rulebook dropped out of heaven or as a theology answer book or as a moral guidebook for every moral question you'll come across a new life the Bible speaks to all of those things to our character formation to our deepest questions and our deepest longings the Bible speaks to all of those things but it does it in the form of an epic narrative epic narrative and epic narratives are like we hardly engage in them anymore except fairy tales or fantasy the story world of Harry Potter it's an epic narrative long periods of time epic casts tons of characters by the time you get into book 3 there's like 37 plot lines moving down the field together and all these subplots and characters any junior toking fans exactly right so epic narrative it's a huge vast world and you're brought into this swirling of about a ring but it's also these kings and ancient kingdoms and elves and dwarves don't like each other in this so there's all these complex plot lines and they sometimes in her lap and home in all long periods of time it's an epic narrative in the Bible it has that literary form to it it claims that it's anchored in real historical events and so on but it's an epic narrative about what God is up to and what God is doing so that's first of all this gives us a very clear clue as to what the Bible is and the key phrase that we've made the mission of this thing called the Bible project that I'll talk about a little bit is that if we're going to reignite our imaginations about what the Bible is and be a part of releasing its power in our culture again I think it's recognizing a very simple thing the Bible is a unified story the leads to Jesus and it has wisdom for the modern world which leads to a second observation about what the Bible is this is a yes I did sit down with a calculator and do this but don't judge me so if you you know if you talk to literate literature nerds and so on they categorize different types of literature and world history and so on narrative is the most common form of human literary expression in human history the second would be poetry condensed speech that forms words together and phrases and dense meaningful usually creative combinations so that the effect on you emotionally is more than just the words narrative and poetry and just look like out of all the chapters in the Bible if you just count them all up what kind of literature is this chapter what's this one there's the breakdown right there 43% narrative 33% poetry and discourse would be something like just normal speech like what I'm doing here right now Moses's speech and deuteronomy's Paul's led all the letters in the New Testament are for the most part disc discourse but so just look at the numbers right there are you guys like that just says something when God wants to speak to his people does he want to engage more are right reigns over more our left brains more our logic brains side of our brain or a creative imaginative effective side of our brain is that interesting so obviously both but there's some things what Dave was saying one of the primary things the Bible is doing is not simply information transfer it's trying to mess with you it's inviting you into an epic story that it claims is the story of our world and as you are invited into and you learn about all of its characters who are mostly dysfunctional this was another strange thing about churchianity that I did not understand is that I'm reading all these stories about these really horrible people and the really bad decisions that they make and then the like I see representations of these stories in Christian children's media and like none of that stuff's in there it's just happy noah you know and happy Gideon or whatever and you're just like my goodness do you remember that part where Gideon said he would scrape the flesh off of enemies with thorn branches like why didn't that make it in to VeggieTales yeah you know like so it just shows you how captivated we are with this Bible as a moral handbook and and therefore all the stories have to be cleaned up of anything that's scandalous because we're trying that must be what they're for these stories about HUD so I can be a good person or something like that like my goodness that's exactly not what these store don't be like the people in the Bible except the ones who come to the end of themselves after all of their flaws and failures and cast themselves on God's mercy and grace be like those people but don't be like the way they are for most of their lives right so sorry that was a rabbit ran with us anyway so evitt in an epic narrative and there's poetry intense emotive literature that's trying to take you through an experience poetry is is a as a literary experience its primary goal is not to communicate information and a third of the Bible is in poetry there's just a very simple observation but I don't think we we this is just isn't even on our radar of our conversations about the Bible because the way that the Bible gets presented to people in most churches is in the form of discourse it's in the form of sermons and teaching writes in the form of classroom education because we think that's what the Bible's for it's for information transfer but the majority of the Bible is trying to do something else it's trying to mess with you the way that the stories and about Jesus messed with me for years right that's how the Bible that's how the Bible works and so here's here's what I would like to do this is gonna be very brief and as an overview but I think we can do it I would like to try and walk through the epic narrative the Bible in a mere 11 minutes [Laughter] what do I think I'm doing okay I like that I like starting with creation that's a good idea isn't it that's a good idea yeah that's a good one but does God make a perfect world where does it say that in the Bible what kind of world does God make he says it seven times on page one you know saying what kind of world God thinks he's made it's the difference between a perfect world and a good world that an important difference that's an extremely extremely important difference somehow there's this narrative that's captured churchy entity's imagination God made everything perfect God made humans perfect humans broke God's law and fell from perfection in fact that's why we used the word fall which is not a word actually used anywhere in the Bible to describe what happened in Genesis chapter 3 that's always been very weird to me why you all think that so let's use biblical vocabulary but we'll get there in a second so God makes a really good world full of potential he stations some creatures in it that he gives a job to who are the what's the creatures names Adam Adam which is the Hebrew word for humanity and he says the humans are the image of God the image of God if you just read read the story it's not something humans possess it's what humans are they are the images of God they are the physical embodiments that represent God's purposes and will and character as they go about doing their job and what is their job to rule right to rule and subdue to take all of the goodness that God is hacked into his good world to channel it so that it doesn't just grow wild tomatoes eventually but to channel the energy inherent within God's good world so that it becomes even more productive for more life to flourish you make Gardens out of the thing to rule and subdue to harness the world's energy and then God gives them a choice and what's the choice the choice is how are you going to go about building this world as the partners and images of God they can trust God's definition of good and evil right but this tree represents here there's knowledge of good and evil but the humans are gonna have to employ as they go about building the world and so they can either trust God's definition of good and evil which by the way is God a reliable provider of what is good very remember page one seven times he says it right so yeah God's a very reliable provider and definer of what is good and so the tree represents this choice are they going to trust God's definitions of good and evil and that way is going to lead to access to the tree of life and good good stuff or are they going to seize the opportunity to define good and evil themselves how does the story go it goes poorly it goes poorly and what they what happens is not a fall from perfection just read the story write the word in Genesis for uses the word it's directly connected to its use in Genesis three is sin which is the Hebrew word for failure they fail to become what they were called to become they failed the opportunity they failed the chance to be to be and realize God's purposes for them and for the world and so what they do is they want to define good and evil on their own terms the story actually says that it's a quest for wisdom the woman saw the tree that it was good for food delightful to the eyes and valuable for gaining wisdom so this is a story about people wanting to define good at evil on their own terms not on God's terms as they go about building building the world and so hey guys doing it's great totally she's just watching that clock so there you go that's the story it's a quest for wisdom and so what what is God's response he's heartbroken he doesn't curse them he curses that snake and he curses the ground curse is the ground and he says as a result of your choice the world that you have created by your decisions is going to be hell on earth and right there in the midst of that assigning of consequences God announces that from the seed of the woman is going to come one who's gonna crush evil edits at its source God can't even judge without being merciful and on page three on page three of the Bible and so what they get is death by exile from the garden and the story goes from the garden to then Cain and then Cain murders his brother and then he goes and builds a city where everybody's murdering each other that guy named Lee Mack who sings a poem and has too many wives and then that leads to the flood and then that leads to the great story of the city in the tower of babylon babylon now this is where you have to account for that huge portion of the bible all right that churchianity neglects and that we should stop neglecting let's just get a fresh start on this thing and what God does is he calls the family of Abraham and existence and what he says is God wants to bless all the nations through Abraham's family book and chapter anybody it's like one of the most important pages in your Bible it's called Genesis chapter 12 yeah Genesis chapter 12 and so that's what God does so this is very important what God wants to do is take one family call them out from among the nations that have failed and he's going to do something with them and make them the vehicle of his blessing for all the nations of the earth so right from page 12 God's on a mission to rescue and redeem all the nations of his world and he chooses one family through whom he's going to do it yeah hey guys done that's the Old Testament like why why is this stuff here it's because I'm page 12 of your Bible God chose not to parachute down packets of salvation to every individual human right that's how Americans would do it right because it's about equality yeah and this kind of thing so what God chooses to do is actually to weave his own character and being into the story of humanity by binding himself to this family the family the family of Abraham and why is this part of the Bible so long and complicated the family of Abraham our or what kinds of creatures yeah yeah they're these kinds there are these kinds people who want to redefine good and evil on their own terms and so what you get is like hundreds and hundreds of pages the story of Israel becomes the story of all humanity in a long dramatic explorative epic narrative any fans of the Godfather trilogy you know you don't maybe I don't know what you think about Breaking Bad and what's that whole thing was but very similar right tragic stories right tragic stories Hamlet right Shakespeare these are stories extremely well told they're very long and the whole purpose is to give you an Anatomy play-by-play story of how this person destroyed their lives and everyone's lives around them why do we tell these stories to each other to depress each other what's the values vary but what's the value in telling long stories about people ruining their lives are these important stories for us to hear the tragedies are extremely valuable stories they give us windows into our own failures and that's exactly what the story of Israel is because what how does Israel do at fulfilling their calling to become a vehicle of blessing to the nation's they fail utterly and so what does God do they go into the Promised Land there's supposed to be a light to the nation's and obey the Torah and they have the temple and everything and what they totally fail and so what God does is he hands them over to the consequences of their decisions and the consequences are death by what exile exile to where Babylon no I could finish the story in this way but now I'll just show you a Bible project video how about that I think audio ought to work here there's this beautiful poem it's in the Book of Isaiah the city of Jerusalem has just been destroyed by Babylon a great Kingdom in the north and all of these Jewish people they've been sent away into exile but a few remained in the city and they're left wondering what just happened has our God abandoned us right because Jerusalem was supposed to be the city where God would reign over the world to bring peace and blessing to every now Isaiah had been saying that Jerusalem's destruction was a mess of Israel's own making they had turned away from their God become corrupt and so their City and their temple were destroyed everything seems lost but the poem goes on there's a watchman on the city walls and far out on the hills we see a messenger and he's running towards the city he's running and he's shouting good news and Isaiah says how beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news beautiful feats yes the feet are beautiful because they're carrying a beautiful message what's the message that despite Jerusalem's destruction Israel's God still reigns as king and that god himself is going to one day return to this city take up his throne and bring peace and The Watchmen sing for joy because of the good news that their God still reigns now in the New Testament we find this same phrase the good news it's the Greek word yuan Gallion and it's also sometimes translated with the word gospel so when Christians say do you believe the gospel they mean do you believe the news but not just any news in the Bible this phrase is always about the announcement of the reign of a new king and in the New Testament the Gospels use this phrase to summarize all of Jesus's teachings they say that he went about proclaiming the good news of God's kingdom so Jesus saw himself as the messenger bringing the news that God reigns yes but the way that he described God's reign it surprised everybody I mean think the powerful successful Kingdom it needs to be strong Abel will able to defeat its enemies but jesus said the greatest person in God's kingdom was the weakest the one who loves and who serves the poor and he said that you live under God's reign when you respond to evil by loving your enemies and forgiving them and seeking peace this is an upside down Kingdom now Jesus also said that this kingdom was arriving with him yeah so for example there's this really interesting story where there's a high-ranking Roman officer and he comes to Jesus begging him to heal this server and he even calls Jesus his Lord acknowledging that Jesus is his authority Jesus praises this man for recognizing what no one else yet had that not only was Jesus announcing God's kingdom he was the king and so the word gets out that this Jewish man from Galilee is talking and acting like he's the king of Israel he's appointing twelve disciples which are an image of Israel's twelve tribes he's healing people forgiving people their sins and all of this so threatened Israel's leaders that they finally decided to have him and Jesus let them yeah which is a weird thing to do if you're trying to become king that's right but for Jesus this is what had to happen Jesus saw the sin and the devastation of his people Israel as just one small part of the entire human condition how all humanity has rebelled against God resulting in the tragedy and devastation of a whole world so how is God going to bring his reign over such a world Jesus believed it would be through an act sacrificial love for his enemies this is why in the Gospels Jesus's crucifixion is depicted as his enthronement as the king of the Jews yeah he receives a crown he also receives a robe he's exalted uh not on to the throne but on to the cross how beautiful are the feet that bring good news and the good news now is that Jesus has defeated death and that he reigns as king but he's dealt with our sin and corruption himself and that he's conquered it with his life and with his love and then Jesus sends his followers to go out and keep announcing this good news of the upside down Kingdom and to invite everyone to give their allegiance to him the king who defeated death with his love there's something about yeah so the Bible project it's a creative nonprofit studio that a friend and I started to make sure animated films for adults about all the books of the Bible and key themes that unite the whole story of the Bible the videos are all for free and they're all on YouTube just Google the Bible project it's the first thing that'll come up and if you like them and find them helpful at the end of the video will tell you where to go contribute to the next video that we're working on but let me just let me land the plane why we're here today what this is all about Jesus is so beautiful and so amazing you guys he changed my life and I've watched him changed the lives of so many people in the 20 years that I've had the privilege of following him and this he is such an amazing complex beautiful figure there's actually there's no one story that can do him justice the only kind of story that could do justice to Jesus is the epic narrative of the Bible are you with me every single part of the story every subplot every confusing thing that you had no idea how it relates dude I'm telling you it relates it connects there are a million spotlights shining on Jesus from the weird obscure stories in the three quarters of the Bible we don't know what to do with only an epic narrative like this could do justice to the beauty of Jesus the Bible is not simple the Bible's it's challenging it takes your whole brain your whole heart and all of your commitment to a community of people who are going to immerse themselves in this story and over a lifetime commit yourself to seeing how every part of this story leads to Jesus and and when when you invite people into this story it messes with people it does things to people when you tell the story of Jesus who was the truly human one who was the image of God and the one who was a human that we are all made to be but perpetually failed to be and when you tell the stories about how Jesus was the faithful Israelite who truly loved God and loved neighbor with look at the cost of his life and when you talk about a Creator God who's so committed to the world despite what we've done to it that he would bind himself to it in the person of Jesus that God would enter his own story and bind himself to humanity eternally because He loves us and because his love is what conquers our sin and our failure in our death and it's precisely his love and creative life that offers hope it offers hope to the drug addict it offers hope to the tech nerd in Silicon Valley it often hope to the urban single-mom offers hope to the suburban mom of four who are all playing soccer right every kind of humanity finds its meaning in its hope in King Jesus and that's what the story's about and this is the story that we have the privilege and the great challenge of inviting our church communities into and it will take a lifetime for you I feel like I'm just scratching the surface of this thing and I've given the last like 20 years to really going for it you know and this but to me it's not about it being daunting it's a playground because every page in every part of its story highlights the beauty of the Grace and the love of King Jesus and so my my ultimate hope is what you take away today is a new passion and a new kind of ignition in yourself to learn the Bible and to understand this huge story and how it illuminates things about Jesus that you would have never never seen before and when we have when we share this wisdom with the world like it it affects people and I believe this is one of our greatest callings as disciples of Jesus is not to hide the Bible by sanitizing it or shortening it so that we basically neuter the thing and its power in our culture and in people's lives and so the Bible project is the way you know that I've found my own calling to do that you're in a local church community with your circles of influence but this is what we're called to do we follow Jesus and we bear witness to him by knowing him and relating to him through the epic narrative of the Scriptures they men so I hope today's been a service towards a 10 let me close in a word of Prayer so if that's ok Jesus we believe that you are beautiful we were compelled by your upside-down Kingdom where love overcomes evil because your love overcame our failures and our deepest flaws and it overcame the hell that we have created here in your very good world Jesus have mercy on us forgive us for our short attention spans forgive us for our laziness give us a passion for you for this epic story that bears witness to you give us a passion for our friends and neighbors whose view of themselves and whose view of the world is so impoverished because they don't know you they don't know the richness of what you open up in the human story and so we commit all of our efforts all of our learning we want to know you and we want our friends and family and neighbors and co-workers to know you to Holy Spirit empower your church to bear witness to Jesus and we pray in his name amen yea I'm N [Applause]

Channel: Tim Mackie Archives

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Length: 45min 28sec (2728 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 24 2017