So we'll go before the Lord in prayer, and then we'll get started. Father, I come before you tonight. I thank you for the opportunity to teach. I just pray, Father, for your strength. I pray, Father, above all, for clarity, that those things which I believe you have for me to say would be communicated and understood, and that all of us would draw closer to you through the truths we talk about tonight. In Christ's name, I pray. Amen. So this course is going to be called The Big Story of the Bible. Now of course everyone, or almost everyone here, has some level of acquaintance with at least some of the stories of the Bible, and most of you have an acquaintance with most of the stories of the Bible. There's a sense in which many of the things that we'll be covering will be things that you already know, perhaps in far more detail than we'll be able to cover them in the 15 weeks we will spend on this course. You may even wonder what the point of such a course might be. You might think, well, I learned Bible stories when I was a kid. Why do we need to talk about story and all of that now? Isn't that just for children? Well, that is what we're going to be talking about tonight. And really, we're not going to be talking about any Bible stories tonight. We're going to be laying a foundation. We're going to be talking about, and I'm talking too fast, so I'm going to slow down. We're going to be talking about the idea of story and what I mean by that. And we're going to be laying kind of a foundation for some principles that we will then be using as we discuss in the rest of the course. And so my prayer and hope is that this introductory, so if you maybe have that idea that why do I need to learn about Bible stories, isn't that for the children over there and we should do something maybe more serious over here, I'm hoping that you will see by the end of tonight just how serious this idea of the Bible's big story really is. The first point I'd like to make by way of introducing the course is that the title of the course is not the major stories of the Bible or the big stories of the Bible. It's the big story of the Bible. And the difference between those two titles is the point of the course. In listening to sermons, in reading the Bible for yourself, or in relating the Gospel message to others, it's all too easy to treat the Bible as just a collection of stories, or a collection of stories and psalms and other various literary genres and things, rather than a single narrative that is profoundly coherent. It can be hard in the midst of all the details, and if you read the Bible from cover to cover, you will find there's an abundance of details in Scripture. You read the Pentateuch, there's an abundance of details in the Pentateuch. But those details come together to form a single picture. As important as the details are, and that picture is Christocentric in nature, and that'll be an emphasis throughout the course as well. As important as the details are, they are important, it is the single picture, that single Christ-centric, that means Christ-centered picture that's the point of the whole endeavor, that's the reason why each particular part is in place. The individual stories of scripture are not intended merely or even primarily as moral examples that we can take out of their context in order to plug them in as needed into our own individual lives. Now, of course, there's nothing wrong if we take account of their context. There's not something wrong with using Bible stories as moral examples. That is a good thing to do with them. It's one of the things we're intended to do with them, but it's not the primary reason why they were inspired. But if it's the only way and if we only use them to kind of pick and choose and put them into some structure of our own, we're going to miss so much of what God intended His Word to accomplish. And we may even use it accidentally or even intentionally to accomplish things that He never intended for us to accomplish with His Word at all. If we do not keep the intended big story in mind, It can be all too easy to refashion the individual stories into a big story of our own devising, one that may have very little in common with what God actually intended originally. What we need to understand from the outset is something that, and this is some of those things that is going to sound a little bit abstract, but I hope I would get to the end of it. You'll see just how practical this is and how much relevance it has to what we'll be doing for the rest of the course. And the first thing I want to talk about is the storied nature of reality. It's something I'm calling the storied nature of reality. It's gonna take some time to fully unpack what I mean by this. And perhaps more importantly, what I don't mean by it. And you may, when I first say something, you may be thinking I mean one thing and I'm going to explain I actually mean something else. So if something sounds really strange, then wait till I'm done and we'll have a time for questions. But just stick with me because I'm going to be explaining some things as I go along. And I may not be going where you assume that I'm going from the beginning. And some of the terminology may at first seem a bit abstract. I'm not going to use too much technical terminology, but I think it will help us in the end to understand the big story of Scripture more clearly and to live out that big story in our lives. And that's really what we are trying to get at. All of us have, whether we're fully conscious of it or not, an overarching story into which we fit or attempt to fit everything that we do and everything that is done to us. I'm not saying that all of us think in those terms. Not everyone thinks in those terms. But everyone has a story of their own life that everything that happens, everything that they learn, if it's going to be of relevance to them, they try to fit it into a particular story. So if something happens, they weave it into the story of their own life. And when things happen that you can't fit into your own story, then either you dismiss them as irrelevant, or if it's something that's obviously relevant and it doesn't fit into your narrative, you begin to have a mental breakdown. And that's really what happens when people go crazy, is they can't fit the data that's coming in with the story that is in their own minds and that we begin to collapse as human beings when that happens. None of our stories are exactly the same. All of us have a story of our life. All of those stories are different. Even people who have had very similar life situations can have very different stories in the way that they put together the details of their life situation. And it's the differences between our stories that lies at the root of each of our own individual unique perspectives on the world. Everyone here has their own perspective on reality. No two people are exactly the same. This is why two people can look at exactly the same bit of data. and put that data into two different stories and interpret it in completely different ways. It is why someone can look at evidence on a broad scale. So this will be a broad scale example. Someone could look at evidence that appears irrefutable to you and you say, here is the evidence for my point. And they look at it and they say, well, here's the evidence for my point. completely different perspective on the same evidence, and they agree with you on the data, and yet they interpret that data in a completely different way. And from your perspective, their conclusions seem impossible, and yet from their perspective, your conclusions seem impossible. It's the different stories that they're bringing and fitting that data into. We're going to go down to a micro level that I'm hoping is going to be a bit humorous. Sometimes when I hope, that doesn't really work out the way that I hoped. But I want to consider the tale of the husband who is routinely leaving his socks on the floor. That's something that no husband would ever do here, I know. But there are hypothetical husbands that hypothetically leave socks on the floor. So there's no debate, right, whether or not the socks have been left on the floor. We're going to simplify the story. They're there in the middle of the room. That is a fact. And to keep our illustration simple, we're going to assume that the husband doesn't make a lame excuse about the dog putting the socks there or something like that. He put the socks there. He owns up. I put the socks on the floor. I did not put them in the laundry hamper. So we've got our fact. That is the fact. The socks are there on the floor. And I didn't put them in the hamper. The kid didn't put them there. I put them there. That is the datum that we're starting out with. And yet, they both agree, right? The wife agrees, husband agrees, socks are on the floor, husband put them there. End of agreement after that point. And here's why. The wife is the datum or individual fact. So, datum, individual fact, not just a punctiliar little fact, socks on the floor. But by the time the story's done, it's no longer a little fact. And so she has a story that includes the datum that her husband forgot to kiss her on the way out the door. As this narrative begins to be woven together, and she's weaving these facts into her own personal story of reality, she notes that he also left his socks on the floor two days before this. And a week ago, he didn't like the soup that she made. And just yesterday, he left his dirty clothes on the bed that she had just made. And the socks on the floor, far from being a mere fact, a datum, something abstract you could put into a dictionary, become part of a larger narrative in which she feels as though her husband no longer appreciates the hard work that she does to keep their house beautiful. So she draws his attention to the offending socks. The husband, noticing the socks for the first time, didn't even notice when he put them on the floor. He fits this fact into a different story. He had stayed up late the night before in order to try to keep their car running just a little bit longer, and consequently had been almost late for work that morning, which was why he had forgotten to kiss his wife. It had been a hard day at work. His boss hadn't been happy with him, and he hadn't been happy with his co-workers. And he was also worried about the security of his job and how that fit into their plans to buy a house the next year. He had big things on his mind. In the story that he was telling, he didn't even notice that he had left his socks on the floor, and he couldn't begin to imagine why that was an issue, far from being a signal that he didn't care about his wife. From his perspective, it meant nothing whatsoever, and he could not understand what the deal was about, because in his story, the socks were not a turn in the narrative. They were just there, and they didn't even merit a footnote, and why are they such an issue? The very fact, in fact, as from that perspective, the very fact that his wife saw the socks as something to complain about meant to him that she must not care about everything that was in his story. Everything that he had gone through to provide for there to be a floor on which to drop the socks in the first place. Or a bed on which to leave the offensive dirty clothes. So if a hypothetical, entirely hypothetical couple are to resolve their differences, they need to do more than agree on the facts. They already agree on the facts. There's no debate between them on whether or not each of these things happened. They all agree on that. Now, there are certainly couples that don't agree on the facts either, but in this story, they do. What they rather need to do is learn to understand the story that the other person is living in, to learn to weave the individual stories of their lives into a unified whole that informs the way that both of them interpret the facts of their relationship. Their stories will still be unique, but if they're going to understand one another, they're going to have to live in one another's story. Yet more fundamentally, more importantly even than that, and that's at the level of marriage counseling, but really what they need to do is bring both of their stories into closer conformity to the big story of which they both, as professing Christians, claim to be a part of. If you notice, there was nothing in the stories, either of the husband or the wife, that connected back to any story larger than their own experiences. The contention of this course is that, at least at some level, there should always be such a connection if we are truly to live our lives as followers of Christ. The point that I wish to make by means of this perhaps somewhat silly illustration is this. All of us have narratives, stories, running through our heads all of the time. We don't always consciously think of it as a story of my life. Some people do. Maybe I'm a bit strange in the fact that I actually really consciously think of the story that I'm putting together in my mind. Most people don't think that way. But everyone has a story into which they fit what happens to them. And when these stories operate at the macro level, we call them worldviews. A worldview, as has often been said, is what you look through rather than what you look at. I look through my glasses. I only take them off when they get dirty or broken or some other reason. I normally use them to look at the world. I don't think about my glasses unless they're causing me a problem. I look through my glasses in order to see everything, and that's what a worldview is. That concept isn't original to me, it's been used by some others as well. And the reason why people who seem to us perfectly rational in most areas, so we would give this person a rationality test and we would say, yeah, you know, two plus two is four, and you know all these facts about history, and you know these facts and those facts, and we're both rational human beings, and yet then that person flies a plane into a building And we can't make sense how in the world would that make sense to someone to fly a plane into a building? Or as Pastor was talking about earlier, how in the world does someone think they're a hero for murdering unborn babies? How does that make sense to anyone? Well, it boils down to these macro-level stories that we called worldviews, where those things that from our worldview are absolutely crazy, and from the big story of the Bible are absolutely crazy as well, by the way, they actually have a significant role to fill in the stories that those people are telling. It is the distorted story that makes the distorted actions seem normal to those who commit them. And while this is something that is worthy of a great deal of time, it's also something that we're going to have, Lord willing, later on in the entire course that really interacts with the differences between the Christian worldview and other unbelieving worldviews. We'll be touching on that as we go through this, but that won't really be our focus. Our focus in this course will not be so much on the difference between various large-scale worldviews as on the way in which we, who all profess, at least I hope that all of you profess, as far as I know most that are here are professing believers, we profess to have the same worldview, how to bring the overall narrative to scripture, the narrative that undergirds the worldview that we profess to have, how to bring that narrative to bear on our everyday lives. At every level, it is most fundamentally the stories that we tell ourselves rather than the data that we are aware of that determine when and how we make decisions and how our beliefs work out in practice. It is most fundamentally the stories that we tell ourselves rather than the data that we are aware of that determine when and how we make decisions and how our beliefs work out in practice. We are all, like it or not, people with stories. Now someone steeped in our postmodern pluralistic culture may think that the reality that all of us have stories is the end of the matter. And this is really, we'll just talk a little bit about this alternative worldview because postmodernism talks a lot about stories. And I need to kind of explain this so you understand what I'm getting at and what I'm not getting at. Each of us on the postmodern view lives in our own story. And on the postmodern viewpoint, a story from which we cannot escape or modify in any fundamental way. We've got our story that's unique to us, and we have to live out our story, and we can't change our story. We are who we are in our own minds, whether reality would attest to who we are in our minds or not. And if reality gets in the way, then you change reality to match your story. The only thing we can do is be true to our own story and to respect the stories of everyone else, no matter how contrary to reality as we see it, those stories may seem to be. And by this viewpoint, again, this is not my viewpoint, there's no criteria by which you could ever judge someone else's story to be in any way deficient. There is, on the postmodern view, no larger narrative to which anyone's individual story is accountable. The only real crime is to attempt to squelch the stories of others, or the perceived attempt to squelch the stories of others, and to prevent someone else from being true to their story, and standing up for those whose stories are being squelched is the only virtue that is left. in our society or in a society that would live by this viewpoint, which is increasingly predominant in the world in which we live. To use a technical term that is often used in discussions like this, there's no such thing on the postmodern viewpoint as metanarrative. There is no story, there are only stories. As believers in Christ, I would hope that all of us have a sense that there's something profoundly wrong with this perspective. And I think that most of us, just from the Spirit of God living inside of us, would know, if you're a believer, there's something wrong with that kind of thinking. We know that there's something called objective truth, whether or not we would phrase it that way. Truth that is true, independent of how anyone chooses to interpret it. Elders postmodern talk about stories, and those postmoderns that want to call themselves Christians often will talk about their journeys, and sometimes that type of language makes me feel ill. Not that everyone who uses journey is necessarily postmodern, I'm not meaning to imply that, but it is some of the buzzwords in that sort of perspective. And all this postmodern talk about stories can lead us to distrust the category of story altogether. When we see the use this terminology gets put to, and when we see the agendas it's being used to support, then we can be tempted to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This proper sense of unease with the pluralism of our moderate culture can lead us to attempt to emphasize facts and de-emphasize story, perhaps treating story as something that's not quite as serious as facts, something perhaps that should be reserved for children that adults don't need to give attention to as such. Yet while such a response is certainly understandable in light of the challenges that we face, I would suggest that in the end it is actually quite counterproductive. The reality is there is no such thing as a brute fact, an uninterpreted bit of data. All facts have already been interpreted by God. The interpretation by God of reality preceded the reality. God didn't just create a bunch of stuff that was just there and then later decide how to interpret that, right? The story preceded reality. Each and every fact you know or will ever encounter already has a place in the single story that he has been weaving together from the beginning. In opposition to the pluralism that pervades our culture, biblical Christianity insists that there is, in the end, one story. A story that includes the correct interpretation of any and every individual fact, bar none. The reality is that God the Creator existed in eternity with full knowledge of everything he would create before he ever created anything. God has a God's eye view of reality that incorporates everything that has ever happened into one story. This means, of course, that each of our individual stories is accountable to a story larger than ourselves. There is, to use again the technical term we talked about earlier, a single metanarrative, a single big story that stands in constant judgment over against the individual stories that we tell ourselves. Showing them up as always, because we are creatures, our stories are always partial. And because we are fallen creatures, our stories are often distorted. Because of sin. Now the difference between God as the creator and us as his creatures is that it is absolutely impossible for us as finite human beings, even if we were to go back and say if the fall had never happened, it was absolutely impossible for Adam as a creature to ever obtain a God's eye view of even the smallest bit of reality. I'm being quite serious, and I'm not being sacrilegious, though it may sound funny, when I say that only God himself has a fully comprehensive understanding of the socks on the floor in the illustration with which we began. Only God understands the full significance in the entire scheme of the reality that he's created of what appears to us to be the most insignificant facts of all, facts of far less apparent significance than those pesky socks that I keep mentioning. They keep coming up because they're annoying. but only God has a fully comprehensive understanding of the way that any one fact relates to all other facts. There's therefore a very limited sense, a very limited sense, in which the postmoderns are right. Because every single one of our individual stories that we tell is both limited and distorted to at least some degree, no one of our individual perspectives can be made normative for everyone or indeed for anyone else. Yet that does not mean, and here the contrast with such thought is striking and obvious, and this is really what the point boils down to, that because we ourselves cannot function as a norm, so I cannot function as a norm for someone else because my story is partial and distorted just as their story is partial and distorted, so who am I to take my story and write over top of someone else's? I am not God. It by no means follows from that that every story is therefore equally valid and equally uncorrectable. It is not, no matter what the pundits of this present age may declare, a matter of my story versus your story. The God who wrote the story has given us a divinely inspired account of that story. He has given us that story in human language, a gift that he himself created and bestowed precisely so as to make it possible for him to give us such a gift. So God is the author of human language and God created human language, not fundamentally so humans could speak to humans, but so that God could speak to humans. rendering that language fully capable of communicating exactly what he wished to communicate. With all the fuzziness and all the confusion of human language, God nevertheless can communicate through human language. He is not, of course, spelled out every detail. As creatures, we would never be able to master every detail anyways. What he has done is given us a framework in scripture by which we can evaluate and correct the stories by which we and others live. It is not a matter of my perspective versus your perspective. We have been given something by which to correct all of our perspectives. And we've been given more than that. Through the power of the regenerated hearts wrought in believers by the Spirit, when we place our faith in the work of the Son that the story He has given us relates, we have as believers entered into a process that is even now beginning to remove the distortion that sin has brought in to all of our stories. Well, I'd love to spend more time on this, and this is something I could get really, really excited about, and I am already really, really excited about it. This will be more properly the subject for a course in theology, and we'll be dealing with that in another course in due time. We're all creatures of story, yet even more fundamentally, we are all creatures in a story that both transcends and corrects the individual stories that we live by. The goal of this series is to help you to bring the stories that each of you, whether you think that way or not, lives by every day into closer conformity to the story revealed in Scripture. If we're to do this, we must have a very clear sense of the way in which our individual lives fit into the overall narrative of Scripture. Because it is altogether possible to have an extensive knowledge of the details of Scripture, and yet to take those details and interpret them by the terms of an overall story that's very different from the overall story told by Scripture itself. My conviction is that it is, in the end, only the big story of the Bible that has the power to transform not only our big picture worldview, but also the individual stories by which we make our everyday decisions, yes, even about how to interpret the socks that are lying in the middle of the room. Now, of course, we'll not be able to cover every aspect of that big story in 15 short weeks that we'll be spending on this course. But I do hope that by God's grace, when we're done, you'll have a better understanding of the big picture than you do now. And so we'll be focusing in the next 15 weeks, not necessarily on the story, we won't be able to cover every story of the Bible, but on the major plot moves that affect the shape that the rest of the story of Scripture takes. Things like creation, things like the fall, things like David, things like the prophets. Those sorts of stories that form, as it were, the main Roman numeral points of the story of Scripture. Though it's somewhat ironic to speak of a story with Roman numeral points, I do have to admit. That wasn't in my notes, so I didn't think through that in advance. But basically, think of it as perhaps the main plot moves, or perhaps some terminology that some use would be the axe of a play, the main axe. And then, of course, there's many things that would occur. in one of those acts. I know that I certainly hope both over the course of preparing the lessons and through the comments and insights that you will share with me and the questions and challenges that you will share with me to sharpen my own understanding of many of the things that we'll be discussing. Now, all of scripture is not narrative, and we need to address this at this point. Scripture contains many genres of literature. Any of you who took the reading with understanding course will know that. Obviously, you wouldn't have needed to take that course to know that, but we spent a lot of time talking about the different genres of scripture and emphasizing that. In fact, it was the main thing we spent time talking about. And every genre of scripture is equally inspired and equally necessary. Yet, just as there are no uninterpreted facts, so also there are no context-less passages. Just as we must not pull a verse out of the context of the passage in which it's found, and that is really what we emphasize, the two things we talked about, context and genre, in the Reading with Understanding course, so also we must not pull a particular book out of the larger canonical framework in which it is found. Every passage in scripture, no matter how seemingly far removed from the narrative genre, has been placed in the canonical context of a single sweeping narrative that stretches from the creation of the world to the coming of the new creation. That sweeping narrative must be taken into account every time we interpret scripture, regardless of the genre of the particular passage that we're interpreting in that instance. In the short time we'll have, there's no way we'll be able to do the actual work of weaving together the contributions of each particular genre and passage into the overall big picture. Such would be the work of a lifetime, or many lifetimes, or the lifetimes of many, many individuals, not a brief course, let alone a single lecture, not let alone the last few minutes of a single lecture. Nevertheless, I want to just take a few moments to show just how important a firm grasp on the big story is to understanding every genre of scripture. There's only time for a selection of pointers, yet I hope that even these brief hints will help you see with greater clarity how important the big story of the Bible really is, even for those passages that do not at first appear to be a story. The numerous senses, if we talk about the Pentateuch, you have story in the book of Genesis, but you have a lot more than story in the Pentateuch. There is in the book of Numbers, there is census after census after census. Even in the book of Genesis, you get to the beginning, there's all these genealogies, and then there's genealogies later on, and there's really genealogies all through the Pentateuch. And there's these laws, and these different sorts of laws, and all of these different things that are there. And those censuses and those laws that we find there mean what they mean because of the narrative context into which they are placed. It is because every law and every number has a place in the single big story that both they and we are a part of that they continue to make a difference and ought to make a difference in your story and in your story and in my story. They are not preserved in the canon of scripture because God thought it would be interesting for his people today to know a few abstract and context-less trivia about how many Israelites there were or what types of birds they were allowed to eat or not eat. They were not included in scripture so that we could have a super-advanced trivia quiz. That wasn't why they were originally written down, and it certainly is not why they have been preserved. We have no calling to sift through the records of the law in order to pick and choose the bits that we think might still be relevant to us today that we can weave into a story that has nothing to do with the story of which they and we are a part of. It is their connection to the big story that ensures that all of them, when understood in the light of that story, will always be relevant to all of God's children. The extensive poetic literature that is found in Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, is also inexplicable apart from the overarching narrative of Scripture. And the pleas to God that pervade the Book of Psalms, for instance, are undergirded by the promises that God made to His people, promises that undergird the pleas that His people make to Him today. The wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs is founded on the creation order that's described in the Book of Genesis. And if you attempt to interpret the Book of Proverbs apart from that creation order, you'll be no wiser than you were before and you may end up making even more foolish decisions than if you had never read it. The message of prophecy, both in the Old and the New Testaments, can only be understood in light of their place in the big picture. not only of the things they foretold, but also of the people to whom they foretold those things and foretold those things. If we abstract their predictions from their own place in the big story, we are highly likely to misunderstand even those bits we have thus abstracted. The epistles of Paul and others may at first glance seem to be exhibit number one of scripture that has nothing to do with the overall story. In fact, many have taken epistles such as the book of Romans to be an abstract theological or even philosophical treatise and interpreted them with very little reference to the overall story of scripture. To read Romans this way is to read it in a very different way than Paul wrote it. Time after time in his letters, in both subtle and obvious ways, Paul uses the big story to drive his points home. And so often, Paul will reference even an entire narrative of scripture with just a single verse. tying in to the big narrative, and the point is dependent on an understanding of the big story of Scripture. And if we want to understand what the Spirit was inspiring Paul to write, rather than simply use what was inspired to create our own meanings, we need to be as at home in that big story as Paul was. The story must be as fundamental to us as it was for Paul. Not everything in Scripture is narrative. Not every passage is a direct building block in the big story. But every passage finds its context in the framework provided by that big story. It's as if you had a building, and the building has a structure, and everything in the building may be important, but yet everything in the building is in the building. And the building is the story. And we need to live in that building in our own individual lives. All of scripture is part of one story and all of us are part of one story. And if we want to live lives in accordance with the word of God, we are going to have to think about the stories that we are telling ourselves and connect those story to the story that God is telling with us. and then we'll be in accordance with the way that God would wish us to live in our lives today. Now before I conclude, there's one thing I touched on earlier and I just want to be very, very clear about something that I'm not saying. You may sometimes hear, particularly in the postmodern context in which we live, the idea of truth as story played off against something referred to by someone that would have this perspective, perhaps with a sneer even, as a propositional truth. And we need to get rid of those propositional truths and just live in the story. That sort of line that I hope it would be needless to say is not at all my intention for this lecture or for this course. Propositional truth is vital to the Christian worldview. But what we must understand is that the only reason why anything can be universally true in the first place is because everything in the universe, everyone in the universe, lives in a single story. And if everyone in the universe was not part of one story, then there could be no such thing as a universally valid truth. The big story of the Bible is not something we can hold on to instead of propositional truth. Now, we can hold on to our own individual stories and absolutize the stories we tell ourselves and hold on to that instead of propositional truth. But the big story of the Bible is the foundation that makes the very idea of propositional or absolute truth a coherent concept in the face of all of the naysayers of our day. Once again, the details of how this works are the subject for another course, but I felt it essential at least to say I'm not saying that. In fact, what we're going to be talking about, the big story of the Bible, is what makes all of that naysaying about propositional truth absolute nonsense. In summary, then, the goal of this course is to help all of us to better understand the big story of the Bible, and then to use that understanding to constantly rewrite our own individual stories, so through the power of the Spirit, to undistort our stories, to our stories will always be partial. And that's really, this isn't even my notes, but this is part of what the glory of this is, is that because each of us are creatures, each of us can reflect the creator in a way that is unique to us as individuals. And that means that even though we're partial, we can, because we're creatures and God is the creator and he's infinite, then as believers, For all eternity, we can learn more and more and more and more and more about the ways of God and never run out of God to learn more about. We can reflect the glory of God more and more and more and more and more. And furthermore, when we get to glory and when we come to the new heavens and the new earth and the effects of sin are destroyed, then the distortion that makes us take God's beautiful story and twist it all up into knots will be gone and we'll still be partial in our reflection of God's glory. but we won't have the distortion that messes up the way that we reflect Him, and it'll be glorious. But even now, the new creational power, and this is something Paul talks about, the new creational power that will one day bring in the new heavens and the new earth, is at work in the hearts of every believer, undistorting your story and transforming you into a more perfect reflection of the glory of God's original story. Seeing the place that you have in God's story is essential to living your life in the light of it, and to living in community with others, and to valuing the way in which others reflect the glory of God. Because it's not about my story versus your story, it's about His story, and that means that my story can change, and your story can change, and they can be woven together, and it can be a very beautiful thing. And some of what we're going to say about the big story are things that are quite foundational to Christian belief. Things you can't disagree with me on without falling into heresy or worse. There are some things we'll talk about if you disagree with, you can't be a member of this church. If you don't believe that God created the heavens and the earth, then you are not welcome as a member. You're welcome to attend. But you can't be a member here if you do not believe that God is the creator. You cannot be a member here if you don't believe that mankind fell in Adam. There are other things we'll talk about that you may disagree with me on. There are things we'll talk about that maybe everyone here will disagree with me on. I would hope, of course, to convince you of some of the things you might disagree with me on, because obviously I wouldn't hold it if I didn't think it was the best position to hold. If I thought there was a better position, then that would be the one I would hold. And maybe perhaps I'll change my mind on some things I might say. That's certainly the case. I've changed my mind before. And maybe you'll raise a question, and you'll be the one that changes my mind. But the one thing I want to ask you for is that what is talked about be judged by the light that it sheds on what Scripture itself says and the way that it reflects what Scripture itself says. Because this is our standard, what God has said is our standard. Not my story, not your story, it's his story. And all of us need to constantly be at work to undistort our stories to match the one story that he has told and is telling and will continue to tell until he brings it to a glorious completion. My prayer is that the author of the big story would use these lessons to help all of us rewrite the individual stories by which we live our lives into ever closer accordance with the story that he has revealed.