For many, their initial exposure to the gospel of Jesus Christ comes in a season where they are
confronted with their sinfulness and their need for God’s grace, offered through the person and
work of Jesus Christ. The new believer is often doused with concepts of grace, sin, redemption,
the cross, and perhaps is reading a Bible plan or immersed in a book like the gospel of John.
One thing that can happen at this point is that the new believer becomes overwhelmed by their
lack of knowledge of the Old Testament, which the New Testament often assumes, pulls from,
alludes to, and quotes. Briefly, let us consider two huge reasons to get started and a practical
word around how to do so.
Our God is an author and the main character
Well over two-thirds of the Bible is contained in what we call “the Old Testament” or what Jesus simply referred to as “Scripture.” Let that sink in. God could have set it up in such a way that after Genesis 1-3, Jesus came in Genesis 4. But that’s not what he did. Our Savior entered a story
that had been going on. He himself was the Author of the very story in which he entered. Our
God is a storytelling God. To fully appreciate the Savior, we must know the story he entered.
God is weaving together a tapestry in history that won’t be fully appreciated until it is fully
written. In his eternal and triune nature, he has overflowed in time and space by revealing
himself to sinful humanity. Before he revealed himself to you, he created everything. The first
humans fell. God called a man named Abram to be the one through whom all the nations would
be blessed. And in the opening verse of Matthew, we learn that the genesis, or the beginning, in
Jesus is a new beginning, but it has old roots as he is not simply the Son of God, but “the son of
David, the son of Abraham.” We may not fully see it all until our union with him takes on its
eternal form, but much of our appreciation of our union with the triune God, in the person of the
Son of God, by the Spirit of God, to the glory of the Father, is rooted in seeing the holistic story he
is writing in and through his church.
You play a role in his story
Neither the individual Christian nor the global and local church is living out a set of principles as
much as they are living out a role in a play. The paradigm that views God as moral police chief
misses what God is up to in redemption. God is the author of a new humanity. Jesus is the
Second Adam. In our Savior and federal head of the new human race, a whole new creation is
being ushered in, right under our very noses. To be a “Christian” is to follow Jesus in his
Kingdom of heaven here on earth activity that in many ways is a divine conspiracy. Our God is a
storyteller, and that means we are actors in his play. But our God is also a subversive storyteller.
He won’t scream at you. If you miss it, you miss it. But he has revealed it all. In and through his
Word, he gives us our lines for the play. Lines that make us the most authentic versions of
ourselves we will ever be. When we take up our lines, we are following the Son and so fulfilling
our destiny in God’s grand story. Christian, take your part in God’s story. To do so, you must
know the story.
It easier to get it going than you might think
I remember a time where I was so overwhelmed at the sheer amount of stories I didn’t know or
understand. To this day, there is much in the Old Testament that I struggle to fully understand
without some sort of guide (shoutout to Zephaniah one time). That being said, with the right
guides and rhythms, you really can get your feet under you pretty quickly. To the person getting
started, pick out a reading plan with a little bit of Old Testament and New Testament each day
(here is the Port City Reading Plan if you need one), and then any time you come to a new book
in your reading plan make sure to watch the “Old Testament Overview” videos on YouTube by
The Bible Project. Going back to those often is totally fine (I still do).
So wherever you find yourself, you serve a storytelling God and you have a role to play. He is
waiting with the script just for you. Just like in middle school theater, everyone has to be able to
recite their lines before they fully embody the character. So it is with us. Let us immerse
ourselves in God’s Word that we might embody it and extend it to the world around us. King
Jesus calls you forward to follow him into the story and make fishers of men. For the glory of our triune God, don’t sleep on the Old Testament.