The Bible is not one book. It is a compilation of sixty-six books, or writings. And even though these were written by some forty different authors over a period of 1500 years, there is an integrated message that runs throughout the Bible. Unfortunately, we often get our exposure to the Bible piecemeal. For the church goer, each week a small sliver of the biblical text is reviewed, without a mechanism that puts all of these pieces into an integrated whole. What we read or hear can seem disjointed. How is the book of Leviticus connected to the book of Hebrews? How is John's reason for writing his Gospel related to Psalm 2? How do we connect the covenant ceremony of Genesis 15 with the cross-much less understand that ceremony to begin with? Why is the book of Ruth included as part of the Bible? What does it have to do with anything? Or better yet, why do we have the book of Esther-where God is not mentioned at all? What makes each of these important? How are they related, or are they? In short, how is God's story-God's revelation-unified? That's where A Forty-Day Study of the Biblical Story comes in. It looks at how each of the elements of the Bible contribute to an integrated whole. And the lens used to see Scripture in a unified way is Jesus. Everything we look at is done in the context to how it relates to Jesus and how it contributes to the Bible's unified message. We learn why an obscure Galilean carpenter has become the center of all of history.
